something's happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?

Breathes there a man with soul so dead who hasn't yet weighed in on the occupy movement and its why, whither and if?  So apologies to whomever I'm citing without credit bcs I can't remember, but this struck me as a true and smart observation on the significance of the occupations: They have made it so that selfishness and greed are no longer cool.  The bumper sticker proclaiming, "The person who dies with the most toys wins" got retired a while ago, but the philosophy has thrived and may explain why a lot of the 99% has put up with getting screwed over by the 1%.  So RIP to sophomoric Ayn Randism (in peace only bcs I like pacifism) and let's move on to the the next step, which is recognizing that we're going to have to do more than just redistribute the resources -- although that's not a bad place to start.

Why we're now occupied with occupations

I've been thinking a lot about how an impulse or dissatisfaction becomes a political movement, as the economic fairness encampments around the country might -- and when it doesn't -- as with the antiwar cause, which attracted hundreds of thousands before the invasion of Iraq and the agreement of the majority of Americans since 2007, but never really took off.  A major reason it didn't was that a tiny portion of Americans have anything to do with the people who have been fighting those wars -- the slogan could have been, "1% at war versus the 99% who get to ignore it" --  but the occupy everywheres don't represent 99% of Americans either.  At most, the 74% who are neither very poor, nor very rich.  Still, it's smart marketing to assume common cause among that three-quarters, despite the diversity of economic and political perspectives within, and I believe the protests are a genuine cri de coeur from younger people who are discovering that they've been screwed over by the system they're eager to be a part of.  What I've come to realize -- it's so obvious and it makes me sad -- is that Americans may take to the barricades over a principle, but they stay there in large numbers only when it's their own interest at stake.

texting for a certain age

YFHOO -- ya-fuckin-hoo
NMP -- not my problem
nsoh -- no sense of humor
cd -- charm deprived
Wapita -- What a pain in the ass!
Wiwt -- Whose idea was this?
Wwit -- What was I thinking?

OCCUPY BOSTON

NOT AFGHANISTAN* 

*or Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, etc.
(of course I have to have footnotes)


We're beginning to get discussion, however superficial, about what constitutes a political movement.  History profs weighing in that movements need identifiable spokespeople, old lefties noting ruefully that we've been here before, a pal laughing that the general assemblies (GA on the website -- I keep thinking they're talking about Georgia) sound like the crafts coop she used to be a part of --  on steroids.  Me, I quote Oscar Wilde that the trouble with socialism is that it would take too many evenings.

But for all that (and the (non)organizers do seem to be getting degrees in meetings and the signs aren't yet witty enough, or the rhythm section jazzy enough), I keep hoping that maybe they're on to something new -- where they don't have to give the press a star protester to fuck and then fuck over (anyone recall Camp Casey and Cindy Sheehan?), or give the politicians something to co-opt and water down to meaninglessness (examples too numerous to mention), or have to court money people to keep going (it's a real worry that some organization, such as MoveOn, will move in and tame the protest into a rally for the Dems), or end up replicating the liberation movements of my generation (for better and worse).  Seems to me the title of "movement" gets bestowed mostly in retrospect because real grassroots movements are  inchoate and evolving while they're happening and because we can't know what will change history until history is changed. So maybe the thing to embrace right now is a willingness to be surprised.

10 years on

It's been a dismal ten years in American public life.  Paul Auster on the BBC

a question

The host of a blather show on NPR suggests that maybe “we all,” by which I think he means all U.S. Americans, are “suffering from a stress disorder.”  But if an entire society has a disorder, doesn’t it become the norm?  And if the norm is dysfunctional, then isn’t it time to consider changing the norm?

dark, darker, darkest horses

I'm already weary of the prez election race with its flavor of the week (Palin might, Romney lies, Bachman OMG! Perry OMG2) and we're months out.  So I've decided to sit this one out until the Triple Crown -- or maybe even the Belmont -- when I'll know which campaigner to bother getting hysterical about.

82% disapprove of Congress -- but the real question is...

18% approve?  Who are these people?

together again?

The new bipartisanship: equal disdain for everyone

suicide ain't painless

So the prez will now send condolence letters to families of service members who commit suicide in combat zones, tho not elsewhere or later, which is where and when many deployment-related suicides happen.  Good.  Now, let's see, what else could he do to improve the situation? Like maybe end the misbegotten wars and remove that cause of moral injury?

okay, let's belabor a point

What's in the Daily News? I'll tell you what's in the Daily News

(with apologies to Frank Loesser) -- what's in the daily news is story after story about the ineptitude of Iraqi or Afghan police & soldiers with veiled/not-too-veiled pleas for U.S. forces to stick around and hold their hand.  You know, we really really want to bring our troops home and end these wars, but they just won't let us.  What ya gonna do?  (I don't think we've gotten a story yet about a guy in the government there who bought his wife a small ruby with what otherwise would have been his reconstruction dues, but when we do, remember that you read it here first.)

MILITARY RAPE (another of my upbeat stories)

MILITARY RAPE: Rampant, Ignored
by Nan Levinson

When Panayiota Bertzikis tried to tell her commanding officers that she had been raped by a shipmate in May 2006 four months into her tour at the Burlington, Vt. Coast Guard Station, they discouraged her from talking to an Equal Opportunity officer, barred her from seeing a civilian therapist, ignored a written confession from her attacker, and browbeat her into silence.  No wonder she thought she was the only one this had happened to.

But thanks to victims-turned-activists, such as Bertzikis, who are pulling military sexual trauma out from the shadows, it’s becoming harder for the U.S. military to ignore the problem.  In February, Bertzikis, along with 14 other women and two men, filed a lawsuit (Cioca et al v Rumsfeld and Gates), charging Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, with mishandling their sexual assault cases.  New plaintiffs are being added.

MST is an epidemic -- nearly a quarter of women serving in combat areas say they have been sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers – but everyone agrees that reliable statistics don’t exist.  The Pentagon, which recorded 3,158 incidents of sexual assault in 2010 (a slight decrease from 2009), estimates that only about 14 percent of all incidents are reported. 

can we say, "dent in national debt"?

According to the calculations of my union, the UAW -- admittedly, not an impartial source -- if the 400 richest U.S. taxpayers paid the same tax rate on their investment income, which is where most of their money comes from, as they're supposed to pay on their earned income, that would generate $18 billion in revenue.  Needless-to-say, they don't: the top tax rate on income is 35%, but the top rate on capital gains is 15%.  The UAW notes that 15% is what a working couple earning $50,000 pays.

Ding dong, the wicked witch has been brought to justice?

     Yes, I understand about how the corruption of language goes hand-in-hand with the corruption of thought, but can we please stop saying that bin Laden was "brought to justice."  He was killed.  The planet's better off without him, to my way of thinking, and in an eye-for-an-eye, he-hit-me-first equation, he got what he deserved and probably expected.  But when those SEALs stormed the compound and opened fire, I doubt that bringing anyone to justice was high up on their list of goals  (Not that I can think of any way that justice could have been served, given the real politik of the situation. A trial would have been a mockery of justice too.)
     Puts me in mind of the scene in westerns, where the last two guys standing face off in a shoot out and spend a good five minutes discussing who did what to whom before offing one another, and I'm thinking, why are you waiting for him to reach for his gun first?  Shoot him already!  The SEALs coming in with guns ablaze is more like a Rambo flick (Why do I have the feeling I'm not the only one who sees this in cinematic terms?).  The New York Times quotes a former SEAL as saying, "There's only two ways to go in these operations -- zero or hero."  Okay, makes sense, but it's a long yellow brick road from justice.
      Or, as a friend points out, when someone dies, instead of saying someone came to Jesus, we can now say, he was brought to justice.