What would life be like if you:

1) Knew there would be adequate and pleasant food, safety and shelter for you, your friends, and your family, no matter what you did or didn't do?
2) Knew you, your friends and your family would have appropriate, reliable health care, no matter what work you did or didn't do?
3) Knew that you would never experience violence or the threat of violence against you from institutions or the state, no matter who you were or became, or what you did or didn't do?
4) Had never been told that you had to do something, couldn't do something or were worth inherently more/less than other people because of some trait that you couldn't or did not want to change?

Tags: america, conflicted, ethics, idealism, musing, politics, work

I've done the unthinkable. I've fallen in love with an American. I don't mean an American citizen (though I've done that too, but been too afraid to admit it for a while for all the reasons people don't admit they love each other - with the addition of the immigration problem), but rather an American city, an American state.

I will be leaving my heart in San Francisco. I will be dragged away from California. Hipsters and surfers, homeless wanderers and fashionable Castro fags and their affected disdain. Beaches and forests. I will be separated by an ocean from Yosemite, from Palo Alto. I will no longer speed along the 101, the 280, broad arterial highways that still take my breath away.

I will miss eucalyptus trees (imported, ironically, from Australia, where I will most likely be headed), and strawberries, poppies and avocados. I'll miss the coffee booths, the taco trucks, the knowing gasps when I say I've eaten at Michael Minna or actually saw Thomas Keller in person.

I'll miss the google bus, and gay shame. Anti-gentrification activists, and bittersweet comments on the price of gas.

I'll always remember the strange Balkanized peace of Dolores Park, with its gay sunbathing slope, dog field, soccer patch, kids zone. A park where black family barbecues coexist with skinny white 30 year olds in tight jeans practicing with hula hoops.

I'll miss the F-line, its bright trolley cars and handsome wooden seats, taking me from the edge of Chinatown into the heart of Castro.

I'll miss the stretches of months with only blue skies, and the bounty of peaches, cherries, plums, pluots, apriums, nectarines, berries that are drawn out by the seemingly unending heat and sun (with a little help sometimes from the giant irrigation projects).

No longer will I walk down streets lined with the food or drug-starved, whose anger and desperation hardens my heart to the point of breaking. No longer will I grimace uncomfortably at the street corner prophets with signs damning fags, fornicators and aliens.

I once improvised, in the lazy hours of the evening, an ironic little ballad titled "Everything is Okay In San Francisco", a skewering of the self-satisfied liberal complacency that I've seen expressed here, hiding a wealth of racism, elitism, and an entrenched powerful political class. But even against my flashes of "better judgment", I know that I'm utterly smitten. There are problems in our relationship, yes, but a person doesn't choose the geography that is his spiritual home any more than he can choose a lover or a best friend.

I've slept eight years in California's supportive arms (though sometimes they've shaken me a bit and given me a bit of a scare). I've eaten its cooking, tasted its oceans, drunk in its spring breezes and breathed even the embarrassing odors of  its city sewers. I've cleaned parts of it and soiled other parts. I've taken from the ground and planted seeds in return. I've shivered and I've sweated. I've tried to console myself when we didn't get our way in National politics. I've celebrated each time it decided to acknowledge and honor its queer residents, and extended its hospitality to others'. I've longed for its embrace in dark months abroad, still smelling its air on my clothes.

All along, of course, I always knew we were star-crossed lovers. California was beholden to a master, a cruel and jealous federal government. I was an unfavored guest, a non-immigrant, a transient. I was to come, sample some delights, then pay my dues and leave, forgotten as soon as the airplane door closed behind me.

So here is my love note, scrawled in passionate haste, for all the world to see. My little piece of vandalism on an uncaring American edifice. Ming plus California, forever.

Tags: america, australia, shameless self-promotion

Over on Balkinization, there's a post by Scott Horton linking to the NYT's must-do list to restore civil liberties, and some additional items that Scott Horton would add. I love me some lists, so I'm linking. Also summarizing.

The Times' list:

(1) restore habeas corpus,
(2) stop illegal spying, really,
(3) close the CIA prisons,
(4) account for "ghost prisoners,"
(5) ban extraordinary rendition,
(6) tighten the definition of "illegal enemy combatant,"
(7) screen prisoners fairly and effectively,
(8) ban tainted evidence,
(9) ban secret evidence,
(10) better define "classified" evidence,
(11) respect the right to counsel.

Horton's continuation (I've included some brief explanation, but you should go to the original post to find out more):

1. The Gonzales 8 (stopping the misuse of DoJ power to investigate political adversaries)
2. Judicial Nominations (partisan politics being the preeminent qualification for judicial appointment. Not good)
3. Political Intimidation of Judges (packing the bench with ideologues/sheep + intimidating those already there = badness)
4. Persecution of Whistleblowers (self explanatory)
5. Perversion of the Inspectors General (Inspectors General are supposed to be enforce ethics, but have instead become a roadblock/damage control to whistleblowers)
6. Persecution of Defense Counsel (esp. defense counsel for Guantanamo detainees)
7. State Secrets Doctrine (designation of stuff as state secrets has spiralled out of control)
8. Erosion of Posse Comitatus Act Protections (protecting civilians from military surveillance)
9. FISA Violations (subjecting people to government surveillance)

Tags: america, balkinization, hamdan, law, law school, links, lists, mass-media, morality

From http://www.paloalto.net/:

Palo Alto. Silicon Valley's midwife. A magnet for ideas and money. The home of Stanford University. It's a town where working for a startup that's hemorrhaging cash is considered a status symbol. Conspicuous consumption is de riguer. Kids drive BMW convertibles. Herds of perfectly outfitted cyclists graze tree-lined streets atop $4,000 two-wheelers. The dominant local emotion: hope.

Tags: america, irony, palo alto, stanford