Asleep at the Wheel
06 Jul 2010 1 Comment
in Current and Personal Events
Today, the UN Wire reports that several of the United States leading banks, including Bank of America and Wachovia, have been effectively laundering money for Mexican drug cartels for years. Stellar job there, guys.
I used to work for a bank. Granted, it was a local Boston bank, not a national giant, but a bank nonetheless. My position was not one in which I physically handled money or even dealt with customers face to face. Despite this fact, I was put through the same rigorous training process that all bank employees had to go through– which included dealing with suspicious activity, filing Suspicious Transaction Reports, how money laundering is accomplished, etc. etc. Perhaps I’m being cocky, but spotting suspicious activity is not very difficult.
So I keep mulling it over, how these banking giants, well-versed in the risks associated with the financially industry, could unknowingly launder billions of dollars for drug cartels. The only conclusions I’ve reasonably come to are either they did know (and didn’t care, or were getting something out of it) or they were asleep at the wheel.
And lately, it seems like the whole damn world is asleep at the wheel.
To get literal for a moment, back in the days when I was a sleep deprived student with a car, I nodded off at the wheel once or twice. Granted, it was for split second– but that’s really all it takes. If you’re wielding 1 to 2 tons of metal at 60 miles per hour, or a multi-billion dollar corporation that is “too big to fail,” you want to keep your eyes on the road at all times.
The one upside to nodding off for but a split second? It sure as hell terrifies you awake. Not everyone seems to have gotten the wake-up call, though.
Other less-than-outstanding driving records can be seen in Uganda, South Africa, the US Congress, and the state in which I currently reside– Arizona. Do I even need to mention BP? Thank the genderless higher power that the Coast Guard has convinced them to stop burning sea turtles alive, but in 77 days BP has only skimmed or burned 60% of what they said they could in a single day. I am terrified that the next time I lay eyes on the Atlantic Ocean, it’ll be nothing more than a sticky, black mess.
Likely you’ve heard about the anti-gay bill that was proposed at the end of 2009 in Uganda. Though the death penalty has, supposedly, been taken off the table as an appropriate punishment for engaging in homosexual activity, life in jail is still a very real possibility. Of course, this hardly accounts for vigilantes. Pasikali Kashusbe, a Ugandan LGBT advocate and member of “Integrity Uganda,” was recently found beheaded. It gets worse. His mutilated torso was found half a kilometer from where his head was found, in a pit latrine. Hate knows no limits.
Then there’s South Africa’s Eudy Simelane, who was gang-raped, brutally beaten and stabbed 25 times for being an out lesbian. Violence against lesbians in South Africa has only continued to rise since her murder. Supposedly, this is part of a campaign of “corrective rape.” You know, since there’s so much evidence to support the idea that you can rape or beat the gay out of someone. I’m suddenly glad I skipped breakfast.
I’m not about to start ranking on the Obama administration, although I know it’s all the rage currently. In all sincerity, the guy can’t take a dump without being criticized. I cast my vote for Obama back in ’08, and although I somewhat unsatisfied with his lack of progress in many areas, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. I do believe he cares, I do believe he’s working on it– and I do believe his very much needs to abandon his attempts at bipartisanship. I applaud the initial attempts, but the GOP has made it crystal clear that Obama can do no right in their eyes. If you can’t persuade them to work with you– screw ‘em! Seriously, the American people gave the Democrats a huge majority in Congress, and they’ve done nothing with it but made countless concessions to representatives who have no intention of supporting any piece of legislation proposed by the Democrats anyway. What is it when you repeat the same actions expecting different results? Oh, right: INSANE.
Rant aside, the two bones I’m picking with Congress today are on the issues of net neutrality and unemployment. Last week, with the unemployment rate still at nearly 10%, Congress allowed unemployment benefits to expire for more than a million unemployed Americans. Arrogant asses like Rand Paul are enjoying telling the unemployed masses to take a pay cut and “get back to work.“ As someone who was, unfortunately, unemployed for 6 months last year, I guarantee you that there is no unemployed person in this country who has been offered a job and turned it down for any reason, least of all a pay cut. No one enjoys being unemployed.
Then there’s the less publicized issue of net neutrality. In short, net neutrality is good for consumers (it means a free and open internet, in addition to the highest speeds available) and bad for large cable companies, who desperately want to become internet gatekeepers and, potentially, limit free speech. While Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 (H.R. 3458) is still on the table, 74 Democratic representatives just signed industry-backed letters to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in attempts to keep the telecommunication companies from being regulated by the FCC. It’s a complicated issue, to be sure and, truthfully, I don’t trust the FCC much more than I do Verizon or AT&T. Oklahoma’s “hands off” approach appears to be the best route. My appetite for capitalism keeps shrinking with each passing day.
And then there’s Arizona. We’ve got rodeos, the Grand Canyon, and legalized racial profiling. If you live above ground in this country, you’ve heard about SB1070, which officially goes into effect on July 29th. Today, the US Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Arizona. As a person who attempts to be socially conscious, my inbox is consistently flooded with calls for action, petitions to sign, and progressive news blasts. This morning I received an e-mail instructing me to thank President Obama for suing my state. I was a little taken aback. Do I think the Justice Department is doing the right thing? Absolutely. Injustice must be stamped out wherever it resides, and there’s an abundance of it in Arizona right now. However, I know a lot of good people in this state. The country is still in recession and while boycotts against Arizona continue, I really do worry about these people. Especially since many of them are at risk of being discriminated against under SB1070. While politicians debate immigration policy, real people are really being hurt.
My initial reasons for coming to Arizona were personal, and it was just by luck I wound up in Tucson, the blue dot in this red state. My reasons for staying in Arizona, though, are more political. Despite being white like meringue (though I’m sporting a nifty farmer’s tan now), I feel like it’s important for me to be here now, fighting this batshit piece of legislation, amongst other things. Don’t forget, July 29th is the National Day of Noncompliance.
So here’s the world: asleep at the wheel. But I can’t say I haven’t been asleep at the wheel myself.
If I believed in luck, I’d say mine has been hideous lately. But I don’t believe in luck, perhaps because of that whole being born on Friday the 13th thing. I do believe in physics, though, namely that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. What I have done to cause these recent reactions, though, is still hazy to me.
This whole year has been kind of a flop, thus far. On New Year’s Day I departed Boston for the West Coast, and made it a mere 80 miles before my engine ceased up. Carless, I came to Tucson anyway. I actually manged to get a job within a month or so (which I thank the genderless higher power for every day), but it was a few weeks after that when my primary mode of transportation, a bike I was borrowing from my best friend and roommate, was stolen. I still owe him $400. I borrowed another friend’s bike, which I managed to not get stolen, but she recently reclaimed that, leaving me somewhat helpless transportation-wise. The public transportation system is atrocious and expensive. A few days later, I had to reformat my laptop hard drive after I unleashed a virus onto it (OK, the cause and reaction to that one is self-explanatory; use a condom and a firewall, kids).
Despite the string of unfortunate events, I’ve been really trying to make self-improvements and be better about self-care. This has been moderately successful. I do have a therapist who I like (and boy am I picky about therapists), I am getting better at making and sticking to a budget, most days I get enough sleep and get to work on time, and I recently took a self-defense class and began fostering an interest in the Israeli combat art of Krav Maga. Not to mention I quit smoking (weed, I never smoked tobacco) a few weeks ago and am trying to wean myself off soda and drink as much water as humanly possible. Not bad.
But then there was this weekend. It started out well enough. I got up early on Saturday, cleaned the house, did weekend chores, ran Saturday errands, and headed to a free Krav Maga class. That’s where I got my wires crossed. I managed to show up just as the class was ending, and then realizing my bus came in ten minutes, ran and arrived at the corner just in time to see the bus drive by. My choices were then to either wait an hour for the next bus, or walk. So I walked. Props to me for not violating my one rule for living in Arizona (“Don’t leave the house without a fully water bottle”), but shame on me for not having eaten anything that day. About halfway home I started to feel lightheaded and even dumber than I already felt. Somehow, I made it home, munched on some bread, and started to feel remotely human again. Showered and headed out to the Tucson versus Mesa poetry slam.
I brought my camera to this slam, a first for me. I’m very deliberate about where and when I have my camera. I think it’s just as important to live life as it is to record it, and I often have to pick one or the other. As such, I have this philosophy wherein I dedicate all the pictures I do take to all the pictures I missed taking because I was too busy living. Philosophy aside, it was going to be an epic slam, so I thought it was a good chance to take pictures.
I got some great shots, but the quality is crap. It makes me ill to think how much money I spent on this digital SLR (an entry level camera, to be sure, but not exactly cheap) and the quality is inconsistent and absolutely terrible in low-lighting situations. But since an external flash would cost almost as much as the camera itself, I work with what I have. I desperately miss working with film, though. Shots are better composed, I focus manually, and the quality (even in low-lighting situations) is significantly better. I hate auto focus, I really do. It always focuses on the background or some insignificant object rather than your subject. But it’s a necessary evil. If, like me, you enjoy photographing people candidly, by the time you’ve focused manually, the shot is gone, the moment passed.
So, even though I know I’m capable of producing good, even beautiful work (such as here, here and here), this weekend I managed to get a lot of shots like this one, which would’ve been awesome if I could learn to get along with my bloody auto focus. (I mean, COME ON! Focused on the SB1070 sign?! And I didn’t think that bill could piss me off anymore than it already has!) This pretty much sums it up:
Anyhow, flash forward to later that night when I return home to find some unexpected guests at the house. My other roommate and her girlfriend were hanging out with two mutual friends of ours, one of whom I hadn’t seen in three years. So, in the spirit of socializing, I had a few drinks with them.
It wasn’t until I was thoroughly smashed that I remember that I had eaten practically nothing that day and that I’m a complete lightweight, despite being large in stature, since I drink so rarely. It wasn’t long before the melancholy hit me hard. I went on a self-deprecating Twitter binge and then refused to go to sleep until the sun came up, for no apparent reason– except that’s what I do when I get depressed. It’s like I think if I go to bed before the sun comes up, something horrible will happen.
Feeling achey and awful, but managing not to get sick (damn my Russian stomach of steel), I took Sunday to recover. But, since work was closed on Monday due to 4th of July observance (as an hourly employee, I hate Monday holidays), I got smashed again on Monday night. This had mixed results. My roomie, her girlfriend and I watched “Death Proof,” my first viewing, and as far as female revenge movies go, it was deeply satisfying. But somehow, over the course of the evening, the conversation slipped into trauma, then childhood trauma, then childhood sexual trauma, followed by a fair amount of drunken weeping (not me, though; I’ll cry for other people’s pain, but fuck if I’m going to be anything but stoic about my own).
This brought me face to face with an issue I keep trying to unpack, but to no avail. Childhood sexual abuse is simultaneously normal, and not normal. It is “normal” in the definition “conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern” (i.e. it’s disturbingly common). It is not normal in the the definition “Functioning or occurring in a natural way; lacking observable abnormalities or deficiencies” or “free from mental disorder.” (Cited: The American Heritage and the Merriam-Webster dictionaries.)
So what the fuck do you do about something that is ubiquitous, but terrifying and inhumane?
Me? I had the worst nightmare of my life. Nightmares usually don’t phase me anymore. For over a decade, I had them every night, and eventually I just got used to it. (You dream about dead children, mass rapes and cannibalism enough, nothing phases you after a while, or so I thought.) The past few years, though, I’ve been sleeping relatively peacefully. Then last night… it’s like my brain took every fear I’ve ever had, every terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced, and shoved it into one compact, nighttime package. In my dream, I wept… but it wasn’t for me.
I don’t know whether to blame it on the alcohol, the conversation, or my brain. But I feel like I’m asleep at the wheel. And, in regards to the drinking especially, I can’t help but ask myself the same question, repeatedly– “What am I doing?” Two nights of excessive drinking does not an alcoholic make, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t very concerned. I didn’t even have my first drink until I was nearly 21; alcoholism runs in my family, and I decided when I was younger that if I was an alcoholic, I didn’t want to find out. Turns out, though, despite rampant addiction, alcohol is extremely normalized. I’m not drinking alone, which is good, but I spend a fair amount of time with people who drink almost every night, and I worry that I’m more impressionable than I realize.
Maybe if I weren’t so terrified of turning into my mother, I wouldn’t be so worried. But she and I are made of the same flesh and blood, what if we’re not as different as I like to pretend? I’ve only got one life to live, that I know of, and I’d like to be sober for it– or drunk off something worthwhile, like Love.
Songs for Today:
“Ball of Confusion” by the Temptations
“Girl Anachronism” by The Dresden Dolls
“Edit” by Regina Spektor
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