A summer of extremes

[Political Waves]

Perhaps you share my concerns about the future of civil society. Historically, the summer months create a rain barrel for people to yell into, you can hear the echo everywhere today. During these hot and hysterical months, folks who actually know how to communicate are shouted down by people who know how to shout, but evidently don't know how to think for themselves, respect one another or entertain lofty topics. But that will not stop them from saying whatever's on their mind and insisting we all pay attention -- everyone seems to feel entitled to rule the Universe, these days.

Me, I think mindless consumerism has all but destroyed our ability to function as sentient beings. We can finger-point at capitalism but it is NOT a system of governance, so we can only blame ourselves. We've given our power away to a system that offers no social contract nor does it provide in any way for the public good. Now we've become so lost in the mechanism of getting and spending, credit and debt, so dependent on the wheels of capitalism turning that we're dropping to our knees, unable to function as it sputters. We have an extreme challenge -- and the voices squeaking the loudest are those of the extremists, which is how these things usually work.

 

So here's the question of the day: is the average citizen able to sort out the wheat from the chafe? We're still seem to be lost in the past, confused in the present and unrealistic about the future. Or ... perhaps its just an election year.

It's been five years now since we sat, watching in disbelief, as American citizens literally died before our eyes, televised. Katrina and all that name evokes is still a wound that may never entirely heal. It was, though we didn't know it, the warning shot that all of us needed to hear in order to make sense of what would come next. That was, literally, a game changer, wasn't it? Our belief in government to be there when we needed it was broken beyond repair ... and now, facing a myriad of systemic problems, we are "under water" on this, aren't we? Obama is literally recreating the structure of government, and results will we evident in the years ahead, but right now? Very little help on the horizon.

Some of us saw the writing on the wall right away -- newscaster Brian Williams has been on several interview shows, talking about the horror of Katrina's classism cum racism and the betrayal of American rights of citizenship. He did a "Dateline" special on Katrina last week and will interview Obama from New Orleans on Sunday night news. He speaks passionately ... as many newscasters do, including CNN's Anderson Cooper and FOX's Shep Smith ... of how this experience changed his understanding of his own country; and not in a good way. The poor could not get themselves out of New Orleans and so they were, literally, left behind.

What shocked us all in the final days of that summer was the apparent inability of the government to intercede for these people. As Williams has said again and again, he's seen Blackhawk 'copters in Iraq set down on a dime, delivering aid or assistance but we were, in this instance, unable to even deliver water to those trapped in the downtown stadium, let alone food. Day after day we watched, puzzled and then outraged.

George Bush's lethargy on this rescue was the wound to his presidency that changed the tide for Republicans. In the last decade, we've learned a good deal about the actual psychology of the Right and I don't think it's exaggeration to suggest that if the whole of Katrina's drama hadn't been televised, there would have been little or no effort at rescue. Period. In the last five years, we've had to accept that the governments ability to respond to emergency is all but missing, thanks to privatization and underfunding.

And if the Pubs were in charge today, I can't even begin to project how dire our circumstances might become. We're already in a world of hurt, thanks to the Bush tax cuts, frivolous wars and abandonment of regulation. Top Dog John Boehner put forth an economic plan for the Pubs this week on how to restructure the White House and economy that, quickly vetted, would increase the deficit by $3.781 TRILLION bucks. With no helping hand, I might add, for the public and no restoration of government to speak of. The Republican American Dream still sounds too much like the Old South with all of us pickin' cotton to suit me.

In a fundraising clip, outspoken Florida Representative Alan Grayson nailed the current direction of the Pubs, what they want and what's at stake in 2010 ... it's 2 plus minutes of real truth about the opposition; Grayson is running for reelection against a Bagger, of course. Florida politics is something to behold. This little YouTube is a MUST see.

Rep. Alan Grayson: What's at Stake in 2010

The extreme emotions of this period are finding a home in extreme ideologies ... but so little of it makes ANY sense at all that it's like watching those pictures of the Dome during Katrina -- you can't believe it's true. For instance, WHO [in their right mind] could believe that Glenn Beck would hold a rally to "restore honor" to a nation gone wrong on the anniversary of the MLK "I Have A Dream" speech, in the very place Martin gave it? I read an op/ed last week from a Righty who said he was 'deeply offended' at the thought of a mosque built close to Ground Zero -- tit, tat -- I know exactly how he feels when I think of Beck standing where Martin stood [Glenn sez he won't use the same step] selling his confusing, duplicitious and semi-literate snake oil, pitching for the end of social justice and attempting to rewrite the history of civil liberties.

Here's a little preview of this attraction, which is being touted as a pivotal moment of change for America and a time of miracles.

I think it would be VERY productive to have an actual discussion about civil rights and race but that's not what Beck will provide us this weekend. He will give us blackboards and Palin and talk of lost honor ... even though it was his own that lost it ... and speak against social justice as if it were not the soul of this nation or any democracy, anywhere.

But then again, this is the US of A ... free speech is still allowed, as is the right to gather ... and Beck and his followers will enjoy the civil liberties we've worked so hard to preserve. But not, I think, respect for the civil conversation, intelligent disagreement and sense of decorum that used to mark our differences. I'm not sure if, or when, we'll get that back. We're flirting with anarchy -- the Right romanticizing it, the Left desperate to shore up against it  -- and, with the raucous and unnerving revelations of another discouraging summer, the loudest voices are leading the way.

Have a good, sensible and peaceful weekend.

Jude



Glenn Beck: I Have a Scheme
Jon Stewart, Comedy Central
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/27/stewart-beck-rally-civil-rights_n_696758.html

Fight radical Islam by turning off FOX
Jon Stewart, Comedy Central
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/23/stewart-fox-prince-alwaleed_n_692234.html

The Summer of Republican Race-Baiting
Bob Cesca, HuffPo
August 25, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/the-summer-of-republican_b_694687.html

Earlier this year, Republican Party chairman Michael Steele admitted that the GOP has engaged in Southern Strategy politics: employing racial, anti-minority code language and fear-mongering as a means of energizing the party's white Christian base.

This is a fact. The Southern Strategy is real, though it's no longer exclusively "southern."

There's no disputing its widespread use. Come to think of it, for Steele to "confess" to the the GOP's use of the Strategy makes it seems as though it was previously a secret. It wasn't. Fact: the Republican Party routinely tweaks white fear, paranoia, prejudice and resentment in order to win votes and score political points at the expense of demonized minority groups. They engage in stereotyping and misinformation and they rarely, if ever, use the "n-word" these days, though they might as well. After all, as the Strategy goes, blacks and minorities aren't voting Republican anyway, so... let fly.

And it works. So well, in fact, that it's still actively used on AM talk radio and on Fox News Channel as a ratings-grabber, not to mention as a recruitment tool for the various tea party groups. If you can effectively convince the majority race that they're being somehow victimized by the significantly smaller minority, you have a seriously powerful (and clearly immoral) psycho-weapon in your arsenal.

This year has to be some kind of high water mark for white antagonism against minorities, and evidence that the Republicans, along with the array of far-right apparatchiks, don't really have a serious agenda for governing to sell or, for that matter, anything of value to say. And so they do this. They continue to tap into a mother lode of white majority self-pity and inchoate rage as a form of spackle over the gaping holes in their ridiculous policy arguments.

Take a good look at the big stories of the last several months -- the stories that have been driven by the far-right machine, injected into the mainstream and subsequently debated by the rest of the country -- partly as a result of the far-right's money, loudness and tenacity, and partly because these arguments are too obnoxious and outrageous, and therefore too irresistible, to avoid. I've been hearing a lot about August being "crazy month," but the crazy topics have spanned the entire summer and beyond.

What are they?

Shirley Sherrod.

The far-right machine and a serial con-man named Andrew Breitbart released a deceptively edited video of a black government worker appearing to tell an NAACP audience that she discriminated against a white farmer couple. Even after the video was widely debunked and Breitbart discredited as an overzealous attention-whore, white rage and white resentment was successfully fueled by conservatives across the media spectrum. White rage and victimhood was successfully tweaked at the expense of an innocent black woman who was, in reality, discussing racial understanding and unity. Mission accomplished.

Anchor babies.

Almost immediately on the heels of Sherrod fracas, the far-right resumed its ongoing attack on Mexicans. This time, Mexican babies, of all people. For all of its bluster and bullshit, the GOP can read statistics and they know that Hispanics are the fastest-growing demographic in America. But rather than embracing this often socially conservative, Christian population and planning for the future, the party and its subsidiaries are instead clinging to its present-day whiteness in hopes of both stemming and discouraging an increasingly brown America, and, again, energizing its base by marginalizing brown people.

In this specific case, the Republicans have stepped through yet another looking-glass by proposing the repeal of the 14th Amendment as a campaign issue. The 14th Amendment! The amendment that was ratified as a reaction against the racist southern Black Codes during Reconstruction. And why does the GOP want to repeal this amendment? To make sure that Mexican babies born inside the United States won't become automatic citizens.

A repeal will never happen, of course. But it doesn't matter. White fear of a growing brown population has been successfully tweaked. Mission accomplished.

The Park51 community center.

The Republicans are making another attempt to brand September 11th. But this time, there's a bonus racial component emerging in the usual anti-Muslim fear-mongering. A considerable number of American Muslims happen to be black, so not only does the Park51 issue serve to tweak jingoistic and religious bellicosity, but it also tosses African Americans into the mix.

The most obvious example of the latter is the disgusting video footage of an African American carpenter (who happens to be working on the new 1 World Trade Center tower) being accosted by a mob of screaming white protesters outside the old Burlington Coat Factory building. His trespass? He apparently seemed Muslim-ish to the crowd -- even after he shouted, "I'm not even Muslim!" I suppose his choice of a white Under Armour hat and his, you know, blackness screamed "evildoer." As we all know, Under Armour is a major supplier of popular sportswear and radical Islamic headgear. Hating America for its freedom requires fabric that wicks moisture (feel free to use that in your next commercial, Under Armour).

"Kenny" with his Under Armour hat isn't the only "Muslim-ish" New Yorker who's been assaulted. A New York cab driver was repeatedly stabbed this week, simply because he admitted to being a Muslim. It's not a stretch to suggest that the political demagoguery of Park51 is partly to blame for this.
Barack Hussein Obama.

And meanwhile, the ridiculous Muslim rumors about President Obama have resurfaced again. It's the other, and somehow more acceptable, Birther conspiracy. Glenn Beck, this week, implied that the president is either attempting to turn America into a radical Islamic nation or that he's trying to establish Sharia law or that the president intends to subjugate white Christian America.

Actually, it could be all of the above because Beck simply outlined a number of so-called Muslim-ish things President Obama has done, and then left the sinister conclusions up to the imaginations and paranoia of his viewers. And by the way, that's a major feature of the Strategy. Never draw the conclusion. Some examples. A black woman was talking about white people -- and you know what that means. Mexican babies are automatically citizens -- and you know what that means. The president with his mysterious religion and unusual name said positive things about Muslims -- and you know what that means. We don't know where Imam Rauf is getting his money -- and you know what that means. Wink, wink. White rage is successfully tweaked. Mission accomplished.

Whether or not these issues are substantive is entirely irrelevant. The ends justify the means. Winning more power is the goal. Demagoguery, racial politics and specious arguments are fair game as long as they work. As long as the enemy is defeated. This doesn't necessarily mean that every Republican is a racist (or, with regards to the specious arguments, an idiot). But what else do we call the deliberate inciting of racial bigotry and resentment for the sake of attaining power? It's unethical, immoral and obscene. It's race-baiting and it's a major component of the Republican strategic arsenal.

My biggest concern is that it will eventually become acceptable to the mainstream. I worry that the politicians, talkers and pundits who employ the Strategy will no longer be marginalized and disgraced -- that it will become just an ordinary fact of life, as it already has for the most cynical among us. Unfortunately, when it comes to people like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Mark Williams, we're already beyond the zero barrier.

A few years ago, Don Imus was fired for saying "nappy-headed hos." Today, Rush Limbaugh gets away with far worse every day and is given a pass, arguably because he makes lots of money for his bosses in part by employing the Strategy. Sarah Palin can insist that Laura Schlessinger "reload" her obvious racial insensitivities, including her gratuitous use of "nigger," and is given a pass. She can accuse the president of being a terrorist, and is given a pass. She can use racial dog whistles like "wealth redistribution" (taking money from white people and giving to poor black people), and is given a pass.

The Republican Party machine does it all the time and is still taken seriously as one of our two major parties. This is unacceptable. And so we have to keep talking about it and exposing anyone who plays this terrible game, while underscoring why it's such a stain on our politics and values. We have to prevent our discourse from moving beyond that point of no return -- to make sure that the exploitation of racial intolerance at the highest levels of politics and the media doesn't become just another accepted facet of the American debate. ++

Now That’s Rich
PAUL KRUGMAN, NYT
August 22, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/opinion/23krugman.html?_r=3&hp

               
 We need to pinch pennies these days. Don’t you know we have a budget deficit? For months that has been the word from Republicans and conservative Democrats, who have rejected every suggestion that we do more to avoid deep cuts in public services and help the ailing economy.

But these same politicians are eager to cut checks averaging $3 million each to the richest 120,000 people in the country.

What — you haven’t heard about this proposal? Actually, you have: I’m talking about demands that we make all of the Bush tax cuts, not just those for the middle class, permanent.

Some background: Back in 2001, when the first set of Bush tax cuts was rammed through Congress, the legislation was written with a peculiar provision — namely, that the whole thing would expire, with tax rates reverting to 2000 levels, on the last day of 2010.

Why the cutoff date? In part, it was used to disguise the fiscal irresponsibility of the tax cuts: lopping off that last year reduced the headline cost of the cuts, because such costs are normally calculated over a 10-year period. It also allowed the Bush administration to pass the tax cuts using reconciliation — yes, the same procedure that Republicans denounced when it was used to enact health reform — while sidestepping rules designed to prevent the use of that procedure to increase long-run budget deficits.

Obviously, the idea was to go back at a later date and make those tax cuts permanent. But things didn’t go according to plan. And now the witching hour is upon us.

So what’s the choice now? The Obama administration wants to preserve those parts of the original tax cuts that mainly benefit the middle class — which is an expensive proposition in its own right — but to let those provisions benefiting only people with very high incomes expire on schedule. Republicans, with support from some conservative Democrats, want to keep the whole thing.

And there’s a real chance that Republicans will get what they want. That’s a demonstration, if anyone needed one, that our political culture has become not just dysfunctional but deeply corrupt.

What’s at stake here? According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, making all of the Bush tax cuts permanent, as opposed to following the Obama proposal, would cost the federal government $680 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. For the sake of comparison, it took months of hard negotiations to get Congressional approval for a mere $26 billion in desperately needed aid to state and local governments.

And where would this $680 billion go? Nearly all of it would go to the richest 1 percent of Americans, people with incomes of more than $500,000 a year. But that’s the least of it: the policy center’s estimates say that the majority of the tax cuts would go to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent. Take a group of 1,000 randomly selected Americans, and pick the one with the highest income; he’s going to get the majority of that group’s tax break. And the average tax break for those lucky few — the poorest members of the group have annual incomes of more than $2 million, and the average member makes more than $7 million a year — would be $3 million over the course of the next decade.

How can this kind of giveaway be justified at a time when politicians claim to care about budget deficits? Well, history is repeating itself. The original campaign for the Bush tax cuts relied on deception and dishonesty. In fact, my first suspicions that we were being misled into invading Iraq were based on the resemblance between the campaign for war and the campaign for tax cuts the previous year. And sure enough, that same trademark deception and dishonesty is being deployed on behalf of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

So, for example, we’re told that it’s all about helping small business; but only a tiny fraction of small-business owners would receive any tax break at all. And how many small-business owners do you know making several million a year?

Or we’re told that it’s about helping the economy recover. But it’s hard to think of a less cost-effective way to help the economy than giving money to people who already have plenty, and aren’t likely to spend a windfall.

No, this has nothing to do with sound economic policy. Instead, as I said, it’s about a dysfunctional and corrupt political culture, in which Congress won’t take action to revive the economy, pleads poverty when it comes to protecting the jobs of schoolteachers and firefighters, but declares cost no object when it comes to sparing the already wealthy even the slightest financial inconvenience.

So far, the Obama administration is standing firm against this outrage. Let’s hope that it prevails in its fight. Otherwise, it will be hard not to lose all faith in America’s future. ++


At the Far Edge
New York Times Editorial Board
August 19, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/opinion/20fri2.html

 
For months, it has been clear that Republican Congressional candidates would benefit from independent voters’ dissatisfaction with President Obama. With the Republican field now largely in place, all voters might want to take a close look at who those candidates are.

The party has nominated so many at the far right of the spectrum, as well as some other unusual choices — Linda McMahon, the candidate for the United States Senate in Connecticut made millions running the sex-and-violence spectacle known as World Wrestling Entertainment — that the Republican brand is barely recognizable. Consider:

•
Ken Buck, the United States Senate nominee in Colorado. A former district attorney, he has said that the separation of church and state is too strictly enforced and wants to eliminate the Energy and Education Departments. Until recently, he supported repealing the 17th Amendment, which provides for direct election of senators. In the primary, he said he should win because “I do not wear high heels” — his opponent was a woman. As a federal prosecutor, he was reprimanded by a United States attorney after he gave information about the weakness of a case against gun dealers to the defense.

•
Rand Paul, the United States Senate candidate in Kentucky and physician, who has criticized the minimum-wage law and the civil rights and fair housing laws. He wants to cut way back on unemployment insurance and has denigrated Medicare as “socialized medicine.”

•
Sharron Angle, the United States Senate candidate in Nevada, who believes that same-sex couples should not be allowed to adopt children, that the United States should pull out of the United Nations and that Medicare and Social Security should be phased out in favor of a privatized system. In May, she suggested to The Reno Gazette-Journal that if she failed to defeat her Democratic opponent, Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, then conservatives might have no choice but to turn to violence. “I look at this as almost an imperative. If we don’t win at the ballot box, what will be the next step?” she said.

•
Mike Lee, the United States Senate candidate in Utah, who said he favors repealing the progressive income tax and supports a low cap on liability for oil companies that cause extensive environmental damage. He is one of the many Republicans who support changing the 14th Amendment to prohibit American-born children of illegal immigrants from being granted citizenship.

Democrats have hardly been paragons of courage during this election cycle, whipping up phony fears that Republicans are on the verge of dismantling Social Security. Some, notably Senator Reid, have refused to stand with President Obama on the right of Muslims to build a community center and mosque in Lower Manhattan. These new Republican candidates are out of touch with mainstream American values of tolerance and pretty much everything else.

They need to be challenged head-on. ++


Forget the ‘Party of No,’ Dems Need to Run Against Extremism
E.J. Dionne, Jr., TruthDig
Aug 22, 2010
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/forget_party_of_no_dems_need_to_run_against_extremism_20100822/

In an election, a solid “no” usually beats an uneasy “yes, but.” That’s the heart of the problem Democrats and President Obama face this fall.

The advantage of saying “no” without equivocation is that a significant share of the electorate is usually ready to shout the word from the rooftops, especially when the economy is as bad as it is now. Both parties have regularly offered variations on the late George C. Wallace’s brilliant slogan, “Send them a message.” The catchphrase leaves voters free to define who “them” is, and to fill in the message themselves.

Democrats know this since the power of negative thinking won them back both houses of Congress in 2006. Their supporters swarmed the polling places to say no to George W. Bush and the war in Iraq.

That’s why identifying the GOP as “the party of no” won’t do the Democrats as much good as they’d like to think. With more than a third of conservative Republicans declaring that our Christian president is a Muslim, just saying no to him is a more than adequate motivation to spend a few minutes with a ballot.

And “no” is certainly more powerful than the mixed messages Democrats are putting forward. In their sweeping victories of 2006 and 2008, Democrats picked up dozens of seats in very conservative districts. Many of these incumbents don’t want to be associated in the least with the remarkable record their party has built in this Congress for fear of tying themselves to Obama or the party’s congressional leadership, or both. But this means that Democrats are defending their achievements halfheartedly, while Republicans are assailing them without mercy and, often enough, without much concern for accuracy.

To solve this problem, the Democrats have come up with a loud “no” of their own, asking voters to reject the Republican past one more time to avoid moving the country backward. The president makes this case by providing some reflections on driving. “When you want to move forward in your car, what do you do? You put your car in ‘D,’ ” he says. “When you want to go backwards, you put it in ‘R’—back into the ditch!”

It’s a nice line, but will it get enough of his party’s supporters to drive themselves to the polls? What’s missing from the Democrats’ campaign is a willingness to raise the stakes of the election. This may be the only way to inspire the party’s own supporters and move those independents still open to persuasion.

The principled case that must be made is that the brand of conservatism seeking power this year is irresponsible, incoherent and untrue to the best of its own traditions. That’s clear enough at the most basic level of policy: Conservatives can say that they are deeply worried about deficits, or they can insist that tax cuts matter most. But when they say they can reduce taxes and trim deficits at the same time, they are either deluded or deceptive, and they are playing voters for fools.

But there is something far more troubling at work: the rise of an angry, irrational extremism—the sort that says Obama is a Muslim socialist who wasn’t born in the U.S.—that was not part of Ronald Reagan’s buoyant conservative creed. Do Republican politicians believe in the elaborate conspiracy theories being spun by Glenn Beck and parts of the tea party movement? If not, why won’t they say so? Liberals who refused to break with the far left in the 1950s and ’60s were accused of being blinded by a view that saw “no enemies on the left.” Are conservatives who should know better now falling into a “no enemies on the right” trap?

When Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert warns, with absolutely no proof, of the dangers of “terror babies”—children whose mothers allegedly come to the United States to give birth so their offspring can have American passports for later use in terrorist activities—have we not crossed into never-never land? Where are the responsible conservatives who should be denouncing such crackpottery?

What the current right has on offer is far worse than anything Bush put forward, which means that this election isn’t even about whether we’ll go back into the ditch. It’s about whether a movement that’s gone over a cliff will be rewarded for doing so. A victory for this style of conservatism will be a defeat for the kind of conservatism the country needs. And that’s a worthy matter to put to the voters. ++

 

 

"I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington ... I'm asking you to believe in yours."
~ Barack Obama

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