The Roots of Obama's Rage, by Dinesh D'Souza

This book (Regnery 2010) was touted on Fox News by Newt Gingrich as being "the most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama." Newt also said that the paradigm of postcolonialism is the only rubric through which Obama makes perfect sense. I ordered it.

The thesis of the book is that Barack Obama's "change," isn't random, but that he has a clear sense of what is, and what should be, and every waking moment is spent moving us from one state to the other.

This state of what ought to be was defined by Obama's father, Obama Senior.

D'Souza points to myriad records in Obama Sr. and Obama Jr.'s thinking that show the parallel. He also points out that Stanley (Obama's mother) was Obama Sr.'s faithful disciple even decades after their divorce and spent Obama Jr's formative years proselytizing the child under her care with her ex-husband's viewpoint. She herself now has a book published by Duke University Press that reveals how completely colonized she was by Obama Senior's postcolonial thinking.

What IS postcolonialism? It is the notion that the western powers gained their wealth by fraudulently skimming the wealth of the third world and keeping them in an adolescent state so that they could be pillaged at will. Postcolonialism argues that it is time for the third world to grow in stature, so that countries like India can take their rightful place on the UN Security Council, for instance.

Another book that I've picked up on Obama called Reading Obama by a Harvard Professor named Kloppenberg argues that Obama is a pragmatist along the lines of Richard Rorty and that his interventions are piecemeal and opportunistic (I haven't finished this book, but that's the sense of his argument that I've gleaned from browsing). What I don't understand about that perspective is what is the larger framework? To change from what is to what should be you have to have a clear map of what is and how it got to be that way versus what ought to be and how to get there. Without that, you can't operate.

D'Souza argues that American liberal capitalism (arising from Locke and Smith) is quite different from Obama's postcolonial conception.

Obama's viewpoint arises from the most important postcolonial theorist, Frantz Fanon, who also influenced his father.

Fanon writes, "The native is an oppressed person whose permanent dream is to become the persecutor" (Fanon cited on p. 134).

To get into the seat of the persecutor, however, Obama has to seem pragmatic and like a reasonable person. He can't show his aggression. "Obama recognized that he had to deliver radical and even revolutionary themes in a bland, anodyne way so that they could cross the threshold of political acceptability. Here Obama knew that he would have to become the Translator, someone who could almost mechanically convert anti-colonial politics into a rhetoric that sounds harmless and even beneficial to the people who are the targets of that politics. This was not an easy challenge, yet Obama was entirely up to it" (142).

D'Souza continues, "The approach that Obama developed is really quite simple. On a given issue, Obama begins by contrasting two extreme positions, and then he presents his view as the rational and middle of the road solution, even if there is nothing rational or middle-of-the-road about it. For instance, if Obama wants to argue for confiscatory taxes, he insists that there are some in society who don't think the rich should pay any taxes at all. There are others who say that the rich should give up all their income in taxes. Obama, ever the mediator of these differences, then declares that he will settle for the rich paying their fair share -- say 40 or 50 percent. In this way Obama's outrageously high taxation comes to seem sensible against the backdrop of two extreme positions, even though no one really holds those positions" (142).

Against this redistribution, in which the first world gives to the third world, and the wealthy give to the poor, D'Souza's notion is something along the lines of the Little Red Hen. The ones who do the work should get to keep their bread, and eat it, too. In other words, those who won't work, should not eat, as St. Paul said.

But D'Souza's argument has more levels of implication. He argues that if America were to give up its power, then China would happily step into the place of super power, and the world would be far worse off with the Red Chinese calling the shots.

"And this is indeed one option, for those who are tired of American leadership in the world. But there is a second, for those who are not. We can give up on America or we can give up on this president..." (196).

Obama is currently trying to equalize the world by transferring American power and wealth so as to negate the envy and anger of the third world and to redistribute our leadership position to places like China.

Is this a wise policy?

The problem with postcolonial socialism is that it requires dictators. Obama's father wished to become a dictator in a country (Kenya) that instead adopted the free-market approach, and he never quite made it to dictator. Instead, he fell into alcoholic rage and lost one position after another.

"For the most part, Africa rejected the route of free market capitalism and adopted a route of centralized planning and African socialism. Overall, Africa rejected Jomo Kenyatta's approach in favor of the approach of Barack Obama Sr. Over the past half-century, Africa has witnessed a succession of dictators and strongmen such as Mobutu Sese Soko in Zaire, Idi Amin in Uganda, and Hastings Kamuzu Bandi in Malawi. These thugs quickly learned the language of anticolonialism and used it as a pretext to confiscate property and appropriate it for themselves and their cronies. Moreover, these men continued for decades to blame the failures of their societies on the legacy of colonialism, freeing them from the responsibility of raising the people's standard of living. Even today Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, one of the last of the Big Daddy despots, has declared his mission as one of rooting out the last vestiges of colonial rule from his country. His strategy for doing that is to drive the European and Asian entrepreneurs out of the country and to seize the most productive lands of the white farmers. As a result, Mugabe's once productive country has been reduced to economic ruins, and most of the population is either starving or running away" (212).

Obama wants to do to America what his father wished to do to Kenya. Our entrepreneurs are already hastening to get out of this country, and set up shop elsewhere where confiscatory taxation and the ever-growing demands of government on entrepreneurs is not so leveling.

With the latest election, and a new Republican majority in the House, there is a sense that Obama's term in the Oval Office is coming to an end. As a result, the economic springs of the country may begin to have a bit of bounce. More people than last year went shopping on Black Friday, and shopowners exulted. Profit came back into the picture. No doubt, Obama will take credit for this and have another go at extending his power over the next four years and have another chance at getting his dad's crazy ideas into our legislative process. Obama will stop at nothing to make his father's dreams into reality.

"The most powerful country in the world is being governed according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s -- a polygamist who abandoned his wives, drank himself into stupors, and bounced around on two iron legs (after his real legs had to be amputated after a car crash), raging against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions. This philandering, inebriated African socialist is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son is the one who is making it happen, but the son is, as he candidly admits, only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is being governed by a ghost" (198).

In the last chapter D'Souza argues that Obama is the Last Anticolonialist. D'Souza argues, on the other hand, that colonialism is the best thing that ever happened to India. Instead of the caste system, and a group of 3% of Brahmins setting the agenda, now the whole of India can vote, women can read and write, and aren't expected to throw themselves on the pyres of their dead husbands who were often thrice their age. There is a fair judicial system. There is mandatory schooling for all. The endemic poverty that held most of India down for thousands of years is beginning to lift as Indian entrepreneurs manufacture under a fair and consistent set of rules that guarantee that the risk of their investments won't be arbitrarily seized by some dictator or high falutin' maharaja.

D'Souza quotes India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the benefits of British colonialism, "Our notions of the rule of law, of a Constitutional government, of a free press, of a professional civil service, of modern universities and research laboratories have all been fashioned in the crucible where an age-old civilization met the dominant Empire of the day" (209).

D'Souza himself believes that India benefited, although there was at first a humiliation as India had to realize it was outmoded in terms of its military ability, and in every other way, by a western power.

"So while Obama fumes, I am happy to raise my glass and toast that curmudgeonly old defender of the British empire, Winston Churchill" (209).

Africa's disaster is that it missed out on British imperialism, D'Souza writes. Mosquitoes and "a host of deadly diseases" (210), kept the British out of Africa. "A strong case can be made that Africa's problem isn't colonialism but too little colonialism" (210). The poorest regions of the world are those that had little contact or too little contact with Britain. South America and the Philippines were under the Spanish. Most of Africa was never fully under the sway of the British.

Meanwhile, America and Australia are now very wealthy and solid countries, as is New Zealand. South Africa is a wealthy country because the situation allowed the British to take control of the country. While racism was clearly an issue in South Africa, the calories were more plentiful in South Africa than in the rest of the continent. If you look at the Human Development Index, it is only South Africa that ranks relatively high (out in the Indian Ocean but still technically belonging to Africa, is also the island of Mauritius, an English-speaking island that is relatively prosperous by comparison with the reeking rot of redolent ruin that consumes most of Africa with the exception of Kenya).

Places that came under Portuguese domination such as Brazil are still economic backwaters.

We fixed Japan's wagon after World War II, and it is right up there with the first world.

The postcolonial notion is that America is seizing the goods of the poorer nations. In fact, those nations that came fully under our sway always did better in the long run. Those that come under the sway of China or some other power stink by comparison.

"Contrary to the charges of the anti-colonialists, the United States today has no intention of ruling or seeking tribute from other countries; America's foreign policy goals are basically to encourage people to trade with us and to make sure they don't bomb us" (216).

D'Souza's books aren't always this well-written. I've read some of his other books and they pop around from idea to idea as if he's got Attention Deficit Syndrome. This book is one fastball after another thrown elegantly at 108 mph right down the pipe of the anticolonialist mentality. It's a series-ending no-hitter.

In the acknowledgements, D'Souza writes, "Mary Beth Baker did the editing that makes my work flow so well; if at any time it doesn't flow so well, direct all complaints to Mary Beth" (219). Mary Beth Baker must have coaxed the best from D'Souza -- like a savvy catcher and coach combined into one.

It's a brief book, that can be finished in two or three sittings. It's clear and fascinating, taking no more time to read than to watch a single game of the World Series. It is probably not the last word on Obama, but it might be the best. I intend to read Kloppenberg's liberal assessment, Reading Obama (Princeton 2010), sometime over the Christmas break (too busy until then). D'Souza's book might singlehandedly change the political thinking of our nation as the left continues to pull students and professors into the postcolonial black hole. This book shows that that's a mistake, and returns us to our best and sunniest game: democratic and pluralistic capitalism under the protection of Locke and Smith.

Last Week Travelling to DC

I spent the last week at a family reunion. It was in a town called Fort Washington, Maryland, about twenty miles south of Washington DC.

I had only limited computer access -- a few minutes a day.

Fort Washington was built on the banks of the Potomac to destroy British shipping in the War of 1812. However, the British walked around the fort to conquer DC.

There are still huge bunkers, and cannons, but few people visit the place. It is now a park inside what I think is the National Park Service. I walked the entirety of the park with my son yesterday morning in about an hour's time. We came across only three or four people walking dogs.

The house we stayed at was a rental that slept twenty. The water faucets were odd. You turned them to the middle to get water. I couldn't get used to this.

Most days I went into DC. I liked going to the National Gallery of Art. I took a guided tour of the American wing, and another of the Italian Renaissance. The Americanist tour argued that American art slips back and forth between gritty realism and high idealism. The Ashcan School followed a period of high idealism and Frenchified prettiness, she said, and showed us a Monetesque picture of New York City by Childe Hassam (see above) to exemplify this trend. Then she showed us a painting of a private boxing exhibition in which a black guy was hammering a white guy as ghoulish spectators looked on in a private club. I thought of how Ginsberg and the Beats followed the academic niceties of Wallace Stevens and Co.

The Italian Renaissance tour focused on the triumphs of Florence, and on a Leonardo da Vinci painting (the only one in the western hemisphere).

I also saw a show of Archimboldo's fruity heads, and Edvard Munch's engravings.

I visited the newish Museum of the American Indian. This exhibit was a giant guilt trip that focused on how Europeans had trashed native American culture. I wondered why they didn't have anything in the exhibit about how warlike their own cultures were, or how they kept entire cultures enslaved, and committed genocide against other tribes. You'd think they were all living in perfect harmony before the devilish Europeans arrived and forced them to work in casinos.

I finished reading Dinesh D'Souza's book The Roots of Obama's Rage (Regnery 2010) which makes the case that we have a Luo tribesman from the year 1950 camped in the Oval Office.

I picked up a few books: Reading Obama, by a Harvard Professor, a book on Zeno's Paradoxes, a book on Lincoln's Speeches, and a children's book about a soldier in Robert E. Lee's army. I wanted to get a book of Ginsberg's photographs based on an exhibit that had been held in the National Gallery of Art, but worried it was too expensive at $20. I bought two books by Arthur Schopenhauer, too. These were all bought at a Borders in Waldorf, Maryland, about 12 minutes south of our fake home for the week.

I ate too much apple pie on Thanksiving. I intended to go to Baltimore on the way back to our real home to see the Warhol exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art (intensive Christian imagery in his last decade) but the family was sleeping comfortably. I stayed en route, making the trip in about six hours.

Now I have to finish reading thirty papers for freshman composition, and start to work up a lecture or two on Martha Nussbaum, and brush up on Peter Singer for the class on animal rights.

My older brother has gone organic, and is now eating only organic items. My younger brother is a regional consultant for 7-11. I haven't been in one of these for thirty years. They apparently still sell Slurpies, but the biggest selling item is chicken wings. My father, I found out, worked for HEW when I was in 7th grade. He went around to colleges all over the country and consulted with them on how to graduate students on time.

I did not know that, as Johnny Carson once said.

My children enjoyed connecting with their cousins. They built a teepee in the back of the yard based on what they had seen at the Museum of the American Indian. My daughter enjoyed climbing on her uncle's lap. She's only four. She's asked me to help her prepare a letter that will thank her aunt and uncle for setting up the reunion. We have no other family near us, and it is nice for our kids to get to know their many cousins. It is nice too for me to get to know my brothers and see their families. I talked a bit with my mother. We were happy. There was no drama.

One of the most haunting sites I saw was while driving home from the museums on Thanksgiving. I saw a man walking against traffic along the side of the highway with his head down. The man was thirty or forty and looked quite unhappy. The next exit was five miles further on. Was he on his way to dinner somewhere? Why was he walking against traffic? It was about forty degrees with a mild wind, but was overcast, with a slight rain. I saw a car turned upside down on the side of the highway called 495 (also called the Beltway). That looked like the un-Happiest Thanksgiving Ever! And on the news they said that on a highway called Route 1 inside of Alexandria Virginia, a jaywalker had been hit by a poultry truck the day before Thanksgiving. She had not survived to have her revenge by eating a turkey.

We ate a few million turkeys for Thanksgiving. Turkeys got one or two of us back by mowing us down in trucks. And maybe a few people got a bone stuck in their throat and croaked. Others were saved by the Heimlich Maneuver.

I wanted to get the wishbone, and wish for something, but two of the smaller children got it, and neither would reveal their wishes. Thank God everyone in my family survived, and I pray that all in yours did, too.

ELLECHOR PUBLISHING HOUSE AVANT-GARDE NOVEL CONTEST

Ellechor Publishing House in Portland Oregon is having an avant-garde Christian novel contest. My manuscript "Immanuel" is one of three finalists.

On Facebook, they are having a run-off using a voting mechanism.

You first have to go to Ellechor Publishing House using Facebook, then "like" Ellechor, after which you go to Notes.

Under notes, you find the avant-garde publishing contest and click "like" under the description of Immanuel.

My description of the book has two misspellings and one grammatical error (I took years on the novel, but I found it difficult to get the description of the novel into the tiny box they requested, and it kept getting rejected because I wasn't following the protocol mandated for the box, but it eventually went through in this form).

At any rate, there are two other novels. They are WAY IN FRONT OF MINE in terms of votes (one has about 65 and the other about 35 and I have only 9).

I would love it if they published Immanuel because they will also do lots of publicity including interviews on Christian television stations.

So, again, here's the steps:

Go to Facebook.

Go to Ellechor Publishing House.

"Like" Ellechor.

Then, go to "Notes."

Click on that, and go to Avant-garde writing contest.

Then, please vote for my book by "liking" my description of my new novel, "Immanuel."

This novel is a contemporary rewrite of the book of Immanuel. In it, a dwarf and his wife have a surrogate child. This seems all wrong, and yet, a lovely child is born after much harrowing misadventure, and there is a hint that this is the Second Coming.

TROUBLE KEEPING FOOD ON THE TABLE

On Tuesday, I picked up the local newspaper The Oneonta Star. A story on p. 2 said that 15% of American households had "trouble keeping food on the table."

This was not defined further, so my imagination went to work. First, I wondered if they had uneven tables, and the food was rolling off. Secondly, I wondered if that was a common goal of Americans, to keep food on the table. In my house, we keep it in the refrigerator.

Is this perhaps too literal?

It's as if someone said, "many Americans have trouble keeping a roof over their head," and I was to say, "Many Americans like to go for a hike in nature. For them, it would be an odd priority to keep a roof over their head."

Or if you said, "I have trouble keeping gasoline in my car," and I replied, "Have you checked for a leak in the fuel line?"

Maybe some Americans keep live chickens on the table, and the chickens run off.

But let's imagine the phrase ending in "table" was meant in a figurative sense, in which "table" represents food, and the ability to buy it.

A report issued last week by the USDA entitled, "Household Food Security in the US 2009" was the basis for the article in the Star, so I googled it. It had charts, prevalence of hunger in various states (worse in the deep south than the northeast). Hispanic hunger is prevalent and growing, and probably off the charts in illegal alien populations (it's difficult to track).

http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err108/

The Socialist Weekly warns that lack of food resources will become the basis of a revolutionary uprising:

"The American ruling class is creating the conditions for an explosion from below..."
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/pers-n17.shtml

In this area (upstate New York), many people shoot deer to make it through the winter. Fortunately, the local elementary school has food programs that give out free lunches. This program has some dreary name, but is useful for many children who get to eat at least one good meal a day.

There have been times when it's been difficult for my family to eat well. I find it hard to buy fruit or vegetables because of their cost. Crummy yogurt with lots of sugar replaces the better creamier Greek yogurts that I prefer. I would like to drink organic orange juice and eat organic chocolate, but find it's too expensive. I get huge drums of oatmeal because it's filling and relatively inexpensive. I look for Bogos. For people who have lost their job, and have children, the situation is worse. With no access to government programs, can churches fill the bill for illegals? Should they?

The "Household Food Security in the US 2009" report says that thanks to food stamps, and WIC, and some other sources, the situation is not too bad, but there are still 43% of the underfed who don't have access to these programs (illegal aliens?). Few would like to admit that they use these programs, but they are important to many. 42 million Americans receive food stamps. Obama is trying to cut back on the program, according to the Socialist Weekly World. According to their article, there are often "one or more people" in a family who went without food each week due to lack of money.

In graduate school in Seattle, I went one summer eating only potatoes with margarine, and a dash of pepper or salt. I went to food programs, and stood in line with people who looked like extras in a zombie flick. We loaded up on out-of-date cottage cheese, and flexible carrots, a carton of day-old milk, and wobbled out the door to prepare to see if we could keep it down. I couldn't and threw it all out and went back to the potatoes. I had a rich friend or two (I had several professors for friends) who would invite me over every week or two, and I would eat everything on my plate (French cheese and real salad!) while they talked about Being and Nothingness.

I have never had "keeping food on the table" as an objective. I keep food in the refrigerator. If it is the objective to "keep food on the table" I suggest velcro, nails, or glue to keep it there. If that doesn't work, I suggest using the refrigerator.

If however the phrase is meant figuratively, I think getting a job would be a high priority. If you're not legal, go home.

For Americans, we can no longer think that our borders are the ends of our ethical obligations, nor can we accept all people around the world moving here, since we already have millions of starving people. People starving all over the world (one child starves to death every five seconds) need our help, but the help has to be structural, not literal. We need to think about how to ethically reduce the population worldwide (not with bombs but with condoms), and raising awareness of how to create sustainable solutions to hunger.

We should also develop ethical ideals toward animals and farming.

SILLY BANDZ DISAPPEAR AS NOVELTY DISSIPATES

The craze over Silly Bandz disappeared because most schools banned them. Kids didn't want to wear them just around the house, but to school. They were a status symbol, but probably more importantly a conversation starter. Last spring (2010) they were a vital necessity. Now, no one wears them any longer.

Why were they banned? This was a perfectly good American product whose sales were going through the roof as children were amused by them. Too amused. They wouldn't stop thinking about them, and couldn't study the Pilgrims, so schools simply banned them.

My kids never ask for them any longer. A few packages still sit in nearly empty boxes in grocery stores. But my kids are no longer interested in them.

I asked my daughter why they were banned in elementary school and she said the teachers said they were too distracting and the kids couldn't stop playing with them, and talking about them. They aren't banned in the high school, but the fad has passed.

My daughter said all kinds of fads and interests pass very quickly when you're a kid. She said a month ago all the kids would pretend that the floor was made of lava in the dining hall down the middle, but now it's boring just to think about it, she reported. I suppose that kids are human, too.

Triangles

If you take an equilateral triangle and bisect the base, you can make an infinite number of triangles by simply extending two lines in any direction from the base to touch any of the other two sides (will these lines radiating out from the bisected base themselves always be equal in length?).

This is what my first grader told me, I think, when he came home today. I thought to myself, no way! I had really better get busy with my Cliff's Notes and brush up my knowledge of geometry!

The triangle is a finite area, but since it is imaginary, I should think it would possess an infinite number of imaginary points along each side, especially as we can now get into supertiny measurements. Just as our numbers never reach infinity as they enlarge, but can get larger any time we wish, so there must be an equal amount of endless diminishment that is possible such that we can never reach a smallest line-length.

I suppose I should think about more practical things.

Any attempt to get from mathematics toward any real-life problem always reminds me of the medievals and their questions concerning how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

I don't think quality can be measured very precisely, since no two people will agree.

Probably a consensus of opinion will be reached throughout a school that such and such is a "good" teacher, or that such and such is a "good" student.

If there were three variables that determined the notion of the good, what would they be? In a student or teacher, I'd look for -- a. gusto in terms of their attitude toward the topic, b. experience c. general intellectual ability as correlated by IQ. Multiply this result by the number of good students in a class, and then divide by the number of mediocre students in the class, and you will have a number that has no relation to whether the class was any good.

Classes that were good, generally everybody in the class agreed that they were good. It's not just the students and the teacher and the subject, but sometimes also the room. One bad student can wreck a class for me. Two bad students (even if I am another student) and the class is just a mess. An ugly room always spoils an experience for me, especially if there are tattered papers and broken maps attached to the walls.

A student's life is reduced to a GPA. Teachers' lives are reduced to a number as well (Rate My Professor). But mediocre classes are rarely ranked in Rate My Professors. Students who loved and hated teachers want to rank. No one else is motivated.

Voting works too in this way -- it comes down to a number of partisan votes for each. Few can be bothered to get out and vote unless they're really fired up. Reviews generally go that way, too. If you just hate a poet, you let them have it, and if you love a poet, you want everyone to know, but if you're just bored, you say nothing.

A poet or teacher or student may be an idiot, but tell one joke that you remember the rest of your life. These are the black swans of an experience that aren't put into the overall rating.

If a vote is valid (unlike the recent vote in Myanmar), this is supposed to give us a sense of the electorate's perception of the quality of the various candidates. Aung Suu Kyi was released JUST AFTER the election, which is supposed to be a sign of the election's fairness.

Numbers help us to represent things (approval ratings), but they don't catch the entirety of an experience, and may distort it. Most Republicans think Bush has a high IQ, and think BO is an idiot. Most Democrats think Obama's IQ is stratospheric, and Bush can barely feed himself. By reducing an experience to a number, it helps us to grasp it more clearly, but too often it's just a prejudice. Numbers are no more objective than feelings, when they're based on feelings.

Love triangles are generally a mistake in life, but often the motor behind good novels. Ranking a novel however has nothing to do with a numerical ranking. It has to do with a feeling. But, it seems, we can give this feeling a number. What does giving a feeling a number really mean? Can you feel a number?

The Roots of Obama's Rage, by Dinesh D'Souza

I'm impressed by the new Dinesh D'Souza book, The Roots of Obama's Rage, which traces Obama's thought back to his anti-colonialist father. The dad had many wives and boozed it up, blaming the Brits for the situation of Africa, and arguing much like Mugabe for a total destruction of all foreign elements within Kenya -- not just whites, but also Chinese and Indians had to be dispossessed of their land and holdings and thrown into the sea.

D'Souza is rather implacable in his pursuit of Obama through his father's writings, connecting them through Dreams From My Father, and from the points at which Obama's public outbursts become particularly passionate and we can see through the smokescreen to see a strong parallel with the father's thinking to posit a common trajectory.

In essence, D'Souza is arguing that Obama is a kind of Ahab, but he is on the side of the whales, who has somehow managed to become the captain of the Ship of State (Pequod), with the ultimate intention of sinking the ship and all on it, by any means necessary.

Secondary implications arise that the healthcare bill is really just another torpedo designed to sink the ship, and render the American business community dead in its wake. The size of the bill and its opacity could be merely a means to make the business community unable to function, and to simply surrender all of our jobs to China and India and Africa rather than to attempt to remain in business. (Perhaps a better metaphor than a torpedo is a giant spiky mine that he's set in the water, and now orders us to go full speed ahead toward the device. You'll find out what's in it after you've hit it, Pelosi adds.)

Some of D'Souza's writing could be compared to Glenn Beck -- he jumps about and connects dots -- in the Michael Moore or Ann Coulter fashion -- but in this book he seems very calm. He paints Obama quite distinctly as a traitor who is somehow in charge of the very ship he's planning to scuttle and kill us all in the process.

You get the feeling that D'Souza and others on the prow are like Cassandra at the rails of Troy, or like someone back from the future on the prow of the Titanic, asking the captain to slow down a minute.

The book's thesis is carefully thought through, and could be accurate. It could be a bit alarmist, too. There were some who tried to speak up on the Pequod, to wake up and smell the coffee (Starbuck), and probably a small number on the Titanic. It was thought that that mighty ship was unsinkable. But where there's a will there's a way.

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD

The deepest and most important aspect of a human being is not sexual intercourse. Sexual intercourse is something that animals indulge in.

The one thing that separates us from all other animals is our ability to have a conversation. This ability allows us to analyze and transmit our experience, and to compare our experience with another's.

Without this, a human being is not human.

America is founded on this ability. It's in the First Amendment. Not only can we say anything we like, but it is guaranteed as the first and most important of our rights, along with our ability to worship as we like.

Most countries around the world deny one of these two rights, and in effect silence the human nature of their citizens in doing so.

Communist countries destroy the ability of each person to speak for themselves. Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch is about an eight year labor sentence handed down to a man because he told a joke about Stalin. Communism invariably destroys the ability of each person to speak. It's the true nature of communism. By destroying the individual's capacity for freedom of inquiry, communism destroys human being in its citizens. Among the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia, only the state could speak, and did so through loudspeakers. Those who worked in the fields were not permitted to exchange words. Anyone who could read or write was destroyed. This is communism in its essence.

In Islamic countries, the right to worship as one pleases is systematically taken away. You have to believe, even if you don't. Otherwise, it is apostacy, and the penalty is death. In essence, Islamic countries destroy the human being of their citizens by denying them the ability to find the meaning of their lives for themselves. The right to speak is especially denied in Islamic countries to the women.

Catholics do this to a degree by having a Pope, a stinking sinner who declares for all what is true only for him. I'm not saying that the Pope should just shut up. He should be allowed to speak. But so should everyone else.

Jesus spoke with his disciples and with others, but he also listened, even to the poorest of the poor.

The Hindus allowed true humanity only to their Brahmin class (3%), and denied it to the lower classes, who were never meant to speak, but only to listen to their betters, so that they could better perform their duties. I find this appalling.

Buddhists think that by restating the same nonsense syllable over and over that we will arrive at an enlightened state by becoming effectively like a vegetable. I find this debatable. People should talk all day long and mumble to themselves when no one else is around to communicate with.

Aristotle thought that slaves should exist and that the glory of a woman lay in her silence. Appalling.

A free press, a free university, should unmuzzle the voices of the citizenry with a lively letters page, lively conversations, and the capacity for blasphemy and the jocular to proceed unchecked. Caveat: When one individual strikes down another's ability to speak by becoming obstreperous, or so grotesquely insulting that it effectively disturbs another's right or ability to speak, there is a line crossed that I find destroys and ridicules the human being of another person, and it's wrong to do this. It is a crime against humanity. This line is difficult to understand, but it's a line that we need to clarify and articulate, as each person seemingly experiences it differently.

We are moved by the disabled. Helen Keller could not hear, could not see, could not speak, and yet she found a way to communicate. When we see this in her, we recognize that she is human, and celebrate her human spirit, seeing in her a symbol of our own struggles to make our inner world known. With the poet Larry Eigner, disabled by cerebral palsy, he managed nevertheless to figure out how to type, and to write many volumes of poetry, and through this we find in him his humanity, which we honor in him and in us by reading him.

Language poets are wrong to think that language speaks through us (this is a flaw in the thinking of many language poets, and stems from Martin Heidegger the vile Nazi asswipe). We use language. It is human nature to think and speak for ourselves. Language doesn't use us. We use language.

Many people are confused by what humanity is, and what it isn't. Some think it's the ability to work (homo faber). Some think it's the ability to play (homo ludens). Some think it's the ability to know (homo sapiens). But this is all wrong. It's the ability to speak (could one of you Latinists help me with the new nomiker, please -- homo ___?), and to understand others, not only in the present, but through other languages, and in distant histories, and to write thoughts down that may be read a thousand years hence. This is why the humanities are about reading, writing, speaking, and studying history and languages and literatures. The humanities are about what is essential to humanity, and what our true humanity consists of: the ability to make meaning through individual communication with others. This is why we don't accept plagiarism. It's why we don't accept the forced essay, and believe that political correctness is always already wrong.

All animals before us were incapable of speech. Those animals who seem to be able to mimic some of our abilities are treasured. When the dog tilts his head to one side, it seems as if he's listening. And when he barks, we see in this a forerunner of our own much more enriched capacity to communicate. The dolphin can jibber jabber, and this resembles excited speech. Some parrots can tape record messages, and play them back to our delight. Monkeys can give us simple sign language which asks for a Snicker's bar, or a peanut. But they cannot tell us how they feel about the death of Christ. Only human beings have the capacity for true intercourse, which is what the humanities aims to aid and abet: a conversation, with each person discovering for themselves what they think on a wide range of topics.

Any country or religion that either hinders this process, or that allows only a few within its domain to practice it, isn't truly human. They are bestial societies that ought to be gently but firmly directed in the direction of freedom. Only verbal freedom, unrestrained, but with a wish to listen to others, is truly human. Everything else is animalistic.

OXYMORONIC NATURE OF HUMAN CHARACTER

Any characteristic that is not becoming its enantiodromian opposite can't be true.

Thus, it must be that to be focused is to be sentimental, to be
helpful is to be domineering,
money-crazy means uninterested in finances,
uptight is a variant of laziness,
explosively loving is to be
paranoid but watchful,
bookish and yet athletic,
well-traveled means to love to stay at home.

Adventurous means uninterested,
pinchily organized is yet thoughtless,
dirty means fastidious,
unscientific: a lover of nuclear physics and astronomy!

Unconcerned about appearances is to be fashion-crazy,
Nazi of neediness means nice,
careful is promiscuous,
a helpful humanitarian is yet nosy,
dextrous implies clumsy,
angry implies loving,
loyalty is evil,
objectivity indicates the presence of the surreal.

THANKSGIVING POETRY CONTEST

Contest ends Thanksgiving Day at 9 pm, and voting will continue through the 26th. Any themes having to do with gratitude, and especially themes connected with that day and all it represents: Puritans, Indians, relationship to food, high cost of turkeys, should we eat turkeys, why do we eat cranberries, football games, are turkeys raised in Mexico for us now, etc.

Here's one as a party starter:

THANKSGIVING

Lola's first grade class
Sang songs of Thanksgiving
Tom Tom Turkey Turkey
Gary Mayer & wife
Carla and Noah on cello
The crying game began
When I was thanked
For reading Lola stories
I wept hot tears

Tristan stood near me
Julian strained to see
Riikka took many photos
Each parent saw one child
And that child sang
Only for her parents
And it was Thanksgiving.

November 22, 2005

MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES: THE INFINITE VERSUS THE FINITE

God is infinite, and government finite.

"The Feeding of the Five Thousand
Mt. 14.13-21 · Mk. 6.30-44 · Lk. 9.10-17


9 There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?
...
11 And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would.."


America has never suffered from a famine. Amartya Sen (Nobel Economist, 1998) believes that liberal democracies will never suffer from famine because they are responsive to political pressure (whereas communist states are not, since their leaders are not voted in, and have no term limits). Haiti is a liberal democracy, as is India. They may not technically have a famine, but the calories are pretty skimpy. Is there relative famine there because huge parts of the population are without political representation?

Our grocery stores are full, and for five dollars, you can get a five dollar bag of potatoes, and margarine, and live for a month on a few hours' labor. But in Haiti, it is difficult to get oneself fed. There are also appalling conditions (among the untouchables, in particular) in India.

Communism promises us heaven on earth, but often drags us to hell. If I had to choose between being the poorest of the poor in Haiti or in North Korea, I wouldn't know which to choose. In which country would you be furthest from power?

America is strange: it offers pyramids of vegetables and fruits, stacks of nuts, and many newspapers and books. What accounts for our surplus, and how long will it last? We have reached 10% unemployment, and the country is deep in red ink, and yet probably no one will starve in America this year (except the fashion models). Is this because everyone has political power? (Two black Republicans made it into Congress this year from the deep south, and we have two Indian governors.)

Could we become a basket case like Haiti, or India, or Zimbabwe, or are we protected by the fair and balanced electoral system which can throw out the non-functioning party?

Is God somehow partial to America?

BUY AMERICAN! BELIEVE IN AMERICA

We need an economy that still rewards the work ethic.

This is why I voted Republican.

I want factories to spew smoke again in New York State.

I want students to get excited about their homework.

I want kids to practice their pitching, rather than just watching TV.

If the work ethic got going again, the deficit would come down, and people would slim down, and knowledge would increase.

You can hardly find anything made in the US any longer. Girl Scout uniforms are still made in one factory in New Jersey (90 employees). There is a company in Boston called New Balance Shoes that still makes shoes and has an annual income of over a billion dollars. Nike outsources its work to Vietnam and China so their prices are lower, but buying a New Balance Shoe is better for America, and better for the world (supporting China is to support a hellhole with no human rights).

What else can you buy in this country that was actually made in this country that is still worth buying?

It is hypocritical to want enormous wages and health insurance for our workers, but prefer to buy yourself cheaper goods from China and Vietnam: national socialist states with no multiparty system, no freedom of speech, and lockups for dissidents.

We should have stores that sell only American goods. The stores could be called BUY AMERICAN. Obama could lend them seed money as part of the stimulus. But, what would be on their shelves? What do we still make?

DIRT: A SOAP OPERA

When someone is doing "dirty dancing" what is going on in their minds? Is it possible to attempt to do dirty dancing, but not succeed? Why do we call it "dirty"? I assume that this always involves pelvic gyrations as per Elvis.

What exactly is dirt? What is the dirtiest "thing" on the planet? Can animals be "dirty," or is this something that only humans can be?

What is it to have a "dirty" mind?

Can we develop a formula: something like, a dirty imagination, plus a high rate of gyrating speed, equals obscenity? (Force = Mass times Acceleration, anyone -- or, the DIRTY-NESS OF THE Mind, compounded by the speed of the thoughts therein, compounded by the alluringness of the moves, adds up to the DIRTY-NESS?)

Is it a sin to conceptualize this in the abstract?

What does it mean to live a clean life, and to have clean thoughts. Would that be what the Waltons lived? What about the Flying Nun?

Can you be a dirty-minded nun? Would you then be a witch without a broom?

Can you be a clean-living witch? Would it help if you use your broom for something besides flying?

Can angels themselves be dirty?

Can saints revel in smut?

Can porn stars have "hearts of gold"?

What is the real difference between love and lust? Do they not intertwine in most marriages? What is the correct percentage of each in a marriage? Can it fluctuate?

Money is important, but what does it have to do with the soul? In the two kingdoms idea, what again is the percentage of importance that we should allot to each? Money is dirty, and yet we must use it, whereas the soul must always remain pristine.

VOTE!

So today the country votes again. This time around the mood is better for me, worse for many of my friends. The country will vote Republican. Will it be a landslide? If so, will it mean a realignment of values? Will business again be prominent?

Coolidge (my favorite president), said, "The business of America is business."

And how could it be anything else?

And yet, many people think the government should be a giant overpaid nanny. I don't think this is necessarily bad. I find it comical. But many people find it quite serious, and actually want this.

One gubernatorial (the term is funny, at least) candidate believes that one should be able to marry a shoe (as long as you pay for the licensing fee). I forget this fellow's name, but his party is called The Rent is Too Damned High. How many votes will he get? He won't get mine.

I will vote for Carl Paladino. He's not the best candidate I've seen. I don't understand his irascible behavior. I don't think he's all that charming. But he's the Republican, and I want America to be able to work, which means that government must be responsive to business, and it means we have to get rid of the giant nanny notions of the noodlers. It's also not clear how hard the big guns of the left aimed at him, as they aimed at Christine O'Donnell, doing their best to paint Paladino as a Grumpy Gus and O'Donnell as a Goofy Grape.

There will be many losers today. Paladino will almost certainly lose. Another of my candidates, a guy named Chris Gibson, will probably get the election as my representative. He's a retired colonel, who led the American army mission in Haiti. I got a chance to meet him, and really liked him. He had read Friedrich Hayek. I wish I had spoken with him about Haiti. I only had about two minutes, and didn't know he had been in Haiti, or had led men in Afghanistan. There's a lot we don't know about our representatives.

Many people will feel defeat because their representative doesn't win, and the pain of loss will cause them to feel a dark mood. But American voters sway back and forth, and winners today will be losers tomorrow. The main thing that politicians need is to listen to the voters. Democrats got the sense of entitlement last time that they had been enabled to override 70% negatives in terms of Obamacare. Today is payback for that notion.

Just as 2008 was payback for W. intervening in Iraq under shaky premises.

The candidates and the nominees work for us, and if they don't, they are out. This is something to celebrate. I have only once voted for a winning candidate for president (Bush 2, the second time around), although I have voted in every election for the last thirty-five years. I always or almost always choose the loser. I still believe in the process, and hope it never changes. I've changed parties four or five times.

Meanwhile, we have our own contest here at LS (it's now wrapped on to the second page), called This Election is About (October 16th). Tomorrow, we vote on that. You could still win. You could add a new poem today on this thread until 9 pm EST (when the polls close). Or at least still affect the poetry election through voting. Plus, don't forget to vote today in the political election. Politics doesn't matter as much as poetry, but it's still important. Even if you lose, you are part of America. Part of its history. Maybe only one of your candidates will emerge as the winner. Perhaps it will be a town supervisor, or a dog catcher, or perhaps a lieutenant governor. And even if your candidate loses, and wakes up tomorrow the loser, at least he or she will have your vote. And at least you are still able to vote. You do count in this country. And that makes us all winners.

Hold your chin high: you are an American. Your heritage includes Bob Hope and Bill Cosby, James Madison and Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King and Martin Laurence, Shirley Temple and Eleanor Roosevelt. We have won two world wars, have freed countries around the world, and have contributed much to the globe. We are still leading in technological innovation and in education. Stay involved, and be proud of what you think and what you believe. We still want to hear about your notion of the good.

WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?

Nixon got a lot of quasi-legal campaign contributions but said he would keep Checkers, a dog that the Nixon children had adopted.

FDR had a dog named Fala left behind once in the Aleutians, and apparently sent a destroyer to pick up the pooch.

In this election cycle, little use of family pets. I don't even know the name of Obama's dog. Something like Boo. But it IS Halloween. Maybe he or she doesn't even have a name, it's just an animal they needed for a photo opportunity, or to help trade relations with economic powerhouse Portugal, since it's a PORTUGUESE WATER DOG. Bush had a dog, but he didn't become a national symbol. He was a small white terrier? He fit comfortably into George W's fraternal lap.

Most Americans like dogs, and feel that a man who loves his dog is a good man. In movies about serial killers, they never have loving relationships with pets. In this catty and dogged electoral race, we have had bearded Marxists, and fly-by-night witches, Tea Partiers and coffee mavens, but they have apparently killed all their pets. Maybe they're all serial killers running for election. Christine O'Donnell should have shown up with an owl on her shoulder while carrying a broom, and said, "I am not a witch." That would stir the pot.

This election has been by turns fishy, catty, birdbrained and squirrelly. Let us vote for heaven's sake, so the presidential race can begin. We have already had a handicapped president (FDR) but how would you handicap the presidential aspirants at this juncture (I mean, their chances)?

Will Obama win the nomination this time around?