Back to school again.

I have officially started classes again. Soon I will be inundated with readings and papers and such. And in that spirit, I present this:

Be still my beating heart.

Today is finally the day.



It's been too long. Come back to me, baby.

What this all means.

So I was going to write some deep, introspective analysis of my feelings about this day, about how every time I take a step back to think about what just happened today... it's overwhelming. I was going to give it a title like "Dear Barack Obama: A Letter from a Person Clinging to Hope." But then Jay Smooth had to go ahead and say it all and say it better. So I'm going to save myself some time, get back to watching the inauguration balls, and let Jay Smooth say the rest.

Good riddance.

Via Feministe, I found out about another way to signal an end to the Bush years--with a view of my shoe. Organized by Lisa at My Ecdysis, I am joining other bloggers and borrowing a page from Muntader al-Zaidi, the 29-year-old Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at Bush to demonstrate his anger at the destruction that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq has inflicted. And here it is.



Muntader al-Zaidi was jailed after the incident, and he had only been allowed two visitors--and none since December 21. According to this New York Times article, he was allowed a visitor on Friday and continued to show signs of having been beaten. He is also now seeking asylum in Switzerland.

A true revolution of values.

About five years ago, I was listening to the radio and I tuned in partway through the program. I could tell that they were broadcasting a speech and that it was one I had not heard before. The speaker explained why he opposed the Vietnam War, and it took me many minutes before I realized that it was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Because, while I had learned about him and the civil rights struggle in school, I had learned the most palatable version. The one that talked about how he believed in people being judged by the content of their character, and how he led a march on Washington, and how--if it wasn't for him--black kids and white kids would still be segregated in schools. Aside from the way that obscures what goes into movement-building and all the people who participate, which is a discussion in and of itself, I had learned about a version of Martin Luther King that did not present a challenge to the status quo today.

But that's only a sliver of his story. Here is a YouTube video with the audio of his speech explaining his opposition to the war. I want to pull out the few passages that resonate for me:

As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action; for they ask and write me, "So what about Vietnam?" They ask if our nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without first having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence I cannot be silent.

[...]

This is a role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolutions impossible but refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that comes from the immense profits of overseas investments. I'm convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.

[...]

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Here is the transcript linked to on the YouTube page, which is actually more complete than the audio (which seems to have clips edited out).

A countdown from the past eight years.

Stonewall just sent me this list from Harper’s Index. Since I’m already gearing up for inauguration day tomorrow, it seemed like a good time to recall the fuckedupedness of the past eight years. You should read the whole list, but here are a few that jumped out at me, for various reasons:

Number of news stories from 1998 to Election Day 2000 containing “George W. Bush” and “aura of inevitability”: 206

Date on which the GAO sued Dick Cheney to force the release of documents related to current U.S. energy policy: 2/22/02

Number of other officials the GAO has sued over access to federal records: 0

Percentage of Americans in 2006 who believed that U.S. Muslims should have to carry special I.D.: 39

Percentage of the amendments in the Bill of Rights that are violated by the USA PATRIOT Act, according to the ACLU: 50

Minimum number of laws that Bush signing statements have exempted his administration from following: 1,069

Portion of Baghdad residents in 2007 who had a family member or friend wounded or killed since 2003: 3/4

Portion of [Bush's] presidency he has spent at or en route to vacation spots: 1/3

Minimum number of times that Frederick Douglass was beaten in what is now Donald Rumsfeld’s vacation home: 25

Number of states John Kerry would have won in 2004 if votes by poor Americans were the only ones counted: 40

Number if votes by rich Americans were the only ones counted: 4

Increase since 2000 in the number of Americans living at less than half the federal poverty level: 3,500,000

Number of U.S. cities and towns that have passed resolutions calling for the impeachment of President Bush: 92

Percentage change since 2001 in U.S. government spending on paper shredding: +466

Amount by which the federal government has underfunded its estimated cost to implement No Child Left Behind: $71,000,000,000

Rank of Bush among U.S. presidents with the highest disapproval rating: 1

Don’t let the White House door hit you on the way out.

PS Also in the spirit of the retrospective, here's a video from the Daily Show. From last week, but still fresh.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Six Days Seven Nights

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Men are from Mars, women are...

If I never hear another stand-up comedian deliver a joke that starts "You know what's the difference between men and women?" it will be too effing soon.

That is all.

There are so many wrong answers to this question.

ABC has a new show called "What Would You Do?" and I hadn't even seen promos for it. I'll admit that I was drawn to it because of another show with the same name that I was very familiar with once upon a time.

But this show is creeping the hell out of me. Here's the premise: the show's producers create artificial situations using actors who break social rules or commit major transgressions. Then they watch how people around them react to the dilemma. Will the person confront the transgressor? Will the person say nothing? It's like a truly disturbing Candid Camera.

In the segment I just watched, two actors--a man and a woman--are in a restaurant pretending to be on a first date. They're having drinks at a bar. The woman excuses herself to go to the bathroom, the man makes small talk with the people sitting next to him, and then after a moment, he slips something into his date's drink--in such a way that the person next to him sees this.

Very few people, it seems, say anything or warn the woman. A couple of people call the bartender to the side to report what they've seen. Most seem to not want to get involved. And this only gets worse when the woman is wearing a lower-cut dress with bright and flashy colors, as opposed to the first part of the segment, when she's wearing a simple black dress. This dismissal of the woman who, as far as they know, is about to be drugged and raped is frighteningly dependent on how she's dressed and thus who they assume she is.

The show lauds the heroism on the part of the few on step in. It's depressing to think that this is the exception and not the norm.

I found this video clip, which doesn't show the whole segment. It leaves out one woman who not only confronts the man who drugged the drink, but also warns the woman and goes to the bathroom to check if the woman is ok after having sipped the drink. It also leaves out the part where the "hero" who confronts the guy also threatens to hit his wife if she doesn't be quiet.

One more thing for Obama's to-do list.

It would seem that while I was drinking bubbly and counting down the seconds to 2009, the illegality of the war in Iraq took on an additional dimension. I'm nearly two weeks late to comment on this, but it's disturbing enough to be worth a mention.

On January 1, according to an article by Bruce Ackerman and Oona Hathaway, Congress' authorization for the war in Iraq expired. Bush had not sought to renew it. An agreement has been presented to the Iraqi Parliament by Prime Minister al-Maliki, and it was authorized there. However, on the US side of things, it seems that members of Congress had to rely on the Arab media's reporting of the agreement to catch a glimpse of its terms.

Yet another thing Obama is going to have to deal with when he moves into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Because, as stated in the article:

We are living in an age of small wars—some are blunders, but some will be necessary. The challenge is to sustain their democratic legitimacy by keeping them under congressional control. If Obama goes along with the Bush agreement, he will make this impossible. Future presidents will cite the Iraqi accord as a precedent whenever they choose to convert Congress' authorization of a limited war into an open-ended conflict.

And this is the president whose reign I came of age in.

This will seem even more relevant closer to the end of the month.

It's not just because of my massive student loans that my ears perk up whenever I hear people talking about anything related to debt. (That's a very big reason, but not the only reason.) It's intriguing how you can't talk about debt without getting caught up in a whole web of issues: morality, justice, fairness, retribution. The ties that bind you to your creditor/debtor are unlike any other human relationship. I've never "met" the entity to whom I owe much money, yet I feel a responsibility to that entity that outweighs and will outlast many of my other relationships.

For Christmas, Stonewall bought me a copy of Payback, by Margaret Atwood, which I just started reading. It's a sort of meandering but interesting long essay about debt and all of the different subjects that intersect with it. I think he got it for me because he knew of my interest in the theme of debt, but also because of how much I enjoyed reading the Handmaid's Tale and the Blind Assassin last year. I'm not that far into it, but I'm now reading her exploration of how notions of fairness and reciprocity are so central to human interactions that we see them in early childhood behavior, throughout centuries of literature, and in ancient mythologies.

To some extent, she's talking about the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."), but she also writes about the Eye-for-an-Eye Rule ("Do unto others as they have done unto you.") The latter is, of course, more directly related to the idea of fairness as retribution. If I expect that you might later mete out the same punishment--or benefits--that I have afforded you, it gives me the incentive to treat you fairly.

This whole line of thinking reminded me of a piece of an article in the Atlantic that I read a very long time ago. I tracked it down, and here is the relevant passage:

I'll be dictator. Here's how we play: An economist puts some money on the table—let's say $1,000. Since I'm dictator, I get to decide how you and I are going to split the cash; you have no say in the matter. How much do you think I'll give you?

Now, let's play the ultimatum game. We've still got $1,000 to play with, and I still get to make you an offer. But the game has a wrinkle: If you don't like the offer I make, you can refuse it. If you refuse it, we both get nothing. What do you think I'll do here?

As you've probably guessed, people tend to play the two games differently. In the dictator game, the most common offer is nothing, and the average offer is around 20 percent. In the ultimatum game, the most common offer is half the cash, while the average is around 45 percent. Offers of less than 25 percent are routinely refused—so both players go home empty-handed.

Economists scratch their heads at this. In the first place, they are surprised that some people are nice enough to share with someone they don't know, even in the dictator game, where there's nothing to lose by not sharing. Second, economists predict that people will accept any offer in the ultimatum game, no matter how low, because getting something is better than getting nothing. But that's not what happens. Instead, some people forgo getting anything themselves in order to punish someone who made an ungenerous offer. Money, it seems, is not the only currency people are dealing in.

So in the dictator game, there's little chance for your counterpart to get you back for unfair treatment. But in the second game, if your counterpart will have a chance to punish you for unfair treatment, they're likely to take it. So we have an incentive to avoid that situation.

I can see where Atwood might be going with this, too, although I haven't gotten far enough to confirm it. If you do something nice for me (lend me money), you expect me to treat you fairly (pay you back). There is a great deal of social weight involved in maintaining this standard of interaction. If I don't treat you fairly (skip town and leave no forwarding address), I'm therefore a deadbeat and can have my financial future and credit scored jeopardized. I have a very strong incentive to avoid that situation and to make my payments on time.

Maybe Margaret Atwood will have some tips on dealing with the stress of thinking about your debt. I'll keep reading.

Thoughts on mentoring

If I feel like I've manage to establish some sort of direction for my life over the past few years, it's because of the people that I've been lucky enough to have in my life. I'm not trying to make this sound like a Hallmark card, but I'm genuinely grateful for having met the mentors who have helped me figure out who I want to be and how to get to that point.

And it's often felt like an accident. At times, I have felt very disoriented and directionless. I've been lucky that, at those exact moments, that's when I've found people who could guide me and who I could trust. I can think of two, maybe three, who have been indispensable to me, and I can't claim to have sought that out. Somehow it came to me. They have provided me with opportunities I wouldn't have had otherwise.

Now, it's important to me that I learn how to do the same. I work with people who are in the same position I was in a few years ago, and I want to know how to pass along some of the principles that I've learned. This is a new position for me to be in, and I don't know quite how to do it yet. So far, it can feel a little stilted, and I especially worry about giving criticism in a constructive way.

And now that I've been all sappy--but about something that I've been pretty preoccupied with lately--I will leave you with this inspirational video. Enjoy!

Things to Look Forward to in 2009

I can't help but feel that it's no coincidence that I completely dropped off the face of the blogosphere as soon as the school year started and I was up to my ears in master's-degree-getting. But it's a new year--and I'm out of class for the next couple of weeks--and I am re-inspired. I make no promises (to my very small audience) about whether I will continue to blog. I'm commitment-shy like that.

And to kick off the new year, I've decided to pull together a list of Just a Few Things I'm Looking Forward to in 2009.

• The end of the Bush years. When he was "elected," I was a senior in high school, just beginning to understand politics and the relationship between the US and the rest of the world. Now, I'm beyond glad to see him go, and much beyond glad to see Obama stepping in to replace him. In fact, I think Stonewall deserves some recognition here for calling the election results back in June.
• Finishing my first year of grad school. It'll be one down, two to go. The program is technically a two-year program, but since I'm balancing school and work, it'll take me a bit longer. And by the end, I'll have another degree to put up on my wall! And I'll be many many more dollars in debt. Wait! That's not something to look forward to! Strike that last bit.
• The return of Lost. This one I almost have mixed feelings about. When the season ended last year, I was nearly giddy with my anticipation for the next season. I also know that as soon as it starts, every free moment is going to be consumed with thoughts about Lost. (Maybe that's an exaggeration, but not much of one.) I'm almost nervous about getting that engrossed all over again. But, oh, I can't wait.
• Following all my favorite blogs. This isn't unique to 2009, I suppose, but I'm still excited to read these blogs everyday. So here's a shout-out to Feministing, Feministe, Racialicious, and I Can Has Cheezburger. One of those things is not like the other.

(It's been not hard to look around and see all the ways that 2009 got off to a really fucked up start, and right now I'm thinking about the attacks in Gaza. I may want to write something about that at some point, but it's not easy to process the information that I've been gathering about that unbelievable situation.)

In which I turn on the TV and get all angry.

I'm home from work today, and while flipping through channels, I've come across one of the most atrocious things I've even encountered on TV--even on MTV. They are doing an hour-long promo for the premiere of the show, Exiled, tonight. Apparently, it's a spin-off of the Sweet Sixteen series, where they take the same spoiled brats previously featured, and ship them off to faraway countries.

And of course we will undoubtedly watch them throw tantrums over having to live in poor communities where their parents' credit card will do them no good and where they are actually expected to work. Oh, and not get waited on hand and foot. What's infuriating me is, first of all, that they don't appreciate that even this experience, being able to travel abroad, is a privilege. It's a chance that they are spitting on and, most importantly, they are disrespecting and insulting the people in the communities who have agreed to host them.

This show seems to exemplify the image of the rude American, who really doesn't give a shit about anything that happens outside of this country's borders and would rather concentrate on buying more stuff. And if anything happens to intrude on that perception, it is only an annoying inconvenience. I try to believe that most people aren't like that, which is probably why this new show gets me so riled.

Maybe there's a good side. Maybe there will be some conclusion where they learn to appreciate the chance they've been giving and learn the value of interacting with people who've had different experiences. Maybe it will broaden their horizons and maybe people watching it here in the U.S. will learn something. Then again, maybe it will be just more of the same, with non-stop whining and moaning.

Stonewall's prediction for the Obama/McCain contest.

The following is at the request of Stonewall. He would like me to let the record show that he has a theory about the US presidential elections. He believes that, come November, Barack Obama will win by a landslide and that it won't even be close. And that any suggestion by the media that this will be a close contest is an attempt to boost their ratings by creating drama and suspense. Stonewall believes that in November, people will be shocked at how easily and by how wide a margin Obama defeats McCain.

Let's say I'm not so optimistic. But Stonewall insists that I put this theory in writing, so that in November when he's proved right, he will be able to point to this and show how astute he's always been. Here's hoping he's right.

Political statements on So You Think You Can Dance

Someone else must've seen that. I turned on So You Think You Can Dance, and what should I see. The guy who just danced disco (Gev), during the rehearsal segment, was wearing a t-shirt with an emblem of one of the famous Abu Ghraib photos, the one with the hooded man standing with his arms slightly apart. And across the front of the hooded man's silhouette was a stained American flag. I'm sure it was a deliberate statement on his part. Now I just wonder how or if people will react.

Thoughts on fears almost forgotten

I decided to break out my iPod on the subway today, tuning into the podcast NPR Driveway Moments. I don't know how long this particular radio story had been languishing on my iPod, but I am glad that I finally got around to it. It's long, almost 25 minutes I think, but completely engaging.

The host asks him whether he was afraid of dying, and while he did say that he really did not want to leave this life, he said that he wasn't afraid. All of the things that people worry about when they think about death--feeling pain, being alone, being afraid--he said that he didn't occupy himself with those thoughts.

I found myself thinking a lot about my father and about when he was sick a few years ago. There is a world of difference between how Gottlieb feels confronting the possibility of death, and how I felt confronting the possibility of my father's death. Thankfully, in the end, he was fine, and he's healthy and strong as an ox today. But at the time, all I felt was pure, unfiltered terror. We knew that something was wrong, but no doctor seemed to be able to tell us exactly what it was. But the options that they threw around, like lung cancer, were terrifying.

Maybe it's always different for the ones who face the prospect of being left behind. My father, with his very strong personality and just with his presence, he's always been at the center of things. I could not imagine how we could begin to function without him. Any time that I allowed myself to think to the future, my imagination would shut down. It was unimaginable. And with every test they did, trying to diagnose, it felt like I was walking on thin ice. I was always afraid that the next step I took--the next test they did--would be the one where it all fell apart.

I wonder if this sounds selfish. In the middle of drafting this entry, my laptop completely crashed and I considered the possibility that it was a sign, that I shouldn't write this entry because it's too self-absorbed. I'm going to stop here.

Some thoughts on a historic night.

It was a long day at work, and I'm just wrapping it up now. I watched Hillary and Barack give their speeches tonight, and my Washington Post news alert in my email inbox confirms it: Barack did it. The nomination is his. I'm almost too tired to process this, and I'm exhausted just thinking about the months ahead. How many times we're going to rehash the same-old-same-old nonsense, about Jeremiah Wright and flag lapel pins and such. And how every step he takes will be analyzed and picked apart endlessly.

Every time I hear him give a speech, I'm on pins and needles -- and not just because I'm moved by his words. It's because I'm waiting for him to slip, waiting for a careless moment or for the words he will say that will be twisted by everyone who's also waiting for him to slip (but not with my same motivations). While all the candidates will face the scorching light of public scrutiny, I have no doubt that Obama will have to overcome the low expectations and serious misgivings of people who still view him with suspicion -- because he is a black man.

I worry that the ones waiting for him to fail are not just in the Republican camp. I worry about all the bitter (yeah, I said it -- "bitter") Hillary supporters who are angry that she's not the nominee. Are they really going to defect to McCain? What the hell is that about? Then what were they supporting in the first place? I understand that you can become invested in a candidate and feel deeply disappointed if they're not nominated. But seriously?

And a side note about the "inadequate" comment. This is the way it is going to go. Many people will assume first that he is "inadequate," and his burden -- before he can even begin to speak about the skills that make him a worthy and fully qualified candidate -- will be to prove that he is at least "adequate." For too many, there is no assumption of even basic capabilities on his part. This story is not at all new. In school, my brother (a young black male) has always had to prove that he was minimally capable before a teacher could even begin to see that he is exceptional, and some teachers never got that far. I remember in middle school having teachers who would enthusiastically congratulate me and my parents on the frankly average work that I was doing, and my parents -- already suspicious -- would point out that I was not being pushed to do any better. Maybe this is a digression, but these are the memories that come to mind when I hear people dismiss him as an under-qualified candidate or commend him for being ... "articulate."

But back to tonight's news. A few months ago, when I was seriously contemplating the possibility of a Clinton nomination, I knew that I would vote for her in a general election. That was never the question. But much as I will when I vote for Obama in November, I knew that I would have some serious reservations and that I would want to make those reservations known. But again, it was never, ever, a question of switching to McCain out of misguided anger. So I hope we can get it together before November.

How many more months?!

LOST was AMAZING tonight. I was in a trance for hours.

Some thoughts and questions:

• Sun and Jin have always been my favorites, and I have argued endlessly about whether he was dead or still alive on the island. The scene where the freighter blew up broke my heart
  
• I totally called who was in the casket! I knew all along that it was Locke! Although the events of this season did cause me to reconsider my initial guess, and I did think that is was Michael/Kevin for a while. So maybe not "all along."
  
• So they all have to go back to the island. Does that include Desmond? And now that Sun is supposedly in league with Widmore, how will that play out? Will she refuse to go with them and state her allegiance publicly? Or will she play along and then betray them?
• WHY do they have to go back to the island? Did their departure trigger some sort of cosmic rupture?
  
• What happened to Farraday and the others who were on that life raft on the way back to the freighter?
• What happened to the island? Where did it go?! And what happened after they left that was so bad that it sent Locke on a mission to the mainland?
• I think Kate is going to be convinced to take Aaron back to the island. She looked over him sleeping and said, "I'm sorry." That must mean that she's decided to do something that she thinks might not be in his best interest.

Amazing. And when does season five start? Not soon enough.

That's not a bomb she's hiding.

This is interesting.

MADRID: When she was appointed Spain's first female defense minister in April, the aspect of Carmé Chacón that drew the most public attention was not her gender, nor her rapid rise through the ranks of the governing Socialist party, but her prominent prenatal bump.

Chacón, who began leave Tuesday after giving birth to a boy, became an instant symbol of the Socialist government's commitment to gender parity in Spain, a traditionally macho society whose new equality laws are among the most progressive in Europe.

I don't know much about Spanish politics, but I can certainly buy the argument that this is a symbolic gesture meant to force a rethinking of what the military means or to signal a shift in the identity of the military. While I do have some hesitation about swallowing the idea of a pregnant woman being reduced only to her symbolic value as the creator of life, I can appreciate the effort to juxtapose concepts that we don't normally associate with each other. It also makes us question how we understand ideas of manliness and womanliness.

Women who have risen to positions of power elsewhere have assumed the mantle of "macho," whether they contribute to that image or not. In order to even attain that position, they certainly have to exhibit characteristics often associated with being a man: assertiveness, aggressiveness, confidence, independence. And here we have a woman who has presumably done all that, and she occupies one of the most typically aggressive positions in government -- but the fact that she is a woman is inescapable. Her baby bump is showing.

And this:

However, José Conde, president of the Association of Spanish Soldiers, a group composed mainly of retired military personnel, called the appointment of "a Catalan, pregnant, woman" an "insult" to the army. Catalonia, the semi-autonomous region where Chacón grew up, is viewed by conservatives as an enclave of anti-Spanish sentiment.

Which part is the "insult"? Catalan? Pregnant? Woman? All of the above? I think some people are feeling the itch of cognitive dissonance.

A love story.

Sometimes, I am overcome by the strength of my affection for Charlie. There are peaceful moments, when we sit together in silence. I am at the kitchen table, holding a cup of hot coffee between my hands, and he looks over at me with sleepy eyes and a handsome face. I remember all the times we've fallen asleep together watching TV, or the times he's waiting for me when I come home from work. Absentmindedly, I reach over and stroke his hair.

And then, this. In one moment, he's changed, and he turns his head to gnaw on my wrist, sinking his sharp teeth in and clawing at my arms. That's when I remember that he's a cat, and therefore a predator. If our roles were reversed, and he was my size and I was his size -- he would kill me. Without hesitation.

And then, just as quickly, he's ignoring me.