No way, no how, no Palin!

I'm not buying it. This is the most transparent move I've ever seen!

Yes, I know. I'm getting too political around here. The fact is that I'm becoming a bit too interested in these machinations. Or perhaps it's just been that I've been trapped in the house for three days because of the heat outside.

Still, there are a few political thoughts I have about McCain's choice.

Picking a woman who hunts, has a lifetime membership in the NRA, eats moose burgers and can keep up with the boys is hardly going to appeal to anyone's desire to see a more feminine influence in world politics. He might as well have picked Margaret Thatcher! (Well, if she was American anyway :)

If he'd really wanted to take some risks, he should have selected Condoleezza Rice as his running mate. At least she has real foreign policy knowledge and experience. She speaks ghu-knows how many languages and has a very, very solid understanding of international politics. I might not agree with her political positions but, Gawd, is she ever smart! She's a brilliant woman and would have had a real impact on the election.

Sarah Palin? Yawn-oh-rama! I'm a social conservative and can hardly stay awake for that woman! Geez! Britney Spears to Ruth Ginsburg!

This really raises an important issue though, one I am beginning to consider seriously. It's not a new phenomena certainly but one worth mentioning anyway.

Politics should not be about personalities. It should be about policies and governance. It doesn't matter whether someone is Black, white, male, female, Hispanic, gay, straight or transgendered. It shouldn't even matter if she's an arthritic old Thaiphile with a blog on the Internet. Seriously. It doesn't matter.

What matters is the kind of policy positions he or she supports. What direction do they want to take the country's foreign policy? What are his or her domestic policies? It's not a question of what he or she says from the lectern during a speech, either. What's their history? In the case of the senators, what has their voting record been on key issues? Who are their allies?

Does anyone remember John McCain and his birthday cake three years ago? While Katrina devastated New Orleans, he was eating birthday cake with George Bush. Does anyone remember McCain's rather putrid joke about bombing Iran?

History is telling.

The key issue for me is the one articulated by Mario Cuomo in the speech I posted a few days ago:

"We believe in a government strong enough to use words like "love" and "compassion" and smart enough to convert our noblest aspirations into practical realities."


Where does your candidate stand?

~*

Inconsequential Saturday....

This is where I write about any old dross that happens to pop into my head at the moment, most of it from the past week.

First off, I am currently reading "The Pillars of the Earth". I can not put this book down. I am reading it in the bathroom, on the treadmill, in front of the TV, in the garden. My hand is cramped from holding it. That is how good it is. Seriously, I recommend it. It's long. Nearly 1000 pages but each page is so richly written that it reminds me of Taylor Caldwell. You feel very present in the world Ken Follett has woven.

Ordinarily I don't jump on bandwagons, particularly the Oprah bandwagon. In my own defense, I bought the book two days before she announced it as her pick. It was prominently displayed at the bookstore and I had no idea it would be Oprah's Book Club Selection.

That said.... :)

Thanks for the responses about my vanity dilemma. Yes, these things are a dilemma for me. I'm a purist in most senses of that. As a friend of mine once said, if I was a Christian, I would be a fundamentalist Christian. I'm very aware of that tendency in my own thinking. If we don't truly live something, how can we claim to believe it?

I'm also on the ascetic side. Pleasure is hard for me. Not because I believe it gains me any particular merit but because somewhere in the hardwiring of my brain, I've connected pleasure for pleasure's sake with Bad Things. So when I believe I might be using the clothing for the wrong reason, it makes me question my own motives.

The clothing is to remind me where my home is, where my soul is at most peace. Doing something that, something so physical and obvious, keeps my mind focused.

But I can see where it's certainly acceptable for others to find pleasure in it. And I want to accept that graciously.

I read a post that disturbed me this week. Let's just say it was entrepreneurism gone wacky. It is only one example of the lowering of taste and class in a culture that seems to be in freefall. Marketing for the sake of marketing, not because it improves the world or our place in it, but simply because it can be marketed without any particular backlash. People have become desensitized.

And a part of me wants to get up on the soapbox and encourage people to mindfully consume, to choose purchases carefully and look not only at the object itself but where the object fits into a larger construct. That part of me is winning at the moment.

Someone once told me that everything we do is a political statement. Not political in the horse race sense of that, but political in the sense that we are supporting certain values, certain ethics and a way of life by the way we choose to consume and what we choose to consume.

I believe this is true. Nothing exists in a bubble. While it is far from me to interfere in the holidays that are coming up for most of the people who read here (not for me, thankfully), I would ask that. Directly. Please. Be careful. Choose carefully.

Your choices matter.

Okay. Enough dross for one day.

~*

Three Deaths... (on social activism)

Most people have memory of a few significant news events that changed their view of the world forever. In my own case, it was the death of John Kennedy, the death of Bobby Sands and a seemingly insignificant newscast in Los Angeles 26 years ago.

A woman by the name of Wanda (mentioned here previously) was dying from cancer. She had to get on television and beg for money to buy medication. Without the medication, she would die in excruciating pain. I can, to this day, remember her words. I can remember her clothing. I can remember the desperation in her voice. It has never left me. I still think about Wanda. She should never be forgotten. The day I forget her will be the day I've lost my humanity.

My determination to fight for freedom and human rights began with those three events. John Kennedy's death taught me about the senselessness of murder for political reasons. On a larger scale, his death taught me about the senselessness of war.

Bobby Sands is the man who, along with several other IRA members, starved himself to death in Britain's Maze Prison. He taught me about the seeming senselessness of zeal. he also taught me about courage and the courage of one's convictions. He taught me that one can die for a cause and sometimes that makes sense. His death led me to think about those causes I would die for ~ and those I would not.

Wanda is dead by now. She taught me something with the process of death rather than her death itself. She showed me first hand the cruelty at the bowels of this society. I began to see the hypocrisy at the roots of a society that claims to have the cornerstone on human rights yet would allow an old woman to die because she committed the unpardonable sin of being poor. She had to beg and plead on television for the right to die with dignity. She had to depend on the good will of others to allow her that honor.

Wanda's situation made me angry to my very instinctual core. That anger has transformed me as I've come to understand that anger only begets more anger, just as violence begets more violence. Given that understanding, my anger has taken a different form. I am still sickened at the thought of living in a society that values the Money God above all else. I am disgusted by a society that would find the invasion of other countries for financial benefit to be acceptable. I am appalled that we continue to allow an erosion of our freedoms in the name of "homeland security". It is horribly sad that we are so immune to information analysis that cultural hegemony is considered a good thing. Importing consumerist values to Asia, Southeast Asia, Russia, Eastern Europe and an assortment of countries that had based their culture on other values is euphemistically called "promoting freedom" when it is easily understood that it is a buzz-phrase for "exploitation".

I am horribly shamed by the fact that in countless ways, my small life may have contributed to this larger picture, perhaps by action or inaction, ignorance or inertia.. perhaps a combination of all.

When this country declared its freedom from the British Empire, it was supposed to free us from political and religious tyranny. Yet what have we chosen to do with that freedom and independence? Are we satisfied? Can we look at our creation, this fledgling ideology of participatory republicanism, and say it has grown into a compassionate and wise maturity? Is it truly a model for the world? These were the lofty goals of the founders.

We failed.

May we find and restore the soul of this nation ~

~Chani