The Pursuit of Hope
I'm fairly certain I am not the only one in this particular choir who is struggling at times to temporarily brush aside the annoying invasive and thorny vines of un-Hope-ful actions and inactions of the Obama administration and the seemingly Dem-dominated Congress. And, of course, "unhopeful" there is pretty darned euphemistic in a number of cases. And, well, yes, anyone paying attention has plenty of other anti-hope stimuli involving mad people inciting madder people to violence and so many other vile behaviors and occurrences that we cannot rightly lay squarely on our government's doorstep. Though in many cases good portions belong squarely on the conference tables of our mega-corporations including the corporatized media, and it seems obvious that increasingly vigorous pursuit and prosecution of internal terrorist/white supremacist/racist activists as I understand was ongoing during the Clinton years, should, alas, be a high priority.
I am definitely in the category of folks who do not find the telephone an endearing, wonderful aid to human communications in many circumstances. Cold calls, e.g., in job-hunting or attempting to argue a case with a politician are anathema to me. But I did place a call to my representative's (James McDermott - 206 553-7170) local office today to urge him to vote against the supplemental war funding bill (HR 2346 or something close) since it lacks any determinative schedule for withdrawal, something that has been out there and well-advertised as needed for long now and in addition has the ghastly rider attached of $100B or so of IMF funding which is strongly rumored to be likely to end up bailing out yet more banker-gamblers, only these being in Europe. So this is an example of "unhopeful" being an inadequate description. I have enough trouble with continuing to fund open-ended wars on multiple fronts, with aerial drones killing civilians, airstrikes killing civilians, no indication that military numbers and might are doing anything but recruit more hatred for our country and potential terrorists. I got that phone number, btw, from the Firedoglake site, where they are doing yeowoman (and -man) work as usual on multiple fronts at once. They have a running tabulation there of representatives and their prior votes on related issues and current stance. Highly recommended.
And there are of course a number of other Very Sore Points right now, potentially leading to a certain bleakness to whatever hopeful visions we might have been tending as a result of the truly empowering election of our first non-white-male President.
I find myself alert for encouragement or at least antidotes to discouragement. Yes, it would be perhaps easier to crawl back in a shell with the other hermit-crabs and just turn it all off. I somehow have not been able to do that.
So, a couple recent gleanings in the "don't let it bring you down, it's only castles burning" category.
Rarely am I so blessed with time as to be able to delve into the comments on posts I read. I am steadily agog over these on-line mavens who put up multiple cogent, lucid, multi-sourced posts on a nearly every-day basis. Many of them also seem to find a way to interact with the comment-streams on their posts and deal with all of the other email and telephone (gasp!) communications their energetic on-line presence must require. I don't know how they do it if they also have an 8-to-5 job, pets, yard/garden, cooking, "recreational" reading, and other interests to attend to. Their relative youthfulness in some cases may have something to do with it.
But I did surf through some of the commentary on a recent Froomkin post, largely because of the satisfyingly frank call-out Mr. Dan did on general parameters I was bemoaning above. Need it be said that I strongly encourage you to check out that post? But I am working at milking some solace from what seems pretty sound thinking in this comment on that post (thank you so much, "ceflynline"!):
The complaints about lack of transparency in dealing with national security issues is a bit premature.
When dealing with what currently classified material to release, Obama's people face several choices, each of which is levened by the consideration that once the secret is out it can't be put back, (even though Cheney tried, lots of times).
Any bit of information currently classified has to be considered as though it were properly classified until it is decided otherwise, and that decision needs to be made by a qualified classification specialist.
Once the information is determined to be not properly classified, or to be declassifiable, Obama's people still need to decide whether they should publish the information themselves, or let Congress, or some investigative body do the outing. The more of this stuff that becomes public knowledge "without" Obama's overt action, the worse it is for the previous administration, because it is harder to call it merely politically motivated when it is released in response to some subpoena or FOIA request.
By being "less than transparent" Obama gets to have his inquisition and not get the blow back he would get if his personal Thomas de Torquimada had his finger prints all over the material.
This one requires patience, but by and by we will get all the truth that can be printed.
Posted by: ceflynline June 11, 2009 1:49 PM
And I couldn't resist sharing this timely post. We celebrated our annual five-family-member June birthday gala today with at least a quorum if not all in attendance. As it happens, it actually was Elaine's Natal Day. But there are a scattering of us throughout June (not to mention multiple anniversaries), so it is always a fairly major social event.
But I don't remember ever before seeing a reference to June 12 as "Loving Day." That's a great concept all on its' own, but this isn't that. It was at some pain that I pruned a central section here in interests of post "brevity" - you will be glad you followed link to fill in short excision:
Reactionary conservatives are smiling through the racial apocalypse. To them race baiting is a joke, as "humorist" Rush Limbaugh will tell you when he's calling Mexicans "stupid." Or it's a matter of semantics when they claim that Sonia Sotomayor is a "racialist" which, far as I can tell, is the smooth jazz version of being a racist. Or they are just merely reporting the "facts" when they repeatedly call an abortion doctor "the killer."
Then, right wingers go nuts and start "Second Amendment-ing" innocent people, and for the life of them conservatives can't imagine how such things happen.
I could connect the dots for them, but there are plenty of other folks out there trying to do that. Instead I'd like to focus your attention on something else this June 12th.
Love. Or Loving, as in Loving Day.
As I've written previously: June 12th, Loving Day, is not named for the emotion of loving, but, fittingly, for Richard Loving and his wife Mildred. Richard was white, and Mildred was black, and when they were married in 1958, their home state of Virginia was one of 16 that still considered interracial marriage to be literally criminal. Hard as it may be to believe now, interracial marriage -- miscegenation is the pejorative -- was once a severely odious concept.
-clip-
The Lovings spent time in jail for the high crime of being married to each other and were forced to move from Virginia. Then, on June 12 of 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Lovings' criminal convictions and struck down all laws against interracial marriage.
Now there's something like 4.3 million mixed-marriage couples in the United States. And the son of one such union is our president.
It's easy to get discouraged -- if not downright fearful -- when the race baiters dial their spew up to "11," and their reactionary puppets respond with violence. But take a moment on this June 12th to look at where our nation once was and where we are now, and take solace in knowing that we are headed in a better direction.
And, in a more bucolic and what might possibly seem frivolous sense, if the above is not helpful, you might try this, which I may have proffered before in slightly different form, now seemingly unavailable. I find a periodic sing-along does wonders for me.
I am definitely in the category of folks who do not find the telephone an endearing, wonderful aid to human communications in many circumstances. Cold calls, e.g., in job-hunting or attempting to argue a case with a politician are anathema to me. But I did place a call to my representative's (James McDermott - 206 553-7170) local office today to urge him to vote against the supplemental war funding bill (HR 2346 or something close) since it lacks any determinative schedule for withdrawal, something that has been out there and well-advertised as needed for long now and in addition has the ghastly rider attached of $100B or so of IMF funding which is strongly rumored to be likely to end up bailing out yet more banker-gamblers, only these being in Europe. So this is an example of "unhopeful" being an inadequate description. I have enough trouble with continuing to fund open-ended wars on multiple fronts, with aerial drones killing civilians, airstrikes killing civilians, no indication that military numbers and might are doing anything but recruit more hatred for our country and potential terrorists. I got that phone number, btw, from the Firedoglake site, where they are doing yeowoman (and -man) work as usual on multiple fronts at once. They have a running tabulation there of representatives and their prior votes on related issues and current stance. Highly recommended.
And there are of course a number of other Very Sore Points right now, potentially leading to a certain bleakness to whatever hopeful visions we might have been tending as a result of the truly empowering election of our first non-white-male President.
I find myself alert for encouragement or at least antidotes to discouragement. Yes, it would be perhaps easier to crawl back in a shell with the other hermit-crabs and just turn it all off. I somehow have not been able to do that.
So, a couple recent gleanings in the "don't let it bring you down, it's only castles burning" category.
Rarely am I so blessed with time as to be able to delve into the comments on posts I read. I am steadily agog over these on-line mavens who put up multiple cogent, lucid, multi-sourced posts on a nearly every-day basis. Many of them also seem to find a way to interact with the comment-streams on their posts and deal with all of the other email and telephone (gasp!) communications their energetic on-line presence must require. I don't know how they do it if they also have an 8-to-5 job, pets, yard/garden, cooking, "recreational" reading, and other interests to attend to. Their relative youthfulness in some cases may have something to do with it.
But I did surf through some of the commentary on a recent Froomkin post, largely because of the satisfyingly frank call-out Mr. Dan did on general parameters I was bemoaning above. Need it be said that I strongly encourage you to check out that post? But I am working at milking some solace from what seems pretty sound thinking in this comment on that post (thank you so much, "ceflynline"!):
The complaints about lack of transparency in dealing with national security issues is a bit premature.
When dealing with what currently classified material to release, Obama's people face several choices, each of which is levened by the consideration that once the secret is out it can't be put back, (even though Cheney tried, lots of times).
Any bit of information currently classified has to be considered as though it were properly classified until it is decided otherwise, and that decision needs to be made by a qualified classification specialist.
Once the information is determined to be not properly classified, or to be declassifiable, Obama's people still need to decide whether they should publish the information themselves, or let Congress, or some investigative body do the outing. The more of this stuff that becomes public knowledge "without" Obama's overt action, the worse it is for the previous administration, because it is harder to call it merely politically motivated when it is released in response to some subpoena or FOIA request.
By being "less than transparent" Obama gets to have his inquisition and not get the blow back he would get if his personal Thomas de Torquimada had his finger prints all over the material.
This one requires patience, but by and by we will get all the truth that can be printed.
Posted by: ceflynline June 11, 2009 1:49 PM
And I couldn't resist sharing this timely post. We celebrated our annual five-family-member June birthday gala today with at least a quorum if not all in attendance. As it happens, it actually was Elaine's Natal Day. But there are a scattering of us throughout June (not to mention multiple anniversaries), so it is always a fairly major social event.
But I don't remember ever before seeing a reference to June 12 as "Loving Day." That's a great concept all on its' own, but this isn't that. It was at some pain that I pruned a central section here in interests of post "brevity" - you will be glad you followed link to fill in short excision:
Reactionary conservatives are smiling through the racial apocalypse. To them race baiting is a joke, as "humorist" Rush Limbaugh will tell you when he's calling Mexicans "stupid." Or it's a matter of semantics when they claim that Sonia Sotomayor is a "racialist" which, far as I can tell, is the smooth jazz version of being a racist. Or they are just merely reporting the "facts" when they repeatedly call an abortion doctor "the killer."
Then, right wingers go nuts and start "Second Amendment-ing" innocent people, and for the life of them conservatives can't imagine how such things happen.
I could connect the dots for them, but there are plenty of other folks out there trying to do that. Instead I'd like to focus your attention on something else this June 12th.
Love. Or Loving, as in Loving Day.
As I've written previously: June 12th, Loving Day, is not named for the emotion of loving, but, fittingly, for Richard Loving and his wife Mildred. Richard was white, and Mildred was black, and when they were married in 1958, their home state of Virginia was one of 16 that still considered interracial marriage to be literally criminal. Hard as it may be to believe now, interracial marriage -- miscegenation is the pejorative -- was once a severely odious concept.
-clip-
The Lovings spent time in jail for the high crime of being married to each other and were forced to move from Virginia. Then, on June 12 of 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Lovings' criminal convictions and struck down all laws against interracial marriage.
Now there's something like 4.3 million mixed-marriage couples in the United States. And the son of one such union is our president.
It's easy to get discouraged -- if not downright fearful -- when the race baiters dial their spew up to "11," and their reactionary puppets respond with violence. But take a moment on this June 12th to look at where our nation once was and where we are now, and take solace in knowing that we are headed in a better direction.
And, in a more bucolic and what might possibly seem frivolous sense, if the above is not helpful, you might try this, which I may have proffered before in slightly different form, now seemingly unavailable. I find a periodic sing-along does wonders for me.
posted by Sir Gumbo at 10:02 PM
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