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up north part 5: talking ’bout 9/11
After being dropped in Grayling I again found myself on a pretty desolate exit. I again kept to the top of the onramp and took the opportunity to try to do some writing during the wait. I pulled out the red steno pad and started writing on the last blank line of page two:
“Narrative interrupted on on (sic) account of a ride. I’m gonna have to start writing more its brought me good luck. 3 rides in an hour and a half. The good news is I’ve made it to I-75. People are going where I want to go. The bad news is I’m at an exit in the middle of nowhere. Not even a gas station. I kind of wish I would have had breakfast when I had the chance. I’ve got a couple of apples though so I won’t starve. Better for me than fast food too.
Good folks picked me up. A nice couple on their way to Camp Grayling to take out the government garbage. I about jumped out of my skin when their dog came out of nowhere barking ferociously as only an enraged Daschund can. I was right to be cautious though. Daisy is a biter. They have to keep moving to save Daisy from execution for finger biting. When she calmed down I gave her my hand to sniff my fingers tucked away safely of course. The driver said he wished he”…
Once again my narrative was quickly interrupted on account of a ride. A nice silver haired gentleman in a big newish pickup truck picked me up and asked me what I was up too. I told him I was hitchhiking to get a feel for what people are thinking about the whole 9/11 thing. He told me he was glad the country had pulled together but it was a shame it took such a terrible tragedy to do so. We both agreed we were glad Bush was in charge. I told him I thought Gore (note the name) would have hit Afghanistan hard, without a plan, to prove he wasn’t weak and Bush had less to prove. He replied: “Gore’s a pussy who would’ve used sanctions, what’s sanctions going to do to a country that’s already ruined?”
I wanted to tell him that that proved my point. Gore would have been forced to act precipitously because of people like him and their impression of Gore as weak. I did not tell him this because hitchhikers are always agreeable, out of both self interest and gratitude. I instead said I read in the paper yesterday that we gave Saddam Hussein his Anthrax strains in the 1970s. The driver was not surprised to hear this and his tone shifted to where he was almost misty as he talked about how we had made an alliance with death when we export weapons. I told him we gave Afghanistan their Stinger Missiles and that the U.S. is the largest arms exporter in the world.
There was then an intimacy as we drove along talking of these things, somewhat similar to therapy. He was really beginning to be moved as he talked about how the Taliban treat “their women”. “Like property”, I said. I liked this guy though, he was not afraid to feel deeply. All too quickly we arrived in Gaylord and he was gone.
I broke for lunch (sub & chips) and did some shopping at a large strip mall complex anchored by a Normans, a discount sporting goods store. I picked up some thinner gloves, as my thinsulate ones were in my pocket because they made my hands too hot. I also bought a pair of orange wicking socks because they like the gloves were only a dollar. I also looked for fire starter sticks to use in my zip stove (a forced air chamber that burns sticks and runs on 2 double a batteries) but they didn’t have any.
i’m afraid of obama
I’m afraid of obama. I’ve never voted for anyone whose won before. Politics has always seemed like something that’s done to me by other people, not anything that really involves me. The first time i voted for president i voted for michael dukakis in the democratic primary. This was during my democratic socialist period and i really liked jesse jackson better but i was trying to use stategery, as W would say, and voted for Dukakis. Dukakis of course lost michigan to jackson and lost the election to papa bush. Their was a big deal made of jackson’s michigan victory because george wallace had taken michigan once upon a time and their was a cosmic shakeup that i didn’t get to be a part of. Since then i’ve never voted out of realpolitik but have chosen the candidate i thought best and migrated to third parties. Four years ago i stopped voting all together. I was going to even though i have had an ambivilance about voting for a long time. “You can choose your own master but do you have the right to choose mine” resonates with me. But also passing up the only chance to participate we are given doesn’t seem right either. So mostly i held my nose and voted. four years ago though i walked over to Malcolm X Elementary (you gotta love Berkeley) to pull the lever for Leonard Peltier (Kerry nauseated me and Nader i have grown to despise as an egomaniacal troll who both annoys and bores me to no end) of the Peace and Freedom Party (you gotta love California) when i noticed a soldier guarding the polling place complete with sub-machine gun. I just kept walking, i didn’t want to involve myself in anything involving machine guns. I felt good about this (see my post i did not vote today) and was content until the obama-clinton primary (see post 43 & 0). So all that being said i voted for the guy and he won. that makes me responsible for him. Before politics has been something other people did to me, not anything that i did to other people. I am afraid that i am going to once again have to write letters, organize protests and engage in a process that i find highly dubious. what are you gonna do?
i like sarah pailin
She seems energetic and fun and did some good with some of her power. Seems to have done less harm than a lot of other politicians. Obviously we have some major philosophical differences and i am not going to vote for her ticket but i won’t shed any tears for missing Joe Biden either. She apparently can think of herself as a feminist. She’d break the 43 and 0 white guy VP streak, and would be a big step up from Dick Cheney. It was a bold move by McCain that turned the race around. I am finding the vitriol the left spews at her kind of grating and certainly shrill. The VP is an attack dog role so i don’t begrudge her her lumps. If you live by the mean mouth you should be prepared to die by it. I just am tired of being exposed to it. Its annoying. If everyone wasn’t being so mean she might say more and i bet it would be funny. She seems like she’s got an isolated inbred reactionary world view punched up with suburban chic. I bet her schtick would be hilarious if she just got to put it out there. She obviously resonates with some folks and not just the right wing base. Obama took the safe way out with Biden, thats what frontrunners do. I had hoped he would try to rise above the politics he claims to decry but they both are running on scripts i’ve heard before. I’m not rooting for mccain-pailin but i’m not rooting against her. it seems mean spirited for a white guy. i wish her well.
43 & 0
Yesterday I drove by some Hillary supporters waving signs, many were honking and I did not. I haven’t voted for a long time, its not really my thing, i believe in and actualize direct democracy. But I kind of felt bad seeing those earnest women and next time I will honk and wave and show some support because all of my beliefs about the folly of the electoral system and not wanting to further the Clintonian dynasty are overwhelmed by 43 & 0. After all I am a white man living in a white man’s land and the system is what it is and needs to be broken. One step to that is ending the lockout of women and people of color. Tomorrow is Super Tuesday and I believe I am going to haul my anarchist ass down to the Ashland VFW hall and cast a ballot for Barack Obama. I liked his book (at least the first 4 chapters), he’s for the abolition of nuclear weapons (unseen in policy circles since Reagan), he has a basic liberal agenda I find less unpalatable than the alternatives, he appears the best candidate to unite our divided country and more importantly this divided world, but mostly because of 43 & 0.
battered woman’s syndrome
I have to write about my latest attempt to be an expert witness on domestic violence. I was called by a Callaway County Public Defender and asked to serve as an expert witness in a tampering with a prescription case. It was his assertion that she was coerced into it by her longtime abusive live-together-partner. I agreed to do so as much as to get a chance to educate a court and jury about domestic violence as for anything else. For those not from Mid-Missouri Callaway is a rural county most known for being the short lived Kingdom of Callaway when they declared their independence during the Civil War. It is now known for being parochial and rumored to be severely in-bred. So I am scheduled to testify around 1:00 pm, I don’t hear anything from the PD so I call him the day before and he tells me he needs me there at 9:00 am to check in. His other expert had a death in the family and couldn’t testify and the judge denied him a continuance since I was on the witness list. I show up and wait 2 hours to talk to the PD. He tells me Judge Oxenhandler (I call this prick out by name) has disallowed a domestic violence defense because the victim was not married to her abuser. He also asks if I will stick around until the afternoon as he wanted to present my testimony to the judge while the jury is out so he can appeal that this info should have been let in. I agree, in for a penny in for a pound. So I wait until close to 3:00 to learn that the judge was disallowing my testimony because I lacked licensure and couldn’t talk about battered women’s syndrome. Now this whole medicalization of a social problem is ridiculous. Victims of domestic violence are not experiencing a syndrome like its some kind of disease they are victims of a crime. If my stereo is stolen I am not experiencing stereo theft syndrome I have been victimized. Being victimized leaves very real consequences but the court’s attempt to medicalize it shifts the focus from accountability for the offender to something being wrong with the victim. It is ridiculous, tragic, and the whole day turned out to be a fiasco. Judges do not want to really examine the real nature and dynamics of domestic violence because it would challenge the cut and dry assumptions of our unconscious patriarchy. Or perhaps conscious as the previous judge i was testifying before stated a domestic violence defense was an “attack at the very fabric of our society”. True no doubt, but an attack long overdue.
A Holiday Letter for Prisoners
This year it looks like 6 people I know are going to be locked up for the holidays; four in jail, two in Prison, and one on a psych unit. Respectively they didn’t complete their sex offender class, operated a meth lab, hit their ex-wife and step-daughter and fled the police, didn’t follow up with drug court, didn’t follow through with mental health court, tried to kill their ex-husband, and punched their mom. They’re all great people in difficult circumstances and I like five of them a lot. About half of them unfortunately needs to be locked up for a minute. One that doesn’t got sentenced to 10 years last week and won’t be eligible for parole for 8 ½. It happened and it sucks. I testified for the defense and felt I was effective in extremely difficult circumstances. The judge was a piece of work, wouldn’t let any witness say much, did most of the questioning himself, called his own witness, dismissed witnesses before the defense was finished, it was a piece of work. The sentencing report based on a standardized formula of priors and life circumstances recommended probation, but the judge scolded them for not giving him any useful information. The judge said the normal sentence for that crime was 5-15 years, the prosecution asked for 15 and the defense asked for 120 days shock and parole. Their was a lot of media attention on the case and the judge might have been pressured to look tough in the face of his recent drunk driving arrest. Maybe he was always that way. A court official said we had done well, that he was leaning toward 15 and was never much one for listening. He said it would break down the very fabric of our society if wives were allowed to try to kill their husbands. Maybe he is right, but I’ve seen enough cases of guys walking for trying to kill their wives and society isn’t crumbling around our heads except as much as it is. Nonetheless it was a sad fucking affair. There was one short questioning by the prosecution that I wish I would have handled better or at least gone back too during rebuttal and made the full point, but I felt on a very short leash of what I would be allowed to say and didn’t think I would get to volunteer anything. So with all these folks locked up for the holidays I at least visited a few of them this week and wrote one of them as well. Julie’s blog had a random act of kindness day for bloggers and that is as close as this tired social worker is going to get. In 2 hours vacation. I hope to post from NV and AZ with lots of fresh and interesting travel stories. Happy Holidays.
I did not vote today
Good morning, i am afraid i lost the brilliant essay i have spent two long sessions working on and planned on finishing off and posting today. Apparently I didn’t turn the computer off and lost it to a dead battery. Its weird because i distinctly rememeber saving it when i took the break i never got back from. Also i had opened up a previous saved version to work on it so that should still be there right? But its not. So since i have had a fairly difficult week already i don’t feel like coming up with something original i stumbled across an essay i wrote last year for the election and with the presidential hoopla nonsense gearing up i thought it was kind of relevant for now, so enjoy. I’d like to hear your comments on this piece and on where i should go with this blog. What do you want to read, dear readers, poetry, essays, stories, something else?
I did not vote today. I chose not to get my hands soiled in a dirty irrelevancy that frightens me to be forced to live in and observe its operations, let alone meaningfully engage it in any voluntary way that is not destroying it, setting it back, limiting its scope. Fundamentally law is unjust. Law inherently lacks the necessary understanding and compassion to account for every possible condition, circumstance, and type of individual to be anything more than a “bull in a china shop” when provided with any ability to coerce, imprison, or deprive of liberty. I have no need of laws. I engage the world in a just and equitable manner whether the law tells me too or not. I pursue pleasure and avoid pain in a safe and reasonable way determined by my own reason and conscience in any way I see fit regardless of the law. Not only do I prefer not to choose someone to invest with power to abrogate my potential freedoms, I would consider it wrong to appoint someone to abrogate yours. I would prefer to live in a world where both you and I are free to determine the entire nature of our lives without coercion; the only limitation being our love and respect for the other occupants of our shared planet and a commitment to sustainability for future generations. I am grateful to live under the rule of law. It is a more graceful and accommodating form of institutionalized-potential-slavery than the previous power structures of enforced hierarchies of times past, but not one capable of real justice and equity, even in ideal circumstances, let alone in our actual world dominated by historic oppression. If I lived in a land without at least the semblance of the rule of law such that we struggle under I might not be an anarchist. I might be a republican, a democrat, a revolutionary constitutionalist trying to enshrine a rule of law. There are warlords, bandits and dictators I know but I live here, now. I dream of living in a better world in a society where we care about each other and voluntarily organize to solve problems and see our needs met in a totally non coercive manner. I believe we can only reach that world by building it now. The system only inflicts its harms and injustices through the participation of not only its law wielders and gun bearers but all of its contributors of energy and resources that we could be contributing toward a world of mutual respect and cooperation. I believe for me, right now, that world is more likely to come about through my not voting than by my voting. Not because I don’t care, but because I care so much. Not because I feel powerless, but because I feel powerful. Not because I have no hope, but because I believe a world of gentle sustainability built upon cooperation is inevitable. The only alternative is complete destruction. I, at least, refuse to participate in anything less than what is good, which is after all, ultimately, all that will last.
Multiconstruct 
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