Sunday morning, someone asked me if I'd read the front-page article about Sarah Palin in the New York Times. "It read like an op-ed piece," she said, "not like a serious news article." Curious, I went home and read it, a five-page “expose” on Palin’s dealings with colleagues as gathered from "60 Democrats and Republicans." I didn't think it was very interesting, frankly, and it only confirmed what I already thought: This woman is not a contender for our highest office. (Although now she is reminding me more of Nicole Kidman's character in To Die For than Dolores Umbridge.)
What I found more interesting than the article, though, were the 1,051 comments (before commenting was closed). There were three types of responses. Those from people who already didn't like Palin and this just confirmed it, those who weren't sure what to think and are now horrified and those who think Palin is unjustly being crucified by the liberal press. The last category is of the most interest to me because it exposes the questions.
Some people simply cannot tolerate the ugliness of politics and I am one of those people so I understand that they may feel compelled to stick up for the person they feel is being picked on. But Sarah Palin seems to be a bully in every sense of the word, not someone to feel sorry for. It is precisely seen as one of her strengths, like it was for Hilary Clinton, a woman who can fight with the men. Then there are those who say the article is just a gossip piece and scoff at the Times for spending so many resources to only come up with this. I have to agree with this although I’m inclined to believe it’s because Palin doesn’t have much to offer but gossip. Mayor of a town only twice as large as my high school and governor of a state the size of the county I grew up in, it’s hard to believe she has much substantive experience to really dig into.
This isn't a news story, just a waste bin of mindless small town gossip. You could write a story like this about every mayor in America.
— White River, Arkansas
I'd love to point to Mayor Villairagosa in Los Angeles who has tackled issues the magnitude of which are actually comparable to those of a higher office. But what I find most troubling is the pervasive belief that all politicians are corrupt. An alarming number of comments sarcastically feign horror at a politician who "hires friends" and "fires enemies" and so in that regard, she is no different than Obama.
I am a registered Democrat and don't see Palin as being any more or less qualified than Obama. They both have huge experience holes. I do believe that the transcendent issue of our time is ENERGY. She seems to be the only person in the group of four who understands how to truly produce more energy.
— Bill, Pennsylvania
Sarah Palin is no worse than anyone on the other side. In fact, I think she may be better. So I will vote McCain with her on the ticket.
— Roy Pendergraft, San Antonio, Texas
Do you think your favorite Democrats are different or better???
— S charles, Northern, NJ
I actually interpreted what was being questioned is how one comes to BE labeled a friend or an enemy, not whether it makes sense to hire friends and fire enemies. Can you imagine the new ads for McCain/Palin: "No worse than the other guy, maybe even better." I suppose it is naïve of me to expect something better from the President but I don’t intend to simply relinquish the standards of our government laid down by our constitution because “that’s just the way people are" and refuse to believe that this type is behavior is required in our current government.
Well it appears that Palin runs a very tight ship. I am not at all surprised about the findings in this article. I am a teacher and my previous school underwent a change of guard in my last year. When the new principal came in she brought new cronies, new policies, and singled out her favorite teachers. Some of the teachers deserved the accolades and some didn't. Some policies were absurd, some weren't. Most of the cronies were incompetent.
The bottom line is that business is not as professional as anyone would like to make it seem. Especially in the government. Taxpayer money is the easiest checkbook to throw around. I'm not letting Palin off the hook, I'm just not surprised. A lot of people get jobs because they "know" somebody.
I'm sure we have all been victims of workplace unfairness at some point or other. I'm sure most of us have even participated in it. Most of this behavior is human nature. Do I think Palin will act any differently if elected to the White House? No. Do I think that she will be the first president or vice-president to use her power to get back at people? No again. I don't want Palin in office at all. But this article isn't making me like her any less. I'm more concerned about her policies.
— Toussaint, NY
While I agree that corruption is not a new idea, it’s certainly not ideal. We’re supposed to have a choice here! Are we not? And while I’ve been in really frustrating and annoying work situations where incompetent people were rewarded, good ideas were shot down and people played dirty, I fought them. I didn’t just say “that’s the way it is” and go about my business. To my detriment, perhaps, but I didn’t vote those people into their positions and the future of our country was not at stake. To compare the Vice Presidency to a teacher’s job or my marketing job is a joke. To say that it doesn’t matter how she behaves only what she produces is also absurd. I learned first hand that no matter how good a person’s direction, it is meaningless if we cannot learn to achieve these things in a way that is respectful and that builds roads and bridges to more progress.
Several readers suggest that the Times has yet to do such in-depth reporting on Obama, because surely they would find the same kind of gossip about him. Some simply dismiss the Times as pro-Obama and say they "will do anything to make this woman look bad." Two readers end by saying "no wonder your stock is tanking" and "look at your revenues," suggesting that the paper is going bankrupt because of their unfair reporting. Isn't it contradictory to accuse the paper of being biased and then making reference to their financial status? If fairness were truly the bottom line, their finances wouldn't matter.
It is nice but who is reading your paper, only the people who would rather vote for a pig than for a Republican. Have you ever done such a lengthy research on Obama's record?
— Igor Dolgachev, Ann Arbor, MI
I look forward to seeing similar in depth investigation of Joe Biden and, for that matter, Barack Obama.
— Dennis from the Bronx, NYS
You know there are times when I really feel like just saying goodbye to the NYT! You cannot simultaneously deride her lack of experience and also meticulously cut up her record. I am not saying that she is the most experienced but I have never read an article like this as critical of Obama or excoriating him like you did Palin. Your bias is so clear it is despicable.
— tom, Bronxville, new york
i will donate $1,000.xx to the charity of JO BECKER, PETER S. GOODMAN AND MICHAEL POWELL's collective choice if they can point me to a New York Times story in the last twelve months similar in tone, depth, length and quotes from critics about either Senator Obama or Senator Biden.
— michael schrage, cambridge
Clearly, it isn't more in-depth articles people want, they just want the bashing to be even. Don't make Sarah Palin look bad if you aren't going to equally discredit the other candidates. Is it really our desire to see all of our candidates dragged in the mud until it’s impossible to believe in a leader that we can respect? It's funny because I doubt these people are as upset about McCain bashing Obama because that's just fair politics for one candidate to trash and lie about another. I, for one, am more upset about our presidential candidates engaging in this type of behavior than I am the press. The press has always been inflammatory. I might be wrong but I thought it was their role to ask the brazen questions and uncover the truth, not to present a fairly balanced scorecard of all candidates with equal amounts of ugly and pretty. Our candidates, however, are supposed to convince us why we should vote for them. It is NOT their job to slander the other candidates.
In another article about the investigation into a firing by Sarah Palin that several Republicans are suing to halt, one of the attorneys says:
"There is no nonpartisan reason to complete this investigation until after the election," said Anchorage attorney Kevin G. Clarkson. "We just want to take the politics out of it and bring fairness back into it."
Good lord! It's no wonder the public is so confused, these people can't stop talking out of both sides of their mouths! They want the investigation to stop because they think it's going to unfairly affect the election? But they ALSO think it's somehow totally unrelated and the public doesn't need to know the truth about her until AFTER the election? I am sickened by the ever-present reference that politics is inherently dirty and, according to the above quote, the OPPOSITE of fair. It seems to confirm that people really believe there is no difference between any candidate, they’re all corrupt egomaniacs, so it really is a mere popularity contest. If it doesn't matter what a person stands for and what they've actually accomplished, it only comes down to is whether you personally think they're neat. Which is so interesting in light of McCain's claim that the Obama supporters are just a bunch of glassy-eyed sycophants, implying that his supporters are meat-and-potatoes issues people. From the fainting spells the Republicans are having over Palin I'd say the opposite is true, but of course she wasn't in the picture then.
I just watched the Sarah Palin special on CNN: sorry, but I can't see anything wrong or that would disturb me - seems to be just a fine woman, and with a spine! So would you please stop bashing her now?
— Richard Streiff, California
I agree. I’m tired of hearing about her! On another note, I caught a little speech by Jill Biden who comes across as a truly lovely person — genuine, likeable and intelligent. She is the perfect antidote to all this ugliness.
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
Wired sells out to Monsanto
I picked up my new Wired magazine and immediately read their cover story, an inflammatory ‘environmentalists are full of shit’ piece. It really pissed me off. They end their series of anti-arguments based on facts focused around cutting carbon dioxide, with a “take it with a grain of salt" letter from the editor of Worldchanging.com. He basically says the article is a short-lens focus that could get us into even more trouble. Isn’t the damage already done with a cover like “Keep your SUV, forget organics and screw the spotted owl?” I suppose it would be okay if they were using it to get people reading but then dole out some actual wisdom inside, but they don’t.
Here are my reactions to the articles:
1) A/C is OK. Here they say it takes more energy to heat a house in a cold climate than it does to cool a house in a hot climate. Good point, but really do we want everyone to move to the Southwest? The area is already burgeoning and just beginning a mega-drought that could last up to 150 years, where are they going to get enough water to live? What about clamping down on cheap housing construction and passing ordinances requiring better insulation. We’ll all have to pay more per square foot but maybe it will have the doubly beneficial effect of making our houses use space more efficiently.
2) Live in cities. Yes, for the most part, urbanization is cool and better for the environment but they make an argument that exurbs are the same as living in a truly rural area surrounded by trees. People don’t live in exurbs to be closer to nature, they sprouted up because people (like in Los Angeles) couldn’t afford to buy houses in the city so developers bought cheap land 50 miles out of town in the desert and built affordable housing there. The article points a finger at lawnmowers (a product of the suburb/exurb) and I totally agree that lawnmowers are a waste of energy. But why not encourage people with land to plant trees and grow a garden to feed themselves instead of trying to get them to move to a city? Not everyone wants to live in an apartment.
3) Organics are not the answer. This one really burns me up. They say we should screw organic because it takes 25 organic cows compared to 23 industrial cows for the same milk and they put out 16 percent more greenhouse emissions. Are they f’ing kidding me? We should drink hormone-laced pus-filled milk from sick suffering cows for that differential? The only smart thing they say in this article, albeit stuffed in the middle, is that if you really want to do something for the environment, stop eating meat altogether. It’s true that we can’t go organic at our current rate of consumption but we (in industrialized countries) eat and waste too much food anyway. Instead, I think we should go organic 100% and patronize restaurants that serve reasonable proportions of quality food.
4) Farm the forests. The only good thing in this section is about culling dead wood out of the forests, it does prevent fires and with the climate heating up, we can’t afford the kind of fires it’s going to bring. But the rest of it, about becoming full time forest farmers and cutting down old growth trees is total bullshit.
5) China is the solution, not the problem. I agree! (See next post) China has become the number one producer of alternative energy solutions for export and use in their own country. Due to decades of rapid and untethered production and growth, their feet are now much closer to the proverbial fire than ours; they will likely find and implement environmental solutions quicker than us.
6) Accept genetic engineering. If I read one more thing about biofuel, I’m going to be sick. They just made the point that we should use more public transportation in the “move to the city” argument but now they’re talking about how we should embrace genetic engineering so we can grow more biofuel. They attack fertilizer and say nothing of chemical sprays, but fertilizer is necessary because of our addiction to monocrops (and profits). Thousands of years ago, farmers rotated crops and used trees and companion plants that naturally kept bugs away or attracted complimentary insect relationships (like worms) and enrich the soil to the benefit of certain crops. The author mentions Monsanto as some kind of wonder company here to save our lives. Monsanto is a chemical company that produces the world’s best-selling “herbicide,” a chemical that kills everything. They then got into the agriculture business producing 90% of the GMO crops on the planet, specifically engineered to resist their herbicide. Roundup kills everything except the crops they engineer. They are corporate bullies who use lawsuits and threats to wipe out local farmers. "Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food," said Phil Angell, Monsanto's director of corporate communications. "Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA's job." Unchecked, everything we eat will be engineered by Monsanto. If Wired really gave a shit about us and the environment, they’d do a full report on how they control our food supply.
7) Carbon Trading doesn’t work. I agree, good idea that needs improved.
8) Embrace nuclear power. There’s been a lot of talk that the only way we’ll produce enough energy for the billions of us on the planet in the future is from nuclear. They call it the cleanest of the fossil fuels because of the low emissions, uh, but what about the huge volume of nuclear waste produced? We already have tons of it buried in leaking containers under the ground in Washington and other states, we have no safe way to dispose of it and it remains toxic for thousands of years. Let’s focus on energy saving and efficiency before we make feeding our voracious appetites the top priority, eh?
9) Used cars not hybrids. Okay, I get the argument. New cars cost a lot of energy to make. If you’re driving a ten-year old fuel-efficient Toyota like my RAV, it’s better for the environment to keep driving it than to buy a new car. Except that my RAV will never end up in the landfill, there will always be someone waiting to buy it. They suggest (again, to be inflammatory) by the same logic you’re better off driving a Hummer because making a Hummer contributes less carbon to the environment (because of the nickel in Prius’ battery). They say nothing about the fact that cars in Europe are twice as fuel-efficient as ours and are the same as a Prius, which is why you don’t see hybrids there. It’s all a bunch of crap. We’re sold gas-guzzlers on purpose so the hybrids look good in comparison. While it doesn’t affect our carbon output, the quiet drive of the hybrids has many other benefits.
10) Prepare for the worst. Yes, things are going to get much hotter and much worse before they get better and we do need to accept that and prepare. They quote Stewart Brand who says, "We are as gods and might as well get good at it" and suggest that we take over completely by using our technology to fix the things we've broken like helping birds migrate, for example. We're destroying their natural habitat, building over open spaces that break up long migration journeys, disrupting communication with our noise and killing them and their food with pesticides but the scientists are going to save the birds with assisted migration? Then again, they mention that Monsanto, who brought us Agent Orange, PCBs and Bovine Growth Hormone, will save us with genetic engineering. What is this issue sponsored by Bush and the chemical industry?
I agree we better figure out ways to adapt and continue to innovate but we are consuming and disrupting the natural order of the planet at an unsustainable rate and technology alone will not save us (or the birds). We need to continue to make our small but impactful changes like eating locally produced food, driving less, taking a tote the store instead of using plastic bags, planting trees and food in our yards if we have them, installing energy efficient appliances, using less energy by unplugging what we aren’t using, and continuing to pay attention, support innovation and demand responsibility from corporations and governments.
Here's the first part of a two hour-long show about Monsanto:
Here are my reactions to the articles:
1) A/C is OK. Here they say it takes more energy to heat a house in a cold climate than it does to cool a house in a hot climate. Good point, but really do we want everyone to move to the Southwest? The area is already burgeoning and just beginning a mega-drought that could last up to 150 years, where are they going to get enough water to live? What about clamping down on cheap housing construction and passing ordinances requiring better insulation. We’ll all have to pay more per square foot but maybe it will have the doubly beneficial effect of making our houses use space more efficiently.
2) Live in cities. Yes, for the most part, urbanization is cool and better for the environment but they make an argument that exurbs are the same as living in a truly rural area surrounded by trees. People don’t live in exurbs to be closer to nature, they sprouted up because people (like in Los Angeles) couldn’t afford to buy houses in the city so developers bought cheap land 50 miles out of town in the desert and built affordable housing there. The article points a finger at lawnmowers (a product of the suburb/exurb) and I totally agree that lawnmowers are a waste of energy. But why not encourage people with land to plant trees and grow a garden to feed themselves instead of trying to get them to move to a city? Not everyone wants to live in an apartment.
3) Organics are not the answer. This one really burns me up. They say we should screw organic because it takes 25 organic cows compared to 23 industrial cows for the same milk and they put out 16 percent more greenhouse emissions. Are they f’ing kidding me? We should drink hormone-laced pus-filled milk from sick suffering cows for that differential? The only smart thing they say in this article, albeit stuffed in the middle, is that if you really want to do something for the environment, stop eating meat altogether. It’s true that we can’t go organic at our current rate of consumption but we (in industrialized countries) eat and waste too much food anyway. Instead, I think we should go organic 100% and patronize restaurants that serve reasonable proportions of quality food.
4) Farm the forests. The only good thing in this section is about culling dead wood out of the forests, it does prevent fires and with the climate heating up, we can’t afford the kind of fires it’s going to bring. But the rest of it, about becoming full time forest farmers and cutting down old growth trees is total bullshit.
5) China is the solution, not the problem. I agree! (See next post) China has become the number one producer of alternative energy solutions for export and use in their own country. Due to decades of rapid and untethered production and growth, their feet are now much closer to the proverbial fire than ours; they will likely find and implement environmental solutions quicker than us.
6) Accept genetic engineering. If I read one more thing about biofuel, I’m going to be sick. They just made the point that we should use more public transportation in the “move to the city” argument but now they’re talking about how we should embrace genetic engineering so we can grow more biofuel. They attack fertilizer and say nothing of chemical sprays, but fertilizer is necessary because of our addiction to monocrops (and profits). Thousands of years ago, farmers rotated crops and used trees and companion plants that naturally kept bugs away or attracted complimentary insect relationships (like worms) and enrich the soil to the benefit of certain crops. The author mentions Monsanto as some kind of wonder company here to save our lives. Monsanto is a chemical company that produces the world’s best-selling “herbicide,” a chemical that kills everything. They then got into the agriculture business producing 90% of the GMO crops on the planet, specifically engineered to resist their herbicide. Roundup kills everything except the crops they engineer. They are corporate bullies who use lawsuits and threats to wipe out local farmers. "Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food," said Phil Angell, Monsanto's director of corporate communications. "Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA's job." Unchecked, everything we eat will be engineered by Monsanto. If Wired really gave a shit about us and the environment, they’d do a full report on how they control our food supply.
7) Carbon Trading doesn’t work. I agree, good idea that needs improved.
8) Embrace nuclear power. There’s been a lot of talk that the only way we’ll produce enough energy for the billions of us on the planet in the future is from nuclear. They call it the cleanest of the fossil fuels because of the low emissions, uh, but what about the huge volume of nuclear waste produced? We already have tons of it buried in leaking containers under the ground in Washington and other states, we have no safe way to dispose of it and it remains toxic for thousands of years. Let’s focus on energy saving and efficiency before we make feeding our voracious appetites the top priority, eh?
9) Used cars not hybrids. Okay, I get the argument. New cars cost a lot of energy to make. If you’re driving a ten-year old fuel-efficient Toyota like my RAV, it’s better for the environment to keep driving it than to buy a new car. Except that my RAV will never end up in the landfill, there will always be someone waiting to buy it. They suggest (again, to be inflammatory) by the same logic you’re better off driving a Hummer because making a Hummer contributes less carbon to the environment (because of the nickel in Prius’ battery). They say nothing about the fact that cars in Europe are twice as fuel-efficient as ours and are the same as a Prius, which is why you don’t see hybrids there. It’s all a bunch of crap. We’re sold gas-guzzlers on purpose so the hybrids look good in comparison. While it doesn’t affect our carbon output, the quiet drive of the hybrids has many other benefits.
10) Prepare for the worst. Yes, things are going to get much hotter and much worse before they get better and we do need to accept that and prepare. They quote Stewart Brand who says, "We are as gods and might as well get good at it" and suggest that we take over completely by using our technology to fix the things we've broken like helping birds migrate, for example. We're destroying their natural habitat, building over open spaces that break up long migration journeys, disrupting communication with our noise and killing them and their food with pesticides but the scientists are going to save the birds with assisted migration? Then again, they mention that Monsanto, who brought us Agent Orange, PCBs and Bovine Growth Hormone, will save us with genetic engineering. What is this issue sponsored by Bush and the chemical industry?
I agree we better figure out ways to adapt and continue to innovate but we are consuming and disrupting the natural order of the planet at an unsustainable rate and technology alone will not save us (or the birds). We need to continue to make our small but impactful changes like eating locally produced food, driving less, taking a tote the store instead of using plastic bags, planting trees and food in our yards if we have them, installing energy efficient appliances, using less energy by unplugging what we aren’t using, and continuing to pay attention, support innovation and demand responsibility from corporations and governments.
Here's the first part of a two hour-long show about Monsanto:
Friday, April 4, 2008
Uncivilized States of America
Between the ages of 12 and 19, I went to Europe three times with my family. We mainly went to visit my relatives in England but also managed to see Paris, stay in rural France, drive through southern Germany, tour Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria and tour through Wales staying in farmhouse B&B’s. My English cousins, only a few years younger than me, thought America was so cool and always talked about someday wanting to live here. It was the eighties; no one in Europe thinks that way about America anymore. Even at that young age, I advised them that America was not all they thought it was. It was in those years that I formulated the opinion that the U.S. treated its citizens as stupid ill-behaved children that can’t be trusted with responsibility. A sentiment echoed decades later in President Bush’s statement that it didn’t matter if we didn’t support the war in Iraq because he knew what was best for the country.
Why is it, I asked, that at 16 I can pay taxes but I can’t vote? That I can drive but can’t go to a club to see a concert with my friends? That I can go to college but can’t borrow money to pay for it? In Europe, college is free and parents are allowed to determine when and how their kids can drink alcohol. At monuments in Britain, there were no ropes or signs restricting where you can go or telling you how to behave. Their government trusts its citizens to be adults and behave accordingly. If you fall and get hurt, it’s your fault and responsibility. You wouldn’t sue for your mistake. But then, you wouldn’t have to because your medical treatment is free regardless of how it happened or who is to blame.
For twenty years, I have wanted to live in Europe. As a teenager, I made “mood boards” of European villages, small farms and old towns that I wanted to visit. I haven’t managed to spend much more than four weeks in Italy as an adult, four of the best weeks of my life. Lately though, I‘ve been feeling so down on America, so tired of the lies and hypocrisy that seem to be everywhere. Why do we spend more than ten times more on military “defense” than any other country in the world? Are we really ten times safer? Or in ten times as much danger? Our president says it to keep our country safe and yet we are being polluted by industry, poisoned by our food and killed by a lack of health care and campaign of misinformation about what is “food.” Why are we told and why do people believe that this is the greatest nation on earth? Because we have democracy? We have the lowest voter turnout of any democracy on the planet, so that can’t be the reason.
I just watched Michael Moore’s new film, Sicko. All these years I’ve been arguing with people who didn’t believe me when I said that Europeans were better off than us. My cousins all own their own homes, have new cars, little to no debt and have traveled all over the world on their holidays. They aren’t better educated than me and I probably make the same amount of money, minus the five weeks paid mandatory vacation. They’re politically informed and engaged and never have had a problem finding work. And they’re healthy.
Sicko, while focused on the sham that is our “health care industry,” also asks the bigger question of “what’s wrong with us”? Why are we the only civilized nation in the world that denies basic rights and services – health care, time off and education – to its citizens? It’s no wonder Europeans don’t respect us, we put up with the most disgusting abuse and corruption but then wave our flags and tell everyone to be like us. It’s unfortunate that more Americans haven’t spent time overseas to see how other people live. Moore makes a good point about how we’ve been brainwashed to believe that national health care would be socialist and socialism is a bad, scary thing. Well it is to rich people but for the rest of us, it’s the purpose of government and society. As Jared Diamond describes in Guns, Germs and Steel, in a kleptocracy it’s what we get in exchange for those in charge taking the largest portion of goods. This article references the best quote in the film from a Labor Party member of Parliament, a portion of which is that “an educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern.” Keep us frightened and demoralized and we won’t protest our condition. Bingo!
Look at these happy people, they just had a baby for free:
Moore takes a crew of sick Americans, including 9/11 rescue workers denied treatment, to Guatanamo Bay where the terrorists being held and receiving better medical attention than most Americans. They end up in a hospital, in Cuba of all places, where they get first class treatment in a segment that rendered me in tears much like one of those makeover reality shows. This country is being run into the ground by greedy and corrupt politicians and corporations, who are getting rich of us, and it’s happening right before our eyes. Someday, when people start trying to leave this country and live elsewhere, we’ll be asked why we didn’t do anything to stop it.
A while back someone sent me a video explaining the writer's strike in Hollywood on YouTube. It was a very simple and factual explanation, nothing emotional, just this is what we have, this is what we're asking for and this is why. Underneath the video, there were hundreds of comments. Almost all of them were hateful vitriolic statements about the writers being lazy and untalented. People said I hope you starve. They said, why should you get compensated when the rest of us are screwed by business? They accused writers of being greedy. I couldn't believe it. A friend of mine said she thought they were planted there by studios but I don't think so. I've seen too many examples of Americans slinging hate at each other to know that we're an angry bunch of people who hate to see other people get something they deserve, unless it's punishment. But the anger is misdirected. We should be angry, we should be very angry but not at each other. Moore says at the end of the movie that nothing will change until we starting thinking of "we" instead of "me."
Why is it, I asked, that at 16 I can pay taxes but I can’t vote? That I can drive but can’t go to a club to see a concert with my friends? That I can go to college but can’t borrow money to pay for it? In Europe, college is free and parents are allowed to determine when and how their kids can drink alcohol. At monuments in Britain, there were no ropes or signs restricting where you can go or telling you how to behave. Their government trusts its citizens to be adults and behave accordingly. If you fall and get hurt, it’s your fault and responsibility. You wouldn’t sue for your mistake. But then, you wouldn’t have to because your medical treatment is free regardless of how it happened or who is to blame.
For twenty years, I have wanted to live in Europe. As a teenager, I made “mood boards” of European villages, small farms and old towns that I wanted to visit. I haven’t managed to spend much more than four weeks in Italy as an adult, four of the best weeks of my life. Lately though, I‘ve been feeling so down on America, so tired of the lies and hypocrisy that seem to be everywhere. Why do we spend more than ten times more on military “defense” than any other country in the world? Are we really ten times safer? Or in ten times as much danger? Our president says it to keep our country safe and yet we are being polluted by industry, poisoned by our food and killed by a lack of health care and campaign of misinformation about what is “food.” Why are we told and why do people believe that this is the greatest nation on earth? Because we have democracy? We have the lowest voter turnout of any democracy on the planet, so that can’t be the reason.
I just watched Michael Moore’s new film, Sicko. All these years I’ve been arguing with people who didn’t believe me when I said that Europeans were better off than us. My cousins all own their own homes, have new cars, little to no debt and have traveled all over the world on their holidays. They aren’t better educated than me and I probably make the same amount of money, minus the five weeks paid mandatory vacation. They’re politically informed and engaged and never have had a problem finding work. And they’re healthy.
Sicko, while focused on the sham that is our “health care industry,” also asks the bigger question of “what’s wrong with us”? Why are we the only civilized nation in the world that denies basic rights and services – health care, time off and education – to its citizens? It’s no wonder Europeans don’t respect us, we put up with the most disgusting abuse and corruption but then wave our flags and tell everyone to be like us. It’s unfortunate that more Americans haven’t spent time overseas to see how other people live. Moore makes a good point about how we’ve been brainwashed to believe that national health care would be socialist and socialism is a bad, scary thing. Well it is to rich people but for the rest of us, it’s the purpose of government and society. As Jared Diamond describes in Guns, Germs and Steel, in a kleptocracy it’s what we get in exchange for those in charge taking the largest portion of goods. This article references the best quote in the film from a Labor Party member of Parliament, a portion of which is that “an educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern.” Keep us frightened and demoralized and we won’t protest our condition. Bingo!
Look at these happy people, they just had a baby for free:
Moore takes a crew of sick Americans, including 9/11 rescue workers denied treatment, to Guatanamo Bay where the terrorists being held and receiving better medical attention than most Americans. They end up in a hospital, in Cuba of all places, where they get first class treatment in a segment that rendered me in tears much like one of those makeover reality shows. This country is being run into the ground by greedy and corrupt politicians and corporations, who are getting rich of us, and it’s happening right before our eyes. Someday, when people start trying to leave this country and live elsewhere, we’ll be asked why we didn’t do anything to stop it.
A while back someone sent me a video explaining the writer's strike in Hollywood on YouTube. It was a very simple and factual explanation, nothing emotional, just this is what we have, this is what we're asking for and this is why. Underneath the video, there were hundreds of comments. Almost all of them were hateful vitriolic statements about the writers being lazy and untalented. People said I hope you starve. They said, why should you get compensated when the rest of us are screwed by business? They accused writers of being greedy. I couldn't believe it. A friend of mine said she thought they were planted there by studios but I don't think so. I've seen too many examples of Americans slinging hate at each other to know that we're an angry bunch of people who hate to see other people get something they deserve, unless it's punishment. But the anger is misdirected. We should be angry, we should be very angry but not at each other. Moore says at the end of the movie that nothing will change until we starting thinking of "we" instead of "me."
Monday, December 3, 2007
Drinking the Kool-Aid
I just watched "Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room," which is just a remarkable story of a group of guys that we're all supposed to want to be like - charming, smart, ambitious and fun - who, in the pursuit of success, blew up a company like a balloon and when it popped took 20,000 employees and their futures with them. The consequent folding of Arthur Andersen, the financial company that destroyed accounting evidence of the Enron dealings, folded and took with it the jobs of 85,000 more people!
My dad says that he doesn't believe in conspiracies. That there are too many people involved and he just finds it implausible that people can be that organized. Technically, though, it only takes two to make a conspiracy which is the most plausible thing in the world and in this case there was Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. But this is a perfect example of something that looks and feels like a much bigger conspiracy than it is. They may never have sat in a room and said we're going to do this thing. Instead, it demonstrates how power and money can corrupt so completely and so thoroughly that no one ever HAS to conspire. People see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe when huge amounts of money (or power) are at stake.
The biggest banks in the world, politicians, traders and financial analysts lined up to drink the Kool-Aid and take their check. If these guys at the top said something was true then it must be. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, the bigger the lies, the bigger the liars and the bigger the accomplices. This is how modern terrorism works. One or two people at the top know what's really going on and everyone else is just buying into the vision, seeing what they want to see. They believe what they're told and by the time they know otherwise, it's too late. So it's easy to claim ignorance, just like the banks did when they said they had no reason to believe what they were doing was wrong, because technically they didn't know. One guy in the movie says he knew things were amiss but he didn't ask because he was afraid of the answer.
It's really an excellent movie, worth watching because it makes you realize that every corruption is a version of this story. Think about the war in Iraq. Every lie begets another lie and the lies get bigger and with more at risk. There's no other way to play that game. Everyone who buys it has to keep buying into it, otherwise they have to face themselves and their mistakes. You can't just turn around and say you were wrong and go back, there's no going back. At Enron, they just kept hoping each new lie would pay off and fix all the previous ones.
The big theme of the movie is "ask why," which ironically, was Enron's advertising tagline. Too much of what happened is a result of no one asking why, which, again is reminiscent of too many tragedies in human history. It's easy in these instances to look back and wonder why people didn't ask what was happening, why people didn't demand the truth, why they believed the lies. Yet in the present, we're all drinking the Kool-Aid somewhere when we should be asking why.
My dad says that he doesn't believe in conspiracies. That there are too many people involved and he just finds it implausible that people can be that organized. Technically, though, it only takes two to make a conspiracy which is the most plausible thing in the world and in this case there was Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. But this is a perfect example of something that looks and feels like a much bigger conspiracy than it is. They may never have sat in a room and said we're going to do this thing. Instead, it demonstrates how power and money can corrupt so completely and so thoroughly that no one ever HAS to conspire. People see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe when huge amounts of money (or power) are at stake.
The biggest banks in the world, politicians, traders and financial analysts lined up to drink the Kool-Aid and take their check. If these guys at the top said something was true then it must be. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, the bigger the lies, the bigger the liars and the bigger the accomplices. This is how modern terrorism works. One or two people at the top know what's really going on and everyone else is just buying into the vision, seeing what they want to see. They believe what they're told and by the time they know otherwise, it's too late. So it's easy to claim ignorance, just like the banks did when they said they had no reason to believe what they were doing was wrong, because technically they didn't know. One guy in the movie says he knew things were amiss but he didn't ask because he was afraid of the answer.
It's really an excellent movie, worth watching because it makes you realize that every corruption is a version of this story. Think about the war in Iraq. Every lie begets another lie and the lies get bigger and with more at risk. There's no other way to play that game. Everyone who buys it has to keep buying into it, otherwise they have to face themselves and their mistakes. You can't just turn around and say you were wrong and go back, there's no going back. At Enron, they just kept hoping each new lie would pay off and fix all the previous ones.
The big theme of the movie is "ask why," which ironically, was Enron's advertising tagline. Too much of what happened is a result of no one asking why, which, again is reminiscent of too many tragedies in human history. It's easy in these instances to look back and wonder why people didn't ask what was happening, why people didn't demand the truth, why they believed the lies. Yet in the present, we're all drinking the Kool-Aid somewhere when we should be asking why.
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