I'm Not Neutral

The Troops

2012-11-13T15:29:00.000-05:00

These days one hears a great deal about "The Troops" and our obligation to "support" them, and while this has generated a mini-boom for the bumper sticker industry and has given politicians of all stripes a common topic to blather about and has led to "God Bless America" replacing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" as the song-of-choice for the 7th inning stretch, it has not resulted in increased funding for the VA or in services to veterans or their families. And the reason for that is that "Support Our Troops" is sentimental drivel, nearly meaningless as a phrase, and it allows us to sentimentalize and, therefore, objectify the very troops it is meant to honor.

I think it is a natural impulse of humans to regard our fighting personnel, particularly in times of conflict, sentimentally. Doing so helps us who are not called to fight to distance ourselves from the horror of what is done in our names. What should be regarded as tragedy gets rewritten as melodrama and heroes and villains are assigned their parts, never to be understood on any more profound or human level than the labels that land upon them. They and their foes are denied all individuality and subtlety and depth.

The film critic, Donald Richie, defined sentimentality as being "unearned emotion." And when we approach strangers in airports or shopping malls just because they happen to be wearing a certain kind of uniform and thank them, that is unearned emotion. We know nothing of the individual and whether they deserve or want thanks. That person has been reduced to the level of a symbol, minimized into an abstraction. Their personhood, their individuality, their desire and need to present themselves to the world as a human have been taken from them in the brutality of a sentimental (and well-intentioned, but that's another road) gesture.

We like to think of "the troops," but disregard the individuals who inhabit those uniforms because then we would have to acknowledge in a true and real and tragic way that they are the ones doing the horrible tasks that our politicians--in our name--send them to do. They are the ones who are being wounded or killed or wounding and killing, the ones who suffer to carry out the aims of those who did not serve and who makes these plans as a result of theories and in pursuit of abstract goals.

Sentimentality is a lie, and it is a convenient lie because it allows us to avoid confronting the true implications of the thing we are trying to appreciate. The sentimental wrap up to an episode of a sitcom alllows us to avoid confronting the true implications of the arguments and schemes and tricks we have just witnessed. The sentimentality of a horror film allows us to watch suffering and misery with enough detachment to be bemused. Surprise and shock are not the same as compassion, and watching a character tortured or eviscerated for entertainment is an exercise in avoidance.

And so, when we cloak our servicemen and women and the veterans who served before them in sentimentality, we drape them in lies. It is unfair, dehumanizing, and demeaning. It also makes rational discussion of the policies behind various adventures difficult if not impossible. And, as we have seen over the last decade, making policy without principled discussion leads inevitably to disaster.

We can do better by our service people and our veterans than to sentimentalize them. We can fight fewer chicken hawk wars and better support those who have lived through the hell of war after they have returned and are no longer useful as cannon fodder. We can bring them home to their loved ones, and consider conflicts through the prism of reason rather than sentimental emotion. We can do better.

How Mr Obama Won the Debate by Not Winning

2012-10-08T10:25:00.004-04:00

I did not watch last Wednesday's debate. I will not watch the upcoming Vice Presidential debate, which I think happens later this week, nor will I watch either of the final two Presidential ones. I find them to be silly affairs, low on useful information and high on silliness and just more proof that the news has become merely a fully owned subsidiary of show business. And show business (and I'm not talking about Barbra Streisand's Constitutionally-guaranteed right to think and say whatever she wishes) has no place in public discourse. As CSPAN has proved for over three decades, public policy is a dull and detail-oriented thing and is not the product of zippy one-liners or good haircuts or skillful editing of carefully photographed images.

I've been weaning myself off debates since the mid 1990s, and my semi-boycott has resulted in there being an almost endless number of the damned things, starting, it seems, a few days after Inauguration Day and extending through 27 hours after the polls have closed on Election Day nearly four years later. They give great grizzle for the chattering classes (made up of about 37 people) to get a bunch of other people--people who think that keeping up on current events somehow makes them smart--all worked up over nothing, over plumes of smoke shaped like ducks and ephemera carefully considered as edifices. Bull pizzle, top-to-bottom.

I have been tempted in a few times over recent years, but substantially gave up on debates after two incidents involving the Bush/Cheney ticket. The first that I will mention, which goes to show what nitwits the "moderators" tend to be and how misleading the participants can be, came when Vice President Cheney started off his debate by saying that in his trips to the Senate that he had never seen Mr Edwards there once. NOT ONE SINGLE TIME! And the moderator said nothing and Mr Edwards just stammered some half-witted reply rather than saying, "Mr Vice President, as far as I know, your office is in the Old Executive Office Building, which is next to the White House and is therefore approximate a mile away from the Senate. How the hell would YOU know how often I've been there?" But Mr Cheney got away with it with that dreadful smirk of his poisoning society as he did. He's a clever one, that Mr Cheney, but we always presume the evil ones are.

The second one from that same campaign that left me slack-jawed, wide-eyed and amazed, was during the town hall style debate held between President Bush and Mr Kerry. Now, Kerry had been a champion debater in college and his rep was as being almost invincible in any debate format. So, imagine my surprise when, after one of the carefully selected independent voters asked the President "What do you think was a correctly decided Supreme Court decision?" (a fine question, by the way, and one you would never fear having come from a news-personality moderator), and he replied "Dred Scott" that Mr Kerry just let the fucking thing go! The decision in Dred Scott v Sandford, as any first year law student or junior high school student of history should know, declared that free citizens could still be considered property and should be returned to their "owners." And Mr Kerry said nothing. He let it go, as did the moderator, as did the press, which is supposed to expose such idiocy and not just let it go. The President of the United States in 2004 effectively came out in favor of slavery, and everyone thought it just hunky-dory.

I slipped again last time and watched bits of McCain vs Obama, not a moment of which gave me the impression that the exercises were of the slightest worth.

All of which I say, to say this. Mr Obama, despite a performance that was universally panned, last week won the debate. And he won it, probably unintentionally, because of Mr Romney's smoothness and confidence. Because Mr Romney, in order to seem like a more reasonable and middle-of-the-road candidate to a large audience, had to contradict pretty much everything he's said since he started campaigning some time in 1847. And now the Obama people are running commercials pointing that out and at least 82 out of the 137 members of the chattering classes as pointing it out and the jokes are made and the weakness that afflicts Mr Romney just as surely as it afflicted Mr Kerry in 2004 has been spotlighted and cemented as fact. He is a man who believes nothing and will say anything just in order to be elected.

Americans voted for Mr Bush not because of policy, but because of a sense that he was genuine, and Mr Kerry (and, frankly, Mr Gore before him) was not.

Americans, as is reflected in The Catcher in the Rye, don't like phonies. Never have, never will. And Mr Romney has revealed himself as being a preening, self-inflated phony and he will lose and it will not be close.

The end.

You Bet, John Cassidy

2012-09-26T14:48:00.002-04:00

John Cassidy, a writer for The New Yorker whose writings on economics I find indispensible and whose writings on politics I find maddening because his love of the horse race dampens his ability to see the forest for trees, has posted a blog post in which he lays out what he sees as the eight possible (although unlikely--there's those damn trees again) ways that Mitt Romney could pull out a victory in the current election. (He forgot the one where Zeus descends with his thunderbolt, but I'm sure he's got that scratched on a notepad somewhere.) All his scenarios are canards, and I intend to prove it. (By argument, mostly, but since his assertions aren't backed up by any evidence of them coming to pass, I think we're even on that score.)

First, he poses the possibility that "The Labor Department revises down the number of jobs the economy has created[.]" This is the most plausible of his scenarios, but, I think, still hardly enough to sway an election in which Mitt Romney has worked very hard in which to portray himself as an incompetent boob of a human-hating robot. He also notes that the figures could go quite the other way, noting the downward revision in the 2010 figures to the upward revision of the 2011 figures. Since the full effect of the stimulus was still revealing itself in December 2010, I'd be willing to put a five spot on the trend continuing from the burgeoning recovery that's picked up some small steam since then and wager that the numbers will be revised upwards. I also think revising downward would have to be so substantial that they would wipe out the total net gain in employment since the stimulus. Otherwise, Mr Romney is put in the unenviable position of having to argue that the progress made would have been greater had we just stuck with the very policies that got us in this mess in the first place. In other words, he can throw that punch, but it will probably miss, and he'd risk a short brisk right hand to the midsection.

Mr Cassidy's second scenario is that "Romney does well in the first Presidential debate." I've been reading lately that there is some good analysis that debates don't change much at all, but let's assume that there is something to this. On what do Mr Romney's skills as a debater rely? On his mostly steady, but not without its wobbles, performances in the Republican debates, debates in which his opponents resembled the graduating class from a clown college. This was even compared, as if they were on a par, with Mr Obama's performances against Hillary Clinton by James Fallows. This is absurd. Mrs Clinton was always smart, controlled, and skilled. Which of the Republican challengers was Mr Fallows thinking of who could compare to her? Rick "I Can't Remember the Third One" Perry? Newt "I Know the future and Nobody Else Does" Gingrich? Michelle Bachmann? HERMAN CANE? Not even Jon Huntsman, what at least had sanity on his side, or Ron Paul, who can be effective, but was generally marginalized, can be thought to possess the punching power of Mrs Clinton. And we know that Mr Obama did well enough against John McCain to trounce him in the election.

Mr Obama is going to slice and dice Mr Romney in all three debates, and here's why. Mr Romney, whose campaign is flailing and whose popularity is flagging is going to go into the first debate trying for a knockout. And that means throwing big punches that are most likely to miss in the hopes of catching Mr Obama just once when he's not looking. Which plays right to Mr Obama's strength. He is not a power puncher. He is a counter puncher. And these big roundhouse rights of Mr Romney's are going to lead to him absorbing flurry after flurry of jabs and hooks. This is not going to be pretty, especially not if you're a Republican.

And it's going to get worse with each debate. The second one is going to be done town hall style, a style which is going to set off the suave and in-control Mr Obama against the barely humanoid Mr Romney. This is a style that requires the candidate to treat the questioners as citizens rather than as something a half-step removed from a helper monkey. There's no comparison.

By the third debate, the Romney campaign will be in such disarray that having to debate on his weakest subject--foreign policy--will represent the fork that is testing him for doneness. It is a disaster that is waiting to happen. Mr Romney should try faking having the flu to get out of this one. (I've stepped on parts of Propositions 4 and 6 in these last few paragraphs, but I was growing tired of the linear approach anyway.)

The third one, "The September jobs figures are disappointing," is really just a rehashing of number one, and his entire argument for it boosting Mr Romney is dependent on Mitt walking away from the first debate with a decisive win. First, I don't think many voters track the jobs report, and it would have to be one with negative numbers in it to really be significant, I think. And, second, Mr Romney is not going to come out of the first debate looking good. (See above.)

Fourth is "Paul Ryan outguns Joe Biden in the Veep debate." First, I don't think that Paul Ryan is quite the superman that some people would like to imagine his being. His grip on facts--and, therefore, reality--is spotty at best, and his ideological positioning is so rigid that his moves will be easy to anticipate. Second, Joe won't have to play softball this time as he did with Sarah Palin the last time. I can see Joe winning this one with one quick shot to the Ayn Rand. Third, VP debates don't matter and never change anything. If they did, we would have had Vice President Lloyd Bentsen.

Fifth is "The national polls tighten up," which is exactly the opposite of what's happening. One of the main problems with this scenario coming to pass is that the Romney campaign is already being perceived as being a losing campaign, and it is unlikely that this perception will change. Once again, he is dependent on Mr Romney winning the first debate and Mr Ryan winning the VP debate to make this work, but, as discussed above, that isn't going to happen. It isn't. Trust me. Isn't.

Sixth, he offers, "Amid more turmoil in the Middle East, Romney gets the best of Obama in the third and final Presidential debate[.]" Do I really need to go over this again? Okay, let's add a couple of other things. First, the reaction of the government and the people of Libya to the actions of extremists shows that our approach there was solid. They are on our side, and when is the last time you could say that about an Arab country? And what, exactly, does Mr Romney have to offer? Invade Iran? Mass hypnosis? Stage the Olympics in Damascus? He has nothing.

In seventh place comes, "Some key swing states move towards Romney." Since almost all the swing states seem to be swinging--hard--for Obama, this can only be termed a fantasy. He might as well have said, "Inanimate objects coming to life at mouse's bidding vote for Romney." I think the Brits have the best term for this: bollocks.

His final fantasy, number eight, is "On November 6th, the late-breakers swing in Romney’s favor." Again, here on Earth, just the opposite is happening in that Independents are favoring Mr Obama. And, on Election Day, they will only do more so. And rats don't board the sinking ship, they leave it. Which is not to say that Independent voters are vermin. The quality that they share with rats is intelligence and the ability to spot a losing proposition when they see one.

Not being a wealthy man, I will give Mr Cassidy 5-to-1 odds on a $1 bet if he will take Mr Romney. Just to make it sporting.

A Killer Problem

2011-10-04T15:29:00.001-04:00

The kinds of liberal folks that I usually (but not exclusively) sympathize with have been up in arms these past few days over the killing of an American-born al Qaeda member and alleged cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki. I understand their point-of-view. It is a very reasonable one. Their concern is whether killing someone in a far away land using a drone without trial is legal or, in fact, wise. If an American citizen can just be disposed of in this case, where does it stop? Aren't American citizens afforded civil rights that should protect them from being blown to bits without a moment's warning? Isn't this why we have a system of justice?

As I say, I see what they're saying. And, as a general rule, I am sympathetic to it. However, I think that their perspective is off and since they are looking at things from the wrong angle, the facts that they take as obvious actually aren't, and the conclusions they draw are, therefore, mistaken.

I think the most pertinent basic question is this: Was this an act of law enforcement or was it an act of war? Although we would like to think that dealing with al Qaeda is a matter of law enforcement--a regrettable leftover of the Bush-Cheney cabal that consistently fought their War on Terror in the wrong ways and in the wrong places and against the wrong people--we are at war with them. It is not a war against a concept--terror--it is a war against an organization which, simply by its zeal in pursuing jihad against us, sees itself as being at war with us.

Part of the problem is that we are used to wars being essentially geographical, even though all of our wars since 1939 have been essentially ideological even though they took place in specific locations. This war is different. It is a worldwide guerrilla war. Let's think about this. Does al-Qaeda limit its attacks to a certain prescribed geographic area? Not at all. Geography is almost meaningless to them. They have attacked us in Africa (the Embassy bombings), the Middle East (the USS Cole Bombing and numerous other attacks, particularly in countries we were busy invading), and the US itself. In doing so, they have established the rules of engagement, and those rules do not recognize such things as national sovereignty.

Had we known that we could have killed Goebbels--even had he been born in the United States--in Paris in 1943 by bombing his convoy we would have done so without hesitation. This is, I think, a similar situation.

We are at war, and I think that the President sees it as a war and wants to end it. And he has chosen to do so by killing the fewest number of people he can, and that means attacking al Qaeda's leadership, even their mouthpieces.

And as far as al-Awlaki's American citizenship is concerned, he was only a citizen by circumstance and was not really one by choice. He lived only small portions of his life in the US, partly as a child and partly as a grad student who got funding based on the idea that he was not a citizen. He clearly did not consider himself a citizen, and, even if he were, he was a traitor. Let's not assume that the actions taken against him would be taken against a legitimate citizen. That is a bit of a stretch.

I Can't Believe I Have to Type This

2011-09-15T10:58:00.000-04:00

I just read, courtesy of Roger Ebert courtesy of The Guardian, allegations of philandering and drug use by Sarah Palin In Joe McGuinness's new book, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin. This comes on the heels of revelations, yesterday, that she once schtupped some basketball player when he was in college and she was a half-assed sports reporter on an Alaskan TV station. And here's the surprising thing I have to say about it: I don't care.

Whatever I think of Gov. Palin--and that is little enough indeed--I can't see what it matters whether she did some blow or banged her husband's business partner or didn't. Those are things that are personal and immaterial. Assuming that she is planning on running for President, and I assume no such thing, all that matters is how she has conducted herself in terms of governing and what her--God help me for allowing that she has one--philosophy of governing is. All else if dross.

So far, this book is coming across as if it were written by the staff of The National Enquirer or one of those other not-quite-good-enough-to-be-fishwraps. I hope there might be something more substantive in it, but I'm not exactly holding my breath.

Character assassination is not justified, even when it is used against someone who has built her career by defaming others. Our political discourse--in both directions--should be better than this. Tell what someone is likely to do in the future, not who she has done in the past.

2012 and the Obama Landslide

2011-08-24T14:12:00.003-04:00

I've read a great deal of dithering in recent weeks about the current field of Republican candidates and how vulnerable the President is because of the economy and his seeming willingness to let the Republicans in Congress pull down his pants and take his lunch money. I've yet to read much of anything that actually points out the reality of it all, however.

2012 is already in Obama's pocket, and I will tell you why. Back when George W. Bush started his campaign for President, Karl Rove made the very cynical decision to rev up the "base" (read: crazy nutjob wing of the Republican Party) and sell out the entire Republican Party to its most extreme wing in order to accrue short term gains while ensuring long term weaknesses. As a result, the only way for any candidate to grab the Republican nomination is for them to skew their pandering further and further to the right to the point where sensible people are disavowing the scientific evidence concerning global warming and the theory of evolution and raising their hands in support of not taking a lopsided offer of spending cuts to tax hikes that any sane person would sign onto in a second. Eventually, in order to secure the nomination, the candidate has painted him- or herself into the crazy-dazy corner, where every utterance is extreme and toeing a nonlooney line is no longer an option.

And this is the persona that the candidate is stuck with throughout the general election campaign. For without the nutbags, the candidate has no basis of support and can only be seen as an equivocator. Unreasonable or unethical, those are the two possible images. Either is a losing proposition.

And all the liberals who complain so vehemently about the President and his performance (me included) will vote for him again because the idea of having a Perry or a Bachmann or a Palin as President will be too much to bear and because they have a tendency to talk too much from emotion (remember, these are the same folks who were going to move to Canada if Bush were elected or reelected) and not enough from a practical consideration of the options that lay ahead.

And the Independents will, by-and-large, decide that sanity is preferable to insanity and will vote for Mr. Obama as a possibly weak but eminently sane candidate.

There will be no melodrama. It won't be a squeaker. Obama will win and handily. The end.

Run! Sarah! Run! Or Don't

2011-08-24T10:01:00.004-04:00

By releasing a mock campaign video in Iowa a week or so ago, Sarah Palin has been able to revive speculation that she is planning on running for the Republican Presidential nomination. After having the Not-So-Divine Sarah's existence forced on me for over three years now, I am almost amused at how easily this not very bright but ruthlessly ambitious historical footnote can manipulate the media and the blogosphere and whatever the hell collections of dimwits follow her incessant doings.

Will she run? Won't she run? She will! She won't! She will, won't she?

Who cares?

My prediction is that she won't run, and I say this for a number of reasons. First, I don't think she wants a real job. I think that she enjoys being a celebrity more than she enjoys the power of position. As becomes increasingly apparent as former Palin apparatchiks spill the beans on what an uninvolved, bored, and distracted governor she was, it also becomes apparent to me that the last thing she'd want is a job that involves much longer days and much deeper attention. She didn't quit halfway through her term so that she could run or not run for President. She quit it because she was bored and because she had better opportunities in show business. And ever since, everything she has done, whether it has been some publicity stunt disguised as a campaign appearance or whether it has been some trumped up "controversy," has been, at base, designed to get people to pay attention to her. She is the loud and bratty problem child, who jumps and whoops and breaks lamps for no other reason than to get attention. Don't be fooled. She really is that pathetic.

But I think there is a second reason why she will not run. Although she is not particularly bright (or stupid, either; I would suggest that her intelligence runs somewhere along the lower end of average), she is cagey, and I think she understands that, should she run, her greatest enemies would not be Democrats, but her fellow Republicans.

Let's say that she was foolish enough to run. Were I one of her opponents, I would wait for the first opportunity in the first of the 6000 "debates" she'd have to attend to say, "Well, my feeling is always that once you take a responsibility on, it is important to see it through. I mean, it's nice to be famous and all, but when I was sworn in as (governor, congressman, senator, pizza chain chairman), I was determined to see my term through and not simply walk away from my responsibility to my (constituents/shareholders)." She would be a sitting duck, and I think that she knows it.

The trouble that she's developed with her brand (and my apologies for using that term) is that it is dependent on her being a possible candidate for the Presidency. She's just a gibberish-spouting cipher otherwise. So I expect that she will, at the latest date possible, announce that she will not run in 2012, but will leave the door open to a run in 2016. And then maybe she will announce her candidacy for a spot on an upcoming edition of Celebrity Apprentice or perhaps a revived Circus of the Stars.

A Few Thoughts on Libya

2011-08-23T10:19:00.003-04:00

As the rebels fight their way through Tripoli, I find it is time for me to impart a few nonstandard thoughts concerning the assistance we have given the rebels in their effort to overthrow Muammar el-Qaddafi (New York Times-approved spelling).

First, I think that the notion that gets passed over most in everyone's rantings about this operation is that it is almost unique in the long line of our post-World War II international meddlings in that we entered the fray at the invitation of the people in support of their attempt to remove a dictator. Traditionally, we have entered the fray in order to support a dictator in his attempt to quash the rebels. On the few occasions when we have entered with the intention of overthrowing a dictator (Grenada and Iraq come to mind), it was without the invitation or support of the people.

So, the use of military force in Libya was unique.

This is why some people are confused about what we should do next. We're so used to installing governments that we have this nagging feeling that we're supposed to send an ambassador-cum-procounsel to establish an occupation government. Only there won't be an occupation government because there will be no occupation. What's an imperialist to do?

But we have done our part, and once things calm down, we will be able to go back to minding our own business. And the new government in Libya, one that was supported in its ascension by the United States and Europe, might actually turn out to be an ally in a region in which allies are few and far between. And maybe having a precedent in which we support the people of a nation in overthrowing their oppressors might have more of a positive effect throughout the Islamic world than propping up the Shah of Iran did.

Now, there is a legitimate question as to whether the President has exceeded his authority under the War Powers Act in authorizing and continuing this action. However, I would like to put forth the notion that the rabid, unthinking opposition that he gets on every measure would have made going forth with a worthwhile mission impossible. After all, he could offer to liquidate his assets to then hand out special $50 bills that have "Vote Republican in November" specially printed on them, and he would get nothing but shit from the Republicans and Fox News. Asking for permission to act would not have brought a reasoned debate on the virtues and weaknesses of such an action, but would have brought instead a kneejerk backlash from a group of people who would have, were the President a Republican, cheered and supported such a deployment to the point of giving their wives and daughters for the Republican President's royal enjoyment. In other words, it's not really the President who is killing the Constitution in this matter, it is the endlessly bitter and divisive politics that have come to be embraced as sort sort of strange norm in recent decades.

Besides which, the Congress has spent much of its existence, particularly since 1945, pretending that its Constitutionally mandated power to wage war doesn't exist. there's nothing new here. Let's everyone stop being hypocritical about it.

Education in America

2011-03-07T12:32:00.007-05:00

I was reading a series of short opinion pieces concerning the current fad for blaming the teachers of public schools for every wrong known to man in The New York Times this morning, something that they published under the rubric "Room for Debate." They published eight different views from "both sides" of the issue (God forbid that we ever take a look at a problem from a nonbinary, multidimensional viewpoint) and, outside of the first piece by Diane Ravitch, it was all twaddle.

My discomfort with the manner is which we talk about education in this country dates back at least to the reign of the first President Bush and perhaps before. The buzzwords have always been ones such as "performance" and "standards" and "testing," and everyone involved would nod sagely and agree that all three of these things in the US was substandard, in tatters, motheaten, weather-stained, a disaster, a corruption, a smear of the young, a shame to the old, a bleeding of the taxpayer. Since the days of Good King Bush II, the answer has repeatedly been framed in the guise of testing and punishment for those who do not perform, a vituperative, judgmental, punitive approach that wreaks havoc on schools in poor neighborhoods and rewards school in wealthy districts. It is now being used to vilify teachers and attack the concept of unionization. Were I a Marxist historian, and I am neither, I might be tempted to draw conclusions concerning the drift of sentiment by workers away from people of their own class and in favor of corrupt capital. Were I a Marxist historian.

However, as usual, I think we are stuck contemplating the symptoms rather than the illness that lies underneath. The illness has always been masked by the assumption that all education is merely job training, that the point of educating a populace is to merely mass produce workers who, through their drone-like sense of reality, will make the United States "competitive again." We're never, it seems, actually competitive at the moment any of these worthies is speaking. The Good Old Days are always just in the recent past, almost close enough to touch, smell, and taste, but drawing ever further away. Since we have, have had, and will continue to have, for some time yet, the world's largest and most successful economy is irrelevant. Despite unprecedented success on the world stage, our workers are overpriced, overpaid, overprotected, coddled, underachieving, lazy, and irresolute. And they are all these things because they have not been taught the proper "skills" to get the right kinds of jobs so as to be competitive with all the other workers in the world. Can the pigs who gorge themselves at the troughs of corporate governance be blamed for outsourcing jobs to India and Russia and Indonesia when the land that they depend on for their bountiful slop is littered with dimwits and nogoodniks? Of course not. Those who have nothing on their minds except the pursuit of money can always be trusted to look out for the best interests of mankind and not to wallow only in their own greed. I'm sure the Bible approves of it, and I'm also sure that you could pay the pastor of some megachurch prove it. He could probably start with the story about that crazy man attacking those poor moneylenders in the temple.

But I digress.

It seems to me, and maybe this is just the delusion of someone who is self-educated and therefore not properly trained to give the right answers to the right job-related questions, that education should be about something more profound than the finding of a job or the building of a resume. It has to do with the opening of the mind, not the limitations of job training. It has to do, I think, ideally, with another kind of training: a training in how to reason, in how to use one's mind to the fullest extent of its capabilities. The person who has been trained to reason, who has been trained in rhetoric, who has been trained in a true study of history rather than in a mere recitation of dates, can do many things. The person who has been trained to do a job can do just one.

However, it is not convenient for politicians to makes these assumptions, not even Good King Barack. It is in the interests of the political class to tie education to job acquisition because it is easier to rule a mob who cannot reason than it is to rule one person who can.

To view our children as merely potential workers is to view them as only potential machines. To view them as machines is to make them into objects. To make them into objects is to craft their ruin. Schools are not factories, and students are not products. We educate to ennoble; we educate to enlighten. We should educate to give each student, according to his or her abilities, the tools to deal with a complex and ever-changing society and world. We should teach them how to fish rather than train them to eat one particular kind of fish.

However, to do so takes respect. Respect for one's fellow citizens, respect for one's children, respect for one's opponents. And two things which we seem to be in short supply of these days are respect and the willingness to teach the things that people actually need to know.

The Press v. Citizen's United

2011-02-07T10:11:00.003-05:00

There is an article in today's New York Times which describes the conflict allegedly inherent in the liberal opposition to last year's Supreme Court decision in Citizen's United v. Federal Election Commission. Citizen's United, of course, was the decision that extended political rights to corporations and other large organizations where none had previously existed. Liberals and, I expect, Libertarians argued in opposition to this arguing that corporations had no inherent political rights.

I had written about this at some length on another of my myriad blogs and made the argument that since corporations had no right to vote and did not, in fact, have the concomitant responsibilities of voting or serving on a jury, they therefore had no inherent right to make unlimited and secret campaign contributions. And yes, I think this applies equally to unions, charities, and the Italo-American Society of East Greenwich, Rhode Island. All non-human entities, the end.

However, this morning, I find what I consider a rather specious argument presented as something of a thorny legal knot for liberals to untie concerning this. Rather than me diluting it through paraphrase, let me cede the floor to Adam Liptak of The Times:

If corporations have no First Amendment rights, what about newspapers and other news organizations, almost all of which are organized as corporations?

The answer to this is simple. The corporations that own various news outlets have no 1st Amendment rights. The reporters and editors of such enterprises do. After all, when the government doesn't like it that a story quotes unnamed sources, who gets carted off to jail to reconsider this protection? Is it The New York Times Corporation or is it the reporter? It is always the reporter and it is always the reporter for a very simple reason: It is impossible to incarcerate a concept. And that's what corporations are, fundamentally. They are concepts. And concepts have no rights, except as expressed through the collective rights of the people who agree to accept the fiction that the concept does exist in order to make a living from that other marvelous fiction of modern life: money.

Part of why we live entangled in the existential miasma of modern existence is because we rarely take the time to distinguish between convenient fictions and reality. As a result, reality starts to seem fictional and fiction starts to seems real, and corporations have political rights and angels and UFOs exist and Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are brilliant jurists who aren't representing the interests of the people who take them on expensive hunting trips.

Of course, the problem that democracy (another concept) has is that human society tends toward authoritarianism. In some senses, it is easier being the subject of an authoritarian society than it is being the citizen of a democracy. The political and social questions are left to the political class to sort out and more of one's time and attention can be devoted to bread and circuses. To be a citizen is to participate and to act, however marginally, in an effort to improve and enlarge the society to which one is a member. And to be a citizen, one must be a human and not a concept.

Strategy, Tactics, or Neither

2010-12-08T15:19:00.006-05:00

Ever since I first heard about the now infamous compromise between the President and the Republican leadership while watching Wake Up with Al on The Weather Channel, I have been pondering, as many have, the implications of this deal for the two parties and for America as a whole. In that time, I have most heard nothing but ire coming from Democrats and liberals, who see in this back-door deal a betrayal, a blackmail, and a capitulation. Of the various things I've read and seen, I think, perhaps, the best was from Keith Olbermann.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Despite the barely contained fury, I think that Mr Olbermann offered a sane and thoughtful analysis, an amazingly difficult tightrope to walk. However, while I think his approach a reasonable and useful one, I do not, ultimately, agree.

In military philosophy, a distinction is made between tactical and strategic considerations. Tactics occur on the field of battle and involve the deployment and use of men and materiel in the heat of the fight. Strategy encompasses the larger view of both the battle at hand and the campaign that leads up to and away from it. Tactics involve squads and platoons; strategies move armies.

And I think, in this matter, that few are thinking strategically, while most are bogged down in tactics. This is as true of the Republicans, if not truer, than it is of the Democrats. The Republican Party has not thought strategically about much of anything in decades, and their habit of tactical thinking has led them into quagmire after quagmire, has forced them into alliances that have served them only in the short run and not the long, and has forced them to be endlessly combative, even when combat was no longer to their advantage.

And this is the problem that I have with the critiques that are being leveled against the President, at least in the matter of the tax cuts. The view presented is strictly tactical, and those tactics are not supported and cradled in an overall strategy.

Yes, the rich have gotten their precious tax cuts extended--for two years, not forever--and everyone else got their rates cut too. Social Security withholding will be trimmed as well and those unemployed will be able to collect for as many as thirteen months more. The problem with looking at this tactically is that the tendency is to see it as being mostly about taxes when it is, at bottom, a second round of stimulus. Mr Olbermann worries about unemployment benefits running out in 13 months, which is noble and compassionate. However, isn't better, in the long run, to get people off unemployment and back into jobs? And that is the crux of this compromise. The goal is to strengthen the recovery and to create more jobs so that a smaller safety net will do.

Yes, we will be borrowing to make this happen, some from China and some from our own future, but that is what you do in hard times. Build debt when times are tough and pay it down when times are flush. And you can either increase spending or reduce revenues, but the money has to come from somewhere. It won't just magically appear. The wealthiest will get wealthier still and will horde the money that doesn't go to taxes that might have. That is their nature and their day of reckoning will come, have no doubt. It just won't be right now.

Everyone else will spend their pittances while the greedy rich save their piles, and the middle class, as usual, will be the engine that drives the recovery. And as things improve and more people find their way back to one payroll or another, revenues will also improve and things will get better, and these hard times will slowly become those hard times, and the need to provide for those without will be less pressing and no longer held hostage to extending tax cuts for the wealthiest. In two years, with an improved economy, Barack Obama can be reelected President and the gains that the Republicans made in Congress either mitigated or overturned, and the shoe will be on the other foot. This is the strategy.

There is also the matter that the Republicans, who swept to their gains in the House by pledging to reduce deficits will have made their first order of business extending the deficit by their kneejerk insistence on underwriting the excesses of the wealthiest one percent. No, that won't come back to bite them in the ass. Not much it won't. Another tactical win and strategic defeat.

At least, that's how I see it.

Of course, it is difficult to see all this when the President is so endlessly po-faced following the November elections. He seems to think that someone somewhere was handed some sort of a mandate, when they were not. Large groups of people work on principles closely related to those of fluid mechanics. The blocks of voters that people like to talk about are more like rivulets and streams of them and the sentiments of the polity shift like the sediment and shoals of the Mississippi.

I'll leave you with this. All the talk about what the November elections meant reminds me of this scene from Citizen Kane. "You talk about the People as though you own them." Sometimes Jedidiah was right.

I Got a Feeling--at Airport Security

2010-11-22T10:16:00.003-05:00

I've been putting off writing this post for a while, but I made the mistake of beginning to read an op-ed piece in The New York Times this morning that just pushed me over the edge. The author, a Mr Arnold Barnett, was arguing in favor of the invasive security measures that are being instituted at airports across the nation. After a couple of paragraphs of admitted hypocrisy and threadbare thinking, he made the following outrageous statement:

But then I remember a basic question. What if the 9/11 terrorists had been thwarted at the security checkpoint?

The assumption he presents is that the exacto knives that the terrorists used on that terrible day were not detectable by the security equipment of the time, which is not in the least true. In fact, the entire reason why exacto knives were chosen as a weapon is not because they were undetectable, but because the insane idiots who thought up that plan knew that they would be detected and ignored. Had the same standards for what could and couldn't be taken aboard still existed today, you could do enforced body cavity searches and CAT scans and X-Rays and charcoal renderings and they still would have gotten through.

And let me go further with this. The whole reason why they were able to hijack those planes with measly exacto knives is that the assumptions of the airlines, the government, the crew, and the passengers was that hijackings always became hostage situations. Because of that assumption, the best course of action seemed to be for everyone to remain calm and do nothing. Everyone involved, before the first plane struck the Twin Towers, assumed that the hijacking was going to end on a tarmac somewhere with negotiations and perhaps an infusion of special forces soldiers. The idea of ramming planeloads of innocent people into buildings was a brand new one.

By the time the passengers on the United flight rushed the hijackers, that assumption was dead.

Since that time, we have had two more attempts by people who have gone through security checkpoints to pull things, and both ended with the passengers subduing the miscreants themselves. The 9/11 model of terrorism will never work again because the passengers and crew will never be passive again.

Even Mr Barnett can only point to other recent attempts that had nothing to do with passengers being loaded on planes as justification for these invasive and unnecessary procedures. He has no argument to make. All he has is the dissemination of fear.

And that, at heart, is what is wrong with the implementation of these procedures. They reek of fear. Terrorists, by definition, seek to instill fear. When we react with fear, they win. I am tired of al Qaeda winning. Screw them. Let's look fear in the face and say no to body scans and pat downs.

Post Election Thoughts

2010-11-03T11:15:00.003-04:00

It looks like Republican gains in the House will be even larger than expected, and good for them. Since races for the House are more likely to be fought as battles of the yard sign rather than as grand theoretical battles, I think it shows something that I posited previously on this blog: This election had more to do with turning the bums out than it did with ideology. And all the folks who won last night will have exactly two years to show that they understand that the People are in charge and not them, or else they will get chucked out just like the current bunch. Nobody got a mandate; they got a two-year probationary period.

In other news, I would like to congratulate the people of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations for electing Lincoln Chafee as Governor and for preserving the state's name. They also seem to have voted intelligently and with foresight on a number of bond issues. Well done.

Finally, I would like to take a moment to discuss my true feelings about the the race for governor here in Georgia, which was won by the Republican, Nathan Deal. Throughout this race, in which Deal was challenged by former Democratic Governor Roy Barnes, I kept thinking of a story about Samuel Johnson.

Johnson had been, in conversation, rather pedantically defending the writings of a minor poet named Herrick when one of the participants in the discussion asked him, "Who do you think the better poet, Herrick or Smart?"

To which the great man replied, "Sir, there is no setting a precedence between a louse and a flea."

That, in my mind, was the choice we were faced with in Georgia. I truly wish that a woman named Karen Handle had outpointed Deal in the Republican runoff, but she did not. Although I do not agree with her on several issues, her positions were reasonable and thoughtful enough that I would have gladly voted for her yesterday.

Instead, I was stuck with the choice between a louse and a flea.

A Couple of Things

2010-10-20T10:18:00.004-04:00

The first item I have on the agenda is something that's been on my mind for a while, and it is this: What is it with Democratic Presidents using drones and missiles as a way of killing people they have decided--without benefit of courtroom or jury--are undesirable? They seem to see it as somehow a clean way of murdering those you don't like; however, no matter how you twist and turn it, it is still merely assassination. Further, it is a method of assassination that is almost guaranteed to kill the innocent as well as the--still unproved in a court of law--guilty and is morally and ethically reprehensible. I've had many differences with Republican Presidents in the past, but at least they understand that there is no such thing as a clean war. Anyone who thinks there is, simply because the killing is done by technology rather than by flesh-and-blood soldiers, is fooling himself.

Second, I will go ahead and say what I'm thinking about the upcoming midterm elections. According to the calculations done by Nate Silver, it looks like the Republicans will end up with a majority in the House and the Democrats will retain a slight majority in the Senate. There is no surprise in any of this. And it could be healthy. Both of these results will require the Republicans to actually legislate and govern rather than merely hold their collective breath and take their ball and go home. Which means, I suspect, that one of two things will happen. With luck, we might end up with both parties working together to craft interesting bipartisan legislation. Unfortunately, because of the fervent and zealous factionalism of the current version of the Republican Party, it is likely that the opposite will happen, and we will end up with two years of nongoverment in which no one comes to any agreement about anything.

And that will lead to my third topic: All the people who were swept in this year will be swept out in 2012. It seems like something that I wrote about in 2005 on another blog is actually what people are doing: They are voting against the incumbents in election after election in a collectively unconscious attempt to get politicians to understand that the People are the boss. So far, the message isn't sinking in, but a couple more election cycles should do the trick. And even though the results in November may not be my preferred outcome, good for the People. And the new batch of cowards who will be herding themselves into Washington next January need to keep in mind that their victories were not based in ideology, but in reaction to a sense that their predecessors were not effectively doing the People's business.

Still, politicians are a deluded bunch, so I'm sure that there will be much talk of mandates and other such nonsense.What I've yet to hear from either the politicians or the sycophants who cover them is the realization that whoever is in is getting voted out, whether that happened in the primaries or if it is about to happen in the general election. The key is change, not ideology. It's time they listened and figured that out.

The Significance of the Tea Party

2010-09-15T09:58:00.005-04:00

The Tea Party, which is essentially a right-wing populist movement, has been winning primary victories across the land, and that is good news. For the Democrats.

First, let's talk a bit about history. These are midterm elections upcoming, and the tendency over many, many decades has been for the party that is in power to lose seats in both the House and the Senate in midterm elections. To not gain seats would be a disaster. And to only gain a few in a year when the other party is vulnerable because of a sluggish economy and widespread misconceptions about the legislation it has passed is not a sign of strength.

But that is the situation the Republicans find themselves in. And they find themselves in that position thanks to the Tea Party.

Elections are generally won not from either extreme but in the middle. And the candidates backed and pushed by the Tea Party have tended to the very extreme right. Many of these people are downright scary and are easily painted as extremists, all of which will make it easier for the Democrats to retain seats in both houses that they probably should have--had mainstream candidates been chosen--lost with little Republican effort. And any upticks in the economy between now and the beginning of November--a possibility that is quite reasonable--will further erode the chances of extreme Tea Party candidates against mainstream Democrats.

Furthermore, by 2012 the Republican Party will be in such a state of civil war that it is going to have one hell of a time not slipping back to complete minority status. The GOP is facing a tremendous dilemma. On the one hand, you have the Republican power structure, which is owned and operated by the top 1/2 of one percent of taxpayers, by and for their interests alone, and, on the other, you have the Tea Party, which is populist and is driven mostly by emotion and largely by fear. They are not conservatives, although that label is generally applied to them. They are reactionary revolutionaries, and they are seeking, more and more, to overthrow the public face of the 1/2 of one percent that has spent a fair amount of money in the quest to get them fired up and rabid.

The significance of the Tea Party is that it is the improvised explosive device at the heart of Republican politics, and it was fashioned by Rush and Beck and Fox News. Cynicism and hubris have built a weapon out of outrage, but, like most such devices, it is likely to go off at the wrong time in the wrong place and to inflict more damage on the cause it is meant to support than the one it is meant to destroy.

The populist uprising that flowered in the waning years of the 19th and sputtered out in the early 20th centuries never put William Jennings Bryan in the White House or secured the Free Silver policy that they advocated. They did manage, however, to keep the Democratic Party out of power for a period of about 20 years.

The Nadir of Cowardice

2010-08-24T16:24:00.006-04:00

I tried to be quiet about this. I really didn't want to have to write what I am about to write, but I had no choice. The idiocy has gotten too grand, too massive, for me to not speak my peace. And it was this story from AP that pushed me over the edge.

The "story," of course, is the one that ought to be a nonstory, the whipped up "controversy" concerning the building of a "mosque" "at ground zero" in Manhattan. I know that I had to use an inordinate number of quotation marks in that last sentence, but the vast mountains of nonsense and folderol at the heart of this made that unavoidable.

Let's start by talking facts. Fact #1: It is not a mosque, but a community center. Fact #2: It is not "at" or "next to" ground zero. It is two blocks away. How far away would it need to be before it is in good taste to build? Three blocks? Seven? Twelve? Give me a number. Newt, Rush, and all the rest of you lying fuckers, any one of you, give me a fucking number. Fact #3: This is only a controversy because the Republican Party repeatedly uses fear to sell bullshit. And they are doing to again because they have no respect for the People of the United States, and judging from the idiotic response to this sideshow, they may be justified.

Let me give you a quick rule of thumb: Any time someone seeks to make you afraid they are selling you something, and they are selling you something you don't need and wouldn't ordinarily want. Fear is the salesman's weapon of last resort. And the only defense against it is a well-displayed middle finger. When politicians sell you fear, confound them by showing courage. Tell them to fuck off.

And this goes for Newt and Rush and Gov. David Paterson and Sarah Palin and Harry Reid. The Republicans are all opportunists using the wedge of fear in order to grab short term gains. The Democrats are spineless, vile weasels who are cowering in fear rather than being defenders of the truth. Even the President's remark about not commenting on the wisdom of building there was gutless and pitiful.

This whole thing makes me sick. Is this the gorge into which this great nation has been pushed by partisan politics and the vast propaganda machine for idiocy that we call "the media"?

It makes me bottomlessly sad to look at the news and to see how little so many Americans think of America and its possibilities. "We have nothing to sell but fear itself" should be the motto of our political class. What a bunch of craven, worthless toads. Is it possible that the American experiment, at the hands of loud and opportunistic cowards, is dead?

I don't think quite, yet. But the prognosis doesn't look good.

UPDATE: One more thing. As of late, it has become a moron talking point that building the community center two blocks from ground zero is akin to the Japanese building a Shinto shrine next to Pearl Harbor. My response is this: A Shinto shrine--from what I know of Shinto, which is apparently far more than what Rush Limbaugh knows--would be a lovely and healing thing. Please America, please, do not give in to ignorance and hatred and fear. Newt and Rush and all of the blank faces on Fox have really put the "con" into conservatism and have thus perverted a necessary and once vital political force. Just say no. In fact, go that threadbare phrase one better and replace it with this threadbare phrase instead: Tell them to go fuck themselves. That's the only way out and the only way back to the greatness that is the American experiment.

Miscellaneous Monday Plus a Day

2010-07-27T10:10:00.002-04:00

First, if the leak of documents concerning the war you are fighting will undermine your ability to fight that war simply because it might come out that it is an ethically challenged mess, you are fighting the wrong war. This applies whether you started the war or inherited it from an Administration whose foreign policy wonks were witless, self-satisfied buffoons.

Oliver Stone believes a lot of crazy shit. Why be surprised that he is a Hitler apologist when he believes that there was some huge invisible conspiracy to kill President Kennedy? Both are examples of delusional thinking. He is deluded. He is an asshole. He is a pompous, vicious boor who makes pompous, vicious, boorish movies.

Allowing giant corporations do what they want unencumbered by regulation is akin to inviting someone you know to be a thief to house-sit for you while you are away on vacation. Regulation is the choke chain on the pit bull of commerce.

Why does anybody care what Sarah Palin has to say about anything? She's a dribbling idiot. Ignore her.

Why does any liberal give a rat's ass what Rush Limbaugh has to say? He's not converting anybody. He's always preaching to the choir. Ignore him.

The same goes for Glenn Beck. Why he's ever gone beyond selling chewed pencils on a street corner is beyond my capacity to comprehend. He's an act and a pretty lousy one at that. I'd rather go down the street and see Corbett Monica open for Jerry Vale. Ignore him.

If you publish and promote videos that are false, that are edited so as to be libelous, that are intended to destroy people you don't know, affect families you have not encountered merely in the service of your own zealotry, whether you produced them or not, be man enough to accept responsibility for what you have done. Andrew Breibart is a coward and a slime, and if doesn't like me saying that, he can stop by and we can decide the matter in the nearest alley. In my perfect universe, he would be arrested and jailed in a nice, big landfill. That's where he belongs.

Enough. It is time to get back to reality, which has little to do with anything I've discussed here today. Have a wonderful day.

A School of Bold Entrepreneurs

2010-05-25T10:45:00.004-04:00

If you ever want to get a sense of what sheep people are, just pay attention to the stock market. Watching the mass reactions of these dolts who are regularly passed off as bold entrepreneurs and risk-takers would actually be quite laughable if it weren't for the fact that their collective zigs and zags--behaviors normally associated with minnows--caused tremendous harm to the normal population.

My point here is not to lobby for the closing of such markets or for more or even less regulation. What I'm hoping to encourage is laughter. Laughter at the idiots who work in and support this market. I hope, in however picayune a way, to encourage disparagement of these mice and to take the first chisel to the monument of worship that currently surrounds them.

There is nothing bold or brave or noble in the naked pursuit of money. As Mr. Bernstein says in Citizen Kane, "It's no trick to make a lot of money, if all you want is to make a lot of money." And yet, we live in an age (and perhaps all ages were like this) in which wealth is equated with wisdom and fitness is equated with saintliness. However, neither equation really stands, and there is nothing particularly virtuous about either.

To find wisdom, one must track down numerous sources. No one person or thing or institution (and I'd trust the person or the thing well before the institution) has the market for wisdom cornered. No one could. It is too vast and elusive to be penned up. It is found through suffering and illumination, not from living in a large, gauche McMansion, and its guardians tend to be individuals and not groups of people whose actions are nearly indistinguishable from the weavings and swoopings of a flock of starlings.

The Virtue of Doubt

2010-04-14T13:21:00.002-04:00

One of Joni Mitchell’s better known numbers, “Help Me,” came up on the shuffle the other morning, and I reflected, as I often do with her, on the price that some artists pay for an early and astonishing success. Orson Welles once said,

I painted and they said, ‘Nobody’s ever seen such painting!’ I played and nobody’s ever played like that. And there seemed to be no limit to what I could do. I was spoiled in a very strange way as a child because everybody told me from the moment I was able to hear that I was absolutely marvelous. I never heard a discouraging word for years, you see. I didn’t know what was ahead of me.

The danger in being told how marvelous one is in that, eventually, one might start to believe it. It develops into a kind of certainty and a faith in one’s brilliance, and that concoction is a deadly brew. In Welles’s case, he invoked the ire of the system that should have sustained him, and he spent the balance of his career, after Citizen Kane, having pictures taken away from him to be recut and running around the world begging for financing from Philistines. As he also said later in that same interview, that’s no way to lead a life.

In the case of Ms. Mitchell, her work became mired, after the great success of Court and Spark, in the swamp of her own pretentiousness. Having been told repeatedly that she was a genius, she came to believe it. Believing it, she developed faith in her genius. Having faith in it, she became certain of its existence. Paul McCartney has been similarly infected.

Belief, faith, and certainty. These three go hand-in-hand. One reinforces the other, which would be fine if they weren’t all based in the ephemeral. We believe when we cannot know. We have faith in order to justify our belief. And to protect the fragile eggs of faith and belief, we build a wall of certainty, denying reason, denying questioning, denying examination. And denying doubt.

The wonder and glory of faith is, of course, the great American cliche, and almost every politician finds it convenient to trot his out for inspection from time-to-time. Even rarer than the atheist in a foxhole is the atheist on the stump, and there is no greater indictment of the value of faith than that every politician sees fit to display his like it’s encased in amber.

This is not to say that faith and belief are without value. Not all is known, and I suspect that not all can be known. It is when faith and belief are mixed with certainty that the greatest sorrow flows. The potion of faith and belief, spiced with certainty, is the basis of every conspiracy theory and crackpot religion, and has formed the basis for great social evils such as South African Apartheid and the demi-slavery of the Jim Crow South. The racist, the terrorist, the killer cloaked in the lineaments of religion are all true believers.

The cure, therefore, is doubt. Not a great deal of doubt, just a pinch. Doubt is the dot of Chinese mustard in an intellectual pool of duck sauce. It cuts through the cloying sweetness of faith and belief and make their flavors more complex and subtle and rich. Doubt makes opposing ideas seem possible and possibly legitimate. It opens the ears and relaxes the mind. It invites conversation and discussion and seeks relief not in thesis or antithesis, but in synthesis.

For one of the great problems in our public life today is the inability of opposing groups and individuals to compare ideas, rationally, and to come up with better ideas out of the comparison. Instead, our public life is awash in grandstanding and posturing, and the conversation that is necessary to the functioning of a healthy democracy is controlled, mostly, by shills and toadies. It is a sad thing, this current American conversation, a set of speeches made to a wall by a wall.

But it needn’t be that way. All we need is for more people to learn the virtue of doubt.

2010-03-23T09:19:00.007-04:00

In the penultimate speech before the vote on the health care bill the other evening, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) showed in his first sentence what sort of craven hypocrite he is. He said:

“Today, we should be standing together, reflecting on a year of bipartisanship, and working to answer our country’s call and their challenge to address the rising costs of health insurance in our country."

This was said by the man who is a leader of a party that steadfastly refused to join in any negotiations, any discussions, anything that came anywhere near acting in a bipartisan manner when it came to health care. To imply, in the last moment before defeat, that the Republicans had any desire to do anything other than oppose health care reform is the height of hypocrisy, especially when they have been stonewalling a President who repeatedly asked them to contribute their ideas and their proposals, a President who repeatedly implored them to act in a bipartisan way. And that he can take it for granted that those he claims to represent will automatically turn a blind eye to that hypocrisy is plain disrespectful. That such an ass can rise so high is, in itself, a sign of the weakness of the current Republican party and the conservative movement.

For they did nothing to "address the rising costs of health insurance" other than to oppose and pout, mostly out of a desire for power rather than because of anything that had to do with policy. They hoped to make political gains in the midterm elections at the cost of the health and financial security of the American people, a vain and cynical approach that should be rewarded with a sound electoral thrashing next November.

David Frum is a conservative and I disagree with him on matters of policy quite often, however, I respect what he has to say. He is a thoughtful conservative, and even when I disagree with him, he usually gives me something to ponder, something to consider. He recently wrote his thoughts about this reflexive opposition to health care reform, and he made all good points.

As someone who tends more to the left than the right, let me say that we need conservatives in the public debate. It's basic Taoism. The yin and the yang are both necessary. They are compliments, not combatants. The system works best when the two are engaged in the process together, modifying and monitoring each other. Without that sort of balance, we are doomed to excess and destruction.

And balance cannot be achieved by hypocrites.

The Republic Takes Another Kick to the Nuts

2010-01-21T11:13:00.003-05:00

The Supreme Court today issued a disastrous ruling that will allow corporations and unions to advertise without limit for and against candidates in upcoming elections. The mistake, to my mind, that the majority made was two-fold.

First, they are endowing large organizations that exist merely to squeeze money out of the populace with political rights. And, in fact, by being able to throw unlimited amounts of money into running ads, they have given these organizations a type of political right unimaginable to most citizens. Corporations and unions are not citizens. They have no civil rights whatsoever. They cannot vote and should not be able to influence the vote in any way. In fact, all PACs, to my mind, should be banned as well. Voting and everything associated with it is the province of citizens and citizens alone. Corporations, unions, political action committees, non-profits, lobbying organizations, associations, and anything else you can think of that is not a human citizen should be barred from participating. They have no rights. Rights are reserved for people, for citizens.

The second mistake is in confusing advertising with political speech. Advertising is no more political speech than a game of three-card monte is. It is commercial speech at its most brazen and oily. To debase political speech, to sully "a house divided against itself" or "I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character" or even my own ramblings here with the sludge of advertising is to debase and sully the entire democratic experiment we embarked upon more than 200 years ago.

Rome began as a republic and ended as an empire. We are sliding along that muddy road with the help and consent of the United States Supreme Court. The bastards.

In the Wake of Brown v Coakley

2010-01-20T09:23:00.004-05:00

I say, "In the Wake of Brown v Coakley," but I'm not going to talk about the Massachusetts senatorial race, it's strategies and importance, mostly because I don't give a crap. What I really want to write about are other issues that occur to me as a result of all the hoopla.

The first thing that strikes me comes from all the dire predictions about the fate of health care reform as a result of the Democrats' loss of their vaunted filibuster-proof majority. Actually several little sparks fly off that sparkler for me, so let me attack each one in turn.

It occurs to me that the Republicans never would have found themselves in this position because they would have rammed some sort of bill through Congress months ago relying on a party discipline that is, at its core, frightening. The lack of free will displayed by Republicans in Congress, the Stepford-like willingness to follow party lines, is an affront to the democratic experiment, and a confirmation of the predisposition for conformity to individuality in the American character.

Which brings me to my next point: Neither of these parties is fit to govern. The Democrats can't do anything as a group and the Republicans have to do everything as a group. For a democracy to actually function in a way that will benefit the People--which is why government exists in the first place--there has to be a conversation. You can't just get by with thesis and antithesis. The two need to be compared and worked through so that a productive synthesis can be developed. Instead, we get the Democrats, who offer a cacophony and the Republicans who offer a chorus. And neither listens to the other. And outrage is not a substitute for reason.

It is only in a system that is fundamentally broken that work cannot be accomplished without a filibuster-proof majority. The whole notion is absurd. Any legislative body that is so pinioned by mindless factionalism is nearly dead. And worthless.

I'm not really a fan of the filibuster anyway and haven't been for a long time. Despite the Frank Capra inspired myth of the little guy fighting the evil majority, the filibuster--as with the ones brought by Southern Democrats in the '60s to fight civil rights legislation--is typically used to protect evil and to impede the general welfare. It is antidemocratic and a wonderful tool for the few to deny the rights of the many.

Of course, there is no real need for the filibuster. It could be done away with through a procedural vote, and I believe those work on the basis of simple majorities. Remember the Republican threat of using "the nuclear option" back a few years ago? Well, that's funny, because no one in the media does.

The media is addicted to melodrama. Every event is presented as being epochal and historic until the next shiny thing passes by and all the media outlets run after it with eyes glassed over and mouths contorted in a demented grin. And while Fox News most consciously and energetically piles up the manure, no major media outlets are immune to it. Instead of presenting facts, they present melodramatic fantasies. This is called getting an angle on a story. When in doubt, remember that news is really entertainment.

And so all the headlines spin this particular melodrama as "Health Care Reform Imperiled," which may or may not be true. I think that, were a rigorous study made, it would turn out that the prognosticative power of headlines is almost nonexistent. The health care bill currently blocking the bowels of the Congress may pass or it may not. I don't claim to know. Or care, really. But the thing to remember is that the media doesn't know either.

Now, I don't really care how this bill goes simply because I have no confidence that it will actually accomplish anything even if it becomes law. In my opinion, our health care system needs to be taken apart and reassembled, not tinkered with. To be blunt, you can mold a pile of shit into the likeness of the Venus de Milo, but it is still a pile of shit. I'm not a fan of mandates. I'm not a fan of providing health care through the medium of insurance companies. I don't think that there are any provisions in this bill that will make health care more accessible to rural communities. I don't think it cures the illness, but merely masks the symptoms.

But it is difficult to get a good bill out of the kind of idiot system that we have currently in place. Party and faction outweigh the needs of the People again and again. I say fuck the two-party system. I'm more in favor of a no-party system. Let it be a free-for-all. I suspect that we might get some better laws that way.

Peace

2009-12-10T09:25:00.003-05:00

The President accepted the Nobel Peace Prize today and, having inherited two wars, two wars that he seems unwilling to be perceived as being weak about by ending, he found himself in the position of having to accept a peace prize while having to defend the practice of war. He made the usual arguments, some of which just don't add up.

Now, I will grant him that nations must be able to defend themselves and to help others who are being attacked unjustly. However, these justifications can be twisted and turned to the benefit of those who would be aggressors very easily and simply laying them out as precepts comes perilously close to saying nothing.

He also used the old saw that "A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies," a cliche that I've always had a problem with since the first time I heard it 25 years ago. The logical trap inherent in it is that Hitler could have been stopped had a sensible peace been made after the First World War. Generosity of spirit is one of the greatest weapons available to humankind, and yet it so often goes unused. Hitler's rise was not inevitable until the vengeful French made it so.

The President further went on to say, "Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaida's leaders to lay down their arms," which is undoubtedly true. However, it does not automatically proceed that endless war against al-Qaida is the best tactic for opposing them. In fact, al-Qaida depends on the West periodically bringing misery to various parts of the Muslim world. Now, don't take that statement to mean that I think that there's some sort of Western conspiracy against the Islamic world. That's a foolish assertion. However, the West tends to look at other nations purely in political terms and even then in the political terms of Otto von Bismarck and Cecil Rhodes, and the majority of nations that have large Muslim populations can often be seen in those terms as being merely pawns in some greater and very abstract conflict.

As I've said before, the best weapons against al-Qaida are generosity and tolerance. Prosperity in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan would be Osama's undoing. And while it might sometimes be necessary to fight fire with fire, fighting fire with water most often does the job better.

If only we could get past the shopworn cliches and bankrupt ideas that have haunted foreign policy for so long, perhaps we could have a more peaceful and secure future.

It being so close to Christmas, I cannot but help to quote from one of the foundations of my philosophy in these matters, and it is from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, in the chapter with the Ghost of Christmas Present:

"Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask," said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit's robe, "but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw!"

"It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it," was the Spirit's sorrowful reply. "Look here."

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

"Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!" exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.

"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And bide the end!"

"Have they no refuge or resource?'' cried Scrooge.

"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"

Choose Your Weapons

2009-12-02T11:24:00.002-05:00

Once again, we are being told by THOSE WHO WOULD LEAD US that the time has come to surge at some insurgents and that the only thing needed to give the world peace and harmony is the application of a few thousand more troops. How disappointing.

"When your only tool is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail." In the U.S., we have two hammers we like to bring to bear to every problem, the armed forces and the police. And yet, not every problem is a nail and not every problem should or can be handled by the armed forces or the police.

The problems that we are currently having in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and with Iran are, in essence, wars of ideas. And what we keep forgetting is that we have the better ideas. And we steadfastly refuse to use the most powerful weapon in our arsenal: prosperity.

Instead of spending huge sums to spread death, we should spend similar amounts to spread the wealth. Osama depends on poverty and discontent to keep his dream of a new 12th century alive. The Ayatollah Khamenei also relies on poverty to retain his power. If we want to complete undo the mullahs, we need to increase exports to Iran, increase trade with them.

And yet we won't, because the all-knowing folks who sit behind desks in Washington and gabble to one another about how wise and thoughtful they are while they callously dispense misery to millions will never learn. I had hoped that this President would get past the blinkered approach of the old guard, but he hasn't, not in this.

What's Left Out

2009-10-22T10:06:00.006-04:00

These days, I'm avoiding the news as much as possible for a variety of reasons. First, I have enough to get worked up about while our house gets restored after it got flooded in the second 500-year rain event to hit Georgia in five years. With real pressures acting on me daily, why go out of my way to get worked up about a bunch of stuff over which I have no effect or control? Isn't the purposeful pursuit of avoidable stress a symptom of madness?

Second, who needs it generally? It's all a show, the politics show, and the people who run it feel that the only way that they can get the number of viewers/listeners/readers/subscribers they need is to get people frothing at the mouth. The truth is, when one stops to actually have a civilized conversation with other people, that most points in the political spectrum are separated by shades and hues rather than colors. Discuss an issue with a reasonable person from "the other side" in a calm manner, sans insults, sans accusations, and you will likely find broad areas of agreement. Further, if the discussion is lively enough, you might find that the two of you discover some third idea that is better than the one either of you started with. That is a productive approach to politics.

Unfortunately, it is better--for different reasons--for both those who have power and the media to have us at each others' throats. For the powerful, it helps them maintain their power. If we weren't attacking each other all the time, we might just figure out who, exactly, has been screwing us all along. And the media needs drama to sell product. Calm discussions that produce workable and interesting solutions lack drama. And so they feel they need to ratchet up the drama in order to make a better show, a better story.

One example of this is an article I made the mistake of reading only earlier this morning. I found it on the AP feed that I can't find a way of removing from the homepage for my Yahoo! email account.

The article seeks to add drama to passage of the healthcare bill by distorting some facts. The attitude presented is summed up (as it should be) in the lede:

The Democrats' control of a hefty majority in the Senate — plus the House — would suggest that President Barack Obama is within reach of overhauling the nation's health care system this fall.

But the numbers mask a more complicated reality: Obama and Democratic leaders have modest leverage over several pivotal Senate Democrats who are more concerned about their next election or feel they have little to lose by opposing their party's hierarchy.

What this article fails to point out is that the President and the Democratic leadership don't need 60 votes to pass the actual bill. They need 60 votes to invoke cloture, which is a procedural vote that closes down debate and would short-circuit any filibusters. Once they move the vote to the floor, all they need is 51. And every Senator they use in this article can justify voting for cloture by citing the need for having this issue "come before the American people." Once it is up for a true vote, they can do whatever is in their best interest.

And so, this story is a swiz based on the assumption that people won't think about the story in any manner deeper than they ask them to. And it makes things nice and dramatic. Which is no way to run a republic.