Category WTF

Not Much. But Something.

Dusty 1 Comment

I’ve led a pretty charmed life. Part of me wants to feel bad about that, because I know many people who have had a much rougher time than I have, and it’s not fair; but also, it’s not my fault. I don’t think I take advantage of my advantages and privileges too much — though that doubt tells me I do it to some extent. That’s okay; I’m not perfect and don’t have to be. But with the advantages I’ve had, growing up as a white male American, with middle-upper class parents, blessed with good health and so on, I’ve been able to do pretty much everything I’ve wanted to do, other than the wilder dreams like owning my own island or becoming a space pirate and whatnot. I went to college, graduated basically debt-free, immediately gained middle-class employment as a teacher, which I’ve kept for over twenty years now — and it turns out I’m good at it, too. I have a wonderful marriage and the family of pets and no children that I’ve always wanted. I’ve been able to write a handful of pretty good books, and there will be more to come.

So why do I need help?

Partly it’s that all the privilege in the world, and all the luck, too, doesn’t actually keep me safe from troubles. It certainly shields me from many difficulties that others have to deal with on top of the troubles that I have; but the fact that I have it easier doesn’t mean I have it easy. Stress doesn’t go away just because other people have more stress. Not even if you’re aware that other people have more stress. I suppose I could try to live with more gratitude, keep counting my blessings and focusing on the positive; but when I try that, the problems keep coming back up, no matter how much I turn my focus away from them. In fact, I think that the good luck and the privilege and the blessings I do have make it harder for me to realize that I need help. They certainly make it harder to recognize this fact. Not that I’m bemoaning the white man’s burden, oh isn’t it hard to not be a victim in a world full of victims; I don’t think that about other people nor about myself. But whenever I feel troubled, I tell myself something along the lines of “What the hell are you bitching about? Look at how hard other people have it! You have all the advantages, who are you to complain?!”

But even when that works (And it usually doesn’t, because there’s a certain amount of schadenfreude in the idea that I should feel better because other people are suffering more than me; and also, comparing your life to others’ lives isn’t a good idea no matter who has the better situation), it doesn’t make the problems go away any more than gratitude does. The stress and difficulty and anxiety and sadness are still there.

A lot of it is because of teaching. It’s a stressful job to begin with, which I’ve written about at length and don’t need to rehash here; but realize that the essential task of the job is too abstract to ever feel confident about, yet everyone involved expects tangible results; and that everyone’s life touches or is touched by education, which means EVERYONE has an opinion about it, and that it is genuinely very important; and that my personality is not at all suited to teaching, even though my skills and abilities are — and I think you can see why it’s often troubling for me. I care quite a lot about doing it well; it’s hard for me to do it well; it’s impossible to know if I’m doing it well; a lot of people are watching to make sure I’m doing it well; many people think I am not doing it well, and they let me know. That’s a lot to deal with.

Now add the pandemic.

So I have been suffering. That’s the truth. Not as much as some people, but enough for me to feel it, enough for me to lose sleep, and question everything I should feel confident about (and question everything else twice), and fall occasionally into pretty deep emotional holes. Enough for me to lose my temper too often, over things that should not bother me. Enough for me to lose hope, and to feel like there’s no chance for success or improvement in the future. I won’t say I’ve been depressed, or anxious, because I have had ample experience with other people going through those specific difficulties, and mine are not the same; but a semblance of it, a shadow of it — yes. And frankly, it has sucked.

And at the same time, I hate saying that, hate saying that I’ve been suffering, because it seems to make light of other people who have it worse. But ignoring what I feel would be making light of my feelings, and that’s not fair, either. To some extent I feel some of that “MEN DON’T CRY! BE STRONG!” kind of ethos, but not very hard; I’m not very manly, and never have been, and I don’t give a shit. But I do care about other people, usually more than myself. Because it’s easier to deal with their problems than mine, of course; but that’s another thing that has become clear to me in the last eighteen months, and which helped precipitate this blog: it’s not feeling that way any more. I don’t want to help other people more than myself. I want to help myself.

Without making light of what I’m dealing with, I know that I don’t need a lot. I don’t need medication; my emotional turmoil has never yet been overwhelming. It has never kept me from going forward, from doing what I need to do — though it has sometimes kept me from what I want to do, which is why I haven’t been writing enough in the last year-plus. I am not as sure that I don’t need therapy. I don’t think I do. I admit there is some comparing there, because I know people in therapy, and they have it worse than me, which does make me say to myself, “Come on, you’re not that bad off.” There’s also the fact that I was in therapy for six years when I was a child, and though the experience has faded with the years, I remember that it didn’t seem to help anything other than the psychiatrist’s income. So I don’t think I’m at that point. I want to talk to someone, but I’m too private for that, most of the time.

So here I am. Writing these vague, rambling puddles of thought-drool.

I think it’s helping. It’s hard for me to say; I’m not very good at reading my own emotions. Not sure if that’s another aspect of the “MEN DON’T CRY!” piece of my psyche, or if it is the result of trauma that is more serious than I think it is, or if I’m just emotionally pretty stupid. All possibilities, and I have no idea how I would distinguish between them — which is also how I feel about distinguishing sadness from worry from anger from depression from — I dunno. But like I said, things tend to become more clear for me when I can write about them, so I’m going to keep trying.

Because I need something. Not much. But something.

Starting Something

Dusty 2 Comments

I need something. I’m not sure what.

I need a lot of things, of course, which confuses the issue. I need more money, I need more time, I need more certainty. Definitely the last one, since I’m here hemming and hawing from the first line of this. Maybe that’s the thing I need most.

Okay: as a teacher and a writer, my usual habit (and, arguably, my job) is to take a position with certainty and then invite people to either agree with me or to knock me off it. So let me change gears here, and see if that makes this better.

I need to talk. Which, because I’m an introvert, means I need to write. I think that means I need an audience to read what I write, but thinking of you all doing that immediately makes me feel bad: I don’t want to waste your time reading my maudlin meanderings, especially not when I’m not actually suffering that badly, certainly not compared to other people. I haven’t lost my job, or my home, or any loved ones or friends. Well, no, I lost friends, but only because we stopped talking, not because they’ve died; surely that’s not as bad a loss. And it might have been my fault that I lost them, which means I don’t get to feel sad about it, right?

The point remains that I don’t have any great, soul-rending grief to get off my chest. Which I am grateful for. I also don’t have any particular insight into — well, anything, really; and I’m realizing, right now as I write this, that that’s the problem. I haven’t been writing blogs — or much of anything else — because I don’t have any answers. I have become acutely aware in the last year or so that I don’t have any answers, that I don’t know what’s best or what’s right, that I don’t know how to make things better. I’ve thought about writing posts on things that occur to me, but every time, I run up against this: I don’t know what the answer is, I don’t know which direction to point in. I’m like a signpost that’s been knocked down, and now I don’t know which road is which, or where to tell people to go.

But maybe that’s a better place to be, rather than thinking I know the answers. Being humbled is no fun: but there are lots of people who have recommended humility; maybe that’s what I’ve needed.

I don’t know. But I do know that I need to talk, to write. And while I have a journal, it doesn’t feel like enough; writing in it instantly feels like I’m keeping secrets, like I’m hiding things away. Partly because there are secret things that I need to hide away, mistakes and failings that I am not ready or not able to confess; I do write about those in my journal. But that doesn’t help, not at all. And I need help.

This probably sounds more desperate and despondent than I actually am (Though I realize I’ve said that a few times of late, so maybe I’m fooling myself and I actually am pretty despondent); I’ve seen real despair and desperate need, and I’m not at that point. But also, if we don’t look for the help we need before we get to that point, then eventually we all get there. I would rather not, so I’m going to try for the help I need now.

So I’m writing. And I feel bad about it, which is why I’m so apologetic and guilt-ridden. But I am actually confident that I need to do this, while I am deeply uncertain that this is a good thing for anyone else but me. Thus I am going to say this: you don’t need to read this. There are probably not great insights coming at the end. This is not my area of expertise, this whole self-care/therapeutic/wellness world, so I’m not going to be able to give advice, nor offer a catalog of options. I’m doing this for me, because I think I need to. Things make more sense to me when I write about them. Writing feels more honest and more important, more legitimate, maybe, when I write for an audience, even if it is only a theoretical one. So I’m going to write about what I’m feeling and what I’m dealing with. I expect that I will be fumbling around a lot, and sounding mostly like an idiot; I expect that these posts will be rambling and kinda pointless. So I want to warn you away from reading them.

But also, I am hoping that being open and honest about what I’m feeling and what I’m dealing with may be helpful. It’s not a special story; I’m just a regular person going through what I presume are pretty normal feelings. But because of that, it may be a more universal story. It may be easier to relate to. And that may help.

So that’s the reason I’m willing to share this on this blog. I need to, and I can envision an audience that would be glad to hear what I have to say. If that’s not you, that’s okay; I’m pretty used to not having much of an audience for my writing. It’s one of the things that confuses and frustrates me, and just makes it that much harder to move forward. Hopefully, this will help me get past some of that block.

Hopefully, this will make me feel better.

I need something that will.

I don’t know what this means.

Dusty 2 Comments

When I was six, I was walking through the woods on my grandparents’ property in Washington, and I stepped on a yellowjacket nest. I remember the sensation as my foot came down: pushing through the humus of dried leaves, a moment of resistance, and then I crunched through what I thought was solid ground, and fell lower than I thought I should have, on that foot. That’s when I heard the buzzing: z z z ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz It hit a fast crescendo and then lowered to a purposeful, ominous hum, as if I had prodded a sleeper who did not want to wake and who growled resistance at me.

Then the stings started. One, two, three, each more painful than the last, the infuriated insects stitched their revenge up my leg as I stood, frozen, suddenly unsure of the ground beneath me — was it more hollow still? Would I fall through again? — obeying my training that told me to stand still when bees landed on me because they didn’t want to sting me, after all.

But these weren’t bees: they were yellowjackets. And they wanted to sting me. Understandable, really, since I had just destroyed their house and maybe crushed some of their family members; but that didn’t make me feel good about the fiery needles jabbing into me.

Fortunately my mother was there, and having grown up on that place named for her family, she was familiar with the sound of angry bees and yellowjackets: and she realized this was not a good time to just stand still. She scooped me up and ran. Of course I realize now that she was running to get us both away from the yelllowjackets, but at the time, I was suddenly sure that she was running me back to the house because I was going to die: my father is allergic to bee stings, and even at that age, I knew the potential danger of those tiny packets of venom which I could feel throbbing in my shin — and maybe moving up through my bloodstream? Was this the end?

It was not. It was about to be my first encounter with witch hazel (a name that still feels mysterious and alchemical to me), the rapid soothing of the burning stings, a cookie or two to soothe my burning tears, and the disappointing reckoning of a mere six stings, none higher than my knee. Not enough damage for a good I-stepped-on-a-beehive story, though it’s a damn good indication of my mother’s reflexes and quick thinking.

 

That moment of stepping down onto, and then falling through the ground and into a sudden attack: that’s what 2020 feels like to me. The hollowness of the hive beneath me, incapable of holding me up, echoed in the middle of me as I realized what was going to happen, a hollowness that seemed to swell and expand even as it grew more empty and dark and cold, as if my fear were a black hole inside, swallowing more and more and growing larger with each terrified thought that fell into it: that’s what I feel like inside, right now, and for the last six months. It’s a much slower process, this time, lasting months instead of seconds; but I feel very much as though my reaction is identical: I am frozen, panicked, trying to figure out what to do and coming up with no good ideas, just standing and watching as the danger swirls up around me.

At the same time: I am not just the kid walking through the woods, this time. I’m the yelllowjackets. The hollowness inside me is the hive, and the shell around that emptiness is too weak, and can’t hold up the weight of the world that is stepping on me. And as everything going on around me crushes through me and into me, I lash out, angrily — maybe understandable, but really, useless  — and I sting, and I bite, and I attack. I have never been so short-tempered, so cranky, so bitter, so apt to strike, so apt to sting with my words and my tongue, as this year. I hate it. I can’t stop it. I can’t: I don’t have the strength. That’s what was hollowed out of me. And I can’t just set myself and bear up under the weight: because the hollowness is under my feet, too, and I am being stung even as I am stinging.

I don’t know what to do. I’m just standing here. I have been for what feels like forever.

And I’m so tired.

And this time, my mother can’t scoop me up and run me back to the house for the twin magics of herbal remedies and baked goods.

This time, I might just get stung to death.

 

Probably not. I’m aware that as high as the number of Covid-19 cases is, it’s still only a fraction of the population, and that while my state is not handling the pandemic well, I am taking reasonable precautions that should keep me safe; I will most likely come out of this with an unremarkable tally of suffering. I do not mind, this time. I would very much prefer a half-dozen stings, no permanent scars, no need for a doctor. Just some soothing liquid and a cookie or two.

But I’m not just standing still with my foot in the danger zone; I’m still walking forward through the woods. In fact, since school starts tomorrow and goes to in-person classes in four weeks, I may be stepping onto the hive, and then continuing on into it, like walking down into a hive the size of a subway tunnel, with yellowjackets the size of Shelob. (At the same time: those goddamn hobbits are coming into my home, fumbling and ripping through my webs, and they are goddamn well going to pay for it. Nasssty little hobbitses.)

What precautions do I take then, as I move deeper and deeper into this hive pit? My school is trying to stay on top of things, having offered fully online learning as an option, instituting new protocols — social distancing, mandatory* masks, sanitizing spray to be applied every two hours**, fever checks on arrival — intended to prevent the spread of the disease. I don’t know how well it’s all going to work, though; and I have no idea what to do about that. I can’t quit. If I raise too great a stink, they’ll fire me. I guess I just have to stand there. Maybe the small things hovering around me don’t want to sting me, this time.

*Mandatory here means just what it does everywhere: masks are required until someone raises a loud enough political objection, and/or presents a doctor’s note. Then, not. Hope the virus takes doctor’s notes, too. 

**Said sanitation to be applied by me, every two hours, in between classes. On a side note, the spray requires four minutes to take full effect. Time between classes is four minutes. Hope the virus will wait out in the hall.

The danger, though, is not what is haunting me. Perhaps it should be, but the thing that is building a growing ball of hollow darkness inside me, the thing that makes me feel as if my next step will land on an equally hollow surface that will drop me through and out of the world, while at the same time the weight on top of me punches through my thin outer layer and into the hollow within, is this:

I am tired.

The hollowness inside me is not just fear. It is exhaustion. I am so very, very tired. Tired from fighting, tired from standing watch, tired from holding up others as well as myself. I’m tired of watching the pandemic grow, and watching my country wallowing in ignorance and selfishness like a pig in shit — just as filthy and twice as proud of ourselves — as we deny science, and raise alarms for problems that aren’t real, pointing to imaginary dangers that somehow block out of our sight the very real danger of this virus. I am so tired of being angry about it. I am so tired of fighting with people who smugly ignore every fact and every reasonable thought because it doesn’t make them feel safe, or worse, it doesn’t make them feel strong and fearless. Saying they’re not afraid of Covid, that makes them feel strong and fearless.

It’s as if when my mother rushed to scoop me up out of the yellowjacket hive, I had pushed her down, spit on her (Because the people who think this way are some of the rudest, most inconsiderate, most contemptuous hooligans I’ve ever interacted with. And I teach high school.), and then stood with fists on hips, chin jutted, nostrils flaring, and said, “Don’t you tell me where I can stand, I’m an American. You run if you want to, you and all the other sheep!”

While the yellowjackets swarmed around me.

And of course it’s not only the virus. I am so very tired of racism. I am tired of being ashamed of what people who look like me have done to people who feel like me for centuries. I am tired of confronting the same angry, willful ignorance about the protests or about opposition to police violence. At the same time, I am tired of being treated like the people I look like by the people I feel like — and I am tired of knowing that I have no right to complain about any treatment I may suffer, because my world has been built to prop me up, and whatever I may have to go through pales in comparison to the ordeals of those who are less pale than I. I hate that people tell me I have no right to speak my opinion, to take a stand; that all I can do is get out of the way and let better people take what they have been denied for centuries, because people who look like me oppressed them, which has enabled me to become everything that I am — all of it tainted by centuries of crimes against humanity. Not my own gifts and efforts, but my privilege, I am told, is why I am who I am and can do what I can do: and that means I don’t deserve what I have, and using that privilege to try to help solve the problem earns me a sort of sly sneer from those who know that my actions on behalf of the cause are just white guilt, and really, I am still the enemy,still perpetuating the problem if I do anything other than get out of the way.

That’s how it feels. It’s maybe not true that people working for social justice think that way of me, but — that’s how it feels. Of course, maybe that’s just my white guilt talking. And my white privilege thinking that I should be the one to speak up and fight for the cause: because that means I am centering whiteness in a movement that is not intended for the benefit or the recognition of white people or white suffering. It’s so easy to fall into the same patterns that have existed unrecognized throughout my life; how can I tell what is genuine and what is instilled in me by institutions of oppression and privilege? Is everything about me broken and wrong because of the world I grew up in? Is there nothing that is me? No, I want to say; I am good, I am worthwhile, I want to help and I am capable of helping. It is not right that I get pushed aside and marginalized, stereotyped, included in sweeping generalizations, based only on my skin color, my nationality, my gender —

And how pathetic do I sound saying those words.

I’m so bloody tired of irony.

I want to help, is the problem. I don’t want to be like those ignorant yahoos I fight with. I don’t want to be selfish.

But so many people need so much help.

I can do a lot of it. I am happy to do a lot of it: happy to support my family, my friends, those who rely on me. They are struggling, too, because this year has not only been hard for the pandemic and the riots: it’s hard financially, and crippling politically, and my family has had a series of tribulations fall on us like Biblical plagues, one after another and each worse than the last, mostly medical and due to my parents’ generation reaching the stage of life where things go badly. And of course, I can’t do anything. I can’t go help them because I might infect them, and that would kill them — and that would kill me. I worry about them double, because I realize that, on top of everything else, the pizza delivery man might give them Covid-19, and then I wouldn’t be able to visit them in the hospital while they coughed their life away.

And I can’t talk about this, can’t complain about this: because everyone else has it harder than me. Everyone. It’s not just white privilege, not just male privilege; I am healthy, and have remained fully employed, at a job where I am respected and well-liked, and I am generally well-balanced emotionally. I’m not well-balanced this year, of course, but since I started off having an easier time than most, and we’ve all gone down together, I still have more of my head above water than others do who were half-drowning before 2020. So I have no right at all to complain, and if I open my mouth to do it, the response I get back (the response I should get back) is something along the lines of, “Yes, I know, I’m going through that too — and a dozen things that are worse.”

Part of me can’t stand myself, right now, for complaining that I have it too easy in life to complain. And normally, the fact that I do have it easier than most would keep me from complaining because it would keep me from suffering. And even when I do suffer, I don’t have such troubles that I need to vent, need to talk them out. Normally I don’t need much support.

But this year is not normal.

I need to vent. It helps, you see, even if you don’t see how it could possibly help, even if you don’t know why it helps, talking about your feelings helps. I need that help. I need to say how I feel, even if how I feel is gauche or insufficiently woke. (“See that? That’s white sensitivity right there. He needs to grow a thicker skin, learn to deal with being told what he’s doing wrong. It’s just that he’s never been criticized much before, not in this society built for people like him.” Yes. I know it. But this is still how I feel.) Because people need my support, and so long as I am this tired, and feel these hollows under my ribs and under my feet, I can’t give them what they need.

This is what I need: I need to talk. I need to write. I haven’t wanted to do it, not for months now, for all the reasons I’ve been talking about here. There is too much, and I need to figure out what the hell I’m really feeling; I hate to ramble and blunder and sound like I don’t know what the hell I’m getting at. But one of the difficult Catch-22s of being a writer is that writing is exactly how I figure out what I’m feeling; I usually don’t know what I’m getting at when I start writing, I just get there when I get there, and I have a pretty good idea of when to stop. I have no doubt that this blog is irritating and confusing for people who read it. I expect you, too, are short-tempered, unable and unwilling to put out a whole lot of effort helping someone else deal with their shit when you’re sitting there with both hands full of your own.

I’m sure you’re tired too.

It feels strange to write this, because it makes me feel better, and so maybe I want to share that; but I don’t want to be a bother, don’t want to be a burden.

Which is also how everyone else feels, too.

So I’m just going to say it. If what I’m saying is wrong, please feel free to correct me; but first, I need to say it. Actually, I take that back: if you have something you want to say about something I’m doing wrong, put a pin in it. We’ll circle back around to it later. For now, I just need to talk about how I feel. And I won’t ask people to listen to me, because I know you’re all struggling, too — but it would mean a lot if you did.

We all need help. We all need support. We need to ask for it for ourselves. Just asking makes us feel better: because it validates how we feel. Being willing to ask for help, from those whom you are willing to give help to, shows that you consider yourself as important as they are, as worth helping as they are. It shows them that they are not a burden on you, that they can help even as they ask for help for themselves. And everyone feels better when they can help.

I need help. I’m standing on unsteady ground, in a country that is tearing itself apart, and I’m about to go back to work where I will be surrounded (Virtually, for the most part, but still) by students — who all desperately need all the help they can get.

That’s what made me actually open this post and start writing. That’s really what I’m afraid of. I’m afraid of the virus, afraid of what’s going to happen in thousands of schools across the country to hundreds of thousands of teachers and millions of students; but what scares me right now is the knowledge that those students will come to me, and they will need me. They will need me to listen to them, to understand them, to take them seriously, to help them. They are bottomless abysses of need, just like I was at their age, as we all are in that terrible time of adolescence. They will need me even more now, because their world is on fire, too.

I don’t know how much I will have to give them.

I’m so very tired.

I’m just standing here: hoping I don’t get stung.

Can someone please pick me up and run me away from the swarm?

Or if not that — can I have some witch hazel and maybe a cookie or two?

Thanks.

Full Offense Meant.

Dusty Leave a comment

(Warning: this blog is upsettingly, egregiously offensive. I got very exercised by what happened here, particularly because it concerns my wife. The language here is not safe for work, and not appropriate for innocent eyes. But I will not lighten up.)

My wife had a thought.

“I would like to put out a thought that I had today.
Our economy as a country, as a world is going to suffer from this pandemic. Hopefully the government will come through on some kind of relief for business but we all know that most of us small businesses will not be offered the same kind of relief, if any, that the larger companies will get so I propose this: let’s start a movement of sorts.
Let’s as a country, hopefully as a world, make a pact to buy gifts only from small businesses this year, birthdays Christmas, anniversaries, weddings, etc. Buy in person from a local small business or online from one farther away. Let’s not forget the entrepreneurs who create everyday without the safety net of a regular paycheck in this time of crisis.

We’re all in this together.

Thank you.”

It’s a good thought. There are pretty clearly two stages to this whole crisis: the first stage, the one we are in now, is when we focus on mitigating the pandemic, limiting the spread of the disease, flattening the curve. Here is where we sacrifice for the greater good: we stay home, we distance ourselves from one another and limit contact with other humans. We do what we can.

We lose our jobs. We can’t pay our bills, and we have to borrow money or beg for help. We might lose our homes, and our businesses.

All of us are at risk. (Of course the very wealthy are not at risk as they are never at risk; I don’t include them in “us.”) All of us are feeling some of the same fears, and the same pressures: we feel the need to do something, anything; but we also know that the best thing we can do is  — nothing. Stay home. Stay away.

It’s terrible. I want to go to school, if you can believe that. I actually want to teach. I want to talk to my students, reassure them that everything will be fine. I’m good at that; they like and respect me, and they listen to me, at least partly because I listen to them, and partly because I am honest with them. And that is the honest truth: everything will be fine. In the grand scheme of things, that is, because of course some people will suffer mightily as a direct result of this disease, some people will lose their lives, others will lose their loves. But that is inevitable, and even in the face of the greatest loss, everything will, so much as it can, be fine. I feel comfortable saying that, and I wish I could say it to my students. I wish I could give them some normalcy.

There’s an old regret of mine: I was teaching on 9/11, in 2001. It was my second year as a teacher, only a few weeks in; the students barely knew me, most of them, but they already generally liked me and trusted me. The planes had already hit both towers and the Pentagon by the time I got to school, 7:15 California time; I was watching in the office, open-mouthed, as the first tower collapsed. The next four classes I spent watching news updates on the classroom TV, talking to students, telling them what we knew (not much) and reassuring them as much as I could (even less). They kept asking me if we were going to be sent home, if the district would close schools; the news kept showing other school districts doing just that, and I was waiting for the same thing, without any answer as to why they didn’t; I had no idea what the district was expecting us to do, other than watch news updates and talk about what little we knew.

My last class, though, as soon as they came in, they asked me if we could turn off the TV, and not talk about what had happened; I said, “No problem,” and turned it off. “”What do you want to talk about?” I asked. The same student, speaking for the class, said, “Can we just do English?”

So I taught English. I taught Antigone, Sophocles’s third play in the Oedipus cycle, about family and death and respect and the law. It was awkward and terrible, and I hated it. I hated that I did that: it felt disrespectful to those who had died, and those who were dying, right then, the first responders in New York who were being buried in rubble and dying in fires.

But now I’m realizing that teaching Antigone was the best thing I could have done. I showed at least one class of students that things could still be, if not normal, at least nodding towards normal. It didn’t change the situation, but it did show them that the situation would change: that no tragedy, no crisis, howsoever devastating and all-encompassing, could last forever or take over every  part of their lives.

I wish I could do that now, for my students first, but also for everyone else.

But I can’t. I can’t fix this problem, and I can’t make it seem less than it is: because here I am at home, instead of at work, and instead of talking to my classes, I’m writing this blog. And the worst part about this is that we don’t know how long it will go on– and we don’t know how much it will help. I hope we all know by now that we’re doing the right thing, but we don’t have any idea how much of a difference it will make. Especially for those who are harming themselves through staying at home — losing income, losing business, suffering the emotional effects of the crisis and of the quarantine — not knowing how much good it’s doing and not knowing how long it will last is absolutely devastating. Because we can’t do the usual calculation necessary with altruism: how much good can I do with this sacrifice, and how much will it cost me? We just don’t know. Because the disease is new and unknown, and also because our government is still scrambling to figure out its response, we just don’t know.

And that’s just the first stage of the crisis.

The second stage is the aftermath.

There’s some indication that things may be improving: China, after instituting serious quarantine measures, has reported no new cases in the last 24 hours. (Yeah, yeah, I know — if we believe them. And they should not have covered up the beginnings of the epidemic. But if you for one second think that our government, that any government, wouldn’t have done precisely the same thing for precisely the same reason, you weren’t paying attention when our government did precisely the same thing for precisely the same reason. Or that other time our government did precisely the same thing for precisely the same reason. Or that other time our government — you get the point.) People are, in fact, making this sacrifice for the greater good (Most of us. For the people who are ignoring the greater good because they still want to get drunk for Spring Break, or because they don’t want to miss out on the father-daughter dance, and especially this douchebag, may I tip my hat with a hearty Fuck You.) despite the pain and uncertainty I’ve been talking about. And though this hurts, and though the benefits are uncertain, it is absolutely true that as a group, we are making a difference, we are doing the right thing. We are saving lives.

But what happens once that ends? Once the disease slows down or stops (It’ll never go away, I know, but it will hopefully join the ranks of SARS and MERS once this pandemic spread stops and we have successful treatments and reliable tests and, especially, a vaccine), and people can go out again — then what?

Our president says that the economy will come roaring back, and be quickly stronger than ever; but our president is a lying fucking idiot, so that prediction can safely be ignored. The truth is that some people may still be generating income, and will have built up plenty of money and be desperate to consume; but for the most part, people are going to be either more cautious, or broke. Many of us will be looking for jobs, and will have accrued pretty serious debt while having been out of work. And since many of those jobs existed because of the demand created by the booming economy and the low unemployment and the high consumer spending that resulted, it’s going to be slow to recover — and the federal government having completely shot their wad in emergency measures to stanch the bleeding during this quarantine (It was the right thing to do and I’m glad they did it, but still) will be unable to do much of anything to make it better after we all get to go out again.

Which is where we come back to my wife’s good idea. Because as she says, the small businesses, the ones without large cash reserves or the potential to create savings by cutting costs without closing the company down entirely, are the ones that will suffer most during this. They are the businesses that will be slowest to recover because their profit margins are smaller. And they are the ones that are most critical, because somewhere around 50% of Americans work for small businesses. Even more difficult in terms of survival through the quarantine and then recovery afterward, 16 million Americans are self-employed, and self-employed workers and those working for them account for 30% of the workforce. At the same time, of course, the rest of us (mostly) will not have a lot of money or a whole lot of confidence about spending everything we’ve got in supporting small businesses once we get to the second stage of this, the long, difficult economic recovery period.

So this is why this is a great idea. Not “SPEND EVERYTHING YOU HAVE AT SMALL BUSINESSES!” Not, “GIVE ALL OF YOUR MONEY TO SELF-EMPLOYED ARTISANS!” Just — gifts. Occasional, special purchases, when you generally want to get something more unique, better made, more thoughtful and meaningful. When you might be willing to spend a little more money to show you care. Not every time, not every gift, of course not; but when you are looking to spend a little bit more, be conscious of where you spend it: make an effort — not “FEEL A MORAL OBLIGATION” — to give something nice to two people, both the person receiving the gift, the small business or individual creator who would love to sell you the gift. Do what we can, when we can; not the primary focus, not our personal responsibility — just a little more thoughtfulness, that’s all. And not, of course, right now (Though honestly, if you are one of those people who has some extra money right now, even though most of us are not in that situation, if you could send a little of that extra  money an artist’s way, help them pay their bills and eat while they are giving up the markets and sales opportunities currently cut off by quarantine, that would be wonderful), but mainly going forward, once we are into the second stage of the crisis.

Which is why it pisses me off so much that someone out there  felt the need to send my wife this message on Facebook:

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This was actually the middling-worst of the three negative responses she got: one dude that I know commented, on my post sharing my wife’s thought, that he saw no reason to spend more money at small businesses when he can get everything cheaper at Walmart. Okay, sure, fine; that’s your choice, even if I don’t agree, but I’m not sure why you need to share that, so I just pointed out that gifts often cost a little more and we are willing to spend a little more, but if individuals are happy with the cheap shit they get at Walmart, go off, king. And there was another guy who was much more accusatory and insulting to my wife in a separate message, calling her selfish for asking that people spend money at small businesses instead of large businesses that employ more people and (in his view) do more for the economy.

To both of those anonymous commenters accusing my wife of being selfish, I have this to say:

(Warning: this is going to get profane. And considering how much I swear casually, please take that warning seriously.)

Fuck you. FUCK you. Fuck you for being as stupid as a shit-stuffed carcass of a dead fucking tapeworm, and fuck you for being so fucking callous and devoid of human feeling that you somehow fucking think that an artist asking for people to buy art is fucking selfish. Fucking what? Motherfucking selfish, to advertise one’s craft? Even apart from the effort — no, fucking wait, I will not put that aside: you shit-stupid fuckbrain, do you have any fucking concept of how hard it is to make art, how much of a person’s (That’s a human fucking being I’m speaking of, not the syphilitic wart on a baboon’s dick, like you) soul has to be put just into generating the work? How much time and effort and confidence an actual fucking artist needs to put in to make actual fucking art? Not only in the crafting of a single piece, but in the years, the DECADES, the MOTHERFUCKING LIFETIMES that go into the training of the mind and eye and hand and heart, the sensitivity and altered perception required to conceive of art  in this bleak, heartless world — made even more bleak and heartless by diarrheal hemmorhoids like you, you fucking twat — and then the discipline needed to turn that concept into an actual piece of craft? Of course you don’t: your skull is too full of that bullshit you’ve been lapping out of your own ass. But even though you couldn’t ever understand what it takes to be an artist, you dick-shitting fuckbucket, maybe, considering how appallingly, grotesquely self-centered and insensitive you are, you could potentially grasp how vital it is in a capitalist, individualistic society, for everyone to promote their work, their company, their source of income? Did you somehow miss that advertising and public relations are the heart of our society, in every single aspect? Are you so fucking blind (Must be the fucking syphilis — or else the shit in your head is leaking out of your eyesockets) that you didn’t see that literally the only way the free market could ever function is if people are aware of the products for sale? That our entire goddamn society, our way of life, is reliant on people holding up signs that say “BUY THIS HERE?”

And then, because this is a free society, a free market economy, allowing people — people, not you, you pus-blooded vomit-eating whoremonkey — to make their own free choice of what to buy and what not to buy?

Apparently you also missed that this was a GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING POST ON FUCKING FACEBOOK AND IF YOU DON’T FUCKING LIKE IT YOU FUCKING KEEP FUCKING SCROLLING, YOU GANGRENOUS YAK-SCROTUM!Dory

Just fucking move on. You can fucking smile when you do it, too.

Kermit

If the fucking message doesn’t speak to you, how fucking manically arrogant do you have to be to think that you need to respond to it? Fucking walk, you fucking mook.

Thinker

I expect you not to think, but that you would take extra time and effort to hurt someone who clearly wasn’t speaking to you, clearly wasn’t someone you care about or agree with — who the fuck are you?

Noharmdone

I mean it. Fuck off. The bunny hates you too.

Deniro

 

Because not only am I an artist who will defend other artists, I am a human being who understands the need to both support our fellow human beings and also the vital necessity of allowing other humans to be humans themselves, to allow them to put forward their ideas, their opinions, and their art, AND their business, without being criticized for simply speaking out — especially when they, like my wife

*DEEP BREATH*

ARE NOT EVEN FUCKING ADVERTISING THEIR OWN FUCKING ART BUT ARE JUST BRINGING UP A THOUGHT THAT PEOPLE SHOULD CONSIDER AS A WAY TO SUPPORT AN INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT PART OF OUR ECONOMY AND OUR CULTURE IN ADDITION TO JUST BEING PEOPLE, SMALL BUSINESSES AND INDIVIDUAL CREATORS ARE FUCKING PEOPLE AND IF YOU’RE TRYING TO BE KIND TO PEOPLE YOU SHOULD FUCKING BE KIND TO THEM, AND MY WIFE, WHO IS THE BEST AND MOST KIND-HEARTED PERSON I KNOW, WAS JUST TRYING TO SUPPORT OTHER PEOPLE DIDN’T EVEN MENTION HER OWN ART EVEN THOUGH SHE IS A BRILLIANT ARTIST AND SHE IS SUFFERING IN THIS QUARANTINE JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE BUT SHE DIDN’T FUCKING MENTION THAT DID SHE, NO, SHE DIDN’T EVEN DO WHAT I WOULD HAVE DONE AND THROWN IN A LITTLE “LIKE MY ART, MAYBE” SOMEWHERE IN THAT REQUEST, THERE’S LITERALLY NOTHING HERE THAT COULD EVEN BE CONSTRUED AS FUCKING SELFISH BUT THEN YOU HAVE TO COME ALONG AND SHIT ALL OVER IT AND HER AND FUUUUUUUUUCCCKKKKKK YYOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.

 

So. Like my wife said. We are all in this together. I want to thank everyone who is sacrificing for the sake of others’ health and survival, and express my sympathy and my support for people who are being hurt by that sacrifice. I will do whatever I can to help you, both now and in the second stage of this crisis — and even after that.

But if you are the kind of person who would say this shit to my wife, get the fuck off of my world.

THIS BULLSHIT

Dusty Leave a comment

Okay. Look. I wasn’t expecting that much. I knew it was small  — five feet in diameter. I knew it was trendy, and therefore I didn’t expect much.

BUT THIS IS SOME BULLSHIT.

My burrito blanket arrived today.

That’s the first thing, actually. Because I ordered it from California Burrito Blanket six freaking weeks ago, on April 12.

2019-05-28 16.42.23

$29.95 felt steep. But my wife, Toni, lives for burritos. She survived college by making her own burritos. She taught me how to make burritos, and we eat them once a week at least. She also loves blankets, and being wrapped up and cozy.

And for the last month or so of her time as a teacher, which just ended last week, I had been giving her little presents. Nothing serious, just little prizes every morning when I woke her up, because she hates getting up and she hated going to work, and having me give her a little toy or a stuffed  animal or something made it a little easier. Mostly it was things I bought at Wal-Mart or Target or some such — Walgreens’ post-Easter sale was a gold mine. So I wanted one thing that would be a big final prize, to give her on her last day. And that’s when this thing went viral, and then showed up in my feed on Facebook. So I clicked on the link, and I bought it.

Here’s what I ordered:

Can you see there where it says “100% microfiber?” Right: I figured it was one of those sort of velour lap blankets you can buy anywhere. It looked fun. I thought Toni would love it.

It arrived today. (A full week after I meant to give it to her —  but that wasn’t the problem.) Here’s what was in the mail.

 

Huh, I thought. Kinda — thin. Not very big across, either; about the size of a DVD case. Very light. So I opened it up, and there, encased in more plastic, was my wife’s final Thank You For Teaching gift.

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The picture doesn’t do it justice, for two reasons: one, it does not look like a tortilla, it looks like a bloody sheet that was laid on top of a murder victim, or maybe a close-up of melanoma: it’s vaguely beige, and the “scorch marks” are far more red than brown. Here’s my attempt to show it as a shroud, with myself as murder victim — and also, this is why you cannot take pictures on the floor when you have dogs. (Also note I had to take the above picture while my wife held Roxie back, because she wanted to stand right in the middle of it and wag her tail. Adorable. And I’m trying to be mad here.)

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Also, I think this one captures the other problems with this “blanket:” one, you see that sheen? That’s because it isn’t microfiber, it’s freaking polyester; and IT’S ONE-SIDED!

Here’s the reverse:

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And two, the biggest problem of all: THIS THING IS THINNER THAN A GODDAMN KLEENEX!

Here’s me holding it. YOU CAN READ MY UCSC T-SHIRT THROUGH THE GODDAMN BLANKET!

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IT’S LIKE FUCKING PLASTIC WRAP!! See that dark mark over “slug?” That’s one of the bloodstains — I mean scorch marks.

What’s that, you say? That’s just the white side, which is clearly not meant to be on top? Surely it isn’t transparent from the burrito side? AU CONTRAIRE, MOTHERFUCKER:

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I’ve seen emergency camping blankets, those things that are essentially tinfoil, that are more comfortable than this plastic rag.

This is no blanket. It’s not even a burrito: it’s a stained tablecloth. Here, look:

 

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It even makes Roxie sad. See her sad face?

 

So, ladies and gentlemen, please: DO NOT PURCHASE THE BURRITO BLANKET. Especially not from California Burrito Blanket. My assumption is that when it went viral, as there was probably no way to copyright a blanket that looks like a tortilla, a thousand other companies jumped on board, including the company I bought it from, and they produced the cheapest pieces of shit I’ve ever seen. And of course, Facebook was more than happy to push their shit on my timeline. I have no doubt that there are far higher quality blankets out there, but obviously there is no way to tell in advance which one you are mail ordering. At some point these things will be in actual stores, and you can pick it up and feel the quality yourself before you buy it. Like I should have done.

Fucking internet.

This Morning

Dusty Leave a comment

This morning I’m thinking about crime and punishment. Sin and redemption, maybe.

Our school got vandalized this past weekend. The new mural, which my wife’s art students have been working on for months, was severely damaged: they spraypainted racist and sexist words, large phalluses, and extremely stupid pro-drug comments all over it. We don’t know who did it, but whoever it was clearly targeted the mural specifically, as nothing else was damaged (A couple of small tags in the parking lot are the only other marks left behind).

I have no idea why someone would do that. You’re pissed off? Sure, that’s fine; do something about it, confront people, post on the internet that you’re mad, write a letter, hell, stand outside with a sign and say “YOU SUCK!” There are a thousand ways to express your anger, most of them very satisfying. What the hell do you get from something like this? Is it funny to be cruel to innocent people? My presumption is that the anger of those who did it was directed either at the school or at humanity and the world in general; so why go after the artwork being created by people you don’t hate? And if you do hate them, why go after that?

If we do catch who did it — and it was reported to the police as a hate crime, as indeed it was — then their punishment probably won’t be enough, because it probably won’t fix the problem: someone who thinks this is the way to go about expressing your anger is only going to continue targeting the wrong victims in the wrong ways. I don’t know how you fix that.

I know how you fix the mural, though. I know because the students and staff at the school did that yesterday, as soon as the vandalism was discovered. The people who had been leading the mural project were seniors, so they weren’t at the school as they graduated this weekend; two of them did come by, intending to work on the mural, which was unfinished; when they saw what had been done to it, it crushed them. It was the rest of the school, out of affection for those young artists — and for my wife, who was helping out with the mural mainly in an advisory role, though she did also put several difficult hours of work into it — who took it upon themselves to try to clean off the spraypaint, and then to re-paint the original design so as to cover up what could not be removed.

It’s not fixed. It’s not finished; there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. The alumni who were leading it are not sure yet if they want to try to finish the piece, because clearly, it is vulnerable and it is a target, and there’s very little stopping the vandals from coming back and doing it all again. If our artists decided to take the risk, and put whatever spirit they have left into finishing this mural, only to have it defaced a second time? It would be devastating.

That would be a hate crime. That would be vandalism, in the sense of meaningless destruction. And there wouldn’t be enough punishment for people who would do that.

This is NSFW. And Trump is a POS.

Dusty 3 Comments

So I wrote a blog, 2000 words, about how I’m unhappy with the way things are going because some things are going well, and I don’t want Trump to get credit for that because he isn’t the reason things are going well, but if we give him credit, we may end up with more people like him doing the things he’s done, because they’ll point at Trump as a success story. And I do think that’s a problem.

But you know what? That’s not what I want to say right now. That’s not the blog I want to post.

What I want to say right now is

Fuck Trump.

 

Fuck him all the way out the door and down the steps, fuck him rolling down the street and around the corner, fuck him all the way to the sewage treatment plant: then fuck Trump into the collection tanks, and fuck him step by step through the process, with the rest of the chunky liquified shit until he has been treated, emulsified, centrifuged, disinfected, milled, filtered, diluted, and sprayed onto his own fucking golf course to make the greens grow. And then let a blind man tee off over and over until he has turned the entire green, watered with Liquid Trump, into broken divots. Then mulch those, feed them to free-range farm pigs, let them turn the grass into chunky liquid pig-shit: and then run him through the process all over again. Keep doing that until there aren’t any more Trump golf courses. If at any point we feel there isn’t enough Trump-taint in the gray water, then throw in his fucking kids. (The grown ones; I got no problem with Barron. Or Tiffany.)

I’ve tried so hard. I’ve realized in the past couple of years that my loyalty to liberal, progressive politics, and especially to the Democratic Party, has been unthinking and in some cases counter to my actual desires and values. Not a lot; I still agree with most liberal progressive ideas. But I think political correctness is a blight on the language and the culture; and honestly, while I love animals, passing laws and regulations to limit human progress or achievement in order to save a rare form of tadpole that lives in one stream in Wyoming is stupid – the world will not be a lesser place if the Greater Wyoming red-speckled spiral-tailed hovering-footed tadpole goes extinct. Mainly, though, there’s one thing – and only one thing – that Trump was right about: Washington is a swamp. Both parties are corrupt, incompetent, filled with narcissistic sociopaths who serve themselves and their cronies and not the American people. I’m not too far away from saying that all of our government should go into the sewage with the President.

I am still trying to decide where I should land politically. I want to remain an idealist, which would throw me all the way to the left; but I also want to be practical and realistic, and that pushes me towards the center. Choosing either one seems like a betrayal of the other: and that’s a result of our political morass, as well, that there are purity tests, that people on the same side turn on each other in a heartbeat if they can find a tender place to sink their claws. We saw it with Sanders supporters versus the DNC and the Clinton campaign, and we’ve seen it for years with the Tea Party and how it has destroyed what used to be the Republican party, resulting in – President Shit-spray. Part of me wants everyone to agree, so we can all move in one direction; but I realize – and this is my big epiphany of the last couple of years of learning how to think more about my politics – that when everyone agrees, it doesn’t lead to good results. We get the best ideas, the best policies, the best country out of a constant and honest debate. The worst thing that our two political parties have done is surrender that ideal in favor of winning. That’s why we have legal partisan gerrymandering, inculcated for decades by both sides; that’s why we haven’t gotten rid of Citizens United, or passed campaign finance reform or term limits or strict controls on lobbyists and corporate influence of politicians. They all stopped trying to do a good job, and focused on just keeping the job. I know that’s always been a factor, but it seems to have become the only factor. One of my biggest surprises of the last two years of the Feces Administration was the sudden onrush of respect for Jeff freaking Flake, a cardboard cutout of a Republican who nonetheless resigned rather than suck up to Trump. (I suspect that he is going to continue on in politics, using his resignation from the Senate as a stepping stone for his next ambition; but he hasn’t done so yet, so as of now, I still respect the man for his decision. Integrity over politics. When was the last time that happened?)

So how do I reconcile that? Practically speaking, the way forward is with a party; because I am not a piece of shit, that means I have to support the Democratic party.

I’m sorry for those that offends. I have actually gained quite a lot of respect for the GOP and the conservative ideals they have historically espoused; the attraction of the moderate political position for me is it allows for that honest debate I mentioned which leads to the best possible outcome, that pull between two poles, both with merit, but both improved by being pulled towards the other – liberal ideas are better with a strong inner structure of conservative reality, and conservative ideas are better with a leavening of liberal idealism. The Republican party has served that role, and for a long time, and in a lot of ways, it has done so honorably, and therefore made our country better. But right now, and for the immediately foreseeable future, the Republican party is the party of Trump. Which means it’s the party of shit. You can’t hold up a 300-pound piece of shit and not get your hands dirty, you just can’t. And I don’t even care if he’s having a positive effect, if the economy grows and North Korea disarms and all that jazz: shit makes flowers grow, which is lovely: but it’s still shit. The best thing I can say about the current state of the union is that I hope it makes the land fertile again. Actually, the metaphor might hold true, because confronting the truth of Trump has made us all look much more closely at our political situation, and it is possible that we will get some genuinely good results after this shit-storm has passed. But now is not the future, and now, Trump is shit, and that means the Republicans are shit, because they back Trump. Period.

Where was I? Oh, right. So, if I want to get results, I have to support Democrats. I mean, sure, I could try to become an anarchist, or a pure Socialist, or something along those lines; there’s an attraction in that, in the purity of the ideas. But in reality, there’s no chance of changing the political situation in any way without one of the two major parties. Ignoring reality means people get hurt. I don’t want to hurt people: it’s kind of my main thing. (Note: I recognize the seeming irony of my rant about grinding our President into gray water while saying I don’t want people to get hurt, but you see, shit isn’t people. I don’t mind if shit gets hurt. [Second note: I’m kidding. I don’t want any harm to come to Mr. Trump. I want him out of office and living in the disgrace that he deserves. I’d like him to live like that for a long, long time.]) I want practical solutions to our immediate problems, all of them chosen and thought out with a positive ideal in constant sight; for that, I need to be involved in actual practical politics with real people in this country. A perfect example of this is Bernie Sanders: who was a Socialist, and then an Independent (Which he only got away with because he represented Vermont, even though he’s from New York), and then ran for the Democratic party nomination for President. That’s an idealist working with practical reality, and that’s why he would have had my vote if I could have voted for him. Another perfect example of someone who creates practical solutions while keeping an ideal firmly in mind is Elizabeth Warren, who I would vote for over any other potential candidate in 2020 with the possible exception of Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. On the other hand, the Democratic party is also the party of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and they, from what I have seen, either  stick to the ideals, but give very little in the way of practical solutions – this is how Schumer has handled Trump, and it’s honorable, but it’s not slowing down the spray of shit – or else they surrender the ideals for the sake of practicality, as happened with the ACA when they removed the public option, which was the whole freaking point of the thing, the loss of which has made it useless, and, eventually, a political liability.

Sorry if that got muddy: it’s hard to stay clear when talking about politics. My point is that the idealism is necessary: purely practical compromise ends up losing its way and accomplishing nothing of lasting value; at the same time, practicality is necessary, because pure idealism doesn’t accomplish anything in the first place. Everyone already has their own ideals, and they’re mostly not mine. It’s too hard to get everyone to agree with the same ideals – impossible, in truth, unless you go full Big Brother and set up the Thought Police. This is what upsets me about the struggles within the Democratic/progressive wing, that we are all fighting each other over our ideas, refusing to accept or support people who don’t have all – and I mean ALL – of the right ideas. The fact that the big criticism of Bernie Sanders during the primary campaign was that he didn’t have a lot of support from minorities shows two things: the important one is that the Democratic party has given up its ideals, which means it has ceased to do good work for minorities in this country, which has left them smothered under the shit this country has piled atop them for centuries (Though fortunately, they seem to have found their own power and are clawing their own way out of the shit of history) and therefore Sanders could not simply pull in minority support by virtue of running as a Democrat; the entirely unimportant one is that Bernie Sanders is a white guy from a white state, and therefore has not had a lot of connection with, or influence on, the situation facing minority Americans. And if that made anyone refuse to vote for Sanders, then it helped give rise to the Shitpile-in-Chief; and that is a travesty. (I’m not saying that Democratic infighting led to Trump’s election, just that any vote that was lost because of the infighting is a specific, individual travesty. People that don’t support the Democrats at all, who are Greens or Libertarians or Socialists and so voted according to their conscience, that isn’t a travesty. But it may not have been practical.) A travesty that happened because people hung too much on the power of their ideals, and ignored practicality; ideally, a President should have a strong connection with all of their constituents; practically speaking, Bernie Sanders was the best candidate in 2016.

So here I am. I can support my ideals, and allow the shit to continue polluting this wonderful country; or I can support a party that keeps electing poor leaders: and I do think, in retrospect, that Clinton would have been one of those bad leaders. She’s not a piece of shit, and so would have been a VAST improvement; but I think she has very little personal connection to the ideals of progressivism. She’s too practical to be really great. I still wish she had won. Man, wouldn’t it be nice if all we were dealing with was a president who wasn’t progressive enough?

But all right, here we are with the shit. And no matter who you are or what your ideals, accept this as gospel truth: Trump is shit. The way he attacks everyone he disagrees with, the way he lies about everything, the way every single issue becomes a reflection only and always of him personally – the man is a piece of shit vaguely in the shape of a human. The most recent outrage is the separation of families at the border – intentional and callous and unforgivably cruel, and we all know it – and his attempt to defend it by holding an Exploit-a-thon, where he paraded out the family members of people murdered by immigrants, like that changes the statistics (which clearly show that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes despite some terrible exceptions), like that has anything to do with the family separation policy, like that’s anything other than cheap, heartless sensationalism intended to stir up racist fears in Middle America.

He signed the pictures. Did you see that? He signed the blown-up photos of the goddamn murder victims. Look.

And look, another Trump signature.

Clear as day: Trump's signature.

[Source]

Think what your brain has to be like to let you make that conscious decision to do that. Repeatedly, because he seems to have signed all of them, and at no point did he think, “Jesus, what am I doing? Who the fuck would want my autograph on the picture of their dead loved one? Is this really a memento they want? Will they want to remember this hoopla at all?” No, I’ll tell you what he thought: he thought, “These people want to use their grief to win political points, just like I do; I should thank them for letting me use them. Then they can frame this picture and tell their friends how they volunteered to become ghouls for the sake of bolstering up a racist piece of shit.”

So that’s where we are, and the cold, hard truth is this: it isn’t over. Trump is still President. And he’s just going to get worse. And I think the Republicans are going to keep supporting him, because too many of the heartless conservative bastards in charge, the ones who have no connection to the ideals they claim to serve but think only of practicality – the counterparts to Pelosi and Schumer and Clinton and Reid, namely McConnell and Ryan and Lindsey Graham, and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, and the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson and the rest of them – are willing to use Trump as their dancing monkey to distract us all while they pull the country all the way over to their side, strap us all to their pole, and whip us with a leather crop made from the tanned hide of Ayn Rand. (That is to say: break the federal government, give all of the money to the rich and let the poor die – unless they’re in the military. No, wait; they still die, then.) And the closer we get to that pole, to that extreme end of the spectrum where there is nothing but a red so deep it looks black, the faster Trump will have to dance and the louder he’ll have to scream and the more shit he’ll have to fling to draw our attention away from the straps being tied around us and the crack of the Rand-whip. I think that his final act will be a terribly protracted fight over his impeachment, which will probably finish breaking the political system – it will be a miracle, by the way, if the last pieces of the filibuster rule make it through this administration; and it is truly worth noting that the first attacks on the filibuster rule came from the Democrats – and which may end in Trump’s removal from office, but will also end with the final slate of conservative goals being checked off, one by one.

Not only do I want to get rid of the piece of shit, but I also want to stop the heartless money-zombies from fucking everything up that Trump doesn’t shit on. And therefore, I will be supporting the Democratic party, and voting for Democratic candidates, even if they choose the wrong ones. I hope they choose the right ones – but whoever they are, they won’t be pieces of shit, and therefore they get my vote.

Join me in voting against shit this November, and in every election until the final collapse of Trump.

And then after we finally manage that, we’ll have a lot of work to do. And a lot of thinking, as well. We have work to do now, but it doesn’t take any thought. Shit is bad. Let’s flush it away, and wash our hands.

Please.

Children in Cages

Dusty Leave a comment

People arrested for allegedly trying to enter the US illegally wait in cages inside a warehouse in McAllen, Texas. Picture: AP

People arrested for allegedly trying to enter the US illegally wait in cages inside a warehouse in McAllen, Texas. Picture: AP

 

CUSTOMS AND BORDER PATROL VIA REUTERS

 

Did you know we’re keeping children in cages?

 

I actually wrote a different blog yesterday, about how I fear that Trump’s success – or at least the positive things that are happening around him, even if they’re not because of him, like the unemployment rate going down – will encourage a cultural shift towards bullying. But I can’t post that one until I write and post this. Because this is the first thing that needs to be discussed. In fact, we should start every conversation with this until the answer can genuinely be, “No, we’re not; they stopped that.” Walk into Starbucks, and the barrista should say, “Hi, there are children in cages, but can I take your order?” And you should say, “Unnecessary family separation as a deterrent policy is a crime against humanity, and I’ll have a latte.”

So. Because of the attack on the media from Trump and the right (And because the corporate media has been sliding down into the muck for a generation at least), let’s establish facts.

First fact: when you type “children” into the Google search box, the first option is “Children in cages.” This is America. Childish Gambino released that video a month early.

Second fact: is this actually happening? Yes.

Federal officials said Tuesday that since May, they have separated 2,342 children from their families, rendering them unaccompanied minors in the government’s care.

(Source)

 

Third fact: are these children being kept in cages? Here’s a good explanation of the semantic argument.  If I may, the answer is: Yes. They are detention facilities, they do provide for the basic needs of the children, with the exception of the most obvious one: their parents aren’t there. But the essential point is: the children are held in enclosures made of chain-link fencing on concrete floors, and they are not allowed out of those enclosures. They are not able to see or communicate with their parents unless they can wend their way through an enormous bureaucracy.

Fourth fact: The children separated from their parents include infants and toddlers. Being kept in “Tender age shelters.”

 

 

Fifth fact: this is not, despite the administration’s stance, required by law, nor is it the fault of the Democrats. Unless we stop believing in free will. The administration has claimed – I heard White House spokesman Hogan Gidley reference all three of these elements during an interview with NPR – that the separation of families and the detention of children is the result of three things: the Flores Agreement from 1997, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, and the 2016 decision by the 9th Circuit Court which included accompanied minors in the previous laws regarding unaccompanied minors.

Here’s a good article from PolitiFact about this argument

If I may quote Inigo Montoya: “Lemme ‘splain. No, is too much: lemme sum up.”

The Flores Settlement agreement (Which settled a class-action lawsuit actually going back to the Reagan Administration) says that aliens in the custody of INS (now ICE) who are unaccompanied minors must be held in the “least restrictive setting” possible. Specifically, it says,

“The INS shall place each detained minor in the least restrictive setting appropriate to the minor’s age and special needs, provided that such setting is consistent with its interests to ensure the minor’s timely appearance before the INS and the immigration courts and to protect the minor’s well-being and that of others.”

Source

This means, to the Trump administration, that children can’t be jailed, and if their parents have to be, then the children must be separated from the jailed parents. I’ve seen various sources say that the settlement requires unaccompanied minors be released within 20 days, but I can’t find that passage in the agreement. If you’d like to try, look here.

The 2008 law applies because it says:

Except in the case of exceptional circumstances, any department or agency of the Federal Government that has an unaccompanied alien child in custody shall transfer the custody of such child to the Secretary of Health and Human Services not later than 72 hours after determining that such child is an unaccompanied alien child.

Source

This means that, once the children are separated from their parents (and therefore, according to the Trump administration, they are unaccompanied minors), they cannot be held by either INS, if the parents are being held pending an immigration hearing, nor by the U.S. Marshals, who hold the parents if they are being accused of a federal crime – which, under this administration, they are; that’s the “Zero Tolerance” policy that Jeff Sessions announced in April. Sessions’s memo to the state attorneys general is here,  and the law that he cites, the law against unlawful entry, is here.

Please note that the maximum penalty for a first offense is six months in jail, which makes this crime a misdemeanor. Most adult immigrants, once they reach a hearing, are released with time served.

Finally, the 2016 decision from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals broadened the Flores Settlement to include accompanied minors, meaning that they, too, had to be held in the least restrictive setting available, and, as with the 1997 settlement, the government had to prioritize release of children in custody to family members over any other solution; the decision says that this was also the case with minors detained with their parents, though it does also make clear that this does not require the government to release the parents in order to provide a custodial parent for the children. It does require, as the Flores Settlement did, that parents be released with their children if they are not a legal or flight risk. 

Text of the Decision

 

So what does all this mean? It means that the Trump administration is arguing that they must uphold the law, and they must do something drastic to reduce the crisis of immigration across the southern U.S. border. They claim that those who cross the border have committed a crime, and therefore they must be prosecuted. If those people brought their minor children with them in the commission of this crime, those children have to be separated from their parents as they cannot be held in a prison with their parents, but must be remanded to the custody of Health and Human Services, as per the Flores Settlement, the 2016 decision by the 9th Circuit, and the 2008 Wilberforce Reauthorization Act. HHS then places those kids into tents and warehouses, wherever they have facilities that meet the standard of the Flores Settlement (Which says that they have to have the basic needs, and also opportunities for exercise, entertainment, education, and contact with their parents. Well.). This, they say, is all required by law, and at various times, various members of the administration from President Trump on down have all claimed that this is the fault of the Democrats: first they claimed that Democrats passed the laws (They didn’t), then they claimed that this has been going on since either the Obama administration or the Clinton administration (Neither is true; both administrations detained unaccompanied minors in similar settings, but neither intentionally separated accompanied minors from their parents and then treated them as unaccompanied minors. Generally they released families. It should also be noted that there were not nearly as many families trying to immigrate with their minor children in the past. Source), and then they claimed that the Democrats could end this any time by passing legislation to change the laws or the policies – their preference, apparently, is for the alteration of the Flores Settlement, so that they can detain children, accompanied and unaccompanied, for as long as necessary. This is also untrue in that the Republicans control all branches of government; it is true that they need Democrat votes to pass a law through the Senate, but the first obstruction to any legislation is and has been the President, who just will not say what he is willing to support; the two bills currently being debated in the House, one more conservative without a path to citizenship for the DACA recipients, one more moderate (but still Republican/conservative) with a path to citizenship (along with limiting legal immigration and funding the Trump border wall) have BOTH got his support, whatever the hell that means.

But please, in this era of lies and exaggeration and political spin, let’s just get down to brass tacks. This policy of family separation is. Fucking. WRONG. It is vile and appalling and inhumane and cruel and everything that this country is not supposed to be. Regardless of whether the parents of those children have committed crimes (and in the case of asylum seekers, some of whom have also reportedly been separated from their children because the asylum seekers stay in the custody of ICE while awaiting their hearings and the children have to be remanded to HHS according to Wilberforce, literally no crime has been committed, as seeking asylum is legal.), the children have not, and the children have rights. They have the right to be with their parents, and they have the right to not be jailed. That doesn’t imply that you put them into chainlink-partition-spaces in tents in Texas; it implies that you find a way to ensure that the parents can be released from custody without violating the laws you are trying to enforce.

Now let’s talk about that. Because there really is an obvious solution here, even though it is one that Trump finds untenable because it makes his base froth at the mouth: he calls it “Catch and Release.” This is the policy that previous administrations have used with most families (Not, as Obama’s Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said, in cases where there might be some doubt as to the child’s familial relationship to the adult; thereby rebutting current DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s argument that children must be separated in all cases because the families have no documentary evidence of familial relationship and therefore ICE has to assume the adults are human traffickers) and with many other immigrants seeking asylum or going through legal processes. You set up a court date, and then you release the people on their own recognizance, with the understanding that they will show up for their court date.

Here’s the thing. This is how our system works. Our Constitution requires the provision of bail that is not excessive, and that everyone receive a fair and speedy trial, and that anyone accused of any crime is innocent until proven guilty. Unlawful entry is a misdemeanor. The maximum fine is $250. Reasonable bail for that crime would be, what, maybe $100? Public intoxication, also a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of 6 months (Varies by state – I’m using Indiana because it came up first on Google) and a fine of a whopping $1000, has a bail around $200-$500, according to the Bail Bonds Network. So I would think that bail for the parents should be something that most of them should have access to, especially if they have friends or family in the U.S. Once bail has been granted, then the question is whether or not the accused will show up for court; President Trump, of course, argues that they won’t, that the illegal immigrants are intending exactly this: showing up with their kids so that if they get caught, they will be released and then they will vanish into the Heart of Darkness inside the U.S. and never be seen again until they get arrested for rape or murder.

But here’s the thing. Immigrants show up. They don’t miss their court dates.

Moreover, studies show that asylum seekers—like many of the thousands of Central American families fleeing violence and arriving to the U.S.—are likely to appear for proceedings, because they have such a strong incentive to avoid returning to persecution. Indeed, as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) researchers found in 2013, asylum seekers have a natural “inclination towards law-abidingness,” and view making a refugee claim as “a manifestation of faith in legal process.” U.S. research bears this out. A Vera Institute study, from 1997 to 2000, of asylum seekers in expedited removal proceedings found to have credible fear, found that 93 percent with intensive supervision complied with all court proceedings; 84 percent complied with minimal supervision; and 78 percent complied even if simply released without supervision. These compliance rates were so high that Vera concluded that “[a]sylum seekers do not need to be detained to appear…. They also do not seem to need intensive supervision.”

Source

And if that rate doesn’t appeal, there are certainly ways to improve it. Immigrants with legal representation, for instance, attend hearings at an even higher rate. Solutions like allowing immigrants to check in via phone call or smartphone location apps create higher response rates. Even ankle bracelets (like the two that Paul Manafort has to wear ) would allow a tough-on-crime sort of stance, while allowing families to stay together, and reducing the burden on government resources to house all of these people.

In other words: there are alternatives. Even if you accept the claim that the administration is enforcing immigration law, it has to be pointed out that there are also 11 million illegal immigrants currently residing in the U.S., who are not currently being rounded up, separated from their children, and housed in federal lockup. So apparently the Trump administration is actually choosing and prioritizing which laws it enforces to what extent. Which is, indeed, the whole goddamn point of an executive branch. And this executive is choosing to prosecute people accused of first time illegal entry – a misdemeanor with a lesser penalty than some states impose for jaywalking – and therefore choosing, as a matter of intentional, proactive, object-oriented policy, to separate families and put children in cages. This is our government, and our country. It is us, unless we do something about it.

It is fucking wrong. It has to stop. It has to be the first thing we say, and the first thing we act on, in our current opposition to the abuses of our government. And I don’t care if you are a progressive liberal or a libertarian anarchist: this is what you should be talking about. This is what you should be fighting. Call your representative, call the White House, write letters, march, protest, donate, do anything and everything you can. Fight this. Fight it now.

We are keeping children in cages.

Not Another War

Dusty Leave a comment

You know what? I just don’t want a war.

It saddens me – no; it horrifies me that my students who are 14 and 15 and 16 years old have never lived in a United States that wasn’t at war. It’s a good swath of my adult life that this country has been at war; but almost all the years before that – I was born right around the end of the Vietnam War – I have known a country that has been relatively peaceful. We had the Cold War throughout my youth, of course – the Russians were the bad guys in pretty much every movie I saw until I was in college – and we sent troops to Panama and Grenada, Africa and Serbia; and there have been troops stationed all around the globe throughout my life; but we hadn’t invaded a country and torn down its government until I was a teacher. Until after 9/11.

I remember it well. One of my strongest memories is of hearing that we had invaded Iraq, two years later, on a pretense that I didn’t begin to understand, let alone believe; when we did, I remember writing angrily in my journal that I was afraid we would colonize the country, that Bush the Younger had brought us back because Bush the Elder hadn’t finished the job, and now we would never leave. I was almost right: we left, eventually, but because we did so, now we will never do that again. Because as soon as we left Iraq, ISIS rose, and became the new villain in every movie from now until – well, probably forever.

That’s why I don’t want a war. Because mark my words: any country we invade, from now until the end of this country’s reign as the world’s most violent nation, will become a permanent victim of this nation’s military colonialism. Because we need to “stay until the job is done.” Because we need to “ensure stability.” Because we need to “prevent the rise of terrorism.” You know: all the reasons why we still have troops in Afghanistan after seventeen goddamn years of occupation. Because something has to justify the continued expenditure of trillions of dollars to feed the military-industrial complex.

The same reason why the military wants to keep our forces in Syria. To ensure stability in the areas not controlled by Bashar al-Assad. To prevent the resurgence of ISIS.

And may I just say: god damn that group for giving our military the only justification it will ever need, forever. But I also have to say that I understand their motives. After all, we are invaders. We are colonizers. We attack governments that are not our enemies, under the thinnest of pretexts, devastating every inch of infrastructure in the country, and then we occupy and act exactly like the tyrants we are supposedly removing from power: we paint the nation black with corruption and graft, we put our cronies into positions of power regardless of their suitability for the role, we act with complete impunity while arresting hundreds if not thousands of “insurgents” and “terrorists,” many of whom are surely innocent, and plenty of whom are thrown into dark holes from which they never escape, where they are brutalized and often tortured. You know where ISIS started, right? Right: in American-run prisons.

Some country did that to my homeland, I’d fucking be a terrorist, too. Well: I wouldn’t. I’m a pacifist. But I’d probably get arrested by the CIA for the things I’d write, and the things I’d teach my students. I might even end up in Guantanamo Bay.

They’re still there, you know. 45 prisoners, some of them detained since 2002. Sixteen years in prison thousands of miles from home, many if not all of them victims of torture; none of them given due process according to our own nation’s laws, let alone the laws of their various home countries. Because we call them terrorists, and prisoners of war. A war older than my students.

I do not want another war.

It’s hard for me to say that, because the two impending wars (assuming John Bolton and Mike Pompeo don’t get their way and lead us into a war in Iran), in Syria and North Korea, would both, in some ways, be “good” wars. Both those regimes are guilty of unspeakable crimes. The North Korean dictatorship has killed millions of people, mostly through starvation, over the last seven decades; 500,000 Syrians have been killed and 100,000 more are missing under the Syrian regime and the civil war that has ravaged the country since 2011, when a dozen young men were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and executed for painting anti-government graffiti on a wall in Damascus. Syria especially frightens me, because the steps leading to the current atrocities have all been ones that I could see our government taking in this country: it began with people talking about overthrowing the government, which led to arrests; the arrests led to protests, which led to a police and military crackdown; and then the revolution started. After that, the arrests turned to a machine: tens of thousands were detained, imprisoned in terrible conditions, beaten regularly, hung from manacles, starved and mistreated, and then executed. I have trouble thinking that American soldiers would emulate Nazis, with cattle cars and death camps and gas chambers and ovens; but I can certainly see them beating people, holding them without trial, even executing them; all of those things have happened in CIA and military prisons over the last seventeen years of this current war. Could they happen in this country, to our people, if those people were deemed enemies of the state?

I’d say yes.

That scares the hell out of me. Particularly when I listen to stories about Bashar al-Assad responding to accusations of war crimes with, essentially, “Fake news!” When he dons a suit and carries his briefcase to work the day after the U.S. targets his chemical weapons facilities, because bluster and bluff are how he has managed to hold onto power – along with his backing from Russia.

It just keeps getting scarier, doesn’t it? You know Assad’s been reelected twice? Sure. He wins around 98% of the vote, every time. Biggest electoral victory in history. And the biggest crowds at his inauguration. Huge crowds. Beautiful inauguration. The best. Believe me.

I don’t want us to go to war in Syria because if we do, we’ll never leave. We’ll keep troops there forever, the same way we’re keeping them in Afghanistan, because we somehow think that our troops are maintaining stability: even though, as a foreign invasive force, I have no doubt we are creating the same instability, the same violent resentment of our presence, that we have to stay in the country in order to suppress. See how perfect that is? As long as our troops stay there, there will always be a need for our troops to stay; and as long as our troops stay there, there will always be attacks that stoke up the dogs of war back home, so they keep supporting those troops, supporting those troops. Look at how the Republican party, the party of fiscal responsibility and small government, was happy to sign away the biggest budget and one of the biggest deficits in history, a budget which expands government in every possible way – because that same budget increased military spending. That’s it, that’s all they got: more money for the military. And did you listen to them talk about it? “We have to make sure we handle our readiness issues,” I kept hearing. Because apparently the largest and best-equipped army in the world is not quite ready enough to do violence, should they be called upon to do so. We have to be ready just in case. To protect our freedom.

I don’t want to go to war in Syria because doing so will cause some further instability somewhere else in the region: the Syrian civil war was at least partly caused by the rise of ISIS, which wanted to conquer Syria for its caliphate; and ISIS was partly created by our invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, which broke al Qaeda and then created a power vacuum to give the remnants of al Qaeda room to grow into ISIS. Of course, al Qaeda was partly created by our support of the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan, because they resisted the Russian invasion; and also by our support of Iraq in the 80’s because Iraq opposed Iran – which was our enemy because the Ayatollah Khomeini blamed us for installing the Shah, after we overthrew the Iranian government in the 50’s. Because that government opposed our support for Israel. It never stops: it’s an unbroken chain of broken countries, broken governments, broken people turned into refugees, and then into terrorists and extremists, by us and our allies, simply because we won’t. Fucking. Leave.

I don’t want a war in Syria because if we are in another ground war when 2020 rolls around, then President Trump will get reelected just like Bush did in 2004, because Trump’s not any less popular than Bush was in 2004 (And I heard today that Joe Biden is thinking of running for the Democratic nomination, and all I could think of was John Kerry in 2004, and Al Gore in 2000, and to a lesser extent Hillary Clinton in 2016: because when we run these same kinds of Democrats, we get – Bush and Trump. And even if he won, well, Biden certainly supports the military, doesn’t he? Sure.), and because Trump will pull the same bullshit that Bush did: you can’t change commanders in the middle of a fight, and those Democrats don’t support our troops and aren’t willing to bankrupt the entire nation in order to ensure our troops are entirely, eternally, apocalyptically ready for any battle at any time in any place, including every battle at once. Just in case North Korea gets uppity while we’re suppressing Syria and Iran. Even though clearly the Democrats are just fine with bankrupting the nation in order to feed money to the military-industrial complex, because they signed that budget, too.

I can’t stand it any more. My former idealism, believing in the essential goodness of the government, especially the American government, is gone now, shattered by the eagerness with which all of our elected officials beat the war drums and spend, spend, spend, to send Americans into danger and to kill thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians in other nations, in drone strikes, in air strikes, in strikes designed to degrade the enemies’ capability to cause damage. My love for my country is gone, because what kind of country is this to love? The only nation to use nuclear weapons – also on a civilian populace. The only nation to prefer carpet bombing to putting “boots on the ground,” because we’d rather cause collateral damage (read: dead innocents) than put our precious soldiers at risk. Don’t get me wrong, our soldiers are precious – but so are the innocent people we bomb. So are the soldiers we kill, even if they aren’t innocent; they aren’t our enemies. When was the last time we fought a nation that was actually, actively, the enemy of this country? 1945, wasn’t it? Al Qaeda was an enemy and a threat, and I suppose ISIS is, as well; but the nations where they live are not. Nor was Vietnam. Nor was Korea. And look how well those worked out. And while we’re talking about Southeast Asia and incessant airstrikes: you realize our years of carpet bombing Cambodia in the 1970’s helped give rise to the Khmer Rouge? Killed 1.5 millions Cambodians, that group did.

That’s my nation. It has always been my nation, because right now I live in a city that used to be a thriving metropolis for the indigenous people of the Southwest, the Hopi and the Navajo and the Pueblo peoples. We killed them, too. And then used their desperate attempts to resist our invasion and slaughter of innocents to justify increasing the size and aggression of our military, so that we could keep our people safe while our people were stealing the lives and the land of other people.

And then people say that the military protects our freedom. Holy crap. Tell me: what threat to our freedom existed in Afghanistan in 2001? Sure, there was an existential threat to some number of our people, no doubt; but we have lost more soldiers in the war than people who died on 9/11. Afghanistan has lost – well, everything, really. And maybe that’s al Qaeda’s fault. But we were the ones who invaded. In order to protect our freedom. It amazes me that people can even say that with a straight face. I suppose now our freedom is somewhere in Aleppo, and sometime (before the election in 2020), we’ll have to put boots on the ground in order to protect it. We really should stop letting that freedom roam around like that. Especially in the Middle East.

I don’t want a war in Syria even though Bashar al-Assad is guilty of war crimes, even though he has used chemical weapons – because I can’t for the life of me understand why the chemicals sarin and chlorine are absolutely forbidden, but when the chemicals are gunpowder and lead, and TNT or phosphorus or napalm or any of the thousand other incendiaries and explosives that burn down entire nations, are no problem whatsoever. Assad has killed thousands with chemicals, and hundreds of thousands with guns and bombs and starvation; and we attack him for using the chemical weapons? It makes no sense. But even though his atrocities demand justice, I do not want a war. Because there is no possibility, none at all, that a war can create justice. It has never happened and will never happen. The “best” war I know of, World War II, which stopped the Nazi death machine, still did not create justice, because there can be no justice for 6 million victims of the Holocaust, and because the war against the Nazis gave them the cover to hide their actions for years, and because we were the ones who firebombed Dresden and used atomic weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and because our alliance with Stalin allowed him to retain power and kill 10 million of his own people, which also helped give rise to Mao and the Cultural Revolution that killed millions more. That’s not justice. That’s not a better outcome. I can’t say we shouldn’t have fought the war, because I can’t say anything other than the Nazis had to be stopped: but I can’t say that and not also say that the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur, and Cambodia, and North Korea, and China, should not also have been stopped. We didn’t fight those wars. So have we really saved people with our wars?

I don’t think we can. I don’t think that anything good can come of war. I think that we don’t really grasp the quintessential truth of the phrase “War is hell.” Especially not because we never think what that makes us, every time – every time – we start a war. We make hell. Every time.

And we call ourselves saviors. But we’re not: we’re the devils.

I don’t want another war. Not ever again. Not for any reason. Not even a good one.

This Is Why I Hate Google

Dusty 1 Comment

Because it is impossible to find things on the internet without Google, since there is just so much crap on the internet. But Google, as brilliant as it is, is still staggeringly stupid.

I wanted a picture in my last book review post  of a man with a thin face, black hair, heavy eyebrows, and who was unshaven. I did a Google image search of those words. And out of all of the pictures I saw, I could not find one that suited what I wanted it for. That’s the description of Guy Montag, the main character in Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451. Montag is a fireman, not a male model, so all of these guys were out:

Image result for man thin face black hair heavy eyebrows unshavenRelated imageRelated imageRelated imageRelated image

Montag is miserable in the book: trapped in an empty sham of a marriage, surrounded by violence and suffering, living in a dystopia. So no smiley guys.

Image result for man thin face black hair heavy eyebrows unshaven

Nope.

Smiling Man in Park

Not you, either. (Though I love that this comes from an article titled “5 tips for growing a great f-ing beard” )

Image result for man thin face black hair heavy eyebrows unshaven

No. You look too much like my brother.

Montag is not a bro, so DEFINITELY NOT THESE GUYS:

Image result for man thin face black hair heavy eyebrows unshaven

Image result for man thin face black hair heavy eyebrows unshaven

And I guess I didn’t have Safe Search on, because I also got this shot:

(It is from Buzzfeed, not porn, so I assume he’s not doing what I think he’s doing. Still.

Shirtless

I don’t — I can’t — let’s just move on.

Montag also doesn’t have a full beard, so not this:

Image result for man thin face black hair heavy eyebrows unshaven

And not this:

Image result for man thin face black hair heavy eyebrows unshaven

Dude, you don’t even have dark hair. What the hell are you doing to me, Google?

And not this:

Image result for man thin face black hair heavy eyebrows unshaven

And REALLY not this:

Image result for man thin face black hair heavy eyebrows unshaven

And then, of course, there were several I could not use because they were too recognizable. This isn’t Guy Montag:

Image result for man thin face black hair heavy eyebrows unshaven

Nor is this:

Image result for man thin face black hair heavy eyebrows unshaven

Or this:

Image result for man thin face black hair heavy eyebrows unshaven

And not this guy:

Image result for man thin face black hair heavy eyebrows unshaven

Here’s another one Google offered me. Remember, I searched for “man thin face black hair unshaven.”

Miley Cyrus' 'Today' Show Performance: Watch 'Malibu' and Comments on 'Friend' Ariana Grande | Billboard – Billboard

Sure, yeah. I’ll use Miley Cyrus. Great idea.

And then, of course, there’s the WTF file. Google should have a checkbox: WTF, No WTF. These are all WTF.

Image result for man thin face black hair heavy eyebrows unshaven

Good lord, no.

mustache

OH COME ON, NOW.

Image result for man thin face black hair heavy eyebrows unshaven

HOW DOES THAT EVEN MATCH ANY OF MY SEARCH TERMS?!?!?!

Power and Pathos': Hellenistic Bronzes as Realism in the Flesh - The New York Times

That’s a statue.

Image result for man thin face black hair heavy eyebrows unshaven

That’s a cartoon.

Image result for man thin face black hair heavy eyebrows unshaven

THAT’S A DOG. (Though he is cute.)

Image result for man thin face black hair heavy eyebrows unshaven

THAT’S — wait, is that Alex Trebek?

Image result for man thin face black hair heavy eyebrows unshaven

That’s Saddam Hussein.

fight club

We don’t talk about what that is.

(Quick note: I keep having to come back to this post to fix it, because the images keep disappearing and the links keep breaking; this time, when I tried to replace the above image by repeating the original search, I got this photo — from this blog. It’s Google-ception.)

Selma Bouvier - Wikisimpsons, the Simpsons Wiki

THAT’S GODDAMN SELMA FROM THE GODDAMN SIMPSONS.

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Now you’re just fucking with me, aren’t you, Google?

A brief history of witch beauty | Dazed

Oh, I give up.