On the death of a pet

Thandi passed away November 16th, 2009, 6 months shy of her tenth birthday.

I was with her when she drew her last breath, my hand caressing her head. My scent was the last thing she smelled, my voice was the last sound she heard and my face was the last sight she saw before she slipped away into eternity. I had already made the decision to end her suffering, and was preparing to take that last drive to the vet; but in her final act of love, she spared me the heartbreak of saying goodbye in a cold and clinical room with bright lights and antiseptic smells. She died in my arms at home, her muzzle in my lap, my tears laying wet on her fur.

She suffered a great deal in her short life. Her epilepsy was the worst the vets had ever seen. She had multiple seizures every 6 weeks from the age of 2, more frequently towards the end. She almost died from pancreatitis. The drugs she took sapped her energy and weakened her legs. In the end she was slipping into the indignity of incontinence. People who knew her well, even her vet, remarked how lucky she was to have been adopted by me. But, really, I was the lucky one. I was the one who had the great fortune to have been the object of such pure and unconditional love, to share a connection with another being so profound that words were unnecessary. Every day I got to look into her eyes and see not just a reflection of who I am, but the promise of who I could be.

When asked, some will say after a pet has died, that along with the sadness, there is a guilty sense of relief. They look forward to a life without the obligation of daily walks, or the inconvenience of finding a pet sitter for a weekend away, or the restrictions on longer vacations with the worries of pet boarding. Yes it is true that life without Thandi will be less expensive, and less inconvenient, and less worrisome, and yet…and yet I would give up every one of those free tomorrows for just a single burdensome yesterday.

What Liberal Media Bias?

Walter Cronkite was interviewed for Playboy in 1973.

PLAYBOY: Implicit in the Administration’s attempts to force the networks to “balance” the news is a conviction that most newscasters are biased against conservatism. Is there some truth in the view that television newsmen tend to be left of center?

CRONKITE: Well, certainly liberal, and possibly left of center as well. I would have to accept that.

PLAYBOY: What’s the distinction between those two terms?

CRONKITE: I think the distinction is both clear and important. I think that being a liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, noncommitted to a cause — but examining each case on its merits. Being left of center is another thing; it’s a political position. I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they’re not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen. If they’re preordained dogmatists for a cause, then they can’t be very good journalists; that is, if they carry it into their journalism.

As far as the leftist thing is concerned, that I think is something that comes from the nature of a journalist’s work. Most newsmen have spent some time covering the seamier side of human endeavor; they cover police stations and courts and the infighting in politics. And I think they come to feel very little allegiance to the established order. I think they’re inclined to side with humanity rather than with authority and institutions. And this sort of pushes them to the left. But I don’t think there are many who are far left. I think a little left of center probably is correct.

Spitting into the Wind

The California Supreme, the same court that in May ruled in favor of same sex marriage , today upheld Proposition 8, but this may be one of the last battles that  opponents of same sex marriage will win. The court was reluctant to overturn the initiative process, but their sympathies and the tide of history are against the prohibition of marriages for all.

In the months since Proposition 8 was passed, Iowa, Vermont and Maine have joined Massachussetts in legalizing same sex marriage. Initiatives to do the same are moving forward in New York, New Jersey and New Hampshire.  The forces of bigotry and the agents of intolerance are on the wrong side of history. Demographics are against them.  A recent study analyzing Prop 8 found that four factors — party identification, ideology, frequency of religious service attendance and age — drove the “yes” vote for Proposition 8. For example, more than 70 percent of voters who were Republican, identified themselves as conservative, or who attended religious services at least weekly supported Proposition 8. Conversely, 70 percent or more of voters who were Democrat, identified themselves as liberal, or who rarely attended religious services opposed the measure. More than two-thirds (67 percent) of voters 65 or older supported Proposition 8, while majorities under 65 opposed it.

Hopefully, by this time next year, California will have joined the ranks of those states who just said no to intolerance and hatred.

Denying Darwin

On the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birthday, a gallup poll showed that only 39% of Americans believed in the theory of evolution. A quarter of all respondents said they do not believe in the theory, and another 36% did not have an opinion either way.

There is a strong relationship between education and belief in Darwin’s theory, as might be expected, ranging from 21% of those with high-school educations or less to 74% of those with postgraduate degrees.  Those with high-school educations or less are much more likely to have no opinion than are those who have more formal education. Still, among those with high-school educations or less who have an opinion on Darwin’s theory, more say they do not believe in evolution than say they believe in it. For all other groups, and in particular those who have at least a college degree, belief is significantly higher than nonbelief. Those with high-school educations or less are much more likely to have no opinion than are those who have more formal education.

There is a strong relationship between church attendance and belief in evolution in the current data. Those who attend church most often are the least likely to say they believe in evolution.  Previous Gallup research shows that the rate of church attendance is fairly constant across educational groups, suggesting that this relationship is not owing to an underlying educational difference but instead reflects a direct influence of religious beliefs on belief in evolution.

Lest we deride this as a purely American phenomenon, across the Atlantic, a poll by ComRes found that more than half of the public believe that the theory of evolution cannot explain the full complexity of life on Earth, and a “designer” must have lent a hand.

And one in three believe that God created the world within the past 10,000 years. This estimate comes from perusing biblical references, including counting up the number of “begats”.

Intelligent design, or ID, is the latest pseudoscientific incarnation of religious creationism, cleverly crafted by a new group of enthusiasts to circumvent recent legal restrictions. ID comes in two parts. The first is a simple critique of evolutionary theory, to the effect that Darwinism, as an explanation of the origin, the development, and the diversity of life, is fatally flawed. The second is the assertion that the major features of life are best understood as the result of creation by a supernatural intelligent designer. To understand ID, then, we must first understand modern evolutionary theory (often called “neo-Darwinism” to take into account post-Darwinian modifications).

It is important to realize at the outset that evolution is not “just a theory.” It is, again, a theory and a fact. Although non-scientists often equate “theory” with “hunch” or “wild guess,” the Oxford English Dictionary defines a scientific theory as “a scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena; a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment, and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts.” In science, a theory is a convincing explanation for a diversity of data from nature. Thus scientists speak of “atomic theory” and “gravitational theory” as explanations for the properties of matter and the mutual attraction of physical bodies. It makes as little sense to doubt the fact of evolution as to doubt the fact of gravity.

It is comforting to think that over time, natural selection will kick in, and that ignorance will eventually be bred out, but the persistent influence of religious wing nuts in the public sphere makes me think it might be a very long time.

Time To Take Out The Trash

In April 2008 I wrote that they would have to pry Zimbabwe from Robert Mugabe’s cold dead hands. At that time inflation was a mere 165 000 percent.  It is now an unimaginable 231 million percent. The 100 million Zimbabwean dollar a week limit for bank withdrawals buys only three loaves of bread, if bread can be found that is. Prices double every 24 hours. Only one in ten people has work.  It costs more for teachers to get to work by public transport, than they are paid in a month.  On top of it all, an outbreak of Cholera threatens to become an epidemic.

How much misery can the world stand to witness before it acts? It is not as if there is no precedent. Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire and Idi Amin of Uganda were both removed from power after their African neighbors intervened. South Africa has both the means and the moral imperative.  Unless it takes the lead in ridding the world of another tinpot dictator in its own backyard due to a lack of political will, it risks being identified as an enabler in the worst humanitarian disaster the continent has seen.  And if the countries of the SADC do not act, then the world must.  How many Darfurs or Somalia’s must there be before we stand up for the wretched who share this planet. Its time for intervention, military if necessary,and  damn the political and ethical arguments – just file it under exigent circumstances.

China Rising

A report by the National Intelligence Council, a US government think tank, warns of the waning of American influence in international politics.  “Although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor, the United States’ relative strength — even in the military realm — will decline and U.S. leverage will become more constrained,” says the report, which is the fourth in a series from the Intelligence Council. Furthermore “the international system — as constructed following the second World War — will be almost unrecognizable by 2025 owing to the rise of emerging powers, a globalizing economy , an historic transfer of relative wealth and economic power from West to East, and the growing influence of nonstate actors.”

Fareed Zakaria calls this phenomenon “The Rise of The Rest”.

America’s biggest rival by 2025, the reports says, will be China. Which leads us to the question – what will the new Chinese era mean?

Francis Fukuyama in his 1992 book The End of History and The Last Man, argued that the advent of Western liberal democracy signaled the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the final form of human government.   What he meant, in simple terms, was that by the end of the cold war, there were no serious ideological competitors left to liberal democracy. The form of government represented by parliamentary democracy in the West had won the ideological race and that the world had entered into a period of convergence.

He may have been premature.

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of China’s policy of reform and opening up. China can proudly boast of many undeniably impressive achievements – lifting millions of its people from poverty and bringing the country into the 21st century.  But moving to a market based economy, while political reforms have lagged, has brought a new set of problems.  Some recent setbacks – Lead painted toys, Melamine spiked milk products, vanishing factory owners. The Communist Party understands that it is riding a tiger. Each year, there are several thousand violent incidents of social protest, each one contained and suppressed by state authorities, who nevertheless cannot seem to get at the underlying source of the unrest. Rising wages have led many laborers to expect better working conditions and residents now demand a more accountable government.

The worldwide recession has affected China as well.  Beijing is pumping half a trillion dollars in to the Chinese economy to stave off unrest.  Economists estimate that China’s GDP has to grow between 7.5 and 8 percent per year just to keep up with new jobs.

Deng Xiao Ping famously said that “to get rich is glorious” when he initiated market reform policies, but while China plunged into capitalism with a vengeance, there was nothing to protect it from the excesses of market forces. Capitalism, in its purest form is a vicious dog eat dog philosophy, a Darwinian competition for the survival of the fittest.  In the west, pure capitalism has been diluted by the philanthropic principles of western theology.  In China, it seems that the country has moved from a collectivist mindset, to every man for himself.  Many disadvantaged Chinese yearn for the days of Mao’s “Iron Rice Bowl”- the guarantee of a job, a home and basic social services for all. Reforms have brought unprecedented posperity, but the cutthroat competition has led to a disintegration of social harmony.  China’s suicide rate (23 out of every 100 000) is double the US number.  The Shanghai Mental Health Center reported that the incidence of depression in that city has quadrupled in the past decade.

In addition, China has become a ravenous consumer.   Its appetite for raw materials drives up international commodity prices and shipping rates while its middle class, projected to jump from fewer than 100 million people now to 700 million by 2020, is learning the gratifications of consumerism. China is by a wide margin the leading importer of a cornucopia of commodities, including iron ore, steel, copper, tin, zinc, aluminum, and nickel. It is the world’s biggest consumer of coal, refrigerators, grain, cell phones, fertilizer, and television sets. It not only leads the world in coal consumption, with 2.5 billion tons in 2006, but uses more than the next three highest-ranked nations—the United States, Russia, and India—combined. China uses half the world’s steel and concrete and will probably construct half the world’s new buildings over the next decade. So omnivorous is the Chinese appetite for imports that when the country ran short of scrap metal in early 2004, manhole covers disappeared from cities all over the world—Chicago lost 150 in a month.

The other side of this economic coin is the cost to China and the world in environmental destruction.  China has become not just the world’s manufacturer but its despoiler, on a scale as monumental as its economic expansion. A fourth of the country is now desert. More than three-fourths of its forests have disappeared. Each year, uncontrollable underground fires, sometimes triggered by lightning or mining accidents, consume 200 million tons of coal, contributing massively to global warming. A miasma of lead, mercury, sulfur dioxide, and other elements of coal-burning and car exhaust hovers over most Chinese cities. Chemicals spill into Chinese rivers nearly every day, and have left nearly all of the nation’s surface water unfit for human consumption.

If China is to become a world leader, it needs to be more than a caricature of American excess. The question must be asked – When China is strong, what will it want of the world? It is practically a birthright of Americans to be able to answer the question of Americas’s expectations – liberty, democracy, equality, the end of tyranny. Like the empires that came before it, America stood for more than prosperity.   For all its faults, including its decadence and conspicuous consumption, the US was as much an idea, as a world power. For now, the people of China, like Rodney Dangerfield, want nothing more than respect.  The entire Olympic spectacle was a plea for recognition.  But there seems to be no defining principle behind it’s striving for material wealth.  Unless as a nation it can articulate a vision of China and it’s place in the world,  all of its achievements will be hollow at the core and like the former Soviet Union, once thought of as the main rival to the US in the field of ideas, it too will become a footnote rather than a chapter of history.

The Obama Revolution

No matter what your political leanings are, it would be churlish and ignorant to deny that Ronald Reagan transformed the political landscape and had a lasting effect on America.  In a recent poll Reagan was considered by Americans second only to Abraham Lincoln in the pantheon of the greatest presidents. (Which begs the question – what kind of kool-aid were the respondents drinking?  The same poll put George W. Bush at 23rd out of 43 presidents!)

Barack Obama has the potential to have the same transformative effect for America.  Just as there were Reagan Democrats, there are now Obama Republicans.  Like Reagan, Obama is arriving during a period of economic turmoil and a time in America’s history when it’s image has been severely damaged.  Just as in 1980, the electorate is anxious to be rid of a toxic administration.

Obama, like Reagan, is a skilled orator and raconteur with an intimate understanding of the power of myth, able to inspire not only with his words, but his delivery.  Like Reagan, Obama has a cadre of intensely loyal supporters and is perceived to be an ideological purist, who can also be pragmatic.  Just as Reagan became known as the Teflon president, by avoiding being tarred with the same brush of incompetence and venality as the rest of his administration, Obama will be forgiven much by his base, even if he is forced to compromise for the sake of making a deal that will move his agenda forward.  Reagan governed from the center as Obama has indicated he will.

Obama has already made history.  It remains to be seen whether it is his presidency that will be historic, or just the mere fact that he was elected at all. In order for the former to hold true, America will have to have patience, a quality it does not possess in abundance.  President-elect Obama began managing expectations at the very instant of his victory when he acknowledged the difficulties he and America faced – “two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.” And he was quite candid about the prospects “The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. we may not get there in one year or even one term” But then he displayed the quality that won him the election, the ability to tap into the wellspring of hope and optimism that is the hallmark of the American people “…but America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.”

In his transformation, Obama evokes the spirits of FDR, Kennedy and Lincoln, and he will need all of their qualities to make his dream a reality.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

In the afterglow of the euphoria surrounding the transformational election of America’s first African-American president, the passing of proposition 8 amending the California constitution to ban gay marriage was like having a gatecrasher at the party, a particularly offensive and obnoxious one at that.

In California, Obama trounced McCain  by 61% of the vote to 37%. Voter turnout broke records, with almost 80% of eligible voters casting ballots.  It seems like an anomaly that a liberal democrat could win the election by almost a 2-1 margin, but that a socially conservative measure on the same ballot could pass. However, the No on 8 campaign was always going to face an uphill battle, especially with a high voter turnout. The excitement generated by the Obama candidacy was a double edged sword, bringing out voters in droves,  including large numbers of ethnic minorities, who are considered liberal on economic issues and the war in Iraq, but social conservatives with regard to gay rights and abortion(which is why prop 4 – parental notification on abortion -may also pass).

It is an unfortunate commentary on California voters that the Yes on 8 campaign was able to successfully disguise it’s true agenda, to enshrine its view that homosexuality is immoral, into law, by using misdirection and obfuscation and appealing to the basest instincts of religious conservatives. An excellent LA Times editorial on prop 8 ran the day before the election, when it would have been more effective if published earlier.

The fact remains that America still suffers from a puritan hangover to the bemusement and befuddlement of Europeans and the rest of the world. Barack Obama’s election is a ray of hope that attitudes, even those which appear entrenched and are seemingly intractable,  can eventually change.

Yes we can

On this day, before the most important election day of this and many a year, perhaps we can reflect on why we look to our leaders. When times are good, we can get by with a manager and all that we ask is that he or she not f***  things up.  Even when times are tough, we’re not looking for a magic bullet for all our problems, we’re looking for the gunsmith who can make the bullet. This year, any of the candidates may have made a good president, but what we need at this precarious time in our history is a great president, one who can look beyond what divides us to rediscover that what makes us good also makes us great.

The elder Bush once complained that he did not have “the vision thing” and he still managed to get by as a caretaker.  But after 8 years of the younger Bush, in a world that is hostile and uncertain, mostly as a result of his policies,  we need more than a caretaker president.  We need a visionary. We need inspiration. We need a reason to feel good about our choice.

Ladies and Gentlemen,  in his own words – Barack Obama.

(From his speech in New Hampshire January 8, 2008 after he had lost to HIllary Clinton in that primary.)

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.
Yes we can.
It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom.
Yes we can.
It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.
Yes we can.
It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballots; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.
Yes we can to justice and equality.
Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.
Yes we can heal this nation.
Yes we can repair this world.
Yes we can.

We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change. (We want change.)         We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics…they will only grow louder and more dissonant. We’ve been asked to pause for a reality check. We’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.
But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

Now the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of LA; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast; from sea to shining sea:

Yes We Can.

Undecided, or just plain stupid?

“To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

I mean, really, what’s to be confused about?”

David Sedaris “Undecided” from The New Yorker

There is apparently a species of voter out there in the wild, much coveted by political operatives of both persuasions, which is holding the electoral process hostage. These “undecided voters” (as opposed to swing voters who, it sounds like, have a lot more fun) have been dithering between two diametrically opposed candidates despite having heard from both candidates for more than 18 months throughout one of the longest election cycles in history.  Come election day,  in the privacy of the voting booth they will exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to carefully sift through the information,  weigh the pros and cons of each candidate, apply their minds for the good of the nation, then flip a coin and leave the entire process up to chance.

Swing voters, on the other hand, like both candidates, or can’t stand either of them.  It’s not that they don’t have enough information, it’s that they like Obama’s economic policy, but think McCain is stronger on national security.  They are conservative Democrats who voted for Reagan, but also liberal Republicans who liked Clinton. Their standard bearer is Joe Lieberman, the political equivalent of a bisexual switch hitter.

Then there is the angry Hillary voter who, despite the fact that Clinton and Obama may as well be two peas in pod, policy wise, are so bitter about losing the primary, that they have deserted the Democratic party to  support McCain, never mind that this makes no political sense at all (See Lynn Forester De Rothschild who considers Obama an elitist – right Lynn, you had me at De). What this species of undecided voter has failed to realize is that the US political system does not rely on a cult of personality like North Korea, Cuba or even Venezuela. The American president is not an autocrat who rules by decree (although W tried his damnedest). In fact, we don’t elect an individual, we elect a team, of which the president is its leader, the person who most ably and eloquently embodies the philosophy of that team. You don’t stop supporting the Lakers just because Kobe loses the captaincy.

Unfortunately, its a reality of political life that these undecideds are significant factor in elections, which is one of the reasons that democracy is imperfect – a government of the people, by the people, for the people takes no account of the fact that many of the people are in fact morons.

“If you shout “fire” in a crowded theater, most people will respond, one way or another. Most of them will run out onto the sidewalk and start to form a lynch mob; some of them will boldly check the theater for combustion-related activities. The undecided voter is the guy still sitting there in the middle of row 43. And not because there wasn’t a fire. This mug just can’t make up his mind whether to burn to death or see the rest of the movie.”

Ben Tripp “The Undecided Voter Examined” in Counterpunch.