The Death of Belief in Truth
The mysterious horseman moves slowly, bearing a black banner emblazoned with the Mystic Rose, which signifies life.
Between two pillars on the verge of the horizon there shines the sun of immortality.
I must be spending too much time on the computer and in the DailyKos site because I'm starting to see a breakdown in realities. This weekend, I wrote a diary about a female soldier in Oregon who'd gone AWOL because she said she'd been sexually abused in her service and had PTSD. Not being in any position to research the claims, I read what I could and put up a post that gave her the benefit of the doubt (and my reasons for giving them).
During the course of the comment thread, somebody logged on and said he was a doctor in Iraq and that if she's a soldier she should suck it up and do her duty (or words to that effect). I had one or two responses he may have read. It's hard to tell as the thread goes. But I took him seriously and addressed him as someone in the field.
I told a friend this story today and she asked how I could be sure the guy really was writing from Iraq. I said I didn't. You know that troops have access to computers and lots of them are blogging, so it's not a stretch for me to believe that I was conversing with a soldier in the field. But I had realized it could all be a lie. I still gave him the benefit of the doubt.
Last weekend, my half-brother in Vegas suggested I get a gun to protect myself from burglars. I said statistics show that you're much more likely to die from the gun yourself (from the bad guys, a friend or suicide) than to use it in self-defense. His response, "Oh, you're just listening to what the gun control lobby says."
I did do a lot of writing for gun control groups in the 90s, but their stats were from reliable polling and government studies. The fact is, I can't quote bibliographical references but these are numbers that are accepted public knowledge. And if I could quote a government study, the argument against it would be, "well, that's just the government. They don't know shit."
The Administration has regularly questioned accepted scientific facts (global warming, evolution) and has shown everybody how to act indignant or condescending when your opponent in a debate says the sky is blue.
So we get to the key dilemma facing media and communications today: how do you talk to anybody when we have no common reference point for truth? We've all gotten so used to thinking in terms of liars, spin, and self-interest (follow the money) that nobody trusts anybody anymore.
In the blogging world, sites like DailyKos have developed extended communities of diarists, commenters, and lurkers. I jumped in with both feet - characteristically - and have been writing diaries and comments. But the first diary I put up (about the auction to benefit YearlyKos) had the first comment: who is this person? Why should we trust them? How do I know where my donation really goes?
I had others on the auction go in and vouch for me, so I "got some mojo," as it were. But therein lies the only validation people have in blogs: the building of community that makes everyone accountable for the honesty of the public square. There are "troll-hunters" zapping commenters who are just schilling for the other side, trying to disrupt reasonable debate. And with enough time on the site and mojo built, you too can become a "trusted user (TU)" and get to troll-rate people, which hides their comments from plain view.
I don't know how the site or Markos figured out all these rules, but I see that they're the only answer to give the skeptics. How do we know anything about anyone writing there? How do you know anything about your spouse? All we can know is what people choose to tell us.
In the sphere of public commentary, we are dividing into self-selecting groups of like-minded people. There's a chance blogs will bring people together in some kind of bridge but it's not happening much yet.
In this new public square, we only have each other and our better instincts to rely on. Getting back our trust in truth will take a long time. We'll see if this experiment works... or else.
Dear Scooter,
cross-posted at DailyKos.I think of you often. Well, not all that often. Just when my dog needs her anal glands expressed and she does that thing to the carpet...
I'm writing you today to tell you the aspens are whispering to each other, and they're finally turning towards the sun.
Yes the odor that emanates from the veterinarian's table at times like that does bring our government to mind, especially during weeks like this when another of your oily friends has made off with a turd to grow another blossom out of.
You probably are used to the smell by now. It's Eau du Republican Locker Room. It's the holy water of your baptism.
I've known your type all my life. You walks the halls of a rarefied world, trading in futures like war whose bonds will never come due for anyone in your family.
You chance the lives of dedicated public servants by exposing them and their operations in a vile attempt to protect the men you have to suck up to to keep making money. To keep holding onto power.
The sad thing is, your strategy works well. Guys who play on teams like yours with the easy ethics have frequently made it to the top. American capitalism is a contact sport and you body-check with the best of 'em.
People who play by the rules are just suckers, aren't they? And those who dare to try to raise the level of discourse are weak. The ones who start to inspire those left behind - the poor, the children, the elderly, the tired huddled masses yearning to be free as it were - the ones who speak to them, well, generally, they get assassinated.
That's the strategy that worked when I was a kid. We'll see if that one comes back for a reprise.
But the aspens are connected now and they're reaching for the sun. They're going to try to clean the rotten air you've left behind and offer some shade in the desert of politics and scorched earth that is your legacy.
Patrick Fitzgerald played by the rules so clearly that we all must accept his judgment. Even though your boys would have twisted the rules and the evidence to create the PR outcome you wanted, Fitz is one of us. He doesn't lower himself to your standards. He believes in the rule of law for all Americans, even you.
You may have won a battle or two, but in the end, Mother Nature will out. The aspens will be standing and the sound of their leaves rustling in the wind will echo the gentle sigh of justice.
Regards,
dcnative
More YearlyKos Love
I got front-paged at Daily Kos
today. Cool beans. SusanG highlighted it in her Wed night Diary Rescue. I'm truly honored.
Did two entries about the event on
Blue Oregon.
I couldn't think of an appropriate photo, though I hear I was spotted on C-SPAN this weekend. Probably talking. And talking.... and talking...
In Vegas
Man, I had no IDEA the blogger dress code was so fancy!I'm at YearlyKos in Las Vegas. To read posts for the next few days, visit:
www.blueoregon.com.
Where is ACT UP When You Need Them?
My romantic role models growing up: Rock Hudson and Doris Day.I had two chores growing up: setting the table for dinner and dusting the 1st floor furniture on Saturday mornings. I learned to plan my dusting around the Saturday morning movie, which was always black and white and frequently featured the two stars above. Love always started out on the wrong foot and ended up in heaven, or at least marriage. There was one that ended with Doris Day seeming horny, an image that led me to become the woman I am today.
In acting school, I fought believing the rumors that Rock was gay, but I was working coatcheck at a Broadway Bar. Charlie's on 45th. (Some nights I'd take a minute and just lean back into the minks. It felt fabulous.) It was the kind of place that put "reserved" signs on all the tables and sat people as they came in depending on their fame.
One night, Rock Hudson came in with his entourage of about 6 handsome young gay men. He was a towering figure, 6'4" if he was an inch. Broad-shouldered, deep voiced, flashing eyes... and gay as the Queen of Hearts. Oh my god. None of his boys were allowed to walk in front of him (the waiters told me) because Rock always came first.
This was one of my first moments of awakening.
It didn't make me love him any less, however. My best friend since high school was a gay guy, so that was a culture I knew. In the early 1980s, there were also rumors about a "gay cancer." My friend started to have friends who became mysteriously ill with a wide range of symptoms, all of them grosser and more debilitating than the last. In Hollywood once, we went to visit a friend of his who'd been one of the Marlboro Men. His chiseled handsome image had long adorned a huge billboard at the curve in Sunset Boulevard by the Chateau Marmont. By the time I met him in 1986, he was skinny as a rail, blind from some disease, and showing signs of carposes sarcoma.
It took a long time for Rock Hudson to come out and admit he had AIDS and he only lived a few months after doing so.
Elizabeth Taylor came to his PR rescue and stood up bravely for her long-time friend. It took guts to deal with AIDS victims in those days. The world made a big deal about the time Princess Diana was photographed touching a baby with AIDS in Africa. That one shot changed how people saw AIDS victims.
The government ignored AIDS for a long time. Reagan was president and things were somewhat like they are today under Bush (though not quite so crazy nutso insane). What turned the tide on getting AIDS addressed as I remember it was a "radical" group of gay activists called ACT UP. These guys were sick of watching their friends die around them in increasingly large numbers. They'd all gone from having fun at the baths to being afraid to help their friends eat because it was all so mysterious. Rumors were rampant.
So this group of annoying, fervent, devoted, theatrical (mostly white, I think) gay men took center stage. They showed up at government PR events and tried to disrupt them. They did street performance. They got in your face any way they could. They were media hogs. I don't know all the details of how they did it, but I've seen what gay men have done for urban renewal across America and they sure started that kind of genius coming together to fight AIDS.
Today is the 25th anniversary of the first news announcements about people dying from a newly discovered disease called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Its discovery was one of the most drastic changes to hit my life. Suddenly, everyone could kill you. We weren't even sure how it was transmitted, but men who slept together seemed to be a key target.
Not surprisingly, gay men would simply not shut up and sit in the back of the bus. In the face of every evangelical in America screaming about God's wrath for sin, his Divine Retribution, these men said, "Fuck You! Cure this disease! We will not stand for this, for being ignored, for having our deaths celebrated by the likes of you."
I bring this up today not only because of this anniversary, but also because this story is one of the few examples I can think of where the left got actively engaged - and enraged enough - to demand societal and governmental change.
Today, the conservative side gets rallied by something as simple and blatantly pandering as a "fight for a Constitutional Amendment against Gay Marriage" or illegal immigration or gays in the military or gay adoption. It only takes getting an initiative on state ballots to energize the base who harbors these kinds of hatreds.
What does it take for the Left to find that fervor? The issues we have that concern us are some of the most important I can think of:
- The lack of health care for 40 million Americans
- A failing education system
- Endangered Social Security
- Protecting pensions from corporate bankruptcies
- The death of unions
- Insane national debt to countries that don't necessarily have our best interests at heart...
I could go on, but you get the point. I could write a tome of sadness on any one of those bullet points, but somehow I don't think anyone on the left who's not politically engaged would necessarily stand in line to vote on these issues. Not if it took more than 10 minutes. I hope I'm wrong, but this feels right and I'm so far left you can't see me anymore.
So here's my solution: get all those guys from ACT UP to help us out. Lots of them must be retired by now. Let's use their expertise, enthusiasm and community organizing talents to help us all. In exchange, we'll keep fighting as we have for their rights. Seems fair to me.
I believe in the power of gay men. I am proud of them. I thank ACT UP and everyone who worked so hard to make AIDS not the death sentence it once was. (insert standing ovation here... along with Donna Summer's "I Will Survive.")
Please Help us now. We need you.
