Be Not Afraid

Have you read "The Rise of American Authoritarianism" by Amanda Taub on Vox? It's making the rounds on social media, at least my social media. It's fascinating. I know nothing about her or the website that published her article, but... wow. Reading it creates in my head the sound of tumblers clicking as they fall into place.

And as these things do, it clicks because it meshes with recent experience in my own life. Not political experience. Nothing to do with Donald Trump, or immigration. But still, it was an experience of fear of The Other taking from me what I see as my own, my right. My experience has no place here, as it is not my story to tell, for the most part. Let it suffice that my "other" is just a blowhard drunkard (read: douche!), not the specter of a horde of inhuman invaders (read: Muslims, LGBQT, atheists, environmentalists, etc.) whose values are terrifyingly foreign to my own experience. Although that particular douche is, in my mind, inhuman. And his values are as foreign to me as they could be. But still!

What I noticed in my own experience is this: the fear was more real than the reality. The possible was more real than the actual. As such, it was not a possibility, it was a certainty. And thus it demanded something from me: a response, a prevention. Action!

Does this make me authoritarian? God, I hope not.

What my own fear experience taught me, though, is a lesson I should have learned before now, because I've had this epiphany before, particularly when I gave up reading What to Expect When You're Expecting about a third of the way through, when little Thumper was still a bun in the oven: the fear experience can be nearly orgasmic. The pomposity of feeling like you're expertly preparing for the thing you fear is also nearly orgasmic.

But! The thing you fear and prepare for is likely not the thing that will happen, and the thing that will happen is likely not the one for which you prepared. And obsessed. And worried. And drove yourself to ecstatic levels of stress and anxiety imagining.

Don't read that book, by the way. If you're expecting, don't expect all those worst-case scenarios. Expect joy, instead. Deal with what comes, if it comes, as it comes. But don't read the book first. It preys on fear. It profits by the uncertainty of the inexperienced and their powerful desire to be ready for whatever experience may be coming.

But! That's the nature of life. You can't be prepared for every possible experience that is approaching you from beneath the curve of the horizon. Besides, if you did know with certainty that the worst-case scenario was actually coming, would that make you any more prepared, really?

And here's the thing: in some of those cases, the fear itself brings about the very experience of which you were afraid.

For instance: the military industrial complex, of which Eisenhower warned us, employs over decades the rhetoric of fear of Islamic fundamentalism (which, by the way, is to Islam as the KKK is to Christianity) to help justify and build support for what is largely a gigantic money grab. So for fear of Islamic fundamentalism spreading across the globe and attacking us at home, we approve of putting boots on foreign ground and everything that entails, which engenders a deep hatred of us globally even beyond the existing Islamic fundamentalists and fuels the growth of fundamentalism, providing new motivation for exactly the kind of attacks on American soil of which we were originally afraid. Which makes us more afraid.

Oversimplified? Yes, of course. But to some degree, we fueled, because we were terrified, the growth of the very thing that terrified us, and now we're even more afraid.

So is fear the answer? Is voting for Trump going to make anything better? Instead, be not afraid. Be not afraid of the Mexican immigrant. Be not afraid of the protestor who wants only for his child to have as little chance of being murdered as your child does. Be not afraid of the woman on the bus who has covered her hair out of the same kind, if not the same flavor, of piety that motivates you as a good Christian church-goer. Be not afraid of the sex lives of those that aren't having sex with you. Be not afraid of those who suggest that unrestrained consumerism may, in fact, be ultimately destructive. Be not afraid that the weed will lead to the heroin will lead to the children dying in droves, impaled on the pikes of syringes on every street corner. Do not dehumanize the other, nor fear his values, though they seem on the surface foreign to your own.

Please don't vote for Trump. Forgiving for the moment that he speaks in sentences and thinks in patterns far less complex, sophisticated, and nuanced than even my 8-year-old does, remember always that a political leader cannot defeat your fears. Only you can. Instead of fearing, live. You do you. I'll do me. Let each of us be calm. Take deep breaths. Meditation is good for that. So is yoga. But hey, I'm not militant, so if that's not your thing, that's cool.

Ishmael

My mother mailed me a copy of Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, with a note saying that as she read it, she imagined me as the narrator.

I had never heard of this book, and I'm only 79 pages into it right now, but it's kind of aggravating me. What bothers me, aside from the narrator's inability or refusal to see exactly where his teacher's leading questions are leading, is this notion that's been at the heart of much of what I've read, watched, and been taught since I graduated high school in 1990, and a little even before that: that western civilization, particularly European and American cultures, are inherently selfish and evil in a way that other human societies and especially other living creatures are not.

Maybe I'm just sensitive, being a white man whose childhood photos look a bit like the kid on the cover of Rage Against the Machine's album Evil Empire.

OK, to be honest, my brother looked more like that kid than I did. But you know what I mean: brown-haired, blue-eyed white kid. Evil Empire. So I'm a little sensitive.

Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh, yeah. Isn't there something in the genetic mandate that all living things share that's a bit problematic at heart: the drive to successfully reproduce? I mean really, a genetic mandate NOT to reproduce wouldn't be passed on very far, would it?

I'm not saying that the culture whispering in our ears that we are the pinnacle of creation and that the earth is ours to use to our own short-term advantage isn't part of the problem, I'm just saying that I think maybe the cultural story is our way of explaining to ourselves the base biological impulse that we've become so successful in satisfying: spread the seed and do everything you can to see it grow to spread its seed, too. The notion that "a lion or a wombat" wouldn't have "conquered" the earth if a series of accidents in their evolution hadn't given them the massive reproductive advantages that would allow and even impel them to do so seems biased in a "humans are inherently different from animals" sort of way that's precisely the inverse of the one the book rejects. If that makes sense.

I Don't Think He Can Pronounce Hussein, Though

I seriously did not teach him this. To the best of my knowledge, Aerie did not teach him this.

The boy says, "Ooooooooooh, Bama!" He's been saying it for months, since before the election. Sometimes he'll repeat it if we've been talking about Obama, but often he says it without context, with no Obama references in conversation or on TV. Out of nowhere, he just says, "Ooooooooooh, Bama!"

Mungo has convinced herself that she taught him to say, "Oh, bummer!" in her heavy South Boston accent. She tells people the story of us being in the car, and her saying, "Oh, bummer!" about some such or other, and him repeating it. But I was in the car. And I remember quite clearly telling her that he'd been saying "Obama," and that I wasn't sure where he picked it up. Probably from the TV (pronounced "TB" in Thumperish). And she said, "It sounds like he's saying 'Oh, bummer!'"

But it ain't "Oh, bummer." It's "Obama." I've never made a big deal about it with him. I've never pointed out Obama on TV and made him say it. As far as I knew, it was just a word he picked out of the ether without having any clue what that word signified.

Until today.

While we were waiting for our car to be serviced, he was getting restless. We played in the playroom, and he was bored with that. We'd wandered around and flirted with the staff, and he was bored with that. He was busying himself climbing into and out of and into again one of the waiting room chairs. I handed him a special inauguration insert from the local paper. I pointed to the picture on the front and asked him, "Who's that?"

"Obama!"

I'm telling you, that boy's a genius.

And that's all I have to say about the inauguration. I could say that I recorded Obama's speech, thinking that I'd show it to Thumper some day. What day, I don't know. But someday. I could talk about getting chills. And getting choked up. And wanting to think this was a new beginning, a new day. But I can't say it right. And it's all been said already. And I don't want to talk about the doubt that comes right behind the hope. So instead, I'll just say it like the boy does:

Obama!

My Belief Is a Delicate Flower; Please Be Gentle With It

I haven't been, as so many of the bloggers that I follow have, as desolate and as despairing in my perception of the Bush administration, its goals, or the results of its pursuit of those goals. I've talked a little bit here about why I became more politically conservative, why I was disappointed in the Bush administration and its abandonment of most truly conservative ideals, and how I was, through my little glimmer of hope that Barack Obama really is who he seems to be, ready to believe that the coercive power of government, and the forced redistribution of wealth, may actually be the best conduit for justice, charity, equality, and sustainability.

Consequently, I wasn't as enthusiastic in my support of Obama as some. I voted for him, but I didn't donate to his campaign. I didn't proselytize. But now that it's here, the moment that could mean so much on so many levels for this nation and its people, I want to rejoice. I want to feel, like so many do, that this is morning in America, that all things are possible again.

Please, sir. Please, Mr. President-Elect. I don't see how you can possibly live up to all of the expectations that are placed at your feet, but please, just be a decent man. Act in good faith and in good conscience. Continue to talk to us as though you believe in us as much as many believe in you. Keep using your position to keep us focused. Remember what you've told us about sensible energy policy, about sensible taxation. Remember equality of opportunity. Remember love and pride and hope. You can't fix everything, but you can continue to inspire. And when the news media turns on you, as it eventually will, remember that you can talk to us without them. You did it in unprecedented ways through the election. Don't forget us out here. We're still watching. We're still listening. We're still hoping.

Oh yeah, and don't fuck the interns. Please.

Why I Don't Talk About the Bailout

Here's another 100-Word Challenge from Velvet Verbosity. These are fun. I'd kind of forgotten about them, so I added VV to my blog roll to help me remember.

Moral

In 1992, Bruce Springsteen sang that there were fifty-seven channels and nothin' on. Now, only fifty-seven channels seems quaint. Provincial. Like how many you're allowed in England. Or France. Here, in America, the Greatest Nation on Earth, we're into the hundreds by now. At least. Maybe more. The cutting edge. 24-hour news channels. Passels of passionate pundits yelling at each other for their due while the crawl contradicts. The moral of the story is no moral, is passivity: we can do nothing because we can know nothing, because everybody knows something different. We are crushed beneath an avalanche of information.

I've Been Warned... Again

I received an email from BFF today, which had the title of this post as a subject line. Well, actually it was, "You've Been Warned... Again." It contained a link to this video. BFF has for years preached the impending end of oil.



At about 4 minutes into this, Matt Simmons says this in response to a question about what will happen first in the next 6 months and then in the next 6-10 years:

"I think unfortunately, the probable scenario is that we're going to basically keep dropping our inventories and feeling good about it hoping that basically that will bring around a price collapse, assuming that might be actually demand declining when it's not, and then we're going to have a shortage. And if we have a shortage, we'll have a run on the bank so fast your eyes will spin, this is basically where everyone tops off their tank. And we haven't run out of oil, but we could literally run out of usable diesel and gasoline, and then we have the great American disaster, because within a week we don't have food."

BFF followed the link with his own exhortation:

"I've said stuff about Peak Oil in the past. Now we've finally hit mainstream media and attention. If you haven't taken steps yet. You better get with it. I'm not talking Y2K where nobody knew what's going to happen. But a predictable decline in resources, especially oil which affects supplies delivery and the supplies themselves. Our culture and lifestyle is where you need to imagine radical change in appearance and operation in our lifetime. More difficult for your kids. The unknowns are how fast or slow a decline. But where we are going, or the eventual outcome is clear. Not trying to scare anyone, just make it in your long term plans how you and your family will get by. We've been spoiled for a really long time. The party's about over. You are not going to be able to depend on the usual outlets nor continuous supplies. There's no one to blame. And you're on your own. The gov't won't be able to keep it all afloat or working (think Katrina). You'll have to depend on yourself and whatever you can create yourself or with your neighbors, networks, and local communities. This ain't gonna happen over night, but neither will what you need to create and who you need to connect with."

I lapsed into a horrible doomsday fantasy that BFF periodically inspires in me about the Collapse of the System that will come with the inevitable End of Oil. The fantasy's all about how we have done nothing to prepare for it, live in nothing like a village, have no renewable agricultural or water resources at hand, and how we and our beautiful baby boy will all die in the rioting, the looting, the starvation, the disease.

I don't think BFF is crazy. Well, he is in some ways, but I believe in the inevitability of the end of the finite resource petroleum. I believe that it is more central to our way of life than we'd like to admit, and that with the industrialization of China and the ever-increasing rate of growth of the global population, we will consume it faster and faster and faster. I don't know that new systems to replace the ones so dependent on oil will be in place soon enough to avoid catastrophe. I hope so. I hope that the economic pinch of high gas prices will make people think more and more about it. But mostly, I just don't know that I can or want to change my lifestyle to become independent of petroleum, even when the prize is saving myself and my family.

But then the boy and I played with an empty box, chased a kitty around, and joked together about burps and toots. I think I'm able now to go back to pretending that all will be well, that the myriad solutions will arise and put themselves in place before that Great American Disaster breaks upon our small, happy suburban shores.

Please, No. I Beg You.

Apparently, I'm an Obamacan.

Since I'm all high school, and whatnot, I figger I better start gettin' all political like the cool kids do. Try an' up my intellectual quotient by using words like "quotient." So here's my plea to Obama to choose someone, anyone, other than Hillary Clinton for a running mate.

I voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. I saw him speak at Quincy Market in Boston, and I was seduced by the charm and charisma. I believed in the "change" mantra. I was deeply immersed in college campus life and had wholeheartedly accepted the notion that justice of every type can and must be legislated by a strong Federal government. I later came to believe that all that a strong Federal government can do effectively is grow, but I won't blame that on a Clinton.

I spent 1998 repeating the following sentence over and over again: "He is the chief law enforcement officer in the nation, and he perjured himself and suborned perjury of others in order to avoid personal liability in a civil lawsuit brought against him by a private citizen." To which the reply was always given: "Sex! Witch hunt! Witch hunt! Sex! Sex! Sex!"

1998 was the culmination of a period of years during which I began to believe that there was no real Bill Clinton. There was no substance beneath the style. He would do anything and say anything to gain and maintain power. He would change his position at the slightest indication that it had not been well-received by some portion of what he deemed to be an important constituency. His core beliefs were always poll-driven and sound-bite crafted. He was a hollow man.

When Hillary Clinton stood by her man while he hemmed and hawed about what the definition of "is" was, I began to believe that she was much as he was. Then she decided to run for the Senate seat vacated by New York Democrat Moynihan. New York, I thought? Isn't she from Arkansas? Huh? Could it be that this is more about the opportunity for her? Could it be that she was more than willing to answer the Democratic Party's plea for her to keep the seat from falling into Republican hands? Isn't something like a Senate seat a necessary step for her on her inevitable quest for the Presidency? She had "shared" the Presidency with Bill, and I didn't think it was too great a leap of imagination to think that she saw it as her destiny to be the first female President.

I saw her speak at the Ann Richards Memorial, and I almost came away with a positive perception of her for once. She was eloquent. She was funny. She was likeable and self-deprecating. But she was also speaking to a room full of people who were there to pay homage to a grande dame of the Democratic Party. They were her people, and they were full of love and nostalgia and all manner of good feelings. And it wasn't televised. Hillary needn't have worried about spin or image or impact or polls. It was the most natural I've ever seen her.

That's why I beg Obama to choose someone else. I watched his Philadelphia speech after the first time that Reverend Wright was splashed across our TV's, and I was moved. I was amazed. I accepted the notion that he was a different kind of politician, one who spoke what he believed to be the truth regardless of the political implications that were no doubt calculated down to five or six decimal places by his advisors. He calmly explored difficult and dangerous and complicated issues, and he trusted us to come along with him on the journey. He spoke like a man sitting in a room and talking with a peer. He appeared to have faith in himself and faith in us. And I was hooked.

Excepting that they are both members of the same party, Hillary Clinton is the antithesis of Barack Obama. She may have faith in herself, but it's a faith in her destiny, her right to a place in the history books. There is no self for her to have faith in. When the news said that she was too soft, she got tough. When they said she was too tough, she lightened up. She is a chameleon trying desperately to match the ever-changing background of public perception. Neither can she have faith in us. We are here to be manipulated by those with the nerve and the skill to do so, so how can we be trusted?

I don't know why Obama wants to President; I don't want to think about it too long or I will begin to remember how I felt about Bill Clinton in 1992. But if he is what he seems to be, then he cannot seriously consider Hillary Clinton for his running mate. Choosing her could only be the result of a political calculation, an inherent refutation of the core themes of his campaign. So please, Mr. Obama, please: don't break my heart. Don't crush my fragile seedling of hope as it pokes its tiny green shoot up from the barren landscape of hopelessness, scorched into a nearly lifeless moonscape through the last sixteen years of Presidential politics. Please, Mr. Obama? Please?

Obama, Supplemental

On the local news today, I saw a story about veterans demonstrating to show support for the war. One of them said, "Our culture and way of life is threatening," when what he clearly meant was that it is "threatened." Kind of a funny Freudian slip. It's sad to think that it's probably more true the way he said it than the way he meant it.

Obama, Hey Bama, Bama Bama Bama Obama, Hey Bama, Obama

By the way, Mom, that's a reference to Jesus Christ Superstar.

Maybe Austin is starting to rub off on me. If you throw a dodge ball in the streets of Austin, you're far more likely to to clonk the noggin of an Obama or Clinton supporter than a McCain supporter. In all my years at my last job, all political conversations had that "nudge nudge, wink wink, we all know what an idiot Bush is" tone to them that left me feeling far right of center. So maybe the pressure is finally getting to me: I think I might vote for Obama if he wins his party's nomination.

Yesterday, suttonhoo linked to Obama's Philadelphia speech. I watched 31 minutes of it before Thumper decided I'd had enough time to myself. That 31 minutes was extraordinary, not only because I never watch that much undiluted political speech in a single sitting, but also because the speech itself affected me in ways I didn't at all expect.

Now, maybe a guy who spends his days folding and re-folding the same 24 diapers, crawling around on the floor and playing with brightly colored bits of plastic, and saying "Rowr!" as he chews on a baby's belly isn't the most qualified political commentator in the world. But what the hell, I get tired of talking about the baby all the time, anyway.

The driving principle of my political thought since perhaps 1995 or 1996 has been: a large, centralized Federal government that is looked to to provide all solutions to all problems can only do one thing effectively, and that's grow. So I have never voted for a Democrat since I voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 because the central message of all Democrat rhetoric is that the Federal government should be providing more solutions to more problems and should be spending more money on the problems it is already failing to solve.

The problem is that the Republicans don't really believe the opposite. Oh, they pretend to occasionally, when it suits their political purposes. But they're really only buying a different variety of political support with our tax dollars than their Democrat counterparts are. And in many cases, both sides are buying exactly the same political support.

That's the real turn-off to the political process: there is no honesty, there is no conviction. Every word uttered is calculated based on its political effect. Some, like Bill Clinton, may be better than others, like George Bush, but virtually no political office holder or seeker, at least on the national stage, speaks the truth simply because it's true. Certainly not Hillary Clinton. Her gameplan changes weekly, daily, based on what pollsters and pundits and political consultants determine what worked or did not last week, or yesterday. Nor McCain, or as Mrs. Rodius like to call him, Fire Marshall Bill.

But then I saw Obama's speech, and it seemed fundamentally different. I mean, yes, he's a poised speaker. His natural manner of speaking adds to the perception that he's speaking extemporaneously and from the heart. I'm sure that's at least partly from his skillful use of the teleprompter technology that's available to him, but still, he's not lecturing from on high with grand gestures and calculated pauses for applause. He's just speaking.

The content of the speech, though, was its most striking aspect. He spoke calmly and directly about subjects that it's common knowledge cannot be spoken of calmly and directly. Especially not directly. Political Calculus 101 teaches that Talking About Race = Risk of Offense. Risk of Offense = Risk of Political Fallout. Risk of Political Fallout = Potential Damage to Political Career. Damage to Political Career = Worst-Case Scenario. Therefore, Do Not Talk About Race.

Any other politician that I can think of would have tripped over his own feet racing to distance himself from the person who uttered the phrase, "God Bless America? God Damn America!" But Obama had the nerve to trust us to understand the complicated tangle of history out of which that phrase was shouted, and he talked to us, calmly and directly, about the complicated tangle itself. He knows, like any other public figure, that "complicated" doesn't fit into the kind of news reporting that carries his message to the broadest set of Americans, but he had the courage and the honesty to do it anyway.

So if Limiting the Scope of the Federal Government is a horse, and that horse left the barn a long, long time ago, maybe it's time for me to stop pretending that the Republican Party even remotely represents the kind of conservatism that I would prefer. Maybe it's time to stop pretending, too, that the President can or will accomplish all of the miracles that all of the candidates promise us when they're interviewing for the job. Maybe it's time to simply do the only thing I can do: vote for the candidate who succeeds in convincing me that he has integrity.

Having Done His Civic Duty

Thumper voted today. He won't tell me who he voted for, though. He says the secrecy of the ballot is a fundamental Constitutional right. I told him that while the Constitution establishes the Electoral process, it leaves the specifics of individual citizens voting up to the States. He just grinned at me. He doesn't think that could possibly be true.

Now With Less Patriotism!

At this point in my life, I've learned that for me, a New Year's Resolution is a meaningless gesture, because I never keep them. But as I watched The Today Show this morning, a new goal for the future occurred to me. The Today Show almost always annoys me, though certainly less so now that Katie Couric is gone. I watch it because it's less annoying than the other morning shows, and it is a lifelong habit to have television on as background noise, especially while eating. Plus, the day's weather predictions are useful to know, and traffic information is occasionally helpful.

This morning, though, I was particularly depressed by the themes, and I realized they are always the same themes, morning after morning, year after year. First and foremost: consumerism as patriotism. This theme is particularly clear during the holiday season. Daily there are gloomy predictions about how reduced holiday spending is likely to doom the American economy for the year to come. Buried in the story so that it is almost unnoticeable is the fact that when they're talking about reduced spending, they're usually talking about reduced growth in spending. Somewhere they'll mention that spending through the holiday season this year is up only 4 percent over last year, which is slower growth than over the past X number of years, etc. Then they talk about how it's a snapshot of the economy, and Wall Street is pessimistic, and gloom doom gloom doom gloom gloom gloom. Consumption is good!

Next they jump into an environmental story. Today it was about the melting of the polar ice and the several reasons why this is bad, and how it's tied to carbon dioxide emissions, like those produced by automobiles and the burning of coal for electricity. When our children are having children, they will live in an entirely different global climate. Consumption is bad!

Then we cut to commercial after commercial telling us what a great Christmas gift a Lexus makes, and diamonds, and sweaters, and housewares and appliances and toys and electronics and more and more and more. The message is always that happiness and satisfaction and individualism are achievable through consumerism. Consumption is good!

There is never once a sense of irony on the faces or in the voices of the anchors or the reporters. This morning there was a segment on Tools! For Women! The reporter presenting the segment was breathless and nearly shouting her excitement over this empowering trend! Yet the segment began with "Tupperware parties and kitchen gadgets" being the old expression of the female realm of homemaking and Tools! For Women! being the new, more equitable expression of the still inherently female realm of homemaking. The entire segment, as are so many morning show segments, was an extended commercial, with brand names and prices conveniently provided.

Now, I'm still trying to process what I think and feel about this, so I'm not sure how to wrap it up. I know that it's just a morning show. But I still feel like, even with the expansion of the number of channels that cable and satellite have meant over the last thirty years, network television is one of the broadest expressions of shared American popular culture. And network news, and network morning shows, are a large aspect of that expression of popular culture. It's just such a corporate, mercenary culture.

So anyway, I'm going to do my best in the days ahead to turn off the TV more. I've been enjoying Discovery and History Channel shows lately, but when you watch a weekly show's daily reruns, you run out of new material pretty quickly, and I've noticed the boy staring blankly at the TV when we're playing on the floor. Already, without even the context or language to understand what he's looking at, he gets sucked into the box such that he can't pay attention to the Tummy Time. It really should be off more.

Does that make me a poor patriot? I hope Homeland Security doesn't come calling.

Crisis Point for a Lifelong Friendship

I have a friend. I remember quite clearly twisting around in my seat with the rest of the first grade to stare at him and his glasses at the back of the classroom. It was his first day at a new school. I don't remember introductions, or slowly becoming friends. We just were. His mother was our Cub Scout Den Mother. His father was our little league coach. His house was always stocked with home-made cookies and cakes and all manner of sugary delights. I may have spent more of my childhood in his house and yard than in my own. We were inseparable from 6 to 15, BFF's, though of course we'd never heard that term at the time.

After junior high, I followed Big Brother's example and transferred out of the high school that Phil Donahue once referred to as "Ken and Barbie High" to go to the rival high school a little further away. We weren't the kids whose parents bought them Mercedes and Mustangs for their 16th birthday. BFF wasn't either, but he chose to keep on at Ken and Barbie High.

Without seeing each other daily, the distance between us grew. Our activities and our circles of friends diverged, but we still remained friends. After high school, he spent a semester in the dorms of a college some 200 miles away. When he came back, I moved to Boston. We wrote letters to each other, in those days before email and instant messaging, and we played a long distance game of chess, one move per letter, over the course of years. He came to visit, and so did I.

We moved to Austin because Big Brother and his family had settled here, my parents and oldest sibling were only 200 miles away, and because I intended to go to grad school at the University of Texas. A bonus incentive was that BFF had settled here, too. With my return to Texas, our friendship was renewed. But now, it may be ending.

Since my return to Texas eight years ago, BFF has demonstrated a tendency toward evangelism. Not of the fundamentalist Christian variety, but evangelism nonetheless. He discovered The Tao of Health, Sex, and Longevity by Daniel Reid, and it became his bible. He felt healthier than he'd ever felt before. He no longer had problems with allergies or acne. He had found The Way that was right for him, and he immersed himself in it completely. He also gave copies of the book to many of the people that he knew, including me. The tenets of the book dominated his conversation for a long time.

He also became an environmental activist. Again, he gave away copies of books that were important to him, like The End of Oil by Paul Roberts. Daily, he forwarded emails from the various green listservs to which he belonged. He pointed out the dietary and environmental failings of his friends and lovers. He preached with the fervor of a born-again sinner.

It was important to him, and he was important to me, so I went along. I tried his diet for six months, and felt no different. I fasted twice a year for a few years, and I got a little bit more out of that, but not enough to make it a permanent aspect of my life. I debated politics with him, in person and in email, until I could no longer stomach the same arguments going around and around and around. As I've mentioned before, he helped curb my rampant conservatism, to a degree. But I finally had to tell him how weary I've grown of his relentess efforts to change me into the friend he wishes I was.

And now, he's discovered Landmark Forums. After a lull in our friendship, he called me out of the blue to apologize for not being a very good friend to me and to ask me to support him by attending a graduation ceremony for a class that he had taken called Landmark Forum. I was touched that he reached out like that, and I told him I'd be there. After I hung up, I Googled it. I was concerned by what I found. It struck me, rightly or wrongly, as a cynical combination of cult and corporation, manipulating their clients' emotional response to the carefully developed and presented content in order to convert them to recruiters to grow ever-larger the corporate bottom line. Is it an actual cult? I don't know. Is Scientology a cult? I don't know. Do the histories and ideologies of Landmark and Scientology intersect here and there? I think so.

The language BFF used in that phone call was repeated in the pages I found: he had been "running a racket" on me, creating "vicious circles;" he wanted to "be present" with me, and "create the possibility" of a better relationship. I read that the phone call he made to me and the invitation to the "graduation" were indeed part of the Forum, and that part of their purpose was to have current Forum attendees working on their friends and families to increase enrollment in future Forums. I found it disturbing. I called him back to tell him that, while I would attend his graduation, I'd appreciate it if he did not give Landmark my contact information and let me make the decision myself how much involvement I wanted to have with them. He agreed, though he felt I had their motives all wrong. I considered parking a few blocks away and walking, so they couldn't hunt me down through my license plate.

The graduation itself was less a celebration of what the attendees had accomplished through the class and more an hours-long marketing session for the rest of us. I managed not to fill out the contact information cards that were repeatedly offered, and they were much less pushy about it than I anticipated. Near the end, the attendees were instructed to invite the rest of us to sign up. I told BFF I was skeptical and wanted to do some independent reading on it. He seemed disappointed, but understanding. I told him that it seemed to me that what the Forum promised to teach me over a weekend were in fact the years-long lessons that make up a life, the kinds of lessons that define each of us as people. I told him I didn't believe there were any shortcuts to be had. Truthfully, I had no intention of ever signing up, and I hoped his passion for it would fade over time. I didn't want to hurt his feelings, though, and I didn't want to drive an even larger wedge between us.

I thought my hopes were being realized when he refrained from evangelizing for Landmark on the several occasions we got together for lunch since then. He barely mentioned it, only referring obliquely to his intention to take additional Forums in the future. Saturday, he called me while Mrs. Rodius and I were driving to meet some friends for dinner. He said he didn't want to distract me while I was driving and asked me to call him back when I got home. We took too long, though, and he called again as we were headed home. I couldn't for the life of me guess what was so urgent. Mrs. Rodius guessed that he was calling to tell us his ex-girlfriend was pregnant.

He was not. He was calling because he'd just taken another Forum and was again all fired up to enroll me. He told me Landmark had more power to positively affect the future of the earth and humanity than did his previously-beloved environmentalism. He wanted me to join him, because the two of us together, with Landmark behind us, could be such powerful agents for change. He told me that he knows me so well that he knows this was just the kind of thing I was looking for to make my life better. He wanted to get me into a Forum right away, before the baby comes, because he knows I won't have time for awhile after that.

I told him I don't have time now. I told him I can't spend the money. He said it's not about the money, and he'd pay for me to go. I told him I'm not looking for a change, because my life is exactly where I want it to be, and I'm happier now than I've ever been before. I told him again that I know this is important to him, and that he is important to me, but no matter what he said to me, the answer now would be no, because with the impending birth, I have no room in my life for the Forum.

But I do not want to lose him as a friend. I do not want him to become isolated from anyone in his life who is not a fellow proponent of Landmark. So I told him that if it was still important to him in six months, we could discuss it again. I did not promise to sign up, but I didn't make it clear that I won't be. I did not tell him that if he knew me so well, he would know this is exactly the kind of thing I would never want to be a part of. I did not tell him that it is about the money; it's not about whether or not I pay to attend the one Forum, it's about convincing me to be a recruiter, just as he has become. It's about convincing me to start a lifelong involvement with many more and more expensive Forums down the road. He would say that I'm "creating" that reality myself.

So now I am very sad. How do I keep my friend without signing up for a program that is utter anathema to me? Do I sign up in six months and let him pay for it (because I'm certainly not dropping hundreds of dollars on this thing after cutting our income significantly), just to keep him from feeling like I rejected it, and therefore him, without even giving it a try? What would you do?

In Which I Abuse Italicized Foreign Phrases

I've been loathe to breathe even a single political word in this space, because, well, I'm an attention whore, and I'm afraid of alienating the few people who do come here and feed my need. Y'all seem to be such kinder, gentler souls than I, and I didn't want to out myself as an auslander.

But now that I've been voted a sensitive, albeit Rockin', girl, I think it's time I admitted it: I voted for George W. Bush.

I'll wait for the gasps to die down.

I only did it the first time, I promise. I won't defend the decision, because I'm sure most of you consider it indefensible. At least the second time I voted Libertarian.

I don't know what to think about politics anymore. When I was in high school, I was oblivious. When I was in college, I was indoctrinated into the affirmative action outrage, animal rights outrage, pro-choice outrage. I've kept most of that last one.

When I got out of college, I did a lot of independent reading, some of it about the Civil War, and began to think more about states' rights and large, centralized federal bureaucracies. It's not the lesson we're supposed to draw from the slavers/liberators morality play that the Civil War story has become, but I began to believe that the larger a bureaucracy became, the less effectively it was able to manage the problems for which it was created. A large bureaucracy with coercive power has a built-in motivation to grow ever-larger, and corruption and abuse are inescapable side effects.

So conservatism, here I come! And which of the two major political parties pretends to be the fiscally conservative defender of the Constitution? Well, they both do to a degree, but I bought into the Republican hype because the Democratic hype doesn't have that much "limited role of government" rhetoric to it. And then there was Bill Clinton. I spent the end of the nineties whining, with much exasperation, "He's the chief law enforcement officer in the nation, who committed perjury and asked others to commit perjury in order to avoid personal liability in a civil lawsuit brought by a private citizen! Of course he should be impeached!" And the answer was always, "It's just sex. Everybody does it!" And so I swore off the Democratic Party for all eternity, amen.

But a friend made it his personal mission to liberalize my conservatism. His particular bent is environmentalism, and there is some truth to the idea that there is no other entity in the world with the authority to protect our natural resources from selfish misuse better than a large, federal government. So there's that.

And then there's the fact that the Bush administration, those fiscally conservative defenders of the Constitution, have grown the federal bureaucracy and mutilated American civil liberties more than any other administration ever, Republican or Democrat. So there's that, too.

Oh my, I just received an office-wide email about building security. It has the subject line "Back Door Entry." Must. Resist. The urge. To reply. Must! Resist!

Sorry, I got distracted for a second there. Where was I? Oh yeah, what's a fiscally conservative, socially laissez-faire boy to do?

I was thinking about this guy, but he came across as a total goofball with virtually no political savoir faire when I saw him on The Colbert Report. Of course, how can anybody come across as anything but a goofball when they're on The Colbert Report? But then I also read that while he doesn't think the Federal government has the authority to regulate abortion and gay marriage (they are more appropriately left to the individual states to legislate), he is personally strongly opposed to them. So that takes him right off the table. I can't vote for a guy who, upon becoming President, might suddenly feel the call of his moral imperative.

What does that leave? Where does someone turn when he wants a small federal government that doesn't interfere in social issues like gay marriage? Libertarians, I guess. But that seems kind of like voting for your little brother's video phone footage for Best Picture Oscar: it could be a gas, and it might even be true, but I can tell you right now, he won't ever have to worry about writing that acceptance speech. Anybody got any better ideas?