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I recently heard Robert Kennedy speak these words, part of a speech given at the City Club in Cleveland Ohio. A recording, of course, of when he first delivered them in that fateful, terrible year of 1968.
In the spring of that year, Dr. Martin Luther King was killed by an assassin’s bullet in Memphis. Vietnam raged, taking with it the young lives of thousands of Americans, while racial tensions and civil unrest left many parts of American cities in flames.
Desperate to make sense of it and find hope for an uncertain future, people gravitated toward Senator Kennedy’s vision and expression of purpose; of what he believed this nation can and should be.
I was ten years old then, my whole cognizant experience of the outside world up to then had begun with the assassination of Robert’s brother, followed by the menacing fear of nuclear annihilation , a war in a far-off and unknown place called Vietnam, and riots in the streets of America, all playing out on a black and white TV in our living room.
The world seemed to be falling apart, and Robert Kennedy helped many to believe that, despite all this, there was still reason to believe in America, that we could collectively live up to her founding ideals.
Bobby never made it to the presidency, of course, and nobody will ever know what might have been. If the hope and faith placed in him and his vision would have translated into a new and transformed America shall forever remain unknown.
But that there was hope on that hot June night there is no doubt; tenuous, unsure, but there it was. And just as suddenly, in that terrible year of 1968, to the horror, once again, of a nation that looked on in disbelief, it was gone. Another sucker-punch that left the world reeling. Taken by the specter of violence, the act of one fear-addled individual translating into a symptom of the sickness of the soul of which Kennedy spoke. A sickness that strikes back at any expression of its own undoing. Fear fueling violence against a message of “hope”.
I was young then, but looking back on it from today’s perspective and alleged maturity, I’m not sure if America has ever really recovered from those assassinations: JFK, MLK, and then RFK.
In these three individuals, Americans – indeed people from all over the world – dared the innocence of hope, of a belief in the potential of the human spirit, and each time it was suddenly, violently and publicly cut down.
And instead of the world Bobby believed in coming to fruition, leading us along with him, violence lingered and grew, and we withdrew into self-concern, suspicion, and cynicism.
Since then we have had very little in the way of leaders that can inspire the best in us. Certainly enough people to take control, but few, if any, to truly lead.
We have cartoonish leaders that rely solely on “swagger and bluster”, all too eager to “wield force” in the name of nothing more than their firm belief that, whatever they do, it is in the name of what is Good and Right, and so therefore they can do no wrong. Which isn’t leadership at all, really. Intransigence and arrogance is perhaps a method to maintain some control, but is not a basis for wise leadership. Fear is a poor motivator for bringing out the best in people, or giving them much hope.
Hope denotes something unfulfilled, and a promise that one day that something may be realized. And “hope” is also a word that is bandied about with seeming impunity from overuse; nonetheless diminishing its meaning, making it little more than a marketing buzzword.
There are no grand themes today. I feel uninspired by anyone that professes the audacity of thinking he or she should be president (though admittedly, the bar is currently at a remarkably low ebb).
I’m waiting for something or someone to come along that can counter what then becomes “hopelessness”, but if it is there, it remains quiet. There are no clear voices that I can hear that inspires much else but fear and division; at best confusion and well-packaged rhetoric.
It is too easy, however, to give in. If there are none to offer us hope and inspire us, then we have no choice but to do it ourselves.
And how do we do that? By reflecting on the words of people that at least had the vision of a better world, the eloquence to express it, and the courage to truly believe in it.
To destroy the individual is not to destroy the idea they expressed. We can build on that.
Those were desperate times back then, even a pointy-headed, half-blind kid of ten could tell that.
These are pretty desperate times now, even though it seems that many choose to ignore it. And it is the nature of how things sometimes shift balance that a voice will appear on the horizon. One with a vision of a better world. Not one the “offers a desert and calls it peace”, but that inspires a next, halting step to a better world, a sustainable and just society, and a chance to find a “Once and Future King”.
That’s what I’m hoping anyway.
Filed under Chastise Man, Mumbling to Myself, People, Politics by 
I can hear it now: “give it a break, already; Kerry lost”
Or maybe he’s just a loser, I don’t know. This isn’t really about Kerry being president or not. It’s about a book I’m reading by Greg Palast called Armed Madhouse.
Palast details the various problems with the 2004 election and makes a solid case for enough tainted or uncounted votes to account for a Kerry victory. Meaning, I suppose, that Bush was never actually elected president.
All this doesn’t portend nicely for how things will go down in 2008 or 2012 or…
Believe me, that’s really depressing. It means that even if everybody gets to vote, not everybodys vote counts, and some data firm somewhere (owned by a Republican Evangelical Christian) decides whose vote does count. If that is true we’ve failed the generation of the Founding Fathers and what they left us to “protect and defend”.
Chastise Man is vexed. He’s mad as hell. He knows that he now must abandon his limited skill with the turn of a phrase and defer to the closing paragraphs on Palast’s chapter entitled The Con:
…Yet most still voted for him.
What we witnessed on November 2, 2004, was a 59 million strong army of pinheads on parade ready to gamble away their pensions so long as George Bush makes sure that boys kill each other, not kiss; who feel right proud that our uniformed services can kick some scrawny brown people in the ass in some far-off place when we’re mad and can’t find Osama; who can’t bring themselves to vote for a guy with a snooty Boston Accent who’s never been to a NASCAR tractor pull and who certainly thinks anyone who does is a low-Q beer-burping blockhead.In his vulturous, brain-damaged way, Zell Miller was right: Stand up for Black voters and the redneck boobs will take their revenge. So the election came down to this: Nitwits who think Ollie North’s a hero not a conman, who can’t name their congressman, who believe Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were going steady, who can’t tell Afghanistan from souvlaki stand and, bloated with lies and super-sized fries, clomped to the polls 59 million strong to vent their small-minded hatreds on us all.
I fear the election was an intelligence test that American flunked.”
Chastise Man bows in awe of such a finely-tuned, deadly serious, and so very accurate rant.
Filed under Chastise Man, George Bush, People, Politics, Things That Make Me Cranky by
I work occasionally with a business consultant and earlier this week we were discussing the possibilities for The History Blog Project.
The conversation led to John relating the story of his recent conversation with two young men in his favorite Austin coffeehouse, one soon to be a senior in high school and the other just graduated. John asked them if they knew what the July 4th holiday was all about.
They both knew that it was about American Independence. But from whom?
One thought we had liberated ourselves from the iron grip of Imperial Spain. “No, no”, said the other, “It’s France”.
And when?
“1965?”
I was not there, I did not hear this exchange. But John has little reason to make such a thing up.
(I have a distinct memory of sitting on our couch in Denver during the Christmas holiday of 1965, watching the Vietnam war on television. At least I think it was Vietnam…)
Who to chastise here… The young men that have made it thus far in their American education without even a rudimentary understanding of our history? Or the adults charged with imparting this rudimentary knowledge? Or the society in general that allows both the adults and children to so egregiously miss the boat.
Take your pick.
How many of the young soldiers in Iraq are there, filled with talk of Fighting for Freedom – or the justification du jour – that don’t even know the history of their own fight for freedom? Is their idea of America only what they’ve seen since the election of George Bush and 9/11?
Is this what America has become? The vision of George Bush’s messianic mission – “crusade”, as he himself put it – and young men, products of mainstream American education, believing that July 4th is a day to celebrate our independence from France on that fateful day in 1965?
This is what I think: If you can’t name at least six people who signed the Declaration of Independence (that’s right, six. Go crack open a book, or better yet, google it if you need to), who we were declaring independence from, and the year it was signed, then I think you should not be allowed to go to preemptive war in a foreign country until you’ve taken – and passed – an American history class (one hopes George Bush would pass muster).
If we can’t insure at least this much, then we shouldn’t put a gun in their hands and send them to a country whose culture their own leader doesn’t understand.
Is anybody paying attention here?
Filed under Chastise Man, History Blogs, People, Politics, War in Iraq by
George Bush vetoed legislation yesterday that would have eased restrictions for federal funding of stem cell research, stating that it is a “moral line" he will "not cross”.
A moral line Bush is unwilling to cross.
Let’s then consider what “moral lines” Bush is apparently willing to cross (this is the short list):
- He has no problem lying to the American people (and the world) about the reasons for invading Iraq and to shift those reasons as each one previous exposes itself as illegitimate
- He feels justified in lying to the American people about illegal wiretaps and surveillance on Americans
- He allows his administration to expose a covert CIA officer only because her husband calls him on his disingenuous assertion that Iraq had obtained nuclear “yellow cake” from Africa. And simply ignores his own previous claim that the people responsible (Dick Cheney) will not work in his administration
- He sees fit to appoint lackey supporters to key administration posts instead of competent administrators, helping exacerbate the criminally incompetent response to hurricane Katrina
- He feels justified in invoking fear, through repeated use of the words “nine-eleven”, to cling to power, harass his opponents, and excuse ill-advised policies
- He is comfortable with abusing and violating the constitution as he sees fit, causing many to fear a dangerous slide into a “monarchial presidency”
- He is willing to use torture as a means of interrogation
- He has no problem backing out of his own commitment to the Kyoto protocol and to do it in a way that then EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman describes as “flipping the bird to the rest of the world”. A posture he holds throughout his presidency, causing a former administrator to suggest that, according to Bush, America’s job is to do what it will, and the job of the rest of the world is to “deal with it”
- He has allowed, through deceit, incompetence, arrogance, and disdain for decency, the death of thousands of Americans and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Iraquis in a colossally foolish, mistaken, mismanaged, and immoral war
- He has allowed war and disaster profiteering from companies such as Halliburton, looting the American taxpayer for 10 billion dollars (money that is simply “missing”)
- He proffered claims that the war in Iraq would only cost $50 billion – current estimates of the cost of the war in Iraq now stand at $1.2 trillion. That’s 1,200,000,000,000.00 (check me on that, I don’t often use such numbers – do I have enough zeros?)
- He claims a unique relationship with God, as if he has been specially chosen by the Almighty to lead the country down the abysmal path of his presidency. If this is true, God must hate us
- He claims he is “for life” in vetoing funding of stem cell research, something that would help ease human suffering and disease. And yet Mr. Bush shows no compunction crossing moral line after moral line; opportunities lost, resources squandered, families torn apart, and thousands of lives ruined. All as a direct result of his arrogance, his intransigence, and his incompetence – in other words, his presidency.
If this is moral leadership, then: 
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Filed under Chastise Man, George Bush, News, People, Politics, Things That Make Me Cranky, War in Iraq by
The irony seems completely lost on the range of republican presidential candidates whom, save Ron Paul of Texas, either implicitly or 
expressly support the use of “tactical” nuclear weapons should Iran appear to be on the verge of acquiring a centrifuge enabling them to produce nuclear weapons.
I don’t think it’s a good idea that Iran posses nuclear weapons; I don’t think it’s a good idea that anyone posses nuclear weapons. But the genie is out of the bottle and using nuclear weapons to prevent the use or acquisition of the same is foolish and calling it “tactical” is a lie. There is no such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon; their very use has strategic implications. Using a nuclear weapon is a strategy. And not a very good one.
Should we preemptively strike another nation with nuclear weapons – call them “tactical” if you want –we guarantee that sometime, someplace, the same will be used against us. It may not be the thirty minute response those of us old enough to really remember the Cold War came to expect in the sixties and seventies, but it will come.
And will we then preemptively nuke other countries as they insist on their right to exploit the genie we unleashed in the New Mexico desert in 1945? Where does it end? It is only in restraint that any moral leadership is possible.
George Bush has gotten the ball rolling in the abrogation of that moral leadership. It seems the Republicans that wish to be president have plans to finish the job.
I think we’d better decide just what sort of nation we intend on becoming.
Filed under Chastise Man, News, People, Politics, Things That Make Me Cranky, War by
We’ve still got a year and a half to survive of it, but I came up with these potential little ditties as possible legacies for the principal players:
Dick Cheney:
He came, he saw, he conquered. And what he didn’t conquer, he shot in the face.
Donald Rumsfeld:
Sometimes you go to war with the Secretary of Defense you have, not with the one you wish you had (in which case, you wouldn’t have gone to war in the first place).
Paul Wolfowitz:
Only got the cost of the Iraq war to the American taxpayer off by half a trillion or so.
Condi Rice:
Should have stayed home the day George Bush was conducting job interviews.
George W. Bush
He led the nation in difficult times, he made the times in which he led more difficult.
Georgie, we knew ye much too well…
Filed under Chastise Man, Mumbling to Myself, News, People, Politics, War in Iraq by
I’m currently in the process of writing a short biography of Albert Einstein in preparation of launching my next “history blog”. 
The beauty of the internet is the ability to sit in your chair at home and do fairly extensive research. Obviously there is no shortage of material on Einstein online, some of it contradictory, sometimes poorly written, and then suddenly it becomes hateful.
I noticed in Wikipedia that access to editing the open source had been locked out due to “vandalism”. I pondered that for a moment then moved on, not really thinking too much about what sort of vandalism it might be.
Then today, while looking for a little more information about the length of Einstein’s employment at the patent office in Bern, I stumbled on a website called “The Christian Nation”. The specific page included my search text but the gist of the article was that Einstein stole all his ideas and was really an incompetent idiot (after all, he started at the patent office as an inspector third class. Failing to mention, of course, that most people just starting at the patent office likely start on the bottom rung of the hierarchy).
Then seeing links to pages describing the holocaust as a very clever hoax, things went from bad to worse.
Einstein wasn’t perfect. He was human. He didn’t treat his first wife very well, he cheated on both his wives. But he was certainly one of the great people that tower above the vast sea of humanity, upon whose shoulders the rest of us view the world.
The problem of course, in regard to the authors of this website, is that Einstein was a Jew.
I was about to list all the subgroups of humans that are hated by these people. It’s better to do it the other way: unless you’re a white, American, “Christian” (in this case a perversion of the term), male; well, then you’re out. God is against you.
I know that everything under the sun that people have thought of is expressed somewhere out there in the web. I know the world is a troubled place; but it is still disturbing to read this crap. It makes you feel like you need to take a bath and that you’re someplace you shouldn’t be.
But I was just trying to learn about Albert Einstein. I wasn’t prepared to stumble into this venomous philosophy of hate.
That makes me real cranky.
So was Einstein an idiot?
Perhaps; and maybe George Bush is a genius.
Filed under Chastise Man, Mumbling to Myself, People, Things That Make Me Cranky by
Mai Mai rebels killed one wildlife officer and wounded three other people in Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Virunga National Park recently.
They warn that they will kill endangered mountain gorillas if there is an attempted retaliation.
Last year the militia used machine guns to slaughter hundreds of hippopotamus.
Filed under Environment, News, People, Things That Make Me Cranky by
A news item I came across reports that former president Jimmy Carter describes current president George Bush as “the worst”.
The full story is here.
It’s painful for all of us sentient beings to watch Bush and endure his devastating presidency. One can only imagine how hard it is for an ex-president. Especially, perhaps, Bush’s own father.
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george bush jimmy carter politics government news presidency
Most reading this know that I was employed by Grace Cathedral as a sound engineer from April of 2001 to the spring of 2005. For part of that time I was considered their "chief" engineer.
For the most part, I enjoyed my work at the Cathedral and was happy to play a role in the Cathedral’s mission. I particularly liked Dean Alan Jones’ outlook and enjoyed listening to his sermons (for which, I suppose one could say, I was paid to do). I still remember the Christmas season of ’04 when I was preparing for some Christamssy kind of service on a Monday night (I think it involved the Mayor lighting a tree or some such nonsense); I was fiddling with something and the Dean’s voice came from behind: Tom, please don’t leave us!
As honored as I was by the Dean’s plea, I left anyway. All my urging to upgrade a 30+ old sound system had been ignored by my then boss who told me that the equipment status was "replace on failure only". Imagine if, say, an airline took such an attitude to equipment maintenance and upgrade.
In any case, I knew that it was only a matter of time before I’d be left holding the bag of a disintegrating sound system that was installed the year I graduated from high school. I felt that such a grand Cathedral deserved better. Since that time I have remained "on the grapevine" as it were with several independent sources of information of the goings-on at Grace.
Since my departure (and the departure of my former boss) the wireless microphone system has been upgraded, the mixing console has been replaced (of which I helped the Cathedral financially, if I may know be so immodest as to shed my anonymity in that regard), and I have now learned that there are finally plans to replace the ancient amplifiers, equalizers, crossovers, and speakers.
Apparently this past Easter’s services didn’t go so well due to the sound system, and the project is now on a fast track. Such is the consequence of a "replace on failure only" policy.
But here’s the rub. I’ve heard from independent sources the following:
- The project is now in committee with recommendations from inexperienced technicians or completely non-technical board members as to the kind of system that should be installed
- There has been a recommendation to alter the acoustics of the Cathedral by using styrofoam on the ceiling (which, by the way, is seven stories up in any case)
Oh my friggin’ God. First of all, to alter the acoustics in any way is, to my mind, an abomination, a sin, and an affront to all that is holy. Let the Cathedral sing!!
That magnificent space is its own sound system and our meager efforts at electronic sound reinforcement is primarily only to enhance speech intelligibility and to a small degree help get the sound of the choir out "into the house" a bit, to help the cathedral and not to overpower it. To attempt any more is a fool’s errand.
The proposal now seems to be to deaden the acoustics and put some sort of rock n’ roll line array speaker system (the kind anyone has seen who has been to a rock or pop show within the past ten years) that would splay sound all over those granite walls, destroy speech intelligibility, and compromise – nay ruin – the acoustic integrity of the Cathedral.
It is apparent that idiots, knaves, and boobs are now in charge of the project. Sound design by committee. And by a committee comprised, apparently, of folks that have never pushed up a fader in their lives, let alone done so in a cathedral. They haven’t a clue as to what they are doing, and I fear that they will irreparably damage the the space for years to come while wasting the good people’s money in the process
Needless to say, this is a job for Chastise Man and I have expressed my concerns (in a much more polite tone, of course) to Mark Stanger, my inside connection to the heights of canonical power within the church hierarchy.
If you care about proper sound and preserving acoustic spaces – I mean STYROFOAM for the love of God – then send an email to Grace Cathedral. And let ‘em know Chastise Man sent you.
grace cathedral sound sound engineering acoustics cathedral sound
Filed under Mumbling to Myself, People, Religion, Things That Make Me Cranky by
