He observed that many strictly anti-gay-marriage conservatives suddenly changed course when their own family members came out as gay. Most recently, we saw this when Ohio Republican, Rob Portman’s son came out; and shortly thereafter, Portman came out in support of legalizing gay marriage.

Savage asked, why does it take a personal experience to inspire a change of heart? Why, when it’s about someone else, does their ability to be empathic hide inside biblespeak or party rhetoric?

Compassion is supposed to be felt for others. So why are these policy makers blind to the pain and plight of others, until their own life experience teaches them a lesson? It’s a great question, and one that I think is important to ask ourselves today.

As a nation, we suffer from the same limitation.

This image is out of date (3 people were killed in Boston, not 2).

Yesterday, in Boston, 3 people were killed. One, a child. More than a hundred others were wounded.

It’s tragic and terrifying. It’s deeply unsettling. It makes the whole world we live in feel uncertain. And it’s what common people deal with every day in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, and anywhere else where the U.S. military sends unmanned U.S. drones. 

We need to talk about foreign policy. We need to talk about drone strikes.

If we think about how we felt yesterday when we heard the news about the bombings at the Boston Marathon finish line, and transpose those feelings onto people just like us, on the other side of the world, dealing with the same horror – the same terror – do we feel compassion?

It can be said that even if we stopped all acts of U.S. aggression this minute, there would still be those who seek to destroy the western “way of life” through means of violence. That fact is indisputable. Religious extremists be extreme. However! It can also be said that it would help a whole goddamned lot if we role modeled some reasonable behavior.

Think about how you felt yesterday when you heard the news. Then, don’t assume someone browner, someone who lives in a far off and exotic-seeming place, feels any less devastated when it happens to them.

Reasons to dislike Valentine’s day are well articulated. Restaurants charge double for food that’s generally less good; servers are harried. Big box chain stores clean up. Rational people ransack the joints, and leave with packages of third world manufactured festivity supplies that will tomorrow find their way to third world landfills. Sentiments, probably born in some gray cubicle, are expressed in cards written by someone else, somewhere else. It’s unsexy as hell.

My reasons to politely (or impolitely) abstain are varied. I figure, if we’re doing it right, we shouldn’t need Valentine’s Day. Our husbands and wives and partners and lovers should remember us, and we should remember them. Every day can’t be love day, but when we’re feeling it, we should express it. We should be making one another feel loved regularly, throughout the year. And we shouldn’t need tissue-paper trifles or waxy chocolates to drive it home.

This morning, as my man was readying to leave, he shot a cursory, “Happy Valentine’s Day” my way. I said, “Are you sad I don’t do this day?” (For whomever’s counting, it’s our 7th unobserved.) “Nah,” he said. “I’m used to it. I think you’re onto something. What with the whole, don’t tell me when and how I’m supposed to express or celebrate our love thing.”

I think I’m onto something, too, but there’s more. There’s the bit about how shopping plays into this, and all American holidays. I don’t expect anyone to stop celebrating Valentine’s Day. I don’t expect anyone to stop shopping entirely. I do think that we can ratchet up our awareness a bit. I think we’ve lost sight of our own behaviors. Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to shine some light.

In general, I believe so strongly that we can be happier and healthier if we have a greater awareness of the ways in which capitalism is seamlessly integrated into our sense of worth. I think we should hone our awareness of how things like “purchasing” and “owning” and “having” make us feel. At Christmas, shopping = family. At birthdays, shopping = celebration. I love to shop. I really do. Sometimes when I’m blue, a little trip for something new actually does lift my spirits. So I get it. I’m who I am, so I moderate the shit out of those impulses, but I get it.

Buying, in most areas of our lives, helps to define our sense of success. Today, it defines the most basic of all human impulses: how loved we do or do not feel. At Valentine’s Day, shopping and purchasing = love itself, and I think that’s a sad story. The machine of our culture is bigger than all of us. The most powerful weapon we have to change things is awareness. We have an obligation to look at how we’re affected by the world around us, and an equal obligation to temper our own behaviors accordingly.

image from adbusters.org

Recommended Reading:

http://www.alternet.org/sex-amp-relationships/why-its-harder-love-someone-era-extreme-capitalism

Let’s all stop using the term “pro-life”. Let’s evict it from the abortion conversation altogether.

We’re all “pro life”, aren’t we? Where pro loosely means “for”, I’d say the large majority of rational adults are … pro life. We’re for life. I’m for life. We want people to be born. We want people to be healthy, and loved, and wanted. If the conversation moves beyond the fetal, life is this whole big thing we’re living, full of love and learning and challenge and sorrow and joy. I’m so totally pro all that.

When you stick “pro” in front of “life”, the inverse becomes anti-life. But that’s not what we are.

We’re pro-choice.

The inverse of that is anti-choice. That’s what we should use.

The debate is not, for us, about life. It’s about choice, and the right of choice.

So do me a solid and get “pro-life” outa there. Let’s call it what it is: anti-choice.

Watch the 30 second video, created by Oil Change International & The Other 98%.

http://www.exxonhatesyourchildren.com/

Exxon hates your children? It may be fun to pump your fist and agree to that. But I don’t think it’s the sort of straightforward dialoguing that will reach people who currently have no issue with Exxon.

NYPD officer, Larry DePrimos, buys shoes for not-homeless man, Jeffrey Hillman.

This story is making the rounds, and my facebook friends have gone all gooey over it. And I, parade-rainer extraordinaire, have thus far managed to maintain my silence. But I saw yet another link today to this ubiquitous vid, and I feel like okay. Enough already.

How many homeless guys has this cop seen? How many homeless people, in compromising situations, do beat cops see every single day? How many homeless people are all over the city, not being bought boots?

Better question: why, in one of the richest cities in the world, do we have so many homeless? And how is it, that while so many of them are not being bought boots, we allow ourselves to feel so goddamned happy about the one who was gifted boots? One little instance. Where the guy turned out to not even be homeless. (Which on its own does not, of course, mean he doesn’t need boots…)

HuffPo – whose tone and style I’m not usually fond of – did a pretty good follow up of this story. Writer Paul Brandeis Raushenbush came to a conclusion that struck me the first time this story passed my way. Which is, although buying someone some boots is all well and good, it solves nothing. A couple of days later, the guy wasn’t even wearing the boots any more. But more than that, it’s actually counter productive that half a million people were able to sit in their comfortable homes, and watch a story on their fancy video-watching machines. A story that made them feel good about someone else, somewhere, doing something nice.

One of my recent posts is called “Sometimes It’s Hard to Like a Good Thing“. It’s about so called “Small Business Saturday”, brought to you by American Express™. I think this story falls in the same category for me. I know, I know, I’m such a barrel of laughs; it’s really fun to read my blog and be criticized for nothing. What’s so bad about feeling good about human nature, right? What’s so bad about having a little faith restored in the humans who make up Bloomberg’s personal army, the NYPD™? It feels so much better to feel really good about a NYC police offer, than to feel afraid of them. It feels good to see one man do a kindness to another. But really, I feel like…fuck that. If there’s a whole picture out there, this isn’t even a sliver of it. This story is an atom in the cosmos of homelessness in NYC, the image of cops everywhere, and especially about the NYPD in general. It’s nothing at all.

I was in a cafe/bistro type of place with Andrew and I don’t know who else. It was the middle of the night, but the place was open. All the sudden, people ran screaming and scared through the streets. We were in Brooklyn Heights, I think, and they ran away from the East River. I stuck my head out of the cafe door. No one would stop to tell us what was going on. Then some girl told us. She had a little mini afro. She said a 6 foot water surge was coming. A tsunami, like, but she didn’t use that word. She said no one knew in advance. They just realized, and it was coming.

Then we were under the elevated train, like in the Bronx, but still in Brooklyn. We were talking and looking, and before we knew it, we were standing up to our shins in freezing water. We ran away from the water. People ran up fire escapes to get out of the water’s way. Then we went up to a fourth story apartment and watched the water come up. I was out of breath from running up four flights. Everything went dark when the power went out, and we lighted candles, and watched the cars float out to sea.

After 9/11/01, I dreamed I was in a building that fell over sideways. It was kinda the building I grew up in, kinda not. I tumbled around and around in my parent’s living room, which is on the 10th floor. The building had split at its midpoint, and fell to the right. In the dream I tumbled and tumbled around, as if the building fell from space over and over on top of itself. It paused for a moment, and I had rolled into a ball in one corner. I looked out the window and saw a horde of men – an army of terrible, angry, civilian men. They were waiting up at the corner by my childhood library, in a mob. They were focused on the falling building, eager and breathless. Once the building landed, they would attack us and hack us up with their dull, dirty knives. The building started its fall, and I started to roll around the room again banging into the floor, and the walls, and the ceiling. I woke up when I tumbled out of bed and hit the floor. Last night’s dream was a bit like that.

Poor New York…

This year America gets a special treat to follow Black Friday, and to precede Cyber Monday, because we don’t have enough special national days devoted to accumulating goods (all scheduled on the heels of a holiday where we’re supposed to be expressing gratitude while commemorating genocidal annihilation). It’s called Small Business Saturday, and it’s brought to you by…American Express.

Every year around holiday shopping time I, and many of my friends, pass around graphics and pictures encouraging people to shop locally, buy from privately owned business, and from online craft retailers like Etsy. Some of my friends are crafters and artisans who make a living from selling their wares, and rely heavily on this invented period called “the holiday shopping season”. So I’m loathe to criticize the whole thing, but criticize I must.

I love getting gifts as much as the next guy. I also really love giving gifts. It’s not just the giving of, but also the shopping for (or making of) that I enjoy. It feels great to give a great gift. To see the recipient go, Oh wow, I love this, and everyone feels good. There’s that quintessential paper all over the floor, footy pajama revelry that harkens the most delightful moments of childhood. But we’re kinda fucked up about this whole giving/getting thing, and we can’t deny it. Now, most kids I know get whatever they want all during the year. The holidays are just a day when they get a whole bunch of shit all at once, on top of getting a whole bunch of shit all spread out over the year. There’s an entitlement and an expectation, and most of the stuff gets ruined, or forgotten, or thrown away in less than six months. The whole affair feels all around less joyful than it used to. We’re consuming more, and we’re becoming all the less happy for it, and it’s never more exemplified than at the holidays.

There are so many questions around it, like why are we aligning so much false and fleeting joy with the giving and receiving of goods? Why, when the kids are grown, and the joy is ostensibly gone from the ritual, do we continue to give things we’re not even sure if the recipients like, want, or need? Why are Christians okay with a complete capitalization of their second most important observance? What do eight magical days have to do with gift certificates for pedicures? We are so far gone, people, but I don’t want to rant. I don’t want to preach.

To see Amex sponsor this thing…it’s a day of shopping that looks and feels so nice because it supports the little guy, right? The little guy who, it should be said, might peddle utter crap, too. The big chains do not have the monopoly on this planet destroying, worker exploiting, cost externalizing, natural resource ravishing, globalizing, cluster fuck of a cycle. “Small Business” doesn’t necessarily indicate handmade lotions made from homegrown lavender, or hand knitted tea cozies from hand combed wool sheared from someone’s own personal organically raised, free-roaming lambs.

Small Business Saturday really seems like something that all the people who facebook-like and facebook-share those “shop locally” banners, myself included, can really get behind. But it’s Amex, the junk in our consumption needle. And it’s talking to us as we tie off our arm, and tap to raise a vein. It’s saying…do it. It’ll make you feel good.

Balog had a vision of planting cameras on the sides of mountains all throughout Iceland, Alaska, and other northern no-man’s-lands. After working out complicated technical problems – how to keep the cameras from being destroyed, how to keep them charged – he and his crew hiked into icy hinterlands, hung precariously off the sides off ice cliffs, belayed down skyscraper sized ice cubes, and planted a few dozen cameras. Then checked on those cameras every few months for years.

The technicalities on their own were interesting. The details of bolting cameras to rock in volatile, unpredictable, ever-changing climates, and all that. Not to mention Balog’s bad knees, which he abuses till he needs a third surgery. Those aspects alone could have made for a great story. But the images captured over a period of years, and the story those pictures tell, are important. And scary. And beautiful.

Icebergs aren’t the lone floating clump, like what we picture the Titanic crashing into. They’re these vast, many-miles-wide sheets of ice that look like their own landmass. Balog’s cameras snap photos of the icebergs all day long, for years on end, as long as it’s daylight. The images are then strung together in a time lapse. The time lapses (I guess this is a spoiler alert, so stop reading if you don’t want it given away…) show how the ‘bergs melting from all angles. These landmasses of ice that have been there for thousands of years are pushing themselves out to sea. And you can see so clearly, when the images are strung together, how they’re rushing and pushing, and breaking off; and running out of their ravines like rivers, instead of staying put as they’re supposed to.

In one moment, a colossal breakage occurs in the peninsula of one massive iceberg. It’s as if lower Manhattan is severed at 14th Street, and the whole thing is set free to tumble and crumble off into bits. Over and over, into smaller and smaller pieces, set adrift.

The bergs are also thinning. Imagine the Empire State Building, but three of them stacked on top of one another. Then imagine half an Empire State Building. That’s the observable difference in depth over just a five year period.

Aside from the photos, the film has great visuals. Whoever did their graphics did a wonderful job. Charts and illustrations, and that sort of thing. If you’re excited by that, and apparently I am, it’s worth a go for those. At no point in the film does data seem to have been manipulated or enhanced, or exaggerated in any way to make the point. The data and information they present really speaks for itself. No stranded polar bear animations here… 

The film is important, because it gives us tangible proof of a warming climate. The deniers will still be able to deny whether the warming is manmade. Even though Balog scoops up a handful of black sludge from beneath a layer of pristine ice, and explains the goop to be a combination of soot from wildfires and residue from carbon emissions, deniers will still say the warming is happening naturally. For the rest of us, though, it will firm our resolve and commitment to environmentalism; and hopefully remind us to vote for policy makers who will move in smarter directions for the planet.

You can also keep track on OurVoteLive.org. Thanks commenter, Dena, for the tip!

*** FLORIDA ***

From The Nation, Tea Party affiliated groups prevent people from voting; prevent water and chairs being passed out to people waiting in line, in the sun, some up to 7 hours

*** LOUISIANA ***

From katc.com, voter registration “mishap” at a local college.

*** MASSACHUSETTS *** 

From Metro West Daily News, Robocall misleads voters

*** MISSISSIPPI ***

• These were sent by my super-cool pal, Tom Head, who writes about Civil Liberties, among other things. Thanks, Tom!

The most serious problems so far seem to be…

1. Up to 10,000 registration forms that mysteriously went “missing” in (white, conservative) Circuit Clerk Barbara Dunn’s office after being submitted by the NAACP. READ IT.

2. An effort by (white, conservative) Governor Phil Bryant and (white, conservative) Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann to suppress black turnout in low-income rural areas by spreading the (false) meme that voter ID is required. READ IT HERE or HERE.

• From Raw Story, Thousands of voter registration forms, not processed.

*** OHIO ***

• From Democracy Now! In Ohio, African-American Turnout Threatened by Reduced Early Voting and Faulty Ballots
• From the Atlantic. Also references Florida: No One in America Should Have to Wait 7 Hours to Vote

*** PENNSYLVANIA ***

• Watch the video of a digital voting machine refuse to accept an Obama vote. Cnet reports that this issue is now resolved.
• From Global Post, Poll workers tell voters ID required, but it’s not so.

*** VIRGINIA ***

• From The Nation, Long Lines and Republican Poll Watchers May Deter Voters in VA

Where I see an utter and terrifying threat to the core freedoms bestowed to us as Americans, not to mention a clear indication of an ever expanding police state, they see an opportunity to make fun of hippies in a meme. Hey, each to his own. They’re not especially moderate, but nor am I. We have many colorful exchanges. While we disagree on details of ideology, we generally have love and history with one another that occurred before and separate from political concerns. So we tolerate one another’s respective insanities. We raise one another’s blood pressure in equal measure. Then we get back to having semi-normal relationships.

The other day on one such conservative friend’s facebook wall, a conversation began. It started with a benign post. My pal posted that areas of New Jersey affected by hurricane Sandy would have more poll location flexibility. I asked whether he knew if the same was true in NYC. As a resident of Joisey, he didn’t know. Knowing his audience, he playfully suggested I contact my local branch of the Tea Party to find out. I joked back that I’d contact Occupy tout de suite instead. The thread then devolved. Here are a few excerpts:

My Pal: hopefully you can pull them away from destroying capitalism for 5 seconds to answer that question.

Me: And by destroying capitalism, you mean doing a better job of organizing food [and supply] deliveries to the rockaways and breezy point than FEMA *and* the Red Cross? You’re right, maybe I shouldn’t bother them.

My Pal: oh wait… so big government isn’t the answer?…

So he kinda had me there. The day after Sandy people were already posting pictures like this…

government isn’t the solution…unless it is. Or is it?

…and I was the first one to repost. But it’s not the whole picture, is it?

City & Federal Hurricane Relief Services

First, New York City infrastructure has been terrific. Really wonderful, in a lot of ways. I live in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a neighborhood that still feels vaguely post-apocalyptic even while the rest of the city is going back to manicures and happy hour.

The police, for starters, have been very helpful. They’ve also been a much more amicable than their usual presence. They turn on flood lights every evening to illuminate our still darkened streets. It keeps the streets safer, and folks in the powerless buildings are also able to open curtains and use some of that light indoors once the sun sets. They drive around the projects, not doing anything, not bothering anyone; just having a presence so that the good non-gang affiliated people of Red Hook Houses can feel free to roam and be safe, even amid the darkness.

City garbage collectors are present day and night. They’re clearing the streets with  bulldozers and trucks, sometimes in the middle of the night, so that come the next morning residents and volunteers can get back to the work of ripping the guts out of basements and garden apartments in order to rebuild. There’s an urgency – mold and disease can spring up quickly, and the city’s been on top of that shit, getting the waste out. At least here in Red Hook.

City Councilwoman Christine Quinn sent a representative from her office to a local business owner’s meeting. He seemed genuinely eager to help us recruit sanitation and safety experts to get local restaurants reopened as quickly as possible.

The national guard rolled up twenty trucks deep, with much fanfare, and distributed MRE’s and cases of water. It was a silly spectacle, and overkill certainly, but at least they came.

The Red Cross parked a truck on my corner and did I don’t know what from a window, but plenty of people lined up for whatever services they offered.

So okay. Go, big government!

For-Profit Companies and Hurricane Relief Services

That said, non government for-profit organizations have also been great.

AT&T has brought trucks in every day. They calibrate a giant satellite on their trucks and offer free Wifi. They set up folding chairs and tables with power strips for folks to use as charging stations.

NYC Food trucks, together with Jet Blue, offered more than ten thousand free lunches; and gave free hot beverages to Con Ed, NYPD, and NYFD workers.

Pizza Moto even schlepped its portable brick pizza oven all the way to Red Hook to serve pies to the neighborhood.

And there are dozens of restaurants and local for-profit businesses devoting part or all of their proceeds to Sandy relief.

Can’t We all Just Get Along?

The nice answer to the question of which is better – private or public sector – would be…neither! Or both. The obvious answer is that the city is doing work that the private sector can’t, and vice versa. So let’s utilize everyone, and find a nice balance betwixt.

That answer is the nicest, but I’m not sure it’s right. It’s certainly more complicated than that, isn’t it? More quotes from that thread on my pal’s facebook wall…

My friend’s FB friend #1: WalMart trucks are lined up ready with supplies. Non-Union WalMart! Woop Woop!

…Then they squeezed in some Chris Christie fat jokes, which I find so distasteful and besides the point. Then they continued…

Friend #1: solving Americas problems, one Conservative at a time! Woop Woop!

Friend #2: ..just wait Proctor and Gamble will be there soon…just as after Katrinia…with Semi’s full of washers and [dryers]…to do peoples laundry…for FREE…because they understand that the good will they promote in times of need comes back to them twice fold in times of plenty… TIDE

So at first I read these, and that second post there kind of caught me. Like…okay, so great. Get these folks some clean, dry clothes. DO that. They NEED that. Know that your generosity will be rewarded later. That feels almost karmic and okay.

…but then, it’s not exactly okay, is it. Because we should not confuse a tax-deductible marketing campaign with an act of benevolence.

The folks who think up the Proctor & Gamble/Tide/Walmart service campaigns probably feel really great about themselves. It’s probably a very warm and fuzzy logistical headache that leaves the coordinators floating on their do-goodness for weeks, yeah?  But in the background, like all other marketing campaigns, there are accountants hard at work measuring the exact ROI they expect from this. Even as the volunteers help one another fold those fluffy towels, the victims remain a metric in someone’s spreadsheet. They remain a monetary projection. A potential unit of profit margin. That shit is ugly, yo.

It’s so easy…SO EASY…to let that fact go. I want to let it go. In fact, I’m judging my own self for being so goddamned cynical. Why I can’t I just let those poor Sandy victims with wet dirty clothes become clean! and dry! Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad someone is offering these services. I’m glad that the private sector is able to motivate and get shit together and show up. What I’m not glad about is that people confuse the efficacy of the private sector with a solution for the public sector’s flaws, and take it a step further to use these acts as reasoning for why the public sector should be usurped.

Where Does So Called Big Government Begin and End? Does “Aid” Count as Charity? And a Bunch of Other Questions.

A series of points come to me, and I’m having a hard time making the details gel, so I thought I’d lay them out here because this blog post isn’t nearly long enough (oy vey!):

• My old friend – the one with all the super right, corporate cheerleading, conservative friends – posits that firemen do not count as big government, because they operate town to town; but teachers, in his framework, are part of big government. By his argument, though I’m sure he’d reject this notion: firemen = good! Teachers = bad. FEMA definitely = bad, because it’s super big government. If there’s an argument that puts teachers and FEMA in the same category of uselessness, I’m not sure I can get down with any part of that argument.

• This article details how Cuomo, governor of the state of New York, rang up the CEO of Walmart to ask for help. He also dialed Pepsi. These two organizations were of course eager to help, and shortly had dozens of trucks heading over the Whitestone Bridge packed to the gills with supplies. Walmart pledged a $1.5mm donation, and will get a tax write off of I guess the same amount. I don’t really know the details of how these things work, exactly. That seems fair enough. More, I’m concerned to think about the other back-scratching that was agreed upon before those trucks were loaded. Walmart tried to edge its way into Brooklyn recently, into yet another community that didn’t want it. Brooklyn has more power to exclude Walmart than many other small towns, and so Brooklyn won. No Walmart. Now I wonder how long it’ll be before Brooklyn loses the next battle for a Walmart free borough.

• Possibly most to the forefront of my unease is this: So many good folks are heading to places like Costco and Sam’s Club and Walmart to cheaply buy many of the supplies they’re sending for relief. Many of these supplies were toxically manufactured in China or some other industrializing country, and will be toxically disposed of in India or some other pre industrial country, causing the same runoff issues, and the same carbon emission issues, that caused this superstorm in the first place. Cyclical as a motherfucker.

Generally speaking, we need to stop supporting the big box, mega corporate philosophy. This is the crux of it all for me, right here. Glorifying anything about them is antithetical to a better world.

What’s the Answer? Private or Public Sector?

I dunno. I have no tidy answer to the question I posed. I’m hoping the conversation will evolve both here and on Facebook once I post a link. My leanings tip me to the slight left of center on this one, which I’m sure comes as no surprise to any of my readers. A nice balance between the two, and a sharing of responsibility in times of hardship. That all sounds great in the short term, sure.

RELATED CONTENT (OFF SITE)

Occupy Sandy uses Walmart.com and Amazon.com to create registries for Sandy relief.

NY Times OpEd: A Big Storm Requires a Big Government