Why We Love Zombies

Hello, you.

It's been a long time since we've talked... well, since I've talked.

I'm starting to realize that like God, you aren't actually out there.

I'm starting to realize that I'm alone in all this, that you won't show up and make it all better.  Oh sure, there'll be imposters and place-holders... bad ideas out of desperation, maybe even a gold-digger or two.

But you... You're not real.

You're just as unreal as freedom and justice. You're just as unreal as Utopia: "no place," if you translate the Latin.

What I've got before me as options are just that: options.  Choices.

That's what this world really is, isn't it? A series of options, half-fulfilled promises, improvisations, make-dos.

Do you know how angry that makes me?  Do you know how bitter I've become and how hard it is to hide it?  How I've stopped caring?

No job, no friends, no life?  Nothing.  Do you know what I do to sustain myself?  Do you know what distractions, HOW MANY DISTRACTIONS I have needed?

You... You are not real.  Why am I even talking to you?

And I realize: I've gone insane.  I'm Rick on the telephone.  I'm Michonne talking to the air: I've taken off your arms, your jaw, so you can't hurt me any more but I can't let go of you, I can't let you die just yet, so I take you with me on chains.

And I... I want to let you go.  I want to treat you like the zombie you are, this lifeless automaton craving to eat me alive... but I can't. Goddamnit, I still LOVE you.  I've moved on in so many other ways, but for the life of me I can't let go of you.

Not yet.  Not yet, at least.

I can't way until you are gone, until I can decapitate you without a second's thought.

I look forward to that day.

You fuck.

Getting off the Obamarama: Hey Buddy, Got Any Hope?

In 2008, on the edge of a massive financial crisis, in the midst of 2 wars and with Americans questioning what it really means to be an American - do we sacrifice liberties, and if so how many and how much, to guarantee our safety? - stepped a tall, cool, collected man who aspired himself, I'm sure, to give us Hope again.

This week, the same man invited us to a public debate as to whether we should allow the warrantless search and seizure of personal information to protect our safety, and this is where I, personally, have to get off the Obamarama.

Because regardless of what the public wants to do with the Fourth Amendment in the future, the NSA cannot convincingly argue in any way that what it did was Constitutional.  And this isn't the first violation: earlier in the cool, calm man's term, we learned about the secret, extrajudicial remote-assassination of American citizens.  And of course, there are still prisoners languishing, suffering, dying slow, torturous deaths without judicial oversight in Guantanamo bay - which is a violation of treaties the US has entered (have a look at the Geneva Conventions), which is itself a part of the Constitution (see Art. IV, cl. 2) and therefore the Supreme Law of the Land.

The cool, calm, collected President knows all this; he was a Constitutional law professor, after all.  But rather than having invited all of us into a public discussion about liberty and safety, and sought the guidance of the public or even the other two Branches of the Government on these issues, for the past 5 years he has operated in secret, upon his own individual judgment.

I do not doubt the difficulty of being President.  I do not doubt the difficulty of raising serious, meaningful debate in the current political climate.  I do not doubt the difficulty that these questions of liberty and safety pose: I have just graduated law school, and I am aware if only distantly of the vast complexity of this issue, perhaps more so than the general public because of my legal education.

But I'm sorry, Mr. Obama, you are not and never were "Hope." You are not and never were "Change." You were nothing but the same.

If Dick Cheney was responsible for reintroducing the Imperial Presidency, you, sir, took the idea and ran with it.

Can you, Mr. Obama, in all good conscience imagine that Mr. Washington, or Mr. Lincoln, would do as you have done? Mr. Lincoln, I know, violated the Constitution at times in order to preserve the Union, but... his war was not anything like this one. His war had a definite end, either reunification or surrender.  Mr. Lincoln knew that his suspensions of Habeas Corpus, for example, was temporary. Our war, this "war on terror," it doesn't have a definite end now, does it? It has no definite enemy: I mean, how can you fight an emotional reaction? That enemy may even be American citizens, at least nominally - look at the Boston bombers, for example.

Actually, sir, LOOK CLOSELY AT THE BOSTON BOMBERS. I want you to pay attention, in particular, to the fact that solid, LEGAL, CONSTITUTIONAL police-work caught one of them, and solid, LEGAL, CONSTITUTIONAL American justice will see that he is justly punished - who knows, maybe even rehabilitated? 

My point is, Mr. Obama, that for a Constitutional Law professor, you seem far too eager to treat "the war on terror" as a WAR, where restrictions on action are cumbersome and may need to be discarded to achieve a victory, rather than what it is: CRIME, where restrictions are necessary to achieve justice. Maybe you got stuck in "war-mode" because 8 years of Bush/Cheney sculpted executive policy that way, but you still didn't have to agree with it, you could have changed that policy to make, oh I dunno, legal, constitutional, or even vaguely "just."  You could have exposed what your predecessor was doing, you could have engaged the public in debate, you could have engaged Congress in debate, you could have, in short, TRUSTED YOUR FELLOW AMERICANS. I know that if you follow what's trending on Twitter we seem like incompetent morons, but YOU COULD HAVE GOTTEN US TO MAKE PRISM LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL if you had in any way presented a convincing case to the public.  Seriously, we scare easily, you could have gotten your warrantless surveillance without too much difficulty.  Sure, "rights" nuts like myself might join forces with tea party nuts to raise a stink, but convince the average Joe the surveillance is needed to prevent a bomb going off and I wouldn't be here, typing this.

But you didn't.  I don't know why you don't trust your fellow Americans to discuss these things and decide what to do.  I don't know what dastardly plots you prevented through PRISM.  Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.  You broke the law.  You violated the Constitution.  You did exactly what Bush/Cheney did, exactly what I and (I think) so many thousands of millions of citizens wanted our government to STOP doing.

So why, I must ask, are you repeating it? Do you seriously think any judge can in good conscience is going to take a look at the evidence that flowed from an utterly unreasonable, warrantless search or seizure and just go with it? I mean, I've seen opinions where its obvious the judge chose an outcome and found the reasoning to justify it, but even these ARE SUBJECT TO REVIEW, a fundamental safeguard of justice, rights and democracy, and something you apparently don't feel necessary any more. And you do know, of course, that if the original search/seizure was unconstitutional, than the evidence flowing from it is inadmissible (absent other ways to find it), which means the prosecutors case against these individuals goes belly-up. You're giving these criminals who are plotting to blow us up Get-Out-of-Jail-Free cards! 

Modesty prevents me from uttering the words I'd actually like to say here.

Mr. Obama, you have completely lost my support.  I can no longer in good conscience support anything you do.  Nor do I feel any more desire to vote for your party, which obviously does not adequately represent anything like my political values.  In fact, I must be frank: you have dashed what tiny, little incandescent Hope I had back in 2008 that a political leader would emerge to restore my country. 

Not only have you further proven our enemies' point that Americans are valueless, immoral, unjust and capricious idiots with lots of weapons to make you fall in line, you have proven to me never to trust an elected official to abide by the oath he swore to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, apparently because the Constitution's greatest enemy at this point appears to be American politicians eager to ignore it when convenient and trot it out as evidence of our "specialness" when we need to look good. You have made our Founding Document a joke.

I do not, and never will, pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America. I WILL and DO pledge allegiance to the republic for which it stands, by which I mean the human and civil rights and democratic values specified in the Constitution of my country, as well as my fellow Americans themselves.  But if a flag could truly represent those things, Mr. Barack Obama, you have stained, soiled, torn and shat on it, sullying it in the eyes of the world.  I had hoped you would restore the dignity of that piece of cloth: clearly i and many others like me wasted our votes.

I am normally proud to be an American; this week, I am ashamed.

And that is your fault, Mr. President. It is your fault.

Faith Restored... Somehow

When I was ten years old, I lived in England, and I had a friend named Ahmad.  He was of Lebanese origin, and his family owned a Lebanese restaurant in London.  One day, Ahmad took me there.  The menu was large, and I had no idea what to order.

So they brought us everything.

To this day, it is the second best meal I ever had.  It is second-best because later, while we were on a shopping trip to Harrod's, I took my mother to the restaurant.  When Ahmad's mother recognized me, suddenly we again got everything on the menu.

And ate it all.  It was fabulous, luscious, vibrant, delicious food.

This hospitality impressed me mightily.

I bring this up because lately I have struggled to keep faith in God, and more importantly in humanity.  I've wanted to believe in us, that we can address the problems we all face - and I haven't been able to muster much by way of faith.  We've all seemed... doomed.  Selfishness, self-centeredness: the root of our problem.  And it has seemed intractable to me.

But then I remember the generosity and dignity that was shown to me by Ahmad and his family.  I remember the Good they displayed.

This basic compassion is, I believe, the way in which we can connect with an immense Power greater than ourselves, that can restore us to a life of modesty, decency, and care.

Ahmad's generosity inspired me to study Islamic law.  I have become an Islamophile.  I have studied and memorized portions of the Qur'an, which I believe is the most beautiful poetry ever expressed, in perhaps the most beautiful language humans speak.

All of this has inspired me again to enjoin goodness, and a restored faith.  I can believe in God once again.  He is no longer some external spirit, but the very thing that animates the universe and gives it life, beauty, grace.  And He is contacted in each moment we tap into the compassion within us.

I want you.

I want you and I want to buy you a Belgian Tervuren puppy.  I want you and I want a house in the country with loads of animals.  I want you and I want to buy you an SUV even though the idea disgusts me.  I want you and I want to have a daughter with you.  I want you and I want to be your son's "Dad."

I want you and I want a future with you.

You're asking so much of me, and expecting it to be of little consequence.

How dare you?  I mean, really how dare you?  I bet my life on this hand, and you dealt me a pair of twos.  I'm hoping against hope y'all got nothing better, because I've bet my stack on this hand.  I have nothing left.  There is no come back.  It's all down to this.

But you expect me to play my hand no matter what.  You know the chips are down, you know I'm fucked if I lose, but you expect me to play this hand.

Fuck you.  Fuck you all to hell, you motherfucker.  Why didn't you deal me something slightly better?

Because I've got a stone where my heart should be.  And it hurts like you wouldn't believe.  I've been beat up a thousand times, and this is what you give me: a stone.

And I still have to make it beat.

Self-Confidence

I guess that I wish we could still be friends.

I understand her point, that a relationship can't have two people with mental illness.  I understand how rough it can be to be around me, when everything is constantly on the edge of slipping into a chronic, painful madness.  I am, to put it bluntly, a depressing person to be around.

What I wish I could give her, or explain to her, is the fact that I actually have a deep faith in myself.  I know that I will continue to struggle with my problems, but I refuse to give up.  It's a powerful force in my life.  It has kept me alive despite everything that has happened, or will happen, to me.

It's a strange confidence, but a sustaining one.  And - I know that I myself need a partner who can also have that faith in me.  It's a tall order.

But a necessary one.

I suddenly feel OK.

Of course the answer was right there all along, staring me in the face.

"For God so loved the world that He gave." (John, 3:16).

And I don't mean this in a boring Christian episcopal, evangelical way.  John is describing an action, a course of action, for all of us to perform.

"For God so loved the world that He gave."

Almost one year ago, I made this promise.  I promised that no matter who or how I was, I would give as my expression of love.  I would be, for her, the ultimate expression of love.  For almost a year, that has been as a lover; and I have made a decidedly poor show of it.  But now is the opportunity to do it as a former lover, as an ex.  I am called upon to be selfless and pure without reward, to love for love's own sake.  And by God, I shall do it.