Beauty Fart

About 14,000 members of the military have been discharged under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" since it was introduced in 1993
- VA News, December 20, 2010

I'm a self accepted skeptic, critic, doubter, curmudgeon, etc. - but mostly I'm a pessimist when it comes to human beings and society. The X-Files got it right "trust no one."

Every once in a while I am serendipitously ecstatic to be proven wrong. When it looked like the repeal to 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' was lost in bipolar politics I nodded to the dark side - "once again you have won."

Now here was one of the most simple arguments anyone could have ever made:

• Ever since the US dismissed 'the draft' they have had a problem of signing up competent soldiers.
• Every year they seem to lower their standards on who is eligible to join the military.
• About 14,000 members of the military have been discharged under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" since it was introduced in 1993.
• Rumor (and more than that) has it that maybe 10% of the population is gay.
• Contrary to misinformed sources, gay people are not delicate, but they are as passionate as anyone else. Exactly the pivotal quality you want in a soldier.
• The US population is scared out of their socks that terrorists are hiding behind every corner and that they need a large and effective military to fight that threat.
• I could go on, but now I'm getting silly...

For some reason there was this enormous and influential population in the US that was willing to sacrifice their security because of their homophobic fears.

To those few republicans who voted to repeal this retched insult to civil rights, I am amazed to see politicians who are willing to put their country before their party. Standing back for a moment I am amazed that a few pivotal individuals were able to rise above the bullshit and see things for what they are.

Sometimes the gas does bubble up above the shit, and it's not so offensive.

Lightning Rod for Moral Panic

When irrational terror takes to itself the fiat of moral goodness somebody has to die. ... No man lives who has not got a panic button, and when it is pressed by the clean white hand of moral duty, a certain murderous train is set in motion.
- Arthur Miller

I was really disappointed that Time Magazine decided to ignore the overwhelming support from responders to their survey on who was the most influential person of 2010. The votes for Jullian Assange outnumbered the votes for the next two candidates on the list: Lady Gaga and the Prime Minister of Turkey, but instead the Times Editors selected Mark Zuckerburg who was something like tenth on the list.

I asked myself why would a magazine like the Times, well respected for their journalistic integrity, deliberately ignore overwhelming statistical evidence who their readers were interested in hearing about, and select someone who has been pedaling influence for years - like what is so bloody special about Mark Zuckerburg in 2010 (besides some movie appearing)?

It seems everywhere I look people are behaving irrationally about Wikileaks and Jullian Assange. So what the hell is going on? I finally realized we have a full blown 'moral panic' on our hands.

Let's stand back for a moment and forget what Wikileaks is, who Julian Assange is, or what they have done - those things for the moment are distracting details. Let's for the moment stand back and ask "what is happening to our society, our governments, our media, and our citizens, why are they all acting so irrationally, on all sides?"

Some insight can be gained by reading Stanley Cohen's "Folk Devils and Moral Panics."

What ever side of the cause célèbre of secrets you are on, what ever you read or what ever you say, just stand back and put it all in the context of moral panic. Who or what are we to believe when statements are made in this context?

Now there is a certain McCarthyism in the air these days and many people are afraid of sticking their neck out. For example, Columbia University were advising their students to stay clear of the Wikileaks stain lest it rub off on them and compromise their careers.

One can easily image that the Editor of Time Magazine felt equally threatened that by nominating Jullian Assange as most influential person of the year they might appear to be raising his celebrity in the world, and consequently celebrating terrorism. On the other hand Times has clearly nominated other devils such as Adolf Hitler, without fear of reprise. In the context of Moral Panic all I can really assume is that whatever public reasons the Times Editors gave for their selection, we will probably never learn their secret reasons, until someone leaks that some day.

To some extent terrorists and terrorism is becoming like a modern day Which Hunt. To be clear, there is terrorism in the world, and it is a hateful and cowardly way to spread one's political message, to simply to exact revenge, or otherwise satisfy a particular moral outrage. It is a really evil practice. But when pundits and politicians cry to declare Wikileaks a terrorist enterprise and Jullian Assange a terrorist, they are simply diluting the extreme nature of terrorism, and they are lobbying to take a legal framework that was intended for one thing, equivocate it to something else in their moral cross-hairs, and "set a certain murderous train in motion." In effect, those who unfairly or irrationally try to accuse others of being terrorists, are in fact themselves behaving like terrorists practicing their own form of terrorism, and are no different than those people who accuse others of being witches, heretics, or any other convenient political label to feed the Moral Panic.

Neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbor.
- deuteronomy 5:20

Dance

To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful.
- Agnes De Mille

The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music. Bodies never lie.
- Agnes de Mille

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is not mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.
- Havelock Ellis

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we're here we should dance.
- Author Unknown

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak.
- Hopi Indian Saying

Socrates learned to dance when he was seventy because he felt that an essential part of himself had been neglected.
- Source Unknown

I cannot begin to reason why we dance, as it seems totally unreasonable. It is incredibly hard to reason a purpose for dance, or why we humans have become so good at it. Yet we do it.

There are other species who dance - bird and bees :-)

• 9 David was afraid of the Lord that day and said, “How can the ark of the Lord ever come to me?”
• 10 He was not willing to take the ark of the Lord to be with him in the City of David. Instead, he took it aside to the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite.
• 11 The ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite for three months, and the Lord blessed him and his entire household.
• 12 Now King David was told, “The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and everything he has, because of the ark of God.” So David went down and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David with rejoicing.
• 13 When those who were carrying the ark of the Lord had taken six steps, he sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf.
• 14 David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the Lord with all his might,
• 15 while he and the entire house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets.
• 16 As the ark of the Lord was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she despised him in her heart.
• 17 They brought the ark of the Lord and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and David sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offeringsf before the Lord.
• 18 After he had finished sacrificing the burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord Almighty.
• 19 Then he gave a loaf of bread, a cake of dates and a cake of raisins to each person in the whole crowd of Israelites, both men and women. And all the people went to their homes.
• 20 When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, “How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!”
• 21 David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the Lord’s people Israel—I will celebrate before the Lord.

Some people think that dance is a sin, but there is some scripture to suggest otherwise.

While I like dancing, there is a particular form of dancing I hold higher than all, and that is partner dancing.

Being human can be pretty lonely at times; not everyone agrees with your point of view. One of the most important things I have learned from dance is that there is a moment in time, when points of view converge and nothing else matters, but the dance. There a lot of rules to follow, but we only choose to follow them, and that is a negotiation.

There is no other time in life you can feel so connected to another person than in the dance. There are many dances - on the dance floor, in a special conversation, or in an act of extreme intimacy usually involved with sex. But on the dance floor there is the most potential of all.

Dance and music is a facade we use to connect, but in our society it works well. Music is a facade in that it is a topic we can agree on together, usually without any commitment. Dance is a facade we can agree upon only for the duration of the dance, and hopefully in most cases without any commitment beyond the dance.

In short, dance is one of the few things we can use to convince ourselves we are not alone.