I've had a transformative experience over the past two months. Any relationship you open yourself to at all has the potential to be transformative, since you wind up learning more about yourself. It's just that most of my transformative relationships prior to this were the sort where all sorts of rough beasts were dragged up from my own personal underworld, and, while I'd always learn a *little* about some of my more positive aspects, most of what I learned was about my ability to deal with said beasts.
This wasn't like that. At all.
It's a very odd, rather symbolic coincidence, though, after having a transformative experience, to be given a discarded snake skin by someone you don't even know. If by some miracle someone who was there is reading this, this is The Kid Who Always Wears The Hat. I don't know his name, like I said.
The fact that this happened at this time, along with my having had an awesomely horrifying ayahuasca experience last Friday night, tells me something.
I've had to fight off a lot of demons along my way here. Most of these I've had to fight solely within the confines of my own mind, but in recent years, some of them have manifested in my relationships with other people, and for that, I am truly sorry.
But this last experience tells me it's all been worth it, that I've been to the bottom of my being and managed to come back bearing light. I've had to face my own inner Chiron or wound over the course of my life; astrologically, my natal Moon squares Chiron as well as the horrifying underworld double-whammy of Uranus and Lilith (both in Scorpio, no less). The person in question has Venus square Chiron in her natal chart, and while I can't say how that may have manifested in her life, I can say that my Moon square can be traced right back to when I was eight.
I had nightmares continuously, every night, for a month. It was the same dream, over and over again, me seeing myself two-dimensionally, in a sort of distorted Super Mario 2 - esque castle, taking a conveyor belt down into a pit instead of jumping to where I was supposed to. And in that pit this awful creature appeared, with an expression I can't name or describe. This face haunted my every waking moment for that entire month.
My parents were sympathetic at first, allowing me to sleep with the light on, but they eventually shrank back in the face of whatever malevolent spirit was tormenting me. It wasn't demonic in origin. It was something worse. My mother admitted to me years later that before my sister was born, she "saw" an apparition of some sort try to enter the house, which I later figured out was the Goetic demon Balam, and she did some sort of incantation to the archangels, which caused a rush of power to flow past her, and hit the.. creature, causing it to howl and implode.
But whatever this thing was that was after me was beyond demonic. I could feel whatever it was laughing derisively at my mother's every attempt to rescue me from it.
And, eventually, defeated and pissed off, my mother turned off the light in my room, leaving me to face whatever it was on my own. "You have to learn to face your fears," she said.
And oh, did I ever. I was in that room, in the dark, faced with something my parents had no idea how to fight, knowing that *they* were angry at *me* for not defeating it.
It's been a long, hard road getting back, but this recent experience has shown me that it's all been worth it. And, as something of a rebuttal, love is only the confusing, apparently destructive mess it can be if we try to force it into the shapes we think it should go into. We're human, after all, and we want things to make sense and have shape and structure... but the nature of the universe isn't like that. And all we can really do is try to be as open to everything as possible, and enjoy every dance, as long as it lasts.
I have no regrets, whatsoever. This is unusual, given my prior relationships with people.
So... the snake skin is going into my closet, where all the other items I feel have magical and/or personal significance to me are. It'll be there with the piece of a gravestone I found with Nur and Tarsila during The Smear Summer (symbolizing, to me, the death of an old personality), the human rib I found at Chuck's Farm '06 (yes, you read that right, a HUMAN RIB... the symbolism behind this is a weird Creation-mythos kind of thing, what with the universe giving birth to itself inside my head while I watched some Jamaican people jump around making ridiculous basslines),...
...and the raven feather I found in late August.
<3.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
memory lane part 2
So the nonsense poem from the previous entry made me think of old stuff, so I ransacked LJ entries to find interesting vignettes.
New stuff will be coming soon. I promise. This is just sort of a clearing of my memory banks.
1/27/05
I saw Tricycle Guy again this morning. "Hey," I said to him in greeting.
"Bijorgdow," he replied, whizzing past me. At least that's what it sounded like.
That's basically a microcosm of how this year is going.
5/03/06
New stuff will be coming soon. I promise. This is just sort of a clearing of my memory banks.
1/27/05
I was talking to Jason from Young Vulgarians last night and he told me that they had broken up. :( :( :(
I will SO miss their live shows.
Their record label describes their shows better than I can:
"The band made most of its music free or very cheap, the profits usually being thrown off stages during live shows in infamous GREEN $HOWER$. In concerts -- the design of which was heavily influenced by the writings of DeBord, Koolhaas and Baudrillard -- Young Vulgarians let in dogs from the street to run wild, smashed computer equipment on each-other‘s heads, pushed shopping carts across the ceiling, threw Christmas trees and bread and magazines back and forth with the crowd, climbed everything climbable, tore ceilings apart, stood on their heads while performing, jumped quite high in the air with keytars and afros, and spat bloody sugar at teenagers. "
They forgot to mention Jason sticking the microphone in his mouth while singing.
Oh! Here's another anecdote:
"Apart from that, their singer is a total madman, in a good way. He was wearing this weird orange suit and as soon as he came on he started consuming whole packets of sugar. His antics included... frankenstein-walking through the audience, picking up the mike stand and swinging it like an instrument of death, lying on the ground while wailing gibberish about being in an institution as a child, singing with the microphone stuffed in his mouth while crouched in the fetal position on a speaker stack, and (this was the crowning finish of one of their songs) crawling through the audience back onto the stage and tunneling behind the drumkit, where he stayed, in the fetal position, for about five minutes. I was laughing so hard i was crying. These guys are the SHIT."
I will miss them badly.
4/27/05
Last night I was still studying at around 4 AM (I had to get up at 8:30; this is pretty typical for me) and I "heard" the weirdest noise outside. I'm sure it was a fatigue-induced auditory hallucination.
9/1/05I will SO miss their live shows.
Their record label describes their shows better than I can:
"The band made most of its music free or very cheap, the profits usually being thrown off stages during live shows in infamous GREEN $HOWER$. In concerts -- the design of which was heavily influenced by the writings of DeBord, Koolhaas and Baudrillard -- Young Vulgarians let in dogs from the street to run wild, smashed computer equipment on each-other‘s heads, pushed shopping carts across the ceiling, threw Christmas trees and bread and magazines back and forth with the crowd, climbed everything climbable, tore ceilings apart, stood on their heads while performing, jumped quite high in the air with keytars and afros, and spat bloody sugar at teenagers. "
They forgot to mention Jason sticking the microphone in his mouth while singing.
Oh! Here's another anecdote:
"Apart from that, their singer is a total madman, in a good way. He was wearing this weird orange suit and as soon as he came on he started consuming whole packets of sugar. His antics included... frankenstein-walking through the audience, picking up the mike stand and swinging it like an instrument of death, lying on the ground while wailing gibberish about being in an institution as a child, singing with the microphone stuffed in his mouth while crouched in the fetal position on a speaker stack, and (this was the crowning finish of one of their songs) crawling through the audience back onto the stage and tunneling behind the drumkit, where he stayed, in the fetal position, for about five minutes. I was laughing so hard i was crying. These guys are the SHIT."
I will miss them badly.
4/27/05
Last night I was still studying at around 4 AM (I had to get up at 8:30; this is pretty typical for me) and I "heard" the weirdest noise outside. I'm sure it was a fatigue-induced auditory hallucination.
It sounded like a small dog LAUGHING..
I saw Tricycle Guy again this morning. "Hey," I said to him in greeting.
"Bijorgdow," he replied, whizzing past me. At least that's what it sounded like.
That's basically a microcosm of how this year is going.
5/03/06
Wake up, go to class. Come home, do work. Eat dinner. Do more work. Go to class having not slept. Do work. Go to class. Do work. Come home. Eat dinner. Pass out exhausted. Wake up, go to class...
Only a few more weeks. Then I can be human again. I kind of forget what that's like sometimes. :/ My life as it is now is a cycle of feverish labor then unconsciousness where I have the weirdest dreams. More on those later.
I sort of half-fell-asleep in PChem yesterday while the teacher was talking. My body kept going but my mind was completely asleep, dreaming while I was awake. I thought I was taking notes but instead I have things scrawled in my notebook about Batman and unicorns. While I was doing an assignment earlier I caught myself writing "and maybe you can tell the delta-H a bedtime story".
Lab time in 1/2 hour.
Only a few more weeks. Then I can be human again. I kind of forget what that's like sometimes. :/ My life as it is now is a cycle of feverish labor then unconsciousness where I have the weirdest dreams. More on those later.
I sort of half-fell-asleep in PChem yesterday while the teacher was talking. My body kept going but my mind was completely asleep, dreaming while I was awake. I thought I was taking notes but instead I have things scrawled in my notebook about Batman and unicorns. While I was doing an assignment earlier I caught myself writing "and maybe you can tell the delta-H a bedtime story".
Lab time in 1/2 hour.
memory lane part 1
Okay, I'm tired of obsessively and reclusively re-learning HTML and JavaScript in an attempt to start down a new career path, at least for the night. Here's a bizarre poem I wrote back in 2004.
Good luck figuring this one out. Incidentally, a bunch of lines from it serve as the song titles to my second TBMPHE album, also called Fox For The Five.
Those barbecues
Floating around in those rooms
Why do they?
BUFFALOONS
The sand is seventeen boxes
FOX FOR THE FIVE
And the parch hlang yep khippi zey potu lehng fak.
We spin around madly,
A dance made for three,
And bananas all posmified...
Zip Zap Marie.
Orangutans gibber, wolves howl and yet I
Cannot fashion this chain to be more than it is.
Fazmatazz Arnold and sing of the Zhlee
Who has come a long way
To be cured of the leaps.
I can't stop this whining noise, stuck in my head...
When the train comes, I'm off
To sell motor insurance.
Hal's got the mice, yeah, but I've got the celery.
Kids in small funny boxes.
Here comes 803.
Yeah, 803, now, he connects all the others
And speaks fluent Hebrew and Hap and Gz'mu.
When you've got 803 you've got nothing but Steve.
803! 803!
THURG VIM KOLLI VING HEVE!
I don't know what's more frightening... the fact that I managed to compile such complete nonsense into a poem (of sorts).. or that I still remember it.
Good luck figuring this one out. Incidentally, a bunch of lines from it serve as the song titles to my second TBMPHE album, also called Fox For The Five.
Those barbecues
Floating around in those rooms
Why do they?
BUFFALOONS
The sand is seventeen boxes
FOX FOR THE FIVE
And the parch hlang yep khippi zey potu lehng fak.
We spin around madly,
A dance made for three,
And bananas all posmified...
Zip Zap Marie.
Orangutans gibber, wolves howl and yet I
Cannot fashion this chain to be more than it is.
Fazmatazz Arnold and sing of the Zhlee
Who has come a long way
To be cured of the leaps.
I can't stop this whining noise, stuck in my head...
When the train comes, I'm off
To sell motor insurance.
Hal's got the mice, yeah, but I've got the celery.
Kids in small funny boxes.
Here comes 803.
Yeah, 803, now, he connects all the others
And speaks fluent Hebrew and Hap and Gz'mu.
When you've got 803 you've got nothing but Steve.
803! 803!
THURG VIM KOLLI VING HEVE!
I don't know what's more frightening... the fact that I managed to compile such complete nonsense into a poem (of sorts).. or that I still remember it.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Juxtaposition
I have a lot of things I want to write about. I introduced Jecca to The Shrub recently; I'd like to do a piece on the history of The Shrub, and how we've all formed this weird, "gigantic, alcoholic, argumentative family."
But I also want to write about Acid Night '05, and how it, for me, was really the night everything kind of cemented together, turning us from what was initially a bunch of college kids hanging out to what it is now. And I want to write about the first time I did DXM and the ensuing life-changing experience.. but this will entail writing about the horribly unhappy times that led up to that. There's so much I could write about, and I'm confident in my ability to describe each individual anecdote.
My concern is that I won't be able to string these anecdotes together. I don't want them to be separate from one another, because they aren't. We look at episodes from different parts of our lives, and we think they're discrete sections. "This was the time I was happy because of this or that. This one over here was the time I was unhappy because of something else." But these things aren't discrete. They all entwine together, weaving themselves into a pattern, and everyone's individual patterns all weave together in some way or another and form something even larger, inconceivably vast.
I can't really describe what I'm feeling right now. It's intensely positive, that's all I can really say. Everything is very good right now, and I'm a pretty happy Rusty at the moment. Perhaps because of this, I've been thinking about a lot of things, and reading through old LJ posts, and I've been able to see things in a new light. I won't go so far as to say I understand everything. I understand a lot more of it, but I can't exactly put into words what it is I understand.
Our lives all tell stories, like I was saying above. The meaning behind mine seems to be, thus far, about how we create our own realities to one degree or another. I'm not saying that just thinking about things in a positive light is going to turn everything into rainbows and puppies. If you're living in some war-torn nightmare scenario, all the positive thinking in the world isn't going to change your daily life. You're still going to get shot at every day. You're still going to spend your waking moments in fear of what's to come.
But you can still choose how it affects you. Obviously, the worse the situation is, the harder it will be to stay afloat. But the choice is still always there. I've been through my own personal hells, yet I still found happiness at different times, despite the darkness around me. Conversely, I've seen heaven in a grain of sand, as the poem goes, and could not reach it because of the cages I had constructed around myself.
Somehow, when you compare the years I spent with my grandmother to the past ten years or so, they both balance each other out. The former was like blips of light in the midst of a vast, all-encompassing darkness. The latter was like playing in some divine, sunlit garden, only to be periodically swayed back into the pitch-black forest surrounding it by the words of formless demons.
I know none of this makes sense. It barely makes sense even to me. What I do know, however, is that I've somehow managed to juxtapose the two themes- light in the midst of darkness and darkness in the midst of light- and, somehow, through this, I've managed to learn how to just *be*.
How this feels is beyond my capacity for description.
In other news... reading through my LiveJournal reminded me of something. I need to resurrect The Nvoblamolux Dhasiddi Du Epic.
In case I've never mentioned this before, this is, in the words of the LJ post, about "an elderly-ish man who worships a newspaper, wears a bright red bathrobe everywhere, has all sorts of weird imaginary friends, and eventually falls in love with and later marries a saucepan that falls on his head".
...Yeah. Nvoblamolux Dhasiddi Du needs to return, walking sideways and shaking his head in rhythm with the Mary Tyler Moore Show's theme song all the way.
<3.
But I also want to write about Acid Night '05, and how it, for me, was really the night everything kind of cemented together, turning us from what was initially a bunch of college kids hanging out to what it is now. And I want to write about the first time I did DXM and the ensuing life-changing experience.. but this will entail writing about the horribly unhappy times that led up to that. There's so much I could write about, and I'm confident in my ability to describe each individual anecdote.
My concern is that I won't be able to string these anecdotes together. I don't want them to be separate from one another, because they aren't. We look at episodes from different parts of our lives, and we think they're discrete sections. "This was the time I was happy because of this or that. This one over here was the time I was unhappy because of something else." But these things aren't discrete. They all entwine together, weaving themselves into a pattern, and everyone's individual patterns all weave together in some way or another and form something even larger, inconceivably vast.
I can't really describe what I'm feeling right now. It's intensely positive, that's all I can really say. Everything is very good right now, and I'm a pretty happy Rusty at the moment. Perhaps because of this, I've been thinking about a lot of things, and reading through old LJ posts, and I've been able to see things in a new light. I won't go so far as to say I understand everything. I understand a lot more of it, but I can't exactly put into words what it is I understand.
Our lives all tell stories, like I was saying above. The meaning behind mine seems to be, thus far, about how we create our own realities to one degree or another. I'm not saying that just thinking about things in a positive light is going to turn everything into rainbows and puppies. If you're living in some war-torn nightmare scenario, all the positive thinking in the world isn't going to change your daily life. You're still going to get shot at every day. You're still going to spend your waking moments in fear of what's to come.
But you can still choose how it affects you. Obviously, the worse the situation is, the harder it will be to stay afloat. But the choice is still always there. I've been through my own personal hells, yet I still found happiness at different times, despite the darkness around me. Conversely, I've seen heaven in a grain of sand, as the poem goes, and could not reach it because of the cages I had constructed around myself.
Somehow, when you compare the years I spent with my grandmother to the past ten years or so, they both balance each other out. The former was like blips of light in the midst of a vast, all-encompassing darkness. The latter was like playing in some divine, sunlit garden, only to be periodically swayed back into the pitch-black forest surrounding it by the words of formless demons.
I know none of this makes sense. It barely makes sense even to me. What I do know, however, is that I've somehow managed to juxtapose the two themes- light in the midst of darkness and darkness in the midst of light- and, somehow, through this, I've managed to learn how to just *be*.
How this feels is beyond my capacity for description.
In other news... reading through my LiveJournal reminded me of something. I need to resurrect The Nvoblamolux Dhasiddi Du Epic.
In case I've never mentioned this before, this is, in the words of the LJ post, about "an elderly-ish man who worships a newspaper, wears a bright red bathrobe everywhere, has all sorts of weird imaginary friends, and eventually falls in love with and later marries a saucepan that falls on his head".
...Yeah. Nvoblamolux Dhasiddi Du needs to return, walking sideways and shaking his head in rhythm with the Mary Tyler Moore Show's theme song all the way.
<3.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Politics! This will be a rarity, don't worry.
Weird experience last night.
I went to White Clay Drive (Jan's house) to watch the Vice Presidential debate with friends, after having assisted my family with the (now hopefully completed) car fiasco earlier in the evening. The debate was... interesting. The weird experience, though, came before I even got there. You'll see what I mean.
But first, a little about politics... If you've talked to me in the past month or so, you know that I hate Sarah Palin. Well, now I REALLY hate Sarah Palin.
Look, I don't like Biden, either. He moved to have Salvia divinorum made illegal in Delaware, thanks to that kid that supposedly killed himself after doing it (Brett Chidester). Newsflash with that one: I know someone that knew him, and apparently, though I'm digressing by even saying this much, salvia did not lead Brett Chidester to kill himself.
By saying this I'm not stepping aboard my "End The Drug War" soapbox, I'm just trying to prove a point. Biden is a politician, and therefore greedy, self-aggrandizing, and hypocritical, just like any other American politician. If he thinks something will advance his career, he'll vote for it, regardless of whether or not it's actually reasonable or helpful. That's the nature of politics. No democratically elected official is going to ride in on his or her white horse and save the public at the expense of his or her own career.
Which is why perhaps the only valid point Sarah Palin made last night was that Biden seems to have flip-flopped on the war issue. When the sentiment regarding invading Iraq was positive (or, at least as positive as it was ever going to get), Biden was all for the U.S. invading Iraq even if it had to do so itself. Now, the official Barack Obama page claims he and Joe Biden are "fully committed to ending the war on Iraq".
So essentially, he's not to be trusted. But why, then, do I find him more palatable than Sarah Palin?
Because what we're dealing with as far as Biden goes is simple, unadulterated greed. Greed can be reasoned with. I realize this is a naive and idealistic notion, but there is the chance, slight though it may be, that if we as a society manage to convince people like him that the war in Iraq is economically (or possibly even just politically) unsound, they just might listen. Again, the odds against this happening are astronomical, given the vast amounts of money that change hands during wartime, as well as the ignorance of the vast unquestioning flag-waving hordes out there, but theoretically it is possible.
Sarah Palin, though? We're not dealing with reason here. I'm sure part of the reason she's running for VP is the morally questionable, but still understandable lust for wealth and status... but I don't think it's the entire reason. She's on a crusade. Unlike Biden, her support for the war in Iraq has nothing to do with the way the political winds are blowing. She really believes in it.
And what frightens me to no end is that the reason she believes in it is because of her religion. She wants to continue good old Dubya's crusade against the Middle East so that we can keep Israel safe. And if Bush is any indication, her motives for doing so have nothing to do with protecting innocent Israeli civilians from harm and everything to do with a lot of ancient bullshit about rebuilding the Temple of Solomon so that Armageddon can take place.
It isn't at all that I'm out for the destruction of Israel, by any means. I have a ton of Jewish friends, and it's rumored among my family that I may have some degree of Jewish background. Israel, on it's own, is not the problem. The problem is the boorish and hopelessly barbaric policies our nation espouses regarding the protection of Israel. We do nothing diplomatically over there, and on the rare occasions we do, it's from the standpoint of the Paternalistic White Man giving the shining apple of reason to the dirty brown Arabs. The entire situation over there is mindblowingly complex, and will never be solved with brute force and/or imperialistic attitudes.
Like I said, Biden will support bills and policies that may well be backwards, unjust, and oppressive if he thinks it will advance him politically. But again, this means he can be swayed, even if only theoretically, if it can be shown that such bills and policies are, in fact, not advantageous to support.
I said, earlier, that there are no "knights in shining armor" politically. Well, perhaps I was a bit mistaken. Sarah Palin may well be one. But she's not going to scoop you up out of the arms of danger, put you on her white horse, and ride you to her beautiful castle in some idyllic realm of peace, where you'll live happily ever after. No, she's out to bring us all back to a world where men are burly, jocular hunters, women are barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, and men, women and children alike literally fear their vengeful, terrible god. She's a knight, all right, straight out of the Middle Ages.
Honestly, I don't care what people choose to believe in. I have my beliefs, you have yours. As long as your beliefs don't affect my life, I don't care if you believe God is a giant hamburger and that when we die we all become his condiments.
I do care, however, when religion plays a role in policy, with my main griping point being the war in Iraq, or in general, really. You want to send our troops to war to keep us safe? Fine. That's their job, when you think about it. (Whether or not our conquest of Iraq ever had anything to do with national security is another issue I won't discuss here, but the reasoning, at least, is sound.) But don't you dare send people's husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers, and friends to war for your personal beliefs. There's really only two degrees of separation, at best, between those of us here in the States and the military over in Iraq or Afghanistan. You either have friends or family members over there, or you know someone who does.
I hated Sarah Palin even more last night after I saw her simpering face smirking at Biden's admittedly repetitious and woefully out-of-touch attempts at defending his position. It was the arrogance I saw in her, really, that did it for me. The fact that some soccer- oops, excuse me: HOCKEY- mom, operating based on Cretaceous-era beliefs, can not only directly affect the lives of millions of people worldwide, but can also feel very secure about her right to do so, is absolutely insane. The fact that said hockey mom may have a hand in our friends and family members not coming back from Iraq for another few years is monstrous.
And the fact that the Cretaceous-era beliefs she holds, which have at least an influence on her rabid support for our administration's tragically flawed policies on Israel, may in fact be the ticket to getting her elected thanks to the shockingly high number of people who also share such prehistoric notions, is horribly disheartening.
I don't want to register as a Democrat, because I'm absolutely not one. I'm a hard-line anarcho-libertarian, thankyouverymuch. But I'm tempted to vote for the Democratic side, just this once, just to make sure I can look back on things and say "Well, McCain and Palin still won, kids, which is why you're wearing loincloths and we have to rummage through a lot of radioactive waste every day to find dinner, but I didn't vote for 'em."
Because I think this election is somehow important, and this has to do with the "weird experience" I mentioned earlier. I went to the liquor store to buy my current liquor fad product (Mike's Hard Lemonade), and the clerks were watching the debate. I made an instant friend just by talking about how I hated Palin. I walked down North College on my way to White Clay Drive, and you could see the debate being watched inside people's houses and apartments.
I'm generally pretty proud of my absolute disconnect with pop culture. My sister gets some celebrity magazine; I have no idea who the people are in it. I don't watch TV, and I haven't voluntarily turned on the radio in years. My point here is that it's very rare for me to be involved in something that the majority of people are also involved with, and it gave me a really eerie feeling.
People are fed up with all the lies and corruption. The battle lines seem to be forming, between those who would rocket everything back to some nightmarish 1950's Leave It To Beaver scenario (with guns and far more degradation of women, of course), and those who, regardless of how much we may blunder everything, do have at least some desire to improve things.
The Chinese had a curse: "may you live in interesting times". It's too soon to tell if it really is a curse or a blessing, but it's quite a ride, thus far.
I went to White Clay Drive (Jan's house) to watch the Vice Presidential debate with friends, after having assisted my family with the (now hopefully completed) car fiasco earlier in the evening. The debate was... interesting. The weird experience, though, came before I even got there. You'll see what I mean.
But first, a little about politics... If you've talked to me in the past month or so, you know that I hate Sarah Palin. Well, now I REALLY hate Sarah Palin.
Look, I don't like Biden, either. He moved to have Salvia divinorum made illegal in Delaware, thanks to that kid that supposedly killed himself after doing it (Brett Chidester). Newsflash with that one: I know someone that knew him, and apparently, though I'm digressing by even saying this much, salvia did not lead Brett Chidester to kill himself.
By saying this I'm not stepping aboard my "End The Drug War" soapbox, I'm just trying to prove a point. Biden is a politician, and therefore greedy, self-aggrandizing, and hypocritical, just like any other American politician. If he thinks something will advance his career, he'll vote for it, regardless of whether or not it's actually reasonable or helpful. That's the nature of politics. No democratically elected official is going to ride in on his or her white horse and save the public at the expense of his or her own career.
Which is why perhaps the only valid point Sarah Palin made last night was that Biden seems to have flip-flopped on the war issue. When the sentiment regarding invading Iraq was positive (or, at least as positive as it was ever going to get), Biden was all for the U.S. invading Iraq even if it had to do so itself. Now, the official Barack Obama page claims he and Joe Biden are "fully committed to ending the war on Iraq".
So essentially, he's not to be trusted. But why, then, do I find him more palatable than Sarah Palin?
Because what we're dealing with as far as Biden goes is simple, unadulterated greed. Greed can be reasoned with. I realize this is a naive and idealistic notion, but there is the chance, slight though it may be, that if we as a society manage to convince people like him that the war in Iraq is economically (or possibly even just politically) unsound, they just might listen. Again, the odds against this happening are astronomical, given the vast amounts of money that change hands during wartime, as well as the ignorance of the vast unquestioning flag-waving hordes out there, but theoretically it is possible.
Sarah Palin, though? We're not dealing with reason here. I'm sure part of the reason she's running for VP is the morally questionable, but still understandable lust for wealth and status... but I don't think it's the entire reason. She's on a crusade. Unlike Biden, her support for the war in Iraq has nothing to do with the way the political winds are blowing. She really believes in it.
And what frightens me to no end is that the reason she believes in it is because of her religion. She wants to continue good old Dubya's crusade against the Middle East so that we can keep Israel safe. And if Bush is any indication, her motives for doing so have nothing to do with protecting innocent Israeli civilians from harm and everything to do with a lot of ancient bullshit about rebuilding the Temple of Solomon so that Armageddon can take place.
It isn't at all that I'm out for the destruction of Israel, by any means. I have a ton of Jewish friends, and it's rumored among my family that I may have some degree of Jewish background. Israel, on it's own, is not the problem. The problem is the boorish and hopelessly barbaric policies our nation espouses regarding the protection of Israel. We do nothing diplomatically over there, and on the rare occasions we do, it's from the standpoint of the Paternalistic White Man giving the shining apple of reason to the dirty brown Arabs. The entire situation over there is mindblowingly complex, and will never be solved with brute force and/or imperialistic attitudes.
Like I said, Biden will support bills and policies that may well be backwards, unjust, and oppressive if he thinks it will advance him politically. But again, this means he can be swayed, even if only theoretically, if it can be shown that such bills and policies are, in fact, not advantageous to support.
I said, earlier, that there are no "knights in shining armor" politically. Well, perhaps I was a bit mistaken. Sarah Palin may well be one. But she's not going to scoop you up out of the arms of danger, put you on her white horse, and ride you to her beautiful castle in some idyllic realm of peace, where you'll live happily ever after. No, she's out to bring us all back to a world where men are burly, jocular hunters, women are barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, and men, women and children alike literally fear their vengeful, terrible god. She's a knight, all right, straight out of the Middle Ages.
Honestly, I don't care what people choose to believe in. I have my beliefs, you have yours. As long as your beliefs don't affect my life, I don't care if you believe God is a giant hamburger and that when we die we all become his condiments.
I do care, however, when religion plays a role in policy, with my main griping point being the war in Iraq, or in general, really. You want to send our troops to war to keep us safe? Fine. That's their job, when you think about it. (Whether or not our conquest of Iraq ever had anything to do with national security is another issue I won't discuss here, but the reasoning, at least, is sound.) But don't you dare send people's husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers, and friends to war for your personal beliefs. There's really only two degrees of separation, at best, between those of us here in the States and the military over in Iraq or Afghanistan. You either have friends or family members over there, or you know someone who does.
I hated Sarah Palin even more last night after I saw her simpering face smirking at Biden's admittedly repetitious and woefully out-of-touch attempts at defending his position. It was the arrogance I saw in her, really, that did it for me. The fact that some soccer- oops, excuse me: HOCKEY- mom, operating based on Cretaceous-era beliefs, can not only directly affect the lives of millions of people worldwide, but can also feel very secure about her right to do so, is absolutely insane. The fact that said hockey mom may have a hand in our friends and family members not coming back from Iraq for another few years is monstrous.
And the fact that the Cretaceous-era beliefs she holds, which have at least an influence on her rabid support for our administration's tragically flawed policies on Israel, may in fact be the ticket to getting her elected thanks to the shockingly high number of people who also share such prehistoric notions, is horribly disheartening.
I don't want to register as a Democrat, because I'm absolutely not one. I'm a hard-line anarcho-libertarian, thankyouverymuch. But I'm tempted to vote for the Democratic side, just this once, just to make sure I can look back on things and say "Well, McCain and Palin still won, kids, which is why you're wearing loincloths and we have to rummage through a lot of radioactive waste every day to find dinner, but I didn't vote for 'em."
Because I think this election is somehow important, and this has to do with the "weird experience" I mentioned earlier. I went to the liquor store to buy my current liquor fad product (Mike's Hard Lemonade), and the clerks were watching the debate. I made an instant friend just by talking about how I hated Palin. I walked down North College on my way to White Clay Drive, and you could see the debate being watched inside people's houses and apartments.
I'm generally pretty proud of my absolute disconnect with pop culture. My sister gets some celebrity magazine; I have no idea who the people are in it. I don't watch TV, and I haven't voluntarily turned on the radio in years. My point here is that it's very rare for me to be involved in something that the majority of people are also involved with, and it gave me a really eerie feeling.
People are fed up with all the lies and corruption. The battle lines seem to be forming, between those who would rocket everything back to some nightmarish 1950's Leave It To Beaver scenario (with guns and far more degradation of women, of course), and those who, regardless of how much we may blunder everything, do have at least some desire to improve things.
The Chinese had a curse: "may you live in interesting times". It's too soon to tell if it really is a curse or a blessing, but it's quite a ride, thus far.
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