It's probably time to say it
I'm a lot of things. They say crazy, violent, a drunk, a liar, a thief, an addict, a contrarian, a person who should not be part of polite society.
I think I'm also a poet, an observer, a frightened little boy and a fearless old man.
But what's amazing is the people I've met around a website called
Sadly, No. I guess one day I just barged into their party. Maybe thats just the way it works. But these people have allowed me to speak, listened and offered thoughtful responses, been there, caring when it made sense and sharp when it didn't.
Make no mistake. This is a community of people who are smarter than me. In many ways they are all the things I'll never be. And they have welcomed me. More importantly, if you are one to see the imaginary distinction, they have made me feel welcome.
Y'know, you don't have to be homeless to have no home. I have a home now. I have a place where I can go, be among friends, say what I think. We may not always agree, but the honesty and the kindness are hard to miss.
May you all find a home for yourselves, someday. Thanks...
mikey
(Re) Stating the Obvious
At the most fundamental level, what is the difference between the Democratic and Republican parties? Certainly, one could go into each of the larger issues of our time, identify the positions of each of the parties and reach some kind of conclusion about the overarching
political theory that brought them there. But that would be slippery, and subject to much debate. It seems that there should be a single basic tenet that informs the belief systems of the two parties, a "
Standard Model" of American Politics.
I've always said that the difference in between the two parties is their belief in what the role of government should be in the lives of citizens, and that's true, but I think we can refine it a little more than that. At the most basic level, then, where does the symmetry break in political theory?
I submit it is the way each party sees the role of the government in delineating and guaranteeing the rights of citizens that forms the basis for the two political viewpoints.
When the Democrats talk about rights, they talk about them is a positive manner. That is, they try to use the power of government to clearly describe what it is the people CAN do, and to make certain that neither government nor any other entity can impinge upon those rights. From the basic Bill of Rights, the right to speech, to assemble, to worship, even when it a more negative expression of rights, such as in the fourth amendment, it is expressed as a guarantee to the people as in:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated."
This is actually a case of the Government choosing to limit it's own power, but it is phrased as an affirmative right guaranteed to the people. Later on, the Democrats supported other guarantees, such as the right to an abortion, the right to be free of discrimination, the right to an education. It is fair to say that the Democrats view a primary role of government as guaranteeing a broad set of clearly delineated rights to the people and then enforcing that guarantee.
The Republicans, on the other hand, view rights from a diametrically opposed position. They feel it is the governments role to limit civil rights, to define them rigidly rather than broadly, and to create a system whereby a persons access to rights and liberties can be challenged. They also see the government's role as punishing people for overstepping their rights, and enforcing the limitations they have placed on those rights.
Abortion and marriage are two obvious examples, but many others can be found. It is exclusively Republicans who call for the punishment of journalists who write stories with which the disagree, calling the writers traitors or worse. It is the republicans, while decrying the lack of freedom of expression in countries that impose limits on their Christian citizens, who seek to limit the ability of others, particularly Muslims, from practicing their own religion.
It is these opposing views regarding human and civil rights that forms the basis for all the political thought and belief structures that follow. As a self-described liberal, I have a difficult time understanding why someone would choose a political belief system built upon imposing limits on the rights of your citizens, and attempting to find a mechanism for punishing those who believe differently from you. In a sense, we are prisoners of our basic political beliefs. For example, a large part of me would like to see more stringent gun control. But that would require, ultimately, putting unreasonable limits on a right guaranteed in the constitution, and that is a risk I simply am not willing to take.
At LEAST Half Empty
I'm more pessimistic about the future of this nation than I've ever been. Indeed, I can't think of a time in history, at least since Washington fell in 1814, when not just America, but the concept of America has been under such dire threat.
I've been mostly concerned about Iraq. The idea of America as a nation that invades and occupies other nations is one that simply cannot stand. The idea of America as an aggressive, fascist rogue nation is unacceptable to me, and I've been focused on trying to bring this vicious, counterproductive foreign policy to a close.
Then came the Democrat's unseemly and wrongheaded capitulation on FISA. Now it's clear. America's reputation in the world as a force for good has already been trashed, if not beyond repair then to the extent that it will take generations to repair it. The failure of the American Democratic political system, the utter inability of the other branches of government to restrain the excesses of the Executive, the collapse of the rule of law, the unsustainability of the American economy - these are all issues with major implications for the survival of America as something we'd recognize. But the real threat to America, not as a country, but as an ideal, is from within.
In particular I have noticed the rise of two groups within the American population that function as a real threat to our way of life, but perhaps even more importantly represent the kind of destructive ideologies that make American democracy such a fragile entity today.
The first, and most obvious of these groups is the Neo-Racists. Sure, America has always been a place where the more virulent forms of racism could take root and grow. It's something that comes out of our puritanical, provincial nature, our attraction to insular communities, our history of arriving on these shores as oppressed refugees, our religious extremism, and of course, our modern history of slavery and apartheid. Much of America is built on the three legs of militaristic nationalism (we call it "patriotism"), rigid fundamental christianity and racism. In a sense, it could be fairly argued that in "small-town" America, that sense of community, of belonging, is nothing more than the manifestation of those attributes.
But recently, a number of trends have come together to bring out an enhanced, ugly form of racism. The Republican party has always been about a thinly veiled racism, at least since the civil rights battles of the fifties and sixties, and with the Republicans contesting and winning elections over the last decade or so using the Karl Rove playbook of slurs, taunts and code-words, they have institutionalized racism, giving a veneer of acceptability. Then there was 9/11. By that time it had become all but unacceptable to use race to attack or demonize another person. Americans were still divided by racial hatred, but it was concealed, pushed beneath the surface, as the community determined that certain words and concepts could not be used in public discourse. But once it became clear that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out by Muslims, it was suddenly perfectly alright to hate muslims as our enemy, just as we had hated the Japanese in the second world war. And Americans, who love to be able to indulge their hatreds in public, almost as a bonding ritual, jumped at the opportunity to hate an entire population of people they didn't understand, deeply distrusted, a people who most importantly were not like US. Finally, there was the ugly, depressing battle over immigration reform fought not between well meaning legislators, but between the exploitative corporatists and the racists. In the current environment, is it even surprising that the racists won? And not just by a narrow margin - the racists won a resounding victory. The things that are being said openly, primarily about Mexicans, have pushed the battle against racial hatred in this country back a hundred years. And that's the beauty of the American style of "one size fits all" racism - If it's Mexicans today, it can easily be Chinese tomorrow, for the only litmus test is "are they different from us?"
The second group is a little harder to spot, but you'll find them inhabiting the same fetid haunts as the Neo Racists. These are the Neo Authoritarians. Now, while I think I understand the roots of racism in this country, I'll confess I'm at a loss to understand this movement. These are people who claim to love their country, who frequently invoke the founding fathers, who speak in glowing terms of the American contribution in World War II, who shout to the rooftops of the benefits of democracy, of human rights, of freedoms of speech and education and religion. And yet they stand and cheer every step the current administration takes toward dismantling the constitution and everything America ever stood for, everything it ever meant. It's as if they've read history, but failed to understand it.
They have cheered from the sidelines as America has abandoned everything Americans ever fought for, and adopted a regime of torture, indefinite detention without due process, the elimination of the 4th amendment requirement for probable cause and warrants, the elimination of habeas corpus. These are people who never understood comunism, and in their minds conflated it with a totalitarian police state, and railed against that as antithetical to all it means to be a modern democracy like America. And yet, the model they seem to aspire to recreate resembles nothing so much as the Soviet Bloc. A surveillance/police state where people are imprisoned for their beliefs and trials are merely for show, arriving in short order at the predetermined outcome.
I would at least entertain the theory that they don't actually
want to live in a police state, but rather are supporting their dictatorial President in all his mad endeavors, perhaps secure in the belief that these extra-judicial practices will never be brought to bear on them or their families - indeed will only be used against the worst of the rabble. But they stood firmly against the administration when they felt it's position wasn't sufficiently racist, so it cannot be said that in their most base desires they are in lockstep with the political leadership.
It almost doesn't matter now. The disastrous legacy of this administration is to have started effectively dismantling the most sacred parts of America. Not as a nation, although they have done irreparable harm to the nation also, but rather to the concept, the
ideal of America. No part of the political leadership of the United States will ever be the same again. Not the vaunted separation of powers, not congressional oversight, not the election process, not the integrity and political independence of government itself. Future presidents will have to decide whether to use the whole litany of extra constitutional tools created by Bush/Cheney and their coterie of pliable lawyers or to set them aside and fight through the "old fashion" way, negotiating, compromising and coming to consensus. When the leadership can violate their oath without sanction, violate the law with impunity and act on their own base desires rather than the good of the nation and find themselves re-elected, that is not likely to be a difficult decision.
With America's utterly unsustainable military and economic policies, the decline is as inevitable as it will be precipitous. And the reaction, sadly, will be led by these groups with their inflexible ideologies and deeply held prejudices. And in her time of extremis, as the desperation becomes palpable, the increasingly violent policies will be truly horrible to watch. The irony, of course, is that these very same people cheering the death and hate will be swept up in the necessary fallout of their own rigid policies, and locked in camps without trial or a lawyer, executed behind the barracks without appeal for "insulting the leadership", they will cry out "What has happened to my beautiful America". And I wonder, if in a brief moment of clarity before the darkness closes in, they will see that all along, while they wanted to eliminate the protections America promised those "other people", the dark ones, the ones who prayed differently, or not at all, the ones who loved differently, they were actually killing America herself, leaving behind something dark, and unrecognizable...
I'm a lot of things. They say crazy, violent, a drunk, a liar, a thief, an addict, a contrarian, a person who should not be part of polite society.
