Month: August 2010

I came across an interesting response to my It’s The Stupid, Stupid piece. Parts of it struck me as a touch pedantic and triumphant, but I thought the conclusion was stimulating.

I think it is crucial to grasp, first, that Republican discourse is suffused with non-argumentative subcultural signaling and, second, that the content of that signaling is mostly a matter of impotent rage and despair for a real reason.

We are wrong to react to non-arguments as though they are arguments, pointing out the foolish ways in which they fail to pass muster as arguments when they are not arguments at all. We should be making our own arguments and filling the empty argumentative space they have evacuated in their rage and despair.

Further, we should hear the rage and despair in their signals. We should grasp as they clearly have done themselves, that they have been defeated. We should stop treating the ferocity of their passion as if it represented an organized opposition. We should be building up multicultures and convivialities in the midst of the wreckage of the Culture Wars that we won and they lost and filling the empty civilizational space they have in evacuated in defeat.

None of this is to deny the real civilizational threats posed by the historically all-too-familiar bad-faith alliance of parochial short-sighted incumbent-elites and the impassioned mob, but it is to demand that we identify their convulsions for what they actually are and respond to what is actually happening here and now.

That clip makes a little more sense in context, but you get the picture. My reaction is that there is some good advice in there, but that idea that we’ve won the Culture War is premature and inappropriate at the moment. I haven’t seen a poll in six months that would indicate that we’re winning the Culture War or anything else. He doesn’t deny the real civilizational threat we’re facing, but he downplays it. We have a two-party system. When one of those parties becomes captured by neo-fascists, you have to take it as seriously as a heart attack.

Pretty much every article published by The Hill has a comments section that looks like this one:

I’m all for free speech, but there isn’t any moderation of The Hill’s comments section at all. This has bothered me for a long time, but the suggestion that we feed Latinos to zoo animals kind of got to me.

If we had an ‘Article of the Month Club,’ this would be your reading and we’d all be making up bullet points to discuss it. Read it and tell me what you think.

Tell her she can’t shoot caribou but one day a year. And who in Obama’s Islamic Kenyan Socialist Federal Government would dare to stymie the Real Americans of Alaska in this evil manner? Uh, no one. It’s Alaska’s bureaucrats that are the problem:

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Friday that it would close the Fortymile caribou herd hunt after a single day.

In an effort to avoid an over harvest, the season will close 11:59 p.m. Sunday. […]

In two of the past three seasons, the Fortymile hunt has closed early because caribou were congregated near the highway, easily accessible to hunters.

Last year, for instance, hunters exceeded the quota by 36 percent in just three days, killing 870 animals. As a result, the winter Fortymile hunt was cancelled.

What the hell are those state bureaucrats thinking? That just because Palin quit as Governor they could get away with ruining the lives of Hunters? Well, actually, maybe they’re a little concerned that the caribou (reindeer everywhere else on the world) population is declining so rapidly large scale hunting is no longer viable unless we want to make Santa’s sleigh pullers extinct within the next generation.

June 22, 2009 — In Alaska, Canada, Greenland and other Arctic regions, people depend on caribou and reindeer as both a food source and a spiritual anchor. A new study reports that the animals have declined dramatically in recent decades.

Overall, caribou and reindeer populations have dwindled by an average of nearly 60 percent, the study found. In some cases, dips have been far more extreme than that. […]

Land development is one of the biggest threats to caribou and reindeer, especially for the subspecies that migrate long distances. Caribou are among the few species left that have retained their ancient migration routes, said Justina Ray, executive director of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Toronto.

Even those that don’t migrate need lots of space, and they’re extremely sensitive to changes in their environment. Logging has changed much of their habitat from old-growth forests to leafier vegetation. […]

Climate change is another problem, albeit an indirect one. For one thing, warming has increased mosquito populations to the point where caribou spend so much time running around and shaking off insects that they don’t eat enough to make it through winter with a good supply of stored body fat.

With warming, whitetail deer have also spread further north — bringing along a parasitic disease that doesn’t sicken the deer but does kill the caribou. At the same time, spring is getting greener earlier that it used to, but caribou haven’t adjusted the timing of their migrations. As a result, birthing females are missing out on the freshest vegetation and the chance to build up the highest-quality milk for their calves.

Of course, I’m sure the communist overlords of The Discovery Channel (i.e., anyone who buys its stock listed on NASDAQ) are lying about climate change having anything to do with the caribou problem. Still if I were Santa, I’d hedge my bets and see if Penguins can be taught to fly again. Might be a good idea anyway considering the real estate at the North Pole is a little too liquid these days.

But hey Alaskan caribou hunters at least you can still shoot wolves from helicopters! The meat might not be as tasty, but I’m sure the thrill of the hunt more than makes up for it.

Ali Abunimah’s op-ed in the New York Times compares Sinn Fein and the IRA to Hamas and wonders why we treat the groups differently. There are a lot of reasons for that. But Abunimah is probably correct that we ought to treat the same if we hope to make any progress on a settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

I don’t think black radio host Joe Madison was correct when he told Glenn Beck that Martin Luther King Jr. was a proponent of liberation theology. It’s my understanding that liberation theology is a Catholic affair. King was not a Catholic. Yet, the point that Madison was trying to convey still stands. King was an advocate for the poor. Maybe Glenn Beck could teach people at his university about the Poor People’s Campaign. It would be, uh, educational. But first he’d have to learn about it himself.

This awesome post by Steve Benen is a good starting point for rebutting this piece of shit Wall Street Journal op-ed by James Taranto. Taranto tries to explain why, in his eyes, liberal elites find Americans (meaning Tea Partiers and know-nothing conservatives) revolting.

What is the nature of this contempt? In part it is the snobbery of the cognitive elite, exemplified by a recent New York Times Web column by Timothy Egan called “Building a Nation of Know-Nothings”–or by the viciousness directed at Sarah Palin, whose folksy demeanor and state-college background seem terribly déclassé not just to liberals but to a good number of conservatives in places like New York City.

In more cerebral moments, the elitists of the left invoke a kind of Marxism Lite to explain away opinions and values that run counter to their own. Thus Barack Obama’s notorious remark to the effect that economic deprivation embitters the proles, so that they cling to guns and religion.

It’s hard to get more elite than Wall Street. The firms there don’t hire people with the educational background of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, or Sarah Palin. So, it’s a little rich for Taranto to lecture us about snobbery from the pages of the Wall Street Journal. But it’s been a part of the financial elites’ playbook forever to rail against the elitism of the left as they play on the prejudices, insecurities, and fears of the ‘proles.’ This isn’t a Marxist-lite argument. There’s no obvious reason why a Manhattan investment banker would share the social values of the Hill People of Appalachia or the religious fundamentalists of the Bible Belt. In truth, they don’t share their values. They just pretend to. And, in difficult financial times, it’s historically indisputable that financially insecure people flock to leaders who offer scapegoats and pat solutions. Unless you think demagoguery thrives during financial booms, there shouldn’t be any debate about this.

But the reason that liberals (and not just our elites) are revolted by the Tea Partiers is well explained by Steve Benen. When we try to take their arguments seriously, those arguments vanish into thin air. They have no logical consistency. Once you scratch the surface of their calls for liberty and freedom and following the Founding Fathers, it turns out that there is no ‘there’ there. Because their policy prescriptions (insofar as they are ever articulated) are either counter-factual or extraordinarily radical, it is impossible to engage Tea Partiers in intellectual debate or enter into any kind of negotiation with them.

When your idea of religious freedom is to ban mosques, how can we take you seriously? It’s not that the Tea Partiers’ concerns are illegitimate, it’s that their entire movement is a nebula of formless angst. What is it that is bringing people out to protest at this particular moment in time? The budget deficit? The budget deficit ballooned under the previous president and these Tea Partiers didn’t express any dismay.

It’s true that economic conditions have declined, and that probably explains part of the Tea Party phenomenon. But the main thing that changed is that a Democrat became president, and that president is black. That president has an unusual biography and a foreign-sounding name. The reason liberals are quick to throw around accusations of racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and xenophobia is because the heart of Republican resistance to Obama has been based in attacks on black institutions like ACORN, on court rulings related to gay marriage, on manufactured outrages like the deceit that PARK51 is being proposed for ground zero, and on Latino immigration. The rest of the Tea Party/conservative opposition lacks credibility because they didn’t oppose deficit spending or warrantless surveillance or Medicare Part D or No Child Left Behind when those those policies were carried out by a Republican. Big government is therefore not the reason that Tea Partiers have taken to the streets.

As Benen notes, there are normally ideas behind mass movements, but the Tea Party doesn’t have ideas. What they have are outlets for channeling racial, economic, and cultural insecurity into traditional conservative tropes.

The anti-intellectualism of Tea Partiers (exemplified by the lazy Sarah Palin) is one of its core features, in part, because logic cannot co-exist in the same galaxy with their arguments. But just because someone is revolted by anti-intellectualism doesn’t make your a liberal. Or, maybe it does. The Republicans seem to have been replaced by the idiocracy.

Assaf, an Israeli-American, writing at Daily Kos provided an interesting account of the intent of some Israeli actors to boycott newly built theaters located in West Bank settlements (see the BIG UPDATE),

The downside is evident in the title, Major Israeli Theaters Embrace The Settlements (+BIG UPDATE!), as it represents Israel’s colonialism as a fait accompli.

Some cultural news from Israel:

Several of Israel’s leading theater companies have agreed to perform in the new cultural center in the settlement of Ariel, due to open on November 8. The companies include the Habima National Theater, the Cameri Theater, the Be’er Sheva Theater and Jerusalem’s Khan Theater.

Ariel lies 20km inside the West Bank, deeper than any other sizable settlement. The divided highway leading to it – the best road in the West Bank – is open to Israelis only, and lacks any signs naming the numerous Palestinian towns and villages flanking the road. According to Peace Now’s 2006 settlement land report, 35% of Ariel’s area was confiscated from private Palestinian owners by military fiat. The rest is public land. No patch of Ariel’s lands was rightfully purchased. Occupied Palestinians are allowed into Ariel only with special permits.

Richard Silverstein’s coverage included the photo above of the cast of Cameri’s production of Caucasian Chalk Circle invited to perform in the settlement of Ariel, but refused.

Israeli Actors Refuse to Perform in Settlements

After Israel’s leading theater companies announced they would appear for the first time in an Israeli settlement, 40 Israeli actors, directors and producers signed a statement refusing to perform.  They were to grace the boards of a new center for the arts, performing some of the treasures of the world canon (among them Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle) for the good burghers of Ariel, known to its boosters as the “capital of Samaria.”

The artists’ statement said:

“We express contempt regarding the intent of the managements of theater companies to appear at Ariel’s new hall.  We will refuse to appear in Ariel and in any other settlement.  We call upon the management to restrict their theatrical activity to the sovereign borders of the State of Israel.”

So in the midst of the present right wing Likud government’s project to annex most of the West Bank, there are still detractors inside of Israel, left wing refusniks, who are willing to boycott Israel’s colonialism in the name of Palestinian rights.

The BIG Picture? The real one? I got it. Right here.

Booman’s latest post?

The Insanity Continues

The Republicans of Louisiana just nominated David Vitter to be their U.S. Senator for another six years. He got 88% of the vote. How’s that for family values? Cheat on your wife and have a prostitute dress you up in a diaper, and the social conservatives give you 88% of their votes.

—snip—

 Also, in Louisiana’s Third District, it appears that another teabagger beat the GOP Establishment’s chosen candidate. Teabagger

—snip—

So, the insanity continues with no break in sight.

I am going to say it again.

The Teabagger reaction to the ongoing failure of this government to put America on a good, solid societal and financial footing…for going on half a century, really…is not “insanity”, and using words like that to describe it is counterproductive and dangerous. Demonizing the Tea Partiers is as stupid as their own demonizing of the center and left.

Let us take General Motors as an example of the failure of the entire system.

Fact is, the last decade in which GM made the best cars in the world was the 1960s.

From then on it has been straight downhill. Now you might make the argument that the company has recovered its balance to some degree in the last several years and is once again making competitive automobiles…I wouldn’t argue too much with that idea, myself…but it has been a long time since 1970.

A long time.

Been down so long it looks like up to me, as Richard Manuel so presciently wrote.

As above, so below.

In both directions.

Read on.

The entire industrial infrastructure of the country has collapsed. Instead of making things, we now basically buy things that other countries make. That is simply foolish, and it did not have to happen.

The government failed us. All government, all parties. Left, right and center. From righty Reagan to lefty Obama. (I know…he’s only had two years. Well…he ain’t gonna get much more than that if November topples the House majority. From then on he’ll be Jimmy Carter II. Watch. He may as well just pack it in and start writing his book, `cuz he ain’t gonna get much else done if that happens.)

As the money flowed out of the country, the day-to-day infrastructure also collapsed. Bridges, roads, railroads, airports, mass transit…they are broken, Booman. Broken, with neither the money nor apparently the will to fix them. For example, it was simpler, cheaper and quicker in 1963 to travel from Ithaca, NY to NYC than it is today. Cheaper in terms of real money, leaving out inflation. You simply paid a flat fee and got on a bus or climbed into a car and drove. It cost relative pennies to do so. I used to do it all the time as a semi-broke college student with no financial stress whatsoever. Traffic was almost never a problem except for an occasional accident, and those kinds of traffic jams never lasted much more than a half hour.

Today?

Fuggedaboudit.

I have traveled to Ithaca several times recently, both by bus and in a car. The bus can cost upwards of $50 unless you really dig into the system to find a few well-hidden bargains, and by bus or car any time from early morning until around 10 PM the chances of getting stuck in an hour plus traffic jam or two are very good. Hell, about 6 hours a day just crossing the Tappan Zee bridge can be a traffic nightmare, and compared to taking the George Washington Bridge or venturing into the Jersey Turnpike/Lincoln Tunnel mess the Tappan Zee is the best bet.

Now a case can be made that all of this stems from the failure of the United States to either successfully win its Blood For Oil Wars or back up offa the petroleum feed trough and get its own energy system working well. I wouldn’t argue with that, either.

But I have no doubt that most of the people who are populating the Tea Party rallies are not aware of much past the plain fact that their lives are becoming increasingly more difficult in almost every way. More work for less (real, usable) money, more money for less goods, more effort for less results…the works.

However… they’re not insane.

They are just not particularly smart. They live on the middle of the IQ curve, most of them.

You know…like the majority of people? By definition of the word “middle?”

Their lives suck and they don’t understand what happened.

Plus…they are in a media-induced hypnotrance. Been in one, most of them. since they were about 2 years old.

From Cheerios and Pop Tarts to AstraZeneca and Capitol One in 40 or 50 or 60 short years.

Buy it, eat it, take it. You’ll look better and you’ll get laid more.

Only…it ain’t working.

And they are getting mad.

They are not insane.

Just misled. And fast asleep as well. A sleep induced by their leaders. Quite consciously. Bet on it.

Now…are their leaders “insane?”

Some of them, maybe.

The front men/front women.

Some of them.

But the real movers and shakers?

Like the Koch brothers?

Not many.

Unless you consider the word “insanity” to include having little or no real regard for the ongoing welfare of your fellow humans…another argument with which I would have little trouble agreeing…then the answer is no. They are not insane. They are simply out to dominate by any means necessary in order to profit themselves.

Short-sighted?

I suppose, although the history of mankind seems to give that general act a passing grade in terms of survival. They have been with us for millenia, these kinds of users, so maybe they are not so short-sighted as we may think.

They have won more than they have lost.

So far.

Have conditions changed since the nuclear revolution altered warfare to include the distinct possibility of human extinction and the ongoing ecological breakdown changed the way that we must think about how we use the earth? Will the “short-sightedness” of these users end human history?

Yes, I believe that this is the crux of all of our problems.

The old ways…the ways of princes and oligarchs, kings and warlords…will not work much longer.

I was once caught in a massive traffic jam in the NYC->DC corridor. Before GPS, before cell phones. After about half an hour of standstill, I got out and started talking with the trucker next to me. He had a CB and I asked him if he knew what was happening to cause this traffic. He laconically replied “Too many cars, not enough road.”

Yup.

Too many people, not enough earth if we’re not very, very careful.

Sooner rather than later, I am afraid.

So here we are, Booman and friends.

We have maybe a year or so to stem this rightward tide. After that?

Hmmmm…President Sarah?

Vice President/Cheney-like controller Newt?

A distinct possibility.

UH oh!!!

Get out the survival gear, Madge, we’re headed for the bottom!!!

So what do we do?

We insult these people.

Call them insane.

They are not insane.

They are just “normal.”

On the simplest and most basic of level of a democracy it is the majority of voters define who runs the government. That’s how it works. Mostly.

“Normal” is the majority.

By simple definition, once again.

Are there more of them than there are of us?

Bet on it, Boo.

Bet on it.

Gotta reach them, Booman. Reach them with the truth of the matter. They are being used, and the way that they are being used is dangerous both to their own survival and to the survival of the human race as a whole. We need to counter their programming. Not call them names.

Just sayin’…

They’re people, Booman.

Treat them like people.

Or…they are gonna kick some ass.

Watch.