Food For Thought

I liked President Obama's words at his press conference more than I like what I understand to be his budget. At this point, having not read the whole thing, what I know is what I've read in various commentaries. My conclusion is like the line in the Woody Allen movie: the food is terrible and the portions are too small.

The first problem is that I'm still persuaded by economists I respect that this is the wrong time in the recovery to be cutting spending. Stiglitz, Krugman, Reich and others say pretty much the same thing. And it would seem that history backs them up, as the Depression was followed by recession when FDR moved too soon in that direction. So I understand.

The next is that a budget claiming to address deficits but which ignores defense spending and entitlement reform is hard to take seriously, at least as advertised. During the press conference, on the other hand, Obama said what I believe; namely, that any cuts must be assessed in terms of harm they'd do both to the needy and to the recovery. He also indicated the top-end Bush tax cuts aren't sustainable, but, having agreed to extension, they're not addressed in the budget. Maybe he figures anything is better than the scald and burn of teabaggers.

I think he knows what constitutes the right things and the right time, so I'm disappointed that he seems to have punted on both. Maybe he's concluded that he'll never get anything he proposes, and his only option will be the veto pen if the teabag budget is as crazy and dangerous as it threatens to be. But I think he'd be in the stronger longer position were he to state and defend, clearly and simply, what needs to be done, and when, straight up, no towing of the cow; and let the Rs make their case for why he's wrong. They claim he is, continuously and loudly. They have yet to propose workable alternatives.

In the long run, whether we can solve our fiscal problems will depend, I think, on how pervasive is teabaggerism. It gets all the attention and it certainly has plenty of votes. But are the sane ones completely and forever outnumbered? Rush Limbaugh has once again claimed that the people in the White House literally hate America. Only a few conservatives recoil from such talk. Nearly half of Republicans believe Obama is not a US citizen. Of those, 83% love Sarah Palin.

So, who has the budget ball? The crazy paranoid haters seem to be the ones for now. The only way out is for people to speak up; and that ought to start with the president. It wouldn't hurt, either, if there were more Rs willing to say this, and fewer going with crap like this.

We need smarter Republicans and a bolder president. The former, clearly, isn't going to happen, at least before it's too late; the latter, I'm pretty sure, is still possible, and it's our only hope. He has the intelligence and the knowledge. He just needs to trust himself -- and, more importantly, US -- a little more.

It's True, Because It's Not

Searching for years for the perfect meme by which to take down Obama, Fox "news" has finally come up with it. It took that paragon of conservative credibility, Newt Gingrich, to do it; and whereas the idea that disgraced former speaker Newt has anything to say worth listening to is hilarious (in a non-hilarious way) on its face, as far as Fox is concerned it's a plus. Since when, after all, has credibility been a requirement for their sycophancy?

Newt's idea didn't originate with him; he's just the one misterspeakering it over to Fox, where it's been shined, redoubled, and poured down the necks of its viewers. The idea came from Distort D'Newsa, who's made a career of spit-polishing racism and selling it as something else. Anyhow, here it is:

Citing a recent Forbes article by Dinesh D'Souza, former House speaker Newt Gingrich tells National Review Online that President Obama may follow a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" worldview.

Gingrich says that D'Souza has made a "stunning insight" into Obama's behavior -- the "most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama."

"What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?" Gingrich asks. "That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior."

"This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president," Gingrich tells us.

"I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating -- none of which was true," Gingrich continues. "In the Alinksy tradition, he was being the person he needed to be in order to achieve the position he needed to achieve . . . He was authentically dishonest."

It's perfect. That nothing in Obama's behavior actually confirms the theory, confirms the theory: he's hiding it. It doesn't get better than that, conspiratoriallywise. No matter what a person does, it proves your point. Tidy. He's out of touch because he seems in touch.

And what, tell, is "Kenyan" anti-colonialism? This: "Look, he's a black guy. And probably wasn't born here."

To thoughtful people, it's as laughable as the idea of Newt still being given credence by anyone. In other words, it'll fall like Halloween candy into the laps of the teabaggoid, and be swallowed whole. They won't be thinking like this:

In these retellings of Obama's personal history, the president's life is an epic, Marxist, sinister version of a Joseph Campbell-style heroic journey, with its hero ultimately falling, like Anakin Skywalker, to the dark side of the force. [ed note: this came after my post using a similar term]

Emerging from his sinecure as president of a small religious college in New York,Dinesh D'Souza, who has been laundering the racism of the right through an "intellectual" filter since his days at Dartmouth, gets back to where his career began.

[...]

This is birtherism with big words. This is the witchdoctor sign without Photoshop, WorldNetDaily without the exclamation points...

[...]

...it's safe to say that someone self-identifying as an "anti-colonialist" would not be escalating an American war in central Asia or claiming the authority to use the entire planet as a target range for flying robots armed with cruise missiles.

If Obama is a Kenyan anti-colonialist for supporting financial regulation, thanScott Brown is a Kenyan anti-colonialist. If Obama is a Kenyan anti-colonialist for supporting the proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero, thenMichael Bloomberg is a Kenyan anti-colonialist...

All of which to say is there's no need to parse the ethnic origins or political philosophies of Obama's parents to understand the ideology of Barack Obama. He is a center-left Democrat who supports mainstream Democratic policies. But some conservatives don't want to talk about policy. They are unable to engage in an argument with liberalism on substantive terms; they know only argument by epithet. They want to talk about the fact that our blackety black president is blackety black.

Nice to know I'm not entirely alone.

Here's a very thorough takedown of the ridiculous and unremittingly false points D'Sousa made in his article, and of Newt for hawking it. But a small sample, of which there's much more:

I can’t begin to list everything wrong with the Forbes article, but here are some of the high points: (the quotations in italics are from D’Souza’s article):

The President’s actions are so bizarre that they mystify his critics and supporters alike. Consider this headline from the Aug. 18, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal: “Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling.” Did you read that correctly? You did. The Administration supports offshore drilling–but drilling off the shores of Brazil.

With Obama’s backing, the U.S. Export-Import Bank offered $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras to finance exploration in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro–not so the oil ends up in the U.S. He is funding Brazilian exploration so that the oil can stay in Brazil…Why support oil drilling off the coast of Brazil but not in America? Obama believes that the West uses a disproportionate share of the world’s energy resources, so he wants neocolonial America to have less and the former colonized countries to have more.

This claim is completely false. First, President Obama had nothing to do with the decision of the Export-Import Bank (“ExIm”) to give $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Petrobas for offshore Brazilian oil drilling. When the loan was approved, ExIm’s board had five members- three Republicans and two Democrats. All five individuals were appointed by… President Bush. I have not located a single quote from President Obama saying anything about the ExIm decision (for or against). Furthermore, ExIm has a very good reason for the transaction: the loan proceeds are to be used to purchase US owned equipment and services (thereby increasing US exports- the very mission of ExIm).

So, D’Souza’s first example of Obama’s anti-colonial views is something that Bush appointees approved which will benefit the US and of which Obama had nothing to do. Off to a smashing start and we aren’t even to the third paragraph.

(This might be a good place to point something out. Not that logic has anything to do with it, but, looking back, was America founded on colonialism or anti-colonialism, by colonialists, or anti-colonialists? Just askin'.)

Quoting from another article connecting to the first, and once again reinforcing the central theme of this blog:

Gingrich was once the most powerful Republican in America and remains an influential figure within the party. D'Souza has done stints at the most prestigous conservative think-tanks. The line between man and kook is getting harder and harder to discern.

The insanity is so obvious. And yet, it's dipped and sipped as if it were the finest oolong. Oh, how we are screwed.

Between Darkness And Light

The best I can say about those that oppose the so-called mosque at so-called ground zero is that they've been played like Glen Hansard's guitar. "I'm not prejudiced," they claim. Right here, even, in comments. Okay. Like Mitch McConnell, who takes President Obama "at his word" that he's not a Muslim, I'll do likewise toward their claim. Although it's hard to say which ought to be more shameful: bearing prejudice and hatred towards those of differing religions, or the dullish credulity that allows them to be manipulated so easily by people with cynical agendæ. Either way. Take your pick. You're bringing us down.

But the real issue here, as I've tried to say many ways, is the shallowness and self-centered hatred that underlies the movement (and not just the anti-mosquers. Teabaggers, too, and their golden calves.) Manipulated or just dumb, these are not nice people, these mosquovites, these mosquitoes. These are NOT people who believe in one of the most foundational principles of the country they claim to love. Love. Right.

And it's not trivial, as some would suggest. It's fundamental.

Opponents of the Park51 Islamic community center held a rally yesterday in Lower Manhattan, and a 4-minute video, posted below, reveals the true sentiments behind this campaign. It has little to do with The Hallowed Ground of the World Trade Center -- that's just the pretext -- and everything to do with animosity toward Muslims. I dislike the tactic of singling out one or two objectionable people or signs at a march or rally in order to disparage the event itself. That's not what this video is. Rather, it shows the collective sentiment of those gathered, as well as what's driving the broader national backlash against mosques and Muslims far beyond Ground Zero.

Anyone not in a coma has already seen it, but below is what the writer is referring to.

What an ugly people we are becoming. Americans, constitutional scholars.

Time was -- so I'm told -- when hard times brought people together. We are so far asunder now we'll never make it back. And, far be it from me to pick a side here, but the ugliness is pretty much entirely on the right of late. The upcoming elections are, quite literally in my view, about choosing dark versus light. About selfish hatred and fear, about ignoring the needs of a country in favor only of oneself, succumbing to lies and deliberate deceptions so that the powerful will keep more of their money; or about looking above and beyond and being willing to reach out to people in need, to buttress ourselves by claiming higher ground ("we won't build a mosque here until they can build a synagogue in Saudi Arabia" -- what high standards they have!), to take the harder path required of us to save ourselves. Not to mention the earth.

Hyperbole? Maybe. But I'm serious. I don't think it's ever been more clear what the two major parties stand for, and how they intend to get there. One: facing facts, trying to do the hard stuff, aiming to provide for the needs of the people and the planet on which they live (and, no, they haven't been perfect, or free of pandering or lilliness of liver); the other: desperate to protect narrow interests (meaning, of course, their ability to keep riding the escalator to ever greater gaps between their wealth and everyone else's) and willing to lie and deceive to get there. Theirs. To use whatever hateful means necessary, appealing (successfully) to the basest in us, to create an electorate foolish enough to do their bidding while thinking they're doing something else entirely. It could not be more clear.

It's one thing to disagree or to be disappointed in Obama's programs. In many ways, that describes me. But he's trying to deal with enormous problems, born of the very failures to which the right wing wants us to return. Why? Because they've made out like bandits every time Republicans were in charge. It's not in their interest to help; the things that the country needs might make them go from unimaginably rich to merely filthy rich. It's not by accident that the teabaggers are created and funded by billionaires, and run by a Republican hack pretending to be a grass roots guy. Unbelievable that they've pulled the pashmina over so many eyes; but hardly accidental.

I lost more money in the market crash than I'll ever pay in taxes. I don't love taxes, I don't like regulations that encumber me. I like to drive fast. But I'd rather see some regulations, and even pay more in taxes, if it would stabilize our economy and make another crash -- and personal loss -- less likely. I don't blame immigrants for our problems. I think our economy will be better off if Americans aren't going bankrupt over health care; the worse off "they" are, the more at risk I am. So I'm willing to pay taxes for that. And roads. On which I wish I could drive faster.

I think Muslims like Osama and the Taliban are lower than scum, but I don't hate all Muslims. I don't hate all Christians, either, for that matter. But I don't think much of the ones who were at that rally, shouting about Sharia while wanting their own form of theocracy.

The division in this country is between people who think like me and who think like those at the rally. And whereas I realize not everyone who disagrees with me is like those people, they are remaining deathly silent, because they're convinced those who think like me, ie willing to sacrifice to a higher good, are more dangerous than those haters. Or, to put it another way, they don't want to face the fact that they've been fed a load since Ronald Reagan told them what they want to hear: government is the problem; people in need are lazy and undeserving, you can think only of yourselves, and have it all. For yourself. For free.

Things are bad; but not, evidently, bad enough for people to abandon discredited rationales for selfishness. I don't doubt that we'll be moving to the dark come November. The time is coming when the realization will be unavoidable; but by then, it'll be too late.

Crazy, Codified

In a literal case of the lunatics being in charge of the asylum, Georgia is set to outlaw the implantation of microchips in humans without their permission. (In doing so, it would become the fourth state to have passed such a law! And it should surprise no one that the legislatures of each of the states are controlled by Republicans.) The responsible committee in Georgia heard testimony from citizens, which included this:

“I’m also one of the people in Georgia who has a microchip,” the woman said. Slowly, she began to lead the assembled lawmakers down a path they didn’t want to take.

Microchips, the woman began, “infringe on issues that are fundamental to our very existence. Our rights to privacy, our rights to bodily integrity, the right to say no to foreign objects being put in our body.”

She spoke of the “right to work without being tortured by co-workers who are activating these microchips by using their cell phones and other electronic devices.”

She continued. “Microchips are like little beepers. Just imagine, if you will, having a beeper in your rectum or genital area, the most sensitive area of your body. And your beeper numbers displayed on billboards throughout the city. All done without your permission,” she said.

It was not funny, and no one laughed.

“Ma’am, did you say you have a microchip?” asked state Rep. Tom Weldon (R-Ringgold).

“Yes, I do. This microchip was put in my vaginal-rectum area,” she replied. Setzler, the sponsoring lawmaker, sat next to the witness – his head bowed.

“You’re saying this was involuntary?” Weldon continued.

The woman said she had been pushing a court case through the system for the last eight years to have the device removed.

Wendell Willard (R-Atlanta), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, picked up the questioning.

“Who implanted this in you?” he asked.

“Researchers with the federal government,” she said.

“And who in the federal government implanted it?” Willard asked.

“The Department of Defense.”

After which, the committee approved the legislation.

This is only mildly surprising. First of all, it's self-evident that Republican legislators are disproportionately disposed to craziness. Raising alarm about things that don't exist, ignoring those that do, they bathe themselves and their constituents in delusion. And, given as so many of them are to religious obsessions, their delusions align nicely with this kind of paranoia.

Second, it's of a piece with the credulity given to craziness, and the extent to which it's fanned for political gain: disingenuously and deliberately by many Republican lawmakers, delusionally by the rest. Prominent among the disinformation about the recent health care law is the lie -- among many others (such as the claim that it exempts Muslims from being required to buy insurance) -- that it includes the forceful implantation of microchips. It's one thing to accept that certifiable paranoid schizophrenics like the poor lady above believe such things; it's an unimaginable other that there are enough believers elected to public office -- even in the South -- that legislatures would pass such a bill. One can only wonder how it is that they don't get laughed out of office.

And yet, it's pretty obvious: it's the result of the deliberate creation of unquestioning followers by the leaders of the Republican party, cynically catering to the religious right, furiously fanning the fundamentalist flames of fanatical factlessness, and intentionally damaging public education by replacing reasoning with religion. (In the first linked article, it's stated that "In Virginia, a bill supporter declared microchips to be the “666″ mark of the beast referred to in the Book of Revelation.") So far, it seems to be working for them, as they've astroturfed their way among the teabaggers, who rage on. Unfocused and without solutions to the problems -- real and imagined -- that upset them so, they will only elect more of the same Bachmannopalinized leaders, legitimizing (at some level, anyway) the rantings of Glenn Beck and that poor chippie of Georgia.

The thing is, as we're beginning to see, when such people are elected there's evidently no limit to what they'll do. When reality ceases to be a fundament, when unhinged thought is not only not a disqualification but has become a requirement for politicians, total collapse can't be too far down the thoroughfare. And along that road, woe be to the non-white, non-Chrisian, non-heterosexual, non-reactionary.

When we've finally become a nation composed mostly of the politically insane, wandering aimlessly about the land, babbling, drooling, confused, bereft of those basic means of support that a reasonable government might have provided, no one -- assuming there might still be a few willing and inclined -- will be able to find the poor souls to help them.

BECAUSE THEY WON'T HAVE THEIR MICROCHIPS!!!

Listen Up, Trolls

My recent call for outrage was met, entirely predictably, by the usual trollage from some, and silence from others, in the comments. Boilerplate stuff, really. So, for the unconvinced, I offer a couple of clips. If you think you can only force yourself to watch one, I'd say go to the second.

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

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

Difficile est saturam non scribere

Stupid? Crazy? Drunk on venom? All three, I think.

Right wing loonatics, who briefly viewed Scott Brown as the second (I guess it would really be third) coming, have turned on him like lady hyenas after he -- the horror, the horror!! -- joined four other Republicans to vote for cloture in the "Jobs Bill" debate.

It's bizarre on so many levels. Which, in a world of right wing politics where "bizarre" is mainlined like propofol at Neverland, is saying something.

First of all, the bill is a conservative's wet dream. It's practically all TAX CUTS!!! Which means, as with most of the stuff conservatives have proposed since Newt Gingrich first took divorce papers to hospital bed, it'll accomplish much less than the original approach, ditched to get some Republican votes. What more could they want; the final bill is everything they are, ferchrissakes: tax breaks, no progress. Moreover, when the final vote came up, six (or maybe eight) guys who voted against cloture voted for the bill. Tell me how THAT makes sense. (It's a little like the woman nominated to head GSA, held up for no good reason by a single Senator for over nine months, then confirmed 96-0.) (Or like the demagoguery of the health care bill as radical leftist policy, when, in fact, it's a centrist bill much like Republicans proposed only a few years ago. How amazing is it that people have been convinced, by the America-hating RWS™, of exactly the opposite?)

Actually, it's pretty clear. All those RW crazies who now consider Scott Brown a traitor aren't even trying to pretend. They couldn't care less about policy; they couldn't care less about improving the economy, balancing the budget, or fixing our system of health care. Seriously. They couldn't care less. They only care about defeating Barack Obama. If he's for something, they're against it. Period. Substance? Irrelevant. Because if he gets anything done -- even things that are undeniably necessary for the future of this country -- his chances of reelection go up. So, ipso facto, prima facie, res ipsa loquitur, caveat emptor, quantum materiae materietur marmota si marmota monax materiam possit materiari, whatever it is, they're reflexively, unequivocally, retardedly, terminally opposed to it. End of story. Country first? My ass.

Qui me amat, amet et canem meum.

Lessons Learned

I learned a lot in 2009, none of it good. Not being a naive innocent, maybe I should say I had some beliefs confirmed, but to an unexpected level. I've known for a few years that, as a country, we're screwed. Still, I didn't think the end would be coming this fast.

What's funny, in the sense of non-funny, is the extent to which so many people are so easily manipulated, and the extent to which they are simply unable to see it. How ironic it is that those people who claim the current administration is like Soviet Russia, or Nazis, have been convinced of that by the fusing of a political agenda and a network propaganda machine exactly like those created and maintained by those authoritarian and failed entities.

The truth is that on average we are a stupid people, weak-willed and uncomfortable with complexity. The reason Fox has the influence it does is that it appeals to the sense of victimhood and lost entitlement that's increasingly the political mainstream. Roger Ailes' brilliance in unabashedly pushing a hyper-partisan agenda is his realization of how simple it would be. Constantly barraging listeners with repetitive falsehoods, conspiracy theories, reinforced endlessly in every time-slot by ethically empty so-called journalists, his network is the embodiment of theory of the "big lie." And the process is made even easier by targeting the very religious, with their need for certainty and their long-standing cultivation into the art of denying reality, the willful rejection of the obvious. Religiosity and political manipulation: they go together like hand and glove, peanut butter and blackberry jam, unprotected sex and STDs.

Who'd, for example, have thought that the destruction of Haiti could be so politicized? It's amazing enough that science has become partisan, with denialism as the central core of an entire political party. But charity, for Christ's sake? To what level of cynicism have our politics sunk that President Obama's actions to help a ravaged nation are mocked, decried, and demagogued shamelessly? That people are being asked NOT to help, and it's being hyped by the right wing, the party of Jesus? (I'll admit that in this, even Rush's rants seem not to have deterred giving to a noticeable extent. Possibly because, as usual, atheists are pitching in.)

How can it be that Massachusetts may well elect to the Senate a guy who, exactly like George Bush, advocates massive tax cuts, after denouncing the budget deficits, and without saying a single word about where he'd cut the spending needed to make up the difference? (And who, most Foxoteabaggingly, suggests our president's mother wasn't married.) Implicitly making the disproved argument that cutting taxes increases revenue, he also claims that the health care bills represent "government takeover," and promises to stop it. Government takeover? Relying entirely on the private insurers to an extent their stock has shot upward? Government takeover? Really? Yet there he is, the darling of an entire movement: completely divested of fact. Not to mention decency.

All of this is against the backdrop of the most misguided populism imaginable, cynically manipulated by corporate interests. Dick Armey, of "Freedomworks" must be in a state of constant tumescence over the ease with which he's pulled it off (as it were). As I've said many times, there's much to criticize about the Obama administration so far: most especially that stimulus monies seem to have been misdirected to a large extent. Not unneeded: inadequately dispersed. Nor do I agree with the buildup in Afghanistan; I'm concerned about Tim Geithner, about the lameness of some White House responses to the constant and dishonest attacks from Fox and the rest of the RWS™. But these worries have a basis in fact. Rather than lies and obstructionism, I wish the opposition would pitch in and provide sensible suggestions, work together even a little. Democracy depends on it. It might even do their party good!

Unlike the things I criticize, wild statements on the placards so proudly waved by the teabaggers are based on unquestioned belief in the steady stream of propaganda to which they're constantly and uncritically subjected. The supreme irony is that they are the very people who ought to be -- claim to be -- scared sh*tless by political agitprop and media control. And yet they eat it like cookie dough.

To them, disagreement is pure evil. I wonder what they think about the founding process of the country they claim to love, and understand not a bit. Compromise. Respect for opposing opinions. Doing the hard work of finding common ground. Contra the Nazi-baiter, it's they that have been dumbed down, not liberals.

Today, for the second time in a few months, someone forwarded me a breathless email. Strewn with full caps and varying colors like holiday fireworks, it claims Obama has demanded a stamp be produced to honor a Muslim holiday. "If you only forward one email.... patriotic Americans.... reject... stand up.... " The usual crap. (The wild-eyed commentary is based on the fact that every year for around ten years such a stamp has been issued, much like those commemorating Christmas, Hanukkah, and Walt Disney characters. Of absolutely NO significance, but seen by the crazed hordes as proof of Obama's treason.) Into the streets they march; into the Congress they send like-minded (in the loosest use of the word "mind") representatives, intent on destruction. It's working.

In a perverse way, I hope I live long enough to see it, because I'm absolutely certain I'm right. And I'd like to know if at any point along the decline those blind and dumb right wingers and teapartiers will realize what they've done, even though I already know the answer.

[PS: speaking of lessons, here's a good one.]

.

Commies!

I'd love to know Glenn Beck's definition of communism. I'd be most interested to understand how he can call the administration both fascist and communist (which, in case you didn't know, are as mutually exclusive as "Fox" and "fair"). I'd be pleased to hear from those commenters of mine who recoiled in horror about an Obama appointee who said he'd been a member of the Communist party at one time: what, exactly, is the threat?

First of all, as the Communist party of the US says, there's never been a communist society on this planet. Moreover, in this country, whatever else they might be, the Communist party has about as much influence as a crazy guy in the street. What they are is a bunch of idealistic dreamers, with a vision of humankind that is entirely unrealistic. For communism to work, we'd have to be.... Christlike. All of us. Ain't gonna happen. Least of all, among Christians. The ideal of communism is people working together for a common good; no one exploited; all people treating all others fairly and compassionately; helping one another; caring; the need for central government nearly non-existent. (How's that for a conservative ideal!) I'm not sure what's so awful about that other than the fact that it's one hundred percent impossible. Just look around. (In case it needs to be said, those American Communists who supported the Soviet Union back in the day were as wrong-headed then as Beck is now.)

Personally, I'm fine with capitalism. I still plan to buy an HD TV some day, and if I could afford another Beemer (I had one thirty years ago), I'd get one of those, too (if I didn't care about gas mileage). But I don't consider those who have a pie-in-the-sky governing model some sort of existential threat; especially when the model has zero chance of being realized.

I traveled in the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, on a Russian language study tour. (Time was, I was a pretty fair speaker of Russian: over there, people complimented me on my aksyent, when they weren't asking me about "Dev Brroobek" or trying to buy my Levi's.) No political scientist, I, it was nevertheless obvious to me that nothing about their society was communistic except the one collective farm at which I had the second greatest picnic of my life, and then proceeded to get drunk on the smoothest vodka I'd ever had -- to the consternation of the tour staff, based, as it was, in a "dry" campus back home. (As our large glasses were filled to the brim from pitchers of the stuff for a raucous toast, I was told to dump mine out and hide the fact with my hand. The "clink" gave it away, after which the glass was refilled, the staff lady gave up and drank happily along with the rest of us as songs were sung, accordions played, and people staggered off into the woods.)

What the Soviet government -- and the Chinese, and Cuban, all of them -- was, was totalitarian. They used the concept of communism ("Forward to the victory of communism," was plastered in signs everywhere), I guess, as a sort of ideal by which to get their workers to buy in. That, and the idea that they had a mortal enemy in the US, the defeat of which demanded the sort of sacrifices that their decaying society presented to them. Tiny apartments, crappy products, decaying buildings, while their leaders lived high on the свинья. They were a threat, all right, but it had nothing to do with communism, per se. They were, in fact, the opposite of communism: near complete exploitation of their citizenry for the aggrandizement of government power. The danger was their international aggression, not their not-believed, paper-thin look-the-other-way "communism." If you want to see the closest remaining thing to actual communism in existence, visit a kibbutz.

This is no polemic in favor of communism. True communists, in my view, are hopeless idealists, hippie squared, impossible dreamers. Theirs is a rosy view of humankind that is clearly counterfactual. In the political descent we are witnessing every day since President Obama's election, nothing could be more obvious.

My point is simply this: the cries of "communism" by Beck and his minions are but another example of the dishonesty of the leaders and the stupidity and gullibility of the followers of the right wing as currently constituted. Railing in the certainty that they know what they're talking about. They seen it on the teevee.

There is nothing "communist" about Obama or his policies, even if he appointed one to oversee green energy efforts.

We're more threatened by Tinkerbell.
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Taking Liberties

Sunday morning, while waiting for President Obama's press conference from Trinidad and Tobago, some CNN talking heads were killing time. Discussing some sort of viewer survey, in which they were asked (I didn't get the exact phrasing) what things could be eliminated to improve the (something or other), they mentioned a couple of received responses. Among them was the suggestion to get rid of West Point. Weird. But beside the point.

Then the anchors themselves chimed in. Gloria Borger suggested something I've thought for years: stop state legislatures from designing congressional districts; make it strictly geographically based, which would go a long way to restoring fairness in elections, ramping down the rampant hyperpartisanship that comes from gerrymandering. A serious idea.

Next, Stephen Hayes, neocon paragon, pre-invasion promoter of a phantom link between Saddam Hussein and al-Queda, suggested getting rid of the ACLU. Of all the troubling things on the political horizon, that's at the top of his list!! Add that to the bafflements beyond which I have a hard time getting. Why are conservatives, among whose raisons d'etre are distrust of government and resistance to overreach thereof, so reflexively and congenitally, insanely dismissive of the ACLU? What beef do they have with an organization dedicated to ensuring that the federal and state governments follow the laws of the land: protecting, in other words, our most defining civil rights?

It's only because reasonableness is a liberal characteristic that the ACLU is seen by some as a strictly left-wing outfit. Standing for civil rights, in the broadest sense of the term, is what they do. Why is that repugnant to conservatives? What it is about the bill of rights that they find so unappealing (second amendment excepted, of course)?

It was the ACLU that supported the right of Ne0-Nazis to march in Skokie Illinois, an act of high principle, in my view, which cost it thousands of Jewish members. It was the ACLU that helped Rush Limbaugh in his attempt to keep private his medical records. Protecting civil rights, demanding enforcement of the Constitution is, in other words, a non-partisan prospect in the eyes of the ACLU; and of course they're right. So why do conservatives have a problem with it? It makes no sense.

Well, yes it does: it's like "activist judges" and "patriotism," terms that are more mutable than one might predict if one were to believe in, oh, meaning. The truth is that such things as the rule of law and respect for the Constitution are, to many on the right, to be supported only insofar as they comport fully with one's personal views. If a judge rules as they wish, it's "strict constructionism." If against, it's unwarranted "activism." If someone -- the ACLU, for instance -- raises alarms when the law isn't followed, it's dangerous: assuming, of course, that the law-breaking in question was the preferred outcome of the conservative aggrieved.

After all, the ACLU are merely advocates. They're neither judge nor jury. What's wrong with consistent voice demanding that the rules be followed? To whom is such a voice a threat? Isn't it a non-partisan idea that some people have a tendency to ignore the law when it suits them? Isn't the rule of law a central tenet of America? Wherein lies the danger? The ACLU sticks its neck out far, in both directions. Why is it conservatives, of all people, who want to disappear an organization dedicated to the Bill of Rights? I just don't get it.

But, obviously, there's a lot I don't get about the current iteration of the right wing.
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The Thirty Percent Solution

Some people have told me to calm down. They might be right.

As is obvious to any of the tens of people who come here, some of the dissenters in this country drive me nuts. And, inferences to the contrary, it's not dissent per se, nor, most certainly, is it conservatives as a group. I've written more than once -- even as it has escaped the other-siders -- that I believe in the need for two strong parties. I've wished out loud -- because I wish it were true -- that the Congressional Republicans didn't have their heads so far up their asses. I may not have said it so gently.

The teabaggers bugged me because it seemed clear that much of their rage was based on false premises, and because it was so obviously ginned up by Fox News (sic) and their high-paid RWS™. Many, it seemed, continue to obsess about Obama's country of birth and his past pastor proclivities.

It bugs me that the pater familias of current far-right thought, to whom all bow in obeisance, can say such stupid things as torture "works" because it broke John McCain, overlooking the fact that it made him produce FALSE CONFESSIONS!!!!!; and that, having heard such a stupid thing, no one on the right has the balls to call him on it.

And then I stop and think.

There will always be people who believe in black helicopters, space alien abductions, fake moon landings, FEMA concentration camps. Even as it was undeniable that the economy was tanking, that the war in Iraq had made things worse, that the Constitution was being ignored and we were being lied to about torture, about 30% of people still thought George Bush was a great president. It's simply impossible, given human weakness, to get all people on the same page. For reasons of their own, of which they'll never be aware, nor admit, there will always be people who need to ignore all evidence and to believe, for example, that Earth is six thousand years old. It's human nature. I don't entirely understand it, I don't like it, it makes progress harder, but I have to accept it. None of these ideas is any crazier than that Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya, or that he has a secret plan to destroy the US. If I can smile and marvel at the ability of the brains of some humans to construct walls impenetrable by other facts, why should I let the political idiocy get to me any more deeply?

Well, as long as these folks are just among that irreducibly complex number, the thirty-percenters, I guess I should chill a little, even as the loudspeakers blare that Obama is a traitor while a predictable number of heads bob in agreement. Heck, I could get all conspiratorial about the recently-released DHS memo, to which the RWS™ successfully manufactured all sorts of frothy rage, completely and complicitly misapprehending the whole point of it. Yeah, I could see the rightie reaction as an attempt to debunk the concerns, in order to facilitate the recruitment of a couple of sharpshooters, depressed after their fifth Iraq tour, unemployable, suffering from TBI, happy to take out the "traitor" to our nation, after they've heard it repeated over and over, louder and louder, on the teevee. Even if it's only a few people saying it.

But that would make me a thirty-percenter myself, wouldn't it?
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Reality Check

When I first heard about the DHS report regarding threats from right-wing extremists, a few things occurred to me -- as they must have, I'd guess, to anyone who stops and thinks:

• Government reports are generated very slowly.

• Any major report coming out early in the Obama administration's tenure must have started in Bush's.
  
• One might expect that there'd be a similar report on left-wing extremism, especially assuming it was in the Bush administration that the process began.
• Despite the above, the Right Wing Screamers will go nuts.

And I was right, by golly.

If the DHS is about identifying and responding to threats, it would be malfeasance not to consider all possibilities. Over the years, there have been incidents from extremists at both ends of the spectrum (although, it must be said, none on the left have had the killing power of those on the right. McVeigh and Poplowski have no leftie counterparts, kill-count-wise). There are crazies everywhere. And, despite the howls from the right, the report was talking about crazies, not your average reality-averse but generally calm and couched conservative. Paranoid?

What's different at the moment, and unprecedented as far as I can see, is the extent to which violent vitriol is coming from national media, in the form of Fox News (sic) and the entirely unbalanced (in both meanings of the term: insanity, and lacking counterweight) RWS.™ It's a deadly combination: well-armed crazy people plus nationally ranked cheerleaders, constantly telling them "You are threatened from within, people are coming to round you up, take your guns, put you in concentration camps. You must rise up and resist this threat to our very survival as a country, to everything you hold dear. A Nazi/Communist/Socialist/Muslim/Black Guy is going to destroy you. Take to the streets! Set him on fire. Drive a stake through his heart."

Give a guy a gun, whisper in his ear. Not a formula for domestic tranquility.

Have I said anything untrue? Might it be a concern for law enforcement? Aren't there very recent examples?

[Update, 4/17: like my first commenter below, Pat Robertson, that paragon of religious nuttiness, misconstrues the whole point of the DHS report, and suggests his followers jam up the DHS phone lines. Brilliant, no? Disable the hotline by which actual America-protecting citizens might warn about a, y'know, bomb threat. Good going, Pat. I guess if the call doesn't get through and the bomb goes off, it'll be your god getting revenge on gays, right? This is what we're up against.]
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Goose/Gander

I wonder if the same right-wing screamers who had no problems with illegal wire-tapping of suspected terrorists will have a problem with legal wire-tapping of right-wing militias, if it comes to that.

It seems I'm not the only one worried that the anti-American fury being whipped by those screamers (I should develop a shorthand, like RWS™ for "Hannity, Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Cavuto, Savage, Coulter, Ingraham, Malkin, Bachmann, Gingrich, Delay, Boehner...." It gets pretty tiresome typing it out each time) could be getting to the point of inciting violence. If/when something horrible happens, it wouldn't be the first time.

Naturally, the report has generated a lot of righteous anger from the righteous right. Probably won't do anything to quell the claim of secret concentration camps for rounding up conservatives.

Well, the slope is slippery on both sides. I'd rather live in a country where even the RWS™ have a voice, than one in which all anti-government talk is stifled, as was attempted when Bush was in office. (Funny, isn't it, that none of the RWS™ types were upset at Ari Fleisher.) But, like the cliché, there are limits.

Maybe I've posted too much on this theme -- the idea that the extreme right wing and their RWS™ seem not to understand the concept of "democracy" and "elections" -- but I have a hard time finding the best way to express it, and it eats at me. On some level, it's laughable -- funny, even. But I don't find myself chuckling much. Depressed, worried, angry, baffled: those are closer to it. It's one thing to be appalled at the direction the country is headed: for the last eight years, I certainly was. By the end of it, so were 80% of my countrypersons. But I don't recall anyone on the left grabbing the airwaves every night and literally calling for violent overthrow, stakes in hearts, or demonstrating what Bush was doing by fake-pouring gasoline on someone and holding a match.
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Beyond Dangerous

I suppose it was predictable. Given the slavish promotion of everything Bush, and the vitriolic and fact-free attacks on Barack Obama during the election, it's entirely unsurprising that the right-wing attack machine would be in permanent scream mode after he was elected. But I admit to being taken aback by the level it's reached of late, and the sense of danger it's creating. Even some of the wrongest of the right are worried.

See, the thing these horrible hacks don't seem to understand, while they weep at how they love their country, is that their country is a democracy. With a constitution. People vote. Things change. When they thought they were in charge, and that their opposition was not only meaningless but undeserving of respect, they were just fine with the idea of democracy. Just fine with the voice of the people as long as the voice was theirs, and theirs alone.

What exactly does Glenn Beck love about this country? Its trees? Obviously, not its laws. Or more than half its people.

If you disagree with what's going on in your democracy, what you do is organize (every hear of "community organizers?"), you get better candidates, you get better ideas, you get out the vote. And then you let the chips fall where they may. Like what happened in November. That's what's to love about America. But not for those guys. Bullies don't work that way. Bullies don't work with ideas, they work with intimidation, because they really don't have ideas. They don't love anything but their sense of entitlement. And their deep-seated insecurities.

Sore losers are not unprecedented, but I think maybe their influence, nowadays, is. These guys could never imagine losing; they can't handle being in the minority, and they're beyond embittered. They're enraged to the point of disbelief, of lying, of seeing evil wherever they look, rationalizing violence against those that beat them in the battle of ideas. It's unfathomable to them. It's deeply personal; their fragile egos are fractured. And they have an audience. Once empowered, now distraught, their devoted listeners are the same. It's religion. The pagans are at the gate; truth and righteousness are threatened. They reject my world view, my emotional support system, therefore they must be destroyed, for the sake of my self-deception. Literally.

I'm not exaggerating. In the deeply disturbed, this sort of rage is deeply rooted. Reactionary beliefs carefully constructed to keep away self-doubt, like religion, must be defended to the death, because without them, their fears become real; their sense of inferiority and persecution are revealed. Really: you can't watch Bill O'Reilly or Glenn Beck without seeing seriously damaged people (or, at best, complete charlatans). But there's a wide audience for guys like them, and for Hannity and Limbaugh and Malkin and Coulter and Ingraham and Savage and Bachmann. They're embittered, feeling put-down, disenfranchised, and to such people a complex world, not amenable to easy answers, is very menacing. Their wall of no discomfort has been removed, with nothing to replace it but anger and hatred and a powerful sense of aggrievement. If the world has rejected them, well, at least Glenn hasn't. He weeps for them. Rush speaks for them. And they're ready to rise up at his call. Like wounded animals, they're dangerous.

So we see sh*t like this. And this. This. Combined with this. And this. And they lie, like this. Now Billo is claiming Obama wants a one-world government. I'd be laughing, except with the crazies out there, whipped into paranoid panic, egged on by these nutjobs, what you get is this. Or THIS. And the cop-killer in Pittsburgh evidently believed the constant right-wing crazy myth that Obama was coming for his guns. Crazy, hearing voices? Yeah. On the radio and on Fox. There simply is no equivalent on the left, not lunacy and paranoia to this degree.

A commenter recently told me I give these guys too much ink (pixels, I guess), too much credence. I don't think so: they need more scrutiny and thought. I think they are irresponsible and extremely dangerous. Democracy necessarily includes folks like these; but in this environment, I'm not sure it can survive them. Not, most certainly, if they have anything to say about it.

[Update: I think many are seeing the same thing, and trying to explain it. The right wing crazies are having a really hard time dealing with reality, and it's coming out in all sorts of ways.]

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Earth Hour

Okay, I admit the "Earth Hour" concept falls into what I'd call harmless but useless feel-good efforts. It's a little too self-conscious and precious for my taste. I get the point, and don't really have a problem with it, other than the fact that it accomplishes not much. Nevertheless, the response from the right-wing is pretty revelatory.

The idea is to turn off lights, curtail energy use around the world, for an hour. I didn't; but I'm impressed by how many seem to have. On the other hand, I find THIS (a luddite level call to burn the planet down) pretty obnoxious, if entirely true to wingnuttia form and unsurprising. 

We can't avoid sharing the planet with stupid people; it's just that it's strange that their particular form of stupid is actively advertising itself. Look at me, it says. I'm not only stupid, but I want everyone in shouting distance to notice.

A friend of mine, from Kentucky, liked to say: What are the last words of a redneck? Hey, watch this!!

I hope those redstate rednecks live long enough to find out how wrong they were.
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Conscience of a Conservative

In merely the latest outgoing outrage wreaked by the trasher-in-chief, George makes yet another move toward theocracy. In doing so, he -- and those into whose recti he's inserted his head (most especially his own) -- has once again revealed the hypocrisy that is the religious right.

"The Right of Conscience Rule," is what it's called. If your feelings are hurt, it says, or if you see something that offends your religious beliefs, you don't have to participate. Boo fricking hoo.

Evidently it takes 127 pages to codify such a thing, and I'm damned (no doubt!) if I'm gonna plow through the whole tract. Clearly it's an anti-abortion effort; but it evidently extends to providing birth control, or information, or, I'd assume, anything that might relate to premarital sex, gay relationships. With no obvious endpoint. In short, pretty much anything. Janitors? Sweep the floor of a classroom in which evolution is taught?? As if!!!!

Here's the hypocrisy (well, including, but not limited to...): when a soldier refused to go to Iraq because he believed the war was illegal, the right wing bloviators all but exploded on air. Exophthalmos. Aneurysms aplenty. "HE SIGNED UP FOR IT!!!," they ejaculated. "HE VOLUNTEERED!!! YOU GONNA BE A SOLDIER, YOU TAKE IT LIKE A MAN!!," they certaintated, from their non-volunteering, sand-free studios.

I respect religious beliefs. (Well, actually, there are many I don't respect at all: those that require a person to reject the most real of reality; and those that lead people to harm others. Which, sadly, are pretty inclusive categories. But I digress...) More accurately, I respect the right of people to have those beliefs, and, insofar as they don't harm the rest of us, to follow them as they choose. If eating meat offends me, I'd not work in a butcher shop. If I believed pigs aren't kosher, I wouldn't buy a ham sandwich.* If I were a pacifist, I'd avoid signing up for the military (although I could see doing so with a guarantee of not having to kill someone; maybe, say, in the medical corps.)

So, fine: don't wanna hand out BCPs? Don't be a pharmacist. Don't wanna clean up after abortions? Work in a bank, ferchrissakes! Because, where does it end? Does an evangelical firefighter not rescue a gay couple from a burning building? May a Christian cop refuse to protect them? Teachers opt out of teaching science? See, it's like I've been saying: to the extent that religion slops over into public life as policy, it's a pernicious influence that threatens to tear us down. When the line between personal belief -- which, by definition, is the cleaving to the unknowable and the unprovable and which, therefore, ought to be kept within one's breast -- and public policy is crossed, we are at risk of ceasing to function.

Conscience is one thing. (Notice the word at its heart: science.) I'd argue that we indeed have one, based on the evolution of the need for cooperation and community as elements of protection and procreation. I know right from wrong, and I didn't have to study the Bible to figure it out. This bill isn't about conscience. It's about religion, which is entirely different, and, in this instance, destructive. The thing is, even as it becomes more obvious, it becomes more prevalent. Christian cries of persecution to the contrary, they're taking over everything and everywhere, breaking us apart.

It must be nice to believe in the Rapture. They're gonna need it.
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*Reminds me of one of my grandpa's (Jewish, need I say?) favorite stories: Jewish guy is traveling across the country from New York, stops in a cafe in Texas, sits at the counter. Cowboy type next to him says, "Howdy, stranger, where ya from?" "New York," says the traveler, a little nervous. "Well, hell, then, let me buy you a beer," handing him a bottle. "I'm sorry," says the Jewish guy, "I don't drink." "Well, okay. How 'bout having half of my ham sandwich?" "I don't eat ham," replies the poor soul. Now the Texan is getting annoyed. "Listen, stranger. Around here we don't turn down hospitality. Drink the goddam beer." "I'm really sorry, sir, but I can't." At which point the Texan pulls his gun and says, "Take the beer, you sonofabitch, and drink!" Hands shaking, the poor guy takes the beer and has a sip. "Well, then," he says, trembling. "As long as you have the gun on me, how about passing the ham sandwich?"

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Boggled

I saw the guy behind this ad on a news show this morning. Key (paraphrased) quote: We need people to oppose the anti-American policies of Barack Obama. And thanks to Sarah for "representing" us real people.

I'm of two minds. The nomination and subsequent lionization of Sarah Palin by many on the right says nothing but depressing things about the nature of a broad swath of American politics. Atmospherics over ability. Connection based on, well, connection.

On the other hand, much as I think (in theory) that as a nation we're better off with an opposition party of quality, if Sarah Palin really is the preferred candidate of the right wing -- whom I find highly repugnant in their theocratic tendencies, for their permanent campaign based on divisiveness and negativity and demonization and extremism -- I say to them, "Go for it!!" Enjoy your life in the shadows.