Category Archives: Political Rant

On shopping

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It is that time of year when societal pressure turns us all into shop-aholics–not because we want to be, but because it’s what everyone expects. So we buy a bunch of stuff that no one really wants and give it to people who already have everything that they already want. The traffic is terrible, the stores are jammed, everyone is short-tempered, they don’t have what you want, you are running short of funds, and you are creating of crisis of both financing and conscience at the same time. We over-consume on a regular basis without giving it much thought. We hurt ourselves because we are only thinking of ourselves and our tremendous righteousness as consumers who have everything: we don’t consider the poor or the hungry–we have met Scrooge and he is us, to paraphrase Pogo. We lead cushy lives, totally intent on satisfying our every need, but we build our castles on the sinking sand of materialism without the foggiest idea that this is not solid rock. We obsess about who might be doing what with whom, which is a total and complete waste of time when we don’t even know how to lead our own pathetic lives. If fact, I always suspect those who complain the loudest without keeping their own doorsteps clean. If we think our materialism will save us, we are so sadly wrong.

On shopping

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It is that time of year when societal pressure turns us all into shop-aholics–not because we want to be, but because it’s what everyone expects. So we buy a bunch of stuff that no one really wants and give it to people who already have everything that they already want. The traffic is terrible, the stores are jammed, everyone is short-tempered, they don’t have what you want, you are running short of funds, and you are creating of crisis of both financing and conscience at the same time. We over-consume on a regular basis without giving it much thought. We hurt ourselves because we are only thinking of ourselves and our tremendous righteousness as consumers who have everything: we don’t consider the poor or the hungry–we have met Scrooge and he is us, to paraphrase Pogo. We lead cushy lives, totally intent on satisfying our every need, but we build our castles on the sinking sand of materialism without the foggiest idea that this is not solid rock. We obsess about who might be doing what with whom, which is a total and complete waste of time when we don’t even know how to lead our own pathetic lives. If fact, I always suspect those who complain the loudest without keeping their own doorsteps clean. If we think our materialism will save us, we are so sadly wrong.

On The Cavanaugh Quest (Thomas Gifford)

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Over the years I have returned to this story of love and death, incest and suicide, murder, listening to the voice of a jaded and burned out Paul Cavanaugh as he tries to unravel a pretty seedy story of human shame and revenge. Cavanaugh doesn’t think anyone can sink as low as he is, on the verge of a mid-life crisis, but he soon finds out that looks can be deceiving, and that everyone is lying to him, except maybe his father. Of course, this novel is about facades, and nobody is really who they appear to be. Cavanaugh falls in love, but he’s a failed Lothario who’s affection go unrequited by one of the most interesting characters you will ever meet in a crime novel who-dun-it, Kim Roderick, who is straight out of an Poe short-story. Cavanaugh is an unlikely investigator, but not an unlikeable one, who isn’t afraid to share his shortcomings, whatever they might be. He’s a bit of a moral relativist, but even he is shocked by the crime that has been committed, especially in the end when all is revealed. Some of the book is a nostalgic, but cynical, look at Minneapolis, Minnesota in the early seventies set against the Ford pardon of Nixon. Minneapolis looks good, but it’s really rotten to the core, a moral metaphor for the ethics of the local rich and famous, upstanding citizens who are a little less than upstanding. The story evokes an end-of-summer atmosphere of sweltering heat, thunderstorms, and North Shore memories that will make any Minnesota yearn for just one more weekend up-north, at the cabin. Cavanaugh yearns to feel young again, but the decay and moral collapse around him only heightens his sense of lost youth and passing time. Though he does solve the puzzle, it’s not because he is Poirot, but because he just sticks with it until the end, as would most people. Readers will be able to relate to a “normal” guy who is not a “gifted” super-sleuth. Gifford hides the solution to the puzzle in plain sight—he’s the real genius in this novel. It unfolds slowly and methodically, and you won’t feel cheated or bamboozled at the end because the solution was more than obvious from about chapter two on. The prose flows fluidly, and although Gifford might be a bit verbose, he does it to pad the readers thoughts with lots of red-herring almost as well as Agatha Christie herself. If you are looking for something different, this might be your ticket. I highly recommend it.

On The Cavanaugh Quest (Thomas Gifford)

Posted on by

Over the years I have returned to this story of love and death, incest and suicide, murder, listening to the voice of a jaded and burned out Paul Cavanaugh as he tries to unravel a pretty seedy story of human shame and revenge. Cavanaugh doesn’t think anyone can sink as low as he is, on the verge of a mid-life crisis, but he soon finds out that looks can be deceiving, and that everyone is lying to him, except maybe his father. Of course, this novel is about facades, and nobody is really who they appear to be. Cavanaugh falls in love, but he’s a failed Lothario who’s affection go unrequited by one of the most interesting characters you will ever meet in a crime novel who-dun-it, Kim Roderick, who is straight out of an Poe short-story. Cavanaugh is an unlikely investigator, but not an unlikeable one, who isn’t afraid to share his shortcomings, whatever they might be. He’s a bit of a moral relativist, but even he is shocked by the crime that has been committed, especially in the end when all is revealed. Some of the book is a nostalgic, but cynical, look at Minneapolis, Minnesota in the early seventies set against the Ford pardon of Nixon. Minneapolis looks good, but it’s really rotten to the core, a moral metaphor for the ethics of the local rich and famous, upstanding citizens who are a little less than upstanding. The story evokes an end-of-summer atmosphere of sweltering heat, thunderstorms, and North Shore memories that will make any Minnesota yearn for just one more weekend up-north, at the cabin. Cavanaugh yearns to feel young again, but the decay and moral collapse around him only heightens his sense of lost youth and passing time. Though he does solve the puzzle, it’s not because he is Poirot, but because he just sticks with it until the end, as would most people. Readers will be able to relate to a “normal” guy who is not a “gifted” super-sleuth. Gifford hides the solution to the puzzle in plain sight—he’s the real genius in this novel. It unfolds slowly and methodically, and you won’t feel cheated or bamboozled at the end because the solution was more than obvious from about chapter two on. The prose flows fluidly, and although Gifford might be a bit verbose, he does it to pad the readers thoughts with lots of red-herring almost as well as Agatha Christie herself. If you are looking for something different, this might be your ticket. I highly recommend it.

On Boston

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As I write this chaos continues to assail Boston, even in the wake of the tragic bombing of the Marathon this past Monday. Perhaps the added chaos this evening is related to that bombing. The FBI seemed to be hot on the trail of a couple of suspects today, so it would not be surprising to find out that a shooting at MIT and further police action in Watertown was related to the terror bombing of Monday’s race. Ever since moving to Spain in 1979 I have had to deal with terrorists, bombs, shootings, and all the associated law enforcement that go with the human tragedy of senseless violence in the name of some irrational nationalism or imaginary political ideology. In the end, all you have is dead innocent victims that had nothing to do with any of that fruitless political struggle. Terrorism destroys both the lives of the innocents and their families and the terrorists themselves, who turn themselves into common criminals because they see their only answer to life’s difficult questions to be violence. Since they cannot attack an entire country, they attack the innocent, a slaughter of lambs, if you will, but what they fail to recognize is that no government worth its salt will ever give into terrorists. The police just work all that much harder to destroy the terrorists, which really only means that the prisons and jails fill up with terrorists, the political objectives become obscure or forgotten, and new terrorists are born to take the place of those who are dead or in jail. Terrorism is a snake eating its own tail, self-perpetuating, blind, filled with faulty thinking and irrational objectives, and it turns normal people into common criminals–murderers, thieves, liars. In the end, no one is particularly happy with the results. The terrorists are dead or in jail, their objectives unfulfilled; the victims are dead or grieving for with the loss of a loved one; law enforcement is frustrated because they could never prevent any of it–they only get clean-up duties. The big problem with bombers is that they never really understand that no matter how much they hurt the people they hate, those people will, eventually, bounce back. Those who have died are beyond reach of pain and their struggles are over. Those who have lost limbs will learn to walk again, readjust their lives, have families, love, grow old, and will eventually die of old age in God’s good time. And all those idealistic political agendas will have served nothing, nothing will change, nothing will be achieved but the destruction of some lives. The funny/ironic part about terrorists is that they are just normal people until they let themselves be lead astray by faulty irrational thinking and a belief that political goals can be achieved through violence. Most political extremism is illusory, foolish, irrational, vacuous, superficial, and/or unrealistic. Bombs will never change the basic objectives of a free market capitalism. If fact, I would hazard to say that terrorism does the exact opposite of what it proposes to do and reinforces democratic objectives and strengthens governments and law enforcement. In the meantime, however, our hearts are broken, our tears burn, the lump in our throats does not go away, and we stare at the ground in shame and horror, unable to understand why our world is so imperfect and broken.

On Boston

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As I write this chaos continues to assail Boston, even in the wake of the tragic bombing of the Marathon this past Monday. Perhaps the added chaos this evening is related to that bombing. The FBI seemed to be hot on the trail of a couple of suspects today, so it would not be surprising to find out that a shooting at MIT and further police action in Watertown was related to the terror bombing of Monday’s race. Ever since moving to Spain in 1979 I have had to deal with terrorists, bombs, shootings, and all the associated law enforcement that go with the human tragedy of senseless violence in the name of some irrational nationalism or imaginary political ideology. In the end, all you have is dead innocent victims that had nothing to do with any of that fruitless political struggle. Terrorism destroys both the lives of the innocents and their families and the terrorists themselves, who turn themselves into common criminals because they see their only answer to life’s difficult questions to be violence. Since they cannot attack an entire country, they attack the innocent, a slaughter of lambs, if you will, but what they fail to recognize is that no government worth its salt will ever give into terrorists. The police just work all that much harder to destroy the terrorists, which really only means that the prisons and jails fill up with terrorists, the political objectives become obscure or forgotten, and new terrorists are born to take the place of those who are dead or in jail. Terrorism is a snake eating its own tail, self-perpetuating, blind, filled with faulty thinking and irrational objectives, and it turns normal people into common criminals–murderers, thieves, liars. In the end, no one is particularly happy with the results. The terrorists are dead or in jail, their objectives unfulfilled; the victims are dead or grieving for with the loss of a loved one; law enforcement is frustrated because they could never prevent any of it–they only get clean-up duties. The big problem with bombers is that they never really understand that no matter how much they hurt the people they hate, those people will, eventually, bounce back. Those who have died are beyond reach of pain and their struggles are over. Those who have lost limbs will learn to walk again, readjust their lives, have families, love, grow old, and will eventually die of old age in God’s good time. And all those idealistic political agendas will have served nothing, nothing will change, nothing will be achieved but the destruction of some lives. The funny/ironic part about terrorists is that they are just normal people until they let themselves be lead astray by faulty irrational thinking and a belief that political goals can be achieved through violence. Most political extremism is illusory, foolish, irrational, vacuous, superficial, and/or unrealistic. Bombs will never change the basic objectives of a free market capitalism. If fact, I would hazard to say that terrorism does the exact opposite of what it proposes to do and reinforces democratic objectives and strengthens governments and law enforcement. In the meantime, however, our hearts are broken, our tears burn, the lump in our throats does not go away, and we stare at the ground in shame and horror, unable to understand why our world is so imperfect and broken.

On some final thoughts on Peru

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My trip to Peru was well-organized, well-planned, well-thought out. Obviously, Peru is a country of contrasts, rich/poor, European/Quechua, English/Spanish, urban/rural, modern/ancient. I have encountered these contrasts before, but never to this extent. I have a new appreciation for all of the wonderful things and people that populate my life because I saw how limited life might be when you don’t have certain advantage, I saw a lot of people going off to work crammed into tiny buses, three-wheeled tricycles taxis, traveling on foot. Cars were a luxury. I gained a new found admiration for people who can live at or above 13,000 feet where the air is thin, the temperatures are cold, and making a living is very hard–little heat, no air conditioning, few creature comforts, Llamas are not the easiest animals to live with, and roads that I would take for granted are narrow, curvy, and rough, which is totally normal in rural Peru. I think that the hardest thing to navigate is that poverty, You can buy a piece of weaving, you can pay tips to visit a local home, you can employ a few of the locals for sharing their day with you, but the poverty these local indigenous peoples is real and you really can’t solve that. For some really simple reasons (and a couple which are rather complicated) these high mountain people are isolated from the horn of plenty which some people in urban Lima and other large cities enjoy. There are issues of literacy, of even speaking the language of power and influence–Spanish. The legacy left by colonial Spain is far reaching and powerful. The Spanish have been gone for more than a century and a half, but the political and social mess that they created still hangs on, and the shadow of Pizarro hangs long over a city like Cuzco. I also realize now that there is very little that the Peruvians might do to resolve many of their rural social problems. Since transportation is such a huge issue in a country that is as mountainous as Peru, many people never travel more than a few miles from the place where they were born. The rural indigenous Quechua are a small portion of the entire population, so the federal government cannot rationalize spending large amounts of money to connect those people to better systems of health and education. I also realized that American culture consumes enormous amounts of resources–water, food, housing, education, health, space, energy. We are a culture of hyper-consumerism. Nevertheless, I have a new appreciation for the industry and exuberance of my own country and its ability to generate wealth and power. Peru struggles with a political corruption that paralyzes its ability to solve social problems or to control the exploitation of its natural resources. In some ways, Peru is an emerging nation and economy. Mining, agriculture, fishing, tourism, and manufacturing are all growing parts of burgeoning economy in which many Peruvians might participate, but then again, many rural people find themselves isolated, marginalized, and left out. The paradoxes between the have’s and the have-not’s is breathtaking as ancient forces and beliefs collide with post-modern hyper-consumerism in a post-colonial meltdown of European values, languages, and conventions.

On some final thoughts on Peru

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My trip to Peru was well-organized, well-planned, well-thought out. Obviously, Peru is a country of contrasts, rich/poor, European/Quechua, English/Spanish, urban/rural, modern/ancient. I have encountered these contrasts before, but never to this extent. I have a new appreciation for all of the wonderful things and people that populate my life because I saw how limited life might be when you don’t have certain advantage, I saw a lot of people going off to work crammed into tiny buses, three-wheeled tricycles taxis, traveling on foot. Cars were a luxury. I gained a new found admiration for people who can live at or above 13,000 feet where the air is thin, the temperatures are cold, and making a living is very hard–little heat, no air conditioning, few creature comforts, Llamas are not the easiest animals to live with, and roads that I would take for granted are narrow, curvy, and rough, which is totally normal in rural Peru. I think that the hardest thing to navigate is that poverty, You can buy a piece of weaving, you can pay tips to visit a local home, you can employ a few of the locals for sharing their day with you, but the poverty these local indigenous peoples is real and you really can’t solve that. For some really simple reasons (and a couple which are rather complicated) these high mountain people are isolated from the horn of plenty which some people in urban Lima and other large cities enjoy. There are issues of literacy, of even speaking the language of power and influence–Spanish. The legacy left by colonial Spain is far reaching and powerful. The Spanish have been gone for more than a century and a half, but the political and social mess that they created still hangs on, and the shadow of Pizarro hangs long over a city like Cuzco. I also realize now that there is very little that the Peruvians might do to resolve many of their rural social problems. Since transportation is such a huge issue in a country that is as mountainous as Peru, many people never travel more than a few miles from the place where they were born. The rural indigenous Quechua are a small portion of the entire population, so the federal government cannot rationalize spending large amounts of money to connect those people to better systems of health and education. I also realized that American culture consumes enormous amounts of resources–water, food, housing, education, health, space, energy. We are a culture of hyper-consumerism. Nevertheless, I have a new appreciation for the industry and exuberance of my own country and its ability to generate wealth and power. Peru struggles with a political corruption that paralyzes its ability to solve social problems or to control the exploitation of its natural resources. In some ways, Peru is an emerging nation and economy. Mining, agriculture, fishing, tourism, and manufacturing are all growing parts of burgeoning economy in which many Peruvians might participate, but then again, many rural people find themselves isolated, marginalized, and left out. The paradoxes between the have’s and the have-not’s is breathtaking as ancient forces and beliefs collide with post-modern hyper-consumerism in a post-colonial meltdown of European values, languages, and conventions.

On Koricancha

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Koricancha, or the Incan Temple of the Sun in Cusco, Peru, or at least what was left of it after the Spanish built the Dominican convent of Santo Domingo on top of it, is a must stop if you have gone to the trouble of going all the way Cusco and Machu Picchu. Cusco was an original Inca city and a major axis within their empire during both the 14th and 15th centuries. Koricancha, or “Courtyard of Gold” was a major shrine within the Incan empire, and its walls were lined with gold, gold that was eventually looted by the Conquistadores, but not enough gold to save the last Incan emperor, Atahualpa. Only a few walls of the original temple are still left, but they do bear witness to the exquisite craftsmanship of the Incan masons whose elegant work far outstrips the clumsy common blocking of the Baroque style convent that rises above the ramparts of the original temple. The temple, or its remnants, is an icon of an empire that totally collapsed under the invasion of the Spanish. The scourge that is colonialism–invade, conquer, occupy as much space as possible, strip out everything of value, redefine language, laws, and religion, isolate the locals outside of the circles of power, redefine all cultural values–is only too obvious in the baroque church built on top of Koricancha, essentially putting it under erasure, shoving it out to the margins of history. I understand how offended my modern post-post-modern post-colonial sensibility is, but I don’t condemn the Spanish for doing any of what they did because they were doing to the Inca what the Inca had been doing to other cultures and societies up and down the Andes. Invade and conquer, it’s an old story in human history. The “Leyenda Negra” of the Spanish has long since been chucked on the ash heap of world history, but their colonial legacy as a fallen empire still echoes within Peruvian society, and the Conquistadores (i.e., white Europeans) are, with a few minor exceptions, still running the government in Peru, and the local indigenous people are marginalized into slums in the urban areas or super-marginalized in the rural highlands where modern social amenities–medicine, schools, housing, utilities–are rare, lacking, or non-existent. Indigenous incomes in the high mountain mesas are almost nothing at all. The role of indigenous people working in the numerous Peruvian mines is particularly troubling, boasting a horrific safety record of numerous deaths and injuries. Koricancha is a kind of synecdoche for the entire Spanish enterprise in the “New World.” Of course, the Spanish did the same thing in Iberia when they kicked the Muslims out of Córdoba, building a Gothic cathedral in the middle of the famous mosque. Carlos V actually built a palace in the middle of the Alhambra. The Visigoths built a church on top of a Roman temple in the same place. Invaders have always felt it necessary to exert their power over the conquered by building their own temple on top of the sacred space of those they have conquered. So when you go to Koricancha you will be assaulted by conflicting images of Incan art and architecture within the context of a Baroque Christian church. The conclusions that you draw about this odd juxtaposition of cultures and technologies will be your own. All of the involved parties have long since turned to dust, and the caretakers of the site today are only the genetic shadows of the movers and shakers of 16th century Cuzco. The important thing about Koricancha is to go there, see it, experience it, and be a witness, albeit four hundred years after the fact.

On Koricancha

Posted on by

Koricancha, or the Incan Temple of the Sun in Cusco, Peru, or at least what was left of it after the Spanish built the Dominican convent of Santo Domingo on top of it, is a must stop if you have gone to the trouble of going all the way Cusco and Machu Picchu. Cusco was an original Inca city and a major axis within their empire during both the 14th and 15th centuries. Koricancha, or “Courtyard of Gold” was a major shrine within the Incan empire, and its walls were lined with gold, gold that was eventually looted by the Conquistadores, but not enough gold to save the last Incan emperor, Atahualpa. Only a few walls of the original temple are still left, but they do bear witness to the exquisite craftsmanship of the Incan masons whose elegant work far outstrips the clumsy common blocking of the Baroque style convent that rises above the ramparts of the original temple. The temple, or its remnants, is an icon of an empire that totally collapsed under the invasion of the Spanish. The scourge that is colonialism–invade, conquer, occupy as much space as possible, strip out everything of value, redefine language, laws, and religion, isolate the locals outside of the circles of power, redefine all cultural values–is only too obvious in the baroque church built on top of Koricancha, essentially putting it under erasure, shoving it out to the margins of history. I understand how offended my modern post-post-modern post-colonial sensibility is, but I don’t condemn the Spanish for doing any of what they did because they were doing to the Inca what the Inca had been doing to other cultures and societies up and down the Andes. Invade and conquer, it’s an old story in human history. The “Leyenda Negra” of the Spanish has long since been chucked on the ash heap of world history, but their colonial legacy as a fallen empire still echoes within Peruvian society, and the Conquistadores (i.e., white Europeans) are, with a few minor exceptions, still running the government in Peru, and the local indigenous people are marginalized into slums in the urban areas or super-marginalized in the rural highlands where modern social amenities–medicine, schools, housing, utilities–are rare, lacking, or non-existent. Indigenous incomes in the high mountain mesas are almost nothing at all. The role of indigenous people working in the numerous Peruvian mines is particularly troubling, boasting a horrific safety record of numerous deaths and injuries. Koricancha is a kind of synecdoche for the entire Spanish enterprise in the “New World.” Of course, the Spanish did the same thing in Iberia when they kicked the Muslims out of Córdoba, building a Gothic cathedral in the middle of the famous mosque. Carlos V actually built a palace in the middle of the Alhambra. The Visigoths built a church on top of a Roman temple in the same place. Invaders have always felt it necessary to exert their power over the conquered by building their own temple on top of the sacred space of those they have conquered. So when you go to Koricancha you will be assaulted by conflicting images of Incan art and architecture within the context of a Baroque Christian church. The conclusions that you draw about this odd juxtaposition of cultures and technologies will be your own. All of the involved parties have long since turned to dust, and the caretakers of the site today are only the genetic shadows of the movers and shakers of 16th century Cuzco. The important thing about Koricancha is to go there, see it, experience it, and be a witness, albeit four hundred years after the fact.