Clock is ticking...

Often I heard that the average life-span of a nation is about 200 years. Obviously this is a problematic formulation since the idea of nation itself is only a couple hundred years old. Nevertheless, the idea that the U.S.A. has reached a precipitous middle-age is not too far-fetched when you consider how radically the state of our nation has changed in just the last quarter century.

Americans are certainly myopic about the relative health of our nation; 200 years of the same government is laudable, but not as impressive as some of the more stable geopolitical organizations around. Hereditary monarchies the world over could do two centuries with their eyes shut.

A recent article in the New York Times illustrates how close we could be to constructing our own demise through political apathy:

By the oldest trick in the political book — the whipping up of a panic, in which any dissenting voice could be dismissed as “soft” or even “traitorous” — powers had been ceded by the people that would never be returned. Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet regimes throughout the region, and turning himself into the richest man in the empire...

Those of us who are not Americans can only look on in wonder at the similar ease with which the ancient rights and liberties of the individual are being surrendered in the United States in the wake of 9/11. The vote by the Senate on Thursday to suspend the right of habeas corpus for terrorism detainees, denying them their right to challenge their detention in court; the careful wording about torture, which forbids only the inducement of “serious” physical and mental suffering to obtain information; the admissibility of evidence obtained in the United States without a search warrant; the licensing of the president to declare a legal resident of the United States an enemy combatant — all this represents an historic shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the executive.

There are few checks to the increasingly disproportionate role of federal government. The blame for the shift does not rest entirely with Republicans either, since the Democratic Party is beholden to the same big-money donors. Further, the apparatus for change within the Democratic Party is lacking because efforts to produce the most "viable" candidate have marginalized anti-abortion, pacifist, and socialist secotrs of the party.

The mid-term elections next Tuesday will undoubtedly reflect the fact that Americans understand the threat to the sovreignity of the electorate, but I don't know that enough can be undone to regain our democratic birthright. One option might be to follow the lead of Colorado and give greater access to private citizens to write legislation.

I don't have a pithy ending for this observation. I invite comments to round out this discussion...

Tunnelling its way into a property near you...

WIth Governor Rick Perry firmly entrenched for the forseeable future, the Trans-Texas Corridor is considered to be a lock. This was a divisive issue in the 2006 gubenatorial campaign which had the effect of pushing some long-time Republican supporters into the Libertarian camp.

This is a case of eminent domain on a massive scale and could be a huge loss in our ever-eroding rights. What Perry orignally touted as a free trade, and Texas Transportation boon is looking more and more like a concession to the new politics of multi-national corporation$. Though Perry remains in office and the deals already in place with Cintra-Zachry are likely to go forward, the TTC is bound for a rocky road with protests from increasingly active, and increasingly populist rural Texans.

The transportation engineers with whom I have contact make no bones about the fact that a project of this size is needed to accomodate our transportation needs. I wonder though, if we've done enough "outside-the-box" thinking on this project. Besides the rural land grabs, another big concern with TTC in urban areas is where are you going to put a ten-lane highway? Enter the Tunnel Boring Machine. Perhaps even one like this; a similar one is being used to put a commercial transportation artery through the Swiss Alps. This worm-like tunnel factory drills, reinforces and builds a water-tight concrete wall as it passes below the surface, leaving all of that valuable surface space for personal property ownership.

In Our Image

I saw the phrase "Free Hawaii" on a bumper sticker this past July while in Honolulu for the 2006 AVMA Converence. Once back at work, I googled the phrase and discovered that I had unwittingly participated in the ongoing plunder of island culture.

In discussion with office mates, we determined thatHawaii and Puerto Rico were the last visible vestiges of Manifest Destiny, but not the end of that problematic worldview. I suggested that the problem is reified in our hegemonic imposition by force (in Afghanistan, Iraq) and economics (all over the globe).

The argument reminds me of this. Which also reminds me of this.

What do you think?

Working out the Kink(y)s

Texas gubenatorial candidate Kinky Friedman visited the Texas A&M University campus last Wednesday afternoon. I've been loosely following Kinky's candidacy since he announced last year, and specifically didn't vote in the primary elections so that I could sign his petition to be placed on the ballot (though I never got a chance to actually sign on), more because I am convinced that the two-party system is broken than his merits as a candidate. In fact, I continued to hear rumblings into late summer that Kinky's run was a huge joke.

Joke or not, I'd been impressed with Kinky's no-nonsense answers to most questions, but hadn't made a decision to support him until Chris Bell's campaign sent a message targeted to Kinky supporters telling them to not waste their votes.

More recently, however, Kinky has been in the news for his indelicate references to race. His campaign released a damage control statement in response to the "Negro talking to himself" comment, but refused to back off of Kinky's lumping all Katrina refugees together as criminals until very recently (a quick search of his site only shows these comments in footnotes...looks as though Kinky's position statements on the issue have disappeared). During his visit to TAMU, Kinky made a joke that it didn't seem to be a fair trade that Louisiana arrested Willie Nelson in exchange for our taking in all of their criminals. Kinky did refer to the Katrina crime issue during the recent sham of a gubenatorial debate. In the debate, Kinky also defended his use of the word "Negro" as endearing by noting that he was raised by a black woman. As much as I can understand generational differences, I am still uncomfortable with his brazen indifference to the lingering specter of racial power difference. Perhaps it's just part of his non-politico schtick.

Kinky's comment in support of his non-politico status during his visit at TAMU just didn't ring true. He mentioned that the difference between himself and Perry is that he knows the diner waitress' name (apparently indicating that he is a man of the people, someone who understands local needs). Apparently this didn't apply to the rule of uncovering in the MSC out of the respect for Aggies who have died in combat (yes, I did ask him through his manager).

The bottom line is that while I did give financial support to Kinky's campaign early on, I'm not sure that I will vote for him...though I do think we need to knock out the two-party monopoly of our political system. And I'm certainly not going to campaign for him.

I did enjoy listening to Jesse Ventura..I think I could support his candidacy...

Breaking In

Today I received the following email from at least two people:

Let's say I break into your house

A lady wrote the best letter in the Editorials in ages!! It explains things better than all the baloney you hear on TV.

Recently large demonstrations have taken place across the country protesting the fact that Congress is finally addressing the issue of illegal immigration. Certain people are angry that the US might protect its own borders, might make it harder to sneak into this country and, once here, to stay indefinitely. Let me see if I correctly understand the thinking behind these protests.

Let's say I break into your house. Let's say that when you discover me in your house, you insist that I leave. But I say, "I've made all the beds and washed the dishes and did the laundry and swept the floors; I've done all the things you don't like to do. I'm hard-working and Honest (except for when I broke into your house). According to the protesters, not only must you let me stay, you must add me to your family's insurance plan, educate my kids, and provide Other benefits to me and to my family (my husband will do your yard work be cause he too is hard-working and honest, except for that breaking in part). If you try to call the police or force me out, I will call my friends who will picket your house carrying signs that proclaim my right to be there.

It's only fair, after all, because you have a nicer house than I do, and I'm just trying to better myself. I'm hard-working and honest, um, except for well, you know.

And what a deal it is for me!! I live in your house, contributing only a fraction of the cost of my keep, and there is nothing you can do about it without being accused of selfishness, prejudice and being an anti-housebreaker. Oh yeah, and I want you to learn my language so you can communicate with me.

Why can't people see how ridiculous this is?! Only in America....if you agree, pass it on (in English). Share it if you see the value of it as a good simile. If not blow it off along with your future Social Security funds.

I think that this message, like a lot of email forwards of this ilk, is misleading and panders to emotion. Why does it matter that this message seeks to engage emotion? Research has shown that too much of what passes for political dialogue in our nation today is a function of emotional reaction* rather than rational thinking.

Mr. Karl Rove has been an especially pernicious purveyor of this type of politics, employing a strategy that I've termed "Discredit, Distance, Dismiss". It is telling that the same kind of categorical dismissal of subjective experience that follows in emotionally reacting to political stimuli is also what is at work in racism (as I define it: a *system* of privilege based on phenotype).

Nevertheless, what the forwarded email does have going for it is the fact that it employed extended metaphor, of which I am a great fan. For that reason, I wish to engage the argument by extending the metaphor. Let's say that the first generation of intruders in the story go unnoticed (if we were to parallel reality, we might concede that we built the house around the "intruder" while coercing his "help" or brought him in as cheap labor...let's hear it for unchecked capitalism!)...and a second, maybe a third generation of "intruders" now occupy your home. They don't have a place to "go back to", they are in a very real sense "at home," though most people that live in the house in which they were born tell them that they don't belong. If you can be empathetic with the protagonists here, can you imagine any reason why you might feel for affection for the flag of a land you've never seen?

So now we have second or third generation "intruders" that have no place to go, and no real chance to advance in our society. Sure, there are opportunities to get a high school education, still fewer to get a college education, but then what? True story: a young woman finishes at the top of her high school class, engages in an intense Science curriculum at one of the state's flagship universities, and graduates with distinction. Despite her proven acumen, diligence, and work ethic, this young woman is unemployable because she cannot get a Social Security number, though Texas is the the only home she's ever known. Sure, she can elect to "get in line" and begin the legal process of naturalization (which seems like an oxymoron, given her situation) and in about thirty years she can finally claim to be a U.S. citizen. Even if her parents had started the process when she was born, she would still have to wait another decade to become a U.S. citizen.

The email correctly identifies that people are angry, but in classic "Discredit, Distance, Dismiss" fashion ascribes it's own reason and then argues against it (in systematic logic that's what's known as a "straw man" argument). What makes me angry is that millions of young people such as the one I described are not only being denied the "American Dream," regardless of the effort they make but that our government wants to classify them as felons for something over which they had no control. *Make no mistake*, no "liberal" that I know is making an argument against protecting the U.S. border; we definitely have a problem with illegal immigration, and I think it needs to be fixed so that immigrants to our country actually find this a land of opportunity. I also think that our efforts to keep people from crossing our border need to start long before they get there. We need to eliminate poverty and ameliorate the living conditions for those who find being an undocumented immigrant in the U.S. more favorable than being a legal citizen in their own country.

Finally, the email ends by cavalierly throwing Social Security down the drain if the illegal immigration problem isn't solved. This argument is perhaps the most disingenuous of all since payments from undocumented workers have propped up the system for decades. Giving Social Security payments to those who have paid in isn't pandering, it's the opposite of robbery.


By the way, my Spanish is really rusty. Anyone want to translate the email posted above so I can send it along? = )

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I'm Fixin' to...

I'm finally getting around to using this account that I created about two years ago.

In the interim, I've been an occasional contributor at IdeaPlay and a frequent reader (and sometime commentator) at The Scientific Activist and History Post . While these, along with CNN International Edition , Slate.com , and The Eagle, have provided me with good opportunities to process and discuss current events, I find myself more and more interested in writing about these issues (alas, the good old days of dialogue at Texags are long-gone).

My interests span religion (specifically Eastern Orthodoxy), politics/social commentary, literature, hip hop, race studies, and giftedness/creativity. Accordingly, my posts will probably fall under one or more of these headings.

A final note about the title of the blog, "Fixin' a Hole...," is a reference to the Beatles' song by Paul McCartney. In the song, Paul describes what amounts to efforts to stay in "flow" (a concept described by Csikszentmihalyi). Borrowing that idea, these are the efforts that I'm making at reducing partisan, racist noise and creating conditions that are congenial to the pursuit of peace.

Please enjoy and comment as appropriate.

Peace!