Michael Jackson

My thoughts on Michael Jackson, as posted on www.vigilantemind.com:

The undying coverage of Michael Jackson's death is precisely the kind of thing that The Vigilante Mind will not be covering. But since TVM isn't up yet, I'll saying something myself, and it's simple: instead of blaming the painkillers, the doctors, the media scrutiny, the massive debt, or (this is the most recent proposal) his burning accident in the 80s that led to his taking prescription drugs... how about we discuss the concept that the entire Jackson 5 was created out of an exploitative, abusive master plan orchestrated by Joe Jackson? He's still delivering his plan to this day, marketing the "aftermath of Michael" line of products.

The Jackson 5 never would have shown up in the entertainment market had Joe Jackson not exploited his children, causing massive personal psychological damage in the process. There's a very good reason why Janet Jackson seems like the only sane one in the family—she wasn't in the Jackson 5. It's not a coincidence. That's the place that pop entertainers hold in our society—we sacrifice the well-being of these people for our amusement, and in exchange we give them ludicrous amounts of money so we can call them the privileged ones. Michael Jackson was slated to live a short and embarrasing life the second that his prepubescent psyche was sold to America at the age of eight. When he was inappropriate with small children, he wasn't a pedophiliac—he was playing doctor with friends of his maturity level. When he was popping massive quantities of painkillers that led to his addiction, it wasn't because his hair caught on fire, it was because he finally—finally—was presented with something that would temper the demons in his head. The overdose was an accident, for the most part. What wasn't an accident was that we created in a human being a hell so fierce that no amount of drugs would be sufficient to shut it out of Michael's consciousness. But he sure tried.

The Vigilante Mind is now available (I think) as an RSS feed here:
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Major Stephan Cook

These posts are going to be more and more frequently links to The Vigilante Mind, once I figure my way around Google Sites... I will still use I, Portlander for my personal opinions and rants about work, and shift all my political commentaries over to the new site. But in the meantime, I bring you this:

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/story/777472.html

Now, those of you who have followed this story know that Major Cook has since been fired from his government job and disgraced, and his case was exposed as opportunism, the lawsuit was frivolous, and his intent in suing was explicitly to force the President to 'prove' that he's an American citizen. So we'll ignore the issue that Major Cook wanted us to look at. Instead, what's this about a soldier committing war crimes if he serves under the orders of someone other than the President?

Have we already forgotten about Blackwater (since rebranded as Xe)? What about the soldiers from Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, et al. who have served in wars that their country was not a part of? Were they war criminals? I was in talks with the Navy a few years back—they wanted me to do some cartography in Iraq (I would have likely been based in Europe), presumably in an effort to find enemy camps. I would have been a plainclothes, as are the majority of people helping in the war. Plainclothes contractors aren't under the command of the President. Are they war criminals too?

The fact of the matter is that we have to stop taking people like this at face value. Major Cook was not a patriot fighting for what he believed in, nor did he honestly believe that anyone in the world was concerned with President Obama's authority to lead the army (though I do believe he is convinced that Obama is secretly not American, simply because that's what he's told to believe). Major Cook is a hack job who is in the camp of The Twenty-Six (tune into future podcasts to find out what that means)—people who don't care one way or another about our country, but are just having fun with their time in the spotlight. Major Cook isn't a patriot, nor is he a traitor—he's just an idiot.

Letting Cynthia Davis speak for herself

The initial criticism from liberal pundit Keith Olbermann was that State Representative Cynthia Davis wanted to pull funding from feeding impoverished children because those children could just get jobs at McDonalds, who feed their employees for free. The criticism was that it was a "let them eat cake" mentality: that the remark was staggeringly insensitive to the problems that impoverished families were up against.

Ms. Davis responded to the criticism as follows:

We all agree on the importance of feeding children, but we differ on who should do this. I believe this duty belongs to the parents. Instead of respecting this time honored jurisdiction of the family, the summer feeding program treats families like they do not exist.

When government takes over a family function, like feeding children on a daily basis, we take a group of people who are capable and treat them like they are incapacitated. Some have a low view of parents, presuming most of them are inept and
proposing governmental intervention as the only solution.

I believe most parents are good and want the blessing and privilege of feeding their children. When families are sharing a meal around the kitchen table, much more is happening. Mealtime is the primary time for shaping values and strengthening
bonds. All of this is missing or diluted when it happens outside the family. Look into your own heart and ask, “What made a difference in my life as a child?” Was it standing in a line for a cafeteria style meal at school or was it sitting around the kitchen table with others in your family?

Ms. Davis clarified what her solution would be to make sure that the parents could feed the children themselves:

Better education can change the plight of the poor. My sincere hope is that we can lift families out of poverty through compassionate interaction with those who can show them a better way. This is why I agreed to chair an interim committee to study poverty and why I volunteered to teach a cooking class for mothers utilizing the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Program to help teach young mothers how to prepare nutritious meals.

That's the problem: impoverished mothers don't spend enough time in the kitchen.

Often I feel compelled to offer my opinion on these issues. Sometimes I don't have to.

Forcibly Rape Journalists

I just heard something really interesting on Real Time with Bill Maher. They were discussing the rhetoric coming out of the Middle East (and particularly Iran) and how relations are strained by improper translation. One in particular that they focused on is the phrase "death to." When we hear them chant that, particularly in the context of "Death to America," we read it to mean that their ultimate wish is that we were all dead. In fact, that was one of the primary defenses in our torture of prisoners—they, after all, chant for our deaths!

By my approximation, the phrase "death to," though that is the direct translation, is the Farsi version of the word 'fuck.' Just as we drop the f-bomb fairly comfortably here, they use the phrase all the time there. When Ahmadinejad was handing out potatoes to people as a campaign gimmick, people who didn't support him would reply with "death to potatoes!" The person they interviewed would say it's fairly common if someone loses their car keys to exclaim, "death to my car keys. Where are they?" If someone makes a stupid mistake, they'll very commonly exclaim, "death to myself." In context, taking the saying literally is absolutely ridiculous.

Imagine the direct translation of the F-word. It's horrifying. How would people around the world react to Cheney's response to a barbed question he received from a journalist? "When the Vice President was asked a question critical regarding his associations with Halliburton, he responded casually to the reporter, 'well, I'd have to say, I hope you get forcibly raped very much.'"

I don't imagine people would think we were deserving of much respect either.

Jesus and The Worthingtons

Tomorrow begins the trial of the Worthington Family, religious zealots who allowed their daughter to die instead of healing her through medicine. I actually side with the Worthingtons on the broadest scale—specifically, that a majority of the hyper-religious are actually just self-serving detriments to society who hide behind religion because of its impenetrable veil, that they are exactly the people who are called out in the first commandment specifying that man is not the word of God.

The Worthingtons, on the other hand, are true faithful, those who stand by their beliefs whether it befits or punishes them. The question at hand, then, is whether it is the role of law to protect people like them who are victimized by dogmatic brainwashing, and more importantly, if they have the right to allow their daughter (who may not have grown up to share their beliefs) to die. It's a really difficult question, because if their daughter did grow up to share their beliefs (never mind whether the beliefs are valid), upon knowing that human medicine saved her life when she was young, she would spend her entire life believing that she was irreperably damned to Hell for something that she had no control over when she was only a year old.

Another interesting question with this case is how it relates to the pro-life movement. Under the religious pretense, it can be argued that the Worthington's actions are consistent with the pro-life dogma: mankind is not to intervene in God's Work by killing an unborn child, so similarly they are not to intervene with a born child that God intends to kill. However, the pro-life movement is increasingly set in a political framework, where it more closely pertains to our lives, and they have gone against the political mindset around kin. The political logic for outlawing abortions is straightforward—parents should not be allowed to abort a fetus, as it is a living, breathing thing, and they are no longer in a position to make the decision of whether another living human is to live or die. It is then to be inferred that The Worthingtons should not have been allowed to make a life-or-death decision with their child; rather, it is our societal responsibility to preserve the life of those who are not yet able to preserve themselves, and anyone who gets in the way (including the parents) are committing negligent homicide.

But what I'm most interested in is the metaphysical aspect of this case. Jesus was known to cure the sick. As an agnostic, I am inclined to believe that Jesus was just a man with great PR skills, not an actual divine being. Many religious historians (particularly on the humanist side) are quick to point out that through modern living, we are capable of carrying out all of the miracles that Jesus was credited for. Jesus himself said that it wasn't he who was responsible for the miracles, it was God. "God," as in "that which we are not capable of understanding." Which in Jesus's time included antibiotics. An argument can be made (which I may make someday) that Jesus himself had an advanced knowledge of antibiotic medicine, which he used to cure the sick.

Chew on that, Followers of Christ.

Subprime TARP

Good news everyone, we're out of the economic crisis! Or so say the bankers, who have returned their TARP funds to the government after deciding they can't meet the terms of the loan. (Oh, so they do understand that sometimes people default on loans.)

Actually, they can meet the conditions of the loan, they just don’t want to. Specifically, the government is placing a cap on executive salaries for any banks who have accepted loans. Essentially, the government is saying that the executives themselves have to help pay back the loan, instead of just cutting the employees. So the banks said they’d rather just give the money back. All twelve were very proud of themselves and immediately released public statements, basically saying “good news everyone—we still can’t afford to help our customers, so we’re not going to be giving out any loans, but the government did let us give back the TARP money designed to enable us to help people so that we can continue to earn huge dividends!!!”

The reason why they’re so proud of this is because the shareholders are all going to get a bigger slice because of it, and they’re taking the slice right out of the actual business they’re supposed to provide. Like the skyscraper that Portland has invested billions into making (by Nordstroms), which has been suspended indefinitely because their bank has said that they won’t front the money, even though it’s guaranteed and has already been collected from people who have dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars on leases. Now the investors are trying to figure out what to do for all the businesses who paid six or seven figures for an office that they don’t have. It's like a season of LOST—just when you think that big business are the villains, you find out that they're right there with us as helpless victims of a far greater evil: the banks.

I hope the banks collapse. We’ll all be fucked in the short term, but it’s the only way we’ll ever move forward. Portland has room for a few more spangers, let the fat cats beg for change on the streets.