October 26, 2004
I try not to read. I try not to listen.
But I can't, because I care about my country, about my family's future, about my safety, about my military friends, about my military future. I follow the campaign not as a fan but as someone who is terrified of the outcome and terrified by the fact that most of us may stop paying attention once a winner is declared (hopefully by math and not by a court).
I am afraid. I am afraid that most of this country does not pay attention to anything that does not agree with their own views. I am guilty of this as well - I read Newsweek, The Nation, online blogs that are all liberal, etc. I tend to search out things that criticise the current president rather than his senate challenger.
But knowing that I do this I look critically at this weak opponent, and I listen carefully to those that support the president. I see them at work, in bible study, at the store, on the radio. The country is a great mass of conservatives now, and I feel like I simply cannot speak up because all the arguments have been made deftly by Rove, and I am not interested in trading fucking taglines that we have all heard on TV.
We cannot back out of Iraq and Afghanistan now that we have created them as terrorist incubators - there will be no peaceful future for either. We cannot continue to spend like we have been, we cannot continue to destroy our education system, our health-care system.
Bush seems like a good man of faith, but I doubt that he has the intellectual capacity to lead this country. You are either the master of your cabinet, or you are controlled by it. Bush is clearly controlled by his love of delegation, and those beneath him appear to be leading this country into risky situations with his unchanging support. Bush has systematically catered to industry (including in particular my industry), and he sees nothing wrong with this in his personal morality.
Kerry is a senator, and he talks like a senator and debates like one. He thinks critically and changes his mind when presented with new information. But this isn't a fucking discussion, this is a series of little tiny lives that can be ruined. I doubt that Kerry can bring a peaceful end to Iraq and he certainly cannot do all the things that he has had to promise to do in order to make a run at an incumbent president.
What worries me the most is that neither is a great man, and to save us we need a great leader to lead this great nation. But I simply hope that it is a great nation - because day to day all I see is ignorance, weakness, and selfishness.
I am comforted by something that I overheard the other day. If there is any sort of attack near the election, we will not roll over and not have them. We are not France or Spain - even if Americans don't intend to vote - we will not allow anybody else to mess with our elections. We can fuck them up on our own.
03:17 PM part of
personal
October 25, 2004
Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't as all. You can be discouraged by failure — or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember that's where you will find success.
— Thomas J. Watson, Sr.
03:03 PM part of
inspiration
October 19, 2004
Man, you know the world is changing when you see a Kurt Vonnegut piece and there are freaking comments to it from readers.
02:51 PM part of
unavoidable sadness
October 12, 2004
I could read this guy's stuff all day:
In a similar experiment, Dweck gave a class of preadolescent students a test filled with challenging problems. After they were finished, one group was praised for its effort and another group was praised for its intelligence. Those praised for their intelligence were reluctant to tackle difficult tasks, and their performance on subsequent tests soon began to suffer. Then Dweck asked the children to write a letter to students at another school, describing their experience in the study. She discovered something remarkable: forty per cent of those students who were praised for their intelligence lied about how they had scored on the test, adjusting their grade upward. They weren't naturally deceptive people, and they weren't any less intelligent or self-confident than anyone else. They simply did what people do when they are immersed in an environment that celebrates them solely for their innate "talent." They begin to define themselves by that description, and when times get tough and that self-image is threatened they have difficulty with the consequences. They will not take the remedial course. They will not stand up to investors and the public and admit that they were wrong. They'd sooner lie.
03:05 PM part of
work
October 06, 2004
From some spam I got today:
"they had been dead: then how old I was, what was my name, whether I"
08:38 PM part of
a balanced breakfast
October 04, 2004
Let's please just try to remember that the nobility of the soldier is separate from the nobility of the war. War and warrior are two different things. I thought that we had learned that, but all the feelings towards soldiers in Iraq and constant protests of Civil War reenactments don't suggest that we remember.
07:59 PM part of
personal
October 01, 2004
I bought the complete Borges about two years ago and am just now really reading it. I read at least one story right before I go to sleep which makes for some interesting dreams. I have found myself skipping over the longer pieces because I don't have a good deal of time normally, and so I have read about half of the anthology, in no particular order. This has lead to a series of intertextualidades including the night when I read The Man on a Pink Corner and then the protagonist's view of it on the same night but from different books after some flipping of pages.
I am not sure if Borges himself would love or hate my approach.
09:46 PM part of
personal
I don't write, and I am in no way a writer, but from my experience there are two kinds. The young ones are constantly looking for something new to write about and pick a word off of an ad in a magazine and try to start or end a story with it as a challenge. The other kind simply starts writing something when they feel it - how does Borges say it? - always write the truth. This second kind is therefore made up of people who have lived, and people who haven't but are perceptive enough to make up for it.
09:43 PM part of
work