Category: Political

Categories
Diversity Political

Color-blind

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I have been enjoying the take down of Trent Lott this week. In particular, the Washington Post and a weblogger, Eschaton have done an excellent job of roasting this man’s chestnuts over an open fire.

What really caught my focus about this whole thing was Trent Lott’s statement, and his talk about a color-blind society. We want a color-blind society that every American has an opportunity to succeed… he says, and to a point, I agree with him. But I also disagree with him.

You see, I want a color-blind society, but I don’t want it now. Now I want people to look for color, to see color. I want them to look at those in power and see, really, see, face after pure white face. And I want them to look at photos from conferences and businesses and within state and federal leadership and I want the lack of diversity to sound a jarring note. And I want us to be uncomfortable, and to squirm in our chairs because we know that for all our finger pointing at Trent Lott, all that white isn’t the result of one man’s action, or inaction.

Personally, I think we’ve been color-blind too long.

Categories
Government

Learned terrorism

Michael sent me a link to an editorial that talks about Learned Helplessness and its association with the current ‘war on terror’. The author. Kriselda Jarnsaxa, writes:

The experience of the last 15 months here in America seems to be producing a nation suffering from learned helplessness. Fear is induced through the constant, but oh-so-vague, warnings emanating from the government. Another attack is imminent, we are told, they may be coming to blow up our banks, our hotels, our apartments, our holiday celebrations. They may be coming in hidden on boats, or scuba-diving to our shores. They may already be here, hidden among us, and we don’t even know it. They may use suicide bombers or shoulder-mounted surface-to-air misses can knock planes from the sky. Crop dusters may be used to spread biological agents, or they may load a conventional bomb with nuclear waste to spread radiation throughout a large city. May… may… may… may. The list of horrors is nearly endless, as is the imagination of those whose job it is to come up with new warnings, it seems. We see no escape from this fear, and are told our only hope is to sacrifice our freedoms, our cherished liberties, our very way of life, on the altar of security, so we do – willingly, it seems – and never realizing that maybe, we should be afraid of our government, too.

I didn’t think to equate my country’s seeming inability to wake up and see the nightmare with Learned Helplessness. An interesting twist.

This follows on Bush cutting federal employee pay raise, because, as he says, the money is needed for the War on Terror:

In a letter sent Friday to congressional leaders, Bush announced he was using his authority to change workers’ pay structure in times of “national emergency or serious economic conditions” to limit raises to 3.1 percent.

Of course, one can ask why Bush doesn’t roll back the tax cuts, which only benefit the wealthy.

I don’t know why we just don’t send the Congress home. Bush has been given powers that allow him to alter or change any law he wishes in the ‘name of national security”, and Congress lets him. The American public lets him.

As long as Bush plans on bombing Iraq and, we presume, to follow through to other countries such as Iran (Israel’s personal favorite), and Saudi Arabia (the US personal favorite), the voting public of this country seems indifferent to what Bush does. However, I don’t think the public reaction (or lack of same) is based on Learned Helplessness: I think it’s based on equal parts fear, retribution, greed, and a desire to show the world that the US is top dog and can kick anyone’s butt.

Cry “Havoc!” and let loose the dogs of war

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Categories
Political

We didn’t start the fire

I don’t normally link to these types of things, but I thought this Flash animation of We Didn’t Start the Fire was extremely well done.

I like Billy Joel, and have always liked this song. Hearing it now, though, I find myself nostalgic for the days when all we were worried about was the Soviet Union. Whatever happened to our world, between the joy we felt when the Berlin Wall came down and now?

Categories
Environment Political

Clean sweep cleans forests

The first environmental impact from November’s Clean Sweep is the Bush Administration’s proposal to:

… give managers of the nation’s 155 national forests greater leeway to approve logging and commercial activities with less examination of potential environmental damages.

Regional managers are easily influenced by timber interests, who tend to have as much interest in the good of the environment as the, um, oil people do. In addition, this new proposal removes many of the required environmental impact checks, and decreases visibility of the decisions being made about the public’s forests.

Have you hugged a tree today? Better do it quick, because that thing is toothpicks on the hoof.

Categories
People Political

Is this what we’ve become?

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Imagine my delight when I woke up this morning and found the following comment attached to one of my old postings, Blast them all and let God sort them out.:

I don’t expect Arabs to be humiliated. . .I expect them to be dead, deader than dead. God doesn’t need to sort them out, he already has. He had the evils all in one place at one point. Now he’s got them spread out all over the world. But I’m not going to sit around and wait for them to do something. . .if I see evils happening in my own backyard, the perps are going to die. If I’m marching into Hebron, and see a sand nigger with a gun, I’m going to kill them. Plain and simple, I’m not going to “bomb them and let God sort them out.” I’m going to shoot them and give God something to do.

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust. The order has been given. Arabs are the 21st century’s Nazi’s. And they are going to die a painful death.

Staff Sgt Thomas Nichols
USMC

(Note that the IP address attached to comment belongs to the Marriott hotel chain, and the comment was most likely written by someone staying at a Marriott — not necessarily by a person with this name. The writer found my weblog posting by doing a Yahoo search with the words “ARABS MUST DIE”.)

Is this what we’ve become? Three thousand people were killed September 11th, so let’s kill millions of Arabs. Can someone please explain the humanity, the justice, and the morality of this?

The last time this world saw a determination to eliminate all people of a specific religion was in the middle of the last century, and was conducted by a man named Adolph Hitler. I found it somewhat ironic then that the use of ‘nazi’ is given the victims in this instance.

I will say this, though: at least this person was honest in their belief and in their expression of that belief. Too many people in my country, and in other countries, hide this same belief behind polite phrases such as “liberation of the native people” and “war on terror”.

And, at the least, this person wanted to kill all Arabs because he’s afraid, and because he’s pissed that someone would actually dare hurt Americans. Too many people in my country, and in other countries, want to kill Arabs because of oil. However, one difference between them and the writer, Staff Sargeant Nichols, is that these people don’t want to kill all the Arabs.

After all, we have to leave enough Arabs to run the pumps, staff the hotels, and clean the streets.

That I would live long enough to see this become the new “moral way”, the latest Christian Crusade, saddens me, and sickens me.