I'm sick of doubt, of being downtrodden, of being self-oppressed. There's enough fucking external oppression out and about these days man, it just won't do to have it coming from within as well. This cop in the head has got to go.

I used to be a more free person, more exhuberent and more honest in the sense of being unguarded and without so much calculation. I recall all the personal progress I made throughout my time in school and I think maybe I should take up yoga again, return to the life of an artist. Perhaps a return to graduate school, or some wild international program.

But I also feel that a lot of what I've lost has to do with an end to innocence, and grad school is a cop out on that tip. Innocence, optimism, maturity, growth, cynicism, pessimism... that shouldn't be a one-way transition. There's been a lot of heartbreak in the past year, I know. A lot of sorrow, and I sort of let it get to me. Lonely nights absolutely crammed with work and worry wear down ones spirit, and without question I been depleted.

Yet I can't cotton to retreat. Not just because it feels like failure. I really don't believe there is any going back. A truly lucky person is gifted to return in triumph with new eyes, but it's foolish to try getting anywhere in reverse.

And so it's time to make a move forward. This situation isn't working out. Something's got to give, and it's unlikely to be my material circumstances. My mindset has got to change. Wild bohemain values, man. Hew to the fucking ethos! Rediscover your love for humanity, for the beauty in souls, for all the tragi-comic ideosyncratic magic of lived experience. This is life; and you do no good by failing to enjoy the world. Be in love wity yr life, reclaim the dignitiy of yr own experience, the most important thing is to stop struggling.

So this is the end of my subterranian life, my homesick blues. No more longing for the past no more. Indeed, it's high time I was a little more bold, a bit more of an explorer.

Glaciers break slowly. Something shocks the system. Fissures spread in the facade, and deep beneath things begin to stir.

I got some decent pushback on my GOP Team Leader comment from the other day. Rather than just answer in the comments, I'll take the opportunity to go through the process here on the front page.

Not only do I think the Iraqi Body Count (IBC) is too high, it does not support your use of it. For example, when Iraqis or foreign terrorists blow up the ICRC building, the UN building, and other “soft” targets, those deaths go into the IBC database.

Valid, and I thought of that while I was writing it. However, it would seem unlikely to me that more than 2/3 of the Iraqi civilian casualties have been caused by insurgents. Likewise, there are few other force on which one can attribute collateral damage in Afghanistan for.

I personally don’t find it unbelievable that “The war on terror has taken more innocent victims than the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”

Great, we agree! Moving on.

It is completely dishonest to say that “$200B over about three years killing people and blowing shit up”. Unless, of course, you are making the argument that despite spending “$200B over about three years killing people and blowing shit up” that fewer fatalities (lower fatality rate) have resulted in both countries.

You're making what is called a counter-factual argument, saying that the consequences of not taking an action would have been worse than taking said action after the action has been taken. This is not a way to engage in rational discourse. It is also the same illogic that Bush uses, for instance, to justify his massive tax cuts: "things may be bad, but they would have been much worse if I hadn't done this."

You presuppose of binary view of possibilities, in this case, "war or nothing." This was a big part of how the pro-war faction succeeded. They were able to frame the debate as war vs doing nothing at all, which of course is a completely ridiculous way to look at things.

The real rub with counter-factual arguments is, of course, that there's no way to know what would have happened if alternative courses of action had been taken because the matter is already settled. They're useful in science because you can go back and re-do an experiment, a luxury we don't have in the world of statecraft.

Beyond this, your argument is further flawed in that you equate any innocent lives lost through US non-intervention to innocent lives we directly bring to an end. This is not rational either, unless you want to say that we're responsible for every unjust life lost world-wide in the same way that we're responsible for blowing up a wedding party by mistake.

WWII killed more “innocent civilians” than the attack on Pearl Harbor. Especially in Europe, whose people had nothing to do with the attack on Hawaii (not even a state at the time).

And so the inevitable comparison to "the good war" comes out. This is pure jingoistic masturbation. Comparing the non-threat of Iraq with the very real threat of the Axis powers is bullshit. Don't take my word for it. Ask a vet about it sometime.

I guess, by that logic, we should have just rounded up 3,000 or less Afghani and Iraqi civilians, murdered them, and called it even? Is that the point?

No, but it would seem that's somewhere near the point the GOP is making. The point I'm making, Tim with no email address or home page, is that the notion that the GOP really thinks it's "Unbelievable" that George Soros would get up and say things like this in public is a pretty unbelievable in and of itself.

Further, it would seem to me that the GOP refuses to admit (finds "unbelievable") that there are strong moral arguments against what we are doing right now in Iraq and around the world. It would seem that when such an argument is made the GOP, rather than making any attempt to actually engage in the work of undertanding and justifying what is going on, seeks to marginalize that moral position in any way it can. My point is that I think the GOP is acting in an immoral and untruthful fashion. My point (which was there all along) is this:

This GOP apparatus is an enemy of truth, an enemy of logic, an enemy of compassion and rational thought. They’ve got to fucking go, and decent Republicans are going to realize this sooner or later. You cannot run a good political party on lies, greed racism and religious fervor. (I just added greed, forgot it before)

If, on the other hand, what you're trying to draw out of me is what I would consider to be a better response to September 11th, you might want to read Why War is Not the Answer or Thoughts on an Anti-War Movement, both of which I wrote in the fall/winter of 2002. I haven't given a lot of thought to the matter lately because, well, a course of action has already been taken and I'm more concerned with what is going on than what might have been.

I get the GOP Team Leader email of course, and here's what I got today:

...Then in his remarks Mr. Soros--the billionaire supporter of John Kerry and MoveOn.org--equated the attacks of September 11 to the Abu Ghraib prison abuse and went on to say, “The war on terror has taken more innocent victims than the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”

Unbelievable.

Abu Ghraib was bad and the soldiers involved are rightly being punished, but for Democrats to say that the abuse of Iraqi fighters is the moral equivalent of the slaughter of 3,000 innocent Americans is outrageous.

Leaving aside the smear that Soros morally equivocated Abu Ghraib and 9/11 (he didn't; he said they both produced shocking images), I'd like to focus on that middle paragraph.

Why is it unbelievable that more than 3,000 innocent people have been killed in our military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq? Is it unbelievable that we could have killed so many people, or that anyone would dare to say that we did?

I hate to let a little thing like math get in the way of a good zinger, but 9,284 > 3000. Oh, and don't forget the Afghanis.

So let's be clear here. Even if you think the lowball estimate from the IraqBodyCount is too high, you probably have to admit that when we spend about $200B over about three years killing people and blowing shit up, we end up with more than 3,000 unintented (read: innocent) deaths. So the numbers aren't unbelievable.

What is unbelievable then? It must be that someone would have the gall to point out that the underlying emotional motivation for our current military (mis)adventures -- vengance -- is completely morally bankrupt even from the most brutal perspective, which is scale. It's un-fucking-believable to the GOP that a man from the opposition party would get on stage and say, "Holy shit, this is so fucked up! Not only are we bombing the wrong fucking people, but we're killing 3 or 4 times as many innocent civilians as died in the attacks on our own country."

That, to them, is unbelievable. It's unbelievable that people in this country are willing to publicly state that we've killed (and are continuing to kill) more Iraqi and Afghani civilians than we lost here at home.

I've met decent people who vote Republicans. I've even heard of decent Republican office-holders. But this GOP apparatus is an enemy of truth, an enemy of logic, an enemy of compassion and rational thought. They've got to fucking go, and decent Republicans are going to realize this sooner or later. You cannot run a good political party on lies, racism and religious fervor.

Well, one of my nipple piercings came out. It's been on the move for a while, and the day finally came. I got my tits done about five years ago by the good people at High Priestess in Eugene. I did it because I was wild and 20, and because my ex-girlfriend dared me. After the fact I found (as I'd suspected and hoped) that girls who were not my ex-girlfriend found the feature quite alluring.

The piercings were simultanious, both at the same time. It was a major rush and probably less hassle to get them done like that, but the right-hand one, done by the apprentice, was always more trouble than the master-pierced left. It took longer to heal, was generally more fussy, and about two years ago the metal stud started making it's way slowly downward with the gentle assistance of gravity. Lately it's been hanging by a thread. I have photos. The process has been kinda painful -- all the times it got caught on something, or smacked around by accident -- and I'm glad it's over, but now the right half of my chest looks strangely barren and featureless.

I have the barbell now; it came out without pain or incident in the shower. The last layer of tissue holding it to my body was so thin it was translucent, and after washing the area to soften it up, I was able to pull it free. Now I find I miss it; have to see about having it redone.

On the other hand (literally), I've noticed that the left-side is a lot more lively, tingling and stiffening and the like, as if finally being the lone piercing on my 25-year-old body has given in a renewed sense of purpose. I also find that without the "problem nipple" I feel a lot less worried about getting hit in the chest. Maybe this little change-up isn't all bad.