A few posts ago, I said something about the fact that I thought the current uprisings in the Middle East seemed a bit too pat and might have been due to a gentle nudge by someone in the Western world, perhaps even the US. Well, it turns out - according to the New York Times - that such a thing did indeed happen. Two pro-democracy groups here in the US have said that they assisted in providing training on social networking and nonviolent protest to several groups in the Middle East. Isn’t that a kicker?

I guess it really was that obvious. It’s not like they read it here first, after all. However, I’m also fairly sure the rabbit hole goes a bit farther down than this, but it’s not likely we will ever get an honest answer about just how deep. Plausible deniability and all that. Still, it’s nice to know that some people understand that a government using a military to effect diplomacy is like a group of janitors using meat cleaver to remove an appendix.

The current “debate” (and I use that term in uncharacteristically loose fashion) in the US Congress right now over whether and how to fund government is, in my view, plain silly. I don’t really think I know anything more than those arguing on the chamber floors about government policy or economics, apart from the few college classes I have had on the subjects, but that’s also not the reason I think the bickering, bickbiting, name-calling, shiftily-worded diatribes and outright lies is so silly.

What’s so silly about all of that to me is how divorced it is from the actual running of a government. Politics has taken over in Washington, and the policies that the political process is supposed to produce are barely given a thought past giving old farts a reason to argue. It’s as if the sole function of a government is for old prunes and fuddy-duddies to get together and fight to the pain over whether or not gays should marry or whether the rich should get to keep all their money and not over whether a particular policy will really do what it says on the tin. Nobody inside the Beltway seems to see the utter silliness of a government that argues more than it governs, and I am sick of it.

I probably don’t have to tell anyone reading this that I am gay, atheist, and, while currently destitute, am invested in the middle-class mindset by the nature of my upbringing. My mother and my father both work for a living (in construction, no less) and will likely never be able to fully retire because the old 50’s middle-class ideal of a job that takes care of you and children who grow up to be doctors just doesn’t happen anymore, if it ever really did. I am a 30-something-year-old who sleeps on his mother’s couch while simultaneously striving to find a job and a place to live. I think of being on welfare as a sort of giving up. I don’t want to ask for help; I want to make my own success in life and know that I got there through my own hard work. When I am old, I want to be able to retire and do whatever projects I dream up, to only be interrupted by my neices and nephews and whatever other family I have coming by to visit.

However, I know very well that my view of the world is colored by my upbringing, my beliefs and values, and the people I surround myself with. I am perfectly capable, for instance, of accepting that gay marriage would indeed be bad for society as a whole - if it were reasonably argued to me, that is, and I could accept the conclusions. I can understand that welfare is a necessity for some, even though I might not accept it myself. I even realize that there might actually be a god or gods out there, despite the total lack of evidence for any such being or beings, and that someone or anyone’s religion my indeed be a correct belief - despite my sincere doubt of any dogmatic belief. In short, I realize that not only can I be wrong, but that I most likely am wrong about anything I believe is true.

And this is why what’s happening on Capitol Hill is so very silly to me. What’s missing in these “debates” (again, the loose term) is the realization on anyone’s part that any or all sides of the issue may be wrong. The “conversation” (another loose term) is more of a shouting match with each person stating what they believe is right while totally denying that their frenzied shouts could be nothing more than the product of their own beliefs - or if they do acknowledge it, also stating that their “lifestyle” (whatever that is) is either the only correct one or one of a short list of possible ways to live a “righteous” (egotistical much?) life. Even worse, in most cases the participants in the shouting match are also extremely strict about viewpoint, taking a compatible but slightly variant view of the same issue as nothing short of heresy, resulting in whoever has the minority view either being pressured back into the fold or declared an outcast. (Yeah, because conformacy is so “maverick”, dontcha’ know?)

Let me be clear: I have my beliefs and values, some of which I hold quite strongly because I have tested them in my own life. I don’t simply believe something is true without examining the facts and implications. There are times when I agree with progressives or even downright liberals, other times when I agree with conservatives - sometimes to the point of libertarianism. I don’t have to agree with everyone, and I don’t need the laws tailored to my values.

What I need is a government that runs and doesn’t have to have months of arguing just to come to an agreement not to halt everything. I need a government that’s going to make it easier for me to find a job - thereby ensuring that the money I am paid gets back into the economy, by the way - so I don’t have to apply for food stamps rather than hold weeks of debate on whether gays should be allowed to serve in the military or to marry. I need a government that’s going to pick its battles and know when to get involved in world affairs rather than hemorrhaging money into two very useless wars and an armed conflict, getting more and more people killed or maimed and damaging our reputation in the world by even considering that torture may be a valid interrogation tool, despite the fact that we have previously agreed multiple times that it never is.

What I need is for all the pride-driven prunes and fuddy-duddies to get their damned noses out of my private life, stop lying to the people to win points, stop accepting what amounts to bribes from lobbyists to sway their votes, stop preaching ideology and get to the practical details of running a government - and, for that matter, to stop preaching altogether, to stop playing a zero-sum game with the lives of real people in the balance who need something now and not when we all finally agree on every small detail, and to get off their damned high horses and realize that not only could they be wrong, but that everone can be wrong and even what we think is the right answer might do more harm than good.

In other words, I want a government that looks absolutely nothing like what we currently have - damn my idealism. If only No Labels were much more prominent. If you agree with the spirit of this post, give them a visit and help make their dream of a functional government a reality.

I don’t normally comment on my own poetry; one very good reason for this is that I think poetry is at least partly the personal experience of the person who recieves it. However, in this one case, I will break my own rule about interpreting for other people and give a bit of clarity.

In almost evetry case, the person who has either read or heard “The Man With No Nose” has chuckled at the end of it. I find this interesting for two reasons: first, that the mild word play I engage in is really so amusing; second, that people think the word play is the focus of the poem. I will admit I was rather amused with my own writing when I finished the poem, but I had a clear intent when I wrote it that had nothing to do with humor.

What I wanted to get across was the ambiguity of human languages and how it creates misunderstandings without leading to confusion on anyone’s part. We humans have a natural tendency to believe what we see and hear, but most importantly we have a tendency to defend our beliefs about it. Sometimes when two people have a conversation, each is really having a conversation with the voice in his or her own head interpreting what the other says rather than spending the time and energy necessary to actually listen and respond.

Where the problem lies in this lazy conversation tactic is the fact that solipsism imitates narcisism externally. We can come off as haughty or deliberately obtuse to others when we are simply not listening; likewise, others who seem as if they aren’t speakng your language may simply not understand why what they say seems not to go past your ears.

I am acutely aware of my own problems in this regard. More than a few times I have said something that was taken completely sideways by the person to whom I was talking and no matter how many times I have attempted to correct the misunderstanding, the original interpretation of what I said persists. This is possibly due to the fact that I have a habit for defining words precisely where others allow meaning to exist in a state of flux. I do not excel at interpreting ambigious meanings (read: I completely fail at it) and sometimes a problem exists where I use one meaning for a word or a phrase where another might be expected. In my defense, I do not use words in ways that are unclear given the context, but I also tend to follow context very closely (due to my own personal issues) where most others do not. Misunderstandings, I think, tend to be more a matter of missing or incorrect context more than anything else.

I won’t quite defend my own quirks, though. I will simply say that they are quirks and that everyone has them about various details of their lives. Some people have a persistent tendency to spell “potato” as “potatoe” and I have a tendency to correct them. Some people have more quirks than others - I likely fall in the latter category. We all have our own personal understandings of the world.

What I ask, though poetry, is that we take the time to follow the context of our partners in communication. Are we really talking about the same rose? Is it truly a rose if it does not smell as sweet? Could it be possible that the person we are talking to sees (or smells) a rose in a fundamentally different manner than we do, and is it possible that we aren’t really talking about the same thing?

I’m glad for the laughter, though. It still proves my point all the same.

I saw a man with no nose
Holding a delicate rose.
Intruigued, I must say,
   I asked, in my way,
   “Hello, Sir! How does it smell?”
Witsfully, he sighed,
   And softly replied,
   “Surely, I smell it quite well.”
Amazed by the truth,
   I replied, “Forsooth!
   But how is it that you can tell?”
He told me this one secret -
I shall never forget it:

“To find the truth in what I have said,
in this case the words themselves must be red.”

I know I am not a perfect person. I know that I make mistakes quite often, that I am rude, condescending, bitchy, and many other types of petty at various times; likely, I am seen as an overbearing asshole even when I think I am only lightly suggesting. The problem with life is that we are not gifted with 20/20 foresight and that hindsight is often described as “too little, too late.”

Of course, it’s customary to apologize for the emotional harm one has caused; I have done plenty of that. I do try to apologize when I make mistakes - but, like the imperfect person I am, the apology doesn’t always sound like one, even if it’s truly what I mean. Life gets hard sometimes when you’re a know-it-all with a chip on his shoulder.

That’s why I have largely given up on apologizing for my mistakes; when one’s apologies are themselves sometimes (read: often) delivered inappropriately to the point that they cause further insult, one learns to keep his mouth shut and work on things most likely to be of benefit. After all, apologies do not fix mistakes as much as they make people feel better about your having made one.

Most people understand the apology is there anyway if you actively work to fix the mistake you have made. So that’s what I do: I make it clear that I am fixing what is wrong. I may not always make enough progress on fixing the problem (some of my mistakes are that large), but I always do my best to show some kind of forward progress.

By way of explanation - and most certainly not of excuse - I have been under quite a bit of stress over the last few years. I do not deal well with stress. I have very few coping mechanisms for feeling helpless and all of them in some way involve me not expressing the way I feel until I explode, or I will act like I know everything, or I make sure I am always right. I will pick fights so I can make myself feel better about my position in life.

I realize that all of these are negative behaviors and I work to subvert them when I can, but this fallible, imperfect human being shouting in the darkness does not always (read: nearly never) catch what he’s doing before it causes harm. I can really be a pain to be around sometimes; I know it and so does everyone who has had the misfortune of being around me for the past few years. I’d like to say that I have gotten better, even if only a little bit, but I truly do not have a metric for gauging such things - and all signs point in the opposite direction in any case.

For what it’s worth (likely a fistful of coppers), I am truly sorry for the pain I have put others through; or, more correctly, the pain I have shared with other people. I truly do not like these parts of myself, and I do work to get rid of them or to at least subvert them. I know that progress is slow. I also know that I am not alone in thinking that apologies do not fix mistakes and that I am judged by how well I do in that regard. So it’s not very surprising that I have received low marks in that subject; I would also grade myself harshly.

I don’t want my life to change while I am working to fix it, but I understand that I have irritated friends and family to the point that it likely will. Mea culpa. I would ask for the same patience be given to me that I have shown with others, but I fear that not only have I already overstayed my welcome, but that patience is not a thing I should have license to ask for at this point. Also mea culpa.


However, please do understand that casting me adrift at this point does nobody any favors. If you would like to have a good relationship with me, please know that I cannot associate myself with parts of my previous life which choose to reject me as I am. I am not vindictive here; I simply can’t continue working to improve myself while simultaneously finding myself judged by those who have already rejected me, and in this case my needs come first. Also, you will be delaying (or denying) whatever improvement you hope to see in me because you will be removing yourself from my feedback loop. Again, this is not vindictiveness: I simply won’t allow those who reject me to shape who I am. I have already had far, far too much of that in my life.

If you are currently among those in my life who cannot tolerate me any longer (and this despite my having tolerated you for just as long, har har), then I think we are at an agreement and we should say farewell to each other as soon as practicable. If you have stated your frustrations with me but are still willing to stick around, then I welcome you anew into my life and reaffirm my commitment to you that I will do my best to improve myself. I do not leave those who do not leave me. Ever. We may lose track of each other from time to time, but I will still call on the off chance my rat maze of a brain manages to remind me at the right moment.

In either case, I wish you well. I hope that both of us have learned something together.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (like me), you already know that for the last month, protests have been raging across the Middle East against oppressive governments. I, for one, think that it is a good thing that the average Abdullah of even the most repressed Middle Eastern society is taking a stand for his (or her) own freedom.

However, something about this turn of events seems just a little too pat to me.

Isn’t it quite convenient, say, that this series of events has lessened the need for the presence of Western troops in the Middle East? How interesting that this might allow the United States to declare an end to the War on Terror because it’s not needed anymore and be able to save face for actually getting into it in the first place. Yes, quite interesting.

Me, I think that someone with a good head on his or her shoulders realized that the social tension in Middle Eastern societies was reaching a breaking point and that only a small push in the right direction was needed. You know, a little bit of encouragement, some reminders on why nonviolent protest was the answer, and maybe a few good lines to chant at the protest. Nothing big - they were doing it for themselves and by themselves, after all (and it would have to be that way, or it would never work) - but a little push all the same.

I suppose that if there were a right way to transform a government into one that might be more amenable to your interests - and I have a difficult time justifying the pain and suffering it would have caused, no matter the outcome - but if there were a right way, this might just be it. That is, if it were incited by some foreign power (or a group thereof) with an interest in backfilling a trillion-dollar-deep hole in the worldwide economy.

But, of course, if it were done correctly, there would be no way to prove it. And yet, here we watch as the average folk of what we had heretofore called “backward” nations standing up for themselves - an act completely out of character for the societies they live in and done en masse over a widespread geographic area. Interesting, isn’t it?

Here, my dear political sleuths, we have means, motive and opportunity, but we shall never find the body. If there ever had been one; this could be a simple case of massively fortunate coincidence on a spectacular scale as well. Food for thought.

More on this at The Daily Beast.

I was introduced to these questions a long time ago, and I finally have answers for them:

1. Who are you?
   I am me.
   
2. What do you want?
   I want to choose freely.
   
3. Why are you here?
   I choose to be here.
   
4. Where are you going?
   I go where my choices take me.

I like those answers - simple, and to the point. What are yours?

Yes, I know what the other Linux geeks out there are saying: “How can you be a Linux geek and not know how to use VIM?” Yes, it’s true - I am a bad geek. But I had a reason for not knowing how to use VIM: I simply did not like it. I am a hater of modal editing. When I start a text editor, especially in a command-line environment, I want to be able to move to the text I want to edit and start typing.

No, that’s a lie. The truth is that VIM is scary-powerful. There is so much you can do in that editor that mere mortals quiver in awe at its sheer, terrifying power. I am a mere mortal. Yes, I am finally Linux+ certified, but VIM was simply too much for me. I could do the basic stuff in it because I had to, but I always fired up nano when I needed to edit something.

Perhaps now that I have finally gone through the VIM Tutor, I will use it more. Maybe. I still hate modal editing, but maybe this old Linux geek is still capable of learning new tricks.