An honest politician is like a regular roll of toilet paper. It’s a generally accepted measuring stick, but reports of actual sightings are rarely more than urban legends.

People who get uppity about the US flag. People who make cell phone calls during movies. Cannibals. Sometimes it’s hard to decide which are the worst examples of humanity.

Right, so this thing of people freaking out flag burning, the pledge of allegiance, or flag pins is really tiring. I suppose a rant about how Christians are instructed not to worship idols would be off-topic (sorry, there’s a difference between physically following a banner, say, into battle, and actually taking offense at someone not wearing a pin of that banner). Also, can we acknowledge that very, very few people know the full lyrics to the Star-Spangled banner, and that the Pledge has only been around for about half the existence of this nation. So, for example, George Washington did not say it? Please?

But here’s how I think of the flag. It’s a symbol of our nation, particularly of the unity of the states under the Constitution. Unity of purpose is what the flag seems to most represent. At least to me. And yes, it’s a reminder of those who have died fighting for this nation, both those who fought for good causes, and sadly but importantly, those who gave their lives for ill-conceived wars engaged to meet the goals of a few politicians.

So, politicians using the flag as part of their campaign is pretty contradictory. Let’s face it, most campaigns focus a lot on divisions, highlighting them even when they’re inconsequential and increasing those divisions. Is a politician where a flag pin really respecting that flag or what it represents? I don’t think so.

In fact, for the flag obsessive that are always wanting to propose some admendment to respect that flag, here’s what I propose: “No person may use the US flag, images of it, or references to it, during the course of any campaign for elected government office.” Because these games of (and admittedly it’s often not the politicians themselves engaging in them) “I’m more patriotic than you because I wear the flag pin, or say the pledge, or whatever,” aren’t promoting unity, or indeed any of the many things that are great about the US. No, those dirty and silly games are among the greatest disrespect than be shown to that banner, or to the nation which it represents.

This is how I feel.

Old King Saul’s time is done. No, he wasn’t terrible. He helped the nation through a crisis, and for a time we were more united. But that didn’t last. And yes, maybe he was God’s choice, but then, maybe God was just giving us what we wanted: a leader who was “one of us”.

He started out promising. He had the right character. A good guy, charismatic, that sort of thing. But maybe he got a bit drunk with power. And maybe he looked for advice in the wrong places. He saw enemies where he should have seen friends. He saw the need for action when he should have chosen restraint.

This is where I am.

The gates of Hebron. David, ready to take his crown. But it’s hard to hear over the whispers, the people I love, I want to respect. “Didn’t he fight for the Philistines? He’s a Judahite, you know? He’s just good at motivating a small group of people. He isn’t really one us. He said he served Saul, tried to help out, but he was really a traitor. Have you heard what his priest did?”

They don’t want answers. I don’t want the questions. I want to celebrate, but it’s hard.

This is how I feel.

And, yes, maybe I won’t cry out in celebration. Maybe I just don’t have the guts. But I will be happy today, I will be hopeful. I will accept his leadership and be glad. And maybe I’m wrong, and maybe he’ll fail. Wouldn’t be a first time.

O, Saul, why did you only ever see enemies all around you?

Here’s a quick question. Does anybody actually like McCain?

I’m serious. I live in Oklahoma. It doesn’t get much redder. And I can count on one hand the people I know who are even considering voting for Obama. But I can’t think of a single time than one of the McCain supporters has voiced a reason for voting for McCain.

Of course, they express reasons for voting against Obama. Actually, there’s only two reasons. The first is a real question as to his foreign policy credentials. The second is this sort of vague repeat of internet hoaxes. In short, some of the people I know actually think that Obama supports anti-US terrorism. Don’t ask me how otherwise seemingly intelligent people try to explain that point of view, because of course they don’t try to explain it. I guess it’s pure fear.

But, then, that appears to be the only angle McCain supporters have.

Fear.

I’m at Moe’s, eating my burrito, trying not to think of the stomach bug I’ve had the past four days. The news on the muted TV seemed an okay distraction (I wasn’t up to actual conversation). At some point, I looked up and saw in large letters “The Voice of Evil”. This was shortly followed by a photograph of Osama bin Laden. Given this photograph (and the Fox News logo), I’m assuming that the “Evil” entity referred to in the headline was bin Laden.

Mull that over a moment. Bin Laden. Capital-E Evil. I mean, yeah, the guy’s a selfish asshole, but “The Voice of Evil”. Do we really want to give to bin Laden the status of Sauron (or even the Mouth thereof), of Satan, of Voldemort, of, dare we suppose, Palpatine? Yes, I’m jesting a bit here, but all of these have a status–for at least some people–of being/representing evil incarnate (side note: think the “mythical” Satan here, the way he’s viewed culturally; otherwise, we could open a whole can of worms). So, what’s the problem with adding bin Laden to this group? All of these also have a particular psychological power, by virtue of being Evil. All, in their contexts, while powerful, suffer significant weaknesses, but these tend to be overlooked because of the way these entities are perceived.

By seeming bigger than life, the Evils have two major psychological powers:

1) The ability to draft others to fulfill their selfish plans. There may be a “cause” involved, but more significant is that other “bad people” draft off of the prevailing fears of this being.

2) Fear. Because this entity is Evil, I can conceive of he, she, it, or they doing anything to me. If I accept that conception, it inspires exceptionally strong fears.

We in the US have indeed granted Bin Laden a portion of both these qualities. That I would even consider the war in Iraq as more valuable to my personal safety than doing something about Interstate cell-phoners (and, I am admittedly an Interstate cell-phoner myself, although I try to keep it to a minimum) is irrational. But that irrationality is based on a fear of a repeat of the 9/11 attacks. Indeed, that this fear actually garnered support for the Iraq war is clear evidence of this irrational power (No, I still don’t know what they supposedly had to do with each other).

To make matters worse, that fear is continually placed specifically in the persona of Osama bin Laden. If I attribute to bin Laden the status of Evil, I resign myself to accepting his role in my life and culture, regardless of any real connection. As the war against Al-Qaeda has failed to materialize, the pundits have pushed the idea of bin Laden as a great Evil as an excuse for his continued real power; if we will instead acknowledge that the Bush administration in particular (and many others in general) mismanaged their post-9/11 offensive, bin Laden loses power. We could instead focus on an improved scheme for eliminating both the current offensive abilities of terrorist groups and the social, economic and political issues that make these groups attractive to a given population.

So let’s consider what bin Laden is if he is not Sauron. Bin Laden is a trust-fund kid. I don’t know much about his personal life, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he got interested in politics and religion out of a combination of boredom and wanting to prove himself. Pride, idleness and available resources is a most dangerous combination (by the way, it rather concerns me that the primary disciplinary action in modern Western culture is forcing idleness on people who have just had their pride hurt).

The current war on terror can then be seen as a pissing match between two trust fund kids. In that light, a second definition of Evil appears. This is the type of Evil that the rivalry football team is. “The Fighting Carrots are evil”, might say a member of the school on the other side of the state. Most times this is in jest, but an insult placed wrongly can turn it ugly. If such a rivalry definition of evil can be turned for political gain, it will be. Consider the Cold War. Certainly the USSR’s government did some evil things, but the “communism is evil” has a lot of the rivalry sense; indeed it’s hard for me to interpret “the space race” in any other light. Folks like McCarthy saw the political potential and acted to turn communism from a rivalry evil (if only in part) to an Evil.

There is a natural conclusion to this: Vietnam. To generalize, creating an Evil for political (or “news entertainment”) ends generates conflicts with no reasonable particular purpose or well-defined goal. People lose their lives fighting an Evil that is at worst no more than a rivalry, at best a sociopath with lots of guns who could be better dealt with if we acknowledge what that entity really is.

I don’t know if I could, but I’d like to say I’d be willing to sacrifice my life to end Al Qaeda’s ability to kill people (note that I don’t know how to go about that, which is partly because even writing this article I struggle to mentally separate that goal from Iraq). I’d even like to say I could sacrifice my life for the creating a more secure environment for Iraqi children, although I’m confident I have no idea how to that (dividing Iraq into multiple independent states might be a decent start though). But I am not in the least willing to lose my life fighting a mythical Evil that has some theoretical connection to Iraq. And that is so hard, to see a list of those who have died who, yes, fought very real problems, but who, from the perspective of the Bush administration and much of congress where ultimately fighting an Evil that is a product of press releases.

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Epilogue: This point isn’t central to my above article, but I think it bears mentioning, if only because it might clarify some of the above thoughts. It’s early year in the 2008 election season (not that you’d know it was still early from the five-nightly debates), but I have done some thinking about the candidates. Up until tonight, preparing to write this article, I hadn’t seen any reason for caring that Clinton is a woman. Sure, if all else was equal, I might vote for her above a man just because I enjoy seeing stupid traditions fail, but I can’t see where her being female would affect her governing decisions in significantly different way than the male candidates.

Tonight, though, I see one possible arena. I’m a guy, and I know a lot of guys, and I know that rivalries are something we guys tend to get into. Blowing those silly rivalries way out of proportion is something we also seem to enjoy. That any male president could think of bin Laden as a rival, could transfer that rivalry onto Hussein in order to get on “more comfortable turf” is not so surprising, because rivalries are an element of the (a?) cultural “man” role in the US.

I would like to think that a woman president might have been more likely to take the 9/11 attacks as an attack on a family (in this case, the US population in general) rather than as a point in a “my dick is bigger” match. If this is accurate–and it may not be–it may help explain something that has been bothering me about Clinton. Overall, I feel she would be an excellent president, except for what has seemed to me to be excessive support of the administration’s (flawed, in my opinion) response to 9/11. However, I may need to rethink this, because I suppose I have been assuming that her response is based on a rivalry philosophy. If not, her execution of that response, as the Executive, may be entirely different.

(Reproduced for an article I wrote about a year and a half ago for another blog I write; I think it’s appropriate here. And I’m tired)

I came with a term the other day as a corollary to the Windows tax, which is, ha ha, the “Apple tax”. According to Google (and not surprisingly) the term Apple tax has been around for a while. I don’t know what everybody else means by it, but what I’m going for is that you can’t (according to the license agreement, anyway) run OS X on a non-Apple computer. In this sense, the Apple tax is the amount I have to pay for the hardware in order to use the software, although I don’t actually want or need said hardware. It’s a testament to Apple’s developers, designers and marketing team that I would actually consider buying an Apple in order to get OS X.

Now, I quite understand what I assume to be Apple’s business reasons for doing this, and that if I used OS X on a non-Apple branded computer, I’d likely have all sorts of trouble. I’m going to deem these points irrelevant though, because the discussion of Apple is, for this article, illustrative. I shall now depart from computers and move into politics.

I’m in favor of a smaller federal government, or more precisely, a more constrained federal government. The US Constitution’s definition of how this would work is the best I’ve seen. Fortunately for lobbyists, politicians are adept are reinterpreting the laws or even constitutions that their predecessors created, no matter how exactly that law or constitution forbids the newly favored interpretation. Among the consequences of the current structure of our federal government is the prevalence of Apple Taxes.

That is to say, each of us ends up paying a lot of money to the government, and get only a small amount of “what we need” in return. We pay taxes for the organization to facilitate interstate commerce, for a federal judicial system, for our armed forces, for coordinated environmental protection (read: less pollution so I can breathe). Those I consider good taxes. They are often not used well, but in principle, they’re not inherently Apple taxes. Instead, they get extended by this law and that into having massive Apple taxes.

For example, the federal government building an interstate highway system. Fine (well, actually, I’m not sold on the idea, but that’s another article). The infamous bridge to nowhere. Apple tax. And this example illustrates an important point about Apple taxes: for some people, they’re not. For the people in Alaska directly affected by that bridge, it wouldn’t have been an Apple tax. For me in Oklahoma, it clearly is.

This sample illustrates what I’m am going to designate a Type 1 Federal Apple Tax. These are Apple taxes that occur because the federal government is doing what the states ought to be doing. I’m assuming the reason this has happened is more or less your good old power struggles. Such spending is good for one or two states and detrimental for the rest. In some cases, things just have to go through the federal government but I think those instances a far less prevalent than current federal spending suggests. I would prefer lower federal spending and taxes and higher state spending/taxes, because then I can have more say in how my taxes are used, by virtue of being a higher percentage of Oklahoma’s population that of the US population.

A Type 2 Federal Apple Tax is spending that is an Apple tax throughout the federation. In general I think they happen because of 1) the interests of a few powerful parties, or 2) because of politics getting away from the politicians, or 3) both. I think the classic example for this decade of a type 2 is the current war in Iraq. I’m talking about the moral value of the war. I’m not awake enough to open that can of worms. I’m talking about the Iraq war as an Apple Tax, a much more expensive piece that I didn’t want, tacked on to something I did value.

Declaring war on Al Qaeda (which I don’t think we ever actually did) makes perfect sense to me after the 9/11 attacks. This organization had declared war on the US and attacked us. Yes, some of the members have some valid complaints, and I sure wish we would try to address those, but I am in favor of a war against Al Qaeda (which, again, as best I can tell, we’ve never started). Lacking that, the war in Afghanistan was sensible. I’m not sure about its particulars but I’m trying to make some sort of point here.

But then, boom, Iraq war. Apple Tax. Do not want. So how did we get there. Politics and some special interests. That war could not (I think) have been justified without the proceeding “War on Terra’”, but over time it became an acceptable tax because the politicians presented it as inseparable from any any action against Al Qaeda. It’s okay for a commercial entity to play those games. It’s a problem when the federal government does so.

Solutions? Other than returning power to the states? Nope. I’m merely using this concept as another way to consider various issues in modern politics.

Why not shoot my political aspirations in the foot, and make wholly non-researched suggestions regarding a top “hot button” issue? Hey, that sounds swell.

If I’m going to write about abortion, I’d like to start by pointing out that I am male, and therefore lack the appropriate organs to ever be pregnant. Hence, I can make all sorts of statements about this without any real hope of empathy. In other words, I want to always bear in mind that I probably cannot fully understand abortion.

But that doesn’t stop me from making some statements and throwing an off-the-cuff solution out there.

Initial Thoughts

The stock “right-wing Christian” answer (whether or not the majority of right-wing Christians actually support this, I don’t know) of abstinence programs may sound like a nice idea, especially to those of us who chose pre-marital abstinence for moral reasons, but I just don’t see how abstinence programs have any likelihood of working among those who don’t have such a pre-exisiting moral stance. Fear-mongering about STDs didn’t seem to cause any particular concern among my high-school class. Indeed, it rather frustrates me to find so many Christians trying so hard to “rationalize” Biblical instruction.

Instead of that route, I begin with the assumption that abortion is always undesirable. Note that I am not saying it is always immoral, unethical, etc., but that it is undesirable. To put this in perspective, I imagine presenting a woman who chooses to have an abortion–for whatever reason–the option to go back in time and prevent fertilization. I assume that in all cases (or very close to all) she would choose to do so. If I’m wrong on that point, the rest of this discussion is probably bunk, but this makes sense to me.

Proposal

My proposal then is as follows:

1. Invest significant federal funding (at least what’s going to the abstinence programs) into identifying or developing female and male contraceptives that prevent conception.
2. Distribute–again, federally funded–said medicine to everybody over the age of, say, twelve. Distributions might include a solution that the medicine could be dissolved in. That way, one could either take the medicine and throw away the solution or dissolve the medicine in the solution and throw both away. The rationale here is to avoid religious demands of placing the unused medicine on the altar–particularly parents demanding of teenagers.
3. Recommend that all people, sexually active or not, take the medicine unless they are trying to conceive.
4. Make it illegal to punish anyone for use of said medicine or to deny it to anyone, including children.
5. Both biological parents (since both can take the medicine) are financially and otherwise responsible for any children.
6. Keep abortion legal. Tell people this is an option, but make clear the benefits of using the medicine.

Hey, that’s nice and simple. Would it work? I don’t know, but it seems a better solution that anything going on right now. And, again, I’m taking the assumption that people will use a free, easily accessible contraceptive, in preference to the possibility of a future abortion. The key here is to make obtaining and using the contraceptive the easiest solution.

Problems

This approach seems the best to me, currently. I don’t doubt that over time I will see other approaches that I may prefer. But at this time, the stuff I keep hearing–abstinence “programs”, legal rulings, etc.–offers no solution, so at least this seems better. I do see some immediate problems that would have to be addressed, and which may not be fully addressable, and so must be weighed against the overall value of this approach:

1. Religious groups might attack anyone who uses the medicine. I’ve proposed some measures above, but I don’t think there’s anyway to fully prevent this.
2. Possible allergic reactions.
3. Some people would refuse to take medicine for religious reasons. I may assume here that they would also refuse abortions. And that hopefully their religious reasons would also prevent them getting into an ‘unwanted pregnancy’ situation. Ha ha.
4. I assume that no contraceptive will be 100% effective. But I hope that the majority of people who consider abortion immoral would accept the opportunity to prevent 99% of abortions despite knowing that unwanted pregnancies will occur, though hopefully only a very small percentage.
5. A fear/concern that the government and/or pharmaceutical companies could somehow abuse this solution, perhaps including other drugs in the medicine for whatever purpose. My response to that is if the government gives that a try, there’s better pre-existing distribution methods. Say, soft drinks.

So, that’s one idea.

It’s important for a guy to support his sister. A few weeks ago, it occurred to me that I need to support my sister more (I don’t actually have a sister, but this point seemed unimportant; in point of fact, none of the following is true). Here’s how I supported her:

There’s this street corner in the middle of town where I buy my coke (Coca-Cola, that is). One of the guy’s there had been causing me some trouble lately. And could you imagine? I’d actually helped this guy out in a turf battle, even provided some weapons (super-soakers, that is). Now, he says I took advantage of him, just played him to get my coke cheaper. Asshole.

Anyway, it was pretty obvious this guy was going to try to kill my sister’s son. This guy knows how much my nephew means to me, even if I haven’t paid him a lot of attention in the past few years. Plus, I had it on good authority from my plumber’s great-aunt, this guy had bought himself a bomb. I could have let it pass, but I need to support my sister.

I bought my sister some pepper-spray and let her borrow my Hummer (the one with the broken window, not the newer one) and told her she needed to go down there and deal with this guy. She was skeptical at first, everyone in family was a bit, especially my brother. Hey, I can understand that. But I laid out my case. Maybe I embellished it a wee-bit, but I was supporting my sister and protecting my nephew. I don’t normally believe that the end justifies the means, but this was an exception. Eventually, even my brother okayed it, although he kept trying to get me to go to the police first. Yeah, right, they’d want to “investigate” and “talk”, while who knows what this guy would be doing.

I would have liked to go with my sister, of course, but I needed to stay where I could direct things, keep myself safe. So, I sent her off. But I supported her–I gave her a thousand dollars, although I had to take most of it back so I could take family members to dinner and make sure they kept supporting her. Also, I told her that she could keep whatever she could take from this guy. She hesitated, but then I reminded her this wasn’t just for her son, it was for all the people this guy was hurting.

Well, she’s been down there for a couple of weeks now–nobody said this would be easy–but I’ve continued to support her. She got beat up, I sent her some bandaids. She was raped, I sent her a some birth control medicine. I’ve even started asking the family to send her more money.

That’s created a problem. My brother doesn’t believe in supporting our sister. He doesn’t want to send her more money. He wants to bring her home. Well, sure, we all do, but if we bring her home now, hell, if we even let that guy know she’s coming home, well, all is lost. My nephew is still in danger, and now the whole street corner’s a mess. So, my brother’s just not going to contribute to the money we’re going to send her, unless she’s leaving. How could he refuse to support our sister like this?

Well, I support her. I’ve got a twenty in gas money headed her way, and my prayer’s are with her.

A short thought this week, whilst I work on two other articles (on Abortion and Liquid templates, for two rather disjoint concepts).

I came across a verse a few days ago that helps explain my unwillingness to accept the justifications for the current war in Iraq.

Be sure you have sound advice
before making plans
or starting a war.
(Proverbs 20:17, CEV)

I am not convinced that the Bush II administration made any effort to ensure they had sound advice. Rather, it seems they sought “advice” that confirmed their predispositions. Whether or not I am right on that, this verse is a good thing to bear in mind; in any planning, it is easy (at least for me) to get so caught up in the planning and/or anticipated result to forget to seek wisdom from others. The “too concerned with whether or not they could, they never stopped to wonder if they should” problem being one of the major symptoms to come to mind.

I’m adding a new section today: Politics. I have lots of thoughts on politics, and can be pretty passionate on some issues. I’ve tended to avoid blogging on politics though. In fact, I tend to avoid expressing my views on politics in general. The level of anger and even hatred that minor political differences can engender is not something I want to contribute to. Especially when a lot of my views are along the lines of either 1) this is a problem, but I don’t have a clue what to do about it; or 2) this is really not a big deal–at least not as big a deal as other, but less considered, issues.

And yet, I have had a consistent and nearly life-long desire to “get into politics”. This, of course, is a double-edged sword, when considering whether to blog on political issues. On one side, blogging would be a way to refine my views, encouraging deeper research and consciousness of various issues. The other edge is that I might herein type something with which I will later disagree. The maxim that a word is forever now has the caching force of the tri-dub behind it. But then it occurs to me that letting that keep me from discussing things I feel strongly about is contributing, if in only a infinitesimally small way, to absurd belief that politicians should never change their opinions. That attitude, at least, that seems to be among the primary reasons that Kerry lost the 2004 presidential election.

So, I’m writing this generally pointless article not as something that I expect anyone to read and, if reading, to take anything away from it, but rather as a (roughly) public commitment to myself to break out of my shell on the topic of politics. I won’t probably make much in the way of absolutist statements. Instead, my goal is to force myself to explore issues deeper in a way that would be readable and sensible to others. So, here we go.

I probably should stick to my policy of keeping my political views quiet in the presence of most, but I’m gonna’ write a bit, mainly cos I need to get it out, the way I best get things out: writing it.

I’ve taken two major lessons from the war in Iraq. The first is that economic sanctions seem stupid enough that they at least ought not be a first choice. The second is that nearly imperceptible differences in values, predictions and understanding of history can and do result in hugely different political opinions.

(Actually three lessons: the third is how I react to attacks on my political viewpoint, which is not very well. Passive-Agressive and all).

I am more or less against the war in Iraq, the reasons being varied and still largely questioned by myself, although the predominant is a lack, to me, of a compelling reason for the war. However, I see people with very similar values and beliefs to me consider people who oppose the war as foolish, sometimes to the point of traitorous. It’s little differences in values, in the ways we think, in how our minds play out might-have-beens.

My hope for me out of this is that I will always remember to look at situations with those slight changes in perspectives, to not assume that because someone arrives at a different conclusion, he or she is beyond understanding. I hope that I will keep trying to understand as many sides as I can, and not forget that but for some small change, I might agree with those whose opinions I instead think are entirely foolish and unreasonable. Cos, hey, I’d guess 99 out 100, they aren’t any more unreasonable than mine.