Cheaters and Prospering

I didn't think about it until the New England Patriots got into the Superbowl and every sports columnist with 100 words at his disposal spouted about how the Patriots were proof that cheaters DO prosper. The quick response to that idea is "yeh, they probably do, and more than we know, because the good cheaters don't get caught," but there is more to it than that.

When you look at the Bush administration, when you look at their manipulation of the elections, their rejiggering of the courts and district attorney offices around the country, their lying about foreign policy... need I go on? When you look at all that crapola, one could readily conclude, cheaters do prosper. But I think there is another way of looking at it which is perhaps too Pollyanna-ish a response, but one which need be looked at with critical eyes. When I think of the Bush administration in abstracted form, I see the United States in its purest form. Bush is to American politics what Las Vegas is to America. There ain't nothing more American than Vegas; it's like Kansas with 'roid rage. When you go there, you might have had a great time, but you leave and thank your lucky stars you don't live there all the time. Not just that, you come to realize you can't live the high life constantly or you will go broke and die a drunkard.

Bush policies are just like that. Once we have had the advantage of a little perspective, we will come to realize this grotesque cheating is not a good thing. More to the point, American greed, while part of the American character for certain, when unchecked, greed is toxic. Bush's policies, domestic and abroad, have proven toxic. We are in a recession, despite the government's loud protestations. The dollar can buy penny candy in Europe and not much else. Our foreign policy leaves death and poverty in its wake. Sensibly minded folk are getting the picture.

So, yeh, Bush and his cronies are making money hand over fist, but what is left when they are gone? I think what's left is a wiser US. We will look at the the cheating, the lying, the manipulation, and we will decide, just like we did after our Vegas trip, that we don't want to continue living in this way.

The clearest indication of this is the explosion in "green" everything. Green buiding, green energy, green you-name-it. The public, and that is the only opinion that has ever mattered, thinks it is time to cut back. Prius cars are the rage. Solar energy is the rage. Wind power is the rage. Hydrogen cars are about to explode. Organic produce. Chemical free farming, chickens, beef, vegetables... and so on. The country is coming to the conclusion it wishes to be toxic no more.

This is not to say the American character is changed for the better as a result of the Bush over-indulgences. No, it is a political pendulum swing, just like other swings that have happened over the last two hundred and thirty some odd years. Americans will remain greedy. Americans will continue to over-indulge. Americans will forever be self-righteous in their foreign policy.

What we need to do is somehow link in the minds of Americans the idea that it is greedy to be green. I think that is possible. There is a long discussion about how this can be so, but for brevity sake, I will skip it. Suffice to say, it makes economic sense to buy green. And I don't mean it makes sense for the country overall or in the long run or anything like that. I mean, if Joe Blow goes green, he will have more money in his pocket than if he didn't go green.

Bush and his Patriot co-horts have awakened the American conscience. Americans have had their fill of being the bad guy. More importantly, it isn't working for the average Joe. He's in foreclosure or just hanging on by his fingertips or feeling the financial pinch in some way, most likely at the gas pump. So, if you can be a good guy and get money to do it, hell, that's the most American notion in the world. I think it is an idea we can sell to the American public. The fact we might save the planet as a result is merely a happy by-product.

A Fuerher of Our Own

A Fueher of Our Own

American Jews face a very difficult political reality today. I came upon this dilemma while I was listening to the ninth of twelve CDs of “European Thought and Culture in the 20th Century,” a series of lectures from The Great Courses™ series produced by The Teaching Company and given by Professor Lloyd Kramer of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In his 17th lecture Professor Kramer gives a brief rundown of the events that thrust Hitler and the Nazis into power in German. My notes read as follows:

“By the early 1940’s there was no way to ignore what was happening in Europe with the aggression of the Nazis. Ell European countries but Spain were at war, and Spain had just endured a bloody civil war which resulted in a dictator assuming control of that country’s political fortunes. Intellectuals were divided by Nazism. People in the middle of a moment in history cannot see the outcome or assess the validity of their choices. Intellectuals were faced with the problem of abandoning the abstract and making political choices. They made these choices in the military context of the 30’s and 40’s. Three German writers are perfect examples of the possible choices in response to the rise of the Nazis and totalitarianism: Martin Heiddeger—support; Hannah Arendt—exile/flight; Dietricht Bonhoffer—resistance leading to death.
In later January, 1933 Hitler and the Nazi party legally come to power in Germany. Within a matter of months, Hitler declares and gains emergency powers. Again almost immediately, he launches the persecution of Jews, outlaws all other political parties and trade unions other than those with close Nazi affiliation, establishes Germany as a police state, builds concentration camps for political opponents, and essentially militarizes the entirety of Germany culture. The Nazis begin to re-arm and prepare themselves for a massive offensive against their European neighbors. This is also the start of “The Final Solution,” the systematic extermination of all Jews.”


The resultant Holocaust is all too well known to us. This specific lecture goes on to show that Heiddeger, Arendt, and Bonhoffer, all three great intellects, made three distinctly different choices regarding their acceptance or rejection of the Nazis. While that moment in history was as desperate as any humanity has ever recorded, the questions facing the American Jew and his political choices today are, while not as terrifyingly life-threatening, far more difficult an intellectual puzzle to unravel than what the great minds of Heiddeger, Arendt, and Bonhoffer faced with the rise of Nazi Germany. And here is why.
If we look at that second paragraph of notes which detail the Nazi rise, one cannot ignore the startling similarities to the sequence of events and actions between Hitler and the Nazis and the present Bush administration. President Bush came to power legally, and within 8 months, the tragic events of 9/11 lead the president to declare a state of emergency. We have remained in this state of armed readiness since. In this heightened posture, America has justified some seemingly implausible political actions. I say “implausible” because I never expected the United States, the land of the free, to perpetrate such defiling of American ideals as “Guantanamo,” “the attorney general purges,” “the Iraqi war,” “the planned Iranian war,” and the seemingly endless number of assaults on American Civil Liberties I had come to believe to be an American birthright. Further, this administration’s attempts to imbue the presidency with king-like divine rights of power have posed a greater threat to our constitutional guarantees than any other political maneuvering since the grotesqueries of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Indeed, we have become aware of documented cases of Middle Eastern-Americans being swept up off street corners and placed in jail cells for weeks, even months, without explanation for why they were detained, without means of defense, and without a phone call to a lawyer or loved ones. Our government clearly falsified information about weapons of mass destruction to legitimize the Iraqi invasion and subsequent occupation. And it is but a hair’s width of sanity and the interjection of concrete evidence about Iran’s lack of effort to create a nuclear bomb arsenal that keeps our military dogs at bay from Iranian borders. Seemingly, America has declared an undeclared war against Arabs, short and sweet. By throwing a blanket of “terrorism” over ever turban in the Middle East, this administration attempted to receive a carte blanche to invade wherever and whenever they wanted, just so their bullying behavior yielded enough oil to satisfy the American populations gluttonous desire for fuel and American oil companies greedy thirst for profits.
This lumping of one people-- today it is Arabs, seventy-four years ago, it was Jews-- into a faceless group of “enemy combatants,” who by their very existence threaten the moral (filthy, greedy, blood-thirsty: pick the adjective to applies to the group and era), religious (Muslim vs. Christian, Jewish vs. Christian), and financial (“They control all the oil,” or “They control all the banks”)well-being of the United States, is essentially the line Americans are being fed by the present administration. Thousands of lives have been lost. Thousands are incarcerated and tortured, regardless of the legal hair-splitting of the term, “water-boarding.”
But these are Arabs, who are being treated thus. These are our sworn enemies, foes determined to wipe out Israel. Therefore, the question before American Jews is: can we adopt the ways of our former enemy in opposition to our present enemy? This is indeed a more difficult decision for the American Jew than the rest of America, for Jews must wade through the history of victimization at the hands of the Nazis, before being able to see clear to the unencumbered American question of whether this administration’s policies have been valid or legal or moral.
Yet, while the American Jew might have his vision blurred by the encroachment of the past onto his thinking today, the answer to the question: Should I support a presidential administration that treats my enemy as we were treated by the Nazis; is even more powerfully the same. To condone the same shape of actions which led to the extermination of six million Jews is to condone the extermination itself. Regardless of what group of people are on the other end of the stick this time, we cannot allow our nation adopt the policies of the most morally repugnant leader and government in modern history. We must not. For if we open that door a mere sliver, those echoes of goose-stepping footfalls will drown out any American Jewish voice denouncing any future attack on any Jew ever again.
The question then must be posed: do we accept (Heidegger), flee (Arendt), or confront (Bonhoffer)? There are arguments for all three positions. Although the above makes clear I am against accepting what the Bush Administration has to offer, in any form, mind you, that does not mean I am oblivious to the profoundly valid arguments pleading for military forcefulness in the world community as a means of achieving stability, and hence peace. However, military might and aggression is successful when applied judiciously and without bias. What I mean by that is we should not threaten a sovereign nation because it has brown skinned people as opposed to light skinned people, which seems to be the extent of the Bush foreign policy other than the oil grab doctrine. Rather, we must establish a significant enough military force as to dissuade other aggressors throughout the world from attacking other sovereign states (and us) for fear that we might exercise our power against the aggressor. Still, to be able to carry this posture, one must assume a moral high ground, and not one reached by declaration (Hey, we’re the good guys. See the white hat?). Instead, our actions as a country must show the world our conscience is clean and clear of lesser motives.
As American Jews with much at stake in the well-being of American life, our acceptance of our government means a commitment to the democratic process. Should this process become compromised (see: Florida, Presidential Election: 2000), the stability and freedom we have enjoyed in the US is jeopardized.
Another alternative is to flee. My father did this. He was sick of the government. He was sick of banging his head against the wall, so he took himself, his wife (English), his vast knowledge of American law, and moved to England. Unlike Hannah Arendt, he left for more personal than political reasons. But the issue is should we leave these shores and from afar point out the misguided direction in which the country is headed? This option strikes me as a completely sane choice. Other than Israel (and that doesn’t exactly qualify as Sanity Central), Jews have never known a country from which they did not have to flee at some point or another. The Wandering Jew plant was named after a repetition of circumstance, as opposed to us being named after a plant.
Secondly, to remove oneself from a state of conflict is to achieve perspective. Nothing rounds out one’s viewpoint like either a distancing of time or space. I can’t possibly imagine that our present federal government could look any more ridiculous from a change of scenery, but my father swears otherwise. And this coming from a man who goes to work everyday with men wearing wigs style for the 18th century. Go figure.
As for confrontation, there is much to say for it. However, the ability to confront our government in writing, in peaceful protest, and/or by any other means, merely serves to suck the wind from one’s anti-establishment sails. One of the great things about this country is its uninterrupted support of protest. While violent protest is not tolerated, and while other protests might be disrupted and even attacked by the establishment’s police force, the population at large views these police attacks as a violation of our inalienable rights and there is a constitution which back up this viewpoint. This is not to say there are not oppressors in our government, but they are not the loudest voice in the crowd of the body politic.
Additionally, the freedom of speech extends to the written word, and writing about the violations of human rights is rarely, if ever shut down in the United States. And one need not be Al Gore to take a pot shot or two at Bush and his cronies. Heck, all you really need to do is write a blog and figure out how to put on an rss feed (something which is beyond me at present, but I was just looking into how to do it), and lawdy, lawdy, you got yourself a protest. Now, perhaps my next blog will be from a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, but I doubt it. Instead, I, like most, will go ignored by the powers that be, and elections will proceed without incident and I will avoid incarceration and show up at the polls on Election Day. When I do, I will have committed the most audible protest imaginable. You can join me, and, to quote the tag line from last century, “throw the bums out of office.” We can only hope.

Green Inequality

Green Inequality



Racism, ageism, classism-- these are truths. They exist in all forms of our society. And if the last seven political years have taught us any one thing, it is we cannot look to government to correct societal wrongs. When we have a government that snatches up people off the streets because they have a mode of worship and dress unfamiliar to most in the US and a skin color a few shades darker; when we have a government that robs Peter to pay Paul, but only when Peter is old enough to qualify for social security, and Paul is a well-connected corporation; when oil prices hit $100/barrel and the government's idea of alternative energy sources is to crank up the old coal mines: well, it is time we take matters into our own hands.

These societal wrongs exist in an environmental context as well. If one were to map out where the primary Brownsfield sites in large metropolises are and then were to overlay first, where people of color lived, next, were the aged live, and finally where the impoverished live, I'm sure it would come as no surprise that people of color, older people, and poor people come in contact with more pollution than the average American. Our government will not correct this unfairness. The question remains, who will?

The "green" construction industry has failed to address this issue of environmental racism/ageism/classism. How do we, as obviously concerned citizens, point our compasses toward not just a cleaner planet, but a fairer planet as well?

Part of our mission as "green" builders is to develop means of limiting "green" construction costs. Further, developments designed for the elderly, for affordable and workforce housing, cannot simply be cheap. This is unfair thinking. This is wrong thinking. This is short sighted thinking. We cannot allow "green" construction to remain the pet boutique industry of the wealthy. This means that the wealthy will be the only beneficiaries of the newest environmentally friendly developments. More importantly, if this is the sole sphere in which "green" thrives, then "green" dies. Until "green" becomes the building mode of the masses, "green" has only minimal impact-- except, of course, on the lucky few who can afford renewable energy sources and those builders who can build for clients without need of a budget. But will this narrow scope of change have any significant change on the environment? I doubt it.

Simultaneously, "green" construction, particularly renewable energy sources shouldn't be financially structured as too expensive. With public and private financing intervention, renewable energy sources could be viewed as just the opposite-- it would be too expensive to not use renewable energy sources. How do we do this? Well, it is no more than torquing one's perspective as both a consumer and a vendor. As a consumer, one must be forward thinking and understand that to not invest in sustainable energy sources is to incur significant financial burden for fossil fuel costs. As a vendor, to sell systems which imbue value into a project, be it single family home, a multi-family dwelling, or a commercial building, is a means of creating more value for your product, thus making that product easier to sell.

Perhaps the perspective which needs most changing is that of the banking community and, dare I suggest it, the government-- municipal, state, and federal. The banking community needs to jump on board and conclude that green construction is more valuable construction. If banks adopt this perspective, then value-added green components should then allow a consumer to borrow more money. After all, 80% of 120 thousand dollars is more than 80% of 100 thousand dollars. However, banks thus far have failed to adopt any form of value conversion, and this has slowed the development of green alternatives. As for our government, well, until we have someone in the White House who does not directly benefit financially from the burning of fossil fuels, we will not have a national plan for renewable energy sources, period.


For a more academically formal investigation on this topic, please go to www.hinkleycenter.com/publications/poverty_pollution_siting_94-8.pdf.

A VC blog response

I am delighted to read what is the first purely political entry I've come across in my vast experience of reading the A VC blog-- uh, eleven days, I think. The two words that caught my attention, as they have been missing from all political discussion I've seen (even in the grande damme of journalism, "The New York Times"), are "common" and "sense" strung together. This concept has completely fallen out of the political arena. When a self-styled whacko like Lewis Black is the most sensible man in the public eye spouting off on political issues, the concern becomes have we approached political madness? Stem cell research could conceivably lead to cures of many life threatening diseases, but the FETUS has become the conservative cause celebre. Any reason in particular? Yes. The Red States fall in line when unborn babies are hoisted up the flag pole. Same with the flag, foreign people of color, welfare fraud, the melding of religion and law, gun laws, and a host of other fabricated issues that are debated endlessly in the media. It's a ruse. A fake. A fraud. In truth, this is simply a means of holding onto political power. The one truth revealed in all of these machinations is that those in power will hang onto that power at whatever cost. Take welfare cheats for one moment. Do you think all the welfare cheats in the entire country cost us nearly the amount of money as a people as governmental fraud, theft, or deception? No way. Did more poeple die from Enron's stealing of funds from the public or from a single mass murderer? In no sense am I advocating mass murder. (One would hope this would be obvious, but the nature of these kinds of discourses devolve into accusations of that kind). Rather, I'm asking for a sense of proportion, or let us say, COMMON SENSE. I'm argueing Ken Lay did more damage to the country than Charles Manson, and I guarentee that indirectly he is responsible for more deaths than Manson ever dreamed up. Still, we as a people, via our government, at the very worst, park the Lay-like offenders in cushy, country club-esque prisons, while the drug dealer in a housing project in Brooklyn is sentenced to prison with the most grotesque conditions imaginable. Why? Well, there is the economic bias, the racial bias, and many other biases that come into play.

A journalist goes into this same project in Brooklyn (true story), and he finds exactly two out of twenty-one kids who are hanging out at the entrance to the project,who actually know someone with a full time job. Not have one. Know someone! As a result, the only folks who have money in their hands in that area are... drug dealers. Big surprise. Are these folks meaner, crueler, more vicious than their counterparts in the area? I'd argue they are simply more practical and probably have a touch more intelligence and get-up-and-go than the average project Joe. No money anywhere except in the drug trade. Can't eat without money. Go into drug trade. Logical.

Unfortunately, the risk often doesn't justify the reward. Instead they should go into the oil business. The profits are better, and when you get caught you wind up dying of natural causes, like Ken Lay, instead of getting stabbed in the prison showers. (Little aside: I'm picking on Lay because he's dead. Twofold benefit to that. One, he can't defend himself. Two, no harm done. Hell, he's dead. And he got away with it and the bloody President of the United States showed at his funeral. See if anyone of that standing shows up at yours or mine. No shot. We need to be bigger and more successful thieves than what we've achieved thus far for that to occur.)

Further, one could argue without much difficulty, that the uneven distribution of wealth caused by the shennanigans of a Ken Lay results in urban projects packed with folks without jobs or prospects for a job. Hence, the logical outcropping of this line of thought results in Lay's responsibility for the many, many, many deaths which occur as a result of our government's "War on Drugs."

As for my thoughts about our government's War on Drugs, War on Crime, War on Terrorism, War on Household Mold, War on Oppositionist Sarcasm and the like, you will have to wait for my next rant, which will arrive when the mood strikes. Til then, adios and happy trails.

Once

If I had met you once,
A moment only,
And you decided
To never again
Cast lashes up
And spread your lips
Across your teeth,
White and giving,
And by doing what
Is most your nature,
Smile, generous
Heart, and give
Me exposed light
You own and
I borrow,
I would have basked
For years in warmth
And asked for nothing more.
Providence was kind,
And left me
With my imagination
Unnecessary, short
Of possibility.
How do you stay
Beyond sensation and memory and logical manipulation of light and air and matter and spirit and psyche?
How do you make
A sad man’s life nor longer constructed with the same building blocks of ridicule terror, and deadness of soul?
No answers.

-- Miles Shapiro

The Wood Bench

The wooden bench swing dangles
From metal chains wrapped
Around a branch high up--
High above the balcony
Where I watch the abstracted shadow
Sliced grey into the pale light, rosied strange
By new sun.
The undulating pattern writhes in the wind.
I drink my coffee and recall the twins
And her child in play.

Cigarette smoke cobras around and into my palm.
The remembered children, who now sleep
Peacefully only yards away, stretched
Waterproof bodies over the snow,
Arced arms and legs re-creating my already perception of them.
A smile leaves behind pained past;
And the smoke fills my once hollow chest
With a warmth, new and welcome
Like hers in our bed, but without the aroma
Of her sauced loins, her welcoming wetness.

It is foreign, this contentment;
One requiring a readjustment of a pessimistic
Default setting honed smooth by angry batterings
Eroding hope into an eviscerated carcass.
But I am no longer that. I work and play and parent and love
Like any man might had he not
Felt and seen and heard what is known.
Is it sweeter because I have?
Does the clean man's “happy” not count the same?
Here's the start. I no longer count.
Measurements are for growth charts pencil marked
Inside door frames and along lengths of counter tops.
There is no score nor was there ever.

When I learned to count as my children have
The necessity to remember every number was crucial.
But score is a verb, meant for meat, not children.
Absolution is self-reflexive. Grammar is felt.
Each sentence is a recrimination, until you teach.
Then the swing has four rungs against the back
And leaves no scarring in the snow.

Stolen

She, on knees scraping pavement and curb,
And he, jerking with sorrowful convulsion
Took my dog. Rather, I gave her away,
But felt pressed I no longer deserved her.
The lines carved jagged beside mouth corners
Sliced off the inside of her cheeks
And threw pain out like confetti.
I stood aloof like the sober one with litter on lapel.

He, though, flat out stole her, twice.
Once by accident as the dog ditched children
And dug nails into macadam with fury and speed
To plunge a life beneath the tire of a municipal snow plow.
Second, when the plowman wept on my shoulder.
He showed my family his dog
Which hangs from keychain without attendant wife.
I could claim near nothing, a supporting role;
A Little John to the minstrel mourners.
My absurd bulldog was gone, theirs.

Undrunk with grief, I rested his head upon my shoulder
Like the good man I am supposed to be.
That’s not who I am. Or not who I think myself to be.
I think of myself as a man who has a dog
And then loses the dog and then cannot bare the pain.
I am not, no more.
I am old, half-a-life down, and fail to avoid
Thoughts of a before dog, a better behaved dog
Whose passing caused greater wrench.
A future dog, different, maybe like the first,
Or perhaps many, clumped together residing in
A culture of dog, and resisting Man.

The Want of Language

I prefer to paint,
Because those snippets of thought
Hang thick smears of color
Instead of tidy, typed
Words without texture.
The paint covers all the white
Noise provoking impulses
Like this.

At certain moments,
Even old wounds
And remembered take downs
By ex-wives and parents
Shroud themselves in silence
Beneath viscous hues
Which merge into
Serene landscapes missing
From moments like now.

And yet here I am
Amongst the critics
Taking on an ancestry invincible.
Men of letters wield weighted measures
As my lightness of thought
Flies into the air,
Untethered, foolhardy.
At pinnacle and then descent
I long to land softly
In the wet and forgiving
Squish of vermillion
And ochre.

The Movies

Hers is redemption.
Her ex’s, persistence against the odds.
My ex’s, cloaked in shame.
During Broadcast News she refused
To see William Hurt’s designed stupidity.
The flashback in the delivery truck,
Father consoling scholastic ineptitude
Did not register above the din
Of Hurt’s humorless, perfectly constructed face.
She lost me that night. I sat in funk
Knowing I did not trust her to let Truth
Strip bare desire and ask forgiveness
For insisting on sightlessness,
And I no longer wanted her too.
I resigned myself to an endless
Scraping away of organ flesh
Until the ventricles flapped paper-thin
Before collapsing beneath the pressure
Of ribs and diaphragm.
I was determined to last-- noble, saintly.
I found reprieve in the ex’s fury.
Stubborn still, but I ceded
To the threat of legal removal

And mine is unknown to me.
With no pattern in Apocalypse, Metal Jacket,
A Night at the Opera, Shawshank,
Young Frankenstein, and Cuckoo’s Nest.
I see myself without human optical accuracy.
I am not there. I am eyes alone. A single eye.
I watch and like what I like. Autofocused.
I only recognize myself in reflection.
A quote from Avedon revealing his portraits
Are about him more than the subject.
Exposes my mechanical whirring, and endless footage.
Narcissisus saw himself in the pool, and did something
Too unlikely for sense. He fell in love. How?
Were I to see my reflection with such clarity,
I would squint in pain. I do not remember a time
Without self-loathing. The ex’s hatred of me
Aimed itself at my lens’ blindness.
My love now laughs at it, warm, inclusive,
And makes no apology for my sadness.

Dear Mr. Stevens

One must have been cold a very long time
with every crystalized juniper in place
each needle threatening one's soul
were the landscape of marriage to change,

and then to have it change, disappear from the familiar
into the wrenching away from the known abstraction,
the tender bone alone, exposed to sorrow never
visited, and then transformed once more,

into the heat of love again, a second cup of richest soup,
to know the abstraction itself was the nothing,
a ruse
lined with psychic mail of modernity's seriousness;

to strip bare again, face this new partner,
naked, sexual, bloodied with her own failed construct,
and then to shed belief for opportunity
to see the rosy pink sun
re-emerge from the distant jagged line

unscathed,
full, glorious
like an as yet hour
spent warm amidst the scent of aroused loins
aching for the forgiveness of a new day
only one’s arms and chest
and fingertips
and tongue
and breath
can bring back to life.