Goodbye, Benazir Bhutto

I'm sure that thousands of blogs are written today upon the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Some will be lauditory; most will be anywhere from sad to frustrated to downright angry.

To me, Benazir was an incredible woman, superior in beauty and intelligence. She managed her fears like few can, and was willing to risk her life from the very moment she stepped into politics. Though I could never tell from official accounts, my gut always told me that she was demonized, threatened, and slapped with trumped-up charges by those who stood the most to lose from the truthful light she radiated. When they said her administration was rife with corruption it seemed an obvious example of projection.

When I heard that Benazir was assassinated this morning I was filled with a hopeless frustration. I've asked for years how we can stop those who cultivate hatred and employ violence without resorting to their tactics. These are the people too self-involved to recognize common humanity, too myopic to understand the common good, doubt their own potency too much so that they have to prove to others that they are strong, people who conquer anything but themselves. They live in pitiful, damnable fear. But they would rather kill the bearers of light rather than admit it.

If anybody questions why I have such a problem with the political and religious neoconservative movement in our nation it is for this very reason. When George Bush stood up this morning and said that Benazir's assassination was so horrible, I believed he really doesn't understand that his use of military violence has anything to do with the escalation of violence in the world. Then his intonation of the threat that we will 'bring them to justice' meant what it always means: we'll hunt them down, beat them up, and kill them. Revenge is justice. Allah will sort these people one day, but until then we have to live with them.

At what point do we finally say that enough is enough? We have the sophistication to test for pathological power-seeking in people. There is enough history to learn from and creativity in good people to find a way to restrain them and keep them from seizing power. The revolutions of human history have been in conquering conditions that make life hard or dangerous for us; the next revolution needs to be conquering ourselves.

Goodbye, Benazir Bhutto. In your memory may we continue your spirit and agenda, may we bear your courage, may we take you for inspiration though we no longer have your voice and vision.

A Bad Marriage

While I want to stay away from political sour grapes, let me digress to another rumination for a moment:

In a marriage, if one partner gets his or her way all the time it is an unbalanced, unhealthy partnership. Eventually it descends into neglect and even abuse of the partner whose needs aren't met. And sadly, the partner who triumphs repeatedly is never satisfied. There is no such thing as 'enough' to be taken.

A report came out this week that said the Bush administration has figured out ways around having a minority in the Senate. There is a difference between a numerical majority -- fifty one percent -- and a voting majority -- sixty percent. The former they don't have. The latter they're taking advantage of. This Congress has used filibusters more than any previous Congress. And the president has used the veto, or just the threat of the veto, regularly since losing the numerical majority in the Senate, which he didn't have to employ when Republicans had the numerical majority. In sum, the White House and the Senate are still getting whatever they want without compromise.

If we call a marriage unhealthy when one partner takes from the other without giving, what should we say of a bicameral government that does the same thing?

John Powell, S.J., said, "If you do not love yourself you cannot love others; you can only use them." In an unhealthy marriage this is what is happening. Is this what has happened with the conservative element in American politics? Is it so full of people who very deep down doubt their own love that they are repeatedly using others for their own gain, not even recognizing that they are draining the goodness from others without refreshing their resources? And, even scarier, are there so many Americans supporting them because they have the same dynamic going on? How did we get to such a state?

This is a spiritual malady. When we take from others without regard for their well being (fitting the definition of 'aggression', which naturally descends into abuse) we are trying to fill a spiritual void by accumulating things that give the illusion of fulfillment, usually material things but most often symbols of power. But they never satisfy. It's like putting water in the gas tank, wondering why the engine won't run right, and putting more water in to make it go. It's useless.

Unhealthy marriages either go on being unhealthy, which gets passed down to successive generations, or break up. There is the occasional relationship that is stopped in its unhealthy course, the real issues identified and worked out, and it becomes healthy. Divorce isn't an option for our government unless we want the nation to fall into civil war and break apart. We don't want the spiritual illness in our national heart to persist into another generation. We, the people, need leaders who are healthy, will keep our focus on maladies and solutions, and guide us into national health. We, the people, have the power to do this at the voting booth. We, the people, have the responsibility and duty to see that it happens.

Be careful with your vote. Make it count.

Flotsam and Jetsam IV

The war in Iraq is employing psychological help for soldiers like no war in history. PTSD is now recognized in the field instead of years later. Massive amounts of material for research is being gathered. There are many decades' worth of research on the psychological aftermath of war with both soldiers and civilians.

I wonder: what if they came to find that war is psychologically unhealthy for everybody involved?

* * *

My newest coworker was ready to leave work at quitting time today, as was I. She's green, just out of college, with all kinds of theoretical knowledge and almost no practical experience. Everybody else was working feverishly to get work done before the weekend. My coworker asked if anybody would think badly of her for leaving while everybody else was working.

"Why should you feel guilty for having your work done on time?" I asked. "You've already seen how several of them stress themselves out, taking on more work than they have to and not managing their time. Don't worry about what others think. As long as your work is done you're blameless."

* * *

At a client's house today I looked through a book on her shelf. It was a series of pictures taken in a small Wisconsin town in the late 1800s. One picture captured me: a small child in a coffin, propped up against a wall.

I suppose they were more accepting of death back then. Diseases were less controlled. Medical treatment was less available and nowhere as sophisticated as we have now. Today we see death as an insult, a failure of medicine, a fault of something as small as a bacterium or virus that we didn't fight hard enough against, a liability of someone else too careless to consider our well being. Victory over death has become the only option, and we will not accept defeat.

Yet in not accepting death we can't make a graceful exit. So it's always tragic.

Too bad. Death is a reality that won't be overcome. I will die one day. In order to have a good end I will have to have lived well all along the way, today and today and today. So you see, it is in the thought of death that we define how to live. It would only be an insult had I not foreseen and planned for the conclusion, and the fault would be my own.

Stop and Shift Gears

I stopped writing again a couple of weeks ago. My blogs were centering on gripes about politics and not as refined as many comments out there. I ain't no Leonard Pitts, Jr. I don't like just spewing bile. There's a lot more to life, and a lot of more interesting and wonderful stuff.

Watching The Pianist while snowed in recently, I was imagining what it was like to be in a concentration camp. There are all kinds of horrific images possible. But then an unbidden fantasy blew into me, quite unlike anything I would have chosen given the subject. Still in the setting of a concentration camp, this time I imagined being relieved of the slavery of possessions, the necessity to work for a living, and the cultivation of image. Absent these things I would be free to do and be whatever I liked. In the fantasy I elected to no longer speak, and would merely go about looking for helpful things to do for people, from silly little things to hard labor, with no expectation of payment. Somewhere inside it seems that this is what most religions would like for us to do, and which we find so hard to follow because we're invested in our image and industry. What a difference the experience of a concentration camp would be with this attitude! I would even be silently charitable to my captors.

Many years ago, first introduced to the Tao Te Ching, I thought that to follow its tenets would make one look insane to the general public. I quit studying and trying to follow it after a while out of fear for this. A few years passed and the book came off the shelf again. Now, after a quarter century of study and inner work, I find that the closer I follow the Tao the less it is obvious to others. The benefit is all inside: without intending it one becomes more and more powerful. It is the dragon hidden in plain sight. Paradoxically, though others don't seem to see it (how can you recognize something you've not been trained to see?), because I cultivate the qualities of balance, flow of energy, nonaction, the pursuit of potential, and virtue, my being around others affects them in ways they likewise fail to see.

I sometimes wonder if this is why I have trouble getting a second date. They sense something about me that scares them (the unknown is one of our strongest fears, for we don't know if or how we will be able to handle something when we don't know what we're facing; this is complicated when we haven't been taught to trust our inner strength in the first place). What a fond thought, to run across a woman who finds no reason to fear me!

Perhaps I dislike my griping because blame is fouled water that merely sits and stinks. But cutting gemstones, even though it requires much patience, is indescribably satisfying because it results in beauty that few will protest. So even though my passion and trained insight will forever inform me about political actors, maybe I need to just observe them, sharpen my beliefs, then let them go play their games as they will. And I will play the piano and cut gemstones, and love my daughter.

Superrationale

In Guantanemo prison, when a detainee is able to obtain legal representation for a writ of habeas corpus (according to an NPR report this week), if the prisoner wins there is a policy that he is tried three or four more times until he loses.

Translation: you're guilty because we say you're guilty.

The report came out this week that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons development program in 2003. President Bush, echoing his father's famous quote "Don't bother me with the facts" said that the report was evidence that Iran is dangerous and that nothing has changed toward them.

Translation: Iran is dangerous because we say it is.

A common logic fallacy is called appeal to authority. It has several shades, but in general it goes like this: person A is perceived as an authority; person A says that X is true; therefore X is true. The fallacy is obvious.

Each of the beginning situations are examples of the fallacy.

I understand that a lot is at stake here. The Bush administration has a lot invested in its war on terror. There are a lot of policies, procedures, and beliefs based on it. Much of its culture-building throughout the administration is geared toward furthering the fear of terrorists and the need to fight them. If something shows up that knocks out a supporting pillar it all comes crashing down. For the structure to fall would leave Bush and Co devestated, especially this late in the presidency when there is little time to rebuild anything. Eternal disgrace is just not an option, therefore something -- anything -- needs to be done to ward off potential threats to the legitimacy of its policies.

Unfortunately, even after so many investigations that have brought legitimate objections to administration claims and so much spin that we're too dizzy to settle on a reality, rationalizations such as above are just too bald to believe. A rationalization is a psychological defense mechanism designed to conform reality to one's preconceived notions, beliefs, or agendas and ward off challenges that would destroy it. The biggest problem with saying reality is other than what it is, is that it doesn't change reality. You're fighting a battle that you won't win. You're wasting time and breath and energy and resources trying to bend reality with no hope of success. Imagine if we put all those resources toward decreasing poverty or enriching education instead!

Rationalization is normal. Super-rationalization happens when you fail to include morality, emotion, and spiritual guidance. Many dictators in history have believed in ethnic cleansing; it made perfect sense to them. They were even able, in most cases, to couch their belief in religious terms for substantiation. It borders on the diagnosis of delusion, which is having a fixed belief (not open to reason) that has no basis in reality and can be easily debated with logic (though the delusional person cannot be swayed).

People rationalize every day. Nearly everybody. What bothers me about the Bush administration doing it like they have this week is that if they get their way then more people will die. More tax dollars will go to this insane path of destruction that is the hallmark of this administration. More hatred and division will be manufactured in the world. The opportunity for using nuclear weapons is inched closer to, or the probability that they will be used becomes greater.

If the American people are so resourceful that they can develop a space program and land a man on the moon within the space of ten years, surely they are strong and resourceful enough to relieve of office a president and administration that drains the nation's resources in their determination to hate someone and obliterate them. It has gone on too long. We're tired. Too many are dead. We want our civil liberties back. We want our tax dollars to go to the common welfare within our borders. We want world-class leadership and statesmanship, not paranoid bullies with an army. If our leaders cannot be convinced that what they're doing is harmful and destructive then they no longer need to be considered leaders. Unless we want to be led into destruction. Despite what we've been told, the collective citizens of our nation are stronger than the presidential administration, even with the army backing them up.