Man with 79 IQ wins governor seat in Arizona

FROM THE FUTURE: Phoenix, Ariz. Nov. 3, 2010. Madness swept the country on the evening of Nov. 2, as voters turned out in record numbers to cast their ballots in what has become the most derisive election year in recent history.

But not a single pundit predicted the unprecedented victory of Paris Hilton’s fingernail cleaner, Rufus Berkowitz. “The Berk,” as he calls himself, received 79 percent of the vote in his home state of Arizona, and became the first man with an IQ under 80 to be elected to public office in the United States.

“Arizona is [a] good state,” The Berk said in his victory speech at the Hooters near Metroman Mall in Phoenix. “Is really, really, really good that those dumb [expletive] ain’t gonna run the show.”

Arizona voters seemed thrilled to have The Berk as their next governor.

When Javier Perez heard the news he took off running like a madman, belting Spanish phrases of jubilation as police officers chased him around the block screaming for his identification. After a thorough background check, DNA analysis and full-cavity body search, the authorities released the 31-year-old painter from Mesa. But Perez would net let the police ruin this special day.

“This is a great day for everyone,” he said, as he removed a wedgie. “Not only is The Berk gonna clean house, he’s gonna make sure that all Mexican laborers get free sandwiches on Fridays.”

The Berk’s passion for Friday feedings of the entire Arizona populace was one of his main running points. Republican incumbent Jan Brewer was shocked at The Berk’s sweep of the election.

“I’m appalled,” Brewer said at her loser’s press conference. “It’s as if the great people of the state of Arizona would prefer to have a retard running things than Mr. [Terry] Goddard or I.”

Democratic candidate Goddard was equally bemused.

“You can’t have a person run the state who can’t even count to 10,” he said. “It’s just not good governance.”

When The Berk learned of his adversaries’ statements, he was filled with anger.

“I can count to 10,” he said. “One, two, [three], four, five, [six], [seven], eight, nine, 10,” he said, to a mix of thunderous applause and confused stares. “Eat that [expletive] Goddard!”

For Linda Brown, a retired court clerk, there was nothing interesting about Goddard or Brewer, but The Berk’s platform spoke to her core values. “Those two don’t have a clue, but The Berk’s a real man,” Brown said, over tacos and tequila at Don Juan’s Taco Taxi in Phoenix. “I worked for the state for 41 years, and I gotta tell you, there’s nothing but crooks and thieves running the place. It’s time for a change. Go get ‘em Berk!”

The Berk also promised to criminalize farting in public, with suggested penalties ranging from forced readings of Sarah Palin’s book Going Rogue, to changing the 13,000 compact fluorescent light bulbs in Al Gore’s mansion. Although harsh, The Berk claims these consequences will deter people from emanating disagreeable odors, a fact which The Berk said “causes the ozone to get [expletive]-up.”

Perhaps the leading factor in The Berk’s win was his impeccable military record, according to political analyst Darryl McCombs of the Nuremberg Institute for Genocidal Rehabilitation and Organizational Education. “A NIGROE poll taken a week before the election indicated that The Berk was favored because of his 139 confirmed kills in Iraq,” McCombs said in his busy office in Waco, Texas. “People also said that they felt like they could trust him, because Paris Hilton trusted him for several months with her fingernails – which aren't even insured!”

As an independent, The Berk stole votes from both sides of the isle, eliciting a fury in the House and Senate. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that she almost choked on her organic tofu tuna veggie burrito when she heard the news of The Berk’s victory. “I’m just glad he’s not coming to Washington,” Pelosi said at her sweatshop in Indonesia. “Arizona could use a little shaking up. Isn’t cocaine legal there?”

The Berk raised an impressive $342 million for the campaign, receiving money from donors such as Mariah Carey, Ryan Seacrest, Hugh Hefner, Lady Gaga, that creepy midget guy whose in all those movies, and Rush Limbaugh. In a statement, Limbaugh said that The Berk is “the right man for Arizona.”

“Listen, all this talk about intelligence is moot,” Limbaugh said. “If intelligence was a prerequisite for public office, how in the hell did George W. make it? Wait a second, are we on record?”

Not to be outdone by stupid statements, Sean “P-Ditty Daddy Corn Puffs” Combs said that he couldn’t believe that a “cream-colored man who hates tacos can be elected in Arizona... But I like the dude. He smells like Purell. I like Purell.”

After Combs’ statement, Purell donated $50,000 to Combs’ charity, Get Out and Vote Even if You’re Uninformed. The Berk was also endorsed by Purell, as well as Walmart, Nike, McDonalds, Starbucks, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, the Mortgage Bankers Association and the countries of North Korea, Iran and Israel. “Thank God for Citizens United!” The Berk said, in a rare moment of lucidity.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that he was thrilled to finally have something in common with Israel.

“Arizona, although part of the Zionist conspiracy, represents cool stuff,” Ahmadinejad said at a press conference for men. “If The Berk can take Arizona, maybe there is hope for United States and their scantily clad, cleavage-laden, voluptuous, curvy, nipples...” Ahmadinejad then quickly ran off the podium, holding his groin and muttering incoherently.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mostly agreed with Ahmadinejad. “I sometimes have spontaneous emissions as well,” he said. “But only since we’ve been resettling in the Gaza Strip. It feels sooo good to be bad!”

When asked about The Berk, Netanyahu said that he respects the man’s straightforwardness and honesty. “He tells it like it is,” Netanyahu said, over pork sandwiches and oysters overlooking the destruction of squalid Palestinian houses. “Arizona needs a straight shooter, someone who can kick out all the immigrants. That’s the kind of man I would want in my government.”

At the top of The Berk’s list is to establish a public-private partnership with K-Y Brand to develop a sexual lubricant using DNA from pop superstar Madonna. “I used to bang Madonna,” claimed The Berk. “I used to bang all sorts of chicks. I had a threesome with Pelosi and Palin. I don’t discriminate.”

The Berk said that his goal is to save women the “trouble of getting turned on.” Sales of the lubricant will fund sex education in public schools, and could help to reduce tax rates. “It was Palin’s idea,” The Berk humbly admitted. “She’s truly brilliant.”

Palin could not be reached for comment, but her assistant’s personal assistant’s spokesperson said that “Mrs. Palin has never slept with Mr. Berkowitz. She only sleeps with her relatives, and she clearly has no polak in her blood.”

The Berk begins his four-year term in January. He is divorced three times and has nine children by seven mothers, and three children through sperm donations to gay couples.

Free market orgasms at thought of liquor store privatization

After nearly 80 years of state-controlled liquor sales, Virginians are on the verge of tasting booze not tainted by the hands of Uncle Sam. And thank goodness. The idea of having low alcohol-related death rates means nothing when there are millions to be made by the sale of the commonwealth’s liquor stores. God bless capitalism.

In a Sept. 13, 2010 press release, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli stated that “Virginians who are concerned that alcohol-related problems, such as under-aged drinking and drunk driving fatalities, will increase under privatization, they can be assured that the research has shown there is no greater incidence of alcohol-related problems in states with private ownership of liquor stores than in states with government ownership.”

Cuccinelli’s “research” reference is a report drafted by the Virginia Institute for Public Policy – a conservative think tank. In the report, objectively referred to as “Impaired Judgement: The Failure of Control States to Reduce Alcohol-Related Problems,” authors and economists Donald J. Boudreaux, PhD, and Julia Williams concluded that “the alleged health benefits of government-spirits monopolies are illusory,” and that “detailed regression analysis using data from all 50 states and D.C. finds no statistically significant relationship between the rates of drunk-driving fatalities in control states and such fatalities in license states.”

Gov. Bob McDonnell is certainly taking this information and running with it. At at time when state revenues are falling and unemployment is rising, the governor’s proposal to generate $500 million from the sale of the state’s liquor stores to fund transportation projects in the commonwealth seems a win-win. Jobs will be created as retail locations expand their staff to handle the new inventory, and liquor stores currently operated by g-men will turn over to Joe the (drunk) plumber.

Our fledgling Virginia Department of Transportation will get a much needed injection of capital so that we won’t have to weave around potholes on I-64 anymore. After all, $500 million represents a hefty 15 percent addition to VDOT’s FY 2011 budget of $3.3 billion. Annual liquor sales from ABC stores in 2009 only generated $111.7 million, and last time I counted to the millions, I remember arriving to 111 million waaaaay before I got to 500 million. So we’re making out like bandits, right?

But wait. I forgot. The $500 million is a one time deal. But surely the revision of Virginia’s Alcoholic Beverage Control regulations will ensure an adequate tax on spirits, as it currently taxes wine and beer which generate roughly $150 million in annual tax revenue for the state. Privatizing and taxing liquor sales would generate revenue, so the revenue question could be moot.

But what about the rock-solid data provided by the objective and agenga-free Virginia Institute for Public Policy? Who cares that the VIPP board of directors is strewn with die-hard conservatives with affiliation to all sorts of partisan organizations, like the Cato Institute, Radio America and Oliver North? It doesn’t matter, not when you’re talking about privatization. Privatization is always the way to go, look how well it’s worked in the health insurance industry. Every American has inexpensive health care and nobody experiences double-digit percentage increases in their annual health insurance costs. Give the lion the jungle and she will find her feast. Duh!

Boudreaux and Williams assert that there is no difference in alcohol-related health risks between the 18 states that currently control liquor sales verses the rest of the country that simply tax it. Their report is a testament to their strenuous and educated effort to illuminate this controversial issue with unbiased representation. It doesn’t matter that states which only tax liquor sales experience 79 more alcohol related deaths out of 10,000 auto fatalities than states which control sales. It’s only 79 more people dead. It’s not statistically significant.

Of course when you reduce the equation, the numbers do seem insignificant as Boudreaux and Williams are quick to point out:

What about drunk-driving fatalities? Here, too, there is no statistically significant relationship between control states and license states. The average annual number of drunk-driving fatalities for control states was 31.06 per 100 driving fatalities (or 31.06 percent of motor vehicle fatalities were alcohol related in control states) in 2008; the average annual number of drunk-driving fatalities for license states in 2008 was 31.85. The national average was 31.57 per 100 driving fatalities.

Now, I’m no mathematician, but I know a little about decimals. I also know that people are not decimal points. In 2008, drunk drivers accounted for 31.85 percent of auto fatalities in states that did not regulate liquor sales. But in the interest of human decency, let’s say that 3,185 deaths out of 10,000 auto fatalities were alcohol related in “free market” states. It doesn’t really matter that Boudreaux and Williams forgot to mention that these numbers are for alcohol-related fatalities, and not alcohol-impaired fatalities which are actually a greater percentage of driving fatalities. But that information wouldn’t support the privatization argument, so bury that data!

Now let’s look at the control states, and let’s see if we can use the same data Boudreaux and Williams used to put real numbers in a real context. In 2008, there were 84.5 million people living in the 18 states that control liquor sales. According to the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, there were 9,754 auto fatalities in 2008 in those eighteen states, and of those fatalities, 3,029 were alcohol-related. But if alcohol was not state controlled, those numbers could have increased to 3,107 people, meaning an additional 78 people could have died in those 18 states.

But 78 people is statistically insignificant according to Boudreaux and Williams, especially when there’s bucks to be made.

The VPPI report indicated that the United States averages 3,157 alcohol-related deaths per 10,000 auto fatalities. So states that regulate the sale of liquor are lower than both the national average and the average of states that license the sale of liquor to private industry. Strange how the same data can be looked at through two completely different lenses. I just prefer to assume that human beings are better suited as whole numbers rather than fractions, but that could just be my narrow communistic perspective.

The convoluted term “statistically insignificant” refers to the deviation in the actual statistic, which in this case was plus/minus 5 percent, meaning that actual data does not reflect extenuating circumstances and other mitigating factors than can skew the data. So the numbers could be much higher or much lower. But in reality, we know that limiting access limits consumption. Improving access improves consumption. It’s not a scientific survey, it’s common sense. With more hospitals, prices go down and more people are served, right? The more grocery stores we have, the more food that’s available to be purchased, prices go down, and fewer people will go hungry, right? Isn’t that a basic tenant of economics?

But for some reason, the conservative businesspeople on capitol slope think that improving access to alcohol will only benefit the commonwealth because of the much needed jobs that will be generated. Who care that dozens more people could die per year? At least the family and friends of the deceased won’t have to drive so far to purchase their mourning-specific beverage of choice to help them dull the pain of their loss.

Give them games, declares Ceasar. Give them spirits to dull their minds. Entertain them. Keep them fat and happy and you can get away with murder. Fill the Gulf of Mexico with oil and then forget it all with the World Cup.

If the Commonwealth of Virginia is going to privatize its state-run liquor stores, then it’s high time it legalizes medicinal marijuana.

When alcohol prohibition was appealed in 1933, the state established the Liquor Control Committee to “examine and propose a plan for liquor control in the Commonwealth,” and so began our commie takeover of the booze business. Nearly 80 years later we’ve gotten to the point where we want to give the reigns to Joe the (drunk) plumber. Why can’t we start the same process with marijuana, so that 80 years from now we can hand control over to Joe the (high) plumber? Government has no business regulating the sale of drugs anyway.

Oh, wait a minute. What about the Food and Drug Administration? Let’s just get rid of the FDA, too. Pharmaceutical companies always have our best interests at heart. They never sell a drug with a laundry list of side effects that includes death (and if you experience death please be sure to contact your doctor right away).

But let’s be realistic. At least marijuana has documented medical effects. The drug Sativex was recently introduced in Europe and Canada, and its active ingredient is natural THC – the active chemical in marijuana – extracted directly from the cannibis sativa plant and used to treat pain and spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis. There are more than a dozen medications that use cannabinoid compounds which interact with the same neural receptors as THC. Fourteen states including Washington, D.C. have passed medical marijuana laws, and the FDA does not have a single death claim attributed directly to medicinal use of marijuana, whereas tens of thousands of people have died from other “legal” drugs.

But we’d much rather legalize something synthetic because it’s easier to control and it’s better for business. Criminalizing a natural plant that was here before we walked the earth is an exercise in self-deification, an unforgivable act of hubris that sums up everything that’s wrong with society. Why don’t we make avocados illegal, because they have so much fat? Fat kills people way faster than marijuana, there’s no disputing that fact. Of course, marijuana might make a person more susceptible to consuming fat after a bout with the munchies, but that’s an issue of self-control, not a legal consideration.

Legalize marijuana, tax it and reap the benefits. Especially now that ABC stores are going private. What better time to take advantage of the loosening of the Man’s grip on free enterprise than to introduce a medicinal plant to the marketplace? I’m sure that Phizer and Roche and Bayer and all the big dogs will come out with their heady brand of ganja-liciousness: Weedex. Herbitol. Reefergra.

Philip Morris will have it’s brand, it’s smooth smoking Greenports that will start off as medicinal and 50 years from now there will be a lawsuit against them because they added chemicals to the ganja to ensure maximum addiction. Then they’ll be forced to fund a campaign that tells everyone how bad marijuana is and they’ll begin integrating with other markets and business ventures to clean up their act in the public eye.

Sell them ABC buildings. What are they doing in the government’s hands anyway? Being controlled and regulated? PFF! Whatever. Let the Joes and Joans of the world handle it. The world is already overpopulated, and the more people who die will be good for the mortician business. Long live free market eugenics!

A Christian Defense of Socialism

Socialism. What a dirty word. It conjures up pink and red images that strike our inner Joseph McCarthy with paranoid precision. Not everyone, of course. But enough of us to communicate to the rest of the world that backward thinking is the status quo in America.

I don’t believe that any one type of government is right or wrong. We are so far away from perfection that it is silly to assume we will get there in the next 100 years. The travesty is the “good vs. evil” mentality that plagues American government and its politics like a ravenous cancer – unmitigated and relentless as it eats the raw talent and creativity of our increasingly disillusioned populace. Draped in good intentions, our leaders’ blind ambition leaves a trail of unintended consequences in its boastful wake, leaving people wondering why. Why are one-fifth of homeowners foreclosing on their homes? Why have banks gotten away with murder, and somehow proven that their victims are responsible for their own deaths? How is that even possible?

It is the failure of capitalism and the disastrous effects of an unrestrained free market and an incompetent government with ridiculous policies and economic demands. Make no mistake, whether the democrats or republicans are in power, neither will create a policy that hurts business, and why should they? Capital is the driving force of the modern economy. It’s not commodities or services, there is no scarcity anymore. It’s a manufactured scarcity, an elite propaganda that represents the fall of humankind and the strength of Babylon.

I’m sure I sound crazy to many people. That’s fine, I don’t mind that perception. What’s crazy to me is that we have all bought into this system, a system of valueless currency and manufactured scarcity. A system of vertical integration and underhanded monopolies. We accept our ridiculous fate because our own demands on our own lives are too much to reconsider, and to actually create substantial change would put our lifestyles at risk. It’s a style of life that we have manufactured, and that’s why we accept slaps on the wrist as consequences for murder. If we seek blood, we may have to do our part of the cleaning up, and that’s asking too much of us. We have our own blood to clean up.

This is the mentality that will be our destruction. This illusion that our individuality is more important than our infinite and primal connection to each other. It is here where I should quote Karl Marx, but in his stead I choose to paraphrase C.S. Lewis. We are all ships in a fleet heading towards the same destination. If one ship goes down, the entire fleet is hurt.

This is why we have law, isn’t it? To protect individuals from hurting themselves or from hurting society, right? Let’s say there is a man who consistently hurts himself – a perpetual perpetrator of “victimless” crimes such as drug use. Sure, he’s not directly hurting anyone other than himself, but what about the ramifications? Who is he hurting indirectly? Family? Friends? Coworkers? Strangers?

An odd element of life that I find fascinating is the ripple effect of our actions and how necessarily ignorant we are of the infinite consequences associated with even the most mundane tasks. Anyone who uses drugs to escape the pain of their existence has admitted to the world that the world is not worth dealing with and creating an alternate reality is their best option. Just being in the same room as this person, even if you never even make eye contact with him, takes away from your own ability to cope with reality. If he’s off in his own world and you’re here in the real world, doesn’t that make the real world that much more difficult? As if the daily rigors of life aren’t enough, now we have people who have decided their own rigor is not worth worrying about. It’s like trying to lose weight and being surrounded my overeaters. Life is difficult enough without others making it more difficult by the residual effects of their individual choices.

Think about it. Say you’re the only sober person in a room full of stoners, or acid trippers or smack heads, whatever. Is your experience going to be easier than their’s? The same? Harder? Of course there are numerous approaches to this situation, depending of course on your personal disposition. You could have the best time in the world. You could make your own fun at their expense. You could pity them and try to show them the way. You could run away in anger and disgust. Suffice to say people are already quirky enough in reality, and to deal with them during their moments of escape adds unnecessary stress and strain to the fledgling human condition.

This applies to “legal” pharmaceuticals also. Anything that effects our body chemistry in an unnatural way subjects our minds to alternate perceptions. Sometimes this is good, but it’s an easy answer to a long-term problem that only meditation and prayer and human interaction can truly cure. You can suckle on a tree all you want, but only a mother’s milk can make a baby grow naturally.

So where is the Christianity in all this? Everywhere. Yehoshua, also known as Jesus, spoke plainly about the importance of being your brother’s keeper. According to Yehoshua, the greatest commandment is to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. To love your neighbor as yourself means that we should not separate ourselves from our neighbors, that we are united in one body.

The apostle Paul wrote scores of letters addressing this very issue. In his letter to the church of Ephesus, Paul asks the people to “Bear with one another charitably, in complete selflessness, gentleness and patience. Do all you can to persevere the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds you together... If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow in all ways into Christ, who is the head by whom the whole body is fitted and joined together, every joint adding its own strength, for each separate part to work according to its function. So the body grows until it has built itself up in love.”

The only difference between Christian philosophy and socialism is the apex of each ethos. Christianity has Christ, socialism has the state. The workers unite to work for the common good of the state just as Christians are called to unite to spread the light of Christ. Karl Marx asks for people to put aide their personal ambition and strive for societal equilibrium. Yehoshua asks for people to be reborn in the spirit, put aside their childish ways and love your enemies. Although Marx is credited with establishing the atheist state, in reality all he did was attempt to replace God with the state and replace worshiping God with worshiping your fellow human beings.

Communism failed in its idealism. It fails to see the effect of power on an institution’s ability to rule. It failed to grasp the power of power, whereas capitalism embraces our weaknesses. Capitalism exploits human desire and takes advantage of our innate selfishness. Neither path is correct for people. We can’t force people to be equal when our egos tell us otherwise, and we can’t expect equality when people will do whatever it takes to push themselves ahead of the others.

But socialism, without the political effluent of communism, is more meaningful and just for a society that calls itself Christian than a capitalist system. Again, socialism is not the answer, but it is part of a solution if carried out in a democratic fashion utilizing certain workable elements of capitalism. One could argue that the impotence of our social security system is evidence that socialism is wrong. I would argue that a bad policy doesn't destroy a good concept. Just because some Christians are lunatics and scream for war with Islam doesn't mean Christianity is a religion of hate. Bad apples.

To fear socialism is to fear ourselves, it’s to fear the very call to be united for the survival of each other.

I’d like to propose a scenario. Imagine if 50 years ago, the United States invested more money in its education system than in the military. What if we made it mandatory to learn three languages in elementary school? What if it were mandatory for high school students to spend one year in a developing country before graduation? What if we taught the essence of religion and philosophy through exploration and active community engagement? What if we taught math and science with practical applications using engineering and modern medicine as teaching platforms? What if the public educational experience became the one and only thing that was talked about during a political campaign? Imagine if those children grew up and took the reigns and led our country forward and were our leaders today. Would we still have had this mortgage collapse? Would we be hovering at 10 percent unemployment? Would we be at war in Afghanistan and in Iraq? Would Vietnam have happened? Would Watergate and McCarthyism have happened?

Obviously these hypothetical questions are pointless to ponder, but the possibilities are fascinating. Taking care of each other and each other’s children is vital for the survival of the human species and our planet. We want more people to become doctors, right? More doctors means lower health care costs, right? We want more people to become teachers and social workers and engineers and technology experts, right? Doesn’t that improve a society by having more skilled professionals? Or is it better to let people figure it out themselves, and thus perpetuate our Darwinist class system and deepen the divide between individuals and society?

Without each other what are we? A collection of atoms randomly floating in a mass until we are recycled back into the universe. That’s depressing. I prefer to be considered as part of a whole, a functional arm on the body of society. Not only are we responsible for each other, but for every living creature and inorganic molecule that has been entrusted to us. We are stewards of the earth and of each other, not self-absorbed tourists infatuated with consumption at all cost.

René Descartes’ concept that thought creates existence is incorrect. It is positive interaction with life that creates existence. Existence without meaning is not existence, it is immaterial being. No man or woman is an island, and until we can learn that we are each a functional ship in a fleet trying to make our destination before sunset, we will continue to hurt ourselves – either consciously or otherwise – in our attempts to improve our individual situations.

The only true path to enlightenment is to lift someone else up. Until the day comes when all hands are held together and falling will be a distant memory.

Democracy in America?

You know a culture has gone full circle when 100 square-foot houses become news simply because they’re small.

Imagine walking into a small town in a remote village in South America and trying to explain to the villagers the resurgence of tiny homes in the U.S. I’m sure you’d draw some hefty laughs and quite a bit of confused stares. As they invite you into their 50 square-foot shanty you tell them that their house design is in high demand in the liberalized cities of the northeast and western U.S. We’ve got billions of house designers in developing countries just waiting to be discovered. Pay attention Bravo network, this could be your next big deal!

The micro-home phenomenon is another instance of Americans doing what they are supposed to do and reveling in it. Sorry, but a vast majority of the world live in tiny homes and have been since the dawn of humanity. At one time, so did most Americans. Micro-homes are not news, they’re olds.

It’s wonderful that this happening, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not an invention. It’s a resurgence. Necessity was the mother of invention until the industrial revolution orphaned the notion and invention was adopted by laziness. Is there really, truly a need for a remote control for a car stereo? Or automatic windows on cars? Or the Segway? Let’s look at industry, do we really need barber shops and hair salons and spas and gyms? Can’t we cut our own hair, give each other massages and exercise on our own? Do we need fast food? Can’t we cook ourselves? Do we really need grocery stores that sell food from countries that are 10,000 miles away? Is cable television our only connection to the world and is the Internet our lifeline to social interaction? Do we really need cheese puffs and pork rinds and dippin dots? Why do we have napkins and paper towels, don't we need one or the other? Are all these inventions necessities?

Naturally, there are arguments to be made on behalf of all these things. Safety. Fear of being hurt. Convenience. Help people. Pleasure. These days, the number one argument for inventions is that people don’t have the time to do it themselves. And lack of time creates the "necessity." Ironically people don’t have the time because they’re spending most of their time doing things that feed the system. I can’t cook because I have to go to work, doing something that is a service. Eighty percent of the jobs in the United States are service-oriented, meaning that they provide a service for people who don’t have the time or ability or inclination to do it themselves.

For some odd reason, do-it-yourself is also some kind of newsworthy phenomenon. It’s as if we never could do anything ourselves and now that we can’t afford services anymore we have to figure out how to fix that leaky pipe on our own. People wonder why the economy is still shit but the stock market is bull-strong? I suggest two reasons. First, companies are exploiting volunteer labor and internships given the market is flooded with extremely valuable talent – and these people are willing to do anything to get their foot in the door. Second, people are saving more money, doing more things themselves and hurting the small businesses that provide most of these services. Walmart is doing wonderful, and why not? Where else can you buy items for odd-numbered prices like $2.41 or $1.27 that are designed to fuck with our minds?

That’s what happens to a foundation built of sand, eventually it falls into the sea. A consumption-based economy cannot and will never sustain itself.

So laziness and greed are now the adopted parents of invention. It’s amazing how we create a “need” for material things that are useless. iPhones. Don’t even get me started on the iPhones. Useful, absolutely, but so is a toilet. That doesn’t mean I want to carry a crapper with me everywhere I go. Or the iPad. The Kindle. The Nook. WTF? The only good thing is that it’s saving paper. That’s it. Other than that it is killing the essence of literary culture. In some extreme cases, I can see the need for it. But for everyone? I sure as hell hope not.

Sooner or later if we keep on the path we’re on, we’ll all find it necessary to have nuclear reactors in our homes. Why? Because the Joneses have one, of course! Plus Walmart is having this awesome sale, if you buy 100 pounds of enriched uranium they’ll throw in a 5-year-old Indonesian servant girl free of charge. You can’t lose! (My love for Walmart runs deep)

To paraphrase Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef, we need to readjust our definition of growth and development. Growth is quantitative and has limits. Development is qualitative and has no limits. The U.S., as Max-Neef opines, is underdeveloping, meaning that the quality of life is diminishing as growth has surpassed the threshold of sustainability.

So much propaganda exists in the information ether, so much misinformation and disinformation it’s impossible to know what’s really going on. For some reason I cannot fathom, we still do not have universal health care in this country. It’s as if we don’t give a shit about the 20,000 people who die every year from lack of access to health care. Sure they can get treated, and live their life with a six-figure debt over their heads, maybe lose their house because they can’t pay their medical bills, but hey, it’s better to be alive and homeless than dead, right? What kind of choice is that to offer citizens of a “free nation?” Even under Obama-care, health care experts estimate that thousands will still die because of lack of access.

I’m just frustrated with our culture, or lack of culture. I see so much ignorance around me, and it’s the people who consider themselves knowledgeable who are the scariest and most in the dark. I admit, I don’t know a damn thing. All I know is that what we got ain’t working, and it’s a shame our president did not take the fire from his campaign and use it to create real change. He tried to appease the right, he tried to pander to them, to find a middle ground, and admirably so. But in the end he just made himself look incompetent. The right will block him to their graves, as that is “good politics.”

Our country needs a drastic and deep upheaval. This two-party democratic republic is a farce. It’s not a democracy, it is a oligarchy dressed up in blue collar clothes. We are a nation of hypocrites. Homosexuals can die for their country as long as nobody knows they’re gay. We want our military might but we don’t want to pay for it. We want a strong economy but we’re not willing to eradicate the disease. We want our neighbors to have access to health care but we’re not willing to help them get it. We want immigrants to leave but we don’t want to wash dishes or cut grass or hang drywall for cheap. We want China to slow down but we can’t stop buying shit from Walmart. We want our children to get a good education but we’re not willing to understand what a good education is. We want our own cars, our own houses, our own pets, our own hobbies, our own lives but we don’t want to deal with our own share of the problems. We want the world to listen but we don’t know what to say. We want our independence and our freedom but we also long for connections and security.

In his book Democracy in America, Alexis de Toequeville states this dualistic phenomenon most succinctly: “Man alone, of all created beings, displays a natural contempt for existence, and yet a boundless desire to exist, he scorns life, but he dreads annihilation.”

Do you ever get the feeling that our leaders are making it up as they go along? I saw a Craigslist post for a government writing position, and it was the longest, most asinine and convoluted post I’d ever seen. After taking 15 minutes of my life and losing five of my 10 brain cells I finished reading the post. I had to pause and gather myself. There were so many unnecessary words in the ad I couldn’t begin to imagine what the hell they were actually looking for. I decided to risk a second read. After recharging my eyes with several doses of hand rubbing I reengaged the advertisement. After reading two sentences my brain registered something. As if my subconscious figured it out while my conscious mind scrambled in vain to determine the meaning. I realized something, and it blew my mind. It was one of those eureka moments that I will always remember, and it perfectly summarizes my feelings regarding American culture.

The federal government agency was looking for someone to write roughly 15 reports to tell them what the hell was going on in the agency. They had no idea what they were doing, and they needed someone to come in, observe what they were doing, and then write a report telling them what they were doing. Operational procedures I think it was called.

All they wanted to know was what the heck was going on. It was truly amazing. I swear to you, I can’t make this up. And I know why they had to make the ad so convoluted, they had to appear somewhat professional and word the ad in a way that would entice academics and make them feel less incompetent. It’s like writing a 1,000-page treatise on the physiology of the back left leg of a carpenter bee.

So I applied for the job. They asked me if I had any experience with operational procedures and I told them I had no idea what that was. Needless to say they hired me on the spot. I wrote them one sentence in my report. “I don’t have a fucking clue what the fuck is going on. Ask Sarah Palin.” (Okay, I guess it was two sentences)

I was immediately promoted to senior executive account assistant managing editor. Gotta love fed gigs.

What's right is right, right?

Doing what’s right is good, right? As opposed to doing something morally questionable, like stealing. But what about the person who steals but is honest about his theft, does he get any kudos for honesty? He doesn’t lie to himself and pretend that he’s a modern day Robin Hood. He knows he’s scum, he knows he’s low. He doesn’t bullshit. Is that respectable?

And what about the person who does what’s right? It’s easy to admire a person who, on the outside, seems righteous. Let’s say there’s a woman who runs a nonprofit that feeds homeless people. That’s definitely a good thing, right? (If you don’t think so, my entire essay might not work for you) She’s respected in the community, everybody knows her as a “good” person. But let’s say she lies to herself about what she’s doing. What if she holds herself above other people, like lets say, the aforementioned thief. Or even better, let’s say that she considers all bank executives to be below her, morally speaking. She lifts herself up in her good deeds, and lowers others whom she considers are parasites in society. Is she lying to herself about how great she is? Is it better to do good and inflate your self-importance through telling yourself lies, or to do bad and at least be honest about it?

Obviously both paths are incorrect. That’s where the third way comes in. But for me, I struggle every day with humility. I struggle with it bad. Throughout my life, I have continuously experienced events that knock me down, cut me to a stump, position me in a place that seems lower than I was years earlier. Humbling events are difficult to accept. You feel weak, insecure. You feel worthless, like all your talent is wasting, like nobody appreciates you. You feel lost in a bubble of inward affectations, disillusioned by pain and confronted with the reality that the world is a cruel and bitter place. And in a dog-eat-dog society such as ours, we will not last.

I remember getting fired from a job, then going back to another job I had also been fired from and begging for work. I was hired on, but not in the same capacity as before. Before I had been the equivalent of a sous chef at an upscale restaurant. But now I was a dishwasher. The lowest rung on the food and beverage totem, the place where only immigrants find pride because to them, work is work, money is money.

But for me, work has never been work. For some reason, after World War II, the understanding of work changed dramatically. For eons, work was what you did to support the people you loved, your family and close friends. You didn’t work a job you were passionate about, you worked a job that paid the bills, that enabled you to send your children to college, that provided for your retirement. Now it seems we are all scrambling to find our voice, our calling, our niche in the ever globalizing dynamism of the marketplace. It is now more important to do something important than it is to just do something. Say that ten times fast.

Of course we can say that the blood and sweat of our forefathers has enabled us to pursue more meaningful careers. We could also say that people were angrier back then because they did not derive a sense of personal satisfaction from their vocation, and that we’re better off having the freedom to choose rather than the obligation to just work.

But we could also say that something was lost in the process. During the lightning evolution of labor, the definition of responsibility has changed dramatically. It used to mean that we were responsible for more than just ourselves, that we have a family to look after, elderly parents to care for, brothers and sisters and neighbors in need of a helping hand. But now we consider responsibility limited to ourselves and our household. If my bills don’t affect you, we have nothing to do with each other.

We’re not all like that, but I would argue that this is the general sentiment of our society, and that it will only get worse as the introversion of our social interactions exacerbates through the expansion of technological relationships, or technoships. But I digress.

I remember returning from Ethiopia and going back to work for my stepfather doing construction. I had helped to create an NGO in Ethiopia, I traveled to Italy with my future wife for an international photography exhibition that included my poetry. I had dined with ambassadors and presidents of countries and multi-millionaires, the elite of the elite. I had found my voice. But now I was living in Goochland, Virginia with my parents, working at a job that I never felt comfortable doing.

But of course I had to. I was getting married and I needed to give something to my future wife and family. We needed a foundation, and although I had the time of my life in Ethiopia, it was not an environment conducive to starting a family–traveling here and there, living on couches and barely scraping by. Even with the blessings of the upper class I was still a mere pet to them. A western boy with bright eyes and big dreams, a bit naive and 100 percent lost. Focused, yes. Passionate? Absolutely. But so caught up in how awesome I was I forgot who I really was.

Why do bad things happen to good people? Because people are so caught up in how good they are they forget that they are just like everyone else. Even the nicest most generous people in the world are subject to being proud of their kindness. Like the story of the monks who argued over who was the most humble. Talk about an oxymoron.

But my time, our time in Goochland dragged. It really strained my new marriage, especially when I had no work for a month, no car, no means to even drive to the city for a job interview. Stuck in rural Virginia, waiting to be saved by something, waiting in vain. Eventually I got a job at a restaurant. Here I was, 29 years old, a life of adventure behind me, and I was back working in the food and beverage industry, making less money per hour than I did when I was 21 and in college. My college degree sat collecting dust in the closet–a $27,000 piece of paper in a cheep Walmart frame. I think that was the last time I ever stepped foot in a Walmart.

Eventually I was hired as a stringer for a newspaper, writing little tidbits of mundane community minutia. The people I wrote about certainly were not mundane, but what I wrote certainly was. Finally I was hired on as a full-time staff writer. Even then I thought is was below where I was in Ethiopia. After eight months I learned that I had won two writing awards, but in the same breath I was laid-off. It was surreal.

I took it in stride, saw it as an opportunity to work on other stuff, get refocused on my own ambitions. So here I am, seven months after being laid-off and still nothing. The humbling experience gets increasingly more painful and longer in duration the older I get. Only now I have a wife, giving the sword another edge and another stabbing point.

I even lost my faith for a while. Athiets and agnostics might find statements like that pitiful, or laughable, or justifiable even. I find it sad. I wish I had the lassaiz-faire spiritual mentality of an agnostic or atheist. I wish I could imagine a chaotic world that ends when it ends, a world in which the Golden Rule were the only thing to worry about, a world in which humanism was the epitome of my moral code. I truly do. But shit in one hand and wish in the other, as they say, and no doubt the dookie will win that battle.

But sometimes we have to lose our faith in order to find it. Sometimes we have to set the bird free and hope that it returns. Older? Naturally. Wiser? Maybe. I guess the key is to never lose faith in yourself, even if you lose faith in the divine. Because God is always calling to us, no matter how much we deny God’s existence or how much we ignore the voice of Mother Nature, God is always singing in our ears. But we are not always singing in our own ears. We are our own worst enemy, each of us is our worst critic. If we forget God, God doesn’t forget us. But if we forget ourselves, we are truly forgotten.

So as I sit, feeling sorry for myself, searching for job after job, writing countless cover letters that inflate my persona, trying desperately to attract the attention of a stranger who in all likelihood I will never meet, as I bounce around ideas for making money in my head, people I can go to for help, places I can go for networking, places I can go to just get the fuck away from everyone, as my brain takes it all in and focuses all its energy on doing something, anything that utilizes my passion and my strengths as a human being, I forget what it means to be humbled. As soon as I grab a job, humility is out the door. I am thrust into the world of Darwinist capitalism, and if I don’t swim, I will sink to the bottom and be forgotten to the sea. If I don’t exude professional confidence and surety I will not last. And if I allow my personal ego to supersede my faith, my soul will not last. So where does that leave me?

I have no idea. I want to give, I want to teach and learn, I want to write, I want to play music and travel, I want to help people. If these are selfish ambitions, so be it. As long as I’m honest with myself, as long as I truly stay humble and reverent and thankful, I have nothing to worry about. If I can be at peace in my heart, if I can know that everything I build with my hands and everything I create can be taken away or destroyed in the blink of an eye, if I know that the only true peace is dedication to a life of humble servitude, if I can truly love and cherish my wife and pray for my enemies and help people when it’s inconvenient to me and be kind with no acknowledgment, I will find my way.

I only hope and pray that the bird will stay happy in its cage. Not pacified, not incarcerated, but locked into the Way, chained in pure freedom.

Swimming in Babylon

We all know what happened nine years ago around this time. We all remember where we were. There’s no need to reiterate the pain of an atrocity as a cheep means to invoke sentimentality.

But where are we nine years later? It would seem that we are even further away from compassion and understanding. Dangerously so. Although we do tend to get wrapped up in the glass being half-empty, don’t we? We forget about the stuff in the glass that gives us strength because we’re inundated with propaganda from across the political spectrum. Not everybody is an ignorant, Koran-burning xenophobe with a penchant for media manipulation and cheep publicity tricks. Not every American hates the idea of a “Ground Zero Mosque,” as if reaching out to the Muslim world in a gesture of solidarity would spit in the face of those who died in the World Trade Center attacks. I thought Jesus said, turn the other cheek, and love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you. I guess we’re only Christians when it’s convenient.

How many churches were built in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the U.S. detonated atomic weapons in the cities, murdering and maiming hundreds of thousands of innocent people? Is that okay, or is it an atrocity? How quickly we forget and how fast we point our fingers.

As I grow older, I experience an increasing cynicism that seems to wrap itself around me in a gradually thickening cloud of misanthropy. When I was in college, I knew that people were good. All people were good. And I still feel that way. But as the despondency of realism claws at my spirit like an undead zombie seeking to turn me into one of its own, I feel more and more inclined to just say fuck it. It is what it is. People are good in their core, but being good is not a priority. Being feared is what many people aspire to, as if Machiavelli’s question was rhetorical.

One could argue that fear trumps love because love has been thrown into the fire of illusion stoked by the imagination of Hollywood and its media contemporaries. Perhaps love began to die when Aristotle wrote his Poetics, an academic attempt to understand the inimitable qualities that make great art great. Perhaps when we started to try and understand love and all its intricate complexities was when we started to actually fear love. Because we can’t understand love, we fear it, so fear comes before love and is therefore more important.

There’s an interesting quote from Proverbs that always threw me for a loop. It says, “The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge.” I always took that to mean that we can’t have knowledge until we fear God. But fear is such a loaded word, isn’t it? Especially when talking about a Creator. Like George Carlin observed, I don’t want to worship a God who wants us to fear It. God should be an element of love and kindness and compassion.

But the English language–in all its bastardized glory–doesn’t due justice to the Hebrew word for fear. Like the online new age guru Richard Shelquist illustrates on his Web site:

“The word most often translated in the Old Testament as fear is the Hebrew word... yirah which can possibly mean fear, but also means awe, reverence, respect and devotion. A closely related Hebrew word is... yare which can mean fearful, but also means to stand in awe, reverence or honor.”

But I didn’t really understand the depth of the “fear of God” saying until I read a little bit of Van Til’s Apologetic. Van Til–in all his obtuse and esoteric glory–notes that the quote, like passages in all great works of literature, has several meanings and the meanings are constantly evolving. Til writes that reverence and respect towards our Creator is essential as all knowledge comes to us through our Creator. Specifically, when we learn something, we must not wallow in the pride of our indomitable intelligence, but rather, accept that the knowledge was actually a gift, a gift that can be taken away if not understood or appreciated.

Maybe we should look at love under the same light. Maybe we should hold love in reverence and respect, as a gift that we should appreciate, lest it be taken from our hearts and replaced with calloused cynicism.

As human beings have evolved, both physically and mentally, we have yet to make a dent emotionally or spiritually. We are still moved by sophomoric yet emotive techniques that should have been thrown in the trash with our baby teeth. We are so immature in our spiritual understanding it makes me queasy. Of course there are millions and perhaps billions of people worldwide who lack physical and mental sophistication but exude a spiritual and emotional maturity that allows them a peace of mind that others can’t even imagine. Not even Hollywood.

Perhaps this problem exists strictly in western countries, or maybe just in the U.S. I don’t know. I do know that when we create things to fix the problems created by other created things, we just create more problems (that’s a lot of creation). At one time in history, our worries were limited to food and survival. Now our worries and psychological problems are enough to warrant an entire industry to fight the negative side effects of our own inventions. It’s truly an amazing spectacle of hubris and fear.

This is no call to turn Luddite, blow up your TV, throw away your paper and move the country, as John Prine suggests. It’s more of a call to ask ourselves a simple question. Have Americans learned anything positive from the Sept. 11 attacks, or do we only care about defeating Islamic extremists? Perhaps what we need is a peaceful wing of Al-Qaida, a Christian Taliban. Maybe we need some people who want the same things but use peaceful means to achieve it. I’m not advocating intolerance against women and Sharia law, but I am asking us to join a fight against imperialism, against one-size-fits-all international policies, against ignorance and corruption and greed which are all symptoms of fear. A fight against the fear of "the other" that has plagued humanity since the tower of Babel fell and our pride thrust our tongues to choose a voice and we were forever separated from our brothers and sisters through language.

Rodney King, the simple-minded Los Angeles victim of the 1992 L.A. riots, was deeply observant when we mused, half-crying and with his head bowed, “Can’t we all just get along?” King echoed the very sentiment that has stirred the minds of every idealist since the tower of Babel crashed. Why can’t we get along? Why is fear so motivating?

If we listen to FDR and understand that fear itself is the only thing to fear, maybe we’ll get somewhere. If we respect fear only because of the power that it has to motivate our actions, maybe then we can stop using fear to achieve power or control. If fear exists only as something that stands in front of us, only an obstacle that must be overcome to achieve understanding, maybe we stand a chance. But we have a long way to go.

Only those who aren’t afraid to get their feet wet can really enjoy the ocean. If you can’t swim, maybe it’s time to throw yourself into the water and see what you’re made of. As long as you have a friend there who understands what you’re doing, you should have no fear, and neither should your friend. Only respect for the power of the ocean, and love for the gift of water.

Let’s all go swimming!

The dust of the war machine

The book and movie Fight Club was an interesting commentary on human beings' substitution of natural pain with artificial materialism, and the resulting backlash. To see clearly the state of one's existence is to feel that one is alive. Without feeling the sensation of being alive, we are essentially walking corpses.

But the feeling of being alive means more than just experiencing pain. We as human beings desire love, success, friendships. We want to feel exhilaration and acceptance and security.

But for those who seek pain either consciously or otherwise, the masochists, they create a dichotomy within the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

If you enjoy or need pain, and you are a golden rule adherent, doesn’t that mean you will cause pain to others? And to people who don’t want it?

So where does that leave us? In a world where violence and pain are often the status quo, how can we ever live in peace? How can we treat others respectfully if we expect them to hurt us?

It comes down to knowing ourselves. How do we know ourselves? By looking at ourselves from the outside. How do we do that? By listening. How do we listen? By loving and respecting. How do we love and respect? We examine the great souls of the past. Yeshua, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr. The Saints. The Idealists. The Givers. Our ancestors who inspired us. Strangers who surprised us.

The irony of academic discussion is that improving the human condition is easy to illustrate via an essay, but in practice becomes horrifically challenging. It takes the full responsibility and dedication of every human being to make it work. We are, as CS Lewis said, all ships in a fleet heading towards the same destination. If one of us goes down, the entire fleet is weakened.

Objectivists may disagree, and argue that our innate selfishness is what inspires our compassion for our brothers and sisters. We only care because we get something out of caring, and we should only care if we are getting something. But, this sentiment only serves to strengthen and perpetuate the ego within each of us, further separating us from the natural wonders and the eternal connection of all living beings and all inanimate matter.

Academics, critical theorists, commentators, and college students with cause affectations, seize society’s flaws as if their own existence requires a state of imperfection. And that is, once again, a terrible self-perpetuating masochism. The idea is to come up with ideas that sound profound, because to actually create change would negate their existence.

So the real question is this: Why bother? If we made a change, we’d have nothing to talk about. We’d have no cause, no purpose. This isn’t a call for nihilism, but rather a call for singular and universal consciousness. Even in America where the oligarchy’s presence is hidden behind progressive and humane causes, where we limit ourselves by apathetic consumerism, where violence in the media maintains a bull market, where volunteers are used to create record profits while maintaining high unemployment rates, where images of computerized strangers affect individuals’ self-esteem, even here, positive change has conditions of acceptance. We can only improve x if y is unaffected. Or else, we will have to create z to combat the unintended consequences of x. And so it goes. The snowball of invention in the name of Utopia eventually crashes and leaves everyone in a melting pool of ignorance.

Let us revolutionize our minds. Let us begin the long process of understanding each other. Let us transcend borders and cultural barriers and reveal the true beauty that lies beyond the dust of the war machine. If we can see with our neighbor’s eyes, if we can hear with more than our ears, we won’t want to feel pain anymore and we won’t seek to be hurt. We will finally become alive.

July 12, 2007