The case against political attack ads

This is from a recent comment I made on Anderson Cooper's Facebook page, concerning his post on the nastiness of modern political campaigns.

It is unfortunately the very history of political campaigns have long stood as a defense to why they continue to run this way.  "Well it's how we've always done it before, so what was good enough then is good enough now."  This is a falsehood; it stands in the way of progress.  Instead it undermines all political and intellectual discussion.  It creates distrust of all politicians and public figures from the constituents they serve, both from those who buy the poisonous rhetoric, and those intelligent enough to recognize it for what it is. It eliminates any true debate and stumbles the pursuit of truth and a better world for all.  And as for the dissolution of progress, Dr. John Kotter has recently released a book outlining how thinking in such terms as "always been done before" hinders progress and also gives good advice on how to counter it effectively.

These thoughts are little more than playing to mob-rule, destroying human intelligence in the pursuit of power.  A very sad fact.  America right now is rife with this frame of mind, it exists everywhere from political campaigns to how we raise our children.  As a student of history, politics, and from my time spent in classrooms in the secondary and primary levels, I have seen it everywhere.  It drives our political, social, and economic policy.  We allow the slander and libel of other citizens in political campaigns because it's how we always did it.  We allow our children to make racist comments and bully each other in school over sexuality under the guilty pale of remembering that we ourselves were that way in our youths.  We refuse to recognize the times when our economic system can no longer sustain itself under the very same guise.  This cannot stand, something that was wrong then, is just as wrong now.  Tradition and history do not make them right.  It is only by intellectually standing against such things that we can have any hope to remove them.  They are difficult to face, even 100 years after the end of the Civil War and the destruction of slavery in the United States we still did not have equality between African Americans and Caucasian Americans, and even after the Civil Rights movements of that time all these years later it still does not exist.  These are not overnight victories, but worthwhile pursuits nonetheless.

Another defense of these ads is that they weren't as bad as they were when politics in America was just starting.  Read some of the old ads from back when Jefferson was running for president, and they were truly malicious and even absurd, but while they might not be "as bad" today, I think we are returning to those ways.  Listen to Limbaugh spouting off about how pictures of Obama look "demonic", and now there are those making veiled threats of revolution should they not get their way; we are hardly that much better.  All we can do as informed citizens is work to further knowledge and understand that history, is history, and never a justification. 

The faces of "the Few"

I know everyone has their demons that hinder and slow us down and make our lives weary... however I simply cannot help but look at this picture and feel that my life is hardly all that difficult. Pictured here is newly promoted Squadron Leader Brian John Edward Lane, Officer Commanding of No. 19 Squadron of the Royal Air Force. Take a good look at this picture and try to guess how old he is.

He is photographed during the height of the Battle of Britain, September of 1940 at the helm of the aforementioned historic No. 19 Squadron, having received his post following the death of the previous squadron leader. At this point in the battle, Lane had fought in the Battle of France that May and June, helping protect embattled British and French soldiers during the harrowing evacuation of Dunkirk. The Allies lost the Battle of France. By this point to many, including the still neutral USA, it looked like they were going to lose the Battle of Britain as well. I on the other hand, look at this face and I don't see defeat. I see strain, I see hardship etched into every line of his prematurely aged face, but I don't see defeat. Instead I see determination, I see grit, and I see sadness.

There are no smiles here. Men just returned from another hard fight, almost always with less planes coming back than went out. That was the reality these men lived in for almost a year, from the late spring of 1940 through spring of 1941. The enemy they faced, the German Luftwaffe, outmanned them, outgunned them, and had a years' worth of combat experience under its belt. This was the great test in that moment of history; after Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Norway and France had all fallen, and Italy being part of the Axis and Spain under control of a Fascist regime every bit as ruthless as Germany's, all eyes were on Britain. The war for the soul of Europe for that one year rested solely on their shoulders. We here in the USA offered little help. We sent no planes, we sent no pilots, we sent no ships, and we sent no soldiers. Britain was seemingly a force alone.

Forget fanciful images from films like "Pearl Harbor", of American volunteers risking criminal prosecution and lost citizenship back at home to gallantly help the beleaguered Great Britain to victory, the total amount of US airmen who flew during the actual Battle of Britain was between seven and ten. Our sole contribution to the actual fighting. Almost 150 Polish airmen fought in the battle however, even after England failed utterly to live up to its promise to assist Poland in the event of a German invasion. One in every eight pilots in the RAF during the battle was Polish.

We in the US, however, were neutral and would remain so for nearly another year and a half. The first full squadron of volunteer US pilots in RAF uniforms didn't become active until February of 1941, well after the majority of the fighting of the battle had wound down as the Germans prepared to invade the Soviet Union instead. The squadron itself was formed and being trained in September 1940, at the time this picture was taken. We have no right to take any pride from Allied victory in the Battle of Britain, or even pretend we do. But really, Britain was not alone. Apart from the Poles, scores of Czech, French, Norwegian, Belgian, Danish, and other pilots had all escaped to Britain. In fact the highest scoring RAF unit of the conflict was No. 303 (Polish) Squadron, which only entered combat on the final day of August 1940. On top of that many pilots from around the Commonwealth, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, all flocked to the homeland in its hour of need.

It would be over another year from when this photograph was taken before the US signed the Lend-Lease Act and started sending aid to Great Britain in earnest in exchange for Caribbean naval bases. It would be another year and a half almost from this photograph until we actually entered the war, and almost another two years from this photograph before we started sending our army air force in earnest to England to carry out the bombing campaign against occupied France and Germany. And even then, we were woefully unprepared to carry our weight. We talk of American victories and American military might when without Great Britain it never would have happened. They gave us staging areas, they taught us tactics and took us under their proverbial and even literal wings.

This was a different conflict, a different time. These were desperate and dedicated young men. Our soldiers on the ground today do not face the same struggles that Lane and his comrades did. No one but those who were there and then in that shining moment can have any idea what it possibly felt like; those of us alive today can only taste it. Fighting to keep anything resembling morale as your airfields, factories, and finally cities are all bombed mercilessly for months on end and no matter how many times you go up and how fewer and fewer of you return every time the enemy never seems to break or lessen their assault. Yet they held, they held strong and they kept fighting. And in the end that determination paid off in victory that I think won the war in Europe. Without a British victory in the Battle of Britain there would have been no launching point for a Normandy invasion, nowhere for the streams of Allied strategic and tactical bombers to break down the German war machine and fighting spirit bit by bit. This moment and these young men were the ones who beat Germany; they kept the light going and the door open for the future.

Let’s go back to the picture now. This was the face of that battle; very weary, very young, but very determined young men. Whatever your guess was at his age from the beginning, he was only twenty three at the time of this picture. He's not photogenic. The lower half of his face is markedly paler than the upper half from being covered by a flight mask after spending much of every day flying. The frown-lines between his eyebrows are very pronounced, he even appears to have bit of a wandering left eye if you look close enough, and you can. But he looks back at the camera, right back at you, and he's unwavering, isn't he? This is the face of Brian John Edward Lane, and this is the face of the Battle of Britain. Lane was not the highest scorer of the battle, not by a long shot. In fact he just barely made 'ace', which is to say he shot down 5 or more enemy aircraft, with a final score of 6. The man to his left, our right, George Unwin, downed over twice as many as Lane. And unlike Lane, Unwin survived the war. Lane on the other hand finally met his fate in combat over the North Sea in December of 1942. Yet it is Lane who we remember today. Because Lane didn't have a low score because of lack of ability, he had leadership thrust on him at a young age and carried his torch well. He dedicated himself to leading his men and the success of the unit over personal glory. The photo shows Lane as he was; a hard-working, no nonsense leader who wanted to win.

Look hard at this photograph. This is the face of a hero. Of a common man who fought a grand fight. And even if it claimed his life, he has in fact survived until today, hasn't he? Even knowing that he only lived two years beyond this photograph, maybe it's just me but I don't see death in Lane's face... do you? I see someone determined to keep going, even if it does kill him. That's a powerful thing, a force of will we all should have, don't you think? It's decidedly missing in today's world, the drive, the desire to win and keep going no matter how long the odds. I know some may argue that our enemies have it today, blowing themselves to smithereens in desperate attempts to kill us, but that's not the same thing, not by a long shot. Fighting to defeat your enemy even if it kills you will always win over killing yourself to kill your enemy. It didn't work for the Japanese in World War II and it won't work now. We should all learn something from this picture, learn something from this small moment in history and move forward with our lives, and keep fighting, even if it kills us, but with a hope for a future all the same. In that way we can all be heroes can't we? We can help keep the spirit of the "Few" alive. We can make sure that the sacrifices of those like Lane don’t go forgotten, or those who're putting their own lives on the line today. The very soul of our modern times depends on it.

(credit to image from militaryimages.net, photograph by Stanley Devon, September 1940)

A Perspective(from FB note 4/1/2010)

It is an interesting thing today to look at the world around me. A world of machismo and self righteous auras of blamelessness that permeate our society about as thoroughly as a skunk smell infests everything in the general area when one's flattened on the highway. It bugs the living hell out of me, to say the least. But that's not really why I'm writing this now. I'm writing this because of how points of view relate to this. It gives us a very, from my point of view, false point of view on the nature of what these ideals mean and the calling I think this age is giving to us. What do they mean to us? Strength. Power.

But this is wrong, utterly. Instead it is the opposite, it is weakness, pure and simple. The strong is not the person who shrugs off others, who seems to stand unassailable by blame, who pushes their point of view across at the expense of all others, because they're not. They are not immune to blame, they are instead just dodging it. It is weakness to be unable to help shoulder the feelings of others and feel their pain, let it pierce them as powerfully as it stabbed the person who's hurting. It is weakness to close your mind to that which you should let in to broaden your understanding of the rest of our world and society. The strong is the one who stands arm and arm with another when they feel pain and pulls them back up to their feet, the strong is the one who stands with their head held high and says "i was wrong". It is the strong who puts their own ego aside to take a minute and just sit and listen to what the other side has to say. The people who do these things, who shoulder others' pains, who listen and who take blame as well are strong because these people carry many burdens. They are strong because they do it believing no more than it is the right thing to do, and they do it for relatively nothing in return but the satisfaction of having done the right thing.

Why else do I say it is weakness to be self-righteous and avoid feelings and emotion? Because doing such things are products of fear, of course. It is because those who prescribe to this are afraid to accept it, to accept the pains of others and the humiliation of blame. Afraid to accept the possibility we are in fact wrong, or in the wrong. This may perhaps make us the weakest society on the face of the earth. No wonder we're declining. Really, we're little more than a decadent, festering former power so wrapped up in ourselves we can hardly acknowledge anything outside our own minds anymore. Most of us no longer have our own principles, we adopt them from another to ease our own minds and then if it's wrong you still have someone else to blame. I am not this, and proud to be. Instead I question, everything. I question the motivations of my government in all things, as much as I question those who oppose it. But I question not out of suspicion, but out of a desire to know, to know why all sides are doing what they do. I am there for any who ask my help, and I give it gladly knowing I am a good person for it. I always leave room for the fact I may be wrong, and can do wrong, for I am human and thus fallible. I have made many mistakes, and fully admit them, and have no reason to believe I'll stop making them.

That is my message to you all. Be strong; stand with one another and share their pains. Think outside yourself and express tenderness for another human being in a way that goes beyond your own self interests. We are only as strong as we are together. Enough of this petty infighting that divides us and weakens us. Enough of this pulling into ourselves and denial of the very emotions that make us human and strong. Those who believe such things are desirable qualities are are not to be revered or respected... but pitied. Pity those who cannot or refuse to feel such things as another's emotions. Pity those who live wrapped in their own self righteousness afraid of failure and their own humanity. Read these words here and question yourself, what kind of a person am I? Am I strong, or am I afraid? From my point of view, I am strong. Who's with me, and for those who aren't, who'll join me?

A Brief History Lesson on American Politics(from FB note 03/24/2010)

Hmmm... in these troubled times of Armageddon prophecies over something like who's entitled to health care... perhaps a history lesson is in order. Conservatism and Liberalism are far from confined to Democrats or Republicans. Let's time travel a little. Late 1850s. The Republican party was just forming from the disintegrating Whig party. Compared to today, it was considered fairly liberal, because liberal means against the status quo. Times were different then, at the time the Democratic party held most of the wealth in the country and was largely made up of wealthy southerners who considered themselves near royalty and fought hard against such values as equality and the abolition of slavery among other things. With the fall of the Confederacy and by and large the South after the Civil War, the Republican Party took power, in fact the president who took over after Lincoln's assassination, Johnson, was impeached by and large because he was a Democrat.

Fast forward a little, come to the 1920s. The country was doing amazingly, the conservatives were now the Republicans. They had basically become the old southern Democrats, they had the wealth and the power, and they liked it that way. However, deregulation and a lack of a check and balance on economic policies as well as a world economy ravaged by the horrors of the Great War (World War I to most) lead to a Great Depression here in the US. It was liberalism, with great amounts of socialism that got us out of the Depression. We put men to work for the government with things like the Civilian Conservation Corps, and while many argue that it was World War II that brought us out of the Depression, what was that when you really think of it but more socialism? The government sent men to fight for the country and paid them to do so, the government put factories to work building millions of aircraft, tanks, billions of bullets and firearms, medical equipment, everything. That is what got us out of the Great Depression, the government putting the country back to work.

Then after the Second World War, things changed. The world had again been ravaged by war, but now we had a great business model and a full level of infrastructure the world completely lacked. And the men running our businesses had all learned organizational skills from the military, which meant our men were dedicated, knew how to follow a good rank and file system and the men at the top knew how to take credit for their businesses failings, as generals do when assaults or defenses fail (Something distinctly lacking in our modern business strategy of punish workers by firing them when businesses go down and rewarding the people in charge with more money isn't it?). And on top of that women were going to work more and more, meaning higher levels of income for the average American family which we could actually afford because we had all the world's wealth in a nutshell.

Which brings us to today. Contrary to popular opinion among modern conservatives, there is a finite amount of wealth in the world. At the time, we had it all. However, as deregulation spread through the American business model, things began to change. The CEOs began to completely take over, and trickle down economics was introduced by someone I don't need to mention. This placed more and more power in the hands of a very few, but again, because we had all the world's wealth still this wasn't such a bad thing for the country on the whole. However, we had put billions of dollars into Europe and Japan after the Second World War, and Japan in particular grasped good business ethics, very similar to the post WWII American system. The rest of the world has been catching back up with us, and as more money goes to the Middle-East for oil and to China and Japan and Europe, that leaves a lot less of the finite amounts of wealth for us here in America, and such a system becomes far less practical. Now we have another "war" going on, and the stock market took another hit as deregulation rode in again and destabilized the economy once more.

However, there is serious problems this time that make it much more difficult for us to effectively counter the economic troubles like we had with World War II. Whereas with World War II we could send millions to work in factories and overseas to fight a just war, we now certainly cannot, because our industrial infrastructure is completely in shambles. We do not produce our own goods here, we produce them overseas. Even in our military we produce specialized high cost and high technology equipment that require very specialized labor. Very different from World War II where we could put people to work riveting together giant B-29s and Sherman tanks and aircraft carriers. The military industrial complex (which by the way was spoken against openly by Eisenhower, a republican) has really damaged our ability to do this. So we're spending millions on products that have no real practical application to the actual needs of our modern military. In World War II we did not win because we had the best equipment, we won because he had enough of what was good enough. We don't have that now, we have too little of what's more or less useless. So here we are, a massive deficit that was put there by the last administration, not this one (do some fact checking, between 1998 and 2002 we had a surplus) a military situation that increases our deficit and continues to do so instead of pulling us out of it, and no real means of putting Americans back to work by either side.

As well there's no effort to lower the gas prices that have horribly exacerbated the problem. Our economy was essentially built upon our very low gas prices. People could afford to drive 40 miles to work every day, people could afford to take vacations and buy expensive things and afford big, safe vehicles for the family. But, now the price of gas goes up, Americans have to spend more money to get to work without being paid more to compensate. Businesses have to spend more to pay for their utilities, as well as to get their products and services to where they're needed, and since as we've discussed modern American management isn't going to take the cut so again it's the middle/lower class who suffers. Instead of easily being able to pay off their debts and continue to spend, people take cuts in what they buy and in taking trips, killing our nationwide tourism trade and making harder times on more businesses. It doesn't take a genius to see the correlations.

So, we need something to go against this status quo to finally push us out of this problem. Sorry, the "conservatives" really aren't putting anything forth but the same things that put us into the problem in the first place. They aren't giving any of their alluded to better plans to fix health-care so we no longer have millions going into massive debt or dying because of its massive costs. If they want to save America, put Americans back to work. Take pay cuts and stop firing us. Come up with good business practices that bring the money back into the country. Stop funding projects that have no practical application when we could be producing massive amounts of what our soldiers actually need. Bring the gas prices back down so that people can afford to go to work and buy products that put other Americans to work as well. Tell people again to listen to the Statue of Liberty and say "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" That is what history is telling us to do, I think it's time we do it.

A Sign of Humanity (from FB note 01/26/2010)

Sometimes the most rewarding undertakings we as mere creatures can pursue are the ones with no clear outcome and we have but a glimmer of hope for victory. And we know deep in our hearts that we have naught but to fail. But the glory and the pride and the worth comes in the struggle itself, and to push to achieve the impossible which other mortal beings would quail and falter at, and to keep pushing on until at last you can not take another step and fall knowing you did your utmost for what you knew was right and just and good. That is perhaps the one true sign of real humanity. Because the true human does not do so for eternal salvation or rewards material or any other form of personal gain, but because we know at the deepest levels that it is the right thing to do.

First post

Well here we are, I've finally sucked it up and joined the blogging world for all to see outside the miniscule yet vast realm of FB. Here I plan on laying down all my notes I write since really just calling them "notes" to me diminishes the thought and effort I put into them. I'll start off here with my note "A Sign of Humanity" in which I impart my wisdom on what it means to be human.