05/20/1999

War is Hell

My favorite graffito is one I saw 10 years ago in Washington, DC. It was neatly painted on the brick wall of a abandoned house and read: “Real jobs for real wages. Stop the phoney war on drugs.” A decade later, that “war” is still being fought, with no end in sight. I’m not even sure there’s any progress in sight. Thanks to Kosovo, we’ve all become reacquainted with military theory and since our action against drugs is a “war,” let’s ask the pertinent “war” questions.

First, what is our objective in this war? That’s an easy one. In the mid-1980s, Congress decreed that it is national policy to have a Drug-Free America by 1995. That’s what we wanted, but what we got by 1995 was Heroin Renaissance.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
05/13/1999

Half a Tank

How long is forever? It’s the kind of question you might expect to hear in a metaphysics class or a bad love song, but neither of those venues is likely to produce a satisfactory answer. It often depends on context. When a president says “forever” he clearly means until the end of his term, after which he doesn’t care. Famous definitions of “forever” from American history include several dozen treaties made with Native American nations that were supposed to last “as long as the wind blows, the sun shines and the grass grows.” That particular version of forever proved to be a short time indeed.

A century later Henny Youngman reckoned he had enough money to last the rest of his life, unless he wanted to buy something. Now he’s dead and has all the money he’ll ever need. If you’re stuck in traffic, it may seem like you’ve been there forever, especially if you’re running low on gas. As a society, we know gas will not last forever, it’s a non-renewable resource. We may drive as if our oil supply will last forever, but we know it won’t. Gas is cheap now, cheaper than at any time since the 1940s, relative to the price of a steak or a pair of shoes.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
05/06/1999

Ready, Fire, Aim

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about the war in the Balkans: If this bombing campaign ever made any sense, which is debatable, that time is surely long past. Our missiles keep hitting refugees in Kosovo and non-combatants in Serbia, and in one tremendous snafu, Bulgaria.

On the other hand, how can we let the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, and the concomitant suffering, go unanswered? Now that Milosevic is starting to make peaceful noises, perhaps we are approaching an outcome that will justify all the death and destruction.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
04/29/1999

A Man of Wealth and Taste

This week, let us consider the nature of evil, the human face Satan wears as he walks among us. No horns or tail, no goatee or widow’s peak, no pitchfork or scarlet jacket. No, I think Satan is serious and sober, righteous and mediocre. A churchgoer, a deep thinker, a man of best intentions.

Satan does not occur in a vacuum, he needs a context, so we’ll give him one. A few months ago, I spoke of the AIDS crisis continuing to explode throughout the developing world. David Satcher, the U.S. surgeon general, compared AIDS in Africa to the Black Plague that ravaged medieval Europe. In the U.S., the AIDS crisis is said to be under control, because many Americans with AIDS – or their insurance companies – can afford the costly chemical cocktails used to fight AIDS. Africans don’t have that kind of money. The pharmaceutical companies will sell AIDS drugs to Africa, but at $12,000 per patient, per year, few can afford it.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (1)
04/22/1999

To Have and To Hold

I came home to find a queer piece of mail the other day. It was third-class bulk mail, addressed to “resident.” The postmark was from here in Burlington, the return address was from Cincinnati, Ohio, but there was photo of a palm tree and the phrase “Aloha, Vermont friends,” on the outside.

It was an open letter from Hawaii’s citizens to Vermont’s citizens – via Cincinnati – and it wasn’t a queer letter after all. It was anti-queer. The letter was from Mike Gabbard, chairman of the Alliance for Traditional Marriage Hawaii. You may remember the great hue and cry of a few years ago when a court in Hawaii legalized same-sex marriages. The Congress passed a law defining marriage as a heterosexuals-only institution, the state of Hawaii added a traditional marriage amendment to its constitution. The amendment was approved by Hawaii’s voters by a 69 percent majority. Interesting statistic, when you think about it.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (1)
04/15/1999

Happy Taxes

Happy Tax Day, our annual celebration of American democracy. Today, more than any other day, Americans participate in the governance of their country. Last election day, only 36 percent of eligible voters went to the polls, but by April 15th, everyone but the wealthiest 10 percent has to have paid his or her taxes. A special tax-day greeting to all cheerful federal income taxpayers. I hope some day the two of you will meet in person. I have the potential to be a cheerful taxpayer – in theory I can see the value in pooling our resources to purchase large items that will benefit us all. In practice, it hasn’t worked out that way and I have little faith it ever will.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
04/08/1999

Beside the Golden Door

I’ve been looking at photos of Kosovo refugees in the paper. Last week, people in the photos looked stoic, this week everyone is crying. I think the enormity of the situation is beginning to sink in. NATO has begun airlifting refugees out and dispersing them among NATO nations. I suppose that’s the only option – I was going to say I suppose that makes sense, but nothing about this makes sense. Even if we manage to chastise Milosevic with our bombs, we can’t send the Kosovars home, their homes are gone. To try and settle them in Albania and Macedonia would only unsettle those regions – so they’ll be dispersed, scattered around the North Atlantic and I doubt if most of them will ever see their native land again. And where will they go? The newspaper said 40,000 are going to Germany, where they will find themselves on the bottom rung of the social ladder, below the Turkish guest workers. I’m expecting neo-Nazi rioting near the refugee centers in about 90 days.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)