My parents, a mother from Lebanese Christian descent and an Ashkenazi father, appear to think the question of accountability for Israeli violence is outrageous, as if it implicitly condones Hamas’ agenda.  My mother especially seems to get foamed at the mouth with the mention of Hamas, and both are baffled by any sort of argument which might cast doubt on the righteousness of Israeli ‘retaliation,’ as if I’m insulting every branch of my family tree.  They ask, “You understand they want to wipe Jews off the face of the earth, right?”

It’s a funny question, because the grating simplicity allows for only one correct answer—that is, to destroy ‘them’ before they destroy ‘you.’  I know where this one-sided compassion comes from.  My parents are hardly stupid and anything but cruel.  They are, however, largely informed by CNN.  Ironically, dissident anti-Zionist voices from Israelis themselves are far more prolific in the media than in the US.  That should tell you something.

Lonnie Ray Atkinson has a post over at DV asking, “Does It Matter?”  Though likely preaching to the converted, the point is that we must assess the situation in context, not in soundbytes regulated and orchestrated by a PR game run by both the Israeli and US governments.  The question is not an affront to Israel’s duty to protect its people or right to statehood at all, because I believe strongly in the former and the second is just fact.  At what point might we begin to doubt the intentions of Israeli military action?  Where is the line at which we would say “OK, enough, your actions indicate that you are not only concerned with the future of only your own people, but actively hoping to end the possibility of a peaceful future for your opposition”?  Will it end only with the deaths of every Palestinian?  In this we might see the longterm goal entirely: to use Palestinian genocidal martyrdom as an excuse to demolish Israel.

In the 2006 invasion of Lebanon seeking Hezbollah, over one thousand Lebanese civilians were killed in a conflict that lasted only a month, 300 of them children under the age of thirteen; Hezbollah, while connected in complex ways I don’t know enough about, was not a part of the democratically elected Lebanese government (which likely mostly wished to minimize conflict with Hezbollah themselves in order to avoid total civil war).  Without any control over Lebanese media, images of the destruction flooded out into the world.  Lebanon was so geographically, economically, and psychologically devastated, in fact, it was ideal weather for Hezbollah to up their attempts at making the Lebanese government even further irrelevant.  At the time nobody understood—it did not seem to warrant the approach nor intensity of force.  Israel essentially claimed they did the best they could.  Did they?  Since 2000, the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces inside occupied territories was, prior to this war, 4781.  The number of Palestinians killed by other Palestinians stood at 594.  The number of Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians was 237.  Are they?

The burden of morality lies first on those with the luxury to be moral.  Israel’s government has every conceivable resource available to them.  Those living within the sealed borders of the Gaza Strip have essentially nothing other than strategy, psychological warfare alone.  A few weeks ago, I quoted Zizek discussing Ghandi’s advice to the Jews during the Holocaust, which was to commit a mass suicide so as to gain the collective sympathy of the world.  Zizek noted that one can easily imagine how the Nazis would have responded to this action: “OK, we will help you, where do you want the poison to be delivered to you?”  Over the last decade, Hamas and Hezbollah have gained ground not only internationally but internally, increasingly allowed more political agency by the exhausted complicity of their own communities in the face of Israeli violence.  It is a perversion of Ghandi’s recommendation, substituting sacrifice for suicide; in collapsing public and militaristic spaces, they are ensuring Israeli aggression will be at the cost of innocent life above all.  It is repulsive and indefensible in the extreme, but Israel has the choice to take the bait.  And the problem is they do.  With gusto.

This, too, bears no defense.  Ultimately, it is Israel’s own brutality which will prove to have been used against them, maybe all of us, by treating life as callously as their guerrilla opposition.  To doubt, to always challenge what is “true” is the only answer here to move forward into something better.  It’s worth quoting again: “If power corrupts, the reverse is also true; persecution corrupts the victims, though perhaps in subtler and more tragic ways.”  Think of all the ways you can fold that.

There’s a really interesting reading of Zizek’s schizophrenic vision of violence in the new issue of Naked Punch.  At least this I believe to be true: we’ve waited long enough.

Glenn Greenwald, as always (always, always, always), is a must-read:

Any decent, civilized person watching scenes in Mumbai of extremists shooting indiscriminate machine gun fire and launching grenades into civilians crowds — deliberately slaughtering innocent people by the dozens — is going to feel disgust, fury, and a desire for vengeance against the perpetrators, regardless of what precipitated it.  The temptation is great even among the most rational to empower authority to do anything and everything — without limits — to punish those responsible and prevent repeat occurrences.  That’s a natural, even understandable, response.  And it’s the response that the attackers hope to provoke.

It’s that temptation to which most Americans — and our leading media institutions — succumbed in the wake of 9/11, and it’s exactly the reaction that’s most self-destructive.  As documented by this superb Washington Post Op-Ed today from Dileep Padgaonkar, former editor of the Times of India, the Indian Government — in response to prior terrorist attacks — has been employing tactics all-too-familiar to Americans:  ”terrorism suspects have been picked up at random and denied legal rights”; “allegations of torture by police are routine”; “suspects have been held for years as their court cases have dragged on. Convictions have been few and far between”; Muslims and Hindus are subjected to vastly disparate treatment; and much of the most consequential actions take place in secrecy, shielded from public view, debate or accountability.

As Padgaonkar details, many of these measures, particularly in the wake of new terrorist attacks, are emotionally satisfying, yet they do little other than exacerbate the problem, spawn further extremism and resentment, and massively increase the likelihood of further and more reckless attacks — thereby fueling this cycle endlessly — all while degrading the very institutions and values that are ostensibly being defended.  The greater one’s physical or emotional proximity to the attacks, the greater is the danger that one will seek excessively to empower and submit to government authority and cheer for destructive counter-measures which allow few, if any, limits.

What happened in the U.S. over the last eight years is about much, much more than what “the Bush administration” did.  It begins there, but responsibility in the post 9/11-era is much more diffuse and collective than that.  Shoveling it all off on the administration that is leaving, while exonerating our culpable media and political institutions that remain, isn’t merely historically inaccurate and unfair, though it is that.  Allowing that revisionism also ensures that the critical lessons that ought to be learned will instead be easily and quickly forgotten when similar episodes occur here in the future.

Do you remember what the days and weeks following 9/11 were like?  I can remember going down to the water and watching streams of thick black smoke rising into the sky like marble columns, and people buying a hundred newspapers at a time from me where I worked, hoping they would sell for something some day in the future, if there was a future.  People kept saying the air smelled like burning bodies, one of the tricks grief can play on the mind.  I remember the glass storefronts of Sikh business owners being shattered by bricks (“towelheads”), and some people waiting for another cashier to check them out other than me, one who had chosen to take off a gold pendant with the Arabic word for “god” on it in light of the way things were.  A friend doing clean-up laughed about some of the crew making marionettes from a few stray limbs they uncovered in the rubble, betraying a hurt so deep it needed to be divorced from the working mind.  He’s never been the same since.  I remember being spit on by passing drivers in Getty Square; I was holding a sign that was asking to stop the indiscriminate, reactionary bombing of Afghanistan.

I don’t know if I feel the same as I did then, maybe not at all.  But I will never forget the way some people let fear and the incredible sadness of unknowable loss turn them heartless and mindless, make numb their care for the future to avenge the pain of the past.  As if that could ever be of true relief, as if that hadn’t been the plan all along.

(It actually got much worse than that.  The shadow of one’s psyche is really a mean, shameless motherfucker.)

When I start talking like the little broad from the Exorcist, I know that it’s time to go to bed.  Then I can wake up and the pall lifts and the sky gets all sunny blue again, and my will to live is renewed by stories like Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic priest originally from Louisiana, and his response to the threat of excommunication courtesy of the Vatican.  Father Bourgeois ordained a woman to the priesthood.

“Who are we as men to say that we are called by God to the ministry of priesthood, but women are not? That our call is valid, but theirs is not?” he said in an interview. “We profess as Catholics that the invitation to the priesthood comes from God, and it seems to me that we are tampering with the sacred.”

He is devastated by the action, but says he is unwilling to recant his position.  It’s what he feels in his heart.  Regardless of what you’re all about personally, it’s sort of the most awesome thing ever to know that there are still people who hold themselves accountable for their own beliefs and actions in this world.  There are still people who, after much reflection and study, will not submit to an external authority the most deeply felt beliefs they know.  That’s amazing.  We should all understand such strength exists inside of us.

Johanna said, “that name sounds really familiar!”  We realized that Father Frank Bourgeois is the founder of SOA Watch, which is the first issue I ever felt moved to political action by, back in the pre-historic days of high school.  The School of the Americas, now renamed (due to too many people understanding what it was) Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, is essentially the terrorist training camp we run down in Virginia.  Their most successful graduates go on to violently overthrow, rhetorically pacify, and piss all over the human rights of all the South American countries we’d like to extort material and abstract resources/political agency from.

It is probably the most explicitly and recognizably shameful representation of the evils done in our name, but hey, there it is.  Hanging out down in Virginia, drinking sweet tea and flipping us the bird.

Oh, America.  You think it will ever soak into a hayseed skull that Jesus and Allah are the same dude?

In any case, here are a few words of wisdom from like, a dude who has a pretty heavy hand in imagining the enduring, essential principles at the core of the American vision.  From the giant, seemingly boundless brain of Mr. Thomas Jefferson, ladies and gentlemen:

History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose. (to Baron von Humboldt, 1813)

And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors. (in a letter to John Adams, 1823)

The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind and adulterated by artificial constructions into a contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves…these clergy, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ.

And now for a little from the mesmerizingly provincial intellect of the GOP candidate for 2nd in command:

What a blessing that the Lord has already put into place the Christian leaders, even though I know it’s all through the grace of God. (Sarah Palin, 2000)

Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God.  That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan…I think God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that [too]. (Sarah Palin, 2008)

I think the saddest part of that is that faith, not just my faith, faith and God in general has been mocked through this campaign, and that breaks my heart and that is unfair for others who share a faith in God and chose to worship our Lord in whatever private manner that they deem fit and my faith has always been pretty personal. I haven’t really worn it on my sleeve. I haven’t been out there preaching it. I’ve always been of the mind that you caalk the walk. You just don’t have to be talking the talk about your beliefs, so just wanting maybe my life to be able to reflect my faith. So it’s always been pretty personal and that was kind of a surprise in the last couple of months that people would misconstrue and spin anything that has to do with my faith or anybody else’s and turn it into something to be mocked. That’s very sad.

I don’t think that there’s anything that I can do about it, so you know, I won’t, I won’t whine or complain about it, but nobody is going to convince me that my foundation of faith is not good for me and for my family no matter the mocking, no matter what anybody says about it, I’m going to keep plugging away at this and I’m going to keep seeking God’s guidance and His wisdom and His favor and His grace, for me, for my family, for this campaign, for our nation. Again no matter what anybody else says about it it’s between me and God, and I am so thankful that that he has strengthened me with this understanding and this belief that I can count on Him. I can reach out to Him asking for that strength, asking for the blessings that He so freely gives and I don’t know how anybody would want to do this if they didn’t have real strong faith in God that He’s got it all under control. (Sarah Palin, Oct 2008)

The fascinating, subtle shift between public and private worship occurs when one believes that they have access to the divine plan.  They move from humble subject to aggressive agent at will, taking whatever shape they find most convenient in the moment.

God doesn’t talk to you, Sarah Palin.  And if he does, it ain’t got nothing to do with me.

Apologies for my slowness in the last few days, what with the crumbling economy, freelancing has suddenly become an unreliable and unsustainable source of GREEN.

There is this dig McCain took at Obama during last week’s debate that has been pestering me, especially in light of amplified attacks which use “socialist” as a pejorative.  To conclude his vague, deliberately distorted criticisms of Obama’s health care package, McCain said,

“If you like Obama’s health care plan, you’ll love Canada or England“

I would imagine that the only way to deride Obama as a “socialist” (oh no, stop, not that) while still keeping a straight face is to start with his plan for government-run health care, then gesticulate wildly, and then keep cawing, “SLIPPERY SLOPE!  SLIPPERY SLOPE!” like some sonofabitch neocon parrot with its tailfeathers all a’ruffle.

Of course, this line makes sense, since the crumbling edifice of this mythical “laissez faire” American economy is chipping away to reveal something that looks more like a plutocracy (I paid for my prescriptions in dimes last week!), everyone is freaking the fuck out, and it’s the neocon tradition to sling your own most unflattering qualities against your opponent like they’re ruinous disasters kicking off the end times.  McCain “suspended his campaign” in order to more vigorously nod in impotent silence from the corner of a room as the GOP effectively nationalized the banking system so tons of middle aged white dudes wouldn’t be launching from their executive balconies,  landing in these really tiresome, unsightly puddles of gore that would totally devastate the NY tourism industry and necessarily had to be avoided at all costs.  But yeah, totally, Obama’s the red herring around here because every day is opposite day on Capital Hill!

I think I’ve been haunted by the prospect of an Obama presidency dragging this country down into the uncharted circles of hell that are the province of sinister nations like Canada or England.  McCain’s ghastly premonition really hits home; what chilling darkness are we allowing ourselves to be ushered into?!  When you think about it, he’s right.  England and Canada?  It’s basically like the Khmer Rouge over there.

Tread lightly, guys, because if before you know it, you might be trying to finding your footing atop a giant mountain of human skulls.

And yet, of course, following the broadcast, dickbags from the network news are praising McCain, announcing it has his best performance yet.  And uh, I guess?  He didn’t look like such a total pussy this time since he “said it to his face” (instead he just looked like a CRYBABY), but he also came off as more insane and illogical than ever.  I guess for all of these tv pundits who are completely obsessed with forcing this artificial climate of “balance” at the sacrifice of media integrity, that makes it a toss up?

The health care question was so elliptical it was like a fucking anesthetic: Obama talks about small businesses being exempt from the fine.  Cue McCain responding that Joe Toiletwater can’t afford to buy a bussiness because he’ll be charged a fine.  Cue Obama saying, OMG I JUST TOLD YOU THERE WAS NO FINE.  Cue McCain repeating that Joe Bidet will be fined under Obama’s plan as matter-of-factly as the earth being round.  Does he underestimate the audience that much?  For that matter, should I?

Imagine despising the world so much, every word you spoke was an effort to keep alive the brittle fantasy world you’ve constructed–whew!  Sounds like a full time job.  The kind of full time job you might have at Fox News, or something.  These neocons are so phenomenally disconnected from who they pruport to speak for, everything they say is a pretty good gauge of the exact opposite of what most Americans are feeling.  That’s KINDOF amazing, when you think about how long their narrative reign went unchallenged, but there seems to be a collective disgust for this Rovian brand of “reality” brewing in most people which is of some comfort.  The rubes, they live, but they aren’t the whole truth. I sedate myself at night by petting the cat, knocking back a few mgs of valium, and repeating to myself that most people are not evil and awful and stupid, over and over and over again.  You might have noticed the upswing in my optimism, no?

On the flipside, Obama himself closed out with a brilliant co-opting of a classically republican narrative, and I think it really underscores how far the neocons have fallen from the actual direction most people want to head.  People older than myself often seem to cling to some nostalgic idea of the republicanism of yore, not yet ready to look the repub’s mutant bastard son, neoconservativism, in its hideous face.  I understand.  It’s them I’m curious about most, and how hearing words like this coming from Obama affects the way they feel about the state of partisan politics today:

But it’s not going to be easy. It’s not going to be quick. It is going to be requiring all of us — Democrats, Republicans, independents — to come together and to renew a spirit of sacrifice and service and responsibility.

Brilliant move.  His energy wasn’t exactly on point tonight, but in terms of clarity and specific strategy, he knocked it out of the park.  No matter what any lying asshole on your tv says, the polls will reflect that by tomorrow, too.

Christopher Buckley is chased with like a hundred million pitchforks and snarky emails into resigning from his column with the National Review following his Obama endorsement.  Um, that’s the magazine his dad founded, one mister William F. Buckley, Jr, aka the last face of the Republican party that actually had a brain behind it.  (Speaking of faces, Chris, you silver fox, why don’t you drop me a line.  I’ll show you a dia-lec-tic.)

Related stub: some species of wild life are super into sexual cannibalism, which typically occurs as the sort of denouement to their wild little “breeding ball,” after everyone is spent from all that boning and orgying and getting totally sloppy and out of control, as sex is wont to do.  In fact, PBS tells us that some victims are “actually willing participants in the feast; they flip onto the female’s mouthparts during copulation, encouraging her to dine.”

I mean, what else would you call an Obama endorsement from a columnist who’s got birthrights at the National Review?

I’m not sure what I wanted to say about it, even to myself.  I have been trying to wrap my head around all the ways one can approach “otherness,” and my relationship to what’s addressed by both Obama and Samuels here.  There is so, so much to consider.

I wanted to talk about the metaphor of the body.  The masculinist anatomy of strength and control, the intersections of race and femininity.  Blackness and brownness in this election.  Degrees of ‘whiteness,’ the space between self-identity and social perception, privileging one cultural history and identity within oneself.  The “foreigner” as the “father.”  The maternal as both problematic and essentially formative to the state.  But I am inevitably drawn back to my favorite phenomenon—and that is language and silence.

It’s true that I’ve appeared to do myself what I am so confused by on the right, which is resent one candidate so strongly I support his opponent by default and not on his own merits.  I have a feeling that’s what a lot of Obama’s support looks like on the surface, but is likely not the case for most of us.  The fragility of the moment makes it hard to speak with very much candor, if one can consciously recognize it at all.  The success of his campaign is a testament to the desire for a new critical approach which has finally found its appeal further inland than the “activist” crowd.  The “change” that Obama represents for us is beyond a return to more humane public policy, but a “change” in how we stratify and distribute political power.

That’s a really hard thing to talk about without freaking the fuck out of everybody who is clutching desperately to any scrap of entitlement they’ve been doled out like they won’t live to see a world any better than what we’ve got.

Here’s to hoping they’re wrong.

Part of what feels so grim about the devolving momentum of McCain’s campaign is that its essentially handed over a script to a part of the population that were formerly, to be frank, too stupid to articulate themselves on a national level, and thus were unlikely to mobilize.  It’s not that they didn’t exist before or that they wouldn’t after, it’s just that they were sleeping dogs I had hoped would die in slumber.  It’s sad to watch McCain suddenly realize as he tries in vain to eat his own words that the consequences of language extend to nearly cellular measure; I have to wonder if it’s the first time he’s ever seen in action how deeply and irrevocably speech can shape our perceptions of reality.  To live 72 years on this earth and have that be novel?  Now that’s privilege.

Another part of my discomfort is that I, too, had the same question he and Palin were so pointedly asking: who is Barack Obama? The difference between us, however, is that the answer we both suspect fills me with incredible awe and hope while at the same time, terrifies McCain’s base constituency to their very cores.

I haven’t read Dreams of My Father (though now I must), but I have read The Audacity of Hope.  It wasn’t the content that stunned me exactly, but really his ability to see.  Barack Obama is a writer.  That is, he understands the intertextuality of the world, the ligaments which connect the singular to the infinite.  But that sensitivity seemed also to be mitigated by the canny, more analytic temperament of a politician, maybe almost a born politician.  A writer inherently appreciates the construction of identity in all senses and on all levels.  The possibility of a president directing policy informed by these sensibilities is so idyllic to me that I can almost feel parts of myself wishing against it for fear of disappointment.

And it has been disappointing.  I realized after reading Samuels’ article that I have been growing silenty anxious over the last two months, itching for a clearer gesture that once sworn into office, Obama will sort of unfold himself from the electable “blank screen” he has become, and burgeon into a political figure that issues a challenge for us to be better, to elevate our standards, to be who we say we are.  It would be the opposite of these self-aggrandizing, congratulatory pats on the back offered to us by empty, disconnected nationalists like Sarah Palin who opt for cheerful adjectives like “imperfect (question mark?)” to describe the state of our nation, rather than risk a more frowny face word which would hint at the darker cultural wounds they are either too cowardly or too hateful to face with any real honesty.  As Samuels notes, “what voters want is to feel that things will change, without too much uncomfortable detail about what will actually happen.”  It’s a strategy vital to his campaign, but I am slightly disheartened by how gingerly he has hedged his bets.

That is the thing about The Audacity of Hope.  It is artfully worded for digestibility to a degree that feels like restraint; he’s brilliant enough to intuitively sense what might alarm a white, privileged audience about the humane side of his political imagination, but not sinister enough to obscure it convincingly.  It’s not dishonest, to be sure.  But if Samuels’ reading of Dreams is as sharp as it sounds, then I might describe it as an undercurrent of benevolent paternalism burdening The Audacity of Hope, like Obama doesn’t quite believe his audience is grown up enough to hear the “real talk” of how to begin this critical shift toward healthier power dynamics, and what sacrifices we would make in exchange for what dividends.

In a sense he’d be right, of course; anyone dropping bombs like “hegemony” in mainstream discourse can’t really get a foot in the door.  But for how long can we hold off demanding better of ourselves before that cautiousness turns into enabling?  And what better proof of our readiness than our impassioned support–which has been powerful since the start, and only on the rise?

But what about if and when he gets elected?  Will he continue the tradition of self-congratulatory pats on the back by remaining a “blank screen” on which we project our masturbatory fantasy of having achieved this farcical ‘post-race’ society (“Everybody is finally equal now that there’s a black president, so stop whining”)?  Will he continue to construct himself with, as Samuels calls it, narratives made of “utter bullshit” like Obama having had a “childhood like any other.”?  Or will we finally be able to look at the state of our culture right now as a moment of heightened history and be able to listen without defensiveness to the realities of this world that one just doesn’t see on the whitewashed network news?

It could go either way.  The deciding factor is likely to depend on the sad cultural chasm exacerbated by McCain’s unprincipled campaign in recent weeks, how loud and low it goes, and for how long.  It could serve to force us to confront the most malignant parts of the American psyche and be a polarizing catalyst which demands action.  The gravity and scope of racism in America has been undermined by its tacit dismissal as a series of isolated anomalies rather than the institution it really is.  It’s the kind of discussion that necessarily must be lead by someone with a personal stake in the marginalized perspective, someone who can talk about oppression without victimizing, talk about privilege without alienating—someone who can explain that we will not miss what we’ll be giving up, that real freedom and autonomy is not at the cost of others.  Have we ever seen a politician better equipped to do that than Obama?  The rubes would make a great bunch of scapegoats to ally ourselves against as a final sacrifice, something to point to and say, “You were powerful and wise enough to not allow your own country to head in this direction.  It is within your control to change the landscape which creates this.”

But that would be a gift.  More probable is a future where this brewing “culture war” calcifies completely and we collapse, or worse and yet still more likely, it slowly strangles us until the US is as much of a failed experiment as the USSR.  I really am not sure anymore.  I vacillate between moments of unblushing sanguinity and defeated cynicism on the hour lately.  I comfort myself with the reminder that whatever happens, however heartbreaking the disappointment, the world won’t end–or maybe it will, only to give way to a new one.

I concede that Obama does sound almost “too good to be true.”  I have a secret hope that it’s because he might be even better.  Whether he can find the faith in both himself and the people of this nation to realize the breadth of his potential as a leader, and whether we can find the courage to allow him that freedom, still remains to be seen.

So, not to be a gloomy gus or anything, but allow me to submit a theory on conspiracy theories for just a second.

We’ll start with a little Duh Philosophy 101 and the very simple understanding that civil society is a human construction to protect us from the chaos of the universe.  Well, that’s part of it.  The more interesting part is that it is also hinged on the illusion of safety–we invent justice within civil society because there is no justice; the tsunami that devestated Indonesia, Katrina, Pompeii, we are all Job at the mercy of Yaweh.  In order to function, a society must remove or alleviate the anxiety of constantly being threatened with one’s own mortality.  Security against these disasters, whether man-made or natural, is false.  Ernest Becker pretty convincingly told us so.  Kim Jong Il said, “mass delusion is the only thing that keeps a people sane.”

Bummers, but like, those two are dead as doornails.  Who really understands modern malaise?  Who really understands the disillusionment of the disenfranchised?  Who speaks for the youth of today?

Obviously there is only one man.

And he is the Joker.

Chaos, as the Joker reminded us with such bittersweet eroticism, is simple.  Society is unraveled almost effortlessly; one only has to pull a single pin in a trusted machine and the whole thing seizes up completely.

(I’m not typically one who loses her shit for dudes dressed like women, but this scene is sortof devestatingly fucking hot.  Not because he’s wearing a dress, but because he’s so fucking crazy that the pettiness of gender is beyond irrelevant.  Imagine watching this movie and looking over at your sad, limp dicked conservative husband who works as an IT tech at a financial analyst firm, doesn’t know how to speak to you anymore, and hasn’t given you an orgasm in six years.  Jesus christ life is depressing.)

Anyway, what I’m saying is that conspiracies don’t have to be master maneuvers by secret operatives who have gradually infiltrated every level of an agency’s infrastructure. It takes just one person with enough insight into an organization’s informational flow to jam it up completely.  In the case of these voting registrars, all it takes is a directive to take Social Security cards first.

Voting rights groups and federal election officials have raised concerns that the methods used to add or remove names vary by state and are conducted with little oversight or transparency. Many states are purging their lists for the first time and appear to be unfamiliar with the 2002 federal law….By using the Social Security database so extensively, states are flagging extra registrations and creating extra work for local officials who are already struggling to process all the registration applications by Election Day.

“I simply don’t have the staff to keep up,” said Ann McFall, the supervisor of elections in Volusia County, Fla.

It takes 10 minutes to process a normal registration and up to a week to deal with a flagged one, said Ms. McFall, a Republican, adding that she was receiving 100 or so flagged registrations a week.

Interesting.  The result of that small change in the order of operations leaves you with this.

In Colorado, some 37,000 people were removed from the rolls in the three weeks after July 21. During that time, about 5,100 people moved out of the state and about 2,400 died, according to postal data and death records.

In Louisiana, at least 18,000 people were dropped from the rolls in the five weeks after July 23. Over the same period, at least 1,600 people moved out of state and at least 3,300 died.

It’s especially hard for me to process this as a naive mistake given that six out of the nine states violating federal law are swing states, and the remaining three (Alabama, Georgia, and Louisianna) are Republican mainstays historically.  Given that new voter registration is overwhelmingly in favor of the Democrats, only a total rube would believe this wasn’t an orchestrated effort to hack the election.  I’m sure they’ll be throwing in their 2 hayseeds soon enough.

Obvious prior election history aside, it’s always fascinating to how easily bureaucratic institutions become a means of denying certain populations access to the very resources they were erected to provide.  If you’ve ever seen a form to enroll in a food stamp program, for example, many states seem to use impossibly nuanced language and require suspiciously banal information in order to even start processing an application, and that’s no guarantee that even the most trivial errors will not be cause for immediate disqualification.

Even in RI, I believe the 2nd most liberal state in the nation, looking over the applications for both fuel assistance and food stamps were surprisingly overwhelming–and I’m a native English speaker from the like, 32nd best public school in the country and half a college education.  The language and instructions were at points so obtuse and ambiguous, I found myself reading passages two or more times.  Some parts appeared so difficult that I could not imagine any reason to phrase them so cryptically other than to intentionally exclude.  Would someone without as confident a command over English be able to successfully receive the help they needed?  After how long?  Would they be informed about existing programs to help with translation and literacy without having to be denied or disqualified the first time?  I wasn’t, though there might be several contributing factors there.

So the programs exist, but because they are so astonishingly inefficient, it isn’t unreasonable to wonder why: do they exist to serve, or do they exist to pacify?  Why are they never streamlined?  Why are they always completely opaque?  The registration offices in 9 critical states have found yet another way to find themselves broken–WHY?

When I ask myself that question, I can think only of this interchapter from The Grapes of Wrath.  It’s nearing the end of the harvesting season.  Everything is ripe and plump and heavy, every limb on every tree is being pulled to the ground it’s got so much fruit.  Everyone is pleased and proud of themselves, it’s all green and all the blossoms have opened.  There’s so many grapes they’ve flooded the market, so they make wine instead.  They get drunk.  They ignore their growing debt.  In fact, there’s so much to harvest they don’t know what to do with it all, the fruit begins to rot, their farms soon belong to the banks.

Other people elsewhere are starving, and they come for miles to take the fruit before it spoils for good, but the trip was for nothing.  The farmers are angry and bitter, they hate everyone who didn’t buy their fruit, they hate the system that has failed them, they look at the hungry people as criminals and thieves because they need someone to blame, anyone, for all of this devastation.  They cover the fruit in kerosene instead and they set it on fire.

Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates–died of malnutrition–because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.

The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is a failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

Even I am impressed with my ability to connect Batman and Steinbeck.