It was a tragedy that I couldn’t attend BlogHer. The conference took place a 40 minute drive away (San Jose), and I knew some people who were going. Unfortunately, I don’t drive, and I just can’t afford the transportation and hotel costs right now. I had thus reconciled myself to the fact BlogHer was out of my reach, and I planned to spend the weekend twiddling with Breakingranks.net and catching up on Jamal Dajani’s Middle East Intelligence Report.

At the very last minute, Mary Hodder, the braininess behind Dabble offered me a ride to the BlogHer reception. While I wasn’t actually registered for the conference, I got to check out this small part of it.

Just the ride to San Jose was an education. I shared a ride Sylvia Paull, who runs the Berkeley CyberSalon. I’ve lived in Berkeley since 1992, and I’ve been working and playing in “cyberspace” for almost as long,   but I’d never actually hooked into Berkeley’s vast community of bloggers, web developers, and tech entrepreneurs. I guess I’m too much of a geek to even go out and meet other geeks. Anyway, Sylvia made a special effort to invite me to all her Happenings. She’s at the top of the list of Thank You Notes I have to write today.

The BlogHer reception was a lot of fun. At first I was worried, because I didn’t see anyone I knew, but I didn’t want to hang all over Mary, either. Fortunately, I literally bumped right into Susan Getgood, an energetic marketing blogger. Since the flipside of my rage against the corporate machine is engagement with a lot of PR and marketing folk, I actually knew Susan. And since Susan is naturally gregarious, she introduced me to a few new people, most notably tsunami-blogger Evelyn Rodriguez.

I also admit to snitching some of the free wine. Hopefully BlogHer’s lawyer’s won’t come after me.

Mary was staying for the conference, so I got a ride home with one of the new forces behind Our Media, Lisa Padilla. I at least knew Mary through participating in her Dabble beta and soliciting her opinions on rankism in the blogosphere. I’d never met Lisa at all, but she was extremely warm and friendly, and we found a lot to talk about.

The last kindness of the night had nothing to do with BlogHer or blogging. Lisa dropped me off at the Millbrae BART (train) station, which was closest to her house. There I discovered, thanks to my apparent inability to read a train schedule, the last train had already left for the night.

Thus, I found myself in Millbrae at 1am. I had no cellphone, and no one to call even if I had one (nope - didn’t even get Lisa’s card before she dropped me off). I had six dollars and my pocket. I also had a credit card, but taking a cab back to Berkeley would have cost me more than spending the weekend at BlogHer. I had exactly six dollars in my pocket.

The BART station agent was then kind enough to point out that there was a popular 24-hour restaurant, Peter’s Cafe, right beside the BART station. While I questioned whether I still had the ability to pull an all-nighter at my age, I decided to give it a shot.

Apparently the staff at Peter’s Cafe has seen this situation before, because they were all very sweet and gave me a whole pot of coffee. I just settled in with the book I had luckily brought with me to read on the train (a translation of The Peony Pavilion, if anyone is interested).

I ordered something called a “Baby Pancake”, which was really the equivalent of a whole apple pie. I was only able to eat a quarter of it the entire five hours I spent there. I recommend it as a special treat if anyone else finds themselves trapped in Millbrae.

I ultimately made it home during the wee hours of Saturday morning. I then slept most of the day, and I wasn’t really functioning on all cylinders on Sunday, either. Now I’m back  in gear, though, and ready to follow up with all the cool people I met at the BlogHer reception.

All of these people were previously strangers to me. I was able to go to the BlogHer reception not through the kindness of one person, but the kindness of many. That sort of thing really renews my faith in the human spirit.

The strangest thing happened while I was on BART (the San Francisco commuter train) on Friday. The girl standing next to me, who had been complaining loudly about the over-crowded train, spit at the people standing on the platform right before the door closed. Her friends immediately started doing a victory dance, singing “Boo-boo-be-doo - we spit on you!”

The fact that all these kids immediately knew how to celebrate the spitting on random commuters made me wonder if this is part of an evolving subculture. It’s probably not that far a leap from spitting to the pyrotechnic subculture. Random violence seems to be bubbling up from the ground. Yet because it’s happening in a familiar setting, we’re striving for labels other than “terrorism”. Our children aren’t terrorists. They’re just confused by hormones. Only “other people” are terrorists.

The irony was that I was returning from watching a live filming of Link TV’s Mosaic (there are streaming episodes here if anyone is interested). The most moving part was a woman who expained the ambivalence that the Lebonese people have about Hezbollah. To the Lebonese, Hezbollah is not necessarily a terrorist organization. Many see Hezbollah as an organization of “freedom fighters” and Israel as a terrorist state that has killed over a hundred people and levelled whole neighborhoods to do their “Boo-boo-be-doo - we spit on you!” victory dance.

My landlord just got back from Mumbai, where almost 200 people were killed and 700 injured in train bombings on July 11. While the U.S. has been too distracted by Lebanon to give Mumbai a second thought, I wonder whether 7/11 will provoke the same sort of reaction in India that 9/11 did here - with “kill the terrorist” flash games circulating by email in a matter of hours and general patriotic warmongering? Where will the anger of the people turn?

Mumbai trains are famous for their hot, over-crowded conditions - and this again takes me back to the spitting girl on the BART train. While the commuters on the platform probably wouldn’t regard themselves as having anything to do with her problems, I don’t think her actions were irrational. It seems to me that in an era where a lot of things that oppressive forces are systemic or anonymous, it’s hard for people to figure out where to pursue their fight for justice. These kids were angry at everybody. An anonymous stranger symbolizes everyody.

I’m thinking that it’s time to get rid of the word “terrorist”. First it’s far too easy for politicians to label anyone they dislike a “terrorist supporter” (or possibly a “terrorist” for wearing the wrong t-shirt or hugging a tree in a logging zone). Second, too many mental acrobatics have to occur to separate the “terrorists” out there from other sorts of violence from spouse-beating to “pyrotechnic subcultures”. In the end we should be looking for the source of the anger and repeatedly asking ourselves whether we’ve shut down the alternatives to spitting and basement bombs.

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On an entirely unrelated note - a friend of mine just launched a web site called Dabble for organizing and sharing online videos. Could be very useful for people who want to put together “video albums” for their particular cause.

Robert Fuller will be interviewed by Michael Krasny on KQED forum Tuesday (tomorrow) from 10 to 11am. The interview may be run again from 10 to 11pm.

Update: Michael Krasny has posted a podcast of Fuller’s interview here.

Fuller just called me from Seattle, and he had a fantastic time there! Go, dignity movement! One of his radio interviews can be found on the KUOW web site here.

Fuller is now on his way to Denver to speak at the Boulder Book Store on Thursday at 7:30pm and The Tattered Cover on Friday at 5:30pm.

Last month Judith Schwartz sent me a copy of her novel Doublethink. I read very little fiction so the book soon got buried in my inbox. Something about Schwartz’s enthusiasm about how a book could change the political imagination and change the direction of the country stuck with me, though. I put Doublethink in my backpack, carried it around with me all over Berkeley, and I when I finally got a chance to relax in a coffee shop for a bit, I pulled it out.

Honestly, it was hard for me to get through the first few pages because the protagonist, Joe Winston, starts out with a political outlook that’s so different than my own. This was Schwartz’s intention: she draws a detailed, and respectful, portrait of how a neocon true believer sees the world. At the start of the novel, Joe has all the comforts and advantages of a politically-crafted elite, though his family troubles suggest cracks in the facade.

When Joe’s cushy job gets outsourced out from under him and a donation to a charity raises a red flag for Homeland Security, Joe discovers how tenuous his life of privilege really is. All the laws he supported in the name of family values and national security start to turn against him, and he finds himself on the outside of the gated communities that had been shielding him from the brutal world he helped create.

While Joe learns the ropes of this new world, he rediscovers the value of human dignity, and his growth as a human being enables him to heal some of the rifts in his family. However, now that Joe is aware of how the agenda of the elite has distorted the lives of everyone else, he finds the courage to take the necessary political action.

Schwartz’s book covers many issues of current political debate and imagines the dystopian outcome. I haven’t read a book like this since Callenbach’s Ecotopia, and a recommend it heartily for people who want to see what all the threads of the daily news would look like once woven into the tapestry of the future.

Last week the U.S. Senate narrowly missed amending the Constitution to prosecute people who protest the government through the symbolic action of burning the flag. While the over-obvious distraction tactic was an insult to the intelligence of the voting public, it’s even more disturbing that the effort was co-sponsored by CA faux-Democrat Diane “National ID” Feinstein.

I’m blogging about this now because I just read a message on a mailing list that put my sentiments into the perfect words. The author, Jean, has kindly given me permission to quote the whole thing:

Political debates are about ideas; but also about the real lives of real people who could be affected. You forgot about them in your listing of things about which I might care.

An important part about PASSING A LAW is that it implies it will be enforced against some unfortunate soul. Like laws against “drugs” and ‘terror” the law is not against the idea of flag burning. It is against the act of a person who might burn or dishonor a flag. When such a law is passed this expands the power of the state to arrest, imprison or otherwise harm someone. You appear to be hoping that the law is pointless, it will alter nothing. Are you sure? That this law would never ever be used?

I was once a foolish young student who might walk right into some such law. I care for those people who still are, or who might yet be. Why do you risk hurting them?

Politics is above all about individuals, if we choose to help or harm ourselves and each other. My core obejction to both this law and the Bush Administration is the consistent investment in the sheer meanness, from the petty to the great.

On a related note, J.E. Schwartz’s recent novel DoubleThink spells out the dystopian consequences of the police state mindset. While it might seem like a good idea to improve your own life circumstances by disciplining your neighbors, the weapons of the police state will inevitably turn on you and your family.