The Exception

No, such people aren't made like that. The real master to whom all is permitted storms Toulon, commits a butchery in Paris, forgets an army in Egypt, wastes half a million men on his Moscow campaign, and gets off with a pun at Vilna. And when he dies they dedicate monuments to him. So it follows that all is permitted. No, it's clear, such people are made of bronze, not flesh and blood!

- Raskolnikov Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"To every rule let there be an exception." These words the goddess spoke on the first day in the life of the universe, and her voice still echoes today through creation. Now what is the nature of this most curious rule? Would it apply to the ethic in question? That is that even this rule should have an exception, and occasionally there are rules that should not be broken? I ask this in relation to many things, maybe first on the list would be killing and war. Is war the exception to the commandment thou shalt not kill? The most curious case of this particular rule being broken I believe, is Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. You may remember this character for his theories about the exceptions and the rules. He believed himself to be the exception in matters of life and death. That is, if he could create some greater good with a terrible deed, he may not only effect that good, but further demonstrate himself to be an exceptional being. You may also remember that he came to a terrible end, as much a consequence of an accident as because he was not up to the original intent. In this case he had to kill to protect himself from the repercussions of his action. An innocent standing by became a collateral death. It haunted him to the extent that he was broken by it, only to be rescued by a pious woman who secures his salvation with her own devoted forgiveness.

It occurs to me that we as a nation are in the throes of just such a transformation in relation to Afghanistan and Iraq. Regarding the latter we, I believe, are deep in the agonies of self conscious realization of the terrible sin we have committed. All our plans best laid have been misdirected, and met with the realities of a resistant world. If only the minds in think tank chambers had considered the risk to our collective sanity when they sought a greater good by breaking sacred rules. Not only have we killed those who stood in the way, but we have killed very many who could not get out of the way. It seems this is a pattern formed in this modern world, of nations sacrificing their souls to effect greater goods that never seem to be the consequence anyway in the end. In Afghanistan more blood will be shed, and no greater greater good is to be had in that land than in the other. Instead we will only reap more anger and resentment. Soon the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan will all but cease to exist. Or at least much of what exists to the north of it, will exist equally to the south. Can we then as a nation further bankrupt ourselves to pursue with ever more high priced weapons and priceless human lives, those who threaten us from that mysterious land? Is there not instead an alternative?

What would the world be like if some rules applied without exception? Would there be fewer gruesome examples of mans inhumanity to man if as a nation we lived by an exceptional creed? If certain rules applied to all, equally, and without aberration. If those who were guilty were civilly treated and sanctioned in ways that did not violate our oath. Would not there be a degree of fairness that bound us together as an exceptional nation? I understand the need in the world we are emerging from for might to prevent the malign from trampling the meek. Although, it is hard to find examples of our use of force to prevent such atrocities. Rather we have most often used force to defend our financial interests, or our interests in other people’s resources. I propose that it is now that the transformative power of peace can be an alternative to our failed foreign policy of dominance and force. May our aspirations to equality, assuring every person the respect they deserve, enable the inspirational uniqueness of each one of us to be freely expressed at liberty, and let justice prevail when human nature does not compel us to do good. This I do believe would be the true exception to the rule, and it may even restore our sanity in time.

The Present Age

If someone were to overhear what people said ought to be done, and then in the spirit of irony, and for no other reason, proceeded to act accordingly everyone would be amazed. They would find it rash, yet as soon as they had talked it over they would find that it was just what should be done.
- Soren Kierkegaard The Present Age

The age in which we live is the age beyond invention, the age in which everything has a reference, and nothing stands uniquely alone. It is an age in which institutions from political parties to religions have become cowardly simpering caricatures of what they might have been in some deeper more sincere age. The towering American edifice lay in smoldering, belching, stinking ruin. From baseball to automobiles to agriculture to motherhood the age is replete with tawdry, hollow imitation. It is of course not a condition limited to America, we are very much a global society in a stupor. I think of China’s hollow communist party and still more hollow capitalism, Russia’s gilded iron fist and India’s hidden castes. There is not the courage among them to embrace fully their own ideologies, everything must be tempered so as not to upset the markets. The great armies of the earth built on noble principle are ranked with corruption. We fail to even respectfully elevate war to its demigod station.

It seems as though we sometimes achieve great things in spirit, but in practice we fail to manage the really exceptional outcomes. Not long after the stimulus package began to gel around a particular monetary value, the critics including those voices on the economy I most respect, began to warn that it simply was not big enough. The moment had come to pass legislation that could remake the American economy, retool our energy infrastructure and modernize our public facilities and institutions, and we had not (yet) seized it. The calm rational voices reassured us that we could not likely have gotten more, considering the slim victory in the US Senate and the opposition in the House. The remnants of the Republican party in Washington were going to reinforce their positions and obstruct to the last congressperson. The media was going to play the advocate of the diabolical, and after all, no one was sure it would work. It is here that I will introduce the idea that there is nothing necessary for the legislation to do beyond all of the particulars. I mean the tangible projects directly undertaken. I think it is clear to most by now that we should not be attempting to restore the economy as we knew it. On the contrary, the intention should be to initiate the creation of something new. If instead the efforts are judged by their ability to reinvigorate the broken system of exploitation and greed we are now emerging from, then I do sorely hope that they fail. Here we are, at this point of opportunity, not unlike the one we stood upon on September twelfth in 2001. May we not see this moment in the same light from some future vantage point.

I wonder about this present age, and about what is possible for us. So much of what we dared not imagine emerges momentarily. It is in these times when it seems there is something in fact to seize, that contemplation may become the subtle obstructor. It will not be a sound excuse to claim that we faced opposition, or that there were doubts, or that the media misled us in a most naive and innocent way. In fact we are now compelled to reach for the exceptional. The exception of which I speak is not a further perfection of something that already exists, it is the invention of some thing entirely novel. Nietzsche refers to “great” individuals or ideas, and how one either exists before or after them. An element of the exceptional is an exceptional impact. Before there can be that impact, we must act. This exceptional action cannot be left to the governments or the institutions that loom above us, but it must be how we all proceed from here.

The End of the Republican Party

New Struggles - After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave - a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. - And we - we still have to vanquish his shadow, too.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science 108

Could the irony be any more striking? With the swearing in of Barack Obama on the bible of Abraham Lincoln, the age of the Republican party has all but come to an end. As the last foolish utterances ring out in the radio station studios, and those wise enough among the members move to join the blue dogs and centrists or welcome the new president into their states, I can see the future of the Grand Old Party and it is grim. It will be said that bitterness and self interest in the end did them in. Their frantic babble screeching over the airwaves, demanding that their sophistry be heard as truth. Ah how satisfying it is to finally see the people of America awakened by the double dealing and dirty deeds of their Republican masters. Finally aware of having been lied to and misled they seem to have awakened from some ill gotten unconsciousness.

Could this in fact be the final days of the Republican party? Their extensive free market habitat has been decimated by mismanagement and human nature. The range that once supported herds of unbridled capitalists is now populated with advocates of sensible trade policy and even a few rare specimens willing to nationalize banks. Yes, I think it will not be long before the now ancient belief in a ‘center right’ America is seen to be false, and the country is understood to be ‘center left’ as it is. Thus the fraud that has enabled the persistence of the radical ideology of Republicanism, wrapped in the guise of conservativeness, will lose its enabling mythology and drift into oblivion.

There can be no question about the associations between right wing media and rabid capitalism and exaggerated fear of foreign enemies and the amplified uncertainties of society. What was it after all that provided the Republicans with one final age of significance but foreign revolutionaries driven by religious zealotry and urban unrest in America fueled by incongruities among the people based on race and means? What was provided the capitalists if not an opportunity to exercise rampant greed and self interest? The American people, concerned for their safety fixed their eyes on uncertain enemies and entrusted the country to the Republicans. In the intervening years of corruption and unscrupulous governance, American wealth and influence has been drawn into the pockets of the sleek suited millionaires of Wall street assisted by the dimwitted nationalists of the airwaves. Their age of influence is now drawing to an undignified close.

What then is it that finally vanquished this enemy of rationalism? This counter to progress? This impostor who feigns piety and scruples in order to win the praise and loyalty of the naive devotees of the ancient religions? This murderous and despicable assemblage of compassionless and hard-hearted self interested villains of the modern age? I will answer this uncomplicated question with the most complex answer imaginable. Hope. What lies beneath this hope and elevates it to the status of dragon slayer? Courage. What bolsters this courage and enables its steadfastness? Rationalism. What fuels this rationalism and builds it into a sound and unfailing footing? Transparency. What capacitates this transparency and imparts its almost magical power to build hope upon courage and courage upon rationalism? Truth.

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners, and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science 125

The Farmer or the Financier

Again I come to you with questions. The scalpel this time in my hand. For farmers are not a monolithic herd, nor financiers in matters of variety. Undoubtedly there are those who see their wealth as a means to encourage and enable. They see every dollar as a dream that can be realized by another. It has occurred to me in the past that if you have too many good ideas to develop on your own, then giving them away is the ethical course. It has also occurred to me that intellectual property will be seen very differently in the future. What one can amply develop is not only an opportunity but a responsibility. If this development is novel, and cannot be matched by another, then so much more incumbent is the task. However, should one be unable to pursue an endeavor, it seems to me that it is an ethical responsibility to make it available to others who are able and capable. A sort of licensing that is driven not by the potential for profit and control, but instead motivated by an ethical imperative. I think the twenty first century will be a century of selflessness, or a century of despair.

I myself am a farmer. I say this with some reservation, as the farmer is an iconic image and I do not measure up to the ideal. The pigs see me as a farmer I think, and the goats. The milk tastes like the milk a farmer would drink, the pork tastes like meat that a farmer would eat. The myriad fruits and vegetables in cans and burlap seems to me to be the provisions of a farmer. I think I am a peasant farmer, much like my Irish ancestors were farmers before the famine. What enables this largely is the richness of this country. Truly America is a land of plenty even today, even after so much has been extracted an abundance awaits our endeavor. So as a consequence of kindness, I am able to be a peasant farmer and rejoice in my opportunity well aware of the blessings bestowed upon me. The loans come at very fair rates, so fair in fact that I invent ways to overpay my lender. If only it were this way in the wider world.

When the financiers reverted to some wild state of being, crept back into the jungle and cultivated the predatory spirit, they sought soft prey to exploit. It was the plump juicy flesh of the tender consumer that they sought, led into a condition of being beyond their means. Ripe for entrapment, they followed the voices on their televisions. They listened to the voices from the radio in their sport utility vehicles. They obeyed the waving and dancing fool beside the road who sufficiently enticed them into wanting things, things upon things. Awe what a trap we have laid for ourselves, and now we will indemnify the beast and damn the gentle lamb. Let it be said of us at least that we saw the crimes committed, even lamented, although we did nothing to stop it.

So, to the question. Who is it we will revere, who will have our solace in these trying times? Will it be the farmer? Whether she sits in a massive machine, tending a thousand acres in a day, or creeps from row to row on her knees speaking in hush tones to each seed, the farmer today embodies an ancient spirit. One that seeks to multiply and understand and adapt and produce. Or will it be the financier? Whether he bends his knees beneath a mahogany desk, or sits on squeaky wheels with elbows on formica, the financier is too an icon in America. One that seeks to calculate and amortize and dictate terms and profit. I above all things seek to appreciate the world in its entirety. I read the first commandment from my childhood to demand this of me, worship no single thing above the unity of all things. Yet in this case I ask myself and I ask you who shall it be; the farmer or the financier?

Life by a Thousand Breaths

I remember how I felt upon returning to Washington State in September of 2004. I had completed an incredible journey that had taken me to the Democratic and Republican national conventions, in Boston and NYC respectively. I returned hopeful that Bush would be defeated, it seemed then that everything I had learned on that trip pointed to a Bush defeat. It is hard to say what really happened a month or so later, but even if Kerry had won, my enthusiasm for him had been limited to the speech he had given to congress as a young Vietnam War veteran. Beyond that I found him to be practically free of character, he was a man without qualities.

It seemed like days after the election, in a hopeless gloom that I believe will be unmatched by any future period of my life, the phrase “He’s ready. Why wait?...” first entered my ear. I had missed his speech to the convention in Boston, I was outside in the streets. When I found my way to the exceedingly lovely home of a good friend’s parents outside of the city that night, it was all they were talking about. Later when I saw the speech, heard it first and then later watched it online, I saw a nervous man, who was anything but tenuous. It was the urgency in his tone, it was the clear recognition by him of the weight of his responsibility to his message. I always said that I liked it best when Jerry Garcia stepped to the microphone to sing a lyric after a long mystical jam that had exceeded his own expectations of it. He appeared to me to be ‘at gunpoint’ he had no choice but to step forward and sing. His life depended on it. That is what I saw in Barack Obama when I watched that speech from the convention.

For the interceding years, I have suffered in my heart the travails of our world. I would have done that no matter what had happened regarding the executive branch of the US government. I am sufficiently skeptical of the government to not blame it for all of the worlds troubles. My pain was compounded however by the reckless, arrogant, ignorant, incurious, absent and sometimes plain malign occupant of the White House. It was not the major events, the big decisions the tremendous errors that eroded my spirit so much as the daily degradation, the ocean of despair filled with a million tears, shed for a million tragedies.

Throughout those years, the tune would ring again in my head on occasion. In fact I sang it out often. Interchanging the lines of the verse randomly, annoying the hell out of my daughter. I am sure a few people first learned who Obama was from me, singing that tune. Many of them said then that there was no way a black man would be elected president of the United States. Especially one named Barack Obama, William Jefferson maybe but... I attended our caucus in Washington State, and vigorously supported Barack Obama. I spoke on his behalf, and dismissed the concerns about too many rednecks in the country for a black president to be elected. I assured the concerned woman by citing my own red neck concealed by my own long hair, and citing my childhood in Pennsylvania as a source for evidence about why he would in fact win the state in the general. Without my encouraging, my precinct was overwhelmingly supporting Barack Obama.

Today Ruth Bader Ginsburg underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer. I breathed a sigh of relief. Utah wilderness was spared the drill bit and the hydraulic fluid spills that accompany exploration and extraction. Yesterday millionaire executives were publicly humiliated for their solipsism. An offer was made to Russia that would reduce ICBMs by 80%. An attorney general who considers torture illegal, and believes justice applies to everyone equally was confirmed. A few days earlier an envoy was sent to the middle east with instructions to listen. School children were read to by the first black president. Secret prisons were closed. Rendition was returned to its pre-Bush era criteria. Aid agencies were relieved of the fear that religious zealots would demand they return funds for discussing forbidden medical procedures with clients. Science replaced desired outcomes as the means to determine policy. A president addressed the muslim world as a coherent and sensible partner for cooperation. After what feels like many years of the steady dripping erosion of my spirit this is what life by a thousand breaths feels like.

We Are All Humans Now

Members of the Olympia Community gathered for a funeral procession through the streets of Olympia in honor of those individuals killed in the Israeli assault on Gaza. In attendance were Craig and Cindy Corrie, parents of Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an Israeli armored bulldozer in Raffah refugee camp in Gaza in 2001. I remember meeting the Nasrallah family, who’s home Rachel had been protecting when she was killed, with the Corries at the KAOS radio station in 2005. We were there for consecutive interviews. I remember looking painfully into the eyes of Samah Nasrallah and reaching for words to convey my good intentions to her. The feeling that I could not effectively communicate how much I supported them and their family and their community. I was struck by how helpless I felt. How I was left feeling powerless and disconnected.

In the days leading up to the procession on Saturday January 17th 2009, Gaza had been the target of the most mercilessly violent assault I have ever personally witnessed. In the name of national security, Israel had unleashed her arsenal of high tech high power weapons with tremendously destructive effect. Innocent and defenseless women and children and non-combatants representing those most devastatingly impacted. Images of dismembered children, eyes burned shut, legs reduced to stumps wrapped in bandages, lips clenched with pain and confusion streamed onto the internet. Segments on Al Jazeera told of medics so brave that they rushed back out into the streets to retrieve wounded as soon as their own injuries had been tended. One recounting the words of his lost comrade saying, even if he lost one of his own legs he would hop back into the streets to save the innocents. Israel shamelessly targeted these brave and devoted Palestinian medics, shooting at them as they attempted to retrieve the wounded.

Nothing was safe from the weapons of the IDF. UN schools where children huddled with their mothers in fear were hit, dozens died. Whole families were rounded up and herded into buildings where they were prevented from leaving when the shelling began, they died as they had lived, together. In the end even relief supplies, medicine and food, were hit. Burned by phosphorous munitions that are banned by international law for use in such a criminal fashion. Miles of roads were destroyed with heavy machinery, making a return to normal life impossible. The people of Gaza were in desperate straits before this assault, the blockade having reduced them to captives in a refugee camp. Now that refugee camp has been destroyed, detonated and inflamed with white phosphorous. Fathers and mothers like the Nasrallahs have lost children. Children are without parents and brothers and sisters. Whatever semblance of civility and normalcy there had been in Gaza, is now reduced to rubble.

When the trade towers fell in 2001, the citizens of the United States of America felt a distinct camaraderie. The flag that had been burned and torn in its decent from the top of the tallest building in Manhattan was raised up. The rally around the flag began. I wondered then as I do now; why that flag? I mean, why not the flag of NYC or New York State? Down the street the flags of every nation fly, why not the flag of the United Nations? Certainly people of many nationalities died that day. The strike may have been intended to hit US targets, but in the days of globalization it is easily argued that it was a strike against the western world as much as it was a strike on American soil.

On September 12, the Paris paper Le Monde printed 'We're all Americans now'. With this they bridged the Atlantic and the many political divides between the left in France and the rapidly right moving 21st century America. This was how they showed their deep concern for the horrors perpetrated that day, they had taken on the mantle of our national identity. But in the end, innocents in Afghanistan payed the price for this alignment. They could not claim to be Americans, and seek the protections and opportunities it affords.

When Russia rolled a column of vehicles through a tunnel into a disputed Georgian province, then candidate McCain stated with artificial meaning the same line with the substituted Georgians in place of Americans; 'We are all Georgians now.' In addition to wishing to rekindle the fears of Americans that had worked so well to keep Republicans in the white house in the intervening years, he was also wanting us to take sides. Choose a flag, choose an identity. In the end the apartment blocks burned in South Ossetia, and innocents died in the rubble.

I can only speak for myself. I have not been given any greater authority to speak than that. But what I see in Gaza today has led me to a different conclusion than those I cited above. The burned and tattered flag in this case is not a national flag, but the flag of humanity. I am not a Palestinian today, I am a human. I choose the human identity, the one that leads me to defend humanity from inhumanity. The identity that leads me to seek peace and prosperity and a future for all of our children that they can rejoice in. It is in this way that I end my isolation and empower myself to strengthen my connection with the Nasrallah family and all of those good and noble who have lost so much in Gaza. It is not up to Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Israel, it is up to all of us. After all; ‘We are all humans now’.

Thoughts on Gaza

Language prevents us from understanding these events well enough to stop them or prevent them. The details of the truce and the rocket fire and the settlement agreements would matter very much if all parties to the conflict agreed that justice should determine the outcome. Contrarily, the parties have allowed their ideologies to extinguish their idealism.

I have a natural predisposition as an Irish Catholic to hold in high regard militant resistance, it is a romantic appeal that circumvents my rational mind. It is evident that many people of Jewish descent are quite satisfied to see a nuclear armed Israel pummeling its helpless neighbors with the most advanced weaponry on earth, immune to the worlds castigation. These emotions crush our humanity.

Through a carefully crafted campaign, we have all been deceived into believing that the two state solution is the just outcome, and the parties need only follow a roadmap to peace. This language is intended to beguile us, making real peace and justice impossible. In reality the two state solution is a cover for genocide, the roadmap to peace is a gilded veil for strategic warfare. Separate but equal is a conception of ruthless oppression. The strategists use language to conceal their treachery in the guise of law and order and self defense.

Without question there are individuals worthy of condemnation who claim to be acting on behalf of Palestinians. This in no way indicates a moral equivalency between the actions of the Palestinian people and the actions of the Israeli Defense Forces. As was the case when Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006, civilians are the target of Israeli fire. Any analysis of available statistics will support this conclusion; Israel intentionally kills civilians. They kill children because they will grow up to be militants, they kill women because they will bear more children to replace those killed. I say this without hesitation and with every confidence that it is a stated objective within the ranks of the Israeli Defense Forces. I do not defend the firing of primitive rockets into Israel, they are the consequence of failed Israeli policy, and serve the Israeli government far better than they threaten the Israeli people or further the cause of the Palestinians.

Israel has a national policy of genocide. Israel has a national policy of demonizing and dehumanizing its enemies. Israel undertakes psychological operations to manipulate political figures and the press in Europe and America to further its agenda. Any attempt to excuse Israeli actions in Lebanon or in Gaza is a dishonest effort born of an ideological loyalty to the state of Israel that will not be altered by empirical evidence. I conclude this as a result of careful analysis and not as a result of any ideological discrimination against Israel based on the race or religion of its citizens.

Palestinians are Semites. I reject any accusations of anti-semitism. I reject ideology that does not modify itself based upon empirical evidence that stands to contradict it. I oppose the willful murder of women and children and non-combatants to further any ideology, wether it be Zionism or America's own Manifest Destiny. I will never weaken my condemnation of the actions of the Israeli Defense Forces by equivocating their actions with the actions of the resistance in Palestine. I vehemently support and defend the right of individuals to participate peacefully in the conduct of global affairs, and I further support and defend the right of peoples to take arms in their own defense when their lives and liberty and culture and ancestral land is threatened by force, even when it is overwhelming force. I strongly and unequivocally support the people's resistance in Palestine.

I remember when Israel withdrew from gaza, and the analogy of the huge open air prison came into common parlance. The thought of families crowded into refugee camps become slum cities, dependent upon hostile and unsympathetic neighbors to provide them the necessities: fuel, water, electricity, medicine. The rumor at the time was that it was part of a larger plan, a model devised by Israeli strategists. They would be back with a vengeance when the opportunity presented itself.

The duplicitous goal of Israel has historically been to demonize the Palestinian natives while simultaneously ruthlessly destroying their way of life. There has been no hint of shame from Israel nor from her allies. These include, of course, the United States of America, after all she too demonized and destroyed her natives. What surely cannot be said is that Israel has any greater right to exist than the native peoples of Palestine, additionally it cannot be said that Israel is a democracy in any meaningful way. Israel is a state of entitlements based upon loyalty and blood.

At one time Judaism was a bastion of the disputative process. Today the skills developed over generations of devoted intellectualism are being bent and misshapen to sophisticatedly defend the indefensible. The sophists are equipped and willing to defend their cause regardless of its failure to adhere to the truth. Today Israel and her apologists are careful and calculated with their language, knowing that truth and morality and the demography of the future are not on their side.

The Israelis have been offering 'warnings' to civilians to abandon their homes in the north and the south of Gaza. Wether the effected families heed these warnings and run for their lives or not, Israeli military operations proceed, killing or wounding anyone who might have stayed behind. Should medics attempt a rescue of wounded civilians they too are fired upon. Once these military operations are complete, Israel is bulldozing the homes that have been emptied.

This is not an attempt to end the firing of Hamas rockets into Israel. This operation is an attempt to humiliate the Palestinian people, punish them for their election of the political party Hamas, and further the careers of Israeli politicians, effectively wiping their defeat in Lebanon out of the minds of the Israeli populous.

These events are extremely painful to witness, and the natural instinct for those of us so removed from them is to deny them or manufacture simple exculpatory conclusions that do not abide by the facts. There is no question that war crimes are being committed, and that we and our government are complicit. What is most painful is to witness Israeli and US officials reading intentionally deceitful talking points that are designed to sophisticatedly mislead and mischaracterize. These are the most brazen crimes, even beyond those crimes of warfare, crimes of deep deceit. Those of us who vehemently condemn these acts are in good company, and as long as our resistance is unrelenting we will be remembered fondly. Our condemnations should be unequivocal, these crimes are inexcusable. The merciless killing of captive civilian refugees with the most advanced and destructive weapons ever devised by humanity is infinitely amplified by the brazen and heartless defense made by the well groomed masters of humanity in Washington DC and Tel Aviv. If we allow these crimes to be committed in our silent midst, we are in a meaningful way as culpable.