Setback for progressivism

Last night was not a particularly good one for progressives, as Republicans, many of them Tea Party-backed, surged into the House. Only two years after Obama's election, my optimism and hope for a return to New Deal progressive values (even bordering on moderate socialism) has turned into cynicism for the left on the entire spectrum. My guess is that Americans want to get out of the huge national debt we are in, but they still cling to a hatred for taxation of any kind. A frustrating aspect I see out this is that very view people are talking about the need for social programs and a non-market-driven healthcare option.

People need to realize that deregulation of the market is one of the worst things we could be doing for ourselves at this point. Multinational corporations, who are a large force behind the libertarianism of the Tea Party, do not care for the welfare of American citizens as long as they keep their profit levels at a maximum. Do we really want to put our faith in private institutions that have no responsibility to the populous, just their stockholders? Do we want to shift our priorities to wealth over the common good?

The preamble of the U.S. Constitution says "Promote the general Welfare", let us live up to that and put the "free" market in the back seat for once.

Palestine: Turning the Jihad into a Class War

Yasser Arafat's shadow is still felt on the people of the West Bank and the Gaza strip. The former leader of Fatah and the Palestinian Liberation Organization may have intended in creating a secular socialist republic out of the occupation of Israel, but he, along with the organizations that he led, went rotten. Graft and corruption were rampant, and while leaders of the resistance movements were gaining prominence in the third world anti-colonial stage, the people of the Palestinian territories were left in poverty and without an infrastructure that could deliver aid. Out of this rose new movements that capitalized on the discontentment with the secular movements: Hamas and the Islamic fundamentalist movements rose to prominence. Hamas actually delivered aid and some protection to Palestinians, and it helped their popularity enough to win them a majority vote in the Palestinian Authority. However, ever since 2006 it is clear that Hamas is just as ambitious and corrupt at the PLO, enacting religious laws and refusing to cooperate with Israel at all and deepening the poverty by provoking Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip. I am totally opposed to the actions that Israel took in late 2008/early 2009 in the Gaza Strip, for the military strike killed mainly innocent civilians who had nothing to do with Hamas. While Israel continues to bury its head in its paranoid neoliberal rectum, Hamas is continuing its theocratic takeover of Palestine. What needs to happen now, not only in Palestine but in all places of the Middle East where America sets its eyes upon and where Islamic fundamentalists prey on the poor peoples, is a new movement of secular Middle Easterners who wish to see new nations created not by religious authority or by nationalistic ideals, but nations that are formed with the concepts of economic equality, social justice, equal rights, and international cooperation. Too long has the Middle East been ruled by corrupt royal families (Saudis), religious demagogues (Iran), or kleptocratic dictators (Syria, Iraq, Libya). Democracy must be formed over there, but not by imported American neoliberal democracy, but radical socialist democracies where individuals and indigenous peoples retain rights while workers and farmers own their own means of production. And with leftist secularism embedded in the culture of Palestine, new movements can spring up which challenge the lies of neoliberalism and theocracy. Freedom must be won for Palestine, and the movement will be led not by despotic clerics, but by the people.

End of High School

Well it's come down to it: April of my senior year and all I have to worry about for school are the AP Tests, a few miscellaneous projects, and my senior project evaluation. Now I'm headed to the small liberal-arts college of Danville, Ky known as Centre. It's a fine institution, with only about 1,215 students or so, and it has a high reputation. Hopefully, I can engage some not-so-sure/open-minded liberal types to join with the Socialist Party, but one step at a time. My goal is to get a Kentucky chapter of the SPUSA started at some point, mainly with some people in Louisville I know who might be interested. Further, becaue Centre uses Sodexo as their food supplier, I could work with the Student/Farmworker Association during their college campus "Dine With Dignity" campaign. In short, I have a lot of options open.
Beyond the travails of political campaigns, the end of my high school career has had me thinking about my school career. I have been to three different high schools, and it has been a strange experience at times. I was a member of my Freshman high school's track team (a 2 mile distance runner, I sucked), and I was also involved in the mock-government Kentucky Youth Assembly sponsored by the KY YMCA from Freshman to Junior year and I loved it. I also wrote for my community's youth section of the newspaper some in junior year, I did the local county teen court, with other various activities here and there. Senior year has seen me do two play productions at my high school and work with a refugee family from Bhutan for my senior project.
In short, although I wasn't a huge fan of the high schools I attended freshman to junior year, my high school career has been pretty damn good overall: I made a lot of friends, I have explored from Ohio, New York, and Chicago to Rome, Florence, Cannes, and Paris, and I will miss it. But if this has been only a taste of life so far, I can't wait for the main course. I love my family and my friends, and will miss them all, but I am about to move past the threshold of youth and enter adulthood.

Thoughts on working with a family from Bhutan

I have been working since October (2009) with a family of refugees from Bhutan, who are part of an ethnic group known as the Lhotshampas (Wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lhotshampa) . The group as a whole is tied culturally to Nepal, and generally they are Hindus, while the whole of Bhutan is much more culturally influenced by Tibet and the majority of the people are Tibetan Buddhists. Since the 1980s, a time when Bhutan was an absolute monarchy, the government of Bhutan has been carrying out ethnic cleansing of Lhotshampas in the country, not in the sense of mass killing but rather driving the Lhotsampas out of the country. Most of the Lhotshampas have ended up in refugee camps in Nepal for the past 20 years or so, and the Nepalese government won't take them as citizens. The act of ethnic cleansing, for one, has created a moral dilemma for myself, as I have attempted to follow the teachings of Buddhism for some time, but the knowledge that there are people who claim to be followers of Buddhism and still commit inexcusable atrocities is very disturbing. How can any person who claims to be a Buddhist-a philosophy which NEVER makes any reference of philosophical/spiritual supremacy over other ideologies- commit acts that are completely discriminatory and xenophobic?!
I look at my own family to see if there is anything wrong with them to the point where they in any way deserved this fate, and I have found nothing. They are a good family of five, a mother and father with a son in high school, a daughter in middle school, and a much younger daughter. The mother is expecting anther child soon, and the family is doing all they can to provide for her well being, even as she and the father are helping to keep their small apartment clean, with the father working late shifts at his job. They are some of the most kind and hospitable people I have known, and they never cease to be warm and open to me. I have only spoken to the children some about the situation in Nepal (I usually talk to the children in most matters as the parents are still struggling with English), and the children have told me about their lives in the Nepalese camps, as the children themselves were actually born in those camps. They spoke mainly of the political situation in Nepal, the clash between the old Hindu traditionalists and the Maoist supporters, but they did tell me some about how their family, along with other Lhotshampas, were essentially "run out of town" by the Buddhists years ago. For their age, the children seem to be some of the brightest people I know, due to their situation growing up, and I believe that it they will be successful in this country due to their realization of the world around them.