Life as Usual

photo by Tom the federal worker

Tom the federal worker got the call from his boss just minutes before time to leave for work on Thursday morning. Of course, he was already dressed and ready to go by 6 a.m., since we had read online the evening before that a debt limit bill was close to passing, that a vote on the continuing resolution to fund the government under sequestration would also pass, and that federal employees would be expected to be at work the following day. Tom spent the entire day, he said, trying to catch up with a project that had been put on hold, that required public meetings to be rescheduled. I spent the morning preparing a bed for some loropetalum bushes Tom was planning to transplant as a screen along our property line behind the newly-built wood rack. The soil was a little compacted there, and Tom had dug up the area the day before; I broke up the clods of dirt with a shovel, turned over the soil to fluff it up, pulled out the grass, and added compost. We planted the bushes that evening after Tom got home from work.

And so we're back to our usual routine.

One of my Facebook friends referred to these two weeks as "paid vacation" for federal employees. It's often difficult to judge tone accurately in FB posts, even with emoticons, but the response, following as it did a comment from another friend who expressed sympathy for those who had gone without pay for two weeks (and longer, as paychecks won't be on schedule for a while), struck me as flippant--similar to the unsympathetic attitude folks often have about public school teachers and summer break. Teachers may not get paid well, but at least they get the summer off, these people often say when teacher compensation comes up in conversation. Of course, as most of us know, especially those of us who have been teachers, the hours are very long, as one inevitably takes the work home, and many weeks of the summer months are spent preparing for the following school year.

In retrospect, now that the shutdown is over, and Tom and other federal workers are on the job once again, getting back pay, the two-week duration seems almost like vacation--but it certainly didn't feel like vacation at the time. Our vacations are often long-planned events, in which we save up money to get the hell out of Dodge. During these past two weeks, we couldn't go far, as Tom had to be ready to return to work as soon as Congress and the President could clinch a deal. And how about those federal employees  living from paycheck to paycheck on salaries near the bottom of the federal payroll? Did worrying about imminent bills feel like a vacation to them? Many were also concerned about work piling up, important duties not being performed. And since no one knew, really, when the shutdown would be over, anxiety about those bills and commitments remained high throughout the ordeal.

The sequester, which many Americans probably don't think about at all, further fuels the anxieties of federal workers. As The New York Times explains, the sequester:

emerged from the refusal of House Republicans to raise the debt ceiling in 2011 without significant deficit reduction. In response, the two parties agreed to the Budget Control Act, which cut domestic spending over the next 10 years by about $1 trillion. Democrats refused to agree to more cuts without additional revenue from taxes, and Republicans refused to agree to tax increases.

Instead, Congress set up a committee to find further deficit reduction. To push the committee to reach a deal, negotiators established a fallback mechanism meant to be so onerous it would never happen: $1.2 trillion in across-the-board, automatic cuts to both military and domestic programs, set to begin this year. (Jonathan Weisman,"Answers to Questions on Capitol's Top Topic," The New York Times  21 February 2013.)

So the sequester sets up this 10-year, 1.2 trillion, across-the-board, indiscriminate schedule of cuts, $85 billion which was to be put into effect this year. As the Times article points out, the cuts can't be targeted toward particular ineffective or redundant programs: all programs suffer. This deal was supposed to be so catastrophic that Congress would be forced to agree on a budget.....but that hasn't happened yet. Republicans want even more cuts, and Democrats want to raise taxes on those who can afford it (those who came out of the economic crisis with even more of the American pie). With the Budget Control Act, Republicans got catastrophic cuts with the sequester, the Democrats, not so much. Thus, we have the Continuing Resolution of the sequestration, under which the government is currently funded. That is what was up for a vote by the end of September; that's what shut the government down first--the Republicans' wanting to tack onto the CR outrageous policy demands: defunding (essentially, getting rid of) the Affordable Care Act (aka, ObamaCare), privatizing Medicare, approving Keystone XL, preserving all the Bush tax cuts while slashing funding for food stamps, among others. The vote on the CR ran into the deadline on the debt limit, which, if defaulted, would have been even more catastrophic than a shutdown.

Thus, the view that Republicans were holding the country hostage to radical demands from the far-right is not an exaggeration.

The sequester has already impacted federal programs. People have lost their jobs; others have faced furloughs (before the shutdown) and reduced pay. This is what federal workers also had in the back of their minds as the country went into shutdown mode. (For an objective look at the effects of sequestration, you can go to the website of the Pew Charitable Trusts and search "impact of sequester.") Tom the federal worker had a meeting with his colleagues and bosses in the summer to discuss how the cuts under sequestration would affect jobs in his particular branch of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The conclusion: uncertain, not good. Advice: keep your eyes open for other jobs in the near future. This is happening all throughout the federal government, and people are worrying about their livelihoods. These worries were there before the shutdown and were exacerbated by the shutdown.

Another shutdown looms as the next deadline for voting on the CR approaches in January. Radical Republicans will still probably use the lives of federal workers and their families (and those of millions of Americans who benefit from federal programs) and the economic stability of our country as bargaining chips in their demands.

Yes, life has returned to what counts for normal these days.

On the 16th Day (NOT "home watching Netflix or whatever")

morning run

Yes, Tom the federal worker has been home these 16 days of shutdown of the United States, but except for our usual internet-accessed film viewing through Roku in the evenings (saw 56 Up last night on POV; League of Denial on PBS earlier in the week), he has not been vegging, as Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL) imagines federal workers doing all day while they've been locked out of the work that pays the bills. Tom has continued chopping and splitting the wood from the downed water oaks, and the newly built wood rack is filling up. I spent yesterday cleaning up the mess of having two water oaks expire on our lawn, picking up all the limbs not big enough for firewood and stacking them on a pile for burning (which is legal to do in this small Louisiana town as long as the fire is out by night), raking all the dead leaves and spreading them as mulch around our little citrus grove, and then mowing the yard. The lawn mower gas tank that Tom ordered was delivered, and Tom repaired the lawn mower for me. He also sharpened the blades. And he expanded the wood rack. It was a busy day.

Today has been much the same.

Tom has also begun training this week for the Rock and Roll marathon in New Orleans, scheduled for February 2, 2014. When he is working and being paid by the government, he runs in the evenings, with longer runs on weekends. But since he has been home on weekdays during the shutdown, he often runs in the mornings. I accompanied him on my bicycle this morning for a four-mile run. Although rain is forecast for this afternoon and later in the week, it was a beautiful clear morning, with a light breeze. Fall-blooming flowers brightened the edges of The Tammany Trace.

I especially love the fall-blooming mist flowers and the dainty asters forming delicate, lacy sprays. The south portion of our property is full of fall-flowering plants: dog fennel, mist flower, asters, goldenrod, clematis (probably an exotic).  Before we bought the property, the area was kept less weedy by the presence of azaleas. We allowed the previous owners to remove many azaleas after we bought the lot, and, unfortunately, the man who did the work for them created deep, compacted ruts in muddy soil, making the area impossible to mow with an ordinary lawn mower. Last year, I cut down all the weedy growth twice with a swing blade, but this year, I didn't, and the area is almost impenetrable. It wouldn't be so bad except that exotic mimosa is also growing freely among the native plants. In very early spring we marked with pink flagging all the native plants and azaleas that we wanted to keep, with plans to clear the area, but we were too busy with other projects. I imagine that we could keep many of the fall-flowering plants--even the dog fennel, which Tom doesn't like much--to create a soft weedy edge to the lot, but it will take a lot of work and planning to do so--maybe during the next government shutdown--which seems as likely to happen as this one has.

Dog fennel and goldenrod on the edge of the south lot

The day is not over as I'm typing this, and while a debt ceiling deal seems to be in the works, the votes aren't in. But the government shutdown isn't the only threat to paychecks of federal workers. Sequestration has already negatively impacted federal jobs and will continue to do so. All the brou-ha-ha and crocodile tears of some Republicans over national monuments being closed was laughable to anyone who has been keeping up with the effects of sequestration.  It's just so much theater for people whose jobs and livelihood aren't affected.

Meanwhile, here in southeast Louisiana, Tom is still waiting for that call (on his personal phone since he had to turn in his work phone before leaving the office October 1st) directing him back to work. We sure are getting a lot of chores done.

limbs too small for the wood rack go up in smoke

the wood rack complete, with two stacks full

How many more government shutdowns do we need to get this wood split?

On the 13th day of the Shutdown of our Country

Tom splitting wood

 Although his work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is piling up as Republicans refuse to fund our country to pay its bills as long as their extreme policy demands aren't met, Tom managed to get quite a bit of work done here at home. He made some headway into the huge chore of sawing up and then splitting the wood of the two water oaks downed on the south side of our property, and he started stacking split wood in the wood rack that he built yesterday. My job was to gather up wood in a wheelbarrow and tote it to the wood stack, where Tom could then stack the wood. He's the professional woodstacker; I just loaned my muscles for the grunt work.

After a few days of cool weather, warm weather had returned, with highs in the upper 80s. 

Tom's wood rack

One of the disappointments of the weekend was the cancellation of Wildthings, an event that thousands of people look forward to every fall; it takes place on the grounds of the Bayou Lacombe Centre, the headquarters of the Southeast Louisiana National Wildlife Refuges. Last year about 5,000 people attended, many of them children. The event includes a wildlife art contest, with participants from nearby schools, vendors, lots of activities for children, music, food, and opportunities for people to explore Bayou Lacombe on canoes that launch into the bayou from the Centre's grounds. Many people at the headquarters worked very hard for months to make this year's event the best ever: only the event was cancelled, as so many such events are being cancelled around the country.

We heard from our son that his research at a flagship university in Texas has also been affected by the shutdown. His grant is funded by a company that has a contract with the Air Force; he received a work stop-order on his research until this year's budget is approved by Congress. He cannot order any supplies with the designated grant money. Such halts on research are happening all over the country. James Fallows has been sharing readers' reports on just such issues: See "Weekend Shutdown Reader: Lest We Forget," and "Sunday Shutdown Reader: Harold Varmus on Self-Destruction in the Sciences," among others.

Hard work, however, helps keep us emotionally and mentally balanced here on our one acre of land in the middle of a small town in southeast Louisiana. I just worry about the many people even more vulnerable than we are to the vicissitudes of irresponsible, radical politics.

By late morning, Tom has almost filled the first tier of the wood rack. (I should add here that he didn't split all this wood in one day.)

By afternoon, the first tier of the wood rack is almost full.

By early evening, I've hauled cut wood from the front of the lot to the wood stack, and the second tier is beginning to fill.

But there was still time to play.

Final note: As James Fallows writes: "And the situation could have been solved at any point if John Boehner had only brought a budget measure for a vote in the House. "

On the 10th Day of the Takeover of our Country by the Minority Party

Today the sun is obscured behind a damp, gray sky. Tom made coffee and biscuits, and we sat on the patio talking about the events that have led to his being home on a weekday. When the local school bus passed, Tom said, "It's weird to hear the school bus," as he is always long gone to work with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service by then, always arriving at his office by 7 a.m.. He began to notice other sounds of the weekday morning that he is usually not home to hear, such as the strange "Close Encounters" chime of a business or school ringing through the woods [I've yet to identify the source]. Yesterday, on the 9th day of the takeover, he began the process of repairing our lawn mower, which had sprung a leak in the fuel tank; he ordered a replacement fuel tank, and began the work of repairing the grass deflector on the side of the mower. He measured the chimney so that he could calculate the amount of steel lining we would need for the wood stove, which he also ordered. He planted bok choy seeds in the garden, hoed some weeds, and in the evening, went for a six-mile run. Today he plans to continue chopping wood and begin building a wood rack.

Meanwhile, I will continue the fall clean-up of the garden areas that I began yesterday, trying to keep at some emotional distance my increasing dismay over how the Republican party has brought our country to a halt. This is no longer just a "government shutdown" to me; it's a hostile takeover, a hijacking of the democratic process and an attack on a million American families whose breadwinners work for the federal government. Republicans are trying to put the blame on President Obama, but since they've been playing this card since at least 2011 and planning this takeover for months, only the politically naive, ideologically blinkered, or easily bamboozled  are convinced. In 2012, President Obama won re-election with a majority of the American vote. Not able to win the presidency at the polls, even with intense gerrymandering, Republicans have resorted to holding the whole country hostage to their policy demands. First, they wanted to get rid of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a., ObamaCare); now they're talking about cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Remember the sequestration (which we are still under)? The cuts brought on by sequestration were already affecting the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service; we weren't sure whether or not Tom's job would continue beyond next year. The takeover and total shutdown of the government on October 1st just adds more to that insecurity.

Need a review of the sequestration? Links below.  I have a yard to clean up.

• February 20, 2013: "The Sequester: Absolutely Everything You Could Possible Need to Know, in One FAQ," by Dylan Matthews, at Wonkblog, The Washington Post.

• February 21, 2013: Answers to Questions on Capital's Top Topic," Jonathan Weisman, The New York Times.

• February 28, 2013: "A Graphic Guide to the Sequester," Christie Thompson, ProPublica.

• May 7, 2013: "Everything We Know About What's Happened Under Sequestration," Theodoric Meyer, ProPublica.

Tom surveys his fall vegetable garden on his 10th day off work

Some Consequences of the Confederacy

E. M.Armstrong, Sr.'s (partial) letter to Baker W. Armstrong, Dec. 20, 1884

Update below
Over the past couple of weeks, I have been immersed in reading letters written by Tom's great-great grandfather and his family, all of Virginia. Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr., had been a prosperous merchant in Romney [now in West Virginia] before the Civil War. His father, William Armstrong, had immigrated to America from Ireland as a young boy, settled in what was then Virginia, and eventually represented Virginia in the U. S. Congress.

In 1861, Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr.  was elected a delegate to the Virginia Convention of 1861, a convention in which delegates were to discuss and to vote on whether or not Virginia would secede from the Union. He was among those who voted against seceding from the Union. Both representatives of Hampshire County, Virginia--Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr., and David Pugh--voted no. But the Ordinance of Secession eventually passed, and a majority of the citizens of Virginia ratified the vote.

We have no letters of the Armstrong family from before the Civil War or from during the Civil War, so I have little insight into why Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr., and several of his sons from his first marriage to Hannah Pancake, decided to fight for the Confederacy. One son, Isaac Armstrong, was mortally wounded in the battle of Gaines Mill; lingering for weeks, he finally succumbed to his wounds. I suspect, though, that like many Southerners who weren't connected to the plantation system, the Armstrongs joined the war out of loyalty to their state, to their region, to a sense of place. That doesn't make the decision right--for the Civil War was about slavery--but it makes the decision more understandable to those of us on the other side of Civil Rights.

After the war and now with children from a second marriage joining those from the first marriage, Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr., moved to Salem, Virginia. He was never again to be as prosperous as he had been before the War; his last years were spent farming and worrying how to support his family. He also was a board member of the Union Theological Seminary, then associated with Hampden-Sydney College, which today remains one of the few all-male liberal arts colleges.

The letters that Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr., wrote his son Baker White Armstrong, the son who moved to Texas and who became my husband's great-grandfather, reveal the man to be kind, generous, loving, and very religious. That he fought for the Confederacy does not make him a bad man; it makes him a misguided man, misguided by the zeitgeist of the plantation economy:  the idea that some people are more equal than others, that some people deserve privileges bestowed on them by an accident of birth and the color of their skin, that some people, by that accident of birth and/or color of skin are providentially destined to be either leaders or laborers. He serves as a reminder of how good people can be persuaded to fight for bad causes--and of how religion can also be used as a tool for a bad cause.

In his letter of October 5, 1883, Edward wrote his son Baker:

I heard a splendid speech from Major Daniel last Monday. He had a full House, and many Re-Adjusters to hear him -- I think it highly probable that this country will gain a democratic majority this fall --Many of the old democrats who were enticed off by re-adjusterism have returned to the democratic fold, [and] others will follow. Mahoneism is a disgrace to our old state, and I can but hope there will be good [and] honest people enough found to throw off the party shackles and redeem the state at the Nov. elections.

The politics behind this letter are murky, the waters muddied by individual expectations and needs and the wider politics of a state that had lost the War. The politics have to do with railroads and debt and government services and the rights of poor whites and blacks freed by the defeat of the South. "Mahone" is William Mahone: he had been a slave owner, he had backed secession, he had been in charge of Virginians who massacred Union Colored Troops, and he moved up the ranks in the Confederate Army to major general. He was also a railroad tycoon, and after the Civil War, he fought to build railroads that would also provide profit for his railroad. Here is where E. M. Armstrong's personal desires probably intersected with politics, for Armstrong had bought land near Salem, hoping to profit from the Norfolk and Western Railroad's building yards, shops and a roundhouse in Salem. This didn't happen, and the family was reduced to what some call "genteel poverty." Perhaps William Mahone's financial success had something to do with E. M. Armstrong's failure to profit from his land acquisition.

During Reconstruction, the Virginia Constitution of 1870 provided suffrage for all men, black and white, over the age of 21, and also instituted state-funded public schools. Later, however, Conservatives used the state's war debt as a way to argue for cutting social services, and thus the access of blacks to education. William Mahone used this argument over debt vs. services as a way to gain political power. He created a biracial coalition of Conservatives and Republicans, and in 1881, was elected to the U. S. Senate. This coalition led by William Mahone was known as the "Readjusters," for its focus on "readusting" the state's war debt downward; this group of uneasy alliances also passed legislation that "abolish[ed] anti-black regulations, establish[ed] Virginia State University, increas[ed] financial support to public institutions, and charter[ed] labor unions." Mahone raised the ire of many Virginia voters, however, by caucusing with the Republicans, and his leadership tended to be autocratic.

A riot in Danville, Virginia, on November 3, 1883, gave Conservative Southern Democrats--the Democrats of the Old South-- the extra fuel they needed to ignite their political campaign to re-take state offices. Some reports describe a scuffle that broke out between some black men and white men after a meeting of prominent white men who were determined to defeat the government of the Readjusters. Other reports describe the riot as having started when black residents failed to give way to white residents on the sidewalks of the town. Whatever the specifics, the riot was obviously the result of the uneasy relationship between white and black citizens, and the repugnant idea of white supremacy. Several people were shot and killed, and the Conservative Democrats used this incident to incite "the fears of white voters."

William Mahone lost the 1884 election to another former Confederate officer, John W. Daniel, the man Edward Armstrong, Sr., had mentioned in his letter of October 1883, to  his son Baker. By the election of 1884, however, Baker W. Armstrong had moved to Bryan, Texas, to seek employment as a druggist with a drug store there. His brother Robert provides the news of the 1884 election, in a letter of November 10, 1884:

"Old Va" I am glad to say went Democratic on last Tuesday, [and] I cannot but hope that Mahone is "done for."

And in a letter written the 20th of December of that same year, E. M. Armstrong, Sr., tells his son Baker:

I wrote to Major Daniel requesting him to send you a copy of his Richmond jollification speech, and, if he could conveniently, his photo which I hope you will receive and appreciate.

And so the experiments in white and black coalition governments in the South came to an end, with the stoking of racial fears. Major John W. Daniel was also to serve as a delegate to Virginia's 1901-1902 Constitutional Convention, the focus of which was to disfranchise African-Americans. Conservative Democrats had campaigned for the convention, touting the need for "electoral reform and better state government," code words then --and even now-- meant to obscure the marginalization of a minority group. But make no mistake--disfranchisement of African-Americans was the convention's main goal:

The main question for the delegates was how to eliminate the black vote without violating the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Eventually they proposed that under Virginia's new constitution, a man would be eligible to vote if he could satisfy one of the following three requirements: he could read or understand the state constitution; he had paid taxes on property worth at least $333; or he was either a U.S. or Confederate veteran or the son of a veteran. All three conditions were loopholes designed to protect white voters. Further narrowing the pool of possible voters, minimum requirements were set for age, residency, and literacy, and a poll tax requirement was also instituted.[ "Virginia's Constitutional Convention of 1901-1902", on the web site of the Virginia Historical Society]

To make sure that blacks would not be able to vote on a constitution that would disfranchise them, "the Convention instead took the unusual step of proclaiming it the law of the commonwealth." ["Virginia's Constitutional Convention of 1901-1902," on the web site of the Virginia Historical Society]

And so are good people manipulated and deceived through fear, personal interest, and a misguided sense of superiority.

Unfortunately, plantation politics continue today, and the myth of the Lost Cause obscures the horrors of slavery, of the debasement of one people to the enrichment of another.

Election "fraud" is still used as an excuse to make voting more restrictive even when the "fraud" is practically non-existent. [See "UFO Sightings are More Common than Voter Fraud," Hamed Aleaziz, Dave Gilson, and Jaeah Lee, Mother Jones, July/August 2012.]

And yesterday the politically-evenly split Virginia state senate pushed through a re-districting map while one of their Democratic colleagues (a civil rights veteran attending the presidential inauguration)  was absent and then afterward adjourned their session on Martin Luther King Day by paying tribute to Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. Perhaps there is a way to honor "good" men who fight for bad causes. This is not the way: publicly honoring a white man who fought for the enslavement of African-Americans on a holiday established to honor a black man who fought for the political and social freedom of African-Americans. This was also the day our first African-American president was inaugurated for his second term. Anyone who sees such actions as purely accidental and devoid of political motivation is willfully blind or ignorant. [For more juicy details, see: the blog of Blue Virginia, "Breaking: While Dems Distracted by Inauguration, Virgina Senate GOP Stages a Coup," in which Republican state senator Deeds is described as "rambling" on about Stonewall Jackson's love of peaches, lemons, and women.]

The poisonous fruit of the Confederacy continues to blossom. Let's hope that good men and good women are not deceived. The murky waters of politics require an alert and engaged citizenry.


UPDATE:
As one of the readers of this post has noted, although Edward McCarty Armstrong did vote against secession, he eventually did sign the ordinance to secede. The majority of the delegates elected to the convention were Unionists, and the debate'"raged on for months." You can read about that debate on the Encyclopedia Virginia website here: "Virginia Convention of 1861".

Writing for the Encyclopedia Virginia, Nelson D. Lankford describes how the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, the Fort's surrender and then Lincoln's proclamation "calling for all loyal states to send their militias to put down the Confederate rebellion" swayed many of these southern Unionists to change their vote. They had withstood months of prolonged debate and the fiery rhetoric of secessionists, but in the end:

[t]he tragedy of the Unionist majority in the convention was that, though its members loathed the thought of leaving the United States, in the end they could not countenance fighting against fellow white Southerners. [Lankford, Nelson D. "Virginia Convention of 1861." Encyclopedia Virginia. Ed. Brendan Wolfe. 23 Jan. 2013. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. 5 Apr. 2011 .]

See a copy of the Ordinance of 1861 here: Virginia's Ordinance of Secession.

To all those business owners whining

over the Affordable Care Act, Matt Yglesias has a thoughtful response: "Keep Tipping Your Servers," in Slate, 16 November 2012.

Take Back Your Slur, Senator McCain

Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have been leading the attack against President Obama's selection of Susan Rice, US Ambassador to the UN, as a nominee for Secretary of State in Obama's second presidential term. In that attack, John McCain has accused Susan Rice of misleading the public on the Benghazi attack in Libya, suggesting that she mouthed talking points of the White House and dismissing Rice's insistence that she was using information provided by the CIA.

Here is what Senator John McCain has said:

Those talking point (sic) that the ambassador used did not come from the CIA. They come from the White House. Who in the White House – was it the president of the United States? Was it one of his people? – who was it who gave her talking points that clearly indicated something for which there was no basis in fact? (Chris McGreal, "Republican senators set up showdown over possible Rice nomination," The Guardian, 15 November 2012)

Now CBS News has discovered the CIA talking points that Susan Rice was given, proving that Rice has been telling the truth all along: she was communicating information from the known intelligence at the time. See "CIA talking points for Susan Rice called Benghazi attack 'spontaneously inspired by protests,'" CBS News, Washington, 15 November 2012.

Take back your bitter, partisan-hack slur, Senator McCain.

(h/t, live updates from Richard Adams, for The Guardian)

 

This is Bitterness

The owner of a coal company with headquarters in Utah who made it mandatory for his employees to attend a Romney rally in August and docked their pay for the same day because he closed the mine for the rally, has now layed off 102 miners. (h/t Think Progress--more on the coal mine owner's strong-arm techniques here: "Coal Miner's Donor, by Alec McGillis, in The New Republic, 4 October 2012)

Maybe James Fallows will follow up with news of the writer to his blog who said he would shut down his business if Barack Obama were re-elected.
 

The Day After

This is how my world looks the day after the 2012 presidential election. The only difference is that the sun is shining; yesterday was cloudy.

I do not get television reception here, and I don't subscribe to cable, so I missed the up-to-the-second updates on the polls. Instead, I would periodically check online to see how the numbers were adding up for President Barack Obama. So I didn't get that euphoric feeling one gets when news outlets first flash their announcements of the predictive winner. About forty minutes after Fox News called President Obama the predictive winner and Karl Rove argued to wait until more numbers came in, I checked Facebook, where my daughter had posted that now she could finally go to bed and another young friend posted "Obama ++." I sighed with relief.

I spent this historic occasion alone, crocheting, drinking a little wine and, later, hot chocolate, and watching Miss Marple Mysteries on Netflix, with two cats curled at my feet, a perfect picture of womanish old age. Tom, my husband, was at a meeting out-of-state, at a location where he could get no cell phone or internet connection. He has yet to respond to the celebratory message I e-mailed him last night.

Life goes on, as it would have done had Romney won, except that Mitt Romney was unable to move his party away from the lunatic fringe toward a more sane center, and thus all of President Barack Obama's achievements--most notably,  the Affordable Care Act--would have been lost. Now Obama's legacy will remain, and, according to Steve Kornacki, on Salon,  even Mitt Romney will benefit from this election, going down in history as the man who made Obamacare possible with the prior health care system he enacted in Massachusetts that served as the pattern for the Affordable Care Act.  History might well forget that Romney was pressured to disavow his healthcare program in order to maintain support of that radical fringe in his party.

Yes, I voted for Barack Obama, but I also voted against a recalcitrant Republican Party. I voted against obstructionism. I voted against torture.  I voted against all those radicals who showed up at rallies screaming that Barack Obama was a socialist or Hitler or the Anti-Christ. I voted against whoever put up that huge roadside sign along I-12 in Livingston Parish, Louisiana, advertising "Satan as Barack Obama." I voted against hate. I voted against racism. 

I sure hope the Republican Party can see that a lot of people voted against the far-right wing of their party as much as for Barack Obama. But I don't hold out much hope in the short term. No, the Republican Party needs to be cast out into the wilderness for a while, and that would mean losing Congress as well as the White House, and that didn't happen this election cycle. It needs to happen. 

I don't believe in the permanent ascendency of one political party because I think when one party governs for too long, that party loses its edge and falls into corruption. We need at least two parties, and I wish we could have a viable third party. But those parties should put the needs of the country ahead of partisan politics. Sure, they do and should have different views of governing, but they need to hammer out their differences in compromise. In that respect, the Republican Party failed miserably, as its leaders were far more determined to obstruct anything a Democratic president tried to achieve than they were determined to govern. And in their obstructionism, they pandered to racism.

 As Jacob Weisberg says, Mitt Romney lost because he had to cast himself as a right-wing extremist in order to win the nomination of his party.  Romney

had to pass muster with his party’s right-wing base on taxes, immigration, climate change, abortion, and gay rights. Many of his statements on these issues were patently insincere, but that was hardly reassuring. Romney’s very insincerity and flexibility made it improbable that he would stand up to the GOP’s hyper-partisan congressional wing once elected any more than he had during the primaries. [Jacob Weisberg, "Why Mitt Lost," in Slate, 7 November 2012]

I hope that leaders of the Republican Party realize this and do some soul-searching.

Meanwhile, we've got some serious issues to address in the four years ahead, and at the top of the list should be climate change, civil rights, and economic opportunity for those who have suffered the most from the financial crisis.

Another Death in the "War on Terror"

I am going to vote for Barack Obama for president in November, and I have good reasons to do so. The Democratic ticket more closely represents my ideals, though it isn't perfect. I believe in gay rights; I believe in a woman's right to choose her own birth control and to have low-cost, easy access to methods that prevent pregnancy in the first place. I believe that the wealth gap is widening in our country, that corporations and the rich have too much power. I really think we should have universal healthcare and that the government should be able to negotiate lower drug prices. I believe in a public education that helps its citizens to become critical thinkers. I believe in the separation of church and state. The Republican Party, as it exists today, supports policies that are inimical to  these ideas, and it's largely responsible, through following the rhetorical instructions of people such as Newt Gingrich, in creating the toxic public rhetoric that drives our politics today. In addition, under the presidency of Barack Obama, Republicans have been pig-headedly obstructive in these times of economic crises, putting politics before the good of the country.

That being said, one of my really big disappointments in the Obama administration is its inability to shut down Guantanamo Bay and its continuing many of the war policies of the Bush administration. And I despise the fact that the DOJ hadn't the balls to go after those who approved administration-sanctioned torture in its "war on terror." (How's that working? Has terror disappeared from the face of the earth?) Unfortunately, voting Republican would not create a change here, either. Mitt Romney is being advised by some of the same neo-cons who got us in the war in Iraq with their lies and unbelievable naiveté about how long the war would last, how much the war would cost, and how little the war would impact the very people we were supposed to be liberating. 

My disappointment is magnified by stories such as that of Adnan Latif, who was finally successful this past week in his many attempts to commit suicide in that national disgrace of a prison, Guantanamo Bay. 

Congress, of course, is greatly at fault, too, in abdicating its responsibility to declare war and in allowing the executive branch to accrue more power. And so are we responsible, too, in our silence, in our eager readiness to follow that presidential advice years ago to "go shopping" rather than to deal with the harsh realities of our nation's actions.

Adnan Latif is finally returning home after ten years. . . . in a coffin. I doubt his death has aided the "war on terror." Do you?

Self-Righteousness, Resentment, Anger...and the Girl Scouts

As I type this post, my door is open, and I can hear doves cooing, the kwirrr of a red-bellied woodpecker, and the rising "turreee" of towhees. It's a warm January day in south Louisiana. When I went outside to fill the bird feeder, I saw a black swallowtail butterfly fluttering around the yard. The peacefulness of this place provides for me such sharp contrast to what I hear and read about the political culture at large. Every day I thank whatever higher power there is--if she cares--for this respite from the anger, self-righteousness, and resentment that I confront in the news every day. There seems to be little room for grace and mercy these days--except for those who helped muster in this sad state of affairs. Somehow,  folks who loudly, vocally (and often aggressively) identify as Christian are ready to vote for a man who helped create the poisonous political culture we now live in and are ready to pronounce him "redeemed" from his sin of adultery.

Well, I don't care if he married three women, but I do think that how he treated those first two women says something about his character, and I also believe that how he condescends to others says something about his character, as well as his readiness to make those nasty connections to racial resentment and hatred: Obama is the "food stamp" president;  to Juan Williams work is a "strange concept." And anyone who isn't "you" is "elitist." Come on. We know exactly to what prejudices those comments pander.

But I'm not here today to talk about the Newt, really. What really bothers me is how self-righteousness, resentment, anger and pitiless judgment affect those of us who can't afford a half-a-million dollar credit at Tiffany's to help us cope with life's little meannesses.

Take the Girl Scouts, for example. Who cannot like the Girl Scouts? Well, those folks who think Girl Scouts shouldn't have reproductive counseling and sex education or allow transgendered children within their ranks. The Girl Scouts are very "pro-girl," in that they have from the inception of the program provided girls with the power to become whatever they can be in a changing culture. Some folks want those girls back in the kitchen making the cookies and not in the boardroom managing the marketing of those cookies.

Oh, and if you are transgendered, the Girl Scouts East Louisiana troop doesn't want you. In fact, some parents are so afraid of the POSSIBILITY of getting cooties from a transgendered child that they will take their kids out of the local troop even when that troop publicly announces it will not accept transgendered children and no transgendered children have even applied to join the troop. No, the refusal was just not "fast enough" for those folks:

But Susan Cramond, a troop leader who had two children in the group that met at Northlake Christian School in Covington, said she and other like-minded parents felt Louisiana Scouting policy-makers should never have had to discuss the transgender issue in the first place. Cramond said when she first contacted Louisiana’s Scouting leaders to ask whether a transgendered child could be accepted into a local troop, she didn’t get the quick and unequivocal “no” she was hoping for.

So Cramond and fellow troop leader Susan Bryant-Snure, a Lacombe doctor, informed other parents. She said they collectively decided to abandon the Girl Scouts and seek affiliation with American Heritage Girls, a similar organization that describes itself as a “Christ-centered leadership and character development ministry.”

Bryant-Snure said by banning transgendered children, the Louisiana board eventually made the “right decision; they just made it in a way that made us nervous.”

[Bruce Nolan, "Transgendered Girl Scout in Colorado Causes Stir in St. Tammany," The Times-Picayune, 22 January 2012.]

I guess the American Heritage Girls are sweating in the kitchen baking those cookies they hope they can sell more quickly now that so many like-minded folks are boycotting Girl Scout cookies.

Yep, this is where we live now....in a state of mind so rigid that just the possibility of otherness causes panic. Think I'll sit here and listen to the doves.


h/t: Mary Elizabeth Williams, "The Right's Latest Target: Girl Scout Cookies," posted in Salon, 23 January 2012.

Low Information Voters and Republican Strategy

Some of the most distressing descriptions of American citizens I've read lately have been detailed by two retired Congressional staffers, one a 28-year veteran of the Republican party and the other who worked for a moderate Democrat. These are not people on the fringes of the right or left. And now that they have retired, they feel free to write what they really believe, what they have actually experienced and observed. This is what Mike Lofgren, who served 28 years as a Congressional staffer and "16 years as a professional staff member on the Republican side of both the House and Senate Budget Committees," writes :

There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn ("Government is the problem," declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).

Lofgren goes on to describe how "the long-term Republican strategy of undermining confidence in our democratic institutions has reaped electoral dividends." People who think government doesn't work decide that their vote doesn't count, too. And so they stay home while the far-right minority, "whipped into a lather by three hours daily of Rush Limbaugh or Fox News" increases its clout in elections. This strategy of weakening trust in government institutions to create citizen malaise goes hand in hand with another Republican strategy, that of disenfranchising voters who are more likely to vote Democratic:

Ever since Republicans captured the majority in a number of state legislatures last November, they have systematically attempted to make it more difficult to vote: by onerous voter ID requirements (in Wisconsin, Republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices in Democratic constituencies while at the same time lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies)**; by narrowing registration periods; and by residency requirements that may disenfranchise university students.

Lofgren says that other folks are very upfront about these strategies:

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption [the more recent Republican strategy to filibuster every confirmation and routine procedural motion] .... By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

 So what Republicans cannot succeed in doing by rigorous debate of the issues and communication of those issues to constituents, they plan to win by subterfuge and destruction of democratic institutions. Again, this is not some leftie talking; this is a guy who witnessed Republican strategy for years from the bullpen and who mourns the demise of Republican virtue (if virtue exists in politics). He is no supporter of President Obama, he says, but he wanted Obama to succeed in the worst economic crisis the country has faced in years because he wanted his country to succeed. The Republicans--those leading now--want the country to fail so that Obama will fail. The country fails, millions of Americans suffer--but they will blame the current president. Why? Because they are low information voters who have no idea how government works.

The second negative description of American citizens comes from a Congressional staffer who worked for years for a moderate Democrat. This staffer wrote in response to James Fallows' post about Mike Lofgren's essay.

The mainstream media absolutely fails to understand how little attention average Americans really pay to what goes on in all forms of government. During our 2008 race, our pollster taught me (hard to believe it took me 24 years to learn this) that the average voter spends only 5 minutes thinking about for whom to vote for Congress. All the millions of dollars of TV ads, all the thousands of robo-calls and door-knocks, and it all comes down to having a message that will stick in the voters' minds during the 5 minutes before they walk into the voting booth.

 Although the pollster mentioned above is referring to Congressional races, I grimaced a little when I read how inattentive voters are in making their choices. While I understand my own ideals and how those ideals have affected my voting record in national elections and state level elections, I have been less attentive to local elections. Yet that's where many politicians get their start, in their being elected to the school board or to mayor. From the city level, they may go to the state level and then the national level--though, more often than not these days, the already-rich jump directly to representing us at the state and national level.

If anything should convince those disaffected voters to get out to vote, this should: there are people hoping that you won't vote so that their ability to whip up the anger and fear of the fringe will have a stronger impact. And that's not good for our country...or for ordinary Americans.

**I have read that the push in Wisconsin to close Department of Motor Vehicles offices has been tabled. A spokesman said that there was no intention to shut down offices in Democratic constituencies, but a Democratic spokesman said that a look at which offices were planned to be shut down counters that claim. However, a recent Wisconsin Department of Motor Vehicles memo came to light in which employees were directed to provide material when people ask for the free ID but that they should not readily provide information if not asked. So it's pretty clear what the intent is.

More on the Wisconsin voter ID conflict: This guy evidently should have used his personal e-mail to send out his message, but....."Wisconsin Employee Fired for E-mail Defying Voter ID Policy," posted on TPM. More at the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel: "State Employee Fired After Telling Co-Workers about Photo ID Policy," 8 Sept. 2011.

Cynicism

My children tell me that I am very cynical, so when they confront some evidence of a younger me--in my writing or the writing of friends--who comes across as naive and trusting, they seem surprised. Of course, our children never really know us, do they? They weren't witness to many of the events (our own failings as well as the failings of others) that transformed us over time--either because they were not present or because they were too young to understand what was going on. I'll admit that a little bit of faith in humanity remains in me, but in the last several years, that bit of faith has received a beating.

The Republicans taking hostage of the debt ceiling is a big disappointment; I mean, they didn't have difficulties with debt ceilings under President Bush. Why so recalcitrant now? (That's a rhetorical question). But the treatment of Elizabeth Warren by Republican Congressmen is in a category by itself, I think. Or maybe not. Given some thought, I could probably come up with other similar examples. Here is a very smart woman who speaks plainly and who has worked to help make financial matters more transparent to consumers, that is, people such as I.

Here is Elizabeth Warren speaking on those credit card contracts that none of us can understand:
"Elizabeth Warren on Credit Card 'Tricks and Traps'," at Now, online, 2 January 2009.

Here she is talking about bankruptcy caused by medical bills and "aggressive hospital collections":
Interview 1
Interview 2

Here she is talking about subprime mortgages in 2004--raising the alarm before subprime mortgages, bundled up as toxic assets, helped to almost blow up our economy:
on "Books of our Time"

People with this kind of sense, with this kind of concern for ordinary families, evidently have no place in our government, according to the Republicans who refused to accept her as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Their condescending questioning and unrelenting demonization of this woman is a travesty of public service.

In The New York Times, Joe Nocera reviews Elizabeth Warren's travails with Republican 'leadership,' in this, her last week with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: "The Travails of Ms. Warren," posted on Friday, 22 July 2011.

Here is an example of Warren's own lack of cynicism. She thought that if she could make clear to Congress what the mission of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would be, the accusations and demonization would stop:

“I’ve never been an ideologue,” she told me. “And I thought the best way to deal with that perception was to put our vision out there. The vision is clear. Consumers should be able to tell the price and risk of any credit product before they buy it. We want to mow down the fine print. I thought once that was on the table, and it was clear that we were executing on it, the accusations would go away.” Nocera, "The Travails of Ms. Warren"

But: " House Republicans regularly brought her before their committees and acted as if this were the second coming of Joe McCarthy....Republicans would cut off her answers and speak to her in tones ranging from contempt to condescension. The treatment wasn’t just disrespectful. It was ugly. And it never stopped."

As I have stated in a previous post, I would have loved having an Elizabeth Warren looking out for my interests. Unfortunately, bankers and financial institutions have far more money than I have and far more influence over those Republicans who made sure that Elizabeth Warren would never direct the agency she was responsible for helping to create.

It's a real shame. Add another coin to my cynicism bank.

Where's the Outrage?

Since moving to Louisiana, I decided not to connect my television to cable, which means that I won't have access to any television channels beyond what I can access online. In Atlanta, we cut our cable, too, but my husband had to install an antenna on our house to access "free" television channels, and anytime we had a change in weather, the reception pixelated and stalled even though we were just a few miles from major transmitting stations. But here in south Louisiana, we've chosen a television-and-cable-silent zone (except for the Internet), and thus I have no access to the 24/7 chatter of cable news, and we no longer even watch the News Hour on PBS every evening as we did previously. Thus, I've missed all the intensity surrounding the trial of Casey Anthony, who was charged with killing her young daughter.

I have read the occasional news story about the trial, and today I've read several articles about the results of the trial and the public reaction, but I didn't keep up with all the details.  Yes, I sympathize with families who are victims of terrible injustices--kidnapped children, murdered family members, incest, etc.--but those stories, to me, are local stories, unless they represent something significant in the wider culture. I will read an in-depth news story describing such a local tragedy, but I don't get swept up in the minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, day-by-day inundation of images and analysis though I understand the attraction to such stories. Color me conservative in that I recoil from the emotionalism and voyeurism exhibited in cable coverage of sensational news.

What bothers me is that these sensational stories get all the media attention while stories that have wider significance are relegated to print media that do not capture the attention that cable does--or get overlooked altogether on the back pages of newspapers. Or those stories that should capture our attention are reported by news organizations or bloggers that do not have a national audience.

For example, finally gaining some attention in international media is the story that British tabloids consistently use criminal means to gather information, including hacking the voicemail of celebrities and royals. Rupert Murdoch's News of the World has been caught in extensive hacking of voicemail not only of public figures but of every day citizens experiencing the kind of horror that little Calee Anthony's family has experienced. Private investigators for News of the World hacked the voicemail of Milly Dowler, a young teenager who was kidnapped and murdered. For months the police looked for Dowler, and for a while, the family had some hope that their loved one was still alive, for messages from Dowler's cell phone were deleted as if someone were still using the phone. It turns out that a private investigator working for News of the World had hacked into Milly Dowler's full voicemail and deleted messages so that more messages could be recorded. The reporters were monitoring the calls. Then the reporters interviewed the parents who had regained hope that their daughter was still alive since her voicemail was showing activity.

This kind of reprehensible behavior on the part of reporters is not limited to the shores of Great Britain. We see similar behavior, I think, in the likes of Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart might not be hacking the voicemails of murder victims, but he publishes cleverly edited video that conveys inaccurate information that he passes off as real journalism.

More troubling, however, is Rupert Murdoch's connection to this imbroglio.  Murdoch, of course, owns News of the World, the Times and Sunday Times in England. He also created the Fox Broadcasting Company  in the USA, purchased The New York Post, worked with MCI Communications to create The Weekly Standard, got into USA cable news with Fox News, and recently bought The Wall Street Journal. Is anyone so naive as to think that what happens in the news rooms of News of the World has no impact in the news rooms of Fox or The Wall Street Journal? As Jack Shafer writes in Slate, Rupert Murdoch has:

swept away every scandal--major and minor--he has ever faced because of his special skill at normalizing his malfactions. [my emphasis] He sacked Times of London editor Harold Evans after guaranteeing the paper 'independence.' He deployed his reporters to unearth dirt on business rivals. He purchased the forged Hitler diaries. He repeatedly and cravenly kowtowed to the Chinese. He approved the acquisition of O.J. Simpson's book, If I Did It, and more...We expect the worst from Murdoch, and he lives up to our expectations.

"Normalizing...malfactions" is a real threat to journalism. People mistrust the media already. Sometimes that mistrust is deserved, but often it isn't. If we cannot trust journalists to gather and report to the best of their abilities, we lose an important--necessary--means for evaluating and understanding our world and people in power. 

That trust continues to be eroded. 

The British Daily Mail's website presence, Mail Online, recently published an article that describes how Roger Ailes, president of Fox News and chairman of the Fox Television Stations, had planned as early as 1970 to create a pro-Republican news station to promote then-president Nixon, for whom Ailes worked as executive producer of TV.  Mark Duell reports that "a memo called 'A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News' was discovered by a Gawker journalist inside the Richard Nixon Presidential Library." Evidently, Ailes hoped that the White House could pay for the station. Ummm...that's called propaganda in reality world.

Melissa Bell includes in an article in the Washington Post a very revealing quote from that early Ailes memo:

Today television news is watched more often than people read newspapers, than people listen to the radio, than people read or gather any other form of communication. The reason: People are lazy. With television you just sit--watch--listen. The thinking is done for you.

 So there you have it: Roger Ailes has finally achieved his goal in Fox News.

And, of course, manipulating a passive public is not limited to Roger Ailes.

These stories should create an outrage, too, for the consequences are far-reaching. Without access to excellent journalism, we cannot act as informed citizens in a democracy.


See the original Gawker article on Roger Ailes' early plans for a GOP-news station here: John Cook, Roger Ailes' Secret Nixon-Era Blueprint for Fox News," 30 June 2011.

See more articles about The News of the World controversy here:
Sarah Ellison, "The Never-Ending Story: News of the World's Andy Coulson Condoned Police Payoffs," in Vanity Fair, 5 July 2011.

"News of the World Phone Hacking Live", The Telegraph 6 July 2011.

Outrage Fatigue

Reading the news online these days gives me outrage fatigue. Today I got out of bed at 4 a.m. because I couldn't sleep. Now, four hours later, I'm exhausted and would like to stay in bed all day to recover. Here is my day's quota of outrage:

• First up, a list of banking crises and bailouts in Paul Krugman's and Robin Wells' article in The New York Review of Books has me wondering why we can't learn from our mistake of not regulating the banking industry (and larger financial industry) more vigorously: The Busts Keep Getting Bigger. Why?". Clearly, some people have been getting very, very rich through insufficiently regulated speculation and trading, but millions of Americans have suffered because of the greed of a few:

  what we have experienced is, in a very real sense, the triumph of Wall Street and the decline of America...[T]the vast sums of money channeled through Wall Street did not improve America’s productive capacity by “efficiently allocating capital to its best use.” Instead, it diminished the country’s productivity by directing capital on the basis of financial chicanery, outrageous compensation packages, and bubble-infected stock price valuations....And what has happened in the aftermath of the 2008–2009 crisis is still worse: all the evidence suggests that the United States is on track to spending the better part of a decade experiencing high unemployment and sub-par growth blighting millions of lives—particularly the old, the young, and the economically vulnerable.

• Next up, an article about how a law to protect pregnant women from domestic violence is being used to criminalize women who have miscarriages: Ed Pilkington's "Outcry in America as Pregnant Women Who Lose Babies Face Murder Charges," The Guardian, 24 June 2011. Women whose addictions may or may not have caused them to abort are being arrested and charged with murder. And this is in a country where abortion is still--theoretically, at least--legal. Now, I believe in a woman's right to have a legal, safe, medically-arranged abortion, a right that is becoming increasingly difficult to attain in states that are throwing up more and more legal barriers. Personally, I don't think abortion is the right way to practice birth control; I would prefer that women and teenagers have cheap and easy access to birth control. However, the same folks who would refuse abortions to women who seek them (or women who require them for medical reasons) also fight to prevent easy access to birth control. I believe that women have the right to make their own decisions about reproduction, and I'm not really sympathetic to the idea that a bunch of cells can have "rights" from the moment of conception. Yet that seems to be where our current anti-abortion groups are leading us--to a place where women's bodies become their prisons, their fetuses--at whatever stage--their jailors. It's difficult for me not to see misogyny in how this law is being pursued:

  At least 38 of the 50 states across America have introduced foetal homicide laws that were intended to protect pregnant women and their unborn children from violent attacks by third parties – usually abusive male partners – but are increasingly being turned by renegade prosecutors against the women themselves.
  
  South Carolina was one of the first states to introduce such a foetal homicide law. National Advocates for Pregnant Women has found only one case of a South Carolina man who assaulted a pregnant woman having been charged under its terms, and his conviction was eventually overturned. Yet the group estimates there have been up to 300 women arrested for their actions during pregnancy. (my emphasis)

  Once again, we have a law whose consequences folks just weren't far-sighted enough to imagine.

• Even David Brooks is calling out the Republicans for obstinancy: "The Mother of All No-Brainers," The New York Times, 4 July 2011. Brooks describes the fanatic movement that has taken over the Republican party as unwilling to compromise, "no matter how sweet the terms," as lacking "moral decency," as deniers of facts (refusing to believe scholars and impartial experts), and as unfit to govern. This is DAVID BROOKS, not some lefty. What I don't get is why so many citizens are influenced by these same fanatics. And I found Michael Lind's article "The Three Fundamentalisms of the American Right" useful, too, in understanding my own outrage at today's conservatism--because today's conservatism isn't the conservatism that I grew up with: it's fundamentalism, not Burkean conservatism. And just as I grew more and more outraged as the Southern Baptist Church, the church in which I was born and reared, became more and more fundamentalist, I have become more and more outraged as conservatism has become fundamentalist. And that makes sense. For, as Lind points out, one cannot have a civil discussion with people who think they are always right--and therefore Good--and anyone who disagrees with them is always wrong--and therefore Evil:

  The rise of triple fundamentalism [Protestant fundamentalism, constitutional fundamentalism, and market fundamentalism] on the American right creates a crisis of political discourse in the United States. Back when conservatism was orthodox and traditional, rather than fundamentalist and counter-revolutionary, conservatives could engage in friendly debates with liberals, and minds on both sides could now and then be changed. But if your sect alone understands the True Religion and the True Constitution and the Laws of the Market, then there is no point in debate. All those who disagree with you are heretics, to be defeated, whether or not they are converted.

Enough outrage for the day. It's mid-morning; I can still salvage the day.

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

The Awl has an interesting post on how Michele Bachman's supporters will use negative criticism to inflame her base--those nasty lefty bloggers, you know--much as Sarah Palin has used negative criticism to make the case that her critics are mean and unfair. But what really caught my attention was the discussion of how local Minnesotans who have been following Bachman's career and catching her out on lies and craziness don't get the credit for their work. Instead, big-name writers such as Matt Taibbi, of Rolling Stone, grab information from those local sites and often don't credit the source. Shame on Rolling Stone! A second criticism of writers of large media publications  is the tendency to condescend to folks who live in those towns from which Bachman and Palin hail: Stillwater, Minnesota; Wasilla, Alaska. It's easy to jet into a place, sniff out some local color, and draw quick conclusions that don't stand up in the light of real analysis--or conclusions that, while not untrue, are simplistic. This is another reason folks hate the media.

Anyway, giving credit where credit is due:  Karl Bremer of Stillwater, Minnesota, has been following Michele Bachman's career from a front-row seat. So check out his blog: Ripple in Stillwater. Also, check out these other sources that did not receive credit for information used by Matt Taibbi in writing for Rolling Stone: Minneapolis City Pages and The Dump Bachman Blog.

Politics Vs. Substantive Discussion of Issues

"... [R]elentless emphasis on the cynical game of politics threatens public life itself, by implying day after day that the political sphere is nothing more than an arena in which ambitious politicians struggle for dominance, rather than a structure in which citizens can deal with worrisome collective problems." --James Fallows, in "Why Americans Hate the Media," Atlantic Magazine,  February 1996.

I am re-reading this article from The Atlantic's archives. Fifteen years later, it seems to me that the media focus is even more on politics rather than on substance, substance such as how our country should deal with the very real problems of unemployment, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and now Libya and maybe even Yemen), the financial crisis, and climate change.  Republicans have just about abandoned any real attempt to create jobs for the millions of unemployed Americans, and they are threatening to blow up our country economically by holding the debt limit hostage to their budget-cutting demands, despite contrary advice from economists within their own party. I'm beginning to think that Republicans are willing to sacrifice American livelihoods to win the presidency--They just rejected a suggestion to cut payroll taxes, a move that would stimulate the economy and a tax cut they very much favored in the past. It's all about politics. All about how a poor economy will hurt President Obama's prospects--and the Democrats'--in 2012. And the media focuses on the politics--on how not embracing Paul Ryan's budget plan will affect Republican nominees' chance at the presidency, not on how adopting Ryan's plan will affect ordinary Americans. It's not about us, the people, and how these policies will affect our everyday lives.

Update (Thursday, 23 June, 2011):
The point that James Fallows makes in the quote I've excerpted above has been demonstrated once again in the discussion of climate change. Al Gore has published a very well-written, insightful article in Rolling Stone on climate change. Does the media then discuss climate change, the overwhelming evidence of climate change, the tremendous push-back from vested interests, the consequences of climate change, the ways to confront climate change? No, of course not. Because Al Gore included some criticism of President Obama in his article, the media immediately focuses on politics: Al Gore vs. Barack Obama--as if the whole issue boils down to a boxing match.

Yet Gore's criticism of Obama is muted and is only a small piece of the long article. Once again, the media turns a serious topic into political entertainment.

It's disheartening.

Read the article: "Climate of Denial," Al Gore, Rolling Stone, 22 June 2011.

Typically, television media frames  Gore's discussion of climate change as a political spat, "Gore vs. Obama." On Hardball, Chris Matthews begins his show using that very frame, though he does give a little push back in the lead-in, as do Joan Walsh and Eric Bates: "Drop the Gore vs. Obama Script," Joan Walsh, Salon, 22 June 2011.