Kemstone's Journal

There is a lot to get discouraged about when it comes to the oil spill, but America’s pathetic response is probably the most discouraging thing of all. Peter Daou wrote an excellent piece last week on the Huffington Post about how the oil spill is the biggest opportunity we’ve had in a generation to push back against the green-bashers who enabled the oil companies to wreak their environmental havoc upon us but that nobody is going after them. If there was ever a time for the adherents of an ideology—environmentalism—to launch of a big fat fucking “We told you so” at the adherents of another ideology—green-bashing—now is the time. And since my blog is mostly a bunch of substance-free ranting anyway, I suppose this is as good a platform as any to do it.

Seriously you guys—we told you so. You said that offshore drilling was safe, that we needed to extract every drop of oil from the earth’s crust and that the potential environment damage was negligible. Look at the news. Who was right and who was wrong? Go ahead and defend your position now.

What can you say except that we need oil to fuel our cars and jet-planes and that renewable energy sources won’t do the job so oil drilling is necessary? Well, is it necessary? Or is it just that oil companies have so much influence over the government that we don’t spend what’s required to switch to alternative fuel sources and instead keep paying for fossil fuels? Sure, maybe we can’t currently supply enough energy to power our country on clean energy sources alone, but with enough research we might be able to, especially if we’re also willing to make some sacrifices regarding our energy use. If we devoted as much money and resources to developing new energy technologies and strategies for sustainability, I think we could pull it off. We put men on the moon, didn’t we? Whatever happened to Obama’s proposal for an “Apollo-style” program to switch America to clean energy?

Now I spend a lot of time bashing Obama—and I will again in just a moment—but I have to give credit when credit is due and he did come out this week and used the oil spill to justify the push for clean energy. I usually do like what the president says. It’s what he does that pisses me off. In front of the cameras he admits that there’s no safe way to drill for oil in extremely deep water, but behind closed doors he still lets oil companies start new drilling projects.

If this spill won’t be a wake-up call for America in terms of our feelings regarding energy and the environment, then I don’t think we ever will wake up. Clearly, while we had the technology to drill at those depths, we never had the technology to prevent a catastrophe if something went wrong. So we let them drill, and what did we get out of it? BP certainly got their fair share of profits, and when all is said and done they might very well still be standing just like Exxon after the Valdez spill. But what did the American people get? Obtaining some of our oil from domestic sources reduced the price of gasoline by a few cents at most. The average family probably saved a few bucks a year. So for a few bucks a year we’ve allowed entire ecosystems to be destroyed, livelihoods to be ruined, tourism-based economies to be crushed, and cities to be placed in jeopardy due to the loss of hurricane surge-protecting marshlands. I won’t even mention the horrific deaths of countless animals—as we already know the opposition can’t be moved by that.

We should be rubbing this in their faces, but instead we continue to let Rush Limbaugh dictate the terms of the debate. “It’s the environmentalists’ fault!” he cries. What’s it going to take to get these people to acknowledge that they’re wrong? Global warming could accelerate, the ice-caps could melt and the sea-levels could rise and flood New York City and the likes of Limbaugh and Beck would still be railing against Al Gore from their new studios further inland.

Every single republican who ever took the microphone and initiated a chant of “Drill, baby, drill” should have to shut up and hide away in shame right now. They should be too embarrassed to show their faces in public, let alone go on national TV and continue to defend offshore drilling. And yet Sarah Palin, the worst of the worst of the Drill-baby-drillers, goes on Facebook to say what she really meant was “Drill, baby, drill in safe onshore locations” in spite of all the clips of her explicitly saying offshore. She actually has the nerve to say to the “greenies”: “Now, do you get it?”

Well, fuck me. If only we’d listened to Sarah Palin. She warned us about drilling in the right locations, but we tree-hugging sissy-pants liberals just wouldn’t listen. BP wanted to drill safely on shore but we just wouldn’t have it and we forced them to drill so far from the coast that a catastrophe like this was bound to happen.

No, goddammit! Sarah Palin does not get to be the one saying “I told you so” here! This is one instance in which one side is clearly right and the other clearly wrong. They said offshore drilling was safe and that the reward would be well worth the relatively negligible risk. Well the risk was not negligible and the reward was hardly worth it. How about some kind of consensus in the media regarding what’s right before our eyes?

Luckily, what’s right before our eyes is so hard to ignore that offshore drilling supporters actually do feel like they have to walk back from it and insist “I never said drill, baby, drill.” But the media is still so obsessed with the appearance of objectivity that they continue to invite people on to talk about how important and necessary offshore drilling is for America.

And the president goes along with it. Now is the best opportunity we’ve ever had to simply say “Enough is enough” and make a clean break with oil. But even in spite of this tragedy, in spite of all the warnings of environmentalists having come to fruition, they are still regarded as some kind of nutty fringe that just doesn’t get it. And we keep on drilling.

They are the ones who don’t get it. There’s only so much damage we can do to the earth before it starts to purge us like a disease. We’re sucking sludge from the ground and spewing it all over the sea and into the sky. We don’t treat it like a catastrophe because it’s happening so slowly, but just look at the images of the oil gushing from that well and consider that it’s now guaranteed to keep gushing until August at the earliest. This crisis is just one small part of a much larger crisis, and the people who are out there shouting warnings from the rooftops continue to be derided as naïve and childish fools. If we do keep sucking and spewing until the planet is pushed past its tipping point and billions of us start to die off, the fact that they can then say “We told you so” will be no consolation.

Allow me to depress the hell out of you for a moment as I step back and take a broad look at the state of affairs in the world and draw my gloomy conclusions. Hopefully someone can tell me why I’m wrong and that things aren’t as bad as they seem.

Cenk Uygur, the host of my favorite political show—The Young Turks—sees most things almost exactly as I see them with one major difference. He insists that while he may be pessimistic in the short-term, he’s “long-term optimistic” and I know a lot of people who also feel that way. But not me. I look at the world and the human race and I see a species on the verge of extinction, brought about by its own blind ignorance and refusal to accept responsibility for its fate.

Just look at what’s in the headlines today. Wall Street Executives are expressing sighs of relief at the financial reform package just passed in the senate. You don’t need to know a damned thing about economics to take that as an indication that the reforms didn’t go far enough and the bankers can continue with business as usual. Banks can still be too big to fail and they can still trade derivatives. There is slightly more oversight and rules banning some of the more reckless financial practices…but no penalty for banks that break those rules. Just this one line from the New York Times piece says it all:

Some experts predict that Wall Street, like water overcoming a dam, will easily adapt to the new regulations, or at least exploit what loopholes do remain and thrive again.

If I had any money I’d bet heavily on another financial crisis hitting within the next few years. And when it does, the damage is going to be far worse than the last one. The big banks haven’t been broken up so they can still hold the economy hostage. The public has to bail them out or it all goes under. But people are still enraged about the first bailout—how is it going to be politically possible for anyone in congress to vote for another one? I suspect they all will because they can hide behind the cover of “this is absolutely necessary” like they did the first time, but there’s a chance that the people just won’t stand for it this time and the banks will go down. In any case, Obama will be blamed (rightly so in one sense) and the Tea Party movement is likely to boil into open revolt. Economies all over the world will fall like dominos and countries that have a social safety net will find the number of unemployed far too large to handle. Billions will be out on the street with nowhere to turn, and global chaos will ensue.

Maybe that won’t happen for a few decades, but that seems to be the direction we’re heading in. Thanks to these financial crises the human race seems to be waking up to the fact that the entire global monetary system is based on nothing more than a kind of international consent. We agree that your money is worth something and you agree that ours is too. But economies are becoming less based on actual tangible goods and more on abstract ‘financial products’ that have no intrinsic value. Wealth is just a number in a bank account, scarcely more real than points in a video game. The entire global financial system is a balloon filled with hot air and we’re doing nothing to stop those who keep blowing into it because they hold the balloon—they own everybody in a position to potentially stop them—and sooner or later the balloon is going to burst.

But that’s just money. The global chaos that will ensue when the balloon bursts may set humanity back to the Dark Ages but it won’t kill us all. The other big story in the news these days is the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which in and of itself won’t be too devastating but it’s just one symptom of a much larger problem—one far more threatening than any economic collapse.

Not everyone accepts that CO2 emissions are warming up the earth’s atmosphere and not everyone believes that the earth’s resources are as limited as environmentalists claim they are, but just about everyone accepts the concept of a food chain. Anyone who knows anything about ecosystems knows that all forms of life depend on other forms of life for their survival. Nature establishes equilibriums, and when it’s thrown off balance the consequences are usually devastating. Remove just one species from a marsh and hundreds of others might disappear depending on how crucial that species was.

This planet is currently undergoing what scientists have labeled the Sixth Extinction, in which the earth loses about 30,000 species per year due to human activity. This has been going on since the development of agriculture thousands of years ago, but there is no doubt it’s accelerating rapidly due to industrialization. The Gulf oil spill is almost sure to take its fair share of species from the ocean, and there is no indication that we as a species have any intention to stop drilling any time soon.

And of course there’s only so much oil in the earth’s crust, so when that’s gone we’re really going to run into trouble unless we can find another fuel source that can provide us with as much energy as fossil fuels do. Wind and solar won’t provide enough power to keep civilization running as it currently is, and nuclear energy has its own problems, the biggest being radioactive waste.

But even if we find a way to keep the engines of civilization churning, those engines will continue to rape the environment, pollute the sky, and destroy species by the minute. Common sense tells us that there’s only so much damage we can do to the environment before a tipping point is reached and some element of the food chain that was critical to our survival disappears. It may not happen for another century, but unless we drastically alter our way of living it is bound to happen, and I see no sign of willingness on the part of humanity to make such drastic alterations.

The last story I read today is about the Muslim world’s perception of America on the one year anniversary of Obama’s Cairo speech, and how nearly all of the hopes he raised in that speech have been dashed over the last year. The prison at Guantanamo remains open, Israel is still building new settlements in disputed territory, and American troops are still in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regarding the wars, Iraq may be “winding down” but people are still being killed by insurgents nearly every day, while Afghanistan truly is “heating up” while many objective observers are saying that our presence there is counter-productive. Our troops are basically there to prop up and support a corrupt, criminal government with a leader who almost certainly won the election through fraud.

Why is this important? Why is it a sign of humanity’s impending doom? Because the leader of the free world is not George W. Bush anymore—it’s Barack Obama.

I came to true political awareness during the Bush administration and back then I was just as filled with doom and gloom. Clearly, the guy was the worst possible president we could have had. Not only was he an ignorant buffoon who probably genuinely believed that Jesus wanted him to start these wars—he was transparently a puppet of the giant corporations that dominate us. He was a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Oil and a staunch ally of the military industrial complex. Under Bush, you could be sure that the environment would continue to be raped and war would be the order of the day. Clearly, there would be no effort towards world peace or environmental sustainability.

But then Barack Obama came along with a promise of change. He talked the talk and inspired the world with the very vision we needed most—the vision of a world united in peace, an end to unnecessary wars and a true drive towards clean and renewable energy that would protect and preserve the environment we all depend on. If anyone was going to lead the way to that future dreamed about by men like Gene Roddenberry or Carl Sagan—in which humanity survives its technological adolescence and dedicates itself to its own betterment and to exploring the universe beyond our planet of origin—it was Barack Obama.

But clearly we’re a long way from the United Federation of Planets and it’s doubtful we’ll ever get there. If Obama had the best of intentions when he got into office, he quickly discovered that there were serious limitations to what he could accomplish. The powers that be were already too powerful. If the best he could do with Wall Street was to give them a slap on the wrist and warn them not to cause another financial crisis, if the best he could do with the two wars was to slightly alter the deployment numbers and shift a few resources around, if the best he could do to address climate change was to offer more subsidies for offshore drilling and then give up the fight when something went wrong, and if the best he can do during an actual environmental catastrophe like the one in the Gulf is to let the corporations handle it and hope the story just goes away—then humanity is more fucked than most people care to admit.

It turns out that it really doesn’t matter at all who the president is. If we’re heading in the wrong direction no matter who is at the helm, we’re eventually going to fall off the cliff. And what can I do about it? What can any of us do about it? That’s a question for another blog entry, one I’ll write if I ever come up with anything. For now I think the best we can do is simply recognize it. To understand that humanity’s survival is not guaranteed—that our grandchildren may not live to have grandchildren of their own—and that the only hope we have is to stop making enemies of each other and to come together and fight against extinction, the common enemy of us all.

An actual “Liveblog” is a running commentary of a major event as it happens. I can’t really do that because I live in Europe, and being 6 hours ahead of Washington I don’t really feel like waiting up until the wee hours of the morning to watch primetime events live. I just watch them online the next day, then write about them when I get a chance. I don’t have much to say overall about the President’s first state of the union speech, so I thought I’d simply have a little fun and do a running commentary of my own that can hopefully be enjoyed even by people who didn’t see the speech.

I’ll post noteworthy quotes when I feel an urge to respond to them, and when I’m responding to something visual (like Republicans applauding or not applauding) I’ll try to make that clear.

Full disclosure: I already watched the speech once and took in some commentary, so some of my opinions are influenced by other bloggers, pundits, and columnists. But in most cases I’m writing the immediate reaction I had the first time around.

[re: the stimulus] Experts from across the political spectrum warned that if we did not act, we might face a second depression. So we acted, immediately and aggressively. And one year later, the worst of the storm has passed.

You lie! Things may get better in the short term, but there’s just going to be another storm because you’re not doing anything to prevent it.

[re: the American spirit] It’s because of this spirit — this great decency and great strength — that I have never been more hopeful about America’s future than I am tonight.

The first applause line. Apparently everybody loves hope.

Despite our hardships, our union is strong. We do not give up. We do not quit. We do not allow fear or division to break our spirit.

You lie! Yes we do. Have you never even watched cable news?

[re: the bank bailouts] But when I ran for President, I promised I wouldn’t just do what was popular – I would do what was necessary.

Then why don’t you?

To recover the rest, I have proposed a fee on the biggest banks. I know Wall Street isn’t keen on this idea, but if these firms can afford to hand out big bonuses again, they can afford a modest fee to pay back the taxpayers who rescued them in their time of need.

Apparently republicans don’t like the idea of paying back taxpayers for rescuing the banks.

Let me repeat: we cut taxes. We cut taxes for 95% of working families. We cut taxes for small businesses. We cut taxes for first-time homebuyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college. As a result, millions of Americans had more to spend on gas, and food, and other necessities, all of which helped businesses keep more workers. And we haven’t raised income taxes by a single dime on a single person. Not a single dime.

Apparently republicans don’t like tax cuts either. And Obama calls them out, saying “I thought I’d get some applause there.” John Boehner is amused.

But I realize that for every success story, there are other stories, of men and women who wake up with the anguish of not knowing where their next paycheck will come from; who send out resumes week after week and hear nothing in response. That is why jobs must be our number one focus in 2010, and that is why I am calling for a new jobs bill tonight.

Republicans are standing now. Everyone likes jobs. Or at least everyone likes pandering to the unemployed.

[re: job creation] We should start where most new jobs do – in small businesses, companies that begin when an entrepreneur takes a chance on a dream, or a worker decides its time she became her own boss.

Lifted directly from every one of Bush’s speeches. And Clinton’s. And Bush Sr.’s. And Reagan’s…actually every speech by every president in history.

[re: infrastructure] There’s no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains, or the new factories that manufacture clean energy products.

You lie! There is a damn good reason—their governments actually do stuff.

And to encourage these and other businesses to stay within our borders, it’s time to finally slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas and give those tax breaks to companies that create jobs in the United States of America.

Also lifted from every State of the Union address ever given.

[re: the jobs bill] Now, the House has passed a jobs bill that includes some of these steps. As the first order of business this year, I urge the Senate to do the same, and I know they will. They will.

You lie! They won’t, and they know it.

You see, Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as the problems have grown worse. Meanwhile, China’s not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany’s not waiting. India’s not waiting. These nations aren’t standing still. These nations aren’t playing for second place.

If these other nations jumped off a bridge, should we do that too?

The House has already passed financial reform with many of these changes. And the lobbyists are already trying to kill it. Well, we cannot let them win this fight. And if the bill that ends up on my desk does not meet the test of real reform, I will send it back.

Hah! You’ll sign anything they manage to deliver to you, and you know it. Luckily for you, they won’t be able to deliver anything.

But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies.

Yeah! Drill baby drill! Clean coal (which is utter bullshit)! Wahoo!

[re: global warming] But even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future – because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation.

Why? Why not let some other nation lead the global economy for awhile? Our recent track record hasn’t exactly been fantastic.

[re: free trade] And that’s why we will continue to shape a Doha trade agreement that opens global markets, and why we will strengthen our trade relations in Asia and with key partners like South Korea, Panama, and Colombia.

This time, only republicans are standing. That could only mean this is a bad idea.

To make college more affordable, this bill will finally end the unwarranted taxpayer-subsidies that go to banks for student loans. Instead, let’s take that money and give families a $10,000 tax credit for four years of college and increase Pell Grants.

Now the republicans are sitting on their hands. I guess they’re opposed to kids being able to afford college.

And it is precisely to relieve the burden on middle-class families that we still need health insurance reform.

Republicans, as expected, are not in favor of health care reform…wait…oh now they’re standing. I guess someone finally realized how bad they’re making themselves look.

Now let’s be clear – I did not choose to tackle this issue to get some legislative victory under my belt. And by now it should be fairly obvious that I didn’t take on health care because it was good politics.

You lie! You behaved exactly as though you were just trying to earn a legislative victory. Otherwise you would have actually fought to get a good bill.

And by the way, I want to acknowledge our First Lady, Michelle Obama, who this year is creating a national movement to tackle the epidemic of childhood obesity and make our kids healthier.

Damn, there are some angry vibes coming from that woman. She really seems to hate her husband now. That was quick. I didn’t think Hillary started hating Bill until a few years into his presidency. Can’t blame her though. She knows more than anyone in that room just how empty his words are.

[re: health reform] Still, this is a complex issue, and the longer it was debated, the more skeptical people became. I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people.

Well, that’s music to my ears. But why aren’t you explaining it now? We’re listening.

But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know. Let me know. I’m eager to see it.

Actually, I think I remember a guy who had a much better approach than the one currently on the table in Congress. I think he ran for president back in 2008. What was his name? Oh yeah…Barack Obama.

So let me start the discussion of government spending by setting the record straight. At the beginning of the last decade, America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion. By the time I took office, we had a one year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program. On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget. That was before I walked in the door.

Republicans also hate being confronted with the fact that America existed before January 20, 2009.

[re: spending $1 trillion for economic recovery] I am absolutely convinced that was the right thing to do. But families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same. So tonight, I’m proposing specific steps to pay for the $1 trillion that it took to rescue the economy last year. Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years.

This is the stupidest idea in the speech, designed to pander to the uninformed independent who doesn’t understand the difference between a family budget and a government budget. The only way you get out of a recession is to spend your way out. A spending freeze didn’t work under Hoover, it didn’t work under FDR, and it didn’t work under any other president during any other recession. This is a cheap political gimmick that won’t have any positive effects.

It won’t win any republican support, as whenever the president moves to the right they just move the goal-posts. It certainly won’t help the economy recover. The only thing it will do is give the conservatives the ammunition they need to go on pretending that fiscal restraint is the right approach to an economic recession, in spite of all the economists who say otherwise and all the historical evidence to the contrary. Obama should have been explaining why the government needs to spend money in a recession, but instead he’s just conceded the argument to the side he knows is wrong, purely for the sake of a gimmick that won’t help him politically anyway.

I know that some in my own party will argue that we cannot address the deficit or freeze government spending when so many are still hurting. I agree, which is why this freeze will not take effect until next year, when the economy is stronger.

Some laughter in the chamber, which is appropriate. The economy may be a bit stronger next year but not enough to justify a spending freeze.

Oh, but they’re probably laughing because they think he should start the freeze this year. Obama responds with a “That’s how budgeting works.”

Even stronger laughter, though I’m not sure from whom or why. Are they democrats laughing back at the republicans who didn’t seem to understand that you plan a budget a year in advance? Or are they republicans laughing at how naïve that line made him seem? “Look mommy, I know how budgeting works!”

Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, it’s time to try something new. Let’s invest in our people without leaving them a mountain of debt. Let’s meet our responsibility to the citizens who sent us here. Let’s try common sense. A novel concept.

Did the president just give props to Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck?

That’s what I came to Washington to do. That’s why – for the first time in history – my Administration posts our White House visitors online. And that’s why we’ve excluded lobbyists from policy-making jobs or seats on federal boards and commissions.

You lie! Lobbyists are still writing policy. They wrote most of the health reform bill.

And it’s time to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office. Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections.

Okay, that was awesome at least. The president chastises the Supreme Court (rightly so) directly to their faces while they’re sitting a few feet away from him! I find out later that Justice Samuel Alito was mouthing the words “Simply not true” in quasi-Joe Wilson fashion!

Okay, Sam, it’s not true? What exactly is not true about it? Please, I’d like you to explain exactly why you aren’t responsible for handing the entire United States government over to giant profit-seeking corporations on a silver platter. I really want to hear you explain that to me.

I’m also calling on Congress to continue down the path of earmark reform.

Pandering to the McCain voters now. Why didn’t we just vote for him?

Now, I am not naïve. I never thought the mere fact of my election would usher in peace, harmony, and some post-partisan era.

You lie!

But what frustrates the American people is a Washington where every day is Election Day. We cannot wage a perpetual campaign where the only goal is to see who can get the most embarrassing headlines about their opponent – a belief that if you lose, I win. Neither party should delay or obstruct every single bill just because they can.

Yes, absolutely. Look at the republicans sitting there smiling knowing that’s exactly what they’re doing and that they have no intention of stopping.

The confirmation of well-qualified public servants should not be held hostage to the pet projects or grudges of a few individual Senators.

The republicans are sitting on their hands to indicate that they are totally in favor of holding up the confirmation of well-qualified public servants for the sake of political grudges.

Washington may think that saying anything about the other side, no matter how false, is just part of the game. But it is precisely such politics that has stopped either party from helping the American people. Worse yet, it is sowing further division among our citizens and further distrust in our government. So no, I will not give up on changing the tone of our politics.

And you will not stop failing miserably in doing so.

To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve some problems, not run for the hills.

Democrats applaud, apparently not in favor of running for the hills. This indicates a major shift in strategy for them.

And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions.

Republicans remain seated to indicate that they are in favor of practicing short-term politics that serve their own ambitions at the expense of citizens. They get points for honesty.

[re: national security] So let’s put aside the schoolyard taunts about who is tough. Let’s reject the false choice between protecting our people and upholding our values. Let’s leave behind the fear and division, and do what it takes to defend our nation and forge a more hopeful future – for America and the world.

That ought to convince Dick Cheney.

We will support the Iraqi government as they hold elections, and continue to partner with the Iraqi people to promote regional peace and prosperity. But make no mistake: this war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home.

You lie! Or to put it another way: Simply not true. Maybe most combat troops will come home but there will be troops there and military contractors for a long, long time.

[re: the troops] And just as they must have the resources they need in war, we all have a responsibility to support them when they come home.

Ooh, pandering to the troops. That’s politically risky.

That is why we stand with the girl who yearns to go to school in Afghanistan; we support the human rights of the women marching through the streets of Iran; and we advocate for the young man denied a job by corruption in Guinea. For America must always stand on the side of freedom and human dignity.

He’s channeling Bush again.

This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are.

You will? I’d like to see that. Honestly. Even if you are just pandering.

We are going to crack down on violations of equal pay laws – so that women get equal pay for an equal day’s work. And we should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system – to secure our borders, enforce our laws, and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nations.

Pandering to women and pandering to xenophobes in the space of two sentences!

Every day, Americans meet their responsibilities to their families and their employers. Time and again, they lend a hand to their neighbors and give back to their country. They take pride in their labor, and are generous in spirit. These aren’t Republican values or Democratic values they’re living by; business values or labor values. They are American values.

Oh man. China called. They’re missing a Pander-Bear (zing).

Unfortunately, too many of our citizens have lost faith that our biggest institutions – our corporations, our media, and yes, our government – still reflect these same values.

You l…actually you’re totally right. I wonder why we’ve lost our faith…

I campaigned on the promise of change – change we can believe in, the slogan went. And right now, I know there are many Americans who aren’t sure if they still believe we can change – or at least, that I can deliver it.

No shit. I guess this is the part of the speech that was focus-tested on disillusioned progressives like me.

Those of us in public office can respond to this reality by playing it safe and avoid telling hard truths. We can do what’s necessary to keep our poll numbers high, and get through the next election instead of doing what’s best for the next generation.

Thanks for explaining your strategy like that.

Our administration has had some political setbacks this year, and some of them were deserved. But I wake up every day knowing that they are nothing compared to the setbacks that families all across this country have faced this year. And what keeps me going – what keeps me fighting – is that despite all these setbacks, that spirit of determination and optimism – that fundamental decency that has always been at the core of the American people – lives on.

Man, you almost had me. I was almost ready to give you some credit and line up behind you to support your agenda. Then you went and turned it back into more ass-kissing of “the American people”.

[re: the American spirit again] It lives on in the struggling small business owner who wrote to me of his company, “None of us,” he said, “…are willing to consider, even slightly, that we might fail.”

Does every president think every American is a small business owner?

We have finished a difficult year. We have come through a difficult decade. But a new year has come. A new decade stretches before us. We don’t quit. I don’t quit. Let’s seize this moment – to start anew, to carry the dream forward, and to strengthen our union once more.

Great, I’m ready. So what do we need to do? You told us what you want to do, but you still haven’t called on the people who supported your candidacy to get behind you and stand up and fight the powers-that-be. All you did was propose small-ball legislation that, if you keep governing as you’ve been governing, will end up getting so compromised and watered down as to be completely ineffective.

Most importantly, you’re still doing your whole “There are not Red States and Blue States” schtick, speaking the language of bi-partisanship even though you know full well that genuine, constructive bi-partisanship is hopeless in today’s political climate. You refuse to take a stand on anything that might make anyone angry (except Sam Alito) and try to keep winning with the same playbook that got you elected: be as vague as possible about your own convictions so that everyone can just project their own political beliefs onto you.

Well, that won’t work anymore. You really have to pick a position and fight for it. There was nothing in this speech to indicate that you would.

Don’t get me wrong—it was a brilliant speech from a rhetorical standpoint, and you delivered it masterfully. You’re a really likable guy, way more comfortable to watch than W and almost everything you say—also unlike W—is something I agree with. I just no longer believe that you have a real desire to back up these words with actions.

I could be wrong. Maybe you really are going to undergo a course-correction and really turn things around this year and start fighting. Then I’ll take back all my “You lie”s and start writing about what a great president you are.

But this speech sounded only like you have people working for you who watch the news, who read the blogs, who talk to people from across the political spectrum and know what they’re thinking, and speech-writers who know how to seamlessly blend the cares and concerns of everyone into one coherent message. On the one hand, I suppose that’s the nature of a State of the Union speech, so I can’t really blame you for that. But on the other hand, you ran on a platform of Change, so you have to expect to be called out when what you deliver is simply more of the same.

In conclusion, if you’re really telling me that Change is coming, that the economy is turning the corner and the middle-class will rise again, that health care reform will finally be delivered, that we’re going to succeed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that we’re going to break the stranglehold of major financial institutions on our government, I have two words for you.
(Hint: one of those words begins with a Y, and the other with an L)

For the record, I do believe that humans are responsible for the dangerous rate of global warming that the earth is currently undergoing. The point of my last entry was not to cast doubt on the science or call into question the scientific consensus that exists on the issue, but merely to acknowledge that there are legitimate reasons to doubt, and that advocates of fixing the climate problem are making a mistake to dismiss them.

I suppose my point got lost in all the snark, but I was only making a comment on the nature of the debate at this point. Since the 2007 IPCC report on climate change was released, proponents of the proposition that global warming is manmade have simply declared that the debate is over, the verdict is in, and that if you don’t accept it they’re not even going to bother trying to convince you anymore. And perhaps that’s an understandable attitude, but it’s not the right attitude if you really want to move things forward. Polls are showing that the number of people who doubt that global warming is manmade is actually growing, not shrinking, so clearly you’re doing something wrong. You can’t just dismiss nearly half of the entire population as willfully blind fools. To be fair, a great deal of them are exactly that, but it’s a disservice to your cause when you lump everyone who has doubts into the same category.

I compared the belief that global warming is manmade to a religion, because I do think that many liberals actually treat it as such. They may have a lot more evidence to support their claims than the followers of religion, but they treat their conclusions more like Absolute Truth than the result of the scientific process, which itself is all about questioning and re-questioning your conclusions. I was completely convinced that global warming was manmade until it seemed that everybody suddenly declared that the debate was over. That naturally made me suspicious. Really? The debate is over? You’re not even going to entertain alternative theories anymore? Maybe I should take a look at what these alternative theories are…

The people who are putting forth these other theories, meanwhile, are being labeled “deniers”, the same word they use for people who don’t believe the Holocaust really happened. Anyone who expresses any doubt on the matter gets leapt on and attacked by those on the left, accused of being shills for big corporations or worse. Many of them may be exactly that, but again, you shouldn’t lump all your opponents into the same category. That makes me suspicious too. Why won’t you just examine the merits of what they’re actually saying? Give a scientific counter-argument to their scientific arguments instead of just dismissing them as a corporate shill. If you won’t argue in terms of facts and evidence, then the only facts and evidence I have before me is that offered by the skeptic. Yes, the IPCC report is there for all to read, but if you really want to help your cause you’ll refer to it, cite it, quote it, use it however you can to counter the argument being made. But if you just dismiss it right away, I start to think that there might be something to it.

Finally, when you’ve framed this issue as one of the biggest threats to humanity and future generations, when you characterize the situation as a dire crisis that requires drastic and immediate action, why is the solution you are advocating something as pathetic and transparently profit-motivated as cap-and-trade? Introducing a financial incentive to cut emissions is logical, but will we really be cutting emissions or merely the profits of energy companies? And if energy companies want to offset the cost of these carbon credits, couldn’t they just…say…raise the price of energy? They may take a few half-hearted measures to cut their emissions for PR purposes, but at the end of the day they’re going to keep polluting because polluting is what they do. Making pollution more expensive will just make energy more expensive—it won’t stop global warming, not by a long shot.

And naturally, with this whole new carbon-credit market Wall Street will have a whole new bag of goodies to speculate on, overvalue, buy and sell and inflate and get super-rich from. They want this climate legislation more than anyone, and that makes me more suspicious than anything else.

The point is, from the perspective of a layman who doesn’t want to go crusading without some degree of certainty that the crusade is necessary, there are too many WTF-aspects of this climate debate to feel sure of oneself at all. That’s the problem I was highlighting, and the solution I was suggesting is A) to stop treating Global Warming like a religion and attacking everyone who has doubts, and B) if you really believe in your cause, don’t just sit-back and accept this bullshit cap-and-trade deal. Keep referring to the facts, and insist on a solution to the problem that takes those facts into account.

One more point—my cousin mentioned “climate-gate” in the comments, referring to the incident in which e-mails circulated among a few climatologists revealed that they were willing to fudge data in order to support their pre-existing conclusion that global warming is anthropogenic. I think this is just another instance of the right-wing blowing something hugely out of proportion and drawing conclusions that don’t follow from the evidence. The fact that we know some scientists are unethical does not entail that all scientists are unethical. That logic is so simple even a four-year-old could grasp it. But conservatives have leapt all over this story and declared the debate has ended in their favor with just as much unjustified self-assurance as the liberals who have declared that the debate has ended in theirs.

Finally, I should say that even if I have my doubts about the degree to which global warming is manmade, I absolutely do not believe we should do nothing about it, or that we shouldn’t act until we know for certain. If we’re going to err, it should be on the side of minimizing our environmental impact. If you ask whether human activity is destroying the planet, I’d be the first to say “yes, of fucking course we are.” Deforestation, over-fishing, damming up rivers, dumping waste into the ocean—we are absolutely on the fast-track to destroying ourselves. I’m just not as sure about the climate thing, for reasons I hope I’ve made clear. But this entry has only been about the debate, not the issue itself. When it comes to what I think we should do about the issue, I absolutely think we have to do something whether we’re sure about the science or not.

As opposed to last week, this week has been very busy, with five days of work in a row starting on Tuesday and ending tomorrow on Saturday with my 3-hour Mr. Bokeloh lesson. I just got back from my awful Friday lessons, and the last thing I feel like doing now is writing anything, but there are a few things I learned from my students this week that I would be remiss not to record.

On Wednesday I had my first lesson in about a month with Frau Suhr, the big-time controlling department executive at E.ON, and I read through an article with her from the Economist, an article Alan had told me about that criticizes E.ON for Germany’s high and ever-rising energy prices. The author of the article accuses E.ON of fixing prices by controlling the supply, of having a near monopoly over the German electrical infrastructure (E.ON and their top competitor RWE control nearly 80% of Germany’s power supply) and of squeezing their smaller competitors even harder through their control of the power-distribution network which other companies must pay them to use. It was interesting how Frau Suhr knocked down every argument in the article, and fun to see how much pleasure she took in doing so. Apparently electricity prices keep rising not because of any shenanigans on E.ON’s part but because the government keeps imposing higher and higher taxes on the company—not just on the carbon they pollute but on the actual earnings of their employees. In order to stay profitable E.ON and other energy companies have no choice but to raise prices, which they wouldn’t have to do if not for all the political points the politicians can score by taking on the evil energy industry. The power distribution grid, she agreed, gave E.ON an advantage over competitors, but apparently they’ve been trying to sell it since January 2008 and so far nobody has been interested in buying it. And although only two companies control 80% of Germany’s energy, in countries like France and Italy there’s only one company in control and their prices are much higher. Frau Suhr expressed great frustration over the media’s blatant bias and omission of important facts.

It was interesting to hear, as I would have simply taken it for granted that E.ON is an evil corporation that’s raising prices simply to fatten the wallets of its top executives. Sure, Frau Suhr has her own bias, but she has no reason to mislead me and the points she made were quite logical. Apparently the government is much more to blame for the high cost of energy than the energy companies, but the public only hears the government’s side of the story and naturally they shift all the blame to the industry. It makes me wonder if I’ve been wrong about American corporations too, but I’m pretty sure it’s different here where the balance of power between government and big business is not as drastically on the side of big business.

At my first lesson on Thursday, the group with which I normally have good political discussions, only one student showed up but we ended up having a really interesting discussion anyway. It was a woman named Susanne who was born in France but who has lived in Germany for most of her life. We started off talking about an article I brought in by Arianna Huffington, talking about how although everybody is still calling for reform of the financial system it doesn’t look like any real reform is going to take place. But the conversation drifted far and wide and soon enough I was learning more about the German political system than I ever have before. I already knew that unlike in the U.S. where people vote directly for a candidate (or at least for electors who are pledged to vote for a candidate), in Germany they vote for a party, and the party then chooses their leader. The Germans basically know who the chancellor will be for each party, but the idea is for them to vote for the party platform rather than a particular person, the idea being to keep personality politics out of the game as much as possible, considering how well it went with Hitler.

There are more than two parties in Germany but the big two are the CDU and the SPD. Angela Merkel, a very popular chancellor even today, is from the CDU, and most people I’ve talked to agree that having the CDU in power is better for E.ON. The CDU is generally the more conservative of the two parties, but a lot of the governing depends on the strength of the other parties in parliament. For instance, because the Green party was heavily represented over the last few years, the CDU had to work with them in order to get any legislation passed, so as a result the government decided to completely phase out nuclear power by a certain date, I think about 2030 or something. Never mind the fact that there is no alternative source of energy that can keep the German infrastructure operating beyond that date—the Green party is opposed to nuclear power so to get anything done the CDU had to acquiesce, in spite of the inevitable energy crisis their decisions are inviting.

In any case, Susanne said she normally votes for the SPD but she didn’t know who to vote for this time. She said she likes Merkel because when Merkel came into office she was very strong and clear in her positions, but now she’s softened her positions a lot and it’s hard to tell where she stands anymore. I asked Susanne what the big issues were in the upcoming election and what the main differences were between the parties, but apparently that’s also a lot less clear than in U.S. elections. Apparently you can’t quite point to a clear division of ideology between the parties, it’s just that each party has its own specific plans for how to deal with certain issues and the people are supposed to vote for which ever party they think has the better plan. It’s nothing at all like in the U.S. where if you’re opposed to war, sympathetic to gays, and in favour of a woman’s right to choose you vote democrat and if you love war, hate gays and taxes, and think abortion is murder, you vote republican. Things are a lot more subtle with the German system. For instance, both parties say something must be done about the financial crisis, but it’s not like one party is calling for bailouts and more regulation while the other is calling for a spending freeze and more deregulation. Each party has a plan, and the differences between the plans are basically minor details.

One of the issues that’s always touted as extremely important is education. Each party always has a plan for reforming the German educational system, which everyone agrees needs reform, but no plan has ever had a real effect because it’s all just cosmetics and window dressing. What Germany needs is a fundamental overhaul of its education system, as the percentage of uneducated adults in the population is rising quickly. The common vision of both parties is to move Germany from a production society to a leader in science and research. But as so few people actually complete a higher education, that goal is completely unrealistic. Susanne was saying that with the recent boom in the Turkish population things are getting even worse, as many Muslims refuse to put their kids through the Western education system, and as a result you’ve got this huge and growing demographic of uneducated Muslims with no skills to speak of other than basic labour—and Germany already has plenty of uneducated labourers.

Susanne went on at length about the “kids these days” and while half of me felt inclined to dismiss it as the kind of thing that every older generation says about the “spoiled” younger generation, I couldn’t help but think she had a point. I’ve only rarely had a good intelligent conversation with a young German, and to take my class of apprentices as a representation of the German youth I could easily see what her fear was. Every so often I give them a “pub quiz” in which a lot of the questions have to do with science or history and it’s quite often that nobody in the class knows the answer to even a basic question. And these are the smart ones who actually are going through higher education. But Susanne pointed out that in the German system, once you get to the high school level you can either continue on the academic path or simply choose to go to technical school and become a labourer, which many do. Furthermore, you can go through university taking as few classes at a time as you want, so student often bide their time, taking sometimes as much as 10 or more years to get a degree. In contrast with France, student not only attend school from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. six days a week (with a break on Wednesday afternoon—but I still think that’s excessive) but they finish high school at 15 or 16, and are often finished with college and ready to join the workforce at just 20 years old. There have been proposals to send German kids to school for at least a comparable amount of time (like say…9 to 5 for five days a week) but the parents protest that it’s too much for the kids and no serious changes are ever made.

Meanwhile, unemployment is rising while the number of educated, skilled workers is dropping. One of E.ON’s subsidiaries in Brandenburg, for instance, has been looking to hire people for years but even with millions of unemployed Germans they still haven’t found enough qualified people to fill those positions. The system badly needs reform, but nobody is willing to seriously reform it. Susanne is very worried that the basic societal and economic strength of Germany that it has enjoyed since the 50s is slipping away and may be nothing more than a memory once the younger generation, this generation of spoiled brats who know all there is to know about pop music but nothing at all about science or history, takes control of the state. And while part of me still thinks that every generation must feel the same way about the generation following it, a part of me does think that this is a legitimate worry. After all, as the eastern countries continue to get serious about education while the western countries get less and less serious, major global balance of power shifts seem completely inevitable. And as awful as Western civilization may be, it’s not like Eastern civilization (namely China) is much better.

Anyway, after that class I had my lesson with the apprentices, in which I just happened to have another pub quiz prepared for the end of class. While the students did about as well as usual on the general knowledge questions, I thought I’d be making it easier for them by making the second half of the quiz completely about entertainment. There were seven questions where I just gave movie quotes and asked for the title of the movie, and seven questions with quotes from lyrics of songs from the 90s, which I thought would be easy as hell for them. But shockingly they all did terrible. The movie quotes I could understand because all their movies are dubbed into German. The only ones anyone knew were “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse” and “Life is like a box of chocolates.” Absolutely no one had a clue about “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” or “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine” although they had at least heard of the films those quotes are from.

But what really shocked me was the music round. I figured these kids grew up in the 90s like me so they would have heard these songs a million times, like “One Headlight” by the Wallflowers or “Ants Marching” by the Dave Matthews Band. But the only one anyone got was “Come as you Are” by Nirvana. What flabbergasted me was that nobody got “Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage.” I could hardly contain my disbelief when I was going over the answers with them. “You mean to tell me that none of you have ever heard of the Smashing Pumpkins?! Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness? One of the greatest albums of the 1990s?! What the hell were you listening to all those years!!?” Apparently they were listening to shitty euro-pop the whole time. Before leaving class I let them know they’d all been deprived, and that there was a serious hole in their lives where bands like the Smashing Pumpkins should be.

So that obviously made me more inclined to agree with Susanne. I don’t know what’s going to become of this country when the euro-pop generation takes over, but it doesn’t look very promising.

On Thursday I had one of my best classes ever. I was looking online for an article that would provoke a truly interesting discussion, and as E.ON is an energy company I had to find something that related to the topic of energy in at least a general way. I wanted to look at an argument similar to that of Derrick Jensen’s argument in Endgame, a book I read last year that really got me thinking about the end of civilization. After searching for awhile and failing to find anything I figured I should just try to find the source itself, and I came across a PDF of the premises and first three chapters of the actual book.

As it happened, I had a full class for the first time ever, all four of my students from Andreas and Monika to the lawyers Christine in her late twenties and Suzanne who was born in France but has been living in Germany for at least thirty or forty years. The three woman are pretty liberal and Andreas is quite conservative so I expected a good discussion. All of them are advanced speakers so it hardly felt like an English course at all—it turned out to be more of a philosophy or political science class.

Much to my surprise, there was unanimous agreement with nearly all of Jensen’s premises. They reacted with shock at how direct and strong the statements were, but they couldn’t deny the truth in them. Civilization, they agreed, is unsustainable in its present form and a catastrophic collapse is likely to occur. Andreas was dead certain that it would, as he had the most negative view of human nature. All societies, he held, are rooted in the violent subjugation of the many at the hands of a powerful few. You could put just two people in a room with some food and water, he said, and no matter what they would eventually find themselves fighting over who gets the bigger share.

I explained that not all societies are unsustainable and rooted in violence. Native Americans are the prime example Jensen writes about of a culture that does not take more from the land than they need and where the leaders of a tribe do not rule by force but because they are regarded as the wisest. Andreas didn’t disagree but the idea that we should all go back to living a tribal existence seemed absurd to him.

When we reached the statement that “Love does not imply pacifism” and I talked about how Jensen advocates the use of violence as necessary to protect the natural world, it was Monika who first said that such a statement makes him no better than the people he believes are killing the planet. Suzanne agreed, saying his beliefs were contradictory. But I countered by pointing out that there is a clear distinction between violence for the sake of a greater good and violence for the sake of personal interest. If one is willing to die for a cause he believes is greater than himself, this is a completely different thing than a person who is willing to kill insofar as it will benefit himself or his own group but will not risk his own life. That was all it took for Suzanne to change her mind, and the rest agreed as well.

But the most interesting parts of the discussion came when we were talking about the general idea of the downfall of humanity. Both Suzanne and Andreas are Christian, but where Suzanne sees a divine plan where God has a destiny for humanity, Andreas believes that human beings are just one tiny piece of God’s universe, and our time on earth just a blink of an eye. He believes that not only will civilization collapse but that human beings will go extinct as well, and relatively soon. Suzanne wouldn’t accept this, believing that God has a plan for us and although there may be a catastrophe that will wipe most of us out (she cited the Noah’s ark story) there will always be some survivors who can start again and hopefully do it right.

I risked getting even more philosophical and pointed out that belief in God and a divine plan does make a huge difference in how a person will see the issue. If you believe we’re here for a reason, you won’t think that God would really let us destroy ourselves, but if you believe that we’re purely here by chance it becomes obvious that nothing guarantees our survival. But I even got Suzanne to agree that we are still responsible for ourselves, and that even if God exists He isn’t going to do everything for us. I suppose it was her inner Frenchness that caused her to agree with this existentialist assessment—that we can’t just sit back and hope that God will take care of everything for us.

In the end, all were quite ready to accept that civilization is definitely going to collapse and there’s nothing we can do about it. The only minor point of contention is whether there is any hope at all—whether after the collapse human beings can start again and figure out a way to live a more sane and sustainable existence. Andreas said no, and he may be right, but I didn’t want to seem like the prophet of doom, so I offered the words of wisdom from the Dalai Lama when I saw him a couple of years ago at a talk he gave in Princeton—that while things may look really bad in the short term, a lot of moral progress has been made in the long-term such as the abolition of slavery and the growing equality of women in societies around the world. I offered the possibility that humans can learn from history and that perhaps in the future we will be able to live peacefully and sustainably in the world. I think everyone was grateful to me for ending on a positive note.

I could tell they were all lost in thought when I ended the lesson and said goodbye. I’m sure I gave them enough to think about for quite some time, and that was a strangely good feeling I’m not used to. Perhaps they’ll go and talk about it to their friends and family or the rest of their co-workers in the energy industry. I certainly hope so. Because as I said towards the beginning when they were still shocked at the force of his premises and the serious nature of their implications—this is a problem we’re all aware of but we never talk about. If civilization is really certain to collapse (and these energy industry people had no arguments to the contrary) and the longer we wait for the collapse the messier it will be, what we have to be doing now is talking about it and spreading these ideas. My current job actually gives me the opportunity to do that, and as such I’ll take advantage when I can.

[Originally written in a private journal. Back-posted in 2011]

Things have been going pretty well so far this week. Yesterday was an all-around good day, the kind indicative of most of my days now, but with just a few extra interesting things. Everything was pretty routine at first. I got up, ate breakfast while scanning the blogs, then headed out to the Planeo office to print some stuff for my lessons. I came back, wrote a little section in my book, and then headed off to the nearby town of Lehrte to do a couple of substitutions for Amanda.

Because I’m pretty much done with the whole Emotions lesson and the Personality Traits lesson I wanted to prepare something else for substitutions, so this weekend I spent several hours looking for short opinion blurbs on the internet regarding political issues. I found a message-board website that fit the right characteristics and went through about 15 pages of these with comments about how people feel about everything from Gun Control to the Death Penalty to Gay Marriage and even Space Exploration. Finding comments of a good length (4-8 sentences) that also weren’t completely crazy and where the English was decent enough for an English student to read was quite the laborious task, but when it was over I had a good deal of food for discussion, which is the best thing to do in class. I’ll also learn a lot by getting the opinion of Germans related to these issues.

So for my first lesson yesterday, only one guy showed up, but the good thing about this lesson plan is that you only need one person, so we went through my print-outs and read through and discussed all the issues he wanted to talk about, which were mostly those having to do with energy and the environment (I made sure to pick a lot of those because just about all of my students work in that industry). Just like all the other cogs in the civilization machine I have met, he was also very pro-environment and concerned about global warming and whatnot. He was also in favor of Space Exploration in spite of the high cost, and critical of the lack of Gun Control in the U.S., although he did not know enough about the subject to have an opinion on Medical Marijuana.

For my next lesson, it was only one person for half the class, but the guy happened to be one of the gay guys from Amanda’s party last Saturday. We spent the first half-hour just discussing a lot of the intricacies of E.ON and the entire German energy-distribution grid, which was slightly more interesting than I thought it would be, and then we got to my pages and pages of issues. Surprise surprise, he wanted to talk about Gay Marriage. Fine by me. I’d been itching to talk about Gay Marriage myself for a long time, and who better to talk about it with than an actual gay person? So Berndt and I got into a long discussion about intolerance and how stupid people in society always fuck things up for everyone else and whatnot. Poor Lara, who came in just when the discussion began, had very little to say. I learned from Berndt that in Germany they have civil partnerships for same-sex couples not for any biblical reasons (apparently in Germany priests don’t have any authority to marry people and ceremonies are only held in churches as a tradition) but because of how the law was written over a hundred years ago when they still had a Kaiser and nobody thought to write anything other than “union of a man and a woman” when discussing marriage. But even though marriage itself isn’t technically a religious institution, these civil-partnerships are apparently even less equal to marriage than the so-called “civil unions” would be in the U.S. They do have the right to visit their partner in intensive care, but they have to pay just as much taxes as unmarried people.

Anyway, we didn’t get to any other issues until it was time to go, and Berndt was taking the same train back to Hannover as me so our conversation actually continued for awhile, only now it got more personal and he actually told me things about his private life and experiences with previous partners and at previous jobs where nobody respected him and even the people he was in charge of never did what he told them to. I guess Germans are as homophobic as they are racist, which I can’t say is very surprising. He had thought of moving to Cologne with his partner, as apparently that’s like the San Francisco of Germany. He also developed his own software integrating E.ON’s power grid with Google Earth, just purely as a hobby, and the company just took the software (worth millions of dollars had they gone through an actual software company) and didn’t pay him for it, and didn’t even thank him or show any appreciation for it. In any case, by the time we got to Hannover and went our separate ways, I could easily tell why Amanda had gotten to know him outside of class and everything. He was a quality guy. A kind of person who is very much worth knowing.

So after that it was a few hours of normalcy, with dinner and some Spore, and then at about 8:30 I got a call from none other than Oliver, inviting me over to his girlfriend’s place to hang out. So I did just that, and when I got to the apartment Oliver came outside and had a smoke with me. He invited me upstairs and I hung out for awhile making small-talk with Oliver and Lena, who I could also tell are quality people worth knowing. They’re just very warm and welcoming, good-humoured people. When I said goodbye after about an hour and a half, they both hugged me. I guess it’s more of a culture thing for Germans to hug each other (apparently the homophobia is not a factor when it comes to men hugging) but just the fact that they were treating me like an old friend after only having met them twice was very nice.

So I came home, happy about my new potential friends. The whole day just made me feel like a real adult with an actual life, and I once again took some time to appreciate how I’d really built this all for myself out of next to nothing.

And today I was supposed to have my crazy juxtaposition-day of Frau Suhr the big-time energy executive and Mr. Hennicke the lowly soldier, but Mr. Hennicke cancelled so today it was just Frau Suhr, and things went much much better than last week. I had some grammar exercises prepared as well as an article from the internet about why nuclear power was uneconomical, and we went through it all and discussed it and she explained that the article might be right but she was skeptical of his calculations because her numbers were different. I also realized she’s not as conservative as I thought. For example, it’s German law for an energy company, after decommissioning a plant built in a natural environment, to have to pay for putting the environment back the way it was, like to plant trees to replace any they’d had to chop down and whatnot. She said she likes this idea in principle, but it’s just an unfair burden to the German energy industry because it’s the only country that has such laws. And that’s something I can totally understand. But anyway, at the end of the lesson she said she liked it and that it was very interesting, so I guess my objective of getting her to take me seriously was accomplished.

So that’s been the week so far. I think I’m in another one of my kind-of-sick periods, but at least now I’m barely noticing it. There’s too much life going on.

[Originally written in a private journal. Back-posted in 2011]

The week began badly, but it looks like it’s headed to a strong finish. Although I didn’t have a particularly nasty hangover on Sunday, the general feeling of ickyness (as well as the sore muscles from all that dancing) carried over well into Monday and even half of Tuesday. Also, I suddenly developed a mild case of insomnia-ish symptoms, where I just couldn’t seem to get more than four or five hours of sleep a night. I’d try to go to bed early but toss and turn for several hours until close to 2 a.m., and then I’d wake up some time between 6 and 7 and then struggle to try and get back to sleep for several hours until giving up around 10. I spent most of my waking time obscenely tired, but even when I’d try to take a nap the best I could do was doze off for several seconds at the most. That was frustrating.

Then there was my lesson on Tuesday with a new student, Ms. Suhr. She also works for E.ON, but she’s much higher up on the corporate ladder than the people I’ve been dealing with so far. She works in the “controlling department” which apparently means she has a lot of control. I had to meet her in her 6^th floor office for what was supposed to be an hour-long lesson but she said she was busy so she’d have to chop it down to 30 minutes. That was fine by me, as I had nothing in particular prepared for this lesson. It’s hard to know what to do in the first lesson with anyone—you don’t know how well they speak, what they need to work on, how they like to learn, etc. I explained this to her and said today I just wanted to talk to her and get an idea of how best to proceed. I could tell from the moment I walked in that I was not what she had expected. The longish hair and a beard is not the typical conservative business-like image that she had probably envisioned for her private English tutor. I also didn’t help my case by being, as it were, deliriously tired, to the point where it was a struggle to even keep my eyes open let alone form coherent English sentences.

When I opened the Energy Industry textbook to a page I’ve had some success with before—where a bunch of opinions regarding green technology and energy efficiency are put forward and you are supposed to express agreement or disagreement and discuss—she just read the first line and then looked at me and said something like she might decide not to continue her training if she does not feel that she will learn anything valuable by it. I wanted to say, “Look, bitch, if you want to fire me just do it right now so it will be completely apparent that you didn’t even give me a chance and I won’t feel bad about it.” But instead I just said it always takes some time with a new student to figure out how they learn best and the best way to conduct a lesson. Like, duh. I’m supposed to walk in there and twenty minutes later you’re going to be a perfect, fluent English speaker? Jesus god, lady.

But she reluctantly continued reading the statements and expressing her opinions, which I took and added to and got a little discussion going. Not surprisingly, she was the most conservative person I’ve met so far among these E.ON people, expressing her woes about such things as Germany’s ban on off-shore drilling within 40 km of the coast (because it’s not viable unless it’s done in shallow water) and admiration for the United State’s lack of regulation on the industry, as well as on industries across the board. And yet oddly enough, she still thought it was a good idea to reduce the speed limit to 90 km/hour to save fuel and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Anyway, things got a little less tense during our discussion and she cut me off when it was time for me to go, actually ten minutes after she said it would be. We exchanged a few more words about the best way to proceed and then I left, glad to be out of there. But it was certainly very interesting to meet someone so high up in the corporate chain, especially in the particular industry I hate the most. I mean, this woman actually makes decisions that effect the direction of the entire E.ON organization, mostly nuclear but also coal and gas and oil (oh, and apparently they’ve got some wind turbines too). If you’d told me exactly a year ago while I was reading Derrick Jensen’s Endgame that the following December I would be meeting with an actual “oil executive” in her 6^th-floor office, I’d have laughed in your fucking face. Life is weird. And interesting.

That evening I had a lesson with Mr. Hennicke, the beginner-level German soldier. He’s a really nice guy and the lesson with him, albeit sometimes tedious because he is a beginner, was rather pleasant. So it was quite the juxtaposition of people that day.

On Wednesday, having nothing to do but a lesson with Mr. Dörge in the evening, I decided to do something I’d been thinking about doing for a week or so—and wrote more in my book. Yeah, after many months of neglect I finally dived back into my pet universe and continued the story that had come to one of those awful “this next part is going to be a bitch to write” standstills. Oddly enough, one of the major factors that brought this on was playing that computer game, Spore. After spending so much time running interstellar empires in that fake, computerized galaxy I’d been thinking a lot about getting back to my original interstellar empire in the fake imaginary galaxy in my own brain. I read what I’d written so far last week, and ideas about how to proceed were one of the many things that had been keeping me awake during my bouts of insomnia.

I wrote one section on Wednesday, then on Thursday morning I managed to crank out another section before heading to my lesson with the apprentices in Helmstedt. That went really well as usual. One of the things I did was an improv game where one person is a celebrity giving a press conference but only the students playing the role of reporters asking questions know who they are, and the person has to guess who they are based on the questions asked. I let the students come up with the celebrities, and there was Bruce Willis (me), Paris Hilton, Oprah, and lastly Sarah Palin. The poor girl playing Sarah Palin had no clue, and when I started to suspect she would never get it, I went to my computer, which was hooked up to a projector that displayed the screen on a monitor in the front of the room, and while the girl’s back was to the screen I pulled up the YouTube clip of Sarah Palin giving the interview in front of the turkey being slaughtered. When the student realized everyone was looking behind her and laughing, she turned and instantly realized who she was, and shouted, “Oh, nein!” It was quite hilarious. Tereza of course was there and looking as cute as ever but I made a somewhat conscious effort not to think too much about her this time, as there were other things on my mind anyway like the stuff happening in my fake book universe.

That night I sat listening to music and having a deep introspective experience for about an hour. I had way too many thoughts during this hour to document them all, but the basic theme was understanding the structure of my life and my personality in terms of layers. The high-school self was just one layer of this entire thing that itself was at the time only the top layer of a personality that went back all the way through childhood to the very circumstances of my birth regarding the whole thing about being abandoned by my father. A continual rejection of the circumstances that led to my birth—guy fucks a girl without thinking about the consequences—is at the core of the explanation for why I never have sex at all.

But more than that, it’s just so damned fascinating to look at each layer of my life from the past eight years or so and think about who I was in each of those cases, what has changed relative to the circumstances and what has stayed the same. For instance, the habit of going jogging or running regularly began during the sophomore-year of college layer during the time I was in love with and seeing Jessi on a regular basis. That habit broke during the exchange student year in Germany, revived somewhat during the relatively quiet and uneventful senior year of college, and then reached its peak during the first year of the Southern California layer, which was probably the healthiest layer in my life all-around, not just physically but mentally, financially, and emotionally as well. I just hated my job and my apartment, but other than that it was great. The habit of listening to music and introspecting itself has been with me far longer—in fact that habit has been with me in some form as long as I can remember, even if it was just indulging childhood fantasies while listening to the radio in the passenger’s seat of my parents’ car. It’s a solid part of who I am.

As for this book I’m writing, that’s also been present in nearly every layer of my life. Each period of my life brings with it new input, and thus each section that gets written during those periods has its own distinctive output. I wrote the parts of the grander story that I needed to write during each period of my life, and when I look at it as a whole and connect what I wrote to the time period in which I wrote it, I begin to see this incredibly elaborate picture involving the most subtle parallels of all kinds that I hadn’t even been aware of while I was writing. But the fact that I’ve remained true to this one idea—that in the almost 13 years since I first created this universe I have never given up on it—leads me to the resolve to never abandon it. It will certainly take new forms, and I’ve become resolved to the idea that absolutely nothing that has been written so far is anywhere near a publishable form, but everything that has been written can be used for future writings, to play as small or as a large a function as the grander narrative warrants, and when it’s all done I’ll have a true masterpiece, a life’s work I can be proud of, an abstract expression of who I am and the way I perceived the world, a patchwork with contributions from every single layer of myself.

This evening is Planeo’s Christmas party. I’m not really sure what to expect, but apparently it starts at 4 p.m. at some kind of racetrack. Whether we’ll be watching a race or driving the go-karts ourselves I don’t know. The only thing I’m sure of is that it’s going to be weird. And interesting. And what more could you want out of life than weird and interesting?