The Selling of America

Although we spend a lot of time looking at atrocities like the war in Iraq and the demolition of the Constitution, our government is destroying America in many other, and equally pernicious, ways. These ways include selling national forests into private hands, for example. There’s an article in the newest issue of Harper’s (not yet online) that argues the real point of the No Child Left Behind Act is to turn public schools into profit-making private businesses (profit being the real goal, of course, not education). We have a health care crisis because government favors and protects private insurance industry above the lives of citizens.

Their current project seems to be killing free speech by running small, independent periodicals out of business. Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, writes,

Half a million dollars. In postage.

In just a few short days, The Nation will pay one of the biggest bills we’ve ever faced – half a million dollars – because of a postal rate increase scheme designed in part by lobbyists for the TimeWarner media conglomerate. Mailing costs for mega-magazines like TimeWarner’s own Time, People and Sports Illustrated will go up much less or in some cases decrease, while smaller publications like The Nation will be hit by an enormous rate increase.

Teresa Stack explains,

… in May 2006 the United States Postal Service proposed a rate increase for periodicals of about 11.7 percent, an increase that would have affected all periodicals more or less equally. Instead, in February the PRC [Postal Regulatory Commission] recommended a version of the rate proposal put forward by Time Warner, which had previously been rejected by the PRC and strongly opposed by the USPS. This proposal would have a disproportionately adverse effect on small national publications while easing the burden on the largest magazines.

The decision was followed by an industry “comment period” of only eight working days, an impossibly short time for small publications to digest changes so complex that to this day there is no definitive computer model to fully assess them. Nonetheless, the new rates are scheduled to take effect July 15.

We now know that small titles will be devastated. According to an analysis by McGraw-Hill (but not, inexplicably, done by the PRC or BOG), about 5,700 small-circulation publications will incur rate increases exceeding 20 percent; another 1,260 publications will see increases above 25 percent; and hundreds more, increases above 30 percent. Some small magazines will no doubt go out of business. Meanwhile, the largest magazines will enjoy the benefit of much smaller increases and in some cases, decreases. To make matters even worse, editorial content charges will now be based on distance. The system of charging one price however far editorial content travels, which has existed since our country’s founding, seems to have been summarily dismissed by the PRC, and then by the governors, with little thought of its future impact.

The Postal Regulatory Commission, btw, is made up of presidential appointees. I assume most of ’em are Bush appointees by now. See Liza Sabater for more.

The Nation is asking for contributions to keep itself in business. If there’s a small magazine in your life that you can’t live without, whether The Nation or another one, they might need some help. I wouldn’t be surprised if some smaller publications become web-only. And then there’s net neutrality

Bold Moves

Last February, Democrats in Congress struggled to put various anti-Iraq War resolutions up for a vote in the House and Senate. Republicans resisted. Senate Republicans in particular were effective at preventing debates on the bills to close so a vote could be taken. Then White House surrogates were dispatched to the cable political talk shows to smirk about do-nothing Democrats.

During that time, as Greg Sargent reported, the Dems got their hands on a GOP talking points memo that instructed Republicans in congress to avoid debating Iraq like the plague.

We are writing to urge you not to debate the Democratic Iraq resolution on their terms, but rather on ours.

Democrats want to force us to focus on defending the surge, making the case that it will work and explaining why the President’s new Iraq policy is different from prior efforts and therefore justified.

We urge you to instead broaden the debate to the threat posed to Americans, the world, and all “unbelievers” by radical Islamists. We would further urge you to join us in educating the American people about the views of radical Islamists and the consequences of not defeating radical Islam in Iraq.

The debate should not be about the surge or its details. This debate should not even be about the Iraq war to date,
mistakes that have been made, or whether we can, or cannot, win militarily. If we let Democrats force us into a debate on the surge or the current situation in Iraq, we lose.

This is still the strategy, of course. As Eugene Robinson recently noted, President Bush is still claiming that the people we’re fighting in Iraq are the same ones who attacked us on 9/11.

“The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th,” President Bush insisted last Wednesday. But those who planned and executed the Sept. 11 attacks are either dead, in U.S. custody or holed up in Pakistan. They are nowhere near Iraq.

The other part of this strategy is to beat the Dems into submission with dishonest rhetoric. Arianna Huffington comments on the Bill Kristol op ed I blogged about yesterday:

I had a preview of this deluded triumphalist drivel a couple of days earlier — on Thursday afternoon specifically. Even more specifically, I was on the 4:00 pm Amtrak Acela from New York to Washington.

Kristol was sitting a row behind me, talking on his cell phone with someone who apparently shared his optimism. “‘Precipitous withdrawal’ really worked,” I overheard him say, clearly referring to the president’s use of the term in that morning’s press conference. “How many times did he use it? Three? Four?” he asked his interlocutor, and the conversation continued with a round of metaphorical back-slapping for the clever phrase they had “come up with.”

I, of course, have no idea who was on the other end. Tony Snow, perhaps? After all, he and Kristol were colleagues before Snow left Fox. But whoever it was, the emphasis during their conversation on the significance of the “clever” phrase has been emblematic of the White House prepping of the president.

Instead of sending their boss out with the real facts or logical arguments, Bush’s aides and their friends (see Kristol) concoct some nonsense phrase in the spin lab, hand it to him and tell him to go out there and repeat it as often as he can. The latest is “precipitous withdrawal.” It’s the new “cut and run.” It’s actually not all that new: back in January 1969, Richard Nixon used it again and again in his famous “Silent Majority” speech: “The precipitate withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam would be a disaster not only for South Vietnam but for the United States and for the cause of peace.” Again and again throughout the speech, Nixon used the phrase to paint the nightmarish consequences of a “precipitate withdrawal” from Vietnam. Almost forty years later, George Bush is using the slightly tweaked “precipitous withdrawal” to paint his own nightmarish scenario of what will happen if American forces leave Iraq. And for that, apparently, we have Bill Kristol to thank. At least partially.

By now you’ve heard of the faux filibuster Sen. Harry Reid plans for tonight. Margeret Talev writes for McClatchy Newspapers:

Senate Democrats are planning an all-night session Tuesday, daring Republicans to engage in an old-fashioned filibuster over Iraq troop withdrawals rather than just threatening one.

The tactic was unlikely to deliver the 60-vote supermajority that war critics need to bypass procedural hurdles and amend a defense authorization bill so that it would require withdrawing combat troop in four months.

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Monday that a little late-night drama might focus more public attention on why the new Democratic majority still hadn’t enacted binding antiwar legislation as it had campaigned to do.

“If Republicans insist on blocking a change of course in Iraq, Democrats will give them the opportunity to explain this, lots of opportunity to explain this,” Reid said. “We are going to have votes during the night. We’re not going to let everybody go home and have a good night’s rest.”


Bill Scher says
the punditocracy for the past six months has wagged its finger at the Dems, telling them to compromise and reach a bipartisan consensus. “In particular, [David] Brooks recently accused Reid of thwarting a biparistan consensus to change course (but remain) in Iraq, for political purposes,” Bill writes. But this “bipartisan consensus” was a figment of pundit imaginations; it never existed in Congress. As has been true for many years, “compromise” in pundit speak means “agreeing with Republicans.”

For six months, the Senate leadership largely took the counsel of the punditocracy. Bipartisanship for bipartisanship’s sake. Compromise for compromise’s sake. The argument was that’s the only way to responsibly govern and win the respect of the electorate.

But it was a bust. Despite all the efforts to water down legislation and curry the favor of the conservative minority, conservatives obstructed most everything anyway.

Few voters realize this, because these filibusters have been mere minutes long, if even that much. If Democrats couldn’t get 60 votes to break a filibuster, they would simply pull legislation off the floor, or not bother to put it on the floor. When Democrats avoid conflict, the media ignore the story, and with it, the conservative obstructions.

Conservatives were able to block popular legislation, without the public knowing about it. There was no political risk taken, no political price paid.

In the past several days a number of prominent Republican senators — e.g., Dick Lugar, John Warner — have called on a change of policy in Iraq, but when pressed about how they will vote they crawl back into their partisan corners and refuse to vote with Democrats. Reid said Republicans blocking the Levin-Reed amendment are “protecting the president instead of protecting the troops.” This is exactly right, and also a heck of a talking point.

I say that any Republican who admits Bush’s policy is wrong but who refuses to stand with Democrats against it ought to be haunted by armies of protesters in weasel costumes. Flush them out, I say.

Who’s Smoking What?

If anyone but Bill Kristol had written this op ed in yesterday’s Washington Post I would have assumed it to be satire. But it’s Kristol. He’s not kidding.

In Kristol’s world, everything George W. Bush touches turns to gold. His entire administration has been a glorious success, and all of his policies have been wise and well implemented. Although the Iraq War is unpopular, invading Iraq was the right thing to do, and someday everyone will appreciate this. After all, if we hadn’t invaded Iraq, Saddam Hussein would still be alive!

I’m not going to quote the thing; you can read it yourself, if you like. But I say that what Kristol writes is not spin. Spin is, IMO, the use of disingenuous language (short of out-and-out lying) to portray something or someone in a deceptive way. But I think Kristol really believes what he writes. I think if Kristol were attempting to spin he’d have included a few loose connections to reality, just to demonstrate he knows what reality is. This piece is so utterly untethered to anything recognizable in our common time-space continuum it can only be called hallucinatory.

In his op ed column today (which I hope to blog about later) Paul Krugman wonders how America’s health care industry and its political supporters get away with lying to Americans about the state of U.S. health care. And the answer is, they get away with it because mass media allows them to get away with it. If you have the money and connections, you can get yourself on a cable TV show and look at the camera and say anything. You can get on CNN and tell people that argyle socks will cure cancer, and the moderator/host will blink a couple of times and say, Really? I didn’t know that.

I think most Americans do, eventually, sort truth from lies when the lies contradict their own experience. They figured out Social Security “privatization” was a scam, for example. They’ve known for a long time the economy is barely limping along in spite of White House spin to the contrary. They’re slower when foreign policy is involved, because they can’t see what’s going on with their own eyes. But I think if only Americans could get accurate information from mass news media, they’d be a lot smarter about foreign policy, as well.

That’s most Americans, notice. Some are too far gone to be salvaged.

If you haven’t already seen it, be sure to read “Ship of Fools” by Johann Hari in yesterday’s Independent. Hari joined a National Review cruise to report on what conservatives say to each other. Here’s just a snip:

Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan’s one-time nominee to the Supreme Court, mumbles from beneath low-hanging jowls: “The coverage of this war is unbelievable. Even Fox News is unbelievable. You’d think we’re the only ones dying. Enemy casualties aren’t covered. We’re doing an excellent job killing them.”

Then, with a judder, the panel runs momentarily aground. Rich Lowry, the preppy, handsome 38-year-old editor of National Review, says, “The American public isn’t concluding we’re losing in Iraq for any irrational reason. They’re looking at the cold, hard facts.” The Vista Lounge is, as one, perplexed. Lowry continues, “I wish it was true that, because we’re a superpower, we can’t lose. But it’s not.”

No one argues with him. They just look away, in the same manner that people avoid glancing at a crazy person yelling at a bus stop. Then they return to hyperbole and accusations of treachery against people like their editor. The ageing historian Bernard Lewis — who was deputed to stiffen Dick Cheney’s spine in the run-up to the war — declares, “The election in the US is being seen by [the bin Ladenists] as a victory on a par with the collapse of the Soviet Union. We should be prepared for whatever comes next.” This is why the guests paid up to $6,000. This is what they came for. They give him a wheezing, stooping ovation and break for coffee.

Maybe we should build theme parks for these people so they can live in their fantasies and leave the rest of us alone.

I’m Back

I haven’t had a chance to catch up on everything yet, but I’m very grateful to Donna, moonbat and biggerbox for keeping the fires burning while I was away!

Arlington West

I just returned from a walk on the beach (aahhhhhhhh…) and visited our nearby Iraq War memorial, Arlington West. Every Sunday, volunteers (mostly from Veterans For Peace) create a temporary memorial, consisting of a cross planted in the sand for each fallen US soldier in Iraq. They’ve been doing this for 3.5 years, starting back when the death toll was at 500. Loved ones often come by to donate various mementos, ranging from newspaper clippings or handwritten notes from girlfriends or wives, or even objects like a can of Heineken – these dramatically personalize the memorial and are dutifully displayed each Sunday, next to the soldier’s cross.

Arlington West has grown to a pretty big affair, with flag draped caskets, various displays of photos and literature as well as T-shirts and DVDs, and fresh flowers.The city of Santa Monica actually provides storage for these materials during the week. The memorial is immediately next to a major tourist attraction (Santa Monica pier) and so is seen by loads of people from all over. It’s also been the subject of a movie of the same name, Arlington West, which was made as an anti-recruitment film, and which I’m told has been very effective at dissuading young people from signing up.(I still remember an anecdote about this, where the film was shown in a packed high school gym, and there was complete, and utter silence when it finished – if you can imagine this).

I have found this memorial to be at least as emotionally moving as the VietNam war memorial in DC. It’s especially moving to me, to watch dozens of visitors, standing overhead on the pier (which has an amusement park atmosphere), in kind of an impromptu viewing gallery, surveying the memorial, and choking up. We are so deliberately shielded from the reality of this war. A couple of prominent signs are oriented toward this viewing gallery and simply explain, in English and Spanish:

Each cross represents an American soldier killed in Iraq

If we were to acknowledge the number of Iraqi deaths, the crosses would fill this entire beach

The Curve of Time

Hillary is from Mars, Obama is from Venus is a perceptive article (on Salon, free, but they make you endure a brief commercial), that I’d like to use as a launching point to discuss the rebalancing of the genders, which I mentioned toward the end of Opening of the Western Mind.

First, a look at the gender swapping roles of our interplanetary presidential candidates:

In the Democratic presidential pack, the leading man is a woman and the leading woman is a man.

Throughout history, American presidents have been men’s men who puff their out chests against evil. Think Teddy Roosevelt on safari, Jack Kennedy in PT-109, Ronald Reagan on his horse, or George W. Bush with a chain saw clearing brush. If leaders show any slackening of testosterone, especially in wartime, they are quickly derided as wimps (George H.W. Bush), a Frenchman (John Kerry) or weaklings (Jimmy Carter). But on the Democratic campaign trail these days, where the first woman in U.S. history is making a serious run at the White House, gender roles are being swapped.

When Obama travels the country, he does not appear to worry much about posing with guns or wearing those khaki workman jackets that made Kerry look so silly in 2004. Instead, he sings an empowerment ballad on the stump that would make most lady folk singers proud. "The decision to go to war is not a sport," he tells crowds, rejecting the male metaphor. "We can discover the better part of ourselves as a nation," he says. "We can dream big dreams."

In contrast, Hillary Clinton has run her campaign with all the muscular vision and authority of the macho candidates of yesteryear. "I’ve seen her stand up to bullies," announced Christine Vilsack, the former first lady of Iowa, when she introduced Clinton at a rally in Des Moines last week. On the stump, Clinton repeatedly tells people that they should let her take control of the country, eschewing Obama’s more abstract calls for national soul-searching. "If you are ready for change, I am ready to lead," she says.

You probably have no trouble imagining The Duke saying that last line.

"The first woman absolutely has to out-masculine the man, kind of like Margaret Thatcher did," says Georgia Duerst-Lahti, a professor at Beloit College who has written extensively on gender in presidential politics. "Men have a lot more latitude. Just think about Ronald Reagan when he would tear up. Could a woman ever tear up? No. But a man can tear up."

One of the points I want to make is that gender roles and behavior are not strictly tied to the sex of your body, and this is borne out by our interplanetary candidates. All of us, men and women, can and do display behavior and ways of thinking that traditionally are associated with the opposite sex. In New Age parlance, each of us “runs” a unique mix of male and female energy.

Begore I go on, let me assure you that I’m not some radical feminist (not that this is bad). I’m a middle aged guy who has many of the usual “guy” interests, along with a barebones understanding of feminism, gained almost entirely through osmosis. I’m definitely not a metrosexual. What I’m writing about is much bigger than feminism, IMO. What follows is speculation, although I’m hardly alone with these ideas.

As you’re aware, we live in a time of intense polarization. On the one hand, dogmas and social conditioning of all kinds, including gender roles, are being challenged, a process which started back in the 1960s or earlier. This forms the grist for the opposite pole, the reaction, the intense need some have to maintain traditional order. We call those with this need "conservatives".

Hillary’s macho posturing notwithstanding, the feminine is reasserting itself, whether conservatives like it or not, while the traditional masculine approach is waning, and has been for some time. Rather than trying to convince you with a shower of data points (a book-length project), I’m a lot more interested in exploring the reasons why this is happening.

There has always been a tension in our race between male ways of seeing the world and acting in it, versus the feminine approach to the same. Which approach prevails at a given time is reflected in the sex of the gods of that time. The fertility gods of the distant past were a mix of males and females, and I’m not convinced that one sex consistently prevailed over the other. But at one point, several thousand years ago, in what was the forerunner to Western Civilization, the gods by and large became male, and stayed male, to this day. This coincided with a shift in consciousness that produced cities, writing, armies, nation-states, technology, space travel, and so on. These are the apparent fruits of the male tendency toward domination and hierarchies. This list also includes the subjugation of women, which feminism understands well.

Each age sows the seeds of its own demise. From "The Curve of Time", a chapter in Thom Hartmann’s inspiring semi-autobiography, The Prophet’s Way (Note: the thrilling "upward glissando" toward the end of the Beatles’ song, A Day In the Life, is an awesome musical companion to this excerpt):

He [Hartmann’s mentor] took a napkin and drew two lines which intersected to create a backwards L. "If you look at the speed of transportation for millions of years, it was the same," he said, drawing a straight line just above the bottom line of the backwards L. "Then they started to ride horses", the line went up a bit, "then cars", a bit higher, "then airplanes", higher still, "and then jets and spaceships." At that point he shot the line straight up to the edge of the vertical line of the backward L. "The same is true of how much energy humans consume. And of the population of the Earth. And of the number of evil acts committed. And of good acts. And of the destructive power of weapons and bombs. And, and, and. Always, at the end, the curve ends with this radical upward sweep, the point it cannot go beyond without collapse, and it is happening now, in our lifetimes."

The point of this, is that the power and reach of the the average human, both individually and collectively has increased geometrically, as a result of the male dominated approach to things, to the point where we can easily destroy the planet and ourselves. We’re painfully discovering that traditional military solutions – the ultimate form of dominance – often don’t work any more – they backfire on ourselves, something that conservatives have yet to appreciate. And so the traditional male approach to things – hierarchies and dominance, and all the fruits thereof – have in many cases hit the wall in terms of being able to deliver workable solutions to the problems we face. It’s debatable whether the male approach now causes more problems than it solves.

In parallel, the traditional feminine skills of intuition, empathy, and collaboration have come to be more and more prized. Because of "the curve of time", it’s vital to be able to get along, both with our neighbors and with the planet’s ecosystem. This requires respect, and an empathic working with, over dominance. Intuition has become more valued than logic, because it’s faster, and produces answers more aligned with our real, deep concerns, in an age when time itself feels sped up. Intuition is also more valued for its ability to penetrate to the truth of things in a time when we’re drowning in confusion and disinformation. How many of us simply knew in our gut that Bush was lying about Iraq in 2002, without a great need for hard evidence, or even in the face of the phony evidence that was presented? The left-brained Mr Spock seems stiff and silly these days, and probably would not exist if Star Trek were being created today.

There’s a dance that goes on between the male and female energies in our race. One dominates for awhile, and provides the groundwork or impetus for its opposite to catch up. Labor saving machinery levelled the field for women by reducing the need for physical brawn. The ascent of the feminine likewise is providing the space for men to introspect and heal their old wounds, to develop their feminine side including their own gifts of intuition and empathy, as well as to develop a more authentic, heart-centered, and mature form of male leadership.The whole planet has certainly seen enough of the immature, embarassing form of male leadership, based on dominance, over these last six, very dangerous years.

If you made it this far, I hope you understand that I’m not putting down men or male ways. Both styles of consciousness are complementary and necessary. What I see going on however, is a rebalancing between them, one that is necessary for our survival ahead. It’s interesting that neither Hillary nor Obama are being laughed off the stage (at least not by Democrats) for their embrace of their opposite energies. This wouldn’t have happened fifty years ago – they would’ve seemed like freaks, straying from the relatively rigid gender roles of earlier times.

I’ll close with the thought that all the major spiritual figures were very balanced in expressing their male and female sides. That level of mastery (and transcendence) is the goal for each of us. It is where we are going. I say this being far more personally familiar with contemporary figures (such as Yogananda) than obviously those from the distant past.

Profiting from Polarity

From How to Win a Fight With a Conservative, by Daniel Kurtzman, comes a seven question, scien-terrific test, designed to show you What Breed of Liberal Are You? (don’t you like being told that you’re a breed?). I took the test and found that I’m a "Peace Patroller" – check out these nearly useless distinctions:

  • Peace Patrollers, also known as anti-war liberals or hippies—believe in putting an end to American imperial conquest, stopping wars that have already been lost, and supporting our troops by bringing them home.
  • Eco-Avengers, also known as environmentalists or tree huggers—believe in saving the planet from the clutches of air-fouling, oil-drilling, earth-raping conservative fossil fools.
  • Social Justice Crusaders, also known as rights activists—believe in equality, fairness, and preventing neo-Confederate conservative troglodytes from rolling back fifty years of civil rights gains.
  • Working Class Warriors, also known as blue-collar Democrats—believe that the little guy is getting screwed by conservative greed-mongers and corporate criminals, and you’re not going to take it anymore.
  • Reality-Based Intellectualists, also known as the liberal elite—are proud members of what’s known as the reality-based community, where science, reason, and non-Jesus-based thought reign supreme.
  • New Left Hipsters, also known as MoveOn.org liberals, Netroots activists, or Daily Show fanatics—believe that if we really want to defend American values, conservatives must be exposed, mocked, and assailed for every fanatical, puritanical, warmongering, Constitution-shredding ideal for which they stand.

Kurtzman also wrote a companion volume, How to Win a Fight With a Liberal, which astonishingly appeared at the very same time as his first book. It also comes with a seven question test of its very own. Clearly the guy is a genius, the kind that has a shrewd eye for opportunity (and that is not a slam, although it sounds like it). If it’s too hard to bring people together, we can instead find a way to profit from the Culture War. I’m not really condemning Kurtzman – I sort of wish I had thought of this, paralleling those moments when I wish I had come up with that famous icon of kitsch, the Ronco Vegematic.

On a more serious note, does anyone still feel the need for the kind of assistance the first book tries to provide? There was a long period of time when I felt beleaguered and overwhelmed by belligerant conservative behavior and rhetoric, but not any more. This receded due to the failures of conservative ideology and its politicians, and in the meantime, we libs have gotten stronger and more confident in standing these people down.

A Failing Grade Calls For Parental Involvement

I don’t know what it was like at Andover, but in my public school education I took a number of tests and quizzes. Never was it possible to earn a passing grade without getting the right answer on most of the questions.

That was particularly true if you hadn’t gotten any answer for more than half of the questions, say 10 out of 18.

That was true even if a very generous teacher gave partial credit on some of the ones you did answer. That was true even if, for three of the 18, the teacher essentially gave you credit for writing your name, the date and the name of the class at the top of the page.

And, while I did once have a math teacher who wryly described his tests as “opportunities,” as in “an opportunity to improve your grade”, I don’t think even he would have been so mordant as to describe a big red “F” at the top of a graded exam as “a cause for optimism.”

Luckily for Mr. Bush, the press grades easier than the most generous teacher. A quick sampling of wire service and TV coverage of his report on Iraq suggests that it was a “mixed” report. (Little Jimmy, remember that word for next time: that paper with the red marks all over it, the one with the big “F” on it, it’s not a failure, it’s “mixed.”)

But as Fred Kaplan notes at Slate, the administration definition of what counts as “satisfactory” is ridiculous. Not even the most desperate schoolboy would try to claim credit as they do. Unless, as with Mr. Bush, the alternative was a big fat zero.

This wasn’t a “mixed” report. This was documented, outrageous failure.

A parent confronted with a test result like this would certainly decide that something had to change. Despite little Georgie’s protestations that he’s got it under control, a grade like this can’t be acceptable. It’s time to stop letting Georgie determine his own study policy. Adults must take charge.

The House has taken the first step.