Truly men hate the truth; they’d liefer
Meet a tiger on the road.

– Robinson Jeffers

What it’s not

First, let’s clarify: a “meme” (rhymes with “scream”) is not what Sarah Palin says when she goes on a family outing with her daughter; as in, “Meme Bristol’s gonna shoot up some mooses.”

Even in herspeak, that don’t get it.

What it is

According to Wikipedia, “A meme, a relatively newly-coined term, identifies ideas or beliefs that are transmitted from one person or group of people to another.”

Except that it’s more than that: more like a transplanting than a transmission; more like an entire constellation of ideas and sentiments flowing from person(s) to person(s); a packet of info from mind/heart to mind/heart or group mind to mind(s). And these ideas and sentiments are but feebly scrutinized, and, generally, not even realized to have been absorbed between organisms. Like a simple computer virus that can crash a system.

A little more from Wikipedia: “A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices [and, of course, values!—GC], which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. … Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures.”

Americans love memes—whether they know it or not. Memes shortcut and short-circuit real thinking and analysis, and give the opinionated something to opine about. Herewith follows some especially noxious specimens.

1. “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

I was 14, watching JFK’s inaugaration on the 13” black and white TV my parents kept in the kitchen when I first heard those ringing words. And… they resonated. There was this movie-star-handsome president (!), with great hair, eloquently delivering a message to unite the country in a noble mission: to bring justice, freedom and democracy to the nation… and the world. “To meet any challenge.”

But… fifty years later, hearing the words repeated incessantly by every 2-bit MSM newscaster, hearing the dissections and bifurcations and vivisections, all I can say is “Bullsh*t!”

Kennedy himself, I’ll give a pass. It was the height of the Cold War, and he was a young, untested leader. And, a Democrat, taking on the mantle of respected—if not loved—Dwight Eisenhower. We were locked in what Kennedy described as a “twilight struggle” between “freedom” and “tyranny,” between “democracy” and “Communism.”

Kennedy was spewing one meme after another—or Ted Sorenson was… or both of them—and its doubtful that he—or they—ever realized the extent of their misdirection.

For the goal of a meme is to inspire… not to educate or enlighten. The goal is to cloud and mystify, not to clarify.

So, half a century later, it is clear: We not only must ask what our country can do for us, we should, in fact, demand to know! That is the essence of what Rousseau called the social contract. I shall give up a portion of my earnings, I shall pay my taxes, I may even go, or send my children or grandchildren, to war to defend my country. But… I can never surrender my right to interrogate my “leaders.” As an adult, I recognize my obligation to be informed and to hold my “leaders”—political, economic, social and cultural—accountable for their expressed ideals.

In recent years, we have witnessed the debacle of our economic system when too many “asked not” what their country, or Wall Street bandits, or mortgage lenders, or Savings and Loans, or commercial banks, or hedge funds—were really up to. “We the people” complacently sat on our asses and let our “betters” run the show. It was a “really good shew,” in Ed Sullivan’s words, but it ended the way it had to end when intellect takes a hike on a prolonged sugar spike. “Asking not” sowed the wind… and now we reap the whirlwind. … And that’s no fatuous meme!

2. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Jefferson gets credit for the phraseology, but the ideas had been kicking around for a while, notably among John Locke and the Scottish philosophers. Since the European Enlightenment, the ethicists, the moral philosophers, had struggled to define “natural rights,” what we generally call “human rights” now. For most of those philosophers, including T.J., the real struggle was to define “property rights.” The rebels of 1776 postponed those splitting-hairs discussions for the Constitutional Convention—and the much more pragmatic and legalistic document that came out of it. No need to rupture the nascent union over questions about how to consider slave property; would that represent 60% of a human or 59 and a half? Better to go with the catch-all phrase and let the rabble read into it.

Problem is, we’ve been reading into the “pursuit of happiness” ever since, and generally making a botch of it. Whose happiness? How is happiness defined and achieved? For too much of America’s history, happiness has been synonymous with prosperity. As long as enough people were sufficiently prosperous, the general welfare was secure.

The equation of happiness and prosperity tips the scales of a just and admirable life with fools’ gold. It redounds in the sort of confused delirium that ends with a mania for tulip bulbs or sub-prime mortgages.

All the great teachers have warned us against the seductions of “happiness.” “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” Christ taught. And, “Lay not up worldly riches.” Buddha’s final words were: “Be a lamp unto yourself.” Not, as the modern gurus would have it, “Be happy!” Kung-fu-tzu advised a responsible life, meeting one’s obligations to family, to the State, to friends, peers, subordinates. Laotze cherished balance. A few hundred years before the Nazarene, Rabbi Hillel expressed the Golden Rule in the more easily followed non-affirmative: “Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you.” And the gadfly of Athens said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

I recall an essay—it was either by Emerson or Tolstoy, I was reading them both at about the same time: the author took a spontaneous walk through the woods on a moonlit night. He came to a clearing, looked up, and was suddenly overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of it all—the gentle breeze, the shimmering stars blinking through passing clouds, moonlight and rustling leaves, and a fragrance of wildflowers. And he was transported with a sense of peace, contentment, joy—happiness. The next night, the moon was about as full and the weather the same, and he went out along the path, came to the same clearing, looked up—and felt nothing.

The lesson is clear. Happiness is a by-product of a life well-lived. A life filled with meaning, good deeds, truth. It can’t be forced. It’s fortuitous. Pursue it–and lose it. “What mad pursuit, “ Keats wrote. “What struggle to escape!”

Keats died of consumption at 25. The disease—tuberculosis—had claimed his beloved younger brother a couple of years before, Keats nursing him to the end. It was a terrible, wasting disease of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, exacerbated, no doubt by the smokestack industries popping up like pimples all over the land. Consumption then; consumerism now. The same wasting disease.

Jefferson himself could never squre the circle. Certainly “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” had nothing to do with Native Americans—the Turtle Islanders. He signed the Indian Removal Act which Jackson was to enforce some 30 years later, after the discovery of gold in Dahlonegha, Georgia. Some 17,000 Cherokees and 2,000 of their black slaves (!) were forced to trudge at gunpoint through snow to Okalahoma. Thousands died on the way.

The magnificent redhead, the studious Francophile, enjoyed his bourbon and ice cream, his slave-mistress Sally Hemings, and his cultivated life at Monticello, accumulating huge debts, on the backs of 150 slaves. Upon his death, he bequeathed his slaves to his daughter. Washington, at least, had freed his slaves in his will—provisioned upon the death of his beloved Martha. This no doubt led to some wakeful nights at Mount Vernon, as Martha lay abed, listening to branches crackling underfoot, trying to discern meanings in the day’s glances or meanings in mubling behind closed doors. No doubt, some unhappy times!

3. The Second Amendment.

This is the motherlode of American memes. It’s better known than the 2nd Commandment, and those who worship it will defend their right to do more truculently than those who subscribe to the Mosaic Code. It holds its place with those few memes identified by numbers: The First Amendment; 911; 1776.

With the random murder of six innocents in Tucson, the near-killing of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and a dozen others by one Glock-toting maniac, the gun debate is boiling again. The apparently inoperable-tumorous meme in the midst of our Bill of Rights reads in its entirety:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Over 30 years ago, I watched “Meathead” on All in the Family try to explain to Archie Bunker, America’s favorite bone-headed bigot, the subsuming importance of that conditional clause. Michael Stivic’s efforts were, of course, futile. “Happiness is a warm gun,” the Beatles sang about that time. Lenon’s ironies were lost on his assassin.

The matter should have been put to rest, the argument concluded, back in 1794 during the Whisky Rebellion. Opposing the excise tax on whisky, a small army of 6,000, mostly Scotch-Irish frontiersmen, assembled in western Pennsylvania, threatened to attack government garrisons to obtain weapons, destroyed the stills of those who had paid the tax, modeled themselves after Robespierre and the Jacobins, cried havoc and let slip the dogs of war.

Fortunately for the nascent Republic, the best dog-catcher of the age, the one who had proposed and implemented that tax and others to raise the capital essential for the Republic’s survival, Alexander Hamilton, was there to stop the would-be guillotine-erectors. “There is no road to despotism more sure or more to be dreaded than that which begins at anarchy,” Hamilton wrote at the time. To oppose the poorly-led rebels, A. H. assembled militias from New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia: a mostly disciplined—they, too, loved their whisky!—force of 12,000 well-armed and provisioned men. There were some skirmishes, some deaths, rebel leaders were captured, imprisoned, and, chastened, and ultimately pardoned by Washington, whose paramount objective during two terms was to keep the fractious nation whole and out of the unending wars between Britain and France.

Apparently the lessons of the Whisky Rebellion have dimmed in the minds of those fervent advocates of “the right to bear arms.” They yammer about their need for Glocks and Uzis against an oppressive government whose most perfidious act will be the seizure of their arms! (They seem to yearn for such a seizure!) That seizure will signal the advent of a new age of tyranny, and light the torch of freedom anew in the hearts of millions of Glock and Uzi armed patriots.

Trying to argue against these memes is like trying to argue with Archie Bunker. So much detritus to work through! So many cobwebs to clear! So much history to back-fill! The lack of so much common sense to decry and lament!

Might not one argue that the seizure of personal firearms would be the least likely act of a tryrannical government… that anarchy would work just fine for controlling a Mad Max world in which the authorities could bring jets and predator drones, tactical nuclear weapons, etc. against an army of gun-slinging cowboys?

So, let’s talk about “arms.” As in, “couldn’t-hit-the-broad-side-of-a-barn” arms. An expression as old as the Constitution, and apropos of the personal firearms of our beloved forefathers.

Their weapons—for hunting rabbits, deer, racoons, “Injuns” or redcoats—were muskets. They were unrifled, could shoot ball or shot or both. About four times a minute, a handy rebel could load his musket with black powder, look down the barrel length—no sites!–and fire. That unrifled ball could fly off like a curve ball. One was unlikely to hit a man-sized target at more than 75 yards, “aiming” straight at him—or the side of a barn at more than a hundred. Once in Concord, Mass., near the “old stone bridge” that Emerson monumentalized, I heard a guide explain that more soldiers had died in the Revolutionary War as a result of bayonets than muskets! The principal “armor” against musket shot was good, strong, fibrous clothing—often spun from hemp!

Let’s also recall that in those days we were a fledgling agglomeration of “states” spread over a vast territory, with under 3 million people—mostly farmers and slaves. People knew their neighbors. If the village idiot—a certain young Jared, say—was seen running around with his musket protruding from his britches, people would have had the time to stop him, toss him in the pig pen and disarm him once and for all. It’s dubious he’d ever have had access to that musket in the first place. And his lack of wherewithal would have saved their lives.

4. “The future is ours to win.”

Once you start thinking about memes, it’s like having cataracts removed—colors emerge more vividly; you start seeing patterns in carpets, in wallpaper. It’s like suddenly seeing Snooky’s face for the first time on HDTV!

Okay, forget that!

The point is, they’re everywhere. More than cliches, more than the banalities that used to fill those empty spaces between the synapses, memes come in a multitude of colors, with images, sound track, Facebook personalities!

“911,” for example—the official narrative… or, the better, “fringe” explanations!

The assassinations of JFK, Bobby K, MLK and Malcolm X.

“The falling dominoes” that never were, for which four million lives were sacrificed. (Check out Gareth Porter’s “Perils of Dominance” for insight into the real story of the Vietnam War.)

“American exceptionalism”. … “We’re number one!”

“The wisdom of the voters.”

“Change you can believe in.”

“The War to End all Wars.”

“The War on Terror.”

“The Cold War.” (Check out William Blum’s “Killing Hope” for the best book about the Cold War. Reads like LeCarre—only it’s non-fiction!)

Not just words, but a panoply of figures marching across the TV sets of our minds, the movies, the political rallies, demonstrations, electronic imagery meshed with e-mail conversations, infiltrating every neuron—memes define, refine… and devour.

“Move on,” for example.

Some character gets devastated in a movie, a book… or you hear about it in the news. You see the tornado or the mudslide or rain torrents destroying houses, schools, churches, lives. People are broken by earthquakes and cholera. And then some pundit announces, “they’ll have to move on.”

A beloved child dies, 31 students are massacred, and we are exhorted… to “move on.”

To what, where, how?

Why… to the future, of course. That great meme in the sky.

And so Obama, master of ceremonies, magican of memes, declaims in his State of the Union, “The future is ours to win.”

And—presto!–the future becomes something tangible, something already there—the brass ring just needing deft fingers to grab. We have only to see ourselves “winning” it, and it is ours. (Kind of like Texas and northern Mexico in 1848!) The eternal vision of the vanquishable American frontier.

Except that… eleven years into our new millennium, one hopes for something more!

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child. … But now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things.”

We should know by now that the future is not something to conquer, something to “win,” but something to share, and that we’ll never understand the future—and very possibly not survive into it—without integrating our past and present, knowing truly what we have done, from where we’ve come, and what we are now in this crazy quilt of peoples and species blanketing this planet. We need “integration” in the sense of wholeness and integrity. Attachment to memes divides and tribalizes us. The ability to discern and assay our common lot, can unify our fracked and fractured, our wounded planet.

How to be whole again? Fully aware, conscious and conscientious? To look beyond memes, to probe deeper, to ascend to a higher view?

Memes are signposts, markers on the road to Oz. When we meet the Wizard, we must challenge him wisely, or lose mind, heart, courage—and never get back home. Life is learning… putting away, with cherished memories if we’re lucky, childish things.

Our problem is not so much that we have chosen the wrong memes, as that we have failed to develop the discernment to know what is what—how to value correctly, to espy the very real tribulations we shall reap from disparities of wealth, the plundering of resources, greed and stupidity. We celebrate the quick-buck hucksters, the mealy-mouthed impostors, and disparage the steady, steadfast striving after excellence and truth.

And we wonder about happiness? And how to serve our nation and our world? And how to organize for the struggle?

“See, now they vanish,” the poet wrote.
“The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
To become renewed, transfigured in another pattern.”

And…,

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

Is Islam a religion of peace? Whenever I hear this, I want to ask a counter-question: Who wants to know? It so happens that the overwhelming majority of people who ask this question do not care about getting an informed or accurate answer. They do not raise this question because they believe they are lacking in the knowledge of the Islamic tradition, and that the response will help them overcome their ignorance by giving them new insights. The question is typically raised by those who are already sure of being in possession of the right answer.

In the majority of these cases, the speaker is an Islamophobe who asks the question only to create an illusion of having carried out an objective inquiry; he/she is then able to present the right answer as an emphatic “no.” Occasionally, this question is raised by an uncritical Islamophile whose response, as expected, is an equally emphatic “yes.” Unfortunately, what this well-meaning friend of Islam does not recognize is that the problem represented by the negative response to the question cannot be solved by simply giving a positive response.

Whether the question is raised for polemical purposes or apologetic ones, it has little or no scientific value. The question fails to generate real inquiry, mostly because it is weighed down by its own ideological underpinnings, which can be revealed by making explicit a series of unacknowledged assumptions without which it cannot function as it currently does.

The most obvious assumption is that there are only two possible answers: “yes” and “no.” The yes/no dichotomy coincides with the peace/violence dichotomy that is also assumed in the question. The question implies that Islam is either a “religion of peace” or it is not. If it is not a “religion of peace,” Islam must, ipso facto, be a “religion of violence.” The query does not allow any third choice.

This way of framing the discussion is problematic. As a clichéd joke has it, a man cannot answer the question, “Have you stopped beating your wife?” with either a “yes” or a “no” without admitting his guilt. The same holds true for the question, “Is Islam a religion of peace?” As soon as we agree to offer a response, we find ourselves trapped in the faulty logic of the question. The wording seduces us to respond within the structure of the question, encouraging us to disregard all the details and nuances of the issues that may be pertinent to the matter at hand. In order to say either “yes” or “no,” we must become highly selective in our choice of evidence. Regardless of which side we choose, the exercise does not generate an honest inquiry but a hardening of preconceived positions, an increase in polarization.

The second ideological assumption underlying the question can be exposed by looking more closely at the value-laden word “peace.” The positive connotations of the word “peace” are so strong and pervasive that it is practically impossible for anyone in their right mind to be against peace. This is evidenced by the fact that politicians never tire of speaking about their commitment to “peace,” even when they are in the midst of declaring and conducting wars. There is an inherent bias in our language that favors “peace” over and against “violence,” so much so that “peace” constitutes its own argument but “violence” must be justified in one way or another. As language users, we instinctively know that, by definition, “peace” is good and “violence” is bad. Because of this linguistic bias, it is self-evident that a “religion of peace” is inherently superior in value to a “religion of violence.” No argument is required to prove this point, and none is given.

In this context, whenever the question “Is Islam a religion of peace?” is raised, everyone thinks that it better be, for it would be really bad for Islam if it can be shown as a “religion of violence.” Fair enough. But the real problem emerges when we look at the people who are raising this question publicly. It turns out that they are rarely pro-peace in their own ethics. Many are known for being anti-Islam and anti-Muslim, and not for their contribution to peacemaking. Their opposition to violence is far from being a principled rejection of all violence; they are definitely against violence when it is perpetrated by Muslims, but they express no comparable indignation when violence is carried out on their behalf and is directed against a group with which they do not identify, including Muslims. In effect, they tend to approve or condone “our” violence against “them” while vehemently criticizing “their” violence against “us.”

It is precisely this contradiction that nullifies the very logic on which the question is built. The appeal of the question depends on the audience’s implicit belief that “peace” is good and “violence” is bad; while the questioners rely on their audience’s moral sense to bolster the validity of the question, they simultaneously undermine that validity by failing to reject violence on a principled, as opposed to a selective and utilitarian, basis.

There is one final assumption underlying the question that we must examine carefully, and it has to do with the word “religion” itself. Whenever the question is raised, there is a tacit understanding that everyone involved shares the same view of religion; i.e., the view that makes the question possible in the first place. However, the particular view of religion that is implied in the question is, itself, problematic and must not be taken for granted. The question is worded as if “religion” could be accurately understood as a single, circumscribed, well-defined, and unchanging entity, something that is unmistakably distinct from society, culture, history, politics, and economics. This view assumes that each individual religion is easily and obviously distinguishable from all other religions, that each religion has its own unique and fixed essence that can be objectively known, and that there is no overlap between the respective essences of any two religions.

What is being ignored in this framing is that the concept of “religion” is just that — a concept. As such, we are dealing with an abstraction that can be defined and described in many different ways depending on our immediate purpose. This is precisely why it has proven impossible for the experts to agree on a single definition of the term “religion.” Over the last century and a half, the most intelligent minds have failed to draw conceptual boundaries between “religion” on the one hand, and society, culture, history, politics, and economics on the other hand. Furthermore, the boundary between any two religious traditions is also fuzzy at best; historically, no major religion has developed in complete isolation from the rest of the world, and therefore all religious traditions are products of syncretism as well as genuine innovations.

If the concept “religion” is so slippery and unstable as to defy a single, objectively verifiable definition, the more complex notions of “religion of peace” and “religion of violence” pose an even greater challenge to our desire for pinning them down. Neither of them is a precise concept that can be employed in an unambiguous or unbiased manner; both have originated in highly contentious debates over power, authority, and identity, and continue to be contested in a variety of ways.

A historically informed perspective does not allow us to treat any religion as if it were a static and monolithic object. No religion speaks with a single voice, and every religious tradition is characterized by a diversity of beliefs, attitudes, and expressions — a diversity that tends to increase with the passage of time. To describe any religion as being solely this or exclusively that, one must reduce its inner complexity to an artificial simplicity, as well as its ever-changing character to a fixed caricature or stereotype. This reduction is itself an act of violence. The resulting image is almost entirely a product of the reductionist enterprise, bearing little resemblance to the dynamic and complex lived reality of the tradition.

In light of the above discussion, the best response I can offer to the question, “Is Islam a religion of peace?” is no response at all. This, however, does not mean that we are trying to avoid or evade the problem; it only means that we must bury this particular question before we can find more constructive and fruitful ways of inquiring into the relevant issues.

One might ask, what would those constructive and fruitful questions look like? Here are some examples. If we are interested in finding out the causes of violence, we may want to ask: “What are the needs of a particular people that they are trying to meet when they act violently?” If we are interested in ending violence, we may want to ask: “How can we help educate a particular people so they can use more effective and peaceful strategies for meeting their needs?” If we are interested in the religious aspects of the problem, we may want to ask: “What are the resources available in a particular religious tradition that might help its adherents make effective contributions to peace?”

From a Muslim viewpoint, the most relevant course of inquiry may well be this: What are the specific resources in the Islamic religious heritage that can help us create a world where everyone can meet their needs peacefully? I find this to be a supremely worthwhile question.

We know that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was holding a “Congress on the Corner” meeting outside a Safeway grocery store.

We know that a 22-year-old named Jared Lee Loughner is in FBI custody, and has been charged with one count of attempted assassination of a member of Congress, two counts of killing an employee of the United States and two counts of intent to kill employees of the United States. We know that six people are dead, that 14 were wounded, several of whom were in grave or critical condition. We know there will be additional state charges filed against Loughner.

We know that among the dead are John Roll, a Republican and the senior federal judge in Arizona, who had come by the rally to support his friend, the Democratic representative; and Christina-Taylor Green, a nine-year-old who was born on 9/11, and died on another day of violence. We have heard the names of George Morris, one of those shot, who tried to protect his wife, Dorothy, who didn’t survive; of Dorwin Stoddard, 76, who was killed while trying to protect his wife, Mary; of Phyllis Schneck, a 79-year-old widow who lived in  Tucson eight months a year to avoid the snows of her native New Jersey; and of Gabe Zimmerman, 30, Giffords’ outreach director.

We know that Loughner was rejected by the Army, withdrew from a community college prior to being suspended, became more abusive the past year, and that many, even before the shootings, have called him mentally unstable.

We know the shooter used a Glock 19 9-mm. semi-automatic weapon, with a 33-bullet magazine, which he purchased legally. We know that Congress did not renew the assault weapons ban, which allowed civilians to own pistols but with only a 10-bullet magazine capacity. And we also know that sales of Glock pistols following the murders, in a nation steeped in a gun culture, increased by 60 percent in Arizona and 5 percent nationally.

We know that Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, a conservative in his 30th year in office, called Arizona a “mecca of prejudice and bigotry,” and condemned the “the kind of rhetoric that flows from people like Rush Limbaugh,” whom he called “irresponsible” and who bases his talk show upon partial and wrong information to inflame his listeners. Three months earlier, the sheriff, possibly the most respected law enforcement officer in Arizona, said the Tea Party “brings out the worst in America,” and implied that the atmosphere of hate was partially responsible for the resulting murders.

While most Tea Partiers are White, middle-aged or senior citizens who are angry but not violent, whenever there is violence, whenever there is racism, discrimination, or homophobia, there are Tea Party sympathizers present.

We know that armed citizens, some carrying signs that advocate violence, attend Tea Party rallies, and speak of the overthrow of government.

We know that numerous members of Congress, including Rep. Giffords, had received death threats after they voted for health care reform. We know that some Tea Party leaders openly urged their followers to throw bricks through the windows of those who supported health care reform, and that several offices were vandalized.

We know that during the 2010 mid-term elections, Sarah Palin had targeted 20 Democratic representatives, including Rep, Giffords, by placing cross-hairs targets on their districts on a map of the United States. “When people do that,” said Giffords at the time, “they have to realize that there are consequences to that action,” We know Palin frequently uses gun analogies and has called for her supporters to “take up arms,” exhorting them not to retreat but to rearm. After the murders, Palin claimed the cross-hairs weren’t really targets but surveyors’ marks.

We know that Eric Fuller, a 63-year-old disabled veteran who was one of those shot in Tucson, lashed out against hate speech. “If you are going to scream hatred and preach hatred, you’re going to sow it after a while if you’ve got a soap box like they’ve got,” said Fuller.

We also know there are liberals who have threatened others, and that the rhetoric of the Radicals of the 1960s, with limited media, may have been close to the rhetoric of the Reactionaries of the 21st century. But the instances of liberal threats pale in comparison to those launched by the extreme right-wing, which is adept at full use of the newer social media, as well as near-monopolies on radio and television talk shows.

We also know the extreme right-wing, usually without facts or bending facts to their own purposes, fired back at Sheriff Dupnik and others.

Rush Limbaugh, with absolutely no evidence, not only claimed the Democratic party “seeks to profit” from the shootings, but that Loughner knows he has “the full support” of the Democrats.

We know that Glenn Beck, two days after the murders, finally spoke out, extending sympathies — and condemning those who argued that a climate of hate was partially responsible for the tragedy. This is the same Glenn Beck who in June erroneously claimed that the media and those in Washington “believe and have called for a revolution. You’re going to have to shoot them in the head.” This is the same Glenn Beck who, on his website, posted a picture of him holding a pistol. And, we also know he defended Sarah Palin, stupidly charging that attacks on her following the tragedy could somehow destroy the republic.

We know that four days after the murders in Tucson, four volunteer officials of the Arizona Republican party resigned, citing the threat of violence by the Tea Party faction. Anthony Miller, chairman of Legislative District 20, a heavy Republican area near Phoenix, told the Arizona Republic that during his re-election campaign, Tea Party members threatened him, some making hand gestures imitating a gun. Many resorted to racial hatred, calling Miller “McCain’s boy.” Miller, an Afro-American, was on John McCain’s paid campaign staff in 2010. McCain’s opponent for Senate was a Tea Party sympathizer, with heavy support of controversial and racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Phoenix.

There is no outcry. We must kill them over there so we don’t have to kill them over here. It doesn’t matter who we kill, as long as the ratings go up, corporations cash in and the masses get some bonus thrills before returning to the regularly scheduled programming.

Initial responses to the Tucson tragedy have tried to shoehorn Loughner into being a Tea Party, Sarah Palin zombie, but this grinning dude is even more messed up than that. A high school drop out, aimless and living with his parents, he was also kicked out of the community college. Loughner tried to join the US Army although he considered as war crimes our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Among his favorite books are Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto. He dismisses others as illiterate and ungrammatical, yet barely makes sense in his own writing.

Let’s face it, sanity and coherence are no longer our strong suits. From President to busboy, we babble in slogans and sound bites. For over a century, the mass media have corroded our syllogistic chops. Browsing some crime story, one is distracted by a shoe add. A genocide photo may be juxtaposed with a new, improved laundry detergent. On sale too, no less. All become spectacles and life is a meaningless collage. With jump cuts and commercials, television accelerates our derangement. The mind is not supposed to blink that fast for decades on end without deadly consequences. Speed kills, period. With remote control, five hundred channels, ipod in one ear, cell phone in other and laptop a humming, we can hardly remember who got wiped out yesterday, or even a minute ago. We no longer have reality, only reality shows.

With a national decline in articulation, is there a surprise that there’s a vertiginous drop in the literacy of our mass murderers and assassins? A man used to be able to hold a gun or knife in one hand, pen in the other. Not no more. Charles Guteau, who shot President Garfield in 1881, could wax, “I weave the discourse out of my brain as cotton is woven into a fabric. When I compose my brain is in white heat, and my mind works like lightning. This accounts for the short epigrammatic style of my sentences. I write so rapidly I can hardly read it,” and, “Life is a fleeting dream, and it matters little where one goes. A human life is of small value. During the war thousands of brave boys went down without a tear.”

Fast forward to Seung-Hui Cho. From his play Richard McBeef, Sue kvetches, “What are you doing to my son! You said you would have a nice chat to get on terms with him. And this is what I catch you do! What kind of step-father are you? Pretending to be nice to him with a fake smile on your chubby face!”

Is it possible to be more tone deaf? Oh, the bathos of atonal youth! Granted, Cho had problems with speaking and socializing his entire life, but he was also an English major in a well regarded writing program. He even took advanced fiction. As poet Richard Hugo observed, “A writing class may be the first and last place where many young people are taken seriously,” so inside they duck, though it may cost them a pretty penny, payable in infinite installments. Anything to get out of the suburbs, I suppose. In any case, count Cho as another young, inarticulate American with a hazy beef against nearly everything. Impotent, many look up to the military. Loughner tried to enlist, Cho dressed up as a Marine.

They like to flash that hard, reliable tool of lethal discharge, rat, tat, tat, tat! Extending the body’s reach, it feels agreeably snug in the hand.

Military culture provides a subtext to the Tucson shooting. Giffords’ opponent in the last election, Jesse Kelly, ex Marine and Iraq war vet, staged a fund raising event advertised as “Get on Target for Victory in November Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.” (If Loughner was so disturbed by bad grammar, why he didn’t target Kelly for this punctuation-free snippet?) Shot through the head, Giffords was then treated by Peter Rhee, among others. Rhee served for 24 years in the Navy, including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Discharged, he worked for five years in Los Angeles, where he dealt with around 30 gunshot wounds a day. Improved emergency care has helped to hold down our murder rates. To get at the real index of violence, one should look at murder attempts.

Responding to the Tucson shooting, Sheriff Clarence Dupnik cited “vitriolic rhetoric” in the media as a poisoning influence. “This has not become the nice United States that most of us grew up in.” How nice it ever was for how many is debatable, but it’s undeniable that our culture has turned more savage. We haven’t always enjoyed caged fighting, people eating maggots on TV or popular music that openly advocates murder.

Mammie Smith recorded the first blues record in 1920. It contained this passage:

Now I’ve got the crazy blues
Since my baby went away
I ain’t had no time to lose
I must find him today
I’m gonna do like a Chinaman, go and get some hop
Get myself a gun, and shoot myself a cop

So yes, drugs, guns and cop killing are not entirely new in pop music, but this song was an aberration. More typical of that era was a cheese wagon like “I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover.” Can you imagine Eminem singing, “One leaf is sunshine, the second is rain / Third is the roses that grow in the lane”? The current top hit is “Grenade” by Bruno Mars. A love ballad, it features these sweet lines: “I would go through all this pain, / Take a bullet straight through my brain, / Yes, I would die for ya baby.”

Looking tough has become de rigueur and even pre-teens now strut around like gangstas. America also leads the world in the adoption of military fatigues as casual wear, where T-shirt slogans such as “Kill ‘Em All” and “Made in America, Tested in Japan,” over a mushroom cloud, are deemed witty. Our soccer moms steer military trucks. Rush Limbaugh used to open his show with a sustained salvo of automatic weapons.

Interviewed by M. Thomas Inge, Truman Capote spoke of the prevalence of tattoos among murderers, “I have seldom met a murderer who wasn’t tattooed. Of course, the reason is rather clear; most murderers are extremely weak men who are sexually undecided and quite frequently impotent. Thus the tattoo, with all its obvious masculine symbolism. Another common denominator is that murderers almost always laugh when they’re discussing their crimes.” Well, Americans have become the most elaborately tattooed people on earth. Not all of us are murderers, of course, we just want to look like we’re always ready to bust a cap. By flexing our masculinity so insistently, so insanely, we’re distorting both the male and female aspects of our nature.

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.

— Chinese proverb

While there’s still some disagreement as to its provenance, most labor historians agree that the word “scab” — a derogatory term for a strikebreaker — was first used by the Albany Typographical Society on November 20, 1816.  Saturday marks its 194th anniversary.

While you occasionally hear the word misused or applied generically (e.g., calling a non-union facility a “scab shop”), there are two and only two accepted definitions of the term:  (1) a union employee who continues to work during a strike, and (2) a person who accepts a job at a union facility that is being struck.

In time of war, a pacifist who’d rather empty bedpans and change soiled sheets is called a “conscientious objector.”  A person who betrays his own country by taking up arms for the enemy is called a “traitor.”  And an employee who refuses to join his fellow union members in a legally mandated strike, or a person who crosses a picket line in order to take someone else’s job is, appropriately, called a “scab.”

Unlike Europe, Mexico and Canada, where scabs are still more or less outlawed (or, at the very least, strongly discouraged), the United States actually rejoices in this form of economic treason.  We openly flout the words of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who said, “Labor cannot, on any terms, surrender the right to strike.”  And make no mistake as to what Brandeis was saying.  When your job can be given away while you’re on strike, striking becomes tantamount to quitting.

In truth, while European trade unionists have their own problems, they are astounded and confused by this free-for-all atmosphere in the U.S.  The bizarre arrangement where a worker’s established role in society can be traded away promiscuously — can be placed on the market and sold to another party like a cheap commodity — blows their minds.

Clearly, they don’t understand America.  They don’t understand our mindset, our deep-seated entrepreneurial impulses, our pungent reverence for the free market, and our belief that anything that can, in principle, be bought or sold is, therefore, for sale. It was this perverse mentality that created pay toilets at the airport.

The way the Europeans, Canadians and Mexicans see it, workers have certain inalienable rights when it comes to their jobs — rights that can’t be usurped at the first sign of trouble.  The way these countries regard striking workers is analogous to the way Americans regard victims of natural disasters, such as earthquakes or floods.

People who try to steal personal property from your home after you’ve been forced to evacuate are the lowest form of creature — scavengers looking to make a quick profit from your misfortune.  We call them called “looters,” and looting is against the law.  It’s fair to say that the bulk of the civilized world considers scabs to be “job looters.”

All of which makes the sanitized term “replacement worker” (which is what the American media call scabs) one of the most repellent euphemisms in existence.  Our European brothers and sisters honestly can’t understand how we accept such a thing.

From their perspective, calling a scab a “replacement worker” is as absurd as calling a dirty traitor an “alternative patriot.”  No flag-waving American would stand for that kind of verbal legerdemain when it came to defending one’s country; and no one should stand for it when it comes to labor disputes.  But we do.

And don’t count on the Congress fixing it (i.e., outlawing or greatly limiting permanent replacements) anytime soon.  Given that they couldn’t get something as tame as the EFCA (Employee Free Choice Act) passed, what chance has the European model got?

Those of you who follow this blog know that those rare meetings of poets and manual workers — in Orwell’s England or in the present-day global North and global South — are something I’ve both written about and tried in various ways to organize over the course of the past decade. From “poetry” performances at rallies for striking Northwest Airlines mechanics and workers (through AMFA Local 33) to “poetry dialogues” between Ford workers at a closing plant in St. Paul, Minnesota, and workers fearing retrenchment at Ford plants in Port Elizabeth and Pretoria, South Africa, I’ve sought to create spaces where poets and manual workers might, as Orwell writes, create language together.

Quite simply, I believe the work we do as poets, as artists, has tremendous potential in its “imaginative militancy” (I borrow the phrase from Kim Moody) — that, when working with trade unions and social movements, we become part of the process to re-imagine something more than the present condition. “Perceptions of what is possible change,” Moody writes, “as new forces come into the struggle and the power of the class, long denied and hidden, becomes visible.”

Poets, artists, imaginative militants… the door into the struggle has never been more wide open.

Last week Tuesday night, I had an opportunity to discuss the issues central to my most recent work (Coal Mountain Elementary) with Al Jazeera TV anchor Shihab Rattansi. Unlike my appearance during the Chilean mine rescue (see my post on that here), this time I was back to speak to that unfortunate and almost daily story in the global extractive industries — 2 more miners were killed at the Los Reyes mine in Chile. And, as I always do (in good times and in bad), I reminded viewers that this is the major narrative of global mining — miners are rarely rescued, miners trapped underground rarely get to sing an Elvis tune on Letterman or run in the NYC marathon. Miners die. Almost every day. Somewhere in the world. Period.

Following my spot on Al Jazeera, I walked just a few blocks to AFL-CIO headquarters to read at the 21st Annual Labor Heritage Foundation Awards ceremony. Honored that night were AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Working America founder (and inspiration for the film 9 to 5) Karen Nussbaum, and the President of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, William “Bill” Lucy. Other performers included Renee Barnes, who works in the International Education Department at AFSCME — and who knocked the house out with her voice.

Toward the end of the program, I read just a few brief sections from Coal Mountain Elementary. But it was especially in my introduction that I wanted to articulate poets to workers before these leaders of so many working people. And I wanted to, and did, remind those present, including the President of the United Mine Workers of America, Cecil Roberts, that this language of workers and poets that I was about to present was dedicated to the miners who had died in the past two weeks. “And not only in Western Kentucky,” I said. “But the miners who died in Chile; the miners who died in the Philippines; the miners who died in Russia; the miners who died in South Africa; the miners who died in Rwanda; the miners who died in China; the miners who died in Guyana… and all of these deaths in a period of just two weeks.”

As I neared the end of the list, I heard several shocked sounds from these leaders of various U.S. trade unions — gasps that this many workers had died in just a single industry. And after I read a few entries from the book and stepped off the stage, the President of the United Mine Workers of America was the first person to shake my hand.

It isn’t so much the first half of Orwell’s famous statement that drives my work (though that sentiment is certainly at the core of my writing projects, too), it is the second half: “it is difficult for these two classes to meet.”

This is the challenge of the present moment (it’s that CLR James/Facing Reality quote I return to again and again): “People all over the world, and particularly ordinary working people in factories, mines, fields, and offices, are rebelling every day in ways of their own invention… Their strivings, their struggles, their methods have few chroniclers.”

Workers and Poets, sharpen your pencils. Open your notebooks (the old school marble ones and the new techno-school ones). Let’s get busy. We’ve got a lot of writing to do.

This is akin to “fighting fire with fire.” Uncontrolled fire can wreak great devastation, but few would object when a large fire is lit to snuff out what might be a more calamitous fire. Why, then, should people object when a violent resistance brings to an end a violent oppression? Peace can only reign when an oppression has been halted. Certainly, it would not be preferable for the violent oppression to continue in the face of pacifist resistance?

Therefore, as a second principle, a resistance movement must never incur greater limitation in tactics than an oppressor uses. To limit a resistance more than an oppressor would be morally anathema. The logical proof is easily verifiable since the cause of the violence is the morally reprehensible oppression; without oppression there could be no resistance. In the case of an occupation/oppression, an entire population is targeted – both civilian and military. In a morally just intellectual space, a military field should never be supported or tilted in favor of the oppressor. Intellectually, if not morally, the entire population of the oppressor could be considered a legitimate target; this writer would, however, recoil at targeting children, elders, and women.¹ Therefore, criticism of the Palestinian resistance for inflicting casualties on Israeli civilians is logically and ethically flawed. The oppressor bears responsibility for all casualties because without the oppression, there would be no need for resistance.

It also follows that an oppressed people must be granted an equivalency in tactics and targets that is beyond moral condemnation, again because there would be no violent resistance were it not for the oppression and violence wreaked upon the resisting people. Ergo, the blame for any violent resistance belongs to the oppressor – not to the resistance.

A major tactic of Palestinian resistance is the Global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. BDS is a non-violent means of resistance against the occupation and oppression that Palestinians have endured for six decades. Nonetheless, there are people regarded as progressives that oppose the BDS campaign or sections of it, such as boycotts.

Expressing disapproval of a tactic is right of any commentator. However, one must wonder about the motives and morality of equally opposing the violence of a resistance and oppressor while also opposing a non-violent means of resistance. If one is opposed to all violence, then if one opposes a non-violent means of resistance, at the very least, it should be incumbent on such a person to proffer an equally viable alternative means of resistance.

Also, in the case of historical Palestine, since it is the Palestinians (and Bedouins and Druze and human rights supporters) who suffer the indignity and violence of occupation, a principled position would hold that any opposition to tactical resistance be discussed with Palestinians first. Further, it seems only just and right that any alternative and/or supplemental plans for tactical resistance also be passed by the Palestinians. I am unaware whether non-Palestinian progressives who oppose boycotts (Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Robert Fisk, etc.) have followed this etiquette.

Progressives must also be on guard for the language they use to identify the oppressors and resistance. Elementary etiquette would, at first, seem to require that a people be referred to by their self-designation. However, since propaganda and disinformation is a major tactical area for oppressors, people receive reportage of oppressors as defenders, as in the Israel Defense [sic] Forces. Predictably, the controlled media and state propagandizing organs, usually refer to the oppressed who dare to resist as “insurgents” and/or “terrorists.” Yet sometimes progressives also lapse into imperialistic terminology.²

Demonizing Iran

Demonization of resistance movements and resistance leaders is a perpetual tactic of imperialists and their media organs. This extends to nations and leaders of nations that hegemons have designated as enemies.

The US-disseminated demonization campaign is crystal clear in the case of Iran. The United States has obvious designs on the region of the Middle East and beyond. It therefore arrogates certain rights onto itself and denies the same rights to other nations. To assert its right as an equal among nations, Iran has been forced to resist US hegemony.

A steadfast stream of disinformation and propaganda has flowed from US media to demonize Iran and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad is controversial because he broaches topics deemed unmentionable by manipulators of discourse. Consequently, Ahmadinejad is mendaciously and repeatedly depicted as calling for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Iranian elections were targeted for criticism, and a Green Revolution was orchestrated to topple Ahmadinejad. Iranian elections are open to criticism for their lack of adherence to democratic principles, and Iran has a long way to go before becoming authentically democratic, but this same criticism holds equally for the US and every other nation on the planet. Democracy, up to the present time, exists as an ideal and not as a reality. Under capitalism, money determines who holds political power. Consequently, criticizing other states for democratic deficiencies is merely revelatory of ignorance and prejudice.

Iran has been subjected to imperialist oppression orchestrated by the US and compliant western governments to submit its right to uranium enrichment to outside jurisdiction, a right which is granted by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.³

Over a dozen countries are known to enrich uranium; preventing Iran from pursuing this same activity creates a hierarchy among nations – a violation of the United Nations Charter.⁴

Moreover, the argument that it is not necessary for a nation to enrich its own uranium because it can purchase enriched uranium from other countries already enriching uranium is flawed, and it does not address the inequality among nations argument. It leaves a non-uranium enriching nation at the whim of the commercial market and its potential enemies. The US and its western supporting nations (with the egregious complicity of the UN, contrary to its own peace-promoting charter, since enacting sanctions is often viewed as a declaration of war) have already abundantly demonstrated their alacrity for using international sanctions to achieve hegemonic ends. Why, therefore, would an independent nation leave itself open to losing its access to an energy supply?

The only way Iran can guarantee itself access to enriched uranium is if it enriches its own supply of uranium.

This US-led campaign, purportedly to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability, suffers from the US’s acquiescence to Israel maintaining a nuclear weapons stockpile. This was, however, not a problem when the US backed the nuclear aspirations of the regime of the dictator it installed in Iran. The Shah of Iran is said to have desired nuclear weapons.⁵ Hypocrisy aside, the US campaign contravenes the UN Charter and NPT, besides positing and attempting to legitimate an inequality among nations. The US rationale points to a scenario where there are supreme nations who may have nuclear technology and/or nuclear weapons, and there are lesser nations in this US-dominated world order who may not have nuclear technology and/or nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Deterrence and Peace

The only time nuclear weapons were used against another nation was by the US, when it only possessed the technology and when its victim nation was virtually defenceless. Since then other nations have acquired nuclear weapons, and a nuclear deterrence factor has been claimed as preventing a nuclear war.

Insofar as nuclear deterrence has significance, then for a peaceful nation such as Iran — which has not initiated a war against another country in centuries, which finds itself unceasingly subject to threats from a warmongering hegemon and the apartheid nuclear-armed Israel, both of which have been at war their entire existence — nuclear weaponization seems to be the only currently viable self-defense option to continue as a peaceful, independent nation among nations. Every nation should be entitled to an equal, inalienable right to self-defense.⁶

To adhere to the principle of equality among nations, then the solution is clear: either all nations become and remain disarmed of nuclear weapons, or all nations have the right to become nuclear armed.

And why stop there? Why not a fully verifiable dismantling of military industries by all nations and a standing down of all military service personnel? Why not a global peace treaty by all nations and peoples forever renouncing war?

It would be most difficult to oppress peoples without weapons and fighters, and the need for resistance would vanish.

However, the oppressors are still calling the shots in today’s world.

1. In Israel, there is also the fact, that most of the population serves in the military of the oppressor at one time or another, and that they may, therefore, be considered military.
2. See Kim Petersen, “Insurgents”: Hermeneutics Are Not a Substitute for Clarity!” Dissident Voice, 3 March 2006.
3. The preamble states “… all Parties to the Treaty are entitled to participate in the fullest possible exchange of scientific information for, and to contribute alone or in co-operation with other States to, the further development of the applications of atomic energy for peaceful purposes…”

   Article IV.1 states, “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.”

4. The UN Charter states in the preamble affirms a principle of “the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small…”
5. Mohammad Sahimi, “Iran’s Nuclear Program. Part I: Its History,” Payvand’s Iran News …, 2 October 2003.
6. See Kim Petersen, “The Inalienable Right to Self Defense: Balancing the Power,” Dissident Voice, 27 February 2006.

Now, I believe he might have been right.

Let’s set the scene – as the advocate sees it. You represent the appellant, and you appear for oral argument before our state Supreme Court or one of our Courts of Appeal. You look up at the black robes, and you assume that the Justices have come to the hearing with open minds. Since you already put in your brief what you thought were your best arguments, you start to give a boiled-down version of a selected couple of your most special zingers. But soon after you begin, the Justices interrupt with questions. Nothing wrong with that. A dynamic intellectual dialogue might help the Court reach the most just decision – which would seem to be the main goal of oral argument.

But you get a queasy feeling: the questions are not genuine inquiries, but rhetorical – even hostile. You might even feel ambushed, by questions that raise issues your opponent never raised in his brief. (Later, when you get the opinion, you see that the decision turned on that issue!) None of your answers seem to satisfy the Justices.

An experienced appellate litigator watching this performance has seen it before, and can easily predict how the court will decide the case. Usually only one side gets hammered this way. Often it’s the Appellant’s advocate, but occasionally the Respondent’s lawyer gets nailed. The non-hammered attorney might get a few questions, but the imbalance is obvious. By the tone, content, number, and target of their questions, the Justices reveal who won the appeal. As Justice Mosk knew, that decision had been made well before oral argument. The oral argument had no effect on the outcome, no matter how poised and apparently persuasive the losing attorney argued.

This is not the case in all American appellate courts (for example, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals), and it wasn’t always the case in California’s courts. Years ago, when I clerked for a Justice of the California Supreme Court, we prepared a “Calendar Memorandum” before oral argument — presenting the arguments on both sides, often without a recommendation for disposition. Since the Justices hadn’t fully made up their minds, oral argument mattered more.

That all changed when our courts began complying with the “90-day rule”: Article 6, Section 19, of the California Constitution, which requires judges to issue opinions within 90 days after the lawyers “submit” the case for decision, which usually occurs at the very end of oral argument (“Submitted, Counsel?”). Rather than get squeezed by the 90-day clock, our appellate courts now front-load their cases: they draft the opinion before the case is “submitted”, i.e., before oral argument even begins.

So let’s revisit the scene described above. As the advocate argues, she notices the Justices glancing down at – or reading from – some papers on the table. Probably the briefs or part of the record, she thinks.

No. It’s the draft opinion – all ready to be filed and sent out. Often all that’s missing is the stamp. Once in a while, something said at oral argument will induce the Court to change a bit of language in the opinion. But the result? Never. (Well, hardly ever.)

Thus, the whole purpose of oral argument – to help the Justices reach the most just result – is pretty much lost.

Well, maybe not the whole purpose. Oral argument also gives the Court a chance to “show the flag” – to emerge from their chambers for a week each month to allow the public to see the pretty faces of those who decide cases. A worthy goal, to be sure. But is this the best way to do it?

Lawyers spend a lot of time preparing for oral argument. They re-read the record, the briefs, and the cases. They try to anticipate questions, and they might even practice in moot courts. All this takes many billable hours – paid by their clients. Then the lawyers (often with clients) come to the podium believing that this investment matters, that they have a chance to persuade the Court.

But they don’t, and the pretense of real substance where there is in fact little substance is troubling – at least to me. Can’t the Justices show their public face by speaking at bar association lunches and high school assemblies? Much cheaper all around than oral argument.

In sum, while oral argument is not useless, its benefits are too small to be worth the time Justices spend on it, the lawyers’ preparation time, and especially the damage to clients’ pocketbooks. So perhaps Justice Mosk was right: let’s just abolish it.

But wait a minute. Abolish all oral argument? What about oral argument in our trial courts? That, my friends, is a different kettle of fish.

Most of our trial courts issue tentative opinions before oral argument. That gives the lawyers a chance to use oral argument to address the exact points the court cares about. No need to guess. No need to go through all the arguments in your briefs. Just focus on what counts – and you know what counts because the judge just told you what counts, by showing you the tentative opinion. Simple, straight-forward, fair – and transparent, the way we hope all government institutions operate.

Such focused oral argument might actually change the judge’s mind and reach the most just result – which is the main purpose of any argument, oral or written. And, if you fail to change the judge’s mind, at least you had a fair shot. And — if the tentative convinces you that don’t have very good arguments against it — just save your client’s money by waiving oral argument and living with the loss.

The California Constitution requires our appellate courts to permit oral argument, so they go through the motions — while hiding the ball. While you are arguing, you can see the back of the paper the Justice is reading — the draft opinion — but you can’t see the front. Wouldn’t it be nice if the Court would just show it to you, like our trial courts do?

Occasionally, before oral argument, the Court will send counsel a short “focus letter.” Sometimes this is helpful – it really does give fair warning of the precise issue on which the decision (already written) will turn. But sometimes it is opaque or abstract, leaving the advocate scratching her head trying to figure out how it affects the outcome. But even a good focus letter fails to give the context of the question, i.e., exactly how the answer to the question fits the full analysis of the draft opinion. This is what the lawyer needs in order to answer the question in a way best suited to help the client.

Why not give the lawyers the draft opinion?

Maybe Justices fear that this will increase the number of requests for oral argument. It is not clear to me why this would be a bad thing. The Court might actually gain something from an oral argument that focuses on the issues the Justices themselves deem important. Trial courts do, and I’m aware of no studies that show that their practice of issuing tentative decisions increases the number of requests for oral argument.

Any other reasons? Do Justices believe that lawyers representing the litigants will not have anything useful to say about their draft opinions? Or are they concerned that lawyers will have too much to say, i.e., are they wary of criticism? Or are they afraid of looking indecisive or stupid if they change the opinion after showing the tentative? (I sure hope not. Intelligent people might make an occasional mistake when trying to resolve any difficult intellectual dispute.) Perhaps the answer is simple, blind inertia: “We’ve always done things this way…”

California has six Courts of Appeal, some with several “Divisions” (panels of three Justices). One of these Divisions – and only one – does in fact issue tentative decisions before oral argument. Division Two of the Fourth District Court of Appeal, in Riverside, has been doing this for a while. On its website, the Justices report that without tentative decisions, “oral argument is often a dry, meaningless ritual in which counsel merely review the arguments set forth in their briefs.” However, because the Court now issues tentative decisions,
[T]he justices of this court have found oral argument more useful in assisting the court to reach a decision. The justices do not sense that their deliberations are any less objective than before the tentative opinion program began. Counsel almost unanimously praise the program.

Issuance of the tentative opinion before oral argument has significantly reduced the time spent on oral argument in two ways. First, argument has become more focused and taken less time as counsel can concentrate on the issues found significant by the court. Second, counsel often decide to waive oral argument once they see the court’s tentative opinion. Thus, the program has increased both the quality and efficiency of the court resulting in a savings to taxpayers.

Our Supreme Court has declared: “If oral argument is to be more than an empty ritual, it must provide the litigants with an opportunity to persuade those who will actually decide an appeal.” Moles v Regents of Univ. of Cal. (1982) 32 Cal.3d 867, 872.

Today, except in one Division, oral argument in California’s appellate courts is indeed “an empty ritual,” pretty much. If our appellate courts will not share their draft opinions with advocates before oral argument, we might as well follow Justice Mosk’s advice: save courts, counsel, and clients a lot of time and money — by abolishing oral argument.

But what exactly did they win?

And is the war really over?

It seems we are once again walking into the same trap, the same nonsensical assumptions of wars won, missions accomplished, troops withdrawn, and jolly soldiers carrying cardboard signs of heart-warming messages like “Lindsay & Austin … Dad’s coming home.”

While much of the media is focused on the logistics of the misleading withdrawal of the “last combat brigade” from Iraq on August 19 – some accentuating the fact that the withdrawal is happening two weeks ahead of the August 31 deadline – most of us are guilty of forgetting Iraq and its people. When the economy began to take center stage, we completely dropped the war off our list of grievances.

But this is not about memory, or a way of honoring the dead and feeling compassion for the living. Forgetting wars leads to a complete polarization of discourses, thus allowing the crafters of war to sell the public whatever suits their interests and stratagems.

In an August 22 Washington Post article entitled “Five myths about the Iraq troop withdrawal”, Kenneth M Pollack unravels the first “myth”: “As of this month, the United States no longer has combat troops in Iran.” Pollack claims this idea is “not even close” because “roughly 50,000 American military personnel remain in Iraq, and the majority are still combat troops – they’re just named something else. The major units still in Iraq will no longer be called “brigade combat teams” and instead will be called “advisory and assistance brigades”. But a rose by any other name is still a rose, and the differences in brigade structure and personnel are minimal.

So what if the US army downgrades its military presence in Iraq and re-labels over 50,000 remaining soldiers? Will the US military now stop chasing after perceived terrorist threats? Will it concede an inch of its unchallenged control over Iraqi skies? Will it relinquish power over the country’s self-serving political elite? Will it give up its influence over every relevant aspect of life in the country, from the now autonomous Kurdish region in the north all the way to the border with Kuwait in the south, which the jubilant soldiers crossed while hollering the shrieks of victory?

The Iraq war has been one of the most well-controlled wars the US has ever fought, in terms of its language and discourse. Even those opposed to the war tend to be misguided as to their reasons: “Iraqis need to take charge of their own country”; “Iraq is a sectarian society and America cannot rectify that”; “It is not possible to create a Western-style democracy in Iraq”; “It’s a good thing Saddam Hussein was taken down, but the US should have left straight after”. These ideas might be described as “anti-war”, but they are all based on fallacious assumptions that were fed to us by the same recycled official and media rhetoric.

It’s no wonder that the so-called anti-war movement waned significantly after the election of President Barack Obama. The new president merely shifted military priorities from Iraq to Afghanistan. His government is now re-branding the Iraq war, although maintaining the interventionist spirit behind it. It makes perfect sense that the US State Department is now the one in charge of the future mission in Iraq. The occupation of Iraq, while it promises much violence and blood, is now a political scheme. It requires good public relations.

The State Department will now supervise future violence in Iraq, which is likely to increase in coming months due to the ongoing political standoff and heightened sectarian divisions. An attack blamed on al-Qaeda in an Iraqi army recruitment center on August 17 claimed 61 lives and wounded many. “Iraqi officials say July saw the deaths of more than 500 people, including 396 civilians, making it the deadliest month for more than two years,” reported Robert Tait in Radio Free Europe.

Since the March elections, Iraq has had no government. The political rift in the country, even among the ruling Shi’ite groups, is large and widening. The disaffected Sunnis have been humiliated and collectively abused because of the misguided claim that they were favored by Saddam. Hate is brewing and the country’s internal affairs are being handled jointly by some of the most corrupt politicians the world has ever known.

Washington understands that it needs to deliver on some of Obama’s many campaign promises before the November elections. Thus the re-branding campaign, which could hide the fact that the US has no real intention of removing itself from the Iraq’s military or political milieus. But since the current number of military personnel might not be enough to handle the deepening security chaos in the country, the new caretakers at the State Department are playing with numbers.

“State Department spokesman P J Crowley said [a] plan would bring to some 7,000 the total security contractors employed by the government in Iraq, where since the 2003 US invasion private security firms have often been accused of acting above the law,” according to Reuters.

It’s important that we understand the number game is just a game. Many colonial powers in the past controlled their colonies through the use of local forces and minimal direct involvement. Those of us oppose the Iraq war should do so based on the guiding principle that foreign invasions, occupations and interventions in sovereign countries’ affairs are a direct violation of international law. It is precisely the interventionist mindset that must be confronted, challenged, and rejected.

While it is a good thing that that thousands of American dads are now coming home, we must also remember that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi moms and dads never did. Millions of refugees from the US-led invasion are still circling the country and the Middle East.

War is not about numbers and dates. It’s about people, their rights, their freedom and their future. Re-branding the army and the war will provide none of this for grief-stricken and vulnerable Iraqis.

The fact is, no one has won this war. And the occupation is anything but over.

I recently read Tony Judt’s last book, Ill Fare’s the Land. His important premise was that we need to develop a new language that builds on the success of social democracy programs (in the U.S. those would be New Deal and Great Society programs) combined with putting forward a new vision for an economy that works for more than the top .5%. His views re-enforced the work we are developing at ProsperityAgenda.US – describing and advocating for a new economy in language that people can understand – post-capitalism, post-socialism, a new democratic economy.

He brought a broad review of the trends of history to analysis of current politics: How lassez-faire economics lost out in the middle of the last century and social democratic programs were put in place that created a growing middle class and a relatively consistently growing economy. Then the last thirty years, from the Reagan Revolution and through to President Obama (with President Clinton creating the neo-liberal version of Reaganism), has been undoing the most successful programs of the last century. Obama is poised to do some real damage to Social Security and Medicare through his deficit commission — that is the next big battle in which we are currently engaged.

Judt rings true when he writes, “To abandon the labors of a century is to betray those who came before us as well as the generations yet to come.” It is that big picture approach that is needed to re-ignite the sense of community that is essential to keeping the fibers of community woven together rather than unraveling as they are now.

We are at a critical crossroads in history when many tens of millions see the corruption and unfairness of the current economy but do not know what to do about it and do not see an alternative economy. There is a real opportunity for change because of combined crisis in economy, environment and energy. It is a great time for Americans who want a new economy to create mass support for change. If the people do so, we will, no doubt, be building a monument to the next FDR who takes our work and runs with it. We will be aided in our efforts by the hubris and greed of concentrated corporate power which seems all to willing to go too far.

Unfortunately, right now the direction the leaders of both parties are taking the economy further into the economic ditch rather than out of it. The exaggerated fear of debt, rather than seeing that the economy is stalled on a fundamentally flawed foundation dominates political discourse. The Obama deficit commission is one example among many.

Judt asks and answers the critical question in Ill Fares the Land: “Why, for the past three decades, has it been so easy for those in power …?” “Because there has been no coherent alternative to offer.” His answer is partly correct. Alternatives have been offered, they are just not heard because concentrated corporate ownership of the media shuts out those views and advocates of fundamental change do not have the resources to break through that barrier.

Judt’s goes on to explain: “To convince others that something is right or wrong we need a language of ends, not means. We don’t have to believe that our objectives are poised to succeed. But we do need to be able to believe in them.” ProsperityAgenda.US and others working for re-making of the economy recognizes we are not poised for immediate success but we do present an “end” that, as Judt says can “re-open a different sort of conversation.”

Judt points to two starting points:

1. “The first task is to remind ourselves of the achievements of the 20th century, along with the likely consequences of a heedless rush to dismantle them.” We need to show that government does important, indeed, critical work that cannot be done by individuals for themselves. We can see this is today’s “hot” issues. On health care we need to highlight the incredible success of Medicare — it equalized health care after people turned 65. Research shows the unequal impact of treating various illnesses when people are under 65 and the better treatment people get across class, race and ethnic lines for those same illnesses once they are Medicare eligible. On financial reform successful reforms were put in place during the Depression and removing those in the 80s and 90s had the devastating consequences of todays economic collapse.

2. “Unequal access to resources of every sort — from rights to water — is the starting point of any truly progressive critique of the world.” “Those who do well in unequal societies would be happier if the gap separating them from the majority of their fellow citizens were significantly reduced.” There is no question that focusing on the wealth divide is a critical. The concentration of wealth is becoming evident to more and more Americans and causing government dysfunction. More are realizing that extreme wealth is not due to intelligence or hard work of the wealthy – there is plenty of hard work and intelligence among the poor. Wealth is created because of crony capitalist policies; e.g., failure to enforce anti-trust laws, massive corporate welfare, reducing progressive taxation so the extreme wealth do not pay their share, ending the estate tax, taxing wealth less and work more.

While there is probably truth in Judt’s statement “If social democracy has a future, it will be as a social democracy of fear,” I’m disappointed by it. Progress should not only come from fear. But sadly, Judt might be right. As more people fear losing their homes, jobs and bankruptcy those fears need to be responded to with the potential for change that shows them another world is possible where they can have economic security and more control of their economic lives. Fear needs to be turned into positive action.

The theme of Judt’s book seems to be: “If we do not talk differently, we shall not think differently.” Getting out the word to people about the unfair impact of the current economy and that there are alternatives to it is where Judt’s analysis takes us. Democratization of the economy is a phrase that covers all these issues in a language that is consistent with American ideals. Democratization of the economy leads to economic security.

Before anyone had a chance to react, Israeli PR and spokespeople were busy feeding stories and giving interviews. Their claim amounts to this: “Rioters” from all over the world left their homes, jobs and families to gather on a boat in order to lure Israeli commandos into international waters and proceeded to attack them with sticks and kitchen knives. The highly trained Israeli special unit soldiers with the most advanced and technological weapons known to man had no choice but to kill unarmed civilians on this boat. Thus, Israel acted in “self defense” against “terrorists” and organizations with “links to Hamas and Al Qaeda” – a mendacious mantra that has become tiresome.

The abuse of language does not stop there. Israel goes on to claim that its barbaric devastation of Gaza is an “embargo” and therefore legal – as if the intentional starvation and destruction of an entire people were legitimate!

The Free Gaza Movement was started by friends of mine – ordinary citizens of the world who refuse to hide behind “I didn’t know” or “What could I do?” as Israel has slowly turned Gaza into a death camp, where food and medicine are disallowed in sufficient quantities. The consequences are clear in reports from the World Health Organization – rampant malnutrition, with at least 10% of Gaza’s children having stunted growth for lack of food; where the education system has all but collapsed not least because Israel has bombed hundreds of Gaza’s schools and continues to prevent the import of books and school supplies; where Israel rains death from the sky onto this captive civilian population with no place to run or take refuge, leaving thousands dead and wounded and 80% of Gaza’s children suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, a crippling disorder that may well produce generations of lost children; where employment (not unemployment) hovers around 20%; where the sewage system cannot be repaired after Israel’s assault and clean water is a luxury few have; where fishermen are fired upon by the Israeli navy dare they try to catch a day’s food in their own waters; and where diabetics, asthmatics, dialysis and cancer patients must die because they lack the most basic medicines and cannot leave to get help in other countries.

So, as Gazans have been left by Israel and by the “international community” to trod in their own excrement, drink toxic water, beg for food, die of treatable diseases, wet their pants at night and quiver with fear in the arms of their equally bewildered parents, unable to work, to fish, or to get an education; unable to breathe or to find hope in this tiny sliver of a prison land, world leaders meet to decipher the “competing narratives,” issue their impotent “statements” and summon their Israeli ambassadors for a slight smack on the hand.

Incidentally, these so called “rioters” and “terrorists” with international “terrorist links” include Hedy Epstein, an 85-year old Holocaust survivor, Mairead McGuire, an Irish Nobel Laureate, Henning Mankell, an renowned Swedish author, a baby whose name I do not know, a journalist for Al-Jazeera, a former US ambassador, a retired math teacher from California, and many other known and unknown extraordinary individuals from all walks and from a multitude of nations. They are my heroes. They are doing what leaders have failed to do, namely to stand up to extreme racism, tyranny and oppression. Not for one moment do I believe Israel’s lie that these individuals were carrying and firing guns.

What do you believe?

More importantly, what will you do?

Will you ask yourselves: What have Palestinians done to deserve such a fate? What have we done to deserve the world’s silence as Israel slowly and cruelly wipes us off the map and destroys our society, then kills those righteous individuals who try to show a minimal recognition of our humanity?

For many, this is a call to conscience and a call to action: To take a stand as individual citizens; to demand a principled stand from our government and to divest and distance yourselves from Israel and those who profit from these endless war crimes that go on with impunity.