Rome, The American Revolution, and the Madness of King George W.

I may have mentioned to you that I have had a lot of free time on my hands as of late. With this free time I have been watching the series Rome on DVD, reading the opinion line in the always-entertaining Wichita Eagle, and reflecting on the laws that govern this country of ours. I don’t know if this is in response to being back in the heart/homeland, or if it in preparation for the study of law into which I shall enter in 23 rather short days. Whatever the case may be, I have been thinking often about tyranny, and the threat thereof.

Tyranny was what got Julius Caesar murdered, to make a long story short. There was a lot of grumbling about the upper classes getting less of the vote, and there was a lot of good that Caesar did for the regular people living day to day. On the surface he seemed gregarious and generous, personable and noble. He paid at least lip service to the ideals of Rome, speaking of needing to consent to dictatorship for a period of time in order to repair the Republic. We will never know if this was indeed lip service or truth, because as we all know Caesar was killed in the senate, at the hands of the senate, because of his tyrannical tendencies. There was nothing a Roman Republican abhorred more than a Tyrant, a King, or an Emperor.

Of course, their plan backfired and led in part to the Roman Empire, but it is their convictions, their steadfast adherence to ideals, at least on the surface, that struck me as relevant to what is happening in this country now. After the death of the Republic the people went into a decline that led to Bread and Circuses, a gluttonous, debaucharous lifestyle, and eventually the fall of Rome and the sacking by the Goths. It was not unrelated to the lack of ideals Rome was founded on, and we are headed much the same way, in my mind. We are the new Rome, we have been for years, and never have the parallels been clearer or more striking. If you look closely, you can see the same grisly mindset at play in “To Catch a Predator”, “American Idol”, Biggie size everything and NASCAR that you could in the combat of Gladiators and the advent of Vomitoriums. Keep the people occupied with trivialities, and they cannot pay attention to politics. We are at the moment when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, and there is no turning back.

Fast forward from Rome to the present day, where we find that we as a nation are under the rule of a Tyrant, as we have been once in the past. I have already made a case that the behavior of the King George of which the Declaration of Independence speaks has eerie and clear parallels to the behavior of the current President of the United States. Some of the grievances that were written about in the DOI include (parenthesese mine, otherwise taken directly from the DOI):

“He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. (See what has been going on in the Justice Department with the firing of Attorneys)

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. (Homeland Security, anyone?)

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. (Yeah, I know this is now legal, but still).

He has combined with others (Cheney ((who apparently is his own private branch of government)), Rove, Rummy, et. al) to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent (See the District of Columbia until very recently, and threatened by a veto when offered representation)

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences (Guantanamo Bay, secret prisons all over Eastern Europe, Saudi Arabia, etc.)

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments (Patriot Act)

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. (Halliburton and all the other contractors in Iraq)

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. If you aren’t with us, you’re against us.”

You catch my drift. Our founders, much like the Republican Romans hated a tyrant, and created a set of laws that gave the executive branch arguably the least power of the three. They safeguarded us through checks and balances, hoping to avoid the creation of a King or Emperor, and yet, they wrote from an idealist standpoint, with the hope that the men who would follow them would be better men, even more committed to equality than they. It is this pervasive hope and righteous indignation that make the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution such beautiful, and in some ways very moving documents. They believed that better days, and better men were ahead.

We find they are mistaken. This man, this so-called President, is committing many of the same atrocities (yes, I said atrocities) that caused us to revolt in the first place. The question now is, are we going to react like Rome, attach ourselves to a Tyrant and rally around his banner, while the ideals of this once great nation go up in smoke, or will we behave as our forefathers did, and refuse to subject to this tyranny and fight for our inalienable rights has human beings and our legal rights has United States citizens? We can no longer ignore this; we can no longer allow this man and his henchmen to wipe their feet on the Constitution on their way to greater power and even greater wealth. We are a nation of laws, and this criminal must be brought to justice, just like any other man that causes great harm. This is not a problem that will just go away on it’s own, it will get worse, or it will get better, but whatever direction it goes, we will be responsible.

I revel in the free speech that allows me to say these things freely, yet I fear that may be gone soon as well. Speak the truth, while you still can.

Observations on Being at Home

What makes home, home? Is it the way your childhood bed envelops you like you never left it? Is it the particular shade of blue-green on the walls that reminds you of the ocean and feeling small and tired from a day at the beach? Is it knowing that when you wake up you’ll find coffee in the coffee pot, and the paper waiting for you to leisurely read it, laughing at the local news and frowning at the national? Is it being at once nostalgic for your childhood habits, but excited by the understanding you have gained as an adult? Is it waking in the middle of the night and hearing the sound or your parents breathing in their sleep, knowing that for this moment, whatever happens next, all is right with the world? Or is it simply knowing that wherever you go and whatever you do, there is a small place in the world where two people will always love you, will always miss you?

It has been strange being at home these last few weeks. I have discovered much about myself, and about my past. I have put to rest a lot of longstanding concerns, and explored a lot of new ideas about where I come from and how it informs where I’m going. I’ve discovered that no matter how hard I run from Kansas, it always seems to be inside me, the wide open spaces and the down home manners; the oppressive heat and the brilliant blue sky. I am as much a product of this state as anything else, and I have decided to stop denying it. It makes me who I am, it makes it difficult for me to accept that paying $750 for an apartment is a good deal, reminds me that all politics is local politics. I never realized how much of my civic mindedness was a product of Wichita until I moved to a place where local politics got much less attention than national. I’m not saying one if better than the other, but here people care about things like the city council and the school board, and the decisions those bodies make are easily as important to people here as the war in Iraq or Immigration Reform. Here they are all tired together. There are many people that live here who have political views I simply cannot bring myself to respect or even understand. I have tried. What I can respect, however, is the discourse- here people still care enough to have an argument, whether it’s in the editorial pages of the paper, or on the floor of the city council.

I have tried to be open to the city, to my past here, more so than I’ve been on the other times I’ve visited. I am not afraid of running into anyone now, not afraid of trying to justify what I’ve been doing away from home for the last seven years, or what I’m doing going forward. I’ve been able to reflect on the great support system I had hear growing up, on all the people and organizations that were pulling so hard for my success, and who continue to do so. In retrospect, I’m not entirely sure what I was running from so hard, except the fear of stagnation. I still fear stagnation, I will not lie to you, but I can see from an older perspective that stagnation is not the result of a place; it is the result of a mindset. Unfortunately many people here are in that mindset, and that contributes to sort of the general feel of the place, but since I’ve left, it has grown in some ways by leaps and bounds, and that is be commended. I still would not want to move back, but now I can see that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, if for some reason I had to.

It will be hard to leave home, hard to leave my parents, and their love and support. I know that travels with me, but there is something to be said for being taken care of, for being able to get a hug from your mother just because, or to laugh with your father about some stupid joke. These are the things I miss; these are the things I know they miss. Perhaps it is the purview of the only child, to be so close with his or her parents that you miss them even when you’re there, as though when you aren’t together you are missing a limb. In my 25th year I begin to reckon with the idea of mortality, mine and others, and if I can barely stand how much I miss them from across the country, I admit that it scares me to think of how I will be when they are gone.

Such are the morose and melancholy thoughts of being at home. On the whole I am joyful, and excited and ready, but as will all big steps forwards, there is the fleeting glance back, the trepidation at moving ahead. I move toward my next chapter, know that there is beauty and love behind me, and the same ahead.

Updates from the 'Ta

So......

There
is
nothing
to
do
here

Which is good in some ways, since I'm enjoying the endless days of reading the first six Harry Potter books, catching up on DVD tv series like "Rome" and laying out by the pool. I had a brief computer scare because I have to steal wireless by typing out on the porch, and the transition from inside sub-zero air conditioning to 95 degree, 98% humidity confused poor little Mackie. But I took it to the local mac retailer, and they had it fixed quick as you please, for no charge. Another benefit of a relatively small town. It's been raining here pretty much every day, for at least part of the day, and yesterday we had a classic Kansas storm, where the sky goes literally green. I wonder what the sky looks like before a storm in Rhode Island?

I've been reading up on "what to expect in Law School" and I'm not sure if it's helping, or if it's freaking me out more. It's been three and a half years since I worked very hard on anything, so it will be interesting to see how I reacclimate. I've been buying kitchen stuff and bathroom stuff, and once I realized that I could decorate my apartment however I wanted, i got quite excited. I don't have to worry about someone else ruining my stuff, or encorporating someone else's belongings into my decorating scheme... I could cover the walls in dead squirrels, and no one could complain. Well, ok, the health department might have a little something to say about it, but you get my point.

It's hard to remember to keep in touch. It's like, I feel like I'm on vacation, and I'll just see everyone in a bit. But then I realize, no, I won't, and I have to make sure to seperate some time each week to keep up my personal relationships. It's a sad, strange realization, and I imagine most of my homesickness or feelings of loneliness will come upon me like that. That's the great thing about emotions- the sneak up on you when you least expect it. So far so good, but I'm with my family, so I'm sure that's taking the edge off it a bit. Not to mention the fact that it's never a dull moment at the Furst household. I wonder what it must be like to live in other families where people communicate a normal volume, where your parents talk about nice normal things like the weather or sports, versus my house where my father is at alternate turns cursing the very existence of the Republican party in elaborate, vitriolic language, or enganging in absurd comedic rants about people who live next door, and my mother and I have conversations that he can't hear because he's too busy with all the ranting. My life at home resembles nothing so much as an Edward Albee play, accented by elements of a bad Monty Python sketch. It's nothing if not entertaining, at least. I'll find examples and report back.

Ok, must get back to Harry Potter. I'm 2/3 through the 4th book, and I need to finish it before tomorrow when I'm hoping to go see the newest movie.

It's a hard life.

Independence Day

It is no longer the Fourth of July. It is two days later, and it has taken me those two days to figure out exactly what I want to say. I’m writing to you now from America’s Heartland, God’s Country, Wichita, KS where we have an Air Force Base to the south, a dog track to the north, a mega church to the east, and nothing but wide open prairie to the west. We have had cataclysmic tornados, torrential downpours, and oppressive drought, all in the last 6 months, all unaided by the Kansas National Guard, which is by and large taxed beyond it’s capacity because many of it’s members are currently fighting an unholy war in the Middle East, either in Afghanistan or in Iraq. These are men and women who signed up for a weekend a month and two weeks a year, and maybe some occasional weather duty, who are now trying to dodge car bombs and insurgents in the worst guerrilla warfare this country has seen since Vietnam. And the town of Greensboro, and the town of Coffeyville, and countless other places in this simple state go unhelped and unprotected because of this President’s, and this government’s, misappropriation of human lives.

You have read my words about this administration and it’s basic lack of decency before. If you think I repeat myself, if you think that I am beating a dead horse or sounding like a broken record, it is because they are continuing to do the same. Their dead horse is our national fear, and their broken record is a litany of misdirection aimed at making us pay closer attention to the fact that Paris Hilton had a shortened jail sentence than the fact the Vice President of the United States has declared himself a branch of government all his own. It is a gamut made to insure you don’t pay too close of attention to the fact that the President of the United States literally took the law into his own hands and commuted the sentence of I. “Scooter” Libby in such a way that the judge presiding over the case had to ask the attorneys that argued it to present him with briefs as to how to make the President’s new sentence fit into the confines of the law (he has commuted the sentence to take away the jail time and leave the parole, but the law has no ability to force a parole without the service of jail time). On the eve of the 231st commemoration of the date that a few true patriots wrote a declaration of independence from tyranny and in so doing signed their own death warrant, the current leader of this free nation signed a virtual pardon for a crony, sealing forever his reputation not as a plain-spoken man of the people, but a company shill, a man who could be bought and sold, and who traded in other men’s lives and lies as other’s have traded in his.

It is not just this commutation that has me angry. It is not just the recent blast from the racist, sexist, robber-baron past that our Supreme Court has handed down that has me appalled, and it is not just the general lack of backbone from our congress that has me disheartened. Far more than this, it is the absence of faith that I have in the people of this nation that has me filled with fear. Even when our government was out of step, even when our leaders would not listen, even when our nation was at war, I always, always believed that this was a nation of the people, and the people had ideals. The people knew what this country stood for, could recognize the inherent good and power in the words our forefathers wrote, in the strength of character it took for those men to write those things at a time when writing them was treason. A nation built on ideas, and ideas that men were willing to fight and die for so that others might see them come to fruition. I always, always believed that this was a great nation, because it was filled with a people capable of greatness.

Now, I do not know. I look around and I see people ill informed and unresponsive. I see men and women and children who do not know or care to know the history of our own nation or of our world as a whole. I see people who care more about who wins American Idol then who wins our national elections. I see men and women who disapprove of our president at a whopping 71%, yet their displeasure is witnessed only by the person who takes the poll. Where are the riots? Where are the protests? Where is the accountability? Where are the congressmen and -women that we elected on the promise they would get us out of Iraq? Where is our national pride? When did it become ok with everyone that we are at alternate turns an international laughing stock, or a reckless, dangerous child to be kept at arms’ length? We are the nation that brought an end to the Second World War and fought off Hitler and the Nazis. We are the nation that brokered the New Deal and said no matter what the fortunes of the commercial world, basic human decency dictated that it was not right, and would not be allowed that any man, woman or child in this nation go hungry or homeless, and in doing so redefined what government was capable of. We are the nation that stood up and said we will no longer be silent under the yoke of tyranny, but will fight for what we are worth as human beings, and what we could be as a nation: a beacon of change, of possibility; a new way of being human.

Let us not forget what it meant to say “all men are created equal”. Let us not forget that the Revolutionary war did not start with a gunshot or a cannon ball, but with words, powerful words the like of which had never been spoken before. Let us not forget that amidst all those bumper stickers and paper flags and fireworks and yellow ribbons and red and white and blue there is blood and sweat and tears and a miracle called America. We are a nation created out of fire and passion, a nation created out of the hope that life could be more than toil and struggle and pain, that man was more than a beast of burden for so-called greater men. We are a promise made by our founding fathers, that the next day would be better than the last, that the government was not the ruler of the people, but that the people would be the custodians of the government, and in so doing, would promise to their children a brighter future than the present they had. We would not succumb to tyranny again, from without, or from within, so long as we held fast to the founding article of our national faith: that all men are equal, and therefore no man can be greater than the other.

These are dark days, and I see more dark days ahead. On this anniversary of the cry in the darkness that was to become our great country, I urge, I beg each one of you to consider what it means to be an American. Not just the happy parts, not just the easy parts, but the hard parts, the dangerous parts, the parts that scare us. Please, please, take the time to read the words of the Declaration of Independence, and feel their power within your own heart, within your own soul. Let them call you to arms as they called others 231 years ago. Let them bring you back to what we are meant to be as a nation, so that we can all work towards getting back there together.