Lots of Not In Our Name rallies this Sunday, including one here in Seattle, one in Anchorage, and many other cities.
Politics
Politically, I’m very liberal — about as far left as one can go without sliding into Libertarianism.
Death penalty unconstitutional
Rock on — I’m a couple days late hearing about this, but on Tuesday U.S. District Judge William Sessions declared the federal death penalty to be unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge William Sessions said the law does not adequately protect defendants’ rights.”If the death penalty is to be part of our system of justice, due process of law and the fair trial guarantees of the Sixth Amendment require that standards and safeguards governing the kinds of evidence juries may consider must be rigorous, and constitutional rights and liberties scrupulously protected,” he said.
According to the article, this won’t affect individual states’ death penalty statutes, and he’s actually the second judge to make this ruling.
For me, the death penalty has never been something I’ve supported. I fully realize that there are some amazingly heinous crimes committed, and I can sympathise with those who feel that the death penalty is the only recourse (it’s entirely possible that I’d feel the same way if I was faced with the violent death of a loved one), but I’ve never seen anything to convince me that it’s an actual deterrent.
Hrm. This should probably get more thought and exploration than I’ve got time to give it this morning. Maybe I’ll come back to this post later on.
Why can’t Bush speak?
Mark Miller comments on Bush’s recent “Fool me once…” flub:
Bush actually believes that he can do no wrong. This fixed conviction of his own infallibility has come out often, in remarks not laughably sub-literate or confused. He’s boasted that he knows what he believes, and that he never changes his position, or his mind, and that he sees the world in black and white, and so on. He’s made it clear repeatedly: George W. Bush is always right, George W. Bush can do no wrong. And now he’s accidentally made the point again, by showing himself incapable — psychologically, and therefore physically — of saying “Shame on me.”
Without really knowing anything about Mr. Miller’s credentials, I’m tempted to chalk this little bit of armchair psychoanalysis up to being just another off-the-wall theory by someone unimpressed with Bush. However, it does make me wonder if this really could be the case? It seems a bit far-fetched for me to jump into believing right off the bat, but it doesn’t seem to be an unthinkable premise. A fairly frightening premise, also, especially for the President of our country, and moreso given the current state of the world. It’s worth thinking about, at least.
Also, ‘Quiddity Quack’ posits this theory:
While plenty of folks chuckle at the Presidents verbal stumbling, we think that it’s more serious. It appears that Bush’s inability to handle complex thoughts may have led him over time to forsake rationalistic approaches, and instead, make decisions based on his feelings. This may explain why he disdains nuance (as he’s said), and why he has simple solutions for everything. E.g.
- Tax cuts always help.
- Good people will make any controversial program (like drilling in ANWR) come out all right.
- American military power is benevolent. (Again, Americans are “good people”).
- Evil is the reason for misfortunes.
- …and so on…
I’ve got to admit, this theory sounds a bit more sound to me than a psychological disorder so severe that Bush physically cannot utter any self-deprecating remark, no matter the context. Now, neither of them are qualities that I’d really like my President to have, but, in a ‘lesser of two evils’ situation, I’ll take the latter over the former.
If I had my druthers, though, I’d like a third option.
Found via Anger Management Course
Violence in the media
I was browsing through /. tonight when someone mentioned an interview with Joss Whedon over at The Onion from last year (oh, except I’m not supposed to link directly to articles inside The Onion…I guess I better just link to the /. post that has the entire interview copied into it — so, which is the greater copyright breach? Anyway…). It’s a good interview on its own, but this quote is as a followup /. post said, “I think that’s just about the most intelligent and responsible thing I’ve ever read about the influence of culture on behaviour.”
People say, “After Columbine, do you feel a responsibility about the way you portray violence?” And I’m like, “No, I felt a responsibility about the way I portrayed violence the first time I picked up a pen.”
Wag the dog, Bushie
I know Dick Cheney finds it “reprehensible” that anyone could think the White House’s timing on Iraq is politically inspired, but the administration has exhibited a pattern of behavior that (as Cheney rightly warns with Saddam) creates a context that raises extra concerns. What else should reasonable people make of these facts?
- In June a floppy disk found in Lafayette Park across from the White House turned out to contain a Powerpoint presentation used by Karl Rove to detail the White House’s strategy for the midterm elections. “Focus on war” was a key point in a talk that centered on the White House’s desire to “maintain a positive issue environment.”
Around this time Rove was upbraided (at least for PR reasons) after he told a Republican gathering that the war and terror themes and the associated military buildup could and should play to the Republicans’ advantage in the midterm elections.
When White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card was asked why the administration waited until after Labor Day to launch its campaign to convince the American people that military action against Iraq was necessary, Card replied: “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”
— Matthew Miller, My ‘reprehensible’ suspicions on Iraq
(via Kirsten — hopefully she won’t mind that I snarfed her idea for the title!)
So it’s been a year
I’d like to come up with something amazingly deep and profound to say, but for one reason or another, it’s just not in me. Besides, plenty of other people have worthwhile things to say.
I think part of my little bout of writer’s block is just that the entire situation is frustrating. One year ago, something huge and immensely terrifying happened. In the year since then, however, a multitude of other, smaller, less immediately noticeable things have happened (usually in the name of ‘patriotism’), that added up scare me as much as (and quite possibly more than) the attacks themselves. It’s a different kind of scare, but it’s a scare, nothenless. Awareness of this side of things does seem to be growing, though, which is good.
I guess, most of what I’d really want to say I’ve said already, either in some of my rants over the past year or in the links I’ve chosen to highlight in this blog (the majority of which, unfortunately, still reside in limbo).
I dunno. I’m rambling. Caught between wanting to say something, and not really having anything of real import to say.
Portland protest
An interesting and nicely even-handed writeup of an anti-Bush protest in Portland that went wrong — from a peaceful protest march to conflicts with the police, including pepper spray and rubber bullets. What happened? Murphy’s law…
…I felt that the police and the protestors were, behaviorally, mirrors of each other. The police officers were mostly acting within decent bounds, and the protestors were mostly peacefully making their views known. However, just as the police had a few unprofessional punks who felt compelled to spray and shoot at protestors, so did our side have its share of adolescent morons who thought it was a good idea to spit at the cops, throw things at them, try and force their way past them, and generally try to provoke violence. As some of the asinine “kill a cop” “they are subhuman” sentiments one hears clearly show, our side cannot claim to be free of infantile, violent cretins, much as we might like to believe it.
It is time to be serious-minded, friends. All the best things about this nation are under assault, and we have lost a great deal of ground already. We have mostly lost it through shortsightedness, internal bickering, and an annoying habit of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. We need to stop acting as though “smash the state, stick it to the Man” is anything other than a child’s point of view. We need to take actions that will have a real effect, supporting candidates who can win even if they’re not 100% ideologically perfect, forming alliances with people who might not share every one of our pet issues, and generally approaching this problem as adults in the real world approach problems. Our freedoms will not be won back in the streets by dashing young revolutionaries. Get that image out of your mind. Our freedoms will be won back by dull people at city council meetings, by policy wonks in congressional office buildings, by months and years of painful, uninteresting, and EFFECTIVE work.
(via Boing Boing)
9-11 tributes
Several sites across the ‘net are altering their front pages as a tribute to the 9-11 attacks. Some aren’t bad, some seem to be pretty ridiculous (to me, at least).
Of the ones I’ve seen so far, Yahoo‘s seems the silliest. Essentially the same old Yahoo! as ever — just all in greyscale. I kind of prefer the approach that other sites have taken (such as Excite, who set their main page to a simple black background, a rememberance message, and links to enter the content area). This just gives me the feeling that while Yahoo figured they had to do something, they sure as heck weren’t going to hide their content — why, some poor soul might actually get distracted by thinking about actual issues and miss out on some ads!
Then again, maybe I’m just too cynical.
(via MeFi)
What kind of God…?
Thinking about the upcoming one year anniversary of Sept. 11th, Dave had this to say:
A common theme — what kind of God lets this happen. I answer that with another question. What kind of a country is so selfish that it doesn’t see that 9-11 was [the] tiniest big tragedy viewed from a global perspective. What about famine in Africa? What about AIDS? They wonder at the spiritual vision of a person who jumps from the World Trade Center to certain death, but don’t wonder about the millions of people who do the same thing with tobacco? It’s out of balance. We’re out of balance. 9-11 was, IMHO, a small upheaval in getting to some kind of equilibrium in how the U.S. participates in the world, both from the U.S. perspective, and the world’s perspective. That we got so much sympathy says how big the human heart is. That there wasn’t more celebrating in the streets of world capitals says that they forgive us for our selfish attitude, which is back in force as if 9-11 never happened.
So what was the lesson of 9-11 that the U.S. has failed to learn? I think it’s that God doesn’t think we’re as important as we do. The concept of national security is obsolete. We can’t close our borders. We live on this planet with everyone else. Global warming, AIDS, terrorism, all penetrate all borders. New York is a world city. The last gasps of isolationism will be snuffed out by more humiliation, until we get the truth, we aren’t above the rest of the world, but we are part of it.
Amen.