Prostitute Politicians

Ok - not much time to write tonight, but I really want to at least put down a couple of comments on the recent Supreme Court ruling on corporate donations to campaigns. Unsurprisingly, I am incredibly disappointed in the ruling and pretty stunned that something so disingenuously naïve could come from the Supreme Court.

There are lots of really interesting things being written and I want to comment on lots (particularly the idea that 'money = speech'), but for now, in the interest of getting at least a minimum amount of sleep tonight and making it to work on time tomorrow, I'm just going to comment on this transcription of House Republican Leader Mitch McConnell's comments about the ruling yesterday on Meet the Press

McConnell had this to say:

I don't know who [the ruling] benefits, but it's a important victory for the first amendment.  RIght now if you're General Electric and you own NBC, you can say anything you want to about any candidate right up to the day of the election. But if you're a corporation or a union that doesn't own a media outlet you haven't been able to. So you've had this big gap in the First Amendment, applying one standard to media-owned corporations and another standard to unions and corporations that don't own media outlets. Now the Supreme Court has said the First Amendment is for everyone, I think that's a step in the right direction.

First of all - he doesn't know who it benefits? What nonsense. Second, I think I've come up with a new motto for the GOP:

Never surprising, always disappointing

What do you think? Catchy, huh?

More on speech/money and bi-partisanship to come!

How to lose your progressive base, 101

1. Don't use your Democratic House and Senate majorities to pass health care reforms. Spend so much time attempting to be 'bi-partisan' that every progressive element gets stripped out of the health care bill... and still end up without any Republican support.

2. After watching the Democratic Party completely fail at getting a Democrat elected in one of the most Democratic states in the country due to gross incompetence, say this.

3. In a year in office, make no substantial steps toward getting rid of Don't Ask Don't Tell and DOMA.
3a. Stand idly by while Cindy McCain (wtf?!) becomes the new face of the marriage equality movement.

4. Continue Bush-era policies like bailing out Wall Street (to the tune of $1 trillion) and sending tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan.

5. Promise to close Guantanamo Bay and make very, very little progress.

6. Publish an article in Newsweek that says this: "For decades, America's leadership has been founded in part on the fact that we do not use our power to subjugate others, we use it to lift them up—whether it was rebuilding our former adversaries after World War II, dropping food and water to the people of Berlin, or helping the people of Bosnia and Kosovo rebuild their lives and their nations."
Mr President, you know darn well that's not true and I don't believe that you're even buying your own bullshit.


Yet despite all of this, I think Frank Schaeffer's column is absolute rubbish. Yes, we on the left are frustrated and disappointed in the Obama administration. And yes, many on the left in Massachusetts stayed home, resulting in the Brown election. But to act as though we are impatient - as if an entire year wasn't enough time to accomplish more than the Obama administration has (especially in regard to health care!) is just plain false. Heath care doesn't need to be 'perfect now' as Schaeffer asserts - but something should be passed by now! And saying that Obama hasn't moved quickly enough on gay rights (he hasn't) because of the mess he was left by Bush only serves to convolute the issues - these two political agendas (gay rights and cleaning up Bush's mess(es!)) are not intertwined. Perhaps one is further up Obama's political agenda than the other (as is obviously the case), but it is certainly within the realm of possibility to pursue both at the same time!

I was rooting for Obama, I really was (see my posts from after the inauguration for proof). As a 'lefty' and progressive I really, really wanted him to do well. I wanted CHANGE. One year on - there isn't enough for me. Maybe I'm being greedy, but I was promised more.

That all being said, had I been able to vote in the Massachusetts election I absolutely would have went to the polls for Coakley - because I accept that despite my disappointments, this is reality. The 37% of people in this poll who reportedly voted for Obama, said that Democrats in Washington DC aren't doing enough to challenge Republican policies and then voted for Scott Brown (a Republican!) are clearly off their rockers... and those who stayed home (39%) should realize that rather than become apathetic, using their frustration and anger to get more Democrats elected would be far more productive.

I'm going to end here because my battery died after writing that last sentence, it's now 2 hrs later and I don't remember what was coming next... but rest assured there will be more to come!

Peace Train

Now I've been happy lately, thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be, something good has begun

Oh I've been smiling lately, dreaming about the world as one
And I believe it could be, some day it's going to come

Cause out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country, come take me home again

Today is Martin Luther King Jr day and it's gotten me in quite a contemplative mood. I find it immensely frustrating that the US seems to have taken so many steps forward in some respects but has regressed in others. Electing a black President must have been absolutely unfathomable during Dr. King's lifetime and having Barack Obama in the White House is truly the fulfillment of Dr. King's most famous dream. Other dreams, however, have yet to be realised - the Cat Stevens song above, written 3 years after Dr. King and Robert Kennedy's assassinations, is shockingly (and disappointingly) prescient. I've been listening to a lot of Cat Stevens lately and it really gets me wondering where the good music of this generation is... but I'm getting off track! I'll save that rant for a different entry.

Back to Dr. King... another area in which we have regressed, other than the war (as that's not actually what I wanted to write about but Cat Stevens and Peace Train is in my head and on my ipod so it just kind of ended up there inadvertently!), is social justice.

This article starts to outline Dr. King's focus on social justice as a means to racial equality. The famous March on Washington at which Dr. King delivered his 'I Have a Dream' speech was actually called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Dr. King spoke equally about economic justice as he did racial equality. Of course as school children we were never taught that Dr. King was anti-capitalist - the horror! - and held a second march on Washington in 1968 as part of the Poor People's Campaign, which advocated for societal transformation, not just economic reform. A few days before his death Dr. King spoke in Memphis to sanitation workers who were striking for better wages and working conditions. He said to the strikers:

 You are demanding that this city will respect the dignity of labor. So often we overlook the worth and the significance of those who are not in professional jobs, of those who are not in the so-called 'big jobs.
But let me say to you tonight that whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth.
You are reminding not only Memphis, but you are reminding the nation that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages.

This dream - of economic equality and social cohesion - still has a long, long way to go. I wonder what Dr. King would say today about the state of race relations and (black) poverty in the US. I wonder if he would say that his worst fears had come true - most people will give praising platitudes to his work and talk about how America is entering a post-racial era, yet the underlying racism that leads to ghettos filled with under-educated, malnourished black children goes unchecked and instead the poor are qualified as lazy and undeserving of the 'productive' citizens' tax dollars.

This shameful attitude has manifest itself recently in regards to the hurricane that hit Haiti a number of days ago.  As much as it pains me to write about facebook (and believe me, it does), there has been going around a 'status update' that implores others to re-post in their own status concerning a benefit concert hosted by celebrities that was raising money for the hurricane victims. It states: 

Shame on you America: the only country where we have homeless without shelter, children going to bed without eating, elderly going without needed medication, and mentally ill without treatment - yet we have a benefit for the people of Haiti on 12 TV stations. 99% of people won't have the guts to copy and re-post this.

Firstly, I will offer up a rhetorical question: would the (all white) people who have posted this be doing so if the Haitian earthquake victims were not black?

Moving on, I don't really understand why someone would be compelled to post such a thing - surely they can try to improve their own community (volunteer, pay for an elderly neighbor's expensive prescription, host a foster child, etc.) while still giving $20 to help the thousands of people made homeless and children orphaned by the earthquake?

Yet the general sentiment is exactly what Dr. King was fighting so hard to avoid - the illusion of racial equality that leads to the masking of economic inequality and want of opportunity. One may wonder if it's really possible be people to be so devoid of compassion. Yet when the overriding American myth, which is also transferred onto non-Americans, is that people are poor by virtue of their own actions (and not due to factors outside of their control - like US involvement in the case of Haiti) and therefore undeserving of charity or empathy, it becomes fairly unsurprising.

As a school child I, like the rest of America, only learned about Dr. King's history insofar as he dealt with racial equality. This is regrettable, as this vision was meant to go hand-in-hand with his economic vision; a manifesto that is ever-relevant and ever in the shadows.

Once upon a time I had a blog?!

Well, suffice it to say I'm not very good at blogging. Nearly a year since my last post I'm getting back on the wagon, but only because I've got the writing bug again... I'll try for some more consistency this time around but if I'm being realistic you may not hear from me again until 2011. (I don't know why I'm writing as if people actually read this... I'm pretty sure they don't).

Anyway, I have two things to discuss, but I'll break them into separate posts so I seem more productive. The first is a book review (fun!). I read The Alchemist during my Christmas holiday (in Malta! 20 degrees Celsius on Christmas day? Yes please!). After hearing rave reviews from lots of people and then finding it for a couple of quid in a charity shop I figured it would make a good holiday read. I was wrong

I have never hated a book so much in my life.

One reviewer on amazon said:
I wish I could kiss that person.

[in the introduction] the author discusses his amazement at the popularity this book has gained. It is equally astonishing for any reader who is able to endure more than five pages of: "The Soul of the World spoke to the Heart of the Boy as he prayed to the God of the Dessert who commanded the Spirit of the Wind..." I found myself praying to the God of Literature that the boy's beloved sheep would stamped and trample him to death, sparing me from the Demons of Boredom.

Anyway, my top 4 reasons why The Alchemist sucks big time:

1. In the version of the book I have, Paul Coelho wrote a prologue in which HE claims to have studied alchemy for 11 years...
What?!
Interesting fact: do you know who else was an alchemist? Albus Dumbledore.


2. "It's true; life really is generous to those who pursue their destiny"

Yes, that's really a quote from the book. What utter rubbish. I can see why this book may appeal to people who have the means to 'pursue their destiny' and that when their life turns out to be relatively successful and they achieve some goals they may see this as affirmation of the original point.
However, in this situation one should refer to the saying 'Post hoc, ergo proptor hoc,' which, for the non West Wing watching Latin speaking readers, means 'After, therefore because of it.' Just because you achieved some goals or traveled to some far away place doesn't mean you fulfilled a destiny. If this were the case, we would have to assume that poor people (and by poor I don't mean 'I-can't-afford-an-ipod-poor', I mean 'I-live-on-less-than-a-dollar-a-day-poor') are either not trying hard enough to fulfill their destinies or were just given really shitty ones.

Not only does The Alchemist insinuate that alchemy is actually real (honestly, I'm still not over this), it mocks people who are really struggling in life. Not everyone has the privileged position to leave their life (and all of the responsibilities that go with it) to go frolicking through Arabia in search of their mystical destiny. The insinuation that if you aren't happy with your life it's because you either haven't worked hard enough or don't deserve it is supremely insulting.

3. This book is chock-a-block full of latent Christianity. Coehlo tries to pass it off as new age-ish mysticism, but he's not fooling anyone (or at least not me). I don't have a problem with religious books - had I known this was one I wouldn't have chosen to read it - but if people want to write religious books then go right ahead. Just don't try to disguise it by talking about the 'Soul of the World' because it's a) annoying (Soul of the World - really?), b) disingenuous and c) amateur.

4. My last (major) reason for hating this book: Coehlo's placement of women. The basic message of this book is: 'your purpose in life is to pursue your destiny. If you do this, the world will 'conspire' to help you and you will be blessed.'** So, as a woman I give it a big fat middle finger!

An actual quote is: "The desert was full of men who earned their living based on the ease with which they could penetrate to the Soul of the World. They were known as seers, and they were held in fear by women and the elderly."

WTH, Coehlo?! As if the first 3 points weren't enough to start making me want to kick every person who recommended this book in the shin, this last makes me want to kick them in the shin AND pinch that tender piece of skin on the under side of their arm really hard. Blech.

Well, that's all for my review - I hope you're convinced to either never read this book or do so with the expressed purpose of masochistically enjoying its many failures (I would like to note, that even with my myriad criticisms I didn't touch one bit on the lack of literary merit of the book, which could have filled an additional blog post).

In any case, you've been warned!



**Applies to men only