Month: July 2004

This article by Martin Schram, published in the Cincinnati Post from my ultra-conservative hometown, explains exactly why I’m so suspicious of Kerry. From the article:

But there is one place where you really haven’t heard those tough truths spoken — and that’s any place Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry is speaking. That is too bad and quite sad. Because now more than ever in modern history the American people need and deserve to be told the tough but undeniable truths about the choice we face and the decision we must make on Election Day.

After I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 last night, there was a guy campaigning for Kerry outside the theater. I got really really angry at Kerry, and I wasn’t quite sure why at the time. Now I know. It’s the same reason why I don’t trust Kerry. Here’s my logic:

• Post-9/11-America is a scary place. Americans have never in their lives been exposed to such danger. The Bushites have done their best to exacerbate these fears in Americans, with the color-coded threat levels, the Dept of Homeland Security, and other such nonsense.
• As a result of this fear, many Americans blame Bush, and have adopted the “anything but Bush” and “get this guy out of office at all costs” attitude.
• This attitude, I believe, is a direct reaction to the fear. People who adopt it, on some level, want to return to the feeling of safety in pre-9/11-America. Clinton embodies this sense of safety, and Kerry seems very much like Clinton.
• The problem with this logic is, pre-9/11-America is what caused 9/11. In other words, without American foreign policy since WWII, there would have been no 9/11. So this desire to get back to a place of safety is actually not as safe as they would like to believe. It just rewinds in time to a place where we weren’t aware of the danger.

This article is right on the money. John Kerry is in an unprecedented position to do a tremendous amount of good, and effect some seriously positive change in the world. To do so will require quite a bit of courage. The sad part is, I have seen not one iota of courage from him in this area. Every time I listen to him, I hear him saying the same kind of crap that American politicians have been spewing for decades.

I want to believe in Kerry. I think he’s got to be the favorite to win the election this year, assuming of course that there will actually be a real election. But for to believe in him, I need for him to open up to his heart, and do what he knows is right, not what will be most likely to win him votes. It’s a situation of safety, vs. honor. It’s a tough lesson, but these days I’d try to choose honor every time.

I just saw that my article has been published in vol. 9 of The Commoner. From the introduction to the issue:

The first contribution by James W. Lindenshmidt is a detailed analysis of the dynamic of revolution and counter-revolution of cyberspace. Borrowing from the theoretical frameworks of Midnight Notes and of this journal, he explains the nitty-gritty of the creation of virtual commons and the open and subtle strategies promoted by capital to enclose and commodify this space. In this way, it is possible to identify how capital creates scarcity in a post-scarcity virtual space. These enclosures of the virtual commons are not enforced by shotguns or by depleted-uranium missiles. The virtual enclosures are perfectly enforceable, because the rules of enforcement are being architected into the code of the Internet itself. Cyberspace is malleable, and it is increasingly being cast into a space with an infrastructure of built-in, centralized control.

This publication has been brewing for a while. I’m glad to see it’s seeing the light of day. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the articles.

Believe it or not, it’s true. Even they can see the wisdom of abandoning Internet Explorer.

I know several people that are switching to Mozilla Firefox. It’s easy to do, switch and most likely you won’t regret it.

My life has been insanely busy as of late. Among this busy-ness has been a tremendous amount of creative output, just beginning, for my music and the album recording. Somewhat paradoxically, a big part of this output has entailed a lot of input, namely technical manuals learning how to use the recording gear.

As a result, apart from some light blogging on this site, my writing has come to a standstill. I haven’t had time or energy or inspiration to write lately. But today, for the first time in a long time, I felt the call to begin writing again.

I may not act upon this call, at least not right away. I have no idea what I’d write about. Perhaps it’s time for a larger writing project again. I’m not sure I have the stomach for more political rants and analysis on the dangers of the current intellectual property culture. Perhaps something more metaphysical would be to my taste. But every time I conceive of such a project (a good friend and I have sort of danced around the idea of collaborating on such a project for a long time now), it occurs to me that I can’t see why anyone would want to read what I have to say on such subjects. Pretty ironic, that I can go effortlessly into rant mode when it comes to Intellectual Property, or Linux, or the Bushites. As if anyone really wants to hear about this…

Another part of me knows that writing, though I enjoy it (to an extent) and I feel I have some skill, requires enough time and attention that it presently can be no more than a hobby for me. My attention is commanded by other things, things that I am not willing to sacrifice for writing. I’ve waited too long to record my own music. Now that the process is finally, after so many years, underway, it needs as much attention as I can give it.

Regardless, though, I heard the call of the scribe today. Perhaps I need to listen closer, and decipher the whisperings floating through the mists, and distinguish them from the rhythmic white noise lapping at the shore all around me. The whispering, the articulate sighs that pass over lips like a spent lover drifting off to sleep, what do they say?