In a Smoke-Filled Gloom

Recently the Seattle Times reported that some public-housing agencies around here are looking at banning smoking in the units of some buildings. At first this got my Wrath up and running around, and the Downtown Emergency Services Center was about to demand ID from the visiting vein in my forehead. So Anitra “Who Needs No Last Name, As Her First Is Not Yet Used Up” fetched the customary three vats of cold water, and here we are now, calm and orderly, and able to discuss this issue in a polite and civilized manner.

I should begin by saying I don’t smoke. I haven’t for nine years. I don’t plan to resume smoking ever. I don’t have a direct personal interest in the question. If smoking were banned in all the rooms of my subsidized DESC-run apartment building tomorrow I wouldn’t give a wrinkled rat’s ass.

But there is another issue behind the immediate issue of whether smoking is banned in rooms or not. It is an issue that means a lot to me, so much that I could spit flaming wrinkled asses.

Here’s the thing. The article was all about “these public health people here sent out a survey of these residents there” and “these residents responded” and “this public housing agency here will do another survey of these other residents” and then “we’ll decide what to do about it” and WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY MEAN BY “WE,” I’ll tell you want they mean: THEY MEAN THEM.

It’s just another example of how the public housing agencies don’t defer to the rightful power of their tenants.

How about if we decide our government the way public housing decides these kinds of rules.

Let’s say in the summer of 2008 Congress commissions a survey. They select a “representative sampling” of Americans and ask them questions like these: Which statement is more true FOR YOU, 1) I like a president who listens to me, 2) I like a president who goes his own way, 3) I don’t care, either way is fine. On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the most, tell how much do you agree the following statements. 1) It’s OK if a woman is president. 2) National security is really important to me. 3) Presidents should be tall.

Then let’s say a Congressional Committee made up of five or ten typical Congressional jerks, much like the jerks who sit on public housing agencies boards, gets together and wets it’s collective seven or eight neurons with the results of that survey. Then, let’s say they do a few more surveys, because they liked the first one so much, it tingled.

Finally they make a decision! Your next president is… whoever they say he or she is!

Meanwhile, let’s say you ask, where was the power of the people in all this? They then tell you that you, the people, WE’RE consulted. By surveys! They tell you they did everything they could to take your “issues” into account. They say they got all kinds of “public input” and “public feedback.” But in the end they decided.

That’s what public housing agencies do.

Would it hurt them to let the residents of each building work it out themselves? The enforcement could be the same. Management could stage the community meetings and set up the vote and enforce the result. But the difference is, the people whose lives are effected by the decision do the deciding, not patronizing jerks who live in houses in the suburbs and think they’re better than the people forced by circumstances to rent from their public housing.

Speaking of people forced into public housing, the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness is underway and everyone’s congratulating themselves on the numbers from this year’s One Night Count. A piece of the plan is to lure homeless people into permanent housing and off the streets, to reduce the total cost of services.

It’s easier to lure people into self-determination, than into slavery.

Bush Beats the Devil

George Bush is not Satan.

That was the final word on the subject from Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals, the day after Hugo Chavez claimed otherwise. Haggard was very clear about it: "NAE theologians and scholars have conducted a thorough exegetical study of the biblical texts concerning the person, disposition, and earthy manifestations of Satan (Beelzebub, Lucifer, Prince of Darkness). They have incontrovertibly concluded that, contrary to the assertion of Hugo Chavez, President Bush is not the Devil."

I totally agree. I have done my own extensive research using alternate tools, and have determined that, without question, President George W. Bush is not Beelzebub. Without going too far afield, I would like to add that he is also not Alfred E Neuman, a chimpanzee, or the latest reincarnation of the 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus.

For one thing, if he were Beelzebub, he would not have said this: “I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like a comma because there is -- my point is, there's a strong will for democracy.” Beelzebub would have had far better sense than to speak like that to Wolf Blitzer on national TV. However much you may dislike Beelzebub, you have to admit he is one shrewd personification of Evil. A chimp would have just flung his feces at Wolf. I don’t know exactly what Paleologus or Alfred would have said, but I’m sure they would have committed offenses on entirely different levels.

As usual, no one in the world really knows what George Bush meant to say. Did he mean that historians are such bad people that they would reduce to a comma the sacrifices of all the US soldiers who have fought in Iraq, including the now nearly 3000 who have died? Did he mean that he’s with these imaginary bad historians on that point? Or did he just mean to remind us that he doesn’t like to read, so if he were handed a history of the Iraq War in say, twenty years, he’d only read to the first comma?

Or maybe he has a deeper meaning in mind. What’s a comma anyway? It’s a hesitation and an interruption. Maybe he is using the word comma accurately as a metaphor for the way he has used the Iraq War and the so-called war on terror to interrupt America’s history of freedom, for the sake of creating and buttressing a sham democracy on the other side of the planet.

Maybe the comma is meant to indicate what he and Congress have together made of us.

The United States as we have known it is now hanging by a thread, with the passage last week of S. 3930. Congress was told by the Supreme Court to fix our policies on detaining and trying terror suspects, to bring them into line with the US Constitution. Congress has basically spit back in the face of the Supreme Court and said to hell with habeas corpus, to hell with the 5th Amendment, to hell with the 14th Amendment. Beelzebub can have all of them; we’ll take Bush and fear.

The thread I mean is the Supreme Court again. If the Supreme Court lets S. 3930 stand, there will be no branch of government left to preserve the constitution. Without a functioning constitution respected by any fraction of our government the United States will have essentially been comma-ed out of existence.

George Bush calls the Geneva Convention vague. I have to wonder if he has ever encountered any of his own pronouncements in print. Does he not even read himself? Not only does he not have the political acumen of Satan, he lacks the vanity, and in his case that’s not a good thing.

Satan would have a lot to teach Bush. He could show him how to google himself, teach him to take pride in his language, and how to reach new levels of competence, so he can screw us all even better than he’s doing now.

It's on the Tip of My Tongue...

What should we call our new form of government?

This can’t be a Republic any more. I’d say the Republic died November 4, 1952, when Truman let the National Security Agency start up without the knowledge of the citizens or most of Congress, but that’s just me.

Some other folks say the Republic ended the first time Congress neglected to either declare or put a stop to a war. Others blame Congress for a hundred years of dragging its heels on civil rights legislature forcing the people to fall back on the courts. Unexpected results: (1) George Bush, 5-4, 2000. (2) The Eminent Domain Principle neutered, 5-4, 2005. (3) The obliteration of First Amendment rights enabling public employees to protect the public, 5-4, last week.

Need more proof? Our executive branch now conducts searches without warrants and regularly tries to deny habeas corpus. Our elected president abuses signing statements to excuse the selective enforcement of laws, openly defying the power of Congress to make those laws.

It’s now deemed illegal to exercise the right of free speech except in a “free speech zone.” Military funerals have been nationally designated, now and forever, as free from free speech. Cries of “Protestor!” from security at the president’s appearances are signals to use violent force to remove and arrest such people as wear anti-Bush T-shirts, who are treated as enemies of the state.

Many have already been asking the question I began with, and come up with ideas of their own. Some say we should imitate Rome and call our government Empire. I think that the Romans were not precise enough; yes, it was an empire, but it was so much more. Let’s be precise where the Romans weren’t, because we care more about who we are.

Some say we now have a Fascist government. They point first to Mussolini’s definition: the repudiation of pacifism, the glorification of war, the claim to nevertheless be pro-life, the rejection of class struggle and explicit rejection of collective responsibility, the idea that citizens need to be preemptively deprived of freedoms that might only potentially be “harmful,” and the right of the state to assert itself in the world, by virtue of its power.

If all that doesn’t get you to buy the name, proponents point to Dr. Lawrence Britt’s Fourteen Defining Characteristics of Fascism, all of which apply to our government, from (1) “Powerful and Continuing Nationalism,” (2) “Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights,” all the way through to (13) “Rampant Cronyism and Corruption” and even (14) “Fraudulent Elections.” (Note the universal use by both parties of gerrymandering to lock incumbents into office -- a war on the representational system.)

I don’t think we should call our government Fascist, even if it fit everyone’s definition, because Fascism comes from the Italian Fascismo, and by golly, we speak American here. So we should have our own American name for our form of government.

“Totalitarianism” is technically valid, but like “Empire” hardly descriptive enough, and our leadership is not so narrow as the kind of one party dictatorship the term usually conjures up. George-Dick Bush-Cheney is not solely in control. He/it has to share power with Judge Roberts, Exxon, Halliburton and even some Democrats, like Zell Miller, for example.

So we would need to refer to what we have as some kind of oligarchy, but what kind is it?

For a clue I looked up the origin of the word “Republic.” It comes from the Latin res (meaning “thing” or “matter”) + public (meaning “public.”) So it means a Public Thing. Clearly, what we’ve got now is no kind of Public Thing. What we’ve got is a secret, private thing. We have a government of dissembling and disguise.

So my own recommendation is (tada!): Redissimulation.

Here it is, used in a sentence:

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to The Redissimulation for which it stands, one oligarchy under Bush’s imaginary God, entrenched and unaccountable, with liberty and justice, but not for long.

Rose isn’t a Rose isn’t a Rose...

Either William Shakespeare or someone calling himself that put the following words into the mouth of what had probably been a real teenage girl of Verona, Italy, who had died in a dual suicide with her lover in 1303: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet.”

What a crock!

First, as someone would have said if anyone had heard it, “If a rose grows in the forest and there’s no one there to smell it, does it smell?” More to the point, if we all were to start referring to roses as “fertilizer,” people might stop smelling them altogether, so roses wouldn’t smell. Ergo, roses wouldn’t smell sweet. Therefore the statement was a crock.

Second, Juliet is talking to Romeo Montague and her whole point is that the name “Montague” means nothing, so far as she’s concerned. Well, so far as the rest of us are concerned, “Montague,” in the play, means unusually wealthy Jerry Springer-fodder. All money, no class. And, what do you know, but Romeo goes and proves he’s a genuine Montague, deserving of a Darwin Award by killing himself because he supposes his 14 year old wife did, after not bothering to get a medical opinion.

Recently a Real Change Board Member said she didn’t like to use the word “activist.” Instead, she preferred “advocate.” Would an activist by any other name be as activating? No! But if you call them “advocates,” from the Latin for “speaker-outers,” then, before you know it, they stop activating, they even stop being active. They become couch potatoes who now and then speak out. Don’t ask me how I know that. Note that I’m not saying that being a couch potato is a bad thing.

Words and names do matter. Otherwise we wouldn’t have these squabbles over the choice between “liberal” and “progressive.” If you’re progressive you’re going somewhere. But if you’re liberal you’re headed along a particular path that people set forth upon long ago, to let knowledge liberate. So the word “liberal” provides a compass heading for your progression. Like the man said, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. You need a wet finger and a compass.

Here’s another example. Rev. Jerry Falwell has started a campaign to use a range of tactics, including boycotts and legal action, to force governments and major retail chains to use the word “Christmas,” rather than losing the Christ connection by talking about the Holidays, or the Holiday Season. For example, Falwell would have folks boycott Wal-Mart unless Wal-Mart forces its Jewish employees to greet you with “Merry Christmas.”

From what I have said here and elsewhere you will know that I heartily sympathize with Rev. Falwell and his fellow practitioners of the heavily oppressed religion of 95% of Americans, because whether the name “Christmas” is used really does matter.

It’s mattered ever since the beginning, back to the 4th century After Christ, when Pope Julius called December 25 Jesus’ Birthday even though everyone knew Jesus wasn’t born in December, just so it would no longer be called “Hooray the Sun is Returning to Us Day,” as it had been.

But in the late 1800s Christmas was forced to change away from simply being Christ’s Pretend Birthday. This began precisely when Congress said Christmas would be a federal holiday, granting most federal employees the day off.

Naming a holiday a “federal holiday” changes it. Congress can’t establish any religion, not even the oppressed religion Christianity to which almost all congressmen, who write all our laws, profess to belong and practice devotedly. Therefore when Congress names Christmas a “federal holiday,” it also begins to take the Christ and the Mass out of the meaning of it.

So until Congress reverses itself, Season’s Greetings to all and remember there’s less than 18 shopping days to Last Federal Day Off of the Year Day.

Permission to Breathe

Let's make this entire column about Terri Schiavo!

Why not? Congress, which has nothing better to do, just devoted all of a weekend and part of a Monday maneuvering to pass a law with the exact title, "An Act for the relief of the parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo." The law directs that one specific federal court, the US District Court of the Middle District of Florida, shall have jurisdiction over one specific case, namely that of whether Theresa Marie Schiavo's life support should be curtailed.

The good news is that the court is only granted jurisdiction to determine whether Schiavo's existing rights under federal law have been or are about to be violated. In other words the court has been given jurisdiction, by an act of Congress, no less, that it already had! (Tomorrow they may pass a law directing you to breathe!)

The bad news is that the intent of the act is to bring the power of Congress to bear on this case, even though Congress has no legal power in the matter, and they know it. To that end the act specifically directs the court to ignore all previous rulings in this case. The court is also directed to ignore any ongoing litigation in the state courts. ("You're to breathe, citizen, but only through this tube… ")

Whoa! That's a nasty slap in the face to your silly Founding Fathers and their silly "separation of powers," isn't it? Who needs it, when we can just order some judge, anywhere we want, in any individual case we want, to pay attention to nothing but what we say. Ignore the man behind the curtain!

Congress to the judge: "Fifteen years of court fights repeatedly resulting in rulings in favor of Michael Schiavo? What, fifteen years of what? Listen to your Congress… You are getting sleepy, very sleepy, and when we snap our fingers you will wake up and rule that Terri Schiavo's rights have been violated."

And if the court refuses to obey Congress, like on the grounds that they can take their unconstitutional law and stick it where their heads usually rest, no problem. Congress can just pass another act "to relieve the parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo, again," this time in a different court. If that doesn't work, well I don't know, maybe they would have to get serious and pass a law that would actually legislate something, but they'll cross that bridge when they get to it.

All of this could have been avoided if ten or fifteen or better, twenty years ago, Congress had sat down and actually considered such situations and what they would want to happen in these sorts of cases. Then Michael Schiavo would not have spent fifteen years of his life fighting in state courts for something that Congress was just going to rule against, after all of it.

Oops, did I say rule? Is that what they're doing, ruling in this case? Gosh, no, they wouldn't do that, because that would be unconstitutional. They're just ordering a federal court to rule, their way, according to new rules that they just invented, in a long-fought pre-existing case.

Can you say ex post facto? But they believe they can get around that by a technicality: she isn't dead yet. So the "facto" hasn't happened. So they can still butt in, without regard for that little detail of the constitution.

Can you say bill of attainder? Again, they've got a technicality: courts have only interpreted the prohibition of bills of attainder to include such things as depriving specific people of life, liberty, or property in cases where Congress would intend to punish them. But the intent here is to deprive Terri Schiavo of her right to refuse life support in accordance with her own wishes (as determined by the courts) for her own good, not to punish her.

Hey, I got my outrage back!

Ignoring Ignorance

Lets talk about varieties of ignorance this month. We experts classify ignorance in accordance with the answers, in each specific instance, to such questions as, "Is it safe for me to ignore this bit of ignorance? For how long? Might ignoring it be advantageous?" Examples of the advantages of ignoring ignorance abound in poetry.

In fact ALL poems begin with a poet who doesn't know how to say something. And almost all end with a poet who doesn't know how to say it, or even if "it" can be said. Only the difference is that by then he/she has a poem. If everyone knew how to say anything that came to mind there would be no poetry, only speech, and the world would be full of it, much like Congress.

For example, latch onto a feeling, like caring for someone. What color is it? How should I know? What does that even mean? It doesn't matter, I'll just write --

a heartbeat

echoes blue

off the walls

of the shadows

of my time --

a vanished

redbird sings

to the child

we touch

violet

together

Note that the question remains unanswered. I'll call it "Violet is the Color of Caring," and add it to my first chapbook.

On the other hand, there are forms of ignorance that should not be ignored

"If the peasants have no bread, let them eat cake." - a suggestion from Marie Antoinette, shortly before having her head removed from her body by an outraged populace.

"Hygiene centers are unnecessary, they can use the bathrooms at Nordstrom's." - the gist of a suggestion from the Downtown Seattle Association (DSA) last month.

Prompting this open letter to the DSA.

Dear DSA:

Congratulations! I had to reach back over two hundred years to find a comparable expression of monumental ignorance founded upon so much lackadaisical indifference. I hope you fully appreciate your good fortune in happening to oppress a people so profoundly uninterested in violence as the good homeless people of Seattle. They deserve from you at least a sincere "Thank You" for that, should a certain callous insensitivity make a full apology for your stupid remarks impossible. Was that last sentence hard to understand? Tough. Figure it out.

But I bear you no ill will. I understand that even ignorance as grave as yours is a disease not a crime. To show that I care, and to encourage your speedy recovery, I am presenting you with this humble poem.

To Sufferers of "Barely-Affective Disorder"

(Affective: displaying emotion, capable of being touched.)

Cheer up! Help is near!

The State relates to those who can't

socially associate!

In fact:

Our Lawmakers assure

that your disorder

has a cure --

Community Service

Work Shelters

Group Therapy.

-- that and more is their prescription

for making upstanding citizens

from those afflicted

with your condition

OH...

And Oh Yes --

along the way,

don't worry

for your personal state.

You'll get GAU pay,... and , AND

Nordstrom's is open each and every day!

(Or anyway until eight)