I was driving around Denver yesterday looking for a company that, even as Mapquest says otherwise, does not exist. In boredom, I turn on the radio. The NPR station is doing one of it’s non-newsy time-filling shows, which is what they do best. Talk radio offered three outlets on 630, 760 and 850, and as I turned to each was blasted by advertising. But I did manage to collect the following two exchanges, which I paraphrase:

Caller: Someone told me about how Obama had signed this bill where he can throw any of us in jail for any reason …

Thom Hartmann: (interrupts caller) yeah – that’s a Republican talking point, trying to break up the Obama support. They talk about how Obama signed the Defense Authorization Bill and how he has that power now. They also talk about how he assassinated an American citizen. These things are true, and I disagree with the president on these matters.

My emphasis, of course. This is what immediately came to mind: In one of my favorite movies, Forget Paris, Billy Crystal and Debra Winger, Mickey and Ellen, are walking by the River Seine in Paris. Mickey is an NBA referee and Ellen mentions to him how in a soccer match in South America a stampeding crowd had killed a referee. Said Mickey: “See now, I’m against that*”.

That’s what Democrats are like – the look out over the sea of crap that we call American politics and sigh, and vote for their candidate like it is going to somehow sweeten it up. They don’t know how. Their candidates stab them in the back at every turn, engaging in ugly betrayal. They are against these things, of course. But they vote for them. It begins there, it ends there.
Continue reading “I’m against this sort of thing” →

Newton Minnow, back in more sentient times, called TV a “vast wasteland.” That seems true. Programming and news is aimed at low-awareness viewers. Advertising is the real product – the incessant carnival barking of consumer products. We may find it annoying to see the same ad seven, eight times – advertisers know all about the annoyance factor, but also know that an ad might reach us the thirteenth time we see it, and that will pay for the previous twelve. So advertising, by design, is intrusive and annoying.

We are subscribers to DirecTV, but suspended that service for the summer. The business model for cable/satellite providers is to package the one or two channels we might find appealing with 30 or 40 others, and for a large monthly fee, usually in the $35-50 range. This in in addition to the $35-50 basic service package. The object appears to be $100 per month from each household in the country. ESPN is by far the premium cable channel in the U.S., and carriers complain about the cost, but it is their lever to “high end” packages and the $100 per month goal. (We were basically subscribing to Comedy Central with our DirecTV package. Jon Stewart is a smart guy with a great staff of writers, but not worth $100 a month.)
Continue reading “Low-level hypnosis” →

We all live within frameworks by which we embrace our own private realities. Those realities must interface with the real world, and often contradictions surface. Our job, if we are sentient and rational, is to resolve the contradictions in such a way that reality and framework are in continued harmony.

Example: As a six year-old child, I believed that Jesus was real, and that he watched over me. I believed in Holy Communion. At that time we had to fast before taking communion, so I was not allowed to eat food for three hours before. On Christmas Eve, 1956, I was in the balcony of our church sitting through long ceremonies, and had a terrible stomachache. But I firmly believed that once I took communion, Jesus would relieve the pain.

That moment finally came, and I made my way back to my seat after waiting for the pain to go away. It did not.

What to do? What any good Catholic would do – stuff doubt, make it go away. But it never really did.

I’ve read many blogs and comments and many articles now surrounding the most recent events in various Arab and Muslim countries, and the overriding American framework is easily apparent:

We are rational, they are not.

I mean, look at them! They are attacking us because of a silly film! They are really fanatic about their religion.

A more logical explanation is that they are really angry at our government and our military, and that it does not take much to set off that anger. And assuming that they, like us, are rational, there must be some reasonable basis for the anger.

Of course, we have our religion, and we can be equally irrational when others insult our religious symbol, The Flag. When others burn it, we go ballistic.

If Americans viewing recent events assume that the players are rational, resolution of the resulting discomfort might produce useful insight.

I watched the move “The Grey” last night, starring Liam Neeson. It started out as “we,” but my wife quickly had had enough. I wanted my $4.99 worth. (This is not movie review, lest you think I have any pretensions in that area. But if you are thinking about seeing it, don’t read any further.)

The movie is set in Alaska, and is ugly throughout. The only thing that held my interest was the potential for a happy ending, but the lead characters are one-by-one killed off, including Neeson’s character, Ottway, at the end. Wolves, assuming demonic proportions, stalk them throughout as if they did not have better things to do … like hunting prey with more protein and fat. Ottway tries to lead the pack of men to safety in the trees. Wolves apparently don’t go there. The symbolism is beyond me.

Of course the movie is a metaphor for facing our deepest fears. But Jesus, let us win now and then!

The only other movies that came to mind were those set in Southeast Asia where our nightmare is the “Viet Cong.” We never saw them – only their punji stakes and other barbarous traps picking off the good guys one-by-one. Those movies were intended for propaganda purposes to demonize our enemies and justify the slaughter that we inflicted on that country. This one … unless Obama is thinking about invading Canada (a routine American ritual in our early years … hmmm …) taunts our psyches for unknown reasons.

The movie is based on a short story, Ghost Walker, by MacKenzie Jeffers, who also co-wrote the screenplay (thank you, Wiki). People who saw it in a theater surely came out smiling … relieved at rejoining life after such a dark journey!

My wife was reminded of Sarah Palin shooting wolves from the safety of a helicopter. The animals are a Jungian archetype, as in Little Red Riding Hood where the Big Bad one symbolizes hunger. (Hunger has constantly stalked humans in our post-hunter-gatherer existence.)

If you have a chance to see The Grey, at least know that it is not a kind treatment of either wolves or humans. I can count the number of times cast members smiled on one hand and still pick my nose.

The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”Ron Suskind, conversation with anonymous White House “aide”

The assumption is that the aide speaking above was Karl Rove, still in power at this time, but the words “judicially, as you will…” hit me as Cheney-talk. Who knows, who cares. Those words were a reflection of hubris, an arrogant revelation, and a mistake. They should not talk out of school.

But they highlight the problem. We only know what power is up to retrospectively. Americans, at least those who are thinking, run around trying to decide which news outlet to trust. The correct answer, “None of them!” doesn’t satisfy. Conservatives run to Fox, liberals to CNN, each getting six of one. Liberals also go to NPR, which offers CNN/Fox news with nice sound effects, and Car Talk.

I like Democracy Now!, not because they have the answers, but rather because they are at least curious about what’s really going on, even as they have no access to power. They try to fulfill the function of a news source without resources. (I send them $25 a month. I am bribing them!)

I also go to RT.com because, as a Russian propaganda outlet, they offer balance to the American propaganda outlets that dominate our senses. Knowing that the US and Russia are at odds is reassuring. However, often in history competing empires share larger objectives and merely facilitate one another, as during the Cold War.

The only thing for sure: Nothing is for sure.
Continue reading “Who’s sowing, who’s reaping, who the hell knows?” →

The murderous attack in Libya was a tragedy, and the loss of life is deplorable.

So too is the attack on the U.S. Embassy and the four Americans killed. But it pales in comparison.

It’s all ugly. What the U.S. did to that country was barbarism.