The Iraq War stems from the same kind of thinking that drives materialism: Don't buy something you actually need; simply justify it somehow and it will be right. Rationalization will never be the same as reason because rationalization always involves self-deception and false premises. America loses its moral compass because it practices self-deception as an everyday aspect of living. Americans confuse need and want more than perhaps any other culture. We spend and acquire recklessly and end up bankrupt, both economically and morally. What we want we want NOW, at any cost. Harness that dynamic with power and you have a recipe for hubris that makes for Captain Ahabs, John D. Rockefellers, and Bernie Madoffs.
Dick Cheney, a Captain Ahab of sorts, painted Iraq's Saddam Hussein as some sort of white whale and went after him with monomaniacal vengeance without regard to facts. If the facts didn't fit, he and his harpooners just made them up. Ahab’s white whale may have contained whale oil, but that was beside the point to Ahab. In Cheney’s case, oil was the point, although he framed it as a WMD and Al Qaeda issue. Cheney just may have cried “whale” (aka wolf) and then had the military and staff round up any available “witnesses” to “help them remember” that they saw “the whale” as well. Meanwhile the rest of the crew from both port and starboard sides of the political Pequod were shamed or frightened into agreeing with the plan to invade.
What is amazing to me is that no rugged individual or maverick within the Republican Party has stepped forward and called for an investigation into “Iraq-gate,” torture and all. In the wake of Obama’s plan to move on, it would be a wonderful opportunity for a Carpe Diem moment by the Republican Party to do its own laundry rather than simply hope the stink blows away in the strong winds of the current economic storm. Is Dick Cheney still too powerful to prosecute, even by Republicans, who could only gain in the long run by hanging him out to dry if he is guilty of crimes against our country? For Republicans to stick by their man even when he may wreak of corruption does nothing toward their gaining moral high ground in the future. Where are Republican principles, really? If America can prosecute governors (Illinois most recently) it can certainly do the same with Vice Presidents if that is warranted. If Bush was actually involved as he purports to have been, then he should be fair game as well.
No pardons this time. What got us into Iraq is a far greater matter than espionage or break-ins at Democratic headquarters. If we are going to be a moral example in the world or even an example to our own children, we need to do our own laundry first. Leaving it all to the historians to decide is not the proper venue for justice.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Texas: The "Show You" State
The You Tube video “Shopping in Texas” circulating among my email friends features a woman in a boutique trying to open a classic whiskey decanter. Finally, it opens with a loud pop which prompts the rest of the patrons to draw their pistols and hand-turret them around the room. The video keeps alive the stereotype of Texans as gun-slinging Second Amendment nut cases.
Rick Perry, the former cotton farmer and now right wing Obama bashing governor, joined his fellow tempestuous “tea party” goers in threatening to secede from the Union if the government doesn’t stop spending all of Texans’ hard-earned tax dollars on bailouts for corporations. He, of course, didn’t mention the long-term, on-going bailout of Texas cotton farmers who have received subsidies since at least the Eisenhower Administration. But let’s not muddy the waters. Let’s be clear by telling half-truths and ignoring inconvenient ones (Whoops! Wrong expression! Inconvenient truth belongs to that commie-liberal turn-coat southerner former VP Gore and his Global Warming nonsense.)
Most Texans don’t fit the stereotype. But the stereotype stays very much alive because of the few who do fit. And when the governor of Texas joins the few, he helps reinforce the stereotype with rebar. Nice going, Rick. You’ll show them.
The American political Right Wing is a bird with multiple right wings, and no left. Therefore, it doesn’t fly. It just flaps its wings and scurries around the barnyard in circles, much like a chicken with its head cut off. It has the wing against gay marriage; the wing against evolution; the wing against illegal immigration; the wing against corporate bailouts; the wing against current deficit spending but not against Bush league deficit spending; the wing against all deficit spending except right wing earmarks. The only difference between the Texas Right Wing and the American is that the Texas variety thinks it’s an eagle.
Imagine if Texas Republicans, for instance, actually wanted to get rid of illegal immigration. They don’t of course, except when they are wearing their Republican hats. The inconvenient truth is undocumented workers once provided cheap labor for contractors, agri-businesses, and factories. They helped smaller businesses that couldn’t afford to ship their manufacturing abroad to compete with those multi-national ones that do. They kept the cost of produce down in the supermarket and they prevented huge losses of crops because they were the most available, efficient, and cheap source of labor for domestic agriculture. Those same business owners and farmers will also holler about unions and the high price of documented labor. And yet, those same business owners will put on their Republican hats and shout about those undocumented Mexican migrants who break the law by crossing the border, and shoot themselves in their economic foot. They would prefer to turn the Texas border into one long Alamo and shoot the lawbreakers on principle, even if the vigilante principle contradicts the economic one. But they’ll show you!
Let’s call Rick Perry’s bluff. Let’s put Texas on sabbatical for one year without pay. Let’s show Texas what life would be like without federal support. Let them distract their Obama-targeting secret militias with full-time employment on the Mexican border instead of the Feds spending federal tax dollars on National Guard troops and Homeland Security to do the job. Let them put their money where their mouth is. We don’t need their oil (they have little left), nor do we need their cotton (we can get it cheaper elsewhere). Let the “Show You” state show us how great life will be without the rest of us. Lone Star, Lone Ranger, You’re on your own. My guess is undocumented Mexicans, most documented ones, and most Mexican-Americans born in Texas would move out or stay out of Texas…and so would three-fourths of the rest of the state. It would end illegal immigration into Texas because no Mexican in his right mind would want to live there.
That self-destructive contradiction reminds me of a movie Rick Perry should see: Sergio Arau's 2004 film "A Day without a Mexican." The message of the movie is that southern California’s entire economy would shut down without Mexicans. And maybe he ought to take another look at the movie The Alamo. As I recall, it doesn’t have a very happy ending for the Texans.
Rick Perry, the former cotton farmer and now right wing Obama bashing governor, joined his fellow tempestuous “tea party” goers in threatening to secede from the Union if the government doesn’t stop spending all of Texans’ hard-earned tax dollars on bailouts for corporations. He, of course, didn’t mention the long-term, on-going bailout of Texas cotton farmers who have received subsidies since at least the Eisenhower Administration. But let’s not muddy the waters. Let’s be clear by telling half-truths and ignoring inconvenient ones (Whoops! Wrong expression! Inconvenient truth belongs to that commie-liberal turn-coat southerner former VP Gore and his Global Warming nonsense.)
Most Texans don’t fit the stereotype. But the stereotype stays very much alive because of the few who do fit. And when the governor of Texas joins the few, he helps reinforce the stereotype with rebar. Nice going, Rick. You’ll show them.
The American political Right Wing is a bird with multiple right wings, and no left. Therefore, it doesn’t fly. It just flaps its wings and scurries around the barnyard in circles, much like a chicken with its head cut off. It has the wing against gay marriage; the wing against evolution; the wing against illegal immigration; the wing against corporate bailouts; the wing against current deficit spending but not against Bush league deficit spending; the wing against all deficit spending except right wing earmarks. The only difference between the Texas Right Wing and the American is that the Texas variety thinks it’s an eagle.
Imagine if Texas Republicans, for instance, actually wanted to get rid of illegal immigration. They don’t of course, except when they are wearing their Republican hats. The inconvenient truth is undocumented workers once provided cheap labor for contractors, agri-businesses, and factories. They helped smaller businesses that couldn’t afford to ship their manufacturing abroad to compete with those multi-national ones that do. They kept the cost of produce down in the supermarket and they prevented huge losses of crops because they were the most available, efficient, and cheap source of labor for domestic agriculture. Those same business owners and farmers will also holler about unions and the high price of documented labor. And yet, those same business owners will put on their Republican hats and shout about those undocumented Mexican migrants who break the law by crossing the border, and shoot themselves in their economic foot. They would prefer to turn the Texas border into one long Alamo and shoot the lawbreakers on principle, even if the vigilante principle contradicts the economic one. But they’ll show you!
Let’s call Rick Perry’s bluff. Let’s put Texas on sabbatical for one year without pay. Let’s show Texas what life would be like without federal support. Let them distract their Obama-targeting secret militias with full-time employment on the Mexican border instead of the Feds spending federal tax dollars on National Guard troops and Homeland Security to do the job. Let them put their money where their mouth is. We don’t need their oil (they have little left), nor do we need their cotton (we can get it cheaper elsewhere). Let the “Show You” state show us how great life will be without the rest of us. Lone Star, Lone Ranger, You’re on your own. My guess is undocumented Mexicans, most documented ones, and most Mexican-Americans born in Texas would move out or stay out of Texas…and so would three-fourths of the rest of the state. It would end illegal immigration into Texas because no Mexican in his right mind would want to live there.
That self-destructive contradiction reminds me of a movie Rick Perry should see: Sergio Arau's 2004 film "A Day without a Mexican." The message of the movie is that southern California’s entire economy would shut down without Mexicans. And maybe he ought to take another look at the movie The Alamo. As I recall, it doesn’t have a very happy ending for the Texans.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Sustainable Orchestration
Sustainable Orchestration
The current economic crisis affords opportunity and even invitation to come up with creative solutions that are the positive equivalent of cluster bombs and falling dominoes. Here is an example.
The San Luis Valley in Colorado is poised to become a significant source of renewable energy in the form of solar power. Sun Edison has already established itself here. Several more companies are also exploring the possibility of building solar facilities whose power would be sold to Excel Energy and transported through an upgraded infrastructure to communities beyond the valley.
Rather than simply allowing “market forces” (investor bets) to once again determine the number and scope of these facilities to be developed, as has been the case with oil and gas across the country, why not actually take a look at what would be ideal utilization of the land for sustainable energy in relation to the proximity of the quietest National Park in the country, the presence of a unique spiritual community, a productive agricultural resource, numerous large wildlife refuges, and a precious aquifer.
In turn, rather than allowing any oil and gas development in the region, which could seriously compromise all of the existing resources mentioned above and continue down the unsustainable path of “bubble and bust,” give the survivors of the banking crisis a tax incentive to retire mineral rights in the valley as part of investing in solar energy. The companies developing solar energy could also be given tax incentives to retire mineral rights as well, so that old, unsustainable energy sources would not compete with new sustainable ones for the same territory. Since the West has been an attractive resource for oil and gas development in the past thanks to vast tracts of sparsely settled land available for exploitation and the unstoppable and antiquated split-estate mineral rights law, more than enough land has already been compromised and more oil and gas development would only inhibit good land use policy aimed at sustainable solar or wind development.
As rural communities across the country wake up to the benefits of alternative energy, they are going to put up with only so much energy development of any kind in any one location. Why not encourage, as part of our economic recovery, the development of sustainable energy and the retirement of unsustainable energy and thereby eliminate one of the potential future bubbles that have plagued us in the past, namely another oil and gas boom and bust. This move will give the recovering economy a boost of confidence for investors who will be investing in something that won’t “go bad” at some time in the future, and that change will help augment much needed faith in our revised economic system.
Oil and gas companies are flooding the media with renewable energy coated advertisements asking for our support for their continued oil and gas exploration. Chevron and Exxon-Mobil even try to create an image on PBS of how education-minded or broad-minded they are in their “new” approaches to energy development and human service. Hogwash! They are dinosaurs on the brink of extinction, just like the flora and fauna that produced their primary exploit. Let’s bury our dead (retire the mineral rights) and build appropriate solar energy plants in ways that minimize impact and maximize a sustainable future. We could even give oil and gas tax incentives to retire targeted mineral rights leases in strategic locations where alternative energy development makes sense.
We need to orchestrate a coordinated solution to our energy needs, global warming, environmental degradation, and promotion of quality of life. That will take cooperation among a host of government agencies, private non-profits, investors, sustainable industries, oil and gas industry, and universal banks. Going at it piecemeal is the old way: it says to each stakeholder, you’re on your own. It invites unwarranted and destructive competition and conflict. We can all avoid being losers, (even gas and oil’s investment in mineral rights), under an orchestrated plan. This is the vision. Who will hold the baton and direct this orchestra remains to be seen.
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