Let's Think About Mexico, People!

All right, it's no secret that I have become Mexican over the last few years.
My continually evolving discontent with North American culture, coupled with my growing love and appreciation for the saner life south of the US border, has done nothing but solidify my resolve to expatriate myself.
I like good food.  I like people with a heart.  I like a culture that isn't utterly corrupted by the pursuit of cool where cool = junk sold by slick junk peddlers.
You gabachos will never understand.  My new countrymen understand it instinctively.
I like a place where you can look at the sky without also having to own a star.  I like a place where a family's plans for the evening will suddenly take back seat to helping a stranger stranded on the side of the road.  I like a place where a friend expects you to do them favors but without any score-keeping.
Gabachos think Mexico is a land of ignorance and crime, even though the average Mexican is better educated and far less likely to be a crime victim than the average person in the United States.  Gabachos think that they are at the epicenter of intellectual thought in the Western Hemisphere, when in fact most gabachos cannot articulate a coherent defense of any of their spiritual and political beliefs, and Mexican art is at least the equal of anything created north of the border.
I love Mexico, and I have little regard for those xenophobic types in the US who write off Mexicans and Mexico with nothing even close to an understanding of the people and the country.  The US is a country demonstrably in decline -- from erosion of civil rights, pathetic education, and general lack of passion or understanding of their political philosophy.  Mexico, on the other hand, is a country that is growing economically, intellectually, artistically, and technologically -- growth, aspiration, positive energy directed toward the future.
I love Mexico -- I'm sorry so many of you gringos hate her without knowing her.
Take a deep breath.  Go outside.  Look at the sky.

Insomnia, Please

I just discovered that I like waking up at 3:00Am, still stressing about work, and then not being able to go back to sleep.  

Because at 3:30, when you finally give up and admit that you can never get back to sleep, you roll out of bed into this wonderfully peaceful world where no one is pulling you in the direction of their own needs.

I figured I'd check on my fantasy football team, get bored, and perhaps get tired again, but instead had a weird thought that I wanted to hear the old song "Sukiyaki" by Kyu Sakamoto.  

Wow.  So there is also a time machine at this hour of the morning.

Suddenly it's me and Linda and Brenda in the backseat of the old DeSoto, as mom and dad haul us cross country to New Mexico, following the real route 66 in 1963.  Canvas water bag hanging from the side-view mirror, I remember Connie Francis' "Never on Sunday" and Percy Faith's "Theme from Summerplace" and Santo and Johnny's "Sleepwalk".

And I've listened to them all this morning.  I've been transported, and I'm sentimental and weepy and nostalgic and even uplifted.  I want to come here more often.  I want to remember when strangers weren't mean and petty, and when the country was bountiful with variety and adventure rather than this insipid sameness that has crawled across the face of our land. 

I want to see Linda's smile and smell Brenda's hair.  I want to see mom and dad looking like kids again.  I want to believe the world is good again, even if when I believed it the first time it was just through the rosie-colored glasses of an irrepressibly curious and optimistic child.

Phuck You, Citicorp

...and fuck you too, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, AIG, American Express, General Motors, JP Morgan Chase, Suntrust, Regions Bank, BB&T and Mellon!

Fuck you fuck you fuck you US Bancorp, Huntington, Morgan Stanley, Comerica, Goldman Sachs, Chryler and all the rest of you rat bastards who allowed the government to put a gun to our heads, wrestle away our hard-earned money, and fill your disgusting fat faces with it.

I hate to be profane here on my blog, but the reprehensible profanity of these corporate pigs is so profoundly unnerving to me that I wish I could walk into each and every bailout recipient's corporate office and spit into the faces of their CEO's. They are the worst human excrement not presently under indictment for some form of capital rape, murder, or dismemberment.

And I'm a capitalist. Yes, I am a capitalist.

One of the things that pisses me off is that people who are stupid will naiively interpret the indefensible behavior of these pigs and tout it as proof of the untenability of capitalism. And yet, anyone with a brain understands that no one who takes a penny of taxpayer money to support their own criminal irresponsibility is a capitalist -- these fucks turned in their capitalist credentials when they sucked the government tit.

In a truly capitalistic economy, these assholes crash, burn, and die a quick corporate death due to their own shitty mismanagement -- their stockholders lose and learn a lesson, their executives lose and go find jobs they're more qualified for, their employees scramble for employment with whomever fills the void, and the smaller private institutions who are already doing it better rise and take their places. It isn't alway pretty, and some people cry that "it isn't fair", but it is a hell of a lot more fair than our government stealing it from us and doling it out to the people who contribute to their campaigns. We already know Congress is corrupt, stupid, and unredeeming. How dare we then allow those empty hair-sprayed suits to steal our sweat and hand it over to the worst of corporate America while the very best, who do not steal taxpayer's money, are left in the shadows to compete with the pigs. Who in hell cannot be outraged by this shit?

Oh, my little rant will change nothing. The time I have to investigate and properly castigate these thieves is minimal -- I'm too busy trying to eke out a living like everyone else. But I am so tempted to send my next credit card payment to Citibank accompanied not by a check, but by an invoice for my balance due on what they've stolen.

Make no mistake -- just because they used a government gun to rob me, I have no illusions as to exactly who it is who has violated me and my fellow Americans. These people have been my customers in business for the last 20 years, and I know about the minions of cubicle-bound workers who bust their asses for a paycheck while the few and arrogant sit in their corner high-rise offices planning their next golf-outings to Kapalua of Pebble Beach -- taking a tax deduction for it, of course. And they are not capitalists. Be they gaunt or pudgy, dashing or crumpled, the upper management of these institutions who are complicit in accepting bail-out money rather than their own responsibility for the failures of their institutions, are public enemies number 1 thru 1000.

I wish them nothing but pain and misfortune. Unfortunately, we as Americans have allowed our criminal Congress to let them once again pass on the pain -- this time not to their employees, but to us and our kids and our grandkids.

Fuck you, Citicorp. I hate you. Be expecting my bill.

My Bittersweet Valentine's Day

by Gerald Michael Rolfe

I love Valentine's Day. I really do.

I love the pinkness and the hearts and the ubiquitous intimations of intimacy and of passion. I love the candy, the sweetness, and the sometimes over-the-top decadence of lingerie and kisses and nubile flowers in abundance. Most of all, I love that there is a holiday for love, and not just any love -- but the aching and yearning and most deeply elemental of all love -- romantic love.

But Valentine's Day for me will forever also evoke a different kind of aching and yearning, and an entirely different kind love. It's hard to believe that it's been four years since a small circle of family and I watched our beloved sister Linda pass not so entirely gently into that good night. It really does seem like yesterday -- that Valentine's Day when part of my heart was pulled right out of my chest and taken with her for eternity into an incomprehensible abyss. At least I hope it was taken with her.

I was inalterably changed by what I saw and felt, and four years later I still cannot say completely what that change was, other than that the change had something to do with love. I live more in the moment than I ever did before. The geographical distance between the rest of my sisters and I is far more palapable than it ever was. And every time I leave them now after a visit, even though it is the natural thing to do otherwise, I don't take it for granted that I will ever see them again. I think I will. I hope I will. But now I understand that every time could be the last time. It makes saying goodbye uncomfortable. It can cause a soul to lean toward feeling morose.

But I remain an optimist at heart. Infernally, defiantly so in fact. A real glass-half-full kind of guy or, like my nephew Alex proclaimed to the world about himself while marching up and down an airport terminal at age 3, "I'm a real pain in the ass!". And so when each Valentine's Day comes round again, I wake up with a smile and a feeling of gladness. I kiss my baby darlin' on the forehead and stretch and look forward to the new, pink day with anticipation. Invariably I remember that this is also that other day, and I think of my sister -- I think of all my sisters. And I count myself a lucky man, a man surrounded by more love than many men know in a lifetime. And love is pretty much the most important reason I can think of for being on this rock in the first place.

I love Valentine's Day. I really do.

This Time It's About Liars

A Few Words from
Gerald Michael Rolfe
about Garrison Keillor's essay
"The big lie" from Salon.com



This one came to me as a request for help from my darling stepdaughter (of sorts) Megan. She was assigned Keillor's essay for a first year college English class, and while she felt like she had the English composition down, Megan asked me to give her help with what she thought to be the underlying political message. Opinionated one that I am, I happily accepted the assignment.

Upon first reading the essay, I discovered that it was more broadly philosophical than specifically political in nature -- these things usually are with Keillor anyway. And the essay is also typically Keillor in that it is rendered with folksy, accessible charm, peppered with believable anecdotes and hilarious imagery. I have to admit that I enjoyed reading it very much. And my assignment from Megan is fairly easily completed with just one sentence -- politically, Keillor is completely opposed to what he sees as President Bush's obsession with the war in Iraq and the administration's seeming disregard for every other issue as a result of that obsession.

Yawn.

I'll dispense with the politics first. Garrison Keillor lopes alongside a gargantuan pack of his fellow liberals who have been baying this message at moon after moon after moon. There is nothing new here other than the priceless metaphor of an SUV being driven the wrong way by cocker spaniels -- intense cocker spaniels even. The left still hates what the Bush administration is doing, and the Bush administration still chastises the left as enemies of homeland security. The truth is somewhere in middle.

Keillor and his pack conveniently ignore the things the Bush administration is doing that are entirely apart from their Iraq policy (some of which are arguably positive doings), and the administration itself ignores the possibility that the howls of Keillor's left, howls that are warning us against an impending collapse of our nation's economy and sovereignty and principles, probably merit serious attention. One need only know recent history to see that the status quo is hereby evident.

President Clinton's critics intimated similar warnings about the imminent demise of the republic. As did George Bush Sr.'s. As did Reagan's. As did Carter's. As did Ford's and Nixon's, and most similarly to today's doomsayers, Lyndon Johnson's. As long as democrats and republicans are trashing each other in the media, those of us who think independently, rather than by checking off a party platform list to determine our opinions, can take comfort in knowing that we have indeed awakened in the same world in which we went to sleep the night before. The rules are still the rules and the pawns are still the pawns. Amen to that! This essay of Keillor's has nothing else to offer politically, and that's just fine with me.

Fine with me, because Keillor's essay is really a great little philosophical exercise. If I were teaching freshman ethics, I would love to use this essay as a launching point for class discussion. Keillor's premises are clear (though assailable), and what is also fairly clear is that his conclusion follows. There's nothing better to build the confidence of aspiring philosophers than to offer them a respected cultural semi-icon's argument and then let them peel away the thin skin to expose an unformed core, but one that is at least correctly structured. This Keillor essay is tailor-made for freshmen.

Here are the aw shucks radio host's premises about lying:

• There's no need to face the truth all at once.
• One should not lie to oneself.
• (But sometimes you have to so) Self-deception is useful.
• Everyone needs to be honest with at least one friend.

These are some really nice premises heading toward (actually emanating from) a conclusion. And what is the folk-philosopher's conclusion?

Garrison Keillor's conclusion in "The big lie" is his essay's very first sentence -- "It's good to know how to lie, and lie effectively." And he means it. He believes in lies for the sake of sparing others -- of sparing them embarrassment, of sparing them the pain of having to listen to our little hardships when they ask politely, "So how's it going?", of sparing them the necessity of looking honestly at their own children through the eyes of others. He even believes in lying to oneself "when you're feeling overwhelmed by your obligations. But if you're going to lie, Keillor's rule of primacy is that it must be done "effectively".

He doesn't take issue at all with the fact that the Bush administration lies, but rather that they are so very ineffective at doing so. Garrison Keillor doesn't lie to himself when it comes to recognizing that politicians lie to the people. He even off-handedly compliments the current executive branch for sounding "so resonant and believable" when they lie to us. But Keillor is beside himself with the fact that no one close to George Bush is telling him the truth. Keillor thinks that President Bush has made lying to himself as natural as peeing in the rose garden at night when he thinks he's all alone, and again, it's not the fact that the President is lying to himself that Keillor can't stand -- it's the fact that he's doing it ineffectively -- that he's not reaping Keillor's utlitarian benefit of lying -- that he's doing it at the wrong time and in the wrong measure, and without even one friend with whom he can honestly discuss anything.

Oh, brother!

Has a liberal really just gone on record admitting that the problem with the Bush administration is that they don't lie as well, as effectively, as liberals do?

Yet again, I cannot disagree with Keillor. The man is as smooth as the corn he serves on his radio show is bumpy. For that I applaud and respect him. It's just a shame that I'm not one of his one or two good friends. It means that though I'll read him and laugh at the funny things he writes, I can't ever really believe a word it.

Gerald Michael Rolfe

Nothing Special, Just E.L. Doctorow

Twice this week I've received, via email, an essay purported to be by E.L. Doctorow explaining his position on the psychology of George W. Bush, specifically, how the President deals with death -- the title on the email was "A Very Special Essay by E.L. Doctorow". It was interesting, and even mildly provocative, and here is a link to it in case anyone is interested -- The Essay


A Few Comments by Gerald Michael Rolfe on E.L. Doctorow's Essay on President Bush and Death


I'm not sure what particular specialness the title of this email is referring to when referring to Doctorow's essay below. It could be the quality of prose, I suppose, which, if not exactly special is certainly in keeping with what one would expect of someone who has spent his professional life writing successfully -- Doctorow is unarguably an accomplished craftsman of rhetoric. Or it could be the message itself that is supposed to be special although the message is not in short supply from other sources. There's nothing new about the notion that a Republican might be heartless and there's plenty of written opinion stating just that. I'm going to guess that it's the prose itself that is ostensibly special. But though I'm trained to expound at length on things literary, and I can think of ten or twenty mini-theses to argue with regard to Doctorow's prose, I've decided that I prefer instead to talk about his message. It's more interesting to me.

At first blush, Doctorow would seem to be talking about the absence of George W. Bush's brain -- after all, he (Bush) doesn't know what death is. "He hasn't the mind for it." And this wouldn't be a special observation at all, of course, because there has been an unprecedented amount of opinion disseminated over the last six years telling us that the present President is stupid. But Doctorow isn't talking about the brain. (at least that part of the brain that's normally attributed to rational thought and the collection and synthesis of knowledge). No, he's talking about Bush's heart. His conscience. His capacity for empathy, or at least an infinite lack thereof. And that's special because?

See, I've always thought that it was common knowledge that Republicans were heartless, that because they (supposedly) put rationality ahead of empathy they are therefore able to espouse 'wrong-headed' ideas like free market capitalism, trickle-down economics, tactical nuclear war, private healthcare and privatized social security. I've always thought this because brilliant writers like E.L. Doctorow and Noam Chomsky have told me this. Republicans are the ones who will unblinkingly tell a poverty stricken old woman, "Gee, I'm sorry ma'am, but you should have planned better." Right? I'm sure Tom Daschel and Al Gore would back me up on this.

I don't mean to make light of the more sensitive message in Doctorow's essay. I understand that he is taking great umbrage at the seeming injustice (dare I say evil?) of a President initiating wars of dubious merit while simultaneoulsy lacking the capacity for grief, without paying the same emotional price that basically bankrupted the spirit of Lyndon Johnson because of Viet Nam. I don't know if it's really true that Bush is bereft of a connection to the "oversoul" as such (and Doctorow's essay provides no salient evidence to support that), but I do acknowledge that if it was true then it would be disgusting.

I could take issue with many of the things in his essay, and if I didn't have a day job I would. I could effectively argue against at least a dozen premises upon which depend the thrust of Doctorow's point, and thereby undermine his argument. And I would do it from a non-Republican point of view (that's why it would be effective) because I am certaintly not a Republican.

But I don't want to.

I don't care if people think George Bush is good or evil. I don't care that E.L. Doctorow blithely drops assailable premise after assailable premise (all of them very worn out platitudes of the left) as he marches toward making a point that is really no point at all -- that we should mourn ourselves. Democrats have been teaching us that we should feel sorry for ourselves for as long as they have been pushing statism under the guise of compassion. No, I don't care about those things because they are a commonplace part of the American poltical landscape and I have been worn thin by them. For me it's enough to just rub off a little of the patina of specialness that has been attributed to the essay by others subsequent to its writing. I don't think his essay is 'very special', or even just special for that matter.

It's long been asserted that if you are a Republican at 20 you have no heart, and if you're a Democrat at 40 you have no brain, and while that's just a cute little saying, it also intimates some fundamental differences between members of the two dominant political parties in the United States. I happen to think, generally, that arguments in favor of Republican points of view pander to our rational side and those pushing Democratic points of view pander to our heart strings. This essay by Doctorow is exemplar of the latter. He brings us to the living room of the grieving families and our feeling soul is therefore supposed to buy every idea he sells us in that emotion's name. Many of us do. I try not to. The self-righteous derision of the left for George W. Bush is so transparent these days that it's a cliche. I'm not buying.

During the Clinton-hating years, Republicans were the ones who wrote these hand-wringing essays in abundance. And they too were usually a mess of reshoveled bullshit that had been passed around for generations -- too many unsubstantiated assertions that we had all heard before. But I remember one fascinating article by Nora Ephron in the mid-nineties (I'm pretty sure she's no republican) that appeared in Reason magazine. It was long, well researched, well-written, and its point was essentially that Bill Clinton couldn't think. Seriously. What's more, her argument was that Hillary did his thinking for him. I wouldn't necessarily call her article special, but I think that if you find it and read it you will see that it is far more special than Doctorow's essay here -- her argument was supported by facts and evidence -- so much so that this skeptical reader's only comment upon finishing it was, "Wow!" To this day I wonder if Bill Clinton has a thinking disorder.

So. Two writers. Two presidents. Ephron shows us the president who cannot think. Doctorow shows us the president who cannot feel. And in the meantime people are born and people die, even people who have volunteered to serve their country after having sworn to uphold the constitution of the United States and to serve the commander in chief of the military toward that end. Even people who mind their own business and treat people with love and respect until the day some asshole flies a jetliner full of other people into the side of the building where they work. Even some poor old lady in Baghdad selling pots in the street until a suicide bomb goes off next to her, or some innocent young girl who was raped in Kabul and who had to therefore be put to death by the Taliban because of the shame she supposedly brings upon her family. People die. We all know death. Some of us more than others.

And if any one of us thinks that our mortality is dependent upon who is the President of the United States then we are missing the big picture. Yes, one can find abundant anecdotal evidence to 'prove' that it does matter, that because George W. Bush is President therefore soldier A died, just as someone can also provide evidence to 'prove' that because soldier A died he made the world safer for Iraqi citizen B and American citizen C who both therefore lived and on and on. We can at least be sure that Saddam Hussein and his sons haven't killed anyone for a while.

Some people think that because America is responsible for removing the Iraqi tyranny then Americans are now therefore in greater danger. And they may be right. But do we err on the side of tyranny in the name of safety? I don't know. I don't know if Americans are more important than Iraqis. I don't know if the fact that US soldiers dying has saved Iraqi lives is a good thing or a bad thing. I know that if it's my son dying it's a bad thing. I know that if I'm an Iraqi mother whose son was released from an Iraqi torture prison it's a good thing.

And so it goes, Linda Ellerbee. People die of murder and of cancer and of suicide and of stupid accidents. People die through no fault of their own and people die because they are careless and people die because they want to and people die because they risk their lives for fun or adventure or, yes, even duty. While E.L. Doctorow is right to deride a President if he thinks that a President is subverting his own duty and thereby causing the unjust deaths of those sworn to obey him, and right to deride him still further if he thinks that president is morally bereft, he would also do well to consider that many of those soldiers believe in the mission that puts them in great peril. To tell an honorable soldier that he risks his life for nothing more than that he blindly follows a moral reprobate into fruitless battle is to tell him he is nothing -- that he is a fool. To tell that to grieving families, many of whom also believe in the rightness of the mission that cost them their beloved, is to spit in their faces. Honor bought with blood is a weighty commodity. It is heavy enough to bear for a grieving mother or wife or child without some morally outraged intellectual attempting to strip away meaning while psychologizing. I would hope that 'very special' essays pontificating on the incapacity for feeling by some, while portraying its writer as someone so full of feeling that he wants us all to mourn, would at least offer a caveat that allowed for those grieving families whose solace indeed depends upon the fact that their loved one's death had meaning -- that they are not fools. Because they are not.

And so, Mr. Special Essay Writer, forgive me for not mourning for my self. Forgive me for seeing the hollowness of your mourning, the calculated politics of your rhetoric, and the fairly well-disguised petulance in your voice (oops, I wasn't going to go into the literary critique!) Forgive me for not jumping onto your self-pity train and forgive me for not piling on the President for which neither one of us voted. Join me instead (and you can bring all your oversoul cohorts with you) in celebrating the bravery of those dead service men and women, in mourning them while marveling at what a counfounding thing is honor. Join me in celebrating the demise of two different kinds of tyranny in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of the rebirth of hope in those lands. We can mourn our dead, as we always do whether we want to or not, as we must do because of our humanity and despite the fact that some never will because they lack the capability. But if we must stoop to mourning ourselves, then we really have dropped out of the best of what it means to be human, and we might better join Abbie Hoffman and Sylvia Plath and my aunt Phyllis and my darling Beckie's brother and all the other tortured souls who hurt too much and for too long to face another day.

Call me Pollyanna -- I think we have a duty to find something positive to say.

Peace,

Gerald Michael Rolfe

What better day than this, the Fourth of July, a holiday commemorating the successful (unless you like treacle) outcome of rebellion and revolution, celebrating independence for a whole people from snooty elites in questionable attire who would keep them down by tax or by gallows. I'm proud to be writing the first entry in my first blog on this holiday that has always been my favorite.

I'm not much of a nationalist.

I don't go in for flag waving or allegiance pledging as a matter of principle. I recognize the stereotypical 'ugly American' abroad and I can even understand the disdain that some Europeans have for some Americans in their midst. When I hear that a plane crashes in, say, Turkey, I don't breathe a sigh of relief when I next hear reported there were no Americans on board. I don't even particularly think that "outsiders" should not be welcome here.

But I am an American.

I love NASCAR and corn on the cob and bleached-blondes with big tits. I love pick up trucks and college basketball and watching Deadwood on HBO. I'm a regular guy with a regular job and I consider myself fortunate as hell to live in a land that affords me this opportunity for a living standard that is, from a global perspective, wealthy. I take great pleasure in hanging around with my redneck friends at a Sunday barbecue, pitching horseshoes and dippin' Copenhagen and washing it down with ice cold Coors Lite.

And I do not feel guilty about it.

Au contraire, mon amie. I am an unapologetic believer in the Enlightenment ideals upon which this nation was founded. I am unabashedly proud of the fact that, despite great odds, the men and women who created this nation did so by kicking a tyrant's ass. I am infernally optimistic, like so many Americans are, and I am that way, at least in part, out of respect for all the people through the past few hundred years who have died so that we can live in a land of liberty.

Some of you are rolling your eyes. Some of you have already decided that I'm just another naive and jingoistic redneck, oblivious to the suffering in the world and self-righteously arrogant in my claims to pride. Uh huh. And a few more of you, no doubt, grate at my paean to Enlightenment principles being the bedrock of America's founding -- I mean, my god(dess), don't I realize that the founders were hypocrites of the highest order. espousing liberty while simultaneously codifying slavery??

I realize a few things -- and I'll speak to a lot of those things in this blog as the months go by. But the thing I realize most on Independence Day, my favorite holiday of all, is that a nation founded on principle is a rare, rare thing. A nation founded on the principles of liberty and individual sovereignty is pretty much unheard of -- except here. I don't need to spend this time of celebration mired in arguing the misapplication of those principles by certain forces or at certain times, or even in arguing the tenability of the principles themselves. There are 364 more days a year where we can tire ourselves out with argument.

Instead, the 4th of July is a day to smile, to reflect, to be glad, to understand, to party, to love, and to appreciate the legacy of our founders. This 'great experiment in democracy' that so many of us love, that so many others hate, and to which so many others around the world aspire and look toward for hope, is a country worthy of a celebration of its principles and its prosperity. The feeling I get today is the same feeling I got when the Iraqis toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein in downtown Baghdad -- it feels like fresh air and sunlight rushing into a basement -- it feels like the last day of school or the first day out of prison -- and it feels good.

Gerald Michael Rolfe
http://www.geraldmichaelrolfe.com