Sticky Notes for Politicians*

*(et us all)

• Collateral damage is not collateral to those who are damaged.
• Stop sound-biting.
• Fact check talking points.
• End the free-market charades.
• Reflective is better than reflexive.
• Listening is more efficiently effective than talking.
• Ask not what your enemies are doing to you, but what you are doing to yourself.
• Remember the Pharisees.

Déjà Vu Eden

Seven-second drama by SMSmith, playwright

Adam & Eve (et all thereafter): "Oh, what are we to do?"

Voice (Off-stage): "Just put one foot in front of the other, and try not to slip on your tears."

Democratic Blues: Confessions & Lamentations of “The Unknown Democrat”

(:Transcribed from meetings of Democrats Anonymous in undisclosed U.S. locations:)

▪ Unfortunately, too many Democrats seem confused by the media’s “blue” labeling. Historically, we Democrats have been closer to the theoretical left, which is not conservative (or big-business) blue. However, by this same twist-of-color, our political rivals appear even more disoriented by their “red” label. They continue to proclaim true-blue conservative (plus b-b) values but have taken to furtive, authoritarian tactics and strategies. This Republican dualism should be a huge Democratic advantage. Why it isn’t, is probably attributable to the American monocle.
▪ Unfortunately, even though we stump for the poor and needy, labor and small business, the middle class, and mother-earth, the reality is: big-business is more present, persistent, visible, and donation/perk-oriented, so we can’t always financially justify what we proclaim or prefer.
▪ Unfortunately, we would prefer to always honor the constitutional checks and balances, but executive orders and an imperialistic presidency (expanded by our predecessors) are too useful and efficient to disregard.
▪ Unfortunately, b-b lobbying is a fact of political life that pays personal and family dividends, both now and in the future.
▪ Unfortunately, since the revolving door between business and government is too lucrative to bypass, exceptions, exemptions, etc. must be made to our lobbyist-free commitment in order to re-access our best, compromised experts for public service. This can make for public relations problems, but there is some consolation in the general shortness of American memory and the abundance and frequency of their distractions.
▪ Unfortunately, nearly every qualified candidate for elected or appointed office will experience moral-, tax-, or nanny-challenge in our hyper-vetted, public-service contests, so PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, young Democrats, keep your nose, hands (yea, your entire portfolio) CLEAN for future service to your party and country.
▪ Unfortunately, too many businesses have become so big, pervasive, and interconnected that they cannot be allowed to fail; therefore prudent government must periodically step in to halt credit and capital free-falls in order to save the world from capital follies. It is regrettable that labor, small business, the average Joneses, the poor, and the common good* suffer disproportionately in these recurrent meltdowns. We would it were otherwise.
▪ Unfortunately, bail-outs, stimuli, and deficit spending often reward the unwise, imprudent, corrupt, greedy, and capital-elites; not to mention mortgaging the vast, uncertain future—which we try not to talk about; but from one POV, if NOW implodes, there may be no future to worry about!
▪ Unfortunately, big-business can cancel its pension, health-insurance, and contract obligations with past and present employees when restructuring; however, present government is limited in the adjustments it can make to CEO/management salaries and bonuses when bailing-out or resuscitating. On the brighter side, this may result in less Republican censure for offending The Myths of Big-Business, and also be less subject to campaign blowback by big-donors.
▪ Unfortunately, despite our beliefs that laissez-faire economics should be less laissez and more fair; that regulations and taxation have purpose; that environment matters; that we can be an inclusive, imaginative people; and that there are good alternatives to every bad idea; we are still mired up to the hip-pocket in status quo. (Sorry, folks.)
▪ Unfortunately, our political rivals are predisposed to repetitive leaps, generalizations, and mis-labelings (e.g., calling us socialists, communists, Marxists, traitors, treasonists, “aiders and abettors,” wimps, crazies, scary, etc., etc.), which is targeted to our electability and to make us think we must support regrettable authoritarian measures to avoid being labeled or seen as “unpatriotic” or “soft-on-terrorists.”
▪ Unfortunately, sometimes it works.
▪ Thus, unfortunately, we have, too often, been in the Congressional minority. Therefore, try to push through as much as possible when in the majority. Try not to be discouraged when in the minority. Try not to resort to neo-Con-Rovian strategies (unless necessary). And try to get elected somewhere other than Minnesota!

(*i.e., the general welfare provision? of the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution)
(Posted in full version on Tuesday, May 19, 2009: 9:17 pm)

Neo-Republican* Redbook** (Ideological & Practical Samplings)

*ska, Neo-Cons; **Not to be confused with other Red books.

• Advertizing: The art of manufacturing desire and producing dissatisfaction, envy, and so forth, all in the greater cause of economic growth and free-market capitalism. A pillar of democracy.
• American Covert Operations: Secret interventions to promote democratic values and thwart anti-capitalists/corporatists. These are necessarily secret to minimize the loss of American lives, values, and image.
• Capital Facts: Greed is good; selfishness is a virtue; paper and property have real and speculative value; and God is a free-market capitalist. (Cautionary note: His rhetoric can be deceptively regulatory, but do not be deceived. See Common Good.)
• CEO Compensation: A means to confer and/or acknowledge prestige and power. Preferably attached to knowledge, expertise, and competence, but not essential. A fundamental of competition. Not to be confused with Efficiency or maximizing profit or Conquest & Plunder.
• Common Good: A subtle, emotive phrase that is leftist code for Socialism and its more evil sibling.
• Conquest & Plunder: The most efficient means of acquiring wealth and power. (See Efficiency.) Not to be confused with acquisitions & mergers, takeovers, British Empire (et al.), globalization, Haliburton, Charles Keating, CEO Compensation, Enron, Dot-coms, Abramoff, business subsidies / bailouts, American Covert Operations, and so forth.
• Cooperation vs. Competition: Cooperation was a Neanderthal necessity, but competition is the name of the greater game where the manufacture of desire (see Advertizing) supplies the demand for manufactured goods.
• Depression: Rare, commonly recurring, mysterious market-system failure characterized by negative growth (aka, bottomless market), pink-slip employment, low caloric intake, vaporization of financial institutions, and massive adjustments to real value and home ownership. Not associated with Deregulation or Poverty. Potentially eased by bailing out the VIC’s and substituting a Recession. (See Talking Points.) Alternately, the feeling one may have resulting from any of the above.
• Deregulation: A capital fact that free-market businesses whose bottom line is growth and profit do best without oversight. Not to be faulted for Enron, Freddie or Fannie, Lehman Bros., the 2008-2010 mortgage meltdown, the recent corporate/bank supplicants, the Dot-com-cons, the former S&L problems, etc. And not to be compared to the Constitutional checks and balances mandated for government. (See Public vs. Private.)
• Efficiency: That which confers maximum return for minimum cost / effort. A pillar of free-market capitalism. No to be confused with Indolence or callousness.
• Environment: That which surrounds you. Not to be confused with lobbyists. Cleaning up the environment means cleaning up on oil and gas reserves from in or near national parks.
• Fabrication in pursuit of true conservatism is no vice. Moderation in the denouncement of Liberals is no virtue. (See Public Speaking.)
• Global Warming: A figment of liberal imagination and a scientific misappropriation of the heat generated by angry liberals. (Not to be confused with the righteous anger generated by Rush Limbaugh, et al.)
• Indolence: The cause of Poverty. Tendency to be unproductive. Not to be used to explain the differential in production outputs of management and labor.
• Invisible Hand: Term coined by Adam Smith to explain the competitive market’s intuitive management of goods and services through self-interest. Not to be confused with Bernie Madoff (et al.), CEO Compensation, or vaporization of assets.
• Litmus test for true Conservatives: God ______ America. God ______ those Liberals.
• Military Spending: A spiraling growth-industry of destruction segued into reconstruction. To be inflated, conflated, and repeated as necessary.
• Patriotism: 1) To support all American efforts (overt or covert) for the perceived safety of America, the liberation of all people, and the imposition of American capitalism; 2) To honor military service and sacrifice in all cases—except perhaps during elections, as in such cases as John McCain 2000; Max Clelland 2002, John Kerry 2004, etc.; and 3) To not question Traditional Values.
• Poverty: Caused by Indolence. Not to be attributed to Conquest & Plunder, medical crisis, layoff, Abramoff/Madoff, Deregulation, Depression, and so forth.
• Public Speaking: Opportunity to espouse small government and proclaim fiscal conservatism. Not to impact spending practicalities such as earmarks; costs to produce House or Senate majorities; subsidizing deserving VIP’s and VIC’s; appointing loyalists to bureaucratic posts; waging war; running deficits; etc. Also an equal opportunity to ____ those ____ Liberals.
• Public vs. Private: Government (of the people, by the people, and for the people) is a necessary evil and must be constrained. Free-market structures (of the few, by the few, and for the few) are pillars of democracy and must be allowed to self-regulate all growth and profitizing.
• Right: There is only one Right, and it is us. Not to be confused with the 4th Crusade or with certain bombastic Reverends.
• Speculation: 1) Unsubstantiated rumor that Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand, CEO Compensation, hedge funds, derivatives, creative accounting, NASDAQ, the IRS, and the U.S. Tax Code are a volatile mix of this & that, which is not comprehensible by anyone with a PhD in economics; or 2) Short-term massive gains by propheteers of rising (or falling) values, real or imagined—see Depression; or 3) An unproven theory that market bubbles (aka, booms) cause virtual amnesia, leading to unexpected, déjà vu vaporizations (aka, busts).
• Talking Points: Saying something often enough makes it true—or at least believable, which is close enough. (See Public Speaking.)
• Traditional Values: Competition, Efficiency, maximized profit, Deregulation, supply & demand, individualism (as to corporate collectives), public virtue, uncompromising loyalty, anti-collectivized-labor, pro-collectivized-capital, growth and consumption, manifest destiny, truth (see Fabrication), certainty, affluence and influence, Patriotism, good reasons, and re-election.
• Transparency: A smokescreen is more transparent than an iron curtain. (See Environment.)
• U.S. Constitution: A document of uncommon wisdom where WE, THE PEOPLE of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure prosperity to all who merit and deserve it, do uphold these values proclaimed in this Preamble of the Constitution for the United States of America. (See Talking Points.)

CROSS WINDS

by SMSmith

Near drowning
In tsunamic rush.
Irrational.
Driven
Against the barren scape
Of reason.

Reason
Caught
In whirls
Of imbalance
Screaming
Peeled
Like bark from groaning willows
Driven into the inexplicable
Of the root of minus one.

Blinded, cast
From a realm unseen
Into the abyss between.
Disheveled, bruised
Torn, confused.
Dreams breaking
Against matter
Matter against miracle.

Trauma Happens

It happens to good people. It happens to not-so-good people. And when it does, it seems our human nature to cry, “Why me?” “Why this?” “Why now?” Or as a good niece of mine recently wrote, “I need some extra help in trying to remember that God doesn’t hate me.”

The short answer to the good and the not-so-good, alike, is that God loves His children. Yet doubts take wing in the wake of trauma, especially for those who are trying to do and to be good—doubts that must be as old as Adam and Eve. What must they have felt to lose two sons in a single day—the younger to murder by the elder, and that eldest, to a life of wandering and exile?

So why, in the witness of the ages—in the trauma stories and déjà vu of millions of souls—do traumatic events seem so irreconcilable to our expectations of life and God? And why is the second trauma—the ensuing, protracted mental and spiritual anguish—so consuming? Why must the mind relive, regurgitate, rehash, and endlessly re-envision all that could/should have been, if only …; All that might not have been, except for …?

Is it because we refuse the witness of the ages? The witness that trauma happens—somewhere, in every moment, in every social and economic class—even to good people. Maybe, especially to good people. Read Biblical Job, but be wary of his friends! God’s criticism of them (Job 42:7) seems but to reiterate the chasm between His ways and ours; His thoughts and ours (Isaiah 55:9).

Those of us who kick and bang at God’s door (this writer being a prime specimen) seem merely to exacerbate our trials and tribulations, because we insist on fashioning God in an image of our own expectation—an expectation where a loving God gives good things and protects from bad things (good and bad being from our point of view). Where trauma, suffering, and injustice cannot be good things. Where an all powerful, omniscient God would prevent trauma and tragedy, especially to His God-fearing children.

So back to the witness of life: It is that trauma happens. It has happened. It will continue to happen—even to good people. Even to God’s beloved prophets. Christ, Himself, said, “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

So perhaps it is not the initial trauma that is the most traumatic. Perhaps it is the torturous disconnect between the God we want/expect/demand/ envision and the God we get. The God we get has witnessed in story upon story, event upon event that, in this world, trauma happens—to the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, the rich, the poor. We don’t want to hear this. We don’t want to experience this. We don’t want the uncertainty of sacrificing the “good” life for His good will and finding His will not so good for our mortal expectations.

We don’t want the mind-numbing God-confusion that tortured Biblical Job (Job 10:15). We don’t want to give up the God we espouse for the God who manifests; for the God who is too often silent, or perhaps worse, who answers at last, as He did Job, with a list of mind-boggling questions (Job 38-41). And for those who espouse The Law of Attraction, one needs to ask: Why all these traumatic events in the lives of apostles and prophets, saints and sages, teachers and truth-seekers? (See left-hand column: “My World/TransWorld View: The First Law of Attraction.”)

Perhaps, it all comes down to this: A test of trust—whether WE can be trusted to choose God, truth, light, peace, justice, mercy, integrity, forgiveness, benevolence, virtue, faith, hope, charity, repentance, and so forth, out of pure intelligence, awareness, commitment, or endurance, when all around us there seems every reason—every justification, every passion and pressure—not to. And where, in this world of opposites, every deception abounds.

If we can be so trusted in the worst of times, maybe then, the light will dawn and we will come to know the full measure of our creation.

HARVEST

by SMSmith

Iron locusts
Belching black exhaustion
Round on round
To gorge upon
The gilt of autumn.

Round on round
To pour out ripe September.

Round on round
Spewing dry-rowed chaff
For other teeth
To glean
Concentric weals
Into ingots of hollow gold.

Round on round
From dawn
To crew-cut dawn
Swallowing
Disgorging
Art
Essence
Season
Similitude.

Round on round
Layering strata
To invisible strata
Of fruits and days
Too soon
Forgot.

© 1987

Wealth Redistribution! ! !

It seems as a nation we have been persistently blind to the wealth redistribution that has been going on for decades, chiefly presided over by laissez-faire Republican capitalists.* Wealth redistribution that is abundantly documented except for those who are so ideologically reflexive they have become functionally blind in the right eye—their only focus devoted to leftist sins.

Blind to wealth redistribution via corporate/industry subsidies; commonwealth giveaways; tax concessions/waivers/deferrals that off-load the burden to the less-wealthy (i.e., less-deserving of wealth?); no-bid contracts with no significant oversight; massive overcharges by prestigious, private-industry contractors for products and services (remember the $25.00/real value:15¢ bolt, the $748.00/rv:$10.00 pliers, the $15,000.00/rv:$700.00 sofa, etc., etc.); abusive earmarks; etc. etc.; and now the $700B bailout of “casino/bookie capitalists.”

Blind to wealth redistribution as business and investors maximize profits (or CEO salaries) through union-busting, employee wage and benefit roll-backs, wage suppression, down-sizing, fraudulent accounting, manipulation of markets and market information, insider trading, collusion, outsourcing beyond accountability, externalizing of costs and risks to government/ taxpayers, excessive CEO incentive and severance packages (a shaft of shareholders?), etc., etc., etc. Again, the list is endless and endlessly documented for those who care to see 360º.

Wealth redistribution is marvelous when voluntary, but in our present system, the right-wing spinmeisters—the authoritarian conservatives devoid of reflective analysis (the AC180s)—have been the main wealth redistributors in an elitist, hypocritical up-flow, firewalled in rhetoric and “free-market” charades.

Let us please cast off our blinders and truthfully look at the whole landscape, left and right. Then maybe we can begin to find a better way beyond the “sins” of the left and the “self-regulating” free-market crimes and charades of the right.

(*Interesting how so many can despise collectivized labor while worshipping collectivized capital.)

The Déjà Vu of Eliot

Eliot* was a crusader. He stood for justice, truth, and consequence. He presented a virtuous face to the world. But behind his words there was an opposing story. It was not a story he wanted made public. It was conducted in secrecy. It violated the principles he presented to the world. He hoped his words and reputation would be enough to keep the truth hidden; that no one would be interested in his actions when his words were so honorable. His secret pursuits cost him big money and put his entire future at risk. He didn’t mean things to go as far as they did, but somehow certain thoughts took root. He entertained them. He acted on them. His secrets began to consume his mind, beyond all expectation. He lost his way. He caused great pain and disappointment to those who loved and respected him.

Eliot is not alone. Eliot is "America the Beautiful."

Except, there is demonstrative hope for Eliot. When the truth came out, Eliot admitted his disgrace. He took responsibility. He resigned. He declared his intention to attempt repairs. He refused the brazen way of excuse, justification, rationalization. He showed America that even in dishonor, honor is still a choice.

So, please, leaders of America (Republican and Democrat), it is not too late to recommit to “America [the Good, the True,] the Beautiful”; to sing with conviction and integrity:

America! America! God shed His grace on thee, …
Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law. …
Till all success be nobleness, And ev’ry gain divine. …
And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea. …

*Eliot Spitzer was governor of New York, 2007-2008; and former NY State Attorney General.