Mending the Dick Cheney Heart

In my transient passages through corporate America and my distant observations of corporate government, I am occasionally reminded of the oft-spoken lament of Commissioner Gordon of the Batman TV series (the old one with Adam West, one of the funniest shows ever on the tube). Contemplating the criminal genius of the Penguin, Riddler, or Joker, the Commissioner would mutter, "if only that mind could be used for good, and not evil..."

Take a look at some of the dramatis personae of our post-9/11 world, and you get the same impression. Dick Cheney: very smart guy. Saddam Hussein: also intellectually gifted. Don Rumsfeld: sharp as broken glass. I'm betting even Osama's pretty smart, though I don't know that much about him. Every one of them is, of course, black-hearted, soul-dead, bloodsucking evil.

These psychotic and murderous tyrants have one common trait: a tumor-like sense of supremacy that is based exclusively on their intellectual grasp of people and events. So when Time Magazine proclaimed earlier this month:

SCIENTISTS HAVE EXORCISED THE GHOST FROM THE MACHINE NOT because they are mechanistic killjoys but because they have amassed evidence that every aspect of consciousness can be tied to the brain.

I had to wonder what kind of a devil's bargain had been made, especially considering that there is another stream of research that tends toward a different, more holistic conclusion. If we are going to conceive of our brains as "machines," as Time Magazine would have it, or of our hearts as mechanical pumps, then cynical tyrants like Cheney and Hussein will continue to dominate us.

Now the brain is no more at fault in this than is my cat: the problem is a matter of perspective, or how we use (and abuse) the physico-psychological tools we are born with. To declare brain the King of Konsciousness is to misuse it, because then it is no longer an organic part of a living whole, but a separate and distant tyrant of the body. This is how every tyranny is started and perpetuated: through a declaration of supremacy—the same kind of supremacy-speak that says, "my country, right or wrong," and "dissent is treason."

So if we're going to rid the world of tyranny, we will have to clear it out wherever we find its ideological substrate. At the same time, we will have to affirm a more truly modern and quantum view of ourselves and the universe: that feeling is as valid as thought; that a poet can see reality as clearly as a physicist; and that the organic unity of being is a more practical metaphor on ourselves and the universe than some anatomical hierarchy. If we can reach for such an understanding, and teach it to our children, then science will be deepened; thought itself will be given the freedom that comes with equality; diplomacy will more frequently be considered over war; and tyrants, when they appear, will be easier to recognize and dispel.

Dick Cheney's heart is physically rotting not because of age, poor diet, or inadequate medical care: it is rotting from neglect, from a deeply cynical subjection. Demons are not born; they are made through the deviant belief in supremacy: one species' supremacy over Nature; one country's supremacy over the world; one man's supremacy over his nation; or one organ's supremacy over the bodily whole. If enough of us can overcome that belief, and keep those who are poisoned with it away from positions of leadership, then we may reach the day when Commissioner Gordon will never have to wonder again.

A Compendium of Sanity

Let's celebrate, for a moment, the voices of sanity that still exist in our media, art, and politics.

We begin with Krugman & Herbert, the rock 'em-sock 'em writing tandem of each Monday's New York Times op-ed, who delivered again yesterday—this time trading hats, with Herbert doing the economic piece (on the beyond-appalling abyss that widens between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else) and Krugman taking on Bush's troop surge. If you don't have Times Select yet, and have the smallest appreciation for lucid social and political commentary, these two guys alone are worth the $50 a year.

Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, makes a point about the hanging of Saddam that I have made every time I've talked about capital punishment. Here's an excerpt:

Kill Hitler? You would have to be mad to do so. Yet that is undoubtedly what we would have done if he hadn't killed himself in 1945. Hussein is not in the same league as Hitler, but, nevertheless, in a small way his execution represents a wanton and vandalistic destruction of important research data.

He should have been locked up, by all means. Kept him in jail for the rest of his life, to be sure. But to execute him was irresponsible. Hussein could have provided irreplaceable help to future historians of the Iran-Iraq war, of the invasion of Kuwait and of the subsequent era of sanctions culminating in the invasion. Uniquely privileged evidence on the American government's enthusiastic arming of Hussein in the 1980s is now snuffed out at the tug of a rope (no doubt to the relief of Donald Rumsfeld and other guilty parties; it is surely no accident that the trial of Hussein neglected those of his crimes that might — no, would — have implicated them).

I haven't read any of Dawkins' books yet, though I intend to; yet every time I see or hear him in the blogosphere, his voice resonates. Whatever your feelings about religion and Dawkins' views about it, there can be hardly any dispute that this guy is a ringing voice of sanity in the midst of an increasingly insane world.

We have written a lot here about the utter depravity of the Catholic Church—or specifically, its leadership and its clergy. Now come more revelations: some of their heavy hitters were stooges for the KGB and their ilk. But by God, if we let that Madonna woman climb onto one more cross in a concert or let Dan Brown write one more novel about Jesus' sex life, why all hell will break loose...But in case you haven't been visiting here lately, we featured a BBC video a while back that clearly exposed the perversions and deceit of the Catholic hierarchy.

Finally, let's join Code Pink in letting Congress know what we voted for back in November; and it sure as hell wasn't troop surge.

21st Century Journalism (and Geek Wednesday)

Next week, Gitmo turns five, and AI has some ideas on how this infamous anniversary might be observed.

Before we get to Geek Wednesday, how about this bizarre statement for our quote of the week: “we said we thought it would be better if they delayed until after Id, and use the delay to resolve the legal issues.”

That's an American government official explaining why certain unnamed American policy geeks were encouraging Iraqi PM Maliki to postpone the Saddam necktie party until after a Sunni holiday known as Id. Does anyone else besides me hear Freud shouting in vindication through that cloud of cigar smoke rising from the underworld?

Well, I'm not listening to any pundit's take on the probable consequences of this until I hear Baghdad Bob break his silence...

And here's a parallel reality news moment of the week: I was at the deli next door and heard this over the TV set there, and I swear I'm not making up a word of it. It was the ABC News show, and a reporter in Texas was wrapping up a piece on some violent storms there that had caused the Secret Service to take the Bush family, dogs and all, off to an underground shelter near the Crawford ranch. They cut back to the studio, where Gibson mused how it reminded him of Dorothy scooping up Toto as the tornado approached. He then blandly concluded the story with the news that the President and his family, including the dogs, are now safe. 21st century journalism.

Geek Wednesday

I'm writing this within Blogger on Firefox/Windows in Parallels Desktop in a Win XP window on my MacBook. XP is set to use 256MB of the 1GB of RAM I have on the machine, and oddly, it seems to run just fine on that (with the help of the Intel Core Duo 2 processor, of course). What is even stranger is that it seems to hurt the Appleware more: I'm getting this situation now where all my open Mac applications won't minimize: the yellow button becomes disabled and double-clicking the window title (on a Mac, that minimizes; on a Windows app, it toggles the full screen setting) does nothing. Like I said, strange.

So unless you're on a network sharing files between Mac and Windows, I don't see the point of having a Parallels installation running on an Intel Mac. The Parallels software itself takes up 200MB of RAM, and for this Macophile, it's just too weird. Anyway on to the geek news of the week...

A Small Victory: Geeks and all the rest of us who support Net Neutrality have won a tentative victory this week in the concessions made by AT&T as part of its deal for the $85B BellSouth takeover (er, excuse me, merger). Frankly, I'd leave the cork in the Moet on this one, but yes, it is the same sort of victory as the Kansas City Chiefs won over the weekend (it's known as backing in: for the Chiefs, five teams had to lose so that they could go on to the playoffs--which indeed happened). But for anyone who's imagining that this is a final win for Net Neutrality, I have two words: Mission Accomplished.

Our theme today is 21st century journalism, so it's a good moment to insert a link to this article that our buddy Nearly Redmond Nick sent over. It's by John Pallatto of eWeek, and presents the case for treating bloggers as journalists (real journalists, that is, not the ABC variety discussed above). Believe me, sometimes I wish I had the problem that Pallatto mentions, but no one's ever offered me a thing to write about their product, and I never even knew there was such a thing as a Ferrari laptop until I read this.

Now, on to a little Google bashing. What's gotten into Blogger's brain these days? I know I've mentioned this before, but their blog is now toasting all kinds of features in the new Blogger that I personally can't find: drag and drop template editing (huh? where?); expanded RSS functionality (I still don't see anything more than the usual atom feeds); and accelerated publishing (kids, it's as slow as ever). What I am seeing is plenty of this: MS-style unknown-problem reports.

I'm also getting some inexplicable failures with image uploads in Blogger. Fortunately, I have a licensed copy of Graphics Converter for Mac, one of the great software bargains of them all, from one of the greatest geeks out there, Thorsten Lemke. If you have a Mac and do anything with images—whether it's keeping the family photo album in order or doing sophisticated image editing for the web—you will never regret spending $30 to get this fabulous program, which contains roughly 80% of the functionality of Photoshop and all of the convenience and ease of use of the Mac platform. Lemke has just released a Universal Binary version for those of us in the Intel Mac camp, and it won't cost a dime if you have a licensed copy. Certain other software purveyors—most notably, Softpress Freeway, which forces users of its web editor to spend on an upgrade to UB—could stand to spend some time at Lemke's feet on the subject of customer service and product support.

Finally today, I found an accessory for the new MacBook that I think every laptop computer owner should consider. It's from Targus and is called the ChillHub. It's a platform containing two fans and four USB ports. You put your laptop on this unit, plug it in, and the fans start up, drawing heat out and away. Once you've attached the unit's USB connector to an open port on your computer, you can plug your printer, keyboard, mouse, and whatever else into the available USB ports. The ChillHub keeps my MacBook comfortable when I'm using it as a desktop, and that's very cool. When I'm ready to roll, all I have to do is to disconnect my ethernet cable, AC adapter, and the ChillHub's USB connector, shut the lid and fly. For $50, this seems to me a must-have accessory for anyone who uses a laptop as a combination desktop and mobile computer.

That's all for now: next week, we'll have stories and perspectives on the fallout of Macworld, now that Al Gore has buttressed Steve's Job in the wake of the ongoing Apple stock dating scandal. Don't worry, Steve: even if you do wind up doing some Martha time, we'll send you a MacBook Pro with a file inside.

Power: Naked and Upturned

The thing I love most about Death is how it tends to reveal the institutional ego in its most naked weakness. The superficiality that death exposes surpasses even your average mass media New Year's celebration. Now put a couple of high-profile deaths side by side with the turning of another solar calendar's page, mix well, and you can see the Emperor in all his pink and bearded nudity. It's like grabbing Power by the ankles, turning it upside down, and viewing its crotch: the scrotal eyes, the dangling penile proboscis, and the short, ragged beard covering the dark and recessed mouth. Power in 2007: raw, naked, and...dead?

I don't know. But maybe Terry McKenna does. Here he comes...

On the weekend of Saddam Hussein’s execution, we need to ask ourselves: did his death make it worth it? For much of the first two years of the war, the Bush Administration, aided by a strangely compliant press, presented a story of war that was a succession of milestones. Each one was treated as a success and as a benchmark on the road to a free and secure Iraq. Now the death of Saddam is counted by the Bush White House as another triumph in the War on Terror. But a triumph of what, for what?

There is an old saying that suggests that nations get the government that they deserve. It was said often during the cold war, and it allowed us to feel complacent about the lack of change in the Soviet Union. For if they were getting what they deserved, then perhaps it was ok to let things alone. The notion has some truth in it. For example, the nations of Western Europe spent 5 centuries developing democratic institutions (such as independent courts). Thus it is no surprise that modern Europe is genuinely democratic. Russia on the other hand replaced Czarist Tyranny with Soviet Communism. Can the current tyranny under Putin really be surprising? It turns out that Gorbachev was the true Russian original, but the revolution he hoped for had no takers. If we consider the wider world, Africa remains very poor and virtually hopeless, and so are its governments. I won’t try to say much about Asia, but certainly the need for governments to maintain order among large masses of people would tend to create different governing structures than would be necessary in the much less populated regions like Canada and the US.

So Saddam was the leader that Iraq deserved. Iraq was an artificial creation assembled by Europeans out of groups of unfriendly and very tribal Arabs (both Shiites and Sunnis); around the edges, they added Kurds, and even sprinkled in a few Christians and Jews. Perhaps the only way to control Iraq was through the sort of brute force that Saddam was comfortable in using. Certainly our experience as an invader would suggest as much. This is not really surprising. Yugoslavia was a similarly artificial place assembled by negotiators after a war. Its very name meant nothing, the place of Southern Slavs. I don’t see a stirring anthem coming out of that history. It was often said (by knowing commentators) that after Tito passed from the scene, Yugoslavia’s opposing factions would destroy it. And so they did.

In the 1960s and 70s, Gerald Ford represented an America that was beginning to pass from the scene. Decent small town America. After Tricky Dick faded away, we needed a man like Jerry Ford to put things back in place. He was not an intellectual, but neither was he a boob (he graduated from Yale Law School after an undergraduate career that included success on the gridiron). As an experienced legislator and minority leader, he was a successful negotiator and conciliator. So, yes we were lucky to find him at the right time, but it also was inevitable that such a person would emerge during the 1970’s and Watergate.

The America of the 21st century is a different place than the America of Gerald Ford (or Ronald Reagan for that matter – he too came from that more decent time). We are full of ourselves, and full of shit too. We expect the world to take us as we are without our making the least effort to take the world like it is. And we’ve lost our ability to think. News is presented in sound bytes, and then the bytes are analyzed. Talking heads will come on TV to debate “stay the course” – and until recently no one was willing to admit that “it” was over. The America of today is – as already has been explained in this blog – the creation of corporate America. Not only do the corporations have tremendous behind the scenes power, they also have created the Newspeak that has replaced the English prose narrative that we’ve been perfecting since Shakespeare. Who better than George Bush to represent our era? Yes, that’s right, a mindless automaton is the embodiment of the America of today.

Do we deserve this fate? I think we must. Perhaps it was the sin of Hubris. In any case, it’s not about any single one of us, but about the corporate us. We may not have any control over it, but America is surely our creation if it is anyone’s. Think of the current culture as the result of some unseen hand (the very same unseen hand that directs the economic marketplace). And just like the marketplace, it didn’t do a very good job with us.

Oh well, tomorrow is another day.

—T. McKenna