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Truthout: William Rivers Pitt: ‘If 1% of those who did not cast a ballot in 2000 decide to do so this Tuesday, 1,000,000 votes would be injected into the process.’

NY Times: Bob Herbert: ‘This will never be seen as a shining moment in U.S. history.’

I’m with these people.

Here’s what I think is the simplest basis on which to decide one’s upcoming vote (or nonvote) for U.S. president.

Observed sequence of events:

1. Command given to invade Iraq for a stated reason ¹

2. As a direct result, so far

• 1,067 Americans dead
• 7,531 Americans wounded
• ~15,000 Iraqi men, women, and children dead
  100,000 Iraqi dead according to study published in British medical journal The Lancet (approximately zero of whom had anything to do with 9/11)
• Iraqis wounded “too high to count” in April 2003 (Red Cross).
  How many more 10,000s since then?
• $140B spent in Iraq, $200B committed
  (Note that given 280M Americans, $200B -> $700/person.)

3. Stated reason proves to be wrong ²

¹ Primary stated reason: “Iraq has WMD including nuclear and biological weapons, and intent to use them, and is therefore an imminent threat to the United States” (paraphrased) (more info).

² Actual outcome: Iraq had no weapons and posed no threat to the U.S. (Duelfer report, Oct. 7, 2004: WaPo summary, actual report).

Time’s up, game over, no do-overs.

No one in any field keeps their job after a mistake of this magnitude. It’s nothing personal; prudence and public safety demands leave, demotion, or outright firing of the person or persons involved in massively deadly mistakes like this. Always.

Further, just as in the corporate world, we the people who exercise oversight over the position of U.S. president will be held accountable if we don’t demote or fire the person or persons involved.

Every other voting consideration in this election, while many are important, factors out of this particular equation.

I think the bottom-line decision really is this simple.

Bonus upside:
The field of rehires looks really good. Great resumes, fine presentation.

NOTE: Making up alternative reasons for invading after the fact is not allowed. (For example, say your kid wrecks the car. If he keeps making up reasons why he did it, will he eventually hit on a reason you’ll buy? Of course not. Reasons aren’t retroactive.)

NY Times op-ed: Bruce Springsteen: ‘It is through the truthful exercising of the best of human qualities … that we come to life in God’s eyes.’

I think I know when the thief is coming …

Judgment Day? Yes, it’s coming, but judgment by whom? I have long perceived the judgment involved as largely one’s own, as beautifully pictured near the end of C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle, one of the most meaning-full books I’ve ever read:

As the land of Narnia comes to an end, its inhabitants stream out through the stable door past Aslan the Lion’s gaze. Some choose to go “further in and higher up” into the bright light of Aslan’s country, God-ward, we are given to infer. Others choose to turn aside and go into outer darkness. The most striking thing to me about this two-pronged parade is it’s not Aslan who’s doing the judging; it’s each one leaving who chooses the direction to take (193).

Lewis summarizes this understanding of judgment elsewhere saying, “Either you say to God, ‘thy will be done,’ or God must say to you, ‘thy will be done’” (The Great Divorce, 72).

Some in Narnia are caught in a dilemma, unable to cleanly choose — the circle of dwarfs sitting inside the exit door. They keep telling themselves they’re in a dark stable where things are at least familiar; meanwhile those around them see they’re sitting in broad daylight. Aslan says of them that they are in a prison of their minds’ own making, “so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out” (186).

It’ll be a surprise. As in unexpected. Paul says an interesting thing: “You know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, ‘Peace and safety’” [as in “The American people are safer, safer, safer” (GWB)] “destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape” (1 Thess. 5:2-3).

Matthew reports Jesus’ similar comments on this timing, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. … Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him” (Matt. 24:36-44).

Here’s my hunch. The unexpected surprise is that judgment has descended from the lofty theological realm with its talk of salvation, heaven, and hellfire, and been made concrete, even mundane: U.S. election day is judgment day. (It will certainly be a judgment day.)

On that day, will we lose our shackles of fear and choose to go “further in and higher up” to a future committed to justice and to bringing all our will to bear on being blessed peacemakers, as Jesus commends?

Or will we choose to continue down this road of endless war [as in “I’m a war president … with war on my mind” (GWB)] with its accompanying inattention to God’s concerns: poverty, injustice, and hypocrisy?

Might I be overstating the gravity of the situation? Maybe.
Do I think I am? No — I think this is a pivotal moment in human salvation-history.

Let’s keep watch. WWAD?

2004-07-20 update:
I like to hope this Judgment Day choice is as evident to a resounding majority of us in the U.S. as it is to me. I mean, if we’re unencumbered by ideology, paying attention, and thinking, how much more clear-cut could the choice be, even for those of us who don’t habitually think in theological terms?

Yet today in my workplace breakroom I heard a colleague wet his lips and exclaim at the TV, “I don’t have to listen to a word that guy says to know he’s a liberal dipshit.” Personally, I don’t think any Bush supporter who stares open-mouthed at Fox News for minutes on end needs to be calling anyone else a dipshit.

Beautifully done short video/audio montage about the ideals at the center of the Dean movement —

http://www.thankyouhoward.com/

This reminds my why I found such hope in the Dean movement — and why, even now, I still do.

My hunch is this is the kind of integrity and core values that all of us who care about such things are looking for. It’s a quality that knows no political party boundaries. Mr. Bush offered depth like this as a teaser, but it was a façade — and a betrayal.

I passionately want a real “uniter not a divider” — and I have a reasonably keen bullshit detector for those who claim to be but aren’t. Since I expect many of us agree on what we actually want, and many of us have now, in the wake of the present betrayal, had a fresh bullshit detector tuneup, I think we can finally move forward, more together than before, toward our common goal.

I intend to work over as many election cycles as it takes to move ideal and implementation closer together.

Voting in the Tennessee primary last Tuesday must’ve been a Dean support closure thing for me, a last-reserves burst of energy like the final moments before crossing a 10K race finish line. I crossed it, and now I’m temporarily out of glycogen.

I really didn’t realize just how much sustaining hope I was deriving from the Dean campaign’s ideals and my support of them — and just how little wherewithal I’d have left for anyone else.

I’m around, just sitting down fer a spell to ketch my breaf.

I am so thankful to Dr. Dean — and to the movement he’s started — for rekindling hope in me and giving a spine transplant to the Democratic Party in the U.S. that I’m marching out the door Tuesday morning (February 10) to vote for Dean in the Tennessee primary.

Howard Dean is the only presidential candidate in my lifetime whose campaign I’ve been passionate about — it’s helped me believe my participation makes a difference, and that collectively we the people can take back our country. We can transform our country into one characterized by courage, straight talk, trustworthiness, balanced budgets, and healthy relationships among ourselves and with the world.

My vote will be one fully for Dean; any other vote would be lessened by being partly for the candidate but mostly against someone else. I am tired of voting for the lesser of two evils, and this day, for once in my memory, I won’t have to.

Of course I’m disappointed that the numbers of us choosing to vote similarly isn’t surging, whatever the reasons. One reason gives me pause about the efficacy of democracy’s equal voting representation: when I consider that someone who makes a voting decision Tuesday AM based on the front page of Tuesday’s USA Today has exactly the same political decision-making input I do when I’ve been studying these guys for seven months, it seems not quite right.

But in the end I let go of that conceit and insist that all of us have voices. Commitment to this democratic ideal implies a next step of reforming the media back to being a diverse chorus of voices and views for people to consider instead of being a monotonous, far-too-influential, agenda-laden handful of voices as it is now. A healthy democracy requires a diverse and informed electorate, not one misled by talking heads’ talking points.

For example, what’s up with the media declaring any candidate the winner when most of the nation’s primary voters haven’t yet cast a vote? That just doesn’t make sense in something called a democracy.

A Rainbow Brightens the Day, © caitlin conoverWhat happened to grace? Given primary results so far, is my earlier discernment without merit? — that “Dr. Dean’s campaign is where the grace falls. If God indeed guides our paths, rescuing us from ourselves — and of course I think he does — then this is where I sense he’s busiest. And where he’s smiling.”

Maybe. But because I credit the Dean campaign with initiating the tectonic plate shift that’s begun in U.S. politics, I think I was in the ballpark but without any sense of the final score, something that happens to me all the time.

I amuse myself thinking that intuition-plus-discernment is like a barometer that makes sweeping atmospheric change visible well before its effects appear (clear skies, raindrops). The data provided by a barometer yield no precise forecasts on their own, but we still value the barometer’s input in revealing invisible trends.

The situation as I see it theologically: The God of scripture and my experience is a God of transformation. And transformation finally appears to be underway in our U.S. political landscape. The Dean Phenomenon by most accounts has played an important role in initiating and fueling this transformation: Dr. Dean’s ideas are alive and well, having been appropriated into and now transforming the candidacies of those around him. Hence I think I can still sanely infer that Dean’s campaign is where the grace falls.

Now where grace rains down next will be interesting to see. Maybe it’s spreading further than I had dared imagine.

It has felt like rain in the desert, and I’m thankful for every drop.

2004-02-09 update: Jon Carroll captures the essence of Dean’s contribution very skillfully in SF Chronicle column Thank Howard Dean for Leading His Party Out of the Darkness.

Tonight as I turn in before voting tomorrow AM, I’m pondering the out-of-control budget deficit (and worse, debt) situation we’re facing in the United States, and thinking how much we need Dean’s year-in, year-out budget balancing expertise at our financial rudder. I imagine his “doctor’s bluntness” could help in this situation: We’re going to stop this hemorrhage so you won’t die. But it’s going to hurt. Much saner than “you can have it all, including Mars, and tax cuts, too.”

2004-02-10 update: Done! I stared at the glowing red LED beside “Howard Dean” for a long time before I pressed the VOTE button, remembering, savoring. Making a fully congruent vote like this is a matter of joyous significance for me; it’s my first in a quarter-century of voting AFAICR.

Steph and I were two among a total of four voters in our precinct at 8:15 AM. I don’t know if that’s a data point pointing to a poor primary turnout in Tennessee, or that we live in an intractably Republican suburb whose voters by and large see no need to vote today.

My rules of thumb:
Vote your conscience in a primary — forget “electability.”
Vote the best interests of your country and the world in a general
(which in the U.S. too often means choosing the least-bad candidate among those left standing).

I am still pro-Dean, and always will be, but I hereby expand my scope to ABB.

I am absolutely flabbergasted:
Media admits Dean “scream” was a cheer in the midst of a roaring crowd.

Small step though this is, and late in coming, I still appreciate it because I expected no acknowledgement at all from the media that anything wrong was done.

ABC News and Diane Sawyer have aired a mea culpa concerning the media’s hyperplay of Howard Dean’s “primal scream” speech following the Iowa caucuses on Monday, January 19. Read what I’m talking about at ABC’s The Dean Scream: The version of reality that we didn’t see on TV (alt article), and watch the video (alt video).

After my interview with Dean and his wife in which I played the tape again — in fact played it to them — I noticed that on that tape he’s holding a hand-held microphone. One designed to filter out the background noise. It isolates your voice, just like it does to Charlie Gibson and me when we have big crowds in the morning. The crowds are deafening to us standing there.

But the viewer at home hears only our voice.

So, we collected some other tapes from Dean’s speech including one from a documentary filmmaker, tapes that do carry the sound of the crowd, not just the microphone he held on stage. …

Dean’s boisterous countdown of the upcoming primaries as we all heard it on TV was isolated, when in fact he was shouting over the roaring crowd.

And what about the scream as we all heard it? In the room, the so-called scream couldn’t really be heard at all. Again, he was yelling along with the crowd.

This glimmer of integrity on the part of Diane Sawyer and ABC News — and I’ll assume it’s indeed integrity instead of anything less savory — makes my day. Not just because I’m a Dean fan but also because this tidbit sets me dreaming of a world in which mainstream media coverage actually is fair and balanced (or at least in the F&B ballpark) instead of superficial, repetitious, and often therefore misleading, sometimes to the point of slander.

This piece along with Diane’s lame-questioned but good-natured — and surprisingly compelling — interview with Howard and Judy Dean last Thursday (transcript and video links) has me prepared to wipe Diane’s slate clean, to give her a fresh chance. Hey, it feels great to do this! Hmmm …

Now if Bill Maher revokes his “new rule” that says — as a result of the TV version of the scream speech — that Uncle Howie is the “creepy guy,” then I’d really be a happy man. :-)

Update: To the objection that the TV version is what matters, I say, No — the real life version — of just about everything — is what really matters. Getting real is essential for engaging and solving the intractable social problems before us. Just playing a politician on TV doesn’t cut it.

Dr. Dean meets my realness criterion, and more important, his campaign is inspiring further realness to bloom in people all around the country. It’s this inspired realness — this hope, this talent, this engagement, this passion — among hundreds of thousands of us that’s even now changing the fabric of our country.

Is there steam enough in this to win? I don’t know. Is there enough to make a difference? Oh, yes.

Wow, I had almost forgotten I can dance to this vision thing. I’ve been sitting too long.

2004-02-01 update: Magnanimous as I was trying to be above, it’s still important to point out that the deliberate escalation of this “scream” nonevent into a national scene preoccupying the airwaves was attempted character assassination. It was a broad jump from fact into manufactured fancy that actually accomplished more character assassination per datum than I remember ever seeing before, kind of an Olympic gold in irresponsible journalism, which is itself fascinating in a perverse sort of way.

As Krista Pollitt at The Nation memorably puts it —

This, after all, is the same media that managed to make a major scandal out of the Scream, a moment of campaign exuberance of zero importance (especially when compared with — for example! — Bush’s inability to speak two consecutive unscripted sentences that are not gibberish, his refusal to read newspapers, and the fact that much of the world thinks he’s a dangerous moron).

[originally via Dean for America]

I have never before in my 4+ decades of life been this engrossed in — and nervewracked by — political caucuses and primaries like today’s in New Hampshire. I have never before given significant sums of money to any political candidate (mine’s going to Dr. Dean). I have never before felt that the soul of our country is at stake.

This, my friends, is turning-point time, a time you’ll remember to your grandkids.

Let discernment abound. Let deliverance begin. Yeeeeeeaaarrrrrgh!

2004-01-28 update: Final results, according to CNN —

Kerry, won 39 percent of the New Hampshire vote, compared to 26 percent for former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, 12 percent each for Retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark and Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and 9 percent for Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.

My #1 practical reason why declaring Kerry the nominee is premature:
Hardly any of my African American brothers and sisters — many of whom like to vote Democratic, as I do — have had a say in choosing the Democratic nominee. (Only two states have participated so far, and neither has many “Black or African American persons” according to the U.S. Census Bureau (2000): Iowa, 2.1% and New Hampshire, 0.7%.)

My #1 personal reason why declaring Kerry the nominee is premature:
I still want a candidate I can vote for with knowledge and enthusiasm (for Dean), not one for whom my vote — while still a certainty — is really a vote against someone else (for Kerry against Bush).

The biggest and best news from New Hampshire? — The record turnout (“estimated at about 200,000, compared to the previous high of 168,000 in 1992”). This level of voter participation is a good sign, an early data point in what I hope becomes a trend: the more we citizens participate, the more vital and representative is our democracy, no matter which candidate we elect to the White House.

Yesterday I was peering into what’s behind this week’s tidal wave of Democratic candidate Howard Dean criticism and merrymaking. As ABC News put it —

Dean’s guttural yells Monday night punctuated his poor finish [in Iowa] and raised questions about his political judgment and temperament. …

A humbled Howard Dean, saying “I have my warts. I sometimes say things that get me in trouble,” argued Thursday that voters will see through his flaws and rally to his troubled presidential candidacy.

I have a scream. Dean’s post-caucus Iowa speech on Monday night, variously called his “barbaric yawp” or “primal scream” speech, is here (Real video). I see fatigue-induced goofiness, maybe, but crazy? Nearly every football game I’ve ever been to is crazier than this. Looks like everyone there was having fun.

Why is it not “presidential” for Dean to coach and rev his tired supporters after a disappointing finish in Iowa, but is “presidential” for Bush to look and sound like — let’s face it — a total effing moron illiterate on national TV?

We’re being way too gullible to what the media tubesters tell us. Most of us can think for ourselves, so why the hell aren’t we?

As Dr. Dean said later about the event, “I was giving everything to people who gave everything to me.”

[2004-01-24 insert: Remixes of this event have become an Internet phenomenon. What started as ridicule has become a vehicle for getting the message out — cool! Some remixes are funny, and this one, You’ve Got the Power (MP3 audio, 3.9MB), is outright inspiring. See DeanGoesNuts.com for more.]

I am one voter — a Christian voter in the U.S. South — who likes this passion and this whole-person commitment. I’ll spit out lukewarm in a heartbeat, just like someone else I know.

So why do I find this campaign hot? Because I want my country back. I want hope, not hopelessness. Cooperation, not division. Straight talk that doesn’t insult my intelligence, not secrecy, empty promises, and lies. Compassion, not disdain for everyone who’s different. Responsibility, not the wanton squandering of lives and resources. In particular, fiscal responsibility, not the saddling of our children and our children’s children with debt. Faithfulness, not the blasphemy of associating God’s name with behavior God abhors.

What a difference a day makes —

Dr. Judy in the house. Last night Diane Sawyer interviewed Howard and Judy Dean on Primetime Live (transcript and video links). The realness, warmth, and candor conveyed in this interview confirms my longstanding discernment that Dr. Dean’s campaign is where the grace falls. If God indeed guides our paths, rescuing us from ourselves — and of course I think he does — then this is where I sense he’s busiest. And where he’s smiling.

[2004-01-24 insert: Naturally now I can’t help but wonder if this wacky remix phenom might be another case of “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” (Joseph, Gen. 50:20). :-) ]

We may yet derail what’s going on — and/or I could be <gasp> wrong about its details — but this burst of sunlight gets me back to knowing that we are being cared for.

2004-01-29 update: For my notes (and links) concerning Diane Sawyer’s surprise mea culpa — an apology of sorts for contributing to the media’s gross misrepresentation of this speech — see blog entry If Howard screams in a crowd, can anybody hear it?.

Katydid splendidly nails my own perceptions of — and motivation for supporting — Howard Dean as president:

I love Dean on paper, on the internet, and in stump speeches, but there have been times on TV that I have cringed and wondered if he was up to the task at hand. But the depth of the support behind him, and the depth of his ideas, hold him up above the rest and he will be difficult to beat. I have come to the realization that I am Dean all the way, no matter what he says, because I trust him and his instincts. It’s very strange, because he no longer has to sell himself to me. It’s the materiality, all that he brings with him. I want all of it, so I want him, no matter what.

Yes, where by materiality I assume K means what I’d say as substantiveness, and wherein I note such trust doesn’t come easily to me and I don’t place it lightly — but after hundreds of hours of research I find that trust has arisen.

Thanks, Katydid.

2004-01-05 update: Outlandish Josh makes a similarly astute observation (as he’s good at doing) about why Dean supporters tend to stay onboard:

The other thing that Dean’s supporters have [besides empowerment] is consensus. Since they’ve been interlinked and empowered since the get-go, they’ve talked through almost everything.

This is not something that we’ve seen in a long long time, and it’s the heart of Dean’s “teflon” status. People who get on board remain on board because their support is based on rational conversations they’ve had and are continuing to have among themselves; and they’re always reaching out to others. Dean’s roots are a 500,000 strong rapid response team, and the campaign is making brilliant use by trusting their responses and ideas.

2004-01-20 update: After Dean’s unexpected third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses last night, the assertion above — and the reasoning behind it — is about to be put to the test. I know I’m not going anywhere. The race has certainly become more of a nail-biter now, which may turn out to be a good thing for the process: more attention, more vetting, more participation.

In the midst of today’s enthusiastic hubbub that Al Gore is likely to endorse Howard Dean for the Democratic presidential nomination, Nathan in MN at Daily Kos provides my favorite quote of the day —

Dean’s campaign is not just about changing presidents, it is about changing the entire social fabric of this country.

Yes. The whole feel of this emerging drama is mercifully different than in 2000. There is pneuma in it this time, I think.

Thanks, Nathan.

2003-12-09 update: Indeed it’s happened, and I am jubilant about what an ascendant Dean candidacy means; the whole phenomenon is breathed through with hope.

As reported by CNN, Al Gore endorses Howard Dean —

Gore said part of the reason he chose to endorse Dean was his ability to appeal to the nation’s “grassroots” elements, a reference to Dean’s success in organizing and raising funds on the Internet and in small voter gatherings.

The Dean phenomenon has proven that grassroots works. You can, I can, anyone can truly make a difference. This is, in fact, what democracy is. $2000-per-plate campaign fundraisers as the price of admission — what you have to pay to play, which means hardly any of us can play — have now become optional.

Side benefit to this grassroots approach:
There is much less beholden-to-big-money sludge accumulating in this campaign.

Gore also praised Dean’s opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq. The former vice president called the Iraq war a “catastrophic mistake” by the Bush administration, a move that leaves the United States less effective in the nation’s battle against terrorism. …

“He was the only major candidate who made the correct judgment about the Iraq war,” Gore said. “And he had the insight and the courage to say and do the right thing. And that’s important because those judgments — that basic common sense — is what you want in a president.”

Yes, sound judgment arising from basic common sense is what I want. It is a baseline requirement in a president.

Our societal abandonment of basic common sense, a lapse we displayed so vividly in the buildup to this Iraq debacle, will be markedly less likely in the future, I think, if we’re listening to truth-telling, insightful, courageous, sensible elected leaders who credibly exercise a commitment to democracy and social justice. I am certain we’re not stupid, but we are too easily duped. It’s a bug, and we can fix it.

“When we set this event up,” Dean said to loud laughter at the rally’s start, “I had absolutely no idea that we were going to have the elected president of the United States here with us today.”

On last week’s CNN Rock the Vote Democratic debate, one questioner asked the candidates, “Which is it, Mac or PC?” Besides being a fluff question, it doesn’t even mean anything unless the questioner was referring to hardware. Generally speaking, there’s Apple hardware and there’s PC hardware. But each can run multiple OSs. So what the questioner probably meant was “Mac OS X or Windows?” (She could have been excruciatingly precise by asking, “Which is it, Mac OS X or Windows or Linux or NetBSD or … on what kind of hardware?”)

Specifically addressing the Mac OS X or Windows debate, MacWorld UK reports that UK newspaper The Times pitted the two by having two reporters, one a long-time Mac user, the other a “Windows-based PC man proud to say that my machine is always in pieces,” swap computers for a week.

[Mac user Nigel] Kendall says his first encounter with the [Windows] PC was a “heart-stopping experience” and that he had the feeling that “something nasty and utterly incomprehensible is lurking just below the surface.” …

“After a week with a Windows machine I get the feeling that this system is designed by people who know a lot about computers. Macs, on the other hand, seem to be designed by people who know a lot about people,” he concluded.

In contrast —

Three hours into using the Mac, PC user [Stuart] Miles admits, “I started to wonder if I should have made the change years ago.”

“The well-styled hardware has a wow factor out of the box (even the box has wow factor), while the oh-so pretty user interface, with its rounded corners, 3D rotating graphics and smooth dissolves, gives you a feeling of security.”

As for compatibility, Miles found getting the Mac to talk to his home PC was “simple”. This point is even more astounding when he notes that is something even his Windows laptop struggles with.

I adamantly think life’s too short to screw around with Windows. It’s not that I have a problem with PC hardware per se; hell, I’m an electrical engineer by training and I like having my computers in pieces. I know and use PC hardware extensively, but what I buy is Apple hardware because it’s durable and elegant.

Hardware aside, I see the more significant debate as being between Windows and Unix (more precisely, “Unix-like” OSs †) where Unix is understood to include Mac OS X, Linux (say, Debian or Gentoo), NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD. In that debate there’s no contest as far as I’m concerned: Unix wins, hands down. And my hands-on favorite is Mac OS X, the most usable, satisfying implementation of Unix now available.

Just be informed, then use what works best for you.

† I refuse to use the official designation of UNIX in all caps; that’s as ugly to me as a cheap PC running Windows95. Besides, Unix isn’t an acronym that needs to be capitalized — it’s a pun. :-)