You’ll notice a rash of “new” posts — and a big gap in the dates of the “Archives”: I’m beginning to import my old political blog, doublethink (small “d”), which used to reside on Salon.com starting back in 2003.
There’s a lot of good stuff in my old work in the form of material that just doesn’t exist on the Web anymore, and, as The Long, National Nightmare That Is George W. Bush winds down, issues are coming up where I find more myself wishing more and more that I could link to these old posts. Well, now I can.
What regular readers will probably find surprising is that, while there’s certainly plenty of LGBT news and opinion, I was focused (you could say obsessed by) BushCo, the brand-new Iraq War, and, perhaps most of all, PNAC. (I also blogged anonymously in those days; no one ever connected my identity to my blog. That’s how cowed I was, how scared I was of my own government.)
Does all of this belong in a primarily gay news blog? It sure does. Everything is interconnected, and when you really start digging deep into the ugly, twisted guts of neoconservatism (as I did in earnest), you realize that you can draw a distinct, if winding, line from some once-obscure German political philosopher directly to the rights you have (or haven’t) as a LGBT American.
Anyway, that’s what’s going on behind the scenes here — I just wanted to point this out before anyone wondered why there was a gap of several years in the Archives. I had stopped blogging, you see, because… well, for a lot of reasons, but mainly because I had become filled with utter despair and hopelessness about the United States, and didn’t feel I was doing a lick of good.
Horribly off-key singer who loved Frank Sinatra and Hank Williams
Adoring, self-sacrificing father
Four-wheeler
Gun collector and hella good shot
Ghost-town hunter
Devout Catholic
Feminist
Liberal
Best friend
July 10, 1919 - December 4, 1990
I love you, I miss you, I miss talking with you about everything, and I will miss you every day for the rest of my life. And I would give everything I own just to have you back again*… and to be at my wedding. You would be so happy, Pop. So very happy.
* Yes, David Gates wrote it for his father:
You sheltered me from harm Kept me warm, kept me warm You gave my life to me Set me free, set me free The finest years I ever knew Were all the years I had with you
And I would give anything I own Give up my life, my heart, my home I would give everything I own Just to have you back again
You taught me how to love What it’s of, what it’s of You never said too much But still you showed the way And I knew from watching you
Nobody else could ever know The part of me that can’t let go
And I would give anything I own Give up my life, my heart, my home I would give everything I own Just to have you back again
Is there someone you know You’re loving them so But taking them all for granted? You may lose them one day Someone takes them away And they don’t hear the words you long to say
I would give anything I own Give up my life, my heart, my home I would give everything I own Just to have you back again Just to touch you once again
…when you could be spending your time watching movies, going to the beach, planting a garden, taking a road trip to Yellowstone, making stop-motion videos of clay monsters attacking Barbie Dolls, looking up childhood friends you haven’t seen since grade school, picking loquats, volunteering at an animal shelter, dishing out meals at Glide Memorial, reading a good book, lying back on the grass and seeing animal shapes in the clouds, teaching someone to read, going to community college to brush up on your American Sign Language, taking a walking tour of a cemetery, investigating a reportedly haunted house, four-wheeling ghost towns in the desert, Googling old episodes of “Zoom,” making a homemade smoothie, adopting a stray kitty, going on a picnic, digging your own swimming pool by hand, learning Italian, [fill in the 8,439 things you’d like to be doing right now, here].
Your words of encouragement have convinced me to keep blogging on the Newswire — and to keeping the clueless Mr. Obama honest.
I can’t answer every message individually (or I’d never start blogging again), but I want to thank you, from the heart of my— er, the bottom of my heart.
(As for one not-so-thrilled correspondent, you can’t get an answer if you leave an invalid email address. This means you, “jdrac@yahoo.com”.)
So, it’s back to work for me.
Thanks again, folks. Tune in tomorrow, same gay time, same gay channel.
I’ve been pretty discouraged for quite some time with the lack of notice the Newswire has been getting, and I’m about ready to call it a wrap, and focus on other things.
Hey, it only took, like, five years (twenty-five, if you count all the time I’ve been banging my head against the freelance-writing wall) to get it through my thick skull that nobody really likes my writing enough to read it. Or link to it.
So here’s the deal: If I get one hundred emails (via the “Comment on this story” link below) within the next 24 hours that say “Keep blogging!” I will. If I don’t, I’ll give up LGBT/political blogging and do something else.
I’m not looking for strokes. It just all boils down to the question: What’s the point in writing anything if nobody reads it?
Or: If a tree falls in the forest, and there’s nobody around to hear it, does it make a sound?
So, let me know if, as I suspect, I’m wasting my time. Or don’t. Either way, I’ll get the message.
I had an epiphany last night. I was lying in bed meditating, when suddenly it all became clear: I now understand the logic of Iraqi liberation, the futility of trying to herd a large group of supporters into accepting the fact that you and you alone are right — and thus Mr. Bush’s initial determination in going it alone if need be, critics and naysayers be damned.
And so I got out of bed, sat down in front of the computer, and began to write — as if possessed.
I hope you’ll forgive any stiltedness in this entry — but it was very late at night, and this is exactly how it came to me. And I feel the need to share it with you, without so much editing that the meaning is diluted.
Please do me the kindness of reading every word, right through to the end. I promise, it will be worth your time.
I sincerely hope the anti-war protesters will see the light, as I did:
The tragic reason why it so often happens that the pursuit of one definite task is not left to one association alone is as follows: Generally speaking, every action carried out on the grand style in this world is the expression of a desire that has already existed for a long time in millions of human hearts, a longing which may have been nourished in silence. Yes, it may happen that throughout centuries men may have been yearning for the solution of a definite problem, because they have been suffering under an unendurable order of affairs, without seeing on the far horizon the coming fulfilment of the universal longing. Nations which are no longer capable of finding an heroic deliverance from such a sorrowful fate may be looked upon as effete. But, on the other hand, nothing gives better proof of the vital forces of a people and the consequent guarantee of its right to exist than that one day, through a happy decree of Destiny, a man arises who is capable of liberating his people from some great oppression, or of wiping out some bitter distress, or of calming the national soul which had been tormented through its sense of insecurity, and thus fulfilling what had long been the universal yearning of the people.
It is certain that the natural law will take its course, inasmuch as the strongest will be destined to fulfil the great mission. But usually the others are slow to acknowledge that only one man is called. On the contrary, they all believe that they have an equal right to engage in the solution of the difficulties in question and that they are equally called to that task. Their contemporary world is generally quite unable to decide which of all these possesses the highest gifts and accordingly merits the support of all.
The populace nourishes vague desires and has only general opinions, without having any precise notion of their own ideals and desires or of the question whether and how it is impossible for these ideals and desires to be fulfilled.
The tragedy lies in the fact that many men struggle to reach the same objective by different roads, each one genuinely believing in his own mission and holding himself in duty bound to follow his own road without any regard for the others.
These movements, parties, religious groups, etc., originate entirely independently of one another out of the general urge of the time, and all with a view to working towards the same goal. It may seem a tragic thing, at least at first sight, that this should be so, because people are too often inclined to think that forces which are dispersed in different directions would attain their ends far more quickly and more surely if they were united in one common effort. But that is not so. For Nature herself decides according to the rules of her inexorable logic. She leaves these diverse groups to compete with one another and dispute the palm of victory and thus she chooses the clearest, shortest and surest way along which she leads the movement to its final goal.
Hence, though diverse groups march along different routes towards the same objective, as soon as they come to know that analogous efforts are being made around them, they will have to study all the more carefully whether they have chosen the best way and whether a shorter way may not be found and how their efforts can best be employed to reach the objective more quickly.
Through this rivalry each individual protagonist develops his faculties to a still higher pitch of perfection and the human race has frequently owed its progress to the lessons learned from the misfortunes of former attempts which have come to grief. Therefore we may conclude that we come to know the better ways of reaching final results through a state of things which at first sight appeared tragic; namely, the initial dispersion of individual efforts, wherein each group was unconsciously responsible for such dispersion.
Anybody who is not so blinded by partisan politics as to deny this truth will have to agree that the so-called wisdom of men would never have come to the same wise decision as the wisdom of Life itself, that is to say, the free play of forces, finally brought to realization.
And that will always be so. Therefore it is not to be regretted if different men set out to attain the same objective. In this way the strongest and swiftest becomes recognized and turns out to be the victor.
The moment a man arises who profoundly understands the distress of his people and, having diagnosed the evil with perfect accuracy, takes measures to cure it.
It is a mistake to believe that a factor of strength will result from the coalition of weak groups; because experience shows that under all forms and all conditions the majority represents the duffers and poltroons. Hence a multiplicity of associations, under a directorate of many heads, elected by these same associations, is abandoned to the control of poltroons and weaklings. Through such a coalition the free play of forces is paralysed, the struggle for the selection of the best is abolished and therewith the necessary and final victory of the healthier and stronger is impeded. Coalitions of that kind are inimical to the process of natural development, because for the most part they hinder rather than advance the solution of the problem which is being fought for.
It may happen that, from considerations of a purely tactical kind, the supreme command of a movement whose goal is set in the future will enter into a coalition with such associations for the treatment of special questions and may also stand on a common platform with them, but this can be only for a short and limited period. Such a coalition must not be permanent, if the movement does not wish to renounce its liberating mission. Because if it should become indissolubly tied up in such a combination it would lose the capacity and the right to allow its own forces to work freely in following out a natural development, so as to overcome rivals and attain its own objective triumphantly.
It must never be forgotten that nothing really great in this world has ever been achieved through coalitions, but that such achievements have always been due to the triumph of the individual. Successes achieved through coalitions, owing to the very nature of their source, carry the germs of future disintegration in them from the very start; so much so that they have already forfeited what has been achieved. The great revolutions which have taken place in human thought and have veritably transformed the aspect of the world would have been inconceivable and impossible to carry out except through titanic struggles waged between individual natures, but never as the enterprises of coalitions.
And, above all things, the goal will never be achieved by the desire for compromise inherent in a patriotic coalition, but only by the iron will of a single movement which has successfully come through in the struggle with all the others.
If you have read this far, and you actually believe A) that I have succumbed to the kind of twisted reasoning that has duped the warmongers into supporting the Iraq invasion, and/or B) that I even wrote this piece of tunnel-visioned megalomania myself, then I have only one more thing to say to you:
April Fool!
Strong stuff, isn’t it? Scary, too, as it pretty well describes the thinking behind unilateralism and certain “divine” missions of a single victor motivated by an unshakable “vision,” and who wins by sheer force — as well as the justification of using coalitions for whatever temporary benefit the “weaker” members may afford, while simultaneously branding coalitions as nothing more than a hindrance to one’s unwavering goal.
So who did write it? None other than Adolf Hitler, in Volume Two, Chapter VIII of Mein Kampf. All I did was excerpt the most readable sections (that guy was hella longwinded and obtuse!), delete any reference to Germany and the Reich, and replace the telling phrase “the People’s State will never be created” with “the goal will never be achieved.” Oh, and I bolded a few pertinent phrases, partly to draw your attention to them, and partly to keep you awake.
Other clues: I didn’t “Americanize” the spelling (and while I may commit a lot of grammatical offenses out of sheer laziness, I NEVER use such the phrase “the reason why” — it grates on me like fingernails on a blackboard). And if you re-read my preface at the top of the entry, you’ll see I never once said I wrote it.
For the right-wingers who thought I had finally “seen the light,” I hope this has been an interesting lesson. Now, go read 1984, and really learn something.
…who wrote a letter to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, whining about “left-wing” media, calling us peaceniks “America bashers” who “spend their nights burning flags” (oh, yeah, right, can’t walk through my living room for all the ashes!) and “starting fights with those who oppose their views” (sure — and you oughta see the other guy!), yada yada yada ad nauseam — the same paranoid crap I’ve heard a thousand times… but for one difference:
Today, I salute YOU, Mr. William R. Schaffer, for giving me the opportunity to say something I have longed to say, all my life, to an ignorant, brainwashed, hysterical, reactionary, hypocritical, First-Amendment-usurping, robotic, Limbaugh-parroting, garden-variety extremist warmonger who has never entertained an original thought in his life.
You wrote:
I’m ashamed to be living here and ashamed to be part of the fighting force protecting their rights.
You know those syrupy “inspirational” daybooks your mom, or aunt, or Christian-camp counselor is so taken with? Don’t you wish there was some sort of truly inspirational reading matter for those of us who aren’t sleepwalking through life?
I’m much too cynical to write such a thing for you. And I’m afraid no one else has created such a thing — at least not on a daily basis — that will keep your hope alive in these darkening days. (I almost wrote “darkest of days,” but I am realistic; these are not the darkest of days yet. Not by far.)
I do have a little secret, however, for buoying my own sagging spirit as I watch my beloved country fall to the forces of aggression and fear. It’s not a secret I wish to keep — and if you find this offering as valuable and soul-lifting and life-affirming as I do, then I beg of you to pass the URL around.
Allow me to introduce you to Granny D.
Granny D (a.k.a. Doris Rollins Haddock) is 93 years old. She has been an activist for peace since long before you or I were born.
On January 1, 1999, she took a walk. A long walk. At 89 years old, she left Pasadena, California, on a solo demonstration on the issue of campaign finance reform.
She walked ten miles a day for the next 14 months, bearing down even through a blizzard in the Appalachian Range, until she reached Washington, D.C.
Granny D has made more speeches, more eloquently, than you or I could ever aspire to. Listening to or reading Granny D’s words is like sitting down with your grandmother (or great-grandmother) to be blessed by the keen knowledge and priceless wisdom gained only through nearly a century of living, straight from a heart whose matter is composed of nothing but pure love, peace, and respect for humanity.
But make no mistake — there’s nothing flowery or idealistic about Granny D. At 93, she is sharper than I was at 20, and more insightful, realistic, and pragmatic than the entire Democratic Leadership Council. (On second thought, my cat is more insightful, realistic, and pragmatic than the entire Democratic Leadership Council — but never mind, you get the point.)
Read her words. Bookmark her site. Tell your peace-loving friends about her.
Trust me: Granny D will breathe life into your flagging spirit, and inspire you to carry on the nonviolent quest for peace.*
Will We Represent Love in the World? Aren’t we privileged to live in a time when everything is at stake, and when our efforts make a difference in the eternal contest between the forces of light and shadow, between togetherness and division? Between justice and exploitation? Oh, be joyful that you are a warrior in this great time!
The Takeover Artists. If we Americans are split into two meaningful camps, it is not conservative versus liberal. The two camps are these: the politically awake and the hypnotized — hypnotized by television and other mass media, whose overpaid Svengalis dangle the swinging medallions of packaged candidates and oft-told lies.
Like a Tree Standing By the Water. [W]e must each in our own creative ways give testimony to who we are, that we have the courage of our Constitution to live free on our garden Earth as brothers and sisters — to live free or die; That we are members of the human community and that we stand for love; That for the dead we light candles, not fuses; That against death and exploitation and the lie of projected evil, we link our arms; That we shall not, we shall not be moved. Just like a tree that’s standing by the water, we shall not be moved.
The Monster at the Door (pre-911!). It is nothing for raw power to thumb its nose at the interests of world peace or the earth’s environment for the sake of corporate expansion and political power. It is nothing for raw power to mistake the flowering of political ideas and dissent in democracy’s garden as a dangerous tangle of garden plots and disloyalties. It can happen quickly. It can happen in America. Open your eyes.
* Isn’t it odd that I should feel compelled to qualify the phrase “quest for peace” with the word “nonviolent”? I suppose it is a safety mechanism so that there is no confusion between true peace, and the quest for psuedo-”peace” through the armed aggression we are witnessing on our televisions today.
