Monthly Archives: April 2006

the Pandora’s Box

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If you like what I’ve come up with here, feel free to post it on your bulletin. Here’s your little foreign policy game for the week:

Imagine you are the most popular kid on the playground. Also, your mom lets you take a gun to school with enough clips of ammo to go Columbine on the whole school. This isn’t something that you are thinking about doing but because you’re the most popular, you get into a lot of fights sticking up for your friends, doing what you think is right.

Its soccer practice one day and you’re talking to two of the neighborhood kids. They have figured out where their parents keep their guns too. The first one, little Suzie, is friendly, nice and fair to everyone she meets. Everyone likes her. She doesn’t get into arguments on the playground but if there were a conflict she would resolve it without violence. She respects other peoples beliefs and is willing to compromise. She says she is planning on bringing her gun and collecting some ammo next week.

The other child is Marcus. Marcus is not very popular. He is always getting into fights with other kids, sometimes he gets hurt; sometimes the other kid gets hurt. He’s also very stubborn. Usually Marcus disagrees with you about everything and he tells you so, rudely. Some of his friends are bullies and many of the kids are afraid of him. He’s planning on bringing a gun next week too, but he hasn’t figured out how to get any bullets. During the conversation with Marcus and Suzie, Marcus promised that he wouldn’t hurt anyone with his gun. Suzie kept silent.

1. Who are you more worried about, Suzie, or Marcus?
2. Do you try to convince either of them not to bring a gun to school? How do you convince them? Do you ask nicely, kick their ass, get the other kids to gang up on them, or something else?
3. What about your gun? Are you willing to stop bringing the gun to school if it means that they agree not to? Do you trust them? Is it fair to continue bringing a gun, if you convince them otherwise?

My little metaphor may seem silly but think about it seriously, as you would in such a ridiculously scary situation. Please think about your answers before you continue…

…Maybe discuss them with someone in the room, what the heck, see what they think…

… Or post them in the comments box…

Okay, so here’s the deal.

You are the U.S. Suzie is India and Marcus is Iran. Both countries are close to producing nuclear weapons. Iran has signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty; India has not. On the other hand, India is a democratic nation while Iran is expansionistic. They’re harboring Al Queda. Everyone pretty much agrees that though they comply with the treaty and India has not, it is Iran that is a danger to the rest of the world. So the debate seems to be, who should we go after, why and how? India is one of our allies but some people think that we shouldn’t be letting them play with plutonium.

Does anyone else see the hypocrisy here? Remember when all of the nations got together and voted to stop producing nuclear weapons? I’ll remind you: The vote was in favor of reducing nuclear armament 147 to one (UK and Isreal abstained). The vote against was yours truely, the good ole’ U. S. of A. How long do we think we can keep producing nuclear weapons and telling other people its not okay to produce nuclear weapons? According to a speech by Noam Chompsky, a recent study showed terrible errors in the security or our nuclear weapons. On top of worrying about other countries making them or our country using them, now we have to worry about terrorists stealing them.

Its happened before and it came close to happening again in the 1960′s. Russia was literally a phone call away from giving the Okay to strike the U.S. Is this frightening to anyone else out there? Sometimes I don’t feel like this is a safe country to live in. Everyone has their crosshairs pointed at us.

How long will these children play with guns before someone gets shot?

Who needs high school reunions?

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“You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”

  — Howard Zinn

I’ve been websurfing through profiles of people I went to high school with. Though I have changed a lot, people that I thought were cool in high school are still the type of people I want to be friends with. People that were “enh” are still “enh.” Most of the latter now have nice-paying careers working for the man. Or doing something incredibly boring that one would only do to have money. While I’m reaching a place in my life where that sort of thing is more important to me (gee, would be nice to fill some of these cavities before I start to resemble the woman who sleeps at the busstop across from the Amtrak) I still find it unimpressive. I wouldn’t trade places to have that kind of job.

I also noticed that people who have TV, babies or God are only interested in TV, babies and God.

Along the same lines, very few people have any interest in the turmoil that is going on in the world. I’m sure that many are aware and just don’t post about it. This makes me want to be more conscious about posting politics.

Last night I got a phone call from a woman I used to know when I was a teen and she was a child. We’re five years apart. She says that she looks up to me because I went to college and I was involved in politics. She doesn’t know a lot about politics (IE, she didn’t know what fascism is) but she knows enough to be peeved. She said she was confused and I could tell that she was frustrated. I feel like there are many people that would make an impact if only they knew how/what/where to break into it.

This inspires in me a lot of mixed feelings. People are really angered about the paths this administration is taking, even people that live in the suburbs and don’t expose themselves to any kind of news media, let alone non-corporate media. There was a woman on the Diane Rheam Weekend Round-up who was near tears because the president lied about the CIA leak. She said it was getting harder and harder to call this country a democracy. The pundits replied that at least there is transparancy and the people will make change at the ballot box. But I’m with H. D. Thoreau on this one:

“Must we resign our conscious to the legislator? Why has every man a conscious then? We should be men first, and subjects second.”

And that gets right to the heart of it. We know how to vote, but once that’s failed we know not where else to turn. I would go so far as to say that our culture discourages further action.

Ask yourself, what have you done for your country today? And by that I mean, what have you done for the world today? And by that I mean, what have you done for your city today? How are the actions that you take on a daily basis affecting the world at large? Would you even begin to know how to affect the world? Yet you are affecting the world. By choosing not to act, that is impacting history. There are no sidelines, everyone is in the game. I may drop the ball from time to time, but at least I’m out there running.

Contemplate This While I’m Breathing Your Exhaust

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Now and then as I’m cycling along the streets of Atlanta, a motorist will honk at me. I can see only two reasons for this:

1. I look so fetching in that styrofoam helmet, you just couldn’t resist blaring your Danger! signal at my sexy abs. Thanks for sharing.

2 (and more likely). You don’t like that my slow-moving bicycle is taking up space on your precious asphalt.

There are a few reasons that I might be riding in the road, other than the sadistic pleasure of pissing you off.

Atlanta’s sidewalks are entirely unpredictable. They’re often cracked and broken, or have huge holes or strange things drilled into them. Those handy street signs you’re so fond of are often jutting out of the middle of the sidewalk. Same goes for those huge, lovely historic-looking streetlamps. I love trees, even sticking out of the middle of a sidewalk. But they sure aren’t fun to bicycle around.

Sometimes there are no sidewalks. Or the sidewalk has just ended or is about to end. Or they are preceded by an enormous curb that I am not skillful enough to jump. Its not quite as easy as jumping curbs in your LandRover. Nest time you angrily point to the sidewalk, check to see if, you know, THERE IS ACTUALLY A SIDEWALK.

Riding on the sidewalks is dangerous. I know that you don’t care. I have inconvenienced you. You have to pass me and add five seconds to your commute so you would laugh heartily to see my innards spread across the concrete. Just the same, I’m attached to my innards (pun intended). Cars pull out of driveways and look left-right-left onto the road before turning onto it. Motorists don’t look for fast moving objects coming on sidewalks. They often don’t look at sidewalks at all and just consider them part of the driveway. That’s okay, I want them to get a good look around before they turn. I’m considerate that way. But I do know that there are lots of driveways on most roads and that this is a great way to get hit by a car. How do I know this, you ask? Because I was hit by a car this way. I’m hoping you’ll see me in your massive Suburban Assault Vehicle.

Did I mention that cycling on sidewalks is illegal? Cyclists must follow the same rules of the law as cars. While you may drive on the sidewalk, most people think that’s a no-no. Would you risk getting a ticket to avoid inconveniencing me?

What is all this hostility about, anyway? Do you honk at slow-driving old ladies? How about schoolbuses, with their annoyingly frequent stops? I bet you get a kick out of blaring your horn at Postal trucks. They have no business on the road, slow as they are.

No, no, of course I’m not like those people; I’m a public menace. I took the easy way out, bicycling to get around. Sure, I could have invested all my surplus income in a car and bought a gym membership for exercise, like a normal person. But no. I insist on smelling the flowers and the smog and the pizza joints and your exhuast. I insist on using my body to power up hills. I insist on seeing my city as I move through it, instead of in a bubble. I insist on boycotting fuel because –no matter whether you’re politics are left or right — everyone know s we could afford to be less dependent on foreign fuel.

Really, I can’t imagine how these things are so offensive to you. I don’t mind if you pass me, I really don’t. If you really don’t want to see cyclists on the streets, lobby for more bicycle lanes. But if seeing me on the road gets you all riled up, maybe you’re a bit too tense. You could use a good bike ride.