Modus Operandi Podcast episode 50

episode 50 2/11/2011

episode in six parts: p1 p2 p3 p4 p5 p6

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This week Alan & Dave count down the ogreness of all 50 states in alphabetical order and come to the realization they are responsible for democracy in Egypt.  Ah...

As soon as Dave types up the notes on the 50 states we will post them.

Rand Paul, Kentucky's Palin?

Obama Tells Rosa Parks to Sit in the Middle of the Bus

ALABAMA, 1950s: Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, boards a public bus and sits at the front, defying segregation laws that state she must sit in the back of the bus. The bus driver, a white male, confronts her.

BUS DRIVER: Hey--you're a colored woman--get your fat ass to the back of the bus where it belongs!

ROSA PARKS: Well, I really think you're position is wrong, but since you're a racist bigot conservative asshole, I will try and be a good citizen and see things from your point of view.

BUS DRIVER: I said get your colored ass back to the bus now, or I'll have the cops beat you and waterhose you!!!

ROSA PARKS: I do see your point. I know--in the name of democracy, why don't we comprise . . . I want to sit in the front, you want me to sit in the back, so I'll sit in the middle of the bus! How's that? Let me count the rows here . . .

Apparently, this revisionist exchange between Rosa Parks and the Confederate bus driver is Barack Obama's political utopia. This weekend at commencement ceremonies at the University of Michigan, the President once again rehashed his banal, uninspiring mantra about how we all need to listen to each other, understand one another's point of view, and work toward comprise. Of course this rigid, oversimplified agnostic logic means that bigoted and hateful positions on social issues must be treated with the same respect and consideration as enlightened and civilized positions. That is where Obama's words betray his shallowness and his cavalier attitude toward leadership. He insists that just because a position is a position that it must be given some credibility. Especially at this point in American history, he is totally off base. After more than thirty years of Republican arch-conservatism, one has to ask: how many more things have to go completely wrong before we stop listening to the people who want us to keep doing the same things? Endless war and suffering in Iraq and Afghanistan. The economy in the pits. Massive environmental damage off the coast of Louisiana--meaning even more people are now out of work. Meanwhile the rich continue to rake it in and the CEO's of investment banks are making record bonuses. Where would Obama himself be if his predecessors in generations past had "listened to the other side and worked toward compromise?" When Martin Luther King declared, "Free at last!" he was not talking about compromise, he was talking about freedom! Why am I or anyone else obliged to comprise with people who want to dominate and control me? When it comes to civil rights and freedom, where is the "middle ground" around which one can compromise? Politics is about who gets their way and who doesn't, and Obama's sugar-coated fairytale of democracy does as much to fight back against tyranny as his reticence toward Arizona's racist and discriminatory immigration laws. I'm 40 years old with a PhD and I don't need Obama to give me a Ronald Reagan-style dummed-down set of instructions on how to participate in my non-existent democracy. First of all, no one should listen to any point of view that lacks credibility. And credibility is as much about values as it is "facts." Any political position based on hatred, punishment, and persecution has no place in a democracy. The fact that millions of people hold dearly to such positions just means there are lots of people who thrive on hatred, punishment, and persecution; it does not validate the vapidness and venom of those views or make them any less incompatible with civilized behavior muchless institutionalized democracy. How pathetic and cowardly is it of America's first (50%) black man in effect to tell the rest of us we must hold bigoted and discriminatory views that degrade and subjugate us on par with our personal dignity? If Obama is right, and what we need is a more civil public discourse, then why would I or anyone else listen to a mob of hate-mongering tyrants in the name of democracy?

The Big Lie(s) - 1

I have begun another series at my other blog.

Ogre-oid: Justice Clarence Thomas's Wife Joins Teabaggers

As Virginia Thomas tells it in her soft-spoken, Midwestern cadence, the story of her involvement in the "tea party" movement is the tale of an average citizen in action.


"I am an ordinary citizen from Omaha, Neb., who just may have the chance to preserve liberty along with you and other people like you," she said at a recent panel discussion with tea party leaders in Washington. Thomas went on to count herself among those energized into action by President Obama's "hard-left agenda."


But Thomas is no ordinary activist.


She is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and she has launched a tea-party-linked group that could test the traditional notions of political impartiality for the court...

...Her biography notes that Thomas is a fan of Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, author of Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America.


"She is intrigued by Glenn Beck and listening carefully," the bio says.  read complete article

 It leaves me gasping like a fish that finds itself suddenly on the shore.  I knew Justice Thomas was a moron but couldn't his wife wait until he retired to become an open supporter of these America haters?  She even uses the idea of  "what made America great" to define these bigots, assholes, idiots, and fascists.  Is that really "what made America great?"  It wasn't tolerance, unions, regulation of industry and finance, reluctance to enter wars, free thinking, and individual freedom?  It wasn't outlawing and abhorring torture?  What made America great was semi-literate hate mongers with no proof of their allegations, just belief?  Fuck that America.

M.O. pod Episode 8 at Vimeo

Modus Operandi Podcast episode 8 3/4/2010 from alan evil on Vimeo.

Episode 7 Finally Available

Modus Operandi Podcast episode 7 2/26/2010 from alan evil on Vimeo.

Due to some technical snafus at Vimeo and delays from studio movement, last week's podcast is only just now available. Episode 8 is in the can awaiting editing.

Ah, America

Beyond Common Ground

“Without contraries is no progression.”

-William Blake

Over and over again I’ve read too many times to keep track of (I’ll do some digging in the NY Times stacks at the library to find some article links) about how the big problem our country and government face is that we can’t seem to find common ground. “Let’s stop looking at each as liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, put our differences aside, and work together for the common good.” Or as Cal Thomas, typical arch-conservative icon and columnist wrote today about President Obama, “he needs to find common ground with Republicans, not scorched Earth.” Besides being cliché and mundane, this ubiquitous mindset fails to realize that all cultures are based on a common ground; if there were no common ground (like the speaking of English or use of silverware instead of chopsticks) there would be no coherent culture. While the common ground may not be visible or explicit or consciously recognized, it is there just like the polluted air we breathe or the potholes we drive over or the desolate infrastructure through which we traverse or the media and advertising in which we are all saturated.

The problem is not that we don’t have common ground. It’s that we can’t get beyond it.

There is no reason why, nor is it possible or desirable, we should agree on or hold common views on everything. In fact, such a condition is unsustainable (humans are too complex and varied) not to mention incompatible with a democratic society or any other benevolent political system antithetical to tyranny.

In a country as geographically vast as ours, there is no reason we shouldn’t have some anything-goes-liberal territories and others that are keep-it-the-same-do-it-the-same oppressive and boring conservative territories. Depending on your preference (a reference to J.S. Mill’s seminal 1859 essay On Liberty), you can have your pick. That’s right: choice! Imagine that in a free country! For example, I concede the entire state of Utah (Colorado is just as beautiful with way better people), the South, and the Midwest. But there ought to not be just little specs but entire regions of this country that can come out of the shadows and be full of fun, experimentation, open-mindedness, curiosity, and intellectual vibrancy, not clouded by military goons who have nothing better to do but become cops and take their PTSD out on a completely harmless, if not partially unsavory, local population. For people who don’t like a place like that, take your guns and get the fuck out. Or better, do the rest of us a favor and kill yourselves.

The so-called health care debate exemplifies the folly of the “common ground” trope. As I said earlier in our blog (see “Massachusucks”) there is no common ground or political middle ground when it comes to health care: either you think everyone should have health care and receive world-class medical treatment when they need or you do not. There is no compromise there. When Obama blandly declared last fall that the key to health care reform was “to bring together the best ideas of both parties” he was not seeking common ground; he was giving in, surrendering. Republicans do not want universal health care and will do everything to make sure it will never happen (and this being an extremely conservative country dominated by Republican politics and priorities, they will win as always). Consistent with the proverb above from Blake, the predictable result from Obama’s complacency has been that no progress has been made. Obama, in quintessential Democrat tradition, refuses to assert himself as a contrary to the Republicans, so everything stalls and nothing happens.

When nothing happens during an administration that campaigned on the platform of “change,” that betrays the common ground the country and government refuse to go beyond: the conservative principle of preserving the status quo—at all costs, no matter how obvious it is the status quo sucks. Imagine you have been a “productive” employee for a company for a number of years. While your tax dollars are appropriated by the government to bailout incredibly rich people whose obsessive greed has wrecked the economy, you get fired because your company is not a giant investment bank—a coded term for a branch of the treasury—so you lose your health care plan. You or a loved one then come down with an illness that would be treatable with either medication or surgery, but guess what? Can’t help ya! It’s too much to ask! We need to build schools and bridges and hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan because of the billions of dollars we’ve already spent blowing those countries up. This is a scenario that clearly sucks and can only improve if it is changed, that is, if we move beyond the common ground that increasingly feels like a prison built on quicksand.

Below I’ve itemized twenty examples of prevailing ideas that define the rigid and miserable common ground that is 21^st century America:

1) Adult life has little purpose or meaning beyond having a job and making money.

2) A job is necessarily something alienating, stressful, and mundane, offering little or no reward beyond monetary compensation.

3) All human conflict must be dealt with through violence, punishment, and criminal justice.

4) To take an intellectual, thoughtful approach toward daunting problems like terrorism, or one’s relationship with food and the environment, is a waste of time;

5) Worse still, such an approach is regarded as deviance from our government and corporate leaders who have already told us how we will deal with these problems, and thus a clear sign that one hates America.

6) Science is something one “believes in” or not.

7) All good ideas have already been thought of—and it is ridiculous to think of our current economic and political systems as antiquated and in need of overhaul.

8) Despite the fact our financial banking system ruined the economy, still the one people in the country who have any credibility or the brains to deal with problems in the “real world” are superrich businesspeople.

9) Anything associated with being liberal is bad, and “big government.”

10) To value family, neighborhood, and community is antiquated and utopian.

11) Saturation in digital media environments is normal and the only effective way to communicate or sustain relationships.

12) War is the answer and victory is always achievable.

13) Anything enriching to human experience, any form of play or private meditation is wrong and irresponsible.

14) Despite its obvious dangers and the considerable expense and toll it takes on the planet’s resources, getting around by car all the time to do everything is normal, the best and only practical way to get around.

15) By constantly being at war, having more police, putting more people in prison, and taking away more rights and liberties, we are maximizing our freedom.

16) Efficiency and profit are the only worthwhile value systems and any other approach to life or value system is worthless, childish, and impractical, and must be squashed (see #3).

17) Only those with lots of money should have any rights or a voice in how society should work.

18) By extension, intelligent and educated people are elitist and should not be trusted, since they value enlightenment instead of profit and wish to impose their views on everyone else.

19) The planet Earth is an obstacle to optimum economic performance.

20) America is the greatest country ever in the history of the world, and it is nothing short of sheer treasonous insanity (that’s what happens when them hippies to do too much of that dope and LSD) to propose that other countries have better policies concerning education, health care, and the economy, and that America might be well served to learn from and to some extent emulate these other countries.

Yes, yes, I know: not every single American agrees with all of these viewpoints. But I’m talking about a culture, not individuals. As my MoPod colleague has aptly observed, people are idiots everywhere. But the difference in cultures is in how people come together, not the percentage of them who are war-mongering morons. While any number of you out there may disagree with these ideological hubs of America’s common ground, it doesn’t matter: these are the ideas that have shaped American politics for my entire conscious life and show no signs of giving way. One reason America cannot get beyond common ground, I think, is that so many Americans fail to make the distinction between individual Americans and American culture—since they know so many people who “aren’t like that” they refuse to look at the big picture and thus take seriously the need to change it. For me, this is just another form of conservatism, which is the prevailing ideology of this incredibly conservative country. There is more to being a conservative than being a fiscal (the rich should have all the money, pay no taxes, and control everything) or social (anyone who is not an uptight Christian should be thrown in jail) conservative. A huge amount of America’s conservative population is made up of people I would call “the apathetic”—people who, no matter how bad things get or how obvious it should be to have a sense of urgency to move beyond the status quo, seem genetically incapable of the slightest sentiment or civic concern. They’re assholes, basically, but in a more insidious way than the in-your-face types that characterize the fiscal and social conservatives. They’re simply just all about themselves. You don’t have to protest, join the Peace Corps, or stop bathing (I do still occasionally bathe) to be a remotely community-oriented human being. Just refusing to believe the avalanche of bullshit our corporate-state controlled media shits down our throats non-stop, thinking about things like the economy and education, and mainly just making time to socialize and listen to the people around you instead of treating them as transparent décor can actually make an important difference in your neo, quasi, on-life-support-community, and yes, to satiate your chronic solipsism, your own suckshit life. Sometimes I think remembering that you are a part of something much larger than yourself actually helps to see that’s exactly why you are important, not why you don’t matter. I got that feeling a lot out in Colorado, when every day I traversed the beautiful Earth beneath 14,100 feet of mountain. I was—and still am, I guess, connected to that, and connected to the stars and galaxies beyond.

In closing, I would like to emphasize that by going beyond common ground I do not mean to leave behind all the good things upon which healthy traditions have been based. What’s important for a culture to stay vital is to add new to the old. The old is has been around for a long time for a reason: it’s good; it has offered sustainable pleasure and value for the human experience. Rural electrification (new) of the family farm (old) is an example of what I’m talking about; getting rid of the family farm is obviously very bad, and something I will discuss at greater length in an upcoming blog entry. In other words, just because one moves beyond common ground doesn’t mean the ground beneath us caves in. It means, as nomads, we have room to grow, to discover, to be ourselves, to be different from one another—a fundamental trait of humanity, in all its glorious strangeness. The common ground will always be there for those of you who want nothing out of life but conformity and self-aggrandizement (e.g. those of you who suck). There are still some of us out there who haven’t forgotten the need for a private, meditative inner world that has no need for affirmation or permission. To reference one of the clichés discussed at the opening, in many ways there is no “common good.” Humans are not identical in their needs and backgrounds. What I need, what is good for me, is not for everyone, not even necessarily understandable to everyone. I don’t need everyone else to understand me anyway and God knows I will never find most other Americans likeable, much less understandable. And until we move beyond common ground, you guess it . . .

. . . nothing good is ever going to happen again.