Tannishblog

To All Readers:

Tomorrow morning my family and I fly to Israel, in part a celebration of our twentieth wedding anniversary and our daughter’s graduation into High School. Paid for by Bube (grandma), this trip also is a cultural pilgrimage common to American Jews. To see the land that started so much culture and strife, to view the history and to breathe in the centuries. This is part of the experience of the Diaspora as expressed in the new world.

I’m not Jewish. I came from a Lutheran family that – although they never said as much – didn’t approve of my marrying out of faith. But I’m not very Christian either, as my three readers can attest to. So for me to fly to the holy land, the Promised Land, whatever, is a strange twist of life: A Buddhist in the Holy Land. This sounds like a novel title; but Heinlein already penned a “Stranger in a Strange Land” – any derivative thereof seems trite by comparison.

Still, I plan to approach this next fortnight with an open mind, an observant eye and a critical stance. Critiquing not others as much as my own viewpoint (I hope, at least) as I have an experience of a lifetime. To go to the same locations that spawned three of the world’s most prolific religions while not believing any of them will likely be a life-changing experience. Surely, it will be interesting.

I look forward to this change of perspective; perhaps it will strengthen my religious convictions, perhaps it will shake them. Perhaps I’ll finally “Grok” this whole theism thing - who knows? Whatever may come, I’ll have my journal and a fresh Dr. Grip to chronicle the experience. We’ve decided not to pack the laptop for freight concerns, so I’ll scribble what I see and translate it to digits later. Look for our return after August 9th.

Until then, take care.
Tannish

While we’re playing soldiers in the sand lot that is the Middle East, the crouching Tiger is stalking our shores. America needs to be vigilant. While I believe that China’s entry into our western-styled economic trade community is good for the emerging global economy and good for the Chinese people in the long term, it will come with some risks of losing economic ground for America. I’m no expert, far from it, but it seems to me that economies are by nature limited in their capacity to create wealth. Some of the limiting factors cannot be controlled directly, but result from other factors and their interactions.

This said - China (or anyone in their position of a monolithic newcomer trading partner) must wrest at least part of their growing trade clout from the other players. America is surely first on the short list of potentials. Just as China played a long-viewed game in the middle of last century to politically annex Tibet, a move that cannot be unmade, so too will this un-Western like long-term strategy give advantage to China in the world markets. Unhindered by political pluralism common to Western Democracies, they can afford to sacrifice a certain level of civil discomfiture within to maximize economic potential without.

China can play the game of global Monopoly, but it won’t play with the same cultural assumptions in place; it will see the game differently and its moves will seem cryptic to others. Just as we are foiled by Islamic ignorance and denunciation of accepted Geneva Conventions during war, so, too will China foil us at our own economic game. They don’t know all the theory, and some theories don’t apply to a nation that can force its will on its own businessmen at the expense of certain civil liberties.

While attention is garnered over China’s attempt to buy a US oil interest, look for more subtle movements to have greater long-term impact. Our nation’s failure to look past the next fiscal quarter will harm us greatly in dealing with the patient tiger. American policy-makers have a history of being blind to the fact that other cultures see things differently and act accordingly. So arrogant is America that it knows the right way to do things, that it is hobbled by its own hubris. We’ll pay the price for that with China – mark my words.

The prison camp in Guantanamo – the very same place described by right-wingers as “a luxury hotel” – is the site of an unusual protest. Unusual, that is, for the standards of a Caribbean retreat of such world-class accommodations. Of the over five hundred “detainees” currently being held there, fifty-two are staging a hunger strike. That’s about ten percent of the happily incarcerated tourists that are complaining. By the standards of, say, a Havana Hilton there are too many unhappy guests.

Perhaps they protest the lousy margaritas, or the carbohydrate-laden meals. Perhaps, in their idleness and luxury, they find it hard to fit into the gowns and tuxedos they brought from the mainland, and they wish to loose a few pounds before the next fete.

Few Americans know just how cushy their lives are; not much information is shared with the media - perhaps because they don’t want millions of summer vacationers to ruin their pristine beaches. Here we have the best permanent-residence resort community that the American government can supply, smack in the middle of the beautiful Caribbean, and the ungrateful wretches are complaining?!?

What really gets me is that the hunger strikers are protesting what they call “Inhumane conditions.” This can’t be possible. I’ve heard Rush Limbaugh say that the Gitmo facility is no worse than a Federal light-security prison. And we all know how soft those people have it. Besides, after the brouhaha a few months ago, the owners have surely cleaned it up by now. Even the Red Cross are sending a few representative to Gitmo to sample the food and bounce on the beds. No way they have it as bad as all that.

Thomas L Friedman of the NY Times wants Western Civilizations to “shine a spotlight” on hate speech wherever it occurs. He sites a London Islamic bookstore as evidence for such action.

What he fails to address is the rampant hatred occurring within our own culture. The kind of hidden hatred that elects demagogues and that fosters parochial views and archaic politics. Yes, I’m talking about America of the twenty-first century. I’m talking about the new American Century built upon the colonial era mentality of slave-owner privilege and puritanical suppression, of the sanctity of land ownership at gunpoint, and a winner-take-all approach to world politics. All are symptoms of a wider stance of self-and-other that breeds habits of dehumanization, hatred, greed, and lust for controlling others that has so marred the so-called “advance” of Western societies.

Mr. Friedman has a valid point. Let us shine a light of reason upon all haters and show the world how the poison of prejudice spreads: Indeed. But let us start in our own houses, before we look in another’s. Unless and until we clean up our own acts of racial profiling, bigotry, intolerance and unbalanced privilege, before we attempt to clean our neighbor’s home, or all we become are hypocrites.

…what you wish for…

You know the ending for that line.

Last week I received the promotion for which I was angling. One member of my five-person office left under a bit of a scandal at the end of June. I tried and failed to get his position. The person who was elected to his chair found himself trying to juggle the duties of the new and old positions simultaneously. He cracked under the pressure, hollered at the corporate-level visitors, and was sent packing. Guess who is now trying to juggle those responsibilities?

Rhetorical question. For the last two weeks I have been trying to manage my old job as well as the two jobs the other guy could handle, virtually 60% of the responsibilities in our small office. During this week I’m also trying to train my replacement at the old position as well.

My family and I are about to take our first overseas vacation next week, so these preparations are in full swing…

This is my long-winded excuse for lately not blogging as much as I would like. I’ll be back after two weeks with a hand-written play-by-play of our trip, to be shared with all and sundry. Maybe I’ll squeeze in another couple of posts before liftoff.

This week’s offering from Lama Surya Das:

We cannot perceive our own faults,
And continually examine the faults of others instead.
How can we all be harmonious with one another?

~ Milarepa

Milarepa was one of Tibet’s most beloved teachers. For the curious, an account of his life can be found here.

Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) says of Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.):

“The chairman of the Democratic Senate campaign committee… is sucking the oxygen out of that atmosphere of collegiality and constructive cooperation by trying to make a partisan issue of something that is being handled by a special counsel today… Let’s get away from the gotcha politics of Washington today.”

How typically bogus of a Republican to paint the Democratic opposition as partisan when Karl “I didn’t do it” Rove’s tactics are being questioned. I don’t have the data at hand, but I’ll bet a dollar that this twerp was active in the partisan lynching of Bill Clinton, the partisan attacks on the last two Democratic candidates for president, and the partisan bickering for Mr. Moustache, John Bolton.

Schumer’s Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee fired back an hour later: “Norm Coleman is paying back his political patrons Karl Rove and George Bush today, picking up the hatchet for the White House and doing its dirty work.”

That’s how it is with the Neo-Fascist-Conservatives these days. A person has only one soul; once that’s been hocked, all you can do is get in line…

I wonder how these people are going to vote in the upcoming presidential election.

The Democrats are barking up the wrong tree. Again.

They’re howling for accountability. They’re demanding an explanation out of Karl “I didn’t do it” Rove for his role in the outing of Valeria Plame. They’re slavering for his resignation.

Not a chance in Hell of that.

Karl Rove is above the law; he is untouchable, and he knows it. No amount of slandering or evidence of wrongdoing will rein him in. No amount of decency and reasonableness can overcome the arrogant abuses of power that is Karl Rove. Why? Because the Bush administration was build by Karl Rove. He’s the kingpin and keystone of BushCo and anyone with anything to gain therein will protect him. Karl Rove is ruthless, merciless and completely without morality. No one with a healthy fear of the laws of this country would blow the cover of a CIA operative. No one with a speck of decency would manipulate the tragedy wrought by the fall of the twin towers and forge it into a political crowbar. No one with any love for American ideals would turn this nation into an imperialistic miltary aggressor. No one, that is - but Karl Rove.

Our Democratic party is at the wrong tree because they form tactics based upon their principles, assuming an adversary of similar attitudes. But the people they face do not have principles. Our current political majority is in this game only for their own aggrandizement, willing to sacrifice an entire generation for the expansion of American Empire and for control of future, dwindling energy. As the Democrats ponder a means toward an end, their opponents ponder an end without worrying about the means.

The Democratic Party actually cares about people - that’s its weakness - so much so that it tries to be everything to everybody. The democratic ideal wants Government to be a nurturing entity that offers gentle assistance to the “tired and downtrodden”, to accept the burden of rational dialogue in the best interests of the American people.

In contrast, the Republican Party cares only about power, so much so that they aggressively seek money constituencies and choose to represent only the very richest Americans. Republicans want government to protect the interests of abstractions like corporations, manifest destiny, and militarization, and in doing so they create the “tired and downtrodden” as they defer the burden of taxation to the less affluent and promote a culture of unbalanced privilege upon the American people.

The Democrats try to be rational, using logic to persuade and the Republicans are powerful and use intimidation to coerce. It is not surprising that Democratic methods of heedfulness and rationality is doomed to fail. Karl Rove, as the quintessential power monger, doesn’t care for such niceties as debate and compromise, and his goose-stepping Republican Party will follow him anywhere.

As BushCo attempts to remake the new world order in its twisted image, the rest of America is trying to tape together the widening cracks of Jeffersonian ideology. This is a dark time for us. History will find little difference between the Fascism of the mid twentieth century and the neo-Conservatism of the early twenty-first. Both are ideological extremes with similar goals. Remember, Adolph was a popular leader, too. How does the world view his policies today? The same will be said of George W. Bush. Mark my words.

The writer in me is always on the lookout for a keen turn of phrase. Here’s one:

We would have preferred for the musicians in Philadelphia and London to have marched and sung for political revolution. Instead, they mourned a corpse while forgetting to denounce the murderer.

Bemoaning the hypocrasy of Live8 and the ineffectiveness of its intentions, Jean-Claude Shanda Tonme writes a good one for the NY Times.