Deafening Silence

OK, I LOVE This

 You can read the full backstory on this here:

While engrossed in a captivating piece of theatre or a moving passage of music, the ambiance is shattered by that dreaded byproduct of the modern era - the mobile phone ringtone.

That's exactly what happened to Slovakian violinist Lukas Kmit as he gave a solo rendition at a Jewish orthodox synagogue in his native country.

The article also speculates that this might have been put up as a Nokia ad, but I sure hope not.  Since they first appeared on the market, I have maintained that the only ringtone available for cell phone use should be a voice saying "Your phone is annoying people.  Your phone is annoying people.  Your phone is annoying people..."

And no, I don't own a cell phone. Nokia or otherwise.

 

Quote of the Week

From Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal:

"Above all, it doesn't matter that Americans are generally eager to send Mr. Obama packing. All they need is to be reasonably sure that the alternative won't be another fiasco. But they can't be reasonably sure, so it's going to be four more years of the disappointment you already know.

............

 And the U.S. will surely survive four more years. Who knows? By then maybe Republicans will have figured out that if they don't want to lose, they shouldn't run with losers."

Well put, Mr. Stephens.

Jon Huntsman's Exit Speech

The only adult competing in the presidential race (and I include our current President in that statement) has been forced out.

Mr. Huntsman's exit speech is worth listening to in its entirety.  I suspect it may come back to haunt us some day as the stern warning of a sane man watching his country sink into the abyss.

Some quotes:

"Now, as candidates for our party's nomination, our common goal is to restore bold and principled leadership to the White House.  Leadership that will re-ignite our economy and renew the American spirit.  Yet rather than seeking to advance that common goal by speaking directly to voters about our ideas to rebuild America, this race has de-generated into an onslaught of negative and personal attacks not worthy of the American people, and not worthy of this critical time in our nation's history."

"... the current toxic form of our political discourse does not help our cause.  And it's just one of the many reasons why the American people have lost trust in their elected leaders....Let's invest our time and resources in building trust with the American people and uniting them around a common purpose."

"This nation was built on unity and trust.  Trust in each other.  Trust in a revolution that gave birth to the freest and most prosperous nation the world has ever known.  Trust in our system of government.  That sense of unity and trust has sustained us through world wars and national tragedies.  Now we need it to sustain us during this hour of need."

The message remains: Country First.

I'm not a Republican (and probably never will be), but regular readers of Deafening Silence will recognize similar ideas about national unity in my posts.  (See here, and here, for starters.)  I did not agree with all of Mr. Hunstman's policy ideas, but like the crowd that cheered his remarks during the New Hampshire debate, I was persuaded to take a serious look at the only candidate declaring:"Country first!"

I find the current Republican reaction to his concession speech very telling.  Some pundits found it puzzling that he would criticize the Republican party.  Others declared that they were so offended by his warning that they had to switch it off.  Still others couldn't understand why he would criticize the party and then endorse its leading candidate.

All of these reactions reveal observers drowning so hopelessly in the political storm that they can't see over the edge of the teacup.  The incessant demand to appeal to the most rabid, radical parts of the Republican base will only result in unelectable candidates.  The temporary high of touting "pure" dogma will leave Republican ideas permanently theoretical as voters flee to other candidates.  Mr. Huntsman's endorsement of Mr. Romney was lukewarm at best.  He first acknowledged the large space between their ideas and then only described Mr. Romney as the Republican candidate "best equipped" to defeat President Obama.

But best equipped compared to what?  A serial adulterer who once shut down the entire U.S. government, a memory-challenged Texas governor (nicknamed "the Haircut" in his own state) who forgets parts of his own platform during televised debates, an elderly crank who would be 76 years old at the time of the inauguration and who admits he can't imagine sitting in the Oval Office, and a religious zealot who thinks the key to American recovery is to ban birth control devices.

Yes, compared to that motley crew Mr. Romney certainly is the best-equipped candidate.  Compared to that bunch, he looks like Winston Churchill.

The Republicans have ejected the one man who might have collected enough centrist, Independent and even Democratic votes to deny President Obama a second term. (If you don't believe me, google a list of news stories about Huntman and read the comment threads.) Instead they will select from the remaining field the person who will appeal to the narrowest slice of the "base," and then wonder why it's so difficult to win the Presidency.  They will never understand that the real difficulty is that they have been putting Party first, not Country.

And throwing away the best chance they had to reclaim the Oval Office.

 

Thought for the Day

I'll believe corporations are people when one gets busted for streaking.

Preferably across the stage at the Republican National Convention.

Country First!

I just saw this in the Christian Science Monitor and I confess it brought tears to my eyes:

During a Huntsman campaign stop outside Marie’s Bakery in Henniker, N.H., Monday morning, patrons chanted his words: “Country first! Country first!”

“This is a turning point,” says Wayne Lesperance, a political scientist at New England College in Henniker, who was present at the event and confirms that the chanters were not campaign staff or even typically involved in politics.

The phrase "Country First" entered the campaign this week as Mr. Huntsman responded to a jibe from Mitt Romney during a debate.  Here's a replay put together by Huntsman's campaign:

 

When I first heard about this moment in the debate, I was immediately reminded of Scott Brown's debate comment in the Massachusetts Senate race two years ago:

"With all due respect, it's not the Kennedy's seat, it's not the Democrats' seat, it's the people's seat."

  

I am a registered Independent.  I'm not a rabid Huntsman or Brown supporter.  Instead, what moves me about the mental image of ordinary Americans chanting "Country first!  Country first!" is the conviction that this is what we need.  I suspect I'm not alone in yearning for a candidate to become viable by bringing this nation together- not setting themselves apart as "the Purest" in some extreme doctrine. 

The bitter truth is that all sides of the debate can bring something valuable to the table.  The genius of this country is not some trumped-up notion of "Purity" or political pedigree.  Historically, generation after generation, the strength and genius of the United States has been its ability to hybridize, to weave together different points of view and create visionary solutions to all sorts of problems.  In these dangerous and discouraging times, we need to remember that.

Maybe we even need to climb up on our chairs and chant a little, just to remind ourselves:

It's not the Democrat's seat or the Republican's seat- it's the people's seat.

Because the country still belongs to us- all of us.  As long as we're willing to work together and fight for it.

Country First!!!!!!!!!!!

Quote of the Week

Mike Daisey travelled to China and interviewed workers at a factory in Shenzhen that produces Apple products, among other things:

"I say to her, "You seem kind of young.  How old are you?"  And she says, "I'm 13," and I say, "13- that's young."

........................

"...in my first two hours, my first day at the gate, I met workers who were 14 years old, 13 years old, 12.  Do you really think Apple doesn't know? In a company obsessed with the details, with the aluminum being milled just so and the glass being fitted perfectly into the case- do you really think it's credible that they don't know?  Or are they just doing what we're all doing- do they just see what they want to see?"

......................

"The official workday in China is 8 hours long.  That's a joke.  I never met anyone who had even heard of an 8 hour shift.  Everyone I talked to worked 12 hour shifts- standard- and often much longer than that.  14 hours a day.  15 hours a day...sometimes it pegs up to 16 hours a day and it just sits there for weeks and months at a time, month after month after month, straight 16's.  Sometimes longer than that.  While I am in [China], a worker at Foxconn dies after working a 34 hour shift.  I wish I could say that's exceptional."

........................

The complete monologue (which actually has some humor in it and is entertaining) is here.

 I've spent enough time around the political blogosphere to anticipate a number of reactions to Mr. Daisey's piece.  Here are a few, just off the top of my head:

If you are a Libertarian:

Typical hit job on Apple.  People just can't stand it when a man succeeds.

Hey, if those kids want to work, let 'em.  We're giving them a chance at an independent income they wouldn't have, otherwise.

If you're a Republican:

Capital has been driven out of our country by greedy unions.  At least these kids have a work ethic.

Apple is kindly providing these youngsters with real work experience in a safe, controlled environment.  Good for them!

If you're a Democrat:

Too bad Steve Jobs is already dead; we could hang him.  Maybe we can still hang him in effigy.  Wait- there's an App for that!

I bet they don't even offer organic vegetables in the cafeteria!  And no yoga breaks!  Horrors!

If you're an Anarchist:

Burn down all the nearest big buildings!  Nobody should have to work assembling iPhones and iPads- and we should all get iPhones and iPads for free!!!!

Lastly, here's what I think:

If dropping out of school to work 12-16 hours shifts is not acceptable for our children, why is it OK for Chinese kids?

My own grandfather dropped out of school at age 14 to work in a mine.  Then this country enacted child labor laws.  And now we have voluntarily exported his shortened childhood to our "trading partners," so businesses can evade those laws.

Explain to me- with a straight face and a clear conscience- what makes that right.

 

 

Messengers, Saviors, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Me

"The fervency for Ron Paul is rooted in the longing for a redeemer, for one who will rise up and cut through the dishonest pablum of horse-races and sloganeering and speak directly to Americans.  It is a species of saviorism which hopes to deliver a prophet onto the people, who will be better than the people themselves."

Ta-Nehisi Coates

I don't usually agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates, but this time I do. In his January 3rd Atlantic essay, "The Messenger", Mr. Coates compares the feverish worship of today's Ron Paul devotees to the adulation of Louis Farrakhan in the 1980's and 90's:

"The need was real.  And the man who best perceived that need--Louis Farrakhan--preached bigotry, and headed a church with a history of violence, and patriarchal and homophobic views.  Some of us even endorsed it.  A few of us debated about it.  But, ultimately we didn't care.  Farrakhan--and his cadre of clean disciplined black men and modest, chaste black women--spoke to our deep, and inward, sense that we were committing a kind of slow suicide, that--as the rappers put it--we were self-destructing."

 

The message of self-destruction and catastrophic decline has been a constant theme among Republican candidates this election cycle. And wherever this end-of-times rhetoric is repeated on the Internet, the comments threads inevitably become clogged with the dogged repetition of two words: Ron Paul.

Ron Paul is the only answer...only Ron Paul can pull the U.S. back from the brink...The only principled candidate is Ron Paul...RonPaulRonPaulRonPaulRonPaulRonPaul...

 

His fans present Mr. Paul as simultaneously Messenger and Martyr: the lone voice crying "Gold standard!" and "End the Fed!" in the wilderness, cruelly banished by the evil Gatekeepers of the mainstream media. (Never mind that by now Mr. Paul has been regularly covered by CNN, The Christian Science Monitor, MSNBC, been included in all the major Republican debates and appeared on everything from The Daily Show to National Public Radio...I mean, come on, people, NPR of all outlets!)

Yet whenever any but the faithful gaze upon him, the view is...less than Messianic. Mr. Coates sums it up:

"I've thought a lot about Farrakhan, recently, watching Ron Paul's backers twist themselves in knots to defend what they have now euphemistically label[ed] as "baggage."  I don't think it makes much sense to try to rebut the charges here.  No minds will be changed.

Still let us remember that we are faced with a candidate who published racism under his name, defended that publication when it was convenient, and blamed it on ghost-writers when it wasn't, whose take on the Civil War is at home with Lost-Causers, and whose take on the Civil Rights Act is at home with segregationists.  Ostensibly this is all coincidence, or if it isn't, it should be excused because Ron Paul is a lone voice speaking on the important issues that plague our nation.

I have heard this reasoning before."

 

So have I.  And here is where I diverge from Mr. Coates, because I've also seen the same purple-prosed, irrational worship heaped on another candidate: Barack Obama.

I did not vote for Mr. Obama and the tone of his campaign was one reason. I found it disturbing- all those packed rallies where women conveniently fainted for the cameras (how many times did this happen? Seven? Eight?), seasoned newscasters burbling about thrills going up their legs during Obama's speeches, candidate Obama addressing the people of Berlin as though he were already a head of state, and eulogizing his candidacy to voters at home as "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

 

As though he had already been granted the presidency by heavenly proclamation.

 

My unease deepened as the hysteria spiralled further out of control. By the time the faux Greek columns appeared in Invesco stadium, it had become something akin to fear. Supporters attending the Invesco rally were rumored to be practicing a special hand gesture, a kind of Obama salute with both hands clasped overhead in the shape of an "O."

All this for a Chicago machine politician, a junior Senator who had yet to finish his first term.

My memories of that campaign prodded me to recognize the same obsessive behavior in Ron Paul devotees- the same way a nagging headache alerts the patient to the approaching relapse of a chronic illness.  "...every man is a prophet, until he faces a Congress,"

warns Mr. Coates. But what might happen if someday the True Believers lose patience with that reality, and decide to change it?

Just how short is the journey from gooseflesh to goosesteps?

Merry Christmas to All

It's been a discouraging year for many Americans.  But cheer up, chin up; a new year full of new chances is on the way.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Make the Yule-tide gay,
From now on,
our troubles will be miles away....

  Sing it, Judy!

 

And a big MERRY CHRISTMAS as well to our returning troops:

  Christmas Eve will find them

Where the love-light gleams

They'll be home for Christmas

And not just in their dreams......

Merry Christmas and warm wishes to all Deafening Silence readers, religious or not.  I hope everyone will have an opportunity to hug a loved one, raise a glass to treasured friends or simply take a deep breath and get ready for the New Year ahead.

Just Because I Like This

My sweetheart stumbled across this YouTube video last nite and we both found it stunning.  Notice how the dancers take turns being the lead.  A YouTube commenter referred to this as being "ambidancetrous," which I think is charming.  Note that (like Jaye Davidson's portrayal of Dil in The Crying Game), this isn't some attention-getting schtick; it's just great dancing.

 

Rest in Peace, Mr. Hitchens

In whatever kind of a ‘race’ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens, writer and perennial target for both ardor and ire, has died at age 62.  He had already discontinued further cancer treatment and was in hospice when he was felled by pnuemonia, a complication of esophageal cancer.

Spare a kind thought (not a prayer, God knows he would hate that) today for his wife and children.  Agree or disagree with him, he was loved and will be missed by them.

Here's a quick roundup of reactions to his passing:

This piece at CBS News is a very good summation of his life and work, for the less-initiated:

He was a militant humanist who believed in pluralism and racial justice and freedom of speech, big cities and fine art and the willingness to stand the consequences. He was smacked in the rear by then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and beaten up in Beirut. He once submitted to waterboarding to prove that it was indeed torture.

The New York Times says this:

Armed with a quick wit and a keen appetite for combat, Mr. Hitchens was in constant demand as a speaker on television, radio and the debating platform, where he held forth in a sonorous, plummily accented voice that seemed at odds with his disheveled appearance. He was a master of the extended peroration, peppered with literary allusions, and of the bright, off-the-cuff remark.

From NPR:

"I mean I thought of, at one point, entitling the book Both Sides Now, to describe the various ambivalences and contradictions that I've been faced with, or that I contained: English and American, Anglo-Celtic and Jewish, Marxist and — what shall we say — I've been accused of being this, accused of being a neoconservative and not always thought of it as an insult; internationalist but in a way patriotic," he said.

An official statement from one of his employers, Vanity Fair:

“My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends,” he wrote in the June 2011 issue. He died in their presence, too, at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. May his 62 years of living, well, so livingly console the many of us who will miss him dearly.

Vanity Fair is also running a photo essay.

From another employer, Slate:

At a rare public appearance in his final months, Hitchens conceded that his time was running short, but said that he had no plans to give up his life's work in the face of his deteriorating health. "I'm not going to quit until I absolutely have to," he said then, drawing an ovation from the crowd.

Hitchens lived up to that promise, authoring articles for a number of publications during his final weeks on everything from American politics to his own mortality. Writing for Vanity Fair in a piece that was published only days before he died, Hitchens reaffirmed that he hoped to be fully conscious and awake as he passed away, "in order to 'do' death in the active and not the passive sense," much as he had previously explained to his readers was his wish even before he learned of his cancer and prognosis.

"I do, still, try to nurture that little flame of curiosity and defiance: willing to play out the string to the end and wishing to be spared nothing that properly belongs to a life span," he wrote.

 And from another employer, The Atlantic:

 Hitch, an idealist committed to protecting human rights and to putting thugs in their place, embraced a muscular internationalism consistent with the stand he'd taken on the Falklands war (in 1982, Christopher, a then-uncompromising socialist, was at one with Mrs. Thatcher) and that he would take on the two wars against Saddam Hussein.

 

(Image Credit: Minnesota Conservatives)