• Is nationalism a four letter word?

    No, I was not dropped on my head as a child. What I want to know is what the word “nationalism” means to you. For me, “nationalism” means fanaticism, self-righteousness, and pharisaism. Where some see enthusiastic flag waving and patriotism, I see a tool to perpetuate some of the worst evils of the last two centuries. (Remember the holocaust?) Some will say that no such evil has come of good old fashioned American nationalism, but I say FOOEY! Think no further than this continent’s indigenous people; if you think they got a fair shake then you need a history lesson. Some will say that we’re no worse than other nations; nations guilty of wiping the floor with other people’s rights. Are you familiar with the trail of tears? Whole societies were erased from the face of the Earth in the name of a contrived “Manifest Destiny.” But surely we’re better now, right? How many people have been detained since 9/11 without so much as a phone call to an attorney? How many examples “Justice, American style” have graced the airwaves these last several years? Police beatings and prison torture may be the exception rather than the rule, but they seem to happen more often than they should, and the world takes notice. We can say that these exceptions don’t reflect our values, but talk is cheap. We are judged by how we react to these exceptions and how we strive to eliminate them. If all we do is talk about our “real values” and rest on our imagined laurels as a great nation, we loose credibility among ourselves, let alone everyone else.

    This July 4th, I will look fondly upon much of our country’s history. I will appreciate the ideals and values championed by our founding fathers. At the same time, I will remember that ideals and values are no more than just ideals and values. They mean nothing unless our actions reflect them.

    Today I see our leaders using nationalism as a tool once again to further an agenda. As I’ve said before, I’ve heard it suggested repeatedly that disagreement with our leaders is tantamount to anti-patriotism. This July 4th I will look fondly on those values that have distinguished us from many of history’s empires, monarchies and republics – chief among them being freedom; freedom to speak our mind, freedom to disagree.

  • I’m Batman

    My house is on a bit of a hill. The front door is approximately four to six feet above street level. As a result, I rarely need reverse to pull out of my driveway. Even better, when my car is backed into the driveway, the driveway serves as a kind of launch pad.

    My car is a wee bit smaller than my wife’s car. I drive a two door Civic Coupe. Cheryl drives an SUV. So on one side of my car there’s effectively a wall of metal and glass. On the other side of the driveway there’s a line of shrubs. So, with the visibility afforded by a hedgerow on one side and an SUV on the other, and with the push that you get with a down hill start; whipping out of the driveway and making that sharp turn at the bottom of the hill feels like launching out of the Bat Cave in response to the Bat Signal. It gives pedestrians a real thrill too.

    Now all I need is a cape and a deeper voice.

  • How’s your brogue?

    I believe it was the great Deforest Kelly who once said, “we mock that which we don’t understand.” In the years since I first heard this quote I’ve added my own corollary, “we mock those whom we don’t know very well; or those whom we know really well and can take a joke.” Well, I was at an off-site meeting the other day. Since I didn’t know the people there and I still don’t quite understand the logic of their arguments, I’m going to lay in with some serious mocking.

    There was this woman from the home office “facilitating” the meeting. (Our department offers a two day training session on how to “facilitate” a meeting. I’ve never been.) She asked the group if we had noticed any impact on our jobs from the anticipation of a new computer system, which is scheduled to come on-line sometime before the state replaces the carpet in my wife’s office. The consensus of the group was a resounding “no.” Flabbergasted, our facilitator wondered aloud why we were not “focusing on getting certain aspects of our job right”, to smooth the transition to the “new way of doing business.” Well, I had one of those rare moments of inspiration. The perfect comment popped into my head from the ether. It had just the right amount of sarcasm to win the sympathy of the room. “I had this radical notion that we were supposed to do our job right all of the time, not just when we want to smooth the transition to a new system.” Come on, give it up. That was pretty good, wasn’t it? To give it a little more flavor, I thought I might say it in a Scottish brogue. What statement doesn’t sound more dramatic with a Scottish brogue?

    Of course, I didn’t actually say it. (Naturally, it was my inability to pull off a worthy imitation of Sean Connery which turned the tide.) It’s probably just as well. This comment would have gone over about as well as Che Guevara crashing a dinner party at Joe McCarthy’s place. It might have been fun for a little while, but it would have been a bitch to clean up afterwards.