Tag Archives: law

Lead Me On, Oh Great Commander in Chief. But Whither?

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My favorite new show, Commander in Chief, shows promise for extending West Wing’s visionary qualities, and then some. Too bad Commander also bodes equivalent stumbles along the same dark lines of its predecessor—too much emphasis upon the quick use of military force to resolve diplomatic crises.

 

Military force doesn’t solve problems, it creates them. Will Geena Davis, aka President Mackenzie, learn this while in office? Will Commander showcase the long list of options any nation has to throw at problems, other than the show and/or use of force? Will Commander de-emphasize testosterone-filled approaches, and demonstrate instead the range of strengths any leader, male or female, can find in more “feminine” approaches? The show's producers will be glad to know that I'm awaiting their answers in great suspense….

 

And what if Geena does experience a direct provocation by another government? Why not try really clever media coverage…. What if the American public insists on revenge and retaliation? Try education, forbearance, charity…. What if Americans die? Try rituals of national mourning for fallen martyrs, or any one of the other thousand approaches to diplomacy…. What if there’s a terrorist attack by a known force? Try investigations, and high-level meetings….

 

And keep on trying. Peace and democracy aren’t missions that can be accomplished. They’re missions that never end. You can’t end a war against an abstract noun. Besides, there will always be one more bomb-throwing terrorist to provide an excuse for one more retaliation. I hope Geena teaches us that sometimes you just have to endure a certain amount of injustice—but you almost never have to add to it.

 

What if a woman who is convicted of adultery is about to be buried to her neck in the sand and then stoned to death? Geena could have focused overwhelming international attention on that country’s leaders, and then shipped in thousands of well-paid, white-clad, unarmed international forces of young innocent collegiate pacifists, silent disapproving witnesses to evil deeds, all willing to die for their ideals—just as our current youthful military volunteers are willing to die for theirs.

 

What a moral message this would send! What culture could continue to kill unarmed, disapproving children while an international press looked on? Maybe the poor adulterer would die, but maybe no other adulterers would, the next time. Geena's point would be made, her lesson taught, her stance clarified, her insistence noted. Conversations would be started. Maybe minds would even be changed.

 

We don’t have to do away with our military forces. We can still use them to defend our country from those who would invade our shores or climb with their guns through our windows (I haven’t seen much of this lately, but it could happen…) We can still call up our national guard for times of natural catastrophes.

 

A new, improved Commander in Chief would have a few long-simmering unsolvable conflicts aggravatingly popping up throughout the show’s lifespan. We could watch these conflicts wend their ponderous and circuitous diplomatic ways through the series, in alarming fits and infuriating starts, week after week, year upon year—and each time, see Geena turn down the easy options of violence. We could grow to love the wisdom and expertise of her trusted diplomats, who have already spent half their lives preparing to tackle just such thorny problems, and who will spend the rest of their lives patiently addressing them, instead of mucking them up with ever more violence, leading, of course, to ever more hatred… and violence…and more hatred…and more violence.

 

I don’t want to see any more episodes in which Geena impresses me with fast, decisive, tough and completely hokey short-sighted violent “solutions” which only postpone and ultimately exacerbate the original problems (remember Iraq?) I want to see her impress me with her wisdom, vision, and forbearance. I want to see deliberate, consensus-building, thoughtful international answers bearing the weight of the whole world behind them.

 

I’d like to see well-written episodes dealing with moments of national hysteria over provocations, complete with their inexorable drumbeats in favor of retaliation, revenge and war, and then I want to see Geena demonstrate some of the myriad, no, infinite alternatives to loutish thuggery. Isn’t that what leadership is? Or is it really all about one's readiness to whip out one's six-guns and shoot ‘em up? I don’t think so. C’mon, TV producers, make my day….

 

I’d like to see Geena diplomatically rebuild a couple of really shaky international relationships, offer aid to one of our so-called enemies in their moment of need, implement fair trade rules for globalization…. I want to see her lead, and become even more visionary than she already is.

 

Some day, when Congress gets around to legislating a cabinet-level Department of Peace (H.R 3760 and S. 1756), I look forward to seeing the show belatedly renamed “Commander in Peace.”

 

Some day perhaps we’ll see Geena back again, a full-lipped, swivel-hipped Indian-style crone, still leading her tribe patiently and diplomatically past each new day's conflict toward the greater safety, prosperity and contentment that await us all on the other side.

 

 

 

A History of Violence Offers Hope For A Less-Violent Future

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A History of Violence is a very good movie. Yes, the violence is graphic and hard to take, but that’s a positive thing in a movie intent on provoking thought and dialogue on the subject of violence. So, for you many testosterites (both male and female) who depend for your jollies upon superhuman heroes gloriously avenging the depraved acts of craven evildoers—and if you also happen to be married to a Quaker spouse—this is the family movie for you. If you gotta have gore, at least this gore isn’t simplistic; it’s powerful, purposeful, effective gore.

 

I was gripped and thoroughly entertained by A History of Violence. The production displayed a beautiful Casablancan integrity–nothing superfluous, nothing left out.

 

The movie’s many surprising moments of really funny dark humor were a nice added kick. At its blackest, life is ridiculously insane, and laughter covers the sad eyes of clowns; it's never either/or. Shakespeare knew this. So, this sad, funny, violent movie makes perfect sense as it moves along inexorably, belly laughs preceding abject tragedy setting up comic tittering introducing disaster….

 

History is also authentically moving, a tricky thing to do considering the thin fine line between effective emoting and hokey schmaltz. It’s a rare treat to have my jaded heartstrings expertly twanged by a good script in the hands of an inspired director leading brilliant actors.

 

History’s clarion response to the long-standing ethical question: When is violence morally justified? Only when you or someone you personally love is directly, persistently and seriously threatened. History’s imperfect characters conscientiously persevere in minding their own business, and endure the injustice of repeated outrageous attempts to provoke them to retaliatory violence–without adding to it–demonstrating the multitude of non-violent options available to unwilling participants.

 

I also appreciated the movie’s generous advocacy for second chances, and third ones, and however many it takes. In this movie, people who make big mistakes (no matter how big) receive support, not punishment–at least so long as they convincingly demonstrate conscientious intentions and results over time. History’s message–that sometimes motivated people can and do change—isn’t heavy-handedly religious; Tom admits that even after three long years in the desert, he wasn’t really born again until he met his wife. We all need both God and man to lift us up over our barriers to caring.

 

The very explicit but lively and original sex scenes were touching and memorable, and essential to the movie’s theme, since affection, loyalty, intimacy, and sexuality are often all that hold humanity to sanity and purpose.

I enjoyed watching Tom, like Lady Macbeth, futilely attempt to scrub the blood from his hands, and then receive the grace to be washed clean, rebaptised—forgiven–probably for the seventy-times-seventh time.

 

I wish the writers had clearly disavowed any hint that a schizophrenic split-personality-thing might be going on. For a confused moment I thought the story was bending that way, which would have disappointed me. I was relieved when it turned out to be about one man’s honest efforts at transformation.

 

Tom’s brief but telling dialogue with his brother offered a perfectly adequate argument for his stunning attempt to climb up from the horrendous dark pit of his childhood environment.

 

The movie offered several intriguing mini-plots—one for each character—most of them feel-good stories anyone could relate to. When Tom’s son finally got around to soundly beating up the kids who had continually attacked him, our theatre audience cheered. And when our thoroughly besmirched and discredited, yet undeniably righteous champion returned home, his family’s acceptance felt honest and right.

 

So why is it that we Americans still feel comfortable flinging our invading armies into the far corners of our empire, to threaten the persons and homes and families and livelihoods of complete strangers who are quietly trying to get ahead, in the lands of their ancestors? Where do we get off invading other countries, tearing up their infrastructure, disrupting their social fabric, blowing up their children? A History of Violence should make perfectly clear that people (of all creeds) who are doing their best to care for their families deserve to be left alone.

 

If my gentle reader still holds a belief that our superior culture justifies empire-building, I suggest you go back to your Bible, perhaps starting with the part about the kindly Jewish itinerant rabbi, Jesus, delivering his Beatitudes and his Sermon on the Mount. As A History of Violence demonstrates: fighting for peace on this incredibly small, interconnected and fragile planet–unless the bad guys are really climbing in your window—makes about as much sense in the real world as it does in the movies.

 

 

 

What Went Down In the Miers Nomination, and What's Up Next in the Hearings?

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Bush’s advisors must have momentarily forgotten that their boy-king doesn’t read the newspapers; probably Bush overlooked how desperate right-wingers were to nominate their very own reactionary Supreme being. His advisors also apparently lost track of who it was that first inserted into Bush’s stump speeches all that stuff about nominating a Scalia/Thomas-lookalike. Bush aspired to highest office with hardly a clue about how to thoughtfully select a Supreme Court nominee. With little previous interest in the fine details of constitutional law, he lacked the legal sophistication to distinguish a Scalia from a William O. Douglas.

 

Upon gaining the presidency, however, Bush quickly turned to his small inner circle for the necessary crash courses on foreign policy (Rice) and law (Miers), just as he once turned to his boyhood hero, Cheney, for instruction on how to select a running mate. It’s very likely that, just as Bush learned everything he needed to know (we hope) about geo-strategy from Rice, he has Harriet Miers to thank for his insights into the workings of the Supreme Court.

 

So, based on recent evidence, what did Miers teach George W. Bush?

 

That selection of a Supreme Court justice is a uniquely personal presidential prerogative, as well as a weighty responsibility…

 

…And that someone with the very specific qualities of say, a John Roberts—someone not a partisan ideologue, who loves the law, who is well-trained, accomplished and respected, moderate in temperament and above reproach in his personal life—would be an admirable choice.

 

Miers would also have taught Bush that conservative presidents can reasonably appoint conservative justices, that litmus tests aren’t appropriate, that candidates don’t have to answer questions about their personal and political opinions, and that good justices set aside their own biases, and seek, with each new case, to determine the current law of the land.

 

Bush might also have learned from Miers that, for every thorny case before the Supreme Court, a reasonable legal argument could be made on either side, and that a wise justice resists radically changing accepted law, but rather leaves major legal shifts in direction up to elected lawmakers. If Bush took in the highlights of the Roberts’ proceedings, he no doubt enjoyed hearing distinguished colleagues from both parties echo and affirm his own newly-acquired legal convictions.

 

No minority candidate with anything like Roberts’ sterling qualities appeared on the shortlists, so Bush must have gratefully embraced the idea that Miers would be a good compromise—for the same reasons he believed Roberts to be a sound nominee. Bush probably thought he was cleverly cutting a Gordian knot in  nominating Miers—a woman who (he imagined) would distress no one. Bush’s advisors erroneously had assumed Bush had shortlisted Miers as a professional courtesy, and would not forget where his bread was buttered.

 

Yet Bush has always elevated his most-trusted teachers—Rice, Cheney, and now Miers—because each has taken advantage of their considerable opportunities not only to shape their belatedly conscientious pupil’s thinking, but to successfully persuade his eager blank-slate brain of the soundness of their ideas. Considering our president’s infamous youthful lack of intellectual curiosity and indifference to exploring alternative viewpoints, it’s doubtful he realizes even now that his newly-received pearls of wisdom may in fact be debatable matters of opinion, rather than revealed truth.

 

It’s curious that presidents can be elected with no rigorous public hearings at all (one cannot count elaborately orchestrated debates), yet these same presidents are the very ones given the heavy responsibility of wisely nominating lifetime Supreme Court justices who must jump through elaborate hoops to get themselves confirmed.

 

During the upcoming hearings, Democrats will pacify their constituencies by expressing grave concern over Miers’conservatism, when in truth they’ll be kissing the very ground beneath her feet in gratitude that they weren’t handed a Scalia/Thomas clone. Democrats may even, with some reason, harbor just the teensy-weensiest outside hope that Miers will turn out to be a malleable stealth centrist.

 

It’s both admirable and tragicomic that President Bush so often accidentally buys into the public storylines his cronies elaborately create as cover stories to paper over their less admirable ulterior motives. With respect to Iraq, for instance, Bush actually convinced himself for awhile that his war really was all about democracy, rather than oil, giving his polpals fits as he briefly tried to run the occupation with that primary goal in mind. Now he's gone and gummed up his Supreme Court nominations by equally stupidly buying into the foolish pretense that he was actually supposed to nominate a fair judge.

 

Bush used to submit more humbly to his advisors’ supposed expertise. These days, Bush is apparently contemplating the possibility that he may after all have some small capabilities and experience, and is, indeed, in fact, the president, entrustable tentatively with a few independent decisions. I hope Bush shrugs off all his discredited advisors soon; just as he once picked up several useful approaches from West Wing reruns, I hope during his lame-duck years, Geena Davis will rub some of her moxie off on him, and make him surprise us and himself by going with his gut, jumping right on in—sans old advisors—to do a few things for his fellow citizens, just because they’re the right thing to do.

 

Will Miers be able to handle the tricks and traps that crafty old senators will throw at her with the intention of engineering a nomination do-over? If she’s Supreme Court material, she'll prove herself no slouch by winning over the American public, despite Republican machinations. In fact, the only scenario I can see for the GOP pulling out this big bad ol' disaster to their diehard constituents' complete satisfaction, would be for them to take a contract out on a couple of the current court liberals. Their fates rest….

 

During the upcoming hearings, the GOP will be constrained from coming right out and saying what they really wanted to do, which was to put in place an ideologue whom they could trust to consistently seek out whatever constitutional pretexts were necessary to legally lead the country back to the stone age. They’ll be forced instead to mumble lip-service courtesies to Bush’s candidate, even while scheming to blow her out of the water and replace her with some right wing nut. Democratic senators will also be squirming as they assume the distasteful duty of backhandedly persuading everyone to confirm an avowedly conservative nominee.

 

I hope Miers gets a fighting chance during the hearings to have the American public eating out of her hand before Christmastime. I also hope she gets a new haircut. (I’m not being sexist. John Warner needs one too.)