eMgram: Find a Christmas

in the bass-bell rhythm
of the radio box
in the swaddling clothes
of wanderers in homeless streets
lost

epiphany
in the red light window
annunciation
through loudspeaker voice

stoplight blur
red green red green
primary colors
in the non-stop rain

together with the stars
sky-high windows
flare like comets
these astral evening hours

child is born
squalls through storm
gives form to december desire

in a cheap motel
in the neon night
clenched fist opens
eyes grow bright

Without a Hitch

As Christopher Hitchens' atoms mingle with the cosmos, I cannot come close to this offering from his friend Chris Buckley. Farewell.

Rx for Occupy

You have most of us largely on your side, at least as far as these points are concerned:

Corporate influence and money determines political outcomes. The system is corrupt. Massive inequity exists.

The next logical extension is this: how do you address these issues, and where do you go from here?

The current tactics you employ, those of the pure revolutionary, will not work--at least in the context of American society. Look to your progenitors that succeeded to some degree. The Civil Rights movement did not advance by arming themselves against the police or the government. They succeeded in the American consciousness in those images from the Edmund Pettus bridge, where firehoses and dogs were loosed on people who simply demanded their legitimate rights. Therefore, eschew offensive confrontation. Stop throwing bricks at the police. Most of us recognize the police as a necessary element of society. As you yourself observed at the onset of the encampment at Zuccotti Park, the police are part of the 99%. Let their overreaction redound to your benefit, as the students at UC Davis did, by bowing your heads and taking abuse. You will accrue sympathies. Be aware that your actions determine our perception. Learn some basic PR. Reject the rhetoric of your fringe would-be co-opters, like the SWP, who refer to police as "legalized killers."

Develop a legislative agenda. There are currently eleven drafts extant in Congress of a proposed 28th Amendment to nullify Citizen's United, which established corporations as people, and money as speech. These issues have built-in popular appeal, and champions to make them happen. Attach yourselves to these.

Draft a slate of candidates for office that reflect these values. The most nationally visible of these, currently, is a Republican--former Louisiana Governor and representative Buddy Roemer. Find your own.  Concentrate on local and state legislatures. Draft candidates for Congress. Participate. And oh, are you registered to vote? Expressing your rage without these channels is sound and fury, nothing else. It may make you feel better--for a while. Without a practical path, rage will either seep away or spin out of control. It is not sustainable.

Abandon your purity. Your version of democracy, an admirably pristine one that may have made sense in tribal enclaves, village squares, or town halls, is impractical and irrelevant on a national or global scale. By clinging to it, you consign yourself to obscurity. Work with what exists, and do not concern yourself with what should be. Focus on movement towards a goal, not wholesale implementation of an unrealistic one. The revolution you seek simply will not happen, not here. Deal with it. If you persist in your present course, the greatest goal you could attain would be chaos, the fall of an entire system with nothing concrete to replace it--which could lead to your greatest fear, authoritarianism.

Build bridges with constituencies that are already organized. Your natural allies exist in labor, civil rights organizations, and advocates for the dispossessed. They have been in place for many years, and will open access to a much broader movement. Yours is an insular and isolated movement, perhaps popular in principle, but not yet truly populist. Again, abandon your purity and join the real world.

Use your tools and considerable organizational abilities in hypermedia to facilitate and advertise coalitions. Another natural breeding ground exists on college campuses. Students shutting down a campus to protest tuition hikes is far more effective than closing a freeway and pissing off your potential allies in the middle class.

And please recognize this lesson from history: the melee in Chicago in August of 1968 and the "Days of Rage" in October of  '69 granted two terms to Richard Milhous Nixon. Your actions entail responsibility for their consequences.

Don't screw this up.

Obama's Slogan for 2012

If I were Axelrod, I would put this on the signs and stickers: FAIRNESS. It worked with HOPE, and it's the best shot now. Please reference the Kansas speech in the previous post. Go ahead, get some coffee. Discuss.

Occupy: Long Range Forecast

An unusual weather occurence, here in Rain City: an inversion has settled in, trapping a layer of cold beneath a stalled high-pressure system. The result is unseasonably frigid temperatures, a welcome lack of rain, and a continuous haze of fog and hydrocarbons. Glorious toxic sunsets. Most local mammals are hibernating.

Occupy in my city is no exception. It has stored up some reservoir of  energy from its brief time in the sun. It is somewhat somnolent, drowsing and diminished. But in warm dens, its respiration continues, the heart still beats.

Understand, please, that I come to this not through any distinct ideological sympathies. It has been my pointed attempt from the beginning to remain an observer, to look at Occupy as a phenomenon, not as something I agree or disagree with, and not something I have identified with an ideological label in order to oppose or support it.

I monitor their websites, and I have talked to local campers a number of times. They will freely dispute with the good ole Seattle SWP, whose history goes back to the IWW, and the infamous Everett Massacre of 1916. They steadfastly refuse to align with them or with unions, or with Democrats. They have no discernible organizers. They operate through a sort of group consciousness committed to a few basic ideas and principles. If this is some defined ideology, I fail to see what taxonomic identification can be attached to it. The "Battle in Seattle," which I observed from several city blocks away, was anarchy, a riot. It was a crowd of disparate identity that became a mob. Occupy is not a mob, at least not yet.

On top of all that, they are very smart and very versed in the organic network we know as Hypermedia. Drawing direct analogies between this movement and the Arab Spring, or indeed a global unrest we have recently seen both in Britain and in Russia, to name just a few, is simplistic. At least one commonality, however, is the power of our now ubiquitous brain tools, which have led to a different type of organizing, one that those of us locked in our elderly bubbles are not as practiced in utilizing.

The Long Range Forecast: In Rain City, we know how to hunker for five months. But we also know that spring lies ahead. And with spring, the local mammals begin to stir. They come outside, throng the streets, and buy more sunglasses than any other city in this country.

I'm fairly certain that this seasonal expansion will be even more intense in warmer climes. There are tremendous implications for this through next summer and into the autumn, which is, I believe, the season that contains an election. I have some speculations about the tactical morphing that may occur, but that will wait for another time.

eMgram: From the Edge of the Road

A meditation on motion, perspective, and the illusion of stasis.


concrete splits the countryside
across glacial moraine
divides declivity from acclivity
exposes old sandstone strata

each curve seems smooth
a genteel gray gravity
a cautious centrifugal pull

seen from space
the road describes
the jagged fractal pattern
of a serriform leaf
genus aceraceae

blades of sawtooth grass
sprout from sand and soil
alluvial sediment from a riverbed
twelve thousand years old

roots reclaim the calcite clay
and gravel of the road at a pace
that only seems like stasis

forty yards from the edge of oil
the femur of a brown marmot
fossilizes to limestone nodules

an imagined camera
placed in that relative reality
would capture my passing
as a blurred blue retinal afterimage

the dilated fixed pupil
the cancerous cornea
sends spores to the wind
again and again

on the event horizon that extends
from the edge of the road
carbon atoms conspire
in the novae of neurons

eMgram: Peeling The Orange

This poem is not about anything else.
The globe you hold in your hands
is the only earth there is.

You may not begin until
you first imagine how the skin will feel
as it slides under half-moon nails.

Unfold the mercator projection.
Pull East from West, dig the Atlantic
with the ball of your thumb.

The tart contraction on your tongue
is an unknowable future
you must for now ignore.

Concentrate instead on the Himalayas.
This is a tectonic moment,
a necessary geography.

Let  Ptolemy be your tutor.
This is the epicenter,
history in your hands.

When you have seen the sphere naked,
felt the rind at your feet,
then, entertain the taste.

Note to Progressives: Why are there gay Republicans?

I have been asked this question innumerable times by friends who identify as left/liberal/ prog, whatever. It seems inconceivable to some that thoughtful, out, gay politicians and voters could identify themselves with a party that does not broadly support their own civil rights. I refer you to Log Cabin Republicans for a more thorough examination of their principles. When progressives say, in argument with anti-gay elements, that gay people are just like us, they are our neighbors, relatives, friends, and coworkers, they are of course correct. What is missing in the formulation when we say "just like us," is that "they" must somehow agree with our own limited political ideologies. If indeed "they" are just like "us," does that mean that "they" think for themselves, come to their own conclusions, and otherwise act "just like us?" This is the tip of the hand: if we cannot come to terms with an oppressed minority disagreeing with our ideology, then our ideology is assumed to be superior to the humanity of that minority. We have impressed our own ideas upon theirs, therefore becoming oppressors of a similar order, and just as self-righteous as the oppressors we decry. This is paternalism, orthodoxy, and condescension of the worst kind.

Off Grid.

Major hardware failure, back as I can.

Sidebar: The Hometown Paper

Off any particular point, except as it relates to the post below: The Stranger is an independent, unabashedly progressive, self-consciously ironic muckraker of a paper, which is just the sort of attitude in print journalism that I can appreciate, for good as well as ill. Creativity may take a back seat to orthodoxy here, but the outcome is often common sense. It isn't afraid to be audacious and honest, maintains a healthy skepticism, and does the only in-depth, in-person investigative journalism in the region. The dinosaurian Times and its defunct repetitor, the Post Intelligencer, run AP copy, have no substantial local reportage, and run continuous lifestyle and fluff pieces that only serve as companions to advertising--hence the heinous concoction, "advertorial.". Heavy on the Arts and the club scene, born of the raucous gay scene on Capitol Hill, and genuinely creative, this paper unequivocally rocks, unless you place the repetition of your ideology in echo chambers above your appreciation for expression. I highly recommend Mr. Charles Mudede's musings on anything at all. He is a poet of journalism and criticism and should not be missed, regardless of individual geography.

The Fizzle in the Drizzle: Occupy Seattle drains away

Here on the leftiest part of the left coast, where Occupy has wide-spread sympathy, devolution has begun. The early protest and encampment took advantage of an atypically glorious autumn. Every November, the jet stream shifts and begins funneling vortices from the Gulf of Alaska right down our throats about every other day. On the lull days it just rains, and rains. The indigenous Salish have a dozen names for rain. It falls from a uniform sheet of gray stratus that hovers ominously, oppressively. We spend our days in half-light, broken only by the wet winter darkness that greets us as we rise and says hello again as we leave work. We  take vitamin D and anti-depressants. We retreat to our burrows with our coffee and craft-distilled liquor, and we read books.

In my three visits to the encampment, I have observed an increasing solemnity, a kind of grim determination, along with deteriorating conditions and dwindling numbers. I've encountered idealists but not ideologues, various hangers-on, and a few fringe-types (the Larouche crowd simply left due to lack of any interest, and the three Nazi skinheads that showed up as provocateurs were summarily escorted off.) No drum circles or dancing in the downpours. No nudity (are you crazy, you want to freeze your ass off?) No public sex, discarded needles, or signs railing against Israel.

The initial camp at Westlake Center, a huge pedestrian concourse in the urban core, was abandoned in favor of a nearby community college campus, away from the financial and commercial centers. This was acheived without major conflict with the police. Tear gas and batons werre not required, just a request from the mayor, and receptive college administration. The move reduced visibility and curtailed any disruption of daily activities in the city. No traffic jams, no more barricaded banks. This is entirely consistent with the Seattle ethos--we are nothing if not unfailingly accommodating.

Shortly after the rains began, an insistence on "process purity," an intense fear of co-option, and outright incompetence led to the following scenarios, ably reported by The Stranger, our local alternative weekly.

No sooner had six panelists finished opening remarks last Saturday evening than a woman scampered onstage and yelled, "Mic check!" It was an orchestrated effort by several dozen Occupy Seattle activists to use the "People's Mic" to interrupt a forum at Town Hall—a forum in favor of Occupy Wall Street, featuring three wonks and three activists from Occupy Seattle. Their stunt replaced what was supposed to be an informed discussion with an uninformative shoutathon about process that consumed most of the evening. They booed opinions they disagreed with and drove supporters out of the building.
"I walked in supportive and left unsupportive," said 69-year-old Mary Ann, who declined to provide her last name. "I'm turned off by the negative shouts and repetition, and all I can think about is a cult."
She added: "And I believe in every one of their damn principles."

Across the country, police and mayors have been sweeping occupiers out of their camps; conversely, here in Seattle, protesters have become their own greatest public-relations liability. After a week of media­genic protests (largely civil disobedience aimed at Chase Bank), the debacle at Town Hall was one of several recent unflattering incidents. For another example, about 30 protesters associated with Occupy Seattle stormed a public meeting at the Horace Mann building in the Central District on November 11 to "reclaim the space for the community," according to a text from one of the protesters. Their efforts failed, and it turns out they crashed a mentorship program for high school dropouts.

Meanwhile, Seattle Central Community College (SCCC) officials have grown upset with declining sanitary conditions among campers occupying the campus. "They said they would get their own Dumpster, but they haven't yet—three weeks into it," says SCCC spokeswoman Judy Kitzman. Trash has been piling up or going into the college's trash receptacles, and "rats don't wait for their process," she continues. (read more.)

The Stranger has been an vociferous Occupy supporter from the beginning.

Occupy is not like the Civil Rights movement, not like the anti-war protests that shut down entire cities. It does not advocate a voting rights bill, nor oppose a specific policy like a foreign war. It instead opposes an entire system, the collusion of government and financial megaliths, without offering any coherent alternative. And with its utopian ideas of democracy, it offers no methodology to achieve the stated aims of fairness and equity. Occupy has achieved one concrete thing, however--it has garnered attention and sparked debate, making fairness and equity part of the conversation. That dialog, though, is often dependent on our own waning attention spans in the hypermedia news cycle, and it can be shunted into obscurity by that capricious beast.

I have an old girlfriend who once belonged to an anarcho-syndicalist commune. I asked her why she left the group. "We were tired, cold, and hungry," she said. "People left and we couldn't replace them. All of us had to work harder. We had conflicting ideas and personalities, and everyone finally stopped listening."

More rain is forecast.

American Verdict: Media and Spectacle

The crawl on all the cable news channels yesterday struck me as strange. The same headline appeared twice: once under the "Top Stories" banner, presumably the more important events of the day; and again under the "Entertainment" heading, along with this week's top-grossing movies. Herman Cain's troubles, rumblings about possible military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, and census data reporting 49 million Americans now living in poverty were relegated to the electron-bombarded back pages.

For 30 minutes prior to the reading of the verdict, the networks cut away from other stories (CNN left a reporter in Afghanistan in mid-sentence to announce the "breaking news"), gathered legal experts and entertainment "reporters," and speculated  as to what the verdict might be. The crowd of thousands outside the courthouse pumped signs that included "Murray Burn in Hell." When the verdict was actually announced, a roar worthy of the Colosseum rose, punctuated by a cacophony of car horns. Ambulances arrived to assist stricken swooners in the crowd. And it continued, on into the night.

But this is not the usual screed about the banality of Big Media or even the old battle over who is biased and who is a counterbalance. We have been gawkers at the freak show for millennia.

Before Hypermedia, we had village gossip, attendance at public punishments, popular salacious scandal, and all manner of vicarious mob mentalities. We sold tidbits and trinkets, brought the kids, hissed the villains, and mourned the righteous. The progression arcs all the way through the famous spectacles we recall from our own cultural history: John Wilkes Booth, Oscar Wilde, Bruno Hauptmann, Fatty Arbuckle, OJ, Casey Anthony, ad infinitum. Although each is different in detail, they share three things: spectacle, celebrity, and our vicarious interest. The differences in media are ones of scale and speed: from word of mouth around the village hearth, to the speed of light around a global one.

We are all, of course, still tribal. That evidence, in politics, conflict, ethnicity, and sect, is irrefutable. Small wonder that we are drawn to community events, for humans seek to belong. The magnetism of spectacle is the sheer ecstatic grandeur of it. The neolithic priests at Stonehenge used resonant sound within that enclosure to induce rapt, trance-like states in the congregants. Spectacle is our collective cultural High Mass, our secular ritual.

We are now and ever have been consumers of spectacle through media. The question of whether media drives our appetites or vice-versa was answered presciently by McLuhan: when we use a tool, the tool uses us. Ever since our antecedent picked up a stick and used it as an implement, our tools have been acting on us, extending and refining our grasp, enlarging our environments. The tools we use today are brain-tools, and they act upon our brains in turn, changing how we think.

Is this a good or a bad thing? The responsibility for that outcome, lies, of course, with us. Are we passive consumers, responding to spectacle in a media-soaked trance? Are we casually dismissive of these mass events? Or do we critically examine them, noting what they have to say about who we are?

Deconstruct spectacles, and they become lenses, magnifiers of what is in us.

Cain Mutiny?

What amazes me most--wait, it really doesn't amaze me at all--is that the same group of folks that didn't believe Obama was born here are among the 54% of Republicans who are "unconcerned" about the latest sexual harassment accusations against Mr. Cain. At your next click, I will apologize for saying that.

Why Occupy Wall Street Won't Work

I’ve had my boots on the ground, listened to the arguments, made my choices, and examined my biases. Given: there is a clear, vast, accelerating disparity of wealth and of burden in the U. S. This is a statistical fact. Given: moneyed interests exert unparalleled control over the conversation in Congress. Given: OWS has accurately identified these two points.

The question is: will they succeed in changing this paradigm?

Flip the coin: I think it can be said with a fair degree of accuracy that the Tea Party has succeeded on the following fronts: they have become the propulsive force driving the conversation within the Republican Party; legislators favorable to them control the House and stall the Senate; and in addition to this legislative blockade, they are the kingmakers in the race for the Republican nomination. The only reasonable person other than (arguably) Mr. Romney is Mr. Huntsman, who is branded an evolution loving-climate change believing-former Obama employee-Mormon-tax-pledge rejecting irrelevancy—and his poll numbers indicate just that. All the rest have bowed to the TP, most in obsequious fashion.

The TP has (depending on nuance) either invaded and occupied the GOP, or they have been co-opted and absorbed by it. In either case, they have a legislative agenda, a slew of candidates, real political power, and, thanks to Dick Army and his funders, plenty of money. They also have at their disposal the organizational power of the party, of the evangelical wing (which is considerable, and another Big Picture topic), PACS, and anonymous sympathetic corporations behind super-PACS.

OWS has struck at the heart of what, broadly, most Americans believe: that Big Money and Big Politics run the show, and that most are left in the dust with no influence, no power, no voice, and no alternative. Americans in general feel captive to forces that they believe are beyond their control. OWS exemplifies this. This meets all the requirements of a popular/populist movement. They have accurately tapped into the zeitgeist.

Here’s the rub. This is essentially a utopian movement, susceptible to all the foibles of utopian movements past: big ideas, big idealism, noble motives, dedicated adherents, out with the old, wholesale, in with the new and innovative. They will become victims of their own aspirations, however admirable those might be. (The TP shares this aspect in a different iteration, the subject of another essay.)

The road to political change is twofold: incremental change through politics, or outright popular revolution that forces the issue. The former is the rule, the latter the exception. I used “paradigm” advisedly earlier. What OWS is proposing is a sea change in the way business is done. No nipping around the edges, no legislative fix, no candidate, no standard bearer, no (big) funding, no party, no co-option/invasion. It has exempted itself from the political narrative by proposing ideas that are just Too Big, no matter how resonant they are. It is creatively attractive anarchy (and I mean that in a good way) that is pragmatically untenable.

More revolutions are crushed than are successful. Those few successes are often co-opted and redirected. Ask me, I was a Trotskyite long ago. Utopia, and Justice, and Fairness, these are ideals to strive towards. These are part of our common aspirational humanity, and striving is in our nature. Without pragmatic methodology, OWS is an inert expression of cumulative and common angst. We do, as humans, dare to dream. But we also have to act in a waking world.