I just spent the last hour reading this series of posts on Obsidion Wings about the reprehensible Lindsey Graham amendment to limit habeas corpus. I feel sick.
I suppose that everyone has certain nightmares that haunt them deeply in some far corner of their consciousness. My most vivid one is being imprisoned for something I didn’t do and having no hope of ever being freed. (I’m certain it comes from growing up with an authoritarian father who refused to hear explanations for perceived transgressions.) The Darkness At Noon scenario literally terrifies me. It’s one of the main reasons I’m a liberal.
This widely circulated Washington Post article from today, in which a lawyer describes his indisputably innocent client’s incarceration in Guantanamo is chilling. I would hope that it would make at least a handful of Senators consider supporting the Bingaman Amendment, which will undo at least some of the damage.
The Republican senate is using habeas corpus as a political football. South Carolinian Lindsay Graham, the sponsor, is undoubtedly feeling tremendous pressure because of his “soft” stance on torture (I still can’t believe we are even talking about it) and this is his way of restoring some manly credentials. But there is no excuse for the Democrats who signed on to this. Nor is there any excuse for the Blue state moderates either.
There was obviously some back room dickering on this bit of legislation and that makes me about as sick as anything about this whole thing. They’re playing politics with habeas corpus for Gawd’s sake. This isn’t some fucking highway bill or a farm subsidy. It’s the very foundation of our system of government and the single most important element of liberty. If the state can just declare someone an “unlawful combatant” and lock them up forever, we have voted ourselves into tyranny.
I know it’s bad form to bring this up, but it’s worth mentioning at this moment. Historian Alan Bullock put it this way:
“Hitler came to office in 1933 as the result, not of any irresistible revolutionary or national movement sweeping him into power, nor even of a popular victory at the polls, but as part of a shoddy political deal with the ‘Old Gang’ whom he had been attacking for months… Hitler did not seize power; he was jobbed into office by a backstairs intrigue.
You don’t make back-room deals in which you fuck with the very basis of our system of government. It is irresponsible in the extreme. Considering the people we are dealing with, it’s especially risky. You just don’t know what they are going to do.
It’s bad enough to do it when the administration is riding on a wave of popularity. To do it when there is no good political reason is mind-boggling. Like I said, it’s one thing for little Lindsay to have to prove he’s not a Democratic eunuch. It’s quite another for anybody who isn’t a Republican from the deep south to feel the need to back this horror.
Katherine at Obsidion Wings concludes her (and Hilzoy’s) masterful series with this:
[I]f you agree, if not with our conclusions, than at least that this is maybe important and complicated enough that we could stand to wait a few weeks, please call your senators, and ask them to vote for Jeff Bingaman’s S. AMDT 2517 to bill S. 1042. And please consider asking other people to do the same.
This one is worth making a call for. it’s important.
It just ain’t gonna fly, George. You’re a liar. You lied about Iraqi intelligence and deliberately mislead Congress. Your soul was already burdened by your disgraceful negligence that contributed to the deaths of over 3000 Americans on 9/11. And to date you’ve added the deaths of 2000 plus American military and uncounted Iraqi civilians to that shameful sum.
You’re a liar, George. And an incompetent. And the majority of the American people, who you duped for so long, and whose children you are needlessly sending to their deaths, are beginning to understand that. Loud and clear.
In all this talk of boycotting Target today, I am reminded of this little gem from over the week-end. Wal-Mart supposedly beat back a boycott threat from the Catholic League by firing an employee who failed to properly toe the conservative Christian line:
A Roman Catholic civil rights group[wha?—ed.] called off a boycott of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Friday after the world’s largest retailer apologized for an employee’s e-mail that called Christmas a mix of world religions.
“This is a sweet victory for the Catholic League, Christians in general and people of all faiths,” said Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, in a statement on the group’s website.
Wal-Mart said Thursday that a customer service employee named Kirby had written an inappropriate e-mail to a woman who complained that the retailer had replaced a “Merry Christmas” greeting with “happy holidays.” The company, based in Bentonville, Ark., also said Kirby no longer worked for Wal-Mart.
Kirby wrote that Christmas resulted from traditions such as Siberian shamanism and Visigoth calendars.
“Santa is also borrowed from the [Caucasus], mistletoe from the Celts, yule log from the Goths, the time from the Visigoth and the tree from the worship of Baal. It is a wide wide world,” Kirby wrote.
Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Fogleman said the e-mail — sent without review by other employees — did not represent Wal-Mart’s policies.
He said employees would continue to wish people “happy holidays” because the greeting was more inclusive.
Donohue of the Catholic League said the practice, although “dumb,” was never part of his group’s complaint.
“We only trigger boycotts when we’ve been grossly offended,” he said.
We don’t know the whole story, of course, but what Kirby said was the truth. Are they going to argue that Santa was one of the three wise men? Is the Christmas tree an old middle eastern phallic symbol celebrating the virgin birth? What do they tell their kids when they ask about this stuff, that it’s all in a lost book in the Bible? What nonsense. What the Irish cretin twins (Big Bills Donohue and O’Reilly) are so exercised about is the “Happy Holidays” thing. And WalMart didn’t budge on that. They just sacrificed Poor Kirby — and Donohue was magically no longer “grossly offended” (by the facts.) Sure.
Everybody just keep in mind when the radical Christian right start bellyaching about “Happy Holidays” this season that their favorite retailer doesn’t give a shit.
The truth is that their little boycott threat was nothing more than kabuki in the first place. It turns out that Wal-mart and the churches are much more entwined than I realized. (I have long joked that shopping is America’s true religion, but this is ridiculous.) And anti-Wal-Mart forces are on to them and are fighting fire with fire.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and its critics have been fighting for the hearts and minds of the American public, through advertising, media outreach, worker testimonials and public debate. Now the two sides are fighting for souls.
The world’s largest retailer and its adversaries are hoping to sway religious leaders to their respective causes, seeking to use the clergy’s powerful influence to reach flocks that may not respond to mere public relations or media-driven pitches.
Wal-Mart has quietly reached out to church officials with invitations to visit its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., to serve on leadership committees and to open a dialogue with the company.
Across the aisle, one of the company’s chief foes, Wal-Mart Watch, this weekend is launching seven days of anti-Wal-Mart consciousness-raising at more than 200 churches, synagogues and mosques in 100 cities, where leaders have agreed to sermonize about what they see as moral problems with the company.
“They are each probing for weaknesses behind enemy lines,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, professor of history at UC Santa Barbara and editor of the forthcoming book “Wal-Mart: The Face of 21st Century Capitalism.” “The liberals are trying to go into the churches even in conservative Republican neighborhoods. And then Wal-Mart goes into black churches and poor neighborhoods and says, ‘Look, on this question, you should be with us because we provide jobs.’ “
Wal-Mart Watch’s religious efforts are part of the group’s Higher Expectations Week, a series of nationwide events at churches, clubs, colleges and other organizations that highlight criticism of the retailer. The activities include free screenings of Robert Greenwald’s recently released documentary, “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price,” a critical look at how the company, the largest private employer in the U.S., treats workers.
Wal-Mart declined to comment on its outreach to clergy. But church leaders from around the country said the retailer had contacted them to encourage their support — or to respond to their criticism — of the company.
The Rev. Ron Stief, director of the Washington office of the United Church of Christ, said a Wal-Mart representative telephoned him about six weeks ago after he criticized the company in a church newspaper article about Greenwald’s documentary. After years of writing letters to the company to complain about Wal-Mart’s conduct, Stief said, he finally received an invitation to Bentonville.
“They wanted me to come see their side of it,” he said. Stief said he hoped to take the retailer up on the offer after he and other church members see the film.
The Rev. Clarence Pemberton Jr., pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Philadelphia, said a Wal-Mart representative attended Tuesday’s regular meeting of about 75 Baptist ministers in that city.
“It appeared that what he was trying to do was to influence us or put us in opposition to this film that is coming out and will be in the churches,” Pemberton said, referring to the documentary. “It was implied very strongly that it was about some sort of cash rewards for people who would become partners with Wal-Mart and what they were trying to do.”
Bishop Edward L. Brown, a regional leader of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, said a Wal-Mart representative attended a CME bishops meeting last spring in Memphis, Tenn.
[…]
Wal-Mart Watch, in reaching out to churches, has opened a new front in its campaign, hoping to win converts among those who are not natural allies of labor and environmental activists, the mainstays of the group’s support.
“In order to make the impact we wish to make, we need to have breadth and depth of supporters, and we’ve been discovering that one way of developing that is with communities of faith,” said Wal-Mart Watch spokeswoman Tracy Sefl. “The notion of justice, fairness and opportunity is a message that is powerful from the pulpit and is a message that really transcends simply talking about the stores in familiar ways.”
[…]
The Rev. Frank Alton of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Koreatown said he could not recall ever sermonizing about a specific company in his 10 1/2 years in his pulpit. But asking his 250 members to consider the ethical implications of Wal-Mart, he said, was worth making an exception.
“They are a leader, and they are multiplying around the world — they have a responsibility as a leader and an innovator and pioneer to set a standard since others are following them,” Alton said. “They are destroying community, which is a value of Jesus; they are exercising greed, which is against the values of Jesus; and they are promoting a culture of greed and extending a culture of poverty, which are against the values of Jesus.
I don’t know quite what to think about all this. I’m so determinedly secular that it’s beyond my ken. But, if Wal-mart is passing out currency to conservative churches, I think it’s only right that the liberal churches get in on the act by at least making the very logical argument that exploitation of the poor for obscene profit isn’t exactly Christian. (But, can someone tell me on what basis Wal-Mart can make an explicitly Christian argument in its favor? Where in the Bible is selling cheap Chinese crap for Jesus mentioned?)
This looks to be a real red state blue state battle shaping up. These companies must grow or die. The blue states are where the people are. We can make a difference here by keeping Wal-Mart out (or atl east contained) and Target in line. We can reward companies like Costco that treat their workers like human beings.
If the culture war is going retail, we libs have some serious clout There isn’t some stupid structural impediment involved in this battle — an electoral college or federalist system that dilutes our influence. This one’s all about the numbers.
Target needs to understand that this latest is not a battle over the morning after pill, it is about birth control in general, and that the majority isn’t going to stand for it. Here’s a handy list of articles that explains the position of these “pharmacists of conscience” and what is their real agenda. Here’s one:
There are mainly three types of drugs that are causing me to feel a tremendous amount of guilt after I have dispensed them. These three are misoprostol, birth control pills, and “morning after pills.”
A little education might go a long way with the corporate cowards at Target. They may not unbderstand entirely what they are getting into by allowing themselves to start picking and choosing among different religions and personal beliefs. If they fail to get it, then boycott ’em. This is the new front in the culture war and we’ve got the advantage this time if we choose to use it.
Those of us who’ve been writing about the torture regime for a long while already knew that the DOD had decided to use the SERE techniques to “interrogate” prisoners. This NY Times article reveals something about this I didn’t know before — the SERE techniques were developed for special forces to learn to resist the harsh torture techniques of the totalitarian communist regimes:
SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. Based on studies of North Korean and Vietnamese efforts to break American prisoners, SERE was intended to train American soldiers to resist the abuse they might face in enemy custody.
[…]
The Pentagon appears to have flipped SERE’s teachings on their head, mining the program not for resistance techniques but for interrogation methods. At a June 2004 briefing, the chief of the United States Southern Command, Gen. James T. Hill, said a team from Guantánamo went “up to our SERE school and developed a list of techniques” for “high-profile, high-value” detainees. General Hill had sent this list – which included prolonged isolation and sleep deprivation, stress positions, physical assault and the exploitation of detainees’ phobias – to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who approved most of the tactics in December 2002.
[…]
the Pentagon cannot point to any intelligence gains resulting from the techniques that have so tarnished America’s image. That’s because the techniques designed by communist interrogators were created to control a prisoner’s will rather than to extract useful intelligence.
Can you believe it? It’s not just that torture doesn’t work generally, which it doesn’t. And it’s not just that torture is morally repugnant and stains all who are involved with it. It does. The most amazingly thing about this (Commie) torture regime is that it’s specifically designed to extract false confessions for propaganda purposes. Dear gawd, can they really be so incompetent that they didn’t understand the difference between creating propaganda and gaining intelligence?
Sadly, yes. I keep forgetting that the GWOT is really a massive mind-fuck for these deluded neocon fabulists. They have long been convinced that the major problem for the US is that the wogs think we are a bunch of weaklings. Here’s what Bush said about this just last Friday:
We know the vision of the radicals because they have openly stated it — in videos and audiotapes and letters and declarations and on websites.
First, these extremists want to end American and Western influence in the broader Middle East, because we stand for democracy and peace, and stand in the way of their ambitions. Al Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden, has called on Muslims to dedicate, their “resources, their sons and money to driving the infidels out of our lands.” The tactics of al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists have been consistent for a quarter of a century: They hit us, and expect us to run.
Last month, the world learned of a letter written by al Qaeda’s number two leader, a guy named Zawahiri. And he wrote this letter to his chief deputy in Iraq — the terrorist Zarqawi. In it, Zawahiri points to the Vietnam War as a model for al Qaeda. This is what he said: “The aftermath of the collapse of American power in Vietnam — and how they ran and left their agents — is noteworthy.” The terrorists witnessed a similar response after the attacks on American troops in Beirut in 1983 and Mogadishu in 1993. They believe that America can be made to run again — only this time on a larger scale, with greater consequences.
to the extent that American passivity and inaction opened the door to 9/11, neither Democrats nor Republicans, and neither liberals nor conservatives, are in a position to derive any partisan or ideological advantage. The reason, quite simply, is that much the same methods for dealing with terrorism were employed by the administrations of both parties, stretching as far back as Richard Nixon in 1970 and proceeding through Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan (yes, Ronald Reagan), George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and right up to the pre-9/11 George W. Bush.
Unsurprisingly, he traces our wimpification all the way back to 1970 when a couple of diplomats were killed in the Sudan by the PLO. If we’d nipped that damned Palestinian bullshit in the bud by dropping some well placed nukes where they were most needed (The USSR), the world trade center would be standing today. We’ve never been tough enough for these guys.
This is the consciousness that pervades the inner sanctum of the Bush foreign policy and defense cabal. (Or, at least, it did. It’s hard to know what they are thinking now.) But considering the way they arrange the world and its history in their strange minds, it’s possible that they didn’t stop to think what the torture regime they so eagerly adopted was actually designed to do before they gave the order to use it.
But, you cannot discount the idea that they may have consciously sought to elicit false confessions through some misplaced fourth generation “mindwar” wet dream in which we would psych out the terrorists by being so macho that they would run like rabbits back into their caves and spidey-holes. Who knows? These guys could have originally thought we could prove how tough we really are by showing footage of al Qaeda opeatives confessing to non-existent crimes on FoxNews. With Cheney and Rumsfeld in charge, it’s entirely possible that this whole torture regime may have sprung from a late night viewing of “The Manchurian Candidate” and “The Battle of Algiers” over cigars and a six pack of Zima. That’s about as strategically sophisticated as these guys get.
There are several things that are exceedingly sleazy about this report that you won’t learn from the NPR story, but PZ Meyers will tell you. First, Sternberg is an Old Earth Creationist. Second of all, the reporter, Barbara Hagerty, has connections to nutty Howard Ahmanson, a follower of the racist Rushdoony who also advocated a US theocracy, and Ahmanson is a major funder of the “intelligent design” creationism con developed at Discovery Institute.
Most importantly, the paper which Sternberg published, and sparked the controversy was, as PZ writes, “an excellent example of garbage pseudoscience that was slipped through the peer review process with the aid of a little cronyism from the acting editor, Sternberg, and is representative of the level of trash we get from the Designists…And in particular, this kind of bad science is being peddled for political ends, which makes it especially pressing to deplore it.”
Exactly.
The report claims that untenured professors who believe in “intelligent design” creationism risk not getting tenure. I certainly hope that’s true.
But to NPR, that’s a restriction of academic freedom. I fail to see how. Look, if a young astronomy professor believed the moon was made of green cheese, she shouldn’t get tenure, either. And there is just as much evidence that the moon is made of green cheese as there is for “intelligent design” creationism: none at all.
NPR should be ashamed of itself.
[NOTE To “intelligent design” creationists who wish to argue with me that it actually is a scientific idea: Please go to Pharyngula and argue with Dr. Myers. When you convince him that you are right, by all means let me know and I will be happy to dicuss your ideas. Until then, bugger off.]
It is vitally important to distinguish between the methods used to establish that a fact is a fact and the tactics used to persuade the larger public to accept that fact. They are not one and the same.
For example, it is beyond dispute, by reasonable people, that contrary to the assertions of Bo and Ti of the Heaven’s Gate cult, there really was no UFO hiding behind the tail of Comet Hale-Bopp. However, if you had a child who was in thrall to these dangerous crazies, no amount of logic or reason would convince them otherwise:
The New Yorker…reported on a camera shop in Southern California that had sold an expensive 3 1/2″ Questar Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope (a favorite of amateur astronomers for decades) to two of the Heaven’s Gate cult members, who said that they wanted to see the UFO following Hale-Bopp. They came back weeks later to return the telescope, disappointed that it could not reveal the UFO and was thus obviously a defective instrument.
So how do you save your child from such crazies, when they are beyond reason? Well, you don’t have too many choices. Most boil down to, “Shut up and get in the car. We’re taking you away from these idiots before you piss your life away. Get in the car, now.” And some people get so desperate they kidnap their kids and hire a deprogrammer to reverse the brainwashing.
Now all this raises a host of ethical questions which can keep the blogosphere humming till the pixels all come home. But let’s change the example slightly. What happens when an entire country is convinced there’s a UFO behind Hale-Bopp? Abandoning the metaphor, how do you bring the country to its senses when it’s been programmed to trust the serial lies and distortions of a compulsive liar of a president?
That is the tactical problem that many of us* have faced since the fall of 2000, when Bush’s Texas-sized lies and distortions went global and the American people, bless their trusting hearts, fell for ’em. Reason, ultimately, is not that effective on people whose brains have been set to refuse admittance to reality. Sooner or later, you need to follow a variation of Sean-Paul’s intelligent advice:
The President is a liar. The Democrats did not have the same intelligence as the White House did. And that’s all any Democrat has to say. Don’t try to explain it. Don’t let the Republicans misdirect you into the details or distract you in any way. Just keep hammering the same line over and over and over because the public already knows it’s true: The President is misleading the American people. The Democrats did not have the same intelligence as the White House did. Rinse and repeat all the way to 2006.
Again, establishing a fact is not the same as persuading others to accept that fact. The fact – the president is a liar – has long been established. Now, how do you get others to accept it? Say it: The president is a liar. Say it again: The president is a liar. And when someone demands proof, you repeat: The president is a liar.
Now, suppose they say, “But you’ve shown me no proof. That’s just your opinion. Prove it.” Now what? You say, “The president is liar.”
Now to us liberals, this may appear at first to be a bit, how shall I say it, irrational and unfair. It is not. First of all, the person you are trying to convince is perfectly capable and in fact probably has read many of the same articles you have read, in which the lies of Bush are so painfully apparent. Their ability to reason is skewed, not their ability to read. Attempts to “set their reason straight” by advancing reasoned arguments merely reinforces the delusion.
The important thing to remember is that a deeply-held delusion is invested with deep emotional attachment. One’s self-esteem, one’s positive opinion of oneself, has become deliberately entertwined with maintaining that delusion at all costs. Dangerously so. It is that emotional attachment you must confront. When that has been dealt with, the ability to reason is freed to arrive at the obivious conclusion: The president is a liar.
Now in dealing with someone on the emotional level, there’s no reason to be cruel, but you need to be firm. You need to weaken, in the face of enormous resistance, the emotional glue that binds the deluded to his/her delusion. You don’t humiliate as in, “Schmuck! Any moron can see the president is lying through his teeth. WTF is wrong with you?” That further binds the delusion to the person’s sense of self, which now feels attacked and therefore becomes defensive. Instead, you simply repeat, “The president is a liar.”
Eventually, the repetition will permit the idea to seep enough into their consciousness to make the deluded start to wonder whether it is worthwhile investing their sense of self so deeply in someone who just may be, in fact, a liar. Your clue that this is happening is a change in the way the way the discourse is conducted. Instead of, “Oh yeah? Prove he’s a liar!” you’ll start to hear things like, “I guess he did cherrypick the intelligence a bit and in a sense, that’s a lie. But you don’t think Bush made stuff up out of whole cloth, do you?”
At which point, you respond, “The president is a liar” but, as Sean-Paul says, don’t go into the details. Remember, they’ve already heard them but they can’t reason about them properly yet and the problem they are having is emotional, not intellectual. They’ve started to wake up, but they are still entangling their own sense of integrity with Bush’s.
It’s only when they respond, “Okay, he’s a liar. He lied and manipulated intelligence to get us into the war. But we have to support Bush now if we are not going to embolden the enemy” that you ease up slightly. You say, “The president is a liar. He lied to your face. Over and over. He lied to the soliders who are now fighting for their lives over there. The president is a liar. You owe him nothing. He owes you the truth.”
Dig?
*Yes, many of us were quite immune from the start to the Bush administration’s assault on reality. While I can’t help feeling that maybe we are a bit smarter than the rubes, reason informs me it’s not that simple. For one thing, some very smart people – eg Kevin – were gulled for the longest time, before they finally woke up, and I’m certain that on any fair intelligence test Kevin would trump me easily. I think it’s more the draw of the cards. For example, Lincoln was a tee-totaler, but unlike the moralizing prigs that surrounded him, he didn’t believe his alcoholic abstinence showed strength of character. “I never had a taste for it,” was about all he said.
Likewise, I think that we never had a predisposition to believe what government officials say. And while I think that’s a good thing, all in all, I can also understand where that kind of skepticism, carried to an extreme, can lead into trouble. It is for that reason that I am not opposed to having those more gullible – like George Packer – publish their thoughts for serious consideration. But it stands to reason that those of us who are more skeptical must also be provided a seat at the table of mainstream discourse. The fact that we are not is an exceedingly dangerous situation as it skews the spectrum of acceptable opinion far too much towards unquestioned belief in a government’s willingness to be honest.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed Israel and the Palestinians today to accept a compromise proposal over who should monitor the passage of potential extremists in and out of Gaza, but she failed to achieve a breakthrough to end a bitter two-month-old impasse on the issue.
Between the failure of the recent Latin America adventure and the Middle East Democracy Conference , it looks like Amercian diplomatic efforts by Rice and Bush are batting 0.
I wonder why? Surely they’re not mistaking the moral superiority of American values for unbridled, dangerous arrogance. I mean, it’s so obvious we’re the best and everyone in the world envys us and wants to be an American or live like an American. What is their problem?
Via Talk left, I see that Murray Waas is reporting that Richard Shelby has been cleared by the Senate ethics committee of leaking classified information to the press. This doesn’t mean he wasn’t guilty, merely that he didn’t break any Senate ethics rules. Of course, if the Shelby Amendment had not been vetoed by President Clinton, Shelby would have likely faced serious jail time for what he did.
I wrote a long post about Shelby the leaking Republican hypocrite a year or so ago. During the Clinton years the Republicans were all hopped up about leaking classified information. Today, not so much.
In today’s LA Times, Gregory Rodriguez says “Blame it On The Boomers” hypothesizing that we boomers have been arguing amongst ourselves since we were kids and are responsible for the polarization of American politics:
While it is amusing to caricaturize all boomers as pot-smoking, free-loving veterans of Woodstock, one only needs to glance at Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s 1971 Princeton yearbook photo to recall that there were plenty of clean-cut young people who preferred to lead traditional lives.
As in any revolution, the values revolution of the 1960s propelled Americans into two different directions. While many embraced the new values of the era, just as many preferred the old ones. Then there were those, like President Bush, who indulged in the permissiveness of the times only to reverse course later and champion the virtues of tradition.
[…]
Clearly, the boomer generation is not the first to divide over conflicting political visions. But unlike others, boomers cannot look to a shared sacrifice or experience that provided them with a sense of common values and shared purpose. On the contrary, the political consciousness of the boomers was forged by terribly divisive battles over Vietnam, the civil rights movement and Watergate.
If the 2004 presidential election between John Kerry and George W. Bush taught us anything, it was that the wounds of Vietnam and the 1960s have still not healed. As a result, the 1960s generation has come to power remarkably split, and this division has paralyzed American politics
Rodriguez also says, “perhaps the most profound political division in the country is generational. No, not young versus old this time, but rather baby boomer versus baby boomer.”
It’s still about Young vs Old — young boomers vs old boomers.
It’s not just that liberals and conservatives of my generation preferred to live different lifestyles. It’s that the largest age cohort in history had some choices to make — and those choices shaped our leadership class in very different ways. The young liberals were combative and revolutionary in their zeal — idealistic and naive also. The conservatives were those who identified with the conformity of their elders, withdrawn, inward and repressed. They have devolved into revolutionary zeal as they aged.
I am very interested in this topic and took a stab at writing about this a while back:
We are dealing with a group of right wing glory seekers who chose long ago to eschew putting themselves on the line in favor of tough talk and empty posturing — the Vietnam chickenhawks and their recently hatched offspring of the new Global War On Terrorism. These are men (mostly) driven by the desire to prove their manhood but who refuse to actually test their physical courage. Neither are they able to prove their virility as they are held hostage by prudish theocrats and their own shortcomings. So they adopt the pose of warrior but never actually place themselves under fire. This is a psychologically difficult position to uphold. Bullshitting yourself is never without a cost.
And I think there is an even deeper layer to this as well and one which is vital to understanding why the right wing baby boomers and their political offspring are so pathologically irrational about dealing with terrorism. Vietnam, as we were all just mercilessly reminded in the presidential election, was the crucible of the baby boom generation, perhaps the crucible of America as a mature world power.
The war provided two very distinct tribal pathways to manhood. One was to join “the revolution” which included the perk of having equally revolutionary women at their sides, freely joining in sexual as well as political adventure as part of the broader cultural revolution. (The 60’s leftist got laid. A lot.) And he was also deeply engaged in the major issue of his age, the war in Vietnam, in a way that was not, at the time, seen as cowardly, but rather quite threatening. His masculine image encompassed both sides of the male archetypal coin — he was both virile and heroic.
The other pathway to prove your manhood was to test your physical courage in battle. There was an actual bloody fight going on in Vietnam, after all. Plenty of young men volunteered and plenty more were drafted. And despite the fact that it may be illogical on some level to say that if you support a war you must fight it, certainly if your self-image is that of a warrior, tradition requires that you put yourself in the line of fire to prove your courage if the opportunity presents itself. You simply cannot be a warrior if you are not willing to fight. This, I think, is deeply understood by people at a primitive level and all cultures have some version of it deeply embedded in the DNA. It’s not just the willingness to die it also involves the willingness to kill. Men who went to Vietnam and faced their fears of killing and dying, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, put themselves to this test.
And then there were the chickenhawks. They were neither part of the revolution nor did they take the obvious step of volunteering to fight the war they supported. Indeed, due to the draft, they allowed others to fight and die in their place despite the fact that they believed heartily that the best response to communism was to aggressively fight it “over there” so we wouldn’t have to fight it here.
These were empty boys, unwilling to put themselves on the line at the moment of truth, yet they held the masculine virtues as the highest form of human experience and have portrayed themselves ever since as tough, uncompromising manly men while portraying liberals as weak and effeminate. (Bill Clinton was able to thwart this image because of his reputation as a womanizer. You simply couldn’t say he was effeminate.)
Now it must be pointed out that there were many men, and many more women, who didn’t buy into any of this “manhood” stuff and felt no need to join in tribal rituals or bloody wars to prove anything. Most of those men, however, didn’t aspire to political leadership. Among the revolutionaries, the warriors and the chickenhawks, there were many who did. Indeed, these manhood rituals are more often than not a requirement for leadership. (Perhaps having more women in power will finally change that.)
The only political aspirants among those three groups who failed to meet the test of their generation were the chickenhawks. And our problem today is that they are the ones in charge of the government as we face a national security threat. These unfulfilled men still have something to prove
.
I agree with Rodriguez that the boomer cohort bears some responsibility for the polarization of America. The liberal boomers are responsible for the polarization of the first 20 years of our generation’s adulthood — the last 20 years are the responsiblity of the conservatives.
We liberal baby boomers were massively full of shit in many ways when we were trying to change the world. But then we were young. The conservative boomers have no such excuse. Last night I heard Tony Blankley on the Mclaughlin report say something like “we needed to completely dismantle the middle east in order to remake it.” I haven’t heard a liberal spout such crazed revolutionary crapola since Jimmy Carter wore sideburns. I have a feeling that if Tony had spent a little more time in dorm room bull sessions drinking Gallo and smoking pot instead of nursing his rightwing resentment, he might have gotten over such hairbrained notions sometime before he turned 50.
Back in 1998 and 1999, it seemed a day didn’t go by when the Washington punditocrisy didn’t tell the American people that the American people were appalled by Bill Clinton’s lying, skirt chasing ways and that he would never survive and that the impeachment was a result of a national disgust with his behavior. If the news media had a vote, George Stephanopoulos,Bob Barr, Tim Russert and Henry Hyde would have marched down to the White House to demand Clinton’s resignation for the good of the country. Even today we have David Brooks and countless other gasbags still selling the hogwash that Clinton was enormously unpopular during Monicagate, despite the fact that his approval ratings consistently hung around 60% throughout the scandal and actually increased after he was impeached. It was the Republicans who lost seats during this period.
It’s this kind of thing that proves that the beltway courtiers truly live in a bubble. Politicians and strategists simply have to stop listening to them and listen to the rest of the country.
For the second day in a row, National Public Radio’s (NPR) Morning Edition misrepresented Virginia Governor-elect Timothy M. Kaine’s position on abortion. On November 10, NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson falsely described Kaine — who supports legal access to abortion — as “pro-life.” On November 11, NPR religion correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty drew a false dichotomy between Kaine’s position on abortion and that of the Democratic Party. Bradley labeled Kaine “an unusual candidate,” claiming that “he opposes abortion in a party that supports it.” In fact, while Kaine has expressed opposition to abortion as a matter of personal faith, he made it clear during his campaign that he supports legal access to abortion and highlighted the issue as one distinguishing him and his Republican opponent, former Virginia attorney general Jerry W. Kilgore.
Bradley went a step beyond Liasson, asserting that Kaine’s position on abortion was the opposite of his party’s position. Bradley’s and Liasson’s mischaracterization has the effect of advancing the notion, promoted by Republicans, that Kaine won because he ran on a “strategy sharply at odds with the approach of leading national Democrats.” That assertion — which is The Washington Post’s paraphrase of RNC chairman Ken Mehlman’s characterization — may or may not be true as a general matter, but what is not true is that Kaine’s position on abortion is the opposite of his party’s. The Democratic Party supports access to legal abortions; Kaine supports access to legal abortions. While Democrats may differ over the degree to which they think that abortion should be regulated, they belong to the party that supports abortion rights, while the GOP opposes them.
Kaine’s position on abortion was also John Kerry’s position on abortion. There are many pro-choice Democrats, a lot of them Catholics, who would not personally have an abortion or want one of their loved ones to have one but they are pro-choice because they believe that this is a personal matter and that abortion should not be illegal. That is the very essence of the pro-choice stance — being allowed to make your own decision free of state interference, subject to certain agreed upon, constitutional restrictions. Why the pundits don’t understand the meaning of the word “choice” is puzzling considering how hilarious they found it when Clinton parsed the question about the meaning of “is.” Choice is a pretty clear cut concept not subject to tense or time.
These reporters mischaracterize not only the position of the Democratic Party, but they mischaracterize the position of the American people. If you watch the bloviators on any given show or read the op-ed pages of major newspapers, you would think that all Democratic politicians must be personally for “abortion on demand” and that the majority of the country disagrees with them. Being pro-choice is spun as a dramatically unpopular position that is costing the Democrats elections. And just as the punditocrisy was completely out of step with the country on the Lewinsky matter, they are out of step with the country on this:
It’s Definitely a Pro-Choice, Pro–Roe v. Wade Country
Lest we harbor any doubt about that, as debate on the Alito Supreme Court nomination heats up, consider these data.
1. In a SurveyUSA fifty-state poll, 56 percent nationwide described themselves as pro-choice, compared to 38 percent who said they were pro-life. Only thirteen states were pro-life; the rest were pro-choice and include Pennsylvania (+7), Michigan (+13), Montana (+11), Ohio (+10), Iowa (+15), Arizona (+17), Minnesota (+17), New Mexico (+17), Wisconsin (+18), Florida (+22), Colorado (+27), Oregon (+29) and Nevada (+32).
2. In a recent Gallup poll, the public, by 53 percent to 37 percent, said the Senate should not confirm Alito if it was likely he would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.
3. The Pew poll cited above asked two slightly versions of a question on whether Roe v. Wade should be overturned. The replies averaged 61 percent to 29 percent against overturning Roe v. Wade.
4. In Washington Post/ABC News poll cited above, 64 percent said that, if a case testing Roe v. Wade came before the Supreme Court, the Court should vote to uphold it, compared to just 31 percent who believe the Court should vote to overturn it.
30% believe that Roe should be overturned! Ferchistsake, why are we even talking about this except to say that our politicians should run as supporters of Roe vs Wade, period. It isn’t even controversial.
Yet, if you listen to Cokie and Monsignor Tim and read the various scribblers on the op-ed pages around the country you would think that this is the Democrats’ biggest problem.
The allegedly liberal beltway gasbags and stenographers are being spun just as they were spun by the Republican establishment back in the Clinton era. We must get our politicians and strategists to stop listening to them. They are killing us.