So, just a brief response to the most recent horrible, terrifying and particularly cowardly mass shooting in the U.S.
Originally, I wasn't going to write anything and keep my thoughts to myself, because my thoughts, honestly, didn't seem horrified enough (or so I felt). News of mass shootings in this country have become more or less commonplace over the last few years, and thanks to the way the human brain works (think of Anderson's critique of "imagined communities" and all the more science-y evidence since that's backed up his ideas), it's easy for me to be saddened by news of a faraway catastrophe involving others attached to me only by the loose label of "fellow Americans," but it's hard for me to summon up the outrage that I see all over the Facebooks and the Twitters. A tragedy that hits close to home is, in fact, a tragedy. A tragedy that hits somewhere else in your state or country is more often than not just an opportunity to use said tragedy to advance your own agenda (political, personal, what-have-you). Or at least that's how most people seem to want to treat it. And who can blame them? Thousands of miles away, we can be distantly horrified at the objective fact of the callous slaughter of innocent kids, but we can't really do anything about it, except to try to change the conditions of the part of the world that's geographically closer to us so that it can't happen again. It's a weird position to be in.
From that position, here's what I'm thinking. One of my colleagues wrote on Facebook today, in response to this massacre: "How can you be shocked?" I thought the same thing, and knowing that someone who I respect was of like mind made me able to move past my guilt and start investigating why it was that something like this could not be shocking. And I think it's actually quite simple (all political maneuvering and other such bullshit aside): we have agreed, as a country, that we will continue to allow civilian access to unnecessarily efficient and deadly weapons, and the price we necessarily pay for this is that someone uses those weapons in an unlawful way against innocent people. That's the nature of the trade-off we've agreed to (collectively). If it's no longer worth the price we're paying, then we can make access to these weapons illegal (and thus more difficult). It's that simple. Opponents of gun control tacitly insist that their right to own ridiculously powerful guns originally created for 20th century total warfare is more important than the lives of those who die unjustly as a result of the availability of those guns. I, always having been more of a socialist than a capitalist or a democracy-ist (really, what is the form of that word that I'm looking for?) would happily give up such a right in order to prevent such shootings from happening. I'm happy to live a little less free (though not a lot less free, mind you) to make society as a whole a bit safer. Many people aren't, and this is and will continue to be the result.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Dec 26, 2009
best response to copenhagen...
...i've seen thus far is from ben stewart (greenpeace). it's a sign of the times, i think, that i'm looking to greenpeace for reason, but there it is:
"The most progressive U.S. President in a generation comes to the most important international meeting since the Second World War and delivers a speech so devoid of substance that he might as well have made it on speakerphone from a beach in Hawaii. His aides argue in private that he had no choice, such is the opposition on Capitol Hill to any action that might challenge the dominance of fossil fuels in American life. And so the nation which put a man on the moon can’t summon the collective will to protect men and women back here on Earth from the consequences of an economic model and lifestyle choice that has taken on the mantel of a religion.
Then a Chinese Premier who is in the process of converting his Communist nation to that new faith (high-carbon consumer capitalism) takes such umbrage at Obama’s speech that he refuses to meet – refuses, in fact, to do much of anything beyond sulking in his hotel room, as if this were a teenager’s house party instead of a final effort to stave off the breakdown of our biosphere.
Late in the evening the two men meet and cobble together a collection of paragraphs which they call a ‘deal’, although in reality it has all the meaning and authority of a bus ticket, not that it stops them affixing their signatures to it with great solemnity. Obama’s team then briefs the travelling White House press pack – most of whom, it seems, understand about as much about global climate politics as our own lobby hacks know about baseball – and before we know it the New York Times and CNN are declaring the birth of a ‘meaningful’ accord.
Meanwhile a friend on an African delegation emails to say that he and many fellow members of the G77 block of developing countries are streaming into the corridors after a long discussion about the perilous state of the talks, only to see Obama on the television announcing that the world has a deal. It’s the first they’ve heard about it, and a few minutes later, as they examine the text, they realise very quickly that it effectively condemns their continent to a century of devastating temperature rises.
By now the European leaders – who know this thing is a farce but have to present it to their publics as progress – have their aides phoning the directors of civil society organisations spinning that the talks have been a success. A success? This deal crosses so many of the red lines laid out by Europe before this summit started that there are scarlet skid marks across the floor of the Bella Centre, and one honest European diplomat tells us this is a ‘shitty shitty deal.’
Quite.
This deal is beyond bad. It contains no legally binding targets and no indication of when or how they’ll come about. There isn’t even a declaration that the world will aim to keep global temperature rises below 2 degrees C – instead leaders merely ‘recognise the science’ behind that vital threshold, as if that were enough to prevent us crossing it. The only part of this deal anyone sane came close to welcoming was the $100bn global climate fund, but it’s now becoming apparent that even that’s largely made up of existing budgets, with no indication of how new money will be raised and distributed so poorer countries can go green and adapt to climate change.
Not all of our politicians deserve the opprobrium of a dismayed world. Our own Ed Miliband fought hard on no sleep for a better outcome, while President Lula of Brazil offered to financially assist other developing countries to cope with climate change and put a relatively bold carbon target on the table. But the EU didn’t move on its own commitment (one so weak we’d actually have to work hard not to meet it) while the United States offered nothing and China stood firm.
Before the talks began I was of the opinion that we would only know Copenhagen was a success when plans for new coal-fired power stations across the developed world were dropped. If the giant utilities saw in the outcome of Copenhagen an unmistakable sign that governments were now determined to act, and that coal plants this century would be too expensive to run under the regime agreed at this meeting, then this summit would have succeeded. Instead, as the details of the agreement emerged last night we received reports of Japanese opposition MPs popping champagne corks as they savoured the possible collapse of their new government’s carbon targets. It’s not just that we haven’t got to where we needed to be, we’ve actually ceded huge ground. There is nothing in this deal – nothing – that would persuade an energy utility that the era of dirty coal is over. And the implications for humanity of that simple fact are profound.
I know we greens are partial to hyperbole. We use language as a bludgeon to direct attention to the crisis we’re facing, and you’ll hear much more of it in the coming days and weeks. But really, it’s no exaggeration to describe the outcome of Copenhagen as an historic failure that will live in infamy. In a single day, in a single space, a spectacle was played out in front of a disbelieving audience of people who have read and understood the stark warnings of humanity’s greatest scientific minds - and what they witnessed was nothing less than the very worst instincts of our species articulated by the most powerful men who ever lived.
I will leave the last word to the late Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who would have given voice to the insanity of Copenhagen better than I ever could, and whose poem Requiem is perhaps appropriate at this moment: ‘When the last living thing, has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if Earth could say, in a voice floating up, perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon, “It is done. People did not like it here”.’
a downer of a first blog for after christmas, but there it is.
"The most progressive U.S. President in a generation comes to the most important international meeting since the Second World War and delivers a speech so devoid of substance that he might as well have made it on speakerphone from a beach in Hawaii. His aides argue in private that he had no choice, such is the opposition on Capitol Hill to any action that might challenge the dominance of fossil fuels in American life. And so the nation which put a man on the moon can’t summon the collective will to protect men and women back here on Earth from the consequences of an economic model and lifestyle choice that has taken on the mantel of a religion.
Then a Chinese Premier who is in the process of converting his Communist nation to that new faith (high-carbon consumer capitalism) takes such umbrage at Obama’s speech that he refuses to meet – refuses, in fact, to do much of anything beyond sulking in his hotel room, as if this were a teenager’s house party instead of a final effort to stave off the breakdown of our biosphere.
Late in the evening the two men meet and cobble together a collection of paragraphs which they call a ‘deal’, although in reality it has all the meaning and authority of a bus ticket, not that it stops them affixing their signatures to it with great solemnity. Obama’s team then briefs the travelling White House press pack – most of whom, it seems, understand about as much about global climate politics as our own lobby hacks know about baseball – and before we know it the New York Times and CNN are declaring the birth of a ‘meaningful’ accord.
Meanwhile a friend on an African delegation emails to say that he and many fellow members of the G77 block of developing countries are streaming into the corridors after a long discussion about the perilous state of the talks, only to see Obama on the television announcing that the world has a deal. It’s the first they’ve heard about it, and a few minutes later, as they examine the text, they realise very quickly that it effectively condemns their continent to a century of devastating temperature rises.
By now the European leaders – who know this thing is a farce but have to present it to their publics as progress – have their aides phoning the directors of civil society organisations spinning that the talks have been a success. A success? This deal crosses so many of the red lines laid out by Europe before this summit started that there are scarlet skid marks across the floor of the Bella Centre, and one honest European diplomat tells us this is a ‘shitty shitty deal.’
Quite.
This deal is beyond bad. It contains no legally binding targets and no indication of when or how they’ll come about. There isn’t even a declaration that the world will aim to keep global temperature rises below 2 degrees C – instead leaders merely ‘recognise the science’ behind that vital threshold, as if that were enough to prevent us crossing it. The only part of this deal anyone sane came close to welcoming was the $100bn global climate fund, but it’s now becoming apparent that even that’s largely made up of existing budgets, with no indication of how new money will be raised and distributed so poorer countries can go green and adapt to climate change.
Not all of our politicians deserve the opprobrium of a dismayed world. Our own Ed Miliband fought hard on no sleep for a better outcome, while President Lula of Brazil offered to financially assist other developing countries to cope with climate change and put a relatively bold carbon target on the table. But the EU didn’t move on its own commitment (one so weak we’d actually have to work hard not to meet it) while the United States offered nothing and China stood firm.
Before the talks began I was of the opinion that we would only know Copenhagen was a success when plans for new coal-fired power stations across the developed world were dropped. If the giant utilities saw in the outcome of Copenhagen an unmistakable sign that governments were now determined to act, and that coal plants this century would be too expensive to run under the regime agreed at this meeting, then this summit would have succeeded. Instead, as the details of the agreement emerged last night we received reports of Japanese opposition MPs popping champagne corks as they savoured the possible collapse of their new government’s carbon targets. It’s not just that we haven’t got to where we needed to be, we’ve actually ceded huge ground. There is nothing in this deal – nothing – that would persuade an energy utility that the era of dirty coal is over. And the implications for humanity of that simple fact are profound.
I know we greens are partial to hyperbole. We use language as a bludgeon to direct attention to the crisis we’re facing, and you’ll hear much more of it in the coming days and weeks. But really, it’s no exaggeration to describe the outcome of Copenhagen as an historic failure that will live in infamy. In a single day, in a single space, a spectacle was played out in front of a disbelieving audience of people who have read and understood the stark warnings of humanity’s greatest scientific minds - and what they witnessed was nothing less than the very worst instincts of our species articulated by the most powerful men who ever lived.
I will leave the last word to the late Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who would have given voice to the insanity of Copenhagen better than I ever could, and whose poem Requiem is perhaps appropriate at this moment: ‘When the last living thing, has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if Earth could say, in a voice floating up, perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon, “It is done. People did not like it here”.’
a downer of a first blog for after christmas, but there it is.
Nov 3, 2008
the shuffle in my winamp brought this song (the jennings cover version) up earlier, perhaps appropriately as i was scouring cnn.com for election news.
i try not to post cheesy slideshow videos as a rule, but this just really struck me, just now.
i know electing one man as president isn't going to magically fix the mistakes we've made in the last 8 years (or hell, the last 200 years) as a country, but everything starts with small steps. it means a whole lot to me to think that we could be a bit closer to living in a country where the people who work in government are as decent as the nice lady at shopko who goes out of her way to be helpful or the great people i work and play with every day. i don't think that's too much to ask and yet, i've been profoundly ashamed of the majority of the people who represent the rest of us to the world at large since i was old enough to be at all informed, and i'm excited to think that maybe i could wake up tomorrow and see things starting to turn back to a point where i could someday hear that "proud to be an american" song that i sung off-key in second grade and actually believe it again.
i try not to post cheesy slideshow videos as a rule, but this just really struck me, just now.
i know electing one man as president isn't going to magically fix the mistakes we've made in the last 8 years (or hell, the last 200 years) as a country, but everything starts with small steps. it means a whole lot to me to think that we could be a bit closer to living in a country where the people who work in government are as decent as the nice lady at shopko who goes out of her way to be helpful or the great people i work and play with every day. i don't think that's too much to ask and yet, i've been profoundly ashamed of the majority of the people who represent the rest of us to the world at large since i was old enough to be at all informed, and i'm excited to think that maybe i could wake up tomorrow and see things starting to turn back to a point where i could someday hear that "proud to be an american" song that i sung off-key in second grade and actually believe it again.
Oct 3, 2008
ur moneys iz broken
really good interview (from: bill moyers to: kevin phillips) on PBS, about the current financial/economic crisis. he makes some good points about the obvious problems, but he also really intelligently problematizes the democratic/obama approach to the issue. definitely worth 25 minutes of your clicky-clicky time.
check it out here.
check it out here.
Aug 28, 2008
iraq hussein obama
obama's speech was great. no big surprise, obviously. but still. i can't get over, even 18 months later, how wonderful it is to hear him speak. to hear him speak, frustration evident in his voice, of "washington" and "politics" and "congress" and to see people listen. to see people want him to be their president.
there truly is a different air surrounding the proceedings of the democratic nomination this year; at least different than anything i can remember in my (admittedly short) life. while objective reflection on obama's speech makes me still wonder if we can truly do the things he's said that we can (as a government, country, people, whatever), i think that in our current state, hope is just as worthwhile a national resource as anything else, and i also think that if we can do 25 percent of what he's proposing in the next 10 years that this country will still be orders of magnitude better off than it's been during any and all of my adult life.
something i've noticed during most of obama's televised speeches is that you fairly often see audience members in tears. i have to admit that i've occasionally gotten a bit choked up listening to him speak. and sure, you'd probably see tears on the faces of dedicated servants of well-spoken, hypnotic zealots (which some people seem to characterize obama as), but you'd also see the same tears in the eyes of people who are living out of debt, who can't afford to have children because they know they probably won't be able to feed them, who really just want to have a decent shot to make an honest living or to make a new start and have suddenly been offered it. i think that's what we're getting. i hope we don't fuck it up.
there truly is a different air surrounding the proceedings of the democratic nomination this year; at least different than anything i can remember in my (admittedly short) life. while objective reflection on obama's speech makes me still wonder if we can truly do the things he's said that we can (as a government, country, people, whatever), i think that in our current state, hope is just as worthwhile a national resource as anything else, and i also think that if we can do 25 percent of what he's proposing in the next 10 years that this country will still be orders of magnitude better off than it's been during any and all of my adult life.
something i've noticed during most of obama's televised speeches is that you fairly often see audience members in tears. i have to admit that i've occasionally gotten a bit choked up listening to him speak. and sure, you'd probably see tears on the faces of dedicated servants of well-spoken, hypnotic zealots (which some people seem to characterize obama as), but you'd also see the same tears in the eyes of people who are living out of debt, who can't afford to have children because they know they probably won't be able to feed them, who really just want to have a decent shot to make an honest living or to make a new start and have suddenly been offered it. i think that's what we're getting. i hope we don't fuck it up.
Jun 25, 2008
ba-rock obama
just saw this on stereogum.
it's totally a geek thing, but i think it's fucking awesome that obama's favorite stones song is "gimme shelter". since i revealed not very long ago that it's also my favorite stones song. a lot of the other stuff on his list is pretty standard fare i think for people his age (even the "blood on the tracks" thing, though i love that album to death, isn't really a surprise for someone in their 50s who pays attention to music at all).
the miles and the coltrane give me hope for our great nation, however.
i'll try to work up some of those videos i mentioned yesterday sometime today. i also have to post some pictures from the trip. i HAVE to.
but right now i'm going to eat something and then start in on those bloomsbury bloggers prompts that i've fallen behind on.
i hope you don't have an RSS feed to this blog, because today i'm gonna be blowin' your shit up.
it's totally a geek thing, but i think it's fucking awesome that obama's favorite stones song is "gimme shelter". since i revealed not very long ago that it's also my favorite stones song. a lot of the other stuff on his list is pretty standard fare i think for people his age (even the "blood on the tracks" thing, though i love that album to death, isn't really a surprise for someone in their 50s who pays attention to music at all).
the miles and the coltrane give me hope for our great nation, however.
i'll try to work up some of those videos i mentioned yesterday sometime today. i also have to post some pictures from the trip. i HAVE to.
but right now i'm going to eat something and then start in on those bloomsbury bloggers prompts that i've fallen behind on.
i hope you don't have an RSS feed to this blog, because today i'm gonna be blowin' your shit up.
May 16, 2008
even more conservative awesome
matt (who's been giving me more links for my blog than i've been finding myself lately) sent this to me today. pretty great stuff, especially if you're in a line of work where people like to throw around made-up words that end in "-ize" without actually saying anything grounded in reality and then believe that proves their argument. of course, i don't have a job like that...
May 15, 2008
Apr 3, 2008
go ACLU, go!!
i still have my reservations about PETA, though.
anyway, if you ever wanted to know what it feels like to want to kill yourself out of frustration and just haven't been frustrated enough to muster the energy, then read this:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2008/04/memo_justified_warrantless_sur.php
that should finish you off.
note: don't actually kill yourself. obama will save us. as long as you're willing to give your first born to his campaign. drink the kool-aid!
anyway, if you ever wanted to know what it feels like to want to kill yourself out of frustration and just haven't been frustrated enough to muster the energy, then read this:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2008/04/memo_justified_warrantless_sur.php
that should finish you off.
note: don't actually kill yourself. obama will save us. as long as you're willing to give your first born to his campaign. drink the kool-aid!
Mar 23, 2008
reasons to like obama: #327
i'm an obama fanatic, in case you didn't already know. but my primary interest in making him the democratic nominee is something a little meta (as we say in the business), and i didn't really have the language to explain it until now. thanks to this article, i've been able to sort of internally articulate how i feel. and now i'll attempt to externally articulate it.
the main reason for my love affair with obama candidacy isn't necessarily his stance on the issues. as a matter of fact, looking at it entirely quantitatively, clinton actually shares my stance on more issues than obama does. of course so does kucinich, but that's another thing entirely. it's not necessarily because i'd prefer a male president, or a black president, etc., ad nauseum. it's not even because of obama's impressive rhetoric or the fact that clinton is running her campaign like a goddamned ninja assassin instead of a human being (though that helps). the reason i like obama is because he's willing to look beyond the pre-21st century paradigm of "popular" democracy in this country and take the chance on something new. clinton is not. clinton is progressive on the issues ("progressive" being a relative term), just as much as is obama. but what it comes down to is that he is tackling those issues and this nomination in a way that tacitly acknowledges that the system is broken. we've moved on from top-down, quasi-fiefdom democracy if for no other reason than the internet (though there are other good reasons too). no one else seems to realize this. they rant and rave about how the system has failed us, how bush has failed us, and on and on, and yet they embrace the same system and try to use it to their own ends. it's not even a "if it ain't broke..." mentality because it's broke. it was broke in 2000, in 2004, and probably well before then, but we didn't have glaring examples like the florida recount or bush somehow getting reelected a second time staring us in the face yet. how does a president who garners an abysmal approval rating almost immediately after taking office in 2004 get elected to that office? well, it didn't help that the democrats chose to run john "diet bush" kerry, but still. if that election and all the following disgusting flaunting of the law that our government has exercised in the last four years haven't shown you the holes in the bottom of the boat, then you're not paying enough attention. it's not even a stance for far-lefters only nowadays. everybody knows something's wrong. it's just that the vast majority of people think of fixing it by changing the people in charge only (or at least it seems this way). clinton is no different. it's been pretty clear all along she's willing to do whatever it takes to win. i'd be surprised if if/when she does win, she even knows what to do after that. she gets into power, and then what do we have? a democrat version of the type of people who've been running this country for at least the last 100 years. white, rich people with little to no perspective on how little this country resembles the america of the 50s or even the 70s or 80s. they don't have a personal stake (i.e. nothing to gain) by investigating the system that's kept them rich and in power since the early 1900s, and who can blame them?
i think living in a system where democracy, at least to a degree, is a charade or used as a pacification/justification device is frustrating people. but a lot of people are either too cynical or too comfortable (sometimes the same thing) to want to invest in a change. or they conceive of a dramatic change as a change of staff or office. obama and clinton generally stand for the same things when you look at "the issues". but just looking at "the issues" is still filtering each candidate's approach to government through the same lens that we've always used when choosing a president. to me, obama seems to realize this. he seems to realize that there are more dimensions to, say, the war in iraq than either being "for" or "against" it. he's willing to recognize the complexity in issues that clinton and other candidates appear to simply see as checkmarks in a column on a scorecard. clinton wants to play and win the game, mccain wants to play and win the game, obama wants to step back and say "this isn't a game at all for people who aren't in positions of power, so let's stop pretending like it is". i like that. i like the idea of a presidental candidate who is willing to question things that need questioned, even as far as questioning the system by which he got to power in the first place. he seems to genuinely be interested in seeking answers instead of pretending he has them to score brownie points, and as sad of a trip as it's been, i'm glad that we as a country are cynical enough to be able to see this as a positive quality and not "waffling", which was such a huge (and completely asinine) issue in 2004. oh my god! a candidate is reviewing new information and reevaluating his/her stance? impossible! if we had more men and women willing to do this versus trying to exude confidence in the idea of the american world as a black-and-white, right-and-wrong construct, there would likely be thousands less dead americans in the middle east (don't get me started) and we would be in an international relations hole that will likely take decades to dig ourselves out of (if that's even possible). and i don't know that at this point in the 21st century america can afford to turn itself back into an isolationist state, which seems to be the other alternative (see: china).
anyway, that's my $.05. i still think the article above says it better than i. but i just had to get that off my chest/fingers. mmm...chicken fingers.
it's hard being a vegetarian sometimes.
the main reason for my love affair with obama candidacy isn't necessarily his stance on the issues. as a matter of fact, looking at it entirely quantitatively, clinton actually shares my stance on more issues than obama does. of course so does kucinich, but that's another thing entirely. it's not necessarily because i'd prefer a male president, or a black president, etc., ad nauseum. it's not even because of obama's impressive rhetoric or the fact that clinton is running her campaign like a goddamned ninja assassin instead of a human being (though that helps). the reason i like obama is because he's willing to look beyond the pre-21st century paradigm of "popular" democracy in this country and take the chance on something new. clinton is not. clinton is progressive on the issues ("progressive" being a relative term), just as much as is obama. but what it comes down to is that he is tackling those issues and this nomination in a way that tacitly acknowledges that the system is broken. we've moved on from top-down, quasi-fiefdom democracy if for no other reason than the internet (though there are other good reasons too). no one else seems to realize this. they rant and rave about how the system has failed us, how bush has failed us, and on and on, and yet they embrace the same system and try to use it to their own ends. it's not even a "if it ain't broke..." mentality because it's broke. it was broke in 2000, in 2004, and probably well before then, but we didn't have glaring examples like the florida recount or bush somehow getting reelected a second time staring us in the face yet. how does a president who garners an abysmal approval rating almost immediately after taking office in 2004 get elected to that office? well, it didn't help that the democrats chose to run john "diet bush" kerry, but still. if that election and all the following disgusting flaunting of the law that our government has exercised in the last four years haven't shown you the holes in the bottom of the boat, then you're not paying enough attention. it's not even a stance for far-lefters only nowadays. everybody knows something's wrong. it's just that the vast majority of people think of fixing it by changing the people in charge only (or at least it seems this way). clinton is no different. it's been pretty clear all along she's willing to do whatever it takes to win. i'd be surprised if if/when she does win, she even knows what to do after that. she gets into power, and then what do we have? a democrat version of the type of people who've been running this country for at least the last 100 years. white, rich people with little to no perspective on how little this country resembles the america of the 50s or even the 70s or 80s. they don't have a personal stake (i.e. nothing to gain) by investigating the system that's kept them rich and in power since the early 1900s, and who can blame them?
i think living in a system where democracy, at least to a degree, is a charade or used as a pacification/justification device is frustrating people. but a lot of people are either too cynical or too comfortable (sometimes the same thing) to want to invest in a change. or they conceive of a dramatic change as a change of staff or office. obama and clinton generally stand for the same things when you look at "the issues". but just looking at "the issues" is still filtering each candidate's approach to government through the same lens that we've always used when choosing a president. to me, obama seems to realize this. he seems to realize that there are more dimensions to, say, the war in iraq than either being "for" or "against" it. he's willing to recognize the complexity in issues that clinton and other candidates appear to simply see as checkmarks in a column on a scorecard. clinton wants to play and win the game, mccain wants to play and win the game, obama wants to step back and say "this isn't a game at all for people who aren't in positions of power, so let's stop pretending like it is". i like that. i like the idea of a presidental candidate who is willing to question things that need questioned, even as far as questioning the system by which he got to power in the first place. he seems to genuinely be interested in seeking answers instead of pretending he has them to score brownie points, and as sad of a trip as it's been, i'm glad that we as a country are cynical enough to be able to see this as a positive quality and not "waffling", which was such a huge (and completely asinine) issue in 2004. oh my god! a candidate is reviewing new information and reevaluating his/her stance? impossible! if we had more men and women willing to do this versus trying to exude confidence in the idea of the american world as a black-and-white, right-and-wrong construct, there would likely be thousands less dead americans in the middle east (don't get me started) and we would be in an international relations hole that will likely take decades to dig ourselves out of (if that's even possible). and i don't know that at this point in the 21st century america can afford to turn itself back into an isolationist state, which seems to be the other alternative (see: china).
anyway, that's my $.05. i still think the article above says it better than i. but i just had to get that off my chest/fingers. mmm...chicken fingers.
it's hard being a vegetarian sometimes.
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