Sunshine


Sunshine is a state
of mind and body sound,
but even in its brightness
deceptions abound: Here Lies
the straight-talker who
through his teeth avoids
the grave, juggling possum
tightrope-walking
(the gators below are trained):
I wouldn't mind; I love what's light,
the skin-of-teeth high in the air,
but here on earth, waters rise,
and each our tiny chair
slips beneath the tide, and we
sink into salt and dark,
deep, beyond the watery fingers
of sunshine, though we reach.
  ¶ 8:57 PM (0) comments

  I've had the flu now for almost a week -- not a terrible flu; I've definitely had worse, but still it's been a sad, strange, awkward week. The tours I give, which are almost always packed, have been plagued by no-shows since tuesday. No one seems to want to go out. The people who do come seem strangely subdued. The Dia De Los Muertos was tuesday, but the walking dead still roam the streets. It's like a haunted world, now.

Stories are just beginning to register on the radar, THIS one for example, or THIS one or THIS one or THIS one by Greg Palast, the great investigative reporter whose report (cliquez ici!) on the BBC's NewsNight was the biggest news story in the rest of the world the weekend before the election, but was entirely blacked out in the US. (We can't handle the truth? ...Or, perhaps the right to speak freely applies only to those who can afford it, and to those who do not offend the powers-that-can-afford to squelch speech they dislike?)

You would think The People would wonder why voting machines, which are being made by companies practiced in making ATM machines, can so easily lose 2 million votes. If ATM machines were capable of losing 2 million dollars a day, would we use them? Would we even complain? After all, they're only grafting off one dollar at a time from the accounts of a couple million of the smallest, least powerful accounts. Are Americans a moral, ethical people? Do Americans even care? Some certainly like to call it "moral" when they're rationalizing their distaste for people different from them. But should we allow the words "moral" and "values" to be lifted and reworked into functional opposites of their former selves? We are the keepers of these words: we cannot allow them to be destroyed.

Votes have been stolen. Values denied. Morals co-opted. Patriotism defined by fracturing party lines. Godliness disallowed the loving. Up is down; hate is love; thought is treason; freedom is slavery; war is peace, and you know the rest.

I have never been so terrified in my life.
  ¶ 2:29 PM (0) comments

 
Bush: Faces of the Fallen   ¶ 11:08 PM (0) comments

  from the NY Times today...

A flier circulating extensively in black neighborhoods in Wisconsin carries the heading "Milwaukee Black Voters League." It asserts that people are not eligible to vote if they have voted in any previous election this year; if they have ever been found guilty of anything, even a traffic violation; or if anyone in their family has ever been found guilty of anything.

"If you violate any of these laws," the flier says, "you can get ten years in prison and your children will get taken away from you."

In Philadelphia, where a large black vote is essential to a Kerry victory in the crucial state of Pennsylvania, the Republican speaker of the Pennsylvania House, John Perzel, is hard at work challenging Democratic voters. He makes no bones about his intent, telling U.S. News & World Report:

"The Kerry campaign needs to come out with humongous numbers here in Philadelphia. It's important for me to keep that number down."

That's called voter suppression, folks, and the G.O.P. concentrates its voter-suppression efforts in the precincts where there are large numbers of African-Americans. And that's called racism.

These are days of shame for the United States. No one writing a civics text for American high school students would recommend this kind of behavior for a great and mighty nation. We have to figure out a way to extricate ourselves from Iraq and rebuild a truly representative democracy here at home. Right now we have a mess on both fronts.

It was Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, who said that "America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment."  ¶ 12:29 AM (0) comments