Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008 Read online

  The Meaning of Life is to Do What We’re Told. This is the religious answer, and no, it’s not meant to be dismissive. Religions come with rules. Rules are meant to be obeyed. That’s one of the attractions of religion; it offers structure. Not only religions offer the religious answer, of course: All sorts of secular philosophies, political platforms and self-help books do the the same. But the added bonus of religion is that usually a reward is offered as a sweetener for following the rules—and among those rewards is often an understanding of what it’s all supposed to be about. If religion is true, it’s quite a deal: Most religions are not so onerous as to be impossible to follow (especially here in the US, with its general tradition of religious toleration), so the risk-to-reward ratio is generally substantially in the favor of the practitioner. If it’s not true, well, you’re no worse off than everyone else who is dead.

  I often don’t like how religious people practice their religions (especially when they decide their religious beliefs should be imposed on me through public policy) and as I’ve noted before I don’t subscribe to any religious philosophy. But as a theoretical matter I don’t see any harm in creating a meaning of life through a religious impulse; the fact that religion is ubiquitous suggests it offers something most people want or need (rules and the idea of continuation beyond this universe), and who knows? That impluse may even be correct.

  The Meaning of Life is What You Want it to Be. This is the final and most specific answer: It’s not the meaning of life as in “all life everywhere,” or “all humans,” or even “all the people who live in your house,” but the meaning of life as in “the meaning of your life.” And once again, who is to say that creating a meaning of life for yourself isn’t what you’re supposed to be doing? This meaning is specific, involves only one person and will not outlast your own life. But last I checked, “meaning” doesn’t imply permanence. And it doesn’t make it any less true, for the time it lasts.

  The meaning of my life is pretty simple: To live my life without regret. But like many simple ideas, the execution is difficult. It means being a good husband and being a good father. It means working hard to support my family. It means doing my best to give others the respect they deserve. It means being involved in the life of my community and country. It means developing a moral system and the backbone to stand for what I believe. It means being willing to admit I was wrong. It means being willing to forgive (but more often to be willing to ask for forgiveness). It means being a good friend. It means being aware of life and being part of life.

  It’s a lot of work, and the real kick in the ass about it is that in a very real sense it’s all process—there’s no reward. Except one, which is in the very last seconds of my life I get to have the knowledge that the life I lived was as good as I could make it. That knowledge, a lifetime in its creation, is likely to last a fraction of a second before I’m gone. It’s the meaning of life as a sand mandala. Will it be worth it? Well, you know. I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out. Briefly.

  But in the meantime it’s a good way to live (or to try to live—I’m not as regretless as I want to be), and I can genuinely say my life has meaning. It’s not THE Meaning of Life, true enough. But like I said, I doubt there is THE Meaning of Life. It is, however, a meaning of life, and that’s good enough for me.

  WHY CLINTON

  WON’T RESIGN

  A. M. Rosenthal of the New York Times called upon Clinton today to resign. As if. Clinton would rather slide his most sensitive parts over a cheese grater than to give up the Oval Office. When Gore or Bush or whomever walks into the Oval Office in January, 2001, they’re going to have to pry Bill off the desk with a barnacle scraper. He would rather have the government implode than to leave willingly, and he may just get his wish. Asking him to resign is like asking a poodle to recite the Tibetan Book of the Dead. If it actually happened, you just wouldn’t know what to make of it.

  It’s a difficult thing. At the end of it, I think the conservative Republican hatred of the man is as venal and irrational as anything in politics this century. They’ve always hated him, for the same reason dweebs and wonks have always hated the most popular boy in school: Teachers love him, girls adore him, and everything comes to him all too easily. I can sympathize with their desire to bring Clinton down, but it also points out their sad, jealous pettiness.

  There’s actually a Simpson’s episode that perfectly encapsulates the whole situation: It’s the one where Frank Grimes, a hard-working, decent, honest guy who had to scrape to get everything he has (which ain’t much), encounters Homer Simpson, who bumbles through everything but has (in Grimes’ eyes) managed to do well for himself. Grimes’ frustration eventually leads him to fool Homer into entering a child’s contest, which he wins.

  When Grimes points out Homer’s competing against children, the response is “Yeah, and he kicked their butts!” Grimes then goes insane, and in attempt to flout the rules as Homer does, ends up electrocuting himself and dies. The GOP today is right about at the point where Grimes was reaching for the high power lines.

  On the other hand: Come on, people, Clinton’s a pig. Like the most popular kid in school, he assumes he can get away with everything; like the most popular kid in school, he gets awfully testy when someone stops him from doing what he wants. Everyone who defends Clinton does so knowing full well that what the man needs is fifteen minutes in a back room with a bunch of thugs who know how not to leave any incriminating marks. In a sick sort of way, I admire how he gets the GOP all wound up. But there’s no denying he asks for at least as much trouble as he gets.

  The optimum outcome for this whole mess would be to have everyone in the whole sordid proceeding experience, simultaneously, a severe and debilitating stroke. It’s hard to see how anyone in America would complain, and, tangentially, it would certainly renew my faith in a good and just God. But I don’t see it happening. We’re stuck with this mess.

  BUSH SNORTED

  COCAINE

  I believe that George W. Bush snorted cocaine. At one point in the 70s, the man was probably offered a line by an acquaintance, and George inhaled. Why shouldn’t he? It was the 70s, and everyone was tooting back some blow. And George, bless his cocaine-stressed heart, probably had no idea he’d one day be running for President. Heck, his DAD probably had no idea he’d be running for President. If dad hadn’t gotten around to it, any Presidential ambitions of Bush fils would be, shall we say, almost Oedipally premature. So, toot! went the coke, and George probably spent the next couple of hours simultaneously convivial and paranoid. Good training, actually, for the office he wants to hold.

  I have no problems with Bush having tried the coke. The man is clearly not a coke fiend today. Were he to assume the highest office in our land, there’s little worry that between meeting the Prime Minister of Israel and a state dinner, he’d retire to his private office and fire up a rock (and then, ranting that Sri Lanka has the bomb, fire a preemptive strike against the Indian subcontinent). I think that most people, were they to discover that George once sucked up a white line, would probably shrug and not think about it again. So he did coke. In the 70s, the only people who didn’t do coke were Billy Graham and Richard Nixon (his paranoia did not need pharmaceutical amplification).

  Bush is running around these days trying to avoid the “did you do coke” question by saying he refuses to answer it, and then saying, incidentally, that he hasn’t done any illegal drug in 25 years (at first it was seven years, and then it got kicked back to 20, and now 25. By the time you read this, it may have gotten back to the early 60s, when coke was still illegal, but Bush could have dropped all the LSD he wanted). Which means he has done an illegal drug of some sort (almost certainly pot, and most likely coke as well), he just doesn’t want to admit to the details. Because it would send the wrong message to the kids, you see: Do coke, and you can be President one day! And because he won’t say what his drug of choice was, the question is going to hound him for the rest of his campaign.


  I’m not planning to vote for George, but I’d respect him a hell of a lot more anyway if he’d just say “Why, yes, I did do coke. It wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done, and now I regret having done it.” All of which would be true, and all of which most everyone could accept. Everyone’s done dumb things they’ve later regretted. And additionally, having done drugs in the past does not make you a hypocrite if you’re anti-drug now (doing drugs now would make you a hypocrite).

  Now, many people feel that Bush shouldn’t have answered the question at all, that he should be entitled to a certain zone of privacy. And actually, I have no problems with that, either, if Bush had in fact just said, “It’s no one’s damned business but my own,” and left it at that. But of course that wouldn’t do, and so we have this “admitting to something but not really anything” policy. I mean, really. Just admit it, George. You blew some blow. Really, we don’t mind.

  This “maybe I did cocaine, maybe I didn’t” thing leads to an interesting question of what past behaviors these days would disqualify one for the Presidency. As I mentioned, I don’t think Bush having done cocaine in the past would ultimately hurt him. And if he owned up to toking up some pot, people these days would hardly blink. And obviously President Clinton’s infidelities have not dislodged his tenacious, barnacle-like hold on the White House.

  So what gossipy nuggets from the past would put a dent in one’s drive to the White House? Well, here’s a list of the things I think would do it (and some that would not):

  Would I Be Disqualified From Running For President If The Press Found Out I…

  Did Pot? NO

  Did Cocaine Once? NO

  Did a LOT of Cocaine? NO

  Did Crack? YES (it’s a low-class drug, you see)

  Did Acid Once? NO

  Did a LOT of Acid? YES

  Did Speed? NO

  Did Downers? NO

  Did Heroin? YES

  Did PCP? YES

  Did Viagra? YES

  Am Currently A Practicing Alcoholic? NO

  Spit Tobacco? YES (Really. You want a president with a spitoon? This ain’t Andy Jackson days)

  Cheated on my spouse? NO

  Cheated on my spouse last night? YES

  Cheated on my taxes? NO

  Participated in a college heterosexual orgy? NO

  Participated in a campaign trail heterosexual orgy? YES

  Participated in a threesome? NO if the two other members were of the opposite sex; otherwise YES

  Had homosexual sex? Ohmigod YES

  Really? Even if it was just that one time in the high school gym shower, which if you think about it, wasn’t really sex at ALL, just more sort of a fumbling thing? YES

  Had a nervous breakdown once? YES

  Beat my wife? YES

  Was arrested for driving drunk? NO

  Was arrested for driving drunk last night? NO

  Was arrested for protesting in the 60s? NO

  Burned a flag? YES

  Kicked my dog? YES (if there are pictures)

  Spanked my kid? NO

  Slapped my kid? YES

  Owned porn? YES

  Used the word “Nigger”? YES

  Used the word “Spic”? NO (Hispanics—low voter turnout)

  Had and/or paid for an abortion? YES (yes, even for Democrats)

  If I had to pick the three things that would be automatic presidency killers off that list, I’d have to pick homosexual sex, flag burning, and the abortion thing. The press unearths any of those in the past, you’re dead meat in a red-hot flaming stick. Most of the others you could at least attempt to wiggle your way out of: You could tearfully admit to wife-beating way back when and bawl how wrong you were, and maybe pull it off. Mention you paid for her abortion and you might as well pack up and go home. I can’t even imagine what would happen if some presidential candidate ever had to field questions about having gay sex (“Did you inhale?”). It would probably be followed either by a suicide or an assassination.

  Mind you, I’m not discussing the relative “right” or “wrong” about each of these things, or how I personally feel about them. I’d happily vote for a man or woman who has had gay sex for President, for example, if they were an otherwise qualified candidate. But I am, shall we say, in an extreme minority here. And I wouldn’t expect any Presidential candidates in the next, oh, 30 years, to go and prove me wrong.

  THE WORLD

  IS LAUGHING

  About every seventh news article about the crap that’s going down in Florida is about how everyone else in the world is laughing at us Americans because our Presidential election is so screwed up. Ha ha ha, says the rest of the world. So much for your democratic ideals! You’re no better than the rest of us! Ah ha ha ha ha! At which point they go back to their 30-cent-a-day jobs injecting plastic into Barbie molds or whatever it is they do in whatever country they are from, unmindful that we’ve still got plenty of nuclear warheads loitering in the wheat fields of South Dakota, so it’s really not a good idea to piss us off when we’re as edgy as we are.

  I say, let the rest of the world have their fun. Sure, it’s a good little laugh, the richest and most powerful country in the history of the world, suddenly running around without a leader (ha ha ha ha….eh). But the rest of the world is forgetting three things. First, of course, is that this will get settled in fairly short order, and we’re all real confident of that—despite all the lawsuits and name calling and whatever, there’s not been a mad rush for toilet paper and ammunition at the Wal-Marts around this big fat nation of ours.

  The second is that this little intramural squabble won’t change America’s modus operandi of blithely lecturing the rest of the world on how it should run itself. The very fact we can walk around for weeks without a clear idea of who our next president is without slaughtering our neighbors in an internecine killing spree attests to the strength of our political institutions (and thus, why they need to be exported at the earliest possible opportunity). Far from humbling us, this experience will only make us more smug and insufferable, if that is somehow possible (and you better believe that it is, pal).

  The third, and probably most salient point, is simply this: Here in the States, we don’t actually care what anyone else thinks of us. Aside from policy wonks and a few American UN bureaucrats that are desperately trying to get into the pants of that hot assistant to the Bulgarian attache, not one of us gives a fart in a bathtub what they’re saying about us in Moscow or Mozambique. Because at the end of the day, we’re still us (i.e., most powerful nation ever in the history of the world, blah blah blah), and they’re still not. And to the minds of most Americans, that means we don’t have to pay attention to what they think. If they were really so smart, wouldn’t they have emigrated by now? Of course they would’ve!

  (Not that we would let them in. Because, honestly, if you don’t like the way we do things here in America, you can just go back to where you came from, even if you have not, in fact, left. Indifference and xenophobia: Two rank tastes that go rankly together.)

  I’d like to be able to distance myself from the great mass of Americans and say that I’m not piggishly indifferent to the jibes of the world regarding our election mess. It really is a high holy clusterfuck and exactly the sort of thing that, were it to have happened in some other country where people are more likely to be barefoot than in business suits, would have the US solemnly intoning about the need for international vote observers.

  But I’m afraid I can’t. The hoots and catcalls of the world leave me curiously unmoved. Aside from the opinion of a select few Canadians who also actually happen to be my friends (and who I think are allowed to have valid opinions of the US, seeing as they share the other half of the Great North American Duplex with us), I just don’t care about the international egg-throwing. I don’t see it amounting to anything, and in any event, it’s their perogative to crack a few jibes our way. Hell, if I had to think about the US all the time, I’d love to watch it fall on its ass, too. As a na
tion, the United States can take a ribbing. So I’m unconcerned. At least it’s an unconcern not born out of ignorance. My indifference is fully informed, thank you very much.

  CELEBRITIES:

  RUINING

  EVERYTHING

  Another day, another letter from someone who thinks that having work out there in the market means that I need to shut up about the political process here in the United States. This is not a wholly uncommon occurrence for me and usually plays out like this: Someone reads Old Man’s War, assumes because it’s military fiction that I am some stripe of conservative and/or Heinleinian libertarian, comes here, catches me on a day I’m writing about politics, has the veins in their neck pop, and then writes me a letter or makes a comment suggesting that I shouldn’t write things they don’t like because then they might not be able to buy any more of my books, hint, hint.

  To which my response is always the same: Kiss my ass, hint, hint. Someone who thinks that buying my books entitles them to suggest I need to be silent about anything is someone whose money I don’t need or want. It’s always the righties who do this; I can’t remember the lefties who disagree with my politics, and yes there are some, ever pulling this kind of stunt (on the other hand, the lefties who disagree with something I write often want me to write differently than I do, which is not something I get from the folks on the right. This may be indicative of larger political pathologies relating to the American right and left wings; I invite master’s theses on this subject).

  To be clear, the vast majority of my right(ish) fiction readers who are aware of my personal politics appear to be content to let me be an idiot on the subject and buy my books anyway; I thank them for their patronage, from the very bottom of my mortgage, and I also thank them for their (ahem) liberal attitude on the subject. I am always glad to see when someone, right or left or orthogonal, decides that as a general rule they don’t have to filter every single aspect of their life through a screen of personal political orthodoxy. It speaks well of their higher cognitive functions, in my opinion.