Once again the greatest representative democracy the world has ever known finds itself in a maelstrom of confusion and insanity. Thanks to the shamefully stupid Tea Buggers and their lethal demagoguery, the whole entire US government is shut down, brought to its knees, spinning its wheels while nearly a million federal workers are idle, national parks and recreation areas are closed, and numerous programs that provide real help to real people are shut down. Welcome to the end of an experiment.
Our system of government has always been a social experiment on the grandest of scales. Imagine a form of government born of the ideas of freedom, liberty and equality for all. Something quite like that had never really been seen on this planet prior to the 18th century. Thousands of years ago when primitive humans were first starting to gather together and form settlements, one of the first governments to evolve was a monarchy, a "king" to rule the others. This ran through a couple of permutations, such as an oligarchy (rule by a small, chosen group of people) or plutocracy (rule by the wealthy) or theocracy (rule by religious leaders) but by and far it proved a fairly workable way to keep a bunch of farmers and shepherds kind of toeing some sort of line.
For a long time monarchies worked well, and still do in a number of countries in the present day, but as large number of people became more educated through technological advances such as the printing press, they soon outgrew the confines of royalty and royal lineage. As the world expanded, wealth (and resultant power) became more distributed, government likewise expanded and adapted. People were demanding more of a say in how their lives were run, and various forms of representation were created. General assemblies, or bodies of citizens representing other citizens, began to take root in Europe, one of the earliest being Iceland's Althing, created in the year 976. Eventually hybrid systems of government were created, merging kings with prime ministers and parliaments and a new form of representational government took hold.
The US government was born at the confluence of a number of serendipitous forces. Initially formed by those fleeing religious persecution, it was a brand new world, full beyond measure of immense natural riches, free from the limited land mass and resources of Europe and the stifling weight of history and their stodgy traditions. America was a clean slate, a chance to start anew, to get it right, to create the most perfect form of government that humans could possibly dream up. And dream they did.
The Constitution that came out of the late 1700s has become the gold standard of good government. Not perfect, but better than anything else that has been around. Even though it has been amended 27 times (with a 28th amendment proposed - one that would make all laws applicable to everyone), these adjustments have allowed the government to change in response to a rapidly changing world. Some of them have been foolhardy (No. 18 - Prohibition) but others have been true to the finest expressions of the best of humanity (No. 13 - Abolition of Slavery and No. 19 - Women's Suffrage). The great social experiment that is the United States of America was in full bloom, and doing very well indeed.
Scientists will tell you that the best experiments are those which are conducted in a closed system; that is, an environment where everything is carefully controlled and random outside forces kept to a minimum. Even under the best of circumstances, a running experiment will start to degrade as entropy creeps in and wear and tear causes deterioration. Our government has been beset with destabilizing forces from inside and out, from those which occur in nature to those created by our own shadow natures.
It seems the worst forces that befall our nation and disrupt our constitutional government are those created by ourselves. In the past century, two devastating world wars, a number of smaller but still very significant skirmishes (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq) have caused great stress. The threat of nuclear annihilation or environmental catastrophe has been shaping policy through most of this century. But most insidious, it seems, are the forces of greed and religion. They form a double-headed serpent, and it is at the nexus of those two where the most damage is done.
The past two decades have seen the ascendency of greed and religion in our government at a level that can scarcely be comprehended. Like some kind of virulent zombie virus, it has taken over vast segments of the population and most of Congress, turning them into blathering idiots, and malignant ne'er-do-wells. Complicated by a Supreme Court that has some of the most backward-thinking, regressive conservatives around, the complete corruption of our government by money has been aided and abetted by heinous, abominable rulings such as Citizens' United, which virtually assured the democratic system will be irretrievably choked and debased by an enormous influx of special-interest monies and corporate meddling.
Religion, and in particular Christian fundamentalism, has also insinuated itself into our legislative system at all levels. Like a many-headed Hydra, it manifests itself in an appallingly large number of ways, from advocating to pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control because it violates their "freedom of religious expression", to taking over school boards and forcing changes to their curricula to include bogus, intellectually untenable pseudo-sciences such as "intelligent design", to doing everything they can to prevent certain segments of the population from exercising their right to vote. Using their religious beliefs like a shield, they cowardly pass preposterous laws designed solely to prevent women from exerting control over their reproductive destinies by forcing them to undergo unnecessary medical procedures such as ultrasounds, and enacting biased, draconian regulations that make it nearly impossible for planned-parenting agencies to legitimately and lawfully provide needed and wanted services.
We have seen the wealth of this nation being concentrated into the top 1% of the population, while everyone else considers themselves lucky if they just tread economic water. This has caused this wealthy segment to tighten and consolidate their control over the Republican party, which is essentially working for the Koch brothers and the Dick Cheneys of the world. Wars are started under the flimsiest of pretenses, bolstered by blatant lying and disinformation, and private corporations rake in the profits.
Sure, there are many evil people in this country who will gladly take this nation down a pathway to complete destruction if it meant getting their political agenda in place. All this is ultimately made possible by an uneducated, disinterested electorate, for whom critical thinking and skepticism are unknown concepts. Too many people are more than willing to let Fox News or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or dozens of other conservative blowhards tell them exactly what to think and do. They find it much easier to hate people who are different from them, and they make these "other people" convenient, easy scapegoats for the awful things their legislators - who they themselves had voted into office - do to the quality of their life and the complete ruination of the future of their children. They just don't give a crap, and are too stupid to care.
The drama going on in this country now - the government being held hostage by a gang of 30 or 40 zealots, blinded by their own radical ideology to the damage they're doing - and the upcoming threat of a debt ceiling crises - which nearly all knowledgeable economists in this country agree would be a complete and unmitigated disaster on a global scale - is unprecedented, certainly in my lifetime. I have never seen the country so thoroughly polarized, even back in the worst days of the Vietnam war, when our society was nearly ripped apart by a costly, tragic war which we eventually lost. These Tea Baggers don't care how much damage and hardship they inflict on millions of people, or the millions and millions of dollars that will be shamefully squandered by a completely unnecessary government shutdown. The only thing they care about is getting their own way, and they don't care how many lives are wrecked in the process.
Sadly, I'm beginning to think the great social experiment in representative democracy that is the United States of America is starting to wind down, to sag and break apart under the weight of its own misdoings and corruption. Our system of government is being poisoned by right-wing ideologues and religious zealots, who are pulling everyone down into their toxic cesspool of psychotic paranoia and dissolution. I don't see a way out for America to save itself. We may come out the other end of this somewhat intact, but we will be so changed that we will no longer be the America we once were.
Showing posts with label conservatism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conservatism. Show all posts
Friday, October 11, 2013
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
20 Years in Arizona
Today marks the day 20 years ago in 1993 when I officially moved to Phoenix. I've written about my "Arizona-versary" several times in this blog so I won't go over things that I've already talked about, but it is somewhat of a milestone. Just short of one-third of my whole life I have lived here, and in spite of being born in Pennsylvania, I consider Arizona my home.
I have always loved the desert, even as a little kid when the only desert I saw was on our black-and-white TV. Something about the dramatic starkness and the beautiful barrenness of the land spoke to me, and I was always mesmerized by the craggy, windswept mountains and vast expanse of sun-baked earth. Where a lot of my peers saw nothing but brutal desolation and debilitating emptiness, I saw life, history, color, art and intricate, ageless patterns and rhythms. This is a land that holds more ghosts than people, and the footfalls and songs of countless previous generations echo down the canyons of time right to the present day. The desert might appear to be a lonely place, but you are never alone here. Wherever you go, spirits walk with you. Monument Valley, in far northeastern Arizona, is one of those places where the veil between the temporal world and the spirit world is especially thin.
Arizona is a place where cultures collide, intersect, conflict, separate and come together again, over and over. Cultures such as the Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo have mixed uneasily at times but have still melded together to form a uniquely colorful and vibrant pastiche. A fine example of this is the church at San Xavier del Bac, in southern Arizona. Known as the White Dove of the Desert, it rises in hallucinatory splendor from the shimmering, heat-blasted expanse of ochre- and olive-colored desert near Tucson.
It seems, though, as time goes on the various cultures who make up this land are increasingly at odds with each other. Discrimination and bigotry are rampant in Arizona, particularly against Native Americans and Mexicans who have lived in this area for a very long time. A lot of those doing the discrimination are people who have moved here from somewhere else, and really have no claim on the land or any of its residents. I guess Anglos have a way of doing that, moving into a land and then taking it over and appropriating its culture as their own, making aboriginal residents feel like outsiders and trespassers. They did that with rock and roll music of the 50s, when black gospel and rhythm-and-blues music were co-opted and taken over by white artists like Elvis Presley and thus made palatable to the presiding (white) culture, who milked it for as much money as they could get out of it. They took everything, and gave nothing back in return.
The Anglo culture has been dominant here for a long time, but that is coming to an end. The increasing Hispanic population fairly guarantees that the white population of Arizona will become a minority, as early as 2025. What that will do to this state, its culture and its population cannot be reliably foreseen, but it will be amazing and fascinating, and it will blaze a trail to a new reality and a new state. Maybe Arizona, as it rushes into the future, will find that it more closely resembles the Arizona of 100 years ago than anything else.
I feel that I have carved myself out a really good life here in Arizona. I have a home which I dearly love. Buying this house was one of the best things I've ever done, and it is a place where I feel perfectly safe, secure and satisfied, and where I can enjoy my beloved rabbits in peace. I have made many wonderful, faithful friends who I value very highly, and a new chosen family in Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue. I've been a volunteer with BHRR for going on 13 years and it has made a huge, incalculable difference in my life. BHRR is also one of the best things that has ever happened to me, and I feel that I have gained much, much more than I have given.
The yearly parade of what passes for seasons here in the Phoenix area never ceases to fascinate me, and a beautiful desert sunrise can still imbue me with an awe and an appreciation every bit as strong as the first time I witnessed one. The cranberry-colored clouds of a December sunset can fill my mind with a beauty and serenity unsurpassed by any other. The summer monsoon can set the sky ablaze and turn the evening twilight into a living painting of the most amazing and intricate textures and colors. And most certainly, a clear nighttime sky far away from the lights of the city is absolutely one of the most mind-blowing and awe-inspiring things I have ever witnessed in my life. The sheer number of stars you can see defies comprehension and is a treasure beyond any valuation, and far beyond my ability to adequately describe.
The vast diversity of the land and the eternally-changing tapestry of the sky turns this state into an artist's-canvas of the soul, a multifaceted prism which shows you many, many different, new sides and angles of something you have seen dozens of time. The desert renews and reinvents itself constantly, but in very subtle ways and if you don't tune your mind to these changes, you will most likely miss them.
But, all things have a beginning and an end, and I am starting to get a bit restless. I find the right-wing, ultra-conservative politics of this state to be destructive, suffocating and toxic. Too often these days conservatism is just a convenient cover for racism, homophobia, religious intolerance and bigotry. American politics is fracturing along many different fault lines, not only by political orientation but also racial, economic, gender and class lines, to name a few. People are much less inclined to open their eyes and their minds to new outlooks and opinions, and many of them opt to shut out any voices which are different from their own. They choose to not make an effort to understand what their neighbor is saying to them, and prefer instead to surround themselves only with others who share their narrow views. Understanding different points of view takes a little effort and so many people in this state are very disinclined to do to make that effort.
So, I am starting to look elsewhere to live, most probably out of Arizona. I'm looking toward New Mexico or Oregon/Washington state. I have no concrete plans as of yet, but this is how things happen in my life. There will be a slow, almost imperceptible change in me and eventually, when the time is right, I will leave Arizona and move on to the next adventure in my life.
There will come a time when I will have no more Arizona-versaries, but I will always have memories of the great times and unrelenting beauty of my desert home.
I have always loved the desert, even as a little kid when the only desert I saw was on our black-and-white TV. Something about the dramatic starkness and the beautiful barrenness of the land spoke to me, and I was always mesmerized by the craggy, windswept mountains and vast expanse of sun-baked earth. Where a lot of my peers saw nothing but brutal desolation and debilitating emptiness, I saw life, history, color, art and intricate, ageless patterns and rhythms. This is a land that holds more ghosts than people, and the footfalls and songs of countless previous generations echo down the canyons of time right to the present day. The desert might appear to be a lonely place, but you are never alone here. Wherever you go, spirits walk with you. Monument Valley, in far northeastern Arizona, is one of those places where the veil between the temporal world and the spirit world is especially thin.
Arizona is a place where cultures collide, intersect, conflict, separate and come together again, over and over. Cultures such as the Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo have mixed uneasily at times but have still melded together to form a uniquely colorful and vibrant pastiche. A fine example of this is the church at San Xavier del Bac, in southern Arizona. Known as the White Dove of the Desert, it rises in hallucinatory splendor from the shimmering, heat-blasted expanse of ochre- and olive-colored desert near Tucson.
It seems, though, as time goes on the various cultures who make up this land are increasingly at odds with each other. Discrimination and bigotry are rampant in Arizona, particularly against Native Americans and Mexicans who have lived in this area for a very long time. A lot of those doing the discrimination are people who have moved here from somewhere else, and really have no claim on the land or any of its residents. I guess Anglos have a way of doing that, moving into a land and then taking it over and appropriating its culture as their own, making aboriginal residents feel like outsiders and trespassers. They did that with rock and roll music of the 50s, when black gospel and rhythm-and-blues music were co-opted and taken over by white artists like Elvis Presley and thus made palatable to the presiding (white) culture, who milked it for as much money as they could get out of it. They took everything, and gave nothing back in return.
The Anglo culture has been dominant here for a long time, but that is coming to an end. The increasing Hispanic population fairly guarantees that the white population of Arizona will become a minority, as early as 2025. What that will do to this state, its culture and its population cannot be reliably foreseen, but it will be amazing and fascinating, and it will blaze a trail to a new reality and a new state. Maybe Arizona, as it rushes into the future, will find that it more closely resembles the Arizona of 100 years ago than anything else.
I feel that I have carved myself out a really good life here in Arizona. I have a home which I dearly love. Buying this house was one of the best things I've ever done, and it is a place where I feel perfectly safe, secure and satisfied, and where I can enjoy my beloved rabbits in peace. I have made many wonderful, faithful friends who I value very highly, and a new chosen family in Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue. I've been a volunteer with BHRR for going on 13 years and it has made a huge, incalculable difference in my life. BHRR is also one of the best things that has ever happened to me, and I feel that I have gained much, much more than I have given.
The yearly parade of what passes for seasons here in the Phoenix area never ceases to fascinate me, and a beautiful desert sunrise can still imbue me with an awe and an appreciation every bit as strong as the first time I witnessed one. The cranberry-colored clouds of a December sunset can fill my mind with a beauty and serenity unsurpassed by any other. The summer monsoon can set the sky ablaze and turn the evening twilight into a living painting of the most amazing and intricate textures and colors. And most certainly, a clear nighttime sky far away from the lights of the city is absolutely one of the most mind-blowing and awe-inspiring things I have ever witnessed in my life. The sheer number of stars you can see defies comprehension and is a treasure beyond any valuation, and far beyond my ability to adequately describe.
The vast diversity of the land and the eternally-changing tapestry of the sky turns this state into an artist's-canvas of the soul, a multifaceted prism which shows you many, many different, new sides and angles of something you have seen dozens of time. The desert renews and reinvents itself constantly, but in very subtle ways and if you don't tune your mind to these changes, you will most likely miss them.
But, all things have a beginning and an end, and I am starting to get a bit restless. I find the right-wing, ultra-conservative politics of this state to be destructive, suffocating and toxic. Too often these days conservatism is just a convenient cover for racism, homophobia, religious intolerance and bigotry. American politics is fracturing along many different fault lines, not only by political orientation but also racial, economic, gender and class lines, to name a few. People are much less inclined to open their eyes and their minds to new outlooks and opinions, and many of them opt to shut out any voices which are different from their own. They choose to not make an effort to understand what their neighbor is saying to them, and prefer instead to surround themselves only with others who share their narrow views. Understanding different points of view takes a little effort and so many people in this state are very disinclined to do to make that effort.
So, I am starting to look elsewhere to live, most probably out of Arizona. I'm looking toward New Mexico or Oregon/Washington state. I have no concrete plans as of yet, but this is how things happen in my life. There will be a slow, almost imperceptible change in me and eventually, when the time is right, I will leave Arizona and move on to the next adventure in my life.
There will come a time when I will have no more Arizona-versaries, but I will always have memories of the great times and unrelenting beauty of my desert home.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Election 2012 Wrap-Up
Election 2012 is now history, and what a historic night it was. Barack Obama was given four more years to continue his leadership and his efforts to repair the economy after the 2008-2009 collapse. We can look forward with great satisfaction for continued health care reform and one, maybe two, Supreme Court appointments, which is a huge, huge deal. The news media were all predicting that the presidential election would be a nail-biter clear into the next morning, but in fact the election was called for Obama shortly after 9pm. When Ohio was seen going to the president, it was all over. To no one's surprise, Florida is still undecided because it seems as if it's impossible for them to have an election without a lot of fuss and hoo-hah and delay. Florida is the Drama Queen of the nation.
A number of other regional races took on national significance, and a lot of them did go the right way. Elizabeth Warren, a very capable, intelligent and resourceful woman, took the Massachusetts Senate seat away from empty mannequin Scott Brown. Drooling, knuckle-dragging religious bigots Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, who gained national infamy with their astonishingly ignorant opinions on rape and abortion, went down in flames, and deservedly so.
In non-office related elections, three states - Maryland, Maine and Washington - approved marriage equality, and another state, Minnesota, turned down an initiative to ban it. All wonderful news, and milestones in what I believe is the inevitable march toward full marriage equality, something that absolutely should be a basic American right. Also the first openly gay Senator was named, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin. In Illinois, Tammy Duckworth ousted loathsome dirtbag Joe Walsh.
As always there were disappointments, and not surprisingly a lot were in Arizona. This benighted, ignorant state chose greasy, buck-toothed scam artist Jeff Flake for the Senate seat occupied by the flabby, flatulent Jon Kyl. Ancient, bloated media whore Joe Arpaio was reelected Maricopa country sheriff for the hundredth time, thanks to all the senile old fools in Surprise and Sun City, all the anti-immigrant bigots and literally millions of dollars which poured into Arpaio's campaign coffer from out-of-state right-wing PACs, who seem to see Arpaio as a conservative (read: racist) icon. Still undecided is the contest for new Congressional District 9, where I live, and I'm hoping Kyrsten Sinema will pull off a win over perennial Uncle Tom, Vernon Parker. I'm also hoping for Anne Kirkpatrick to win over payday-loan-pimp Jonathan Paton in District 1. And late today, Anne Kirkpatrick was declared victorious in her contest.
Also very much on the plus side is that AZ Proposition 204, which would have permanently extended the 1% sales tax, went down in flames with 65% of voters saying no. This tax was passed a couple of years ago on the promise that it was only to be a temporary increase, and greedy special interests in this state thought it would be easy to make permanent. They thought that people would go for anything that nominally was portrayed as helping school children, but voters in this state weren't snookered by this charade and rightfully told them to go pound salt. Also, Proposition 120 the "sovereignty" amendment, a ridiculously blatant and stupid attempt by the state legislature to take control of public lands, also went down very decisively. So, there was a little bit to be thankful for in this wretched excuse for a state.
There were some really funny things that happened last night. Apparently Fox News - Stupid News For Stupid People - was one of the first outlets to declare Obama the winner. One of their commentators, the execrable Karl Rove, went completely batshit crazy ON AIR, frenetically blathering about and trying to grasp any kind of straw, real or imagined, to deny the outcome in Ohio. He looked like a gigantic, bug-eyed catfish who was yanked out of the water and was gasping and thrashing around. Then, one of Fox's newsskanks trotted off stage and stumbled back into their "Decision Room" to confront the number-crunchers with the news that Karl Rove did not approve of their pronouncement. The number geeks practically told her to GTFO, because numbers, unlike everyone on Fox News, do not lie. Ohio was definitely Obama country.
But to me the most amazing and inspiring thing was that despite everything the Republicans tied to do to steal this election - lies, misinformation, voter suppression and intimidation, pathetic, un-American attempts to restrict poll hours or early voting times - everything they tried to do was to absolutely no avail. Most amazing were the American voters who stood in line for an extraordinarily, unbelievably long time (as long as seven hours in some cases) but would not be deterred by Republican skullduggery and dirty tricks. They were going to cast their ballots and would not be denied, and as a result, democracy itself would not be denied.
Political pundits are already furiously dissecting all of last night's happenings and assigning blame and credit as they see appropriate. In my opinion, the Republicans lost the presidential election for two reasons: 1) a pair of profoundly unattractive candidates at the top - Romney and Ryan; and 2) a party which has been co-opted and corrupted by right-wing extremists who made the party very unappealing to the more moderate American electorate. The Republicans thought this election was going to be a cakewalk - they just had to repeat the word "economy" over and over like a mantra and the voters would flock to them - but much to their dismay that did not happen.
Complicating matters for them was that Romney was such a repellent, off-putting candidate who was his own worst enemy. His infamous "47%" remarks kind of scuttled his candidacy at a crucial point, and his own chronic, incurable awkwardness and creepiness turned many voters off, even on a subconscious level. Scrawny, big-eared geek Paul Ryan did not really help much. It seems the Republicans have a really amazing talent in picking very unattractive, unappealing candidates for their elections. They did so in 2008 and thoughtfully repeated the same mistake in 2012, and for that I thank them very much.
Everyone, including me, was fretting about the unprecedented flood of anonymous, untraceable money that was poured into the process by the horrendous Citizens' United Supreme Court ruling, but much to my surprise, American voters - not known for being particularly discerning or resistant to idiotic campaign rhetoric - were not swayed by sham super-PACs with lofty, misleading names like "Americans For Prosperity" (because who in their right mind would be against prosperous Americans?) and "Club For Growth Action" (whatever the hell that means). Quite a few super-wealthy billionaires - casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, for one - dropped a huge chunk of change on Romney's campaign, and essentially threw their money down a rat hole. I wonder how much good that money could have done, donated to food banks or domestic violence shelters, instead of being utterly wasted on a political campaign.
By Anne Romney's own statement, she and her husband are through with politics. We can only hope we've seen that last of that corrosive, elitist, hatchet-faced old trollop. Initially her role in her husband's campaign was to "humanize" him to the voters and make him seem like a regular person. In the end, Anne Romney was the one who needed "humanized," because her presence and role in the campaign proved to be a major misfire. She needs to just throw on one of her pioneer smocks and go be a good little Mormon wifey. It's hard to humanize someone who lacks so very much in terms of basic humanity, and maybe her next dancing horse can do a little jig to make her feel better.
America dodged a huge bullet (more like a thermonuclear warhead) when Romney lost. I can barely imagine how unspeakably awful and horrible a Romney administration would be. Our nation would have become a weird, Frankenstein-like hybrid of theocracy and oligarchy, with government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich becoming the norm.
If I can be indulged for a little bit of tooting my own horn, I wrote in an entry on this blog called "This Just In: Time Marches On," dated almost a year ago November 15, 2011:
"My prediction is that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee and will go against Obama in the 2012 election....Obama will coast to his second term."
If you don't mind my saying... Nailed. It.
A number of other regional races took on national significance, and a lot of them did go the right way. Elizabeth Warren, a very capable, intelligent and resourceful woman, took the Massachusetts Senate seat away from empty mannequin Scott Brown. Drooling, knuckle-dragging religious bigots Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, who gained national infamy with their astonishingly ignorant opinions on rape and abortion, went down in flames, and deservedly so.
In non-office related elections, three states - Maryland, Maine and Washington - approved marriage equality, and another state, Minnesota, turned down an initiative to ban it. All wonderful news, and milestones in what I believe is the inevitable march toward full marriage equality, something that absolutely should be a basic American right. Also the first openly gay Senator was named, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin. In Illinois, Tammy Duckworth ousted loathsome dirtbag Joe Walsh.
As always there were disappointments, and not surprisingly a lot were in Arizona. This benighted, ignorant state chose greasy, buck-toothed scam artist Jeff Flake for the Senate seat occupied by the flabby, flatulent Jon Kyl. Ancient, bloated media whore Joe Arpaio was reelected Maricopa country sheriff for the hundredth time, thanks to all the senile old fools in Surprise and Sun City, all the anti-immigrant bigots and literally millions of dollars which poured into Arpaio's campaign coffer from out-of-state right-wing PACs, who seem to see Arpaio as a conservative (read: racist) icon. Still undecided is the contest for new Congressional District 9, where I live, and I'm hoping Kyrsten Sinema will pull off a win over perennial Uncle Tom, Vernon Parker. I'm also hoping for Anne Kirkpatrick to win over payday-loan-pimp Jonathan Paton in District 1. And late today, Anne Kirkpatrick was declared victorious in her contest.
Also very much on the plus side is that AZ Proposition 204, which would have permanently extended the 1% sales tax, went down in flames with 65% of voters saying no. This tax was passed a couple of years ago on the promise that it was only to be a temporary increase, and greedy special interests in this state thought it would be easy to make permanent. They thought that people would go for anything that nominally was portrayed as helping school children, but voters in this state weren't snookered by this charade and rightfully told them to go pound salt. Also, Proposition 120 the "sovereignty" amendment, a ridiculously blatant and stupid attempt by the state legislature to take control of public lands, also went down very decisively. So, there was a little bit to be thankful for in this wretched excuse for a state.
There were some really funny things that happened last night. Apparently Fox News - Stupid News For Stupid People - was one of the first outlets to declare Obama the winner. One of their commentators, the execrable Karl Rove, went completely batshit crazy ON AIR, frenetically blathering about and trying to grasp any kind of straw, real or imagined, to deny the outcome in Ohio. He looked like a gigantic, bug-eyed catfish who was yanked out of the water and was gasping and thrashing around. Then, one of Fox's newsskanks trotted off stage and stumbled back into their "Decision Room" to confront the number-crunchers with the news that Karl Rove did not approve of their pronouncement. The number geeks practically told her to GTFO, because numbers, unlike everyone on Fox News, do not lie. Ohio was definitely Obama country.
But to me the most amazing and inspiring thing was that despite everything the Republicans tied to do to steal this election - lies, misinformation, voter suppression and intimidation, pathetic, un-American attempts to restrict poll hours or early voting times - everything they tried to do was to absolutely no avail. Most amazing were the American voters who stood in line for an extraordinarily, unbelievably long time (as long as seven hours in some cases) but would not be deterred by Republican skullduggery and dirty tricks. They were going to cast their ballots and would not be denied, and as a result, democracy itself would not be denied.
Political pundits are already furiously dissecting all of last night's happenings and assigning blame and credit as they see appropriate. In my opinion, the Republicans lost the presidential election for two reasons: 1) a pair of profoundly unattractive candidates at the top - Romney and Ryan; and 2) a party which has been co-opted and corrupted by right-wing extremists who made the party very unappealing to the more moderate American electorate. The Republicans thought this election was going to be a cakewalk - they just had to repeat the word "economy" over and over like a mantra and the voters would flock to them - but much to their dismay that did not happen.
Complicating matters for them was that Romney was such a repellent, off-putting candidate who was his own worst enemy. His infamous "47%" remarks kind of scuttled his candidacy at a crucial point, and his own chronic, incurable awkwardness and creepiness turned many voters off, even on a subconscious level. Scrawny, big-eared geek Paul Ryan did not really help much. It seems the Republicans have a really amazing talent in picking very unattractive, unappealing candidates for their elections. They did so in 2008 and thoughtfully repeated the same mistake in 2012, and for that I thank them very much.
Everyone, including me, was fretting about the unprecedented flood of anonymous, untraceable money that was poured into the process by the horrendous Citizens' United Supreme Court ruling, but much to my surprise, American voters - not known for being particularly discerning or resistant to idiotic campaign rhetoric - were not swayed by sham super-PACs with lofty, misleading names like "Americans For Prosperity" (because who in their right mind would be against prosperous Americans?) and "Club For Growth Action" (whatever the hell that means). Quite a few super-wealthy billionaires - casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, for one - dropped a huge chunk of change on Romney's campaign, and essentially threw their money down a rat hole. I wonder how much good that money could have done, donated to food banks or domestic violence shelters, instead of being utterly wasted on a political campaign.
By Anne Romney's own statement, she and her husband are through with politics. We can only hope we've seen that last of that corrosive, elitist, hatchet-faced old trollop. Initially her role in her husband's campaign was to "humanize" him to the voters and make him seem like a regular person. In the end, Anne Romney was the one who needed "humanized," because her presence and role in the campaign proved to be a major misfire. She needs to just throw on one of her pioneer smocks and go be a good little Mormon wifey. It's hard to humanize someone who lacks so very much in terms of basic humanity, and maybe her next dancing horse can do a little jig to make her feel better.
America dodged a huge bullet (more like a thermonuclear warhead) when Romney lost. I can barely imagine how unspeakably awful and horrible a Romney administration would be. Our nation would have become a weird, Frankenstein-like hybrid of theocracy and oligarchy, with government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich becoming the norm.
If I can be indulged for a little bit of tooting my own horn, I wrote in an entry on this blog called "This Just In: Time Marches On," dated almost a year ago November 15, 2011:
"My prediction is that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee and will go against Obama in the 2012 election....Obama will coast to his second term."
If you don't mind my saying... Nailed. It.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
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.
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.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
A Texas-Sized Disgrace
There's been a disturbing story going around lately about, of all things, the Texas Board of Education. It seems this august body of elected officials is in charge of determining the content of textbooks used in their schools. The Board has been overrun by Christian conservatives, and they outnumber the normal board members nearly two-to-one. The leader of the conservative faction, a dentist by the name of Dr. Don McLeroy, has used the majority to pass over 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards which affect what is taught in history, economics and civics.
McLeroy is a self-described "orthodox conservative Christian" who feels he is on a mission to rid the Texas school system of the tired old threat of "liberal bias." He is one of those people who believes the earth is less than 10,000 years old. He does not believe in the validity of the fossil record or the carbon-dating process which determines the age of rocks, or the dinosaurs which lived 65 million years ago, or the two-billion-year-old rocks you can find in Greenland. He does believe there was once a Garden of Eden and a snake who hoodwinked Eve into munching on a Red Delicious.
While he's pretty clear on believing certain things that happened thousands of years ago, he seems to have a bit of a problem with more recent events. For instance, instead of students learning about Chicano labor leader and activist Cesar Chavez, McLeroy and his ilk have decided they will learn about the puckered, skeletal Phyllis Schlafly, who headed the ultra-conservative Eagle Forum in the eighties. To counter the nonviolent approach and civil-rights accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King, students will now be instructed in the violent philosophies of the Black Panthers.
There's more: students will read less about Franklin Roosevelt and more about senile, Alzheimer's-addled buffoon Ronald Reagan. One of the founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, has been replaced on a list of influential 18th and 19th century writers by the likes of St. Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin, who both lived long before the 18th century. Jefferson, despite his place of honor in this country's history, is a favorite target of conservatives because he coined the phrase "separation between church and state." Also, the American economic system is referred to as the "free enterprise system," because "capitalism" sounds too much like that other terrible "ism" - "socialism" - and the vast majority of Texans can't tell the difference between the two anyway.
The revisionist history goes on and on. One would be inclined to dismiss this blatant, unconscionable whitewashing of the facts as just the regular, outrageous level of stupidity and ignorance associated with the state of Texas. After all, everything is bigger in Texas except people's brains. But because of quirks in the educational system this is a much bigger deal than one realizes. Texas is such a huge market for textbooks that their standards are incorporated into the books and then sold to schools all over the country. So students everywhere may be exposed to the ignorance, biases and prejudices of the crotchety, crusty conservatives on the Texas Board of Education.
This is such a cowardly, underhanded thing, even for conservatives. We're all used to hearing about conservatives advancing their agenda by any illegal and immoral way possible, such as election theft, falsifying votes, attack ads on the media, and just out-and-out bald-faced lying about everything they don't agree with. But to poison the textbooks school children use to learn with their toxic blend of stupidity and lies, is a new low even for them. And McLeroy does not feel the least twinge of guilt from misusing the educational system to force his bigotry down the throats of children across the country.
Now obviously a system which allows and indeed propagates such insanity beyond the borders of Texas is tragically, profoundly broken. Nobody cares if children in Texas grow up to be total idiots because after all, it's Texas, and that's more or less their destiny. But when it starts to contaminate other areas of the country, well that's a problem. The textbook publishers couldn't care less if the content of their books is dangerously skewed and biased, they're just out to make money. One can only hope with all the other ways to get information in the modern world, such as through the internet, teachers won't have to rely entirely on the contents of a textbook to teach students what they need to know to make intelligent, informed choices as adults. But because of Mr. McLeroy and the Texas Board of Education, they are getting sabotaged from the very start with a massive, early dose of stupidity.
McLeroy is a self-described "orthodox conservative Christian" who feels he is on a mission to rid the Texas school system of the tired old threat of "liberal bias." He is one of those people who believes the earth is less than 10,000 years old. He does not believe in the validity of the fossil record or the carbon-dating process which determines the age of rocks, or the dinosaurs which lived 65 million years ago, or the two-billion-year-old rocks you can find in Greenland. He does believe there was once a Garden of Eden and a snake who hoodwinked Eve into munching on a Red Delicious.
While he's pretty clear on believing certain things that happened thousands of years ago, he seems to have a bit of a problem with more recent events. For instance, instead of students learning about Chicano labor leader and activist Cesar Chavez, McLeroy and his ilk have decided they will learn about the puckered, skeletal Phyllis Schlafly, who headed the ultra-conservative Eagle Forum in the eighties. To counter the nonviolent approach and civil-rights accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King, students will now be instructed in the violent philosophies of the Black Panthers.
There's more: students will read less about Franklin Roosevelt and more about senile, Alzheimer's-addled buffoon Ronald Reagan. One of the founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, has been replaced on a list of influential 18th and 19th century writers by the likes of St. Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin, who both lived long before the 18th century. Jefferson, despite his place of honor in this country's history, is a favorite target of conservatives because he coined the phrase "separation between church and state." Also, the American economic system is referred to as the "free enterprise system," because "capitalism" sounds too much like that other terrible "ism" - "socialism" - and the vast majority of Texans can't tell the difference between the two anyway.
The revisionist history goes on and on. One would be inclined to dismiss this blatant, unconscionable whitewashing of the facts as just the regular, outrageous level of stupidity and ignorance associated with the state of Texas. After all, everything is bigger in Texas except people's brains. But because of quirks in the educational system this is a much bigger deal than one realizes. Texas is such a huge market for textbooks that their standards are incorporated into the books and then sold to schools all over the country. So students everywhere may be exposed to the ignorance, biases and prejudices of the crotchety, crusty conservatives on the Texas Board of Education.
This is such a cowardly, underhanded thing, even for conservatives. We're all used to hearing about conservatives advancing their agenda by any illegal and immoral way possible, such as election theft, falsifying votes, attack ads on the media, and just out-and-out bald-faced lying about everything they don't agree with. But to poison the textbooks school children use to learn with their toxic blend of stupidity and lies, is a new low even for them. And McLeroy does not feel the least twinge of guilt from misusing the educational system to force his bigotry down the throats of children across the country.
Now obviously a system which allows and indeed propagates such insanity beyond the borders of Texas is tragically, profoundly broken. Nobody cares if children in Texas grow up to be total idiots because after all, it's Texas, and that's more or less their destiny. But when it starts to contaminate other areas of the country, well that's a problem. The textbook publishers couldn't care less if the content of their books is dangerously skewed and biased, they're just out to make money. One can only hope with all the other ways to get information in the modern world, such as through the internet, teachers won't have to rely entirely on the contents of a textbook to teach students what they need to know to make intelligent, informed choices as adults. But because of Mr. McLeroy and the Texas Board of Education, they are getting sabotaged from the very start with a massive, early dose of stupidity.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Voter "Values"
The conservative movement in America is in full hysteria mode and can barely speak without sputtering and fulminating like they are having a collective grand mal seizure. Some news pundits are referring to it as a death spasm for a political movement coming to the end of its existence (we should be so lucky) as its own extreme-radical right-wing takes over like a virulent, all-consuming cancer. Conservatives have jumped on the health care "debate" like a fat kid on a case of Hostess Ho-Hos and are shrieking and screaming like a senior citizen at a cafeteria who missed out on getting the last bowl of lime Jell-o.
The latest manifestation of this death rattle is something called the "Values Voter Summit" unfurling in all its rancid glory in Washington DC this weekend. A quick perusal of the list of speakers on their website (click at your own risk, you are warned) is like a college-level anthropology-class listing of the most reactionary, backward-thinking dinosaurs of the past 60 years. From the ancient, brittle and desiccated Phyllis Schlafly to the mummified remains of Ed Meese (Ed Meese is still around? Seriously??) to the batshit-crazy Rep. Michele Bachmann to the Howdy-Doody-on-heroin visage of Gary Bauer, the speakers' list looks like a summit meeting of every bigoted, racist, and homophobic old crank that they could drag out of the cultural toilet of modern-day America. The only one prominently missing is methed-out scarecrow Ann Coulter, who presumably couldn't make it because she's at the Goodyear Tire Factory getting her throat re-treaded.
This Values Voter Summit seems to be obsessed with "taking back their country" from the godless legions of the liberal elite who are nipping at their orthopedic shoes at every turn. They profess to be Christians but typically, so many of them are doing such incredibly un-Christian things. At their march on Washington last weekend, signs were visible everywhere which showed Obama made up to look like Hitler or the Joker from the Batman comic books. There was a sign proclaiming "No Communist Health Care!" Um ... Communist health care?? What is that? Do they even know what the word "Communist" means? Ignorance of the most profound kind was on display everywhere, with the shamelessness of a mob mentality. One woman was interviewed on National Public Radio and whined, "I'm here because I want my country back. The country that my parents left to me, I want to leave to my children."
Well, guess what, lady? That country is gone. Times have changed, and this country is a radically different place than it was even a half a generation ago. The world has never been so interconnected (due to the global economy and the Internet) and polarized at the same time. The glaciers are melting and sea levels rising. Gasoline reached over $4 a gallon before receding, and only when a global recession and the near-collapse of the US economy caused energy demand to fall through the floor. Unemployment has soared to 30-year highs and has not finished rising yet. The economy has lost over 6 million jobs in the past year, most of which will never be replaced. And the America of a generation ago came to a crashing, horrific end on September 11, 2001. Absolutely everything changed, permanently and irretrievably, on that awful day and no amount of wishful thinking will ever restore it.
But, in spite of all the evidence staring them in the face, we have the spectacle of tens of thousands of people marching on the Capitol, blaming all the awful things that have happened to this country on the fact that godless liberals took prayer out of the schools, and the homosexuals and fornicators are trying to make bestiality legal. How they managed not to run each other over in their walkers and their scooters is beyond me, but one thing was clear: this is all the fault of "others," i. e., people who don't share their conservative and fundamentalist views. Never mind that eight years of the Bush administration got us into two costly, interminable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - the Iraq war based on total fabrications and falsehoods regarding WMDs - and other wars looming on the horizon with Iran and North Korea. Never mind that conservative control of Congress has exploded the deficit and saddled future generations with crushing debt. Never mind that the institution of marriage is much more threatened by the over-50% divorce rate than it ever would be by the marriage of the lesbian couple who have been together for over 40 years. Never mind that the greedy bloodsuckers of Wall Street very nearly caused the ruination of the American economy and destroyed the domestic automobile industry, along with many other job opportunities and have caused thousands of people to lose their homes and everything they own. Never mind that the policies of the Bush administration sent millions of jobs overseas to India, China, Malaysia and other places and flooded the American job market with foreign workers willing to work for a fraction of the pay it takes to have a decent standard of living in the U.S.
Never mind that conservative principles are at the very least equally, if not more, culpable than liberal philosophy in destroying the America of twenty years ago. Never mind that in the past twenty years Republicans have held the power in Washington more often than Democrats. The only thing that matters to these "Values Voters" is the fact that they are right and everyone else in the world is responsible for all the bad decisions, poor choices, and outright lies that have taken this country down the path to dissolution. They don't realize that the "moral decay" they incessantly decry found its highest expression in the Bush White House. They are happy to listen to an endless stream of double-talking, crotchety hypocrites who tell them how right and noble and good they are, all the time laughing at them behind their backs and regarding them as ignorant, mindless dupes.
Such are the values embraced by these "Values Voters." Once again, stupidity reigns supreme in Washington DC, on Wall Street and on Main Street. How much more of this idiocy this country can endure, I don't know, but it does not bode well for us all. And if you think for one second I'm exaggerating about the bottomless stupidity and ignorance of these people, check out this video.
The latest manifestation of this death rattle is something called the "Values Voter Summit" unfurling in all its rancid glory in Washington DC this weekend. A quick perusal of the list of speakers on their website (click at your own risk, you are warned) is like a college-level anthropology-class listing of the most reactionary, backward-thinking dinosaurs of the past 60 years. From the ancient, brittle and desiccated Phyllis Schlafly to the mummified remains of Ed Meese (Ed Meese is still around? Seriously??) to the batshit-crazy Rep. Michele Bachmann to the Howdy-Doody-on-heroin visage of Gary Bauer, the speakers' list looks like a summit meeting of every bigoted, racist, and homophobic old crank that they could drag out of the cultural toilet of modern-day America. The only one prominently missing is methed-out scarecrow Ann Coulter, who presumably couldn't make it because she's at the Goodyear Tire Factory getting her throat re-treaded.
This Values Voter Summit seems to be obsessed with "taking back their country" from the godless legions of the liberal elite who are nipping at their orthopedic shoes at every turn. They profess to be Christians but typically, so many of them are doing such incredibly un-Christian things. At their march on Washington last weekend, signs were visible everywhere which showed Obama made up to look like Hitler or the Joker from the Batman comic books. There was a sign proclaiming "No Communist Health Care!" Um ... Communist health care?? What is that? Do they even know what the word "Communist" means? Ignorance of the most profound kind was on display everywhere, with the shamelessness of a mob mentality. One woman was interviewed on National Public Radio and whined, "I'm here because I want my country back. The country that my parents left to me, I want to leave to my children."
Well, guess what, lady? That country is gone. Times have changed, and this country is a radically different place than it was even a half a generation ago. The world has never been so interconnected (due to the global economy and the Internet) and polarized at the same time. The glaciers are melting and sea levels rising. Gasoline reached over $4 a gallon before receding, and only when a global recession and the near-collapse of the US economy caused energy demand to fall through the floor. Unemployment has soared to 30-year highs and has not finished rising yet. The economy has lost over 6 million jobs in the past year, most of which will never be replaced. And the America of a generation ago came to a crashing, horrific end on September 11, 2001. Absolutely everything changed, permanently and irretrievably, on that awful day and no amount of wishful thinking will ever restore it.
But, in spite of all the evidence staring them in the face, we have the spectacle of tens of thousands of people marching on the Capitol, blaming all the awful things that have happened to this country on the fact that godless liberals took prayer out of the schools, and the homosexuals and fornicators are trying to make bestiality legal. How they managed not to run each other over in their walkers and their scooters is beyond me, but one thing was clear: this is all the fault of "others," i. e., people who don't share their conservative and fundamentalist views. Never mind that eight years of the Bush administration got us into two costly, interminable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - the Iraq war based on total fabrications and falsehoods regarding WMDs - and other wars looming on the horizon with Iran and North Korea. Never mind that conservative control of Congress has exploded the deficit and saddled future generations with crushing debt. Never mind that the institution of marriage is much more threatened by the over-50% divorce rate than it ever would be by the marriage of the lesbian couple who have been together for over 40 years. Never mind that the greedy bloodsuckers of Wall Street very nearly caused the ruination of the American economy and destroyed the domestic automobile industry, along with many other job opportunities and have caused thousands of people to lose their homes and everything they own. Never mind that the policies of the Bush administration sent millions of jobs overseas to India, China, Malaysia and other places and flooded the American job market with foreign workers willing to work for a fraction of the pay it takes to have a decent standard of living in the U.S.
Never mind that conservative principles are at the very least equally, if not more, culpable than liberal philosophy in destroying the America of twenty years ago. Never mind that in the past twenty years Republicans have held the power in Washington more often than Democrats. The only thing that matters to these "Values Voters" is the fact that they are right and everyone else in the world is responsible for all the bad decisions, poor choices, and outright lies that have taken this country down the path to dissolution. They don't realize that the "moral decay" they incessantly decry found its highest expression in the Bush White House. They are happy to listen to an endless stream of double-talking, crotchety hypocrites who tell them how right and noble and good they are, all the time laughing at them behind their backs and regarding them as ignorant, mindless dupes.
Such are the values embraced by these "Values Voters." Once again, stupidity reigns supreme in Washington DC, on Wall Street and on Main Street. How much more of this idiocy this country can endure, I don't know, but it does not bode well for us all. And if you think for one second I'm exaggerating about the bottomless stupidity and ignorance of these people, check out this video.
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