Zell Miller Pops a Vein

Scowling like a constipated headmaster, Democratic senator Zell Miller unleashed a venomous scolding last night of John Kerry and the unpatriotic ingrates who dare to work for the removal of the current commander-in-chief.

Here once again we saw a frightening example of blind militarism masquerading as patriotism. Miller's vein-popping rage is inspired by an unhealthy belief that once bullets begin to fly, the reasons that triggered them need to be buried and we all need to fall into line in humble obedience to the president and unquestioning support for his policies. For Miller and many of his ilk, military action is in and of itself sacred and opposition to it tantamount to treason. I can only hope that reasonable people will see the danger in this type of thinking and the hateful rhetoric that accompanies it. Dissent in this country is always legitimate, especially in matters of war. People like Miller are justifiably proud of having served in the armed forces and his claim that American troops serve as liberators and not occupiers can be amply supported in most of our historical military engagements, notably the two world wars of the last century. But we cannot permit ourselves to so fetishize our military as to render ourselves incapable of criticizing actions that result in its deployment. And if we believe that a presidential administration has improperly used military force, conscience and civic duty demand that we work vigorously to oppose and remove it from office.

Miller's diatribe was a shameful disservice to the millions of Americans who are concerned about Bush's actions and his posture in combatting Al Qaeda. Few of us opposed taking action in Afghanistan and few of us call for restraint in pursuing, capturing, and destroying the Islamic extremists who use terror as a tactic to advance their sick politico-religious agenda. The reason Bush's support has dropped from greater to 90% to less than 50% is that many people are troubled by the admininstration's willingness to speak of terror as movement rather than as a tactic and his willingness to blur distinctions between the Islamic radicals who represent an urgent and imminent threat to our interests and everyone else who may have some sort of hostile posture with respect to the U.S. Iraq is the case in point.

The United States was attacked on 9/11 by an organization of Islamic extremists. This organization and others like it also hold responsibility for the attack of the Cole, the original World Trade Center bombing, the attacks on our embassies in Africa, and many others. They are inspired by a radical brand of Islam that is taught in various forms in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan and which managed to come to power in a perversely medieval form in Afghanistan. We've been dealing with this Islamic radicalism in one way or another since at least the time of the Iranian Revolution, in which a secular dictatorship supported by the U.S. was overthrown and an Islamic theocracy put in its place.

Iraq was not on the verge of Islamic revolution. Iraq was a secular society controlled by a dictator, as is Syria and some would argue, Egypt.. Iraq's threat to the U.S. was much different in character than that posed by the nihilistic, suicidal extremists of Al Qaeda. Iraq behaved like a traditional nation-state with the same desires for power and fears of retribution as any other nation-state. Certainly, Iraq was hostile to the U.S. and if there was a strategic case for pre-emptively invading Iraq, it could have been made and should have been made in the context of comparing its relative threat to other states that are similarly hostile to the U.S. (North Korea, Cuba, the Sudan, Syria, and others)

However, Bush avoids differentiating between state actors and non-state actors, between Islamists and secularists, between hostile postures of nations wishing to exist in perpetuity and suicidal individuals ready to die for the glory of Islam. He instead lumps everything into the single abstract category of terrorism. This is tactically brilliant for his own political philosophy and for the aggregation of power by the executive branch. It is dangerous, in my view, for the nation for two reasons. The first is that it allows the president to exploit people's fears to ram through policies and actions that would not be so easy to get away with otherwise. The second is that it emboldens the Zell Millers of the world to lash out wildly against people who exercise their right to dissent, paint them as unpatriotic and "soft on terrorism," and unfairly destroy careers, reputations, and lives. Zell Miller is cut from the same cloth as Joseph McCarthy - change the word from terrorist to communist and you're finding reds under the beds and holding hearings on Un-American Activities.

The Lamentations of October

Oh Lord, Your ways to us are mysterious. We beseech You to grant us understanding, to remove the scales from our eyes and show us the reasons for our suffering.

Oh that you allow death and destruction and sickness to be visited on Your people. That You permit flood waters to rise and fires to burn. That You send tornadoes to trailer parks and mudslides to mountain peasants.

Oh that You give tax cuts to the wealthy and pink slips to the poor. That You permit a madman on a donkey to knock down buildings with airplanes. That Kenneth Lay and Bernie Ebbers collect millions while the guy that holds up the 7-11 does time. That the good die young and the wicked endure.

Oh that the arrogant jerk gets the homecoming queen. That a muscle-bound movie star becomes governor. That not just one, but two Bushes have been President. That summer always ends, flowers always die, and Mondays follow Sundays.

Verily, oh Lord, Your ways are strange. But with baseball, oh Lord, they are exceedingly cruel.

Oh that the Yankees always win and the Red Sox always choke. That Mickey Owen, Bill Buckner, and Leo Durham couldn't get their gloves to the ground in time. That You allowed the designated hitter and artificial turf and the Montreal Expos. That we have been plagued with free agency and million dollar utility infielders and ball parks named after shooting stars of technology. That Jose Canseco and Reggie Jackson won championships and Ted Williams and Ernie Banks did not. That Pete Rose bet on games, and though we begged Joe to say it ain’t so, the Sox did indeed throw the Series. That the Dodgers moved to L.A. That You took Lou Gehrig and Roberto Clemente too soon. And just where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

But, oh Lord, although many things exceed our baseball understanding, it is indeed easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than for us to understand Your wrath against the Cubs.

The Cubs, dear Lord, the Cubs. For ninety-five years they have frolicked in sun-drenched mediocrity. They play in the paradise of ballparks, in friendly confines ringed with brick and ivy. They lose – consistently, routinely, sometimes spectacularly – but they lose just the same. We love them despite the fact that they lose. We love them in fact because they lose. They personify loserdom – they validate our own losses.

They lost despite Ernie, who always wanted to play two. They lost while Billy swung sweetly. They lost with Santo, they lost with Sandburg, they lost with Maddux and then they lost more when they lost Maddux.

Despite all, Cub fans have remained loyal. Think of them, Lord. Inside every Cub fan is a Wal-Mart greeter. Cub fans eat hot dogs, they wear bowling shirts, they drink Old Style and like it. They ride buses. They vote, oh Lord, early and often, and do not shirk their civic obligation even after death. They live in neighborhoods and support their local parish. They speak Polish and Spanish and Russian and German and even English with a funny accent. They are Your children, if ever any could make that claim.

But now, Lord, they suffer anew and know not why. For the lowly Cubs have unexpectedly risen to knock on destiny’s door. Redemption was but a game away. Redemption was but five outs away. Prior was on the mound, oh Lord. Prior – as wholesome as the chewing gum sold by the ballpark’s namesake. Prior – young, tall, poised, dominant. The Cub fan in everyone was rooting desperately for You to smile at last and nod assent to that most unhoped for of all hopes – the World Series, Lord, the World Series.

And then, cruelty of a sort unimagined. A fan, an innocent fan. A true Cub fan, with oversized cap and big nerdy glasses and ears plugged into the radio play-by-play. A fan who undoubtedly said prayers of thanks to You for his box seat on the third-base line. A fan who undoubtedly suffered through’84 and ’89 and knows by heart the legendary swoon of ‘69. Why, if there had to be one to commit the boner of boners, to break all our hearts and surely his own, why did You let it be this poor man, this accountant, this computer geek, this Blockbuster clerk? Why if it had to be, did You not cause some drunken, bare-chested frat boy with face paint and a Mohawk to serve as the object of wrath of a horrified and dejected city?

Lord, we still have hope. There is a game seven. There is Kerry Wood. There will again be thousands gathered at Clark and Addison while millions watch vicariously, waiting for the chance to celebrate at long last, to bury the past, to kill the goat, to forgive the nerd.

Please – one Job was enough to get Your point across. Harry: use your influence.

The War Song of George W. Bush

With inspiration from and apologies to T. S. Eliot.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the bombs' smoke is spread out against the sky
Like their victims etherised on makeshift tables;
Let us go through cratered, shrapnel-littered streets,
The muttering retreats
Of Arab troops in unrelenting hells
And toppled maniacs in buried cells:
Streets that follow like my tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lure you, deaf to worldwide opposition . . .
Oh do not ask, 'What was it?'
That made us go install our puppet!

From the flight deck sorties come and go
Dropping on targets far below.

The terror fog that clouds the thoughts of fearful brains
The terror threat that haunts the dreams of fearful brains
Licked its tongue into the dark days of McCarthy,
Lingered with the fools that ask for chains,
Let fall upon its back the soot of burned up freedoms,
Slipped by the Congress, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it faced a soft and token fight,
Curled tight about our rights, with most asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the terror threat that permeates our lives
Clouding the thoughts inside our fearful brains;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a war to meet the terrors that we meet;
There will be time to murder, recreate,
And time to loot the works and change the lands
That shift and pose a problem for our state;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for some UN indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Of those repackaging our history.

From the flight deck sorties come and go
Dropping on targets far below.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, 'Do I dare?' and, 'Do I care?'
Time to give back and replace with prayer,
The civil liberties that once were there -
(They will say: 'How their rights are growing thin!')
The anchor's gloat, and chiseled jaw, and never ending grin,
His necktie patriotic, and emblazoned with a spangled pin -
(They will say: 'But how his bites and clips are thin!')
Do I go
Before the UN first?
In a conflict there is time
For decisions and revisions which a conflict will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all
Have known the high life, beer blasts, pretzel swoon,
I was granted my first term by silver spoon;
I know the voice votes dying with a dying call
Beneath the gavel of the Senate room.
Global power I assume?

And I have known the ayes already, known them all -
The ayes that boost you in the formulaic phase
And when I am formulaic, prowling on a whim,
When I have whims and Congress at my call,
That's how I can begin
Defiscalizing dividends for all my wealthy friends.
Global leader I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all -
Arms that are nuclear or not, but chers
(But in the night fight, downed on targets fair!)
Is it military dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that fly along a laser, to resurrect a Shah.
Global power I assume?
And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I was blessed with trust, lacked Ivy feats,
But watched the smoke that rises from the rooms
Of business men in cuffed sleeves fixing me the Rangers? . . .

I would have lost, but for the hanging chads
Scuttled in haste and shame by tarnished courts.

In the briefing room, with evidence, Powell pleads urgently!
Spinning humdingers,
Rumsfeld . . . Franks …and troops malinger,
(Cheney's seen no more, for his security).
Shall I, after Iraq's been purged of vices
Have support to thwart the next fake crisis?
But though I have prepped the masses, kept afraid,
Though I have let Korea (grown slightly bold) restart their bomb reactor,
They are not Muslim - and hence no great matter
I have seen the image of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the French and Russians block the vote, and snicker
And in short, I was enraged.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the Ba'ath, the Taliban, to see
Among the battle plans and paranoid security,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the interests into the will
To roll out at last some comprehensive health plan,
To say: 'I am Roosevelt, come with the Deal,
Come back to help you all, I shall help you all -
If one, settling a lawsuit on appeal,
Should say: "It is now what is fair for all.
It is now fair, for all.'

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while
After the anthrax, and the Twin Towers, and the panicked streets,
After Kyoto, after the scandals, after the stocks that tanked and made us poor -
And this, and so much more? -
It must be possible for justice to be seen!
But as if the major networks told the truth in programs on the screen;
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a lawsuit or sentencing a shill,
And citing the Constitution, should say:
"It is now fair for all.
It is now what is fair, for all."

No! I am not Abe Lincoln, nor was meant to be;
Am reborn in the Lord, one that will do
To swell an ego, start a war or two,
Despise the French; no doubt, the dainty fools,
Presidential, glad to stage a ruse;
Politic, reckless, and iniquitous;
Fond of death sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous -
Almost, at times, a fool.

I grow bold . . . I grow bold . . .
I shall wear down Congress till my tax cut's sold.

Shall I part with old allies? Do I dare the peace to breach?
I shall send troops preemptively, cruise missiles where they'll reach.
I have heard Al Qaeda talking, each to each.

They'll die in caves or else hang separately.

I have seen bin Laden's terror in my dreams
Bombing the White House, bringing small pox back
When the wind aids the bio-chem attack.

We have tinkered with the world economy
And nations propped with World Bank loans and yet
The ingrates cannot service all their debt.

The Nuisance of Private Ownership

I became a homeowner in a fit of temporary insanity. One of my more prominent genes has consistently sent an unmistakable message to the boys at Central Nervous: Don’t buy. Rent. Somehow, some way, however, nurture tricked nature, the clarity of instinct blurred, and I foolishly signed away my money and leisure.

I’m not lazy. It’s just that ordering my days according to the strictures of household maintenance always seemed a perversion of priorities. I was right, of course. Like everyone in the muddling middle-class, I owe most my time to people I would rather not know and activities I would rather not do. But unlike many in my social milieu, I am loathe to fritter away my meager free time tinkering about my domicile. First, my craving for self-expression cannot be satisfied by a well-manicured lawn, or by the brand of faucet that spouts water on my head, or by a sprawling wooden wasp nest appended to the back of the house. Second, I have no talent for labor of the manual and dexterous sort. The ineptitude with which I wield a power drill, for example, would win me a starring role in a slapstick short. Despite careful measurements and penciled stenciled pilot holes, the screws inevitably penetrate off perpendicular. I then cuss a bright blue streak, hurl my tool, and punish my incompetence with a painful pound of the fist on something not meant for fist to pound against. Finally, my father was a spy, not a carpenter or mechanic, and despite his latent flowering as Mr. Fix-it, let me pass my youth chasing balls and girls and failed to instruct me in the handy arts. Thank God.

Although I’ll admit to some strategic miscalculations of life course, I’m far from stupid and present my engineering degree as evidence of an ascetic stubbornness to earn stage credit even when hopelessly miscast. But neither my highfalutin schooling nor my long association with techies and trekkies gave any osmotic boost to my feeble domestic intuition. I still sadly lack the hands-on how-to most folks seem to develop naturally. I am always amazed that people puzzled by algebra can correctly calculate the amount of drywall needed for a half-bath or that good souls blissfully ignorant of the mathematics of fluid flow can diagnose plumbing problems with knowledgeable references to drains and traps and valves and seals. My eyes, in sad contrast, glaze over quickly when trying to figure out the working and wiring of a three-way switch, a problem I never confronted on all the electrical engineering exams I aced.

The structure I bought and euphemistically call home has what realtors, neighbors, and members of the Bob Vila cult call “character.” To these silly and dangerous fools, “character” means Victorian nooks and crannies, turn-of-the-century curlicues, and lots and lots of oak. Character really means gaping fissures swallowing disintegrating plaster. It means paint and varnish on the precious oak resistant to blistering heat and chemicals that could dissolve diamonds. It means hidden, waterlogged two-by-fours nesting insects whose swarming numbers easily outmatch the beer-bellied goof sent by Terminix. Character means an ancient toilet one dares not flush with the lid open for fear of sucking toiletries, knick-knacks, and domestic animals into the stinking entrails of the Chicago sewer system. It means porous pipes in the upstairs bath that seep and form plaster stalactites on the dining room ceiling, creating a homey ambience for the troglodytes and spelunkers among our dinner guests. Don’t give me the song and dance about character.

Allow me to take you on a brief literary tour of my home. To quote a cliché of the smiling faces gracing the paper placemats at the nearby pancake house, it has location, location, location – at least with respect to transportation, transportation, transportation. The Kennedy expressway meets with the Edens at a stone’s throw from my back windows, from which, by the way, I can verify the accuracy of the rush hour traffic report. A steady whispered roar is the audible sum of the Dopplered traffic rushing past, with the occasional throaty downshift of an angry truck providing bass counterpoint. The clattering El splits eardrums as it splits eastbound and westbound lanes of the Kennedy. And the double-deckered majesty of the Metra train whistles and dings not fifty yards from my back door. E-Z on, E-Z off, but a din of urban white noise perhaps disturbing to light sleepers.

Our house is fourth from the north on the east side of Keystone, a street segmented into a short autonomous stretch from the Metra line to the north to a run of homes on Grace to the south. It faces a fenced schoolyard landscaped with weedy grass and blotches of ancient asphalt and shadowed by a large, drab, red brick school. Like the other houses in the neighborhood and throughout the city, ours has a brief front yard belted by a sidewalk luckily in better repair than some. The front porch might wrap around if it could, but the narrow gangways spacing the neighboring homes truncate it to the width of the house. This is fortunate, since the porch’s border of wrought iron seahorses and licorice sticks took me four months to prime and paint last summer as it is.

Our home is sided in grayish blue vinyl, which, for some curious reason probably part of the pitch of the guy who sold it, has swirls of simulated wood grain. The fatness of the siding suggests the dowdy peasantry of the neighborhood’s Central European ancestry; homes more recently sheathed by yuppie newcomers have thin and elegant strips, even if they still suffer from shadings too muted and putrid or too childishly bold. I’ve always been partial to the earthy dignity of brick and stone and have never liked the motley hodgepodge of off-the-rack frame house fashions. I’m sure some bright social scientist somewhere earned his doctorate explaining why Americans wrap their homes in colored plastic.

Entry into my house is gained through a front door of handsome oak rather precariously framing a large pane of plate glass. The fact a competent burglar could pop that glass in a jiffy makes a good argument for one of those impact-resistant screen doors – the kind that seal tightly with a loud pneumatic sigh and lock with crowbar-proof deadbolt. Extra aesthetic bonus points would accrue with the trashing of the flimsy, drafty, gingerbready door that currently ushers in cold air and insects with indiscriminate hospitality.

The highlights of the house are evident from the foyer. Spice brown hardwood floors cover most of the first level. The slightly more reddish banister jutting from the north wall partially hides the strong staircase that makes one abrupt right turn and a second through a fan of several steps, eventually orienting its climber 180 degrees from his starting attitude. More richly hued oak frames a north window and forms a decorative, possibly even functional, ceiling beam. So much for the highlights.

Actually, I do like the wall colors chosen by my wife and painted by a drunken Greek and his drunken mutt of a sidekick after they kalexed or katexed or some such thing to shore up the plaster. The living room is my favorite, a bold and sunny yellow that offsets the dark floors very nicely indeed. A subtle lavender (adjective useless in its redundancy) coats the foyer, the stairwell, and eventually the upstairs hallway. A fortunate play of shadows hides the splotches of old wallpaper adhesive the drunks failed to remove before painting. The dining room is two-toned. Its peach interior wall has gradually become dekalexed or texed (the trains cause the cracks, say our sympathetic neighbors) and both the peach and the pale green on the other three walls are chipped and smudged at kid level.

I attest that the moldings and baseboards of the living and dining rooms really do amount to lots and lots of oak. I became intimately acquainted with their every blessed square inch during a hellish month of stripping and sanding. The result, kindly stated, is rustic. The next sap that owns this dump can finish the job.

You have the feel for the downslope of our home’s features as you approach the rear of the house. On entering the kitchen, you sense the plummeting terror of free fall. No more time for languorous descriptions – I must rush you through the tour in mumbled embarrassment.

Kitchen: Floor the color of smoker’s teeth. Walls covered with a Formica/linoleum compound from the laboratories of the fifties. Ample cabinets. Drop ceiling hiding unspeakable horrors. Leaking faucet, drain pipe with PVC union formerly held in place by my own time-sensitive magic spell, now more professionally secured. Rotted wood below the drain pipe proof that the previous owner’s magic was no more enduring.

Half-bath: After the paint stripping nightmare, my second-biggest restoration project. Newly insulated and drywalled with the bubbles and ridges of a rank amateur. Pressed wood sub-floor promoted de facto to full floor. Spanking new double-hung. Sleek, racy, low-profiled toilet whose government-mandated 1.6 gallon flush barely beats a chamber pot.

Wreck room: Hideous dark paneling and frilly, doily, water-stained curtains (the water courtesy of a tree-scraped gash in the roof that also soaked the insulation and probably gave birth to our carpenter ants). Toys and food crumbs strewn entropically. Gurgling water cooler. Drafty door. New sliding windows giving an uninhibited view of the rotting garage. Possessive of a mysterious gravitational attraction that pulls in both guests and residents.

You may have heard enough. But I insist on diverting your imagination upstairs (I haven’t the Inquisitional heart to torture you in the basement dungeon). Resist shrieking at the tentacles protruding from the wall and groping for your face – they are only Edison-era wires grasping for the missing wall sconce. Glance in the master bedroom and breathe with relief – it’s large and charming with handsome maple floors and bay windows. You’ll find the other bedrooms more or less inhabitable as well and you may even find clever our use of one dinky little room as a walk-in closet. But if you peer into the bathroom, the illusion of respectability will be shattered.

Let’s end the tour before I start plaintively moaning about the financial aspects of my residence. Suffice it to say that any repair costing less than a grand either doesn’t last or looks bad and anything more than a grand means I got screwed. The famous mortgage interest deduction is more than offset by such unforeseen foibles as a failed furnace in a mid-December freeze or a fund-sucking attempt to fortify the fenestration.

Fly on, unencumbered spirits! Keep your rented studios, your two-bedroom flats. Boomerang back to your parents, if necessary, or be not too proud to lodge in the alcoholic warmth of a decent flop house. Take on spouses and kids and pets and jobs with mind-crushing demands. But until you’re ready to bed yourself in the mossy fungus of the sedentary life, avoid the jungle of homeownership.