NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

When I am writing or working, I like to have MSNBC playing in the background. Although definitely not on weekends, as I don't find their barrage of prison reality TV shows very appealing. On weekends I watch clips on Youtube and recently they started a new show with longtime foreign affairs and war correspondent Richard Engel called On Assignment with Richard Engel.  I've enjoyed the first few pieces released on Youtube on his show. They've both been critical of Trump and talked about the international dimensions to his business connections. This is one of the things that makes Trump different from previous Presidents, even those who were also wealthy, his international business empire that he is absolutely using the powers and privileges of the off to enrich and enhance. Here's a few of the clips from On Assignment:  

The conservative echo chamber on Guam isn’t very large but it is very persistent. Guam doesn’t really have a Fox News that can pound into our heads everyday a consistent, hateful terrifying public ideology. Some Chamorros say that K57 News and talk radio plays that role, but this isn’t really true. K57 has the interesting role of being fairly liberal in a national context, but fairly conservative in a local context. K57, like most media on Guam is pretty inconsistent in its messaging.  Even though there is no mecca for this conservative echo chamber it still exists. This network exists through the collection of certain events, figures and signifiers. Over time this collection gains strength and loses strength. These signifiers can at certain moments achieve a potent and undeniable aura, and other times bleed insignificance. This collection doesn’t exist for the same reason that conservative networks exist in the states. In Guam what pumps life into this network, what ma...

Everyone hates "politics." It is almost funny how it works. How people sneer, and jeer and frown when something happens and its "political." On Guam for example people say or think these things so much and so often it makes you wonder what they expect? In an ideal world, government is supposed to work for the good of all and run based on strong principles. The same goes for those elected into the government or working in it. But we don't live in an ideal world. We may pine for it, dream about it. But in truth, the ideal world only exists to make us feel crappy about the world that we have. The ideal world also exists to be an excuse to keep us from acting in this world. No one has the ideal form of government, but for the majority of people, if their government is found wanting, they fill the void of inadequacy or mediocrity not with engagement, hardwork and a determination to fix things. Instead, they fill the gap with complaints that make them feel like they...

One of the unfortunate things about writing a column for a newspaper is the space limitations. Often times I'm discussing important topics and I can't do justice to it, can't say anything close to what I want to see or even feel I need to say. One such moment came last week in my column "Corruption in Context" in the Marianas Variety. In the column I discussed how people come to see the Department of Defense or the military in an extremely skewed way. As a place where there is no corruption, where everything is equal, based on merit, and handled in the right way. People see the military through nicely kept yards, proud serving men and women and cheaper gas that helps in the fight for freedom. In contrast to this image, the Department of Defense is interestingly enough, the largest, most corrupt, most incompetent and most inefficient part of the Federal government of the United States. Although I mentioned this point, given the space limitations, I was not able t...

The article below from Common Dreams gives you a hint of what the term "militarism" refers to. The rhetoric in Washington D.C. right now is that the American government and economy are potentially careening towards destruction, and so cuts and sacrifices have to be made. Armageddon in just in a few weeks and so there are both offers of compromises and rhetoric of righteous obstinacy from all sides. In a moment like this, where supposedly everything is being placed upon the table whereby the people aboard the plane which is surely going to crash unless the collective load can be lightened, make the decision as to what is chucked, you can see the ideological blindspots of people based on what they refuse to put out in the open, what they keep hidden behind their backs as they make angry suggestions about what is already on the table and should be thrown away for the good of the many. It is intriguing how the most massive, overbloated, corrupt and inefficient part of the Uni...

Do you know how ridiculous the United States is when one of its most dominant voices in political discourse today is someone who is too scared to do interviews with human beings who might not worship her, who embodies almost perfectly the Stephen Colbert truthism that truth comes from the gut and the hip and not the mind, and whose interventions boil down to mindless little posts on Facebook and Twitter, but are reported as something far more meaningful and powerful? Gof o'sun yu' nu Si Sarah Palin yan i bida-na. Taihinasso gui', lao sa' hafa meggai na taotao guihi gi lagu muna'fofotte i fino'-na? ********************************* Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury Michael Joseph Gross Vanity Fair October 10, 2010 Backstage in the arena, a little girl in Mary Janes pushes her brother in a baby carriage, stopping a few yards shy of a heavy, 100-foot-long black curtain. The curtain splits the arena in two, shielding the children from an audience of 4,000 people c...