Mark W. Tiedemann's Blog, page 66

The Other Side

I have a confession to make.  While I’m going to vote for Obama again, I do not like everything he has done and, even more, am disappointed by some of what he has not done.

That’s not the confession.  I promised some folks months back that I would write a post wherein I take Obama to task the same way I’ve been going to town on the Republicans.  I was sincere when I made the promise, because I had, in fact, winced often these past four years when Mr. Obama has let me down.  Or not me specifically, but my expectations.  And this is a question of spin.

All candidates run on a mixture of core issues and hyperbole.  The nature of the race requires sound-byte, slash-and-burn rhetoric, sweeping generalizations, and occasionally over-the-top characterizations of the opponent and promises too big to keep.  We as voters must walk through all this to determine how much of the hyperbole is simple exaggeration and how much of it is outright lying, slander, or total b.s.  As I say, all candidates do this.  Even after they leave office.  (George W. Bush’s acerbic “Do you miss me yet?” is an example of that, to which my response at the time and still is “You’re kidding, right?”)

Obama campaigned in 2008 on a wide range of issues and made a LOT of promises.  In fact, I believe he holds the record on the number of promises made by a presidential candidate, by a significant factor.  Depending on where he was at the time, he adroitly tailored his message, made the kinds of specific pledges that are ordinarily suicide for a candidate, and won by the biggest landslide since Reagan

In all those promises, inevitably some were going to go by the wayside, some were going to simply stall, others were going to stand as reminders of betrayal when exactly the opposite happened.

But in looking back over the last four years—especially in light of what he came into office having to deal with—I can’t find very much to complain about.

What there is, though, is pretty bad.

Implicitly and otherwise, Obama promised that business as usual in D.C. was going to change.  Of course, anyone who believed this was naive at best, but there were a few things that he could have done something about.  One is lobbyists.  He promised to close the revolving door, that people in government would not be permitted to leave for jobs as lobbyists and come right back.  Well, he sort of tried that, but then proceeded to issue waivers for certain people.

The biggest betrayal to my mind at the time was the selection of his economic team.  One may quibble about this, but I think it fair to say that he had something of a mandate to change the way government dealt with the financial sector.  The appointment of Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, both of whom had been instrumental in the years of deregulation that had led almost directly to the 2007-08 meltdown, signaled a marked turn-around from expectations.  At the time I looked at that and thought “What the hell?”  Talk about putting the fox in charge of the chickens.  (Certainly an argument could be made that these people understood the problem better than anybody else, but you also can’t tell me that there weren’t equally qualified and talented people with no ties to the last 20 years of fiscal irresponsibility and with a vision consistent with what we’d been led to believe was going to happen.  Elizabeth Warren was certainly such a person, but then he didn’t stand by her when she had Congress running scared that she meant business.)

Obama fell down, in my view, by the simple omission of demanding a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall.  Clinton had foolishly signed its repeal, it had worked for 60 years, its destruction allowed everything that followed to happen, and yet we heard nothing.  Instead we have an overly complex mess of rules that form a Rube-Goldberg assemblage of fingers-in-leaks that overburden everyone, Wall Street and regulators alike.  And while I came to support the auto industry bailout, his administration has made a hash of the housing recovery.

But the worst thing is the national security betrayals.  I do not approve of the drone program and I certainly do not like the indefinite detention aspect of the NDAA, which we were led to believe he also felt was a bad law.  Yet he signed the reauthorization and now his justice department is trying to overturn a judge’s ruling that indefinite detention is unConstitutional.  I grant you, this is all inherited from Bush, this is a Cheney construct, but that would seem to me all the more reason to do away with it.  Obama needed to nothing but sit back and let the ruling from bench hold sway, but instead he’s arguing for retention of powers I believed he ran opposed to.

He’s pulled some other stunts.  While I’m not a fan of Big Oil, I actually think the Canadian pipeline should have gone through.  It would have allowed him to stop issuing so many off-shore permits, which have greater possibilities of failure and environmental damage.  For myself, I wanted to see the end of the faith-based initiatives—this is a clear violation of the separation clause and the only thing that might have made it more palatable over what Bush had done would be its expansion to non-christian institutions.  And I’m still waiting for the repeal of No Child Left Behind, which was one of the worst things done on the federal level in education since…I don’t know.

But for all that, I have to confess that I still find him far more acceptable than what is being offered by his opponents, whose only solutions seem to be slash-and-burn spending cuts—except to the military.

So while this post is a complaint, an attempt at fair play, I have to apologize to those to whom I pledge a thorough drubbing.  Even when they make mistakes, I can’t seem to get as pissed at the Democrats right now as I do at the Republicans.  I know that sounds like excuse-making, but there it is.

I’ll try to do better.

Here’s a Fact

Mitt Romney let it be known that he believes 47% of Americans are freeloaders.  Entitled, he says.  They pay no income tax whatsoever and will therefore vote for Obama no matter what, because they get their support from the government.

Now, this is how spin works.  Saying it the way he did makes it sound like that 47% are sitting on their entitled butts, drawing stipends from the government and doing nothing with their lives.  This is the myth of the welfare queen, writ large.  He makes it sound as if these are entirely worthless people.

[image error] Somewhere To Lay My Head

There is much that is wrong with that, not least the irresponsible use of statistics.  47% of all Americans, Mitt?  Hm.  That would include children and the retired.  It would, I assume, also include those who live in one-income households who are not themselves earners.  So, really, all of them?  Those preadolescents sucking off mom and dad should be cut off and forced to go to work?

But we may assume (maybe) that he is referring to 47% of people between 18 and 65 that he thinks ought to be paying federal income taxes.

The other false assumption is that, by inference, none of these people pay any taxes whatsoever.  We tend to talk about federal income tax as the sine qua non, the only game in town, and in the heat of political posturing, we tend to make the assumption that if someone doesn’t pay it, then they pay nothing at any level.

At least half of the number he cited constitute what we know as the working poor.  They work.  They have jobs.  They struggle and earn. They do not make enough to pay federal income tax.

But they pay payroll taxes, state income taxes, personal property taxs (if they have cars) real estate taxes (if they own a house, however small and inadequate), and everybody pays sales taxes.  They pay.  They work.  Many do get subsidies of some kind—foodstamps (recently we learned that more than half of WalMart employees do not make enough money and need foodstamps, but if they’re working for WalMart, they’re working), MedicAid, things like that.  But here’s the thing.

We all get something from the government!

Whether we see it this way or not, all of us get some kind of assistance from the government, either directly or indirectly.  Quite famously (and in some instance hypocritically) most so-called Red States, those with state governments, congressional members, and we assume local populations who do the most bitching about this sort of thing, draw the largest shares of federal aid.  And unless you’ve had your head in a small hole somewhere, we all know about federal subsidies to big businesses.  The record profits from investments are a direct result of government enabling and the way folks who derive their income from speculation talk, they sure sound entitled to me.

So either Mitt Romney does not actually understand what it is he’s criticizing or he’s just feeding bullshit to his base because that’s what they want to hear and he’s pandering.

Either way, he’s playing politics with people many of whom, if the Tea Party got all its wishes and all those programs were shut down tomorrow, would in fact die if the political wet dreams of the Rabid Right came about.

It is the oldest bit of political sordidness in the book to characterize people you don’t like as lazy, incompetent, entitled, useless burdens.  (Oh, and also “they breed like rabbits”, but as the Right seems to be trying to guarantee that I’m not so sure they see that as the insult it used to be.)  It only plays well because people tend not to see reality that causes them dyspeptic pangs of conscience.

They Think You’ll Believe This Is A Good Thing

Here it is, stated baldly and without any evident embarrassment. Rick Santorum states exactly why what he represents is a dangerous and stupid movement.

This country has always contained a significant resentment toward intellectuals, knowledge, an active distrust and occasionally hatred of reason and understanding. We have been watching a “grass roots” movement develop since the late Seventies that embraces the anti-intellectual, the retrograde, the regressive as if being ignorant is a virtue. They have turned a refusal to face reality, to come to grips with facts, into a virtue, and an unwillingness to change ones mind into a kind of uber-patriotism that would, if fully empowered, destroy this country.

The difficulty in countering this is that he wraps his idiocy around two things that make anyone who would argue with them appear churlish if not downright immoral. This is a rhetorical game of false choices. It is not intelligence vs. family, it is not reason vs. church. It is not education vs. patriotism. This is a lie. By stating it this way, he makes it seem anyone who supports enlightenment, progress, rationality is somehow an enemy. It divisive in the most heinous and absolute way and it is exemplary of all that is currently wrong with the Right.

Smart people will never be on the side of ignorance and bigotry. Smart people will never support the idea that we should live by a code written by people who not only knew less than we do but also had completely different expectations of what life meant. Smart people will never be on the side of stupidity.

Out of the mouths of people like Santorum and Todd Akin and Michele Bachman we have heard a call to turn dumb into a desirable condition, to ignore ramifications, discard causal thinking, just “trust them” and America will be great again.

I appreciate that they no longer feel they need to couch their positions in user-friendly phrasing that softens their meaning. I’m delighted that they’ve decided to reveal who they really are.

This is one or two steps away from book burning.

Let me leave you with a few choice quotes.

Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction.

Adolf Hitler

Education is dangerous – Every educated person is a future enemy—– Hermann Goering

What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.

Adolf Hitler

It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge.

Adolf Hitler

Who says I am not under the special protection of God?

Adolf Hitler

Maturity

I’ll keep this brief. Maybe. We’ll see.

Our ambassador to Libya has been killed in an assault on the consulate in Benghazi.  The attack was in response to a video that aired throughout northern Africa, a satire (I use the term loosely, as apparently it does not deserve so elevated a label) by an amateur filmmaker in California that allegedly mocks Mohammed.  A similar attack occurred in Cairo, but no deaths resulted as security there proved more effective.

This is my opinion.  This kind of crap is a consequence of a profound lack of maturity on the part of religious extremists.  Of all denominations and philosophies.  I do not here single out any one religion or culture.  The idiot who gunned down the people at the Sikh temple here is of the same infantile level of literal-minded incapacity to see past the end of a wrongheaded embrace of religion-as-substitute-for-mature-thought.

Partly this the result of a peculiar kind of insularity that does not allow for exposure to diverse ideas.  Like disease, you cannot develop tolerance if you keep those things to which you are susceptible always at bay.  Information, the daily encounter with differences, with ideas, with modes of thinking, all these things act like vaccines and you learn over time to put matters in context and acquire perspective.  Religious extremism relies on the absence of such exposure, the cordoning-off of experience.  People overreact to that which seems threatening of which they have little direct experience.

Poking fun at things, mocking things—I don’t care what they are—do not justify killing.  If you insult or mock the things I hold important, I might get a bit testy, but ultimately I know you speak from lack of knowledge, from prejudice, and from a similar dearth of maturity.  More importantly, I have to consider that you might have a point, that what you say may demand some consideration on my part.  At the end of the day, my discomfort over your words, however intended, that have no merit leaves no scars; what you say does not hurt me.

Until this becomes internalized, misunderstanding across cultural lines is inevitable.  Tragic, stupid, and an impediment to any future rapprochement.

Besides—idiots—someone in California made that video, not the people in our embassy, and it did not represent anything more than the views of one person, not the official position of the United States.  Maybe you pretend to be a monolith and if one speaks you are all represented, but not here, and you should know that.  You should know by now that we value the individual right to self-expression.  Just as some believe they have a right to issue blanket condemnations of America and the values we embody, we likewise have a right to express our opinions.  On anything.

All such violence does is provide further evidence of a thin-skinned immaturity, the kind of adolescent pique that is only important to the one indulging what is essentially a feckless hissy-fit.  It is my fervent hope that one day we will all grow up and get over ourselves.

Thank you for your patience.

Playing

Archon 36 is approaching and I’ve taken out a couple of panels in the art show.  Consequently, I’ve been playing in order to create images suitable for a science fiction/fantasy art show.  My most recent accomplishment:

 

[image error] Twin Sun Pastoral

I have a few others, plus a couple of actual paintings and drawings, but I’m fairly pleased with this one.

Now for the crass commercial message.  This image is for sale.  The one I’ll be hanging at Archon will be and you can order one directly from me.  Just drop me an email, mentioning the image title (Twin Sun Pastoral) and I will reply with price and all that.

In fact, most of my visual art is available for purchase and some time in the next couple of months I’m going to be putting up another page here to feature an “image of the month” for sale.

End of commercial.  As I become better acquainted with Photoshop, I’m finding ways to realize more interesting images.  (I recently discovered the magic wand and it has opened up vast possibilities!)  I hope you enjoy it at least.

And thank you in advance for your consideration.

Still Plodding

I’m finally able to sit in front of my computer for more than five minutes at a stretch.  (Nothing painful, just really uncomfortable.)  I suppose I’m progressing. My patience abandoned me weeks ago, but since I have almost no energy, it’s not an issue.

Next Tuesday I have my follow-up at the various clinics to see if I’m doing well enough to be “unplugged” and go on my own.  Which only means that afterward I have to be vigilant for a couple of months in regards to fever, etc.  Last night I discovered I’ve lost 15 pounds, which under normal circumstances I wouldn’t mind terribly much.

Meantime, I’m doing some reading.  I have a few books going at the same time.  I’m finally reading the first Aubry/Maturin novel, Master and Commander.  This has been recommended to me by so many people whose taste I trust and I have been so utterly put off by it till now that I feel a bit embarrassed.  The big problem is the plot—which proceeds at a snail’s pace.  But I’ve given it the major attention it clearly deserves and I can appreciate what O’Brian was doing.  Not sure I’ll continue on with it, but I can now declare that it is indeed a fine piece of work.

A couple of history books, and I’m reading Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow.  Yes, this is a reread, but since my first time was forty-plus years ago, it’s virtually a new book, and I guarantee I missed a lot back then.  I’ll be doing a long post about it soon.

Anyway, I’ve booted up my novel again and I’m noodling with it.  I’m only three or four chapters from done with it, which makes this past month a real annoying waste in my mind.  But the downtime has given me the space to rethink a couple of things, which is all to the good.  A better book will emerge from this.

So, till later…

[image error] “Rides”

Two Steps Forward….

Well, things slid backward this past Monday.  I had a low-grade fever all weekend and decided if it was still there Monday morning, call the doctor.  Events took charge and I ended up back at Barnes with a soft-tissue infection in half the appendectomy incision.  They did a CT scan to be sure that was all it was and lo!  I have an abcess.

So another day in the hospital having a drain installed, which is really annoying.  I’m home now and I have a nurse visiting everyday to make sure things track the way they’re supposed to.  There’s a twice-daily routine to go through which is unpleasant but I’m sticking to the program.  I want this over.

The nurse is cool, a chipper, upbeat woman named Dawn who is both very sociable and very efficient.  I’m not leaving the house till next Wednesday for a clinic visit.  Fingers crossed, in two weeks all the plumbing will be removed and things will resume some form or normal.

That’s all for now.  I’m getting reading done but not much else.

Plodding Along

For those who may be interested, recovery continues.  I know things are improving because my memory is fairly clear about how bad things were.  Last week, the week before.  But, as is the nature of the critter, we tend only to focus on the present and how crappy it may be.

But I am getting work done.  I’ve completed the first few prints I intend to exhibit in this year’s Archon art show.  Done the critiques of the short stories for the workshop I’m conducting then.  And just about finished two chapters in the current project.  (About those chapters, it is with wry amusement I note that I was about to doggedly go down the wrong path in one of them when this nonsense struck.  Between the time off and the percocet hell, I realized the mistake I was about to make and corrected it.  Always look for something positive, you know?)

Other things are better.  Not great.  I seriously doubt I’ll be back to the gym for at least another month.  And my body seems to have entered another phase of healing, because around noon or one o’clock I seem unable to stay awake.  My sleep is deep.  I’m assuming my body knows what it’s doing.

Part of my reticence involves a growing lack of patience.  I’m getting well enough to start chafing under the restrictions.  I would really like to walk my dog by myself.  I would like to go to the grocery store so that Donna doesn’t have to.  So on and so forth.  I’d like to be able to say I’m catching up on my reading, but that hasn’t been a notable achievement.

In any case, I’m still alive and that’s the best part.  So till my next entry here, I’ll leave you with a new image and a hope that the rest ofyour summer is just fine.

 

[image error] Sugar Steel Mill

Gravity

Sometimes you just come to a sudden stop because the universe puts a wall—or a floor or a ceiling—in your way and you bang into it.  I am for the foreseeable future in recovery mode.

Let me explain.

Last Wednesday, August 8th, I finished up for the evening and started getting ready for bed.  I confess to preening.  I’ve been hitting the gym pretty hard and pretty regularly and things were beginning to show for all the effort, so I was checking out my torso in the mirror, noting a small bit of belly definition I have never had much of but is—was—beginning to show.

As I twisted around, something kind of “moved” inside.  An almost-cramp.  Ripples chased around my abdomen.  I stretched, didn’t think more about it, and went to bed.  But I got up twice during the night for unexpected visits to the toilet and the funny clenching was still there.  By morning I thought I might be getting stomach flu.  Great, I’d intended another morning workout and then a few hours downtown working for Left Bank Books.  Instead, I was moping around the house feeling thoroughly blah.

But no fever.  No diarrhea.  Just this generalized muscle cramp.  By Thursday afternoon, my hindbrain finally told me something was wrong.  I called my doctor, who was gone for the day, and the nurse practitioner was vague and unhelpful, but suggested I go to the emergency room.  That was three o’clock.  Donna would be home by 5:30, I could go then.

But it got markedly worse, so I called her to come and get me.

We staggered into Barnes ER around five and I was having a full-blown attack of appendicitis.  Despite the fact that it seemed to take forever, they got me in and on pain killers pretty quickly.

Cut to the chase, they removed my perforated appendix early Friday morning.  Had I gone in a few hours earlier, they likely would have been able to remove it laproscopically, which is out-patient surgery and rather neat.  Instead, I now have the classic three-inch appendectomy wound.

But…three hours or so later, I might not be writing this.  Or anything.

I have to say right here that if you’re going to get sick and need ER service in St. Louis, go to Barnes.  I was treated by a string of the most professional, pleasant people I have ever encountered in a group, especially considering what they have to deal with daily.  I felt very cared for.

I also have to say that irony seeps through this.  We’d been discussing terminating my health insurance.  Bottomline, money.  We’re at that point where it’s becoming untenable for me to carry it, even though in a couple of years I’ll have to.  But we didn’t and now intend hanging onto it at least for a while.  Because although this is fairly standard surgery and the costs are well-defined, there is no way we could have afforded this out of pocket.

What I’m dealing with now is recovery.  It’s going to be a while before I can do any meaningful exercise and this is the first writing of any length I’ve been able to do since coming home, mainly because of related intestinal issues making it impossible to sit in front of the keyboard more than a couple minutes at a time.  Issues I’m still dealing with.

A note on medication.  They put me on percocet for the pain.  Marvelous drug, that.  Shuts the pain down magnificently. Shuts several other things down, too.  But also opened a door in my brain for a series of the most razorsharp, crystalline-clear, hallucinogenic nightmares I have ever had.  I was reluctant to close my eyes after a couple of days.  Unbelievable.  I have stopped taking it.  I can put up with physical pain, but not that.

I thought I’d post something to let you all know where I’ve been and how I’m doing.  Needless to say I won’t be preening anytime soon.  All that wonderful definition is gone, replaced by a flaccid, doughy puffiness that annoys me.  All that work.  But that just means I get to climb back up out of the gravity well—once they let me lift more than ten pounds.  Fortunately, right now the only thing I feel like lifting is an idea and a coffee cup.

Take care.

511 Live Treet

[image error] 511 Live Treet