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 Ice
Cube 
 "It's
a tried and true way of dealing with people or nations that the
ruling elite finds troublesome or inconvenient -- whoever gets in
our way. They're simply lumped into the enemy pile. "
 "You
need gas money and a car that works. Of course, my preference is
to do it in the middle of the night! Leave them little presents,
you know what I'm saying? Like the Easter bunny." "Gregory
La Cava is probably the greatest classic Hollywood director still
in need of rediscovery. The man W. C. Fields called the best comedy
mind in Hollywood is virtually forgotten today."
 "North
Korea will conduct its first test of a nuclear bomb, and the Bush
Administration will respond by putting Kim Jong Il on the Federal
Do Not Call list."
 "Carbs
are the new terror-ists. Bread is the new Bin Laden. I can't
wait to order a low-carb veggie Whopper. People are pathetic."
 "The
surreal-ists wouldn't know what to do with Harvey Birdman. Its ingenious brand of adult animation owes as much to absurdists like Ionesco and Duchamp as it does to Bugs Bunny."  "There
is no one thing to know in Lord of the Rings more important
than the fact that everything is disappearing, and disappearing
fast."
 "Word
comes that brother Cat Stevens refuses to lend his support
to our virtuous jihad. May this turncoat's Peace Train be
laden with explosives and rammed into the Mountain of Mohammed,
peace be upon him." "There
was some-thing truly visceral about Cube's voice that made his ever-present snarl that much more serious. As he barked on Death Certificate and Amerikkka's, he was the nigga you love to hate as well as the wrong one to fuck with."  "In
a segment that seems designed to honor yet another one of rock and roll's
seminal yet fallen heroes, MTV just can't help talking about why it,
not Nirvana, mattered so much."
 "Bush's
lame response to North Korea has made it quite clear that all he wants
is to invade Iraq again. North Korea may be more dangerous in fact,
but there's no oil there, and it simply doesn't figure in the grand
eschatological design of Bush's theocratic circle. Pyongyang isn't
even in the Bible!" "'People
are more aware of the world that they want to live in, and now
they have to realize that they can actually create that world
and fight for the things that are worth fighting for and not
feel apathetic. We are all going to die. There is no point in
holding anything back."
 "Well,
well, well. President George was in one hell of bind when it
turned that that Saudi Arabia funded Al Qaeda, not Iraq. Realizing
we'd invaded the wrong country, Bush did the honorable thing:
he's come out against gay marriages." "There's
some thing in our psyche, this kind of right or privilege to resolve
our conflicts with violence. There's an arrogance to that concept. To
actually have to sit down and talk, to listen, to compromise, that's
hard work. To go for the gun, that's the cowardly act."
 "There's
a scene in Richard Link-later's Waking Life where the protagonist
crouches down to read a note in the street that says, 'Look to your
right,' which he does, only to come face to face with a speeding car
aiming right for his head. That's what it's like to listen to Mars
Volta's De-loused in the Comatorium for the first time."
 "it's
also directly because of 2000 that people are more active. Everyone
that was pushed to the brink of sanity is going, "What the fuck?
We can't let this happen again."
 "It's
a sad ending, to be sure, but it may be just what the doctor ordered.
If this whole experience -- the rape accusations, the internal
squabbling, the ego explosions, the Zen hypocrisy -- doesn't teach
Los Angeles that it takes a team to make it happen in the end,
then nothing ever will.""There
is no one thing to know in Lord of the Rings more important
than the fact that everything is disappearing, and disappearing
fast." |
by Ross Levine I recently read in the health section of the Los Angeles Times that being a pessimist does not necessarily take any years off one's lifespan. This news is almost enough to make me an optimist, even during a presidential election cycle. I said almost. It's not that a presidential election brings out anything worse in human nature than was already apparent the previous three and a half years. But there is something about a power struggle that tends to rip the paper lantern from the naked bulb that illuminates the political system in which the struggle unfolds. And since this is America, after all, let me begin by mentioning the Electoral College. Even those of us with a "college" degree have a somewhat difficult time explaining the origins and workings of this peculiar institution. We have a vague notion that a certain Alexander Hamilton, to date still in residence on the ten-dollar bill, believed the average Joe in 1787 could not be trusted to vote intelligently for president. True, communications were rather wanting at the time, the 13 states even more self-absorbed than they are today, and politics thought such an unseemly profession that campaigning was considered a repugnant exercise (well, things haven't changed all that much). It should be noted, too, that the first iteration of the Electoral College was designed to function in the absence of political parties, since they did not exist in the U.S. at the time. In any case, our founding fathers could have had Congress choose the president (so much for checks and balances), or the state legislatures (so much for federal authority), or a direct popular vote of the people (so much for the less populous states). And so the Electoral College was born. After only four elections, it already needed rehab. The emergence of political parties in America caused a problem in 1800. Originally, each elector was compelled to cast two presidential votes for two different candidates -- one vote, it was assumed, would go to his state's favorite son, the other to an out-of-state contender, the idea being that the majority's favorite alternate would carry the day. But in 1800, with Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr head-to-head and both members of the same political party (called, ironically, the Democratic-Republicans), the result was an inevitable tie that made for some fairly crooked backroom dealings in the House. Soon the Twelfth Amendment was ratified as a remedy, with electors now obligated to cast one vote for president and one for vice-president, instead of two for president. But enough history -- what about the main flaw that still afflicts the College today? Which is that, because the electoral votes of each state equal the number of its representatives in the House plus the number of its Senators (which is always two), then, for example, the six sparsely peopled states of Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming, with a joint population of less than 4 million people, have a combined electoral total of 18 that surpasses, let's say, Michigan's 17, even though the Wolverine State has nearly 10 million citizens.
Now that's what you call fuzzy math. And that's why the candidates are tearing up the tarmacs in Iowa and Wisconsin and not in California and New York. Which is why those of us in "big" states where the parties believe the outcome is already decided feel almost irrelevant to the campaign, and wonder cynically if we're part of the U.S. at all, or just self-governing satellite republics; that is, until it comes to paying for Washington's foreign escapades with our tax dollars and the blood of our youth. And so we the 168 million citizens who do not live in swing states can do little but watch and wring our hands as the 114 million who do "swing" decide our country's fate. There's gotta be a better way. Even the New York Times, as of August 29, 2004, has called for the abolition of the Electoral College. But can we realistically expect a nation that is hard-pressed to construct a democracy in a relatively small country like Iraq to reconstruct one in a country as big as this one? Fat chance. So instead of anticipating an overhaul of the electoral system -- the voting system is bad enough! -- shouldn't we all just relax and hope for the best? Well, that depends on what -- or whom -- you consider the best. And whether there can even be a "best" when the candidates from both parties are run through the wringer by a media that behaves like a runaway train. What gets extracted is not necessarily the best and worst of a candidate's traits, but the best and worst of our own.
The best is that we have such a dynamic and sleepless press, relentlessly pursuing every piece of dirt, potential lie, lurking truth . . . or do we? Let's not forget that two of our most influential newspapers (that same New York Times and the Washington Post) recently mea culpa-ed themselves for not going after some pretty big truths during the wind-up to the "spiderholization" of Saddam. But I digress. Yes, we have a dynamic, sleepless press, but we also have a competitive one, which means the main course is not always as thoroughly prepared as the appetizers. And when the appetizers overwhelm the meal -- as they so often do in the meeting of press and politics -- that's when the worst of our culture shines forth, the part that trivializes the process of electing a new leader, which, contrary to what many believe, does carry a certain modicum of importance. If you believe in globalization -- and who would deny it these days, with Wal-mart poised to become shogun of Japan? -- then the United States is the world's corporate headquarters, and our CEO is, unquestionably, the greatest mover and shaker on Earth (although he may soon get some stiff competition from his counterparts in Beijing). Of course, it helps if the choice is resoundingly clear, as in, for example, the election of 1932. The nation was in a numbing Depression with capitalism itself under fire as Franklin Roosevelt took on Herbert Hoover. Hoover was a self-made, boot-straps Republican -- government welfare wasn't what got him out of poverty, and he couldn't see it getting others out, either. Roosevelt was a coddled, silver-spoon Democrat, quite used to spending other people's money. He promised help and seemed prepared to deliver it. The choice was stick with Hoover, whose policies were failing miserably, or try Roosevelt, who certainly sounded a whole lot more reassuring. It was a no-brainer. And now (speaking of no-brainers) there's Bush in 2004. The economy is not quite in shambles, though the national debt looms like a fiscal Death Star. There's a war going on, but for the majority of Americans, it's more an argument over the dinner table than a real crimp in their lifestyle (imagine gas rationing in the age of the SUV?). The terror alerts come with the regularity of spam, but whether you think Tom Ridge is God or Chicken Little, it seems fair to say that most people realize that if a McVeigh or an Atta is determined enough, neither Bush nor Kerry will be able to stop him. So what is the choice we're making? You may think you know. Bush is good for business, Kerry for trees. Bush is a born-again Christian, Kerry a born-again Captain. Bush is for the rich, Kerry for the middle class. But then again, Bush will keep us in Iraq, and so will Kerry. Bush will try to ambush gay marriage, and Kerry will let the states ambush it. Bush will make empty promises about healthcare and education, and so will, indubitably, Kerry.
And both candidates will dance the Willie Horton tango, with images and sound bytes dictating their place in -- and at -- the polls. The voters in the Illinois of 1858 deciding whether to make Stephen Douglas or Abraham Lincoln their senator would have had to be present at one of the seven debates or put their eyes to a newspaper to find out who said what. You can imagine today that Douglas might have resorted to a 30-second TV spot showing a rather sinister and sinewy black slave sneaking into the master's boudoir to either bludgeon him or deflower his wife; the substance of the debate itself would scarce have mattered. Of course, you can't blame the candidates for technology, but you can blame the voters for trusting in it so implicitly. Just as you can blame the rabble for letting the demagogue work them into a racist, genocidal or xenophobic frenzy, so you can blame the people for not looking past the patriotic music, the 1984ish Newspeak slogans and the standard radio and television news reports that distill a 60-minute campaign speech into a 6-second blurt, then focus more on the results of opinion polls and the minutest ripple of controversy rather than actual analysis of what the candidates may or may not be saying. Not that every second of coverage must be spent on substantive issues, but would one second of every one and a half be too much to ask? And then there are the visuals, too, that did in Richard Nixon in the 1960 race against JFK, and might surely have deprived Lincoln of his victory a hundred years earlier, had his grotesque Marfan's-like features been broadcast into every American living room. Yes, the Selling of the President, as one might hawk a brand of cornflakes, because the truth is we, the citizenry, are far too busy and numerous to hope for a handshake and a chance to go one on one with the man would be king.
And why not king? What king was ever quite as powerful as a U.S. president? You say a king has no Congress breathing down his neck but I say that Congress lacks the power to truly keep the President in check. The President and his band of merry men and women run the show, and every now and then Congress wakes up and asks for documentation, and then has to huff and puff in order to get it, but by the time they do, the damage is already done. The House is a gerrymandered body, while the Senate is unrepresentative of the electorate, at least numbers-wise, given that Alaska's two senators (representing 700,000) have the same voting power as California's (representing 34,000,000). These two legislative assemblies, when confronted with a wily and determined president, are like the houses of straw and sticks that the Big Bad Wolf has no trouble blowing down. Today it's the White House that's made of brick. And we, who are busy working in Home Depot by day and McDonald's by night, are asked to decide who should live within those brick walls to determine, perhaps, the fate of our health, prosperity, security, children -- whether in school or the army -- and our rights or lack thereof as citizens. And what do we base our decision on? Our two-party system? If we identify strongly with one party or the other, our minds were made up long ago. The latest attack ad? I have no idea who to vote for, or more likely, no faith that it even matters, so I might as well dedicate my choice to the attack that most resonates with my inner Mr. Hyde. My own pecuniary self-interest? My money situation sucks, so who do I believe might make that one move (a tax cut, a new government program) that could possibly improve it? Or, if it's not the interest of our party, our inner bugaboos or our own private economy driving our decision, then. . . We might as well "eenie meenie minie moe" it, or vote for someone out of spite (daddy's voting for "A," and I hate daddy, so I'll vote for "B"!), or because someone "looks" or "sounds" more honest or we may not even vote at all, and thus join the ranks of the real "swing voters," some 40% of the population who are completely disengaged from the body politic, like corpuscles circulating in a loop that by-passes the nation's heart. That they don't trouble to declare themselves one way or the other surely does not preclude their griping about the state of the country, for which they blame those of us who did register a decision, which -- as is always the case in their eyes -- was the wrong one. So is there a right and wrong choice? Or even a choice at all? Perhaps the latter is the real issue, considering that the Republicans, with their runaway, profligate spending on federal programs, have come to resemble the Democrats of old, and the Dems, unable to approach a social issue now without a degree of casuistry that was once the exclusive hallmark of the GOP, now seem to scarce resemble the dynamic social activists of old. Without a clear idea of what to do to keep America a bold, ongoing experiment in free society as opposed to a thrashing empire nipped at by outside barbarians while collapsing within from a neo-feudal rift of rich and poor, our elections can only grow less and less significant, until it may no longer matter whom we (or the Supreme Court) implant in the Offal Office. Once that happens, this experiment in representative government will have failed.
But with the American electorate becoming increasingly polarized, such an outcome is not a likely one. More probable is a transformation of the parties themselves, as they somehow morph into entities of renewed purpose, perhaps one with the word "Progressive" in its name, the other with "Christian" or even "American" -- God and country taken to the extreme. But whether or not the parties prove conducive to change, the government itself will certainly have to. When the Founding Fathers met, after the failure of the Articles of Confederation, to forge a constitution, they were not hammering out commandments relayed to them from the heavens; they were fallible mortals, albeit in many ways brilliant ones, making up a system that was derived from what had come before but that also reached toward the future. Their efforts, with considerable patching, have survived a Civil War, a series of world wars, and more than a few imperial adventures. They have weathered, since 1789, an increase in population of approximately 278,000,000 people. It is quite apparent that after more than 200 years, the foundation has sustained a few cracks. With the pressing day-to-day business of government, it's not always easy to find the political will to make necessary changes and repairs. But unless we alter certain things about, if not our government, at least our elections, we may come to regret it later. The year 2000 was a warning shot, but God help us if November 2004 sees another leader elected without a majority of the popular vote. Riots might conceivably envelop the streets of this country that would make the Rodney King debacle of 1992 Los Angeles look like a playground recess. So... don't forget to vote. And do forget what I said about there being no choice. When making your decision, keep in mind the words of our greatest statesman, Benjamin Franklin, as quoted by Gore Vidal in his book Inventing a Nation: I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such: because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no Form of Government but what may be a Blessing to the People if well-administered; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other. One hopes the electorate will vote to prove Ben wrong. 07 September 04 Ross M. Levine is an author, Marcel Proust marathoner and manatee-hugger who feels safer on the edge; i.e., in New York or California. He agrees with the King of Brobdingnag that we're "the most pernicious race of odious vermin to crawl the surface of the Earth." He thinks Americans have too much freedom -- fries, that is. 
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Copyright Morphizm.com. All Rights Reserved. |
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Everybody
is a star. Including Da Lord. "More probable is a transformation
of the parties themselves, as they somehow morph into entities
of renewed purpose, perhaps one with the word 'Progressive' in
its name, the other with 'Christian' or even 'American' -- God
and country taken to the extreme." (Photo: Reuters/Gary Hershorn)
God save the
King. "What king was ever quite as powerful as a U.S. president?
You say a king has no Congress breathing down his neck but I say
that Congress lacks the power to truly keep the President in check."
(Photo: AP/Luke Frazza)
Sign language
for dummies. "The truth is we, the citizenry, are far too
busy and numerous to hope for a handshake and a chance to go one
on one with the man would be king." (Photo: AP/Charlie Niebergal)
From Zell
with love. "I have no idea who to vote for, or more likely,
no faith that it even matters, so I might as well dedicate my
choice to the attack that most resonates with my inner Mr. Hyde."
(Photo: Reuters/John Galbraith)
How to get
ahead in advertising. "The Republicans, with their runaway,
profligate spending on federal programs, have come to resemble
the Democrats of old, and the Dems, unable to approach a social
issue now without a degree of casuistry that was once the exclusive
hallmark of the GOP, now seem to scarce resemble the dynamic social
activists of old." (Photo: AP)
Meet the new
boss. Same as the old boss? "You may think you know. Bush
is good for business, Kerry for trees. Bush is a born-again Christian,
Kerry a born-again Captain. Bush is for the rich, Kerry for the
middle class. But then again, Bush will keep us in Iraq, and so
will Kerry." (Photo: Reuters/Jim Young)
