Rise, Lather, Repeat; Thoughts On Newtown Connecticut.

I’m thinking about the recent tragedy in Connecticut. I’m feeling rather down about the whole affair. Once again, a disturbed man with a high-powered, semi-automatic rifle killed and killed again. This time it was a class of six and seven year olds.

We are talking little children, first graders, just a few years out of diapers and one year out of Kindergarten. I am appalled and I am resigned. Even this will not change a thing. The death of 20, middle class, white children will not move the discussion one bit forward nor backwards.

We are already gathering in our respective corners and yelling at each other with the same old tired talking points. Our Conservative (read reactionary) friends continue to fetishize both guns and ammo wanting to spread the love to all corners of the United States. That any person could seriously argue that the Newton tragedy proves the need of more guns everywhere only shows the depths of ideological idiocy some people are willing to go to. They are arguing that we should arm teachers in elementary schools, that we should all further arm ourselves. 

This is insanity. The privatization of public safety has been tried gentle reader and it was an abject failure. The Federal Government put a lot of effort into restoring the monopoly of force on the frontier. It had little choice, vigilante justice in places like Tombstone Arizona was causing outright chaos.

But the left is not getting the job done either. They are not reaching anyone outside their charmed circle. It is an abject failure to take the well know facts about gun violence and fails to make them into a compelling political argument that captures the mushy middle.

The anti-gun forces can’t even get individuals to re-think their personal possession of fire-arms. Seriously why would a middle class mom living in a middle class house in middle class Connecticut even feel the need to own a military firearm?

I ask this as a genuine point of concern. Why did Nancy Lanza feel the need to own an AR-15 Bushmaster? It’s a military grade rifle, the same weapon our troops use in Afghanistan and other hot spots. What kind of threat did threat did Nancy Lanza feel she need to protect herself against? Was she privy to some secret information that the North Koreans really were planning to invade her little patch of heaven? 

While Nancy Lanza had the right to purchase that AR-15, I can conceive of no earthly reason why she would need that damn thing lying around the house. I can conceive of no earthly reason why any person would need such a weapon at all. Deer hunting? What, has Bambi suddenly gone Rambo on us and is packing a Kalashnikov? Oh, it is a pain in the but to track down a wounded deer and deliver the final killing shot? So, your all for hunting as long as it does not take too much effort.

You need the weapon to protect yourself against an over-arching government that may attempt to suppress you via Black Helicopters? Sorry, that ship has sailed. You have no 4^th Amendment rights anymore. You and your fellow “patriots” will be crushed before you  can even think of contacting each other to start an action. Your telephones are monitored, your e-mail is monitored, you don’t have a prayer. And even if you and your hunting buddies do manage some sort of resistance, you have no real options against a modern state. If the government really wants to put a hurt on you; it can, and it will. It doesn’t even have to risk sending out living, breathing lawmen; the government has drones, and knows how to use them.

I find these kind of talking points from gun fetishists infantile. Nothing they say makes a damn bit of sense. And even if they are right about people’s right to bear arms, they are wrong about the advisability of most people exercising that right. 

People are just too damn careless as a rule and most should not be anywhere near a small arm. Familiarity does breed contempt when small arms are the subject. Guns are left in draws, under beds, stashed in closets, stored in garages, kept everywhere except where they belong--under lock and key. The thoughtlessness of Nancy Lanza is, unfortunately, very typical. She did not pause to think that having a loaded AR-15, with a 30 round magazine, around her mentally disturbed son might be a bad idea. She did not have the presence of mind to buy a gun safe for her weapons. 

Am I blaming the victim here? No, I’m not, I’m trying to point out how bloody careless many gun owners are. Remember that at Columbine the shooters had ridiculously easy access to small arms too. 

If you own a weapon, as is your right, you do have responsibilities. A true conservative actually understands that rights always come with responsibilities. But our right wing, our Ayn Rand inspired reactionaries, are not true conservatives. They and the NRA are all for the right to bear arms, but they loose the thread when responsibility becomes the talking point. 

Right wing gun-fetishist love running around with their side-arm strapped to their bodies, but they lack any kind of self control or understanding of use-of-force guidelines. And that is how an innocent teen can get shot by a vigilante loon for the crime of walking to his parents house. Zimmerman broke so many use-of-force rules that he became the acme of how not to handle yourself while armed.

Yet the Right Wing would have more Zimmermans running around loose, not less. Tell me, seriously, does that sound remotely like a good idea? Do you really think we need grade school teachers wearing kevlar and packing heat? What is this insanity, and why are we treating it like it is one part of a rational debate?

But that is the “debate” our moron media will give us. In the name of “balance” they will have some Second Amendment ultra, an absolutist ideologue, arguing that we need more arms every where debating some milquetoast NeoLiberal proposing some pointless incremental change. And even that weak sauce of reform will die in the House Of Representatives because the NRA owns the Republican majority in the house (and much of the Democratic minority.) Most citizens will watch this unfold and not do much about it. We have seen this show before and we will be back to watching “Dancing With The Stars” in no time flat.

The Limits Of Faith, Roman Catholic Edition.

I’m not Catholic. For me, the Roman Catholic Church is an interesting institution that has survived for over sixteen centuries with many ups and downs. As the last Mediaeval and absolute monarchy left standing, it is an always a fascinating, if frustrating, anachronism. Battered and bruised by modernity, diminished by secular society, it struggles to be relevant in a zeitgeist soaking in materialism. The Catholic Church has a few shreds of moral authority to wave about; but the authoritarian nature of the Papacy is its own worst enemy in keeping that moral authority relevant.

The church limps into the 21st Century as an institution diminished by the slings and arrows the 20th. The last part of the 20th Century was a really bad patch, as the church failed to meet the challenge of the Nazi terror, and then was called on the carpet for the failings of its Priests and charitable organizations in the last decade of the 20th.

With a new Millennium at hand, the Church that Peter and Paul built is a deep funk in the developed, post-industrial world. It keeps trying to play defense, but the social revolutions of the 20th Century, especially the sexual liberation of the 1960’s, have left its moral teaching in tatters. While increasingly authoritarian, the papacy has ever less authority among the laity.

This brings us, by an admitted long, circuitous route, to the Roman Catholic Church’s attempt to get a carve out an exemption for Reproductive health services for it’s hospitals and other institutions in the US. The Church’s insistence on following a deeply flawed teaching on birth control has once again brought in conflict with secular society. The church fathers are attempting to nullify the secular government’s prerogatives, and to carve out an illegitimate exception to the notion of the commons for themselves. This is ridiculous.

Let’s be clear, Catholic institutions that interface with the commons, Hospitals, Universities, Charitable organizations, etc. fall into the purview of governmental regulations. They are subject to Federal, State, and Local regulation just like any other institution. They are businesses, just like any other business. They are not special because their CEO hangs out in some very nice digs in Rome.

In the US, we live under the protections of a Constitution that separates church and state. The state in our nation is the final authority. Secular institutions have the final word about the most intimate details of family life. The state regulates marriage and family life; not the church. The church is allowed to participate in the institutions of marriage and family life, but the final answer, the rules for marriage, divorce, child rearing, are made and enforced by the secular state.

We live in a nation grounded in the notion of unalienable rights. These rights obtain by the very fact of our humanity. They are human rights, and to deny them is do violence to human beings. It is to do an act of evil.

But no right is absolute, they interact and are limited by other rights. Put simply, the right to swing your fist freely ends at someone else’s nose. What the Catholic Church is proposing is that it has the right to swing its fist into the noses of thousands of citizens who just happen to be women. The proposal is specious and wrong headed.

The church does not even have the right to impose it’s views on contraception by force on its own parishioners, never mind the general public. The insisting on the right to nullify the laws laid down by the Federal government is unacceptable. By offering its employees and others health services, by entering the commons, by serving the outside public, the Church has to accept the rules and regulation laid down by the state.

The church is not allowed to discriminate on account of sex. It can not create a second class, second tier cohort in its ranks. If a Catholic institution were to baring people of color from certain health benefits, the general public would demand immediate restitution from the government. Race bias is not allowed by the government in any institution that serves the public, neither should gender bias.

In one way the attempt by the Roman Catholic Church to get away with gender bias, its attempt to keep on wallowing in Patriarchy and Misogyny, is hardly surprising. The Catholic Church has become ever more reactionary, both politically and in matters of faith as the 20th Century wound down. The new century has not halted the retrograde activities of the church. If anything, the elevation of Benny the Rat-zinger has made the march rightward pick up speed.

What is surprising though is how the Church is getting away with this utter nonsense. The willingness of bobble head pundits to be spear carriers for the Roman Catholic hierarchy is mind bending. That an aid to the Speaker of the House does not get how the church is trying to do an end run around the constitutional protections of women is depressing. Is this a sign of creeping senility, or has Chris Mathews always been this dense?

This is all about equal protection under the law. You cannot have one level of care for the male of the species and then have a lower, more restrictive level of care for the female.That is flat out wrong, and no appeal to rosary-bead fiddling can ever change how wrong this kind of backwards thinking is.

The church has a right to teach on every subject under the sun. It has a right to expound on any weird notion that strikes its fancy. It can lock itself in any number of cloisters, and attempt to count the numbers of Angles sitting on a pin. It can continue its regard action against modern science. It can continue to rail against modernity in all its forms. It has that right. What it has no right to do, is shove its retrograde notions down the throats of millions of women in the US, and billions of women throughout the world.  The fundamental right of women to control their own bodies trumps Humanae Vitae.

In a world were the struggle against religious extremism is a a real concern, the only true bulwark against Theocratic rule is secularism.  The bar against the rule of zealots and fanatics of all stripes is a strict separation of church and state. If you wish to bar Sharia law from our governance, then you must also bar Roman Catholic Hierarchy from gaining a carve out on birth control. It is not the governments concern that the Bishops have issues with women’s sexual agency. The government is only concerned with bending the cost curve of health care via sound preventive medicine. The Catholic Church can either comply with the rules as written, or it can remove itself from the requirement by no longer participating in the public sector.

Final words. Every idiot pundit out there is indulging in heavy breathing about First Amendment protection for this outrageous move by the US Bishops. The First Amendment is not a get out of jail free card. The state would stop the Roman Catholic Church flat if the Holy Father attempted to restart the Auto Da Fe' of the Inquisition. The State these days has zero interest in persecuting Christian Heretics. This is because the state has made it clear it has no interest in establishing a religion. It is right there in the First Amendment : Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

We have no official Church in the US. Faith has its limits. In public governance, it is excluded. In the public sphere, the church is strictly regulated.  It has to follow the rules of any other employer. It has to answer to the state for any and all egregious malfeasance; which is why the Roman Catholic Church got clobbered in the tort courts when the hobbies of certain priests were revealed. The Roman Catholic Church is not a law to itself. It does not earn a carve out for birth control any more than it earns a carve out for child raping priests.

Dereliction Of Duty, The Grey Lady Goes AWOL

I  usually look forward to Fridays, they are my only real off day. I get to sleep in, lounge about, or get stuff done. So imagine my dismay when Taylor Marsh pointed out an epically egregious Op-Ed in the New York Times “Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?” It took all my limited amounts of self control and self restraint to avoid picking up a verbal flamethrower and fricasseeing Mr. Arthur S. Brisbane to charcoal perfection. This is the great great lady’s “readers' representative”? Things have seemed to have only gotten worse since Judith Miller lowered the TImes to the level of over-priced fish wrap.

Sorry, let me try to dial this back a bit. If I don’t regain some composure, this posting won’t be readable in any kind of family setting.  It is going to be difficult because the article begins wrong right at the title and keeps right on digging a deeper hole until the final coda.

Let us look at the title gentle reader, let us drill down to the singular word that causes your faithful reporter to set his phasers to “vaporize.” Exactly how does telling the truth make one a vigilante? Tell me, how does that happen? How can one point out the truth “violently and summarily, without recourse to lawful procedures”? The very use of the word vigilante smacks of rude frontier justice and more darkly; lynch mobs with murder in their hearts. To my eyes this reads like arrogance mixed with condescension. “Do you readers really expect us to get our hands dirty by calling out the lies of politicians? How unseemly” is message bleeding out from the very beginning. 

That the “readers’ representative” should spend so much time, effort, ink and electrons wringing his hands over what should be the core competency and responsibility of a reporting,  ie. reporting the facts, is beyond depressing. From the article itself :

“readers... look to The Times to set the record straight. They worry less about reporters imposing their judgment on what is false and what is true.

Is that the prevailing view? And if so, how can The Times do this in a way that is objective and fair? Is it possible to be objective and fair when the reporter is choosing to correct one fact over another?”

I have never seen so many fails power-packed into two paragraphs in a long time.  Sorry, there is no objective and fair as far as facts are concerned. There is no fair and balanced way to point out a lie. Their is no way to balance out the big fat lie of President Obama having an “apology tour” or the myriad of other falsehoods spewed out by the Republican Party. 

This is where PolitiFact got in such serious trouble. By trying to “balance out” big fat Republican lies with a big fat Democratic lie, PolitiFact jumped the shark with its claim that Obama “lied” when he claimed that Republicans voted to end Medicare. PolitiFact then doubled down on that goof when they made the Obama claim “Lie of the year.” In a foolish attempt to balance out Democratic Party lies with Republican lies PolitiFact managed to construct is own whopper of misstatement. 

Like it or not, quite often the truth, the summation of data, the results of the real world, are neither fair nor balanced. Quite often you can be fair or objective; but not both.

For example if you are objective, ei reality based, evidence driven, and results oriented, then you have to admit that climate change is real. Global CO2 poisoning, its deleterious effects, and its acceleration are no longer a subject of debate. There is the fact that climbing CO2 levels in the atmosphere are having an effect; they are changing the environment of the entire globe in ways that are both dangerous and harmful. The science is sold, unbending and inescapable. There is no real debate, there is the truth, and then there is the big fat lie of denial. For any media outlet to speak of a debate, or to attempt to be ‘fair” in providing “both sides of the story,” is to participate in an abject abandonment of their public trust. There are no two sides, there is only a rise to CO2 levels last seen when T-Rex was alive and kicking. There is only human actions that threaten to catastrophically alter the very earth we depend on for subsistence. 

I could give example after example that once you become actually objective, based in results, fairness becomes moot. Ideologies, both left and right, sink once they strike the unforgiving rocks of reality. Results matter, gentle reader, and sooner or later the onrushing flood of results, the accumulation of stubborn facts, will sink many a grand ideology. You can twist words into any type of pretzel you wish. You can change the optics anyway you please. Sooner or later the facts will out, sooner or later the barbarians arrive at the gates, sooner or later the ivory castle will fall.

I have no idea when the great grey lady lost this simple truth. It has been a long, slow, torturous process; the death of a thousand cuts. The media of today is a shadow of itself; a dim reflection of the glory days of the late 40’s to late 60’s. Granted the media never really lived up to its self-proclaimed position of the forth estate, at least not in the U.S. If you look at the history of journalism, at the real dirty, nasty underbelly of a press that was scurrilous and highly partisan, the idea of an unbiased, fair, balanced, objective press is a fairly new institution. The idea of an unbiased truth teller is a work in process at best, and perhaps a deception-- a bit of self delusion.

Still as Rachel Maddow proves again and again, you can have a point of view without sinking into the fetid waters of propaganda. You can do journalism that is both factually correct and advances a particular political philosophy. In other words, it is quite possible to walk and chew gum at the same time. 

The hand wringing by Mr. Bisbane is what the Filipinos call “maarte.” Literally maarte means “full of art” but is better translated as being a drama queen. Reporters do have a responsibility, if they want to be more than stenographers, to point out when a source is telling a fabrication, a  misstatement, a misdirection, a lie. Reporters can research, test case when conflicting statements are made. They need not default to he-said, she-said reporting. The data are out there, the published, peer reviewed papers are out their, the history is out there, do the work. 

And that is the real issue here. At the end of the day it is all about the refusal of Corporate Media to do the work of journalism. It is about how reporters, who once were, at their best,  barely on the outside fringes of respectability, got utterly co-opted and corrupted by becoming part of the establishment. It is about how reporters abandoned their readers to become the hand maids of the political and economic elites. It is about how the Media abandoned its post and let the barbarians overrun our political process.

 The OpEd from the Times is admission that the great grey lady is still non compos mentis; unable and unwilling to do the work of reporting. It is a response of nolo contendere to the charges of gross neglect and gross incompetence by the Times. Well, at least we have it writing; that’s a start. 

The Myth Of JFK And The Beginning Of The Cult Of Personality

I’ve been thinking about JFK. It all began as a sidebar conversation with one of my favorite blog buddies Cujo359. He wondered if the present generation of Kennedy generation was living up to the standards set by the Jack, Joe Jr. , and Ted. This progressed, or perhaps degraded, into a conversation about the relative merits of John F. Kennedy vs. Lyndon Baines Johnson.

It is brutally hard to do an honest accounting of the charismatic and martyred JFK vs the man who succeeded him. LBJ had none of JFK’s charisma, was quite the brutal SOB, and had the extra large albatross of the Vietnam War hanging around his neck. There is not much love for LBJ. Johnson’s legacy is also shorted because he exploited the death, and image, of his predecessor to twist the arms of politicians, and others, into supporting a specific agenda that was all LBJ, all the time. LBJ was quite complacent in the construction of the myth of John F Kennedy, as were others. I’m going to try to put down my flame thrower and attempt to deconstruct that myth, and its very real, very political effects.

There is a reason that I have to proceed with caution. There is a small cottage industry with the only object of buffing up JFK’s image to a lustrous shine. Topmost is the Kennedy clan. JFK is very much their holy relic, their entre’e into politics, and their get-out-of-jail-free card.

But they are not the only people out there constructing the myth. The Media loves the image of JFK. They love pulling the heart strings of the ill and uninformed. They love diving into the warm, deep,waters of Kennedy bathos and nostalgia. It is a sure-fire way of getting high ratings.

Then you have all the retainers and hangers on that surround the Kennedy clan. The actual people who were attached to Jack’s presidency are fading and passing away, but their are plenty of people willing and able to pick up the dropped banners and carry on the cause. Each and every one of these professionals has good reason to keep the myth of JFK alive, and at the forefront of people’s mind.

So what is the cottage industry at? What are they constructing? What is the product they are selling? It’s an image, carefully crafted, expertly preserved, and mostly bunk. It is the image of a young, vital president, dashing, brilliant and progressive. It is an image of a man of political courage. It is an image of man who brought about massive political and social change. It is an image of a champion for Civil Rights, and a champion of the poor and dispossessed. Most of all it is an image of a great life cut short, brutally ended by murder most foul.

Like any good myth, there is a small grain of truth, a core to build on. Jack Kennedy was charming, handsome, dashing and photogenic. He was the first politician who really understood the then new media of television, and exploited it to the hilt. He really knew  how to use the image of his family, the image of him as young Pater Familias, to great effect. But like much of the JFK mystique, the image and the truth of the matter are very different. JFK did have the beautiful wife, and the large brood of children, but the family dynamics were a lot worse than advertised.

I am not going to go into the long, sordid tale of JFK’s numerous infidelities, it is subject that is far too long to relate. JFK followed one of the iron laws of history and biography: men with out-sized charisma, and out-sized egos, have out-sized sexual appetites. There was a pretense of happily married man and wife. This type of hypocrisy was tolerated in the 1960’s. Even today, the visual image of JFK as virile and dedicated family man still trumps the reality of JFK’s serial, and sometimes reckless, sexual affairs.

And since we are, in a way, discussing JFK’s image of virility, now is as good a time as any to drill down into the reality of JFK’s health. Be warned it is not a pretty picture. I really feel for the medical professionals that had to deal with JFK. I also really feel for the patient who those professionals attempted to treat.

If there was one true cross JFK did have to bear, it was his bad health. Where to begin? Do I begin with his war injuries? If so, how deeply do I go in to the symptoms of his ruined back? I’m not going to go too deeply because it is a truly awful thing to contemplate. We are dealing with unbelievable pain and suffering; chronic in nature, with no real end in site. The heavy duty meds Jack was given were only palliative, they temporary eased the pain, but never dealt with the underlying medical issue. There were other work-arounds, other palliative measures, a laundry list actually, but they were equally unsatisfactory. For Jack Kennedy, and many others who shared his type of traumatic back injury, you don’t look forward to a cure to the condition, because the only real cure is the grave.

The back was only one of JFK’s problems. He also suffered from Addison’s disease. As this disease affects the bodies hormone balance, it causes a plethora of symptoms in the sufferer.  Unfortunately for JFK, he had to deal with this disease back in the days when the treatment options were just plain awful. Medicine has advanced since that time, and the management of Addison’s is quantum leaps better. In JFK’s time, the treatment for Addison’s had barely advanced from the stone knives and incantations stage. The health care professionals did the best they could with the tools provided, but JFK was often in ill health.

The contrast between the image of a young vital JFK, and the reality of chronically ill, and often debilitated man could not be more stark; yet we cling to the images of youthful vigor, while ignoring the medical reality. As with so much with JFK, image trumps reality.

Having dealt as best and sympathetically as I can with the actual man; let me attempt to deal with the politician as sympathetically as I can. Be warned though, in attempting any such consideration my default is, “results matter.” The one true light I will follow is what JFK achieved in his own lifetime; in his tragically truncated presidency. I am not going to deal with counterfactuals, with could-of, should-of, would-of. The only honest appraisal of any person, but especially a politician, is what they achieved during their time in office; not what was achieved after the fact.

By this measure I must be honest, it really does not look good for the home team. What JFK actually achieved while alive places him, for the most part, in the presidential category of “above average.” He was brilliant in the Cuban Missile Crisis, avoiding nuclear Armageddon, but domestically he was middling.

Granted I have the advantage of hindsight that JFK did not enjoy, but on the core moral issue of Civil Rights, both Jack an Bobby did not cover themselves in glory. They were an improvement over Ike, a step above, they did move the game forward, but not in the way that is now advertised.

Like Ike, the two brothers were mostly dragged into the Civil Rights struggle by other parties. Let us zero in on the Freedom Rides as a prime example. The brothers did everything in there power to make this issue just go away. In this regard they were not alone. Even Martian Luther King Jr. was initially opposed to the idea of the Freedom Rides. But the movement took a life of its own, and as it progressed the awful images of Freedom Riders being beaten, abused and harassed forced Jack and Bobby to do something. It became a matter of protecting US citizens right to life and limb. Jack and Bobby had to act in the face of Southern attempts to nullify Federal protections.

They did the absolute minimum. JFK and RFK negotiated a peaceful extraction of the first set of Freedom Riders from Louisiana and called it a day. But when the second set of Freedom Riders upped the political pressure, Jack and Bobby finally brought out the sledgehammer of Federal Power. This particular sledgehammer happened to be the ICC, but all the same it got the job done. The segregationists of the south howled in pain, but they were not about to challenge the brute application of Federal prerogatives.

JFK dedication to the advancement of Civil Rights is a fraught subject. He did make motions in that area. He did make incremental gains in Civil Rights during his time in office. Unfortunately, it gets really difficult to measure the real amount of political capital he invested, and was willing to invest, because LBJ muddied those waters so thoroughly after JFK was assassinated.

LBJ flogged the image of the holy, sainted, martyr for the last bit of political advantage possible. JFK might have set up the political chess board of Civil Rights, but LBJ and MLK pushed those pieces around to brutal effect. Both LBJ and MLK were grand masters of that political game. King provided the moral force and the outside agitation, wile Johnson provided the inside game of brow-beating and cajoling the Senate into action. Together they steamrolled the recalcitrant Dixiecrats in the Senate.

I just do not see the partnership of JFK and MLK working in the same way. Even if JFK did bring his A game to the effort, how does a second term of JFK match the first term of LBJ in effectiveness? LBJ had a deep knowledge of the Senate, he had a historic mandate after the1964 election, and he had the image of the martyred JFK to use as a holy talisman. Again, I just do not see either the Great Society, nor the Civil Rights happening as they did without that triple threat that LBJ brought to the political table. I sure do not see JFK racing ahead of MLK the way LBJ did.

I’m sorry this took so long. It has been a very long and twisted shaggy dog story; even for me. I’ll try to drive to end of this narrative as best as I can. History matters gentle reader, you can’t discuss were we are without setting up how we got here. I have spent an inordinate amount of time on the history and biography of JFK, on the chasm between that myth and that reality for a reason. I think that it is with Kennedy that our present toxic cult of personality in politics began. It is in the manipulation of image, the choice of surface over substance, that the John F. Kennedy myth began, that our present political woes find their source.

We have made this choice gentle reader, and we have doubled down on our preference for style over substance every time we, as a nation, have been offered the chance. We did it with Nixon, if barely, accepting a very complex and angry man as a moral defender of a mythical silent majority. We did it, in a way, with Jimmy Carter, thinking that somehow an “outsider” could cure all the ills of a post-Watergate USA. We really went in for myth when we voted for Don Renaldo; the sunny, affable cowboy who would make all things bright and shiny again. What Reagan actually did was a whole different matter, best left for a different discussion. With Pappy Bush, we took a bit of a breather before diving back into the calming waters of myth with the man from Hope. After Bill Clinton departed, we wildly gyrated from the faux cowboy presidency of Bush Jr. , who we could have a beer with, to the professorial Obama, who offered Hope and Change.

It is with Obama we have reached an apex of sorts. The myth of Obama, and the reality of his presidency have been at such odds, that to even contemplate such things brings on nose bleeds. As I would rather not bleed over my keyboard at the moment, I will let that discussion pass for now. I will also leave the epic cult of personality his supporters indulge themselves in for other times as well. Obama did not create the present cult of political personality, as much as he has both exploited it and enlarged it. The cult of personality is quite the 800 pound gorilla, is quite the dangerous, lumbering beast.

It is this tendency toward political cultism that I find so toxic. The willingness of voters to  cling to an image, while ignoring the reality beneath, is distressing. It becomes almost farcical when you look at the present election of 2012. The fluffing up of both WIllard “Mitt” Romney and Barack Obama by their partisans is disconcerting, to say the least. Both these men are ethically challenged empty suites, political operators and hacks. But to their supporters, they walk on water; and possess an overarching  competence that is sadly lacking in reality. It is all smoke and mirrors, and we are without Toto to provide the helpful parting of the curtain.

Sorry, to end on such a down note. Sorry, to end the discussion with such a flame-thrower of invective. Our nation is in a bad way, and our refusal to do the hard work of due diligence with our political class is a big part of why our nation is in such a lamentable state. What to do? What to do?

The Fail Of Senator Obama

Barack Obama, was a creature and the apple of the eye of a very specific group of Senate Democrats. They were Hillary phobes, who felt that Ms. Clinton would go down in flames from a well established right wing and Moron Media attack. They did have a point, the Right Wing Noise Machine had its wrecking ball primed for a Hillary nomination.

This cabal always had a thing against John Edwards too. They considered him a total light- weight. As events played out, they were right about Edwards’ utterly uncontrolled narcissism. I cringe to think of what would have happened if the Rielle Hunter debacle had come out with Edwards as the nominee.

So the doyens of the Senate looked around for a anti-Hillary that was not John Edward and, hey presto, Barack Obama! They were gob-smacked by Barry’s Chauncey Gardiner impression. Trust me, Senators just eat up the type of crap that Obama was peddling. Obama’s transactional nature, his tendency to agree, at least in part, with almost anything his interlocutor said, was music to the ears of the self-involved Democratic leadership of the Senate.

The Senators also loved that Obama had no real history in national politics. By design, Obama had avoided all sorts of hot-button issue that usually trip up national Democratic candidates. This made him the most anti-Hillary of any candidate out there, a tabula rasa unencumbered by the baggage of a Kerry or a Clinton, or a Gore, or a Biden.

From the perspective of the Democratic Senate, Obama was their man. Joe Biden’s awkward bit of man love really did encapsulate the love the Senate had for Barack. With the push from the old Senate war horses, Mr. Hope and Change was unleashed on an unwary electorate.

Still as culpable as people as Dick Durban were, a huge portion of the blame has to rest with Obama. Having watched the man go through the motions, detached, reactive, unmotivated, I wonder why the hell he wanted the job in the first place. He worked so assiduously, making no false moves, saying all the right things, leaving no political trace, looking for his main chance to become the first African-American President. And it came to him only two years into his Senate tenure; woefully unprepared and unready for the slot of the Chief Executive.

What kind of egomania combined with cognitive dissonance allowed a man with not even two years in the Senate to think he was ready for the Oval Office? With his studied avoidance of hard political choices, and his constitutional inability to handle any kind of conflict, Obama should have known that his personal defects made him unsuited for the job during a time of hyper-partisanship.

I don’t like using the politically and racially loaded word “arrogant” to describe the Obama, but it is the only word that fits. The man is unbelievably arrogant. He bought into his own propaganda and drank deep his own kool-aid. He really believed that he was a transformational actor, a person for the ages. He believed that his unique gifts would lead the US out of the hyper-partisan hell it found itself in.

But Obama did not want to do the real work, he did not want to confront a Regan legacy head on, but co-opt it. He thought he could do the small bore Neo-Liberal politics of Bill Clinton without the charm and compassion that the Big Dog brought to the discussion. Barack Obama also thought he could do the politics without Bill Clinton’s willingness to scrap. Clinton always saw politics as a way to connect to people; Obama treats politics like a math equation.

Yet for all his faults, Obama was able to snooker the media and then, very narrowly, the Primary voters, into his myth of adequacy. He was able to convince the nation that he was a better option than McCain, which he was and still is. What he was not able to do, was resolve the central failure of our Political Duopoly, and the rabid partisanship it creates. He never had the tools to do that, he never had the foundational principles, he never had the emotional equipment, he never had the grit. Barack Obama only had his exaggerated belief in himself as a man that would use sweat reason and compromise to bring about unanimity. Not having any ideology to speak of, he never understood the ideological underpinnings of the Republicans nor his base. He knew not either himself or his opponents, which is why he keeps failing. Sun Tzu would not approve.

Primary Realities (Updated @ 13:00 2 Aug 2011)

It has taken some time for the bloom to fall off the rose, but the liberal / progressive base of the Democratic Party is getting restive. The base is spitting mad over what it considers the multiple sins of omission and commission that Barack Obama has committed. There is even talk of a Primary challenge to the President. Nothing in present day politics points out the fecklessness of the Progressive base than this move. 

First there is the unavoidable fact that no Progressive hero is willing to play Saint George to Obama’s dragon. Far too many politicians are like Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, more than willing for someone else to take up the good cause, but unwilling to do the deed themselves. One wonders how committed these Progressive stalwarts really are to the one true faith. There seem to be no end of armchair generals, but trigger pullers seem to be thin on the ground.

But this is only the beginning of the inept political gamesmanship of the Progressive base. The supposed goal of a primary challenge is to bring Obama back to the left; to halt his rightward drift. One can only hold their head in their hands to hear such considerations. Lefties; Obama is just not into you, he never was, he never will be. He will give a nice speech, toss the most meager of bones, and then govern right.  If the Progressives continue to act like a jilted girlfriend to Obama’s political Lothario, they will continue to get played.  A temper-tantrum Primary challenge to Obama will only play to the contempt that Obama obviously has for the base.

If you go up against an incumbent President, like Ronald Reagan did, and Ted Kennedy did, you go in to win. You go in to win, and damn the consequences. This is politics 101. The liberal base could not be more incompetent in forwarding its goals to not understand this.  To Primary a President of your own party means you have accepted a “damn the torpedoes” mentality. It means you have had such a break with the leader of your Party, that your only concern is to ruin him or her politically. To put this crudely, the goal of Primarying Obama is not to deliver a slap to the face, but to gut him like a fish. The goal is to put such a hurting on Obama that no future Donkey politician would dare sell out the Democratic base.

The down-side to this is that a Republican Operator may get the gold ring. Shredding Obama may mean eight years of Multiple Mitch Romney in the Oval Office. The hard nut is that the Progressive movement must accept that possible result, and be fine with it; as long as they can mount Obama’s head on their wall. You must accept an Naderite world view to accomplish this. You have to accept the notion that the choices offered by the present political parties are the choice offered a Thanksgiving turkey : slow roasted or deep fried.

A serious Primary challenge to Obama would take a bloody-mindedness that seems lacking in the Progressive contingent. All the political Berzerkers seem to be on the right side of the political spectrum. Progressives make a fetish of their reasonableness. Most times Progressives lose the fight before they have even engaged the massed hoards of the right. Progressives have been a punching bag ever since Ronny Ray-Gun strolled on the political scene. The left have a reputation of folding like origami.

How the left counters this long history of losing their shirts is anybodies’ guess. How they actually manage to get a message out, any message out, in the white noise of the 24 hour news cycle is another issue. The current muddled message has no chance in the he said-she said, brain-dead, narrative the corporate media vomits up as “news.” In the search for ”balance”, corporate news has abandoned any attempt at truth-telling or fact checking. Obama can hippy-punch / liberal bash his opposition in oblivion and not even break a sweat in the present media environment. 

Finally any opponent of Obama, especially from the left, is going to have to deal with the race card. The bitter truth is that if Obama does get into any difficulty from a challenger, he will pull this joker out and play it. His supporters are more than willing to play racial politics. The only way to counter such a play is to call BS. The only response to the charge is to perform an act of political jiu-jitsu; to show how the charge of racism is act of political bad faith. Such political messaging will take nerves of hardened steel. Bill Clinton is something of a template with his Sister Soldier moment. Of all the political bear traps out there, the issue of race will be the hardest to deal with for any opponent of Obama. There is enough real race-based animosity hurled at Obama for his supporters to use as a bogus charge of racism against a challenger from the left. The challenger will have to keep hammering away on core economic issues and core entitlement programs that Obama is trying to undercut, and how that relates to the lives of African-Americans to the point of nausea and beyond.  That opponent will have to do that in full knowledge that they might only secure a minority of the minority for their troubles. While support for Obama has fallen to 50% among African-Americans, the bitter truth is that it is still much easier for Obama to coax this cohort back home, than for an opponent to persuade them to cut the apron strings.

Obama probably knows all of this; which is why he has no obvious concern about a challenge from the left. The talk of a challenge is just that: talk. Obama is fully aware of how feckless and clueless his left wing opponents are; and how easy it is to logroll them. The summer of Progressive discontent may just melt away like a ice cream scoop on a hot August day. There really is no political downside for Obama in shafting the Democratic Party core, time and time again. For there to be a down side that base has got to go at Obama with political murder in its eyes. It has to make clear that you do not cross the base without an expert, well provisioned team of Sherpas, and purpose built equipment. The present chatter by Bernie Sanders et al is worse than useless; it is further proof of political incompetence from the left.

Taylor Marsh 02 August 2011 at 12:43 pm 

No one will challenge Pres. Obama, from the left. There’s not enough money to make it worth it, because Obama’s corporate fluffers are filling his 2012 war chest, which will dwarf the GOP’s candidate. However, outside groups like Rove’s will make up the difference, so the big two will be equal players.

But the progressive movement, though I’m not among this brave band, is really up against it. They’ve been humiliated and put down, not only by Obama & Democrats, but by the Tea Party, who stood up and got a lot, even though they’re not happy either.

Unease and disgust are the words for anyone in politics today.

But it is going to be very interesting how progressives react and what they do.

spincitysd 02 August 2011 at 3:45 pm 

Yes there is that whole money thing. Any political actor must understand how corrupt the US political system has become.

Far too many people bought the myth of Barack Obama hook line and sinker and did not bother to figure out where the money was coming from. How does a political Tabula Rosa, with only two years in the Senate raise the doe-ray-me to swamp Team Clinton in a sea of cash? How does Obama find the geld to out spend the Arkansas political Tag-Team champions in Primary after Primary? Small contributions via the net? Not bloody likely boys and girls. But what a smoke screen for putting even the most cynical observers into a confused state. Still, the fact that a Democrat had more money to spend than the Republican nominee should have been a huge, red, flashing light. When does any Democrat worth the name have more campaign funds than even the most hopeless of Republicans? Follow the money, it is even more important now than it was in the days of Watergate.

I have no idea what the Progressives will do, I only know what they need to do if they want to become relevant. First and formost they have to own up to the facts on the ground. Progressive need to understand that they are the only true opposition party out there. They have to own that idea; accept that Obama is not now, nor never has been one of them. They have to accept the fact that they are way out in the cold and it is a long, tough slog back to power. They have to understand that it is the economy stupid; that power and wealth is concentrating into the hands of the hyper-rich. If there is going to be any push back to the new aristocracy of wealth, Progressives cannot shy away from class conflict, they have to understand that the New Robber Barons are not asking or giving any quarter.

Progressives also have to understand that their only option is developing a grass roots organizational response. It is the Howard Dean, nuts and bolts, long game that has to be played. And it will be a very long game indeed, because the left is at zero, a non-player. Progressives have to understand they are starting from scratch and plan accordingly.

That means building up an entirely new organization. It may mean abandoning the Donkey Party the same way the Republicans abandoned the Whig party so long ago. People on the left have to understand what a fools game the present political duopoly is. There are no bargaining chips for lefties in the Democratic Party; only wooden nickels.

Success for Progressives, if it comes at all, will come from the grunt work of the grass roots. Victory, if it comes at all, will come from the depth and breadth of the organization, not from some “transformational” personality. There is no substitue for spade work in politics; organise or perish. A strong organization will create is own leaders. A weak organization will allow a faceless wonder to helicopter into leadership, Either inside or outside the Democratic Party, the left has got get its act together, it has to get down into the weeds of practical politics, of building a movement.

How the left manages to do this, how it regains its confidence after decades of self-flagellation and self-hatred is a mystery. But the left has got to get over its funk about the Nixon-Reagan political triumph. Self doubt is both pointless and counter-productive.

The nation needs a confident and scrappy left political movement to maintain long term political health. We have spent far too much time in the politics of memory; far too much time in reaction. The body politics needs hope again. Whether is gets that hope is another story. Maybe that is why ” Unease and disgust are the words for anyone in politics today.”

think08 02 August 2011 at 11:05 pm 

Despite the verbosity of this post, the points are all pretty obvious. You don’t think progressives have considered these things, and have many times before? We need to be cautious who falls into the Progressive tank, because many who call themselves Progressive supported Edwards, Clark, and then Obama. Not particularly progressive candidates. Many of us real progressives figured out day 1 that Obama wasn’t one of us. At this time, there are many who feel quite comfortable in letting Obama go to the wolves, when it’s much more important to get Dems in both houses, and let a Romney win the White House. If you haven’t noticed, Obama is a Republican, and there won’t be a lot of difference anyway, so I think Progressives have figured out that they are more than willing to let the fake Dem go, and deal with that just fine thank you.

spincitysd 03 August 2011 at 12:33 am 

While the few and the proud sniffed out Obama as a Rockefeller Republican, or worse, at the beginning, far too many on the left are still in denial.

I still don’t think people understand how deeply down the Rabbit hole goes Think 08. Electing Donkeys is not the answer because the Democratic Party is no longer the Party of FDR, HHH, Harry Truman, or Ted Kennedy. The Democratic Party is Barack Obama, deal with it. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street. If lefties stay with the Donkeys they will somehow have to clean out the rot that has taken over the Party of Jefferson. That is a huge job. That is primary challenge after primary challenge after primary challenge on every level of the electoral process. That is a lot of political guerrilla theater.

I like your handle Think 08, and I truly hope you do think this one out. The corporate take over of the political process is a done deal, we really do have to think of how we, the people, get ourselves out of this mess. We get the government we deserve Think 08, and that is worst part of what happened in the debt debate; we deserved this epic shafting.

The Message and The Messenger

Forgive me for beating this dead horse, but I am not quite done with the spectacular fall of Johnny Reid "John" Edwards. As the only politician who had the guts to talk about the reality of our two Americas, one for the hyper rich elite, the other for the rest of us, I miss him to the point of night sweats. Not being able to see into the mans heart, I cannot guess to his sincerity on this subject. Was One America all smoke and mirrors; like Hope and Change?

Oddly enough there are plenty of commentators on the inter-webs that have been gifted with the talent to X-ray into the soul of Edwards. Oddly enough they all proclaim his concern for the working class a fraud. And this is just the beginning of their spittle-flecked ramblings about the man. By the time these good people are done with their discourse about Johnny-Boy you are forced to conclude that he is the spawn of Satan or at least a lesser demon of Hell.

This level of hostility to a failed politician is odd, even for a Democrat. Edwards gets slammed for his metrosexual good looks, the fact that he was a trail lawyer before entering politics, and his populist messaging. Even now, when he has performed the most epic political face plant of last twenty years, and perhaps more, some people cannot let go. Why?

It must be that, for all his faults, and for whatever reason, Edwards hit a nerve.That Populist message of his was hitting a little too close for comfort, it was hitting a nerve. People whose politics are invested in increasing the economic divide, in increasing the gap between the economic winners and losers, cannot spare the vitriol when it comes to Edwards. It is vitally important for them that Edwards failings as a human being, which were legion, be attached to his ideology. 

The idea of One America, that we are our brothers keeper, that economic justice is necessary for America to stay America, is an anathema to Edwards haters. It is never sufficient for these people to just attack Edwards, or his moral failings. It is essential to prove that Edwards was never serious about One America in first place. It is essential that One America was never a serious proposal, period. 

In reading the flow of bile pouring forth from Edwards-phobs, the presumption of free market uber alles is never far from the surface. The lock-step dedication to economic laissez faire notions favored by libertarian propeller-heads is not hard to discern. It is not necessary for one to be a Ayn Rand loving, Tea Party mau-mauing, ditto-head to dislike Edwards. It is not necessary to be dye-in-the-wool Right-Wing Republican troll, but it certainly helps.

Maybe I’m projecting here, but it seems if you just scratch the surface, you will find genuine fear from political conservatives that Edwards’ ideas might just catch on. What will the right-wing fear mongers do if the working class actually starts acting as a cohesive class? What to do if Joe and Jane Six-Pack stop being distracted by social issues, and start following the money? What happens if the working class, and the middle class, focus on Bill Clinton’s message of, “ its the economy stupid?”

As Amanda Marcotte pointed out, the real danger that Edwards presented to the status quo was that his liberal populism was a direct counter to the conservative populism that is running rampant over the political landscape. Much of the beat-down Edwards is getting is to ensure there is no challenge to the triumph of conservative populism / TEA Party extremism. That way the concentration of wealth can continue unabated, and Social Conservatives can get their Authoritarianism on. 

So wither the message now? With Edwards down and out for the count, is there any politician of note willing to pick up the amor that Johnny-Boy left scattered about after he fell off the cliff? Is there anyone out there? Anthony Wiener? Oops, I see that he has small problem with his twitter account and is not available for the foreseeable future. Anyone else? Perhaps a member of the fairer sex, as all the male progressive politicians seem to have problems with their little heads short-circuiting their big heads? 

As the Edwards saga plays out, I keep reevaluating who he was and what he did. His candidacy did get both Barack Hopey-Change Obama and Our Most Sacred Lady of the Tastefully Appointed Pant-Suite to get serious about health care reform. But seeing how Idiot Big Ears botched the actual enactment of that program, I can’t say I’m that thrilled with the results. We wanted Health Care reform. What we got was Health Insurance reform. We got something to the right of Dick Nixon’s bright idea back in the 1970’s and called it “progress.” We got a Republican idea in good standing, that the Elephants then demanded be repealed immediately. Still without Edwards' prodding, we might not have even gotten this soup sandwich of “reform.”

I cannot blame Edwards for the epically corrupt way D.C. does business these days. Any politician in the Presidency would have an uphill climb to counter the dirty way D.C. conducts its affairs. My problem with Obama is the man does not even try to counter the dirty deeds done dirt cheep business model, he just goes with flow, further enabling and entrenching the corruption. It may be good politics, but it is rotten policy. 

Still, who knows what betrayals Edwards would have envisioned if he had managed to keep his monster in his pants, and gained the top prize? How much of the Populist Edwards was a construction? More to the point,  how much of it was a construction of Elizabeth Edwards? With Edwards in re-elect mode, and his wife no longer present, what compromises would Edwards envision? Having been badly burned by the reality of Edwards, and his epic narcism, I am unwilling to give him too much latitude as how he would have behaved in this mythical present construction. Even for a supporter like me, Edwards’ stock is in the dirt, and not likely to come back up.

Edwards the messenger may no longer carry much weight, but that does not go for the message. For this nation to succeed, for it to truly climb out of the hole it has dug itself, there has to be some politician willing carry that message, that idea, of One America. The continued hollowing out of the middle class is dangerous to Democracy. It is ultimately dangerous to the very people who are carrying it out. I am not saying this as a dyed-in-the-wool, peace-love-and-granola, hippy-dippy, commie-pinko, bleeding-heart lefty, but as a student of history. If we continue on the path we are on, revolution is inevitable. I’m not talking in the hackneyed sense that the yammering elites of the media class are want to talk, not one bit. I am talking in the historical sense, in the sense of the French or Mexican Revolutions, where lots of people ended up seriously and prematurely dead. In a nation where there is one gun for almost every person, the violence, if it gets to that point, will be stupefying. 

It won’t be the mythical class war that right-wing pundits love to yammer about, but the real deal--which is a much uglier thing. The rural, right-wing, racist yahoos that run the Republican Party these days may be all for this, theoretically. They might be all gung-ho for the big get even, for the all-out race war of their fantasy; right up to the point where the reality of the situation comes right up to their faces, and literally guts them. As they slowly bleed out, they might reconsider what a bad idea this was; but maybe not. The unbearable pain of evisceration does have a tendency to block out all other thoughts that are not connected to central theme of ,“Sweet Jesus, stop the pain!”

Unlike the right wingers, I am not willing for the nation to devolve into the dystopia of out-right class war. I have read enough history to know that revolution is never what you think it will be. Revolutions, by their nature, are chaotic. The losses that flow from revolutions never justify the gains. Real revolution, is horror, and pain, and dislocation, and utter madness. Only fools and ideologues ( which is pretty much the same thing) root for violent revolution.

Unfortunately we seem to be chock-a-block with willing fools these days. Far too many are far too willing to indulge in tribalism, to my way or the highway, to eliminationism, to bigotry, to homophobia, to immigrant bashing, to misogyny, to all types of petty hatreds. 

For them, the unity John Edwards proposed is blasphemy. For them, there is only Social Darwinism. For them, there are only winners and losers. For them, it is winner take all, and screw everyone else, especially if the else is not a white male. In there love of the mythical John Galt, they have no end of hatred for the real John Edwards. There seems to be no shortage of little men and little women who are willing accomplices in the plutocrats grand design to turn  99% of the population into destitute surfs. Economic slavery is ok by these minions, as long as they get to be overseers on the plantation. 

I have no idea how the politics of fear, division and corruption will rule this nation. I have no idea how long the populace will continue to trade illusionary security for real freedom. I don't even know if Johnny Reid Edwards would have even attempted to change this process once he gained the White House. Before he became a populist, Edwards was a very solid DLC donkey of the South. 

It was this supposed Southern Connection that was to be Edwards strength. Mudcat Sanders was more than willing to blather on to anyone who showed any interest how Edwards was the man to bring back the Bubba vote. I never had much faith in that narrative. My biased guess is that Dixie will not come back into play for the Donkeys until present demographic changes further play out. 

Edwards supposed strength may never had existed in the first place. Far too many of the people, especially in the South, were far too willing to buy into the meme of Edwards being a sissy "Breck Girl" and ignore his economic message. They appeared to more than willing to go whole hog for the big fat lie of the $400.00 haircut. 

The real problem here is that the politics of personality, the politics of celebrity, has drowned out all other considerations. John Edwards, light-weight, self-indulgent, narcissist that he proved to be, really was a the wrong man to move forward the message of left-progressive economic populism. But then who would be viable candidate? Any man or woman who qualifies to run as a serious candidate for President will always have mountains of baggage that the trolls can rummage through. 

And even if there is nothing there, the right will just make crap up. Republicans have perfected the dark art of the bald-face lie. Every Democratic nominee since McGovern has had to deal with utter bunk charges; with deep, dark, obvious lies during their campaign. The election of Barack Obama has only made this awful situation worse. In this regard we are own worst enemy. As long as we treat our electoral process with the same lack of seriousness we treat American Idol, we will continue to have clown-car elections. 

The petty politics of personal deconstruction will continue as long as we continue to treat our elections the same way we used to treat runs for high school student council. We have to separate the message from the messenger. We have to treat our elections with the seriousness they deserve.