It Stinks

The party of patriots, the "us" in "us against them," the party that claims a patent on the love-of-America brand, is become the party of distortion, lies, personal attacks, slime; and the party of voter suppression. One on top of another, the stories pile up: deliberate attempts to deceive voters, to challenge them, to reach into the polluted well and come up with new ways to prevent voting. It's as much as admitting that in the battle of ideas, they have none; or they have no faith that theirs might prevail in a fair fight.

Where's the outrage? Where are the voices on the right, crying "enough." Is there no one on that side to say, "We are better than that. This is America. We should battle in the arena of ideas." Silence. It's beyond shameful. It's a disgrace to them, to this country, to our future. There have been defections: many newspapers, many prominent Republicans have announced their support of Obama. And while it's good that such switches have been based on substantive issues, I've heard no one on the right speak out against this most fundamental perversion of democracy, this evidence that, for all their professed love of country, what they hate is its very foundation.

I'm not a vindictive person. But this time, I hope for a resounding rejection of the tactics, a rising up of people from every state saying, ENOUGH!! We can't afford this. This will not do. This kind of politics -- Rovian, Orwellian, Machiavellian; destructive, undemocratic, uncaring, cynical, antithetical to everything I believe -- I long to see it end resoundingly, in the only way it can: by a reaction so obvious, so monumental, so undeniable that it will never, NEVER, be used again.

No matter the outcome of the election, in this, I know, I will be disappointed.

Plumbing The Depths

Words come with difficulty. Bizarre. Unbelievable. Depressing. There are many more, but they seem to be piling up behind my right eye, building, plowing into it, hot, painful. Is this really an election? Can this truly be the centerpiece of a campaign as our economy collapses, deficits overwhelm all understanding, wars lumber on, oil runs out? Does John McCain mean what he says? Is this really an American hero, the role model of a senator and presidential candidate? He has a job for him in his administration? Famous for asking a single question, the guy later admitting he'd be better off in under Obama's tax plan. Now known for misrepresenting his situation, and for being under a lien over unpaid taxes!?!? Do the words "hero" and "role model" no longer have any meaning? In these times, are we that empty?

Nausea makes it hard to laugh, and crying does no good. The spectacle of John McCain elevating Joe (with his agent, his record contract, his offer from Laura Ingraham to mastermind a run for congress) to a national figure says a great deal about the current state of the Republican party: to whom they are trying to appeal and how little they think of those folks. And, of course, it says something pretty pathetic about the ones who cheer him on. It's not surprising that the party of Sarah Palin -- a singularly unprepared national figure -- would lionize a guy like ol' Joe. It's of a piece, I guess, with their criticisms of Barack Obama, a man of undeniable intelligence and depth, who's been thinking and learning and writing and talking about important issues for years. One can only conclude that dumb is their direction, that they've ceded the high ground, taken a pass on policy.

I'm sure Joe is a nice guy (actually, I'm not: he seems sort of nasty, and he is either really poorly informed or such a partisan that -- like the one who idolizes him -- he finds facts mere annoyances. Israel, he tells a crowd, is threatened with doom if Obama is elected. Marxism, he warns, taking up the latest deception.) I like plumbers. Plumbers have bailed me out, quite literally, more than once. I've even learned a little about their craft from watching them. I liked taking care of people with grease under their nails more than I did fancier professionals. But there's something surpassingly weird about this lionization and fawning by McPalin and their media sponsors. And it's not just that Republican policies over the years have been disproportionately disadvantageous to such blue collar folk.

In the near future I plan to write a little about the dumbing down of this country. It's undeniable. I blame Republicans: not all, just the most "base," as it were. The deniers of global warming. The rejecters of evolution, the young-earthers. The redacters of scientific facts. They're in the White House, they're in every state -- especially the South. They're in megachurches, sending money to their preachers who spend it on fancy homes and porn. Seriously. It's a curse on us all, because they can turn elections. They don't want hard; they don't want complex; they need enemies -- they cling to them, one might say, whether it's the devil, Muslims, or Democrats -- to keep themselves motivated and from facing reality. They think small, they think bumper-sticker thoughts. They love Joe the Plumber, but they really can't admit why. They would, however, happily vote for him. When the going gets tough, the weak get stupid.

A campaign, based on a myth. The ultimate rejection of seriousness. Vacuity as value. Anti-intellectualism as archetype.

It's funny.

But really, it's not.

Traction

When planning surgery, weighing the options and discussing them with patients, I always had to consider the worst possible outcomes. Or maybe it's just because I'm a Democrat.

Whatever the reason, I find myself less than confident that Obama will win the election. After flailing around aimlessly, bouncing from one ineffectual theme after another, revealing his central lack of conviction on pretty much anything, the McCain campaign seems to have settled on something that's getting apparent traction: Obama's a socialist, and Joe the Plumber doesn't like him. It makes no sense, it's completely baseless and unfactual; it's cynical and nasty.

In other words, it's the perfect Republican strategy.

And, watching interviews of pundits and of McCain's fellow-travelers, it appears people are buying it. "Socialist," they holler. "Marxist." One is left to wonder how many of those hooters could define either socialism or Marxism; and one is quite certain that they could no more outline specifics of Obama's economic plans that amount to it than they could name ten presidents. What they can do is latch onto that perfect phrase: "income redistribution." I've written about it before, nearly laughed it off because it's so ridiculous.

God knows I have abiding faith in the superficiality of the American voter. That both candidates voted for the bailout (which can rightly be viewed as a partial step toward socialism, except that it isn't the long-term goal) escapes them. Perhaps that's because John McCain was so two-faced about it that he nearly ran himself down dashing in and out of the room. And mainly, the fact that what Obama proposes is simply a readjustment of tax rates -- just as McCain (and every candidate who's ever run for president) does, except that McCain's proposals exacerbate the inequities and deficits and disaster we've gotten under Bush -- makes no difference: McPalin says it's socialism, and therefore by golly it is.

From the beginning, McCain has made it clear he thinks the electorate is stupid. It was just a matter of finding a message sufficiently idiotic to match up. No sense appealing to our better selves; no point in facing facts: Obama's pretty much got that segment locked up. Find something really moronic, dumb it down to the most simple-minded, and run with it. And so he did. And so I'm worried.

In my state, Washington, the lowest turnout in the primaries was among the 18 - 25 age group. Now it's true that on the Democratic side, the primary was essentially meaningless because the caucuses had already determined the outcome. Still, it concerns me. It's that group that has come out in huge numbers at rallies, and who are the core of the grunts in the campaign. I worry that they'll follow prior form and not vote in the needed numbers. Which would be doubly tragic. It's their future that has been mortgaged away and degraded by the presidency of George Bush. It's their security that would most certainly be placed further out of reach by John McCain, who differs from Bush on the economy and on foreign policy only in the ways he'd worsen Bush's mistakes. The "socialism" theme has the crazies riled up; the recent polls might have the young people overconfident.

There is, of course, one actual socialist on the ticket: as governor of Alaska, which owns its oil, Sarah Palin annually redistributes the wealth of the state to its people. And every time they hear about it, her crowd of America-lovin' socialism haters cheer and weep and look for an Obama supporter to beat up.

Funnyoid

When does it simply become farce? I suppose when it's this serious, the answer is "never." Still, John McCain and Sarah Palin are saying such outrageous things lately, that laughter might be the only appropriate response.

Briefly tacking back to substance, John McCain discusses energy. In the process, he derides Barack Obama for suggesting he'd consider nuclear energy, but thinks it ought to be "safe, environmental...blah blah blah." Is literally how McCain put it. To the hoots and hollers of his audience. What typical liberal bullshit: safety. Of nukes. And the audience cheers wildly at the put-down.

Are we on the same planet? It makes his air-quotes around the issue of women's health seem positively new-age sensitive. How can it be that an audience would jeer the idea of nuclear safety? Chernobyl anyone? Three Mile Island? Submarines (at which they really laughed. A knee-slapper!)? Who ARE these people?

Voters.

And Sarah Palin, who never phagocytosed a lie she wouldn't tell, is still spreading the previously-debunked nuttery that Obama has already written his inaugural address. (The right-wing blogosphere vibrated with the news, which derives from the fact that John Podesta, in a book he wrote while still working for Hillary, proposed an inaugural speech he thought a Democratic president ought to give.) The woman who says her source of information, magazine- and newspaper-wise, is "all of them" might be thought actually know the real story. Yet on she lies, with the fluidity of the Kenai. I'd laugh, if it weren't so appalling. Is there no one on the right who finds this too much? Is everything acceptable to further the cause, such as it is? Is there nothing she can say from which even partisans would recoil, thinking, hey can't she find something true to say? Is our party so bereft?

Or how about her latest escalation of the "wealth redistribution" theme: Obama wants to nationalize all property. He's a terrorist socialist communist America hater now. Che Guevara? He wants people to be able to share in the wealth (what's left of it) of this nation, and that makes him a communist? Is that the only model? From a simple phrase, the only manifestation of which is a proposal to raise the tax rates on the wealthy to where they were eight years ago, in prosperous times, Palin claims he wants to take everyone's property. Did she come up with that herself? Do the words burn her lips?

If she's the face of the new Republican party, it's no about-face. Same old, same old, is what it is. The stuff that got us where we are. Maverick? Well, yes, when it comes to truth.

Maybe, as the McPalin campaign resorts to such outrageous falsehood, some potential supporters will turn away. In these perilous and demanding times, where reasoning and cooperation will be demanded in amounts not seen since 1776, one would certainly hope so. But that was then, when education and discourse were valued. The party of Thomas Jefferson, the most educated and brilliant of our founders, holder of the largest collection of books in the country in his time, has devolved to the party that elevates mediocrity to a sacrament; that considers cluelessness a virtue, and facts irrelevant.

Getting Real

Some things are obvious. Others are saying it, too. When you cut through the crap, push away "he's a terrorist, they hate America," and listen to what Obama says, comparing it to the tone and text of McPalin's campaign, nothing could be more clear: If it's possible to get through these tough times -- and I'm not at all certain it is -- the style and substance of the leadership offered by Barack Obama is exactly what we need, and those of McPalin are exactly what we don't. And that, of course, is why McPalin are trying to change the subject. And change it. And change it. And change it.

Commies

You could knock me over with a feather: the Republicans have adopted a new meme and it makes no sense! Didn't see that coming.

So every Republican talking head, starting with John McCain and his marionette Sarah Palin, is screaming "socialism!!!" "redistribution of wealth!!!" As if there is some tax system that is not a redistribution of wealth. And coming from Sarah Palin, whose state owns all its oil and divvies up profits to its people (socialism, anyone?) it's particularly amusing.

What happened when Bush and his Congress pushed his tax-cuts for the wealthy? Redistribution of wealth. Up. And if we were to return to the (highly successful) tax policies present during the Clinton years? Redistribution of wealth. Down. Is there anything more obvious? It reminds me of the politician (some say it was, ironically, Red-baiting Florida Senator George Smathers) who said of his opponent: in college he matriculated in public, his wife was a known thespian, and he practiced nepotism with his sister-in-law.

Once again we are left to wonder if the people who fall for this (some of them are intelligent enough to be reading and commenting on this blog) are present in large enough numbers to affect an election. Meanwhile, anyone wanna predict how many more days before John McCain forswears his last vestige of honor and starts campaigning on Reverend Wright?

Sickening

I barely have the words to express the sadness and literal sickness I feel at the sight of Sarah Palin campaigning around the country, deliberately pitting one against another, framing this election as about those who love this country vs those that hate it. The McPalin campaign is fully committed to such diviseness. They're funding robocalls by the very company that slimed McCain in 2000, denounced by him then, now hired by him to do the same thing to Obama. At the precipice, while one campaign calls for finding common ground, for an end to that sort of divisiveness, the other is doing the opposite. And the polls are tightening. It still works.

Do they really not see how damaging it is? Do they believe that serving on a charitable foundation with William Ayers portends more danger to our country than the seeds they are sewing? Does winning justify tearing us asunder? It's simply unfathomable. And yet, it still works.

Their people feel comfortable in their hatreds. These self-described America-loving, Jesus-following patriots need to hate. They find difficult problems too difficult. Really to follow their Savior's teachings is too complicated: how much more comfortable simply to hate than to make the effort required to find a way forward with people with whom you disagree on some things. The more challenging and threatening the times, the more they recede into simple-mindedness. To do otherwise is too scary. A closed mind keeps out the cold.

Therein lies the real secret of the Republican party. The smart people within it (and yes, I believe there are a few of them) know that in order to get their "base" (how appropriate a term) voters willingly to vote for policies that are clearly against their own interests, they need to tap the correlation between conservative thinking and religious and social fundamentalism. It's no coincidence that the most fundamentalist religionists are nearly exclusively in the right wing. People who need to see the world in black and white, who deal with existential questions by blanking them out with absolutist thinking, are not, by definition, contemplative. And so we have it: whipping up enthusiasm by pitting us against them; framing politics as an internal struggle, those who love the country against those that don't.

And the obvious -- that criticism and arguing we can do better is not unAmerican any more than correcting your children is child abuse -- escapes them. The paradox of their argument -- that exercising the very tenets of our country's founding: freedom of speech, speaking out against injustice means you don't love the country -- is unnoticed.

In the press conference that will never happen (why?), Sarah Palin should be asked: what are the areas of this country that hate America? In what way is that hatred expressed? What, exactly, are the "small town values" that she praises? In what larger cities do they not exist and what is the evidence? And this: do you think there's danger in pitting one half of the country against the other? Why not run a campaign on ideas, why not plant the seeds of reconciliation? And when she gets through those, how about comparing sitting on a board with William Ayers with sleeping with a guy who was a member of a party that literally hates America, to whose membership she herself has said "keep up the good work."

Who is doing more harm to America? Sarah Palin and her elderly enabler, pitching fear and hate, or Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who are speaking of hope and common ground? It's another of those things that seem as obvious as the sunrise. And yet, here we are again. It still works. It makes me fear for our future. And it makes me sick.

Bring It On

Sounds like John McCain is going to bring up the terrorism thing in tomorrow's debate. That's good news (and it would prove me wrong). Let's see, once the facts are on the table, how many people are moved to vote for the old guy. My guess: only those already there; way there. I suppose there's a chance Barack Obama could muff it, sound defensive. But I doubt it. Facts, as they say, have a well-known liberal bias.

Meanwhile, it's interesting to hear the rationalizations. McPOW seems unable to grasp that there's a difference between the candidates themselves whipping up the rabble by implying Obama consorts with and is himself a terrorist, and the occasional Obama supporter saying something stupid.

And we still have another three weeks of this crap.

Lurch

It's almost funny, were it not so pathetic. Over the weekend, McCain announces he'll be releasing a new economic plan today. Lindsay (I'm as self righteous as Joe Lieberman and even smarmier) Graham was out there on the tubes saying the plan "will be a very comprehensive approach to jump-start the economy, by allowing capital to be formed easier in America by lowering taxes." Well, it's today. Oops.

The operative words, to pick only a sampling of the applicable, are erratic, disarray, incoherent, confused, unbalanced, lost. Which is not to say the campaign is over. I've written about how conservatives think differently from liberals; about that amazing study showing that when presented with facts which disprove a position, they actually increase their belief in that position. Today, McPalin are out with a new ad that even more brazenly hypes the Obama-as-terrorist connection. (For an excellent fact-check, read this.)

So I guess the question is this: will people take note of, and be appropriately distressed by the way, under duress, John McCain is lurching around like a zombie, or will they recede into the ooze of guilt-by-association, distortion, and lies? I'm hopeful; but, past being prologue, I'm a long way from confident.

Update: Gee, after Obama came out with a comprehensive plan today, it looks like McCain changed his mind again. My neck hurts.

Letter

Dear Governor Palin,

I'm happy to give you the benefit of the doubt, here. Ascending the political stairway in Alaska, you didn't have to consider certain things. In a state that's pretty much homogeneous (that's not a sexual reference, by the way), where money flows from the pipeline to its people, and from Washington in gushers, you've never had to wonder about tone and truth. It's not been much of a problem (although the gate is a little bit open) to use political power to personal advantage, and gaining that power didn't require turning people against one another. So I think it's quite possible -- understandable, even -- that you don't recognize the potential damage, the actual damage, of what you have now agreed to do in running a campaign of polarization. In Alaska, there are no parallels. Down here, in the lower forty-eight, your descent into smear and into the mongering of hate and fear threatens our existence. I'm not kidding. It's that serious.

Maybe you know how untrue is your statement that Barack Obama "pals around with terrorists," and your implication that he is one himself. Perhaps you've even made an effort to understand (if you were to do so, you might even agree with) his statement, in context, that our strategy of focusing on bombing in Afghanistan was risking serious alienation of its citizens and is counterproductive. For the troops (for whose welfare, unlike John McCain, he voted in the form of the new GI bill) and for our cause there, which he has said from the beginning was abandoned prematurely. I suppose it doesn't really matter whether you know or not, other than what it says about you. What matters is how it inflames a certain part of our society, and how that sort of divisiveness has gotten us to where we are today, and how it threatens any real hope of finding our way back.

Coming from Alaska, a place pretty much free of the strains facing the rest of us, you may not understand the difficulties of finding common ground, nor even of the need. When you smile from your podium at the crowds before you, as they shout, derisive and vocal in their hatreds, naming Senator Obama a terrorist, treasonous, calling for his death, perhaps you find it exhilarating. Never, I'm sure, have your words fallen on and stirred so many. A far cry indeed from playing the flute in a beauty pageant.

Can you see how dangerous it is? Not just for Senator Obama: for our country. Does it occur to you that, as we head into a worldwide economic downturn the likes of which none of has seen, fomenting hatred will make helping each other that much harder? Isn't such behavior anathema to your faith, by golly; were your political aspirations, ever, at first, maybe, to lift people up and to help them? Granted, this much help was never needed in Wasilla or Juneau. But we're really hurting down here. Our country is in two wars, its military is stretched, our economy is crashing around us. People are losing homes. The world economy, thanks largely to the exporting of our unregulated financial instruments, is teetering along with ours. For the last eight years, the world already had a pretty low opinion of us. Now, our need for countries to wish us well is even greater. On top of all that, we're running out of oil, the ice is melting, health care is a mess, our education system doesn't measure up. Facing this, do you really, in your heart of hearts, have no compunction about dividing us against ourselves? Are you really so free of values and ideas of your own that it bothers you not at all to campaign in the way you are? Can't you see a need for something better?

Your time is valuable, and I'm going on too long here, Governor. But I'm physically ill over it (you said you were ill over the bailout, so I guess you can understand how outside events can affect a person.) Barack Obama has spoken not just eloquently but really thoughtfully about all of these problems. I'd bet the oil in ANWR that if you saw his words and didn't know the source, you'd really like a lot of it: most of it isn't partisan at all. It's about solutions, about the need to listen to each other, respectfully, finding common ways forward. And where you disagree, why not say so in positive ways? Now, facing problems the seriousness of which the world has never seen, aren't respect and open-mindedness exactly what we need? Must we not search among all of us to find the best ideas? The twisting of words, the fomenting of hatred in order to gain purely political advantage -- don't the times call for better?

Please. Think about what you are doing. Look at your crowds, listen to them as they spew hatred for liberals, for Senator Obama, for the press. For half the country!! For the foundations of its liberty!! Please. We can't take it. We literally may not survive it. Stop, think, reflect. This is real, it's serious. It's much bigger than a sports complex in Wasilla. There could well be no tomorrow. If you have ideas, let's hear them. If you get that a country in peril needs all of its citizens to look at one another and see themselves, say so. Or is it just about winning? And if so, to whose benefit, to what end? Have you ever really thought about that? In Alaska, such questions didn't matter. Now, they really do.

Thank you for your time.

Sid Schwab
Human-American

Double Negative

So McCain's brain trust (look up "oxymoron" and.... [whack!]) announces that for the rest of the campaign they'll be spending all their advertising money on attack ads. Actually announces it!! So they can, by their own description, be "turning the page" on the economy. Remember back in the beginning, when McPOW promised to run a respectful campaign, based on the issues? His wife, too.

Here's what I'd love to hear from Barack Obama:

John McCain has announced that the last month of this election will be full attack mode, nothing but. The politics of attack, distraction, distortion, and lies are exactly what has brought us to where we are: economy in shambles, an impending energy crisis, climate change unaddressed, staggering debt, two mismanaged wars, our place of respect in the world, gone. All because we keep electing politicians for the wrong reasons, baseless attacks and barbeques. Voting our fears, our hates, having been turned away from the important issues. We are where we are exactly because that kind of politics has always worked. It got us George Bush and Dick Cheney. Twice. It produces a Congress full of hyperpartisanship, people unwilling to find common ground with the other side. John McCain even ran an ad saying that because I agreed with him on some things, I wasn't fit to be president. What does that mean? That his ideas are so bad that agreeing with him at all, ever, means one isn't fit to lead? This is craziness that has to stop.

Now, at this time in the history of our country, when it may be literally true that if we don't solve our problems soon we may not survive as a nation, if we let the same old politics work, what hope is there? If now, of all times, we don't demand real discussions of real problems, if we think we can reduce discourse to ideas that fit on bumper stickers, if we are persuaded by winks and smiles and snarls, if we let politicians get away with lying and smearing as they always have, then we have no one to blame but ourselves. My entire political life has been based on the idea that change comes from the bottom up. And where it starts is once and for all, now, when nothing could be more important, a resounding rejection of politics as usual, politics of hate, politicians who want you to ignore problems rather than face them. It can happen. But only if now, finally, when it matters most, we rise up and say "Enough!!" We demand it. We are better than that. Now. There's no more time. Our leaders reflect who we are. Enough of talking down. Enough of memorizing talking points. Enough of fear and hate and simple-minded slogans. Enough of politicians with no new ideas, who want to bring us down to their level rather than us lift up. Enough. Enough. Enough!!!

And if he were really ballsy, he's say this:

I respect Joe Sixpack. Joe Sixpack is among my friends, among my family. America needs Joe Sixpack. Joe Sixpack built this county. But now is not the time to have Joe Sixpack on the presidential ticket.

I'd be okay without that last paragraph, though.

Brilliant, Comprehensive, Compelling. Perfect.

Yeah, well, I'm an elitist liberal. I went to an expensive college, I sip chardonnay. (Down it like lemonade, these days.) So, sure, I subscribe to, and read, The New Yorker magazine. (Sarah Palin has said, with regard to newspapers and magazines that she reads "all of 'em," so we have that much, evidently, in common.)

The most recent edition has a presidential endorsement. Unsurprisingly, it chooses Barack Obama. But what's news is that it's the most thorough, thoughtful, detailed and cogent exposition of the issues and contrasts that I've read. (It's also quite long, for such an editorial, which means it can't easily be summarized; and, of course, that few people other than subscribers, will read it.)

For those who'd like to see an extremely well-written and profoundly thoughtful discourse on the reasons to choose Barack Obama over John McCain, it can be found here. In far better language than I've been able to muster, it says exactly what I've been thinking and trying to say for months and months.