For a political party long renowned for its message discipline and sunny optimism against all odds, the GOP and its surrogates have veered further from their A-game than at any time since I've been walking this Earth. Let's look at it from the policy approach, and then its delivery.
Part of any political genius is to get people operating under your assumptions before you even begin the discussion. Issues like flag burning are the purest examples, but this can also be found in the arguments around gay rights, abortion, gun control, even the Iraq war. Here's what I mean.
Flag Burning: "You mean you're in favor of desecrating our nation's greatest symbol?!"
The forced response: "No but..."
Gay Rights: "Gay marriage is a threat to our society's moral fabric."
The forced response: "No it isn't. Let me explain why..."
Abortion: "It's stopping a beating heart."
The forced response: "Yeah but..."
Gun Control: "Our constitution guarantees our individual right to bear arms."
The forced response: "Actually blah blah blah..."
Iraq: "How can you undermine the efforts of our valiant troops?"
The forced response: "No, of course not. It's just that..."
It doesn't matter who's right or wrong. Some of those arguments begin with unfounded accusations, some with misrepresentation, some are just bullying. These strategies only work if everyone is saying the same thing, from the politicians to civic action groups to talk show pundits. When they strike the right cultural chords with a good, clean hit they are almost impossible to stop. Opposing views can only provide morally weak or logically abstruse reactionary responses. That's how liberals become the waffling eggheads of lore.
But there's a problem when people start disagreeing, or if people just don't care about the issues that propel this strategy.
People don't care about flag burning. Most of us understand that flags matter. Most of us would get pissed off if someone lit one on fire. Most of us would also like to avoid the desecration of our constitution for the sake of a symbol. But more to the point, most of us don't care. There's a recession and a war on.
Gay rights are happening regardless of this or that moral objection. The first reason is reason itself. There is no scientific evidence that gay couples can't be perfectly good parents. There is nothing out there that says that marriage or civil unions have any impact on the institution itself. Proposition 8 may pass in California, but taken over the longer-term this is a losing issue for cultural conservatives.
There is a growing consensus that abortion is not a desired outcome, that abstinence-only education only leads to furtive, guilt-ridden and unprotected sex, and that the best way to reduce abortion is to avoid it in the first place. Some people will always see a moral imperative to outlawing the practice, but this is far from the most parsimonious approach to their stated goal, stopping abortion.
Gun control has never been about the government taking away people's rights. It's been about safe, responsible ownership. Almost everyone agrees that people should be permitted to "bear arms", but where does it stop? Aren't bazookas arms? What about nuclear arms? The point here is that there are common sense limits to one's rights. Sure you can have a gun, but let's keep it registered, and if you're dangerous, maybe you shouldn't be allowed to own one. Cars are useful and fun, but they're dangerous too. We license their users and revoke that license if they abuse it. That's reasonable, just like most people.
Iraq has become overshadowed by Afghanistan and domestic issues. More importantly, it seems to be getting better, or at least to a point where we can leave it and go do other things. It's hard to get bogged down in patriotic fury when things have nearly reached their likely conclusion.
All of the bread-and-butter issues of the GOP are drying up and blowing away. They've ceded the sensible middle ground and decided to circle the wagons around Reagan, Heston and Wayne. The Indians have gone, guys. Come out and join the party.
While Rick Warren agrees to speak at the opposing party's inauguration, taking millions with him, the candidate for chairman of the GOP is releasing "Barack the Magic Negro" on his greatest hits list. I don't care if you think there's a double-standard when an LA Times column is taken out of context and made into a racist parody, or if you think it's all just a harmless joke. It doesn't matter what you think, guys. It sounds terrible, so you lose. DNC 1, RNC 0 and you scored on yourselves.
I knew Rush Limbaugh was deaf, but it looks like he's gone tone deaf too. The country is going be majority non-white in a few more years. White suburban men are not the voting bloc they once were, nor do they have the same social power as their forebears. They can go on living with their golf shirts and sense of entitlement, but it won't win many elections.
They need to throw Limbaugh out of the big tent. If I were a high-level GOP operative I'd seriously consider planting some underage pornography on his computer, combing through his taxes for missing money, or entrapping him in a bathroom stall. After all, these are the guys who brought us Watergate.
So how (and when) will the GOP redefine itself? There are some core values, some powerful messages that could gain some traction among the public, especially once the opposition takes power and the blame that comes with it.
All I know is...
The meteor has struck. The dinosaurs are going extinct. Keep an eye on the scurrying mammals at their feet, that is, if you believe in evolution.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
To Coopt is to Coerce
On its face, Obama's choice of Rick Warren as the religious Master of Ceremonies for his inauguration looks like a disaster move. After all, the Christian Right and its sympathizers have been on the wane in recent years and many on the left are already seething over appointees who weren't on their short list.
Well, people asked for change and they got it. Here's a president-elect who's broken every archetype of who a president is, who they are loyal to, and how their own ideals shape our country's future.
The man's a constitutional lawyer. He views things in terms of rights before he views them according to any other moral framework.
Women should have the right to abortion, but that doesn't make it something good that should happen all the time. Nobody wants that. Everybody wants to reduce the number of abortions. It's just a matter of what policies take priority. It's an issue that can be resolved rationally if everyone takes a deep breath and is willing to compromise a bit.
Gay people should have the same rights under the law as straight people. Call it marriage, or call it a civil agreement. I don't think Obama really cares, at least on the terms of government's role in the institution of marriage. If a church doesn't want to marry you, so be it. Many synagogues wouldn't have married me and my wife, who doesn't share my lineage. But the state doesn't care about lineage.
The choice of Warren is a signal that Obama intends to end the culture wars once and for all. After this, he'll have 4 years to appoint Supreme Court justices and pass policy that allay the fears of many of Warren's mortal enemies. Nobody will remember who spoke at the inauguration beyond emotional memory. Down the road, Rev. Warren's followers may be more likely to think twice about their opinions of the incoming president, and that's the only conceivable impact of that choice.
The choice of Warren signals a few other things.
1. Obama won't exclude those who don't agree with him from the big discussions. How refreshing after so many years of fighting for control.
2. Obama won't be intimidated by the people who put him in office. He's going to be everybody's president, even for people who didn't and would never vote for him.
3. Obama won't fall victim to the old wedge trap. Wedge issues only work if the wedger can force the wedgee into viewing things along the lines of their thinking. It doesn't work if you bring them to your side.
4. Obama won't be swayed by knee-jerk reaction. We won't be divided along the lines of a few emotional issues when there is so much more at stake. Rick Warren and his ilk also do a lot of good in the world. This shouldn't be ignored.
The choice of Warren isn't a signal of weak-kneed compromise. It's the signal of someone who intends to lead everyone, unlike our current president who has marched in lock-step with the program while ignoring opinion or circumstance.
The Right should view this move, and many of Obama's appointees, as a sign that he is serious about bringing them aboard in solving today's problems. They should try to avoid the instant judgment and criticism that's become instinct for everyone with a strong party loyalty, on all sides.
The Left should view this move as a sign that the game's going to be played differently now. It's not going to be another round of "our turn, our program." Even if America is in dire need of many of the programs and views that the Left has to offer, it is not interested in whether this or that particular issue suits the tastes of a small minority.
In some ways, Obama's choices are a rude awakening, but it's better to be awake than polite.
Well, people asked for change and they got it. Here's a president-elect who's broken every archetype of who a president is, who they are loyal to, and how their own ideals shape our country's future.
The man's a constitutional lawyer. He views things in terms of rights before he views them according to any other moral framework.
Women should have the right to abortion, but that doesn't make it something good that should happen all the time. Nobody wants that. Everybody wants to reduce the number of abortions. It's just a matter of what policies take priority. It's an issue that can be resolved rationally if everyone takes a deep breath and is willing to compromise a bit.
Gay people should have the same rights under the law as straight people. Call it marriage, or call it a civil agreement. I don't think Obama really cares, at least on the terms of government's role in the institution of marriage. If a church doesn't want to marry you, so be it. Many synagogues wouldn't have married me and my wife, who doesn't share my lineage. But the state doesn't care about lineage.
The choice of Warren is a signal that Obama intends to end the culture wars once and for all. After this, he'll have 4 years to appoint Supreme Court justices and pass policy that allay the fears of many of Warren's mortal enemies. Nobody will remember who spoke at the inauguration beyond emotional memory. Down the road, Rev. Warren's followers may be more likely to think twice about their opinions of the incoming president, and that's the only conceivable impact of that choice.
The choice of Warren signals a few other things.
1. Obama won't exclude those who don't agree with him from the big discussions. How refreshing after so many years of fighting for control.
2. Obama won't be intimidated by the people who put him in office. He's going to be everybody's president, even for people who didn't and would never vote for him.
3. Obama won't fall victim to the old wedge trap. Wedge issues only work if the wedger can force the wedgee into viewing things along the lines of their thinking. It doesn't work if you bring them to your side.
4. Obama won't be swayed by knee-jerk reaction. We won't be divided along the lines of a few emotional issues when there is so much more at stake. Rick Warren and his ilk also do a lot of good in the world. This shouldn't be ignored.
The choice of Warren isn't a signal of weak-kneed compromise. It's the signal of someone who intends to lead everyone, unlike our current president who has marched in lock-step with the program while ignoring opinion or circumstance.
The Right should view this move, and many of Obama's appointees, as a sign that he is serious about bringing them aboard in solving today's problems. They should try to avoid the instant judgment and criticism that's become instinct for everyone with a strong party loyalty, on all sides.
The Left should view this move as a sign that the game's going to be played differently now. It's not going to be another round of "our turn, our program." Even if America is in dire need of many of the programs and views that the Left has to offer, it is not interested in whether this or that particular issue suits the tastes of a small minority.
In some ways, Obama's choices are a rude awakening, but it's better to be awake than polite.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Of Love and the Big Three
At the first mention of the letters G and M, I think about my parents' Oldsmobile station wagon, which after about 3 years, would start if you poured gas directly into some hole in the engine. Free association reminds me of the Ford Taurus that seemed like a spaceship at the beginning, but had a leaky sun roof that would never have protected from the vacuum of space. I then remember the Datsun 210 that outlived the family dog by a significant margin, and went on to be my sister's mode of transportation for her whole time in high school.
When I was in high school I had a sclerotic green-and-rust '78 Volvo 240 station wagon with faux sheepskin seat covers. No style, but it ran great and was a perfect buffer against the teenage idiocy of which I was quite guilty. A good, safe first relationship with the road.
The best car I ever owned was an '03 Mazda Protege5. I took that car everywhere, including the Northwest Territories over 400 miles of gravel. It was a little loud on the highway, but it ran and ran and ran. It was comfortable, had a good sound system, and was perfect for the city or for camping in the boonies. I'm glad that my brother is now its proud owner. The Mazda was clean and smooth, but lacked the soul of some other cars I drove. It was the car you'd take home to your parents, while you quietly mourn the bad girl from Detroit that they'd never approve of.
But the car I loved the most was the '86 Pontiac 6000-LE that I received from my grandmother, 12 years old, with 26,000 miles on it. College road trips were shaped and defined in that car. Ohio to Toronto by way of Niagra Falls. Ohio to Colorado in the middle of the night. DC to Portland Oregon and back, with some pizza delivery peppered in there. Ohio to DC through rain, snow, trucks and the jersey walls of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Midnight runs to Denny's. Over about 4 years and another 25,000 miles the car needed a new radiator, thermostat, A/C compressor, engine suspension and struts, and 2 new tires after a blowout in South Dakota due to ruined alignment from driving too hard over the Bitterroot range of Idaho. A friend miscalibrated the spedometer by pinning it against the 85 for hours across Nebraska in the middle of the night, so I had to keep it at 55 to really be going 65. But I loved that car. My love for that Pontiac was the passionate love of a mutually abusive relationship.
In recent times, as a business traveler I've become a connoisseur of the American rental car fleet. My options range from the square, though well-appointed Chevy Malibu, to the chintzy, plasticky Chrysler Sebring, to my favorite, the leather clad sexy-shaped Pontiac G-6. Oh, and the occasional Hyundai.
My observations are that some of the cars that are made here in America by Americans working for American companies (an increasingly rare combination) aren't so bad. The G-6 handles great, has tons of room, gets over 30 mpg on the highway, has excellent pick-up, and feels well-made. I've even read that Fords and some GM models are now on par with Toyota and Nissan in terms of initial quality. Chryslers, on the other hand, are terrible buzzboxes not worthy of ownership by anyone other than Avis.
So today, the CEOs of GM, Chrysler and Ford are asking for a $25 billion loan to keep making their products. They argue that their continued existence is all that stands in the way of the rust belt getting rustier, of our national security for building the vehicles of war, of national pride. I think of my own likely future decisions in car purchasing. I love renting a G-6, but I'll buy a Toyota Camry. Is $25 billion going to change that? Doubtful.
Is $25 billion going to keep the good people of Michigan gainfully employed making a product that the world demands at a premium? I think not.
Could that $25 billion be better spent on enhanced unemployment benefits, job retraining, tax incentives, business incubator programs, and other ideas? I think so.
If the Federal government's most pressing concern at the bankruptcy of the Big Three is that of the long-suffering workers on the lines of Michigan, Ohio and elsewhere, why not help them directly? Shouldn't ravenous long-term junkies who think only of their next fix of corporate earnings go to rehab, find God, and maybe go on to produce something better? That's far preferable to giving them yet another injection of unfettered capital. Isn't that true even if they have people to take care of? Maybe the plant workers of the midwest would be better off as wards of the state, rather than living under the roof of a long-neglectful, absent parent company.
When I was in high school I had a sclerotic green-and-rust '78 Volvo 240 station wagon with faux sheepskin seat covers. No style, but it ran great and was a perfect buffer against the teenage idiocy of which I was quite guilty. A good, safe first relationship with the road.
The best car I ever owned was an '03 Mazda Protege5. I took that car everywhere, including the Northwest Territories over 400 miles of gravel. It was a little loud on the highway, but it ran and ran and ran. It was comfortable, had a good sound system, and was perfect for the city or for camping in the boonies. I'm glad that my brother is now its proud owner. The Mazda was clean and smooth, but lacked the soul of some other cars I drove. It was the car you'd take home to your parents, while you quietly mourn the bad girl from Detroit that they'd never approve of.
But the car I loved the most was the '86 Pontiac 6000-LE that I received from my grandmother, 12 years old, with 26,000 miles on it. College road trips were shaped and defined in that car. Ohio to Toronto by way of Niagra Falls. Ohio to Colorado in the middle of the night. DC to Portland Oregon and back, with some pizza delivery peppered in there. Ohio to DC through rain, snow, trucks and the jersey walls of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Midnight runs to Denny's. Over about 4 years and another 25,000 miles the car needed a new radiator, thermostat, A/C compressor, engine suspension and struts, and 2 new tires after a blowout in South Dakota due to ruined alignment from driving too hard over the Bitterroot range of Idaho. A friend miscalibrated the spedometer by pinning it against the 85 for hours across Nebraska in the middle of the night, so I had to keep it at 55 to really be going 65. But I loved that car. My love for that Pontiac was the passionate love of a mutually abusive relationship.
In recent times, as a business traveler I've become a connoisseur of the American rental car fleet. My options range from the square, though well-appointed Chevy Malibu, to the chintzy, plasticky Chrysler Sebring, to my favorite, the leather clad sexy-shaped Pontiac G-6. Oh, and the occasional Hyundai.
My observations are that some of the cars that are made here in America by Americans working for American companies (an increasingly rare combination) aren't so bad. The G-6 handles great, has tons of room, gets over 30 mpg on the highway, has excellent pick-up, and feels well-made. I've even read that Fords and some GM models are now on par with Toyota and Nissan in terms of initial quality. Chryslers, on the other hand, are terrible buzzboxes not worthy of ownership by anyone other than Avis.
So today, the CEOs of GM, Chrysler and Ford are asking for a $25 billion loan to keep making their products. They argue that their continued existence is all that stands in the way of the rust belt getting rustier, of our national security for building the vehicles of war, of national pride. I think of my own likely future decisions in car purchasing. I love renting a G-6, but I'll buy a Toyota Camry. Is $25 billion going to change that? Doubtful.
Is $25 billion going to keep the good people of Michigan gainfully employed making a product that the world demands at a premium? I think not.
Could that $25 billion be better spent on enhanced unemployment benefits, job retraining, tax incentives, business incubator programs, and other ideas? I think so.
If the Federal government's most pressing concern at the bankruptcy of the Big Three is that of the long-suffering workers on the lines of Michigan, Ohio and elsewhere, why not help them directly? Shouldn't ravenous long-term junkies who think only of their next fix of corporate earnings go to rehab, find God, and maybe go on to produce something better? That's far preferable to giving them yet another injection of unfettered capital. Isn't that true even if they have people to take care of? Maybe the plant workers of the midwest would be better off as wards of the state, rather than living under the roof of a long-neglectful, absent parent company.
I love you Pontiac, but baby, you have to change before I come back home.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
In the wilderness
I'm told every spring of my ancestors wandering across the barren Sinai desert for 40 years on their way to the promised land. The story talks about those peoples' missteps, incurring the wrath of their stuttering leader when they got impatient and started worshiping a golden calf instead of the Guy in the Sky. The people grew agitated in their hunger and thirst, their loss of place. They were people after all, and living in such austere conditions after the fleshpots of Egypt (what's a fleshpot?) must have had a despondent post-apocalyptic feel to it.
Of course, political metaphors can be drawn from this story. Much has been said of the GOP's newfound residence in the wilderness, and of a new generation of Democrats strolling bravely into their own just future. It wasn't quite 40 years ago that the story was reversed, of course, but let's just talk about now. I like that story better.
It is also true that those in the wilderness and those in the promised land aren't a different people; they are Israelites or they are Americans who suffer different fates depending on their spots in history. Sometimes you're just born at the wrong time.
It is also true in both cases that fate isn't the only factor in play. The Israelites could have resisted temptation to their basest instincts, as could those elements of the Right who today insist that their way is the only way.
Even today, between overtures of good will towards the new administration, the new wanderers whisper about Marxism, even National Socialism. (At least we waited until the Iraq war to label Bush a Fascist and a Nazi, though neither is the case) Such language ensures that no progress to their cause will be made.
The modern GOP and the ancient Israelites had a choice to align themselves with their people or their faction, and in both cases they chose the latter.
Moses isn't allowed to enter the green pastures of Canaan, and all those who had known the land of their servitude had to die so that a new generation that had known only freedom would be grateful to their Creator for the abundant land that stretched before them; a promise for all time.
At the end of the Exodus story, Moses is up on a mountain, looking over the land of his people. He is forbidden to tread on that territory like everyone else who had known Egypt, but God let him have a look before giving him the gentle kiss of death and prophet status for all time. After so much anger, conflict and suffering, Moses had to go before progress could be made.
There are lessons for all of use here in America to take from that story. At some point we are all in the wilderness, at some point we have a choice to pursue our own interests or to pursue the greater good. I for one hope that this wilderness-promised land cycle can be broken and that we can work together to make this land as great as its promise. It's not us-vs-them. We're people who must choose our better nature despite circumstances, good or bad.
Of course, political metaphors can be drawn from this story. Much has been said of the GOP's newfound residence in the wilderness, and of a new generation of Democrats strolling bravely into their own just future. It wasn't quite 40 years ago that the story was reversed, of course, but let's just talk about now. I like that story better.
It is also true that those in the wilderness and those in the promised land aren't a different people; they are Israelites or they are Americans who suffer different fates depending on their spots in history. Sometimes you're just born at the wrong time.
It is also true in both cases that fate isn't the only factor in play. The Israelites could have resisted temptation to their basest instincts, as could those elements of the Right who today insist that their way is the only way.
Even today, between overtures of good will towards the new administration, the new wanderers whisper about Marxism, even National Socialism. (At least we waited until the Iraq war to label Bush a Fascist and a Nazi, though neither is the case) Such language ensures that no progress to their cause will be made.
The modern GOP and the ancient Israelites had a choice to align themselves with their people or their faction, and in both cases they chose the latter.
Moses isn't allowed to enter the green pastures of Canaan, and all those who had known the land of their servitude had to die so that a new generation that had known only freedom would be grateful to their Creator for the abundant land that stretched before them; a promise for all time.
At the end of the Exodus story, Moses is up on a mountain, looking over the land of his people. He is forbidden to tread on that territory like everyone else who had known Egypt, but God let him have a look before giving him the gentle kiss of death and prophet status for all time. After so much anger, conflict and suffering, Moses had to go before progress could be made.
There are lessons for all of use here in America to take from that story. At some point we are all in the wilderness, at some point we have a choice to pursue our own interests or to pursue the greater good. I for one hope that this wilderness-promised land cycle can be broken and that we can work together to make this land as great as its promise. It's not us-vs-them. We're people who must choose our better nature despite circumstances, good or bad.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
It actually happened
2004 was not a good year, especially to be living in DC. America was at war, people were certain that the next terrorist attack would occur at any time; after all, they were happening in Europe and Asia. The country was heading into an election between the most palatable of a cadre of isolated, intimidated and confused Democrats and an incumbent president who had boundless authority and a sweeping vision that seemed destined to be pursued ad infinitum. The Democratic convention tried to put its best face on an anemic candidate and a fearful electorate. A vote for Kerry was a vote against Bush and little else. There was no Democratic platform beyond getting the other guys out of office. The Republican convention had a long list of speakers holding forth on security, strength and resolve to the adoration of millions who viewed their life in the exurbs as under siege by mysterious and menacing foreign powers. They were going to win, but not by much.
In the middle of this uncertainty and polarizing rhetoric Barack Obama took the stage in Boston, putting all of the issues of the day aside, providing a vision of how things should be. It was probably the most inspiring political moment of my life. The only visions I'd heard that season were military superiority on one hand, or wresting control from the militaristic on the other. There was no should, and plenty of must that no one could agree upon. I said then that I wanted that guy to be our next president. My mom and grandma said they were moved, but that he wasn't ready, wasn't vetted, wouldn't be accepted by the party or the country. Today they're happy to be wrong.
I believe that this country is in the beginning degrees of the largest 180 it has ever made in its 230-odd years of history. We are about to shift from the most rightist agenda to possibly the most leftist in the space between election day and inauguration day. But we're going to have to look beyond that. I got the feeling from most quarters that the country is ready for this, whatever it may entail. It's ready to move away from manufactured scandal, fear and vitriol. McCain's concession speech last night was as magnanimous towards his opponent as he could be. The promises of unity felt genuine. These aren't campaign promises. This is something bigger.
At the same time, I heard interviews of people leaving a Republican senator's return party saying things like "tonight is another 9-11", and "this is the end of America as we know it." There is nothing that can be said to sway the thinking of people with beliefs like that. Their thinking has been molded by the prepackaged reality of certain media outlets, they have been scared into the fallacy that the election of one presidency or another threatens the very existence of our republic. I rejected that when people said it about Bush in '04 and I reject it now. We will move on despite, or even because of our disagreements.
It's my sincere hope that this election isn't viewed as a clear mandate for the Democratic brand, but as one that meets the urgent demands of Americans. My beliefs and those of everyone else are only reconciled when we work in the system, where we can agree on the common rules of the game. We will never be great again if we don't recognize this truth and see something bigger than ourselves and our necessarily narrow individual stakes in the way the world is. Enlightened self-interest isn't enough to ensure an efficient government, a strong economy, or a vibrant society.
When Obama said he would be the president of all Americans I hope he meant it, and I hope America allows for it.
In the middle of this uncertainty and polarizing rhetoric Barack Obama took the stage in Boston, putting all of the issues of the day aside, providing a vision of how things should be. It was probably the most inspiring political moment of my life. The only visions I'd heard that season were military superiority on one hand, or wresting control from the militaristic on the other. There was no should, and plenty of must that no one could agree upon. I said then that I wanted that guy to be our next president. My mom and grandma said they were moved, but that he wasn't ready, wasn't vetted, wouldn't be accepted by the party or the country. Today they're happy to be wrong.
I believe that this country is in the beginning degrees of the largest 180 it has ever made in its 230-odd years of history. We are about to shift from the most rightist agenda to possibly the most leftist in the space between election day and inauguration day. But we're going to have to look beyond that. I got the feeling from most quarters that the country is ready for this, whatever it may entail. It's ready to move away from manufactured scandal, fear and vitriol. McCain's concession speech last night was as magnanimous towards his opponent as he could be. The promises of unity felt genuine. These aren't campaign promises. This is something bigger.
At the same time, I heard interviews of people leaving a Republican senator's return party saying things like "tonight is another 9-11", and "this is the end of America as we know it." There is nothing that can be said to sway the thinking of people with beliefs like that. Their thinking has been molded by the prepackaged reality of certain media outlets, they have been scared into the fallacy that the election of one presidency or another threatens the very existence of our republic. I rejected that when people said it about Bush in '04 and I reject it now. We will move on despite, or even because of our disagreements.
It's my sincere hope that this election isn't viewed as a clear mandate for the Democratic brand, but as one that meets the urgent demands of Americans. My beliefs and those of everyone else are only reconciled when we work in the system, where we can agree on the common rules of the game. We will never be great again if we don't recognize this truth and see something bigger than ourselves and our necessarily narrow individual stakes in the way the world is. Enlightened self-interest isn't enough to ensure an efficient government, a strong economy, or a vibrant society.
When Obama said he would be the president of all Americans I hope he meant it, and I hope America allows for it.
Friday, September 26, 2008
We need to make something!
I wrote this in August of '07:
"So today we find ourselves where the two humors of government and enterprise are out of sorts. Our state has ceased to invest in its people and places with the vigor that made us competitive, and our enterprise is at the beginnings of producing either inferior or non-existent products. Over the past month the world's stock market has plunged across the world as we are coming to the startling realization that the past decade's growth has been leveraged almost entirely on credit, with all production stemming from what looks increasingly like bad debt. This is really bad. We're good at spending money but we just don't make anything anymore."
...the only thing that's changed since then is the disharmony between government and the private sector. All of the sudden they seem to be getting along just fine. The public may not be comfortable with a $700 billion bailout package for financiers, but this is not the same as bailing out your screw-up brother for the fourth time. Without credit, we've got nothing. Without the credibility of the dollar we are (at best) a well-to-do banana republic.
The bailout is not such a bad thing in itself.
First of all, most of the $700 billion is good debt. In those bundles of mortgage-backed securities are many, many 30-year loans, and even adjustable mortgages where people are on time every month. Imagine what would happen to those securities if credit dried up, and those same people lost their jobs as employers' access to capital disappears. Most of that $700 billion will come back to the treasury; compare that to the potential losses in revenue if everyone is unemployed, no one pays property taxes, and foreign creditors start getting behind the Euro.
Second, moral hazard is an issue, yes, but even your screw-up brother can be coerced into straightening out. Tough love isn't the only way. Consider the bailout a girlfriend who your brother gets pregnant, and who wants to move in and settle down. It's a gamechanger, especially if she makes him get a job and stop going to poker games and online betting sites in the Caymans.
Third, the American taxpayer is the only group aside from the IMF that could come close to fronting this kind of cash, and it is the only entity that has the authority to enact real, enforceable reforms.
The biggest problem to me is around restructuring our economy to produce more than it consumes. We've all had in the back of our minds for years the latent fear that American buying power is leveraged entirely by credit, as opposed to people getting paid more for the value of their work and then choosing to reinvest that money back into purchases at WalMart and CarMax. It's like our whole system of production revolved around trading baseball cards.
It's not enough for the American consumer just to consume. That much is clear. We've got to make something, and make something the world needs. Anything else is a shell game. The rest of the world now sees the risk in predicating their own growth prospects on the US Treasury. Any rational producer of goods and services abroad must be scrambling to make sure their assets are diversified.
There needs to be investment in our education, infrastructure, health care system and of course, our industrial base. All of those areas attract business, foreign and domestic. Think of all of the American entrepreneurs just waiting to take a chance on their million dollar idea if only they could get a loan, hire 5 well-educated employees and provide them and their families with good health coverage. It is time for economic policy to work from the demand side for a while. Government doesn't need to front the costs of all of this investment, but it has a role in creating environments conducive to the success of American firms and American taxpayers alike.
Our greatest strengths are our optimism and our inventiveness. Government has a role in actively supporting both of those virtues, and coordinating them to serve the maximum number of people possible. Tax incentives, R&D grants, and even direct state investment in private enterprise are legitimate roles of the state. They also help to ensure that it is the American people who benefit, and not just the highest bidder in a game of market warfare.
The government can be a nag and a drag, but it keeps things from getting out of control. We need it just as much as the screw-up brother needs someone to tell him what to do.
To do nothing is an option, but it is a stupid one. To do nothing places ideology above seeking the best possible solution to a difficult problem. This crisis will not be without its losers. I think we're headed for some austere years, but that's OK. I think we needed it, and I think we'll come away as the dynamic, prosperous nation that we pride ourselves to be. Doing nothing is not enough, nor is just repairing the credit market. We've got to repair America. We've got to do everything.
"So today we find ourselves where the two humors of government and enterprise are out of sorts. Our state has ceased to invest in its people and places with the vigor that made us competitive, and our enterprise is at the beginnings of producing either inferior or non-existent products. Over the past month the world's stock market has plunged across the world as we are coming to the startling realization that the past decade's growth has been leveraged almost entirely on credit, with all production stemming from what looks increasingly like bad debt. This is really bad. We're good at spending money but we just don't make anything anymore."
...the only thing that's changed since then is the disharmony between government and the private sector. All of the sudden they seem to be getting along just fine. The public may not be comfortable with a $700 billion bailout package for financiers, but this is not the same as bailing out your screw-up brother for the fourth time. Without credit, we've got nothing. Without the credibility of the dollar we are (at best) a well-to-do banana republic.
The bailout is not such a bad thing in itself.
First of all, most of the $700 billion is good debt. In those bundles of mortgage-backed securities are many, many 30-year loans, and even adjustable mortgages where people are on time every month. Imagine what would happen to those securities if credit dried up, and those same people lost their jobs as employers' access to capital disappears. Most of that $700 billion will come back to the treasury; compare that to the potential losses in revenue if everyone is unemployed, no one pays property taxes, and foreign creditors start getting behind the Euro.
Second, moral hazard is an issue, yes, but even your screw-up brother can be coerced into straightening out. Tough love isn't the only way. Consider the bailout a girlfriend who your brother gets pregnant, and who wants to move in and settle down. It's a gamechanger, especially if she makes him get a job and stop going to poker games and online betting sites in the Caymans.
Third, the American taxpayer is the only group aside from the IMF that could come close to fronting this kind of cash, and it is the only entity that has the authority to enact real, enforceable reforms.
The biggest problem to me is around restructuring our economy to produce more than it consumes. We've all had in the back of our minds for years the latent fear that American buying power is leveraged entirely by credit, as opposed to people getting paid more for the value of their work and then choosing to reinvest that money back into purchases at WalMart and CarMax. It's like our whole system of production revolved around trading baseball cards.
It's not enough for the American consumer just to consume. That much is clear. We've got to make something, and make something the world needs. Anything else is a shell game. The rest of the world now sees the risk in predicating their own growth prospects on the US Treasury. Any rational producer of goods and services abroad must be scrambling to make sure their assets are diversified.
There needs to be investment in our education, infrastructure, health care system and of course, our industrial base. All of those areas attract business, foreign and domestic. Think of all of the American entrepreneurs just waiting to take a chance on their million dollar idea if only they could get a loan, hire 5 well-educated employees and provide them and their families with good health coverage. It is time for economic policy to work from the demand side for a while. Government doesn't need to front the costs of all of this investment, but it has a role in creating environments conducive to the success of American firms and American taxpayers alike.
Our greatest strengths are our optimism and our inventiveness. Government has a role in actively supporting both of those virtues, and coordinating them to serve the maximum number of people possible. Tax incentives, R&D grants, and even direct state investment in private enterprise are legitimate roles of the state. They also help to ensure that it is the American people who benefit, and not just the highest bidder in a game of market warfare.
The government can be a nag and a drag, but it keeps things from getting out of control. We need it just as much as the screw-up brother needs someone to tell him what to do.
To do nothing is an option, but it is a stupid one. To do nothing places ideology above seeking the best possible solution to a difficult problem. This crisis will not be without its losers. I think we're headed for some austere years, but that's OK. I think we needed it, and I think we'll come away as the dynamic, prosperous nation that we pride ourselves to be. Doing nothing is not enough, nor is just repairing the credit market. We've got to repair America. We've got to do everything.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Paper Tigress
I'll put my cards on the table now, before events have played out too far and say I think Sarah Palin will be a net negative on the Republican ticket. For all of the talk of suburban moms running out to get their hair cut the same way and mocking community organizers, there's just nothing there. There's nothing behind their own campaign aside from oil interests and a newly coopted (though not gullible) evangelical political establishment. On issue after issue after issue they are on the wrong side of American opinion.
In '04 the big issues were Iraq and terrorism. Reasonable people could disagree on what to do i.e., the policy debate. In '04 reasonable people could disagree on whose candidacy gave them more confidence in America, i.e., the emotional debate that Republicans are supposed to be good at, even though it's gotten them a slim, sometimes contested majority of delegates in the past two elections and nothing before that since Reagan and Willie Horton. In '08 the big issues are the economy, housing, energy, the environment, and yes, Iraq and terrorism. With the possible exception of energy American views heavily favor the Democratic positions. And at least some people actually like the Democratic ticket. Nobody liked Kerry and people's plastic detectors went off at Edwards.
I have never heard so much hair shirt wearing self flagellation as I've heard over the past week since McCain picked his running mate. Never has there been so much despair around an opponent's vice presidential nominee. Who cares if throngs of housewives show up at rallies, or if the Christian Right is suddenly energized by her candidacy? Neither are the voting bloc they once were. Neither women nor Christian evangelicals are that easy to pigeonhole or patronize. What's more, for those who are so easily swayed, they probably were waiting for an excuse to vote for McCain anyway, the so-called shy Tory, or the "Silent Majority". Now they've been flushed out, a known quantity, and not too bad. Meanwhile, Republican leaders are jubilant, telling America that Obama should have picked Hillary, spinning the yarn that personality will win over issues. Well coulda woulda shoulda. As if their candidates' personalities are automatically appealing while the other guy's aren't. What unbelievable hubris. Reminds me of Achilles.
For the remaining independents susceptible to this sort of identity politics, just wait until real flaws and doubts arise, as exist for McCain, Obama, Biden, both Clintons and both Bushes, and anyone else who has spent any time in the spotlight of a national campaign. Once her image is sullied by some offhanded comment, some sly gesture, something, adoration will shift either to resignation or revulsion; neither of which are good for turn-out. Obama was placed on a pedestal by many of his disciples, attaining feverish cult status that does not befit a democratic society. He was put on high and has since been taken back down to earth. Having it happen even before the convention will prove to be a blessing. Buyer's remorse has happened already for Obama, and the candidate survived in good shape. With just over 50 days to go, the Obama campaign can only trend up, while the McCain campaign will hold steady at best. People will become galvanized to his candidacy, but that would have happened anyway, or else we could have expected a blow-out, which no one ever expected.
Turnout matters too. Democrats have been at it for months, with bigger operations and more money than ever before. Republicans have one popular spokesperson they hired last week.
Even if Palin does well in the debates and public appearances, she won't be perfect, she won't appeal to everyone, and at the end of the campaign, she won't be president. Voters will vote for McCain, not her. We've seen the top of their game. That's all they've got. Expect more smears.
For any number of reasons, this race isn't over, but it won't be won or lost over who's on the ticket for vice president.
In '04 the big issues were Iraq and terrorism. Reasonable people could disagree on what to do i.e., the policy debate. In '04 reasonable people could disagree on whose candidacy gave them more confidence in America, i.e., the emotional debate that Republicans are supposed to be good at, even though it's gotten them a slim, sometimes contested majority of delegates in the past two elections and nothing before that since Reagan and Willie Horton. In '08 the big issues are the economy, housing, energy, the environment, and yes, Iraq and terrorism. With the possible exception of energy American views heavily favor the Democratic positions. And at least some people actually like the Democratic ticket. Nobody liked Kerry and people's plastic detectors went off at Edwards.
I have never heard so much hair shirt wearing self flagellation as I've heard over the past week since McCain picked his running mate. Never has there been so much despair around an opponent's vice presidential nominee. Who cares if throngs of housewives show up at rallies, or if the Christian Right is suddenly energized by her candidacy? Neither are the voting bloc they once were. Neither women nor Christian evangelicals are that easy to pigeonhole or patronize. What's more, for those who are so easily swayed, they probably were waiting for an excuse to vote for McCain anyway, the so-called shy Tory, or the "Silent Majority". Now they've been flushed out, a known quantity, and not too bad. Meanwhile, Republican leaders are jubilant, telling America that Obama should have picked Hillary, spinning the yarn that personality will win over issues. Well coulda woulda shoulda. As if their candidates' personalities are automatically appealing while the other guy's aren't. What unbelievable hubris. Reminds me of Achilles.
For the remaining independents susceptible to this sort of identity politics, just wait until real flaws and doubts arise, as exist for McCain, Obama, Biden, both Clintons and both Bushes, and anyone else who has spent any time in the spotlight of a national campaign. Once her image is sullied by some offhanded comment, some sly gesture, something, adoration will shift either to resignation or revulsion; neither of which are good for turn-out. Obama was placed on a pedestal by many of his disciples, attaining feverish cult status that does not befit a democratic society. He was put on high and has since been taken back down to earth. Having it happen even before the convention will prove to be a blessing. Buyer's remorse has happened already for Obama, and the candidate survived in good shape. With just over 50 days to go, the Obama campaign can only trend up, while the McCain campaign will hold steady at best. People will become galvanized to his candidacy, but that would have happened anyway, or else we could have expected a blow-out, which no one ever expected.
Turnout matters too. Democrats have been at it for months, with bigger operations and more money than ever before. Republicans have one popular spokesperson they hired last week.
Even if Palin does well in the debates and public appearances, she won't be perfect, she won't appeal to everyone, and at the end of the campaign, she won't be president. Voters will vote for McCain, not her. We've seen the top of their game. That's all they've got. Expect more smears.
For any number of reasons, this race isn't over, but it won't be won or lost over who's on the ticket for vice president.
Friday, September 05, 2008
Who Me? Elitist?!
Reading Paul Krugman's column today in the New York Times about the decades of deft Republican maneuvering around people's resentment of the educated, urban classes, it hit me hard that many Democrats are still missing the point on a matter of human nature.
People don't like it when someone comes off as better than themselves, their families, their lifestyles. Krugman writes,
"What the G.O.P. is selling, in other words, is the pure politics of resentment; you’re supposed to vote Republican to stick it to an elite that thinks it’s better than you. Or to put it another way, the G.O.P. is still the party of Nixon."
...all true in my opinion, but it only captures half of the phenomenon in play in the presidential politics of our era. On one hand, the GOP has become masterful at presenting the public with "salt of the earth" candidates who look and sound appealing; walking tall about family values, religion, the flag. On the other hand, the GOP has all but abandoned American conservatism, such as it was, for the wholesale auction of our infrastructure, natural resources, labor market, and government services. Lots of talk about leaving us alone to determine our own fate as pioneers of the land, masters of our fate, as they take our civil liberties and pillage our nation's coffers. But I digress. I haven't even gotten in the same zip code as my point.
Sure, the Republicans are all of those things. But Democrats, especially the urban, highly educated ones like myself and the people I know, need to do a little self examination. Maybe we do look down our noses at the poor, or at least at the less educated, more uncouth among us.
Many are the times that I've been at a party surrounded by like-minded liberals who serve the public interest as activists, environmentalists, health policy types and general academics, and who haven't spoken to someone with a twangy accent beyond stopping at a Cracker Barrel off the interstate on their way to California.
Many are the times that I have been at New York cocktail parties with those "elites"; people who want to do good, people who chose not to go to Wall Street in favor of one non-profit pursuit or another. They aren't bad people. They have good ideas. But they are genuinely out of touch with even the suburban wage slaves among us, let alone rural people.
Many are the times I've heard comments about someone or something being "redneck" or "white trash", somebody making backhanded comments about my living in Atlanta, as if this were Mississippi in 1956. They may mean well, but they really have nothing to say to someone who didn't go to college.
On the flip side:
Many are the times where some guy in a golf shirt thinks I'm "one of them" and lets loose on how poor people are stupid and don't deserve any help if they can't help themselves.
Many are the times that I've encountered someone who comes off as "one of us" but truly detests their Mexican help, and goes to work for no other reason than to make money, and treats the poor with charitable condescention.
Many are the times that I've heard wanting to be left alone as an excuse for slovenly selfishness, and many are the times that I've heard piety used to judge others and control that individuality that is so important to the American psyche.
I work in rural health care with rural people every day. Most of them are nurses or administrators, some of them are just people who have worked hard to help their communities. A good number of the would call themselves Republican, conservative, pro-life. Coming to these towns with my grad school ideas and my expensive accent I need to be aware at every moment. I need to practice true humility, and just listen, find things in common, make small talk, come off as "normal". I need (and want) to do these things because otherwise people would shut down. In doing so, I've learned that there are greater virtues than being smart, other ways to live beyond the i-phone/indy-rock/liberal arts school track. It's been wonderful to see America past the interstates. There are excellent people everywhere.
It is a universal truth that the highly educated and urban will intimidate the less educated and provincial.
It is also true that intimidation often leads to resentment.
It is also-also true that resentment makes people not want to vote for those who intimidate.
Any perceived difference in education and sophistication runs the risk of that resentment.
For a party that wishes to destroy the rights of workers, the environment, wages and welfare, this knowledge is the ultimate political Trojan Horse, built by Nixon, run through the walls of belief by Reagan, and slaying Troy by Bush. The ultimate gift-turned-force-of-destruction.
Democrats need to be more savvy about this in their political strategy. They also need to ask themselves what it is that makes them judge the very people they wish to help. Emotion matters. People care what you think of them. Policy is justified only later. Elections are won on these truths. Republicans have proven time and again that it's not how rich your family is, how many houses you own, or what stocks are in your portfolio. It's how you relate. FDR was rich as sin but he genuinely cared about people. He genuinely helped. Clinton was born poor, and became a slick, underhanded, and successful politician, but he cares about people.
Democrats: tell the country that the other guy doesn't care. Tell them that you do. Then shut up and listen.
People don't like it when someone comes off as better than themselves, their families, their lifestyles. Krugman writes,
"What the G.O.P. is selling, in other words, is the pure politics of resentment; you’re supposed to vote Republican to stick it to an elite that thinks it’s better than you. Or to put it another way, the G.O.P. is still the party of Nixon."
...all true in my opinion, but it only captures half of the phenomenon in play in the presidential politics of our era. On one hand, the GOP has become masterful at presenting the public with "salt of the earth" candidates who look and sound appealing; walking tall about family values, religion, the flag. On the other hand, the GOP has all but abandoned American conservatism, such as it was, for the wholesale auction of our infrastructure, natural resources, labor market, and government services. Lots of talk about leaving us alone to determine our own fate as pioneers of the land, masters of our fate, as they take our civil liberties and pillage our nation's coffers. But I digress. I haven't even gotten in the same zip code as my point.
Sure, the Republicans are all of those things. But Democrats, especially the urban, highly educated ones like myself and the people I know, need to do a little self examination. Maybe we do look down our noses at the poor, or at least at the less educated, more uncouth among us.
Many are the times that I've been at a party surrounded by like-minded liberals who serve the public interest as activists, environmentalists, health policy types and general academics, and who haven't spoken to someone with a twangy accent beyond stopping at a Cracker Barrel off the interstate on their way to California.
Many are the times that I have been at New York cocktail parties with those "elites"; people who want to do good, people who chose not to go to Wall Street in favor of one non-profit pursuit or another. They aren't bad people. They have good ideas. But they are genuinely out of touch with even the suburban wage slaves among us, let alone rural people.
Many are the times I've heard comments about someone or something being "redneck" or "white trash", somebody making backhanded comments about my living in Atlanta, as if this were Mississippi in 1956. They may mean well, but they really have nothing to say to someone who didn't go to college.
On the flip side:
Many are the times where some guy in a golf shirt thinks I'm "one of them" and lets loose on how poor people are stupid and don't deserve any help if they can't help themselves.
Many are the times that I've encountered someone who comes off as "one of us" but truly detests their Mexican help, and goes to work for no other reason than to make money, and treats the poor with charitable condescention.
Many are the times that I've heard wanting to be left alone as an excuse for slovenly selfishness, and many are the times that I've heard piety used to judge others and control that individuality that is so important to the American psyche.
I work in rural health care with rural people every day. Most of them are nurses or administrators, some of them are just people who have worked hard to help their communities. A good number of the would call themselves Republican, conservative, pro-life. Coming to these towns with my grad school ideas and my expensive accent I need to be aware at every moment. I need to practice true humility, and just listen, find things in common, make small talk, come off as "normal". I need (and want) to do these things because otherwise people would shut down. In doing so, I've learned that there are greater virtues than being smart, other ways to live beyond the i-phone/indy-rock/liberal arts school track. It's been wonderful to see America past the interstates. There are excellent people everywhere.
It is a universal truth that the highly educated and urban will intimidate the less educated and provincial.
It is also true that intimidation often leads to resentment.
It is also-also true that resentment makes people not want to vote for those who intimidate.
Any perceived difference in education and sophistication runs the risk of that resentment.
For a party that wishes to destroy the rights of workers, the environment, wages and welfare, this knowledge is the ultimate political Trojan Horse, built by Nixon, run through the walls of belief by Reagan, and slaying Troy by Bush. The ultimate gift-turned-force-of-destruction.
Democrats need to be more savvy about this in their political strategy. They also need to ask themselves what it is that makes them judge the very people they wish to help. Emotion matters. People care what you think of them. Policy is justified only later. Elections are won on these truths. Republicans have proven time and again that it's not how rich your family is, how many houses you own, or what stocks are in your portfolio. It's how you relate. FDR was rich as sin but he genuinely cared about people. He genuinely helped. Clinton was born poor, and became a slick, underhanded, and successful politician, but he cares about people.
Democrats: tell the country that the other guy doesn't care. Tell them that you do. Then shut up and listen.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Donkey Disease
My father sometimes recounts a friend of his from school who was famously handsome, but tried to pick up girls using love advice from Playboy. Let's call him Jim. Despite having everything going for him, Jim never could get a date. Looking back at my own time in school I remember thinking, if I can act this way, or that way, or some other way, I might score a prom date at the very least. It never worked.
In both Jim's and my own case, while we were looking for the perfect attitude, the perfect line, the right cologne, other guys were just saying, "I like that girl, I think I'll ask her out." Even if it didn't work every time, it worked. Meanwhile, Jim and I stayed home for the proverbial prom.
Getting older, I see that talking to women, selling stuff, or winning at something all require what the voodoo practitioners among us call mojo. For nerds, the best advice on this subject is found in the immortal words of Yoda, "Do or do not. There is no try."
At the root of that inability to just do is insecurity. It may come out of some chemical imbalance, or some past experience of getting burned, but the result is the same. People ask, "what if they don't like me?" or "what if I come off the wrong way?" It's self doubt through endless self analysis; sort of a Woody Allen navel gazing exercise.
For a long time I've watched Republicans do a great job at saying to themselves and everyone else, "I like what I believe in. I believe it's the right thing, and I think you'll see it my way if you give me a minute to explain..." These are the guys who get the girls.
For an equally long time I've watched Democrats backtrack, vacillate, waffle and eventually pancake. "Well, you see, it's a matter of the long term policy approach. When we examine what's at the root of the problem there are three basic phenomena at work, each of which we can ameliorate through a multipronged strategy of capital injections, programs and civil society blah blah blah heee hawww heee hawwwww..."
No wonder research psychologists have found conservatives to be more happy on average than liberals. It's gotta feel great to be so sure of your world view.
Some self examination and reevaluation of the situation is good. Listening to talking heads parsing every syllable of a convention speech and worrying if the wrong message came across is bad. In fact, responding to the talking heads just validates views that don't help your cause.
In November, Obama may win this election, and liberals may take control of most seats of government. None of that will matter until they grow a pair, stop responding to every criticism, acknowledging every special interest that feels slighted by some asinine comment or position, and say in simple terms what they believe in.
I've heard many Democrats say that coming at the issues from a simple, emotional viewpoint is somehow dumbing down the issues for the proletariat, but they're wrong, condescending, and in my opinion, don't deserve to govern.
It's not a matter of being intelligent, it's confidence. Too often this class of people view intelligence as the greatest virtue. It's a good thing to have, but on its own, it doesn't lead to greater morality, or even wise decisions. Feeling and belief matter. Standing up and saying you want something and you know you're right is just as important as explaining why you're right.
Watch Ted Kennedy. He gets up there, and for forty years has said exactly what he stands for. People can malign his character, but the consistency of his belief if beyond reproach. That will be his legacy.
Someone at the Denver convention needs to stand up and say, "I'm a Liberal. We're Liberals. We're here to do good, make this country safer, stronger, and a better place for our children. The other guys couldn't do it, and now it's our turn." I've been hearing bits and pieces of it, but then I read of chatter from the convention floor about whether this or that speech was too lofty, too wonky, came on too strong, or offended someone. Shut up. Stand there and cheer. Ignore the critics and seize the day. It's our turn. We're right, they're wrong. Let's roll.
In both Jim's and my own case, while we were looking for the perfect attitude, the perfect line, the right cologne, other guys were just saying, "I like that girl, I think I'll ask her out." Even if it didn't work every time, it worked. Meanwhile, Jim and I stayed home for the proverbial prom.
Getting older, I see that talking to women, selling stuff, or winning at something all require what the voodoo practitioners among us call mojo. For nerds, the best advice on this subject is found in the immortal words of Yoda, "Do or do not. There is no try."
At the root of that inability to just do is insecurity. It may come out of some chemical imbalance, or some past experience of getting burned, but the result is the same. People ask, "what if they don't like me?" or "what if I come off the wrong way?" It's self doubt through endless self analysis; sort of a Woody Allen navel gazing exercise.
For a long time I've watched Republicans do a great job at saying to themselves and everyone else, "I like what I believe in. I believe it's the right thing, and I think you'll see it my way if you give me a minute to explain..." These are the guys who get the girls.
For an equally long time I've watched Democrats backtrack, vacillate, waffle and eventually pancake. "Well, you see, it's a matter of the long term policy approach. When we examine what's at the root of the problem there are three basic phenomena at work, each of which we can ameliorate through a multipronged strategy of capital injections, programs and civil society blah blah blah heee hawww heee hawwwww..."
No wonder research psychologists have found conservatives to be more happy on average than liberals. It's gotta feel great to be so sure of your world view.
Some self examination and reevaluation of the situation is good. Listening to talking heads parsing every syllable of a convention speech and worrying if the wrong message came across is bad. In fact, responding to the talking heads just validates views that don't help your cause.
In November, Obama may win this election, and liberals may take control of most seats of government. None of that will matter until they grow a pair, stop responding to every criticism, acknowledging every special interest that feels slighted by some asinine comment or position, and say in simple terms what they believe in.
I've heard many Democrats say that coming at the issues from a simple, emotional viewpoint is somehow dumbing down the issues for the proletariat, but they're wrong, condescending, and in my opinion, don't deserve to govern.
It's not a matter of being intelligent, it's confidence. Too often this class of people view intelligence as the greatest virtue. It's a good thing to have, but on its own, it doesn't lead to greater morality, or even wise decisions. Feeling and belief matter. Standing up and saying you want something and you know you're right is just as important as explaining why you're right.
Watch Ted Kennedy. He gets up there, and for forty years has said exactly what he stands for. People can malign his character, but the consistency of his belief if beyond reproach. That will be his legacy.
Someone at the Denver convention needs to stand up and say, "I'm a Liberal. We're Liberals. We're here to do good, make this country safer, stronger, and a better place for our children. The other guys couldn't do it, and now it's our turn." I've been hearing bits and pieces of it, but then I read of chatter from the convention floor about whether this or that speech was too lofty, too wonky, came on too strong, or offended someone. Shut up. Stand there and cheer. Ignore the critics and seize the day. It's our turn. We're right, they're wrong. Let's roll.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
"Guns don't kill people...
...people kill people?" We've heard that before. In some sense this is true. But if we can use the transitive properties of logic to somehow remove guns from the equation, solving for x as "people", why can't we go a step forward and add to that adage, ..."People + guns = more dead people."
You can also say, "cars don't kill people..." This is true, so long as a car is parked, or cruising unmanned over a smooth stretch of Antarctica. Cars might kill penguins, I guess.
It's fair to say that the ultimate perpetrator of homicide, accidental or otherwise, is almost always a person. A penguin may pick up a gun when threatened by an unmanned car, but that doesn't harm anyone.
Point is, we require that anyone who drives a car pass certain requirements that are intended to reduce the chance that they kill someone. They need to be able to see, to read road signs, to know the laws, and to get a little practice before being unleashed on the road system. Cars need to be registered to someone so they can be traceable in the event of an accident or a crime.
Society has judged that driving is a right, but not at the cost of great public risk. We regulate drivers and we regulate the cars they drive because it saves lives and reduces burdens on society.
Society has decided that free speech is a right, so long as it doesn't insight violence.
Society has decided that gun ownership is a right. Isn't there some responsibility to reduce the risks that come with it?
Individual rights are curtailed when they infringe on the liberties of others, on public safety. One person's private safety should not be allowed to override the safety another. Allowing anyone with a gun to ride a subway train waiting for a crime so they can feel justified blowing someone away is not an acceptable method of keeping the peace.
The basic principle that seems right to me is: you're a responsible person, so prove it and you can do whatever you want so long as it doesn't put others in danger.
What your rights as a gun owner are:
1. You have a right to any gun you want.
2. You have a right to any gun any time. No waiting periods. Just present your license, get the gun registered in your name and away you go.
3. You can use it to defend your life and your property while on your property. Off your property, unless your life is under imminent threat, defense is the domain of our police and military. No vigilantes.
4. You can use it for livelihood, sport and recreation as permitted by existing law.
What your responsibilities as a gun owner are:
1. You must be a licensed gun owner, having passed a state-administered safety test, and being eligible based on a background check.
2. Any gun you own must be licensed to you. Guns must have serial numbers and ballistics reports so they can be traced in the event of a crime.
3. If it's stolen or lost, you must report it stolen or face civil and/or criminal liability for its misuse. If you give it to someone, they must register the gun and be a registered gun owner.
4. You risk losing your license through misuse of a gun that is registered to you.
5. There are places, like airports, and enclosed, crowded places where your right to defend yourself poses a greater risk to others that can be justified. Local, state and federal bodies should be allowed to pass laws based on this principle.
As good as it may sound, unless you're the only person on earth, absolute freedom runs the risk of putting others in harm's way. That's why we have a legal process. That's why we can't just do whatever we want. I accept that because it lets me live a very good life, far better than if I lived somewhere with no laws, where anyone can take my life or livelihood.It's our government. We get to vote on these matters. We're not powerless. It's OK to pass some laws that might protect people. It's about reducing harm while ensuring rights, not just ensuring rights.
If we had no power over our government's imposing of restrictions, that's tyranny. If we don't demand any restrictions, that's anarchy. Somewhere between Russia and the Congo lies the power balance of American life.
I think we've been leaning towards the Congo on gun rights.
This 4th of July, take a minute to celebrate not only your freedoms to do what you please. Think about your freedoms from things. Neither can be taken for granted.
You can also say, "cars don't kill people..." This is true, so long as a car is parked, or cruising unmanned over a smooth stretch of Antarctica. Cars might kill penguins, I guess.
It's fair to say that the ultimate perpetrator of homicide, accidental or otherwise, is almost always a person. A penguin may pick up a gun when threatened by an unmanned car, but that doesn't harm anyone.
Point is, we require that anyone who drives a car pass certain requirements that are intended to reduce the chance that they kill someone. They need to be able to see, to read road signs, to know the laws, and to get a little practice before being unleashed on the road system. Cars need to be registered to someone so they can be traceable in the event of an accident or a crime.
Society has judged that driving is a right, but not at the cost of great public risk. We regulate drivers and we regulate the cars they drive because it saves lives and reduces burdens on society.
Society has decided that free speech is a right, so long as it doesn't insight violence.
Society has decided that gun ownership is a right. Isn't there some responsibility to reduce the risks that come with it?
Individual rights are curtailed when they infringe on the liberties of others, on public safety. One person's private safety should not be allowed to override the safety another. Allowing anyone with a gun to ride a subway train waiting for a crime so they can feel justified blowing someone away is not an acceptable method of keeping the peace.
The basic principle that seems right to me is: you're a responsible person, so prove it and you can do whatever you want so long as it doesn't put others in danger.
What your rights as a gun owner are:
1. You have a right to any gun you want.
2. You have a right to any gun any time. No waiting periods. Just present your license, get the gun registered in your name and away you go.
3. You can use it to defend your life and your property while on your property. Off your property, unless your life is under imminent threat, defense is the domain of our police and military. No vigilantes.
4. You can use it for livelihood, sport and recreation as permitted by existing law.
What your responsibilities as a gun owner are:
1. You must be a licensed gun owner, having passed a state-administered safety test, and being eligible based on a background check.
2. Any gun you own must be licensed to you. Guns must have serial numbers and ballistics reports so they can be traced in the event of a crime.
3. If it's stolen or lost, you must report it stolen or face civil and/or criminal liability for its misuse. If you give it to someone, they must register the gun and be a registered gun owner.
4. You risk losing your license through misuse of a gun that is registered to you.
5. There are places, like airports, and enclosed, crowded places where your right to defend yourself poses a greater risk to others that can be justified. Local, state and federal bodies should be allowed to pass laws based on this principle.
As good as it may sound, unless you're the only person on earth, absolute freedom runs the risk of putting others in harm's way. That's why we have a legal process. That's why we can't just do whatever we want. I accept that because it lets me live a very good life, far better than if I lived somewhere with no laws, where anyone can take my life or livelihood.It's our government. We get to vote on these matters. We're not powerless. It's OK to pass some laws that might protect people. It's about reducing harm while ensuring rights, not just ensuring rights.
If we had no power over our government's imposing of restrictions, that's tyranny. If we don't demand any restrictions, that's anarchy. Somewhere between Russia and the Congo lies the power balance of American life.
I think we've been leaning towards the Congo on gun rights.
This 4th of July, take a minute to celebrate not only your freedoms to do what you please. Think about your freedoms from things. Neither can be taken for granted.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Dreams of My Father
Whether he ever really said it or not, for a long time I've taken as my father's chief piece of advice that above all else it is a good idea to cultivate cheap tastes. There you have it, a three-word summary of all the wisdom that a boy could expect of his old man. This paternal proverb may have greater staying power in my father's impressions on my psyche than any walk along the beach, game of catch, or airplane glue-addled time hunkered over a plastic model of a B-29 ever could have.
Becoming a man has meant putting away childish things in small increments, seemingly unnoticeable without some sense of time. Finishing college was not the end of all depravity, but merely the beginning of more responsibilities that get in the way of the depraved times I'd grown accustomed to. Getting married didn't change much, but it had eons of symbolic baggage attached to the rite, so much so that even if the average symbolic suitcase weighs as much as a feather, their combined weight places a pressure on many newlyweds great enough to create the very diamonds so often at its center. Having kids will require many of the childish things I cling to to be passed on to the next generation, leaving me to find new, fatherly things to take on.
Being a married (as yet childless) man as I am it's no wonder then that thoughts of my father grow ever prevalent in the daily cycle of musings that passes for conscious life here in my head. This evening I found myself in a bar on the shores of Lake Huron in eastern Michigan about 3 hours north of Detroit. Taking my order of foodservice grade chicken tenders and fries, the bartender remarked that he'd never had Pabst Blue Ribbon before, the beer I was presently swilling. He was a young guy and could be excused for having never tried one of America's, perhaps the world's, greatest beers. I offered my wholehearted endorsement for the beer to the guy and finished my second. In earnest midwestern fashion he said he'd try it this evening.
That advice to cultivate cheap tastes echoed back to me over the bad classic rock and chatter. I imagined my father, who is very much alive, along side Yoda, Obiwan Kinobi and Anekin Skywalker beaming on as I tilted my head back to work on my can of beer. The music almost changed to Ewok celebration. I was really enjoying Pabst Blue Ribbon to the core of my being; not out of any sense of self-sacrifice, but as something that I'd choose above most plasuible alternatives, taking price out of the equation. I had really cultivated a cheap taste. It isn't the only one.
Becoming a man has meant putting away childish things in small increments, seemingly unnoticeable without some sense of time. Finishing college was not the end of all depravity, but merely the beginning of more responsibilities that get in the way of the depraved times I'd grown accustomed to. Getting married didn't change much, but it had eons of symbolic baggage attached to the rite, so much so that even if the average symbolic suitcase weighs as much as a feather, their combined weight places a pressure on many newlyweds great enough to create the very diamonds so often at its center. Having kids will require many of the childish things I cling to to be passed on to the next generation, leaving me to find new, fatherly things to take on.
Being a married (as yet childless) man as I am it's no wonder then that thoughts of my father grow ever prevalent in the daily cycle of musings that passes for conscious life here in my head. This evening I found myself in a bar on the shores of Lake Huron in eastern Michigan about 3 hours north of Detroit. Taking my order of foodservice grade chicken tenders and fries, the bartender remarked that he'd never had Pabst Blue Ribbon before, the beer I was presently swilling. He was a young guy and could be excused for having never tried one of America's, perhaps the world's, greatest beers. I offered my wholehearted endorsement for the beer to the guy and finished my second. In earnest midwestern fashion he said he'd try it this evening.
That advice to cultivate cheap tastes echoed back to me over the bad classic rock and chatter. I imagined my father, who is very much alive, along side Yoda, Obiwan Kinobi and Anekin Skywalker beaming on as I tilted my head back to work on my can of beer. The music almost changed to Ewok celebration. I was really enjoying Pabst Blue Ribbon to the core of my being; not out of any sense of self-sacrifice, but as something that I'd choose above most plasuible alternatives, taking price out of the equation. I had really cultivated a cheap taste. It isn't the only one.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Conservative Cosmology
As a dreamy observer at night I gaze into the political cosmos. I am now old enough to make my own astronomical observations. I've been around long enough to see some familiarity in the passing of political movements over grounded points of reference like the tides of the news cycles, and the deeper patterns of mid-term and presidential elections. I've watched parties pass through elections changing their positions from the last time they were in full view. I've seen the meteoric careers of politicians soar overhead, burning themselves out. I've watched the brilliance of primary candidates be eclipsed by something bigger and closer.
Of course, this is a metaphor... knowing where a stellar body is going to be this time next year is a different thing from knowing the outcome of an election.
But consider the conservative movement as a star. In the 50s and early 60s, scattered particles of thought began to coalesce into one region of political space. A gaseous object was formed. As the 60s wore on and the clusters of leftist thinking was pulled apart by its own mass, those particles gravitated towards the increasingly massive body of a political movement. The old political coalitions from the New Deal wore down to elemental hydrogen, floating in a torrid vacuum through the 70s. Somewhere in that epoch, the movement reached critical mass, fusing into a blinding star, releasing energy even as its mass grew to ever greater proportions. And the mass of past brilliance continued to drift towards the Conservative Star.
By 1980, the Conservative Star was fast on its way to red supergiant status. Whole planets of belief fell into its influence. Christian fundamentalist particles fused with free marketeers and civil libertarians.
The 80s was a period of runaway growth. But a challenger came into view around 1992, another stellar body began to orbit in a binary fashion, taking some of the Conservative Star's mass for itself, grabbing votes at the center. But galactic catastrophe struck our region. The political pieces all fell into the Conservative Star's gravity well, some of them not so conservative. A tipping point was reached. The coalition was too big. Deep in the hellish core of the star the original members felt marginalized and began to bubble and vibrate furiously. The red supergiant swelled, charring and consuming planets and interstellar dust as its diameter grew to precarious proportions.
If my observations are correct there will be a supernova in November of 2008. From where I view it, a political object can only get so big before it destroys itself, only to create something new. It's a force of nature that cannot be prevented. Once the Conservative Star casts off its mass and energy in a brief blaze, an angry brown dwarf will remain; a stubborn group of Ron Paul zealots and fundamentalists without a political home. Their energy will one day be subsumed into some other stellar body.
A universal truth is that our region of space will continue to knock the same particles back and forth. We'll continue to hear the same arguments over moral issues like abortion, economic ones around public or private investment, and basic cultural forces separating urban existence from suburban and rural, rich from poor. Energy will shift from one star to some future object to gravitate towards, but the mass and energy in the system will remain. The law of conservation of matter and energy means that conservatives and conservative ideas will not go away with a massive loss, they'll just lose coherence and influence only to reform with different constituent parts at some later date.
To borrow a line from Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun.
Of course, this is a metaphor... knowing where a stellar body is going to be this time next year is a different thing from knowing the outcome of an election.
But consider the conservative movement as a star. In the 50s and early 60s, scattered particles of thought began to coalesce into one region of political space. A gaseous object was formed. As the 60s wore on and the clusters of leftist thinking was pulled apart by its own mass, those particles gravitated towards the increasingly massive body of a political movement. The old political coalitions from the New Deal wore down to elemental hydrogen, floating in a torrid vacuum through the 70s. Somewhere in that epoch, the movement reached critical mass, fusing into a blinding star, releasing energy even as its mass grew to ever greater proportions. And the mass of past brilliance continued to drift towards the Conservative Star.
By 1980, the Conservative Star was fast on its way to red supergiant status. Whole planets of belief fell into its influence. Christian fundamentalist particles fused with free marketeers and civil libertarians.
The 80s was a period of runaway growth. But a challenger came into view around 1992, another stellar body began to orbit in a binary fashion, taking some of the Conservative Star's mass for itself, grabbing votes at the center. But galactic catastrophe struck our region. The political pieces all fell into the Conservative Star's gravity well, some of them not so conservative. A tipping point was reached. The coalition was too big. Deep in the hellish core of the star the original members felt marginalized and began to bubble and vibrate furiously. The red supergiant swelled, charring and consuming planets and interstellar dust as its diameter grew to precarious proportions.
If my observations are correct there will be a supernova in November of 2008. From where I view it, a political object can only get so big before it destroys itself, only to create something new. It's a force of nature that cannot be prevented. Once the Conservative Star casts off its mass and energy in a brief blaze, an angry brown dwarf will remain; a stubborn group of Ron Paul zealots and fundamentalists without a political home. Their energy will one day be subsumed into some other stellar body.
A universal truth is that our region of space will continue to knock the same particles back and forth. We'll continue to hear the same arguments over moral issues like abortion, economic ones around public or private investment, and basic cultural forces separating urban existence from suburban and rural, rich from poor. Energy will shift from one star to some future object to gravitate towards, but the mass and energy in the system will remain. The law of conservation of matter and energy means that conservatives and conservative ideas will not go away with a massive loss, they'll just lose coherence and influence only to reform with different constituent parts at some later date.
To borrow a line from Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
The AIDS Myth
Following the Reverend Wright saga as loosely as possible without losing a grip in the zeitgiest, one thing got my attention and seemed worth writing about. It was the myth that AIDS was developed and released by the US government in order to kill off American Blacks and the world's poor.
First, it's important to discuss the basis behind this belief. When I was in public health school, one of my professors liked to tell ong-winded stories about his days in Nigeria spearheading smallpox eradication. He was on the team that wiped the disease from the earth, so he was entitled to the high horse he straddled. The topic of the origin of the AIDS myth came up one day in class. He said that the myth that the CIA was responsible for AIDS came from Soviet Psy-Ops. The belief dispersed among Soviet African allies; like Angola and Mozambique, embroiled in the cold war fought in jungles across the world.
Then, there's the scientific way of looking at the disease. There's a simian variant to AIDS that is common among monkeys commonly consumed in the form of "bush meat" it was only a matter of time before the bugs in the monkeys wised up to the endless supply of human T-cells available to chew on and turn into virus factories, just a monkey cutlet away. There's even genetic evidence that tracks the human origins of AIDS to regions of East Africa, going back decades before the civil rights movement. A decent conspiracy theory would at least have its timing right.
Here's a link to a good article that covers many of the theories of the disease's origin, including the conspiracies.
Next, being my blog, I want to put my own conjecture into the fray. If the CIA or the FBI indeed ever thought that Black Americans were somehow an existential threat to the nation, why not plant some operatives and uncover or fabricate conspiracies among their leaders? That more closely follows the M.O. of people like J. Edgar Hoover. It's certainly more targeted, contained and proven than biological warfare. Why would anyone release a disease that kills indiscriminately across all continents of the world, all human lifestyles, all skin tones with the goal of eradicating one group? What sense does that make? Think of the essential narcissism underlying the belief that the AIDS epidemic is all about me and people like me. Think of the grandiose paranoia that supports such an irrational belief.
And this belief is alive and well among many, thriving among certain members of the black intelligencia and spreading in a fashion rivaling the virulence of the disease itself.
Reverend Wright wasn't the first time I've heard this from surprising quarters. My wife had a long, drawn out argument with an anthropology professor who perpetuated the belief that AIDS was a conspiracy against poor blacks. To keep the discussion grounded in fact, she brought in journal articles that refuted the myth, trying at least to present a dissenting point of view to the (mostly black) class she was in. The professor grudgingly agreed to disagree on her points, despite presenting any documentation lend some fact to her beliefs. This coming from a Ph.D. candidate at a major university teaching hundreds of young minds a year.
And I imagine powerful preachers across the country, leaders of their flocks, presiding over their congregants every Sunday with messages of paranoia, hatred, and superstition. I imagine college professors, sitting comfortably in the easy chair of their tenure, dusting chalk off their fingertips with an air of nobility as they explain to a wide-eyed class the truths about the government's involvement in the AIDS epidemic.
Yesterday as I was leaving work, I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt with a cartoon crack vial on the front, with the words "Government Assistance" underneath. That belief ignores demand and makes up something about supply. I think that crack is simply the most profitable way of dividing cocaine up into small bits and ensuring that people can never get enough. But that's another theory to debunk another time.
It needs to be said that there's usually some rational basis behind irrational thinking. It is accepted fact that researchers allowed scores of black men over a period of 40 years ending in the early 70s to die of syphilis in the so-called Tuskegee experiments. It seems plausible that any militant group in this country has someone from the intelligence community assigned to their case. It is definitely the case that no matter who you are, if you're black, you're more likely to end up in a traffic stop, and you're best off avoiding most contact with the police altogether. If you're black, there's good reason to be paranoid. As Henry Kissinger once said, "even paranoids have enemies."
But belief that it the government is to blame for any or all social ills just doesn't add up and does no one any good. Such unfounded, emotional beliefs are often the motivating tools of demagogues grasping for ever greater amounts of power. To use an extreme example, consider the myths that Hitler perpetuated in the early thirties placing blame for the collapse of interwar Germany on the Jews. Hitler's beliefs and assertions superseded dozens of rational explanations, such as worldwide economic collapse, a country recovering from a war that killed millions and destroyed much of Europe's industrial complex. He would never have been at the center of a world war without such myths motivating millions of men and women to his cause. There is a seduction to myth that leaves logic to the cynics and the intellectual weaklings among us. People in search of power will always put truth aside for their own sakes, and it often works.
The AIDS myth would never have gone anywhere if it wasn't somehow useful to authority figures who can also claim themselves as victims. With the exception of certain preachers and professors, it does no one any good.
First, it's important to discuss the basis behind this belief. When I was in public health school, one of my professors liked to tell ong-winded stories about his days in Nigeria spearheading smallpox eradication. He was on the team that wiped the disease from the earth, so he was entitled to the high horse he straddled. The topic of the origin of the AIDS myth came up one day in class. He said that the myth that the CIA was responsible for AIDS came from Soviet Psy-Ops. The belief dispersed among Soviet African allies; like Angola and Mozambique, embroiled in the cold war fought in jungles across the world.
Then, there's the scientific way of looking at the disease. There's a simian variant to AIDS that is common among monkeys commonly consumed in the form of "bush meat" it was only a matter of time before the bugs in the monkeys wised up to the endless supply of human T-cells available to chew on and turn into virus factories, just a monkey cutlet away. There's even genetic evidence that tracks the human origins of AIDS to regions of East Africa, going back decades before the civil rights movement. A decent conspiracy theory would at least have its timing right.
Here's a link to a good article that covers many of the theories of the disease's origin, including the conspiracies.
Next, being my blog, I want to put my own conjecture into the fray. If the CIA or the FBI indeed ever thought that Black Americans were somehow an existential threat to the nation, why not plant some operatives and uncover or fabricate conspiracies among their leaders? That more closely follows the M.O. of people like J. Edgar Hoover. It's certainly more targeted, contained and proven than biological warfare. Why would anyone release a disease that kills indiscriminately across all continents of the world, all human lifestyles, all skin tones with the goal of eradicating one group? What sense does that make? Think of the essential narcissism underlying the belief that the AIDS epidemic is all about me and people like me. Think of the grandiose paranoia that supports such an irrational belief.
And this belief is alive and well among many, thriving among certain members of the black intelligencia and spreading in a fashion rivaling the virulence of the disease itself.
Reverend Wright wasn't the first time I've heard this from surprising quarters. My wife had a long, drawn out argument with an anthropology professor who perpetuated the belief that AIDS was a conspiracy against poor blacks. To keep the discussion grounded in fact, she brought in journal articles that refuted the myth, trying at least to present a dissenting point of view to the (mostly black) class she was in. The professor grudgingly agreed to disagree on her points, despite presenting any documentation lend some fact to her beliefs. This coming from a Ph.D. candidate at a major university teaching hundreds of young minds a year.
And I imagine powerful preachers across the country, leaders of their flocks, presiding over their congregants every Sunday with messages of paranoia, hatred, and superstition. I imagine college professors, sitting comfortably in the easy chair of their tenure, dusting chalk off their fingertips with an air of nobility as they explain to a wide-eyed class the truths about the government's involvement in the AIDS epidemic.
Yesterday as I was leaving work, I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt with a cartoon crack vial on the front, with the words "Government Assistance" underneath. That belief ignores demand and makes up something about supply. I think that crack is simply the most profitable way of dividing cocaine up into small bits and ensuring that people can never get enough. But that's another theory to debunk another time.
It needs to be said that there's usually some rational basis behind irrational thinking. It is accepted fact that researchers allowed scores of black men over a period of 40 years ending in the early 70s to die of syphilis in the so-called Tuskegee experiments. It seems plausible that any militant group in this country has someone from the intelligence community assigned to their case. It is definitely the case that no matter who you are, if you're black, you're more likely to end up in a traffic stop, and you're best off avoiding most contact with the police altogether. If you're black, there's good reason to be paranoid. As Henry Kissinger once said, "even paranoids have enemies."
But belief that it the government is to blame for any or all social ills just doesn't add up and does no one any good. Such unfounded, emotional beliefs are often the motivating tools of demagogues grasping for ever greater amounts of power. To use an extreme example, consider the myths that Hitler perpetuated in the early thirties placing blame for the collapse of interwar Germany on the Jews. Hitler's beliefs and assertions superseded dozens of rational explanations, such as worldwide economic collapse, a country recovering from a war that killed millions and destroyed much of Europe's industrial complex. He would never have been at the center of a world war without such myths motivating millions of men and women to his cause. There is a seduction to myth that leaves logic to the cynics and the intellectual weaklings among us. People in search of power will always put truth aside for their own sakes, and it often works.
The AIDS myth would never have gone anywhere if it wasn't somehow useful to authority figures who can also claim themselves as victims. With the exception of certain preachers and professors, it does no one any good.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Road Trip Radio
I just got back from a 6-hour trip to eastern North Carolina for a meeting. It feels more like 12 since I came and went after staying only one night at a second-rate Holiday Inn Express. This morning I skipped the complementary and well-known Holiday Inn Express Nasty Cinnamon Buns Soggy Eggs and Gross-looking but probably good Sausage breakfast in favor of one of the South's many, many Waffle Houses. Two eggs scrambled, double hashbrowns scattered, covered and peppered, and black coffee.
The trip was unremarkable and pretty easy, save for one detail. In a mad rush I didn't check if the car I rented had satellite radio. Turns out that they don't all have it these days. I've done the Atlanta-DC run many times, coping with a minimum of 10 hours through some of the worst FM radio in the country and I was ready to cope this time, but this time was the first that it actually got under my skin a little. Maybe it's everyone's endless coverage of the presidential campaign, maybe I've just grown weary of hoping for a Lite Rock or Top 40 station just to give my "seek thumb" a break from preachers and Christian Rock that sounds kind of cool till the guy starts singing about passion and boundless love.
Sometime around hour 2 of the first day, as I got near Augusta, each of the Atlanta stations faded out. First it was 96 Rock, its angry teenager butt rock fading into static, then Rock 100 (or whatever it is), Stone Temple Pilots stuff (I remember from high school so it has to be good, right?). Then the often vaginal but sometimes all right Dave FM gave up its ghostess. Last, the 97.1 The River's classic hits flitted out into a country station with annoying ads for a goofy morning show.
So I moved to talk radio, hoping for something at least a little interesting.
First, there was Rush, broadcasting with great authority coast-to-coast and to anywhere in the world where the US has military presence. He congratulates himself on Operation Chaos, the less-clever-than-you-think march of his followers to the Democratic primaries to cast votes for Hillary Clinton so as to ensure a humiliating victory for the necessary evil for true believers John McCain. Some guy calls in and says he feels like drinking a latte and test driving a Prius since he's temporarily registered for the "Democrat" party. He swears to Rush with great confidence that first thing tomorrow he's going to switch back his allegiance to the party that he favors but probably goes against his economic interests as a guy who works for a living.
Somewhere in the bland South Carolina piedmont I went to the NPR affiliate. Someone whose gender I can't quite figure out from their voice is telling me about all the environmentally friendly appliances that went into their $500,000 gutting of a row house in a neighborhood next to where I lived for a while in DC. They cut to the interviewer, who has a masculine but unthreatening middle age growl to his voice, asking questions about this or that feature of the modern monument to smug sanctimony that the young woman with an expensive sounding accent calls home.
I stop at McDonalds for a Number 2 with a Diet Coke (for here), stretch my legs and climb behind the wheel.
Some guy who I don't recognize is holding court about how "enhanced interrogation" is absolutely necessary to gather information from people suspected of terrorist leanings under any circumstances and in all conditions, declaring in no uncertain terms that anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool who would risk the lives of all Americans (and our children) for the sake of principles that we've subscribed to by treaty with the rest of the free world. The guy's narrow gauge train of thought shifts tracks to something about how he's insulted by the idea that working class Americans might feel "bitter" about how things have been going over the past 8 or so years.
NPR comes in 5-by-5 thanks to affiliates scattered all across the Carolinas. They're running a narrative piece from, a writer in Ohio who mourns after the old growth trees that her neighbor cut down from his land to sell for timber. She understands that it was his land and he had all rights to do as he pleased with his trees. She was especially fond of an old Tulip Popular that they called the Privacy Tree for its shielding of their kitchen from a nearby road. She brightens up about the whole thing, as new growth sprouts from the soil, new birds come to roost in its tender branches, and new sounds echo through the wispy underbrush each spring.
The trip finally ended, and now, as I blog off of my back porch listening to crickets in the dark with cold beer, I have time to reflect. Most of the trip was a Baptism by Blustering Babble. I'd hit scan more times than I care to remember. I gnawed a sore spot in my cheek as I grew fed up with the irritating opinions that had held me as a captive audience for so long. But from all the static a pattern emerged. The right wing is on the wane for now. They're out of touch with the American zeitgeist. They've lost their mojo. Maybe people's patience for their messiahs is growing thin. It's true that Liberal banter finds its home somewhere in the space between the informative (but safely diplomatic to all parties, well-considered, morally vetted by experts and gently put forth) concerns to the downright milquetoast agitprop that passes for advocating for the most important issues of our day. It's also true that people are gravitating towards those messages, if the messenger.
I think some big changes are near for our world, our country and me. Well, for me anyway. I know I'll get satellite radio when I can afford it.
The trip was unremarkable and pretty easy, save for one detail. In a mad rush I didn't check if the car I rented had satellite radio. Turns out that they don't all have it these days. I've done the Atlanta-DC run many times, coping with a minimum of 10 hours through some of the worst FM radio in the country and I was ready to cope this time, but this time was the first that it actually got under my skin a little. Maybe it's everyone's endless coverage of the presidential campaign, maybe I've just grown weary of hoping for a Lite Rock or Top 40 station just to give my "seek thumb" a break from preachers and Christian Rock that sounds kind of cool till the guy starts singing about passion and boundless love.
Sometime around hour 2 of the first day, as I got near Augusta, each of the Atlanta stations faded out. First it was 96 Rock, its angry teenager butt rock fading into static, then Rock 100 (or whatever it is), Stone Temple Pilots stuff (I remember from high school so it has to be good, right?). Then the often vaginal but sometimes all right Dave FM gave up its ghostess. Last, the 97.1 The River's classic hits flitted out into a country station with annoying ads for a goofy morning show.
So I moved to talk radio, hoping for something at least a little interesting.
First, there was Rush, broadcasting with great authority coast-to-coast and to anywhere in the world where the US has military presence. He congratulates himself on Operation Chaos, the less-clever-than-you-think march of his followers to the Democratic primaries to cast votes for Hillary Clinton so as to ensure a humiliating victory for the necessary evil for true believers John McCain. Some guy calls in and says he feels like drinking a latte and test driving a Prius since he's temporarily registered for the "Democrat" party. He swears to Rush with great confidence that first thing tomorrow he's going to switch back his allegiance to the party that he favors but probably goes against his economic interests as a guy who works for a living.
Somewhere in the bland South Carolina piedmont I went to the NPR affiliate. Someone whose gender I can't quite figure out from their voice is telling me about all the environmentally friendly appliances that went into their $500,000 gutting of a row house in a neighborhood next to where I lived for a while in DC. They cut to the interviewer, who has a masculine but unthreatening middle age growl to his voice, asking questions about this or that feature of the modern monument to smug sanctimony that the young woman with an expensive sounding accent calls home.
I stop at McDonalds for a Number 2 with a Diet Coke (for here), stretch my legs and climb behind the wheel.
Some guy who I don't recognize is holding court about how "enhanced interrogation" is absolutely necessary to gather information from people suspected of terrorist leanings under any circumstances and in all conditions, declaring in no uncertain terms that anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool who would risk the lives of all Americans (and our children) for the sake of principles that we've subscribed to by treaty with the rest of the free world. The guy's narrow gauge train of thought shifts tracks to something about how he's insulted by the idea that working class Americans might feel "bitter" about how things have been going over the past 8 or so years.
NPR comes in 5-by-5 thanks to affiliates scattered all across the Carolinas. They're running a narrative piece from, a writer in Ohio who mourns after the old growth trees that her neighbor cut down from his land to sell for timber. She understands that it was his land and he had all rights to do as he pleased with his trees. She was especially fond of an old Tulip Popular that they called the Privacy Tree for its shielding of their kitchen from a nearby road. She brightens up about the whole thing, as new growth sprouts from the soil, new birds come to roost in its tender branches, and new sounds echo through the wispy underbrush each spring.
The trip finally ended, and now, as I blog off of my back porch listening to crickets in the dark with cold beer, I have time to reflect. Most of the trip was a Baptism by Blustering Babble. I'd hit scan more times than I care to remember. I gnawed a sore spot in my cheek as I grew fed up with the irritating opinions that had held me as a captive audience for so long. But from all the static a pattern emerged. The right wing is on the wane for now. They're out of touch with the American zeitgeist. They've lost their mojo. Maybe people's patience for their messiahs is growing thin. It's true that Liberal banter finds its home somewhere in the space between the informative (but safely diplomatic to all parties, well-considered, morally vetted by experts and gently put forth) concerns to the downright milquetoast agitprop that passes for advocating for the most important issues of our day. It's also true that people are gravitating towards those messages, if the messenger.
I think some big changes are near for our world, our country and me. Well, for me anyway. I know I'll get satellite radio when I can afford it.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Conservatives and McCain
The GOP race has now narrowed down to two viable candidates. On one hand, there's Mike Huckabee, whose no-nonsense old time revival preacher style looks prophetlike to the bible belt and like a carnival hawker everywhere that they believe in evolution. And then there's McCain, the senator with years of experience, hard-ass conservative bonafides on foreign policy, an 80-some percent conservative voting record aside from that, and a proven ability to work on both sides of the aisle. He might be the most likeable figure in the GOP to come along in a generation. What's the problem here?
The problem is McCain's proven ability to play with others. Conservatives (by that I mean the conservative "base") have been seeking a genuine "conservative" to promote "conservative" policy, appoint "conservative" judges, and to just sound "conservative. It's not actually about problem solving, engaging in a democratic process, or moving this country forward. It's about following a set of often untested principles at any cost. The spirit of compromise and pragmatism is as alien to this group as good coffee and economical cars. The fact that a decorated war veteran with his credentials has to go before conservative groups and beg for their approval tells the rest of us just how narrow and isolated their thinking must be. How could a guy like McCain actually be answerable to Rush Limbaugh?
This is America. People are welcome to have whatever political opinion they can think up. We have as wide a range of views here as you're likely to find anywhere. In his heart, I'm sure that McCain shares most the conservative ideals of those he must now convince on the solid right wing. What he does not have in common with this group is the practical realities that are part of working in a democratic government.
It was not long ago that the same conservative groups were calling for the ascendancy of a permanant Republican majority, following in lockstep with their notions of what's right and wrong. Since the '06 congressional elections, the idea that America ever did, or ever will have one idea on things from religion to regulation is just plain laughable. The idea of a permanant majority of anyone should strike anyone with real democratic instincts as repugnant and counter to American values.
You may have noticed that I haven't made any attempts to analyze conservative policy here. That's precisely the point. The problems that conservatives have with McCain have little to do with policy and much to do with process. Sure, people will haggle over McCain's stances on immigration, or his opinions of this or that Supreme Court justice, but the real reason they have reservations is in his unpredictability and his threats to the (somehow still) monolithic conservative agenda. Their hang-ups with McCain are really about who has the power.
Sooner or later, this group of uncompromising idealogues will face up to the fact that, barring a military coup or constitutional crisis, the other guy will always have a voice in this country.
The question for the GOP is now: do you deep-six this guy because he doesn't follow the self-anointed leaders' scripts, or do you get behind a candidate who may actually lead. I think GOP voters, and many independents, will choose the latter.
This will be a close race-- one whose outcome will be decided less by power brokers (and more by the voting public) than any other in my lifetime. It's been a long time coming.
The problem is McCain's proven ability to play with others. Conservatives (by that I mean the conservative "base") have been seeking a genuine "conservative" to promote "conservative" policy, appoint "conservative" judges, and to just sound "conservative. It's not actually about problem solving, engaging in a democratic process, or moving this country forward. It's about following a set of often untested principles at any cost. The spirit of compromise and pragmatism is as alien to this group as good coffee and economical cars. The fact that a decorated war veteran with his credentials has to go before conservative groups and beg for their approval tells the rest of us just how narrow and isolated their thinking must be. How could a guy like McCain actually be answerable to Rush Limbaugh?
This is America. People are welcome to have whatever political opinion they can think up. We have as wide a range of views here as you're likely to find anywhere. In his heart, I'm sure that McCain shares most the conservative ideals of those he must now convince on the solid right wing. What he does not have in common with this group is the practical realities that are part of working in a democratic government.
It was not long ago that the same conservative groups were calling for the ascendancy of a permanant Republican majority, following in lockstep with their notions of what's right and wrong. Since the '06 congressional elections, the idea that America ever did, or ever will have one idea on things from religion to regulation is just plain laughable. The idea of a permanant majority of anyone should strike anyone with real democratic instincts as repugnant and counter to American values.
You may have noticed that I haven't made any attempts to analyze conservative policy here. That's precisely the point. The problems that conservatives have with McCain have little to do with policy and much to do with process. Sure, people will haggle over McCain's stances on immigration, or his opinions of this or that Supreme Court justice, but the real reason they have reservations is in his unpredictability and his threats to the (somehow still) monolithic conservative agenda. Their hang-ups with McCain are really about who has the power.
Sooner or later, this group of uncompromising idealogues will face up to the fact that, barring a military coup or constitutional crisis, the other guy will always have a voice in this country.
The question for the GOP is now: do you deep-six this guy because he doesn't follow the self-anointed leaders' scripts, or do you get behind a candidate who may actually lead. I think GOP voters, and many independents, will choose the latter.
This will be a close race-- one whose outcome will be decided less by power brokers (and more by the voting public) than any other in my lifetime. It's been a long time coming.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Addicted to Interest
As an amateur economist (I got a C in econ 101, for the record), my understanding of the complexities of fiscal policy and macroeconomics is limited. The way I've been able to understand the role of the Federal Reserve is that they decide the price of money through controlling the interest rates on borrowing and lending US dollars. This is the only real lever we permit our government have on the economy, having learned from the Great Depression that price and wage controls distort market signals, and create value where there is no product, jobs where there is no work to do.
As far as I can tell, the same is true of raising and lowering the interest rate. Low interest rates made credit easy to come by, so people (myself included) borrowed lots of money. People borrowed for bigger houses, borrowed from those houses, borrowed for bigger cars, borrowed for vacations. And no one made any more money. Companies borrowed to leverage growth in their offerings based on the flood of money into potential consumers' pockets. But no one was making anything.
In my opinion, we shouldn't place controls on the price of things, but we should think about creative incentives and disincentives.
The US auto industry and manufacturing is clearly on the decline. Our extra money has us importing everything from Asia, rather than making it here, and we sell them less than we buy. Competitors are eating away at our comparative advantage for nearly all of the goods and services we're known for. And our economy's heath is dependent on everyone spending more than they make.
Since spending more than you make requires borrowing, we all clamor for cheap money, that is, low interest rates. Until people actually start creating value that someone else is willing to buy, we'll need cheap credit to keep to engine turning over. Cheap money can dampen the effects of recession, but in recent years, it hasn't found a new role for us as producers of valuable stuff in the global economy. It's the economic equivalent of prolonging a cold by taking DayQuil for a week straight.
So there's the fundamental problem with today's economy, and the reason why I think we're headed towards a nasty recession. Cheap money encourages spending, but does not create value on its own. Value requires both opportunity and brains. We all can't all expect to buy a house and make 10 percent a year without doing anything. That's not production, and it is quickly and necessarily eroded by arbitrage.
If houses increase in value by 10 percent a year, pretty soon, no one except for those with houses will be able to afford houses. Investments must be based on perceived value, not on speculation.
Injections of capital in the economy need to happen, but on a more thoughtful basis. The market doesn't just figure it out on its own. If we're going to control the levers of growth through a flat interest rate, how about monkeying with the rates for different types of borrowing. If the problem is on the demand side, make consumer borrowing easier. If supply is the issue, target specific industries or economic sectors with cheap loans. If housing is overheating, cool off housing and leave the rest alone. Why the hell not?
We're already interrupting the natural flow of the market by deciding what's the minimum interest banks can charge. Why not actually get some control over what happens?
As far as I can tell, the same is true of raising and lowering the interest rate. Low interest rates made credit easy to come by, so people (myself included) borrowed lots of money. People borrowed for bigger houses, borrowed from those houses, borrowed for bigger cars, borrowed for vacations. And no one made any more money. Companies borrowed to leverage growth in their offerings based on the flood of money into potential consumers' pockets. But no one was making anything.
In my opinion, we shouldn't place controls on the price of things, but we should think about creative incentives and disincentives.
The US auto industry and manufacturing is clearly on the decline. Our extra money has us importing everything from Asia, rather than making it here, and we sell them less than we buy. Competitors are eating away at our comparative advantage for nearly all of the goods and services we're known for. And our economy's heath is dependent on everyone spending more than they make.
Since spending more than you make requires borrowing, we all clamor for cheap money, that is, low interest rates. Until people actually start creating value that someone else is willing to buy, we'll need cheap credit to keep to engine turning over. Cheap money can dampen the effects of recession, but in recent years, it hasn't found a new role for us as producers of valuable stuff in the global economy. It's the economic equivalent of prolonging a cold by taking DayQuil for a week straight.
So there's the fundamental problem with today's economy, and the reason why I think we're headed towards a nasty recession. Cheap money encourages spending, but does not create value on its own. Value requires both opportunity and brains. We all can't all expect to buy a house and make 10 percent a year without doing anything. That's not production, and it is quickly and necessarily eroded by arbitrage.
If houses increase in value by 10 percent a year, pretty soon, no one except for those with houses will be able to afford houses. Investments must be based on perceived value, not on speculation.
Injections of capital in the economy need to happen, but on a more thoughtful basis. The market doesn't just figure it out on its own. If we're going to control the levers of growth through a flat interest rate, how about monkeying with the rates for different types of borrowing. If the problem is on the demand side, make consumer borrowing easier. If supply is the issue, target specific industries or economic sectors with cheap loans. If housing is overheating, cool off housing and leave the rest alone. Why the hell not?
We're already interrupting the natural flow of the market by deciding what's the minimum interest banks can charge. Why not actually get some control over what happens?
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