Category: politics

I’m not shy about political ranting here at Words’ End, but this time I’ll leave it to the professionals. (NYTimes link, login required)

“This is clear evidence of God’s existence,” they say.

But if you believe in a god, why do you need evidence that this god exists? And why would you want to convince others of it?

So, I didn’t actually know that the words “Under God” weren’t put into the U.S. pledge of allegiance until 1954, when America was fighting godless Commies. I find this as hilarious as the present blind enforcement of the phrase’s repetition is idiotic.

Who are you to make me pledge allegiance to your god?!

In high school, at first I thought it was kind of cool to participate in recitations of this sort. After all, I’d just arrived fresh out of the USSR, where vocal pronouncements of solidarity and loyalty to the State weren’t exactly a rarity. As I got older and started thinking for myself a little more, though, it seemed distasteful to have to say “under God.” This is around 1992-3 we’re talking about, Clinton was president, people were a lot more relaxed, and I’d just moved to southern California, where (especially compared to Queens, New York) nobody seemed to ever raise their voice above speaking level. My teachers gave us quite a bit of freedom on this one, saying we didn’t have to recite the pledge at all, but could mouth it or just stand there with our hands over our hearts, facing the flag.

I had my problems with facing the flag as a daily exercise, too, but wasn’t going to fight this particular battle.

Anyway, yes. “Under God” in the pledge of allegiance, and the forced daily recital of the pledge of allegiance, is stupid. It’s not going to get you any thinking person’s loyalty. It stinks of propaganda: “Look at us! We’re good Christians! WE are not mindless ROBOTS who want to take away everyone’s MONEY! Oh, and by the way, you should praise our god.” Spare me, will you? You’ve already made me renounce my godless ways in favor of The Flag whose purpose and ideals of religious and other freedoms you are corrupting. You get my loyalty, and my taxes – for now, anyway; I’m not at all sure I want to while away the rest of my days in the U.S. You made my mother wait over a year longer than the rest of us to get her citizenship, because her line of work back in the old country required inscription to the Party ranks. Over a year. In 1998. Paranoid bunch of…

In other news, I notice that political ranting is becoming a favorite use for this blog. I wonder how many people I’m aggravating.

Bush slams gay marriage at Evangelical convention.

Bush vows to protect traditional marriage from courts.

Listen to the NPR report. Note the Evangelicals gloating that Bush is picking up the torch that was dropped, leading a country founded on Christian principles.

Yes, well, this country is also founded on blood, on near-genocide. And on freedom of religion. Including freedom from religion. Oh god, am I furious.

I don’t usually swear gratuitously in writing. Lest I continue sputtering uselessly, I will shut up, and refer you to a short post by Xtina, who curses much more to-the-point than I.

When is this goddamn administration going to stop telling me what to do with my body, my interpersonal relationships, my life?!

It’s so much easier to throw up the smaller updates once you’re done with the larger one.

Remember when the gummint made waves, trying to track terrorists and similar undesirables through library records? Well, this is heartening, at least.

This Washington Post article is nothing new, but I wanted to document it nonetheless, and possibly disseminate (that’s where you, Reader, come in). Mostly, “White House Web Scrubbing” is about Iraq-related issues; here’s a particularly nauseating non-Iraq excerpt:

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and USAID have removed or revised fact sheets on condoms, excising information about their effectiveness in disease prevention, and promoting abstinence instead. The National Cancer Institute, meanwhile, scrapped claims on its Web site that there was no association between abortion and breast cancer. And the Justice Department recently redacted criticism of the department in a consultant’s report that had been posted on its Web site.

This is the American Family Association’s poll. They are going to present the results to congress to show that Americans don’t favor marriage for homosexuals. Unless, of course, that’s not how the results end up.

Take a minute to fill it out, if you care about such things. And please distribute.

I’m a bit slow on the uptake, but then, I don’t spend much time on the ‘net nowadays, on the weekends. Here you’ll find a letter from ICANN’s [1] Paul Twomey to VeriSign’s Russell Lewis, dated 3 October. This one’s quite a bit harsher than anything else I’ve seen officially voiced. Excellent:

[P]lease consider this a formal demand to return the operation of the .com and .net domains to their state before the 15 September changes, pending further technical, operational and legal evaluation. A failure to comply with this demand will require ICANN to take the steps necessary under those agreements to compel compliance with them.

Thanks to Liz for the link.

[1] The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. I’m including this here because I had to look it up myself.

Today, Mikhail Gorbachev received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Brown and gave a lecture titled “Democracy’s Impact on Globalization.” It was truly a privilege to listen to this intelligent, diplomatic, humble, utterly humane politician. It’s in large part thanks to his “daring… and restraint,” as Ruth put it, that I have been able to go back to Russia after emigrating; thanks to processes he helped set in motion, people are now less afraid, more politically active over there. To take a country as twisted and stifled by its own governments as the Soviet Union and turn it around, never losing sight of humanity in the process, is admirable.

He didn’t say anything new, by any vaguely politically aware person’s standards; nevertheless, it was an excellent lecture to read (and to hear) in the current political climate here in the States. He talked of real democracy, not only on a national but on an international level. He talked of the need for popular vote, pointing out that world leaders get elected by 25-30% of their populations, considering the nonvoting masses and the (fewer!) people voting for the opposition. He said that the UN needs to regain momentum and authority. He did mention Iraq, stating unequivocally that, although Americans did create the mess, it would be wrong for the world to not participate in cleaning it up, because it would only promote divisiveness. Later on, during the Q&A, he harshly criticized the U.S. for its imperialist attitude, said that imposing American will on other peoples is not acceptable and does not promote democracy, and quipped that the U.S. needs perestroika as much as Russia and Latin America do. Throughout his speech, Gorbachev repeatedly placed emphasis on peace and the betterment of the human condition (not his exact words) as the ultimate goals.

The simultaneous interpretation was atrocious. Having done it in the past, I know what it takes; and this guy was just plain unprepared. He was bad. I wonder if he’s Gorbachev’s “own” interpreter (unlikely, given the quality) or one provided by the university (which would be shameful). I hope that, if the text of the speech is posted, it is a better translation.