April 25 Frustration Rant

It’s time for another rant.

I want to start out with a warning to my more liberal friends. This rant is anti-Republican, but that does NOT make me liberal. I am anti-stupidity and anti-extremism. The multi-party checks and balances of this country are out of whack at the moment, made so by our electorate. We are at our strongest when we have different parties in control of the Congress and the White House, and right now we do not have that. Right now, we are saved only by those intelligent moderates of the party of power preventing unfettered passing of the most extreme of its party’s agenda.

It is always easier for the party with the most power to push it’s more extreme agendas, while the party not in power has the freedom to point out the absurdities of the other side. It doesn’t mean that there are not absurdities in the weaker side, it simply means that THEY know that there is no way they’re going to get any of theirs passed, while the other side pushes its, figuring this is their best opportunity.

And keep in mind as you read this rant, it is neither liberal nor conservative. It is a rant against tactics, tactics which in this case were employed by the party of conservatives, but the tactics themselves could just as easily be employed by the party of liberals, and I would hate them (the tactics) just as much.

What has brought me to writing this rant is the current debate over the nomination of John Bolton to the position of Ambassador to the United Nations. I think there are some very good questions to be asked as to why this man is considered a good choice, a man who has publicly and loudly derided the U.N. in the past, a man who clearly considers the U.N. to be useless and seems to feel it should be dissolved.

I’m not commenting on any of those views. They may have merit, they may not, but… who nominates someone like that to such a group? It’d be one thing if he has strong criticisms of the group and strong feelings on how to make it BETTER, but his views (at least as far as I’ve seen them) lean not towards FIXING the institution, but doing away with it entirely. Also, like it or not, the U.N. does have some authority over the world that the U.S. does not. Perhaps not much (and this is probably a good thing), but think of it as a neighborhood watch group, sending a representative of each household to meet and discuss the issues pertaining to the neighborhood, and trying to present a unified front in combating the problems OF the neighborhood.

In such a neighborhood group, if there was an outspoken critic of the neighborhood watch group, someone who loudly and publicly stated that the group should be disbanded, that it would be no tragedy if the room in which the group met were hit by lightning killing all inside, and that his house should be free from the influence of and participation in that group, would it make sense for that family to choose THAT person as its representative to the group? How likely are the other members of the group to side with (or even listen to) anything said critic has to say, and how much more useful would it be to that household to have a representative on the group who was less openly critical and resentful of the group?

To me, this all smacks of the continued failings of foreign policy of this administration, which seems to believe that autonomy is all, might makes right, and we don’t need to be good neighbors or work with anyone. But that opinion is tending towards a philosophical bias, so let me get back to my main point.

I recently received an e-mail from an ultra-Republican family member. This e-mail was a “rally the troops” sort of e-mail, casting aspersions on those who would dare to question the wisdom of our President in nominating such a person. It spent a great deal of verbiage asserting that liberals (defined as anyone who could possibly disagree with Bolton’s nomination) didn’t like this nomination because they wanted the U.S. to be merely a state under the U.N.’s one world government.

This is the tactic that I decry, the ascribing to a whole group an opinion that the majority of that group do not hold, and then demonizing them for that opinion. It is the ultimate in “Straw Man” arguing, but apparently we’re so caught up in our “root for my team, root against the other guys” mentality that we no longer can see it, or care.

I don’t dispute that there are people in the world who believe one world government would be a good idea. There are also people who think fascism, communism, slavery and white supremacy are good ideas, it doesn’t make them right and it doesn’t mean that everyone who belongs to whatever political party to which these extremists belong agrees. It is possible to believe that being good neighbors, cooperating and sharing and building alliances is a good thing, and being openly hostile to a group whose charter is to do just that can do nothing but harm.

This is another example of the Republican rallying cry “liberals hate America”. This is patently absurd. People on both sides of the aisle love America, they got into public service in order to make America stronger. They disagree on how to go about that, that’s clear. I’ve said before, I believe the liberals have the stronger philosophy but no clear plan on how to accomplish the things which need to be accomplished, while the conservatives have a weaker philosophy, but are very efficient at pointing out inefficiencies in the system (although based on the pattern of deficit spending in the last 25 years, not particularly efficient at eliminating those inefficiencies).

But I do believe both sides love America, they just have different views of what America should be. Debating those views, and being open to hearing what each side has to say makes us stronger. Setting up such an obvious and easily knocked down straw man as “the other side hates America” just indicates the weakness in your own arguments. When you are forced to rely on such obvious fallacies (obvious to anyone who has ever taken Logic & Argument 101 in college, anyway), you are as much as admitting that you can not win the argument on the merits of your case alone.

And when we, as a society, buy into the straw man in such numbers that we’re willing to break the fundamental separation of powers that keeps this country safe and strong, we harm our great nation, and that is more harmful than any hatred of the country could ever be.

Copyright © April 25, 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net

Quick Note...

The index is getting larger, so if you didn't notice...

On top of the regular Friday post, I posted a new short story that I wrote.

It is listed in the index post, but it's a few pages down, you might not have noticed.

(If you care).

It's called Tiny Bubbles.

--Liam

Tiny Bubbles

I had an idea for a short story this weekend, and so I wrote it, and this is the result. I'm not sure whether this is the final form or not. I kind of like it, but I'm not absolutely thrilled with the result. I'm not sure if I should work in more elements, make the story longer, and I'm not sure if it's too overt or too subtle. Perhaps this idea, and this story, will just have to ferment for a while until I'm happy with it.
--Liam

My friends and I are rather great fans of a certain fermented consumable.

Please understand, when I say "fans", I do not mean that we are addicted, like so many poor slobs, or that in some measure we cannot do without it. Perhaps "snobs" is a better term for us. We do not like any of the "mass produced" product available, advertised by macho males and scantily clad females, and certainly can not abide anything with "Lite" in the name.

No, clearly we are snobs. We will spend ten times, twenty times, even thirty times as much for a quality, hand crafted specimen, and spend a good half hour over it, comparing notes, discussing subtle nuances of flavor, aroma and texture. We could never be like those poor addicted sots for whom the next "fix" was always just around the corner, poor things for whom the pleasure of the product has been lost over time to the base bodily cravings. It’s just too expensive to consume enough of the ones we truly adore to create that level of dependence.

I must admit, however, that when it comes to devotion to the art and the craft, some of my friends put me to shame. While I abhor the mass produced swill as much as any of them, I content myself with frequenting establishments which "brew" their own heady mixtures. I’ve always wanted to try making a batch myself, but it takes the expense (and the dedication) to whole new levels. With little mouths to feed, the added expense for what is, at the end of the day, a hobby can not be justified. And I’ve never had the patience necessary to wait nor the organizational skills necessary to obsess over the little details.

One of my friends, however, is always working on at least one new batch, and as often as not has two or three new creations fermenting away, and his devotion has reached the point where he seldom has anything else to discuss. Talk about the latest entertainment program or theatrical experience or musical number or dance, and in surprisingly little time, he will have turned the conversation back to his latest experiments, the subtle twists to the recipes he’s tried and what he hopes the results will be, or the triumphs and tribulations of his last batch.

Once, on a lazy Saturday afternoon when my wife was out of town with the young ‘uns, he showed me the process, and allowed me to help as he started another batch, a batch which, actually, should be ready any time now. As it is my first time with any involvement in the creation (however minor), I am most interested in sampling the results.

The process is surprisingly simple, and yet exceedingly complex and subtle. In the overview, nothing could sound simpler: you take raw ingredients (and there are surprisingly few), mix them together and then set them aside for quite a long time as "the magic" happens. Nothing could be simpler, right?

Well, the subtle part comes in the selecting of the ingredients, in the infinite minute variations of amounts that produce surprisingly large variations in finished product, in the length of time the raw "wort" is left to ferment, and the ambient environment while the fermentation takes place. Add a little bit more of one ingredient, take away a little of another, and raise the temperature by a few degrees and you can turn an ordinary batch into an exceptional batch... or completely ruin it. My friend takes long, detailed notes on every batch, to try to figure out what works best, always in the search of the elusive "perfect recipe".

The secret to the whole thing, really, is in the fermentation agents. What they really are is tiny little living beings. Well, not really living, it’s hard to call something so stupid, and with so little self-awareness truly ALIVE. But in the scientific sense, they are alive, in that they eat and create waste products, and we must be thankful to them for doing it, for those waste products are what turns our little concoction of raw materials into the fine culinary experience we all enjoy so.

What these little "creatures" (my friend calls them "yeasts") do, essentially, is live and produce waste wantonly, slowly polluting their own environment. It takes them a long time; by their own life clocks it takes thousands of generations. In the end the same thing always happens: they continue consuming raw ingredients and producing waste products until they’ve polluted their environment to the point that it will no longer sustain their lives, at which point that generation dies off (or perhaps is simply unable to produce another viable generation), leaving behind a finely fermented ambrosia, ready to be consumed.

And this is why the subtle changes in environment change the character of the end product so greatly: a little bit "warmer", or a little too much food, and these "yeasts" have a world of plenty, and grow too quickly, fermenting much too fast and leaving a bitter, almost un-palatable result in much too short a time. A little bit "colder" or too LITTLE food and they are apt not to be able to establish a proper culture, and to die off before doing their jobs.

Really, philosophically, I’ve sometimes wondered if it’s wrong on the grand scale of things to take advantage of these simple, stupid creatures, setting them up in a perfect environment, knowing as we do that they will (as they always do) exterminate themselves by the untold billions, but it is their way. If we did not set them up to do it for our benefit, they would be doing it anyway, decomposing the rotting carcasses of the dead, or befouling standing pools of liquids, always doing their work and polluting their environment until it will no longer sustain them. It is their way.

And anyway, can such lower-life-forms really be considered alive? Surely they are not AWARE of what they do, or they would find ways to deal with their wastes in a more harmonious fashion. Reduce, reuse, recycle, find ways to work their waste into the cycle of life, instead of simply tossing it aside and creating ever more.

No, surely they are just what we say they are, mere biological machines, processing raw fuels into waste materials because in the grand scheme of things, such a job is necessary, and then shutting down with no more feeling or emotion or discomfort than turning off a food preparation device after it has processed to our satisfaction. There can’t be any moral ambiguity, just because we employ them to do what they would do anyway in OUR service, instead of in the wild.

So, we do. And in they end, the result is always the same, ingestion, excretion, pollution and death by the countless billions, leaving us with yet another batch to sample and discuss, to consume and enjoy, whiling away an evening over a "cold one" at the pub or one of our respective houses.

I really do look forward to trying the one I helped create. It should be done any time now. The style, according to my friend, is one I have not yet tried. "Earth Dopplebock". I can’t wait.

Copyright (c) April 11, 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net

This is just WRONG.

"Hey, Son, what're you up to?"

"Oh, just hangin' around, Dad."