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.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Maybe you can, but man, I hope you can't.
'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.
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.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
What a Bunch of Poonises
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.
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.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Channeling Andy Rooney
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?
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?
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Capitalism At Its Finest
...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.
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.
Friday, September 7, 2007
Yeah, this one might be unpopular.
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Bridge to Nowhere
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?
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?
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