Where Do We Stand?

It's strange to be traveling when you're not traveling at all, but sitting in your daughter's apartment 2500 miles from home. Meanwhile, the world is spinning more rapidly than anyone seems to be noticing.

Protests: in many large cities, across the country, young people are standing up again, after decades of complacent malaise. Barack Obama motivated them, then dropped them and possibly lost them to a brand new movement. While he was being nice, instead of being right, it was impossible for people not to see that they had gotten stabbed in the back by everyone in power-- not right, not left, not center, but everyone.

It was easy to blame 2000-2008 on George Bush. We can do it still if we want and we'd be at least half right. But when piddling and watered down reforms become the best the system can offer, the system needs to be changed.

When the people who caused an economic meltdown are the same people who remain in power, new people need to be found as leaders.

When a very small elite (and we count ourselves within that elite) get to share practically all the economic blessings of a mega-wealthy society, there remain some sizable crumbs to be doled out to everyone else. But when those miserable crumbs themselves fall to cutbacks and resizing and shifts to overseas production and changing priorities and wars of occupation, the rest of society is going to react. 99% is a lot more than 1%, even if the fondest dream of many in the larger group is to someday get closer to the smaller group.

The question Plotnik has been asking himself is where does he stand? He lives a comfortable life in the Educated Bubble, as do just about everyone reading this blog. Some have somewhat more, some have somewhat less, but everyone has -- enough.

We all lost when the economy tumbled, but most of us still have enough. Where do we stand?

We all know congress is a sham, that they are out for re-election, not change. We know that as clearly as we know our own names. Where do we stand?

It's easy to laugh at Michelle Bachmann and the Tea Party. It's easy to laugh at the nameless youngsters 'occupying' Wall Street for a few hours or days or weeks. But we know we agree with plenty of what they all say. It's easy to figure out what we are against. But what are we for?

Things are happening. Decisions will be made without us as long as we chuckle at everybody who is shouting to be heard. The Great Plotnik doesn't know what he wants either, but his gut feeling is both right and left are going to join eventually in a huge chorus to throw out the amorphous middle. And then we'll have to choose.

Endorsements Phooey

Plotnik saw an article in the Morning Bird Wrap about the country singer Randy Travis performing at a benefit for Michelle Bachmann. Now Plotnik wishes Travis would take Bachmann, turn'er into overdrive and toss her off a cliff somewhere, but forgetting about politics Plotnik remembers that he likes Randy Travis's voice. The music bores him silly but he is always taken in by the sound of that pure country voice.

Now that it's politico season 24/7 for the next two years, there will be other singers and bands performing for various candidates, most of them doing it, Plotnik suspects, out of a commitment that is 10% candidate, 40% good business and 50% because their manager told them to. Musicians and politicians just don't partner up all that easily, because musicians like to take stands. They have to write or sing their songs about SOMETHING, not just against EVERYTHING.

So Plotnik is thinking he could invite Randy Travis and Bruce Springsteen and Mick Fleetwood and all the others who have done plugs for politicos, into one room, pull out the chips and guacamole and hang out with everyone having a great time. The musical compromise would probably be The Rolling Stones. The discussion would be about songs and music and guitar strings and microphones and other great stuff like that. Government would not come up. Politics would not come up. Maybe football, but maybe not.

Now, imagine a room with Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney in it. What would be their choice of music? Plotnik thinks Yanni. They all love Yanni, he's sure of it. Bachmann's husband loves Barbra Streisand, of course. But the others adore Yanni.

Romney would be furious he couldn't talk anyone into watching the PBS Pledge Drive.

Plotnik thinks there would be a scuffle and Bachmann would be the only one left standing, though if she set foot in Texas afterwards Perry would execute her.

The Sherlock Solution

BZ is right, it was just another First World Problem. And The Sherlock Solution was the answer.

It's not about our children starving, it's not about malaria mosquitoes stinging them while they sleep, it's not about having to walk miles with buckets on our heads to get fresh water, it's not about suicide bombers, it's not about the army bursting into our homes at night and hauling us away to be tortured, it's not about tsunamis or earthquakes or drought or flood, it's not about Parkinson's Disease or Alzheimer's or terminal cancer or AIDS. And it's not about jobs or housing or debt or the environment or immigration or campaign finance reform or electric freaking cars either.

It's just about who can scream the loudest and keep it up the longest. This is The Sherlock Solution.

Plotnik played b-ball with Sherlock for 15 years. Sherlock is a bus driver for MUNI, maybe 5'6" and close to 300 pounds. He isn't the tallest and he's not the fastest nor the best shooter, but he has the loudest voice. He is willing to stand in one spot and scream until he gets his way. You can't budge Sherlock. He's always holding onto the ball. The game cannot continue until Sherlock decides it can.

If Sher is on your team, you tend to win more. Nobody really minds, because Sher can stop a game but he can also keep it going. Nobody argues with him. Keep Sherlock happy and you keep playing, week after week, year after year.

So this is what we've got: a collection of Sherlocks. We don't get real solutions, we get Sherlock Solutions. Whoever can yell the loudest and longest wins. The President doesn't matter, heads of committees and congressional leaders don't matter. No one can do anything until Sherlock says so. Right now, the Tea Party is Sherlock, but people elected these guys. They want them to be doing exactly what they're doing.

And they're right: we ARE spending too much. I may think we should remove our troops from all these idiot wars against Muslims who hate us, and you may think we ought to stop providing school lunches for blind children with one leg, but both of us agree we can't keep doing what we've been doing. What we all need is our own Sherlock.

Think about Israel: Sherlock over there is the Orthodox Rabbis. Nobody in the country can stand them, but they yell the loudest and don't care who they hurt, as long as their little world remains the way they want it. So if there is to be any movement, on any issue, you have to cave in to the rabbis.

It's the Tea Party now but tomorrow it might be the Unions or abortion foes or the NRA or network TV executives. Who can yell the loudest? Who can pay the most? Who is the shortest, meanest and hardest to move?

The economy goes up, the economy goes down, we borrow more, we borrow less, we balance the budget, we don't balance the budget: do you think anything will ever change? Do you?

Not until Sherlock says so. Maybe someday we'll elect him. A lot of us thought we had.

Throw 'em All Out

What a surprise. The debt ceiling issue that never was real turns out to have been just another bag of hot wind. Can there be anyone left in America who doesn't hate Demicans and Republocrats?

Throw 'em all out. Hire seven new dwarves.

Third of July Musings

The streets were empty on a Saturday night, as Plot and Duck drove to the East Bay for dinner at their favorite Persian place and a show at The Marsh Berkeley. Dinner was good, the show was good, empty Bay Bridge, no traffic in either direction. People must be out of town for the Fourth of July.

At dinner Plot and Duck were talking about President Obama. Plotnik truly does not want to feel disappointed in this man. He knows that he holds Obama to a stricter standard than the mediocre-at-best norm by which previous presidents have been judged. Obama's election seemed to promise so much, so fast.

What we have gotten is progress, but compromised down to very little, on a few issues like national health care, but on the great issues we seemed poised to tackle: little. Or nothing. Or nothing, disguised as something.

Whose fault is it? Who knows anymore? Republicans, certainly, and Americans willing to listen to tea party distortions of the truth wrapped up in patriotic nonsense.

But where is leadership on immigration reform? Tax code reform? Election finance reform? Why are we still in Afghanistan? Why are we participating in bombing Libya? How can we fire teachers and close libraries and kill preschool lunch programs? How can we bankrupt states instead of raising taxes to help them pay for all the programs we all want and use? Where are leadership and solid stands on the most important problems our country faces?

Plotnik heard a Republican congressman from South Carolina say yesterday that education was over-rated, that kids come out of college knowing no more than when they went in. This was to rationalize huge cuts in education spending. Really.

Osama bin Laden is dead, hoorah! We did it! We promised we'd punish them, and we did. So how about punishing the finance thugs who came within a whisker of bringing down the financial stucture of the entire world, instead of marijuana growers in Humboldt County? How about realizing that the Democratic Party is as corrupt and beholden to special interests as the Republican party?

How about admitting something that is obvious to everyone: the internet golden egg has hatched out and changed the world of commerce. All those jobs you talk about bringing back are gone forever. It happened a lot sooner to some than others -- want to talk about songwriters? -- but everyone has been affected. Don't you want to buy the cheapest car? Book? Airline seat? Computer? Cell phone? When was the last time you spent $12 for a movie, instead of watching it on Netflix? And did you spend $19.97 for your HDMI cable at Radio Shack or $0.60 on line?

So what are we going to do about it? Ignore it, right? Pretend none of this has happened? This is exactly what we will do.

Unless...and I hate to say this, knowing there is probably some guy with thick glasses and a red, white and blue cap stuck in a cubicle in Chevy Chase, Maryland, reviewing every word that is spewed into the blogosphere -- we have another crisis.

We don't move 'til we have to. Bush was SO ignorant, so 1950s. He had a chance to move us decades forward, and instead he took us back to Leave it to Beaver. Obama, too, has had a chance to bring an American vision to the world, after we pulled ourselves out of the financial compost pile, but he is quite possibly over his head too.

Plotnik is still in love with Obama, The Promise. He is willing to wait a little longer for Obama, The Leader. But if Obama doesn't wake up we will all wind up with General Petraeus or somebody like him in 2012. Is this what we want?

Maybe we do. Maybe we miss Ike. Maybe we really do need a tyrant to tell us to shut the f___ up and do what he says. Bush tried, but was too ignorant, and Obama doesn't appear to have those kinds of instincts.

And the Plotzers are in last place and deserve to drop lower.

Anyway, Plotnikkies: Happy Third of July from Saint Plotniko. America First Class. A Sparkler (and a bottle of Il Gioiello 2007 Mourvedre with notes of blackberry and persimmon) in Your Glass.

Who Is Your Tribe?

At the risk of alienating his multiplicity of readers at the office who have already exhausted every other time-wasting method at their disposal, The Great Plotnik would like to have a short discussion about the Middle East.

Oh, all right, forget it. How about Survivor? The 'Jints? No?

Think about this: in Egypt and Tunisia there are basically no ethnic differences. Most of the people are Arabs and think of themselves as Tunisians or Egyptians. In those countries, the despot preferred not to incinerate his own people just to stay in power.

In Bahrain it is a sectarian struggle between Sunni, who have all the power but are few in number, and Shia, who have no power but are the majority. The Sunni king has no problem calling in the army to defeat the 'enemy,' who he considers to be a different tribe than his own.

In Libya there are more than a dozen ethnic groups. Khaddafi's family owns a great deal of property and he feels his tribe is far more important than the country. So he is more than willing to bring in the air force to strafe unarmed demonstrators. It's an easy decision, when protecting your tribe's power is all that matters.

In Iran the police seem to hold off any demonstrations the people might want to make. It sounds brutal, but you have to wonder how many people are really behind these supposed insurgencies? If the government can squelch all dissent that easily, perhaps there really aren't that many people who oppose them?

So the question is: what about America? Who is our tribe? Who do we defend at all costs?

It seems to Plotnik that we are more like Iran. We would like our country to be smarter and stop defending the world's dictators, but we're not all that adamant about it. We'd like not to be fighting wars we can't win in places we don't care about, but if we're told it's important it must be so.

We'd like to provide aid to our poor and needy, but we're running out of money right now.

We'd love to put Americans back to work but if our largest corporations can make more money putting their factories in Mexico or China, hey. It must be good for America or they wouldn't do it, would they?

We are not racists. If we believe our President was born in Africa it has nothing to do with what he looks like.

Above all, we are not stupid. But we are not uncomfortable either. So we go along with the program. It's not that insurrection can't happen here, but it will all come down to who is your tribe? Who will you fight for? Who will make you get off your ass and head down to the street to protect them?

We know the answer, so far, don't we?