Social Insecurity

The administration's push to privatize social security is now big news. For years, commentators have been referring to the fund as a "sacred cow," implying perhaps that the program belongs to some benighted era. Having laid that groundwork, now, with the right combination of second-term politics and a republican-controlled congress, the program is on the chopping block. The administration is in the process of developing a rhetoric that will make the abolition (not "reform") of SS appealing to the masses. Other social safety nets such as welfare have been and can be dismantled with a "back to work" rhetoric of responsibility. There is no such justification for leaving the poor and elderly out in the cold. Of course, the abolition of social security will only benefit those with money. Thus, the administration must manufacture scare scenarios about the immanent demise of SS and progressive-sounding arguments about how it disproportionately benefits those with statistically longer lifespans (i.e. whites and those with money). The alibi is still on the drawing board. Apart from the choice of "reform" over "abolition," the administration has decided to use the term "personal" rather than "private" to refer to the new plan. Moreover, the mainstream news appear to have boiled the issue down to this question: Will you ever see the money you put in? The framing of this manufactured crisis, while simple on its surface, contains a value system that is incompatible with SS at the outset. The only way one is guaranteed to see the money one contributes is through the program's abolition. The question answers itself. One only has to ask a similar question about welfare to see the absurdity of this framing.

Here's a copy of the republican talking points that are being passed around for selling SS demolition.

Here's a good rebuttal of administration arguments.

Carrier Wave

I recommend everyone go out and buy Patty Griffin's "Flaming Red" (and, while you're at it, the live album, "A Kiss in Time"). Flaming Red is a wonderful synthesis of her delicate, driving, incising voice and her deliberate, lapidary verse. For me, her melodies are so strangely familiar that each song is like flexing a muscle I didn't know I had. I was particularly struck by "Carry Me," which takes you out of body to electromagnetic pulse and back. It seems to really capture a certain delicious anxiety of the body going fully wireless, humans evaporating and lifting from the earth in all of our alchemical quicksilvery love-flight. Whatever else have people sung about? The song reminds me of the lingo of amateur radio. Communication by the broken wave of morse code is called "CW," shorthand for "carrier wave." My grandfather is a radio nut, building them from the ground up. The desire to transfigure the voice and broadcast it into the ethers runs in the family. But who doesn't like flight? It's ever so fly. "Language is a virus from outer space," said Burroughs. If so, the aliens have already landed... and perhaps they are preparing for take-off again.

Maybe they come by land
Maybe they come by sea
Maybe they've already come
Maybe they come by me
Slipping into the twilight
I ride the broken wave tonight
An old song on the radio
You knew a long time ago
An old song on the radio
Going out over the ocean

Carry, carry...

Maybe it's World War I
Maybe its World War III
Maybe it's Vietnam
Maybe we're on TV
Falling into the tall grass
Melting into the tall glass
Spilling out over the lip and
Into the ocean
Into the ocean

Carry, carry, carry me
Over the ocean, over the ocean, over the ocean, over the ocean
Over the sea

Maybe I've come so far
Maybe I'm on my knees
Maybe I'm dead or alive
Maybe I'm none of these
Just an old song on the radio
Someone put on a long time ago
Going out over the ocean
Over and over the ocean
Over and over the ocean
Over and over the ocean

Inauguration

I was doing the dishes at the time, not paying particular attention, and this was the speech that I heard:

"From the sniper turrets atop the White House, let freedom ring! From the mouths of underground missile silos, let freedom ring! From the grinding steel treads of bulldozers in the occupied territories, let freedom ring! Let it ring from the secret corridors of the advancing police state! Let it ring from the black hole of Gitmo Bay! Let it ring from the wreckage of Fallujah and Baghdad, from every uranium-tipped bullet to rain down on the fertile crescent! Let it ring, ring, ring in your ears every time a marketplace or hospital is bombed from a plane flying too high to see! Let it ring like the talking points of an army of guest political analysts! Yes, let freedom ring so loudly that it drowns out the First Amendment! Let it ring your bell, baby, with the butt end of a rifle or the push of a button."

Upon reading the speech later, it had a slightly different tone. The Inaugural was epic, poetic, and certainly a turning point in this administration's rhetoric. No longer is the emphasis on fear, remembrance, and protection, but rather the crusade of "freedom" on a global scale. Now the War on Terror's first priority is breaking the yoke of oppression, and our own safety will be the by-product. Alright. I've heard this one before somewhere ... Oh, yes. It was emanating from the throngs of pepper-sprayed protesters at the castle gates, "No Justice! No Peace!" The speech was a masterpiece of progressive posturing. Let's see if we can take Bush's speech point-for-point. I agree with much of it.

"We have seen our vulnerability - and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny - prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder - violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat."

It's true. Iraq had no particular ties to Al-Qaeda's loose network. Now, because of this corporate war, the country has become a hotbed of resentment and a well-spring of future retaliation. Take it from the Pentagon itself.

"There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom."

Yes, indeed. I think the world has done a pretty good job of it. See the 14 million who took to the streets on February 15, 2003, the largest day of worldwide protest in human history.

"We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."

Agreed. Thank goodness for the Internet and the liberties of foreign news. To quote David Cross, the comedian: "Things are messed up when you have to look to the foreign press to find out what's going on inside your own country."

"Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time."

Well said. Now where's the part about bringing the troops home? Oh, they're staying to make sure this whole "self-governance" thing go to Halliburton's, Bechtel's, and the Carlisle Group's plans.

"Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen, and defended by citizens, and sustained by the rule of law and the protection of minorities. And when the soul of a nation finally speaks, the institutions that arise may reflect customs and traditions very different from our own. America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way."

Good...er...right in step with Article 51 of the UN Charter and international law designed to thwart the pre-emptive invasion and overthrow of a sovereign nation. Why would we attempt to impose anything on anyone? Let the voice of the people be heard! Now what's all this I hear about bombing Al Jazeera?

"We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right. America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies."

Right on. I suppose this sentiment would apply first and foremost to the country with the most guns.

"We will encourage reform in other governments by making clear that success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own people. America's belief in human dignity will guide our policies, yet rights must be more than the grudging concessions of dictators; they are secured by free dissent and the participation of the governed. In the long run, there is no justice without freedom, and there can be no human rights without human liberty."

I don't know about you, but I believe this is the first time I've heard our president utter the words, "human rights." But, hey, who's not for human rights? Well, apparently those who would ally with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and, until 1990, even during its worst atrocities, Iraq. And those who regard the Bill of Rights as a speed bump on the way to power.

"Eventually, the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul. We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery. Liberty will come to those who love it."

Indeed. Probably why half the population in the U.S. is vehemently opposed to any further hastening of the apocalypse. Join with me now as we channel the spirit of Thomas Jefferson. Or, in the words of Steve Earle from "Christmastime in Washington:" Come back Woody Guthrie/ Rise up old Joe Hill/ The barricades are going up/ But they cannot break our will// Come back to us Malcolm X and Martin Luther King/ They're marching into Selma as the bells of freedom ring.

"Democratic reformers facing repression, prison, or exile can know: America sees you for who you are: the future leaders of your free country."

God bless it, my favorite line in the entire speech. If I may quote Abraham Lincoln, "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it." Whoops. Bush beat me to the Lincoln line.

"In America's ideal of freedom, citizens find the dignity and security of economic independence, instead of laboring on the edge of subsistence. This is the broader definition of liberty that motivated the Homestead Act, the Social Security Act, and the G.I. Bill of Rights. And now we will extend this vision by reforming great institutions to serve the needs of our time."

If Social Security is so great, why does it need reform...er...abolishing? This seems to be the weakest part of the speech. It seems to lack coherence - or maybe a better word is "resolve."

"When the Declaration of Independence was first read in public and the Liberty Bell was sounded in celebration, a witness said, 'It rang as if it meant something.' In our time it means something still."

Let it ring.

"May God bless you, and may He watch over the United States of America."

I prefer Dickens myself, "God Bless us, everyone."

30% Evil

In scanning the net for references and rhetorics of evil (a current project of mine), I came across the Gematriculator, a web-based program that calculates the goodness or evilness of any give website based on a simple alpha-numeric algorithm. Gematria is the esoteric, kabbalistic method of divining the secret truths in Hebrew religious texts, assumed to be written in God's language by God himself. At the turn of the 20th century, one of its celebrated later practioners, Russian born mathematician Dr. Ivan Panin, became obsessed with the first verse of John's Gospel in the New Testament: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with the God and the Word was God..."

[This passage is one of my favorites as "word" in the Greek is "logos," a term that both means "the said" but also has in it a profound sense of "dividing up" of the world into opposites and proportions relative to one another. John's paradoxical statement seems to imply both that the world was spoken - "thus sayeth the Lord" - into view (of particular interest to students of rhetoric like myself) and that this God was and is an imminent thing that differentiated itself from a singularity into the manifest world - that God is the Big Bang and everything after. This is an altogether different conception than God as the transcendent being that stands outside of time and creation. An alternative interpretation of the Gospel passage might suggest that the word itself is responsible for the creation of God as Kenneth Burke argues - that the birth of language was also the birth of the idea of perfection and "God" as the ultimate term in the hierarchy of valuation that language fosters by its very nature.]

In any case, Panin found through his methods that the first verse in the Hebrew Bible, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Gen 1:1), contains over 30 different combinations of 7, and the 3 nouns, "God," "heaven," and "earth," equal 777. Moreover, 7 is a number of overwhelming significance in the Bible, especially Revelations in which there are 7 of almost everything. This is plain to see even without a calculator handy. The association of the number 7 with things divine - in Indo-European cultures - most likely has its roots in the seven visible planets. Also, 7 is a prime number, sum of 3 (heavenly things - trinity) and 4 (Earth - 4 elements). Here's a great numerological-cultural primer.

Addendum: After penning this entry, according to the Gematriculator, my blog's "evil" rating went down 1%. It's true!! It's all true!!

Prayer to CNN

from netcowboy:

O Wolf Blitzer, Ask Me Thy Question That Will Get So Deep In Me and Unplug My Cork
O Christiane Amonpour, Who Liketh To Hear The Sound of Thy Own Voice, Drone On Thy Throne Where The Sun Rises Before Here
O Larry King, Who Mixeth All Information Into Thy Comfort Food, Make Me Feel From Thy Fragile Seventh Heart of Compassion
O Aaron Brown, Whom Witnesseth Great Destruction, Draw Me In With Thy Trident of Courage and Introduce Thou The Next Commercial
O Paula Zahn, the Vanilla Goddess of Mediocrity, Put Everything In A Convenient Box for Easy Transport
O Soledad O'Brien, Who Licketh the Ears of All Men with Thy Billion Humming Tongues, Vouchsafe Me Drink from Thy Coffee Mug
O Anderson Cooper, When Life's Little Victims Upstage Thy Airtime, Be Thou Noisier Than They So I Might Know Thou Art Not Outscoopable
O Lou Dobbs, Who Laboreth Below, Bring Thou My Wallet to Fullness Even As Thou Chortle in Thy Glittering Studio
O Judy Woodruff, Hub of All Gods and Goddesses, Outperform Thou Thy Wanderers and Report Stories Best Heard with Loud Stacatto Horns

O CNN, In The Throes of Unspeakable Tragedy, I turn to Thy Heads Which Talk and to Thy Headlines Which Art More Precious Than Static.

Christmas Questions

If Santa Claus is the new savior, is Frosty the Snowman a martyred saint? Is the Grinch Beelzebub?

When we look directly under the Christmas tree star, what does it mean that we find consumer goods instead of the baby Jesus?

Why are SUV's by far the most likely vehicles one finds in ditches alongside icy North Dakota interstates?

Is God responsible for evil in the world? If not, can we say He is omnipotent?

When I attended Christmas mass, why was the figure of the crucified Jesus behind the altar holding up two fingers on each hand like Nixon?

Is it possible that the mythical and incidental actions of three wise men two thousand years ago have become the bedrock of the most powerful economy in the world?