Statecraft and Politics

When a single man declares war on your state in 1994, then proceeds to murder thousands of your people, then gets himself shot in the face, that is statecraft.  It is what must happen.

It does not matter what we would rather have.  I don’t like using the word “appeasement” – conservatives use it to refer specifically to the type of weakness that lets Nazis win.  And bringing Nazis into an argument is, I’m sure you know, the fastest way to lose your credibility in my eyes.

However, there is only one kind of pacifism: the one where the good guy dies.  There is no other kind.  If someone says he plans to kill you, and you say that nothing is worth fighting to the death over, you’re including your life.  It is a form of suicide, and so I cannot subscribe to it.

Admitting that I am not willing to die to prove that violence isn’t the answer forces me to accept that there is a list of people whom I would kill.

Osama bin Laden is one of those people.  If I had killed him, I would have shot him in the face, then probably thrown up or peed myself, as most first-time killers are reported to do.  Maybe I would have high-fived someone, and that would not have fixed anything.

High-fiving killing is never appropriate in real life.  I’ve done it once or twice, but it’s not something that should feel 100% good.  That twinge is our humanity, telling us that That Shit Wasn’t Very Cool.

If you have been thinking about the Osama bin Laden operation, and you

1) haven’t been seriously thinking about the true consequences of life and death struggle during this thinking, but

2) still have an opinion about it

…then please, shut up.  You are talking politics, and not in a good way.  You are probably trying to use this bit of the news cycle to stick it to someone you don’t like.

Then think about this instead:

1) Find the video where the bodies from the Twin Towers are smacking into the roof of building 7.  Watch the faces on those firefighters as they listen.  Try to be there.

2) Imagine you are about to shoot Osama bin Laden in the face.  Try to fully imagine what the burden of that killing is going to put on your soul, right or wrong.

DO NOT discuss your feelings about this exercise with anyone else, until you are certain of those feelings yourself.  Discussing unnamed feelings with others, too early, very quickly leads to other people putting feelings in for you.  When it comes to killing, your soul needs to keep its own counsel.

I know I could pull the trigger.  I have thought about it carefully for a while.  I could kill someone, but I would struggle with it afterwards.  This would not be the same thing as regret.

This would be the hollowness of knowing that the killing wouldn’t take those bodies off the roof of building 7.  Those bodies still hit the roof in my mind, whenever I think about it, and nothing makes that go away.

The most I could hope for is not having a repeat.  And that has to be enough.

If you couldn’t pull that trigger, I will not judge you, if you came to that knowledge through taking a good look inside yourself.  If you’re the sort that could pull that trigger, I urge you to resist that spirit of vengeance inside of you.

No matter what it says, nothing will make things right.

Book

Go ye out and read The Kingkiller Chronicle right now.  Book 1 is called The Name of the Wind, and Book 2 is called The Wise Man’s Fear.

Mind you, I read and enjoyed the Harry Potter books.  But whatever grumbling guilty sensations you, as an adult, felt while reading seven lengthy young adult novels, will promptly disappear, as you experience the refreshing threat of real bad guys, potions that work like real pharmaceuticals, magic that works using an actual system of logic, and a badassed main character that can’t handle money.

I’m talking Song of Ice and Fire competitor, here.  Get on it, people.

Liberty

I’ve been waiting a while to talk about Egypt.

First, good on ‘em.  I’m a firm advocate of people standing up for themselves.  I would also say that Egypt is another step in what I believe is the inevitable direction globalization + internet is taking us.  So, whether we like it or not, this is what the future is.

But my cynicism about mankind’s limits already seems to be finding ways to stick its tongue out at hope.  NPR’s coverage this morning seems to be uncovering a lot of sour grapes.  Insurgencies and revolutions ultimately center on a plausible promise: a single, simple goal that seems achievable.

But once a large group achieves the original goal, which is often negative, the movement splinters.  In Egypt’s case, 30 years of strongman rule has conditioned some of its people to seek a new strongman.  For those who want no such thing, it’s tempting to consider building a coalition politically, so that at the very least, “your side” can force its will on others.

I think the Tea Party in 2010 is the obvious recent American example.  They sure as hell seemed to hate things uniformly, but what they all turn out to want is much more heterogenous than what they did not want.  Certainly, some are hewing to their core principles…but I imagine many of them will become more old-school Republicans soon enough.  And just as certainly, the President has shifted his tone considerably away from his “reformer” persona.

I don’t necessarily consider either of these transformations as negative.  I see them as inevitable.  The people are not stupid, per se…but we do tire easily.  Whipping up a revolution takes a lot of energy, and most of us couldn’t imagine staying on top of a mayor, governor, sheriff, congresspeople and senators for their entire terms.

Rich people have this energy, because they can pay for it.  And as long as someone can pay to care more than you, they will win.  Democrat, Republican, libertarian, commie or despot, the rich will win.

If the internet somehow manages to make the world more “democratic”, it will do so at a cost: our ideas will Balkanize us, even more than they already have.  If, say, Tunisia decides to go more “old school”, and puts its women back inside the house, how does it expect to sustain economic growth in a global environment?  The only way a society could compete with an enforced 50% unemployment rate would be to change its mind…or to only play in a market where ALL the players had the same rule set.

In empires, the rulers could adjust right and wrong to serve political reality…the Ottomans were certainly masters at declaring and undeclaring jihad when it suited them. But a democratic fundamentalism is a nightmare – you have to wait until 51% of the people think God favors money from the infidel more than he favors moral purity.  And I daresay, when people’s religion is challenged in this way, they historically find infidels to kill before they accept God changing His mind.

And this moral purity concept goes beyond God.  Even more than Jesus (I apologize for this truth, my evangelical friends), America worships individual freedoms as its state religion.  Some of us think of that as freedom from oppression (down with the white male, even if he’s a nice guy!); some of us think of that as freedom from sickness or want (Obamacare is either necessary, or the blood-curse of the Antichrist); some of us think of that as freedom of action (literally speaking, the Second Amendment allows me to keep an unshielded nuclear weapon in my house, and if you’re catching my rads, you should move!).  But all of us get ornery, and damned fast, when we see someone attacking freedom…whatever the hell that is.

More liberty and individuality are the future, whether we like that or not.  Let’s hope we all keep learning how to use these powers with some sense of responsibility.  And fi maa’ Allah, ya Musriyeen.

Evidence

Nineteen years.

I have outlived Charadi Colin by nineteen years.  I can barely remember what she looks like, but here she is – my bald head.

Charadi had had a crush on someone else.  I was in that guy’s driveway when I heard she had leukemia.  And yeah, I hated that guy’s guts for the briefest of instants.  But the hate wasn’t very real, and he’s married to a nice woman I took to a dance once.  So it goes.

I shaved my head for the first time in high school, while Charadi was still alive.  I wish I could tell you what that even meant.  Since then, I’ve done it occasionally, and especially as a New Year’s present to myself.  I generally don’t tell people why I do it – it’s not something that pisses off the squares anymore.

It was weird to do it back in the day, though.  It was easy for me to sell the gesture as a measure of solidarity – Charadi was still alive at that point.  Chemo.  The truth was something a bit more pathetic – I hated my hair anyway, and making an ass of myself was easier to do than admit that I was harboring a monster crush on the woman.

I’m going to stick with “woman,” though she died before she turned 18.  She looked her death in the eye.  Adult.

I couldn’t do her the favor of growing up, though.  I just showed up with flowers occasionally, like an asshole.  I was out of town when she died.  I never told her anything. Nothing serious.  Nothing important.

Her dad had a Cerwin Vega stereo system.  She liked the Cars, because her dad did.  She liked Nirvana, because that’s our time, and she died before Pearl Jam really got going with Ten.  I like to tell myself she would have liked Foo Fighters better, because I do.

But how can I know that?  I can’t.  I can’t tell you her taste in music would have improved. That she wouldn’t have gone on to date a string of bastards, because there is no other kind of interesting man. I can’t tell you that she would have lived better than I have, if our places were switched.

But the other women I’ve loved since then will have to let a little bit of cheating go: Maybe just before I shaved my head for the first time, I had engineered a team visit.  The sunken den was a day room for her.  The other boys had headed back outside.  I was saying something stupid.

She took her head rag off. I don’t remember whether it was just for me or not – it’d make a better story that way.

I reached out and touched her head. Actually felt it. Not a wussy fingertip brush, not like I was palming a ball. I don’t remember the words, but I told her it didn’t matter. I told her she was beautiful anyway.

I needed to say more. I could not say more.

And that’s the first moment of intimacy I remember.  I had kissed girls prior to that, but that was my first moment of feeling the true terror of being alive. I didn’t want her to die. I wanted a relationship that didn’t exist, and couldn’t. Everything I wanted was wrong, or uncool to talk about, or terrifying to admit.

And here is the Evidence. The True Religion Moment. The the awesome, beautiful, tragic bitch of a moment that creates faithful and atheists alike. People have these moments, they curse God or don’t, and it’s supposed to make them decide what they believe.  I have lived in this space, in some sense, forever after.

Because the truth is, I still don’t know if keeping my mouth shut – not burdening her with my feelings – was the right call. I have lived my life since then regretting my choice, though. Making calls – sometimes, pretty bad ones – specifically to spite this one. I will die, though, not really knowing whether I was right not to tell her.

It sure would be convenient if God had a checklist for all of us. A specific divine plan. Charadi – dead early, on to her reward, check. Justin bumbles on a few more decades. Gets to have his little flaming turd of a life. If she’s watching, she’s okay about it. She doesn’t get mad that I mess up my life every chance I get, but still manage to stumble into a happily marriage. Which does not include her, outside of my never getting piercings and shaving my head.

It would be less comforting, but just as convenient, if God didn’t exist at all.  Stuff just happens. She’s dead, I’m not. All the hurt, abandoned, murdered women I’ve seen since then don’t need to remind me of her. I’m just messing with myself.

My experience is somewhat more nuanced than that. The God vote is still out, and there’s no bringing that election to a close – not if we want to be honest with ourselves.

I suspect there is a God, but that He just isn’t in the habit of handing out ice cream sundaes. And any covenant we have with God – with ourselves, with the universe, however you want – isn’t about comfort. It’s about God punching us in the mouth and saying, “you’re welcome”. The beating is a gift, because the alternative is oblivion. Job and Ecclesiastes don’t go away just because you don’t get them.

I will try to keep getting happier, because I am alive, and I have not yet proven I deserve to be. So that’s what I’ll do. Prove it to her. To those I love. And one day, maybe, to myself.

On Secrets

First: I am writing this post because of the current spate of Wikileaks reveleations from classified U.S. sources.  Professional obligations prevent me from reading or posting about specific items on the Wikileaks website, so I’m not linking to it, either.  Please Google things as necessary.

Now, about that classified information.  This is the primary regulation governing what is, for the U.S. government, classified information.

FACTOIDS

• Every President writes one of these.  Barack Obama did not generate most of this text.  Near as I can tell, he strengthened the language that forces people to give up old secrets in a timely fashion, and forbids people from “unnecessary” classification – but “unnecessary” depends a lot on viewpoint.
• There are many other regulations, written by the President’s subordinates, covering this same stuff.  They only explain HOW individual parties choose to obey this order.
• Really, I mean it.  No other law supercedes this Order, on this subject.
• Section 3.1 explains when a person may officially tell a secret.  Since the current President always has maximum classification authority, he may also tell any secret he wants, whenever he wants.

THEREFORE

• Telling secrets is not, in itself, breaking the law.  Telling secrets while holding a certain job is often a crime, and telling secrets after signing a Non-Disclosure Agreement is often a crime.
• It is therefore impossible for a President, or his authorized agents, to commit treason.  We can split hairs on wording, but treason requires a Congressionally declared enemy, and an intentional act to aid that enemy.  By those lights, I was wrong to label Karl Rove a traitor years back, and President Obama was not a traitor for telling the public about the confessions of the underpants bomber.
• PFC Bradley Manning may have a treason charge coming to him.  The Taliban government is a recognized enemy, and they have publicly announced their intent to use his (alleged) leaks.  If he is on the record anywhere saying that his intent in leaking was to damage the government, he’s done.
• Do not expect this charge to ever happen, though.  The penalty for treason is death, or five years/10000 dollars.  There is no point in charging someone with treason, though, if you aren’t going to kill him.  This makes it politically impossible to convict anyone of treason without destroying the United States.

This is exactly what we’ve earned, though.  When elected officials run their mouths off whenever it suits them, and we think collectively that we don’t owe anything to our government in exchange for what it provides us, and we don’t hold people accountable for their actions on any kind of uniform standard, people are going to talk.

I had more to say, but I think I’ll stop while I’m still being informative, and save rants for another time.