What's At Stake?

Friday (late again)

My apologies for posting late. I've spent the past three days doing all of the things that makes Thanksgiving my favorite holiday--eating execessive amounts of food, buying things I don't need, and watching football. And none of that is meant sarcastically--watching anyone beat the stuffing out of the Cowboys (but especially the Dolphins) always makes for a great day.

I completely zoned out from paying attention to politics for the past few days, and have only now been catching up on President Bush's trip to Iraq on Thursday. Can we all just call off the election now? These guys are so damn good, it's scary. It was amazing on several levels: (1) it made for brilliant political theater--how much do you want to bet that they'll be using this clip ad nauseum over the next year? (2) especially with the tears, it shows that he really does care about the troops, neutralizing a message the Democrats have been hammering, and (3) more than anything else, the fact that they pulled this off in secret shows how damn organized and cohesive they are. There were no leaks, despite the fact that they'd been planning it for months? If this were the Clinton Administration, the story would have appeared in the NYT or the Post sometime around August...

On a brighter note, Kinky Friedman's running for Governor in Texas...http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/29/national/29KINK.html (sorry, I'm doing this from a Mac, and can't seem to make that URL a hyperlink).

Wednesday

I am in the UK, the land of neat accents, as Tuesday would have it, and this afternoon hung around a favorite bookshop. This particular place is more well known for its weighty academic tomes than anything remotely political, so I was a bit surprised by their rather substantial show of what might best be described as Anti- Bush material - everything from scholarly books to a cartoon comic of Bush's best verbal gaffes, to a set of playing cards depicting Bush and his cronies in a way that the White House might not quite approve.

So, I accosted the chap who was staffing the display and asked him about it. A nice portly, jovial Brit he was, but he stunned me - not just with his facts and figures - but with sharp rhetorical jabs at the US establishment and indeed the US press. "Did you notice that they under-reported last week's demonstrations?" he enquired. "More than 200 000 people showed up in London - and that too on a working day. If I had time off I'd have taken the train and gone!" I asked him about the playing cards. "We sell them like hot cakes," he remarks. "People here hate Bush."

This reminded me of the short quote I heard on Savage Nation the night before I flew out here. Michael, with his tried and tested savagery, dug into the British newsman who asked George why so many people hated him. According to Savage, this "lowlife" had no business demeaning our president - and ignoring Bush's own response - that he believes in free speech, implored his audience to actually deport US liberals - even if they were citizens - if they did not go along with his point of view. I wonder now about the demonstrations in Miami. Would the likes of Savage throw all these people out? If they do, where is their argument about intervention in Iraq - which was ostensibly to deliver democracy to those unfortunates? If, for some reason, they don't - and just use police force to suppress the demonstrators, what does it say about our democracy? What does it say about the state of our democracy when so many millions of people disagree so vehemently with the views of the administration - and are just not being heard - or allowed to engage - or plain shut out by the mainstream media which does not even provide balanced reporting. (It is extra-ordinary to compare the British coverage of Miami with that in the US).

The view from this end of the pond - at least among the many ordinary folks that I have talked to, is that American democracy is dead. Personally, I disagree with this view quite strongly. But sometimes I hope I am not wrong, that I am not just hallucinating.

Tuesday

I was collecting signatures the other day outside a store downtown. Most people were surprisingly supportive and engaged when I approached them to discuss the issue we were picketing over. Many people even offered their contact information so that we can keep them involved and apprised of the campaign. In fact some of the few people who sadly told me they couldn’t give me their information were immigrants either residing here in the US or foreign nationals who are visiting the US as tourists. Several of them explained to me that you can never be too careful these days, that “it’s really terrible here” how we treat people without US passports (or hey, even some with!). It shocked me to think that people would be so scared for their immigration or visa status that they would not be willing to offer their name for a relatively harmless petition (not related to the US government or its policies). Of course I shouldn’t be surprised. We don’t live in a free state.

In other news…the Boston Globe had a full-page grid chart yesterday comparing the Dem candidates to-- who else? Bill Clinton! Can anyone guess who the “it’s the female’s turn, stupid” or the “it’s the Jesse example, stupid” candidates are? Of course the most important column they list, the first column in fact, is the hair of the candidates: Kerry got a “fabulous” rating (though this is arbitrary since they offer no criteria) so maybe his campaign is picking up?! Poor Dean's is "showing signs of wear." They did get one thing right, though, William H Macy *would* play an excellent Joe Lieberman!

I’m getting the sense that maybe our media think we aren’t really interested in the real issues…humm!

Monday

Fifteen years ago, Peggy Noonan said that the difference between supporters of the Democratic Party and supporters of the Republican Party was the difference between those who talk loudly in restaurants and those who wait on them.

Leaving aside the brilliance of this wresting of the populist banner from the Chattering Classes by the party of Big Bidness, I have to ask how much real attention the Democrats are going to be paying to the people who wait on others in restaurants, do the cooking in the back out of sight, etc. etc. etc.

If there was ever a time when the banner of The Majority of Ordinary People - with all their very different values - should be easy to take away from the Republicans, it's now.

But can the Democrats really do this?

Over forty years ago, the Beyond the Fringe folks quipped that in America, there's the Republican Party, which is like the UK's Conservative Party, and there's the Democratic Party, which is like the UK's Conservative Party.

And that's still pretty much the case.

Friday is, I think, quite right in pointing out that the candidate of the Center will walk off with this particular election, but the Center gets moved Left and Right by politicians' own actions. Who will move this year's Center anywhere near someplace that, say, RFK would have recognized??

Rorschach-lein

And as for names and pseudonyms, I want to remove the ad hominems (ARE YOU AMERICAN ENOUGH?) out and focus on the arguments. Hence, Rorschach, since the name simultaneously represents (a) the reactionary character from Alan Moore's "The Watchmen" (where the central question is who watches the watchmen, relevant to our times) and (b) a Rorschach test through dire irony and humor.

Staring into the black and white patterns of the letters of these posts, what pattern do you see? What do you bring to the screen?

Rorschach

I am glad for American policy now. Exceptionally glad. There's no need to tell the truth to the American people: they don't care. Hey, there's weapons of mass destruction! Yeah, those bad brown people have them. Yes, they're brown like the people who attacked the world trade center so they're all bad. Oh yeah, we knew that they didn't really have weapons of mass destruction, but we couldn't tell you that we wanted to create a colony for oil and military power over those brown people. It's really good that those American people don't care. And we were doing it to help those poor brown skinned folk. That's why we didn't have any plan for electricity, water, medicine or police. It was top of our list. The cholera is just an accidental by product. Just like the military bases that we're setting up until the oil runs out.

Saturday

Yo. This is Saturday. Or, perhaps the ghost of Saturday's past. What is Saturday: a chance at reflection on the week, what we have done. When is Saturday: in the time between one set of events and another. Here is Saturday: a view backwards to Santayana. Why is Saturday: a chance to reflect on whats at stake, what choices that make us who we are, individuals and tribe. And where is Saturday: hopefully in a few of our hearts.

What's at stake: a chance to be the good guys rather than the bad guys, a chance to choose a life about more than just ourselves.

Friday

To respond to "smart aleck, as it were", (who managed to make the same post three times), the answer is NO--Lieberman is not my candidate. His campaign is done, barring a miracle.

While I don't agree with everything the DLC says, they were completely correct about the need for the Democratic Party to shift closer to the center if they had any hope of winning Presidential elections.

If/when Dean wins the nomination, he's staked ground so far to the left that it's going to be difficult to seize the middle ground. In addition, a campagn based on anger, on why things are going so badly, is not a formula for a winning campaign. After Jimmy "malaise and the misery index" Carter, Walter "I want to raise your taxes" Mondale, and Michael "tank gunner" Dukakis, Clinton actually presented a positive hopeful vision for America. Dean better start articulating that vision, and soon...

Then again, we're still pretty early, and a great deal can happen over the next three months. Who knows--maybe it really is the staff, and not the candidate, that's been wrong with the Kerry campaign. But I doubt it. Brian McGrory of the Boston Globe has always had Kerry pegged.

Our Monday contributor pointed out the "hate speech" comment by Tom Delay. It's just part of a new set of line of attack that Ed Gillespie at the RNC's been pushing--the full term of art is "political hate speech", and it's frankly pretty hilarious. Spinsanity has a great piece on the subject.

It's still GWB's race to lose. The economy seems to be recovering, and losses in Iraq are low enough that people are concerned but not angry. Given the recent gerrymandering in Texas, the Republicans are going to have a solid majority in the House of Representatives for the foreseeable future. With Hollings' retirement, and Bob Graham's and John Edwards' decisions not to run next year, the Senate will also be even more firmly under Republican control. It's going to be a long four years...

This is Thursday. Sorry for missing the opening week, but let's talk about 2004.

Frankly, this will be just like any other election. We will get agitated about the usual: taxes, environment, abortion, immigration, and things of that sort. Don't get me wrong, these conflicts are important, and we should get agitated about them, but they have been with us for a while. We know where we stand, and our opinions won't change regardless of what anyone says or does during the campaign.

(Incidentally, the Greens are wrong! The two serious parties do take different stands on these issues, and they do implement different policies when in power, especially when one of them controls all three branches.)

My point is simply that we are unlikely to hear anything new in 2004. Few pithy parallels aside, there is no fascism looming on the right, and communism is in fact dead. Democracy and capitalism won. History is over. Time passes and nothing new happens. Which means that if the economy improves and Iraq stabilizes, GW will win and that's just that.

Wednesday

I think Tuesday has a valid point. Not that I’d like to live in a colony – I’d rather be free, thank you very much. The issue simply is that for all the bonhomie underlying the so called special relationship, the two countries – or at least the ruling parties in the UK and the US, could not today be further apart on the issues that really count for average citizens.

British commentators have not failed to draw out the contrasts against the backdrop of Mr. Bush’s on-going State visit. In Britain after Labour came to power, health and education spending are near EU averages for about the first time, and in general, social democratic ideas have produced a society that is far more equitable and just than any in recent memory. Contrast this with the US, where the neo-cons who hold the strings that animate the Bush Marionette have produced public policy that has produced greater inequity and economic despair than any administration in recent memory. What -- ask the opinion-editorialists in British papers -- do Bush and Blair share other than perhaps a brand of toothpaste to help make their white smiles?

It is indeed stunning that the oligarchs behind the Bush façade have helped themselves to the lion’s share of the tax cuts (after all, they belong to the top one percent of Americans who have received more than half of the tax cut), while at the same time seeking to axe every social welfare program put in place since the Great Depression. Apparently, the only purpose that they see for taxes is in arming the police to protect their property, and to provide minimal cannon fodder for our troops – who they march off to distant parts of the world to protect their economic interests. So, the news of the move by some citizens engaging in tax resistance does sound interesting. Didn’t someone once say, “No taxation without Representation”?