An Idiot to Not Appreciate Your Time

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All hail George Saunders' early stories, but the man's magic may have gone bye-bye. I just finished his novella from last year (takes an hour to read), The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, a not-so-thinly veiled Animal Farmesque satirical attack on the Bushies, and I was underwhelmed, to say the least. His targets are easy, the humor is smirk-producing at best, and there are few surprises. You will not see the Administration in any new ways, and most importantly for a Saunders story, I did not laugh once. Yea, comedy is very hard to do well, and maybe Georgie's well is all dried up. If so, too bad. The man was a breath of fresh air for two collections, and while I'll still check out the third (even though I haven't really enjoyed the stories in the collection that have already appeared elsewhere), my hope quotient is diminished. Funny- it's a bitch, ain't it?

It's impossible to read Daniel Ellsberg's Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, through any other modern lens but Iraq. And it has plenty to teach, or to remind, about how and why administrations that lock themselves away from contradictory positions fail to see the reality on the ground. But it also delivers an insider's account of how a devoted Cold Warrior could evolve into an anti-war activist in just a few years. It also provides plenty of specific evidence to back up your arguments for why the attacks in the Gulf of Tonkin never happened, why Richard Nixon is fucking insane, and how the Pentagon Papers came out. The last one was what I was most interested in, as I had the basics but never the detailed-laden story, and it's that story that really brings the book to life. Too much of the first part is building a case for Ellsberg's move from Cold War true believer, and while a necessary component, it goes on too long, especially the chapters on his time in Vietnam, which are too self-serving in an attempt to illustrate his manly courage in the field. OK, you raced around the most dangerous roads where no white man dared venture and instructed inept commanders while Charlie fired rounds above your head and stood guard while drunken South Vietnamese hefes spewed anti-American trash and hailed machine gun fire over your hut. We got it. You're a bad ass.

That said, the second half is both riveting and very, very disheartening for its depiction of the corruption of power and the sick recognition that it happened all over again and for many of the same reasons. One line from Kissinger that struck me and probably has as much explanatory power as anything else I've read about why we kept going in Vietnam when so many folks on the ground kept saying that the war could not be won: "Yea, things have been going badly, but that's because the previous administration did not know what it was doing. We do." I'm paraphrasing slightly, but it's the arrogance that rings so clearly. It's not only the contempt for the public, but the disdain for just about anybody else outside the inner circle. We know better, trust us, but just to be sure your puny brains don't misconstrue what we're trying to do, we'll lie over and over again to that guppy press and they'll turn our lies into the truth of public perception and then we can do whatever we damn well please. Near the very end of the book, when Ellsberg is finally exonerated for releasing the Pentagon Papers and Nixon's plumbers are being busted and cutting deals with the Feds and Tricky Dick is isolated and cursing the world and still increasing the secret bombing, somebody asks Ellsberg what good he believes the release of the Pentagon Papers and the entire anti-war movement has done: "None," he replies, adding that all the protests did nothing to stop Nixon and Kissinger from raining down bombs on innocent civilians, and while the implosion from Watergate and the psychiatrist office break-ins might have shortened the war slightly, the number of deaths during Nixon's time after he vowed publicly in '68 to withdraw with honor is staggering.

It's an old lesson but we just keep forgetting to tap ourselves on the shoulder and remind our lazy asses: if Congress and the press do not check Executive power, administrations will do what they want and lie about it. The nature of power being what it is, human beings and human institutions need strong restraints, and Congress has to show more wisdom and less machismo in the future when real, imagined or constructed threats appear. Instead of racing to give future Admins the blank check of expedient war powers, let's all take a deep breath, put the flags down and measure the threat honestly and prudently. Twice now Congress has laid down and told an Administration that hey, guys, we trust you, and look at the results. We're always gonna get nutjob execs drunk on theory and power looking to etch their names in the history books through foreign wars. Bush is just Nixon without the brain or the self-consciousness and inferiority issues. Will the press, the Congress and the people ever remember that to give too few, too much power is to ask for corruption and lies and aggressively bad decisions? Doubt it. See ya in 2032, when we smoke out the atheistic biotechers looking to push the post-human future in the Droid's Republic of Korea. Ought to be a hell of a ride.

Black Black Love of our Lord
I celebrated our Dark Lord's holiday by heading down to Rooster's Roadhouse in Alameda to check out Black Stigma, a five-piece Acalanes band opening a metal fest to honor Satan. I chatted nicely with the boys for a few minutes before the show but quickly made my exit so they could get their evil on away from teaching influences and headed for the bar to order an Arrogant Bastard draft from what looked like an escapee from the Philipino leper society. She called me hun and the night was on. After our boys' first song, the audience filled with tattooed metal boys with weedwhacker hair slabs began chanting at the sixteen year olds and then finally after a moment's silence, one dreadlocked cretan screamed, "Are you dudes in high school?" The lead singer from my sophomore English class quickly responded, "Yes, we are all in high school, and this week is Finals." The blazingly hot metalettes standing next to me at the bar swooned, and continued to make rude gestures and to utter suggestive coos about things they'd like to do to said 16 year old boy that had me outraged, proud, and jealous. He continued to ramble about the band's incompetence, their ignorance of any one in the decidedly white trash establishment, and the number of cds they had for sale. My breast swelled. They finished their four song set to "fuck yeas" and "you guys are sick" and I made my way for the exit. I paid my deserved compliments to the band and heard this from the swirling haired bassist: "Dude, you made my night. Thanks for coming, dude." I've never felt more like a dad in my life. If this is the apocalypse, pour me a milkshake. All the right people, obviously and as always, celebrate the juju. Long live the mark of OUR beautiful beast!

There is a god...

New Bob Forrest songs

I know that dude...

Say Hello To Miss World Cup, from Togo