Information Glut: Breaking It Down

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

I caught a headline this week that seemed to sum up the energy of these last several months: “Sharp Rise in Executions Bucks Declining Trend, Rights Groups Warn.” The article details an Amnesty International report on the sudden flurry of lethal activity in the remaining nations that put people to death: China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and, sadly, US (the killing fields and gulags of North Korea are not mentioned, but should be.) Here, where appropriate poisonous cocktails are no longer easily acquired, some states, including my own, have turned to secretive formulas and elusive sources to end life. An Oklahoma judge has just declared such secrecy unconstitutional, in violation of the prisoners’ civil rights. She argues that they have a right to know what is being used to kill them.

Cold comfort, that, not to mention that having such a conversation just seems wrong to its core. My spirit recoils at the mechanics of execution when the actual ethical challenge is our embrace of state-sanctioned murder, representing some archaic need for revenge within the American psyche still alive in our romanticized notions of vigilantism, approval of Stand Your Ground laws and shrill hysteria over Second Amendment rights. Our flirtation with violence and vengeance, our love affair with the macho arts and posturing, our need to bang the drums louder and keep the pot stirred, add energy to the final gasps of the darker agenda of humankind, frenzied to regain its flagging influence.

We keep trying to do the right thing, end the game, but someone is always there to pick up the ball and keep it in play. For instance, we were given a reprieve in speculation-overload this week when the search for the missing Indonesian flight intact was ended. As much as my heart goes out to grieving relatives and friends, keeping hope alive to feed another agonizing news cycle is not just cynical but cruel. Not that some aren’t still glued to cable news, ball carriers relentlessly in pursuit of which X marks the entry point on the map of the Indian Ocean. Inquiring minds are hunting the details like dogs at point, unwilling to let this tragedy rest, in exchange for another of the myriad national or international emergencies available for dissection.

Whether an example of overkill, or merely over-hyped, there is a kind of relentless investigation going on for any given topic, someone, somewhere making sure every scrap of information and innuendo is uprooted and laid out on the table. Seems as though there isn’t a rock that won’t be overturned, a lie sniffed out, or a policy unexamined as we pick through the rubble of our failing systems. That’s productive, as the first step to fixing anything is discovering what went wrong and how, but what do we do with truth when we find it? We use it to bash somebody over the head in order to further our own agenda and feed our personal bias. The reason we’re hot on the trail of truth appears to be a need to prove the other guy wrong.

For instance, as the Russian threat continues to expand into Ukraine, a new book about Dubby’s warrior-in-chief, Donald Rumsfeld, was released, based on in-depth interviews exploring his known knowns. The text shows him customarily non-reflective and as unrepentant as his life-long mentor and ally, our own Uncle Dick Cheney. A legend in his own mind, Rummy still knows best, as illustrated by his recent comment to FOX News that a trained ape could manage diplomacy better than Barack Obama. Nothing racist about that, of course, nothing inflammatory, self-serving or hypocritical with a capital H, as in “Hubris, thy name is Rumsfeld.” (Let’s see, hubris: noun, excessive pride or self-confidence. Synonyms: arrogance, conceit, haughtiness, hauteur, pride, self-importance, egotism, pomposity, superciliousness, superiority. Yep. Hubris.)

Rummy also deemed the breakdown of relations with Afghanistan to be entirely Obama’s fault, and noted that he understood why Karzai was backing Russia’s takeover of Crimea, adding ” … I really think it’s understandable, given the terrible, terrible diplomacy that the United States has conducted with Afghanistan over the last several years.” Never mind that Karzai has been the poster child for corrupt and half-hinged leadership since he was first installed as puppet to George W., and has been ineffectually flailing since Obama took office. His latest tantrums have earned a quicker than planned withdrawal of American troops, but we still offer support, lest the country topple into the inevitable civil war with the Taliban.

Throughout history, Afghanistan has remained intractable, our occupation there never an assured success, our presence in country barely tolerated. If we expected the Afghanis to assume some of the heavy lifting, we were sorely mistaken. Somebody remind me why we continue to send them multi-billions, again? The question is rhetorical, the video explicit. We buy influence, as best we can, even as we close in on austerity at home. In Afghanistan that appears to be good money after bad.

The string of Middle Eastern dictators we no longer support, providing legitimacy for their heavy-handed leadership, tells the story of nation-building in this emerging century. Freed from their influence, current events prove that democracy is a messy business, with chaos the creative impulse that feeds its transformation. Time will tell if Obama’s lighter touch in diplomacy will help normalize America’s international footprint. Naturally, anything other than superpower is not acceptable to Neocons, who urge a renaissance in militarism and resurrection of Cold War consciousness, a return to the old ambitions that fed the beast of American exceptionalism. We still have to decide who we want to be on the global stage, but at least the deluge of information we (often) suffer can help us to define our choices.

Regularly, the information we’re after gives us more truth than we want. It gave Republican hit-man Darrel Issa a bit of unwelcome truth this week, regarding continued investigations into allegations that the IRS delayed granting conservative groups their tax exempt status in the last election. The Pubs have been wearing that badge proudly, proving that they are continually attacked and yet again victimized by liberal minions, press and the federal government [sic]. Turns out the criteria upon which these groups were judged tax-exempt included nine separate requirements, including the groups’ primary goal as engagement in social welfare work. To earn exemption, they had to pledge to confine their political activity to less than 40 percent.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that a number of groups refused that option, preferring to run a “dark money” operation that protected donor identity. Shall we call this the “cake and eat it too” gambit? Since at least 19 of these applicants demurred on the percentage of time devoted to social projects, it seems only reasonable that, as a group, they deserved a level of scrutiny that took additional time. But we knew that, didn’t we? The average liberal understands that it’s not the left that has a blood feud with the IRS, as the money arm of the federal government. And Darryl Issa, promoting scandal and jonesing to do as much damage as possible to the Dem brand, shot himself in the foot this time with TMI (too much information).

There’s a last example of information glut, both true and false, I’d like to include. The Affordable Care Act — while not wholly affordable to those who didn’t have surplus income for coverage prior to the mandate, and still don’t — has now been voted against by the House 51 times, in a reasonably effective effort to damage the brand. Polls show ACA is still not popular, although most citizens accept it as defined law and expect improvement in the glitches over time.

And still, despite the amazing ineptitude of the roll-out, the creative if often dim-witted litany of lies and accusations directed toward the legislation from the right, and the disinterest, if not outright resistance, of younger citizens to acquire coverage, Obamacare now boasts over 6 million members. Somehow it hit its target, despite the shit-storm that greeted it from day one. And, aware of its Achilles heel, the administration assures us that those who have begun to apply for coverage on HealthCare.gov, but who haven’t finished by the deadline this Monday, will have until mid-April to ask for an extension. Get started now, if you haven’t already.

There are obviously a lot of people who haven’t signed up yet, and, as we knew all along, unless everyone works within the system, the system will struggle to work properly. Guess who doesn’t want it to work? Guess who would rather the Insurance Industry and Big Med and Pharma continue to wring the public dry with privatized this and that, with random pricing and exorbitant fees? Attacks on ACA as more expensive than existing insurance have been knocked back, Koch ad by Koch ad, and the success stories far outnumber the problems, although the red states continue to stonewall additional Medicaid funding, and have limited carriers that don’t create the competition that would lower rates.

The red states contain the citizens needing the most care, and the ones receiving the least cooperation from their political system. Obstruction of this healthcare system may backfire ultimately, as more savvy states are beginning to think they could offer a closed system themselves, as has Massachusetts. In fact, it’s not difficult to intuit ACA as a grand experiment, perhaps the bare bones of an eventual single-payer system.

The big scare, not long ago, that the work force would be smaller in future years became very clear to me this week. Here’s a story that made politics personal. I get my over-the-counter meds at Walgreens, my one nod to modernity (don’t laugh!) here in the Pea Patch. Wal-Mart looms large as the only big store in the larger town I frequent, but Walgreens is little and friendly, reminds me of home, and makes me happy.

Once they didn’t please me so much, when I was told that Obama refused to allow me further access to a bottle of Tussin. I snapped back that he’d done no such thing, and breathing fire, I educated the owl-eyed clerk in the local politics of methamphetamine use and fear-mongering by state Republicans. She mumbled that her supervisor had told her it was Obama (with the Tussin, in the White House). I asked to speak to the supervisor, and did, at length. Blaming Obama for most of life’s ills is the default political position around here, and it gets old quickly.

The other day I stopped in to pick up a few things and waved to the checker, who welcomed me with unexpected enthusiasm. In a town of less than 5,000, there is seldom more than a handful of customers at any given point, except maybe at Christmas. There was only one person ahead of me on the way out, either a regular customer or close friend of the clerk, who was so jazzed she practically bounced as she rang up the purchase. She had given notice, she said, because — and who knew, for heaven’s sake! — Obamacare had made retirement possible. She’d thought she’d have to stay another couple of years, despite medical issues that left her worn out and stressed much of the time, but now she had what she needed in order to leave.

When it was my turn at the cash register, I congratulated her and she beamed at me. “I’ve been working since I was a kid and now I can finally go sit down, read a book, sleep in. I was so surprised,” she said, filling the bag. I assured her that anything that came between me and big greedy insurance carriers was a fine thing, and she nodded. “We shouldn’t be so quick to judge,” she finished, as she handed me my purchase. The doors came open and she spotted another acquaintance. “Did you hear?” she called. Her happiness was so infectious it slapped a grin on my face for the rest of the day, and even as I write this I’m smiling. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? Making life a little easier, a little fairer? A little more workable, a little less limiting? A little more satisfying, a little less stressful? Hopefully, eventually, a little more affordable? This was information transferred heart to heart.

Eric spoke of tradition this week, and our necessary embrace of what gives structure to our lives. For me, that’s remembering the past and allowing it to inform the future. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is never how improvement comes about, but rethinking the process of bathing the baby surely leads to breakthroughs. The highest expressions of our democratic republic are certainly endangered at this juncture, but we’re being bombarded with examples of what needs mending. Like holes in the boat, these aren’t things that can longer be ignored, yet the glut of information, uncomfortable as it has often felt, has given us a blueprint for what must come next.

Seems to me that Neptune conjunct Chiron explains a lot about the kind of information out there at the moment: befuddling, mysterious but tickling our intuitive, spiritual Self, perhaps wounding as truth strips away the cobwebs, perhaps healing as we find meaning hiding within the pain that brings a welcome change of mind. While Pluto shakes our structure, Uranus brings us a series of twitchy shocks and upheavals, so we get a clear picture of our needs and vulnerabilities. And, after years of preparation, here come the 2012 energies of spring — the trine and cross sandwiched between eclipses — to make the picture even bolder, the process more profound.

The darkness is here because there is so much Light. The glut of information all around us serves a purpose, as we open to it. Nothing is random, and we can rest assured that everything is in place for the next phase of our evolutionary journey.