Exactly how vigilant is eternally vigilant again? (or, Yet another partially educated opinion on the passage of Prop 8)

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, Thomas Jefferson once said. Live long enough and you can't help but agree with the statement. The problem is, agreeing with it and fully understanding its implications are separate. Being eternally vigilant sounds like a lot work without a day off. Exactly how vigilant are we talking here?

I'm afraid Jefferson's wise observation means we have to occasionally attend boring political meetings or carry a sign in the street. It means we have to read the news, or worse watch it, or make tedious calls from a campaign office. It means no matter how much fun we're having, sometimes we have to stop, and volunteer for a second job that doesn't pay, so we can take part in a movement to fight some wankers who are trying to outlaw gay marriage, or videogames, or books, or whatever.

Some might think that within that "whatever" I include guns. I suppose it could, but I find it a never-ending source of irony that the people most vocally terrified their freedoms are going to be taken are the ones who run out and stock up on guns, at the same time voting for Republicans who rob them blind and lock them in the cage of poverty. Analogies to describe the situation are equally surreal. It's like pointing all your weapons at the front door, while leaving your money stash outside on the back porch with the door wide open. Gun Nuts have admirable drive but a poor sense of direction.

Pay attention, Gun Nuts! What is the primary obstacle when you seek to go from point A to point B? What most often blocks your freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness? Is it someone you need to shoot? No. It's money. So should you shoot money? Cease fire, soldier! You can't blast your way out of the poor house, and as for bullets, you can sweat 'em but you can't eat 'em.

But enough of all this sky-high abstract talk. Let's get specific. Let's talk about eternal vigilance as it refers to Prop 8 which just passed in California, attempting to deny gays the right to marry.

If all of those who worked hard for the No on Prop 8 (pro-gay) movement would forgive a marginally educated opinion (since there is such a shortage of those!) let me say that the success of Prop 8 seems to be in part due to a lack of vigilance on all of us freedom lovers.

It's easy to say that from 3,000 miles away (as I live on the opposite North American coast) but I don't count myself blameless. Here's the score: 1.) Despite the zillions of liberal organizations that send me email asking for money every day, I barely heard of Prop 8 until the election was right on top of us. 2.) When I finally did hear of Prop 8, I heard that the Mormon church from Utah was donating a lot to the anti-gay effort. As a supporter of the other side from out of state, I was never contacted to lend financial support. 3.) I set aside the issue in favor of working for Obama because I found it hard to believe an anti-gay measure would pass in the state that holds two gay capitals: Hollywood and San Francisco.

That makes me part of the problem. Of course maybe it was simply a devious strategy by anti-gay wankers, in that they timed Prop 8 at the same time they knew all the liberal energy would be working pro-Obama.

Psychotic extremists have an advantage over us cool people who want to live and let live. Extremists don't care if their Friday night is spent sealing envelopes, or preparing bombs, or something equally uncool. Extremists are eternally vigilant... for opportunities to be assholes. We need to be just as relentless in stopping them, even if that means doing the boring stuff mentioned earlier.

So, for this past election, as great as we all did, we have to do better. There's still work to do to achieve equality for our fellow human. Let's get to it. Obama's elected, because that campaign and its supporters took nothing for granted.

Despite my critique, let's not waste too much time on blame. Maybe Prop 8 just got beat in a close race. I just want to make sure we remember that if we take something for granted, we'll soon have nothing left to take for granted. Not as poetic as Jefferson's quote, but just as true.

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Larry Nocella is the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? available on Amazon. For more info, visit his website at http://www.larrynocella.com/.

Modern Cube Jockeys and Nineteenth Century Prostitutes

I just finished reading the massive graphic novel From Hell. It was also made into a movie starring Johnny Depp. It's based on a theory of who Jack the Ripper was and why he killed. We Americans have our JFK theories, our British pals have their JTR theories.

The story is good, but it's a huge downer. It's not the sort of thing one should be reading in these dark months, but for those who could use an extra helping of seasonal depression, From Hell is just the ticket.

The story bummed me out because the victims were completely helpless. They were poor nineteenth-century prostitutes, essentially street people, scratching out a living day to day by letting any guy give them some coins for a few minutes against a wall. Then on top of it all they were being hunted by a psychotic killer. They simply had nowhere to run, and little to live for. Death and mutilation closed in, inevitable as the sunset.

As if autumn's dark and From Hell together weren't enough to knock me into a funk, layoffs hit the day job. Fortunately, I was lucky and spared the ordeal of having to look for employment. Luck was all it came down to. Those that were released across all levels of the organization were powerless to resist and I was powerless to help them.

It's the powerlessness that's upsetting. Tie that in with the brutal impact of the event, make it random and you've got everything that composes terror.

To ponder the subject of layoffs and poverty sends me on a rant-path that always ends with this question: Why are we working, anyway? Why are we relying on the random forces of the market (meaning, the will of the rich)? There is enough wealth and food for everyone to have plenty. If we could just all distribute the work evenly, we could probably work one day a week and spend the remaining six days doing little more than drinking and eating and goofing off. Who's the ass that came up with the concept of work? Why couldn't Jack the Ripper take out that fool?

Now I'm not saying that your modern cube jockey is as unfortunate as your average nineteenth-century prostitute from the slums of London...

Or am I?

I don't think I am. Despite similarities, they're not identical. I'd argue now, people are better off. There is money to be collected from unemployment. If you want to, you could survive using a credit card for a while, even though you'd go into debt for a long time.

According to the theory, the Jack the Ripper killings were not random, there was an agenda behind them (but no spoilers here!) Maybe that's inaccurate. Maybe they were random. The human mind just can't tolerate a lack of reason. We see patterns even when we don't want to. Images emerge from clouds. Shapes form in TV static.

Randomness annoys our brains. Death terrifies. Together that's a primal-level scared-shitless cocktail.

Sure, there may be a reason behind something, some kind of pattern, but if we're not aware of it, it might as well be random. If we're powerless to stop it, does a pattern make it anymore comforting? Or does that make it worse, convincing us that the architect behind the forces that control our lives is malevolent just like Jack the Ripper and just like a system that makes layoffs so crushing?

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Larry Nocella is the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? available on Amazon. For more info, visit his website at http://www.larrynocella.com/.

Breaking Up with Obama (It's not you, it's me.)

Last week on U.S.A. Election Night 2008, we dodged a huge-ass bullet!

We had to stop the McCain-Palin insanity. We simply could not allow their armchair bloodlust anywhere near nuclear weapons. McCain would have pushed for war over an adjective (honor, integrity, dignity, freedom, etc. take your pick) and Palin would have pushed for war because she wanted The Rapture(TM) to happen ASAP.

McPalin was clueless, arrogant, prone to self-deception, oblivious to the costs of war, and crazily religious. Those are not ideal traits for stewards of a nuclear arsenal. If they had successfully stolen the election, we would all have had a decent chance of perishing in a nuclear holocaust.

Humanity dodged a bullet? Humanity dodged a fuckin' ICBM.

Now the election is over and I can breathe a tentative sigh of relief. Sadly, though, Obama and I are breaking up.

The lawn sign has been taken down. (By me, not by angry McCainers who think that supporting freedom means they must deny me my first amendment rights.) The bumper stickers are coming off when I get around to it. I've supported Obama strongly. I wanted to, but even if I didn't, I had to. The alternative was offering up all of us to become crispy, radioactive Human McNuggets(TM).

I've never been blind or purposefully dishonest when supporting Obama. Biased? Definitely, but never dishonest. Now, however, I intend to be a much more harsh critic.

You hold the highest office in the land, Obama, and your predecessor was a complete idiot. There's no time for soft words. I love you, bro, but there's no room for mushiness here. We've got to fix this country ASAP, so I'm going to be coldly objective. As much as I admire you, I still can't help but remind myself you are a politician and therefore worthy of my skepticism. We can still be friends, but the honeymoon is over. The good news is I think you're going to do well.

On a separate note, I know a couple who a while ago left the USA. They just didn't like the way the country was heading, so they took off. Buried in the hopeless Bush years, I can certainly relate, so I don't judge a decision like that.

As for me, I'm never leaving the USA. This is my country and I will stand and fight for it. I won't let a single stolen election (or even two) deter me. So to those refugees running from Hurricane Dork (the Bush years) I say, please come back. We need good people like you. To anyone who entertains the idea of leaving, please don't.

We need as many good people here as we can get. Because if the wrong group grabs power in the most madly military nation in the world, no place on Earth is going to save you.

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Larry Nocella is the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? available on Amazon. For more info, visit his website at http://www.larrynocella.com/.

Game. Set. Match. Election. History! (or, The cynics were as wrong as a Fox News pundit.)

Several years ago I worked at a place where the management was either incompetent, uncaring, unsupported or untrained by their managers. For the record, I think the latter was mostly the problem: upper management didn't care and left the front line managers to fend for themselves.

Whatever the reasons, it was a good place to work but it needed structure and consistency. We were generating a lot of income for the parent Corporation but getting little back in pay. Every so often a high level exec would stroll through, tell us what a great job we were doing, how much money we were generating, but never promise us any additional opportunities.

In short, the place needed a union. It was obvious. So when a union did come around for the card check ritual, I was cynical. I thought people were stupid, they were often cowardly and they regularly voted against their own interests. There was no way my co-workers would see the logic of a union, the vote was going to fail and all of us who voted yes were going to be fired afterwards.

I was as wrong as a Fox News pundit. The union won in a landslide. Lesson learned! Sometimes the people aren't stupid, sometimes the majority is right. All those quotes about the unwashed masses being dumb are exposed for what they are: knee-jerk snobbery.

Yesterday, Obama won a solid victory and cynicism lost again!

I visited Amsterdam in 2005, about a year after George W(ar criminal) Bush got re-elected. Here was a man who was a wealthy oil baron, whose daddy was president just a few years ago, a man who lied the USA into a war with Iraq. He wasn't a good example of America. He was a good example of the knuckleheads that are often found in royal families. I was so embarrassed.

No longer. Now I can visit Europe (assuming I could afford the weak U.S. dollar vs. Euro exchange!) and hold my head high again. Last night, not only did the smarter guy, the best guy, the right guy, win, but look how far our society has come. Around 150 years ago, Barack Obama would have been a slave, but now he's our deserving leader.

A word about those who supported McCain: I don't mean to imply that by not voting for Obama they are racists or cowards or anything negative. I can't imagine a worse candidate for right now than McCain, but I'm sure those people had their reasons, and as long as they were based on reason, I don't fault you.

What I am excited about, and what all Americans should be excited about as well, is that our country provided Obama the opportunity. That's what it's all about: equal opportunity.

I'm also hoping this election provides irrefutable evidence to my darker-toned fellow humans that millions of us paler folk are willing to judge people by their words and actions, and not prejudge based on skin color. Maybe that fact will spell the end of some cynicism, too.

For now, the first hurdle is passed. Obama won. Obama won! My country rocks!

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Larry Nocella is the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? available on Amazon. For more info, visit his website at http://www.larrynocella.com/.

To all those damaged and dead from the Iraq Oil Wars: This vote's for you.

Well, I voted early this morning, my opinion a tiny drop that dissolves into the tidal wave of Obama supporters that's going to sink the dinghy George W. McPalin in Pennsylvania. It's a delight to deny Whacky Mac and Taliban Palin the state they wanted so bad, the state they thought was key to their victory, the state they never stood a chance in, that they gave up on Michigan for. It's extra funny since McCain was lecturing Obama in debates about how much he knew about strategy and tactics.

Ah, what a pleasure to say no to McPalin, to fearlessly push a button (does that count as brave?) and defy those who would try to base their leadership on fear.

I'd like to dedicate that vote to every person who suffered under war criminal George W. Bush's Iraq War lie and this era of oil wars. I mean the thousands of dead Americans, the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, the millions displaced, the countless damaged. I see that vote I cast, tiny as it may be, as a step toward moving our country to a more responsible place, a place where prejudice has no part, a place where being smart is admired and not scorned, a nation not run by oil interests.

Hell, if being smart matters again, there is no telling what might happen. Maybe we can even get lots of people to see the logic behind becoming a nation where helping someone out is understood as the right thing to do, and anyone who tries to paste it with a supposedly scary label (like socialist) is pointed out as an idiot and challenged to define the label (which they always are unable to do.)

For all of you who died in the oil industry investment more commonly known as the Iraq War, I can't bring you back to life, but I can throw my tiny influence behind reversing the addiction that ended your life.

As a side note, it's bittersweet that Obama's grandmother passed away the day before her grandson won the election. Still, I can't help but think her death has a mystical air of confidence about it. She was so certain her grandson had the race won she knew it was okay to bow out.

Rest in peace, Ms. Dunham. We'll finish what you started.

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Larry Nocella is the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? available on Amazon. For more info, visit his website at http://www.larrynocella.com/.