I am absolutely furious about this torture thing. Really. When did we stop being a nation that gives a shit and turn into this current one, which is apparently A-OK with war crimes, blatant human rights abuses, and violent, despicable activity by our previous administration?
Torture, no matter who is on the business end of it, should infuriate anyone who has a human soul, and I say right here and right now that if you think it's okay to torture people—even after it has been proven time and time again not only to be illegal, not only to be immoral, but also to be wholly ineffective for the garnering of any usable intelligence—you are not human, you are disgusting, you have no soul. I'm serious. The very idea that this issue is even being debated just turns my stomach. If the Bush administration had extensive proof that their techniques worked and provided actionable intelligence in adequate time to save many innocent lives (spoiler alert: they haven't, and I doubt they will be able to provide any that isn't made up just like every other lie of the Bush administration), I might waffle on this, but the vast preponderance of evidence contradicts this notion.
People like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh disgust me greatly. They are subhuman and should be despised. They do not deserve our attention. They only deserve psychiatric help, as I believe they are both in desperate need of it. I saw Glenn Beck speaking on his show in his pouty, derisive voice, mocking those of us who have more than a single gramme of compassion in our hearts, saying that he doesn't think waterboarding is torture. Know what, Glenn? Nobody gives a fuck what you think, because we already have hundreds of years of history, including the Japanese in WWII, Chinese communist forces in North Korea during the Korean war, even the fucking Spanish Inquisition (bet you weren't expecting that, asshole; nobody ever does), who were all called torturers because of their use of waterboarding. As Paul Begala averred to Ari Fleischer, who is also rapidly climbing my shit list, we hanged Japanese soldiers who waterboarded our POWs. We didn't do it because we won the war; we did it because what they did was morally reprehensible and if nothing was done about it justice would never be served.
A recurring theme in the opinions written about this: we are a nation of laws, not men, or political parties. I would express exactly the same disgust if it had been Democrats in charge, and if we find out that there were some who knew about this and gave it their blessing I say let's go after them too. No one who was in favour of this, who pretended it was legal, who covered it up, or who otherwise condoned it should be spared from justice that is as bipartisan as it is brutal. Seriously. When did we become a country that condones this kind of behaviour no matter how golden the intentions? Not in my name, assholes.
Let's hang 'em high, space cadets.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
26 April 2009
08 January 2009
2008: a retrospective
I'm looking forward to 2009 mostly because I'm glad to see 2008 be finished forever. The politics and the economics of 2008 were just about the worst I've seen in my lifetime. The 2008 primary—at least on the Democrats' side—got super messy. I was behind Obama from the very start because I live in Chicago and that's just how we do; we support our own. Even before his campaign I was impressed with his rhetorical skills, and I agreed with a lot of his politics as well. I disliked Hillary because I saw that since the Clinton presidency she'd been working towards occupying that seat herself, but it always seemed to me that it was for her own glorification that she did it. Sure she would probably do a good job, but that would mean that for my entire lifetime every US president will have been from one of two families, and that just seemed wrong to me.
Meanwhile I got laid off from my job last summer, which didn't surprise me but it still pissed me off. I didn't mind because I really saw Fave as a company adrift. Working there was like living out someone else's mid-life crisis. The owners were amiable and well-meaning enough but at the same time they were two men completely out of their league who, though they had surrounded themselves with people who knew what they were doing, often refused to listen. It angered me but I knew that I would fare better than they would in the long run, so I struck out on my own freelancing and pretty immediately got snatched up by an agency. I've made it to 2009 just fine but I hear interesting rumours coming from Fave lately.
The presidential election last year produced a curious mixture of feelings for me. On the one hand I felt so very proud of this country and, in a way, this city, when Obama won the nomination and especially when it started to look like he was going to win. The Republican side just made me feel ashamed for this country. In the 2008 election we saw that the Republican party has become a party of only three issues: abortion, gay marriage, and teaching evolution in schools. The 2008 presidential campaign was the ugliest I've seen in my entire life and I've been paying attention for a long time. To me my choice was clear and it had to be Obama, because to me he represented everything I liked about America, particularly the notion that you really can raise yourself up from poverty to Presidency here. Having up 'til then lived a life dominated by Bushes and Clintons (except a couple of years where there was a Reagan, but I was like two years old whatever), I had never gotten to witness that happening. John McCain, married to a trophy wife he ditched his old wife for when she got in an accident, son of a wealthy admiral, just did not give me that same impression. He never seemed like he knew what I, as a member of the middle class, go through on a day to day basis to make ends meet. But the real show-stopper there was his bewildering choice of Sarah Palin, a virtual unknown from Alaska whose uncouth "you betcha!" perkiness made me cringe visibly. It was at that point that I almost felt like it was McCain's way of bowing out. When he picked her for VP, it seemed like he was throwing the fight. A sort of dejectedness settled over the McCain camp and it really seemed that by the time election night rolled around, they had long given up.
Speaking of which election night was an amazing night for me. It's rare that you come upon a moment in history and in your life that you think afterwards, I will remember this forever. I think that I will, too. I was in Grant Park and I witnessed first-hand the election of the United States' first President of any colour besides white as all hell. That alone was reason to be excited, but in addition the election of Barack Obama meant the possibility we could break free from the kind of divisive, fear-based politics of 2000–2008. That's really the one thing I will miss the least about 2008: the bullshit fearmongering. I'm not saying that all the Fox News anchors are out of a job just yet, but I think we are about to see a major change in how the White House views the world and the American people.
One of the horrors of 2008 continues still: the economy. In 2008 we saw a house of cards forever on the precipice of implosion finally fall, and I suspect most of the people who built it up knew how fragile it was. In the interest of furthering the interest of a "free" market, the powers that be left the rest of us out in the cold. As a consequence of losing my job at Fave and also the beginnings of the economic downturn, I lost a mortgage on a condo I was planning to buy. In the end I think that was a good thing because I wouldn't want to be saddled with a huge mortgage at a time like this anyway, but it still sucked. I'm seeing more friends than ever getting laid off, and the more I think about it, the more I realize we're gonna be feeling this for a while. This isn't an ordinary recession at all. It feels like a depression. Here's to 2009 being better I guess.
Keep hope alive, space cadets.
Meanwhile I got laid off from my job last summer, which didn't surprise me but it still pissed me off. I didn't mind because I really saw Fave as a company adrift. Working there was like living out someone else's mid-life crisis. The owners were amiable and well-meaning enough but at the same time they were two men completely out of their league who, though they had surrounded themselves with people who knew what they were doing, often refused to listen. It angered me but I knew that I would fare better than they would in the long run, so I struck out on my own freelancing and pretty immediately got snatched up by an agency. I've made it to 2009 just fine but I hear interesting rumours coming from Fave lately.
The presidential election last year produced a curious mixture of feelings for me. On the one hand I felt so very proud of this country and, in a way, this city, when Obama won the nomination and especially when it started to look like he was going to win. The Republican side just made me feel ashamed for this country. In the 2008 election we saw that the Republican party has become a party of only three issues: abortion, gay marriage, and teaching evolution in schools. The 2008 presidential campaign was the ugliest I've seen in my entire life and I've been paying attention for a long time. To me my choice was clear and it had to be Obama, because to me he represented everything I liked about America, particularly the notion that you really can raise yourself up from poverty to Presidency here. Having up 'til then lived a life dominated by Bushes and Clintons (except a couple of years where there was a Reagan, but I was like two years old whatever), I had never gotten to witness that happening. John McCain, married to a trophy wife he ditched his old wife for when she got in an accident, son of a wealthy admiral, just did not give me that same impression. He never seemed like he knew what I, as a member of the middle class, go through on a day to day basis to make ends meet. But the real show-stopper there was his bewildering choice of Sarah Palin, a virtual unknown from Alaska whose uncouth "you betcha!" perkiness made me cringe visibly. It was at that point that I almost felt like it was McCain's way of bowing out. When he picked her for VP, it seemed like he was throwing the fight. A sort of dejectedness settled over the McCain camp and it really seemed that by the time election night rolled around, they had long given up.
Speaking of which election night was an amazing night for me. It's rare that you come upon a moment in history and in your life that you think afterwards, I will remember this forever. I think that I will, too. I was in Grant Park and I witnessed first-hand the election of the United States' first President of any colour besides white as all hell. That alone was reason to be excited, but in addition the election of Barack Obama meant the possibility we could break free from the kind of divisive, fear-based politics of 2000–2008. That's really the one thing I will miss the least about 2008: the bullshit fearmongering. I'm not saying that all the Fox News anchors are out of a job just yet, but I think we are about to see a major change in how the White House views the world and the American people.
One of the horrors of 2008 continues still: the economy. In 2008 we saw a house of cards forever on the precipice of implosion finally fall, and I suspect most of the people who built it up knew how fragile it was. In the interest of furthering the interest of a "free" market, the powers that be left the rest of us out in the cold. As a consequence of losing my job at Fave and also the beginnings of the economic downturn, I lost a mortgage on a condo I was planning to buy. In the end I think that was a good thing because I wouldn't want to be saddled with a huge mortgage at a time like this anyway, but it still sucked. I'm seeing more friends than ever getting laid off, and the more I think about it, the more I realize we're gonna be feeling this for a while. This isn't an ordinary recession at all. It feels like a depression. Here's to 2009 being better I guess.
Keep hope alive, space cadets.
20 October 2008
Living in the Fake America
Okay I don't really write about politics here very often, but this is something that really pissed me off as a city dweller and as a man who makes his living pushing pixels.
I am so tired of this mentality, put forth by the likes of John McCain and especially Sarah Palin, that because I'm a liberal (though I prefer the term "progressive") and I live in a city I'm not part of the "real America". It all started when Sarah Palin said "We grow good people in our small towns". Oh yeah? Well we grow good people in our cities, too, missy, and we grow more of them! We have hundreds of thousands of people in our big cities. In fact, most of the population of this country is in cities. Being as we have a democratic government of a sort (it's a republic but whatever) it would seem that since there's more of us city folk we should definitely have a voice in the way our government is run, and the direction in which our country is headed.
I live in Chicago, which I believe to be one of the best cities in the whole world. I love it here. I don't have a blue collar job anymore. I used to (printing press operator, screenprinter), but I don't now. I'm a pixel pusher and bit twiddler (designer and programmer, for those who can't understand the vernacular), not an unlicensed non-union plumber. I feel, though, that as a citizen of this country my opinion should still matter. I still vote and I still pay taxes, so I should have a say. That's how it works.
If only people who live in small towns are the "real America", if only rabidly anti-choice people are the "real America", if only young-earth creationists are the "real America", if only people like Sarah Palin are the "real America", then count me out. I have news for you, Sarah. We city people run this economy, we spend most of the money, we pay most of the taxes, we have the most people. Your "real America", though it takes up more actual space, is actually quite small. I don't think I'm any less "real" than Joe the fake plumber or this Joe Sikspac Sarah Palin keeps talking about.
We all have our idea of what this country ought to be like. The beauty of our system is that no one person gets to decide that. We all decide it together. If that's not good enough for them, then maybe they should go start their own country, oh, right, Sarah Palin already wants to do that.
Pay attention and stay strong, space cadets. Over and out.
18 January 2007
Hillary, Barack, Iraq, and 2008's Prospects
Those of you who've known me or have been reading my writing for a while will already know quite well my opinion of Hillary Clinton as a senator and as a presidential candidate. Now that Barack Obama has, essentially, thrown himself into the fray, I think some further discussion needs to happen.
First and foremost, this country seriously lags behind not in minority rights, but in minority status. Whereas minorities in this country have less and less every decade that holds them back, the fact of the matter is that the distribution of income and status in this country is neither uniform across race nor across genders. This is definitely the right time for more women and more people of all colours to get into politics. While I think it's fantastic that an increasing number of women are getting into politics (kudos and propers go out to Nancy Pelosi, our first female speaker of the house), I think there's cause for some caution in the 2008 elections coming up. Just as it would be wrong to vote for someone in a presidential election only because they were a man, it is equally wrong to vote for a woman only based on her gender. I feel like, with things the way they are and with Hillary Clinton running, there's a good probability she will get swept up by the gender vote.
This is a problem for me, because while I do think that Mrs. Clinton is very intelligent and certainly qualified for the Presidency, I disagree with so many of her policy decisions, stated opinions, and political allies that I could not bring myself to vote for her in '08. I think there are a tremendous amount of others in this country that, while perhaps not for the same reasons, do feel the same way. I disapprove of her record on the Iraq war, for one. Only just now is she saying that troops need to be redeployed away from Baghdad, and she voted in 2002 to approve the war to begin with. She has also ardently opposed any set timeline for troop removal. As if that weren't enough, she is buddies with Joe Lieberman and Tipper Gore, and supports their calls for censorship of video games—policies that I cannot abide.
It is definitely my opinion that, barring a serious coup from Obama or Edwards, Hillary will get the Democratic nomination, possibly by a wide margin. I don't think that she would perform well in a national election, though, and that's really the problem here.
Let's talk about Obama for a minute. Let's make this clear right off the bat: I like Obama. His continued, consistent opposition to the war in Iraq, work on improving Pell Grants (even though that bill got pigeonholed), and his immigration reform notions (which I found to be slightly more sensible than many alternatives) have all been pretty good. As a junior senator, though, the big question on everybody's minds is, is he experienced enough to be president? That I'm not so sure about. Even though I do think he'd have a pretty good chance of being elected, I'm not 100% sure yet whether or not he'd make a good president at this point. He's a junior senator here in Illinois, and he's only been in that national office for less than two years now. He did also serve in the Illinois state senate, but is that really enough? I believe it's possible, but I can't really know for sure.
We've still got a ways until it all throws down. For right now, let's focus on not letting this decaying republic fall apart. Until then, space cadets!
First and foremost, this country seriously lags behind not in minority rights, but in minority status. Whereas minorities in this country have less and less every decade that holds them back, the fact of the matter is that the distribution of income and status in this country is neither uniform across race nor across genders. This is definitely the right time for more women and more people of all colours to get into politics. While I think it's fantastic that an increasing number of women are getting into politics (kudos and propers go out to Nancy Pelosi, our first female speaker of the house), I think there's cause for some caution in the 2008 elections coming up. Just as it would be wrong to vote for someone in a presidential election only because they were a man, it is equally wrong to vote for a woman only based on her gender. I feel like, with things the way they are and with Hillary Clinton running, there's a good probability she will get swept up by the gender vote.
This is a problem for me, because while I do think that Mrs. Clinton is very intelligent and certainly qualified for the Presidency, I disagree with so many of her policy decisions, stated opinions, and political allies that I could not bring myself to vote for her in '08. I think there are a tremendous amount of others in this country that, while perhaps not for the same reasons, do feel the same way. I disapprove of her record on the Iraq war, for one. Only just now is she saying that troops need to be redeployed away from Baghdad, and she voted in 2002 to approve the war to begin with. She has also ardently opposed any set timeline for troop removal. As if that weren't enough, she is buddies with Joe Lieberman and Tipper Gore, and supports their calls for censorship of video games—policies that I cannot abide.
It is definitely my opinion that, barring a serious coup from Obama or Edwards, Hillary will get the Democratic nomination, possibly by a wide margin. I don't think that she would perform well in a national election, though, and that's really the problem here.
Let's talk about Obama for a minute. Let's make this clear right off the bat: I like Obama. His continued, consistent opposition to the war in Iraq, work on improving Pell Grants (even though that bill got pigeonholed), and his immigration reform notions (which I found to be slightly more sensible than many alternatives) have all been pretty good. As a junior senator, though, the big question on everybody's minds is, is he experienced enough to be president? That I'm not so sure about. Even though I do think he'd have a pretty good chance of being elected, I'm not 100% sure yet whether or not he'd make a good president at this point. He's a junior senator here in Illinois, and he's only been in that national office for less than two years now. He did also serve in the Illinois state senate, but is that really enough? I believe it's possible, but I can't really know for sure.
We've still got a ways until it all throws down. For right now, let's focus on not letting this decaying republic fall apart. Until then, space cadets!
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