Open Thread: Show 28
Listen here. Comment below. Isn't Space Ghost cool?

What's The Use?
The Angry Liberal asks:

Although blogging is as much a personal joy as it is an attempt to convey views and perhaps change a few, with this story today in the Washington Post (which confirms what we've known for some time), one has to wonder what's the point of it all. Apparently, the country is divided, and stridently so. Those who are going to vote Bush or Kerry are already dead-set in their minds, leaving a scant few to be won over or converted. Thus, Air America Radio and the many left-leaning blogs are doing their best to get the truth out, but in effect to win over just 3 out of every 10 voters. It appears as if for the most part they're singing to the choir.

I often wonder the same thing myself. If you click the little planet icon on the upper left you'll see that I get about 50 hits a day, which is, like, nothing. A lot of that is because I post infrequently, sometimes only twice a week: my job is a very physical job and takes a lot of energy, so does doing the radio show, which I am spending most of my non-working time on. If Ben Burch's records are to be believed (and I have no reason not to believe them), I get about 200-300 regular listeners for the show, and I don't know how many I get on Rant Radio or Radio Power. But the point is, I want to reach people with my words either through the blog or through the show. As I have said before, if you're writing something like a blog for public consumption you want people to read it. Atrios, bartcop, and DailyKos are the big boys on the block, they get thousands of hits and a day, I'm an insignificant little microbe out here in the blogosphere. I get a lot of hits when I post a comment on these boards, but no one ever stays around and comments come rarely, if at all. It gets a little depressing sometimes but I will carry on because I like doing this.

So how do I get more people to read the blog and listen to the show? By doing the hard work that it takes to get the info out. But I'm not very good at that, and I don't really have the time for it. What I really need is some help, and I have asked for that from time to time, in vain, because everyone else has their own thing to do and I understand that. Of course becoming big has its complications too. Atrios must have a horrible time keeping up with his email, and when you're the big guy on the block there are always people who want to knock you down and always people who resent it if you don't do something for them (I get pissed because Atrios hasn't even put me on his blogroll even though I know he knows who I am, we have even chatted from time to time in the bartcop chat room. He has no need to blogroll me, there's nothing I can do to help his site but everything his site can do to help mine. Same with Kos or bartcop, though bart does mention me once in a blue moon).

When people started blogging they did so in large part because they were dissatisfied with what they were getting from the "professional" news sources and wanted to make their own voices heard. Also because they wanted to try and change the world. But eventually what happens is that people get caught up in their own popularity and start believing the things they hear from the people who want to use that popularity for their own agendas. If I ever get that big I hope I can keep my feet planted on terra firma and not get caught up in all the bullshit. That's what's happened to our professional media; they're not journalists, they're TV stars, image is everything. That may already be what is happening to Atrios, which in retrospect means it's a good idea that he remains anonymous. Of course that could work against him, if he pisses off the wrong people they could "out" him.

I made a decision long ago to use my full name and accept the dangers that come with that. It's not a risk now because as I said I am pretty insignificant and no threat to anyone. But if somehow the show takes off or the blog suddenly gets big, I could be treated as a threat, and things could change, and that's the risk I take, because I do want to help change the world. It may be naive and stupid, a tree in the forest no one will ever hear, but that's who I am.

Open Thread: Show 27
Listen here. Comment below. Eat a cookie, it's good for ya. Apologies to Billy Shears for not reading his emails thoroughly enough.

Life, The Universe, And Everything
Note:I had begun to write this article about a week or so ago, before Atrios' rant and before Kristof's insulting article, intending to get it published on The Right Christians when the stuff hit the fan. It always bugs me when friends fight, moreso when you consider the implications of dividing ourselves against a unified opponent. My personal feelings about Life, The Universe, and Everything have changed as I have changed over the years, but I thought I would bring them up now to let people know how I felt about the whole thing at this point in my life.

As I always do when I discuss issues of religiosity or the more ambiguous "spirituality", I want to state clearly that I do not consider myself a Christian. Some here may find my attitude offensive, seeing as how this is a website designed for Christians, but I admire Rev. Brill's tolerance of my views because even though there are some beliefs we may differ on, there are many that we agree on, most notably how we should treat our fellow humans. I should, however, clarify that when I say I am not a Christian I simply mean that I am unwilling to "submit myself" to the will of Christ, to make him the total focus of my life as some Christians do. For the record, I believe and understand that Jesus sacrificed himself, and that, at the very least, he and his disciples believed that he did so for the salvation of humankind. I certainly agree with Jesus' message insofar as love thy neighbor as thyself and how we should treat the least of us. But, as happens so often with humans, the movement that grew after him has done many things that, I am sure, he wouldn't like at all. As the saying goes, Lord, save me from your followers.

I am a practical person. My lack of faith lies not in Jesus but in humans. God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, beings presumably of vast supernatural power and knowledge, are far beyond my meager abilities to comprehend, and more complex than any book on the subject that ever has and ever will be written. But humans I know. I live and work among them every day, and I know what they are capable of, both good and evil. This is why I refuse to belong to any organized religion; in my opinion, these are human-made institutions and fraught with all the failings that humans have. For many, they are nothing more than a place to meet people, for others, they exist to affirm an already held belief. And that's fine. As far as I am concerned people are free to believe anything they want to believe, I only object when people try to use the force of law or peer pressure to force someone to join with them. But I prefer not to be involved at that level, I grew weary of churches many years ago.

But even being a practical person, I sometimes think about things that lie beyond our experiences. Does God exist, and if so, what is the nature of God? Are we, as religious people think, physical creatures seeking a spiritual experience, or are we, as New Agers think, beings of spirit who choose to manifest ourselves in physical form as a learning experience? Many years ago I read Shirley MacLaine's book Out On A Limb and while I thought a lot of it was a crock, it made me think a bit about the nature of our existence. The idea of different levels of being is an intriguing one, but I was always bothered by the idea of intentionally returning to the "physical world" (for lack of a better term) to learn, especially why it is that we have to forget everything and start from scratch every time. It's like intentionally becoming illiterate to see if you can get something new out of learning to read, it makes no sense to me.

Neither does the Christian idea of eternal suffering or eternal bliss based upon a specific belief that develops over a very short life span appeal to me. Eternity is, after all, a very long time, and if our souls are what we truly are, is no redemption possible after the death of our physical forms? It seems a cruel fate to sentence someone to eternal punishment solely for their beliefs when we are given so many beliefs to choose from here on Earth. If someone is presented with the absolute knowledge that they have been wrong, shouldn't they be given an opportunity to change? If not, is this a God we ought to worship? If God exists and is seen as a parental figure, should God be feared in the same way that you fear losing the love of someone you respect and who you feel bad about disappointing, or is God an abusive parent who might strike us down at any moment for reasons of his own?

One night, recently, I had a thought, and it was so blatantly simple that I don't understand why it never occurred to me before: what if the New Agers are only partly right: that our physical existence is indeed a learning experience, but rather than choosing to return we are forced, like gravity, back down to the physical world because we lack the strength or desire to continue on to whatever the next level of existence might be? This would cover many different beliefs: Hindus believe that humans sometimes return as animals, perhaps they do so because their spirit is no longer strong enough to become human when they return. Jesus said that "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven", which could be interpreted as "those who obsess over material things are unable to move on because the true nature of sentient life is not physical, but spiritual, and physical pleasures distract us from this". Perhaps God is the sum total of all there is, as incomprehensible to us as we as a whole might be to our individual cells.

I'm not going to be bold enough to claim absolute knowledge of what goes on once our physical bodies are dead. There are certainly a lot of things that, at face value, defy rational explanation, but that doesn't mean that I am required to accept any answer that is given to me. This is why I am an agnostic and not an atheist: atheists are as certain of their beliefs as religious people are of theirs. I'm simply not capable of that kind of certainty, I am filled with doubt and will likely stay that way. Some would call that doubt failure, I see it as having an open mind and trying to look at things from a different point of view. So much of what we do is based upon human culture and history, it's difficult to try to ascertain truth through that strainer.

But I do know this: it's wrong to kill people just because their views on God are different. It's wrong for the terrorists and it's wrong for us. It's wrong to go to war just because you can, self-defense is the only rational excuse for fighting. This isn't to say that I am opposed to the military, I am not, I just see them as a means of preventing war. As Faramir said, I do not love the sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.. It's wrong to claim that any one religion has a monopoly on the truth: there is no one, true religion. The Word Of God is written in many forms, not the least of which is the structure of the universe itself, from the force that binds molecules together to the genetic code that is the basis for all life on Earth that we know of.

The Founding Fathers worded the First Amendment the way they did because they understood that the State has no authority to tell you what you can or cannot believe, and no amount of force will change the minds of true believers of any religion, I know that no government run by Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell is going to change my beliefs, if anything it will turn me away from religion even more.

The human race is only beginning to grasp the concept of Life, the Universe and Everything. We have only existed as a species for a few million years (if that) and only really existed as civilization for about six thousand years (I defing civilization as being the point where we learned to control our enviroment to the extent that we could support more than just those who grew the food). We are so very young and have so much to learn. Fundamentalism is just one of many obstacles we must learn to overcome. I hope we can do so before we all wipe each other out.

Open Thread: Show 26
Listen here.
One of my emailers tells me I put too much "personal shit" into my shows. I think that personalizes the problems I talk about. I don't want to do a show about dry statistics or try to be like everyone else on talk radio. Anyone care to chime in?

Open Thread: Show 25
Listen here. Comment below. Eat sensibly and exercise regularly.

A Fairy Tale
Once upon a time there was a bunch of guys who lived in a neighborhood. Like a lot of people, they had their good times and their bad times, but now, for the most part, they all get along OK. There's Claude, and there's Charles, and there's Fritz, and there's also Ivan and Luigi, Carlos and Shiro, and a lot of others who have been around a long time. They're all pretty rich and set in their ways.

Then there's guys like Sam and Lenny and some others, who don't necessarily get along with each other but who have something in common: they can't stand how the other guys push them around, even though they too have lots of money, most of it buried in their basements where it's hard to get at. They'll do business with each other and with the older crowd but there's a lot of tension there and everyone's a little worried that someday there's gonna be a big fight.

And then there's Joe.

Joe hasn't been around the neighborhood for as long as the others. He's got a lot of money and likes to flaunt it a bit, but he can be a real cool guy to hang out with. He was a great help when Fritz, Luigi, and Shiro got real drunk and started beating the crap out of everyone. Joe even got them back on their feet again, which everyone thought was cool, especially since Shiro started the whole thing by blowing up Joe's tool shed. Since then, Joe has become the Big Man in the neighborhood, and is known for helping people out, even though he can get a little snotty about it. Joe even helped form a neighborhood watch to make sure the streets are a little safer and to help bring everyone together. All in all, despite his faults, everyone likes Joe because they know that deep inside he has a good heart, he just gets carried away sometimes.

But as Joe's status in the neighborhood has gone up, things have been going pretty bad for Sam, Lenny and their pals. They don't seem to be able to get anything done, they spend most of their time bitching about how crappy things are and how they're being victimized by the others. Some of the complaints are legitimate, because all of the older guys are trying to get all that money, but some of their problems they bring on themselves because somehow they're not as good at getting the money out of their basements as the others are. Also they get hung up on old grudges, and get into fights all the time, especially with Sol, who the older guys built a house for right near where they live. Sol and Joe are good friends, moreso because Joe saved Sol when Fritz nearly killed him. And now Joe helps Sol out a lot and Sol is starting to act like kind of a jerk, too, because he knows Joe will always be there to back him up. So Sam and Lenny and pals are getting surlier and surlier.

One night, when Joe was either asleep or down in the basement working on a project he's been working on for ages, Lenny breaks into his house and rapes Joe's wife. Joe is furious, and everyone feels really bad, because even though Joe can be kind of a jerk sometimes, no one likes to see this kind of thing happen. There's no doubt that Lenny did this, and everyone in the neighborhood wants to help Joe get Lenny. They know Lenny's been staying with his friend Tommy, so Joe tells Tommy to give Lenny up or he and his friends are coming in after him. Tommy tells Joe to go screw, so Joe gets his family and help from a few neighbors (especially Charles, his best friend), and rips into Tommy's house looking for Lenny and his gang. But Tommy and his family slip out into the neighborhood while Joe's family and friends ransack his house, and Lenny is nowhere to be found.

But for some weird reason, Joe seems to lose interest in going after Lenny and instead starts going after Sam.

Sam lives in a hut on the middle of one of the lousier parts of the neighborhood, not too far from Tommy's house. He's crabby, conceited, and he beats his wife and his three kids. Nobody really likes him, and everyone knows he's a little nuts. He's got a lot of dough in his basement, though, and it's common knowledge that Joe's been wanting to get his hands on it, as well as some payback from some earlier fights they had. Unfortunately, Joe's been doing a lot of drinking since the break-in, and is starting to talk and act like Fritz did some time back. Joe talks Charles into going along with his plans to get Sam, and they start talking about how Sam has all these guns in his house and if someone doesn't go after him Sam'll start shooting people. Sam, who doesn't want to lose his house but is too proud to back down, finally agrees to let the neighborhood watch come in and look around. The watch doesn't find anything like what Joe's been screaming about, even though they look where Joe tells them to, even though Joe says he knows exactly where the guns are. Finally Joe tells the watch to get the hell out and slams into Sam's house. He figures that Sam's wife and kids will be glad to get rid of him, but instead they start throwing things at him. And Joe still can't find all the guns he said Sam had.

So now Joe's in charge of Sam's house, and it turns out that he doesn't have as much money as they thought he had. Sam's family is still throwing things at Joe, who's beginning to look more and more like an idiot. But Joe is determined to hang in there, he claims he wants to remake that whole part of the neighborhood, but everyone else just thinks he's trying to get into all the other money that's buried down there, as if he needed any more anyway. A lot of people in the neighborhood are thinking that Joe is a bigger danger to the neighborhood than Sam ever was. It also looks like the reason Lenny managed to get into Joe's place to begin with was because Joe left the door unlocked, and some people think he left it that way on purpose so that he'd have an excuse to go after Sam later. Joe isn't quite as drunk as he was when he started the whole mess, but he can't go back to ask the others for help, and they aren't that interested in helping out anyway, especially since that big scene at the bar where Joe called them all cowards. They'd love it of Joe got bruised up a bit, they figure it would probably be a good thing for him in the long run, teach him to think beore he acted. Meanwhile things over at Tommy's old place aren't so good, either, as Tommy's people are starting to worm their way back in. All Joe really has is the kitchen and the living room.

Things are starting to get out of hand, and there's a sense that this could wind up tearing apart the whole neighborhood, just like what happened with Fritz and Shiro and Luigi, but worse.

So how will the story end? We'll have to wait and see.

Open Thread: Show 24
Listen here. Comment below. No shirt, no shoes, no service.

A Quick Question
If you were an hourly worker and you had screwed things up as badly as the Bush administration has, would you still be working?

Untermenschen
British Commanders Condemn US Military Tactics
(via JuanCole.com)

Senior British commanders have condemned American military tactics in Iraq as heavy-handed and disproportionate.

One senior officer said that America's aggressive methods were causing friction among allied commanders and that there was a growing sense of "unease and frustration" among the British high command.

The officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said part of the problem was that American troops viewed Iraqis as untermenschen - the Nazi expression for "sub-humans".

Speaking from his base in southern Iraq, the officer said: "My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are."

The phrase untermenschen - literally "under-people" - was brought to prominence by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, published in 1925. He used the term to describe those he regarded as racially inferior: Jews, Slavs and gypsies.

The statements by the British commanders come as no surprise to anyone who has lived in America any length of time. While Americans are a diverse people, and there are plenty of good, decent, compassionate citizens, there is a definite tendency to treat people who are different as untermenschen, especially the poor and lower class workers. Of course race plays a part as well, Blacks and Hispanics in particular still suffer from prejudice and disenfranchisement.

But the real irony to this story is that the soldiers who are the biggest problems in Iraq, the ones who treat the Iraqis the worst (and I betcha they are hardcore Bush supporters, too), are that, to the Bush administration, its neocon policymakers, and the corporate elite who back them, these guys are untermenschen. Maybe, just maybe, when they get back and find out how much they have been screwed over, they might reconsider having voted for these slobs, but knowing how fanatics are, I doubt it. More's the pity.

There's an old saying in the workplace, that a single "oh shit" requires ten "atta-boys" to balance it out. Every time these soldiers treat an Iraqi citizen like dirt is an "oh shit" moment that only makes life more difficult for everyone involved, and at the rate we appear to be going, there won't be enough atta-boys to counter all the hatred we're building out there. Whatever else you want to call them, there's a lot more of them than there are of us over there, and that's a bad recipe for everyone.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Find Out What It Means To Me
Or, How Everything You've Been Told About Good Business Practices In America Is Wrong
by Tim Widerquist
Editor's Note:I ran into Tim, who teaches English in Japan, in the bartcop chat room and asked him to write this for me so you can have a firsthand example of the differences between labor relations in America and in other industrial nations. Tim can be reached via email and at his web site.

Five years ago, I was a junior high teacher in suburban Chicago. At that time management was putting tremendous pressure on teachers and trying to "run the school like a business", which meant reducing teacher preparation time. Not much thought was given to the fact that teachers need prep time, and students need well-prepared lessons. Mainly the admin was fired up to "get tough". I was already working damn hard and didn't like losing the few breaks I had so I became our union rep. In typical fashion my superintendent reacted to my union activity by bringing pressure directly on me. It got to the point where I couldn't exercise the slightest discipline without a threat of legal action from management (telling an ADD child to sit down could result in an accusation of discrimination against the disabled at my school).

I decided to go where teachers are appreciated and moved to Japan. It was the best move I've ever made. I know this sounds unbelievable, but I was hired by a committee of teachers and in the five years that I have been at the same school, I haven't even met anyone in management! I teach English at a University in the Japanese National system and I am trusted to be a professional. The university would consider it foolish to try and tell me how to teach because I'm an expert and closest to the students. In any case, they don't think they could possibly improve my work by telling me how to do it. I work just as hard in this environment. I think I'm more effective, because my stress level has been reduced so drastically. In addition, I want to do well by these people because they are treating me well.

You may think that this type of respect for labor would handicap Japanese business. That's how the situation is presented in the American press, and how we look at things in our culture. That, however, is not the case. Though the Japanese economy has been in recession for most of the last 13 years, that has more to do with unwillingness by Japanese banks to default on bad loans. Serious bank reform has not been implemented since the bursting of the economic bubble. Imagine if US savings and loans had never been reformed, it's like that. The money supply is too tight and new businesses don't have capital to grow.

The US press often states that Japanese companies who "coddle" workers by offering lifetime employment, medical care, and high wages will be forced to lay off workers due to cheaper competition. This has never happened. During the 90s, the average length of employment in Japan actually increased. According to American conventional wisdom, that would make Japanese products too expensive and easy competition for "lean and mean" US manufacturers. Please take a look around Best Buy the next time you're there and see if this is the case. Is there boom going on in American VCR production? And if Japanese companies suffer due to high labor costs, don't US manufacturers suffer under high management costs?

Japanese companies are able to continue to dominate markets and maintain high labor standards by using labor wisely, and innovating. For example, Kenwood just moved it's mini-disk manufacturing plants back to Japan from Malaysia because the workers at its Yamagata (Japan) plant stayed on the job long enough to master a variety of skills that the low cost, short term workers in Malaysia were not able to master. The Japanese also strive to maintain the products they produce through innovation. Toyota, for example, welcomes environmental regulations, because it gives them a chance to win with advanced technology, rather than just low prices. So, businesses can prosper and treat labor respectfully.

High labor costs have other advantages. Of course, it benefits the entire economy for workers to spend money and create demand; that is common knowledge. Less common is the idea that high labor costs lead to product innovation. Japan is the world leader in robotics, because the use of robots pays in Japan. It's likely that as robotic technology advances the price of this technology will be reduced and find a market overseas.

Recently I read an article in the New York Times about a nursing home here in Tokyo that had begun using automatic washing machines to bath geriatrics. The Times made fun of the Japanese for not opening their borders to cheaper labor. I think that attitude is seriously mistaken. First, we need to be thinking of ways to use machines to eliminate unpleasant work. Saying that the crappy jobs should just be given to the poor people sounds awfully elitist to me. I don't want to find myself 90+ years old, unable to wash myself, and have to hope my nurse remembers to scrub inside all of the folds. Yuck, maybe Republicans get off telling the little brown nurse exactly what sponge pressure they need, but not me.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go?
I've been a member of the League Of Liberals since October of last year, and have maintained their links on the left. At first it was more than worth it, as the hits to the blog increased, but as happens so often, things began to fall apart a bit...no real nastiness, but the group is now, and has been for some time, more like just a bunch of bloggers rather than an actual group that works together. This is not to say anything bad about the individual members, they are all very good blogs, but we're all just off in our own separate ways, and there isn't a lot of communication or coordination between the assorted members of the League, and while I still get the occasional hit from a League member, I'm really not getting a whole lot out of it.

So I'm asking myself, and I'm asking my fellow League members, is there any reason to maintain the League as it stands? Should I continue to be a part of a group that really isn't a group? Or should we all start all over again to re-forge our alliance? Let's take the next week to decide this and after that we'll see where it goes.

Open Thread: Show 23
I actually finished the show and posted it to the site hours ago, but Blogger was down.
Listen here. Comment below. Remember the lesson of Ed Gruberman.

Dear National Review
The following is a copy of the letter I sent to the National Review Online concerning the article Side Show:

To The "Editors":
In the article "Side Show" NRO April 08, 2004, Cliff May wrote the following:

President Roosevelt waited until after World War II to put in place a commission to investigate what mistakes led to Pearl Harbor.

There are two major things wrong with this statement. The first is that a Pearl Harbor commission was formed under an Executive Order signed by President Roosevelt on 18 December 1941, a mere eleven days after the Pearl attack. The second is that President Roosevelt died well before the Second World War ended. So Mr. May is either stupid for not knowing this, lazy for not bothering to do any research before he made such a ridiculous comment, or just plain lying.

But the greatest wrong is that the NRO "editors" didn't even bother reading the item deeply enough to have these errors corrected before they went to print. This can only lead me to conclude that the editorial staff is either a bunch of incompetents who have no business running a magazine or paying people like May huge sums of money to write this garbage, or they are complicit with May and wish to continue supporting an illegal President engaging in illegal activities that endanger both the country and the world.

Perhaps it bothers you that President Roosevelt was elected four consecutive times, by wide margins with no controversies. Maybe it disturbs you that President Roosevelt saved the country from the crippling economic policies of the greedy bastards who ran the country before the New Deal. Perhaps you are all still dismayed that the current breed of laissez-faire ideologues are doing no better handling the economy than the bunch we ran out of town in 1932. But maybe it's simpler than all that. Maybe you're all just, as the late great Douglas Adams wrote, a bunch of loudmouthed jerks who'll be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

Sincerely,
Joseph Vecchio

Mosaic
Some of you may have seen this already, but for those who haven't, click here

I Guess I'm Just Stupid
We went to a ball game tonight, I treated my wife to a nice game, even went to the expense of getting decent seats. We got our money's worth, as the game went fifteen innings and it was a beautiful night, perfect for baseball.

As we were singing "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" during the seventh inning stretch, I was thinking how wonderful it would be if all the people in the world, people in China and Iraq and Bangladesh, anywhere, could enjoy an evening like ours. I don't mean going to a baseball game specifically, but just going out and enjoying the company of your family and being out "with the crowd" as it were, and I realized all at once how stupid and foolish that thought was. But I guess that's just me. I can't help but want a better world for everyone, and I wish there was some way I could make it so.

But the world isn't like that. Humans kill and do all sorts of evil for every reason imaginable. Even though I'm sure that 80 to 90 percent of the population of the world, if you could possibly get an honest and accurate polling of everyone in the world, would much rather live their lives in peace than fight these endless, pointless wars, the wars would still go on. Even people I know, like BChan, who in person is one of the nicest, friendliest guys you would want to meet, is capable of some of the most vile thoughts, so I guess all that wishing is just naive.

But I can't help myself.

I want something better.

I guess I'm just stupid.

The Freak Show

When everyone is born they get a ticket to the Freak Show. If you're born in America, you get a front row seat.
-George Carlin

I was sick most of the day yesterday, so I spent some time watching TV. I don't watch a lot of TV any more, mainly when I watch it's either reruns or sports. I spend most of my entertainment time on the computer, either reading or writing or doing the radio show. But while flipping channels I came across George Carlin doing an interview on one of Georgia's two PBS stations. This guy is, to me, one of the funniest people who has ever lived, so I enjoy any chance to see him. But funny as he is, he's also one of the most pessimistic people in the world. The Freak Show, as he describes it, is the human race. The participants, the "freaks," are the assorted politicians and power-brokers. Then there are the ones who try to change the freaks, like the ACLU. Most of the rest of us are just observers.

I don't share Mr. Carlin's pessimism, but I understand where he's coming from. Humans are full of greed, hatred, and bloodlust, and it's hard to imagine us breaking out of our old habits. Even the things that are supposed to help us overcome these dark aspects of our lives, like religion, are often used as just another excuse to rob and kill our fellow humans. The ones who propose peace are more often than not killed, and their martyrdon turned into yet another excuse to kill, this time in their name. For six thousand years very little about the human race has really changed, and Mr. Carlin sees no hope for the human race as a species. But unlike Mr. Carlin, I do think there's hope for us, but only after a lot more suffering. As bad as things are now, I think they're better than they were a thousand years ago.

Gov. Howard Dean, during his run for the Presidency, said it as clearly as it can be said: We need to do more than change things at the top, we need to change America, and he's right. The problems we face, as Mr. Carlin pointed out, are of our own making. This is a democratic republic, and we have the ultimate responsibility for what our government does. We put these people into office, we support the laws that make life more difficult. We have to look long and hard at ourselves and ask if this is the country we want, is this the world we want to live in? The change has to come within ourselves, that's more powerful than any laws or military force. Until that change happens, the Freak Show will go on.

Open Thread: Show 22
Listen here. Comment below. Betting windows close in five minutes.

Doing What We Can
The news of the attacks in Iraq and the deaths of twelve more American soldiers unnerved my wife greatly. She was in tears as I called her from work during my last break at 11 pm, as I usually do. Mainly she was upset that she felt powerless to do anything about what was going on. I often feel the same way, this blog and the radio show are pretty inconsequential in the greater scheme of things. I tried doing more when I was with the Dean campaign, but without a car, and working evenings as I do, it was nearly impossible to get as active as I would have liked. Many Dean supporters are still active, using their energy towards building grassroots movements and supporting local candidates. Bloggers like Atrios and Daily Kos help raise money for candidates, sometimes in huge numbers...Sen. Kerry has raised over $25 million from the internet alone from thousands of people who can continue to contribute throughout the campaign, so those who say the blogosphere is meaningless are just full of it.

I do what I can, and I decided that since I couldn't do everything for everybody, I would do what I could to help working people. Soon I will be a card-carrying member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), and I intend to work hard getting union members to work together for their own benefit. Working people who have neither the skills nor the inclination to open their own businesses, or who are content merely to work their jobs and support their families that way, deserve to be treated better than second-class citizens. They are the backbone of our, or any society. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration, Lincoln said. But only in unity can working people get the rewards that they have earned through their hard work.

The soldiers that were killed in Iraq were working people just like you and I. Many of them joined because they could not find work elsewhere, or because they wanted to take advantage of the training and other opportunities that the military has to offer. This does not mean that they had no sense of patriotism, but that patriotism may not have been first and foremost on their minds when they considered volunteering for the service. It is an honorable profession, despite what some of my bretheren on the left would say. But that makes it more imperative, not less, that these soldiers not be forced to risk their lives for any reason other than the legitimate defense of this country. When peaceful means are available they should be used until there is no option. Iraq posed no threat to us or to anyone, our leaders have been lying to us about the nature of this war, and by pursuing it have helped to make the world more dangerous, not less.

The people of Iraq are also, mostly, just like us. They want to support their families and make a better life for themselves, they want the freedom to worship God in their own way, and to have some manner of control over their lives. They are not "barbarians", they are doing exactly what we would do under similar circumstances. I wish I could do more to help them, just as I wish I could do more to help our wonderful, brave soldiers who would rather be home than where they are.

I realize that I'm a very small fish in a very big ocean, but I will continue to do what I can. Some of you out there think I'm foolish or naive for doing this blog and for doing the radio show, some of you think my ideas on life and the world are just wacky. But I am what I am, and as long as I feel as I do I am going to continue to speak out.

Blood
Let's not kid ourselves. Sooner or later it'll have to come down to blood. It always does.

Open Thread: Show 21
Is your boss or supervisor an idiot? Listen here. Comment below. Destiny commands it!

Open Thread: Show 20
Once more, more shows than posts. What the hell is wrong with me? Listen here. Comment below. I don't care if no one commented on the last show, just DO IT!