Category Archives: Political Discourse

9/11: Never Forget…

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9/11 Memorial

As each anniversary of this horrific event rolls around, there are the reminders to never forget. We renew our resolve to never forget the people who perished, the loved ones who continue without them, and the people who are still dying from the diseases contracted on that day and during the clean-up of ground zero. I believe that one of the tacit reasons we challenge ourselves to never forget is the underlying desire to strike back at the perpetrators of 9/11. I know that I am guilty.

That said, I must also remember to rise above my desire for revenge and to never forget that we have also been the perpetrators of obscene acts, as have the Germans, and the Japanese, and the North Koreans, and the Jihadists, and…well the list could, and does, go on and on.

The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor to eliminate our interference of their imperialistic goals and to end the oil embargo we had put upon them. (Just as a side note, we are now contemplating doing this with China as they flex their imperialistic muscles). They chose a military target and of all who died on December 7th, only 103 civilians were killed. A little more than three and a half years later we unleashed a new era by dropping two atomic bombs on Japan. We chose to drop these weapons of mass destruction on largely civilian targets, not military ones. Even though the battle for Iwo Jima ended almost four months before Hiroshima, all remaining civilian population had been removed from the island and bombing that instead, might have proved just as effective a demonstration and prevented a civilian death toll 75 times greater than 9/11. Just consider the fact that the bomb on Hiroshima was considered by some a failure because it yielded only 1.7% of its capacity during its release. Imagine if all its fissionable uranium had been used.

The United States has also bombed places like Libya and Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan along with 23 other countries. I believe much of it was justified, but if one were to add up the number of civilian casualties obliterated by American bombs, it becomes a little easier to understand the steadfast hatred leveled in our direction.

War is an abomination, but it would seem we will never be free of it. It’s in our DNA, and we suffer from ideologies of such extreme polarity that there is no hope for establishing a middle ground.

So yes, we must never forget. But the lesson is, we must never forget the extent of just how low humanity can morally descend and remember to seek the higher ground whenever possible.

Hiroshima Memorial

Hiroshima Memorial

The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award: The Polar Divide

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In the late 60s and early 70s, an enormously popular TV comedy show, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-in, routinely awarded the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate trophy for such things as Congress being unable to pass gun control legislation (click on the link – 47 years ago and we’re still talking), or for cops who sleep on the job, or once for the state of California for passing a law that allowed car dealers to disconnect odometers until the vehicle was sold. Though delivered within the context of a variety comedy show, most recipients were chosen for a more derisive purpose.

So, the Polar Divide. I say polar as in opposite as well as something glacial (big and cold) in nature. It’s what we’ve got. Here’s a short list:

Republican vs Democrat: budget and debt, education, the environment, immigration, and tax reform go through endless yet inconclusive debate.

Congressional Voting

Congressional Voting

Gay Marriage vs Heterosexual Marriage: though the LGBTQ community has finally received legislative support, the debate and posturing continues ad nauseum.

marriage merge

Ban the Confederate Flag vs proudly flying its colors: racist or heritage – an amazing example of how people can be insensitive and egocentric

flag

For those for Obama vs those Against Obama: more like Democrats vs Fox News

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White Supremacists vs Jews and anyone not white: the ugliest face of America

white pride

1% vs 99% (Government, Wall Street, and the wealthiest Americans): the definition of unbalanced.

99vs1

Freedom From Religion vs Religion (State vs Church): Bible thumpers, atheists, governments, all circling around the mat, pulling quotes out of context, misconstruing the truth, and morons like Pat Robertson claiming we’re all going to be having sex with animals soon because of gay marriage (apply this comment to the marriage item above, as well).

freedom from religion 2

Police Brutality vs Black People: it’s hard to ignore the fact that more unarmed black people are shot by police than any other group, but people also forget that uniformed police officers are often moving targets – when your life is on the line daily, it’s hard to imagine that you don’t overreact sometimes. Unfortunately, an underlying sense of racism fuels the fire, and it’s not going to get better any time soon.

police brutality

American Jihadists against anyone and everyone. As I said in a post a couple of months ago, the war is here, and it too won’t be getting better any time soon.

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I’m sure if I thought for another three or four seconds I could augment this list with another dozen examples. Such a huge percent of the news I read and the meme’s I see (I also create memes in the way cartoons try to illustrate the ridiculous, but I do attempt to be truthful) are so heavily laden with finger pointing that things have escalated to the point where truth has been left behind; in fact it’s unrecognizable. Our political candidates are, and always have been, the worst of the lot. They just don’t get that we don’t want to hear what the other guy did wrong; we want to hear what they’re going to do, instead.

Wars often bring a people together (Vietnam notwithstanding), but I don’t see how in the face of these polar divisions we will ever be able to conquer our domestic foes (hell, our own Civil War only had like four major fundamental factors), not to mention those that are ramping up their military overseas: Russia, China, North Korea, and the indecipherable mess that is always the Middle East – loyalties, hatreds, vendetta’s, alliances; they shift faster than the sands of their dunes.

So, on this fine morning, I hereby present the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate award to the Government of the United States and its people for being so addle-brained, capricious, and ignorant that the nation now has a seemingly unsolvable divide and for setting the nation rolling down the hill to oblivion with no emergency brake.

Certificate ver 2

The Death Penalty: A Personal Exposure

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On June 29th, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a narrow ruling in favor of Oklahoma continuing its use of lethal injection in carrying out the death penalty. Discussion of capital punishment is cyclic; it’s a perennial topic all contenders for political office have to face – and answer to – in their bid for voters. Presidential elections are still sixteen months off, but controversy over the death penalty has a head start.

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote an impassioned dissent suggesting that since the last fundamental discussion on the constitutionality of the death penalty was nearly forty years ago; it is time to renew the debate. Breyer listed four points regarding the administration of the death penalty:

1 – Serious Unreliability

Clearly, this is the most frightful consideration in the application of the death penalty. There is no pardon from death. The fact 140 convicted people, later found to be innocent and released from death row, were innocent is more than enough consideration to be wary of prescribing the sentence. It begs the question as to how many people have actually forfeited their life because of a flawed criminal justice system. However, there is a simple fix to this problem. Alter the rules of conviction in capital cases to those proven beyond ALL doubt and not beyond all REASONABLE doubt. When someone’s life depends on the strengths and weaknesses of a prosecutor, a defense attorney, and the questionable intelligence of jury, the standards must exist at much higher level. That said, the likelihood of changing a legal system in place since medieval times seems a bit thin.

2 – Arbitrariness in application

Justice Breyer said: “the factors that most clearly ought to affect application of the death penalty – namely, comparative egregiousness of the crime – often do not. Other studies show that circumstances that ought not to affect application of the death penalty, such as race, gender, or geography, often do.” Can anyone really question the validity of such a statement? The numbers of examples one can site for the inequality of justice are legion.

3 – Unconscionably long delays

If the notion of unreliability is the most serious, this situation is the most ridiculous. According to the Death Penalty Center, as of 2012, the average wait time between conviction and carrying out the sentence is more than 15 years. It adds a complication to the discussion of cruel and unusual punishment, not to mention the increased societal cost. It seems ironic even to consider such a factor as cruel and unusual punishment in relation to someone whose crime was murder, or even the method of its administration as discussed in Glossip v. Gross. Whatever pains the convicted feels while in the throes of death seems irrelevant when compared to the life-long pain the victim’s family will have to endure the rest of their lives. It’s difficult to summon an ounce of sympathy in this regard.

4 – Most states have abandoned its use.

This is a mistake. Perhaps the more socially responsible approach is to apply the sentence in the cases beyond all doubt and move on.

Amnesty International touts the most often heard statement about capital punishment: it does not serve as a deterrent. They quote FBI data, which indicates 14 states without the penalty have homicide rates less than the national average. The statement sounds a bit self-serving. The most significant reason the punishment no longer works here is due to its removal from the public forum. In the years before 9/11 and radical jihadists, I never felt safer than walking the streets of Saudi Arabia – day or night. I have a long list of things I do not like about that country, but their murder rate stands at a mere .8 per 100,000. By comparison, America’s is at 4.7. Why? In Saudi Arabia, capital punishment is a public affair and in full display; it’s gruesome in its spectacle. To watch a few thousand Muslims emerge from a mosque on a Friday at noon and circle around the kill-zone, pushing and shoving to get up front in order to watch the executioner slice the back of a man’s neck open with a sword, is horrifically mesmerizing, which is the point. Human rights activists’ fault Saudi Arabia for its growing number of public executions and for good reason – capital punishment serves a broader spectrum of crime there. Nevertheless, there is no arguing the fact it is a significant deterrent to committing capital crimes. We are coming up on the 79th anniversary of the last public execution in this country. Perhaps when the Supreme Court reconvenes on the first Monday in October, they might consider an amendment to common law and push the notion of public display of execution back into vogue. It’s incongruent Americans can withstand the barbarism of white supremacy or gang wars, yet turn suddenly squeamish over a public display of execution designed to curb the very crimes which diminish the quality of our lives.

1982: My introduction to the effectiveness of the death penalty