The Short Take: A Supreme Folly

Originally published in the Valparaiso University newspaper, The Torch, on January 22nd, 2010.

Last Thursday, the United States Supreme Court revealed the true extent to which big business and corporate interest has infiltrated our government. In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling allows corporations to spend limitlessly in candidate elections. What’s even more infuriating is the Court’s twisted use of jurisprudence to accommodate special interest in Washington.

The case before the Court, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, sought to apply the terms “broadcast, cable or satellite transmission” to a specific means of electioneering. After the arguments were concluded last March, the Court asked lawyers to re-argue their case months later in September. When the case reconvened, the Court attempted to broaden the case and use it to overrule two precedents – both precedents tightened campaign finance laws.

With frightening hypocrisy, the five conservative justices are guilty of violating their pledges of judicial restraint. Writing in dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens accurately summed up the ruling.

“Essentially, five justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law,” Stevens said.

I couldn’t agree more with Justice Stevens. Waving a false flag of free speech jingoism, Justice Anthony Kennedy and his cohorts have opened the floodgates for corporations to buy elections – while impressively mangling our justice system in the process.

Here's why I'm a Jon Stewart fan.

Here's the link.

"The reason [healthcare reform] will die is because if [candidate] Coakley loses, democrats will only then have an eighteen vote majority in the senate, which is more than George Bush ever had in the senate when he did, whatever the fuck he wanted to do. In fact, Democrats have a greater majority in the Senate than Republicans have had since 1923... And the state that you need to save healthcare reform, is Massachusetts - perhaps the one state with a healthcare system more progressive than anything promised in the reform bill, therefore making them the only state that doesn't suffer a whit from the dying of this bill. You really fucked yourselves."

-Jon Stewart

The Case For Vocabulary

I am an elocutionist. I fall for grandiloquent gymnastics and articulate aptitudes; there is a particular art to speaking and writing with beauty and grace. More people should aim for such goals.

As much as I wish, however, it would be unreasonable to expect every person to speak and write like a Dr. Martin Luther King, just as it would be unreasonable to expect every person to paint like a Michelangelo. But our society has placed the expansion of vocabulary lower and lower on the academic hierarchy. When in fact, an accurate and versatile lexicon is essential to every profession and endeavor. What are words if not the nervous system of society?

Somewhere before high school, vocabulary lessons get shelved and this astounds me. The reasoning could be that at a certain age, students must take it upon themselves to expand their vocabulary. This could be a rational course of action if our educational institutions impressed upon students the necessity of expert use of language. But in reality, students enter high school with an inappropriate sense that their lexical abilities are adequate.

Another possible reason for the abandonment of teaching vocabulary is that some educators may deem it unnecessary; in the modern world students don’t need to know words like “insalubrious” or “plenipotentiary.”

But this is comparable to teaching math students that numbers above one hundred aren’t necessary.

Every word has a unique nuance that may make it appropriate or inappropriate for certain contexts. For example, “preservation” and “conservation” are words that many people juxtapose without any thought about what makes them two words – they are separate words for a reason. Preservation speaks to the maintenance of something, keeping it in its original state. Conservation speaks to the protection of something from harm or destruction.

Even these words change definition depending on context.

Such intricacies demand our diligence in mastering language. Without this expertise, conveying information will become – and is becoming – oversimplified. We must prevent tools like dictionaries and thesauruses from becoming anachronistic and antiquated. Attaining an expansive vocabulary, and grasping the ability to apply it, will protect us ambiguity and equivocation.

Journaling - Comfort and Coincidence

As of tonight, I’ve logged eight full pages in my large moleskin journal with nearly two weeks worth of entries. Each entry is more extensive and honest than the previous. The content waffles from mundane accounts of the day’s activities, to my own meditations on the various issues that arise in my life. My own little black book of ramblings.

It started as part of my New Year’s resolution. I wanted divulge my own thoughts onto the written page. I’ve always tried to keep a consistent journal, but have always failed to keep one for longer than a week.

Recently, I began to miss the reflective journeys I’d take on the page; I miss the cathartic addiction to journal writing.

Eerily enough, a strange coincidence happened recently that seems to catalyze my journaling. For a class I’m taking on creative nonfiction, we’re reading Susan Neville’s Iconography. It’s a collection of her journal writings that she kept each day of Lent. In each entry she grapples with her depression, her spirituality, and her struggle as a writer. Her blunt honesty and ruthless self-reflection ring strange parallels in my own life. What’s strange is that I am fated to read this book shortly after I began my own journey in journaling. The coincidence is unsettling, yet strangely comfortable.

In either case, I plan to fill as many pages as possible. Maybe I might share a few with you.

An Adventure A Year Ago

A year ago last Saturday, I completed one of the greatest adventures of my life so far. To write about it is to experience it once again.

Our guide woke us at 4 am. Overcome with nervous excitement, my fatigue stubbornly subsided as I unzipped my sleeping bag and began to suit up. My head brushed up against the roof of my tent. There was frost built up from a night of heavy breathing; at 18,800 feet, you tend to breath harder. Stepping outside, the cold dark wind blew across the camp as I stared upwards to our goal: Uhuru Peak, the summit of the world’s highest freestanding mountain, Kilimanjaro.

Despite the ungodly hour, the camp was bustling about and I was the second climber to rise and make it to the breakfast tent. I stared at my food with bitter contempt. My characteristically voracious appetite had long since disappeared, but the athlete in me knew I must eat.

Once we departed from the campsite, we made our way slowly up the steep, rocky southern face. I knew cold, but I did not know mountain cold. The biting gusts of Chicago’s winter lakefront seemed like a chilly spring breeze compared to the Kilimanjaro slopes.

I felt the weakest and most vulnerable I had ever felt before. The earth and heavens began to spin around me and my knees buckled. My pack began to weigh down on me as a symbol of my pride. Though I made it a point to carry it throughout the entire trip, now was no time for stubbornness; I gave up my pack to the porter.

The weight was lifted, but the shiver remained. I began to shake uncontrollably with cold. In hindsight, I knew about as much of the cold as Jack London’s protagonist in To Build a Fire. But when the sun rose above the face, in all its glory, I felt rejuvenated and reborn. Step after step I finished the climb and successfully reached Uhuru Peak.

The experience solidified my lust for mountains and wilderness. The trip solidified my need to wander and travel. From then on I knew my desire to experience all the world has to offer was no passing fancy. I intend on fulfilling this craving.

Be Creative as a New Year's Resolution

I bought a sketchbook today. This 249-page Moleskin serves as a material impetus for my New Years resolution, blank and pure. I seek a revival of my creative outlets, most of which have fallen into hibernation since my acceptance into college. But I have resolved to obligate myself to a single enigmatic goal: Be more creative.

In high school, I immersed myself in as many art forms as I could. I wrote songs, compiled an art portfolio, and sang in a concert choir. But it all changed when I enrolled in college. Suddenly and subtly I began to neglect my creative output in the pursuit of creative input. I read more than I wrote, critiqued more than I drew, and listened more than I played. For a while this was a good thing. I relished the opportunity to absorb all that my university had to offer. But somewhere along the line, I let things get out of balance.

This year I’m going to restore my innate human instinct to create. Reviving my old habits of drawing and songwriting marks only the beginning of my creative expansion into all mediums. Wish me luck!

Virgin Post

In the popular parlance of the 1950’s, hipsters spoke a language of their own. Among the hyperbolical idioms and cryptic euphemisms, to “vomit on the table” meant to speak up, to get loud. In my brief experience with this life, I’ve found that too often some of the best ideas go unsaid, never to be heard for fear of embarrassment or ridicule. In the spirit of vomiting on the table, I titled this brand new blog of mine Vomit on the Page to adhere to the philosophy of speaking up.

I believe in public discourse and dinner table discussion. No one should ever be afraid of a topic; threatening topics are most dangerous when when left alone.

“To have something to say is a question of sleepless nights and worry and endless ratiocination of a subject – of endless trying to dig out of the essential truth, the essential justice.”

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

So begins my career as a blogger.