I have a favor to ask all of you. If any of you happen to run into President Bush (at the bank or the post office, for example), could you tell him that God called and he wants his ego back?

Much obliged!

The Family

, by Kitty Kelley. Read it! Then you’ll come to undertand what I have. “Crazy” is not always surrounded by padded walls. Sometimes “Crazy” is surrounded by lots and lots of money. In the book, Kitty mentions that all of the Bush children (meaning the generation currently holding America’s future in the same hand they use to adjust their manhood with) consider themselves to be self made individuals. Now, those of you paying attention know that this is just silly. It is no coincidence that these kiddies made their millions during the time their “Poppy” was in the White House. I’m sure nobody spelled it out for them, but if you’re a rich guy looking for political favors, and the son of an incompetent but verY friendly to business president comes a knockin’ looking for a loan or investment, what are you going to do? Ask for collateral? You give them the money, pat them on the back, send gifts to their family and look the other way when they cut and run with your cash. Whether the Bush kiddies know it or not, they’ve had it easy, even for rich kids.

All this talk of “self made millionaires” by these silver spoon base heads got me thinking. Is it possible to be a self made millionaire at all? When you think about it, and actually give credit where credit’s due, the very concept is an impossibility. Most of the people who wear the title “self made millionaire” like a badge actually have lots of people working for them, toiling away in factories and shops making the goods and providing the services to the customers who pay the money so this guy can walk around acting like a big shot. And then for him to turn around and act like none of those other people even exist? If he’s not going to give them an equal share of the profits, then he can at least give them credit.

Even if he’s into stocks, he’s not making the money himself. Those stocks, after all, are representative of investments Mr. Rich Dick has made in actual companies with actual people doing actual work making actual money which this guy pockets and pretends he earned all by himself.

And what about all the other people in their lives. Family, friends, business partners. You know that old saying, “tell a child he’s stupid enough times and eventually they’ll come to believe it.” Well, the same effect occurs with positive statements. Again, the “self-made” millionaire fails to recognize all of those people who made sure (s)he grew up healthy and strong and educated. No one thrives in this world all by themselves. As much as some don’t want to believe it, nobody achieves anything without the help of at least one other person. It’s, as I said before, an impossibility.

So, how ’bout it, Mr. President? Are you and all those other pompous, self-delusional, “self-made” rich folk going to fess up and admit you had a LOT of help making your fortunes? Yeah, right! Like he’s reading this blog.

Sellah,
Chris Pollick

Shadow of the Hegemon

, a speculative novel about one of our planet’s possible futures. I won’t go into the novel here, because what I want to talk about is something he says in the appendix. At the end of the book, he writes a bit of an essay on socio-political speculative fiction and what he feels are the major challenges of pursuing such a story. Semi-interesting stuff if you’re interested in becoming a writer. But, in this essay, he states something, almost in passing, that really got me thinking. He said, almost matter-of-factly that America is in decline, and that the reason we are in decline is that we haven’t had a decent leader in a very long time and seem to have no interest in finding one. Of course, I’m paraphrasing. You can dig up the book yourself if you want a direct quote. It really got me thinking, though. Are we in decline? Seems to me like he’s not the only one to say it. And if this is true, how much time do we have? What will happen to us when the end finally does come? Is there any way to stop it? If there is a way, should we even try?
I personally am of the opinion that we are in decline, and the main reason for this is that no one in a position of power seems at all inclined to do anything about the increasing problems our nation is facing. The middle class is still dwindling. The rich are getting richer, and the poor are increasing in number. More and more, the issues that are taking the forefront in politics are increasingly irrelevant to the real problems that we all face. Big business is gaining more control over us by the minute, and nobody in power seems to be of a mind to put a stop to it or even slow it down. The whole situation is downright depressing. I really don’t blame those of us who are more inclined to ignore politics and world events and focus their energy on insignifigant and innane pursuits.
Thinking about all of this, I am reminded of exactly what it is that got me into activism in the first place. Personally, I don’t believe we as a country and as a people have very much time left before total collapse. The chaos and terror that will follow are unavoidable. But, the damage that is done to the average person, tho ones usually hurt the most by these sorts of things, can be minimized. I’m not talking about building a bomb shelter and saving up canned goods, or whatever. I’m talking about learning to fend for ourselves. Some of us should learn how to grow our own food. Others should learn quick and effective ways to build houses and furniture. Still others should come up with viable alternatives to capitalism. We all need to stop depending upon the government and big business for all the things we need to survive. That way, when and if the unthinkable occurs, we won’t suffer needlessly. And, even if things aren’t as bad as they seem, learning all of this stuff will help us become more well rounded individuals. Heck, we may even affect real change and end up saving the country by empowering people everywhere.
Who really knows what the future holds. I just think it’s a good thing to be prepared.

Okay, I know that last one is often espoused by moderate democrats (the business part, at least). Maybe I don’t really mean “Republican”. Maybe I mean “conservative”. I don’t know. And that’s part of the problem.

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a rather confrontational individual. Not the “in your face” yelling Sean Hannity type of confrontational. More of a Plato “what does this really mean” type of confrontational. I like to challenge people’s ideas and not their very existence. It’s not that I think that those ideas are wrong. I genuinely want to know why people think the things they do. There’s no better way to find the truth than to examine all of the possibilities of existence.

So, when asking myself the question “why do conservatives think the way they do?” my initial reaction isn’t to shrug my shoulders and answer “I don’t know. Because they’re morons, I guess.” No, I have to torture myself with the torturous task of actually finding an answer. Since I don’t have any conservative friends whose brains I could pick, my only source was the media, which is no source at all for the most part. I simply can’t stomach the belligerent lunacy of Bill O’Rielly, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. It’s been my experience that such reactionary people tend not to do much of their own thinking anyway, and regurgitated concepts are hardly useful in answering my question. I needed somebody whose own intellectual journey has led them to believe in the ideals of the conservative movement. I found that person, almost accidentally, in Colin Quinn.

For those of you who don’t know, Colin Quinn is a comedian. You may recall he did a stint on Saturday Night Live as the weekend update anchor. Right now, he has a show on Comedy Central called Tough Crowd, which airs after the Daily Show. It took me a while to realize he was a conservative. Like pretty much everybody else, I have certain prejudicial predispositions. It’s hard for me to come to terms with the concept of a free thinking conservative. I grew up in a Democrat household during the Reagan years, another long stretch of indecipherable lunacy that I’m sure had nothing to do with my political development (somehow, sarcasm doesn’t transfer well to paper). But, in Colin Quinn, I was confronted with just such a person. I know some of you don’t consider Colin to be much of an intellectual. He does appear rough around the edges. But, you shouldn’t let that fool you, for it’s an indication of just how intellectual he really is. We share some commonalities. We both come from blue collar families. We both have an unhealthy interest in politics (unhealthy in that we both have sacrificed some of our sanity). We both have short fuses when it comes to certain topics. And, most importantly, we are both self-taught when it comes to philosophy and critical thinking.

Right now, some of you just had alarm bells going off in your heads. How can you trust the ideas of someone who hasn’t been classically trained in logic to be genuine? Their thoughts must be full of fallacies. I would counter (being fiercely anti-establishmentarian), how can you trust the ideas of someone whose brain has been molded by a stagnant institution? Their thoughts can’t be original. Of course, the answer to both of the above questions is, you can’t. And, you shouldn’t. It doesn’t matter where people learned how to think. It only matter that they are thinking. If you want to know the validity of their ideas, look at them.

I respect Colin Quinn as a person and as an intellectual, and that made it very hard for me to hear what he was saying. Here was a person with a mind of his own who had come to completely different conclusions than I did on a vast number of topics. A man who is as vociferous and passionate about his ideas as I am about mine. I suddenly found myself arguing back and forth in my head, confronting my own ideas right along with his.

“How can he believe these things?”
“I don’t know, but he does.”
“Yes, but how?”
“I don’t know, but he does.”
“He must be regurgitating them from Fox news or something.”
“He’s not. He’s a free thinker.”
“Well, then, he’s stupid.”
“You know he isn’t.”
“Well then, he’s partisan. He has an agenda.”
“He has a lot of guests on his show that don’t agree with him and are articulate.”
“Then, he’s naïve. He doesn’t understand politics.”
“You know he does.”
“Then, he must be misinformed.”

On and on I went, wrestling like Jacob with this behemoth. Then, the kicker came. On his show, Colin and his guests, all conservative this time, started complaining about how liberals often speak to conservatives as if their stupid, naïve, or simply misinformed. Being a common perpetrator of just such an attitude, that hit me hard. Especially since that very attitude was my last line of defence in my obstinate categorical rejection of conservative concepts. Suddenly, my mind was flooded with them, casting doubt on all of my own thoughts. I was at last forced to confront the conservative agenda on a level playing field.

I suppose now you’re expecting me to confess that I found all of my “bleeding heart” ideals to be false on their face. I didn’t. Most of my ideas survived. Actually, all of them did, except for one. Conservatives are just as smart, just as informed and just as experienced as we liberals are, and it is to our own detriment that we believe otherwise. I’m not saying we should take somebody like Rush Limbaugh seriously. In fact, we should be much more vociferous in rejecting all anti-intellectual reactionaries, regardless of their political stripes. I’m just saying that we need to rethink this whole partisanship thing. As John Dewey said, in order for a Democracy to succeed, all of it’s citizens must be democratic. In other words, we must continuously participate in the conversation that is American society, and we must do so honestly and with respect for the ideas of others. If our ultimate goal is to build a society where all people have a place, we need all people to participate in the construction.

I know, sappy. I’m not saying we should cow tow to the forceful demands of the conservatives. Indeed the opposite is true, especially now that they hold the keys to political power. I may respect Colin Quinn, but I don’t believe he’s right. And I certainly don’t believe that his ideas should take precedence over my own. I still believe that our fight is the good fight, and we should definitely keep on fighting in the most positive ways that we can. I’m only saying we shouldn’t reject ideas simply because we don’t like them. Confronting a bad idea with a good one only makes the good idea stronger and the bad one even harder to defend. In such a situation, only good ideas will flourish, and hopefully, they will make all of us stronger.

They are under obligation to their conservative reliigious constituents to do something, and this is what they came up with. Too many senators are reluctant to take a big stand on this issue. So, if we push them hard enough, they should cave in to pressure and vote no.

We all know what we need to do. Let em know how we feel, AND keep in mind that lobbying against this FMA is NOT a vote in favor of Gay marriages. It is truly a call for further consideration and discourse, which is exactly what this issue needs. My feeling is that America is simply not ready to deal with gay marriage at this time. Too many people are uncertain as to what this all means. As Andrei pointed out, this issue cannot be summed up as the simple granting of ceremonial rights. It is a much deeper rooted issue dealing with Equal Rights for Gays and Lesbians.

Society HAS to be ready for it. And for that to happen, virtually everyone in society will have to think seriously on this issue and come up with valid conclusions.

This hasn’t happened yet, though the recent ‘uprisings’ (for lack of a better term) have thrust the issue into the spotlight and forced many to start considering the issue. Our best bet is to continue along these lines, doing our best to keep the issue on the front page for as long as possible while simultaneously providing the best information possible to as many people as possible. In other words, educate them and keep them thinking!

Whether or not the FMA passes, the battle for Equal Rights for Gays and Lesbians will continue. So, we know what to do. Call our Senators and Congress-folk, and keep plugging away at our freinds and neighbors.

Love and Peace,
Chris Pollick

(Hey man, I didn’t intent for this to become a bloggish essay, but, well… If you want to post it for me, you can. Although I’m sure nobody’ll read the poor neglected thing. Maybe you should just forward it to folks.)

P.S. this Terrence McKenna-y crap is not going to be the norm of this blogatorium. See, when I get delerius from sleep deprivation I tend to babble this psuedo-spiritual Hoo_ha, along with countless Simpson’s quotes.

Oh yeah, and as soon as I figure out how to, I’m gonna change the name of this thing to Blather-fest.

Chris P.