…”we need to make love to the Iraqis after we’ve made war.”

RICK GIOMBETTI writes at Eat the State:

“We have long since passed the stage in our history when opposition to militarism are merely values to be cherished. Given the awesome destructive power of the weapons at our government’s disposal, we have no choice but to oppose the Bush administration’s belligerence. It is a prerequisite for our survival.”

…sez we shouldn’t consttantly rail against Bush’s language blunders. For one thing, we can still “criticize the U.S. President based on his bad policies. It ain’t like there’s a shortage of those.” For another, “Language bullying — or prescriptivism, as it’s more
politely called — is conservative in the worst sense. It advances a stuffy
and old-fashioned view of language, the rules of which it considers set by
supposed experts, such as the authors of grammar books, rather than common
usage. It is deeply anti-populist and snobby, not to mention just plain
wrong and cranky.”

DAVID BRODER breaks from the Washington Post‘s recent deluge of Dubya-worship to dare to question a new Federal budget that sacrifices almost everything from education to children’s health, all for the sake of the gazillionaires’ sacred tax cuts….

WHILE SUSAN FALUDI ponders whether we’re seeing the death of certain American mythologies, such as those of morality and justice.

FRANK RICH isn’t the first one to notice how the Chicago movie reflects today’s cynical media manipulations. But I haven’t yet read of anybody who’s noticed the political relevance that almost redeems Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones. A republic slowly devolves into an empire while fighting both large-scale battles and sneak terror attacks–and while its supposed leaders are actually conspiring with the attackers, to generate an atmosphere of instability and to promote the “emergency” suspension of democracy. Lucasfilm is now filming the next sequel, in which (as we all already know) the forces of empire win and the defenders of freedom scatter into far-flung exiles. Let’s hope we can improvise a happier ending to our real-life clone wars.

…a little further on the addictive quest for what my previous post referred to as “abstract power,” the destructive madness that’s fueling our governmental elite during its current drive toward doom.

Some of you who lived through the Watergate era remember the “Blind Ambition,” as Nixon aide John Dean described the White House mindset of the time.

Look at the number of un-reconstructed Nixonians back in the White House now, imagine three decades’ worth of stewing grudges and revenge fantasies.

Next, consider the “Reality Distortion Field.”

That’s the late-’80s-coined phrase with which Apple Computer cofounder Steve Jobs was accused of being selectively unaware of business conditions that didn’t fit what he chose to believe. The lieutenants and yes-men who surrounded Jobs, according to this theory, held such personal loyalty to their boss that they came to share his delusions?and to feed them back to him, by giving him highly edited market data and highly weighted interpretations of that data.

Finally, we have the example of Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal.

This documentary, currently airing on the Game Show Network, tells the tragic life story of Michael Larson, an unemployed ice-cream truck driver from Ohio with three kids by three different mothers, a man obsessed with finding the perfect get-rich-quick scheme that would set him up for life. He spent his jobless days watching the four or five TV sets he’d stacked in his tiny apartment. He watched the now-classic Press Your Luck until he realized the show’s big game board wasn’t really random, that he could predict the order of its blinking lights and stop it on any prize square he wanted. He got to LA, somehow got through the contestant-casting process, and legally took the network for over $100,000. He then promptly lost it all between a shady real-estate deal and a burglary at his home (yes, he’d kept thousands in small bills lying around the apartment!).

Anyhoo, during the documentary a staff member on the old show recalls seeing a steely, emotionless stare in Larson’s eyes. The staffer says he saw the same look years later, when his teenage son started getting hooked on video games. It’s the “in the zone” stare one gets when one has become one with the game. Total zen-like concentration on making the right moves in the right sequence, and on the power-rush rewards for success. Total obliviousness to everything that is neither the screen nor the control console.

This country, my loyal readers, is being run by people who try to run government, and war, as one big video game. The chickenhawks don’t want to fight. They never wanted to fight. They just want to manipulate the joysticks of power by all means available, including by the means of making other people fight for them, whilst they remain in their posh office suites and luxurious homes bossing everybody around.

I could give a fourth metaphor here, but you already know about the hubris and comeuppance of those ol’ dot-com bosses.

NEWSWEEK VET ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE recently gave a long speech to the Foreign Press Association on the messier-every-day mess the right wing sleaze machine has gotten us into, entitled “Clash of Civilizations or New World Disorder?” Some highlights:

“All I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty is that the

world today is a lot safer than it will be in 10 years from now, as the

forces of nationalism, fundamentalism, globalism, and increasingly

transnationalism sort themselves out. The new nexus that I can see at my work at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)—where I direct a program about transnational threats—is an emerging link between fanaticism, religion, and science….”Somebody, somewhere today is planning a post-capital world. I see some of the Phd dissertations being written all the way from Singapore to Spain following the scandals we had recently and still have on Wall Street. If present trends continue with democratic governance dominated by political leaders whose main concern is how to get themselves re-elected, then I’m afraid that democracy and the public good may be deemed incompatible, as indeed they were in Europe in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

“I don’t think it takes rocket science to figure out how much damage was done to the United States – the citadel of capitalism – by the age of gluttony on Wall Street. These crypto-capitalists saboteurs, as I call them in a column are the fodder that feeds transnational progressivism, which is a new ideology rooted in the NGOs….

“Last fall, Hewlett Packard received a patent for a new computer of

breakthrough technology that will enable them to manufacture a computer

smaller than a spec of dust. There is already a cell telephone so small that

it can be planted in a tooth. So the technology revolution is bound to be an

integral part of whatever emerges, as invisible molecular structures

embedded in conventional chips will be worn, ingested, or implanted. Imagine entire chemical labs the size of a computer chip. Technology is neutral, but one can easily imagine that the forces of evil will harness it to their objectives….

“[Washington] has become a bilingual city where truth is the second language…

“Are the networks in favor of war for ideological reasons or because ratings go up? I would tend to agree with the latter. They want a war. I am convinced of that.”

…at the (beautiful) main Tacoma Public Library was a smash. Some 60 Citizens of Destiny listened to me, KIRO-AM’s Dave Ross, and two Tacoma News Tribune writers debate whether or not we’re all amusing ourselves into oblivion. I, as I told you here I would, said we’re not.

If anything, I said, the current would-be social controllers aren’t trying to get us to ignore serious issues by force-feeding us light entertainment. They’re trying to get us obsessed with certain serious issues at a non-rational level of fear and obedience.

As I’d expected, there were several cranky old hippies who pined for the pre-TV golden age they were absolutely convinced had existed just before they were born, and who didn’t believe me when I told them the old newsreels had war theme songs long before CNN. I also tried to reassure some of the library loyalists in the crowd that books weren’t going away anytime soon (even if library budgets are currently big on DVDs and, in Seattle’s case, on building projects rather than on book buying); whether the stuff inside tomorrow’s books will be worth reading is a different question.

One woman in the audience noted that Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (the topic of an everybody-in-town-reads-one-book promotion to which this panel was a tie-in event) ended with a scene of people reciting from their favorite banned books, which they’d cared to memorize. In a variation on the old “desert island disc” question, she asked the panel what books we’d prefer to memorize. I mumbled something about The Gambler and Fanny Hill, saying they represented skills and pursuits that some people in a post-apocalyptic situation might not consider vital to survival but I would. I’m sure tomorrow I’ll think of a few tomes far more appropriate to the hypothetical situation. If you’ve any desert-island books, feel free to email the titles and reasons why you’d choose them.

I’ve been recruited into speaking this Thursday at the Tacoma Public Library’s main branch (1102 Tacoma Avenue South; 7 pm).

They’re running one of those “everybody in town reads the same book” promos, based this time on Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. The panel I’ll be at will discuss Bradbury’s premise of a future dystopia where audiovisual media are drugs and books are outlawed.

This nightmare image has been very popular among highbrow technophobes, particuarly by Neil Postman. In his 1986 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman essentially argued that Those Kids Today were all a bunch of TV-addicted idiots; that new info technologies were always inherently reactionary and anti-thought; and that The Word was good for you and The Image was bad for you.

I’ve written about Postman in the past: I disagreed with his premises then and still do.

The Simpsons and The Sopranos are, I argue, more intelligent than the books of Danielle Steel and John Grisham. Secondary and tertiary cable channels provide more highbrow arts and culture than PBS ever did. The Internet has helped to democratize the written word (and helped get the current peace movement jump-started).

And kids’ attention spans seem to be getting longer these days. I’ve written before how every Harry Potter book is at least 100 pages longer than the previous one; and about those PC adventure games where you have to methodically explore and experiment for weeks or months before discovering the solution.

Postman, and most of his leftist pop-culture-haters, apparently believe there had been a pre-TV golden age when everybody was a Serious Reader, every newspaper was a junior New York Times, and every magazine was a junior Atlantic Monthly.

Not so. Escapism has always been with us. We are a species that craves stories, pleasure, beauty, and diversion. Bradbury himself is an entertainer. (In the early ’50s he sold stories to EC Comics, whose Tales from the Crypt and other titles were denounced in the U.S. Congress as corrupters of innocent youth.)

And no, The Word isn’t in decline. We’re more dependent upon words than ever. Rather than dying, the book biz seems to be weathering the current fiscal storm better than the TV networks, and a lot better than the movie theater chains and the cable TV operators.

And those words aren’t always progressive or enlightening. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the anti-Jewish hoax that’s become recently popular among Islamic fundamentalists, is a book. The Bell Curve, a pile of pseudo-scientific gibberish intended as an excuse for anti-black racism, is a book.

Entertainment can give a context for ideas and propose a way of seeing the world. Few people knew this more fully than Francois Truffaut, who directed the movie version of Fahrenheit 451. Truffaut was a lifelong student and admirer of great films. He wrote elequently about how the perfect scene, or even the perfect single image, could immediately express whole ranges of thoughts and feelings.

The question should really be what contexts and worldviews emanate from the entertainments we’re being given. That’s what I hope to ask in Tacoma this Thursday. Hope you can attend.

MEANWHILE, the NY Times interviews some Euro intellectuals wondering whatever happenned to that good ol’ American freedom-loving, individualistic spirit.

…has been spending the past year and a half denouncing “pluralism” and “diversity” as ideologies that breed terrorists. I’ve been looking for the proper way to say “bah” to that particular malarkey.

I found it in this essay by the late philosopher and historian Isaiah Berlin.

Berlin (1909-97) believed, as I do, that dogmatic ideology (any dogmatic ideology) is the eternal ruin of the human race, and that the only way out of that trap is to acknowledge we’re a complex species in a complex world, to resist the temptation of too-easy answers, and to expose oneself to highly divergent points of view. But Berlin also distinguishes this pluralism from “relativism,” the unquestioning acceptance of other viewpoints (or the tolerance of intolerance):

I do not say “I like my coffee with milk and you like it without; I am in favor of kindness and you prefer concentration camps”—each of us with his own values, which cannot be overcome or integrated. This I believe to be false. But I do believe that there is a plurality of values which men can and do seek, and that these values differ… And the difference it makes is that if a man pursues one of these values, I, who do not, am able to understand why he pursues it or what it would be like, in his circumstances, for me to be induced to pursue it. Hence the possibility of human understanding….”The enemy of pluralism is monism—the ancient belief that there is a single harmony of truths into which everything, if it is genuine, in the end must fit… that those who know should command those who do not. Those who know the answers to some of the great problems of mankind must be obeyed, for they alone know how society should be organized, how individual lives should be lived, how culture should be developed.

“This is the old Platonic belief in the philosopher-kings, who were entitled to give orders to others. There have always been thinkers who hold that if only scientists, or scientifically trained persons, could be put in charge of things, the world would be vastly improved. To this I have to say that no better excuse, or even reason, has ever been propounded for unlimited despotism on the part of an elite which robs the majority of its essential liberties.

“Someone once remarked that in the old days men and women were brought as sacrifices to a variety of gods; for these, the modern age has substituted the new idols: isms. To cause pain, to kill, to torture are in general rightly condemned; but if these things are done not for my personal benefit but for an ism—socialism, nationalism, fascism, communism, fanatically held religious belief, or progress, or the fulfillment of the laws of history—then they are in order.

“Most revolutionaries believe, covertly or overtly, that in order to create the ideal world eggs must be broken, otherwise one cannot obtain an omelette. Eggs are certainly broken—never more violently than in our times—but the omelette is far to seek, it recedes into an infinite distance. That is one of the corollaries of unbridled monism, as I call it—some call it fanaticism, but monism is at the root of every extremism.”

The election-stealers and the demagogues in DC now tell us we have to fall into line with their brand of intolerant monism, or risk being accused of supporting an overseas gang’s brand of intolerant monism. This situation blantantly stinks. We must demand better, and millions of us are doing so.

But while you protest, ask yourself what type of “regime change” you’d like to see in the US. I’ve read a lot of “radical” political schemes and utopian dreams over the years. Most of them would require a “benevolent dictator” or philosopher-king, or a ruling caste of philosopher-kings. Even some of the Eugene anarchists of WTO infamy want to make everybody conform to a single way of life (even down to what clothes we’d be allowed to wear and which foods we’d be allowed to eat).

I wish I knew who first wrote the old cliché, “One man’s utopia is another man’s dystopia” (or reign or terror, or just plain hell). We’ve gotta get the country out of its current, ultra-stupid situation. But there’s a larger task beyond that—helping build a nation, and a world, that’s more friendly toward real pluralism, real diversity, real debate, and real complexities.

A lot will have to change to make that happen. And it’s the kind of change that can’t be accomplished just by putting somebody in charge to order changes.

…in rural Eastern Washington can be found today at the unlikely spot of SexNewsDaily.com. Scroll about halfway down the hereby-linked page to find the memories of one “Larry K.” concerning the girls he knew back home, who drank and cavorted like rebel girls everywhere but who disdained abortion or even contraception—because they saw what used to be called the “shotgun wedding” as a path to an at least marginally-better existence.

Mr. K also chides college-grad feminists for not seriously considering the plight of the non-affluent:

“To lower class women the world doesn’t look like patriarchy; it looks like it’s run by a class of women and men who run it to their own advantage.… Feminism failed because it failed to seriously consider the fears of the mass of women who don’t have many options.”

I also see the world, or at least the non-Moslem world, as controlled by “a class of women and men who run it to their own advantage.”

White affluent women are the second most privileged class in this country. It’s not surprising for such a woman to see only affluent men above her socioeconomically, and then to perceive the whole of society as “The Patriarchy.”

I’m not denouncing such women. It’s easy to fall into limited perspectives. It’s harder to imagine life from somebody else’s point of view.

But it’s vital.

Amid the ongoing ickiness of war and rumors of war, Shuttle Explosion II came along to remind us that American techno-might does not equal invincibility; that Americans can needlessly die horrific deaths at the hands of their own government’s wrong decisions (such as NASA’s chronic corner-cutting), with no overseas enemies involved.

If the deaths of these six Americans (one of whom was born in India) and one Israeli have any meaning at all, it will be to help dissuade a few more citizens from blind faith in their government and its promises.

WHILE MUCH OF THE NATION was being reminded about the frailty of technology, I spent the weekend (when I wasn’t moving the print MISC into stores) being reminded about the eternal strength of the plain ol’ human body, at the Seattle Erotic Arts Festival at Town Hall (a former Christian Science church). There’ve been countless erotic-art group exhibitions in town before, but never this big or this well-publicized.

The Friday-night opening and auction left over 150 people lined up outside waiting for the chance to enter the filled-to-capacity auditorium. Once inside, many patrons removed jackets to reveal the requested “provocative” attire. (Signs were posted at all doors leading to other parts of the building, announcing “CLOTHING REQUIRED Beyond This Point.”)

There were guys in leather chaps or Utilikilts or puffy pirate shirts. There were ladies in thong bikinis with body paint, or thongs and burlesque pasties beneath see-thru dresses, or vinyl hot pants and ’70s-esque knit halter tops. There were lots of corsets and other cleavage enhancers. The wearers of these costumes (some of whom were older and/or wider than the standard “model material”) all glowed with the pride of being admired, being desired.

There was a glorious vibe in the air of joyous celebration, of taking a vacation from winter blahs and sharing a form of instant intimacy with several hundred other adults. Unlike much of the “sex industry” (porn, strip clubs, advice manuals, etc.), there was no mercenary hard-sell attitude; not among the viewers and exhibitors and not even in most of the art.

There were 80 or so artworks on auction night, and over 200 artworks in the subsequent weekend exhibit. (About half the auction pieces were also on display the following two days.)

The artworks themselves encompassed most of the popular visual-art media. There were photos, paintings, drawings, cartoons, sculptures, and collages, in all sizes and shapes.

The subject matter of the works hewed close to a rather narrow variety of scenes, rather than the full possibilities of erotic expression.

There were many solo “figure studies” of women and men of assorted adult ages, nude or in fetish garb.

There were many bondage scenes, of a woman or man either tied up alone or being disciplined by an always-female dominant.

There were scenes of kissing and/or groping among lesbian, gay-male, and even a few hetero couples.

There were two or three scenes of fellatio, but none of cunnilingus.

There were no scenes of what used to be called “the sex act,” hetero intercourse. (One of the event’s organizers told me no such scenes were submitted.) The only penetrative sex shown was in a large painting of a gay orgy. (Once again, I thought, the Seattle art world’s reverse double standards were more open to gay-male sexuality than to straight-male sexuality.)

My first thought about the prevelance bondage art: “It’s just so 1998.” Some of the S/M scenes depicted the attitude of aggressive egomania that helped make the dot-com era so annoying. Others seemed intended to be “shock art,” as if we were still living in an era before there were adult novelty stores in half the nation’s strip malls.

But others recognized a more playful spirit to role-playing. Although the exhibition’s contributing artists come from all over North America, I pondered whether I was seeing the birth of a particularly Nor’Western flavor of erotica, and what that could be.

I decided it would be an erotica based on playfulness, closeness, and comfort. Instead of the “are we being transgressive yet?” bombast found in much NY/Calif. “alternative” sex art, or the artsy pretensions found in much Euro sex art, NW sex art would acknowledge that people have been having sex since before we were born, and having all assorted types of sex to boot. Het, lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, pain/pleasure, monogamous, nonmonogamous, multi-partner, solo, etc. etc.—none of it’s outré, all of it’s fun for those who’re into it. It’s all about connecting with other bodies and souls, keeping warm and passionate during the dreary winter days, being creative and positive, gentle and brash.

Sidebar: Before the exhibition, I’d seen the video Sex Across America #8: Seattle. It’s part of a series in which some hard-porn performers and their camera crew travel to different cities. This one featured hotel-room sex scenes taped in the (unnamed but obvious) Seattle Sheraton, Edgewater, and Inn at the Market, plus a billiards bar I’m sure I’ve been to under other circumstances; as well as clothed tourist scenes at the Space Needle, the Pike Place Market, and around Fourth and Pike.

While merely location-shot here by LA porn-biz people, the sex is a lot closer to personalized lovemaking than to most of the emotionless hot-action usually found in LA corporate porn. Especially in the final scene, with a real-life local couple (who’d previously appeared in an “amateur” sex video for the same director). Prior to showing off their well-practiced lovin’ technique, the couple’s female half is interviewed by the director: “So I hear the women in Seattle are really horny,” he says. The woman smiles back, “Yes! It’s all the moisture.” It’s a cute, charming prelude to some cute, charming nooky.

So there can indeed be a Northwestern eroticism. Another, more vital question: Can eroticism save the world, as has been pondered on this site and elsewhere?

The answer, like so much involving sex, is complicated.

The wide-open decadence of Berlin and Paris in the ’30s didn’t prevent the Nazis. Indeed, these scenes were among the Nazis’ first targets.

The ’60s hedonism didn’t do much to stop the Vietnam war or prevent the rise of Nixon’s gang.

The ’70s cult of individual pleasure merely foreshadowed the upscale “lifestyle” fetish of more recent times.

But a strong, supportive gay community, built largely around sexual enjoyment (and around demanding the right to it) is the dominant reason new AIDS infections have been stemmed in urban North America.

And today’s most pressing social problems all have sensually-based potential solutions.

Both fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity seek to repress sex, as part of authoritarian ideologies encouraging obedience and disconnectedness.

Today’s war fever is profoundly anti-sexual, promoting cold ruthless ambition at the expense of almost everything to do with freedom or compassion.

Our contracting economy keeps most of us shackled and frustrated, while rewarding a tiny elite of whip-lashing doms.

The suburban landscape is a wasteland of beauty-deprived arterial roads and subdivisions keeping people apart and isolated.

Sex and erotica, by themselves, won’t solve any of these. A consumerist, self-centered definition of sex could even help these problems get worse.

But it’d sure help if more people used sensuality as a way to become more aware of the world around them, and if more people used sexual intimacy and to learn how to empathically bond with people, to help bring back a sense of community.

And, of course, sex is always a good way to advertise a progressive movement. Spread the joy, share the (consensual) love, propose a world of more satisfying possibilities, and have tons-O-fun doing it.

Come out of the shadows and into the warm pink light.

UPDATE: The oh-so-long-awaited new-look print MISC will finally, knock on Formica, be out starting this Tuesday at select sales outlets around town. Subscribers should get it by the end of the week.

SOME MAGAZINES are so desperate to fill their pages with sex-related texts, they end up hyping alleged “trends,” sometimes contradictory, sometimes in the same issue.

Case in point: New York mag, which in a recent issue declares NYC young-marrieds to be a stress-defeated “Generation Sexless,” yet also proclaims a new upsurge in casual sex thanks to online dating services giving women more anonymity and power within such situations.

OK OK, less married sex and more unmarried sex aren’t contradictory. Except another story in the mag claims more NY-ers now want to marry and are having less casual sex.

Meanwhile, USA Today claims to have discovered a vast trend of listless middle-aged husbands, incapable of satisfying wives who came of age in the sex-lib ’70s and who still want it as often as possible.

Confused? Hey, it’s an innately confusing topic to begin with. Live w/it.

Or maybe it’s not so confusing, if you try to wrap it all into a meta-trend.

Say, a grossly overgeneralized meta-trend of Women Who Want It All, or at least as much of It as can fit around other weekly tasks; facing dudes who can’t be the Sole Breadwinner anymore (and are often not winning any bread right now), who don’t know what role to play opposite assertive women, and some of whom (particularly in art-and-media cities) might feel intimidated by some of the “cute” and “funny” wholesale male bashing in contemporary pop-cult.

This ties in, tangentally, with this site’s “Peepees for Peace” campaign, advocating the deployment of passionate male energy in the quest toward a better world for all. This call for a metaphoric rebalancing in the public sphere can easily equate with a need for more literal rebalancing in the private sphere.

I’m not advocating male superiority but male equality. As John Cusak’s platonic ladyfriend says in Say Anything, “There are millions of guys. Be a man.”

This country needs men.

Not the prepubescent schoolyard bullies of the political right.

Not the self-emasculated gender-guilt trippers of the political left.

Not the bumbling dads and incompetent husbands of the sitcoms.

Not the Pavlovian dorks of Maxim and The Best Damn Sports Show Period.

We need men who are equally eager to learn how to rebuild a dying economy and to learn how to lick clit. Who can create both new opportunities and new fantasy-role games.

We need more of the positive masculine qualities of bravery, responsibility, zeal, intelligence, and perserverence; at home and in the outside world. (The fact that juxtaposing the words “positive” and “masculine” is so rare in alt-culture, even a seeming oxymoron, is but another symptom of our problem.)

We need men who are confident enough to work and live alongside strong women, neither as master nor as slave. Men who can give women the kind of attentive, soul-meshing love neither vibrators nor blue pills can give by themselves.

Such men are made, not born. How to make them? I wish I knew.

…this is the next-to-last day for America, what with the deliberate official drives for more wars, more pollution, more social injustice, and more of just about everything that’s bad for everybody but George Dubious’s zillionaire cronies.