Good Sunday morning, folks! About to head in to work, but a fun little article on Yahoo! News about the best brunch locations in America caught my eye, and I thought I'd share. I've always loved Sunday brunch, though I don't get to indulge in it nearly enough (maybe when I'm rich and famous I'll make it a weekly tradition ;-) ). Unfortunately, I've never visited any of the restaurants listed in the article, but when reflecting on the best brunches that I've personally ever had, two places come to mind (both of which are in hotels, strangely enough)- the La Fonda in Santa Fe, and Marty's Bistro at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles.
I'm extraordinarily lucky in that I was blessed throughout my childhood and adolescence to get to go to Santa Fe multiple times every year, as my father Jack Sorenson is a Western artist whose paintings are sold exclusively at Joe Wade Fine Arts in Santa Fe, necessitating a trip on Dad's part to Santa Fe every month to deliver paintings. Two or three times a year on such a journey, he would take me and Mom along for the ride, and we always had a really wonderful time. I have a lot of good memories from those trips, many of which happened while eating breakfast or brunch at the La Fonda. If you're ever in the area, stop by and get the Eggs Benedict- no joke, by far the best Eggs Benedict I've ever had (and with a Santa Fe flair, to boot).
As for Marty's Bistro, I was only 13 years old the one time I ate there, so who knows if it's still as good as I remember, or if it really was as amazing as my 13-year old self thought it to be, but I remember having the most pleasant of Sunday mornings with my parents and my recently graduated brother Jacob (we were in LA for his graduation ceremony from UCLA), partaking of a brunch buffet that included the usual suspects- bacon, eggs, pancakes, etc., in addition to more exotic fair with a uniquely Californian character (my Mom also let me have several sips of her mimosa, making my day).
Well now that I've gotten myself all hungry, it's off to work. Brunch on, readers! :)
Theatrical release poster, courtesy of the Weinstein Company
For the first time in much too long, my umbilical chord to the UT campus was cut this evening as I FINALLY went to go see "The Iron Lady," after weeks of having a burning but, until now, unsatisfied desire to do so. My first thought after seeing the film is the obvious one: Meryl Streep, to quote one of Lady Thatcher's advisors in the film, "looked absolutely magnificent." I would be hard-pressed to think of an actress more vibrant and capable of capturing the truth of seemingly any character that she sets her mind to portraying, than Streep. If you had told me after I saw "Julie and Julia" that it was physically possible for Meryl Streep to ever pull off an even more convincing performance (portraying a much more divisive and complicated figure than Julia Child, no less), I would have dismissed you with Thatcher-esque certainty of myself, but pull it off Streep does nonetheless, and she very well could (and should) win her third Academy Award for it.
My opinion of the film itself, like that of the Prime Minister whose story it tells, is more complicated- due in no small part to its choice of what was probably an over-complicated plot device: that of an elderly Thatcher who is battling senility and seeing visions of her deceased, beloved husband Dennis, letting the audience in on her story in the form of flashbacks almost reminiscent of ABC's "Lost." The film's makeup department delivered a pitch-perfect performance in transforming Streep into an octogenarian in the scenes set in the present, but some of the flashbacks felt out of place and, particularly in the film's beginning, almost confusing (not at all unlike "Lost"- well, except for the fact that there was no actual time travel or a smoke monster that eats humans involved).
The film's treatment of Thatcher also feels contradictory at times- she is neither heroine nor villainess. Which Thatcher should I take away from the film- the obviously devoted and loving wife and mother, or the supremely ambitious, demanding, and sometimes cruel political taskmaster? The answer isn't clear, but it rarely is in life, is it not? Almost no one is pure evil or pure good, and I actually appreciate the film for refusing to attempt to pigeon-hole a figure as complex as Thatcher into either category. True, less ambitious viewers than I might fault the Iron Lady for placing such a high priority on her career and conviction that it was her destiny to have a "life that matters," but as someone with political aspirations myself, I was sympathetic to (or at least understanding of) Thatcher's sureness of herself, and her conflicting emotions at having to sacrifice some of the joys of private life in exchange for a shot at public greatness and making change in the world. It's a fascinating story, and one worthy of Streep's always masterful performance. Three and a half stars out of five.
Very disappointed to read yesterday that social media giant Twitter is willing to throw its whole reputation as an agent for change (and, in the case of the Arab Spring, revolution) away to please authoritarian bureaucrats abroad, by taking down users' tweets if that user's government doesn't like them. Somini Sengupta from the New York Times explains:
Twitter explained the change in a blog post on Thursday: “We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld.”
In principle, that could apply to a message promoting Nazi ideology in Germany, a critical remark about the monarchy in Thailand, or perhaps even lines from “The Satanic Verses” in India, where the 1988 book remains banned.
The announcement has already provoked protest from Twitter's millions of users worldwide, including Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei, who posted "If Twitter starts censoring, I'll stop tweeting." Between this and the recently defeated (thank God) SOPA Bill, it's quite alarming to see that the idea of censoring the internet seems to be "trending" among corporate elites and their government lapdogs in this country and beyond.
Oscar nominees were announced today, and I was very pleased to see that "Hugo" led all films with 11 nominations. Last year offered several really fantastic movies, so I hesitate to go out on a limb with which particular one was my absolute favorite- but "Hugo" would definitely be near the top of the list. It was uplifting, beautiful, entertaining, everything that a good movie should be. To be completely honest, the only Scorsese film I had ever seen before was "Good Fellas," which I felt lacked substance and was horribly overrated, so I was pleasantly surprised by the degree to which I enjoyed "Hugo." "War Horse" (which I previously posted a review of on this blog) was likewise nominated for Best Picture, as was "The Help," "Tree of Life," "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," "The Artist," "The Descendants," and "Midnight in Paris"- all of which I'm sorry to say I wanted to see but have not yet done so, with the sole exception of "Midnight in Paris," which I absolutely adored. Though I have not yet seen it, I was a little disappointed to find that "The Iron Lady" was not nominated for best picture. The trailer was so captivating I almost feel that it could be nominated itself for best picture, lol. Planning on going to see it this coming weekend with my cousin Anthony here in Austin. On a side note, I am pleased to find that the Academy is continuing a trend of nominating more audience-friendly films for Best Picture. I recall a very boring ceremony a few years ago in which it seemed that "No Country For Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood" swept up all the awards- two films whose appeal is, to say the least, limited (though "No Country" is a fantastic movie- even if it does have a crappy, unsatisfying conclusion. I've never seen "There Will Be Blood," though I hear that it is an excellent film as well). Nice job this year, Academy. Looking forward to the ceremony.
Hey blogosphere, sorry for my prolonged absence these past several days. I started back to class on Tuesday, and being able to blog multiple times a day (or even once a day) with a full course load has proven itself a far more formidable task than I had bargained for. It's a pity too- there were SO many things I wanted to talk about this week: the whole SOPA protest on Wednesday, Pope Benedict's latest homophobic ramblings, Newt Gingrich's upset in South Carolina, the NFC/AFC Conference Championship Games, the absolutely brilliant "Glee" episode from last week, etc. Unfortunately though, every time I sat down to do some typing- my mind raced to the million other things I had to do that were related to school, work, or other more immediate concerns. The difficult thing about being a blogger, particularly an amateur one who is going to school full-time, is that the business of writing is always important... but it isn't urgent. It's far too easy to just put it off until tomorrow morning, then put it off until after class, then put it off until after work, until before you know it, it's been almost a week and you haven't posted a blog entry. I'm aware of this, and I am sorry for it. But- having become re-accustomed to the pace of college life, and having my course schedule now finally set (Ooooohhh!... I've got some good one's this semester too!- "Morality and Politics," "America as a Global Power," "History of Modern Science," and "Germany Since Hitler." I look forward to posting about the interesting things I learn in each and every one of them), I should feel somewhat freer to spend some time blogging over this coming week. I might not be able to post many long pieces again for a while (at least not during the week), but I wanted to get my followers up-to-date on why I haven't posted in a while, and what my plans are going forward. My passion for blogging and my desire to blog has not lessened at all, but the time I have available in which to indulge that desire has. I'll do the best I can going forward. :) Goodnight all.
The following trailer has a lot of my Facebook friends buzzing today:
Upon watching it, my first reaction was moral support for the overarching message and purpose of the film, mixed with an apprehension about some of its more conspiratorial overtones which prevent me from giving my full-fledged endorsement. As a gay man- a group that I would argue is targeted and stereotyped as badly as any by the mass media- I have first-hand knowledge of the harmful psychological effects that negative media imagery about a group can have on a person, especially a person trying to come to terms with their own membership in said group. Without getting too mired in stereotypes myself, I've always considered myself a pretty ordinary guy in most respects- almost all of my friends from preschool to high school were straight guys who I'd do typical "guy things" with- play sports, play video games, watch superhero movies, etc. I knew that I felt a certain way about men that they seemed to feel about women, but I convinced myself that this fact didn't make me gay. How could it? I didn't act like the guys on "Will and Grace," and had no desire to. I have absolutely nothing against real-life flamboyant gay guys- they're just being themselves the same way I am and God bless them for it- I'm just not one of them, and the fact that the only portrayal of gay men I ever found in the media for most of my childhood and adolescence was a hyper-feminine caricature made my self-acceptance as a masculine gay man a much longer, more difficult process than it had to be. But is the media targeting gays and, as the above trailer demonstrates, women, out of a personal vendetta, or because it sells? This is where I break with the message of the video.
Conspiracy theories get people riled up and motivated to take hasty action, but they are very rarely (I mean close to 0% of the time) true. It disappoints me that people with a good, powerful message so often resort to such a cheap propaganda technique to gain followers. As anyone who's ever had any interaction with corporate big-wig, Gordon Gekko-types knows, such people have little principles outside of their desire for money and, sometimes, fame. Such is the nature of capitalism- a system which comes with both great benefits and terrible consequences. The culture in which the new technology that allowed mass media was born was one which had been dominated for thousands of years prior by straight white men, who thought a certain way about women, gays, and other groups, and rewarded those media programs that projected a vision consistent with their ignorant prejudices with their viewership and money. The problem lies not with the mass media, an unthinking actor that merely gives its audience whatever it wants, but with the cultural attitudes held by a people who reward such dreadful imagery and ask for more.
But there is hope- for the racist, sexist, and homophobic culture that capitalism and mass media came out of contained the seed for its own destruction. My main beef with the trailer for this film was that it got so carried away in its completely justified outrage at the media's portrayal of women, that it almost argues that the existence of mass media itself is a bad thing. On the contrary, the only reason we are conscious of the problem of sexism, homophobia, etc., in our culture, and at last have hope that we can combat and defeat those last traces of barbarism, are because we have a mass media at our disposal which has created a much more open and honest world. Dirty little secrets are an endangered species, my friends. Some of Western civilization's dirtiest were the very issues raised in this trailer and blog posting: racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. We are self-aware of them and can confront them only because it is now acceptable and possible to talk about them in the open. That could have never happened in the absence of mass media, which is precisely why underdeveloped societies in the third world still often have big time problems with those same issues. The way to eradicate these problems is not to destroy the only effective weapon we have at fighting them, but to use it to change the hearts and minds of the people who it markets to- a mission that I hope this film and its trailer continues to succeed at.
I have a confession to make- I have never been the avid reader of books that my friends and acquaintances often assume me to be. Don't get me wrong- I love to learn and to read, but I probably only read an average of 6 or 7 books per year on my own volition. Most of the knowledge I've acquired about the world has come from words not printed in books, but posted on the internet. As much as I might like for it to have, my intellectual journey did not start by my reading one of the "Great Works" by authors like Plato, Shakespeare, or Milton, but by my having an open mind, an abundance of curiosity, and access to the internet (and, more specifically, Wikipedia- which I will vociferously defend against attacks on its reliability to this day). The consequences of the fact that my generation and each one after us will grow up with easy access to pretty much any information we want will continue to play out over the course of the 21st Century, for better or worse (I for one think that more information and openness is almost always a good thing), but it is a fact for which I am most grateful and appreciative. Had I been born even twenty years before I had, and come of age in a world devoid of the world wide web, I probably never would have made the effort to figure out the answers to questions as simple but important as "why did Europe go from being almost all monarchies to almost all democracies?" or "how did we go from being almost entirely farmers living in the country to having all the diverse occupations we have today and living in cities?", and would have spent my life in some mediocre and boring existence rather than the exciting one I have chosen today as an aspiring writer and public intellectual.
Now before it seems that I am telling my fellow young people that it's okay to not read books and only look things up on the internet, I want to clarify myself: while my journey didn't start with books and I still don't read as many of them as I would like, I made the one's that I have chosen to read count. Over the past four years, I've read Dante's Divine Comedy, Joyce's Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the great dystopias Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World, The Great Gatsby, Reflections on the Revolution in France, The Federalist Papers, and of course all the books that I mentioned in my previous post which were assigned to me in my "Theoretical Foundations of Modern Politics" course last semester. Reading those books exponentially deepened the knowledge of politics, history, and even basic and timeless issues dealing with the human existence like love, that I had first gained and found a passion for on the internet.
Two days ago, while on my return flight back from Amarillo to my collegiate life at UT-Austin, I picked up a book (it was Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, from the aforementioned Theoretical Foundations course) for one of the first times since I left college for Christmas break six weeks ago. I don't know why it's so easy for me to allow my passion for reading books to atrophy when the reading is not assigned to me, but atrophy it does, and my mind suffers for it. This year, taking the "baby-steps" approach, I hope to increase my reading output to no less than one book every month, with an eye towards increasing that number to two books a month in 2013. While the internet is fabulous and I'm obviously a big fan, there are just some things that you get from reading a book, taking notes, and underlining important passages from it, that you can't get online. The sooner my generation (myself obviously not excluded) realizes that fact and acts on it, the sooner we demonstrate the internet's true potential- it's ability to get people's feet wet with knowledge, so that they might feel comfortable wading into deeper sources of it.
(Portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli by Santi di Tito)
With Christmas break almost over, I have been scrambling the past few days (hence the absence of a new post yesterday) to get all of my affairs in order prior to returning to my beloved University of Texas at Austin on Sunday for a new semester. Much like the dawn of a new year, the dawn of a new semester always give me reason to reflect back on everything that I learned and accomplished in the previous semester and the many ways in which I hope to build upon that foundation in the new term. Last semester, one such foundation was perhaps my favorite and, probably, most intellectually stimulating course I have taken to date- "Theoretical Foundations of Modern Politics" with Dr. Devin Stauffer. In reading The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli, Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, The Second Treatise of Government by John Locke, The First and Second Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, the class- to quote Professor Stauffer- "witnessed the birth of our brains." Accustomed as we are to living in 21st Century civilization, we take for granted such concepts as democracy, checks-and-balances, commercialism, the natural equality of human beings, and tolerance of differing world views, and seldom give pause to consider the fact that there was a time when those ideas, far from being accepted as self-evident, were violently suppressed. The free and prosperous world we live in today, a world we too often bitch about rather than enjoy, emerged out of a very different, more pious, submissive, and impoverished world- a world in which reason was shunned for faith and superstition; a world in which equality was despised, while the divine right of kings and aristocrats was extolled; and one in which freedom was stifled and pious submission to arbitrary authority was the norm.
Certainly, our current system isn't perfect and has many failures (foremost among them, that it fails to educate we lucky people who live in this age just how well we have it compared to those who suffered under the yoke of the medieval system that preceded ours), but I consider it one of my greatest duties in life to remind everyone just how well we have it. Say that our world is empty and materialistic, I might agree with you. Say that it is lackadaisical and that people today don't know commitment or exertion, I might agree with you. But say that those who lived under the system of religious tyranny and oppression that preceded ours knew better, and I will oppose you most vigorously. The very fact that we can casually comment on the failures of our current system is a testament to one of that system's greatest successes- that it is open to change and adaptation, and has an open mind to its shortcomings. The same could not be said for the Medieval matrix that governed Western civilization until the rebellion against it began with Machiavelli's The Prince in the early-16th Century. Do you like free speech? Then you shouldn't like theocracy. You enjoy the wealth, comfort, and choices that come with a free market? Then you shouldn't like theocracy. You appreciate being able to believe what you want to believe, without being persecuted? Then you shouldn't like theocracy; for there are a lot of religions in the world- chances are pretty high that if one of them is officially adopted by the state at the expense of all others, yours won't be the one chosen.
Professor Stauffer's course, in many ways, taught me what I already knew deep-down; but it also taught me why I believe it, and what historical developments and events led men like Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Nietzsche to come to the conclusions that they did, and why Western civilization took aspects of their thought as its own. I don't have time in this short post to elaborate on the sophisticated and unique worldviews of each of these individual thinkers and why it's so important that the average person gain a better understanding of them than they currently have- successfully taking on that formidable task will require a good portion of my career, let alone one little blog posting- but what I can say for now is that we each should be grateful to those thinkers for what they gave to the world, and that anyone who hopes to look outside their window and with any clarity understand why they see a more-or-less egalitarian, commercialistic, compassionate, scientific, and economically prosperous society instead of a cruel, paternal, repressed, and ignorant one, should familiarize themselves with these thinkers and their Great Works.
(The Trailer for "The Iron Lady," which opens this Friday nationwide)
From the moment I saw the above trailer for the new Margaret Thatcher biopic "The Iron Lady," I was immediately anxious to see it as soon as it hit theaters- not only because Lady Thatcher is portrayed by Meryl Streep, a true master at her craft and someone I've adored in every film I've ever seen of hers, but also because the former Prime Minister is an utterly fascinating and magnetic historical figure, regardless of what one might think of her politics. Being a convinced leftist in a 21st Century political culture still characterized by a debate over the consequences and legacy of the policies instituted by Thatcher and her ideological counterpart Ronald Reagan here in the States, it might seem odd that I am so entranced and fascinated by the Iron Lady. As her biographer Charles Moore told Jill Lawless of the AP though, "You have to be over 40 to hate Mrs. Thatcher. Young people just want to know about her."
Reagan and Thatcher- Photo courtesy of the Daily Mail
I find myself in a similar predicament oftentimes with regards to President Reagan. If my interest in and study of the politics of my lifetime have made me sure of anything, it's that Reagan's policies have been pushed much too far by his current-day disciples and have had quite a pernicious influence on the economy and, more fundamentally, the mindset of my native United States. However, it's hard not to wonder sometimes whether or not said policies, while having outlasted their welcome in 2011, were not exactly what the country needed in 1981 when Reagan took office. Given that I was born in November 1991, nearly three years after Reagan left office and only a month before the Soviet Union finally dissolved, I can't fully appreciate the dichotomy between pre-Reagan America and post-Reagan America, any more than as a student of history. Even in that context though, it would be hard for anyone to say that he didn't leave his country in better shape in 1989 than he found it in 1981. An economy wracked by inflation and unemployment in 1981 was vibrant and expanding in 1989, while a United States scared and embarrassed by the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1981, stood as the confident, preeminent power of the world in 1989. Of course, a lot of luck on Reagan's part was involved in his successes- the former transformation took place in the context of compromises made between Reagan and Tip O'Neill's Democratic Congress, while the latter one could never have occurred if not for Reagan's presidency of the United States occurring at the same time as Mikhail Gorbachev's premiership of the Soviet Union, but history shows that great leaders have a way of falling into good luck.
Don't get me wrong, Reagan had some faults and some big ones- he helped to create a culture of carnivorous greed and empty materialism, in which it's considered acceptable today for his followers to shout things like "Let him die!" when a candidate from his party is asked a question about what the government should do about an uninsured man with a terminal disease. Moreover, his legacy will forever be tainted by the cardinal sin he made of legitimizing and empowering the Religious Right in this country as a powerful force in the Republican Party and, by extension, American politics. To what extent Reagan did this in order to pander for votes, or because he genuinely believed that religious fundamentalism and government policy should be mixed together is uncertain, although, as Christopher Hitchens pointed out in a rather harsh critique of Reagan for Slate, our 40th President "used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the "End Times" foreshadowed in the Bible."
On this front, history will remember Lady Thatcher much more kindly than her American counterpart. In an interview with Movie Fone, Meryl Streep notes that the Iron Lady would likely be ostracized by the American conservative movement today for her surprisingly moderate views on social issues and healthcare:
"I was very surprised to learn that she didn't try to dismantle the National Health [Service], she thought that it was right to have the National Health [Service]... she was Pro-Choice, I went to Washington recently and spoke to somebody who was in the room when she took Dan Quayle and President [George H.W.] Bush down for using [abortion] as a political football... She had people in her cabinet serving very high, close to her in her staff, who had big homosexual scandals, and she would say, 'You stand right next to me, all day, that's how we'll handle this.' She didn't care about that stuff... She would be drummed out of the American conservative party, there would be no question."
At any rate, Thatcher and Reagan are both likely to continue to be controversial figures for some time to come. But while the extent to which, if any, either or both would approve of the mischief caused by modern-day conservatives is in doubt, their lasting influence and impact on the Western world in the late-20th Century into the present, is beyond question.
The second major contest of the 2012 Presidential Election goes down tonight in New Hampshire, where frontrunner Mitt Romney should be a lock to win by a relatively large margin. Unlike in Iowa last week, the drama tonight will be as to who comes in second- a distinction likely to go to either Ron Paul or Jon Huntsman. In the past few days, I had planned on writing a post on this blog endorsing Huntsman for the Republican nomination (I even had a title picked out- "He Blinded Me With Science," for Huntsman's lonely refusal to pit himself against the scientific community on evolution and climate change, as most or all of his other Republican comrades have done), though I highly doubt my endorsement would mean much to Huntsman or any Republican considering voting for him, given that I'm a staunch liberal and will enthusiastically support President Obama over any current Republican fighting for their party's nomination. The latest polls have had Huntsman and Paul neck-and-neck for the past few days, at right under 20% each (both behind Romney, who, as usual, hovers in the 30-40% range). Given how wrong I was in predicting a Paul victory in Iowa last week, I hesitate to go out on a limb tonight, but I would hope that New Hampshire voters would be smart enough to go with Huntsman over Paul. Romney's going to win of course (I predict with around 35%), I think Huntsman comes in second with around 20-25%, giving him enough of a boost to stay in the race, while Paul gets third, just as he did in Iowa, at just under 20%. Next stop- South Carolina on January 21, which is sure to be the most interesting of the early contests, given that it will be a must-win for both Santorum and Gingrich (neither one of which is likely to be much of a player in New Hampshire) if they are to have any chance of stopping Romney.
(This send-off to Christopher Hitchens, a personal hero of mine, was originally posted on my old blog on the night of December 17, 2011, two days after Christopher's death was announced. As Hitch continues to be on my mind, I figured it was an entry worth reposting here.)
One might find it odd that a practicing Catholic and a liberal such as myself would ever come to take as an idol a man with a background as seemingly offensive to both of those sensibilities as the great Christopher Hitchens, who left this world a much drabber and intellectually deficient place when he parted our presence Thursday evening. "Hitch", as he preferred to be called by his friends (and though I never met him I deeply regret to say- I almost feel that I can count myself among them due to my having read his columns, essays, and books, I daresay, "religiously," for the past couple years), began his career as a writer and journalist in the 60's as a radical leftist (a Marxist Trotskyite, to be exact) as relentlessly critical of the inhumane totalitarianism of Stalinist Russia as he was of the ruthless exploitation of the working classes in the capitalist West. Over the span of his long and illustrious career though, the three things that Hitch became best known for, indeed the things which finally made him famous long after he deserved to have been, were his stinging rebukes of figures as diverse and seeming innocuous as Princess Diana, Bill Clinton, and Mother Theresa, his outspoken support for the War in Iraq as one front in what he saw as the global struggle between the liberal, democratic and secular humanist West against the forces of "Islamofascism" (a term he coined), and his undying atheism. Hitch's 2007 magnum opus God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, and the following debate tour he undertook to promote the book, catapulted him into the limelight and exposed him to a much wider audience than he ever had before, an audience including yours truly.
I remember the first time I heard the name Christopher Hitchens. It was in connection to his attacks on the doctrines and hierarchical structure of my own religion of Roman Catholicism, most especially his attacks on Mother Theresa. Good Catholic schoolboy that I was, I was horrified by what I heard (how could anyone not like Mother Theresa???), and vividly remember wanting to run as far away from such a heretic as I possibly could. Tonight, I write to tell you that I am very happy and much intellectually richer for the fact that I did not. If I had, I never would have been exposed to one of the greatest writers (the greatest contemporary columnist and essayist in the English language, in my opinion) and most intelligent and best-read political and cultural commentators of our time. As I pried more and more into the life and works of Christopher Hitchens, I was pleased to find a man who attacked religion, not out of malice or misanthropy, but out of what his fellow atheist Bertrand Russell called "unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind," and the role that Hitch felt religion played in prolonging and aggravating that suffering. In all of Hitch's countless columns that I have read and debates that I have watched over the past two glorious years that I have known of him, though I have never been swayed to adopt his atheism, I have rarely, if ever, disagreed with the premises on which he attacks organized religion. The God that Christopher railed against (and tragically, the one which those who claim to be God's most loyal followers promote) "creates his children sick and then commands them to be well," despises honest inquiry and free thought, wishes blind submission to his will and eternal adulation, and has such little respect for the intelligence of human beings, supposedly the highest expression of the life he willed to exist on this planet, that he handed down a book to dictate forevermore how, conscience be damned (literally), we should live our lives- a book that says, among other horrific things, that it is an "abomination" for the millions of gay people of the world (including the author of this column) to physically express their love to their soulmate, if that soulmate happens to be a member of the same sex, as they must be if you are gay. Such attacks on religion by Christopher never bothered me or weakened my faith, because such a God would not be worthy of my love, let alone my worship, and is as far from the God that I know and adore, as night is to day. The God that I love, pray to every day, look forward to meeting, and am confident embraced and welcomed Christopher into his arms the second the old gadfly left the realm of the living, desires the freedom and happiness of his children, relentless pursuit of truth and knowledge on their part, and would be just as amused and breathtaken by Christopher's incomparable wit and sense of humor, as well as his vast ocean of literary and historical knowledge, as I was. The God that I know would never have created me to be gay as a cruel joke, or willed me to live my life in misery and romantic isolation. Indeed, the God that I know comforted me in my time of greatest need this summer, as I gathered the courage to come out to my family and friends and at last reconcile myself to a truth that I had struggled with my entire life. The God that I know broke the mold the day he created Christopher Hitchens, and has eagerly anticipated reunion with him.
Shortly after the news came of Hitch's passing the other night, film critic Mary Pols tweeted her goodbye to Christopher with the following succinct but suiting adieu: "Mr. Hitchens, you glorious bastard, thank you for your gift of savagely smart writing." I felt that such a salutary send-off perfectly encapsulated the humor, wit, and irreverence that so characterized Christopher's beautiful writing style and personality, and, despite our never having met, the affection that I feel for him on account of it. Earlier this year, sensing that Hitch's time on this earth may not be long, I felt the urge to write him a letter letting him know how much his life's work meant to me, and the large role it played in convincing me to pursue a career as a writer and public speaker myself. It is with deep regret to say that I never succumbed to this desire, and Mr. Hitchens died having no idea how much he inspired me. But, regardless of whether Hitch was right or I am with as to the question of an afterlife, I know this- Christopher Hitchens lives on in his riveting corpus of work, both literary and oratorical, and in the hearts and minds of those of us who, I daresay, were blessed to encounter such a brilliant and beautiful mind, and the graceful pen that it wielded. Rest in peace, Christopher.
As anyone who's been following the race for the Republican nomination knows, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is the Tea Party's newest flavor of month- a fate so horrible it almost makes even me feel sorry for the noted homophobe. If the experiences of Bachmann, Perry, Cain, or Gingrich tell us anything, it's that cultivating Tea Party support as your base in this nomination contest only results in the media discovering and publicizing your bat-shit beliefs and/or your creepy-as-fuck life story, embarrassing you, and convincing your supporters to abandon you and flock to a similar candidate, who will inevitably meet the same fate shortly. Granted, maybe that wouldn't happen if the Tea Party actually decided to throw their support behind candidates that didn't have bat-shit beliefs or a creepy-as-fuck life story, but then they wouldn't be a Tea Party candidate, would they? *cough (Mitt Romney) *cough
Santorum is the latest victim of having his beliefs and policies scrutinized by the "liberal media" (the horror?! The media actually analyzing and reporting the beliefs of a viable candidate for the most powerful position in the world? HOW DARE THEY?!?!), and his homophobia is Item #1 on the laundry list of reasons that Santorum is just as strange and out of sync with the country as any of his predecessors on the Tea Party pedestal, evidenced by this interview with Piers Morgan (courtesy of CNN):
The cornucopia of faulty logic and cognitive dissonance displayed by Santorum in this interview is almost so immense that it's too intimidating even for a lover of argument such as myself to attempt to dissect and pinpoint all of the many ways in which his reason (or lack thereof) errs on the issue of marriage equality, but given the importance of this issue to myself personally and to the society as a whole, I will attempt it nonetheless. For clarity's sake, I'll break the main flaws in Santorum's "argument" (although that word seems to be a generous description to the bigoted drivel he spews) down into five bullet points:
1. Early in the interview, Santorum acknowledges to Morgan that just because he considers something to be "morally wrong or sinful," it doesn't "necessarily rise to the level that government should be regulating that activity." Here, Santorum is accepting the logic behind the separation of church and state which has been a cornerstone of political philosophy for the past 350 years, since the Wars of Religion which devastated Europe following the Protestant Reformation. It's telling of Santorum that observers might actually be pleasantly surprised that he would consent to such a common-sense and basic aspect of our political system, but in so doing he is already conceding his entire argument against same-sex marriage which, at its core, is based entirely on religious premises. As Ron Paul often points out in the Republican debates (though his fanatical federalism prevents him from coming to the right conclusion on this issue, as on so many others), civil marriage is nothing but a contract between two people, entitling both parties to certain rights and responsibilities with regards to each other. Consenting to such a contract with someone does however carry a special social significance, as it is a sign of your commitment to and trust of the person who you consent to it with. If Santorum's opposition to marriage equality is not based on the premise that it's legality would be governmental endorsement of something he regards as a "sin," then what is it based on?
2. I'm as surprised as anyone to learn that I'm a better Catholic than Rick Santorum, but the Church doesn't say that homosexuality "is a sin," per se (they do say that it's "disordered"). Now don't get me wrong in any way- I'm not endorsing the Church's position- I think that it is also utterly backwards, even if more nuanced than Santorum's. The Church teaches that being gay is not a sin, but that any sex outside of marriage IS a sin, thus, since the Church doesn't allow gay people to marry their soulmate, their having sex is necessarily a sin. Many a Catholic homophobe fail to realize that, according to the Church's teaching, two gay lovers having sex outside of marriage is no more immoral than two straight lovers having sex outside of marriage. Moreover, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, "men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies... must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided" (2358). I wonder if Santorum's past comparisons of gay sex to polygamy and bestiality qualify as "respect, compassion, and sensitivity"?
3. Later in the interview, Santorum (again, confusing his position on homosexuality with that of the Catholic Church) asks Morgan and his audience whether the Bible and the Catholic Church are bigoted. Well... yes, but not as much as Santorum himself is (at least the Church isn't- the Bible tells us to do such things as stone harlots and never shave our sideburns, so, really, who in the 21st Century should actually take seriously what it says about homosexuality?). As John Mattras beautifully points out on CathNewsUSA.com, the Church is hardly consistent in its political activity to "defend the sanctity of marriage":
"If marriage needs to be defended from modern adaptations, what is the church doing to outlaw civil divorce and remarriage? Where is the political mobilization to prevent avowed adulterers like Hugh Hefner and Charlie Sheen, who flout notions of marital fidelity, from obtaining civil marriage licenses? How vigorously is the church calling for constitutional amendments and voter referenda to confirm, or deny, these modern versions to an institution once considered irrevocable, eternal and exclusive?... Is there any rational basis, either from the experience of states and countries where same-sex marriages are legal or from peer-reviewed studies, that marriage equality has or will diminish marriages between heterosexuals? Isn't the Church taking special aim at society's growing acceptance and recognition of same-sex marriages and, more fundamentally, homosexuality?"
4. Santorum claims that it is bigotry itself for one to call devout, homophobic Christians "bigoted." Given that the the Catholic Church and many other Christian denominations ARE bigoted in their singling out of homosexuals for political opposition, as I just pointed out, this logic just seems utterly backwards. Refusal to tolerate intolerance IS intolerance??? One has to give it to Santorum- it takes a peculiar genius to make such an ignorant and plainly illogical argument with a straight face.
5. In defending his rigid interpretation of Christianity, Santorum is right for a change when he tells Morgan that the truth doesn't change- either homosexuality has always been wrong and a sin or it hasn't. The truth, of course, is that it hasn't. The desert tribes who recorded the Bible were far more ignorant and less civilized than we are today, as should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of intellectual honesty. We learned from theirs and other ancient societies' mistakes and have built a civilization far more tolerant, dynamic, and loving than theirs ever could have hoped to be. The only thing that prevents our society from becoming even more perfect in this happiness and tolerance is the unfortunate and persisting influence that the worst of those tribes continue to have on weak-minded but powerful men like Santorum.
Hey blogosphere! My apologies for not posting yesterday- I am aware that this broke my pledge to post multiple times every day less than a week into the blog's existence, and I'll try to do better in the future. Had a very busy day yesterday that distracted me from publishing my NFL playoff predictions as I had planned and, though it may seem somewhat anachronistic now that they've already started and all, I've decided to post them today anyway. :) At any rate, I'm 3-0 so far in my picks so my predictions for the following rounds after Wildcard Weekend still stand. A cynic might ask, "How can we know that you didn't just retroactively pick the team that already won the games since you're posting this after they were already played?" Well, for those of you who are my Facebook friends, you can check my note on this subject published on Monday at 2:32 PM (and for those of you who are not my Facebook friends, well, you'll just have to either trust me or... well, tough. ;-) )
*on a side note, I am always unsure whether, when one posts a smiley or winky face inside of parentheses as I just did, to close the parentheses as one would regularly, or to allow the mouth on the smiley/winky face to suffice as the closing parentheses. I've done it both ways, but I feel more comfortable using the method I employed above, with a separate parentheses than the one constituting the smiley face serving as the one which closes the thought. Perhaps I should just refrain from using smiley and winky faces... but I digress... :D :) ;-)
Finally, after that unnecessarily long intro, I present my 2011-12 NFL Playoff Predictions:
Wildcard Weekend
Cincinnati Bengals (9-7) @ Houston Texans (10-6)
Prediction: 20-17 Texans (Yesterday's actual result: 31-10 Texans)
My record: 1-0
Detroit Lions (10-6) @ New Orleans Saints (13-3)
Prediction: 49-17 Saints (Yesterday's actual result: 45-28 Saints)
My record: 2-0
Atlanta Falcons (10-6) @ New York Giants (9-7)
Prediction: 34-21 Giants (Today's actual result: 24-2 Giants)
My record: 3-0
Pittsburgh Steelers (12-4) @ Denver Broncos (8-8)
Prediction: 27-6 Steelers (ongoing, current score: 17-6 Broncos)
Divisional Playoffs
Houston Texans (11-6) @ Baltimore Ravens (12-4)
Houston's done well to get as far as they have this year, but it stops in Baltimore. These teams played in Week 6 of the regular season with the outcome a 29-14 Ravens victory. Expect this one to be similar, but perhaps even a larger degree of Baltimore dominance given their age and past playoff performances, as opposed to Houston's youth and inexperience.
My prediction: 27-0 Ravens
New Orleans Saints (14-3) @ San Francisco 49ers (13-3)
The Saints are a sexy pick to win the Super Bowl again this year on account of the 8-game winning streak they ended the season on, but I think this makes them overconfident and vulnerable (and I seemed to be vindicated by their surprisingly competitive match with the Lions last night). Conversely, the 49ers only lost 3 games this season- one early in the season and in overtime to my Dallas Cowboys (total fluke, obviously), the next a 16-6 loss in Baltimore (completely understandable, Baltimore's a great team), and another close, flukey defeat in Arizona to the Cardinals 21-19, by which time San Fran already had the division long secured. This is a team looking to prove itself, against a team that expects a victory as a foregone conclusion. Niners pull the upset.
My prediction: 30-20 49ers
New York Giants (10-7) @ Green Bay Packers (15-1)
I expect this game to be competitive in the first half, as the Giants are a good postseason team and will be seeking to prove themselves against a team that came within an inch of going 16-0, but I can't see the G-Men giving a repeat performance of their shocking 2007 upset of Green Bay in the NFC Championship Game (which they followed up with an even more memorable and amazing upset of the previously 18-0 Patriots in Super Bowl XLII). Green Bay is a much better team, and they'll pull away as the game goes on.
My prediction: 41-21 Packers
Pittsburgh Steelers (13-4) @ New England Patriots (13-3)
This should be a really good game. I could totally see the Steelers getting a victory in Foxboro, but the Pats of course have the greatest playoff weapon of all: Tom Brady. He'll be the difference that puts New England back in the AFC Championship Game.
My prediction: 28-20 Patriots
Conference Championships
NFC Championship Game: San Francisco 49ers (14-3) @ Green Bay Packers (16-1)
This will be a closer game than people expect, but when it comes down to it, Green Bay is the defending Super Bowl champion and the better team. Next season very well might belong to the 49ers but (up to this point), this one has belonged to the Packers.
My prediction: 28-27 Packers
AFC Championship Game: Baltimore Ravens (13-4) @ New England Patriots (14-3)
Baltimore is a talented and tough team (obviously- as they're in the AFC Championship Game), but have shown signs of some flakiness this season, in four hard-to-explain defeats at the hands of weaker teams (26-13 to the Titans, 12-7 to the Jaguars, 22-17 to the Seahawks, and 34-14 to the Chargers). I'm not sure they're ready for primetime; everybody knows that the Patriots are. Pats move on.
My prediction: 31-21 Patriots
Super Bowl XLVI
New England Patriots (15-3) vs Green Bay Packers (17-1)
Green Bay will be heavy favorites in this repeat of Super Bowl XXXI 15 years ago, on account of New England's (admittedly) weak defense. On paper, Green Bay probably should win this game. However, there are intangibles which I think work in the Patriots' favor- most of all, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady's determination to redeem themselves for their shocking loss to the Giants 4 years ago. New England becomes the worst defensive team to win a Super Bowl in NFL history, and deny Green Bay a repeat championship.
My prediction: 34-31 Patriots
Super Bowl XLVI Champions: New England Patriots (16-3)
It's almost as funny as the actual debates (very glad to see that they're still finding an outlet for Mike Tyson's hilarious Herman Cain impersonation too):
The December jobs report was released this morning and it appears to be good news both for America, and for President Obama's re-election prospects going forward (if the numbers continue to improve that is). From Annalyn Censky at CNN:
The economy added 200,000 jobs in the month, the Labor Department reported Friday, doubling the number of jobs added in November. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate fell to 8.5%, the lowest level since February 2009.
Moreover, the new jobs are coming from the private sector and not the government:
Private businesses have been adding jobs consistently since March 2010, while the government has been bleeding jobs. In December, private employers added 212,000 jobs, while the public sector cut 12,000 jobs.
The positive new numbers are a good sign going forward that the US will likely avoid a double-dip recession, even as it seems increasingly likely that Europe is headed for one on account of its sovereign debt crisis. Why exactly the country seems to be slowly rising out of the worst depths of the Great Recession is uncertain, but some likely explanations are simply that labor costs have once again fallen to levels that match employer demand, or that multinationals who might otherwise do business with Europe are coming to America instead on account of the aforementioned Euro problem.
Good afternoon everyone! Found an interesting video today on Yahoo! News today- the Kepler telescope is continuing to find planets similar to our own that may be hospitable to life:
The caveat, of course, is that these planets are 950 lightyears from Earth- meaning that present space transportation technology is nowhere even close to allowing us to travel to them. A little perspective may be of use in illustrating just how far away these planets are: according to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light- which travels at a rate of about 300,000 kilometers per second (or, in terms more familiar to us, 671,000,000 miles per hour). If Kepler-20E and Kepler-20F are 950 lightyears from Earth, that means it takes the light reflected from those planets' surfaces 950 years (traveling at the unfathomable speed of light that I illustrated earlier) to reach the Kepler telescope's lens. In other words, when we see these planets through the Kepler telescope- we're not seeing them as they exist today, in the year 2011; we're seeing them as they existed around 1061 AD. Kepler or a telescope like it, wouldn't be able to capture an image of those planets as they exist today until 2961 AD- simply because the light those planets reflect can't get here any faster than that. Such unimaginable distances and speeds seem utterly impossible for human beings ever to surmount in our quest to become the masters of the secrets of the universe, but contemplate how unimaginable it would have been to a caveman that members of his species would one day walk on the moon, let alone be able to even observe planets 950 light years away. The more I've studied human history, the more I've learned that only fools bet against the human race or its capacity for progress and scientific advancement.
(Andrew Sullivan, photo courtesy of moreintelligentlife.com)
I must confess, it was a little difficult for me to say goodbye to 2011 when the clock struck midnight on Saturday evening, signaling the end of what was a truly momentous and wonderful year for me, and the beginning of a new and uncertain one. In many ways, 2011 was the most important year of my life thus far, as it was the year in which I at last came out as gay to my friends and family. Now comfortably out and enjoying life far more than I used to ever think was possible for me, I sometimes get asked by friends- "Was it hard for you to come out? Did you always know you were gay?" Even though I am now only five and a half months removed from my coming out experience, I've found that my unthinking reflex already is to downplay its difficulty, grown accustomed as I am already in that short span of time to the unadulterated peace that comes with a life of being honest and true to oneself. The truth, of course, is that coming out was without a doubt the most difficult thing I've done yet in my life. Every single time I had to admit to someone new- someone close to me- that I had been dishonest with them over the span of our entire friendship about such a critical aspect of myself, it was reliving the single most difficult and self-revealing moment of my life all over again. It was this hesitance on my part to go through such an emotionally draining experience any more than I felt I absolutely had to, that motivated me to take a most unusual and, until recently, impossible course in how I decided to come out to the bulk of my friends- I posted a note explaining myself on Facebook. I have nothing but the deepest heartfelt sympathy for my gay brothers and sisters in generations past who not only existed in a far less tolerant culture than the one I was blessed to be born into, but who also unfortunately lacked the new social tools made available by 21st Century technology to liberate oneself from a life of painful and dishonest isolation with a single stroke of the keyboard, as I did.
The abundance of ways in which social media can influence and improve our lives are still being expanded and explored every day, and as someone whose life has already been impacted in a profoundly positive way by it, this is a process that I take great joy in observing and being a small part of through my involvement with this blog and with the various social networks I belong to. A pioneer both in the social media revolution, and its forever-connected counterpart in my experience- the revolution towards acceptance and equality for LGBT people such as myself- is Anglo-American writer, blogger, and public intellectual Andrew Sullivan. Andrew's blog, The Dish (which can be found at http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/), launched in 2000, was one of the first of its kind to be authored by such a respected journalist and public figure, and one who happens to be the openly gay intellectual godfather of the concept of marriage equality, the legality of which is now considered the holy grail in the struggle for gay rights. The rapidly increasing openness of 21st Century society, made possible by the technology at our disposal and by pioneers like Andrew who find ways to make the world a better place through the use of it, has created an atmosphere in which subjects previously considered taboo- subjects like homosexuality- can no longer be ignored and run away from. It's created a world in which myself and millions more like me can live happy and truthful lives shared with the ones we love in the sunshine and not in the shadows. Both for his contribution to this process, and for his bravery to come out as an openly gay role model for people like me, back in a time that was much more hostile than our current much happier and more open era, I must personally thank Andrew Sullivan from the bottom of my heart. Mr. Sullivan, you are a true hero who has effected my life and that of countless others in a profoundly positive way through your tireless work as a new media pioneer and spokesman for marriage equality. Your efforts have helped to create for me and my generation a much happier and more tolerant world than the one you bravely came out to in the early 80's, and for this you will always be a role model and personal hero of mine.
In the wake of her realization that even Iowa evangelicals found her a tad loony, self-anointed Tea Party queen and Sarah Palin knock-off Michelle Bachmann suspended her campaign this morning. Bachmann finished 6th place in Iowa (the state she was born in) with a mere 6,073 votes, compared to the 30,015 votes received by winner Mitt Romney:
Personally, I always found Michelle Bachmann to be akin to the Wal-Mart brand version of Sarah Palin, but with an even greater propensity for anti-science hysteria (HPV vaccine, anyone?) and homophobia. Her exit from the race already makes this presidential campaign a little more respectable and less hysterical. Bye Bye Bachmann. (If it's any consolation, I hope Marcus at least enjoyed my allusion to the musical "Bye Bye Birdie" in this post's title)
97% of Iowa's precincts are reporting, and it looks like it's a dead heat between Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney, meaning that the Republican bigwigs can sleep easy tonight assured of a Ron Paul third-place finish.
If Romney ends up edging Santorum (who doesn't really have a chance anywhere outside of Iowa- I mean he got trounced in his home state of Pennsylvania the last time he ran for public office in the 2006 Senatorial election), the nomination's next to locked up for him.
Theatrical Release Poster, courtesy of Touchstone Pictures
Being a western artist and horse enthusiast, my father was very anxious to see the new Stephen Spielberg film War Horse from the moment he saw the previews and, myself being a cinephile who is willing to give just about any movie a chance (particularly when Dad's buying the tickets), I happily obliged when he asked me today if I'd like to accompany him to the movie theatre. Going in, I had next to no knowledge about the film, its plot, or even the fact that it was a Stephen Spielberg production, but I had some inkling that it might be a run of the mill boy-meets-horse, boy-falls-in-love-with-horse cliché. The beginning of the film, while charming and beautiful in its setting of an early-20th century Scottish farm, reinforced my preconceived notions of its potential triteness, only for the middle and ending to blow me away with its depth and humanity, and remind me once more what a fool I inevitably make of myself when I try to play the role of holier-than-thou, elitist critic. Yes, War Horse is a "horse movie"- but it's more than that. It's a film that uses the horse's story as a mechanism for commentary of a much deeper sort- namely, the senselessness of war, and the awful effects and influences it can have on human beings. I certainly know that War Horse's depiction of World War I, as experienced by Joey (the film's equine protagonist), was enough to make me think twice the next time I thoughtlessly prepare myself to throw my lot in with the war hawks in society. Whether it was the scene in which a regiment of German troops execute two teenage brothers for desertion, or when the British (the supposed "good guys") charge into a German camp and proceed to slash everyone they can find only to ultimately be gunned down themselves, every moment in the film following Joey's sale to the British army begs the question of the audience: Is war really worth this? I know that by the film's final scene, I personally felt that it isn't, or at least it wasn't in World War I, or even probably in most wars. War makes a monster of man, by convincing him to see his fellow man's life as something less than precious, indeed, something to deliberately seek the destruction of. As someone who vigorously supported intervention in Libya last year and who has defended to my more pacifist friends the United States's historical interventions in both the First World War which War Horse chronicles, and the later War in Vietnam, War Horse gave me cause to contemplate just exactly what could possibly make such a hellish reality as war worth it? I can not answer that question tonight, in this post. All I can say is that it is a question worth asking and thinking long and hard about, and War Horse's asking of it in the dramatic and heart-wrenching way that it does, alone makes it a film worth seeing. Four stars out of five.
Inundated as we've been over the past year with news about whichever Republican candidate happened to be the Tea Party's flavor of the month, it may come as a surprise to casual observers of politics that nothing... nothing has actually mattered in the development of the Presidential campaign until tonight. The Iowa Caucuses tonight are the first actual contest with anything of value at stake in the road to the White House. My pick (if you couldn't guess from the attention I gave him yesterday) is that Ron Paul pulls the upset- something that has the brass in the Republican Party terrified. If Paul was the GOP nominee (which the men behind the curtain in the Republican Party will make sure won't ever happen), all of the corporations and billionaires that bankroll the GOP would have to admit publicly the large extent to which they've just been playing lip-service to libertarianism (and social conservatism, at the other end of GOP radicalism) all these years, when they would inevitably end up supporting Barack Obama over the radical Dr. Paul. The corporate oligarchs in this country still control the Republican Party- don't let the Tea Party fool you. If you've watched Fox News lately, it's blatantly obvious that they've done everything they can to prevent a Paul victory tonight. If he does end up pulling out a victory anyway- the likelihood of which rests on the unbelievable enthusiasm of his supporters- just how little power the inmates in the Republican asylum actually have will become obvious over the coming days as the knives really start to come out.
"Hi, my name is Joey, and it's been two years since I last succumbed to Ron Paul hysteria."
This is where you say, "Hi Joey...", creepily and in unison.
It's true. When my political journey from being a West Texas conservative Republican Catholic schoolboy to a contrarian liberal iconoclast was still just beginning in those cold, confusing but stimulating days of fall/winter 2009, I drank deeply and frequently from what then seemed to be the oasis of Ron Paul-ite libertarianism. For a teenager desperately trying to grapple with the conflicting forces of the conventional wisdom of the social circle I was born into, and the desire for the change or even revolution that I felt the country so desperately needed and that motivated me to shock my friends and family by supporting Barack Obama in the previous year's election, Ron Paul appeared to be just the savior to restore order to the chaos of my contradictory political views. Opposed both to the War in Iraq and on Drugs, and seemingly above the spineless displays of political pandering so shamefully characteristic of modern politics, Paul was and is masterful at couching his brand of libertarianism in terms which at first glance seem acceptable to people such as myself, ordinarily disgusted as we are by the concept of a federal government indifferent both to allowing uninsured citizens to die and to public businesses denying service to racial minorities:
The sad truth that I discovered during my few months with a Ron Paul fetish, was that an America governed by Paul's philosophy would be indifferent to both of those horrific realities, automatically disqualifying him from ever getting my vote or endorsement- and that's to say nothing of his inadequate response to the controversy surrounding his connection to those atrocious racist newsletters, or his ridiculous and historically inaccurate portrayal of Abraham Lincoln as a man who fought the Civil War "to get rid of the original intent of the republic":
But while Dr. Paul's, *ahem, eccentric views on history and philosophy disqualify him personally from ever gaining the endorsement of anyone who is aware of those views and cares that their presidential candidate accepts the logic that established national unity, social justice, and racial equality in this country, one must be careful not to, pardon the cliché, throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is a good reason that he's caught the attention of those planning on attending the Iowa caucuses tomorrow, as well as so many of my fellow young people. He is the only candidate who takes seriously the reality, made more obvious every day, that if this country ever hopes to get its budget in order it must cut back seriously on a bloated defense budget that is a whole six times larger than our closest competitor (China- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures#cite_note-The_SIPRI_Military_Expenditure_Database-0), and who has the testicles to say publicly that the War on Drugs has been a miserable failure and that marijuana should be legalized, something that almost every politician must be smart enough to know deep-down. In characteristic Ron Paul fashion, the doctor carries this latter doctrine much too far in his advocacy for the legalization of drugs substantially harder than marijuana as well, but this gets back precisely to the original point- while Ron Paul has some good ideas that ought to be co-opted by more reasonable politicians, he himself is unacceptable as a candidate for high office anywhere outside of his home district here in Texas.
It's rather strange and remarkable, when one tries to think about it objectively, that the dawn of a New Year has such a capacity to inspire people. I'm far from immune to this phenomenon (indeed, I relish the hope and excitement that I feel each start of the new year), but recent discussions that I've observed among my friends have given me cause to ponder the peculiarity of January 1's inspirational potency. Over the span of the last few days on my Facebook feed (being the 21st Century creature that I am, Facebook is probably my primary means of knowing what's got the world abuzz), mixed in with posts about New Years Eve celebrations and lamentations about the Dallas Cowboys' fatally abysmal performance against the New York Giants last night (many of them my own), was an interesting dichotomy as to New Years' significance between my more cynical friends on the one hand, and those on the other who might be described as either upbeat and optimistic, or naïve and full of shit, depending on whether or not you belong to the first group (personally, I've always prided myself on membership in the "naïve and full of shit" group). Over the past few days, we in the latter group have been looking forward excitedly to a 2012 full of new opportunities and have been reflecting on all of the novel, perhaps unlikely, things we wish to accomplish before that last numeral on the calendar changes again this time next year, while those in the former group sit astounded that we in the latter feel that anything has changed due to the mere completion of one revolution on the Earth's part around the sun. Like I said, when one thinks about it from a strictly scientific and objective perspective, they seem to be right- but self-improvement and pursuit of the good life is an art, not a science, my friends. That statement might seem odd coming from a History and Government major (specialty in political theory) whose favorite period is the Enlightenment- that period of greatest triumph for science and reason over emotions and idealism- but it's something that has made itself as abundantly clear as anything to me in the short 20 revolutions around the sun that the Earth has completed since I was born. That feeling that the dawn of a new year offers hope for redemption and self-improvement may not be rational or quantitative, but the real-world accomplishments that it can bring about are.
One such accomplishment that I have committed myself to achieving in this new year is to blog more often. I am a writer: it is what I love to do, and, according to many of the teachers and friends I've encountered over the years, it is one of the things which I am best at. I also pride myself on being somewhat in touch with the zeitgeist of the times in which I live, and current on what is hot and new in the world. As such, a marriage between my love of writing and my love of new media in the form of blogging seems only logical. I've tried my hand at blogging before (my old blog can be found at http://teen-age-wasteland.blogspot.com/), but, though I'm proud of the posts that I put up on that blog, in hindsight I see that I put far too many and too rigorous regulations on myself in posting on that blog, which resulted in my failure to post more than just one or two entries every several months. Politics being my first and greatest passion, I stipulated to myself that it was all that I would write about on my blog. As I aspired to be a columnist someday, I likewise mandated that my entries on the blog be formal, at least 500 words, and read like something one might find in The New York Times or Time Magazine. I have placed no such demands on myself in what I am going to post on this blog. This being the blank slate on which I can write anything at all that I would like the world to read, I intend on writing about any and all of my interests- which will of course include politics, but also movies, music, my favorite TV shows, religion, sports, philosophy, and even the art of writing itself. More innocent readers should be warned that I'm not going to hesitate to throw in a "fuck" or a "shit" when deemed appropriate or necessary, either. The only rule that I will be imposing on myself in the authorship of this blog, is that I will post multiple times every day (excepting special circumstances such as vacation or a prolonged separation from my beloved MacBook Air). Sometimes the posts will be long and sometimes they will be short, sometimes they might be about the differences between the Hobbesian, Lockean, and Rousseauian Social Contract theories, while sometimes they might be about the delicious teenage drama that unfolded on "Glee" the night before. Always, I hope, they will be entertaining. With that, Happy 2012 everyone, and keep dreaming! Life's too short not to be "naïve and full of shit." ;-)
