Libertarian Rage

Phil 'n' Max Hit the Road

2009-07-07T11:21:00.004-06:00

Just a head's-up -- most of my blogging for the next couple of months is going to be taking place over at the Maximum Verbosity Production Blog. It's essentially documenting my first international tour, but because I'm me I've noticed that the tone's already become pretty aggressively political. So feel free to click here and cruise on over if you're looking for more of my musings on the subject.

In Defense of Darkness

2009-05-28T03:36:00.002-06:00

Writing the kind of work that I do, I'm frequently accused of being pretentious -- of trying to elevate the significance of my own obsessions by recasting them in the heroic language of the past. (And if that bothers you, boy, are you going to hate this latest show.) That's an accusation that I'm not necessarily prepared to refute -- but even greater than that sin is, perhaps, the period of time that I choose to fixate on -- not the classics of Greece and Rome, nor the enlightenment of the Renaissance -- but rather, on the Dark Ages themselves.

Why, some have speculated, would anyone choose to fixate on those benighted and barbaric times? Particularly when they're surrounded by the ideals of democracy and humanism and all that good stuff? Because, I counter, it's in the Middle Ages that the modern man was born. Current scholarship favors the Renaissance, but I disagree. My reason? Here's, say, nine.

1) The language that you and I speak? That I'm writing in right now, and that you're reading? Medieval. Dating in its earliest form to the Anglo-Saxon invasions of Britain, at which point the island was renamed to Angle-land, or, as we know it today, England -- and its brand-spanking-new language, English.

2) The two largest religions in the world today? One of them -- Islam -- was born in the Middle Ages, when the merchant Mohammed supposedly received a vision from the Archangel Gabriel -- and the other, Christianity, also rose to prominence in this time. They came into conflict in a series of wars known as the Crusades -- memorably evoked (by name!) by President Bush during his tenure. So that animosity and vitriol that fuels most of our current wars and blog posts and whatnot? Born -- naturally -- in the Middle Ages.

3) That middle-class that politicians talk about (and cater to) constantly? And the union system that wields such devastating power of our economy? Can be traced directly back to the rise of guilds of skilled artisans that were emerging as European cities swelled in size.

4) Our entire legal system -- one of common law, with a trial by a jury of peers and founded on the concept of legal precedent, accountable to the state rather than to the church -- we largely have Henry II to thank for, thank you very much.

5) Angsting over your last relationship? We have the Middle Ages to thank for our whole existing concept of courtly and romantic love. The significance of this can't be underestimated. The chivalric code of Lancelot du Lac may seem silly and archaic, but he was a pioneer for the fucked-up relationships that we're struggling through now. The gender roles and combinations may have shifted recently, but the template we still use for relating to each other was born a thousand years ago.

6) Then there's concept of individual liberty, and the limitation of state power. All effectively articulated in the Magna Carta, a medieval document that subjected executive authority to the law. The document's easy to romanticize -- in reality, all it was really doing was taking power from one thug and dividing it among several -- but it started a dialogue, a language, and a system of thought that eventually led to Oliver Cromwell and John Locke and Thomas Jefferson.

7) Maybe this whole conversation seems silly and annoying, and you just want to nip down to your local watering hole for some libation. Beer and wine have been around for nearly as long as our species has -- but the distillation of liquor? Whether you want to order a brandy, scotch, whiskey, vodka, or gin -- all of them were discovered in the Middle Ages. Even if you abandon those and grab a beer -- the whole concept of brewing hops into beer, and thereby being able to control its flavor and consistency, was born then as well. Even the bar you're sitting in exists because of the Saxon alehouses that preceded it.

8) The literacy that enables you to read windy and rambling blog posts -- for that, you can thank yet another medieval invention: the printing press, which for the first time in human history enabled us to disseminate written information widely, without relying on monks copying out every letter by hand. (Oh, by the way, Catholic monasteries? Those centers of learning, which are responsible for the preservation of nearly all of the texts we have both from this period and before? We can thank the Monastic Rule of St. Benedict.)

9) Or the country that you occupy (assuming that the bulk of my readership is in the United States) -- although we have pretty solid evidence that the country had been discovered by both the Chinese and the Icelanders previously, it was the voyage of Columbus that brought our continent to the attention of European civilization.

So why does any of this matter? Because the vast bulk of what you do, think, or feel, can be traced directly back to a single period of time. My own religious faith, political ideology, theatrical profession, racial identity, sexual relationships, and alcoholic fraternity -- all achieved their current form within a single millennia. That's *extraordinary*. And to not be conscious of that fact seems to me to be failing to acknowledge *why* any of us believe the things that we believe, or behave the way that we choose to behave. It is to live in profound ignorance of why we are the way we are.

Which is, perhaps, why I -- throughout my career -- keep coming back to the romances of the medieval writers. I find something modern in Malory's imagination. And we haven't evolved as much as we like to believe that we have.

Christmas Lessons

2008-12-24T16:21:00.002-06:00

HOCKEY COACH: And, well, y'know, the kids have another hockey game coming up, and some folks were concerned because it's on December 31st, but, y'know, it's okay, this has happened before, and, I mean, we're pretty good, people usually get out by around seven-thirty...

REPORTER: And that might be kind of a fun way to spend New Year's Eve!

HOCKEY COACH: Oh, yeah, I mean, what else are you gonna do on New Year's Eve?

REPORTER: (laughing) Exactly!

What else, indeed. One of the great pleasures of visiting my folks down in Rochester -- aside from extended cable and being able to watch Bill Maher's Real Time -- is the opportunity to watch local news, or at least what passes for it here.

Size -- as with firearms and male genitalia -- is relative, after all. As an enthusiastic resident of the Mini Apple, most of my colleagues think of Rochester as a small town. But I definitely know of people in the suburbs who regard it as the big city. And I have at least one friend -- who spent a lot of time growing up on her grandmother's farm, where the nearest residence was five miles way -- who would find characterizing Rochester as small to be laughable. Then, of course, there's plenty of people on the coast who regard the Twin Cities as being backwater, a hicksville in the flyover with aspirations of trendiness.

I've commented on this before -- that, as someone who's traveled the world, it's bizarre to experience such severe culture shock between two places that are barely ninety minutes apart -- to leap from the radical liberalism of Minneapolis into the (at times) myopic conservatism of Rochester. And reinforces for me my sense that the division between red and blue states is somewhat arbitrary -- that the real political spectrum is defined by population density rather than geography.

After all, look at any electoral map of the blue-state Minnesota. You'll see an island of blue, representing the Twin Cities and their environs, in the midst of a geographically wide but sparsely populated ocean of red. Most states, whether they trend red or blue, map roughly the same way.

This is something I was thinking about, as a proponent of deregulation. To take an extreme example -- like, say, my friend's grandmother, who is largely self-sufficient -- nearly any government intrusion is going to impact her negatively. In towns small enough for its inhabitants to recognize each other on sight, the community is generally elastic enough to respond to its own needs. (Please note that I'm not romanticizing -- people in small towns can be petty, small-minded, and at times startlingly cruel. Human nature doesn't change, simply because of the level at which it's organized.)

To take an example at the opposite extreme -- like, say, New York City, which packs roughly eight million people into three hundred square miles -- a fairly nuanced system of laws may be necessary just to keep its citizens from obliviously trampling all over each other. I'm not necessarily opposed to this in theory (though in practice, I have plenty of issues with the particular laws that get passed).

The absurdity emerges when a single set of laws is created to legislate the behavior of both populations. And if there's such a wide range within the individual states, what happens when you try to legislate the behavior of a country the size of the United States? That's when we start yelling at the south for electing some of the most lunatic Presidents in our history, and they start yelling at Democrats to go back to Europe.

This is why the great cause that swung me to libertarianism isn't being anti-state or anti-tax -- although, yes, I am both of those things -- so much as my belief in the dire need for decentralization. And going back to Rochester is a good way to keep grounding myself in that important lesson.

All Right Reserved: Reviews and Reflections

2008-08-26T22:36:00.002-06:00

So I've been avoiding the DNC coverage as much as possible. But I do a weekly trivia night at my local bar, and I plunked myself down in front of a television broadcasting the Olympics. After about five minutes, the bartender stepped in front of me and switched the channel to CNN. So, uh, there I was.

I've talked about Obama's campaign before. In terms of policy, he's not fundamentally different from most other Democrats; I wasn't really interested in the product in the many other forms in which it was offered to me, and I'm not really interested in it now. But the aspect that I've always struggled with, regarding his campaign, isn't policy, but rhetoric. It's easy to grasp why he's been so fervently embraced: he's managed to seize hold of the language of liberalism, and make it soar. If the philosophy is one that you love, then his speeches must be electrifying. But if you struggle with the underlying assumptions, the linguistic hoops he leaps are rough going.

Former Virginia governor Mark Warner was the first to speak. He expressed the usual shame and outrage, that so much is being invested in our military that could be spent on domestic programs. Erm. What about those of us who regard investment in a vast state-controlled infrastructure to be more monstrous and irresponsible than investment in national defense? For those of us who disapprove of centralizing authority within a Federal government, there isn't a place in either party. It's a game of false opposites: you can choose *where* you want that power to be centralized, but *decentralizing* power simply isn't on the menu. Laying out arguments in this format *creates* the positions that are socially acceptable to adopt.

He closed out by quoting Thomas Jefferson: "I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past." And I'm grinding my teeth, wondering what Jefferson would have made of this whole campaign. This is the same Jefferson who claimed that "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants," right? A claim that it's very hard to imagine this campaign making. Simply quoting a statement by one of the founding fathers (the author of the Declaration of Independence, no less!), outside of the context of his entire ideology, may not be actively deceptive -- but it's certainly misleading.

The next speaker goes on to state words to the effect of "I'm not going to mention how John McCain is simply carrying on the policies of the Bush administration" -- you just fucking did! The hell? It's one of the most absurd permutations of politically correct speech -- hearing people say things like "I'm not a racist, but there's something I just don't trust about black people." Yes! Yes you are a racist! Throwing a polite caveat in front of the statement doesn't alter that fact! And claiming that you're not going to stoop to the level of saying something, while in the process of saying it -- gah.

Hillary Clinton assumes the stage, and the camera spends half of its reaction shots on her husband. She wields the same gut-wrenching, manipulative human-interest stories about those suffering under our current health care system -- channeling it into applause for a system of universal health care, without any examination of either the underlying problems of our system or any of the countless alternative solutions -- then draws further applause for championing the nineteenth amendment(!).

I don't mean to single out Democrats here (although they're an easier target for me lately) -- the Republicans are, if anything, far *worse* in the language they use. Even alternative parties have been struggling to ape them, consciously or otherwise, under the unspoken assumption that by imitating their most repulsive qualities they can achieve their success.

I can't even blame the politicians making these utterances, either. They say what they need to in order to generate the response they require. They're fundamentally no different from so many of my colleagues, self-styled political comics who use the same words and phrases to trigger the appropriate response, regardless of whether or not they have a script with anything churning beneath that. We're all in the same business, after all -- show business -- and we use *exactly* the same collection of tools to survive.

---

I've been putting off posting my thoughts about the Minnesota Fringe run of the show -- I have, well, too many, and too many that it's going to take me a while to sort through. I will say that we achieved a very mixed response, and that I received more hostility in response to this script than any show that I've produced since 2005 ("Camelot is Crumbling").

I've had several people corner me, arguing about the use of language in the script -- whether or not it's responsible or irresponsible, and laying out careful arguments about why or why not. That's fantastic, and exactly the kind of dialogue I was hoping the script would produce. On the other hand, the vast bulk of responses I've received has been along the lines of the following:

"Some sketches hit the mark and others just seemed offensive -- and I am not easily offended. Since I think that is part of the intent of the show, they succeed."

"The gratuitous use of racial and anti-gay epithets added nothing to the show."

"My father and I went into this show with high hopes. This would be a show that would inform us, that would give us a new point of view of the world. All though we did leave with a new point of view then the one we had when we entered. The way we were brought there left little to be desired.

Rudeness. Not understanding that we live in a day where words are more then words."

Putting aside for the moment the question of whether or not it's appropriate to use a comedy show as an introduction to the entire philosophy of libertarianism -- I don't know that I accept "rudeness" as a legitimate complaint, in a show whose primary thesis is that all kinds of monstrosities can be couched within polite language.

These reviews aren't upsetting so much as frustrating -- because I simply have no idea what I could have done differently; I don't know how I could have written this script in a way that would have made them happier. I don't know what the phrase "Words are more than words" means. The "use of racial and anti-gay epithets" was -- discussed. At extreme length. Within the text itself! Irresponsible? Perhaps. Hurtful? Possibly. But gratuitous? I don't accept -- the use of language is absolutely essential to the point being made by the text.

What could I have done? To not use the language -- in a show that is devoted, specifically, to examining the use of language in a political arena -- seems profoundly hypocritical to me. I worried that the script was too preachy, too obvious, wearing its agenda on its sleeve. And what troubles me about these reviews isn't that they disliked the show, or that they disagreed with the underlying points -- it's that they don't seem to be aware of what the underlying points are. And as a writer, I have to regard that as my failure: but I'm at a loss as to what I could have done differently.

---

And as a writer, watching the DNC -- it's exactly the same arguments being played out, exactly the same rhetoric that I can't stand, exactly the same rhetoric that the script is trying to pull to pieces.

I dunno. A lot of this script emerged from the frustration of sitting through so many Bush-bashing political comedies, and feeling so intensely isolated; of looking around me at all of the people laughing, and wishing that I could join in. So I wrote a script that I was hoping could be an olive branch between us -- "See? We're not so different after all! We all want the same things! We all have the same enemies! All we're fighting over is language!"

But I suspect now that I was wrong. Maybe we don't have so much in common. And we are different. Maybe I just plain don't have anything to say to the left, and maybe they just don't have anything to say to me.

But I'll confess -- working on political comedy always leaves me in a pretty bleak place. And watching yet another election process leaves me in a bleaker one.

Final Note From Kansas City

2008-07-31T11:34:00.001-06:00

Normally I don't reprint e-mails that I receive without first specifically receiving permission from the person who sent it -- but in this case I kinda thought, well, fuck it.

hey... you pieces of shit. that was the most fagasious shit i have even witnessed in my entire life. you call yourselves actors, ha, I call you fucking, faggot, china babies, whose use of arrogant words such as, nigger, are for shock value alone. You call your selves playwrights? who the fuck do you think you are coming to my city? seriously? You come here thinking your cool and then you call my city a ghost town as you drive into the distance... fuck you! seriously? why don't you fuckers go back to china where you belong and wright shit plays for them instead.

sincererly

FUCK YOU! minnisota nigger cunts!

niggggggggggerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
chink, gook, honkey, chinese piece of shit cong!

come back soon we miss you already!

NOT!

Now, putting aside for the moment that the most wounding part of this missive is its utter butchery of the English language -- this is far from the first message of this nature that I've received, and I'm sure it won't be the last. I'd hope that it's self-evident that there's more going on in the play than shock value, but the accusation of carelessness in my writing is always dismaying. The true arrogance on my part, I suppose, is that I can write political satire -- containing much material that I know will be hurtful to members of the audience -- and not expect to receive any backlash from it.

That said, it's almost impossible to discern exactly what his purpose is -- whether he's someone offended by use of racist terminology (in which case his e-mail is either a case of failed irony or stunning hypocrisy), or whether he's a racist himself annoyed at having been shown up (in which case, well, I will cheerfully and unapologetically say "Fuck him").

Still -- good to be back in Minnesota, y'know?

Last Night

2008-07-28T08:12:00.000-06:00

I have to confess, exhaustion is finally starting to get the better of me – we mostly spent the day in working (with a brief excursion out for one last rack of Kansas City ribs).

Our show tonight was finally a gratifying one: a packed house, with an incredibly responsive audience. Lots of laughter, and one of my soapbox speeches was actually greeted with cheers and applause.

Part way through the show, it started to hail outside, and since we were beneath a skylight, that meant we found ourselves shouting over the thunderous storm of hailstones on the roof. Then our set, um, kind of blew apart. The screen collapsed, though the cast ad-libbed around it nicely. At one point, I grabbed a piece of it, flung it backstage, turned back to face the audience, tap-danced, grinned, and spread my hands in a little “ta-da” gesture.

This got a laugh. And the thing that’s so interesting about that to me is that it represents a clear disconnect between myself and the character that I’m playing: the audience appreciated it because I allowed the mask to slip and peered out at them from behind it. That’s notable to me, because that distinction is one that I think audiences have struggled with in the past: I’m often accused of playing myself. I certainly write to my strengths, but I think that that confusion is something that often results from writers who perform their own material: the audience assumes that the character is you.

Penner isn’t me. He may have been at one point, when I first started writing him (whoa, nearly a decade ago now) – but he’s certainly by now evolved into his own entity. In this play, he functions primarily as a buffoonish figure, a kind of summary of everything that drives me crazy about left-wing pseudo-intellectualism. He occasionally stumbles backwards into intelligent ideas, but that’s more a case of a stopped clock being right twice a day than it is of any kind of real insight that he possesses.

That distinction is critically important to me as a writer. And it’s certainly possible that it’s one that I’ve simply manufactured to allow me to work – but the fact is that I’m not all that interested in self-portraiture.

The show we saw afterwards was appallingly bad, and I stepped out about halfway through. Went for a walk, and ran into another set of Kansas City locals.

THEM: So how are you enjoying our city?

ME: I dunno – we’re strangers here, so I think that we haven’t found out where everyone is hanging.

THEM: What, are you looking for more posh places?

ME: Actually, I think we’re looking for dives.

They nodded serenely, and recommended a place called the Lava Room. The next show we saw was absolutely phenomenal, and we invited the cast to join us there afterwards.

Our last night in Kansas City, and we finally had a positive experience – a laid-back bar, populated by locals, hanging out with other artists. It’s remarkable that it was so difficult for us to find this. I’ve kind of felt pretty isolated since we arrived – there’s no out-of-town coordinator, we haven’t really had much contact with any of the artists. It’s taken us this long to finally start making these kinds of interactions happen, and it’s a shame that the Festival doesn’t really seem to have the mechanisms in place to make it work.

I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open.

YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION OH-OH-OH

2008-07-28T08:02:00.002-06:00

So we kicked off today with a visit to the Negro Leagues Museum. I was expecting this to be fairly tedious, since I don’t really give a fuck about baseball, but I found myself getting fairly into the subject.

Even in the single experience I had a few days ago, I was struck by the fact that the real appeal of baseball isn’t the game itself – it’s the *texture* of the game. I’ve been trying to lose weight, and found myself peering at the menu in search of a salad; and of course there wasn’t one, only a steady stream of hot dogs, beer, and, well, variations on those two items. It’s an environment that’s not interested in compromising, and that’s part of its appeal: the heat, the food, the music, the *culture* surrounding baseball, the aesthetic, is in some respects the most critical part of the experience.

Its refusal to compromise, its very refusal to appeal to a wider audience, is exactly the thing that gives it its appeal: it’s an unapologetically testosterone-fuelled entertainment, and it’s glorious.

So if you were a baseball fan in the time period that the museum was covering, you’d find yourself torn: as a lover of the game, you’d want to pursue the absolute masters of the field. And as you did so, you’d be forced to confront the fact that skill and discipline is not confined by ethnicity.

One of the things I find so moving about the story is the fact that it’s one driven by individualism. My favorite African-American intellectual isn’t Martin Luther King, but Zora Neale Hurston; one who asserted that the social liberation of the black intellect lay within, not without. I find something vaguely offensive about the very idea that black liberation is something that must be bestowed upon them by superior whites – and the philosophies of redistribution and affirmative action are couched within that idea, despite whatever its left-wing proponents might claim.

The social equity of blacks is something that must be achieved within the black community, if it’s to have any meaning whatsoever: it’s going to be achieved by the actions of extraordinary individuals, not by some kind of state-sponsored validation.

Courtney found herself choking up during the exhibit; but I found myself breaking down in the neighboring building, the American Jazz Museum. I’ve always been a fan of Duke Ellington, but I’d never actually heard his religious music before: every time I thought it was winding to a conclusion, he’d hit me with something else: a clarinet solo, or a shrill, soulful cry from his lead vocalist, or suddenly, impossibly, a chorus of voices wailing both grief and praise. I broke down sobbing like a child in the middle of the museum. We may live in a world of misery, slavery, and degradation; we may be only temporarily shielded form those horrific realities; but having lived in a world in which music like that existed? And in which I had the opportunity to hear it? Jesus.

Saw an excellent show in the evening, and went on to perform in yet another open-mike night, this time doing a piece from “Descendant of Dragons.” Managed to twist the collective arms of 3 Sticks into going bar-hopping with us, and found myself in yet another gay bar, in which the prospects of a heterosexual man getting laid are roughly equivalent to the spontaneous combustion of Tipper Gore. My tech cheerfully and loudly announced that his pseudo-girlfriend had granted him permission to have a gay experience, which resulted in at least one patron descending upon him like a starving puma upon a wounded gazelle.

A shout-out definitely goes to Charla, who’s stepped up to be our designated driver for the week: her repeated efforts to bundle a bevy of besotted buffoons into the van and get us all back to the motel are nothing short of heroic. The ride home rapidly degenerated into a belligerent, alcohol-soaked argument about abortion that left pretty much everyone ready to rip out everyone else’s throats.

I dunno: I guess it’s ironic for a political writer to have such an intense dislike of conflict, but I do – I’ve worked pretty hard to steer our rehearsals away from discussions of the underlying politics and to keep them focused on comedy, to let the text do its work while we entertain. In an odd way, in spite of how militant many characters in the play are, the script itself represents a kind of an olive branch – it’s a right-wing comedy for left-wingers. I’m afraid I don’t have much of a spark of revolutionary spirit: I don’t want to see another Civil War, and I don’t want my children to witness a revolution, and I don’t want to take arms against my friends, family, and colleagues. The day may come when it’s necessary: but it’s not something I yearn for.

I remember one drunken exchange with a colleague a few months back:

HIM: (for, like, the eight hundredth time) I really think we need a revolution in this country.

ME: Okay, dude – why are you always pushing for a revolution?

HIM: I don’t know. I think I just really want to shoot a lot of people.

ME: Well, yeah, but – you don’t need a war for that. You can just go out and starting shooting people.

HIM: Yeah, but in war it’s allowed.

ME: Oh, I see. So you want state-sponsored shooting of people.

HIM: I’m a liberal, phillip. It’s only allowed if it’s state-sponsored.

And that about sums it up, dunnit?

Various Kinds of Communion

2008-07-27T20:48:00.002-06:00

I’ve switched over to Jack Daniels, since Jameson’s is apparently impossible to find here – we went to more than one place seeking it out. I finally found myself in a seedy dive where the liquor bottles were tossed haphazardly onto the shelves with a single clerk glowering at me from behind bulletproof glass. I sheepishly purchased my southern brand, not having the courage to ask “Say, do you carry any good imported Irish whiskey?”

(The reason why writers have such a high rate of alcoholism is simple: all writers are cowards, and alcohol is the most cowardly drug. Que sera, sera.)

I usually try to avoid talking about religion in this space, since, well – it’s one of those things that, if you’ve already signed up with it, it makes sense; if you haven’t, it doesn’t have much to say. But today, when I was praying before the show, the following words popped into my head:

“God, grant me the anger to strike against the enemies of strength and wisdom; but more importantly than that, remind me of the love that makes anger like that necessary.”

Had another show, with a much smaller turnout tonight – fairly unresponsive, but I no longer know how to interpret that, since we also had an unresponsive opening night crowd that left us several very kind reviews. Walkouts, however, are hard to misinterpret, and tonight we had three – including a member of the press. Yowch.

We crashed an open-mike night tonight to promote the show. Since I have a cast that consists almost entirely of strong solo performers, rather than doing a preview of the show proper, I encouraged everyone to perform individual pieces – thus allowing us to plug our show five consecutive times. I did a piece from “Warrior Needs Food, Badly,” which went over well (I haven’t slammed in nearly six months), Courtney did stand-up, Michael and Charla both slammed, and even Phil did a song cover. What a remarkable cast I have, in which any given member can stand up and entertain.

We were delighted to find that 3 Sticks had arrived in town, and were the other performers on the bill. Remarkably, the only Fringe performers on the bill tonight were us, the Minnesotans, so at least we had the opportunity to entertain each other.

Who Am I Rooting For?

2008-07-25T08:12:00.001-06:00

So today I attended my first baseball game – well, ever. It was immediately preceded by a frantic ten-minute phone call in which I asked Liz to “tell me everything I needed to know about baseball.”

ME: So, who am I rooting for?

LIZ: The Royals.

ME: The Royals. Are they…good?

LIZ: Yeah, they’re a good team.

ME: No, I mean, are they, like…good, y’know, morally?

(long pause)

LIZ: Sure.

I quickly memorized the basics – three strikes, four balls, three outs, nine innings – got my beer and my hot dog, and settled into an American rite of passage. The game itself was…pretty uninspiring. The Royals got creamed, seven to one, and we all got healthy sunburns, which will undoubtedly cause us to look like a set of patchwork quilts when we do the underwear scenes in the show.

Turns out that we got a number of positive reviews on the local website – we’re number three in terms of ratings, and the most-reviewed show of the entire Festival thus far. So, that’s exciting – hopefully the taciturn response of our opening audience was a fluke.

Aside from my usual angst at being compared to Woody Allen yet again, one review said something to the effect (and I’m paraphrasing, since I don’t have internet access – this tour diary is being updated by one of my staff) that I needed to decide whether or not I wanted to be funny. I guess it was a pretty glib line, but it stuck in my head and struck close to one of the many things that I struggle with in this show.

Thing is – when I first started doing all this, I was very concerned about my ability to be funny, and all of my energy went in that direction. I’m not nearly so insecure about that anymore – I’m reasonably confident that I know how to hit the stage, work the crowd, and generate laughter – and yet, oddly enough, there’s now some weird level on which I kind of resent it. I hit a point where I get sick of the audience laughing, and that frustration has manifested itself in the script. So I lapse into preachiness or anger or ten thousand other things that seem to exist to get the audience to stop laughing, shut the fuck up for ten minutes, and respond differently. And I’m not entirely convinced that that impulse of mine is unhealthy.

It’s worrisome, because it’s dangerously close to the attitude that “I know better than the audience,” which rarely leads to anything worthwhile. But at the same time, my workmanlike approach to generating laughter in the audience has left me with a lot of resentment towards them, and a lot of questions about what the hell point there is to what I’m doing. Was Karl Marx right when he described the kind of entertainment I produce as “opiate for the masses?” Possibly, and possibly there’s nothing wrong with that – but I find it profoundly unsatisfying.

“Who am I rooting for?” seems to be a recurring question in all of the reviews. And of a lot of my career, too – I’ll never be a great comic, because I get bored with cracking jokes all the time. But I’ll never be a great tragedian, because I can’t seem to get through a serious point with a straight face. So when they ask which side I’m on, I guess I’m not really sure – and I don’t know that the play would be better if I was.

Saw a bunch of Fringe shows in the evening, too. At one venue, Charla leaned over to me and pointed at the ceiling. The room was lit by a brand-new electrical line and set of light bulbs, embedded into decaying wood. It was a largely abandoned building that had had the barest skeleton of a set thrown into it to create a theatre space.

And that’s so much of what I love about Fringe. I know that our tech was pretty intensely frustrated at our initial rehearsal – but complaints that we don’t have a light board seem to me to be largely missing the point. The sloppiness, the synergy, the spontaneity, are largely what this kind of work is all about. As far as I’m concerned, as long as I get to go to a place I’ve never been before, down some cheap whiskey, and tell a few bad jokes – that’s what this is all about. Everything else is just footnotes.

Ribs, Royals, and Rednecks

2008-07-24T09:00:00.001-06:00

I don’t consider myself someone who needs a lot of flash when it comes to lodging – but it would really be a pleasant luxury to wake up in the morning and not have to scrape insect carcasses out of every moist surface in the Motel 6. I’m just saying. I’ve ended up sharing a room with our tech guy (also named Phil), which prompted the following exchange:

ME: You’re about to see something awesome, when you go in to take a shower.

PHIL: If you’re talking about the bug carcasses, I saw them last night.

ME: We should probably pick up some roach motels or something, when we go out to run errands today.

PHIL: Yeah, but this is something we should really take up with the management.

ME: Dude. This is a Motel 6. Why? So they can spit on our towels in contempt?

We also ran into the problem of our door locks jamming shut, so that we couldn’t close our doors upon leaving them.

PHIL: I’m just going to turn on my iPod and pretend this isn’t happening.

ME: Yeah, but you’re our tech guy. I think this is exactly the thing that I’m paying you to deal with.

At this point, he studies the deadbolt, grabs a wrench, strikes it eight times – hard – until it retracts. Maximum Verbosity: the mark of quality.

We opened tonight, and actually had a decent audience, largely because of our preview last night, I suspect. They didn’t laugh much, which means that we either flopped or had a crowd of introverts. The former seems the only safe assumption, if only because I have no control over the latter.

There’s two things that I found really bothering me. The show is punctuated by musical interludes, written by cast members Neil Fennell and Mike Shaeffer. The first one in particular is pretty crowd-pleasing stuff, exactly the kind of topical material that the script proper works so hard to avoid: I’ve encouraged its involvement, both because I think that the left-wingers in the audience need something to engage with, and as something appealing to throw them in the midst of a very language-heavy script.

In one rehearsal, Courtney criticized the opening number, claiming that “The audience is going to be so into what they’re doing that they’re not going to be into the script.” And she’s absolutely right.

There’s also a sketch part way through – difficult to describe, but it basically plays out as an argument between Penner – who favors a more thoughtful, cerebral approach – and Max Verbosity, who favors a more crowd-pleasing, community-theatre approach to entertainment. Part of the gag is that the actual structure of the comedy shifts – in the beginning, it plays out as a Penner-esque comedy dialogue, and concludes as an action-comedy as envisioned by Max Verbosity. The latter half is, unfailingly, more popular than the former, thus proving the point of both its protagonists – and that fact drives me up the fucking wall.

I’ve claimed before, and I’ll continue to defend the point – I’m not Penner. But I do favor his more cerebral style, and it’s intensely frustrating to me that the more shallow material is more popular. For most of our audience, political comedy breaks down to little more than a kind of tribalism – they hear the phrases that they recognize, in the context of an ideology that they’ve signed up with. The actual *structure* of the joke means far less than whether or not they hear the phrases that are familiar to them.

I suppose the fact that I favor Penner’s position in this makes me something of an elitist – and that’s an unforgivable sin, in a context in which I’m supposed to be a populist. But, yeah, I favor those who are able to deconstruct ideas over those who simply respond to the ones that they already recognize. I don’t know how I’m supposed to build an audience with that philosophy, but it’s one that kinda makes me want to pierce my ears with a railroad spike.

The other thing that really bothers me is an exchange that I had with our techs:

TECH GUY: Yeah, I was laughing at the sketch, but you realize that you’re working in, like, the most segregated city in the United States, right?

ME: I guess. But the worst-case scenario is that I just get shot, right?

TECH GUY: You won’t get shot. Three blocks over that way (he points in one direction) is where all the beaners live, and that’s where you’ll get stabbed. Three blocks over that way (he points in the other direction) you’ll get shot.

Now, I recognize that it’s entirely possible – even likely – that they were simply fucking with me. But it’s still intensely disheartening. I know that – as a political comic – I operate in an occasionally dangerous profession – I’ve certainly received more than enough death threats in the past five years to cement that idea for me. But at the same time, I’ve come to realize that most of those threats are empty.

And still, it’s frustrating. Racism has always been a difficult concept for me, not least because I’m the child of an interracial marriage. It’s difficult because it’s so fundamentally irrational – there’s no real way to reason with it. ‘Tis in grain, sir; ‘twill endure wind and weather. I recognize that the fear of getting shot or stabbed because I use a racial slur onstage is nothing short of a kind of a terrorism, and I refuse to allow it to dictate my writing – not out of any kind of simple-minded nobility, but simply because I don’t know how to write anything at all with that many mental blocks on my brain.

The real challenge for me, I suppose, is that I have little hesitation about defending my text as a solo performer – I am, however, *very* hesitant about asking an ensemble to do the same thing. It’s a community of people who signed up to do a fun, silly comedy by a comic who is, for whatever reason, a flavor of the month – it’s absurd for me to ask them to then defend that text against the threat of physical violence.

I suppose that, at the end of the day, this whole line of thought is academic – nothing more than ink on paper. But then, words are important. Names mean something. And if Maximum Verbosity is about anything, it’s about that.

Quarter-Life Crisis Plus One Year

2008-07-22T20:08:00.005-06:00

I continue to express the same astonishment that I did one year ago today – that the vast, interlocking system of web networks have made the process of my continued aging one of public knowledge. Not that I’d like to devote *too* much space to this kind of angst – beyond noting the fact that, yes, I’m now officially in my late twenties, past the last major milestone of youth, and still nowhere near where I suspect that I need to be.

A couple of people who knew that it was my birthday expressed dismay that I would be on the road, instead of comfortably at home – and, y’know? In spite of how vocally I may complain, I wouldn’t have it any other way. In fact, I’d like that to be a goal for the rest of my life – to be performing, somewhere on the road, on my birthday, from now until the day that I either die or reach a state of such drooling incompetence that I’m an utter embarrassment to everyone around me.

A year ago today, I hopped into a car, with nothing but myself, a music stand slung over my shoulder, and a bag full of props. As much as I admire and enjoy the rest of my cast, I can’t help feeling nostalgic for the days when I was only responsible for myself: there’s an incredible amount of time, money, and stress that comes with mobilizing a team of people. Again, not a complaint about the cast that I’m currently working with, who I consider to be pretty much top-of-the-line – but it’s a psychological leap, to suddenly have to be considering the actions of six individuals, rather than simply my own.

But I’m now in the land of ribs, Royals, and rednecks, and there’s nothing like the surge of adrenalin that hits on being part of another Fringe Festival. I won’t romanticize it – at its core, it’s just another drug, and I’m just another junkie. But I’m in a state that I’ve never been before, and there’s a whole community of artists who’s never even heard of me, and I’m right back where I started years ago, and that’s – incredibly exhilarating.

Our piece was fun, I think. Doing the ad-libbed introduction to it for the audience, I was viscerally reminded – in a way that I haven’t been for nearly a year – how dependent I’ve become on my audience already knowing my schtick in advance – the hand-wringing, the anxiety, et cetera. Minnesota audiences respond to it immediately with a knowing laugh when I play to it. But entering a new environment, I have to quickly sketch out the character in a few broad strokes, giving them enough information rapidly and efficiently to enjoy the acrobatics that he’s put through.

We did the same piece that we performed for the Fringe-For-All in Minnesota – but this time, it was to a crowd that I don’t know, and one that doesn’t know us. And one thing I’ve come to love about it – and out of context, I wonder if it isn’t even more effective – one character pronounces the word “nigger,” and you can feel the whole audience pull back. Then, a few moments later in the same sketch, he drops the words “honkey” and “chink” – and, unfailingly, everyone laughs. A-ha – it’s appalling if a white guy says “nigger,” but if he calls me and my family “chinks,” it’s funny. There’s a double-standard at work, and one that could only be so clearly evident in an interactive medium. I have no idea if the audience registers it, but it’s fascinating to play.

(Assuming, of course, that I don’t get the shit beat out of me. I’m not nearly so familiar with exactly how this environment works, and Missouri is a stone’s-throw away from the racial tensions of the deep South.)

Truthfully, I was worried about how our work would be received – I bit my tongue asking our coordinator if profanity was off-limits, because I was afraid he would say “yes” – but where some of the stuff we do is shocking in Minnesota, it’s downright tame down here. There were points where I felt that I was twisting arms to get actors to remove clothing, but at least two of the shows tonight were top-of-the-line burlesque. In fact, since it was my birthday, I think that Courtney probably has several pictures floating around the internet of me, drunk, with naked women hanging all over me. I’ll post them if it becomes possible.

One of the other previews also included a dancing bear in a fez. I don’t remember whose idea it was (Michael’s? I think?) – but I did extend him an invitation: if he shows up before any one of our shows in the bear outfit, we’ll throw him onstage for one of the scenes. I’m amazed that I still remember this in the morning.

After the previews, a couple of the musicians in my cast got together with musicians from other groups and jammed out front in the street while we handed out postcards. Minnesota represent, I suppose. It’s always strange, being in an environment where coming from Minneapolis makes you at least somewhat exotic.

I’m also lucky to have a cast that includes several marketing *machines*. Courtney alone is ridiculously aggressive when it comes to pushing the show onto new people, and that’s a gift of immeasurable value.

Late tonight, we met at the front desk a member of the Libertarian Party of Missouri (who had moved from Texas a few years back). She was very cute, and meeting a “friend” for tonight, and I’ll simply assume that she wasn’t a prostitute. But I had a reasonably interesting (if brief) conversation with her about politics in the area. Fringe audiences are notoriously left-wing, and I’m grateful for any sympathetic face I can find. In any case, I gave her one of our free comps, since I don’t really have any family or friends in town to distribute them to.

We open tomorrow, God help us. He should be keeping an eye on the place – we’re in the Bible belt, after all.

Fringe-For-All 2008

2008-07-16T14:05:00.003-06:00

Fringe-For-All was a pretty wild time, as usual: a packed house of enthusiastic theatregoers, and a rapid-fire smorgasboard of various categories of lunacy.

I was actually pretty anxious going in -- a lot of the success of my show last year is due to the fact that I killed at this showcase. As I recall, I came up with my performance the day of -- a punk-jazz CD that a friend had recommended to me arrived that day, I popped it in, and -- click. I knew what I was doing. I threw out the old idea, rehearsed it a couple of times, and hit the stage.

Used a pretty similar process with this one, in that I didn't figure out what we were doing until pretty much the last minute. I spent weeks on several false starts -- including one that memorably involved an American flag and a leaf-blower -- before one of my actors joked, "Why don't we just do all of the scenes at once?"

That idea wouldn't work -- but something like it might. I whipped together a script overnight and away we went. The result was successful, I think -- not a big hit that people will be talking about for a while, but entertaining and interesting enough that we probably sold a few tickets.

But why listen to me theorizing about it? Judge for yourself. The Fringe has taken the initiative to put all of the previews on YouTube, and ours can be found at this link.

(photo by Scott Pakudaitis)

An Idle Thought

2008-07-14T23:53:00.000-06:00

I just finished the Chronicles of Narnia again. I continue to believe what I believed as a kid: that chapter twelve of "The Silver Chair" is one of the finest things ever written.

I'm repeatedly moved by how seductive the witch's enchantment is -- and that Puddleglum, the eternal cynic, is the only one who's resistant to it. The speech he gives -- claiming that, yes, we live in a fallen world, and that it's full of misery and degradation and bloodshed -- and that he still chooses to behave as though there was something better than that, in spite of evidence to the contrary -- is an intensely moving one to me.

So the reason I think that Puddleglum is Lewis' greatest creation is the same reason that I think that Angel is the greatest television show ever created -- that he espouses much the same philosophy in "Epiphany." And that philosophy is pretty much the centerpiece of "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" -- that in his final battle against the Despiser, his triumph emerges from the fact that, yes, he believes that everything that he loves is an illusion that he conjured in his own mind -- and it's still worth dying for.

So, yeah. Puddleglum, Angel, Thomas Covenant -- I don't know what it is about all three of them that makes them so heroic to me. But I note that they're all cynics, all skeptics, who unflinchingly confront the worst that reality has to offer -- and all three of them still choose to behave in a way that's heroic. Not in spite of that fact, but because of it.

Heroism without hope -- true bravery that emerges from despair. That's something that's very close to my core theology. And something that, ultimately, is the antithesis of everything that Barack Obama preaches, and that his followers believe.

Profane Political Parables

2008-07-11T10:39:00.001-06:00

So I've been having a lot of conversations with one of the members of my cast lately (because we hang out entirely too much), and one issue that's come up is that "this isn't really sketch comedy." And she's right -- it's not. It's something a lot like sketch comedy, in that it consists of a compilation of short pieces, which are (hopefully) funny, intended to get people relaxed and laughing. But structurally? Not quite.

And I made the comment (drunk and high at the time, as I recall, the state from which all truly profound realizations emerge) that the pieces aren't sketch comedy. They're fables. Structurally, they have a lot more to do with Aesop than Lorne Michaels. They all consist of broad, cartoonish characters tumbling out, having absurd arguments with each other that play out in ludicrous ways, that generally culminate in some kind of political moral or thesis.

Another comment she made, that emerged from another similar session, is that "we don't want to be preachy."

This also got me thinking. Is that true? I know that conventional wisdom right now is that preachy is the worst thing that you can possibly be -- how dare you try to inundate your audience with a message, et cetera -- but the fact that something is unpopular doesn't necessarily make it wrong. I mean, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is my favorite Twain novel, one of my favorite novels of all time -- and it's probably the single preachiest book ever written. It's also fucking hilarious.

And I go down the list of artists who I truly love, who have really deeply affected me -- Aristophanes, Moliere, Charlie Chaplin -- and every single one of them is obnoxiously, unapologetically preachy. It's one thing my character even complains about the show (probably preaching, as it were) -- that the currently acceptable approach to theatre is to turn inwards, to pick apart psychological states; plays that try to deal with broader issues are dismissed as pretentious. And personally, I kind of think that that's a sign of a sickness.

I'll keep calling the play "sketch comedy," because that's the only way I know how to market it. I doubt I could sell "profane political parables" to anybody. But, y'know -- I hope they still find an audience. And one that's willing to laugh, even if there is a moral floating through the story.

July 4th, 2008

2008-07-05T15:25:00.000-06:00

So I dutifully spent my Treason Day as every American should: seeing good theatre, drinking good beer, and watching shit blow up.

While I was waiting for my bus on Nicollet Mall, a cadre of naked bikers coasted past, singing The Star-Spangled Banner. Near me, an Old White Dude shook his head in disgust.

OWD: I like bicycles, but there's no excuse for that. That's why I live in the suburbs.

He notices me leaning against a pillar and reading City Pages.

OWD: Excuse me. Move that newspaper.

I do so, hesitantly. Now, note that I'm wearing a T-shirt with an image of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, with the caption "I'm from the government. I'm here to help."

OWD: So, that's Beijing?
ME: Yeah, man, Tiananmen Square.
OWD: Oh.

(pause)

OWD: China deserves to be fucking crushed.

(pause)

OWD: I'm going to go get a copy of The Onion.

(pause)

OWD: Thanks for talking to me.

(pause, then, walks away)

Now, I know I don't look Chinese -- my Hennepin County Jail wristband blandly identifies me as a "WHITE MALE". And it's not as though I disagree with the underlying sentiment. Although I wouldn't necessarily use the word "deserves." Or "crushed." And I might want to add a couple of qualifiers to "China." But "fucking" I'm totally on board with.

This exchange, edifying as it was, did get me to thinking. Even if China's current government could be easily, peaceably dismantled, would that be desirable? It's not even close to addressing the underlying problem of what China is, and has been for longer than any other country. The citizens of every nation are indoctrinated by their respective societies, but the Chinese people have been subjugated to a single monstrous intellect for two and a half thousand years. I'm not referring to Mao Zedong or Karl Marx, both of whom are fairly late comers to the party; I'm referring to Confucius, whose collectivist philosophy perhaps found its ultimate expression in Communist doctrine.

After all, isn't this one of the underlying problems of the occupation of Iraq? We tear down a secular dictatorship, only to find a significant body of people who want to set up a theocracy. Contrary to what The Rascals would like to believe, ask me my opinion, my opinion will be -- people everywhere don't want to be free. Certainly one of the many issues I struggle with within my own faith is the concept of one man dying for another's sins. Is it possible to pay for somebody else's sins? Isn't that something like what we're trying to do? And from whence does the moral authority come to make a sacrifice like that meaningful?

My understanding is that the most rational and moral course available to us is one of non-interventionism. It's certainly possible that that's a mistaken belief, based on a poor education. And it's certainly true that that understanding rejects me from the two major parties, both of whom seem to believe that overseas intervention and entangling alliances are necessary to our continued stability -- a fact making this November's election yet another no-win scenario for me.

But thinking about all of these ideological and geopolitical conflicts leaves me with one clear thought: that our own revolution, two-hundred and thirty-eight years ago, was nothing short of a miracle, in both a military and philosophical sense.

So thanks, Old White Dude. And a happy Treason Day to you, too.

It's Like the Inside of My Head Just Barfed Onto Your Screen

2008-07-02T16:28:00.000-06:00

So one of the musicians for the show, in working on a song, compiled a list of topics covered by the text. It's too good not to share.

- underwear
- soldiers
- war
- killing
- cheesecake
- stripping your child
- "Why can't I stick that there?"
- verbal uncle abuse
- bloody spear
- desire for knowledge
- rotting corpse
- American television
- Green Party
- exposure
- hippies
- peace leagues
- pretentious peaceniks
- wannabe hippies
- the war machine
- government corruption
- "Give Peace a Chance"
- white guys
- shitty poems
- pacifists
- the KKK
- late night cable porn
- jerking off your brother
- zombies
- political debates
- politicians
- moderators
- soapbox speeches
- the electoral system
- "Christ on a minibike"
- homophobia
- boobs
- lesbians
- Max Verbosity
- chronic misanthropes
- Neil fucking Simon
- guns
- beer
- cheetos
- granola
- wine
- "the discipline box"
- rape scene
- bombs
- granola-crunching bleeding-heart liberal hippie bullshit
- Chinese ninja aliens
- confessions
- Catholic priests
- stabbing the baby Jesus
- Harry Potter
- Keira Knightley's nipples
- Michael Jackson
- suicidal tendencies
- rednecks
- Osama bin Laden
- Cinemax
- comic book discussions

He also compiled the following list of vulgarities, which, if read aloud, becomes almost poetic:

- fuck
- goddamn idiot
- shut the fuck up
- god
- you stupid fucking asshole
- bullshit
- fag
- faggot
- China baby
- bee-yatch
- half-retarded
- shit
- chinks
- ass
- fuckin' up
- fuckin' enough
- fuckin' the right people
- crips
- queers
- baby dispensers
- cock puppets
- niggers
- beaners
- honkeys
- colored people
- blacks
- whites
- bitch
- tits
- slut-whompers
- jew
- dick

All Rights Reserved: A Libertarian Rage! Opening July 21st in Kansas City!

The Best Defense Is Being Offended

2008-06-13T15:57:00.000-06:00

So we've started rehearsals for our next show, All Rights Reserved: A Libertarian Rage, which is a rewrite and a remount of a show we did a couple of years back -- the show that initially got me into political writing. Like most of Maximum Verbosity's shows, one of its primary themes is language, in this case how it operates within the realm of politics. One of the ways this is represented is through the use of profanity and racial slurs throughout the script.

When I initially wrote those scenes, I recall sitting down and thinking through the implications very carefully. I recognize the fact that there are some people -- indeed, a significant portion of the population -- who can find the mere existence of a word to be offensive, even painful. Surely, I thought, I must be able to connect to that mentality on some level -- there must be at least one word, somewhere in the English lexicon, that fills me with rage.

But there isn't. As a student of language, I've always had the sense that words, by themselves, mean nothing -- they're complete abstractions of the concept they represent: an arbitrary collection of syllables; ink on paper. Their meaning is defined entirely by intent and context. I'm reminded of a quote by Larry Elder:

Hate crime legislation forces us to place greater value on some victims because of race. By all means, we should prosecute bad conduct. But if I'm standing at an ATM machine and a Ku Klux Klansman hits me in the back of the head with a brick, the operative word is not "Klansman." It is "brick."

I'm also conscious of individual words as bearing the weight of history. Am I being excessively semantic to point out that the word "nigger" ultimately emerged from the Latin "niger" -- a form of speech that hasn't been widely used in nearly 1600 years? That it has derivants in every Romance language? That it was a neutral descriptive in our own country until about 150 years ago? That 150 years from now, it will no doubt carry a completely different connotation?

Oprah's serene assertion that the word should be stricken from the dictionary (to full-house applause by an interracial audience) seems to me to be to be nothing less than an attempt to -- if you'll forgive the phrase -- whitewash history. Language isn't an absolute, but an evolving organism; and for someone fascinated with that process, witnessing the attempts of the black community to consciously reclaim the word has been compelling stuff.

These are all arguments I've been making for years. But picking up this project again, I find that my thinking has developed, and I think that my beef runs a little deeper than that.

I'm not prepared to say that I'm totally immune to being offended by something, but I think I certainly have a higher threshold than most. If someone says something I disagree with, I'm far more likely to laugh, shrug my shoulders, think "Wow, that dude is crazy," and go on my way. If I were to be physically attacked for my minority status, my emotional response would be fear for my life -- being "offended" on behalf of the race I was born into would, I imagine, be very far from my mind in that moment! A lot of my writing has been offensive to a lot of people, although that's never been my intention. And here, I think, is why it bothers me so much:

Ultimately, it's hard for me to read taking offense as anything other than attempt to seize control of the conversation. To be "offended" by something is to immediately put your opponent on the defensive. This is one of the reasons that polical correctness is subjected to much ridicule: that, for example, the appropriate term for an American of African descent has been, at various points, negro, nigger, colored person, person of color, black, African-American, Afro-American -- and none of them are an appropriate descriptive of the range of ethnicities it applies to! To use the wrong one in the wrong environment is to demonstrate how out of touch you are, to force you to apologize, to put you on the defensive.

This is perhaps more visible in the left -- but the right is, if anything, worse -- it's just that their sacred cows are differently placed. Try to say anything critical of America's recent military ventures, and, oh! The offense! The umbrage! And we have to twist ourselves into knots apologizing, affirming our patriotism, beating the nationalist drum. It's a dirty trick, and one that's killed dead just about any meaningful dialogue we could have about the war. Or race. Or language. Or any number of other issues.

None of this is new -- after all, it was just a few centuries ago in Britain where it was a stated crime, punishable by death, to think treason against the king. In a representative republic, we've organized our "forbidden language" around a different set of concepts. Could we at least stop being offended long enough to figure out where we all stand beneath this steadily-growing morass of forbidden words and phrases?

This Is Fucking Ridiculous

2008-05-15T08:49:00.003-06:00

So this is what they mean when they said irony is dead.

Theatre and Theology: Addendum and Apocrypha

2008-04-28T15:49:00.003-06:00

A few years back, I wrote a series of essays about theatre and theology, in preparation for my coverage of the (now-defunct) Spiritual Fringe. Since I’m gearing up to start writing reviews of yet another spirituality-themed theatre festival, I thought it might be worthwhile to revisit some of my thinking about the subject. After all, I’ve had two years – two more years of wrestling with my faith and my career, and I think I’m better equipped to articulate some of my thoughts again.

First of all, I consider my faith to be the center of my life and work. My thinking and writing about other subjects – politics, art – is a direct result of my thinking about more metaphysical issues. I suspect that this makes me something of an aberration within my profession – I would characterize the attitude of most local artists towards religion to vary from a kind of vague disinterest to outright hostility, with a few pockets of warm enthusiasm. Though I would argue that all of my plays have a religious subtext, there’s rarely anything explicit in the work. Yet another reason that I’m drawn to fantasy – metaphor is a powerful tool for examining ideology.

Yet I, like most, find the Bible-thumping fundamentalism of the neoconservatives to be actively repugnant, a fusion of religion and politics that capitalizes on the worst of both. So I spent some time exploring the more left-wing, social-justice-driven religious movements, and found myself kinda wanting to thump a Bible. Why? Aside from my own contrary nature?

I suspect that, in an age of globalization, the defining artistic movement is fusion – fusion between different disciplines and specializations, fusion between cultures. Religion has not been left untouched by this movement, and many of the more progressive churches have proudly absorbed many of the tenets of Eastern thought.

I’m no stranger to Eastern philosophy – and I suspect that, having seen China up close, I’m more willing than most to acknowledge the dark side of Confucianism. That said, I have a profound admiration for the writings of Lao Tzu and the Pali Canon. Attempting to summarize the whole of Eastern thought is a dangerous and foolish endeavor – roughly equivalent to, say, trying to sum up the single message of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – but if I had to try to single out what’s drawn *me* to those particular texts, it’s the idea of the self as a self-created illusion. The bulk of our suffering is self-created, and the things that cause us pain are the things that we cling to unnecessarily. That’s a huge, towering, terrifying idea, if all of the implications of it are examined closely.

So I’ve been to the churches that consist of people lounging around on couches, and I’ve read the (could they be more ironically titled?) self-help literature – I’ve heard priests preaching the power of positive thinking, and watched their congregations practicing their healing affirmations. Now, some might say that a Catholic upbringing damaged me too deeply to properly appreciate these behaviors; others might say that it effectively armored me against what a seductive school of thought this is. But I can’t avoid the observation that Americans – the most self-centered people in the history of our species, and oh do I love us for it – have taken these texts, built a new religious movement, and placed the self directly at the center of it. These movements revolve almost entirely around self-affirmation – around making *you* feel better. And that’s not the fulfillment of Eastern thought – that’s its ultimate perversion.

And then the Bible-thumping minister in me rears his head, and says – religion isn’t supposed to make you feel good. It’s supposed to make you feel *bad*. It’s not supposed to tell you to be content with yourself just the way you are – it’s supposed to urge you to strive to be something much *better*. God forbid, maybe a little fire-and-brimstone would be good for us. Especially living in an age of apathy and affirmation.

And the end result is that it takes the philosophy of liberalism, and *tries to articulate it as a religion*. It boils down to little more than the welfare state with Jesus’ smiling face stapled on top of it. And, yeah, that’s every bit as repugnant as neoconservatism. More so, if only because it strikes me as being more dishonest. Affirming for me why I choose to avoid getting sucked into the two-party struggle. Right-wing, left-wing, no-wing; jackboots are one-size-fits-all.

So this is a big part of my struggle with religious theatre – it so often boils down to little more than political diatribe in the trappings of religion. I *have* to believe that meaningful fusion is at least possible, even if it’s almost impossible to find. In any case, I'll be exploring the ideas for the next month over at Womb with a View.

X-TREME WRITING!

2008-04-08T13:41:00.001-06:00

So a while ago I read the novel "Empire" by Orson Scott Card. I'm a fan of his fiction, less so of his political writing -- frankly, I think he's off his rocker most of the time, and obnoxiously dismissive of anyone who disagrees with him, although he will occasionally startle me with a well-reasoned and fairly-argued point about a controversial issue. So I was looking forward to this one, not least because its premise -- a civil war breaking out in the contemporary United States -- is an interesting one to me.

It's appallingly bad.

Leaving its politics aside, its literary qualities are pure camp, played with an absolutely unironic intensity. Its heroes are all unflinching, steely-eyed, square-jawed military men; its villains cringing, conniving academics plotting the overthrow of the free world. The prose is riddled with intrusive editorials from his blog. It's almost impossible to believe that this emerged from the same mind that created the tales of Alvin Maker -- stories about a group of men and women trying to stop a civil war that are thoughtful, layered, and inventive. Seriously. This reads like one of Stephen Colbert's Tek Jansen novels, only it's not a parody.

I suspect that all of these issues are symptomatic of an underlying conceptual problem. The basic argument of the book is as follows: that all of the moderates need to get together and stop arguing, or the extremist wackos will break us apart. On its face, this seems like a reasonable position, and echoes one that I've been hearing in political discourse for a while. The problem is that it's bullshit. Read his work closely, and his definitions become a bit less opaque. Do you support homosexual marriage? Then you're a wacko! Do you oppose the occupation of Iraq? Then you're a wacko! And pretty soon, it becomes clear that the real argument of the book reads thus: that all of the moderates (people who think what I do) need to get together and stop arguing, or the extremist wackos (everyone who disagrees with me) will break us apart.

It's a rhetorical trick -- six of one, half a dozen of the other. For that matter, I have a hard time seeing the virtue of moderation as a guiding moral principle, period. Sure, you can look around you and draw up an average of the opinions of everyone within your political boundaries -- and I guess that would make you a moderate, if such a thing is to be desired -- but in nearly every other place and time in human history, you'll be a raving extremist. You believe in representative government? Guess what? In the context of most other civilizations throughout time, you're a wacko. I know that it's an extreme example. but if you were a moderate in Nazi Germany, I wouldn't want to know you. What's to be gained by seeking a middle position between two morally untenable ones? The founding fathers weren't seeking a reasonable middle position, and they were quite openly contemptuous of those who did. This guy sure as hell wasn't a moderate about anything.

After I spoke at my Republican caucus, I was followed by a man who stood up and asserted that "an election is not the time to assume a moral position." Buh? Then when is the appropriate time? When there's nothing at stake? When there's nothing to be either gained or lost by espousing a principle?

I'm annoyed with myself, because I've been so hesitant to support Ron Paul. For a number of reasons. He seems too good to be true, for one thing, and I've been burned by politicians before -- the last time I was this enthusiastic about a politician was Bill Clinton in 1996. (Which, I suppose, demonstrates how far my politics have swung in the past decade.) For another, I'm embarrassed to be playing to type, to be so utterly predictable. A fellow playwright asked me who I was supporting a couple of weeks back, then cut me off before I could respond: "Oh, you're a libertarian. You're just going to be supporting Ron Paul."

So yeah, I'm annoyed with myself. Not because I haven't been shoving my opinions down people's throats (like, I'm afraid, so many other Ron Paul supporters have been doing), but because I've been squatting over my enthusiasm for him, stammering and changing the subject even when people ask me point blank who I like in the race -- when I'm faced with the most exciting political candidate I've seen in my lifetime. In a way, that's why I'm pleased to see the success of Obama's candidacy, despite my profound dislike for his policies -- that someone has the opportunity to support a candidate that they can believe in. Lord knows the Republicans don't. When presented with the options, they chose the path of political expediency.

And if that's the voice of moderation, then I'll none of it. If there's a basic argument to what I'm trying to say, it reads thus: that all of the extremists need to keep arguing...

...before the self-styled moderates find a way to pull us together.

My Life as a Political Insider

2008-03-04T01:13:00.000-06:00

As probably does not surprise anybody reading this, I'm a Ron Paul supporter. As may surprise some reading this, I am enough so that I actually sucked it up and attended my local Republican precinct caucus on Super Tuesday. That's right -- I shaved, buttoned up my shirt, and plunged into enemy territory. I haven't really been widely advertising this fact.

So my intention was to go in, lay low, cast my votes for sympathetic delegates, and slink back into irrelevance. But then the convention started, and people started talking, and I started getting irritated with everyone, and then *I* started talking, and I talked for a while, and then people started arguing, and then somebody raised his hand and nominated me as a delegate, and a bunch of people voted for me.

The three primary slots went to the McCain supporters, but I somehow got elected as one of the alternates; which is how I found myself at the Republican Convention for Senate District 44 in Hopkins tonight.

So, I'm a playwright. In Minneapolis. Which means that I find myself operating in a pretty lefty crowd, most of the time. And most of my energy goes towards arguing with that. So tonight, I was startled to be reminded of a fact that I'd pretty much forgotten: I really fucking can't stand Republicans.

I've spent the past five years performing in front of a variety of crowds, in a variety of different contexts, and if I've picked up one new ability in that time, it's a sensitivity to audience response. And the "playful" back-and-forth between the speakers and the crowd was riddled with so much understated racism, homophobia, and xenophobia, I still feel a little slimy thinking about it.

I walked out early, unbuttoning my shirt on the way. My brief, experimental return to the two-party system has fizzled out rather abruptly. For better or worse, I'm officially back in my role as a political outsider. Which, in retrospect, is probably the place I belong.

Maybe you can, but man, I hope you can't.

2008-02-05T23:31:00.001-06:00

'Kay, I'm drunk enough now to poke my head out of my current pseudo-retirement from political blogging, but I've just sat through Obama's speech and I just have a few quick things I'd like to go on record as having said.

First of all, I've resigned myself to this election being one of three heartbreaks for me: first, Doug Stanhope's dropping out of the race several months ago; second, Ron Paul's brutal trouncing tonight; and third, whichever one of these aggressive interventionists ends up wielding the most powerful military force in human history in November.

Believe me, I'm well aware how absurd my position must seem to everyone else. It goes beyond rooting for the underdog. It's not rooting for the Giants: it's more like, say, rooting for the Twins during the Superbowl.

A while back, Bill posted Obama's speech The Great Need of the Hour in an enthusiastic display of support. I would, if I may, like to point at this speech as being symptomatic of exactly why I'm incapable of supporting him. In this speech, he is the author of a concept known as an "empathy deficit"; I am the author of the essay Empathy is the Enemy. I maintain my original position: as a guide for individual behavior, empathy is a powerful and beautiful force; as a guide for designing a monolithic Federal government, nightmarish.

Barack and his supporters talk enthusiastically of wide-eyed idealism, of overcoming the negative impact of cynicism in our politics. I am, unapologetically, a cynic, a skeptic -- to the point that I have placed the desire to question at the center of every play I've ever written, every vote I've ever cast, at the center of my entire existence. Seeing a roomful of people chanting "Yes we can" in unison is not an inspiring image to me -- rather, it's one of the most chilling that I can imagine. As I watch the candidates of both major parties preaching varying degrees of collectivism, I find myself wondering whether I would be one of the first to be "reformed" by their new regime.

Am I paranoid? Yeah, maybe. But I look at the remaining field of candidates, and for a non-interventionist, my heart can only sink. On the right, I see a community of people who want to wield American military might in the Middle East like a game of Whack-a-Mole, swinging wildly at everything they see, planting permanent bases in every country with an oil interest and spreading democracy at the point of a sword. On the left, I see a community of people embedding our country deeper and deeper still into ever more elaborate systems of entangling alliances. Who the hell am I supposed to vote for? How the hell am I not supposed to be a cynic?

And once again I'm a Catholic schoolboy, glancing about me in despair, marveling at the capacity for faith of everyone around me, at the ability to surrender completely to an ideology. But I can't, I just can't, no matter how appealing the idea is to me.

Because I'm a cynic.

What a Bunch of Poonises

2007-09-26T13:08:00.001-06:00

My nephew has recently coined the word "poonis," under the logical (and etymological, and scatological) reasoning that if pee comes out your penis, then the anatomical region that produces poo must be your poonis. I've rapidly developed an intense fondness for this word, not least because it seems to me to neatly encapsulate my current feelings about the Democratic Party.

I often feel out of step with the rest of the LME crowd -- not so much because of the philosophical differences, but because I so rarely talk about current events, preferring to use this space as a place to think about the relationships of individuals to their societies in a much broader, less specific sense. I pay fairly close attention to day-to-day politics -- I'm something of a news junkie -- but I just don't feel that I have much to say about it.

Take the current debate over the surge, for example. What's the big story here? That the Democrats continue to be a pack of pussies, worn, torn, stretched, and bleeding from brutal overuse? That the Republicans continue to form a line of glistening, erect penises, eagerly thrusting in and out of whatever oily orifice they can find? It's hardly worth coming up with the crude analogy, although I did enjoy the triple pun in the word "crude."

Briefly spent some time in a resort village. I'm told that the landscape was beautiful, though this may have been obscured for me by the presence of four Starbucks in a single square mile. Partway through the trip, we discovered a sign that boasted the opportunity to "Make Your Own Ice Cream." We eagerly rushed forward, to discover their offer of ANY combination of chocolate or vanilla, with ANY combination of either a waffle cone or a cup. Buh? Those are significantly *less* options than just about any ice cream shop I've ever been to.

The rhetoric of self-determination requires only the illusion of choice. And -- in an age where we're coming to accept a more fluid perception of human sexuality -- I find it ironic that our ultimate choice boils down to a bunch of pussies, or a bunch of dicks.

Channeling Andy Rooney

2007-09-15T18:17:00.000-06:00

In an airport again. On my way to Canada this time. Stopped to use a restroom -- three stalls, all lined up, all occupied. Used those motion-activated flushing mechanisms, which means that each time one of us shifted, the damn thing flushed again, which happened roughly every five seconds.

Aside from the horrific environmental waste, this is just stupid. Everything in the bathroom was automated, the sink, the soap, the toilets, the towels, and not one goddamn thing worked the way it was supposed to. An extraordinary amount of time, money, and effort went into making my bowel-moving experience both more wasteful and less convenient. And -- why? Because we've literally become too collectively lazy to wipe our own fucking asses?

I caught a few episodes of "American Inventor" a while back. I had some interest in the concept -- my father's a scientist, and most of our money growing up came from patents on his inventions -- but I was vaguely appalled by the steady stream of new bike seats, sunglasses, and perfume bottles. There wasn't a single new idea there, and these people had devoted years of their life and thousands of dollars to -- what? A better bar of soap?

If this (admittedly sensationalistic) piece of pop-culture is any indication, the new god of invention isn't progress but convenience. It's a sad irony that such an astounding amount of intelligence has gone towards developing new technologies that have pampered us into drooling incompetence. Living in such a decadent culture is almost enough to make me run off into the woords and become a survivalist.

But not quite. After all, what would I do if I needed to rent a Buffy DVD at 11:59pm?

Capitalism At Its Finest

2007-09-08T14:52:00.000-06:00

...and, in a truly fell stroke of irony, shortly after my last blog post I received the following e-mail:

Locate Registered Sex Offenders Living In Your Neighborhood

New registered sex offenders may have recently moved into your neighborhood or your city. Let us help you locate them with a quick search so you can better protect your loved ones.

I click on the link, which offers me a "Free search for sex offenders in my area." Inputting my zip code reveals that -- gasp! -- there is 1 sexual offender located in my immediate area. And, for a small activation fee, they'll tell me who he is!

That's right -- if you don't give us money, strangers could rape your children. Yeesh.

Yeah, this one might be unpopular.

2007-09-07T13:26:00.000-06:00

So I've been following the saga of Jack McClellan. The guy's a self-proclaimed -- and also non-practicing -- pedophile.

He's pretty much a grade-A creep. He claims to abbhor any kind of non-consensual relationship, then identifies his favored age-range as being between three and eleven years old. Now, on some basic, primal level of the reptile brain, I can grasp the appeal of a nubile teenager -- those are, after all, the years in which the body is transitioning to adulthood, and begins sending out all kinds of sexual signals. It's literally in our DNA. Not that I by any means condone someone who chooses to pursue a sixteen-year-old -- just saying that I recognize how it could happen. But, ugh. A three-year-old? What kind of consent could possibly take place?

There's some legal gray area here -- although he claims to have never touched a child, he's posted sites that are essentially "how-to" guides for meeting young girls, and he's been seen hanging around places like playgrounds. If I burst into a bar, wielding a gun and screaming profanities, I'm behaving in a threatening manner and should probably be stopped, regardless of whether or not I actually pump a bullet into someone. So legally articulating exactly where that line is is difficult.

That's a discussion worth having. But it's not a discussion that's taking place anywhere near the hysterical news coverage, in which every interview I've seen displays an undisguised disgust with a legal system that leaves a guy like this on the streets. And, y'know? I hate to be the one to say it, but the fact that this guy is on the streets is probably an indication that our legal system is *working*. If he hasn't committed a crime, then he isn't a criminal. Not that I'd allow this guy anywhere near, say, my niece -- but I don't see any way to bring down the hammer of the law without going in a direction that strikes me as fundamentally *worse*.

That's something like thought crime, something a lot like a pre-emptive strike -- the same kind of mentality that leads us to bomb nations under the mere suspicion that they have the means to harm us, the same kind of mentality that leads us to disarm law-abiding citizens. Jesus may have said "...if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out..." but this seems to me to be somewhat impractical as state policy.

We can't prosecute someone who hasn't committed a crime. That's the painful trade-off of living in a free society, the very thing that makes freedom so terrifying -- because it means sacrificing a degree of safety, a degree of security. The rule of law, and the presumption of innocence, both leave us occasionally exposed to criminals. But the alternative? The alternative is unthinkable.

Bridge to Nowhere

2007-08-21T13:23:00.000-06:00

Oh, City Pages. I can always rely on you for a measured response.

In addition to their latest cover -- an image of the collapsed bridge, with the caption "WHO'S TO BLAME?" -- Kevin Hoffman opened a mini-article last week with the following paragraph:

"President Bush didn't bother waiting until all the bodies had been recovered from the Mississippi river to politicize the disastrous collapse of the I-35W bridge at a morning press conference the day after the tragedy."

Now, my rejection of the Bush administration, and all of its works, and all of its empty promises, are a matter of public record -- but this seems to me to be a classic case of people getting angry with Bush for the wrong goddamn reasons.

I've heard a lot of people complaining about Bush callously taking advantage of a tragedy for a photo-op. But the thing is, he kinda has to. Why? Because if he didn't, we'd never let him live it down. We'd be indignantly blogging about how he doesn't even care enough about his constituents to put in an appearance. It's like how we crawl up his ass about not having attended any of his soldiers' funerals. The minute he did, we'd be expressing our dismay at how he takes advantage of their loss for his own gain. It's lose-lose, and not just for him.

The point I'm making is that that's the wrong debate for us to be having. Ultimately, I don't care if he shows up at the scene of a tragedy or not. Isn't he doing plenty of other scary shit we should be paying attention to?

As usual, I have one foot planted in both halves of the blogosphere -- and, as usual, both sides of the debate are pissing me off. Right-wingers are trumpeting the bridge collapse as a sign of government incompetence; left-wingers are using it as a rallying call against the Taxpayer's League. I'm all about accountability -- I'm all about doing everything we can to insure that something like this doesn't happen again. But am I alone in thinking that we need to at least wait for the results of the investigation before we can have anything resembling an intelligent debate about this?

Libertarian Theatre

2007-07-27T12:31:00.000-06:00

So the Minnesota Fringe is rolling around again -- and for those of you who aren't in the know, it's the largest non-juried theatre Festival in the country. That means there's an even keel -- there's 163 shows selected by lottery, who are then left to sink or float on their own devices. How's that for a free market system?

In any case, it's Christmas for theatre junkies, and I'm one of the Festival's in-house bloggers -- I preview dozens of plays to help the audience sift through what they're interested in seeing. As, apparently, the Twin Cities' sole anti-state theatre critic, I thought the readers of this blog might be interested in shows with a libertarian bent.

Bad Dad: A Comedy of Errers

I was lucky enough to catch a production of this while I was touring in Iowa, and it's one of the most explicitly anti-state plays I've ever seen, period. If you're looking to catch one show this time around, it's this one.

Bleak, bitter, and funny as hell, this show works precisely because it recognizes that there's *nothing* funny about the ideas it's ridiculing. It tells the story of a man trapped between banks, law firms, the IRS, the Supreme Court, and the weight of the US government -- and his frenzied attempts to beat the legal system at its own game, to win back his liberty and his family. It doesn't shy away from just how totally, unapologetically *fucked* all of us are, and that it's *not* just a minor inconvenience, it's *not* just some silly, bureaucratic hassle -- that we're all trapped as part of a system that ruthlessly destroys people's lives.

I want people to see this show, not just because I'm in passionate agreement with its message -- although, of course, I am -- but because it's *good satire*, dark, mean, smart, and hilarious. It's wrestling with ideas that almost *nobody* else is onstage right now, so please, please, please make an effort to this show.

That's really the only explicitly libertarian show I'm aware of in the Festival this year. There are, however, several libertarian *artists* who are producing work, if you're interested in supporting them:

Descendant of Dragons

This is my show. In the past four years, I've been to Canada, Portugal, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, the Fiji Islands, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China, doing research on my Chinese ancestry -- so if you're interested in going to all of those places in an hour, this is the show for you. Not explicitly political, but one of the major themes of the show is individualism versus collectivism, and my politics become a significant plot point once I actually enter red China towards the end.

Robert Anton Wilson's Masks of the Illuminati

Robert Anton Wilson may have chosen to call himself a "decentralist grassroots Jeffersonian", but his tongue-in-cheek approach to conspiracy theory made him something of a cult favorite to libertarians everywhere. The writer/producer, Tim Uren, blew me away last year with a slavishly faithful one-man retelling of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls," so this seems like one hell of a team-up to me.

Bouffon Glass Menajoree

A parody of the Tennessee Williams play. Bouffon clowning is hard to describe -- it's a form of French clowning that's sick, violent, hedonistic, and grotesque, pretty much the embodiment of contempt for authority. And by contempt, I don't mean a "ha-ha-let's-make-fun-of-Bush" contempt, I mean scary, cruel, raping-an-open-chest-wound kind of contempt. If you think that snuff films could use some wacky ragtime music in the background to lighten the mood, this is probably the show for you.

Tom Thumb, or The Tragedy of Tragedies

This is a collaboration between two of the Fringe's most talented entertainers, and it looks like all kind of whacked-out, trippy fun. The actor cornered me the other night, confiding in me (with all the glee of arrested adolescence) that they've made a real effort to cram in all the cock-and-ball jokes they could possibly think of, so that should tell you pretty clearly whether or not you're in the audience for this.

But I'm Not Bitter: Confessions of a Middle-Aged Lounge Lizard

To be honest, this show's kind of a crap shoot -- I've seen a few previews, and it could really be either brilliant or embarrassingly bad. The *script* is funny, smart, poetic at times, shifting between highbrow musings about Dante and Yeats to cheesy, Borscht-belt stand-up.

If you're interested in more of my thoughts, check out my Fringe blog Womb with a View. Remember, there's a lot of smart, edgy stuff happening out there -- and you can see more than one play a year.

The Next Generation

2007-07-16T12:21:00.000-06:00

My eleven-year-old niece is currently taking a radio drama class. She just wrote a commercial in which she does an impression of George Bush saying "Buy this product or the terrorists will win."

So...is it in the genes, or what?

This Is Not a Joke

2007-07-13T11:32:00.001-06:00

Okay, even *I* think this shit is terrifying:

http://freemarketunderdog.com/book.php

Words fail me. And that's saying a hell of a lot.

Why Does Political Theatre Have to Suck, Part One of a Very Likely Continuing Series

2007-07-07T17:45:00.000-06:00

A few weeks ago, a friend and I went to go see a production at a theatre which shall remain nameless. She wrote an excellent post about how silly and pretentious the programme was, and I agree, though I think for the most part harmlessly so. I would, however, like to leap on board ridiculing the symbol next to some of the actor's names, which indicated the following:

"Supports peace in the world, equality and justice for all, and the fundamental human rights of speech and all forms of artistic expression."

Now, why does this get under my skin so much? Well, perhaps because I don't *agree* with it. I'm no pacifist, and I don't support peace on general principle -- I believe in the concept of self-defense, and recognize that we live in a world where self-defense is frequently necessary. I also don't necessarily support the idea of equality -- there are, after all, those who devote their lives to helping others, and those who devote their lives to spreading harm, and I don't see those as being morally equivalent.

Some will say that I'm missing the point, and they're absolutely correct -- because this sentence is so ridiculously vague that it could mean just about anything. And that's what I find so offensive about it -- that it is smug, and self-congratulatory, and purports to be daring while saying nothing whatsoever at all.

Perhaps you've become so insulated that you believe that a statement like this is still challenging and provoking. But it's nothing more than cheap applause line, the kind that many college theatre groups are fond of making, and I don't accept it from you, because you are fucking better than this.

The Greatest "Fuck-You" in HIstory

2007-07-04T15:35:00.001-06:00

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such From, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Two hundred and thirty-one years ago today, fifty-six men were preparing to sign their own death warrant.

(The date is somewhat arbitrary -- the fourth was the adoption by the Continental Congress, not the date of its endorsement by various colonial delegates. Still, tradition is tradition.)

It's just something I was thinking about, as I see all the chest-beating and flag-waving, all these cries of patriotism and nationalism -- that there was a time when this date was chosen to celebrate the rebellion against authority, not submission to it.

After all, a death warrant is exactly what the Declaration of Independence was -- we've somehow ended up with this image of stodgy, stately old men signing a document that was already held in reverence. Then as now, there were plenty of people who enjoyed peace, security, and luxury, urging everyone not to make trouble, to keep your heads down, everything's gonna stay afloat as long as you don't rock the boat -- and there were a number who were prepared to paint a target on their own heads and those of everyone they loved, for a principle.

It's a hell of a document, perhaps the single most eloquently phrased "Fuck-you" in human history. Hell, every time a new "war power" is declared, every time I'm told not to question our government, I remember the words:

...when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

So fuck you, Bush, fuck you, two-party duopoly, fuck you, all of those people telling me what to do, what to think and what to feel. Jefferson may have articulated the idea with better skill than I'm capable of, but the spirit remains the same.

In any case, I'm off to enjoy the fine American tradition of Chinese fireworks. But let's not forget to raise a glass and toast to what Independence Day is all about:

Here's to high treason. I'll see you around.

I'm Writing So Much

2007-06-26T10:46:00.000-06:00

...even *I* can't keep track of all my blogs.

Womb with a View, on the website of the Minnesota Fringe Festival, contains my reviews of Twin Cities theatre. My production company's website is at Maximum Verbosity, and the Maximum Verbosity Production Blog contains plugs for my own work and musings on art in general. My political writing is for the most part cross-posted to both Libertarian Rage and Liberal Media Elite, two sites that, oddly enough, seem to have a very different audience.

For those whose interests overlap with mine in more than one place, or want to keep track what I've what I'm doing without hopping between five different sites, I've started a Livejournal which is nothing more than a collection of links to updates of the other blogs. Feel free to add or syndicate

penner_pott.livejournal.com

if it makes your life easier. I know it'll make mine.

Notes from Australia Journal

2007-06-13T15:07:00.001-06:00

(PHIL is visiting the AUSTRALIAN HOUSE OF PARLIAMENT with his nine-year-old Aussie nephew CALEB. They enter the GREAT HALL. It is an impressive sight. The two of them pause for a few moments to take it in.)

CALEB: Oy! I wish I had a basketball right now!
PHIL: (nodding sagely) Spoken like a true American, Caleb.

—

There’s a famous quote by the late Dr. Kinsey in which he wonders what America would have been like if it had been settled by criminals and hedonists, rather than religious fanatics, the implication being that a much more liberated society would have formed. He needed look no further than Australia, to see his thesis proved both right and wrong. They’re a lot like Americans, only without that wonky puritanical streak.

—

Visited the Aussie House of Parliament, and got separated from the others no less than twice, because I had to spend just a little more time with their copy of the Magna Carta — dating from 1299, when Edward I signed and distributed several copies, only four of which are still in existence.

Its easy to romanticize the document, regarding it as a triumph of the people over their monarch, when in reality it had a lot more to do with one small gang of thugs stealing power from the king for themselves. But still, it articulated a set of ideas and started a dialogue that was later picked up by figures like Richard Overton and Oliver Cromwell, Adam Smith and John Locke, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, and that’s still going on today. It’s hard to stand in the presence of that and not be sort of startled by it.

And, y’know, I never thought the day would come when I was waxing nostalgic for the right of Habeas Corpus. So there’s that.

—

Travelling with my father means listening to lots of arguments championing the cause of socialism, and that means necessary recourse to copious amounts of alcohol. This has led me to three observations:

1) Hard as it may be to believe that an advertising campaign has lied to me, Foster’s is something of a joke here.

2) Observed several signs indicating “WARNING: THE SERVING OF ALCOHOL TO SOMEONE WHO IS INTOXICATED IS A FEDERAL OFFENSE.” Where the hell is the fun in that? This is one of those laws that I assume isn’t really enforced. I can’t imagine what watering hole *could* enforce it and still stay in business.

3) Guinness is me brand, and it’s so hard to find here it’s ridiculous. Finally hit up a bar towards the end of the trip that had it on tap, and, mmmmm, there it is, that dark, creamy liquid flowing down my throat, black as the devil and cold as hell — how could anyone have ever made this shit illegal? If heaven doesn’t have a keg, I ain’t interested.

A New Low

2007-05-26T17:15:00.000-06:00

Currently in Australia, where my sister is in training to become a midwife. Got into a discussion with her about some of the political and legal ramifications of midwifery, and asked her if she'd contribute a few thoughts. I will now yield the floor to another cranky member of the Low clan.

Midwifery has never been illegal in Australia but it is very much under the thumb of the medical establishment. Midwives in Australia have traditionally practiced more as Obstetric Nurses (Mum uses the terms “midwife” and “obstetric nurse” interchangeably describing herself as both, something that would make modern midwives cringe) and Obstetricians set the policies and protocols. Hospitals are staffed by midwives (in the US they use Labour and Delivery Nurses) and 2/3s of Aussie babies are caught by midwives, but the majority of midwives practice under a medical model.

I have been involved in the starting up of Midwifery led units and it has been very very interesting. We have started one in Wollongong but it is very much under the control of our Consultant. He still sets the criteria for women to be "on the program". In fact you need a consultation with him in order to get on to the program! This is ridiculous as it is within a midwife’s scope of practice to care for women autonomously throughout pregnancy and childbirth, referring to an Obstetrician if anything deviates from normal. Obstetricians are specialists in complications of pregnancy and birth and the evidence shows that when healthy pregnant women are under the care of physicians the outcomes are inferior to a matched group being cared for by midwives. It is this medicalisation of normal pregnancy that costs a fortune, does not improve outcomes, and leads to a lot of unnecessary intervention (Australia is approaching a 40% caesarean section rate!) with the sequelae that goes along with it.

Back to our local consultant…interestingly, one of the requirements to take part in the Midwifery Group Practice (or MGP) is three ultrasounds during pregnancy, (btw, evidence shows routine ultrasound in pregnancy does not improve outcomes). If you decline to have these you are kicked off the program. The clincher? He owns the local ultrasound clinic! Ka ching!

Our local MGP was supposed to be a 6 month pilot in Wollongong then move out to Shellharbour (where I live) and operate at Shellharbour Hospital with no Obstetrician on site (complications requiring Obstetric care would require transfer to Wollongong). That was 4 years ago. The outcomes of the program are of course superior to the outcomes of the obstetric led care in hospital (midwifery care is always superior to obstetric care :) ) but whenever there is talk of the program going to Shellharbour we have headlines in the paper: "BABIES WILL DIE SAY LOCAL DOCTORS". I kid you not. The doctors have repeatedly stopped the program moving to Shellharbour and it operates in Wollongong still.

The AMA continually uses scaremongering tactics, and the “Babies will die” comments are usual whenever a new midwifery led unit opens. In fact one Queensland obstetrician, former Queensland president of the AMA, made headlines when he referred to the Brisbane Birth Centre as “The Killing Fields”. The Brisbane Birth Centre has superior outcomes to the general labour ward care. This particular OB runs a private practice that is 100% caesarean section.

Interestingly, this man (his name is David Molloy) appeared on 60 Minutes in a Caesarean Section promotion piece describing the procedure as “the choice of the emancipated woman” and also as the safest way to give birth. He overstated the risks of vaginal birth and understated the risk of Caesarean Section. When asked about the 150% increase in emergency hysterectomy rates in Victoria (emergency hysterectomy is a risk of Caesarean Section) he replied that it is not an issue when Australian women are currently having an average of 1.7 children (I do wonder how he would feel about losing a sexual organ whether or not he wants more children). Current research indicates a 3 x maternal and neonatal mortality rate from CS. He did not mention this. He also stated that vaginal birth causes sexual dysfunction, incontinence, etc. He did NOT mention that the latest research shows that CS is NOT protective in pelvic floor dysfunction.

We had a case in Queensland where a woman, who had experienced 2 CS, wished to birth her next child vaginally. The hospital she planned to birth at pressured her for a CS stating that they were only willing to allow her to attempt a vaginal birth under very strict criteria such as continuous monitoring, being confined to bed, etc. They scheduled a CS for her but, feeling bullied, she informed them she would not turn up and made plans to birth in another hospital. The original hospital called DOCS on her(like your CPS) and they went to her home when she was in early labour (this is in direct contravention of the legislation which states that DOCS may intervene if an unborn baby is in harm’s way but SPECIFICALLY excludes the mother’s birth choices). She was able to fend them off and ended up birthing vaginally in the second hospital. Mother and baby were well.

David Molloy, then the Queensland president of the AMA (Australian Medical Association), was very vocal about this incident criticizing the woman for “risking her child’s life”. He stated that the woman had a 5-19% chance of her uterus rupturing resulting in the death of her baby. The actually risk of uterine rupture in a vaginal birth after caesarean is 0.4% with about 1 in ten of those cases considered “catastrophic rupture” resulting in the death of the baby. How can an AMA president get away with making such blatantly false and misleading statements to the press? No idea. I know a couple of people who wrote to the AMA about that specific statement and the AMA replied with “the doctor knows best” (I am paraphrasing of course!).

So you mention the AMA.… that is a small part of my experience with the AMA here in Australia. On a more positive note, I have seen the new president of the Royal Australian New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in interview a couple of times recently and she is great. She was being interviewed about our soaring CS rates and she provided a very balanced and informative view on the risks and benefits of both. It is refreshing to see after hearing OBs like David Molloy advertise the procedure as safer and easier than vaginal birth (absolutely not true).

And that brings us to homebirth. When I was pregnant with Lucy I was reading a very mainstream pregnancy book and there was one paragraph in it about homebirth. It stated that for well women, home could be the safest place to birth your baby. I was outraged as EVERYONE knows that homebirth is foolish and risky and I intended to write the author a letter telling her how dangerous it was to publish such false and misleading information. So I looked up her references and was astounded at what I found. In study and after study homebirth has been shown to be as safe, or safer than hospital birth. Not only are the mortality rates similar, but in study after study the babies were in better condition at birth, mothers were in better condition, mothers experienced less PPD, higher breastfeeding rates, etc.

However, the exception is the Pang study. This study looked at out of hospital births in Washington state and, unbelievably, does not distinguish between planned and unplanned homebirths! The researchers looked at all births that occurred outside of the hospital but had no way of knowing which were planned homebirths with a midwife in attendance and which were BBAs (born before arrival - babies born on the way to hospital), unplanned homebirths, homebirths without a trained professional in attendance, whether the woman had had prenatal care, etc. Unsurprisingly, the Pang study shows that babies born out of hospital have a whopping three times the neonatal mortality rate as those born in hospital.

And this is the study that physicians always quote and that ACOG (the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) has on their website. Of all the studies in existence on planned homebirth (I’ll send you a list of abstracts if you are interested) the Pang study is the single one that shows better outcomes in a hospital setting. And in spite of its flaws it is the one that is repeatedly quoted by physician groups.

Through out public health system midwives can only provide care under the supervision of a general practitioner or specialist obstetrician. This puts midwives on the same footing as nurses with NO midwifery qualifications and Aboriginal health workers! When a bill was proposed allowing midwives to bill the public health system for their independent services the physician associations kicked up a huge stink. It is ironic as midwives can be supervised by general practitioners with no obstetric qualifications or experience but cannot practice autonomously under our public health system.

Two pet peeves about right-wing argument

2007-05-25T18:44:00.001-06:00

...which are essentially the same pet peeve, in, y'know, different contexts.

1) Smoking doesn't cause cancer, because I smoke and I don't have cancer!

You've got an argument? Fine. Bring it on. This isn't an argument, it's a fucking rationalization. You've smoked a pack a day since you were thirteen, and you're in perfect health? That doesn't mean that there's no link, it means that you were fucking *lucky*. It's like saying "I got shot and didn't die, therefore bullets don't kill people." What the hell kind of science is that? You can't map a trend from a sample of *one*.

2) Global warming is a hoax, because it's a cold day outside!

...and let's also add the left-wing "How can people say global warming is a hoax? It's such a hot day outside!" Yes, I've heard both.

Now, look. I'm a global warming skeptic. There's an argument to be had here. This is not it. Climatology means mapping trends over periods of thousands of years; you've gone ahead and made an assertion based on a study of *twenty seconds*. In one location. All argument like this does is serve to make the rest of us look stupid.

(Insert snarky "You don't need any help for that! Ha-ha!" here.)

Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?

2007-05-24T19:03:00.001-06:00

Note to anyone travelling overseas: say you're an American playwright, and nobody bats an eyelash. Say you're an American *satirist*, and you're a rock star for the evening.

(Just don't mention that you're a *right-wing* American satirist. That tends to clear the party out rather quickly.)

---

One of the books I brought with me was Stephen Mitchell's "The Gospel According to Jesus", one of those projects akin to the Jefferson Bible that attempts to take the Synoptic Gospels and form a single coherent text out of them, excising passages that are contradictory, historically unsupportable, or that the editor didn't like. This seems like a perfectly acceptable process to me, since I suspect that this is how the Gospels were largely compiled in the first place.

Those who argue for the historical validity of the Gospels frequently say that they *couldn't* have been fabricated, because there were still some people who were alive during the ministry of Jesus when they were composed. I actually found this a reasonably compelling argument -- five years ago. I have since lived through two terms of the Bush administration, where they will say one thing, a year will pass, and they will then assert the complete opposite -- and everyone will nod their heads and say "Yes, that's correct."

We'll eat up any bullshit with a spoon if it's said to us confidently by someone in a position of authority. That's true of politics *or* religion.

I still want them back, though

2007-05-22T16:56:00.000-06:00

“And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.”

-Luke 6:29-30

So shortly before I left the US, my car was broken into and a CD wallet stolen. This wallet contained 72 CDs, which I’d just spent some time sorting; I’d been collecting them since I was twelve; and I estimate their total value to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $1000.

I have two responses to this.

—

RESPONSE #1

It’s been said that the reason why we regard life, liberty, and property as sacred is because they represent temporal states: to steal your property is to steal your past, to steal your liberty is to steal your present, and to steal your life is to steal your future. If my current emotional response is any indication, this is a remarkably accurate characterization.

What really stings isn’t the financial loss, although that’s significant; it isn’t the loss of resources, although most of the music from my shows has been drawn from this library; it’s the loss of *history*. There’s music in there that I’ve picked up on my travels to other countries; music burned for me by friends and girlfriends; music that got me through some hard times, and some harder ones; music that played in the background as I composed scenes for plays. I’m a materialistic guy, and I get too attached to *things*: but those things carry part of my past with them, and their loss can’t help feeling like a violation of that. *That’s* the ultimate reason that theft is evil, and property is important: because you’re not just stealing an object, but its history, as well.

Which may well be my trying to rationalize how fucking pissed off I am right now.

—

RESPONSE #2

And yet — maybe as a product of just how chaotic my life has been for the past couple of weeks — when I realized it was gone, there was actually a moment of — serenity? I mean, I’d spent a lot of time sorting them, not alphabetically but in chronological order of the composition of the earliest song on each CD. I — ah — get wrapped up in certain, uh, rituals and patterns, and that turned out to be a big job. And suddenly — whoosh — it was gone. I’d been liberated of it.

I mean, there’s a big part of me that’s disgusted with myself for even owning that much stuff, y’know? And not just the stuff — the *history*, that I’m carrying around that much stuff *mentally*. I’m the kind of guy that keeps boxes of every letter, note, object I received from every terrible relationship I’ve been in, because I *can’t get rid of it*. I have pictures of most of my ex-girlfriends in my wallet, because I don’t know how to throw them away. And, yeah, the bulk of my response to the theft is anger.

But there’s a small, very small part of brain that wants to thank the thief for liberating me of my possessions. Does that make me crazy?

“Ryokan lived in a small hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief broke in, only to find that there was nothing in the hut worth stealing.

When Ryokan returned, he found the thief and said, ‘You’ve probably come a long way, and you shouldn’t return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.’

Shamefaced, the thief took the clothes and left.

Ryokan sat down naked and looked up at the sky. ‘Poor fellow,’ he said, ‘I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.’"

-Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

Notes from an Airport, or, the Illusion of Security

2007-05-22T00:12:00.000-06:00

I’ve just come down from my third production week in a row, and since this time around I was directing, not performing, I haven’t shaved, permitting the rebirth of the Lovecraftian nightmare that is my facial hair. I staggered out of bed this morning, hung over and bleary-eyed, and peered into the mirror, to find a scruffy, olive-skinned terrorist peering back at me.

Ah, the joys of airline travel! I suspect I can look forward to being randomly selected for any number of searches over the next forty-eight hours.

—

Number of signs have posted that we’re currently on an “orange alert.” I guess my main beef with the color-coded alert system — and, I suspect, the real source of much of the ridicule that’s been heaped upon it — is the fact that you can’t really *do* anything — you don’t go to shelter or cancel your flights or stay home from work. It ultimately ends up feeling like the government jumping out form behind the bushes and shouting “Someone’s trying to kill you! Booga booga booga!” then running away.

—

Y’know, as much as the romance of airplane travel has worn off for me over the years — am I crazy for actually liking airports? I never get lost, and I actually don’t mind getting stuck in them. They’re almost like self-sustaining mini-civilizations, and I find in them much of what I love about city life in microcosm: they’re crowded, expensive, everyone’s in a hurry to get somewhere, and you’re constantly weighting your likelihood of being shot.

—

I have a habit of running my hand along the rails of the moving walkways, and it always comes up coated in filth, the source of which is not to be contemplated. The one exception to this rule? Japan, where they apparently hire someone to wipe them down multiple times a day. I am adding this to my long list of Reasons Japan is Fucked the Hell Up.

—

It seems to me that among the greatest casualties of tightened airport security must be chick flicks. How are romantic comedies to end now, when the jilted lover, running to prevent the object of his desire from flying out of his life forever, is gunned down by a bevy of trigger-happy air marshalls?

Come to think of it, I’m hard-pressed to think of many such movies that wouldn’t be dramatically improved by this treatment, so perhaps it’s all to the good.

[100supportourtroops=yes/no?goto100]

2007-05-19T23:39:00.000-06:00

A lot of the “Support our troops” rhetoric has been re-emerging lately, seemingly not unlike Prometheus’ liver in its ability to regenerate itself, and it’s continuing to do a very good job of the thing it was designed to do, which is shutting me up.

There’s a number of reasons why it leaves me scratching my head, slack-jawed and unable to respond, not least because it’s always seemed to be such an obvious straw man argument to me: nobody *doesn’t* support the troops. Nobody’s cheering at the idea of American soldiers getting shot at. People bring up the military men returning from Vietnam who were spit on: but I find it extremely difficult to credit that that’s going to happen now. The cultural climate’s changed, not least because of people yelling about supporting our troops.

Taking the argument at face value, I just plain don’t get it, and I’m the first to admit it: I don’t see how claiming that the invasion of Iraq was a horrifically bad administrative decision, a bureaucratic fuck-up for Blobby’s Big Book of Bureaucratic Fuck-Ups, is somehow an expression of contempt for the guys on the ground.

Probing a little deeper, I think it has to do with a differing concept of love: that for them, love of country must be composed of a kind of blind adulation, an unwavering support for everything it does. Let’s add this to the list of the things I fail to get. I mean, I love my family, but I can acknowledge that they’ve done some pretty fucked-up things. If I found out that, say, my nephew had murdered somebody, I would do everything I could to help: speaking in his defense, getting him a good lawyer, trying to get his sentence reduced, et cetera. I get the impression that the “Support-our-troops” camp would be helping him hide the body.

But we can get a little deeper than that, can’t we? Ultimately, the reason I have such a hard time responding to the slogan is because there’s a grain of truth to it: I *don’t* support our troops. I support the American people; in a broader sense, I support the human race, the species into which I was born, of which the military branch of the United States government comprises a very small percentage. As long as that percentage is doing work that I feel is beneficial to the rest of the species — including my favorite component of it, me — then, yeah, I’ll support it. When I feel that it’s doing work that’s actively harmful? I’d be nuts to.

None of which, none, is passing any kind of judgment upon the individuals inhabiting that percentage. I don’t have any issues, good or bad, with the individuals. It’s collectives I don’t trust: and that’s the case whether they’re parties, corporations, governments — or militaries. As James Madison put it, “A standing army is one of the greatest mischief that can possibly happen.” (His syntax, not mine.)

One of the better concepts drilled into me growing up was “Love the sinner, hate the sin” — and if we can sidestep for the moment how terribly loaded those particular word choices are, all it’s really saying is that people can do shit you don’t approve of without you passing judgment on them.

In my last political satire, Libertarian Rage, I made a conscious decision early on not to mention any politicians by name — because I wasn’t interested in ridiculing *people*, I was interested in ridiculing *ideologies*. I may object to just about every decision Bush has made since he was appointed to his office by the Supreme Court (including, y’know, that one) — and I will call him on every bullshit decision he makes — but I am singularly ill-equipped to pass any judgment on him as a person, as a human being, because I *don’t fucking know him*. I honestly can’t tell if he’s a bumbling puppet or brilliant con-man or a dangerously wide-eyed idealist. And even if I could, I don’t know what his private thoughts are in the dead of night, nor do I have any desire to. Not my job.

Christ’s injunction to “Love thy enemies” is one that gets thrown around pretty glibly, but its implications are terrifying: it means, well, loving your enemies. It means loving Osama bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein; it means loving both your military and political opponents; it means finding a way to love George W. Bush. Not letting them get away with shit. But not passing judgment on the contents of their hearts, either.

Vengeance is easier. Rage is easier. Hell, a lot of the time it’s useful, too — witness this site. But left unchecked, it leads to things like blood feuds, crusades — and wars. Compassion, mercy, forgiveness — they’re hard. They’re *fucking* hard. But if we entered this raging inferno in a state of grief and anger, we’re not gonna crawl our way out for as long as we’re clinging to the things that brought us here…

…e quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.

Loyalty to the Party

2007-04-30T14:00:00.001-06:00

So I received the following letter from the Libertarian National Committee. (And, yes, it was indeed written in all caps, much like the writing of an indignant twelve-year-old on the internet for the first time.)

DEAR PHILLIP:

UNLESS OUR LETTERS HAVE CROSSED IN THE MAIL, OR THERE IS AN ERROR IN THE REPORT I’VE JUST RECEIVED, I WAS DISAPPOINTED TO LEARN THIS MORNING THAT YOU HAVE YET TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY FOR 2007.

THIS PAST MONTH, I SENT YOU AND OTHER LP SUPPORTERS OUR 2006 ANNUAL REPORT ALONG WITH A PRESIDENTIAL SURVEY.

DID YOU PERHAPS NOT RECEIVE IT? ALONG WITH THE REPORT, IN THE INTEREST OF KEEPING EXPENSES DOWN, I INCLUDED AN APPEAL FOR YOU TO RENEW YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT FOR 2007.

EVERY SINGLE MEMBER AND SUPPORTER OF THE LP IS VITAL TO OUR OPERATIONS AND I WAS COUNTING ON HEARING FROM YOU BY NOW WITH YOUR GIFT.

PHILLIP, I HOPE IT IS JUST AN OVERSIGHT THAT YOU HAVE NOT RENEWED YOUR SUPPORT FOR 2007. I UNDERSTAND HOW THAT CAN HAPPEN. BUT PLEASE KNOW THAT WE NEED YOU ON OUR TEAM IF WE ARE TO REMAIN EFFECTIVE.

YOUR GIFT RIGHT NOW IN THE AMOUNT OF $10, OR EVEN MORE IF YOU CAN, WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE FOR OUR NATION, YOUR STATE, AND YOUR COMMUNITY.

‘Kay. I’m gonna take a deep breath and not respond to this one just yet, and bring up another point by way of contrast.

At the last state convention, Bob Smith took the podium and made a very simple, direct, and somewhat moving plea for support. There was no bullying, no coercion: nothing more than a laying out of the facts and the consequences, and a respectful request for any aid that could be given.

Let’s compare this to the condescending “I’m not angry, just disappointed” tone being presented at the national level, shall we? This call to give them money for the sake of our glorious nation? This evocation to be “part of the team?” I’ve got news for you, mate: I’m not part of anybody’s team, leastways not the smegging shitwank who composed this letter. I’m happy to register with you guys, so you have one more head to count when you’re tallying up the numbers. And I’ll continue voting for your candidates for as long as they’re supporting principles that make sense to me. But I don’t owe you jack-shit. And nobody should talk about concepts like “loyalty to the Party” with a straight face outside of Communist Russia.

I grow especially impatient when alternative parties begin employing this sort of tone. I mean, the two-party duopoly? They have to be patronizing jerkwads. Their elections hinge on it. We, however, have the freedom to talk to adults like adults.

One thing I feel that I’ve learned in show business is that the idea of “selling out” is really kind of an illusion — you can’t achieve success by pretending to be something that you’re not. So why do the other parties feel that they have to legitimize themselves by adopting the demeanor of the ones that everybody else is voting for?

I just thought you should all know

2007-04-22T03:03:00.000-06:00

Just got back from the LP convention, and the somewhat raucous post-convention get-together (that’s fifteen consecutive hours of argument about individualist feminism, anarchism, and the role of the state — my head still hurts, and not just from the alcohol), at which a drunken female referred to me as “sexier than Batman.”

This is the greatest compliment that anyone has ever been paid.

Finally, a tussle!

2007-04-20T15:48:00.000-06:00

[For those who don't know, my writing here is being double-posted over at Liberal Media Elite. This post is a direct response to one located here.]

I hope nobody minds if I respond with another post — I have a few too many thoughts to justify a comment.

First of all, an apology. My last post was intended to be an examination of my own thoughts and impulses — not anybody else’s. I in no way meant to imply that there was anything wrong with your emotional response to tragedy — merely that I suspected that there was something wrong with mine. I don’t know you, and I have no desire to pass judgment on anything going on on the inside of your skull.

That said, I’m prepared to defend my, er, cheap ideological point — which is that, yes! Compassion and empathy are noble human impulses! And that, unchecked by other noble human impulses, such as prudence and careful self-examination, they can lead us to unintentionally harm others. Does that really qualify as defamation?

If I’m not belaboring the argument, I’d like to specifically respond to your point about Iraq. Whatever the motives of the people at the top, in a democracy, international crimes have to sold to the people. (Well, at least in theory.) Nobody (outside of weapons manufacturers) is pro-war. Everybody knows that war is an evil. The only way to sell it to a population is convince them that it’s *necessary*.

Points that were used to sell it to us:

1) Liberating the Iraqi people. Empathy. (Bullshit, of course — our own government’s done plenty to create or support oppressive governments when it suited their purposes.)

2) Strategic movement in the larger war on terror. Empathy — nobody wants to see anyone else die in terrorist attacks. (Bullshit — there are plenty of other nations that form a more credible threat.)

3) The development of WMD’s. Empathy — nobody wants to see *those* unleashed on the planet again. (Bullshit — see last point. And, y’know, there were none.)

4) Control of and access to oil. Okay, not really empathy — but nobody used that as an argument to *sell* the war to anyone.

The only way anyone could be convinced to sign up for this was through the *manipulation* of that noble impulse. The impulse isn’t evil. Sometimes the application of it is.

One more point — not only in response to your post, but something I’ve been meaning to say for a while and this seemed to an appropriate place to do so — I’ve been hearing a lot of people complaining about the apathy of the American public when it comes to Iraq. I don’t think that’s true. I think that people are every bit as angry and disgusted with the situation as they ever have been. The reason we’re not hearing about it anymore isn’t because we don’t care, it’s because we’ve been worn out — we’ve been shouting and complaining and arguing for going on four years now, and all we’ve really gained is the knowledge that we *don’t* have any real influence on the situation.

It’s like when someone close to you dies — eventually, you pick up and find a way to move on. This is like someone close to us has died, every day, for four years. We’ve never been able to heal our wounds and move on from it, so eventually I think we’ve just started shutting down.

I’m not condoning it. I’m not condemning it. I’m just saying that I think the response has been mischaracterized. It’s not apathy. It’s exhaustion.

And, y’know — I can justifiably be accused of being a lot of unpleasant things, but apathetic is hardly one of them. A big part of the reason I’m a Libertarian is because I genuinely believe that a free-market economy works best for people on every rung of the economic ladder, including the bottom. Outrageous nonsense? Perhaps. But sincere outrageous nonsense.

Empathy is the Enemy

2007-04-19T13:28:00.001-06:00

Following up on the heels of my last post, I'd like to link to this excellent and articulate one that has spun out into a fascinating discussion. And one that's left me asking myself the question -- why do I feel so goddamn much? And I don't mean that in some positive "look-at-me-aren't-I-so-wonderful-for-being-so-compassionate" way -- I think I get wrapped in other people's tragedies in a way that's actively unhealthy.

I mean, 9-11 changed my life, and I don't mean that glibly. And it didn't happen to my city (hell, I don't even like New York), nobody I knew was involved -- but that day has been stamped on every play that I've written since. Somehow it left me wracked with a guilt and nausea that hasn't fully faded to this day. Why?

Thinking about this got me thinking (as most things do, sigh) about my Catholic upbringing, particularly a quote from Paul's Epistle to the Romans:

"For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do."

See, Catholics have this concept called a sin of omission, which means that you're not only responsible for the evil that you do -- you're also responsible for all of the good that you fail to do.

There's a degree to which this makes sense. I mean, if I walk past a guy dying in the middle of the street and don't do anything to help him, then, yeah, I bear part of the responsibility for his death, even if I didn't, say, run him over with my '95 Ford Taurus myself. Or if I neglect to mention that the door labelled "FREE COOKIE DOUGH" actually leads to a pit of venomous snakes, then I bear part of the responsibility for the fat German kid who ends up in the poison control center.

But what if I don't actually see the dying guy? What if it's a kid starving to death on the other side of the planet, and there's something I could do to help him? Am I responsible for him, too? Following this line of reasoning, it's not hard to arrive at the conclusion that you're indirectly responsible for all of the evil that occurs in the world. And we laugh at this, like it's somehow harmlessly neurotic, but it's not. That mentality has destroyed far too many lives to be dismissed as harmless.

After all, what if we could invade the starving boy's country, and see to it that nobody went hungry again? The very concept of a sin of omission implies that if we have the power to do such a thing, we have the responsibility to do so as well. And this clearly isn't a hypothetical situation -- how many have died in Iraq, because our "responsibility" to liberate the people?

Assuming responsibility for that much pain and suffering isn't humility, it's arrogance, more than a desire to protect, more than a desire to liberate, it's a desire to be God -- the greatest sin of all. A world ruled by benevelont self-interest -- where everyone took care of themselves, reached out to help the people around them, picked the dying man up off the street -- that would be a good world to live in. But we forget that the ultimate root of fascism isn't selfishness, but compassion -- that desire to lead everyone to the promised land, and thinking that you have The Way to do so.

I'm no Ayn Rander. Altruism isn't evil. I believe that that impulse to help others is the one of the noblest of our species. But it's important to remember that it's almost impossible to help someone without hurting somebody else, and that same impulse that leads us to do good can also lead us to do great evil.

And I wonder if my strong emotional response to tragedy isn't a reminder that I, too, have the capacity for both. Which is why I don't own a gun. Which is why I'll never run for office.

The Virginia Tech Massacre: Six Contradictions

2007-04-18T11:03:00.000-06:00

THE THOUGHTFUL RESPONSE

I don’t know what it is about school shootings. Usually I’m pretty good at maintaining a snarky demeanor in the face of tragedy — not because I’m callous but because it’s a coping mechanism for me — but something about school shootings really brings out this streak of sobriety. Maybe it’s because I was a social leper in high school who wore a trench coat at the time of the Columbine shootings, and I ended up getting a lot of the fallout from that. Or maybe it’s because I work with teenagers, and I have plenty of opportunities to recall what an eternal prison our education system appears to be from the inside. I never went to college, but I think these events have a certain resonance for all of us, because our time in school was so emotionally intense — it’s really not hard to imagine this kind of thing happening. What I don’t get is the shock — the real shock is that this isn’t happening all the goddamn time.

THE SNARKY RESPONSE

Finally, a large-scale act of senseless brutality from an Asian male! Perhaps this’ll finally dispel all that emasculated, “model-minority” bullshit that we have to put up with. We’re capable of being every bit as fucked up as any other race of people, thank you very much.

THE ANGRY RESPONSE

I’m growing truly tired of the e-mails flooding my inbox from liberals and conservatives alike — I’m hardly sure who to be more disgusted with right now. On the one hand, I’m annoyed with all of those on the left who are trying to take advantage of this tragedy to push through more anti-gun legislation — and all of those gleefully telling me that I’m directly responsible for this because of my support of gun ownership are welcome to go perform an anatomically impossible act upon yourselves.

On the other hand, folks on the right are welcome to go join them, especially if you’re posting shit like this:

“We can lay the blame on the ‘Red Star’ on their door step for all the deaths. They refuse to all individuals to protect themselves. They created the situation that lead to this. The paper needs to be picketed. May be a TV station or another paper like the Pioneer Press could cover an event like this. We would need a flyer to hand out explaining our position and creative signs to hold. This is I think a good oppurnity.”

Not that I disagree with the basic point. But if you’re prepared to characterize the deaths of thirty-two people as a “good opportunity”, then I don’t want to fucking know you.

It’s not the debate I object to, but the vitriol inherent in it. Emotions are running high right now. Isn’t some kind of mourning period in order before we go back to name-calling and mud-slinging?

THE LIBERTARIAN RESPONSE

I can’t help wondering how many of the students would be alive now if they’d been armed. Obviously, the campus’ ban on firearms didn’t prevent Cho from getting his hands on some. I look at events like the Appalachian School of Law shooting, a massacre averted by armed students, and a part of me worries that we’re doomed to repeat events like the Virginia Tech Massacre as long as we hold onto this illusion that weaponry is a substance we can effectively control. If I’m determined to kill a lot of people, I’ll find a way to do it.

THE NIHILISTIC RESPONSE

Above all, though, the aspect of this that troubles me most of all are the usual attempts to characterize the perpetrator as a “sicko” or a “wacko”, or often both at the same time, despite the inherent contradiction. We don’t know anything about him, and obviously the people around him didn’t, either.

Whenever someone does something truly heinous, from Adolf Hitler to Ted Kaczynski, we need to turn them either into a calculating villain or a raving lunatic — we have to turn them into something totally alien, something totally “other”, because the truth is so much more terrifying, that they’re human beings, that they have all the same parts that we do, that anyone’s capable of anything, and nobody has a fucking moral code outside of a Sergio Leone western.

THE PRACTICAL RESPONSE

After the Columbine shootings, we weren’t allowed to talk about what happened — I recall getting in trouble with teachers numerous times for trying to strike up conversations about it in the hallways — but we suddenly and without explanation began praying before every class.

When seemingly senseless events occur, there’s really nothing for us left to do but try to construct some kind of meaning out of it and go on with our lives, whether that meaning is religious, political, or artistic. But whatever that meaning is, it’s one that we choose to construct. We have to assume responsibility for our many contradictory responses, whatever they may be.

Because that’s the meaning I’ve chosen.

Sweet Mother of Christ, It's Been Too Goddamn Long

2007-04-01T09:29:00.000-06:00

(After a Saturday evening performance.)

ME: Hey, so where's everybody going? Isn't anybody going out tonight?
SIARDE: Well, me and my girlfriend were going to go check out PI.
ME: PI? What, are we talking, like, Baker's Square pie, or the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter in Euclidean geometry pi?
SIARDE: Uh, it's a bar.
ME: Oh, okay. So, what, are there gonna be a lot of girls there?
SIARDE: Oh, yeah. Definitely. Tons.
ME: Sweet! I'll meet you there.

(At PI.)

ME: So, what are my chances of getting laid tonight?
SIARDE: Uh, probably not great.
ME: What, is there a cock detector at the door or something? Is some kind of alarm gonna sound when I walk in?
SIARDE: Yeah, something like that.
ME: Shit, you weren't kidding. There's a ton of hot girls here. Man, look at all of them! Wow, check out those two are doing! This place is...this...is a dyke bar. You brought me to a fucking dyke bar. Oh, fuck you, Siarde. Fuck you.
SIARDE: There's a five dollar cover. I don't really want to pay it.
ME: C'mon, we can cover it.
SIARDE: Fine. Let's go ahead and get raped.
ME: Uh, you mean economically, right?
SIARDE: Why don't you go ahead and get something to drink.

(Four drinks later.)

ME: WHAZZUP, MY SEXUALLY INACCESSIBLE BITCHES!
SIARDE: Uh, you doing all right, phil?
ME: Y'know, this is a lot like my idea of what hell would be. I'm gonna go home and masturbate so hard, bone marrow's gonna come out, you know what I'm saying?
SIARDE: Oh...oh yeah?
ME: I don't suppose there's a section for hot bi girls here, is there?
SIARDE: No. No, there isn't.
ME: Goddammit, I have all of this grade-A cock that's just withering on the vine.

Needless to say, I did not score.

Molon Labe, says Iran

2007-03-29T13:44:00.000-06:00

So there’s a bunch of guys in a lunatic asylum. One night (stormy, of course) there’s a power outage, and the lunatics murder their guards, steal their weapons, and (in some cases) eat their flesh. The next several days are harrowing, as they find themselves running up and down the halls trying not to get killed by each other. Finally, one of the inmates is sufficiently charismatic to call together a meeting without anybody getting shot.

“This is insane,” he says. “Running around with all these weapons, soon we’ll be lucky if there’s anybody left. We’re all going to have to disarm.”

“You first,” mutter the others distrustfully.

“Now, I know that some of us are going to be hesitant about dropping our weapons when everybody else still has one,” he continues, “So I’ve devised a plan. It’s simple: you’ll all give your weapons to me, and if anybody tries to shoot anybody else, I’ll shoot them first.”

“But how do we know that you won’t take advantage of being the only one armed?”

“Because I’m trustworthy,” he responds, with a wounded expression. “Besides, the other folks in here are CRAZY!”

Nobody’s surprised that I’m a Second Amendment supporter, right? Whatever the risks of private gun ownership, disarming your populace is pretty much step one of establishing their dependency on you.

So Iran’s refused to back off on their uranium-enrichment program, and the UN’s imposed sanctions on them, setting up a chain of events that will almost certainly lead to another war. President Ahmadinejad (try saying that ten times fast) warns that any nations “seeking to impose sanctions against Iran will suffer a greater damage themselves.”

Let’s get the obvious statement out of the way, that nobody has the warm fuzzies about a gang of undersexed theocrats like the Iranian government getting their hands on something as delightfully phallic as a nuclear warhead. That said, as long as any one government has access to WMD’s, every other government would be crazy for not trying to develop them. It’s the only credible defense in a post-nuclear age. In fact, as the technology improves, they’re only going to continue to become easier for developing nations to obtain and conceal. Trying to fight that process — to turn the technology backwards — isn’t just crazy, it’s rapidly becoming impossible. We’re fighting the most basic biological imperative of our species, to build, to construct, to grow.

Unfortunately, it’s not like the alternative is any less crazy. The last several decades taught us the madness of nuclear proliferation. Now, it seems, we must learn the madness of nuclear disarmament. It’s a true Gordian Knot, and one that, sadly, may take a stroke as brutal as Alexander’s to sever.

Galaxy Quest

2007-03-29T13:12:00.001-06:00

“Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
and revolving at nine hundred miles an hour;
orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
a sun that is the source of all our power…”

So, do we not care about space anymore?

I remember back in 2004, when Bush was talking about a manned mission to Mars, which led to all of the expected jokes — “Bush wants to go to Mars, let’s send Bush to Mars, ha ha ha” — but no detectable enthusiasm.

Okay, I think the initiative was a bad idea, too. It’s incredibly expensive with no immediate payout. And I’m confident that we’re going to make it there anyway, with my usual faith in the private sector — space tourism is already becoming a lucrative industry, with tickets selling in excess of twenty million. Functioning space hotels seem likely to go up in the next twenty years. As these venues both increase and become more affordable, intelligent investors will jack up their funding for private research. We’ll get there.

What disappoints me is the open contempt for the very idea of space travel. I mean, did nobody out there feel a chill of excitement at the prospect of travelling to Mars? My God, of a human stepping onto the surface of an alien world?

Whatever happened to the enthusiasm of the sixties? Back when science fiction was about ideas instead of explosions, when we put a man on the moon, when we transformed the night sky from a veil that covered us into a place that we could go? When our natural satellite ceased to be the subject of myth and superstition, and became a surface that bore a footprint of homo sapiens sapiens?

Two weeks ago, our species discovered that the south polar region of Mars contains enough ice to cover the entire surface of the planet in water thirty-six feet deep. If the planet once supported water, could it have supported life? Life? What would that mean for us, if it did? What might we learn about ourselves? About our world? What would such an achievement mean for the history of our civilization? Let alone our future?

So what happened? What happened to our excitement about these things? Am I the last one left who cares?

“So remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure
how amazing unlikely is your birth;
and pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space,
‘cuz there’s bugger all down here on Earth…”

Here I come, to complain ineffectually

2007-03-27T12:29:00.001-06:00

It has been requested that I weigh in on the latest batch of so-called “nanny laws” — and I always aim to please. “Nanny laws” are laws so-called for their intrusive regulation of citizens’ personal lives. (Of course, for someone of my political inclinations, this encompasses, er, most of the laws passed in the last 216 years.) Particularly egregious are the bans on trans fats established recently in both Philadelphia and New York City. I have heard it claimed that this degree of state intervention in justified, because it is a matter of public health. Look –

– it’s not like we’re talking about the Joker poisoning the city’s freakin’ water supply, aight? There’s absolutely nobody who eats this stuff and thinks that they’re doing their body a favor. These are adult individuals, consciously making the choice to purchase and ingest food that they know is bad for them.

The argument, as usual, is that this will help people. Well, yeah — you can always help people by curtailing their liberties, whether they be large or trivially small. Impose a curfew and nobody gets mugged after dark, but what would be the fun in that?

It’s also a basic rule of politics that There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch — whenever you pass a law to help people, you’re also hurting somebody else, in this case various restaurants and manufacturers. It’s easy to be dismissive of the needs of organizations, but also easy to forget that organizations are ultimately nothing more than a collection of individuals who bear the brunt of the economic fallout of increased regulation. It’s impossible to measure exactly what that fallout is — probably equally impossible as measuring the exact damage that trans fats do. How the hell do you weigh something like that?

And how far does this go, anyway? Am I going to find myself lurking into a seedy downtown bar — shoulders hunched, hands shaking, palms sweating, eye glancing furtively from side to side — approaching a delightfully buxom waitress, giving her a code word and a secret handshake — her smiling warmly at me, guiding me to the back, pulling on the wine bottle three slots from the left, opening a secret underground passage — descending into a dimly lit club, where rotund men and women dine secretly upon greasy burgers and doughnuts?

Okay, I’m exaggerating. This is not that. But it does set a troubling precedent. You can’t even trust your government to deliver a letter — you want to entrust them with your own body? Everybody’s trying to save us from ourselves — God, why can’t all these people just leave us the hell alone?

BanTransFats.com founder Stephen Joseph, who grew up in England, said the heated reaction to the ban seems uniquely American.

“I was on a talk show a couple years ago and the host said, `Well, you’re trying to bring socialism to America!’” Joseph said, “I mean, what an incredible overreaction for trying to change a cooking oil.”

Bring socialism to America? Oh, sure you are, Steve — just one baby goose-step at a time.

Minority Report

2007-03-26T12:11:00.000-06:00

So a lot of people have been asking me for my “take” on the 2008 elections, to which I usually respond that I’m amused to note that the Democrats have selected as their frontrunners a black guy and a woman. They then look at me with a kind of confused, hurt, bovine expression, and ask if I think that that’s really still an issue.

Look, maybe I’m just a cynic, but I can’t help thinking that the white guys’ fifty-five term winning streak is gonna be a hard one to break. My county just elected the first Muslim representative to Congress. He wanted to be sworn in on the Qu’ran, and the country went apeshit. And we’re, like, one of the most liberal states in the union! I’d love to be proven wrong on this, but c’mon. We’re not ready. We are all kinds of not ready for this.

Not that I’m one to talk, anyway — I’ve never supported a candidate that actually had a prayer of making it into office. This is why, every time the Democrats get bitch-slapped in an election year, I find myself clapping my hands and cackling “A-ha! You see? Now you see what I feel like every goddamn election!” Then I get recklessly drunk, curl up under my bed and start weeping, because it’s an emotionally fragile time and sometimes it’s okay to have a crutch.

I guess what I’d really like to see would be Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton, because twenty years under the same two-family aristocracy just plain wasn’t enough for me.

Eminent Stupidity

2007-03-25T14:27:00.000-06:00

And for today’s compelling topic…Chinese property law!

So on March 16th, the National People’s Congress finally passed a law clearly defining three existing property types, state, collective, and private. The very concept of legally protected private property is a revolutionary one, and it’s a big step in the right direction. But in a lot of respects, it’s nothing more than symbolic.

Y’see, regardless of the fancy legal language that it’s dressed up in, Chinese property is still defined in terms of usufruct — meaning, the government owns all property. What you actually “own” is a land-use right, not, y’know, property itself.

Sounds pretty kooky, right? I direct your attention to Exhibit A:

“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

That’s the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and it’s pretty good stuff, no? In fact, it contains the one line in the Bill of Rights that I don’t agree with:

“…nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Er, what exactly qualifies as “just compensation” for the forceful deprivation of property? This is a concept known as eminent domain, and the practical upshot of it is that the government can come and take away the house that you worked and sweat for if they decide it would be a nice place for a parking ramp. This isn’t one of those antiquated laws just sitting around on the books that nobody pays attention to anymore, either: it happens all the goddamn time.

It’s kinda like if you’re a teenager, and you have to borrow your dad’s car all the time, and you realize that all the girls think that you’re kind of lame, so you decide to work and save up and buy your own car, but your dad still has the right to take it away from you whenever he wants, so in a sense you never have to grow up but remain a teenager for the rest of your life, and the next thing you know you’re in your forties and you’re still fucking teenage girls, because they’re the only ones naive enough to believe that a guy who actually has his own room and gets to stay up late is still pretty cool. It’s kinda like that.

There's a reason that we regard property rights as sacred -- because your property is the product of your life and liberty, and robbing you of the former robs the latter of its meaning. And concepts such as usufruct -- and eminent domain -- turn the very concept of private property into a joke.

I voted, too

2007-03-25T12:02:00.003-06:00

So I turned on the TV yesterday to see the House of Representatives kneeling before their lord and master George II, who promptly pulled down his pants, whipped out his cock, and began merrily fapping away, crying “You like that? Huh? You like that, bitches? See this? I’m gonna ram it so far down your throat your throat’s gonna bulge out, and then I’m gonna start choking you to make it tighter, so it’ll be like I’m jacking myself off on the inside of your throat! Whadda you say to that? Huh? Huh?”

…at least, that’s the basic gist of what I saw. Judging from his tone, the President may as well have been whapping Nancy Pelosi on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper and scolding her like a naughty puppy.

So, once again, we have the President furious at the legislative branch because of their attempts to, y’know, legislate — and we have a Congress furious at the executive branch because of its refusal to, y’know, execute their laws. Most agitating of all, perhaps, is George’s exhortation to the House that “this is not what the American people want.”

Uh, you mean the American people that elected them? For specifically this purpose? Hey, y’know all those kooky anti-war protestors that have been giving you such a headache lately? We’re the American people, too. Who the hell are you talking to?

Mind if I take a swing?

2007-03-25T12:02:00.001-06:00

1.) One book that changed your life.
Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. I’ve pretty much outgrown this one — I don’t really agree with, well, most of the conclusions that he comes to, and the protagonist is something of a slack-jawed straw man — but I read this at just the right age for it to blow my mind, and I still adhere to the main revelation that I took from it: that human societies function best when organized at a smaller level.

2.) One book you’ve read more than once.
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien. Picked by virtue of the fact that I think I’ve read it more than any other book (with the possible exception of Le Morte D’Arthur) — I read it when I was six years old, it’s the first book I remember reading on my own, and I’ve come back to it at least once a year since. Its depiction of the corrupting influence of power, of evil as both an internal and external force, and its faith in the potency of ordinary people to resist it, have all had a powerful influence on my own thinking.

3.) One book you’d want on a desert island.
Parzival, by Wolfram von Eschenbach. This sprawling, sixteen-book German epic about a bumbling simpleton being initiated into the mysteries of man and God is nothing less than the single greatest achievement of Western literature, and nobody’s even heard of it.

4.) One book that made you laugh.
Y’know, I don’t laugh that often when I’m reading — I might be amused, or think “Huh. That’s clever,” but actual, out-loud laughter? I’d have to go with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. Every line in the damn thing is perfectly constructed, and it’s also the most bleak and bitter satire of the way bureaucracy destroys lives on a (literally!) cosmic scale that I’ve ever encountered

5.) One book that made you cry.
The Power That Preserves, by Stephen Donaldson. Another fantasy novel (can you tell I’m kind of a geek?) in which the epic final battle takes the form of an epic conversation, an almost Buddhist argument over the nature of reality and the function of morality within it. The conclusion that the protagonist comes to — that concepts such as hope and despair are irrelevant in a moral struggle, that evil must be resisted for its own sake, without anticipation of success — is a deeply moving one to me, not least because of what it costs him to achieve it, and probably explains why I’ve ended up allying myself with third parties.

6.) One book you wish had been written.
Chretien de Troyes’ continuation of Perceval, le Conte du Graal, not least because it would spare us all any number of nonsensical conspiracy theories about the Roman Catholic Church. For Chrissakes, they’ve done enough monstrous bullshit in their history without us having to invent more.

7.) One book you wish had never been written.
I guess I could come up with some kind of snarky response, like The Communist Manifesto or Atlas Shrugged, but the fact is that I really don’t jive with the whole “suppression of information” thing. Bring on all the ideas, good, bad, and ugly. And thus I, Clinton-like, will neatly tap-dance my way past this whole debate.

8.) One book you’re currently reading.
Time Enough for Love, by Robert Heinlein. It’s a bit of a slog, but much more enjoyable if you approach it as a loosely connected collection of short stories, rather than a coherent novel.

9.) One book you’ve been meaning to read.
I’m embarrassed to admit that I still haven’t made it through The 9-11 Commission Report, but I think I’m going to have to steal Rik’s response and say The Qu’ran. Islam is a rising geopolitical power, and I honestly have no genuine understanding of where they’re coming from.

10.) Tag six people.
Since four of them are the LME crew, I guess I’ll tag two: Ben and Dan.

I Can't Stop Blogging

2007-03-25T11:57:00.000-06:00

So I've been asked to be a guest writer (curiously enough, considering my particular political background) for Liberal Media Elite, where I will function as something of a dissenting voice, except in those cases where I'm in agreement with them. (See? I'm already mastering the diplomatic art of using a lot of words to say nothing at all.) I've been a fan of the site since it went up, and they've begun to achieve a reasonably high profile, so it's an honor to be asked. In the meantime, I'll probably be cross-posting most of what I write over here, if only to keep it archived in one place.

Uncivilized

2007-03-05T03:30:00.000-06:00

After veritable minutes of careful research, I'm come to the conclusion that the world is divided into two kinds of people: those who are addicted to Sid Meier's Civilization, and those who have never played it.

For the uninitiated: the game is a kind of "God simulation" in which you guide the fortunes of a struggling civilization, founding cities, establishing trade and diplomatic ties, waging war when necessary (and perhaps when it isn't). Your goal is to win the game in one of two ways: either by wiping out all other civilizations (almost impossible without developing nuclear arms), or successfully developing space travel and colonizing other worlds.

The real genius of the game, I think, is its unique combination of challenge and accessibility. It's remarkably easy to sit down and start pushing elements around: what's this? oh, I'll just move my settlers here, click this "found city" button -- what technology should we be developing? whoops, I've been wiped out by barbarian tribes, silly mistake, one more quick play-through -- and then it's three in the morning and your civilization is still getting wiped out by the French.

The system of inventing cultural advances is by far the most interesting part of the game, and the one that produces the most amusing absurdities -- it's possible to develop nuclear weapons without having cracked the secret of pottery, for example. The invention of democracy enables you to discover recycling, because, y'know, one inevitably leads to the other, I guess. The invention of communism allows you to build the United Nations (tee hee), and so forth.

But the thing that struck me the most on my most recent play-through is the fact that the world of the game presents no role for the inspired individual: *all* cultural advances are solely the role of government research, requiring a specific number of "resource points" which, once alotted, will produce the desired invention. This isn't how history works, although the idea's a disturbingly prevalent one -- we hear it now with scientists talking about stem-cell research, confidently claiming that this amount of research over this amount of time will yield this result. (Uh, has science *ever* worked this way? I mean, ever?)

Anyway, the point is that, sure, it's possible for you to build Shakespeare's theatre in the game -- but that achievement is meaningless without a Shakespeare to inhabit it. And a government can't create a Shakespeare. (You could justifiably argue that a government can -- and did -- *facilitate* a Shakespeare. I yield the point, but my own stands.)

So, yeah. I realize that I'm attacking the underlying mechanic of the game, and that altering it would suck a lot. It's a great game, even if I can't help raising an eyebrow at most of its basic assumptions. And it's definitely one of the most ambitious, certainly politically, that's ever been created. Why don't they make 'em like this anymore?

Nike-Eighty-Four

2007-02-20T13:51:00.000-06:00

http://mmdnewswire.com/content/view/862/

AAAGGGHHH OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY FUCKING GOD

I have nothing further to add.

Oh, Right

2007-02-19T21:04:00.000-06:00

After the last election, I wrote the following:

"In a national level, Democrats have picked up the House, while it looks like Republicans will maintain their hold on the Senate. A divided government once again, and I have to confess, it couldn't come too soon. Hopefully a split between the various branches will render our government completely ineffective, unable to take a shit without going through reams of bureaucracy first, and a paralyzed government is exactly the kind of government I like."

The bickering over the Democrats' recent non-binding resolution has brought my attention to the fact that -- while a power squabble rendering both parties ineffective is all well and good -- one of the things that a legislative branch *can* be effective at is, say, serving as a check on the executive. Which doesn't seem to be happening.

Absolutely Negative

2007-02-17T14:29:00.000-06:00

Couple of random thoughts, which may or may not form part of a coherent whole:

-I'm a moral absolutist. This means that I believe that there is an objective good and evil that operates within human society. I don't believe that morality is something solely defined by the society or the family that you were raised in; I believe that there are certain beliefs and actions which are fundamentally damaging for human beings to practice, and damaging to those around them.

-Saturdays are pretty heady for me. I have Tai Chi classes in the afternoon, church in the evening, and cabarets at night. It's a good day for thinking about stuff.

-There are those who characterize absolutism as simplistic point of view. To my way of thinking, the relativistic view -- that words and deeds carry no objective moral weight -- is the simplistic one. My belief is not that mankind is divided into good and bad people, but that each man's soul is a daily battlefield between the two -- that every word and action we deliver carries significance.

-I've started going to church again. People tend to roll their eyes a lot when I talk about light and darkness at work in the world, and the conflict between the two , but sitting through the homilies is reminding me where I got it from. It's place where people talk about that conflict -- and take it very seriously indeed. The church views itself, rightly or wrongly, as a bastion of light in a world of darkness. This is, perhaps, why I've always attempted to characterize theatre the same way -- that I want my profession to serve a similar function in the world.

-I think that the greatest work of twentieth-century literature -- and the one that will be regarded as such by future generations -- is Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings." People scoff at this, because the books are very popular, and people believe that things that are popular can't be great art. They're wrong, and it is.

-One of the things I find so effective about the books is their complex portrayal of evil -- that evil is characterized both as an external force to be resisted physically, and an internal force to be resisted morally.

-The external force -- as embodied by Sauron -- I find effective, because it's so faceless, so chillingly bureaucratic. It's a single animating consciousness with no individual personality behind it. The face of Sauron is in his works.

-The internal force -- as embodied by the Ring -- I find effective, because it corrupts, not by appealing to the worst impulses in mankind, but to the best. Boromir is corrupted by his nobility, his patriotism, his desire to defend his nation. Gandalf was tempted by its potential to heal.

-Is such exercise of power inevitably corrupting? If you told me I could be absolute dictator of America for one week, I'd be tempted. Think of all the good I could do in that time! But would I really be able to step down after a week? After all, I would have to make sure that my changes could be maintained for an adequate period of time. And I'd stay for another week, and another -- until I ended up trying to reshape the country into my own image.

-This is part of why Superman's such a great metaphor for American power. I've joked that he's a man with the powers of a god, who uses them to defend the property of middle-class white people. But would he be wiser to use them more broadly? He could win any war single-handedly, but the source of his authority would be nothing more than brute strength. But to *not* intervene in a war, and to end it quickly, makes him responsible for the lives that are lost. It's America's dilemma, isn't it? We simply have too much power to wield responsibly.

-Tai Chi is interesting because -- like many Chinese arts -- it's defined largely by its duality: that it functions both as a kind of moving meditation and a form of self-defense. It has a "Yin" aspect, a soft, internal one, an embracing of the void, a desire to cleanse oneself; and a "Yang" aspect, a hard, external one, a bright, powerful form of physical resistance. It, too, recognizes the need to confront evil both internally and externally, through that poetic contradiction of resistance and submission.

-This, ultimately, is why I believe that the invasion of Iraq is doomed to failure: because we've been fighting it as an *external* war, and not an *internal* one. We have enough physical power crush any opponent; but our own moral position is too hollow to inspire, to lead. We've built a throne of blood with nobody to place upon it.

Ancient Chinese Secret

2007-02-08T16:51:00.000-06:00

“Rule a nation with justice.
Wage war with surprise moves.
Become master of the universe without striving.
How do I know that this is so?
Because of this!

The more laws and restrictions there are,
The poorer people become.
The sharper men’s weapons,
The more trouble in the land.
The more ingenious and clever men are,
The more strange things happen.
The more rules and regulations,
The more thieves and robbers.

Therefore the sage says:
I take no action and people are reformed.
I enjoy peace and people become honest.
I do nothing and people become rich.
I have no desires and people return to the good and simple life.”

That was written by the Chinese sage Lao Tzu, nearly six thousand years before John Locke was born. It was written during a time of political upheaval and philosophical revolution. The nation was divided into dozens of different entities in constant war with each other, and its citizens were desperately seeking another way. Confucius taught that the way to order was through submission: submission of the child to the parent, of the wife to the husband, and ultimately, to the state.

At the same time, Lao Tzu was teaching another way – not just another way, but literally the Way, called the Tao. He spoke of the harmony achieved within oneself, with one’s environment – of a world in which man and the state simply left one another alone.

I’ve been taking Tai Chi classes lately, and it’s my first in-depth exposure to a soft style of martial arts. Most of my training has been in hard styles – I’m a red belt in Tae Kwon Doe – which consist largely of direct force, of muscle against muscle, bone against bone. And I have a lot of respect for that philosophy – if I’m in a fight with someone, it makes sense for me to hit someone as hard as I can, as fast as I can.

A couple of classes ago, one of the instructors did that thing that every martial-arts instructor does, y’know, where the scrawny old guy stands in front of you and says, “Okay. Come at me as hard as you can.” And you know you shouldn’t, because you know something fucking awful is going to happen to you if you do, but you just can’t help yourself, y’know?

First, he demonstrated the resistance of a hard style – pushing against me with all his strength, and we were about evenly matched. Then, he showed the resistance of a soft style – where I would lunge against him and just somehow fall *through* him or *past* him.

It was like pushing a noodle – because *it’s impossible to push against something that isn’t resisting you*. The more force you exert, the more damage you do to yourself. It’s the perfect illustration of Lao Tzu’s philosophy – that beautiful contradiction of resisting without resisting.

Unsurprisingly, the philosophy of Confucius ended up becoming the philosophy of the state, ultimately establishing four thousand years of varying degrees of tyranny. Lao Tzu, it is said, fled society altogether – his great work, the Tao Te Ching, was supposedly dictated to the gatekeeper of the Han Gu pass, who would not let him depart without leaving some tangible legacy behind.

That seems to be the response of so many of those who fear and despise state power – to abandon civilization altogether, from the Taoist monks, to the survivalist nuts running around in the woods today. And they’re an easy target of ridicule, but I can’t help wondering if there isn’t some merit to their approach. After all, talking about societal collapse isn’t paranoia, it’s history -- *every* society collapses, it’s just a question of *when*.

For my part, that kind of retreat is unthinkable, for at least three reasons. One, because I’m incapable of surviving outside of the boundaries of civilization. Hell, if I can’t get a pizza at three in the morning, I feel like I’m trapped in Lord of the Flies.

Two: because I’m in love with civilization. In fact, that’s a huge part of the appeal of a free market for me. Milton Friedman has this wonderful speech he gives (well, gave, sigh) in which he holds up a pencil and makes the assertion that there is no man on earth who is capable of constructing it. And he’s right – he goes on to list the thousands upon thousands of people involved in its creation, from obtaining the raw materials, to their refinement, to their ultimate combination. There’s a poetry to that, to the specialization and collaboration that city living creates, that I honestly can’t imagine living without.

And, three, although this is by far the least logical one – there’s a part of me that wonders if that kind of retreat from society isn’t simply another kind of submission. Perhaps there is no virtue in resistance – it may simply be the product of idealism and naivete – but I’m young enough yet to be that naive. And I’m tempted to observe that our country was founded by those idealistic enough to resist.

“Why are the people starving?
Because the rulers eat up the money in taxes.
Therefore the people are starving.

Why are the people rebellious?
Because the rulers interfere too much.
Therefore they are rebellious.

Why do the people think so little of death?
Because the rulers demand too much of life.
Therefore the people take death lightly.
Having little to live on, one knows better than to value life too much.”

Confessions of a News Junkie

2007-01-19T15:19:00.000-06:00

(Tangential rant about feminism up on my arts blog, if anybody's interested in such nonsense.)

---

My name is phillip low, and I'm a news junkie.

I don't differentiate, I'll take it in any form I can get it, television, newspapers, talk radio, blogs. LSD? PCP? Forget it. Try CNN, FOX, BBC. I'm always looking for a new high. If there was a way to inject information directly into my bloodstream? I'd be doing it right now. If they find a way for me to snort it into my nasal passages or ram it up my ass? Consumer whores like me don't get to have limits.

For the longest time, I didn't get how people could find politics boring. Actually, I suspect I largely generate my own entertainment. The television isn't on for five minutes before I start screaming profanities at the screen.

Thing is, it was around the time of the 2004 election that I think I finally figured it out. I was up all night, laptop sitting open in, naturally, my lap, television on, rapidly switching between channels and websites, following the results with bated breath as they gradually came in, state by state, and suddenly it hit me -- this is how my dad watches football.

It's not like I hate football or anything, it's just that I find it unutterably boring. But here's the thing -- the reason that I find it boring is because I don't understand it. Because I don't know the rules, I don't get the significance of things happening -- and because I don't know the players, I don't get the significance of this guy doing this thing to this other guy.

The reason people find politics boring boils down to two simple things: the fact that they don't understand the rules, and that they don't know who the players are. Once you figure those out, it's gripping. I presume football is, as well. The difference, I suppose, is that if the Vikings win the Superbowl, they don't then get to redistribute your wealth.

Of course, the fact that the media sucks may have something to do with it.

---

In continuing my steady accumulation of 9-11 memorabilia, I just received my copy of a graphic adaptation of the 9/11 Report. Adam Cadre was rather dismissive of it in his review, correctly observing that it consists, for the most part, of stating facts and then illustrating them (e.g. the text will read "President Bush said..." and then show a picture of President Bush, rather than finding a more dynamic way to visually dramatize the events). I would argue that I think he's underestimating the value of being able to attach a human face to the events in question. It's one thing to read "Three Arab nationals set off an alarm and were directed to a second metal detector, but they quickly passed inspection." Somehow, there's a more immediate, visceral impact to seeing it happen.

I spent a couple of months recently working with my students on melodrama, with a particular focus on theatre as political action. Ultimately, the realization I emerged with from this was that theatre's power, politically, is the ability to assign a human face to a problem. An economist can pull out countless charts and statistics, abstractly indicating the idea of poverty -- but an actor can give you a direct, emotional connection.

---

I recall one morning, as I was fixing breakfast, I was flipping back and forth between CNN and Fox News, respectively regarded as the bastions of the left and the right, and -- it was a surreal experience.

FOX, you see, underscored everything with a rapid, pulse-pounding beat, rapidly switching from scene to scene, offering melodramatic voice-overs and pundits screaming at me, attempting to create news as a kind of action movie.

Then I flipped back to CNN. They were in the middle of some human-interest story about, I dunno, autistic kids or something. The camera was using a soft-focus lens, and piano music was playing in the background. I saw an image of a window, and someone pressing their hand against it from the other side. And I thought, ah. If FOX is giving me the news as an action movie, then CNN is giving me the news as a bad Lifetime for Women television special.

Both of them, I recognize, are struggling with the same problem -- finding a way to create that emotional connection between the information they're providing and their audience. Thing is, what we see are journalists pretending to be filmmakers, and they're doing it badly.

This, I suppose, is why I have little patience with those who complain about programs like the Daily Show and the Colbert Report -- because they're filmmakers pretending to be journalists, and they're doing it *well*.

Self-Doubt

2007-01-05T18:22:00.000-06:00

Why am I writing this?

I’ve been glancing over some of my old posts, and I can’t escape the sense that – this isn’t me. Oh, they’re my beliefs, yes, absolutely, but – this isn’t my voice. Why does this space exist? These essays haven’t been particularly funny, or interesting. The only reason I can find so far is to provide a kind of affirmation for people who already think the same things I do, and if that’s the case, that’s truly unpleasantly self-congratulatory.

---

9-11 affected me profoundly. Not just because of the carnage, and the loss of life – although that was terrible – but because in the face of that carnage, I thought I saw something I recognized – that black thing in my own mind that drives me from one self-destructive behavior to another, that nihilism, that entropy, that anger, and in the men who organized such destruction I saw men who had ceased to resist, who had given themselves over to that same force, and I know, I know how easy it would be to surrender myself to that desire to destroy myself and everything around me...

...and I think – although I wasn’t able to articulate this until much later – that it was in that moment that I became viscerally conscious of evil as an external force, rather than as a solely internal one. I can’t condone the actions of suicide bombers. But if, say, somebody murdered my entire family, and then told me that I could lash out at that person at the expense of my own life...

...I’d like to think that I would take the moral high ground. But I wonder how many of us, facing the true terror of sincere self-knowledge, would choose to walk away.

“...we had it all
we could have lived forever
but there was something in us
that we could not help
which just wanted everything to die.”

-Mario Milosevic

So I wonder –ranting and railing in a space like this – is it truly productive? Or is it just one more way of feeding that destructive rage, that blackness in my mind, that blackness in the world?

---

My last show featured a running gag in which my character would step up onto a soapbox and unleash a series of explosive rants. They were intended to be comic, but frequently not received as such. I recall one performance in particular, in which I paused to take a breath – and become aware of dead silence in the room. For a picosecond, I panicked. As a performer who’s used to playing for laughs, the instinct is to regard silence as deadly. But I quickly realized that, no, they weren’t bored – there were *listening*.

The sensation was an intoxicating one. And I can easily see how it becomes so fatally addictive to political figures.

After all, all bloggers secretly believe that we’re Thomas Paine.

---

The ultimate figure out libertarian heroism, to me, is not John Galt, but Adrian Monk, the obsessive-compulsive detective of the titular television series. (Try saying that ten times fast. Alliteration, my most reliable companion thou art...) Taking to heart the axiom “A weakness is a strength misapplied,” this man, who would be dismissed – and frequently is, much to his enemies’ regret – as a mental cripple by those surrounding him, examined his particular gifts and was able to transform himself into a powerful force for good.

Not in an act of selfishness, as Ayn Rand might claim, but in an act of self-actualization. This, perhaps, is where I differ from many libertarians – in my belief that we exist to serve. Not to serve our governments – but to serve each other, as individuals.

I think that the ability to write satire requires not so much cynicism (contrary to popular belief) – but a truly unique idealism – idealism enough to imagine a better world, and rage at the discrepancy between that world and this one. It is perilously easy to lose one’s footing and slip into bitterness and despair. But to maintain our reforming zeal, we must raise our eyes and remain fixated on hope.

I am idealistic enough to believe that – crippled beings though we are – we all have something necessary to contribute, though we spend our lives seeking after what that something is. I haven’t found it yet – I presume if I had, that I would be playing to larger houses.

But I do know that the voice I’ve been using here isn’t it.

---

I believe in liberty, in liberty to choose, and the moral necessity of taking responsibility for those choices. I believe that we are all constantly re-inventing our selves, that it is within our power to choose who we want to be.

I’m going to continue writing in this space, but maybe putting a little less pressure on myself. I’m not writing speeches, or even for an audience. Hell, that’s my day job. I want this to be a space where I come to struggle with ideas – not a place to give answers, but a place to ask questions.

I believe that the world needs one more sincere libertarian voice. Not another indignant, condescending demagogue.

God Make You Mighty, Gentlemen

2006-12-24T02:07:00.000-06:00

I vividly recall traversing the threshold from mainland China into Hong Kong and its environs, because it was as though we slammed into this wall of Christmas. The scarcity of the holiday in the former is hardly surprising -- even setting their wariness of globalization aside, this is after all a country that requires you to renounce faith in God for membership in its sole political party -- but you hit a free-market economy and whoop, there it is.

I had a similar experience around the same time last year, as I returned to the States from another trip overseas to find the airport decked out in full Christmas regalia as early as November fourth. (I also narrowly avoided stepping into a pile of human excrement sitting in the middle of my departure gate, which I observed lying unattended for no less than a full half-hour before I boarded my next flight -- as startling a "welcome home" as I've ever received.)

The season is so relentlessly cheerful that it's hard for contrarians like me to avoid using it as an excuse to brood on all the things missing from our lives.

A lot of people complain that our emotional attachment to the holiday is simply something that was manufactured by advertising agencies. Well, yeah -- but a lot of our attachments are manufactured. In fact, that's what I do for a living -- economically speaking, I create fictional constructs that you develop an emotional attachment to in order to encourage you to continue buying my product. (Of course, artistically speaking, it's somewhat more complicated than that.) But surely that doesn't diminish the validity of the emotion. So what's the sin? That the attachments were created by Big Evil Corporations, rather than struggling artists? If that's the case, God forbid I should ever achieve anything like success.

"But it's such a commercial holiday!" people cry. Well, yeah, but that's obviously not going to be a big barrier to somebody like me. I love capitalism, its hyperactive desire to entertain, its breathless, scizophrenic attempts to capture your attention. The economy booms around Christmastime. "But what about the little guy?" This is when private charity peaks. (Of course, the little guy desperately needs more, not to mention more often -- my point is simply that the season doesn't *damage* us economically.)

"Remember that Jesus is the reason for the season!" cry Christians. Well, we all recognize that for the bullshit argument it is, surely? There's no historical basis for Jesus of Nazareth having been born around this time of year -- it was a co-opting of a number of pagan festivals, which, I'm sure, cannibalized the traditions preceding them, as well. "But what about other winter festivals, like Hannukah, or Kwanzaa?" Oog. I can't speak for the Jews -- whose dates aren't determined by the Gregorian calendar -- but Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by a Marxist who claimed that Jesus was psychotic. Then people start calling me a racist, and then I curl up into a fetal position and start rocking.

It hardly matters though, does it? After all, they're all made-up holidays, at least in terms of the time of year that they take place. The reason we have a winter festival is because we all get so fucking depressed that we need a socially acceptable excuse to get recklessly drunk and start frantically groping each other beneath exotic vegetation. And that, I can get behind.

---

Just got back from seeing Santa Man, another zinger of a one-man show from the prolific Rik Reppe. I know this is a backhanded compliment, but it's the most enjoyable holiday show in recent memory. It follows the same predictable arc that so many Christmas stories do -- cantankerous individual discovers holiday cheer through the spirit of charity -- with the significant twist that this story is a true one; Rik, depressed over an impending divorce, set out on a road trip across America last year to hand out toys to Katrina victims.

Towards the beginning of the show, as he was talking about things like snowball fights and road music, I found myself thinking: "His strength as a storyteller is his ability to attach profound significance to events most of us wouldn't consider twice." But no, that's wrong, and I quickly corrected myself. His strength as a storyteller is the fact that he's a man of action, that he aggressively pursues his stories, rather than passively allowing them to happen to him. After all, while most of us (okay, me) were sitting at home feeling sorry for ourselves, he hopped in his car and actually did something beneficial to somebody else.

In an enjoyable twist, the nature of the show became an interactive one, as Rik and his cronies over at Liberal Media Elite conducted a toy drive in conjunction with the performance, which he'll be taking out to kids who lost their parents in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in Worthington. It's a swell cause, and one that contributes a level of immediacy to his storytelling. Highly recommended, if it wasn't obvious already, and it gets the phil low stamp of approval(TM).

---

What is libertarianism about? It seems like I've asked that question in every post since I started this thing, and come up with a different answer every time. (To paraphrase an old joke, put five libertarians in a room together and you'll get six opinions.) But it's a worthwhile question: what is it all about?

It's not about greed, or selfishness (contrary to popular opinion, or what Ayn Rand and her acolytes may assert) -- at least, not for me; it's about the power of choice, and assuming personal responsibility for those choices.

Christmas is an emotional time, and it's easy to lash out at the world around you: to blame corporations, or government, or Christians, or secularists, or the idiots who put up nativity scenes, or the idiots who vandalize them. But libertarianism demands that you take responsibility: that you take responsibility for your Christmas. The season can be about whatever you choose it to be: about greed, or compassion, or Jesus, or family, or alcohol. (The best Christmas, I imagine, would be one that managed to combine all of the above.)

So, rather than dishing out yet another saccharine "Merry Christmas!", allow me to articulate a truly libertarian holiday sentiment:

(clears throat)

"I hope that you choose to have a Merry Christmas, and that you choose to share that spirit with those around you."

Amen, brothers and sisters. And to all a good night.

Department of Insecurity

2006-12-17T00:43:00.000-06:00

"It's not my fault," he went on harshly. "I didn't do any of this. None of it. But I'm the cause. Even when I don't do anything. It's all being done because of me. So I won't have any choice. Just by being alive, I break everything I love." He scraped his fingers through the stubble of his beard; but his eyes continued staring at the waste of Andelain, haunted by it. "You'd think I wanted this to happen."

"No!" the First protested. "We hold no such conception. You must not doubt. It is doubt which weakens -- doubt which corrupts. Therefore is this Despiser powerful. He does not doubt. While you are certain, there is hope." Her iron voice betrayed a note of fear. "This price will be exacted from him if you do not doubt!"

Covenant looked at her for a moment. Then he rose stiffly to his feet. His muscles and his heart were knotted so tightly that Linden could not read him.

"That's wrong." He spoke softly, in threat or appeal. "You need to doubt. Certainty is terrible. Let Foul have it. Doubt makes you human." His gaze shifted toward Linden. It reached out to her like flame or beggary, the culmination and defeat of all his power in the Banefire. "You need every doubt you can find. I want you to doubt. I'm hardly human anymore."

-Stephen R. Donaldson, White Gold Wielder

I don't own a gun.

I'm a fan of the Bill of Rights. I'll always defend your right to possess one, and to use it in your own defense if necessary. I'm surprised that people aren't more alarmed by the prospect of a government that attempts to forcibly disarm its own citizens. I'm also surprised that the Democrats -- who claim to be the supporters of individual liberty -- are the ones most engaged in trying to repeal that right.

So, politically? Yeah. An unarmed populace is completely *dependent* upon the state. I get that. But that doesn't alter my great personal distaste for them. In fact, "distaste" is too mild a word -- I have an active *revulsion* for the fucking things. Why?

I can conjure up a few possible reasons. For one thing, my background in martial arts: a form whose sole function is to prepare you for the moment of confrontation with your own mortality. If I attempt to kill a man with my bare hands, that takes some goddamn *work* on my part. A gun is a tool designed with the sole function of making killing *easy*.

Of course, I recognize that fine ideals like that won't defend me from a bullet speeding toward my face at 3000 feet per second. And I recognize that that's groping after a rational explanation for an emotional state that is fundamentally irrational.

Because ultimately, it isn't violence I fear: it's *power*.

---

If I distrust power in others, then it's at least partly because I distrust it so deeply within myself. I'm all too aware of my own capacity for harm.

This, I think, is the area that differentiates me from so many other libertarian writers: that so many of them seem to be trying to re-invent themselves as the Randian "ideal man", preaching with the same brash self-assurance that -- forgive me -- characterized the socialists of many decades ago.

Well, I'm the first to admit that I've got more than my share of preachiness and self-righteous indignation. But though I'm a Libertarian, I'm no Objectivist. And maybe it's all of my clowning training, but that kind of assertiveness just doesn't come easily to me. I look in the mirror, and my reflection doesn't present an ideal *anything* -- I'm not physically imposing, I have no fashion sense -- I'm so hamstrung by my neuroses half the time it's a miracle I can even manage to leave my apartment. If libertarianism offers us the promise of the self-created man, the man who confidently seizes his destiny and conquers his opposition, well, I ain't it. If life is a circus, I'm not the ringmaster; I'm the guy scraping up the elephant shit after the audience goes home.

In fact, the only thing I'm confident of is my right to indecision. The ideal to which I've devoted my life is the pursuit of (t/T)ruth. Perhaps it's that spirit of inquiry that's led me to the libertarians -- because, in my view, they're the ones who are most likely to defend it.

Or, perhaps not. Or...well...maybe...hmm...

"INDECISION NOW!" isn't a battle cry that's going to rouse anybody's blood. But I sometimes wonder if it isn't the sanest one.

---

The quote at the beginning of this post comes from my favorite modern fantasy work, "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever." (Have I mentioned I'm kind of a geek?) It relies upon a fairly cliched fantasy setup -- unlikely hero is given a ring of unimaginable power to overthrow a dark lord, yadda yadda yadda -- with two twists: one, a compelling moral ambiguity; and two, the fact that the "hero" is writer who suffers from chronic illness, and consequently believes that his own capacity for creation will kill him. I'm reminded of one passage in particular:

"...innocence is a wonderful thing except for the fact that it's impotent. Guilt is power. All effective people are guilty because the use of power is guilt, and only guilty people can be effective. Effective for good, mind you. Only the damned can be saved."

Amen to that, brother.

A Strained Homonym

2006-12-07T15:56:00.000-06:00

I guess that you could say that I've always had an issue with capitals.

My name, for example -- I haven't capitalized it since I was sixteen years old. The affectation started with an obsession with e. e. cummings, a pretentious act of adolescent rebellion, the linguistic equivalent of dying one's hair green. When I entered show business, it struck me that a memorable quirk could be professionally advantageous -- so I hung onto it. (Besides, I suppose that I have some objection to my name being classified as a proper noun. There ain't nothin' proper about me, thank you very much.)

Likewise, I've never had much fondness for capitols, either, those industry towns whose industry happens to be the government. I infinitely prefer the bustling nightlife and exuberant cultural scene of Minneapolis to the staid, static wasteland that is St. Paul. I've always distrusted the consolodation of power.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that those are both reasons why I've long resisted making the jump from being a small-"l" libertarian to a large-"L" party supporter. While I align myself with them philosophically -- I find their platform to be just about the most coherent and ethical political ideology I've ever encountered -- I was never quite able to bring myself to join up.

Ironically, one of the main forces that led me to the party -- a profound distrust of authority -- is also one of the things that's kept me from signing on the dotted line. I'm not a joiner by nature. I'm too damned stubborn, too damned skeptical, and Lord knows I've been burned too goddamned many times by just about every organization I've aligned myself with, religious, political, or professional. I mean, Christ, I supported the Democrats for most of my teen years, and that didn't exactly have stellar results.

There's a professional concern, too. I've commented that the greatest casualty of 9-11 was decent comedy writing, as countless skilled comedians eschewed punchlines in favor of trying to re-invent themselves as tiresome political pundits. I've come to believe that my status as an outsider has been advantageous to me as an artist -- since I'm not invested in either of the two major political parties, I'm free to heckle both from the sidelines. Once you swear yourself to an Absolute Truth, you lose some of your unpredictability, some of your effectiveness, some of your, dare I say it, individuality -- not to mention taking the first tiny step to becoming a dictator yourself.

But this afternoon, I finally signed up. Why?

Well, a number of reasons. It's true that I'm in agreement with the bulk of their philosophy, but more importantly, they're in agreement with mine. It's not that I read the literature and tried to conform my opinions to theirs, it's that I read the literature and realized that they were saying things that I'd been thinking -- not to mention writing about, and performing -- for years. There's also the fact that we're coming off of midterm election season, and that's always a pretty emotional time for me. But I think the greatest reason is my return from three countries (or two, or one, depending on how you define it) -- Taiwan, Hong Kong, and, most notably, China.

Seeing China up close was a -- troubling experience. Of course, there were the obvious things -- the state-sponsored propaganda, the omnipresence of the police -- but what really disturbed me, I think, was how effectively they were able to put up a smiling face -- that I could be sitting at a table with men and women earnestly discussing the failure of capitalism of democracy.

On November 24, the day I left, Wan Yanhai, the country's leading AIDS activist, disappeared under mysterious circumstances -- almost certainly murdered by the police. The thing is, within the country itself, I would have had absolutely no way of knowing about this -- it was only after I left that I found it reported. And that's just one destroyed life among many.

It's been correctly ascertained that China is now a Communist country in name only. Their leadership was able to realize that that path would lead them to certain economic self-destruction. So we're seeing the rise of private enterprise, under the control of an authoritarian government. Stalin coined a term for that merger of state and corporate power -- he called it corporatism.

But in the West, we had a different name for it. We called it fascism, and in its day, it nearly brought the free world to its knees.

One of my fellow Minnesotans, Sinclair Lewis, famously said "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." Now our reliance on a two-party system has left our government vulnerable to a takeover by religious fundamentalists. This is one of the most alarming -- not to mention unprecedented -- events in our political history.

I'm equally alarmed by the rise of the religious left, who are trying to adopt the language and tactics of their opposition, apparently dismissing Christ's injunction to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, render unto God that which is God's" -- perhaps the most eloquent call for the separation of church and state in history. The first priority of Jesus of Nazareth was saving souls (in fact, as I recall it, he was crucified in part for his refusal to enter the politics of the day). He urged men to give of themselves to the poor, because it was spiritually good for them to do so. He did not urge men to create a government that would forcibly redistribute other people's wealth amongst the populace.

So why did I join the party? And why am I writing this blog? In part, because I've come to realize how small I am in relation to that, how limited I am as a single voice -- and, perhaps, a foolish desire to measure myself against the rising darkness of our time. I recognize that you can't fight collectivism with collectivism. But that doesn't mean that you have to stand alone.

I believe that the key question of all politics was posed nearly two thousand years ago, by a satirist named Juvenal: "Quis custodiet ipso custodies?" or, "Who watches the watchmen?" Glancing around at the American political landscape, the answer, I believe, *is* the libertarians. The digital revolution, and the rise of the internet, is changing the way we access information. That's easily the topic of an essay in and of itself, but the point is that voices that have traditionally gone unheard are gaining a larger and larger audience.

I'm still struggling to figure out what my role in contemporary politics is. Even if the nature of military life wasn't in diametric opposition to my disposition, my physical disability would presumably keep me from the battlefield. I know myself too well to believe that I could ever pose as a credible electoral candidate. It's true that I have certain abilities, and that most of my work has an expressly political subtext (not to mention, something of an overbearing, preachy streak) -- but I find the bulk of explicitly political plays to be offensively condescending. I have no intention of becoming a party shill in my work -- I recognize that that would be both financial and artistic suicide.

I'm still trying to figure it out. But for now, I'll be doing it as a (l/L)ibertarian. Capit(a/o)ls and all.

More Notes from China Journal

2006-12-03T22:53:00.000-06:00

Last filler post before I get back to something with a little more substance.

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Concluded our visit to Guilin with a visit to a tiger zoo, and maybe it's because I was in such a foul mood at the time, but I thought it was the just about the most miserable, depressing place I've ever been. I don't know what it says about us as a species that we take delight in caging such raw power for our entertainment. The animal act was the worst -- watching them being whipped and yelled at to literally jump through hoops for me is not something I can derive a lot of enjoyment from.

Watching the act, it's almost absurd to see two or three unassuming men so easily cowing a cage full of tigers. It would be so easy -- it would be the simplest thing in the world -- for the animals to overcome them, and yet they don't.

I read a book a while ago that claimed the Chinese have something worse than whips -- they have whips in the soul, an ingrained compulsion to cringe before authority. This idea disgusts me enough that I found myself longing for a fit of Jurassic-Park-like rage, in which the animals would burst free from their captivity and messily devour us, except I know that the government would draw exactly the wrong conclusion from this and start discussing how to build better cages.

After all, isn't that exactly what politics are all about? Building better cages?

Notes from China Journal

2006-12-01T18:33:00.000-06:00

Still struggling to catch up with a life that's racing out of control, so I thought I'd toss out some pages from a journal I kept while I was travelling in China.

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So stop me if you've heard this before. A group of political and religious refugees flee an oppressive regime and found a new nation overseas. After some initial conflict with the indigenous peoples, they establish themselves for several generations and soon regard themselves as independent. Despite an increasing tendency towards democracy, the citizens of this nation are still regarded as citizens of the regime they've fled. A seemingly inevitable conflict is delayed by those who urge reconciliation on both sides.

Now, here's the ten thousand dollar question -- am I talking about America in 1776, or Taiwan nearly 230 years later?

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There's been a lot of concern and discussion lately about the possibility of China becoming the next global superpower. This seems to me to represent a fundamental misunderstanding of the issue at hand. The question is not whether or not China will achieve this power; the question is what China is going to do with the power it already has. China could be the most powerful nation in the world tomorrow if they had the focus and the leadership.

This may not be a politically correct observation to make -- since, after all, everybody's exactly the same and nobody's better than anybody else -- but I believe that the Chinese have more potential than any other race of people on earth. In every discipline, their society, and the individuals within it, have completely redefined our understanding of what the human race is capable of. Our best defense is, perhaps, the fact that many of them do not realize this -- but one day, and one day soon, the Chinese will awaken and realize that they are strong. And the earth will tremble.

In fact, the only credible threat they face may well be the Americans, whose emphasis on the value of the self, and individual creativity and inventiveness, produces its own extraordinary achievements -- and renders them an ideological polar opposite to the thinking of the Chinese. The conflict between the two would be fascinating to watch, if it wasn't me and family getting caught in the crossfire.

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Currently on our way out of Taiwan, and even from my (admittedly narrow) outsider's viewpoint, the country has thoroughly charmed me, particularly the bustling metropolis of Taipei.

What the Chinese have built here is extraordinary -- they've managed to preserve their ancient history and roots while simultaneously progressing forward into a more democratic state. They've achieved what mainland China so dramatically failed to do -- they've entered the modern world without sacrificing their own unique identity.

I find the mainland's insistence of ownership to be deeply troubling, and despite conciliatory voices on both sides, I find it impossible to credit that they will simply leave Taiwan alone indefinitely. If I have learned any fundamental truth about politics, it is that greedy and stupid is always finding new ways to be greedy and stupid. One day -- maybe tomorrow, maybe in twenty years -- they're going to make a move, and the real question then for Taiwan will be -- do they resist? Or do they submit?

Letter from a Lone Conservative

2006-11-29T23:48:00.001-06:00

Hi. My name's phillip low. I'd really love to sit down and compose some kind of eloquent introduction -- who I am, why I'm doing this, what this blog is for -- but I've just returned from a trip to China, and I'm running behind on, well, everything. That said, I know I need to start doing this now -- I'll be able to maintain it once I get some momentum going, but I'll never get started unless I make myself. (Which probably already tells you more about me than I'm comfortable with you knowing.)

In any case, I'm going to throw up an old post from one of my other blogs. Sorry for the abrupt leap to the most intimate part of our relationship -- give me a few days and, I assure you, the post-coital part of our dialogue will be delightfully stimulating.

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LETTER FROM A LONE CONSERVATIVE

ME: I'm a libertarian.
SOMEBODY: That's okay, I respect that.

It seems to me that whenever I reveal my political leanings, I get some variation on that response. I'm tempted to reply "I know that's okay, and I didn't ask you to respect that," but that would be less than civil. More to the point, there seems to be a kind of understated condescension to it -- it's okay for me to be a libertarian because I'm completely unthreatening to you. Y'know, I'm kind of like a Republican Lite, same conservatism without the political clout to back it up -- much like a wounded puppy pretending to be a wolf. Pat on the head, that's cute, let's get back to some legitimate political discourse now.

Furthermore, nobody seems to really believe that I actually mean it when I say it -- I'll say something like "I don't believe in government support for the arts," and people will say "Oh, yes, I see what you mean, we're too dependent on it, you want to reduce it somewhat, make a push for private funding," and, no, I mean that I don't think it should exist. Yeah, my company's struggling, just like everybody else's, but if it finally does collapse, I'll be able to look myself in the mirror and say that we didn't have to rely on money stolen from ordinary citizens under threat of imprisonment. There's just no way I can twist that around in my head and make it seem like morality to me. Some people claim that this system -- which they refer to as "taxation", and I refer to as "theft" -- is the basis of civilization. If so, not any civilization I want to be a part of. I may be persuaded that it is necessary, but if so it is a necessary evil, and not something to be championed.

There is additional level of absurdity to this in that I *am* an artist, so that a portion of the money I make entertaining people is taken by the government to fund *other* artists, my direct competition, and frequently goes to theatres that I wouldn't be caught dead in, because an elite group of people decided that their work has more socially redeeming value than mine. I find this ridiculous. If only we could devise some system whereby individual citizens could determine which theatres they wanted to survive, and -- oh, wait. We have such a system. It's called "free enterprise."

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The alarming expansion of federal power of this particular (Republican) administration, and the long national nightmare that has resulted from it, makes an alliance with Democrats appealing. Indeed, despite our differences on, say, economics, it's a kinship that goes back decades -- the Libertarian Party in this country was founded by men and women working alongside the remnants of the hippie movement in the early 1970s. But I can never lose sight of the fact that if the Democrats do get what they want -- control of the White House -- I'm going to be turning around and coming after them just as fast and twice and hard.

Albert Camus identifies two types of political ideologues: the revolutionary and the rebel. The revolutionary is the one with a grand vision, the one who wants to tear down the dictator so that they can become the dictator. The rebel wants simply to assert his own human dignity. The world that the Democrats envision for themselves -- a world where wise, benevolent leaders make the decisions regarding who deserves what, who dream of equality by cutting down the great to lift up the weak -- seems to me to be a kind of beautiful lie. I don't want to make those decisions, and I don't trust anyone else to make them for me. I got no mind to conquer. I just want to go my way, and I want everybody else to be free to do the same.

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George Washington was a President who believed in the restraint of the executive branch -- that true decision-making power lay with the legislative. He rarely used his veto powers, unless he believed that laws were being passed that were demonstrably unconstitutional. This is a man who, during the French Revolution, took down a portrait that had been given to him by the French government, out of fear that merely having it hanging in the White House might be construed as taking sides in the conflict. (I can't help but look at such an absolutely noninterventionist policy with a kind of melancholy longing, these days.)

In fact, there was one strong, controversial position that he adopted, passionately, and he was widely criticized for it: he warned the American people against the rise of political parties, cautioning that their reign would spell the end of everything he and his fellows had struggled to build.

I bring up this story because I'm an alternative party supporter, and it seems to me that every election year, there's countless articles by left-leaning columnists, very politely and articulately spelling out to me why I am stupid, selfish, and destroying our democracy. I would like to take a moment to respond to those, if I could.

First of all, yes, I am an idealist; yes, I follow party politics; no, I am not simply voting for the candidate who seems the coolest guy, or the one I would most like to have a drink with. I would not like to drink with any of them. Yes, it is a question of personal morality and integrity for me, as opposed to simply "the good of the state." Perhaps this makes me selfish; there are worse labels. I infinitely prefer the selfishness of voting for a cause that I believe in, to the hypocrisy of voting for a cause that I have devoted a significant portion of my life and career to fighting against.

You do not automatically have the right to my vote. If you want it, then you have to work for it. If I choose to give my vote to somebody else, then that somebody is not "stealing" my vote from you; they have competed fairly, and competed better than you did, and I would not have voted for you anyway. If I'm not on your side, then it's because you're not on mine.

I'm accused of being short-sighted; it seems to me that those who think only in terms of the battle directly in front of them are the ones thinking in the short term. I am playing for higher stakes. I am investing in a world where this bloated, inefficient monster -- the two-party system -- is nothing more than a footnote in our history texts.

To those of you voting in this Tuesday's election, I urge you to consider the following:

1) If you truly support one of the two major-party candidates -- congratulations! I can't tell you how deeply I envy you, or how I dream of the day that a candidate I believe in has a snowball's chance in hell of winning.

2) If you're considering voting for a candidate that you despise, simply out of party loyalty -- please consider the possibility that, while you are investing in a short-term triumph, you are also investing in long-term dismissal and degredation by the party that you swear fealty to. The message that you're sending is clear -- they only need to pay lip service to the principles you hold dear. They could nominate an orangutan and you would still vote for them.

(Incidentally, I am particularly exasperated with the gay community, who is so willing to blindly follow wherever the Democratic Party leads -- when it's clear that the Democratic leadership doesn't give a fuck about you. They hardly even bother to pretend to have any interest in your rights anymore. They might as well give you a careless shrug and say "Well, where else are you gonna go?")

3) To those of you who don't follow politics, who don't watch the news or read the newspaper, who get your opinions from late-night comedy shows and decide you might as well go along with the people surrounding you -- please. Don't vote. An uninformed vote is worse than no vote at all. The choice whether or not to vote is, indeed, a right of yours, a valid choice for you to make, and don't let anybody tell you differently.

4) To those Democrats who, every two years, try to bully me into voting for their party, relying on insults to my intelligence, rather than appeal through the powers of persuasion -- eat a dick.

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One more point -- the major issue on the ballot this year is not the War on Terror, or tax cuts, or gay marriage. It's an issue that's impossible to get people excited about, because there's no shocking images or tear-jerking human interest stories to accompany it. It's nothing more than the first, tiny step in a battle that could one day topple the two-party system once and for all. That issue is Instant Runoff Voting, and far, far, far too few people know anything about it. If you haven't heard of it, I won't try to persuade you -- all I ask is that you look it up, and decide for yourself, because you're an adult, and you can make your own decisions.

That is, after all, what libertarianism is all about -- is it not?