HBO's Show Me Hero, Racism, and The Drug War

I just finished an excellent six part mini-series by the wonderful David Simon (The Wire) called "Show Me a Hero" on HBO.  Really well done, with terrific acting, especially from Oscar Isaac and Catherine Keener.  

It explored a real life event in Yonkers, NY, from the late eighties where the government wanted to establish low cost housing in middle class neighborhoods, which created violently intense opposition.  It has me thinking about the issues of race in our country.

As best I can tell, the worst thing you can do to poor black and brown people is put them into large Projects.  This is just a way of the government jamming them all together in one place and doing their best to forget about them, which is possible as long as their problems don't spill out and intrude into the consciousness of the middle and upper classes.  This last year, there has been a lot of spilling out going on, however.  

As I have written before, the problem with this is The Drug War.  Black and brown people are essentially sectioned off from the middle classes in Drug War Zones.  The people warehoused in these types of environments are part of The Drug War or at least in the middle of the battle zones.  

They are high crime areas, of course, but I believe a very large percentage of the crimes are Drug War related - selling, buying, organizing the drug gangs, killing and terrorizing other gangs, killing the police, killing and terrorizing civilians unlucky enough to be witnesses or in the wrong places at the wrong times.  Young men of color are born into a world that the middle and upper classes know very little of, and I am grateful to David Simon for his windows into these dysfunctional worlds.  

It appears that Yonkers did their integration the right way, which was to build scattered low cost housing that had only about 40 low income people of color in each area.  The purpose was to allow a small number of them to be more easily absorbed into the middle class neighborhood because the white and black/brown neighbors would interact over time and see each other as human, and thus be given a real opportunities to create more meaningful hope filled lives.  

The racism behind the outcries and avid opposition to the building and occupying of these units was pretty hard to watch.  And no claim was made by the show that every person of color integrated successfully into their new neighborhood.  But the point was pretty strongly made that it was a successful effort and the resulting communities have adjusted to each other pretty well.

I believe that this kind of integration, done right, can be successful, and good for Yonkers and good for David Simon to provide reasons for optimism.

Beyond that, I think the bigger question about race in America has a chance to be successfully dealt with by ending The Drug War.  Apparently Portugal decriminalized most drugs with some very positive results.  They stopped treating drugs as a crime and started treating drugs as a disease to be treated.  The result? No Drug War.

An obvious example is in America's own history.  In the early 20th century prohibition made alcohol illiegal.  The result?  The Alcohol Wars.  Gangs terrorized each other, civilians were killed who were witnesses or in the cross fire, etc.  Al Capone built his empire out of blood and terror.  Just like the current gangs and cartels do today in the Drug War Zones.  

So, what happened?  Alcohol was decriminalized and the idea of the head of one alcohol maker or distributor killing and terrorizing another is ridiculous.  Of course they don't.  There is no need.  There is not a massive police occupation of large areas of population that are involved in the making and distribution of alcohol.  Prohibition is over.  So is the killing.

I think the best thing that can happen to the inner cities of black and brown people is to end the prohibition of drugs.  The wars would be over.  The inner cities would no longer be war zones.  The police would no longer be an occupying force in the midst of an endless and hopeless war against the making and distributing of illegal drugs.

Would there be more addicts?  Maybe, but they would be treated as sick and in need of assistance rather than as criminals and thrown into the criminal justice system which does little else other than train them to become warriors in The Drug Wars. And the end result would be fewer addicts, not more, as Portugal seems to be proving.

Some countries have tried it with good success.  Why not here?

And, by the way, wouldn't black and brown people living in the inner cities start to be seen as human rather than as threats once they were no longer soldiers in the misbegotten Drug War?  Wouldn't their neighborhoods have a chance to become much safer and heal?  What could more dramatically elevate the environment of the impoverished inner cities than to have them cease to be war zones?  Wouldn't their assimilation into the middle classes become a much more natural evolution?

I wonder.

George Will says just say NO to Trump

I have never taken Trump seriously. I have always thought he is just this year's version of Sarah Palin, all attitude and no substance. So I am reluctant to write again about this empty suit, but I do so again simply for the pleasure of being able to quote long time conservative thinker George Will about the grandiose one:

"In every town large enough to have two traffic lights there is a bar at the back of which sits the local Donald Trump, nursing his fifth beer and innumerable delusions. Because the actual Donald Trump is wealthy, he can turn himself into an unprecedentedly and incorrigibly vulgar presidential candidate. It is his right to use his riches as he pleases. His squalid performance and its coarsening of civic life are costs of freedom that an open society must be prepared to pay."

I think Trump supporters are versions of the semi-drunk delusional bar fly described by Will, and those who delight in the silliness of right wing talk radio and FOX News, whose main message seem to be that all we need to do is get a president and congress who are really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really. really, really, really, really ... and I mean really ... TOUGH.

And what about the polls?  At this point in the campaigns they are little more than name recognition. Its very predictable that the biggest winners of today's polls are simply the most famous people - Clinton, Bush, and Trump.  Saying you like someone today doesn't mean you are going to vote for them when the time comes.

Thank goodness.

The Little Man is Done

No surprise, of course, but Donald Trump has already outstayed his 15 minute of presidential candidate fame welcome.  He managed to make a disgusting sexist attack on Megyn Kelly, probably the top conservative woman media person in the country.  I guess Mr Trump is just not very bright.

No loss.  I don't expect him to go the third party route, he could only do that if there was some kind of ground swell for him, and his swell has peaked and will fade into dust soon enough, it seems to me.  A third party run by Trump might end up getting the Duck Dynasty vote along with his own, but by that time even the DD fans would likely move on.

By the way, I suppose Mr Trump's greatest attraction was his attack on Political Correctness.  Many conservatives are very angry at Political Correctness.  I guess they feel inhibited by such constraints.  But why?

How about sexism?  It's politically incorrect to be sexist, but it's politically correct to be against sexism and to pursue a greater understanding of what that means as time passes and all of us born into a sexist world continue to become more and more conscious of unconscious sexism and chauvinism.  So, is this a tough choice?  Sexist or not sexist?  Obviously Mr Trump has made his choice.  Seems to be Politically Correct is the better choice.  Is that controversial?

How about racism?  It's Politically Incorrect to be a racist, but it's Politically Correct to be against racism, and to pursue greater understanding of what that means as time passes and all of us born into a racist world continue to become more and more conscious of unconscious racism.  Racist or not racist?  Seems Politically Correct is the better choice.  Is this controversial?

And homophobia? Politically Incorrect to be homophobic, Politically Correct to see gays as just folks like you and me but who fall in love with their own sex rather than the opposite.  So what?  This question is being answered generationally, and my favorite statement about it is conservative George Will saying that to the young someone being gay is about as interesting as someone being left handed.

So, Trump will fade into oblivion, probably as noisily as he can.  But who will his enthusiasts switch their allegiance to?  

I doubt that very many of them will change their anti-Political Correctness spots.  But, who knows, maybe seeing their beliefs being portrayed so openly and vilely by Trump can be an awakening for some of them, and maybe they can just walk away from their old politics.  It's not easy to change your mind, or learn new things, but it is possible.  I've done it a couple of times.

Donald trump is a joke but his constituents are not

Donald Trump has no more chance of becoming president of the United States than William F Buckley, and Buckley is dead.  Which is a shame because one of Buckley's greatest gifts to conservatives when he was the leading intellectual voice on the right was to keep the crazies out of mainstream conservatism - that is, he kept out the lunatic John Birch Society, the toxic hatred of the racists, and the paranoid fringes that are consumed with apocalyptic visions and paranoid howlings.  Yes, there was a time when conservatism had actual intellectual groundings and ideas.  Alas, in the age of the Tea Party and right wing talk show ravings designed to boost their ratings at all costs, apocalyptic visions, racist dog whistles, and paranoid conspiracies have taken over too much of the "conservative movement."  Scare quotes because they aren't conservative, they are delusional revolutionaries.  Or so it seems to me.

The problem isn't Trump.  To me he just seems to be a sad old man lost in delusions of his own grandiosity, who actually thinks that being rich is reason enough to elect him to the presidency.  I think his only motivation is his insatiable need to be in the spotlight.  It must be a terribly galling thing for his ego to realize that the history books will write about Obama and other presidents, and he will long be forgotten after his demise.  So, what better solution than to become president? or at least make enough of a splash in this presidential race that he gets some kind of mention in the future?

I don't know if Trump has ever honestly expressed a political opinion of his own.  His public views seem to align with whatever will get him headlines, and his view of previous decades are quite different than his public views today.

I have avoided any posts on Trump because I think he will be a momentary headline.  But the problem isn't Trump, it is the extremist right wing base that is excited by his cynical, opportunistic ravings.

Racism?  How about accusing Mexicans of being rapists?  Tough guy to the max? How about accusing John McCain of not being a war hero because he was captured, and the mighty Trump has no respect for captured people?  Mr. Success Himself? How about having no respect for losers like McCain and Romney?  Oh, what a mighty man Mr Trump thinks he is. 

He's not, of course, he's a national embarrassment, and a Republican embarrassment, as Republican denunciations pouring in from all sides testify to.

No, the problem is that he has a constituency in the extremities of the Republican base that say, Way To GO, tell it like it IS.  Good grief.  And these people vote.  They won't end up voting for Trump in the end, of course. But they will vote for someone. And that is something for all of us to be afraid of, indeed.

Dunford's evaluation of threats to the United States

Marine General Joseph Dunford testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in his confirmation hearings to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  He looks to me like someone who understands the world.  When asked what the greatest threat to the United States was, he said it was Russia.  Followed by China and North Korea.  Of these three, only Russia is actively making dangerous moves.

I am especially heartened that he did not say ISIS or al Qaeda in answer to that question.

It seems to me that the bloodthirsty fundamentalist extremist segment of the Muslim world can harm us, and is certainly trying.  But they really don't represent an existential threat to this country.  They are a terrorist threat, which is quite different.  They could blow up another building, they could kill hundreds of Americans and Westerners, they could shock our sensibilities with horrific atrocities, they can do all that they can imagine to do to promote deep and disgusting depravities of violence.  But they aren't an existential threat to our country.  

I believe their intent is to act so atrociously as to bait the United States into making the same mistake that W made - send ground troops into the Middle East and wage war against - Muslims (which side to we pick in this horrible civil and religious war, and why?) This would frame the fanatic jihadists barbarities as Islam against the crusading U.S.  This would be an amazingly stupid mistake for us to make.  It would be a tremendous aid to the recruitment of Muslims to the barbarous jihadist side.  It would grow the threat rather than reduce it, or so it seems to me.

I don't believe Russia is out to destroy the U.S. but it does have enough nukes to do so, so they actually could be an existential threat.  And good for four star General Dunford for seeing that and being willing to take that threat seriously.  

Protect ourselves against terrorism, don't get sucked into their pathetic civil wars.

Right wing terrorist kills nine in South Carolina

Dylan Roof, a right wing extremist, slaughtered nine people in an historic black church in South Carolina. This hateful deed puts an exclamation point on the report from the Department of Homeland Security that right wing extremist terrorism is every bit as much of a threat in America as Islamist extremist terrorists. 

We always seem to want to explain away right wing extremist violence as expressions of mental illness, whereas we want to explain Islamist extremist violence as an expression of a murderous ideology. I think it is time to realize the the right wing terrorists are also acting out murderous ideologies. And, indeed, both right wing and Islamist violent extremists have some pretty serious mental problems. I believe what they have in common is the paranoid fear that they are losing the world they think should be - some sort of Islamist fantasy or some sort of right wing fantasy - and they see themselves as brave soldiers out to right the terrible wrongs of the modern world which they see as plunging into an abyss of darkness. 

And, in a way, they are right. The world is changing, and changing very fast. The extremes of masculine chauvinism, of hyper masculine purity that subjugates all that is feminine, or "impure" from a religious, or racist, or sexist  bigotry are dying. We no longer live in a world where everybody is just like us. We no longer live in a world where tough, ruthless men run everything. 

And that is a good thing. The days of brutal Islamism are fading away, and a reform of Islam is happening, despite the violent reaction against it. And, in the West, the days of hyper-masculine domination are also fading away. Hooray for the rest of us!  

Lost, frightened souls are the ones doing the violence. I believe that their violence trying to stop the world's evolution are actually signposts that the path of the future is moving away from their fantasy worlds and into a world of much more balance and harmony. 

Containment - not a new Republican War in the Middle East please

I think that the only wars worth fighting have to pass what I call the Mom and Pop test.  That is, if your son or daughter goes off to fight a war, and is killed in that war, Mom and Pop should be able to look at each other and say that even though the pain of loss of a child is unimaginably horrible, at least they can comfort themselves with the knowledge that their child died for a good cause.

I don't see where the wars in the Middle East pass the Mom and Pop test.  The Republican candidates for president all seem to be very intent on running on the idea that America needs to be actively involved in the wars of the Middle East.  The latest entry, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, is especially hawkish and sees his hawkishness as his primary virtue. He proudly announces 

"I want to be President to defeat the enemies trying to kill us, not just penalize them or criticize them or contain them, but defeat them," he said at his kickoff event.

This seems to be a very clear promise of war in the Middle East to me, a war that does not pass the "Mom and Pop" test.  Who is it we are supposed to fight?  Who are we supposed to support? I think this is a civil and religious war to be fought out by them.  It seems to me that they are deciding that the straight lines of the countries created by the Europeans after WWI will no longer apply.  It looks to me like the Sunnis and Shia are fighting viciously to establish their own countries. Of course, each is fighting to annihilate the other, but it will end up with the establishment of independent countries in some form of uneasy balance - probably a Shia country, a Sunni country, and a Kurdish country.  Iraq and Syria are already gone, and will never return.

Iran is behind the Shia and Saudi Arabia is behind the Sunni, but America has no dog in that fight.  Both sides are hideous and dangerous.  Our only job is to try to keep them from killing us, it seems to me.  That sounds like the old fashioned "containment" policy of the Cold War, where we didn't attack Soviet Communism directly, but did our best to contain their spread.  Eventually, the Soviets imploded, and we had limited our wars mostly to two ill-conceived efforts in Korea and Viet Nam.  I say we have already done our two ill-conceived wars in the Middle East - Iraq 1 and Afghanistan/Iraq 2.

Back to containment, is what I hope for.

The war zones rebel against what they see as a police state

Whites see protests and violence by inner city blacks very differently than blacks see the same events.  They are seeing two totally different things.  

Blacks see unarmed black men being killed by a hostile, occupying police force in the world of the inner city which is little more than a war zone and police state.

Whites see a police force which is doing an enormously difficult and dangerous job being under attack by fools, criminals, and race agitators.  

Wow.  Different realities.

My take is similar to David Simon's - the creator of "The Wire". The inner cities are war zones, the drug war.  The inner cities are discarded places filled with people who are seen as not useful to the economy and thus are forgotten, neglected, disrespected, and held in contempt.  

Simon makes the point that America, and capitalism, cannot function if either unfettered capitalism or unfettered socialism wins totally over the other.  Unfettered socialism becomes the horror of communism, like the Soviet Union and North Korea.  Total tyranny, and the abolition of freedom and caring.  

He also makes the point that unfettered capitalism becomes the horror of plutocracy and oligarchy.  Total tyranny, and the abolition of freedom and caring. The perfect example is how unfettered capitalism deals with the inner city drug war zones - they ignore them - the inner city people don't feed the capital, don't feed the corporations, don't feed the quarterly reports. Thus, they aren't thought about until there are riots.

What is needed is balance.  Balance comes when neither side wins. The Soviets went out of balance and destroyed themselves by Communism.  America is in danger of going out of balance and destroying itself by Plutocracy.

The United States was created to overthrow aristocracy.  It wasn't England that our Founding Fathers rebelled against, it was rule by aristocracy.  When the wealthiest of the wealthy can contribute billions of dollars to control our elections, we no longer have a democracy, and we are living in the tyranny of aristocracy.  We are getting too close to that tyranny, to that loss of freedom.

The plutocracy has chosen the Republican Party and the "conservative movement" to rule the country for the sole purpose of creating unfettered capitalism and unlimited capital.  All costs are to be reduced, including of course the cost of "labor" - the cost of you and me.  They do this with the megaphone of talk radio, and ironically their attack on the middle class is done under the rubric of "freedom".  The more extreme the right wing becomes the less power the middle class becomes and the more power the plutocracy has.  

I have hopes that the American people will be able to walk back away from the blow torch of extremism, and will elect conservatives and liberals who are not crazy. The biggest danger to this is the enormous  amounts of money that the Plutocracy is putting into the election process.  I think they will lose.

U.S. Iran framework deal

Congratulations to Obama and Kerry for coming up with a better than expected nuclear framework agreement with Iran.  I know that Netanyahu is upset, but that is probably a very good sign that it is a good agreement.  I am really tired of him, his right wing Zionists in Israel and the U.S., and the American right wing of the Republican party trying their best to get the U.S. to attack Iran.  Inspect-inspect is much better than war-war.

I know my right wing friends are convinced that Obama represents the end of American True Manhood, a manhood that stomps across the earth inflicting fear and shock and awe at our mighty forceful powers.  But, indeed, I think Obama is a glimpse of the future of American and of American manhood - one that has many more arrows in its quiver than just military force and intimidation.  John Wayne was a fictional character, and at best he was a picture of a manhood that is now in a very distant past.  

The American right wing keeps thinking that there is only one lesson to be learned in history - that of Churchill standing up to Hitler, and how much that was needed rather than Chamberlain appeasing the maniac tyrant.  But, there is so much more to history than that.  Ted Cruz and the American right wing see this deal as a capitulation to the maniac Iranians.  They see themselves as brave Churchills shouting against the weak foolishness of appeasement.  I think they are dangerously deluded about how to operate in today's world.

They forget a president named Ronald Reagan who negotiated a deal with the Soviet Union -a much more dangerous, brutal, and deadly foe of the America than Iran ever will be - and gave away half of America's nukes.  The right wing in America was apoplectic, and struck endless Churchillian poses, railing against such utter stupidity of the American president.  Well, of course, Reagan was right and they were wrong, and the Soviet threat fizzled and Reagan's nuke deal was a very good one.  

I think this Iranian deal will prove to be a very good one indeed.  Netanhayu and the hard core American right wing has been saying for twenty years that Iran is only a year or two away from a nuke.  This deal has extraordinary levels of inspection and oversight inside Iran in exchange for dropping those sanctions connected to Iran's nuclear program (the sanctions directed at Iran for reasons of Iran supporting terrorism are not affected).

So, good for the president.  Gee, do you think that this man will end up with a very good historical legacy after all - expansion of health care - which has dramatically slowed the growth of health care cost in America - the rescuing of the American economy by providing economic stimulus rather than government austerity - which is being used in Europe to disastrous effect - getting out of and staying out of, as much as humanly possible, the religious and civil wars in the Middle East, and now a defusing of potential war with Iran and containment of its nuclear program.  A pretty good record, to me.  

I know my conservative friends see him in the most demonic of terms, but I think that his choices have proven out to be pretty darned good.

Israel drops its mask

I am pretty disappointed in Israeli voters for decisively re-electing Netanyahu.  His promise was very clear, there would never be a Palestinian state.  

There is no chance of a two state solution.  There is only the relentless drive to eliminate Palestinians from Palestine.  There will be no "peace process", of course there never was, it was always a pretense.  The mask of Israel is off, and the real face is the face of a police state which oppresses Palestinians, occupies more and more of their territory, and makes life as difficult as possible in its relentless efforts to drive them out - this is the "one state solution" that has been obvious for years but America has pretended that a "two state solution" was always possible.  It's not.

Israeli peace activist, Miko Peled, gave an hour long talk a while back and I was so fascinated that I listened to the entire thing.  He tells of the dark side of Zionism - drive out the Palestinians, Israel for Jews only, punish and oppress Palestinians.  The rest is all pretense.

If you focus on Hamas terrorist acts you naturally conclude that the Netanyahu approach is necessary - a matter of self defense.  I have come to the conclusion that focusing on Hamas is the key to Israeli propaganda to justify their oppression of the Palestinians. 

But if you focus on the lives of the Palestinians the entire picture changes.  You finally start to notice that they are living in a totalitarian police state.  And what do oppressed people do when they live in police states? they fight back.  Terrorism is the language of the oppressed.  Terrorism is the language of the hopeless and impotent.  Remove the oppression and the fuel for terrorism dries up. 

It is a shame that American hawks are so committed to Netanyahu and his dedication to oppression and war.  One of Netanyahu's lovely goals is to goad America into war with Iran.  Let's have you and them fight, is his message.  Fortunately, we have a president who won't take the bait.  

God help us all if a Republican hawk becomes president and dances to the tune of Netanhahu, or more to the point Netanyahu's biggest contributor, American casino  magnate Sheldon Adelson.  The American Jewish lobby has had too much influence for too long on American policy.  

The Cold War is over and U.S. interests in Israel have waned.  It is time to rethink our relationship with Israel, especially when they have made it so blindingly clear that peace with the Palestinians is not now, never was, and never will be possible.

Netanyahu tries to sabotage U.S. negotiations with Iran

It seems to me that Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is doing his best to sabotage the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran regarding nuclear weapons, by demanding the results that he insists on in the negotiations, knowing that his demands kill the possibility of a deal.  And, perhaps worst of all, he presented his case to one half of the U.S. government, the Republicans.  The House of Representatives is controlled by the Reps, and is violently opposed to almost anything the executive branch. or the Democrats in general, stand for.  By teaming up with one U.S. party, Israel now has declared war on Obama, and on Democrats.  Is he out of his mind?

Why on earth should the United States be doing what Israel commands?  I know that Israel has had great influence on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East in the past, but I think it is about time to put an end to that influence in a very decisive way.

The relationship between the U.S. and Israel has changed pretty dramatically with the end of the Cold War, it seems to me.  When the Soviets were dedicated to world domination, Israel was a valuable ally to the U.S. as a way of thwarting Soviet hegemony over the Middle East.  But the Soviet Union is gone, and although Israel is a nice ally to have for its intelligence assistance in the Middle East to help us deal with the Muslim civil and religious wars, Israeli interests aren’t any more important to U.S. interests than those of Saudi Arabia, or Turkey, or Iraq, or maybe even Iran.  They are all a bunch of Middle Eastern countries that refuse to play well together, and the primary interest of the U.S. seems to me to be to keep all of them from doing stupid things that will harm the U.S.  

I think that those who try to equate the Islamist nutcases with the existential threats that was posed by the old Soviet Empire are ridiculously wrong. The fundamentalist nutcases are dangerous, but mostly to themselves, using mayhem against us as a tactic in their religious civil wars.

It is certainly true that the U.S. Jewish lobby has had a death grip on U.S./Israeli relations for decades, but I think that influence is starting to wane a bit.  The primary argument for supporting Israel has become humanitarian since the end of the Cold War, but it is pretty hard for the average American, or at least for me, to see Israel as the victim as long as it brutalizes and dominates the Palestinians in its sphere of influence.  Israel really seems to feel entitled to subjugate the Palestinians and punish them at will.  Hezbollah is certainly terrible, but the Palestinians seem to me to be people who have had almost all of their freedoms taken from them by an Israeli police state. 

Maybe it’s time for the U.S. to make some real demands on Israel, like to grant basic freedoms and rule of law to the Palestinians, and to demand that Israel withdraws from the occupied lands.  But, time after time Israel expands their Israeli settlements, brutalizes the Palestinians, and seems to be secure in the notion that America will back them.  Why are we so passive with the Israelis?

And why on earth should America stand for Israel taking sides in the partisan divides in U.S. government for the purposes of sabotaging American diplomacy with Iran?

Is it really Muslims against the world?

The election season is beginning, and some battle lines are being drawn.  A conservative friend sent me a video of a speech by Newt Gingrich in Iowa.  I guess Newt is running, or at least wants to shape the debate.

Gingrich is a very articulate and persuasive speaker for his world view.  He says the we are losing the war on terror, our president and the State Department (meaning Hillary Clinton) won’t even tell the truth about who the terrorists are, it is a global war, and it is being waged by Muslims against the West. 

I understand this view, it is the view that I passionately held ten years ago.  I do not see it that way anymore.

I think we are doing a good job of keeping America safe from attack from the terrorist wing of the Muslim faith.  And the terrible flaw in the idea of ginning up hatred and fear of Muslim terrorists is that we lose the war against them by turning those that we need most in this war against us – Muslims themselves.  America is not going to defeat the Muslims.  America shouldn’t be waging war against the Muslims.  Muslims need to defeat the terrorists amongst them who are falsely claiming the mantle of Islam as they kill, maim, and terrorize us all – Westerners and Muslims alike. 

I do not believe this is a global war even though the terrorists strike against the U.S. and the West.  I believe we are peripheral to the real war, and that the real war is a civil and religious war between the Sunni and Shia Muslims.  We have no dog in that fight.  Both side include vicious, fanatical Muslim extremists.  It is up to Islam to sort this out.  My hope is that mainstream Islam will turn against the terrorist wing of Islam.  Fortunately, it looks like Jordan is going after the brutes of ISIL.  So are the Kurds.

But, most importantly, I believe we in the West need to refuse to take the bait of going after these monsters in their countries.  As soon as we do, ISIL and al Qaeda transform this war into the story they need to tell – it becomes the Christian and corrupt secular Crusader West against Islam.  And then what happens?  The ranks of ISIL and al Qaeda and other bloodthirsty fanatics fill with recruits from the one and a half billion Muslims around the word.  If we attack all we do is swell the ranks of the crazies, we play into their hands.  This was the goal of bin Laden, Bush fell for it, he attacked, and the Middle East exploded, creating more and more extremists, including the current terror – ISIL.

I think our job is to do two things- keep from getting killed by them, and stay out of their wars as best we can.

Muslims need to figure out what Islam is in the modern world.  Obama was right in his speech to the prayer breakfast last week – violent, puritanical extremism isn’t unique to Muslims.  Christians went through that stage a few hundred years back.  The United States was founded by Christian groups fleeing the attacks of the fanatical My-Christianity-or-the-Highway terrorists of their times. 

So, there are thee lessons we can take from history, our own Western Christian history:  first is that it is normal for extremist, puritanical fanatics to violently try to force the rest of the world to obey their fanatical views, and second is that religions split into factions and fight each other, and third that eventually they learn how to co-exist.  The Christians did it, and the Muslims will too. 

We just need for them to speed up this process, a lot.

Anti-vaxxer from the extremes on the right and the left

I get frustrated by the anti-vaxxers.  The notion that vaccination causes autism has long been disproven.  The idea was apparently proposed by a Doctor in 1998, Dr Andrew Wakefield.  But his study was false, he was disbarred, the paper was retracted.  What more do people need? 

I am old enough to have gotten measles when I was in the sixth grade.  It was a very difficult disease.  We had a president who was infected with polio - FDR.  The world had a much lower life expectancy rate before Dr Salk discovered the polio vaccine and proved the value of vaccinations.  Massive numbers of people have died from contagious air born diseases.  And now, some people have been convinced to refuse vaccinations for their children.  This is really a terrible idea. 

There seem to be two political extremes vulnerable to the anti-vaccination fad.  First are the hard right wingers who think that anything the government wants is bad, so they oppose it because the government says it is good, and they see the government as an oppressive enemy of freedom of choice.  Second are the food purity people on the left who think that if they just eat whole, nutritious foods no harm can come to them.  Apparently one of the centers of anti-vaxxers is liberal, wealthy Marin county, CA.  I've heard it claimed that if you want to find a lot of anti-vaxxers, just draw a circle around Whole Foods stores. 

Both groups, meet contagious disease!  It doesn’t matter what the government says or what foods you eat, you will get the measles, or polio, or…  Vaccination is one of the greatest benefits to humankind in the twentieth century, and some seem to be longing for the days when, for example, the native Americans were extinguished more by the contagious diseases brought by the Europeans to America than by the calvary.  I guess we forget the terrors of contagion since we don’t see it.

So, today we are treated to the spectacle of a Republican presidential hopeful, Jeb Bush, needing to be courageous when he says he thinks all parents should get their children vaccinated.  It's like thinking that it would be a courageous thing to say that their children should wear boots in the snow.  This is a strange bit of silliness, it seems to me.

Obama finds his voice

After watching the State of the Union address a couple of days ago, I conclude that it looks like Obama has finally found a sense of voice.  What I mean by that is that when some people speak, their words carry a certain weight, have an impact.  I think it comes from the person’s own sense of their substance, their gravitas.  For a long time, Obama seemed to have lost his voice, and seemed to be speaking as just another guy with an opinion, and all he could do was pretend to be significant but was really just hoping that others would agree.

But, now, he seems to have been freed of some self-imposed restriction, and seems to have found his voice, indeed perhaps has found himself.  I think by losing big in the 2014 elections, he has decided it was important to let people know that he was still important, still president, still a power to be reckoned with.  Plus, I think he finally has decided that he might as well be who he really is rather than try to find ways to twist himself into a pretzel trying to appease Republicans in order to get things done.  I believe he has used the veto pen remarkably seldom compared to other presidents. If he follows through on his new authenticity I expect that to change.

Very little of his proposals from the speech have any chance, but his proposals wasn’t what the speech was about. 

His speech was about presenting his vision of the future of the Democratic Party and liberalism – empower the middle class - which creates demand and grows the economy, help the poor, and stop bowing to the demands of the Oligarchy.  Pretty clear message.  Very different from the Republican vision of empower the wealthy and they will create jobs and prosperity.

This should be an interesting couple of years in D.C. 

Why do they do it?

Why do they do it?  The Islamic terrorists?

Is it religion?  Does their religion tell them to kill infidels, so that’s what they do?

Is it poverty and lack of opportunity?  Are there simply a bunch of young Muslim men that feel beaten down and hopeless, so they strike out at their perceived oppressors? 

Is it the brainwashing of the constant drumbeat of propaganda demonizing the West? and Jews? and Sunnis/Shia (depending on whether the young man in question is Shia/Sunni)?

Is it refusal to integrate into the new world?

I think all of the above play very important roles in creating young Muslim terrorists. But, I think there is a reason that makes more sense to me – they see themselves as defending their "countries."  This is the underlying reason, I believe, for all soldiers to fight wars. The ideologies, religions, and propagandas all add to the fervor and the justifications, but I think at the heart of battle is the love of country, or of community, or of tribe - the desire to protect what is perceived to be the homeland.  That’s why the Americans volunteer to fight, why the Europeans fought in their terrible wars, why the Vietnamese fought, ad infinitum.  And to the Muslims, the only kind of fighting that can have any effect is asymmetrical warfare, i.e. terrorism.

This reason dropped into place for me when reading an article by David Ignatius, whom I pay attention to when it comes to the Middle East.  He cites author Mark Sageman:

"The core question for Sageman is why people become radicalized in the first place. In a forthcoming book, “The Turn to Political Violence,” he argues that it’s partly because militants see themselves as soldiers defending their communities. That’s why brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi wore military outfits when they attacked the Charlie Hebdo weekly, according to Sageman. “They self-identified as soldiers and tried to play the part as they imagine soldiers act.”

The Charlie Hedbo killers thought of themselves as soldiers and carried out what they considered to be a professional, military type strike at the heart of those they saw as out to destroy their “country” – i.e. their culture, their Home.

All of the other influences create a situation of young men, and some women unfortunately, who feel alienated, shunned, outcast, adrift – people without a Home, people who don’t belong.  When they join a cause, the cause of fighting back against the terrors of change and Westernization of their cultures, lands, countries, religions, they finally find meaning for their lives, they belong to something grand and noble and larger than themselves.  They join what they believe to be a worldwide movement to spread their idea of the future across all the world.  They fight for their “country.”

This is something that I can understand. They are not so different from all soldiers across all of time.  Although they attract psychopathic brutes to join them, it makes sense to me that they are like soldiers everywhere, they are defending their "country" from invasion.

That is why I think that John McCain couldn't be more wrong when he wants to fight this with military troops in the Middle East.  Most Muslim terror strikes have been in retaliation to what the terrorists see as Western assault on their homeland.  Even Osama bin Laden said his complaint with America was the presence of America and the West in what he saw as the sacred Muslim lands - Saudi Arabia, Mecca, etc.  He wrote:

"The deployment throughout the Gulf states of U.S. forces, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he argued, is “the greatest of … aggressions incurred by the Muslims since the death of the prophet.”

So, if we don't go to the Middle East and fight there, what do we do?  We defend ourselves, of course, using our Intelligence Services, special forces, limited military support in assisting roles, but I think our main objective is to support the non-terrorist Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere. I hope that Obama can resist the drumbeat of the hawks to commit troops overseas.  All we do is create more terrorists than we can possibly kill.

The Islamic Inquisition

Last week's barbaric attack on a satirical magazine was a shock to France and all of the Western world - make that a shock to all of the civilized world.

It is easy to see the violent jihadist wings of Islam as evil and crazy, and to conclude that we must expand our commitment to bloody war in the middle east. But I think a little deeper thinking is required.

Very shortly after the 9/11 2001 attacks a dear friend of mine pointed out that the mighty Roman Empire was unable to stop Christianity. Even they were unable to suppress a religious movement. Indeed the slaughter of Christians only created martyrs, which strengthened the growth of the religion.

At the time I was totally in favor of our invasion of Afghanistan, and later, Iraq. Over time, however, I reluctantly grew to realize that our military effort in Iraq was only creating more terrorists than we were killing. So, I concluded that our invasion of Iraq had been a terrible mistake. I do not want to see us repeat that mistake against ISIL.

ISIL has been desperately trying to bait the United States and Europe into legitimizing and expanding their violent mission to establish a caliphate in Syria and Iraq. We must defend ourselves of course, but I believe the tools we should use should not include being drawn into their civil wars militarily.

Islam is not the only religion that kills infidels and blasphemers. Christians did the same thing for centuries not that long ago. Unfortunately, Islam is just a few centuries behind the rest of the world.

The Spanish Inquisition lasted over 300 years, I believe. It took a lot of time for competing Christian philosophies to learn to live in peace. I wish I knew what ended the Spanish Inquisition, because that is what is needed now in Islam. (Maybe God managed to sneak in the idea that God was love, not vengeance or righteous punishment and dogma. After all, the religious at least pretend to pray to God, and maybe some of them listen in return?  That is my vision.)

If seems to me that today's bloodshed is the result of a violent war between The Sunnis and the Shia. The West is essentially collateral damage in that war as each side targets us for as part of its war against the other.  It seems to me that the west cannot settle that conflict, we can't even pick sides. We have no dog in that hunt. Our demand to both parties is that they stop killing us and that they find a way to live with tolerance for each other and for everybody else.

The main tool we have to defend ourselves is not military might, but rather modern philosophy. This is a war of ideas, not of savagery.The real war is the war of ideologies, and the West's best strategy is a powerful message of economic success coupled with emotional and spiritual fulfillment possible in the modern world.

How do we teach the intolerant to be tolerant? Demonstration is perhaps our strongest argument. We do manage to live with many religions in the West without endless bloodshed.  And we need to vigorously protect ourselves against their crazies out to slaughter infidels and blasphemers - us.

U.S. formalizes the obsolescence of the Cold War by establishing diplomatic relationships with Cuba

President Obama has re-established diplomatic relations with Cuba after extensive negotiations with them.  Makes sense to me.  

During the Cold War, Cuba was an advance thrust of Soviet Communism into American sphere of influence, and they were quite dangerous, as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1963 demonstrated.  The USSR planted nuclear missiles on Cuban territory aimed at the U.S.  Kennedy stared down Kruschev and had the missiles removed, and apparently Castro was furious, indeed his hatred of the U.S. was so extreme that he wanted to fire the missiles he had already in Cuba into the U.S. while he had the chance.  Fortunately, Kruschev wasn't that stupid.
But, with the collapse of the Soviet Empire, Cuba has become a harmless and pathetic impoverished speck next to the U.S.  They are certainly no threat to the U.S. now that communism has died in the rest of the world. 

The notion that the best way to end a dictatorship is economic embargoes that only punish and weaken the populace has had a fifty plus year record of futility.  Indeed, the only way dictator police states lose power is by a growing power of the people, and that includes economic prosperity and growth for the common folks.  Economic sanctions can actually harm the power of the populace much more than it harms the tyrants in charge of the populace.  Eventually, they see their interests being thwarted by despotism and overthrow, peacefully or violently, can occur.  

So, I say good for Obama.  Church bells rang out in Havana as Obama and Raoul Castro made their simultaneous announcements of the return of diplomatic relationships. 

Also good for the Pope for his assistance in getting this done.  

Time to move on to the actual realities of today and stop fighting a Cold War that we won fifteen years ago.

Our enemies act without conscience - we must not

Do the ends justify the means?  Count me on the side that says no.  I side with John McCain and George Washington on this one.

Senator Diane Feinstein released the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA interrogation methods.  Too many of the techniques are straightforward torture: waterboarding, rectal feeding, extreme sleep deprivation, freezing, etc. 

Some of my conservative friends may say who cares?  We are dealing with depraved terrorists and we need to stop them and what we have to do is not fit for viewing by women and children but it is something that men do because they have to and thank goodness for hard men who can stomach doing such things as it makes us all safer.  

Indeed, I was one of them immediately after 9/11/2001 - who were al Qaeda? where were they? did they have nukes? chemical weapons? Just find out, soon, now!  

Some of my liberal friends, and some conservatives too by the way, think that we have been lied to in both the extent and the effectiveness of the “interrogation techniques’ and that indeed we tortured and got not very much in the way of good intelligence.

John McCain said it very clearly by saying that our torture was not unknown to the Arab world, just to the American people:

"...that doesn’t mean we will be telling the world something it will be shocked to learn. The entire world already knows that we water-boarded prisoners. It knows we subjected prisoners to various other types of degrading treatment. It knows we used black sites, secret prisons. Those practices haven’t been a secret for a decade.”

What is the result of torture?  Doesn’t it just give the terrorists a great recruiting tool? Doesn't it just produce more terrorists with more really good reasons to hate and kill, and torture?

The torture was more understandable in the beginning because our intelligence agencies had failed so totally, they new nothing, they used everything to find out what they could.  But...  Time passed.  And they ended up knowing more and more, and they didn't have to be desperate anymore.  But torture had become Standard Operating Procedure.  

That's the trouble with the idea that the ends justify the means, the ends go away but the means become Standard Operating Procedure.

Actually, another American who was quite experienced in the terrible arts of war had an opinion on that matter, George Washington.  

After a battle, Washington’s troops were going to force German Hessian mercenaries fighting on the side of the British through the brutal treatment of the gauntlet (multiple beatings by the victorious soldiers).  He stopped them and told them this:

 “Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren who have fallen into their hands,’ he wrote. In all respects the prisoners were to be treated no worse than American soldiers; and in some respects, better. Through this approach, Washington sought to shame his British adversaries, and to demonstrate the moral superiority of the American cause.”

Apparently, his humanity toward his prisoners paid off as many of the Hessians switched sides, fought against the British, and stayed in America after it was all over. 

If we torture our prisoners all we do is say America is no longer an exceptional nation, no longer are we a Shining Light on a Hill, we are just another nation in a long line of nations with no real moral, ethical, ideological, or exalted purpose or meaning. We are just like others, indeed, we are just like our enemies whom we are fighting under a pretense that our enemies are bad and we are better.

I will close with John McCain again, as I can’t say it any more simply and powerfully:

"Our enemies act without conscience. We must not"

Another football suicide because of brain injury

Another suicide in football due to brain injury.  Kosta Karageorge of Ohio State committed suicide texting that “… these concussions have got my head all fucked up.”  He joins an ever growing list of football suicides as a result of brain injuries.

The culprit is CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy):

“Should CTE be found, Karageorge will join Andre Waters, Ray Easterling, Dave Duerson, Terry Long, Junior Seau, Paul Oliver, Shane Dronett, and Jovan Belcherin an ever-growing list of athletes with CTE who took their own lives and were wracked by memory loss, disorientation, cognitive issues, mood and personality changes, and crushing depression.

And yes, this is the point where we mention that even the NFL admits that nearly three in 10 former players will develop some form of debilitating brain injury in their lifetimes as a result of playing football.”

That’s worth repeating – the NFL itself admits that nearly 3 in 10 players will develop some form of debilitating brain injury in their lifetimes as a result of playing football.

So, why is it enjoyable to watch people inflict brain injuries on each other?  On the rare occasion when I glance at a TV with a game on I wonder which 30 percent of the players will end up with brain disease?  Which will commit suicide?  

Ferguson - a tale of two truths

I believe there are two truths that are at odds in Ferguson, resulting in unfortunate violence and injustice.

The first truth is reflected in the Grand Jury decision not to indict the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown.  In this truth, we are a nation of laws, the Grand Jury spent a lot of time, listened to about 60 eye witnesses, was presented the forensic evidence, listened to extensive testimony by the officer involved, and concluded that there was insufficient evidence to cause this to go to trial.  That is, when everything was heard and evaluated, it was believed that the officer acted in self-defense.  I think it is good to remember that almost all big news events have big mistakes in the initial reporting, especially in today’s 24 hour news cycles where TV and social media feel the need to jump in with instant opinions. So a lot of what was initially thought to be fact was probably discredited upon examination of the Grand Jury.

The second truth is reflected in the outrage of the black community in Ferguson, Oakland, and other black communities across the country.  In this truth, inner city blacks and browns live in a police state.  I believe this is because of our unfortunate and deeply failed War on Drugs.  The inner cities have been turned into armed camps of warring factions - drug gangs on one side and the police force on the other.  In the cross fire is a trapped by poverty populace, ever at risk from criminals on one side, and the suspicions, surveillance, and mistakes of the police on the other side.

In the first truth, the officer reacted as he was trained and protected his life.  Justice was done.

In the second truth, a man was killed for an act of petty theft, and injustice was done.

I don’t have wonderful solutions to this.  I note that the black community sees racism and oppression at play every day, in ways that I am blind to.  I note that the police see crime and danger to society and themselves every day in ways I am blind to.

I guess my question to my liberal and black friends would be this – if you had been on this Grand Jury, with an open mind, for three months, seeing all the facts, witness statements, forensic evidence, and had sort out fact from fiction, wouldn’t you have most likely come to the same conclusion that this Grand Jury came to? Might they not have simply been making judgments based upon the evidence rather than demonstrating some kind of racist animus?

And I guess my question to my conservative and white friends would be this – if you were black or brown and lived in an inner black or brown city, might not you think you were living in a police state where an over-militarized police force could kill unarmed boys and men with impunity?  And wouldn’t you want to burn things down yourself in response?

My hope is that our nation can grow as a result of this terrible incident, and that the police can find better ways to interact positively with inner cities, and that inner city citizens can find better ways to interact with the police – that both sides can find partnership with each other rather than both sides feeling that they are living in a war zone.  I don’t have an answer about what to do about the disastrous War on Drugs, but it is pretty clear that the consequences are terrible for people trapped in the middle of that war.

Good substance, bad precedent

If I understand it correctly, in order to qualify for Obama’s offer not to deport illegal immigrants (for two years while he is still in office) they would have to voluntarily turn themselves in to Immigration and Customs and apply for status.  Why would they do that?  What one president can grant by executive mandate another can certainly take away, and in the process of taking it away that next  president would have all the info needed to deport all of those who signed up for Obama’s deal.

Sounds like a very big risk to me.  The only way illegals would rationally become visible should be to get a change in legal status, i.e. a path to citizenship, which this Obama offer does not present, if I understand correctly.  That requires Congress to pass a law which does that, and apparently Obama’s very public executive action has guaranteed that Congress will not be able to negotiate a deal out of fierce Republican reaction to what they see as an abuse of Presidential authority.  Of course, the chances of the Republicans every successfully negotiating a deal on immigration has always been pretty close to zero, so…

So, Obama’s big immigration move, designed to be compassionate to immigrants, could actually put them at much greater risk than they already are in.  Of course, it would be a very big incentive for the Hispanic community to vote Democratic in the next presidential election, to keep a Ted Cruz type anti-immigrant Republican from rounding up all those who exposed themselves, but does this mean that Obama’s compassion is really little more than a way to use these people to elect the next president? 

Speaking of political motives, is Obama putting out bait to draw the Obama-haters into a stupid attempt to impeach him in hopes that it would so damage the Republican brand that the Democrats will ascend in 2016? 

Not sure I would recommend anyone signing up and exposing themselves for a two year exemption from deportation that could be overturned by the next president - then, adios amigo.

By the way, if Obama can do this on what he considers to be a very important thing, which he cannot get Congress to act on, doesn’t that open the door for a Republican president doing the same thing on abortion, or on access to abortion clinics, or open carry gun laws, or school prayer, or privatization of public schools, or whatever? 

I think the chances of a Republican president in 2016 are very low (it take more than white men to elect a president), but I’m still not sure I like this action by this president. 

I agree with the substance of what he is doing but I think it needs to be the Congress that makes immigration law.  This looks like a bad precedent to me.