So the Wash Post has a story out today about discord between the DNC and the DCCC on how to spend money.
And Ezra Klein and Garance Franke-Ruta at TAPPED have jumped in to say that if the Dems bomb out in 2006 it will be Dean's fault for spending too much money on a so-called 50-State Strategy.
I respect Ezra Klein a great deal and this criticism of Dean may very well be on the mark. But there's a statement in Garance's post that makes me think the DC Beltway types don't quite get it:
Should Democrats fail to regain power, it's likely they won't get as favorable an electoral environment again any time soon, regardless of what's built out on the ground.
And Ezra says much the same thing:
Dean's...determination to create a 50-state structure would deprive the party of crucial resources in an almost historically fertile election year.
Do you hear the desperation in those statements? With the president's poll numbers at record lows, Democrats are drooling at the prospect of not only reducing Republican majorities in the House and Senate, but the very real potential that they could in fact recapture control of both houses. And to folks like Garance, the president's and Congress's low poll numbers mean this election may be the only chance Democrats have of getting themselves and their unpopular values elected. If we blow it this year, the thinking goes, we're toast for another generation. We have to win Now! or else all is lost.
Does that thinking sound familiar? In the sports world, it typifies teams that mortgage the future for the win-now demands of the present. But the strategery is a risky one because if the team does mortgage its future by trading away draft picks (the Washington Redskins) and still doesn't win Today, the team is in worst shape than when it started. Contrast that approach with the approach of the New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers who frequently let the high-priced talent walk and keep reloading through the draft with young, less costly talent, and yet almost always are in the playoff picture, if not winning the Big Game outright.
There's a parallel in the religious world as well. If you have read about or have spent any time at all in the world of religious "reform" movements, you'll notice a characteristic that's always present: the church or denomination is in "crisis" and it's up to the pure elements in the body of Christ to right the ship. Regardless of the church's growth or lack thereof, to the purists, the church is always in crisis. The result of this perpetual crisis mode in the churches is that there's no time for objectively assessing the church's teachings or place for permitting thoughtful inquiry or truth-seeking.
Likewise in the political world, there's a risk in cashing in all your cards on the next election--which is pretty much what the Democrats have been doing for the last several decades. This short-term focus has resulted in the party's declining presence and support in many areas of the country and a narrow "swing state" strategy in national elections. Building long-term structures and support at the local and state levels are important for many reasons. As David Sirota notes:
First and foremost, we've got to start focusing on politics in our backyard--not just national politics. The media and the political elite in Washington want us only focused on federal politics. They seem to think, as ABC's The Note epitomizes, that the only thing that is important in politics is what a bunch of suits in D.C. decide is important. Though that might make the self-important Washington political operatives, pundits and media chattering class feel good about itself, nothing could be further from the truth.
State, county and municipal policy often affects people's daily economic lives in far more profound ways than even federal policy. That's not to say that federal policy isn't important, but it is to say that there are other arenas for engagement. And because the hostile takeover is far less pronounced in these other arenas, it means citizens still have an ability to affect policy at this level, elect good people to office, and make real change. Put 20 people in a room with your city council person and demand something from them, and you will see that while they may not fully switch their position or do exactly what you ask, they are listening a hell of a lot more than your average national politician.
The other reason to get local is because these city council people, county commissioners and state legislators are going to be tomorrow's congressmen, senators and presidents. We've got to get to them now before they become co-opted by Washington's money-drenched indoctrination system.
Now, it may be that the Dean skeptics are right and that reallocating greater funds towards the party's once-in-a-lifetime shot at recapturing political control of Congress in '06 would be the Democrats' best strategy this year.
But it is also undoubtedly true that the party faces not just simple numerical obstacles to taking control of Congress, but in fact, faces considerable structural impediments as well; impediments that have come about because Republicans have been busy winning state and local elections and thus controlling the electoral machinery in those states and redrawing congressional districts to prevent the sort of Democratic tidal waves the DCCC is hoping to accomplish This Year.
Naturally, a political party aims to win every election. But it would be short sighted to think that The Next Election is all that matters. It would be better, obviously, if Democrats were able to capture control of one or both chambers of Congress in November. But for all practical purposes, the Bush II presidency is dead. What happens in November won't significantly alter that reality. True, a Democratic Congress could investigate, finally, the administration's excesses. But it wouldn't be able to pass any meaningful legislation with George W. ready to throw down his first vetoes. And if the structural impediments to winning This Year are as steep as some of our best analysts point out, a cash-run on 2006 could set the party back if it isn't successful.
Ultimately, for Democrats to be a majority again, they have to change the paradigm of American politics, the one that has been operative for the last 25 years or so. And in the wider scheme of things, that is the kind of thing that requires both the necessary rhetorical foundation as well as the appropriate political structure--neither of which would a 2006 Democratic sweep necessarily accomplish.
So while I know we're all anxious for big gains in November, recognize that conservatives have spent decades building up a movement and party apparatus. That won't be conquered over night in one election or at one level of government.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Kingfish Government
I've been reading Kingfish: The Reign of Huey Long by Richard White.
One of the striking things about the book and Huey's real-life story is how it makes his fictional counterpart in All the King's Men seem almost positively benign.
The other striking thing is how similar the real Kingfish's politics resemble that of the current Republican regime ruling in Washington.
Both were obsessed with obtaining and maintaining absolute power. Like the Cheney Administration's unitary executive theories, 750 signing statements, and FISA-busting NSA wiretaps, the Kingfish believed he was a law unto himself. Like the Cheney Administration's disregard for Congress (even when controlled by its own party), the Kingfish was known for his direct intervention in the legislative process, even going so far as to patrol the floors of the Louisiana state legislature, threating and cajoling the people's representatives to vote for his bills. Like the Cheney Administration's promotion of loyalty over competence and legality, the Kingfish used patronage to reward his friends and contributors and punish his enemies. Like the Cheney Administration's retribution against opponents, Huey Long would employ "any means necessary" to enact his policies and control the state. Like the Cheney Administration, Huey cast himself as a representative of the Common Man and sprinkled his speeches with and based his policies and political manueverings on stories and quotes from the Bible (while failing to uphold that Book's ethical injunctions). Like the Cheney Administration, the Kingfish viewed himself as superior to his opponents and those he ruled, never admitting mistakes but instead blaming others for his failures.
Of course, today's Republican Party and ruling elite don't mirror the Kingfish in every way. Huey Long constructed roads (albeit shabby ones at inflated contractor rates) across the state, builty up Louisiana State University (while intervening insufferably in the institution's sport's and academic life) into one of the country's most well-known and well-funded universities, distributed free texbooks for school children across the state, alienating richer districts that didn't want to be "tainted" with the appearance of charity or unfavorably linked with poorer areas of the state, and called for raising taxes to pay for it (once the state's ability to borrow had been exhausted).
In short, the Bush Restoration, together with its Gingrich-Delay K Street Project forebearer, has given us the worst of the Kingfish's autocratic excesses but little or none of its generosity.
One of the striking things about the book and Huey's real-life story is how it makes his fictional counterpart in All the King's Men seem almost positively benign.
The other striking thing is how similar the real Kingfish's politics resemble that of the current Republican regime ruling in Washington.
Both were obsessed with obtaining and maintaining absolute power. Like the Cheney Administration's unitary executive theories, 750 signing statements, and FISA-busting NSA wiretaps, the Kingfish believed he was a law unto himself. Like the Cheney Administration's disregard for Congress (even when controlled by its own party), the Kingfish was known for his direct intervention in the legislative process, even going so far as to patrol the floors of the Louisiana state legislature, threating and cajoling the people's representatives to vote for his bills. Like the Cheney Administration's promotion of loyalty over competence and legality, the Kingfish used patronage to reward his friends and contributors and punish his enemies. Like the Cheney Administration's retribution against opponents, Huey Long would employ "any means necessary" to enact his policies and control the state. Like the Cheney Administration, Huey cast himself as a representative of the Common Man and sprinkled his speeches with and based his policies and political manueverings on stories and quotes from the Bible (while failing to uphold that Book's ethical injunctions). Like the Cheney Administration, the Kingfish viewed himself as superior to his opponents and those he ruled, never admitting mistakes but instead blaming others for his failures.
Of course, today's Republican Party and ruling elite don't mirror the Kingfish in every way. Huey Long constructed roads (albeit shabby ones at inflated contractor rates) across the state, builty up Louisiana State University (while intervening insufferably in the institution's sport's and academic life) into one of the country's most well-known and well-funded universities, distributed free texbooks for school children across the state, alienating richer districts that didn't want to be "tainted" with the appearance of charity or unfavorably linked with poorer areas of the state, and called for raising taxes to pay for it (once the state's ability to borrow had been exhausted).
In short, the Bush Restoration, together with its Gingrich-Delay K Street Project forebearer, has given us the worst of the Kingfish's autocratic excesses but little or none of its generosity.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Frank Rich Sounds Off
Today's NYT op-ed is priceless:
DON'T feel guilty if you, like most Americans, have not run or even walked to see "United 93." The movie that has been almost unanimously acclaimed as a rite of patriotism second only to singing the national anthem in English is clinical to the point of absurdity: it reduces the doomed and brave Americans on board to nameless stick figures with less personality than the passengers in "Airport." Rather than deepening our knowledge of them or their heroism, the movie caps an hour of air-controller nail-biting with a tasteful re-enactment of the grisly end.
But it's not a total waste. The debate that preceded the film's arrival actually does tell us something about the war on terror. The two irrelevant questions that were asked over and over — Does "United 93" exploit the tragedy? Was it made too soon? — reveal just how adrift we are from reality as we head toward the fifth anniversary of the attacks.
The answer to the first question is yes, of course "United 93" exploits 9/11. It's a Hollywood entertainment marketed to make a profit, with a smoking World Trade Center on its poster as a gratuitous selling tool and a trailer cunningly deployed to drum up pre-premiere controversy (a k a publicity) by ambushing Manhattan audiences. The project's unappetizing commercialism is not mitigated by Universal Pictures' donation of 10 percent of the opening weekend's so-so proceeds to a memorial at the site of the crash in Shanksville, Pa. Roughly 50 times that sum is needed to build the memorial (and its cost is peanuts next to the planned $1 billion extravaganza in New York).
Still, a movie that exploits 9/11 is business as usual. This is America, for heaven's sake. "United 93" is merely the latest in a long line of such products and relatively restrained at that. This film doesn't use documentary images of shrouded remains being borne from ground zero, as the Bush-Cheney campaign ads did two years ago. And it isn't cheesy like the first fictional 9/11 movie, Showtime's "DC 9/11: Time of Crisis," in 2003. That dog, produced with White House cooperation and larded with twin-tower money shots, starred Timothy Bottoms as a derring-do President Bush given to pronouncements like "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come get me!" It's amazing that it hasn't found an honored place beside "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" as a campy midnight perennial.
As for the second question in the "United 93" debate, it's disturbing that it was asked at all. Is this movie too soon? Hardly: it's already been preceded by two TV movies about the same flight. The question we should be asking instead is if its message comes too late.
Whatever the movie's other failings, that message is clear and essential: the identity of the enemy. The film opens with the four hijackers praying to Allah and, in keeping with the cockpit voice recording played at the Zacarias Moussaoui trial, portrays them as prayerful right until they murder 40 innocent people. Such are the Islamic radicals who struck us on 9/11 and whose brethren have only multiplied since.
Yet how fleeting has been their fame. Thanks to the administration's deliberate post-9/11 decision to make the enemy who attacked us interchangeable with the secular fascists of Iraq who did not, the original war on terrorism has been diluted in its execution and robbed of its support from the American public. Brian Williams seemed to be hinting as much when, in effusively editorializing about "United 93" on NBC (a sister company of Universal), he suggested that "it just may be a badly needed reminder for some that we are a nation at war because of what happened in New York and Washington and in this case in a field in Pennsylvania." But he stopped short of specifying exactly what war he meant, and that's symptomatic of our confusion. When Americans think about war now, they don't think about the war prompted by what happened on 9/11 so much as the war in Iraq, and when they think about Iraq, they don't say, "Let's roll!," they say, "Let's Leave!"
The administration's blurring of the distinction between Al Qaeda and Saddam threatens to throw out the baby that must survive, the war against Islamic terrorists, with the Iraqi quagmire. Last fall a Pew Research Center survey found that Iraq had driven isolationist sentiment in the United States to its post-Vietnam 1970's high. In a CBS News poll released last week, the percentage of Americans who name terrorism as the nation's "most important problem" fell to three. Every day we spend in Iraq erodes the war against those who attacked us on 9/11.
Just how much so was dramatized by an annual report on terrorism issued by the State Department on the same day that "United 93" opened nationwide. The number of terrorist attacks was up by a factor of nearly four in 2005. While Al Qaeda is scattered, it has been replaced by what Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar, describes as "a many-headed hydra that is just as deadly and far harder to slay." Osama bin Laden, no longer an operational leader, retains, in the State Department's language, "the capability to influence events, and inspire actual and potential terrorists."
We remain unprepared should they once again strike here. Like Hurricane Katrina before it, the Dubai Ports tsunami proved yet another indictment of our inept homeland security. While the country hyperventilated about the prospect of turning over our ports to a rare Arab ally, every expert on the subject, the former 9/11 commissioners included, was condemning our inability to check cargo at any point of entry, whether by sea or land, even if the Sopranos ran the show. Congress's Government Accountability Office reported that in a test conducted last year, undercover investigators smuggled enough radioactive material past our border inspectors to fuel two dirty bombs.
To add insult to this potential nuclear Armageddon, Afghanistan is falling back into the hands of religious fanatics; not even the country's American-backed president, Hamid Karzai, dared to publicly intervene in the trial of a man facing execution for converting from Islam to Christianity. "The Taliban and Al Qaeda are everywhere" is how a shopkeeper described the situation to the American commander in Afghanistan, The Times reported last week. These were the conditions that spawned the hijackers of "United 93" — all four of them trained in Qaeda camps in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. At this rate, we are in danger of marking the next anniversary of 9/11 with a reboot of the Afghanistan war we were supposed to have won more than four years ago.
Our level of denial about these setbacks is embedded not just in the White House, which blithely keeps telling us "we're winning" the war on terror, but also in the culture. The decision of most major networks and newspapers (including this one) to avoid showing the inflammatory Danish Muhammad cartoons attests less to our heightened religious sensitivities (we've all run reproductions of art Christians and Jews find blasphemous) than to our deep-seated fear of the terrorists' unimpeded power to strike back. The cheers that greet the long-awaited start of construction at ground zero are all the louder to drown out the unsettling truth that no major private tenant has bet on the Freedom Tower's security by signing a lease.
We also practice denial by manufacturing vicarious and symbolic victories at home to compensate for those we are not winning abroad. Two major liberties taken with the known facts in "United 93" — sequences suggesting that passengers thrashed and possibly killed two of the hijackers and succeeded in entering the cockpit — are highly cathartic but unsupported by the evidence. In its way, the Moussaoui prosecution conducted its own Hollywood rewrite by exaggerating the stature of the only person to go to trial for the crimes of 9/11. The larger this marginal creep loomed, the better the proxy he'd be for those we let get away (starting with bin Laden). Perhaps we might even be tempted to forget that F.B.I. incompetence had kept us from squeezing Moussaoui (or his computer) for information that might have saved lives during the weeks he languished in jail before 9/11.
Two of the F.B.I. bosses who repeatedly squelched Moussaoui search warrants in August 2001 remained at the F.B.I. as he went to trial. The genuinely significant 9/11 figures in American custody, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, cannot be prosecuted because their firsthand accounts of our "interrogation techniques" at Guantánamo and our "black sites" are bound to incite more terrorists. Meanwhile, the American leaders who devote every waking moment to defending their indefensible decisions in Iraq have squandered the energy, the armed forces and the international good will needed to fight the war that began on 9/11 and that, in our own State Department's words, is "still in the first phase."
That's the scenario before us now. Next to it, "United 93" may in time look as escapist as the Robin Williams vehicle that outgrossed it last weekend, "RV."
The airplane personnel and passengers aboard United 93 were indeed heroes that day. No doubt about it. But the right-wing intellegencia that is demanding we sacramentalize 9-11 to advance their own authoritarian agenda is not, by any means. Time to let the Keyboard Commandos on the right and the administration they blindly support know we won't be intimidated by the memories of 9-11 and the threat of terrorism to sanction their domestic spying among other civil liberty abuses. Not anymore. As in starting Monday when:
Barring a change of heart, aides expect Bush to name (Deputy National Intelligence Direct, General Michael V.) Hayden tomorrow as his choice to succeed CIA director Porter J. Goss, who resigned under pressure Friday. Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency and now deputy director of national intelligence, has become the most forceful defender of Bush's eavesdropping program since its disclosure in December.
Rather than steer away from a Hayden nomination because of the controversy, the White House seems ready for a new fight over it, convinced that it has public support and that Democrats opposing Hayden's confirmation would risk looking weak on terrorism. Democrats yesterday began formulating a strategy built around grilling Hayden during hearings and then determining whether any refusal to answer questions provides enough justification to oppose his confirmation.
"By nominating him, they are looking for a confrontation and forcing the Congress to take sides, so I am troubled by this," said Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, who has a close relationship with Hayden and considers him "very professional and dedicated."
A senior White House official said Bush did not choose Hayden to pick a fight but would welcome one if it came. "We felt that we're in a position on offense," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the nomination has not been announced. "We have no concerns about a public debate over the terrorist surveillance program."
DON'T feel guilty if you, like most Americans, have not run or even walked to see "United 93." The movie that has been almost unanimously acclaimed as a rite of patriotism second only to singing the national anthem in English is clinical to the point of absurdity: it reduces the doomed and brave Americans on board to nameless stick figures with less personality than the passengers in "Airport." Rather than deepening our knowledge of them or their heroism, the movie caps an hour of air-controller nail-biting with a tasteful re-enactment of the grisly end.
But it's not a total waste. The debate that preceded the film's arrival actually does tell us something about the war on terror. The two irrelevant questions that were asked over and over — Does "United 93" exploit the tragedy? Was it made too soon? — reveal just how adrift we are from reality as we head toward the fifth anniversary of the attacks.
The answer to the first question is yes, of course "United 93" exploits 9/11. It's a Hollywood entertainment marketed to make a profit, with a smoking World Trade Center on its poster as a gratuitous selling tool and a trailer cunningly deployed to drum up pre-premiere controversy (a k a publicity) by ambushing Manhattan audiences. The project's unappetizing commercialism is not mitigated by Universal Pictures' donation of 10 percent of the opening weekend's so-so proceeds to a memorial at the site of the crash in Shanksville, Pa. Roughly 50 times that sum is needed to build the memorial (and its cost is peanuts next to the planned $1 billion extravaganza in New York).
Still, a movie that exploits 9/11 is business as usual. This is America, for heaven's sake. "United 93" is merely the latest in a long line of such products and relatively restrained at that. This film doesn't use documentary images of shrouded remains being borne from ground zero, as the Bush-Cheney campaign ads did two years ago. And it isn't cheesy like the first fictional 9/11 movie, Showtime's "DC 9/11: Time of Crisis," in 2003. That dog, produced with White House cooperation and larded with twin-tower money shots, starred Timothy Bottoms as a derring-do President Bush given to pronouncements like "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come get me!" It's amazing that it hasn't found an honored place beside "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" as a campy midnight perennial.
As for the second question in the "United 93" debate, it's disturbing that it was asked at all. Is this movie too soon? Hardly: it's already been preceded by two TV movies about the same flight. The question we should be asking instead is if its message comes too late.
Whatever the movie's other failings, that message is clear and essential: the identity of the enemy. The film opens with the four hijackers praying to Allah and, in keeping with the cockpit voice recording played at the Zacarias Moussaoui trial, portrays them as prayerful right until they murder 40 innocent people. Such are the Islamic radicals who struck us on 9/11 and whose brethren have only multiplied since.
Yet how fleeting has been their fame. Thanks to the administration's deliberate post-9/11 decision to make the enemy who attacked us interchangeable with the secular fascists of Iraq who did not, the original war on terrorism has been diluted in its execution and robbed of its support from the American public. Brian Williams seemed to be hinting as much when, in effusively editorializing about "United 93" on NBC (a sister company of Universal), he suggested that "it just may be a badly needed reminder for some that we are a nation at war because of what happened in New York and Washington and in this case in a field in Pennsylvania." But he stopped short of specifying exactly what war he meant, and that's symptomatic of our confusion. When Americans think about war now, they don't think about the war prompted by what happened on 9/11 so much as the war in Iraq, and when they think about Iraq, they don't say, "Let's roll!," they say, "Let's Leave!"
The administration's blurring of the distinction between Al Qaeda and Saddam threatens to throw out the baby that must survive, the war against Islamic terrorists, with the Iraqi quagmire. Last fall a Pew Research Center survey found that Iraq had driven isolationist sentiment in the United States to its post-Vietnam 1970's high. In a CBS News poll released last week, the percentage of Americans who name terrorism as the nation's "most important problem" fell to three. Every day we spend in Iraq erodes the war against those who attacked us on 9/11.
Just how much so was dramatized by an annual report on terrorism issued by the State Department on the same day that "United 93" opened nationwide. The number of terrorist attacks was up by a factor of nearly four in 2005. While Al Qaeda is scattered, it has been replaced by what Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar, describes as "a many-headed hydra that is just as deadly and far harder to slay." Osama bin Laden, no longer an operational leader, retains, in the State Department's language, "the capability to influence events, and inspire actual and potential terrorists."
We remain unprepared should they once again strike here. Like Hurricane Katrina before it, the Dubai Ports tsunami proved yet another indictment of our inept homeland security. While the country hyperventilated about the prospect of turning over our ports to a rare Arab ally, every expert on the subject, the former 9/11 commissioners included, was condemning our inability to check cargo at any point of entry, whether by sea or land, even if the Sopranos ran the show. Congress's Government Accountability Office reported that in a test conducted last year, undercover investigators smuggled enough radioactive material past our border inspectors to fuel two dirty bombs.
To add insult to this potential nuclear Armageddon, Afghanistan is falling back into the hands of religious fanatics; not even the country's American-backed president, Hamid Karzai, dared to publicly intervene in the trial of a man facing execution for converting from Islam to Christianity. "The Taliban and Al Qaeda are everywhere" is how a shopkeeper described the situation to the American commander in Afghanistan, The Times reported last week. These were the conditions that spawned the hijackers of "United 93" — all four of them trained in Qaeda camps in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. At this rate, we are in danger of marking the next anniversary of 9/11 with a reboot of the Afghanistan war we were supposed to have won more than four years ago.
Our level of denial about these setbacks is embedded not just in the White House, which blithely keeps telling us "we're winning" the war on terror, but also in the culture. The decision of most major networks and newspapers (including this one) to avoid showing the inflammatory Danish Muhammad cartoons attests less to our heightened religious sensitivities (we've all run reproductions of art Christians and Jews find blasphemous) than to our deep-seated fear of the terrorists' unimpeded power to strike back. The cheers that greet the long-awaited start of construction at ground zero are all the louder to drown out the unsettling truth that no major private tenant has bet on the Freedom Tower's security by signing a lease.
We also practice denial by manufacturing vicarious and symbolic victories at home to compensate for those we are not winning abroad. Two major liberties taken with the known facts in "United 93" — sequences suggesting that passengers thrashed and possibly killed two of the hijackers and succeeded in entering the cockpit — are highly cathartic but unsupported by the evidence. In its way, the Moussaoui prosecution conducted its own Hollywood rewrite by exaggerating the stature of the only person to go to trial for the crimes of 9/11. The larger this marginal creep loomed, the better the proxy he'd be for those we let get away (starting with bin Laden). Perhaps we might even be tempted to forget that F.B.I. incompetence had kept us from squeezing Moussaoui (or his computer) for information that might have saved lives during the weeks he languished in jail before 9/11.
Two of the F.B.I. bosses who repeatedly squelched Moussaoui search warrants in August 2001 remained at the F.B.I. as he went to trial. The genuinely significant 9/11 figures in American custody, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, cannot be prosecuted because their firsthand accounts of our "interrogation techniques" at Guantánamo and our "black sites" are bound to incite more terrorists. Meanwhile, the American leaders who devote every waking moment to defending their indefensible decisions in Iraq have squandered the energy, the armed forces and the international good will needed to fight the war that began on 9/11 and that, in our own State Department's words, is "still in the first phase."
That's the scenario before us now. Next to it, "United 93" may in time look as escapist as the Robin Williams vehicle that outgrossed it last weekend, "RV."
The airplane personnel and passengers aboard United 93 were indeed heroes that day. No doubt about it. But the right-wing intellegencia that is demanding we sacramentalize 9-11 to advance their own authoritarian agenda is not, by any means. Time to let the Keyboard Commandos on the right and the administration they blindly support know we won't be intimidated by the memories of 9-11 and the threat of terrorism to sanction their domestic spying among other civil liberty abuses. Not anymore. As in starting Monday when:
Barring a change of heart, aides expect Bush to name (Deputy National Intelligence Direct, General Michael V.) Hayden tomorrow as his choice to succeed CIA director Porter J. Goss, who resigned under pressure Friday. Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency and now deputy director of national intelligence, has become the most forceful defender of Bush's eavesdropping program since its disclosure in December.
Rather than steer away from a Hayden nomination because of the controversy, the White House seems ready for a new fight over it, convinced that it has public support and that Democrats opposing Hayden's confirmation would risk looking weak on terrorism. Democrats yesterday began formulating a strategy built around grilling Hayden during hearings and then determining whether any refusal to answer questions provides enough justification to oppose his confirmation.
"By nominating him, they are looking for a confrontation and forcing the Congress to take sides, so I am troubled by this," said Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, who has a close relationship with Hayden and considers him "very professional and dedicated."
A senior White House official said Bush did not choose Hayden to pick a fight but would welcome one if it came. "We felt that we're in a position on offense," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the nomination has not been announced. "We have no concerns about a public debate over the terrorist surveillance program."
A National Disgrace
Embarassed by the war in Iraq, their president's basement-dwelling poll numbers, and by their party's leadership generally, the right wing intelligencia is demanding we all go see United 93 so that we make sure we don't ever forget about 9-11 and that maybe we'll somehow forget about everything else.
Like Katrina.
Last week I wrote that any Democrat worth his salt should make the repeal of last year's Bankruptcy "reform" bill a centerpiece of his or her 2006 congressional or 2008 presidential campaign.
The 2008 hopefuls might also want to point their fellow Americans' attention to the continuing national disgrace that is the Gulf area devastated by last year's hurricanes. Yes, I know, Katrina is so last year, there are no Missing White Women, why should we care? Because apparently the place is still a disaster, Katrina's dead bodies are still being found, and even establishment journalists like Howie Kurtz are pissed.
I know we've all given the guy a hard time for his Republican bias, but this article in today's Post is blistering:
Like many Americans, I've followed the Katrina story closely, but then tuned out for days when other news or the daily strains of life intervened. After eight months you assume they must be making some progress. Downtown and the French Quarter basically look fine; the worst damage by now must be limited to a few of the hardest-hit areas, such as the Lower Ninth Ward.
But then you come here and see the devastation up close, and discover that things are far worse than you imagined. And you realize that, despite the millions of words and pictures devoted to the hurricane's aftermath, the normal rules of writing, photography and broadcasting are just not equal to the task.
(snip)
It is a depressing story, hardly a ratings grabber. It is like Iraq, day after day of numbing sameness: violence and suicide bombs there, a frozen-in-time lack of recovery here. Reporters like to cover tangible issues -- the battle over small-business loans, the race to buttress the levees, the failures of FEMA, the campaign for mayor, the first post-storm Mardi Gras. Everyone knows what happened to New Orleans; it is not new news.
But it is still news, if news is defined as a catastrophic event that alters a community and a country forever. (NBC News Anchor Brian) Williams, dismissing some viewer complaints and nasty e-mail saying that he devotes too much air time to this city's struggles, stays on the case, as do a handful of other television and print journalists.
CNN's Anderson Cooper has been here several times, and ABC maintains a bureau for rotating correspondents. Major newspapers have devoted plenty of resources to the region. Since Jan. 1, the New York Times has run more than 110 news stories on New Orleans, the Los Angeles Times about 90, The Washington Post about 75, dissecting the current state of hospitals, schools, housing, even Cajun cooking and jazz.
But can anyone really say that New Orleans remains an urgent, top-of-the-newscast issue, that the recent coverage captures the raw emotion of a crisis that continues unabated? By and large, the plight of this crippled city seems to have become background noise.
Reporters by trade parachute into disaster zones, steeling themselves against sadness. You start out as a young scribe chasing car accidents and then graduate to plane crashes. Later you might find yourself in Oklahoma City or in Lower Manhattan, trying to chronicle the aftermath of a terrorist attack, or in Bosnia or Baghdad, filing dispatches about military conflicts. Then the war ends, the community rebuilds, and you move on. Collectively, we all move on.
That is not possible in New Orleans. Yes, many people are tired of the Katrina saga. In a world filled with problems large and small, in a business that gravitates toward the latest buzz, the up-to-the-minute news flash, that's easy to grasp. If people saw what I saw, however, they would understand why journalism's work here is not done -- not by a long shot.
No, journalism's job is not done there, despite the demands by many of the country's white middle-class for the media and political establishments to focus on something else, anything else (like movies about 9-11). And if journalism's job isn't done down there, than neither can be any 2008 prospective Democratic contender's. Feingold, HRC, Bayh, Biden, Warner, you want some attention, you want to appear "authentic", you want to show leadership, camp out in the land time forgot. Save all the money you would have originally used to run TV ads or hire consultants and orchestrate a "convention", and just set up shop along the Gulf Coast. Do it in protest, demand answers and action. Will the country and public respond to the call? I don't know. Probably not. But leadership is as leadership does. If you don't lead, you don't deserve to be president, and the country will deserve whatever imitation of leadership it gets.
Like Katrina.
Last week I wrote that any Democrat worth his salt should make the repeal of last year's Bankruptcy "reform" bill a centerpiece of his or her 2006 congressional or 2008 presidential campaign.
The 2008 hopefuls might also want to point their fellow Americans' attention to the continuing national disgrace that is the Gulf area devastated by last year's hurricanes. Yes, I know, Katrina is so last year, there are no Missing White Women, why should we care? Because apparently the place is still a disaster, Katrina's dead bodies are still being found, and even establishment journalists like Howie Kurtz are pissed.
I know we've all given the guy a hard time for his Republican bias, but this article in today's Post is blistering:
Like many Americans, I've followed the Katrina story closely, but then tuned out for days when other news or the daily strains of life intervened. After eight months you assume they must be making some progress. Downtown and the French Quarter basically look fine; the worst damage by now must be limited to a few of the hardest-hit areas, such as the Lower Ninth Ward.
But then you come here and see the devastation up close, and discover that things are far worse than you imagined. And you realize that, despite the millions of words and pictures devoted to the hurricane's aftermath, the normal rules of writing, photography and broadcasting are just not equal to the task.
(snip)
It is a depressing story, hardly a ratings grabber. It is like Iraq, day after day of numbing sameness: violence and suicide bombs there, a frozen-in-time lack of recovery here. Reporters like to cover tangible issues -- the battle over small-business loans, the race to buttress the levees, the failures of FEMA, the campaign for mayor, the first post-storm Mardi Gras. Everyone knows what happened to New Orleans; it is not new news.
But it is still news, if news is defined as a catastrophic event that alters a community and a country forever. (NBC News Anchor Brian) Williams, dismissing some viewer complaints and nasty e-mail saying that he devotes too much air time to this city's struggles, stays on the case, as do a handful of other television and print journalists.
CNN's Anderson Cooper has been here several times, and ABC maintains a bureau for rotating correspondents. Major newspapers have devoted plenty of resources to the region. Since Jan. 1, the New York Times has run more than 110 news stories on New Orleans, the Los Angeles Times about 90, The Washington Post about 75, dissecting the current state of hospitals, schools, housing, even Cajun cooking and jazz.
But can anyone really say that New Orleans remains an urgent, top-of-the-newscast issue, that the recent coverage captures the raw emotion of a crisis that continues unabated? By and large, the plight of this crippled city seems to have become background noise.
Reporters by trade parachute into disaster zones, steeling themselves against sadness. You start out as a young scribe chasing car accidents and then graduate to plane crashes. Later you might find yourself in Oklahoma City or in Lower Manhattan, trying to chronicle the aftermath of a terrorist attack, or in Bosnia or Baghdad, filing dispatches about military conflicts. Then the war ends, the community rebuilds, and you move on. Collectively, we all move on.
That is not possible in New Orleans. Yes, many people are tired of the Katrina saga. In a world filled with problems large and small, in a business that gravitates toward the latest buzz, the up-to-the-minute news flash, that's easy to grasp. If people saw what I saw, however, they would understand why journalism's work here is not done -- not by a long shot.
No, journalism's job is not done there, despite the demands by many of the country's white middle-class for the media and political establishments to focus on something else, anything else (like movies about 9-11). And if journalism's job isn't done down there, than neither can be any 2008 prospective Democratic contender's. Feingold, HRC, Bayh, Biden, Warner, you want some attention, you want to appear "authentic", you want to show leadership, camp out in the land time forgot. Save all the money you would have originally used to run TV ads or hire consultants and orchestrate a "convention", and just set up shop along the Gulf Coast. Do it in protest, demand answers and action. Will the country and public respond to the call? I don't know. Probably not. But leadership is as leadership does. If you don't lead, you don't deserve to be president, and the country will deserve whatever imitation of leadership it gets.
Friday, May 05, 2006
The Party of Life
From today's Wash Post:
Sen. Gordon H. Smith faced a fundamental choice after his son committed suicide in 2003, the day before his 22nd birthday. He could end his political career and live out his years in an agony of "what ifs" and "whys." Or he could rededicate his professional life and powerful position to trying to make something positive come from the tragedy.
Staggered by grief, the Oregon Republican and devout Mormon seriously weighed the first option. But a church leader persuaded him to mourn his son and then "get back to work." Part of that work is a new book on a subject that cannot get too much attention: a plea for Americans to learn more about depression and suicide, and to confront mental illness openly, without embarrassment or prejudice.
"Remembering Garrett" is a straightforward, simply written account of one child's descent into despair and the nearly unbearable heartbreak his family endures.
Famous or powerful people can do more than suffer in private, however, and Smith has chosen to try, as he puts it, "to bring suicide's brutal toll and mental health's subordinate status out of the shadows. The shame and stigma our society feels about mental health must stop, and our national conversation needs to begin."
(snip)
Throughout the book, Smith takes care to blame no one, except perhaps himself, for misdiagnosing Garrett's condition or missing possible warning signs. His only ire is aimed at several unnamed House Republicans who complicated his bid to enact legislation intended to combat youth depression and suicide.
Other senators previously drafted two bills, but they rolled them into one, named it the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act, and let Smith take the lead in pushing it. It called for federally funded screening of school-age children "to detect those predisposed to depression and suicide," and for funds to combat suicide at colleges.
The Senate unanimously approved the legislation, but some House conservatives objected. Smith tried to address their concerns, but writes that he was "appalled by some of their responses. " 'Your bill has Democrat sponsors!' said one. 'We don't pass bills over here that Democrats want!' "
The House approved the bill only after several changes were made, including a provision that permits the school screening only for children whose parents request it.
One wishes Smith had named names. Plausible arguments can be made for and against federal spending for mental health screening and intervention. But to attack or push a bill in order to hurt the other political party is all too typical of the partisanship that poisons today's Congress, and Smith's account of his House negotiations adds a bitter note to a book already replete with heartache.
(snip)
Smith, generally labeled a moderate Republican, says he gave modest thought to such issues before his son's death. But now, he writes, "my heart has softened," and he proudly notes that he has defied GOP leaders by opposing cuts to Medicaid, food stamps "and other safety-net programs that serve the underprivileged." Whatever one thinks of his political reawakening, none can dispute that the price was unspeakable.
Sen. Gordon H. Smith faced a fundamental choice after his son committed suicide in 2003, the day before his 22nd birthday. He could end his political career and live out his years in an agony of "what ifs" and "whys." Or he could rededicate his professional life and powerful position to trying to make something positive come from the tragedy.
Staggered by grief, the Oregon Republican and devout Mormon seriously weighed the first option. But a church leader persuaded him to mourn his son and then "get back to work." Part of that work is a new book on a subject that cannot get too much attention: a plea for Americans to learn more about depression and suicide, and to confront mental illness openly, without embarrassment or prejudice.
"Remembering Garrett" is a straightforward, simply written account of one child's descent into despair and the nearly unbearable heartbreak his family endures.
Famous or powerful people can do more than suffer in private, however, and Smith has chosen to try, as he puts it, "to bring suicide's brutal toll and mental health's subordinate status out of the shadows. The shame and stigma our society feels about mental health must stop, and our national conversation needs to begin."
(snip)
Throughout the book, Smith takes care to blame no one, except perhaps himself, for misdiagnosing Garrett's condition or missing possible warning signs. His only ire is aimed at several unnamed House Republicans who complicated his bid to enact legislation intended to combat youth depression and suicide.
Other senators previously drafted two bills, but they rolled them into one, named it the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act, and let Smith take the lead in pushing it. It called for federally funded screening of school-age children "to detect those predisposed to depression and suicide," and for funds to combat suicide at colleges.
The Senate unanimously approved the legislation, but some House conservatives objected. Smith tried to address their concerns, but writes that he was "appalled by some of their responses. " 'Your bill has Democrat sponsors!' said one. 'We don't pass bills over here that Democrats want!' "
The House approved the bill only after several changes were made, including a provision that permits the school screening only for children whose parents request it.
One wishes Smith had named names. Plausible arguments can be made for and against federal spending for mental health screening and intervention. But to attack or push a bill in order to hurt the other political party is all too typical of the partisanship that poisons today's Congress, and Smith's account of his House negotiations adds a bitter note to a book already replete with heartache.
(snip)
Smith, generally labeled a moderate Republican, says he gave modest thought to such issues before his son's death. But now, he writes, "my heart has softened," and he proudly notes that he has defied GOP leaders by opposing cuts to Medicaid, food stamps "and other safety-net programs that serve the underprivileged." Whatever one thinks of his political reawakening, none can dispute that the price was unspeakable.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Sliding Towards Absolutism
There were a couple of posts I wanted to point out, one at Mahablog and the other, a review of David Sirota's new book at TPM Cafe by Nathan Newman. While each has its own value, I didn't at first realize their connection.
The first by Mahablog is a discussion of an article in this past Sunday's NYT magazine basically on Freud, the fascist mind, and current political developments. I'm glad she pointed the article out because although I get the Sunday Times I didn't look at the magazine. I won't attempt to summarize either the whole article or Mahablog's comments, but I think it would suffice to say that a key element of both is the tendency towards absolutism and intolerance in today's conservatism, a vitriolic dislike for ambiguity.
The other post at TPM Cafe by Nathan Newman wonders who, or what, exactly, liberals think our "enemy" is. Who is the enemy of the Common Good that folks like Tomasky want us to be concerned with? If there is a Common Good, it would stand to reason that there is a force, or array of forces or processes acting in opposition to that Common Good which progressives must oppose. Newman argues that part of the conservatives' electoral successes over the past several decades has been just this quality--the ability to conjure up a class of enemies of which people of good will and proper morals should be afraid and opposed to.
I suspect this talk of "enemies" is uncomfortable for many liberals including myself. Politically it's often difficult in practice to single out any particular entity for condemnation on account of the fact that the target--some polluting corporation for example--is more than likely an employer of large numbers of people and maybe even your brother. Who votes. Likewise with religions, church leaders or denominations. We may think Pat Robertson a loon, but we likely have at least one friend or relative who watches The 700 Club, and for that reason, we might want to err on the side of politeness and ambiguity when determining a political campaign message or strategy.
On a more philosophical level, however, I think liberals by and large don't tend to think in terms of enemies, particularly at least enemies as being people, any of our fellow citizens. We may complain about Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly, but most liberals don't object to the existence and participation of those different from themselves. One of the underlying features of liberalism is its pluralism--the belief that the aim of society is to somehow ensure that people of varying beliefs, practices, tempraments, etc, can live together peacefully and all more or less equally contribute to and participate in the body politic and generally be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor and the community of their fellows without undue interference by others.
Let me give you an example. It's growing convention wisdom that there exists a secular-religious divide in American, with large majorities of devout Christians voting for Republicans and secular or atheistic people voting for Democrats. But these two groups are not diametrically opposite. Atheists may not like religious expression in the public square and not want to have someone else's religious beliefs imposed on them, even if it is a belief held by the majority, but most atheists don't have a political program or philosophical belief that assumes religious believers should be excluded from society or punished for their beliefs, either in the present or in the "age to come".
Unfortunately, this is not what most Christians believe at a fundamental level. Most Christians believe in some form of eternal life and future age of utopia in which only they and fellow adherents will share Heaven with God. Unbelievers, heretics, those who have "rejected" God's love, will, after some form of judgment, either die and remain in the grave, or suffer through an eternity of torment. Although many Christians in the West tend not to highlight this dimension of their faith, or choose to believe in a form of universalism in which almost everyone on the earth is eventually "saved", there are a not insubstantial share of Christians who are taught to regard non-believers, sinners, as deserving of eternal punishing or punishment. Not all of this class advocates that that punishment be administered by civil governments. But some do, or at least could conceivably be convinced to give passive acceptance of it should a goverment or society wish it. In any event, an orthodox Christian belief system includes a philosophy that essentially makes certain people, even large numbers of people, expendable (and makes a book like The Party of Death so misleading--the argument that liberal Democrats are the "party of death" turns each party's philisophical underpinnings upside down).
In a nutshell, this is the Absolutism that more and more pundits, elected leaders, religious elites, and opinion-shapers want to urge on the country. There is a certain right way to think and act. Deviations from this order will and should at least at some point, be punished. It is reflected in a variety of lingo, the most common perhaps being "moral relativism", a particularly attractive straw man. The use of phrases such as moral relativism also carries with it the belief that there are certain, maybe even many issues that should not be issues at all, should not be matters of social or political conflict, matters on which the mass public should be concerned or engaged with. The message behind complaints about moral relativism is that certain grievances, needs, wants, or rights should not be given a forum in our democratic institutions. It is a philosophy that is inherently undemocratic. It's quest for conformity and unity and demands for absolutism are an "unhealthy" attempt to reduce conflict and eliminate the uncomfortable but inherent tension in everyday life. Consider these paragraphs from the NYT magazine article"
Freud's implicit morality is counterintuitive. Though Freud acknowledged the uses of mild intoxicants like love and art, he was nonetheless extremely suspicious of any doctrine or activity that promised to unify the psyche--or to unify the nation, the people--without remainder and to do so forever. Freud believed that the inner tensions that we experience are by and large necessary tensions, not because they are so enjoyable in themselves--they are not--but because the alternatives to them are so much worse. For Freud, a healthy psyche is not always a psyche that feels good. For Herbert Marcuse, author of a brilliant meditation on Freud, "Eros and Civilization," Freud's politics are potentially the politics of ecstasy. We can collectively undo our repressions and regress toward collective erotic bliss. For Philip Rieff, author of the equally perceptive and original "Freud: The Mind of the Moralist," Freud appears to be a deep political pessimist who thinks that the healthiest individuals will probably be those who turn completely away from politics. But another way to look at Freud is to see him as someone who suggests that a considerable measure of freedom and even relative happiness can come from following a self-aware middle way. If we are willing to live with some inner tension, political as well as personal, we need never be overwhelmed by tyranny or fall into the anarchy that giving into the unconscious completely can bring.
For Freud, we might infer, a healthy body politic is one that allows for a good deal of continuing tension. A healthy polis is one that it doesn't always feel good to be a part of. There's too much argument, controversy, difference. But in that difference, annoying and difficult as it may be, lies the community's well-being. When a relatively free nation is threatened by terrorists with totalitarian goals, as ours is now, there is, of course, an urge to come together and to fight back by any means necessary. But the danger is that in fighting back we will become just as fierce, monolithic and, in the worst sense, as unified as our foes. We will seek our own great man; we will be blind to his foibles; we will stop questioning, stop arguing. When that happens, a war of fundamentalisms has begun, and of that war there can be no victor.
There is an inherent puritanical, Final Solution-ish fetish in the frequent calls for "moral clarity" and purges of "moral relativism" (or moral relativists) by many leaders on the political "right". If everything or near everything can be characterized as "right" or "wrong" than inherently, these are matters that legislation, constitutional parameters, or court rulings cannot respond to or address. Essentially, if most matters are either/or, black or white, right or wrong, there's no need for people to elect leaders to decide most issues critical to the community. Of course, if there is a right or wrong belief or action for everything, than there must be someone or something that makes this determination. And if the people, through a constitution, or branch of government are largely not allowed to make that decision, than another entity, say the Church, must. Consequently, this form of political absolutism demands a hierarchy, an authoritarian, non-participatory form of government.
Needless to say, this is a radically different notion of citizenship and humanity than that shared by liberal Christians and non-religious people, and one that potentially presents the greatest threat to a democratic society.
Now, it's important to point out that not all Christians are political absolutists and not all political absolutists who find their home in the Republican Party are Christians. But voting trends as well as the political posturing by many recognizable religious elites do serve to highlight the relationship and conflict between a politicial absolutism, rationalized on religious grounds, and political pluralism, the social arrangement believed in by small 'd' democrats.
Confronting this challenge will not be easy for the progressively-minded. I fear that appeals to economic populism or the Common Good will not adequately defeat the more malicious designs of political absolutists, at least not for any extended period of time. And even though many of us who share an opposition to political and moral absolutism are Christians ourselves, mitigating the reach and effect of the religious right will be difficult. Our institutions and books are not generally conducive to moderation. Our religion has been tempered by tradition. A tradition of democracy, freedom, and yes, humanism. All religions are a fusion of book-based theology and historical and human tradition. In other words, our beliefs are shaped by both orthodox theologies and culture. Unfortunately, the tradition that colors many conservative religions is an older tradition based on misogymy, patriarchalism and hierarchy. It's a tradition largely hostile to the Other in community life, a tradition hostile to the values of political pluralists and democrats.
So what are progressives to do? One, I believe is we need to elevate the ideological to our campaigning (and our bloggering). Conservatives have skillfully used the instrument of language to set the parameters of political debates, chiefly by demonizing liberalism, humanism, secularism and even in some cases, pluralism itself. Liberals need to rehabilitate these words and defend their contribution and importance to American democracy. The liberal blogosphere is getting more attention these days, not all of it positive or accurate, but it does provide an opportunity to insert new words, symbols, and ideas into the political debate.
Two, to the extent that Democrats rally around an agenda based on the Common Good, it must be a Common Good that celebrates and safeguards our diversity, not one that demonizes particular groups of people or one-issue interest groups (as some on the left seem to be demanding). In debates and campaign ads, Democrats should recognize that while "some people say" that liberals, women, the poor, environmentalists, or university professors are hurting America, we say that we can't risk attacking ourselves and that we need to allow everyone the right to play a part in shaping and improving our world. It's a bit lofty and idealistic, but hey, maybe that'll work for a change.
Third, by all means we should continue to push for a fairer economy, a more just and moral economy that promotes the consumer and worker above the interests of the financial centers of power. Specifically, I don't see why any Democrats campaigning in 2006 or those hoping to run in 2008 should not make a repeal of last year's bankruptcy "reform" legislation a very public item on their will-do list. We don't need to promise a cure for every economic inconvenience or to pledge absolute equality of outcomes. But we do need to demand that individuals be protected from forces more powerful than themselves.
In short, in order for progressives to increase their electoral share and hope to influence policy, we must identify and target the main problem facing the country and having done that, articulate the nature of the problem to the public. And that problem, from my point of view, is the risks of Political Absolutism. If I'm close to being right about this, Democrats will realize their other political aims--campaign clarity, authenticity, and the like by honestly, plainly and firmly making their concerns and aspirations for the country known.
The first by Mahablog is a discussion of an article in this past Sunday's NYT magazine basically on Freud, the fascist mind, and current political developments. I'm glad she pointed the article out because although I get the Sunday Times I didn't look at the magazine. I won't attempt to summarize either the whole article or Mahablog's comments, but I think it would suffice to say that a key element of both is the tendency towards absolutism and intolerance in today's conservatism, a vitriolic dislike for ambiguity.
The other post at TPM Cafe by Nathan Newman wonders who, or what, exactly, liberals think our "enemy" is. Who is the enemy of the Common Good that folks like Tomasky want us to be concerned with? If there is a Common Good, it would stand to reason that there is a force, or array of forces or processes acting in opposition to that Common Good which progressives must oppose. Newman argues that part of the conservatives' electoral successes over the past several decades has been just this quality--the ability to conjure up a class of enemies of which people of good will and proper morals should be afraid and opposed to.
I suspect this talk of "enemies" is uncomfortable for many liberals including myself. Politically it's often difficult in practice to single out any particular entity for condemnation on account of the fact that the target--some polluting corporation for example--is more than likely an employer of large numbers of people and maybe even your brother. Who votes. Likewise with religions, church leaders or denominations. We may think Pat Robertson a loon, but we likely have at least one friend or relative who watches The 700 Club, and for that reason, we might want to err on the side of politeness and ambiguity when determining a political campaign message or strategy.
On a more philosophical level, however, I think liberals by and large don't tend to think in terms of enemies, particularly at least enemies as being people, any of our fellow citizens. We may complain about Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly, but most liberals don't object to the existence and participation of those different from themselves. One of the underlying features of liberalism is its pluralism--the belief that the aim of society is to somehow ensure that people of varying beliefs, practices, tempraments, etc, can live together peacefully and all more or less equally contribute to and participate in the body politic and generally be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor and the community of their fellows without undue interference by others.
Let me give you an example. It's growing convention wisdom that there exists a secular-religious divide in American, with large majorities of devout Christians voting for Republicans and secular or atheistic people voting for Democrats. But these two groups are not diametrically opposite. Atheists may not like religious expression in the public square and not want to have someone else's religious beliefs imposed on them, even if it is a belief held by the majority, but most atheists don't have a political program or philosophical belief that assumes religious believers should be excluded from society or punished for their beliefs, either in the present or in the "age to come".
Unfortunately, this is not what most Christians believe at a fundamental level. Most Christians believe in some form of eternal life and future age of utopia in which only they and fellow adherents will share Heaven with God. Unbelievers, heretics, those who have "rejected" God's love, will, after some form of judgment, either die and remain in the grave, or suffer through an eternity of torment. Although many Christians in the West tend not to highlight this dimension of their faith, or choose to believe in a form of universalism in which almost everyone on the earth is eventually "saved", there are a not insubstantial share of Christians who are taught to regard non-believers, sinners, as deserving of eternal punishing or punishment. Not all of this class advocates that that punishment be administered by civil governments. But some do, or at least could conceivably be convinced to give passive acceptance of it should a goverment or society wish it. In any event, an orthodox Christian belief system includes a philosophy that essentially makes certain people, even large numbers of people, expendable (and makes a book like The Party of Death so misleading--the argument that liberal Democrats are the "party of death" turns each party's philisophical underpinnings upside down).
In a nutshell, this is the Absolutism that more and more pundits, elected leaders, religious elites, and opinion-shapers want to urge on the country. There is a certain right way to think and act. Deviations from this order will and should at least at some point, be punished. It is reflected in a variety of lingo, the most common perhaps being "moral relativism", a particularly attractive straw man. The use of phrases such as moral relativism also carries with it the belief that there are certain, maybe even many issues that should not be issues at all, should not be matters of social or political conflict, matters on which the mass public should be concerned or engaged with. The message behind complaints about moral relativism is that certain grievances, needs, wants, or rights should not be given a forum in our democratic institutions. It is a philosophy that is inherently undemocratic. It's quest for conformity and unity and demands for absolutism are an "unhealthy" attempt to reduce conflict and eliminate the uncomfortable but inherent tension in everyday life. Consider these paragraphs from the NYT magazine article"
Freud's implicit morality is counterintuitive. Though Freud acknowledged the uses of mild intoxicants like love and art, he was nonetheless extremely suspicious of any doctrine or activity that promised to unify the psyche--or to unify the nation, the people--without remainder and to do so forever. Freud believed that the inner tensions that we experience are by and large necessary tensions, not because they are so enjoyable in themselves--they are not--but because the alternatives to them are so much worse. For Freud, a healthy psyche is not always a psyche that feels good. For Herbert Marcuse, author of a brilliant meditation on Freud, "Eros and Civilization," Freud's politics are potentially the politics of ecstasy. We can collectively undo our repressions and regress toward collective erotic bliss. For Philip Rieff, author of the equally perceptive and original "Freud: The Mind of the Moralist," Freud appears to be a deep political pessimist who thinks that the healthiest individuals will probably be those who turn completely away from politics. But another way to look at Freud is to see him as someone who suggests that a considerable measure of freedom and even relative happiness can come from following a self-aware middle way. If we are willing to live with some inner tension, political as well as personal, we need never be overwhelmed by tyranny or fall into the anarchy that giving into the unconscious completely can bring.
For Freud, we might infer, a healthy body politic is one that allows for a good deal of continuing tension. A healthy polis is one that it doesn't always feel good to be a part of. There's too much argument, controversy, difference. But in that difference, annoying and difficult as it may be, lies the community's well-being. When a relatively free nation is threatened by terrorists with totalitarian goals, as ours is now, there is, of course, an urge to come together and to fight back by any means necessary. But the danger is that in fighting back we will become just as fierce, monolithic and, in the worst sense, as unified as our foes. We will seek our own great man; we will be blind to his foibles; we will stop questioning, stop arguing. When that happens, a war of fundamentalisms has begun, and of that war there can be no victor.
There is an inherent puritanical, Final Solution-ish fetish in the frequent calls for "moral clarity" and purges of "moral relativism" (or moral relativists) by many leaders on the political "right". If everything or near everything can be characterized as "right" or "wrong" than inherently, these are matters that legislation, constitutional parameters, or court rulings cannot respond to or address. Essentially, if most matters are either/or, black or white, right or wrong, there's no need for people to elect leaders to decide most issues critical to the community. Of course, if there is a right or wrong belief or action for everything, than there must be someone or something that makes this determination. And if the people, through a constitution, or branch of government are largely not allowed to make that decision, than another entity, say the Church, must. Consequently, this form of political absolutism demands a hierarchy, an authoritarian, non-participatory form of government.
Needless to say, this is a radically different notion of citizenship and humanity than that shared by liberal Christians and non-religious people, and one that potentially presents the greatest threat to a democratic society.
Now, it's important to point out that not all Christians are political absolutists and not all political absolutists who find their home in the Republican Party are Christians. But voting trends as well as the political posturing by many recognizable religious elites do serve to highlight the relationship and conflict between a politicial absolutism, rationalized on religious grounds, and political pluralism, the social arrangement believed in by small 'd' democrats.
Confronting this challenge will not be easy for the progressively-minded. I fear that appeals to economic populism or the Common Good will not adequately defeat the more malicious designs of political absolutists, at least not for any extended period of time. And even though many of us who share an opposition to political and moral absolutism are Christians ourselves, mitigating the reach and effect of the religious right will be difficult. Our institutions and books are not generally conducive to moderation. Our religion has been tempered by tradition. A tradition of democracy, freedom, and yes, humanism. All religions are a fusion of book-based theology and historical and human tradition. In other words, our beliefs are shaped by both orthodox theologies and culture. Unfortunately, the tradition that colors many conservative religions is an older tradition based on misogymy, patriarchalism and hierarchy. It's a tradition largely hostile to the Other in community life, a tradition hostile to the values of political pluralists and democrats.
So what are progressives to do? One, I believe is we need to elevate the ideological to our campaigning (and our bloggering). Conservatives have skillfully used the instrument of language to set the parameters of political debates, chiefly by demonizing liberalism, humanism, secularism and even in some cases, pluralism itself. Liberals need to rehabilitate these words and defend their contribution and importance to American democracy. The liberal blogosphere is getting more attention these days, not all of it positive or accurate, but it does provide an opportunity to insert new words, symbols, and ideas into the political debate.
Two, to the extent that Democrats rally around an agenda based on the Common Good, it must be a Common Good that celebrates and safeguards our diversity, not one that demonizes particular groups of people or one-issue interest groups (as some on the left seem to be demanding). In debates and campaign ads, Democrats should recognize that while "some people say" that liberals, women, the poor, environmentalists, or university professors are hurting America, we say that we can't risk attacking ourselves and that we need to allow everyone the right to play a part in shaping and improving our world. It's a bit lofty and idealistic, but hey, maybe that'll work for a change.
Third, by all means we should continue to push for a fairer economy, a more just and moral economy that promotes the consumer and worker above the interests of the financial centers of power. Specifically, I don't see why any Democrats campaigning in 2006 or those hoping to run in 2008 should not make a repeal of last year's bankruptcy "reform" legislation a very public item on their will-do list. We don't need to promise a cure for every economic inconvenience or to pledge absolute equality of outcomes. But we do need to demand that individuals be protected from forces more powerful than themselves.
In short, in order for progressives to increase their electoral share and hope to influence policy, we must identify and target the main problem facing the country and having done that, articulate the nature of the problem to the public. And that problem, from my point of view, is the risks of Political Absolutism. If I'm close to being right about this, Democrats will realize their other political aims--campaign clarity, authenticity, and the like by honestly, plainly and firmly making their concerns and aspirations for the country known.
War Addicts Need Another Fix
Some of our favorite bloggers have already weighed in on Shelby Steele's Appetite for Destruction op-ed in the Wall St. Journal. In brief: Steele blames the quagmire in Iraq on "white guilt"; if we had only incinerated the place and the people to begin with, we wouldn't have to be enduring an insurgency from a weaker and much less worthy foe. Steele's essay is rife with ignorance, recklessness, inhumanity and hypocrisy.
There are two main points I draw from this. One, there is a class among the warmongers, a class which may in fact comprise the whole of it, that is finding the Iraq war bitterly disappointing. And this is not just because the U.S. is perceived to be "losing" in Iraq. The root of the real disappointment this class feels is that after the initial Shock and Awe, Operation Iraqi Freedom has turned into, well, just so much nation-building. The taking of Baghdad, the toppling of Saddam's statue, Bush's aircraft landing, and Saddam's eventual capture, were fine for starters. But since then, it's mainly been about turning over sovereignty, holding elections, and trying to hammer out a constitution. And all of this has been rather unexciting. Sure, some of this class vicariously held up the "purple fingers" of Iraqi voters as an indicator of U.S. "success" but even with this, one could sense that their heart really wasn't in it. Giving people the vote has never been a conservative ambition. They may have bought into the whole "liberation" charade before the war started, to try to give the effort some moral legitimacy. But these conservatives mainly wanted to smash something, to intimidate the world by conquering Iraq. Destroy and dominate. Now that that isn't happening, many among the Home Field Generals are letting their true malice show. Screw the liberation. Why can't we just torch the place? Ah, White Guilt. We'd win if it wasn't for White Guilt weighing us down. As Glenn Greenwald and Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog have noted, it's at least refreshing to hear some of these guys let their real motivations show.
Second, conservative whining about the quagmire in Iraq and blaming it on someone else, anything else besides themselves and this administration is ridiculously ignorant or just plain hypocritical. The quagmire in Iraq stems from the fact that wars, especially modern wars against hostile populations and unconventional foes, can't be fought with a toothpick and a cellphone. They require large numbers of "boots on the ground" and deep levels of economic and professional sacrifice on the part of the warring state's population--neither of which have the warmongers been willing to supply or endure. If they want war, they have to be willing to contribute their all to it. The administration and its apologists wanted war, dreadful, violent, and intimidating war, on the quick and cheap. And it can't be done. Hence, the quagmire.
The warmongers are addicts. And the hit they experienced from invading Iraq has worn off. Now they either want to bomb Iran or reconquer Iraq. But like most addicts, they're both suffering from the inevitable declining marginal utility of each addictive hit while failing to recognize their well of resources is dry.
There are two main points I draw from this. One, there is a class among the warmongers, a class which may in fact comprise the whole of it, that is finding the Iraq war bitterly disappointing. And this is not just because the U.S. is perceived to be "losing" in Iraq. The root of the real disappointment this class feels is that after the initial Shock and Awe, Operation Iraqi Freedom has turned into, well, just so much nation-building. The taking of Baghdad, the toppling of Saddam's statue, Bush's aircraft landing, and Saddam's eventual capture, were fine for starters. But since then, it's mainly been about turning over sovereignty, holding elections, and trying to hammer out a constitution. And all of this has been rather unexciting. Sure, some of this class vicariously held up the "purple fingers" of Iraqi voters as an indicator of U.S. "success" but even with this, one could sense that their heart really wasn't in it. Giving people the vote has never been a conservative ambition. They may have bought into the whole "liberation" charade before the war started, to try to give the effort some moral legitimacy. But these conservatives mainly wanted to smash something, to intimidate the world by conquering Iraq. Destroy and dominate. Now that that isn't happening, many among the Home Field Generals are letting their true malice show. Screw the liberation. Why can't we just torch the place? Ah, White Guilt. We'd win if it wasn't for White Guilt weighing us down. As Glenn Greenwald and Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog have noted, it's at least refreshing to hear some of these guys let their real motivations show.
Second, conservative whining about the quagmire in Iraq and blaming it on someone else, anything else besides themselves and this administration is ridiculously ignorant or just plain hypocritical. The quagmire in Iraq stems from the fact that wars, especially modern wars against hostile populations and unconventional foes, can't be fought with a toothpick and a cellphone. They require large numbers of "boots on the ground" and deep levels of economic and professional sacrifice on the part of the warring state's population--neither of which have the warmongers been willing to supply or endure. If they want war, they have to be willing to contribute their all to it. The administration and its apologists wanted war, dreadful, violent, and intimidating war, on the quick and cheap. And it can't be done. Hence, the quagmire.
The warmongers are addicts. And the hit they experienced from invading Iraq has worn off. Now they either want to bomb Iran or reconquer Iraq. But like most addicts, they're both suffering from the inevitable declining marginal utility of each addictive hit while failing to recognize their well of resources is dry.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
FEMA Drowned in Bathtub
What Kevin Drum says.
Crippled by years of poor leadership and inadequate funding, the Federal Emergency Management Agency cannot be fixed, a bipartisan investigation says in recommendations to be released Thursday.
....Describing FEMA as a "shambles and beyond repair," [Republican Senator Susan] Collins said the overall report "will help ensure that we do not have a repeat of the failures following Hurricane Katrina."
This is truly remarkable. FEMA was a fine organization for eight years under Bill Clinton, widely recognized as one of the best run agencies in the federal government. But after a mere five years of George Bush's stewardship there's now a bipartisan consensus that it's so rundown that the only choice is to get rid of it and build a completely new agency in its place. Astonishing.
It's hard to put into words the true scope, the level of utter malfeasance embodied in this administration's--and this Congress's--Katrina debacle. Combine an administration led and staffed by people ideologically opposed to government service and crony-hires committed to savaging the previous administration and prepping for the next contract payoff with a Congress more concerned about flag-burning than bureaucratic oversight, and you get the drowning of a major American city, the death of over 1,300 people, most of them poor and black, and the demolition of a critically important and once highly respected government agency. All of this would have been awful enough even if 911 had never happened. But given what the administration's apologists claim is a threat dire enough to warrant the surrendering of our most basic civil liberties, the failure, if not purposeful strategy of crippling one of the most critical departments responsible for meeting that threat is truly stupifying.
But it would be a mistake to cast the Katrina-FEMA catastrophe as only a Bush, or even just a Republican Party failure. The cause goes much deeper than that. It symbolizes the effects of radical conservatism, from the war-mongering neocons to the hate-filled minions on talk radio and cable TV, to the Christian Reconstructionists who only want the government to criminalize abortion, gays and non-Christian worship. The conservative movement's forty year quest for power has born its worst, worm-infested piece of low-hanging fruit. It's aim for over forty years has been the destruction of the government's ability to respond to the needs of the vulnerable. And through FEMA and Katrina, it succeeded.
If Democrats want to make this an issue in the 2006 elections--and I obviously believe they should, as should any thinking or caring individual--they shouldn't pin it all on George W. Bush, who despite his failings is more of a symbol than driving force of conservatism's bankrupt politics. Democrats should point to the main culprit--radical conservatism itself. One of its main organizers and ideological enforcers, Grover Norquist, has stated that he wished for the Republican Party to shrink the size of government till it could be drowned in a bathtub. He and his elected partners have succeeded, in the case of Katrina, all too well.
Republicans have spent the last four decades laying the blame for every disaster, personal tragedy and negative statistic at the door of Liberalism. Democrats have been reluctant to respond in kind, partly because the GOP has so skillfully made liberalism a byword while elevating its own label to "third-rail" status. If Democrats want to recapture the majority, both in government and in the country at large, they will have to, sooner or later, begin the arduous but necessary task of challenging the radical conservative underpinnings and rhetorical labeling of the opposition. And the continuing aftermath of Katrina is as good a point as any to begin that process.
Crippled by years of poor leadership and inadequate funding, the Federal Emergency Management Agency cannot be fixed, a bipartisan investigation says in recommendations to be released Thursday.
....Describing FEMA as a "shambles and beyond repair," [Republican Senator Susan] Collins said the overall report "will help ensure that we do not have a repeat of the failures following Hurricane Katrina."
This is truly remarkable. FEMA was a fine organization for eight years under Bill Clinton, widely recognized as one of the best run agencies in the federal government. But after a mere five years of George Bush's stewardship there's now a bipartisan consensus that it's so rundown that the only choice is to get rid of it and build a completely new agency in its place. Astonishing.
It's hard to put into words the true scope, the level of utter malfeasance embodied in this administration's--and this Congress's--Katrina debacle. Combine an administration led and staffed by people ideologically opposed to government service and crony-hires committed to savaging the previous administration and prepping for the next contract payoff with a Congress more concerned about flag-burning than bureaucratic oversight, and you get the drowning of a major American city, the death of over 1,300 people, most of them poor and black, and the demolition of a critically important and once highly respected government agency. All of this would have been awful enough even if 911 had never happened. But given what the administration's apologists claim is a threat dire enough to warrant the surrendering of our most basic civil liberties, the failure, if not purposeful strategy of crippling one of the most critical departments responsible for meeting that threat is truly stupifying.
But it would be a mistake to cast the Katrina-FEMA catastrophe as only a Bush, or even just a Republican Party failure. The cause goes much deeper than that. It symbolizes the effects of radical conservatism, from the war-mongering neocons to the hate-filled minions on talk radio and cable TV, to the Christian Reconstructionists who only want the government to criminalize abortion, gays and non-Christian worship. The conservative movement's forty year quest for power has born its worst, worm-infested piece of low-hanging fruit. It's aim for over forty years has been the destruction of the government's ability to respond to the needs of the vulnerable. And through FEMA and Katrina, it succeeded.
If Democrats want to make this an issue in the 2006 elections--and I obviously believe they should, as should any thinking or caring individual--they shouldn't pin it all on George W. Bush, who despite his failings is more of a symbol than driving force of conservatism's bankrupt politics. Democrats should point to the main culprit--radical conservatism itself. One of its main organizers and ideological enforcers, Grover Norquist, has stated that he wished for the Republican Party to shrink the size of government till it could be drowned in a bathtub. He and his elected partners have succeeded, in the case of Katrina, all too well.
Republicans have spent the last four decades laying the blame for every disaster, personal tragedy and negative statistic at the door of Liberalism. Democrats have been reluctant to respond in kind, partly because the GOP has so skillfully made liberalism a byword while elevating its own label to "third-rail" status. If Democrats want to recapture the majority, both in government and in the country at large, they will have to, sooner or later, begin the arduous but necessary task of challenging the radical conservative underpinnings and rhetorical labeling of the opposition. And the continuing aftermath of Katrina is as good a point as any to begin that process.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Gore and the Common Good
In my last post, I outlined some reasons why I don't think Michael Tomasky's Common Good theme is good for progressive Democrats.
Since then, there have been two developments that have caused me to qualify those objections, at least a little. The first is rapidly rising (again) gas prices. The second are the reviews of Al Gore's soon to be released movie on global warming and the environment: An Inconvenient Truth. Obviously I think these two developments are convergent, and that both have implications for a Democratic vision based on notions of the Common Good.
First, the issue of gas prices. While, like Atrios, we may shake our heads at how the mainstream media is so quick to run "news stories" showing upset consumers at gas stations, David Niewert and Billmon explain why the issue of gas prices is more than just gas.
Meanwhile, at the same time as issues of energy policy are getting more attention, along comes Al Gore, who's climate-change, Powerpoint demonstration is being adapted to the big screen. Republicans had a lot of fun recalling Gore's Earth in the Balance writings during the 2000 campaign, using it as yet another link in a chain supposedly indicating how geeky and out of touch Gore was. But now, conservative critics of global warming, and of environmental causes generally, are in retreat.
For those of us uninspired by the thought of a Hilary candidacy, and hoping someone else, anyone else, with greater stature, credibility, or electability may yet enter the 2008 race, we can wonder whether Gore's moment might be arriving.
For amazing as it might sound, of all the prospective 2008 candidates, Al Gore, Al Gore! may be the visionary one. He's raked the administration over the coals on NSA wire-tapping and lambasted the attempt by Justice Sunday-Christian Reconstructionists to bulldoze the wall separating church and state. But it's his signature issue--the environment--that may give Gore his (and our) best chance to shift the national debate. Environmental protection, natural resource conservation and development, and climate change projections are issues Gore is knowledgeable and passionate about, and as it happens, also issues currently and extremely relevant to our nation's, and world's, economic futures. It seems to be that this set of issues also could prove to be the best test for a campaign and governance strategy oriented around the concept of the Common Good. It avoids the narrow-minded, leave-no-corporation-behind, Tax Cut agenda of the conservatives, as well as the standard "pocket-book", special interest driven, redistribute-the-economic-pie-type politics that many Democrats, like Tomasky, seem to find so bankrupt from our own party. Gore campaigning on the environment in 2008 would finally give the Democrats the kind of unifying, visionary, nation-wide, identity-shaping agenda that so many seem to think the Democrats have been lacking in recent elections.
Sound good? If not, why not?
Well, after feeling like I had had an epiphany, I began to have some doubts.
First, the price of gas could quickly head back down, particularly if the bomb-Iran rhetoric coming from the administration and its neocon media hawks starts to subside, negating the potential appeal to the Common Good that high gas prices may have made viable. And even if gas prices stay high, the public could very well adapt to them, making energy and environmental issues less salient generally, and Gore a less appealing candidate. If the gas issue is kaput, so is the Democrat's unifying, global vision, at least one driven by this issue.
But second, even if gas prices remain high and the public remains concerned, that doesn't mean it will be attracted to the type of belt-tightening measures an environmentally-focused, non-self-interest-based political campaign would be making. This seems especially true if Democrats hope to ride a new environmentalism from the primaries through to November.
Which brings me to what I think is another problem with the Common Good campaign model: trying to get people to look beyond their self interest could easily come across as hectoring, lecturing, or finger-pointing. And people don't take to that very well, even if they're more than happy to have a candidate hector, lecture and finger-point at someone else.
Since 1968, and particularly in 1980 and George Bush II, Republicans have been very good at two things: one, making a virtue out of ignorant, numbskullness; and two, making church-goers, construction workers, and insurance sales-persons think it's the other people who need to be personally responsible. If there's been a campaign by either party before that has centered on suggesting that its voters or the majority of Americans need to change, and that has succeeded, I am personally unaware of it.
So I'm not necessarily optimistic that high gas prices, theories of peak oil, and rising global temperatures can be the new centerpiece of a victorious Democratic governing vision or campaign strategy. I'm not sure how ready the middle-class is to restrain its consuming and spending patterns, to admit that sacrifice and responsibility may need to be exercised by all of us, and not just the "deviants". I'm not sure how politically viable it would be.
But it just might be the right thing to do.
And that would be an identity worth having.
Since then, there have been two developments that have caused me to qualify those objections, at least a little. The first is rapidly rising (again) gas prices. The second are the reviews of Al Gore's soon to be released movie on global warming and the environment: An Inconvenient Truth. Obviously I think these two developments are convergent, and that both have implications for a Democratic vision based on notions of the Common Good.
First, the issue of gas prices. While, like Atrios, we may shake our heads at how the mainstream media is so quick to run "news stories" showing upset consumers at gas stations, David Niewert and Billmon explain why the issue of gas prices is more than just gas.
Meanwhile, at the same time as issues of energy policy are getting more attention, along comes Al Gore, who's climate-change, Powerpoint demonstration is being adapted to the big screen. Republicans had a lot of fun recalling Gore's Earth in the Balance writings during the 2000 campaign, using it as yet another link in a chain supposedly indicating how geeky and out of touch Gore was. But now, conservative critics of global warming, and of environmental causes generally, are in retreat.
For those of us uninspired by the thought of a Hilary candidacy, and hoping someone else, anyone else, with greater stature, credibility, or electability may yet enter the 2008 race, we can wonder whether Gore's moment might be arriving.
For amazing as it might sound, of all the prospective 2008 candidates, Al Gore, Al Gore! may be the visionary one. He's raked the administration over the coals on NSA wire-tapping and lambasted the attempt by Justice Sunday-Christian Reconstructionists to bulldoze the wall separating church and state. But it's his signature issue--the environment--that may give Gore his (and our) best chance to shift the national debate. Environmental protection, natural resource conservation and development, and climate change projections are issues Gore is knowledgeable and passionate about, and as it happens, also issues currently and extremely relevant to our nation's, and world's, economic futures. It seems to be that this set of issues also could prove to be the best test for a campaign and governance strategy oriented around the concept of the Common Good. It avoids the narrow-minded, leave-no-corporation-behind, Tax Cut agenda of the conservatives, as well as the standard "pocket-book", special interest driven, redistribute-the-economic-pie-type politics that many Democrats, like Tomasky, seem to find so bankrupt from our own party. Gore campaigning on the environment in 2008 would finally give the Democrats the kind of unifying, visionary, nation-wide, identity-shaping agenda that so many seem to think the Democrats have been lacking in recent elections.
Sound good? If not, why not?
Well, after feeling like I had had an epiphany, I began to have some doubts.
First, the price of gas could quickly head back down, particularly if the bomb-Iran rhetoric coming from the administration and its neocon media hawks starts to subside, negating the potential appeal to the Common Good that high gas prices may have made viable. And even if gas prices stay high, the public could very well adapt to them, making energy and environmental issues less salient generally, and Gore a less appealing candidate. If the gas issue is kaput, so is the Democrat's unifying, global vision, at least one driven by this issue.
But second, even if gas prices remain high and the public remains concerned, that doesn't mean it will be attracted to the type of belt-tightening measures an environmentally-focused, non-self-interest-based political campaign would be making. This seems especially true if Democrats hope to ride a new environmentalism from the primaries through to November.
Which brings me to what I think is another problem with the Common Good campaign model: trying to get people to look beyond their self interest could easily come across as hectoring, lecturing, or finger-pointing. And people don't take to that very well, even if they're more than happy to have a candidate hector, lecture and finger-point at someone else.
Since 1968, and particularly in 1980 and George Bush II, Republicans have been very good at two things: one, making a virtue out of ignorant, numbskullness; and two, making church-goers, construction workers, and insurance sales-persons think it's the other people who need to be personally responsible. If there's been a campaign by either party before that has centered on suggesting that its voters or the majority of Americans need to change, and that has succeeded, I am personally unaware of it.
So I'm not necessarily optimistic that high gas prices, theories of peak oil, and rising global temperatures can be the new centerpiece of a victorious Democratic governing vision or campaign strategy. I'm not sure how ready the middle-class is to restrain its consuming and spending patterns, to admit that sacrifice and responsibility may need to be exercised by all of us, and not just the "deviants". I'm not sure how politically viable it would be.
But it just might be the right thing to do.
And that would be an identity worth having.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
It's the Power, Stupid
I've had some more time to think about Michael Tomasky's TAP essay on Communitarianism and the Democratic Party.
First, consider this passage from his essay:
For many years -- during their years of dominance and success, the period of the New Deal up through the first part of the Great Society -- the Democrats practiced a brand of liberalism quite different from today’s. Yes, it certainly sought to expand both rights and prosperity. But it did something more: That liberalism was built around the idea -- the philosophical principle -- that citizens should be called upon to look beyond their own self-interest and work for a greater common interest.
This, historically, is the moral basis of liberal governance -- not justice, not equality, not rights, not diversity, not government, and not even prosperity or opportunity. Liberal governance is about demanding of citizens that they balance self-interest with common interest.
This, I think, is exactly wrong.
First, I would argue that the "demand" (his words) for citizens to balance their self-interest with common interest is precisely the basis of just about every conservative critique of modern culture, from abortion to gay rights and school prayer. It might not have anything to do with the Republican's economic agenda, but it has everything to do with its cultural one. The conservative critique of modernity is precisely the liberal democratic notion that people should be reasonably free to live their lives on their own terms, as they see fit, provided they are not directly or significantly harming others. For conservatives, the type of individualism that allows and even encourages personal freedom of expression is anathema. In contrast, it seems vital to me that modern liberalism and the emancipation of the individual that it desires be given a voice from at least one political party in the country, and since Republicans, with their base of fundamentalist Christians are not inclined to provide it, Democrats can and must.
Second, the basis for liberal government is not "the demand that citizens place community interest over self-interest" but the belief that the purpose and vision of democracy and its correlary principle--popular sovereignty--is to shift power from royal and religious elites to the common man. Consequently, for liberal governance the essential aim of government (besides that common to all governments of securing order and protection from outside threats) is to diffuse power, to neutralize the concentration of power in the hands of economic, religious or governmental elites. The aim of liberal democratic government is therefore, to empower and liberate the individual, to pull the individual out of the group, as my political theory professor once remarked, to free him or her from the demands and conditional constraints created by private and public power centers against which the individual is unequally matched.
The essential basis of conservative philosophy is that the entity to be protected is society, and that the threat to society is the individual. This is why the conservative movement and the Republican Party have managed to fuse so well. It's economic and social coalitions are not essentially different. Both favor the establishment and enrichment of concentrated power, whether it is the corporation and wealth elite on the economic side, or the religious and cultural elite on the social side. Both demand that the individual be made subservient to a group or groups in society that dictate or constrain the individual's actions.
Attempts by Democratic Party leaders and strategists to articulate a response to the conservative menace to freedom tend to break down because, such as is the case with Communitarianism, it fails to link the economic and social wings and coalition members of the party. Tomasky's Communitarianism thus attempts to find an appealing rationale for the Party's economic agenda, be it Social Security, Medicare or aid to education, and to do so, comes forth with the notion of the public good versus individual self interest. This sounds all well and good until one recognizes that applied to the social and cultural sphere, it leads towards intrusion upon the individual and an invasion of the family's right to privacy.
The reason modern liberalism has embraced both income support and redistribution policies on the economic front, and civil liberties issues on the social and cultural front is because both aim to ensure that economic and religious foundations of power are mitigated to at least some degree, allowing the individual and the family to be more fully free.
If Democrats want to overcome the challenge to freedom and liberty represented by the Republican Party, it can best do this by emphasizing that the individual freedoms it seeks to protect (and of which Republican conservatives and Tomasky seem so contemptful) and opportunity it seeks to grant are equally important for the family as for the individual. Instead of talking about the individual right to privacy, liberals should talk about the family right to privacy. I believe this would allow the party to articulate and defend its civil liberty concerns (i.e. abortion and gay rights, voting rights, affirmative action, etc) a language that would at least partially negate the negative connotations that many in the conservative media and religious industrial complex* have tried to apply to the Democratic Party's pluralist goals and voting patterns.
For another example, consider the issue of NSA wire-taps. From Tomasky's Communitarian point of view, the president is basically right to do whatever he wants to "fight terrorism", even if that means invading a family's privacy without a warrant, because it is in the common interest, and liberal Democrats should just stop complaining about it and whining about individual rights, which are really pretty pesky things that need to be bulldozed in the name of the common good. Obviously, this will not do for a Democratic vision of governance, or at least one that seeks to provide checks on concentrated power, whether in the government or in society as a whole.
In short, the unifying element of modern liberalism is not the common good, as articulated by Tomasky, but the need to reduce the adverse effects of concentrated power. By reducing the adverse effects of concentrated power, the common good, in the pluralist and best sense of the word, is also preserved.
For an additional critique of Tomasky's Communitarianism see Digby's post.
*I'll elaborate on this concept in a future post.
First, consider this passage from his essay:
For many years -- during their years of dominance and success, the period of the New Deal up through the first part of the Great Society -- the Democrats practiced a brand of liberalism quite different from today’s. Yes, it certainly sought to expand both rights and prosperity. But it did something more: That liberalism was built around the idea -- the philosophical principle -- that citizens should be called upon to look beyond their own self-interest and work for a greater common interest.
This, historically, is the moral basis of liberal governance -- not justice, not equality, not rights, not diversity, not government, and not even prosperity or opportunity. Liberal governance is about demanding of citizens that they balance self-interest with common interest.
This, I think, is exactly wrong.
First, I would argue that the "demand" (his words) for citizens to balance their self-interest with common interest is precisely the basis of just about every conservative critique of modern culture, from abortion to gay rights and school prayer. It might not have anything to do with the Republican's economic agenda, but it has everything to do with its cultural one. The conservative critique of modernity is precisely the liberal democratic notion that people should be reasonably free to live their lives on their own terms, as they see fit, provided they are not directly or significantly harming others. For conservatives, the type of individualism that allows and even encourages personal freedom of expression is anathema. In contrast, it seems vital to me that modern liberalism and the emancipation of the individual that it desires be given a voice from at least one political party in the country, and since Republicans, with their base of fundamentalist Christians are not inclined to provide it, Democrats can and must.
Second, the basis for liberal government is not "the demand that citizens place community interest over self-interest" but the belief that the purpose and vision of democracy and its correlary principle--popular sovereignty--is to shift power from royal and religious elites to the common man. Consequently, for liberal governance the essential aim of government (besides that common to all governments of securing order and protection from outside threats) is to diffuse power, to neutralize the concentration of power in the hands of economic, religious or governmental elites. The aim of liberal democratic government is therefore, to empower and liberate the individual, to pull the individual out of the group, as my political theory professor once remarked, to free him or her from the demands and conditional constraints created by private and public power centers against which the individual is unequally matched.
The essential basis of conservative philosophy is that the entity to be protected is society, and that the threat to society is the individual. This is why the conservative movement and the Republican Party have managed to fuse so well. It's economic and social coalitions are not essentially different. Both favor the establishment and enrichment of concentrated power, whether it is the corporation and wealth elite on the economic side, or the religious and cultural elite on the social side. Both demand that the individual be made subservient to a group or groups in society that dictate or constrain the individual's actions.
Attempts by Democratic Party leaders and strategists to articulate a response to the conservative menace to freedom tend to break down because, such as is the case with Communitarianism, it fails to link the economic and social wings and coalition members of the party. Tomasky's Communitarianism thus attempts to find an appealing rationale for the Party's economic agenda, be it Social Security, Medicare or aid to education, and to do so, comes forth with the notion of the public good versus individual self interest. This sounds all well and good until one recognizes that applied to the social and cultural sphere, it leads towards intrusion upon the individual and an invasion of the family's right to privacy.
The reason modern liberalism has embraced both income support and redistribution policies on the economic front, and civil liberties issues on the social and cultural front is because both aim to ensure that economic and religious foundations of power are mitigated to at least some degree, allowing the individual and the family to be more fully free.
If Democrats want to overcome the challenge to freedom and liberty represented by the Republican Party, it can best do this by emphasizing that the individual freedoms it seeks to protect (and of which Republican conservatives and Tomasky seem so contemptful) and opportunity it seeks to grant are equally important for the family as for the individual. Instead of talking about the individual right to privacy, liberals should talk about the family right to privacy. I believe this would allow the party to articulate and defend its civil liberty concerns (i.e. abortion and gay rights, voting rights, affirmative action, etc) a language that would at least partially negate the negative connotations that many in the conservative media and religious industrial complex* have tried to apply to the Democratic Party's pluralist goals and voting patterns.
For another example, consider the issue of NSA wire-taps. From Tomasky's Communitarian point of view, the president is basically right to do whatever he wants to "fight terrorism", even if that means invading a family's privacy without a warrant, because it is in the common interest, and liberal Democrats should just stop complaining about it and whining about individual rights, which are really pretty pesky things that need to be bulldozed in the name of the common good. Obviously, this will not do for a Democratic vision of governance, or at least one that seeks to provide checks on concentrated power, whether in the government or in society as a whole.
In short, the unifying element of modern liberalism is not the common good, as articulated by Tomasky, but the need to reduce the adverse effects of concentrated power. By reducing the adverse effects of concentrated power, the common good, in the pluralist and best sense of the word, is also preserved.
For an additional critique of Tomasky's Communitarianism see Digby's post.
*I'll elaborate on this concept in a future post.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Recasting the War on Terror
This week brought with it two new attempts by Democratic thinkers to jump-start a 2006-2008 campaign message and articulate a broader Party rationale.
One was published at The American Prospect by Michael Tomasky. The short version is Tomasky outlines two variants of liberalism, the first a nationalistic and communitarian "responsibilities over rights", "we're all in this together" paradigm, the second an individualistic-rights-equality-justice paradigm that supposedly came out of the late 1960's and whose one-issue-interest group nature has been responsible for driving many white Democrats to the Republican Party. Tomasky favors Democrats going "back" to the first paradigm, which he says was the heritage of the good old Democrats like FDR, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson and Clinton. Tomasky makes a fair share of good points in the essay, but overall his message sounds an awful lot like DLC-light.
The second was drawn up by Democratic economists Roger Altman, Pete Orzag, and Robert Rubin. This group of Clinton era administrators has billed itself and its approach as "Hamiltonian". The authors favor balanced budgets, and greater government "investments" in education, health care, and worker retraining.
The best that can probably be said about each piece is they at least say something; they're a start. But both strike me as largely "political" approaches to recasting the party's message as opposed to viewing the party as a means of addressing the greater, structural problems the nation faces.
One example of this is that neither set of authors says much about the "war on terror" or national security. How should Democrats approach the "war on terror"? Or better yet, the question should be, what do Democrats actually think about the 9-11 attacks, Al Qaeda, and the threat of "terrorism"? Not how should Democrats spin national security as a policy matter but what do Democrats actually think about the threat of terrorism and perhaps more broadly, radical Islam?
Since I'm a progressive Democrat I'll give it a shot. There are three primary lessons I draw about Al Qaeda from 911 that would seem important for Democrats to articulate and address.
First, the terror attacks remind us that our problems are as much global as domestic. The World is Flat, as Thomas Friedman says. In other words, while improving our education systems, reducing marked income inequality, and expanding access to health care within the U.S. are important, our major challenges, particularly from the point of view of the federal government, continue to lie outside our borders. And what are these challenges? Ultimately, "oil dependency" generally, but something more serious and alarming--the disparity of well-being and resource-use between between us and the rest of the world. A NY Times article and editorial this week pointed out that the U.S. consumes 20 million gallons of oil per day, while our nearest "competitor", China, consumes 6.5 million. And China has about one billion more people than we do. Bluntly, we're consuming too much of the world's stuff. No amount of war-mongering or sabor-rattling is going to ensure our dominance in this area. Gas is back up to $3 a gallon in the U.S. If the party isn't over, the fat lady is about ready to sing. And needless to say, the issue of global income and opportunity disparities is a key contributor to the vitriolic immigration debate.
How will the U.S. begin to address these disparities? Is working towards greater free trade and open trade borders the answer? This is not an invitation to Democrats to pander to local constituencies, as legitimate as that might be, or to revert to knee-jerk protectionism rants. It's an invitation for Democrats to evaluate how our trade and international business policies are working, not just for our own immediate "good" but for the well-being of all mankind. This is not just being altruistic, although that would be OK, too. It's vital for our survival that other countries be successful economically and create the right kinds of opportunities for their populations.
Helping ourselves by helping others is important because if the Iraq war has shown us anything it's that Military Force as the one and only instrument of fighting "terrorism" is rather limited at best, badly flawed at worst. This is the second main lesson I draw from the 911 attacks on our shores. Tough talk and shock and awe will only get us so far. We can't blow up every country, or legitimately even threaten to blow up every country we think might endanger us. Liberals expressed a deep concern with the Bush administration's "pre-emptive force doctrine", but the truth is, no matter what our stated policy, military force can't be used in all, or even most cases. In fact, it can only be used rarely if at all. Three years after toppling Saddam Hussein, we have every indication that from a terrorism perspective, we may have left that country, and by extension ourselves, worse off as a result of the invasion. Nation building ain't easy. Rather than ape Republican rhetoric about being "tough" Democrats should unashamadly argue that the military is a greatly limited tool in the fighting the "war on terror" and that we need to begin to address other means of assuring other nations and their populations that we have their well-being in mind.
The third lesson is that religious fundamentalism is very dangerous. While the 911 attackers were radical Islamists, religious fundamentalism of various stripes has caused a considerable amount of bloodshed throughout history. We have an interest in ensuring that no one religion gets a monopoly on public policy or civil society. Radical Islam, like other variations of puritanical religions, is predicated on the notion that it is the only valid form of human salvation. Once that attitude is given free reign, non-believers can be cast as non-human, as The Other. True religion will protect the freedom of all religions to worship and participate equally in our democracy. Some Republicans give evidence of supporting a regressive, un-Constitutional Christian Reconstructionism. Democrats should ask their opponents if this extremism and exclusivity is what they believe in. Naturally, addressing the problems and role of faith in the public square is controversial. But one of the Democrat's greatest problems in recent years has been a seeming unwillingness to offend anyone. But the growing influence of radical religion in American life can't be ignored in the hope that it will go away. Ignoring the role of radical religion in America will be just as fatal as ignoring it in Afghanistan.
One was published at The American Prospect by Michael Tomasky. The short version is Tomasky outlines two variants of liberalism, the first a nationalistic and communitarian "responsibilities over rights", "we're all in this together" paradigm, the second an individualistic-rights-equality-justice paradigm that supposedly came out of the late 1960's and whose one-issue-interest group nature has been responsible for driving many white Democrats to the Republican Party. Tomasky favors Democrats going "back" to the first paradigm, which he says was the heritage of the good old Democrats like FDR, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson and Clinton. Tomasky makes a fair share of good points in the essay, but overall his message sounds an awful lot like DLC-light.
The second was drawn up by Democratic economists Roger Altman, Pete Orzag, and Robert Rubin. This group of Clinton era administrators has billed itself and its approach as "Hamiltonian". The authors favor balanced budgets, and greater government "investments" in education, health care, and worker retraining.
The best that can probably be said about each piece is they at least say something; they're a start. But both strike me as largely "political" approaches to recasting the party's message as opposed to viewing the party as a means of addressing the greater, structural problems the nation faces.
One example of this is that neither set of authors says much about the "war on terror" or national security. How should Democrats approach the "war on terror"? Or better yet, the question should be, what do Democrats actually think about the 9-11 attacks, Al Qaeda, and the threat of "terrorism"? Not how should Democrats spin national security as a policy matter but what do Democrats actually think about the threat of terrorism and perhaps more broadly, radical Islam?
Since I'm a progressive Democrat I'll give it a shot. There are three primary lessons I draw about Al Qaeda from 911 that would seem important for Democrats to articulate and address.
First, the terror attacks remind us that our problems are as much global as domestic. The World is Flat, as Thomas Friedman says. In other words, while improving our education systems, reducing marked income inequality, and expanding access to health care within the U.S. are important, our major challenges, particularly from the point of view of the federal government, continue to lie outside our borders. And what are these challenges? Ultimately, "oil dependency" generally, but something more serious and alarming--the disparity of well-being and resource-use between between us and the rest of the world. A NY Times article and editorial this week pointed out that the U.S. consumes 20 million gallons of oil per day, while our nearest "competitor", China, consumes 6.5 million. And China has about one billion more people than we do. Bluntly, we're consuming too much of the world's stuff. No amount of war-mongering or sabor-rattling is going to ensure our dominance in this area. Gas is back up to $3 a gallon in the U.S. If the party isn't over, the fat lady is about ready to sing. And needless to say, the issue of global income and opportunity disparities is a key contributor to the vitriolic immigration debate.
How will the U.S. begin to address these disparities? Is working towards greater free trade and open trade borders the answer? This is not an invitation to Democrats to pander to local constituencies, as legitimate as that might be, or to revert to knee-jerk protectionism rants. It's an invitation for Democrats to evaluate how our trade and international business policies are working, not just for our own immediate "good" but for the well-being of all mankind. This is not just being altruistic, although that would be OK, too. It's vital for our survival that other countries be successful economically and create the right kinds of opportunities for their populations.
Helping ourselves by helping others is important because if the Iraq war has shown us anything it's that Military Force as the one and only instrument of fighting "terrorism" is rather limited at best, badly flawed at worst. This is the second main lesson I draw from the 911 attacks on our shores. Tough talk and shock and awe will only get us so far. We can't blow up every country, or legitimately even threaten to blow up every country we think might endanger us. Liberals expressed a deep concern with the Bush administration's "pre-emptive force doctrine", but the truth is, no matter what our stated policy, military force can't be used in all, or even most cases. In fact, it can only be used rarely if at all. Three years after toppling Saddam Hussein, we have every indication that from a terrorism perspective, we may have left that country, and by extension ourselves, worse off as a result of the invasion. Nation building ain't easy. Rather than ape Republican rhetoric about being "tough" Democrats should unashamadly argue that the military is a greatly limited tool in the fighting the "war on terror" and that we need to begin to address other means of assuring other nations and their populations that we have their well-being in mind.
The third lesson is that religious fundamentalism is very dangerous. While the 911 attackers were radical Islamists, religious fundamentalism of various stripes has caused a considerable amount of bloodshed throughout history. We have an interest in ensuring that no one religion gets a monopoly on public policy or civil society. Radical Islam, like other variations of puritanical religions, is predicated on the notion that it is the only valid form of human salvation. Once that attitude is given free reign, non-believers can be cast as non-human, as The Other. True religion will protect the freedom of all religions to worship and participate equally in our democracy. Some Republicans give evidence of supporting a regressive, un-Constitutional Christian Reconstructionism. Democrats should ask their opponents if this extremism and exclusivity is what they believe in. Naturally, addressing the problems and role of faith in the public square is controversial. But one of the Democrat's greatest problems in recent years has been a seeming unwillingness to offend anyone. But the growing influence of radical religion in American life can't be ignored in the hope that it will go away. Ignoring the role of radical religion in America will be just as fatal as ignoring it in Afghanistan.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
The Chicago Way

Malone: You said you wanted to get Capone. Do you really wanna get him? You see what I'm saying is, what are you prepared to do?
Eliot Ness: Anything and everything in my power.
Malone: And *then* what are you prepared to do? If you open the can on these worms you must be prepared to go all the way because they're not gonna give up the fight until one of you is dead.
Eliot Ness: How do you do it then?
Malone: You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone! Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?
Eliot Ness: I have sworn to capture this man with all legal powers at my disposal and I will do so.
Malone: Well, the Lord hates a coward. Do you know what a blood oath is, Mr. Ness?
Eliot Ness: Yes.
Malone: Good, 'cause you just took one.
We live in a strange world. Michelle Malkin publishes the names of students who opposed allowing military recruiters on campus, causing some among her readership to respond to the students with death threats and other forms of harassment. Yet, it's the "left" that's "unhinged".
Nevertheless, it's counterproductive to complain or even point out, as many of my favorite bloggers have, that Malkin's behavior is "over the line" or beyond the pale, and that she should apologize. The Rush Limbaughs, Ann Coulters and Michelle Malkins of the world don't apologize. Calling for their apologies makes them stronger and more vitriolic. It makes them think we're weak. Nor is the corporate media or their political sponsors going to call them on anything they do, no matter how outrageous.
And we've seen this before. Remember the Swiftboaters? The first reaction of the Kerry campaign and many among the left was to call for the ads to be withdrawn and the sponsors to be refuted by decent figures on the political "right" (like John McCain).
That was effective, wasn't it?
There seems to be an assumption on the part of us leftists that the "right" is supposed to be playing by the rules, and they aren't.
Calls for apologies and even factual counter-presentations don't phase the "right's" pundits, screamers and hate-mongerers. It's sad to say, but there's only one language, one tactic that the "right" understands. It's action. There's only one place it recognizes, and that's the gutter.
The emergence of Daily Kos and other Democratic web-sites is proving to be an important force in shaping party politics. But I suspect that many of us are only beginning to understand the nature of the Republican underground, as represented by its talk radio hosts, web-bloggers, cable television networks, "family" advocacy councils, reconstructionist theorists, and anti-intellectual rabble rousers, which play such a large role in elevating or destroying GOP candidacies and cowing the corporate media.
So, as "Malone" might ask of us would-be-nation changers, "what are you prepared to do?...And *then* what are you prepared to do?" Many of us, I know, would rather not play this game, not stoop to the level of raunch politics specialized in by the Michelle Malkins of the world. We live in a democracy where we strive for the values of pluralism, education, and tolerance needed to support a civil society. We'd like to do our anti-war protests and democratic participation peacefully.
But our opponents are not going to let us do that. To even have a chance of turning back the nation's slide towards fascism--and that's where the Savages, Limbaughs, Coulters, and Malkins would lead us--we have to create an environment where liberal ideas can be heard. To do that, liberal groups, individuals, and leaders need to have the protection to act. The "right's" interest is in creating a climate of fear to make sure that we can't act. That's why the UC Santa Cruz group was targeted. As seemingly minor a group or effort as they appeared to be making, the "right" needs to make them an example. Creating fear on the part of the progressive community, or creating ridicule among the mass public for the left, is what the "right" has been specializing in for the last two decades. Even if the press release had not contained contact information, don't think the "right" would be beyond finding that information anyway.
So what am I saying? If we are going to take steps to turn back the tide of militarism and authoritarianism we need to recognize what the other side is prepared to do. And when the Michelle Malkins of the world step "over the line" we need to respond with action, not plaintative words or calls for apologies. We need to become actors, not reactors. We need to become the hunter instead of the hunted. When the Michelle Malkins of the world call for hate-male and death threats from their readers, their hosts need to wonder when and where the next horse's head is going show up under their bed-covers.
That's the Chicago Way.
Yeah, I don't know why either
The perfesser:
Blogger Michael Totten has been blogging from Iraq. The latest installment is here, with links to his earlier posts.
With his detailed first-person reports and excellent photos as he travels the area, Totten is offering a kind of reporting that Big Media seem not to be delivering. I'm not sure why that is, but his stuff -- supported entirely by reader donations -- is well worth your time.
Yeah, I don't know why the corporate media isn't doing his style of reporting either. But maybe this has something to do with it:
Police on Monday found 18 bodies in Baghdad, including a prominent Sunni politician's brother who had been missing about three weeks.
Taha Mutlaq, who disappeared in late March, had been shot several times in the head and appeared to have been tortured, police said.
His brother, Saleh Mutlaq, is the head of the National Dialogue Front, which won 11 seats in Iraq's parliament.
Police also found 17 unidentified bodies around the capital, all of them shot in the head and showing signs of torture.
Twelve of the bodies were discovered in Dora, a Sunni district in southern Baghdad.
Two other bodies were found in Khadhamiya, a Shiite area of northern Baghdad, and three turned up in the Shu'la neighborhood in northwestern Baghdad.
The discovery of bodies killed in similar fashion has been a regular occurrence in Baghdad since sectarian violence flared after an attack on a revered Shiite mosque February 22.
Of course, once Iraq is pacified, a unity government is formed, and the oil is flowing again, there's always Iran.
Blogger Michael Totten has been blogging from Iraq. The latest installment is here, with links to his earlier posts.
With his detailed first-person reports and excellent photos as he travels the area, Totten is offering a kind of reporting that Big Media seem not to be delivering. I'm not sure why that is, but his stuff -- supported entirely by reader donations -- is well worth your time.
Yeah, I don't know why the corporate media isn't doing his style of reporting either. But maybe this has something to do with it:
Police on Monday found 18 bodies in Baghdad, including a prominent Sunni politician's brother who had been missing about three weeks.
Taha Mutlaq, who disappeared in late March, had been shot several times in the head and appeared to have been tortured, police said.
His brother, Saleh Mutlaq, is the head of the National Dialogue Front, which won 11 seats in Iraq's parliament.
Police also found 17 unidentified bodies around the capital, all of them shot in the head and showing signs of torture.
Twelve of the bodies were discovered in Dora, a Sunni district in southern Baghdad.
Two other bodies were found in Khadhamiya, a Shiite area of northern Baghdad, and three turned up in the Shu'la neighborhood in northwestern Baghdad.
The discovery of bodies killed in similar fashion has been a regular occurrence in Baghdad since sectarian violence flared after an attack on a revered Shiite mosque February 22.
Of course, once Iraq is pacified, a unity government is formed, and the oil is flowing again, there's always Iran.
What a Surprise
Georgia Enacts a Tough Law on Immigrants
ATLANTA, April 17 -- Gov. Sonny Perdue signed a sweeping immigration bill on Monday that supporters and critics say gives Georgia some of the nation's toughest measures against illegal immigrants.
The law requires verification that adults who seek many state-administered benefits are in the United States legally. Employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants face sanctions, and companies with state contracts must check employees' immigration status.
The law also requires that the police check the status of people they arrest.
Many of its provisions will not take effect until July 1, 2007.
The bill drew demonstrators on both sides at the Capitol here and prompted a daylong work stoppage by thousands of immigrants.
The regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Tisha Tallman, said she was studying potential legal challenges.
Governor Perdue, a Republican, said at the signing: "I want to make this clear -- we are not, Georgia's government is not, and this bill is not, anti-immigrant. We simply believe that everyone who lives in our state needs to abide by our laws."
The law will not affect emergency medical care and educational benefits for children in kindergarten through 12th grade. Federal courts have said those programs have to be provided regardless of immigration status.
Exemptions were added for other services like prenatal care and the treatment of communicable diseases.
Outside the Capitol, a few hundred supporters of the law applauded loudly when word came that Mr. Perdue was signing the measure.
The crowd waved American flags and cheered as State Representative Melvin Everson, a black Republican in the House, denounced illegal immigration as a cancer.
"The last time I checked," Mr. Everson said, "America was the land of English, not Spanish."
So the bill and the state are by no means "anti-immigrant" but one of the bill's supporters says (illegal) immigration is a "cancer" and that the last time he "checked", America was the land of the King's English, not Espanol.
Wanna know about "Mr. Everson"?
Melvin was born on September 24, 1957 to the late Northern & Willa Everson of Abbeville, Ga. He attended Wilcox High School and graduated in 1975. After high school he attended Albany State University and graduated in 1983 with a BS in Criminology. Melvin married Geraldine M. Everson and they have one son, Ricardo D. Everson who attended South Gwinnett High School and was an honor graduate. He is a recent graduate from UGA with a B.S. degree in social work. He is currently applying for Law School at UGA.
Melvin served 23 years in the military and just recently retired in 1999. He served 5 years on Snellville's Planning Commission before running a successful campaign to become a council member in 2000. He is a charter member of the Snellville Optimist Club, Associate Pastor of Salem Missionary Baptist Church in Lilburn, Ga., and served on the Take Pride in Snellville Committee. Everson served two terms as President of the South Gwinnett High School PTSA and two terms as Vice President.
Melvin was a fifteen-year employee with JCPenney Catalog as a Customer Relations Supervisor until the company ceased its Atlanta operations in July 2003. During fourteen of those years, Melvin served as the United Way Advisory Member for JCPenney for Clayton, Henry and Butts counties, and just recently completed his tenure as the 2003 campaign chair of United Way in Clayton County. Melvin is currently an Associate Pastor at Salem Missionary Baptist Church and a Probation Officer for Professional Probation Services.
So a black Republican in the South who thinks (illegal) immigration is a "cancer" and who says that the last time he "checked" America was the land of the King's English and not Espanol, although the issue of English-Espanol doesn't appear to have been at all relevant to the legislation at hand, also turns out to be an "associate pastor" of a Baptist church.
Charming. Who'd a thunk it? A Christian and a bigot. In a way, the Christian Right is "right"--it's awfully hard being a Christian these days, especially when we're represented by such fine spokesman as Mr. Everson.
You know what the sad thing is? I checked out Everson's bio because the fact that he was a black Republican in the South piqued my curiosity, and made me suspicious that the guy was probably a right-wing evangelical. And how about that? He is.
And while we're on the subject, what sort of pastor is it that doesn't appear to have anything resembling a religious education? I know I probably sound like some sort of snob, but the Bible was written in Hebrew (the O.T.) and Greek (the N.T.) with some Arabic thrown in for good measure. It usually helps if the pastor preaching the Word is familiar with the Biblical languages or at least has some awareness of the basics of theology. Guess that's not a condition for churches these days.
And what's with this guy's resume? He was born in 1957. He served in the military for 23 years. He was an employee at JC Penney for 15 years. I'm having a hard time with the math. He's 49 years old and has apparently worked for 38 years. Maybe that military career was part-time.
Anyway, it's be nice to hear, for once, of a bigot not being connected to Christianity.
ATLANTA, April 17 -- Gov. Sonny Perdue signed a sweeping immigration bill on Monday that supporters and critics say gives Georgia some of the nation's toughest measures against illegal immigrants.
The law requires verification that adults who seek many state-administered benefits are in the United States legally. Employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants face sanctions, and companies with state contracts must check employees' immigration status.
The law also requires that the police check the status of people they arrest.
Many of its provisions will not take effect until July 1, 2007.
The bill drew demonstrators on both sides at the Capitol here and prompted a daylong work stoppage by thousands of immigrants.
The regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Tisha Tallman, said she was studying potential legal challenges.
Governor Perdue, a Republican, said at the signing: "I want to make this clear -- we are not, Georgia's government is not, and this bill is not, anti-immigrant. We simply believe that everyone who lives in our state needs to abide by our laws."
The law will not affect emergency medical care and educational benefits for children in kindergarten through 12th grade. Federal courts have said those programs have to be provided regardless of immigration status.
Exemptions were added for other services like prenatal care and the treatment of communicable diseases.
Outside the Capitol, a few hundred supporters of the law applauded loudly when word came that Mr. Perdue was signing the measure.
The crowd waved American flags and cheered as State Representative Melvin Everson, a black Republican in the House, denounced illegal immigration as a cancer.
"The last time I checked," Mr. Everson said, "America was the land of English, not Spanish."
So the bill and the state are by no means "anti-immigrant" but one of the bill's supporters says (illegal) immigration is a "cancer" and that the last time he "checked", America was the land of the King's English, not Espanol.
Wanna know about "Mr. Everson"?
Melvin was born on September 24, 1957 to the late Northern & Willa Everson of Abbeville, Ga. He attended Wilcox High School and graduated in 1975. After high school he attended Albany State University and graduated in 1983 with a BS in Criminology. Melvin married Geraldine M. Everson and they have one son, Ricardo D. Everson who attended South Gwinnett High School and was an honor graduate. He is a recent graduate from UGA with a B.S. degree in social work. He is currently applying for Law School at UGA.
Melvin served 23 years in the military and just recently retired in 1999. He served 5 years on Snellville's Planning Commission before running a successful campaign to become a council member in 2000. He is a charter member of the Snellville Optimist Club, Associate Pastor of Salem Missionary Baptist Church in Lilburn, Ga., and served on the Take Pride in Snellville Committee. Everson served two terms as President of the South Gwinnett High School PTSA and two terms as Vice President.
Melvin was a fifteen-year employee with JCPenney Catalog as a Customer Relations Supervisor until the company ceased its Atlanta operations in July 2003. During fourteen of those years, Melvin served as the United Way Advisory Member for JCPenney for Clayton, Henry and Butts counties, and just recently completed his tenure as the 2003 campaign chair of United Way in Clayton County. Melvin is currently an Associate Pastor at Salem Missionary Baptist Church and a Probation Officer for Professional Probation Services.
So a black Republican in the South who thinks (illegal) immigration is a "cancer" and who says that the last time he "checked" America was the land of the King's English and not Espanol, although the issue of English-Espanol doesn't appear to have been at all relevant to the legislation at hand, also turns out to be an "associate pastor" of a Baptist church.
Charming. Who'd a thunk it? A Christian and a bigot. In a way, the Christian Right is "right"--it's awfully hard being a Christian these days, especially when we're represented by such fine spokesman as Mr. Everson.
You know what the sad thing is? I checked out Everson's bio because the fact that he was a black Republican in the South piqued my curiosity, and made me suspicious that the guy was probably a right-wing evangelical. And how about that? He is.
And while we're on the subject, what sort of pastor is it that doesn't appear to have anything resembling a religious education? I know I probably sound like some sort of snob, but the Bible was written in Hebrew (the O.T.) and Greek (the N.T.) with some Arabic thrown in for good measure. It usually helps if the pastor preaching the Word is familiar with the Biblical languages or at least has some awareness of the basics of theology. Guess that's not a condition for churches these days.
And what's with this guy's resume? He was born in 1957. He served in the military for 23 years. He was an employee at JC Penney for 15 years. I'm having a hard time with the math. He's 49 years old and has apparently worked for 38 years. Maybe that military career was part-time.
Anyway, it's be nice to hear, for once, of a bigot not being connected to Christianity.
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Iran?
I'll admit I'm having a strange reaction to the "wild speculation" about Iran and whether there will soon be "wars and rumors of wars" again in the Middle East.
The strange reaction I'm having is I just don't buy it. Maybe I'm naive or deluded, I don't know which. I just don't think the administration can afford to go there, literally or figuratively. I know they're messianical and inept, but I don't think they're this crazy. Don't get me wrong, the reality based community is well within its rights to begin spreading the alarm, given the snow-balling we got between 9-11 and March 2003. But the administration, someone in the administration, has to know or at least highly suspect what some of the implications would be of an Iran war.
But maybe the administration hasn't yet learned the lesson from Iraq that history is starting to write. Maybe America's power elite thinks Iran will look like Afghanistan and the first few weeks of Gulf War II.
Someone, someday will probably go back and write a very interesting book about the wars America waged between 1981 and 2006. They will write about how after the national trauma delivered by Vietnam, America's military was seemingly resurrected, aided by new technology and the capture of the government by a new conservative elite, dedicated to recreating America as a militant, faux-Christian "City on a Hill" ruled by uncompromising patriots and inhabited by loyally unquestioning citizens.
When they inquire as to America's military excursions in the Reagan era and beyond, they'll no doubt highlight our trampling of Grenada, our clandestine support for right-wing dictatorships in El Salvador, Nicaragua and elsewhere throughout Latin America, our one-time bombing of Libya, the invasion of Panama and capture and trial of Manuel Noriega, and the Reagan era's grand finale, Gulf War I, the route of Saddam Hussein's army and the liberation of Kuwait. This survey of the new American militarism might even include the air-war over Kosovo, leading to the ending of Serb atrocities, the capture of Slabodan Milosovic, and the stabilization of the Balkans by UN and NATO peacekeepers. Finally, the events of 9-11 and the soon to be unleashed invasion of Afghanistan will come under review, serving as the high-point of American triumphalism.
Then this history will turn to Operation Iraqi Freedom, known at the ground level as Cobra II. Before Iraq 2.0, and even in its early stages, the resurgence of America's military might appeared to be a fait accompli. The Reagan tough talk and defense build-up that's been credited in some quarters to the demise of Communism, the against-expectations quick roll-back of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait within a week's time and a scant loss of American military personnel, and the also relatively successful reconstituting of Afghanistan, where America's Cold War enemy had failed, seemed to all point to limitless possibilities for American military hegemony. New technology assured military victories would be short and relatively painless. Wars were no longer really wars. Not only was a draft or full societal war mobilization necessary, ground troops themselves might rarely be needed.
In a way, it's hard to fault the planners of Gulf War II. The peaceniks had been wrong about Gulf War I and Afghanistan. No chemical or biological weapons had been unleashed as a result of GWI, nor had our oil been shut off. American troops did not get bogged down in Afghanistan as had the Soviets. History had not been a valid guide for assessing just how thoroughly dominate the American military machine had become against third world foes.
In the lead-up to GWII, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld no doubt typified the beliefs of neoconservatives everywhere when he spoke aboard the Intrepid, a WWII air craft carrier anchored in the Hudson river on February 14. His speech was entitled, "Beyond Nation Building". In it, he criticized the nation-building policies of the previous administration saying that in Kosovo, they had created a "culture of dependency". America's new strategy was perfectly illustrated by its Afghanistan campaign where the U.S. was "helping the Afghans build their own country." There was no need for significant troop deployments and nor would there be a long occupation. The Iraq campaign would be even more efficient Rumsfeld promised. Iraq was rich in oil and the administration had more time to prepare the postwar plan.*
But as the last three years have demonstrated, GWII would be the first black mark in America's new military era. Iraq has and is demonstrating that war cannot be fought on the cheap, with magical bombers that alleviate the need for "boots on the ground" and large-scale sacrifices at home. If there is an Iranian invasion, the 101st Fighting Keyboarders won't get to stay downstairs in the basement or on campus flying yellow ribbons at support the troop bake sales.
This is why I don't think there will be military action against Iran. I don't see it stopping or being limited to a few smart bombs against selected, well known targets. Air attacks on Iran would prompt a response, in Iraq and elsewhere, that would rise above the level anyone could write off as being liberal defeatism.
The neocon's military party is over. Iraq was the beginning of the end of it. If there is an Iran, the neoconservative agenda will be sent back to the stone-age.
And that book on 1981-2006 American military history will be quite a read. In the meantime, and for an alternative perspective, read what Billmon has to say.
*Taken from the book, Cobra II, by Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor, page 151.
The strange reaction I'm having is I just don't buy it. Maybe I'm naive or deluded, I don't know which. I just don't think the administration can afford to go there, literally or figuratively. I know they're messianical and inept, but I don't think they're this crazy. Don't get me wrong, the reality based community is well within its rights to begin spreading the alarm, given the snow-balling we got between 9-11 and March 2003. But the administration, someone in the administration, has to know or at least highly suspect what some of the implications would be of an Iran war.
But maybe the administration hasn't yet learned the lesson from Iraq that history is starting to write. Maybe America's power elite thinks Iran will look like Afghanistan and the first few weeks of Gulf War II.
Someone, someday will probably go back and write a very interesting book about the wars America waged between 1981 and 2006. They will write about how after the national trauma delivered by Vietnam, America's military was seemingly resurrected, aided by new technology and the capture of the government by a new conservative elite, dedicated to recreating America as a militant, faux-Christian "City on a Hill" ruled by uncompromising patriots and inhabited by loyally unquestioning citizens.
When they inquire as to America's military excursions in the Reagan era and beyond, they'll no doubt highlight our trampling of Grenada, our clandestine support for right-wing dictatorships in El Salvador, Nicaragua and elsewhere throughout Latin America, our one-time bombing of Libya, the invasion of Panama and capture and trial of Manuel Noriega, and the Reagan era's grand finale, Gulf War I, the route of Saddam Hussein's army and the liberation of Kuwait. This survey of the new American militarism might even include the air-war over Kosovo, leading to the ending of Serb atrocities, the capture of Slabodan Milosovic, and the stabilization of the Balkans by UN and NATO peacekeepers. Finally, the events of 9-11 and the soon to be unleashed invasion of Afghanistan will come under review, serving as the high-point of American triumphalism.
Then this history will turn to Operation Iraqi Freedom, known at the ground level as Cobra II. Before Iraq 2.0, and even in its early stages, the resurgence of America's military might appeared to be a fait accompli. The Reagan tough talk and defense build-up that's been credited in some quarters to the demise of Communism, the against-expectations quick roll-back of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait within a week's time and a scant loss of American military personnel, and the also relatively successful reconstituting of Afghanistan, where America's Cold War enemy had failed, seemed to all point to limitless possibilities for American military hegemony. New technology assured military victories would be short and relatively painless. Wars were no longer really wars. Not only was a draft or full societal war mobilization necessary, ground troops themselves might rarely be needed.
In a way, it's hard to fault the planners of Gulf War II. The peaceniks had been wrong about Gulf War I and Afghanistan. No chemical or biological weapons had been unleashed as a result of GWI, nor had our oil been shut off. American troops did not get bogged down in Afghanistan as had the Soviets. History had not been a valid guide for assessing just how thoroughly dominate the American military machine had become against third world foes.
In the lead-up to GWII, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld no doubt typified the beliefs of neoconservatives everywhere when he spoke aboard the Intrepid, a WWII air craft carrier anchored in the Hudson river on February 14. His speech was entitled, "Beyond Nation Building". In it, he criticized the nation-building policies of the previous administration saying that in Kosovo, they had created a "culture of dependency". America's new strategy was perfectly illustrated by its Afghanistan campaign where the U.S. was "helping the Afghans build their own country." There was no need for significant troop deployments and nor would there be a long occupation. The Iraq campaign would be even more efficient Rumsfeld promised. Iraq was rich in oil and the administration had more time to prepare the postwar plan.*
But as the last three years have demonstrated, GWII would be the first black mark in America's new military era. Iraq has and is demonstrating that war cannot be fought on the cheap, with magical bombers that alleviate the need for "boots on the ground" and large-scale sacrifices at home. If there is an Iranian invasion, the 101st Fighting Keyboarders won't get to stay downstairs in the basement or on campus flying yellow ribbons at support the troop bake sales.
This is why I don't think there will be military action against Iran. I don't see it stopping or being limited to a few smart bombs against selected, well known targets. Air attacks on Iran would prompt a response, in Iraq and elsewhere, that would rise above the level anyone could write off as being liberal defeatism.
The neocon's military party is over. Iraq was the beginning of the end of it. If there is an Iran, the neoconservative agenda will be sent back to the stone-age.
And that book on 1981-2006 American military history will be quite a read. In the meantime, and for an alternative perspective, read what Billmon has to say.
*Taken from the book, Cobra II, by Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor, page 151.
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