Oh, Democracy! Don't play so hard to get, you vixen!

In 1776 a bunch of dudes got together in Philly and--PRESTO!--democracy reigned and today I have a blog and all is well with the world. Now in Iraq the same thing is about to happen. Man I feel all squishy inside about it, like watching a puppy rest his head in the lap of Santa Claus on Valentine's Day. It's a good thing that we are out in the world spreading the democracy and the freedom, just like the Founders would want us to do.

Sadly...

I read a history book and now I feel bad because none of the above is true. You see, the American Colonies in the 18th century were, by some wonderful accident of history, host to an incredible collection of geniuses and statesmen, often both incarnate in the same individual. Let's run down the list: Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Adams (both of them), and it goes on. Hell, Cheif Justice Marshall gave us judicial review not long after the founding. It's like Augustan Rome, or the medieval Caliphate in Spain--some particular place and period becomes an axis for the rest of the world for a time. But just like Augustan Rome and Al-Andalus, Revolutionary America wasn't merely a date, but it is an ongoing era (one that may be ending, but that is another story). The point is that Revolutionary America contained a population as prone to democratic self rule as any in history and it was still a tough row to hoe.

So back to Iraq. The President has compared the, ahem, difficulties in establishing an Iraqi democracy--I think it will end up a fascist theocracy, but whatever--to the birth pains of this country. After all, it took years to sort out the path of America from the 1770's to the adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1791. But if Iraq really does track to the birth of American democracy I say we should have a functioning Iraqi democracy sometime in the late 22nd century. Right after the massive Civil War that redefines martial brutality. You see we didn't stop the enslavement of a fifth of Americans until the end of the first century of freedom. And the campaigns of genocide against the earliest inhabitants stopped sometime around the First World War...but we haven't begun to try to turn that around until the last 30 years, and not yet in earnest. The birth of self rule and freedom finally extended to the neglected half of the population a mere 144 years after we understood that all MEN are created equal (just not girls until 1920 because 'ginas make you bad vote-casters). Oh, and all other minorites were effectively given full citizenship about 40 years ago.

So congratualtions Iraq, welcome to the family of nations whose promise of democracy only extends to the upper classes of the dominant ethno-religious group, or at least the males of that group anyway. Better hurry up, full democracy is only 200 years off! Maybe. We hope.

Thank God we went into Iraq, after all we only wrote our Constitution after the Frech occupied us and selected the first government of the US. What? We threw off our occupiers once the random violence we inflicted in nonconventional warfare was more than their empire was willing to tollerate and could barely convince the French to even send us aid, and still we turned into oppressors ourselves? And yet the President promises a new birth of freedom in the Middle East in the near yerm? Oh, bother!

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My own name pales in comparison.

As you may know I have an impressive, long and aristocratic name that when pronounced with just the right amount of snootiness makes me sound as though I had class, money, or style. None of which I possess. But my name is nothing compared to Czech-born German painter Gabriel Cornelius Von Max. Nothing I tell you! I officially declare him the Possessor of History's Greatest Name, Non-Emperor Division. (No matter the culture, the Emperor always has the best name). He painted some impressively disturbing and mildly spiteful things before dying in Munich in 1915. Munich is where the majority of his work still resides including his most famous painting: Monkeys as Judges of Art. It's, just, well, it's just fucked up and that's all there is to it. But it's fucked up in a compelling way. I refuse to believe that the obvious metaphor is the one he was shooting for: "Hey you jerks looking at my paintings, yeah you're all monkeys." He was, in fact, fascinated with Darwinian evolution and I think was saying something different, but still...it's Monkeys as Judges of Art which is wonderful on any level which you want it to be wonderful.

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Rev. Douchebag

So I have returned, like the swallows to Capistrano, to Colorado. Here in my birthland I will recharge, drawing on the energies of the earth. For I am no ordinary man, I was born on a lay-line that transmits the lifeforce of Mother Gaia to me, I must return once every Lunar Year to absorb this power and sustain my vitality. With such power I have been subtley influencing events and shaping my plan for the day--not long off--when I shall reveal my masterful craft to the world and BLOW YOUR MIND.

Alright, so none of that is true. In fact, it's all superstitious and self-indulgent nonsense that I have made up using some magic sounding words to suit my own desires. This leads me to my point: Pat Robertson is a douchebag. So he's called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, 'cause he won't give us our oil. Or rather, he will give us our oil, but he won't lick our toes for the priviledge of giving us our oil. And I say our oil because in the world of men (or rather man-shaped douchebags) like Robertson it is ours. You see, God put the oil in the ground so that we could extract it and fuel our Ford Expeditions. Ford Expeditions full of Jesus! That this brown heathen is not rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar's is, in the eyes of Rev. Douchebag, a capital offense. For, verily, the heavens themselves do turn so that white people in America may get Dakota and Trevor to soccer practice. Hast thou sounded the depths of the void? Well, it seems Pat has.

But here's the big picture: This is par for the course. Not because of religion and religious figures' truely ghastly records, and not because guys like Robertson are prone to this sort of ignorant talk. No this is par for the course because we now live in Gitmo America. The brutality of war, the brutality of a criminal justice system gone amok, is spilling out into the realms of our civil life that once harboured no outright brutality. This is to be expected, and no, it's not because of Grand Theft Auto--the people that are the most brutal are the ones most agast at violent video games and rap lyrics. It is acceptable discourse in this country to threaten protestors and openly denounce your fellow Americans for inoccous things like being gay, or a feminist. Because the world is--and I didn't know this--all fucked up because of Mary Wollstonecraft. And I'm not talking about guys in a bar talking big with their buddies about how their wife doesn't wear the pants (even though, lets face it, she does and that's why they are hiding out in a bar to pretend to be big masculine men instead of loving husbands). I'm talking about Congressmen and Clergy and Pundits on the teevee.

So Pat Robertson wants to assassinate the democratically elected leader of a sovereign nation because his politics aren't right with Robertson's. This is how empires fall: it starts with messianism, then douchebaggery, and it ends with kitsch. Pat Robertson just found a way to do it all at once.

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Oh, Snap!

Uh-uh! No you di'n't!

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Why Intelligent Design should not be taught in science classrooms

For the same reason Moby Dick shouldn't be taught in science classrooms...it isn't science.
Here, read this piece from the conservative National Review Online by Peter Wood, an anthropologist at The King's College (an evangelical bible school in NYC). It's oddly balanced, though it seems to attribute startling philosophy of science knowledge to President Bush--and it makes some statements that I would dispute, but that is no matter. Now forget everything Dr. Wood wrote, because it's completely immaterial to the debate. In fact the debate itself is immaterial to the issue. Other than the (to me) terrifying spectactle of an antrhopologist defending Bush's pronouncements, the thing is that ID is not science. Karl Popper said that for something to be science it must make falsefiable statements...now that gets sticky when you look into it further, but it's a pretty good rule of thumb. ID makes no falsefiable statements. It says, "Maybe some dude in the sky made this all happen." You can't get a lot further than that, no new lines of inquiry are opened up, ID does not spawn testable hypotheses. The Creator is not evident in the fossil record or mitochondrial DNA. Indeed, evolution doesn't address the questions that ID criticizes it for not addressing because those questions are not scientific. The scientific questions that science has no answers to yet, well we're working on those.

You see, science looks for gaps in our knowledge and tries to find rational answers to the questions those gaps pose and then fill in the gaps the better to create an integrated picture of the universe and it's workings. ID just says, "Maybe some dude in the sky made this all happen." It's a perfectly legitimate proposition, it's just not science. If you get to teach it in a science class, I totally get to teach my idea: That this is all a cruel joke being played on us by Satan who we should worship and ask mercy from, as a callous God looks on, unseeing; and the laws of science are arbitrary restrictions the sole purpose of which is to limit and consternate humanity. I totally get to teach that.

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Why LA is Great

As promised, I shall endeavour to explain the greatness of Los Angeles, California.
It's not because of the beaches, the palm trees, the movie stars, or any of the other reasons the Clampet family packed up their bags and moved to Beverly--Hills that is. But in a strange way the Clampets themselves may be part of the greatness. Los Angeles is where we make those parts of the culture that are explicitly manufactured. The motion picture remakes of television shows, the pop music by committee, and the bad television that it all produces are made there and they are the Frankenstein force that animates our national corpse. The capitalism and the democracy tempered not with philosophy and education, but with desire and venality have become the basis of a national greatness that it mildly perverted. We might enjoy a light operetta, or a Winslow Homer exhibition, but the great masses of men watch CBS. And when the piper comes to collect in exchange for driving out the rats he's a takin' the chilluns; or more aptly, he already has. We went out and demanded cheap and eye-catching entertainment and we have sold our very ability to reason to raise the capital. When the cancer that will eventually consume us all metastasizes we will wonder at it's first invasion point, that place is Los Angeles.

My contention is that we should all move to LA so we can get a front row seat to the slow show: the deterioration of of the national soul.
We owe it to ourselves to see the sinking of the ship from the lido deck. Wallow in the filth and the destruction, the blow jobs and the happy endings (of all kinds). I for one propose to enjoy it as our very own Gommorah by the sea leads us all into evil.

And let's clear this up once and for all. I'm not getting all Pat Robertson about this...indeed he's part of the infotainment apocolypse, necessarily feeding the media monster he pretends to defend us against. He is a St. George who sleeps with the dragon. On the contrary, I'm enjoying the slow slide. I myself merely plan of being in Bethelehem when the rough beast slouches there to be born. And if you doubt Hollywood's power remeber only this...William Faulkner went to write screenplays and was deemed competent. Tremble not at the Grand Guignol, but the sublime mediocratic power of the only true hell, development hell.

So LA's greatness is not the greatness that was Greece or the glory that was Rome. LA's greatness is the sticky sweet greatness of cotton candy...eat too much and you'll be sick, but you'll always eat too much. It's sunny and seasonless and warm with salty breezes and it's seduction is perilous. I propose to give myslef then and be in love for a while, it's a sort of divine drunkeness we can all enjoy. I think Faulkner worked on the script for that one too, didn't get made.

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Tragedy Porn

The local NBC station here will be covering the return of the Space Shuttle from the ISS. I am one of the people who sees the space program as a legitimate public expense...and I'll not get into that here, but suffice it to say that I'm a space shuttle fan and I am glad when more people pay attention to space exploration. It's a science literacy thing. But I'm not happy about this particular bit of coverage. You see, with the space shuttle's recent troubles--including problems with the thermal shielding that protects it during reentry: the cause of Columbia's destruction--I have the sneaking and troubling suspicion that the interest isn't in the return of the shuttle so much as the possibility that it will explode.

In this weird way people in the US, especially in the last few decades, kind of like to feel like the victims of tragedy. Witness the legions of Christians that claim that they are persecuted in this country (85% Christian though it is). There is a mix of anxiety and anticipation in something like the shuttle return because teeny tiny pieces of the American psyche kind of want to see it blow up. It's not just a predilection for the morbid, it is the jones for tragedy. And that's sick, but so are we.

LATER--Why LA is great (hint: because it's not) and what Origen of Alexandria and Basil of Caesarea have to do with modern political discourse.

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