Inquiring Minds Want to Know, Part the First

Avid reader Jeff Miller recently posed the following question: What's the deal with Libertarians? We here at the Fiery Sword can't resist an opportunity to expound extemporaneously on subjects over which we have only the slightest mastery, as we take the often surprisingly acceptable results as further confirmation that we are Always Right About Stuff, so we had R'n'D work up this nifty little Q'n'A feature on their R'n'R time.

Well Jeff, some might tell you that Libertarians are pretty much just anarchists who prefer powerlines and interstate highways to homemade candles and moccasins. As to what, exactly, the deal is with them, we have prepared this answer, after perhaps a full two to three minutes of slightly distracted rumination:

The deal with Libertarians is that they thought that they were firmly ensconced in the well-heeled, self-satisfied embrace of the American right-wing, but owing to some careful political jujitsu by the Bush junta, they have awoken, crabby and disoriented, on the center-left, for all practical purposes. Let this fact inform your dealings with them, and you will find that things go much more smoothly.

Exit, Staged Left

In the heady days of my youth, I played organized sports. Should our team come to the field and find that the other team was down a man, we would do the sporting thing and play down a man as well. Some folks never learned the finer lessons of sportsmanship, and they regarded this type of action as "the nice thing to do" or as a charitable concession on our part. They never quite caught on to the fact that, if we had not put one of our boys on the sideline, we left ourselves open to two equally unpleasant outcomes: either we won with an unfair advantage, and claimed no glory, or we lost, even with an advantage, and reaped an even more bitter defeat. It's not a selfless act, it's a Machiavellian political calculation.

Cindy Sheehan has retired from the protest racket, effective today. If her press release is to be believed, we will never again be subjected to the stomach-turning sight of her being carted off by stone-faced peace officers, the signature mawkish grin of hippie nostalgia plastered across her face. This should be cause for relief among the Forces of Goodness and Light everywhere, because frankly, the woman was terrible at her (self-appointed) job. More even than by the war in Iraq, Sheehan and Bush are bound together by a shared and ghastly combination of basically good intentions, glaring incompetence, and woefully unfettered access to the bully pulpit. Sheehan's agitation for peace, like Bush's attempts to ward off the threat of tourism, ought to have been met with the same response as a five-year-old who attempts to drive the car to the grocery store to pick up milk and eggs: Golly gee, what a very nice thought, don't ever try anything like that again, YOU. ARE. NOT. QUALIFIED. This is a grown-up thing, a tool not a toy.

When offered a position as dreadfully important as "face of the anti-war movement," the first thing one ought to do is engage in some vigorous introspection. The very first question on one's mind ought to be "Am I up to this?" When I first heard that there was a grieving mother camped outside of the president's Texas cowboy playpen, I thought a valid and time-honored statement was being made about the American people's disagreement with the choices of their leadership. And for one brief, shining moment, it was. And then it devolved, predictably, into a peculiarly American variety of celebrity farce. Hippocrates summed it up pretty well when he said "First, do no harm." Because, you see, if you're not up to the job, there's quite a lot of harm to be done. The fracturing and/or discrediting of the (vitally important) peace movement, for instance, not to mention the entire (albeit already rather fractious) left wing of American politics.

So now that Sheehan is bowing out, apparently more from her own exhaustion than from any ability to read the writing on the wall, we here on left are obligated to accept the resignation of an equally embarrassing faux representative from the far right. I will accept Malkin, Coulter, Hannity, or Gonzales, unless anyone has a better suggestion. It's really only sporting of us, you know.

In My Country

Yesterday, on my way home from work, about a block from my house, I discovered something kind of unsettling: my brand new brakes, which are nominally anti-lock, sometimes lock. The guy in front of me accelerated as though he was going to go through the yellow light, and then abruptly changed his mind for reasons which will become evident below. I slammed my brakes, and the car slowed, and then the brake pedal ceased to resist my foot and the car ceased to slow, and I hit this dude's Honda.

It was a low-speed collision, there was no damage and no airbags were deployed. The reason for the Honda's caution became readily apparent, as the cop who had stopped at the other side of the traffic light turned on his flashers and waved us both over to the parking lot. I got out and checked with the other guy, and we shook hands and agreed that there was no damage and we were both okay, and that was nice, and I apologized and he said it was nothing, and I felt quite relieved. The cop then took my license and asked the other guy if he had one, and the other guy smiled and said "In my country."

Immigration laws are laws of necessity, not choice. So much of our society and system of government, from politics to finance to education to medicine, is predicated on everybody being equal in the eyes of the law, and thus recognized by the eyes of the law. We don't have laws against unsanctioned immigration because we are xenophobic, we have them because we have a system that we all enjoy, that we all agreed upon in some form or other, and the proper functioning of which requires certain rules.

The passenger in the other car mumbled something to the driver and then walked away across the parking lot when the cop asked to speak to me. He asked me if I wanted to pursue the issue. I told him the accident was pretty clearly my fault, mechanical failure or not, and that any pursuing was the other guy's decision. The cop looked up at me and scowled, and told me that the other guy wasn't really in a position to pursue anything. He walked back over to the other car and starting asking more questions, taking pains to make clear right off the bat that he was no fan of illegals. Tattered papers were produced and exchanged, and the accident was quickly becoming the least of this guy's problems. I tried to signal my apologies over the cop's shoulder, and the guy gave me a hapless smile and raised his arms in the international sign language for "Oh well, what can you do?" The cop turned around and told me that I was free to go, and that I really ought to act upon that freedom.

Mr. Artiz was in the wrong place at the wrong time yesterday evening. In a number of ways. First of all, he was in front of me, my over-zealous desire to get home, and my dubious brakes. Secondly, he was in Arlington, Virginia, without legal citizenship of the United States. One was not his fault and the other, barring abduction/blackmail/et cetera, was. I'm not sure exactly what happens to illegal immigrants when they get stopped by police for being victims of someone else's criminal negligence, but the immigrant in question most certainly found out the hard way last night, and I feel pretty bad about it.

There are those who would celebrate this sort of thing. They would congratulate themselves on doing their part, however accidentally (haha), to combat the alien menace. There are those who would decry the injustice of it all, that this guy who was just minding his own business and obeying the laws of the road should be subjected to interrogation and criminal penalty on account of someone else's folly. I'm not really entirely in either camp. I feel really terrible that I might have caused this guy to be separated from his family, that I might have swiped bread off some kid's table, that I might have screwed this guy over at his most vulnerable position, perhaps tantalizingly close to getting himself on the right side of the law. But alternately, he knew the rules of the game, and he knew where he stood in regards to them. Like a British officer whistling "Tipperary" in the trenches, this guy's defeated smile signalled an acceptance of fate, and of the risks inherent in his actions. Sometimes, out of a clear blue sky, things just go completely sideways. What can you do?

The US Congress is debating a reform of current immigration law right now. By the sound of things, neither side of the political spectrum is pleased with the whole bill. Because of that fact, I'm inclined to support it, or at least not oppose it, and here's why: if we could grant the prosperity of our nation to every other person around the world, we would. We cannot, however, guarantee that the prosperity we now enjoy, the enviable conditions that cause people to flock to our country in search of a better life, can be maintained if we allow everyone who wants to come here to do so. There's no comfort in that equation, there's no moral high ground to be claimed, there is just the unfortunate reality that our situation will be either exclusive or unsustainable. That should cause some guilt, but that guilt can be acknowledged without diminishing the pride of citizenship. Of those to whom much is given, much is expected. So my apologies to Mr. Artiz, and I wish him the best in his attempts to enjoy the freedoms and opportunities that have been granted to me since birth. There are obviously some advantages to doing it legally, but the fact that he didn't avail himself of that option earns him the same amount of ill will from me that I earned from him.

An Interested Party Weighs In

I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne: "Let my armies be the rocks, and the trees, and the birds in the sky!"

Hope For Us?

What the hell happened to the Jealous Sound? Can we start a petition to get these guys to finish their album? Apparently there was some word in January of '06 that they were working on a record for the Militia Group, but no one has heard anything since. I'm still on the mailing list for Better Looking Records because of these guys, and I haven't heard crap since I ordered their EP two years ago. This recession will not stand, man. Kill Them With Kindness is a fascinating, endlessly rewarding album, it got me all the way across west Texas on repeat with its sparse, shimmering guitar interplay and jittery, shifting rhythms falling all over each other. Somebody please track down Blair Shehan, Pedro Bonito, John McGinnis, and Adam Wade, aim them back towards the studio, and give each one a swift kick in the pants to get him going. Seriously. I have spoken.

The Prayers and Tears of Jesus Quintana

Buying a house introduces you to all sorts of strange new things and concerns. The most unexpectedly entertaining of these is this. It's safe for work, yes, but as you will discover, it is also undeniably pornographic. It is sick and prurient and disturbing and dangerous and so fascinating that whole hours of your life will disappear into it, never to return. Because, as you will learn, THEY ARE EVERYWHERE.

The relationship between the unencompassable variety of human sexual desires and the law has never been an easy one, and the line between the harmless pervert and the sex criminal is blurry and ever-shifting, but the penalty for those discovered to be on the wrong side of the line is absolute and unwavering. These men (and I have yet to find a woman on the list, although there must be some) are now at odds with their society. The difference between the guy who bedded a 17-year-old with a fake ID and the serial child rapist is erased by the common designation of "sex offender." Everybody goes on the list. Everyone gets his picture on the internet. Every alias is held up for scrutiny. They have been paraded in shame through the town square, and every public encounter they have is haunted by the same question: "Recognize me?"

The closest one to my house is two or three blocks. We call him "The Todd" because humor, as Gene will tell you, is how people come to grips with the things that disturb us. The Todd, in his photograph, sports the same basic demeanor as Khaled Sheikh Mohammed did, upon being awakened by the United States Special Forces sometime before dawn, with nought but a wifebeater and a Selleck-worthy moustache'n'chest-hair combo (perhaps he was at a costume party the night before?) to protect him. But where KSM sports the disgruntlement of a freshly-bathed tabby, The Todd evinces the pleading desperation of a man for whom the crime was quick and the penalty slow. In his eyes is reflected the future, dark and inexorable as a storm at sea, with every thought and movement tied directly back to the horrible act that led him to be in front of that camera.

Browsing through the kid-touchers, wife-beaters, father-rapers, and uncategorizably disturbed folks who live in my neighborhood (what are "crimes against nature?"), I found myself judging the pervs not by the nature of their crimes, but by the emotions signalled by their mugshots. Some were visibly angry, some were smugly contemptuous, some were stone-faced, and some, like The Todd, were sadly bewildered, adrift in the wake of their own loss of self-control. These men are wreckers of lives, perpetrators of horror, somebody somewhere's personal demon and tormentor, but that last group are wrecked and tormented themselves. The forced isolation of prison would be a relief for these men, because every glance, every meeting, every job application or knock at the door brings the same apprehension, the fear of the Knowing Look. It's a peculiarly cruel punishment for a peculiarly cruel crime, and once you look up your address in the database, you'll be qualified to mete it out.

American Idyll

The United States is staggeringly, ineffably huge. From geography to ideology to finance to architecture, there is only so much commonality of experience to be found. The states assert their limited sovereignty, the regional industries delineate their fiefdoms, churches, news organs, and even restaurant chains stake out their territories in the minds and municipalities of their adherents. The city mouse and the country mouse are only vaguely aware of how the other half lives.

So if one were to aspire to lead this country, to be the central, chief executive, how would one craft a message that would cut across these divisions, that would ignite the fire of support in enough people to elevate one to the top job? Because this is America, not Great Britain, there is no division between the avatar and the manager of this country. Taking the reins of power means accepting all the trappings of national cultural identity.

There is one school that takes after the Oracle at Delphi, striving mightily to keep the message vague enough that people can hear only what they want to hear. This is the path of darkness. With candidates campaigning from afar, through television and cattle-calls, carefully scripted to avoid the collective embarrassment of the entire field of contenders, there is a serious danger that the Bromide Candidate can seize the mantle of cultural identity without ever demonstrating the skills necessary for government. The catastrophe that results from this quirk of the American electoral process is evident.

So keep your eyes open, countrymen, and keep your minds sharp. If the words of a politician pass through you like a phantom, leaving no discernible trace, take that as evidence of the substance of said candidate's character. Stay vigilant against those who describe that quality as "electability," for they seek to deceive you. This is one nation, indivisible, but like the A-Team, it is our differences that make us strong. If someone comes to you claiming to bring vague, unifying ideas, cast him aside. If someone comes to you with strong ideas, the kind of vigorous thought that challenges and threatens, engage him directly and plumb the depth of his intellect, because this nation was not raised on the bending and scraping of pandering sycophants, but on the clash and conflict of new and dangerous hallucinations.

A Brother's Gonna Work It Out

Follow me for a second: you walk into the polling place, present your ID, and stroll over to the voting booth. You look over the options, you select which bond issues you support or don't support, you wonder briefly if this is one of those Diebold machines you read about, and then you get to the screen where you are going to select a presidential candidate. You're a smart person, you've paid attention to the issues, and you're just about to vote for the candidate whom you feel is best qualified for the job, or at least the best qualified among the usual pathetic pool of applicants, and then you stop. When reaching for the screen, you have caught sight of your hand, the back of it, specifically. Wait a second, the skin on your hand is a shade of brown, and not a tanned brown, or a latino brown, or a blotchy liver-spotted brown. It's the color of skin that a certain subsection of the populace has, those who are casually termed "black people."

Oh shit. It's time to rethink things. You're black. You pull your hand away from the voting screen. You've just realized that you're not a person, you're a Black Voter. That means that your vote isn't a normal vote, it's a very special vote, fraught with all sorts of heady cultural horsefeathers. And then, right before your eyes, the other options on the screen fade away, and the only candidates you can see are Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards. The issues of the day fade from your mind, and all you can think is, "Gee, Hillary spoke in a fake southern patois during that one stop on her campaign, that was pretty great. Obama has the same skin-color, within the strictures of Jim Crow law, as I do, but is he black enough? John Edwards said he would help poor people, and Kanye and I care a lot about poor people's issues ever since every face on the television during the Katrina footage was as dark as mine. WWAlSharptonD?!"

Whoa! That's quite distressing!

If this happens to you, the Fiery Sword recommends that you quickly remind yourself and the Washington Post that there is a dream extant, dreamt often and dreamt before, that one day a man's worth will be judged not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. At which point you are free, once again, to vote your conscience, and not your melanin. This pre-election public service announcement has been brought to you by respect for ones' self and one's fellow human beings.

A Not-So-Well-Regulated Militia

Apparently, a group in Fairfax County held an event that they called the "Bloomberg Gun Giveaway" the other day, in which they raffled off a pair of expensive weapons to raise money for the gun stores that are being sued by New York's mayor for the illegal sales of handguns that were used in crimes in NYC. Now, I don't really like New Yorkers, especially outside of New York City (they tend to spend a lot of time bitching about how the hardware store in THEIR neighborhood stays open till 4am, and what the hell is wrong with this town that there isn't such a store HERE), but if a gun store in VA is illegally selling weapons that are subsequently used to commit crimes in NY, and VA doesn't appear too concerned, isn't Bloomberg's concern justified? Because, you know, guns are great and all, but this is a country that places a certain amount of emphasis on the rule of law, generally. So if someone is habitually breaking the law, and doing so in a way that brings a lot of negative attention to gun enthusiasts (by killing and robbing people with illegally purchased guns), wouldn't you think those gun enthusiasts would be the first to advocate for the shuttering of the offending store?

Or is that too reasonable? Totally. Let's all react like 12-year-olds who got their videogames turned off and have a "gun giveaway."

Let's Blogroll!

I have not yet begun to blog. But I have one now, so, you know, baby steps.