I don’t have to work until this afternoon so ya’ll get a long blog in which you will ultimately conclude that I am some conspiracy theory nut job, and it’s important that you come to that conclusion ala Plato’s Allegory of The Cave – so I won’t have to Socrates snuff it. If you have no idea what I am talking about that’s probably better still.

Well, here we are after the first debate. Andrew has fairly succinctly summarized his reaction to the proceedings, and I couldn’t agree with him more as regards Bush. Though I would say that Kerry impressed me more he did Andrew, and more than I was expecting. I am voting against Bush and I had accepted that Kerry was my party’s nominee, but I wasn’t for him in the way that I am now. He won me over last night such that I am firmly in the “for Kerry” camp. I would love to assert with confidence that based on last night’s showing clearly Kerry will be the next president. I am afraid, however, that Andrew and I live in a bubble where content and depth matter more than surface inanities. So, to better gauge how people outside the bubble might be reacting to what happened I turned to the BBC.



I read all of these opinions in detail and it confirmed a fear that the despite Kerry’s fabulous performance – and he did just decimate Bush from a debate perspective – Bush’s folksy dumb ass embarrassingly inarticulate and repetitive rhetoric plays well in a country whose public is patently anti-intellectual and (deliberately?) uninformed. I think I can safely say that most of America is in deep denial about its role in the world and completely oblivious to the larger stages of history and geopolitics. Gore Vidal’s renaming of our country as the United States of Amnesia is the best summation of the state of things that I’ve read. Here’s his take on 911 and the implications for our “freedoms” etc. (Which I charge you to read in full). (Ok it won't let me link directly but you can get there with the left frame of this bio screen - the link to the article is near the bottom of the page).


I was as per usual listening to NPR the other day, though not to a news program, I was listing to –What Do you Know -

One of the contestants was a biologist and she just mentioned incidentally that she was looking for a new career. She said something along the lines of the following – which is not an exact quoting, but an attempt at a re-enactment. A rare moment of honesty getting through the filters:

“Yeah, I had to get out of it because the work was too depressing. All we really can do is document the disappearing species. It’s all too far gone to intervene at this point. There’s pretty much nothing anyone can do besides be a witness. When I came to that realization I knew that for my own sanity I’d better get out.”

You have to watch for stuff like that, gaps in the flow of things that get you past the curtain.

We watched the CSPAN coverage last night and so got to see what was happening in the hall prior to the debate. Jim Lehrer got up and was explaining the rules to the audience and he used similar language to that of the biologist. He stressed that the audience was not there to cheer or react or participate in any way other that to be witnesses to this historic event. He also at one point asked how many people had been to presidential debates before and a significant number of the audience raised their hands. It was like a vegas concierge asking for Players Club cards. The President of the University of Miami made a point of giving up her seat to a student, I presume that after her remarks she left the event. I admire the gesture, recognizing the importance of getting students in among the hand raisers. Still a student myself, in the lifelong category, I felt reminded of bell hooks assertion that there is power in being an “enlightened witness”.


When I watch politics and I start to get involved I feel like that biologist, I feel like this thing to which I have brought my attention is so far gone from the ideal – a healthy biosphere – a healthy nation of well educated and well informed stewards of their power– that my sanity is best served by staying out of it. Kerry made me feel a little better last night. He made me feel like it might be worth uncorking that canister of hope in which I keep my idealism and love of country.

I am not naïve about these things. I heard someone say that he thought that while the Republican party was clearly about 90% corrupt and on the take from and controlled by big business, the Democratic party was maybe only 70% so – so he was a Democrat as it was the lesser of two evils. Despite that, I still think men of principle can take principled action. Kerry is working in the poisoned fields of politics to be sure, but I am impressed with him nonetheless, and I hope to God that the strength of character and conviction and intelligence that he showed last night will do something to wash away the four years of unbridled greed with untold human cost that it has been our unfortunate task to bear witness.

Where does that leave me? I hate to paint myself into a corner, but if Bush wins I’m beginning to think that I might actually follow the advice of the Bushites. If I can’t love my country for all its retributive murder and back door greed, maybe I should leave it.
Honestly, how many people do you think carpet-bombing areas of Iraq and Afghanistan killed? Do you think bunker busters are designed to take out what, four or five people? Not that Iraq had anything to do with the twin towers, but if you get into the retribution mindset and you want to fill body bags in an eye for an eye kind of way, we’ve easily killed several hundred if not several thousand people for each one that died in the towers. And if Bush wins we have an inkling of what’s to come.

Lesson:

If you want to understand something geo-politically you need to heed Deep Throat’s advice and “follow the money.” Money is the only truth teller in the game. The companies that manufacture arms for the “defense” industry are tracked on the stock market as a group – the Amex Defense index.


This index has followed the market with ups and downs, but since the beginning of hostilities against Afghanistan the market has had a return of 80% on initial investments. In other words your 2001 eight dollars is now eight hundred, your eight million is now…. You get the idea. Why is that? Stock prices had been faltering for the industry as once you have a set number of bombs you don’t need anymore, right? People were canceling orders for attack planes left and right. Clinton had taken all the defense money and was actually helping people with it, national infrastructure and all that, prosperity, you remember. And yet you have to upgrade your military at some point, right?

Well, old bombs are expensive to get rid of. However, if you have a war, then instead of having to pay to safely get rid of them you just drop them on people and they “absorb the cost”. You then tax the American public to upgrade to the next generation of weapons to replace all the ones you’ve used up, while at the same time taxing them to rebuild the country that you’ve blown up. Not only have you avoided the cost of disposal, you have actually made billions on the deal and it looks like a gesture of goodwill. This is very smart, or it would have been if all that reconstruction money didn’t have to be reallocated to re-defeat the re-born enemy who seems intent on spreading that human cost around a bit.

So how does this information help us look forward and what does this have to do with the election? The stock market is full of forward lookers trying to make money by prognosticating where the market will go and the sword of Damocles is hanging over the Amex Defense fund. Investors know that if Kerry wins the election that we will withdraw from Iraq sooner rather than later. (Wasn’t Kerry great on that “defend the oilfields” attack – What about the border? What about the advice of your generals who you retired rather than heeded? Outsourceing Osama - Good stuff! And the coalition stuff – fucking “Poland” that was a laugh riot. And the Bush senior quote that we didn’t invade because we would have to occupy – I’d read that before – fucking brilliant).

Crazy assertions born of too much coffee:

If Bush wins we will invade Iran, probably quite soon after the election. There is a great deal of money pushing for that outcome in a market where a 15% return is considered healthy. If you want to keep your 80% returns you have to keep the invasions coming. However, the market in general has tied its fate to other ships and it may well be that Adam Smith’s invisible hand has decided to make a correction. There may in fact be more money to be made by global cooperation – ala the Clinton years of robust economic health for all – which were by no stretch of the imagination resultant from the policies of Bush senior (which some Luddites contend). After all, no one expected Kerry to raise the kind of money he did. That shocked the hell out of the Amex crowd, who had thought their pockets were the deepest.

I have to hope that the world has had enough of this “perpetual war for perpetual peace” and is perhaps ready for something better. My only advice from the non-naïve couch as I prepare for my participation in the electoral process is that Kerry should consider avoiding air travel. The past few years have not been kind to prominent Democrats traveling by plane.