And then there were none

Today, a horrible crime was committed by an extremist who, in cold blood, gunned down a security guard at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. There is no excuse for such a crime, and I have no tolerance for anyone who thinks the same way or supports this act of hate.

I pray for the family of Stephen T Johns, the security guard killed in the attack, and that justice is served swiftly and coldly against this killer.

Within minutes of discovering the identity and possible onetime military affiliation of the shooter, Shepard Smith, of Fox News, made the following astonishing leap of logic: that this shooting validates the contents of the DHS report labeling veterans as potential right wing extremists. A good synopsis of Smith’s statements and their context to the DHS report can be found at Mudville Gazette. In one statement, Smith and Fox News advanced the damage already caused by the original report. Now, the leftist blogsphere is alight with the very kind of rhetoric that has spilled into every channel of media blovating, including now Fox.

Unfortunately for Smith and all of the other people out there who want to desperately believe that those who serve in the military, support the idea smaller government, and believe that people should be able to believe whatever they want even if it offends others, the murderer in this case proves nothing about the DHS report. The murderer was 89 years old, may have never served in the military (the only available confirmation of his service is his own claim that he served), but was an extremist in every other sense. The report, on the other hand, is explicit in its reference to modern veterans returning from places like Iraq and Afghanistan:

(U) Disgruntled Military Veterans

(U//FOUO) DHS/I&A assesses that right-wing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat. These skills and knowledge have the potential to boost the capabilities of extremists—including lone wolves or small terrorist cells—to carry out violence. The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today.

–from Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment (.pdf)

Now, it no longer matters what the facts of the shooting are and what the DHS report said. The cultural meme that veterans are dangerous extremists who murder people out of hatred has been created and will continue to persist. Now, people who do not bother to differentiate between those with legitimate philosophical disagreements about beliefs and politics will be even more invigorated in their intolerance of people with differing views.

It does not help that too many people out there in the ether of the internet take their disagreements to extremes when responding to such events on both extremes of political belief. People sending email to Shepard Smith today only reinforced the stereotypes too many people have of the conservatively minded as surely as liberals have done in past instances, only proving how uninformed and reactionary they are themselves.

We live in a time of strong, sometimes even radical, disagreements about the way forward for our nation and for the world. I have been a part of that debate for a long time, and it saddens me more than I can convey with these words that our national discourse has degraded into shouting and increasingly hostile accusations against one side or the other. Certainly, I believe that some of the things being done by liberals are destructive to our country, and I believe it is my place to argue against those actions with the hope that something like the middle ground–and often the best–solutions can be achieved.

However, I do not now, nor will I ever condone violence against those with whom I disagree either now or ever. The threshold for taking up arms in support or opposition is very high, something anyone who has sworn the oath to protect and defend the Constitution should inherently understand.

The distinction between this view and that of the murder in question is rapidly being lost, and with that loss comes the loss of the very things the veterans now being steadily maligned hold dear. I ask the same question now as when this idea first reared its ugly head: what happens when those who have decided that what their nation stands for is worth fighting for are no longer willing to do so because what they believe in has become criminal? How can any nation survive criminalizing a way of thinking? How can any nation survive criminalizing its defenders?

First they came for the Communists but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists but I was not one of them, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews but I was not Jewish so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.

Martin Niemoeller

We are sliding down a very slippery slope. God help us all.

Soft Money Suit

So, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Republican Party has filed a law suit to finally destroy what's left of the McCain-Feingold laws governing soft-money contributions to political campaign

"Mr. Duncan, the RNC chairman, said the soft-money rules are too broad and prevent the party from participating in state-level races in which no federal politicians are running for office. The rules as written would also prevent the party from directly participating in state redistricting, which will begin following the 2010 census, and from lobbying on state issues."

Didn't the 50-state ground game waged by Mr. Obama and Howard Dean just disprove that thesis? Big donations weren't the key to the Obama electoral college landslide... it was the ground organization that put them over. I'm not saying the man got to the Whitehouse without big donors, but it was the small donors, millions and millions of them making small donations made one at a time, again and again by normal people who put him in Washington atop a wave of populism.

I'm the first to admit that - for better or worse - Barack Obama's fundraising juggernaut changed the face of American politics, especially presidential elections. This still seems like the GOP is fighting the last war rather than learning from the thrashing they just took and applying those lessons in the new arena.

Isn't the Republican party missing the lesson of this election? Do they think that "This Candidate Brought To You By AT&T" is going to trump "This Message Made Possible By 100 Million People Just Like You"?

Or am I the one who is missing something here? What's the angle?

Nebraska's Camel

This morning, I was reading news and blog postings on the ongoing situation in Nebraska and it got me thinking...

First of all: I'm not going to defend the law. It's a mess, there is no doubt. I have any number of friends from NE who may well respond to this and I encourage them to do so. I would love to hear from you.

On the whole, I think it's important to acknowledge that this legislation came from a good place and is the result of Nebraska lawmakers being progressive in the only way that the state as a whole generally allows.

But it's nevertheless a camel: A horse built by a committee.

Nebraska's history in the realm of child welfare is one spot where they can be justifiably proud of their record. Boystown and Girlstown are institutions of great merit, or so I believe. In some ways, I see this as an extension of that history, and an attempt to pave a highway with good intentions... but we all know where such roads inevitably lead.

I lived in Omaha for a time and found the experience not at all as appalling as my blue-state cohorts would assume. But the winters very nearly defy description. I'm not sure I can adequately describe to those who have not experienced it the full brunt of a Nebraska winter what it is like. Maybe the number of people posting here who live in Ohio makes that unnecessary, but it's true. I have been caught in blizzards high atop Rocky Mountain passes, weathered nights in a tent at temperatures well into the negatives and even lived in Milwaukee... and nothing compares to the full brunt of Nebraska's winds howling in off the great plains, coating the world in a rime of ice. It is beautiful if viewed from a cozy redoubt, assuming you don't want to go anywhere until it passes.

And I remember all too well stories of babies found abandoned and blue in the fierce winters of that corner of the world. Anything done to save a child from such a fate is worth the effort, even when the results are so tragic as these have been.

Of course, the larger and most devastating part of this is the lives of the children so abandoned, their families shattered. Older children brought in from out of state by parents pushed beyond their limits. Using statistics I found in one blog, 33 of them since the law's inception. (I'll attempt to verify those numbers later, they're only peripherally germane to this commentary.)

I don't know any of those families, I don't share their situations, and I won't pretend to understand what drove them to act in extremis in the manner which has garnered so much national press coverage.

Parenting in this country is a quiet and growing tragedy and this is simply the exposed wound that has been hidden, quietly progressing into gangrenous rot. Not entirely unlike the manner in which the aftermath of Katrina/Rita forced us to realize the depths of racial division still extant in our country and the tragic poverty that still grips far too many. So too with the rearing of children, and now that the bandage is off, and the exodus of parents with children they cannot afford or cannot handle turns toward the Sand Hills... I ask: now what?

The problem lies in the attempt to find solutions to the symptoms without addressing the disease. This attempt to legislate away the point of the lance, fails to take into account the shaft of the weapon or the momentum of the rider and horse. Ignoring my personal outrage as someone who would give anything to be a parent that any children are 'unwanted', there are deeper issues here than this or any law can adequately address. The problem lies deeper than the disposition of unwanted children, the problem lies in the societal forces creating children who will one day fall into this category.

Our national discourse on sex and procreation is a travesty. Our culture wars are operating on a layer too thin, a veneer over the real issues. As we argue about the sanctity of life and marriage we forget the rest of the lives we are so cavalierly ignoring in favor of these two universal points.

What greater good are we serving by saving a fetus only to abandon the child?

What greater good are we serving by telling Barry he cannot marry David if we're telling young Louise that the MUST marry Jimmy?

What greater good are we serving by refusing to discuss the results of a child's actions when those actions might result in more children?

Even the best intended legislation cannot solve any of these issues by addressing the results but not the causes. This cultural war will never reach an armistice at the ballot box. Just as the Gordian Knot could only be untied by Alexander's sword, a more direct and comprehensive solution is called for...

Unfortunately, I don't know where to find Alexander's sword anymore than Nebraska's lawmakers do. Or California's. Or the ones in Washington DC for that matter. I do know that the greater good can only be served by opening up the floor for a more reasoned debate and taking one more step back from these issues to better see the full scope of the decisions that are so quickly desolved into soundbytes for the next election cycle.

In the words of Albert Einstein: "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

Godspeed, everyone.

The whole video

Because these words make more sense when viewed in context...

Amusing

more music charts

The Myth of Corporate Greed

I heard it again today. With the so-called "financial crisis" making hot and heavy headlines, the phrase has been running rampant: corporate greed. "We must fight corporate greed." "We must not reward corporate greed." The problem with these understandably emotional verbal skewers of corporate greed is that corporate greed is a myth. It doesn't exist.

Surely that is a ludicrous statement to make, that corporate greed doesn't exist. Corporations are well known for shipping jobs off shore, fixing books, lobbying for corporate-friendly legislation, and now, taking tax-payer dollars to bail them out of financial crisis. Only an idiot would say that corporate greed does not exist, right? Maybe. I mean, I could be an idiot, but that assessment is a separate issue from the myth of corporate greed.

Here's the thing: a corporation is just a legal classification and grouping of assets and people. A corporation is inanimate. It cannot be greedy. You want a villain? Here they are: people. People are greedy. Is this a distinction without a difference? I don't think so.

When we make a monolith of something we bascially create a black box around the facts. The black box effect is one that I observed in my time as a technical writer. Software developers would refer to any system or part thereof that we had to interact with, but didn't need to understand, as a black box. In other words, we didn't need to understand the inner workings of the thing, we just need to know what input or output was necessary from our system to interact with the black box. Our whiteboards were full of drawings of black boxes.

When we make a black box of corporations we fail to understand that people and, in many cases, individuals make the decisions for a corporation. A person or group of people can be greedy and often times are. These are the people who may well deserve our wrath and certainly deserve our scrutiny. These are the people that we must seek to remove to ensure that our corporations are healthy and can serve their higher purpose.

When we allow ourselves to believe that corporations are bad, we miss out on all that they do and can do for us. When ethical people run corporations, or a business of any size, they provide jobs for us and our neighbors. They pump not only money, but products and services into our economy. They solve problems. A business under ethical leadership that pursues its goal of profit with a broad definition of that term -- one that encompasses not only CEO and stockholder profits, but also profit to the employees and community in which it is situated -- is a boon to all it comes in contact with. It is, in a very real way, the key to the American dream.

The things that plague us in our time and every time -- evil, greed, hate -- are individual sins, if you will. To attack the vehicle by which individuals or groups of individuals commit their acts of evil is to miss the target. Corporations, competition, the search for profit, these are not inherently bad things. In fact, they can be quite beneficial when they are run or pursued with ethical energy.

You want to attack greed? Attack greed in individuals -- including yourself. That is where the problem lies. When individuals pursue more than what they need or just more than what they can reasonably use, bad things are sure to result for those left in the wake.

I don't know if that is compelling to you. It may still seem to be a pedantic difference. It matters to me because for a long time I believed business was bad. I didn't want to have any part of it. But this irrational view kept me from being able to improve both my economic condition and my life in a broader sense as well. Taking an active role in an ethical business is one of the most rewarding experiences, not only on a financial level, but from the sense of accomplishment that comes from solving a problem or actually creating something.

I know too many good young people who want nothing to do with business because they view it as a greedy blight on the world. The problem is, that attitude robs business of truly talented and ethical people who could actually make a difference by contributing to a well-run business, thereby making not only their own lives, but the lives of others better. That's a difference worth making and that's the difference that results from making the distinction between corporations and the greedy people who sometimes run them.