Tag: politics

Week Six: Show Me The Levees

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Yesterday was California’s ‘Special Election Day’. Voters went to the polls not to elect a new President or oust an old Governor, but to vote on eight ‘Propositions’, changes to the state law. Popular referenda are more commonplace here than in the UK, but the advertising campaigns that accompany them are vitriolic to say the least, usually sponsored by special interest groups such as ‘parents against Prop 73’, with slogans like ‘another bad idea from the Governor’. As it turns out, the public turned down all eight measures, leaving Arnie in a bit of a sticky situation. But the problem that is really worrying Sacramento right now is not the seismic events at the ballot box, but the threat of a catastrophic flood caused by unrepaired levees in the wake of the ineviteble Big Earthquake.

We have all, after New Orleans, heard about levees. We all know what happens if governments ignore their state of disrepair. Last weekend we moved to Davis, in the greater Sacramento area. Reading the Sunday newspapers, I have discovered that not only is the Sacramento Delta considered one of the most likely places in the US to suffer a massive flood, but that governments do not want to face the problem, the ‘big, dark secret that no one wants to talk about’ (as a UC Davis geologist has put it). The levees protecting the Delta dams need updating, and fast.

Everybody knows that California has long been expecting the ‘Big One’. It suffers tiny quakes every single day, but the state is splitting apart, geologically speaking. The Central Valley will eventually become a huge Bay (probably forcing the prices of houses up rather than down). If a large earthquake strikes – it could strike tomorrow, for all we know – it is likely that the levees will fail and FEMA will once more be pulling people from rooftops. And it may not even need to be a quake that triggers it – the Sacramento Bee is equally concerned with the threat of a ‘Pineapple Express’ storm, presumably from the south. But worse than that, such a catastrophe would destroy the water supply for two-thirds of California’s population for anything up to a year. We’d need more than Arnie to get us out of that.

So when we moved into our flat (sorry, ‘apartment’), I made sure that we were placed on the second floor. When that Big Quake comes, and the floodwaters invade, the roof will be ours! I’ve already started making my sign; it reads, ‘Food, Water and Football Results Urgently Needed!’

 

Originally posted 11/10/2005

Week Four: God Only Knows

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I’m considering writing to Apple to market my latest invention – the iGod. It’s just like the iPod but specifically built for religious purposes – it’s cross-shaped (useful when you meet vampires and heathens), contains over five hundred Christian rock songs, and is perfect for downloading the latest sermon, or Godcast, from any Church in the world. Furthermore you can use it to automatically register your vote for George W Bush or any other leading Republican, as well as convert other people’s votes for them. I can’t see it being a big seller in Europe, but it might make me my million over here.

God is everywhere in America – you are reminded of this daily. ‘God Bless America’, ‘In God We Trust’, ‘One Nation Under God’ – these are drills every American has embedded in them from a very young age. Ok, the British National Anthem is ‘God Save The Queen’, but God is no more important to most Brits than the Queen is these days. In the US, faith in religion is still a make or break issue – the Religious Right currently holds much political sway. Now I am basing this on my initial observations only, I am not trying to paint an unrealistic picture, but where in England it is usually fairly embarassing to admit your religious bent, people here wear it on their sleeves (and on their bumpers). You would not find a two-minute commercial advertising the new ‘Bible on DVD’, featuring scenes of whole Ned Flanders-like families sitting around the TV grinning inanely as passages from Corinthians are read to them by a soothing mid-western voice, over saccharine vomit-inducing lift-music. But you do here; I saw one last night (right after the Gary Coleman loan advert). Diaries often contain such passages as ‘when I realised God loved me’ and ‘Bible passages that inspire my family’ (I found these in a regular diary in Barnes and Noble that was advertised as a Father’s journal – I don’t think it meant a priest). TV shows hardly ever insult God, even if they insult organised religion. It is almost as if God is American, and to be an unbeliever is to be unpatriotic.

Of course, America was settled by Europeans fleeing religious intolerance. In the case of the Puritans, this meant they were free to cross the Atlantic and be as intolerant as they liked. Nevertheless, the Founding Fathers knew that the power of the Church must never infringe upon State affairs, as was still the case in many older European countries. People who still chant ‘One Nation Under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance at school still enforce the mantra of Seperation of Church and State. In a nation in which some states have all but reduced the teaching of Darwinian Evolution in favour of Creationism, it is still unacceptable to teach religious education in schools. I find this unbelievable – how are children to learn about Hinduism and Islam and other cultures’ belief systems if not at school? The Discovery Channel? Yet Christianity is still allowed to get in the way of Science. Museums trying to promote Darwinism are up against an education system whose textbooks regularly feature disclaimers concerning the ‘e-word’, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Christianity pervades popular culture here. A new film out soon is being premiered in churches across the land. Called ‘Left Behind: World At War’ it features an Antichrist created by the ‘Global Community’ which burns the White House down and reaks general havoc upon the planet and its environment (pretty much as the White House itself does, I think). Only those who believe in Jesus are saved, “and you don’t want to be left behind”, as a local Santa Rosa priest said in the Press Democrat. Christian Rock is all over the airwaves (and I have noticed something – when you hear a black person sing the praises of Jesus, it sounds good, it sounds cool, but when you hear a white person sing for God with a guitar it just sounds creepy). Political books always bring up God, linking it to this mythical concept called ‘values’, and using God as the ultimate patriotic symbol, like Superman. That cretinous right-wing spokesperson Ann Coulter for one says, on the back of her latest book ‘How To Talk To Liberals (If You Have To)’, that not only is invading other countries and converting them to Christianity admirable, but should be done ‘now more than ever’. Any bookstore will find ten other new books saying the same thing (with another ten accusing the Republicans of stealing God, and even Christmas, from the Left).

However, I’m starting to wonder whether my iGod gadget would be such a good idea. I mean, should we be promoting Apples in America? Remember the bollocking God gave Eve when she chose an Apple over a PC in the Garden of Eden? You should do, if you went to an American school. Let’s learn from our mistakes. Call it Eve-olution.

 

Originally posted 10/25/2005.

Week Two: No Crony Left Behind

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Santa Rosa must have the most intelligent homeles people in the world. I’ve just joined the local Sonoma County library, and it is full of grizzled, unwashed hobos, shuffling around the journals, poring through encyclopedias, lost in thought and pungent odours. They are there every day, like mumbling monks, preparing either for an overthrow of the regularly-washed capitalist regime, or a special tramp version of University Challenge (better watch out, Paxman). Their greying pony-tails and Haight-Ashbury beards betray them as old Northern California liberal hippies, more LSD than LSE. These are not, absolutely not, the people who voted in Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governer of California.

I am yet to meet a californian who thought giving Arnie their top job – the ‘one man with one veto’ (and he aint afraid to use it) – was a good idea. Most people here are saying his days are numbered (a phrase I’ve never understood – surely all days are numbered, isn;t that what calendars are for?), but even the Governator isn’t losing support like the President is. Yes, the legendary (read mythical) ‘approval rating’ has never been lower for George W Bush, particularly after his slow response to Hurricane Katrina (he thought it was a female boxer). One of the big political stories to fall from the Katrina fiasco was the resignation of Michael Brown, the Bush-appointed head of FEMA whose only qualifications for running large scale relief operations amounted to cleaning shit from paddock floors at the horse-shows he used to run. Now, the politcial storm is Hurrican Harriet: Bush is insisting on appointing his White House legal adviser (and long-time Texan friend) Harriet Miers to the highest legal position in America, Supreme Court Justice.

Her qualifications for being the nation’s most prominent judge do not include ever having been a judge, nor ever having shown any inclination of wanting to be one. Her own judgement, in fact, is fairly dubious, having once said (to David Frum) that the President was the ‘most brilliant man she knows’, according to the SF Press Democrat. That such a Dubya-acolyte is being rewaded with a position so clearly above her station has naturally angered Democrats, but the real backlash has been from right-wing Republicans – even they abhor the obvious cronyism. On the internet, in the newspapers, on the radio and on TV, Bush is losing the support of his own supporters.

Yet surely he is just showing Americans another version of the American Dream? That you can become important and powerful even if you don’t have any qualifications or experience – in short, ignorance, stupidity and a lack of education pays off. Those homeless guys in the library are clearly wasting their time – or will one of them be the next Secretary of State?

Originally published 10/11/2005