I’m so tired of reading and writing about war. But I know this isn’t the time to stopl The struggle of the people of Iraq to rid themselves of oppressive and manipulative leadership isn’t over. The Campaign to Reclaim America is just beginning.
Jim Culleny’s No Utopia site leads with this Hungarian Proverb: The believer is happy; the doubter is wise. I guess the path you take depends on what you believe about what it means to be human.
Some salient points from recent posts on No Utopia (which include links to all the citations):
–The United States consumes a quarter of the world

Over at Shelley

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When a blogger posts outright lies, it stirs a little wave of annoyance and criticism in blogdom — as it should.
When our American president lies outright, it should stir up a whole lot more.
…It is no exaggeration to say that lying has become Bush’s signature as president./…. The pattern is now well established. Soothing rhetoric — about compassionate conservatism, about how much money the “average” American worker will get through the White House tax program, about prescription-drug benefits — is simply at odds with what Bush’s policies actually do. Last month Bush promised to enhance Medicaid; his actual policy would effectively end it as a federal entitlement program.
So, why isn’t there revolution stirring among the American people? Or at least impeachment?
More distressing even than the president’s lies, though, is the public’s apparent passivity. Bush just seems to get away with it. The post-September 11 effect and the Iraq war distract attention, but there’s more to it. Are we finally paying the price for three decades of steadily eroding democracy? Is Bush benefiting from the echo chamber of a right-wing press that repeats the White House line until it starts sounding like the truth? Or does the complicity of the press help to lull the public and reinforce the president’s lies?
Go here to read documentation of only some of the little man’s lies.
Hypocrisy has been defined as the tribute that vice pays to virtue. George W. Bush lied about all these policies because the programs he pretends to favor are far more popular than the ones he puts into effect. But unless the voters and the press start paying attention, all the president’s lies will have little political consequence — except to certify that we have become something less than a democracy.

While conversations go on about allegory, good writing, truth, lies, and authenticity, I keep going back to poetry. It’s all there.
‘Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front’ – from The Country of Marriage (1973) by Wendell Berry
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion—put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark a false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
*******
‘You’re the Top,’ by Tony Hoagland from Sweet Ruin (University of Wisconsin Press).
You’re the Top
Of all the people that I’ve ever known
I think my grandmother Bernice
would be best qualified to be beside me now
driving north of Boston in a rented car
while Cole Porter warbles on the radio;
Only she would be trivial and un-
politically correct enough to totally enjoy
the rhyming of Mahatma Ghandi
with Napoleon brandy;
and she would understand, from 1948,
the miracle that once was cellophane,
which Porter rhymes with night in Spain.
She loved that image of the high gay life
where people dressed by servants
turned every night into the Ritz:
dancing through a shower of just
uncorked champagne
into the shelter of a dry martini.
When she was 70 and I was young
I hated how a life of privilege
had kept her ignorance intact
about the world beneath her pretty feet,
how she believed that people with good manners
naturally had yachts, knew how to waltz
and dribbled French into their sentences
like salad dressing. My liberal adolescent rage
was like a righteous fist back then
that wouldn’t let me rest,
but I’ve come far enough from who I was
to see her as she saw herself:
a tipsy debutante in 1938,
kicking off a party with her shoes;
launching the lipstick-red high heel
from her elegant big toe
into the orbit of a chandelier
suspended in a lyric by Cole Porter,
bright and beautiful and useless.

There are some individuals who are extraordinary human beings — talented artists, intelligent thinkers, articulate speakers, passionately responsible citizens. Tim Robbins is one of these. (Of course, I also have to note that he also has the smarts to team up with “older/wiser woman” Susan Sarandon.)
The following is excerpted from his April 15th address to National Press Club”
For all of the ugliness and tragedy of 9-11, there was a brief period afterward where I held a great hope, in the midst of the tears and shocked faces of New Yorkers, in the midst of the lethal air we breathed as we worked at Ground Zero, in the midst of my children’s terror at being so close to this crime against humanity, in the midst of all this, I held on to a glimmer of hope in the naive assumption that something good could come out of it.
I imagined our leaders seizing upon this moment of unity in America, this moment when no one wanted to talk about Democrat versus Republican, white versus black, or any of the other ridiculous divisions that dominate our public discourse. I imagined our leaders going on television telling the citizens that although we all want to be at Ground Zero, we can’t, but there is work that is needed to be done all over America. Our help is needed at community centers to tutor children, to teach them to read. Our work is needed at old-age homes to visit the lonely and infirmed; in gutted neighborhoods to rebuild housing and clean up parks, and convert abandoned lots to baseball fields. I imagined leadership that would take this incredible energy, this generosity of spirit and create a new unity in America born out of the chaos and tragedy of 9/11, a new unity that would send a message to terrorists everywhere: If you attack us, we will become stronger, cleaner, better educated, and more unified. You will strengthen our commitment to justice and democracy by your inhumane attacks on us. Like a Phoenix out of the fire, we will be reborn.
And then came the speech: You are either with us or against us. And the bombing began. And the old paradigm was restored as our leader encouraged us to show our patriotism by shopping and by volunteering to join groups that would turn in their neighbor for any suspicious behavior.
In the 19 months since 9-11, we have seen our democracy compromised by fear and hatred. Basic inalienable rights, due process, the sanctity of the home have been quickly compromised in a climate of fear. A unified American public has grown bitterly divided, and a world population that had profound sympathy and support for us has grown contemptuous and distrustful, viewing us as we once viewed the Soviet Union, as a rogue state…..
And he finishes with:
We lay the continuance of our democracy on your desks, and count on your pens to be mightier. Millions are watching and waiting in mute frustration and hope – hoping for someone to defend the spirit and letter of our Constitution, and to defy the intimidation that is visited upon us daily in the name of national security and warped notions of patriotism.
Our ability to disagree, and our inherent right to question our leaders and criticize their actions define who we are. To allow those rights to be taken away out of fear, to punish people for their beliefs, to limit access in the news media to differing opinions is to acknowledge our democracy’s defeat. These are challenging times. There is a wave of hate that seeks to divide us — right and left, pro-war and anti-war. In the name of my 11-year-old nephew, and all the other unreported victims of this hostile and unproductive environment of fear, let us try to find our common ground as a nation. Let us celebrate this grand and glorious experiment that has survived for 227 years. To do so we must honor and fight vigilantly for the things that unite us — like freedom, the First Amendment and, yes, baseball.
Hey, Ronnie Reagan got himself elected president, and he wasn’t half as talented, smart, articulate, intelligent, or brave. I wonder if Robbins ever thought about running. Susan Sarandon as (unmarried) First Lady. Now there’s Crone Power!

Our paradigm now seems to be: something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us,” said Clinton, who spoke at a seminar of governance organized by Conference Board (news – web sites).
“And if they don’t, they can go straight to hell.”
The Democratic former president, who preceded George W. Bush at the White House, said that sooner or later the United States had to find a way to cooperate with the world at large.
“We can’t run,” Clinton pointed out. “If you got an interdependent world, and you cannot kill, jail or occupy all your adversaries, sooner or later you have to make a deal….
“Since September 11, it looks like we can’t hold two guns at the same time,” Clinton said. “If you fight terrorism, you can’t make America a better place to be.”
Clinton said that if he were at the White House right now he would scrap a 726-billion dollar tax cut proposal made by the president in January to stimulate the flagging economy.
Read the whole article.

Now, here

I have a craving for oranges lately. Oh, you do too? Don