In A Minor Key

We come on a ship we call the Mayflower, 
We come on a ship that sailed the moon 
We come at the age's most uncertain hour 
And sing the American tune 
But it's all right, it's all right 
You can't be forever blessed 
Still, tomorrow's gonna be another working day 
And I'm trying to get some rest, 
That's all, I'm trying to get some rest.

                                Paul Simon, "American Tune" 

If there is a single platitude that transcends the political differences of our short age of ideological discord, it is this: America's Best Days Our Ahead!

Whether it's Pres. Obama:

The bravery, resolve, expertise and commitment of U.S. servicemembers proves that America's best days lie ahead, President Barack Obama said at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, Dec. 3, [2010].

--snip--

"Through your service, you demonstrate the content of the American character," he said. "Some people ask whether America's best days lie ahead or whether our greatness stretches back behind us in the stories of those who've gone before.

"When I look out at all of you, I know the answer to that," he continued. "You give me hope. You give me inspiration. Your resolve shows that Americans will never succumb to fear. Your selfless service shows who we are, who we always will be, united as one people and united as one nation, for you embody and stand up for the values that make us what we are as a people."

Or Mitt Romney:

 There was a time -- not so long ago -- when each of us could walk a little taller and stand a little straighter because we had a gift that no one else in the world shared. We were Americans. That meant something different to each of us but it meant something special to all of us. We knew it without question. And so did the world.

Those days are coming back. That's our destiny.

We believe in America. We believe in ourselves. Our greatest days are still ahead. We are, after all, Americans!

It might be the co-founder of Home Depot:

Despite rampant government spending and heavy-handed regulations, the country's best days do lie ahead, as the U.S. has shown a history of doing away with policies — and politicians — that don't foster an entrepreneurial spirit, says investor and Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone.

"Talking about America, let me tell you something right now — I am 100 percent invested," Langone tells CNBC's Squawk Box. 

"Our best days as a nation are ahead of us. I'm talking about great days. We are a great nation. Every once in a while we get a little foolish and we do things and we get through it. We'll get through this."

Or our only Muslim member of Congress, MN Rep. Keith Ellison:

America remains the greatest country in the world and we inspire millions struggling for freedom around the world. When the people of Libya stood up against brutal repression this summer, they waved American flags in celebration and gratitude. As the people of Egypt shape their new government, they are rightly turning to the American Constitution as a model.

So before anyone mourns the decline of America, they should look at our history. We're Americans--in times of crisis, we step up.

This particular theme was sounded most eloquently by that most American of writers, Walt Whitman:

America, filling the present with greatest deeds and problems, cheerfully accepting the past, including feudalism, (as, indeed, the present is but the legitimate birth of the past, including feudalism,) counts, as I reckon, for her justification and success, (for who, as yet, dare claim success?) almost entirely on the future. Nor is that hope unwarranted. To-day, ahead, though dimly yet, we see, in vistas, a copious, sane, gigantic offspring. For our New World I consider far less important for what it has done, or what it is, than for results to come. Sole among nationalities, these States have assumed the task to put in forms of lasting power and practicality, on areas of amplitude rivaling the operations of the physical kosmos, the moral political speculations of ages, long, long deferr'd, the democratic republican principle, and the theory of development and perfection by voluntary standards, and self-reliance. Who else, indeed, except the United States, in history, so far, have accepted in unwitting faith, and, as we now see, stand, act upon, and go security for, these things?

At a moment in time when we all feel unsure, it may well be comforting to hear that this moment not only will not, but perhaps cannot last precisely because we Americans have demonstrated our ability to overcome whatever obstacles barred, for the moment, our climb toward greatness.  Few things are more reassuring than the promise that the future will be brighter than the present.

Yet, I wonder.  For all that these platitudes and promises play upon a deep strain within the American cultural self-consciousness, what, precisely, practically, effectively, is anyone doing to bring about these better days?  What is the substance of these things hoped for, the evidence of these things not seen?  A couple days ago, I wrote the following:

We have become more than cowardly.  We, as a people, have become blind.  We have lost the ability even to celebrate that which is best about all of us as a people.  We stagger through our days, hoping only that the collapse will come tomorrow, grateful at the end of each day that we have reached it safely.

I am planning, over the next few days, to explore this contraction of our sense of our abilities, this nagging fear to which we dare not even give voice that in fact our best days do not lie ahead.  This is not a state of affairs I celebrate.  On the contrary, I am terrified that this fear may yet make itself out to be a prophecy fulfilled.  I do think it is possible to rescue ourselves from this state of affairs; the outcome, however, is never certain.  Something Whitman, in words immediately following the paragraph quoted above, states quite baldly:

But preluding no longer, let me strike the key-note of the following strain. First premising that, though the passages of it have been written at widely different times, (it is, in fact, a collection of memoranda, perhaps for future designers, comprehenders,) and though it may be open to the charge of one part contradicting another -- for there are opposite sides to the great question of democracy, as to every great question -- I feel the parts harmoniously blended in my own realization and convictions, and present them to be read only in such oneness, each page and each claim and assertion modified and temper'd by the others. Bear in mind, too, that they are not the result of studying up in political economy, but of the ordinary sense, observing, wandering among men, these States, these stirring years of war and peace. I will not gloss over the appaling dangers of universal suffrage in the United States. In fact, it is to admit and face these dangers I am writing. To him or her within whose thought rages the battle, advancing, retreating, between democracy's convictions, aspirations, and the people's crudeness, vice, caprices, I mainly write this essay. I shall use the words America and democracy as convertible terms. Not an ordinary one is the issue. The United States are destined either to surmount the gorgeous history of feudalism, or else prove the most tremendous failure of time.

The challenges we face today are neither unique in our history, nor without solutions that are readily implemented.  As we look around us, however, we see the promised horizon retreat and we wonder: Are more than our institutions broken beyond repair?  Are we, perhaps, as a people incapable of doing what is necessary to right ourselves and continue moving forward?  I shall be employing Whitman as a guide through the tangle in the hopes that his vision may yet offer a way past our moment of doubt.

As a simple, yet terrible, example of the many failures with which we live yet find impossible even to deal: The many ways we have failed those who have sacrificed so much in our wars the past decade.  Just last week came news that our active duty service personnel are killing themselves at a higher rate than the enemy.

According to new Pentagon figures, 154 military service members committed suicide during the first 155 days of this year. During the same period, ending June 3, 136 U.S. troops died in combat in Afghanistan, according to icasualties.org, a website that tracks combat casualties.

In a decade that has seen so many reports of our failures to support our troops and veterans, whether it was proper body armor or vehicles that could withstand enemy IEDs to the scandals at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital and other VA hospitals, the current failure even to have a general discussion on what it might mean demonstrates, I think, the kind of nagging fear that plagues us.  How can we drag ourselves out of a years-long economic slump if we cannot even provide help for those who are serving to protect and defend us?  How can we face our problems if we cannot even acknowledge together the problem exists?

For all the rhetoric and even demagoguery that surrounds the support of American military personnel, the reality keeps coming back to haunt us: We have failed them, repeatedly.  Before we can begin to work through possible solutions, we need to admit this.

And there lies the beating heart of the dark beast whose presence we fear.  We have become so fearful we dare not even mention a failure so basic and profound because to do so might well expose the beast in all its ferocity.  That beast is our own cowardice, our fear that we might well not be up to the challenge to make good on Whitman's vision, a vision cheapened by repetition by politicians and business executives.

This American tune has been played in a minor key for far too long.  I am not interested in partisan games.  I do not hold any individual or group at fault for our current malaise.  We all bear a measure of responsibility for the current state of affairs.  As such, we all also carry the burden of admitting our fears, and living together out of our hopes.  That is my wish, at least, in the next several posts: To give voice to those things we refuse to say, in order to move through them and perhaps, just perhaps, see a way we all together can make good on the American promise.

In Defense Of Steve Almond

One reason I detest the preening self-righteousness that is so prevalent on the Internet is I used to engage in it. Back in the dim dark days of the summer of 2006, I had a comment-conversation with Glenn Greenwald about his use of the word "neoconservative". These were the days before he went big time. I made the not unimportant point on a post he wrote that he referred to pretty much anyone in the Bush Administration as a "neocon", yet the word actually meant something, referring to a specific group of political thinkers, with a particular ideology, and a history that had been well-documented by Garry Dorrien. Greenwald, displaying the same open-mindedness and willingness to stand corrected that is his hallmark, essentially told me he didn't give a damn what I said, or what anyone said; he was going to continue to call these people "neocons" and I would just have to live with it.

Back in those same dim, dark days, I thought it necessary to revive the notion of "heresy" because I kept running in to in so many places that called themselves Christian that were, in fact, awash in all sorts of historical heresies. Best way in the world, I thought. to teach these people about Christianity is to show them how they are not within any historical stream of orthodox belief. Right on!

Let me just say, mea culpa.

I was reminded of this particular deficiency this past weekend when some folks I respect made fun of a New York Times op-ed by Steve Almond.

Over the past few years, I’ve come to view my appearance as somewhat less heroic. I hadn’t spoken truth to power or caused anyone to reassess Secretary Rice’s record. I merely provided a few minutes of gladiatorial stimulation for Fox News. In seeking to assert my moral superiority, I enabled Hannity.

This, to be blunt, is the tragic flaw of the modern liberal. We choose to see ourselves as innocent victims of an escalating right-wing fanaticism. But too often we serve as willing accomplices to this escalation and to the resulting degradation of our civic discourse. We do this, without even meaning to, by consuming conservative folly as mass entertainment.

While I do not, as a rule, listen to right-wing talk radio or visit right-wing websites; while I do not, as a rule, think liberals and progressives who do so are masochistic or enabling; while I do not think doing this kind of thing is "ruining" America; all this, yet I do think there is more than a bit of honesty and candor here.

Many critics have taken Almond to task for the following, in particular the second sentence:

It’s for this exact reason that the left can no longer afford to squander time and energy engaging the childish arguments of paid provocateurs. We have to seek out those on the right willing to engage in genuine dialogue and ignore the rest.

They latch on to the very idea there might be some folks on the right out there who aren't, well, pretty much looney. I happen to agree with the critics here, only because I used to believe it possible to have discussions with folks on the right that might be productive. I discovered fairly quickly there are far too many who seem to think it far more important to win an argument, whether they actually do, than it is to actually hear what other folks have to say. So, the whole, "let's all sit around and chat" thing doesn't work.

All the same, the first sentence here is, I think, spot on. All of us who write on the internet want attention. We want folks to read what we have to say. The easiest way to do this, very often, is to be provocative in some way. Folks come running to clap you on the back, or troll your comment section, baiting you and commenters. Few benefit from these games. The internet's reputation as a sewer free from actual thought and discussion continues not least because of these nonsensical dick-waving contests.

While I think Almond gets much wrong in this piece, the general point that it would be far better if we worried less about what other folks were saying and far more about what we were saying is spot on. If we did so, we might actually accomplish something.

Without A Vision, The People Perish

I do not doubt that every traveller must remember the glowing sense of happiness which he experienced, when he first breathed in a foreign clime, where the civilized man had seldom or never trod. - Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand.  - Neil Armstrong

I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you. - Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Fifty years ago, Pres. Kennedy gave the commencement address to the students at Rice University in Houston, TX. He said, in part:

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

Just last week, Pres. Obama gave the commencement address to the students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He closed with a call to work for his vision for their future:

Look, here in America, we admire success. That's why a lot of you are going to school. We work and study for it. And if folks aren't willing to help themselves, we can't help them. But America is about more than just protecting folks who have already done well, it's about giving everybody a chance to do well. It’s about hard work and responsibility being rewarded. (Applause.) It’s about everybody having the chance to get ahead and then, reach back and help somebody behind you so that everybody has a chance. That's what makes us strong.(Applause.) That's what makes us strong.

So if you agree with me, I need your help. Some of these folks in Congress are a little stubborn. So, I need your help. You've got to tell Congress, don’t double my rate. Call them up, email them, post on their Facebook wall, tweet them. (Laughter.) We've got a hashtag -- #dontdoublemyrate. (Applause.)

Never forget that your voice matters. I know sometimes it seems like Washington isn’t listening. And, frankly, Congress sometimes isn't. But we're talking about issues that have a real impact on your lives, real impact on your futures. Making education more affordable, that’s real. Making homes more affordable, making it a little easier for you to make your mortgage payments -- that’s real.

Building an economy that works for everybody -- that’s real. So I need you all to stand up. I need you to be heard. Tell Congress now is not the time to double the interest rates on your student loans. Now is the time to double down on the middle class. Now is the time to build an America that lasts. Now is the time to work together, to put people back to work and strengthen our housing market and help our veterans. Let's get this done. (Applause.)

Let's remind the world why the United States of America is the greatest nation on earth.

Having just finished Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle, what struck me the most was the reality that we Americans no longer consider embarking on any kind of daring mission. The best we can hope for, it seems, is a promise that we might, some day, reacquire the wealth we lost in the collapse of the financial industry and subsequent recession.

Our politics, like so much else in American life, has become small. The visions we are offered in this Presidential election year are contrasting predictions of collapse should one or another party control the apparatus of government.  Even the state is viewed as some hostile force. Once upon a time, we Americans believed it possible to take up a challenge, knowing the dangers were all very real and very great. We did so, however, precisely because they were challenges. We did so because we had leaders who appealed to a vision of ourselves as rising above the technical, political, and economic challenges we would face.  Now, we are told we cannot "go to the Moon and do these other things" because they are both hard and expensive.

A generation that turned its back on Kennedy's vision had many good arguments on its side.  The role of the Cold War in the decision; the history of imperialism, American specifically but human in general; the demand of other issues much closer to home, not least the wasteful, useless carnage in Vietnam.  For all these arguments made some sense, there were other, far more compelling reasons to continue our space program.  Not the least of those reasons were those made clear by Kennedy himself: these are challenges, and we Americans do not shrink from challenges.  Even though this particular phrase does, indeed, hide much evil and death - the same appeal very often invokes our history of conquest and near-genocide over the native populations; our humiliation of defeated Mexico and what amounts to the theft of a third of their national territory; the on-going American Imperial projects in Latin America and the Pacific - yet it also appeals to a new vision of ourselves.  A vision of Americans working together on a grand project that will benefit the human race.  While we might chuckle at Kennedy's insistence that we Americans should be first because, well, we're Americans, what has the loss of this particular sense of ourselves gained us?

When the British Admiralty sent the H.M.S. Beagle on its mission, it did so with the understanding it would be long, and dangerous, and that the payoff would be even further down the road as new maps, new and better clocks, and new navigational charts would need to await both the return of the ship as well as an assessment by those who would need time to study them.  They made the investment, however, because they understood it would benefit the British nation in the long run.

There is no part of our globe left to discover, no empty spaces on any map to fill.  Space, however, offers possibilities not just for us Americans, but for all people.  We, the pioneers of successful interplanetary space flight, now sit on the sidelines.  We have no vehicles in production to return us to space under our own power.  We have no plan for returning Americans to space under our control, in our vehicles.  Even the mention of a return to human space flight is met with derision, as Newt Gingrich discovered during the Republican primaries this past winter.

I doubt very much it would be possible to offer a vision of a new American Space Program.  Our political class, as a rule, is terrified of anything that sounds like "government spending".  The guardians of our national dialogue are ready to pounce upon those who even suggest a return to space.  All the arguments - technical, political, economic - against such a thing would flash around the web and through newsrooms, all the while pundits chuckling behind their hands at such silly notions.

What does this say about who we are as a people?  Are we really that willing to laugh at the thought that the United States should picture itself at the forefront of new discovery and exploration?  Are we that willing to dismiss the possibility there may yet be places where many people might yet want to be the first upon which to stand?  Do we think those who dream such dreams are little more than the butt of sad jokes?  All we are currently offered by way of some consoling vision is the comfort of material gain.  We see so many threats around the globe, we no longer believe it possible to do much more than keep them at some arm's length, staving off the eventual disaster.

We have become more than cowardly.  We, as a people, have become blind.  We have lost the ability even to celebrate that which is best about all of us as a people.  We stagger through our days, hoping only that the collapse will come tomorrow, grateful at the end of each day that we have reached it safely.

Quite apart from all the other reasons a reinvigorated human space program is a great idea, it offers the possibility that we Americans might remember how much we can do so well.  For now, all we are told we do well is make money, a past-time that is thwarted either by the interference of corporate giants or government bureaucrats.  If this is all any of us, whether private citizen or public official, can offer as a vision of American greatness, it may be too late even now to stave off the inevitable end.

Once Conquered, A World To Discover: Charles Darwin's The Voyage Of The Beagle

Back in March, NASA announced a new satellite program:

[A] pair of satellites called GRACE (short for Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment) will open a new window on that hidden realm. GRACE, slated for launch on March 16, will peer beneath the oceans by measuring tiny changes in gravity -- changes caused by moving water and ice. "We'll be able to monitor things like water moving around in ocean basins and changes in deep-sea currents," says Michael Watkins, project scientist for GRACE at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). "We'll even be able to weigh ice sheets from orbit."

The dry surface of the planet having been mapped so minutely, we are turning to satellites to peer through thousands of feet of water.

In 1831, the situation was very different. It was only fifteen years since the end of the Congress of Vienna, which sent Napoleon to St. Helena, tried to restore the ancien regime, and, by ignoring Great Britain, allowed it to become the dominant power for the next century. It didn't take long for the British to realize they were the masters of the planet. With their navy spread across the globe, territories acquired from the retreating French, and in need of far better intelligence on everything from longitudinal clocks to details on various naval moorings, the Admiralty had been, in the intervening years, sending out various expeditions to acquire as much information as possible on these matters. 

The British also needed information on territories they either had acquired, or might wish to acquire. There were a series of well-used stops for passage from Europe to South America - Cape Verde and Ascension - but the British also lay claim the the Falkland Is. and the South Georgia Is. In the Pacific, Tahiti, then the most remote of his majesty's possessions, while controlled by a small group of missionaries, was still an exotic question mark. In the mid-1820's a nephew of the great British foreign minister, Castlereagh, named Robert FitzRoy had been a Mate aboard a two-ship expedition to Tierra del Fuego that ended abruptly after the captain of the flagship, the Beagle, committed suicide. Still in his early 20's, FitzRoy took command and led the ships back to Portsmouth. The Admiralty had decided the time and expense of outfitting another such expedition outweighed any advantage that might be gained; FitzRoy, seeing little chance for naval advancement if aground, lobbied hard. After some more lobbying, rather than build a new ship, the Admiralty agreed to repair the Beagle, and set her two-year mission to achieve greater longitudinal clock accuracy, using Bahia Blanca in Brazil as both starting and ending point for a circumnavigation, with stops in between. Soundings and detailed mapping of the coasts and bays and, in particular, the Strait of Magellan, as well as Valparaiso in Chile, more detailed mapping of the Galapagos Is., and checks-in at Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, then around the Cape of Good Hope, and after a quick dash back to Bahia Blanca to check their longitudinal clock measurements, back to England.

Captains then were given much leeway and personal preference.  FitzRoy, a young man of privilege, longed to have someone accompany him on this long voyage that would be intelligent and entertaining, as he saw himself. The Captain also saw advantages, fancying himself a man of science, in having a schooled geologist along to examine in detail the physical and biological wonders they would encounter. After inquiring with several respected individuals, the invitation landed in the lap of a recent Cambridge University student of middling recorded abilities named Charles Darwin. Darwin accepted the appointment, sailing from Devon on December 27, 1831. He next saw England five years later.

 

Darwin's annotated journal is a marvelous document from a singular individual. Knowing full well both the uniqueness of the opportunity he was given, and the responsibility he felt toward the scientific establishment back in Britain that he fulfill their hopes for him, Darwin was a keen, knowledgeable observer on the geology, geography, flora, fauna (both living and extinct), and residents of the lands he visited, from Cape Verde through Chiloe and The Chocos to the Galapagos, Australia and Tasmania (which he called by its then given name, Van Diemen's Land), the Keening Atoll, back to Great Britain. Nothing was uninteresting to him, even if his recorded statements evince a disgust with the scenery, the paucity of a variety of life, or the conditions of life among the residents of Tierra del Fuego or the criminal element in Australia and Mauritius.

He discovered an enormous fossil bed, containing many complete skeletons of extinct megafauna from South America's prehistory. He discerned the feeding habits of the giant ground sloth Megatherium from the size of the hind-quarters and tail, ending a long debate on how an animal the size of an elephant yet known to eat only the leaves of trees, accomplished such a feat. Assisting Capt. FitzRoy in returning to their home three natives from Tierra del Fuego, Darwin exposes his familiarity with European racism, ignorance of and contempt for native populations, all the while on occasion noting that it might well be possible his judgments are completely wrong. While crossing the Andes, he finds a horse, frozen to an ice pinnacle, standing upright on its head. From this he deduces it had fallen in to what had been a crevasse from an overlying ice field that had since retreated, exposing the corpse, preserved well above 16,000 feet, in eternal ice. While in Chiloe, he experienced a massive earthquake that devastated not only that island, but parts of the Chilean mainland as well. Observing the way the earthquake created a massive uplift along the Pacific coast of South America, he wondered aloud concerning the possibility that such events might well demonstrate, in graphic, dramatic moments, what was the otherwise gradual, unnoticed uplifting of at least parts of the land from the ocean. Observing the structure of the surrounding geography, he noted that it showed the effects both of long-exposure to tidal pressures as well as occasional moments of faster uplift, creating step or terraced patterns. These observations went a long way toward confirming Lyell's theories about geology, then still much in debate and discussion.

It was in the Galapagos, however, that Darwin found himself confronted by a series of anomalies that would, in time, percolate toward a complete revision of then-existing theories of evolution by acquired characteristics. After visiting Mauritius, toward the end of his journey, he notes the many places he visited had been ravaged by introduced species, both floral and faunal. Unique, perhaps, of the places he visited, the Galapagos had not yet suffered the ravages of rats, mice, goats, pigs, or gorse. Much taken with the distribution and uniqueness of several species of finches and large tortoises, these curious features would move him toward understanding the change and development of life not as a result of acquiring certain habits or attributes; rather, external pressure in the struggle for survival toward procreation would create opportunities for specific advantages to emerge, branching the tree of life over time. There are hints, even within the editions of his journal, that Darwin is moving in this direction.

Yet, he spends far more time attempting to settle the question of the creation of atolls than the creation of new species. Arriving at Keening Atoll in the Indian Ocean, having seen The Low Archipelago in the Pacific from a distance, he offers a theory of island subsidence as an alternative to the view that the atolls are created above existing, extinct, volcanic calderas. Not conversant on the details of current understandings, I found his arguments, the wealth of detail as well as personal experience (the Pacific earthquake through which he lived was an object lesson in the way the land rises and subsides over time) to be a marvelous example of how to persuade others in a scientific community.

Finally, while Darwin's voice shines through each and every line, it is precisely so that reminds readers that he was not anything other than a man of his time and place and class. The prejudices and presumptions of his time and place and station are glaring, sometimes with a light that exposes some real ugliness. We should take care in our judgments, however. For all that Darwin could no more escape his time, neither can we. How many of us, putting our views on the Internet, available for generations of our posterity to read, would feel secure that we are free from the worst of our own bigotries, no matter how hard we try to imagine we are enlightened? Darwin was not a person of any other age; he was, along with Dickens and Tennyson and Gladstone, representative of a kind of high-minded moralism so typical of mid-Victorian Britain. That he could be so a generation before that period actually began (roughly speaking, the year both that he published The Origin of Species and the year that marked the death of Prince Albert, 1859) only demonstrates how deep that particular vein ran through the British bourgeoisie.

A marvelous work, filled simultaneously with wide-eyed wonder and a species of hautuer common enough among those who fancy themselves the rulers of the world, a world whose exact proportions and details were yet to be discovered, Darwin's work is of a kind that cannot ever be written again. With detailed satellite photographs of the land surface of the earth available at our fingertips; with NASA about to map the floor of the ocean as well as underwater currents, there just aren't any blank spaces on the map at which one might wonder he or she is seeing that which no one has ever seen. It is, perhaps, a glimpse in to a world that will be forever lost.

It's My Vote And I'll Waste It If I Want To

Summer has yet to begin, and folks to the Left of the President are hearing the same thing we heard after the 2000 election: If Obama loses it'll be our fault.

For the record, I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 and I don't regret that vote one bit. If there was such a stark difference between the candidates, why did Gore win the popular vote by fifty thousand out of some one hundred million cast? If Gore would have been such an awesome improvement over Bush, how do these folks explain such an inept campaign that still managed to win the popular vote, albeit by such a slim margin? Given the historical circumstances in the following year, how would a Gore Administration have differed, substantially, from Bush? Would Gore have managed to eke out a second term, given the pasting he would have received both from Republicans in Congress and the slobbering minions on the right who think anyone to the left of Robert Taft worships Josef Stalin's memory? 
Considering how quickly so many liberals (*coughcough* MattYglesias *coughcough* KevinDrum *coughcough* JoeKlein *coughcough*) became enamored of our eventual invasion of Iraq, I'll just let the shouting of that particular word pass over me before I continue.

Here's the deal. Mr. Obama has failed to act decisively, through a variety of means both at his disposal and through fellow Democrats in Congress, to counteract the worst effects of the depression. He has more than flirted with an irresponsible deficit fetishism, rather than make the banal point that, were the economy righted through specific actions Congress and the Executive could take, the deficit would take care of itself. He allowed the Congressional debate over the Affordable Care Act drag out far longer than was necessary, vacillating at key points, while surrendering to rhetorical threats from the Republicans. He has failed to make clear to the American people why the Keystone XL Pipeline is not a good deal for the American people, in the process alienating potential supporters in the heart of Red America, Nebraska. The President has used his personal feelings for sexual minorities as an excuse for a failure to act more swiftly to support marriage equality, the repeal of DOMA, and the end of DADT. 

President Obama has escalated the war in Afghanistan without a clear strategy; he has moved the war in to Yemen and Somalia, without so much as a serious Congressional debate; the expansion of the drone program to become one of war by remote control alters any understanding of what constitutes a combatant or a front line; he has explicitly targeted individuals, taking advantage of gatherings that include non-combatants, and defended his choice by claiming that these civilian casualties may well not be innocent; finally, he has arrogated to himself the decision to kill American citizens overseas, without so much as a fig-leaf of judicial action.

Finally, let me just say that as long as we continue to work within the current political status quo, we shall find ourselves shrugging our shoulders and accepting the candidate who sucks less. They insist we do the same, and call this realism. I, on the other hand, consider it realistic to accept that neither major party candidate is, or will be in the foreseeable future, worth a tinker's damn. As such, I am going to use the one precious thing I have to contribute to this whole thing, my vote, and give it to the person who actually deserves it. Others may do as they wish. Please, however, do not pretend that you are somehow more grown-up, more hard-headed, more realistic, or more anything because you are going to vote for Obama when, at the end of the day, the best argument any supporter seems to come up with sounds an awful lot like, "He won't be as bad as Romney!"

I'm not even sure that's true.

When November comes, I'll cast my vote for someone else for President, and the next morning, regardless of the outcome, I'll know I did what was right. Now go call Glenn Greenwald names and leave me alone.

The Tune Without Words

Someone recently asked me why I care so much. I was surprised at the question; surely events of the past decade and more have shown how important, even necessary, it is that we Americans become involved in our public life. While there may be little any particular individual can do to move and shape our discourse or events, it is more possible than ever now to stay informed, the prerequisite to participation.

There are days, though, that information is enough to make most people throw up their hands. Just from the past couple days:
- The suicide rate among active duty service personnel has "spiked", averaging one a day. Think about that for just a moment, and what it says about who we are as a people.
- There is one American prisoner left in the hands of the Taliban. Because he is on record as critical of the US military, of his fellow soldiers and superiors, and left a trail that indicates a desire to walk away from his duties, some have publicly stated their preference not to bring home this young man, held for three years now by religious and political fanatics. With evidence, including testimony from his parents, that his mental state may well have been fragile, what state might be be in now?
- Our elite journalists are quite open about their contempt for actual news and information that effects the American people. Rather than give people the news and information they need to make informed choices, they head to social media to complain that talking about a possible European currency collapse is just too dull.

The State of Florida is trying to strip people of their right to vote. The Congressional leadership refuses to act at the very time we need, as FDR said, "bold vigorous experimentation" in order to keep the American experiment afloat. Both major party candidates for the Presidency continue to mouth platitudes in support of the idea that, as the tired phrase has it, "America's best days lie ahead." Neither one evinces any interest in actually doing anything to make this possible. In the words of Jack Germond's and Jules Witcover's famous autopsy of the 1988 Presidential campaign said, it is nothing but blue smoke and mirrors.

Those who complain about Obama's abuses of power, from covert cyber-war against Iran to lists of targets for assassination, including American citizens overseas, are told to remain quiet. Those who complain about how beholden Obama and the Democratic Party has become to corporate interests, stifling any attempt to force legal and social accountability upon the very institutions that created and sustain our current economic doldrums are told to fear how much worse America might be under his rival.

All the while, the other major American political party, wedded to a voting base which holds as self-evident a series of propositions without any basis in fact, whether about the President and his policies or the efficacy of particular policies for the health of the economy or foreign policy, has become a ridiculous caricature of a serious political party. Precisely for that reason, it does indeed pose a danger not only to the Republic but to the world.

Yet, if all we are offered is fear; if all we are told is, bad as things are imagine the alternative, where do we look to hope, perhaps, if not for success then at the very least an end to failure? Hope does not rely on the ebb and flow of events. Hope sees the possibility that things may yet right themselves. There are always breaks in the clouds through which rays of light shine, offering the possibility that we may yet set ourselves on course. It isn't in politics or institutions or policies or power in which we should rest our hopes. Rather, in the openness of history, in the reality that, as free people, we may yet show ourselves better than our worst detractors claim we are.

All One Life In A Single Moment

The summer of 2001 was a wondrous time for me and my family. I think my memories are colored by the horror of September 11, which makes that stretch of time, full of new music and laughter and beautiful days and pleasant nights and even a great place to work and live and a church family that celebrated all the joys, all the more precious.

For all that there was so much else to celebrate that summer, nothing compares to the afternoon of June 7. It was cool and drizzly most of the day, but by four o'clock in the afternoon the sun broke through the clouds. I remember it so clearly because about twenty minutes later, the sunk kissed Miriam's face for the very first time. Even before she had emerged fully, she had her first experience of the light and warmth of the sun on her face. Then the doctor set her tiny body on the towel. She looked so fragile, yet she cried with a joy and power her tiny size belied. The doctor tied off the cord and invited me to cut it. She was whisked away to the warming table so the nurse could clean her and check her on the Apgar scale. After a few minutes a clean, rosy-cheeked child was handed to Lisa, who was still crying. Lisa lay in bed and I stood beside her. Miriam, her eyes open but not really seeing much more than light, seemed to look around her, taking in this whole new experience called the world.

Less than half an hour after entering the world, Miriam showed what a quick learner she was as Lisa nursed her. With just a little prodding, Miriam got the hang of it, and lay there, enjoying her first meal as the sun, still slanting in the windows, lit her face.

The world in which Miriam was born was troubled; it has become even more so, something that keeps me awake sometimes, wondering what kind of world it might be in to which she will grow. As a father, my fervent prayer is it will be one that is far better than that with which we currently live. Part of me knows it will be; part of me fears it will not, perhaps, can not, be. Whatever the case may be, today is not a day for worry or fear as we celebrate Miriam's eleventh birthday.

Darwin On The Habits Of Parasitic Birds

Deciding that part of my summer reading will be a re-read of Darwin's Voyage Of The Beagle and On The Origin of Species, expect interesting highlights to appear on occasion over ensuing days. 

Commenting of a species of South American starling that practices a form of parasitism, Darwin wonders less at the how of the behavior than at the why. Offering up observations another naturalist made concerning the cuckoo, a common British bird known to have similar behavior, Darwin writes the following:

Many theories, even phrenological theories, have been advanced to explain the origin of the cuckoo laying its eggs in other birds' nests. M. Prevost alone, I think, has thrown light by his observations on this puzzle: he finds that the female cuckoo, which, according to most observers, lays at least from four to six eggs, must pair with the male each time after laying only one or two eggs. Now, if the cuckoo was obliged to sit on her own eggs, she would either have to sit on all together, and therefore leave those first laid so long, they they probably would become addled; or she would have to hatch separately each egg or two eggs, as soon as laid: but as the cuckoo stays a shorter time in this country than any other migratory bird, she certainly would not have time enough for the successive hatchings. Hence we can perceive in the fact of the cuckoo pairing several times, and laying her eggs at intervals, the cause of her depositing her eggs in other birds' nests, and leaving them to the care of foster-parents. I am strongly inclined to believe that this view is correct, from having been independently led (as we shall hereafter see) to an analogous conclusion with regard to the South American ostrich, the females of which are parasitical, if I may so express it, on each other; each female laying several eggs in the nests of several other females, and the male ostrich undertaking all the cares of incubation, like the strange foster-parents with the cuckoo.

Charles Darwin On The Effects Of Slavery

To my mind, there are three individuals who epitomize different aspects of Victorian England at its height. Charles Dickens gave voice to the qualms about industrialization, urbanization, and class warfare all the while speaking with the voice of bourgeois moral rectitude. William Gladstone helped create the conditions for British economic and political power with a career in Parliament that began before Queen Victoria took the throne and lasted until her dotage. As Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister (the latter four times) he typified a kind of evangelical high-mindedness that lay thick over a country that assumed its power was ordained by God rather than as an accident of history. Charles Darwin gave the world the archetypal Victorian scientific theory, getting as much wrong as he did right, all the while setting the groundwork for how we understand the development of living organisms.

Before he published On the Origin of Species in 1859, while doing several years of research on roundworms, he also published a travelogue, a genre most loved by Victorian Britain as it settled in to the comfort of superpower status. Hired as the naturalist for a five year expedition aboard the H. M. S. Beagle, Darwin traveled through the Atlantic islands, South America, then on to the Galapagos. He kept a journal, collected hundreds of specimen samples on which he conducted experiments (many of which would be considered cruel by contemporary standards), and enjoyed the comforts a middle class British gentleman had come to expect from a world that granted British hegemony. His memoir of the trip is filled with notes on the geology of the places to which he traveled; inventories of interesting flora and fauna, including habits and practices of species that were generally not well known to British scientists; he also included many asides on the customs, habits, and social conditions in the lands through which he traveled. Early in the voyage, while in Brazil, he was crossing a river on a ferry pulled by a slave of African origin.

I may mention one very trifling anecdote, which at the time struck me more forcibly than any story of cruelty. I was crossing a ferry with a negro, who was uncommonly stupid. In endeavoring to make him understand, I talked loud, and made signs, in doing which I passed my hand near his face. He, I suppose, thought I was in a passion, and was going to strike him; for instantly, with a frightened look and half-shut eyes, he dropped his hands. I shall never forget my feelings of surprise, disgust, and shame, at seeing a great powerful man afraid even to ward off a blow, directed, as he thought, at his face. This man had been trained to a degradation lower than the slavery of the most helpless animal.

Not a stranger to typical middle class 19th century bigotries, Darwin still had insight enough to understand precisely what occurred in the exchange with the gentleman in question. There is some humor in Darwin calling the slave "uncommonly stupid" then going on to describe himself acting quite stupid, to the point of accidentally threatening the man, who seemed to understand the rules of communication in his land far better than did Darwin. All the same, Darwin shows us it is possible to overcome, at least in some fashion, the limitations of his own prejudices. Seeing this man cower, Darwin realized not only his own error, but the conditions in which he found himself. Would that we had more such people today.

To All Facebook Users: Learn About The Internet

I am an enthusiastic user of social media. I find Facebook and Twitter wonderful vehicles for getting and staying in touch with others, whether people from my past with whom I'd lost touch, or people I've come to know via electronic media, or just folks close by, getting an insight in to who they are apart from our regular encounters. All the same, I am aware of the medium's many faults and limitations, not the least of them the possibility that one gets a false impression of who all those "friends" are on the other side of the digital veil. Just as I assume the persona that others encounter when they read my tweets and status updates shows only a glimpse of a facet of who I am, I never believe I "know" those whose statuses I read. I assume I am getting a tiny hint, perhaps, of a deep passion for poetry, say; perhaps a secret love for painting or auto racing; even several years of Facebook statuses would fail to give me any interesting insight in to who the people I encounter there are.

At best, I might hope for the surprise that the rough-and-tumble, tattooed military vet has a soft spot for all those sickeningly sweet kitten pictures that float around the internet; perhaps I might find out that the young woman who seems so upright and devout also enjoys letting her hair down, rocking out with Stoly and dancing the night away at various watering holes. Not one to judge others, I find these insights more fascinating than anything as all of us do the grunt work of negotiating with others and determining for ourselves who we are.

I am also amused by the steady trickle of complaints about various policies Facebook implements. When they switched over their homepage format to "The Timeline", I sat and chuckled, reading all the people who posted what amounted to one long whine that Facebook might dare change without consulting them. Personally, I like the timeline format, finding it, if nothing else, an easy way of differentiating one's homepage from the usual news feed.

Then, there are the complaints that Facebook, as a corporation, might dare use information it gleans from our posts and clicks-through on ads both to target advertising to users as well as to create data that marketing firms and others might use in their research. How dare they! A corporation acting like . . . a corporation! I have to laugh out loud (for real, not LOL!) when people couch their protests at such indignities in the name of privacy. If you have any expectation of privacy, or object to anyone using any image, word, sound, or other content put up on the internet without any express consent, my advice is simple enough: Get off it.

If you don't want people knowing you have a secret passion for porn, don't sign in to those websites using your Facebook account. If you're having an extra-marital affair, don't put pictures of you and your hoped-for future trophy wife frolicking in Cabo on Flickr. If you don't want your neighbors to know you drain a twelve-pack of beer every day, don't tweet, "Well, another platoon has fallen."

In other words, use some common sense. I have nothing against people who check out porn, or who carry on with those with whom they're not married, or anything else. If you do those things, then use the internet to communicate things about them, don't sit and bitch when this stuff suddenly becomes well known because it's your own fault.

Furthermore, while I agree to a point with Rob Horning's many articles and essays on the manipulative aspects of social media, I also believe he overdetermines it all just a bit. Were our identities so fragile that we were little more than the sum total of our status updates or photos or likes or tweets, we would be pitiable indeed. If true, how would it be possible to mourn such a state because there would be no access to a place outside from which to bewail such a diluted, inhuman reality. The fact is, social media are only as powerful and determinate as we allow them to be. Both individually and collectively, we need to exercise not only common sense and restraint, but a sense of proportion when it comes to how we use these marvelous tools for communicating. They are just tools, for all they give us access to other people and information about the world and a variety of ideas and thoughts and perspectives.

They are also borrowed tools. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google +, Flickr, and other social media are not ours; we use them under the terms set by those who do own and operate them. As such, the control over information we place on them disappears because the information ceases to be ours once it is up there.

Which brings me to a larger point. For all that the internet has created opportunities for people to collect and disseminate all sorts of information, the best part of the internet still seems to elude so many of its users. Once stuff is up here, it's up here forever. Anyone, anywhere, at any time in to the distant future has access to it. Whether it's a photomontage of your vacation to Paris or the love letters you've emailed to the next door neighbor, letting him know your husband has left for work and he can come over for some nooky, it's all there and no amount of pressing "delete" makes it go away. If someone wants to access it, they can and probably will. You don't want anyone to know about the fling with the dude next door? Don't use the internet to communicate about it! You don't want people to find out you're not quite as holy or unholy or bad or good or straight or gay as they might think you are? Then I suggest you don't post material on the internet that might lead them to discover this is the case.

A while back, I posted about my awe at how ignorant some people are about things on the internet. A gentleman from South Carolina had verbally attacked Sandra Fluke, then became enraged when those tweets were shared on various websites. He threatened legal action. He was one of far too many people who have not quite understood that the internet is a public forum. All those folks bitching about Facebook don't quite get it, either. Or, perhaps, their own sense of themselves is so fragile, they fear what others might think of them should some deep dark secret about them suddenly receive a blinding glare of light. Either way, I have only one wish. Please, for crying out loud, remember where you are. Use some sense. Don't create a situation wherein you feel vulnerable because something you wanted kept private becomes public knowledge.

Place-Holding Invitation To Share What You're Listening To

See what I did there, ending the post-title with a preposition? Bad me.

Back in January, I mentioned internet music/radio site Spotify. I have come to love it in many wonderful ways, not least because it allows listeners to create all sorts of playlists. Because I'm simple-minded, I have just one, though, unimaginatively called "My Faves". It currently holds 341 tracks, to which I keep adding all sorts of goodies all the time. Below are ten songs, only the first of which is non-random, because when you open Spotify, you have to choose a song with which to begin, then the shuffle takes over and who knows where you'll land.

The challenge, should you choose to accept it, is this: What are you listening to? Pandora? Spotify? Slacker Radio? iTunes? What's on your playlist, either on purpose or by accident? Please share with me because I'm a nosy-nelly.
This Beat Goes On/Switching To Glide - The Kings 
Midnight Rider (Live at Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame) - Allman Brothers Band 
Mellow Down Easy (Live) - Black Crowes 
Subdivisions - Rush 
Soulful Terrain - Eric Johnson 
Boys Don't Cry - The Cure 
Bad Moon Rising - Creedence Clearwater Revival 
Avalon - Roxy Music 
Pretty Lives - John Wesley 
September - Earth, Wind, and Fire

For those paying attention, that last one is doubly evil. It's a song about losing your virginity, by a band named after three of the four classic elements; Maurice White was a big follower of astrology, and linked it to ancient Egyptian and sub-Saharan African religions. So, paganism, which everyone knows are just demons in costumes.

And Robert Smith of The Cure was androgynous which violates some verse in the Bible that no one can point to.

What's The Matter With Indonesia?

This is the kind of story that warms my heart. See, I love it when American journalists go abroad, their lips pursed, their heads shaking, wondering how Indonesia can survive.

Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim majority nation and has drawn praise for its evolution into a vibrant democracy. It's a country of more than 17,000 islands, with more than 300 ethnic groups who speak about 740 languages. But recent cases of persecution of religious minorities have led some to question whether Indonesia is still living up to its reputation for pluralism and tolerance.

The persecuted include atheists as well as minority Muslim sects, such as the Shia and Ahmadiyya. Hundreds of churches have been closed in recent years, including, most recently, 17 house churches this month in Aceh, the only province in Indonesia where Shariah, or Islamic law, is in effect.(emphasis added)

It's America's western, Christian heritage that makes it so much better than Indonesia, I think.

As soon as mainstream journalists start wondering the same thing about pluralism in America in the face of racist, religiously motivated hate and violence, I might be more inclined to hear about places like poor Indonesia and its prospects for survival as a pluralist society.

As We Remember

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? . . . How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? . . . T[he Nixon A]dministration has done us the ultimate dishonor. They have attempted to disown us and the sacrifices we made for this country.

John Kerry, 1971

During the 2004 Presidential election, John Kerry tried to distance himself from these comments, made in the passionate heat of anger he felt at the waste of life in pursuit of our on-going military operations in Vietnam. To this day, I wonder why. The questions, both at the time and subsequently, are the very questions we need to ask ourselves whenever we feel to urge to send our military as an instrument of policy.

Especially on this Memorial Day, as we remember those who, as Abraham Lincoln said, gave the last full measure of devotion, it might seem at the very least inappropriate, if not somehow dishonorable, to ask the question: Is it worth it? I understand the emotional turmoil that results from questioning the legitimacy of any military action; what if, it turns out, our men and women in uniform died for ignoble or useless reasons? Somehow, a verdict against the larger aims and purposes reflects upon those who died pursuing those aims.

The dead, however, are not silent. Anyone who has visited a cemetery on Memorial Day understands this. Standing above the bodies of those whose lives have been spent either on some distant shore, or perhaps even down the road - the military cemeteries in Virginia are a chorus of voices from the sons of the Confederacy - it is possible to hear the whispered question, "Was it worth it?"

I shall leave for the moment the judgment of the worth of any particular conflict. To say, whether at the time or later, that any war in which our troops participated may have been in pursuit of ends that were unjustifiable; or, perhaps, the means used to pursue certain ends were out of proportion to the stated objectives; to say these things is not a reflection upon those in uniform, who only carry out their orders to the best of their ability. Our troops, from the lowest private through the uniformed leaders of the various service branches, serve the Constitution and the civilians placed in offices of responsibility over them. We must always remember that questioning the propriety or wisdom of military action is a question of policy, over which the military has, at best, a consultative role. 

Furthermore, these on-going demands from the fallen should serve as a warning to we who bear the burden of living, knowing we are here in no small part because they are no longer. When confronted with a situation in the world in which the possibility of sending our military in to harm's way, the first voices we should heed are those silenced by previous such decisions. Can we, as a people, answer those demands with anything like honesty and integrity? Do we, perhaps, owe our dead an apology for sacrificing them upon various altars other than those of national survival or integrity?

Ours is a country where the government, recent rhetoric to the contrary, is not a stranger or alien presence. We the people, despite abundant lack of interest or understanding, are potentially the most powerful single interest group there is. Whether in a time of national or international crisis or, perhaps, in pursuit of some humanitarian aim, we start to hear cries to send in our troops, the first question we need to answer is whether we can look at the flag-draped coffins without fear they are testimony against our decision to end their life this way. These are hard questions, which is not an argument against their being asked. We live as we do today in no small part because so many men and women have died on battlefields, asking nothing but to be remembered. Today is the day we honor that most basic request; in remembering, we face the hard reality of self-government, of being a people who deserve the sacrifices they have made.

"A Hollow Military"

Last Monday, I wrote that, in regards to the imbalance of obligations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Gov. Romney was quite correct to point out that, already stretched and strained from wars fought on several fronts, the United States military continued to bear far too much of the relative burden in NATO. Today, I would like to say something about an entirely different aspect of his op-ed in last Sunday's Chicago Tribune.

We have a military inventory composed of weapons designed 40 to 50 years ago. The average age of our tanker aircraft is 47 years, of strategic bombers 34 years. Our Air Force, which had 82 fighter squadrons at the end of the Cold War, has been reduced to 39 today. TheU.S. Navy, at 285 ships, is at levels not seen since 1916. Should our air, naval and ground forces continue to age and shrink, it will place the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies at risk. With the United States on a path to a hollow military, we are hardly in a position to exercise leadership in persuading our allies to spend more on security. And in fact the Obama administration has failed to exercise such leadership. Quite the contrary; a multiplier effect has set in: The administration's irresponsible defense cuts are clearing the way for our partners to do even less.

The website Globalfirepower.com offers both a ranking list, from largest military on down, as well as relative comparisons between any two countries on that list. The United States has the largest military in the world.

The M1A1/2 Abrams Main Battle Tank is, arguably, the finest tank in the world. While later models, especially the German Leopard and Israeli Merkava, and the newer Russian T-90 have certain advantages including being designed more recently, the extensive field experience has improved the performance of the M1-class tanks. Even before the previous decade's wars demanded the most out of our tanks, the M1A2 had extensively modified and improved the original design.

While the bulk of the US fighter squadrons, both Naval and Air Force, continue with the F-series fighters introduced in the 1970's, various limitations and problems with subsequent designs - from the B-2 Bomber's many failings, through serious problems with the F-22 Raptor made public by the pilots that fly them - as well as improvements in technology (for example, this declassified USAF assessment of Operation Iraqi Freedom, includes many firsts for a variety of the weapons platforms designed originally for use during the Cold War; page 15 even mentions "wartime employment of a Laser Guided Bomb by a B-52"; the B-52 Stratofortress is a grandpa compared to the current F-series fighters).

Let us consider Gov. Romney's comments regarding our "285 ship navy". The United States floats eleven aircraft carriers.  The next 29 largest military's have a total of 9; six of those are in the inventories of our NATO allies.  The Virginia-class fast attack submarine is a post-Col War design, and according to the website Naval-Technology.com, it is also a stealth naval vessel. The Ticonderoga-class Cruisers are, according to this website, "the 27 most expensive cruisers and the most powerful surface combatants in service in the world."

These are just some of those old weapons systems, leaving our military hollow.

Our military is overstretched, to be sure. A decade of war has strained our resources, the life-span of a variety of weapons systems, but it has also shown how durable, reliable, and capable a variety of our weapons platforms continue to be, even after ten years of service. It may be possible to have a discussion of the stresses and strains of war, combined with financial collapse, and what possible responses to these matters might be. To say the United States is on the way to "a hollow military", however, just ignores the facts.

Taking A Short Break

In the process of essay-writing.  For that reason, this blog - an attempt at column-writing - needs to rest, breathe, relax.

Take some time to browse my back catalog.  There's stuff there that's fun, or interesting, or perhaps curious.  If you find something, drop a comment here.  You never know what might happen.

Be of good cheer, have a great Memorial Day weekend, and to quote my dear friend Rodney, don't hurt nobody.

Gazing In Wild Wonder

I think the internet is a marvelous tool. I think it is possible for ordinary people like me to take in and share all sorts of information with pretty much the whole world. News, politics, science, the arts; it's all there for the taking.

I also am a firm proponent of having as open an internet as possible. Anyone and everyone should have access to whatever they want. Jump in with both feet, even if they're occasionally planted in your mouth, I say! Be bold and brave.

Then again, because it's open to everyone, some folks out there are just . . . well, see for yourself. The following includes some extreme vulgarity, so, you know, tread with caution.

Recently (May 8th to be exact) I did a post on potty-mouthed golf caddy George Tierney of Greenville South Carolina who, for some reason, took offense when Sandra Fluke went on Twitter and voiced her support for a bill that would protect the rights of working women when they get pregnant.

Misunderstanding how the Twitter works, George Tierney of Greenville South Carolina seemed to think he was using his “inside voice” when speaking (twatting) to Ms. Fluke on Twitter only to find out, in a very round-about way, that she elected to retweet to her 36,000 followers what George Tierney of Greenville South Carolina had to say to her and she only did this because she is obviously racist against douchebags who like to shout stuff at ladies on the internet because, as we like to say: virtual manhood is better than no manhood at all. --snip-- So eight days after I shared The Magic of George Tierney of Greenville South Carolina he wrote an email to my patron d’art, as follows:

Whoever runs this site needs to take my damn comments off of it. I did not give you permission, nor did you ask me for it. It shows up on google and I will see a lawyer if this doesnt disappear. Ask me before posting bullshit about me. You fuckers had no right. Sincerely, George Tierney Jr

The only thing classier than those tweets is threatening to sue someone because you don't know how the internet works. There are a couple subsequent posts detailing Tierney's Twitter War with a couple folks having a bit of fun with him, because baiting someone who seems to have a couple issues with anger and self-control can be fun, even if it ends up with nothing more than learning a new insult, "fuckhop".

I appreciate Marshall Art a whole lot more now, let me tell you.

We move now from the random slightly crazy person who was on the receiving end of that whole fifteen minutes of fame thing only to realize what a fickle lover she is, to a website that seems to be WorldNetDaily meets Weekly World News. Called Before It's News, it is an example of what's called "Citizen Journalism", or, "Our unverified rumors are better than the Times' or the Post's so there." What do all those scrappy site members dig up, "before it's news"?

Obamacare: The Foot in the Door for Communism

Russians Build FEMA Camps For Americans On Alaska Islands

Congress Seeks To Establish Ministry of Truth!

And, my personal favorite, although it will never beat "Headless Man Found At Topless Bar":

Giant Killer Mice Decimating Rare Seabirds

While it doesn't have that dash of outre that comes with calling a young woman one has never met a cunt, not to mention that marvelous "fuckchop", it's this kind of thing that keeps the internet from getting boring. Oh, and if Scott Tierney wants to sue me, he can email me the threat, then I'll publish it here, and he can figure out I'm really a woman named Jennifer. Like the kids say, mad skills.

One Note Timeless: Allan F. Moore's Song Means: Analyzing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song*

The text of this post has been changed to reflect corrections both in spelling and construction.

It is of course a mistake to think that an artwork or cultural product is the expression of certain feelings, ideas or values which exist independently of the creative product and which simply result from the intention to communicate them . . . What is felt is mediated by the lyrics, rhythm or beat as a form of creative expression . . . we do not have a fully formed, reflexively comprehended experience which we then reproduce in the verbal or sonic form. What this experience means to us, and how we may value it, is usually only discovered in the form of utterance or figuration that is given to it. The expressions not only forms the experience but also transforms it, makes it into something whose meaning changes our understanding of it.

Keith Negus and Michael Pickering, "Creativity and musical experience", Popular Music Studies, p. 184, quoted in Song Means: Analyzing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song, p.210

If Rock: The Primary Text (R:PT) by British musicologist Allan F. Moore was, as I wrote in my review, "focused, one might almost call it lean", Song Means: Analyzing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song, (SM) Moore's latest addition to the Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series, is nothing less than a huge, ambitious, sprawling, and ultimately successful attempt to move forward the argument set forth in the earlier work. Expanding the "primary text" - the recorded song - from rock to "popular song", Moore offers nothing less than the possibility of fruitful interpretation within the locus of what he calls the "track", a particular recording of a song.

There was not a page I read that I did not find myself closing the book around a finger, sitting and considering something I'd read. More often than not, at least initially, it was a series of "Yeah, but . . ." scenarios, as Moore offered exemplars of particular analytic categories in traditional musicology, and how they function in particular tracks. I realized that I was engaging in a favorite sport: offer a possible counter-example as a way of challenging a clear definition and its demonstration. I detest when others do this to me, so if I caught myself about to do that I stopped and gave Moore the benefit of the doubt.

Other times, when I stopped, it was because the overwhelming detail, the breath-taking breadth and depth of his knowledge of popular music and the sheer mass made me want to catch my breath. When I did, I would open the text again, perhaps read again a particular passage, and then I'd have to stop and think, "Wow." It is rare I come across a work I believe is not just important in a particular field of study, but might actually be important for larger audiences who want to know why it is music is so important; Moore shows us why by showing us how, over and over and over. Whether it's a particular rhythm or harmony, the use of timbre and pitch, or melodic surprise or the lack thereof, even the traditional analytic categories of musicology offer the opportunity to come to a more clear understanding of what a particular track means.

Before I get to some critical comments, I think the most important analytic category Moore offers is what he calls the soundbox. The best way to describe the soundbox is, first, to have the reader put on a pair of headphones and play a song. Any song will do. Listen carefully to the exact spacing of the sound sources. How far to the left or right are particular sources in the mix? Usually the voice, the kit, and a lead instrument are centered, but there is the matter of how these are placed vertically in that center that offer clues as to what we are hearing. Finally, some sources sound closer, suggesting either intimacy or, perhaps, confrontation while other sound sources, mixed further back, suggest a distancing. Considering a track as occupying a particular space in particular ways offers opportunities for all sorts of questions that come back, again, to the meaning of a particular track.

I must admit, however, that I was struck for the first time - the concepts aren't new to me; it was, perhaps, using word "Form" as the title of Chapter 3 that lit the light - with what might be called a kind of Aristotelean essentialism in the description of "song". There is the formal structure of song - the rhythm and harmony and melody - and the material substrate that takes the empty form and makes it what it is. Timbre and voice and pitch and volume fill out the formal structure, which, going back to the Peripatetic, are the constituent elements of all things. I think this kind of essentialism is inescapable due to Moore's two-decade old decision to make the song the locus of consideration for the study of popular music.

Moore is quite clear in R:PT that he is not interested in the creative process that led to the song. He takes a further step in SM, quoting Paul Ricoeur at length on page 10:

What is indeed to be understood - and consequently appropriated - in a text/ Not the intention of the author, which is supposed to be hidden behind the text; not the the historical situation common to the author and his original readers; not the expectations or feelings of these original readers; not even their understanding of themselves and historical and cultural phenomena. What has to be appropriated is the meaning of the text itself, conceived in a dynamic way as the direction of thought opened up by the text. in other words, what has to be appropriated is nothing other than the power o disclosing a world that constitutes the reference of the text. in this way we are as far as possible from the Romanticist ideal of coinciding with a foreign psyche. If we may be said to coincide with anything, it is not the inner life of another ego, but the disclosure of a possible way of looking at things, which is the genuine referential power of the text.

I am somewhat sympathetic to this as an interpretive stance, at least as the second stance. The first stance should consider the text - however that word may be understood; in this case, of course we have the recorded song or "track" that functions as the text - in all its particularity. It is the product of this person or group and not that. This person or these people create the track out of their experience, their understanding of how best to communicate through this track a particular idea or narrative thread. The track first appears in time, along with other tracks, offering to potential listeners a unique possibility for incorporating this song in to their own lifeworld. Once the song has been recorded and made available to the public, it becomes a thing, to be sure, an object for analysis and understanding; these analyses and interpretations then become a part of the track's own life as an on-going part of the larger culture.

Perhaps an example will help. Over the winter, we purchased the Beatles for Rock Band for our home game system. My older daughter, at 14, loves music, but she told me she didn't like playing that particular game because she just doesn't like The Beatles. I have to admit I was shocked; I don't know if I've ever heard anyone ever say such a thing. Yet, she was adamant that the songs just didn't say anything to her. While this might be the case because, at 14, she hasn't been exposed to them as much as I was (my two oldest sisters had enough Beatles music around our house that at 10 and 11 I was listening to their greatest hits LPs over and over again). More to the point, however, their whole aural texture, from rhythm through timbre to the particular lyric concerns just don't resonate with Moriah. As much as it pains me to admit it, The Beatles are, at least for some young people, just no longer meaningful because they are . . . well, they're old.

This is a not-unimportant observation to make. If we take song seriously as a vehicle for shaping our lives, then those songs have to be relevant in some way to the listener. Reifying "song" the way Moore does makes an observation like Moriah's incomprehensible. I think the same kind of reification - or, from another angle, perhaps: positivism (I consider Aristotelean realism and positivism flip-sides of the same coin) - accrues around Moore's discussion of style.

I'm thankful for several matters in his discussion of style, including a history of popular music from a British perspective as well as distinguishing "style" from what he calls "idiolect". In the former case of the historical survey, it was nice to have a corrective to the American-centered histories of rock and pop that abound. Popular music in Britain formed in completely different circumstances, and for all there are affinities and cross-overs, the music is, and continues to be, very different from American music. Idiolect refers to what might be thought the particularities an artist or group brings to crafting tracks. We recognize, say, a song by Tool or James Taylor not only because of the styles but because of the particular approach these artists bring within the markers of the styles within which they work.

At the same time, "styles" are just conventions. I think they have become, in particular in the minds of music company executives and marketers, hardened, unbridgeable categories. In the late 1980's, it became impossible to classify the band Faith No More. They had a heavy metal guitar sound, a bass style brought over from 70's funk, drumming heavily influenced by reggae and dub through a band like Bad Brains, a keyboard player who was classically trained, and a lead singer who alternated between singing, shouting in the style of hardcore punk, and rapping. What, exactly, was Faith No More? Even labeling them "nu-metal", the genre that emerged in the late 1990's with Korn and Limp Bizkit, didn't do them justice precisely because their stew of sonic elements, under the very categories of musicological analysis, rendered them "unclassifiable". While they were, for a while, marketed to the then-large heavy metal audience, it just wasn't sustainable because their music was NOT heavy metal. Unable to put them under any stylistic heading, their output subsequent to their debut The Real Thing, while having a great deal of merit, wasn't classifiable under any style heading precisely as Moore describes. Without the support of their label, they foundered for a while then broke up, without, perhaps, defining their sound more clearly. Precisely because we need to recognize the contingency of style labels, I am personally wary of spending a great deal of time wondering whether a track is heavy metal, progressive metal, symphonic metal, or perhaps progressive death metal (Opeth). How about, "Hey, listen to this really awesome song?"

I agree with Moore that songs are things; if we are going to make the case that music provides meaning for listeners, then we have to have music to provide that meaning. This obvious point is, I think, all too often missed, especially by critics and journalists who are unfamiliar with music qua music, preferring to limit their discussions to matters of personal style and presentation that create an empty space where the song actually is. All the same, I would much prefer a less positivist approach, in which a song becomes a thing detached from the human agency that created it. Music is an artificial medium, and we need to recognize that artificiality for what it is, giving some due to those who produce a particular track. Not pride of place, certainly; all the same, at least a nod in the direction of the conventionality of everything from the analytic categories of musicology through matters of style would, at least for me, be preferable.

One more issue related to this whole matter of the conventionality of musical analysis. After Levitin, it is important to remember that those elements of music that have the most emotional resonance with listeners, namely timbre, pitch, and volume, are not real, inherent qualities of sound. Sound is a physical thing, and one can speak of frequency, to be sure, of sound. While there is a physical effect to extremely loud and low sounds - I will always remember feeling my pants move against my legs to the rhythm of the beat as I stood at a Rush concert - "loudness", "high" versus "low", and "guitar" or "keyboard" are only the ways our brains interpret the sound waves that impact our ears. They are qualities that do not inhere in music itself. Manipulation of these secondary characteristics is an important part of song-construction; accepting them as secondary is important to analysis so we don't go too far in making of these secondary qualities something real in and for themselves.

Finally, a note on the construction of Moore's text. He writes on p. 16 at the close of the first chapter, entitled "Methodology":

[W]ith the proviso that this is a methodology rather than a theory, I believe that what is offered here does have wide applicability, across the whole discursive field that was, is, and for some time will be popular song. While how something operates is dependent on the way the style within which it is couched operates, the rules of such a style are only ever implied and incomplete. This methodology, a process of discovering, can be applied irrespective of style.(italics in original)

What struck me most about this particular line was a previous discussion in which Moore was quite clear there were certain theoretical debts he owed, most especially to Ricoeur, as quoted above.  I believe he is making clear he is not setting out a "theory" of popular music; rather, he is  working within a broad scope defined as "recorded popular song", spanning decades of time and myriad styles, he is demonstrating that analysis can offer up questions that can only be intelligible this way. All the same, it is rather bold to make the case that one is not setting out a theory.

Starting in Chapter 6, Moore moves through a set of interpretive categories, successively "Friction", "Persona", "Reference", and "Belonging". Here, he sets aside his disclaimer that he is just explicating a method and dives, yet again, in to theory. Most helpful was his long discussion on the ineffectiveness of semiotics as an approach for understanding popular song.  Precisely because these categories are contested space, it becomes necessary to make clear how they function as interpretive schema; how they intersect and, perhaps, contradict, thus creating variant meanings. In particular, separating "Persona" from the dual matters of authenticity and intertextuality explored in "Belonging" seems to me a bit of theoretical sleight-of-hand; while perhaps convenient for reasons of explanation, the much-contested matter of authenticity impacts directly on the question of persona in any number of ways, not least the trustworthiness of the persona's voice. While Moore recognizes this, continually cross referencing various passages to make several points across these chapters, it is the return of theory that interests me here. While not arguing with his inclusion of the theoretical sections of these chapters, it might have served his readers to have at least some of these explored, at least tentatively and generally, at the start. Further, had the quoted sentence on page 16 included the qualification that he is offering a methodology of analyzing and a theory of interpretation, would, perhaps have made the sudden appearance of theoretical discussions less surprising.

These, however, are quibbles. This is an important work that offers readers the tools to understand what is going on when they hear a particular track. For all that capitalism reduces music to a product without meaning or purpose, part of the struggle against the totalitarian tendencies of capitalist ideology occurs precisely in music's refusal to be denuded of meaning. In this, it is a glorious testimony to the human refusal to surrender meaning to the demands of the market. For that very reason, making clear for ourselves not only that songs are meaningful, but how they are and why they are, is a necessary task. Moore's work goes a long way in that regard, and I have no doubt will bear much fruit not just within musicology, but in the study of culture in general.

*I am very grateful to Allan F. Moore for sending me a review copy of this book. There is no way a review can do justice to it, and I'm quite sure this has failed.

The Lady Or The Tiger

Ahead of the NATO summit just up the road, Mitt Romney had an op-ed published in Col. McCormick's bird-cage liner, complaining about cuts in the US military budget that, specifically in context, do not match with the expansiveness of the uses of military power.

Last year, President Obama signed into law a budget scheme that threatens to saddle the U.S. militarywith nearly $1 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years. President Obama's own defense secretary, Leon Panetta, has called cuts of this magnitude "devastating" to our national security. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has plainly said that such a reduction means "we would not any longer be a global power." Despite these warnings, the Obama administration has pledged to veto an attempt to replace these cuts with savings in other areas. This is reckless. We have a military inventory composed of weapons designed 40 to 50 years ago. The average age of our tanker aircraft is 47 years, of strategic bombers 34 years. Our Air Force, which had 82 fighter squadrons at the end of the Cold War, has been reduced to 39 today. TheU.S. Navy, at 285 ships, is at levels not seen since 1916. Should our air, naval and ground forces continue to age and shrink, it will place the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies at risk.

Think Progress is correct to criticize Romney putting the onus on Obama alone for signing that bill. Part of the far larger deal that avoided a default on our sovereign obligations, those cuts were reached after negotiations between both parties, and the Executive and Congress. Of course, the House partisan leadership scuttled that deal, dumping eight billion dollars worth of extra goodies in to the Pentagon budget in the version of the NDAA they passed on Friday.

The thing is, Romney - or his ghost-writer - is right. Since the Cold War, NATO has been lurching and grasping for a reason to exist. When one got plopped in Europe's lap in the form of the series of wars as Yugoslavia collapsed, everyone clucked their tongues, shook their heads, and turned away. At that point, the Brussels headquarters should have been shuttered, and folks sent on their merry way. Yet, NATO is in titular control of the current coalition in Afghanistan. Last years ridiculous air campaign in Libya was a NATO affair. Yet, again, as Romney points out, calling these "NATO" missions is a bit like calling the Normandy invasion a Brazilian mission.  Further, specifically in regard to Libya, such a mission, without serious thought regarding monetary cost, the cost in wear on our military equipment and weapons platforms, to say nothing of the political and diplomatic damage, was an example of the over-extension of the military that is not reflected in our DOD budgets. In that regard, Gov. Romney is quite right.

So, what's the solution? I think we need to ask ourselves a couple questions. Since the attacks on the United States in 2001, we have continued to carry on our politics here at home much as if our troops, engaged (after March, 2003) in combat on two fronts - since expanded to several of varying intensity and commitment - existed in a realm apart. Both invasions, Afghanistan and Iraq, were accounted largely off-budget, i.e., the money spent was not counted in normal fiscal requests and appropriations. For over a decade now, we have conducted our domestic affairs with the pretense that it is possible to do so without any reference to the economic, social, and political cost of fielding two pretty substantial armies in combat. We've been through not one but two economic downturns in that time, the second historic in size and scope. We've had two Presidential elections, conducted by and large with little reference to the actual circumstances the country faced. We've had long, drawn-out discussions on taxes and spending, with a large and vocal voting bloc within one party insisting on the necessity of fiscal probity, always, however, with the money set aside for the Department of Defense somehow magically excluded from any such discussion.

Do we wish to admit that we are, and have been for a while, a country at war? Whether or not any formal declaration has been made, the reality is we continue to act as a belligerent around the world. Whether it's central Asia, Yemen, Uganda and neighboring states in central Africa, or Latin America, our military posture is one of a nation ready and willing to put our troops in harms way. Please notice I didn't add "able", the matter Gov. Romney addresses in his op-ed. That, of course, is the $1 trillion dollar question. The President, the Joint Chiefs, and the Congressional leadership of both parties need to face the reality that, as large as our military is, as overwhelming as our power becomes, as well-trained and disciplined as our troops continue to be after years in combat - and despite abundant evidence of the psychological toll years of repeated exposure to combat has wreaked upon our men and women in uniform - we have constructed, and live within, a fiscal and political fantasy land in which these things do not cost any money; do not play havoc with the economy; are separate from our day-to-day existence. In other words, we do not act as a country at war.

Which are we? Are we a nation at war, willing to make the sacrifices - fiscal and monetary, political and structural - to support the military as many both in the civilian leadership and the uniformed services envision? Or do we continue to pretend that we can somehow make it all work out without recognizing the links between the struggles our military faces to accept the challenges they are given by civilian leadership? Do we reorder our entire national life to support a military that can continue a variety of missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen and Uganda/CAR/DRC and, perhaps should the President feel the need to "do something", Syria? Or do we prefer to insist on fiscal probity and thrift, not only reducing the size and scope of the military, but redefining its mission accordingly? 

These, it seems to me, are questions we just don't want to ask, let alone actually consider. The old story of the man facing two doors, while perhaps not perfectly appropriate, exemplifies in a larger sense, the situation within which we find ourselves. We face stark choices, and we must choose carefully and thoughtfully. We have not been either careful or thoughtful in a very long while. It would be nice if we at least started.

Something Old, Something New

I expect, very shortly, there will be a surprise coming here. Please don't be like my kids who insist on my telling them what that might be. See, doing that makes it, you know, not so much a surprise anymore, now does it.