Pro-War Papers Say Bush Let Them Down, "Just wait," Bush thinks, "you'll see."

Normally I don't try to interpret or "translate" stories this much, but it represents I think, a previously mentioned here shift beginning to happen in even the most Pro-War press (long overdue for reflecting the change in the publics opinion instead of trying to "influence" public opinion against their own, in this case, better judgments) across the country. From today's (Sunday, April 29, 2007) the Portland Press Herald / Sunday Maine Telegram - Editorial: Blunders leave troops with no hope of success:

"Even if the Bush administration exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam's weapons programs and hinted disingenuously at a link between Iraq and the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the mission still made sense. That's because the threat of weapons of mass destruction and a potential Iraq-al-Qaida link were never the best reasons for the invasion. By themselves, the strategic advantages to be had from Saddam's ouster and the creation of a more pro-Western government in Iraq were worthy and obtainable goals."

Read as "so even if the President openly lied about the reasons for going to war, manufactured or doctored intelligence to support bogus claims, and openly stomped on a raw nerve of fear after the 9/11 attack for falsely ralling the public to "pre-emptively" attack a country that had not attacked us and was not about to in the foreseeable future, nor training nor harboring terrorists, it was still a good idea for the real reasons he was not mentioning. That is that it would be to our advantage to place friendly governments in hostile countries based upon false claims and hope their publics would be too stupid, or as easily decieved as ours, not to be able to tell that they would be being (blanked) over."

"Even if one believes the United States has the resources to turn things around, the president's performance has been so poor that he has lost the confidence of the American people. As such, it will be impossible for him to rally the support necessary for a costly and sustained military effort in Iraq."

Translated to "Because the American people are failing to support Bush, his Iraq policy is bound to fail. That it is not the wrong policy, nor that it ever was wrong, but that he just isn't doing a good enough job of selling it. If only we could come up with a better packaging for a country that has been turned by us into a hell on earth, we not only could sell more of it, but at higher profit margins as well. Just need to find another and better name or slogan for this mess, then the American public would again support Bush, and all would be right on God's green Earth again."

"We did not fall into lockstep on the march to war as many in the media are accused of doing. We did ask critical questions before the invasion.
Still, we were sucked in and blinded, not by White House rhetoric, but by the tremendous upside to removing Saddam from power. We should have paused to think what it meant that the president hadn't made his best case for the war or hadn't thought about the obvious challenges going in."

Or instead would it be that "We DID ask ourselves if it was morally right, and we obviously did and still do answer, "Hell yes!" It is not our fault our leader was not able to sell it to the public enough to write him a blank check for as long as it takes to win this morally correct and justifiable war." Sounds almost like any major Democratic Presidential candidate's (the ones hypocritical enough to be thought to have a chance of winning (except they would add "By what we were told at the time.")) stump speech.

"Efforts by congressional Democrats to legislate a target date for withdrawal are understandable given the president's stubbornness. But those dates don't make sense from a military standpoint. It's just a bad idea to give one's enemies that information."

So even as we, the great press pundits of the great State of Maine, announce this "bold change of direction" in our editorial policy, we will continue to criticize anyone who tries to set a date for the withdrawal that we are here supposedly advocating, and will continue to support the White House directed media and propaganda offensive against any Democrat who tries take the position that we are here now pretending to take, to decisively (sort of) talk about the need to withdraw from Iraq, and then bash the Democrats over the head with it repeatedly for pressing a date for it, and then again on the way out. The mythical "Plan B" begins to take form in this world.

Little time to write for now, not the Dalai Lama post

      This has been a busy week for me, and much that I wanted to write, I have not had time for. Much time went into finalizing PolSci.com Version X. It took a year to update it this time whereas before it was updated every few months. As stated in it, it was a very turbulent year which deposited me back where my journey began. Instead of a circle completed, it ended up more as a spiral. Whether the spiral leads up or down has yet to be determined and as with everything in regards to perspective views, that view depends on where you stand.

      Another delay was caused by the visit of the Dalai Lama to Maui. I could not pass up the chance to see him, especially here in what is for me a very special place in the world, my backyard, my home so to speak, a place for me like no other. Since I consider myself in part a Buddhist because that comprises a major tier of my belief system, I was honored to be able to see someone whom I respect give a speech on Buddhism and Buddhist principles.

      Eventually I will write the Dalai Lama post, but this is not it. It is too much to write now and full articles like that, that I consider important, take many hours to write and eat up entire days usually. I liked that he spoke of identity and time at the beginning of his speech though, and will write briefly about that instead.

      In my version X of PolSci.com mentioned above, I was unsure about leading off with Symbol of the Soul, about a sense of identity driving events, but coupled with internal and external views upon it and how you view your environment, as an external or a part of yourself. It was wordy, what I wrote, but I still think it was important enough to lead off the rest with, even if no one understands why.

      Our identities are both built on what we remember of the past, combined with our hopes and fears about the future, and nothing is less important to understand when we contemplate,or have need to contemplate, changes of direction. And for those who think the US has no need to seriously do some soul searching and contemplate a change of direction, I am truly baffled and disheartened both by and for them.

      The original "Best of" the notes I write, "All good things" and "Growth" were compiled originally to be given to the Tibetan Buddhists as a present. They would understand them, I thought, as I was searching within myself at the time to get their perspective (and others) on what I was going through. There have been many recompilations of the notes now, the newest and most prominent in this version, is of course, Fearlessness.

      There is a connection I share with Buddhism and Taoism, am built in a way from them and made whole by their past, but look now more to the future than ever, as unreal as it may be. It too is necessary to give perspective upon the present, the only time we ever exist in or ever will.

      I will write the Dalai Lama article soon I hope, the one I thought of on the bus not so long ago, and I will try to tone it down as best I can. I do not wish to offend anyone, least of all him. I will try to find the time to touch the most important bases of what I think should be said soon, as waiting too long, the muse dies.

      Through the time until recently when I was forced to remain silent, not easy for me, I found refuge in these words I wrote. "Hesitation is a myth. You know somewhere inside yourself what you will do if you have enough time to do it by the time you are ready to do it. If you do not have the time to do it by the time you are ready to do it, perhaps it ought not to have been done."

      If only it were always that easy. Too much left undone by myself and others has made the future that much harder and more difficult. While I am usually the first to say, "Yeah, right on, make it as difficult as possible," one does not have to look far to see how many near and far suffer the brunt of the pain our inactions, and the suffering it causes. Lucky are those can be detached from the sufferings of our mistakes spreading like wildfires, but for those who still have hopes invested in the future, detachment and silence is becoming untenable. Much now ought to have been done that wasn't, so being ready or not is becoming less of an issue everyday.

The No Maas Moment Approacheth for the Washington Press Corps

In Russia...

The political atmosphere on the eve of the putsch

Despite Gorbachev's having greatly strengthened his formal political power and asserted the right to issue decrees on everything from military operations to the price of fish (when it is available), it was probably fair to say that he had less real power to affect the course of events in the USSR in the first half of 1991 than at any other time since his accession to power in March 1985. People in authority in the republics and provinces simply were not listening to him, and few members of the general public seemed to have much respect for him.... The Lithuanian Declaration of Independence of 11 March 1990 certainly brought matters to a head, even if it seemed quixotic at the time. There can be little doubt, also, that the sacrifices in human life that were the unfortunate result of his persistence in acting upon the Declaration which paved the way for speedy international recognition of the independence of the Baltic states and set the stage for the subsequent collapse of the Soviet empire. Dr Robert F. Miller, February 17, 1992 (1)

Glasnost’ coverage of Soviet politics was indeed an essential part of the strength of the democratic movement, because it politicised a formerly quiescent Soviet society, giving the various parties and neformaly mass popular support. Although it is true that the press was dominated by the liberal, Westernising intelligentsia, and did not accurately reflect the dispersal of political opinions amongst the populace, the preponderance of this view in news stories and features, and the presence of public opinion polls which reflected this news bias were very important in manufacturing popular dissent. This mass politicisation of a formerly apathetic Soviet population was very important in giving opposition parties and neformaly the support they needed to present a credible alternative to the crumbling Soviet Communist ideology, as well as giving the press leverage against the government to continue and enhance its independence. ... The pattern of media intransigence, attempted governmental control, wider media outrage, and popular demonstrations against the government was to be repeated many times over and served to strengthen active hostility to an already weakened regime. Television also played a vital role in the transformation from popular apathy to discontent, to political action. Olivia Boyd, Autumn 2006 (2)

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In China...

It is noteworthy that the Chinese media, surprisingly objective in its reporting of the demonstrations until then, began to positively support the students. This 'press revolt' was so unified in its style and purpose as to bespeak manipulation from the very start. Subsequently, in his official report to the National People's Congress in late June, Beijing Mayor Chen Xitong identified Zhao Ziyang's comments to China's propaganda chiefs Hu Qili and Rui Xingwen on 6 May regarding media coverage of the demonstrations as crucial to the buildup of the protest movement. Geremie R. Barmé , May 2006 (3)

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In Serbia...

The fearsome Serbian propaganda machine appears to be beginning to falter as hundreds of state media journalists call for more balanced reporting.The independent media have dismissed the unprecedented protests as cynical opportunism by regime journalists who fear opposition retribution if Milosevic is defeated. Political observers in Belgrade believe that while the (press) revolt in itself will not pose a serious threat to Milosevic, it suggests that his regime is beginning to weaken. In the biggest revolt to date, 300 employees at Serbian state television and radio, RTS, are reported to have gone on strike in Belgrade on Thursday, demanding an overhaul of the station's editorial policy. Mirna Jancic, October 5, 2000 (4)

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In Ukraine...

Independent media played a positive and critical role in communicating news about the falsified vote and helping in turn to mobilize popular opposition to the regime after the vote. Channel 5 played the central role, first in communicating the results of the exit polls and in reporting on the hundreds of cases of electoral fraud. Channel 5 then served an especially vital function of providing live, 24-hour coverage of the events on Maidan, broadcasts that helped to encourage others to join the protests, especially when viewers saw the peaceful, festive nature of the crowds. By the end of the demonstration, Channel Five catapulted from 13 in the national ratings. Channel 5 coverage also put pressure on the other channels to stop spewing their propaganda. Michael McFaul, May 2006 (5)

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In America...

(At the "Confronting the Seduction of Secrecy: Toward Improved Access to Government Information on the Record," Panel) Bill Kovach, director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, described the short-lived revolt he tried to lead when he was Washington Bureau chief of the New York Times in the 1980s. "A few other reporters joined us at first when we asked briefings be kept open and left the room if they were not. But the support didn't last long," he said. "The main argument from other journalists was that they would surrender their independence if they took part in such group actions," he said. But Kovach said that in this era of spin and misinformation, it's time to head to the ramparts again. "And maybe if we're lucky we can find that cooperation and collaboration are not threats to our independence but are the key to strengthen the value and the appeal of a journalism of verification to the American people." Several panelists said that another response to Bush's control of the press should be to report more about the process the White House is using to achieve it. In other words: More stories about the endlessly repeated talking points, the merciless spin, the fake news, the screened audiences, and the increasingly sophisticated public relations apparatus. Dan Froomkin, The Washington Post, March 18, 2005 (6)

He chose the opposite path, and his hyper-partisanship has proved to be a travesty of governance and a comprehensive failure. I've tried to be respectful of the man and the office, but the three defining sins of the Bush Administration--arrogance, incompetence, cynicism--are congenital: they're part of his personality. They're not likely to change.And it is increasingly difficult to imagine yet another two years of slow bleed with a leader so clearly unfit to lead. Joe Klein, TIME Magazine, April 5, 2007 (7)

Even more than most national journalists, The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt has been a stalwart defender of the Bush administration with regard to the U.S. attorneys scandal. ... In just two weeks, we went from firings that "didn't need covering" to "troubling evidence of improper political motivations." ... Now it's the very, very esteemed Fred Hiatt and the Post Editorial Page -- rather than merely the loudmouth partisan dirty blogging masses -- recognizing that the U.S. attorneys scandal involves accusations of very serious wrongdoing, along with substantial evidence to support those accusations. And even Hiatt now recognizes that Rove and even the President are quite near the center of it all. Perhaps this Editorial is a signal that national conventional media wisdom will shift. Glenn Greenwald (quoting Fred Hiatt in The Washington Post), April 10, 2007 (8)

          When I went to University in Estonia, one of the things I was most interested in was how the press functioned in the former Soviet Union, in dealing with censorship and constant attempts at propaganda. I was lucky enough to be able to take courses in studying this. One of which was even titled, “Media under a Totalitarian Regime"' The course that made me wish to go to the University I did attend for my Master's degree in Sweden was a course entitled, “Why Revolt?” For me they are intertwined, for you cannot have a revolution, political, electoral, or otherwise, without a sympathetic press ready to embrace change, somehow somewhere within the region.

          What specifically I looked for in so-called “revolutions,” none of which mentioned above probably deserve the term as they are mostly electoral and superficial, is what I call the “No Maas” moment. It means “No More” in Spanish. It is that moment when journalists become journalists and no longer function as mouthpieces for the official regime. They start to dissect press releases and official statements from an adversarial point of view. They stop getting invited, nor would they choose to be after that, to hobnob at the political power broker's parties. They begin to function independently to do what they believe is to inform instead of blindly surrendering their own judgment of the so-called 'facts' they are putting out to the public and stop allowing themselves to be misinforming rather than informing.

           The public, at least in America, believes this is what journalists always do, and that is why when they are not doing it, it is so valuable, and so destructive. Americans are much more naive than the Soviet citizens were and tend to believe whatever they hear on television. Fox News and CNN may have been tarnished in some people's eyes as propagandists, but by and large Americans think what they are being told in television news is the truth and objective.

           Other nations have varying degrees of faith in their own press as well, unless owned more openly, or more openly siding with, political elites or political parties which are thought to favor the wealthy. And even when these ties are known, the effect of this is superficial, for even propaganda known to be propaganda is listened to and often believed when constant enough. Lies repeated enough are thought to have a grain of truth to them by the general publics, even when known to be from biased sources. If its on the air, it must be answered and if left unanswered, by many people simply taken as less factual 'facts' nonetheless.

           The No Maas moment to me is when the tide begins to turn within the press against unpopular and often criminal regimes. The press starts playing up more and more potential crimes and scandals, incessantly until the get the publics attention. Scandals are always there to be found as any government has thousands of employees, often political appointees.

           The press, when it so chooses and united, can bring down any government. They can brand a new much less corrupt administration as more corrupt just by the number of stories they run about them linking them to possible corruption scandals. Indeed, from seeing the coverage in countries of extreme disparity in wealth, a populist government can or could be far less corrupt than its predecessor and still get many times more stories accusing it of supposed corruption. And often this is the case. It is called “perception management.”

           Many reporters will rightly feel that the job of the press in a democratic society is to support the supposedly popularly elected government, or the “legitimate” government, or even the “de facto” government when legitimacy is in short supply. This encourages 'stability.' The existing government would not have arisen to hold power, so the thought goes, if it did not already have a base of support, and the alternative is usually thought to involve chaos.

           But when a groundswell in the public arises against the current government, it becomes open for specific incidents to trigger a nations press corps to rethink their main job is to give support to the existing political status quo. Some reporters fear seemingly supporting public movements to unseat existing parties or governments to be risking to lose objectivity, without realizing to constantly allow the existing government to use its "bully pulpit” as Theodore Roosevelt called it, to dominate the discussion and debates, to print whatever 'official' statements they are told to, can be to surrender their objectivity as much as required or asked, depending on who is asking and how willing their owners appointed editors are to let it go unfiltered into the public discourse.

           In defining the No Maas moment as when a new, more critical angle is taken by the press corps which threatens to add to, or fuel, the rising popular discontent, I have long ago decided that such a moment in the USSR occurred when the Lithuanian TV station was attacked on-air by Soviet troops. Not only was it a blow to the growing independence of the press under Gorbachev's Glasnost program, it was a threat pointed at the press itself, an outright desire for control.

           At such turning points, which need not to lead to effective political changes or upheavals to be considered turning points, the press begins to favor the popular movements which previously were ignored, marginalized or demonized in their coverage, or simply shut out completely. It often involves journalists willing to put their careers on the line, their family's security, and even their very lives on the line. They, as much as they can, go off-script, say “We were lying to you before, don't believe what we were telling you. We were being used. Until we are fired or arrested, we will try to do better from now on, or at least for as long as we can financially hold out.”

           But the American situation of 2007 is more difficult to judge one single day or one single incident. Surely Hurricane Katrina can count as such a near moment. Reporters on the scene of the humanitarian disaster openly defied their station owners attempts to 'spin' the coverage of what they were seeing and reporting. “Its not true” they dared to openly say, in real time and that is key if not crucial in importance, of what the government was saying to be the case, of what their fellow journalists were saying when repeating the 'talking points' given to them from above. And it was so extreme with pictures no one could deny, that they were allowed to get away with it, careers intact, maybe some lost promotions not withstanding.

          The present Bush administration should have zero credibility to the press corps that cover it, so often have they been lied to, threated with arrest and the monitoring of their phone calls and personal lives by the government when looking into government abuses of power and violations of the law arbitrarily and unilaterally deemed off-limits due to national security.

           Indeed,the abuses of this Bush Administration are so far reaching in their criminality even the Democrats can appreciate that exposing them would be a threat to national security and our image. What they don't realize is that that image outside the concentric bubbles of the Washington beltway and American ignorance of the relevance of other countries legitimate views of us as out-of-control, is long dead anyway. Likewise, our very national security is no longer served by keeping covered these festering and poisonous actions, treacherous when not treasonous.

           Yet instead, greed to those who make their careers and tax cuts, their access to power and all its perks and privileges possible, and even loyalty to that common grouping that politicians and those who cover them now can be thought to comprise, these have kept them from openly asserting that what they are being asked to put out they often know to be lies and disinformation. The backhanded 'corrections' about previous lies are meaningless, when they are even called outright lies, because it does not affect, or has not yet affected, the ability to put out new ones completely unchallenged.

           America's No Maas moment this April, if it indeed proves in hindsight to be one, is interesting because of its timing in relation to the impending attack on Iran, intended not only to silence such quibbles, such as “who killed who” or “who spied on who” or “which government leaders committed which felonies or treasonous acts against the Constitution,” but rather instead shift the debate to who is trying to undermine our leaders ability to manage his self-imposed World War III. Without nerve such a stand now is the ultimate brand of futility.

           Yet when has honor had anything to do gauging the chances of success?

1) 1992 Miller, Dr. Robert F. Sr Fellow in Political Science, Division of Economics and Politics, RSSS, ANU 1992/02/17 THE BALTIC STATES WIN THEIR INDEPENDENCE: LITHUANIA'S DIFFICULT RENAISSANCE
http://history.eserver.org/baltic-states-independence.txt

2) 2006 Boyd, Olivia 2006/Autumn Information, Ideology And Power: How Glasnost’ Affected The Demise Of The Soviet Union: CROSSROADS JOURNAL, VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1 AUTUMN 2006 ISSN: 1833-878X
http://www.uq.edu.au/crossroads/Issues/Autumn06/Autumn06%20-%204.Boyd%20(pp.14-21).pdf

3) 1991 Barmé, Geremie R. 1991 BEIJING DAYS, BEIJING NIGHTS From The Pro-Democracy Protests in China: Reports from the Provinces , edited by Jonathan Unger (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1991)
http://www.tsquare.tv/links/Beijing_Days.html

4) 2000 Jancic, Mirna 2000/10/05 State Media Revolt: Journalists loyal to the Milosevic regime are rebelling in the aftermath of the opposition election victory. Institute for War and Peace Reporting, London, UK
http://iwpr.net/?p=bcr&s=f&o=246807&apc_state=henibcr38938691c88c678d8ab7c39d4fd713a9

5) 2006 McFaul, Michael 2006/May Importing Revolution: Internal and External Factors in Ukraine’s 2004
http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/21145/McFaul_No_59.pdf

6) 2005 Froomkin, Dan 2005/03/18 What's a Press Corps to Do?, The Washington Post, Washington, DC
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46867-2005Mar18.html?nav=rss_politics/administration/whbriefing

7) 2007 Klein, Joe, 2007/04/05 An Administration's Epic Collapse, TIME Magazine, New York, NY
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1607243,00.html

8) 2007 Greenwald, Glenn, 2007/04/10 A light bulb goes off on the Washington Post editorial page, Salon Magazine, New York, NY
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/04/10/hiatt/

Wordplay

revival: -> awakening, cheering, consolation, enkindling, reshening, invigoration, quickening, reanimation, reawakening, recovery, recrudescence, regeneration, rejuvenation, renaissance, renewal, restoration, resurgence, resurrection, resuscitation, revitalization

Thesaurus.com

revival: -> reanimation, rebirth, regeneration, rejuvenation, renewal, resurgence, resurrection, resuscitation, revitalization
Related Words: renaissance, reactivation; rally, recovery, recuperation
Near Antonyms death, expiration, extinction

Merriam-Webster

         I have always been fascinated by words, with their capacity to not only let us express ourselves, but that they are the palette of how to frame what we have to think about. They spring up when an idea or event comes up which we feel the need to express to others. They are a paper trail, when recorded in a written language, of where we have been before, when new concepts emerged which needed short well-defined sounds of themselves, apart from all others, to be named as a single and separate thing, a word distinct, self-inclusive.

         That is why I have studied languages, to try to get into the heads of cultures to gauge their present mindsets, which concepts they think are most important at the moment, important enough to be set aside apart from all others, to be crystallized in peoples minds as words, as something which they have grown up with, think they know, as basic words of common sense, the building blocks of how they frame their worlds.

         I have not been able to study languages in detail enough for my aims, as it would take up too much of my time which I have not had either the resources in money for, nor lack of other things I deemed more important to be focused on instead of hiding myself away for long periods of time to absorb the richness of the past, and bask in the diversity of culture and different mindsets inherent in studying different languages of the present.

         As with so many other things, I have dabbled in trying to understand language, but dabbling has its merits as well as well thought-out expertise. We are all dabblers in many subjects because the immense body of recorded language and history now makes complete expertise on more than one (or a few) topics virtually impossible without surrendering much of your life and free-time to it, but having some expertise in many things is, or can be, as valuable as great expertise in a few things. And if no one had lesser expertise in fields, experts would have no one but students to sell their books to, or a public educated enough to relate to what they have to say and contribute. And without a mass audience, no matter how relevant to society, they can be pushed to the fringes of irrelevance of purposeful ignorance by those who pander and offer the public pseudo-knowledge for 'guidance' or control. Without some ability by the mass public to gauge the expertise of those who are called experts, we simply open our heads to their opinions and give up willing the right to question them.

         My dabbling with languages began with Latin, which lead me to the name I used for business, Scandere, which meant to climb. I did not know it at the time but it was a perfect match for the defnition to the name I had resolved to take for myself as an adult since I was a child, which means to descend. They, like so many concepts, like words, bookend each other, for you cannot have one word or concept without entailing its opposite. Anything and its opposites are united in conceptualization, you build another word for its opposite, whether spoken or not, admitted or not, and a third for the spectrum which includes them both, or as a single concept or single way of looking at things.

         In addition to writing as a non- expert about words and my fascination with them, I have written about the danger of polemic thinking, such as good and evil, because this leads to identical actions of each side, supposedly for different causes or hoping for different effects. Step back far enough and you see they are the same thing, use the same methods, are two sides of the same coin, and ultimately the same concept.

         I have seen things in modern Christianity, mainstream Christianity, which are nearly identical to Satanism, which itself while trying to distance itself supposedly 180 degrees from many things, adopted the same language, the same words, the same concepts, the same myths as Christianity. Many things denounced as Paganism, later as Satanism, were incorporated into the Catholic Church, and many truly independent alternative religions in Europe were falsely condemned as Satanism, again itself being an offshoot of Christianity, which these European religions had nothing to do with Christianity, Satan, or anything associated with the religions of the Middle- East, and why they were treated (and massacred) all with the same brush. If it wasn't what the Church said was the case, then it must be Satanic. If you weren't with everything you were told to believe, if you weren't blindly with us, you obviously must be working for and with the most evil of evils. Even simply by rejecting our dogma, our black and white mindset, our definitions, our words.

         My fascination with words has framed much of my life. In my teens I started writing poetry seriously and was taken in with the concept of using multiple levels of meaning with the fewest words possible, the swordplay of wordplay, the essence of communication. That is what religions teach as well from the earliest of recorded histories, using stories or parables to convey deeper meanings you cannot either say outright because of the unquestioning times you live in, or that they need to be embodied in people, real or imagined, to become relevant, fleshed out, comprehensible. And that is the essence of deeper levels of meaning to what is written, how different others might see it, for it is the diversity of perception and what different life experiences possible readers bring to bear which gives poetry and other types of attempted 'positive' double-speech, their supposed deeper levels. Saying two things at once, or more, or far more with the same words, requires these other minds and mindsets to speak to to give them these multiple meanings at once.

         And you cannot speak to them without knowledge of them. The tragedy of America in these days is the 'writing off' of other culture's views, especially upon our own actions, as irrelevant and uninformed. To not want to see and know yourself from other culture's points of views, I have said before, not only makes you something ugly, something deformed in the light of general human development, it is to write off their perspectives as meaningless. They might as well not exist. And in that light as in so many other nations in the past, we are doing 'good' to 'remove' them.

         It is a myth of the left and progressives that Americans are peaceful and would never advocate genocide. They, the left, are as wrapped in their own perspectives as much as the Neo-Conservatives are in choosing to see the world according to their own beliefs rather than see the uncomfortable reality of the situation around them. I know to a great extent neither self-delusions of the left or right is absolute, that both know their mindsets are false, but think by openly promoting them whenever possible as true will make them real, or at least more real.

         Most Americans like most in any other country are peaceful people who are sent to war because that is the machinations of leaderships that do not hear them and do not respond to their wishes. But there is a dark side in all people, and in Americans as well. I have heard many voices since I have been back advocate genocide, the murders of thousands, even millions, and not just on television. "Bomb them all," "Nuke them and take their oil," and so on. This is not just because of shameless propaganda outlets like Fox News, it is almost a natural reflex when you think your side is good and the other side is bad or evil.

         In studying other cultures, the biggest revelations for me came from studying Chinese philosophy and Buddhism, getting beyond the duality of 'Good' and 'Evil.' Such is called 'Eastern thinking' in opposition to our 'Western thinking.' No culture in the next 100 years can call itself 'developed' or 'enlightened' without having a foot firmly in place on both sides. Each exposes the limitations in the other's type of thinking. Each side has its own poisons as well. The West seeks to eliminate all opposing viewpoints to its 'universal' values, now by the US actions, unsubtly at the point of a gun, while openly violating all of those values at the same time. But the West has a toleration for ethnic diversity which the East lacks, yet the shortcomings of both lie in their imagined 'superiority' over others. That you cannot be at the top of the cultural spectrum without others at the bottom. More limitations of words and concepts.

         When writing about my poetry and Taoism which influenced it, I first had to speak to the fact that it was using a different 'language' than what I had been raised in, as the East/West divide in thinking is, different ways of looking at the world each forged with different histories which must now combine themselves without pride and patriotism into a common world history which includes both and will be influenced by both without the elimination of either one side or the other. Yet that is where militaristic thinking warps the development, the myth that that is possible, to totally eradicate or completely subdue your enemy. It is up to politicians and historians to sell that to the public as not being an immoral thing. "It was inevitable," "they left us no choice but to destroy them."

         Chinese (Mandarin) was one of the first languages I studied, in part, to try to understand the palette of ideas which lead to this different type of thinking and world view than the one I had been raised with. Reading the "Tao Te Ching" was one of the most enlightening events of my life and opened up new worlds of thinking embodied in the views and cultures of others. Such knowledge are bridges that the cultural totalitarians on both sides of the Pacific are afraid of.

         In China, the obvious threat is of Western ideas of liberty, now ironically available in practice to their own wealthiest elite at home, to single party rule. Yet at least there is change going on there. America has become the dinosaur of political change compared to almost anywhere else in the world, China, Russia, India, the European Union (which most Americans know almost nothing about), and has become notable in recent political evolution changes only for its erosion of freedoms and increasing absence of regard for human rights. Secret prisons, kidnappings, torture, election rigging, funding civil wars and terrorist groups in countries it does not like, holding people without trials, spying on journalists, whistle-blowers, demonstrators, wrong voters, and on and on. And keeping Americans ignorant of how the rest of the world sees us now puts our own elites hold on power tenuous. Thus our "news" networks instead of informing us of our transgressions and slide instead mock the rest of the world for being 'uncivilized' and 'resenting our freedoms.'

         In addition to studying Chinese and Latin, other languages I have dabbled in include Dutch, German, French, Spanish, and Russian. I have envied those who can speak a multitude of languages because each can open up to them new concepts not inherent within, or stressed as much, in their own language or culture. But I still think, though that is obviously better, using language at all in our thinking limits our thinking only to ideas we have been exposed to previously. We need to go beyond the past embodied in language. In my earliest writing on the subject, I stated that "It is due to this limiting aspect of our languages that it is beneficial to clear one's mind of these concepts and deal in pure thought or pure existence. Just as in mathematics, how the answer is determined by the question, one could reasonably argue that all the thoughts we think are logically deduced from our experiences, both internal (feelings, moods) and external, and are defined by the rules of language. If we, however, clear our minds of both our experiences and our language we may be able to 'see' from a point of view which would be forever unobtainable as long as we are limited by language and experience." I have also written about words in First Words in Towards Tomorrow, and Perception in Deconstructing the Universe.

         And within that are the great lessons of Eastern thought, Taoism, Buddhism, and Zen: the need to recognize the limitations of languages, and by extension, of cultures, as contextual, limited in scope to those they were originally developed within or for, but needing constant expansion and having that past, that foundation, being put in new contexts through new experiences and greater histories which they cannot contain without constricting them. Constricted growth is as close to death as it is to life. Growth must be free of the limitations of languages, of single cultures, of single ideologies, of single types of governmental or economic systems, or it is not growth at all, merely attempted sameness, death of better ideas, preventing new words, new concepts, new systems from emerging.

         Truth is not found in words. Words like art, like anything in our environment, are attempts to make a representation of truth. The "Western" type of thinking, of an external objectifiable truth to reality has its roots in a wider viewpoint. Among the earliest Greek philosophers, Paramenides among others, knew that thinking was at best an approximation of truth, an elusive search meant to be unending, always sought after, yet forever out of reach. That has nothing to do with the absolutism with which the West has come to be identified with, mainly as an excuse to impose its culture upon others. Parmenides said on truth, " "both the unchanging truth behind all that which only seemingly comes and goes from being, and the opinions and perceptions of Man about this in which there cannot be found truth, ... it is necessary for you to see how untruths and misconceptions come to be seen as truth, both (the unchanging truth and our interpretations/changing perceptions of things/subjectivity) together create all experiences."

         I began my own philosophical search as a cultural relativist, have moved beyond it, yet am astounded and disheartened beyond measure to see my own culture, America, slam cultural relativism, as something trite, irrelevant, even a fashion without substance. It has become a victim of its own hyped up self-importance, a media preaching that ignorance is better than knowledge. There has been so much of a backlog of falsehood, misrepresentation, propaganda, and outright self- destructive lying to the American people by the Bush Administration of the 21st century that as it begins to get exposed, has the potential to point us, and because of our possibly undue influence or control over the rest of the world, to point the world on a new and better path as we begin once more to speak what we believe to be the truth. We need to try to know what is outside of ourselves, what lies outside of our bodies, minds, beliefs, mindsets and national borders, that is not irrelevant, not without truths of their own which we do not destroy without destroying our own ability to grow.

         The truth will begin to be let out more and more. We in the West, we need to demand a media that shows us to us as the rest of the world knows us, so we may see what they do and we do not. To see ourselves from the most points of view. To see ourselves from the most points of approximations or representations of truth that may not be true in individuality, but in sum, in total, in the view we are purposely now kept from seeing, comes as close to the truth as we will ever get without retreating into our own unquestioning assumptions, dogma, propaganda, hubris, and self-delusions. We have become and have been led by the embodiment of such a dark path of willful ignorance. Yet a new path has already begun. It is young yet, this truth telling, and its fate depends upon the actions of millions of others to survive against the legacy we have spun, yet I have faith in it. I have faith that it will grow, that it will survive, and it will dominate the lies, at least in the short term, and at least of the recent past.