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Notes from the ABOVEground |
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Written by Jason Brink
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Sunday, 11 April 2010 16:51 |
 Its been a couple weeks since I have really had a chance to put pen to paper, it is something I wish I had the free time to do daily, but the world simply does not allow for that density of creative expression. One day, my friends, one day.
The 12th century Sufi mystic Rumi once said, "I can't stop pointing to the beauty." I imagine this being written after wandering through an oasis, or sitting and watching the birds in the early morning light. Taking in a bit of the untamed, windswept wilderness that is the desert. This phrase floated in my mind over the last few weekends, as my camera lens fell onto everything I saw. The whir of the autofocus and the click of the shutter capturing a sliver of light in a moment of time to be presented later for review. I think that when you really break it down, life is a collection of these slivers, all strung together in lines, but each its own separate moment, mostly unaffected by those surrounding it.
I spent this last weekend at Lake Havasu for Spring Break. The original destination had been the Grand Canyon, but finding a place to camp during spring break was something of a challange, so Lake Havasu is where we stayed. I was with several friends of mine; The Princess, The Lioness and her Cub. We camped at a campground in Lake Havasu City directly on the shores of the lake. Set up out tents, and began to normalize for camp life. There is something familiar and comforting to me about camp life. I suppose it is related to the amount of time I spent camping as a child, sleeping curled up in our little inflatable boat. Waking in the morning to climb out of the tent and blink into the pre-dawn light. I guess it is a return to the primitive, a tiny glimpse of the band level hunter-gatherer society. Your camp-mates are your family, and it is their back you find against your if anything goes wrong in the camp. As you trek across the wilderness together, it is them you find yourself dependent on for anything past one a single person alone can handle.
The other thing I love about camping is the simplicity of it. There is always things that must be done, but they are simple in nature. Chop wood, carry water. A return to the simplistic good in nature and thereby a path for the forgotten simple hollows of the human heart. That secret place that can be accessed only when staring into the swirling depths of a campfire.
 I love to wake early in the morning, before the sun, sit on top of a log of table to watch the sun begin its assent into the sky. The Lioness is also an early riser, so while camping we would often leave early to go exploring. She is an avid runner, so we would go park at a trailhead so she could take off down the dirt path. To say that I am not a runner would be an understatement though I enjoy hiking and climbing. While she took off down the path at a run, I would find the nearest high place and climb it. I would reach the top, and sit and just take the sights in. Savoring the feeling of the wind whipping my skin, tugging at my hair. In that moment, sitting on top of a small mountain, away from everything and everyone, perfection is found. A deep peace descends into my soul, I sat and spent some time in meditation, aware only of the feel of the earth beneath me. When my eyes opened, I could see the Lioness returning, her shoes kicking up little puffs of dust with each step. I think we both reached that secret and silent, internal and eternal, space within ourselves that morning. It was a good morning.
There is alsways an odd silence to the air before dawn... No, not the air, for it is filled with the chirping of the beers, the unseen hum of life in the distance. No, the silence is of the soul, a deep peaceful inner quietude. The burst of the suns says upon your face strike you silent, nothing that needs to be said is important enough to break that silence.
As I plan the next stages of my life, it is odd to consider that I feel I have spent so much time already and accomplished so little. Certainly I have DONE things, but of what I have done, what carries any real meaning? In the larger sense, my work is almost meaningless. Sure, it is appreciated by some, but what does it MEAN?
I need to live harder, to borrow the words of another wiser than me, to "live life closer to the bone." I want to matter in the larger sense. As humans, I believe we all have the potential to be much more than a shadow on the sun, we just need to step outside ourselves. We must be estranged from the world, estranged from everything we can hide behind, before we reach the place from which we can jump to the secret glades of understanding within ourselves. It requires risk and pain, personal and internal to reach this place. We, as a nation, have gotten so used to the concept that we are the righteous inheritors of the planet and the concept that the world was build just for us, that most of us never leave this internal bastion of safety to reach for something else. The weirdest thing about this unrelenting quest for safety, is that is a fundamentally unachievable concept...nothing we do amounts to anything more than playing peek-a-boo with Cthulu...its all an illusion.
 In my Critical Thinking course, we have been studying existential philosophers, primarily Neitzche and Kierkegaard. Nietzsche is an interesting one...I think most of his perceived negativity springs from a desire to be able to rise above the plane he sees as our unblemished mundane reality. It is more possible to plant a flower on the spot that has been pulverized by artillery and nourished by blood, it is easier to live as an empowered individual after all means of control have been destroyed, and so Neitzsche sets about to tear down the walls surrounding these places we see as 'safe'. I don't see him so much as a nihilist, but rather as believing that value is inherently created by individuals, rather than being something that exists intrinsically.
In one of my classes, we have been discussing the nature of existential crisis through the eyes of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, and the one thing that stands out clearly to me is that you must go deeply into the abyss in order to experience the exultation of great height. I was considering the illustration of a sliding scale (this is oversimplified, but I don't currently have a couple hours to put it together) that runs from -100 to 100. We each begin our lives at 0, and as children we experience the range of emotion and feeling that exists within the first couple points of that scale. A child will cry over spilled milk or the loss of a toy... each tiny tragedy pushes the scale deeper into the negative, allowing the range to swing farther into the positive.
As an adolescent, you experience your first crush... your first childlike heartbreak, and to you it is the end of the world...never before have you felt such pain...but it passes and allows you to expand ever higher... as we go through our lives we collect experiences that expand the scale in both directions, allowing for a ever-increasing range of experience and emotion.
The kicker is this, when you are at your lowest point, you have the ability to grab hold of that zero on the scale, and drag it to where you are. From that point forward, even the things that were tragedies to a child, become inconveniences or wrongly considered joys to one who has moved the zero-point. Tears over spilled milk becomes gratitude that you had milk to spill, a wince over a cut or scrape becomes laughter as you continue down the forest path on a sunny day. Once you have lost and regained the use of your leg, a walk down the street to get a gallon of milk goes from being a minor inconvenience to a joy...IF you maintain the correct perspective.
We, of course, have the ability to think in such a way that we lose this perspective, or even drag the zero the other direction...so a minor joy becomes tragedy...but this rests upon our shoulders to consider the situation and test it against our past experience to place it correctly on the scale.
Once you have experienced a place in your scale in which death is preferable to continued life, even death loses its sting. We cannot always control what happens in the world surrounding us, but we can always choose how we will react to it.
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Full Speed Ahead and Damn the Torpedoes |
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Written by Jason Brink
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Tuesday, 30 March 2010 07:12 |
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Here comes a tirade for which I feel my logic and rhetoric professor would probably rip me a new one for, but its what I have in my head tonight, and I need to let it out.
I have a confession, something I almost hate to admit, but I must. I love to listen to talk radio. I am not sure at what point this happened, or when it began to seem like a good idea to me, but I love to listen to it. Very rarely do I hear anything interesting, but it fills up the empty space when there is no CD I feel like listening to in the car. There are some days I like to be alone with my thoughts, and there are some days I want more material to shovel into the info-grinder that is my mind.
The two options available to me that are not religiously oriented (though I do listen to those if I want a good laugh...especially that one guy who sounds like Bobcat Goldthwait...hes pretty damn hilarious) are NPR and the local AM talk station, KPRL. NPR is generally speaking fairly interesting, with lots of interviews from many viewpoints, this is what I would prefer to listen to. KPRL is sorta-ok in the morning, when it is covering local issues. Once it is turned over to the nationally syndicated talking heads, it just kinda comes apart. The thing that strikes me about all of their broadcast material is the fact that it is so incredibly partisan. The complete and total "Us or Them" mentality is sickening to me. It is not the thought of this difference in principal, sometimes there ARE situations in which there are two options, and one is the clear and immediate correct choice, however this implies that there are in fact some REAL differences between these two choices. This is something that I believe is severely lacking in our current political discourse.
Tonight, on my way back from getting a bowl of pho, I had the Jerry Doyle Show on, broadcasting on KPRL. NPR was busy playing some cheery violin pieces, and I just wasn't feeling it, and the CD I have in the car is too sappy sounding for a night of productivity. All the radio stations seemed to be simulcasting Lil' Wayne, and I had the "5 Dollar Footlong" song stuck in my head...SOMETHING else had to be turned on. So, Jerry Doyle is was. He was going on and on about an interview of Rahm Emanuel by Wolf Blitzer. In his critique of Rahm's answers, he trotted out all the normal talking points. Doyle is an outspoken Independant, and so he is a little better than the rest of the peanut-gallery, but listening to him I realized that both sides have an odd sort of worship for their own chosen representatives.
Politics in the United States has become a spectator sport, in which people chose their side and paint their faces. We show up to the polls wearing our flag-pins and go to marches holding misspelled signs, rooting blindly for our side, which is in our eyes clearly infallable. We all manage to miss the clear fact that we are all little more than grit in the teeth of the political machine. We sign petitions and hold signs, the drying ink evidence of our Sisyphean task of attempting to bring about actual change. We hurl insults at the "fans" of the other team, pointing to our players as the paragons of virtue that we see them to be. We, as a whole, never take a critical look at those we champion. How many people know the names of their representative? How many know their voting records? How many even know how to find out their voting records? Who pays for your senator's campaign? The problem with our representative democracy as it exists is that it does not just encourage collusion and corruption, it is a prerequisite for doing business. I sometimes wonder what would happen if suddenly everything became transparent? What would happen if suddenly the entire network of privilege (in its most basic form...private law) was exposed. The billions of dollars of no-bid contracts, the shuffling of billions of dollars of resources and enough pork-barrel spending to stock the navies of the world with salt-pork for eternity.
Things have fallen into this sorry state because we quit asking questions. We quit paying attention, we became content with the warm glow of our TVs and monitors, enraptured by the flickering lights of our lives, punted around by the obfuscation of the TV and radio punditry. Allowed our passions to be enraged by misinformation, thinking things to be true simply because we WANT them to be true. Allowing ourselves to be lulled to sleep by the quiet hum of the world through our own ethnocentric headphones, oblivious to everything that goes on outside our skulls.
Next time someone tells you something, ask why. Why are they telling you this? Is it true? How do I know? When you turn on the radio, and someone spits out some figure, look at their motive. I don't care who they are...question them. Look to the root of the problem, follow the money, follow the votes. Look beyond the ridiculous screaming radio personalities and examine the basis of their statements. What is the motivation? Don't take anyone's word for anything when it comes to politics. Before you decide whether you like or dislike a person or a piece of legislation, look at it yourself. Don't trust Glenn Beck or Rahm Emanuel or Michael Moore or Rush Limbaugh... find out for yourself. Before you complain about the bill, READ it. Your job as a responsible voter is to know what the hell your representatives are up to, not to just trust some guy with a blackboard to spoonfeed you his idea of the truth. We must do our best to learn the truth for ourselves, and draw our own conclusions. Throw out your preconceptions, start from zero...throw it all out, and prove it to yourself. Hold no piece of your beliefs inviolate, for in that untouchable and unproved piece of your mind your weakness will take hold and send out its tendrils into the rest of your mind.
I love this country, this land of my birth and the land in which my heart lays, but I refuse to just accept that this is the way things are. Our system is broken, our people are deaf and blind because they have put out their eyes and stopped up their ears willingly. Our leaders on all sides do nothing but spend time carving up the world a little finer amongst themselves, all while we wander around with eyes cast to the ground. Stand up! Shake the slumber from your bones, take off your headphones, turn off your TVs, and go out into the world that we live in. Stop listening to the mindless in your life, stop following your preachers, politicians, and societies blindly. Look at it all, look at it, in all its beauty and complexity, and make your own decisions. Give nobody a free pass, question it ALL.
Part of this...if you disagree with this, tell me! Don't just sit there and take it in, letting it fall into the back of your mind and be forgotten, step up and own your view. Give it back to me with the full strength of your conviction! Don't just do nothing... Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes!
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Relay for Life - Team Bailey |
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Written by Jason Brink
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Tuesday, 23 March 2010 06:00 |
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Hey All, I am not generally one to sponsor events, or even bother to talk about them much at all, unless I happen to take pictures I like at them. However, this is one I am personally involved in, and we could certainly use the support. Cancer is one of those things that touches all of us in some way in our lives. We have all had a friend or family member fall to cancer, robbed of their vitality and energy, and finally of their lives. For all of our scientific advances, all of our technical prowess, we are still almost helpless beneath the onslaught of our own body out of control. While we cannot save those who have fallen in the past, we can do something for those who are left. We can do something for all those in the future yet to be touched. This is why I am going to be walking in the Paso Robles Relay for Life this coming June. I will be walking with Team Bailey, in memory of Bailey McManus, a girl I never had the chance to get to know, she died just short of 12. I don't know her, and I have been told little about her, but my family has been touched by cancer just like all others. I will walk for those in my family who have experienced the horrors of cancer, and for my good friend and mentor Clyde Moore, a man who was struck down by bone cancer. So many are touched daily, we cannot turn our faces away. To raise money for Relay for Life, Team Bailey is working with Vina Robles Winery in Paso Robles, CA, to put together a Wine and Chocolate event. The event will be held April 23rd, there will be complimentary wine tastes, and all-natural chocolate demonstrations by my friend Jennifer Bunderle. Tickets are $20 if purchased up front, or $25 at the door. There will be three musicians playing throughout the evening, and it should be a fun and educational event for all who attend. Please, if you can attend, call Regina Vasquez at (805) 423-4867 and purchase tickets. I hope to have a paypal button and whatnot set up shortly, but that will not be tonight. Tell your friends!
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Written by Jason Brink
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Monday, 22 March 2010 05:18 |
 There is something about springtime that makes nearly everyone want to clean. To sweep out the dust and cobwebs of the dark winter into the morning air of spring. To knock the mud from your boots, polish things up a little bit, and just put a gleam of fresh life on everything. The birds sing their incomprehensible songs of courting, building their nest in the outstretched and freshened arms of the trees, or in the little birdhouses my mother prepares for that purpose. It is a time to start things over again, to begin anew, out with the old, in with the new.
Last week, I picked up my toolbox from the house of a friend; I had left it there so she could disassemble something. It had been years since I had cleaned the box out and inventoried its contents. It had been used by friends and roommates, family, and myself...things were disorganized and missing, and there was a large amount of random detritus inside.
I sat on the porch in the late afternoon sun, and took each piece out, polishing them as I went, to lay them in an organized pattern on the concrete. Things I have not seen in years, tools I thought I had lost. My old tape measure I had decided to paint blue and yellow for whatever reason, my old saw...the first tool I remember being mine. I remember sitting in the living room when my father brought it to me, in its cardboard sheath. I still remember the sheath, though it is long gone. It had a great white shark on it, and I remember him telling me that if I cared for it, it would always be sharp. It is still quite sharp, though it has not received the care it deserved. As I went through this process, organizing and cleaning, I began to think.
We begin our life as a toolbox with the barest essentials inside. A hammer, a simple wood saw, maybe a set of wrenches or a ratchet and socket set. These are our inborn abilities, the basics we all have in life. As we get older, those we come in contact with us give us tools. Sometimes it is seemingly insignificant, a word or a phrase given to us we can use later in life becomes a drill-bit we put in our set, making things more complete. Some experiences leave us with a new tool, others with a new way to use what we already have.
 As we progress, our ability to cope with situations out of our little toolbox of the mind is enhanced or hampered based on the care we put into maintaining the mental tools in our possession. A rusty saw will not cut wood, or if it does it will do so very slowly. A screwdriver that has been worn off through improper use becomes useless for anything but the largest and loosest of fasteners. A rusty wrench will not take hold on a tight bolt, nor will an untrained mind grasp a delicate concept without ruining it. If we do not take the time and care to inventory and clean the tools at our disposal, they will become weak and useless. It is also true that if we do not exercise our minds and bodies, they will become broken and feeble, worthless for all but the most mundane of tasks. This thought pattern was somewhat surprising to me, though it makes sense and is very clear. Often it takes the silence of a simple action like cleaning out a toolbox to allow your mind to draw the connections it otherwise would not. Chop wood, carry water.
My classes this semester are progressing nicely... many classes are covering things I knew already, others are forging new trails through the immense forest of things I do not yet know. The class that is oddly giving me the most trouble in the realm of grades is by far my favorite class. It is a class that I paradoxically love and hate at the same time. As a class, it is fantastic and challenging. I love the fact that I feel like I am actually LEARNING, but learning in a way that I have never learned before. It is something that words have a hard time summing up accurately, but the best way I think I can put it is as follows. Up until this point in time, every instructor I have had has done one of two things; brought buckets of knowledge with zero perspective and just dumped it on the heads of the hapless students, or had nothing to bring whatsoever. I think back on my instructors, there have been the kinds that have had little or nothing to teach, or those that have had a large quantity of completely irrelevant information. This instructor does not bring information...we all have the information already. Instructor does not stand in the front of the classroom and mindlessly drone on and on about the irrelevant...this instructor asks little else than to do something I have never been asked to do by an instructor...THINK. I know, that sounds ridiculous, but the more and more I look at things, the more positive I am that our society in general is designed in such a way that independent thought is at best discouraged. This instructor points out small bits of the world around us, and asks that we think about them, to look within and without to find the truth of the world around us. We are all surrounded by the truth, though we often don’t know how to see it, and sometimes even if we see it we dislike the conclusion it draws so we ignore it out of hand.
The thing that gets me about this class is its simplicity. There is no memorization, though there are things we would do well to memorize. There is no simple regurgitation of vocabulary, there is no scan-tron test in which a money has a better than 50% chance of getting a passing grade in...it is so simple it continues to confuse me. The instructor simply gives us the chance to exercise the abilities we already have to deconstruct information and reveal the face behind the masks of the world surrounding us. This is the part of the class that I hate the most, not because I dislike what it does...but because I dislike the fact that it forces me to realize that I have willingly turned my face from the truth so many times in my life, because the lie that we all live within is more comfortable.
 So many times in recent years I have let myself forget many of the truths I know. I have forgotten the faces of the Peruvian children, brought into our clinic in the desert mountains, forgotten the tiny weak hands clutching at my shirt as I gave them the injection of B12, of which they were so deficient. Forgotten the look on their faces as the nutrients to which they were unaccustomed to coursed through their veins, brightening their eyes and quickening their step. Forgotten little Anna and Mateo as they played in the grass, chasing the little balloon with the face drawn on it. I have forgotten the suffering of the world around me, and allowed myself to become dissatisfied. Oh, of course I have remembered these things on an intellectual level, it is easy to be moved seeing the images of the bodies of children being stacked on a flatbed after their school collapsed on their head. It is also easy to change the channel, or open up a new browser tab and forget it the next moment. We forget so easily. You have to get out in the trenches humanity, you must smell the blood and feel the tears of the broken and shattered humanity to remember the true meaning of your own humanity.
This class acts as my own call to action, sounding over distant hills as a clarion call of the world beyond. We live in our tiny, safe, world. Outraged by some new piece of legislation. We raise hue and cry over any ripple in our tiny harbor, without ever realizing that our little puddle is connected to the rest of the vast ocean of humanity, and that while we have some small seawall protecting us, we are still part of this ocean. This class forces me to look at my world, at my life, and break it apart. What is truly important, where is the true meaning?
I heard a speech in my public communication class, a speech on the “Banker’s Secret” and how you can save a bunch of money making prepayments on your home loan. The women giving the speech was certainly a nice woman, and did a nice job, but in the end it broke down to, “After working all this time, at the end you get this house and a little bit of money, isn’t that nice?” Sitting in that classroom, I had an epiphany. None of the things that we think are told in society have any real meaning. Your house is just a house...it will go away some day. Your car will break down and leave you stranded, your possessions will molder and disappear...everything you are told to value by society is meaningless. We are party to the biggest joke ever played, a joke as old as the roots of the societies in which we live...the punchline is that we value our lives and the lives of others in proportion to the amount of capital they possess. We will slave for decades to own a home...even if you do use the bankers secret and pay off your 30 year fixed loan five years ahead of time, you are left in your 50s, with a house and 30 years of your work going to support a bank.
 This may be great for some people, ideal for some people even. That though sends me into cold shivers though. Not the loss of money or anything, but that fact that after thirty years that's what I would have to show for it. It would be different if that was important to me, or if I had children who required a place to live, or if any number of other factors applied. For me though, it just doesn't make sense. I need to be able to get out there, adventure, and not worry about my accumulation of stuff. I have recently been paring down my possessions to become more mobile, and it amazes me how liberating it is...and how little I really actually need or want. There is virtually nothing I own that I would not part with. There is a small box of things with sentimental value, but that's really it. For the first time, I believe I am beginning to understand the phrase, "How fortunate the man with none." From this point forward I refuse to let the things I own, own me. Non serviam. From here out, its the experience and connections I shall pursue, not possessions.
Lets see...I don't think anyone wants to read anymore, so here is a quick rundown of other things that are relevant... - Next weekend I will be at the Crystal Palace, up in the mountains. I am leaving Thursday morning after class...or maybe before. We will see when we get there. - In the last few weeks I did photo shoots of my friends Lindsey and Jenny, they came out fantastically. That was a bellydance styled shoot. Gallery coming soon. - This morning I did a Victorian shoot with my friend Tabby and two of her friends. They came out fantastically. Gallery coming soon. - Went to Shell Beach, I THINK I drove past one of my instructors, or a woman who looked exactly like her and decided to wave before scampering down a cliff face. Made me do a double-take before continuing on down the beach to take pictures of sea-anemones in the tide. Those little buggers can be tiny sometimes! - Looking for more people to do photo shoots of, so if you are interested, let me know! Oh, and one last thing! We were assigned this as a reading in our Critical Thinking class last week. Its a commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace for Kenyon College in 2005. It is where the title for this blog post came from. Read it, it will blow your mind. Link
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Last Updated on Monday, 22 March 2010 05:53 |
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Barack Obama - He's Come to Save the Day |
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Written by Jason Brink
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Tuesday, 02 March 2010 14:48 |
 Note: This is an essay written for my English Composition: Critical Thinking class. I was not able to put all the time I would have liked on this, and it is weaker than I would have liked, but I still think the point is valid. I did not include all the citations on my online copy, but if you are really interested you can send me an e-mail and I will get you the citations. A few moments watching one of the national cable networks in the US will give the casual and uneducated observer a very interesting view of the office of the President of the United States. Depending on the political bent of the network, the current president, Barack Obama, is viewed in two different lights. He is seen by some as suit-clad hero, capable of flight and possessing the ability to single-handedly heal small children without health insurance. By others he is seen as a masked bandit, walking past the lazy guards outside the treasury, carrying out wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of American green to redistribute to the undeserving and unwashed masses. Both of these viewpoints have something in common, they both view the presidency as something it is not; a position of unlimited power from which one person can dictate the path a nation takes to the smallest detail. The office of the President has become over-hyped in recent years, causing people to place all their hope or irritation on a single face, and allowing their other elected officials a free ride. When the constitution was being written by the architects of this nation, great care was taken to ensure that it was impossible for the power of the entire nation to rest in the hands of one man. As the newly forming United States had just finished making a bolt from the corral of the English Empire under King George III, the Congressional Assembly were in no great hurry to establish an autocratic governmental system. A quick review of the primary source documents written by the representatives show this clearly. In many cases, such as Alexander Hamilton's Plan of Union, there is not even a defined president, rather a goverment by legeslature only (Hamilton). The government of the united states is made up of three separate but equal branches, consisting of the legislative branch, the judicial branch, and the executive branch. Each of these branches has the ability to put a hold on the proceedings of the government, employing checks and balances built into the system by the constitution of 1788, and improved upon since that time. The president has no autocratic ability of make unilateral decisions without the support of the rest of government. This fact is clearly laid out in the Constitution of the United States when it spells out, in the first three articles, the powers of the various governing bodies. In reading that document it is clear that the presidency has its limits. This is the reality of the situation, yet the American populace as a whole seem to have a very different view of the powers of the president. When noted politically oriented satire cartoonists at JibJab published a cartoon in mid June, 2009, the reception was telling. The hook of the song accompanying the cartoon was "He's Barack Obama, he's come to save the day!" and it resonated with many people. Independent columnist Nancy Tracy commented in her article in response to the cartoon; "While many Republicans such as Rush Limbaugh mock the media's and other's superhero worship of Barack Obama, citizens worldwide have a keen psychological need to believe that Barack Obama has special powers and can accomplish the seemingly impossible" (Tracy). This sentiment has been echoed by citizens the nation over, and it represents a gross misappropriation of the nations knowledge of their own government. To ratchet up the ignorance a notch, Peggy Joseph, a supporter of Barack Obama said at a rally in Sarasota, Florida, said that watching the rally was "the most memorable time of my life, it was a touching moment, because I never thought this day would ever happen. I won’t have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won’t have to worry about paying my mortgage. You know. If I help [Obama], he’s gonna help me" (NBC). The point that makes this all the more astonishing is that Peggy appears to be serious, when one would expect a statement of that sort to be pure hyperbole. Statements of this type show the widening gap between reality and public perception, a gap made wider daily by the creeping apathy most americans take towards their own government. Things from the other side of the political aisle are no better. Gina Cobb writes for Right Wing News, "He's (Obama) running up crushing federal debt at a level unprecedented in American history. We are talking trillions upon trillions of dollars in debt. This ensures the the future will bring ruinous taxes, runaway inflation, or eventual financial collapse (Cobb)". This statement of course sidesteps the rest of the legislative process, and places in Obama's hands the sole responsibility for things he could never have had complete power over. While the president is granted certain emergency powers in some limited situations through acts such as The War Powers Resolution of 1973, the president does not, and never has had, the power to single-handedly create permanent policy. Even such seemingly short-ranged powers such as the line item veto, which grants the president the power to exclude single items of spending in bills passed by congress before they become law were ruled unconstitutional. The president is completely and totally hamstrung by the rest of the government, with no power to make any permanent changes completely of his own volition. What then accounts for this gross misrepresentation of the power of the office of the President of the United States? I would propose that this is due mostly to the fact that the media caters to a largely uneducated and notoriously short-of-attention populace, whom are largely ignorant of the finer details of the government under which we live, and require a figurehead upon who to fix their sights. Congress does nothing to correct this perception, as any shift back towards the center brings more responsibility into their laps, and with more responsibility there is always the threat that they will come under closer scrutiny, something which most people - especially politicians - are eager to avoid. This misconception of the powers of the office of the President are in part a result of the media surrounding the office. The President tends to stand out, not because his branch has any more power than any of the others, but because he is one of the very few leaves on that branch. A look into the halls of the senate or the house of representatives will reveal hundreds of suited men and women miling about carrying attache cases and folios, surrounded by the hustle and bustle of aids and advisors, while a look into the west wing reveals two men and a handful of staff and advisors. No doubt the presidents of the past, present, and future have and will use this media focus to further their own agendas, creating a cult of personality and using it to sway the legislative process. This manipulation of the system can be kept to a minimum by the American people educating themselves in the intricacies of their own government, and making sure their representatives do what they were elected to do, represent. None of this is to slight the office of the President, or minimize the role of the president in the course of national politics, it is merely a reminder that while the President's pen may be the last to touch a bill, it is by far not the only one.
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 02 March 2010 18:41 |
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Crimson Cannonball: The Non-Blog of Jason Brink
