I Don't Actually Know What Kind of Jets We Use, Anymore.

From the BBC (Well, mostly. People should know better than to give their kids names like that.)

"You can't fly missions over Afghanistan from the Gulf because you'd have to fly over Iran," explained Lieutenant-Commander Charlie Brown. "Every time I get anywhere near Afghanistan, that rat Iran jerks it away, and I wind up flying through the air and falling on my back!"

When further questioned, that blockhead admitted that he was hopeful about the current maneuvers. "Maybe this time I'll finally get to fly a mission into Afghanistan. Maybe this will be the day."

The F-15 Eating Tree refused to comment on the situation in Afghanistan.

And in the Darkness Bind Them?

Watching a few re-runs of Bill Maher’s "Real Time" last night, I was inspired by a comment made by conservative think-tanker David Frum. He was pretty directly assaulted by the combination of self-proclaimed libertarian Maher, Democratic mayor of Atlanta, Shirley Franklin and recording artist John Legend throughout the entire episode. To Maher’s credit, most of the childish yelling and booing from the audience was met with calls for quiet. The guy was putting himself out there by appearing on that show. Creating an interesting dialogue between people with harshly divided viewpoints is good for everyone, and shutting him up by calling out “Bush sucks” is just crude.

Frum was asked point blank what he believed about homosexuality, and given no alternative but to answer simply whether he believed in gay marriage. What he said—and keep in mind Frum worked for the American Enterprise Institute; (their record speaks for itself) was that he believed that (paraphrasing) we need to work on heterosexual marriage before we try experimenting. Experimenting was his word. He was cut off by reactions from all around him at that point, and the idea of "working on" it was not further explored.

The US divorce rate is the world's highest, and probably still climbing. A very large portion of children are born out of wedlock (almost forty percent, per the USA Today), and even more are raised by single parents or some variation of time-share custody. I won’t say that’s automatically a bad thing, and I won’t pretend to know how that feels (I’m one of those freaks with happily married fifty-something parents). But let’s talk about "working on heterosexual marriage," since so many people think it's important.

The old trope is that “the American family is our greatest strength.” Do we actual derive any benefit, as a country, from the idealized nuclear family unit? The perspective of evolutionary psychology would have us believe that families are an extension of our very important hard-coded genetic desire to exist in groups. Sensibly, of course. We have a number of adaptations for working in teams and organizing.

Standing in line at Trader Joe’s last night, I engaged in a conversation with the two people ahead of me. One of the two expressed what I thought was some pretty overwrought frustration with “shopping couples.” Have you seen this? It’s a smart tactic. The two gather the majority of their groceries together, then one gets in line with the cart while the other procures some of the hard-to-find or far-flung items.

I have my doubts that this is what Neoconservatives are getting at when they call families “our greatest strength,” but that illustrates the basic concept that teams can achieve more than individuals. For decades women stayed home and raised children while men earned money to support the group. There are disadvantages to this (Jesus Christ, are there ever disadvantages. If I ever have kids there’s no way I’m leaving them for ten hours a day every day. I can’t see any lifestyle more likely to cause both parents to resent the other), of course, but it does maximize the utility of both adults.

These days, most families find that both parents need to go out and work in order to earn enough money to support children. This is a fundamental breakdown of that so-called “tried and true” family unit. More than two parents are necessary to provide money, attention and love to children. I’m going to say that fundamentally and without exception, and I’ll accept the consequences. How many families rely on day care or grandparents to keep children safe during the day?

How do we work on marriage? Why don’t we find ways to make staying together beneficial? If you truly believe that marriages are important, and the law needs to be a part of that relationship, the law needs to create incentives to stay married. This isn’t Moral Decline, it’s basic economics. When both parents have the capacity to support themselves, and even together *do not* have the resources to support children in all the ways they'd like, the two don’t need each other. Overcoming the barbaric practice of enslaving one partner to the other in a gender-biased fashion has led us to a state of being where the dissolution of a union is a decision that only involves emotional concerns. Staying together “for the children” isn’t important when they’re already raised by a third party.

The American nuclear family unit is the biggest weakness our state faces. Innovation and freedom are more important to us than the nuclear unit. People's lives are more fluid. Commitments to companies and organizations are shoreter term. Cooperative theorists have proposed that larger units could function in today’s economy by allowing, for example, five out of seven adults to work, while the remaining two take care of children, maintain the home and fend off predators…

Ok, not that last one, but that's my direct allusion to tribal life in the survival environment. That's where all those instincts and behaviors for group living come from, after all. And, hell, in the modern workplace with the average length of employment decreasing, switching off responsibilities is a possibility. (Yes, I admit, one probably fraught with ugly domestic disputes, but a definite possibility.)

Our notion of the nuclear family is powerful, but everything can change. Either the underpinnings of our successful, mostly free, world-class economy will change, or the family will. Divorce will become more common. People will cling to whatever rock they can to avoid the crushing expense of childcare. Say what you will about the American people: they might not know a lot of facts or do very well on tests, but they figure out their own best interest eventually. Laws change, morals are discarded and life goes on. Is it an important use of national resources to protect and improve marriage in the United States? Probably not. Is it important to make sure that kids have loving, available, attentive parents? Of course.

Fight the sickness, not the symptoms.

In Betweens

Darkest before dawn...
Further to fall...

Those of us living in the here and now mostly move from dusk to dawn, with nothing in between. Twilight lives of good and bad, gray areas in the photometaphoric sense. Morally questionable and generally on the middle-steps of the ladder. We never find the eye of a storm, nor the whirling, soul-killing precipice of the hurricane's teeth. If we're lucky, life is a kaleidoscope of tiny aches and brief victories. Brief lullabies and transient dirges. Those heights of ecstasy and depths of despair come only with vanishing regularity. We wake up one morning to find twenty dollars, but puncture a tire on the freeway. You get that tiny raise you wanted, but come home to an empty apartment.

In all likelihood, we will mostly dwell in the moderate and learn to appreciate little victories. And in a perfect world, we'll aspire to something greater, but find satisfaction with what we can find.

Also

As a sort of addendum to my previous post, I think MySpace is trying to have sex with me.

The Dating Minefield

There is something so incredibly damning about sending a message to a stranger through the aether of the Internet. The stripping down of masks and personae. That open, honest communication that people spoke of ten years ago in the dawn of the chatroom—the one that made online weddings so much purer and more intellectually honest—isn't entirely false. No one is truly surprised that we haven't seen the text-based dating world supplant nature's own, but neither do they have any reason to discount the very naked sharing that can happen in such a forum.

I won't lie about the fact that I respond to personals and pursue romantic interests through dating sites. I do. It's the more fruitful of the two ways I meet women at all. The second, dating friends of friends, has had a return of about two in two years. Once I met a girl in a public place and dated her, also unsuccessfully, but I'm beginning to regard that as a fluke, not a viable alternative. The fact remains that I'm usually drunk or otherwise impaired in public, and my decisions aren't realistic or wise. The pictures people provide of themselves on the Internet are enough to establish a modicum of physical attraction when your eye is seasoned to the tricks people play.

I just wrote an entreaty to a young woman in my area through a dating site that plays with the triumphs of social networking and the allure of user-created electronic “testing.” Surveys. These are something like Cosmopolitan's quizzes, injected with 100cc of anabolic steroids and the irreverent groupthink that is spawned by the odd wikismörgåsbord of ten-million-some lonely singles. I don't know yet if there will be any reply, despite my finely crafted missive.

I can tell right away that I've made some questionable choices. Like the pigeon in Skinner's box, I only have my previous examples to draw on, and the decisions made by the unsuspecting targets of my would-be affections may be completely random. Brevity seems to be a good way to open an exchange. Or, at least, the results of these previous successes imply this. So I've been brief. I've also tried to extract some kind of dream-like effluvia from the meager details this lovely young lady has lain out on her “profile.”

This is clearly stupid on my part. Would anyone who was actually interested in meeting a potential significant other actually lay out all the keys in their two hundred word essay? Wouldn't the most intelligent strategy be to wait for someone to come along who says the correct thing without prompting?

I feel this foreboding twist in my muscles immediately after releasing an inquiry like this into her waiting inbox every single time I do this. It leaves me unable to sleep, wracked with thoughts. Embarrassments. Would-have-beens. This is what was seen by those early pioneers of the e-relationship. My psyche is being stretched so thin that it hurts. My vulnerability is spread on the page like a mono-molecular layer of peanut butter on a pauper's sandwich. And this is all before any actual interaction has occurred!

Mind you, sometimes it works. And usually, after all the wall-building and self-effacing tosses and turns between the sheets, I'm no longer interested in the physical being who presents herself to me. Usually I can't wait to go home and laugh about it. But here, in the moment, I am a sheared lamb. All of my puff and valor gone the way of the sweater.

Every time I stand on the train, riding to work, and observe a young man or woman with an iPod turned up loud, earbuds assaulting their cochlear canals, I see the very root of human reproduction besieged. Constant public conversations on cell phones are a modern salvo against hook-ups or a thickly interlaced society of many cultures fucking and swapping memes in dark places. The conservative agenda has known no greater ally than digital hand-held technology in the fight against promiscuity.

All the classic avenues for breaching the thick sand-bag walls that surround my minuscule social circle have been barricaded and cut off.

So I try the electronic superhighway to love. And my inability to hide behind a smile or a carefully crafted appearance leave me the stepchild of the eighties and the naughts. No doubt my descendants will negotiate this javascript minefield in sashaying figure-eights, but I stumble like a half-blind eunuch at the senior prom.

(Thank you for reading as the stupid monkey complains about his inadequacies.)

The Worst Euphamism, Ever.

Japan basically did something stupid and heartless this week.

During World War II a lot of repugnant acts were performed. I wouldn't feel out of line if I ventured to say that this is the expectation in war. But we live in an international culture of apology. Attrocities need to be recognized by the elites and bemoaned as tragedies. Reparations need to be made for the slate of a relationship to be wiped clean.

The Japanese government of WWII created brothels for it soldiers, allowing combatants behind the front lines to have companionship. (The news media is referring to these enslaved victims as "comfort women." No doubt that's a ragged translation of some official Japanese euphamism. Yuck.) There is, no doubt, some advantage to be gained by providing regular release from the tensions of battle. I can see why a brutal, expansionistic, top-down aristocracy suffering from a violent shift into a dehumanizing mechanistic infrastructure might err on the side of utility rather than compassion in this case.

But the institutionalized rape of two hundred thousand women is a crime that humanity itself cannot live down; apologies and reparations notwithstanding, that is a stain on our collective world culture.

US Representatives Michael Honda, Madeleine Bordallo, Phil Hare and Edward Royce show powerful resolve to give closure to those women still living, and show clear accountability for the acts. Their resolution HR 121, referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, asks the Japanese government to "Refute any claims that the sexual enslavement and trafficking... never occurred," and "accept historical responsibility." Should their bill pass, our government would ask the Japanese government to "educate current and future generations."

Big deal. Half-steps. The bill doesn't ask for reparations; the bill doesn't seek any countermeasure to the wrongdoings. Honda et al are merely posturing. They're playing the role of preening peacocks in nature preserve of the culture of apology. I'm tired of apologies. Human society doesn't get back any credibility by expressing regret. Someone recently said to me, speaking on parenting, that when a child misbehaves, "trust is regained slowly. [We] earn trust with positive actions." The Japanese government will earn the trust and respect of its voters with by setting out on a long journey of honesty and discourse. By talking about tragedies, but additionally by not denying any new ones.

Additionally, we're asking for this disavowal and education from a government which did not even exist at the time in question. It's not clear from the bill if we're asking for this apology from Japan's Diet or from it's Imperial House. The Imperial's could definitely apologize for this, as they are the hereditary bearers of internationally acknowledged guilt from Hirohito. But the civil government? Admittedly their actions since the time of these military brothels has been less than forthcoming at being honest about the reality of these actions, but they have set up private commissions to provide aid for the affected.

There's another government who could be held accountable if, indeed, the current Japanese leadership is deemed responsible. That's our own. The reconstruction of Japan after World War II was overseen by Douglas Macarthur and our own government. We didn't take any steps to provide our allies in Korea, China and the Phillipines with help for these abused women. As near as I can tell, no one in the US government has done anything before this house resolution to make ammends for that oversight.

And we have our own soldiers who had their own way with the women of Europe and the Pacific islands as well! The soldiers of the United States took regular forays into the European countryside to rape or seduce young girls throughout both world wars. This may be harder to lay a finger on than 200,000 imprisoned women, but it certainly shouldn't be immune to the culture of apology. Come out and show yourselves, anyone who has ever been violated by a soldier in a sexual manner. Let all governments, everywhere be forced to lay these gruesome truths on the table so that we can have our apologies.

Seriously, though, it's difficult to know where to draw these lines. Let's not let 200,000 women suffer quietly. Let's know that it is right to acknowledge suffering, but do not stoop to the level of the mob. Demanding apologies from bodies who have no traceable lineage to the parties who committed the act isn't rational, it's just going for blood. The Japanese government will earn or lose respect by how it helps those who suffered, not by hanging its head and acting remorseful.