The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Video of Obama and the End of DADT

    By we are stardust on Thu, 12/23/2010 - 10:09am |

    I want to give my thanks to the President and Congresspeople who helped get this accomplished.  Watching the video gave me the shivers and damp eyes.  There were a lot of players who made contributions to this historic vote, including the top Generals, Pelosi, Reid, Lieberman, Gillibrand, and even Murkowski and Collins.

     But most of all it was a victory for the many activists who kept the issue alive, many of them discharged service members and those still serving who risked a lot by publicly declaring themselves gay and supporting an end to the rank policy.  And for the incredible majority of Americans who wanted the policy to end, some even against their religious principles.

    This process showed that sometimes a vigorous outside push can influence a President and Congressional leadership, both long-term and as this, at the last minute; especially when it's the right policy.

    This is a great day for America on the road to strengthening civil rights for all, and is a chink of light akin to the Solstice’s bringing a bit more light to us as our planet leans a little closer toward the sun in our rotation.

    There are plenty of reasons to be a bit cynical about some of the process that led to this, but for today, I want to celebrate it.

    Obama said. "That's why I hope those soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen who have been discharged under this discriminatory policy will seek to reenlist once the repeal is implemented."  I hope that instead, he makes sure they are re-instated, and as of today the ongoing ‘discovery’ investigations are halted.

    Comments

    May I join you in thanks and congratulations to the Congress and the President for the repeal of DADT, and especially to Secy Gates and Adm Mullen who so courageously put forth their views to abolish this inhumane legislation. As a former Naval Officer, who is gay, I was under constant threat of disclosure for eight years. I served with others who were gay and never experienced any incident of bigotry or intolerence. There will be, of course, difficulties in implementing the new order, just as with racial and sexual integration—but we would be short sighted indeed, to believe that the members of the Armed Forces will not live up to this challenge and, as a result, become better for it. This is a great step forward in our never-ending struggle for human rights and understanding. 


    by Dennie Briggs on Thu, 12/23/2010 - 12:21pm

    It sounds as though Gates and Mullen are committing to a speedy implementation; and yep, the mmilitary will be better and more honest for it.  We share in your delight, Dennie. I've enjoyed reading your diaries here. 


    by we are stardust on Thu, 12/23/2010 - 12:50pm

    Thanks for sharing this stardust. I felt very proud while watching this.


    by emerson on Thu, 12/23/2010 - 12:42pm

    Welcome, emerson-who-talks-to-dogs(-and-gods ?)    Innocent


    by we are stardust on Thu, 12/23/2010 - 12:52pm

    Oh yeah, I talk to the gods all the time. (Still waiting on the animal communication skills. But I will exhibit forbearance since it is not yet 2011.) You ever read Erewhon and heard about the gods of time and space. They gets mad anytime two objects try to occupy the same space so if some guy gets hit in the head with a rock he is punished with injury or death because he tried to occupy the same space as the rock. Silly man. Awesome book. I recommend to everyone, especially Chapter XVI Arowhena.

    Happy Thursday star and eve of Christmas eve.


    by emerson on Thu, 12/23/2010 - 1:12pm

    Jeez, I read it forever ago; I don't remember the gods of time and space...machine consciousness, though...a visionary; oy.  I'll read a bit online; looks like it's available.  I keep trying to remember a sci-fi book that was about different stars having personality and communication.  Interesting, though fuzzy in my memory.  Does it ring a bell?  I'd guess it was written by one of the biggies in sci-fi, Clarke or someone...

    And good Christmas to you, emerson-who-will-talk-to-dogs        ;o)


    by we are stardust on Thu, 12/23/2010 - 2:09pm

    Not meaning to politicize this, but I do want to add a link to an incredible story I read this morning.  I write a bit at MyFDL; Margaret shared her expriences of being transgendered in the service, and wanted to let us know that the DADT repeal doen't included the transgendered.  She taught us things about the subject that I, like most commenters, didn't know.  I hope you might read and love her story. 

    http://my.firedoglake.com/margaret/2010/12/22/why-the-t-is-also-important/


    by we are stardust on Thu, 12/23/2010 - 12:57pm

    How dare you politicize something at Dagblog! ; )

    Thanks for both the video and the article on the struggles of the trangender, which is happening in both inside and outside the military.

    If we consider the plight of the transgender, we need to also recognize our own roles in the continuation of this particular form of oppession.  One of the giants on whose shoulder I stand is Judith Butler and I can't go into her entire body of work, from performativity to the notion of the zones of uninhability as they relate to identity and cultural determination of which bodies matter (including the literal sense of that word). 

    We are too often unwitting participants.  One of the concepts Butler posits is that power as exercised by a culture is the power of language to name that which it names.  In a sense, DADT was a brilliant exercise in undoing the heterosexual imperative because it made apparent a process that had already in place before the policy - that is, if we don't tell (name) that which is, then whatevet that is - doesn't exist, i.e. has no physical matter, and thus doesn't matter, in the sense of relevancy.  By making this process visible and tangible, DADT showed society, even those in the Pentagon and Congress, just how unacceptable this is.

    The blog on transgender points out how the repel of DADT, however, reinforces the continued denial of the transgender existence.  It doesn't intend to do that, and it should be repealed of course, but it does play its role in the cultural matrix in delimiting what exists and doesn't exist.

    Each time one of here at dagblog (and yes I include myself) make a comment which, for instance, claims something like women bloggers are this way and men bloggers are that way, we reinforcing this binary reality, the gender matrix which denies a reality to the transgenders.  We don't mean to, but that is why this power of the cultural imperatives is so powerful.  It doesn't have some nefarious individual or group behind it pulling levers and twisting knobs to make it work.  It is not Power out there somewhere, but power exercised in and through the very "performance" (not in the theatrical sense) of our daily life.

    I would just end with: this is process is vastly more complex and subtle than my simplistic rendering of it here, and it has significant implications in regards to how we are to really generate the change we claim we want. 


    by Elusive Trope on Thu, 12/23/2010 - 2:59pm

    Gotta get me a giant to stand on; I wouldn't feel so puny some days.  ;o)  I scanned Butler's Wiki page, and mentiones of iterablitity, etc.; a bit Greek at first reading.  But I got snagged by the part mentioning she's often been accused of writing 'in impenetrable jargon-ridden prose", though the Wiki piece mirrored that, LOL!  I do find fewer words that concentrate a point are far better than walls of words that attempt to show how brilliant we are at word-smithing.  The extra ones misdirect us, I think.  And the critic who reminded her that sexuality is not just words but bodies rings true to me, but my career was body/mind work.  ;o)

    But beyond Butler, sure; how we talk about things, and how we neglect to talk of them, shows our thinking and even our ignorance, which is why it's good to be taught different ways of looking at things.  That's what would be the most elevated reason to blog.  Margaret, by the ay, helped up to never again forget the T's' what a greand gift for today and always.

    I just deleted a long graph on the ubiquitous binary thinking here at Dag; it's not the time for it.  But you're right that it's good to exercise some care in our speech and think further than our conditioned responses to terms.  Margaret showed me how ignorance is limiting, even ifit's not willful. 


    by we are stardust on Thu, 12/23/2010 - 6:46pm

    Not to veer too far off topic here, but...as far as her style of writing is concerned, I think this is an important topic for the blogosphere.  Granted there are those who seek to use big words and sentences that obfuscate the point being made as a way to demonstrate just how brillant they are (and to cover up the fact they have no idea what they're talking about).  As it is often heard (read), if one learns anything with a liberal arts degree, it is the fine art of bullshitting. Or at least secular bullshitting.  Yet sometimes, I would argue, there is a need and purpose, to prose that takes on a density with multitudes streaking out. 

    A lot of this comes from a belief that as Derrida (the master of the impentrable prose) summed up with "there is no outside the text."  In a more straight forward way, we understand and communicate the world through language, and the only way we can come to understand and communicate this is by using language.  There is no way for us to step outside of it and discuss it. 

    And so it might misdirect us, but that misdirect made be a good thing.  As was summed up on the wiki page, Butler "argued that writing clearly can make the author too reliant on common sense and as such make language lose its potential to "shape the world" and shake up the status quo."  The status quo is able to stay the status quo because its imperative, its "naturalness," is embedded and manifested in the very language.  Each time we reiterate though our words and actions some portion of the larger cultural discourse of "what is suppose to be" is a moment the status quo is reaffirmed.

    An easy example of this is a man wearing a dress.  Nothing fancy or made of leather. Just a typical dress one might see any woman in America wearing.  If he puts this dress on and walks into, say, his office place, I think we can all imagine that things wouldn't quite be as if he had come in the 'normal' suit and tie.  And there would be people who would probablt get quite angry, even violent.  There is a reason why the transgendered, as Butler has pointed out, are, of all the various sexual-orientation identities to suffer violence as a result of that sexual-orientation identity.

    But another way to think about it is that the post-structuralists are the poets of academia.  We would not criticize our poets for layering and meshing their meanings, misdirecting us this way and that way, contradicting and undermining while building up and affirming.  One of the other giants I am fond of quoting is Herbert Blau, who in book Take Up the Bodies, said (I don't have it with me at the moment so somewhat paraphrase): I don't trust thinking that is made in a straight line, not even in prose.

    And I will end with saying that while sexuality is not just words but body, the moment we want to talk about sexuality it is just words.  Along those lines, early on in my introduction to meditation I was told that no matter what one experiences or "learns" while in meditation, the moment you try to talk about it, you have lost it.  Or as Laurie Anderson would say in her concerts, there is an Asisn saying that said 'there is the thing and the word for the thing, and that is one thing too many.'


    by Elusive Trope on Thu, 12/23/2010 - 9:15pm