Obama And The Common Good

Obama's transition team have announced that Barack plans to veto a law passed under Bush making it acceptable to drill for oil in wilderness areas. I think that's the nub of it, anyway: I came in to a newsagents to shelter from the freezing rain and saw the story on the front of the Guardian newspaper. He's also heading for conflict with Gordon Brown over tax havens for the rich.

Wonderful! Can I apply for four-year citizenship in the United States with an option to renew for another four years dependent on the result of the next election?

Brown will trot out the tired old (Tory) argument that the rich and powerful cannot be hamstrung by legislation; that the only incentive they have to fatten the bank accounts and fill the dining tables of us all is complete freedom. Action cleansed of all moral, ethical and cultural considerations.

But it isn't the heads of the multinationals who have made Britain and America wealthy nations anyway. It's the ordinary men and women labouring their asses off every day in the companies run by the rich. Or at the very least it's the rich and powerful and the ordinary man and women working together. And what is the incentive of the ordinary man supposed to be?

I'm an ordinary man, albeit one with interests and opinions some consider eccentric (even dangerous, as a true belief in individual liberty is always considered to be); and I've never felt more inclined to work for the common good than I do at present knowing there's about to be an intelligent and moral man in the White House, someone who'll be working alongside me for things that matter. Ravage the sacred and the beautiful and fuck the poor as Bush has been doing for the last eight years to feed the insatiable bellies of the rich and all I want to do is sit in my flat cursing the stupidity of human kind.

The Next War

One of the fabulous things about Obama's election is that when confronted with racism these past few days, I've been able to point out to the ignorant curs who perpetrate it that history has left them behind. You can stick to an increasingly deluded view of your superiority over a whole race of people if you like, feller,though quite how skin pigmentation is supposed to affect intelligence or morality I've never understood; but there's a black family heading for the White House now and the country everybody else presumes to be terminally racist has voted them in.

Rosa Parks didn't quite know what she was starting all those years ago when she refused to get up off her bus seat to let a white man sit down.

And the struggle for civil rights for black people (and Asians in this country) isn't finished yet. Obama is only the end of the beginning and if we allow ourselves to become complacent about black equality because of his triumph, the racists will sneak up on our flanks and reverse the successes we've had.

It interested me, however, to read in the paper yesterday that one of the most powerful weapons Republicans and religious nuts have in their campaign against equality for gays and lesbians is the support of the black community in America. Unless one man is free, no man is free, as far as I'm concerned. A community only now beginning to free itself from the tyranny of exclusion, disadvantage and violence ought not to be lending its arm to the oppression of another.

Well Done America, All Is Forgiven

Ted Pope just wrote to me, "We've got a president who's read more books than I have." He's right, and it's marvellous. Think about it. Barack Obama is so erudite, no rhetorical flight I could produce here to express my satisfaction at the American presidential election outcome, and why I think it will be important not only for America but for the world, would have a prayer of surpassing in style or content what Barack has already said himself. I feel--I hope temporarily--quite silenced by his prodigious gifts as a communicator. And I like that. I want to know that the most powerful man in the world is a man of extraordinary talents.

Well done, America. You played a blinder when you went to the polls the other day.

Cheney Endorses McCain

John McCain must have been privately squirming when he was publically endorsed by Dick Cheney the other day. Is that what the flagging Republican campaign really needs? The vocal support or a central figure in the Bush administration? Even Republicans don't like Bush anymore, not now that his plummeting support among moderate Americans threatens the interests the Republican Party is designed to protect.

Same Old Same Old

The world--well, the part of the world that is conscious and not preoccupied with survival--holds its breath. America is only a few days away from deciding its future, and by extension, everybody else's future too. Do they elect Barack Obama as president and send a signal to the world that they are renewed--that the torch, as Jack Kennedy might have said, has been passed to a new generation who want America to rediscover its sense of mission, its presumed destiny as the leader of a New Way that enshrines fairness "and justice for all"? Or do they elect John McCain, who stands for a slightly more liberal version of the same corrupt, greedy, lying, illiterate bullshit America has soured the world with for the last eight years (with my own country, which has never known any better, cheering it on).

The people I have spoken to--Africans and Pakistanis among them--men who have witnessed enough corruption and violence in their own countries to turn Michael Landon to drink and Devil worship--say McCain is so old he will be in a nursing home before the end of his first term. They say, correctly, "same old same old." They say, "America will never elect a black man."

Nobody anywhere else in the world appears to believe that America would dare to take such a bold and visionary step. The consensus is that voters must be lying to the pollsters and that come election day they will vote McCain with guilt in their hearts and never admit what they have done. I hope America proves them wrong and that hope triumphs over cynicism when the votes are cast. If it doesn't and McCain is elected it will be difficult for us ever to have faith in the value of political engagement again.

No!

I found out yesterday that a woman I really like, in whatever way you want to take that, thinks I use long words when I talk to her because I know she doesn't know what they mean.

I was rather appalled anybody would even think me capable of such pretentious behaviour. If I use long words it's because they're the words that are passing through my head when I'm talking to somebody, or writing something down. It's not because I'm trying to intimidate anybody, or impress anybody.

Actually, I think my vocabulary is pretty basic for a man who likes to believe he's intelligent.

The most pretentious thing a person could do in conversation would be to simplify his (her) words or ideas because they presumed the person in front of them was too dumb to understand them in their original form. (Stand up everybody publically campaigning for the Republicans in the American election.)

It didn't even cross my mind that the woman I like wouldn't get what I was telling her.

She said she didn't mind that tendency in me because I taught her things. But I don't want to teach anybody anything either. What do I know that I should be electing myself anybody's teacher?

All I want to do is have a conversation with anybody who's interested so all of us can learn a little more.

Barack Does Rhyme With Iraq, After All

The Republican campaign in the American presidential election may go down in history as the sleaziest one ever fought.

They have to take some, though not all, of the responsibility for the ridiculous idea that seems to be abroad aqbout Obama's true religion, since they made such an effort to conjoin their opponent's name with terrorism in the public imagination.

I saw one woman at a McCain rally the other day say that Obama was really a Muslim. That he was just pretending to be a Christian until he got into the White House. At which point, presumably, he plans for there to be a great Ta-Da! moment when he rips off his suit to reveal a chest strapped heavily with explosives (maybe when he does his first speech from the Oval Office, eh?)

Of course, to a sensible person being Muslim signifies no more of a connection with terrorism than being Christian, or Buddhist. But to the uneducated, prejudiced, angry white swine who vote Republican in America or Conservative in the UK it does.

By tying the name of an opponent with a Muslim heritage to the boogeyman of terrorism (albeit homeland terrorism), they--or whichever multinational business executive directs their policies--were trying to spook voters with the spectre of September the 11th. And with some of their supporters,who are dumber than ten mules in a pea soup fog anyway, it has worked.

It is a dangerous tactic, one guaranteed to unleash even more anti-Muslim feeling in America than there may already be, and poison impressionable minds on both sides for a generation.

Thankfully McCain and Palin have changed their tactic somewhat in recent days, realising that most people were onto them and looked on what they were doing with distaste. Now they are trying to conjoin Obama's name with Socialism, which is equally absurd given how conservative Obama is, but much less damaging. Socialists are used to being maligned and beaten over the head with sticks.

But at least these days most people wouldn't kill them.

Basting Mummy

I was cooking two chickens at work the other day, the fellow who usually does the cooking not being around, and I can't even begin to explain how horrible I found it looking at those poor plucked and beheaded creatures sitting on the baking tray in front of me with their legs tied together. Some readers may think my views are extreme (as I would theirs, in reverse), but to me they'd been murdered, those chickens, and they had just as much of a right to life as you or I. The method used to slaughter chickens for human consumption is ghastly too, adding sadism and torture into the mixture, until murder actually seems too tame a word to describe what happens to them. I can't refuse to do the cooking, though. That is part of my job. And I'm preparing food for people who are meat eaters, and are unable for various reasons to prepare meals for themselves.

I told the Muslim man I was on duty with how revolting I found the experience of preparing the chickens for dinner.

"I wonder what it does for my karma to be a part of this," I said (this bloke knows I'm a Buddhist, and we have had many stimulating conversations about the differences between our respective faiths).

"All Buddhists are vegetarian, aren't they?" he asked.

"No, but in countries wealthy enough not to have to rely on meat consumption for survival vegetarianism is advised," says I. "I'm afraid I might reincarnate as a chicken and be cooked by a fat hippie."

"Do you believe animals reincarnate because of karma?" he asked, seeming mildly surprised.

Well, yes. The Dalai Lama even says that all sentient beings were once your mother. So when you baste a chicken, you're effectively basting Mummy.

I find it really difficult to understand any philosophy that allows us, as human beings, the right to use and abuse other creatures just because (I presume) they aren't as intelligent as we are. By the same token, couldn't I murder half the people who'll be walking up and down Abington Street when I leave this cafe? take their carcasses home and cook them for dinner? After all, they won't have read Dante or Shakespeare or Baudelaire or Lao Tzu like I have.

Most of the people whose friendship I cherish are meat-eaters so I don't want to pursue that argument too far. But on a relatively objective level, seeing animals as ours to exploit and dispose of freely is a kind of fascism. Though a desperate man will do anything he has to, just like a hungry badger.

On The Cushion

I had the feeling that I came out of my body while I was meditating this morning. Never had the feeling before, not in meditation anyway (knowing ho ho ho). I didn't go up, or down, or sideways; I just suddenly wasn't inside the seated figure in the half-lotus on the floor in front of the old wooden buddha. I knew I used to be, but now I wasn't.

It wasn't frightening at all. This is the way it will be, I thought, warmly, remembering the prophesies of the ancient masters. And then I was back inside my body again, like slipping into a familiar old coat.

Off out to face whatever dreams the day had in store.

How To Cope With Death

Someone I know is watching a family member go through his last hours of life, and she's understandably devastated. She sent me a text message a couple of days ago saying she didn't know how she would get through it.

Yes, I remember the experience all too clearly. And one day I will have to go through it again, if death doesn't take me first (who knows what little surprises are in store for us, eh?)

I was tempted, for a moment, after I received her text to write back that something of him would live on, that he would be reborn, that her grief would disturb him after death and cause him to drift towards an unfavourable rebirth. I wanted to echo Chogyam Trungpa's words to Allen Ginsberg when his father died, "Please let him go, and continue your celebration."

But my friend isn't a Buddhist. And she doesn't need to hear me proselytising for Buddhism, regurgitating stuff I learned from "The Tibetan Book Of The Dead", any more than I would have appreciated a Christian telling me my mother would have a wonderful time in Heaven when she died in 1996.

When someone dies or is dying all the person really needs to know is that they are not as alone as their grief and bewilderment makes them feel. Then they need space to rebuild a life which has been devastated by the loss.

You can get points for what you learned in Seminary School the next time you sit down with your teacher.

It's Time To Move The Lookout

By the time I left work this morning I'd been there for more than 48 hours, give or take the odd walk into town for fresh air. It's because we have people, including me, sleeping at the home to be on hand in the event of a crisis. You get paid for it, which isn't a bad gig, and since it's cheaper and easier for me than trekking the 8 or 9 miles out of town to the Lookout, at night, with no transport of my own, I'll do the sleep-in when it's available.

I've fallen out of love with the Lookout anyway. Every home I live in is called the Lookout, of course (I say "of course" as if it were obvious!), so what I actually mean is that I've fallen out of love with its present location, in a cold, two-bedroom flat over a shop on the Square in the middle of Earls Barton. I quite liked living over the shop for a while, since it sells flutes and Buddhas and Indian clothes etc. etc.--I was living some early fantasy of the bohemian poet's life--but now I just want a garden and my own front door again, for as long as I can afford them.

I'm pissed off with the journey back and forth on buses and in taxis too. It adds an extra two hours to my working day, when everything is reckoned up, and costs me £80 to £100 a month.

When you look at it that way, choosing to live where I did when I work in Northampton was a kind of weird masochism--which would be perfectly in keeping, actually, with my perverse need to believe that life is shit and everything is stacked against me ever finding happiness or comfort. They're not gonna come if you don't give them the chance, dumbass.

Nearly There

America is frighteningly close. The presidential election is only a few weeks away and Obama is still ahead in the polls. McCain looks old and irrelevant, and he's desperate enough to attempt to make any charge stick against his rival, however ludicrous, however scurrilous. And to the credit of the American public, his barrel-scraping tactics these past few weeks seem to have caused enough distaste to turn swing voters towards Obama.

He encouraged the racist groundswell against Obama by peppering his references to his rival with the word "terrorist". And his featherweight running mate followed suit. They were referring to an old association Obama himself had denounced long ago, not directly to Obama. It was obvious. however, that they hoped the man and the word would become conjoined in the public consciousness; and among less discerning Republicans it worked. Ironically, how stumbling and weak McCain looked having to redirect supporters at his own rallies when they stood up and verbalised the ideas he and Palin had implanted in their minds. Don't say it, stupid,just keep it in mind on polling day.

The whole world wants Obama to become president because the whole world wants to believe in the American vision, as articulated by the Founding Fathers and poeticised by Walt Whitman. We want to believe that America leads the way in liberty, morality, decency, community. For God's sake, somebody has got to. But it has become impossible to think America even strives to lead the world in anything other than military muscle since the inarticulate, duplicitous and plain nasty Bush administration seized control in 2001 (via, remember, means of electoral fraud). Obama may not be able to deliver on even half of his promises, but for me it's enough that he actually wants to. That he cares what the rest of the world thinks. That he wants to restore America's covenant with the world, and give his country meaning again.

If something unexpected happens between now and November and McCain snatches the election, I'm digging myself a hole in the ground and living out the rest of my days in an air raid shelter.

The Other Bruce Endorses Obama