WWDD: What Would Donald Do?

The refugees are coming (or not)! The refugees are coming (or not)!

The Paul Revere-like cry thunders a warning across New England. Warn the troops, lock up your wives and daughters, form neighbourhood committees to make sure they live somewhere else. Still the alarm rings out in the midnight ride of Donald Trump, "danger, danger Will Robinson!" Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party...because Lord knows the party isn't going to come to the aid of any man or woman, child even, be they poor, middle class, minority, Non-Christian (that includes Episcopalian), or - God forbid - alien ('foreign' is too PC a word to use, too humanizing).

But the real question to ask Don and the chorus of little mini-Dons piled knee-deep about him is this: if New York City was bombed into rubble, if there was no electricity, no banking system, no police or courts to enforce property rights, if a third of Donald's family had been executed, if he he could not buy food and an armed gang took over his house (a Tower, one imagines) - if one of his children (I won't name drop) was shot dead in front of him, or raped, or if he himself went four days without food, well, what are the odds he'd be headed to the Canadian border desperate to be let in?

I know, Don is a Republican, so in such a situation he would walk right up to the head bad guy, punch him in the nose, and end the whole war. But Don is probably banking on never having to find out. And he may be right. Probably someone who is rich enough can move his money out of a war-ravaged America, invest in munitions, hire an army of body guards, and safely sit perched like Snoopy pretending to be a vulture looking down on the carrion below and feeling himself master of it all. But it's easy to think, sitting in a wealthy city, in a peaceful country, on TV, everyone's darling, that the way things are now is the way things will always be. That civilizations don't fall, or change, that once a superpower always a superpower. Don't tell him that Spain was once the richest country in the world and now is not, or that Britain once owned parts of France. He can't be told that borders change, economies rise and fall, power shifts from country to country, that no-one, no country, stays on top forever. Rome didn't, Spain didn't, England didn't, the US won't. Soon, later, now?

What would you do if Syria was happening in the U.S? If you had young children, no access to your money, no house, if you were being bombed and shot at, if there looked like there would be no end, if your choice was between a dictator who was trying to kill you or terrorists who would execute you? Would emigration start looking good to you? Would Donald seek refugee status somewhere where he could be safe with his money and his family? Can you really see him picking up a shotgun and fighting in the front lines hopelessly against all comers?

Mexico might start looking pretty good (but would they let you past the wall?) Or would he have hightailed it to Switzerland long before things got that bad? Perhaps buy safe passage for himself and his family from the terrorists. What if his daughter was held for ransom? Would he pay it? If he were held for ransom, would he want his family to pay it - Donald tied up in a cave for three years, hungry, isolated, beaten regularly - so, What Would Donald Do?

I know, American Exceptionalism means that if an American does it, it must be exceptional. What would be fascism in another country is patriotic in America. What would be terrorism if ISIS did it is just a routine drone strike if the U.S does it The Muslim religion is ancient and out of date and pre-modern and anti-women; the two-thousand year old texts from Christianity are the basis of the constitution and we must kill and die for them, even if it means women aren't allowed to be priests or grow old or be a size to large (or be paid as much as a man). Jesus would never let global warming end civilization. We already know how the world ends - The Rapture - so don't worry about nuclear war, or rising temperatures, or famine, or pollution, or extinction of species. Between the two of them, God and Donald got it all covered.

Who Came First, Stupid Leaders or Stupid Voters?

Two things stand out about Donald Trump (peace be upon him). One, that he is popular (at least among Republicans) and two, that he us an asshole. Now it's one thing to be an asshole in private life, and another to be one in public life. Trump is wealthy, popular, famous, powerful and successful, so his being ignorant and hateful gives permission to the public to be those things, freely, openly, publicly, proudly. Where would all the little Trumpettes be if they had to choose between rational, calm, intelligent, non-pig-like candidates? Probably they would stay home. Or they'd vote for Lyndon LaRouche (is he dead? This could be his moment).

But when the worst of human character traits becomes the best a nation can offer itself one has to wonder; are the hateful among the leaders giving permission for the hateful among the voters to come forward, or do the hateful among the public allow hate-filled candidates to emerge as legitimate. Which came first, the bowel or the rectum? (There is probably a biological, evolutionary answer to that question but we are talking politics so there's no room for science, is there?). Maybe it started with Fox News making bigotry and stupidity and hate/fear/lunacy mainstream (and, eventually, one assumes, profitable). Maybe all that really bad ideas in the world need is just time, and they will become legitimate.

If everyone you see on TV is stupid, stupid ideas become regular, everyday, ordinary, perfectly reasonable ones. If everyone on TV says we need war with Iran, then war seems like a legitimate, reasonable, mainstream option to be considered. Maybe we should, in fact, nuke a non-nuclear country...to prevent them from getting nukes like we have and are prepared to use against them. Maybe the President is a Kenyan. Or a Muslim, or a Nazi, or Stalinist, or an alien life form from Mars disguised as a human bent on taking over the earth and enslaving us all. If people in the public eye talk about it in serious tones on newscasts and in public (and televised) forums, there must be some legitimacy to it. If a United States Senator doesn't know if Obama is really Christian, how can I know? Maybe he isn't.

Look at the TV, look at the candidates, I always knew you couldn't trust them foreigners and this proves it. Donald came right out and said it, and he's a star. I was right all along, Mexicans are rapists, Muslims can't be Americans, and Americans are the greatest people in the universe. They wouldn't say it if it wasn't true.

Fear Of Terrorism?

The risk of being killed in a terrorist attack in Canada is sort of like the risk of being killed in a car accident. We know that all of us who drive are at a theoretical risk every time we're out. We know that there will be deaths - we don't know when or to whom they will happen - we know that we are all potential victims. In fact, in 2011, over two thousand Canadians died in traffic accidents and in 2010 there were 1.24 million such deaths world wide.

We also know that as a practical matter we will never get the number down to zero. There will always be accidents, and there will always be the possibility it will be us who are in them. No-one can keep us, nor do we really demand that the government keep us, totally safe from any possibility of crashing. So what do we do to deal with this massive threat to our personal lives and security, this recurring, year after year, senseless, cowardly (that's the word you use about all terrorist attacks, even if it involves a shoot-out with police and the terrorist dying) brutal death toll? How do we cope when faced with meaningless, violent, death that could come to anyone of us or our families every day?

Well, we take reasonable precautions, like not driving in really bad whether, not driving drunk, obeying traffic laws and being careful. We also ensure that if something happens, there are effective responses. There are ambulances and hospitals and police and health care and the courts, if they are necessary. And what else do we do? We go on with our lives. We don't panic, arm ourselves, demand a police officer ride with us everywhere we go, or give up our right to gps units and Tim Hortons travel mugs. We continue to drive, go places, see people, do things. We live with the risk.

Same with the risk of being mugged, killed in a drive-by shooting, targeted by the mafia, having a heart attack, your house catching on fire, or nuclear war (which is still a threat). Let me repeat: a) take reasonable precautions, b) establish effective responses should they be needed, c) get on with your life.

The Canadian police -national, provincial, and municipal - despite all their numbers and funding and authority, cannot protect you or me from the risk of murder or assault. Murders and assaults happen everyday in Canada. To someone. Maybe next time it'll be you. Why do we demand a higher security, a more extreme and frightened response, to the risk of a terrorist assaulting you than a mugger, street gang, drug addict or friend of the family assaulting you? Is it that gang murders generally happen in gang neighbourhoods and terrorist seldom target poorer areas? Is it that terrorists are somehow in league with foreigners? The guns are out there, circulating around the world, and we all have causes we are willing to kill for. It's a globalized world. We can no longer fight our wars exclusively in other people's countries. The shock of the Paris attacks is that it is not a story of the French invading and colonizing and bombing people in Africa - that would be normal and just one if those things countries do - the terror part is that the killing happened in Paris: we are not even safe in our own cities! Welcome to the world.

You are not safe in your city from dying early because of air pollution, being hit by a bus, being shot for your purse, being raped, being beaten up for money, being murdered by your spouse, or the many other much more likely things to happen to you. You don't walk in bad neighbourhoods at night unless you have to (and many people have to). You don't leave your drink unattended at a bar (but you still go out with friends). You look both ways before crossing the road (but people still get hit).

When it comes to death by terrorist, it's different. They are a group, a mass, a people, a country, a type, religious or ethnic. They must be destroyed, all of them...because terrorism is not just a threat to you or me individually, terrorism is an affront to our power as a nation. To our rightness and justness. You being killed in a drive-by sucks for you but says nothing about us as a people. Terrorism provokes our sense of outrage because it strikes at our sense of self, as a nation. How dare someone hate us? How dare they act on that hate? How dare they think that they can just kill our citizens the way our citizens kill others of our citizens? What kind of evil people would see us as the enemy? Don't they know who we are? We're on the side of the angels. God loves us especially. We never did anyone any harm. We're the good guys. Terrorists commit the sin of hating who they are supposed to love, whereas we only hate the people we are supposed to hate.

We have good reasons for our violence (see the bombing of Libyan cities to protect civilians...and where do most civilians live? In cities). Terrorists are evil because they kill for the wrong reasons. Who really cares if there are American bases on Muslim holy ground? That's a stupid reason to kill. Regime change in a foreign country - now that's a proper reason to kill. Why doesn't everyone see that? Why do other groups insist on killing for what they think is important? Ultimately, what the world needs is to be more like us, for our priorities to be everyone's priorities, all territory to be our territory, for everyone to value only what we value. Why can't the terrorists see that?

Paris, Terrorism, Islam, and You and Me.

Once again terrorists have struck at a Western city, and once again it is Paris. And yes, the terrorists have been identified as Muslim and members of the violent and aggressive Islamic State. There, I've used the words 'terrorists', ''Muslim' and 'Islamic' all together. No-one can say I'm soft on terrorism.

But if the problem is Islam, if there is something intrinsic and essential about being Muslim that is causing the violence, then there are only two solutions. Either convert every Muslim to some other religion: Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism (or atheism) even by force, or alternatively, kill them all. If you want to only kill the extremist Muslims, then you are admitting that not all Muslims are responsible for violence and so the problem cannot be Islam but something added to it in this particular case

Islam is not the problem. Yes, it can be used to motivate or justify violence, but so can democracy, patriotism, capitalism, revenge, pride, nationalism, language, loyalty, even love can motivate violence (love of country, love of fellow soldiers, love of royalty). The problem is not the reasons people give for committing violence, it is the willingness with which people commit violence, the readiness with which we are willing to kill.

There really is a moral equivalency between our side killing them and their side killing us. As outraged and grief-stricken we feel at the Paris killings, that is how outraged and grief-stricken Yemenis feel when we bomb their families. Ask yourself whether you would rather live in Paris today, after 120 people out of a city of. Million were murdered by a handful of terrorists, or live in Baghdad during the American invasion, when by December 2005 just one US air force wing had dropped five hundred thousand tons of explosives on Iraq. Think there was anybody terrified by that?

We all assume that the cause someone kills for is what's important, rather than the fact that they are killing, period. Since we only kill for reasons that are important to us, our violence is always justified. Since the enemy kills for reasons that are not important to us, such as getting foreign troops out of Saudi Arabia (bin Laden's reason for 9/11), they are always wrong. If the reasons they killed for were important to us too, then they wouldn't even be the enemy, they'd be allies or surrogates.

It is wrong to blame religion for causing violence, but it is right to criticize religion for not ending violence. How would the US fight any of its wars without faithful, God-fearing, peace-loving, Jesus followers ready to kill and torture and bomb others? The difference between a US bomb killing a family of Iraqis and an ISIS gunman killing a family of Parisians is that in one case we agree with the cause and in the other we don't. Both groups are just as dead. If we didn't believe that what we kill for is more important than whether or not we kill at all, if we didn't believe that the things we value are worth killing for and the things they value are so clearly not worth killing for, well, then, what would we do? How could we function? How would we be able to fight wars at all?

Blame religion for not making every violent, war-like, hate monger on whatever issue and on all sides (including ours) ashamed to open his or her mouth. Complain that religion has not been effective enough in bringing peace to wars fought for other things. It has not made enough people better enough to stop this shit from happening again and again. But then, what has? Maybe we need stronger, better, more positive religion. Maybe, if we are religious people, we should be calling out our leaders and brothers and sisters. When you think of all the reasons people kill each other: domestic abuse, drug deals, money, territory, revenge, anger, and yes, God, maybe the problem isn't religion. Maybe it's people.

What is Remembrance Day? Really?

November 11th is Remembrance Day in Canada, a day set aside every year to celebrate the making of war veterans through our past wars and to encourage our young people to become veterans themselves in our future wars. I know that's not what they say it's for. They say it is to 'honour' the people who fought in our wars. What makes fighting in a war honourable? Certainly not bravery, enemy soldiers were just as brave and we are certainly not celebrating them. Not patriotism; Nazi soldiers were no doubt patriotic, as patriotic about Germany as ours were about Canada. Not self-sacrifice, since both sides sacrificed, died, were wounded. For that matter, most of the people who die in wars now are civilians, and Remembrance Day is definitely not about remembering or honouring them. Civilians killed in war aren't even people, they're not even soldiers, they are 'collateral damage', and certainly there is no day set aside to think about them.

Patriotism is not a virtue, neither is bravery or sacrifice or loving your spouse or your children or being loved by your parents, because those things apply to both sides in any conflict and if we admit that the Taliban were fighting for their country, were brave, skilled, loved their families and left widows behind them when we killed them, well, it sort of makes you question how honourable killing them really was. Our soldiers deserve our gratitude because it is they who fight and not us. In fact, they are fighting for us. And by 'us' I mean the Prime Minister.  The PM said "bomb Libya" so our troops bombed Libya. If the PM had said "bomb Sweden" our troops would have bombed Sweden. Our fighting men and women are thankfully free from ever having to consider the moral implications of whether or not they should bomb Sweden - their moral choice is made when the sign up: follow every legal order.

Fighting the Taliban wasn't necessary to protect any Canadian rights or territory; we invaded their country, they didn't invade ours. The Afghanistan mission was a failure anyway; we neither caught nor killed Osama bin Laden there, which is why we went in the first place. But, and here's the point, given that the Canadian government was going to send X number of Canadians to war there, I am very grateful that I wasn't one of them. Therefore, although I honour our veterans, I do not honour them for what they have done, because war is largely immoral, inhumane, unChristian, and unjustified - war is never the last option, you always have the option of doing without whatever the war is over. I don't honour them for what they are, because what they are is being played for suckers by politicians who wouldn't declare war in the first place if they didn't figure their political objective was worth the cost of a certain number of our soldiers dying. I honour our fighting men and women because when our soldiers go off to battle irrelevant enemies in far away places, as ordered by whatever politician happened to get 38% of the vote in the last election, it saves me from having to go to jail for refusing to wage war myself.

If a veteran on Remembrance Day ever took a young person aside and said, "Listen, I've been to war. If anyone every tries to send you to one, for God's sake don't go. Refuse. Go to jail. Face a firing squad. Don't believe what they tell you. There's always another way," then I might be happy. Just one. But you can't expect that, because that would invalidate the veteran's own value as a veteran, which is based on war being a good, noble, heroic, necessary, honourable, Godly thing.

If I approached you to donate to end world hunger, you might think it was wishful thinking, that there will always be hungry people, that ending hunger would cost too much, that it is impractical - but you still might donate. If I told you I was working to create a world without war, what would you do? We all know what we are willing to sacrifice to win a war. What are we willing to do to not have wars?

Look Who's Hot.

New Canadian PM Justin Trudeau is, by international female consensus, hot. This may seem like (or even actually be) a case of woman objectifying the male body in ways feminists have always complained men objectify women, but don't be deceived. It is simply women doing to men what they don't like men doing to them because, well, it's their turn.

For years (centuries? Millennia? Forever?) men have rated the female body strictly as a machine for sexiness, while women during the same time never ranked one male as sexier than another, or at least not based on his appearance - or if they did they did not do so publicly and openly. Now, just when women are starting to take the power of, and right to, objectification for themselves, men are telling them objectification is wrong. When, the frustrated feminist wonders, will it be their turn to be pigs, or is that to forever be an exclusive male privilege?

I'm old enough (sadly) to remember when the feminist argument would have gone, "men objectify women. It is bad when people to objectify each other. Therefore no one should do it." Now the argument is, "men objectify women. It is bad when people objectify each other. Therefore we should all objectify each other equally." Everyone treating each other equally badly has become an adequate substitute for everyone treating each other well. This may be a legitimate, practical feminist reform, but it is not as easy for me to get behind or support as the old goal of building a society where no one exploited or objectified anyone. Call me an idealist (please) but the latter is a more attractive rallying call for me as a male feminist than the former.
It seems like we've lowered our goals.

As well, there is still the question of the individual male youth who internalizes this discussion of the male body as meaning he is not good enough, tall enough, doesn't have nice enough hair - in other words, ends up with poor body image issues. I know he would have to be a weak, effeminate, rare, sensitive, insecure male, but nonetheless such individuals may exist. Real men, of course, can take it. Why, real men love it when women look at them purely as sex objects; I know because a) I am a man, and b) because even though women pretend not to like it when guys cat-call them on the street, we all know that secretly it turns them on. Come on, all we're doing is appreciating your legs, you should be proud of them. It's meant as a compliment.

I know the male gaze carries with it the implied threat of violence that the female does not, but the gaze that objectifies, rates, discusses - coldly, matter-of-faculty - carries with it a sort of put down which is probably not healthy for viewed or viewer. You will never get people to stop responding to some people as sexy and some others as not. But what do you do after you've said to yourself, "so-and-so has a great body"? Do you shrug and move on. Do you harass? Do you start public online discussions about that person's body part? Do you get on your high horse and say that it's different when you do it because you've earned the right to ogle or disdain other people, and by God that's what you're going to do?

It's not a big social problem, by any means - women publicly objectifying men's bodies - but it is a bit disappointing for feminists to take it on as a cause. As a male I have had decades of hating myself and my body, and it effecting my social life badly. It really does seem to me that simple politeness dictates that if you think someone you don't know has a sexy body part, don't go on about it publicly and over and over. Messages build up, and weakened minds can take them the wrong way. Besides, it doesn't make the person doing it look very good. At some point we all (hopefully) have to get out of high school.

Why 9/11 Hurt

Two things stood out in the American mind about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. One, it was, in the eyes of Americans, unprovoked, and two, it happened on US soil - in,  as they say, The Homeland.

To take the second point first, the unspoken deal the U.S. public had long made with its military and foreign policy was that, yes, there would be ongoing war, yes, there would be bombing campaigns and the destruction of cities and the deaths of thousands - but those would happen in someone else's country. In, for example, Cambodia and Vietnam - with those countries having no ability to bomb the U.S. back. The Americans would attack Iraq in the Gulf war, but that war would be fought overseas, not in New York or Boston. The invasion of Grenada? No chance that any fighting would happen in Texas. The multiple times (I believe the number is nineteen) that the U.S. Invaded Guatemala in the twentieth century held no danger of Guatemala taking the war to Michigan. The west could bomb third world countries without worrying about those countries bombing anything in the West. For one thing, those countries had no military capacity to fly over Chicago and drop fire bombs - no wonder going to war was no big deal.

But today, technology has reached a point, and strategies have been developed, so that targets (or those who perceive themselves to be targets) of US war can, in fact, bomb the US. Without missiles, without B-52s, without nuclear submarines, or jet fighters, enemies can hit the Homeland. When America bombs Yemen, the effects of that bombing do not stay in Yemen. Instead, they may bomb the U.S. back - with a suitcase. There was a reason America never attacked the Soviet Union - because the Soviet Union would have hit the US in return. It used to be safe though, to attack smaller countries. Maybe not so much these days.

You might think that fact would change American policy and make military adventurism and fiddling with other countries politics less attractive or at least more tentative. But the thing is, the terrorist attack on the U.S. is universally considered unprovoked by Americans. Whatever it may have been in the minds of the perpetrators, no one one this side can accept that anything could have preceded 9/11. Even the Muslim world saw the attacks as criminal and unjustified and unprovoked - there were pro-US demonstrations in Iran, of all places - until, that is, America responded to the attacks with war. War on Afghanistan. War on Iraq. Black site prisons. Torture. Drones. All of which, in the minds of many Muslims, justified 9/11 in retrospect; see, the US really is trying to destroy Islam, really is bent on dominating or eliminating Islamic countries or populations - Bin Laden was right. At the time Muslims saw 9/11 as unjustified and shameful terrorism, by the end of Bush's tenure many saw 9/11 as pointing out an obvious truth, that America was out to destroy Islamic culture.

Since 9/11 was such a shock, violation, affront, was done to such innocents, was so like the Crucifixion of Jesus - the most innocent person who could possibly be and who had only wanted to help the very people who executed him - the response had to be damnation to the perpetrators (remember when Jesus called down curses and hate on the Romans who were crucifying him? "Kill them all, Father, for they know exactly they are doing." Look it up). Such a challenge to self-image, to confidence, to invulnerability, military supremacy, righteousness and the favour of God, the raised possibility that not everyone wanted to be an American; a controlled, measured, limited, criminal justice, political, cultural, response including working with then-sympathetic Muslims would have been emotionally unsatisfying. Outrage must be met with outrage. As the point of capital punishment is simply to emotionally satisfy those who like it, the point of the Iraq war for the public was the visceral release of anger - "Hulk! Smash!" - even if those leading the war had another agenda (Oil? Glory? Utopian arrogance? Money? Empire?). There is nothing more natural than the desire to hurt people who hurt people.

But if that is the reaction of Americans to an attack on them, what do they think the response of foreigners will be to attacks on them? If a U.S. drone kills your friends and family, are you not going to have he same reaction? Aren't you going to want to lash out in return? And, of course, there is a way to lash out. Terrorism.

This war is already lost. It was lost as soon as it was declared, because war was the goal of the attack; to provoke the targeted nation to over-react with excessive violence which will only make the terrorists' point for them, namely that there is a war going on between their interests and our interests. That sides must be chosen. That there is, always has been, and always will be, a war going on between the West and Islam. It's just that now we know it, whereas before only people like Bin Laden could see it.

9/11 was unprovoked, but not unusual. People in other countries have had bombs dropped on their cities, governments overthrown, civil wars, military dictatorships, dirty wars, and death squads - they already knew how politics and economics and ideology kill, even American politics, even capitalist economics, even our foreign policy. What happened to America that day was that buildings blew up in an act of political violence - something that had happened in lots of other places, sometimes (often) as a result of Western interests. The charmed life of North America (Satan himself to its enemies) has changed. It was not a loss of innocence; the west was never innocent. It was joining the club. It was our becoming like the other nations of the world - subject to war and aggression and attack and violence from political interference from external forces whose interests differ from ours.

To the extent that American exceptionalism is built on military supremacy, it took a blow on 9/11, and an even bigger blow in Afghanistan and Iraq. No one sees the U.S. as invulnerable or even intimidating the way it used to be. This is not like to change. It is the new reality. Perhaps the west needs to find a political, international, policy approach that doesn't rely one an advantage it no longer has.

What's So Bad About Iran And The Bomb?

It is obvious that at all costs, even the cost of our launching a nuclear attack on them, Iran must be stopped from getting the bomb. This is because Iranians, unlike Americans and Israelis, are not moral enough to have such weapons. Iran is part of the U.S.-identified axis of evil - they are not rational actors, do not have any legitimate self-interests (like, for instance, protecting  themselves from the U.S. and Israel, who both do have nuclear weapons), are fanatical, maniacal, radical death-cultists, unfazed by the certainty of own retaliatory destruction, religiously driven (if a real god like Jesus can tell George W. Bush to invade Iraq, heaven only knows what a false god like Allah could tell Iran to do).

If Iran became a nuclear power it would destabilize the region (it was different when Israel got nuclear weapons, that stabilized the region, because...well, be fair, Israel is the Judaeo in Judaeo-Christian). An example of how it would destabilize the mid-east is that America wouldn't have been able to invade Iraq and Afghanistan which both border on Iran and are universally recognized as two wars which made the region oh so much more stable then it was. Vice President Cheney could not talk openly about launching a nuclear first strike on a non-nuclear Iran because, hey, Iran wouldn't be non-nuclear. You could image how much less stable that would make things. Iran must not be allowed to do anything that limits our ability to attack, bomb, threaten, ignore, or insult them. If the west has to take Iranian interests into consideration, it will be a humiliation of America unlike anything since the failure of the invasion of Canada in 1812.

We need third world or developing nations to remain third world or developing nations so that we are able to do what we need to do to them militarily, to protect our interests. What if Ronald Reagan had let Grenada get the bomb? He would have been unable to invade the island and the US would still be living under the shadow of failure in Vietnam. Do we really want to jeopardize the U.S militarist ego like that? Who will protect us from Iran then?

War is never the first choice but there is a whole private-public, media, political, infrastructure to ensure it will always be the easiest. To start, anyway. Everyone is against war once it's started, but for it before it begins. As soon as a politician has declared war he or she starts talking about how they are bringing the war to a close. Before war starts no one wants to talk about avoiding it. This is because we in the west (and this includes Israel) really do like war. We go out if our way to have them, we rise to power through them, we profit by them, we build economies around them, we are proud of being at war. The fear I have is what if the Iranians turn out to be just as territorially greedy and power obsessed as we are? What if the Islamic state actually turns out (they haven't invaded anyone in 700 years) to be just a nuclear warhead away from being like us. We act like Iranians have some genetic, ethnic, religious, cultural tic that makes them so different from us that they can't be trusted with the weapons France and China and Israel and the U.S. have...but what if they turn out to be just like us?

Rags to Riches to Love?

From The Actual, But Informal News File:

Two brothers in Hungary spent their lives so poor they had to live in a cave and sell whatever they could scavenge or salvage from trash piles. Now in their forties, they have just been informed that they have inherited six billion dollars. Long lost heirs.
   
Their immediate reaction, as reported by MSNBC? That when they were living in a cave no women would look at them, but that maybe now they have money they thought that might change. You think? Six billion dollars?
   
But lest you think that implies something mercenary and unflattering about women, you know that with that much money the brothers will make sure they are surrounded by the youngest, most beautiful, easiest women.
   
It would be a  rare man who inherits three billion dollars (half of six billion) and moves from his cave into the local village and marries a fifty year old woman who works in the local bakery and lives in a cottage the rest of his life.
   
They are quoted as saying they want a "normal life", but my guess is that it won't be a normal life they get, any more than it was a normal (by our standards) life they had before. It may not even be a good life. You and I, we may dream of having three billion dollars, or be afraid of being forced to live in a cave, but the lives we work to build for ourselves, 'normal lives', are most likely, if they work well, to be a stable marriage, a home, friendly neighbours, and grandchildren. Some - hopefully enough, though probably just barely enough - money  as well. Some genuine warmth from people dear to us, comfort and time in our old age. These two didn't have it when they were poor. I hope they, but would not be surprised if they didn't, find it now. Be nice to try, though, wouldn't it?

Israel and Palestine: who's for peace?

Israeli 'extremists' (note, not 'terrorists') have been blamed for the murder of a Palestinian child. The Prime Minister of Israel said said there will be "zero tolerance" toward such Israeli 'terrorism' (that is, 'extremism').

We know what Palestinians are angry about in this conflict: their expulsion from their homes, the theft of their land through expanding settlements, living in prison camps, an economic blockade against them, segregation, no freedom of movement, living behind a security wall (also a theft of their land), being denied their own state, poverty, humiliation, hopelessness, being at the mercy of a hostile military against which they are wildly overmatched, the destruction of their homes as punishment for relative's crimes - compare the life and life-style of the average Israeli citizen with that of the average Gaza citizen and guess which one is harder and which one is easier and better off. By miles.

But what is Israel angry about? Security? They get billions in military aid from the U.S.; the Palestinians have no Air Force, no navy, hardly even an army, more a small group of armed men, no national status, no legal weight (the US veto can be counted on at the UN), and presents no economic competition to Israel. Think of the last invasion. What was it, 2,000 Palestinian dead versus 70 Israelis, most of whom we soldiers killed in the invasion itself? More Americans are killed by other American in Chicago in two months than Israelis are killed by Palestinians in a year.

That is why I think it is time to say it out loud, this thing that has finally gone out into the open with Israel saying it does not want a two state solution, that is to say, that Israel does not want peace. The status quo works for Israel quite nicely. There is no incentive for them to change anything. Israel gets to take over Palestinian land as the mood suits them, they are under no real military threat as can be seen by the devastation of Gaza by the IDF, they get billions in aid from the U.S. (what happens to that money if there is a resolution of the conflict?), the Israeli economic, territorial, military, political and logistical dominance of the region goes on unchallenged, and Israeli politicians and Prime Ministers have a trump card to play every election: the Palestinians. Resolve the Palestinian issues and Benjamin Netanyahu is judged on economic policy, social justice, the environment, minority rights, the status of women, education policy, democracy, likability - he, like all Israeli PMs, is in power because of the crisis. He needs that card to play, over and over, or how does he stay in power? Even Winston Churchill, who won the Second World War, lost the post-war peacetime election.

If Palestine becomes a state, it gets to have an army and airforce. Any settlements or a blockade become acts of war, and any war becomes not a matter of firing missiles into a basically undefended refugee camp, but army against army, air power against air power, tank against tank - a much less favourable war. We can see what the Palestinians have to gain by peace: nationhood, and end to the blockade, self-respect, a chance at an economy, security from Israeli raids, international recognition, the ability to travel, a shot, theoretically, at a middle class life lived among buildings that are buildings and not rubble. But where is Israel's incentive for peace? Peace with the Palestinians can only lessen Israel's economic and military and political power. It can only makes things harder for Israeli politicians.

Peace with the Palestinians would come close to removing the reason for Israel. If the Jewish people are not continually under threat from someone, then what's the point of Israel? Without war or the threat of war, without persecution or the language of persecution, the country's entire history, politics, self-image and status as a powerful symbol of humanity and innocence slips. Could Israel survive a peace? Yes. But could it flourish in a peace? Yes, perhaps, probably. But not the way it is now, not the way it has become accustomed to. Not the way that has worked so well so far.

Until A White Man Has A Problem

The tendency armed white people (like the police) have shown recently towards killing unarmed black people in America has put me in mind of Canada's native people. The problems, troubles, crises, injustices and apathy the First Nations are subjected to regularly turn up on mainstream (read: white) news, and yet are never actually addressed by government. For generations.

The reason is obvious. A problem isn't a problem until a white man has it. Aboriginal Canadians are not a significant financial or voting base, so until the problems of the native community matter to non-native voters or backers, no politician has to campaign on them. Should non-native (mostly white) voters ever say to politicians vying for power, "look, this shit has got to stop. You better fix it because poverty, suicide, disease, and injustice are just not fucking acceptable in this country," things might change. Until aboriginal issues start to matter to non-aboriginals, nothing is likely to change.

In South Africa's apartheid age, sanctions worked because they meant whites pressured the government - a government that was elected by them and dependant on them - for change, because they couldn't do business. It was costing white South Africans, establishment South Africans, money and inconvenience - in other words, the problems of nonwhites (powerless and poor) in S.A. became a problem for whites (privileged and not poor) in S.A. That's my theory, at least.

How does a mistreated group: black, female, native, French speaking, Spanish speaking, immigrant, poor, make progress on a grievance? Perhaps when their problems become problems for the empowered groups. Through violence? Maybe selectively, but embrace mass violence and it becomes easy for them. The answer to violence is violence, and you know who wins that.

Social action leads to politics, but politics is where the bottleneck is. How many policies that large majorities in the country support and want have no chance of ever happening? Many, very many.

George Bernard Shaw said that as long as we have prison cells it matters little which one of us sits in them. The question is how do you get people who don't experience poverty to see poverty as a problem. Or people who don't experience racism, or may benefit from racism, to see racism as real. Change requires a critical mass of people - but not necessarily a majority. If the persecuted and the poor where not so powerless they would not be so persecuted and poor, and if the were not so persecuted and poor they would not be so powerless.

The system is self-perpetuating, and that is also it's weakness, because entropy applies to everything and there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. Every civilization eventually winds down and our civilization will inevitably be replaced by something we cannot now imagine. What we do now, be it clean energy, peacemaking, environmentalism, equal rights, or justice in the system, we hope influences that change. Let us hope for a soft landing, a positive change - from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, not from Rome to the Dark Ages. But you never know.

Too Good At Democracy?

It's been said before that perhaps wanting to be a political leader should disqualify you from ever actually being one. That's because your wanting power over me makes me that much more suspicious of you in the first place. Who does power attract, and what does power do to them when they get it? The cliche that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely assumes that those who attain power weren't already corrupt. That being corrupt, morally, intellectually, or financially, isn't how you get power in the first place.

The problem is that the worse you would be at governing, the better you can be at getting elected.

What do we do when the people who do politics for a living get so good at it that it renders the democracy non-functional? Political professionals know our psychology, they know how our brains work, they know marketing, hell, they know what colour tie to wear to make us trust them more than the other guy. They know how to poll to get the result they want, how to work within laws to slant courts, influence voter turn out, and gerrymander districts. They target so specific a demographic that they know what word to repeat to get the emotional reaction they want.

Face it, the game is so well played by the players, that we, the voters, are at the disadvantage. The point of manipulation is that if it is working on you, you don't know it.

In professional hockey the goaltenders are now so good at stopping the puck, are so hard to beat, that the league may make the nets bigger to give the shooters more of a chance. The players are so good at what they do you have to change the rules to make to make it a meaningful contest. Something worth cheering for rather than tuning out.

Sports leagues seem able to find neutral referees and umpires to call their games - you don't get to umpire a Yankees' game if you work for the Yankees, even if they are paying you through a third party fake Society for the Betterment of the Red Sox charity front. Fans can stop watching, but voters need to vote, because somebody is going to form government. It's just that it will either be with or without your voice.

I can't out spend the a billionaire on campaign ads, but for all his or her money he or she only gets one vote. The rest of us out number them and can out vote them, but only if we don't let them buy our votes. Only if we don't respond just to ads, stop being emotional voters, vote with our head as much as our gut, support independent media, participate not just in protests, but in the process, think critically about our own culture about what we're told, pause and count to ten before casting that vote, and God's sake, don't base it on what colour a candidate's tie is.

Sex, Gender, and Jenner

I am not a doctor but I do play one in my imagination and in my imagination people are just people, rather than being assigned a gender at birth. People are not heterosexual or homosexual, just sexual. You may choose to tell me who you're dating now, but why tell me what type of person you are committed to dating the rest of your life? It's not that your orientation will or should change, but who you may sleep with ten years from now is not relevant ("Will you go out with me?" Yes because I'm a man or no because I'm not tall enough?).

I'm not advocating bisexuality. You can still like who you like - only woman, only men - but don't need to identify with that as a campaign, a cause, a flag to fight under. I am a man married to a woman, but that is a description of my current life, it needn't be turned into an ism.

Being circumcised (male or female) to fit into your cultural box is bad enough, but having yourself surgically and chemically altered to fit into the cultural box of 'womanhood' or 'manhood' is a lot to go through. Why can't a person have a penis and just be a person with a penis - not 'male' or 'female'? Why require surgery to be one thing or another, when we can let anyone dress, date, or be treated as they wish, out of the respect accorded all humans. Perhaps rather than changing a body to fit our social conception, we could change society's categorizing of male and female into just people, with their own selves and interests and ways of living. Maybe a penis is a differently shaped clitoris.

I know that evolution, which undergirds everything, requires we be split into groups of with-penises and with-vaginas and that that ends the discussion, but there will always be reproduction - that's not going away. What, though, if I had to get to know some people before I could tell if they had a vagina or not? Would I find myself liking someone who turned out to have a penis? Would I be waylaid into gay sex?

How would society function if we couldn't automatically tell who had a penis and who didn't? It couldn't, so this is not a serious suggestion. For all I know someone who identifies as a woman (itself a social construct) while living in a 'male' body very much wants a clitoris. But if we could take the socially constructed elements out of people's identities - gender, sexuality, race - could we ever just see a person as a person who has a body, is dating a person, who dresses a way.

What if we just had people, without short-hand categories of gender or sexuality or marketing, and let people sort everything else out one on one? I know - it'd be inefficient, and nothing is worse than inefficiency, not even suffering - but a man can have sex with only women without identifying as heterosexual, but just sexual. No matter what you may think, and no matter who you are sleeping with now, you don't know who you'll be attracted to ten years from now, if the situation and the options are different (prison?).

If you're in a good relationship now, be glad that you are, and if you are not, be hopeful that you will be soon. If you have in mind the kind of person you want to be with, that's fine. But do we need to categorize gender more emphatically than we may someone having a job, or height, or age limits, or the kind of accent you find sexy? All of which are also preferences. Is someone in Toronto who is only interested in someone who lives in the same city, a Toronto-sexual? Why then with gender? Why must you must be a gender not just have sex. You must be a man in a man's body or a woman in a man's body - those are your options. Yes or no. Up or down. In or out. On or off. No continuum. No recognition that your state is 'at the moment' - you just choose a forever side and go though massive reconstruction and trauma should you choose to switch.

Think of Caitlyn Jenner. If a 65 year old man thinks she'd be happier as a 35 year old woman, who am I to disagree? But the point is she switched sides. You still have to be one or the other - the idea of the surgery is to be all one or all the other. Race, nationality, gender, sexuality or caste - it's never enough to be a person, we need to know what type of person you are.

Politics, Terrorism, War, and OurTroops

So, do you support the troops? Does anyone know what that means?

I don't see how I can say war is wrong in principle, but support each war that came along in practice. The life of one of our soldiers must be worth more than the life of one of their soldiers, right? How else can we have any wars at all? I don't want any Canadian soldiers to die, but I don't want any enemy soldiers to die either. I don't really want anyone to die. There is bravery on both sides of a fire fight, otherwise it wouldn't be a fight

Joining the military means agreeing to bomb whatever country the politician who happens to be Prime Minister (probably with thirty-six per cent of the vote) says to. Remember when we didn't trust or respect politicians?

It is hard for me to get past the fact that war is the justification of killing, is saying, “It is okay to kill these people. Do as much of it as you can.” If that is what 'supporting the troops' means, can  I oppose what is being done while supporting those who do it?

If we show we value democracy and tolerance by shooting the enemy in the face at every opportunity, we can also show it by questioning the idea of war and the justness of politicians. Democracy is defended more by exercising dissent here than by bombing anyone an ocean away.

Is it really less practical to look for peaceful ways to resolve problems than it was to spend 18 billion dollars sending troops half a world away for eleven years? We know what we are willing to sacrifice to fight wars, what are we willing to sacrifice to not have wars? War is never the last resort because you always had the option of sacrificing the thing the war is fought for.

The problem with fighting a war on terrorism is that war is terrorism, just seen from our side. The opposite of terrorism is not a drone strike, the opposite of terrorism is the same as the opposite of war, that is, diplomacy.

If we keep ISIS from forming a state - and states are things you can do diplomacy with, they have borders and economies and governments and interests - and just kill large numbers of them, how do we cope with what emerges from that war, which will be...another war. A war we will fight by bombing and they will fight by encouraging attacks domestically.

At what point does this end? When we stop bombing them in their countries and when criminal attacks in our countries are dealt with as criminal attacks. Ending the Baader-Mienhof terrorists in Germany or the Red Brigade terrorists in Italy did not necessitate the bombing of anyone (least of all Germany and Italy).

Denying ISIS a state will not end terrorism. Nothing will end terrorism, the way nothing ends murder. We just live with the risk of it, have laws against it, put people in jail for it, try to build good citizens who don't want to do it. What makes us think we can eliminate terrorism if we can't eliminate murder? Murder doesn't stop us from living our lives, exercising our freedoms, and ensuring due process, nor should it. Should anything?

Why Mass Shootings Don't Bother Me.

Somebody shot somebody today. Somebody may have shot multiple somebodies today. A few days ago there was a mass murder in a church. A few days from now there may be one in a mall or a school or a factory or yes, even a post office.

Beyond mass murders, there have are individual one-on-one murders - one person shot here, another person shot over there. There are even murders that are of more than one person, say a mother and her child and then the shooter ex-boyfriend, that don't quite qualify as 'mass'. I don't buy anymore that people are outraged by it.

Clearly America has made its choice. Society has made its grand bargain and it is this: regular mass murders are an acceptable price to pay for not having to change gun laws. Yes, they are unfortunate - especially if you are involved somehow (but that's the risk you run for the privilege of living in status quo America - and who doesn't love that) - but a fair trade off when you consider the benefits of allowing people and companies to make money off producing, promoting and selling guns. What do you want, communism? Socialism? Regulation? Peace?

The tree of liberty must be watered by the blood of victims and the powerless - that's just the way it is. Those African-Americans who died in the church shooting were patriots who willingly gave up their lives for America's gun freedom and should be honoured as the heroes they are (were). Because of them and their willingness to put there lives on the line, and the willingness of all Americans who put their, and their loved ones', lives on the line everyday in every schoolhouse, daycare and street of the country, the United States of America remains free of government
interference in the business of guns. The U.S. stands as a beacon of hope, a shining example to peaceful but insignificant countries like Norway, Australia, Canada, the hated France, or Costa Rica.

But not just Americans die to defend these freedoms. America's destiny is to be leader, not just off the free word, but of the entire world, and the export, sale, and smuggling of guns around the world, the flooding of the world with guns, is part of fulfilling that leadership. Guns make America great and America makes the world great. If it wasn't for war and murder, what would we watch on TV? More cooking shows? Masterpiece Theatre? In depth political journalism? Science?

Freedom doesn't mean security, it means the opportunity to make money, and lives cannot be sacred - everyone's going to die anyway - but money can be, because it is immortal. It can be passed down from generation to generation to generation. In a truly religious nation it is eternal life that is important, not this temporary, finite life as church-goers, or grade school students, or movie theatre patrons. God has given us freedom and we must use it or lose it, and nothing says 'freedom' like having the power to end some stranger's life any time you want to, just because you feel like it. And what country has done more for freedom than the United States?

Psst...we can hear you...

Do Americans not realize that the rest of the world can hear it when they talk to each other?

Things that go over well when one American talks to another, can make the rest of the world think the U.S. is full of crap-crazy fart eaters. When V.P. Cheney said that maybe America should launch a nuclear attack on a non-nuclear Iran, no-one in the U. S. - politician, media, or voter - batted an eye. It was just one of the options on the table to be discussed in a reasonable and dispassionate cost/benefit analysis. When a candidate says God told him/her to run (you and every other candidate - I guess God hedges his bets), or that President Obama is secretly a Kenyan Muslim Stalinist nazi (do they actually know what those words mean: A communist and a fascist? An atheist and a Muslim?), the rest of the world gets creeped out.

It's like suspecting the big dude with shotgun may not be right in the head.

Thing is, America has nuclear weapons. If it goes off the deep end it could get us all f-ing killed. And what do we have as a safe-guard against an ignorant, easily manipulated, sadistic, religious nut-bar coming to power in the most militarily dominant country in the world? Democracy? Are you serious? Do you see the people who get elected?

As the British joke goes, an Ambassador in 1776 rushes into the court of King George the Third with news from the colonies. "Your Majesty! The Americans are revolting!"
"You're telling me," the King says, "they're disgusting."

The U.S. is not disgusting. It's just so-o-o weird. It wasn't long ago world polls called the U.S. the greatest threat to world peace. Maybe that's because the guy with the assault rifle is swinging it around pointing at things no-one else can see, hates women, hears voices in his head, has already killed 12 people in the crowd and keeps mumbling something about the Rapture being true and Climate Change a lie.

No doubt every country has its less-than-normal-intelligence population, and maybe it is just because I'm Canadian that I know so much about Michele Bachman and Ted Cruz and Sean Hannity and very little about any equivalents they may have in the Czech Republic or Australia. But most countries aren't death-dealing militaristic superpowers constituting a law unto themselves and bent on self-aggrandizement at any cost, only exceptional ones are.

If a country wants to be taken seriously and respected as a nation of adults with contributions to make to the good of the world, a positive first step would be to stop talking to each other like brain cells were as rare as fossils, and just as hardened.
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Cynicism, Politics, and the Economy

     If you have ever voted, you are probably cynical about politics. But being cynical about politics misses the point. No matter how cynical the public may be about politicians, politicians are just as cynical about the public. They know what buzzwords will get us to respond; they know we don’t really pay attention between elections. They know we vote as much on manager-crafted images as on issues. They know spin-doctoring works. They certainly know we don’t mean what we say. We tell pollsters the environment is important, but politicians know we don't mean it enough to actually vote that way. A politician can make a promise in one campaign, get elected, do nothing to meet that promise and then make the same promise in the next election and get re-elected on the same platform he or she ran on and ignored the last time.

     Ask how much integrity we can expect from a politician and the politician might ask how much he or she can expect from us. We may have to try not just voting for someone, but working for something. Not claiming our Member of Parliament is out of touch unless we've have actually tried to contact him or her. Maybe take a position ourselves, and not demanding several contradictory things at the same time, like a clean environment and limitless oil money. But expect pushback What are you, a Radical? A Keynesian? Concerned about the human condition? Remember, money was not made for society, society was made so that money could move around better.

     I laugh at people who don't believe in the redistribution of wealth. What do they think the economy is? How do they think it works? The economy is the redistribution of wealth. You have three dollars, you give it to a baker for a loaf of bread and... What just happened? Wealth got redistributed. The baker pays his staff out of your money and they buy a newspaper that your daughter works for. Some of the money they spend on buying the paper goes to pay your daughters salary, most of which she sends home to you because you are on social security and can only eat dog food. C'est bonne, the wealth, she has travelled round the room.

     Hence the beauty of the new paper from the non-partisan conservative think-tank Americans for Democratic Prosperity (formerly Prosperity for American Democracy) On The Need To End Economics. In it the lead author Simon Twilling of N. S. F. U., argues that we need to shut down the economy entirely, so that everyone just gets to keep what they already have, and can neither get, nor spend, anything. This would appeal to the the rich as freezing the game now would mean they win - they have the most and get to keep it. It would satisfy the middle class because it may be the only way to stop them from sliding into the poor class; there is no way to move up in the current system, but many ways to move down. The poor would be happy because, since you couldn't spend money on anything, the fact that they didn't have any money wouldn't bother them. 

     It will be interesting to see whether the left or right picks up in this report first. Whoever does may have a winning formula in the upcoming election. People being as cynical as they are. I offer this as advice. Join the revolution, get money out of the economy!