The Pledge by Karen

At the end of this post is a poem I wrote a few weeks ago--it's also a song to a jazzy big band melody I haven't put down on paper yet. It's about my love/hate relationship with the Pledge of Allegiance. As a child and youth, I loved standing to say the pledge, especially with large groups of people. I love the idea of people standing together, speaking as one about a cause they believe in. The pledge both directly verbalizes and indirectly represents some ideas that I, personally, believe in: loyalty, love of country, gratitude for God, community, democracy, liberty and justice.

But the pledge also tends to represent some ideas that I don't believe in. I don't believe that the country is indivisible--I mean, why shouldn't a state or two break off if they want to, what's the big deal? I don't believe that the U.S. is God's favorite country. I don't believe that belief in God is a prerequisite to patriotism. I don't believe that the pledge is worded in a manner inclusive enough to sufficiently unite the modern American population.

And I don't really believe that elementary school students should be expected to stand and repeat it all together. This tradition was started in the 1940s, when war permeated Americans' minds; when militant habits seeped into our language, our hairstyles, and our classrooms. In the 1950s, under the reign of McCarthyism, the pledge was a reminder that any person accused of criticizing the government could be fatally blacklisted.

At any rate, my general reaction to the pledge is not dramatic. I'm just tired of taking the whole thing so seriously. The pledge is not a test that reveals which individuals in a room love democracy--and it certainly isn't a real oath (Thank heavens, we are not coerced into making oaths of obeisance to our government!) It's also not the best way to teach the values it attempts to teach. I mean, let's get real. Teaching kids to express their personal feelings about their country is more meaningful than asking them to memorize and daily repeat something that someone else came up with.

On the other hand I don't think the Pledge should be banned, either. It's a quaint tradition that many regard with fondness. Say the pledge if you feel like it, but don't expect everyone to chime in. Or, reject the pledge if you want, but don't expect the government to formally amend or renounce it. Eventually, I believe it will fizzle out on it's own.

So, here it is, below, my poem. Again, it's mostly about my feeling that the ideas in the pledge are important, but that the pledge, itself, shouldn't be taken too seriously.


The Pledge

The pledge--some patrage allegiance,
a sledge that can Christmas
the wedge that's betwixt us?

The blood of our founding,
foregrounding resoundings:
Rockefeller and Old Yeller.
Blitzkrieg lips, read this:

Applaud, appalled. Uphold the old glory phrase.

I told you, gist
raise a fist, Texas twister.
Emancipate a race, suffragistic sister.

Encrypted snacks in Liberty's lap,
Justice for Albequerque and even Mr. Turkey Lurkey,
Madame Allegiance, go free lance!

Applaud, appalled. Uphold, the old glory frays. 

Treasonable supricion,
seasonable remission in the sale of
apple pie fillin' cans--what's the brand?
And to the corn for which it stands!

In God we fussed a crust,
in gold we thrust a must,
in time we trust a dusty gust,
or bust,
it's just--

Applaud, appalled. Uphold the old glory phrase.

I want the government out of my life too--the confessions of a non-Tea Party patriot by Justin

I want the government out of my life too. I want them to stop installing black boxes on my cars and stop GPS tracking my phone. I want them to stop reading my email messages--I want them to stop listening to my phone calls--I want them to stop tracking my web browsing--I want the corporations that supply the government with data for these requests to be held accountable for their actions--I want the government to stop treating me like a terrorist at the airport. I want them to take down the surveillance cameras--the cameras that don't catch the bad guys, but that catch the millions and millions of good guys going about their daily private lives--they've put up on roads, on buildings, in schools, and in Time Square. I want the assurance that the government, precluded from doing so both by principle and by law, cannot track and record my life and behavior. I want my privacy back--I want them to stop demanding papers and identification--I want them to stop tracking me with my driver license, student ID, and bus pass. I want them to destroy their biometric databases and stop giving in to the temptations to subjugate my life to the literal dictates of a machine--a machine which threatens to supplant moral and legal authority vested in government officers bound by solemn and sacred oaths. Once the machine has replaced all those living, thinking, doubting humans, it only needs a single totalitarian dictator to be run.

I want them to stop squandering my tax money and their Chinese bonds and my family's future on premium government surveillance infrastructure: buildings, labs, technologies, and list of acronyms which no one this side of heaven seems to fully know. I want them to stop playing the spy games. I want them to stop impressing my friends into the FBI and the army by tempting them with the allure of grandeur and mystery when all they have to offer them is a vapid brand of world dominance and sordid espionage debauchery. I want them to stop selling these putrid ideals under the brand of patriotism. I want them to repeal the (anti-)patriot act--I want them to repeal the DMCA--and I want Hatch to pay the price for being the fool to sponsor these misdeeds. I want them to take back their constitutional trespasses. I want my legislators to take charge and hold government accountable to the people again.

I want them to stop politicizing scientific issues. I want them to stop politicizing trivial issues. I want them to stop lying to me that the founding fathers were homogeneous in belief and unified in action in order to bolster their own treacherous, asinine cabal of political complicity and silence opposition by invoking founding fathers and claiming them as their own anointed political patrimony. I want them to stop pretending that their constitutional interpretations are the only valid ones. I want them to stop denying the bill of rights to foreigners. I want them to stop lying to themselves and to me about how all of this self-granted power is to track down terrorists and pedophiles, when now it's just so convenient to go after ordinary murders and felons and illegal immigrants with the same air of constitutionally dismissive expedience. When will it be me that they go after? The Mormon, the scientist, the independent, the satirist, the skeptic, the antipatriot, the objector, the civil disobedient?

Once any of these yields his sacred sovereignty unto what has turned out to be only the appearance of safety from one spectre while resulting in a most clear and immediate danger from another more treacherous, more cunning, and more damning, he has forfeited both his liberty and his safety.

Unanswered Questions by Karen

[I published this narrative essay in Segullah Journal, 2008]

“How would you describe your classroom management...philosophy?” I asked her awkwardly, trying to read my own handwriting.

“Love and logic,” she spat out just as casually as if I'd asked her what time it was. She was mostly occupied with gently pushing away the four-year-old tugging on her sweater sleeve.

Great, I thought to myself. This is perfect, I'm supposed to write a three-page paper on a real English teacher's comprehensive answer to a single question, and all she's got for me is a four-syllable slogan. On the other hand, she did use alliteration; maybe I could take up a couple of double-spaced paragraphs by analyzing that...

“Oh, interesting,” I inserted as a verbal filler; I was grasping for a way to get her to explain without letting her know how clueless I was, “and ...”

“Maddy, go find your shoes, please, we'll go home in just a couple minutes—”

“...and how does that philosophy literally... play out in your classroom?” That would have to do, I sighed.

fully automatic maleficence by Justin

We live in a world where there are actual fleets of robot assassins patrolling the skies. At some point there, we left the present and entered the future. -xkcd

Society at large is more civil than it was 5000, 500, or even 50 years ago, but the hearts of men are tried one by one and are as susceptible to darkness as they ever were--perhaps more. Institutions of maleficence are found even among the most capital and praiseworthy. I am not condemning militaries or war altogether, but violence is exceptional. What happens when the routine production and practice of it is integrated into the economy? When it is accepted as part of normal life by a thoughtless body politic? How less barbaric are we than our ancestors?

retrogressive impunity by Justin

It is fun to find passages in the persuasive writing of the Founding Fathers which fully document today's raft of scheming, petty, or malicious politicians. The fun is yet enhanced when the politicians under observation are found to be using the very tricks the Founding Fathers warn against in an effort to lead the people back to the innocence of the incipient days of Liberty when great Thinkers and Philosophers humbly donned the sacred robes of public service for the greater good of not only this supreme country, but humanity at large.

I've discovered that personal political success does not correlate with either intelligence or wisdom as evinced by today's specimens for scrutiny: the Utah state legislatures. Their recent antics raise doubt as to whether the legislators comprehend the appreciable difference between Public Entertainment and Public Service. I will not condemn them for this mistake, for it is an honest one, and their strenuous efforts in the pursuit of the Entertainment have brought laudable national and international attention to our state.

Lately it has been my privilege during the few prized reading minutes I have each day to apply my intellect to the study of The Federalist Papers. While reflecting upon the dedicated efforts of our Public Representatives in Congress, with serendipity I happened upon the following gem from Madison, who with lawyerly acumen was enumerating and expounding the several crucial roles of the Necessary and Proper clause.

If it be asked what is to be the consequence, in case the Congress shall misconstrue this part of the Constitution, and exercise powers not warranted by its true meaning, I answer, the same as if they should misconstrue or enlarge any other power vested in them; as if the general power had been reduced to particulars, and any one of these were to be violated; the same, in short, as if the State legislatures should violate the irrespective constitutional authorities. In the first instance, the success of the usurpation will depend on the executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to the legislative acts; and in the last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people who can, by the election of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers. The truth is, that this ultimate redress may be more confided in against unconstitutional acts of the federal than of the State legislatures, for this plain reason, that as every such act of the former will be an invasion of the rights of the latter, these will be ever ready to mark the innovation, to sound the alarm to the people, and to exert their local influence in effecting a change of federal representatives. There being no such intermediate body between the State legislatures and the people interested in watching the conduct of the former, violations of the State constitutions are more likely to remain unnoticed and unredressed. (emphasis added)

With regard to the Utah State Legislature, Madison's argument is somewhat skew in that it compares the violation of the Federal Constitution by the Federal Government to an equivalent violation by the State Government of the State Constitution, whereas the principal trespass of the Utah State Legislature concerns violations of the National Constitution. Madison lived in less certain, possibly more exciting times than ours. He was charged with the difficult purpose of convincing the states to ratify a new Federal Government, our Federal Government, and could not assay state sovereignty except to imply his arguments. This circumstance, however, cannot dismiss the truth of his last sentence. At least in Utah, the people are beholden to and dependent upon their state government at far greater a debt than any level of government in between. With a few exceptions for important local civic matters and active city councils, city and county governments in Utah are effectively administrative and bureaucratic.

But the real message we can apply from Madison is that the state governments are only less guarded from capricious expedients because there are not government bodies attentive to the interests of the citizens who collectively have tantamount authority to that of the state. This argument is somewhat vapid since the doctrine of state sovereignty fell out of fad sometime during the Civil War era.

Curiously, the issue of State Rights has been raised again by our intrepid representatives in the state legislature. The Constitution was constructed such that the Federal Powers granted therein would be explicitly vested in the Federal Government by explicit enumeration. Such is the wording in that document, but taken to the extreme, Madison protests that

In fine, the world would have seen, for the first time, a system of government founded on an inversion of the fundamental principles of all government; it would have seen the authority of the whole society every where subordinate to the authority of the parts; it would have seen a monster, in which the head was under the direction of the members.

This hypothetical monster was prevented from existence by the Constitutional clause Madison is expounding.

This Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

However, state sovereignty is circumscribed by the Federal Powers listed in the Federal Constitution. Moreover, State, City, County, and any other Government authorized to operate in the United States cannot in good faith annul or reinterpret the Supreme Law of the Land without severe castigation. At least, that my hope duly predicated upon my faith in my tireless, watchful fellow citizens. If that faith should fail, then why not our government also?

Art Deco--Modified Picasso by Karen

Justin and I put together a little creative project a couple weeks ago. We went to D.I. to find a frame for the Picasso painting I received for Christmas (Guernica). We knew the poster was pretty big, so we took our time, looking for a few weeks to find just the right frame.

Finally, we found a white-and-gold art frame with a painting in it. It was an old style desert landscape. An art print of an oil painting--very much like the oil painting landscapes that grandma and grandpa have at their house--lots of green and yellow. We imagined that we'd just slide the Picasso in over the existing painting in the frame and put it up on the wall. When we got home, we realized a couple of problems. One, the Picasso (black and white) looked silly and washed out in the white and gold frame. Two, the frame was actually much too big for the poster--we'd have to put in additional matting around the poster, which we really didn't want to do, matting is so expensive, and the poster was really special, not the kind of thing a person could matte with sheets of construction paper.

Meanwhile, we'd had a good laugh at the back of the desert landscape painting--a thin particle board with a very amateur half-done painting on it. Cheap paint was used probably by a high school art student, or any non-professional just having fun. At the top, a dramatic, fantastical sunset in orange and blue and yellow, with black ominous clouds; to the left a great and spacious building of stacked-up, pueblo-style architure, brown stucco walls, red, rounded doorways. Poor attempts at a 3-effect. At the bottom, a fluffy, green blob, possibly meant to represent a bush. To the right, streaks of random color, maybe someone had been testing the paint, unsure of what colors would come out. Justin and I, as a joke, placed the Picasso poster on this underbelly of the desert landscape painting. Then we looked down at it. And looked up at each other. We laughed. And both knew that this was the answer, the true destiny for our Picasso.

I carefully cut the Picasso painting out of its white poster background and centered and pasted it to the amateur painting. I spray-painted the frame black, to bring out the dramatic contrasts in the Picasso. On the undone spaces of the amateur painting, the parts where no paint had ever touched the flat, particle board surface, I scrawled depressing, war poetry in pencil (to add to the effect of despair). Some e.e. cummings, some Charles Boudelaire, some T.S. Eliot, some Walt Whitman, a paragraph from a novel about Hiroshima, and a poem of my own. and Voila! A beautifully dramatic abstract modernist commentary on war and violence as the new focal point for our room. After we put it up, we stared at it for several minutes in awed reverence. "This is really beautiful, honey," Justin said, "a real piece of art."

For your reading pleasure, here are the poems/excerpt from the painting:

T.S. Eliot (From The Waste Land, a tedious, modernist poem about the depressing face of post-WWI America):

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

Walt Whitman (From Pioneers! O Pioneers! Expressing the violence and vigor of Manifest Destiny--he thought his encouragement of Western Expansion was quite noble, I use it in this collection, because I find it sick, and ironic considering the fact that it was not just trees, but Native Americans who were the victims of several pioneer movements):

Come my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? Have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O Pioneers!

Charles Baudelaire (The most highly acclaimed depressing French Poet of the canon of literature. This is the English translation):

O, Death: old captain, it is time!
Let us raise anchor!
This country bores us, O Death!
Let us set sail!
Though the sky and the sea are black as ink,
our hearts are filled with rays!
Pour us your poison, so that it comforts us!

e.e. cummings (The postmodernist who always finds contentment in his exploratory writings about despair):

Faithfully tinying at twilight voice
of death earth's innumerable doom
againing (yes by microscopic yes)
acceptance of irrevocable time

particular pure truth of experience heard
above the everywhereing facts of fear;
and under any silence of each bird
who dares to not forsake a failing year

--now, quite before your whisper's whisper is
subtracted from my hope's own hope, receive
(undaunted guest of dark most downwardness
and marvellously self diminuitive

whose universe a single leaf maybe,
the more than thanks of always merest me

Quote from Hiroshima:

The day before the bomb, I went for a swim. In the morning, I was eating peanuts. I saw a light. I was knocked to a little sister's sleeping place. When we were saved, I could only see as far as the tram. My mother and I started to pack our things. The neighbors were walking around burned and bleeding.

Me (This is a poem about many things. Mostly about how my disgust for war and violence is making me want to be vegetarian. Also, about my annoyance at President Obama for accepting the Nobel Peace prize, when we knew that sending a few thousand more troops into Iraq just before accepting the prize was dishonorable.):

She,

of whom it is said would,
in a million sentences about years,
never take an axe in hand against,
much more than a cherry tree, an
innocent, running sans head chicken,
or any chicken for that matter,

is no more innocent of bar-B-que finger-licking
than the man who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize
for ordering only a few thousand more friends, Romans, Countrymen
into the
out of the frying pan and
into the
hands of Macbeth, his wife, and other red-fingered Fates.



I hope rather than getting sad by these literary excursions, you think of them as important social commentary--just one more effort to inspire the community with feelings of anti-violence and other optimistic Ghandi-isms.

Educating a Modern President (Justin)

In The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton often employs a simple yet profound rhetorical strategy in promoting and defending the unratified constitution. Detractors of the constitution argued against its provisions for unlimited powers in making war, levying taxes, and enacting all laws necessary and proper. Hamilton responded by wisely pointing out the futility of fully circumscribing a government intended to endure the unforeseen challenges of the future. A government without unlimited means to enact expedients cannot survive the ever changing and unpredictable tumult of human affairs. Yet even Hamilton in all his rhetorical acumen could not have foreseen the universality of scientific application in these affairs. Science in applied form---technology---is rapidly pervading all aspects of human affairs. The government, therefore, must competently assess and respond to science in order to promote the general welfare, industry, and commerce. In particular, the president of the United States cannot ably lead the nation without adequately understanding scientific issues. Therefore, an education in science would be an important asset for the president.

In American politics, science is displacing, replacing, or rephrasing traditional issues. Science not only illuminates philosophical and ethical issues but also creates its own. What once were only questions of human activity are now exposed to applications of technology by science. Technology replaces increasingly less and less menial elements of our lives. The farmer's craft is redefined by a battalion of machinery. Machines control our indoor climates. Vehicles transport us from place to place and from city to city with little inconvenience. Autonomous computers are found in almost every area of our lives. Innovations in manufacturing processes continually reduce the cost of technology while increasing its sophistication. A president without a sure comprehension of how technology affects the country cannot be considered competent in discharging his public service.

Science was once an isolated pursuit practiced in monasterial universities. Now those universities are the laboratories of industry and commerce. Alan Greenspan remarked recently that the country's GDP has become ``largely conceptual.'' Surely a university scientific education is the best source of conceptual capital. This capital may be thought of as both a knowledge of important scientific principles and the skill of critical thinking. Once learned, these principles are taken and infused into almost every area of industry and commerce. Because scientific knowledge at universities is being discovered at an inflationary rate, the rate of knowledge taken into the marketplace is also increasing. Thus the rate and breadth of technology for sale increases, and industry itself becomes susceptible to the inevitability of scientific discourse. The president is often influential in the legislature or directly responsible in setting policies, and must be able to understand new science in order to help guide its progress and inhibit its harmful effects.

Mediocrity is often met with success in life generally, but the president of the United States cannot afford to want any insight without hazarding the wellbeing of the whole country. President Bush may have been pursuing his vision for promoting the welfare of the country in his responses to generic terrorism and yet it was his prerogative to issue a flurry of presidential orders that amounted to uses of technology questionable in their faith to the Bill of Rights. The FBI alone breached the already clandestine FISA measures several thousand times with warrantless searches of property. Several million times they sifted unwarranted through phone conversations of American citizens. These are not uses of technology that are condoned by a Commander in Chief sensitive to the politics of science and technology. Science produces new contexts for technology to interface with humans. None of these contexts have any legal or political precedence. How dangerous it would be for them to be greeted with ignorance by authority so that malice may exploit them. The science of today is the technology of the future. A president needs to understand the larger Bill of Rights issues threatened by an unscrupulous government with access to technology and with means to exploit it. A president also must comprehend what patience is required for the science of today to come to fruition.

Certainly one of the most urgent needs for patience and support given to science a president needs to have pertains to earth stewardship. Technology may be a universal benefit to humankind but we have much to learn in order to make it more harmonious with the earth's natural processes and ecological needs. For whatever purpose, presidential politics has been famously associated with ecological stewardship. It is critical at this time that the president have a solid understanding of the new scientific information available on this topic. Many populous countries that once were typically technology poor thanks to advances in modern advances in science and technology are rapidly coming up to the same rate of energy and product wealth once only enjoyed by a fraction of the world's human inhabitants. In this manner, our careless industrial practices are multiplying the wreak of pollution, and the earth and our fellow nonhuman inhabitants will suffer for it. The president needs to understand these complex issues and select or create positive measures that will reduce the shock of human industry on our biological environment.

Finally, a scientific education helps the president in understanding how to use technology to benefit the poor. Not only does the president have great influence in setting national and global policies in ecology, but also can direct measures to help the destitute and the poor. Technology is the primary means by which poverty can be eliminated. What resources the world offers us are fixed, but one of the principal ideals of technology is efficiency. By fulfilling basic human needs with more efficient technology, people will better be equipped to help themselves out of poverty and to help each other, and that is the measure of goodness of any technology. Society in essence is ultimately progressive. It is exciting to reflect how that across time from dim prehistoric memory to the present, this progress in art, science, thought, philosophy has been gradually exponential, and yet it is in our age that science provides the means for this progress to achieve fantastic realities.