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Consider:

"It is better to be drunk with loss and to beat the ground, than to let the deeper things gradually escape."

- I. Compton-Burnett, letter to Francis King (1969)

"Cynical realism – it is the intelligent man’s best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation."

- Aldous Huxley, "Time Must Have a Stop"







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Thursday, 4 November 2004

Topic: Election Notes

The Day After the Day After

Clare, an old college friend, sends a quote along -

"The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing - for the sheer fun and joy of it - to go right ahead and fight, knowing you're going to lose. You mustn't feel like a martyr. You've got to enjoy it."

- I. F. Stone

First from Paris - Joseph, the expatriate American ex-film producer from these parts -
Last night at the Philo Caf? [that Paris institution explained here] we enjoyed a heated discussion regarding the future of democracy. I argued that as marketing and politics become more scientific, politics becomes more as theatre. Political parties have greater tools with which to manufacture the consent of the governed, and we enjoy the spectacle, ever more deluded that we are participating in it.

Allow me to draw your attention to the following. This is just getting started.

Scientists scan brains for political clues
Associated Press story covered by CNN
Tuesday, November 2, 2004 Posted: 1625 GMT (0025 HKT)

SAN DIEGO, California (AP) -- Applying some of the same brain-scan technology used to understand Alzheimer's and autism, scientists are trying to learn what makes a Republican's mind different from a Democrat's.

Brain scanning is moving rapidly beyond diseases to measuring how we react to religious experiences, racial prejudice, even Coke versus Pepsi. This election season, some scientists are trying to find out whether the technology can help political consultants get inside voters' heads more effectively than focus groups or polls.

Already, the scientists are predicting that brain scanning -- known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI -- will be a campaign staple four years from now, despite ethical concerns about "neuromarketing."

Brain scans measure blood flow. When brain cells start firing in a part of the brain that governs a particular emotion or activity, they need more oxygen, which is carried by the blood. During an fMRI, active regions of the brain can be seen lighting up on a computer monitor.

Last month, Drs. Joshua Freedman and Marco Iacoboni of the University of California at Los Angeles finished scanning the brains of 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats. Each viewed images of President Bush, John Kerry and Ralph Nader.

When viewing their favorite candidate, all showed increased activity in the region implicated in empathy. And when viewing the opposition, all had increased blood flow in the region where humans consciously assert control over emotions -- suggesting the volunteers were actively attempting to dislike the opposition.

Nonetheless, some differences appeared between the brain activity of Democrats and Republicans. Take empathy: One Democrat's brain lit up at an image of Kerry "with a profound sense of connection, like a beautiful sunset," Freedman said. Brain activity in a Republican shown an image of Bush was "more interpersonal, such as if you smiled at someone and they smiled back."

And when voters were shown a Bush ad that included images of the September 11 attacks, the amygdala region of the brain -- which lights up for most of us when we see snakes -- illuminated more for Democrats than Republicans. The researchers' conclusion: At a subconscious level, Republicans were apparently not as bothered by what Democrats found alarming.

"People make tons of decisions and often they don't know why," Iacoboni said. "A lot of decision-making is unconscious, and brain imaging will be used in the near future to perceive and decide about politicians." ...

... "This is a story of the corruption of medical research," warned Gary Ruskin, who runs a Portland, Oregon, nonprofit organization called Commercial Alert. "It's a technology that should be used to ease human suffering, not make political propaganda more effective."
Emma, our Australian friend in Paris comments - "Orwell must be laughing in his grave!"

To piggyback on a famous British poet of the seventeenth century - The grave is a fine and private place, but none I think do there... giggle? (See this.)

Dick in Rochester, New York adds - "Gee whiz, Joe! The good news just keeps a comin'."

Bob Patterson, who weekly writes for Just Above Sunset as "The World's Laziest Journalist" tries out a football metaphor - "Maybe it's time to heed the wisdom of the old football coach? Drop back ten and punt?"

Vince in upstate New York demurs - "Can't punt if you don't have the ball..."

Ah, but how bad are things?

The previous day Dick in Rochester, New York had mentioned that the national debt is going right off the chart, as the big bucks people will probably get another tax cut.

Joseph adds this -
Dick: This is part of an explanation I will eventually get to, but probably not until I return from London next week.

By this time next week, the Euro will be at 1.30 USD. Look at how the bond market is reacting. We are in a hole we may not get out of for a long, long time. The party that is sitting at the table when this check comes will be ruined for a generation. You can quote me.

Why Democrats should be thankful?

At least they don't have to clean up the Bush fiscal catastrophe.
And Joseph sends along Daniel Gross in SLATE.COM - - "...the Treasury Department announced an impending crisis. If the lame-duck Congress doesn't raise the statutory $7.384 trillion debt limit, which was intentionally breached in October, by Nov. 18, the world's greatest power will run out of cash."

Emma? "Ah but for just how long will the Chinese and Japanese continue to buy the debt when they have increasing problems of their own?"

That is a consideration.

Rick, The News Guy in Atlanta, adds this -
Look at how the bond market is reacting? We are in a hole we may not get out of for a long, long time? The party that is sitting at the table when this check comes will be ruined for a generation?

No time right now for a detailed response from me on that, but yep, you're right!

Republicans and Bush are good for business?!? As I understand it, many of the folks who buy our bonds are them foreigners that Bush has so studiously thumbed his nose at - something they may not take personally so much as they look at his policies of running up huge deficits and think he might not be able to pay it back - which means he'll have to tempt them with higher bond rates, making it even harder to pay back. (And if nobody has yet coined the term "Treasury Junk Bond," please remember that you heard it here first.)

And there are reports that Europeans, who in the past pretty much admired "American confidence and that 'can-do' attitude," now see that as "arrogance," and are starting to boycott the same American products they once thought cool. U.S. firms deny noticing any effect, but Coca-Cola says its 16% drop in sales recently is just due to the weak economy over there. So once again, Republicans and Bush are good for business?

Not really! One could guess that his being-bad-for-business thing going on is one of the prices he paid when he sold whatever passed for his soul to the so-called "moral values" crowd. But I'm pretty sure that at some point, America will catch on and turn on George W. Bush in the same way they did turned on Newt Gingrich.

I haven't read all of the posts, and if you've already explained your pre-hangover thoughts about it being a good thing Bush won - my gut reaction being, "Yeah, you and al Qaedda both!" - and also that disengaging thing, I hope to find the time to get to read them this weekend, but on the face of it, I must say I really disagree.

Yeah, who wants to have to clean up Bush's mess! And especially when at least half the country cares less about how much he screwed us all up in the world than whether God wants us to kill embryos here and there in the name of keeping actual living people alive!

But the fact is, in the reputed words of John Wayne, "It's a job to be done; somebody's got to do it." Kerry would have done it, with both trepidation and pride. And I wish he could have. But since he didn't get the chance, we may have to follow up and do it.

And if I take correctly that business about not trying so hard to be right, I do like the way Phillip made that sound like the credo of the other side, which doesn't seem to care as much about really being right as it does about winning.

I do hope, in the coming inevitable bloodletting of the Democrats, the argument that "we all have to have to have the courage to change our philosophy and become more like the Republicans" gets the mercifully short shrift it so richly deserves.

If we want to win, we have to learn to pretend to "love God" in the same way Bush supporters do? We have to reaffirm our belief that "God hates Fags" and that gays shouldn't get married or raise children? Are we supposed to learn to love guns and hate the idea of legal abortions?
Denounce Hollywood for corrupting our morals? Learn to love the idea that evolution is merely a theory equal to creationism? Run shithead campaigns where we talk trash, and where we lie, exaggerate, distort, and blatantly ignore the facts without fear of contradiction? I think you get my drift.

The point is, if you want to pretend to be an asshole just to get the votes, not only will those other guys always be better at it, they will also gain votes by mocking you for trying to be like them, just to get votes. (Think Kerry-shoots-goose.)

The Democrats do stand for things that the other side doesn't (we can talk about that later), and that's why I almost always find myself voting Democratic. I do hope we don't give into the temptation to fiddle with the formula, just for the sake of winning. Someone has to believe in the things that George W. Bush doesn't, and if need be, let me the first to join that group.

But if you really want to imitate something the Republicans did to win this time, let's try to energize the base. Try going out there and getting people who agree with you to not only go to the polls, but also do the thankless job of going door-to-door and taking shit from the folks who don't agree with you, all in an attempt to get them to join our side. We may not cut too many strays from the herd, but every one you get is one you didn't have. Keep in mind that most those Red State folks have never heard the other side of the argument.

The first step is the midterms. Democrats have to use these storm trooper tactics (pardon the expression) to try to change the makeup of the next Congress. That should set us up for 2008. We can do this, and if we want to do any good whatsoever before we die, we should try. We need not be ashamed of what we believe -- hey, we're probably MORE than half the country! And we need to have the guts to both stick by our beliefs and to spread the word!

(Of course, the first thing I myself have to do is find the time to read Slate article. I've been so busy writing this diatribe that I haven't had time. I'm just so pissed off, and plan to stay that way for some time to come.)

But for other good reading matter on this issue, I refer you to the Op-Ed page of the Thursday's New York Times, specifically Maureen Dowd's "The Red Zone", Thomas L. Friedman's "Two Nations Under God", and Garry Wills' "The Day the Enlightenment Went Out". [See below.]

Sex and God

That was also an issue in the election.

Joseph replies to our Cincinnati friend who explained the Christian view of the election results -
"You need to disengage your need to be right."

That particular piece of advice was leveled at me by Joel Silver himself. He was right. [Joel Silver's Frank Lloyd Wright house in Just Above Sunset here.] Only Phillip and you, I believe, have truly understood the spirit of it. It is a waste of time trying to convince others that you are right, when you could more easily convince them of what they need to believe in order to believe you. In other words, if your ego can forego the satisfaction of being proved right, you are more likely to get what you want. The Republican leadership knows this. Sun Tzu would approve.

Activist judges: judges at the appellate level or higher are activist. That some are not is talk-radio hype. It's just that there are some kinds of activists I don't like, and some kinds don't like. You will be tempted to label them "liberal"; I would urge you to call them "permissive" instead. It's not the same thing.

Don't believe me? How about your cherished right to privacy? Not in the constitution. Lots of other things you and I both cherish (like the right to drink beer, for example!) are not in the constitution and are only rights because "activist judges" "created" them. I think you would be appalled by all that we would have to give up if we had a judiciary full of Antony Scallias. You wouldn't like it. So let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Having said that, I agree. When gay activists first began throwing a fit, now nearly a year ago, I smelled big trouble. For quite a while, we have been in danger of scuttling the party on their behalf, and I for one, do not approve. Their welcome at the table was tentative at best, and this is how they pay us back?

I don't give a shit how badly they want it, their "plight" has absolutely ZERO parallel to the civil rights movement. To make the comparison is absurd. I agree with you 100% that the state amendment story is the elephant in the room. As far as I'm concerned, they should be shown the door until they can prove that they can behave themselves. If that makes me a bigot, tough. Should I let my house burn down to save theirs? 90% of gays aren't going to vote Republican no matter what we do. Those "log cabin" Republicans (who picked THAT name, anyway?) are gonna do what they're gonna do.

True, I don't support gay marriage either, but my reasons have little to do with morality. (Have you noticed that "morality" these days is limited to matters of sex?) If you give them marriage, it's no threat to me or society at large. But there would then be no legal basis for denying adoption rights, etc. This is where I personally draw the line. It's tough enough being a kid these days without having two daddies that shower together.

The whole gay thing is just a big yawn for me. Except that their collective impatient, impetuous sniveling has played a major role in this particular train wreck. Every sensible Democrat should feel betrayed by those who insisted upon their own little interests when it was important (and smarter) to keep it together, shut up and wait.
Wow.

Emma responds -
Look I think you guys are making a real song and dance about this gay marriage thing. Personally I don't think there is anything wrong in gay couples wanting to get hitched and settle down - it might reduce their so-called loud and rampant promiscuity.

Furthermore, in a world where so many couples get hitched for all the wrong reasons I have the impression that gay couples looking to marriage might actually be doing it for far more admirable moralistic reasons than most of us heterosexuals would give them the merit for.

My one concern however with gay married couples is when it comes to having children. That would seem to be the more appropriate discussion to seriously debate.
And Rick, The News Guy in Atlanta, takes that up -
Emma,

I agree about the marriage thing. Although I never cared that much about it before, I was forced to make a decision about this stupid issue since the Republicans made it a wedge-issue: I really can't see anything wrong with it, especially since it seems spousal benefits can't be handled any other way. (Would it "destroy the concept of marriage" as we know it? I can only imagine the day it becomes legal that, all over this country, husbands will smack their foreheads in a "V-8" moment, shouting, "Damn it! If I'd only waited! I coulda married a MAN!!")

But as for their raising kids thing, I very much disagree with both you and Joseph.

Phillip and I live in a town (Decatur, Georgia) that is apparently famous far and wide for being where lesbians come to live. (If you've ever heard of the Indigo Girls, the singing group, they grew up here, and I think still live here.) But I've noticed at my daughter's elementary school countless lesbian couples dropping off their kids, kids who seem as normal as can be. And studies have shown that adults that were brought up by gay couples are normal in every way, and also end up having about the same sexual preferences as those raised by heterosexuals.

Should kids be raised by a mother and father? It's probably best, but I personally believe children of divorce probably fare much, much worse than children with two mommies or two daddies.

One more note about this Republican wedge-issue, as manifested in state amendment ballot proposals: I know that in my state of Georgia, a lawsuit to throw an anti-same-sex marriage amendment off the ballot failed, despite the fact that it secretly also banned not only civil unions, but heterosexual civil unions. (Some claim the challenge will win on appeal, on constitutional grounds.) This whole damn issue was phony from the get-go, designed to get the evangelicals -- people who didn't care about the real issues we face -- out to the polls. And if worked, and we're going to pay the price.

Rick
We are paying the price.

Phillip Raines chimes in here -
Scuttling the party on the behalf of the gay thing, huh? Hmm. I recall a headline in the Atlanta Journal "Zell Miller: ' I tried to tell you.'" I didn't have the stomach to read his opinion, but I'm sure it danced around that very issue. I could be worse. A candidate like me might say "Not all church is good and not all dope is bad." Boy that would really scuttle the bonnie ship, eh matey.

I found solace in coming to the conclusion that their writing is better, more hypnotic, and better on things that are bullshit. That's it! THEY DO THE BULLSHIT BETTER. That's what we need. To be better at a bunch of bullshit - then we can pull in the vast pool of the gullible, who after all are real numbers. I feel like we actually got out all the reasonable Democrats there are. That's our whole team, and you're not going to get the artist and anarchist to vote, they're too distracted anyway. Now the next step is to get Robert Redford to run, ahh.. How the electorate would swoon, if there are better writers out there to slip him all cue cards. I see a real dork factor to the image makers in this party, it's not like we have our best talent on the job. And Kerry bore the burden for us, but was not himself overburdened with charisma.

But on the prohibition on gay adoption. Well, it already happens one way or another. A couple of gay guys up the street have a couple of kids achieved by artificially inseminating one or the other in a lesbian couple. All four parents make good money and they aren't pedophiles. In my small town such things don't even raise an eyebrow for most of the citizens. There's a big lesbian population here in downtown Decatur (code named Dick-hater). There are responsibilities like school conferences, who picks up who at after-school, who is sent grades, hospital privacy concerns and medications, and then a myriad of insurance issues, pretty much like families everywhere have to wade through. All the contractual obligations could fall under the umbrella of marriage, but that sounds too much like holy matrimony and then you get some moron wrapped in an idiot who ponders who would Jesus booger or some such shit and their wiring burns through the insulation and there is a melt down of outrage spread chicken little-like through the land. The critical error is really based on the connection of marriage and matrimony, which is well... grammatical bullshit, which like I said, we don't do as well. Always distracted by turning it into some sort of smart-ass joke - and hey, who can blame us. In a way it's funny like a fart, but you gotta keep a straight face and enlightenment is, we must admit, the higher path.

But the point is that there is some sort of family contractual agreement that for all us straight people is covered in marriage, but for gays it is more convoluted, if not impossible. And insurance companies just hate the idea because it means more pay outs, and without national health insurance people are looking for an angle in the same way I tell young musicians to marry a teacher. You can't beat the benefits. With gay couples it all gets distracted by the buggery issue, and the farmers in the red states aren't going to go for that. And apparently even the Amish will vote to stop things from going in the direction of such nastiness. And now it's a democratic issue, somebody's sex life. Yeah, well maybe we should draw the line on constituency, but replace them with whom? Or as Joseph implies, should we say you can come to the party, but try not to speak and don't make a spectacle of yourself. If they're even sitting at our table we have to defend the question of why do you have a queer at the table. Then where is that bullshit reply? Don't ask me. I would say their table collapsed from the weight of all those dildos, and where is that going to get you?
Rick, The News Guy, adds this -
Decatur (code named Dick-Hater)?

Yeah, I thought of mentioning that, but passed on it because I was trying very hard to come off as serious. (Oddly, I first heard that joke from a guy who lived in Orange County, California, after my having lived in Decatur for maybe ten years.)

Phillips says, "That's it. THEY DO THE BULLSHIT BETTER. That's what we need. If [gays
are] even sitting at our table we have to defend the question of why do you have a queer at the table. Then where is that bullshit reply?"

It's odd, but I think their bullshit, on one level, actually isn't.

In fact, the Bush constituency has this indelible image in its collective head of a strong leader, and their guy fits that picture perfectly. So when Bush and his crowd shovel what the rest of us may think of as bullshit, his followers just see it as the kind of thing the "right man for the job" has to say in order to keep it.

This is why all this stuff about Kerry - for example, making sure we see him goose hunting, to show he's not going to take guns away from conservatives ("There he goes, the Massachusetts liberal, pretending to be a gun guy!"); or emphasizing his war record, as opposed to Bush's ("There goes that liberal Kerry, pretending to be as tough as W!"); or admitting to all the world that he's against same-sex marriage ("There goes the liberal from Massachusetts again, trying to pretend he's not a liberal!") - is seen by them as making Kerry look like a big phony who will do and say anything to get votes.

And quite frankly, although "bullshit" is way too strong a word for it, it's hard to deny that so much of it came off as pretty disingenuous and baldly pandering. But no, I don't think it's necessarily Kerry's fault.

The truth is, just as Kerry gambled he might be able to win without carrying one Southern state, Bush took a chance and spent his whole campaign playing to his core fans, not even allowing anyone into his rallies who wouldn't sign a form that promised to vote for Bush. And his gamble paid off. Not once did he try any such stunts to appeal to liberals.

In other words, on that particular level, not once did Bush, the candidate, bullshit anyone!
Amazing, when you think about it!

(By the way, oddly enough, George Bush apparently isn't even a hunter. Then again, nor does he need to pretend to be one in order to impress his crowd.)

So, is there a lesson for our side in all of this? Here's one: Don't try to make yourself look like the other guy, since voters already have one of those, and he will inevitably be better at it than you.

A corollary lesson: Those Bush bastards are begging for an opposition, someone who proudly stands for something else, and it might as freaking well be you.

It can be argued, of course, that Bush was able to get away with playing almost solely to his base only because he knew his base was larger than Kerry's. Maybe so, although I'm still not convinced. I still think there are plenty of untapped smart people out there who have a different definition of "moral values," and who could be recruited to get off their asses if only they were shown some glimpse of hope, and who would be willing to go vote for, and maybe even work to elect, the good guys.

I think prominent among the reasons that Bush beat Kerry, as has been discussed here, is that conservatives are very much into image, while liberals are more into truth. But it's also true that liberals, who try to be open-minded and are always willing to entertain both sides of an argument, are that much more likely than the other side to wonder why their guy can't jimmy up a good image as well as the other guy. (And it's equally true that conservatives are entertained by the liberals' tendency to doubt themselves out of existence.)

But this is not to say the liberals should be tempted to abandon their beliefs, in the vain hope of becoming winners.

Try to remember the dark days of "Strange Fruit" - black bodies hanging from trees, alluded to in the Billie Holiday song of the same name. Because brave people fought, and sometimes died, to make unacceptable behavior no longer acceptable, those days have become a curious relic of the past. The lesson is, happily, that sometimes sticking to good principles ends up being not nearly as futile as all those cynics and pessimists claim.

Which is to say that, among other things, we should stop worrying about coming up with a "bullshit reply" to those who question why we have gays sitting at our table.

I suppose we could tell them to go ask Dick Cheney, but they would then only accuse us of "bad taste" in "outing" Cheney's daughter, or some such crap. Maybe the better approach might be to say that there's nothing wrong with gay people - very smart and creative folks who contribute plenty to society, thank you very much; and maybe that God obviously agrees, since he created so many of them; and, by the way, who the hell are you to go around, second-guessing God?

But if that doesn't work, maybe you should invoke Dick Cheney's wisdom once more, advising them to go do to themselves what Dick Cheney advised Patrick Leahy to do!



Notes on the Press

Joseph again -
On CNN I just saw the announcers TWICE deliver the line that "MOST Americans are happy with the results of the election" while showing a graphic that indicated that 44% were either "disappointed" or "afraid". As a journalistic convention, we don't usually invoke "most" for a shade above half. I guess that's the liberal media for you, the same lot who never said a discouraging word about this president until six months ago.

A few weeks ago, I had lunch with some people, one of whom was the kind of guy who refers to CNN as the "Clinton News Network". It was hard going. Here's the funny bit. Do you remember the old saw that says that journalists are liberal because they "want to save the world" which is why they became journalists to begin with? You will be happy to know that it has graduated to the status of urban legend. This guy claims that a "friend" has "a friend" who is a journalist who said this about himself. I could barely keep from laughing in his face.

You know that something is completely indefensible when presented this way. If this were his argument one might present a counter-argument and shoot the whole thing. But by presenting it as the confession of a friend of a friend, one is being asked to accept, like so many other things these days, the core assumptions as an article of faith.

I have known many journalists, and few of them managed to muster more than a detached amusement regarding most of news stories they covered. I think that like much twaddle of this type that one hears these days, it stems from the distance most people have from the practical realities of the subject, an understandable ignorance of how stuff actually "works".

For William Safire, I have no explanation. I have admired is "language" column for years, but I suspect he's coming unhinged.
Rick, The News Guy in Atlanta, who was in on CNN at the start, responds -
Except to say, yes, over 50% does indeed qualify as being "most", this is not to be confused with the sentiments of right-wingers I've heard in the last few days that Tuesday's results prove that we are overwhelmingly a conservative -- as if to say, anti-God-liberal -- nation. After all, 50% is a long way from 100%, isn't it?

And yes, I myself have met liberals who have become journalists because they wanted to "do good." But I've always contended that liberals think of education and journalism as "noble professions that help society," while conservatives tend to pass over "noble professions that help society" in favor of "going where the money is."

But I should also note here the little-known fact that, at the height of CNN being referred to as the "Clinton New Network," not only did Clinton reportedly have a distinct dislike for CNN, but that all the very top news managers of the network at that time were conservatives!

And I must say, thank goodness all of those managers (two of the three are dead now, but I still shouldn't betray their secrets by naming them) were so dedicated to principle that they never let their political beliefs interfere with their professional standards.
Well, don't tell the conservatives that. They don't believe it.

___

References, and other comment -

Rick in Atlanta mentions items in the New York Times and here are two of them.

The Enlightenment was overrated?

The Day the Enlightenment Went Out
Garry Wills - Published: November 4, 2004
... This might be called Bryan's revenge for the Scopes trial of 1925, in which William Jennings Bryan's fundamentalist assault on the concept of evolution was discredited. Disillusionment with that decision led many evangelicals to withdraw from direct engagement in politics. But they came roaring back into the arena out of anger at other court decisions - on prayer in school, abortion, protection of the flag and, now, gay marriage.

... Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?

America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values - critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences. Though the founders differed on many things, they shared these values of what was then modernity. They addressed "a candid world," as they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, out of "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." Respect for evidence seems not to pertain any more, when a poll taken just before the elections showed that 75 percent of Mr. Bush's supporters believe Iraq either worked closely with Al Qaeda or was directly involved in the attacks of 9/11.

The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies.

Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists. Americans wonder that the rest of the world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed.

It is often observed that enemies come to resemble each other. We torture the torturers, we call our God better than theirs - as one American general put it, in words that the president has not repudiated.

... Jihads are scary things. It is not too early to start yearning back toward the Enlightenment.
Note: The Times tells us Garry Wills, an adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University, is the author of "St. Augustine's Conversion"

And MAUREEN DOWD on the same page -
... The president got re-elected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule. He doesn't want to heal rifts; he wants to bring any riffraff who disagree to heel.

W. ran a jihad in America so he can fight one in Iraq - drawing a devoted flock of evangelicals, or "values voters," as they call themselves, to the polls by opposing abortion, suffocating stem cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.

Mr. Bush, whose administration drummed up fake evidence to trick us into war with Iraq, sticking our troops in an immoral position with no exit strategy, won on "moral issues."

The president says he's "humbled" and wants to reach out to the whole country. What humbug. The Bushes are always gracious until they don't get their way. If W. didn't reach out after the last election, which he barely grabbed, why would he reach out now that he has what Dick Cheney calls a "broad, nationwide victory"?

... Just as Zell Miller was so over the top at the G.O.P. convention that he made Mr. Cheney seem reasonable, so several new members of Congress will make W. seem moderate.

Tom Coburn, the new senator from Oklahoma, has advocated the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions and warned that "the gay agenda" would undermine the country. He also characterized his race as a choice between "good and evil" and said he had heard there was "rampant lesbianism" in Oklahoma schools.

Jim DeMint, the new senator from South Carolina, said during his campaign that he supported a state G.O.P. platform plank banning gays from teaching in public schools. He explained, "I would have given the same answer when asked if a single woman who was pregnant and living with her boyfriend should be hired to teach my third-grade children."

John Thune, who toppled Tom Daschle, is an anti-abortion Christian conservative - or "servant leader," as he was hailed in a campaign ad - who supports constitutional amendments banning flag burning and gay marriage.

Seeing the exit polls, the Democrats immediately started talking about values and religion. Their sudden passion for wooing Southern white Christian soldiers may put a crimp in Hillary's 2008 campaign (nothing but a wooden stake would stop it). Meanwhile, the blue puddle is comforting itself with the expectation that this loony bunch will fatally overreach, just as Newt Gingrich did in the 90's.

But with this crowd, it's hard to imagine what would constitute overreaching.

Invading France?
It's a thought.

The world press reaction is here in summary form....

Brits to America: You're Idiots!
Well, 51 percent of you, anyway.
By June Thomas - Posted Thursday, Nov. 4, 2004, at 5:07 PM PT SLATE.COM
... check out the cover of Thursday's Daily Mirror: Over a picture of President George W. Bush, the paper asked, "How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?" Inside, the left-leaning British tabloid headlined its editorial, "WAR MORE YEARS." In a clear demonstration of the trans-Atlantic culture gap, the paper's description of the president's beliefs--clearly intended to strike Mirror readers as a radical agenda--is simply an accurate, if crude, pr?cis of his platform: "Mr Bush opposes abortion and gay marriage, doesn't give a stuff about the environment, is against gun control and believes troops should stay in Iraq for as long as it takes."

The Mirror wasn't the only British paper with a striking cover. The Guardian's "G2" section was fronted by a page of solid black containing just two small words: "Oh, God." Meanwhile, the Independent ran the headline "Four More Years" along with iconic images from the first Bush term: kneeling prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib, soldiers fighting in Iraq, oil-drilling machinery, sign-wielding religious extremists, and a smirking Dubya. In France, Lib?ration ran a picture of the president under the headline, "L'Empire empire"--"The empire declines."

... As the Guardian put it: "We may not like it. In fact ... we don't like it one bit. But if it isn't a mandate, then the word has no meaning. Mr. Bush has won fair ... and square. He and his country--and the rest of the world--now have to deal with it." In a fit of double-negativity, the Independent's editorial added: "This does not mean, however, that we do not contemplate the second Bush term with considerable trepidation. Another four years of a president in thrall to the religious right and the neo-conservatives is another four years in which the United States risks sliding back into an earlier age of bigotry and social injustice." Writing in the Times of London, Simon Jenkins' condescending sigh of disappointment typified the genre:

... Elsewhere in Europe, France's leftist Lib?ration got with the program: "A new reactionary majority ... has cemented its hold on American democracy. The rest of the world may deplore it, but it will have to adapt to this reality." Turkey's Hurriyet also echoed the familiar grin-and-bear-it theme: "American voters have once more brought someone they deserved to the presidency. In this case, what is left for us is to bear it and to protect our own interests with maximum sensitivity." But Sovietskaya Rossiya defaulted to quaintly archaic Cold War rhetoric: "Bearing in mind that Bush's policies are prompting increasingly powerful rejection in the entire world, mankind will inevitably unite against the common evil--American imperialism."
Oh my!

Other comment?

This - "'Ach,' says Oliver James, the clinical psychologist. 'I was too depressed to even speak this morning. I thought of my late mother, who read Mein Kampf when it came out in the 1930s and thought, 'Why doesn't anyone see where this is leading?''"

"I think a large part of the public likes the conservatives' theme music. Now they will be tested on whether they like the lyrics." - Barney Frank - Brookline TAB, Nov. 4th, 2004

This -

Rove's re-election strategy was elegantly simple: Scare the bejesus out of Jesusland. Faggots are headed your way! Satanic Muslims are hiding everywhere! That's all it took to get Jesusland to do the job. Intellectual conservatives like the National Review staff are flattering themselves if they honestly believe Jesusland cares about conservative thought. The "reality-based" folks are learning that Jesusland doesn't even care about jobs or the economy. In Jesusland, it's all the will of Jesus. No job? No money? Daughter got her clit pierced? Jesus is just fucking with you again, testing your faith. Got the cancer? Oh well. Soon you'll be with Jesus. Reality is no match for a mystical world in which an all-powerful god is constantly toying with every detail of your mundane life, just to see what you'll do about it. Keep praying and always keep your eye out for homosexuals and terrorists, and you will eventually be rewarded ... all you have to do is die, and then it's SuperJesusLand, where you will be a ghost floating in a magic cloud with all the other ghosts from Jesusland, with Jesus Himself presiding over an Eternal Church Service.

And A reader to the Guardian (UK) - "... I suggest Operation Rock the Voter - well-meaning Guardian readers volunteer to visit America, and are assigned a single Bush voter, who they then shake violently and slap around a bit, and point at any given five second video clip of Bush and scream, "Look! He's a fucking moron! Can't you see that? Everyone else on the bloody planet can, what the hell is wrong with you?" Followed by some more violent shaking."

Oh well.

The London Daily Mirror front page - Thursday, November 04, 2004 -



Posted by Alan at 22:32 PST | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Saturday, 6 November 2004 14:18 PST home

Wednesday, 3 November 2004

Topic: Election Notes

The day after the election... "You need to disengage your need to be right."

From someone to whom I was once married -
It's just after 7:00 am here and I'm about to leave for work. Just thought I'd check in to commiserate. I guess the people have spoken. Unfortunately most of "the people" are faith-based morons. Still, I'd feel really odd being part of an American majority. It is much more comfortable to be outraged from the fringes.
I'm settling down to being comfortable with the new state of things. I guess. My domain names - the Above Sunset things - are registered and paid for. And I suppose someone else owns the domains www.grousingfromthefringe.com and www.whatwereyouthinking.com and such variants. Minorityreport.com is taken. Being one of the few and isolated contrarians will do for now.

From another friend in upstate New York -
Excuse me... looking up from my Vonnegut book long enough to ask this disenfranchised question....

Republicans send THOUSANDS of lawyers to specific voting precincts in critical states to hover over the process and contest irregularities... And not a single shot is fired - anywhere?

And yet - ALL the exit polls throughout the day that indicated Kerry was actually winning this thing.... to the extent that the markets tumbled (Dow down several 100 points) in the final 90 minutes of trading... ALL those polls happen to be TOTALLY wrong by the end of the day when numbers are actually tallied?

Now I only grew up in the 60's when we had clear evidence that certain conspiracies - from time to time - deserved to be considered more than just theory -

But is ANYBODY out there with a national voice going to ask what ALL those lawyers were doing yesterday? Really?

Signed,
Anonymous (to protect my children's' children!)
Yeah, well, fraud or not, it's a done deal. And Phillip Raines adds -
Just the threat was enough. Did they cheat? Yeah, prove it. Say "wait a minute, this ain't right..." and get hit with the sore looser tag. Out thought in the devious arena, again.
From our friend in France.

Heather Stimmler-Hall - member number one of Ric Erickson's MetropoleParis Club - sends this along. (You can see her picture over at Ric's site of course - she's the one in the middle.) Joseph was at Harry's New York Bar near the opera. Heather was at the Paris Plant Hollywood, which I think is up on the Champs somewhere or other. The expatriates (ex-patriots?) in Paris... not happy?

Heather and I have traded emails in the past on many topics.
Hey Alan -

Spent last night (midnight six in the morning) at Planet Hollywood's election party. I expected a few cameras, but the reality when I arrived was much more over the top. There seemed to be more journalists with cameras and notebooks and bright lights than actual Americans. There were only a handful of people really dressed up for the occasion, and they were constantly hounded. The rest of us didn't even have buttons. I put on a donkey sticker from my CNN election worksheet I tore out of the New Yorker. The bar is huge, lots of small rooms. Stood around awhile, met up with a friend, got drinks, got food, got Champagne. Got tired and commandeered some chairs. There was a band, and the sound on the TV was turned up to drown them out. The volume was unbearable by 5:00 am, especially during the commercials. There were mostly Democrats, I gather from the cheering whenever a state result was announced in his favor. The few Republicans were being very quiet. I think there were even some Nader fans. A woman next to me commented on how old Larry King looked. The guy on my left was growing frustrated with CNNs "We haven't got any news yet, but we're going to keep talking anyway" schtick. I left with Ohio and Florida still unannounced, as well as my own state, Minnesota. By the time I made it into my house and turned the TV back on, Ohio was already being declared favorable to Bush. A long night. I went to sleep at 830am. This afternoon, still no word, but of course the Republicans would like to just go ahead and accept the win before everything's counted. Another proud moment in American Democracy. And this is what we want to export?

Still keeping my fingers crossed...

- Heather
Oh well. It was not to be.

By the way, check out Heather's new book:
Paris & Ile de France by Heather Stimmler-Hall
Hunter Publishing, Inc March 1, 2004
ISBN - 158843396X
And her Secrets of Paris website is really fine.

Joseph, out expatriate friend threw this is in -
I will be at Harry's Bar from about 4:00 pm EST, glued to the Reuters screen, drinking, canvassing the crowd and probably hounded again by the Agence France Presse folks trying to get point of view from a "real American". I shall have to once again tell them that I don't know any.

For anyone wishing a report from the ground on this side, general commiseration or condolences, as the case may be, I will happily accept your call on [number kept private].

Cheers, and may someone win!
Someone did.

Ric Erickson adds this - grounding us back to real life -
Bravo Heather!

Last night, Tuesday, 2 November, was at a dinner in a place with no TV. We were told Oleg from Kiev had left a black and white TV in a closet, but nobody made a move to get it. Alan Ginzberg's 'America' was read aloud.

This morning radio France Info was no longer focusing its reports on the United States. Weather, sports, the Paris Bourse, and finally a 90-second bulletin. Grand elector scores and hung up in Ohio. Then on to the 'life of plants.'

Had to go out to the deepest countryside today to pick something up from the server-lady. She has satellite and cable, maybe 30 channels. Which she had watched until early morning; and was not in a good mood at noon.

What should we do? Immediately buy all the apartments we can, so we can sell them to refugees?

Will they sing, 'Don't cry for me, America?'

Today's papers too soon for Paris comment.
But the comments came.

Joseph, after his vigil at Harry's -
Yes, it does seem like a pretty dark day. But I can't really complain too much as none of it affects me very directly.

Before the whining begins in earnest, let me share with you two thoughts that have pre-occupied me in the last week, and I'll explain them later when I'm no longer hung-over and exhausted.

1) This outcome proves superior to a Kerry win. Though I voted for Kerry, I have been somewhat hoping for a Bush win.

2) Dems need to understand why it is that they are so personally offended
by Bush. It has little to do with his policies.

3) Dems did not lose the election because all the votes were not counted, or because Republican operatives pulled dirty tricks. These are the political realities we must face. This stuff will always be with us. Therefore, the solution doesn't lie in re-counts or lawsuits. Kerry, like Gore before him, lost to a stuffed-shirt all on his own, fair and square. If you can't beat someone with this record, there is something seriously wrong with your message. Deal with it.

4) The Republican leadership knows something that the Democratic leadership does not: The majority of Americans do not support their policies. This realization affords them a tremendous advantage. The sooner the Democrats learn this lesson, the sooner they can shape public opinion to their benefit.

Let me share with you the best piece of advice anyone has ever given to me: "You need to disengage your need to be right."
Phillips Raines down Atlanta way, adds this -
Watch the talking heads last night I felt like I had eaten some bad shellfish. My oldest son, Will (18) voted for the first time yesterday and stayed up to watch me cuss at the TV "See what it's like being a leftist in the south, pointless except for being a goaded punching bag for some god and guns devotee." But I'm not moving to France because I'm so disgusted with the majority right wing slant here. It crosses my mind like it does every other friend who has called me this morning to cry in the democrat beer. The percentages look the same in most states as they have the whole election. 51 Bush, 48 Kerry. The skins capture the flag. But I will still sell my hotdogs on this street, even though a goomba will expect 30 dollars a day protection money, even if it rained. Can't fight it. I hope Bush won't fuck things up as bad as he did the first term, but I'm sure the deficit will get higher and that the United States of Europe will surpass us as the supreme economic power, especially since so much of our debt is owed to them. There is no reason for EU to have any mercy.

EU "You must pay the rent."
US "But we can't pay the rent."
EU "Should have thought of that before you took Iraq on as your main welfare project."

As Alan says..."Oh well."
Do I say that?

And Vince in upstate New York also comments to Joseph in Paris -
Joe your thoughts here are grist for deep diving, in fact profound, but as I take my own loop through your implied logic - and I'm looking forward to your expanded thoughts on just that exercise, I'm struck not only with the impact of your closing thought (never stated more eloquently), but struck especially by the triple-entendre of pure irony that plays here...

1) ... for what proportion of red state votes were grounded in just the opposite expression of self righteousness?, and
2) ... if W. had adhered to your wisdom would his face have ever graced our national stage?, and
3) ... if not for your counsel's polar opposite would the incumbent party even have had a platform on which to stand yesterday!

"Shoot me off my own ho'ss?" cried the Marlboro cowboy.

"Not while I'm still breathin' (and smokin' these things!) Dang varmits!"
Dick, nearby in upstate New York adds -
"....need to be right......?" This all sounds like a Red Sox fan in 1919 (or whatever) saying "wait `til next year." None of them lived long enough for "next year."

It is not so much a need to be right as it is a realization that we have just reelected the worst president of my lifetime. (I'm 58.) Even when he did not win the popular vote in 2000 he made absolutely no minimal gesture toward "healing" or even considering the Democrats as anything but a pain in the ass to be snubbed and ignored. He has said, "Fuck the world" and shows no indication moderating that. He has indicated that Scalia (short form of Machiavelli) is his standard for appointing probably two - maybe four - Supreme Court justices. The environment is up for sale with energy companies having first bid and environmentalists not making the list at all. The national debt is going right off the chart as the big bucks people will probably get another tax cut.

Need to be right? I don't think so. I just am not happy having Nero back in office.
And Vince responds -
Funny you should conclude that way - the name Nero crossed my lips just this morning... as I thought - Jeez maybe New Zealand would be a nice place to move the family... or retire!

Which is my own way I guess of "disengaging my need to be right..." Same category as my Vonnegut novel - only safer!

One worst-case Nero scenario that may emerge here... is that we become ever more the target... in the infinite loop of militant bloodletting, merely because of the way Cheney and friends provoke with every breath!

You want to know why Palestinians & Israelis refuse any path but violence? Because the Bushes in particular have been the latest ideal role models for best practices in middle east conflict resolution! Why wouldn't I emulate the "winners!"
But Phillip in Atlanta adds this -
"You need to disengage your need to be right."

Good advice whether you got it from a respected professor or a sailor with chronic B.O. Even my smartest friends fall into the trap of conceit centered on their opinion. It blasts a great sucking sound to me too. It is fueled by the phantom of bewildered dismay at how an opposing view could erupt from deluded insight based on emotion or lack of facts. An easy example is that not accepting Jesus as your personal savior will lead to an eternity in hell for your immortal soul. That just can't be right, the Baptist just can't be right. I recall so many emails from Alan where he had dinner conversations with republicans who thought we should defeat Iraq and afterwards march into Syria then Iran. It would be followed up with articles and analysis of astonished disbelief, almost hurt feelings that friends were detached from the trouble such actions would cause. No desire to gloat if these bad ides were carried through and then made things much, much worse. Only a hope that cooler heads prevail.

In Yana Yoga, an ancient study that plays with the stretch of thought, there is a distinction made between knowledge and belief. If you know something you don't get torqued out of shape if someone disagrees with you, but if you just believe something and encounter disagreement, a flood of emotions kick in, dragging behind it vanity and an inability to disengage a need to be right. Such are the perils thought. Disengaging from this need does in fact sooth.

After voting yesterday morning I had a vision of the republican party grabbing their heart like Obi Wan Kanobe feeling a great disturbance in the force as Kerry won by a slight margin state after state raising the metaphorical moan like the citizens of Algernon. The anticipated collective anguish sent a warm glow through out me and I felt the seductive opiate of prescient vanity. Damn it felt good. But I was wrong. Oh well, what's next? Maybe I'll return to the axiom of my twenties of not really caring about politics, being more interested in my sax, centering my pitch, fattening my tone. If he doesn't draft my boys then it's not really my problem.

Joseph, please spread the word that half of Americans think this administration sucks, and give us the benefit of the doubt if we visit overseas. That's a useful activism I'd appreciate.

































Emma, the Australian in Paris, to that image - "Thanks it brought a smile to my face. I'm suffering depression and I'm not even American!"

Dan in Cincinnati, to Joseph, his old friend in Paris, weighs in from the other side -
"You need to disengage your need to be right."

I have always admired your ability to come up with good quote. Ever since we met way back in high school, I have always quoted you. Actually, plagiarized is a better word. Anyway, I know we shared some thoughts off-list so no one will fully understand what I am talking about but I share it with everyone anyway.

Some points:

The margins by which Bush won was what I was referring to when I said my gut tells me Bush wins by a "large" enough margin to keep the lawyers at bay.

I am not sure the Democrats will learn anything from this loss any time soon. Fear of Christians, hatred of Bush, among other things has clouded their thinking.

As far as Ohio goes... The press late last night was pointing out all the provisional ballots that had yet to be counted. They speculated (hoped, really) that if numbers were close enough the provisional ballots would put Kerry over the top. What they either missed or didn't say is that one of the biggest groups that signed up new voters was those "dumb" Christians. You see, we here in Ohio were voting on a same-sex marriage amendment (which was soundly defeated, bi-partisan-like) so the churches started signing up voters. Had some activist judges and others on the left not stirred that pot earlier in the year, we may not have had that issue on the ballot. Could be that the Christians who registered to vote solely for that issue wouldn't have been a factor and Kerry wins Ohio. The one big lesson the Democrats could learn from this is that the country in not as liberal as they think.

Keep in my mind I have had no sleep in the last 36 hours so I hope I am making sense. Finally, I am not a gloater but I have some quotes to comfort those of who need it. Please take these in the spirit intended.

"In times like these it helps to recall that there has always been times like these" - Paul Harvey, I think.

"Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy" - Anne Frank
Okay.

And in the web sphere?

This -
Reading the various commentary and chatting with a few people I've come to a couple of realizations which I think we all need to come to terms with. First, as Eric Alterman puts it, there are more of "them" than "us" right now. The people who voted George Bush and the Republicans into office this year didn't do so because they were conned by a right wing asshole posing as a compassionate centrist. They did so precisely because he is a right wing asshole. Yes, the modern Republican party consists of nasty bigots and liars and the media rarely bothers to point out just how nasty they are (all the talking heads talking about the role of "moral values" in the election know that what that really means is "fag hating," but they won't say it). But, don't be fooled - people know what they voted for.

... Democrats and liberals have spent too many years running away from the Right's caricature of what it means to be a liberal that they've managed to obliterate from the public consciousness any coherent concrete narrative. It isn't as many seem to think about precisely where on the Left/Right spectrum a candidate or the Party chooses to position itself. I'm not arguing that Democrats need to be "more liberal" or "less liberal" or anything like that it all. But, they have to be something other than "not Republicans."
And this -
I hate to say this, but I hope liberals quit whining about George Bush's "mandate." It may be a narrow one, but of course he won a mandate. We've all been saying for months now that this election was a referendum on the incumbent, and the incumbent won the electoral college, won the popular vote by nearly 4 million votes, picked up four Senate seats, tossed out the Democratic leader in the Senate, and picked up a few more House seats for good measure. If the results had gone the other way, we'd be talking about them as a clear repudiation of Bush and everything he stood for.

Needless to say, this doesn't mean we should just mope around and let the Republican Party run the country unopposed. At the same time, though, it doesn't help to be in denial: the fact is that Bush did win a convincing victory, and he did it because more Americans agreed with his vision for the country than agreed with ours. Our job now is to try to change that, not to pretend that it never happened.
And this -
A MANDATE FOR CULTURE WAR

That's Bill Bennett's conclusion. He won't be the only one. What we're seeing, I think, is a huge fundamentalist Christian revival in this country, a religious movement that is now explicitly political as well. It is unsurprising, of course, given the uncertainty of today's world, the devastating attacks on our country, and the emergence of so many more liberal cultures in urban America. And it is completely legitimate in this country for such views to be represented in public policy, however much I disagree with them. But the intensity of the passion, and the inherently totalist nature of religiously motivated politics means deep social conflict if we are not careful. Our safety valve must be federalism. We have to live and let live. As blue states become more secular, and red states become less so, the only alternative to a national religious war is to allow different states to pursue different options. That goes for things like decriminalization of marijuana, abortion rights, stem cell research and marriage rights. Forcing California and Mississippi into one model is a recipe for disaster. Federalism is now more important than ever. I just hope that Republican federalists understand this. I fear they don't.
And on it goes.

There will be more.

Posted by Alan at 23:32 PST | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Saturday, 6 November 2004 14:01 PST home

Monday, 1 November 2004

Topic: Corrections Noted

Listen up! There IS no War on Terror! I repeat: There IS no War on Terror! None! We have all been conned!

A little bit more on that Osama videotape from Friday, discussed in Just Above Sunset on the weekend here.

A bit on the codependency thing here -
The two men turn out to be well-matched. Bin Laden pisses people off and drives them into the arms of Bush. Bush pisses people off and drives them into the arms of Bin Laden. Bush keeps Bin Laden in business; Bin Laden keeps Bush in office... Bin Laden has shown up on the eve of our election, full of the same impenetrable self-assurance Pat Robertson noticed in Bush.
The makes sense to me.

And here in the Los Angeles Times we find Osama Bin Laden really longs to be Arafat, of course -
In fact, what has caught the attention of the U.S. intelligence community is the strangely conciliatory nature of bin Laden's new message, according to some government officials and outside experts... These experts say bin Laden appears to be intensifying his campaign to "re-brand" himself in the minds of Muslims worldwide, and become known more as a political voice than a global terrorist... The U.S. official said "a political spinoff (of al-Qaida) is one of the greatest fears" of U.S. counter-terrorism authorities, in which bin Laden and the terror network follow the path of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hezbollah and members of the Irish Republican Army. Over the years, those groups evolved from having an emphasis on committing terrorism into broader organizations with influential, widely accepted political wings.
Ah, he becomes legitimate!

Then this on that videotape -
"We want people to think 'terrorism' for the last four days," said a Bush-Cheney campaign official. "And anything that raises the issue in people's minds is good for us."... A senior GOP strategist added, "anything that makes people nervous about their personal safety helps Bush."... He called it "a little gift," saying it helps the President but doesn't guarantee his reelection.
A gift?

I suspect the tape has no net effect on the election. Things I've come across but didn't capture? Walter Cronkite saying something like we captured Osama long ago and this tape was produced by Karl Rove and the Republican National Committee. No, he couldn't have said that. And there is lots of net chatter that we have had Osama for months and we'll kill him tomorrow - Monday - as the final election surprise that puts Bush over the top. And a variant, we've had him for months and we forced him to make this tape or we'd kill him. And on and on....

Well, Monday is over and Osama Bin Laden is still out there... somewhere.

Rick, The News Guy in Atlanta, sat there really is no War on Terror -
Okay, I'm confused and need some help. Is it just me, or has anyone else in this country noticed that there is no "War on Terror"?

Polls show Americans trust Bush more than Kerry on the issue of protecting the country from terrorism. Really! (They obviously ignore the fact that Kerry has actually killed someone face-to-face, while the closest Bush got to doing that was when he giggled it up as some born-again Christian woman was on the war to one of his Texas execution chambers.)

But other than that, when you think about it, what has Bush done in this so-called "War on Terror"?

He attacked Afghanistan? Big deal! Hell, if 9/11 had happened on Calvin Coolidge's watch, he'd have invaded Afghanistan during a break in one of his famous afternoon naps!

Bush invaded Iraq? Okay, if you insist on considering Iraq part of the "War on Terror," then you must admit to it being one hugely-botched battle at best, with terrorists now operating out of that country and doing things Saddam Hussein would never have allowed them to do. But in fact, Iraq, as has now been demonstrated, originally had nothing to do with the war on terror anyway, although probably now it does. Which leaves us with Afghanistan, where the Taliban still lives, and as Osama bin Laden possibly does, too.

(Okay, looking on the bright side, isn't it nice that Saddam was removed from power? Yes, but considering the subsequent blowback, celebrating Saddam's being gone is like calling the glass ten-percent full instead of ninety-percent empty. One can understand some Iraqis being happy about this, but it has certainly /not/ made the world safer.)

Is this war just a metaphor, like the "War on Poverty"? Apparently Bush doesn't think so, charging that anyone (i.e., Kerry) who thinks this war is just a metaphor is not fit to be president. (Lots of Bush's fellow Republicans have called it a metaphor, but that's okay, they're not candidates for the job.)

Can this war be won? Apparently Bush doesn't think it can be, not in the classic sense (although he had to later clarify that argument by inserting some flip-floppy ambiguity into it.)

Is it a law-enforcement matter? Bush says no, that's just "September 10th thinking," the sort of thing his opponent is guilty of. (You know, it seems this business of hunting down this war is like Twenty Questions, with no end in sight.)

But in truth, if it's not a metaphor; and it can't really be won in the usual sense; and it's not a law-enforcement thing; and if even Tommy Franks has told people Afghanistan is really more of a man-hunt than a war -- and as has been pointed out before, shortly after our invading Afghanistan, there were more American soldiers in Salt Lake City, protecting the Winter Olympics, than there were fighting our so-called war in Afghanistan -- then where is this war everyone's talking about?

Even Bush and his people admit that this "war" has produced absolutely no actual "war prisoners" as such that fall under Geneva Convention protections. Shouldn't that alone tell us something?

Look, I have ideas of war in my head. Take WWII; now that was a proper war! So was WWI and the Civil War and the War of 1812 and the War for Independence! Real wars you can see and smell, and run to join up with, or maybe run away from. Korea and Vietnam were called "police actions," but whatever you called them, they walked and talked like wars to me.

So if anyone tries to tell you that this is a war unlike others and it isn't between nations and that it doesn't take place in any one chunk of geography, but is in fact taking place in the slums of Hamburg and the jungles of Indonesia, and hundreds of other secret places where these vermin try to hide, and that it won't end with someone signing a peace treaty, and may not /ever/ end in the conventional sense, and is not fought only by soldiers with guns but also by prosecutors with subpoenas ... you see where this is going?

Tell them what they're describing is only "metaphorically" a war, but is really mostly just a law-enforcement issue that, like crime itself, will probably never end -- and certainly not the sort of thing to allow a president to lay claim to being a "wartime president". I'm sure future historians will someday compare the mass hysteria rampant in early 21st century America, as it fought its imaginary war, to the Salem witch burnings and communist-hunts during the McCarthy era.

It seems like such a classic case of emperor-wearing-no-clothes, and it seems that nobody wants to bring this up, so let me do it now:

I need everyone's undivided attention! Listen up! There IS no War on Terror!

I repeat: There IS no War on Terror! None! We have all been conned!

Anyone? Please feel free to convince me otherwise.
Readers?

Vince in upstate New York comments -
What? That we have not been conned?

Pete Townsend just has to eat his own words... can't escape even in the UK!

"Won't get fooled again?"

Ah to be young again & writing anthems...

P.S. No one ever called us on budgeting federal dollars in the name of our domestic labels of "War on..." - so why should they question this mirage of tax dollar diversions.? All we need is for Chaney to come up with a new acronym for W-I-N. Any takers there?
Nope. Just go vote.

Posted by Alan at 20:31 PST | Post Comment | Permalink
home


Topic: Election Notes

I guess there will be an election tomorrow... Bush as Robespierre?

Digby on Kerry -
He's not a crook, he's not lazy, he's not stupid. He's very accomplished, he's highly experienced and he's got good instincts. But, I'm convinced that the most important character traits in a successful President at this point in history are resiliance and cunning; even if we win the election, politics are going to remain a bloodsport. The Republicans aren't going to fade away. This battle is ongoing and we must have someone who can withstand a punch and come back. It is going to be very, very difficult to govern. I think Kerry is running not because he's "electable," but because he's one of the few Democrats of his generation who has spent his life preparing to govern in the face of a radical political opposition. The job is not for the fainthearted...
Yeah, who would want that job?

Juan Cole (University of Michigan Middle East expert) does the French thing -
The decision between Bush and Kerry will shape the world Americans live in during the next four years. Even though Bush has been called the "CEO President," that isn't how he has behaved. Bush has overthrown two governments and announced the imminent demise of several others. Bush is a revolutionary in Asia, a Robespierre. At least one of Bush's revolutions is now mired in its Terror phase. What a real CEO thinks about Bush is obvious from the Paul O'Neill / Ron Suskind memoir of life on the Bush cabinet. Kerry in contrast is a statesman committed to navigating the status quo without producing unnecessary turbulence.

Since the United States is essentially a vast island, three thousand miles across and two thousand miles deep, its inhabitants often begin to think that they are unconnected to the wider world. My friend John Walbridge suggested to me that most Americans may not believe the rest of the world exists, as opposed to being something that one occassionally sees on television.

September 11 was a reminder that even the defenses of an island can be breached. It was also a signal that the old foreign policy prerogatives of the United States government, to intervene as it liked to impose its will on other regions, was no longer cost-free. In a world of increasingly powerful technology, each individual is potentially much more powerful, and this was a development that diabolical engineers in al-Qaeda saw clearly and figured out how to use.

Al-Qaeda has ambitions beyond just blowing a few things up, no matter how horribly. It is now a cadre organization, that is, it consists of a few thousand committed fanatics. But it wants to be a political party. That is the significance of Bin Laden's most recent videotape. He is posing as a champion of "freedom" in the Muslim world (mainly freedom from US hegemony, but he maintains also freedom from authoritarian and corrupt regimes in the region backed by the US). Bin Laden is making a play not just to be a cult leader but to succeed to the position of Gamal Abdul Nasser as an anti-imperialist icon in the region. Ultimately al-Qaeda would like to get control of entire states, and merge them into an Islamic superstate, a new caliphate. It is a crackpot idea that will fail, but many crackpot ideas that fail (e.g. the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia) do a great deal of damage along the way.

George W. Bush has never been able to see clearly the nature of this threat...
Ah, maybe so, but voters think otherwise.

And he goes on -
The Bush administration is full of revolutionaries. They are shaking up the world by military force. They are playing a role familiar in modern history, pioneered by Napoleon Bonaparte, of using overwhelming military superiority to establish new forms of hegemony by appealing to desires for change among neighboring publics. Bonaparte promised the Italians liberty on the French model, but in fact reduced the Italians to a series of French puppet regimes and then he looted the country. So far Bush's Iraq looks increasingly like Bonaparte's Italy in these regards.

... Kerry is not a revolutionary, unlike Bush. He recognizes that al-Qaeda is a real threat and needs to be the main focus of US security thinking. Kerry will capture or kill Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri because he will put the resources into that endeavor that Bush instead wasted in Iraq.

Kerry is worried about Iran's nuclear ambitions, but is highly unlikely to resort to military force or connive at a coup in Tehran. He will use diplomatic methods and more subtle military pressure.

Kerry will rebuild the alliance with Europe, which is crucial for fighting al-Qaeda. He will attempt to improve the US image in the Muslim world, which Bush has completely shattered. His approach to China will be measured.

So the choices are clear. Those who want a revolutionary who will risk further wars and instability, should vote for Bush. Those who want someone who will use diplomacy to manage the status quo and roll back asymmetrical threats should vote for Kerry.
Ah, but Kerry is tall and Bush is short. Bonaparte indeed.

Martin Kettle does the US history thing -

The fervour behind the push to put 'America first'
Don't underestimate the centrality of the old belief in manifest destiny
Martin Kettle, The Guardian (UK), Tuesday November 2, 2004

This sounds awfully familiar -
We are all Americans now, announced that now famous Le Monde headline after September 11 2001. Back then, more than three years ago, it felt true. But we all know the feeling is not as strong now; and we also sense that it is not George Bush alone who has made it so. Indeed, irrespective of how Americans vote over the next 24 hours, today may even be the day when the rest of us should begin to stop being Americans at all.

The Bush administration's policy of "America first" is neither some personal obsession on Bush's part nor a spasm in response to the shock of September 11. It is part of a much older, wider and very specifically American conservative sense of exceptionalism whose militancy and energy are still greatly underestimated outside America. If Bush is re-elected today, that sense will deepen and strengthen further. But even if Bush loses, this same American exceptionalism is now so strong that it will aggressively constrain any other presidency, even one that seeks to reject the approach, as Bill Clinton's did and John Kerry's would do.

The rejection of international institutions and stable alliances is a signature aspect of this militant new exceptionalism. It is inconceivable that it will be significantly reined in during a second Bush term. From the point of view of the administration and the bulk of its Republican supporters, however, this unilateralism is merely one aspect of a distinctive worldview which has little parallel in any other liberal democracy, and which might best be seen as a modern reincarnation of the old American preoccupation with "manifest destiny".
Yeah, we all remember that, unless we napped through ninth grade US History.

But now it's serious -
...Bush's apparent acceptance of the view that he may be doing God's work in the White House has been much noted in this country as the campaign has wound through the autumn. But this is not some idiosyncratic hubris on the president's part. It is shared by millions of American conservative evangelical protestants, many of whom believe, along with the attorney-general John Ashcroft, that the very existence of the United States is proof of a divine purpose. In that context, the idea that America should reject ties with necessarily less blessed nations becomes existential, an exceptionalism of another order altogether.

Most Americans don't think in these terms, of course. Yet sufficiently large numbers of them do for their conviction to be massively important, especially when they are so determined and have such powerful armed forces. If you believe that God has a higher purpose for your work, then you bring a special fervour to everything that you do, whether it is re-electing the president, challenging his opponent's credentials, stopping his voters from voting, challenging their votes or - if by some cruel fate the opponent wins the election - preventing him from governing.
Ah yes, God's work is never done. It seems He needs His foot soldiers.

Ah well, if you click on the link you sill discover the rest is an appeal to Tony Blair to get a little more European in his outlook.

And it concludes with this:
It is the centrality to American public life of this militant conservatism, more than any other single factor, which makes current British policy towards the United States so difficult to pursue productively or honourably and which has brought this country's relationship with the US to its present ebb. Tony Blair's policy has been entirely consistent - to stick fast to America under all circumstances. It will clearly remain his policy whether Bush wins or Kerry.

But it shouldn't. It would be a more defensible policy if American parties were like European parties - but they are not, with the consequence that the policy becomes a hostage to the Republican right when the Republicans are in power and is constrained by them when the Democrats are in the White House. The invasion of Iraq, in this context, is more an example of British marginality than a good or a bad policy in itself. Unless British policy adapts and changes to these realities, it is doomed to be replayed over Iran or Cuba or whatever other adventure becomes the conservative right's next test of God's higher purpose.
Kettle suggests Blair should be thinking in "a more informed way about the foreignness of America." And that means...
... growing up and growing away process that need not and most certainly should not mean becoming anti-American. But unless and until we do it, unless we see that our centre of gravity in the 21st century should be as part of an alliance of liberal European states, we are fated to fall between America and Europe, not to be a bridge between them. It is a challenge to Blair, to whoever succeeds him, and to our very sense of ourselves.
The Brits don't want to become Americans? But everyone wants to be like us!

Posted by Alan at 19:53 PST | Post Comment | Permalink
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Sunday, 31 October 2004

Topic: Photos

New food for thought!

The parent site of this web log Just Above Sunset was posted today. This would be Volume 2, Number 43 for Sunday, October 31, 2004

This week in the virtual magazine? The annual Halloween issue, of course. Since I have been without television or my high-speed cable modem since the 25th this week you will hear many other voices. Of course there's a bit on the new Bin Laden videotape, and a whole lot on the pledge one must now recite a Bush rallies in unison with the other true believers. In the "Breaking News" item friends in Paris, Atlanta, Canada and upstate New York try to make sense of the week's events - and that gets pretty lively. Our expatriate friend in Paris, Joseph, kicks off a lively discussion about class warfare, and takes some digs at Southern California. And the Week in Review hits the odder stories out there.

Bob Patterson? Read his endorsement of George Bush for president. You decide if he's serious. And in the guise of the Book Wrangler he visits the Borders at Hollywood and Vine and notes some good reading ahead.

Features? Much on the flurry of books in France now that try to figure out just what we're doing here in the United States, with comments from Ric in Paris and Vince in upstate New York, who worked with one of the key French cultural critics. And as a Halloween bonus - notes on the Salon du Chocolat in Paris we all missed. If you have to attend a trade show, attend that one.

Local Hollywood photography is devoted to Halloween - with a cute kid in a pumpkin patch, then Hollywood Boulevard all strange, or stranger than usual - and the pithy quotes this week are about who believes in what, from Robert Burns to Isaac Asimov to William S. Burroughs.

So enjoy.

Current Events ________

The Short Snark: The New Bin Laden Videotape

The Pledge: The Cult of Personality Returns (atavistic instincts are fascinating)

Breaking News: October surprises as seen from Paris, Atlanta, the London in Canada and upstate New York...

Class Warfare: We're not in Kansas any more? Oh yes we are!

Catching-Up: The Week of Quite Odd Events in Review

Bob Patterson ________

WLJ Weekly: The World's Laziest Journalist - He's makin' a list and checkin' it twice. (Christmas comes early for the Republicans)
Book Wrangler: Bookstores always remind the columnist of "Bring Cash Alley" in Saigon

Features ________

The Francophile Corner: How we are seen by the French, who we so love to hate...

Halloween Extra: Notes on chocolate...

Photography: Halloween

Quotes: Useful Pithy Observations... Just who believes in what?

And one of the photos...



Posted by Alan at 21:32 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
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