I stopped by the room to fill my mug with some fresh caffeine. The ever present TV set to a 24 hour news channel was telling the tale of some Republican ranting about some Democrat being corrupt and needing to be removed from office. (By the way; is there a public room anywhere in the industrialized world that does not sport a TV? Even public bathrooms have them now. And 24 hour news? I know that life goes on 24 hours a day, but how much of that is actually "news"?)
"The only thing stranger than a Democrat complaining about corruption," I said to the man standing at the other coffee machine, "is a Republican complaining about corruption."
He immediately took offense, suggesting that Democrats are more corrupt than Republicans on any day of the week.
And I had to laugh. Somehow we had taken opposite sides while saying the exact same thing. So indoctrinated are we in the left v right, conservative v liberal, capitalist v socialist, ad nauseum, that even when we agree with each other we fight over just how agreeable we are being.
Depending on something completely arbitrary, the time of the day or the positions of the stars, something, one will take the position that the Democrats are dumping 15 tons of shit on us while the Republicans are dumping just 13 tons. Another will insist that the Republicans are the ones dumping 15 tons and the Democrats just 13. And somehow, while arguing over who is right, both forget that they are wading though tons and tons of shit.
I openly admit that I exited the reservation stage left. I see little hope in the claim that true freedom results from religious fundamentalism being forced on all. The idea that personal responsibility means working dutifully to provide international corporations with a consumer market and a fat profit strikes me as a sad delusion that can only lead to ruin. And the claims that a human invented "free market" will dispense divine justice and lead to a fair and progressing society without continuous oversight, adjustment and regulation, are clearly the ravings of the insane.
But what of those who exit stage right? The person who who insists that freedom is jeopardised by an overbearing and intrusive government will find me nodding in agreement. One who claims that personal responsibility is not fostered by a society that attempts to provide cradle to grave safety and prosperity regardless of individual effort will get little argument from me. As for the capitalist crying that communism is anything but fair and has the added benefit of failing where ever it is tried, well, guess what? Not only does she have a point but she is probably not very happy with the kind of "capitalism" currently inflicted on America.
Left or right, we cherish and even demand freedom and personal liberty. Liberal or conservative, we will insist that no society can thrive that demeans personal responsibility. Capitalist or communist, we desire a system that allows universal access to success; that rewards work and innovation and courage; that does not abandon the weak or the ill or the old; and does not celebrate greed as the most noble aspect of human character. And we will probably agree that, what ever label is hung on our current economic system, it does none of those things. Liberty, personal responsibility, fairness and compassion? How much disagreement can there be on these things between thinking human beings?
Those in power are staying in power by making sure we don't realize that fact. As long as they keep us angry with each other we will forget that we should be angry with them. They are working together to leech the liberty out of America while getting us to believe it is those damned liberals or religious conservative who are at fault. To "win" and "save our society" we are told to trust and obey those in power and be responsible to them, not to our families, friends and to ourselves. They have set up the most skewed society in modern history, where the political and business elite grow obese at a table set by the labor of those going without, while telling us that those not at the table, (which is most of us by the way) are the inferior ones.
The chattering class is in on the same scam, not so much to stay in power but to keep the easy money flowing from their sponsors. Be they right wing or left, they generate money by generating heat, not light. In fact the current structure is perfect for them - all they need do to stay fat is keep stirring up the shit! Accuracy doesn't matter, nor facts or truth or context. Far from being shameful and derided, hate speech and shear lunacy are celebrated for the ability to hold an audience.
The very idea that there are "opposite sides" is an invention of those grabbing power. Each person has a unique history and a lone view of the world. An idea that forms the very core of your being, (a religion for example) may not interest me at all. That makes us different. That does not make us opposites. In all probability tied up deep in your religion are notions of personal responsibility and justice that are parallel to mine. My need for liberty and insistence on compassion will be echos of your own hopes. We only come into conflict if I try to force you to abandon your god or you try to force me to kneel at an alter. Even then our conflict is over a single issue. All we need to to resolve the conflict is to leave the other person be.
This is not to suggest we will all be sitting around the fire singing in blessed harmony. Just because we are not opposites does not mean we are not different. Nor does it mean we will actually like each other. There are people very different from me who I like (even love) very, very, much. There are people very much like me that I don't care for at all. And there are some things that are "deal killers." The white supremacist may be a good father, a loving husband, a talented sailor or pilot or motorcycle rider. Doesn't matter. We are not going to be sharing a beer. Even then (and as much as it might pain me to admit it) we are not opposites in anything but our view of justice as it applies to race. I may really want to see him get his ass kicked into next week, but until he raises his hand to inflict his illness on another, he is safe from me.
And I think that is where those in power are playing us for fools. Every nuance of the propaganda machine reinforces the idea that if I don't agree with someone on every single level, then I can't trust them and don't like them. If I can't trust them and don't like them then we are opposites. If we are opposites we must be enemies and kicking some ass is my inalienable right. To kick ass we need leaders. Those in power just love to call themselves leaders. We buy into the story and keep electing them to kick some opposite ass.
I don't know if there is a way out of this morass of "opposites." But calling it for the horseshit it is can't be a bad start.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Monday, December 19, 2011
Home made religion
I take it as a given that all gods are invented by human kind. To some degree every believer I have ever talked with has modified the god offered him or her, making it tolerable. One young lady is a good example. Over a dinner hosted by a Seminary friend she insisted that she was a Bible believing Protestant, though she was sure the "submissive woman thing" was a mistake. When I suggested that her bible very specifically declares that women should be subjected to men and that she had, in fact, modified the Christian god into one she could worship, she was deeply offended. (Oddly enough she was offended at me, though I completely agreed that no real god would insist that women be subjected to men.)
In addition to rejecting doctrines they can't swallow, each believer is faced with a holy book full of contradictions. Each ends up interpreting that book as fits her or his own society, personal history, and prejudices. In addition most such books were written thousands of years ago when even the most educated person knew less about the true nature of the cosmos than does the average kid in an eighth grade science class. (Not including those in Texas or Kansas.) The gods described in the holy books are severely mismatched to the universe we see; thus even more interpretations are required. There appear to be as many different gods as there are believers.
That strikes me as curious. If there is really a god out there why is it so impossible to get a clear view of It, Him, or Her? Most of my species insists that there is a god, what if they are correct? Assuming a god actually exists what should I look for? What would I expect to see in a universe created and overseen by a real, Honest To Goodness God? (HTGG) How would such a god be noticed and described; what should I believe, really?
My first assumption is a certain level of honesty or, at least, a disinterest in deception, on the part of a HTGG. Fact is, if the HTGG, being ancient and powerful and a lot smarter than us, has a desire to deceive, then we will all be deceived. Nothing we think we see, nothing we imagine, and nothing we experience can be trusted in the least. If the HTGG lacks this tiny bit of morality, then the cosmos is a nightmare experience where there is no hope of understanding. All alone this assumption of honesty puts some serious dents in the god beliefs floating around our little planet, forcing me to look elsewhere.
To be honest the HTGG ends up being constrained - unable to do (or be) some things if it does other things. Claiming to be god makes it even more so. I consider lying a serious affront, but in no way claim I have never told a lie. A HTGG however, would not be considered "honest" if it could be demonstrated that IT had ever lied about any thing, for any reason. One deliberate falsehood on the part of a being who claims perfect morality and the whole story falls apart.
A real HTGG could not (for example) create the universe just 10,000 years ago where every observation, every natural process from plate tectonics to the speed of light to the cosmic background radiation, points to a cosmos being 13+ billion years old. To do so would be to deliberately mislead anyone who was trying to understand the nature of existence. Christians who believe in a literal interpretation of the first books of their bible are, without recourse, worshiping a lying god. That they do so with such enthusiasm is curious, but the god is fundamentally flawed and needs no serious consideration.
This essential honesty makes it impossible that the HTGG has actually written any books as a revelation to mankind. Any such book would have to be internally consistent and true in every particular, parallel the universe we observe. Such a book could simply not contain any errors about any subject, never get its history wrong, never trip over its science. If it did the only claim it could make would be a collection of some person's thoughts about what god is like. Interesting, maybe even helpful, but no more holy than are these scribblings.
Integral to that honesty, a HTGG could not make mutually exclusive claims about It's own character. For example the HTGG could not claim to be an all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing deity with no recourse but to invoke a hell. (2300 years later, Epicurus still awaits an answer.) In the end, if the god is not honest it is a poor excuse for a god.
Honesty suggests that, if the HTGG is all powerful, then there is no Anti-G who is being allowed to deceive. I know this is a favorite of the Jewish/Christian/Muslim faith. But either the HTGG is omnipotent and therefore utterly immune from opposition, or the Anti-G roams the world. And if there is an almost-as-powerful-as-the-HTGG Anti-G who is free to deceive, we will, again, be deceived. Of course many religious folk claim exactly this. But they then make the claim that they are the exception, they alone are not deceived; without having any real explanation as to how they managed to pull that off. (And they still have the problem of not agreeing with each other.) In a universe rife with deception, accepting their claim of knowledge without a single fact that backs them up would be colossally foolish.
Thus this universe with an HTGG as its creator is fundamentally honest. What we see is what we get. The HTGG cannot contradict itself and cannot exist in contradiction to the cosmos.
The search for an Honest-To-Goodness-God gets kind of stuck right here. A look about the cosmos doesn't uncover anything that looks like a god. Nor does a look around our little planet. What we do see is a continuous evolution of natural processes. From here on all god-thoughts can be nothing but assumptions and guesses. Even if there be a HTGG, It can hold no grudge against those who sally no further in faith. This is, after all, how the cosmos presents itself to be...godless.
Could an honest god deliberately hide for some reason? It is hard to see how, but an honest god could be surprised, perhaps even delighted, by a cosmos that evolved in ways unexpected. That may leave an omniscient god out of the picture; but that appears to be the only option that fits into the cosmos. To get to some kind of god belief means looking for a different kind of god.
An engineer starts a project (say a bridge) knowing exactly what needs to be built. Each bit is designed for purpose, strength, and fit with all the other bits in mind. Tools are deployed to make the bits, and any surprise is a failure of design or execution. An artist, on the other hand, starts out not knowing the exact image that will ultimately appear on the canvas, it is a journey of discovery.
Could it be that the HTGG is an artist and not an engineer? That the cosmos is a canvas and not a bridge? If so the universe would appear exactly as it does, its history would be what we have learned, and we would fit into it exactly as we do. Creation is not a place we inhabit; it is a process of which we are a part.
I have the privilege of knowing a couple of artists. Sometimes, as they work the canvas, things appear that don’t seem fit, that have a tinge of ugly to them, things no one really wants to see. But they appear anyway and even the artist can’t explain why. What usually happens next is that the artist buries the offensive image into the painting. The image doesn’t just go away, it can’t. It has become a part of the work. But instead of projecting ugly that layer becomes the foundation for the next, and ugly is absorbed by subtlety and depth. It is a reach, but not much of one, to accept the ugly in our evolution as a parallel experience for the HTGG. Racism, tribal warfare, genocide, murder, torture, slavery; from our prospective such massive evil, such overwhelming ugly, appears irredeemable. But we can grant that the HTGG works a canvas beyond our vision, that what appears beyond redemption in this tiny corner of the canvas will be layered into the whole.
It could be that the HTGG is a duffer, that the canvas will be fit only for some attic somewhere. But I’m going to take our collective morality, even as it appears just slightly more moral than immoral, as a hint this is not so. As art reflects the artist I think we are safe to assume that consciousness and morality (nascent as it is in our very young species) could suggest that such has been infused into work by an Artist. This might be the one place where the cosmos hints at a god-like entity being involved…that an unconscious universe has evolved bits of consciousness.
With the HTGG envisioned as an Artist and not an Engineer, the cosmos as a work in progress, and life as an unexpected or unanticipated facet glowing out of the work, we at least have a god that does not contradict the cosmos we know. However, the real goal of every god belief seems to be to find a way for us to remain “alive” after we die. If the HTGG is going to make it as a “real” god-possibility of any interest, somehow, some kind of life-after-death has to fit the picture. Thus we are forced to assume that eternal life is inherently “good” and desirable, and a lack of same is inherently “not-good”. There is the problem of the 13.7 billion years of cosmic history that passed before any of us showed up. True we are a bit part of that history, but those passing eons had no real impact on our conscious selves. They passed without our realizing and left no trace in our memories. Is it really unlikely that the eons that unfold after we die will be different? Still, I think I can get there, (that is to eternal life).
The Artist and the Canvas are but an analogy, and not particularly nuanced. The cosmos is clearly more dimensional, more faceted, than a canvas. Compared to an artist, the HTGG would be equally more complex and dynamic. Imagine life, consciousness, and self-awareness emerging from the cosmos as layer upon billion year layer is brushed on; a glow imperceptible at first, lost in the flux of light washing through creation. It is an image parallel to what we know to be true. Matter and energy are two sides of the same coin, energy being nothing more (or less) than patterns in the light. Matter precipitated out of the light of the early universe. Organized by gravity, the matter (mostly hydrogen) coalesced into masses, compressed and ignited into stars. From those early stars was all of the complexity of a chemical universe bred. As those first stars expired the calcium, iron and carbon that forms the foundation of life’s chemistry flowed into new stars, solar systems, planets and biospheres; layers that built up even beyond the attributes of chemistry. We know our very minds to be layers, complexities mounded up on earlier complexities that form our brains. We know that conscious thoughts ride on the sub-conscious and that we are social creatures. Our “individualism” rides upon the structure of societies and civilizations. So deep and intricate are these layers that much of our decision making happens on a sub-conscious level; our conscious self being told only after the fact. Our self-awareness lies at the surface of the most subtle of interactions of light flowing through literally billions of years of layering.
Fragile as human life and each individual may be, it is not difficult to envision such as being interesting, even a delight, to the HTGG. Self-aware bits, the Canvas alive, looking at itself and wondering from whence it came? Why let such mastery pass away? Indeed, could the HTGG allow such to fade knowing that to do so would be considered immoral, even evil, by the bits themselves? It seems unlikely. If the cosmos is a canvas, and if life brings beauty to that work, then the HTGG might (Must?) preserve that beauty somehow.
So here we have a religion that allows for an Honest To Goodness God to actually insist in the cosmos we observe. The universe is consistent with such a Being, our existence and evolutionary history fit as well. Morality is a bit different than what we usually imagine. What the Artist sees as beauty we interpret as moral. People can still live differently as their history and geography dictate, customs will change and sometimes clash, but an underlying common existence will allow for a shared sense of being and importance.
Immoral acts, even when done in the name of the HTGG, are universally ugly, marring the artwork and a direct affront to the Artist. Such an evil line or splotch is sure to be layered away, left far from the surface when the work is completed. Only the beautiful will be visible. How one chooses to live one’s life determines one’s place in the eternal canvas; layered away and hidden forever, or part of the visible to join in an ongoing celebration.
My own prejudice is to envision the universe more like a thought than a machine, a conscious entity because we are conscious. It wouldn't take much faith to reach my Artist God, but I put no value in faith. (Nor am I convinced that "eternal life" is of much value either.) Indeed, trying to force a god onto a cosmos that shows no evidence of such is always a impediment to wisdom. Still, if a god belief is necessary there are worse ones out there than god as an Artist.
In addition to rejecting doctrines they can't swallow, each believer is faced with a holy book full of contradictions. Each ends up interpreting that book as fits her or his own society, personal history, and prejudices. In addition most such books were written thousands of years ago when even the most educated person knew less about the true nature of the cosmos than does the average kid in an eighth grade science class. (Not including those in Texas or Kansas.) The gods described in the holy books are severely mismatched to the universe we see; thus even more interpretations are required. There appear to be as many different gods as there are believers.
That strikes me as curious. If there is really a god out there why is it so impossible to get a clear view of It, Him, or Her? Most of my species insists that there is a god, what if they are correct? Assuming a god actually exists what should I look for? What would I expect to see in a universe created and overseen by a real, Honest To Goodness God? (HTGG) How would such a god be noticed and described; what should I believe, really?
My first assumption is a certain level of honesty or, at least, a disinterest in deception, on the part of a HTGG. Fact is, if the HTGG, being ancient and powerful and a lot smarter than us, has a desire to deceive, then we will all be deceived. Nothing we think we see, nothing we imagine, and nothing we experience can be trusted in the least. If the HTGG lacks this tiny bit of morality, then the cosmos is a nightmare experience where there is no hope of understanding. All alone this assumption of honesty puts some serious dents in the god beliefs floating around our little planet, forcing me to look elsewhere.
To be honest the HTGG ends up being constrained - unable to do (or be) some things if it does other things. Claiming to be god makes it even more so. I consider lying a serious affront, but in no way claim I have never told a lie. A HTGG however, would not be considered "honest" if it could be demonstrated that IT had ever lied about any thing, for any reason. One deliberate falsehood on the part of a being who claims perfect morality and the whole story falls apart.
A real HTGG could not (for example) create the universe just 10,000 years ago where every observation, every natural process from plate tectonics to the speed of light to the cosmic background radiation, points to a cosmos being 13+ billion years old. To do so would be to deliberately mislead anyone who was trying to understand the nature of existence. Christians who believe in a literal interpretation of the first books of their bible are, without recourse, worshiping a lying god. That they do so with such enthusiasm is curious, but the god is fundamentally flawed and needs no serious consideration.
This essential honesty makes it impossible that the HTGG has actually written any books as a revelation to mankind. Any such book would have to be internally consistent and true in every particular, parallel the universe we observe. Such a book could simply not contain any errors about any subject, never get its history wrong, never trip over its science. If it did the only claim it could make would be a collection of some person's thoughts about what god is like. Interesting, maybe even helpful, but no more holy than are these scribblings.
Integral to that honesty, a HTGG could not make mutually exclusive claims about It's own character. For example the HTGG could not claim to be an all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing deity with no recourse but to invoke a hell. (2300 years later, Epicurus still awaits an answer.) In the end, if the god is not honest it is a poor excuse for a god.
Honesty suggests that, if the HTGG is all powerful, then there is no Anti-G who is being allowed to deceive. I know this is a favorite of the Jewish/Christian/Muslim faith. But either the HTGG is omnipotent and therefore utterly immune from opposition, or the Anti-G roams the world. And if there is an almost-as-powerful-as-the-HTGG Anti-G who is free to deceive, we will, again, be deceived. Of course many religious folk claim exactly this. But they then make the claim that they are the exception, they alone are not deceived; without having any real explanation as to how they managed to pull that off. (And they still have the problem of not agreeing with each other.) In a universe rife with deception, accepting their claim of knowledge without a single fact that backs them up would be colossally foolish.
Thus this universe with an HTGG as its creator is fundamentally honest. What we see is what we get. The HTGG cannot contradict itself and cannot exist in contradiction to the cosmos.
The search for an Honest-To-Goodness-God gets kind of stuck right here. A look about the cosmos doesn't uncover anything that looks like a god. Nor does a look around our little planet. What we do see is a continuous evolution of natural processes. From here on all god-thoughts can be nothing but assumptions and guesses. Even if there be a HTGG, It can hold no grudge against those who sally no further in faith. This is, after all, how the cosmos presents itself to be...godless.
Could an honest god deliberately hide for some reason? It is hard to see how, but an honest god could be surprised, perhaps even delighted, by a cosmos that evolved in ways unexpected. That may leave an omniscient god out of the picture; but that appears to be the only option that fits into the cosmos. To get to some kind of god belief means looking for a different kind of god.
An engineer starts a project (say a bridge) knowing exactly what needs to be built. Each bit is designed for purpose, strength, and fit with all the other bits in mind. Tools are deployed to make the bits, and any surprise is a failure of design or execution. An artist, on the other hand, starts out not knowing the exact image that will ultimately appear on the canvas, it is a journey of discovery.
Could it be that the HTGG is an artist and not an engineer? That the cosmos is a canvas and not a bridge? If so the universe would appear exactly as it does, its history would be what we have learned, and we would fit into it exactly as we do. Creation is not a place we inhabit; it is a process of which we are a part.
I have the privilege of knowing a couple of artists. Sometimes, as they work the canvas, things appear that don’t seem fit, that have a tinge of ugly to them, things no one really wants to see. But they appear anyway and even the artist can’t explain why. What usually happens next is that the artist buries the offensive image into the painting. The image doesn’t just go away, it can’t. It has become a part of the work. But instead of projecting ugly that layer becomes the foundation for the next, and ugly is absorbed by subtlety and depth. It is a reach, but not much of one, to accept the ugly in our evolution as a parallel experience for the HTGG. Racism, tribal warfare, genocide, murder, torture, slavery; from our prospective such massive evil, such overwhelming ugly, appears irredeemable. But we can grant that the HTGG works a canvas beyond our vision, that what appears beyond redemption in this tiny corner of the canvas will be layered into the whole.
It could be that the HTGG is a duffer, that the canvas will be fit only for some attic somewhere. But I’m going to take our collective morality, even as it appears just slightly more moral than immoral, as a hint this is not so. As art reflects the artist I think we are safe to assume that consciousness and morality (nascent as it is in our very young species) could suggest that such has been infused into work by an Artist. This might be the one place where the cosmos hints at a god-like entity being involved…that an unconscious universe has evolved bits of consciousness.
With the HTGG envisioned as an Artist and not an Engineer, the cosmos as a work in progress, and life as an unexpected or unanticipated facet glowing out of the work, we at least have a god that does not contradict the cosmos we know. However, the real goal of every god belief seems to be to find a way for us to remain “alive” after we die. If the HTGG is going to make it as a “real” god-possibility of any interest, somehow, some kind of life-after-death has to fit the picture. Thus we are forced to assume that eternal life is inherently “good” and desirable, and a lack of same is inherently “not-good”. There is the problem of the 13.7 billion years of cosmic history that passed before any of us showed up. True we are a bit part of that history, but those passing eons had no real impact on our conscious selves. They passed without our realizing and left no trace in our memories. Is it really unlikely that the eons that unfold after we die will be different? Still, I think I can get there, (that is to eternal life).
The Artist and the Canvas are but an analogy, and not particularly nuanced. The cosmos is clearly more dimensional, more faceted, than a canvas. Compared to an artist, the HTGG would be equally more complex and dynamic. Imagine life, consciousness, and self-awareness emerging from the cosmos as layer upon billion year layer is brushed on; a glow imperceptible at first, lost in the flux of light washing through creation. It is an image parallel to what we know to be true. Matter and energy are two sides of the same coin, energy being nothing more (or less) than patterns in the light. Matter precipitated out of the light of the early universe. Organized by gravity, the matter (mostly hydrogen) coalesced into masses, compressed and ignited into stars. From those early stars was all of the complexity of a chemical universe bred. As those first stars expired the calcium, iron and carbon that forms the foundation of life’s chemistry flowed into new stars, solar systems, planets and biospheres; layers that built up even beyond the attributes of chemistry. We know our very minds to be layers, complexities mounded up on earlier complexities that form our brains. We know that conscious thoughts ride on the sub-conscious and that we are social creatures. Our “individualism” rides upon the structure of societies and civilizations. So deep and intricate are these layers that much of our decision making happens on a sub-conscious level; our conscious self being told only after the fact. Our self-awareness lies at the surface of the most subtle of interactions of light flowing through literally billions of years of layering.
Fragile as human life and each individual may be, it is not difficult to envision such as being interesting, even a delight, to the HTGG. Self-aware bits, the Canvas alive, looking at itself and wondering from whence it came? Why let such mastery pass away? Indeed, could the HTGG allow such to fade knowing that to do so would be considered immoral, even evil, by the bits themselves? It seems unlikely. If the cosmos is a canvas, and if life brings beauty to that work, then the HTGG might (Must?) preserve that beauty somehow.
So here we have a religion that allows for an Honest To Goodness God to actually insist in the cosmos we observe. The universe is consistent with such a Being, our existence and evolutionary history fit as well. Morality is a bit different than what we usually imagine. What the Artist sees as beauty we interpret as moral. People can still live differently as their history and geography dictate, customs will change and sometimes clash, but an underlying common existence will allow for a shared sense of being and importance.
Immoral acts, even when done in the name of the HTGG, are universally ugly, marring the artwork and a direct affront to the Artist. Such an evil line or splotch is sure to be layered away, left far from the surface when the work is completed. Only the beautiful will be visible. How one chooses to live one’s life determines one’s place in the eternal canvas; layered away and hidden forever, or part of the visible to join in an ongoing celebration.
My own prejudice is to envision the universe more like a thought than a machine, a conscious entity because we are conscious. It wouldn't take much faith to reach my Artist God, but I put no value in faith. (Nor am I convinced that "eternal life" is of much value either.) Indeed, trying to force a god onto a cosmos that shows no evidence of such is always a impediment to wisdom. Still, if a god belief is necessary there are worse ones out there than god as an Artist.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Election news
The election, still almost a year away, is the most talked about subject when it comes to "news". (Which is why taking the "news" in very small doses, spaced a couple of days apart, is probably a good idea.) There is some serious weirdness going on with the coverage of this upcoming debacle of democracy.
One is the breathlessness, the shear "little-girl-giddiness" that underlines the stories. One would think that the most important event that has ever happened in the history of the cosmos is about to unfold. Part and parcel of the giddiness is that the talkers clearly don't have much of a clue. There is only one real story that matters this election; Democrat, Republican, Independent, Third party, what ever. The only thing that the American people really need to know about any candidate this election is, where is the money coming from?
The Supreme Court of the United States has ensured that this election will be an orgy of graft, corruption, and influence peddling. Rivers of dirty money will ensure that the winner of the election will be bought and paid for. Who is buying any particular candidate is the most important, indeed the only, information that matters. In the (claimed) immortal words of Mr. Deep Throat - bane of the corrupted Nixon administration - "Follow the money."
And it needs to be detailed information. Some truth obscuring name for a political action committee is not enough. American Crossroads, America's Family First Action Fund, Club for Growth Action, but I couldn't find one named, "We buy ugly Politicians" though that might be closer to the truth. Who are the people behind the PAC, what is their agenda, how many will end up in the administration? Unfortunately it takes serious investigative journalism to uncover such details. The best we can do in America is talking heads.
One is the breathlessness, the shear "little-girl-giddiness" that underlines the stories. One would think that the most important event that has ever happened in the history of the cosmos is about to unfold. Part and parcel of the giddiness is that the talkers clearly don't have much of a clue. There is only one real story that matters this election; Democrat, Republican, Independent, Third party, what ever. The only thing that the American people really need to know about any candidate this election is, where is the money coming from?
The Supreme Court of the United States has ensured that this election will be an orgy of graft, corruption, and influence peddling. Rivers of dirty money will ensure that the winner of the election will be bought and paid for. Who is buying any particular candidate is the most important, indeed the only, information that matters. In the (claimed) immortal words of Mr. Deep Throat - bane of the corrupted Nixon administration - "Follow the money."
And it needs to be detailed information. Some truth obscuring name for a political action committee is not enough. American Crossroads, America's Family First Action Fund, Club for Growth Action, but I couldn't find one named, "We buy ugly Politicians" though that might be closer to the truth. Who are the people behind the PAC, what is their agenda, how many will end up in the administration? Unfortunately it takes serious investigative journalism to uncover such details. The best we can do in America is talking heads.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
An American worker
My wife got fired a few months ago. She has never been fired before and took it kind of hard. Actually, to put it bluntly, it pissed her off to the core. And rightly so. She got fired for the same reason most Americans get fired these days; her boss found someone younger and drastically less capable who would try to do her job for less money. Customers will suffer but the boss will keep a little more of what he regards as "his" money.
Like most Americans my wife worked for a for a small company where there is no union, in a country that long ago sold itself out to business. Employees have virtually no protection from employers, and (in my experience) small company owners/employers are the very worst. Every penny they chisel out of their suppliers, every nickel of pay / benefit / vacation day / sick day they can steal from their workers, every dime of quality they can cut from their product, is change that goes directly into their pocket. Even if they started out trying to build a better widget at a slightly more competitive price, eventually there is nothing left but pure greed and utter selfishness.
My work history is a bit more storied but reflects the same realities of working in America. I bailed out of job #1 just before the government/military contract that supported the work went away, and with it the loss of thousands of jobs. It was with a big company with many layers of management trained at Ivy League schools boasting of the letters after their names. The program went millions of dollars over budget but at least managed to be months and months behind schedule. The "workers" took the blame of course; never mind that we weren't provided with enough tools and equipment to make use of all the people thrown at the project. It was a good thing there were some extras around though, since more than a few got killed in the unsafe working conditions. As there were thousands of us in the factory the odds were good that any particular worker would live to find another job, and I did.
I left Job #2 when the company decided they could make more money off of me by moving me to a production line rather than keeping me at the job I was hired to do. It was also at a big company and all workers were just like the parts of the production line, moved around at whim.
Job #3 was my first with a small company. It went away when the owner looted most of the accounts and ran off with a girlfriend. I had to talk the Sheriff into taking the padlock off the hangar door long enough for me to roll my toolbox out to the van.
Job #4 was for another big company. After managing to aggravate my immediate supervisor, mostly by simply doing my job without needing much from him, I was once again “moved” to “new responsibilities.” That lasted until the newly appointed President of this international company happened to run across a grade 5 aircraft mechanic sitting on the wing of an airplane after finishing up with the list of airplanes to be washed that day. After a good deal of loud conversation, (with my supervisor, not me) I was moved back to the job I was being paid to do. I kind of enjoyed the fact that my supervisor had his ass chewed off by the President of the company, sort of on my behalf. But clearly that job was not going to be tenable for long.
Job #5 was a move closer to family and lasted for more than a decade. But the owner of the company was determined that he would dictate to the market, not the other way around. I locked the doors and turned out the lights on my way out. Job #6 was half way across the country.
I liked job #6 right up until they decided they were spending too much money on things like safety, equipment and training. For some reason they took offence at me pointing out that they were likely to get someone killed, and that I might be that someone. Threats of being fired ensued, but I bailed before, 1) getting fired and 2) getting killed. Just a few months after I left one of the people who did the threatening and who was, himself, not particularly well trained, died in a piece of poorly maintained equipment. He took two co-workers with him and the company folded.
Job #7 was ¼ of the way back across the country and for another small company. The owner resented every dime that flowed through his hands that didn’t end up in his bank account. It was a fun job in some respects, but being consistently treated as an expense he resented took its toll. As time passed the job changed from being a key part of a challenging enterprise to being a Boy Friday running errands. I still did the skilled work needed, after all I was the only one on the payroll who could. But The Boss was clearly getting tired of giving some of "his" money to me and was upset by the fact that I wasn't as impressed with him as he was with himself. Once again threats of getting fired ensued so I started looking for another place to be. When I left he hired someone cheaper with fewer skills, then someone even cheaper and less skilled after that. Eventually he faded away, though thankfully managed to do so without actually killing anyone.
I took Job #8 mostly because it seemed a good chance to get away from Job #7 and they sang me a good song about starting up a first class operation. Within weeks the song changed to one of how they were smarter, quicker, and better than everyone else who had ever been in the business. They were wrong. The carnage ended up including at least 2 dead, several others severely injured, and the dollar amount of equipment damaged too high for even a lunatic reported to be worth some $200,000,000 to ignore. Fortunately I missed the memo that said my job was to nod, say, “Yes Sir,” and stroke the boss with continuous praise as to just how smart he and his demented little band of children really were. They fired me just BEFORE the first body hit the ground, and I am forever grateful it worked out that way.
Job #9 was a good job running a department for a large University and being involved with educating truly extraordinary young people for a demanding career. But eventually the University had “other priorities.” After nearly 7 years of nothing but glowing job reviews, job #9 disappeared into the hole being dug for the foundation of a new Basketball Stadium. Fortunately the U. found places for the others in my department, but my job skills are a bit specialized. Out the door I went with a couple of weeks pay and not so much as a "thank you." (My already dim view of big name collegiate sports programs took a real nose-dive after that.)
Job #10 was a brutal schedule with minimum pay and a management team that never saw a union worker they thought worth the trouble. Still, I kind of liked it and intended to hang around for a while. The equipment was new, the people out on the line were mostly good folks, and the job could be a real challenge. But Job #11 was too good to pass up.
So far job #11 is working out pretty well. With any luck it will be the last one I have. If so the score will be:
Jobs left for my own reasons on my own time? #10
Jobs that went away? #1, #3, #5, #9
Jobs that changed into other jobs I didn’t want to do? #2, #7
Fired or bailing just before getting fired? #4, #6, #8
Jobs that came perilously close to getting me killed? #1, #3, #6, #7, #8. Now I admit my job is a bit more dangerous than most - usually listed in the top 5 of the most dangerous jobs in America and currently at number 3. But wouldn't you think that people involved in such a risky enterprise would be more careful, not less?
Jobs I look back on as "good" jobs? #5, #9, #11. It is no coincidence that at these jobs I report(ed) to people I regard as first class, expert individuals who treat(ed) me as fairly as they can or could.
So far as I can tell my experience isn't that unusual. Being exploited as a revenue source on one hand and despised as a financial liability on the other, while being sacrificed (rhetorically or factually) to the whims of those in charge, is pretty much what it means to be an American worker today. Not always and not everywhere, but 3 out of 11 is just about 27% of my jobs that were good verses bad.
With the unions neutered and the government long ago sold to the highest corporate bidder, an American worker had best be a nimble, unencumbered individual who can throw any job back at any employer and walk away. Kind of difficult with credit card debts, mortgages, and family to feed. Which is probably why the government and banks are so eager to push credit card debt and home ownership. It helps keep the work force immobile and compliant.
Like most Americans my wife worked for a for a small company where there is no union, in a country that long ago sold itself out to business. Employees have virtually no protection from employers, and (in my experience) small company owners/employers are the very worst. Every penny they chisel out of their suppliers, every nickel of pay / benefit / vacation day / sick day they can steal from their workers, every dime of quality they can cut from their product, is change that goes directly into their pocket. Even if they started out trying to build a better widget at a slightly more competitive price, eventually there is nothing left but pure greed and utter selfishness.
My work history is a bit more storied but reflects the same realities of working in America. I bailed out of job #1 just before the government/military contract that supported the work went away, and with it the loss of thousands of jobs. It was with a big company with many layers of management trained at Ivy League schools boasting of the letters after their names. The program went millions of dollars over budget but at least managed to be months and months behind schedule. The "workers" took the blame of course; never mind that we weren't provided with enough tools and equipment to make use of all the people thrown at the project. It was a good thing there were some extras around though, since more than a few got killed in the unsafe working conditions. As there were thousands of us in the factory the odds were good that any particular worker would live to find another job, and I did.
I left Job #2 when the company decided they could make more money off of me by moving me to a production line rather than keeping me at the job I was hired to do. It was also at a big company and all workers were just like the parts of the production line, moved around at whim.
Job #3 was my first with a small company. It went away when the owner looted most of the accounts and ran off with a girlfriend. I had to talk the Sheriff into taking the padlock off the hangar door long enough for me to roll my toolbox out to the van.
Job #4 was for another big company. After managing to aggravate my immediate supervisor, mostly by simply doing my job without needing much from him, I was once again “moved” to “new responsibilities.” That lasted until the newly appointed President of this international company happened to run across a grade 5 aircraft mechanic sitting on the wing of an airplane after finishing up with the list of airplanes to be washed that day. After a good deal of loud conversation, (with my supervisor, not me) I was moved back to the job I was being paid to do. I kind of enjoyed the fact that my supervisor had his ass chewed off by the President of the company, sort of on my behalf. But clearly that job was not going to be tenable for long.
Job #5 was a move closer to family and lasted for more than a decade. But the owner of the company was determined that he would dictate to the market, not the other way around. I locked the doors and turned out the lights on my way out. Job #6 was half way across the country.
I liked job #6 right up until they decided they were spending too much money on things like safety, equipment and training. For some reason they took offence at me pointing out that they were likely to get someone killed, and that I might be that someone. Threats of being fired ensued, but I bailed before, 1) getting fired and 2) getting killed. Just a few months after I left one of the people who did the threatening and who was, himself, not particularly well trained, died in a piece of poorly maintained equipment. He took two co-workers with him and the company folded.
Job #7 was ¼ of the way back across the country and for another small company. The owner resented every dime that flowed through his hands that didn’t end up in his bank account. It was a fun job in some respects, but being consistently treated as an expense he resented took its toll. As time passed the job changed from being a key part of a challenging enterprise to being a Boy Friday running errands. I still did the skilled work needed, after all I was the only one on the payroll who could. But The Boss was clearly getting tired of giving some of "his" money to me and was upset by the fact that I wasn't as impressed with him as he was with himself. Once again threats of getting fired ensued so I started looking for another place to be. When I left he hired someone cheaper with fewer skills, then someone even cheaper and less skilled after that. Eventually he faded away, though thankfully managed to do so without actually killing anyone.
I took Job #8 mostly because it seemed a good chance to get away from Job #7 and they sang me a good song about starting up a first class operation. Within weeks the song changed to one of how they were smarter, quicker, and better than everyone else who had ever been in the business. They were wrong. The carnage ended up including at least 2 dead, several others severely injured, and the dollar amount of equipment damaged too high for even a lunatic reported to be worth some $200,000,000 to ignore. Fortunately I missed the memo that said my job was to nod, say, “Yes Sir,” and stroke the boss with continuous praise as to just how smart he and his demented little band of children really were. They fired me just BEFORE the first body hit the ground, and I am forever grateful it worked out that way.
Job #9 was a good job running a department for a large University and being involved with educating truly extraordinary young people for a demanding career. But eventually the University had “other priorities.” After nearly 7 years of nothing but glowing job reviews, job #9 disappeared into the hole being dug for the foundation of a new Basketball Stadium. Fortunately the U. found places for the others in my department, but my job skills are a bit specialized. Out the door I went with a couple of weeks pay and not so much as a "thank you." (My already dim view of big name collegiate sports programs took a real nose-dive after that.)
Job #10 was a brutal schedule with minimum pay and a management team that never saw a union worker they thought worth the trouble. Still, I kind of liked it and intended to hang around for a while. The equipment was new, the people out on the line were mostly good folks, and the job could be a real challenge. But Job #11 was too good to pass up.
So far job #11 is working out pretty well. With any luck it will be the last one I have. If so the score will be:
Jobs left for my own reasons on my own time? #10
Jobs that went away? #1, #3, #5, #9
Jobs that changed into other jobs I didn’t want to do? #2, #7
Fired or bailing just before getting fired? #4, #6, #8
Jobs that came perilously close to getting me killed? #1, #3, #6, #7, #8. Now I admit my job is a bit more dangerous than most - usually listed in the top 5 of the most dangerous jobs in America and currently at number 3. But wouldn't you think that people involved in such a risky enterprise would be more careful, not less?
Jobs I look back on as "good" jobs? #5, #9, #11. It is no coincidence that at these jobs I report(ed) to people I regard as first class, expert individuals who treat(ed) me as fairly as they can or could.
So far as I can tell my experience isn't that unusual. Being exploited as a revenue source on one hand and despised as a financial liability on the other, while being sacrificed (rhetorically or factually) to the whims of those in charge, is pretty much what it means to be an American worker today. Not always and not everywhere, but 3 out of 11 is just about 27% of my jobs that were good verses bad.
With the unions neutered and the government long ago sold to the highest corporate bidder, an American worker had best be a nimble, unencumbered individual who can throw any job back at any employer and walk away. Kind of difficult with credit card debts, mortgages, and family to feed. Which is probably why the government and banks are so eager to push credit card debt and home ownership. It helps keep the work force immobile and compliant.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Cut the Government!
"Cut the Government!" That seems the current battle cry for everyone, along with the claim that doing so will "fix" everything. It sounds good, nice and clean, the kind of bumper sticker politics that passes as policy in our country. In addition it is something everyone seems to agree on; that excessive regulations are killing the country. I make my living in the aviation industry and will certainly admit that we suffer our share of "excessive regulations." I can't say that they have killed anything though. In fact it seems to me that, should the cost of complying with one regulation or the other actually increase the cost of doing business, that cost will be passed along to the customer just like every other cost. Anyway...
We flew into an Indianapolis airport the other night. It was a typical early winter flight, low visibilities all day, mist and fog, instrument approaches everywhere we went, and bumpy clouds all sporting a little ice. Working our way toward the final approach course Air Traffic Control (ATC) asked us to reduce to our slowest possible speed. It seems they had an emergency situation unfolding and someone needed to get on the ground ahead in a serious way. To make room we climbed up out of the worst of the ice and motored around for 15 minutes while the problem was resolved.
A small, single engine airplane had taken off from somewhere to somewhere, stumbled into the icing conditions, and was quickly overwhelmed by the deteriorating situation. The pilot in command kept his shit together, (no mean feat with ice encrusting your airplane on a dark and stormy night) and aborted to the same airport that was our destination. Declaring an emergency ensured that he got all of the help he needed. No harm, no foul, well done.
We landed a few minutes later, dropped off a passenger of our own, and went inside to order a little gas so we could make our last jump to home base. One of the endless, 24-hour a day news programs was playing inside the business aviation terminal, (as there always seems to be). The passengers from the emergency airplane were also inside waiting for a cab. The T.V. mentioned a speech made that day by Obama, where he outlined some program to try and stimulate job creation.
"Great," one of the passengers grumbled, "another government program when we need to cut the government."
I found myself a bit mystified by that statement. The ATC system in the US is a massive government program; some $1,865,000,0000 worth of it this year. It makes use of the combined efforts of tens of thousands of some of the world's top experts; controllers, inspections, engineers, pilots, maintenance inspectors, accident investigators, weather forecasters; an endless list. Before that airplane ever departed the government insured that the pilot was trained and current, the aircraft was properly designed and built, that there was an airport for it to depart from and another to arrive at, that the navigation satellites were in orbit and working properly, and that the instrument landing system (ILS) was calibrated properly to allow a pilot to find the end of a desperately needed runway on a dark and icy night. When the grumbler's pilot declared an emergency, literally millions of dollars of assets where put into play to get himself, his airplane and his passengers safely back on the ground.
I wonder which parts of that particular government program he would like to see cut?
People always seem to be for cutting the parts of the government that don't seem to be helping them at that particular moment; like I said, bumper sticker politics. Those on the right really should stop talking as if every single penny that the government spends is a wasted penny. There are a lot of wasted pennies for sure, but far less than half of the pennies that are spent; likely less than a quarter of the pennies spent; and possibly less than 10% of the pennies are wasted, (particularly if it is assumed that no military / security penny has ever been wasted - a budget which accounts for about half of all the pennies.)
Those on the left have to stop talking as if there is an endless supply of pennies that they can throw at every harebrained idea that comes down the pike.
The smart bet is that neither side is likely to fess up to the idiocy of its rhetoric. (Any more than the grumbling passenger mentioned above is ever likely to admit that a massive government bureaucracy saved his ass on pitch black night of ugly flying.) Since each party is bent on committing social suicide before admitting to uttering idiocy, it seems pretty clear that all of the pennies will soon dry up and nothing that makes for a first world society is going to get done.
Until something new rises in its place.
Which is something my grand kids will not see, and maybe not my great-grand kids. (Or yours.) But that's what happens when a whole society loses its mind and utters nothing but idiocy.
We flew into an Indianapolis airport the other night. It was a typical early winter flight, low visibilities all day, mist and fog, instrument approaches everywhere we went, and bumpy clouds all sporting a little ice. Working our way toward the final approach course Air Traffic Control (ATC) asked us to reduce to our slowest possible speed. It seems they had an emergency situation unfolding and someone needed to get on the ground ahead in a serious way. To make room we climbed up out of the worst of the ice and motored around for 15 minutes while the problem was resolved.
A small, single engine airplane had taken off from somewhere to somewhere, stumbled into the icing conditions, and was quickly overwhelmed by the deteriorating situation. The pilot in command kept his shit together, (no mean feat with ice encrusting your airplane on a dark and stormy night) and aborted to the same airport that was our destination. Declaring an emergency ensured that he got all of the help he needed. No harm, no foul, well done.
We landed a few minutes later, dropped off a passenger of our own, and went inside to order a little gas so we could make our last jump to home base. One of the endless, 24-hour a day news programs was playing inside the business aviation terminal, (as there always seems to be). The passengers from the emergency airplane were also inside waiting for a cab. The T.V. mentioned a speech made that day by Obama, where he outlined some program to try and stimulate job creation.
"Great," one of the passengers grumbled, "another government program when we need to cut the government."
I found myself a bit mystified by that statement. The ATC system in the US is a massive government program; some $1,865,000,0000 worth of it this year. It makes use of the combined efforts of tens of thousands of some of the world's top experts; controllers, inspections, engineers, pilots, maintenance inspectors, accident investigators, weather forecasters; an endless list. Before that airplane ever departed the government insured that the pilot was trained and current, the aircraft was properly designed and built, that there was an airport for it to depart from and another to arrive at, that the navigation satellites were in orbit and working properly, and that the instrument landing system (ILS) was calibrated properly to allow a pilot to find the end of a desperately needed runway on a dark and icy night. When the grumbler's pilot declared an emergency, literally millions of dollars of assets where put into play to get himself, his airplane and his passengers safely back on the ground.
I wonder which parts of that particular government program he would like to see cut?
People always seem to be for cutting the parts of the government that don't seem to be helping them at that particular moment; like I said, bumper sticker politics. Those on the right really should stop talking as if every single penny that the government spends is a wasted penny. There are a lot of wasted pennies for sure, but far less than half of the pennies that are spent; likely less than a quarter of the pennies spent; and possibly less than 10% of the pennies are wasted, (particularly if it is assumed that no military / security penny has ever been wasted - a budget which accounts for about half of all the pennies.)
Those on the left have to stop talking as if there is an endless supply of pennies that they can throw at every harebrained idea that comes down the pike.
The smart bet is that neither side is likely to fess up to the idiocy of its rhetoric. (Any more than the grumbling passenger mentioned above is ever likely to admit that a massive government bureaucracy saved his ass on pitch black night of ugly flying.) Since each party is bent on committing social suicide before admitting to uttering idiocy, it seems pretty clear that all of the pennies will soon dry up and nothing that makes for a first world society is going to get done.
Until something new rises in its place.
Which is something my grand kids will not see, and maybe not my great-grand kids. (Or yours.) But that's what happens when a whole society loses its mind and utters nothing but idiocy.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Muslim dictatorships
From what I can gather from the American propaganda machine the Arab spring is being hijacked by Muslim fundamentalists; which appears to have my fellow Americans all in a twitter. That seems a little odd to me. America's staunchest ally in the Arab world is Saudi Arabia, the definition of a Muslim fundamentalist state. Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi Arabian, as was the not so long gone and justly reviled Osama bin Laden. The suspicion still lingers that much of the financing for the 9/11 operation came from Saudi Arabian oil money. Iraq is now a fundamentalist Muslim state, as is Afghanistan, and Pakistan is certainly leaning that way. These are all ally nations. (Or maybe occupied nations, which is probably not the same thing.) Iran is, of course, a fundamentalist Muslim state that the US counts as an enemy; clearly being an Islamic fundamentalist dictatorship doesn't upset the American population a majority of the time.
Egypt seems to be the focus of this panic over Islamic fundamentalists taking over once secular Dictators are toppled and something resembling elections are held. We Americans seem very unhappy with free elections unless the elected happen to agree with us. At least we are fair in this regard; mostly feeling the same way about elections in our own country. The American media trashes Obama with complete abandon and without the slightest hesitation, forgetting (apparently) that he basically crushed McCain in a free election. (Elections in the US are of little value - but Americans are still free to choose between two equally ugly and unsavory candidates.) If Egyptians elect a Muslim fundamentalist government wouldn't that put them ahead of Saudi Arabia in the "democracy" department? Throwing off a dictator and electing people to represent a constituency sounds like something we Americans might boast of doing. We don't do it very well, gerrymandering our "constituencies" to make sure that a minority can outvote a majority; but we like to boast about it. Voting Egyptians would seem closer to the dream than non-voting Saudies.
I find it amusing (in a sad kind of, WTF? way) that those who howl the loudest at the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in place of once secular dictatorships are mostly the Christian fundamentalists of the American right wing. Apparently religious oppression of a free society is only acceptable when it is Christian or Jewish oppression of a free society. Islamic oppression of a free society being the worst, and secular oppression being okay so long as they will sell us oil or make our kid's toys and sneakers cheap. Somehow that is supposed to make sense? (Okay, I'll admit that it isn't just Christian fundamentalists who give a pass to tyrants who sell us oil and make cheap toys and sneakers. A lot of us secular Americans will give a pass to oppression so long as doing so helps our wallet.)
People who support democracy and personal liberty first, over and above religion, find it easy to criticize both secular and religious tyranny. I would hope that the people of Egypt, who found the courage to overthrow a secular dictator, can find a way to build a secular society that allows people to worship (or not) with a degree of personal freedom that seems beyond the grasp of most of the Arab world. If they can't then they will have failed to catch the flow of human history...at least for now.
But they are not the only peoples to so fail. Americans are failing in much the same way though, fortunately, on a much smaller scale. It would be impossible to argue that civil rights and individual liberty are on the march in America still; rather they are increasingly under assault and in retreat. Mostly they are trampled under the feet of American Christian fundamentalists and their political allies in both the Republican and Democratic parties, and hopefully we will not retreat too far before we remember what it means to claim the title of "The land of the free."
Islamic dictatorships are a blight on the world, new ones no less than old ones. Then again any dictatorship is a blight on the world, in any guise, in any place, on any scale. It can only be hoped that the current unrest growing across the planet is the result of more and more people demanding liberty in the face of any oppression, anywhere, at the hands of anyone.
Egypt seems to be the focus of this panic over Islamic fundamentalists taking over once secular Dictators are toppled and something resembling elections are held. We Americans seem very unhappy with free elections unless the elected happen to agree with us. At least we are fair in this regard; mostly feeling the same way about elections in our own country. The American media trashes Obama with complete abandon and without the slightest hesitation, forgetting (apparently) that he basically crushed McCain in a free election. (Elections in the US are of little value - but Americans are still free to choose between two equally ugly and unsavory candidates.) If Egyptians elect a Muslim fundamentalist government wouldn't that put them ahead of Saudi Arabia in the "democracy" department? Throwing off a dictator and electing people to represent a constituency sounds like something we Americans might boast of doing. We don't do it very well, gerrymandering our "constituencies" to make sure that a minority can outvote a majority; but we like to boast about it. Voting Egyptians would seem closer to the dream than non-voting Saudies.
I find it amusing (in a sad kind of, WTF? way) that those who howl the loudest at the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in place of once secular dictatorships are mostly the Christian fundamentalists of the American right wing. Apparently religious oppression of a free society is only acceptable when it is Christian or Jewish oppression of a free society. Islamic oppression of a free society being the worst, and secular oppression being okay so long as they will sell us oil or make our kid's toys and sneakers cheap. Somehow that is supposed to make sense? (Okay, I'll admit that it isn't just Christian fundamentalists who give a pass to tyrants who sell us oil and make cheap toys and sneakers. A lot of us secular Americans will give a pass to oppression so long as doing so helps our wallet.)
People who support democracy and personal liberty first, over and above religion, find it easy to criticize both secular and religious tyranny. I would hope that the people of Egypt, who found the courage to overthrow a secular dictator, can find a way to build a secular society that allows people to worship (or not) with a degree of personal freedom that seems beyond the grasp of most of the Arab world. If they can't then they will have failed to catch the flow of human history...at least for now.
But they are not the only peoples to so fail. Americans are failing in much the same way though, fortunately, on a much smaller scale. It would be impossible to argue that civil rights and individual liberty are on the march in America still; rather they are increasingly under assault and in retreat. Mostly they are trampled under the feet of American Christian fundamentalists and their political allies in both the Republican and Democratic parties, and hopefully we will not retreat too far before we remember what it means to claim the title of "The land of the free."
Islamic dictatorships are a blight on the world, new ones no less than old ones. Then again any dictatorship is a blight on the world, in any guise, in any place, on any scale. It can only be hoped that the current unrest growing across the planet is the result of more and more people demanding liberty in the face of any oppression, anywhere, at the hands of anyone.
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