Curious

This past week, my friend and co-conspirator in writing about political and cultural issues, Deb, put up a new post on a web site that she and I a few others contribute to. She was motivated, in this instance, by the dismissal of Lt. Dan Choi, for openly defying the terms of the DADT policy in our military. You can read it here: http://turn-left.hypocrisy.com/2009/07/01/the-injustice-continues-under-obama/.

As you might guess, the article expresses Deb’s displeasure with the military’s decision concerning Lt. Choi, as well as the general direction of affairs relative to the country in general, President Obama’s inactions and the LGBT community. She makes a very good case (as usual) and concludes by saying that the President is a “political coward”, and that “is not what the country needed”.

Now you should know that Deb is a very vociferous member of the LGBT community so it is not difficult to understand her basic position. And I was very much in general agreement with her, but I did not feel her statement went far enough. So I wrote this:

Before this post becomes the source of vitriol that swirls around solely LGBT/homo-angstian rhetoric, and some of the readers here climb all over Deb for per position, I must say that I think she is both right and wrong. Her outrage and indignation over the handling of Dan Choi( and DADT in general) is apt and well placed. But she is wrong in overlooking its' symbolic value, as regards the actions (or inactions) of the Obama administration on the whole.

Injustice is probably not the best word we could use here, and I'll tell you why. The outcome of the Choi hearing, as well as the President's comment to a retired Air Force officer, that this was a "generational issue" smack of the same position of mediocrity, appeasement, glad handing and moral molly-coddling that is evidenced by his stance on every major issue confronting us today: the financial debacle, the economy in general, LGBT rights, foreign policy issues (Israel/Palestine, Honduras), government secrecy and the biggest elephant in the room, health care. And Deb's conclusion that this stance is political cowardice may not be the more appropriate word , either.

What we do have a a betrayal of promised leadership and a strange and curious sudden lack of courage.Five to six months in or no, we were promised change. But, alas the world is of full of promise keepers/breakers: Ensign, Sanford, Pelosi (who lead her legislative body), Reid (who would lead his party), Bush who promised to be a uniter and a decider and was neither.

Obama appears to lack the courage to do the extraordinary so that the ordinary and necessary and morally correct may occur. He is languishing in a sea of mediocrity and half-baked actions.

If you want something worthwhile to occur, the required action must have some spectacular and extraordinary transformations accompanying it so that there will be a valuable and lasting effect. If you want to burn down a building, you have to start a fire and be prepared for the heat.

If you want to bake leavened bread, you must scald then milk befor you add it to the mixture or else the the microbes in the milk will kill the bacteria in the yeast and the bread will not rise. You will still get bread, but if you don't scald the milk first, but the bread will be flat, hard and disappointing. If you use only tepid water to make tea, instead of boiling water, you will still get tea but it will be weak and unappealing.

Obama needs to stop walking down the middle of the road, stop trying to appease and accomodate everyone, stop not trying not ruffle feathers , incorporating every side on every issue, take a firm stand, piss off a few people on the outer edges, stop pretending to be Solomon and make some strong tea and some substatial, chewable bread.

Injustice and cowardice? I think not. But mediocre fence-straddling and a lack of conviction to cause the extraordinary may be more like it, and Dan Choi is only one example of convictional terpitude.

A postscript:

Almost without fail, Deb’s posts get lambasted and attacked by a select group of right-wingnut, conservative, nearly illiterate, unabashed homophobes who attack her comments almost solely because of her sexual orientation. I posted my comments almost immediately and several days have passed. There has been no rhetorical firestorm or rebuttal from any front. I wonder why that is?

July Fourth Special

Here are some holiday suggestions for ways to utilize the summer’s unfolding events and organize your priorities, so far. As you set off your firecrackers and bottle rockets, and 500 G military artillery shells (like we do here in Texas), and grill your steaks and hot dogs, and munch on watermelon, try a few of these observations on for size.

If you have watched the television at all, lately, you have probably noticed advertising for:

-Independent trade schools urging people to go back to school to learn new skills in law enforcement (municipalities have no money to fund these jobs), electrical/construction trades (the housing construction industry has crashed, nationwide), long-haul truck driving and drafting. There are no jobs to be had in these fields, but we are encouraged to take out student loans and go deeper into debt, anyway. And be sure to eat at McDonald’s every day, between classes. Then you can spend what you have left on an expensive weight-loss program. Google Dan Merino.

-Learning to use tools like PC-based stock trading programs to play the stock market or else run right down to the local office of your friendly neighborhood broker, to discuss re-managing your empty portfolio (on July 3, the DOW closed down about 225+ points…again). All we have to play with is monopoly money: we may as well have fun with it. Paper re-cycling bins are full of shredded 401k statements.
-A rash of new extended warranty companies who want to you pay large amounts of money to protect you from financial ruin if your “older” car breaks down. They know you can’t afford a new car, but want you to believe that a monthly payment to them (about the size of a small car payment) will protect you from the financial ruin roughly equal to not having adequate health insurance. If not that, then run out and take advantage of low-cost 60 month financing on a new vehicle that will no longer be manufactured by Genera l Motors. Or get guaranteed payments on a new car from Korea if you lose your job in the next few weeks or months.

-Immediately changing your auto insurance policy from company A to company B, because company A is surely charging you too much and company B has a much better payment plan. The combined monies that Progressive, Geico, State Farm, et.al. are spending on TV ads could finance the war in Iraq. And their rates go up, daily.

So let’s change gears. Before you get caught up in worrying about Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan, Honduras, un-health care, North Korea, the imminent crises concerning world food supplies and water or the fact that the Obama presidency has the remarkable look of being the mirror opposite of the Obama campaign, kick around a few of these entertaining activities:

Stay mesmerized by the meaning less and irrelevant death of Michael Jackson. He has does nothing but represent the bizarre, financially irresponsible and macabre and molest children for the last decade or so. Maybe we can spend more time talking about it and maybe you can contribute to the already bankrupt city of Los Angeles to help pay for his “memorial service”. Are we that stupid?

Keep your imagination titillated by speculating on the real reasons behind why Sarah Palin is resigning. This is, in all likelihood, a preemptive strike to get her out of the line of fire before some Inuit Eskimo Exxon baby seal scandal erupts or that we find out that her hubby is not Trig’s father. Or John Ensign is. Or that she got an STD from Mark Sanford in Argentina. Which she can see from her front porch. And she has done nothing but produce and intellectually molest children for the last decade or so, either. Are we that bored? Gullible?

And if you are still without enough diversionary fluff to keep you busy, run on down to Wal-Mart and buy a new HD flat-panel TV(on credit) and jump into the fray about whether or not to get Direct TV, Dish Network or Cable( I receive junk mail from all three of these four out of seven days a week. What tye spend on this marketing could pay my mortgage without batting an eye and they want rate increases) Then you can decide at the same time if you should bundle your telephone land line with the charges that you are about to be hit with by TimeWarner to surf the net and buy more stuff from the Home Shopping Network… or sell your old TV at a profit through ebay (after you buy the computer training program from the guy on TV who says he won’t make you rich but wants your money for some CD training disks). It’s fun. Really.

And don’t forget to take your gun to Church when you go the day after the fireworks and be sure to watch Fox News , so that you can ineffectively discuss DADT and DOMA and Officer Choi. And Michael Jackson is still dead. Really.