Taboo You

Jay Michaelson's article in Religious Dispatches "Why Rick Santorum Can’t Just Say: God Doesn’t Want You To Be Gay," makes a fascinating argument about the translation in the famous condemnation in Leviticus of male gay sex. Taboo  Among his credentials is that he is a Hebrew scholar so it seems plausible to take his theory seriously. The argument covers other passages in the Bible but still boils down to his claim that "abomination" is a mis-translation of the Hebrew word "toevah" which, after some machinations, he decides is better translated as "taboo."Abomination?

Michaelson seems to believe this is some sort of revolutionary improvement in the Bible's view of the sexuality part of being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered. An 'abomination' gets a dictionary rendition of 'something that causes disgust or abhorrence' while 'taboo' according to Webster's is (1)forbidden to profane use or contact because of what are held to be dangerous supernatural powers, (2) banned on grounds of morality or taste.

Abomination at least in modern usage comes down to something gross, while Taboo is forbidden or banned on grounds its profane or an immoral status. At least with respect to the proscription in Leviticus, it seems to me that matters have not been made tremendously more lenient, but in fact are if anything worse. To get things to come out slightly better, Michaelson defines Abomination as "conjur[ing] up images of things which should not exist on the face of the earth: three-legged babies, oceans choked with oil, or Cheez-Whiz" -- Leading some religious people  to regard "Homosexuality [as] unnatural, a perversion, a disease, an abomination." On then other hand in the Hebrew Bible the word "toevah" he says is used only in the context of practices and attributes occurring in foreign tribes or civilizations and thus, on that account, forbidden to the Jews. The Israelites are warned in Deuteronomy 18:9-12 "not to learn the toevot (plural of toevah) of those nations." They are warned about stuff like magicians, forture tellers, charmers, and witches. 

Michaelson writes "Deut. 12:31, 13:14, 17:4, 27:15, and 32:16 further identify idolatry, child sacrifice, witchcraft, and other “foreign” practices as toevah, and Deut. 20:18 says that avoiding toevah justifies the genocide of the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanaites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. So, toevah is serious, but it is serious as a particular class of cultic offense: a transgression of national boundary. It is certainly not “abomination.” Nationalism

Okay. Let's review. Toevah can justify genocide, but don't worry it's about nationalism, so queers can relax because unlike child sacrifice, genocide, and witchcraft, toevah doesn't call queer sex anything as crummy as an "abomination."

Deuteronomy it appears assumes the existence of charmers, fortune tellers, witches -- that is people with magic powers however limited in scope. The problem is that charmers and witches cannot do any magic, and fortune tellers don't exist because no one has knowledge of the future. The matter of justifying waring against and either exterminating or enslaving Hittites, Amorites, Canaanaites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites is slightly problematic. A god who commanded or tolerated such wars and exterminations would be evil and if they-he-it-she existed would be unworthy of worship much less obedience. How "toevah" can be so mild a notion, a mere social taboo, whilst when it comes to foreigners warrants genocide, slavery, and rape is a good example of why theology can so often be clever when hardly ever making any sense.

Maybe I'll learn more as I keep plodding through the Bible, but so far the inescapable conclusion is that it condemns something for which there is nothing wrong. It does condemn; and there's is nothing wrong with being LGBTQ. It cannot be squared, accommodated, fudged, finessed, lavenderwashed. It claims all sorts of nonsense. It is a reservoir of increasingly false empirical claims, and nonsensical moral/ethical claims. From the point of its plausibility and authority, it simply cannot make a difference whether "toevah" means abomination, taboo, or Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Spinal Tap & Disaster Insurance

Appropriately, since it is MLK Day, our subject is what to do if the Republicans win and the Democrats are tempted to bail. As unexpected and dejecting shit always happens, we have to prepare for the Romney Administration. The key to survival of this debacle will be holding a majority in the US Senate. Historically, unlike Republicans who never vote for a new Democratic President's program, many many Democrats voted for the Reagan and the George W tax cuts.

So while the GOP has all these “contracts” that its candidates must sign – from putting Reagan on Mt. Rushmore, to never raising any tax for any reason if should the Republic be in mortal peril to vowing to fight gay marriage as if it were typhoid or  cholera. we need some nail-them-down-before-they-are-tempted-to-compromise-based-on-fear-of-the-prevailing-political-mood-of-their-constituents.

Proposal One: Read Our Lips, No New Tax Cuts For The Rich

I, ____________________, vow swear or affirm before my God, my Higher Being, or my Sacred Honor, that should the Republican Candidate be elected, take office, and propose a tax cut for any person or family making more than the then minimum wage income, I will refuse to vote for such a proposal. Further, should the proposal be embedded in any legislation with which I agree – such as funding for cancer research, purchasing new incubators for neo-natal care units in hospitals, funding to veterans learning to use their new prosthetic limbs, or any proposal which might even inadvertently transfer wealth to my state or district, I will not be shamed, cajoled, or otherwise manipulated to ever vote for any bill or amendment that has the intent or possible effect of lowering taxes on any individual or family making more than the then minimum wage.

Should, however, despite the policies of the Republican Administration, economic growth should reach an annual level of more than 5%, inflation fall below 3.7%, unemployment fall below 4.7%, I solemnly swear and affirm I will do everything within my power to drastically increase taxes on the wealthiest 5% of Americans as long as the money is earmarked to (1) reduce annual indebtedness or (2) make a net transfer of wealth to the bottom 20% of Americans, or (3) both

Second proposal: Only Romney's Massachusetts Judicial Appointments Are Acceptable

As a member of the United States Senate I will never vote to appoint anyone to the United States Supreme Court, unless (1) They are avowedly pro-choice and see a right of privacy and/or (2) Were nominated by then Governor Mitt Romney and confirmed to sit on his state's highest court, the Massachusetts Judicial Court. I will assert adamantly that if such appointees were good enough for Romney when he was Governor, they are good enough for the nation when he is our President.

Part II: Judicial Nominees must have Post Magna Carta Understanding of Law

I will closely investigate and assess all judicial appointments and never hesitate to disrupt their approval by the Senate, if on balance it seems to me they are driven by a pre-18^th century understanding of the framers' intent.

The True Meaning of Our Creed

One Person, 17 minutes at a microphone, on a summer day in 1963

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "For Whites Only"

We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for  freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Thrilla Against Manila

For what seems like forever, the GOP Presidential field has been engaged in debates. They had two over this past weekend before the voting on Tuesday in New Hampshire. They have not been lovefests. And the probable nominee has handled them well and is only getting better. Even Newt Gingrich's gambit of promising to challenge the President to seven 3-hour Lincoln-Douglas style debates underlined the public's sense that Presidential debates are stagey and contrived. Assuming that Romney does not wrap up the nomination after South Carolina and Florida, these debates are going to go on, and should one of Romney's challengers decide to compete all the way to Tampa, we can expect many more candidate “joint appearances” where one main theme will be attacking the President's accomplishments, leadership, philosophy, and foreign policy savvy.

If Newt can challenge the President to many 3-hours debates with no more structure than a timekeeper, I can't see why the President isn't entitled to challenge the several remaining Republican candidates to let him join their ostensibly GOP nomination debates. They are attacking him, can they really object to an opportunity to make their criticisms right to his face under circumstances where he's there to defend himself.

My worry is simple: the President is not a great debater. He's brilliant at giving a calm, composed, confident, and “presidential” impression – that is, he's fantastic at allaying political, ideological, and racial anxieties voters consciously or unconsciously harbor. This election isn't about voters' comfortability level with a young Black Senator; it's about the leadership qualities and accomplishment of that man. And frankly he needs some practice at defending his record. I happen to think that record is pretty damn fine on paper and exceptional compared to what I am able to imagine John McCain would have done instead.

On foreign policy, where we might have expected excuses and geo-political gobbledygook for maintaining the Bush troop levels in Iraq along with aimless incoherent failure in Afghanistan; instead there is a real draw down of troop levels in Iraq, a focused if not brilliant strategy in Afghanistan, and some quite intricate and cunning maneuvering to establish a situation where killing bin laden would not thereby threaten a fundamentalist revolution in Pakistan.

At home, the US government nationalized a major US corporation, operated it from DC, saved it from bankruptcy, and then turned it back over to its stockholders and private managers. On the verge of thousands of small and medium sized towns and cities experiencing having the local bank close up shop, the banking system, the monetary and financial circulatory system of the economic body was shored up and is now not at risk for a catastrophic failure. The stimulus package, lamentably ill-focused and shatter shot, undoubtedly saved millions of jobs and prevented a level of unemployment high enough to create a downward spiral of consumer confidence – the very intangible factor that has to become stronger not weaker for a real recovery to take hold. There is also the law that may well end up leading to a highly desirable and economically competitive state of affairs – all Americans having health care insurance. This idea was proposed by President Truman in 1947.

Some lovely liberal figures – Adlai Stevenson, John Kennedy, LBJ, Hubert Humphrey, Mo Udall, Mike Mansfield, Frank Church, Scoop Jackson, Ted Kennedy, Dale Bumpers, Paul Wellstone, Bill Bradley, Eugene McCarthy, Barbara Boxer, Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, Dick Gephardt, Jerry Brown, Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Mikulski, Hillary Clinton, George Mitchell, Bobby Kennedy, Al Gore, Geraldine Ferraro, Terry Sanford, Dianne Feinstein, Abe Ribicoff, Paul Simon, Nancy Pelosi, Pat Schroeder, Mario Cuomo, George McGovern, Ed Muskie, Joe Biden, and Bill Clinton – had failed to come through on Truman's idea.

Of course the Republicans would say no; and the politicos guarding the President so they can spring him like a caged tiger would never allow it. Plus it violates an absolutely religious rule in politics – when your opponent(s) are messing up or self-destructing, stay out of their way. I am sure that three hours alone on a sun-drenched state fair platform with Mitt Romney would be all it would take. I see no reason for the President to wait to take this guy down before Mitt wins the imprimatur of his party's nomination and the electorate gets so used to his flip-flopping that it gets less noticeable.

Obama to Ahmadinejad: Cuchi Cuchi

In the “Way We Were” Barbara Streisand plays a Trotskyite campus agitator and in one scene taking place in the early to mid 1950s she's leafleting near a “Ban The Bomb” banner. The Left is no longer quite for unilateral nuclear disarmament. It would be a huge victory if we could win a worldwide accord outlawing chemical and biological weapons and requiring the nations that have them to drastically reduce their stockpiles. It would also be pretty good if we could get the number of nuclear nations down to the permanent members of the UN security council – and then get them all to cut their stockpiles on a steady course to an agreed minimum required for deterrence.

In practice, we can't get an agreement to ban landmines.

Now you can't find a good Leftist to say they trust Obama or any President and certainly not the US Armed Services with tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. If the President went mad, the military is so obsessive about the chain of command they might carry out an order to nuke Bolivia. Maybe someone in the chain of command would or could countermand the order …. but the “maybe” exactly describes the problem. However, though Putin and Obama cannot safely be trusted with such power, it is cultural colonialist imperialism to suggest that New Deli, Islamabad, and Tehran can't be trusted either.

In Iraq Saddam Hussein was so nervous about looking weak to his people, he pretended to have WMD he didn't have, and he pretended to hide them from UN weapons inspectors. The current President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insists the Holocaust is a Zionist play for sympathy and in fact never took place. That makes him less qualified to lead a major nation than Ted Nugent or Charo. Now maybe the anti-imperialist Left would condone letting Ted Nugent build a nuclear weapon in his backyard as long as only Charo had the launch codes, but I don't think so.

The left is clamoring about the possibility of the U.S. attacking Iran. With a third aircraft carrier heading to the Strait of Hormuz, our strategy seems crude but clear. We're gonna pick off their nuclear scientists one at a time until they let inspectors in and prove they are not creating the capability of producing nuclear weapons. And we get to blame it on the Israelis!! The Iranian press is going crazy knowing it is our operation while being unable to resist such a believable chance to pin the tail of blame on Zionism. Our message is clear: if you are working on the nuclear weapons project you're gonna get killed sooner rather than later unless you let our local agent know you're fudging the math and nobody is good enough to realize you're stalling. Aircraft carriers have lots of planes, and at least one coward has turned and told us where the main facilities are located.

The Iranians have had time to take a very fine look at the drone they captured. To the extent they have people knowledgeable enough to comprehend its capabilities, the Iranian government knows no general area bombing would be necessary to eliminate their program. Even worse, we'd take credit for the attack denying them the redeeming glory of blaming the act of war on the Zionists.

If you think it is a terrible immoral colonialist imperialist idea to do any such thing, close your eyes and think what would be permissible if it were Ted Nugent and Charo.

Bookchat Walk of Shame

Today's topic is the march of time. It's running out, btw. And many of us are confronted with a terrible fact – we have utterly failed to read most of the world's indispensable fiction. We are going to die without having read Milton, Thackeray, one or all of the Brontes, the funniest Austen novel, and that book of Audrey Lorde poems that has sat and will sit invitingly on a poetry section shelf. I've decided to come clean and reveal a representative sample of the embarrassing gaps in my education and therefore the loosening joints in my life of the mind. Let's start with ten novels I'm embarrassed that I haven't read but am simultaneously defiant and won't read them if I live to be 105.

1. Moby Dick – I'm just not gonna read the damn thing, I don't care about whaling, and while today's blog may be a counter example I know when to quit
2. Anything by Charles Dickens – I've gotten more than 50 pages into Oliver Twist and I get where its going and even if it a big surprise, it wouldn't surprise me that much. I could be wrong but the first 20-30 pages of a “Tale of Two Cities” rivals the sparkling conversation of Calvin Coolidge.
3. Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
4. Don Quixote - Cervantes
5. Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
6. USA Trilogy – John Dos Passos
7. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
8. Anything by Joyce Carol Oats
9. My Antonia – Willa Cather
10. Crime and Punishment – Dostoyevsky

I promise to never read these books, and to resist any & all hectoring from my many better-educated friends who may attempt hopeless sighs and gaze at me with the rare and burning mixture of pity and condescension. But wait, there's more: Here's the top ten classics I have not read, and feel chagrined about & harbor secret though vague plans to rectify the situation:

1. Middlemarch – George Elliot
2. Neither Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer – now that's embarrassing
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Marcel Proust – well there is a slight dispensation since I'm not over 60
5. Ulysses – James Joyce
6. What Maisie Knew – Henry James
7. Beloved – Toni Morrison
8. The Autobiography of Malcolm X
9. Vanity Fair –William Thackeray
10. Not a word of William Faulkner – an accomplishment if a ghastly one

Middlemarch and Jane Eyre are at the top of the list, I've read lots of Henry James so I'll get around to Maisie. Why Faulkner scares the shit outta me I cannot say, but he does. I'm vain, superficial, callow, and snobby enough to read Ulysses just so I can claim I did it. These qualities got me through the first 150 pages of War and Peace (numerous times) before the thing got airborne and flew me to page 1564 before I klnew what hit me. Why, you might ask would I eschew Carson McCuller's masterpiece? They made a movie of it, and I began to ball during the opening credits. If I'm gonna collapse in a blubbering tribute to the unrecognized tragedy and unacknowledged pain and the grief of our waste of life's impermanence, I prefer to do so at the climatic recognition scene and not so much through the entire book.

All great novels break your heart, they wound and mend. In E.M.Foster's “A Passage to India” a chapter opens with this line: “Some hundreds of miles westward of the Marabar Hills, and two years later in time, Professor Narayan Godbole stands in the presence of God.” I was disappointed to learn this was metaphorical, because by this time in the novel I was interested to know what God would actually say to Godbole.

"blah,blah,blah" of Talk Therapy

Does talk therapy work? Talk Therapists are worried, they express anxiety and disquiet. They wonder what more they could be doing, and why the results of their work, if anything, are subtle and take such a long time.

One of the hilarious things that happened in several of the 30-40 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings I attended with a friend two summers ago, was listening to people giving what are called “qualifications” where folks describe their abject condition when they hit bottom and provide a paean to the program for transforming their attitude and giving them their life back. The funny part? The consistent un-selfconscious diagnosis is talk therapy & psychopharmicology don't work. Not surprisingly the life-story tellers come around to the blase mention they kinda sorta forgot to mention their heavy drinking to their therapist or even their psychopharmacologist.

The big issue is that psychotherapists have an agenda. They do not believe is it controversial. It is a consensus amalgamation of how you'd act and what you'd say, and the decision you'd make if you were psychologically healthy. If you didn't personalize anger, you wouldn't put your fist through your bedroom's plasterboard. If you didn't think your pain was a sign of weakness and helplessness, you'd unashamedly cry, if you realized who you really were, you'd be able to orchestrate and conduct your way around even your deepest fears. If you felt lovable you could cuddle with your spouse without a slow but steady feeling of claustrophobia increasingly insisting it was time to turn over and fall asleep. Comfortable with your numerous inadequacies, you'd become more patient, content, and tolerant with the foibles and normal human failures of others.

Somehow you'll be better. But compared to what? Everybody else. There is a societal norm which informs the consensus of “psychological health” – and when you think about it, where else could such a definitional consensus come from? It has to be from how ordinary, functioning, stable, reasonably successful people think and behave. If you can be “adjusted” to think and behave that way, then you'll end up functioning, stable, reasonably successful and in a table, successful, functional relationship.

The concept of “who you really are” which was already vague, and perhaps abstruse, has faded as the 70s became the 90s and now to a mechanistic model of getting neurotics who have intense and (mostly) irrational anxieties to behave themselves and get on with maximizing steady and typical psychological health. Freud called this the “reality principle” since each person must come to terms with how things are and negotiate their path through then gallant of things they should give no mind to understanding as unfair or changeable.

“Forget who you want me to be,” is how I open my therapy sessions. She answers “what would you do if you were free?” She means all the negative messages arising about my identity from childhood and adult experiences that I haven't been able to debunk, de-program, delimit, or de-bug. The internalized critical parent, the imposture syndrome, the 11 year old sissy who knows there really is something different and wrong with him, the man who has never let go of the constant surveillance and automatic tactical avoidance of anyone who reminds him of the bullies who could slam him up against his hall locker, spit on him, and pretend to punch his face just to take joy in the flinch of fear.

Over the years I slowly give up on the idea that she will or can understand. There isn't time, she can't follow me around and observe how I act in 'real life' so I become satisfied with telling the story – I'll sometimes interrupt if she poses a question – “You don't have to understand, you just have to listen.” This seems means, but it's true – I pour things out without regard to whether there is a way to integrate them in some surprising analytically ingenious synthesis – some eureka moment that will alter the struggle with my feelings and my actions. All that really matters is that we've worked as a team to peel away judgment and assumption, she suspends her agenda of “health” and I plug away to say how I feel even when I'm sure I oughtn't feel as I do.

Does the arduous non-judgmental stance, if worked on by both participants, do any good? Well, I'm not happily married, my work life isn't exactly churning like a hydroelectric turbine, and I'm boiling with resentments, fears, and unfulfilled hopes. I don't meditate, volunteer, don't teach Pilates, or have an easy carry roll up yoga mat.

Besides an assortment of developments too subtle and haphazard to mention, I can say that the non-judgmental stance, produced one interesting effect. For a decade I worried that I was drinking too heavily. It affected my judgment, work habits, and produced the occasional scary blackout. The non-judgmental stance dismisses these drawbacks as piffle. When you're drinking Johnny Walker Red, the level of interesting conversation available with fascinating people can easily outweigh any moralistic ideas about “clean” and “sober” which are temperance words from Prohibition. We discussed, here and there, how alcohol can undue inhibition and allow observation and insight. If you're not a mean drunk, as I wasn't, it can help you meet new people. And what's so wrong with feeling more handsome, charming, and funnier than I really am? In short, we discussed my drinking as if it were a learning experience that contained a way to deepen and enliven experience. We discussed all the reasons to quit: and on close examination they were all moralistic – tied to an agenda of improvement along a narrow line of what counts as being a better person in our society.

In short there were interesting reasons to keep drinking heavily and only conformist moralistic ones arguing for quitting. Happening to think the idea of being “clean” is a disgusting Christian moralism, and sobriety is at best a 19^th century concept – how in the world did I stop drinking almost eight years ago.

One of the issues that arose as a constant theme was the ambivalence and sometimes disgust when I found I wanted something. Just mere wanting could make me feel ill. Negative tapes would roll: you aren't smart enough, good enough, hard-working enough, you'll never measure up to actually merit getting it. These tapes are not easy to switch off, and it may be impossible to erase them. To hate that you want things – friends, love, a good job, time for inventive projects – is a real life impingement. It can be paralyzing. Over the years the act of wanting stayed problematic, but the certainty of un-entitlement waned. It occurred to me I could quit drinking – if I wanted to. I rejected any time commitment, any sense that the decision was or had to be a permanent one, that in fact it was the “right” decision. I made no promises to myself or others. I rejected the idea I'd be a better person if I stopped drinking – 'cleaner' in any sense, 'sober' in any sense.

What would you do if you were free? I can go back to drinking anytime I like – the moment I feel like it. Eight years later I still don't want to drink, but it is not an accomplishment of discipline or will, it's an accomplishment of being free to want what you want

Masks or Moods

Yesterday on my ride home on the 4 Train from Manhattan to the Bronx, I sat next to a person who was the splitting image of Essex Hemphill one of my favorite poets from the 80s/90s who died of AIDS. In my “Days of our Lives” imaginativity my daydream fantasies gravitate to imagining how I might have meet him and become his lover. Would my rude abrupt straightforwardness have helped him write more interesting poetry or would true love have reduced him to the mere embers of his previous burning self engendering a shadowy man resentfully teaching at some ill-attended poetry writing class at our local university? Would he have liked my cooking. Might the never ending desire to escape the banality of domestic like and the knowledge of far more ecstatic sexual release have driven him to clandestine hook-ups and affairs he'd have ingeniously disguised from my wishful-thinking outlook I'd have mistook for trust. Would some inability of love have manifested and driven me to drink and dissolution. My fascination with his stubbly and intellectual beard, with his lips, and chest and dick have waned over enough time, leaving me in a scenario I dread more acutely than loneliness - existing in a perpetual ennui and dread bubbling from immersed ideas that I could never be good enough to make another person happier than they would have been if they'd never crossed paths with me.

Why didn’t his death many years ago squelch this daydream of remorse and regret? Is it enough to stand in front of impatient bread trucks to let old ladies in walkers make the light on 49^th Street and 9^th Avenue, to calm the tides of a mind jammed with all the windblown files I can't move to the recycle bin?  Before 1995 when Hemphill died,  I was afraid to buy his poems, knowing I could never see what he saw, could not be more than an acolyte, an intellectual twink. Why did I create this fantasy only to use time to potato peel it skin-strip by discolored skin-strip with my non-fastastical atoms of reality.

At the end of heavy breathing/ does it come to this – Heavy Breathing
Essex Hamphill Wiki Entry

Circumcision on the Block

For several years in the midst of otherwise erudite and compelling debates and lectures against Christianity and the metaphysical claims of all religion, Christopher Hitchens would veer into a soliloquy that would equate slicing off the clitoris with circumcision lumping them both together in a rousing renunciation of “genital mutilation” On the other side of the English class and ideological divide, we've got Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Beast who is against infant circumcision convinced it is in fact “genital mutilation” and therefore a violation of human freedom. My reaction would always be, “I'm not mutilated, what's he talking about.” When I've had sex with an uncircumcised man, have we been having significantly different experiences, even experiences that due to my dulled sexual response from circumcision aren't truly comparable? Oh, no!!! Everything seemed to be going jolly well indeed, until these two British intellectuals planted this fear in my brain that sex has been going off at 80% of how it might have been … that alone is depressing if it's true, and then add the idea of bodily defect, damage, and mutilation, and suddenly I'm reviewing the tapes wondering how I could have recognized the unrecognizable. I suppose my biggest mistake was to allow the thoughts of these two rather un-sexy Englishmen intrude upon the repose of my tenderest memories.

In the event, today we will figure it all out. Is infant circumcision a medically beneficial, safe, and pain-free procedure, or is it a risky, deforming, excruciating assault on bodily integrity, heightened sexual response, and human freedom? Our sources are the paltry products of a quick Internet search. There is a fact sheet from Doctors Opposed to Circumcision a D.C. Based advocacy organization and a health group webpage from Nemours Kids Health

First question: does it hurt. The oppositions says the procedure “Is excruciating for an infant as well as an adult. Tightening the circumcision clamp puts crushing pressure on a large area of sensitive skin.”The kids health site says, alarmingly, that until recently “anesthesia hasn't been universally used,” but that two forms of local anesthetic are recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP): (1) a topical cream and (2) a much quicker acting injectible anesthesia. Besides the anesthetics, the site says “giving a pacifier dipped in sugar water can help reduce your baby's level of stress,” which when you think about it is not very re-assuring – if the anesthetic is truly eliminating any pain how come something more is needed to sooth the baby's stress level?

A website for NY area Rabbi Boruch Mozes (a certified Mohel) the Rabbi reviews many anesthetic options, and claims that a traditional bris circumcision is quicker and less painful than the procedure performed in a hospital. If this is in fact true, then the medical profession must adopt the quicker less painful procedure Also, what is a Rabbi doing performing a medical procedure? We don't let Priests suture wounds even if they originate from an instance of stigmata. And we wouldn't let Priests train to suture such wounds, and we wouldn't allow physicians to be used as spokespersons for a Priest suturing such wounds. But Rabbi Mozes has numerous highly qualified physicians on his website endorsing him as qualified to perform circumcision. The Rabbi does say “There are situations where Bris circumcision on children and adults are performed in a hospital. A surgeon performs the surgical procedure and a mohel participates in the removal of the foreskin.” For me, that settles it. It is a medical procedure, a doctor must perform it. And it must take place in a hospital or medical facility. Most importantly, the most effective anesthetic must be used.

Interestingly, the two sides give only conclusory or vague indication of whether circumcision has health benefits. The opponents state penile cancer is not prevented by the procedure, and without mentioning the claim that circumcision helps prevent STDs, asserts without citation it leads to “increased exposure to sexually transmitted diseases.” The health site indicates that the circumcised suffer a lesser risk of urinary track infection, while admitting only about 1% of male babies are at risk for that condition. It equivocates on STDs, saying “ Some studies indicate that the procedure might offer an additional line of defense against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including HIV”

What about sexual pleasure? The opponents claim the foreskin provides “most of the nerves for sexual response.” Really? Most? Seems like I've got more than half of 'em. Anyway, they go on to say the loss of the foreskin “contributes to inferior sexual relations, which leads to increased divorce rates, increased violence, increased exposure to sexually transmitted diseases, and contributes to impotence, especially after age 40.” No studies are cited for any of these broad claims. Kids Health takes an odd tack on this issue – “Some people claim that circumcision either lessens or heightens the sensitivity of the tip of the penis, decreasing or increasing sexual pleasure later in life. But neither of these subjective findings has been proved.” Ummm … that means they have not been disproved either, and so the conclusion is that no one has taken the trouble of determining for sure if sexual response is significantly diminished by circumcision. That doesn't strike me as either very scientific or humane. If sexual response is significantly diminished that would be something the medical profession ought to want to know about for sure before it sanctions a surgical intervention. The claim the the answer is subjective is bogus. There is undoubtedly an objective way to measure this and the fact that neither side seems terribly interested in testing this crucial hypothesis is disheartening.

A ban on circumcision is not – on the record I've been able to develop in a coupla hours – justified. What I've learned is that circumcision is a medical procedure and therefore must be performed by doctors in a medical facility using the scientifically determined most effective anesthesia. No excuses, No exceptions. Each side in the debate must take the question of whether circumcision in fact helps prevent sexually transmitted diseases seriously and advocate for ways to answer this vital question empirically. Similarly, advocates on both sides of the issue are obliged to support true scientific investigation into the issue of sexual response and provide parents with an answer they can rely upon in deciding about the procedure for their male children. As long as there is health benefit and it is clear that sexual response is not significantly diminished, it would not be a human rights violation for parents to make the call. On the other hand, should any significant diminution in sexual response be discovered and proven and the health benefits remain speculative or refuted, then the medical profession would be obliged to discourage circumcision.

A ban could be justified solely on the grounds that the health benefit is basically zero. That would make circumcision as “elective” as a medical procedure could be. Obviously there is more to learn and skeptically evaluate. I'm curious what I missed. Hoping you'll fill me in.

The Santorum Theocracy

“One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country.” And also, “Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

Do things. Ummm … Not exactly a holistic attitude toward sex, but instead a conception that breaks down making love into separate and discreet activities … which people do, when they do things.

Can we elect an 11-year old to the Presidency? Because this is the level of the former senator from Pennsylvania’s sophistication with respect (well 'not respect' actually) to human sexuality. He envisions a politics where government cannot regulate pollution or insider trading, but can be cognizant of whether husbands and wives are having non-procreative sex in anything other than the missionary position. He feels life would be better if there were Vatican authorized vanilla sex Gestapo agents standing by in case non-Vatican authorized sex acts take place within the jurisdiction of the United States. It's a sexy fantasy …. voyeurs with arrest warrants lurking to seize upon any illicit “thing” We'll almost surely need surveillance cameras for this operation, and then trials can be broadcast live, and perhaps if things get really pure and historical and back to the way the founders understood individuality, we will be blessed with public hanging on the town green for all sorts of “things” the evidence of which will eventually make its way onto You-Tube. Of course, to watch the live executions or download the You-Tube vids you are gonna have to be in a free country like Canada or Holland.

Then again after food stamps are eliminated, gays kicked from the military, all gay unions and marriages legally annulled, and the nuking of Tehran, and all contraception pulled from the shelves, a decedant European welfare state will suddenly appear very vivacious and quite a bit less Calvinist. The Santorum Theocracy will never come about anymore than the Caliphate will be re-established, but the sexy vision of power, degradation, and servility we exorcise from our politics may linger in our sex lives where, crude as they are, they are at home along with all of our high and low hopes and passions

Pretzel Logic: War And A Path To Peace

On Sunday in “B'way Baby & the Vice of Virtue” I sketched the dynamics of a dilemma that America is in with regard to its military and its constant overseas wars. A Brief History of Violence is a fascinating talk by Steven Pinker who makes a case that humanity in the past century is less violent, even counting WWI and WWII, than in previous epochs. His assessment is optimistic, but hold your horses:

Our military is relatively small in terms of soldiers, seapersons, and pilots compared to the qualitative levels of sophisticated high-tech weaponry. As we constantly improve our stealth, drone, missile, and tank technology we perpetually create a situation where the weapons we tout for deterrence are in practice un-tested. To prop up the deterrent effect of these systems we are logically forced to test them in real life (death) battle field conditions in order to assure any potential adversaries that they really work, and work so well that it would be suicide to tempt fate and oppose our fundamental or even tangential geopolitical interests. This is one reason, and I think its a major reason, why after WWII we've been involved almost continuously in localized regional wars – only a few of which was it plausibly true that we used force as a last resort.

Presently if we were able to refrain from any military operations for say the next 30 years – until 2042 – we would somewhat paradoxically be in a situation where we would have good reason to doubt the efficacy (lethality) of our war technology a circumstance that could easily lead to big mess ups, higher casualties, and lower morale. From this point of view, refraining from military violence would make us rusty, unsure, and nervous about the reliability of our troops and weaponry – exactly the conditions unhelpful to fighting wars that are decisive and quick and which are therefore on the low side of both military and civilian casualties.

If you spot the trap, then you are asking with me – how the hell can we risk peace and still be sure we have the ability and skills to actually deter madmen and aggressors and defend (hopefully) our most legitimate interests?

1. Acknowledging the dilemma is itself helpful since we can then perceive any rush or push to make war as resulting from considerations utterly removed from and independent of the arguments given for and against our involvement. The presence or non-presence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) will look less and less relevant – regardless of the true state of the facts – when we understand the Generals and the Fighter pilots, and the ship manufacturers are all anxious to practice under real war conditions.

2. We can advocate and resist the military's drive to develop and deploy increasingly sophisticated weaponry, that once deployed will necessarily need to be demonstrated and tested for the system to properly scare/deter potential adversaries. We will favor building a few more of the type of fighter planes we already have, the type of cruise missiles whose reliability we can already trust.

3. The dilemma makes it singularly critical to support actions and initiatives which have the result of quelling and/or resolving localized and regional conflict – thus denying the military the existence of real life situations where “practice” would in fact be helpful in assessing the efficacy and reliability of our troop and weapon doctrines.

4. The dilemma as I've described it provides one more potent argument for any effort to disrupt and undermine global arms sales by leading military nations. This week the President approved an enormous sale of fighter planes to Saudi Arabia. Billions of dollars and thousands of U.S. Jobs were and are at stake in the deal. The biggest rationalization for the deal? If American companies didn't build and sell the planes certainly China or France would have come forward to provide whatever armaments the Saudis could pay for. Now we know that “disarmament” doesn't just mean cutting back on nuclear, chemical, and biological stock piles, but must be about multilateral reductions in arms sales by the major military powers.

5. We can never use Costa Rica as a site to bring our military forces to bear, we wouldn't get a lot of practicing and effectiveness-testing accomplished, because Costa Rica doesn't have a military. As consumers and advocates we can make a good case that nations we trade with should take a close look at reducing, minimizing, and even abolishing their military. As long as there is no credible threat of attack by a regional power or a hostile neighbor, very few countries need a military for national defense as opposed to say ensuring the continuation of an illiberal dictatorship or other corrupt regime. I mean, the ostensibly Buddhist military fascists who control Myanmar (formerly Burma) are not in genuine fear of an invasion by Laos, Bangladesh, Thailand or China. Well maybe they fear China a little bit, which is why if they weren't so afraid of their people, collective and global security might appeal to them more than it currently does.

6. Theocratic, Monarchist, Militarist, and Autocratic regimes around the world need armies and advanced weaponry. They need tanks and artillery and shock troops to maintain their overawing authority over their subjects. We can now see how adoption of more thorough-going democratic regimes which can thrive not just survive in the presence of freedom of speech and press and of serious non-violent dissent, are a feature that could help reduce the global demand for ever-more-advanced weapons systems. How many aircraft carriers and F-16s does New Zealand really need? Compared to Saudi Arabia?

7. Creating the conditions where the United states can go 30 or 40 years at a clip without being draw into a war will not be easy. Teaching peace won't be our ultimate ticket – a lot of people are already for Peace. By bringing pressure on nations to actually adopt freedom of speech/press and embrace a culture where dissent isn't just tolerated buy proves useful, and by advocating for vastly superior diplomatic conflict-resolution efforts, and by bringing pressure to include the arms sales industry within the concept of arms control, I believe will create a small break in the chain of logic I've described which allows wars to be in our interest whether they are worth winning or not.

Sorry Fellas, but Wombs are Canadian

With the GOP Presidential candidates touting extreme and unconstitutional positions on abortion, I offer a defense of the right to choose to end a pregnancy at any time prior to delivery.
Santorum's Racist Stereotyping of Obama Pro-Choice Position

A human fetus is a potential human being. In future with technological advances in cloning any cell in a human body may well become a potential human being. If a human being could be grown from saliva, then spitting could be considered a mass destruction of potential human life. Under our system persons have rights. Only legally designated “persons” are protected by rights. The spectrum of when beings become “persons” stretches from conception to birth.

Abortion kills potential human beings who have not yet reached the point in their development where our law defines them as persons. Under Catholic doctrine, sperm cells can constitute potential human beings. Autoerotic stimulation leading to non-reproductive ejaculation would kill sperm thus effectively mass “murdering” thousands of potential human beings. In American jurisdictions with the death penalty murdering more than one person can make the case a capital one.

Believing that a human zygote should be considered a person as of conception, leads straightforwardly to the idea that abortion – by killing a person – is or ought be considered murder. Indeed, if abortion is a murder, it has to be considered first degree murder, as it is utterly premeditated – you have to make an appointment to get an abortion. That's as calculating as it gets. The physician has an office, employing staff, and maintaining all the apparatus required to commit the crime – hard to beat that in the premeditation/malice aforethought department.

So everything turns on our designation of personhood. Define the fetus as a person and abortion is murder, define the fetus as not-a-legal-person and abortion is not a murder. Pinning the label “person” on a living being of our species is non-problematic after birth, however contentious the matter is prior to birth. How can the point be settled? It cannot. However, there is a non-frivolous and non-arbitrary ethical and moral theory which I'll argue can sort things out and provide a coherent framework to justify the right to chose an abortion at any time prior to birth.

We have to go back to what allows us to order each other around in the first place. We take law for granted. It is what it is, and we must obey it or risk punishment. We know that some laws can be morally and ethically wrong. It is our custom to obey laws we are near certain are immoral, unless by refusing to obey we are willing to unashamedly proclaim our resistance and submit ourselves to the ordinary penalties running with the contested law.

Our constitutional system presupposes that the individual “precedes” the state – is “prior” to the state. Society exists for the benefit of individuals not the other way around. Our rights are individual arising from the notion we possess a legitimate sovereign authority to make laws for our tiny nation of one. We operate democratically, taking a vote (which is always 1:0) on those matters over which we retain sovereignty. Broadly speaking, the constitution delineates those areas of life where the individual is sovereign. It also divides this sovereignty in a variety of ways – between the three branches of the federal government, between the federal government and the states, and between governments and the individual. The locus of individual sovereignty is what we think of as private life. A woman's house is her castle. As sovereign her body is subject to no law but her own. This is personal freedom. The concept of rights and personal sovereignty flow from the Enlightenment’s “thesis of self-ownership.”

Where once Kings literally owned the bodies of their subjects in trust for the Christian God, the Enlightenment rejected giving effect to God's property rights. Slowly the interposition of law interrupted the prerogatives of the sovereign's property claims over people's bodies. From the Magna Carta to the Bill of Rights to the 19^th Amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the scope and extent of our sovereignty and the liberty it protects has been extended. 

In a democracy we hand over a part of this personal authority so that society through government is enabled to make a variety of collective decisions. Somewhat paradoxically we “let” government boss us around. But only … if the social contract is honored, such that the authority we give government is exchanged for not only civic rights but an inviolate sovereign authority over major areas of life where government is deemed to lack jurisdiction and lacks any warrant to boss us around. 

Now let's suppose for argument's sake that a vast consensus develops that views abortion as utterly immoral and because it fits the definition of murder this new consensus favors its criminalization. Congress and the 50 states all draft identical statutes purporting to overrule Roe v. Wade and setting criminal penalties for doctors who perform abortions and women who have the procedure. Exceptions are made for danger to life of the mother, rape, and incest. Discouraged by legal scholars who proclaim that Roe v. Wade cannot be overturned by statute, and that the new law is plainly unconstitutional, somebody offers the novel idea that the next best alternative is to promulgate the law to make abortion in Canada illegal. The rationale? The legislation embodies universal precepts of justice and morality -- transparently spiritually enlightened, manifestly wise it thereby gives effect to profound ethical and moral imperatives. Given the law's utility, justice, and moral thrust, can law-making bodies within the United States legislate for Canada? The answer is no, for American legislatures lack jurisdiction and sovereignty over Canada or indeed any other sovereign body.

It can now be seen why a democratic government such as our own is without legitimate authority to proscribe abortion. Any woman may rightly say “I own my body and therefore I own my womb. I retain sovereignty and remain the only person who can exercise true authority over a decision such as whether to carry a pregnancy to term. It is as if my womb were in Canada from the point of view of the jurisdictional reach of any American legislature. Canada's sovereignty precludes Americans from enacting laws purporting to bind Canada, and my personal sovereignty precludes an assertion of jurisdiction over my body.”

B'way Baby & The Vice of Virtue

Can I segue from a run in with a Broadway star to a discussion of what we have to do to bring about world peace. It's New year's Day in Manhattan, I get coffee in Hell's Kitchen on the west side in the 50s. I'm doing this because there's a boy involved, well he's a man now but when I got the crush he was still a boy … and I spotted him at a cafe and now I take time to ensconce myself in that same cafe in hopes he'll spot me. I practice affecting a pose of nonchalant availability – no Oscars I can tell you for this performance. So this morning I hang for a while and then take the long healthy walk to 3^rd street and Second Avenue to hang at my favorite coffee spot. This takes me through the theatre district and past a long row of shows where I notice Judith Light is in “Other Desert Cities.” I cut across an alley and the stage door opens, and a slim theatre-looking broad exits without self-consciousness. I'd just thought “Hmmm Judith Light didn't disappear after all from the scene,” and now a moment later here she is in a wide alley traversing the 50 feet to get some coffee. I stop say hello and extend my hand and say something sweet – she knows I'm thanking her for all her intense gay activism she's done over the years – but she takes the love well saying “oh that's so sweet.” I don't want to bother her (anymore than I have) so I wave “Happy New Year” as I scoot away.

Segue? – FAIL? Yeah. Walking makes me think … of idealism and dreams. I cut through Times Square, which is hardly showing signs of what occurred barely ten hours before – there's some colored paper on the ground. I've got a Blog to write. I pour through my short list of peeves I categorizes as insights. Ah, the dilemma of my country's military power and the issue of deterring madmen, rogue regimes, and anything that could conceivably draw us into a general conflict.

Americans don't like war. They want them over very quickly and with virtually no casualties. Perfectly reasonable. Since WWII where the quality of our weaponry proved inferior to that of the German's (and undoubtedly the Russians) we have banked on technologically advanced systems … nuclear submarines, advanced supersonic aircraft, guided missiles, stupendous air sea and ground mobility, automated drones, and the incredible wizardry of the amazingly invulnerable yet lethal Abrams M1 Tank with numerous features classified as top secret. Our forces sacrifice quantity for quality as they must since our people demand a volunteer army/navy/airforce.

I'm going to try and explain something mind-blowing which will explain why America cannot but help getting involved consistently and repeatedly in relatively small localized regional wars – almost whether we want to or not. That is, regardless of the wisdom or perhaps even the sanity of so doing.

Let's start with deterrence. The power of our weapons should make our adversaries think twice about doing stuff we won't like very much. For instance, the North Korean religious fascists would genuinely enjoy attacking South Korea and putting it under its total control. The Chinese are insulted by the existence of a democratic Taiwan. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and maybe even Egypt and Jordan, if they imagined they could get away with it and be victorious, wouldn't mind very much if Israel could be vanquished and eliminated as a sovereign state. If the Turks could march unopposed into Kurdish Iraq, they would be sorely tempted to do so. Kashmir is controlled by China, India, and Pakistan all of whom claim more than they currently possess. If we had invoked Monroe Doctrine,Argentina would have succeeded in capturing the Falkland Islands from Britain. They were willing to risk war to get it in 1982. It is not irrational to assume they still want it and would take it if they could be sure we wouldn’t let the British Fleet sail into our sphere of influence to take it back.

Even with military spending equaling the military outlays of perhaps 20 or 30 of the next-most-powerful nations, we in fact do not deter all actions with which we disapprove. Pakistan and India have nuclear weapons. Russia invaded Georgia. North Korea and Iran threaten to develop nuclear weapons and the missile systems capable of using these weapons against our interests and allies. China is continuously expanding its forces capable of threatening Taiwan and perhaps even our allies Japan and South Korea.

Who have we deterred? Well, China and North Korea haven't attacked Taiwan and South Korea, Russia did not overrun Georgia, Britain owns the Falklands, India and Pakistan have not sent armies into Kashmir to drive out the other from that territory. Fascistic and militarist dictatorships all over the world behave more reluctantly than it can be supposed they would do if American intervention was seen as impossible or highly unlikely.

How come? Well, our advanced weaponry is consistently on display. Our drones are used with impunity in Afghanistan and Pakistan, our Abrams tanks wiped out the Iraq armored forces in no time flat. Our cutting edge helicopters swooped deep deep into Pakistan undetected, carried out a complicated operation, and pulled back without the Pakistanis being any the wiser. Our burrowing missiles cleared bin Laden from an inaccessible mountainous area in Afghanistan that hitherto was not susceptible to any military action.

With each new generation of experimental advanced weaponry that we deploy comes the serious possibility that they will have unknown defects and bugs and thus prove weak or useless under real war conditions. So? Suppose we deploy brand new stealth fighters, tanks, missile-equipped naval ships, a new generation of drones, heat-seeking and infra-red guided missiles, and all manner of new untested weaponry. The longer we refrain from using these weapon systems, the easier it will be for adversaries to dwell on their possible defects and inadequacies. Indeed our own confidence that they would operate effectively and reliably under battle field condition would diminish as time went by. The longer we refrained from intervening, the more likely it would become that an adversary could believe we would refrain from intervening to stop them in a particular case. The longer we refrained from using an untested technologically complex set of weapon systems, the less they would deter an adversary.

Yep. So to deter any potentially serious adversary, we would have to in effect “demonstrate” these advanced systems in battle to ensure the adversary properly understood what it was truly up against. To maintain this deterrent effect, we'd have to conduct demonstrations on a pretty regular basis to prevent any illusions about our capabilities from entering their mind and emboldening their hopes. We'd have to conduct these demonstrations independ of the “merits” of getting involved in a particular conflict – Who cares if Iraq didn't attack us on September 11, 2001, the terrorists will get a excellent look at how well our weapons work and will get a load of how they might be used against them should we be able to locate and pin them down. The idea that we are acting as the world's police force is now exposed as a mere rationalization for our demonstration wars. Even worse, there is probably some truth to the idea that by making a show of how our advanced systems work we thereby do deter at least some further messy and violent actions by others.

We're in a trap, with no way out. Without testing the weapons, they won't scare anybody, if we don't scare the shit out of potential opponents, they are more likely to risk violence for their own ends. Can I figure a way out? Stay tuned.