Wednesday, June 30, 2010

THE FOUNDERS AND THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT

Both the teabaggers and the Religious Rightists (the RR) want to talk about the Founding Fathers continually. While the baggers make them out to have been anarchists, which they were not, the RRs make them into narrow, intolerant Christians like themselves, which they also were not.

This is hypocrisy. From the RR's standpoint, those of the Founders who were Christians (which was most of them) were pretty bad ones. Their advocacy of religious freedom is sufficient to establish that, because the RRs constantly attack other religions, using reasoning and invective; a free and unassailed choice in matters of religion is an ideal that is alien to their mentality.

Whenever Christians as such have wielded power, they have carried out religious persecution. The Founders believed more in the benefits of religion in general than they did in emphasizing the differentiating characteristics of the Christian religion.

Whom do we mean by the Founding Fathers? I think primarily Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin.

Jefferson was expressly not a Christian but a Deist. Madison, who made a major deal of the separation of church and state, was presumably a Christian but refused to discuss his religious beliefs; this is not exactly Witnessing for Christ. Washington was a Christian, but he made a practice of walking out of church before communion was served; evidently he was one of those who saw such things as superstition. Freemasonry was also a major component of his thinking, which does not correspond to the RR view of the world. Franklin was not a Christian; he was, at least in his later years, an independent theist rather than a Deist, as he believed God to be active in the world. Adams was a Christian but was very impatient with some facets of Christianity; his religious thinking fairly bristled with independent-mindedness.

These leaders were the liberals of their day, and they were religious liberals. The attempt to represent them as Christian supremacists is a direct attack on their beliefs and their work and our legacy from them. Every one of us should know that and not one of us should be fooled by the RR's self-serving claims, because it has nothing in common with them even when it can point to identical words and affiliations.

ANOTHER BAD, DUMB, SORRY IDEA

Term limits has been an issue in recent years. It shouldn't be. Currently the teabaggers, who put such energy into representing everything that is or can become wrong with our society, are pressing for it.

Their demand is that someone who has held an office for a while should be automatically barred from running again for the same office. They say with some justice that people get used to the perks of a position and cease identifying with the people who put them in it.

But why shouldn't the people be allowed to decide for themselves whom to elect every time? And why shouldn't a candidate who has served for some time be free to offer him- or herself again?

Term limitation is an idea we have heard before at the national level. It was part of the Gingrich "Contract With America" - a part that the Repub members of Congress somehow never got around to enacting. Ross Perot's party came out for it also, though Perot himself was not for it initially.

Term limits is a mechanistic and undemocratic answer. Like "zero tolerance" policies, it eliminates thinking and permits no intelligent making of exceptions. Someone who has served outstandingly can be booted out even if that person's superior knowledge and exceptional skills would be particularly useful at the time - and even if the voters would readily re-elect him or her if given the chance.

Term limiting is offered as a democracy substitute. Why would anyone want an alternative to democracy? There is just no substitute at all for the people evaluating a situation for themselves and making the right call. If someone has been in office for too long and has "gone native," that person should be ousted. It might be hard to do so when the person is bringing in Federal money or has a massive edge in campaign donations. But it should be your call as a citizen, not a call made for you in advance.

Yes, crummy officials get in office and stay, bolstered by the large campaign contributions that incumbents attract and the favors they do for voters. But the solution to that is not to make them ineligible to run; it's to get campaign finance and campaigning rules under control and to create a more even-handed system. And the responsibility rests with the citizenry.

If you want lazy-minded, undemocratic answers like term limits, elect who the teabaggers say you should. Then at least there will be something to be said for restricting how long they can serve.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

TEA: THE PEROT PREQUEL

Before there were teabaggers we had Ross Perot and the movement he summoned into being by declaring on the Larry King Show his willingness to run for president if the people would get him on the ballot in all 50 states. That was his first, 1992, run for it.

Perot, a billionaire businessman with a military background and the rescuer of his own company's hostages in Iran, offered a disaffected public an alternative to the two major parties and the usual politics. He brought to the fore big themes: populism, direct democracy, electronic democracy, dynamic centrism. He was a political scientist's dream, and he altered the political landscape fast.

This colorful, persuasive little Texan was often depicted as a conservative; but if you look at what he proposed, including the rebuilding of our cities, you can see that he was not. He was pro-choice, pro-civil rights, pro-civil liberties, highly critical of the Gulf War and the neocons and our habit of building up "bad boys" like Noriega and Saddam and then having to take them down. He wanted to reform how things were done, not implement reaction. I had heard him a number of times on Larry King's radio shows, and I knew from what he said there that he was more a Ted Kennedy than a Dick Nixon in outlook.

I liked him. And I remember at one point talking with a conservative Republican of around my age, who was also very much for him. You found that widely: left and right together. Perot did what nobody else has done: got people of different viewpoints behind a candidate and an agenda. And that agenda was progressive.

At first it appeared that he could win a 3-way election with a plurality, though there were questions about the Electoral College. But then the news media started in on him. And I have never seen anything to compare with that.

Why did the news industry hate him so much, especially when he was such a great source of news? It seemed they thought he was an autocrat (somewhat true) and a potential tyrant. But our system is made to contain the overly ambitious; our greater problem is with those who want and attempt too little.

It is perfectly true that Perot had over the years lied, exaggerated, and told tall tales. That was foolish and it indicated a character flaw. And how he got rich can be discussed and evaluated and argued about. But we have had presidential candidates the media went easy on and should not have, because their wrongs really mattered. I am thinking especially of Nixon's tactics and Reagan's worldview.

The media assault on Perot was relentless. On page 23 of the New York Times you'd find a small article about a major, novel proposal that he was making, one that should have been discussed seriously. On page 1 of the same edition would be an unsubstantiated allegation about his business practices. Thus the reform movement was controversialized and trivialized.

It was clear that Perot's reputation would be destroyed if he proceeded, not because of what was disclosed but because of the insistent reinteration and the editorializing in the news columns. He suspended his campaign while quietly continuing to fund the organizing. Then eventually he got back in. Now the media were indifferent, because now it was clear that he couldn't win.

He used television broadcasts and a succession of pie charts to make his case, including a warning that "free trade" would produce a "giant sucking sound" as our jobs went elsewhere. Few who saw him on TV will forget it soon. He got 19% of the vote, better than any third party contender since TR. And if he had been treated fairly, he would probably have made it.

The media were and frequently are conservative in the sense of protecting the status quo. In this case they did so viciously. And the accumulating frustrations in the electorate were permitted no alleviation, though the popular market in ideas had dutifully produced one with the Perot movement.

So today we have a much, much worse popular movement in our midst. And toward that the media are neutral. Instead of a constructive populism that is about unity and results, we have one that is dividing us as bitterly as possible.

The media, by the way, also deliberately destroyed the promising candidacies of Republican George Romney in 1968 and Democrat Gary Hart in 1984. That's one Repub, one Dem, one independent.

So if you enjoy today's American political scene, thank a reporter.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

SUCH CLEVER PEOPLE (SIGH)

We are getting a lot of news nowadays about politicians trying to make end runs around fair and equitable campaign practices:

>Cedric Richmond, a black Democrat who is running against Republican Congressman Joseph Cao of New Orleans, charges that Republicans are getting black candidates to run as independents so as to split the Dem vote. The district is black. Cao, of Vietnamese extraction, won in a fluke and is considered the most endangered Congressional incumbent in the nation.

>Repub governor Rick Perry's former chief of staff and other staffers attempted to put a Green party of Texas candidate on the ballot, using corporate money, to sap the vote of Dem gubernatorial nominee Bill White. This effort failed and has backfired.

>In Nevada a Tea party has formed and is running candidates. Teabaggers insist they do not know these people. The Repubs allege that the Dems are behind this. Are they? Could be.

>A Florida Tea party (FTP) also has come to be and has its own candidates. The Repubs charge that the Dems engineered this, and many FTP contenders are young with no political histories while others are former Dems. But known teabag activists say the FTP is a Repub plot to co-opt the teabaggers. The truth? At this point, who can say?

>The shock nomination of indicted Dem nonentity Alvin Greene for the U.S. Senate from South Carolina over the plausible and more active Vic Rawl, who was expected to win easily, has left many Dems angry and wary. Could this have been sabotage? It is hard to see how it could have been carried out, but that possibility should be looked into closely. Certainly Repub ultra-teabag incumbent Jim DeMint is the lone beneficiary of the Dems having an unelectable nominee.

Tales of more such ploys will doubtless be along. Dividing the other party's base or finagling its nomination of a substandard contender are old and widely used political tricks.

Needless to add, they are not admirable. Conservatives, who preach so piously about the sanctity of the Constitution, are often the ones being accused of these democracy-negating antics. Liberals, who believe in rule by the people and not by elites, should not be engaging in them, either.

There are all sorts of connivers out there who count on having a passive and deceived public in order to get their way, either in business or in politics. For those who dislike that, there is always something new and populist that can be done to bring light to the concealing darkness. And the challenge of exposing who is doing what is particularly appealing today, when secretive ways are more and more vulnerable and information is power.

Plots are news, and news is money. That is how the disruption of plots can be made into a growth industry. It should be.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

THE MOST PERFECT IMPERFECTION

When you get far from the political center, to the left or the right, you find perfectionism. What it comes down to is rigid adherence to an unrealistic paradigm.

Leftist perfectionism wants perfect social equality. Rightist perfectionism wants those who are naturally "superior" in some respect to be lords over the rest of us.

There is the true human perfection, by contrast. You see it in sages and saints. They have no illusions about anything that is as merely human and fraught with wishful thinking as ideology is. Their judgments are penetratingly realistic, their decisions altogether pragmatic. They appeal to the best in us, regardless of where we start from, and they work to evolve us.

What should we who are not sages or saints want from our society?

We can and should acknowledge that all of us have the same rights. We should all have the chance to help ourselves economically, both as individuals and collaboratively. We should all have the chance to be heard when we have something to say, both at work and in society. We should all have the chance to participate in civic life, including office-seeking. We should all have community or government help in getting by when we cannot do so on our own. We should have a government that intervenes pragmatically on behalf of our collective well-being when the latter is not supported otherwise. Less or more than the above can be dangerous.

On the left, an attempt to negate the effects of varying degrees of judgment and talent and leadership ability could only straitjacket us. We have not seen true socialism in any mass society; the women who swept the Moscow streets in the old USSR days were in no sense equal to Politburo members or even to factory workers, and nobody admitted that that was a scandal for Communism.

So on the left, insistence on perfection results in either a Procrustean bed or hypocrisy. On the right, it results in self-designated Nietzschean supermen kicking us around for their own aggrandizement or amusement.

Not insisting on perfection but continuing to improve things keeps freedom and democracy going and the fanatics and "zero tolerance" freaks at bay, where their imperfection should keep them lest it succeed in making us still less perfect.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

WHO IS EUROPEAN?

It is a happy thing for all of us that, the worse our rightists get, the more incapable they are of building bridges or looking ahead. Their chosen victims of the moment, Muslims and Latinos, are very plentiful here now; and they will be more so, as they tend to have large families. And, especially if you keep kicking them as rightists do, they will come out and vote.

Nativism is a rightist staple, however it is rationalized. And as you may have noticed, the righties have taken to describing liberalism as not only "socialist" but "European", which is more nativism and is also inaccurate.

There is nothing very socialist about Europe today. And it is not a case of our liberals being European in outlook; our greatest ideals - equality, freedom, and democracy - have resounded among Europeans because those ideals have universal appeal and because of our national influence. Previously that sometimes took the form of socialism there, but today they are pretty much off of that. And our liberals have always believed that individuals should be permitted to rise above the wealth and status of most, with the proviso that they may not impoverish or oppress others.

Europeans have become increasingly American in outlook and ways, rather than the reverse. Why must the righties get everything wrong?

As you may have seen, Mark Williams, the chairman of the Tea Party Express, is stepping down; he says it is because he is busy, and maybe it is. But even a shameless group can be embarrassed. This man is bent on marginalizing Muslims. He is crusading against the plan to build a mosque near Ground Zero in New York. He says our president is "an Indonesian Muslim."

What is unAmerican and is European in the very worst sense is hatred and persecution of those who are different. Making some Americans into second- or third-class citizens is much nearer the vision of Hitler, which grew out of old resentments and snobberies, than that of the Founding Fathers, which grew out of high and universalist hopes. And the use of malicious lies for advantage is the very essence of Goebbels-type propaganda - as in "socialist," "European," "Indonesian Muslim" and all that.

Mark Williams is not an American, no matter where he was born.

Today's Americans can live and work well with the new Europeans. Our ideas and institutions can cross-pollinate with theirs, to the benefit of everyone.

We and Europeans have rejected traditionalist elitism and rightist populism. While it is true that some people everywhere are just no damn good, those people are defined not by race or culture or religion but by how they think and what they want and what they do to others. If people like that don't like it here, it isn't because we're European; it's because they are, and in a way that the overwhelming majority of Europeans would repudiate.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

WOMEN AND MEN TODAY

I was watching Neil Sedaka in a 1961 rendition of "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen" - a great source of happy energy, by the way - and I noticed that a young woman (she posted her picture) commented after it that the song was "hilariously creepy." That startled me and I began thinking, How can that be her take on it?

The key is probably in the song's words "But since you've grown up / Your future is sewn up / From now on you're gonna be mine." That seems so proprietary by today's standards! Today a woman is her own person, is autonomous, whether in a relationship or not. And a man who says "You're gonna be mine" seems a caveman, maybe a stalker, someone seeking to deny her rightful and cherished independence. That Sedaka's young audience was enthusiastic, clapping and swaying as we see on the video, must have appeared creepy indeed to this woman.

But let's look at the song. It talks about when the girl was 6, when she was 10, when she was thirteen: that's what precedes the infamous lines. So it establishes that he has had a relationship with her for years, an evolving and intensifying one that is mutual. I think we can assume that she wants to be "his" and to have him be "hers."

In the social world of 1961, what the guy is doing is not appropriating her against her will but (1) making clear that he is not ambivalent about the relationship: that he wants it; (2) expressing confidence that he can make his end of it work; and (3) showing his confidence that she will make her end of it work, too. This is not sexist, not creepy. But ironically, the very assertiveness that made the "girl" of 1961 feel secure would make the "woman" of half a century later feel insecure.

Women's rights and feminism necessarily came to the fore when the economy began requiring both partners in a marriage to work if they were to survive. I'm sorry that women who don't want to leave the home and go into the workforce have no choice but to do so. But I'm glad that women can go out and have careers, and I note that rightists - the same people whose corporations and anti-union activities brought about these constrictive economic conditions! - have denigrated women for doing that, saying that they're putting their ambitions ahead of their families. You can't win on the right wingers' terms. If the woman stays home, the couple can't get by; if she gets a job, she's disloyal as a wife and a mommy.

Rightists frequently want to punish those who divorce, also; they talk about "saving the family" by making divorces harder to obtain. So a marriage can be made into a cage or a torture chamber, another "freedom-loving" rightist contribution to our lives.

It is the political left that has promoted women's rights, but part of what has resulted is more individualism with its accompanying alienation. That is the kind of thinking that can make "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen" seem "creepy" to women now. And it contributes greatly to our high divorce rate.

Sexism must go, but so must excessive individualism, and both of these are right-wing attitudes. Marriage will come back only when a family is seen as bigger than the individual selves of the people in it: as something both voluntary and - you should excuse the expression - collective.

Marriage is not an alliance of convenience but a life partnership in which each partner becomes more than (s)he could have been through accomodating, and being accomodated by, the other, and through working together for the kind of future that they want. That's something we can learn from an old song.

Neil Sedaka, for his part, has been married only once: since 1962. Maybe he knows something about these things?

Saturday, June 19, 2010

THE OPEN PRIMARY JITTERS

The recent tendency of our elected officials to be blindly and excessively partisan is leading people to favor open primaries on the ground that this will cause the nomination of centrist, consensus-minded candidates who can appeal across party lines.

In Utah they already have open primaries, as they do in some other states. And there, Democratic Congressman Jim Matheson, whose views are moderate to conservative, is being primaried by a retired teacher named Claudia Wright, who is a strong liberal and a lesbian.

This situation has attracted the attention of the teabaggers. According to a New York Times story of 6/16/'10, one of their honchos, a state legislator named Carl D. Wimmer, at first proposed that Repubs vote for Wright in the Dem primary because a victory for her would assure a Repub victory in November. But then he rejected the idea, and a spokesperson for the Utah "Tea Party Movement" named David Kirkham said that such a strategy would go against his movement's principles.

Principles? Who knew? What principles does it take to break up democratic gatherings and spread vicious lies about the president of the United States? Can this really be about principles?

I suspect that Messrs Wimmer and Kirkham have realized that sabotaging the opposition in a primary would work better for the Dems in most cases than for the Repubs. Dem primaries are typically between believable candidates with no great differences in their views; but there are always tea-tending screwballs running in GOP primaries nowadays, and Dem voters could get behind them and deliver the difference for them, rendering the Republicult still more extreme and less electorally viable.

Usually fooling with the other party's primary hasn't worked. Most voters don't want to be part of such a scheme. But when somebody controls a bloc of votes, as the teabaggers may, it could succeed. In New Jersey in 1929 the Democratic party boss of Jersey City, Frank Hague, provided 20,000 votes in the Republican gubernatorial primary to State Senator Morgan F. Larson, who he thought would be the weakest nominee. Larson was nominated. But he also got elected and proceeded to make Hague's life as unpleasant as he could for the next four years.

Unintended consequences are the peril that attends unscrupulous cleverness. So perhaps we can look forward to open primaries that serve the solidarity of our national community and not the ambitions of calculating extremists.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

LOST INNOCENCE

Recently I've been watching videos online of songs from my college years, which were 1959-63. Then, everything was pitched to teenagers, and "puppy love" was the thing. Cute guys like Bobby Vee and Jimmy Clanton appealed to girls, but they also gave us some really good songs. Neil Sedaka, not cute but gifted, wrote and sang a string of peppy, lyrical hits. There was happiness in the air and we believed in our future.

Don McLean in "American Pie" traced our national angst to the death of Buddy Holly (February, '59). But the darkening of our culture didn't begin till after the assassination of John F. Kennedy (November, '63). It has in fact become a belief of Americans that the end of "Camelot" began a national loss of innocence.

Vietnam came along. Lyndon Johnson lied to us.The sweetness of the Counterculture collapsed into the Drug Culture. Many blue collar Democrats, offended by McGovernism, defected. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were struck down. We became divided politically in a more drastic and unbridgeable way than we had been, and cynical rightists gained the ascendancy and have held it.

There has been much wondering and speculating about what would have happened had JFK lived. Could this handsome and cool-headed young war hero who balanced realism and idealism and championed excellence, surrounding himself with brilliant people, have steered us clear of pitfalls and kept the country together? Would the popular culture have remained wholesome and optimistic? Could our growing nihilism and fanaticism have been averted?

It is hard to conceive that one person, however outstanding, could have achieved all that. And Kennedy had lost popularity by the time of his death; I recall that on the day he died a headline reported that the young were no longer enchanted with him. It seems more as though his murder was one symptom of a national trend that would have come in any event.

Today we have a president who is more like JFK at his best than any president has been. Here
is a figure of rationality, integrity, and hope: the kind of leader we should want.

How do we respond to Barack Obama? He is attacked from the left, the center, and the right; second-guessed by the media; doubted by the public; defied by the politicians; defamed by the talk radio haters. Everything about him is dissected and dismissed as not enough or too much. When people can't find something to criticize, they make up nonsense about him being born abroad or wanting to impose socialism on us. It appears sometimes that the entire country is bent on hobbling him and keeping him from doing anything for it.

So our dark age has reached its nadir at the same moment that we have elected a person of light and uprightness to lead us.

Now we must discover - and decide - whether we will choose settled darkness or illumination.

Monday, June 14, 2010

POLITICAL DEATH WATCH: BOB INGLIS

If the nation should go wholly nuts, expect South Carolina to lead the way. At least it is trying to. If you have followed the political news from there, you know what I mean.

I mentioned SC Congressman Bob Inglis once before. This Repub has called himself a member of the Religious Right and has been critical of what he calls the Far Right. The Far Right is pretty much the teabaggers.

Inglis has the pinched, thin-lipped face of a puritan. Sometimes you know a Republican when you see one, and he is a case in point. And he is no RINO: He has voted with the Republicult 95% of the time.

But he is in a run-off for renomination that will take place a week from now. He came in well behind in the first round, and he appears to be doomed. Why? Because despite his conservatism there are streaks of independence and pragmatism in his record - he voted for cap & trade and TARP, for example - and he has been critical of some on the right.

It was he who reported that a teabagger told him of wanting the uninsured to die on the hospital steps. He advised one furious audience not to listen to Glen Beck because he preys on fear. He thinks that in the Congress, working across the aisle is a good thing in principle.

What a "real" conservative is has changed over the years. Today you have to be in absolute ideological lock-step with the teabaggers and the social issues reactionaries to qualify as one. And if you aren't one, it's goodbye.

So take a moment to pity Bob Inglis, a man who tried to cling to a shred of rationality in a blizzard of madness. He is by no means what a Congressman ought to be. But there are worse possibilities out there. And South Carolina - described by a Civil War era politician as too small for a republic and too big for an insane asylum - is about to send one to Washington in his place.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

FEEDBACK REQUEST

Till now I've used this blog to tell you things. Who I am to tell you anything is a good question, but we're all tellers in the age of the blog.

This time I'm asking you to tell me something. I'd like you to let me know if you're reading this thing. I know that Wes Richards reads it, but I have no idea whether, by now, anyone else does.

Someone informed me at one point that she tried to post a comment and wasn't able to. Possibly the same thing has happened to others. So let me give you my email address. You needn't say more than "Hello." But if you have a comment or a question, that's fine, too. I won't reply unless you ask me to, and I won't retain your address without your volunteered permission.

I'm at jwg16801@yahoo.com

Hope to hear from you.

Friday, June 11, 2010

RIGHTIES IN ACADEME

Conservatives are displeased with our colleges and universities because they hire so many more liberals than conservatives in teaching positions. They try to make out that liberal profs are brainwashing their students or punishing them for having right-wing views. (This is unlikely, but all such allegations should be looked into conscientiously.)

And that's not all. They want more conservatives hired for balance. Can you imagine the nerve? Having opposed affirmative action for those who were wrongfully discriminated against, they now demand it for themselves!

Sorry, folks. An educational institution is precisely the kind of meritocracy you say you believe in. If you aren't competitive for professorships, the economy that your kind wrecked will enable you to compete for jobs at Wal-Mart.

But there are conservatives who do get places, even to the top, in our big schools. There was the president of a university at which I once worked as a peon. Him I will not forget.

This man served on commissions, etc. in a couple of Repub national administrations while making his mark in academic life. That was one indicator of his views. But there were others.

I was a (very small) part of the unsuccessful unionization drive among the university's white collar employees; the blue collar workers had succeeded in their drive and were affiliated with the UAW. The white collar types apparently considered themselves above something so plebeian, however much they were getting screwed over by the school. There were downright unsafe working conditions in some places on campus, but that didn't matter to the outcome.

The university president, meanwhile, was professing neutrality on the unionization issue until shortly before the balloting. Then he suddenly denounced unions as unsuited to academic venues and told us we should not second-guess his administration, which had our best interests at heart. (Someone commented that his upper-class British accent was an unfortunate accompaniment to this paternalistic message.)

In the meantime his administration had long since hired a union-busting law firm to frighten workers with propaganda and innuendo. So much for appealing to educated, rational decision-making by employees.

Education, as I understand it, is about enhancing our capacity for taking responsibility - for ourselves individually and in all that we are involved with. So when the head of a university tells me that I need not stand up for myself or join with others to insist on fairness and accountability because he will take care of us, I bristle; all the more so when he isn't taking care of us.

It is not unions but people like him that don't belong in higher education.

What he exhibited was what is typical of conservatism: the view that some of us count and the rest of us don't. The white collar workers did themselves dirt by identifying with this elitist notion instead of with one another and the blue collar workers. That was attitude over actuality.

It was the custom at that university to have its president alone be the speaker at its graduation exercises. So he would discourse on moral responsibility and good citizenship and the democratic humanitarian mission of our institutions, etc. And the students and faculty who knew what this man was and what hypocrisy he was capable of could have the privilege of listening to him, and not to someone outstanding from the greater world.

A little more liberalism wouldn't have hurt that school one bit.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

HELEN AND BIBI

Veteran, almost-90 newswoman Helen Thomas had to quit her forever job after saying in an interview that Israelis should "get the hell out of Palestine" and go back to Germany, Poland, the U.S., etc. Her status as a beloved fixture in the White House press core couldn't save her after that.

It is a time of intemperate and ill-considered remarks, but most have no consequences. Hers did.
Nearly all Americans think Israel has a right to exist. And virtually our entire right wing is rabidly pro-Israel and would be critical of that country's government only if it took risks to get peace with the Palestinians, as the Obama administration would have it do.

Obama might be inclined to want to reprieve Thomas, putting in a good word for her with her bosses; but under the circumstances he can't. If she had attacked Mom or apple pie, her chances would have been better.

I don't think Thomas is an anti-Semite, and her remark was not anti-Semitic. I suppose it to have been an expression of her frustration with the lack of progress and the ongoing violence against civilians on both sides in the the Israeli-Palestinian standoff. In resigning, she repudiated her idea that Israel should dissolve itself and emphasized her belief in the necessity of making peace there.

Benyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is only Israel's latest right-wing prime minister. All of the previous ones, like Bibi products of the Likud party, have been the same in their harsh and unreasonable attitude.

Palestinian land gets gobbled up in more Israeli settlements. The Palestinians live in a state of siege that keeps them pinned down and blights their economic future. And this is represented as Israeli self-protection. It is a curious kind of self-protection that can only lead to more hate, fury, and conflict.

It has seemed to me for many years that the Israeli right really believes that it can wait out and wear out the Palestinians. If it just goes on being intractable - so I suspect it thinks - the Palestinians will give up and accept whatever deal they're offered. That's as hard-nosed as it is unrealistic, as we should all see by now.

An earlier Likud prime minister, Menachem Begin, a onetime terrorist, was compelled by President Carter to drop the intransigence and come to terms with Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat. Sadat was the rarest of Mideast birds, a person of peace. This general, politician, and Muslim mystic had the U.S. and the world with him, and Begin had to go along.

Later a Mapai (Labor) prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, a former general and veteran of high office who had always been cautious and tough, decided to take a run at peace and was assassinated by a rightist fanatic during an election campaign. Then terrorism increased and Likud won again in spite of expectations.

Israel's Likudniks and Palestine's Hamasniks bolster each other, just as the American and Soviet hard-liners did. Anybody who is "soft" is discredited in favor of warlike words and acts.

It appears to me that Bibi is taking advantage of the American right's adulation for his regime and Obama's political weakness. He thinks he can get away with just about anything now and maybe bring down his critic Obama in the process; this is a reversal of how things have been.

Obama must get him on the defensive and bring into play everyone's hopes for a settlement and the world's distaste for the Likud mentality.

Israel is at heart too good and fair a country to want to remain the oppressor of Palestine. But for now, Helen Thomas is only the latest and most conspicuous victim of Bibi's trust in cynicism, injustice, and realpolitik.

Whether you vote rightist here or in Israel, you should have no illusions about what it is that you are voting for.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

THE SPREEBAGGERS

In recent decades we have seen a number of spree killings. Most recently a taxi driver in England, Derrick Bird, 52, shot his twin brother and his family lawyer and then drove to three towns and killed people he encountered and himself; in all, 12 are dead and quite a few wounded.

Well-known spree killers in the U.S. have included the two kids who shot up Columbine High and the student who perpetrated the Virginia Tech massacre but also older males.

What gets into people who do these things? Hard to say. But they have decided that life isn't worth living, and they want to get back at strangers they could have no real grievance with. The shootings end with their suicides or with them being gunned down by someone else.

In 1984 a middle-aged survivalist named James Huberty shot 41 people in a McDonald's in San Diego, of whom 22 died, including himself. He believed, among other things, that government regulation and meddling were destroying our economic future.

Huberty had told his wife, "Society had its chance." Think about that phrase. He thought it was up to him to judge and punish society, not the reverse. How is that for self-centered and anti-social? And does it put you in mind of anyone?

Yes, I mean the teabaggers. The teabaggers are a collective spree phenomenon, and they resemble spree killers in several notable respects:

>They behave in highly intrusive ways.

>They have their own version of reality, which is at odds with how everyone else thinks.

>They have no use for reasonable people or reasonable measures or reasonable attitudes.

>They are destructive, wanting only to tear down.

>They think everything has gone to hell.

>They hate the government and have no respect for authority or office-holders.

>They opportunistically bend the truth to suit their own desire for drama, as in the birther movement.

>They take the rules to apply to everyone else and not to themselves, as when they break up town hall meetings.

>They think others should be blamed for their discontents and failings.

>They are full of unaccountable rage.

Just as spree killers predictably die at the end of their bloody deeds, look for the "tea party movement" to wreck itself, after continuing its negativity spree for a while.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

'12: THE GOP FIELD

I've said something about Gingrich, Huckabee, Palin, Paul, Pawlenty, and Romney as Repub presidential possibilities. There are more, and this is a summing up of the whole bunch as things look to me presently. Additional ones may emerge from the woodwork, naturally.


>Haley Barbour: Mississippi gov, onetime political operative and GOP national chair, former lobbyist; good-ol'-boy, smooth, shrewd, not right for right now and probably lacks the necessary fire in his expanding belly; I doubt he'll go after it.


>Scott Brown: Newbie Massachusetts senator, GOP miracle candidate and hunk; moderate enough for MA means too moderate for the national Republicult; won't run.


>Jeb Bush: Son and brother of two presidents, former Florida gov, praised for ability, viewed with skepticism because of Dubya's unpopularity; people think it's too soon for another Bush. But it's a volatile situation. I think he'll end up running for it, unless he decides it's hopeless and opts to wait for '16. My guess is he has as good a shot as anybody.


>Dick Cheney: Former veep, bad heart, bad attitude, loved by the far right and feared by everyone else. Despite his excellent ogre credentials, I don't think he wants it; his health would preclude a run anyway.


>Bob Corker: Tennessee first-term senator, gray-haired and modest-looking; nothing remarkable; could come across as moderate despite some mean rhetoric. Maybe for vice president as balance if the top candidate is a rightist fire-breather.


>Mitch Daniels: Onetime federal budget director; more recently capable but skinflint two-term Indiana gov; intelligent, colorless, no particular appeal to most but is the favorite of the rightie intelligentsia. Maybe treasury secretary if the GOP were to win.


Newt Gingrich: Scandal-scarred and too out of synch with the teabaggers, but proud owner of a great reactionary record. Among those in this field, a heavyweight, though erratic. Might take it if he can re-invent himself in some respects.


>Mike Huckabee: His cheerfulness and shortage of malice could make him popular among the electorate at large, but he comes across as a lightweight and seems disinclined to run again. So, no.

>Bobby Jindal: Young, of Indian ancestry; Louisiana gov and former Congressman; threw over Hinduism for Catholicism when younger; intellectual with doubtful instincts. For pres, no; possible for vice pres but probably not because whiter, more decisive, and dumber people are available.


>Sarah Palin: Too ignorant and mentally lazy to be competitive and with a closet likely to contain skeletons. No go.


>Rand Paul: I saw him as a real possibility, but he had better find some beliefs that most Americans agree with and learn to keep his mouth shut in the meantime. He has started to seem less interesting than just featherweight and oddball.


>Tim Pawlenty: Too ordinary and, in a way, maybe too normal: no cutting edge of fanatical anger. More plausible as veep nominee.


>Mike Pence: Indiana Congressman, wrathfully bland and outspokenly rightist; could be vice presidential prospect at most, unless he finds a theme that sets him apart and that works.


>Mitt Romney: No ability to project himself as angry outsider, and his Mormonism is poison to the Religious Right. I don't think so.


>Rick Santorum: Former boy Congressman from the Pittsburgh area and two-term U.S. senator; got annihilated going for a third term; was always overrated and had lucked out because of the decadence and ineffectuality of the Western Pennsylvania Dems. Is saying the same stuff he has always said, which means he doesn't read the moment perceptively. Maybe secretary of health or something were the Repubs to win.


>John Thune: Somewhat handsome one-term South Dakota senator, beat Tom Daschle; unopposed for re-election this year. No great shakes but just the kind of unifyingly meaningless conservative nonentity who might win if better-known figures implode.


So, then, who do I think will get it? Jeb or Newt or maybe Rand or some very rich and charismatic teabagger not yet in view. Chances for any of them in the general election: slight.


(Save this posting and you can come back some day and remind me how wrong I got it.)

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

ALABAMA REVISITED

I thought I would talk a little about the Great State of Alabama and some of what went on there in the June 1, 2010 primaries.

In a previous posting I mentioned Bradley Byrne, a contender for the Republicult nomination for governor, who was accused by dastardly opponents of believing in evolution. He vehemently denied this and said every word in the Bible is literally true. Evidently he convinced the folks he meant it, because he has made it into a runoff with either of two other jokers.

The contest for gov on the Dem side was different and instructive. You had a smooth young Harvard-educated black Congressman, Artur Davis, giving up his House seat to have a go at it.
It is a good sign when an African-American has a real shot at becoming governor in George Wallace country, and Davis was favored to win his primary. His strategy was to count on getting black support while ignoring it, and to try to build a coalition of whites and blacks on centrist ground.

His primary opponent was the state's elected agriculture commissioner, a middle-aged white man named Ron Sparks. While Davis emphasized that he was a moderate, Sparks ran as, in effect, a national Democrat, endorsing the new national healthcare bill while Artur Davis voted against it. Sparks has a kind of folksy populist edge that the people of Alabama have sometimes gone for. As examples, think of Wallace as a rightist populist and"Kissin' Jim" Folsom as a leftist one. If the liberal and anti-segregation Folsom could get elected governor of Alabama in the 1940s, you can see that reaction may be the likelihood there but is not the certainty.

The four strong black political/civil rights organizations in the state looked over their options and found it easy to decide. They endorsed Ron Sparks.

And in the primary, Sparks beat Davis, 62% to 38%.

These were two very different strategies for getting votes.

I saw Artur Davis speak one time; and while he is bright and articulate, I found him to also be bland and cautious. I saw Ron Sparks speak in a video at his website a few days ago, and I thought he was sharp: direct, intense, apparently voicing conviction. At that time, going by media reports and opinion polls, I had been expecting Davis to win the thing. But after seeing Sparks, I wondered if he could?

Now we know. Alabama, where much of the Dem party is black, went for a "real" Dem regardless of race. And in November? I don't know, but I suspect that someone who really stands for something and isn't afraid to say so boldly may have a better chance than someone who is calculating and overly careful would.

Also in Alabama, Congressman Parker Griffith had a bad day. He is the fellow who recently switched parties and in the process became unacceptable to both. A teabagger beat him easily in the GOP primary. Griffith's path has been from reactionary first-term Dem Congressman to reactionary first-term Repub Congressman to reactionary in private life. He has finally found his niche!