Tannishblog

Karen Hughes is finding out some interesting things. Not what she intended, perhaps, but interesting nonetheless. On her visit to a Saudi university, she open up to a group of black robed women to state her hope (that is the hope of our sociopathic ruling party) that Arab women would be able to drive and “fully participate in society.” No doubt she envisioned them all huddled around the TV watching Oprah reruns.

But she encounters resistance. “The general image of the Arab woman is that she isn’t happy,” one audience member said. “Well, we’re all pretty happy.” With that, the room resounded with applause. Imaging that! Women, whom the Americans have been seeing as an oppressed subculture within the Arab world, having the audacity to say they like their lifestyle. It makes sense to me that Arab women have somehow managed to come to terms with their own culture over the past 3000 years or so. Several women later noted that Americans failed to understand that their traditional society was embraced by both men and women.

What I find amazing is the lack of brainpower at work within the conservative elite and the plethora of squawk boxes who gleefully echo rightwing mindlessness. To wit: some underlying assumptions of Karen Hughes’ message to the world.

1. Americans have the only true culture, no other way of life is right for you.
2. You can’t possibly know the glory of American life, therefore you’re ignorant, and we are here to educate you.
3. All markets throughout the world are in reality American markets – we are what we sell you, and what we sell you is what you need because we tell you so.

Again, we meet resistance. In Turkey, following the Saudi visit, Mrs. Hughes takes flak about our (insert tongue in cheek) foreign policy. It seems they’re not really happy with the ongoing Americanization of Iraq.

Regarding our nations conversations with the global community, Mrs. Hughes says “we’re beginning to hear other voices,” by which I would guess other voices beside Jesus whispering into our president’s ear. The voices are whispering, too, that the world doesn’t want to be Americanized. Maybe its time for Tommy Hilfiger to come out with his 2006 line of abayas.

Whatever possessed Karen Hughes to take the job of public relations guru for the Bush administration? Either she is incredibly naïve or unbelievably stupid. Concluding her Mideast tour in Turkey got an ear full from members of the Women’s Research Center at Ankara University.

I’m not up on Ms. Hughes background or credentials; I’m sure she’s at least as qualified as any other Bush appointee, but what can induce her to accept a position as the cheerleader for George W-is-for-warmonger Bush. That’s akin to being the publicist for Attila the Hun or the actuary for Vlad the Impaler!

High paying jobs outside of congress are drying up, I suppose…

The wagon. It conjures images of alcoholism, which is rumored to be a returning problem at the White House. Some would like us to believe the Prez has fallen off the proverbial wagon. I think he’s never quite gotten on. It would explain much.

The Bus. An old comedy record I once knew of was entitled: “We’re all Bozo’s on this bus.” For some strange reason this phrase has been knocking about in my brain lately (oh, say for about five years). All the Bozo’s have taken the bus to Washington, as if they all were Ken Kesey, proudly redesigning the nation in their own image. But know the cracks are appearing in the facade of the Bozo-ian architecture. Oh, wait! I’m mixing my metaphores (my doctor warned me about that). Back to the Bus:

It’s an old bus - held together with a lick and a promise. The old grafitti on the side, which once read “Washington or Bust” has been scratched and weatherworn, and some Bozo tried to repaint it, so it now says: “Washington is Bust.” Last election season, the old gas guzzler was paraded out in the streets beside the obvious wheezing of the engine and the plumes of diesel fumes whenever the Bozo driving it shifted gears. And the noise!

But recently part have been coming off the bus. Last spring it began when the Religious Right removed the fender, it could never be reassembled. Since then, wingnuts and boltheads have been flying off the thing; just today the fuel pump quit. On such an old contraption, it’ll take a while to build a new one - they just don’t make them like that anymore.

As we watch the bit and pieced fly off the Bozo Bus that is Washington Politics, it’s only a matter of time before the wheels all fall off. Then we’ll have the last Bozo sitting on the ground holding the steering wheel looking perplexed as the nice policeman asks him to breathe in the tube.

I’ve been lethargic toward blogging lately. Whenever I find both time and energy to seek inspiration, I find articles that are so much more than I could produce. EXIBIT A is Heart of Darkness at Whiskey Bar.

Who can hope to say it better?

This is my first post on my new toy: a Compaq notebook! I’m such a geek, but a poor one, so I mostly make due with hand-me-down computers that I take apart and put together again for kicks. There’s only three in our household (not counting our cats) and we have 7 working computers of various vintages – including an old Compaq desktop model with a (wow!) 400 MHz processor. I just can’t bear to throw out the old tech, especially when I consider how toxic for landfills the stuff is.

Getting a new computer is like buying a new car, exciting at fires, one just wants to drive around in it, eschewing all responsibilities. But with a laptop there’s the phantom excuse that is it a tool for work. That is why I got this one: My new job has me on the road a lot, and I’m trying to create a mobile office. My company is in the construction business, and as such they aren’t as techno-savvy as I would prefer, so I was told emphatically they wouldn’t be getting me a laptop. Being the resourceful (and a bit too defiant) person I am, I got my own.

My wife cautions me about the hazards of being independent like this: how other people may become suspicious, or begrudge me somehow. I find this weird, as I’m only trying to maximize me effectiveness on the job. To provide myself the tools I need to become more efficient, save aggravation and improves my job performance. To do so with my own money should show my employers how willing I am to go the extra mile. But I concede that others won’t see this; they’ll misinterpret my actions and I’ll pay the price for their misunderstanding.

This explains why I have an inherent distrust of people.

But, I’m going to use this new tool to make my job easier, so I need to spend less time at it and more time with my family. My non-computer coworkers won’t understand, perhaps, I’ll just have to deal with that. (sigh)

I never know what I’m going to write about as I fire up the blank word processor template, yet I almost always end up sharing my philosophy. A few topics are taboo to me: my career frustrations; problems in the workplace; person minutiae, to name just three. Overall, when I find blogs that express personal sentiments I quickly click through; voyeur, I am not.

So that leave the impersonal from which to draw what inspiration I can. Politics, philosophy, religion… Of political blogs, mine lacks energy. I am neither so involved as to meticulously research my topic du jour, nor am I so rabid as to foam-fleck my keyboard. I try to be thoughtful, reasoned and circumspect. Religion, the eternal flame of issues, is a might dangerous, but I have dabbled. The ensuing scorn and put-off-ishness is anathema to the reasons I blog, so I’ve toned down a bit; in this arena I can get a bit wild-eyed.

So that leaves philosophy – or what I would prefer to entitle – Applied Philosophical Awareness. How pretentious! But that is the best moniker I can come up with as a secular translation of the Buddhist concept of mindfulness. When I mention Buddhism to others, I can actually see and hear minds close. I think to myself during my writing sessions how to share the wisdom of Buddhist thought, to the small degree I am able, with blogsters and blog readers who reflexively recoil from such blatantly non-Christian ideas.

The beauty that is eastern philosophy, as express in the Buddha’s teachings, is not essentially a religion, as Theists would view religion. The most poignant description of Buddhism I found relates the practical application of “the way” as “a science of mind and a philosophy of ethics.” In this way people who don’t feel comfortable with religiosity, like myself, can approach the Dharma as a vehicle of self-improvement, of an understanding of the human mind, through which all phenomena must be filtered.

To view Buddhism in the Theistic definition of religion is akin to stating “all apples are red.” While most apples certainly fit this description, some very possibilities are neglected. Buddhism can be a religion, to those so inclined, but not necessarily so. The core teachings of mind and suffering are a definition of the human condition, and so it pertains to all, irregardless of belief and culture.

Why I bother to mention this subject at all, stems from my lifelong gut feeling that without individual effort, our civilization will enter a tailspin only to crash and burn. I’ve felt this as a vague notion since childhood, only to reform this hypothesis repeatedly throughout my life. It is this belief that spurs most of my writing; it is the story I’m somehow meant to tell. No matter how free-flowing my writing habits are, most of my prose eventually comes around to the following point: In order to change the world from its disastrous course, one must first change ones self. As Ghandi said: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” If enough of us adhere to this, in ways small and grand, the world will have changed itself.

Simon Wiesenthal dies in his sleep at home in Vienna. He was 96. Few Holocaust survivors are left to us, people who miraculously escaped certain death at the hands of oppressors, who came to understand more than most of us just what life means.

That’s the trouble with our soft lifestyles; they don’t force us a gunpoint to face a grave of our own making and stand half-starved and shivering looking into the dirt awaiting a bullet in the head. To life through an experience like that would certainly change one’s outlook for the rest of one’s life.

Simon Wiesenthal, and all who suffered at the hands of Nazi Germany 60 years ago, devoted his life to giving back a tangible thank-you to the world that saved him. For fifty years he served as the “conscience of the Holocaust,” determined to bring to justice the many Nazi war criminals even long after the Allied forces lost interest.

As many other former prison camp survivors understand, life is not to be squandered. What these people did for the Jewish people is astounding. They commit their entire lives to clear away the evils that lead to the depravity they witnessed.

Today we have a new holocaust happening in Darfur, Sudan, which affects aver 1.8 million people. We comfortable Western people have known about this for years. A year ago, President Bush, to his credit, spoke out about the mounting genocide in Darfur, but he hasn’t done anything about it. Beawitness.org offers a petition to the major news outlets to “do a better job of covering the Darfur genocide.” To me, such language is too weak.

From beawitness.org:

Here are the official responses from the networks:

NBC: WRC-TV has chosen not to accept the submitted commercial advertisement, “Genocide is News,” sponsored by BeAWitness.org.

CBS: Management did not approve the airing of the “Beawitness.org” spot.

ABC: I just got word that WJLA-TV will not be able to accept the creative for Be a Witness.org. Please let me know if there may be any alternative creative that we may run.

While BushCo postures for the cameras and news media cater to the Nielsen-rating gurus,the last of the Capitol-H Holocaust survivors fade away and the world turns it’s self-absorbed head from a reenactment of what people like Simon Wiesenthal lived to prevent. Perhaps the trouble is too much time between atrocities, too many sitcoms and too many trips to the casinos for the rest of us to care. While we bemoan natural disasters that occur here, generously (and rightfully) offering to help the “poor” of the richest nation on the planet, we turn our heads at the truly poor people - who are forced to send their children out to the communal well for the family’s drinking water because the young ones are less likely to be raped, mutilated and/or killed in the process.

Have we learned nothing?

What strikes me most about fellow armchair pundits of antipodal positions is an overview of emotions that leak out in our writing. Us on the political left suffuse our writing with frustration, resentment and sometime with humor. Those I find on the political right, however, share only one emotion: Rage.

Despite the obvious difficulty of reading expressions of opposing political views, discourse is necessary for Democracy to thrive. To be forced to read the conservative hoipoloi spewing hatred is counterproductive to any healthy debate; one cannot win an argument by shouting. One cannot foster modern political debate by promoting hatred, intolerance, or by subscribing to hate-speech.

As example, read this article. Now read a Righties’ take on it, and a Lefites’ viewpoint. Pam, on the left, does insert a few derogatory monickers, but largely sticks to reportage. Trodwell, however, blasts right in, using as many inflammatory references as he can fit in his junior-high sentence structure - talk about a festering gob, to use Trodwells’ own phrase.

Such open hostility is killing national debate; partly because somewhere within their tiny, charred hearts, the right-o-sphere knows their inflammatory pustules cannot hold up to logic and erudition inherent in objective debate. Better to gun down opponents - figuratively speaking, of course - than to withstand the brutal reality of not owning the Truth-As-I-See-It.

Real men (and women) can admit to being misguided; our current crop of Republican keyboard know-it-alls cannot. To most people branded by the scarlet letter “L” by the spittle-flecked and fiery-eyed, it’s no big deal to be found wrong. To admit error is to grow, and growth is advantageous on both the personal and political spectrums. Therein lies the essence of what being liberal means: being broad-minded; accepting.

How can that be a bad thing?

News recycled: Repetition.
All are sliding toward Perdition.
Stocking up on ammunition.
No room left to brake.

Antipodal opposition,
Erudition in remission.
Payouts for a politician -
Icing on the cake.

Children struggle with addition,
Failure in our foreign mission.
Gulags come with electricians.
Artificial lake.

All the world’s in opposition,
Missionaries in position,
Military expedition.
Burning at the stake.

Coalition with ambition,
Trying out a phase transition.
Blaming the planning commission.
Oil of the snake.

Heading for an intermission.
Smelling of decomposition.
Mount a search and rescue mission.
What’s it going to take?

As provided this week by Lama Suryas Das:

All things in worldly existence
That are colored by attachment and aversion
Are in reality devoid of any real existence.
When this is seen, everything is seen as golden.
When we meditate upon the illusion-like nature
Of all the illusion-like phenomena
We attain illusion-like enlightenment.

~ Dakini Niguma

If this doesn’t make sense, consider:
In Buddhist tradition, the three poisons are attachment, aversion and indifference. Everything our minds come in contact with is judged on a sliding scale, so to speak, between loving and hating. When we love something we try to own it, maintain it, and continue to experience it, when we hate something, we try to disown it, eliminate it, and avoid experiencing it. Like wise when we are indifferent to an experience, we ignore it completely.
To the degree we chose to react to phenomena, based upon these judgments we all make, is the degree we suffer because of our judgments: We cannot keep an enjoyable experience going forever as all things are continually changing; we cannot ignore reality on the basis of indifference, or rid ourselves of unsavory moments simply because we want to. The attempts we make at shaping reality to fit our biases is in fact the mechanism that creates our unease, unhappiness, and neuroses.

The wise among us would counsel us to “Roll with the punches,” or to “Take it easy.” All experiences in life, good, bad or neither, are very brief occurrences; nothing lasts forever. To accept what is before you with equanimity, knowing that it cannot last, is the foundation of a healthy and wise outlook. All things are predicated upon our state of mind as all must be filtered through our consciousness, as such what we experience has no substance until our mind decodes it and gives it meaning. Until we do this, all is illusion, insubstantial and of no real existence.

As the old adage goes: “If a tree lands in a forest and no one hears, does it make sound?” I would rephrase this: “If there is no consciousness to perceive, does phenomena actually exist.” I am not learned enough in philosophy to tackle this one as an argument, so I rely on my heart-mind (as Tibetans might say) to answer. What does yours say?