I’m sitting on the Chinatown bus in Philadelphia waiting to go to Washington D.C. and the man in the seat behind me is on his cell phone talking to his wife/girlfriend/ partner who just dropped him off and is herself driving home in their car. I know all this— which I don’t want to know— because I can hear every word he says through the crack in the seats. As soon as the bus leaves Chinatown and heads south along the river, he’s on the phone again, this time to someone he’s meeting in D.C. They proceed to have a 30-minute conversation about how the third person they’re meeting in D.C. screwed up by not getting in touch with them sooner so they could coordinate everyone’s arrival better: “I’m counting on the bus to not take more than two and a half hours or I’m going to be late for the meeting. So and so should have made her reservations weeks ago so we could have arranged to come in on our flights close to the same time. I know, I know, it’s too late to do anything about it now but . . . “ and on and on and on.
About half way to Baltimore (the guy is still on the phone) the bus pulls into a rest stop and we sit there for awhile until some of the passengers start wondering aloud if this is a scheduled stop or what’s going on. An Asian gentleman then approaches the rear of the bus where we’re sitting and explains that he’s having to translate for the two people who were on the bus from New York but slept through the stop in Philadelphia where they were supposed to get off. When they woke up and realized where they were they approached the bus driver and asked him to take them back to Philadelphia. The translator says, “We’re trying to decide whether to turn around and take them back to Philadelphia or continue on to Baltimore where they can catch a later bus back.”
Up jumps the cell phone guy who starts in, “There is no way this bus is going to go back to Philadelphia. I’m already late as it is. These people need to take responsibility for themselves.” That’s right, a chorus of voices ring out. We’ve paid good money (the Chinatown bus costs $15, as opposed to Amtrak’s $60 to $80) to get us on time to D.C. and we can’t go back because two passengers missed their stop! The woman in the seat in front of me wakes up and asks what’s going on. I explain the situation and she says, “I heard them come through the bus when we stopped and yell out ‘Philadelphia, Philadelphia,’ at least a couple of times.” I answered her, “I wish I could sleep that soundly.”
Several days later I’m sitting in the Philadelphia airport waiting for a flight that’s two hours late, knowing I’m probably going to miss my connection home. Sitting next to me is a young woman waiting for the same flight who decides to pass the time talking to her sister, who is also sitting in an airport waiting for a flight. They are both going home for Thanksgiving. No one wants to give up their seat in the waiting room because the room is packed and you’ll end up on the floor if you do. So I listen to her tell her sister every excruciating detail of her trip to the airport, what’s going on in the airport, what she’s got in her suitcase (five pairs of shoes for her four day stay), how her sister can possibly survive four days with only a backpack for a suitcase, etc., etc.
I actually need to talk on a phone because I have to call Mark and tell him to cancel my surgery for the next day (how crazy was I to schedule hand surgery on the day before Thanksgiving and then actually try to get home on time?) and give me the phone number of our friends in Chicago who I’m probably going to have to stay with when I miss my connecting flight home. I pile all my possessions on my chair while I go find a pay phone, for which my calling card company charges me ten times what they charge from a regular phone, and hope all my stuff is still on my chair when I return.
I do end up staying the night in Chicago with our friends, who can’t believe I don’t have a cell phone so I can call them when I get off the train at the stop near their house, The next morning I’m back again at O’Hare Airport waiting to catch my plane to Albuquerque. A young man in his late twenties or early thirties is pacing the floor with his cell phone, speaking loudly in what I think is an Australian accent, talking to his wife/girlfriend/partner about the fact that he is about to get on the plane and that the plan for New Year’s Eve at the hot springs outside of Denver is just “awesome” and that it’s going to be so powerful, the best celebration yet. Then he tells her goodbye, and as we’re walking down the ramp onto the plane (he’s right behind me) he’s on the phone with someone else explaining that the celebration at the hot springs is going to be truly “awesome” because 30 of his closest friends have already said they’re coming and can you believe how fabulous it’s going to be, better than last year, truly outstanding.
Of course, there he is when we get on the plane, sitting right in front of me and he tells two more people about the hot springs gig before they make everyone turn off their cell phones. But do I finally get a reprieve from the constant chatter than has taken over every public place and ruined it with private bullshit? Not on your life. It turns out that the guy sitting next to him is a student at a seminary and that the hot springs gig that the Australian (turns out he’s from New Zealand) has been raving about is some spiritual gathering that he and his “closest 30 friends” have been going to for the last few years. So naturally, their conversation turns to religion and they are off to the races. For the next hour they engage in a spirited dialogue regarding the church doctrine espoused by the seminary student and the freewheeling Christianity celebrated by the New Zealander. There’s a lot of scripture quoting, scripture interpretation, discussion of the merits of various popes, discussion of dogma regarding who’s going to heaven and hell, ad nauseum. While the New Zealander challenges the seminary student on a lot of his fundamentalist rap defending the church, it’s within the context of the sanctity of Christianity, and I’m hoping (I don’t pray) there’s not a Muslim or a Jew across the isle.
Finally, after a free bloody Mary from the airline attendant, who I’ve consulted about airplane etiquette, I’ve had enough. When the seminary student starts in about homosexuality being an abomination I stand up and say, “That’s it. I’ve listened to this crap for almost an hour but I’m not going to sit here and listen to offensive talk about homosexuality. You’ve offended any number of people on this plane, particularly me, and it’s got to stop.”
And it did. They listened to their iPods for the rest of the flight, and the guy sitting next to me bought me another bloody Mary.
Solution: Never leave home.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Electoral Politics
Only two days after the presidential election of 2008 Barack Obama hired as his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, whose father, an Israeli physician, was quoted as saying now that his son is in the White House Israel will certainly have the ear of Obama. Why shouldn’t it? After all, his son is no Arab, scrubbing the floor.
It just descended from there. Obama picked an economic team comprised of the current masterminds of unfettered capitalism who are responsible for our economic meltdown (if Milton Friedman were still alive Obama probably would have assigned him some job). He picked a secretary of agriculture who favors the development of genetically modified organisms, a secretary of defense who’s going to take more troops into Afghanistan, and Hilary Clinton as secretary of state, who is in favor of anything that keeps the Clinton dynasty alive.
Why do progressives fall for these figures like Obama who promise “change” and redemption. I guess because there’s not much of anything else to believe in. The sixties revolution of consciousness, that promised, and to a certain degree delivered, changes in how we view and relate to issues of gender, race, and postcolonial freedoms, had no lasting political effect, really. The same political elites are the ones getting elected to state and national office, with an occasional moderate swing from right to left. They’re still threatening to overturn Roe versus Wade. They’re still sending young men and women (mostly minorities) all over the world to kill and be killed. They’re still complicit in the capitalist system that continues to increase the disparity between rich and poor. And they’re still the only vote in the United Nations defending Israel’s incursions into the West Bank or the blockade of Gaza.
Our children see how our efforts failed to effect any kind of real political change, so what are they supposed to do? There are still young activists out there, like my nephew, who belong to radical anti-war or anti-capitalist organizations that protest and demonstrate and scream bloody murder. I don’t know how much community organizing they’re doing, but after the failure of my feeble efforts in that capacity, I’m not surprised they don’t bother. We marched by the millions against the war in Vietnam. How much did that actually undermine the U.S. role and bring about our withdrawal? I don’t really know. People all over the world marched by the millions against the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and look where that got us.
So what motivated them to get out and vote in the 2008 election? Bush’s abysmal record on everything, of course, but what made them think that electing Barack Obama was going to really change anything. By the time you’re in a senate race, yet alone a presidential race, you’re already bought and sold. There’s no way around it. To be one of the elite you have to be able to raise the capital to compete in enormously expensive campaigns that get your face on the TV screen and your voice on the airwaves. You have to make promises to interest groups and you have to pay them back so they don’t abandon you in the next race. Here’s how J. M. Coetzee puts it in Diary of a Bad Year: “We do not choose our rulers by the toss of a coin — tossing coins is associated with the low-status activity of gambling — but who would dare to claim that the world would be in a worse state than it is if rulers had from the beginning of time been chosen by the method of a coin?”
In a recent issue of The New Yorker there was an article on Arthur Fisher Bentley, who wrote a book called The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures back in 1908 that claims all politics and governments are the result of the activities of interest groups (pluralism) that are engaged in a constant struggle for advantage. His argument gained traction after World War II because of people’s fears about the “big ideas of government,” i.e., Hitler and Stalin. Bentley himself was a progressive who advocated using government to curb the power of big business, but maybe he was right: reforming government, as it’s actually constituted, will never be possible.
I sometimes fantasize about what would happen if someone who got elected actually decided they would never run for office again and see what they could actually accomplish without fulfilling promises to anyone except their own conscience. This may be the collective fantasy that got Obama elected. So if Nobel Laureate in economics Paul Krugman can write an open letter to Obama detailing what he thinks he should do about the failing economic situation, here’s my open letter about what he should do about everything else. (Unless Obama is in favor of the violent overthrow of the government, which I doubt, he’s not going to change our economic system from capitalism to socialism, but some of the points I make in my letter may make us a bit more like Sweden or even Germany, economically speaking.)
Dear President Obama,
The first thing you have to do is bring all American troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Emergency negotiating sessions, involving every country with any kind of involvement with either county must begin immediately so as to deter reprisals by the warring religious factions in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The second thing you have to do is shut down Guantanamo and provide civilian trials for all those remaining who a case can actually be made against (the Center for Constitutional Rights has to be consulted, along with every other NGO or human rights lawyer who is working on individual cases). Then you have to replace Robert Gates with a Defense Secretary who will look into shutting down other military bases around the world based on the reduction of our military industrial complex, and who will pursue nuclear disarmament. You will get rid of the Reliable Replacement Warhead Program and begin to reduce the stockpile of nuclear weapons at all our nuclear facilities in order to comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. You will order a mission change at these labs to develop a renewable energy policy that will develop cars that run on alternative fuels, that develop local renewable energy grids that rely on solar, geothermal, or biomass, and you will redirect highway funds to subsidize mass transportation, in whatever forms are best suited for city, town, or rural area. You will rewrite an economic stimulus package that includes universal health care, whether it’s based on expanding what we currently have, such as using Medicare to cover all the uninsured and letting those with private health insurance keep theirs (which is probably the only way you’ll get it passed) or scrapping the entire system and doing away with private insurers altogether. There’s a ton of other stuff I could tell you to do, but I think I’ll finish by saying you can get rid of the Forest Service and manage our vast western public lands with what Daniel Kemmis describes in his book, This Sovereign Land, watershed-based local coalitions of citizen democracies.
So best of luck, and when you’re done, in 2012, if you last even that long, you can go back to Chicago and Michelle can go back to being a college administrator and you can write some more memoirs. Sounds like the good life to me.
It just descended from there. Obama picked an economic team comprised of the current masterminds of unfettered capitalism who are responsible for our economic meltdown (if Milton Friedman were still alive Obama probably would have assigned him some job). He picked a secretary of agriculture who favors the development of genetically modified organisms, a secretary of defense who’s going to take more troops into Afghanistan, and Hilary Clinton as secretary of state, who is in favor of anything that keeps the Clinton dynasty alive.
Why do progressives fall for these figures like Obama who promise “change” and redemption. I guess because there’s not much of anything else to believe in. The sixties revolution of consciousness, that promised, and to a certain degree delivered, changes in how we view and relate to issues of gender, race, and postcolonial freedoms, had no lasting political effect, really. The same political elites are the ones getting elected to state and national office, with an occasional moderate swing from right to left. They’re still threatening to overturn Roe versus Wade. They’re still sending young men and women (mostly minorities) all over the world to kill and be killed. They’re still complicit in the capitalist system that continues to increase the disparity between rich and poor. And they’re still the only vote in the United Nations defending Israel’s incursions into the West Bank or the blockade of Gaza.
Our children see how our efforts failed to effect any kind of real political change, so what are they supposed to do? There are still young activists out there, like my nephew, who belong to radical anti-war or anti-capitalist organizations that protest and demonstrate and scream bloody murder. I don’t know how much community organizing they’re doing, but after the failure of my feeble efforts in that capacity, I’m not surprised they don’t bother. We marched by the millions against the war in Vietnam. How much did that actually undermine the U.S. role and bring about our withdrawal? I don’t really know. People all over the world marched by the millions against the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and look where that got us.
So what motivated them to get out and vote in the 2008 election? Bush’s abysmal record on everything, of course, but what made them think that electing Barack Obama was going to really change anything. By the time you’re in a senate race, yet alone a presidential race, you’re already bought and sold. There’s no way around it. To be one of the elite you have to be able to raise the capital to compete in enormously expensive campaigns that get your face on the TV screen and your voice on the airwaves. You have to make promises to interest groups and you have to pay them back so they don’t abandon you in the next race. Here’s how J. M. Coetzee puts it in Diary of a Bad Year: “We do not choose our rulers by the toss of a coin — tossing coins is associated with the low-status activity of gambling — but who would dare to claim that the world would be in a worse state than it is if rulers had from the beginning of time been chosen by the method of a coin?”
In a recent issue of The New Yorker there was an article on Arthur Fisher Bentley, who wrote a book called The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures back in 1908 that claims all politics and governments are the result of the activities of interest groups (pluralism) that are engaged in a constant struggle for advantage. His argument gained traction after World War II because of people’s fears about the “big ideas of government,” i.e., Hitler and Stalin. Bentley himself was a progressive who advocated using government to curb the power of big business, but maybe he was right: reforming government, as it’s actually constituted, will never be possible.
I sometimes fantasize about what would happen if someone who got elected actually decided they would never run for office again and see what they could actually accomplish without fulfilling promises to anyone except their own conscience. This may be the collective fantasy that got Obama elected. So if Nobel Laureate in economics Paul Krugman can write an open letter to Obama detailing what he thinks he should do about the failing economic situation, here’s my open letter about what he should do about everything else. (Unless Obama is in favor of the violent overthrow of the government, which I doubt, he’s not going to change our economic system from capitalism to socialism, but some of the points I make in my letter may make us a bit more like Sweden or even Germany, economically speaking.)
Dear President Obama,
The first thing you have to do is bring all American troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Emergency negotiating sessions, involving every country with any kind of involvement with either county must begin immediately so as to deter reprisals by the warring religious factions in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The second thing you have to do is shut down Guantanamo and provide civilian trials for all those remaining who a case can actually be made against (the Center for Constitutional Rights has to be consulted, along with every other NGO or human rights lawyer who is working on individual cases). Then you have to replace Robert Gates with a Defense Secretary who will look into shutting down other military bases around the world based on the reduction of our military industrial complex, and who will pursue nuclear disarmament. You will get rid of the Reliable Replacement Warhead Program and begin to reduce the stockpile of nuclear weapons at all our nuclear facilities in order to comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. You will order a mission change at these labs to develop a renewable energy policy that will develop cars that run on alternative fuels, that develop local renewable energy grids that rely on solar, geothermal, or biomass, and you will redirect highway funds to subsidize mass transportation, in whatever forms are best suited for city, town, or rural area. You will rewrite an economic stimulus package that includes universal health care, whether it’s based on expanding what we currently have, such as using Medicare to cover all the uninsured and letting those with private health insurance keep theirs (which is probably the only way you’ll get it passed) or scrapping the entire system and doing away with private insurers altogether. There’s a ton of other stuff I could tell you to do, but I think I’ll finish by saying you can get rid of the Forest Service and manage our vast western public lands with what Daniel Kemmis describes in his book, This Sovereign Land, watershed-based local coalitions of citizen democracies.
So best of luck, and when you’re done, in 2012, if you last even that long, you can go back to Chicago and Michelle can go back to being a college administrator and you can write some more memoirs. Sounds like the good life to me.
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