Author: Mark Tokarski

Just a man who likes to read, argue, and occasionally be surprised.

Pondering life’s complexities (2)

I saw Lincoln on Sunday night, and with muddled head wrote about it Monday morning. I committed the cardinal sin of op-edding, failure to stay on message. I do that a lot, but with that movie, I want to give it a second shot.

lincoln-1067508-squareWe finally saw the movie Lincoln last night. I feared that the man would receive a royal Spielberging, or be drowned in excess sentimentality. There is some of that at the beginning and scattered about, but it’s an excellent film. Spielberg has embraced complexity – the use of evil means to achieve good ends. Sometimes that works.

It is difficult to get anything done in politics without duplicity. That’s why lying is a tool of the trade, and not an ignoble one. According to the movie, Lincoln did the right thing for the right reasons and by the wrong means. We can debate that sort of thing afterward, but Lincoln did not have the luxury of a Department of Philosophy and Ethics. He had to get things done amidst swells of turmoil, suffering and feverish emotions, and maintain a steady hand.
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Pondering life’s complexities

lincoln-1067508-squareWe finally saw the movie Lincoln last night. I feared that the man would receive a royal Spielberging (Lincoln turns as they watch the play and says “Molly, have I led a good life? Am I a good man?”*). There’s some of that right at the beginning and scattered about, but it’s an excellent film. Spielberg has embraced complexity – evil means to achieve good ends. Sometimes that works.

Politics, with all of its duplicity, can be a noble profession when used towards noble ends. It is difficult to get anything done, good or bad, without duplicity. According to the movie, Lincoln did the right thing for the right reasons and by the wrong means. Good for him.
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Professional victims

6a00d8341c1aee53ef00e54f82cc248834-800wiDuring the last baseball game we attended in Arizona, at Chase Field, the stadium announcer asked all people who had served in the military to stand so that we could applaud and honor them. Though I sympathize with their plight I don’t “honor” these people. But there is no way of expressing sympathy without joining the general applause for nonexistent accomplishments fighting manufactured enemies as unwitting agents of Wall Street (or the military-industrial complex, if that makes more sense.)

All of these people had to go through basic training. It’s a terrible experience that none should endure. My brother, a gentle man who had no business carrying a gun, was force-marched, made to stand guard in the rain until exhausted, sleep deprived and hypothermic. He was drilled to exhaustion, kicked in the stomach by a drill instructor, called every imaginable demeaning name. This, we are told, made him a man. But he was already well on his way to manhood before this interruption. The experience merely separated him from humanity, which is necessary to create killing machines.
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The testing regime

satMy son, who is in the teaching profession, has reminded me that most teachers care about kids, know how to teach, and don’t need advice from outsiders like me. I agree. This is not about them. It is about public policy, or more specifically, the testing regime.

I never took the SAT, though it probably existed. Instead, I took the “ACT” (I think). These were general tests given perhaps yearly. I don’t recall being grilled on anything more than basic abilities in math, science, reasoning and language. I received the results in a percentile form, and have never been told what my “IQ” is. Such testing was important to identify strong students as part of the culling process, as these would be our future technicians, scientists, and blah blah blahs. It was a system that relied on testing, but not a testing regime. I have struggled with the idea, as do teachers including Polish Wolf, who wrote this piece about a testing scandal in Atlanta. NCLB had created perverse incentives, people have responded accordingly, and now we must punish them.
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Another dung beetle on the feedlot of power

“The greatest enemy of the truth is not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, pervasive, and unrealistic.” (John F. Kennedy)

Washington Post editor Jackson Diehl
Washington Post editor Jackson Diehl
Driving home yesterday we listened for a while to NPR, not expecting much and not disappointed. During the Vietnam war protesters had managed to use various local radio outlets to spread their message, and the result was widespread dissemination of information that the government did not want. NPR, which went on the air in 1971, is not without an accomplishment here and there, such as exposing Archer Daniels Midlands corruption in the mid-1990’s. (ADM promptly began funding NPR, so that never happened again.) But the effective result of NPR and its 900 stations is to suck up bandwidth. Those pirate community stations are almost all gone now, blanded out of existence. NPR has replaced them with news indistinguishable from any other major outlet, and cultural programming. I listen to some of it, but have long given up on NPR as a meaningful alternative to government-managed news as presented to us by the other major outlets.

We listened to Talk of the Nation Yesterday as the host interviewed Washington Post editor Jackson Diehl. (Transcript here.) He appears to have all of the credentials of an ‘Op”, or government intelligence employee placed at a critical junction as a news filter in the private news media*. He’s a Yalie, and pro-military aggression and war all the way, including an advocate of the attack and invasion of Iraq in 2003. News, after all, is too important to be left in independent hands. If Diehl is not an op, he’s very dumb.
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Our kind of guy

A Cypriot news source has accused Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades of wiring €21 million of his own funds to London prior to announcing the Eurobank-sponsored haircut that would affect his fellow countrymen’s holdings. He has promised that he would authorize an investigation of himself by a committee that will be organized tomorrow. There is no word on the reliability this committee, as any government that investigates its own activities must be held to extremely high standards of transparency and accountability.

I found no coverage of this story in American news.

Profiles in courage

Don Progreba, Democrat, does not seem to understand why it is important for a politician to fight for the things he believes in while holding office.

Jimmy Carter turned out to be quite a man of peace, after leaving office. Al Gore turned green, after leaving office. Bill Clinton became a professional liberal, after leaving office.

At least Republicans like Conrad Burns and George W. Bush have the decency to remain the right wing hacks they were while in office, after leaving office.

Attention all Democrats:

March 28, 2013

To: All Democrats
From: Central Committee

Effective immediately you are IN FAVOR of the Keystone Pipeline, and have ALWAYS favored this pipeline. At no time did you ever doubt that Great Leader would approve it, and that it is a wise, virtuous, and good public policy. 35 jobs are 35 jobs we would not have without Great Leader

You are also in favor of protecting Monsanto from oversight and lawsuits regarding genetically modified foods, and have always been in favor. Great Leader signing a bill today protecting Monsanto is what you want, and what you have always stood for.

Just as with wars, torture, Gitmo, tax cuts, austerity, and saving Medicare and Social Security by attacking those programs, Great Leader reminds you that your support for him in this trying time is critical to the success of his Administration. Remember, a successful presidency is on your shoulders.