thursday bleeds out into friday casting the whole weekend into doubt

Man, it was cool when the guy gave me the free 16oz mocha at 4pm but now it's 6am. I have been fantastically productive this evening. Including an eight page letter to my dad that I finished about an hour ago. I am now working on sociology. I am tired but I sure feel like a real college student for some reason. I have class in four hours. No more caffeine in the afternoon. I'm such a lightweight. Also, I may have eaten a few too many Oreo cookies last night and have remained in a state of lowgrade nausea ever since.

My dad taught me how to eat Oreos, like any good Dad of the pre-transfat age would. This is the method, it's... um... a little dark, but it's really not - I mean they're just cookies right? You drown the Oreo and then eat it whole. You take it in two fingers and hold it under the milk until the little bubbles stop, then you lift it up, toss it in and feel that soggy cookie melt into delicious as you much away on your mouthful of cookie. Haven't touched an Oreo in six months. Probably wont' again. Uggh. Feels so bad-good in my tum-tum.

Sociology is sick. Similar feeling. So bad-good in my brain. It's not all-right, but it makes some interesting points about socialization and freedom, I mean... who are you... really?

And then I think about my friends who are parents, and my parents. I think about the late nights and the early mornings, the working and everything else they do, and I wonder if that lifestyle has anything to do with the status quo, with the autopilot culture that has subsumed the American (by which I mean the United States) ideal of "freedom." I have the freedom to drink a sixteen ounce mocha at four pm, but there are consequences to my actions. It's practically scientific - for every action an equal and opposite reaction.

I thinka about all the sacrifices and struggles that parents must go through, and how so many of these contrived problems pale in comparison to anything that can be experienced with a child, the good and the bad, the enlightening and the frightening. But I know how well I think when I'm in zombie mode, like I'll be today. And I know that most of the parents I know are running on so few hours of sleep so often. And I wonder, how many of the foolish trends catch on because of factors like this.

Because what sociology shows is that patterns exist in our 'ness. From cultures to sub-cultures, people in similar situations make similar decisions - not everybody, but enough to form patterns. Patterns form trends. Trends come and go, and change is gradual, slow. and absolutely inevitable. And I wonder if being in this sleep deprived, protective, educating state that is parenting, if it leads people to become more conservative, accentuates latent and manifest conservative principles, or just makes people cranky and impersonal.

But perhaps that's the magic of staying busy. Could the trouble be that there's just too many people for us to all stay busy? Or is it better to be able to make that detachment between work and home, keep that home space sacred and separate? We are what we cultivate I suppose. The projects we work on, children can be this as much as careers or cars or vijiagames or girlfriends or religion or education or really, just about anything else - but how many projects can someone work on and give just due to? At what point does overload set in and somebody is useless to all of the above, or simply spread too thin to be effective in any one?

And perhaps, another seed of conservatism is planted by necessity - if one is not allowed, or does not take the time to educate and meditate, ponder, pray and examine in detail themselves from top to bottom and outside in - how many values can be taken for granted and accepted at face value? Values that might be harmful, or better amended to include new information - traditions, superstitions, sanctioned violence, flat earth mentalities being passed on from person to person without a second or third thought to the drawbacks or the benefits of amending the method.

In essence, I appear to be hypothesizing that, at least in the USA, early parenting forces the continuation of cultural norms, but allows a great amount of freedom to the individual (to spread the dominant culture to their children and participate in the system of norms to provide for their family) and the argument appears circular. Though, one can sacrifice some of the family project to excel at the system, the career project, the motivated-self-starter/aspiring entrepreneur project, thus creating more opportunity for the offspring to succeed by establishing wealth and, or a family name.

The beauty of the system is that it is open. Participation is mandatory, but if you're willing to go all in there's a good chance for boom or bust, and if caution leds to opportunity, or you're just lucky enough it could all come together in your favor. The system is organic. The system can be controlled to a certain extent, but it is ultimately unpredictable. The system is slowly becoming what the participants desire it to be, but it's no democracy. Elites do dominate the system qualitatively, while the majorities are maintained, though they dominate quantitatively, through this open system.

The trouble with the system is that it is harmful. It is oppressive to those who fall beneath it's tread. It keeps us occupied but it also generates the show around us, it's akin to working in a bar or a restaurant or a retail shop - where it's so easy to wind up throwing so much of your money right back into the business. It does this at the cost of those lower down the food chain. Meanwhile, there's no need for a food chain between humans.

We have the ability to change this, to respect each other and live our lives side by side - it just involves taking note of our cultures, seeing the differences in our societies and subcultures and questioning everything - but we're too busy with our individual selfish pursuits to be reminded of what's really important - our connection to the Divine Other, the Perfection that is all we are not, and greater than all we are; our connection to our flesh and blood, kindred spirits and like minds (family, friends and community); our shared reality, the planet and our humanity - that we are human, alike for all our differences.

=( boo hoo

in the most pessimistic of lights, the US is hardly more than just another conquering empire built on the backs of slaves. A massive nation governed by a vaguely aristocratic elite who are in turn influenced by the hereditarily wealthy, the owners of the banks and corporations; the rich, new and old. It's way more that than any masonic conspiracy BS.

The founding fathers may have been individually selfless, no one believing himself too superior to another, but they were predominantly slavers and they were predominantly full of themselves (some, perhaps deservedly so). They were also predominantly "self made" men, being the right combination of preparedness and circumstance, the elite amongst the colonists and although not an exclusive order, they certainly saw themselves as the decision-making group of the whole. I imagine there to be a lot of people like our founding fathers running around, sleeping with whatever they want, not wanting to pay their taxes, breaking rules, making rules to bend, looking for loopholes, fond of expressing themselves and certainly charismatic. I think it's very much the same people who run things today. Opportunists and lechers the like. Though I think we prefer to imagine them much more egalitarian, honest, moral and just.

Maybe We're Asking Too Much Of Our Politicians

In the face of globalization, the new modern identity crises are rapidly taking shape, but whilst much of the world was locked into tribal, civil, social and martial combat, these United States spent the first half of the last 234 years as an isolationist state - expanding its borders and eradicating tribalism at home. When the founding fathers established the interim government with the Articles of Confederation they were forming a unified voice with which to speak to European power but they were confronted with a reality of strong states who were very much concerned with their autonomy. Today, States are suffering while the federal Government - though deeply in debt - is practically bleeding money. It is actively funding the occupation of two, non-contiguous countries on the other side of the world and with regard to the billion dollar bailouts of yesteryear while simultaneously catering to a failed economic strategy and the courting the extraordinarily wealthy by seeking to maintain the Bush era tax breaks for the 250k plus crowd. And now for a rash overgeneralization, Rich people don't pay their taxes anyway because they can afford the best accountants and lawyers with all the money they save by not paying their taxes [RE (but not limited to): John Kerry].

As I was reading the Articles, Article Five really stood out to me, resonating. I could be dead wrong on this, but I like my interpretation of it: representatives are elected to a six year term; each state being represented by not more than seven or less than two representatives; each representatives not being able to spend more than three of the six as the state's representative to the federal government. In Washington's day, he complained the delegates weren't showing up. I wonder if that's, at least one reason, why we have a permanent representative base in the nation's capitol. But, tell me, what do you think would change if we didn't? If instead, our state representatives rotated in and out of the Federal representative seat?

The grass is always greener on the other side isn't it?

I want to know more about why the states are starving and the federal government has the money to burn - and so should you. It's a separate line item, but at least in my little Capitol city, the lobbyists are self motivated, extra-curricular lobbyists. I'm wondering how and if the current federally minded lobbying apparatus could maintain it's current power if forced to manage at the state level. The founding fathers saw the threat of external (as in not "by the people") influence on the democracy and they made many a law to combat this threat, but now we have similar threats from dissimilar places, from within the country but innately external to the system - some are human beings, as in individual people, many of who represent interested groups or incorporated interests, some aren't human beings at all, though still legally people, corporations.

But maybe we're asking too much of our representatives. Asking them to listen to people, to their constituents who - all too often - either can't bring themselves to say anything, or are so passionate that they can't find a way to the bargaining table through their partisan talking points. Asking them to say no to millions of dollars, some for them and theirs, some for "friends" and whatever passes for "family" these days, most in the interests of those who do have (an unfortunate monopoly on) their ear. Asking them to balance the needs of an individual State vs. the looming deficits of the Federal budget. Asking them to balance their appearance, like valiant bastions of morality - but when one giant falls no one says, dear god, not him; instead, the cry comes up, finally, with his checkered past...

Maybe we're asking too much when we ask them to stick to party platforms, masking both their views and the nuance of their constituents. Maybe we're asking too much and they're just giving us a little lip-service demagoguery in return - run another poll of our district Ted, let's see what we're going to talk to the people about today. Maybe we're asking too much of our suitors (the politicians), we're dying to get married, we've only got their word - do we take them at face value? Something old (power corrupts; money talks), something new (lobbyists and corporate personhood; money as free speech), something borrowed (the money draining out of the Federal government; bankrupt borrowers and too-big to fail lenders), something blue (the idea of a freedom sucking, left leaning, ethnic majority hating, big government - the tribulation styled secular humanism of Christian eschatology, when the majority becomes the persecuted and the anti-Christ reigns supreme; echoed in an Islamic perspective here and then in more exclusively secular terms, here, as well. And never forget that behind all of this lies the power of symbolism, from our capitol city to our home town; from marketing and advertising that saturates our living-rooms and wardrobes, to the churches that dot the countryside.)

But seriously, as we face the increasingly global future, Jihad vs. McWorld comes back into scope. It's unfortunate that the meme (jihad vs. mcworld) is easily misunderstood within the inspired nationalistic ignorance and ethnocentricity of the post 9/11 American milieu. The author may explain the metaphorical and rhetorical use of the Arabic term "jihad" as well defining it by loosely associating it with the "struggle" of righteousness against the profane, but this nuance is lost as the voices of the mostly unrelated, Islam (as representative of "the other," proxy for terrorism and all that is backwards and wrong in the world) vs. America (as representative of uninformed individuality bordering on the ignorantly, selfish, proxy for westernization, globalization, secularization, corporatization and exploitation) debate escalates at home and engages violently abroad. I digress, as we face the global future, the struggle of identity comes to the forefront.

Who are we if we're not human? what are we? What is a politician if not a man (or a woman for that matter)?

Our American fore fathers built a Government infrastructure that was designed to balance the the power of the state against the power of the nation, the national identity and military unity a check to the powers of the state; the individual pieces against the government's parts and whole. Yet something has slipped away. The people are as they have always been - perhaps with greater options today, a prison of a different type - some make choices to be some combination of active, informed and the converse of each, while others still, will, choose or quietly become contextually ignorant but constantly involved - not so much even pawns but the board upon which the game is played.

What if our freedom of speech has been translated, and as happens in translation has been weakened for it, into freedom to spend as much as you want on whatever you want. A corner stone of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, has been co-opted by advertisement dollars, the deeper and more consistent the journalistic sensibility (ie, the bastion of the informed, what a gentleman reads two of a day, aka, the newspaper, the investigative report) the greater the failure. More effort in, more effort out, less money in, more money out - a recipe for failure but perhaps some things must operate at a loss, like Government. This is the democracy of the market, this is democracy overwhelmed by group-think and mob-rule, the market is Darwinian not democratic. They are not incompatible, but they are not completely compatible either. Think of it this way, you can view the internet from different browsers on different platforms, either way you're seeing the internet. You can even run the same browser on different platforms. But you cannot run Windows coded copy of Firefox on a Mac OSX system (without some serious interpretative software, which in turn has to run Windows anyway). We can live in a Darwinian society where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the government exists (primarily, if not completely) to make life easier and more profitable for the corporations - which in turn is supposed to 'trickle down' to the little pieces, the individual peoples, the cogs and pawns of the system itself; it does too, unfortunately it doesn't seem to penetrate beyond the surface, shining on the prepared, the lucky and the elite while missing the needy, unfortunate and incapable. The majority is left without, glossed over and enduring the low grade exploitation of life in an open air debtors prison. It's not impossible to get out, and work within the system to great success. It's not impossible to move up, drop out, slip through or otherwise achieve a dream but there's no escape from the reality of the economic prison. You're either in it, working for it, running it or working against it.

This is the set up for a revolution. This is the prison our forefathers were trying to keep us from falling into. A demeaning set of serfdom. They never knew it would be so couched in the freedoms they were so resolute in providing. Perhaps an Ataturk would be more deserving our modern state than the (racially exclusive, social) altruism of a Franklin, Hancock, Jefferson or a Washington. This prison of borderline serfdom and neglected, marginalized and overtaxed existence was the set up for Marx, for Lenin, for Hitler, for America. Perhaps we're asking our politicians to do too much, because we're asking them to be unamerican. To stand against absolute freedom, as a bulwark not just against the storm of nations and assaults against borders, but against the market, the global as well as the local economy, to shield us from the shifting tides of international politics, violence and resource management while balancing the needs of the increasingly failing state. Perhaps these burdens increase and be far too great for mere local politicians to handle on a rotating schedule of federal service, but I know what the answer is not. the answer is not an increasingly consolidated power structure, culminating in a cult of national security headed by autocratic Presidency and his cabinet of selected advisors. It's not in the status quo. It's not in a Congress and a Senate increasingly out of touch with - or at least distracted from - local constituents and more importantly good personal judgement, the most integral piece of representative government. Wisdom over demagoguery, but that might not get you re-elected, or even elected in the first place

Maybe we're asking too much of our politicians, but we're still not asking enough. Maybe we should be asking for more, not of our politicians, but of our system. Trying to get along in the twenty first century without diligently and intelligently reinterpreting our foundation - to repair the cracks of expansion, growth and the ever changing world, to remove therot and corruption from within, and heal the damage of abuse - we're cursed to regression, to wandering aimlessly into obscurity. If we don't learn to adapt and change and get involved, we're going to lose more than freedom or identity and many lives will be lost.

Americans like to poke fun at Islamic Shariah systems, the backwardness of stoning adulterers, veiling women, male dominance and other parochial and patriarchal aspects to the system. A system that dates back to the 7th century but is held to be sacred and beyond reproach by its followers. Yet, here in America, we love a document from the 18th century and hold it to be sacred and byond reproach. How long will it be before we're the relic - or will we make sure that's never the case with our military might and our conspicuous consumption; with the global reach of the corporate culture that we've molded and been molded by, sugar, salt, fat and opportunity - everything you could ever want. Maybe we're asking our politicians to do too much, but if we are, we're not doing enough ourselves.

It's not all about voting (though it is in part), it's about voting with every dollar. It's not all about changing the political guard (though it is in part), but about reforming the systems of government and the regulation of what goes on between political participants, activists, lobbyists and decision makers, and and getting diligent and informed people into the roles played by increasingly self serving, career politicians with too many friends, contacts, debts and debtors. It's not about FEMA and prison planet and satanic conspiracies, it's about taking the reigns of the future. It's about dissent, debate and disagreement as much as it's about community, solidarity and open-minded reform. Don't eschew the government for the corporate prison, there is nothing holding the people back but the people themselves. It's not about facebook, politics, groupthink, or anything else, it's about ourselves. If we value freedom of choice, we have to become aware of the prison of too-many-options, of over-extension, of over-consumption. A culture of disposable permanence (plastic - from bottles to wrappers) and permanent disposability (social darwinism, market economics, fashion, media and social trends), trapped in a self destructive cycle positing elitist interests against majority numbers - why that's the very concept of modern America itself against the world. Some day we, whatever we are, we're just going have to admit to being outnumbered - though we may never be outgunned as the ghost of the cold war doctrine of mutual destruction rears its ugly head.

We may be asking too much of our politicians. We may be asking too much of the world. We may be asked to give up too much, but on a long enough timeline, every lie becomes truth, every truth becomes lie and the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

if you're not conservative when you're old...

My mother used to tell me that if you're not a liberal when you're young you don't have any heart and if you're not conservative when you're old you don't have any brains. She still says it. Both of my parents have always been fairly conservative in their views, neither belonging specifically to one party or the other. As a child, my father was a union plumber and for some reason (contrary to his personal views) voted for the party of democrats. My mother (more accurately reflecting her personal views at the time) voted republican. Their goal was to cancel each other out believing that the system was inherently corrupt and that whoever was elected was more so a politician than a man of conscience and belief. Elections are seldom, if ever, decided by a single vote - especially in populous southern California.

I'm getting older and I'm still not conservative, mostly because I'm not vested. I am of the opinion that as you age you have a greater invested interest in the status quo, and that is the how and the why of old age conservatism. What was conservative for our parents, for our parents parents is considered practically backwards today. The further back you go, the more it seems so. Each generation has lessened the load, eased off the restrictions - technology has played its part as much as say, women's lib or the civil rights movement, or Roe v. Wade. We've got a president with African heritage from a mixed coupling of the early sixties - we've come a long way since he was born - thankfully.

Here's my trouble, there is a rift between the old and the now. The youth of the country, those younger than me, by a decade or more especially, are coming of age into a unique situation in our history. Whereas the youth of Iran form the up and coming majority, the youth of America are outnumbered by the old. Just as the baby boomer hippies of yore changed the world with their massive protests, their women's liberation, civil rights and anti-war protests (back in their heart-driven liberal days), they are now fighting back civil rights and propagating war in the post 9/11 milieu. Presumably because 9/11 changed their status quo so severely, it was an assault on not just their country but their sensibilities that demolished their sense of safety.

While my grandparents are still getting out and voting, conservative demagoguery and tea party style politics are being fed to them like a mother feeds a baby; from the only hand they trust, the "Fair and Balanced" FOX news owned by Rupert Murdoch (with the number two shareholder being a Saudi Prince). They are setting the policy for the rest of us - oddly enough Barack Obama was elected, they must not ALL be old conservatives...

If our parents and grandparents are offended by Mosques being built on American soil (let alone hallowed ground), it is their grandchildren who will see a decrease in their constitutional rights. The past is putting the future of religious freedom in America on shaky ground. If our parents and grandparents are in charge of determining the future of healthcare, or of immigration procedures and regulation, or ANYTHING ELSE - it is not they who will lose the freedoms of America, but us.

Now, I don't think they mean it. I don't think that's their goal. I think it's about protecting America, protecting the cold war patriotism that has faded in the current and proceeding generations. I just think they're blinded by the corporate media, the corporate agenda, the corporate lobby. They see the detachment between the people and the government. They know, better than we do, that this is a huge and growing problem and they want to fight it - but they don't see the money agenda. They were warned by Eisenhower of the military industrial complex, but they don't understand that the whole system they set up for us is a dangerous game, that grows more and more dangerous in the future.

As our parents and grandparents rail against ecological reforms (because climate change isn't man made, isn't real) in the name of limiting government power and keeping us (their children) free - they'll be dead by the time their environmental choices are raining down on our heads. Although, our parents and grandparents can stand opposed to the (forced) government healthcare-reform in the name of budget deficits, the growth of the government (in terms of spending and scope) and anything else that puts more power in the hands of our elected officials; what they're missing is that the "big government" that they fear so intensely is powered by the big corporations and the massive lobbying apparatus of the modern political age.

They put the emphasis on the politicians, perhaps because they are blind to the ways of the system they created. Not the democracy of their parents and grandparents (people we've probably never met, or died when we were but babes), people who fought in world wars and provided for families through depressions, dust-bowls and prohibition (and some of whose parents saw the institution of slavery crumble in a bloody civil war), but the systems of consumptions and the growth of corporate interests. Either blinded by personal participation or a lack of education (not to diminish the importance of their experience and wisdom), our parents and grandparents, whose parents were tasked with destroying the Nazi's and the Japs, fought bravely against the communist threat, the big red menace, by any means necessary. They did it by making America the greatest economic powerhouse the planet has ever seen, they did it by making babies, they did it by making alliances with brutal dictatorships, by the doctrine of containment - wherever the Russians tried to go, we made every possible effort to deny them.

USA, USA. Meanwhile, their chemicals are poisoning us, but not before they have become our chemicals. Meanwhile, their alliances are becoming more problematic than beneficial, but not before they have become our alliances. Meanwhile, the companies they created are dominating our ideas of freedom - dictating to the masses through the media and the advertisement that keeps the TV on and the stores that sell them open, as well as feeding millions if not billions into the political system to keep the government in their hip pocket. Ten years ago, I was talking about the importance of removing career politicians from office, of voting against the incumbents, of term limits for ALL our representatives - and I still believe it. But, more importantly now, it has to be noticed that the influence of the massive money makers (be they corporations, those who run them, or just the incredibly, generationally, wealthy) on our government: the system must be changed.

Just as when these United States were founded, the founding fathers emphasized the necessity of separation between church and state, perhaps it is time to notice the need for a separation of finance from politics. It appears to me as daunting as separating church and state (which I argue to be externally plausible while internally impossible). This isn't something that is going to happen easily, quickly or without much debate and thought. The debate and thought of which must come not from the corporate or political world, but from WE THE PEOPLE. Once the decisions have been made, solutions reached, I wonder, what will the cost be to enact the resolutions and achieve, the nothing short of revolutionary, results?

Will it smack of socialism? Will it smack of government regulation? Can it be said that government regulation, if by the will of the people and beneficial to the vast majority of individuals (in these United States specifically, but also abroad - as the world is becoming increasingly global in nature and connection), is constitutional? As the generations shift, the old pass away and the young become the old, the world changes. Change is inevitable in this world and the beauty of America is that WE THE PEOPLE are those who should be shaping it. (Clinging to the past while resisting the future is a recipe for disaster as bad as any poorly thought out ideas for change.) Not we the powerful, not we the elite, not we the corporate big-wigs, not we the wealthy, not we the white, black or brown - WE THE PEOPLE.

We may be outnumbered between old and young, we may not have the inside track like those who have captured the ear of the government or hold them by the purse-strings, we may not have our hands on the wheel just yet, but, in the words of Rupert Murdoch, "The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow." We're coming for you Rupert, and we're faster than you - because the young are faster than the old. (though age and treachery are not to be underestimated...)

(also, I love my grandparents and my parents, but fortunately for my sanity, that doesn't mean I have to agree with their politics. It just means dinner is more interesting.)

...?

been a while since I've read the communist manifesto, it's been assigned for my sociology class. In looking over one part of it, Marx is describing the globalism of the bourgeois, and what strikes me about it is not that he saw so (this aspect) so clearly but that this feared globalism (by the west as giving up its place atop the world, by the east as being dominated by the west) is so succinctly something we're facing right now in the world, but it's being labeled socialism. But what's really happening, in Marxian terms, is that as the bourgeois is solidifying it's hold on the world, America (or insert other country here) becomes far less important in the scheme of things, because the domination and interests of the global bourgeois is more important than any one country. Our corporate way of running things through rampant consumption and out of control, dehumanizing capitalism is still building this global dream, yet Americans opposed to big government (another form of tyranny) are so blind to it.