Ron Paul Revolution March

I'll have to make this one quick, because I only have half an hour in the Internet cafe this time. I just got back from the Ron Paul rally.



I was, alas, unable to attend the post-rally book sale and signing because I was dehydrated beyond all belief. The hot and sticky deep summer of Washington is just beginning and many at the rally were exhausted after walking the length of the National Mall, often with no more than a single water bottle.



What the turnout lacked in numbers (I estimate 2,000 to 3,000) it made up for in spirit. Many of the speakers would call each other crazy, and some lived in their own little worlds. Naomi Wolf came and spouted nonsense about Bush war crimes, a Texan talk radio host talked about colored stickers on your mailbox that would indicate whether the government would shoot or enslave you when martial law came, and one speaker indicated that the United States was losing the protection of God.



I'm sure everyone at the rally had one alienating moment. It would be easy to call it "FreeDUMB" or something and I'm sure Wonkette will have an article like that if you care to read it. But in the end, we were all honest people, trying to discard whatever illusions we have and embrace respect for each other's freedom and a true understanding in a complicated world.

Well, except for the Libertarians who were networking. They don't count.


The turnout included the anti-Fed folks, Truthers, numismatic hobbyists, the Free State Project, ultra-right neo-Confederates rejecting McCain, Code Pink librarians and teachers, peace protestors, Holiness Christians from a commune, and many veterans speaking forcefully against a war that has caused much pain.


One story I think you might like is about my favorite group at the rally. Last night I was chatting with my best friend about the crazy people he's met in Silver Spring. "There's a group that starts with a Z," he said, "Zeebadee or something like that. They would come to the middle of town and try to change people's minds about totally random crap. They wanted people to join their art commune/cult in West Virginia. They got banned from Silver Spring illegally because they were being too annoying."

Well, those people were at the rally. They're called Zendik ("Easy to remember," I was told. "Zen plus dick. Without a C. But it's Sanskrit really.") and they were actually very friendly. They were persistent but not annoying, and when I bought their magazine I was surprised by the relevance of their ideas. They easily seemed like the most amiable people at the rally. They got kicked out of Silver Spring not by annoyed people, by the corporations along the street-- you know, pamphleteering neo-hippies are the sort of quirky local culture gentrification tries to stamp out. And they live on a farm, not a commune, but it seems like the kind of place I'd like to visit.

Everyone was waiting for the man himself: the Hon. Dr. Ron Paul, M.D. Here are some more examples of the kind of enthusiasm one might either ridicule or appreciate. One thing I could not get a photo of was a little girl on the metro, roughly 8 year old, who was jumping up and down because she got to see Dr. Paul, and pointed and smiled at me when I took his book out of my backpack.



The above picture was taken without permission. The picture below will make you smile if you know the background story.



Finally at 4 PM, Dr. Paul came and spoke. It was real exciting to see the man in person, but his message had no surprises-- it was about liberty, beating Rudy Giuliani in a national election where he got 6 months of constant press attention. A group of Capitol Police and volunteers barricaded the stage so he could get to his vehicle without being swamped by adoring fans. Here is my photo of him which is in the public domain.



It was a great afternoon. Well, I did eat at a taco place where they ran out of lemonade and a piece of ceiling fell into my lap. But they were very nice about it. And the entire thing cost me only $25-- $16 for lunch, $8 for Zendik literature which I will be happily reading this evening.

Eating In with the Vegans

It turns out that the pamphlets being handed out on the Mall two weeks back were not all produced by Compassion Over Killing. Some were produced by Vegan Outreach, an organization with a striking contrast to PETA and other animal rights groups. I was really impressed by their pamphlet, especially the following swift sentence on the last page:

If you decide not to eat any animal-derived foods, please remember: the objective is to reduce suffering, not to achieve personal purity or perfection. [...] You can make exceptions, such as eating meat on certain occasions, and still make a big difference by eating vegetarian the rest of the time.

I had to wonder what sort of attitude they had towards semi-vegetarianism, so I went to their Wikipedia article, which provided some interesting background about this group:

In their June 1998 newsletter, Vegan Outreach published a very long article called "Veganism as the Path to Animal Liberation" (now called "Activism and Veganism Reconsidered"). This article ... argued against the movement's focus on trying to get media attention through protests. The essay also questioned the effectiveness of civil disobedience and direct action, and a perceived tendency towards self-delusion and dogmatism in vegetarian and animal rights promotion.

You know, those dry turns of phrase like "very long article" are really what make Wikipedia great.

Another big change for Vegan Outreach occurred in 2005, when the first copy of their new brochure, "Even If You Like Meat," was printed. ... "Any amount of animal food reduction helps prevent suffering. Another problem we encountered was that people would see the word 'vegan' or 'vegetarian' on our flyers and assume we were just do-gooder busybodies trying to get them to improve their health, so they would not take a flyer."

And there's even more smart thinking in an essay online:

"When it comes to advocating for the animals, people are looking for a reason to ignore us – no one sits around thinking, 'Wow, I really want to give up all my favorite foods and isolate myself from my friends and family!' Knowing this, we can’t give anyone any reasons to ignore the terrible and unnecessary suffering on factory farms and in slaughterhouses."

So, I was convinced. I was actually impressed by the flyer alone, there being no computer in my room, and provide this background info only to back up my conviction. There being no room for pause and reflection on the Internet, one must provide filler instead. I went to Trader Joe's and aimed for a completely vegan diet for the next week. I took a picture when I got home, but unfortunately I still don't have a card reader for my camera. But here's what I bought: peanut butter, bananas, bread, Joe-Joes, cold cereal, and cup noodles. I later supplemented this food with jelly and waffles. Does this not sound delicious? Yes, I ate this way for a whole week.

The one thing I found hard to eliminate from my diet was milk. I've been drinking milk 2-3 times a day for 20 years and it is not only a staple of my life but a fundamental food for most peoples and cultures all around the world. But, I went out on a limb last night and bought soy milk. I then put it in cereal.

It was good.



I will still likely eat whatever my stomach demands at restaurants, but I'm such a picky shopper anyway that I don't see grocery-store chicken fingers in my future anytime soon. Considering that I'm on a very tight budget this summer, that is practical veganism. Thanks, pamphlet people!

Telecom Immunity and Ingrid Betancourt

Yesterday I learned how to give a tour of the Capitol. As we were walking into the Crypt, I noticed that the Senate was voting on cloture for the FISA immunity bill. As I was learning about the famous paintings of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, Senator Obama was first violating his own promise to support a filibuster of telecom immunity, and then voting to undermine the Constitutional guarantee of a fair trial. It happened just like that, while I was in that building. He betrayed his message to the American people and proved his neoconservative credentials. I saw soon after that the vote must be over because Ted Stevens walked past us.

I went home and watched Larry King interview Ingrid Betancourt. What I saw at the top of the hour shocked me. Betancourt had not spoken English in seven years; she was quiet, and slow to speak, and if it weren't for her mitigating celebrity status, she wouldn't have lasted two minutes on a talk show.

KING: You said that you suffered terribly during the captivity.

What was the worst thing you experienced?

BETANCOURT: (Thirty seconds of silence)

I think that the worst thing is... (twenty seconds of silence)

Realizing that mankind — that... that human beings can be so horrible to other human beings.

KING: Do you hate the FARC?

BETANCOURT: No, not at all.

KING: You don’t?

BETANCOURT: No, no. I don’t — first, it’s like a kind of position I took many years ago, that when I would be released, I wouldn’t take out of the jungle any kind of bitterness or any kind of eager to — seek for revenge, anything of that. And now that I am out, I feel that I’m, like, in another planet. It seems so far. Those people seem so — I mean, aliens to me, you know? I mean, I’m so — it’s incredible how in a week the distance between that life and this life.

I mean, it’s — well, I don’t — I — the only thing I want is — I pray God to give them his blessing. I want — I don’t want to forget, but I want to forgive

There was no acknowledgment that these were not the sort of answers King had expected, that she was showing surprising dignity, humility, and compassion for someone who just a week ago was trapped and suffering horribly. By any standards she was making a beautiful performance, on par with the deep understanding of Aung San Suu Kyi. Yet Larry King represented the worst of yellow journalism, saying things like "The obvious question: were you sexually mistreated?" An obvious question to no-one except a modern cable news reporter.

KING: Can you give us an example of what they did?

BETANCOURT: No, Larry no. I’m not ready for that, you know. I just — I don’t want to fill myself with those memories. I want to —

KING (cutting her off): I understand completely. Did you see anybody at all killed?

BETANCOURT: No.

KING: (waits five seconds for her to elaborate)

...all right.

This must be among the lowest points of American journalism. Cable news is a travesty of the heart that I hope will soon pass from this world.

Afterwards I watched Ted Koppel's report on China but it only made me anxious so I won't talk about that too much.

Senator Chuck Hagel and Gyetrul Jigme Rinpoche

Yesterday I went to an intern talk in the Senate building by Chuck Hagel. After work I went to the Shambhala center and Gyetrul Jigme Rinpoche, a Tibetan guru living in a refugee camp in India, came and gave a talk about his "eco-dharma". Both shared the basic message of "make the world a better place" and "everyone has good intentions." They differed mainly in implementation.

Hagel's talk was rather what I expected. He denounced deluded views, such as that the United Nations infringed on our sovereignty, or that global warming was a hoax. He encouraged us to recognize our own ideologies and biases, consider the facts objectively, and reach out to people with different viewpoints and consider their inherent worth. He saw the room, packed full of interns, as an ambitious group: not just prospective Congresspeople, but also "five or six Presidents." A young man asked him whether he supported McCain or Obama, and of course, he refrained from judgment, saying they were both Presidential material and we should ignore slander of either one in the mass media. He denounced the MSM as "entertainment," saying the only true news sources today are PBS and NPR.

Hagel thought poverty was the cause of terrorism. I wondered whether I should ask him about American interventionism, but I thought maybe other interns would have better questions. They didn't-- one of them asked him for advice on running for Senate.

Gyetrul Jigme Rinpoche was late from the airport but, being good Buddhists, we sat quietly in the meditation room for an hour and did not complain. His "eco-dharma" was not high philosophy but some examples of where we were being extravagant and could size down to, say, Indian levels of consumption. For example, Jigme was once very hungry and ordered a three-course meal at an American restaurant. When the appetizer arrived, it was so large he could not finish it! Then, no longer being hungry, he noticed the people around him were devouring all three courses. "I couldn't help but wonder: Where does it all go?" he asked us, grinning. He was also surprised at all our gadgets-- remote controls, Segways-- which he said served primarily to make us lazy.

His other suggestions were based on his Indian experience: using less water with toilet flushes, or not washing our clothes so often, or bringing our own chopsticks to an Asian restaurant. He talked about how in his little town, people strung up prayer flags on young trees torn from the ground once a year, uprooting thousands of trees. He got them to put the flags on aluminum poles instead; soon, the entire Tibetan refugee community was doing it. His message was that we shouldn't stick fastidiously to tradition but fit our practice to suit the environment. A working practice is always suited to the here and now.

I asked him if eco-consciousness was more than just "saving the environment," but recognizing that you are part of your environment, and part of Nature. His answer began with a lengthy definition of what he called "sameness" or "equalness" and I enjoyed it more than the dharma talk itself. He warned that if your definition of compassion is pity for those less fortunate than you, then you'll become jealous of people who are just as fortunate as you are, and angry at those who are better off. True compassion recognizes the dignity and need of all people.

So, that poor, scruffy guy at the change machine who needs 50 cents to get off the Metro? I gave him my last 50 cents.

Fourth of July

I'm back in the sweltering Internet cafe. My roommate took his computer away. I'm not sure if he's being passive-aggressive or just not communicating. It doesn't matter to me so I head out on the town. The cafe is about an hour walk from my dorm but there's other cool stuff here too.

I'm sure many of you (all 10 of you) are wondering what the Fourth of July is like in DC. This was my objective, too, when I set out yesterday. I discerned, twelve hours later, that the Fourth of July in DC is made up of the following elements:

1. Inter-high school parade
   
2. Write-in Presidential candidate canvassing
   
3. Obscure religious proselytizing
   
4. Completely screwed-up concert
   

I only have 38 minutes left to describe these things, so I'll hurry. The photos are from a cell phone camera and thus kind of blurry.

Inter-high school parade

The first thing I saw when I arrived on the Mall near the Reflecting Pool were tired high school kids taking off their uniforms and getting into buses. It turned out that this was the tail-end of a parade. As I walked towards the Capitol I saw the parade itself, which was very cute, as a sort of large version of a small-town parade. There was a float with Washington and Lincoln, a float with a reenactment of the Iwo Jima flag raising, and performances by all the high school bands in town, even Latino dancers.

Write-in Presidential candidate canvassing

I wandered away from the parade looking for food and saw a big tent with the word "ALLEN FOR PRESIDENT" written on it. As I approached the tent I saw many other posters with "Smith for President" written on them... not Allan?! It turned out this was a write-in canvassing tent run by five separate would-be Presidential candidates: Christopher Popham Smith, Daniel Kingery, Joe Oliva, Ruth Bryant White, and the aforementioned Allen, who didn't give me his card but I believe to be Donald K. Allen. They all appeared perfectly sane, but none of them are on the ballot anywhere. Also, the tent was completely empty; passersby seemed to be somewhat nervous to approach these people. I referred them to ballot-access.org for help getting on the ballot. That's what America is all about.

Obscure religious proselytizing

The National Mall was packed from one end to the other with people bringing picnic baskets and blankets. There's no surprise I hadn't heard about this event before; it's huge enough without advertising. The Park Service had tents at every entrance checking people's bags, which created huge lines. On every street corner next to the Mall you could buy water, pop, or pretzels from three or four vendors, most of whom had hungry Americans from all over the country lined up. The result was a spectacular, even newsworthy amount of trash stretched out over however many miles I walked along the length of the Mall. Many people were wearing Obama shirts; nobody was wearing McCain shirts. In fact, the quantity of Obama merchandise that was moving from those streetside carts was really impressive.



At one end, there was the Washington Monument, WW2 memorial, Reflecting Pool, and so forth. Directly after that, the Folklife Festival was still running. The thought of entering that area, which is packed even on a normal day, horrified me-- from a distance I could see it was one teeming, gridlocked mass of human bodies. I felt really sorry for the Bhutanese (as you might recall, they were not experienced in showmanship).

But the most interesting thing, to me, were the religious groups at the far end of the Mall, which was previously unoccupied. Jews for Jesus were wandering around somewhere, giving combination maps and Christian tracts, which were then dropped on the ground for me to pick up and puzzle over. A born-again Christian group had occupied one square and were blasting live Christian music, giving out free water, and making friendship bracelets "with a message" (presumably the Jesus message). Right near the exit, an ultra-fundamentalist group called the Holiness movement who were dressed in Amish-style modest clothes were singing traditional songs. In the middle, and most interesting to me, were the Hare Krishnas.



The Krishnas were running a sort of fair that apparently had been done the same way since the 70s: big tents, posters underneath them explaining vegetarianism, reincarnation, the life of their guru, and so forth, and less religious activities such as Indian music, a sara dress-up booth, and free food. Yes, the Hare Krishnas were serving free drinks and meals to the 300,000 people on the Mall. As there was no water fountain, I was parched and took a huge gulp of their lemonade; I then talked to the nice woman at the book fair booth, and bought a deluxe Bhagavad Gita from her (apparently the Krishnas' holy text) for a donation of $10. It was a good time.

Completely screwed-up concert

I arrived on the steps of the Capitol around 4PM and sat there for four hours. It turned out it was a fairly bad seat. There was a really fancy concert going on below that started at 8, and when it did start I couldn't make out the singers.



That's okay, because the concert was a fiasco and would have been horrifying to see up close. It would have suited a small-town event, but this concert was being broadcast live on PBS and to armed forces around the world. The announcer was ad-libbing. The first two performers were clearly coked up-- an old C-list rocker who dropped his mic and may have been lip-synching, and a past American Idol winner who was making jerky movements with his hands, running impatiently around the stage, and had his mic cut off. There were then some nice non-celebrity performances, and Jerry Lee Lewis came on. Dude was old (at least 70, I'd Wikipedia it if I had extra time on this machine). He belonged in a nursing home. He could play piano superbly, but they had heavy backing in case he screwed up, so you couldn't really hear it. Then, as he was singing "Great Balls of Fire," the Park Service decided they really needed to start the fireworks before they got rained out, and the audience started running to the sides of the concert platform. Jerry Lee Lewis was either ticked off or decided he wasn't needed anymore, and walked off the stage with almost a minute left in the song.

The fireworks, which came from behind the Washington Monument, were very nice. I didn't take a photo of them because for me that is the essence of reification. I mean, come on, everyone knows what fireworks look like. The point is to enjoy the experience, not try to preserve it. It's difficult to take photos anyway. There was an Army band playing on the concert stage, which was annoying-- I like my fireworks with silent contemplation.

Everyone then crammed onto the Metro at the exact time (great practice for Japan) and after being squeezed for air for half an hour, I escaped, made it safely home, and watched 1776 on TV.

Conclusion

There is no need to come to DC just to watch the fireworks. Stay home and enjoy your local fireworks.

The Examiner: Worst Newspaper in the World

I haven't posted in two days because not much happened. We had to package more than 50 flags for Massachusetts offices. Ever since Bush v. Gore all government employees have required 10 flags to stand behind them in their offices.

Today I was handed a copy of a free paper called The Examiner. I marvel at how bad this newspaper is. Maybe you think the Metro is a bad paper because it just reprints Reuters and really dumb letters. Imagine what it would be like if a newspaper actively tried to make you groan and feel pity for its readers once in every story. It would probably be something like this:

The first story I read was about how Americans find Cindy McCain more "likable" than Michelle Obama. To me this is absurd. When I read the story, the absurdity increased:

In February, the 44-year-old Obama sparked an uproar by asserting that “for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.” In March, she described America as “just downright mean.”

Cindy McCain fired back at the time by declaring: “I’m very proud of my country.”

So, given a choice between an honest and independent woman, and a Stepford wife... oh God, never mind. Let's go look at the op-ed page.

There is one article decrying Obama as a flip-flopper taking on conservative positions, and one claiming he is more tax-hungry than Denmark ("where excessive taxation has been a way of life for decades"... it sucks being the happiest nation in the world). But on the op-ed page, Meghan Cox Gurdon takes the cake:

A friend of mine gave his 11-year-old daughter a pair of sneakers the other day, thinking she’d be pleased. She was not. She became agitated when she saw the label and told him, “I can’t wear these, because of child labor!”

It took half an hour of Internet research for him to persuade the girl that her anxieties were unfounded, and that Nike did not enslave small children in remote foreign places.

What’s a pre-pubescent child doing, panicking about the industrial origins of her shoes?

American children ... ought to know that they are fantastically lucky to have a seat at the greatest banquet table in history ... They ought to be encouraged to look about the world with dash and optimism, not apologetic guilt for the footprint they’re leaving behind.

This is the most wrongheaded thing I have ever seen. I am going to pretend I did not read this.

Let's try the cinema review section... it can't be as bad as this, right?

'Family Guy': Funny but oh so wrong
Smart but subversive humor gives show broad appeal

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

This is... the worst newspaper in the world.

American Causes

Today I got a mortgage crisis phone call. It was from Florida, which is a little far from our district. But the caller was at her wits' end. She had a subprime mortgage with a rate that had jumped on her; she had no job and thus couldn't refinance; she was disabled and thus couldn't get an easy job. She described how she had tried subletting a room to an ex-convict who wrecked her car and stalked her. The housing bubble in Florida has popped completely and she was being offered 15% of "market value" for her house.

Of course, there was nothing I could do to help her. But even so she thanked me for being such a good listener. She said I was going places and might be a big politician someday. I felt humbled by her good grace. As I transferred her to a committee that might help her marginally more, I heard her start to say something-- but my fingers moved faster than my thoughts and I dropped the call. I feel bad about that.

Later that afternoon our staff acted on a letter from a constituent. Our congressman is pro-AIPAC and I was surprised to see such quick and unhesitant action over a Palestinian cause. I was asked to call up the Rebuilding Alliance to see what we could do about a village that is to be demolished in the West Bank, all because one guy sent us a letter!

Researching this subject is hard-- try to verify it yourself and you'll see what I mean. The Rebuilding Alliance spokeswoman clarified some of it for me:

• Al Aqabah is a town on the West Bank that used to have an Israeli army base next door.
  
• The army fired into the hills for target practice, wounding many Palestinian farmers, and paralyzing the mayor from the waist down. The town sued the IDL, took it to Israel's Supreme Court, and won; the base was removed.
  
• The Rebuilding Alliance was asked to build a kindergarten in the West Bank with help from government organizations around the world. Because the IDL demolishes West Bank towns almost on a whim, they needed to choose a site that was least likely to be demolished. Al Aqabah was chosen because it had proven its historical existence before the High Court and thus established the Palestinians' right to live there.
  
• Nevertheless, soon after the kindergarten was finished, the IDL suddenly decided they wanted to demolish the entire town.
  
• The town went back to court, and lost because Israel had not accepted their zoning documents even though they submitted them with UN approval over a decade ago. The mayor was denied the "visa" needed to cross the Palestinian border wall and appear in court, even though his town's existence was in the balance!

They then went over what my congressman could do to stop this, which I'll keep confidential for now. I submitted this to the LA in charge... and it seemed like he would do some of those things just to show the constituent that his concerns were valid!

Being a Congressman seems like a very hard job-- every year people expect you to take action on more and more, and please your constituency on ever-more minute issues. But my congressman does a superb job of that. I went to Buddhist meditation again today, spoke to another stranger, and once again when she heard his name she lit up and gave me all sorts of praise.