Matt Taibbi rips Fareed Zakaria

I have always felt a strong, inexplicable pull towards liking and agreeing with Fareed Zakaria, without knowing why.

I remember telling a friend of mine about a year ago that I really like his articles, but that I wished sometimes he would just drop the proper, status quo act and just really tell it like it is for once.

Thanks to the greatest political blogger in the world, Matt Taibbi, I no longer feel that strange desire to nod my head at everything Zakaria says or writes. In his latest post, Taibbi rips Zakaria’s Newsweek piece defending capitalism into a million tiny pieces, and unlike the Fry book, it is chocked-full of unalderated truth:

“Any writer who doesn’t admire what this guy does is probably not being honest with himself, because being the public face of conventional wisdom is an extremely difficult job — and as a man of letters Zakaria routinely succeeds, or pseudo-succeeds, at the most seemingly impossible literary tasks, making the sensational seem dull and the outrageous commonplace, rendering horrifying absolutes ambiguous and full of gray areas.“

(In his original piece, he misspelled ambiguous. But it’s cool because I misspell things like that all the time.)

Suddenly it all makes sense. I found myself feeling the need to agree with Fareed Zakaria because he represents common sense; ie conventional wisdom. The problem with conventional wisdom is that it is right 99.9 percent of the time, but when it’s wrong, the consequences are disastrous. Example: the western mainstream media’s pitiful, even to this day, explanations for the roots and causes of Islamic terrorism.

I have expressed my displeasure with the general mediocrity in Newsweek’s reporting before, but seeing Zakaria in this new light puts the very integrity of the publication into question as far as I’m concerned.

Ok, Jonathan Alter is not and never has embodied anything close to the cavalier journalistic spirit of E.R Murrow, but I always held a certain degree of respect for Newsweek until very recently. Perhaps it has something to do with my upbringing. Newsweek was the magazine of record in my house growing up, so it’s afforded a special status in my subconscious, but now I find it hard to believe that I was blinded to their mainstream B.S. for so long.

There are many many drawbacks to the development of new media and the gradual decay and death of traditional newspapers and magazines. Yes, it’s cool that Twitter is available to the Iranians, but it’s also shown how unreliable it is by crashing every 8 hours.

Yes, blogs have promoted decentralization and democratization as far as how people get and perceive their news, but there’s also no fact-checker working behind the scenes, nobody to call an anonymous blogger out when they publish grade-A, irresponsible nonsense. (You shut up.  Just shut up. We’ll discuss my nonsense another day.)

Yes, there are a lot of problems with the current trends in media. But my heart swells with joy when I envision a day when nobody has to pretend to like a journalist just because he represents conventional wisdom.

Cheney gets a Book Deal

Dick Cheney is reportedly getting a huge book deal for his memoirs through Simon & Schuster.

So HARD... trying... to look..... human!

So, let me get this straight. All I have to do in order to get a multi-million dollar book deal with a big publishing house is invade a sovereign nation, jerk off on the constitution, shoot my buddy in the face, tell a senator to go fuck himself, and then claim executive privilege when somebody cries foul? Where do I sign up?

Predictably, the masses are not happy about this news. Here are a few of the gems from the comments section at CNN:

“I would not and will not spend one cent for his bunch of lies” -Carl Justus

“Ah, his new career as a fiction writer!!” -Gizzi 1213

“This book is not worth the trees used to make it!! Toilet paper has a better use of trees than this book. Cheney will go down in history as a war criminal no matter what he writes or thinks.” -Brett

Ok, so I’m an under-employed writer to begin with, so this was going to rub me the wrong way no matter what. But what’s really upsetting is the fact that the editor-in-chief (Mary Matalin) used to work as a Cheney aide.

Does the mind not rebel upon hearing that? Did nobody who brought this deal together think that this might represent a conflict of interest, given that the book is going to be a non-fiction manuscript?

Thank you, big New York publishing, for proving yet again that one can get away with anything if you wear a really nice suit.

Dick’s dyke daughter says that her father wants to set the record straight for his grandchildren: “”He wants to make sure that his story is told, and told in a way that his grandchildren will be able to understand and appreciate even 20 or 30 years from now,” which is ironic because his grandchildren will already be benefiting from all the great work Cheney has done for the last 8 years.

Because in 2039, chances are we’re still going to have at least 50 thousand troops stationed in Iraq, just as Cheney intended. People who have complained about a lack of an exit strategy need to tuck their naivete back in: there never WAS an exit strategy. We will be paying to occupy Iraq until the end of time.

In 2039, we will be facing an enormous refugee crisis due to the catastrophic effects of climate change. Poor third world nations near the equator will all experience a dramatic exodus. Where do you think all those millions of penniless citizens are going to want to go? No number border fences or chants about buying American are going to keep them out. We can thank Cheney and company for setting back the environmental movement for 10 years by rejecting the Kyoto protocol.

If we’re lucky enough to still be a functioning state in 2039, Cheney’s influence will be felt in the Oval Office. There have been egregious abuses of the executive branch’s power before, but Bush and Cheney broke into a whole new ballgame: they set the standard for future Presidents, who will not hesitate to trample on civil liberties regardless of their party affiliation.

If Ms. Cheney ever wants to be married, she certainly will not be able to thank her father for helping make that a reality one day.

So, I hate to brake it to you, Liz, but there’s really no need for your dear old dad to write a memoir to set the record straight. History will judge him by his actions, not his words. And I guarantee you that the account of his years haunting the White House will not be a generous one.

We Want a Public Option

In a democracy the few are subject to the tyranny of the majority. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s the best damned thing that we’ve come up with so far in human history to make things fair.

Even though it’s imperfect, we must trust in democracy to meet the needs of the people in the most efficient way possible. Some people will say that this is the role of the market. These people are either ignorant, deluding themselves, or have something to gain from subverting democracy for the sake of monetary gain.

History has shown time and time and time and time again that when the will of the majority of the people is ignored consistently, it’s only a matter of time before a revolution takes place.

For instance, when a large majority of the people state that they want something, it would be very unwise of the government or the ruling elites to deny them this. Today in America 76 percent of us say that having a public health care plan option is important to us.

That’s a far greater majority than Barack Obama won to become President of these United States. Which means that this is far from a fringe group: 76% means that liberals, conservatives, moderates, and nutjobs alike support a public option. 76% represents more than just ample political capital to get things done. It represents A MANDATE. To sign a petition to show your support for a public option, visit here.

But, for some odd reason, the Democratic party’s plan for health care reform no longer includes a public insurance option.

Could this possibly have something to do with the fact that the health care industry contributed over 166 million dollars to candidates during the 2008 election cycle? Or is that just one big, giant, floating, pink-hued fucking coincidence?

It’s probably just a big coincidence, but just in case it’s not, I think that all 76% of us that support a public plan should take this opportunity to tell Congress that we want serious campaign finance reform right now. Because if we don’t, it’s highly unlikely that no matter who gets elected, no matter how much hope or change they promise, is going to give much of a flying fig about what we the people really want.

A collection of Henry Fairlie’s essays just came out. One of the more poignant passages that I’ve come across is this: (from 1976:)

“It is time that it was acknowledged that there are now only two choices: one can be either for strong government for the few and the rich, or for strong government for the unrich and the many. There is no longer a third way. This is what the American election this year is about: not whether there should be “big government” or not—that is a false issue—but whom the “big government” should serve.“

Too many of my intelligent, politically aware friends say that they just want the least amount of government possible. This can mean several things; normally that they don’t want beaurocrats deciding what they can and can’t do in the privacy of their own homes.

But the simple fact of the matter is that life has gotten too complicated for small government to be viable anymore, as Fairlie recognized.

This is why the founding fathers envisioned a flexible constitution: so that when circumstances dictated that change was necessary, the state could follow through without a violent hassle. Thomas Jefferson was all about independence and small government, but if he had lived in our times and gone through the process of tyring to purchase private insurance, I’m certain that he also would have supported a public option.

Intelligent people change their minds.

Whether the citizens voting for them know it or not, the Republicans abandoned the idea of small government about thirty years ago. They recognized that the strong central state wasn’t going anywhere, despite using anti-government rhetoric to trick people into voting for them. Since then they have willingly used that government to promote the interests of what Fairlie called the few and the rich.

Big government is here to stay, folks. Isn’t it about time that it started serving the needs of the many unrich?

Liberal Wusses

Recently I characterized the White House’s official response to the election crisis in Iran as “tepid.” Apparently, I’m not the only one who chose this adjective. On the Today Show, senator John Mccain called out the Obama administration for failing to call a spade a spade:

“He should speak out that this is a corrupt, fraud, sham of an election; the Iranian people have been deprived of their rights. I think it’s possible to engage. But item number one is giving the Iranian people a free and fair election.“

Predictably, the mainstream liberal media (no, I’m not saying the media has a liberal bias. I’m saying that there are mainstream media establishments that are liberal out there) has stood behind Obama’s decision to not interfere, or even offer a worthwhile comment on what’s happening in Iran.

If ever there was a no-brainer that would help repair our broken image in the middle east, this is it.

An extremist President rigs an election and hundreds of thousands of dissatisfied, highly motivated, politically engaged citizens are demanding a recount and refuse to accept the result. These are the very hearts and minds that we have supposedly been trying to win over for the last decade. So, what do we do when an easy and obvious villain oversteps his bounds? Nothing.

That’s the Obama doctrine for you: don’t do anything that could be considered by anyone to be choosing a side.

Memo to you media sycophants at the Examiner and the New York Times: nobody is saying that we should send troops in to Iran. Nobody is saying that we should interfere directly and ensure that a fair election takes place. All we want is for the leader of the free world to make some vague statement of support for a nation that has just had its democracy pulled out from under it by a totalitarian regime.

Is that too much to ask for, Mr. President?

The throngs of Mousavi supporters rushing into the streets on a daily basis are the future of Iran. This scandal will bring down the Ahmadinejad regime, mark my words. The green-clad protesters out there are going to be the Iranians that we will have to negotiate with one day down the road. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to say that we at least tacitly supported them in their darkest hour?

According to John Kerry, Senator from Massachussetts and least charismatic Presidential nominee in American history, the answer is no.

“The last thing we should do is give Mr. Ahmadinejad an opportunity to evoke the 1953 American-sponsored coup, which ousted Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and returned Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to power. Doing so would only allow him to cast himself as a modern-day Mossadegh, standing up for principle against a Western puppet.”

John Kerry’s logic makes sense if you’ve spent your life in a party that has been straddling the fence for so long that its testicles have been crushed so thoroughly that child-bearing is out of the question.

This is one case where it actually would be beneficial for us to take a side on a thorny political issue in another country. Ahmadinejad is not the shah. The year, as far as I know, is not 1979. In this case, the popular uprising in Iran is firmly directed against a corrupt, illegitimate regime. It would be foolish for us not to show our support for this Iranian grassroots movement. Sitting on the sidelines here would be a disastrously squandered opportunity to show that we have the common people of the middle east’s interests at heart, contrary to what their dictatorial leaders tell them.

Come on, Democrats. Show some balls for once in your life. Please.

Update: In response to the violence in Tehran on Saturday, in which the government killed 13 protesters, President Obama released the following statement:

“Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion…  Martin Luther King once said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian people’s belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.”

This is an improvement. Failing to criticise the thuggery of the Iranian government and ruling establishment would have been criminally negligible.

I hope that the people of Iran will continue to resist the Ayatollah’s crackdown on legitimate protests.

Keep fighting on!

To show your solidarity with the Iranian protesters, use this icon for your Facebook profile, or better yet, write your elected officials and ask them to condemn the stolen election.

Mo Money Mo money

Blog News: You can now take Not so Subtle with you wherever you go. Through Amazon’s Kindle, you can subscribe to the feed for just 1.99 a month.

Upsetting News:

Today the United States Senate passed an 80 billion dollar spending bill to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but this hardly even qualifies as news anymore.

This is how out-of-whack our priorities are. Every Republican in Congress has been crying and pounding their shoes on the podium about too much government spending under the Obama administration. But when a bill comes across their desks that spends nearly 13 figures worth of the taxpayer’s money to continue funding two un-winnable wars, not a peep is heard.

The final vote tally for this spending bill was 91-5. Which means that the vast majority of Democrats, who have spent the last 6 years pussy-footing around and half-heartedly calling for withdrawals from Iraq, also don’t seem to care how long we stay there or how much money we waste.

Sanity seems hard to come by with our elected officials’ logic as it pertains to spending. This same bill included a 1 billion dollar provision that would have given 4,500 dollar tax credits to car buyers who trade in fuel-inefficient cars to buy new, more economically and environmentally friendly vehicles. This provision just BARELY passed.

So, 80 billion dollars to continue babysitting the Iraqi military, which we disbanded coincidentally, doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. But 1 billion for bringing American cars into the 21st century nearly torpedoes the whole bill.

Who makes these decisions? Where do they come from? What possible life experiences could they have had to make them this incompetent? Why in the turquoise hell do we continue to re-elect them?

It’s sad enough that today we spent $80,000,000,000 more on these ventures in imperialism, but what’s even sadder is the fact that this will only cover the cost of these two wars until October. That’s 4 months. This means that on average, we’re spending 20 BILLION dollars a month in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That figure may slightly drop off as we start to “pull out” our troops from major Iraqi cities. But keep in mind that we will be keeping a residual force of over 130,000 there indefinitely. This means that every month for the foreseeable future we’re going to continue pissing these dollars down the drain. Now is a prudent time to ask the question: what are we still doing over there, anyway?

Officially we are in Afghanistan and Iraq to disrupt terrorism and prevent its spread throughout the region and the world.

The real reasons probably have more to do with Iraq’s oil and Afghanistan’s blossoming opium trade.

In conclusion:

Whatever the reasons, whatever possible good that might come from our presence in these countries, can we agree that the price tag, given our current economic troubles, has gotten just a WEE bit out of hand?

Those Silly, Useless Democrats

There will never be hope for this country until there is a legitimate liberal party.

The Democratic Party is at best a moderate choice in the grand scheme of things; far more conservative and spineless than mainstream leftist parties in Europe, Latin America, and all over the world.

Example: the new health care bill, which will not even attempt to pass any form of single payer, despite Obama’s promises during the primaries.

For some reason the Democrats don’t even think they can pass this watered-down legislation despite having majorities in both houses and enough political capital to choke an elephant.

The reason? It will cost 1.6 trillion dollars over the next 10 years. Which sounds like alot, but consider that we’ve handed out about that much to the vermin on Wall Street over the last 10 months and it suddenly doesn’t sound so bad.

UPDATE: It turns out I was way off on that number. If you add up all of the government’s commitments to the financial industry, we’ve got over 12 trillion tied up to keep this system afloat.

12.2 Trillion dollars to rescue the financial services industry.

But 1.6 Trillion dollars is too much to ask to overhaul health care?

What a crock of shit.

The Dems are proving to be useless to progressive America once again. When will we wake up and embrace a really liberal party that doesn’t cower at the accusation of being soft on terrorism or run for cover when their corporate overlords crack the whips?

I have a novel idea for paying for this new health care bill:

Raise taxes on rich people.

It’s really quite simple. From the end of World War 2 until the Reagan years, we taxed the shit out of rich people, and it worked out extremely well. What few deficits we had were small, the employment rate was impressive, and the average American savings rate was actually respectable.

Even with a generous tax hike, wealthy individuals still would be paying far, far, far, less in income taxes in America than in the rest of the developed world.

If you call this class warfare, that’s because you’re either stupid or rich. If you’re not obscenely wealthy, please turn off your computer and go enroll in a remedial history course.

To my left-leaning, Obama voting, change and hope touting friends: don’t say I didn’t tell you so.

Tehran Burning

While Tehran is burning and the biggest political uprising in the Middle East in thirty years is going on, Neil Cavuto is whining about President Obama not appearing on his show.

Maybe it’s not such a terrible thing that the western media has been banned from reporting inside Iran. Of course it’s unfortunate for the protesters who will have to rely on social media (for fuck’s sake Twitter, get your shit together) to report the news. But at least they won’t be subjected to gross distortions and nauseating round-table discussions from the 3 headed monster.

Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN all deserve lambasting for their pitiful, soundbite style coverage of what’s going on in Iran. This is the most newsworthy event in the region since shock and awe, with reverberations that will be felt all over the world, but you stand a better chance of winning the lottery than finding any in-depth coverage on the 24-hour news networks here in America.

The story of the stolen election is important enough itself. But if you think about the possibilities and consequences, the story becomes absolutely critical. If Ahmadinejad stays in power, especially illegitimately, war with Israel is pretty much a foregone conclusion. What slim chances there might have been of new dialogue between the U.S. and the Iranians will suffocate for at least another four years.

No man is an island. The election results in Iran will impact each and every one of us in profound ways, but the sniveling, loathsome, rotten, disgusting fucking fellators working in the mainstream media are treating it like a recap of a night at the Oscars.

If you’ve ever wondered how George W. Bush managed to steal an election in 2000, there’s your answer. The media simply didn’t give enough of a damn to pursue the story and we fell right in line. The results of that election were felt profoundly throughout the middle east. Perhaps this is a karmic return of the favor, and we certainly deserve whatever’s coming to us.

I’m standing firmly behind the protesters and the moderate candidate, not because I am an Iranian political junky, but because I’m genuinely concerned about what can happen if we allow the democratic process to be hijacked by yet another incompetent right-wing extremist.

A recount has been promised for the people of Iran. Let this be a lesson for every democratic nation. It’s obvious that the elite establishment in the country engineered, if not passively accepted the rigged vote: for whatever reason, Ahmadinejad is the Ayatollah’s man. But the ferocity of the people’s response was unanticipated.

Iranians refuse to accept this bogus election. Keep on fighting- the world is watching. (At least those of us smart enough to care about what happens on the other side of the globe.)

Book Review: Clockers

You should throw out your television set. Your life will be enriched in more ways than you can possibly imagine. But before you do, you should watch the entire series of The Wire on DVD, or BlueRay, if you’re into that kind of thing. Personally I don’t see any difference between the two, but that’s why I’m not working for BlueRay’s marketing department.

You probably have had at least two friends tell you at some point that you absolutely MUST watch The Wire: that it’s the greatest, most poignant, most important tv show in history. You were probably annoyed with them and said that you’re too busy trying to keep up with Lost.

Unfortunately, your friends are right, because The Wire is quite simply, the best work of art that the medium has ever produced. If you’re leery because you think it’s just another cop show (as I was) you will be pleasantly surprised to learn that it’s anything but. The Wire is about the city of Baltimore in its entirety; the police, the streets, the government, the blue collar workers, the newspapers, all of it. To put it more succinctly, The Wire is about what it means to be living in a poor city in America today.

But this post is not about The Wire, tremendous as it is.

Nay, this is about the book that served as the inspiration for The Wire; which affords it an immediate hallowed status in contemporary literature. Clockers by Richard Price is quite frankly one of the best books I have ever read in my life.

The story follows two threads: one is Strike aka Ronnie Dunham, a low-level drug dealer living and working in the projects in Dempsey, New Jersey. The other is a homicide detective named Rocco Klein. These two are brought together over the murder of Darryl Adams. Rocco becomes convinced that Strike did the deed, despite the fact that Strike’s brother, Victor has confessed to the crime.

Any writer who knows anything about the craft of fiction learns very quickly that you need to create an emotional connection between your characters and your audience. If I were to teach a class about this aspect of the art, I would use Clockers as its primary text.

We have every reason to despise Strike; he shuffles through half-assed justifications for his dope dealing and jeopardizes anyone and everyone who crosses his path. But because Richard Price paints such a complex portrait of this young man, you find yourself outraged when he is hounded by cops, cheated by other dealers, and shunned by his family.

Mekhi Phifer as Strike

It’s very easy to make an aging homicide cop identifiable. The trick is to not fall into cliches that you see on CSI, NY Undercover, The Shield, or on any of the other three dozen cop shows that cable networks shovel onto your screen every night like so many tons of manure. Like every other cop on TV, Rocco Klein is struggling with family issues, likes to take a drink every now and then, and has a passion for justice bordering on obsession, but Price somehow manages to keep this character refreshing.

Because you care so much about these characters, when they finally face off in an interrogation room, the emotional payoff is enormous.

What’s most amazing about Clockers is the fact that it keeps you engaged despite its length: at over 600 pages it’s easily the longest novel I’ve read that wasn’t part of a class requirement, and I wasn’t bored by a single sentence.

The book inspired Spike Lee to make a film adaptation, David Simon to create the glory that is The Wire, and me to work that much harder on my own fiction.

If you enjoy stories that reflect life as it is rather than junk-food style entertainment, then you owe it to yourself to read Clockers.

Attn: Right Wing Terrorists

Deer rite wing neo natsee terrorist dudez,

I am riting this letter fonetiklee becoz I sinseerlee want you to be able to reed it. Pleez forwird this letter to yer frends n’ relutivs.

A few munths ugo a homeland security report sed that there iz a growing thrett from rite wing extremist grups. At the time, a lot of cunservativs were reel reel mad at it becoz everebodee knows that rite wings reelee luv Americu.

Sinss then, there have  been sum shutingz and killingz by rite wing terrorists: in Pitzburg, a man shot three poleese cuz he was scairt that they were gonna take his gunz away. In Kanzas, another gie shot an aborshun doctor in chirch becoz he was killin babeez. Then last week anudder guy shot a securitee gard at the holocost museum becoz he was hoping for a return to the grate areean empire.

These gize were probly mad cuz they think the blax and the gaze in the wite howss are gonna go and change evereething.

I kin understand you being scairt by all the changes and the soshulizm stuff you’ve been heering about in them e-mail chains. But allow me to ashir you that the blax and the gaze in the wite howss don’t care if you have got lotsa gunz. The tall black gie who cheeted John Mccain and that perrtty ladee from Alaska sed that he ain’t gonna repeel the secund ummendmunt no matter wutz.

Nobodeez gunna take ure gunz away and make yer kids into sochulist gaze or go on dates with the blax. So you kin just relax and put yer gunz away, or better yet, uze em on yerselvs.

Do Not Recognize Ahmadinejad

The stolen election in Iran has led to massive civil unrest and rioting in the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities. Foreign journalists are being told to leave the country, reformist candidates have been placed under house arrest, and police squads are beating non-violent protesters.

So far the response from the White House has been tepid and disappointing. Vice President Biden expressed that he had “doubts” about the legitimacy of the election.

The Obama administration cannot afford to sit this one out and hide behind non-confrontational language. It’s understandable that we don’t want to be perceived as meddling in Iranian affairs, but this is too important to remain neutral on.

I believe that the United States should not recognize the Presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This represents a perfect opportunity for the west to show that we support the ordinary citizens of Iran, who want reform and prosperity for their country rather than four more years of mindless, reckless saber-rattling and failed domestic policies.

The real power in Iran rests with the Ayatollah, but we cannot allow an illegitimate President to sit. I only wish that we had shown as much courage to challenge the American election results in 2000 as the Iranians are showing now.

The people of Iran are ready to rise up and cast off the hardliners who have done so much to damage their country. They need the support of the United States and our allies. If we recognize Ahmadinejad as President, we are betraying democracy and run the risk of encouraging the outbreak of yet another war in the middle east.

The controversy over Iran’s nuclear program will not go away but the presence of this volatile leader threatens to bring Israel and Iran to the brink of war.

President Obama spoke recently in Cairo about a new beginning between the US and Islam. It was a very moving, eloquent speech that demonstrated a sincere to desire for cooperation and peace. This illegitimate election in Iran is a chance for him to prove that he means what he says.

The End of History

Only a crazy person would actually believe that the hard-line, far-right extremist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the Iranian presidential election legitimately.

The people of Iran are not taking this lying down. Following the extremely controversial election results, the people have taken to the streets to protest the obviously corrupted final vote, which states that the nutjob won with a plurality of over 60 percent of the popular vote.

This is perhaps the most important electoral protest in the 21st century thus far. If the far right wing is allowed to remain in power in Iran, it will have disastrous consequences for the rest of the region and the world.

Both Israel and Europe have seen their most recent elections swing to right-wing parties. If the most volatile and powerful state in the middle east stays in the hands of the extreme conservative block, then war will become a sad inevitability.

I am not a leftist extremist by any stretch of the imagination. But if far right wing parties are allowed to flourish in the middle east, Israel, and Europe, then the chances of avoiding a catastrophic third world war are almost slim to none.

If you have any interest in maintaining the viability of the human race and the continuation of makind’s history, I strongly suggest that you hope and pray for the official results in Iran to be overturned.

I have tried to turn away from politics as much as possible, but ignoring these latest turns in the news would be criminally negligible.

Both Benjamin Natenyahu and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s credibility rest on the idea that war between Israel and Iran is inevitable.

If both of these war-mongering psychopaths are allowed to hold legitimate office in their respective countries, then we will all be soon drawn into a confrontation of unprecedented proportions.

In 1992, Francis Fukuyama speculated that mankind was about to enter the final phase of human history; one where democracy and neoliberalism reigned supreme and we are all entered into a utopian, humanitarian future.

In a way, he could not have been more wrong. But given the availability of nuclear weapons in today’s political climate and the catastrophic meltdown of Bretton Woods-style capitalism, he may not have been so wrong after all. If far-right wing governments in Israel and Iran are able to flourish, we will indeed be seeing the end of history much sooner than any of us could have possibly imagined.

Raul Ibanez Flips Out

The latest chapter in baseball’s ongoing PED saga unfolded this week when Raul Ibanez of the Phillies completely flipped out on a blogger who insinuated that he might be doing performance enhancing drugs.

Since the story broke there’s been a tit-for-tat in the Philadelphia media as well as the online sports world. The much condensed version of it is this:

Ibanez is leading the National League in ribbies, hitting .327, and having a career year at 37 years old.

If this sounds suspicious, that’s because it is.

Ibanez has always been a steady, if over-looked power hitter. He usually hits 20-30 home runs a year and habitually knocks in over 100 runs. But the numbers this season are a real anomaly, if for no other reason but his age. Very, very, very few major league stars get better once they’ve had thirty-five candles on their birthday cakes. (Hopefully at their age they still don’t have that kind of birthday party, but that’s another story.)

Anyway, all of these incredible numbers have prompted some speculation, mainly from sportswriters and fantasy baseball fanatics who have far too much time on their hands. Seriously, check out the length of the original article by Jerod Morris.

Now I’m certainly in no position to tell anybody to get a real job but that was just absurd. After the 3rd graph I took a nap, then went out to Taco Bell, came back, read War and Peace, and then tried to finish reading the post but I fell asleep again. And I LIKE baseball.

So after hearing about the blog, Raul Ibanez called this guy a 42 year old who lives in his mom’s basement and then said he was willing to take any kind of drug test imaginable to prove he’s clean. Also, he said he would put up all of the money he’s ever earned playing baseball if he failed any of the tests. He’s probably clean, but doesn’t that sound just a little bit too much like a jock offering to go down on Judi Dench just to prove he’s not gay?

The point is, Ibanez and the blogger both need to get a life and Commissioner Sealig needs to do something to convince the fans that his sport is still legitimate because right now there’s no reason why we should take any ballplayer at their word.

The Identity Crisis

Thirty years ago next month, President Jimmy Carter addressed the nation. He said that America was facing a crisis of confidence:

“It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.”

If you’ve ever been around insecure people, you know that they don’t take very kindly to having their self-esteem or confidence called into question. Predictably, Americans didn’t take very kindly to Carter’s message and they voted him out of office by staggering margins the next year.

Whether we like it or not everything that Jimmy Carter said was true. In fact, he didn’t take it far enough. Carter lamented the loss of faith in our cherished institutions:

“As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.”

But the American crisis of confidence goes far deeper than just a steadily eroding respect. What we’re really facing in this country is an enormous identity crisis; it extends to each coast and touches every one of us in one way or another. Collectively, we have no identity.

How did this happen? I cannot say for sure. Crises of this scale usually come about as a result of a number of contributing factors and foment over a long period of time. If I were to venture a guess, I would say that our consumer culture is the primary culprit.

Characterizing Americans as spoiled brats is probably unfair and a bit of a blanket statement, but it’s hard to ignore the facts. For the last three generations, we have been blessed with an unprecedented standard of living, which has only recently begun to seriously wane.

It’s very difficult to have healthy relationships with people who were spoiled as children. Because they’ve had everything handed to them, they haven’t had to struggle, and therefore lack empathy for others.

As a whole, we are selfish, narcissistic, and care very little about things outside of our immediate social circles.

We are a nation of emotional children. We want what we want when we want it. As a result, we have very little confidence in ourselves, and so we desperately cling to lifestyle addictions.

The American identity crisis begins in junior high and high school for most of us, when we are first exposed to cliques and sub-culture social groups that fixate their identity on one thing; it could be punk rock music, athletics, or sex and dating. People strive very hard to fit in with these social groups; conforming to the accepted identity of the group becomes a matter of life or death for some; even those who claim to be bucking the system follow their own rules.

The ringleader of the goth kid clique on South Park illustrates this perfectly when he said you can’t be an anti-conformist unless you dress and act like us.

Luckily, some of us never fall in to the identity culture crap that pervades the high school years. Many more of us grow out of these things in college or soon after getting out into the working world. But there are still many, many more people who simply trade one identity for another.

Some women become enamored with a Sex and the City type lifestyle; they move to larger cities and start sleeping with as many random people as possible.

Some men join up with a group of like-minded sports fans and get inebriated three or four times a week while watching baseball at a local sports bar.

There are many, many more examples, and I’m sure you can think of some of them as well. The point is that there are far too many Americans who are clinging desperately to an identity culture because they are terribly terribly afraid that their lives really don’t mean anything.

This is the downside of a tremendous standard of living: at a certain point, our entire lives become centered around consuming. When we first start out, it’s cars, then it’s houses, patio furniture, HDTVs, and laptops. The problem is that somewhere along the line the American dream became synonymous with buying as many possessions as possible, and at the end of the day, that’s a very hollow existence.

So, we try to find meaning. We seek out others who have similar interests and then we begin to base our entire self-esteem on identifying with that one particular group. Hipsters, yuppies, and trust fund brigades all are buying into stereotypes that have come to define their very lives because all they’ve done with their time on Earth is consume things.

How can we stop this?

In a word, civics.

Unfortunately our public education system has been so underfunded and poorly managed for the last several decades that civics classes have fallen by the way side to math and science.

Every morning we require our children to cite the pledge of allegiance, but they’re just words until you give them a greater meaning.

The American character instinctively is ruggedly individualistic, which makes us leery about co-operative enterprises. The dumber among us are so scared of socialism that they weep and flee in terror when they think they see it in the shadows under their beds. Unfortunately, this feeds directly into our identity crisis.

A greater emphasis must be placed on the good of the whole: the society at large. Statism is not an inherently wicked idea. What’s ironic is that the people most frightened of collectivist politics claim to be the most patriotic citizens.

If we start teaching civic pride, ethics, and community organization at the youngest ages, then we will start to see our identity crisis solved. The survival of future generations depends on their ability to see that their fates are all inextricably linked.

This will take a radical change of philosophy not only in education, but in our society as a whole. Coming up through school, we teach our students that they need to perform well in school so that they can get a good job, so that they can earn more money as an adult. That’s a very sick and sloppy reason to invest in your own education.

Capitalism works, but it does not serve the interests of a nation or of a people. Accumulating goods is fine, but there is much, much more to life.

We should be teaching our kids that a yearly salary is not the end-all, be-all of existence. If we learn anything from this financial crisis it should be that none of us live on an island; our welfare is directly related to the welfare of our neighbors.

If we can teach them to care more about their fellow Americans and put more emphasis on the good of the whole, then the morning ritual of sleepy-eyed patriotic incantations won’t feel so empty.

How do we solve America’s identity crisis?

We start caring less about how we’re going to pay for the next version of the Ipod and start caring more about the people living in the United States of America.

The World is Not Flat

Everybody party! The recession is over! Last month we only lost 345,000 jobs, which marks the second consecutive month that we have lost jobs at a slightly slower rate!

This is what qualifies as good economic news these days.

The fact that the media, specifically the New York Times, is trumpeting this number as a sign that things are starting to improve, is indicative of a very perverse sense of priorities in this country.

The same people trumpeting these unemployment numbers have been giddy about the fact that the Dow Jones average is flirting with 9,000 again. Somewhere, Benjamin Disraeli, who coined the phrase “there are lies, damn lies, and statistics” is rolling over in his grave.

First of all the official unemployment numbers are wildly inaccurate, because they don’t take several key factors into account:

1. They don’t include people who have given up looking for work

2. They don’t include involuntary temps

These latest numbers push the official unemployment rate to 9.4%, but the real figure is more likely closer to 16 or 17 percent. This amended figure still doesn’t take into account the number of Americans who are chronically underemployed.

But the mainstream media is telling us that we should all REJOICE because the Dow Jones is starting to crawl back up and we’re shedding jobs at a slower rate.

This is just plain sick.

The sickness is a matter of priorities: that being the west generally doesn’t examine the human cost of the equation when discussing economic indicators. For too long we have marked our health by arbitrary numbers such as overall GDP, the fickle stock market, and the value of commodities that only a fraction of the population has a hand in.

The true believers in these numbers have priorities so out of whack that the title of their definitive work is a lie that was disproven hundreds of years ago. “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman is a terrible book. It’s written poorly, and the ideas therein represent an extremely skewed vision of history and economics in general. No wonder it’s considered to be as sacred as the bible by most market-minded economists and deregulation cheerleaders.

Despite what the New York Times, the Economist, and the corporate-whored government may tell you, the world is in fact round. It always has been round. It always will be round, at least until the Flattists and their mindless philosophies send us over an ecological, economical, and humanitarian precipice, from which there will be no return. There is something to this metaphor that Friedman came up with after all.

If I were to describe what it’s like living in contemporary America to a member of a third world country, it would go something like this:

Imagine that you’re sitting in the back seat of the largest sports utility vehicle ever constructed. It comes fully loaded with power windows, anti-lock breaks, air conditioning, DVD players in the headrests, and a 7000 watt speaker system.

You’re watching your favorite movie on the DVD player, your favorite song is blasting on the radio, the air conditioner is on a setting so high that you have goosebumps, and you’re chowing down on your favorite food, only the meal is three times larger than it needs to be.

You glance out the window and see that your enormous SUV is driving eighty-five miles an hour directly towards a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon. You try to get the attention of the driver, but the vehicle is so big and the radio is so loud that they can’t hear you. In fact, you don’t even know who is driving the SUV, because they’re so far away from where you’re sitting. You scream and shout that we’re headed for a disaster but nobody can hear you.

Finally you realize that you’ve already crossed a point on the plain. Even if you got the attention of the driver and they tried to slow down, it would be too late. You’re going to fall right into the ravine. So, you decide to enjoy the little time on this planet that you have left, so you turn up the speakers and take another bite.

If the world is indeed flat then these economists and media sycophants would do well to remember that you can only drive so far in one direction before you fall off the edge.

A Tale of Two Gagas

In one of Justin Timberlake’s earliest solo songs, he stated that people should get used to pop music because it isn’t going away any time soon. After hearing that I waited patiently for him to be proven wrong. I’m still waiting. Unfortunately not a whole lot has changed in pop since then.

The new hit sensation in pop music is Stefani Germanotta. You probably know her better as her alter-ego, Lady Gaga. She’s had two songs reach number 1 on the Billboard charts over the last several months and was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone last month, wearing a “dress” made of plastic bubbles.

If you’ve seen any of her music videos, you might be shocked to learn that she used to do cocaine as an exotic dancer and sleeps with both men and women, which makes her boyfriends “uncomfortable.” I can’t imagine why.

Ms. Gaga, who just turned 23, embodies every single cliche of pop music over the last 25 years. Her influences range from Michael Jackson to David Bowie to Madonna (surprise!), yet she claims to pride herself on challenging people’s assumptions:

“… I’m changing what people think is sexy… I don’t feel like I look like the other perfect little pop singers.“

Only she isn’t, and she does.

Poker Face, currently number 2 on the pop charts, reveals her attidude towards sexuality, which she embraces with open arms and legs:

I won’t tell you that I love you Kiss or hug you Cause I’m bluffin with my muffin’ I’m not lyin’ I’m just stunnin’ with my love-glue gunnin’

Funny and catchy though the song may be, it don’t represent anything thoughtful or innovative, even as far as pop music goes. Others were selling sex, albeit with a little more subtlety, when Ms. Gaga was still in preschool. She doesn’t seem aware of the conventions in her own backyard, so her oft-repeated claim that pop culture is legitimate art falls just a little bit flat. But making wide generalizations about a genre of art based on one bubble-headed slut’s comments is pretty lazy, intellectually speaking.

Luckily, there happens to be a far sweeter rose in pop music that goes by nearly the same name. Recently I had the pleasure of meeting a member of Gidgets GaGa, a powerpop band hailing from Chicago, Illinois.

If you’re into pop music but want to experience something slightly different than what the major labels have been force-feeding the public since the Reagan administration, you should check them out.

The band’s innovation isn’t restricted to its music: it manifests itself through a number of clever promotional ideas, including allowing online users to hear songs all the way through one time on some sites, rather than the thirty-second clips that are all too common and unsatisfying. Go Go Gidgets marketing plan!

But what’s most refreshing about Gidgets Gaga is what they’re not selling their listeners: that being a lifestyle so rampantly promiscuous and reckless that the artist doesn’t know where tongue-in-cheek ends and unintentionally ironic begins.

At the end of the day they play fun powerpop/rock music. It’s not going to save the world. We all have different tastes, you might hate all pop or powerpop in general. But if you have to choose between the two Gagas, you could certainly do worse.