Author Archives: Greg Wees

Politically Motivated (editorial 2)

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One of the new arguments designed to prop up the legitimacy of the Iraq war is that although no WMDs were found, the military did uncover massive stockpiles of conventional weapons. So score one for the administration.

Unfortunately, as we learned recently, the U.S. failed to actually secure the masses of conventional weapons they found. Thus, sometime after March 9 of 2003 (when International Atomic Energy Agency representatives confirmed their seals on the materials were in place) 380 tons of high explosives disappeared from the unguarded Al Quaqaa complex, probably into the hands of the enemy.

But not to worry. As we also learned, the revelation of this tactical blunder was “politically motivated,” in that the news came out just a week before the election. That is, it came out to the rest of us just now. The administration apparently has known about it for many months. But their silence was tactical: they didn’t want the enemy (the ones who stole the explosives) to find out about the stolen explosives. So no harm, no foul.

Or, as they say over at the Pentagon, “Don’t’ ask, don’t tell.” You remember Abu Ghraib, right? Donald Rumsfeld knew all about that, too, months before the press broke the story. But he wasn’t telling, because no one asked. Unfortunately, once the press got “politically motivated,” out came the messy facts.

It’s the same over in Congress, where a “politically motivated” bi-partisan ethics committee recently admonished Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay–not once, but twice–for shady practices during his orchestration of the “re-redistricting” of Texas congressional districts. As you may recall, when the Texas Democrats balked at the patently unfair slicing and dicing of districts and left the state to deny Republicans a quorum, DeLay was the one who called on the FAA to help round them up like so many stray dogies.

Said DeLay when questioned about his reprimand, “It’s a month before the election. You do the political math.” Which is amusingly ironic, since “political math”–calculating election-proof Republican districts in Texas in an effort to offset predicted Democratic gains in the House on November 2nd—is exactly what led to his rebuke.

But hey, we’re on permanent spin cycle here, people. You can’t trust a bi-partisan Congressional committee to tell you the truth. Trust Tom DeLay instead.

Or trust Halliburton. Because this week brought another Halloween skeleton out of the closet, one you may have missed since the press didn’t pay it much attention. In this instance, the “politically motivated” chief contracting officer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—apparently a bastion of liberal sympathizers—has leveled the bothersome charge that Halliburton was probably unfairly awarded some of its lucrative “no bid” defense contracts and contract extensions.

The chief contracting officer for the Corps of Engineers is worried that the process was corrupted by senior administration officials. I can’t think of who that would be. Maybe you can. But don’t worry. Because of the proximity of the election, a Halliburton spokesperson assured us, such accusations are “politically motivated.”

Sure, there was that matter of Halliburton overcharging the Pentagon many millions of dollars, but they gave that back. Right after the press found out.

Do you see a pattern here? Reports suggesting incompetence in handling the Iraq occupation? Politically motivated. Bipartisan Congressional committee reprimanding Tom DeLay for ethics violations? Politically motivated. Accusations by the chief contracting officer that the administration improperly steered lucrative contracts to Halliburton? Politically motivated.

Economic forecasts of crippling deficits necessitating either massive increases in tax rates or massive reductions in Social Security and Medicare payments once Bush is out of office? Findings by the National Academy of Sciences confirming the contribution of human activity to global warming? Polls showing America’s loss of prestige in the world? The bi-partisan 9/11 Commission’s findings of no connection between Iraq and 9/11 conspirators?

All politically motivated. The economists, the scientists, the bi-partisan committees, the rest of the world–they’re all apparently just pessimistic Bush bashers. As Bush himself might say, they’re “blame America first” types. Some of them are probably Old Europeans or even Massachusetts liberals. So they come up with all this stuff to make his administration and his political allies look bad.

It’s a shame, really. Why can’t these folks just mind their own business and trust the government to do what’s right?

Vote Wrong and Die

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As an American, do you feel threatened? Because you are being threatened. There are elements in this world who want to frighten you–to terrorize you, so to speak–into voting their way. They want you to make your choice in November based not on a sober assessment of the candidates but on fear for your safety.

These international thugs know that a rational decision process will not favor their agenda. They seek to spread fear and insecurity among Americans in order to sway the election and help their cause. Their cause is not one of freedom and sovereignty for the world’s nations. Instead, they envision a global transformation, where all governments adopt their idea of God’s prescribed government, culture and way of life. And as we have seen, any nation that refuses to adhere to their new global order will face the consequences of a doctrine that has established unprovoked attack as a legitimate weapon to wield against perceived enemies, regardless of whether they are a threat to peaceful nations.

These ideologues will stop at nothing, for they are driven not by a desire for justice and equality but by a narrowly defined ideology. Faced with the prospect of a democratic election in a nation divided by war and competing ideas, they have chosen not to enjoin the democratic process in a fair contest but to undermine the mechanisms of democracy by spreading fear and mistrust among the populace. Their goal is clear: to distract the voting public from issues that are important to them with violence and the threat of more violence to come. In effect, their message is, “vote our way, or you will be attacked with even more ferocity than before.”

Not all who follow these groups are as fanatical as their leaders. Many are merely following the same leaders who promised to help their common cause in the past. They have not yet come to realize that as their leaders preach morality they practice an immoral war; that as their spokesmen call for the “truth” about their enemies they spread unfounded deception designed to distort that very truth; that even as they seek to convince us of the honor of their cause, they cannot hide from the dishonor of their actions past and present–which are characterized not by the brave valor they seem to value but by bullying, fear-mongering, deception and lies.

But America is still, for now, a democracy. We do have the right to choose. So please remember, when you make your choice, that no one can bully you into choosing their way. Remember that you have a right–a duty–to make the choice that you feel will best serve the country and the peaceful nations of the world. And that choice should be based on a rational weighing of the facts, not on suggestions of cataclysms to come should you make the “wrong” choice.

After all, it is our greatest patriots, the fathers and mothers of our nation, who sacrificed the prospect of personal safety to stand up to those who would deny us a government based on fair representation, a government “of the people.” Don’t let those who have no concept of such a sacrifice deny you the power to make an informed and rational choice for the candidate you believe will help lead us in honor and in courage against those who would threaten us into believing we no longer have that choice.

Living in a Quiet Place

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August 27, 2004

I’ve been eating at the Subway near my office once a week for about five years now. I don’t always get the same sandwich, but nearly always. Today I got a turkey and ham, though usually I get a plain turkey.

If that sounds boring, well, it is. But I’ve found that while I’m always interested in new ideas in art, music, philosophy, etc., and I’m fascinated with new people, places and events, the truth is I’m happy with rut-like routines for the more mechanical aspects of day to day living.

With respect to wardrobe, I am far from a “dandy,” though I try not to be slovenly or wear clothes too far out of style. Occasionally at the office we have a “casual day,” which I usually opt out of. I have a good standard set of boring work clothes–khakis, black slacks, oxfords, and polo shirts from the local mid-value retailer–and the effort required to think up something more “casual” to wear (but not too casual) sort of negates any pleasure I might have in wearing jeans or shorts to work. Plus, I don’t even have that many casual clothes, so I don’t want to “use them up” before the weekend arrives. The whole thing just screws up my monk-like routine.

My last car was an Acura, but it got pretty old, so I traded it in–for another Acura. Hey, they’re just good cars.

It’s simple living, and I no longer find simple to be synonymous with bland or commonplace. Quite the contrary: as the whole population seems to strive for a life of some deeper significance, I accept life as inherently significant, and life’s simple acts as acts of faith in that belief.

My weekdays are filled with routine, though I like to break things up on the weekends. I’m happy to work, come home, work out or mow the lawn if it needs it, read the paper, eat dinner, walk the dog and read to my daughter with my wife, watch TV for an hour, and then hit the sack, where I sleep quite soundly. I look forward to each familiar component of these evenings as others might look forward to a coming change. There is a quietness to these days, a rhythm that is in tune with my life’s rhythm, at least for now. My earlier life was so frenetic, unpredictable, often dangerous. I’m happy to be in this new stage, one where I might plan a long-term personal project without the need for a deadline. I can plant a tree, and say to myself in earnest, “Well, that will be looking just great in about five years or so.”

I can still contemplate the old days, the lessons they taught me. This old life lives on in my mind, a spirit life of some lone gypsy obsessed with finding meaning, searching for people who knew about living, expecting to find significance lurking nearby like a wino in an alley. He eventually stopped wandering and found meaning–in a child’s eyes, a swept porch, a Saturday morning kiss, a dog’s soft ear, a garden of wild lilacs and daisies. The necessary thing was to stop looking.

And now, waves of meaning wash over each morning shave and mirror stare. Who am I today? How will I change to face events, and how will events change me without my knowing? How far away am I from that naïve child who felt so apart from everyone else? How much closer am I now, and will I move closer still, to those I love?

It is the exquisite, almost painful beauty of the world as seen from a quiet place, with room and time to observe the day’s passing, that I crave. And I find it so often, I am approaching a contentment I never knew was possible.

I wrote a bad poem some time ago, about the sun as an indifferent ball of fire careening dumbly through space. I thought it was a poem about alienation and the loss of significance in the face of the death of God, etc.–a riff on the current Zeitgeist. Now I know it was just a poem about loneliness. And that’s what most angst must be about. The inability, if even for a while, to move from separate lonely spaces to a common warm, quiet place of belonging and acceptance. To come home.

Questions for the CEO of Civil Corp.

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An oft-cited Republican mantra promotes the idea that the United States government should be more “businesslike” in its approach to governance. That is, it should not borrow excessively, it should manage its affairs with efficiency, it should not engage in Quixotic pursuits unrelated to the success of the company, etc. This is all in keeping with the conventional wisdom that businesses–and by extension, nations–survive because they are “fit” (AKA Social Darwinism). And it under-girds that famous, non-ideological axiom (so dear to the hearts of capitalists), that “The business of America is business.”

Let’s imagine, then, in light of such a premise, a list of questions that the Board of our company (that’s you and me) might have for the CEO (that’s you-know-who) as he petitions for continuance of his position as leader of the corporation.

Questions from the Chairman of the Board of Directors to the sitting CEO of Civil Corp:

  1. OK, it looks like we started off in Fiscal ’02 with a surplus of a couple of hundred billion. Now, according to these numbers from Lou in accounting, we’re looking at a debt load of about seven trillion bucks. I know we’ve hit a few bumps in the road, but Lou tells me your budgets are running half a trillion in the red for the next ten years or so, and it’s got him and the whole accounting staff pretty worried. How are we going to stay afloat with numbers like that? What are you doing to boost revenues and profits and reduce outlays?
  2. On acquisitions – it says here in your ’01 corporate goals report that you planned to scale back acquisitions. Even so, we went ahead and backed your hunch on Ira Co. and green-lighted the hostile takeover. Now we’re about 200 billion down here, with nothing to show for it and no prospects apart from more fiscal hemorrhaging and loss of key personnel through…um…attrition. That’s not to mention the PR beating we’re taking in the industry at large. Now I’m all for expansion, but it looks like your team never really had a post-acquisition plan in place. Did you honestly think the Ira Co. loyalists were going to bend over backward to help Civil Corp. restructure the company? I think it would have been prudent to expect at least a little foot dragging. The shareholders might have reacted differently to your proposition with more information on alternative outcomes. You know as well as I do the law of unintended consequences. Anyway, I want a full report on your plan for Ira Co. in fiscal ’05 by early October. We need a serious plan, and we need it now.
  3. HR is reporting that hiring is way down. It looks like we issued huge bonuses in both ’03 and ’04 to your top people, but bonuses down the line toward middle management and labor are flat. That doesn’t bother me, but since Accounting can’t justify any more revenue for payroll while we continue to hand out these bonuses, we’re understaffed. What’s your plan to help turn that around?
  4. We know the competition hit us pretty hard in ’01 right after you came on, and we don’t blame you for that. It was a rough year for the whole industry. You got right on the stick, and we’re grateful. But getting back to Ira Co. – it says here in your business plan that the takeover was part of a plan of targeted acquisition of competitive rivals in order to consolidate our market share and protect the company. But the boys in research were apparently wrong, or else you misunderstood them–Ira Co. isn’t even in the same markets as we are. Obviously, we didn’t “know” Ira Co. was gunning for us, because we now know they didn’t have the manufacturing capacity to do so. And what’s more, All Chaos, our biggest competitor, is still out there punching away at us and intimidating our business partners. And Tali Brands – are we sure they’re out of the picture? I’ve heard rumors. The shareholders will want to know–why did we reduce efforts addressing a known threat in order to go after a paper tiger
  5. I’ve got a report here from the facilities manager that says our utility bills are soaring, and they’re climbing every year. He says we could put a real dent in these bills just by encouraging our building managers to make a few changes–turn off the lights, turn down the thermostats, reducing fleet vehicle size, that kind of thing. Now you know I’m not one of those touchy-feely environmental types, but business is business, and we have an opportunity to increase efficiencies here. I think we just need to lead the way, and the staff will see the value in it for the good of the company. Still, your executive VP–is it Dick?–issued a memo last year that actually discourages staff from reducing our utility bills. He seems to think there’s no need to conserve at all. I think I speak for most of the board when I say we need to conserve everywhere we can. It just makes good fiscal sense. (And by the way, I’ve heard rumors that the utilities are heavily invested in All Chaos. You look at it that way, and we’re helping All Chaos succeed with every extra dollar we spend on energy.) Will you look into what’s behind Dick’s apparent abandonment of environmental efficiencies as a company policy?

Freedom Fever – Catch It!

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I read a couple of good quotes the other day. One was from some philosophical hack or other, and it basically went, “A man is free at the moment he decides he is.” I suppose I could look up the author, but I suppose if I’m free, then I’m free to be lazy.

I have, in fact, decided to be free.

It’s not an easy thing to wrap one’s mind around. After all, one has to live somewhere, and virtually every place you can live has rules of some sort. I had an old friend, classic anarchist, who used to complain that he couldn’t live anywhere as a sovereign being, because anywhere he chose to live would force him to work and earn money. How do you mean, I ask. Well, because every piece of land that’s “owned” requires taxes, and taxes require money, and money requires work. “So I’ve gotta shackle myself to the man even if all I wanna do is just live.”

And I think that was the salient point – he would have to work. Some folks, God bless ’em, just don’t feel like working.* And they confuse the requirement of working with a kind of enslavement. But if that’s so, then we are enslaved by being born. Every creature must hunt its dinner. Some do it with a bow and arrow, some with a fishing net, some by pretending to be too crazy to take care of themselves, some by running a corporation.

The only ones who are exempt from work are invalids and the truly disabled. But they don’t get to enjoy it.

What about “welfare mothers” and criminals? Believe me, both are occupations. Those lifestyles take time and effort. I’ve known enough of both variety.

But I have decided to be free, and I think what the man meant was that our only prisons are the ones we build for ourselves (another stolen quote  – this one from Doris Lessing, I believe. But you look it up. I’m free.) So freedom is a matter of organizing one’s life in such a way that the necessities of life don’t infringe too much on a person’s human sovereignty, if at all possible.

If I have to work, I should work at a job that doesn’t make me feel like an indentured servant. Think I’ve got that covered. The job isn’t glamorous, but it lets me be me. (Read John Kenneth Galbraith’s “Company Man” to get an idea why I’m not more ambitious here at the ol’ office. In brief: we cannot help actually becoming the role we continually play — stole that from Kurt Vonnegut.)

And I should never have to say anything I don’t want to say, right? Only slaves watch their mouths. Yet, with age we come to realize that the mouth is a weapon, and kindly, responsible people wield it responsibly. Think drunken rock star on a trans-Atlantic flight. Sure, he can shoot his mouth off and make an ass of himself and not care for the consequences (since there aren’t likely to be any). But he’s still an ass. Better to balance the right to free speech with respect for the ears of others.

And I can come and go as I please. I don’t have to tell anyone where I’m going or, God forbid, ask permission (sound of “pussy whip” cracking in background.) But, again, with age we come to realize we’re building relationships that go beyond the casual friendship or pretend romance of youth, and we have people who depend on us. I suppose I could, for the sake of argument, take off for a few days without telling my family. But of course they would worry tremendously, and I don’t want that. So I make sure I tell them my whereabouts. It’s the human thing to do.

“But the government! The damn government!” Ah yes, the damn government. My response is another quote, this one from that sandal-wearing sage we all know and love. When he responded to the man who asked how it is possible to be true to God’s will while living under the yoke of Roman tyranny, he hit it right on the head. “Render unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar.” In other words, accept that free people always have to live within the borders of so-called “nations” run by those who seek to make their mark on history, which often  involves an attempt to curtail individuals’ rights to be left alone. The only way to remain relatively free is to allow the world’s “leaders” to play their overgrown chess game while attempting to stay  out of their way as they rage around the world with their wars and laws.

The government does not “provide” freedom or “guarantee” freedom. No. No government in history has been the least bit interested in issuing the power of true freedom to its subjects. Quite the opposite: governments use every power at hand to attempt control over their subjects, balancing the desire for control with the threat of rebellion should the  methods of control go too far. (An example today is the so-called militia movement. The government would prefer to simply wipe these people out and remove the threat, but that would simply stoke the rebellious spirit of the ones that get away, causing more problems.)

And yet, no government in history has been successful at a sustained denial of freedom. Those governments are upended by free people who will not stand for it. Or they are crushed under the weight of their own corruption. I’m no Pollyanna, I’m aware that despots and crooks are “in charge” all over the globe. But what are they really in charge of? Money, borders, bullets, but not people. They don’t own souls. So the trick is to live in the nation that doesn’t get on your back too much, if you can, and don’t get too cozy with the power structure. And maybe try to help those who live under the more oppressive regimes, if you can (though I have to stress that doesn’t mean killing them in order to “free” them from tyranny.)

In the end, I believe freedom is an overblown, overused concept. We don’t think that much about being free. We think about being happy, and our happiness is a byproduct not of our freedom but how we manage our lives as inherently free beings. When we do it in a way that honors our natural status as sovereign beings,  we are as free as birds in spirit even though some inhuman government may imprison our bodies. When we don’t, all the freedom in the world will not release us from what amounts to a self-imposed confinement based on willing submission to the rule of others.

*Quote from Ned Flanders, The Simpsons