Nobel Prize Winner Just Does Not Get It

March 29,2008

CAB STORY: The Really Smart (Nobel) Money

Hello Everyone,

As I sit down to write, it is 11:01 a.m on Saturday, March 29.
Exactly four weeks from this minute -- at 11:01 a.m. on Saturday,
April 26 -- I am expecting to be down at Ocean Beach in San Francisco,
looking up at one or more helicopters photographing 1,000 or more
people arranged in the sand to form a giant pro-impeachment message:
Beach Impeach 5. (Election laws specify April 26 as the day Cindy
Sheehan can begin to collect the signatures required to challenge
Nancy Pelosi on the November ballot, and Cindy will be in attendance.)

When the Beach Impeach idea first hit me, back in October of 2006, I never imagined that I'd still be wrapped up in it eighteen months later. I also never imagined that the Bush administration would still have such a stranglehold on the country and the world, and that it would have been assisted in its crimes against humanity by a Democratic majority in Congress. Many people (most of them a lot smarter than I -- see the cab story below-- and including many Beach Impeach veterans), have told me, in effect, "Give it up, dude!"

And I would like to give it up -- truly, I would. I've got this nice little "other" life -- my taxi driving, my writing, my family -- and I'd like nothing more than to just stick my head in the sand (ho, ho...) and enjoy it as much as I can. But I find I can't enjoy any of it completely -- not even halfway, really -- when I reflect on the fact that our country and our world are run by a group of unrepentant war criminals who, as Sean Penn says, should be "in f***ing prison." I look at the recent footage of George Bush tap-dancing in front of a fawning, guffawing press corp, of George Bush cuddling up with the Easter Bunny, of Dick Cheney saying he just really doesn't give a damn that two-thirds of the American people consider the Iraq War not worth fighting... I look at our leaders' almost-boastful admissions that they have created a global system of secret prisons where they have conducted (and undoubtedly, I think, still do conduct) torture sessions in my name and in your name... I recall old footage of a smiling, joking Hitler, and fresher footage of a smiling, joking Saddam Hussein, both of them living large while presiding over the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people... And I wonder: How did the people of those two butchers' countries stand by while all this carnage was going on? And what do they think of themselves today?

I also wonder: When people of the future (or even people in the
present) view our torturing, tap-dancing president, what must they
think of us, the daily grind Americans? And I find I don't want to be
looking back on this vital time in our collective history, with our
country's economy and its reputation quickly swirling down the toilet,
and have to admit, "Yeah, I was there, but there was nothing I could
have done, and so I didn't even try." How can I, how can all of us,
simply go about our lives while we are personally responsible for
leaders who have caused the deaths of some one million Iraqis?
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/9/14/173832/320 I don't have an
answer for that. But the very least I can do is organize another Beach
Impeach event -- which surely feels (as the four that preceded it also
surely felt) like the last one.

I'm working on the arrangements. Within a few days the sign-up
mechanism will be activated and the Beach Impeach website will be
updated. Over the next couple of weeks I'll be arranging insurance,
permits, portapotties, helicopter(s?), etc. (If it seems that the
sub-prime mortgage mess hasn't yet personally effected you, please
consider this: The helicopters we hired last year came from an outfit
whose bread and butter was a helicopter flight school -- most of the
school's students took out loans to pay their tuition -- the lender
has run into credit problems of its own and has stopped lending money
-- in February the helicopter outfit filed for bankruptcy -- the phone
has been disconnected. I'm confident I'll find a helicopter, but as I
type, I am not exactly sure where.)

I'm going to be keeping up a pretty steady stream of emails to you
between now and April 26. I hope you'll keep your calendar clear for
that morning, I hope you'll come to the beach (yet again?), and I hope
you'll share this news with people you think would be interested.

ANTI-WAR TOWN HALL WITH DAVID SWANSON -- GRAND LAKE THEATER, OAKLAND, APRIL 24 -- 7 pm

With Congress ready to debate Bush's request for another $102 billion
for the war, the anti-war movement is calling for town hall meetings
in each of the 435 congressional districts (http://www.democrats.com/iraq-town-halls-top) in the country.
Tireless local impeachment activist Cynthia Papermaster has arranged
for a town hall meeting at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland on April 24. David Swanson, the incredible force behind http://www.afterdowningstreet.org, will be the featured speaker. David
has been a personal inspiration to me for the last three years -- I
imagine he will have a great future in leadership or politics if he
wants one, and I think the fact that he's coming here is something no
one will want to miss. Details here.

CAB STORY: The Really Smart (Nobel) Money

The Smart Money has been sneering at impeachment for years now.
They've fallen right in line, right "off the table" with Nancy Pelosi.
Even my own representative, Barbara Lee, who was once upon a time
courageous, has been all-but-silent on the topic, and has hidden
behind the "We don't have the votes!" fig leaf. The truth, it seems to
me, is that what the Democrats are really lacking is the guts and
vision and courage and backbone we expected of them when we went to
the polls in November 2006. But what do I know? I'm just a cab driver.

Last month, at the international terminal at SFO, I picked up a very
nice man about my own age who was headed to Palo Alto -- a 40-minute,
$100 fare. It wasn't long before my questions revealed that my fare
was on his way back from Asia, where he'd been invited in conjunction
with his position as a physics professor at Stanford, and that the
main reason he'd been invited was that he was, in fact, a Nobel Prize
winner.

I am constantly floored by the wide, wide range of people I've met in
my cab during the past 23 years, and, this being my first (known)
Nobel laureate, I was completely disarmed. He was very gracious and
allowed me to quiz him on everything I could think to quiz him on. As
best I can recall, his Nobel had resulted from an insight he'd had and
a prediction he'd made (it was later proven correct) after reading a
research paper written by someone in the semiconductor industry, a
paper that revealed certain unexplained anomalies in the behavior of
photons (or was it electrons?) in a gaseous state and subjected to
extreme temperatures... About 20 minutes into the ride, he said, "If I
were to go any further I'd need a blackboard and some chalk." And I
had this awareness: "My goodness -- I've been in the middle of a
conversation with a Nobel Prize winner, and so far I've understood
everything he's said. Perhaps his real brilliance is in making all of
that intelligible to someone like me!"

Anyway, it was an exhilarating ride for me. And although I had
wanted, from the start, to steer the conversation to politics and
impeachment, I kept myself from doing so until the very end, when I
asked about my fare's thoughts on the war. He said it was all "lies"
-- from before the war, to the invasion, to the aftermath, up to this
minute -- all of it "lies."

And I asked, "Given that almost everyone everywhere seems to agree
with you, how do you explain that the fact that Congress hasn't
started impeachment proceedings?"

I'd understood our entire conversation until this point, but I can
not for the life of my understand his answer. And I didn't like it one
bit. I'd heard it before, of course, but never from someone of such
notable brilliance. I actually find it a poorly thought out answer,
which may say more about me than about anything or anyone else. My
fare delivered it without hesitation, as though it were the most
obvious thing in the world. But, for me, this answer only raises
bigger questions, most of them dealing with the flawed nature of us
human beings, and also the nature of courage, and vision, and
imagination. Countless times I have mulled over this answer that slips
so easily from so many mouths, and I know I will never find it an
acceptable answer no matter how hard I might try.

I asked: Why hasn't Congress started impeachment proceedings?

My Nobel fare said: "They don't have the votes."

I just don't get it. Do you?

Brad Newsham
newsham [at] mac.com

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More News from Brad:

BEACH IMPEACH 5 -- Saturday, April 26, Ocean Beach, San Francisco,
arrive by 10:00, helicopter overhead at 11 sharp

ANTI-WAR TOWN HALL WITH DAVID SWANSON -- GRAND LAKE THEATER, OAKLAND, APRIL 24