I admit it. I am a sucker for the stupid little blog memes. But this one actually seems pretty cool — although I guess it’s in the nature of being a sucker that they _all_ seem cool to me. So be it. Hat tip to “Immediacy”:http://www.engel-cox.org/. Here’s how it works:

Everyone who reads this asks me 3 questions, no more no less. You may ask me anything.

Then to go to your journal or weblog, and copy and paste this allowing others (including myself) to ask you anything. Please do a trackback ping so I’ll know that you copied it.

Answers will be given in a follow-up post.

According to “Teresa Nielsen Hayden”:http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/005106.html#005106, “it is now impossible for us to win this war.” I was one of the people who thought that it might be possible to win it — I opposed it on the grounds that the costs would be too high (they have been), that it was a distraction from the real war against Al Qaeda (it has been), and that it would make us _less_ safe, not more. But even given my reservations, I didn’t imagine things would turn out this badly. Maybe it’s my emotional reaction to the photos that’s tipping the scales, but Abu Ghraib, even more than Fallujah, does seem to be the point beyond which there can be no acceptable outcomes, from anyone’s perspective.

Credit should go to people like “Jim”:http://www.highclearing.com/ who not only opposed the war all along, but also predicted that there was no way it could be won. I used to think that, as bad an idea as the war was, we had to stay around to finish the job and rebuild Iraq. Now I’m on the fence as to whether picking up and leaving Iraq is best of a truly awful set of options, not only for us but for the Iraqi people as well.

The cancer spreads. “This New Yorker article”:http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact sheds a lot more light on the goings-on at the prison, and none of it is good. A classified report on what was happening there was given to the Pentagon in February, and knowledge of the atrocities being committed extended far up the command line.

As the international furor grew, senior military officers, and President Bush, insisted that the actions of a few did not reflect the conduct of the military as a whole. Taguba’s report, however, amounts to an unsparing study of collective wrongdoing and the failure of Army leadership at the highest levels. The picture he draws of Abu Ghraib is one in which Army regulations and the Geneva conventions were routinely violated, and in which much of the day-to-day management of the prisoners was abdicated to Army military-intelligence units and civilian contract employees. Interrogating prisoners and getting intelligence, including by intimidation and torture, was the priority.

That seven stressed-out soldiers might be driven to commit atrocities is awful, if unsurprising. But I never would have guessed that complicity in such acts could go so far; it gives the lie to the “99.9%” of my previous post. This is just sick.

This past week Suanna and I have been catching up on a backlog of taped _West Wing_ episodes from this season while at the same time re-watching the first season on DVD. The juxtaposition is fascinating. In November I complimented the darker turn the show was taking, but the comparison makes clear just how much darker it really is. Even the music has changed subtly to register the shift in tone. So much of those early episodes was full of the camaraderie of the staff, Bartlett’s impassioned, partisan speeches, and, despite the hard political realities the show regularly dealt with, a prevailing mood of optimism.

Much of that has ebbed away. (And to the cheesy Bartlett speeches, good riddance.) Where once the staff was a intimate group of friends at frequent odds with the outside world (especially Republicans), now that they are full of disagreement, resentment, and inner turmoil. The relationship between Josh and Donna is an excellent example. In the early days they are a darn cute pair: the energetic political operative and his idealistic, longsuffering, omnicompetent assistant. As the years go by, intimations of romance develop, but of course nothing ever _happens_. And then, in last weeks’s episode, CJ, angry at Josh for letting it come to this, lays it out for Donna. “You should have grown out of that job three years ago,” she says, and goes on to explain that of course Josh would do everything he could to keep her, and that she knows that the reason Donna’s staying is that she loves him. But all the more, then, she needs to get out of there.

This is the point in your standard, early-season _West Wing_ show where, having been on the receiving end of an eloquent, pointed monologue, Donna would come back with her own, even _more_ eloquent and pointed monologue expressing the other point of view. But instead, Donna sputters. “I don’t want to be talking about this,” she says. It’s clear that CJ’s right about why Donna’s staying, but that doesn’t make it any easier on her.

Part of the show’s drift is due to the fact that it tries to mirror our current society, and so in the world of the _West Wing_, the economy is in the tank, Middle East strife is front and center, and partisan deadlock is as bad as it’s ever been. But even if the stock market was still booming today like it was in 1999, the show would still have had to have taken a darker turn, or at least a _different_ turn, in order to avoid stagnation. It’s a sad commentary on our society that the clear way for the show to remain relevant is to present a darker, more conflicted world where everything seems to be falling apart. At least it’s making for great television.

The bad news: visits to Polytropos were down last month from the previous month, the first decline ever. The good news: direct bookmarks and external links were actually _up_ slightly; it was a drop in search engine traffic that accounted for the difference. But still, direct visits were up _slightly_ — Polytropos traffic has pretty much plateaued, and while it’s done so at a level far higher than I would have dreamed when I started, I’d like to keep the ol’ readership growing. And the way to do that is clear: write good stuff, more often.

But that’s the real trick, isn’t it?

Reading blogs, and writing one, have been tremendously humbling. In the old days it was possible, if you thought yourself a writer, to maintain a fanciful illusion — when you read a piece somewhere by a published writer, one that sucked so much that you knew for a stone cold fact that you could have done a better job yourself, it used to be possible to think that there were, just beneath the level of Actually Published Writers, a relatively small number of folks like yourself. Of course the truth is that number is vast, and includes many better writers than you, and people way smarter than you and with more interesting things to say. That truth is difficult to escape now that much more of that writing is out there for the whole world to see, in the form of blogs. And sure, you _could_ have done a better job than that one guy that sucked, but hey, get in line.

It’s humbling, but also liberating in a strange way. And it’s a reminder that attracting more readers won’t happen automatically because you’re just that cool, but will take time and hard work. It will mean writing essays of _substance_ — not, say, self-referential blogging-about-blogging tripe.

I’m on it. Starting first thing tomorrow.

* *hot wings and cheesy blue* — The surprising thing about this phrase, and ones like it, was that they generated dozens of hits. “They’re tasty”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000343.html, I’m tellin’ ya. A new craze sweeping the nation . . .
* *they might be giants make a little birdhouse in your soul meaning* — Far greater minds than mine have pondered this question for many years. Just remember: “they’re leaving out the whistles and bells.” _Whistles and bells._ That’s the key.
* *wallace stevens they might be giants* — I asked this question “before”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000323.html but nobody stepped up. Come on: what TMBG song quotes the emperor of modern poetry? And which poem does it quote? I even just gave you a hint on the second part!
* *elves wearing diapers* — I’m speechless.
* *the sopranos roleplaying game for d20 modern* — Wow. That’s a really dumb idea.
* *peter jackson made faramir evil* — For Pete’s sake, let it rest, will you? Peter Jackson _improved_ the character of Faramir! There, I said it! And then it was all spoilt in the third movie, but that’ll be fixed in the extended cut. Hopefully. November’s a long way away . . .
* *the emotional effects of traffic congestion on people living in thailand* — It’s not the congestion. It’s the peppy happy birthday song they play _every freakin’ day_ on the radio. That’ll drive anyone nuts.

By now you’ve heard about “Abu Ghraib”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56661-2004Apr30.html. If you haven’t seen “the pictures”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/throwingstardna/513278.html, you should, even though they’re hard to stomach. There’s a big difference between reading about them in seeing them, and in this case, the horror and revulsion of seeing them is something everyone should experience in order to remember just how bad we, the good guys, can get.

It’s true that 99.9% of the men and women serving in Iraq would never even think of committing such acts. But in this occupation, after this war, with all the mistakes that led us into it and all the hatred already directed at us, the margin for error is _zero_, not .01%. If “this Guardian article”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1206725,00.html is borne out, then a big part of the problem is that unaccountable private contractors were involved, actually _supervising_ the soldiers in question. We should wait for corroboration on that point, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if it were true.

It’s also true that these soldiers are going to be punished severely, and that no one anywhere is making excuses for them or trying to downplay the significance of their actions. That makes the gap large between us and the true monsters of this world, but — well, as “Jim”:http://www.highclearing.com/archivesuo/week_2004_04_25.html#005301 put it:

Are we “as bad as Hitler?” No. Are we “as bad as Saddam Hussein?” No. Not So Far. _That’s not good enough!_

We have a long way to go.

UPDATE: More information in “this entry”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000387.html.

(Hat tips to multiple sources; I first came across the picture link and the Guardian article at “Amygdala”:http://www.amygdalagf.blogspot.com/ and “MetaEd”:http://ed.puddingbowl.org/.)

* Congrats to John & Belle on the birth of their new daughter, “Violet Mai”:http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2004/04/little_mai.html. It’s weird how I’m a total sucker for baby pictures now.
* Check out the new “art blog”:http://www.edheil.com/artwork/ of . . . a fine blogger and friend who prefers not to have explicit, web-linky lines drawn from his regular blog to his art blog. But if you head over there you should be able to figure it out who it is.
* Let me second Gary Farber’s “complaint”:http://www.amygdalagf.blogspot.com/2004_04_25_amygdalagf_archive.html#108319587824877650 against group blogs. Not those blogs that are conceived as group efforts, but those that toss in guest writers to increase posting frequency, thereby losing the individual voice that drew you there in the first place. Like the man says:

And you growl to yourself, as you have so many times before, that what you value about blogs, what makes them worthwhile to you, why you spend so much time with them is that they are individual voices. You become friends, in your own mind, at least, with the voice, because it speaks uniquely, has its own view, speaks in its own manner, says what it wants to say in the way that only it would.

* This is a couple weeks old now, but Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s “Things I believe”:http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/005007.html#005007 is very fine.
* There’s no doubt that “Slacktivist”:http://slacktivist.typepad.com/ is the best blog I’m reading right now. He doesn’t indulge in personal narrative all that often, but when he does, “it’s groovy”:http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2004/04/pink_fountains.html.
* Aaron Haspel tackles the whole “difference between poetry and prose”:http://www.godofthemachine.com/archives/00000543.html question with his usual aplomb. He’s a little hard on free verse, but that’s OK by me. Anyone who presumes to study, teach, or write about poetry should be able to analyze scansion the way that he does with _To a Dead Journalist_; I wonder how many of them actually can. “Jim Henley”:http://www.highclearing.com/archivesuo/week_2004_04_25.html#005296 beat me to the punch with some comments, but he expressed them way better than I would have, so it’s just as well.
* Speaking of Jim: back in the old days (like, a year ago or so) he used to regularly post his poems on his blog. But it’s been a while since we’ve seen one. What gives, Jim? More poetry!

Catching up on old business: I owe reader Jeff Brower a response to his comments on my entry Slippery Symbols. Here’s Jeff:

The other thing that it makes me think about is the whole concept of symbol as shorthand for cultural power. The cross (or any other religious symbol, for that matter) is indeed a symbol of political power, but that’s not its primary reference. I’d be interesting in knowing what you think about the postmodern tendency to mix and borrow symbols, extra-tribally, if you will. Once again, that seems to be about cultural power . . .

First of all I hesitate to call it “postmodern.” Not because I can think of historical examples of it happening, though it wouldn’t surprise me if they were out there. More because “postmodern” is a slippery term that, when used while referring to the culture as a whole, as opposed to a specific segment (e.g. “postmodern literature”), is often so broad as to have limited usefulness. But we can easily discard the term in this case, because the tendency Jeff describes is certainly out there, and it also seems pretty self-evident that that sort of mixing and borrowing is way more prevalent now than in the past.

Speaking as someone with an ankh tattooed to his shoulder blade, I’m all for it. The down side, I suppose, would be that such a callous use of symbols potentially dilutes their significance even for the people who attach importance to them. On the up side, we get to bring symbols into circulation that might not otherwise be seen or considered, which in its own small way gives people the power to define themselves in ways not limited by their immediate cultural context. It is about cultural power, and it’s more power to the people: the ability to define yourself instead of being defined.

Jeff goes on:

. . . When an artist uses a religious symbol in a incongruous way, it seems that they are trying to acheive in the observer a kind of liminal stage, of being in-between all categories. Unfortunately, when that goes in hand with an offensive artistic use of the symbol, like immersing it in urine or morphing a fish symbol into a darwin-dog, that openness is lost.

First of all, the liminal stage Jeff’s talking about isn’t limited to artists or to religious symbols: I’d say it’s what goes on whenever there’s a bit of symbol-borrowing. What’s achieved isn’t always liminal in the sense of being perpetually in between categories, but it does very often involve escaping the categories that exist, and most times, as Jeff suggests, also creates openness. I think the two examples of “offensive artistic use” are different, though. The urine-soaked cross—though I’ll heartily defend the artist’s right to make it—does seem to lose openness. Whether or not you find it perverse, it’s certainly not robust, semantically speaking. The darwin-dog I don’t find so much offensive as silly. First of all, it would be a lot more elegant if you took the DARWIN letters out and let the feet speak for themselves. Then you’d have the basic implication, “evolution replaces Christianity,” with a nifty added layer, “Christianity is something you evolve out of, just like a fish crawling on land.” It would all be quite clever if it wasn’t predicated on the nitwit notion that Christianity and evolution are mutually exclusive. So here I guess we have a case of failed robustness, and a lack of openness based not on the symbol itself but the narrow-mindedness that inspires it.

For pictures of a darwin-dog, and to see how far down that road the symbols have gone, check out this site. In most of those cases the original reference to the Christian fish-symbol has been left behind, except insofar as one connects the dots from the original Darwin fish. I got a big kick out of the description of the Happy Shark Emblem:

If you’ve lost another emblem to the holy war, consider one of these sharks – just for the sturdy tape. Some people like these sharks because they illustrate the hostile nature of some popular American religions. Some members of those very religions like to display shark emblems as a symbol of their “muscular christianity.” Still others just like sharks . . .

It’ll symbolize whatever you want! It slices! It dices! The shark, like most of the stuff on that page, is an example of Jeff’s “postmodern” symbol jamboree—a vapid and harmless example. One of the reasons I’m generally for symbol proliferation and tinkering is that they create significance but don’t really take any away from the root symbols they draw from. A urine-soaked cross is certainly ugly, but even it doesn’t dilute the power of the cross as a symbol itself.

All of this takes on some concrete importance for me, since I will be getting another symbol brazened on my flesh in the near future. (Suanna and I have decided to get tattoos every five years on our anniversary, though this time it’s been delayed since she was pregnant during anniversary #10.) What to do? I’m thinking of Kali, riding a tiger bareback, holding a laser rifle. Too busy?

Via “Kevin Drum”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ I came across “The Revolution Will Not Be Blogged”:http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/05/04_200.html, a somewhat skeptical take on the importance of blogs to the political process this election cycle. No doubt others will take issue with the author’s condescending view toward blogs generally; my pet peeve is a bit more specific. All the way through, George Packer speaks of “blogs” and “the blogosphere” when in fact he is only talking about _political_ blogs. Now, it’s likely that those are the only blogs Packer knows or cares about, but it’s still falling into the common fallacy of generalizing content in a new or little-understood medium.

Just as the Packer piece assumes that all blogs engage in political commentary, I’ve read similar articles in the past which assume that all blogs are just a bunch of links to wacky stuff on the web, or that all blogs are just personal diaries. Those three categories, taken together, do account for a lot of blog content, but what people have to start getting into their heads is that blogging is a _medium_. It can be about anything.

What I never seem to see is anyone talking about a blog as a platform for cultural and occasional political commentary, personal narrative when inherently interesting and/or appropriate to a larger point, and additional material focusing on the idiosyncratic interests and/or expertise of the author. That describes a huge number of blogs, and most of my favorites, but it’s harder to generalize about so it doesn’t get talked about. Phooey.

Moving on to my next pet peeve, here’s something else from the article:

Blog prose is written in headline form to imitate informal speech, with short emphatic sentences and frequent use of boldface and italics. The entries, sometimes updated hourly, are little spasms of assertion, usually too brief for an argument ever to stand a chance of developing layers of meaning or ramifying into qualification and complication.

Say it with me now: blogs are a medium. They can be written any damn way the author wants to write them. In fact, what Packer’s describing here is pretty much _bad_ blog writing, which I’m sure I’ve been guilty of from time to time but isn’t characteristic of the best blogs at all. It’s true that the medium may _tend_ to encourage a certain type of writing, just as email tends to encourage shorter, punchier texts than snailmail letters do. But the tendencies don’t constrain the possibilities, and as time goes on we’ll be seeing even more diversity of both content and style in them than we do now.