Jonathan Dewbre dot com

It’s come to my attention that all I talk about on the Internet is the election and politics, despite not knowing a great deal about either subject. Apparently at one point in time I used to have a sense of humor, as well as a great desire to be non-political and inoffensive. Either those character traits have gone into hiding, or they have been dashed against a rock along with all of the hope and optimism I used to harbor about having a “career” and being “happy” with my life.

Here’s the problem - there are things that I just can’t blog about on the Internet. I can’t blog about myself or my life, because when I do this journal has a tendency to devolve into the pity-party and self-loathing session from hell. (In case you haven’t realized, I hate myself more than most of this country hates Iranians. Or Russians. Or homosexuals. See… there I go being “political” again.) I can’t blog about my job, because despite however much I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing and that it’s going nowhere, I don’t want to risk being discovered. I can blog about what movies I’ve seen and what music I’m listening to, but I already do that, and furthermore, who really cares?

So I’m at an impasse. Chances are that I’ll just end up going back to the political crap again, but until I do, I want to know… what is it that you’d like to read here?

Actually, I just want to know that somebody appreciates my effort to post here every once in a while. Hello? Is there anybody out there? Does anybody care?

I’ve been listening to Glenn Beck and other conservative talk radio hosts this morning, just for the pure schaedenfreude of hearing them flagellate themselves over the losses the Republican party suffered in this election. Sadly, talk radio seems determined to deny me even this simple pleasure. Oh, we expected all of this to happen, says Beck. Not only that, but conservatives didn’t really lose this election, because even though the Democrats gained the Presidency, and the House, and the Senate, all of the legislation concerning “traditional values” ended up getting passed. So, of course, this election wasn’t about the triumph of the Democratic party, but really about people harboring anger at Bush over the economy.

And now, as if to drive home this point, California is passing Prop 8, declaring same-sex marriages to be illegal in the state. It didn’t get passed without a fight, but it still got passed, meaning that California, Arizona, and Florida now all have bans on gay marriage. With a record Democratic voting turnout this year, and with California and Florida both being blue in 2008, most free-thinking and humanistic individuals like myself are wondering what the fuck happened. Of course, my sympathy goes out to those several thousand gay couples in California who are already married, and whose unions are now going to be declared null and void, or at least questioned, due to the stupidity and selfishness of California voters.

If gay couples can’t get married in one of the most liberal states in the U.S., where the hell can gay Americans enjoy the same rights and freedoms afforded to straight Americans?

I want somebody to tell me why this is okay, and I want somebody to have the balls to explain this to me without lying through their teeth. Supporters of Prop 8 like to say that this has nothing to do with gay relationships, that they love gay people, that this is about moral beliefs and/or religious beliefs, all while doing something that directly harms gay Americans and prevents them from ever having the legal status and rights afforded to married couples. Just for once I want one of these assholes to say that they hate homosexuals, or that gay people aren’t equal to straight people, or that gay marriage supporters are a bunch of “fags” and “queers,” because at least then I could believe that they’re telling the truth. Stop using your Bibles as a shield and stand up for yourselves for once!

I’ve got some Republican friends on Facebook who are analyzing the election results and saying that they’re going to move to Canada. Think about that for a second. Sure, it made sense when Democrats were talking about moving to Canada after the 2004 upset, but I don’t think that Republicans would be happy in a country that is more liberal than the United States. I do hope that you guys enjoy the nationalized health care system, though - it would be nice to have a first-hand account of how much better Canadian medicine is than ours.

Somebody left a comment on my journal a few months ago about conservatives being the “silent voice” in America, which sounds eerily similar to the “tyranny of the minority” argument that I hear so often on conservative talk shows. This much is true - conservatives are more likely to vote than liberals are. We’ve seen that in recent elections. But the problem with saying that conservatives represent a majority in America or hold greater moral and ethical values than the rest of this country is a lie, just as much as saying that liberals represent a majority in America or hold greater values, etc., would be a lie. If either of these statements were true, we would have had the same party in power ever since the equal voting rights act.

What’s my point… God, I don’t know. I guess I’m trying to say that Republicans shouldn’t be disheartened by what happened tonight. The reason that Obama won is because the majority of voters were sick of the way things are right now and wanted a change. Now Obama has a chance. If he fucks things up - and I’m not saying that he won’t - the voting public will demand a change again. That’s the way things go. It’s not “over” for the United States, however much you want to believe it is - not as long as people in this country have a right to vote.

And the United States isn’t going to become “socialist” or “Islamist” either. That’s just… what’s a good word for it?… idiotic. And contradictory.

And now, to the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama: Congratulations, you’ve just won a decisive victory for your party. Now you’ve got some big promises to keep. You’ve got a lot of people who have put their trust in you, including myself. You’ve got a world that’s at war, an economy that’s self-destructing, an environment that’s collapsing, and a hell of a short time to prove yourself. Your critics will be unforgiving of your mistakes, as will I. You have defeated the demon of the U.S. racial barrier, but this country has many more demons left to defeat.

Please don’t let me down. Please don’t let us down.

Thousands Pray, Fast, to Support Prop 8.

Voters on Each Side Pray for Proper Election Result.

By the time you read this entry, you will probably have already voted in the 2008 election. Considering how often I update this journal these days, chances are that the choice of our next president has already been made.

I don’t pray a whole lot these days, and I think it may be because people pray for the wrong things. We don’t pray for salvation, or guidance, or eternal life, or anything that we should be praying for… we pray for intervention, usually for our own safety, or the safety of our loved ones, or, in this case, for the victory of our side of a particular conflict. Presidents and kings do this constantly during times of war, and I hate it. Which is why, on the morning of election day, I will not be praying for an Obama victory, or any other type of victory. Sure, I’m hoping that Obama will win, and that Prop 8 will be struck down, but I would no more ask for some almighty hand to “guide” the free will of voters than I would force somebody to vote for my candidate at gunpoint.

Here is what I am hoping will happen:

I hope that Obama will win the presidency, but barring that, I hope that whomever is chosen to lead our country for the next four years will be intelligent, judicious, and will hold true to promises made by both parties to change our country’s government into something better than what it’s been for the past eight years.

I hope that however divisive this election may be, that our country holds itself together and makes it through these difficult years so that the United States may once again be prosperous.

I hope that our new government changes and mends our foreign policies and relationships with other nations, and that this country is no longer seen as an isolationist, jingoist entity that only has interests instead of allies.

I hope that Prop 8 is struck down in California, but barring that, I hope that the presence of the gay marriage question on the ballot moves this country toward further discussion of gay rights and the realization that being gay is neither an oddity nor an abomination.

Most of all, I hope that we can put the ignorance, war, terror, failure, selfishness and frat-boy mentality of the Bush years behind us, and move toward a future administration that lives up to all of the hopes, dreams, and ambitions that we have put behind our candidates, whether Democrat or Republican.

And if you haven’t voted, don’t forget - complacency has killed the Democrats in past elections, and it could do so again. In fact, I don’t care which party you pledge allegiance to, just go vote!

Halloween used to mean a lot to me. When I was a kid it meant dressing up, going to the school carnival, and trick or treating. When I got older it meant watching as many horror movies as I could handle and going to “haunted houses.” These days I’m either too loathe or lazy to drive 100 miles and pay $30 to walk through a “haunted house,” and watching horror movies just seems to drive home the point of how pointless and violent these films have become, and how little we as a species value the lives and well-being of other human beings. I watched a couple of Boris Karloff/Val Lewton films, and it’s amazing to see how the horror genre once revolved around suspense and psychological terror instead of Lovecraftian monstrosities and gore.

I spent Halloween this year early voting. Three guesses as to whom I voted for our next president…

Our neighbors across the street have Obama/Biden and Carol Kent signs up on their lawn, the only such signs that I’ve seen in our neighborhood. Their kids came over to our house to trick or treat this year, and one of them was dressed up as - no joke - the Tom Baker version of Dr. Who, including a remote-controlled K-9 on a leash. One of their friends was carrying around an incredibly realistic Dalek costume. It was so cool - even I wasn’t such a geek that I would have known about Dr. Who at their age. And apparently I was the only person on our block who correctly identified the Tom Baker costume.

Either these kids are going to grow up to be the most awesome people in the world, or they’ll become complete dorks who have to shut themselves away from society. Like myself. I’m hoping for the former.

I’ve got a couple of movie reviews that I want to post here, and I’m going to start with a positive one, about Errol Morris’ documentary “Standard Operating Procedure.” It saw limited release in theaters and there are a lot of possibilities as to why nobody really knows about or cares about this film. I doubt many conservatives are willing to see a film that they think is critical about the Bush administration or the war, and I doubt many liberals are willing to see a film that doesn’t go all out to bash the officers responsible for the Abu Ghraib photographs. Maybe we just don’t care about Abu Ghraib anymore. Also, Errol Morris doesn’t have the flashiness or asshole edge of Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock, which just demonstrates how much better a director he is than either of them.

The story of “Standard Operating Procedure” centers around a small group of military police who were put through the ringer by the U.S. army and international media and who have become the symbols of government mandated torture carried out in the name of the War on Terror. These men and women were forced to live like prisoners while put in charge of “breaking down” detainees for interrogation by the CIA, all the while enduring constant outside attacks and bombings, prison riots, prisoner rapes and violence, and weapons smuggling perpetrated by Iraqi guards. Their rewards for following orders were dishonorable discharges, prison sentences and the infamy of having their names and faces plastered across every newspaper and television show in the United States.

Errol Morris does resort to some re-enactments and cut-aways during “Standard Operating Procedure,” which are mostly unnecessary because they distract from the real strength of the documentary - listening to people like Lynndie England and Sabrina Harman tell the story of Abu Ghraib without the intervention of the director’s voice. That’s not to say that the film has no opinions about the incident, or about the war in general. The film states, and rightly so, that while Army officers like England and Harman may have harassed and humiliated prisoners, the CIA operatives and other government spooks who were actually torturing and murdering detainees received no punishments, because no photographs exist to convict them. The film also makes a strong case against torture as an interrogation tactic. Abu Ghraib was set up as an interrogation center to catch Saddam Hussein, and regardless of whether any of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib had any information about Saddam or were actually guilty of terrorism, no intelligence that was gathered through torture assisted in the capture of Saddam.

“Standard Operating Procedure” is worth seeing, and if you take nothing else away from this post or from the film, I hope that you’ll consider the following three salient points:

1. England and Harman were thrown under the bus for Abu Ghraib because the public wanted justice and nobody else was willing to take responsibility. If the world was a better place, England and Harman would have walked away free and Donald Rumsfeld would be serving 20 years to life.

2. Shit like this happens because we’re more interested in capturing individual bad guys like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden than we are in re-stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan. What the hell is bin Laden going to do now anyway, sneak into an Pakistani hospital and steal a dialysis machine?

3. As long as the public gets its news and political views from TV shows like “Family Guy,” “The Daily Show” and “Saturday Night Live,” good documentaries like “Standard Operating Procedure” are going to slip under the radar and bad documentaries like “Religulous” are going to get all of the prestige and box office sales. For shame, America!

Vampire, vampires, vampires. Who doesn’t love a good vampire story? Apparently we don’t care anymore that vampires were once symbolic of sinful, soul-destroying erotic lust. Now it seems like everybody wants to get it on with a vampire. There’s not a month that goes by when we aren’t bombarded with yet another book or TV show or film involving a love story between a human and a vampire. I thought somebody would have buried this trite supernatural conflict long ago, but apparently it’s undead and doing well.

Take, for example, the new TV series by Alan Ball, “True Blood.” The show centers around, and I quote, “a young Louisiana waitress, Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), who bucks conventional wisdom to forge a love match with the 173-year-old vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer).” Alan Ball, if you’ll remember, is the creator of “Six Feet Under,” which, while often over-the-top, was at least grounded in reality. I liked “Six Feet Under” because it was a breath of fresh air from all the Lost’s, Alias’s, Battlestar Galactica’s, Hero’s, Dead Like Me’s, Buffy’s, and other action-adventure-science-fiction epic sagas on television. (Not that some of those shows aren’t good, mind you.) At least for the first few seasons, “Six Feet Under” was a unique adult drama in that it didn’t have to bombard you with supernatural or outlandish elements to be watchable. Although it tackled tough issues, it was admirable in its normality. Why, then, does Alan Ball need to follow it up with some schlocky storyline that’s already been recently beaten to death by a quartet of soon-to-become-a-major-motion-picture youth romance novels?

It’s not that I hate vampires; I just hate the way that vampires have been romanticized and popularized. We need to return to the old way of depicting vampires - evil, menacing aristocrats with fangs and capes. I bet Barnabas Collins could kick Bill Compton’s ass in a fight any day of the week.

I recently saw the film “Festival Express” on my Netflix instant viewing TV box. It’s a 90-minute documentary of one music promoter’s attempt to bring a bunch of rock acts together for a cross-Canadian tour during the summer of 1970. One particular thing that I found interesting is that the promoter ended up practically losing money on the venture because the kids who came to see these musicians thought that they were entitled to free concerts; in fact, many of them staged protests outside of the venues, simply for the sake of being able to protest something and antagonize the police.

You don’t see many people demanding free concerts these days, though they’ll gladly complain about jacked up ticket prices and unaffordable t-shirts. There is, however, a very large portion of the population that still wants its music for free, and complains loudly anytime musicians or music labels protest this situation.

In the interest of disclosure, I will say that I spent a lot of time in college and after graduation downloading illegally distributed MP3s. And admittedly, I’ll still grab a Rapidshare link off of a music blog if they’re distributing vinyl that never made it to CD, or an album that only exists as a ludicrously overpriced import. But I’ve been trying recently to make up for my spotted past by buying the albums that I filched back in college, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s nice to own actual, professionally pressed copies of the albums I’ve grown to love. I’ve even started searching eBay for those ludicrously overpriced Japanese imports - the ones that come stored in facsimile cardboard sleeves with the original artwork.

I think anybody who illegally downloads music should watch “Festival Express,” just to see the utter stupidity of these kids in 1970 who were protesting over not getting a free concert, despite the fact that the Festival Express tour was hemorrhaging money. Things really haven’t changed that much. Downloaders still react with utter indignation when musicians speak out against the practice of getting free music. I can understand burning a copy of one of your albums for a friend to hear, and there’s nothing wrong with listening to (not ripping) a CD you get for free at the library. However, when you download a torrent containing every album a particular band has ever done, there should at least be some part of you that realizes what you’re doing is wrong.

There’s also something that today’s musicians and music labels can take from “Festival Express.” When confronted with these protests, bands like the Grateful Dead performed at the paid concert, and then went and did a second free concert anyway. These bands still catered to the kids that wanted stuff for free, simply because they enjoyed playing music and being around other musicians more than making money. Maybe the business doesn’t work that way anymore, but there’s still something to be said for generosity. I don’t think the Compact Disc is going to disappear forever just because some people don’t want to (or can’t afford to) pay $20 for a double album. And musicians do concerts for charity all the time, but when was the last time you heard of someone like Don Henley or Sheryl Crow doing a concert for free, just for the hell of it?

Pakistan stands with the U.S. against international terrorism, the Muslim nation’s presidential front-runner wrote in a column appearing Thursday amid furor over a U.S.-led cross-border attack in Pakistani territory.

Wait, let me re-read that - did you say *Muslim* nation of Pakistan? (Laughs) Yeah, like we give a damn if we hit one of you people with a stray missile or a few bullets. You can make all the “we’re on your side” rhetoric that you want, but you gave up all rights to protest when you flew those planes into the Twin Towers. Besides, there’s like 1.2 billion Islamists in the world, so what do 15 or a hundred civilian deaths matter in the grand scheme of things?

Right now I’m imagining George C. Scott in “Dr. Strangelove” in the War Room talking to President Merkin Muffley - “Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops. Depending on the breaks.”

Apparently our “intelligence” believes that Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri are hiding somewhere along the Afghanistan and Pakistan border. Both McCain and Obama are making promises that if they are made President, they will finish the job that Bush fluffed - finding bin Laden and bringing him to justice. Here’s my question - is it worth invading Pakistani territory and killing Pakistani citizens just to find these two assholes, who may or may not still be alive? I spoke about Simon Wiesenthal a few blog entries ago; maybe it would do the American people some good to study his life’s work and see just how long it takes to find individual war criminals who have fled to other countries to evade justice.

Our best chance of getting Pakistan to actively weed out bin Laden and al-Zawahri is precisely what we seem to be too impatient to wait for… the election of Asif Ali Zardari as president of Pakistan, a liberal candidate who - imagine this! - actually supports the United States, despite the protest of more hard-lined Pakistani citizens. Are we really willing to risk pissing him and his supporters off with our trigger-happy desire to capture some half-dead terrorists?

You know what? I really don’t care about Osama bin Laden anymore. I don’t care if he’s captured or if we never find him. As far as I’m concerned, he’s ancient history. As a nation, we’ve got more important things to worry about.

I’m having trouble deciding whether McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate is smart, crafty, wily, or just plain evil. Liberal reaction to the choice seems to range from amusement (”Hey, now the PUMAs have a reason to vote for McCain! Before they were bitter, now they’re feminists!”), to anger (”What a goatblowing assclown.”), to belittlement (”Good thing that coming in second place in the Miss Alaska contest transforms really well into being a heartbeat away from leading the country. Is this an election or a beer ad?”), to fear (”I’m now going to go cry into my coffee. My right to get married and do what I want with my own body had a good run. Maybe in another decade I’ll get it back.”), to conceited self-satisfaction (”I honestly think the women who will vote Republican because of their anger over Hillary losing the nomination is by and large a myth”).

The one thing we seem to agree on is that we can’t agree on why, exactly, McCain chose her. She’s got less experience as a politician than Obama; nobody outside of Alaska had ever heard of her until yesterday; McCain himself had probably never met her before she was suggested as a potential running mate. The only thing that’s apparent - at least to me - is that she adds nothing to the campaign besides the chance to gain more votes. I defy anyone to come up with one thing - experience, political ties, oratory skills, etc. - that would make her a good choice to be the second-most powerful person in the United States. Go ahead… respond. That’s what the comments section is for.

As ridiculous as this election season has been, it’s hard to deny that it’s been interesting. Depending on how this country votes, we’ll either have a female Vice President or an African-American President. We’ve broken barriers, and I think that’s impressive, whether I think Palin would make a good VP or not. Hopefully this trend will continue, and next time maybe it won’t be because of oneupmanship.