Still Here: Once an Optimist, Often a Realist, Presently Evolving

378 days have elapsed since my last post. For those of you who follow me (are there any of you left?), you'll know I've had some tribulations in the last two years – mostly health-related. And to say that these past two years have deeply affected my soul/spirit/chi is quite an understatement. Even more of an understatement is that my drive towards enlightenment and my appreciation of different worldviews has undergone even more of a radical transformation. This blog – the entirety of my dialogue with the public – was intended to be a intersection of important ideas and critical thinking. A place I could share my thoughts as philosophy, and elicit yours as learning points. For a while, it worked – and was gaining traction and depth. My ideas were out there, people were responding (publicly and privately), and the world of the Frank Spot was coalescing as I'd hoped. So much has happened since then, and so much of me has changed, that I had all but abandoned it. I knew my Katra had become so out of sync with the world that it was hard to hope for any connection. And I always wanted and hoped to connect.

I've often pondered the difference between a philosopher and someone who just spouts off about ideas he thinks are better than those of the general masses. It's a tough nut to crack. Historically speaking, the only differences seem to be that:

1. Philosophers retain gentler airs than loudmouths (even under "fire," so to speak);


2. Philosophers have new and different ways of looking at things, that often fail to coincide with mainstream OR fringe thinking, and;


3. At some future point, usually once a person has been published, widely read and debated, and often already died, others/history confer the title of Philosopher upon him. (It also seems to help if the person is destitute while plying his trade; living openly off of friends and family, and on coins dropped into a pail at his roadside pulpit...)

Ultimately, this suggests pretty strongly that you can't self-dub and be seen as a philosopher. I strove regularly for the first, and felt I often surmounted the second...but I fell short on the third. I'm not widely read and debated, I'm not poor, and I haven't died yet; most importantly, nobody else has referred to me as a philosopher. So I guess I'll call that my root error. I have, therefore, withdrawn my application to the society of acknowledged philosophers, and already started penciling the phrase, "Just Another Guy with an Unusual Opinion" at the top of my { frank } :: { philosopher } stationary.

{ frank } Defrocked

Now, even though the philosopher door is closed, I still have opinions and ideas based on (what I'd call) my uniquely apt, ongoing critical analysis of everything. And in emulation of true philosophers, I feel that these ideas and opinions constitute "truths" which can withstand the weight of the heaviest scrutiny, and the most rigorous debunking. Hence, I still have stuff to write about. But again, Frank the author is much angrier and more out of phase with the world – I no longer care if anyone does any additional analysis of the world, or if they use my words as an invitation to self discovery. I'm just going to blog from time to time, and let the population churn as it will. In time, I may reach someone, or even posthumously attain a title of visionary, prophet, or my initially coveted philosopher. If not, oh well. A fully diminished { frank } is still frank...

Why a New Post (or: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to this Post)

On Friday, I did something here that was an absolute first: I deleted a comment someone made on one of my posts. I've never done or felt the need to do that before. I've seen some lively debate here, but it trended towards civility in tone and word choice, even when the comments were harsh and heavy barrages against my ideas. This unnamed commenter was an ass. His post was everything I despise about the world of internet posters: it was directly insulting to me, sexist towards women, included few correctly spelled words or valid punctuation, and was grammatically equivalent to things written by my daughter's kindergarten classmates. So, I deleted it. And I'm happy about it. New { frank }, new rules: sell nastiness and incivility someplace else.

But, in the spirit of full disclosure, I have to admit that the nasty post I deleted was what actually crystallized the final content of this post. It was the final push I needed to move these brewing ideas from brain to screen. So here we are...

Twenty-One Things I Know (That You Should Know Too)

I think the world is full of unwritten rules, and knowledge that's supposed to be common but really isn't. I think this discontinuity is at the heart of many societal ills. So I've cobbled together 21 morsels of wisdom/critique that should resonate for anyone still interested in trying to build a better world. I've kept them pretty bare for now. It's up to whoever stumbles upon them to decide if, how, and why to expand and use them. But be assured, despite my damaged psyche, I believe I have stumbled onto some fundamental truths here; they could be game-changers if seen or redelivered by the right few people.

1. Being angry/outraged/shocked/hurt doesn't automatically mean that your opinion on the matter is the right one. You can be "wronged" by decisions/laws/others' personal choices that are logical, rational, and the "right" thing to do for the majority.


2. The adult population of the United States is MUCH larger than most people realize; so even when 100,000 people on the internet agree with you on something, you are not necessarily part of the majority. Try to remember this the next time you get ready to start a revolution, boycott a business, or burn down a building.


3. In matters of opinion: for every person who believes something, there is a very strong possibility/likelihood that there are plenty of others who believe the exact opposite thing.


4. Believing "something else" doesn't make somebody evil or corrupt. If it does, then you're corrupt and evil too.


5. Not all Republicans are rich people, and not all rich people are Republicans. (Hello, Hollywood! I'm looking at you...)


6. Fairness doesn't favor one side/person over another, and doesn't take more from or give more to anyone; in best practice, fairness imparts equality and the uniform treatment of others, and the uniform disbursement of rights/benefits. If there are ten people and ten one dollar slices of pizza, the only fair division is one slice per person, at a cost of one dollar per slice. It is not "fair" to tell the fat person to take only a half a piece, and give a skinny person one and a half pieces. It's also not fair to ask anyone to pay more than a dollar for his slice so somebody else can pay less. This relates directly to:


7. The United States uses a progressive income tax code; people who make more, pay more. People who don't make enough (roughly 50% of us) pay absolutely nothing. If you're arguing fairness, this is basically wrong – it means that many people are getting something (government service) for nothing. Everyone who gets something should pay something. Many people try to argue this by pointing out that poor people pay other kinds of tax; but other kinds of tax are not income tax, and the debate is about income tax. In the current world, everyone pays sales tax and such; but where all rich people pay some income tax, many non-rich people don't.


8. There are about 55 million registered Republicans and 72 million registered Democrats at last count. That means there are 22% more Democrats than Republicans. This does not constitute a "vast majority" of the population, and Democrats should stop pretending it does. It means that there are roughly four Republicans for every five Democrats. There are also about 42 million registered Independents, who, when voting, can easily change the outcome if all the Democrats and Republicans vote the party line.


9. Anyone can look so closely at a problem that they can believe they are right about its nature, scope, causes, and solution. This is great way to feel absolutely right about something, but still be completely wrong.


10. Most people are ignorant about hate. They imagine and project hate onto candid statements of simple disagreement, honest retellings of personal beliefs, or others' adherence to almost any kind of principle; then they absolve or deny it when it comes from someone with a compatible point of view. Not-so-ironically, the people who cry "hate" the loudest and most often tend to be the ones whose words best fit the hate template.


11. It's wrong to be uncivil, no matter who you are, or what side of a debate you're on.


12. Keeping your promises and sticking to your principles is an inherently good thing; it's not good only when your champion does it, and bad when someone else's champion does it. Remember this next time your least favorite politician keeps a promise.


13. Compromise doesn't mean that you get everything you want, and the other guy only gets a little of what he wants. Furthermore, not every principle or idea lends itself to compromise. Reread number 12 for clarity.


14. If you can't afford it, or don't know how you're going to pay for it, you shouldn't buy it. This goes for the individual, the corporation, and the government. Don't ask/expect the government to give you something it can't afford to pay for, no matter how important a thing you think it is.


15. Corporate tax loopholes and outsourcing are basically bad. However, the big companies that benefit from these things also tend to employ a lot of Americans. Don't mess it up for them because you're angry about their company's profits or practices. If that "hated" corporation packs up shop, a lot of American people will lose their livelihoods (and possibly their houses, cars, families, etc...) And there's one less company to hire you next time you're out of work.


16. There are a lot of great and noble ideas out there, and most of them will never give rise to anything.


17. Most opinion polls are irrelevant. They are not a good representation of anything EXCEPT the opinions of those polled. Remember what I wrote above: the population is huge. We should never trust that the opinions of 1000 people could accurately stand in for the beliefs and leanings of 350 million people. Divide 1000 by 350 million – all those zeroes between the decimal point and the two should tell you something.


18. The internet makes people believe they have more complete information than they really do, and that they are in the majority when they really aren't.


19. Ridiculing someone's faith or deeply held spiritual beliefs (such as believing in a God or the teachings of the Bible/Torah/Koran) is wrong, childish, and mean. And let's face it: until you die, you really won't know what's true anyway.


20. The law is not a collection of guidelines and suggestions; you are expected to obey them all. You do not actually have a "right" to choose which ones to obey. Sadly, a vast number of people seem to do so anyway.


21. The country is in a bad way because of the people in it – politicians and the general public alike. We take when we should give, want more than we deserve, horde what we should share, ridicule what we disagree with or don't believe in, and think much too highly of ourselves. And we are still surprised at the bad, immoral, and destructive behaviors that are borne of those traits.

I'm out.

"There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul."

- Pablo Neruda, Nothing But Death

I've been gone for while: by my count, it's been 362 days – just short of year – since I last put text to screen. I'd like to say I've been busy with some fulfilling new project, or pursuing some long-delayed dream; but in fact, dear readers, my blogging – indeed my life – was interrupted by the thing Neruda is talking about above. Not long after I wrote my last post, I, your humble narrator (with props to Anthony Burgess and the parlance of Alex DeLarge), nearly shuffled off this mortal coil, in a series of events that were real horrowshow. In the aftermath of that, I haven't had the inkling, energy, or fortitude to write anything. I've been surviving. And without going deeply philosophical, things start to look different when you viddy your own expected-but-untimely end. Writing this blog takes a chunk of my spirit that I simply haven't had to give. I don't really have that spirit now, but as I approach the one-year mark with nothing but silence here, I thought I should at least take a moment to mark it, and give those of you who read me a brief explanation-cum-apology. I hope it's enough.

I'd also like to thank those who've continued to check back, or stumbled upon me through Google, or through other sites to which I've posted; especially those who've taken the time to comment. I created this place to share my philosophy and views, and to invoke yours. I'm always glad when someone joins the dialogue. That said, I've spent the last week perusing new comments, and without trying to spin it – or even be particularly open-minded – I've realized anew that there are too many people out there who love to comment without speaking to the specific issues in a post, and who dodge every actual question at the core of a debate, and who do both with malice and aggression. For those people, I have a special condemnation, courtesy of my yearlong odyssey, and the scar it has etched into my drive to become enlightened:

YOU are the people I rail against: you are the people that ruin the world. You, with your prefab, narrow-minded, unshakable ideas, who don't engage in a conversation, but try to overpower it; you, who attack under the guise of contributing, and think bullying is akin to sharing; you, who lambaste others for not seeing things your way, or for having the audacity to publish thoughts or pursue agendas that run counter to yours; you, who litter the world with shameful nonsense, and claim that those who do not agree are willfully ignorant, stupid, or lazy; you, who breed hate, contempt, and intolerance, all while ignoring the rules of kind society, and the basest needs of your fellow man; you, who thwart humanity's evolution and enlightenment by turning the world into an ideal- and soul-crushing meat grinder; you, who spread hate, and take without giving, and consume to the point of wastefulness; you, who want to be heard and have the world change to suit you, but who would never suffer the same for others; you, who can't muster enough guilt or regret to even contemplate an apology, much less work to change for the better. You are the people who, even when my spirit is strong, make it hard for me write here. And make it hard for me to do more than survive.

The Future of the FrankSpot

So, is there still a blog here? I just don't know. As I said above, there's a lack of spirit in me now. And although there's a lot to blog about – including many interesting tidbits I'd love to share about the sorry state of doctors and medicine in this country – I'm barely treading water in my quest to provide for those I love, and lamenting much of what I've lost this past year. So, for now, I think the FrankSpot is still on hiatus. But:

My best to all the good people out there. I hope you find what you're looking for.

A few months back, I published The List – my unabashed, profanity-laced diatribe on all things irritating. It was a fantastically satisfying exercise – an anger-releasing orgasm that left me with a month-long afterglow of self-satisfaction and general sense of rightness in the world. It felt so good, that by the time I wrote my closing, I was fairly certain there’d be more volumes. The many visitors who grokked what I put to page only fed my certainty, and I immediately started a new cache of hastily scribbled post-it notes detailing my daily frustrations. So, even though there are plenty of real issues I could devote my fingers to typing, I’m taking a detour back to The List with hopes of another teeth-rattling release. So here we are, with the second volume of things that really tick me off; a proverbial beatdown of minor irritants which, when added together, make my life suck more than it should.

And another disclaimer:

Warning: (Really) Adult Language Ahead

In my last post, I issued a semi-adult language warning. Then I used the f-word about 900 times, often accounting (in some form) for 40-50% of any sentence’s content. So, clearly, there was nothing semi there. With that in mind, I amend my warning: I intend to swear at least as much in this volume. My profanity will be in noun, verb, adverb, and adjective forms, and will spew unapologetically across the page. If you don’t like that kind of harsh language, stop at the end of this paragraph and go look at my Goulash Recipe. The rest of you: welcome back, and I hope you enjoy. And I hope you’ll add more of your own world gripes. Misery likes company, and my blog LOVES comments.

See you on the other side.

The List (continued, and in no particular order)

Who/What: The Cancel Button on any Printer
Why: Oh, my fucking God! When I press cancel, don't print another thing. Don’t print the whole document, don’t print half a page and then stop, and for the love of God and all that is holy, don’t print 400 one-line-of-garbage-at-the-top-of-each-page pages. Stop immediately! That means right fucking now! Whoever designed this button should be strapped to the paddle wheel on a river boat and churned from New Orleans to Japan.

Who/What: Ronald D. Moore (Warning: Spoilers ahead!)
Why: Battlestar Galactica’s last episode. Are you kidding me with this shit? That was your idea for a good ending? The bad guy gives up and shoots himself, the main character vanishes without any explanation of what the fuck she was, and the last remnants of the human race discard their technology and wander off to mate with cavemen? Forget the freakin’ plot holes you never closed – some of which were big enough to drive the Galactica itself through – this was just bad writing. I wanted to drive to your house and slap you. Seriously. I’m glad your next pilot flopped. I bet you pissed off the network executives as much as you did me.

Who/What: The Folks Who Loved and/or Defended the Aforementioned Finale.
Why: Well, you’re either stupid suck-ups or pretentious pricks, or both. Line up behind Moore, assholes, the slaps are coming your way next.

Who/What: Bands that Release CDs Without Lyrics in the Liner Notes
Why: It’s 2009! How do you not get this? People want to know what you’re saying. So much so that there are entire web sites devoted to translating your drunken, mushmouthed ramblings into readable text. Save us the hassle, and the embarrassment that comes when we sing the wrong lyrics around someone who knows the right ones. I’m giving you $15 for 15 songs. Spend the 1/10 of a cent on ink and print the freakin' words.

Who/What: Ron Livingston (Actor – Band of Brothers, Office Space)
Why: Put your fucking eyebrow down, jerkwad. Jeez.

Who/What: RoadRunner Web Mail
Why: Where is the Goddammed Empty Trash button? Are you telling me that nobody has mentioned that it’s missing from your interface? I shouldn’t have to delete messages from a folder, then go to the Deleted Items folder and delete them again. Every other fucking mail client on the planet has an Empty Trash feature. Get with the freakin' program, jerkholes!

Who/What: Joss Whedon, Screenwriter of Alien 4
Why: I know Ripley was being kind putting all of those other half-formed/mutant clones out of their interminable misery, but shooting them with a flamethrower is not the best or most humane way to do it. Yeah, it’ll end their suffering...with excruciating pain (a proverbial cherry on top!). "Hey, mutants! You thought you were in agony before, and it couldn’t be any worse? How about bathing in 1400 degree napalm for a few minutes as you die?" Writing a flamethrower-based mercy killing is just plain wrong. Shame on you, Joss.

Who/What: People my Pants Size
Why: You fuckers have been thwarting me for 25 years now, and I’m tired of having to shop for two fucking weeks in 17 freakin' stores to find one pair of jeans in my size. I mean come on – when I was a 30/30, I could only find 28/30 or 32/30. When I was 32/30, all I could find are the 30/30s I always needed. It’s like you’re following me through my exact nutrition/exercise/weight gain pattern, but just happen to leave the house five minutes before me. Stop it, Goddamn it! I need some freakin' pants!

Who/What: Unclear Windows System Messages (No matter what software makes them pop up)
Why: Here's another Oh, My Fucking God! I don’t know what SVCHOST or RUNDLL32 are, so how the fuck do I know whether they should have access to the internet through my firewall, or whether I should force quit them when they stop responding? How about telling me something useful, like which program is using those things? I’m not sure who to blame for this one, but who ever you are: fuck you, and your grandchildren, pets, neighbors, and anyone who serves you spit-free food in a restaurant.

Who/What: Elevator "Close Door" Buttons
Why: What the fuck? There weren’t any more jobs in the printer cancel button business, so you moved on to elevators? Don’t give me a button that doesn’t work, dickwads, or that only works in some elevators. Go back to every elevator you ever designed and make them work. In fact, just to pay me back, I want an additional Turbo Close button that will bisect a 700 pound man in less than a second, and get me to my floor before the bloody torso stops twitching.

Who/What: Kellogg's Frosted Mini Wheats (also good for any other flavor-coated foods or snacks)
Why: Listen to me very carefully, brain trust: if the wheat biscuit comes through without frosting, it isn’t a fucking Frosted Mini-Wheat. Send it back and spray it again. That includes the ones that were on their side, or went under the clogged nozzle. If you didn’t know, eating an un-frosted Mini Wheat is akin to eating a fucking Brillo pad. It’s called quality control, jerkwads. Do some.

Who/What: The Fucking NY State Lottery/Mega Millions
Why: Pay attention, stingy lottery gods: I’m tired of going to work, missing every sunny day, and never having enough cash to rent a fucking DVD. And I’m especially tired of seeing other people win. It’s my turn. No more “I never play the lottery, but I grabbed a ticket when I went to buy myself some Skoal and a Diet Mountain Dew on the way back to my mobile home” winners. In fact, no more fucking wins for other people at all until I win – they’re probably all pedophiles and atheists, and should never, never have access to big money.

Who/What: Democrats Who Know How to Comment on the Internet
Why: What a whiny bunch of know-it-all childish pukes you are. You make us all look bad. So just shut the fuck up. And when you do have something to say, try using good grammar, proper spelling, the correct fucking words, and some punctuation. The only thing worse than an obnoxious computer-savvy Dem, is one who writes like a retarded 5th grader. In fact, I bet it was you who designed all those cancel and close buttons. Fuckers...

Who/What: Sam’s Club
Why: What kind of sadistic mother fuckers sell me something for six months, get me hooked on it, and then NEVER FUCKING SELL IT AGAIN? Oh, there’s a special place in Hell for you, my friends – and I guarantee you it will be a place where the close and cancel buttons don’t work, and every Windows message is too obscure to be of any use.

Who/What: Television Stations
Why: Stop putting extraneous promotional shit on the screen when I’m watching a show. I want to see the entirety of the image, not clever graphics for other shit I’m never going to watch. And I already know what show I’m watching, and what channel it’s on. Stop telling me, “You’re watching 24 on Fox.” Really? I thought I was watching fucking Madagascar on PLEX! And another thing: let me see the fucking credits. I waited 45 minutes to find out who played that hot freakin' waitress or who sang that great song – don’t scrunch up the screen, run the credits at turbo speed, or tilt the whole thing to one side. And don’t fucking talk over the music/end jokes/epilogues/previews. Wow, that’s annoying.

Who/What: Town/County Tax Assessors
Why: $189,000? For my house? In 2009? Are you fucking kidding me? Did you pull that number out of your ass while you were sucking down martinis in Boca? Have you ever actually seen my house? Have you read about the economy? Are you fucking blind, deaf, and stupid? And don’t tell me I have to prove my house value is down. Is my house in some kind of magical fucking bubble where it’s unaffected by everything else that’s happening in the world? Of course it’s down, you prick. Pick up the paper, turn on the TV or the radio, or talk to any person in earshot. Know what they’ll tell you? Housing values are down, you pig-headed moron! Start cutting people’s assessments.

Who/What: Cottonwood Trees (and the people who own them)
Why: Holy fucking Christ! Does my entire ½ acre have dandruff? Why does anyone even have these freakin' trees? And I’m not just talking about my neighbor who has a forty foot tall cottonwood that hangs over my yard and craps so much white fluffy shit that it looks like ten flocks of birds got sucked into a jet engine 30 feet above my house (Karma will get you one day, my friend; if not karma, then Ripley with her flamethrower). No! In fact, it snowed cotton for a month in my town. Rise up, comrades! Burn those fucking trees down! Every one of them! I don’t care if the species goes extinct. It’s time to take back our lawns!

Who/What: Smokers
Why: Hey, assholes! The can is right there! It’s less then three feet away. What kind of lazy motherfucker are you that you can’t walk three feet to the can? Stop throwing your still-smoldering butts on the ground. And for those of you who smoke in your car: first, close your fucking windows – you wanted smoke, why are you letting it out? And second, there’s a place in your car to throw your ash and butts, dicklicks - use it! What’s that? You don’t want it in you car? Oh, I see. Then what the fuck makes you think I want it on my lawn, or bouncing off my car while I drive behind you? I’m a non-smoker for a reason, dipshits. And a special shout out for those bonus-sized assholes who bury their butts in the sand in the beach. You are absolute gems among human beings – I’m gonna tell Ripley to use a lower heat setting when she puts you down with her flamethrower.

Who/What: Advocates of Pretty Much Anything that isn’t Yet Mainstream or Legal
Why: What a self-important, self-serving, blind bunch of assholes you are. I know I speak for the majority when I say, "Oh, my God, shut the fuck up!" We don’t agree with you, and we don’t want to hear it. And what’s more, even if we don’t have strong feelings about your cause, I guarantee that your obnoxiousness will turn us against you. So to be clear: shut up and go fuck yourselves sideways in whichever holes make you most uncomfortable and have the highest risk of bruising.

Epilogue

Well, that’s it. I burned like 10,000 calories worth of angst and anger there; and yes, the language was pretty strong, and awfully harsh. I’m not usually an “in for a penny, in for a pound” guy, but this is a pretty faithful example of that. I’ll be writing a serious post at some point in the near future, so look for it.

Peace out, y’all.

Prologue: Writing the Unwritable Post

So let's talk about torture.

It's been in the news for a while now, and has quickly become a defining issue of the last 9 years: legally, politically, and ethically. It fairly clogs the news cycles on some days – the media trots out questions and talking points, which ripple into the morning shows, local papers, and countless web sites:

• Is it right or wrong?
• Who authorized what?
• Who knew or didn’t know, and how much?
• Republicans versus Democrats.
• Which religious demographics support it or don’t.
• How America + Torture = Nazi Germany.

Tough stuff. And I’ve been ruminating on it the entire time; trying to decide if I could blog about it. I mean, it’s obviously a provocative topic – it riles and offends people, and triggers family-event-destroying blowouts – but it's dense, and impenetrably gray. I want to weigh in; I want to entice others to the public debate, and I want to enrich the public dialog. But it's a window that's hard to see through. Even in the brightest light of human outrage, the image beyond the glass is shadowy, and indistinct. How do we define torture? Is this it, or is that it? Why is it being used? Does it work? Look as I might, I can't get to a clear picture. And if there's one thing I like when I start a post, it's a clear picture.

When we discuss things like racism, or gun violence, or whether drugs should be legalized, there are plenty of folks with first-hand knowledge, and even more with second- or third-hand knowledge. Mention torture, and suddenly almost no one is an expert (even if they have an opinion). The folks “in the know” are people most of us will never meet. Many are deliberately hidden from the world, so even if you do know them, you don't know you know them. This makes torture a unique consideration to the common man. How do you genuinely contemplate something that you know nothing about? If you're a FrankSpot reader, you know that I lament that people generally opine (and take up fortified positions) in relative ignorance, but this topic is unique in that there really isn't any way for the average person to contemplate it with a foundation of experience. By default (and lucky for all of us), we lack the ability to speak on the topic from place of knowledge. Everything we think we know is anecdotal. That's one of the things that made it so hard for me to put words around this topic. What do I really know about torture?

But the story is still very much in the minds and in the media, and I’m drawn to it because it speaks to our fundamental humanity. I want to explore the philosophical notions that underpin the outrage, and the real world considerations of torture’s application and efficacy. Unfortunately, it more and more seems that every measuring stick is insufficient, and there’s a good chance that the only thing likely to be borne of the debate…is more debate. That poses a special and significant challenge for me: what do philosophers do with a conundrum like this? What if there is no final answer? No absolute right or wrong? No way to build true consensus? What if we just can’t solve this one?

These questions dogged me every time I tried to put words to page. What follows is my wholehearted attempt to make sense of it all.

Defining the Indefinable

What is torture?

As I mentioned above, the main problem with this discussion is that torture isn't one easily definable thing. It's a word open wider to interpretation and semantics than most in our language. Sure, there's a dictionary entry, but as I survey the outrage of everyone touched by the topic, it’s clear that that the “official definition” has barely informed the debate. It turns out, instead, that the notion of torture is as personal and subjective a thing as anything out there. People define it through a combination of religious, moral, and ethical beliefs, political affiliations, gut reactions, and their own sense of place in the world. So the dictionary entry doesn’t add any meaningful text to the discussion. What is torture? It’s whatever the debaters – the observer, the victim, the state enemy, the foreign government, the special interest group – want it to be. If we were discussing torture as a philosophical exercise, or a re-examination of unfortunate history, we could stop there. And it wouldn’t matter that we couldn’t reach a consensus. But the debate has changed: it is no longer a lukewarm ethics discussion, but an urgent legal issue. That brings us to the second problem:

The Legal Definition

In a society of laws (which I’m glad I live in, despite the sometimes rickety condition of our legal system), we classify specific behaviors as illegal. It makes sense if we want to surround ourselves with safety and order. But, there’s a catch, and it’s the same one that makes the torture debate so hard to resolve: what measuring stick do we use? This is an important consideration in any debate, and doubly so in this one. Laws require both a proverbial watermark as a starting point – a consensus-based standard to be used any time we perceive a transgression – and very specific wording. Like it or not, laws aren’t meant to be flexible; and well-written ones don’t leave much room for interpretation (even if they are dense with legalese and abstraction). That’s an important protection for us as citizens. (And yes, that creates a host of other issues, but I’ll save that for another blog entry.) Laws need to be specific if they are to be understood and enforced fairly. This applies to simple stuff – don’t take something from a store without paying for it – and deep, unwieldy stuff like torture. So, regardless of your personal feelings, torture needs a legal definition if we’re going to address it as a society. That means specifics, examples – dictionary entries. It means a legal consensus even when there is no philosophical one. And to be clear: it can’t be a moving target.

Let’s stop on that for a second, just to make sure we’re all on the same page. Torture – from a legal standpoint – has to be strictly defined. That means one clearly stated description of what constitutes torture. It can include a laundry list of citations and examples, but the definition has to be finite. It has to end. If you look to the law, you’ll find that there’s already a legal definition in place. That’s a key problem with the current debate: people keep forgetting (or ignoring) that definition in favor of their personal outrage, and want to categorize as torture treatments that currently fall outside the legal definition. In itself, that’s a noble pursuit. Something has rankled us, and we want the law to be rewritten so that thing can’t happen again. But, the problem is further complicated here by the public's need to punish someone: it’s not good enough to rewrite the law for tomorrow. People want to bend the law to create a retroactive illegality. An interesting idea, I suppose, but impractical at best, a path to absolute ruin at worst. As a rule, we don’t criminalize past behavior, only future behavior. Call it a conceit to the linear, forward-only nature of time’s passage – and to our basic inability to predict which of today’s legal behaviors would land us in the electric chair tomorrow. It’s a basic protection we have to embrace: what you did yesterday might become illegal tomorrow, but you won’t be prosecuted because it was legal when you did it.

Now some people argue here that the Bush administration’s lawyers deliberately exploited the finite nature of legal language to “get away with” treatments that don’t violate the letter of the law – but still cross into unethical/philosophically shaky behaviors we’ve retroactively classified as torture. They’re right, but skirting the law isn’t actually illegal. As despicable as it seems in this context, “going around the law” is just another part of the legal process. Those lawyers aren’t the first or only ones to do it. It happens every day, sometimes in our favor, sometimes to our detriment. That is a conceit to the vagaries of our language, and a basic fact of life. I recently wrote a post about the drive to legalize drugs in America, and I posited that every regulation (or law) breeds loopholes. This is the same problem. If you don’t list smacking someone in the head with a rolled up magazine as torture – or have intersecting laws that constrain any of the constituents of that treatment – then it’s legally not torture. And guess what – it’s not just lawyers and government officials who exploit that fact. Almost everyone you know does too (in some form), and so do you. It’s obviously not in the same vein as torture, but the principle is the same. We have imperfect language, so we have imperfect laws. The best – and some would say smartest – thing we can do, is use history and better language to help us redraw ineffective and incomplete laws. In this case, we can rewrite torture laws to include what was done to those alleged terrorists; add as many new clauses and behaviors as we like – dig into history books, and even popular fiction, and litter the legal definition with examples. We’ll be behind the curve, but we can be assured that those specific tactics will be illegal the next time they are used.

Which brings us to:

The Three Killer Questions: Efficacy, Intent, and Degree

Despite the basic disagreements about what specifically constitutes torture, there is one common belief that seems to resonate throughout the national debate, and across many international borders: torture itself is bad. It's something only bad people or bad countries do. Proof of that belief is found in treaties and pledges, and in the outspoken condemnation of those who torture. But just below the surface, beneath the philosophical condemnation of the act, lies the tricky question of efficacy. Does torture ever work? If you follow the national headlines, or read books like Daniel P. Maddix’s The History of Torture, you probably get the idea that it doesn’t. And if the national uproar is an indication, we don’t want it to work.

But there’s an important question that lingers, even if it’s fully obscured by the shining spotlight: what if it does work?

I know that’s a scary question. It sets people’s hair on end, and makes people reach for antacids, or their bibles, or the television remote. But, what if torture isn't the ineffective black hole of the popular belief? Sure, you can point to what happens when you torture an ignorant someone for information: they’ll say anything to stop the torture, and none of it is worth the breath it arrived on. But what happens when you torture a person who actually has the information you need? This is an interesting point that comes out of the Bush administration: they say that “harsh interrogation” produced actionable intelligence. Regardless of your personal feelings, if it’s true, then it’s a fact that counts in the reality of the world, and has to count in our debate. And it begs the larger question: how much is a life, or a handful of lives, or a way of life worth? How far would/should we go to secure something important for ourselves? What happens when talking simply doesn’t work, and when the clock is already ticking? I know this is dangerous water, but aren’t these questions valid parts of the debate? Some people argue that the loss we stand to suffer (personally or nationally) is insubstantial compared to the moral breach we commit when we abandon talking in favor of inflicting pain. They could be right. I think it's probably a question for the ages, and certainly for the people that have already lost something or someone because of our adherence to principle over the need for positive results.

Lets focus on that for a moment: why does anyone use torture? I’ve been exploring the efficacy question, but I haven’t really touched on the purpose question. Like efficacy, it’s an important thing to explore.

As I’ve absorbed the national commentary, I’ve noticed that there are lots of different ideas about why we used those interrogation techniques in the first place. A good portion of people accept that they were used to obtain information – some about yesterday, but most about tomorrow. Some people think it was to extract confessions – like the Viet Cong used, a way to demoralize the prisoner’s parent nation – or to exact punishment, or gleefully inflict pain on inferior races. They evoke images of World War 2 Japan and Nazi Germany. Provocative stuff, to be sure; more importantly, a prompt to discuss intent – to examine if and how the intent of the torturer factors into our considerations. Does a lack of sadistic intent count in the torturer’s favor? Is it a more acceptable practice if torture is used strictly to garner information, and not applied with malice or hatred? If it’s an unfortunate escalation, in situations where gentler methods don’t produce the needed results? If it’s applied clinically, dispassionately?

And what about degrees? As we build our new legal and national definition of torture, does degree count for something? Should we compare types of harsh treatments? Is that informative as we draw our lines? Is a slap as bad as genital electrocution? Is a flushed holy book as bad as pliers-based fingernail extraction? Is being forced into a naked human pyramid, or being deprived of sleep, as bad as being beaten lame with batons and 2x4s? If we take degrees into consideration, don’t we run the risk of more unethical treatments slipping through the legal cracks? If we ignore degrees, aren’t we opening the doors of interpretation so wide that our “enemies” can complain that restricting access to cable TV and alcohol in prison is just as harsh as crushing their fingers in drill presses? How do we factor in the common sense comparisons without opening the door too wide, or shutting it too tightly, and without ignoring something key? Is there even an answer?

Sudden Epilogue: A FrankSpot First

So, I’ve just asked a bunch of questions, and I know it seems like I have a lot more ground to cover. But I’m not going to cover it. As unlikely and abrupt as it seems, I’m going to end here – after two months, and 2500 difficult words. As I predicted in my prologue, I haven’t found any answers on this. Not for myself, not for my readers, and certainly not for the national debate. Instead, after all this time and typing, I’ve become exhausted by the topic. I’m truly at a loss to draw some profound overarching conclusion, or make any valid suggestions on how to address the ongoing issue. I can’t even answer most of the questions I’ve raised here. At least not definitively, and not in the space of a single post. The most I can do is ask my readers to keep this post in mind as they add their voices to the debate. I hope they’ll remember that religion, ethnicity, age, political belief, and level of education impact how people feel about torture; so do being touched by loss, or war, or terrorism, or fearing for the lives of people loved. I hope they’ll remember that the law is an important tool – especially in this debate – but one that shouldn’t be used for revenge, or to apply retroactive justice. And I hope they’ll remember that – even without one we can see from here – the pursuit of an answer is still important. As we strive, we grow; and as we learn, we change. Hopefully, all for the better.

Peace.

Sometimes, I just can’t believe the world around me. Every day, I see people who just don’t get it. It doesn’t matter the topic, there are people who have the wrong idea. Or are too self-involved to notice the bigger picture, or see what’s really important in the world. Today, those people are the folks who are fighting for gay marriage.

I’ve been working on a tough blog entry for a few weeks now. It’s about torture, and all that goes with it – the national focus, the moral and ethical debate, the legal considerations. Truly, one of the hardest things I’ve ever tried to write about. And certainly an issue that deserves our attention. But every time I look up from torture, I get smacked by someone waving the gay marriage flag, and trying to push that issue into the center of the table.

I’m here to push back.

Now, let’s be clear: I’m not writing to opine on the subject of gay marriage. I’m writing because I’m irritated by the debate. The country is in serious trouble – right now! – and gay marriage isn’t any of the reasons why. I know it’s an all-important issue for the gay community, and equally so for those who oppose it. But it’s not an issue that deserves center stage today. Frankly, no matter how important the gay community and its activists claim it is, it’s an issue that barely registers when viewed alongside (pay attention here!) staggering unemployment, foreclosures and homelessness, foreign wars, the pervasive use of state-sanctioned torture, international nuclear proliferation, and the human misery we call Darfur and the Middle East. Considering those things, I have a hard time conceiving a top five priority list that includes even a passing hallway conversation about the rights of gay people to marry. In fact, I’d be mortified if our new president spent any time at all on the issue right now. Yet, the gay marriage advocates keep pushing it into the spotlight: “The President isn’t working fast enough on this. He’s had almost 100 days and he hasn’t fixed it yet! Let’s go picket and protest! Let’s get on the nightly news! Let’s force the issue NOW!”

Did I mention that I’m appalled?

Okay, so they want their time at the top of the issue heap, and on the president’s calendar. I get that. But which other issue of the day should take a back seat to theirs? Which humanitarian or national crisis is less important than gay marriage? That’s really the question here. How does a gay marriage advocate see fit to elevate this issue above – well – pretty much anything that has the President’s attention? Every time someone steps into national view with an urgent gay marriage agenda, all I can see is a kind of blind selfishness and self-importance: “Hey, America – I need the President to stop working on everything else so my friends, Bill and Steve, can get married next week!” Yikes. Perspective, anyone?

Here’s some: Shut the Hell up and wait your freakin’ turn!

Sorry. I know that’s not very nice (and not very FrankSpot-ly), but it’s a pretty apt way to express my feelings on this. We’re trying desperately to crawl away from the brink of absolute national ruin, and we’re being snared and diverted by people without an ounce of perspective, or an ability to understand priority. People who clearly don’t know the difference between “no” and “not yet;” people who say they voted for Obama, but don’t trust him to address the issue like he promised; people who forget that there are only so many hours in a day, and only so much that can be addressed in those hours. That in itself is almost unbelievable. And it pushes me away from sympathy for their cause, and leaves me in a coarse mood. The notion that the Prez should forego ending wars, saving our houses, and creating jobs, so two women in Muncie, Indiana can have rice thrown at them next Saturday, is ridiculous. The ground of our society is still crumbling beneath us like a landslide – so fast that every time I pull into my driveway, I wonder where I’m going to put the For Sale sign that already seems a tangible part of my inevitably unemployed future, and where I’m going to park when my daughter and I are living in my car. How can anyone expect gay marriage to trump the issues that give life to that kind of hopelessness? Why would anyone want it to? What kind of person pushes marriage rights to the top of the pile when children are living in hatchbacks? Or when friends and family are dying in distant deserts and mountain ranges? Or when race and religion are justifying torture in dark, wet rooms? How can anyone champion that kind of selfishness? How can anyone be that blind?

The truth of the day is this: the gay marriage battle will continue – be assured of that. (And it won’t be won or lost quickly. So even if the president takes it up tomorrow, you shouldn’t plan on catching a bouquet anytime soon.) But, as a wise man once said: “Only a fool fights in a burning house.” Look around, folks: America is on fire. America is the burning house. You knew that when you voted last year. So instead of trumpeting how unfair the world is because your idea of marriage hasn’t been legally validated, grab a bucket and help. If you can’t do that because you’re too full of yourself and your cause, at least step back from the counter, and wait until someone calls your number.

I’m out.

Back in 2000, I worked for an interesting fellow named Bill. He was mostly a standup guy – straitlaced, religious without being a fanatic, educated by years of honest work, and a great debater. He was also a self-taught constitutional scholar, who carried a pocket-sized copy of the constitution with him everywhere he went. It was worn and dog-eared, and heavily marked up with yellow highlights and multicolor underlines. It was his conversation starter: if he wanted to talk to you about guns, he'd read you a portion of the second amendment. Religion: first amendment. And so on. It was a peculiar hook, but it seemed to work – at least on me. We had dozens of great conversations, and sometimes even broke new ground for each other. I was always challenged to look with new eyes at topics that were at least important to society of the day, if not the grist of seminal American debates. It was during one of these conversations that I first heard talk about legalizing illicit drugs. I have to admit: at the time, I hadn't given the topic much thought. I wasn't a drug user, I didn't know any drug users, and hadn't ever considered legalizing something that was already illegal. So I choked. I didn't know enough to talk beyond the standard fallback platitudes you'd expect when opening a dangerous topic. But Bill was always prepared. He pulled a thick folder out of his desk, and said, "Read through this, then we'll talk." I did just that. The folder was a veritable gold mine of information: the background of the Harrison and Controlled Substance Acts, the role of racism in the criminalization of some drugs, the impact of drugs on culture, the legal costs of prosecuting drug crime, and the ubiquitous War on Drugs that started under Richard Nixon, and gained renewed life under the Reagans. It was a good primer for me, and it armed me to go back and express my first opinion on the topic. It was no surprise that he took a pro-legalization stance – there was a barely perceptible "this is why anti-drug laws are unconstitutional" slant in the reading materials he proffered, so I expected that. But what did surprise me was how incomplete his analysis really was. Yes, he'd gathered lots of data, and clearly had read everything in the folder, so he came out like a shot on why drugs should be legalized. But when I challenged him, most of his arguments fell flat. There was some modicum of logic behind his position, but – like what happens when you ask a devoutly religious person where Mrs. Cain came from – he was quickly and utterly confounded by my counterpoints, and visibly struggling to cling to his ideas. Despite that, there was no clear winner in the debate. We moved on with an agreement to disagree, then never discussed it again. I didn't think much about it after that.

Fast-forward to 2009...

The Legalization Argument...Again

What happens when a bunch of lifelong marijuana advocates have access to the internet, and a web savvy guy takes up the mantle of President? No, this is not the beginning of a killer FrankSpot joke – which, I assure you, would have split your sides. It's a legitimate question. And here's the answer: more than a thousand stoners reach out to the Prez, and suggest legalizing pot as a way to jump start the flagging economy and pump up the federal tax coffers.

"What? Are you kidding me? Wow. How...stupid."

Yes, I was shocked. (And a little less open minded than I would have liked, which is another example of me not living up to the ideals I espouse here, and another opportunity to redouble my efforts on that front...) Here we have a world leader poised to talk directly to the electorate – someone genuinely engaged with, and interested in, the common man's issues – and the sum of some people's interaction is, "Legalize it, maaaan."

Like I said: Wow! Way to represent the needs of your neighbors and children. Way to fix the country. Way to go, boys.

Unfortunately, this newest legalization suggestion didn't fade away at the end of that day's news cycle. Instead, it pushed the war on drugs back into the spotlight, and sparked a new national debate. And although I'm a big advocate of debate, this one rankled me instantly. Not because of the "clever" stoners who touted legal pot as a way to fix the ailing economy, but because it brought out all those folks who pedal the legalization of all illicit drugs as a national cure-all. "Make 'em legal," they shout, "and you can tax 'em, regulate them, put drug dealers out of business, secure the borders, end crime, empty the prisons!" ...and give every Jack and Jill a free pass to shoot up and let the world go to hell around them. Again: wow. Talk about a bad idea. To quote a source I can no longer properly cite: "This is the worst idea in a world of bad ideas..." Why? Read on.

Legalization as Miracle Cure (Or: Doesn't Anyone Actually Think Anything Through in This Country?)

So here we are, looking down at the game board of life, death, law, and social problems in America. And one of the biggest barriers on the board is this thing called illegal drugs. It's a monolith. It drives crime and murder, fills prison, and destroys families and communities. And no matter what you score in the pop-a-matic bubble (props to the makers of the game Trouble!), you won't be able to move enough spaces forward to cross it in your lifetime. That makes it even too big to ignore. Its ominous, seemingly insurmountable size makes it an issue that has to be addressed – definitively! On this, I think we can all agree. The problem starts when we start brainstorming the vaccine. Legalization, more and more, seems to be the "go to" move. And it's just a bad one. Don't believe me? You're not alone. That's why I'm writing. I want legalization advocates to see the Biblical "Where did Mrs. Cain come from?" problem with their plan. I want to loosen their grip on a solution that won't drive the results they're expecting. They can still choose to argue their point and push for their legalization solution, but it won't be because I didn't point out some of the giant flaws in the plan. Let's start with some of the common arguments:

• We're losing the war on drugs. Drug trade is at an all time high, and drug crime continues seemingly unabated.
• Our prisons are overcrowded, and arresting drug users just adds to the problem.
• The war on drugs is expensive, and that money could be better spent elsewhere.
• More people are killed every year by...

I can't argue with any of these statements. So I'm still in lock step with the legalization crowd. We both understand the problem, and agree that something needs to be done. But when we start talking about how to fix the problem, the legalization crowd goes down paths that I just can't follow. Let's look closer:

We're losing the war on drugs...
Yup. True. There are so many drugs, so many users, and so much corruption that underpins the whole thing. It's a tough nut to crack. But does that mean we should stop trying to crack it? I know some consider analogy to be a weak way to debate an idea, but let's use one anyway. It's hard to housebreak your dog. So, why not just allow him to poop anywhere? Silly, right? Yet, that logic is at the heart of many legalization arguments. You hear similar suggestions where illegal immigration is concerned. It's hard to stop, so let's just stop trying. Here's my question: when did we become a people who don't want to do something just because it's too hard? I know some of you will argue that legalizing is doing something. To some degree, you're right – learning to be helpless, then comforting yourself by adding some cursory rules around that thing you can't control is doing something – but is it the best solution? Is it any solution at all? Isn't it like trying to make a murder a little cheerier and bearable for the victims, instead of trying to stop murder outright? In effect, that's what you're doing here. Not fixing the problems caused by the drugs, but putting a thick salve on the wounds and hoping for the best. Put a pin in this one...I'm coming back to it a few paragraphs...

Our prisons are overcrowded...
Again, true. But the fault always lies with the criminal. Not society. Not the law. We have a very simple system. It's a system that my toddler already understands: if you break the rules, you get punished. Period. It's irrelevant if you don't like the rules. You have to follow them because that's what it is to live in a world of laws. No matter who you are, you should be able to grok this idea. You should be able to put blame for crime on the criminals themselves. They chose to do something they were told was wrong. How is that anyone's problem but theirs? Now, here's a twist: I don't think it's inherently bad to decriminalize something. In fact, I'd say it's a natural part of our legal evolution. Societies outgrow laws, and those laws have be dissolved. However, there's at least one rigorous test that has to be passed before we confer a legal status on something illicit: the decriminalization has to benefit society, not generate a new hazard. Otherwise, all we've done is given one group of scofflaws a free pass. Sure, the prison populations dwindles for a bit, but at what long-term cost?

The war on drugs is expensive...
Yup. It is. But is that really a reason not to fight it? Some expensive things are more than worth the money. Ask me if this is one of them...

More people are killed every year by...
This is a common and completely indefensible, invalid argument. Let's use the perspective of the stoners who wrote to the President last month.

"Alcohol kills more people than pot...so since alcohol is legal, pot should be too."

<Buzz!> Wrong answer! This argument is acutely flawed for several reasons. Here's the big one: pointing out that something legal is more dangerous than the illegal thing you're doing, is actually an argument for criminalizing that other thing, not legalizing your thing. If the goal of law is to protect and improve society, then you should act to prohibit things that hurt society. That's why murder is illegal. And rape. And theft. Let's play with more analogies, and you can decide if any of these make sense:

• Alcohol kills more people every year than burglary. So, since alcohol is legal, burglary should be too.
• Alcohol kills more people every year than assault rifles. So assault rifles should be legal...
• Alcohol kills more people than rape, so...
  

It's absurd to look at it that way, isn't it? So go all arguments of that nature when our goal is to protect life, limb, happiness, and freedom. A correct argument goes more like this (and forgoes any comparison):

• Alcohol kills people, so it should be illegal.

Or:

• Pot doesn't kill anyone, so it should be legal.

I wouldn't necessarily agree, but I'd give you points for forming a valid argument. It doesn't rely on the status of some other thing, but on the inherent merits of your subject. If you want to win an important argument, that's a good rule of thumb to use. Then we could talk about the validity of your point. (Now, just to be clear, I DO know the difference between pot and harder drugs. But in the context of this debate, it's not a valid delineation. If you're high, you've already been compromised – in judgment, attentiveness, coordination, and the ability to follow rules. The degree to which you've been compromised is irrelevant. You know that jerk you see on the freeway every day? The one who's always four seconds from rear-ending someone because he's texting, juggling his Tim Hortons' and morning butt, and took a little too much Benadryl before he left the house? What happens if we also let him blaze up 5 minutes before he slots himself into traffic beside you? I'm guessing that'll end badly more often than not. So, for the sake of this discussion, I'm lumping pot in with every other illicit substance.)

That said, let's get on to my point – why the legalization idea is unworkable.

Legalization Debunked (Or: You Don't Always Get What You Pay For)

So, let's legalize illegal drugs. Why not, right? The benefits are obvious:

• We can control them; the FDA will make sure they're safe, and of good quality, which will decrease accidental deaths.
• We can tax them. With the huge interest in drugs, that will be a small fortune, one that we can use for health insurance for kids, and to fix our roads, and create new jobs.
• No more user arrests. You can't be arrested for buying and using something legal.
• No more illegal drug dealers – drugs will be legal, so they won’t have anything to sell.

Good arguments, right? Nope. Not even close. They come from the same body of "research" and level of critical thought as the points made by my former boss. On the surface, they may seem to make sense – especially if you've lost a loved one to some form of drug crime or punishment, or are a lifetime democrat – but there's no substance; no depth; no tensile strength. Each argument is insufficient to address the complexities of a legalization scheme. They are dismissive of key facts about human nature, the general order of things, and the business of illegal drugs. They just don't make any real sense when you shine the light of critical thought upon them. They fail on almost every level:

Regulation Can't Work
Regulation is an interesting and tricky thing. Let's for a moment forget the complexities in preparing a drug for public consumption, and skip right to the very nature of a regulation. Regulations are rules – rules that, by default, govern who can sell an item, and for how much, and in what quantity, and on what day, in what venue, and to which consumers. These rules are the problem with regulation. Every rule you create is a rule to be broken, which, in turn is an opportunity for crime. Let's say a legal heroin fix at your local drugstore is sold like this:

• 5 cc
• $50
• Only to people over 21
• No more than once a day

In the legalization model, everyone says, "Hey, cool," and goes to the drugstore to buy a fix. But, what about the 20 year old who wants 50cc, twice a day? Oops, here comes illegal heroin again, which demonstrates that:

Crime is Fluid
The legalization model supposes that there will be no way for illicit drug makers, importers, and dealers (read: criminals) to make a living. I guess the legalization advocates just assume that all the folks on the supply side of the issue will pack up shop and go work at Wal-Mart. Well, as I just pointed out, EVERY regulation creates an opportunity for crime. And criminals know their shit. They're criminals because they like to be – they like the life it affords them. They're not a group of enterprising rogues who sell drugs as a form of social protest. Don't believe me? Look at DVDs. DVDs are legal, and cheap. Yet, there's a multimillion-dollar illicit DVD trade out there. Criminals realized that people don't want to wait for the official release, or don’t want to pay the studio price. We created a demand, and the criminals rushed to meet it. It would be the same here. That flexibility is actually at the heart of the failing war on drugs. So, yes, there would be a whole host of mainstream consumers who would buy FDA-approved crack. But there's an even bigger population who wouldn't. They're the folks who want higher doses, or more frequent fixes, or are too young to buy drugs legally, or who don’t want their local pharmacist or doctor to know they're stoning up every day. And if I know this, the criminals do too. It’s their livelihood. They can find the illegal outgrowths of every regulation you place. Unless the legalization movement says free drugs of any kind to anyone, in any dosage, and is willing to dispense them to kindergartners, then the problem hasn't shrunk even a little bit. And let's add this: what about all the new drugs? You know, the ones in this model that haven't yet been approved by the FDA, or that are too dangerous to ever be approved. Do you think anyone will want those? Do you think the criminals won't be out there making those? Of course they will. The Feds have stepped on their action, and they're not going down without a fight. At that point, they could cook up a drug with a 50% guarantee of death, and people would still buy it...

Addiction is Still Addiction
Here's one that's underrepresented in every legalization discussion: addicts are still addicts. It doesn't matter where they get their drugs. They have a problem that's driven by a combination of the drug itself, and their own personality/body chemistry. It's not reasonable to expect that addiction will no longer be a problem just because the drugs are legal. I suppose the FDA could try to make all drugs less addictive, but oops, then we've created a new crime loophole – an illicit variant of every legal drug, that has whopping more addictiveness. And I'm not even going to dive into the problem of everyone around you being stoned at any given moment of the day. That makes me positively YEARN for my next 747 ride. (What's that you say? Pilots would never take legal drugs before a flight. Of course they would. You made it legal to do so. And people who take drugs tend to suffer from bad judgment – not necessarily before taking them, but certainly afterward. Maybe as part of this plan, we can test everyone for drug levels every morning before work. That wouldn't have any negative impact on our economy or society, would it? And before you talk about punishment for those who break the rules, if I hear you right, you're talking about a form of criminalizing drug use again...interesting catch 22, huh?).

Legal Drugs Aren't Free (Or: Where Does the Money Come From?)
Here's another one that the legalization crowd ignores: drugs aren't free. This is an important point, since the plan includes taxes on drug sales. What happens to the folks who can't afford to buy them, legal or not? Do you suppose they're just going to forgo their daily fixes? My guess is that they'll do what they do now: lie, cheat, and steal. Drugs are a powerful draw, and heavy drug users aren't deterred by empty wallets. The fact is that it won't matter if they're stealing to pay the pharmacist or the Columbian on the street corner. People are still being victimized to support a drug habit.

Flash Forward: The (Crime Free?) World of Tomorrow

So: now we've legalized drugs. In the ideal model, we've changed the face of the most common drug user. Instead of a gaunt trembling junkie cowering in a dark alley, it's the honorable Reverend Godfearing and his wife, Prudence, snorting coke with Mr. and Mrs. WASP from the country club. And they're not doing anyone any harm, so all is good, right? But let's look out the window:

Oops! Look at that. The problem is still there. The criminals didn't go straight after all – they're smiling across the border as drug mules deliver their quadruple-strength cocaine (now with fresh pine scent!) to the US border guards who want to buy bigger sailboats than they can afford on public servant salaries. And the kids who aren't old enough to buy and use all those newly legal drugs aren't saving up to get high on their 21st birthday. They're under the bleachers getting high today on the ULTRA-POT that was grown in the house across the street – the one with the garbage-bag covered windows, and daily foot traffic that's on par with that of an urban shopping mall. Welcome to the safe, clean, crime-free world of legalized drugs.

Okay, maybe that last paragraph was a little more Harlan Ellison than it should have been. But I wrote it so to drive home my main point. You can't win the war on drugs through legalization and capitulation. You can't regulate the problem away, and there's no level of concession to the destructive nature of drugs that has any positive impact. It's a zero-percent solution, even before you invoke the more obvious unmitigated problems in the plan, like its impact on employment and poverty, quality of goods and services, or public health and the cost of medical insurance. In the end, the whole notion of legalization leads nowhere good. Crime rebounds, prison populations stay high, and our society pays an even higher price than it pays today. As the national debate continues, I hope the fundamental truths I've described here start to ring in everyone's ears. I hope that the smartest of us, especially those who hadn't thought deeply about the subject before the conversation went public, will realize the folly of legalization as a salve, and lead us down a better path.

Then, hopefully, this will never come up again.

Thanks for reading. Peace.

It's been a while since I blogged for real. Yes, I posted a good recipe last month, but that was a little bit of a cop-out on my part. The truth is that I've just been too busy to blog in earnest. I recently transitioned from one consulting gig to another, and have been neatly sidelined – almost blighted – by a month of terrible luck. You've heard about life throwing you curve balls? My life has been holding my head underwater and waiting for the bubbles to stop. And in the meantime, lots of hot, timely, blog-able topics have slipped through my fingers: bailout fever; gay marriage; the new president; unemployment. I had plenty to write about, but no time. Pretty irritating, even without the emotional torpedoing I've suffered at the hands of 2009.

Luckily, I've been keeping tabs on the things that have gone wrong for me recently. Well...actually...I've been keeping track for most of my life. I know it's probably a bad idea: people who do that with too much diligence usually end up on the same rocky path: ulcers, depression, unemployment, divorce, and a dark final day on a clock tower with a high powered rifle. But, all that notwithstanding, my bad times have inspired my next real post. But first, a disclaimer:

(Semi-) Adult Language Warning

I like to swear. I don't do it very often anymore – I have a daughter who's at a highly impressionable age – and until now, I haven't felt a need to do it here. That changes with this post. As I contemplated what to write here, I realized that I needed to unleash some colorful (read: immature and vulgar) language to fully convey my irritation with the those things and people that made the list. That said, you're probably still wondering what The List even is. Read on... (even if you've already figured it out.)

The List...of things that really piss me off

Over the years, I've developed a strong set of opinions on things that diminish the quality of my life: things that make me want to rage against the world, and turn away from the open-minded, even-keeled philosophy I try to live by. Things that make me want to cry out in astonishment, or take my toys and go home.

Things that make me want to slap the shit out of somebody.

So what is The List? It's my darker side put to words. It's a telling of things that – as Peter Griffin would say – "really grind my gears." Why is it called "The List?" Because I couldn't come up with anything better. And because this way, if someone pisses me off, I can say "You just made the list!" and have it mean something. If I like how it comes out, maybe I'll make this a regular feature.

The List (in no particular order)

Who: Retail Buyers (and/or whoever decides what to stock, and when to stock it...)
Why: It's January, fuckers! Why can't I buy a pair of gloves and a nice fucking hat? I don't need a bathing suit yet: I need to stave off frostbite while I'm running the snowblower. (Okay, it's February right now, but this happened around January 15th, and every time I look at my suddenly hole-peppered gloves, it pisses me off anew. So dates be dammed! And anyway, don't some of our worst winter storms come in MARCH! Get with the program!)

Who: Time Warner (Roadrunner)
Why: I know you fuckers throttled down regular RoadRunner service when you decided to start selling your TURBO service. And I also know that that your modem speed test gives phony results. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Who: The City of Rochester
Why: We need more parking downtown, not less. Stop closing garages! (And I KNOW you followed it up by putting on more parking enforcement officers. Don't lie about it...)

Who: Wegman's
Why: Stop littering the ice cream aisles with knock-off brands! Perry's and Breyers are better than Blue Bunny and Turkey Hill, and every time you steal freezer space from them, I end up having to make an extra trip to Tops.

Who: RG&E (Rochester Gas and Electric)
Why: Our power lines are brand new and underground: why can't you idiots keep the power on for more than three consecutive weeks? And why don't your customer service folks ever know what the fuck happened or how long it's going to take to fix it?

Who: Parking Garages (the ones that are still open)
Why? $6.75 a day, and you're STILL not responsible if anything happens to my car?
Are you kidding me? And sell more goddamned monthly passes!

What: The Wind on the Night Before Garbage Pickup
Why: Oh my fucking God! Stop blowing my recycle bins into the woods across the street! I don't live in Chicago or on some wind-swept delta. And why do you only blow so much on THAT PARTICULAR NIGHT? There are six other nights when my garbage wouldn't be involved!

Who: The Local News
Why: Where is the story on the huge fucking accident that made me an hour late to work?

Who: Wegman's (again, and still on ice cream)
Why: What idiot told you to stop carrying Strawberry ice cream in ANY of the brands you sell? It's one of the most important flavors, and I shouldn't have to buy Neapolitan to get it!

Who: Highway Advisory Radio/Radio Traffic Reporters
Why: Aren't you supposed to actually tell us something? What exactly has to happen before you broadcast it? And why is it that if I'm in the car for an hour, I still can't catch a report that tells me anything about what I see in front of me? Do you idiots ever actually go outside and look at the roads? Where are your damn traffic copters?

Who: Time Warner (again!)
Why: How fucking stupid is this DVR? Why do I have to manually add time to the end of my scheduled recordings every week? When I set a time, freakin' keep it! I'm tired of missing the ends of shit.

Who: Rover (the morning DJ)
Why: Dude, breathe through your nose; don't talk through it. You sound like an idiot.

Who: Cops
Why: Why did you pull ME over for a lapsed inspection sticker when there were people buzzing by you at 30 miles an hour over the speed limit? Who did you think I was? John fucking Dillinger? You made me late for my doctor's appointment...

Who: The Makers of Levaquin
Why: My arms hurt, you jerks. Both of them, in the same place. For five months now. Don't sell bad medicine!

What: Glasses with Anti-Glare Coating
Why: Could these things BE any harder to keep clean? (Thanks, Chandler!) And that "cleaning solution" I got for free from Cohen? What kind of bullshit nonsense is that? I'd be better off licking them.

Who: People who Comment on CNN's Political Ticker
Why: You people are a bunch of fucking idiots. Learn to type, spell, and format, and figure out what the site is for. Stop telling CNN what they should and shouldn't post there, and stop mentioning how ashamed you are of them. What are you, their mother? It's not your site. When it's your site, you can post whatever you like. Otherwise, shut the fuck up.

What: My Prostate
Why: You brought me in here to pee. Now fucking let me pee, goddamn it!

Who: Loud Coworkers on Long In-cube Conference Calls
Why: Wow! Really? You're lucky it's bad form to hock a stapler at someone, because mine would be over the wall nine minutes into your three hour call. Your laugh is shrill and obnoxious, and you're awfully confident for someone who sounds like such an incompetent moron. Go find a conference room, dumbass!

Who: Doctors' Offices
Why: Why aren't you open in the evening? Or on weekends? What the fuck?

And finally:

Who: Greedy, Corrupt Companies Who Think Laying Off Employees is a Remedy (So, pretty much, every company in America)
Why: This helps, how? You can suck your bailout money out of my ass.

In Closing

Well, that's it: The List. It was more of a catharsis for me than I expected. In fact, I feel lightheaded, giddy, and a tad winded. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. While I contemplate both my next post and the possible next edition of The List, I hope you'll take a few minutes to share some of your own little irritants with other Frank Spot readers – if for no other reason than the good feeling you might get from doing so. Or blog about them on your own site. Who knows: if enough people starting calling out this stuff, maybe some of it will actually change for the better.

Wouldn't that be a hoot? Ah well...

See you next time.

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the land,
The shoppers were rushing to make their last stand.
They’d waited ‘til now, so the presents weren’t bought,
The stores’ walls were bulging, the folks overwrought.

They were stricken with panic, would there be enough time?
It was so hard to tell from the end of a line.
And out in the aisle, the people did shove,
For the last-ever Bratz toys (lead-painted with love).
For Hannah Montana, and HSM2,
For Apples to Apples, and Panda (Kung Fu!).

There were tramplings, and fistfights, gift cards on the floor,
And the Salvation ringers, outside every door.
The parking was horrid, the lots underplowed,
And not one good word from the folks in the crowd.

It had been a bad season, a bad year I’d call it,
Where layoffs and rip-offs had cleaned every wallet.
Four dollar gas, foreclosures galore,
And most of the folks were all newly poor.

For so many people, that was the rub:
Without any money, it was presents or grub.
So it wasn’t “last minute” that this madness capped,
It was the fact that the shoppers were desperately strapped

Their bank accounts vanish’d, their 401’s locked,
Their faith in the system was tragically rocked.
As they fought with each other, they wondered aloud,
How did we get here? How were we cowed?

What was it that brought us to this sorry state?
Where DID we go wrong? Was it just some cruel fate?
So they clutched so forlorn to a bargain or three,
And remembered what fortunes had kicked off this spree.

It started with pundits, and bytes from the Fed.
Then early last spring, Bear Stearns woke up dead.
Like dominoes falling, the sickness, it spread,
Our entire economy fractured and bled.

The banks began failing, their mortgages bust,
Oil speculators stole away with our trust.
There was Fannie, and Freddie, then rich AIG,
And let’s not forget the big auto three.

They went before Congress, their hats in their hands,
Having cheated and squandered their way ‘cross the land.
They’d swindled, then dwindled their ranks as a cure,
They sucked down huge payoffs, and screwed us for sure.

And then came the galling, most horrible part,
The bailouts that punctured a hole through our hearts.
“It’s for you that we do this,” the CEO’s claimed,
“Without us, the U.S. will surely be maimed.”

“Just think about Christmas, the happiest season.
The shelves will stay full. Not to help us is treason!
Unemployment will surge, and prices will too!
And who will be blamed? It’s not us. It’s you!”

“But help us,” they claimed, “and the States will rebound.
You’ll save countless jobs, and praise will resound!”
The argument stuck: unemployment is bad,
What little girl would want that for her dad?
Who in the country could stand and let fall,
Those huge corporate giants who employed one and all?

So elected officials, their consciences clear,
Happ’ly unlocked our coffers, and toasted good cheer.
They’d save our big business (their own portfolios too).
But shamefully, sadly, there’d be nothing for you.
No protection, no structure, no oversight sought,
No accounting, no refund, no voiced second thought.

Cuz’ as you’d expect, the “cure” wasn’t real.
The banks took your money, but they still wouldn’t deal.
“Pay your big bloated mortgage on time,” they still bleat,
“Or come New Years Day you’ll be out on the street.”

And in every business, the cry was the same,
“Hey, look, those dumb sheep gave us money! How lame!
Let’s play in the cash, and make big money forts!
Then come two-thousand-nine, more layoffs – like sport!”

Which brings us right back to the scene at the mall,
Where poor vanquished shoppers lay right where they fall.
‘Til just before midnight – St. Nick’s op’ning bell –
When the shoppers filed out of their bargain-hunt hell.

The wrapping was wrapped, all the boxes were filled,
And in all the commotion, sixteen were killed.
But it wasn’t the Grinch that killed off the season,
It wasn’t E. Scrooge you can use as a reason.

It was greedy big business, and government fools,
Who tanked capitalism, and made up new rules.
It was DC and Wall Street, and our friends at the Fed,
Who gave us all pause, and a winter of dread.

And now in the silence of this one sacred eve,
We struggle to find anything left to believe.
Investment, or business, a work ethic that pays,
Something to bank in the lean coming days.

‘Twas the night before Christmas in two-thousand-eight,
When Santa Claus comes, it might just be too late.

Election Night is almost here. I'm actually watching the clock count down as I write this post. And I'm feeling pretty grim. If you've been following The Frank Spot, you'll know that I recently lamented the state of politics in America – specifically the rough and brutish political discourse of my own party. As we get closer to Election Night, I can't help but see the spreading lack of civility – and, in fact, the rise of near-fanaticism – that grips the country. Behavior I thought (hoped!) might have been limited to my own party's highly contentious primary race, has spilled into the national forum. I'm now held in thrall by the spectacle of it as it burns across a once lush democratic horizon. This is unlike any election to which I've been knowing witness and participant. We don't just need change in American government – we need a fire extinguisher. And, oh, yes, for a lot of people to get a clue.

The American political system – indeed the American society – is supposed to be a model of the best: our citizenry, enlightened and altruistic; our politicians, role models; our process, unbreakable. But instead of the triumph of a dream in action, I hear the shredding gears of our society grinding on each other. You may have blocked it – relegated it to background noise, or dismissed it as "people frightened of...something", or even heralded it as the promise of a new and better tomorrow – but it's a harsh and discordant sound. And it speaks what I consider an important truth for our time.

We're ignorant and deliberately angry. We've sabotaged ourselves. And we now stand to lose what we prize in the fires we set.

My Opinion is the Only Right One: The Cry of an Ugly American

It all comes down this one thing: too many people think they're absolutely right, and anyone who disagrees is wrong, and even dangerous. It's as if the vagaries of the world have been revealed to them, and they have discovered the elusive and uniting answers: it's their candidate, their political belief, their judgment that is best. It's the path to radicalism I mentioned in my article on PETA; the path where strength of conviction overshadows quality of belief:

"I believe so strongly, that I must be right. No one could possibly believe something else! And I will make them see..."

Does that kind of rhetoric sound familiar? If not, page through some history books. Humanity's past is plagued with that kind of thinking. And it is one of the most dangerous paths for 21st century America.

Fixing It (Or: Geez, Frank, do you just want to insult us, or do you have some wisdom to impart?)

If you're wondering, I know how ominous my words sound. I impart such weight upon them because of how deeply American behavior affects me. You may not realize it, but it affects you too. Probably in ways some people would never notice, or understand. It affects our economy, our standing in the world, our personal lives, our sense of freedom, and our belief in our ability to think and act in our own best interests. I'm hard on the world, because wry insight and smatterings of sarcasm aren't always sufficient to spark necessary introspection, or foment real change. As you read on, if you read on, I hope you'll start to consider what stokes the rage and activism in the people around you, and possibly see the obvious path back to sanity.

The Silly Stuff (Or: Oh...my...GOD...Could these things BE any less important?)

It's a basic human component: to have an opinion. You can care about anything you want. In America, you can say (almost) anything you want. I don't want to interfere with that. But people look awfully silly when they cite nonsense in their political discussions, or when they deliberately base important opinions on insignificant things. That silliness gets dangerous when it becomes the basis for activism and voting choices, and I see that all around. Here are some top contenders for things people really seem to care about, but probably shouldn't:

Obama's Middle Name is Hussein
Well, that clinches it for me. We all know that your middle name says EVERYTHING about who you are as a person; including what you'll do if you reach the White House. Sorry, all you guys with middle names like Muriel or Adolph.

The truth is that you'd probably have better luck predicting Obama's future presidential decisions with a Magic Eight Ball or a cupful of tea leaves (with a wonky cross that says that your guy will muck up the country, but you'll be happy about it...) than by using his middle name as prophecy. Ultimately, it's not much of a predictor at all. It should be sitting in the debunked pile alongside Phrenology and anything uttered by a mechanical Gypsy fortune-teller on an Atlantic City boardwalk. Want to predict what kind of decisions he'll make? Look at his writings and his record, and listen to what he says. (But even so, keep in mind that past behavior and campaign speeches are, at best, uneven predictors of future actions...)

John McCain is Old and Could Die Soon
Because only old people can die soon. Nobody young can ever die. Sorry, JFK, you made a mistake taking that bullet in Dallas.

The truth – for those who couldn't dig it out of the sarcasm – is that anyone can die, anytime. Health, wealth, and status be damned. People die when they die. And it's not usually convenient for anyone involved. To put it in more perspective, Obama and Biden could win handily, and through a series of fatal mishaps in January, Nancy Pelosi could become President. February 2, 2009: somebody that NOBODY voted for is redecorating the Lincoln Bedroom and reading up on Area 51.

The Republicans Spent $150,000 on Sarah Palin's "Look"
Who cares? It's not your money. Do you get angry when your neighbor buys an expensive vase to put in his loo?

The truth is that this is so irrelevant, I don't even need to make a joke about it. Shame on you if this helps you decide which lever to pull.

The Important Stuff (Or Why Don't You Care About That?)

So, there people are, making life-changing – country-changing – decisions based (at least partly) on unimportant drivel, and (at least partly) ignoring some really important facts. I can't say that acknowledging these issues would solve anything, but how your candidate deals with them – understands them – is an important aspect of the President he will become. When you consider your vote, consider these points:

The Economy Goes the Way it Goes, and it Doesn't Matter Who's President
A lot of pundits like to lay the current financial crisis at the feet of the President (and his administration). This is such a misleading oversimplification, and so many people seem to believe it. I urge all of you in this camp to ditch your dog-eared pamphlets on the The Butterfly Effect, and read up on real causal relationships. Better yet, take an economics class. You'll find our economy is complicated beyond belief, based heavily in greed, faith, and luck, and influenced only slightly by the President's daily routine.

The truth is that the market rises or falls on the backs and actions of consumers, investors, lenders, and speculators. Yes, the government contributes to the moods and actions of those people, but at about the same level as a bad haircut affects your grocery bill. Fact: The economy is as healthy or sick as we make it. Ironically, just like the government.

Wealth Redistribution is Bad
That's right: bad. Let's call this what it is – punishing people who've done better for themselves than you have. It's a slap in the face of capitalism: you're richer than I am, and that makes me angry. So I'm going to take some of what you've earned away from you...

The truth here is that this is exactly what shouldn't happen. Yes, from a human perspective, the have's should help the have-not's. But it's not the government's job to mandate that. And if you look closely, you'll see that the entire tax system already takes more from the rich than the poor. That brings us to our next entry:

Income Tax is (Already) Applied Unfairly
Let's ignore the fact that income tax was originally unconstitutional, and chalk it up to a necessary evil for our country. The bottom line is that rich people already pay more than you do. That's right: for every dollar they make, they pay more in taxes. It's a sliding-scale-burden that the rich have been shouldering quietly for years. When was the last time you heard a rich person complain that YOU weren't paying enough in taxes? They certainly have that right, since the dollar-for-dollar facts are on their side, and they don't get any additional service out of the government for their additional payments. Yes, they have loopholes and get tax breaks, but not for just making more money. There's no checkbox on form 1040 that says "I'm rich, cut my taxes by 20%." Their tax breaks come from what they do with their money after they've earned it (and been taxed on it). If you did with your money what they do with theirs, you'd get tax breaks too.

In short: I would never try to punish someone who does better in life than me. As an American, I root for them, and hope they root for me.

Other People Count Too
Back to my radical-bashing, here. No matter how strongly you believe in what you believe, there's a good chance that roughly half the people in the country disagree with you. In fact, they think you're a dangerous idiot who just doesn't get it. What's good for you is bad for them. What you look at as a right, they look at as an abrogation of their ideals or faith. What you think they should give away, they think they should protect with a gun.

I could spend a lot of time on this one – oh, goodness, this is an important and timely point. The Onion recently posted a great article, one so good that I wish I had written it myself. Because, even as satire, its words speak more truth than Obama's middle name would if it was interrogated by Jack Bauer.

Report: 60 Million People You'd Never Talk To Voting For Other Guy

The truth here is that even when you're absolutely right, you're probably still half-wrong. We aren't – and will likely never be – a one-size-fits-all world. And getting louder and angrier doesn't lead to anything...but more noise and anger. You've become the problem. And in election 2008, you've hurt more people than you can count. No matter who wins – landslide or not – there's a good chunk of Americans who are going to burn for the next 4 years because you got your way.

The Rest of the World Hates Us
This is true, and the cause is: George Bush?<BUZZ!> Wrong answer!

The truth is that other countries have been hating us since the day we were born: the Brits wanted their tea taxes and a well-behaved colony; the Southerners/Northerners hated us for abolishing slavery/having slaves/abridging state's rights/etc.; the Japanese saw us as a roadblock to victory in their war against China; the Soviets feared our reach and influence so much that they put missiles in Cuba; 20 terrorists learned to fly without asking how to land. And George Bush wasn't precursor to any of that hatred. The fact is that nations hate other nations, for a variety of (good and not-so-good, valid and not-so-valid) reasons. It's a simpleton's view to point to the sitting President as if he is the focus of it all. Because of the political system in America – the one that dismisses a good President after eight years, but lets a bad teacher have tenure for life – most of why other nations hate us happened on some other President's watch. Plans for 9/11 didn't start on GWB's inauguration day – the terrorists didn't know him any better than we did on that day. Figure it out...

We've Lost Our Place in the World's Esteem
This isn't the same as the political brand of "hate" above. This is the view of the ordinary world citizen, reported back to us through the media, and evidenced in our ongoing relations with our work-a-day foreign counterparts.

The truth is that our behavior as a nation is the thing that hurts us most. Our lack of unity, our propensity for vicious and unrestrained in-fighting, and our daily attempts to silence political diversity and abridge the rights of our fellow citizens, speaks more loudly than any national political action. Put simply: we behave badly, and the world sees it. We lie, cheat, and manipulate, we rape each other economically, and ignore the poor and infirm. We rally for special interests, no matter the impact on the mainstream, and weaken ourselves through social movements that strike at the very heart of our citizens' beliefs. In no uncertain terms, we've lost our place in the world, because we've lost our way. We've lost what made us great. We behave like thugs and third-worlders. If they hate us, it's because there's little to love anymore.

Vote for Change, but Don't Expect It

On Tuesday, we'll file into voting booths all around the country – except for those incomprehensibly-sure-of-themselves voters who already knew everything there was to know and voted in advance (read: stopped listening) – and pull levers, push buttons, punch cards, and express our unmitigated opinions in increments of one vote. At the end of the day – counting problems and claims of voter fraud notwithstanding – one man will be crowned king for 2009-2012. Here's what I don't expect:

Apologies.

After the election, the history books will start to re-craft the race. They will revise the facts to fit the outcome, and try to hide the blue-faced breach-birth that was election 2009. But no one will apologize. Not to the candidates, not to the public, not to disaffected/disenfranchised party brethren, and not to the neighbors whose hopes for tomorrow were suddenly and soundly thrashed. In the absence of that – and the commitment to each other it portends – I think change is unlikely.

I mentioned it above: the President, even the government, isn't the problem with America. They are both a reflection of what's wrong with all of us. Obama or McCain can't fix us. They can't make us smarter, wiser, or once again civil. They can't make greed less fruitful, or thoughtful debate more powerful than brutish threats and fear-mongering. In the end, all they can do is legislate and try to lead.

It's up to us to do the rest.