Why I Didn't Celebrate the Death of Osama Bin Laden

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Hello Fellow Seekers of Truth and Life,

One year ago, we got some big news. I think you remember what happened. On Sunday night, May 1, 2011, we found out that Navy SEALs had raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan (30 miles north of Islamabad, like the Pakistani version of Manassas, Virginia), and shot Osama Bin Laden dead. I found out about it from Facebook comments from people. I didn't believe it at first, because you hear all sorts of things on the internet, but then we turned on CBS, and there was Obama, delivering the following announcement.



When I heard this, I felt all sorts of conflicting, excited emotions. There was the amazing revelation that something I didn't think could ever happen, just happened. The main conflict was between two feelings, the first was a grim satisfaction that We got him. That was my main feeling, that I hate it when the criminals get away. I believe people need to pay for their crimes. I really wanted him to pay for what he did to all those people, all their families, all their friends, coworkers, and all the people who cared about them.

All of them had a huge, horrific whole ripped in their lives that Tuesday morning in the late Summer of 2001. At least all those terrified people who jumped out of the 87th Floor of that building to their deaths, or the people on the planes who made teary last calls to their families, or employees who burned to death in the Pentagon, will not be left behind as a "cold case."

On the other hand, though, I just cannot bring myself to celebrate death, in any way, shape, or form. You might think that's a sappy way to go, but, quite frankly, I am done giving a damn. I used to take a lot of pleasure in the thought of hitting back at someone who wronged me, even if it was only a wrong to me, but I could never stand the sight of someone suffering. It's something that seeps into my consciousness, and I feel this need to make it stop. Thus, when I was about 14 or 15, I decided that hatred was an addiction that I needed to swear off. Ever since, any celebration of death has bothered me deeply. Let me backtrack, though, and talk about how I got to where I am on this issue.

I remember the morning of that September 11 very clearly still. I remember having breakfast, I was having Lucky Charms, my favorite cereal, as an 11-year-old kid, and my Mom told me a plane crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. I assumed it must have been an accident, it must have been cloudy. Mom told me it was a terrorist attack. She said it pretty straightforwardly, without much apparent surprise. When I went to school, I was still a little freaked out by my new setting. I had not been in middle school for a week, even, I had just started the previous Wednesday, and when everyone in class started talking about it, I realized what had gone on.

What I remember most, is hearing the teacher talking about the kind of planes that crashed into the towers. "These were big planes," she said. I found out later that these were not light propeller-driven planes, but huge passenger jets, 757-s and 767-s, both of which are massive. You have to understand that back then, I was a huge aviation geek. I loved machines that flew, and I was especially in awe of those passenger jets we often jump on and take for granted. I must have been one of the few people that got excited to get on a plane. It seemed like such a freeing thing to me.

An example of a drawing of jets that I often do. I have done so many of these it's not even funny.

It seemed bizarre to me that such beautiful, amazing machines could be used for such a terrible, destructive purpose. I spent the whole day not getting what went on, and wanting to get what it was that affected everybody that day. I remember getting scared about it that day when my new P.E. teacher was ostracizing us for talking too much. It was just a confusing day, all in all. After I got back from school, we were staring at the TV news ceaselessly, blankly trying to figure out what this was all about. My Dad finally turned it off and said "It's really easy to just veg out and watch TV, but let's not." Probably a good idea, in retrospect. However, in the dark days, weeks, months and the following year, TV coverage like this was something I saw regularly.



By the way, the point of the above segment was the speech from Donald Rumsfeld. His speech also included a line to the effect of "If anyone says this is an attack on the Afghan people, they're wrong." I remember being so thrilled about the speech, and that the US was bombing Afghanistan. After all, those guys had killed our people, we had to go get 'em. That gets to the central journey I have made, lo these 10-plus years since that day at the end of Summer.

I was a really patriotic kid back then, if only because of my goody-two-shoes nature. Still, I really wanted to get the people that did it. I was an 11-year-old boy, I wasn't about to take an attack from some foreigner lying down. I knew that the bad guys were a group called Al-qaeda (I heard it pronounced "Al Kita" which added another level of bizarreness to it), and the main villain was a guy in Afghanistan named Osama Bin Laden, who was the ringleader of another group called the Taliban. As unclear as I was on who these guys were and what their problem was, I knew we needed to take them out.

At the same time, when my Dad told me we were now at war, I got scared, because I got this image of old-school, nuclear war-type scenarios. Even then, I knew that war meant you could get hurt, you could be killed, and so could your whole family. I got anxious then, as I often did when unexpected things happened to me in my youth.

At about this time, I began to learn about a group of religious people called the Muslims. In the months after 9/11, I heard people talk about "Muslim-this," and "Islamic-that," but I had no idea what any of it referred to. In the 7th grade, our teacher took us through the world's religions. She told us that around 600 AD, a man named Muhammad (I've never figured out how to properly spell this name, forgive me) traveled through the desert in what is today Saudi Arabia, and found a bunch of guys worshipping false idols, and in general, acting quite badly.

Then one day, he went into a cave, and had a vision from God, whom they call Allah, and went forth to spread the word. Muhammad was only a prohpet, a messenger of God's vision. Today, that cave is a Holy Site to all Muslims. There are also five central demands in Islam, called the Five Pillars. They include prayer five times a day, facing the Holy City in Mecca, and at least one trip in believers' lives to said Holy City.

The ubiquitous image of the terrorist we are shown. I did this as a mock-up of a picture you would find on TV news about an international terrorist (hence the made-up foreign intel label in the bottom left). I assure you this was entirely fictionalized, but it does have truth to it, does it not?

I later found out that this religion had drawn a lot of suspicion from people here in the US, and later Europe. Because of religious customs in many Middle Eastern countries, people argue that the religion itself is wrong. I drew the above picture four years ago, to capture the familiar theme we find in the news, of the scary Muslim guy who tried to blow something up. Since the 80's, with the destruction of Flight 103, we've been seeing this picture of Middle Eastern guilt shown to us, over and over again.

This despite the fact that, as I mentioned in my post on terrorism on the 10th Anniversary of Daniel Pearl's death, that the majority of victims of Islamic terrorists are Muslims themselves, including about 2% of the 9/11 victims. All you get in our media is images and stories of the scary Muslims who are gonna blow you up or make your country adopt Sharia Law, and when everyone on the TV agrees on that, and all your friends and family believe in it, that becomes your reality.

The first time I realized it was after the Iraq War. In the early winter months of 2003, we began to hear talk of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and "WMD's" weapons of mass destruction. Our government were telling us that we needed to invade now, before the "smoking gun" became a "mushroom cloud." Yet I began to hear a bigger group of people saying that there weren't weapons, there were other ways of dealing with the problem, and we needed to have the UN verify this to be true. I came to find out later that none of this was allowed to happen.

So the orgiastic beginning of this war was dismaying to me, since I was just beginning to discover that war and hurting could be wrong. My country could be wrong. Our country can be responsible for the deaths of families, of children, of people who do not deserve to die. That's never an easy learning experience.

It is only in the months and years that followed September 11th, the USA PATRIOT Act, and the Iraq War, that I have understood what those events truly mean. I have been just as angry at the terrorists from Al-qaeda and all the related networks as I have been at US Government officials, upon discovering their deceit, and callous disregard for people's very lives. Not only foreigners, these people don't give a damn about protecting us from anything. It is this kind of anger and despair about the world that has propelled me into meditation on this condition of getting shafted called the human condition.

For years, I felt a lot of anger about the world, about all the pain, unfairness, and loneliness I felt as if it were my own experience. I didn't even have the words to say what it was, accurately, much less the will to discuss it with anyone. As much anger as I felt, I felt it all because there was so little connection of people to each other. They were all in their own tunnel world, thinking about themselves, their cliques of friends, race, family, nation, economic status, and religion.

A dark voice inside me whispered, This is human nature, this is how it is, it is part of you, join it, give in. I was not going to give up, I was not going to be just another stooge to power, to nation, to religion, to Groupthink, as George Orwell termed it. I was going to defeat the dark part of my nature, while everyone else gave in to it in the form of supporting wars, killing in other countries, and all.

So why did I not celebrate the death of Osama Bin Laden? Well, because I just don't celebrate death, even if it is the death of a scumbag. Don't get me wrong, what Bin Laden did, not only on 9/11, but in running this collection of bad, bad people in Al-qaeda, and in his Holy War in the US, which included attacking our Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and our ship in Yemen in 2000, personified what evil means. To me, evil is not about a person, it is about what they do, and how they do it. Bin Laden conducted the killing of human beings with cool, steely composure, and pleasure in his work, the terrible deaths of people.

Yet, what were we doing the night he was killed? Celebrating like rowdy fraternity brothers, celebrating death. Where does that leave us? Everybody I heard in the news expressed sheer delight that he had died. Even Elie Wiesel, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, said that the death was well-deserved. Rudy Giuliani implied that if you aren't feeling a little gleeful, you're in denial. All they tell you is that it's human nature to take glee in the enemy's death, as if that's all human nature is: barbarism and vengeance. Even Jon Stewart, whom I usually like and admire, joined in the antics.

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What is even worse than him ridiculing the notion that maybe we shouldn't be having an orgy over this event, that maybe it was ambivalent, is his phallic implication at the end, there. That boils down to what most international conflict is about. Listen to a bit of George Carlin's famous Jammin' in New York special from 1992, about the Gulf War that had played out much like this Iraq War did.



You might find this offensive, but I think the point needs to be made that war is about proving who is tougher, who has more might, power or virtue, in other words, whose masculinity is more potent(because, at the risk of making a feminist statement, it is mainly men who are part of wars, but I digress). That's why I believe wars, killing, and hatred are not only destructive, but ultimately futile. After all, sooner or later, you will no longer be able to win power struggles consistently.

Ultimately, these assassinations are more symbolic than anything else. To Al-qaeda, the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon were symbolic of America's power. That's the main reason the terrorists chose to crash planes into them, because they had been trying to attack civilian jet liners for a long time, and several members of Al-qaeda's planning team were showing interest in the Twin Towers as potential targets. To us, here in the US, Bin Laden became the big bad guy. He was the symbol for all that was evil in this world. So I get why people would celebrate the killing of this terrible mastermind.

However, seeing the huge spectacle of raucous celebrations at this raid made me, just, spiritually ill. You may remember the outrage surrounding the picture of Palestinians celebrating as the planes crashed into the buildings.

I saw a picture similar to this one in the LA Times the day after 9/11. Even at my young age, I was coolheaded enough to realize the paper was probably doing it because they wanted war. A war would be good for their news. Yet it made me boil in rage nonetheless. There is no reason to celebrate death. Period. That's what is so awful about these celebrations. It isn't just that we've learned nothing from the errors of the Middle East, it's also that we would spit in the face of anyone who would tell us different from what we want to hear. Remember the story of the girl who trashed the Martin Luther King quote from my post on MLK Day? That to me was the height of arrogance and a willful, malicious variety of ignorance that is so often our error as a culture.

Oh, and by the way, I feel like I should mention this. Not everybody in Palestine was celebrating that day. Below is a photo from a large group of Palestinian students who held a long, silent vigil for their fellow children lost 5,000 miles away. You can find the link to the story here.

You're not gonna see this in the news. It doesn't fit into the neat little narrative that "sells" in the west. Our news outlets like CNN and the New York Times would be terrified of appearing to be "liberal" or "politically correct." So ironically, in their urge to not be politically correct, they come to serve another type of political correctness.

This goes to show that you do not have to celebrate death. Now, there is a difference, I want to make it clear that I know this. I am not defending Osama Bin Laden, and I am certainly not defending anything he ever did or stood for. What he did was wrong and it was evil, there is no dispute about that here.

However, I find it interesting that no one would listen to what the demands of Al-qaeda and all kinds of people in the Middle East are. That doesn't mean we should grant all the demands, that would be unrealistic and would let them off the hook too much. We need to know what the demands are, so we can decide what to allow, and what to stand firm on. We haven't done any of that, though, we've just insisted "They hate us for our freedom!"

The death of Osama Bin Laden was, for me, more a grim relief than anything else. My thought process was "At least he won't be able to hurt anyone anymore." We could learn from this relief, though, rather than go into an orgy of nationalism and machissmo. We must understand that we cannot accept that our government plays power broker all over the world, and expect that it won't come back to haunt us. This does not mean that we are to blame, however, if we stay silent while our government carries out unethical, undemocratic activities, such as the Iranian Coup of 1953, we are implicitly accepting it as normal.

We need to understand that while we, as individuals, may hold certain ideals, when it comes to our culture, the only thing others see, and judge us on, is our actions. We can't expect to keep our governmental status quo going and get more equitable and just results. We also need to have compassion, both for ourselves, and for other national bodies, even as we hold responsible the appropriate power players, be they heads of state, military leaders, or militants acting outside any national authority. Bottom line, if you commit the crime, you do the time, as Robert DeNiro once said.

This grim justice is not a cause to party. It is a cause for a more reflective relief. I believe we should be glad that at the very least, these horrible crimes were answered for. This does not mean that all terrorism has ended. We like to believe that once we "get" the main bad guy, all is won, but remember, this is the "War on Terror," which, by the way, you can't permanently win.

What you can do is root out the desperation and sense of wrong that makes terrorism seem so necessary for the peasants of Afghanistan, Yemen, and so forth. It was rich Saudis that funded Al-qaeda, whom the Taliban gave safe haven. From that, all sorts of people along that barren stretch of land on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border supported the terrorist network. The good news is that Al-qaeda is now on the run, and they are having less and less credibility throughout the Middle East and elsewhere.

The even better news is that most of the people on Earth are not sociopaths at their core. We realize, on some level, that pain is bad. From that starting point, let us learn now that it will not work to simply pin all of the evil in the world onto one man or group, sacrifice them, and believe evil has been purged. This can just as easily pinned on the righteous as it can be on the wicked. Rather, we must realize that there is a part in all of us, from the best to the worst human beings, that urges us to destroy, and to take glee in that destruction.

Often, when we pin evil on someone, putting all that urge to destroy on them becomes more natural, more just. We must face that part of ourselves and say "I don't need that high. I don't need the glee in destruction, even in the truly wicked." After all, working on this projection of our destructive will toward the "evil ones" is what allowed Bin Laden and sociopaths like him to recruit, train, and facilitate real evil. We can step out of that cycle.

Well, I'm sorry this post ended up taking so long, but like I said, I had a lot of contradictory emotions going on when this happened a year ago. I wasn't quite sure how I was supposed to feel about it. Venting on my knowledge, and my experience over the years has really helped clarify my aim here. As I was typing, all sorts of memories were coming back that I felt I needed to share with you. I feel this perspective was underrepresented in this story, and needed to be shared. Anyway, if you have any thoughts, feelings, comments, or anything on this you would like to share, please feel free.

I included this post on this blog because I believe our artistic experience can help us see the world in ways we may not have before. I hope that discussion on this helps bring a creative, innovative energy out into the world. I'll have some more good stuff for you soon. Thanks for listening.

See ya!

Terrorism Hurts Everybody

Hi everybody,

As you may know, today marks the 10th anniversary since Daniel Pearl's death. Pearl was a Wall Street Journal international correspondent, who broke many stories around the world, including an incident where a US airstrike on a supposed weapons factory in Sudan actually hit an aspirin factory. In early 2002, he was sent to Pakistan to search for al qaeda moles in the Pakistani government, was subsequently abducted by one, held for demands from al qaeda, and then murdered by beheading.

When I learned of this act in depth, it was the barbarism of the acts that made me so mad about it. It was a feeling of simultaneous anger and disgust at the act. You know how he was killed? He was decapitated (head cut off), then chopped into ten pieces, and thrown in a ditch someplace in Pakistan. What other word is there for an act like that but pure animal savagery. It's just a horrible thing to do to anyone of any nationality. When I hear about groups like al qaeda carrying out acts like this against people doing their job, I almost understand the kind of guttural anger that drives people like Dick Cheney to want to bomb countries out of existence, or Rick Perry to have criminals executed, even if they are in fact innocent of murders.

It's not that I would ever do these things, or condone them, in any sense, it's just that sometimes, events in the international arena of news sometimes make you so upset that you do get to that point. You do get that level of intense anger, terror, despair about your species, cynicism, a thirst for vengeance. It can be (and sometimes has been) so overwhelming that it scares you. It scares even me how much of that emotion I have sometimes.

This is not the first time I have given issues of an international scope much thought. I came of age, spent my preteens and teens, in a world shadowed by the spector of terrorism. On the morning 9/11 occurred, I was 11 years old, overwhelmed at starting the 6th grade. So it isn't like I've had much choice in what I've become aware of. In past decades, like the 80's or 90's, you could get away with having little or no opinion in international strife and conflicts, because it didn't have a tangible effect on people's lives here in the US. On that Tuesday morning in September 2001, that perception ended abruptly and shockingly.

Since that day, I've felt like there has been a progressively more urgent nature to what happens to people in other countries. So this issue has been on my mind a lot over the years, even though I am still very young. Since I came across this information on Daniel Pearl, I was looking for a way, in my art, to deal with it. I know that won't have an effect, but it will help me express how I feel about this whole issue. Hopefully, just my sharing it with you will have some small effect.

On the one hand, as I said, I do have that anger and fear, but on the other, I do care about other nations, countries and cultures. I want to protect the people of America and the West, but I also don't want to see people on countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, or Iran, shredded, incinerated, then written off as "collateral damage." Sadly, a flipside of our American optimism is this our blindness to the damage our foreign policies, and wars, can cause. If we are an exceptional country, surely we could never kill someone who didn't deserve it. So I get that there are bad people abroad, but I also think we need to take a look at our own soul.

For a while, I racked my brain to try to come up with a way to express this. The phrase "terrorism hurts everybody" went through my mind, but I wanted to come up with a picture that represented it. That is how I express what I find through art best. I wanted to draw up an image that got at the universality of having life ripped from someone you care about. I got the idea to do this drawing.

I was inspired to do this from the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing. On the night of December 21, 1988, the plane, Pan Am 103, was blown up as it was heading from London to New York City. Everybody on the plane (259 people) was killed horrifically, and when the plane hit the ground, it destroyed several houses in the Scottish town of Lockerbie, and 11 people in Lockerbie were killed. The attack was carried out by two Libyan Intelligence agents, one of whom was imprisoned, later released and returned to Libya. There is also good evidence, from official sources, that it was planned within the Libyan government.

Again, the horrible, terrifying way those people were ripped from their lives is gut wrenching. Hearing of it makes it all the more distressing that the perpetrators "got away" and one was sent back home. Again, I had dark thoughts about what I would like do to inflict pain on the people resposible, only to try to take them back soon after. In one account I read, they reported that some christmas presents that the plane was carrying back to the US lay smashed in Lockerbie. That heartbreaking image really stuck with me.

So I decided to make this image as broadly applicable as I could. I wanted it to be about the feeling of a loved one ripped from life. Just the shock, horror, and pain, is something that unites us all. I decided to make this a jarring image of the keychain of a close love falling out of the side of the plane into the darkness. I included the jettisoned christmas present alongside it. This makes it about what terrorism really costs us: people we love, care about, or know. People who don't deserve to be a victim of political or religious hostility. Thus, it applies beyond just the bombing of Flight 103, or terrorism from the Middle East.

It becomes about us all. What do we lose from terrorism? We lose fellow human beings, we lose humanity. By the way, the majority of victims of Islamic terrorism are themselves Muslims. 30 of the victims of September 11th (a full 1% of them) were Muslims, including people on the flights to Los Angeles, and Firefighters, Police Officers, and Paramedics in New York.

Listen to this beautiful video, done by Queen Rania of Jordan, about victims of terrorism who live in the Middle East and pratice Islam.

This inspired me to make this more of a universal statement. That's where I came up with the statement "Terrorism Hurts Everybody." While focusing on this "clash of civilizations" that has claimed many lives, we lose sight of those things in common that give us our humanity. We need, therefore, to reclaim this sense of common experience across borders or cultures. We need to understand that when one act of violence is carried out, someone always suffers, lives with pain for weeks, months, years afterward.

To return to my starting point, Daniel Pearl was killed because he was doing his job. He was doing his work one day, and then he got killed in this horrible way. The same could be said of nearly all other victims of contemporary terrorism. It's just that his job was to highlight goings-on in the world few of us ever encounter. His job may be one of the most crucial in this world.

Thankfully, his death was not for nothing. Now our world is getting more and more interconnected, in an economic sense, in a communal sense, in a cultural sense, in an ethical sense. This is made possible by technology like the laptop I am using right now, and the IPhone I currently own. What is diclosed in Washington DC, can now be passed on to journalists in Europe, and can launch an uprising in the Middle East.

The good thing about this interconnectedness is that it makes it much harder for us to kill indiscriminately. At the same time that technology is bringing us farther apart, it is bringing us closer together. Now our humanity is being brought to bear, as cultures around the world are not as far apart as they used to be. I do not believe this is the end-all-be-all of what needs to happen on Earth, but I do think this is the beginning. The beginning of a journey that needs to happen.

Well, more on the subject of 9/11 in the next post. I was thrilled to finally get to see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close last Saturday night. I would have blogged about it sooner, but for the last few days, I have been tied up with homework, already, yes. I'll have that for you tomorrow.

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

Why the Tennessee Tea Party Made a Serious Mistake

Hi there everybody,

Well, it's back to political issues again. I just had to share this little tidbit with you. The reason I am putting this up is because this goes back to the tone of discussion I would like to set. This is a tone of honestly, a willingness to talk about the issue, with all the truths of the people and parties present, however uncomfortable or jarring they may be. To me, this also requires a tone of compassion, of understanding accepting the other, whether you push back on them, call them out, or even take some action against them.

Anyway, the Tennessee Tea Party has demanded to the State's Legislature that, as well as rejecting the Affordable Care Act of two years ago, the history of our "Founding Fathers" and the country's development, be "more truthful," to use their terminology. According to them, the characters of the Founders have been "distorted," treated "unfairly." Huh? Really? Somehow, in Tennessee, of all places, Washington and Jefferson are getting a bad rep. I didn't see that one coming. In all seriousness, I believe that the Tennessee Tea Party here has made a huge mistake (like G.O.B. has below). Here's why.

This re-writing of history (because that's what it is, no matter what anyone wishes to call it) creates a convenient fiction. It promotes a simplistic, almost childlike, view of our history, our heritage, as a country. It just erases facts, important facts about what happened in our past. Don't like some aspect of our past? Just write it out of our textbooks.

This reeks of Ministry of Truth-style renderings of historical knowledge. That's why it is scary to think that one ideological faction could bend, knead, and press history into whatever shape or narrative they wish. If this is the case, how can we have freedom? How could anyone have real freedom? The freedom to explore their world, and reach whatever ideas or conclusions they believe to be right. The truth is, the children of Tennessee would not get the variety of perspective they need to be truly free to see our good work, our mistakes, and ultimately our potential as a people.

A dangerous aspect of this is that the "Founding Fathers" are turned into Gods on Earth, this time at the expense of the non-whites in the America of 1776. The submitted request to the Tennessee Legislature explicitly said this. "No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership." What this means is that the petitioners here want the curriculum to take out people and incidents which bring to light the white population's oppression of slaves, or their transgressions against the Indians.

Another criticism of theirs is that "the constitution created a republic, not a democracy." I find that interesting. The emphasis here is on the Constitution as it was first ratified back in 1787. They believe that the Constitution must never, ever change from the way it was first conceived of back then. It must never move toward a more democratic framework or expand to "create more rights." Here is the problem with that mindset. In that version of the Constitution, slavery was perfectly accepted, and runaway slaves were even required to be turned in. Slaves had no worth of their own, yet were counted as just three-fifths of a person. Indians were required to be hunted down, butchered and killed. Women were given absolutely no rights outside the home.

The sad truth is that many of the Founding Fathers (with the notable exception of Thomas Paine, who was a real visionary) had slaves of their own. There was, in fact, much concession to the slaveholders in the South, particularly Virginia and Georgia, in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. The Slave trade was at its height right in the late 18th century, around the time that revolutionary spirit caught fire in what became the US.

The Tea Party people down in Tennessee, as well as Texas and other places, will not accept these parts of our history. When Michele Bachmann intimated that the Founding Fathers ended slavery, she wasn't joking, and she wasn't just being stupid. That is what she, and many other people in this country, do believe, and want to keep believing: that the Founding Fathers can do no wrong. That America can never do anything wrong.

The danger of this belief is that it ignores, or even tries to justify, the very real wrong things done in the name of America. Like the systematic destruction and genocide of the Indians, their ethics, and their way of life. Or the violent uprooting of millions of Africans, tearing apart their culture, and stripping them of their humanity in a land where they were beaten down for the sake of profit and goods in America and Europe. Or the deeply entrenched cultural animosity, across history, towards the French, the Germans, the Eastern European Jews, the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese, and now the Mexicans. If these are ignored, we are blind to our mistakes, and we will be doomed to the same cycle of animosity that has played out since America began to exist.

However, you can't blame the Tea Party people much. Well, you can if you choose, but it would be wrong. After all, seeing the shadow of something you hold so dear is tough. It would be very easy to simply not accept these facts, wish them away and , when given the chance, to simply write them out of history. It seems like you've defeated the issue, the knowledge of the transgression just disappears. However, the animosity does not. People not in the favored race or class will remember it, every time the subtle contempt comes at them.

Facing such unpleasant, even painful truths of our past is a part of growing up. It is a part of viewing our own heritage and society in a mature way. Being patriotic has nothing to do with being blind to our past, or our country being without flaws. It comes from knowing this country, its victories in the quest for truth, justice, freedom, and its downfalls. To me, it's similar to how you would love a member of your family. You would not pretend they were perfect, you would know they had flaws, but care for them, and help them heal anyway.

Paradoxically, it becomes easier to live with and love somebody when you don't have to pretend they are perfect. This goes the same with the United States of America and its people. Like I said before, I think there is a discussion that needs to happen concerning race and class history in this country. We must confront the ways, individual and systemic, intentional or unintentional, that we have marginalized and ignored the poor and the immigrants. This requires us not to blame each other excessively, but rather, to see our abuses for what they have been, in all that it entailed. We must see the dark flip side of the early prosperity of our country-the campaign against the Indians' culture and the slave trade, for all the suffering they caused.

Recently, I have been reading A People's History of the United States by the late Howard Zinn. It shows, through extensive and unknown research and documents, how the beginning of the United States was not a 100% new, radical declaration of the freedom of humanity, but a continuation of many cultural defects of old-racism, sexism, slavery, contempt for the "inferior" (i.e. native) cultures. It is absolutely required for a comprehensive understanding, what is contained in it.

I think that this also misses something, though. There are two strains of cynicism; one says that because we are the "right" ones, whatever we do must therefore be right. the other says that because what you see is not as pure, wholesome and clear cut as it seems, real transcendence is not possible, and it is pointless to try to achieve it. These are both ideas you must be careful of. I think the Tennessee Tea Party is trying to shut down this type of discussion at the very time it is most needed. Thankfully, there are a small number of people who realize that while we do not live up to our own mythologies, we nevertheless have our drives of compassion and a longing for connection.

Wow! That went on way longer than I expected it to. I always promise myself, Okay, this is just gonna be a short entry. Then, sure enough, it just comes out, and then I've written several paragraphs. Thanks for reading. I hope you bear with this, even though it can be hard to focus on these long entries. So, what do you think? Does learning about, for instance, our history with slavery scare you, or upset you? Do you believe that it wasn't really as bad as they say? Or were some of your ancestors perpetrators, or victims, of our country's racial or class divides?

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

Citizens United: Two Years Later

I did this back in 2007 as taking note of the Corporate influence on our society.

Hi there everybody,

I remember very clearly the week of January 21, 2010. I remember, first, because it rained ferociously all that week, from Monday, the 18th, all through the next Friday, the 22nd. It rained so hard that my college's student union, that it sustained some rain damage and had to be closed for the next three months while it was repaired. The second reason is that on that particular Thursday, the decision on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission came down. I know I've been on a political kick the last two days, but stick with me here, and I'll tie it back to creativity.

Now, I could bore you right out of your mind with the Supreme Court jargon and legalese (read this if you're in the mood), but essentially, what that verdict said was that money given to campaigns constitutes free speech, therefore, any restriction on it would be unconstitutional. The ruling went farther to declare that all corporations and unions have the same legal right to spend unlimited amounts of money on campaigns as individuals do. This ruling derives from ambiguities in rulings going as far back as 1886. The question at stake here pertains to the rights of legal entities, like corporations, under the 14th Amendment.

I remember that this was a day when I was, truthfully, very scared for the future of our society. I don't mean this in a rhetorical way, I mean, very literally, that I was scared. I knew that what this ruling was really meant to do was undo all of the rules to limit the influence of money in decision-making. This would make an already-atrociously bad situation much, much worse. I didn't know how much our society might corrode. To me, on that day, and the day after, it looked to me like there was a very real chance that we could go the way of those European countries in the 30's.



I saw this newscast on that night. At the time, I felt like "This is it. Now we're gonna be on our way to a police state." I felt this because the big corporations would give the money to the uber-authoritarian political leaders, who would pass laws making the monolithic power of corporate America invincible, with anyone with any shred of power having to kiss their rings, and any small criticism punishable by God knows what. This was a classic case of worst-case scenario thinking. Like the man on the TV said "Who's gonna stop them now?"

Looking back, the rhetoric of this newscast seems hyperbolic, with the host, Keith Olbermann, infusing as much drama into it as possible. He does raise points that need to be recognized, it is just how he raises them that gives me pause. However, the changes since that infamous ruling, sanctioning any and all financial corruption, have been more subtle. Perhaps they, the financial powers, still couldn't afford to be too blatant about cashing in.The process of purchasing our "leaders" has not occurred in one fell swoop, but rather, as a decades-long process. One that started long before Citizens United came up for argument.

In America, over the years, the "private sector" has gained this ring of absolute faultlessness to it. People who praise it often evoke the image of the small business owner, toiling with great integrity in the store down the street. They invoke legendary names like Henry Ford, or more recently, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, or even Sam Walton, owner of the first Wal-Mart in Bentonville, Arkansas. What they neglect to mention are these things. First, that as more power and clout amasses among the wealthy, there is much less room for people to make it to those ranks, or just to realize their dreams. Second, too heavy an emphasis on competition diminishes our link with our common experience.

Why would I be saying this? In the current model we have, a corporation's sole purpose is to continue making money for its shareholders. Because of this, they have to do anything to remain profitable. Once a company is chronically un-profitable, it is subsumed. That's the nature of "competition" and "free enterprise" that are so above scrutiny or criticism, of any sort. Look at how much power and influence corporations hold over our society. That's why I included the drawing of the various logos at the top. Big corporate names are found all over our buildings, cities, arts centers, even sports arenas. Those seldom have the names of Athletes or folk heroes anymore, just corporate sponsors, like "Home Depot Center," or "Goldman Sachs Stadium."

One question I must ask here is What about the people who worked their asses off in that not-profitable company? That's where the shadow of corporate society appears.

In fact, caring for workers could take away from the corporation's ability to make money. If that hurts profitability, the company will just have to make those people live on less. That means workers will have to work longer, go through more stress, for the same or less in benefits. In this competition, their work no longer is anything of value, just a means to the end of profitability on the company's records. Another means of getting to that end would be to downsize them and uproot those people's lives. This competition is beginning to take its toll.

The need to profit or die in work necessitates companies being as reckless with risk as possible, whether it's a big bank with new financial instruments, or an energy company with new resources for drilling. This means the risks have to be downplayed. This is where things get hairy. Which would be more cost-efficient to do? To, for instance, install a filter in a refinery that cleaned out any pollutants in the smokestack? Or to just ship the material to some body of water to be dumped? Then, if a bunch of people nearby mysteriously begin getting sick and dying, what do you do? Would a good option be to spend money, to elect a senator or governor, to write a law letting you manufacture, and pollute, to keep making money and staying profitable? Probably, even if that means employees have to be short-changed, or the world polluted, or people getting sick or dying.

I say all this to emphasize this point: corporations do not suffer. They do not have to work on poverty wages. They do not have to live in fear of starvation, sickness, or death. They do not get sick, they do not die, and they will not be imprisoned or executed if they steal or kill. I do not say this do disparage free enterprise, or business, or competition. Realize, though, that said concepts are, in many ways, blind to the hardships of our lives. There is nothing wrong with these things. There is nothing wrong with cells in your body multiplying. However, when this gets out of control, the body can get serious, or deadly, cancer.

I believe that we need some balance between the government and business sectors of this country. My point here is that the motive to profit and compete to make the best product needs to be in check. We must have a public entity to encourage unity, collaboration, and to keep businesses working for the good of their clients. They need to be kept from buying off their cops.

Okay, so the profit motive can lead to destruction, but what should we do? In addition to the current model of profit for the shareholders, there need to be more people to whom the corporation is accountable. For instance, the employees, and all the stakeholders in a company's well-being.

Recently, I found this logo in a bike store in Downtown Long Beach. Underneath, I found a charter entitled "Declaration of Interdependence." It listed the missions of a "b" corporation,which spoke beautifully to what we need in our enterprise arena. A model based on workers' needs need not decrease freedom, it could increase the amount of freedom and well-being in our lives.

There have been many established enterprises in which the workers are the stakeholders to which the company much answer. In Spain, there are a number of such companies that operate under the title "mondragon." My brother just brought me back a book from Argentina called Sin Patron (Without a Boss), in which workers in a factory walk out to form a worker-owned collective factory.

In order to accomplish such things, we need to begin to view life in a more creative way. If the employers and the employess were in closer proximity, it would be so much more difficult for the former to exploit the latter when they needed to boost profit margins. All this entails shifting the focus from sole profit and advantage to the meaning of our work. This purpose (i.e. whatever the enterprise is set up to do) must become something that we do first, because it serves a need, and second, because it is what we enjoy. This I believe, would change the nature of what it means to go into business, or to work. This is not the end of my discussion on these subjects, but the beginning of a conversation that will continue, with the help of this blog.

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

Visceral Anger

(Above photo from the Washington Post)



Hi there,

Well, everyone, today I'd like to talk about some things that make me angry, and how I'd like to get through that anger. I didn't want to get involved in horse race politics, for two reasons. First, because I knew that might alienate some people if I were to talk about why one party, or one ideology was the greatest, while the other was just deplorable. This would invavlidate the readers of that party or ideology, which I don't want to do here.

Second, this blog is called Art From The Heart, which evolved from the previous Daily Reeder ( a much more explicitly political blog, but still more self-expressive than your average blog on these issues), and part of the Fuzz Memorial Project, which is still in its conception stages. So for these issues, I only want to talk about them in so far as they relate to my art, or others' art, or creative expression, particularly as a means of enriching humanity.

I also refuse to get totally swept up in this Presidential Race. You might realize that I have a certain position, however, I refuse to simply plug for any national party, or political ideology. I will tell you what appeals to me, in some cases, about it, but I take great pains to see the drawbacks for what they are, and keep it at arm's length. Just the other day, though, something crossed the line with me. This is something that I need to talk about now. It was a comment Newt Gingrich made at the South Carolina debate this past Monday.

Something about this set me off. I knew there was something bad about Newt, but the totally smug, egotistical "Let me tell you the facts of life, because you don't know any better," attitude was what was totally unjustified. Juan Williams made a totally valid point here. The epithet of "Food Stamp President," and saying that poor kids should "mop the floor and clean the bathroom," to earn money are absolutely insults. That is an attack on the poor, but especially the black segment of the poor. To add insult to injury, this debate took place on Martin Luther King Day.

You can see the incredible disdain on Gingrich's face as Williams asks him that. Williams at least brought this fact in the discussion, setting it up as a softball, and Newt spat all over it. By the way, what Gingrich is saying, when he says "own the job," is "be a janitor, because that's all you'll ever be good for, is cleaning rich kids' toilets." Don't rely on those goddamn Union workers, who dare to bargain for just a passable wage, instead, have those lazy poor kids pulled out of school, to work slaving away at the feet of the wealthy kids, because that's the only skill they'll ever be good for. They're just so fucking lazy that they need to work.

Now, if a kid wants to be a janitor, that's a different story. A child should have every right to pursue the type of work they want, be it rich or poor. So a poor child should have the right to be a janitor, if they want. They should also have the right to go to school, to get into college, and to get into the field the want, whether it's from a degree in engineering, economics, architecture, theater or communications. I believe that this not just better for the kids going into these fields, it is better for society itself, precisely because these kids are happier at their work. I elaborated on the importance of finding work that gives you joy yesterday. According to Newt Gingrich, and many others, these poor kids just "come from lazy families," and "need to learn to work." They need to work like children in China work in toxic factory settings, like this one.

The sickest part of this whole episode is how nuts the crowd went with applause. Listen to how absolutely disdainful Newt Gingrich was, in his speech, about these kids in the families. His little point about "those kids went and got jobs when they were little, why are you being so coddled?" was another wrong point. All kids are not meant to be forced to go to work, under pressure, when they are 10 or 11 years old. These young children should be given the time, the space, and the resources to grow, and then they will work more effectively for their employers.

None of this mattered though, to the people in that auditorium. It was that horribly sick mass cruelty toward the poor, and those absent from this discussion that really put this over the line. This amount of riotous applause are unprecedented for a debate. It is literally sickening to watch so many people approve so loudly of such a deplorable statement. This morning, when I was getting ready to do this post, my stomach was literally turned.

This type of anger reminded me of something else I heard that made me really mad. Remember when Sarah Palin first came on the scene, and gave that big Convention speech when she was nominated? There was this snide, spiteful line she threw out against community organizers.



This also got a huge line of applause, and conservatives continue to mock, belittle, and put down the work of community organizers. The most galling thing about this was, practically nobody in the media, not even liberals, talked about this for the rest of that campaign cycle. It was like nobody else noticed or cared that this insult had taken place. Against people with too little clout to defend themselves, no less.

All anyone seemed to be talking about was how provocative Sarah Palin was, or she was a brave feminist, or Look at how stupid Sarah Palin is! This last line was what frustrated me about the liberals. Call her out! I would always think to myself. All this talk about this shiny new woman, and since she's a woman, anyone who dares object is an evil misogynist. All the focus on her, none on the people she so gleefully pillaried. The only thing worse than an injustice, is an injustice that is not recognized as such.

This brings me back to Newt in this debate. There is also the subtle context of racial animosity against the poor in the inner city, many of whom are black. This was in South Carolina, where unemployment is much higher than the national average. It is sad to see, but many poor people in this country, who are victimized, marginalized, turn on each other. So poor whites in South Carolina blame those poor, mainly black, families who "have no history of work," as Gingrich put it.

I do not believe that Newt Gingrich, or the Republicans, are racists. There is a dialogue that needs to happen in this country around race and ethnicity. When you use the word racist, everybody shuts this discussion down, and they retreat into their defensive modes. So I hesitate to throw that bomb. I don't think it would be accurate to call them racists. What I believe Newt, and the others, are doing here, is appealing to the worst parts in the audience members.

This part in all Americans has been pushed numerous times, particuarly in the last few years. All this job loss, job insecurity, money and insurance insecurity, deeper and more terrifying law enforcement power, have been making everyone crazy, even (or, perhaps, especially) me. The economy is still on shaky ground, and just the threat that the economy could turn South again, would mean people could lose their jobs, their homes, their health resources, even perhaps their life, if they get sick.

So those people in the auditorium in South Carolina probably have lots of anger, and anxiety. Here, Newt is challenged on one of his points on "those lazy poor kids," and Newt smacks down the guy who asks him if this could be offensive. This forcefully confirms the order they have been given, that "those people on food stamps" need to just "get to work." The punishment of these out-groups supports the powerful, leader-type presence, like the order that "the Jews are enslaving us," or "the blacks are an inferior race," to borrow two historical examples. They are never shown that "those people" have more in common with them than they realize.

The media is constantly talking about the traits and doctrines that divide us. Races, economic strata, political ideology, these are all ways that we are pitted, sometimes violently, against each other. We see the other groups as having no human worth, or redemptive qualities. To us, the others are just evil, through and through. While we hate them, we are also terrified of them. This pattern existed in the minds of those at the debate, with the inner-city and black poor.

What I have come to realize is that most politics, journalism, and so forth is devoit of humanity. There is mainly a framework of us, the enemy, and how to maximize good for our side, and shut the others out. The downside of this competitive political arena is that there is little room for people to come together around a collaborative solution. It has to be this side, this party, this nation wins, and the other must be ignored. People's experiences of poverty, war, terror and all the rest are left out. In this way, our societal landscape is reduced to teams jockeying for an advantage.

This robs us of our humanity. It must be noted that while those of us for reforms have our deep, rich experiences of life, so do those working against us. Recognizing this is, in part, what distinguishes this country from the more despotic ones. We must also realize that our "leaders" (be it Newt Gingrich or Barack Obama) have their small human experiences too, although these might be darker. They had to get rid of these sides of themselves in order to make it to the top. This makes it easier for them to manipulate, shut down, pit their groups against others, and be so insincere.

This is part of why Gingrich uses these code words that are so divisive. In the world of Gingrich, you are either a "virtuous, Christian job creator," or an "elitist liberal," or one of the "poor that won't work, like you and I." In order for our society to recover, we need to be truthful about leaders like Gingrich, Obama, and others. We must realize that they are ultimately interested in their prosperity. We need to see each others' faults and shortcomings, and those in ourselves, and then accept them, or point out and correct the aggregious flaws.

I realize how powerful this visceral anger can be, particularly when you feel so right, and they are so wrong. I used to get very impulsively angry, when I was being abused. I would yell, scream, swear, sometimes hit people. I knew that my impulsive anger would make me do something I would regret later, even though it was so strong. I have been working on a way to say exactly what is making me mad, even as I recognizeand honor the other. This is a tough thing to do, but I am ambitious about this goal.

In case you get mad, listen to this video:



This is from the little-known 2003 comedy Anger Management, which starred Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson. Maybe we need some national campaign of anger management, so that we can solve our serious crises without losing our shit. Maybe that's what we can call the program. When you get really mad, I have found that it is helpful to have some small to do, like take a few deep breaths, to focus your mind. I wanted to boldly, candidly, but relatably face this anger that I used to avoid, if I could. I have turned my creative energy toward the things I previously tried to stay away from, like my deep anger. Your creative lifestyle is much more potent, and much more important, when focusing on something that dogs at you. Thanks for listening.

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!