I'm back.

I don't feel too bad about disappearing for two months, because I know no one's reading this crap, but still, what's the point of having a blog if you never update it? It's not really a blog then, is it?...woah... Did I just invent a new zen koan?

Anyway, I felt like writing because I just read this. First of all, the stuff about the kid is totally endearing, and second, I couldn't agree more about the Jackson shit. But okay, third. "If we fight back, we get what we deserve," he says sarcastically, referring to the idea that the bombings in Turkey were retalliation for the Iraq war. He's successfully missed the entire point. Going to war in Iraq was not "fighting back." Goddamn, how many times and how many different ways can it be said? Iraq had nothing to do with September 11. Just ask George Bush.

I think he thinks he anticipates this point in the passage that starts "Oh, there you go again with the us vs. them, the good vs. evil, the with-us-or-with-the-terrorists. But these aren’t my definitions; these are the definitions of the enemy." He goes on to say "They obviously believe that sides have been drawn, allegiances chosen; why else kill Turks, for heaven’s sake?"

Uh... buddy? They attacked Turkey after we attacked Iraq (and Turkey offered to back us up). Who drew the sides?

Best quote from Bush's address to the UN:

"Events during the past two years have set before us the clearest of divides: Between those who seek order and those who spread chaos; between those who work for peaceful change and those who adopt the methods of gangsters; between those who honor the rights of man and those who deliberately take the lives of men and women and children, without mercy or shame."

Good god. Are there really people who think that pulling American troops out now is a good idea?? I guess so. Actually, I'm a little confused -- the AP seems to report that 48 percent of respondants in a Newsweek poll said we should bring soldiers home; but Newsweek says only five percent support bringing them home now. Oh well.

Anyway, obviously Bush is in trouble. Large numbers of Americans are not happy with the cost we're paying for our adventure in Iraq. And there's no way -- no way, unless they're even crazier than I thought -- that the administration will be able to make those people happy now. (Of course, not going to war in the first place would have been a nice thought.) So, that's good news for all us anti-Bush types. But, of course, it's terrible news too: if this sentiment can, in fact, be turned into a democratic victory in 2004 (a wishful thought, I know), whoever finds himself in the White House will be saddled with the task of trying to clean up this mess. Which, from where I sit, seems to be an impossible task.

What?!! Is this really possible?

I've been thinking about this for a while, too. Namely, that "There is a difference between saying that our dealings with Saddam have to be viewed in the context of the September 11 attacks and claiming that he was behind them." For the most part, administration officials haven't said explicitly that Saddam was behind the attacks. Still, a majority of Americans believe he was! Surely, that idea didn't just materialized by itself?

Of course it didn't. The administration cynically manipulated the average American, hinting that Saddam was involved -- they certainly claimed that he was working with al Qaeda, and it's not much of a leap from that to imagining that he was at least complicit in that organization's biggest-ever operation -- and using intentionally vague ideas. For example, this one: the concept that "our dealings with Saddam have to be viewed in the context of the September 11 attacks" means that we must go to war with him. What this says to someone not inclined to pick apart the logic and be obsessively skeptical is that Saddam Hussein had something to do with the September 11 attacks. I mean, who are we kidding?

It's like when Rumsfeld and then Bush referred to "senior-level contacts [between Iraq and al Qaeda] going back a decade," by which they meant that reports existed of such contact a decade ago -- no strong evidence existed that those contacts were ongoing. Could it possibly be a coincidence that they both used the expression "going back a decade" to mean "a decade ago?"

Of course, it's also like when Bush, in his State of the Union address, said "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," a bald-faced lie. When the claim was questioned, some apologists said "well, he only said that the British government had learned that -- we never said it was true!"

What is this crap?

By the way, I just hate how EVERY SINGLE TIME the Niger uranium claim gets mentioned, it's referred to as "the sixteen words," as if the number of words has any friggin thing to do with what was said. Maybe we should refer to the entire speech as "the 5,490 words?" After all, they were all bullshit. But I mean come on. Calling it "the sixteen words" is an obvious attempt to minimize the importance of the claim. Sorry, but it was a damn important claim, and it was a lie. If someone yelled "fire" in a crowded theater, would we say, "well, it was only one word?"

I wonder how much I have in common with these people

This weekend, a bunch of us went to the house where a friend grew up, out in rural Connecticut. It was a nice place, and there were potted plants scattered about, adding embience, as potted plants are wont to do. One of them was this huge freakin cactus, which my friend who grew up there said had been sitting in that very corner for as long as he could remember. The thing was about seven feet tall. The wild thing, that another friend pointed out, was the tininess of the pot it was growing in: it was about 9 inches tall and six inches in diameter. How the hell is that possible?

Another friend, when this was pointed out, said "cacti [actually, she probably said 'cactuses'] thrive on deprivation. The worse things get, the more they like it." God, doesn't it seem like that's true? And don't you know people like that?

Ugh.

Oof.

Whew, check this out. These are comments that people added to a blog maintained by an American soldier in Iraq (which is also unbelievable).

Okay, did you read it yet? Did you notice what I noticed? The soldiers, save for one 30-word missive, ignore all the debate over the war, instead giving each other tips on how to carry their m16's. It's so dramatic how they just don't address anything else that's being said. It makes you think about what their world must be like: no time for partisan arguing of the kind that us civilians indulge in. They must realize that there's no easy answers to the questions that are being asked, and also that a lot of the debate is done just for the sake of debate. They have more serious considerations to focus on.

Concentrating on Iraq has the added benefit for the Bush administration of making them appear to be interested in doing something about threats to our national security while leaving bin Laden out there. It's good for them to leave him out there because the 2004 Bush campaign is going to focus on making him the "national security president," and if Americans feel they're actually safe, that strategy won't be effective. The Democrats should be talking about how we still haven't found bin Laden, and yet we've committed ourselves -- and huge numbers of troops -- to years of occupation in Iraq. If we really cared about the number one threat, we'd be putting everything we have into getting bin Laden.

A few months ago now, I heard my brother-in-law (I'm sure I'll do a lot of blogging about my brothers-in-law, just you wait) complaining about people who claimed that our credibility as a nation had been hurt by the fact that we hadn't (and still haven't now) uncovered any WMDs in Iraq. He said, "that's not the point! The point is, we've shown the world, if you aid terrorists, we'll come after you." I bit my tongue.

But now I have my own blog!! The notion of credibility is based on what others think of you, not on what you think you've demonstrated. And I think it's safe to say that, right now, most of the world thinks we lied.

And with good reason. Before the war, we market-tested using the "Iraq aids terrorists" justification, but found that "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction" worked better, for beaurocratic reasons. So we made the idea that Iraq has these weapons the primary justification for going to war. As it seems increasingly more likely that Iraq never had those weapons, our credibility is increasingly undermined. As David Corn points out, Bush's new tactic is to talk about weapons "programs," not weapons themselves. Ignoring, of course, the lack of evidence of even such programs.

But if that's not enough, it seems that the beaurocratic reason that we didn't make more of the "Iraq aids terrorists" argument is that most in the intelligence community didn't think it was true. Good for our credibility? Indeed, back in January, Bush himself said he "couldn't make the claim" that there was any connection between the September 11 terrorists and Iraq.

And yet, almost half of Americans still believe that we have found clear evidence that Hussein supported al Qaeda. Why??

I am not a true Ted Rall fan. I have worked with him, and I think he's usually not very funny. And he's completely unsubtle. But he provided me with an answer to the mystery of why Americans still believe -- even though everyone is now denying it, including the White House -- that there was a Hussein-al Qaeda link. It's because the poor fools want to believe that their government, so strong and so protective, wouldn't take them to war for no reason. It's just too fuckin' upsetting to realize what's really going on!

I wonder if that's what's going on with my brother-in-law.

Ugh. This is some pretty despicable shit. Fortunately, although this story doesn't seem to be being reported (do a Google news search on "executive order 13303" to see what I mean), someone is trying to do something about it.

(Notice how I'm using more links?)

The other thing about blogs is that they're supposed to have a ton of links in them. That's why they're called "blogs," right? Well, I don't have jackie to link to. I was just looking around the net for stuff I could link to, and I found this. Amazing. Then there's this. Also amazing. The great thing about these blogs is that they offer insight into worlds that lots of people don't have access to. What can I offer people access to?

I actually see this one on my morning commute: a corner where they train traffic cops. There's always a throng -- like 50 or see -- of those guys in their orange outfits and those white gloves, which remind me of Mickey Mouse. Sometimes they're all just standing there (I enjoy the fact that, in the last two sentences, I used the words "their," "they're," and "there"), sometimes they are actually directing traffic, totally unnecessarily. To make matters weirder, at that corner, every morning, at least 20 times a morning, a huge crowd of people gets off a bus and crosses the street illegally to get to the subway. It's very dangerous. And it's clear that the traffic cops don't realize at all that it's illegal, they just smile and say "hi" as we walk past.

That last post happened -- what -- over a year ago? Wow. Well, if I want to take the blogging thing seriously, I have to get the idea through my head that I'm not supposed to be the only one reading this. I should be talking about stuff that the rest of the world might find interesting -- that's what blogging is about.

I thought I could keep in my blog a running list of images that I think would work well in stories or songs. Dumb idea? Probably. I'm going to do it anyway.

So here's one: a city street during the summer time, with a parked car on it. The car has snow on it. It's not the kind of thing that you really notice -- you're so used to seeing cars with snow on them at other times of year -- and you might just walk right past it without even thinking about it. But it's there, and it doesn't belong there.

People who walk down the street with their umbrellas open when it just looks like rain.

things to do:
email the southern center for human rights. Page with addresses is here.
try emailing James Liebman. jliebman@law.columbia.edu
try emailing Stephen P. Garvey and Sheri Lynn Johnson (Cornell): spg3@cornell.edu, slj8@cornell.edu
talk to Crime Communities and Culture people about volunteering/internship possibilities.

Guess I'll give this another shot tonight. Free writing. That was a sentence fragment.

Everything I've read about the personal statement says that it should be something that only you (me) could honestly write. Because the idea is to give the admissions officers a sense of precisely who I (you, one) am (are, is) and what sets me apart from others. I wonder whether what I came up with last night fits that description -- probably not. What does set me apart from others? Dear god, this looks like another recipe for depressing myself. But I better go ahead and face it: nothing. I am just like everybody else out there. I wouldn't make a better or worse lawyer or law student than anyone else. Okay, that's silliness. For real now, what does set me apart? I have long hair. I've had long hair since I was in eighth grade. No, no, for real now.... I am smart. That's probably the one quality I have that I can be (fairly) sure of. And I believe strongly that I have to use my life to make the world a better place. I really believe that that's what I was put here for. And I am skeptical of everything, including -- and this is important -- myself. I'm willing to hold myself to the same standards that I hold the rest of the world to, and I can see it when I don't meet those standards, and I'm willing to change so that I do.

Okay, I guess being smart won't really set me apart from the other applicants to Yale, NYU, Columbia, Cornell and Berkeley. Probably a real drive to contribute positively to the world is a good start, although there probably are plenty of other applicants with the same idea. But mine is probably realer, because I am probably older. So I think the story I tell should be one of a guy who set out to do something good for the world, and the discoveries along that path that led him to law. It should not be a meandering path, however, more of a zeroing in. Which is precisely what is going on. I think I may have hit upon something. The statement would start with something about the present, something about my interest in law or law school. Or maybe the death penalty. Then maybe it could go to the 'push-pull' thing I talked about last night. Which might lead me to my study of sociology -- where our story begins. From there it would be chronological, giving a sense of the refinements in my thinking that lead me from that point to my senior year, to my internet stuff, to my present situation, to law. Zeroing in on both my medium and my issue. Another thing that definitely will set me apart is my age. So I should try and convey a maturity in my personal statement. I should not write it like a kid addressing adults, which would be my inclination, believe it or not. I am an adult, and I am writing this for another adult to read. Just like at work -- I am an equal. I could sit in meetings with these people, I could probably tell them a lot of things they don't know.

I have been zeroing in on the study of law, and the pursuit of law in the public interest, for a long time. At the age of 29, I have been moved my entire life by two competing forces -- a pull, on the one hand, and a push, on the other. Settling into the valley between the two -- achieving a balance -- has been my task.

The "pull" I'm referring to is a natural drift on my part toward the realms of abstraction, the intellect, and theory. This is what I love: my mind naturally drifts toward playing with ideas, putting them together and seeing what comes out. The "push" is my strong desire to make an impact on people's lives, and change them for the better. I know beyond doubt that I must achieve this to consider myself a success, and I "push" myself to do so.

... is this good so far? It's a little corny. I'm sure I'll read it tomorrow and realize that it's unbelievably corny. And I'm afraid it sounds like a college student wrote it. Also I fear it's probably a whole lot like most other personal statements. Should I put my age in the first sentence? To grab the reader. There's a danger, though -- the reader can either say "oh, he's a little more mature than our other applicants, maybe he's got something interesting to say," or they can say "oh, this is just some loser who's decided to try his hand at law school." Shit, and what about the web stuff? When I talk about the web stuff they'll be like, "oh, he's just like all those other failed dot-commers who have been applying here lately." The difference there is that I am still employed and have never lost a job -- but will they see that? Maybe I should explicitly address that issue? Say "Yes, I am an internet person. I'm sure you have had applications from thousands of other internet people who have decided to move on to law school. But let me point out, I'm not a casualty of the dot-com fallout who is searching for the next thing. I have never been without a job, and my current job is not in any danger. My entire carreer has been leading me to this point. I am not a dot-commer, I'm a dot-orger, and there's a big difference." Maybe I should write the whole thing as an address to the reader, using the word "you" a lot. Maybe, but that might be a little passe these days. Also, it's kind of tough -- seems like you either have to come off sounding defensive or cocky. Either "I imagine you look over my transcripts and LSAT, flip through my resume, and say to yourself, 'what's this guy got to offer that our other applicants don't?'" ... or "I imagine that when you see my LSAT and transcripts and take a look at what I've done with my life so far, you begin to think, 'this looks like a pretty good candidate for my school.'" Know what I mean? Well, I think I'll sleep on that one. There may be other, better approaches. Anyway, I think I'm beginning to get somewhere.

Okay, here's the idea right now: I am applying to law schools, and most -- probably all, actually, but I don't know for sure -- law schools require a "personal statement" from their applicants. I guess I have a decent idea of what this is supposed to be, but I desperately need to figure out what I'm going to say in mine. I think my first step will be to do some "free writing" here: just writing whatever the fuck I think of. Which is what I'm doing right now. Problem is, whenever I do this I start doing this -- talking about what I'm doing, which inevitably leads to talking about talking about what I'm doing (like right now), and then talking about talking about what I'm doing (like right now) and like that. So I'll make a rule that I try and avoid that. I will also make a rule that I don't curse too much or use too many sentence fragments, and I try to punctuate everything properly, so I can get the hang of trying to sound professional again. It's been a long time since I've had to write anything decent (I'm 29 years old). This will be my first attempt in -- well, a long freakin time (note avoidance of the 'f' word). I think my next step will be to talk to people that know me and respect me and that I respect -- probably this will turn out to be my Mom, Dad, brother and girlfriend -- about what they think I should put in the personal statement. Alright, let's see. What should I say.

Well, first of all I know a couple things about what led me to my decision to go to law school. Those things are that 1) I realized that I had to do something, and that law school is as good as anything else; probably shouldn't put that in the personal statement. 2) That I am basically a lover of academic pursuits -- I love to think about things, analyse things, study things, read about things, write about things (well, I'm starting to write about things right now -- oops, I said I wasn't going to do that -- or that -- or that), develop ideas about things -- but I don't want to spend my life and my brain power just tossing ideas back and forth with other academics. I know that some intellectuals are talented and lucky enough to pursue their abstract and theoretical ideas and simultaneously engage the world outside of the academy, but I'm not sure I'm that person. Or now, that's not it -- the problem isn't that I'm not that person, the problem is that I want to be even more in the world, having a day-to-day effect on things, and hopefully daily making it a better place. It seems to me that law is the perfect intersection of those two ambitions. It is an intellectual pursuit but it acts on and in the world of people and things instead of the world of ideas. Pretty fantastic, really (that was a sentence fragment). A guy named Kenneth Anderson says "The study of law is the best way I know to unite the intellectual and the activist," which is pretty much what I'm trying to get at here. And I think, when it comes down to it, I am an intellectual by disposition and an activist by ambition. That is to say, my natural state is that of an intellectual, but what I most want to be is an activist. Of course, that "natural state" comment needs some clarification, doesn't it? Let's see. Well, I already said that "I am a lover of academic pursuits," which is certainly part of it... I love the intellectual stuff. Another part of it is that I'm good at it. Maybe that's the real point. When I asked myself "what am I best at?" the answer was thinking abstractly, taking ideas and putting them together to see what you get. So, to explain the "natural state" remark, we have a) I love the intellectual stuff and b) I'm good at the intellectual stuff. And I am just naturally drawn to the intellectual stuff. I'm always coming up with ideas and theories and shit like that. That was a curse word, and plus that last sentence was really truly idiotic. That is certainly not something I want to tell law schools. I think, generally, I will want to frame everything in terms of my drives -- I am driven to think abstractly about things, on the one hand, and I am driven to activism, on the other. I don't want to give them the impression that I am lost and just trying to figure out what would be the best match for my personality (which is, of course, the truth). It's kind of interesting, though... In a sense, these two things could be taken to be opposites -- theory and abstraction on the one hand, and activism and practice on the other. And yet I'm driven to them both. Also interesting is the two different kinds of drives that are leading me in each direction: leading me to abstraction is a sort of natural pull, like a magnet or a car that pulls to the left (or right, if you like that better); leading me to activism is a desire and a self-requirement. In other words, a pull ... and a push. I naturally fall toward one side, and I consciously ask myself to go to the other. Something that would satisfy both would be a dream.

Of course, if I'm going to tell law schools that I am driven toward activism, I'll have to back that up with something, which is a little tough. I'm driven by a sense that I should be doing something in the world, but I don't have a lot to show for that... one thing I really should do is get involved in something now. Maybe I could lie on my application? I can't think of an excellent reason not to. Actually, my current job gives me a little of that kind of satisfaction -- I am using my abstract thinking skills to further a worthwhile cause in the world. But if I talk about my current job in my application, they'll say 'so why is he leaving? he should keep being the webmaster for .orgs.' Well, I suppose that's something I should address myself. Why am I leaving? I like my job a lot, and it does give me that kind of satisfaction. Uh-oh, don't talk yourself into staying by working on your personal statement for law school. Well, there are a few things. One thing is that I'm not completely convinced that what I do is really helping that much. Another thing is that, if it is helping, I obviously don't see it -- if I did, I would be convinced. Another thing is that it doesn't give me enough mental exercise. A majority of my time is spent on work that requires very little thought for me; a minority is spent doing stuff that's actually interesting. And yet another reason that I am ready to leave is that there are issues that I care about more, and feel closer to personally, than those with which my current job is concerned.

Okay, all of this bullshit is good and fine, but I don't know that any of it will really get and hold the attention of an admissions officer. It's pretty silly-seeming, even though it is meaningful to me. I could touch on it all and then go on to something else. The other thing that most naturally would fit into a personal statement is my very strong opposition to the death penalty. Of course, this is a little risky as well, because it's a political position, and what if the person reading the application is for the death penalty? Further, I don't want to appear to preachy or self-righteous (which I am). But I am strongly opposed to the death penalty, and that is a major reason that I want to go to law school. So shouldn't it appear in my personal statement? I do want them to know that I have specific goals, particularly because I'm likely to appear pretty lost if I don't.

I want to tell a story of what led me to law school, and to explain why it took me so long. Can I paint a picture that goes like this:

I am pulled and pushed, respectively, to theory and practice.

My education in sociology convinced me that I wanted to be involved in human rights advocacy.

It was the mid-nineties, and I developed internet skills so that I could work on websites that dealt with those issues.

I worked on these websites, both of which dealt with human rights.

The foci of the two sites, combined with my own thinking, led me closer and closer to the death penalty as the most important human rights question for me.

I concluded that I could no longer adequately address the question from my position as a webmaster and had to take a more ambitious and active role.

That would be a story. I think I need to play down the webmaster stuff though. More useful would be to say that I worked with these organizations -- I was brought there by my web skills, and I worked with them and went from there. But I really have to figure out a way to play up any connection to the legal profession that I can think of -- any reason for them to believe that I would be good at it. I mean, this story sort of talks about why I want to do it, but they need to have some reason to think their investment in me will pay off. Of course, I can't think of any connection at all.

Okay, so the weaknesses of what I've come up with so far are: I) need to come up with reasons why I'd be a good lawyer; II) need to back up my claims to a drive for activism with something; III) need to make it interesting and lively, so it will hold the reader's attention. Also there's the concern about taking a semi-controversial political stand in the personal statement. Although that's probably not a concern with NYU and almost definitely not with Columbia or Cornell. Probably same goes for Berkeley. Yale is different, as is Georgetown (I think), but who cares about those two schools anyway. Also, whatever safety schools I come up with will probably be different.

Guess I'll sign off now. Let's see what this looks like up on my Johnson.

This is my first posting to Johnson. I am excited about Johnson and I think you should be too.