The Cherry Orchard

It’s ironic that, several months after starting this blog with the express purpose of allowing me to vent my thoughts and frustrations on political and global issues, I find myself so overflowing with things to write that I end up writing nothing at all. (And, yes, that is my excuse for not posting much here in the last couple of weeks).

I’ve spent more time in the last few weeks reading up on politics and keeping up with the latest news than I have in many years. I check several of the political blogs listed on the front page of this site many times a day (most often Daily Kos and Huffington Post), and I watch a lot of Jon Stewart (when I need to laugh) and Bill O’Reilly (when I need to get pissed off). But my characteristic ability to mouth off freely about politics is stunted. I have too much to say, and I don’t know what to say first, and sometimes it’s easier to just talk about books instead of “dwelling in the real”.

I’m sure this won’t be a permanent condition, though. The upcoming USA midterm elections have many people on edge (witness the hysterical tones of every political blog, television news show and newspaper these days), and I certainly can’t remember ever feeling like so much was at stake in an non-Presidential USA election. I believe our current Iraq policy is a disaster, and I do not believe our President or Vice-President have the courage to admit their mistakes. Thus, we need to elect a Congress and a Senate that can take decision-making power away from the Executive branch, and this is why November 7 is so important. I will not be able to rest easy until I am sure that George W. Bush will spend his last two years as a lame duck.

Let’s say the Democrats do take the House and the Senate — what next? Well, first of all, impeachment proceedings can wait, and may not even be worth the trouble and the distraction. Instead, I want the new Congress and Senate to quickly pass legislation withdrawing past Congressional support for our current Iraq war, and to set a firm timetable for the fastest exit possible. I’d then hope for the beginning of a new kind of battle, which we can call a Diplomatic War (because the United States electorate really does love war, so let’s call it a war) to build an international coalition that can continue to work with the moderates in Iraq and contain damages to the best possible degree. Our current administration has gotten an F in diplomacy from day one, so the new Congress and Senate will have to work hard to establish new diplomatic channels that do not fall under the influence of the Executive office.

I pray that we wake up on Wednesday, November 8 and discover that we have elected a new government of the United States of America.

I used to hope for things like world peace. My expectations have been battered lately; the most I can hope for right now is a fresh start. Hmm, five days away …

I’ve occasionally tossed around poker metaphors when discussing politics.  Well, let’s be honest, I toss around poker metaphors when discussing anything (for example, I was recently trying to explain to a group of skeptical baseball fans why baseball is just like poker: pitching a fastball is a bet, a breaking ball is a bluff, a walk is a fold).  I’ve also been known to pontificate about poker as literature.

But poker as politics is a metaphor you can go a long way with, and in fact somebody has recently created an entire blog about this subject, PokerAndPolitics.com, which rightfully points out that George W. Bush must be a terrible poker player, based on the way he’s misplayed so many hands in Iraq.  Dummy, you don’t go all-in with a questionable hand when you’ve got a big stack!  So true, so true.

However, I’m worried that the whole poker metaphor might become commonplace, so I’d like to talk about a different game, Risk, which I played several times this summer.  What do poker and Risk have in common?  Well, they both teach one very, very important life skill that is essential to success in any field: restraint. 

 This is important, so I would like to say the word again: restraint.   Without restraint, you cannot win at poker, and you cannot win at Risk.  Witness: this past summer I found myself in a perfect position to take the entire continent of Africa from Southern Europe, thus wiping out my opponent Matthew and taking Matthew’s cards, which put me in great position to wipe my other two opponents Andy and Daniel out of Asia and North America and conquer the world. 

Never mind the fact that Matthew is my eleven year old nephew (familial bonds and mercy towards youth have nothing to do with game-winning strategy).  I needed Matthew’s cards, and that meant I needed Africa, and since I had nineteen soldiers to his eleven I had no doubt I could make this work.  The game was in my hands.

First roll: Matthew wins both dice.  I now have seventeen soldiers.

Second roll: Matthew wins both dice.  I now have fifteen soldiers.

This is where restraint kicks in.   I stood staring at the board for about five minutes, caressing the dice slowly in my hands (as Matthew squirmed and Daniel and Andy yelled at me to hurry up).  I caressed and thought, caressed and thought.  Then I slapped the dice down on the table, decision made: my turn was over.

I could win with nineteen against eleven.  I could probably win with fifteen against eleven but I didn’t like the odds.  I backed away and began thinking up a new strategy, and needless to say two hours later I took Kamchatka from Irkutsk and won the entire game.

Restraint.  Such an important lesson to learn, and this is one reason it’s so important for children to play games — not just dumb games but tough games, intense games, games that it kills you to lose.  You learn what it really takes to win in life.  And what it takes, more often than some people think, is not a whole lot of bluster and confidence.  If you’re not capable of carefully evaluating your own position, your own strengths and weaknesses, than you will play like a fool and be recognized as such by all your opponents.  If you tend to “go for it” because you believe you’re invincible, your game is as good as over, before it even begins.

Restraint.  This is what George W. Bush did not demonstrate when he decided to invade Iraq in 2003. 

I wonder if George Bush played a lot of games when he was a kid. 

I believe I could kick Bush’s ass at Risk.  In fact, I believe Matthew could kick Bush’s ass at Risk.  And Matthew’s just eleven, but he plays a lot of games.

I’d just like to point to two posts on Daily Kos today:

Waterboarding. This is just a clip from a movie, but the illustration helps to understand what the word means. I could preach about this, but it’d be better if you just watch the short clip and come to your own conclusion.

Me Shooting My Mouth Off Again I read DailyKos regularly and I am fairly sympatico with most of the points of view represented there. However, I don’t feel confident that Democrats have a coherent strategy for 2006 (or 2008) and I think liberal/progressive activists should try to find every opportunity to de-politicize their message and appeal to a wider range of American voters. The big message for 2006 should be “WE NEED COMPETENT GOVERNMENT, AND THIS AIN’T IT”. Incompetence, incompetence, incompetence, incompetence. We don’t need any other charge to win elections, and liberals should stop over-prosecuting their case. I’ve posted about this a few times on Daily Kos and elsewhere. Sometimes I get nice reactions (big plus signs, which means people like what I said), and sometimes I get ignored. I’m pretty sure I’m right, either way.

I don’t want to spend too much time writing about electoral politics here– I’m much more fascinated the undercurrents and assumptions that influence popular politics. But I do occasionally have something to say about electoral strategy, as in a short piece I wrote for Daily Kos last night. Here’s what I posted:

As opponents of the Iraq war across the USA hopefully await our chance to take back the White House in two years, we still hear disturbing rumbles that Democrats cannot find a clear position on the Iraq war, both past and future.

For instance, I have now heard from two different sources that Hillary Clinton can never be President — not, surprisingly, because she was married to Bubba, or because she’s a liberal woman. Hillary’s biggest problem right now, apparently, is that she voted to go to war against Iraq in 2002.

Democrats and liberals need to get past the unfair and inaccurate charge that we are “wishy-washy” on future policy in Iraq, or that politicians are “flip-floppers” because they voted to go to war in 2002. How do we get past this? Mainly, we need to focus on the terrible performance of the Bush/Cheney administration, their lack of planning, their lapses in judgement.

The lack of seriousness with which the Bush/Cheney administration has been conducting this ongoing war resonates with all Americans, red state or blue. For many Americans, the Iraq war didn’t go wrong when the tanks started rolling, but it went wrong when Baghdad fell and the occupying troops failed to prevent — or even encouraged — widespread looting. And it went more horribly wrong when we discovered what had been happening in Abu Ghraib.

Democrats, let’s stop arguing over who voted for or against the war in 2002. This war was an aberration and an injustice before it began, but that’s not why Americans hate this war. We hate the war because it is a disaster and a failure, and that’s not something any Democratic politician must bear responsibility for.

USA President George W. Bush appeared dejected and defensive in tonight’s televised address to the nation. The fight against Islamic fundamentalism, Bush said, will be the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st Century, but many viewers will wonder if the struggle against the type of antiquated chauvinism this president represents won’t be just as difficult.

“Incompetent” remains the best word to describe the presidency of George W. Bush, but “antiquated” is rising in the ranks as well. Evidence:

• Bush speaks of the children who lost parents on 9-11 as never being able to “hug their daddies”. Umm … mommies too, George?

• Bush urges Arabs to “leave the desert of despotism”, as if he doesn’t realize this type of quaint “Lawrence of Arabia” stereotyping has got to go.

• The man who barely knew the difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims when making the decision to invade Iraq now says that we will not leave the war until “the extremists” are defeated. This shows that he is still not well-informed about the situation in Iraq, in which “extremism” plays a minor role behind territorial and political confrontation.

• Our beloved president evokes World War II yet again, despite the fact that if he had been President in World War II he would probably have attacked Quisling or Petain instead of Hitler (that’s what his record against Bin Laden shows, anyway).

I recently posted a suggestion pleading with George Bush and Dick Cheney to just stop giving speeches, because the experience is incredibly painful and frustrating to those of us who have to listen. The decisive ideological struggle of the 21st Century will be against militarism, chauvinism and stupidity of all kinds, and George Bush better think about which side he’s on.

British author and social critic Martin Amis recently wrote a book called The War Against Cliche; it’s a pretty good book, and it’s a great title. As an author of fiction and poetry trying to turn my head towards the controversial topics of the day, I can relate to the title. When I write about world events I often feel myself fighting the war against cliche, and sometimes losing it.

What’s a writer to do? I am filled with disgust and anger towards a few world leaders whose decisions and statements seem too banal for tragedy and too predictable for comedy. I want to write about this, but I can come up with nothing to say that hasn’t been said before. But if I don’t write what I feel, I find myself unable to write anything at all. My anger is a clot, a clump.

So, let’s dive in. I have two subjects today, two influential global leaders who claim to be each other’s philosophical opposites: one is a religious fundamentalist and populist politician who embraces military solutions to human problems, whereas the other is a religious fundamentalist and populist politican who embraces military solutions to human problems. I’m speaking of George W. Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Bush administration has begun a new public relations initiative aimed at keeping Republican seats in the US Senate and Congress during the November midterm elections. Their speechwriters have now put the phrase “Islamic fascism” into regular rotation, and Vice-President Dick Cheney recently delivered a speech comparing the anti-war movement in the USA to the appeasement of Hitler before World War II.

As many before me have already said, the Bush administration does not have the credibility to make comparisons like this pass any type of inspection. The horrific results of the war in Iraq, begun in March 2003, betray a more obvious truth: this war was hastily planned and badly executed. The good citizens of the USA know that their current leadership is frighteningly incompetent, and many of us dread the damage that may be done in this administration’s remaining two years. As far as I’m concerned, Bush and Cheney are already lame ducks, and I earnestly plead that they cease delivering speeches. They have already insulted America’s honor with their reckless foreign policy; I beg that they stop insulting our intelligence.

The administration of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is no less reckless. Cartoonists and comedians in the USA like to portray the earnest fanatic as a clown, a madman, but in fact he is a career politician with over twenty-five years of experience in Iranian politics. It’s all too easy to laugh him off when he convenes a panel of academics to study whether or not the genocide of six million Jews in mid-20th Century Europe is a myth. We know that the Holocaust was all too real, as were other holocausts of modern times from Russia to China to Cambodia to Rwanda to Bosnia to Darfur. How shall I react to a politician like this? Ahmadinejad is all over the news: he is famously beginning a program of nuclear enrichment, he has declared that Israel has no right to exist, he has called for a purge of liberal intellectuals from Iranian universities. I believe Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a familar character from history. I don’t intend to bore my poor readers by beating this subject to death, but I do plan to use this site to watch his activities in the future.

Cliches? Yeah, I’ve got nothing but cliches to offer today. I hate when the world seems simplistic, but I’ve got to call the shots like I see them.