Funding fighting doesn't feed people, but peace does. In the United Gun-toting States of Bombs Bursting in Air America, however, we fund fighting: for the year 2010, at the rate of $2,000,000,000.00 a day. That's two billion dollars a day. And that's just for the Department of Defense. (It used to be called the "War Department"--which at least was honest. Given that our two current wars are--as Vietnam, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Greneda all were--wars of aggression, not national defense, the present name is an obscene lie.)
Part of the Pentagon's $600,000,000,000.00 budget--$160,000,000,000.00 total or almost $500,000,000.00 a day--will be spent on our two outrageous, illegal wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And nobody will object. We are so committed to violence that to secure passage of a bill to protect homosexuals from hate crimes, the measure had to be attached to a fat military spending bill. (Knowing that the Defense spending bill would pass, twenty-seven Republican senators voted against it just to demonstrate their approval of violence against homosexuals.)
If we spend $2,000,000,000.00 a day rebuilding the Iraq we have destroyed and feeding and housing and educating Afghans, we might actually win peace in both countries. But all that our $2,000,000,000.00 a day for contunued war will win for us is further destruction, more violent deaths, more hatred, more shame.
"Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Baron Acton said that a hundred plus years ago. And here we stand, budget in place, blood on our hands, and bombs away: absolutely guilty.
vrijdag 23 oktober 2009
zondag 18 oktober 2009
DESTRUCTION AND DECONSTRUCTION
I want to talk about a silly word, which is used to do something that is not good. GOOD is a social word: it and "gather" come from the same root, and mean the same thing. "Together" is an intensified version of "gather." And something that holds together--or holds us together--is GOOD.
One of the things that hold us together is language. Communicationis another social word, and language, as verbal communication, is socially important. Communion is a word that probably comes not from com+unis ("one together") but from com+munis. Munis is a curious word that means both "gift" and "duty"--and it gives us words like "common," "communion," and "community." All of those words have to do with or gifts to each other or our duty to each other.
Good things hold us together.
In our language a structure is something built. If I destroy it, I destruct it: un-build it. Construction is something built complexly, out of parts, put together, to make a new structure.
When we read we put things together, to understand them. We read words in sentences, we read maps, some of us read tea-leaves or the lines in palms. Sentences, maps, tea-leaves, the lines in palms are all, in a sense, constructions. A single line on a sheet of paper is not a map, nor is a single line in the palm of a hand. Nor is a single word.
Suppose I say--aloud--the word there. Did I say "there," or "their," or "they're"? You don't know. So I add another word, merry. Did I say "merry," or "Mary"? I add and Tom. That doesn't help, except that I can forget about "merry." If I add, then, who, you have to wait again: I might be saying "There Mary and Tom, who are young, eat. . . ." Or I might be saying "Their Mary and Tom, who are young, are older than my Mary and Tom." Or maybe I'm saying "They're Mary and Tom, who are young."
The words work together, constructing sense. And the structure of the sentence lets me understand what the words mean, together.
But if I destroy that structure, I can't make sense of those words. Destroy is the act of destruction: which is not a good thing.
We have another word, deconstruction, used these days by people who don't care to read, who don't value communication, who aren't intertested in community or goodness.
A deconstructionist looks at a sentence--let's have a new one: "When I offered the small boy a cookie, he held out his hand, like a Catholic taking communion from a priest, then--trusting me--popped it in his mouth without even thinking that it might be poison." That's clear enough, isn't it?
But the deconstructionist ingnores what the sentence says, and instead focusus on and "priest" and "poison." Ha! he says. "Priests poison young people with what they pretend are gifts." And before you know it, we will be talking about religious prejudice and pedophilia and parental responsibility and safe streets.
Deconstructionism is an egotistical practice. It lets the deconstructionist ignore what someone has said, in order to talk about what the deconstructionist wants to talk about. It uses and abuses what other people say. It is a formalization of the attitude that lets some people say, "What I hear you saying is. . . ."
Deconstructionists pretend to be interested in language. But they aren't any more interested in language than they are in the act of communication--the gift and duty of communication. If they were interested in language, they wouldn't use a word like deconstruction. They would use the word destruction instead.
One of the things that hold us together is language. Communicationis another social word, and language, as verbal communication, is socially important. Communion is a word that probably comes not from com+unis ("one together") but from com+munis. Munis is a curious word that means both "gift" and "duty"--and it gives us words like "common," "communion," and "community." All of those words have to do with or gifts to each other or our duty to each other.
Good things hold us together.
In our language a structure is something built. If I destroy it, I destruct it: un-build it. Construction is something built complexly, out of parts, put together, to make a new structure.
When we read we put things together, to understand them. We read words in sentences, we read maps, some of us read tea-leaves or the lines in palms. Sentences, maps, tea-leaves, the lines in palms are all, in a sense, constructions. A single line on a sheet of paper is not a map, nor is a single line in the palm of a hand. Nor is a single word.
Suppose I say--aloud--the word there. Did I say "there," or "their," or "they're"? You don't know. So I add another word, merry. Did I say "merry," or "Mary"? I add and Tom. That doesn't help, except that I can forget about "merry." If I add, then, who, you have to wait again: I might be saying "There Mary and Tom, who are young, eat. . . ." Or I might be saying "Their Mary and Tom, who are young, are older than my Mary and Tom." Or maybe I'm saying "They're Mary and Tom, who are young."
The words work together, constructing sense. And the structure of the sentence lets me understand what the words mean, together.
But if I destroy that structure, I can't make sense of those words. Destroy is the act of destruction: which is not a good thing.
We have another word, deconstruction, used these days by people who don't care to read, who don't value communication, who aren't intertested in community or goodness.
A deconstructionist looks at a sentence--let's have a new one: "When I offered the small boy a cookie, he held out his hand, like a Catholic taking communion from a priest, then--trusting me--popped it in his mouth without even thinking that it might be poison." That's clear enough, isn't it?
But the deconstructionist ingnores what the sentence says, and instead focusus on and "priest" and "poison." Ha! he says. "Priests poison young people with what they pretend are gifts." And before you know it, we will be talking about religious prejudice and pedophilia and parental responsibility and safe streets.
Deconstructionism is an egotistical practice. It lets the deconstructionist ignore what someone has said, in order to talk about what the deconstructionist wants to talk about. It uses and abuses what other people say. It is a formalization of the attitude that lets some people say, "What I hear you saying is. . . ."
Deconstructionists pretend to be interested in language. But they aren't any more interested in language than they are in the act of communication--the gift and duty of communication. If they were interested in language, they wouldn't use a word like deconstruction. They would use the word destruction instead.
vrijdag 16 oktober 2009
Remembering FDR
I am old enough to remember Franklin Delano Roosevelt as president of this country. I lived in a small Kentucky town just south of Mammoth Cave, which was cleared by Roosevelt's C.C.C. workers. The area benefited from the Rural Electrification program, too. He brought the country back from the Great Depression, and brought millions of Americans back from unemployment and poverty and bankruptcy to work and stability.
I also remember that Roosevelt was hated by large numbers of Americans, Republican and Democrat alike. My aunt worked in Washington, starting in 1939. She regularly sent home carbon copies of hate material distributed quite openly in the Commerce Department, where she worked. They were type-written, and the biggest letters were no more than twelve-pouint caps--LIKE THESE. But they were big enough that you could see the venom, and hear the hate.
You could hear it on the radio, too. And read it in the newspapers. And your neighbors talked it. What was said on the radio and in the press wasn't so bad as the not-so-very-underground smears that my aunt sent us from Washington, but they were often hateful, too. The neighborhood hate was almost mild, because even if you were (or had been) rich, Roosevelt was saving your tail. But you knew it was wrong, because of the way he was doing it--and because he was doing it. And what he was doing was Socialist and therefore bad. He was making everybody work together, and even if he and his Socialism saved us, we knew that he and his Socialism were wrong.
The vicious stuff called Roosevelt a "Jew," or sometimes just a "Jew-lover." The hate-mongers called him "Roosenvelt," as though that made him as Jew. They called him a traitor because he insisted that Black Americans were not only human, but just as human as White Americans. They hated his wife, Eleanor, too: she was a loud-mouthed, ugly woman, and like her husband, a Socialist. And of course she was a "Jew-lover" too. No telling what Americans would have thought or done if they had known that somewhere in Eleanor Roosevelt's background there are most probably Black ancestors.
Americans hated the Roosevelts because they were intelligent, because they spoke in sentences, because he had a "snooty" accent. Americans hated the Roosevelts because they told us what to do. They didn't insult our intelligence; they simply noted it, silently, and tried--for our sake and the country's--to overcome our ignorance and stupidity.
Because Roosevelt and his policies got us out of the Great Depression, we could only hate him; we couldn't vote against him. Our selfishness told us that. We had to put up with him, and re-elect him. We were like stupid, incompetent boy scouts, lost in a woods, and having to trust a compass--which in our ignorance we couldn't possibly trust--to find our way out.
President Obama's situation is a lot like that of President Roosevelt. And the best we can hope is that he can survive all the stupid attacks, and save us in spite of ourselves.
I also remember that Roosevelt was hated by large numbers of Americans, Republican and Democrat alike. My aunt worked in Washington, starting in 1939. She regularly sent home carbon copies of hate material distributed quite openly in the Commerce Department, where she worked. They were type-written, and the biggest letters were no more than twelve-pouint caps--LIKE THESE. But they were big enough that you could see the venom, and hear the hate.
You could hear it on the radio, too. And read it in the newspapers. And your neighbors talked it. What was said on the radio and in the press wasn't so bad as the not-so-very-underground smears that my aunt sent us from Washington, but they were often hateful, too. The neighborhood hate was almost mild, because even if you were (or had been) rich, Roosevelt was saving your tail. But you knew it was wrong, because of the way he was doing it--and because he was doing it. And what he was doing was Socialist and therefore bad. He was making everybody work together, and even if he and his Socialism saved us, we knew that he and his Socialism were wrong.
The vicious stuff called Roosevelt a "Jew," or sometimes just a "Jew-lover." The hate-mongers called him "Roosenvelt," as though that made him as Jew. They called him a traitor because he insisted that Black Americans were not only human, but just as human as White Americans. They hated his wife, Eleanor, too: she was a loud-mouthed, ugly woman, and like her husband, a Socialist. And of course she was a "Jew-lover" too. No telling what Americans would have thought or done if they had known that somewhere in Eleanor Roosevelt's background there are most probably Black ancestors.
Americans hated the Roosevelts because they were intelligent, because they spoke in sentences, because he had a "snooty" accent. Americans hated the Roosevelts because they told us what to do. They didn't insult our intelligence; they simply noted it, silently, and tried--for our sake and the country's--to overcome our ignorance and stupidity.
Because Roosevelt and his policies got us out of the Great Depression, we could only hate him; we couldn't vote against him. Our selfishness told us that. We had to put up with him, and re-elect him. We were like stupid, incompetent boy scouts, lost in a woods, and having to trust a compass--which in our ignorance we couldn't possibly trust--to find our way out.
President Obama's situation is a lot like that of President Roosevelt. And the best we can hope is that he can survive all the stupid attacks, and save us in spite of ourselves.
donderdag 15 oktober 2009
NOBEL OBAMA
President Obama's Nobel Prize for Peace has Americans furious. Why? Let's start with the most obvious one: he's a black American. And America's vocal chords are not much different today from what they were forty-five years ago, when Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize.
I was a new faculty member at the University of Michigan then. I walked into my freshman English class and began by noting Dr. King's being so honored. One of my students--never mind his name, but I still have his name, his face, and his home town of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in my head--said, loudly and with conviction, "Give a prize to that n*****? They ought to shoot him."
But it's more than that. Obama stands for change. And in doing so he stands for a different America from the one George Bush appealed to.
Why weren't there constant protests against Bush? Why did the media avoid mentioning what protests there were? Because even among those who voted for John Kerry, there were plenty of Americans who supported Bush: even as he lied to us, even as lies were exposed that cost several thousand young Americans their lives. He was a warrior, a My-Country-Right-Or-Wrong American who thought war was the American Way of Life. He was a rich man who thought being rich was a Constitutional Right for his kind of Americans. And he was stupid. All three of those things appeal to Americans, never mind the political party.
President Obama has a tough road ahead of him. But he is a strong man, and he believes in what he is doing. He has to end the wars he inherited; there is nothing right about either of them, and never was. He has to close Guantanamo and the other illegal concentration camps the United States runs hidden away in other countries. He has to forbid torture absolutely--unless he wants to let somebody torture Dick Cheney for the rest of his life. And he has to get health care for ordinary Americans.
That's a lot. And a Nobel Peace Prize should help toward those goals. It would, certainly, in any country on earth except the United States.
Bert Hornback
I was a new faculty member at the University of Michigan then. I walked into my freshman English class and began by noting Dr. King's being so honored. One of my students--never mind his name, but I still have his name, his face, and his home town of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in my head--said, loudly and with conviction, "Give a prize to that n*****? They ought to shoot him."
But it's more than that. Obama stands for change. And in doing so he stands for a different America from the one George Bush appealed to.
Why weren't there constant protests against Bush? Why did the media avoid mentioning what protests there were? Because even among those who voted for John Kerry, there were plenty of Americans who supported Bush: even as he lied to us, even as lies were exposed that cost several thousand young Americans their lives. He was a warrior, a My-Country-Right-Or-Wrong American who thought war was the American Way of Life. He was a rich man who thought being rich was a Constitutional Right for his kind of Americans. And he was stupid. All three of those things appeal to Americans, never mind the political party.
President Obama has a tough road ahead of him. But he is a strong man, and he believes in what he is doing. He has to end the wars he inherited; there is nothing right about either of them, and never was. He has to close Guantanamo and the other illegal concentration camps the United States runs hidden away in other countries. He has to forbid torture absolutely--unless he wants to let somebody torture Dick Cheney for the rest of his life. And he has to get health care for ordinary Americans.
That's a lot. And a Nobel Peace Prize should help toward those goals. It would, certainly, in any country on earth except the United States.
Bert Hornback
zondag 4 oktober 2009
Feed the Poor
Europeans don't do stupid things so very often, but the great milk spill last week was stupid. And shameful. And mean.
I sympathise with the farmers who are being squeezed out of existence by corporate "farmers." But the proper protest is NOT to dump milk.
The milk--thousands and thousands of liters or gallons or tons or tonnes of it--were dumped. Why couldn't all that milk have been sent to starving children in Africa? Why couldn't countries that have big airplanes have flown milk to Africa?
That would have been a much more effective and efficacious protest.
We need to try thinking every now and then. Even an occasional thought would make this a better world.
Bert Hornback
I sympathise with the farmers who are being squeezed out of existence by corporate "farmers." But the proper protest is NOT to dump milk.
The milk--thousands and thousands of liters or gallons or tons or tonnes of it--were dumped. Why couldn't all that milk have been sent to starving children in Africa? Why couldn't countries that have big airplanes have flown milk to Africa?
That would have been a much more effective and efficacious protest.
We need to try thinking every now and then. Even an occasional thought would make this a better world.
Bert Hornback
zondag 23 augustus 2009
My Lai and Lockerbee
It must be an accident, of course, but the uproar over the release of the one man convicted in the Lockerbee disaster coincides poignantly with the reappearance of Lt. William Calley, the officer convicted of mass murder in the killing of 300 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai in 1968.
The man convicted in the Lockerbee disaster, which killed more than 300 people (it missed me by one day on that flight)in 1988, was the only person brought to trial. He was prosecuted in a Scottish court by the U. S. Attorney General. He was released--under Scottish law--on humanitarian grounds; he is dying of cancer.
The man convicted in the Lockerbee disaster was alleged to be the "mastermind," though obviously he did not personally murder anyone on that flight. He has consistently claimed himself innocent, and until his release had an appeal of his conviction pending.
Lt. William Calley recently made a speech at at Kiwanis Club is the United States. Lt. Calley was a platoon commander in Vietnam. He admitted to what happened at My Lai: there was no doubt of his guilt. He and his platoon were "frustrated" at not finding any Viet Cong to kill, so they went into a small village and murdered 300 civilians. Then they burned the village--and the evidence of their crime. Lt. Calley was convicted, not of ordering the massacre, but of personally murdering at least twenty-two people. But he was responsible for the deaths of 300 people. Not Viet Cong, not enemies, but civilians: people like those who flew on the Pan American flight that exploded in mid-air.
Lt. William Calley's prison sentence was never carried out. The President of the United States intervened, and Lt. Calley went free after three years of house arrest. And is still free.--and making speeches at civic club lunches.
But Americans--including a former U. S. Attorney General and even our president--object to the release from prison of a dying man who even as he approaches death insists that he was not guilty of the crime for which he was convicted.
We talk about "justice," and the "rule of law." WHO ARE WE TO TALK ABOUT JUSTICE AND THE RULE OF LAW?
We didn't punish Lt. Calley for ordering the murder 300 innocent people--a whole village--out of "frustration." We didn't even punish him for killing at least twenty-two people with his own gun. Now we are in the process of trying to pardon ourselves--every one of us--for torturing people at Guantanamo, in Afghanistan, and in dozens of other concentration camps around the world: and we won't even release them from their torture camps.
In the average American mind,"justice" is utterly meaningless. "Might Makes Right" is the motto of this country, the first article of our popular constitution. Though this country proclaims piously to believe in a "higher power"--an American God--there are really only two powers we believe in: and neither of them is what anybody else would call God. Americans believe in military power, and the power of money.
What the rest of the world fears most--as it has since 1945--is that when the money runs out, the United States will still have its military power--its nuclear bombs--and will destroy not just My Lai or an airliner, but the world.
Can't we change? Can't we learn to be civilised? Please?
The man convicted in the Lockerbee disaster, which killed more than 300 people (it missed me by one day on that flight)in 1988, was the only person brought to trial. He was prosecuted in a Scottish court by the U. S. Attorney General. He was released--under Scottish law--on humanitarian grounds; he is dying of cancer.
The man convicted in the Lockerbee disaster was alleged to be the "mastermind," though obviously he did not personally murder anyone on that flight. He has consistently claimed himself innocent, and until his release had an appeal of his conviction pending.
Lt. William Calley recently made a speech at at Kiwanis Club is the United States. Lt. Calley was a platoon commander in Vietnam. He admitted to what happened at My Lai: there was no doubt of his guilt. He and his platoon were "frustrated" at not finding any Viet Cong to kill, so they went into a small village and murdered 300 civilians. Then they burned the village--and the evidence of their crime. Lt. Calley was convicted, not of ordering the massacre, but of personally murdering at least twenty-two people. But he was responsible for the deaths of 300 people. Not Viet Cong, not enemies, but civilians: people like those who flew on the Pan American flight that exploded in mid-air.
Lt. William Calley's prison sentence was never carried out. The President of the United States intervened, and Lt. Calley went free after three years of house arrest. And is still free.--and making speeches at civic club lunches.
But Americans--including a former U. S. Attorney General and even our president--object to the release from prison of a dying man who even as he approaches death insists that he was not guilty of the crime for which he was convicted.
We talk about "justice," and the "rule of law." WHO ARE WE TO TALK ABOUT JUSTICE AND THE RULE OF LAW?
We didn't punish Lt. Calley for ordering the murder 300 innocent people--a whole village--out of "frustration." We didn't even punish him for killing at least twenty-two people with his own gun. Now we are in the process of trying to pardon ourselves--every one of us--for torturing people at Guantanamo, in Afghanistan, and in dozens of other concentration camps around the world: and we won't even release them from their torture camps.
In the average American mind,"justice" is utterly meaningless. "Might Makes Right" is the motto of this country, the first article of our popular constitution. Though this country proclaims piously to believe in a "higher power"--an American God--there are really only two powers we believe in: and neither of them is what anybody else would call God. Americans believe in military power, and the power of money.
What the rest of the world fears most--as it has since 1945--is that when the money runs out, the United States will still have its military power--its nuclear bombs--and will destroy not just My Lai or an airliner, but the world.
Can't we change? Can't we learn to be civilised? Please?
vrijdag 24 juli 2009
Guns Again: Against Guns
More campus shootings in the news. And a gun-dealer in Butler, Missouri, giving a gift certificate from a local gun-shop worth $450 to everybody who buys a new GM car from him. (And $450 is the price-tag at the gift-certificatre gun-shop for an
AK-47: to use at Yellowstone, I guess, or Grand Canyon. Or maybe just for a neighborhood drive-by, or at a school somewhere once classes start again.)
We are insistently crazy.
Maybe we should require that people carrying AK-47s, bazookas, machine-guns, howitzers, battleships, and nuclear missiles carry them only as "concealed weapons."
Maybe all members of Congress should be required to carry hand grenades, and mount 106 mm. recoil-less rifles on their desks in Washington.
Maybe Congress should give every American a $450 gift-certificate from his or her nearest neighborhood gun-shop.
Maybe American babies should all be born with guns.
Fifteen years ago, as a joke, I advertised in the "For Sale" column of the Louisville Courier-Journal: "Used Sherman Tank turrets, complete with their cannons. Suitable for mounting on Lincoln Town Cars. Offense for the Offensive." I received fourteen calls--and twelve of them sounded serious. The thirteenth laughed, and the fourteenth was angry that I didn't like Lincoln Town Cars.
If I placed that advertisement today, my phone would ring itself to death!
AK-47: to use at Yellowstone, I guess, or Grand Canyon. Or maybe just for a neighborhood drive-by, or at a school somewhere once classes start again.)
We are insistently crazy.
Maybe we should require that people carrying AK-47s, bazookas, machine-guns, howitzers, battleships, and nuclear missiles carry them only as "concealed weapons."
Maybe all members of Congress should be required to carry hand grenades, and mount 106 mm. recoil-less rifles on their desks in Washington.
Maybe Congress should give every American a $450 gift-certificate from his or her nearest neighborhood gun-shop.
Maybe American babies should all be born with guns.
Fifteen years ago, as a joke, I advertised in the "For Sale" column of the Louisville Courier-Journal: "Used Sherman Tank turrets, complete with their cannons. Suitable for mounting on Lincoln Town Cars. Offense for the Offensive." I received fourteen calls--and twelve of them sounded serious. The thirteenth laughed, and the fourteenth was angry that I didn't like Lincoln Town Cars.
If I placed that advertisement today, my phone would ring itself to death!
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