In John We Trust

I now have the disappointing distinction of supporting two prominent liars in the course of my life, George Bush and John Edwards. By comparison, Bill Clinton’s response to the investigation of his relationship with Monica Lewinski doesn’t even rate with Reagan’s bad memory. When Bush claimed that Iraq represented a threat to the progress of international peace by WMD development and imminent deployment, I believed that the President of the United States had more at stake than some kind of schoolyard attitude. I was wrong. Perhaps my outrage at the failure of my judgment in that case led me to an excessive desire for retaliation that made me blind to the apparent character (or lack thereof) on the part of John Edwards. Or maybe at that point I just really didn’t care that much. When controversy usually seems to mean increasing the divide between rich and poor, and the military cheerfully obeys illegal orders just to keep the funds flowing, you tend to develop a kind of cynical attitude toward the prospects for performance of government and politicians, despite the necessity for both.

The excessively sordid saga of John Edwards' infidelity, however, has an additional ironic, poignant resonance in the UCF composition program, where one of the textbooks on argument included an essay by Edwards discussing the essential nature of trust and credibility. HOO Rah. There’s a laugh, you would think. The only redemption for Edwards in that discourse may be Hank Lewis’ distinction between morality and ethics, the idea that perhaps you can be professionally ethical without being entirely moral on a personal level. A philandering doctor or real estate agent or convenience store clerk can still perform the functions of the job, maybe even exceptionally well. Why should their behavior off the clock impact professional expectations?

What we expect of professionals is to do the best job they can, regardless of their personal prejudices. Morality is a kind of personal responsibility, a personal prejudice in a sense. However, excusing bad behavior as irrelevant to professional performance assumes a distinction between personal and professional that may not exist. Showing up late and falling asleep, or stealing to finance multiple relationships are common ways that the complexity of the personal can directly affect the professional. At that point, at least, we generally agree and acknowledge by policy and law that the limits of the personal and professional have been exceeded, but what if the relationship is less obvious? Lawyers, for instance, are supposed to be committed to excluding individual morality from performance anyway. Lawyers are supposed to choose the best argument regardless. Why should infidelity and public deception be anything other than what you would expect? A good lawyer being a good lawyer?

The reason is the same reason we don’t allow doctors and fighter pilots to kill runaway children on the weekends as part of the compensation for their value to society. A doctor for whom destruction is personal entertainment would neutralize the value of professional performance to society. Likewise, anyone for whom destruction is personal entertainment neutralizes their value to society, and so we discourage destructive personal behavior regardless. Murder for entertainment on weekends wouldn’t prevent a doctor from treating the flu, but the value of treating the flu pales by comparison, so to speak. We don’t even tolerate a doctor who goes out on weekends and knocks over convenience stores for fun, in spite of how valuable the medical skill may be. There are degrees of destruction, both personal and public, but when the destruction has been sufficient to be acknowledged by everyone involved, then the value of the profession has been neutralized. Call that morality of a sort.

If I didn’t know about Edwards’ infidelity, maybe it wouldn’t matter, but on the other hand, if I don’t know about a crime, does that mean it didn’t happen or it isn’t important? Everybody takes up some space on the planet. That’s the space we agree to allow each other by virtue of the planned or unplanned fact of existence. Connections of family and the routine affairs of subsistence are personal. Services rendered on an impersonal basis are professional, but where personal affairs, personal space, becomes destructive in a comprehensive and acknowledged way, the social value of the professional has been neutralized. John Edwards’ infidelity may not be entirely illegal, but it was destructive on both personal and public levels. As far as I’m concerned, Edwards’ value as an attorney and as a politician has been neutralized, or should have been.

Here’s thinking for you.
Iffy

The Shrill Sillies of Righteousness

Jesus was a socialist. In his outrage at the exploitation of class distinctions, however paternally condescending such outrage may be, there was a fundamental insistence on mutual consideration. Jesus may not want you for a doormat, but he certainly doesn’t want you for a military elitist reactionary. As much as you might like to think Christianity is parochial, colonial, and safe from universal concerns, Jesus had other ideas. The unfortunate down side of Christianity for supremacist interpretations is the Christian part, and there is, by the way, one sin that will not be forgiven regardless of all the love in the heart of Jesus, righteousness. Judgement is God's turf, and God don't take kindly to squatters. So much for theology.

The heart of socialism, shared with humanism before Darwin got hold of it and ripped it out, is the idea that people are fundamentally equal and valuable. Seem familiar? Individual expression is also valuable, but distribution of resources depends on the determination to find places for everybody that fit their individual capacities, not on the mighty power of randomly individual supremacy and survival of the most contentious. Hysterical objections to socialism are based, not on the reality of an economy and society that has already demonstrated the essential nature of interdependence, but on perceptions of a failed communist experiment that established a new aristocracy of party affiliations unequal to confrontation with the established aristocracy of capitalism. In spite of technical expertise formidable enough to at least put a good scare in the capitalist technocracy, the Soviet Union failed to compete toe-to-toe as an industrial capitalist initiative, much as any under-funded and badly organized business venture fails to compete with other established competitors in the market. Soviet communism was only socialist in the sense that it confined the majority of the population to subordinate positions, creating a façade of equality that, like capitalist class distinctions, does not even allow participation in public discussion, much less socialist ideology, Marxist base and superstructure. Therefore, unable to continue support of a non-productive aristocracy and competitively outclassed, Soviet Communism collapsed under its own weight, an outcome previously predicted by a few shrewd analysts, and since Soviet Communism was neither socialist nor competitive, we need to get over fear of Soviet Communism as justification to oppose the suggestions of the President.

The underlying premise of socialism produces such cooperative consequences as public roads, health standards, educational opportunities, legal recourse, and free speech. The ancient and excessive fear of an aggressive and totalitarian aristocracy disguised as communism now justifies opposition to initiatives that are both socially and religiously imperative, and the inference of irrational volume and intensity suggested by characterizations of shrill and silly resistance are about right. If the objection to health care reform depends on resistance to government and the threat of socialism, then my response would be to get your sorry hypocritical parasite butt off the public streets produced by socialist consensus, and find a privately constituted route home, and good luck with that.

Here's thinking for you.
Iffy

Advice from the Other Side

Poetry is the language of profound observations, and I wouldn't want it to be said that I did not aspire to literary achievement, so here is a cautionary tale as an account of personal experience in traditional lyrical style.

An armadillo in repose
With outstretched arms and pensive nose
Extended to the sky.
Only the armadillo knows the reason why
It’s lying in the road.
Perhaps it paused to think great thoughts
And having thought of lots and lots,
It stood up to command attention,
Preparing for the exposition,
Of insights too profound to mention,
When in due course it was fatally struck
By a careless, careening pickup truck.

Take counsel all you small and great,
When legs are short and hazards wait,
Don't dawdle in obtuse reflection,
Inviting horrible dissection.
Recollect the armadillo
Snuggling asphalt for a pillow.

Here's thinking for you.
Iffy

Intercultural Communication

I had some trouble with my presentation at the conference of the National Council of Teachers of English in San Francisco due to the simple logistical problem of a wireless mouse that was too small for my nervous fingers. I plead Aspasia, either that or early onset dysfunctionality. I was okay once I gave it up and switched back to the keyboard, but when I made one of my cryptic remarks about mice in Orlando with more political influence than Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the middle of the presentation, somebody in the audience said “What’s that supposed to mean?”

I suppose they considered it to be criticaI of the governor of California, although the point was simply that in Orlando Walt Disney World is the political power. California and Anaheim have Disneyland, but it’s not quite the same where an entire region sort of owes its existence to a theme park.

I like Arnie. For a Republican, at least he seems to have some common sense. Everybody wants big cheerful guys to be their friends. I’m all about that, and I considered stopping and explaining the remark, but to me it seemed like it would be even more embarrassing to have somebody explain in the middle of a presentation that mice in Orlando was a reference to Walt Disney World. Would that be a credit to your information fluency? And I wouldn’t want to make the issue any more complex and contentious, because, after all, that one individual represented 20% of my audience.

Here’s thinking for you.

Iffy.

Horton Hears a Heffalump

My previous reference to Oliphant and the chimpanzee rampage cartoon was somewhat ironic since one of Oliphant's new cartoons outraged the Semitic community. I’m not totally enthusiastic about the cartoon myeself because it isn’t really funny, and it’s too obvious to be clever. It has sort of a Dr. Seuss sense about it, with the little wheel under the monster star. Dr. Seuss produced patriotic propaganda during WWII, before he used the characters for children’s books. That's another lesson in recycling swords and plowshares. Maybe the Semites should give some thought to how Gaza has been coming across, however. Complaining about Oliphant isn’t exactly going to fix the problem, no matter how mindless the cartoon may be.

Oliphant 2009


Dr. Seuss 1942

***************

MSNBC published a somewhat uncharacteristic article about Bill Clinton signing off on the derivatives regulation exclusion in 2000. Some things the article neglects to mention are that besides burying the clause in a morass of complex financial legislation, in 2000 the Republicans (and I use the capitalized form lightly) had Bill on the verge of an executive layoff. It wasn’t like he could afford any showdowns over individual components of budget legislation. His veto would have been overridden faster than you can say “Monica Lewinski.”

We can blame nitwit Bill for doing something petty, arrogant, and self-indulgent in the first place, but somehow I can’t help thinking that in 2000 the Republicans should have been concentrating more on the economy and national security and less on presidential indiscretion. We would have all been better off in the long run. In a crisis, if you had to choose between whether the president gets oral sex or a long vacation in Texas, which one would you go for?
Here’s thinking for you.
Iffy

Another Pot of, Well, Gold

Spring Break is over. Another St. Patrick’s Day has come and gone. President Obama got in touch with his Irish roots. That must have been invigorating.

AIG bonuses are in the news again. The idea of a retention bonus seems to presuppose some kind of value to be gained from retention, although the value in the case of AIG employees is a little hard to conceptualize. How much value to a company can employees be who engineered a two hundred billion dollar loss, unless their expertise actually depends on sucking up government bailout funding? If that’s bad for company moral, Gee Whiz, excuse me all over the place. I’m sure there are many decent human beings working for AIG who don’t deserve to be identified with unfortunate company initiatives. On the other hand, I also suspect there are plenty of homeless people who made better choices than working for a conglomerate without moral principles.

Somehow the argument of contractual obligations leaves me unimpressed. Let’s see. I work for a company that loses vast amounts of money with operations that are barely even legal. Now I want a bonus to continue working for the company? Why didn’t I think of that in previous jobs? I could be a CEO myself by now.

Just say no. If they don’t like it, let them sue. Breach is always an option. I like Cuomo’s question about where would the bonus money come from if there was no bailout. There would be no bonus money.

Let’s look at it this way. If we don’t pay out million-dollar bonuses to keep these brilliant economic yahoos employed, they could wind up panhandling for change on street corners, and considering AIG, I’m afraid it would require a whole new infrastructure program to build additional street corners, but on second thought, maybe that would help revive the economy. It could be a win-win.

Here's thinking for you.
Iffy

Elmo Love Bernie

A fifty-four year old woman required treatment by teams of surgeons over a period of seven hours for injuries inflicted by a confused chimpanzee living on lobster and ice cream in Connecticut. If the victim survives, she will require years of treatment to repair the disfiguring injuries suffered after offering the chimpanzee an Elmo doll as a present. There is a temptation to speculate that the chimpanzee was not a fan of the Muppets, but unfortunately the consequences and implications of this event transcend humor, to the detriment of a New York Post cartoonist.
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/nat?guid=20090219/499cf560_3ca6_15526200902191164606112

Selma Hayek inspired international outrage by breast-feeding a starving baby. The baby has no doctors. The baby has no medical care. The baby has nothing to eat. Selma Hayek did the only thing a decent human being could do.

The chimpanzee died of gunshot wounds from police faced with the task of controlling an unpredictable animal the size of a large man with twice the strength. A controversial political cartoon subsequently appeared in the New York Post portraying police shooting a chimpanzee and commenting that the chimpanzee could have produced stimulus/bailout legislation more competently than Congressional legislators, suggesting a connection to the sad event of the Chimpanzee Rampage.

In a rather ironic political twist, civil rights activists compared the chimpanzee to President Obama, and complained about discrimination by the cartoonist. The cartoon tastelessly exploits an unfortunate tragedy in an unoriginal way that has been treated more effectively and humorously, by Oliphant during the Reagan administration, for instance, but the racial discrimination is in the eye of the beholder. The baby, on the other hand, will be lucky to live as long as the chimpanzee.

There is a moral in these events, confused as morals usually are, something about expending resources to establish and maintain impossible relationships doomed from the start, while the most basic needs of others go unanswered. Can I excuse myself any more than the nation or humanity? No I cannot. I have adopted defensive habits of moderation that regard punishment as the only reward for good deeds. Witness Selma Hayek. I have retreated into the noncommittal middleground of Martin Luther King’s frustration, yet I cannot help reacting, like touching something unpleasant in the dark, to the unregulated opportunism and unfocused excess of economic and administrative cowboy culture that has encouraged disregard for just responsibility and produced an environment characterized by the vast and historic scope of self-indulgence represented by the superficially benign but ominously paradoxical images of the Dick Cheneys and Bernie Madoffs and their spiritual kin.

As far as I can tell, nobody offered the baby an Elmo doll.

Here's thinking for you.

Iffy