Last week, a kid fired shots in a nearby high school, injuring ten students forcing the school into lockdown. Suffering from some typical problems (teachers called parents about grades or something like that), he was reportedly inspired by a documentary about the Columbine shootings. Two thoughts occur to me: #1: how very impressionable this shows him to be. #2: He would have had to have been about eight years of age when that happened, which is a shifted frame of reference of what is remembered. Time processes forward. This, therefor, goes down as a sort of time lapsed “copycat” school shooting, which was all the rage of suspected back in 1999.
Yesterday, a massacre happened at Virginia Tech which has surpassed Columbine and is now the largest one, though I suppose I can mention that if not for some faulty wiring, Columbine would have had upwards of 400 dead. (The shooters had a cinematic aesthetic in mind.) What strikes me, as it did then, is how meaningless the news coverage is — and it’s difficult to say whether the overviews in a couple months will be more significant or deficient in a different manner. At the moment, it is a four line story — which is to say there are about four sentences that we know that are relevant to everyone in America. Beyond that we have a strange gun control debate, and I will point you to the wacky contrarians of lewrockwell and prison planet .com for articles on how Gun Control was responsible for many of these deaths because it stopped the victims from being able to Pack Heat.
The basic problem is that any commentary made about the Virginia Tech shootings is that it will be small. If I say, as occurred to me, that this is something like every day in Iraq — moving on to snuff the frequent comparisons of death rates between, as so happens misleading geographic areas between Iraq and the United States — by pointing to the natural reaction of this shooting, I feel like I just cheapened myself. But there you go.

I don’t know what made the Korean student do this. Supposedly a dispute with a girlfriend, which makes sense for the first two deaths (the girlfriend and the RA). Beyond that… we can only assume he has holes in the brain.

Your schools are still statistically safe. Your kid will come home at the end of the day, or I guess to their dorm-room.

I read this debate in the American Prospect over the desiribility, from a liberal Democratic prospective, of both a Hillary Clinton nomination and a Hillary Clinton presidency. Obviously I’m more inclined to the “con” side than the “pro” side, the pro side I at times can’t make heads or tails from, the politics of seeming to come out of a strange inside the beltway consensus. Example in waiting, which is sliced in the “con side”: Perhaps the biggest misperceptions Hillary Clinton will have to overcome are that she is more liberal than she actually is on domestic issues (even though she is not the most liberal candidate in the field) and that she is too liberal to win a general election.… presumably it’s a problem that can be solved by eschewing the problem and going to the other candidate’s problems.

Here is the “Hillary Clinton Problem”, the sentence that sum up her problem:

she is, on the merits, the least progressive of the major Democratic candidates in the race, and also the one with the least appeal to moderate and independent voters — the exact reverse, in short, of what liberals should be looking for in a nominee.

(BTW: Why is there an ad on the sidebar of the American Prospect website to a Rudy Giuliani fund-raising website?)

It was a couple of days before Halloween, a couple hours past dark. I was sitting alone either at a bus stop or, where I have learned that nothing good ever happens, on a park bench. Into my line of vision walks a group of 3 or 4 individuals — wearing masks. I, even as I conciously am aware that they are probably ambling their way to a Halloween Party, instinctively feel a bit fretified at the situation, the feeling finds its way onto my expression.

They stop. They pull up their masks so as to ameleorate my fears (something on the order of anonymous figures running around in bands intending either violence or ill-gotten profit through violence), making a bit of small talk.

I can’t quite recall or recreate the conversation, but the up-shot is that the kid speaking to me — black — clearly with his hip hop infused everyday slang — so as to make sure everything is cool here — they mean me no harm — referred to me as…

Nigger.

See, I’m used to situations where I’d be “brother”, or “amigo”, but I must say I was more uncomfortable at that point than when I first saw a bunch of masked youth walking in my direction. But I had to strain not to make a point of it, to smile and nod awkwardly without having anything to say that could possibly come out well. My discomfort level must have strained onto my face, as I had to explain that everything was okay and I was fine with them, and once again the word “nigger” was thrown in my lily-white direction.

I suppose we need to figure out what to do about that word, and debate amongst ourselves the boundaries of urban youth (um… that would be black)’s use of ther term amongst themselves, and its sociological import and all of that, to arrive at no clear markers. All I know for sure is that it doesn’t fit me, either as a racial slur or a term of
endearment, and thus my rule here is not to use it in reference to me, basically
by definition… find a different slur or find different a word of endearment. “Whigger”, for instance. Although to toss that word in my direction is semi-analogous (not entirely, of course) to slapping the back of your grandfather and using that other word.

Then again, I can say that I do indeed know what it is like to have that term used right to my my face. Granted, it’s an entirely different situation, which builds up to awkward as opposed to degrading.

I have been informed that the man reported in this Washington Post news story about a Suicide off an overpass in beautiful (?I have no way of knowing?) from Leesburg, Virginia was a high level Larouchite.

Naturally I cannot leave that without some sort of comment, but for the life of me I don’t know what that comment is. We run into members of this outer group and react by laughing or perhaps going a bit further. A look at Dennis King’s website (finally got around to that) (customary Disclaimer for any wandering Larouchites who do seem to be reading this: Dennis King once wrote an article that appeared in High Times, which has a different title than the one that Larouche propaganda claims), which contains somehow or other have internal documents from this creepy organization, reveals a Byzantine Operation … high pressure and demeaning control jobs.

So I am left with a few simple thoughts. #1: After a lifetime devoted to this creep, you come to the realization that you wasted your life, robotically programmed into a netherworld of lies and Stalinist rationalizations for — say — the death of Jermiah Duggan, and what do you do then? #2: The paranoid Lyndo — nay, I’ll stick with Lyn Marcus– carries out loyalty tests, and if you fail… Proceed to something similar to the strange case of Alice Weitzman and know that little has changed. It’s not that that happened, so much as Lyn Marcus handed him his walking papers and told him that he was too attached to his mother. (Wait. That’s an inappropriate joke, grasped only by those who knew from elsewhere the reference or have been paying attention. Sorry.)
Hence the following comment: See if the larouche cultists who show up here can give more details of what happened in larouche’s residence the night before and the morning of the suicide.

Sounds like either a call to decency or a throwing of the guantlet.

I was contemplating my theory of Lyn Marcus’s shift to Al Gore and Global Warming, and perhaps a long series of posts corregated at bloglines of mocking nature — my theory being that this is in part a tightening of control, jiggling off some merely semi-committed liberal – minded followers who were attracted to the anti Bush message and thus arriving back at a good core of manageables to march off to the next Crusade from his batch of tricks. But I’m analyzing something that affects my life not a wit here, and won’t think it through. He’s taking credit for some idiot German politician’s call to Ban the nation’s Green Party. (Note to the side the “Projects” list which includes “Destroy Al Gore”. Hardee Har Har.) Which is funny enough, because all reports are that his Germany organization has imploded. (Whereas he appears to have thrived in America for the moment, recovering from a horrid 1990s).

Okay. Now I can return to real politics… something I read in the American Prospect that is worth mentioning… in a post coming up.

“I want something provocative.”  My 7th grade English teacher was explaining what he deemed a very important step in writing a persuasive essay composition.  “The first sentence should catch my attention and force me to read on.  In this case, and for this paper, I would actually accept something like ‘America sucks.'”

Predictably enough, more than half the class would now start their paper with the provacative sentence “America sucks”, or some deriviative thereof.  I was not immune to that pull.  But, realizing that “America sucks” and “America stinks” and “America Blows” hardly counts as “provacative” in a sea of other essays that begin with that sentence, I upped the ante to:

“America is a fucking shithole.”

I wrote on from there.  I don’t remember what ill of America I was attacking or asking to fix, but I felt confident that it was a provacative first sentence.

As was standard procedure, we ended the class by passing it up the rows.  Someone saw what I had written, and by the next day everyone knew.  And everyone anticipated the teacher confronting me on this.

So, the next day, the teacher stood before us with the armful of essays.  “The power of suggestion.  It never fails.”  He shook his head.  “Yesterday I gave the suggestion that I would accept a first sentence like ‘America sucks.’  Here’s what you wrote:”

He went through the papers.  “America sucks.  America sucks.  America stinks.  America blows.  The world stinks.  I hate America.  America now has a 4 trillion dollar debt that it will never be able to repay. America sucks…”  He went on and on like that… and I did not make up the “America now has a 4 trillion dollar debt that it will never be able to repay.”

Lance smiled, and poked me, as if anticipating him referencing my sentence.  “Anyway, we’re just going to have to all come up with something original now.”  He passed back the papers, marked with recommendations and corrections and criticisms on what to turn in for draft number two.

Then he held up a paper, “Justin… can I have a word with you at my desk?”

The class gave a collective gasp, and looked toward me.  I gave a somewhat calculated and cool exaggerated nervous look where I stretch out my left cheek bone and move the two sets of teeth as far apart as possible for a second, as was my want, as is indicative of me playing for the camera.

I went over to his desk.  “Justin.  There’s a type of writing called ‘hate literature.’  It’s the easiest thing to write and takes absolutely no talent, and its only goal is to shock the audience.  It has no lasting value to society.”

I nodded.

“Ever hear of ‘shock radio”? It gets huge ratings, and…”

I nodded my head, and gave my only murmur of affirmation.  I had heard of a thing called hate radio.  Bad, bad stuff.

He finished up his speech.  “You understand me?”

I nodded.  “Good.  Go back to your seat and do this over again.”

I went back to my seat.  Lance asked me what happened, as if something dramatic could’ve happened.  “He told me to write it over again.” His face fell into semi-disappointment.

The paper had one red mark on it, an arrow pointing to the offending sentence saying “I Quit Reading.  Try Again.”  I crossed it out, wrote something else, and turned it in sans any other new mark the next day.

For the life of me I don’t know what this Learning Moment was supposed to teach me.  A focus on “Shock Radio” is bizarrely narrow and outside the purview of any possible career I might be pursuing, so why he would want to warn me about it I do not know.

But all “Learning Moments” are kind of like that.  Witness the ritual Kabuki Dance that marks the “National Conversation on Race” whenever a major celebrity, in this case — um — “Shock Jock” (the kind that I was I warned about in seventh grade, I guess) Don Imus — makes a well publicized bigoted statement.  You can line up the commentary and the incidents that will follow, and cross them off as they come to pass.  Wait!  Let me guess!  “Who voted for Jesse Jackson / Al Sharpton to be representatives of them/us?”  NEXT item on the list, please!!   The one fortunate (and that is an odd thing to say) about the Don Imus incident as opposed to the Michael Richards incident is that it covers ugly misogyny as well — which means that any white man yelling “Blacks use the term” doesn’t end up at the queasiness of an implicit “Why Won’t the Political Correct Police let me use the word ‘Nigger’?”  So, we float into the song “99 Problems and the Bitch Ain’t One”, and if society ever cared to contemplate it, um… Black Snake Moan?
I wish to stick Don Imus down the memory hole.  I don’t even know what to make of the ethnic slur.  It doesn’t quite add up to any bland little “Black men drive a car like this.  White men drive a car like this.”  Or Fuzzy Zellar’s offensive stereotypical comments on being paired with Tiger Woods about serving fried chicken and cauliflower, which at least has the benefit of demographics pointing to a lot of fried chicken resturants in heavily black neighborhoods.  (Also, stock up on grape soda.  I don’t know why, nor do I particularly care.)  But who looks at a college basketball runner up and sees a bunch of “nappy headed hos”.  Mind you, this follows comments about the championship Tennessee team on them being “cute” — I suppose a bunch of white all American “girls next door” versus (tattooed) women from “THOSE” neighborhoods, which makes it all the more cringe-worthy, and desirious of …

National Healing?

Patrick Leahy says:  “You can’t erase e-mails, not today. They’ve gone through too many servers.  Those e-mails are there, they just don’t want to produce them. We’ll subpoena them if necessary.”
AND
“Like the famous 18-minute gap in the Nixon White House tapes, it appears likely that key documentation has been erased or misplaced. This sounds like the Administration’s version of ‘the dog ate my homework.'”

This is a contradiction within a single paragraph or two.  It cannot be “like the famous 18 minute gap in the Nixon White House tapes” AND “can’t be deleted”.  The 18 minutes are deleted.  Gone.  Repeatedly.  As deleted accidentally by Rosemary Woods.  These emails?  Somebody some 16 year old quasi-anarchist geek please hack into them and float them around the Internets / Series of tubes?

The common reaction to the news of the attempted creation of something called, colloquially at least, “War Czar” is that Bush (“The Decider”, mind you) is attempting to create a new Fall Guy for his failures abroad.  Beyond that, we have the typical commentary for any “moving the boxes around” bureaucratic re-organization or creation — isn’t this the job of (list of officials in charge of war planning and operations), and if not what the hell are they doing?

Granted the seeming insignificance of the job duties, but I don’t understand why nobody hasn’t taken him up on the offer of “War Czar”.  It looks like a pretty good position for an industrious aspiring dictator to sidle in from to seize control.  I imagine Smedley Butler being offered such a duty.  Stalin and Saddam Hussein came in through bureaucratic manuevers.  Hitler has a relatively powerless figure-head position that he just killed the chancellor from his position as to seize control.  Heck!  Lyndon LaRouche’s designs have always been to seize control through a newly created cabinet position to oversee some emergency or other — AIDS or Asian Financial Crisis — where he levels control of all government into his hands (and quarantaine certain undesirables) because that’s necessary to solve that crisis.

War Czar as a crisis management tool is a good dictatorial stepping ground.  Or maybe I’m paranoid.  Better to accept War Czar as meaningless Fall Guy position that it is and acknowledge that the chances of a dictatorial takeover from that position are negligible.  Still… who’s controlling the military all of a sudden and what the hell is a “War Czar” supposed to do?