A MeanMesa "Quickie" - The Heroism of Righting Past Wrongs

Sometimes a few really reassuring stories "jump" across the spread of news so quickly that we miss the essence of the "larger picture" they are conveying.  This might be the result of a lack of interest or a lack of background.  It might be the signal of nothing more than an on-going stubborn avoidance, manifest as petulant stoicism and assuaged by an enduring cynicism.

The reports on the nightly BBC news offered two examples of unexpected good and another revealing the alternative.

What were the stories?

The alternative first.  After risking everything to depose the old regime in Kyrgazstan, the citizens of that country have found it necessary to rise up again, this time to eliminate the corruption of the man they installed last time.  The out-going government unleashed its Special Security Forces to open fire on the malcontents -- somewhere around 75 dead with 400 wounded.  The Defense Minister of the new government announced today without condition or ambiguity that such a practice was over.  Period. 

Aside from the US Air Base at Mana, the day's events in Biskek are probably a move in the right direction.  The bloodshed is, however, the price paid for consolidating too much unchecked power in the wrong person.  Kyrgan society seemed to be moving forward after the last uprising, but, once again, idealism and hope were bargained away under the thrall of corruption.  The positive side, if there actually is one among the corpses in the streets, is that the people of Kyrgazstan remain hopeful and idealistic, even after the bullets were flying a mere 24 hours before.

PBS Story about Riots in Bishkek, Kyrgasztan

Next, the unexpected good.

Case one: Pakistan.

BBC - Pakistan Parliament takes back Presidential Powers

In Pakistan, President Asif Ali Zardari will peacefully and legally renounce some of the powers of that office which were purloined under the recent dictator.   Those powers will be transferred to the country's Parliament.  From the look of the process today, there will be no street rioting or gunfire involved.  The country will move another step toward its ambition to be a democracy in both word, deed and structure.

It takes a serious commitment to democracy to take such a risk.

Hold out your hand and count -- on your fingers -- the number of times we have seen a recent story even remotely similar to this one.  Once power has been consolidated in the "wrong" place, it tends to stay there.  In fact, once begun, the results of such a process almost invariably get worse until a Kyrgazstan-style, bloody correction takes place.

This story casts a long shadow, too.  In our own country, President Obama has retained the power of the so-called Patriot Act, an on-going claim  to the legitimacy of military tribunals and the lingering embarrassment of a Constitution which has been ruefully denuded of its habeas corpus clause.

Case two:  Southern Sudan.

BBC - Gun Collection in Southern Sudan

The guns which flooded this unfortunate country to provide the fire power needed for its decades long civil war, are being forcefully and lawfully collected by the local semi-autonomous government.  The time trigger was five days.  After that, anyone in the region possessing a firearm will face a five year prison sentence.

This action would have been painless enough if all these rifles were simply sitting in closets collecting dust.  They weren't.  In fact, the government took this astonishing step exactly because they weren't collecting dust.  The tribal factions in Southern Sudan -- when the civil war died down a little -- had turned all these guns on each other.  They were settling disputes over cattle, dishonor, religion and a dozen other tribal issues.

What had always previously been  sporadic, low level conflicts when these matters came up had turned into murderous episodes of local military combat.  The fledging democracy in Southern Sudan is quite a ways from anything close to a presence in the "out back territory" miles from the roads, towns or capitol.  (The Darfur refugee camp is in Western Sudan.)

The government of Southern Sudan apparently is convinced that it has the moxy to collect the guns even as it admits that it lacks the capacity to control all parts of the country.  Ready or not, that government has decided that the wanton killing is worse -- and more dangerous to the country --  than over-extending its governmental powers to collect all these rifles.

Both the government and the people of Southern Sudan are taking the risk for peace.  All the parties in the region know and accept that conditions will most likely slide downhill for a while before they improve. 

It takes a serious commitment to peace to take such a chance.

MeanMesa wishes the people of Kyrgasztan a rapid and peaceful change in governments.  MeanMesa's compliments the brave, hopeful governments and people of Pakistan and Southern Sudan.

Now, to the quality of brave, hopeful citizens in this country.  How far will we go, what sacrifices will we willingly make  -- that is, what risks will we take -- for the sake of restoring, protecting and sustaining our own democracy?

Education Reform: Part Four - Creating Men & Creating Citizens

Our country's infatuation with considering education -- especially when gauging it with respect to its success and failures -- as a measure of its competitiveness in innovation, technology and other economic drivers may have left something very important "out of the equation."  Philosophically, such neglect or omission sounds  a "tone" of its own, albeit perhaps a rather abstract tone.

Sooner or later Americans will arrive again at the inescapable conclusion that although what one can do because he has been educated has an immediate importance, what one will be stands to shape the future of our nation just as profoundly.  

In the short term -- the time span always favored by "bite and grab" neo-cons -- inventions and efficiencies seem to be the whole body of the "life's blood" coursing through the veins of our country and culture.  However, more reasonable folks understand that, while such things are, indeed, important, the future will be a profile of the quality of citizens who live here, vote here and direct American society, that is, a profile of the essence of the American people.

Of course, such a claim must be very cautious not to imply that the essence of Americans will emerge as a quiet, cooperative, orderly almalgam of ideologues marching forward in lock step style uniformity.  That, again, would be suspicious akin to the neo-con approach where every issue is always politics and the only choice for a response is, too often, to simply dig-in one's heels, predict calamity and incite fear of change.

So, from what well will these American citizens spring?

There can be little question that they will, as is the case with all young humans, develop under the influence of a wide variety of encounters.  They will be products of their own childhoods and upbringing.  They will be influenced by the fundamental values of their parents, churches, coaches and pastors.  The events transpiring during those parts of life when they are aware of events transpiring will, unavoidably, influence their outlooks as adults -- as citizens.

The final product, that is, the nature of the citizen who will ultimately reconcile all these disparate experiences, will be an alloy formed from all sorts of things, many of which will present contradictions to other things. Decisions will be made.  Personalities will be formed.  Intuition and suspicion will each enjoy their own place in the mix.  

Now, to the topic.

A dominant influence in the outcome of this maturational journey will arise from the education of this man and this citizen.  (Of course, girls also become women and citizens...)  All those topics and subjects which might have seemed  somewhat irrelevant as a young student gazed from a classroom window to the fresh air of springtime or considered an upcoming party grow legs -- perhaps better said, grow roots.

In a myriad cacophony of hardly perceivable routes, the fundamental education a student receives will contribute to the foundation of his adulthood.  The underpinnings which will define the adult and the citizen are hard to determine as absolute specifics when considering what thoughts and knowledge lay at the base of his ideas at any given moment, but they are there.

Should anyone wish to dispute such an argument, just let him begin to extract the educational contributions from one of his complex thoughts.  An opinion on the Afghan War might hold particles of a past study of Alexander the Great.  An interest in agricultural subsidies might rely on a recollection of the agricultural beginning of the ancient Sumerian Empires.  A position on some piece of current legislation winding its way through the Congress might be derived from studying the Jim Crow period or accounts of labor disputes from the past.

There is not -- nor should there be -- a "knee jerk path" from some classroom topic encountered in one's youth to some feature of one's adulthood -- and citizenship.  Whether that class was sex education or civics, home economics or psychology, geology or mathematics, every moment spent in a public education classroom is an investment which will determine the quality of the citizen who will be formed by it.

Does anyone think that we, as a nation and a culture, can sustain our collective essence with uneducated, supercilious ninnies?  

An education system which focuses only on what commercial abilities might be inculcated into the youth of our country is sterile and suffocating, not to mention insufferably boring.  Further, this complaint of being "boring" not only fits well in respect to what occurs in the classrooms where this is the primary direction, but also in the citizens such a system will create as it staggers forward.

America has always needed dynamic, well-rounded, interested, interesting, well educated citizens, not simply better prepared "wage slaves," uninformed ideologues who vote as they are told or mindless soldiers who are unable to understand why they are asked to fight.

Just now, as the nation is rightfully flabbergasted at the pitiable state of our public education system's products, we see the crisis of 18 year old Junior High students who read as if they were third graders.  Of course, recoiling from such a realization, we a worried about what the future might hold as these  texting video game players begin to compete with the 300,000 Chinese engineers who graduate every year.

The shock of such a revelation naturally inspires us to a desperate "catch up" mentality, and it probably should.  However, fixing the outrageous defects in what we see today is one thing.  Building a tomorrow which is filled with individuals who have taken a bit of effort to form themselves in some significant way is, unhappily, quite another thing.

It is necessary to understand that we face two challenges.  The first is to educate the young ones for their future competitive, economic survival in a world where our public education system is plummeting to horrible depths of mediocrity and crushing incompetence.  The second, although a bit more abstract but equally critical, is to inspire our nation's students to develop their being to a much high quality, an undertaking which can never succeed in the absence of education.

MeanMesa's compliments to the President for his efforts to reform education.

Stay tuned for even more MeanMesa postings of education reform.

 

“How Far Must the Dow Plunge Before Confidence Is Restored?

Spending too much time "ducking" the old things? Spending not enough time dreaming about the new things?

These days hold only cold comfort for the timid.

The newspaper headline titling this post betrays what may be an unexamined paradox. The sensation of "confidence" is an allegedly rational one which may be insinuated by past history, but probably not the past history being cited in the discussions of this moment. Likewise, the "restore" idea is visiting every area of pain in the present economy. There are the dreamy desires of those who would like the declining value (market price?) of their real estate "restored" to the figures of a year or two ago. There are those who feel that economic recovery implies that the stocks they purchased in the past might be "restored" not only to their previous trading values, but also in their vivacity and mobility with respect to potential profits or losses demarcated in the "numbers and the systems of the past."

Folks who are entertaining this expectation for the "recovery" are not founding their ideas on circumstances which enjoy much of a chance to materialize in reality.

The less lofty have ambitions for a stable floor to the decline where, although the numerical "prices" of monetary assets would be defined by lower numerical values, the relative values would become, once more, as promising as they had been before. Perhaps even the wage earners are gradually becoming adjusted to the idea that their "restored" wages, although not bearing the same figures as on the old paychecks, might have a "restored" purchasing power or offer an investment opportunity equivalent to the ones on those old stubs.

The economic pedestrian has only a slightly more realistic view of the possibilities at hand. He, at least, has the common sense necessary to envision an economic solution which is not the "restoration" of his previous conditions, but something of a hybrid, located between full "recovery" or "restoration" and some intermediate state where his comfort level is comparable to what it was before.

Likewise, the critics and cynics (uh, that would be the hillbillies, Senate bigots and other free market criminals) seize on the predictable, codependent opportunity of establishing that true "recovery" or "restoration" can be nothing less than a sterile return to the artificial successes previously derived from the avarice of the recent past. They would, foolishly, like to establish that vision as the only possible outcome which might legitimatize Obama's desperate efforts ideologically. The public opinion attraction to that insistent approach is waning rapidly, most likely, as was the tragic case with "confidence," another victim of “common sense” on the main street.

My advice? Quit dreaming of the past. Quit trying to measure the possibilities and challenges of the near future by the currency of the past. All those “restorations” require more than a duplicated economic flow of factors and equations. Frankly, they all depend on more than a resurgence of familiar numbers on the Wall Street trading boards. They also, in a way as subtle as the “elephant in the living room,” also depend upon the resurrection of all sorts of imaginary asset values, labor rates, real estate ambitions and even international trade relations. There is no part of the economic stimulus plan which can re-materialize these old, opium dreams. They cannot be “restored,” because they were never material in the first place.

We can join the wailing of the Wall Streeters and the bankers and the quiet, arrogant ultra-rich with their effected accents if we like, but all the old deceptions of this crowd have evaporated just as concretely as the sale price of the duplex next door. All the illicit advantages they promoted as “sharp business practices” for the last dozen decades have been exposed now. Worse, their dreams of the precise value of such deceptions have also been smashed. They sold them to us once, and that worked out well for them. But now, those balloons have popped -- perhaps largely in the very faces of these “pretend Captains of Industry.”

No one can still reasonably hope that those “balloons” of theirs can be “restored.” Further, citizens of both the United States and the rest of the world where their extractive schemes have reached, seem to have a new, much more informed style of awareness of exactly what had been done before. The hordes of what had previously been “easy marks” have now entered a period of renewed understanding of what the responsibility of “self-interest” actually means. An understanding which excludes the necessity of supporting these parasites in the style and luxury of the past.

Obama gets this. One wonders how many familiars of the old White House have appeared once again with “offers he can’t refuse.” One wonders what was on their deflated faces when he did, in fact, refuse.

Without the hordes of the sleeping, the mistaken certainties of the past are beginning to rot on the vine. Mistaken certainties? The sanctity of the free market as the ultimate director of the economy. The acceptability of the well (and not so well) disguised, noncompetitive subterfuge, whether a no bid contract for billions or some doo-dad added to a House bill at the last minute making new profits an automatic reality for some crony.

But wait. No matter how refreshing it might be, a modern correction of these sorts of things amounts to little more than a tweeking to the system. Such a development might turn out to be the final result of this economic melt-down, but there are others -- developments which can hardly be defined as a “tweeking.” In any event, it looks constantly less likely to be a mere “restoration.”

The economy is not experiencing a little difficulty, it is evaporating before our very eyes. We have heard fifteen thousand reasons why this is happening, but what seems the most logical conclusion at this point is that no one has either any complete or rational explanation of precisely why this is happening or how far down it will go. All the old reasons are approaching a region of logical discontinuity far too similar to what might be encountered on a classic Riemann Equation’s first surface. We have probably left explanations or their possible comfort somewhere behind us.

The classical parameters which used to drive everything have ceased functioning. What was successful “tweeking” in the past system no longer produces any effect at all.

So, where does it go?

It “goes” through the discontinuity, and we go with it. The hilarious threats of creeping Socialism or nationalization or Fascism or vacant promises of capitalism or free marketism or a “restored” hegemony are all now parked in the "used car lot" history of the past, in our memories, in our dreams. That old currency fills the entire stage, constructs all the sets and writes all the play. We can make no new play which requires parts other than those old familiar ones. Our imagination has beached itself on the remnants of our fears.

The choices for the face of the future system will not be variations of the faces of the past. What has begun as an economic aberration has become an ideological meat grinder, and its product may well arrive without so much as a reasoned hint or even a wild speculation from the past.

The “new thing” approaches.

It won’t be all bad, either, but these last few months before its arrival will be terrifying -- especially for those who were able to prosper in the false world of the false values of the past. Still, we must prepare ourselves for a new system. It arrives just as the widower's new wife. The recipes and the bedroom, although quite satisfying, can never "restore" what has passed before. We have no firm ideas about what the new system will require of us or what new opportunities it may present, of course, but we do know one thing. We prepare ourselves by watching for its arrival with hope, not dread.

Adjusting our ideas of “necessity” and “comfort” might help a little. Experimenting with values which have evolved beyond imposed scarcity and insatiable greed and impossible security is probably a good idea, even if such a discipline hasn’t ever been reasonable in the past. We must clear our road weary slate of ancient false priorities, thrash out the cobwebs and steel ourselves for a new day.

As humans, we are now stranded with the frightening necessity of charting our way forward. We find the press of events has cast us not as survivors, but as designers.

The “new thing” approaches.

Mean and Tasteless Poetry: Welcoming Sara

The milk man said good morning 52

Morning, ma'am,

Your two per cent is less today than gas is by the gallon.
And, your neighbors are excited about the big election.
That cagey fighter pilot's called out missus Palin,
sweet Alaskan butt, to remind him of his last erection.

Victory! Senator McCain's found special, secret polls,
big news showing Obama's crew sliding into disrepair -
under attack by strong, yet compassionate, Christian souls
and a vampy veep who cleans her rifle while she skins her bear.

Oh my! Who could compete? He's just certain her wave will last!
She's quick, delightful, the governor and, quite the mama!
Abortions, gays and those Russians! When the final vote is cast,
her interviews will have elected Barack Obama!

Will you be wanting cream tomorrow?

Empires: Brief and Empty Histories

BLOGdoc 5 Separations November 22, 2007

The first chapter of the train wreck that is Iraq divided all public speech between those who have experienced combat and those who have not.

The second chapter is here with us now. It divides those who have read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and those who have not. The United States arose more quickly than the Roman Empire. Do we dare expect its fall to proceed more slowly? More rationally? More comfortably?

No American Rubicon will be required in its passage from Republic to Empire. Our modern Rubicon requires only sufficient fear, executed effectively, for our ultimate willingness to accept the unbridled ambition of pathetic incompetents with tragic, meager goals and corresponding bargain basement promises.

Being driven by the fear of one’s own legacy is similar to being addicted to white sugar. Or maybe, to even less tasteful, high fructose corn syrup. The “drug” is available, dependable and destructive.

It becomes dull, boring. There is no final crisis of the spirit from self-observation which might resurrect human life in the afflicted. There is only a long, slow decline. There is no fiery moment of self-reclamation, only a suspicious kind of irritated soul more akin to a lingering toothache.

A Chinese proverb of suspicious origin:

“If your servant carries the stone three miles the first day and you beat him. And on the second day, he carries the stone eight miles and you beat him. You should plan on three miles per day.”

As active voters we are, in a sense, the servants of our Constitution and our democracy. The perceptions of the self-image of these “masters who have stones which must be carried” are inflated by their transitory positions and power.

We must never see them as anything other than vacuous.

Will we, as individual citizens, dare dream that we, as individuals, might try to do better?