A Pilgrim’s Digression

If you go down in the flood,

It’s gonna be your own fault.

Bob Dylan, “Down in the Flood”

Essentially, that is what the city has told us, after flooding washed out part of our driveway yesterday.

I spent part of the afternoon out of the rain, in a coffee shop drinking tea and blogging. When I got home, I could not pull completely into the driveway. Water was flowing across it in a shin deep river. On the right side, where water flows down off the hill, it had backed up at the culvert and had overflowed. The water made a deep channel across it, washing away the gravel down to the red clay soil underneath.

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If wishes were horses, sometimes we’d all get a kick in the head.

Not even a week ago, we here in the east were complaining about the heat and lack of rain. Why is it so dry? Why won’t it rain?

After a weekend of rain, and now two weekdays of rain, I think we’ve had enough. Washington has been flooded for several days now. Electricity has been out. Streets flooded. Rivers are out of their banks. The government is on an unscheduled leave policy, and employees are being encouraged to stay home.

Thus on a Tuesday afternoon, I sit in a coffee shop, blogging, and thinking ironically, “I ought to be writing something really important.” Funny how blogging, or any kind of writing that isn’t fictional, doesn’t count, in my opinion.

Lynn had already booked a babysitter for today; she has a week of workdays at school, in preparation for next year. So instead of telling the babysitter to stay home today, I decided to let her stay with Brendan so I could have some time to myself.

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Since Republicans love to tout their deep and abiding faith in democracy, I have a solution to the Iraq issue that should make everyone happy. No, I am not going to propose that we Americans hold a referendum on whether or not to withdraw from Iraq.

As I see it, the one strong argument that Republicans have in their corner on the issue is that withdraw would send the country spiraling into chaos and even more Iraqis would die (ignore, for a moment, the uncomfortable fact that thousands upon thousands of Iraqis have died despite the “security” we provide them). Yet maybe despite all the death and destruction, Iraqis really do believe that the situation would be worse in our absence.

Thus, the only ones who should decide whether we ought to stay in Iraq are the Iraqis. I say, let’s hold one more vote in Iraq, and let it be a referendum on whether the coalition forces stay or go.

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If you want a justification for murder, give a lawyer a call.

In the Washington Post article 8 Troops Charged in Death of Iraqi, the reporter apparently interviewed Georgetown law professor Gary Solis.  Solis said that “fatal mistakes” happen in war, and went on to describe the circumstances necessary for a soldier to actually be convicted of murder:

“Where is the line? The line is premeditation,” Solis said of wartime killings. “If you make a mistake, you’re not going to be investigated. The only guys that have to be worried are those that have thought about doing it and then do it.”

Sorry, Judge.  It was a mistake.  I didn’t plan to shoot him, it just happened.  Does Solis realize how ridiculous he sounds?

I have to wonder if Solis really means what he says, here, about premeditation being the sole factor in whether a wartime killing can be prosecuted as murder.

Assume for a minute that Solis knows what he is talking about.  Can you imagine applying this same standard to murderers in the civilian world?

Recently, you may have read the “Oddly Enough” story of a nude man who, in a unique attempt to persuade his fiancée to marry him, was chased and shot at by a do-gooder passerby who thought he was just another pervert.

For his vigilante act, the gunman was arrested and charged with various crimes.

But what if he had actually killed the nudist?  Under the standards Solis proposes for the military, he could tell the judge, “Look, I was trying to do the right thing.  It’s a dangerous world out there–you never know where the danger is going to come from.  I felt threatened, and I shot him.  I made a mistake.”

This is an argumentum ad absurdum I have made here, but I think it makes a good point.  Why is it any less ridiculous, in the military world, that a murder must be premeditated before it can be considered more than a “mistake?”

Could it be because we want the people we arm with guns to have the authority to use them without worry that they will be punished?  Is it because today, “our” security trumps everything, even the life of an innocent individual?

In a thematically-related story, recently in the Washington area, a police officer shot and killed a teenager in a group of kids who were skipping out on a check at IHOP.  The officer claimed the kids tried to run him over with the vehicle, as they left the restaurant.

The officer fired several times, even after the vehicle was moving away from him.  The case has been a topic of discussion on local talk radio for weeks, especially after the officer was exonerated of all charges against him.

I am afraid that another of the unintended consequences of the Iraq War is going to be a general degradation of respect for the military among civilians with no understanding of military history and culture.

I say that not because of the indictment of eight soldiers charged with the premeditated murder of an Iraqi civilian, nor because of whatever comes of the Haditha investigation, but because a war fought for as many years as this one, and with no end in sight, is a war that grows darker and more brutal as the years wear on. It is often shocking to civilians to learn of the callousness created by war, in soldiers and civilians alike.

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Much of my day has been tinged with depression over the killing of these two American soldiers in Iraq. I had been following this story since learning about their being taken prisoner yesterday. And when I woke up this morning to the breaking news that the Iraqi military was reporting they had been found, I felt this veil of darkness fall across my mind that has not been entirely lifted.

The darkness has tinged my entire day.

We all knew they would not be found alive. We all knew what the barbarians would do to them. We knew from past experience what barbarians do to captives, especially American captives. Yet you don’t admit any of what you know to be true, until denial is no longer tenable.

Now the media begins its gruesome inquest into the details, like some county coroner who has to measure the wound, probe it, and cut the bodies apart to determine cause of death. Will we know all the bloody details of the torture that was done to their bodies? Oh yes, I am sure.

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One of the things I have missed over the past decade or so, and didn’t even know I missed, is a porch. Having rented apartments or townhouses for the past ten or twelve years, I haven’t had much opportunity to appreciate the humble porch. Now that I am a putative “homeowner” (I am fully aware the bank still actually owns the house I live in), I am beginning to reacquaint myself with the beauty of porches.

Yesterday evening, after finishing the yard work I began on Saturday evening, I took some time to sit on our front porch, as I have done occasionally this summer so far. The past three days have been scorching during the afternoon, but in the evening, the sun loses its intensity and a pleasant breeze stirs the trees and makes it more comfortable to sit outside.

Saturday evening, it was cool enough that I was able to mow, beginning at about five o’clock, but I ran out of trimmer line and so had to postpone finishing the trimming until yesterday. So after doing that, as well as cleaning up some more brush from our thicket in the back yard and dragging it to the street, I just sat on the porch and reflected.

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Lacking anything better to write about today, here are a few of my favorite things (plus a house update).

My favorite coffee mugs:

A Republican roommate in college gave me this mug when we were packing up at the end of the Spring semester in 1993. He was from Buffalo, New York, and was a staunch, card-carrying GOP-er. He once said that he was glad it was so cold and snowy in Buffalo in winter because it cleared the streets of the homeless, many of whom froze to death.

I was a Republican at the time, as well, though his views were a bit radical even for me.

For reasons I can’t recall, I never went to my college graduation in 1996. I probably didn’t consider it an event of any significance. Anyway, I didn’t go, but Lynn had another friend graduating that spring so she went to be there with him. She brought me this lovely mug celebrating a hundred years of West Virginia University.

Considering so many schools in Virginia date to the eighteenth century, it’s a little odd to think that my University is just a little over a hundred years old. That is a very young school, really.

I loved WVU, however, and I loved Morgantown. When I first left college, I used to daydream about being hired to teach there, so I could live there permanently.

Now, when we pass through on our way to Pittsburgh to visit Lynn’s family, I think the traffic is so horrific–worse than Washington, D.C., really–I could never live there full time. The town and school were not built to handle the kind of automobile traffic they must currently support.

Our house is coming along. I’d post some pictures, but I am not happy with how my digital camera has been working, lately. It is only a 2 Megapixel camera, but in the past I have been able to take some really good shots with it, which I have had framed.

Recently, the colors have begun to seem faded, and every picture I take seems blurred. I don’t know if there is something wrong with the camera, or what. It’s a Canon Powershot s200.

Well, here are a couple pictures, anyway. As you can see, they are not particularly crisp, and I don’t know why. The light was good, I was consciously holding the camera steady, and I did not use digital zoom. So what’s the deal?

Yesterday, I took this one of my lovely wife and darling child sitting on our recently-polyurethaned steps. To left and right are flower boxes. Lynn took the boxes to school and had the agriculture students plant and grow them from seed. Yeah, she’s a cheater. I love her ingenuity, though.

Above the outside light beside the door, she has temporarily hung a sign that says “Beware of Attack Democrat.” I don’t know where we’ll hang that permanently. If we make it prominent, we’ll probably get our house egged at Halloween. Virginians may like to elect Democrat governors, but that doesn’t mean this is blue state.

Brendan plantd some sunflowers from seed, and he has been anxiously watching them grow. A couple weeks ago, he shut his finger in the door at school, breaking it at the tip. You can see the splint, if you look closely. Fortunately, it’s his middle finger, so he can help us out with hand signals when we’re driving.

This gravel walk is new. We had nothing but the red brick pavers when we moved in. Lynn made this walk herself. She was going for an amateurish, crooked look, I think.

Just kidding, dear! It looks very nice, especially because I didn’t have to build it. Now we don’t track mud up the steps on wet days.

And finally, our handy Wal-Mart garden cart, loaded with bags of top soil to be mixed with our piss-poor red clay soil. We’ve been planting grass along our walk, trying to cover the bare spots, but first we have to rake good topsoil into the ground. Grass will not grow in red clay.

Our next project, maybe later in the summer or fall, is to have the ditch in the background filled in and leveled off so that we have a flatter front yard under those oak trees. Our neighbors have said they know someone who will give us the pipe needed for the ditch; we will have to pay for fill dirt to cover it, which shouldn’t be more than a few hundred dollars. The real expense will be finding someone with a caterpillar to take a half hour and spread it for us.

We have made other improvements you can’t see from this picture. In the rear, we’ve taken down most of the trees in our little patch of woods. Now we’ve got a pleasant thicket of poison ivy growing there. This fall, I’ll clear that out.

My Grandpa and Grandma came down from West Virginia to visit last weekend, and Grandpa said, “Boy, if I lived down here, I’d be over here every day with my tractor, and you’d have a nice yard in no time.” I said, “Well, you’re welcome to sleep in Brendan’s Spongebob bed. Come on down and stay as long as you want.”

I’m afraid we’re very slow about getting our yard up to code. It’s expensive work, too. More expensive and time consuming than I imagined.

I mow about every two weeks. If I’m lucky, I’m able to pick a day to mow when it is cool and overcast. If I am unlucky, I get to sweat off a few pounds mowing our unlevel ground. I have lost weight, too. I am below 170, now, for the first time in a couple years. I don’t know whether to attribute that to my infrequent mowing or not.

It may be a result of us eating at home more than we did previously. We hardly ever go out to eat. On weekends, every meal is home cooked.

I don’t know what has inspired this, but since moving in, Lynn has been cooking some really good meals for us. We have breakfast together at the table; lunch is usually haphazard, and if there is one meal where we might eat out, it’s lunch. We also eat dinner together at the table. I have to say, it’s been really good.

The only reason for it I can think of is that we finally feel like we have a home and not just a few rooms to flop in. It’s really strange how owning a home changes your attitudes and habits.

Also, owning a home is so much more satisfying than I ever imagined. Previously, I would have said it didn’t matter at all whether you rent or own. People need a place to sleep, so what’s the difference?

There is a huge difference, mentally. Our mortgage payment is $1,050.00 a month. If I were paying that kind of money in rent, I’d feel like I was taking a screwing. Since I am actually paying for a house I am going to own outright, one day, it ain’t so bad paying a mortgage.

Analyzing my most recent statement, however, I do see that of our payment, only $111.00 goes toward the principal. The rest is interest, escrow (for homeowners insurance), and mortgage insurance. But most of my payment is towards interest.

That’s normal, I suppose. Car payments work the same way. Yet I can’t help but feel that Citibank is making some good money off my loan. There used to be laws against Usury, and the Catholic Church still considers it a grave sin.

Back on June 2, I wrote a piece called Flogging a Straw Man on the subject of how frequently Conservatives manufacture “straw man” arguments.  That is, they attack an argument they say is being advanced by Liberals, but which no Liberal has actually made.

Over at The American Prospect, Greg Sargent points out how the Conservative punditry make use of the straw man.  First a Conservative newspaper, the Washington Times, publishes an article purporting that “some Democrats” have called the killing of Zarqawi a “stunt” to divert attention from the failing war in Iraq.  Then Conservative commentators cite the article as proof of their deeply held belief that Democrats are demoralized or saddened that Zarqawi is dead.

The only problem is, the story was manufactured to flesh out the headline, “Democrats Call Zarqawi Killing a Stunt.”  Says Sargent:

Of course, the majority of those quoted in the story said the killing was good news, and none quoted actually said it was a “stunt.” Only one of the Dems quoted said anything that could conceivably be read as anything close to that — and his quote was half-paraphrased and was chopped and mangled so badly by the reporter that it’s impossible to know what he really said or what the context was.

And as Sargent concludes, “When Dems won’t say what you want them to, just make it up.”

When I first read the Washington Times piece, my first thought was actually, “Geez, this reporter really had to dig for some obscure Democrats to give them the quotes they wanted.”  Who the heck is Pete Stark?

Anyway, the point is that here you have the Conservative portion of the media doing exactly what they acuse the “liberal” media of doing: manufacturing news.  That is,  the “mainstream” Conservative media creates a straw man, which the attack dogs can then chew up.

Rather than writing a full-fledged film review of one movie, I want to post a few brief thoughts on films I’ve seen recently.

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