A Different Kind of Storm

Everyone is taking a break from the usual pre-election programming to concentrate on Hurricane Sandy, which just blew through Manhattan and is probably soaking my home state of Pennsylvania right now.  The news media went into full-blown apocalypse mode for this, with the kind of breathless whirlpool of coverage usually reserved for assassinations or major earthquakes.  Even days before, they were sounding the warning claxons about "Frankenstorm" making its way up the east coast and putting a real damper on everyone's Halloween.  And is "claxon" an awesome word or what?

Some people are already saying that the unusual trajectory this storm has taken is related to global warming and the huge, unprecedented reduction in the Arctic ice sheet, which alters ocean currents and air temperatures in such a way that big, weird storms which move in new, unexpected pathways will start becoming more frequent.  While it's still probably premature to link the two events, I think there is a great deal of truth in the idea that human-caused climate change will alter the planetary weather engine in ways we can't even yet imagine, and more unpleasant things like these loose-cannon superstorms are in our future.

The other big storm of late has taken a temporary back seat to the march of Hurricane Sandy, and that is the presidential election, now just one week away.  It seems like this election has been going on for years, and this last week will no doubt be the most intense week ever, with everybody pulling out all the stops when it comes to trying to sway the last two or three undecided voters out there.  It's beyond me how anyone could be undecided about who to vote for.

I've heard people on the radio say that there's "not much difference" between Obama and Romney, and that statement completely blows my mind.  In my opinion the two candidates could not be more different, both in style and substance.  Obama seems so intellectual, so measured, controlled and sincere; Romney so aloof, privileged, entitled and hypocritical.  There is little question that given their backgrounds, Obama truly understands what the middle class people, who are in many ways the backbone of this country, have greatly suffered due to the economic collapse of 2008-2009.  He really "gets" what they're going through and empathizes with them.  Romney, on the other hand, has had every single thing in his life handed to him, coming from a family of privilege and power, and is completely and utterly clueless about what average people have to go through to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.

Likewise, the vice presidential candidates are quite different.  Biden is loud, gregarious, sometimes prone to embarrassing gaffes and misstatements, but given his background you have no doubt he understands what it is like to go through very rough periods in your life and still manage to triumph over adversity using little more than sheer strength of character.  Paul "Lyin" Ryan is an uber-nerd, someone who's obviously much more comfortable around masses of fiscal data and reports than around people, and comes up with a witches-brew of spending cuts to government programs which aid the poor, the elderly and students (to name a few) in order to fund massive, unnecessary defense spending and more tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy one-percenters, who already have so very much but still want to take more and more.

The differences even extend to the candidates' wives.  Michelle Obama is beautiful, sleek, intelligent, articulate and very easy for anyone to relate to.  She has such great poise and presence, and in my opinion has been one of the most notable and successful First Ladies in recent history.  Ann Romney, on the other hand, is brittle, imperious, condescending, sharp-tongued, elitist and thoroughly unsympathetic to anyone outside of her own socio-economic class.  With her fake, painted-on country-club smirk and mannerisms, you just know she sits around drinking appletinis with her wealthy cronies, cackling about how pathetic poor people are and complaining about how hard it is to find qualified domestic help these days who won't expect to be paid more than $5 an hour and won't steal you blind behind your back.

There is so very much riding on what happens next Tuesday, but to me one of the most important is the future of the Supreme Court.  Latest prediction is that the President-elect will get to choose at least one and possibly two new Justices, and that will directly affect each and every one of us for decades to come.   Right now the Court is split 5-4 in favor of upholding Roe v. Wade, but it would only take one Court appointment to reverse that to 5-4 in favor of overturning it.  Then you can absolutely certain that anti-abortion zealots would push a test case through the lower courts and into the Supreme Court, and Roe v. Wade would be scrapped, sending the abortion question back into the states, where many if not all of the red states would outlaw it completely.  That would be an astonishing tragedy and catastrophe for anyone who holds dear the concepts of freedom and government not making decisions in such an incredibly personal thing such as family planning.

Another very important thing, related to the Supreme Court, is their horrific and spectacularly awful Citizens' United ruling, which unleashed a torrent of untraceable, unaccountable money into a political system already mortally choked and corrupted with cash.  One of the most wrong-headed and destructive rulings ever, a top priority should be to overturn it, with a constitutional amendment if necessary.  The choice of President could not be more important to this vital legislative task.  One candidate will fully support reversing the ruling, and other candidate will do everything he can to keep it in place, because as he famously stated, "Corporations are people, too."  I will leave it up to my discerning readers to figure out which candidate is which.

Funny thing about these neoconservatives, they will scream unmercifully about how the evil, incompetent and corrupt government is blatantly interfering in everyone's lives and making choices for them, but they are perfectly fine as long as this interference is with the right to abortion, or marriage equality, or any number of personal-freedom issues they personally oppose.  They seem to think that government is evil and satanic if it messes with something they believe in, but perfectly fine and proper if it goes after things they don't.  According to them, it's okay if government restricts the freedoms of people they don't like, but it is a horrendous abomination if it seeks to restrict their own freedoms and choices.

Thus is the ultimate contraction in the conservative point of view - as long as government is doing what I like (or conversely, attacking things I don't like), it can have free rein and untrammeled authority to do whatever it pleases.  But just let the government try to do something to curtail something in which they fervently believe, for instance, gun control - outlawing the sale of semi-automatic assault weapons comes to mind - then people scream that government is a vile, cancerous conspiracy hell-bent on destroying the very fabric of this nation.  Government-provided farm subsidies could not be more "American", but affordable health care is "socialist."  It is this cultural and political schizophrenia, this infinitely subjective cherry-picking of what is right and what is wrong, that ultimately dooms neoconservative thinking to the intellectual trash-heap.

One week to election day, and is Hurricane Sandy a metaphor for the shitstorm that may be released on this country as a result - one that will last not a couple of days, but for four long years.

Rumbles of Discontent

Well, here we are barreling full tilt toward the end of year, having survived the gigantic pothole in the road that is Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving Day is not that bad, it is what comes immediately afterward that makes my eyes bug. There's this little thing called "Black Friday," the start of the Christmas shopping season, and the day when we're all supposed to go completely berserk and shop 'til we puke.

I'm becoming more convinced each year that Black Friday is another of those media-created, media-driven non-events. The reason why that day gets weirder and more intense each year is that the media whips people up in a frenzy, just about forcing them to believe there is some kind of genetic imperative to go out and spend money. If there wasn't a huge amount of media coverage - much ado about nothing - I think "Black Friday" would be just another day. The same thing happens, to a less extent, with "Cyber Monday" when everyone does their online shopping. Do we really need the media telling us this?

The day before Thanksgiving one of the local TV stations had a story about these two Phoenix-area housewives planning their assault on the stores and malls on Black Friday. It showed them combing through newspaper and online ads, making copious notations about where the bargains were, Mapquesting their travel routes and timing their shopping sprees down to the minute, starting at 4am. The only thing that was planned with more attention to detail and meticulous organization was the Allied invasion of Normandy in World War II.

But nearly hidden under all the consumerist hysteria is another story. The first year of Barack Obama's term in office will be over in a little more than a month, and it seems a number of his supporters are starting to feel a little buyer's remorse. Obama was swept into office by a wide-ranging coalition of liberals, progressives, moderates and a whole rainbow of ethnic and racial factions. His message had always been one of change, and he portrayed himself as the agent of that change, an outsider who will come in and throw the status-quo and entrenched special-interests out on their ears. Unfortunately, precious little of the promised change has been delivered.

And now, people are beginning to talk. The progressively-inclined Bill Maher on his HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher, took Obama to task several times for his lack of meaningful progress on front-burner issues like health care, energy policy, and the closing of Guantanamo. Filmmaker Michael Moore, a prominent progressive who has gleefully taken on the gun lobby, the health care industries and George Bush, complained loudly that Obama is following his predecessor and stepping up the war in Afghanistan, and instead of pulling out and bringing the troops home as promised, recently announced plans to deploy 30,000+ more soldiers to that benighted country. And most recently, the excellent writer Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone magazine analyzed the Obama administration's response to the economic meltdown which almost bankrupted this country. Taibbi ruefully points out that the advisors Obama chose to lead the nation out of the current mess were precisely the ones who caused the mess in the first place, and that by itself will guarantee that critically-needed financial reform will be impossible. In fact, laws and regulations are being written right now that will consolidate and institutionalize the power of Wall Street and their stranglehold on Washington.

There are so many dire problems facing us right now, and it's becoming more and more apparent that Obama just is not measuring up to the task. In my opinion a crucial, if not fatal, mistake he made early on was thinking that he was going to somehow convince the Republicans to join him in bipartisan unity and help solve the problems together. One thing he apparently ignored was the fact that the Republicans had nothing to lose after their catastrophic loss in the 2008 elections and had no motivation to pitch in and help. After all, things could not be any worse for them. Obama just doesn't get it - the Republican party has been taken over by the fundamentalists and the conservatives and they never, ever compromise on anything. It's either their way or no way at all, and they are perfectly willing to let the country falter and fail in spectacular fashion if they don't get their way.

Obama has very clearly moved to the center of the political spectrum, hoping that would somehow make him more palatable to the far-right conservatives, but their deep-seated hatred of him and everything he does makes that impossible. Obama has shown a really frustrating willingness to do anything to please people who smile in his face and then turn around and lambaste him on conservative talk radio. What he should have done was slammed the door in the face of the Republican party, and told them when they are willing to come around and stop acting like they're trying to destroy this country, they would be welcomed back. Otherwise, go away and stay away.

There really is a lot at stake right now. If Obama fails and all his major initiatives - health care, financial reform, foreign policy - turn into crap, the Democrats will find themselves exiled into the wilderness by an American electorate who will be fighting mad that they've been sold down the river. They were promised so much in terms of change and got nothing, and they will be pissed. That will open the floodgates for the Mitt Romneys, the Sarah Palins, the Mike Huckabees, the Newt Gingriches, and every other loathsome right-wing creep who will come crawling out of every sewer and cesspool around, all pushing and shoving their way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC.

And that would be the icing on a very big, very disastrous cake.