I'm Sorry I Was So Wrong About President Bush

Today, as President Bush marches confident and alone into a conference room to give sworn public testimony to the 9/11 commission, I have to admit, finally, that I was totally wrong about this guy. He didn't have to go into that room alone, after all: the commission had offered the option of appearing jointly with Vice President Cheney and White House Counsel Gonzalez and a few other aides. In fact, they begged him not to go alone. They even said he didn't have to appear under oath, or even have a recording or transcript made of the proceedings!

But no. Fearless and resolute, our great President knew that if he had insisted on appearing only as long as Dick Cheney was with him, he might be perceived as a stupid and weak man, unable to take responsibility, unable to speak for himself, perhaps only a figurehead president. He knew that appearing together with Dick Cheney might reinforce the idea that they had to keep their stories straight, or perhaps that Cheney wouldn't trust him not to slip up in front of the commission. He knew that if he insisted on not giving testimony under oath, it might reinforce the notion that he and Cheney have something to hide. And in a time of war, our brave, honest and forthright wartime president knows that he cannot even be perceived as weak, stupid, incoherent, dependent, dissembling, devious, and completely untrustworthy, a failure not merely as President, but as a man -- because that might undermine the war effort. And so, with a stout heart and his unflagging confidence that God will see him through, our greatest President -- for I truly, now, believe he is just that -- stood alone before those commissioners, swore an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and then he proceeded to fulfill that oath. In so doing, he demonstrated that he is the only one who can protect America and see this war through.

Speaking of the war, on this too, I have to admit that I was totally and completely wrong, and the Bush administration was 100% right. You know, I guess I should just have taken them at their word when they told us, "trust us. We know more than you do." Remember how some skeptics just wouldn't be convinced about the immiment threat that Saddam's nuclear, chemical and biological arsenal posed to America? Well now that we have uncovered vast stores of WMDs, all poised to strike America, we know that no matter what the CIA was telling him, President Bush knew they were there, and that a pre-emptive strike was exactly the right thing to do. Remember all those predictions before the war of rioting and looting in the streets? Remember how some weak-kneed commentators kept saying how 100,000 troops couldn't possibly keep the peace in Iraq, or that there needed to be a clear exit strategy? They obviously didn't know what they were talking about, and the absolutely brilliant war and reconstruction plan put forward by the Pentagon is proof enough of that. (I think Rumsfeld was absolutely right to shut out those State Department pansies who predicted postwar chaos and thought they knew something about nation building.) And all that talk about an open-ended quagmire? You don't hear that anymore, do you? Now that our service people are back home, and Iraq has become a stable and prosperous democracy, a beacon of hope to the Middle East and the world, I have to just marvel at how completely wrong I was about these guys. And remember when they said that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for the reconstruction? They were completely right! This whole expedition hasn't cost the American taxpayers a dime! It's just incredible, isn't it? The Bush team did exactly the right thing by not budgeting for the war or the occupation, or even telling Congress how much they thought it would cost. Who could have believed that it wouldn't cost anything?

President Bush was also right about democracy in the Middle East. I have to admit that I was one of those people with a strong conviction that brown-skinned people cannot govern themselves, and George W. Bush put me in my place regarding that. I'm ashamed that I ever held this opinion. (Bush knows better, of course, because he has plenty of brown-skinned domestic help.) We now know that the brown-skinned Iraqis can very well govern themselves, as is demonstrated by the remarkably peaceful transition to democratic government and the rule of law. It just makes me proud to be an American.

The war in Iraq was a war that this President never wanted to fight. He decided to fight only when it was clear that war was necessary to protect America, only after having exhausted every possible avenue of diplomatic action, and only after deep consultation with our allies and friends around the world. The proof of that is in the 100-plus countries who committed thousands and thousands of troops to the war. They were right. Bush was right. I was totally wrong, and I'm really, really, sorry. I'm sorry I said anything bad about him, but now he makes me proud to be an American. And now, I can't wait for Election Day, when I get to vote on a Diebold voting machine for Bush -- whether I actually vote for him or not.

A Busy Time

I haven't had much time left for blogging lately, but I have had lots of good news on the writing front:

Baker's Plays has finally gathered the plays from the 4th Boston Theater Marathon (back in 2002!), so my play Get Out Of My American Way will be published sometime later this year in their anthology.

Copland College in Australia is putting up a production of First Person Shooter this summer (I'm not yet sure of the exact dates).

Yellow Taxi Productions is filming my screenplay adaptation of Hack the Vote in June. It should prove to be a very interesting short film.

Hack the Vote will also be performed at the Playwrights' Platform Summer Festival in June, and at the Pregnant Chad 2004 Festival, sponsored by the Stormy Weather Players of New Windsor, NY, in August.

I just completed a new ten-minute play called Bits, which I like quite a lot, and I will be submitting it all around.

But what's really been taking my spare time recently has been my new full-length play, American Rex. We just read a rough first act of the play at Playwrights' Platform last Sunday, with a bunch of really great actors I was fortunate enough to get. I'm happy that a lot of it worked. Naturally, a lot of it didn't work, but that's what a reading is all about. I'll be spending at least the balance of the year rewriting the script and finishing it. (At which time it will hopefully be a tiny bit less relevant.)

Randy's Up To No Good Again

My good friend Randy has started a new story line over at his webcomic Something Positive. I'm linking to it out of a particular fondness borne of artistic affinity. A few years ago, Randy and I worked together on the first public reading of my play First Person Shooter, and in very broad outlines, the satiric thrust of his latest story is in the same direction as FPS. I'm loving the new story and I can't wait to see where Randy takes it next.

Call For Actors

I am seeking 4-6 actors, evenly balanced between men and women, for a play reading at the Hovey Players in Waltham on April 25th. This is informal, as the script is a first draft, and the work is unpaid, but I will buy dinner, it's a fun script, and the folks at Playwrights' Platform are always looking to meet new actors, with an eye toward future projects.

The play is called American Rex, and it's a highly theatrical political satire/dark comedy. I am still working on the first draft, so there will be no rehearsals and you will have the play in hand only a few days before the reading -- but don't worry, there's no pressure. My goal in this reading is to hear the words in someone else's voice to let me judge whether I'm achieving the tone I set out to achieve.

For a sample of my work see My Writings Page (www.pbrennan.net/writings). American Rex will most closely resemble First Person Shooter in tone, but I am trying to make A.Rex more practical to produce and funnier. I will be happy to send you a sample of the play upon request.

For more information about Playwrights' Platform, including the calendar and directions, see The Playwrights' Platform site (www.playwrightsplatform.org)

"Obedience To Law Is Liberty"



This is the facade of the courthouse in Worcester, near where I used to go to college. You can click the image for the full-size version, which lets you see what's inscribed above the entrance to the court. It says:

"OBEDIENCE TO LAW IS LIBERTY"

The first time I saw the inscription on the facade, I was stunned speechless. Now, the current building was completed in 1900 [link], long before Orwell wrote 1984, but the statement has exactly the same ring to it as Big Brother's Newspeak slogans: "War is Peace", "Freedom is Slavery", "Ignorance is Strength". Moreover, it has the very same political purpose: the subversion of plain language to suit the power of the state.

Now, I'm a big fan of liberty, and a big fan of obeying the law, too (so long as it does not violate my conscience); and there's a very good case to be made that in a democracy, general obedience to the law (which, after all, we, the governed, have consented to) is critical to the functioning of an open, free, and prosperous state. But that's a pretty sophisticated train of thought I just articulated, and it's NOT the same as the simple equation: "OBEDIENCE = LIBERTY". Obedience is obedience and liberty is liberty. I'm sorry, but they're just not the same thing, which should be plainly evident to anyone who gives it two seconds' thought. So what is this inscription doing on top of a courthouse? I see the proclamation of the power of the State, and a redefinition of the emotionally-charged word "liberty", again in a way reminiscient of Orwell ("some animals are more equal than others").

I'm sure quite a few people who have advanced the cause of liberty would disagree with this simplistic formulation. After all, the Founders didn't obey the King's law, did they? Henry David Thoreau didn't obey the tax law. Gandhi didn't obey the English law. Martin Luther King Jr. didn't obey the segregation law. We revere these people as stalwarts of liberty (most of them predating the courthouse) precisely because they didn't obey the law (in very particular circumstances, it must be noted, but still). Hell, Jesus didn't obey Roman law! So don't go telling me that OBEDIENCE = LIBERTY, because it's just Statist bullshit.

And it's really, really, creepy, besides.

Expressions of Faith in a Faithless World

Daven was feeling pretty frustrated after watching DUI Bush give his State of the Union address, so he wrote an open letter to the President of the United States (which for some reason wasn't addressed to Dick Cheney). Reading this letter broke my heart, in part because of Daven's apparent faith that George W. Bush and company actually give a shit about him and guys like him.

I wouldn't even have bothered writing this letter, because I really think it's a complete waste of time. If you don't have $10,000 in your hand, nobody in the Republican Party will give you the time of day; and a day after you give them $10,000, they don't remember your name. To really get their attention, you need to be a millionaire.

Still, it's touching that Daven still believes he lives in a democracy. I think I have some of his faith, maybe just a sliver, but I know we both want to live in the same sort of country, and it ain't Bush country.

Another Top 10 Playwrights' Words and Phrases to Run From

Because my first top ten list just wasn't enough...

10. Nazis
9. Salesmen
8. The Holocaust
7. AIDS
6. Racism
5. Sexism
4. Homophobia
3. Murder Mystery
2. Catholicism
1. Godot

Good Week to be a Space Geek

Last week was a good one to be a space geek. On the heels of the revelation that the Opportunity rover sits at what was once the shore of a salty sea, there has also been the very exciting revelation that there is an unusually high concentration of methane in the Martian atmosphere. Where did the methane come from? Methane has an expected stability of only 300 years on Mars; if it's there in the steady state, that means something is replenishing it. But what? Two explanations have been advanced, and both of them are very exciting -- either Mars is volcanically active, which would be really cool, or else Mars has extant life on it, which is, of course, even cooler.

And then, on top of that, NASA successfully tested the X-43A scramjet! The vehicle set a new speed record for air-breathing engines – about Mach 7. Scramjet research and development is underway in many different places -- not just NASA -- and this could eventually turn into a practical engine technology for suborbital or even orbital flight. The vehicle has to be boosted to startup velocity (Mach 5, I think), which might limit its practicality, though; one indication of this is the fact that the research vehicle had to be mounted on a Pegasus rocket booster, which was itself launched from a B-52 bomber. Nevertheless, we're at least one step closer to practical, reliable, and inexpensive access to space.

(When are we doing a Mars sample return mission? Don’t hold your breath. Remember that we still have about a decade left of pouring money into the 2 sacred sinkholes of the American space program, namely the Shuttle and the ISS.)

Liberal Oasis

Looks like I'm going to have to add LiberalOasis to my regular web-tour. I heard about them via Air America Radio a couple of days ago, but I only got around to checking them out in a cursory way today. It looks like a very good portal site: links to practically everywhere in the vast left-wing conspiracy. I will have to explore this site in depth, as my copious free time allows.

While I'm on the topic, I'd just like to mention that Air America Radio is great to listen to. Since I'm in the Boston area, and they don't have a local affiliate (yet), I can only listen to them on the Internet or over my XM satellite radio (channel 167). (Apparently XM has packaged Air America Radio as "America Left", and cobbled together another channel, "America Right" (166), from the existing syndicated behemoths of AM talk radio, like Michael "Savage" Weiner.) I love XM, and I'm enjoying Air America Radio, especially Al Franken's show "The O'Franken Factor."

I'm In The Boston Theater Marathon After All

I submitted a play into consideration for the Boston Theater Marathon, but it didn't make the cut this year. That doesn't bother me so much; I've been rejected plenty of times before, and after all, I have had a play in the Marathon (Get Out of My American Way at BTM IV). So I've got nothing to complain about.

At the same time, it's a big event, one of the biggest on the local theater scene, and it's not something that I want to miss out on. So it's a real thrill to say that I will be on stage at the BTM -- as an actor! I will be playing the part of MAN2 in Gail Phaneuf's play Random Selection. It's a hilarious piece, and I'm looking forward to doing the role. If you get the chance, check out the Marathon! It's a great event.

The Wrong Stuff

Steven Weinberg, writing in the New York Review of Books, notes in this article that there is no scientific or practical justification for sending people into space. Sure, it's an old debate -- as old as space flight itself. But considering that George W. Bush says he wants to utterly change the course of the nation's space flight program, to emphasize human flight to the Moon and Mars, it's worth revisiting. Weinberg reminds us that Bush may not at all be serious about the new initiative, that it might be just a political exercise, the real goal of which is to kill off the ISS and the Space Shuttle -- maybe even NASA itself. I think it's very possible that this is the case, but only time will tell.

It's interesting to remember how we got here. When space ships and space stations were first proposed, back in the late 19th century, they didn't have any practical purpose at all, much less the means to build and fly them. As the century advanced and the technology to fly in space became closer and closer to realizable, there were plenty of ideas for how manned space stations could actually be utilized: astronomical observatories, communications relays, weather observation stations, and bombing platforms. In the 30s, 40s, and 50s, it seemed that such applications could only be filled by manned stations. But then a funny thing happened: advances in computers and electronics made it possible to do all of these things without requiring astronauts in the loop. (Bombing platforms are a special case: you don't even need to keep the bombs on orbit -- that's a violation of treaty, anyway -- and ICBMs are more accurate than anyone could have imagined in the 40s.) We now use space for a very large number of military, scientific and commercial purposes, all without requiring human flight.

The irony is that these technologies were enablers of practical space flight in the first place: without computers and miniaturized electronics, space flight might be possible, but it wouldn't be anywhere near as robust as it is now. In the course of getting there, though, those same technologies removed the need to put astronauts into orbit.

Why do we need to put humans into space at all? The answer is all political. NASA has to put astronauts into orbit in order to maintain public interest in space flight, which keeps the dollars coming -- which NASA spends to put astronauts into orbit. Their claims of scientific utility from doing so sound more threadbare every year, but we keep putting them up. I don't have much of a problem with putting astronauts into space per se, but I wish we were more upfront about it.

There is no practical point in putting people into orbit, unless they're actually doing exploration. Putting people into space is a political act, and it should be explicitly discussed as such. Exploration and colonization are the only reasons for human flight into space (at this point in history), and these are both long-term projects.

Maybe NASA thinks these statements of fact, which are simple articles of faith to the true-believer community (e.g. The Mars Society), are too "far-out" for mainstream Americans and Congressmen, and they might be right. But the current state of affairs, in which we continue to spend lots of money and risk astronauts' lives with no good justification, cannot be sustained indefinitely.