dannyman.toldme.com

Hail!

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/1998/01/29/hail/

So, Bill Clinton came to town today. The whole place has been excited and everything all day. He didn’t say anything interesting, which is to be expected. Jon got irritated when Al Gore referred to the University as the central cloverleaf of the Information Superhighway.

We hate the term Information Superhighway in the first place. Jon said the abusive metaphors were driving him nuts.

Whatever. It’s Al Gore. He invented the first term so if he wants to be a schmuck about pushing his metaphors around, more power to him.

If you start talking about Cyberspace though, don’t expect any sympathy from dannyman.

Anyways, the cool part was when Al Gore started yelling. See, all the dopes who got to make speeches before the president got to be more expressive towards the audience. This includes Al Gore, who CNN apparently didn’t give a shit about. Bill Clinton comes to the podium in the midst of scandal after his State of the Union address and the world’s cameras power up.

Al Gore however, was shouting things like a pro wrestler. It was kinda weird, and I wondered if something hadn’t gotten into his water. It’s good to see him trying to resemble a human being though. Maybe.

I was giggling at the image in my head of Al Gore wearing a mask and some colorful wrestling costume threatening the Republican party or scandal-mongers with his mighty physical prowess. Whatchya gonna do, when Al Gore runs wild on you? Grrr!

Clinton was greeted at Willard by local heros … I was a bit wary of the heroics when the first lady to shake his hand was Mrs. Ramos, director of Food Services. What is so heroic about the crap that passes for service on this campus tends to escape me. The rest of the heros seemed like nice folk though.

At the end of Bill’s speech, he was shaking hands on his way out. Tsoni had a good position, given his place in the College Democrats leading the Schmidt campaign. He shook hands and exchanged a few words both with Bill and Al. He patted Bill on the shoulder and the allegation, apparently founded by me, is that Al gore rubbed his head. He doesn’t believe that and I was babbling it to everybody so excitedly that it’s now dubious as to whether it actually happened or if it is simply the product of a rather flamboyant guy making irresponsible claims and folks gobbling it up. Eventually I may well receive independent confirmation of the occurrence. Tsoni doesn’t remember it happening, but seems open-minded about it. I think the experience was likely somewhat surreal.

Tsoni’s been glowing all day. And all the hall that does know him, has been absorbing it.

Tsoni’s the man.

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Swaraj

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/1998/01/04/swaraj/

I’m reading in The Essential Gandhi by Fischer chapter 15, titled Gandhi’s Message to All Men and just a few pages into the chapter I’m struck with a strong disagreement.

Up until now, I agree strongly with Gandhi’s arguments for strict adherence to purity and non-violence. When you are gentle, and compelling in the face of an oppressor, when you yield materially without resistance … well, what’s the aim of a bully? Generally, a real bully enjoys the struggle some.

Dad told me of a story which convinced him that there was power in non-violence … he had pissed off a bully who told him that he was going to be beaten up after school. After consultation with a friend of his who was in fact a gun-nut who later entered the Air Force, dad wrote a note for the bully and met him after school for the big showdown.

The bully struck him, and following his friend’s advice, dad did nothing to stop him, or strike back. The bully got one lick in, which didn’t hurt dad too bad. But there was no struggle to keep the bully occupied.

Dad’s letter to the bully consisted something of “I’m sorry for you, to be embarrassed in such a manner.” Despite his fears, dad didn’t get his ass kicked after all, he merely got one strike at him.

Turn the other cheek.

At this occasion, the power and appeal of Dad’s non-violence was that the cruelty, terror, unjustness, whatever negative adjectives you can use to describe the bully’s wrongful aggression, were starkly illustrated to Dad, the bully, and onlookers … what’s the point to fighting an enemy who is not in it for the fight? Says Gandhi, “They say ‘means are after all [just] means.’ I would say ‘means are after all everything.'” What is the end that justifies the mean of bullying? Of unwarranted aggression?

It is harder to see the evil in violence when it is construed as a means to an end … violent revolution, war … other examples I can’t think of just now … what if they held a war and nobody came? Gandhi would ask such a question, and I envision in my mind a country surrendering to an invading army, offering no resistance … why fight, when in the end justice will prevail anyway? Assuming, for the sake of example, we’re not dealing with Hitler and instead just mere territorial greed, if the country being attacked can absorb and then overwhelm the invader with … righteousness, love, truth … and so soften the invader as to purge the enemy therefor of the bad things which caused the invader to invade in the first place, and come to regret and hope to rectify these actions, well then is not everyone better off?

The collapse of the Warsaw Pact, all those totalitarian regimes, the reformation of Taiwan, are all beautiful examples of the fatal flaw of an unjust and oppressive system: it’s being run by humans. Humans tend to want to be pretty moral creatures, setting things right, atoning for their past transgressions, that sort of thing. The braver ones, the Mikhail Gorbachevs, the past leaders of South Africa, that leader in Taiwan that Ian told me about … they’ll actually go so far as to say “Look, this is wrong, let’s try to set it right.” These are the truest reformers, because they have the ability to simply maintain the status quo to their benefit, but they instead endure great material loss and put a lot of under-appreciated effort into doing the right thing.

How many times must the cannon balls fly, before they’re forever banned?

The thing that tends to be scary about the modern world though, is that humans are less and less employed in the means … it is easier to see the inhumanity of war when soldiers are charging at each other with fixed bayonets, staring each other in the eye and keeping a question on their own humanity open. It is a harder thing to do when you are dropping bombs on people, particularly big bombs, bombs affixed to missiles which can cross the globe and annihilate awesome amounts of life at the push of a button.

But then, it’s humans that have to build the machines, humans that have to push those buttons. And you’re better able, I’ve found, to build and operate complex gadgets when you’re acting out of rationality and not emotion.

Dad proferred some of his doubts about the Oklahoma City bombing … if Tim McVeigh was that freaking bonkers … a patriot that would indiscriminately blow up people … how capable was he of the planning required to build and plant that damned bomb? While I really don’t know all the details, the fact that he was so easily caught, while smelling of some government conspiracy, is also symptomatic of sloppy work. It’s one thing to build a big bomb and kill people with it as a loner. It’s another thing to do that really well. All the kids that were killed in the pre-school? A sign of mental competence would have been to check beforehand … like those guys at the World Trade Center, who rented an easily-traceable truck, leaving even the serial numbers on the vehicles … these are not people thinking clearly.

Luckily, it takes a great deal of effort to build something as complex as a nuclear bomb. Unfortunately, bombs have gotten a lot cheaper, because even though it takes a lot of clear minds and steady heads to build them, and a decent government capable of assembling the effort, the governments that have pulled it off weren’t good enough that they lasted so well, and the integrity of Russia’s stock-piles are in great question …

Anyways, back to being invaded … what do you do when a well-organized, well-tuned and strong terror machine is knocking on your border? You know, the Third Reich or something. They think you’re not even human. While non-violent swaraj has a chance of working, it’s more likely, I might tend to think, that by the time your good feelings overwhelmed the enemy, the numbers of people killed would not justify it. That’s assuming good triumphs in the end in any reasonably timely fashion … as effective as we are now at the arts of mind-control, propaganda and the like, it’s quite possible for at least an extended period of time to manipulate and control most of the population’s thinking and morality to suit your own ends. A human’s greatest strength is it’s ability to communicate good ideas … while high morality is a good idea, if the oppressor does a good job of eliminating those with the good ideas … well … self-sustaining. With time such a system could theoretically weed out any human intentions toward the good idea – nightmare scenarios like 1984.

I’ve clearly been thinking about this too much. But there’s times when you must take the great bravery it takes to stand up in non-violence to face the wrath and hatred of those you are trying to overcome through virtue, and there are times when you’ve got to take the great bravery it takes to reject this idea and out-muscle the opposing force, often with guns, weapons, civilian casualties, untold amounts of human suffering.

While my greatest sympathies would tend towards the side of non-violent and virtuous action against the foe, I also support the idea that violence would sometimes be the better course of action. The right answer to Hitler in Europe, and Tojo in Japan, was I think the one we delivered.

I think that anyone who takes up violent action though, should take it up with the greatest humility possible. These are extreme situations … when you are going off to hurt or kill others for the greater good … you should acknowledge that suffering and always interrogate yourself and feel true to your conviction that yes, this is the best way.

And you should do the job right.

I agree with World War II. I am heartened even more with the doctrine of total victory … if something is that evil that you must enforce violence against it, then you better be damn sure that fucker is eliminated. Nazism? Just say no, all the way … the system of barbaric conquest that was in place in Japan? Get rid of it!

That humility comes into play especially when I think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Towards the end of total victory, we inflicted awesome violence upon those cities. I think that America generally does feel somewhat ambivalent about that action. I think it is healthy that we continue to question the wisdom of that action … that reveals some humility on our part regarding the action we took.

We went all the way in World War II because we believed we were doing the right thing. We were firm in our convictions.

We failed in Vietnam, and I think too we failed in the Persian Gulf against Saddam Hussein, because we did not have a full moral conviction behind our actions. In Vietnam, we sunk to humiliating levels of inhumane barbarity in fighting the enemy … if you are going to kill, you should do so acknowledging the full human dignity of those you kill. Ultimately the greatest price you will pay is the bad feeling of having had to kill a person, or several people, in the case of combat … unless you are damn certain you are doing the right thing, you can’t do this honorably, and the only way you can achieve the end of surviving is to get even more fucked in the head … we didn’t believe in what we were doing, and we failed to retaliate after Tet, I understand, because we didn’t truly believe in the war, and lacked the conviction it would have taken to see that carnage through.

We failed in Iraq, I think I can say. Yes, by the standards of warfare, we did really well and kicked lots of Iraqi ass.

By the standards of swaraj, or human struggle, we failed. We liberated Kuwait back to it’s royal masters, but when push came to shove, when George Bush saw those pictures of carnage on the highway of death, he couldn’t stand it. Instead of the total victory that we stood for in World War II, we collapsed when faced with this moral dilemma. We did not push to Baghdad and rid the area of Saddam Hussein because we felt remorse at our own actions. They were undertaken for material benefit – oil, International prestige, and not for any great motivation on the part of the people involved. We chickened out.

Perhaps that George Bush sat on that popularity, doing nothing with it … maybe he was overwhelmed with what happened? He couldn’t stand the pain we were inflicting .. he didn’t believe in it because it was wrong, and he got really weirded out after the war as to his ability to really act right.

Well, that’s pushing it … but …

I opposed the war. The day before the bombs began to fall I participated in my first protest. We marched from Lincoln Park down Lake Shore Drive and into Daley Plaza. I was full of great conviction then, shouting “One, two, three, four, we don’t want your fucking war!” I sincerely believed and continue to believe that without the violence, which is now used by Saddam to justify himself, that he would have collapsed more readily under the more humane and oppressive weight of sanctions and a huge fucking Army waiting out in the desert for him, with great patience, for him to fall. As the stand-off continued, I heard more reports on the radio of small signs that Saddam’s control was being eroded. It would have taken a long while … it took a long while to sit out apartheid, but in the end, quiet pressure won out, and fewer people lost their lives in armed conflict.

When the war started, I shut my mouth, and supported our soldiers. I may question the virtue, but wars aren’t won by consensus … if we’re going to do it with violence, then I will put my support behind it. That we failed to follow through though … Saddam Hussein is still fucking there! Some argue that eliminating him would cause a power vacuum … maybe Iran might get ambitious … maybe I’m a fool, but if one leader’s bad, and you remove him, someone takes his place … maybe or maybe not he’s a better leader. If you replace Saddam Hussein, you’re prolly trading up though … if that leader can’t hold Iraq together though … well, maybe we could do the right thing and acknowledge the truth that the country is pretty cobbled together and maybe a better solution is possible … hindsight is 20/20, possibly. Crystal balls are pretty murky though .. to not do the right thing on the chance that something bad might happen … that’s wrong.

I dunno. But the fact that there is so much opposition to sanctions, that we’d rather just forget about Iraq … we wish it’d just go away. We did wrong.

We should acknowledge the Allied casualties of war, but we should also try to repent for the Iraqis who died. I have believed this for so long … every Iraqi killed was a human tragedy. Every child that dies in Iraq now from lack of nourishment, whether it’s Saddam holding back or not … what the hell are we doing there now? Traipsing around, trying to coerce and cajole Saddam into letting us find his poison gases? We should either give up or strong-arm him the right way.

I dunno, and my arguments are getting emotional …

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No one Expects the Christian revolution!

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/10/23/fanatics/

I just back from Quad and classes. There was yet another preacher out today. It was nice and warm this afternoon. Actually, it is still nice and warm this afternoon, as far as I know. The sun came out see, and that’s so valuable in October.

Anyways, this guy was wearing yellow signs on him, saying who all was going to hell. I had a hard time finding anything I fundamentally disagreed with him about, which was kind of creepy, though I didn’t stay long. He was saying the professors and all manner of people were a path to hell and the like, as they were more concerned with their own ends. Yeah, lotta people are missing the point, but I don’t see it as anything particularly terrible, even if it is disheartening at times.

What scares me now though, in retrospect, is the increasing number of these fanatics out there. This year especially, the upswing on our campus, at least, has been tremendous. Did I mention the other day the God Fleet of these guys, actually only a few adults and several younger kids who were carrying huge signs spread out on white sheets damning people to hell. They managed to chase a group of schoolchildren off the Quad by calling their teachers witches and encouraging them to not follow “the system”.

The sense of danger is prolly more from reading The Handmaid’s Tale than anything else, but you ever wonder that these people will continue to attract followers – I mean some of what they say is true, is of concern – namely that people aren’t really keeping their moral priorities straight and all, and that it is a strong negative tendency … I completely disagree with their nutty rhetoric that they see as the solution – basically a return to the crappy days when men were men and women were suitably cowed, and we were all fanatical followers of God and believed in Jesus … but they seem increasingly to disrespect our government, the system, and seem to be advocating that something stronger must be done.

I think any time we see people flirting with the cause of revolution, we need to keep an eye on them … and these people do seem to be getting around …

And no, they’re not popular, but how many Christians in this country? Catholics probably can’t be counted as possible comrades for these zealots, but there are plenty of fundamentalists, anti-abortionists, born-again weirdos, and the great mass of vanilla-flavored Christians that if they ever were nutty enough to put their government where their passions were that things could potentially get really really ugly and bad.

But I do have a great faith in the strength of our government, and it’s ability to adapt and respond to threats, ultimately getting a little better each time in the interests of all.

But then I’m also one of those God-forsaken Atheist Liberals.

And I publish my thoughts openly. the second that Christian Nazi we had on the Quad a few weeks back gets the chance to run the government and conduct public executions of Liberals, I’ll be on the first lists of folks who just gotta go …

If something like that ever did come to pass, it would mark an interesting turn in world history.

This time, it would be America in flames, and perhaps an economically depressed Europe trying to put it straight. Asia too. I wonder how Japan and China would react to a bloody revolution in the USA.

Definitely being overly speculative here, but it never hurts to be aware of possible contingencies.

I’m glad to see my imagination kicking in though. It’s been missed a lot since grammar school and high school

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Da Chief

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/08/18/da-chief/

And Chief Illiniwek was the topic of discussion at dinner. I made a remark about the DIA being the same bit of the University that has the offensive mascot, and Brian and Anatoly sprung to his defense.

What, may you ask, is my beef with the chief?

As mascots go, he is in poor taste. Let’s say, hypothetically, that you conquer and pretty much destroy a people. Then you decide to honor that people by taking a symbol of leadership and spirituality, and have one of your own people dress in that manner to dance around at a football game. Honor? That seems disrespectful. I tried to make an argument, what if we were to use Jesus as a mascot? the pope? A rabbi? I implored of ‘toly that if the mascot were Jesus Christ dancing the Macarena and the majority of the 80% Christian population of our country were left a little offended if that might not be grounds for changing our mascot. He conceded that point. My next rhetorical argument was that why then did the same standard not apply when the offended group was an underrepresented racial minority … and he started to sound eerily Libertarian … the sort of attitude that if people can not defend their own, then there is nothing wrong with them getting fucked over.

That is not a positive attitude, might does not make right.

Anyway, I did not dissuade either of them, but I do believe given the food for thought, that our argument may have an effect on them. I was once in their shoes too, thinking that all this Chief-bashing was counterproductive and inspired by over-zealous political-correctness. But as I asked Goth Dan, how he felt about the Chief, he said “I think it’s dumb.” – It’s a mascot, er, a “symbol” in poor taste, that is kept around in large part due to institutional inertia.

And I have a fetish for fighting institutional inertia.

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Political Pot-Pourri

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/07/13/political-pot-pourri/

(Watch out, rant coming forth!)

I met a cool freak yesterday at the Union lab. You see why I like labs? We’re both here now. He’s a self-educated computer geek, and a writing studies sort. You see his web page he’s working on a collaborative writing CGI. I was walking past and saw Perl code, did a double-take, and we started talking.

Well, that’s nice. Yesterday was an errand-running day. I returned library books, renewing one by Frederick Pohl that I haven’t finished with. Then I took the bus out to Jewel, spending nearly $40 on groceries, which is more than I’d wanted to spend, but I made a really good haul, so I can’t complain. I’ll be eating well. I bought lunchmeats, cheese, and romaine lettuce for lunchtimes. I’ve settled on purchasing milk, eggs and bread at local convenience stores though. Perishables I go through quickly see? Anyways, I didn’t skimp on ingredients. The cheese is sliced deli cheese, cheddar and swiss. The romaine lettuce don’t seem so cheap either. I also stocked in some Peanut Butter and Jelly, the old standby.

What else? Some Turkey dogs for Mac & Cheese, some spaghetti sauce, and garlic bread … mm! That’s gonna be good. I picked up some Matt’s Fig Newtons as I like Fig Newtons. They seemed right tasty. I made a rule for myself though that I shall only buy one package of cookies per shopping trip. Their expensive and spoil my appetite for a real meal if I’m reckless. Ah well.

Ran into Mary and Phil, we did a little bowling. I caught sight of Asao there and it messed with my game some. I still missed her. Still haven’t figured her out either. Well, managed to get it off my mind pretty well. She seemed to be enjoying her self pretty much. Hard to tell, of course as I didn’t approach her and she tends not to be too expressive.

So, I been thinkin’ you know … about the American electoral process. It sucks you know? You can run out of money, and have to withdraw from an election. That means that to be elected to public office you have to curry favor with the monied interests, and that’s not representative. That and ya got all these lamers who refuse to vote because they just don’t see any point to it. Whoever wins, the results will be pretty much the same, since the Democrats act like lame wannabe Republicans, or so it sometimes seems. Just this morning I heard that the White House put out some document on their thoughts on the Internet, and it was concerned mainly with how commerce could take place, not so much with the human potential the thing offers. As well, old man Clinton was supposedly defending the Communications Decency Act … sheesh!

I remember in PoliSci 150 with Joe Miller. He talked to us some about Proportional Representation, the idea that instead of winner-take-all you kinda break the political spoils down into a certain number of representatives per party depending on what percentage of the vote they got. Each party could have a list of candidates they’d send, and however many the election entitled them to, that’s how many of that list they’d send to office.

I proposed in class that perhaps any state willing to try could easily enact a scheme like this with their House representatives. Say, Illinois has 30 folks or however many they send to the House of Representatives, but instead of picking those by district, they just throw them all in a big ol’ PR pot and depending what percentage of the state vote their party gets, that’s how many get sent to Washington. Joe got all upset about this it seemed saying that it would be bad for people to not be represented geographically, but the way I see it, it’s more what your ideology is, isn’t it? Especially if you’re an obscure “radical” like Joe.

Anyways, if yer worried about rural representation, then a major party would have to represent itself to rural constituencies for fear that they might lose that constituency to another, possibly third party. This would alleviate voter angst somewhat, I’d think, because partys could fill niche rolls for different ideologies and interests. Staunch environmentalists could vote green, say. Farmers could vote for Farm-interest parties. When you get to Washington then the special interests are more clearly marked based on the popular constituencies, and less on PAC or corporate monies. At least, that’s what I’d hope. To be a successful major party then, one would need to develop a platform that appeals in some rational manner to a wide array of newly-awakened popular political interests.

Well, no-one said I was ever an expert.

Another time, I believe, it was proposed that with technology and all, direct participatory democracy could be achieved. Well, we run into the problems of “mobocracy” and the fact that it take a lot of work to run a government. Well, I’d think to take PR to it’s logical extreme conclusion then, which I would think would be proxy democracy.

See, take mom for example. I’m a politics geek moreso than she is. she has better things to do. Sometimes she’s consulted with me on ways to vote, you know, which candidate? Well, why bother with that, when she could say, just give me or someone else whose judgment she respects proxy power over her single vote? This would maybe work again in a forum like a House of Representatives where at least there you are in theory representing the individual voices of several Americans. I could in turn assign my proxy to another proxy broker or whatever, who I can consult with on his decisions, which might in turn be selecting another broker, or direct representative perhaps. See, this way people have much more encouragement to be involved in the system. Anyone could be their proxy, so it comes more instead of deciding between two bozos more of deciding who your ideal candidate might be .. like shopping for a car. By assigning your proxy to someone you’re stating that you feel confident in the decisions they might make. It’s a far more personal fit than a normal election, so you put more effort, more political awareness and activity, in to making the right choice. At least, one would hope.

In theory, you could then perhaps have several multitudes of representatives – small proxy holders. Well, it might get a bit crowded to implement. Of course, tele-whatever could be used for such folks to discuss the fate of their government, and act accordingly. But if you wanted to be more old-fashioned, you could make a cut-off, say … only the top 38 or whatever number of representatives you want get to go to Congress, with each of those representatives having their votes weighed in proportion to the number of voters they represent, the number of proxies they hold. Proxy holders who don’t have enough votes to make it to Congress have to select their most favored representative to assign their proxies to.

This might confuse the hell out of Corporate America, and other monetary contributers, as the system is very populist, a potential nightmare though, to implement! Imagine the paperwork.

But we don’t have to do this zaniness based on election cycle, eh? You know how a corporation works? Who owns the most stock controls the company, or who owns a significant proportion may sit on the board of directors? Well, say some fool starts making bad decisions, he starts losing his proxies. He makes enough bad decisions he’s outta office. The real power then, gets kinda defused in the larger intermediate proxy brokers who have much control over whether a candidate stays in office.

This also distributes the load of a representatives job. They’re responsible directly to a smaller group of proxy holders who trust them to be doing the job right. They can explain their decisions to this perhaps smallish group, and consult with these “wizened” leaders or whatever, who can in turn come around and address their proxy holders as to why the representative is making the calls he makes. Mr. Representative doesn’t have to commute so much to his district to be in touch with voters, his proxy holders give him the poop. And if they start acting too elitist or anything, of course they start losing their powers.

Fraud becomes much easier though. But then, perhaps, less likely, at least at higher levels, where you have a public trust that the media would be very interested in investigating, no?

Eh, I’m wacko.

NOTE – 19 February, 2002: I’m not the only wacko. And some folks take their own ideas more seriously. If this idea strikes your fancy at all, check out http://www.directrep.org/.

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5 June 1996 @7:42PM

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/1996/06/05/5-june-1996-742pm/

Yesterday was June 4. Anniversary of Tienanmen Square. Also Lionel’s birthday. I saw a very good documentary/movie on Channel 11…very long, but it was all about the student protests and all. I appreciated that they explored all sides of the story … and some of the messages that people had to say. There was this one kinda crazy girl who was a big wig in the protest, it was impressive to see her talking about how she knew there would have to be bloodshed for anything to happen, and how she found it hard to tell students to come and gather when she knew that it was neccessary for them to be attacked. The messages that progress cannot come very well in too large steps … the analogy of the ripe melon, that if eaten in one gulp by the hungry person will cause an upset stomach, but can a hungry person wait to bite at the melon? Which is the right way?

While it put things in perspective, there was still the strong emotional appeal of the whole theme present. China, last great bastion of totalitarian Communist government, a “People’s State” not run by the people, but whose people are eager to stand up for themselves, although they are not suitably educated as to how. I guess the thing that impresses me the most about China is that it has great potential, and has over one fifth of the world’s population. Nearly a billion and a half people who are kind of in darkness.

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