The Beer of Fear
Dammit. I'd LOVE to have a beer and chat with Barack Obama. He is, in spite of my concerns about his Presidency, a brilliant and inspiring figure, and one who would offer an interesting insight into the current state of affairs.
But as a supporter, a person who believes he is trying in many ways, someone who genuinely wishes him well, I have little or not chance of ever seeing something like that come to pass. In fact, the lesson here is the best way I can hope to have a soul-searching one on one conversation with the most interesting American political figure since John F. Kennedy is to find a way to abuse and mistreat a black man. If I can violate his constitutional rights in a public setting, then deny it was racially motivated, to the point where I can earn the wrath of the President so that he might speak intemperately, then I can hope that the whole thing will blow over as we sit in the garden outside the Oval Office enjoying a Red Stripe and laughing about post-racial America.
The Gates of Wrath
Not much left to be said about this, but once again we find we're not arguing about the issues raised by the very public mistreatment of a black man by white policemen, we're seeing them trying to silence that argument using a well-understood tactic. By being offended, not by the repugnant actions of a cop steeped in the tradition of dealing with people of color as if the Constitution does not apply to them, but by the words the President used in talking about it.
And once again, it worked. We're not having a national conversation about the abusive manner in which police treat minorities, as should have been the result of the Gates arrest, but rather we're taking the political opportunity to back the President down, simultaneously rehabilitating the cop and subtly demonizing Gates for having the temerity to expect to be treated the same as his white neighbors. Outrage at the actions of the Police has shifted to outrage at the words of the President, who, it should be mentioned, is black.
The narrative of white America, where the police are uniformly good and black people are criminals remains ascendant, even though everyone KNOWS that the police routinely profile and mistreat minorities, abuse their authority and use unnecessary violence against anyone who stands up for their rights.
What we know to be true and what we are permitted to say have become so radically disassociated from one another that it really can only be described as Orwellian. How have we allowed our society to be bullied like this? What happened to the open exchange of ideas that is such a necessary part of a functioning democracy? Why should we care if someone feigns outrage in a cynical, manipulative attempt to stifle those ideas? Why are the self-appointed "idea police" winning?
In a deeply ingrained pattern of racial domination, Henry Louis Gates was wronged. It was important for Americans to talk about it, and it was important that Barack Obama, as the President and also as an American black man, to call out that abuse in the harshest possible terms. If there is outrage over Obama speaking bluntly about the behavior of the officer, it should be noted by all observers that it is the outrageous behavior of that very cop that brought about the whole discussion. Had he acted professionally and humanely, as we know he would have if the homeowner was white, none of this would have happened. But immediately the last bastions of white privilege rushed to the barricades to defend a policeman's right to abuse, mistreat and even take into custody a minority citizen because that's the way America works. Disgusting.
Centuries of abuse by white Americans is coming to an end, probably in the next generation. Demographics and the relentless march of human diversity will out. But make no mistake, in their desperate fight to cling to power and privilege, we will see white racists say and do increasingly irresponsible things, and there is suffering yet to be inflicted. And the worst thing we can do is allow the defenders of the unfair and untenable status quo silence the discussion when abuse occurs. Artificial outrage is not a viable basis for a society to answer these questions...
You Can't Say That!! I Demand an Apology!
So, let's be real clear. You can't accuse the CIA of lying, because they are wholesome keepers of the American dream. You can't ever say that police acted "stupidly", because goodness knows they only ever act with wisdom and altruism in their unstained hearts. You cannot suggest that American soldiers died in Iraq for nothing, because American soldiers are, to a man and a woman, saints with guns, unmarked by the horror of their profession. You cannot call the abusive treatment of detainees "torture" because there is a perfectly reasonable policy debate about the meaning of that word, and to simply use it as it is defined would be a partisan act. And of course, if some OTHER nation acts in exactly the same way, it can accurately be described as torture, as obviously there is no policy debate about THEIR actions. And heaven forbid you should mention the horrendous treatment of the innocent civilians of the Gaza Strip by the Israelis, or that it is precisely this kind of collective punishment they had in mind in Geneva when they designated it a war crime. Certainly, the Israelis, just like the Americans, are by definition incapable of committing war crimes.
Of course, we all know what we're really seeing here. It's a kind of conversational filibuster, designed to do nothing so much as silence ideas we dislike. And like the filibuster, we sit back and let it be used against us because we desperately want to be able to use it against our ideological foes tomorrow. If we can create a general sense that some things simply should not be discussed, then we never have to consider those ideas on the merits. We can simply attack someone for
saying these things, and that acts to limit the exposure the idea can get, reducing the tendency of people to bring it up. In a perfect social feedback loop, by defining an idea as off limits, we enforce the belief that idea IS actually off limits.
Interestingly, these taboos can evolve over time. We saw a very interesting example of this in 2002-2003 with the invasion of Iraq. To even question the legitimacy, necessity or utility of that invasion was to immediately be shouted down, as those ideas were not considered to be part of the legitimate conversation. To even consider them was to become ineligible to particpate in the discussion, as you were simply not "serious". Now, of course, all of those ideas have not only been validated, they are the widely accepted consensus. But at the time they mattered, when they might have made a profound difference, they were effectively taboo.
This needs to stop. By making specific ideas off limits, by limiting the conversation to non-controversial topics we are allowing the defenders of the status quo to control the discussion. The purpose of this type of argument is to suppress ideas, not to argue against them but rather to try to prevent them from ever being considered. We have to be willing to offer these ideas up in the face of shouts of "racism", of "unamerican", of "soft on crime" or "supporter of terror", and defend them in a manner that requires an opponent to make an argument against the idea, rather than an argument intended to disallow the idea. And we have to have the courage to reject this same tactic when it would favor us. It is only logical that if we cannot construct an argument for why a bad idea is bad, maybe it's not a bad idea after all. And if we can construct such an argument, THAT is the position we need to take.
Ideas can be good or bad, but the
discussion of ideas is always good. Silencing an ideological opponent does not win the argument, it is the tactic of a bully. It seems that the arguments against even discussing ideas are louder these days than the arguments of the ideas themselves, but that is a toxic formula that must be resisted...
Maybe it would be simpler to just list who DOESN'T Suck
The vote was 58-39 in favor of the provision establishing concealed carry permit reciprocity in the 48 states that have concealed weapons laws. That fell two votes short of the 60 needed to approve the measure, offered as an amendment to a defense spending bill.
Here it is. Neatly summed up in two sentences, a clear description of what's wrong with our Congress, our Press Corps and our entire legislative process.
1. It's utterly wrong about what happened
. The American Congress operates on majority rule. That is, it takes a simple majority to pass legislation. Up until recently, the filibuster was an obscure procedural tactic in place to protect the minority but seldom used. Now, we have arrived at a situation where the accepted wisdom is that ANY legislation requires a super majority in the Senate to pass. It should be noted that this is glaringly incorrect. When cloture is invoked, 60 votes are required to end debate and bring a bill to a vote. So once again, this bill, however you might think about it, wasn't "defeated" with 58 votes, it was prevented from being voted on at all. Had it been voted on, it would have passed easily. I happen to think this is bad legislation and was glad to see it did not become law, but I would much prefer to see a reduction in arbitrary veto-points in the American legislature, and would gladly accept the passage of any bill with the support of 58 Senators. This new set of rules for the operation of the Senate strongly supports the status quo, and no matter what your political worldview, I don't know anyone who actually prefers the status quo over some kind of significant change.
2. The Bill itself is so incredibly stupid and misguided that for any representative to actually support it is an indictment of that representative's priorities. Gun possession and concealed-carry laws are the province of the individual states. Absolutely no one disputes that. The Second Amendment guarantee of a right to keep and bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution, but the local rules about how that right is implemented and regulated is left up to the various statehouses. A law like this one would essentially strip those regulations in the worst possible way, standardizing all state gun laws on the bases of the weakest state's rule set. What's interesting is that the 2nd Amendment zealots that favor legislation like this don't seem to be cognizant of the potential for unintended consequences. The law would have applied to 48 states, as Illinois and Wisconsin do not allow citizens to carry concealed weapons under any circumstances, so one has to wonder how many additional states would repeal their concealed carry laws if required instead to accept other states weaker regulations.
3. Once again, the blatantly corrupting power of interest group money is on full display. And nobody is even slightly embarrassed. There was no large constituency clamoring for the right to carry their handgun outside of their home state. It was nothing more than an arbitrary and needless expansion of the law that found voice in the legislature for two reasons. First, the gun lobby is so wealthy and so powerful that they regularly use that wealth and power to bring to congress ANY legislation that weakens firearm regulation. They use it to force elected representatives to publicly support virtually unregulated firearms ownership in the US, preventing Members of Congress from avoiding the issue, and giving pro-gun candidates leverage over gun-control advocates in many, if not most districts. And for the Republican Party, so badly damaged after 8 years of Bush/Cheney they are left with nothing but fear, hate and bigotry, this was nothing short of a political windfall, a win-win opportunity of the first order. If the law was enacted, they had a rare legislative victory. If the law failed or was vetoed, they had the opportunity to further scare-monger the President as a socialist out to take away their guns. Either way, they would be happy with the outcome.
Does the Truth even Matter Anymore?
Iran, by all reports, is not developing nuclear weapons, but rather a civilian nuclear power industry. You would not know it by reading the statements of the American political leadership.
Iran can become a constructive actor in the region if it stops threatening its neighbours and supporting terrorism.
--Hilary Clinton, United States Secretary of State
What? Who is doing the threatening here? Not a week goes by where powerful figures in the US and/or Israel don't have open, casual discussion reported in the press about starting an unprovoked war against Iran. Is that threatening war, or is that terrorism? Either way, it seems to demonstrate a bit of a double standard. But somehow, American and Israeli leaders have the chutzpah to accuse Iran of threatening their neighbors. Oh, and with thousands of nuclear weapons, neither developed under any international oversight at ALL, both the US and Israel have decided that Iran may not join the nuclear club, even as India and Pakistan and, in perhaps the most egregious case of flaunting the non-proliferation regime, Israel, have developed weapons and missiles and warheads and yet, somehow they maintain their status as responsible players in the global order. How could it be that they are willing to threaten nuclear war on their neighbors, where Iran does not, and yet continue to be viewed as reasonable stewards of the global peace?
And then there's that whole pesky issue around human rights and torture. The US used to have a strong position on the moral high ground, with an uncompromising stance on the treatment of suspects and POWs and the unquestioned limits imposed by the rule of law. Not so much, anymore. The US has been shown to be every bit the hypocrite on human and detainee rights that the Soviets, the Chinese and our dear friends the Saudis and Egyptians are. Speaking one thing, but in a time of fear and extremis, reverting to our most base instincts and hurting and killing people out of a hopeless, terrified rage and an inability to find a place of safety and comfort. Sad, all too human, but not what we claim to be about. When fear causes us to throw our most profound values over the side, we reveal to all that our values were never that important in the first place. That the only reason we were able to hold that moral high ground was that war and mass violence is never visited on our homeland, and as soon as it was we became everything we ever said we hated and would never be.
So what is America now, today? A sad empire, an increasingly authoritarian and militarized society, torn apart by the same kind of ethnic hatreds we are so prepared to cluck over in other, less "developed" nations? Some kind of giant mutant, strong and deadly, but mentally and morally challenged, with the majority of our citizens unconvinced of either evolution or global climate change, but willing to embrace unconditionally a sixteen hundred year old peasant's tale of supernatural power and impossible events?
We hear repeatedly that the primary role of a national government is to protect the nation and her citizens from attack. If this is true of the United States government, is it not equally true of the Iranian government? And if so, and the goal is to discourage Tehran from developing powerful weapons that might be used as a deterrent to an attack, wouldn't it be much more effective to STOP THREATENING TO ATTACK? In who's imagination would continued threats be an effective method to cause an adversary to take fewer defensive measures? That wouldn't even make sense to a third grader.
Indeed, in the course of merely considering the glaring hypocrisy represented by ongoing American and Israeli threats of war, of bombing, of "covert action" and "regime change", the thing that becomes most obvious is that the goal is clearly not one of peaceful coexistence. No, the only logical goal of all the sanctions, saber-rattling and unreasonable demands is to end up, at some point, in a state of war. It appears that the Obama administration has decided that the time for that war is in the future rather than now, but when you observe smart people taking what appear to be stupid and counterproductive measures, you must apply Occam's razor and accept the obvious assumption, that they want what they seem to be working towards.
The American war culture can't see any downside in starting another war, because America is so powerful and remote that none of the destruction and horror of yet another war will be felt by her citizens. No thought will be given to the desperate suffering of the innocents under the bombs, for they aren't us, they are not even LIKE us, and their deaths cannot interfere with our shopping malls and TV shows.
So be it. But rather than making up wild stories about who is threatening who, and who has the power to unleash industrial - scale death and suffering, let us understand clearly that we are starting yet another unprovoked aggressive war out of our own vast pool of fear, ignorance and hubris. Let us describe it as what it is, not a defense of our way of life, but a crime committed in our name. The world has turned a blind eye to our deceit in the name of massive violence for a long time. History will record the names of the butchers...
The Second Amendment is Not a Suicide Pact
We aren't stupid. We aren't blind. Regardless of ideology, we can sit down together and talk through the issues, can we not? Even if we cannot arrive at a real solution to intractable questions, we can at least ponder the questions as thinking adults, right?
Sadly, the stupidity has taken hold in a genuinely frightening way, preventing even our elected legislators and appointed adjudicators from speaking honestly about so many issues. In the Sotomayor confirmation hearings today, we saw this, from a woman who grew up in a hardscrabble Bronx neighborhood that lost many of it's sons and daughters to pointless violence:
"I understand how important the right to bear arms is to many, many Americans," Sotomayor told Leahy, adding that one of her godchildren is a member of the National Rifle Association and she has friends who hunt.
Show of hands. How many people think that's actually her honest thoughts around guns in America? How many think THATS the thing she'd choose to say when asked about the Second Amendment? We have reached a tipping point, where not a single government figure is allowed to tell the truth about important issues anymore. Can someone tell me how all this hiding from the facts and refusing to even have a conversation about the real-world issues and their non-imaginary impacts on neighborhoods and families all over the country is a sustainable path?
Look, here's the hard truth about gun ownership in America. First, it's in the Constitution. As much as firearms opponents want to try to create some kind of fuzziness around that, and they do make a valiant effort, "...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" is a hard phrase to obfuscate. Is it valid, or valuable now, today, in twenty-first century America? Of course not. It is a deeply embedded evil built into the very fabric of our national heritage, and the bloodshed just goes on and on. To get to something approximating common-sense gun ownership laws, you will HAVE to change the Constitution. But here's the thing. It's not just in the Constitution, it's in the Bill of Rights. And if you open the door to tampering with
that, there is NO reason to believe it will all just stop there. A free press, as poor a job as they have done recently, is a pesky thing that most authoritarian governments do not allow. Speech can be re-defined. Assembly more tightly controlled. As much as we have seen the American Constitution trampled upon over the last decade, to allow people to begin to tamper with the core principles is to open a Pandora's Box of authoritarian and plutocratic activism, something we've seen far too much of already.
But to leave things as they are is a horrorshow of blood and loss, wasting our best along with our society's detritus, breaking families and hearts even as no higher purpose is served, and nothing of value is accomplished beyond the profits of the weapons industry. We cannot allow the status quo to be the future. We cannot continue to watch our children and brothers take the lives of their neighbors so casually, and then rot away in a prison cell for a moment's sick anger.
It's easy to reach the conclusion that there is no way out of this conundrum. And, for all that, I have no solution to offer. A solution, if there is one, would not look like an assault weapons ban or a law against high capacity magazines. It would be something that greatly reduced the number and availability of handguns, particularly in places like the inner city where the murder rates are unacceptably high. There would be regional, emergency legislation that, while unlikely to have an immediate impact, would begin to make guns more scarce, more expensive, and more difficult to for children to get and use casually. But it doesn't really matter. Because we have created a system where the only people that matter, the only people who have within their grasp the power to make a difference, to try to save some lives over time, the people who ASKED for the responsibility to deal with our society's hard problems are afraid to even have the conversation. Are AFRAID to even start a dialog with the phrase "what are we going to do about gun violence in our communities". The brave men and women who are asking this question, who are demanding answers, are written off as leftists, pacifists, unamerican hippies who are not "serious". And the people who are considered serious are AFRAID to say to the very constituency that elected them "I need you to help me develop a solution". They are more protective of their reputation in Washington then they are of the children back home.
Let's be honest. They will never have to try to decide whether to risk taking a gun to school, or risk leaving it home. They will never learn to not just flinch at the pop-pop-pop-pop of a drive by but to find good cover, and take care of their friends under fire. They live in nice, safe neighborhoods and will never have to try to understand the loss of a daughter caught by a stray round, or a son who just didn't have the strength and support to say no to the gang.
When you're scared, a gun is a very easy thing to reach for. I've done it. But when you're scared to talk ABOUT guns in America, it is enough to offer platitudes to the people who perpetuate the violence without ever suffering from it. The Alabama Senator, the Michigan Congressman, the Florida Governor will never lose a child to gun violence. They will never have to lie awake in the depths of the night, sobbing, wondering why god has taken their daughter, or what could have led their son to a life sentence. Like so much in our world, the difference between where we are and where we need to go is courage, and sadly, once again, courage is sorely lacking...
Do you think he Understands the Difference?
Pope Benedict XVI stressed the church's opposition to abortion and stem cell research in his first meeting with President Barack Obama on Friday, pressing the Vatican's case with the U.S. leader who is already under fire on those issues from some conservative Catholics and bishops back home.Pope. Leader of an international group of people who have
chosen to live according to the strictures of a particular mystical, metaphysical and philosophical belief system, predicated on an ancient text that is generally accepted outside the confines of the church as describing events that often have no basis in reality. Like membership in a club or union, the members of a church agree to abide by it's arbitrary rules and live within it's proscribed boundaries.
President. Elected as leader of a country or nation-state,
chosen by the people to represent EVERYONE in that country equally and fairly. To consider the real - world needs and aspirations of his constituency, regardless of their individual spiritual or philosophical beliefs or the demands and constraints of their chosen thought-leaders.
These are powerful men, with very large constituencies and responsibilities. And yet, they are not the same. They are FAR from the same. If Obama (or any elected leader of a diverse constituency, for that matter) allows himself to be influenced by the dogma and doctrine of a narrow group whose ideology is defined by mythology, he will be no different in his governance than Amedinejad. Obama was elected by the vote of the majority of Americans, and is obligated to balance his agenda so as it might serve the broadest measure of the citizenry.
By dint of the constraints of their beliefs and the dictates of the church leadership in Rome, Catholics are by the very nature of that self-identification constrained from various actions and activities, although it does seem odd that these are subject to some evolution over time. While they now can eat meat on Fridays, they are still prevented by threat of excommunication and eternal torment from divorce, contraception or abortion. And this is as it should be. Anyone is certainly entitled to enter into membership agreements that constrain their ability to choose their own actions in exchange for the perceived benefits of said membership. But people who choose to believe a different doctrine, or even who choose not to believe at all, must still be governed as equal citizens under elected democratic leadership.
I am an atheist, and Obama is my president too. He needs to lift his head, square his shoulders and tell the pope "you may instruct Catholics all over the globe, but I lead Americans, four fifths of whom are NOT catholics, so while I deeply appreciate your input, it would be profoundly undemocratic for me to follow that course". Of course, he also must send the same message to evangelical American christians, that they are completely entitled to live their lives in accordance with their interpretation of scripture, but they may NOT impose that scripture on Americans who do not choose it for themselves...
Sarah Smile
So what does the future hold for former part time governor and full time ideologue Sarah Palin? Well, it's a bright, if somewhat constrained future. Let's be clear about this. She is the queen of the 28%ers. The far right bigots, the tribal paranoids, the people who use the word "socialism" without ever bothering to look up what it means all love her. And when you are the figurehead for a political movement that constitutes by any reasonable metric close to 60 million people, people who will forgive you for any transgression and allow you any stumbling incoherence, you have a great opportunity not only to a life of cheering adoration but for great wealth.
Let's be clear. Sarah Palin offers the Republican party nothing. The base loves her, and will turn out with activists, phone banks and money. But she will bring not one single independent or fence-sitting voter over to her cause, for her message is so extreme and her qualifications so limited. She can raise money that they would have raised anyway, and bring out crowds that would have come out anyway, more out of Obama hatred than Palin love. She will keep their message on the front page, but with her political illiteracy, issue ignorance and odd, provincial cadence it won't be in the way they hope for.
Sarah Palin is a fool's choice for spokesman, and an even worse choice for political leader. As spokesman, she delivers nothing but derisive laughter and head-shaking confusion. As leader, she offers only a fair-weather leadership, and when things heat up and times get hard, well, we've learned her response this weekend. Only quitters fight. Fighters quit. Right. In the Republican black-is-white up-is-down world of political convenience and institutional incoherence, she offers a unique willingness to ignore not just reality, but logic in general.
So carry on, Sarah. Let your victim flag fly. Go proudly into that tiny, insular world of paranoid fear and hatred, rally the angry, scared white people to the cause of holding back the tide of history. Diversity and community is the future, so cling to fearful homogeneity and tribal animosities. Dwell in the past, glory in a time when anyone who wasn't a white man had no voice and no power. Of course, the fact that that was you, as a woman, is not to be considered. There is a constituency for your message of hate, ignorance and fear. But fortunately for the rest of us, it is small, regional and shrinking. And as you can only guarantee the ultimate failure of that message, you may actually turn out to have done some good...
