Chicago Tuesdays: Step by Step for Better Governance

Things may not be so bleak for Democrats this November, says Robert Creamer in HuffPo. Here's to hoping that he's right and that I won't be crucified for not voting straight party-line Democrat in two weeks. See, I just can't.

This is my line of reasoning and advice:

• The Tea Party and Corporatist Munchers Can. Not. Win.
• However, everyone needs to research all viable candidates.
• When one does this, one may find that some candidates that are not specifically Tea Party and/or Republican are, in fact, Incompetent Corporatist Munchers.
• These people also should not be given the keys.
• One such person in the ICM Party is Alexi Gianoullias.
• As mentioned here previously, Alexi is a failed bank executive who's risky ventures with his family's Uptown Bank were as reckless as any of the big losers on Wall St. He also somehow lost millions of dollars during his tenure as State Treasurer for an education program that, in hindsight, I'm glad my family never got to be a part of.
• Of course, his opponent, Mark Kirk of the GoodOl'Boys Party - among being a serial liar, etc., etc., - displayed his dirty white boy politics a couple weeks ago by bragging about putting mostly White overseers (basically, the Intimidation Crew) in predominately Black neighborhoods, watching out for any nasty "jiggering" that may go on there... Of course those "lawyers and people" will undoubtedly look just like the people in the communities they go into and will not, under any circumstance, try to intimidate residents from voting...
  
• Aww, who'm I kidding?
• Sometimes, such monumental political FAILS, there is no choice but to unplug.
• But, if we unplug, if we refuse to vote - to be engaged - the entrenched powers win. It's as simple as that. The fewer voters in general, the easier it is for them to amass the minimum votes necessary to stay in office.
• Until it's too late.
• What we need is a massive sea change. These kind of things take time. Lots of time.
• The next two years may be a wash, however, for progressives. Our fate, we seem to be saying. We weren't able to convince the Supermajority Democrats to promote a truly progressive agenda, especially in the most important area of job creation and economic stability and accountability. Some things were accomplished (health care; some job creation), but others weren't (health care; comprehensive immigration reform; job creation). And now most forecasters are trending that Dems will likely lose the majority in the House and certainly be on the run in the Senate. Either way, there will actually be MORE morons running around in DC thanks in part to a strange synergy between the Toilet Paper Nimrods and the Dick Army Corporatists. Obviously, allowing Republicans may not be the best option, but then we have to start thinking long-range and if the options are so similar that it feels like you've taken a dumpy-whirl, well... Are we flushed? Hanging in the boys' bathroom, waiting for the final bell to ring or our mommies to bring clean clothes - desperately trying to dry our hair out before anyone notices the sure marks of the dreaded swirlie.
• So, what's the option for those of us stuck with Evil and Stupid I v Evil and Stupid II? Pick someone else! For Chrissake's: Pick Someone Else!
• My suggestion: Go Green, baby. They're the party concerned about sustainability, not just ecologically (which is important), but in terms of health care, education, economics, business and governing. So this year, they get 5, 10, 15%, maybe (hopefully! likely!) pick up a seat or two somewhere, next time they come back to fight, there'll be a referendum on the GODumbnuts and Democrats will fight to fight for us - just a little more. Next time, 15, 20, 25%, and so on... Equity builds. We all win.

Requiem for a smaller creature, with more legs...

The McRib is going national!

How much longer til THAT creature goes extinct?

Voice-over:		Like a rib, it tastes like liberty. Like a rib, with a bun of sesame. We start with authentic, letter-graded meat, and process the hell out of it, till it's good enough for Krusty.
Krusty:		Try my new Krusty Ribwich. Mmmm. I don't mind the taste.
Marge:		Oooh, a new hamburger sandwich.
Homer Simpson:		Wow, I can't wait to pack that into my colon!

News of the Weird: Only in Wasilla

Radio Wagon Flyer from a pickup. Yep.

From AP:

Fred Keller and Judy Foster [of Wasilla, Alaska] worked on the vehicle for 11 months, using the base of a 1976 Mazda B1600 pickup truck.
The couple got the idea for their to-scale replica of the beloved childhood wagon after visiting a car show in summer 2009 in Oregon, and seeing another Radio Flyer, albeit that one on a hot rod.
"We said, 'We could use the Mazda for that,'" Foster, 67, said of the pickup which had sat undriven for about five years at their home. "We came home from our Portland trip, and about a day after, he was tearing the Mazda apart. No changing my mind."

The Mis-Informant rings true

I swear this is how we're brainwashed from childhood to believe the lies that hurt us and enrich the rich.

"You want to be a doctor? That's the worst possible profession ever! Because Obamacare [reads palm] is going to take choice from doctors and so they're all going to quit."

Chicago Tuesdays: The Politics of Politics

The Democrat idiot and Republican loser candidates for Illinois Senate (Obama's vacated seat) met on the air at NBC's Meet the Press with David Gregory the other day. Notably absent was any literate person with a plan for the US or Illinois. But that would entail the possibility that a major news network give equal hearing to a third party option. Because the only one on the ticket that's worth the ticket is LeAlan Jones.

In the words of Russ Stewart:

Both candidates, Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Alexi Giannoulias are, at best, flawed, and, at worst, execrable. Voters feel as though they're choosing between a kick in the groin and a poke in the eye.

Kirk, a 10-year North Shore congressman, has come to be perceived as a serial liar, utterly devoid of principle, with no moral compass. In short, a crass opportunist and an ideological windsock. Giannoulias, the one-term state treasurer, is perceived as a clueless idiot, utterly lacking in judgment, whose performance as an officer at his now-defunct family bank was beyond inept. In short, out of his league.

The candidates' shortcomings -- Kirk's persistent exaggerations of his military record and Giannoulias's incompetence as treasurer and as a banker - mean that voters must choose the least unacceptable candidate. A plethora of media ads reinforce that theme: I'm not perfect, they say, but my opponent is worse.

Well, thank goodness for public radio, eh? The same questions that Gregory got to ask Mr. Military and Mr. Bank were also asked (in front of a much, much smaller audience) to Libertarian Party candidate Mike Labno and Green Party candidate LeAlan Jones. Take a listen.

On change since Obama took office: There has been very little change since he went into office. I think the president is an image that has really brought no equity to the voters who voted him in 2008 that thought that he was a voice of civility and credibility to their interests. The grassroots organizing skills that he won the presidency with have been lost to the corporate interests that are going to have to support him being there.

On earmarks: It’s very laughable [that Kirk says] that he’s sworn off earmarks for the 10th District, when many of those people are high net worth people who benefit when you have interest rates at zero. They’re the people who benefit when the Fed… buys bonds on the open market. So in terms of saying that they don’t need earmarks, that’s probably right when they have a fiscal and monetary policy that’s skewed to their lifestyles.

On spurring on the economy: The government has already run into problems The federal government needs to put resources in the hands of the people in the community that are actually in these communities and don't have banking relationships that are there: credit unions, shoring up pension funds, community co-ops, that have lost a lot of money over the years. But the sad thing about that... is that many of these people in the community have not built up the wherewithal to manage the resources you would put there, which creates a conundrum. We need a great deal of financial education in rural and urban communities so people can have a better management of their resources. Right now, there's gonna have to be a combination of working with the private sector, working with the public sector, and working with entrepreneurs that have been capitulated out of the job market for the last twenty-four months and creating a conversation out of these three entities. That will be the truest environment that can create the economic expansion that can create the employment levels that can help the suffering people right now.

Edward McClelland may have the last word, for now...

Of course, Jones can afford to tell the truth. He doesn’t have any campaign contributors paying him to say otherwise. That’s why he won the debate, but will lose the election.

But as I assert, if Illinois knew what was good for it, LeAlan would get the landslide...

Facing Race Panel

Just the other day, I included a snippet from the great Van Jones from this video. It's long, but wonderful. Van is joined by white Anti-Racist activist Tim Wise, Voto Latino's Maria-Teresa Kumar, and the Applied Research Center's Rinku Sen were on a panel and talked about many issues affecting people of color in the States presently. Among the topics that they hit on in a compellingly creative and comprehensively are:

• Immigration (Tim notes that during the 1920's, roughly a million people of Mexican descent were deported to Mexico, even though about 600,000 of those were American citizens);
• Race-baiting and Reverse Discrimination attacks by Right/Nativist/White Supremacist pundits (and the Left's silence allowing the Right to define the discourse);
• Color-blindness (and how that affects other issues, such as predatory lending, health, etc);
• Gender and sex in the racial dynamics;
• Racial equity;
• Ecological equity;
• Political activism/movements (I think it was Maria-Teresa who mentioned that progressives should use volunteers for transactions in the same way that the industries use lobbyists and their gifts as transactions with politicians. Brilliant);
• Power acclimation (Specifically, progressives' Punk-Rawk-like fear of success).

This 1 1/2 hour vid is like a tasty grad-level course on race in the US and is definitely worth the listen.

Follow the Blood Trail 2

Imagine a city with two neighborhoods. It only has two neighborhoods because one of those neighborhoods expanded and conquered all the other neighborhoods. So now there are only two neighborhoods.

Neighborhood A (Alliance) is now encroaching on Neighborhood B's (The Bucks). Each neighborhood has youth gangs who represent, on the streets, the battles between the two neighborhoods. Alliance's gang is called The Valiant Warriors and the Buckians are called The Evil Terrorists. These are not the names that the gangs picked for themselves, but those that the city's newspapers and TV news (all controlled by the Alliance) pegged for them. And because the Alliance has control over all the media, it controls the message. So it doesn't matter that Alliance has the heavy weaponry, is starving and murdering Buckies, keeping them from resources to educate and employ their own, locking down the neighborhood and keeping others from entering to aid or enable them.

Yet, it's the Buckies who are called "Terrorists." And "Evil." And most people believe this to be the case because the Alliance runs the message. And in this message, the Buckians are a dangerous threat with their bats and bricks. They look different, even, then the Alliance. And they refuse to cave in to the more-than-generous relocation offers of the Alliance.

The Alliance and its Valiant Warriors need to defend themselves and their sacred land, women and children (ESPECIALLY the women and children!) from this menacing threat. And so they have bought guns and missiles and semiautomatic weapons and helicopters and fighter jets and machine guns and tankers. There are also rumors of a nuclear warhead. Just in case. "But don't worry!," we are reassured. "The Alliance is much too calm and placed and rational to ever consider actually using such a weapon. But we heard that the Evil Terrorists have all the makings of a dirty weapon of mass destruction at hand."

And it is for this possible frightening scenario that Buckians cannot get their hands on such seemingly innocuous products as toothpaste or school supplies. They can, however, get plenty of liquor cheaply. But any other supplies that so-called humanitarians wish to give to the Buckians, will have to go through a rigorous and demanding wall.

Now, imagine that some Alliance neighbors saw through the smoke, saw that their neighbors in the Bucks were suffering and badly and for no other reason than because they had what the Alliance wants. Imagine that they decide to help Buckians, despite what their family and friends think of them. Imagine that they set out to rescue Buckians, or give them aid, knowing full well that unless they make a dramatic gesture, the news of their work and the injustice of what is happening across town will not be carried by the newspapers, radio or tv stations. So they make big statements, carrying pencil sharpeners on river rafts in a doomed attempt to try to sail past the Valiant Warriors-led embargo. But that ends violently and sadly as the VW's shoot-to-kill first, board second, shoot-to-kill-at-close-range third, and detain and imprison fourth.

Imagine another group of Alliance neighbors standing in between the two neighborhoods as human shields. Trying to keep the VW's from launching helicopter, tanks, bombs and automatic weapons against the brick-wielding ET's. And as such, this ad hoc group of Alliance neighbors being labeled violent reactionaries. Because, of course, they highlight the violence that is already happening on a daily/hourly basis by placing their Alliance skins in between the Alliance grenades and Buckians' families and homes, they are somehow labeled as the perpetrators of violence and evil deeds.

Now, of course you don't have to do too much imagining. It's already happening.

Sunday Readings: Where is the world that hears the hurt?

Van (Target) Jones (12:00 in) on the silence of racism:

I think what bothers me the most is when I think about the ordinary folks who are hurt but now they can't holler. It's one thing to be hurt by racism but to be able to stand up and feel that the world is with you when you denounce it. It's something else now to be hurt by racism, to be in a community that's disproportionately impacted by all these things, to feel that you got a sock in your mouth.

And I wonder what that's going to do inside our communities. If you can't actually name your pain, if we can't holler when we're hurt, where does that hurt go?

What'cha Get Is What Ya Did wit Whatcha Had

Lincoln's Illinois. I'm sure he'd recognize the political landscape if he saw it now. Full of dimwits, half-wits and mass corruption - in both the party that he helped to establish and in that other party. I also have a feeling that he'd agree with me in not voting for any Republican, but in voting only for the Democrats who actually mean something.

Or maybe, standing just over my shoulder and looking into my skull, he'd just try to eat my brains. He is a two hundred-plus year old hugnry zombie and all...

Regardless, if one more Democrat tells me I have to vote for Alexi - the scion of banking scandal and irresponsibility himself - or else the Tea Bells Will Toll, I will sic a very hungry and feisty dog on him. Mr. Giannoulias and his RINO rival, the somewhat-moderate but bad liar Mark Kirk, represent most of what is wrong with politics in this state. And I see no change coming soon if we continue to do what we've been doing.

To choose between the lesser of two evils here would be to not cast a vote. However, I will choose the greater, to vote - for neither nincompoop. I am voting (and am asking you to vote for) LeAlan Jones (G).

Regardless of whether or not you agree with him, I ask that my fellow 'Noisians will vote for a third party rather than stay home November 2 (I'll stretch that out for everybody, period, in the States). And here's why:

Disaffection kills. We need to convince the powers that we are not happy. That we are not satisfied. That we will not sit down and be steamrolled by the politics of the few and monied. This is not a rich man's game. This is not a game at all; lives are at stake here.

The message if we are to stay home is that we do not care; they can do with us as they please because we will not interrupt their game. The message we send if we continue to vote as we have been voting is, "I know he loves me. He said so himself. He won't do it again. I can change him."

If we allow these two parties to continue to play the same game - specifically in this state - we'll get what we asked for. But I ain't asked for this. So please, at least for my sake, make your voice and dissent heard.

Update: In case you forget, my frustration with the Democratic Party in Illinois is largely local, and largely tied to the state of Illinois. Fortunately, most statewide Republicans are moderates, so there isn't the ultra Tea Party loon or War Hawk goon threat (as far as I know) even if, say, the GOP takes over Obama's old seat. But if you've been living under a rock and don't understand the deep-seated arrogance and corruption that has defined inter- and intra-state politics in this state, you can read up on some govs here.

*This post is partially a response to my friend Peter's post at Spirit of a Progressive.

Follow the Blood Trail

The internet rag American Stinker (1) is at it again. Normally, if I'm writing about the kooks on the far right zombie hand of the dial, I write a brief, dismissive and/or furiously satirical piece at the other site, if for nothing else than to blow off steam. But this piece was frustrating for different reasons. And for those reasons, I thought it best to write an actual, serious bl0ggue about it.

Mister Perfesser Robert Huff* follows his hero, the self-serving malignant David Horowitz (a troll that has been touting his past-life as a 'radical liberal activist' since the day when every single person on the Left exhausted their patience with his conniving, back-stabbing ways and Horowitz found he could make more money by 'exposing them' - pretty nifty trick) in making connections that aren't really there in an attempt to smear the images of innocent people for political purposes. Huff puffs about Shane Claiborne, darling of the Evangelical center, actually. But he also aligns him with other characters, chief among them Dr. John Perkins (elder statesman of reconciliation and the Beloved Community, a hero to non-racist Evangelicals for being our sole historical bodily connection to the Civil Rights movement, the visionary responsible for the Christian Community Development Association's ethos and doctrine). But he never mentions anything at all positive about the actions of Perkins - never clues in his obviously clueless audience as to the identity of Claiborne's co-author. Huff only makes this dubious association with a man he dubiously associates with dubious associators of dubious associations with dubious people and/or purposes. The soul-sucking vacuum is obvious - and intentional. And, for what I can only assume are ivory-political purposes, he throws in a dig at the naivety of his school for forcing its freshmen to absorb the the librul Christian Left propaganda.**

When I got my bachelors, the only credit math classes I signed up for were Linear Equations and Logic. Huff must not be so advanced in these fields that he's pushing forward a new type of logic. Or, he's just another separatist fundamentalist that got a job at an Evangelical school.

My money's on the second. According to Huff, Dr. Perkins and the entire Christian Left*** are guilty by association with Claiborne. Claiborne is guilty for having gone to Iraq with Iraq Peace Team^ for a few weeks during this occupational war. The Iraq Peace Team is guilty for being a joint venture of Voices in the Wilderness and Christian Peacemaker Teams. Christian Peacemaker Teams is guilty for talking with and working with Palestinians. Teh nerff! Spazz!! And those ingrates at VitW hate America so much that they went to Iraq, got kidnapped and then had the gall to blame the American and British governments for creating the desperation in the country that led to their imprisonment.

Of course, this is some weird thinking, but it's not new. Peacemakers are always accused of creating violence, by the very fact that they expose the violence of the oppressive system. Israel, Britain and the US can do tremendous violence against Iraqis, Palestinians. They can completely destroy their homes, take over their countries, displace them, remove their access to jobs, clean water, and the land they've owned for generations and generations. They can introduce civil strife, tie their hands, force them into desperate and violent retaliatory measurements. This is not new for empire-building, nor for the United States (take how we treated our indigenous populations, for instance). But the second someone questions these actions, the moment she takes an action to openly demonstrate the evil that is being brushed under the carpet, she is labeled a traitor and a violent, dangerous radical.

However, the real victims of the American Thinker's article isn't the Christian left, the Iraq Peace Teams, or even everybody's favorite evangelical monastic, Shane Claiborne. Neither is it the much-revered Saint (and the only living connection between the largely white Evangelical church and the Civil Rights movement it sat out) Dr. John Perkins or his school's curriculum. The real nasties, according to The Perfesser, are the Palestinian and Iraqi people who dare question American dominance and imperialism.

Not only are they guilty of being ingrates (and dark-skinned), but anyone who associates with someone who associates with someone who associates with them are, of course, tainted...

(1) Credit for photoshop and altered name belong to the fine folks at Sadly, No. Should have made this clear yesterday.

*Google crashed when I tried to search his name. Just sayin'...

**Yes, I'm reading between the lines. I make no excuses for doing so. If he's going in with such a naked agenda, I'd like to call him out on it. Or he can explain how I'm wrong. In which case, he'll have to repudiatedly refutions on his whole piece.

***A rather new name - complete with a Facebook page - that may be bigger and more diverse than can be possibly contained within Huff's use of the term, or anyone else's. But, in basic, it seems to be a somewhat reactionary movement against the political conservatism that has largely taken over at least the Evangelical super-movement. It parallels, in some ways, the post-Conservatives and Hipster Christian generational shifts.

^ From the Voices in the Wilderness page:

Voices in the Wilderness organized Iraq Peace Team delegations to live alongside ordinary Iraqis during the massive bombardment of Operation Shock and Awe. Convinced that “where you stand determines what you see and how you live,” VitW continues its efforts to educate people in the United States and abroad about the consequences of US militarism. Our current campaign focuses on the need to “spotlight Iraq.” By telling the truth about this war, we hope to help prevent future wars. Further, we seek to connect with and educate ourselves about people who live in other countries threatened by US war.

Chicago Tuesdays: Hey! I'm WALKIN' Here!

One of the sites where I work is in the middle of an industrial park. As a motorist, for a few months I used to travel through here between work, church and school. And I appreciated this strip, because it is nearly half a mile of pure, unadulterated three lanes in an otherwise stop light-heavy major thoroughfare. If you hit the green at the south end, you've got another six blocks before the next light - but that's full of dangerous turns and it's more narrow, so it's not quite the joy to traverse.

So I see why cars don't necessarily have any desire to slow down at this juncture, despite the obvious pedestrian crossing markers on the floor.

However, Illinois just became the fifth state to pass a law wherein cars have to stop in order to let pedestrians cross at any crossing lane. And that would include unmarked lanes.

Motorists don't seem to be much aware of this law, though. And I'm sure that there are many who, when first hearing about the law, argue that it's unnecessary or reaching For instance, although 6,000 people are hit by cars each year, only a fraction of those result in injuries and fatalities. I can hear the everyman rhetoric right now. "Only 170 people died in the entire state from getting hit by cars while walking. Half of them were probably asking for it. How much are we going to lose in revenue to enforce this law? How much productivity are we going to lose to slow down every block for walkers?"

Similar arguments (at a more heightened and frightening level) were made about DWI laws, of course. But there is a major difference: Driving while intoxicated has killed multitudinous drivers, passengers, passerby, bicyclists and other motorists and their passengers. The culture-change that needed to happen there was not just necessary, but apparently so. And as Mad mothers started telling their stories, more people felt it necessary to be responsible (not always, but there is a legitimate sea change here).

Pedestrian crossing laws and cultural shifts are, however, just as necessary, even if not as apparently so. Citizens are not necessarily dying at a heart-breaking rate from being run over or sideswiped. We are dying at heart-attack rates from inactivity, from NOT walking or bicycling. And as long as the rules of the road favor 1500 lbs of steel and plastic traveling at 30-60mph over roughly 200 lbs of cartilage and organs, capable of traveling from 1-10mph (or those same skins and bones on top of a 25lbs thin machine of oil and aluminum at 10-25mph), then we'll continue to suffer and die from preventable diseases. As long as current law and culture favors oil and gas-propelled vehicles over food-propelled movement, we'll continue to poison our waters, land, air, children and lungs. As long as we continue to promote vehicular use over and above other forms of transport, we promote violence for expediency.

So, I say, bold move Illinois legislature. Good show.

Chicago Tuesdays: We Can Get Good Things I: Incarnational Ministry and the Firehouse

When I was a youth leader with my church, I got to hang out with a lot of really cool, smart, fearless and passionate adult men and women who felt it was/is their life's mission to come alongside disadvantaged, marginalized and targeted young men and women throughout the city. I could write much about my love for this way underpaid (if paid at all) crazy career and the folks who lovingly risk it all to give a thug a hug.

One of the leaders of this group (in a rather organic matter) is Phil Jackson (not that one) of Lawndale Community Church, and The House. LCC is one of the models for the Christian Community Development model (in which a church or church-based org works within the community to serve and uplift its people as one of them) and its head pastor helped to found the CCDA along with Civil Rights icon John Perkins. Fittingly, the church and its community centers (which include a fitness and health clinic as well as many social agencies---) are located in the neighborhood that Martin Luther King, Jr. used as his base for the Northern Civil Rights movement in the sixties. The House is a youth-led church that practices the gospel through the cultural context of hip hop. All of this fits under the rubric that I've noticed with the most successful Christian ministries - not just in the cities, but in any place. To be intentionally incarnational. To walk with the walkers and suffer with those that suffer, but with the hope of a redemption and the work that hints and grows toward that.

In other words, they don't believe in waiting for the Kingdom Come - until after we die or are raptured up - to answer the problems of today. Consider the work of Phil Jackson and his team in North Lawndale. " and that, according to the 1980 census, 58 percent of men and women 17 and older had no jobs. And The Firehouse Community Arts Center is an emblem of this, an abandoned firehouse in the middle of one of the nation's poorest neighborhoods (from Wikipedia: Jonathan Kozol devotes a chapter of Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools to North Lawndale, which he says a local resident called it "an industrial slum without the industry." At the time, it had "one bank, one supermarket, 48 state lottery agents ... and 99 licensed bars.) that is being turned into a multi-use site for arts and community-building. Programs include a recording studio, music, photography and dance classes, video editing, and culinary arts training with an emphasis on entrepreneurship throughout the classes.

The site is within an African American community called North Lawndale (an area that is 94% Black) and next to a Mexican American neighborhood called Little Village (Latinos - mostly Mexican and Mexican American - account for roughly 80% of the population). Recently, a group of young Afro and Mexican Americans traveled to Veracruz, Mexico for an eye opening experience that Phil and his crew was able to be a part of. According to Phil (via his fb pix), this was the first time for many in the group traveled not just out of the US or out of their region, but out of their neighborhood. Many of these guys spent little time off their block. But not only was this a time to travel to pyramid sites, but to check out the history of the African diaspora in Latin America, in an effort to build bridges of reconciliation between these members of the African American and Latino cultures in the hopes that they would be ambassadors.

Check out what's going on at The Firehouse here. But only if you want to be encouraged.

WLS Channel 7 report:

Prejudices in Process

People need prejudice. That's a given universal measure of most any creature. In order to be safe and function in the world with any amount of Things We Haven't Quite Comprehended, we must be cautious of how we respond to those TWCQCs. We tend to distrust and even fear what or whom we don't know. And although we do not want to be prejudiced against other people, even the most open-minded amongst us has blind spots in one area or another. And that is human. To suggest that one doesn't or that another shouldn't is to suggest that one (usually the self) is better than and above collective humanity and certainly holier than thou.

So it shouldn't come as a shock that so many Americans not only don't understand Muslims nor Islam, but are a wee bit afraid of them somewhere deep down inside. Few of us work with, go to school with, live with or talk to Muslims - let alone worship with them. It is in moments when we encounter The Different Breed where tolerance should be the immediate first response*. But even still, there is fear and ignorance throughout the world and in each person. Blaming someone for being ignorant about another group of persons may make us feel better, but we're deluded to think that - in the deepness of our hearts - we can't be guilty of the same awfulness.

Personally, I still fear/dislike/detest (depending on my mood) gangbangers and drug dealers. I could have easily been in their spot, but I had community, family and a belief system to keep me out of such predicaments. And although I know and have housed quite a few homeless people, I don't tend to trust them - at least not as a group.

Of course, none of this is an excuse for not knowing who our neighbors are, or at least some basic and biological true facts about them. No matter how overworked and tired we are, if we have enough energy to write or speak about a people group with a fair amount of anger directed at some supposed travesty that they supposedly commit that we don't understand, maybe we should try to get to know a little about them.

Or shut up.

But then there are people who are paid to learn and teach. Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, "Pastor" Terry Jones, myself. We're paid to KNOW things and disseminate things in a teachable manner so that our students/clients/disciples can empower themselves in order to make their personal lives and their environment better. And yet at least three of us aren't doing our jobs honestly. Palin, Gingrich, Jones: These smog-peddlers exist primarily to exploit and exponentially explode the below-the-surfaces toxic mixture of anger, paranoia, and fear of a confused generation. The arguments that they are haters or stupid or both (while true and important) may not have much to do with the terrible fact that they are not doing their jobs. They should be fired post-haste by whoever handles their checks, but they won't because they sell. A rotten agenda, but they sell it very well.

But what if the teacher (let's say a director of issues analysis) isn't just a horrible teacher, but speaks on behalf of a Christian organization while performing some of the worst, most vile teaching possible from a supposedly respected organization? What if this 'teacher' argues that not only are Muslims inbred idiots, but aggressive and war-mongering (funny, that)as well? What if his own evidence is refuted by his own evidence? Could that possibly deter him from blatantly lying about 1/7th of the world's population? What if that same population is made up primarily of dark Middle Eastern, South Asian, Northern and Sub-Saharan Africans - would that shine some light on his willingness to be so obstinate on painting such a demeaning picture?

This is pathetic race/religion/culture-baiting of the lowest order, and the lowest intelligence. It's the type of stuff we expect to find on a White Supremacist Church website, written by a man with a high school education and schizophrenia, missing an arm from bomb-making experiments gone awry. As a Christian, I must call into question how Christ-like the American Family Association behaves by endorsing this message through their Director of Issues Analysis, Bryan Fischer. As Christian as the KKK and the White Citizen's Council? Which is, nominally CINO. The AFA is no longer about families, nor is it very American. And it certainly isn't Christian. In order to qualify as that, they would have to love the Lord their God with all their minds. And love their neighbors** as themselves.

It's been this steady diet of winking hatred that is feeding the Fearful Monster. This Monster as evidenced by the recent spate of Qu'ran burnings and by the Muslim world's reaction to such threatened burnings, is hungry and won't die any time soon. This morning, I read about a burnt Qu'ran left outside a community center in the North Side of my own city. When defamations of holy symbols and places happen, physical and lethal violence are not far behind. How else can a defiled Holy Symbol be interpreted but as an act of terrorism? Burning crosses a hundred years ago. Burning, then bombing black churches. Now burning Qu'rans? We've not evolved, we're just changing our targets (while simultaneously oppressing many of the former ones).

*I'm a proponent of love OVER tolerance. 'Tolerance' doesn't quite cut it for me. It has the connotation of "passively living and letting live." Religious tolerance gives, on the face of it, as much credence to the ability of "Pastor" Terry Jones to burn a holy book as to his targets' professed hatred of him.

Love isn't passive, however; it's active. It not only says, you can be my neighbor and that's okay, it says, "Let us be neighborly." It defends, it guards and protects those who need protection. Further and even better, it gives tools to those same oppressed, marginalized voices so that they can speak on their own, for their own.

But, at the very least, if we don't have the time nor energy nor resources to get to know everybody and their customs, likes/dislikes, nor why or at least how they do what they do, we should acknowledge that they may do things differently than we do, but that doesn't make them any less worthy of dignity or respect or health or natural resources than we.

**One could argue that the AFA as represented by its outspoken leaders does love its neighbors, if by "Neighbors," we mean, "Other people that think and look like them." But that's missing the point of the story of the Good Samaritan. Who would be considered in much the same way Palestinians are now in Israel. But that's our neighbor, the one least like us (at least on the surface), the one we're most terrified of, the one who is dirtiest, poorest, richest, snootiest, loudest. These are the ones we are to love as ourselves - not just others who ARE just like ourselves...

Lazy Sunday Reading: We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that...

Archbishop Oscar Romero - much like Ben Franklin and Mark Twain - may have said less than what he is said to have said. Apparently written by soon-to-be Bishop Ken Utener of Saginaw (eastern Michigan), the poem/prayer is beautiful and one I was led in at a parent's orientation at our daughter's school a couple weeks ago.


It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
It may be incomplete,
but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference
between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation
in realizing that. This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
Amen.

The Hizzoner Is Dead! Long Live the Hizzoner!

I normally (if ever) write about local concerns once a week. But right after I wrote my rare Chicago Tuesdays profile, the citywide news of the year broke. And to be honest, I'm not sure if I'm going to add to the noise or not. I just want to have a place to explore my thoughts and invite dialog about meaningful local politics.

Daley will have been king of Chicago (with some help and propping from the self-serving Machine of patronage that his father established and perfected he has updated and continued) for 22 years by the time he steps down next year (unless he pulls a Favre. Although he could conceivably pull a Jordan, now that I think about it), but he is leaving the city in economic turmoil that he didn't create, but he did help to exacerbate. Much like his birthday buddy, GWB, Daley didn't make much use of surplus when he had it and squandered billions in bad ideas and in shady deals to politically connected friends. Additionally, of course, there were the scandals that always seemed to escape this Teflon Don: Hired Trucks, Silver Shovel, police misconduct,

and locked-up cronies and associates acting as Fall Guys.

But he did some things right. The tourist areas of Chicago are more tourist (and native) friendly. And, unlike Detroit, moneys have been brought back into the city and the economy is pretty diverse. Of course, that source of revenue is funded most easily by gentrification and cheap TIF handouts - in short, displacing the poor while giving welfare to the rich corporations.

But there's no shortage of good reasons for Daley to quit now. His wife is in poor health. He will have been in office for a longer period than even his father (who, like Harold Washington after him, died in office). The city is losing revenue while costs are raising. And then there's the bondoogles, like the Parking Meter FAIL privatization scheme, which is the one scandal that finally caught up to him in any appreciable (though not legal) manner. So, that's another source of revenue that the city - and whoever leads the city - can not count on to help through the recession.

Whoever occupies the City Hall Royal Throne next has their (thankless) job cut out for them. He or she is going to have to find ways to bring in jobs (which would cure a whole mess of ill, including closing the budget woes and decreasing crime), bring in other sources of revenue, streamline effectiveness and pull out the weeds to loosen the patronage grips of the Machine while tightening the budget. Importantly, the next mayor can do these things while serving the poor and minority populations. It's going to be a tough job.

What we're looking for here would be a Wonk, primarily, but not only. Someone who has proven capabilities and can work with business and community leaders as well as a possibly fractious city council. The new mayor, much like the old, will need to have connections with and wide support from White, Black, and Latino populations and communities (including the diverse White ethnic communities) as well as the diverse social and economic groups.

From what I can see, the list of possible contenders runs from the hopeful but novice Scott Waguespeck (one of the few aldermen to actively object to the recent fiascoes, most notably the Parking Meter privatization. I like him, but it may be too early for him yet. Some more money, name recognition and experience will do him a world of good, though), to the Law & Order types like Sheriff Tom Dart (L&O's like Daley himself don't tend to take care of fundamental problems as much as sweep them under the carpet. Just ask anybody in New York who got 'Guiliani'd'.), to the dynasties like the Jackson family - three of whom are rumored to be thinking about it, to the BIG NAME Rahm Emanuel (a bane to progressives, of course. And a man too much connected to Daley and the hard-line machine to cause any real difference. Except possibly cuss more in front of a mic. Or confront adversaries in the nude) to the already-entrenched Machine Heads like Alderman Burke (no.).

But I think the person who best fits the needs of the city - and, as a bonus, could actually pull off a win - is current City Clerk - and longtime pol - Miguel del Valle. As an extrie bonus, he's actually represented and worked with the poor and Latino populations.

Chicago Tuesdays: Why Chicagoans never get good things, pt. Q

Chicago gang leaders met with top cops last week. Past and present members and leaders held a press conference a couple days later to denounce that meeting. Aldermen also denounced that meeting. Of course, the reasons for denouncing that meeting were myriad and diverse. But they also demonstrate substantial problems within the city and the tense relationships between those in power downtown, those who are supposed to serve and protect, and those that arise out of an economic/power vacuum. And, more to the point, those put in their crossfire.

Here's a few of my questions. Please feel free to add your own. Or to address them to those who can do something about them (CAPS meetings, POs, gang leaders, etc.):

1. Since the fatalities in the city are not statistically worse than before, why does the city wait until now to take such desperate measures?
2. Apparently, the gang leaders were roped into this "summit" under false pretenses. And the pretense of this actually being any sort of dialectic summit is also false. Does the CPD understand that they need to actually build relationships? Does the CPD understand that they're largely ineffective in the same communities where gangs have a strong hold because the police are untrusted in those communities? Does the CPD really think the solution is to break down what little trust is still there?
3. RICO. Gang leaders/proxies say that this is a violation of their rights. Do they have a point? The violence here is systemic and much of it is directly gang-related. They do have a point that much of it is more directly related to drugs, but their deflection is - to say the least - lame. Since the violence is intrinsically related and fundamental to how gangs operate in Chicago, is it wrong to implicate the entire structure and those who prop up the violent structure?
4. Speaking of violence... The biggest and most accessible complaint at the press conference is that the biggest crime is the scarcity of jobs available for potential gang members. This is something that Daley and city council has had ample opportunity to turn around if they were willing to fully leverage TIF funds from the downtown districts to community development in the West, Near North, South and Far South sides. If Daley is serious about reducing crime and violence done in those areas, then shouldn't he be serious and creative about reducing the crime and violence done to those areas?
   
5. Children learn from their community. Unfortunately, a disproportionate amount of Black and Latino adult males served time locked up and away from their communities. And when they returned they found fewer options to get straight than when they left. With depleting jobs, decreasing social programs and a wide reticence (however understood) to hire ex-cons, the temptation to return to the same patterns is stifling. While many young men in the area are steadfast in their determination not to become the men they see and know, it's near impossible to not become like most of the people you've ever met/seen/talked to, despite what we want to believe. How can we expect better from the next generation if we continually ostracize the current adult population? Don't we recognize the forces of internalization when we see it?
6. What's with the aldermen getting their bunchies in a bunch over the idea of talking with gang leaders? "We don't negotiate with terrorists..." Stupid. Lame. No wonder nothing works here...

Next, I want to highlight some local stories that I think ARE working in this city (and in others). Hopefully, I can get some stories for the upcoming Christian Community Development Association conference starting in the city tonight I'm going to try to make it to the film fest sometime during the week. If any of the LeftCheekers are wont to go, hit me up here and we'll see about making a date about it!

Full of win!

I've been on vacay for a good part since I've last posted here. And when I gets back, all xeno- breaks loose. You know, hatred of The Others because they are The Others. First it was brown people (Mexican immigrants), then it was Black people (African Americans who happen to speak up and notice that America is still racist), now back to another type of Brown people (Muslims, who will be allowed to worship their demon-possessed god as soon as they change their religion).

So, the little blogging that I have done has been the highly satirical/sarcastic type, on the other site. But now that I've gotten that out of my system and saw that The Onion has returned (at least for a bit this week) to its primal form, I can cool my jets. More of teh blogging to come. But for now, a steal from this great, on-the-street report from L'Oignon:

Man Already Knows Everything He Needs To Know About Muslims

SALINA, KS—Local man Scott Gentries told reporters Wednesday that his deliberately limited grasp of Islamic history and culture was still more than sufficient to shape his views of the entire Muslim world...

"I learned all that really matters about the Muslim faith on 9/11," Gentries said in reference to the terrorist attacks on the United States undertaken by 19 of Islam's approximately 1.6 billion practitioners. "What more do I need to know to stigmatize Muslims everywhere as inherently violent radicals?"

"And now they want to build a mosque at Ground Zero," continued Gentries, eliminating any distinction between the 9/11 hijackers and Muslims in general. "No, I won't examine the accuracy of that statement, but yes, I will allow myself to be outraged by it and use it as evidence of these people's universal callousness toward Americans who lost loved ones when the Twin Towers fell."

"All Muslims are at war with America, and I will resist any attempt to challenge that assertion with potentially illuminating facts," said Gentries, who threatened to leave the room if presented with the number of Muslims who live peacefully in the United States, serve in the country's armed forces, or were victims themselves of the 9/11 attacks. "Period."

"If you don't believe me, wait until they put your wife in a burka," Gentries continued in reference to the face-and-body-covering worn by a small minority of Muslim women and banned in the universities of Turkey, Tunisia, and Syria. "Or worse, a rape camp. That's right: For reasons I am content being totally unable to articulate, I am choosing to associate Muslims with rape camps."

As the article is full of win, may you read it. Peace.

Music that Gets Us Through: Ant and Arms and Hearts

Antarctica - The Prayer Chain

Any Day Now - The Soul Stirrers

Any Side of Anywhere - Vigilantes of Love

Anybody's Guess - Vigilantes of Love

Anything - Sixpence None the Richer

Anything At All - Over the Rhine

Apathetic Way to Be - Relient K

Apocalypse Lips - Michael Knott

April in Paris - Count Basie

April Showers - King's X

Are You a Dreamer? - Denison Witmer

Are You Sure Hank Done It this Way? - Uncle Tupelo

Arizona Skies - Los Lobos

Arms and Hearts - The Hold Steady

Teaching for the Test Machine

The US Department of Education (under the leading of Arne Duncan, previously Daley admin - and non-educator - appointed to head the Chicago Public Schools into privatization and union-busting), is sponsoring a program called Race to the Top, wherein state educational systems prove that they are worthy of extra funding by acquiescing to centralized standards of education.

Not a bad idea actually, if it weren't for the wider context that these changes are happening under.

When No Child Left Behind entered the scene some years ago, the entire game changed. Many progressive educators that were hopeful that the underfunded, largely ignored urban education field was finally going to get the attention it desperately needs felt betrayed to find that it was more about the business of the standardized-testing industrial complex and the business-ification of teaching than about the business of teaching and the implementation of more accurate learning assessments.

Alas, high-stakes standardized tests are the new rules now. Art, music, literature: subjects that can actually further learning and creativity (which is also learning) are being removed wholesale to double the time in reading and math. Not that I have anything against the latter classes being taught or emphasized, but the constant repetitive action of teaching test-taking skills has an adverse effect on burgeoning desires to learn.

If we can agree that children are naturally curious (certainly anecdotal evidence backs this up), and most children leave the educational system devoid of intellectual curiosity, then it must be acknowledged that there is a prime problem in the way we are schooling our children. Our goal should be to leave our students with nourished but growing curiosity, because the world that they inhabit is larger than any one schema can grasp, no matter how we try to pigeon-hole the squares of their minds.

But then I'm encouraged by the site of students themselves taking action and saying that the goals of reform aren't where they should be.

Students draft a lesson plan of their own:

Amara Brady's academic life changed when she transferred to Mother McAuley High School on the Southwest Side last year. She got better books, more passionate teachers and access to postsecondary education information she'd never had.

"The schools aren't on a level playing field. And some systems are just set up for failure," said Brady, 16, who lives in the North Lawndale neighborhood, where many teens are faced with drugs, violence and a rising dropout rate.

Deciding she wanted to do something about it, Brady joined World Vision's Youth Empowerment Project (YEP), which gives young people a voice to become what they call "agents of change." World Vision is a Christian organization dedicated to fighting poverty...

After five months of community mapping, interviews, surveys and debate, the Chicago-area students from both public and private schools had a clear choice for this year's issue: education. They wanted to find a way to keep kids in school.

The students presented their proposal to local representatives in Washington this week...

A recent study from the U.S. Department of Education shows that less than 75 percent of students nationwide got high school diplomas within four years.

"The dropout rate is about violence, but it's also people, the teachers, the schools and the neighborhoods," said Howard.

The students' proposal, which they presented to community leaders in Chicago last week, had four key recommendations:

The first is to level the playing field for all schools in Chicago by updating the facilities and materials. Howard said one of his friends is still using Windows 98 and a Math Busters program from the 1980s at school.

The students also proposed that schools increase social support by asking for more parental involvement and adding extracurriculars.

Carol Beal, chairman of the Block Club Association, who was present at the students' presentation last week, understood.

"If you have nothing to do, you find something ignorant to do," Beal said. "If you don't want it to lead to trouble, it still might. They need resources and activities to occupy their time."

Feedback from students in the form of quarterly and annual surveys was another suggestion. Both could help identify problems such as inedible food and inadequate teachers, students said.

Access to information on post-secondary education, which Brady found at Mother McAuley, is the final point. The teens want counselors who can provide students information on everything from the PSAT to how to fill out a job application.

Lack of funding and budget cutbacks are an issue, say some school officials...

Better funding is part of the students' requests to Washington officials this week. They are also lobbying for the Youth PROMISE Act, legislation that advocates for more resources for preventive programs in education. The bill has 234 co-sponsors in the House.

The Rev. Joe Huizenga, of Roseland Christian Ministries, said hearing the students tell their own stories had a huge impact.

"The kids talked about friends who got into gangs, dropped out of school and missed the window. They all wanted to change this. They told us just how much they believed in it. It was pretty remarkable," he said...

Local advocacy group Logan Square Neighborhood Association is also among a growing group of orgs critiquing the Washington-based reforms as "top-down experiments that disrupt schools and communities."

"You have to give resources to support students and families, and build trust in schools. If you don’t have that, none of your other reforms matter," says Bridget Murphy of [LSNA].

This on the heels of a larger policy report they compiled with several other local urban community development groups nationwide, Our Communities Left Behind: An Analysis of the Administration's TurnAround Policies. Included in that report is this research analysis gem from The Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice:

It is recommended that policymakers refrain from relying on restructuring sanctions (takeover, private management, charters and reconstitutions) to effect school improvement. They have produced negative by-products without yielding systemic positive effects.

Lazy Sunday Reading: Kurt Vonnegut and the Golden Rule

"Cold Turkey"

When you get to my age, if you get to my age, which is 81, and if you have reproduced, you will find yourself asking your own children, who are themselves middle-aged, what life is all about. I have seven kids, four of them adopted.

Many of you reading this are probably the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government.

I put my big question about life to my biological son Mark. Mark is a pediatrician, and author of a memoir, The Eden Express. It is about his crackup, straightjacket and padded cell stuff, from which he recovered sufficiently to graduate from Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: “Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.” So I pass that on to you. Write it down, and put it in your computer, so you can forget it.

I have to say that’s a pretty good sound bite, almost as good as, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, 500 years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.

The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one.

But back to people, like Confucius and Jesus and my son the doctor, Mark, who’ve said how we could behave more humanely, and maybe make the world a less painful place. One of my favorites is Eugene Debs, from Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana. Get a load of this:

Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was only 4, ran 5 times as the Socialist Party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:

As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.
As long as there is a criminal element, I’m of it.
As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Doesn’t anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools or health insurance for all?

How about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. …

And so on.

Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

“Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!...

I was born a human being in 1922 A.D. What does “A.D.” signify? That commemorates an inmate of this lunatic asylum we call Earth who was nailed to a wooden cross by a bunch of other inmates. With him still conscious, they hammered spikes through his wrists and insteps, and into the wood. Then they set the cross upright, so he dangled up there where even the shortest person in the crowd could see him writhing this way and that.

Can you imagine people doing such a thing to a person?

No problem. That’s entertainment. Ask the devout Roman Catholic Mel Gibson, who, as an act of piety, has just made a fortune with a movie about how Jesus was tortured. Never mind what Jesus said.

During the reign of King Henry the Eighth, founder of the Church of England, he had a counterfeiter boiled alive in public. Show biz again.

Mel Gibson’s next movie should be The Counterfeiter. Box office records will again be broken...

But I have to say this in defense of humankind: No matter in what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got there. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these crazy games going on, which could make you act crazy, even if you weren’t crazy to begin with. Some of the games that were already going on when you got here were love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf and girls’ basketball.

Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics, where, thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative...

My government’s got a war on drugs. But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.

One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W. Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed or tiddley-poo or four sheets to the wind a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he was 41. When he was 41, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint.

Other drunks have seen pink elephants.

And do you know why I think he is so pissed off at Arabs? They invented algebra. Arabs also invented the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which nobody else had ever had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals.

We’re spreading democracy, are we? Same way European explorers brought Christianity to the Indians, what we now call “Native Americans.”

How ungrateful they were! How ungrateful are the people of Baghdad today.

So let’s give another big tax cut to the super-rich. That’ll teach bin Laden a lesson he won’t soon forget. Hail to the Chief.

That chief and his cohorts have as little to do with Democracy as the Europeans had to do with Christianity. We the people have absolutely no say in whatever they choose to do next. In case you haven’t noticed, they’ve already cleaned out the treasury, passing it out to pals in the war and national security rackets, leaving your generation and the next one with a perfectly enormous debt that you’ll be asked to repay.

Nobody let out a peep when they did that to you, because they have disconnected every burglar alarm in the Constitution: The House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the FBI, the free press (which, having been embedded, has forsaken the First Amendment) and We the People...

I’ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut.

And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.

When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any more of those. Cold turkey.

Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t like TV news, is it?

Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.

And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.

Kurt Vonnegut
In These Times

h/t to Tina C