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The graven images of patriotism June 2003

Who is a patriot?

If judged on decibels alone, the answer would be simple. Patriots must be the ones ranting on talk radio, shouting down questioners of administration policy and, in the name of freedom and democracy, putting the other nations of the world on notice that they’re either with us or agin’ us. Patriots must be the ones indignantly passing flag “desecration” laws, citing the “In God We Trust” motto on coinage to assert a Christian America, mandating the forced recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance by schoolchildren (but only the revised, Knights of Columbus “under God” version), and demanding the display of the Ten Commandments in public places.

Speaking of which, remember the part of the Ten Commandments story where Moses is up on the mountain and the tribes are getting restless below? In their impatience and anxiety, many began to question this new spiritual path Moses had set them upon. After all, prevailing religious practice in Egypt and elsewhere was centered around Gods with actual names, powers, and responsibilities. Those Gods took the form of sculpted and carved figures, something concrete you could put your faith in. Now the People were being told not only that the core of their universe had no name, but that it might even be more a set of ideals than a personage. And they were expected to believe in that?

Believing in a set of ideals was fine as long as things worked out pretty well. Maybe they thought, “Hey, give me a pillar of fire to keep away my enemies and then drown them in an unparted sea, and I’ll believe in whatever you want.” But now times were difficult and stressful. Food was running low. They were lost in a barren wilderness, with hopes of a Promised Land becoming ever more distant and uncertain. In times like those, who were you going to trust? What were you going to believe in? In answer, some began forging graven images of the familiar old-time Egyptian deities, and engaging in idol worship.

So what has this biblical tale got to do with American patriotism and the right-wing’s boisterous claim to it? Well, it’s all about idol worship.

To many in America, the Constitution and the ideals it represents are fine when discussed academically, or even, occasionally, when put into practice in times of domestic tranquility. But as a core belief, as a guiding set of principles for our society, many simply have a hard time wrapping their minds around it.

The Founding Fathers must have wondered if future Americans could maintain loyalty to Constitutional ideals, and not revert back to primitive symbols and allegiances. Perhaps they hoped that a free press would ensure an enlightened, informed, and involved citizenry. Of course today, we’re busy dumbing down our future citizens with standardized thinking. And our ever-consolidating corporate media bears about as much relation to a free press as Rupert Murdoch does to Thomas Paine.

So in stressful times like these, many Americans seek refuge in the reforging of old familiar idols, and in demanding fealty and homage to those graven images, the cloth flags, uttered oaths, creeds, and pledges of primeval tribes and pre-Constitution nation-states. Or else.

Or else they’re perfectly willing to make sacrifices unto the alter of their idols. A TV news exec censors a war correspondent for hinting at the complete embeddedness and subservience of US media to Bush administration management. Another TV exec fires a mini-series producer for pointing out similarities between pre-Nazi Germany and current times of increasing fascism in America (thereby proving the producer’s point). Journalists and educators who dare express critical and revealing statements about our foreign policy or declining freedoms at home, are fired or censored. Not just celebrities but, more importantly, thousands of others whom you’ll never hear about, are harrassed, censored or self-censor for simply believing in the Constitution.

Soon it will be Flag Day, then Independence Day. Perhaps these would be good times to reflect on the deeper meanings of patriotism, and to celebrate the patriotism that comes in different stars and stripes.

Who killed democracy? January 2003

Disney and others successfully attacked the public domain. Politicians ignored rules about accepting corporate gifts. Telecoms slipped stealth provisions into legislation forbidding communities from using health concerns to stop cell towers. Cheney snuck oil and gas cronies into the White House to plot energy policy. The music industry forced ISP’s to rat on their e-subscribers. Commercial entities received lists of citizens against whom it was OK to discriminate in the “War on Terrorism.” The Supreme Court equated money with free speech.

Slowly, but surely, power in our society drifted away from citizens, acquired by corporate interests. No cabal of capitalists specifically planned it. No PAC pandering as public interest group mapped out a long-range strategy. Nonetheless, the combination of being awarded the rights of citizens (even though the words “capitalism”, “corporation” and “business” appeared nowhere in the Constitution, certainly not in its definition of a citizen), along with unlimited resources and life spans, all without the Constitutional constraints on government, led to that inevitable consequence of relentless self-interest.

We should have seen it coming. Republicans had managed to redefine capitalism as democracy, and democracy as socialism. We should have asked, “Do we really want the ‘free market’ reigning over all of America’s institutions?” We could have, for instance, pointed out that the right to vote wasn’t dependent on wealth and power, in theory anyway. Justice was intended to be blind and not to be a product of free market auctioning, at least that was the intent. Did this make our electoral and judicial systems socialistic? On the contrary, they were the foundations of democracy. But the suggestion that other areas fundamental to our society, such as health care, education, growth, mass media, or mass transit be managed by the public sector was considered treasonous, or at the very least Communistic.

Capitalism equivalent to democracy? Hardly. The evidence was all around us, if anyone had bothered to look. Numerous countries in Asia were zealots of capitalism while their societies remained racked with repression and a lack of civil liberties. No, capitalism and totalitarianism got along just fine, as we would eventually, too late, realize. Capitalism didn’t even necessarily encourage democracy, although that ruse had been successfully used to turn our foreign policy into a Willie Loman of advance work for Corporate America.

We should have realized that capitalism partnered well with democracy only when the former remained in service to the latter, but not when democracy became subservient to capitalism or a false front for it. Too late did we wake up to the smarmy, mealy-mouthed platitudes of politicians and corporate mouthpieces.

Republicans continued to implement their agenda unquestioned. They cut taxes in good times and reduced spending in bad, all the while whittling away at the small uniting contribution of society’s wealth in shared acknowledgement of a public good. But as the public sector shrank, the private was advantaged with less regulation, less competition for government services, resources and attention, and fewer opposing voices; the Reagan Revolution come trickling down to fruition. And come election time, corporate media hid behind its money-for-access-to-the-public-dialogue policy as usual. Opinion was bought, victory assured, tactics validated.

It couldn’t have worked without a certain level of societal control. Nobody would have imagined that we were one of the most controlled societies on earth. Weren’t we constantly told on TV and in the mainstream press how free we were, and how despised we were by the rest of the world because of our freedoms? What a joke. Only later did it dawn on us that the most effective form of control was achieved when a population did not realize it was being controlled. We were being allowed to exercise only that measure of liberty unthreatening to corporate and political elites; an illusion of democratic choice necessary to maintain an adequate supply of compliant workers and credit-worthy consumers. And no more.

We thought we were being patriotic, harassing and turning in anyone treasonous enough to question the government or the status quo. Looking back, we were like zombies from some Grade B horror flick eradicating the town’s only living people. I remember, we thought we were so cool mocking and deriding a litigant who actually had the audacity to suggest fast food corporations were responsible for his obesity. Turns out we were in deep denial of the very real control they did have over our bodies, our lives. He never had a chance. None of us did. Wasn’t it Aldous Huxley who said in a 1946 introduction to his Brave New World, “...the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude?” But then we were all too tuned in to monopolized, networked TV. Who read? Who spoke? Who listened? Who cared?

We had become ill-bred, wallowing in our bloated big-screen possessions, addicted to our piggish SUV’s and super-sized bellies, factory-fatted cattle waiting to be fed upon by the corporate vampire bats of consumption. Supremely confident in our ignorance, we projected our militaristic arrogance planet-wide. No matter how feeble the rationalizing effluent our leaders shoveled for the constant warmongering, we lapped it up or at least shut up.

I held out hope. I told myself that systems did not continue in one direction forever; they contained the seeds of their own transformation. Surely, our arrogance would eventually lead to tragic consequences and fundamental confrontation of our own piggishness, blindness, and denial. Surely, if all avenues of creativity, freedom of expression and diversity of behavior were crushed, corporate vitality, wealth, and influence would likewise, eventually, diminish.

Well, all that happened, and more. Unfortunately, much more. I didn’t anticipate the magnitude. I wish I could turn back the clock. What could we have done differently?

America loses the 2002 election November 2002

As a result of the Republican sweep in the elections, there have been interesting editorials on Shrub power and the long-awaited easing of the judicial logjam. Although I’m not sure if a logjam isn’t preferable to the judicial deadwood we’re likely to now have foisted upon us, I have a bigger problem with the fawning over Bush, exaggerating his personal influence on the elections.

The Republican Party appears to have won the 2002 election fair and square (if there is such a thing). But were Republicans more successful at getting their “message” out? Was it a reflection of Bush’s popularity? Or was it something else?

As to message, here in Colorado I listened to weeks of attack ads from Wayne Allard, Bob Beauprez, Web Sill, and Marilyn Musgrave, and I still have no idea what their individual messages were, assuming they had any. But there was a Republican message, one that was far more subtle and indirect.

In the wake of personal trauma, individuals tend to focus on their own needs. In the wake of Sept. 11, the country has been less concerned with addressing far-reaching social, environmental, or universal issues. We have instead focused on fulfilling our more basic needs.

We’re hurting, and we want to deal with it by indulging ourselves and forgetting more generalized concerns. The psychologist Maslow talked of a hierarchy of needs, starting with the most basic and proceeding to the most self-actuating. In order to focus on higher-level needs, the more basic ones below must be met. September 11 ratcheted us back down the pyramid.

This shift toward national and personal security is bolstering the calls to sacrifice such things as the environment for oil and water sufficiency, constitutional rights for keeping suspicious persons in check, and ethical corporate behavior for a healthy economy. We may still give lip service to some progressive causes, but for now Americans want to continue driving their SUV’s without guilt, restraint, or high gas prices. Americans want to make money in the stock market, no matter how their companies are run, and pay little or no taxes, so they can buy more of the things TV advertising says will make us feel better. Americans want those people who make us uncomfortable watched and harassed, even if those people haven’t done anything wrong.

This is all in line with the unspoken message of Republicans. They indirectly appeal to those baser, more self-interested instincts. Voters in turn were less concerned with candidates’ character, positions, and plans than they were with perceived palliative benefits.

As for Bush, his popularity is itself more a result of the above phenomenon than the cause of the Republicans’ victory. But he did serve as the model, a template for making one’s choice at the polls - virtual coattails, if you will.

George W. Bush may not be an especially brilliant individual, not a great leader, or ethical giant. But compared to recent examples of strong, dynamic leadership, such as some of our more infamous corporate leaders and even Bill Clinton (whose image was itself manipulated by a Republican congress), Bush appears less risky and less disturbing; just a regular guy and a homespun talker who simply and unabashedly holds to his values. It also didn’t hurt that he was unburdened with actual governance, freeing up huge blocks of time to vacation and fundraise. Unfortunately, this too may become the presidential template for the future.

Similarly, our current and future senator Wayne Allard comes across to many as light-weight, fairly invisible in the halls of Congress, and inconsequential on the national scene. But that is now sufficient, even desirable, for a position of leadership. Allard's opponent Tom Strickland and others lost, not because the electorate was energized for one party or another (with the possible exception of Minnesota), but because America put comfortability ahead of dynamism and change.

This was no test of leadership quality or potential for greatness, either for Bush or for any candidate. History will not be mentioning the names of Katherine Harris, John Sununu, or Tom Tancredo in the same breath as Gandhi or King. It was instead the need to soothe ourselves, to overeat when we’ve had a setback at work, to soak in a tub when we’ve had a stressful day, to take our frustrations out on others when we ourselves feel abused, along with the continued and not unrelated dumbing down of the electorate, that caused enough of a shift in a few percent of the voters to swing the election and concentrate national power in the hands of the Republicans.

Conserving for whom? September 2002

The west is in a drought. Along with other measures being recommended or required, we’ve been asked to conserve water. Great. It’s good to conserve. After all, being frugal, dependent on less, and keeping one’s environment uncluttered and unpolluted do far more to enhance quality of life than do frantic consumption and the over accumulation of stuff.

But I have two questions.

First, for what and for whom are we conserving?

The drought has forced many communities to issue mandatory water restrictions. Some have even had to truck in bottled water to meet basic needs. But not everyone is truckin’ in the same direction.

Take Douglas County, Colorado, development capital of the nation, where recently there was some exciting news. Mammoth bones were unearthed at an excavation site. But what was also uncovered was the fact that the frenzied addition of water taps continues unabated. People were encouraged in the reports to contemplate the extinction of the woolly mammals. My guess is that it was early DougCo hominids’ plundering of the mammoths’ water supply to green up acres of proto-bluegrass that caused the beasts’ extinction, not climate change or overhunting.

While we’re dealing with a near-empty glass, developers want to sell more straws. One thing is certain. As water shortages become a way of life, we will be forced to find new water sources. Politicians will wait for the right time to propose it waiting, perhaps, until drinkable water becomes scarce. Then they’ll throw up their hands and “reluctantly” offer a solution: more dams and reservoirs. They know that public sentiment can waffle, but the profit and pressure to continue growth, as well as the need to finance elections, remain constant.

Question number two: “Then what?” After we build more containments, build more houses to suck up any additional water, and confront the inevitable next drought, then what?

We’re driving around on a tire with a slow leak. We could stop and put some air in the tire, but then what? Do we continually refill the tire while the leak gets bigger and bigger? Or do we stop the continuous drain? At least we can find air to fill the tire. Additional containments of little or no water provide little or no long-term solutions. No matter. They represent more major development projects, greased with a little campaign support.

There’s a bigger lesson here, though. Continuing development during droughts demonstrates that conservation on one level may only serve to encourage waste and the exploitive use of resources on another level. Consider that when we recycle, instead of reducing the need for landfills, we might just be opening up more acreage for Wal-Marts and subdivisions. When we push for more public transportation, instead of alleviating congestion, we might just be creating more available volume capacity for land speculators.

The problem may be that we see conservation only as a personal choice or fashion. But to be truly effective, we might have to apply it throughout all levels of society, not as fashionable behavior, but as internalized ethic. We might need to think beyond personal recycling and every-third-day-watering to such notions as conservation of land use, conservation of quality of life, conservation of surface and ground water, and conservation of climate. We might need to value restraint in physical expansion, restraint in personal transportation, restraint in gratification, and restraint in resource consumption.

Do we dare consider freezing the addition of new water taps and making future taps conditioned on sustainable supplies? What a bold notion: to use conservation not to put the squeeze on individuals to cough up resources for industry, but to make our lives easier.

It’s always difficult to draw a line at a particular point, but that doesn’t mean a line shouldn’t be drawn at some point. After all, the west’s land and resources are not unlimited. If we use them up, then what? Have we reached the point where we consider drawing that line? While there are still some things left to conserve?

Nationalism..."For those who think young" June 2002

The most successful marketers, whether in economics, politics, social change or religion, have always been able to recognize an emerging trend, define it, ride it, and then take it as far as the understanding and attention span of their audience would allow. But whenever Madison Avenue is attacked for its advertising, the usual response is, “Oh, we don’t promote attitudes, we just reflect what is already happening in society”.

So which comes first, trends in society or trends in marketing? It’s probably a little of both. Ad agencies think they’ve spotted an emerging cultural attitude, while viewers believe this is now the new, hip way they must act and think. As always, more than a product is being promoted.

What we see on TV no doubt influences behavior and culture. That being the case, the latest trends in advertising, especially in advertising to teens through twenty-somethings, are particularly disturbing.

The goal has always been to tap into the rebelliousness of this demographic. In the past this manifested in anti-establishment messages. Recall the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, when Madison Avenue sucked all meaning out of the counter-culture, leaving nothing but the husk of fashion.

Maybe it's these times, with the upsurge in nationalism and corporatization, but basic value systems seem to have become the latest easy target. Now the marketing industry seems to be defining “coolness” as dishonesty, callousness and selfishness.

This trend is perhaps most obvious in the Smirnoff Ice ads. There’s one where a group of stone-faced guys pretend to be part of the kitchen crew in order to bypass the waiting crowds (read uncool, non-Smirnoff drinkers) left outside of some dance spot. After deceiving the bouncer, they march through the kitchen tossing off their hairnets without a thought, barely acknowledging the real working stiffs. One camera shot makes a point of following a tossed hairnet as it lands on a dinner plate. They are then rewarded with a night of great dancing and beautiful babes.

Smirnoff’s has a couple of these ads where young partyers pull the wool over the eyes of uncool outsiders. The sneering condescension of the “insiders” is palpable while they play on the gullibility of others.

Then there’s the Sprite ads. One features basketball player and sports "hero” Kobe Bryant. The scenes move among characters from different walks of life, each saying, “I told him to be a ...” The list of suggested occupations includes doctor and scientist. Is the message here to follow your dreams? Hardly. The message, as the ad cuts to scenes of Bryant, smirking while showing off his hoops abilities, is that considering such honorable, if mundane, pursuits is laughable when you’ve got game or you’re a kid who thinks you do. Perhaps like Kobe, you too can be a high school kid who is offered a truckload of money to skip college and play basketball.

In Honda SUV ads extreme industrial-recreationists, such as a kayaker or an all-terrain skateboarder, recklessly barrel over a waterfall or a cliff. Witnessing the carnage and hearing the screams from above, some young, stone-faced yuppies nonchalantly shake their heads at the pathetic risk-takers, then resume loading their daypacks into the back of a Honda. Only then do we pan over to see the prone extremer beginning to show signs of life, like a moan or a leg movement. After all, Honda seems to want us to know, we don’t want the targets of our derision dead. “Hey, up there. Help, please? Perhaps you could place a 911 call on your satellite phone? I’ve lost the use of my limbs.”

But nobody’s listening, because the point is aloofness and insensitivity to the realities of others. It’s now cool to ignore or dismiss others’ perspectives. Ethics and empathy only get in the way in a world of self-interest and self-serving views of justice and reward. Perhaps the Sprite commercials say it best, mocking the notion of role models and the setting of standards or higher values, using a phrase that could just as easily apply to oil as to soft drinks: “Image is nothing. Follow your thirst.”

Is the media liberal or conservative? April 2002

There’s been a recent outbreak of commentary concerning the perceived liberal bent of the media. The paradox is that, at the same time these pundits were bemoaning a liberal bias, we were simultaneously witnessing a near unanimity of war-terrorism reporting, corporate media self-censorship and a near-jingoistic editorial fervor. And yet more reporters do identify themselves as leaning toward the left. How can this be? As in many things, an example from nature may be illustrative.

Seems that when a bare landscape is first colonized by plants, they can’t wait to grow, reproduce and spread out. No matter that the simplest disturbance, a fire or some bug, could wipe them out in no time. It’s full speed ahead. Later on, however, as the landscape ages, things change. “Hold on,” the plant communities seem to say. “Rampant growth may be less important than surviving and protecting our species.” In this mature, healthy state, fire and insects take some, but not all of the individuals. You could say that the community leans first toward risk taking, and later as it matures, toward risk avoidance. OK, so what does this have to do with bias in the media?

Conservatism implies an affinity for the status quo and being uncomfortable with change. Overall, our plant community above became conservative as it aged, despite any tendencies of individual species. Now look at new media outlets, print or electronic. They tend to be innovative and creative early on, taking risks and establishing their niches on the media landscape.

To see what happens after time passes and a media outlet is well established, merely look at the contents and structure of the average major city, mainstream daily newspaper. The sections are almost identical: World, Local/Regional, Sports, Business, Scene/Living, etc. The median editorial opinion varies remarkably little from one paper to another. So the differences in philosophy that we perceive as significant may only be the result of grading on the curve. After all, how much difference is there really between the editorial stances of the New York Times and the Houston Chronicle when you consider the full range of possible positions?

The landscapes of corporate media and vegetation have much in common. Perhaps because of all that risk taking, the newly colonized landscape is very dynamic, but not very stable. On the other hand, the mature landscape is more stable, but has a lot further to fall if something drastic occurs.

So, returning to the question of whether members of the media are liberal or conservative, the answer is it doesn’t matter. While reporters may be liberal, editors, publishers and owners often are not. And, as the outlet ages and becomes part of a larger corporate enterprise, it will naturally become more conservative. The more corporate its profile, the less willing it is to take the risk of challenging its standard business model. The more established the outlet, the more likely it is to rely on establishment and corporate sources for content and the information which informs its opinions.

In the end, I believe there are two determinants in assessing tendencies toward liberal or conservative in the media. 1) How established is the particular outlet, and 2) How extensive is the corporate entity which owns the outlet?

I understand we’d all be more comfortable with a black and white, definitive, yes or no, liberal or conservative answer. But just like a mom and pop vegetable stand is not a business in the same way Microsoft is a business, and just like a New England Town Hall meeting is not the same political animal as the Republican National Committee, a newspaper such as the Colorado Springs Indy is very different from the Denver Newspaper Agency, which runs the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News. It’s the media species, not the individual reporter, that matters.

Patriotism and the knock on the door December 2001

What’s an American to do?

First, after giving to a fund for the families of New York firefighters, I learned that many of those families had already been made millionaires through the outpouring of charity. At the same time, needy individuals and innocent families across the country have seen their lifelines dry up, as giving and attention has focused almost exclusively on September 11 needs.

Next, I heeded the call to go out and spend money to help our country’s economy. But just when the bills from that excess spending came due, I lost my job. Then I saw those same industry and corporate heads who were laying off workers by the thousands pull on their Congressional strings to demand taxpayer-funded bailouts for themselves and their shareholders.

Perhaps worst of all, when I didn’t see any articles in the daily paper expressing diverse viewpoints, I didn’t even go out in the streets and protest. You see, what I thought was the basic American right of voicing an opposing opinion is now considered unpatriotic, dangerous, even treasonous.

All of which made me wonder. What if I had acted in the exact opposite manner to that above, instead of going along with official directives?

Instead of giving money directly to the September 11 funds, I could have given to a variety of causes and needs, in diverse communities across America. Instead of spending money on unnecessary consumer goods and unhealthy, processed fast food, I could have saved and invested it, so that my family is more secure and my community has more funds available for economic stability. Last, I could have openly expressed a viewpoint counter to the prevailing one, contributing to the public dialogue necessary for an informed, democratic citizenry.

When I look at these two sets of approaches, I’m struck by how much more reasonable, democratic, and yes, patriotic the latter approach seems. This presumes, of course, a definition of “patriotic” which epitomizes the Constitution, and not merely a flag-waving, blind obedience to our leaders and their media outlets.

So I decided to apply this same contrary approach to other recent actions and proposals from our business and government leaders. For instance:

The biggest influence on Bush/Cheney and the most powerful commercial force in this government is the oil and gas lobby. It wants to drill anywhere and everywhere for oil, keep power delivery systems centralized, develop nuclear energy, and receive tax breaks and subsidies. So I guess the contrary approach would be to conserve resources and protect wilderness, decentralize the energy grids by encouraging community-based power, develop renewable energy technologies and fuels, and formulate a system of positive incentives and subsidies for all this.

Hmm, this going-with-the-opposite-approach could be habit-forming. Let’s try it out on the government’s new take on free speech.

The government has been telling us to “watch what we say”. Quasi-governmental agencies have even begun compiling McCarthyesque, “anti-American” lists containing names of those who gave even the impression of opining freely about current events. Mainstream media pundits have chimed in by saying now is not the time for free speech, peaceable assembly, etc.

But could it be that Constitutional liberties are only meaningful and real when put to the test under conditions which are uncomfortable and perhaps inconvenient, and not when merely existing as dormant, academic principles unthreatening to anyone in authority? Maybe now, especially, is the time.

So the patriotic approach could be to support causes you believe in. State a personal belief, even if unpopular. Advocate for a more creative, energy-diversified economy. Consider who may be the real enemies in our midst: the John Ashcrofts who would redefine the Constitution to facilitate their personal power grabs; the Joe Citizens who rationalize fascism as occasionally, not even regrettably, necessary; the lobbyists who shamelessly seize upon any tragedy, any horror, and manipulate it to fill their own money troughs; the pandering corporate media, who reflexively reflect mob moods while not daring to relay any unmarketable opinions.

Above all, while many of our leaders’ decisions might appear to have turned out OK, don’t assume that different or even opposite choices might not have been far better.

Wait, I thought I heard a knock on the door. I’ll be right back...

(Mr. Teitelbaum has graciously accepted our invitation to come down to the bureau office and help us with our investigation into possible domestic threats, and so will be unable to complete this essay. Before he left, he asked us to pass along the following advice to readers: Anyone found reading this essay will be considered a danger to the national interest and may be detained indefinitely for questioning. For your own good and for that of Our Great Nation, you are advised to leave this website immediately.)

The War Response September 2001

As I look at the media blitz stoking the war fever of the American public, I keep asking myself if there’s something else involved here besides media manipulation. After all, corporate media reflects as much as it leads. What’s more, many friends and family members for whom I have great respect seem to have bought into the war response completely.

So it set me to thinking, and the first thing I thought of was my divorce ten years ago. At the time, I was in great distress, adrift emotionally, and sought advice on how to proceed. That advice was surprisingly consistent. Get her before she gets you; you have to be aggressive if you don’t want to get screwed; get the most rabid, attack-dog lawyer you can find. Fortunately, my frame of mind was such that I no longer trusted standard advice. We worked it out ourselves.

And then I thought of recent, high-profile murder cases, some in which the defendents were children. How often did we hear relatives of the victims say that they needed the death verdict for “closure”, for “resolution”, or for “justice”. How rarely do we hear a victim’s family or a prosecutor plead for rehabilitation or reconciliation.

Here in Jefferson County, CO, our school district and the community responded to Columbine with much denial, coupled with a zero-tolerance policy on teen behavior.

What has all this got to do with waging unrestricted war in response to the terrorist attacks? Maybe the reason most Americans want war is because they can only conceive of that one alternative. All our default responses to relationship conflict are adversarial, from our campaign and political structures, to our legal system, to the war on drugs, to capitalism, to getting tough on crime. People are frustrated now, they need to do something, to have some kind of response. And war and vengeance are all many can find on the American menu.

One can imagine Osama bin Laden looking at our society from the outside, from where trends and aspects are perhaps clearer, and predicting the zero-tolerance response. We know why he hates the US: Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Israel, our arrogance. But we don’t know his overall plan, if he has one, in carrying out these terrorist attacks. Could it be that he is counting on a heavy-handed response to be the catalyst for uniting hardline Muslim factions worldwide against the West, tipping the scales in favor of the traditionalists?

If so, and even if we were aware of this, recent history suggests we might still not change our response. Even after all the supposed soul searching following Columbine, almost nothing changed. While there was an outpouring of contributions for a new memorial atrium at the school, there was little support or money for our teen mentoring/drop-in center. The kids we served were not the safe, clean-cut, athlete types, and they made the community nervous. We eventually closed for lack of funds.

I too struggle with my rage at what happened in the terrorist attacks. I am most grateful for the gift of alternatives.

NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) August 2001

Have you seen all those newspaper columnists trashing, with the condescending label of NIMBY, those communities that don’t want prisons or toxic waste dumps in their neighborhoods? “Why, the nerve of you entitled, spoiled citizens.” Ever wonder what you’d read if the prison or dump was proposed for the columnists’ own neighborhoods?

Well, I have an alternative to that condescending and annoyingly loaded tag, NIMBY. I call it NIABY, or Not In Anyone’s Backyard. After all, rather than assuming that undesirable facilities have to be built somewhere, so whoever is unlucky, unconnected, underfinanced, or under-represented enough to get picked should just shut up and accept it, perhaps we should take the boldly un-American step of considering minimizing the need before we opt for another consumerist fix.

I know, I know. Treasonous. After all, this is a society which “races for the cure”, which celebrates the raising of public funds to subsidize those same chemical companies which contribute to disease in the first place, so that they can then develop chemicals to patent and use to treat those same diseases. (Talk about creating your own markets!) This is a society which, instead of controlling construction or reducing growth, attempts to construct its way out of it, with more roads, more reservoirs, more temporary classrooms, and much empty talk.

In short, we live in a Pavlovian consumerist culture which has trained us to apply active fixes and products on top of problems and situations, rather than passively removing, avoiding, or backing away from conditions and causes. We and the GDP seem to like digging ditches in pristine areas and then filling them in, so that we can generate twice the economic activity, jobs and taxes. But as any restorationist or plastic surgeon will tell you, the filled-in patch will never be as whole or complete as the original undisturbed area.

Put in more concrete terms, a 1995 NY Times report estimated the cost then of yearly incarceration at app. $60,000. In other words, it would be cheaper, and probably more effective, to send inmates to private colleges than to warehouse them in your neighborhood. Cheaper still, according to CU’s Center on the Study and Prevention of Violence, might be to invest in primary education, youth-at-risk, home health, pre/post-natal, and other proactive programs. And with this latter approach, we don’t have to deal with questions of our need for justice/vengeance.

With landfills, the question might be: How much of an increase in effective recycling rate would be needed to do away with, or avoid the additional need for, one community dump in your neighborhood? 15%? 20%? Perhaps we could follow Rhode Island’s lead by setting goals of “separation of the residential waste stream to recycle and compost (a target percentage); reductions in collection costs by employing alternative collection strategies; intensive promotion of source reduction and on-site composting techniques, and; adoption of a user-fee system to provide residents with more direct control over their waste management costs as well as greater incentives to reduce and recycle.”

But I also like the NIABY concept because it finally includes those groups and communities who were (and are) our siting and dumping grounds long before this issue appeared on the radar screens of white, middle-class neighborhoods and publications. Long before NIMBY columnists and homeowners associations set down to battle over their keyboards, there was and is the environmental racism of locating toxic, often fatal industries in communities of color across this nation. There was and is the cultural racism of putting mining and disposal operations on or adjacent to Native American reservations, along with the routing of noisy military training flight patterns over those same communities.

So I’m glad that our rampant growth and diminishing open spaces are, if nothing else, forcing us to weigh the costs and benefits of our modern services and “necessities”. Perhaps, rather than accept the “need” to construct some new facility, or blindly accept the notion that we need more jobs and taxes, or that we need to pay back those well-connected interests in the growth industry who helped us finance our campaigns, maybe we should consider the growing NIMBY resistance as a constructive hint to change our attitudes and pursue alternatives.

Are you Roundup Ready™? July 2001

Remember when you first heard about genetic modification? For most of us, it was when Monsanto came out with its Roundup Ready™ seed. This was a new type of seed which had been genetically altered to be resistant to the company’s Roundup™ herbicide. Roundup™ works, according to Australian scientist Judy Carman, by “inhibiting an enzyme that is necessary for the plant to synthesise certain aromatic amino acids, killing the plant. The genetic modification in Roundup Ready™ soybeans involves incorporating a bacterial version of this enzyme into the soybean plant, giving the soybean protection from Roundup™. In this way, the soybeans and any weeds can be sprayed with Roundup™, killing the weeds and leaving the soybeans.”

The process also produces plants whose seeds are sterile, necessitating farmers to return to Monsanto’s seed distributor to purchase next season’s Roundup Ready™ crop. This threatens the millennia-old practice of selectively saving seeds from each season’s harvest for replanting, a practice which improves seed stock and makes subsistence farming viable.

By now, most people have heard about genetically-modified foods and crops although we are, perhaps intentionally, far less than fully informed. It is therefore a concern for some of us, not a concern for others. No matter. As Lori Johnson, spokeswoman for the seed giant Cargill admits, GM crops have become so widespread in American agriculture that, even if organic and non-GM farming survive, "the likelihood of commingling, we think, is very high. We tell customers we cannot guarantee 100 percent G.M.-free." Genetically-modified foods have reached a point of environmental ubiquity that, combined with the biotech industry’s influence on politicians and the FDA, nearly ensures that there can be no turning back.

And while Monsanto and others have tried to dupe the public with warm and fuzzy claims about feeding the world’s hungry, the truth is that there is already enough food to feed the world. The reason people are starving has more to do with politics and distribution, than with supply. Andrew Simms of Christian Aid, quoted by Louise Jury in the London Independent, observed that people went hungry because they did not have access to food, not because there was not enough of it. Jury cites the example of Ethiopia, which “was a net exporter of food during its famine when the fighting prevented produce reaching those who needed it.” Far from welcoming the biotech industry as the saviors of starving masses, “African delegates to the United Nations' recent session on plant genetic resources asked for support in fighting (my emphasis) the biotechnology companies. In a joint statement, the UN delegates said: ‘We ... strongly object that the image of the poor and hungry from our countries is being used by giant multinational corporations to push a technology that is neither safe, environmentally friendly nor economically beneficial to us.’”

It is therefore very unlikely that giving control of the world’s food supply to biotech companies will result in the alleviation of hunger. It is far more likely that this is simply a cynical marketing scheme, with the ultimate goal being nothing less than the sterilization and commodification of the world’s agricultural seed stock.

At the same time, the changes spawned by the genetic revolution go beyond our food supply and environment. They have also opened the door to manipulation of the human genome. Already, there have been discoveries linking certain cancers with specific genes. But while there has been some dialogue and skepticism over genetic modification of plants and other animals, there has been little recognition that some of these therapies represent nothing less than the genetic modification of the human organism.

The similarities go beyond simply the label, “GM”. The biotech companies redirect our focus away from the causes of hunger so that they can then sell us their “fix”. Similarly, in human gene therapy and other chemical cancer therapies, the same companies that seek to redirect our attention away from causes (often their own products) and prevention benefit when all our resources are directed toward their “cures”.

And so we continue to “race for” those cures, cures likely to include genetic modifications which make us less vulnerable to the diseases which could have been prevented in greater numbers had we kept the chemical causes out of our systems in the first place. No matter. We will soon be force-fed an increasing array of human genetic modifications protecting us from an increasing number of toxins, which in turn will embolden the biotechs to expose humans to additional toxins with impunity. Are you Roundup Ready™?

Juiced on SUV’s and Prozac July 2001

Every time I have the misfortune of unwittingly getting caught in rush-hour traffic, I am struck by the magnitude and incivility of the condition. No civilized people should allow themselves to be subjected to such trauma. Recovering from the experience, I keep expecting to read headlines or see news bulletins about the crime of today’s massive traffic tie-up. But apparently this is now normal urban activity, undeserving of notice.

What is interesting to note is that, as roads and public places have become increasingly congested, the average car interior, along with the average home’s square footage, have bloated proportionately. It’s not unreasonable to conclude that the reason we have bigger and bigger cars and houses is to compensate for our shrinking public spaces.

But instead of showing news coverage of people being herded like cattle, the TV is showing an ad for a cavernous SUV. The ad does not show a suburbanite yakking away on a cell phone, obliviously hurling tons of steel across lanes of choked traffic, while rushing from mall to mall on robotic shopping errands. No, it instead presents scenes of forests, rivers and mountains, scenes of nature where the only visitor is Modern Man and his supersized SUV. (OK, sometimes MM is accompanied by the family). The image is always one of space and openness and freedom. What is being marketed here is not security, not utility, not even macho independence, but room.

As I contemplated this, another commercial came on, this time for some psychiatric drugs. It occurred to me that these pills might be considered the SUV’s of the inner environment. “Feeling constricted, things closing in on you? Well, take our little overpriced pill and maybe you won’t notice any more.” Traffic jams will no longer bother you. Having to pay for space, serenity, quiet, clean air and water - these things will no longer bother you.

Thank goodness there are still some basic, straightforward products being sold on TV, products like...well, orange juice, for example. But wait. This orange juice commercial shows a young suburbanite, manic-ly dashing through the morning tasks, "fueled by”...orange juice? Is this what’s it’s come to, selling orange juice as speed? “Not to be taken with... Side effects were generally mild...”

So are SUV’s being sold as happy pills, to treat a society where all the walls are closing in? Or are ingestibles being sold as SUV’s, vehicles for personal freedom? I don’t know, but consider this:

As uncongested open space becomes more scarce, advertisers are increasingly turning to computer-generated imagery for the “natural” settings in which to place their client’s vehicles. In other words, even the images of room now need to be manufactured. Virtual reality, therefore, is behind not only the way we’re sold products, but the mental images and preset expectations for the things we purchase, both to swallow and to drive. No wonder we have nature scenes as wallpaper on our computer monitors; more soothing, stupifying reinforcers of our denial.

And it wouldn’t be economically productive for the media or the government to go out of their way and upset us with all these notions. It seems as if, to satisfy the merchants of sprawl, who conspire with the illusionists of growth, who abet the demigods of the GDP, we’ve allowed our delusions of progress to back us into subdivided, commercially-zoned corners. While, to divert our attention, we’re thrown bones of increased interior space, both physical and mental.

Speaking of which, I continue to flip through the channels looking for some good escapist fare. Oh, look. There’s George Bush, telling the rest of the world that global warming doesn’t exist, and that preserving the shrinking natural environment is less important than expanding our domestic economy. Where are my pills?

Whittling Democracy June 2001

You’d expect our business and political leaders to be champions of democracy, but let’s face it. Democracy can be an annoyance for business and government, what with all those rights and freedoms mucking up the pursuit of profit and power. So instead of just accepting democracy, they find ways to bypass it.

For example, this pesky notion of presumption of innocence is not conducive to furthering political careers, satisfying our lust for vengeance, keeping poor people down, and pruning dissent. Maybe that’s why the prosecution is allowed to proceed both first and last in presenting and summarizing court cases - to counter and compensate for the accused’s supposed constitutional advantage. Instead of embracing the presumption of innocence by perhaps enhancing and expanding its role in courtroom process, we dilute it.

Meanwhile, Americans smugly look down on other nations’ presumption of guilt. But while Japan, for example, only prosecutes those against whom it has first collected overwhelming evidence, it is standard procedure for American prosecutors to charge first and ask questions later, the rationale being that the presumption of innocence will eventually sort things out in court. In practice then, suspects are presumed guilty until trial, and somewhat guilty after that.

A Grand Jury is a last-ditch means of investigating exceptional crimes. Since many rights, liberties, and normal courtroom procedures are suspended during the grand jury process, it is to be invoked only rarely and reluctantly. Increasingly, however, grand juries are being used, not to seek out the truth in major violence-against-persons crimes such as the Columbine High School shootings, but as private tribunals in damage-to-corporate-property cases. Recent examples include the seating of grand juries to investigate an arson fire at the Vail ski resort, and petty vandalism of merchandise at Kohl’s, one of a large retail box store chain in Colorado.

Why these cases? Using grand juries in both instances enabled the government to go after and persecute local grassroots activist organizations that had been making life difficult for Vail and Kohl’s by exposing those well-connected corporations’ illegal or unethical behavior. Although no evidence existed to directly tie the activists to the crimes in question, accommodating authorities nonetheless proceeded to persecute Ancient Forest Rescue, which had exposed Vail’s illegal road building and destruction of lynx habitat, and a Denver-based, anti-sweatshop group in the Kohl’s case. Say hello to the increasing commercial use of grand juries.

Actually, many grassroots groups don’t even get the chance to demonstrate. It has become standard practice for law enforcement to conduct preemptive raids on activist organizations in order to muzzle commercially or politically discomforting demonstrations. Usually, these raids are authorized by complicit judges using trumped-up pretenses such as “fire safety”, “building code violations”, etc. Even if the raids are later judged illegal, so what? The occasion or event that drew the demonstrators has passed, the purpose of the raids accomplished. Again it’s charge first, answer questions later. So much for the presumption of innocence and “the right of the people peaceably to assemble”.

In the Bill of Rights, within the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, it is stated, “...nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb...”. But in recent high-profile trials, such as those involving Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols and the police attackers of Rodney King, the government, after initially failing to get the verdict it wanted, simply retried the cases. How? It has been held by the courts that the government can skirt “double jeopardy” simply by retrying a case in a different jurisdiction!

In Orwell’s Animal Farm the rule, “All animals are equal” has been amended with, “but some are more equal than others”. In other words, what appears to clarify is actually used to refute. With double jeopardy and other constitutional rules, interpretation has often amounted to refutation. Unfortunately, the “zero-tolerance” form of justice we’ve been sold has desensitized us to this most common form of constitutional decay.

Other examples of the whittling away of democracy include the converting of “public” to “private” to skirt the Constitution, the sacrificing of the Fourth Amendment’s privacy protections to commercial necessity, and the degeneration of our electoral process into an exercise in corporate acceptability, abetted by corporate media’s whiny claim to its supposed “business rights”.

Far from championing democracy, business and government leaders now see basic democratic principles as too potent, too inconvenient. Perhaps we’ve surrendered to the insatiable needs of commerce, and a “law and order” mentality. Or perhaps it’s simply a case of our being blind to slow, insidious change. Regardless, while our personal liberties and freedoms diminish, those of business continue to grow. If we don’t soon become our own champions of democracy, money as speech will eventually become the only form of public speech, corporate “citizens” the only citizens.

Creationism v2.0 (Creationists roll out "Intelligent Design") May 2001 (rev. 10/2002)

Just when evolutionists thought they were safe from the tempests of creation “science”, a new movement is blowing across school boards and state legislatures. Get ready for “intelligent design”.

What is intelligent design (ID)? And is it the union of faith and science its proponents claim, or a Trojan Horse sneaking reconstituted “neocreationists” in through the back door, as claimed by its opponents?

Largely attributed to biochemist Michael Behe, the theory argues that when something can no longer be broken down past a point of “irreducible complexity”, it displays the presence, let’s say the hand, of ID. Behe uses the example of a mousetrap which, minus any one of its basic parts, can no longer function. Therefore, he contends, the basic mousetrap could not have “evolved” from simpler parts organizing for that purpose, but must instead be the result of ID.

Likewise, Behe claims there are living things which could not have arisen from the evolution of their components. While not an easy concept to grasp, most proponents are content with, “The universe is so vast and wondrous, and the world so perfectly designed to fit our needs, surely there is an intelligence at work here.”

Of course after ID has taken root in classrooms and boardrooms, the next step would be to assign that intelligence and name that designer. Behe and others make no bones about their motivation, and their acceptance of a Judeo-Christian God as the Intelligent Designer behind ID.

As even most ID’ers would admit, though, evolutionary theory has shed much light on the processes of living things. Still, our knowledge is incomplete. Like creationism, ID relies on this lack of knowledge, this doubt, for the dispersal of its seed. Its proponents suggest that evolution ceases to operate at the exact edge of our current knowledge, right at the threshold of doubt. It is here where God steps in.

Proponents have at least two things going for them. First, after seeing a backlash in Kansas and elsewhere, creationists are regrouping behind perhaps the most unabashedly conservative presidential administration in recent memory. Second, ID has appeal as a seeming compromise, one promoted by real scientists with impressive letters after their names, making it very tempting to skittish politicians and school officials.

So what is the response to this latest attack on evolution, this attack on what, in an effort to reduce it to a cult of personality, is often referred to as “Darwinism”?

Classical physics saw the universe as a pendulum. Any one point in the swing could be traced back to a previous point, and all future points could be knowable. In other words, time was thought to be perfectly reversible. Examples from real life were adapted to fit the pendulum model or, when they couldn't be made to fit, ignored.

ID'ers are saying that, since the physical universe is like a pendulum, since time is reversible and we should be able to trace any condition back in time to an earlier condition whose recognizable parts could in turn be extrapolated into the future state, any condition not connectable to it's past or future must therefore be the work of a power outside of physical laws, namely, God.

But it turns out that in this universe classical physics doesn't hold, not even for the pendulum in the long run. Time, it turns out, is irreversible in the physical universe. Natural processes like evolution only appear to be irreducible to linear, reductionist thinking.

For example, classical thinking easily understands the differences between a small caterpillar and a large caterpillar. The differences are primarily quantitative. But classical thinking can not make the connection between the caterpillar and the butterfly. The butterfly can not be traced back into the caterpillar. Similarly, when looking at a chicken egg and the relative uniformity of material within, classical thinking can not extrapolate the beak that will eventually appear.

Simply discarding real life, as the classicists do, or inserting God at the point of complexity-ignorance, doesn't cut it. We now know that these structural shifts, these reorganizations of parts into new wholes, are not rarities in nature, but fundamental means of change and development in the universe. Not only are they common, and found in everything from the creation of a galaxy, to the development of a fetus, to the life history of a corporation, but they are often predictable and reproducible. What's more, attempts to undo or reverse resultant states do not produce the earlier ones. Rather than revealing the hand of God, the point of supposed irrreducibility follows a threshold of emergence, change, and evolutionary creativity.

For instance, what if Behe’s smallest parts actually have organized, but for a different purpose than the one ultimately apparent? ID’ers might conclude that flight feathers represent an “irreducible complexity”. Could they conceive of a part having initially evolved for another purpose, warmth, and then reaching a point of emergence, i.e., the threshold of flight?

Proponents have naturally selected ID over creationism as their best hope for a religiously-based biology in schools. Likewise both physics, with it's growing understanding of quantum mechanics and relativity, and the theory of evolution, continue to evolve and coevolve. There is now a growing realization that systems, living and not, are capable of self-organization. Ilya Prigogine and others have observed chemical systems that restructure themselves into completely new forms under certain conditions, forms bearing little reducible trace of their past. Prigogine developed a clock that keeps time through the predictable and regular restructuring of "non living" chemicals. Is God intervening at one second intervals to redesign this chemical system at the same precise points and to the same precise forms? As Stephen Hawking has said, “It seems better to ... cut out all the features of a theory which cannot be observed." In the case of the theory of Intelligent Design, that would be all of it.

Self-organizing, emergent structures: any "intelligence" may lie within, and not require the hand of a Western God. On the other hand, to say that a system is at a point of “irreducible complexity” is to claim perfect knowledge of that system; in other words, to claim a God-like perspective. This, therefore, makes arguments for ID circular (if not ironic) and the theory unverifiable.

Behe and his followers are like early hominids lost in the wilderness. At night, they deal with the terrible, mysterious forces of nature by sending up burnt offerings to the heavens, while by day they search the earth in vain for baby butterflies.

Our knowledge of thresholds and evolutionary change is slowly increasing, adapting, branching out and reducing both complexities and the opportunity for those who would exploit those complexities. There will always be magic and mystery in the world; thank God for that. Intelligent design, however, appears to be just the latest flawed attempt at repackaging that mystery as science, to further a very earthly agenda.

Cokie, Sam, et al analyze the Hitler-Ghandi campaigns April 2001

In our quest to discover why Americans are so underinformed, we tune in to a fictional Sunday morning news-talk show:

Sam: Welcome to our weekly panel discussion with some of TV’s most watched and respected political commentators. This program reflects our network’s commitment to providing complete, balanced, and in-depth coverage of the most important issues facing the nation. Especially during this election season, we believe that a fully informed and knowledgeable citizenry is essential for effective democracy.

Sam: Welcome panelists. Well, it’s been an interesting week on the campaign front. Candidate Hitler, in an effort to draw in some of the millions of undecided voters, those still unsure of the differences between himself and candidate Gandhi, staged a massive rally in the commercial district. George, your thoughts?

George W.: Well, I believe the rally slogan, Kristalnacht, was a brilliant stroke of campaign rhetoric from his speech writers. The image conveyed is one of elegance and sophistication, like clinking chandeliers at a gala. As you know, many left-wing liberals have been trying to portray Mr. Hitler as unsophisticated, not up to the subtle diplomacy required of a world leader, too stuck in his working-class roots...

Cokie: Oh, come on George. The voters will see right through this latest slogan. (All laugh at the pun.) Seriously, it’s certainly not going to connect with voters like his earlier pledge to “Make the country great again and restore national pride”. That seemed to strike a chord. Everyone jumped on that bandwagon, but I’m not sure the press corps, and those reporters who’ve traveled with him from the start of the primaries, will be taken in by this latest attempt at repackaging the candidate.

George S.: Interesting, though, how he seems to have gotten under Mr. Gandhi’s skin again. The talk I’m hearing from Hitler’s people is that they think they can, almost at will (slight pause), provoke Gandhi into one of his preachy responses - you know, those patronizing sermons that put everyone to sleep, kill any signs of life in his campaign, and make you wonder if Gandhi is too sensitive for high office. It’s one thing to be among the greatest spiritual and ethical leaders of all time, quite another to deal with an aggressive press corps on a daily basis as head of state. Is that a fair test for office? Sure. After all, if you can’t stand the heat...

Sam: But isn’t Hitler’s tactic of ignoring the minority community, making excuses for not reaching out to ghetto leaders or meeting the ghetto press, a risky decision that could backfire on election day?

George S.: I don’t think so. His advisors have told him, and daily polling backs them up, that his core constituency does not support special minority rights, and instead seeks a return to traditional values, which Hitler represents. Plus the fact that the polls suggest minorities almost unanimously favor Gandhi anyway.

Sam (laughing): Plus the fact that they’re not allowed to vote. (All laugh.)

George S.: Seriously, far more telling than his handling of the ghetto question is how Hitler has been skillfully using the image of himself, Eva, and his dogs to convey the image of the traditional family man engaged in wholesome activities. That TV spot, the one showing the energetic candidate and his young, attractive wife playing with the dogs at the resettlement camp, I thought contrasted extremely well with Gandhi’s stodgy, talking-head spots about peace, passive resistance, blah-blah-blah.

George W.: It’s certainly a brilliant strategy, and I believe there’s some truth to those images. After all, Hitler’s rough-housing affection for animals does play much better than Gandhi’s pedantic vegetarianism.

Cokie: Speaking of which, don’t you all consider Gandhi’s slip, the one about not eating meat, a major gaffe? It almost certainly will cost him the endorsements of the agriculture and restaurant industries. Add to that how this new Kristalnacht strategy seems to be winning Hitler votes among the glaziers, construction workers, and other trade groups, all looking for promises on job creation and, well... Still, there are many who like Gandhi’s soft-spoken, serious manner...

George W.: ...Oh, come on Cokie. The intellectual snobs don’t run this country, and never will. Your average voter is a bratwurst and potatoes kind of guy. He’s looking at a well-run Hitler campaign, one that sends a can-do message of confidence. Look how weak and timid Hitler made Gandhi look at the debates, constantly attacking and putting him on the defensive.

Sam: Well then, are we all pretty much agreed that it will be Hitler raising his right hand come inauguration day? (All look at the camera and nod.)

George S.: Yep, I guess we can expect to see more brown blouses than white saris on the Paris runways next spring. (All laugh.)

Parables of Balance and Gale Norton March 2001

“Balance” may be among the most abused words in the dictionary. Many officials and pundits think that, by simply invoking the word and its image of fairness, they can rehabilitate their biased positions. Take Gale Norton, for example. She has stated that some public lands should be conserved, while others should be developed. As she puts it, we “can conserve our environment and benefit from it, too.” Putting aside her obvious implication that conserving, or even preserving, the environment does not benefit Americans (although a recent USFS survey indicated that the vast majority of Americans felt there was worth in the mere existence of wilderness areas, whether or not they personally used them), Ms. Norton seeks to use the pretense of “balance” to make her views seem almost reasonable.

A parable: There is a story about a time when we are down to our last tree. Now some of the locals (I guess those in closest proximity demanded the most say, whether or not they actually had greater ownership rights), wanted to preserve this last tree. Other locals, however, saw only commercial opportunities. “You can’t lock up that tree. That would not be a wise use of its resources.” So in the interest of balance, a compromise was reached whereby half the tree would be cut down and used commercially, and the other half preserved. Seems fair, doesn’t it?

The obvious response to both the Interior Secretary and the developers in the parable is that the resources they seek to develop are already the result of a compromise. Undeveloped resources already reflect an historic balance between exploitation and preservation. To not see this is to buy into a course of action, a halving of a halving, that inevitably leads to the dilemma of “the last tree”.

So why isn’t this obvious every time some public official solemnly invokes the need to “balance” different land use interests, usually just as some new development scheme is being announced?

The answer may be found in another parable: There is the example of the boiling frog. All right, maybe it’s an analogy and not a parable. But it seems that if a frog is put in boiling water, it will protest like crazy, as might be expected. If, however, a frog is put in cool water which is then slowly heated to boiling, the frog apparently does not put up as much of a fuss. While I do not advocate this as an experiment, or a cuisine, we can see parallels in ourselves. If Metro Denverites in 1976 were suddenly shown how our region would look, and what our quality of life would be like, 25 years later, we might have reacted like quick-boiled frogs, and put up a fuss. But in reality, we’re more like the slow-cooked kind.

Gale Norton is taking advantage of our lack of perspective on the issue of preservation vs. development. She and her developer friends count on us not having the perspective to see the compromises in land use that have accumulated over time.

But she doesn’t stop there. In addition to looting public lands, she has her sights set on exempting, she would say unlocking, private land from any environmental or other regulatory constraints on development and exploitation. She believes that such restrictions represent unconstitutional “takings”.

One last parable: Amelia Bedelia, the maid to Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, continually muddles things up by taking phrases too literally. Amelia gets into trouble when asked to do such things as draw the drapes, ice the fish, sow the garden seeds, and separate the eggs. Of course she means well and no harm is done. But if one were to take Peggy Parish's stories more seriously than they’re intended and find a moral, it might have less to do with Ms. Bedelia and more to do with the Rogerses never fully addressing her penchant for taking things too literally. Had they done so, they might have been able to open her up to broader and more reasonable interpretations of those phrases. Of course, that would have spoiled the fun.

The Fifth Amendment says, “nor shall private property be taken for public use,...” Do zoning restrictions represent “takings”? If I can maximize the return on my property by opening a nuclear waste dump, is it a “takings” for my neighbors to prevent me from doing so? Of course not. After all, constitutional guarantees of free speech are not absolute; they do not provide immunity against libel or slander, for example. And while Ms. Norton may speak of embracing “balance”, it apparently does not extend to her extremely skewed and literal interpretation of the Constitution.

Even invoking the word “conservation” is a bit of a Trojan Horse as used by Ms. Norton and Company. What to a true conservationist encompasses notions of protection and sustainability, to Norton means maintaining resources just so, and just until, plundering them becomes financially viable.

The plan, then, delivered with Gale Norton’s usual disarming smile and wit, is to whittle away at preserved public land, while removing any development constraints from private land, all part of the scheme to convert nature into corporate profit and drive the final stake into the heart of American wilderness.

Gore and the media too quick to "put election behind us" December 2000

There was much anticipation leading up to Al Gore’s concession speech. Would he graciously accept the awarding of the US presidency to George W. Bush? Would he do what all the pundits and politicians hoped he would do, namely talk about “healing the wounds”, “putting the bitterness of the election behind us”, “reconciliation”, and “bringing the country back together again”? Well, yes he would.

And then there was great relief among the commentators. For Al Gore had put things back in order. The same voices which had tried to tell us that the US Supreme Court’s actions were just and constitutional, even though the nakedness of its corruption became only more evident upon closer reading of the final decision; the same voices which had strained credibility with their tortured attempts at justifying our electoral college system, an archaic device serving only as a last ditch check against too much democracy; the same voices which scolded us and said we had only ourselves to blame for our naive indignation at the weaknesses and failings of our flawed, yes, but elected public servants, in effect excusing those representatives for their own lack of ethics and integrity; those same voices now breathed a sigh of relief.

We could now move on to considering Bush’s cabinet appointments and his possible policies and agendas. Perhaps best of all, the media could now refocus our attention on Christmas marketing and end-of-the-year retail sales. In short, we could now sit back in our couches, flip on the TV, and pop open a beer, content and secure in the shared denial that all is well with America, everything is working as it should be.

But hold on a minute. Was this just another hard-fought election contest, to be wrapped up with calls from the vanquished candidate for his defeated supporters to unite behind the new president, “for the good of the country”, or was this election somehow different? After all, this was an election in which many of us lost our innocence as we glimpsed the dark, ugly, underbelly of the US's political and judicial systems, exposed in all their rabid partisanship.

So I for one would have liked to have heard a slightly different speech from Mr. Gore, perhaps ending with something like this:

“...And so, my fellow Americans, while I’ve attempted to be gracious in acknowledging defeat, I don’t want to leave you feeling too comfortable with the resolution of this election. In fact, for the good of the country, I’d prefer you felt somewhat uncomfortable and unsettled about things.

“Fraud, corruption, manipulation, and abuse of power were all present throughout this campaign and election process. And there are no checks in our system to prevent these failings from occurring again in future elections. Nor can we depend solely on the vote to ensure a responsible democracy, especially when many who wish to vote are prevented from doing so, and many who do vote can not be assured that their votes count. What's more, for a variety of reasons, including disenfranchisement, disillusionment, and disinterest, most of the voting-age population does not vote at all.

“So is there a greater, higher, more vital demonstration of citizenship than voting? I believe there is. I believe there is no greater expression of citizenship than civic participation and activism. After all, one can only vote on election day. But every one of us can take it upon himself or herself to ask, ‘What can I do to improve my democracy and my government at the local, state, and federal level, tomorrow, every day, right now?’

“And then, my fellow Americans, before we get too comfortable on our couches this holiday season, we can each make a pledge, a New Year’s resolution, to do something, anything, to personally get involved. Whether it’s attending public meetings, social organizing, writing letters and articles, registering new voters, starting a newsletter, or questioning the behavior of public officials and public corporations, make a commitment toward your democracy. Ultimately, the last and best check is you. Let’s make something positive come out of the unfortunate electoral process just concluded. Let’s make a better future for our nation and for our democracy. Thank you all. God bless you. And God bless America.”

Instead, Al Gore opted for the short-term admiration of politicians and pundits. Gracious? Certainly. Courageous? Perhaps not. For long after memory of the pats on Al Gore’s back have faded, along perhaps with the public Al Gore, we may find ourselves wondering if an opportunity to turn a political farce into something lasting and positive was missed.