A blog that I like to read has in the last few months become almost unreadable due to a numbingly endless series of posts by so-called "trolls" espousing right wing points and positions. The main problem stems from the grinding repetition of stupid "talking points" and a particularly arrogant and triumphalist tone, encouraged by an apparently irresistible urge on the part of the readership to argue with them, no matter how painfully stupid the topic.
But lately it's occurred to me that there's another thing these "trolls" do that I find grating. They start at least half their posts by referring to "you libs". Now, I am completely comfortable with the shorthand description of my general political outlook as "liberal". I've always preferred it to the more weaselly "progressive", which was mostly adopted because the political right was able to successfully demonize the word "liberal".
But while I can broadly be characterized as a liberal, I, and most of my political fellow-travelers, are not in lockstep on every position when you begin to speak in terms of specific issues. In fact, unlike the more doctrinaire "conservatives" (the most ardent of which most certainly are NOT), you will find a very wide set of opinions among the people who populate the left-of-center continuum. In some areas I am very liberal, in others, much less so.
But in thinking about it, it occurs to me that definitions like this are essentially asking the wrong question. It's as if you and I were having a conversation and I suddenly left my chair, floated into the air and flew around the room, and you asked me what I could see from up there. The right question would be what
caused me to be able to fly? Politically, this is also the right question. What informs my positions, what is it that brings me to these positions?
The thing I find most appalling about the extreme right wing in American political thought is their utter lack of compassion and their undervaluation of their community. Whether it is the deaths of a hundred thousand Iraqi women and children or their neighbor's loss of their house due to their lack of health insurance, the right wing refuses to endorse a position that could prevent either. It seems to me that my positions are mostly based on compassion and community. America is going to spend a certain amount of money. I'd like to see that money spent to help Americans be healthy, educated and secure. I'd like to see that money spent more on raising people up and improving their lives than on killing them.
If they were truly opposed to ALL spending equally, then I'd have more respect for their position. It would still be insane, but at least it would be consistent. Instead, they seem to have no problems with international military adventures and unspeakably massive spending on what we have euphemistically come to call "defense". But spending American money to help Americans, whether they be sick, out of work, homeless or old is something they continue to rail against, and seek at every opportunity to obstruct. I don't understand this sort of thinking - it just cannot be reconciled. Just as the same people who feel it is within their purview to control a woman's personal medical and reproductive decisions because to abort a fetus is killing, and killing is never acceptable are the ones who rabidly support wars, occupations and capital punishment. They should call themselves the party of cognitive dissonance.
It is beyond frustrating to even have to have this argument, let alone endlessly repeated, over and over. How do you argue with someone who is taking a position against their own better interests? How do you overcome this kind of indoctrination, that causes people to passionately support those who would see them lose everything and die hard rather than offer them a hand? What can you say? President Obama has said some hopeful things, but it is clear that there are powerful forces deploying to resist his attempt to make America a more compassionate place. I am not, frankly, optimistic.
Bashing al Bashir - Is it Time for Real Action in Sudan?
Yeah, I get it. Military intervention has not exactly yielded the kind of benefits it's advocates so glibly promise. Iraq was the hideous disaster it always had to be, and Afghanistan is nothing but incoherent, mindless violence and corruption with no benefit to the parties doing the bleeding. Israel did not exactly cover herself with glory in Lebanon and Gaza, and the only lesson little Georgia learned was not to pick a fight with the biggest kid in the neighborhood.
I know. I DO get it. Except.
Except I always wonder what difference a Ranger battalion might have made in Rwanda. I wonder about Kenya, if some determined men under arms could have brought a halt to the bloodletting. I think it's fair to say that NATO did some good in ending the violence in the Balkans.
But most of all I wonder about Sudan. It is the Sudanese government enabling the crimes, perpetuating the horror, both ordering and allowing the brutal torment of the non-Arab ethnic minorities under the guise of fighting the anti-government rebel movements like JEM.
Were it not for the actions of the Sudanese government, there might be some viable options for the international community to intervene on behalf of the helpless people dying hard by the thousands in the sprawling refugee camps on both sides of the border, the victims of rape and murder and disease and starvation that are the whole point of the discussion. So logic seems to dictate that any first step towards addressing the suffering would require some methodology for taking the option to participate in the conflict out of the hands of the Sudanese Leadership. And if somehow one believed that additional international legitimacy was necessary before undertaking such drastic measures, the International Criminal Court in The Hague has handed down an indictment against al Bashir for Crimes Against Humanity. It seems as if the time for action, if not well past, has come.
There are a wide array of options. From a no-fly zone to the complete destruction of the Sudanese Air Force, the US military has the power to act in a coercive manner to force Bashir to behave within international norms. Certainly, widespread bombing of Omdurman would not serve the US or the International Community well, but very selective targeting of palaces and military assets would very quickly result in the Bashir Regime's cooperation, however reluctant.
I'd also like to see a few companies of Rangers set up a Forward Operating Base in the area of the Refugee camps and exact a violent toll from the militias when they kill and rape. I realize that any combat deployment of American troops is necessarily controversial, and it may be nothing more than my own frustrated loathing, but it just doesn't seem beyond the pale to me. At the current levels of deployment and operational tempo, the judicious application of a very limited set of American military assets to begin to put an end to this rapacious thug's reign of terror seems to be to be a valuable and honorable use of military force.
Done right, I don't think we'd see a lot of blowback. Sure, the al Quaedas of the world would spin it as another occupation of another Islamic nation, but Sudan's neighbors and the international aid community would counter that with a different viewpoint altogether.
I am not a "foreign interventionist" by temperament, and I remain opposed to American international adventures, but at the same time, common sense seems to dictate that if this incredible capability we have squandered so much treasure to develop can be used to do some good, on balance, that would be a very good thing.
Filling the Republican Leadership Vacuum - It's the Votes, Stupid
Back in late 2004, when George W. Bush was re-elected handily, when Republicans dominated all three branches of government and wielded that power ruthlessly and arrogantly, he famously promised to "spend his political capital". And boy howdy, he sure did that. Two years later the Republican party was on the run, their policies discredited, their leaders involved in the seediest of corruption scandals and their popularity at historic lows.
Two years after that, the best they could come up with as a candidate for the highest office in the land was an aging mental defective former fighter pilot and POW who couldn't solve basic math problems, let alone huge national problems; and a brassy, undereducated trailer-park "hockey mom" who wielded her ignorance with pride, for whom all problems were simple because SHE was undeniably simple.
Now the Democrats hold the presidency and a substantial majority in both houses of congress. The people trust and support them as they offer up bold new and innovative solutions to the myriad problems created by both malicious action and malicious inaction by the previous leadership. And the Republicans find themselves at the nadir of their power, able to count only a small and shrinking minority of southern whites, bigots and cranks among their determined followers. So they have set out to find a new leader, someone who can attract support and lead them once again into the halls of, well, if not power then at least respectability.
You can describe this search in all sorts of terms, and in all sorts of directions, but what it comes down to is really simple. In American politics, you need votes. With votes you can raise funds, get attention, with supporters you can get your message heard, allow people to reach out and recruit more supporters, and of course, at the end, that leads to winning elections. And no matter what else you do, if you are a politician and you don't win elections, you are not going to have much influence on the policies of the country at any level.
Like a spoiled child, the Republican party refuses to acknowledge that they cannot have it both ways. They cannot cling to their obsolete and discredited policies and expect the people who are harmed by those policies to support them. They will have to walk away from the more extreme far-right wing political positions in order to attract new voters to their (revised) message. The belief that they can win over young people, people of color, immigrants, gay people and women, for example, if only they could better articulate their message is absurd on it's face. In fact, it's safe to assume that if they could better and more clearly articulate the policies that they wish to implement, they would LOSE even more voters than they have so far.
The American people are not afraid of the word "Socialism". It's not a particularly scary word. If a descent into "Socialism" is something the people should fear, then the Republicans need to articulate the reason. Merely invoking the word is silly. The people would like help, help with jobs and education and health care and infrastructure. They are not desperately afraid of the government, or of their upcoming tax bill, or that some jackbooted Brownshirt UN operative will come in their house and take away their gun. These are simply not day-to-day realistic concerns, and to make them a major part of your platform not only makes you sound hopelessly out of touch, it causes people with other, genuine fears and concerns to tune you out. You are not talking to them - they know it - it's time for you to admit it.
Every year the demographics of the American population changes. And with every passing year, the Republican message gets more and more irrelevant to people's real lives. With every turn of the calendar's page the Republicans sound more like a party at war with it's own people and less a party that can make people's lives better. Without a MAJOR overhaul, the worst news of all for the Republican leadership is that this is as good as it's likely to get. The Republican brand is in free-fall, and the only thing that can arrest the plunge into historical irrelevance is the courage of the Republican party leadership. Something, from Michael Steele to Eric Cantor to Rush Limbaugh the party has shown no evidence of.
It's really pretty simple. When you can count on 30% of the American population to vote for your candidates, you cannot win elections. So you have to ask that missing 20-25% what they want in a party. And you'll have to move toward the center to provide what they want from you. The funny thing is that, while the right-wing extremists will howl and stomp and threaten from the pulpit, they will still vote Republican. Just as the Democrats have for decades just taken for granted that the far left would end up voting for them even if the party gave them nothing, nary a crumb, the Republicans COULD accept the shouting and stop pandering to Christianist terrorists. They could simply cease to have a position on abortion, homosexuality, on morality in general as the government has no stake in these issues, and people do not need the government to criminalize perfectly reasonable activities like love and marriage. The Republican party could purge itself of the bigots and racists that have found a home there with codewords and dogwhistles to people who hate. It seems that we may have reached a tipping point where there is just not enough hate to fuel a national political party. See the Oval Office for evidence.
The choice for the Republican party is as stark as it is obvious. And the fact that they refuse to face it only makes it loom larger in the minds of the incredibly shrinking conservative constituency. They can cling to the same messages, the same policies, the same divisive narrative of exclusion and hate, and they can simply cease to have a voice in the national dialog. The other option is surprisingly simple, but I, as a Liberal in the original sense of the term, hope they remain blinded to the path of reasonableness. By backing away from social wedge issues and sticking to a political/economic message, they would quickly increase their standing in the community. Many people who were driven to the Obama Democrats in November would start to return to their Republican roots. And that, ultimately, would not be a good thing.
The train wreck has been, and continues to be, grand and amusing theater. Let's hope they continue to ditto behind Rush, and bask in the hate and fear of Cantor and the ignorance of Boehner. Because this is just the way I want it to be...
A blog that I like to read has in the last few months become almost unreadable due to a numbingly endless series of posts by so-called "trolls" espousing right wing points and positions. The main problem stems from the grinding repetition of stupid "talking points" and a particularly arrogant and triumphalist tone, encouraged by an apparently irresistible urge on the part of the readership to argue with them, no matter how painfully stupid the topic.
