Cheating and Lying

It was in the late '90's that I noticed a story in the news that two thirds of American college kids admitted cheating on exams and papers. Two thirds is an important proportion of a population. It's the center of the bell curve. When two thirds of a group agree on something, the remaining minority know they are _really_ a minority, and the issue has been settled, and any further discussion will be regarded as in poor taste. So it was in the late 90's that an American concensus formed around the notion that cheating and lying were just part of succeeding in today's world. This concensus included a generation of future leaders, from the country club set on down, and it included their parents, teachers, and the entire adult power structure, at least to the extent that all these encouraged cheating by looking the other way.
To me this seemed a disheartening change at a foundational level of the country's values, and I wondered when and how it would start to 'hit home' in terms of real consequences. I suppose we are seeing it, in the current Bush administration.
The Katrina cockup, for example, spread far and wide to every level of government. It seems like a sort of generalized shotgun blast of trouble all over a lot of different groups, but it all makes sense when one realizes that all the trouble boils down to people not doing their jobs, and routinely signing off as if they did. In other words, it boils down to individuals choosing to cheat rather than do what they are supposed to do.
Individuals make this choice in an atmosphere where 'everyone is doing it,' and there is pressure on everyone to 'cheat' so that they enter the code of silence of the guilty. This 'cheating' phenomenon was endemic at every level from the New Orleans Police Dept to the Oval Office.
Related to the 'cheating' phenomenon (kissing cousins, perhaps) is the phenomenon of Lying , repeatedly, and shamelessly, and expecting others, particularly those of lower status, to accept the Lie and pretend to believe it. This is the usual dynamic in abusive households, and the USA is nothing if not an abusive household writ large.
I have made a careful study of the current occupant of the white building on Pennsylvania Ave, and I am certain that virtually all the times he tells a lie, his lips can clearly be seen to move. Hyper-analysis of thousands of hours of video footage reveals a virtual one-to-one correspondance between the Subject's lips moving, and the emanation of a lie therefrom. (Sounds that were not lies tended to be grunts and coughs with no apparent information content.) This is what poker players call a 'tell.' A 'tell' is a nervous habit other players can see that indicates a given player is attempting to deceive them, either bluffing or faking a bluff. Virtually every time Mister Bush appears before a camera and moves his lips, his intent is to deceive, to dissemble, to disinform, to distort, and then to dictate to the scared and stupid that they must flock together behind him with the other War Sheep, or else Santa Claus, Jesus, and the FBI will put them on the Naughty list.
Here in the Shopping Season, we take heart because once again we call Jesus to be born in our world. And like Pagans everywhere I pray earnestly that Jesus show up to lead his Flock with his Righteousness, and in Glory to Someplace Far Away where they can only harm each other. Failing that, I hope He shows up and tells them to give their wealth to the poor (just like before,) and they scatter like chaff before the wind.

Why am I proud to be Pagan? Simply, because my two least favorite living humans, Great White Beast Bush and Osama Bin Laden agree on exactly one thing: They both hate Pagans, and call each other Pagans as a slur. Good. Whatever they both fear most is what I want to be.

A friend of mine used to say that the Truth is the most powerful weapon in a world powered by lies. Maybe if we all made a point of telling some uncomfortable Truth in our own lives this season, the resonance could carry all the way to the highest levels, and shake away the veils of deception behind which todays mass murderers hide.
The Truth is the US Military, which used to have some honor, kicks in the doors of innocent people, shoots journalists in the head at close range, burns and dishonors the bodies of its victims, rapes children and posts pictures of all these atrocities on the internet. And every one of them is a volunteer, who hopes to gain monetarily from supressing the Iraqis or the Afghanis. In short, they are a mercenary army sent far away to steal somebody else's country, and every man and woman of them volunteered. That's the Truth.
The Truth is that about half of Americans who bothered to vote actually voted for Bush in both 2000 and 2004. It may be possible to believe that in 2000 some people did not know that Bush would be such a disaster. But by 2004, there was no mistaking what was plainly the Truth, that Bush had damaged the USA more thoroughly than any terrorist or enemy ever could. The Americans who voted for Bush in 2004 freely approved crimes against humanity, torture, and the theft of billions in public money.
No people anywhere was so brazenly Evil that it voted for the 911 terror attacks. You can't find lists of thousands of people who gave their money specifically to see Americans die. But the same is not true of the atrocities of the US military. Millions of Americans saw the torture pictures from Iraq and actually voted for more of the same. Thousands of Americans gave big money to continue the war crimes. These people should be exposed for what they are, and neither they, nor their children, nor their children's children should ever be allowed to forget what they did to our country.

Who won the Cold War?


When I was a kid, there was this thing called the Cold War. The world was split between two competing ideologies that went out of their way to offer contrasts with one another. We were The Free World, and they were Behind The Iron Curtain. We had Free Speech, and they had jailed writers. We had Freedom of Religion, and they were Godless Communists who told you what to believe. We earnestly believed that every American who'd ever fought in Uniform had fought For Freedom, and if he died fighting, it was a noble sacrifice for a Great Cause. G.I. Joe might as well have been Martin Luther King. We believed Others might fight because they loved their country, especially the British or French, but just about every other army in the world was of brainwashed conscripts kept on rabbit food. And in any event, love of country was a lesser thing than fighting 'for freedom' which was the lofty motivation of every American who'd ever killed a stranger on command. Our side, which was conveniently called 'U.S.' in case we forgot who to cheer for, also harped constantly on the Commies about Human Rights. Freedom, of course, meant you could not be picked up by government agents and whisked off to some secret torture camp in Romania. You had rights. They couldn't do anything to you without a public trial (unless you were Black.) In ONE respect the two opposites mirrored each other exactly. We had their civilian population as hostage to our nuclear weapons, and they had our civilian population as hostage to their nuclear weapons. This ingenious compromise (hey, world leaders were Smart Guys, right? so anything that incomprehensible had to be genius...) was called Mutually Assured Destruction, or 'MAD' for short.

Then the Cold War ended. Our leaders gloated as the Soviet Union fell apart. Freedom Reigned Supreme, and the good guys had kicked serious ass by just spending money (giving it to defense contractors) faster than the Russians could match, for forty years. The Russians were big losers, and the defense contractors were the big winners. That might help explain how the weapons business has spread its tentacles into virtually every city or town. Almost anywhere in America, in any room full of respectable people with jobs, you can bet at least two or three of them work in the defense business, owe their careers to it, and will vociferously defend every last dollar that has ever been spent on defense, and darkly hint that They, doing Their Job are the only thing keeping you safe from the Enemy Du Jour.

But now that the Cold War is over, it is harder to recognize our side. We used to criticize the Soviets for occupying Afghanistan and committing war crimes there. Now our side occupies Afghanistan and commits war crimes there. We used to criticize the Soviets for violating human rights, and now our side asserts that neither the Geneva Conventions nor any other law apply to 'terror suspects,' or to anyone the President/military/CIA claims is a terror suspect. (If they are being held secretly, then they _must_ be terror suspects.) The Russians used to be the main trading partner of Red China, and so were partially responsible for human rights abuses there. Today our side is the main trading partner of Red China, and is billions of dollars in debt to Red China, and never mentions China's human rights abuses. We used to criticize the Soviets for having a vast secret police/torture infrastructure, and today our side are using the very same sites for the very same purpose.

I say 'our side,' but is it really? Who is really on our side? Is the United States Government really on our side? What has the U.S. Government become? What have We the People become?

Secret Prisons

The Washington Post carries a story this morning about a network of secret prisons the CIA is operating in 8 foreign countries, in 'cooperation' with the intelligence services of other countries.

A trans-global network of black operations spooks, above the law in any country, with their own network of torture chambers: that's what the 'War on Terror' is all about, on the top levels.

It's ironic they have chosen a 'Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe,' a site presumably used for internment and interrogation (read abduction, torture, murder) of enemies of the State under Communism. It must feel really interesting to American government employees (some of whom must have known George Sr. personally) to torture people in the same very rooms where the KGB used to torture people. For that matter, I'd bet the compound is actually a site used for the same purpose by Hitler. After all, why would the Soviets have built a new one with so many left lying around?

Ever since The Butcher assumed the presidency, he has struck me as the American Hitler: the political embodiment of Nationalistic demons, the ugly side of a culture. He embodies the very worst of the Plantation culture, the Victorian Militarist culture, and the West Texan bush-wack oil bandito culture. He speaks for the very worst Americans, on their very worst days, pursuing their very worst ideas, with a lot of borrowed money.

Do the Republicans think they are going to get away with this? I mean the actual, individual people who vote Republican and give them money. Do they glibly imagine that nothing and no one is going to hold them responsible for what they have done to our country?

I think it is possible with a little research to find out exactly who these people are, and exactly how they thought they might profit from helping turn the US into a Fascist Police State. These stories should be written, with the names named and the addresses noted. These people should be exposed for what they are: a conspiracy to undermine the US Constitution.

Armageddon?

This morning Drudge has a headline that says 'This One Is Going to be Armageddon.' The picture shows a skinny white woman with a Benneton sweater and expensive hair raising her hands in the air in a 'praise jesus' gesture in front of the graven images of the Supreme Court.

Everyone it seems is gearing up for the 'ideological fight' over Bush's new nominee, the Italian Conservative from New Jersey. The news junkies are sharpening their electronic pencils and waiting for the political equivalent of a major play-off game-- a fight that presages a midterm election and later a presidential one, and more importantly will be the place where the Supreme Court's slide to the right is either arrested or accelerated.

As momentous as all that sounds, though, when compared to concrete realities like a war we can neither win nor escape, and man-made ecological disasters to which we seem unable to respond competently, questions of how law is interpreted strike me as, well, somewhat abstract and etherial, something after the nature of a huge game of Let's Pretend.

Who really cares? The law as it stands forbids torture by police, military, or corrections officials, but what does it matter? They do what they do, and judges almost inevitably back them up. Only the rarest cases, like those caught on film, ever reach the public eye. Whining that the law against torture isn't strong enough won't stop torture. Suppose police obey anti-torture laws as well or as often as they obey other laws, like speed limits, parking regulations, or laws against domestic violence. How often would that be? And what difference does it really make if a Supreme Court Justice is generally pro-cop as a matter of course, or if the Justice is viralently and emphatically pro-cop in ways that push the boundaries of any kind of sense?

I guess it makes a difference, sort of. But still it looks like a distraction from the real problems that demand real action, sooner not later, and not a lot of pious platitudes about how The Law we inherit from the Roman Empire via the British Empire might be applied in some theoretical world where laws are understood, followed, and make a difference.

I guess for some it will feel good, the familiar territory of theory marked with the well-worn paths of slogans we grew up with, and a break from the tactile too-real-ness of people getting blown up, flooded out, or just dropping dead. And let's not forget the bills that are accruing for the 'nation' as well as for us as individuals. I guess in times of stress, cultures like people instinctively grope for what is familiar and comfortable. And there is nothing more familiar and comfortable to Americans than rehashing the political cleavages of the past 400 years as a colonizing power.

Once again, we will congratulate ourselves. The Right will congratulate itself for being Tough and Smart, and the Left will congratulate itself for being Humane and Progressive. Everybody will prance across the stage on the TV screens, and have their say. (Everybody will have their say except those of us not in the script, of course.) And then, whoever Wall Street wants will become Supreme Court Justice. It would have been the same way if Democrats ran things.

But the real problems will not have gone away while we were in the huddle selecting a new Grand Poodle, Supreme Whatever. His position is essentially one of Public Relations, that is, explaining why the laws all apply strictly to you and me, but not to corporations, or politicians, or soldiers, or cops, and explaining it with sufficient legalistic effluvium to cow the herd.