I'm watching the September 11th Commission public report (before Congress) on CSPAN, and man oh man, what an assbeating.
Claudio Manno, Transportation Security Administration, Asst. Administrator for Intelligence is asked about why known, listed, terrorists that he knew about weren't on the no-fly list (of people who are forbidden from flying, to be clear), and he says that it was beyond the airline's ability to track the tens of thousands of potential terrorists. But the Navy guy breaks in and tells him that's just ridiculous - the airlines don't have any trouble tracking frequent flyer miles on millions of customers, but they can't track a static list of thousands? He tells the whole lot of them that they're total failures because they didn't do what made sense and they're just hiding behind the very policies that they are responsible for creating.
Ouch!
Cathal Flynn, Former Head of FAA Civil Aviation Security (1993-2000)
Jane Garvey, the former FAA Administrator (1997-2002)
Are also getting the grill, but it looks like Claudio is getting the most heat.
pulse, pulse, pulse ok you need to relax, you need to unclench yes unclench your jaw, so you can breathe, so you can breathe open your mouth so you can breathe easier, ahhh, deep breaths, why can't I breathe through my nose, wait, my jaw is clenched again, relax, stop thinking so much, stop telling yourself things, breathe, relax your jaw, yes it's much easier to breathe with your mouth open, but I'm thinking again and didn't I just have this thought? pulse, pulse, pulse My front teeth are cold, close my mouth, relax your neck, oh god that hurts, I wonder how long those muscles have been flexed, it's hard to relax those muscles, breathe, breathe, my jaw is clenched again and I can't breathe, my brow is furrowed, relax it, relax your face, your jaw your neck your back and, and, and breathe. pulse, pulse, pulse What's that sound? There are things crawling under my skin, under my arms and under my face and under my feet and it's coming-
ghhhH, that one wasn't so bad, just a little tremor, just a little shake shake it loose and I'm clear for a moment. I'm calm. It left me. It let me breathe.
But pulse, pulse, pulse my view is shaking and the ground is shifting and I can feel the nerves in my teeth like the superheated cores of popping corn they're going to pop if I don't unclench my jaw and relax and breathe and didn't I just think this didn't I just think this didn't I think just now this is a pattern and how long has this been repeating because my eyes are tearing and my face has things on it or under it tiny prickles and pulse, pulse, pulse there it is again that pulse what is it? pulse Stop it. Stop everything. Don't breathe, don't move, don't no stop it-
Shook it loose again, a bolt of lightning in muscle reflex swirling in my belly and ripping through my body into my arm or leg or stomach or my neck and then relax and pulse, pulse, pulse
Oh. It's no earthquake. It's not my vision. It's my heart pulse, pulse, pulse and I can put my ear to the silence and hear the ocean, it's a rush a rumble of pressure of blood in my ears rocketing through my head and through my face and back my chest is pulse, pulse, pulsing and I can see it shake my shirt before it snakes down my arms, my hands tremor imperceptibly and ricochets back and my chest is so tight and worms of blood shift slightly under the skin of my legs and disappear into the numb cold of my feet.
Unclench your jaw, Matt. Breathe, breathe through your mouth so you can get more air. Oh god I've though that before, how long have I been at this and I've thought that too and all of this is so familiar so very famliar like a rhythm like a pulse, pulse, pulse a resonance of resonance it's a resonance
After watching Dean's mesmerizing meltdown and Kerry's utterly unpredicted win in Iowa and subsequent domination of the polls, there is little avoiding the budding possibility that Bush might not cake-walk his way into the 2004 election. The notion that a Democrat might be in the oval office in 2005 brings up a number of disturbing questions.
What will happen in Iraq? As every Democratic candidate has promised, will we pull out of Iraq and hand over control to whatever interim Iraqi government is in place at the time, or to a Bosnia-style UN oversight? Or, in a surprise move, will we stay the course?
What will happen to the Global War on Terror (GWOT)? It appears that all the Democratic canditates are planning on returning to a pre-Bush plan of global popularity through UN-sanctioned maneuvers. Presumably the federal money train will shift from military spending to domestic, and we'll get ... what? A balanced budget? More metal detectors in the airports? Anti-missile systems for airplanes? The goodwill and love of our global neighbors.. or at least their forgiveness for our bullying?
Who knows. Who can guess what will happen domestically, with health insurance or with our economic growth?
I have no idea.
Will the Patriot Act be renewed, or will it die, or will it be succeeded by the more ominous Patriot Act II?
Again, no idea. As a right-leaning centrist, I'm constantly confused by the conflicting ideals of both sides of the fence. My only certainty is that in my next political post, I won't go so damn link crazy.
This all started out with some simple explanations about how I do things, but after several re-writes, I've decided to make things a little more vigorous and just tell you folks what's what.
You tell me you're going to meet me - and never do. You endlessly complain about how little I help you, and in particular how little I help you in the way you need help, yet my problems are either unimportant to you or you have to solve them your way. You betrayed me and then expect trust. You want me to be closer, but I can sense a emotional void pretty damn well - and it creeps me out.
If you want something from me, don't demand it. If you expect something from me, tell me about it so that later, when you blame me for not providing it, I can at least understand what the hell you're talking about.
I have a bad memory. I don't make fun of your weaknesses (booze, wrinkles, social ineptitude, loose bowels), so back off of mine. I don't remember asshole! Get over it.
I spend a tremendous amount of energy in my life doing things for other people. You don't need to bust my rice bowl just because your life sucks. When I hear you complain about how your slice of the Matt pie isn't big enough, (You don't call, you don't write, you don't visit, you don't talk, you don't touch, you don't this and you don't that), all I am thinking is, "you have no idea how lucky you are to be getting the portion you're getting." I then redistribute my time and efforts to those who do have some idea.
I've written a number of times about how my aggressively passive nature is frequently mistaken for weakness. I have a long fuse, and I don't stay angry. I want to be cool and I want you to be cool too. But don't misunderstand my generous nature for a inability to calculate value.
I'm warning you. You do have a value. You are replaceable. Remember that bad memory? It does have its upside.
A friend invited me out for drinks last Saturday, with the lure of there being 'girls from New York' there to meet. "Hanging out with girls is fun," he said. Although this is true, I went out not because of that prospect, but because it is near canon for me to always accept any invitation. Accepting invitations is what greases the areas between social circles.
So I peeled myself out of my chair, poked at my face in the mirror for a bit, threw on my going-out ensemble and pushed myself out the door. Almost immediately I became aware of being in public. It was a psychic nudity feeling, wherein merely being aware of others highlighted their being aware of me. This happens if you spend too much time indoors, alone.
Shaking it off, I continued on my walk to Henry's, a local hotel/bar that I've only known as 'the place where that crazy guy shot the blonde girls'. That happened before I moved out here, so I know it as just another place for dumb, white undergrads to hang out at. Kinda like TGIF's except without the dizzying red and white striped outfits. Not my spot, but rules are rules and I was invited.
Midway through Berkeley campus I started to think about the dichotomy I have between my behavior and expectations indoors, and the same such outdoors. Why am I known for being gregarious and extroverted in one, and aloof in the other?
I am privately public, and publicly anonymous. I want to know everyone at a party or gathering and I want everyone to know me - and secretly, I want everyone to know everyone else through me. But when outside, in public, I basically want to be left alone; The slightest intrusion into my personal space, mental, physical, or social is thoroughly unwelcome.
For private interactions, I routinely butcher politeness and decorum to make way for provocative, outrageous, and frequently abrasive behavior. I'm a buffoon, a rake, a bombastic palaverer and a shameless philanderer.
In public, I'm my father. I'm serious, stern, interested without being invested, unafraid but only mildly ambitious, comfortable, and most importantly minding my own business. I even walk like him, barring a near-imperceptable limp from my various injuries.
There are exceptions, of course, being me is never simple, but they are rare and involve merely swapping attitudes from one spot to the other. At formal functions, I am private as I am in public. When drunk, I am in public as I am in private. No change in this is expected anytime soon.
I found myself reading this article, The Kingdom of Silence, and I couldn't help but think about all of the recent conversations I've had about global politics, particularly about the Middle East. I think I may start to write more about my politics here. I've been deliberately avoiding it, but I think it's getting to the point where it's unfair to call this place Open Matt and yet not be open about this.
Anyways, the article is a New Yorker piece about an American journalist's stay in Saudi Arabia. I found myself frustrated, sad, and angry at various points as I read it. One thought that constantly pops up when I'm reading things like this is "what can I do about it?" These people are horribly oppressed and it seems like any solution I come up with is fraught with bloodshed and horror.
I think about the high-minded ideals of some of the people I talk to. Their thinking is based on a percieved good-nature in humanity that I don't see. I particularly don't see it when I read articles like this. I wish there were some way of convincing these rulers to notch their evil down to the level of evil that the high-minded folks see in America's leadership.
I think about the sharks, and how we absolutely need them even though they are the engine of all this misery.
And I think about myself. What can I do? Why do I care? Can I do anything?
On occasion, you find yourself in perfect awareness of who you are. You catch your own reflection and see for just an instant who you are, who you represent, who you've developed into. Is it right? Is it what you hoped for?
No matter. Nobody knows you as well as you do. You're utterly aware of how much you've lived up to your own expectations, never mind others expectations of you. You're a sum of your own experiences, and boy howdy do you know it.
You know your potential. You've been hearing about it since you were a chiild. You've had daydreams which encompassed all you could be and more. Sadly, your final analysis includes the very same criteria you've been measuring yourself up against - regardless of it's veracity.
You're lazy. You want the hot chick, or the hot guy. You would have shown everyone if only that one moment had been different. People don't want to hear the truth. People don't like the unusual. Nobody understands you.
But if you look at the edges, you'll see those claws, the same claws that have been haunting you since you became aware of your own unique, magical self. The claws of fear and doubt, attached by taut and terrible sinew to the infernal beast of blind self-judgement. Those claws draw blood, oh and what blood they spill.
Your screams are it's inhalation, and your struggles are its nervous twitches. It loves you with more intimacy than your closest lover and costs far more.
Each era comes and goes without flags or celebration. I think things couldn't possibly be more inconcievable or more beyond my comprehesion. The ride is exhilarating, terrifying, awesome.
I'm pre-pubescent. I'm in Hawaii, alone and on the beach in shorts and sunburned to leave scars. I'm knee-deep in the beach, and I can feel the undertow of water pulling my feet out from under me. I see each wave as they come in, tugging my feet, sucking the air in front of me before the shockwave of air and water hits me and shakes me like a rag doll. There's salt water up my nose and I'm coughing it out of my mouth. I spit out pieces of shellfish as I find my footing for another round.
Is that all you have? I shout back at the wave. Raised in an odd way on Greek and Norse myths, I curse aloud at Poseidon. Is that the best you have?? And dripping and snotting all over myself I stagger with rage against the next wave with the pure rage of a child. I tell myself through salty breaths, you will never take me. Never. Nobody is here. My father is gone. My sister is gone. My mother is gone. You will never take me.
Ten feet of tidal water impacts over me, and I'm thrown head over heels into the sand. I feel a shock of nerve trees explode as my face plants itself inches into the sand. Inhaling a lungful of punishment, I grip the ground (that way is down) and find my footing. Fuck the undertow. Fuck the water. I can swim. I will never die.
Fuck you, Poseidon. You're old. Your vengence is ancient and only knows the simple costs of life. I'm part of a new world, one whose understanding uses your perspective as a springboard to greater and more violent prices.
I can't see. I blow sand and salt out of my nose and recieve your full body absolution, sending me across the beach, without outcry. My tears mix with your ocean, my rage mixes with your chaotic tide, my anger and resistance meets your overwhelming forces and is stomped with a validation of rage and mutual absolution.
Dripping with phyrric victory, I wink at you and return to my holster.
For some reason, the past two days have been absolutely quiet. Nobody is returning phone calls. Nobody is returning my emails. It's quiet as hell, and it's spooking me out.
It's fine and good to talk all day about Iraq, but here is an opportunity to actually do something. I did - you should too.
The redeployment of the 1st Marine Division to Iraq in February and March comes at a critical juncture. The Marines returned from southern Iraq in September. This time they are going to Al Anbar Province and will be responsible for half of the 'Sunni Triangle' including the city of Falluja which is one of the most volatile in Iraq. Relations between the current Coalition forces and the people there are strained. The Marines success in this region will play a crucial role in Iraq's transition to a stable and prosperous society.
A key element of the Marines plan is to build trust by demonstrating there is "no better friend" than a Marine, as the saying goes. Officers feel it is imperative to "show an immediate improvement" over current conditions to the local people. They know much of their success rides on the impressions and relations built in their first 30 days. As one officer says, "it's important to not go in empty handed." As they say, there is only one chance to make a first impression. The items they need - medical goods, school supplies, etc. - will be used immediately to assist the people of Iraq, establish better relationships and help win the "battle for hearts and minds."
Inspired by the SFGate article, by Jennifer Nelson, posted in the comments:
I moved here from NYC in the early 90's as a more-or-less ignorant twentysomething who'd been a part of the whole punk/rebel scene and was used to a very diverse (and consequently conflictual) social environment. As I settled in, from Ashby Ave near Oakland, to MLK, to eventually Northside, I discovered the very same thing that you have written about. Namely, the intolerance of the tolerant.
Something about the persistant insistance of my peers and their corresponding groups, all dogmatic to a fault, rubbed me the wrong way and slowly forced me to investigate their claims and views in ever-increasing depth. I would say that if I entered Berkeley as an ultra-left radical, by midway through my stay I had somehow become a moderate centrist. Admittedly, this corresponded with my transition to becoming a thirtysomething and the natural progression to conservatism that tends to occur with that change, but I like to think it was more introspection than age that had to do with my transformation.
I find myself now, at least by Berkeley standards, a right-winger. I recently registered Republican. I have argued, with at least one notable success (out of hundreds), for the recent wars, and for a host of issues that I would have probably punched myself for ten years ago. I have often added the caveat, when I felt I was speaking to someone who had a pinhole's width of their ears open, that I was an -uncomfortable- conservative. That is, being forced to pick a side, I grudgingly picked the republican/right/conservative side.
But that is exactly the rub. I felt -forced- to pick a side. Ironically, the very same rebelliousness that granted me the freedom to disagree with society's norms and official authority is the same rebelliousness that forced me to analyze my own dissent. Berkeley forced my hand.
Now, I find myself surrendering the land. In the past year I have had only a handful of open dialogues with people here, and I cannot take it any longer. I'm moving back to New York this year, not defeated by the leftist lockstep, but rather depressingly bored by the near total absence of an open forum in which ideas can be examined. Although my friends frequently mention that New York is very liberal itself, the visits I have there include one key distinction; people there are more interested in being right than they are in being righteous.
She has the most fascinating cheekbones. Just look at the smooth curve it makes down the side of her cheek and around those pouting lips. How does her jawline curve like that? How does it curve up into that nook under her ear, so close to her neck - which is of itself a masterpiece? Look at her eyes. Dark, soulful, evocative of nocturnal woodland rituals.
Wait, look again - they are blue as tropical waters, and as shimmering. They make me want to giggle and explore. Her lips, uneven, one a narrow saber, the other a plush ottoman, both conspiring to make me kiss them. She has a face that defies geometry, and serves seduction.
Blink. Her dark hair curves and curls around the cute, curious eyes and frames a young vortex of potentials. Is that a button-nose? It points up at the end. It fits on her face like a queen on her throne, and leads just as well. On occasion her tongue is visible, small, soft pink and wet. To die for.
I've forgotten her breasts. They strain against the buttons on her shirt, and when she turns I can see through the resulting wrinkles. They are full and tight and hardly move when she sits down. Poor dears. No revolutionary desired freedom more than I for you.
No, they are small, delicate fruits hanging from her like the tree in Eden and twice as succulent. I can hear her heartbeat hiding behind them and I control it's tempo with my touch. Her nipples are the axis around which my entire face rotates, an inexhaustable supply of hunger and kisses colliding around them.
Her belly, so firm and athletic no round and soft and are there soft hairs or none? Her back has a mole on it shaped like a foetal question-mark, and I love it. No. It's clear and smooth without a single mark, a runway for my hands and braille for my eyes. Her legs are short, and her thighs are luscious and between them she holds her second mouth and I'm listening to it comforted by those walls of cushioned warmth.
NO
They're long, and thin, and as my eyes trace the T's I'm inexorably drawn to the twin diamonds beneath her waist, one made of the light shining behind her and the other made of her hidden, folded smile.
NO
They come up and cradle an ass that makes my hands twitch and my face feel naked. It's round and dimpled and it's not dimpled and she's bent over something or she's lying down or she's brushing her teeth with her weight on one leg and I must have it now.
AGAIN
I trace a finger from her feet to her legs up around her world of ass and through her legs to I moan inside and she giggles to her belly and it's arms now and around her back and split now, boys, one up to her neck and the other back down, down, deep down, and I feed her and I consume her and there seems to be not enough, never enough, not up and up and against her breasts and in her mouth and looking for eternity oh god help me I see
her eyes