John Edwards Withdraws from Presidential Race

Senator John Edwards has withdrawn from the presidential race. He had run as the Vice Presidential nominee with Senator John Kerry in the previous presidential election. They were defeated by President Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney. During that campaign, Edwards sounded populist themes which would become much more prominent in his recent run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Edwards was considered the most liberal of the viable candidates, though Dennis Kucinich had more liberal views, most notably advocating a single-payer health care system. Edwards' decision to run as a progressive is consistent with the rise of the more progressive wing of the Democratic party which has occurred during the Bush years following the defeats of moderate candidates Kerry and former Vice President Al Gore.

Though Edwards seemed to adroitly predict the mood of the Democratic party during the current nomination process, his candidacy was hindered by a number of factors. Both Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama have run campaigns promoting policies that are not as progressive as those of Edwards, but that are substantially more progressive than those pursued by the administration of former President Bill Clinton.

Further, he suffered from being a white male in a competition with the prospect of the first African American nominee from a major party and the first such nomination of a woman. His candidacy was met with disapproval by many pundits who complained that his campaign was to confrontational for a country that, in their judgment, has become too partisan.

Despite his strong pro-union rhetoric, he faced strong competition for union support from Clinton, who benefited from a superior organization and ties to unions dating back to the presidency of her husband. former President Bill Clinton. Also, the lack of a win in either a primary or a caucus made Edwards campaign seem somewhat quixotic.

Though the impact of his withdrawal remains to be seen, some trends are evident already. Firstly, it is clear that the Democratic party will nominate an establishment figure. Hillary Clinton, despite running to the left of ex-President Clinton, still represents the interest of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the moderate to conservative group that rose to prominence in the Democratic party with the election of Bill Clinton. Members of the Kennedy family, including daughter of President John F. Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy, and her uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy, have endorsed Obama. This endorsement is notable because the Kennedy family has represented the more liberal part of the Democratic party, and Obama is arguably the most conservative candidate for the nomination as he was the only candidate against individual mandates in his plan for universal health care.

Edwards' departure from the race could presage a movement to the right by both Obama and Clinton. Both candidates seemed to propose more liberal polices only in response to Edward's proposals. The remaining candidates may want to start positioning themselves to attract independent and conservative voters in the general election.

McCain Wins Florida Republican Primary

John McCain has won the Florida Republican Presidential primary. Former mayor of New York Rudolph Giuliani is expected to endorse McCain. The Republican race is now considered to be a two man contest between John McCain and former governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney. The competition between the two men has become more pointed as tonight's primary approached.

Neither man has been able to unite the party so far. McCain has been a stalwart conservative for many years. But, he has raised suspicions in Republican party for worrying about intolerance in Christian right movement, supporting campaign finance reform, and for opposing Bushes tax cuts. Recently he has embraced the recently deceased Jerry Falwell, Sr. and claimed that he voted against the Bush tax cuts for the lone reason that they were not offset by spending cuts.

McCain was a war hero in the Vietnam war. He was captured by the enemy and was tortured for years by them. As I explain in the post Bloody Flag: Our Gratitude, but Not our Endorsement I think that the very reall possibility that McCain suffered mental damage during this episode makes him to risky a pick for President and Commander and Chief.

Mitt Romney has two major problems in gaining the Republican nomination. He was governor of Massachusetts a liberal state were he governed to the left of the mainstream Republican party. He is also a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints which many conservative Christians view as a heresy. During the end of his governorship Mitt Romney was able to appeal to conservatives in the party by staunchly opposing the Massachusetts' Supreme Court's decision to legalize same sex marriages.

Governor Romney tried to counter suspicion of his religious beliefs by making a speech in which he argued that his faith led him the same conservative values as more traditional Christians. He claimed that conservative followers of religion should unite against Americans with secular beliefs.

The former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee hoped to use his conservative record and the fact that he had been Baptist minister to energize the Christian conservatives. But he was opposed by fiscal conservatives who viewed him as to liberal on financial issues. In the South Carolina primary he made the following statement "In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell them what to do with the pole, that's what we'd do." This statement did seem odd given his strong opposition to sodomy. However, this vulgar appeal to supporters of the Confederate Flag was not enough to secure a victory. He no longer is considered to be a viable candidate, but he is considered a likely choice for Vice President.

The Democratic Primary for President in Florida was not seriously contested because the party stripped the state of its delegates for moving the primary forward. Senator Clinton gained the most voters.

The Other F-Word

The main thing this current election season in the United States has me thinking is that the People do not appear ready for Freedom. I know it has been said, but as long as we are content with this appearance of democracy, and as long as we are ambivalent about the ownership of power, there is little hope for drive toward freedom. Squabbles at the party level are almost meaningless, and I always feel like an outsider in such discussions, even when I share the views of some of the others participating. I do believe some level of participation, even in a near meaningless operation of politics, to be important because participation is an essential element in the drive for freedom. I believe the best route for me at this stage is some level of devotion to particular causes. There appears to be enough slack in the arena of particular causes to travel from A to C, to include the work done by Amnesty International, various environmental groups, various groups for relative equality, and the like.

A lot of the party-politics commentators, in the US at least, don't even try anymore. It is all fluff and flatulence, cotton candy farts. Most of the People seem glued to one side or the other and/or they are completely apathetic. I don't know where to look for others like me, the “sticky ones”. We're the ones who aren't completely unglued, but we fail to find impassioned understanding or purpose in national politics. For a long time, I think I was not okay with being a sticky one. My most likely group of friends appear to be tightly glued, and their conversations take a form within which I find myself unable to comment. It is not that the conversations lack fascinating, engaging, interesting and informative commentary (better than anything on TV); they just seem to originate from a place I've never visited.

Many have warned that the political system is broken. It is not time for a change. It is time to trash the whole damned thing. Freedom, Equality, Justice are all in trouble. It is indeed time to wave the bloody flag, now. When the bloody flag is waved too late, you get the French Revolution. The French Revolution was perhaps the last significant step toward freedom, yes, but at what costs? It is time for One World, One People, One Heart. When those stories appear showing how this world leader is related to that one, and that one to the other one; it is not some quirky coincidence. It is the status quo for practically all of written history, and this status quo is the enemy of freedom. I am not saying the leaders themselves are the enemy. The problem is that the leaders are more glued to each other than they are to the People. I will never understand why people feel the need to go around saying, “I hate Bush.” If your focus is on hating Bush, then you have bought the ticket to the magic show, folks.

Many of the learned claim that agriculture was the start of the problem. They hark back to the past, exclaiming that are hunting and gathering ancestors did not have the social woes of today. Everyone was fed and there was relative equality. Agriculture, ownership of land and animals, and the need to maintain control are the parents of the present starvation, inequality, and war. Maybe it is my ignorance showing, but I disagree. Ownership is irrelevant without Power. Our present woes are not only the result of, but the natural evolution of hunting and gathering culture, a culture of isolation, zero dissent, in which the solution to problem folk was to either murder or exile them. To call such a culture egalitarian is facetious. They were all slaves to an invisible lord. Ownership of power belonged to the culture and not the people. The people were enslave by the norms to which they were enculturated. Slavery, by definition, excludes labels such as “egalitarian.” Hunting and gathering culture could not evolve into peaceful larger populations because it engendered a mindset that expected simple, quick and permanent solutions to problems. There was little violence, yes, but that violence was murder, and it was the standard answer to noncooperation or inability to cooperate for generations of humans. People from that type of culture are not going to “play well with others.” In that type of culture, only the people you know have the capacity of good. The others are almost always evil and untrustworthy (incubate fascist nationalism?). When the mainstays of conflict resolution are murder and exile, what hope is there of dealing with larger populations, juxtaposition of differing populations, ample food supply, more babies, and the conflicts that arise from those things? None. The development of agriculture provided the landscape for the illumination of the defective psychology of hunting and gathering culture. Isolation combined with lack of dissent is not peace, and it certainly is not freedom. I think they call it, um, fascism. Let us see – intolerance of individualism, complete subservience of individuality to the invisible Culture Lord, a black and white world, death and exile as punishment. Yep, I think they call that F-A-S-C-I-S-M. Humbug to the whole learned, shallow-minded lot. Shenanigans! Shenanigans!

I welcome my true birth as a Sticky one. I embrace the flexibility of stickiness. I embrace conflict negotiation, acceptance of individualism, and an end to cultural enslavement whether by normative standards or dictator. I understand that true peace results from personal control multiplied. I embrace spiritedness and calm reflection. I want more than a magical mirror of freedom. I want more than trains that run on time. I want more than a belly that does not know hunger. I want FREEDOM, the other F-word. Power to People and all that Jazz. I say I want an Evolution. I say I want to STICK. Stay Truly Individual, Conscious, & Kind. Do it; do it; do it; do it, now.

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Nacirema Culture: A Look at Horace Miner

Body Ritual of the Nacirema by
Horace Miner

Horace Miner's article reminds us of the difficulty many have of examining the practices of their own culture. One person's normal is another's exotic. Rituals are often of particular interests as examples of exotic behavior. Miner avoided religious ritual and went about describing typical American behaviors that the average American probably does not view as ritual. On the subject of religion, however, I remember someone's commentary that Christianity had cannibalism as an important component as the adherents regularly consumed both the body and blood of the one they worshiped. I don't remember the article or the author offhand, but the article's purpose was similar to that of Miner's. In writing about the Nacerima, Minor notes, "The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease."

Reading Miner, I was bemused by the thought of dryers as head ovens. I can't believe he didn't mention the high walking sticks attached to the footware of women as these are often the source of the continual rant that, “one must suffer for beauty,” or some such. Thinking in general of Miner's statements that the Nacirema find the body ugly in its natural state, I'm reminded of Leo Buscaglia. I remember flipping through channels and stopping on some seventies-looking production with a bearded man talking about just this subject. I particularly remember his advice to get to know your own smell if only briefly, to stop with the soaps and the deodorants and smell yourself for god's sake. It's probably difficult for today's average American that the whole world isn't obsessed with such things. Many of us have heard Americans (and others) complain about the smell on French public transport during the summer time. One of my first love interests was a boy from India, and I remember his commentary that in his village people didn't really notice such things as body order or bad breath so much. He did adjust to the American way of doing things once here, except for the unfashionable seventies dress and glowing appreciation of disco.


I found Miner's use of exotic terminology enlightening. The idea of required gifts as opposed to the exchange of money for medical services was particularly sweet, as I believe gifts for such services as opposed to money may sound more off-putting. Medicine men, Mouth men, Listeners, and Herbalists certainly conjour different images than doctor, dentist, psychologist and pharmacist. Oh, the head dresses, strange makeup, spicy hot breezes, and continual beat of some invisible tribal drum excite and cause fear. And how exotic that a whole culture practices S&M and show no shame in visiting special practitioner of that art or, in other words, Americans go to the dentist expecting pain and oftentimes they get it.


And how could I not be put in mind of the magical Japanese toilets, fairly accurately depicted in an episode of The Simpsons, when Miner speaks of the ritualized excretory functions and the use of the excreted matter to help discern illness. The Japanese have toilets that keep track of the makeup of one's excrement in order to warn of possible medical conditions. The scales that keep track of body fat measurements and such seem elementary by comparison. These toilets do all kinds of things. I don't remember the list, but I do remember the feeling of fascination.

Our Gratitude, but Not our Endorsement

New York Times Endorses John McCain

I firmly believe certain things that should immediately disqualify a candidate from being President. The President of the United States has the ability to destroy the world through a number of means. Our nuclear arsenal is sufficient to end all human life on the planet in a matter of minutes. We also have developed research in biological warfare, for defenses purposes only (wink, wink), several other means of destroying all human life, or at least some rather large portion there of, in a matter of weeks. We also have the means to destroy a large proportion if not all the agricultural products of the world which would, of course, result in huge famines. And, these are only the things that we know about.

The mental stability of a candidate for President must be of primary importance in determining his or her fitness for office. This is why the New York Times erred in endorsing John McCain for the Republican nomination. The reality is John McCain was tortured for years in Vietnam. I am not saying that he is some Manchurian Candidate who will bring back communism from the grave. But the entire point of torture, is not to glean information that will save the world before the commercial break, but rather to degrade the mind to make it more pliable. Given that his captors had years to accomplish this goal, it is safe to assume that they made some headway.

John McCain is known for his quick temper. He is already the oldest of the Presidential candidates, and therefore he is also in danger of the assaults old age make upon the mind. Though he has performed well as Senator and as a presidential candidate, his very military training may be hiding mental damage that could be very dangerous in a critical situation. I worked in a residential hotel for seniors. I saw several veterans go from being so sharp and polished you felt they could report to duty in an instant, to raving mad lunatics wearing their underwear on their heads in a matter of hours. When you talk to veterans from World War II they can recount the horrors of battle as though it were yesterday. We must always remember the sacrifice these men make for us isn't about a day but a lifetime. We owe McCain our gratitude, but the Presidency is something we mustn't thank him with.

The Use of Humanities, Part Two

Stanley Fish, apparently not content with the absurdity of his first exposition on the Humanities, seems determined, in memory of Sir Edmond Hillary's ascent of Mount Everest, to ascend to a peak of ridiculousnesses never before attained by man.

He hoped to clarify his original argument by stating that he did not find great works of literature worthless, but that he did find the analysis of them worthless. What is so different about the humanities than other areas of study? Imagine saying that while technology is useful, basic science is useless. One would be laughed out thinking society.

The humanities play a larger role in our lives than at any other time since hunting and gathering societies. More and more, technology and manufacturing are only used as a means of conveying content. While the auto industry is slowly dying in the United States, the movie studios and software companies are bringing in the hard currency that our nation so needs. The last century was the century of technology changing the minds of humanity. Though this century will still see gains in technology, it will be our stories that change the nature of technology.

Just like every other pursuit, training in the basics creates breakthroughs. America has been the leader in creating new intellectual properties. If we follow Fish's advice we won't be for long.

Set Bill O'Reily Straight

If you favour things like war or a low tax, low service economy, you should admit that there will be negative consequences to that policy unless, of course, you're Bill O'Reily. Despite O'Reily's claim to operate in the "No-spin Zone," he refuses to admit that the failure to provide needed services to those scarred by war, may, and in fact does, result in large numbers of veterans who live the hellish existence of homelessness. Don't let him get away with it. Sign the this open letter http://www.billwaswrong.com
to let Mr. O'Reily know we are watching while he fibs.

Trees and Limbs: Roots that Move

It's that time of year when many people around the world are returning back to school. Some are going to a new school. Maybe even today is someone's first day at school. I remember my first day at kindergarten. The place wasn't really that far from where I lived. I swift run across a bean field would have made the trip even faster. Being a little girl, feeling my feet sink into the mounds of dirt while the leafy greens tickled my arms and legs scared me. My mom and I took the long way around. I don't remember a whole lot about the day. I had on a brown dress with a floral print. The floral was printed on 70s transparent polyester with a solid brown polyester silk underneath. We began to turn in towards the door. My sweaty hand slipped from my mother's grip, and in a moment that hand was clasped to my other one around a tree. I closed my eyes and anointed my checks with prayerful drops. I had been fine at home, hanging out on the porch with papa, gently pulling the comb through the gray hairs that sat like a crown around his bald head. He didn't stop her from taking me. He didn't stop her from prying my hands free, hands and legs that quickly wrapped around my mother's body. Perhaps it was my grip that kept the tree from betraying me. But no, I watched as the blurred tree moved further away. Coward. Before I was done cursing the fleeing tree, my mother's legs had carried us all the way to the door. “Let go, now.” I squeezed harder. “I'll be back to get you in a little while.” Lightening cracked from deep in my chest. My cheeks were pelted. My limbs went a bit slack, then slid away from my mother's trunk. I watched as my mother's legs carried her away. Only just then did I learn to walk.

It Is Time to Kill Fredo

It has become clear that the Democrats will accomplish nothing until the election of the next president. There will be no impeachment hearings. There will be no time table for withdrawal from Iraq. There is not even much evidence of effective congressional oversight what so ever. While having a majority in the house has been some what useful, the same can not be said for the Senate where the Democrats seemed to have gained nothing but blame by their majority. As sad as this circumstance is, it allows the Democrats to take care of some unfinished business.

Joseph Lieberman dropped all pretenses when he endorsed McCain for president almost right off the bat. The reality of the matter is McCain is a very conservative Republican. A McCain presidency would thwart almost all the Democrat's goals. McCain is running on exactly the same economic program that has resulted in flat wages, declining benefits, huge private and public debts, the ruin of the housing market, and the steady decline of the dollar. It is not possible to endorse McCain and still share goals with the Democratic Party.

As with Fredo, it is difficult to know what rules Lieberman's mind treachery or idiocy. For years he has displayed craven cowardly treachery. When he confronted Clinton, he did not do so as a man, face to face. He waited until Clinton was out of the country to stab him in the back. If he was motivated by conviction there was certainly no courage involved. Then he slandered fellow members of his party with the ridiculous charge of partisanship as Bush repeatedly slandered the Democrats. Lieberman just flat out lied to his constituency during his election about his intentions to be more critical of the war as well as his intention to vote for a Democratic president. Not surprisingly, after the voters had been safely duped, Lieberman gloated that he could do as he pleased.

One would have to be forgiven for supposing that he was a mole placed by Bin Laden as no one man has done more to degrade the position of the United States and Israel. He did everything in his power to prevent any oversight of Bush's incredible incompetence. He egged Israel on into its disastrous war with Lebanon. If Israel is destroyed, Lieberman will doubtlessly be remembered as a great hero by the Arab people.

If the Democrats are going to succeed in saving our nation and our allies, there will have to be party discipline never before seen amongst the Democratic party. In particular, Blue Dog Democrats will have to believe that they must support their party or try their luck as Republicans. The Democrats need discipline more than they need the majority in the Senate.

Michael should have killed Fredo in Havana. We're living in Havana, folks. Let us do what Michael should have done by stripping Lieberman of his chairmanships and allowing him to live with the consequences of his actions.

What do the Humanities Do?

I used to read critiques of the New York Times by 60's radicals who declared that the paper was a dead relic of the past that had nothing more to offer the world. I was always mystified by this criticism. For years my morning started with an order of Beignets, a cup of cafe au lait at Cafe Du Monde, and the New York Times. Now my opinion has changed. I no longer read the Times with the joy that I once did. The writing has been in decline for years. What used to be a quick morning massage for the brain has long since turned into a dissipated flop in the Lay Z Boy.


Recently the Times has become a parody of itself. Who can remember the last time Maureen Dowd had anything remotely interesting or relevant to say? When every single social issue of the day is viewed through the writer's own relentlessly narcissistic sense of self-importance, the exercise is useless except for that rare voyeur whose sad urges are slaked by watching other people masturbate. Rather than the paper of record, it has become the paper of a time gone by. From its shameless and dishonest shilling of the Iraq war to its recent hiring of Bill Kristol the calender at the Times seems to have stuck at 1980.

Nothing could be more representative of this than the blog, Think Again, by Stanley Fish. Like Kristol and David Brooks he lives in a world where the calender always reads 1980 and grownups like himself save us from the excesses of the Sixties, and progressive values are constantly paired with the foolish excesses of youth. But 27 years have passed since 1980. The promised corrective of Reaganomics actually have produced the first generation that is no more educated, no more wealthy and will live less long than its predecessor. The incredible contention by all these authors is that the fate of the Reagan generation is the result of liberalism a now full generation removed.

Though Fish may be less brazen in his mendacity than Kristol or Brooks, his comments are far more insidious. He constantly tells us to ignore what our eyes tell us, and believe what he feels in his heart -- that the rejection of the liberalism of the 60's, which was itself a pale shadow of the progressivism of the 30's and 40's, will somehow bring us to the promised land. When he writes of the decline of public universities, he deigns to mention in passing the fact that funding has been slashed; but the real villains, he perceives, are regulation and the hippies from some 40 years ago. After going on a debating tour with Dinesh D'Souza, it is clear that Mr. Fish has gone native. His review of Indoctrination U does point out some of the holes in the "documentary," but he is careful to make it clear that he sees political bias in teaching as a problem, a big problem. In another post he goes further, stating that asking a student to compare Ahab to President Bush is prohibited despite the undeniable objective similarities. In other words, if the truth upsets a rightist political sensibilities, it verbotten in class.

When he lists departments that have a potential to be politicized he mentions, of course, Gender Studies, African American History, and the like. Noticeably absent of course are Economics or Business. I have a friend who had an entire class during medical school about why socialized medicine doesn't work. Did he mention this. And is his most recent book about lemming-like devotion to Reaganomics and what it has done to our economy. Of course not, it is, you guessed it, another book warning about liberal menace at Universities.

It isn't just in politics that Fish is stuck in the eighties. He completely fails to understand the nature of our current economy. In his most recent post, he explains how humanities serve no purpose but pleasure and emphatically denies that they have use in the economy. This might come as some surprise to George Lucas who literally invented the blockbuster with Star Wars, the classic hero myth reimagined, or J. K. Rowling whose Harry Potter: The Philosopher's Stone, a classic hero myth which suspiciously resembled Star Wars, made her richer than the Queen, or Rumiko Takahashi, the mangaka, whose innovative use of classical Japanese literary themes transformed manga and anime making her one of the richest women in Japan.

Fish fundamentally does not understand that 27 years have passed and everything has changed. He is the perfect example of what the times has become. To mangle John Lennon, all the Times prints is yesterday, now it is some other day.

Creative Instability

I don't have a fully developed voice, yet, for L'étandard Sanglant. I've blogged before, but not for quite some time. The whole idea of this blog and accompanying website is still gelling in my mind. It's all too easy to throw around nice words without ever really forming a “thing.” I know that I want to create something that inspires me to know more about others and to be more impassioned in regards to freedom and justice on a more regular, if not daily, basis. I want visitors to find useful information on the stuff of culture, so I don't plan to stick to any particular subject matter. That's not to say that others who choose to blog here may not specialize in a certain area.

At the moment, I feel that I'm in too many pieces to focus. I say that as a good thing. It's a highly dynamic and developing state. Of course such a state does have its accompanying instability, but I'm no stranger to searching for balance. I'm in theory building mode. My world view appears to be uncommon. I want to explore that more and develop it into a “thing.” So, I have some reading to do to gain a better understanding and perspective. I have a particular love for Kant. I haven't visited with him for a while. I believe I have something in common with Kafka as far as world view. I want to explore that here. So there, I'll be blogging about Kafka over the following weeks. So, I've come upon a plan, Kafka and storytelling.

I've been visiting with some Deaf friends over the Internet. Storytelling is a big part of Deaf culture as it is in all cultures. Sharing stories is great way to communicate and learn about others, and Deaf culture is rich with form of networking and forming ties. Also, the storyteller is forced to pull out scattered pieces and reform them in way that almost always provide the storyteller with a richer self-knowledge.

The Works of Franz Kafka

Potpourri of Republican Misinformation

Michael Gerson's recent column in the Washington Post is a regular potpourri of Republican misinformation. As such, it provides an excellent opportunity to take on the canards du jour.

Iraq
He starts out with the Republican line that things are improving because casualties are down in Iraq, and there are portions of the nation that are relatively more calm. This is somewhat true as it goes, but that does not mean that we are making great strides in Iraq. On the contrary, this reduction in casualties has been accomplished in the same manner that all reductions in casualties have been accomplished by Republican presidents since Eisenhower, namely, virtual unconditional surrender to the enemy.

It has become clear that the reduction in casualties has been effected through the novel counterinsurgency plan of surrendering to the insurgency. Rather than creating a monopoly of military forces in the central government, or even in regional governments, the United States has gone from tribe to village paying off all and sundry with cash and weapons not to attack U. S. troops. They are also asked to fight the Al Queda. One assumes that the U. S. military will bring in O. J. Simpson to lecture the sundry on the techniques he has been using to track down the real killers. Al Queda was never in Iraq, although the brand was appropriated by a small group of fighters.

The reality is that Iraq is ruled by a Shiite government that seems to differ from Saddam Hussein only in that they only control a small portion of Iraq, and that they are much more willing to work with our enemies to degrade our strategic position in the region. The Iraq war has already spread into Turkey and threatens to spread throughout the region. Iraq is still leaking tens of thousands of refugees who themselves have the potential of destabilizing neighboring regimes.

Meanwhile the cost of the war is growing as measured in loss of strategic power by the United States. Korea, which actually had nuclear weapons, which they didn't even need given their ability to destroy Seoul with conventional weapons, has extracted meaningful concessions from the United States and already broken its promises again. What are we going to do about it when our army is busy surrendering in Iraq?

Africa
The Bush administration may have denied the reality of global warming though almost every orifice, but strangely the military prepared for the predicted water wars by strengthening its position in Africa. Unfortunately, China, our likely adversary in Africa, has also been preparing the ground for future conflict in Africa. With an unencumbered army and economy that hasn't been wrecked with irrational tax cuts. China has been buying friends fast.

Iran
Then there is Iran. Bush has rushed headlong into conflict with Iran as if he had an extra army to engage in a second war. Perhaps unique in the history of warfare, the Bush administration prepared for the war they had planned in Iraq from before his election, by trying to reduce the size of our military. Initial victories can be achieved by air power, but occupation requires boots on the ground. We used to pretend we were prepared to fight two and a half wars. The reality is we can barely fight a half war.

Not only do we not have the military resources to effect regime change in Iran, but our troops are also effectively hostages in Iraq. If Bush attacks Iran or if Israel attacks Iran, you can be sure that Iran will attack US troops in Iraq. It is only logical to assume that Iran learned the lesson of the outcomes of Iraq and Korea, and understood that it is much better if your weapons of mass destruction are not imaginary. Who knows what form the Iranian attack on US troops would take, but devastating losses in Iraq would truly hurt the strategic position of the United States. New troops take time to train and we have, in effect, no reserves.

Taxes
On the tax issue, I am always amazed by the Marie Antoinette quality of Republican rhetoric on the issue. They point to an economy that has expanded though it has not benefited the vast majority of the population. Now almost everyone predicts a recession. The reality is that democracy simply can not continue in a country were all the economic benefit accrues to a small minority. Worse, the huge deficits caused by the tax cuts have severely weakened our economic clout with the rest of the world especially vis a vis China. As mentioned above, China is winning the war in Africa before the first shots are fired.

Education
Finally the Republican message on “No Child Left Behind” is perhaps the most disingenuous of all. No Child Left Behind was designed to destroy our public school system. At its core, it is merely a system of defunding schools. It requires universal competence which is almost by definition unattainable. Republicans make little effort to hide their desire to destroy the public school system which they oppose both on principal and because it is a source of union power. Republicans often speak of the need to get rid of bad teachers, but bad teachers simply are not the problem. Teaching is a high-stress, low-paying job that has enormous turnover. The problem is not getting rid of bad teachers; it is keeping any teachers at all. Of course Republicans oppose increasing the amount spent on teacher-pay but they would like to increase the pay of the best performing teachers at the expense of less well-performing teachers. The result would be those with poorly performing teachers would be left with no teachers at all.

There is a reality problem, but it is with Republicans.

Why "Bloody Flag" and "Létendard Sanglant"?

The inspiration for the name of this blog, BloodyFlag.com, as well as of the main site, L'étendardSanglant.com, comes from La Marseillaise, the French national anthem. We Americans often speak of our special relationship with England. However we have quite the special relationship with France also as without them, we would have been unlikely to have won the American Revolution. The Statue of Liberty is only the representation of the real gift of providing decisive aid to American independence. You will find the anthem in French and in English translation at Fordham. The bloody flag is raised in recognition that freedom and equality for all peoples are not well-established across the globe. Though for some the image of a bloody flag brings to mind the gore of war, one must remember that blood is not only that which oozes from a combative wound. The presence of blood can be a sign that something is amiss, such as the bleeding nose. Blood binds people to one another. Blood boils with passion and stokes the fires of love. Blood signifies fertility. And yes, life's blood, is often included in the price for freedom. Blood given in this manner is to be honored and held sacred. Life's blood transports oxygen, vital fluids, cures and more, necessary to sustain life. Blood is the restorative force of balance and peace. Inequality, injustice and denial of freedom are all gory violence that exist both visibly and invisibly. The bloody flag at once signifies that these ills exists and represents the cure that rids us of them. This cure takes many forms and employs many methods, including nonviolent ones. We here at the Bloody Flag and L'étendard Sanglant are revolutionaries for peace, equality and justice. We believe in an active, energetic and dynamically peaceful stance. We here will leave Movements to the realms of the bowels. Revolution is that which lives in the realm of the mind, the soul, and of the planet's life blood. Allons enfant!