I've been following the latest round of political footballing over the closing of our Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects. I must say, I really have to laugh.
It's so pathetic. Bear in mind, I am no fan of former President George "Dubya" Bush's policies in this area, or in the war on terror area in general. In fact, I believe that the former Prez was a third-rate mind who was too easily swayed by those around him - particularly by neocons who wanted to use US foreign and national security policy to promote their own questionable agenda in the world. It was because of this, in my humble opinion, that we've been blowing valuable resources in Iraq for the last seven years, when we should have been focusing on where Al Qaeda REALLY was - namely in Afghanistan and the not-so-governed far-flung regions of Pakistan that border Afghanistan. But I digress...
Getting back to chez Gitmo, what really blows my mind is that whilst Dubya was still President, Democrats in both houses of Congress were leading the charge to close Guantanamo. Whilst Barack Obama was on the campaign trail, he said that he would do this, and his allies in the Democratic Party praised him whilst his rivals in the Republican party labeled him a weak sister in the war on terror.
But the world moves in complicated ways. Now that Candidate Obama has become President Obama, one of the things he has recently set about doing is to announce that indeed, he is going to have Gitmo closed. And what of the detainees? As many as possible that can be tried will be tried, proclaimed Obama, and whilst we will still use military commissions to do it, we'll do our best to ensure that the American principles of a fair trial are preserved. Detainees will have more latitude than is usual in military trials, in that they can choose their own lawyers and the use of hearsay evidence will be limited, as will the use of confessions allegedly extracted under torture. All this, said Obama, will help to strike a balance between ensuring that justice is done, but not at the expense of American principles, which were so badly used and abused under the Bush administration.
Mind you, Obama's decision to carry on the Bush administration's use of military commissions to try Gitmo detainees was treated with horror by Obama's usual allies on the left, and it won Obama some political capital from his critics on the right. One such critic on the right, whose name escapes me at the moment, commented that Obama appears to understand that the world of governing is much more complicated than is the world of the campaign trail. Quite true, that.
But the biggest kicker of all is yet to come. When asked, where would the Gitmo detainees go if the prison were to be closed, Obama proposed that they would be sent to the United States, to be kept in "supermax" prisons in various cities around the country, either to await trial or to be indefinitely detained if they could not be tried and are deemed too dangerous to release. And then, all hell broke loose.
On May 19 the New York times reported that Senate DEMOCRATS blocked the $90 million that Obama asked for to close Gitmo. Why? Because they don't want former Gitmo detainees coming to supermax prisons in THEIR areas. Not in my backyard!! And this gave Republicans the ammunition they needed to say see? Guantanamo should not be closed, because even our rivals across the aisle don't want the detainees anywhere near the US, and they certainly can't be released! Whoever coined the phrase "politics makes strange bedfellows" wasn't kidding.
Basically, you've got Senate whores on the left and the right united against the White House. Guantanamo is a stain on America's reputation in the world, say the Democrats, but we don't want the detainees here on US soil! Argh, anything but that! Change is great as long as it doesn't affect my life/my constituents! And the Republicans say, of course not, and since there's no place else to put them, we have to keep them where they are. Told ya so! Nyah-nyah!
Can I vomit now? Yep, I'll vomit now. As usual, Congress (in particular the Senate in this case) is playing politics when they should be thinking about the US's strength and reputation. But no, they're too damn busy thinking about how to make political hay so that they all can keep on pandering to their constituents, getting re-elected, and avoid ever actually getting real jobs. But I digress once again...
I actually think Obama's plan makes a lot of sense. Perfect sense actually. Guantanamo is a pox on our house - it's symbolic of the sacrifice of American principles of justice that the Bush administration made in the name of security. Get rid of Gitmo, and you get rid of a major political flash point.
Furthermore, I think the supermax prisons would make great homes for the detainees whilst they await trial, or if they cannot be tried, or if they are convicted. Supermax would cut off what terrorist scum crave the most - attention. The attention that makes people fear them. When you're in supermax, you're in isolation, cut off from the world 23 hours per day. Even your jailers are not allowed to speak to you. For those who are convicted of terrorist plots and acts, supermax is a very fitting punishment, a better punishment than death. No martyrdom. No fiery speeches. Instead, they'll be safely tucked away and forgotten. No one has ever broken out of a supermax. Once you go in, you don't come out.
Moreover, Obama is not proposing that the detainees be thrown in supermaxes forever, without mercy and without trial. In fact, these folks will receive a much better chance to defend themselves than their victims ever had. At least most of the detainees will have a chance to have a trial, whereas they ended their victims' lives without mercy and without trial.
But you see, politicians such as Senators and Representatives don't actually THINK. Instead, they just focus on what will get them re-elected, or get their party fellow-travelers more seats in each house, or how they can discredit political rivals/enemies, etc. It seems that the welfare of our country, and the principles for which our country is SUPPOSED to stand, matter less to these whores than does the welfare of themselves and their petty political squabbles. So President Obama has his work cut out for him. Hopefully he can sell his plan to the whores in a way that they will accept. In the meantime, I'll be vomiting.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Reflections of a Canine Kind
Being classic movie buffs, my husband Chris and I have seen many times the bizarrely twisted and surreal The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, starring acting legends George Sanders, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Ella Raines, among others. There is a line that George Sanders's character Harry Quincey utters whilst hanging out at his gentleman's club talking to friends: "People who love animals shouldn't own them. They don't live long enough."
How true. How sadly true.
Here, we are a four-dog household. We are animal lovers, and we own them. And certainly, we couldn't imagine life without the dogs. They create so much fun and happiness (more fun and happiness than most humans we've had the pleasure to have known have ever created, in point of fact). A quote attributed to another great classic actor, Burgess Meredith, sums it up nicely: "The more people I meet, the more I love my dog."
Dogs are truly special creatures. Chris and I don't anthropomorphize them - we're well aware that dogs are dogs, and as such do things for their own reasons, and are not human. Yet they are, in many ways, like humans. They have understanding and forethought, and contrary to what the "great chain of being" school of bullshit claims, they have souls. Mind you this isn't just something that we believe to be true - animal behaviorists make this very point in an article in today's Seattle Times, "Dogs Have Souls, but You Already Knew That". Not that we needed the animal behaviorists' confirmation of this...if ever you look into the eyes of a dog, you can see wisdom, thought, understanding and love looking back at you. As Plato was quoted to have said, "All the knowledge and wisdom of the universe is contained in the eyes of the dog." If that's not evidence of a soul, I don't know what is.
There is, however, one burden that non-human creatures, including dogs, do not carry, that we humans do - the understanding of mortality. Of all the creatures that roam the Earth, we humans are the only ones burdened with the knowledge that someday we are going to die. And that those we love, both two-legged and four-legged, are someday going to die as well. And this burden is a bastard to carry.
I find myself reflecting on this from time to time as concerns our two older dogs, Bix and Theda. Bix is a male Norwegian Elkhound, proud, brave, stubborn and stoic - a true Elkhound in every way. This past August, our Bix turned ten years old. Check him out:
Six months younger than our Bix is our beautiful female German Shepherd Dog Theda, also ten years old as of this past March. Bix was our first dog, and Theda was our second. Bix was six months old when we brought home the bewildered, scared seven-week-old Theda. She rapidly became attached to Bix, and followed him everywhere. Bix for his part accepted the role of Big Brother and taught and mentored his Little Sis. She grew into a beautiful, muscular, protective, loving, goofy and slightly nervous doggie. Check her out:
As I look at these two recent photos of our first babies, I find myself feeling...
Sad. Apprehensive.
Why?
Because I am burdened with the knowledge of their mortality. As I look at their beautiful, now grey-muzzled faces, I think, "Where have my puppies gone?" And I wonder how much time they have left. If you are a dog lover and owner, reading this, I am sure this very thought has crossed your mind from time to time. Especially if you have older dogs, as we do.
I admit, there is a degree of selfishness in all of this. Naturally, like most humans, I don't want these two wonderful creatures to die because I don't want to imagine my life without them. I also dread the heart-wrenching decision that most dog owners eventually have to make - when is keeping the dog alive no longer a kindness, but an act of selfishness? When is the right time to release his/her soul to the Rainbow Bridge, because the quality of life is no longer there?
Chris says, don't think about these things. It'll only depress you. And the time will come soon enough when these things will actually happen. Don't make yourself feel bad about it before you have to.
How I wish I could just stop thinking about these things. But I cannot. And I know Chris cannot either, despite his effort to be brave.
But what to do? Some people, after they lose a dog, vow never to have another, because the pain of the loss was so great that they cannot bear to go through it again. I've thought about that. But then again, is that really the right solution? To close your heart and your home to a creature that brings such happiness, joy and love, because you don't want to go through the pain of them dying someday?
Hell, no, it's not the right solution. Not for Chris and me, anyway.
I guess we're just fated to be like the narrator of Annette King-Tucker's beautiful poem "I Am An Animal Rescuer", who has fallen in love a thousand times, and cried into the fur of a lifeless body too many times to count...whose home is never quiet, whose wallet is always empty...but whose heart is always full. Only sometimes those feelings are sad. I guess you've just got to believe that all the happiness those beautiful creatures with a soul bring is worth any sadness at the end.
The knowledge of mortality is a bastard of a burden to carry.
How true. How sadly true.
Here, we are a four-dog household. We are animal lovers, and we own them. And certainly, we couldn't imagine life without the dogs. They create so much fun and happiness (more fun and happiness than most humans we've had the pleasure to have known have ever created, in point of fact). A quote attributed to another great classic actor, Burgess Meredith, sums it up nicely: "The more people I meet, the more I love my dog."
Dogs are truly special creatures. Chris and I don't anthropomorphize them - we're well aware that dogs are dogs, and as such do things for their own reasons, and are not human. Yet they are, in many ways, like humans. They have understanding and forethought, and contrary to what the "great chain of being" school of bullshit claims, they have souls. Mind you this isn't just something that we believe to be true - animal behaviorists make this very point in an article in today's Seattle Times, "Dogs Have Souls, but You Already Knew That". Not that we needed the animal behaviorists' confirmation of this...if ever you look into the eyes of a dog, you can see wisdom, thought, understanding and love looking back at you. As Plato was quoted to have said, "All the knowledge and wisdom of the universe is contained in the eyes of the dog." If that's not evidence of a soul, I don't know what is.
There is, however, one burden that non-human creatures, including dogs, do not carry, that we humans do - the understanding of mortality. Of all the creatures that roam the Earth, we humans are the only ones burdened with the knowledge that someday we are going to die. And that those we love, both two-legged and four-legged, are someday going to die as well. And this burden is a bastard to carry.
I find myself reflecting on this from time to time as concerns our two older dogs, Bix and Theda. Bix is a male Norwegian Elkhound, proud, brave, stubborn and stoic - a true Elkhound in every way. This past August, our Bix turned ten years old. Check him out:
Six months younger than our Bix is our beautiful female German Shepherd Dog Theda, also ten years old as of this past March. Bix was our first dog, and Theda was our second. Bix was six months old when we brought home the bewildered, scared seven-week-old Theda. She rapidly became attached to Bix, and followed him everywhere. Bix for his part accepted the role of Big Brother and taught and mentored his Little Sis. She grew into a beautiful, muscular, protective, loving, goofy and slightly nervous doggie. Check her out:
As I look at these two recent photos of our first babies, I find myself feeling...
Sad. Apprehensive.
Why?
Because I am burdened with the knowledge of their mortality. As I look at their beautiful, now grey-muzzled faces, I think, "Where have my puppies gone?" And I wonder how much time they have left. If you are a dog lover and owner, reading this, I am sure this very thought has crossed your mind from time to time. Especially if you have older dogs, as we do.
I admit, there is a degree of selfishness in all of this. Naturally, like most humans, I don't want these two wonderful creatures to die because I don't want to imagine my life without them. I also dread the heart-wrenching decision that most dog owners eventually have to make - when is keeping the dog alive no longer a kindness, but an act of selfishness? When is the right time to release his/her soul to the Rainbow Bridge, because the quality of life is no longer there?
Chris says, don't think about these things. It'll only depress you. And the time will come soon enough when these things will actually happen. Don't make yourself feel bad about it before you have to.
How I wish I could just stop thinking about these things. But I cannot. And I know Chris cannot either, despite his effort to be brave.
But what to do? Some people, after they lose a dog, vow never to have another, because the pain of the loss was so great that they cannot bear to go through it again. I've thought about that. But then again, is that really the right solution? To close your heart and your home to a creature that brings such happiness, joy and love, because you don't want to go through the pain of them dying someday?
Hell, no, it's not the right solution. Not for Chris and me, anyway.
I guess we're just fated to be like the narrator of Annette King-Tucker's beautiful poem "I Am An Animal Rescuer", who has fallen in love a thousand times, and cried into the fur of a lifeless body too many times to count...whose home is never quiet, whose wallet is always empty...but whose heart is always full. Only sometimes those feelings are sad. I guess you've just got to believe that all the happiness those beautiful creatures with a soul bring is worth any sadness at the end.
The knowledge of mortality is a bastard of a burden to carry.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
I Read the News Today, Oh Boy...
...to quote the Beatles' opus "A Day in the Life".
And you know something? I really wish I hadn't read the news today. Oh boy...
I had gone a while without reading or watching any news. I did this on purpose. I took a hiatus from the news after being a 24x7 news junkie (well, practically, anyway) for the entire Presidential campaign.
For the record, and because I feel like pontificating about it, I voted for Obama, not out of any sense that he was some great savior who was going to solve all of our many ills, domestic and foreign, but rather because I felt that the Republican party had withered on the vine. I found the Republican politicians to be out of touch with what everyday Americans were going through in this horrid economy, and it seemed that they didn't give a shit anyway. Plus it was my studied opinion that John McCain, whom I'd previously liked and respected as a moderate candidate, had whored himself out to the base of his party in order to win the Presidency...a bit contrary to "The Straight Talk" of which he claimed to be a champion. Plus I lost all respect for McCain when he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. Friends of mine tried to say, well, she was chosen for him, he didn't choose her himself. My response was, well, then what the hell kind of candidate is he if he doesn't control his own campaign? That doesn't bode well for him as a President, now does it?
But I digress. So as I was saying, I voted for Obama and then went into a cocoon, studiedly determined to wean myself off my news addiction. You might ask, who gives a damn anyway, why are you telling us this? Why didn't you want to read or watch the news anymore? Well, because my constant news watching/reading was making me damned cranky. If you read or watch the news, you'll know pretty much immediately that most of it is bad. And that makes the news damned depressing. For me, it's depressing because it always seems to highlight how bad things happen to good people, or to people not powerful enough to change their fate, etc. Then I start getting pissy and questioning the fairness of the cosmos and the existence of God.
But the freakin' news kept pulling me back...I find that the news is a hard habit to break. It's sort of like a car accident at the roadside. You don't want to look, you don't want to look...but then you do anyway. Such is my relationship with the news.
So today I pulled myself out of my self-imposed exile from the news and read The New York Times online, for the first time in months. And I came across an article that immediately got me depressed, because it highlights how bad things happen to good people, and I started getting pissy and questioning the fairness of the cosmos and the existence of God.
The article is titled "Months to Live: Fighting for a Last Chance at Life". The basic point, without getting into tons of nauseating (and I mean truly nauseating) detail, is this. A man was diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a.k.a. Lou Gehrig's Disease) at age 34. His family had to claw and fight, along with other families whose loved ones had the same dreadful malady, to get approval to obtain a drug as yet not FDA-approved, but whose use in experiments had shown promise for those stricken with ALS. At issue was whether or not an experimental drug should be allowed to be administered to terminally ill patients on compassionate grounds. And amazingly, for a long while, the FDA said NO, this should NOT be allowed. The FDA finally relented, after it was too late for some people but at least, not too late for the 34-year-old man who was the focus of the article.
As I read, my blood began boiling.
For those of you unfamiliar with ALS, it's basically a disease of the motor neurons. Eventually your muscles give out and you cannot walk, talk, speak, swallow, breathe...the list goes on. You basically become a prisoner in your own body, with a mind fully aware of what is happening to you but physically unable to do anything about it, until you eventually die. I put this into the category of a fate worse than death.
So what bothered me about this article? First of all was the incredible length of time it took for the FDA to reverse its original decision and decide to allow these ALS patients to have the drug. While human beings were becoming prisoners of sick bodies and dying of a disease whose progress this drug could possibly arrest, the FDA had to take its time, go through its bureaucratic paces, etc. I guess the lesson here is that if it's compassion you want, a government agency is not the place to look for it.
Second of all, I began wondering where ALS fits into God's supposed "plan" for us, His children. Having been raised a Catholic, I had been taught that God is perfect, merciful and good, as well as all-powerful and loving. So I wonder where ALS comes into the equation. Why should a 34-year-old married father of two, a vibrant athletic person (an avid surfer, among other things) with his life ahead of him, be stricken with ALS and within a year of that diagnosis be confined to a wheelchair, unable to walk, talk or feed himself? Why? I don't understand this. I have an Ivy League Ph.D., so dammit, I am well-read and a critical and analytical thinker. And I don't fucking understand this. If you do, then you've obviously figured out something that I haven't. If God is everything He is claimed to be, then why is ALS even in the world?
And when I go down this road of questioning, it usually leads me to the same place: God either does not exist, or He is a twisted sadist who takes some wicked pleasure out of seeing humans suffer, or he's an impersonal God, a God of physics maybe, who is a mover and shaker of the universe, but really doesn't have compassion the way organized religion claims He does. If you buy the standard line about God's attributes, then those can be the only possibilities, in my opinion. Because if He does indeed exist, and if he is in fact not a twisted sadist, then how freakin' all-powerful can He really be? He can't do anything but sit by and watch His children suffer from something like ALS, then? I don't buy it. So maybe, if He is there, He just doesn't have the human qualities that we've been taught to believe He has. Or maybe He's just not there at all. I could go off on this for pages and pages, but I'll stop here, as I plan to have many more posts on this subject, rest assured. Questioning God is something I do a lot. A lot happens to make me question.
So after reading this article I just had to vent my spleen. The news often gives me lots of spleen, because very little makes sense. I probably shouldn't have read it today.
And you know something? I really wish I hadn't read the news today. Oh boy...
I had gone a while without reading or watching any news. I did this on purpose. I took a hiatus from the news after being a 24x7 news junkie (well, practically, anyway) for the entire Presidential campaign.
For the record, and because I feel like pontificating about it, I voted for Obama, not out of any sense that he was some great savior who was going to solve all of our many ills, domestic and foreign, but rather because I felt that the Republican party had withered on the vine. I found the Republican politicians to be out of touch with what everyday Americans were going through in this horrid economy, and it seemed that they didn't give a shit anyway. Plus it was my studied opinion that John McCain, whom I'd previously liked and respected as a moderate candidate, had whored himself out to the base of his party in order to win the Presidency...a bit contrary to "The Straight Talk" of which he claimed to be a champion. Plus I lost all respect for McCain when he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. Friends of mine tried to say, well, she was chosen for him, he didn't choose her himself. My response was, well, then what the hell kind of candidate is he if he doesn't control his own campaign? That doesn't bode well for him as a President, now does it?
But I digress. So as I was saying, I voted for Obama and then went into a cocoon, studiedly determined to wean myself off my news addiction. You might ask, who gives a damn anyway, why are you telling us this? Why didn't you want to read or watch the news anymore? Well, because my constant news watching/reading was making me damned cranky. If you read or watch the news, you'll know pretty much immediately that most of it is bad. And that makes the news damned depressing. For me, it's depressing because it always seems to highlight how bad things happen to good people, or to people not powerful enough to change their fate, etc. Then I start getting pissy and questioning the fairness of the cosmos and the existence of God.
But the freakin' news kept pulling me back...I find that the news is a hard habit to break. It's sort of like a car accident at the roadside. You don't want to look, you don't want to look...but then you do anyway. Such is my relationship with the news.
So today I pulled myself out of my self-imposed exile from the news and read The New York Times online, for the first time in months. And I came across an article that immediately got me depressed, because it highlights how bad things happen to good people, and I started getting pissy and questioning the fairness of the cosmos and the existence of God.
The article is titled "Months to Live: Fighting for a Last Chance at Life". The basic point, without getting into tons of nauseating (and I mean truly nauseating) detail, is this. A man was diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a.k.a. Lou Gehrig's Disease) at age 34. His family had to claw and fight, along with other families whose loved ones had the same dreadful malady, to get approval to obtain a drug as yet not FDA-approved, but whose use in experiments had shown promise for those stricken with ALS. At issue was whether or not an experimental drug should be allowed to be administered to terminally ill patients on compassionate grounds. And amazingly, for a long while, the FDA said NO, this should NOT be allowed. The FDA finally relented, after it was too late for some people but at least, not too late for the 34-year-old man who was the focus of the article.
As I read, my blood began boiling.
For those of you unfamiliar with ALS, it's basically a disease of the motor neurons. Eventually your muscles give out and you cannot walk, talk, speak, swallow, breathe...the list goes on. You basically become a prisoner in your own body, with a mind fully aware of what is happening to you but physically unable to do anything about it, until you eventually die. I put this into the category of a fate worse than death.
So what bothered me about this article? First of all was the incredible length of time it took for the FDA to reverse its original decision and decide to allow these ALS patients to have the drug. While human beings were becoming prisoners of sick bodies and dying of a disease whose progress this drug could possibly arrest, the FDA had to take its time, go through its bureaucratic paces, etc. I guess the lesson here is that if it's compassion you want, a government agency is not the place to look for it.
Second of all, I began wondering where ALS fits into God's supposed "plan" for us, His children. Having been raised a Catholic, I had been taught that God is perfect, merciful and good, as well as all-powerful and loving. So I wonder where ALS comes into the equation. Why should a 34-year-old married father of two, a vibrant athletic person (an avid surfer, among other things) with his life ahead of him, be stricken with ALS and within a year of that diagnosis be confined to a wheelchair, unable to walk, talk or feed himself? Why? I don't understand this. I have an Ivy League Ph.D., so dammit, I am well-read and a critical and analytical thinker. And I don't fucking understand this. If you do, then you've obviously figured out something that I haven't. If God is everything He is claimed to be, then why is ALS even in the world?
And when I go down this road of questioning, it usually leads me to the same place: God either does not exist, or He is a twisted sadist who takes some wicked pleasure out of seeing humans suffer, or he's an impersonal God, a God of physics maybe, who is a mover and shaker of the universe, but really doesn't have compassion the way organized religion claims He does. If you buy the standard line about God's attributes, then those can be the only possibilities, in my opinion. Because if He does indeed exist, and if he is in fact not a twisted sadist, then how freakin' all-powerful can He really be? He can't do anything but sit by and watch His children suffer from something like ALS, then? I don't buy it. So maybe, if He is there, He just doesn't have the human qualities that we've been taught to believe He has. Or maybe He's just not there at all. I could go off on this for pages and pages, but I'll stop here, as I plan to have many more posts on this subject, rest assured. Questioning God is something I do a lot. A lot happens to make me question.
So after reading this article I just had to vent my spleen. The news often gives me lots of spleen, because very little makes sense. I probably shouldn't have read it today.
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