The effluence of influence

"On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh." - Rachel Carson, in her seminal book about the unchecked use of pesticides in post-war America , Silent Spring

Rachel Carson, in 1962, published a book that moved a nation to do something about the devastating environmental impact of DDT. Setting the stage for her argument, she wrote of a hypothetical morning in a not too distant future, where nature will have been stymied into silence by the overuse of insecticide that made its way through the food chain, killing birds, plants and bees. As a result of Ms. Carson's well documented work, laws were passed outlawing the civilian use of DDT, and awareness was raised about just what kind of impact our lifestyle has on the planet we share with the rest of nature. People stood up. Something got done.
This spring, it's time to pay attention to a perhaps more insidious pollutant that affects the way we live. Winter's acrid snowfall of presidential election idiocy has distracted us, muffling the voices of protesters that began screaming last fall about fair access to the ears and hearts of our lawmakers, that didn't involve entering through their wallets. Despite President Obama renewing the call for "fair play, shared responsibility," in the spring thaw, there is only the creaking of Congress' rusty wheels blowing across the election year breeze. It's the practiced deafness of a seized machine - not the gear churning, consensus building, bill producing process with which our legislative branch is tasked.

"Some insecticides affect sensitive plants ... retarding root development or depressing growth of seedlings." - Rachel Carson, ibid

Plants can't grow properly in soil infected by toxins, and our Congressional ecosystem has been toxified by money. The laws that come out of Congress have long had their potential stunted by the ugly politics of greed and corporate congressional corruption. We are promised fields of green, spring wheat and acres of blooming flowers, and are presented with AstroTurf and plastic poppies. This isn't what government should look like. This is a painted backdrop of mythical American glory, an artifice created by the corporate manipulators and political strategists, where they can stage a bought Congress that passes the laws they write with the help of ALEC.

(DDT dusting photo by USDA)
For most members of Congress, it seems that Capitol Hill is just another market where power is the commodity and there are plenty of big-monied lobbyists looking to buy. Sure, America is a free market economy, but let's keep the free market in the marketplace, and not in the halls of Congress, where lobbyists and Super PACs line the walls, trading laws for dollars like the moneychangers at the Temple gates. A den of thieves, to be sure.
The first five words of the First Amendment are, "Congress shall make no law." Unfortunately, it seems, Congress has stopped right there, taking the phrase out of context as easily as a super PAC ad, and using it to illustrate their attachment to the meme that government can't do anything. What's really sad is everyone knows they can't do anything. In the recent arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, about the Affordable Care Act, there was an acquiescence to the stymied way the 112th Congress has limped through its tenure.
In one exchange, on the third day of oral arguments, regarding what might happen to the entire law if the so-called individual mandate were struck down, Justices Sotomayor and Scalia had this telling indictment of the current Congressional process in an exchange with Paul Clement, who was arguing that the law should be scrapped. Justice Sotomayor asks Clement (page 7, line 10), "I guess, on the bottom line, is why don't we let Congress fix it?"
"Well, let me answer the bottom line question," Clement responds, "if you strike down the mandate, there's going to be something for Congress to do. The question is really what task do you want to give Congress? Do you want to give Congress the task of fixing the statute after something has been taken out, especially a provision at the heart, or do you want to give Congress the task of fixing health care?"
"[W]hatever you do," Clement later adds, "Congress is going to have options."
It's there that Scalia interrupts the petitioner, with the most practical question of the entire proceeding: "Well, there's such a thing as legislative inertia, isn't there?"
"[W]e all recognize there's legislative inertia," Clement goes on to agree, "And then the question is what's the best result in light of that reality?"
The Supreme Court of the United States has little respect for Congress' ability to get anything done, and they're right to think that. Those attending the proceeding found the whole notion of Congress buckling down to "fix" the healthcare law laughable:

(page 26, line 14)
MR. CLEMENT: At a certain point, I just think that, you know, the better answer might be to say, we've struck the heart of this Act, let's just give Congress a clean slate. If it's so easy to have that other big volume get reenacted, they can do it in a couple of days, it won't be a big deal. If it's not, because it's very -
(Laughter.)
MR. CLEMENT: -- well, but -- I mean, you can laugh at me if you want, but the point is, I rather suspect that it won't be easy.

No, Mr. Clement. It won't be easy, because nothing in Congress is easy. They need 60 votes to get anything done in the Senate, and the House is passing budget bills with the goal of "sharpening the contrast," as Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) put it, between the majority party and the president during an election year. It's all done for political points and serves only the perpetual campaigners in Congress, not the American people.
While it may be easy to blame Congress, though, this is our fault too. They lead not just by our votes, but also by our example. If we are silent about our polluted and corrosive system, then they will be too. If we are unwilling to allow our elected representatives to be a cacophony of "sound and fury, signifying nothing," then we have to make certain we don't represent the same thing to them. Meaning, if we want them to actually get in there and do the work of enacting laws that help everyone in this country prosper, then we have to be willing to do the same. We appear to have given up on our federal government being functional, and so have they. There's not much left for them to do except rake in the cash from defanged regulations. If they saw us giving the issues that affect our fellow citizens the due diligence they deserve, perhaps they would too.
I don't know what SCOTUS is going to do about severing the individual mandate from the Affordable Care Act, but just as Scalia argued against presenting Congress with a "false choice" of all, some or none of the act intact, we have a similar choice when it comes to Congress in November - do we re-elect all, some or none of them? Maybe we can just sever the toxic ones. Then, perhaps, the seeds a new Congress plants will have a chance to prosper, for all of us.

"No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves." - Rachel Carson, ibid

-PBG

Looking Under the Hoodie

The exposure is stark, high contrast, black and white. The last time this country cared even near this much about a person in a hoodie was that infamous sketch of the sunglassed Unibomber, Ted Kaczynski. But wearing a hoodie doesn't make one evil, threatening or a gangster, despite FOX News showman Geraldo Rivera's bizarre assertion that, "His hoodie killed Trayvon Martin as surely as George Zimmerman did."
Blaming Trayvon Martin for being suspicious in a hoodie is like blaming a rape victim because she wore something sexy. Judging someone because of what they wear or the way they talk is the same prejudice that judges them by their skin color. Sure, there are times when "appropriate" attire is required, like a funeral or a job interview, but the kid was just walking on a particular street, like hundreds of other kids do, everyday. Apparently, some people don't want kids to be kids, especially if they are Black (or Asian or Hispanic or Muslim).
 
The lesson here is less about the gun lobby's "Stand Your Ground" law, than it is about how far we still have to go to recognize all Americans, regardless of race, color or creed, as neighbors first, and criminals only when there's direct evidence from that individual to support specific suspicions.
We are meaning making machines, a teacher once told me. We relate to other people (and our environment) with the lessons past experience has taught us, or, lacking direct experience, we draw conclusions based on "stories" we have heard from our prime influences - our parents and our community. So all it takes to change the reflexive responses to social situations to which we resign ourselves, is a willingness to acknowledge that things may not be what you were always led to believe they were.
That's not always an easy thing to do. It requires disavowing some deeply held beliefs, letting go of our grip on the familiar bar that has gotten us this far in life, and like a trapeze artist, trusting that there's another mindset that will catch you and validate your new feelings. If you've ever had to admit you were wrong about something, in just about any context, you've done something similar. The biggest difference is admitting something you once thought was correct is flawed, compared to something you were certain about could be wrong.
Here's an exercise from the Book of Oversimplification that may help you. Let's say you have this idea that you look terrible in stripes. Try wearing stripes on a date, or to an important meeting, and see if it really matters. Better yet, try listening to your significant other in a conversation, while you're wearing stripes, and pretend you don't automatically know where they're coming from. Be willing to be surprised, by every one and everything. Americans are better than the racial profiling that passes for vigilance these days. George Zimmerman may not be there yet, but you can be. Give it a try.
 -PBG

Smears and skidmarks

It turns out what Rush Limbaugh did by calling Georgetown law student, Sandra Fluke, a nasty name may not only be misogynistic and in horrible taste, it may be illegal. That would make him a criminal and an asshole. According to the Huffington Post:

Gloria Allred, the famed celebrity lawyer, sent a letter to the Palm Beach County Attorney's Office on Thursday saying prosecutors should consider a charge under an 1883 law making it a misdemeanor to question a woman's chastity.

Yes, that Gloria Allred. It's not illegal to spew bullshit from a radio microphone, or a megaphone, as long as it doesn't sully someone's reputation. That would be slander, which is a civil matter. Satire is not slander. That's why comedian Bill Maher is allowed to call Sarah Palin a "dumb twat," because it does not imply any sort of specific behavior. He doesn't attempt to present any evidence of her dumbtwatness, doesn't implore us to see her and think, "Now, there goes one dumb twat." It's just his personal assessment of her demeanor. But calling a woman a slut implies a specific kind of behavior, one engaged in by women of loose morals and low character, a purposefully twisted conclusion based on her truthful and sincere testimony to a Congressional committee, and that is where Rush messed up. He went too far because he gorged himself on the lumps of fat that pass for brains among Right Wing extremists. When one feeds at the trough of ignorance, bigotry and intolerance, one extrudes excrement of hate, derision and superiority. It's what his audience wants. The problem is, he forgot that what he says doesn't stay in in his EIB bubble, that the public's airwaves are, by their nature, an open system. It may be intended for a limited, shit-for-brains audience, but people who actually understand the meaning of language and speech hear it too. It's no accident, then, that politicians who reach for the same audience as Rush have engaged in similar vitriol. It's why they can't bring themselves to declare that there's no doubt about President Obama's citizenship or religion (not that the latter should matter at all). It's also why Rick Santorum can assert that the president is "a snob" for encouraging a system that enables higher education. His wife called him on that, though. It's not Christian, you see, to call someone a snob. "The snob comment did not go over very well," Santorum said, relating his wife, Karen's, dissatisfaction in an interview with CNN's Piers Morgan, "And she reminded me, you know, it's snobbish. You can say it was a snobbish thing to say, but don't call him a snob." So Obama isn't a snob, see? He just engaged in snobbish behavior by saying a snobbish thing. I wonder if he took that into the confessional. "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I called the President of the United States a snob, when I should have said he said a snobbish thing. I also said a beloved, assassinated, Catholic president gave a speech that made me want to throw up." "I can prescribe penitence, son," the priest might have replied. "I'll accept it, humbly," Santorum would say. "But I can't prescribe a prophylactic, Rick -" "I know," the candidate then interrupts, "I've taken a strong stand in that regard. "Let me finish, boy. I can't prescribe a prophylactic," the priest repeats, "which is too bad, because you need one for your mouth." Maybe Rush can spare that condom he's always slipping over his microphone. Not sure why he does that, though. Maybe it's protection for when he shoves it up his bung hole so we can hear him talking out of his ass. Now, that would be video worth putting online. -PBG

Let's not say 'Let them all kill each other'

"There are credible reports that the death toll now often exceeds 100 civilians a day, including many women and children," U.N. Under-Secretary-General for political affairs Lynn Pascoe told the U.N. Security Council. "The total killed so far is certainly well over 7,500 people." - Reuters report, 28 February, 2012, on the assault of Bashar al-Assad's forces on the civilian population of Syria

There is a saying among people for whom the disintegration of an enemy's infrastructure of steel and flesh, through mayhem, madness and war, is greeted with darkly cynical glee. "Let them all kill each other," they declare, feeling that they are blessed to be witnessing some kind of karmic cycle, in which the wicked devour each other into nonexistence. In mythological terms, it's like watching Titan Cronus (or Saturn) eat his children out of fear they would overthrow him, and cheering at every flesh-tearing bite like a bloodthirsty crowd at a 2012 Republican debate.
In the Cronus story, Zeus, the secretly exiled son, returns to free his siblings, who are still around, twisting in the old titan's gut. He forces his dad to regurgitate a family reunion, and the rest is myth-tory. But in the twenty-first century version, the onlookers are hoping that Assad will gorge himself until he consumes even his friends in Iran, at which point he will agree to eat a wafer thin mint, then explode. Check please.
There is a problem in the logic that says it is good fortune to get to observe Syria's carnage with your hands clasped behind your butt, like a dispassionate scientist watching a lion take down a zebra on the Discovery Channel. Of course it comes off as a cold and dispassionate exercise, but it also is shortsighted.
As an example of the perils of this schadenfreude, one does not have to look much farther than the United States' 2012 presidential race. Look how gleeful Democrat pundits and politicians are, at the way the GOP seems to be imploding, devouring each other, charring the Republican brand to hard, black toast. Actually, their self immolation is real, but it has an expiration date, and it's not when there's no one left standing. There will be a phoenix for them, rising from this "fucking mess," as GOP strategist Ed Rollins said, in describing Republican reaction to the party's primary insanity, to writer John Heilemann for a recent (and awesome) New York Magazine article.
When they are done going at each other, they will reach consensus and turn their fangs on us, and all the happiness we may now have watching the GOP going so far off the reservation - hell, to the moon and beyond - is going to have to transform to resolve. Otherwise, we'll still be standing there, grinning like idiots at the last slapstick frame of the primaries, while the Republican nominee and his super PAC mount an effective, money filled campaign against President Obama.
So it is with what is going on in Syria and Yemen and Egypt. To be sure, from a humanitarian standpoint, the stakes in the events in the Middle East and Southwest Asia are much, much higher, as the people there are enduring profound pain and sorrow to which the petty words of American electoral rhetoric are incomparable. They are killing each other, but the lesson is the same. Eventually, they too will reach an accord, and they will turn, or return, to their age old political and cultural enemies, and that is us.
So temper your humanness with your humanity. Have a heart for the suffering of others, when that's all that you can give. Raise your voice, so they cannot help but listen. Finally, it is better to engage your enemies; don't engorge yourself with fear and animosity. You'll never, ever, be able to keep all that hostility down. It will come back on you like a garlicky pizza, or a rebellious child. -PBG

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