Poetry Friday - a short and dreadful poem

this is a short and dreadful poem
about love. what else?
when you like awake wrapped in your caftan
without a comforter
alone like an abandoned baby tangled in a shawl

think of the moon locked in its orbit
in the scorching vacuum and darkness
with always the same face turned to the earth
unable to look away, unable ever to come nearer.
this is a short and dreadful poem
about love. what else?

23 January 1977

But How Many Divisions Does He Have?

Now and then over the past couple of decades I've subscribed to In These Times, most recently from 2006 to 2007, so I'm still on their e-mail list. Today I got their latest e-mail newsletter, which included a link to an article, "Moving Forward Without Dogma," by one of their regular online columnists, Ken Brociner. It's a painfully bad piece, badly written and devoid of thought.

Brociner praises "progressives" for having "approached politics in a principled and pragmatic manner" in the past year. They didn't make any third-party moves, and better yet, progressives resisted the "temptation of political purists to sit on the sidelines as a presidential election hung in the balance because the Democratic nominee wasn’t progressive enough."

In short, the unrestrained progressive activism during the campaign signals a weakening of the dogma that has previously stifled the left. To build on this momentum, we should do all we can to further minimize both doctrinaire thinking and shrill rhetoric within our ranks. By doing so, we’ll be able to enhance our movement’s ability to communicate with the American public.

As I said, Brociner writes badly, tossing a fine salad of clichés: "doctrinaire thinking," "shrill rhetoric," "enhance our movement's ability to communicate with the American public" (as though liberals and progressives weren't part of the American public). Judging by the articles listed in the sidebar, "dogma" is one of Brociner's cusswords. And "unrestrained progressive activism"? Where did that come from? What does it even refer to, in the context of the Obama campaign, which harnessed the energy of many progressives in the service of a center-right candidate? Oh, I don't know... "unrestrained" sounds so cool, like an ad for tampons or feminine hygiene spray; it's marketing talk, not argument.

Brociner begins his article by exulting, "Liberals, progressives and leftists worked their tails off to help elect Barack Obama—and this time we won!" Did "we"? What exactly did "we" win? Yes, "our" candidate was elected, but he's given nothing back to the "liberals, progressives and leftists" who worked their tails off to help elect him. His advisors and cabinet appointees are overwhelmingly right-wing, with the notable exception of Hilda Solis, who's under attack from the Republicans for her pro-labor stance. (There's a good article on Solis at the In These Times site. The author thinks that the Republican attacks won't succeed in blocking her appointment. I hope he's right; Obama has already backed down on support for contraception in his economic stimulus plan, under attack from the usual Republican suspects.) Brociner sounds like a sports fan to me, happy because "we" -- the corporate-owned team he roots for -- won. After his victory, Obama moved quickly and decisively to reward his corporate and party supporters; he has not been so generous to liberals, progressives, and leftists.

(P.S. February 1: It turns out that it isn't the Republicans who are blocking Solis' nomination in committee; it's the Democrats, with Obama's encouragement.)

Argument generally is in short supply in Brociner's piece. All is not well in Progressiveland, for "even progressive icons can, at times, have a negative influence on the movement’s ideological understanding of the world." Brociner has a bone to pick with two such "icons", Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein.

He begins by praising Chomsky in a way that strongly suggests he knows him only as an icon; he doesn't seem to have read his writings much.

One of Chomsky’s many strengths has been his uncanny ability to deconstruct propaganda and, in doing so, expose the hypocritical—and often criminal—nature of our government’s actions.

Chomsky has often complained about fans who think he "deconstructs" anything, claiming in his endearing Old-Left Philistine way that he doesn't even know what "deconstruct" means. Well, neither does Brociner. As Chomsky has always insisted, what he does is nothing particularly complex or technical; he just reads a lot and pays attention to what he reads, much as the journalist I. F. Stone used to do.

However, while Chomsky’s biting skepticism towards practically everything that emanates from official sources is generally on target, his bitterness, has at times, come to cloud his better judgment. Furthermore, his writings all too often tend to convey an overly conspiratorial view of world politics.

Ah, "bitterness." Numerous people have accused Chomsky of such things. I've been trying to track down a review of one his books in The Nation, from the 1990s I believe, which lamented that while the great man had been on-target during the Vietnam era, as time went on and he was ignored by the Powers That Be, his work took on a harsh and bitter tone. This prompted me to reread American Power and the New Mandarins, Chomsky's first book of political writing. It seemed to me that if anything, Chomsky was harsher and more excoriating when he was younger. Not that it matters: even if he was bitter, that wouldn't prove him wrong.

For example, when the Clinton administration finally did the right thing by intervening in order to stop Milosevic’s brutal aggression in Bosnia (1995) and Kosovo (1999), Chomsky adopted positions that assigned such sinister motives to NATO that they crossed over into a form of demonization.

According to Chomsky the U.S.-led NATO intervention in Bosnia was really driven by the interests of “wealth and power.” As for Kosovo, Chomsky pronounced that “in brief, it was well understood by the NATO leadership that the bombing was not a response to the huge [Serbian] atrocities in Kosovo, but was their cause, exactly as anticipated.” (Monthly Review, Sept. 2008)

Brociner doesn't try to explain why Chomsky was wrong about US motives in Bosnia and Kosovo -- he just knows, dogmatically, that the US "finally did the right thing", and for the right reasons. Chomsky doesn't merely "pronounce," he always marshalls evidence for his arguments and claims, and he documented that the NATO bombing was a cause of Serbian atrocities, not a response to them, and that NATO anticipated this result. If Brociner objects to what Chomsky says, he needs at least to point to evidence that supports his position, not indulge in name-calling.

Brociner continues:

Fast forward to the 2008 presidential election and we hear a similarly dogmatic—and cynical—reaction from Chomsky. “So, every year, the advertising industry gives a prize to, you know, to the best marketing campaign of the year. This year, Obama won the prize. Beat out Apple company. The best marketing campaign of 2008. Which is correct, it is essentially what happened.”

First of all, it happens to be true that Barack Obama's presidential campaign won an Advertising Age award for marketer of the year, beating out Apple Computers. So who's cynical, Chomsky or the advertising mavens who anointed Obama as one of them? Nor was Chomsky being dogmatic: he explained in detail (via Distant Ocean) why he said what he did, and what he meant by it. If Brociner objects, he needs to construct an argument, not call Chomsky names. But that would be, like, hard.

Second, if Brociner wants to lump Chomsky together with "purists" who "sit on the sidelines as a presidential election hung in the balance because the Democratic nominee wasn’t progressive enough", he's in error, to put it as gently and neutrally as I can. Chomsky has always urged leftists to vote in elections, including Presidential elections, and 2008 was no exception. Even when the differences between the candidates are small, as they were in 2004 and 2008, "given the magnitude of U.S. power, ‘small differences can translate into large outcomes.’” This is an utterly pragmatic, non-dogmatic position, and a fairly well-known one, since numerous leftists have criticized Chomsky for it. But evidently Ken Brociner is unaware of it, perhaps because it clashes with his shrill, dogmatic rhetoric. Or maybe he just considers it unacceptable to express any doubts whatever about the candidate to which a liberal, progressive, or leftist has hitched his or her star.

Brociner takes the same tack with Naomi Klein; I'll leave the dissection of his critique as an exercise for the reader.

He concludes his piece with a ringing peroration.

In order to effectively move forward, we’ll need to reject any and all dogma—wherever and whomever it may come from. By doing so, we’ll be in a better position to understand the nuances of the obstacles and opportunities that we will be facing in the critical years ahead.

Ouch. That is some bad writing, but I agree with him this far: it's always a good idea to reject dogma, including the dogmas of people like Ken Brociner.

Cult of Personality

Back in the early years of this century (pardon that, but I couldn't resist), I worked with a student who told me that she didn't want to discuss George W. Bush's conduct as President because she knew him personally. She'd met him at a state dinner while he was governor of Texas, and she liked him.

I respect her feelings, but something is wrong when adults (and as a college student old enough to vote, she was and is an adult) can't even conceive of a difference between their feelings about a person and their judgment of his or her conduct. This seems to be a basic human trait, though; I'm beginning to realize that what I consider a basic necessity is for most people an ability to be gained, if at all, only slowly and painfully, with regret that it's even necessary. It's so much nicer and easier simply to judge people by their cuteness or lack of it, by their accent, by their shared fascination with this or that Saturday-morning children's tv show, by the color of their skin, by the way they dress or walk or wear their hair.

One reason I've always liked online discussion is that you get to know people only by their words and, ahem, ideas. It took me a while to figure out that for most people, this is a major downside. It especially seems to bother people who are used to getting their way either by being cute and charming, or by being threatening. Suddenly the physical presence they've always relied on doesn't work any more. Wink! Grin! Twinkle! Menace! Loom! Argh! What's the matter with this thing?

It took me a while to figure out that, as I mentioned once before, many of the political / intellectual writers I follow know each other in person, and underlying their debates with one another is their personal friendships and enmities. Which, of course, they're entitled to -- they're only human, after all -- but it sometimes introduces undercurrents and weirdnesses in their published writing that interfere with their argument and analysis. I am still haunted by the memory of mentioning to a friend a scholar of Judaism I'd been reading with interest. Her response: "Oh, I've heard he's really hard to get along with!" I was boggled. What does that have to do with his scholarship? I'll never meet him; nor, as far as I know, did my friend. But gossip takes precedence, I guess.

So, of course, I've been working my way around to our new God-King, Barack Obama. As I've said before, I suspect I would like him if I ever met him. (Weirdly, over the past few weeks I've had several dreams in which he was a character.) But that had nothing to do with how I voted, or how I'm going to evaluate his presidency. For many people, though, it's all that matters. I decided to write this posting after I found a comment on another blog by someone who found it "amazing to feel such closeness--true 'intimacy' with the occupants of 1600 Penn..." Even if she does (and I think it's a self-deluding fantasy), so what? A good many Americans felt "true 'intimacy'" with George W. Bush and his lovely family, or with Sarah Palin and hers.

Still, I admit to a slight, infinitesimal sense of inner conflict. My friend Anne Haines mentioned at her blog that

Later on, I watched an online video of the Obamas dancing at one of the balls -- not the ballroom dancing with each other, but cutting loose a bit and dancing with the crowd. And there was Barack, big as life, DOING THE BUMP.

... with a teenaged girl who asked him to, it turned out when I found a clip.

It's true, Obama is a good dancer, if a bit too contained. (On the other hand, can you imagine the corporate media's reaction if he'd let loose and done something fancy?) I wouldn't mind dancing with him myself. And it was sweet to see him dance with the girl; I'm sure she'll tell her grandchildren about it. But a few days later, Obama was killing children in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He's talked about how he'd feel if his daughters were killed by Palestinian missiles; but what if they were killed by US missiles, fired at the orders of the President of the United States?

Then there's this photo. Had I known before that Obama is a southpaw?


(But then, so is McCain; and so were Ford, Reagan, Bush I, and Bill Clinton. The horror ... the horror... ) That gives me a sense of fellow-feeling with him. Intimacy, though? Huh-uh. He also used that hand to sign the orders that killed civilians a few days later.

Finally, there's this photo by White House photographer Pete Souza:

Such a likable man, really. But he's taken on a job that enables him, requires him to do horrible things, and he's shown no hesitation about doing them.

Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv

(Photo from Chris Floyd)

Okay, credit where credit is due. Like so many other people, I was pleased that President Obama plans to close Guantanamo, though I also agree with Michael J. Smith: "How we would laugh at some foreigner seeking our approval with this kind of initiative. Ahmadinejad: Okay, I'll stop hanging gay guys.... Next year. But this year -- hoo-ha! Line 'em up and keep 'em coming!" And I was pleased that Obama has forbidden torture, though with Chris Floyd I notice that he actually limited "the overt use of torture to the torture techniques approved of by the Pentagon -- although his own intelligence supremo, Dennis Blair, refuses to say if "waterboarding" should be considered torture, and assures Congress that he will examine 'whether certain coercive techniques have been effective'; i.e. which torture techniques should be continued." All this, "while leaving alone the Pentagon's numerous and far worse gulag centers -- where thousands of Terror War captives languish without charges, representation, or the slightest legal recourse." Too many people on the left still believe that the US didn't torture before Bush came along, and that if we could just put the Bush years down the memory hole, the US would have an admirably high moral character, and once again be the beacon of freedom, a light unto the nations. (Oh wait, that's Israel.)

I was also pleased that Obama rescinded Bush's gag rule on abortion for clinics that receive US funding, though I wonder what he'll do to prevent what he criticized as "a back and forth debate that has served only to divide us." As usual where US politics are concerned, I hadn't noticed much "debate" on this or any other issue, though Obama promised to start a "conversation" about it. Should this sort of matter be subject to Presidential decree in the first place? Bush the Elder initiated the gag rule, Clinton rescinded it, Dubya replaced it, and now Obama has rescinded it again. That's not a "debate," as Obama called it, but power politics. People's lives around the world should not depend (though they do, I know) on the vagaries of American voters.

There've been some intriguing reports (via) that Obama dropped his touchy-feely bipartisan mask in meetings with Republican congressional leaders who tried to dictate some features of the economic stimulus package. "I won," he reminded them. Even better, he told them (via) that "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done." And I wouldn't be So Gay if I didn't also point and giggle and say rude things about House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH)'s complaint, "You know, I'm concerned about the size of the package." We all have our little insecurities.

But I'm not pleased, to put it mildly, that Obama promptly began killing people. (And dammit, Chris Floyd beat me to the title I'd thought of for this posting.) Just dusky foreigners, mind you, of no great concern to right-thinking Americans; and it was really no surprise given the man's belligerence, expressed in speech after speech during the election campaign, but that's no excuse for anti-Americanism! We may not be perfect, but our virtues greatly outweigh our defects, especially now that we have this inspiring, shiny-new President!

Nor am I pleased by Obama's pronouncement on the Israel-Palestine conflict. It's the same old lies -- as Noam Chomsky said on Democracy Now!, it's basically the Bush administration's position, though that should be no surprise by now. Obama treated Palestinian deaths and Israeli as if they were equivalent (instead of the 100-to-1 ratio that actually obtained), demanded that the Palestinians relinquish their right to self-defense without making similar demands of Israel, and spoke as though Palestinian Authority President Abbas (whose term of office expired on January 9 but refuses to step down, claiming that he has the authority to extend his term, not that that bothers Obama) spoke for all Palestinians. In a move worthy of the Ministry of Truth, Obama simply erased the fact that Hamas is the democratically-elected government of Palestine.

Of course, Obama here shares the attitudes of most of the American elite. John Caruso pointed out this reality-challenged headline from the Washington Post: "Battered Gaza Still In the Grip Of Hamas." (There seems to be general acknowledgment that the Israeli massacres increased Hamas' popularity among Palestinians.) And let's not forget Israeli elites, such as the former air force colonel also quoted by John Caruso: “When you have a Palestinian kid facing an Israeli tank, how do you explain that the tank is actually David and the kid is Goliath?"

(Photo from The Distant Ocean)

Poetry Friday - What does withdrawal do

What does withdrawal do to a fetus?
I've pulled my knees up to my chin
and I'm hiding. Seven months spent
banging up against my mother's bones,
I cut my wrists and didn't die, what
an abortion. Took seven Seconal, a dozen
Darvon, spent seven hours throwing up.
Hands holding my head under the water:
You're bad, you're bad. I don't even deserve
to die. Can't you see how bad I am?
Seven months of nightmares, things I wanted
to remember now I wish I could forget.
Sometimes I feel like I'm being torn to
pieces. I don't want to come out of here.
I don't want to be locked up. It's different
when the door is locked from this side.

---------------------------------
A found poem, from sometime in 1977 or 1978.

The Fire This Time

It's become routine for Korean people being dislocated by "redevelopment" programs to protest. But under President Lee Myung-bak's administration, such routine democratic behavior is more and more embattled. Lee is hostile to citizens who behave like citizens instead of docile employees, as shown by his paranoid response to last summer's candlelight vigils against US beef imports.

Tuesday morning the Seoul police raided a sit-in on the rooftop of a five-story commercial building in the Yongsan district. Accounts of what happened vary, naturally, but it is certain that six people were killed, one of them a policeman, and twenty-three were injured when a fire broke out. The police claim that the protestors threw Molotov cocktails which ignited cans of paint thinner. The protestors say they threw Molotov cocktails after the police turned water cannons on them (in January weather, on a fifth-story rooftop!). It was the first day of the protest, and the police seem to have moved in without attempting to deal with the protesters first. According to The Hankyoreh, 1600 police were involved in the action; I haven't yet seen any report of the number of protesters.

I have mixed feelings about this. The Hankyoreh chides the police for moving carelessly into "an area they knew to be dangerous", though I'd criticize them more for using water cannons in such a confined space -- were they trying to kill people? On the other hand, the protesters brought Molotov cocktails into an area they knew to be dangerous -- 70 containers of highly inflammable paint thinner! -- and threw at least one of them; for once, the police claims seem to coincide with the protestors'. I support people who fight back against police violence, but the weapons must be chosen sensibly. It's lucky more people weren't killed, and both sides share the blame.

And now it seems that the families of the dead (except for the one police officer, of course) have been impeded by the police "from confirming the identities of their bodies".

In addition to being consistently irresponsible towards the victims’ families, police are using harsh tactics against citizens protesting the deaths. They used a water cannon against 1,500 people who held a candlelight protest late Tuesday night, then engaged angrier protesters in a stone-throwing battle. then the police threw rocks back at the more active protesters. Roughly twenty people were injured at the candlelight protest, including members of the press, and were taken to area hospitals. Two people were arrested.

Police even used violence against members of a National Assembly fact-finding mission.

According to statements from the Renewal of Korea Party Wednesday, party member Yu Won-il identified himself as a member of the National Assembly but was verbally abused and beaten, with police demanding to know “if you can do what you want ‘cause you’re a member of the National Assembly.” He has since been diagnosed with a concussion, requiring two weeks of treatment.

In other news, the blogger known as Minerva has been indicted "on charges of spreading false information through online articles to destabilize the foreign exchange market." The Korea Times is a bit more critical than I'd have expected, noting again that the information Minerva posted was accurate, not false.

(P.S. January 24: The Hankyoreh reports:

A recording of a police radio transmission made just before Tuesday’s deadly crackdown on a protest in the Yongsan district revealed that police armed and hired security guards to participate in a joint operation to evict tenants and protesters. The record, which contradicts the police’s assertion that it did not mobilize the contracted personnel, is expected to influence an ongoing investigation being conducted by the prosecution.

This news fits with the Korean government's increasing tendency to try to repress dissent under Lee Myung-bak. It's depressing to think that Koreans should have to fight again the battles they fought for freedom in the years before 1987. But at least, under present conditions, it's a little easier to expose the government's lies, and it may be possible to fight this out in the courts rather than the streets. More information here.)

See Those Children Dressed in Red (and Blue)

I've been trying to remember the last time I watched the inauguration of a US President on TV. Probably John F. Kennedy in 1961, if we watched it at school. I don't remember watching Lyndon Johnson's inauguration in 1965, but who knows? It's virtually certain I wouldn't have watched Nixon's in 1969; by then I hardly watched TV anyway. Today was a work day, so I couldn't have watched the ceremonies for Barack Obama even if I'd wanted to, which I didn't.

In general I don't watch these spectacles, these extravaganzas. The last such a one that I saw was the opening ceremonies of the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000, because I happened to be in a bar waiting for a friend to arrive; I was surprised to find myself moved. Before that, the 1969 moon landing. I must lack the gene or whatever makes one susceptible to such things.

Perhaps I'll dissect Obama's inaugural address some other time. It's a cloud of gaseous platitudes that leave a nasty aftertaste. But for now, I'll recommend to you Chris Floyd's essay on the festivities, John Caruso's brief comparison of Obama and MLK, and this remark I overheard today by a student in the dorm where I work: "For me, I think it's the idea of change ..." Not the reality, apparently. I think that a lot of Obama's fans feel that way. All in all, I feel like I'm in a replay of 1993, when Clinton took office to the snap, crackle and pop of expoding conservative heads, and the frothy foam of hope flecked the lips of liberals and progressives.

Finally, Dave Lindorff had this article at Counterpunch, with a link to the video clip above. It's not really about the inauguration, but the concert that took place a couple of nights ago. Lindorff said:

Maybe symbolism is just symbolism, but the optimist in me says that Barack Obama's invitation to former Communist and life-long political activist Pete Seeger (along with Bruce Springstein and 89-year-old Pete's full-throated grandson Tao) to sing Woody Guthrie's anthem This Land is Your Land, and the fact that the once blacklisted folk legend chose to do not just the feel-good, approved-for-public-school-music-class-use verses, but all the verses, including Woody's long-censored "commie" verses, and that Obama was right there singing those verses along with the rest of the million people on the Mall, has to mean something.

That I had to see! Seeger looks remarkably spry for 89; look how he trots off the stage at the end of the song. There's one second, maybe two seconds of Obama at 3:28, who isn't singing as far as I can tell -- it looks to me like he's saying something to the person on his right. He rocks gently from side to side in time with the music, but I think he looks a little bored. More like "Who let these old hippies in?" than "Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh." Did Obama invite Seeger et al. to sing this song? Someone, I think, has let his optimism get the better of him.