Insert a Trite Metaphor about a Corral

Posted on May 14, 2004 in Roundup

UPDATE: Please note that Walter does not blame Abu Ghraib on gays and lesbians. This trait belongs to overzealous Catholic commentator Mark Shea. See politics for links.

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

-Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

Thank you, George W. Bush, for keeping us on the “numb-em-with-ghastly-images-until-they-don’t-move” track this week. Between Nick Berg and Abu Ghraib, what sanity could we enjoy?

The war in Iraq has become so horrible that I predict within a few weeks to a few months time, the accountability-for-everyone-but-us faction will be blaming the war on feminists, gays, lesbians, environmentalists, and Clinton’s penis*.

Politics

• Brian felt morally bound to watch the video:

  I know because I made myself sit and watch the video tonight. Not out of prurient interest, but because this act of terror demanded that we all must bear witness to it, to know first-hand what evils are being perpetrated.

• Andrew reminded us that the decapitation and the torture of Iraqi prisoners don’t deserve the same airing because “They’re different, remember? One shows death. The other shows abuse.” He then displays this cartoon which pokes fun at the jingoist’s excuse that we went in because we were “better than Saddam”.
  
• Victoria fumes about the uneven treatment being given to participants in the Abu Ghraib scandal:

  ….the blame goes all the way up the ranks. The soldiers who perform the torture are to blame, although I think they shoulder a small portion of it. They were ordered to do what they did. This obvious from the type of torture done. A “foot soldier”, left to his/her own discretion may beat a prisoner, but the fact that their methods were exactly those that would humiliate a Muslim man the most, I truly doubt they came up with these on their own. However, if I was given an order to torture a prisoner, I can’t imagine I would follow it. There is a time to stand up to authority and this was one of them. It was this blind following orders that led to a lot of Hitler’s atrocities and now it is leading to Bush’s atrocities.

• Mike thinks he sees the beginning of the end for Bush.
  
• Jody mocks those who think that Abu Ghraib (e.g. Mark Shea) was the result of the rise of gay and lesbian awareness:

  I just can’t stop picturing those late night secret meetings at the White House, all dark and shadowy, shafts of light spilling harsh grays across hard visages, with Rummy, Cheney, Powell and the Shrub, nattering on about sending legions to war to the glory of stained sheets, the SPICE network and cool, spunky ciggies wafting an ethereal trail of nicotine and menthol out a slightly cracked Double Hung 1500. Who knew Bush even had homosexual attractions…?

• Walter likewise rejects Shea’s insistance that all Americans must do penance for Abu Ghraib and the war:

  He starts out with a classic statist error, conflating ‘we’ with our government. Perhaps he’s just being lazy, and doesn’t really mean to say that each of us are to blame for what happened in Abu Ghraib. I can assure you that I’m not to blame. Shea can atone for it all he wants, but I haven’t even been a particularly enthusiastic supporter of the war, much less the torture of prisoners.

• Kynn questions whether there were only seven soldiers.
  
• Jeremy’s gone paranoid but who can blame him?:

  I stumbled across the video of Berg’s decapitation. Now I’ve gone completely off of the deep end over the absolute evil of the Black Iron Prison and those who currently rule it. I refuse to rule out even the most hideous possibilities. I can’t shake the Lovecraftian image of cloaked, faceless, tentacled beings from alternate dimensions feeding on the psychic energies released by this torture as they plot the further degredation of human society.

• Jeremy again:

  Let’s get one thing straight right now: the rhetoric of revolution cannot apply to the establishment.
  
  

  Kerry supporters who donate to Move On are not members of “The Resistance.”
  
  

  Keeping a diary on The Daily Kos does not give one a place on the roster of “The Popular Front.”
  
  

  Reading all the slightly-left-of-center blogs and magazines and planning to vote a Democratic ticket in November does not equate one, in any way, with Zapatistas, the IWW, the Founding Fathers or any other revolutionary association.

• Mileah drops a little battery acid where it is needed:
  

  Well our fearless Sec Def Rumsfeld is spending the day hanging out at our very own Abu Ghraib prison (I keep thinking of Vincent Price in any 1960’s horror film) and giving our troops a little pep talk.

• Allison posts a message from Bruce.
  
• Jack says “My God can Torture Your Idol”:

  Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, the deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, may have been involved in the recommendation to use questionable methods to soften up detainees for interrogation. Boykin became controversial for his statements that in the war on terror the United States is a “Christian nation” fighting Satan and for his considered opinion of the religious beliefs of a Muslim Somali warlord: “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.”

• Randy explains to an apologist for Pinochet that he is “bipartisan” in his contempt for dictators. As all of us should be.
  
• Rob is heartened by Zogby’s prediction that Kerry will win in the Fall because people want to return “honor and integrity” to the White House.

Culture

• Jenny considered the form versus the content of Contemporary Christian Music:
  

  Why must the rock and roll style of music be anti-establishment? If a pro-establishement song in the rock and roll style is boring, could it not just be the fault of the song writer, independent of the genre??

• AC veered into Canada for a visit to an archaeological site:

  The Native name for Head-Smashed-In buffalo jump. . .estipah sikini kots, translates loosely into “where he got his head smashed in,” and refers to the legend of a young Peigan Indian man who, approximately 150 years ago, wanted to watch the buffalo cascading, like the inside view of a waterfall, from within the cliff itself. He cached himself within a hollow inside the cliff, but the herd of buffalo driven over the buffalo jump that day was so large that the young man ended up being trapped inside the cliff by the suffocating tonnage of fallen buffalo. When his body was finally recovered, it was sorrowfully discovered that his skull had been crushed.

• Seraph investigated the divide between academic poetry and “the People”:

  [I]t’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, isn’t it…when you then only educate people to read poetry a certain way, to read a certain type of poetry, and then you write dozens of articles and posts and such about How Inaccessible Poetry Is, and How Academic It Is?

• Michael gave it the good go:

  I wanted to use and love Linux, really. It IS more powerful, it IS more secure, and the philosophy behind free software (as in beer and as in speech) is something I can really get behind. I thought maybe my problem was just with Debian, so I tried Mandrake. The installation was indeed prettier, and seemed much easier to follow. I still had to identify my graphics card and network card, however, and even after setting those up, neither worked as they should.

• MacDiva reviewed the Internet literature on beheading.
  
• Yule sees contemporary relevance in Goya’s The Disasters of War.

Religion

• Stephen supports his bishop’s stand of denying communion to politicians who are “pro-choice”. But what about the death penalty and torture, Stephen?
  
• doug sounds a little like Milton talking about “blind mouthes” in Lycidas:

  So many churches are following a pastor’s “vision” or a denominational “vision” or the “vision” of a local church powerbroker. They become beehives of activity, but cease being houses of prayer except in formal, ritualistic ways — and this has nothing to do with worship styles. I see hundreds of thousands of dollars and hours going into erecting church structures (and then maintaining them), into find-a-need-and-meet-it programs that disable rather than enable, and do nothing toward helping grow as a follower of Christ; doing nothing or precious little to connect in any meaningful, life-giving way with people beyond the immediate fold of the congregation.

• MM summarized her trip to Korea:

  i was beginning to think that i am totally missing the whole point of trip but realized this morning that nothing was lost on me after all. my observations of korea, her people, and her phenomenal recovery and rise to progress is inextricably connected with the reason we are here, which is to study her history, the christian church ( which now counts its member at 36% of population ) and its prayer life. i believe that the hands behind korea and where she is today must be two clasped in prayer, for these are truly a prayerful people. and through the years, the grounding of her deep and mature culture with able leadership that is mindful of lessons learned from the past have carried them over the dark moments in her history.

• Ellen sees something on the horizon:

  American cultural Christian practices become glaringly obvious when Bosnians try to adopt them part and parcel with “Christianity.” Because the cultures will clash inevitably, and the only questions then are, will it happen sooner rather than later? and who is going to get crushed in the conflict?

Personal

• Bittersweet remembered the loss of a love:

  The truth is, I took a long time to grow up. The ex was the equivalent, maybe, of a childhood sweetheart. My first real love. And I chose someone who was not so good for me, as it turns out. I chose someone who helped me learn some valuable lessons. And I loved her, but not in a way that was healthy, or adult. In a way, the way I loved her wasn’t particularly *real*.

• Tracy assesses her life:

  I have been running around like my ass was on fire. Work is awesome. Home life, equally awesome. The kid is rockin’. Physical health? I’m getting muscles! Love life? ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY AMAZING. Writing? *page comes to a screeching halt*

• Kimber makes me wonder what happened to America while Bush was in charge:

  I talked to our Autism Society Advocate on Friday. I love her! LOLOL She is currently in the middle of a court battle with the Falmouth School District because they won’t allow her Autistic son to play on the school playground. They seem to feel that the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) doesn’t apply to them.

• Irene wondered if loneliness was a good enough reason to marry.
  
• Jill proves that her mother is a witch.
  
• Kathryn discussed how to cook cicada.
  
• Kate got up early to work in her garden:

  There is something about plunging one’s hands deep into the rich darkness of potting soil, aromas exploding, the texture of the moist clumps clinging, the quiet of the neighborhood bathed in warm, sunny light, chirruping squirrels and songbirds for background noise, the solitude of creating flower beds and beautiful flower sculptures in containers, all factors encouraging meditation, introspection, and a renewed love for the home, for this beautiful state, for the miracle of summer below the Arctic Circle

• Mary Lou describes a pestilence of peacocks.

• Bill observed this accident in the making:

  This morning, I saw a woman flossing while driving. And she did not have a gadget allowing her to use one hand. She had both hands on the floss, mouth open, car moving.
  
  

  She’s lucky her phone wasn’t ringing.

• Robert suffered a particularly painful sort of dental torture.
  
• Rae had an epiphany:

  after the age of 25, everyone has back problems, knee problems, shoulder problems, kids, jobs, schedules, and all of that. When the circle of friends starts going to dr. appointments more than parties, it’s time to get movers.

• Andrea says that stability is overrated.
  
• Stu translated a story he wrote four years ago.
  
• Bea’s collision with a sheep failed to hurt her Toyota.

• Grey Bird thanks Bush for giving her a new reason why she’s glad to be gay.
  
• Michael shared an experience he had in a deli.

• Zhaf is under pressure.
  
• Sally wondered what you do when a homeless person yells at you.

Poetry

• Maria posted a work in process.
  
• Nancy: some nice vignettes from India.
  
• Daniel links to a poem of his published in Painted Bride.

Photos

• Theodore: a peek into the dressing room
  
• Natalie took some pictures of bloggers in a bar.
  
• Caterina: a wooden computer.
  
• Elkit: Sweet Hitchhiker.
  
• Coup de Vent: proves that the photoshop is mightier than the pen.
  
• Mizzy: face and tatts.
  
• Bobbi: flat affect.

Missing Bloggers

• Howard, a Bush apologist, threw in the towel. Can’t say that I blame him. It’s getting to be a tough job.

• A Clever Sheep (since April 28)
  
• A View from the Lake (since (April 18)
  
• Raven (since May 5)
  
• Francis (since April 27)
  
• Teresa (since April 5)
  
• Treesong (since April 15)

Recent Reading

• Fat Land : How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Crister

• Paris Spleen by Charles Baudelaire
  
• The Discovery of Poetry: A Field Guide to Reading and Writing Poems by Frances Mayes
  
• Selected Poems by Carl Sandburg
  
• In the Palm of Your Hand:The Poet’s Portable Workshop by Steve Kowit
  
• The Voice That Is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the Twentieth Century by Hayden Carruth (a well-read, dogeared copy)
  
• New Selected Poems by Phillip Levine
  
• Introduction to California Spring Wildflowers of the Foothills, Valleys, and Coast by Phillip A. Munz

Web Links

• Book Crossing
  
• California Reptiles and Amphibians
  
• Defenders of Wildlife
  
• Draft Registration – register your cat or parrot
  
• Top IRC Quotes
  
• The British Museum: The Silk Road
  
• The Squeeze is On
  
• Sunrise/Sunset Calendars – truly useful
  
• People miss a lot
  
• How Bush Chose Stupidity

I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.

–Kurt Vonnegut

*This joke is getting so old it hurts. I wish they’d change their act so that it didn’t fit them so well.