|
Post by dgarr on Nov 22, 2013 18:02:33 GMT -5
the new meanness By Liberal Librarian One of the most popular shows on television is CBS’ “Two and a Half Men”. And I’ve often wondered at its popularity. It is a very well-written and acted show, as far as it goes. But if you watch it for any length of time, you come away with a wretched taste in your mouth. It is, without a doubt, a show with characters who have no redeeming qualities. Everyone is gleefully mean to everyone else, reveling in cutting barbs and casual humiliation. Obviously, it’s a comedy painted in broad strokes, as sitcoms normally are. However, if you watch it on your local station in reruns before the prime time schedule comes on, you’ll be forgiven for wondering why anyone should give a damn about what happens to any of the show’s characters. And yet, for more than a decade it has been one of the most popular shows on television. Before Charlie Sheen melted down, he was the highest paid actor on TV thanks to it. Millions of people tune in to watch a weekly display of dysfunction so severe that suspension of disbelief becomes increasingly difficult. Obviously, you can’t judge an entire culture by the popularity of one television show. But here is another data point. Bloomberg has an article helpfully entitled “Obamacare Shows How Americans Are Becoming Jerks“. From the piece: What’s clear is that the shifting views on health care predate the Affordable Care Act. The number of Americans who think health care is the government’s responsibility hovered around two-thirds for the first half of the 2000s, peaking at 69 percent in 2006. Then those numbers started falling, hitting 50 percent in 2010 and 42 percent this year. The shrinkage of American generosity during that period wasn’t just about health care. The onset of the recession corresponded with a change in public opinion on a range of issues, and in most cases the effect was to make Americans less caring about others. Starting in 2007, the portion of Americans who said the government should guarantee every person enough to eat and a place to sleep started falling, from 69 percent to 59 percent last year. People who said the government should help the needy, even if it means going deeper into debt, fell from 54 percent to 43 percent over the same period. The Great Recession was a gut check to a nation which had been promised, since the end of the Cold War, that “history was over”. Life would be one continual economic boom, and people could just go about their lives in splendid apathy. In that kind of environment it was easy to be for national healthcare, help to the homeless, aid to the poor, and other altruistic programs. Even during the height of Republican dominance in the G.W. Bush years, Americans felt more charitable towards their fellow citizens. Ever since the near-collapse of the economy, though, Americans have retrenched. A frightened meanness and selfishness seems to be the norm. Instead of banding together and helping each other out, as President Obama continually encourages people to do, we retreat to our corners, guard what’s ours, prepare for the worst. Another example of this in popular culture is the wide popularity of “doomsday prepper” shows, with paranoiacs preparing for all sorts of apocalyptic scenarios, ready to defend what’s “theirs” with violence when the government and social order inevitably fail. Unspoken is the thought that if the preppers spent their time becoming part of their communities and working for the common good rather than preparing for Armageddon, then perhaps The End wouldn’t come to pass. But, as seems to be the current currency, fear and paranoia sell more than optimism and common purpose. The country is getting meaner. And it’s no coincidence that it’s getting meaner at the same time that there is a man in the White House whose entire message is that we are each others’ keepers. The previous Administration so betrayed the peoples’ trust that anyone coming with a message of compassion (remember “compassionate conservatism”?) is seen as suspect. They’re simply more flowery words, and won’t stop the next economic collapse. But they’re more than words. President Obama has matched words with dogged action. From the auto bailout to ACA to pushing for immigration reform, he’s done the work to, eventually, ease people’s fears. Yes, the Great Recession was a splash of ice water in the face of a complacent electorate. And it’s obvious that enough of that electorate believes in Obama’s message to have elected him twice. Yet too many of our fellow citizens have yet to recover from the economic meltdown; they trust nothing and no one, seeing a hostile world out to crush them. Any move to make the country more just they see as a “handout” to “those people”. As many of them as possible need to be reached; the 27% will always be against anything that smacks of humanity; but the country cannot function if a large minority is dead set against it. The new meanness exists, and it’s strong, but nothing says that it’s destined to win. The race we’re in isn’t a sprint; it isn’t even a marathon; it’s an endurance race across trackless wastes, which requires every ounce of strength and resourcefulness. But if we’re to have a human life, it’s one we must win. Turn off the culture which promotes fear and casual cruelty. Go out into your community. Meet your neighbors. Talk about what everyone needs. It’s the only way anything good ever happens.
|
|
|
Post by dgarr on Jan 10, 2014 12:42:07 GMT -5
09 Jan 14 What Bridgegate tells us about the GOP By Liberal Librarian
I know we’ve all had a laugh at New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s fall from grace. Documents have come to light that his top aides were involved in closing access lanes to the George Washington Bridge as political payback for the mayor of Fort Lee not giving Christie his endorsement for re-election. And his marathon news conference today, even though being massaged by the feckless national punditry, was a farce of gigantic proportions.
But there’s something serious underlying the Christie debacle.
In a fit of vindictiveness, he either ordered an act which would perforce put lives at risk, or, like Henry II, mumbled “Will no one rid me of this turbulent mayor”, and loyal aides knowing his bent acted upon his ambiguous wishes. Either way, Christie does not come off well.
His press conference was a master class in GOP damage control. He spent the majority of the conference in casting himself as the victim. Another chunk he spent in excoriating his mendacious staff for lying to him. (Note, he was angry for them “lying” to him, not for their actions.) He spared almost no thought for the very real danger in which he put the people he was elected to serve.
That speaks to the core of the modern Republican Party. It really has no concern for regular people. They’re merely voters to be conned into supporting the party. Once electoral success is achieved, they can be dispensed with as so many pawns on chessboard. The GOP playbook when caught in malfeasance is to cast about for blame, play the victim, and ignore the real damage done. We see this in the fight over unemployment insurance. Anyone with a soul would realize that there people who are still feeling the aftershocks of the Great Recession, and that help is still needed. But those people are so much chaff for a wider political agenda, which is to destroy the last vestiges of the Great Society, which the modern GOP hates with a visceral hatred.
Christie is merely the grandest expression of a deeply seeded Republican pathology. Republicans love their country; they just happen to hate most of the people who inhabit it. People are merely means to an end, and that end is power. The powerful to whom they’re handmaidens have no concern for ordinary people, and that mindset informs their political minions. One could say that their worldview boils down to “The beatings will continue until morale improves”; however, they don’t care about morale, they just employ the beatings to maintain control.
So, as we chuckle and chortle at Chris Christie, remember that the clown masks a deadly serious persona. The bullying, the misanthropy, and the lack of empathy are not bugs; they’re a well-designed feature_____________________________________ Jon Stewart nailed the GOP in this segment www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-january-9-2014-scarlett-johansson
|
|
|
Post by dgarr on Jan 29, 2014 14:58:27 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by dgarr on Jan 29, 2014 18:11:42 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by dgarr on Feb 11, 2014 17:24:46 GMT -5
Feb 11, 2014 boehner caves. republican civil war continues apace. By Liberal Librarian
Today we were greeted with the news that House Speaker John Boehner, unable to cobble together a debt ceiling hike which would bring along a majority of his conference, caved and agreed to a clean hike, passed with a minority of GOP votes, the rest of the votes supplied by Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats. As reported in the Washington Post:
House Republican leaders told members Tuesday morning that it is clear their latest attempt at seeking a concession in the debt ceiling debate will not attract enough support, so they will be bringing up a “clean” debt limit bill, according to several GOP people inside their Tuesday morning huddle. This “surrender” was not greeted kindly by the Tea Party rump.
Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) made his opposition known in dramatic fashion. “How about you talk to my son and tell him about the debt that he’s going to pay,” he said. Flashing his phone at TPM, he raised his voice: “$17.3 trillion right now. … He’s a Clemson student. I’d be glad for you to explain how he’s going to pay that back.” And thus John Boehner is forced, yet again, to go hat in hand to Nancy Pelosi, and beg for Democratic support to pass the basic business of government. When he’s put out as being the most ineffective Speaker in modern history, others say that “No, he’s being very effective at stymying government.” But he’s not even able to do that. His great battle, shutting down the government in 2013, was a colossal failure and defeat, due to a misreading of both President Obama and the national mood. He was forced to surrender unconditionally, getting nothing of what he had demanded, having brought the country to the brink of insolvency.
When I speak of a “Republican civil war”, let me be clear that I’m not speaking of anything so grand as a fight for the “party’s soul.” Many “mainstream” Republicans are as far to the right as the Tea Party faction. The civil war is one of strategy and tactics. The problem is that the Tea Party faction consists of people who eschew strategy and tactics. They are the true believers, ones who think that merely by remaining pure and true they can bring the rest of the country with them. They don’t believe in polls which show that the movement has a dearth of popularity among non-Republicans. Any failures are attributed to a lack of will and conviction, not to the fact that the ideology is bankrupt and frightens most Americans.
Mainstream Republicans want many of the same things as Tea Party members. They just want to disguise their goals more carefully, not putting the racism and radicalism of the Tea Party at the forefront.
The problem is, that without the energy of the Tea Party, the GOP would already be a dead party. Teabaggers have kept the GOP on life support for the past five years, providing the shock troops for the 2010 takeover. And Republicans disgusted with the Tea Party haven’t fought them in local boards, but have merely left the party all together. Thus, as the Tea Party becomes more marginalized in the broader electorate, it continues to battle for the GOP as it becomes a bigger percentage of its dwindling adherents.
This dynamic, and the titanic demographic shifts occurring in the country, doom the GOP on a national level. Their only hope is to hold out in their gerrymandered districts. But even that is a will-o-the-wisp. There are some districts which will never vote for a Democrat. But there are enough purple districts which could swing with good Democratic candidates. If Tea Partiers in these districts stay home out of disaffection with another GOP cave, and Democratic voters view 2014 with the same urgency they viewed 2012, then Democrats can recapture the House. What John Boehner just did was give the Tea Party another reason to either stay home in November, or pull out the knives and carry out a political war in full view of the electorate. Either road leads to the same destination.
The election of 2012 was of monumental importance. It showed that corporate money couldn’t buy the White House. The election this November will go a long way to determining if the same is true of the Congress. The Koch Brothers and their allies have already poured millions into House and Senate races, and the election season hasn’t even started. But John Boehner is the best ally a future Speaker Pelosi can have. His incompetence plants seeds of doubt in a voter’s mind; if Boehner has to plead with Pelosi for votes, why not just hand the gavel back to her?
Thank you, John Boehner. First, for facing reality and putting a clean debt ceiling hike on the floor. But secondly, for proving again and again that if Americans want a functioning government, voting Democrat is the only option.[/font][/font][/b]
|
|
|
Post by dgarr on Mar 26, 2014 19:59:34 GMT -5
25 Mar 14 wherein i go on a little rant By Liberal Librarian
Well kids, our never-ending election season is about to shift into high gear. And it’s an off-year election, a midterm if you will, which occurs every two years in between the only elections which Democratic voters seem to think matter. Which means we’re hearing it from the usual quarters that “Both parties are the same” or “elections don’t matter” or “I voted for Obama—isn’t that enough.”
Don’t like Diane Feinstein? Well, she’s not my favorite cup of tea either.
Don’t like Mark Pryor? Yeah, he’s kind of not my favorite Democrat.
Don’t like the Blue Dogs who will try to wrest control of the House away from Teabaggers? No, they may not be what Markos Moulitsas calls “better Democrats”.
But you know what? I don’t give a fuck.
Democrats like Feinstein and Pryor will make sure that Harry Reid remains Majority Leader, and sets the agenda in the Senate. The Blue Dogs so disparaged by those on the Purity Left gave Nancy Pelosi the gavel from 2007 to 2011 and allowed President Obama to get ACA passed and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repealed. And if they win in November, Pelosi will again be Speaker, and actual legislation will once again move.
So, please, spare me your scruples. Spare me the “not good enough” speech.
The only thing which should be on the mind of any Democratic or Democratic-leaning voter should be crushing the GOP in both House and Senate come November.
Actually, let me amend that. The first thing on our minds should be… VOTING.
I’ve written on the GOP civil war, and how that might depress GOP turnout among the more rabid Teabaggers. But the fact is that most GOP voters will crawl on sharp glass while drinking lighter fluid to get to the polls every single time, and not just for midterms or Presidential elections. School boards matter as much as the White House.
Democrats have to be as evangelistic about voting as are Republicans. When we vote in massive numbers, as in 2006, we win. There just aren’t enough people who buy the Republican line to win elections consistently. The GOP and the Right depend on Democrats being Democrats, whining about the candidates not being good enough, about the scandal of the day which will keep them home on Election Day. They rely on Democrats thinking that nothing they do matters, and not go to the polls.
The only person an “angry Democrat” hurts by not voting is himself. And his neighbors. And his country. Scratch that: non-voting Democrats hurt the entire commonwealth. Republicans win in a low turnout election. And when Republicans win, we have what we’ve had since 2011: paralysis on the national level, and all sorts of chicanery on state and local levels.
Listening to pundits telling you to “teach Democrats a lesson” teaches nothing to Democrats, aside from making office-holders and candidates spineless and milquetoast. Democrats don’t need lessons; Republicans need to learn that their policies are rejected by a majority of Americans. Now that majority has to vote, otherwise the lesson will never be taught.
You don’t like DiFi? Tough shit, mark the ballot for her. You don’t like your local Blue Dog running in a purplish district? Suck it up and vote for him or her.
To form policy, you have to have the votes first. Without votes, you have a House voting 50+ times to repeal Obamacare. And if you didn’t vote, it’s your fault. That bit of truth stings, and it should.
So please, pretty please, pretty please with fucking sugar on top: shut up and vote. Once Democrats have super-majorities, then we can talk about realignment and shifting the parties. As long as the GOP exists in its current form, nothing else matters other than sidelining them. And that should be the progressive position. Anything else just sends tingles up the Koch Bros. legs.
|
|
|
Post by dgarr on Aug 8, 2014 22:44:10 GMT -5
08 Aug 14 the difference between barack obama and george w bush By Liberal Librarian
Last night President Barack Obama announced that he had ordered airstrikes against ISIL positions in northern Iraq.
He didn’t do this to secure oil fields. He didn’t do this to project US power in the Middle East. He didn’t do this in some sort of misplaced revenge.
He did this, as he stated quite clearly, to prevent a genocide.
The Yazidi community—descendants of the Zoroastrians who used to rule the area—has come under attack by the militants of ISIL. ISIL’s intent is clear: wipe out the community. Whether it be starvation in the mountains or slaughter on the plains is of no matter to them. (Although I think those brainwashed fundamentalists would love nothing more than to mow down unarmed men, women, and children.)
Of course, ISIL is a direct result of the chaos unleashed by former president George W. Bush in 2003 with his invasion of Iraq. No, I’m not carrying water for Saddam Hussein. He was a murderous, psychopathic dictator. However, he maintained a level of stability via his terror. The Bush Administration had no plan for what would replace Saddam, Donald Rumsfeld famously saying that US troops would be out of Iraq within six months. Six months turned into seven years, while Mr. Bush’s best and brightest were found out to be the worst and dullest, fumbling around for one solution after another which never worked out. The solution finally decided upon—the regime of Nouri Al-Maliki and his Shi’ite maximalists—was probably the worst possible choice. Replacing a Sunni dictatorship with a Shi’a dictatorship proved not only hypocritical, but suicidal. Mr. al-Maliki, for all his venality, hasn’t been able to project the terror which Saddam did to keep the various sects in line. And the Iraq invasion unleashed all sorts of ethnic and confessional demands. But most importantly, al Qaeda, which had never been in Iraq or the greater Middle East before 2003, suddenly found purchase amidst the chaos. Mr. Bush’s lie that the US invaded Iraq to fight AQ became true after the hornet’s nest he stirred up. ISIL is a direct descendant of those first AQ cadres. So, as with our support of Mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s leading to the formation of al Qaeda, our invasion of Iraq has led to predictable blowback in the form of ISIL.
Every time Mr. Bush had the chance to do the right thing in response to the 9/11 attacks, he chose to fulfill neo-conservative wet dreams of remaking the Middle East in America’s image, and subservient to US interests. And he never seemed to be bothered by the thousands of people—Americans and Iraqis—he sent to death.
Pres. Obama is quite different.
As far back as 2002 he was making his opposition to the Iraq adventure known, at a time when it was still quite popular among the public. He foresaw the possible blowback—blowback with which he now has to deal as president.
As president, he’s taken limited military action when needed: the air war over Libya, drone attacks against militants, surging in Afghanistan to stabilize the country so that the US could then withdraw. But much more often, he has relied on diplomacy: the Syrian civil war, the crisis in Ukraine, and issuing the harshest language a US government has issued against Israel since former secretary of state James Baker’s famous tirade in 1991.
And now, in an effort to avoid a shameful massacre, he has ordered US planes to bomb ISIL positions so that Kurdish troops can move against the militants and save the Yazidi. Notice the difference between Mr. Obama and Mr. Bush: the former is acting to prevent a humanitarian disaster; the latter acted to create one.
But, more importantly, is what Pres. Obama isn’t doing. He’s not sending in ground troops. He’s made it clear that there is no US military solution to the Iraqi civil war—a civil war created as a result of Mr. Bush’s invasion. The US can support a peace process, it can provide limited military aid to stanch the rolling of ISIL. But it has lost all legitimacy in imposing a solution.
And that is what drives Pres. Obama’s critics like former vice president Dick Cheney mad. They are besotted with the idea of the United States as the world’s new empire, imposing its values and forms on the world. Pres. Obama is quite aware that to exert US influence, it has to be done in coalitions of equals, with the coalition members on the same page as to goals and objectives. Carrier aircraft are unable to solve most of the world’s problems; but persistent, public diplomacy can.
Mr. Bush—or any of the hopeful GOP candidates since 2008—would have already sent in the Marines, to start another cycle of blood. The hammer is the only tool in their tool box. As Vladimir Putin is learning, it’s usually the wrong tool.
I, like most Americans, don’t want more war. And Pres. Obama, by his actions, is helping to ensure that there will be no US boots on the ground of Mesopotamia. As an added goal, he may just prevent a genocide. That’s the man I voted for twice.
|
|
|
Post by dgarr on Aug 9, 2014 20:09:50 GMT -5
09 Aug 14 in which the white house press corps makes me guzzle antifreeze By Liberal Librarian
Before leaving on a well-deserved vacation, President Obama made a statement on the situation in northern Iraq and took a few questions.
Near the end, one of the esteemed members of the White House press corps asked—and I’m paraphrasing—”Do you regret not leaving troops in Iraq.”
I beat my head against my desk and blacked out for a few minutes upon hearing this query, but have now recovered enough to pen this essay.
This shouldn’t have to be repeated ad nauseam, but it seems that it must be so.
After former president George W. Bush’s misadventure into Mesopotamia—which exceeded its original 6 month timetable by about 6 and a half years—the Iraqis were quite eager to be rid of us. Mr. Bush, obviously, wanted to get something for his disaster. He wanted to leave a residual force in Iraq, to train Iraqi troops and “fight terrorism”—terrorism which hadn’t existed until American brigades invaded from Kuwait.
Part of any standard Status of Forces Agreement between the US and a foreign government is that US personnel are immune from prosecution for alleged crimes in the host country. Any alleged crimes will be dealt with by the US military justice system.
Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki balked at this. The Iraqi government would under no circumstances agree to this. And, more to the point, the basing of a residual force would hamper the Maliki government’s main aim, which was to impose a Shi’a hegemony on the country. Therefore, for those reasons, a SOFA was agreed to which stipulated that all US troops would withdraw from Iraq. A SOFA negotiated and agreed to by the Bush Administration. President Obama—also eager to end the debacle of our Iraqi war—inherited this agreement, and implemented it.
This was not a secret agreement. This agreement was not hidden from the public. It has been reported on widely in the press, both domestically and internationally.
However, ever since ISIL began its Iraqi rampage, it’s as if members of the US mainstream media have all gone in for neurosurgery to extract all memory of the SOFA negotiated and acceded to by Mr. Bush. Now the talking point is that Pres. Obama was the one who pulled out US troops unilaterally, that he could have left troops in country if he had wanted to, that the massacres occurring now are completely of his doing.
The fecklessness of our media never ceases to amaze me. A media which lay supine like a beaten hound before the Bush administration for most of its eight years in office—until, at the end, it was safe to mock it—now blames Pres. Obama for, once again, having to save something out of the mess his predecessor created. Pres. Obama campaigned on getting the US out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and against overextending an abused US military. He came into office with the Iraqi SOFA agreed to and ratified. The Iraqis were eager to see the back end of their “liberators”. And this same Iraqi government—put in place and supported by the Bush administration—has proven inept, corrupt, and venal, creating the conditions for ISIL to gain a foothold in Iraq and exploit it.
Any cursory examination of The Google would point this out to the ink-stained wretches. But for them, it’s as if all of America’s troubles began on January 20, 2009.
As I tweeted a few days ago, the world’s most powerful politician is attended to by a press corps awash in parochialism and ignorance. It ignorantly cheerled the previous administration’s every action; now it ignorantly snipes at and questions this one. It’s no wonder that citizens are fed up with all levels of government. The broadcast media, which holds its place on the airwaves as a public trust, doesn’t inform or educate its viewers. It engages in the cheapest of journalism, giving no context but merely saying “both sides are to blame”. And usually, its reporting betrays even that construction, as it usually operates from a place of Republican talking points.
A free press is a necessity to a democracy. But when broadcast media are owned by five corporations, and when what newspapers survive are being gobbled up by chains, what kind of free press do we have? I’m not asking for cheerleading of the Obama administration. What I’m asking for is honest, nuanced reporting, reporting which delves into the grey areas, rather than jerking complex issues into a black/white paradigm. American citizens have to be informed again that the world is not simple, and need to think in complex terms, because our decisions as to whom we elect to lead us affect people half a world away.
Our democracy would be much better served by a press corps which still reported critically and skeptically on the current administration, but gave its reporting context to allow its consumers to come to informed conclusions. Asking inane “gotcha” questions serves no one, except for the media’s own inflated opinion of itself.
|
|
|
Post by dgarr on Aug 9, 2014 20:09:57 GMT -5
09 Aug 14 in which the white house press corps makes me guzzle antifreeze By Liberal Librarian
Before leaving on a well-deserved vacation, President Obama made a statement on the situation in northern Iraq and took a few questions.
Near the end, one of the esteemed members of the White House press corps asked—and I’m paraphrasing—”Do you regret not leaving troops in Iraq.”
I beat my head against my desk and blacked out for a few minutes upon hearing this query, but have now recovered enough to pen this essay.
This shouldn’t have to be repeated ad nauseam, but it seems that it must be so.
After former president George W. Bush’s misadventure into Mesopotamia—which exceeded its original 6 month timetable by about 6 and a half years—the Iraqis were quite eager to be rid of us. Mr. Bush, obviously, wanted to get something for his disaster. He wanted to leave a residual force in Iraq, to train Iraqi troops and “fight terrorism”—terrorism which hadn’t existed until American brigades invaded from Kuwait.
Part of any standard Status of Forces Agreement between the US and a foreign government is that US personnel are immune from prosecution for alleged crimes in the host country. Any alleged crimes will be dealt with by the US military justice system.
Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki balked at this. The Iraqi government would under no circumstances agree to this. And, more to the point, the basing of a residual force would hamper the Maliki government’s main aim, which was to impose a Shi’a hegemony on the country. Therefore, for those reasons, a SOFA was agreed to which stipulated that all US troops would withdraw from Iraq. A SOFA negotiated and agreed to by the Bush Administration. President Obama—also eager to end the debacle of our Iraqi war—inherited this agreement, and implemented it.
This was not a secret agreement. This agreement was not hidden from the public. It has been reported on widely in the press, both domestically and internationally.
However, ever since ISIL began its Iraqi rampage, it’s as if members of the US mainstream media have all gone in for neurosurgery to extract all memory of the SOFA negotiated and acceded to by Mr. Bush. Now the talking point is that Pres. Obama was the one who pulled out US troops unilaterally, that he could have left troops in country if he had wanted to, that the massacres occurring now are completely of his doing.
The fecklessness of our media never ceases to amaze me. A media which lay supine like a beaten hound before the Bush administration for most of its eight years in office—until, at the end, it was safe to mock it—now blames Pres. Obama for, once again, having to save something out of the mess his predecessor created. Pres. Obama campaigned on getting the US out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and against overextending an abused US military. He came into office with the Iraqi SOFA agreed to and ratified. The Iraqis were eager to see the back end of their “liberators”. And this same Iraqi government—put in place and supported by the Bush administration—has proven inept, corrupt, and venal, creating the conditions for ISIL to gain a foothold in Iraq and exploit it.
Any cursory examination of The Google would point this out to the ink-stained wretches. But for them, it’s as if all of America’s troubles began on January 20, 2009.
As I tweeted a few days ago, the world’s most powerful politician is attended to by a press corps awash in parochialism and ignorance. It ignorantly cheerled the previous administration’s every action; now it ignorantly snipes at and questions this one. It’s no wonder that citizens are fed up with all levels of government. The broadcast media, which holds its place on the airwaves as a public trust, doesn’t inform or educate its viewers. It engages in the cheapest of journalism, giving no context but merely saying “both sides are to blame”. And usually, its reporting betrays even that construction, as it usually operates from a place of Republican talking points.
A free press is a necessity to a democracy. But when broadcast media are owned by five corporations, and when what newspapers survive are being gobbled up by chains, what kind of free press do we have? I’m not asking for cheerleading of the Obama administration. What I’m asking for is honest, nuanced reporting, reporting which delves into the grey areas, rather than jerking complex issues into a black/white paradigm. American citizens have to be informed again that the world is not simple, and need to think in complex terms, because our decisions as to whom we elect to lead us affect people half a world away.
Our democracy would be much better served by a press corps which still reported critically and skeptically on the current administration, but gave its reporting context to allow its consumers to come to informed conclusions. Asking inane “gotcha” questions serves no one, except for the media’s own inflated opinion of itself.
|
|
|
Post by dgarr on Aug 12, 2014 16:56:51 GMT -5
12 Aug 14 a darkness visible By Liberal Librarian
(Author’s note: “A Darkness Visible” is William Styron’s memoir about his battles with depression. It is a recounting of depression’s palpable physicality.)
It was 2003. My sister-in-law was visiting us. It was a weekend, and her, my wife, and our niece were going to go up the coast to a fish shack just over the Ventura County line. They asked if I wanted to join them. I said no.
The fly-by-night telecommunications company for which I worked had just closed its doors, but I had quickly found a job at a similar company. I started that following Monday. And all I could see was a hopeless, endless succession of dead-end jobs, one following the other, none leading to anything, no hope of doing anything better, anything more meaningful. I was trapped. I was in the grip of my depression.
Depression can be triggered by anything—or it can be triggered by nothing. It can have warning signs; or it can come upon you like Judgment Day, as a thief in the night. It robs you of you, turning you into someone other than who you were, altering you irrevocably. You are suddenly or not so suddenly this person you weren’t before, a distorted image of the person loved and cherished by others, an image of yourself dark, twisted, sent into the world too soon.
My depressive episodes, stretching back to the late Nineties, have usually been triggered by the combination of pointless work, or lack of work, and the curious malady of my stutter which made me despair of ever being able to do anything other than what I was doing. But triggers don’t always happen. As Robin Williams shows, people who have it all can feel as if they have nothing. Fame, glory, money: they don’t matter. When depression strikes, it doesn’t discriminate. It will take the high and the low, the rich and the poor. It’s very democratic in that way.
Depression is the soul destroyer. It consumes the soul, stamping out whatever joy it may have gloried in. Depression is the sly counselor, whispering in your ear that nothing matters, that there’s no hope, that you are worthless.
Depression tells you to tie the noose, tightly, and look through it. Outside of the circle all is fractured and torn, a world of tears and regrets. Within the noose it shows you peace, tranquility, finality. Just put that noose around your neck, just jump off that chair, and it will all be over, you’ll finally be at rest, the demons will be defeated. Of course, it will be the demons who have won, chuckling as they move on to claim another life.
Most of those dear to me have fought the demons. My wife, my best friend, my niece, my brother, my mother. All either have gone through or continue to battle depression. Depression does not respect you. It is the lord of darkness, ever working to draw more people into its kingdom.
No one in my family or circle of love, aside from my wife and best friend, have ever known about my depression. I haven’t wanted to burden them, I’ve felt ashamed, I’ve felt weak. I wanted to maintain the facade of the happy go lucky baby of the family, always with a smile on his face, always ready to lend an ear to other people’s problems. I didn’t want to be pitied.
And that was the exactly wrong thing to do. Depression festers in the silence of shame. The quiet leads to the overdose, or the gunshot, or the noose. I’m lucky in that the love my wife has for me was so powerful that I was able to rise up and escape depression’s grip, making changes which defeated it. But many times love is not enough. Sometimes the loneliest place is in the middle of loved ones who don’t understand. And that is not shameful; it is not weak. It is an illness, it is a disease, and it is life. What depression relishes is the despairing silence. What it fears is when you tell one person, and then one person more, and those people understand, and those people love you enough to give you the support you need.
To those reading this who may be going through the darkness: speak. Speak your truth. Do not suffer in silence. There’s no honor in that, neither is there relief. Suffering in silence will lead to the silence of the grave. You are a human being, who is loved, and by that you have worth, whatever the demons may be whispering. Depression is the soul devourer. Hope is its mortal enemy.
***
|
|
|
Post by dgarr on Nov 5, 2014 13:24:36 GMT -5
05 Nov 14 a nation of cowards By Liberal Librarian
Well, America, you’ve done it.
It all began with 9/11, when after that atrocity citizens abdicated their reason and embraced a Daddy state in the form of Dick Cheney and his puppet George W. Bush. Remember Ari Fleischer’s admonition: “Watch what you say in times like these”? Oh, so many of us took that to heart, and the shock and the horror of that day transmuted into almost unquestioning support for any program coming out of the Cheney cabal.
Recently, Ebola fever swept the land, as a nation went apoplectic over one Ebola death—which wasn’t even contracted in the US—and hazmat suits became haute couture. Matrons on the north shore of Long Island were worried about the Walking Dead Ebola patients shuffling down their chic streets.
And it’s reached its apotheosis with the midterm elections. Ginned up by a hostile press, a 38% turnout gave control of the Congress to the GOP, based on a campaign of fear and lies. And I’m not letting the 62% who stayed home off the hook. By their inaction they guaranteed two years of unceasing political warfare, which will dwarf even the fighting we’ve seen since 2009.
You’ve done it, America. You’ve shown the world that you’re a nation full of cowards.
It’s heartrending that a country which survived the Depression and fought Hitler is now peopled by abject cowards, afraid of their own shadows. But that’s where we are.
Fear those who think differently. Fear those who look different. Fear those who sound different. Fear those who worship differently. Fear those who love differently. And vote for the party which stokes those fears, which makes voodoo dolls out of those fears and with a leer invites you to stick pins in them to attack the evil.
Barack Obama’s whole program has been to fight the fear. He stands in the tradition of FDR. But fear grips this nation of cowards, covering it in an itchy cocoon from which it doesn’t wish to wrest itself. President Obama is one man. One man cannot analyze the souls of 300 million people. He can only offer a path. It’s easy to obscure that path by those merchants who trade in fear. “Oh, no, don’t go down that way, you don’t know what dangers lurk. And, besides, look who’s leading you. He looks different, doesn’t he?”
At some point the chickens must be allowed to return home to roost. At some point Americans are going to have to reap the whirlwind for their decisions or indecisions. Those who didn’t turn out to vote are just as guilty as those who did and voted for Majority Leader McConnell. Those of us who voted to have the President’s back will be collateral damage. But that’s what it is like in a putative democracy. We either rise or sink together, and right now the tide is ebbing at an alarming rate. It’s not fair that I voted for all the right things and will still suffer the consequences. But we are all tethered to each other, in spite of what some think. A vote cast in Alabama affects me intimately. Someone who stayed home last night and watched “Jeopardy” affects me just as much.
Congratulations, America. We’ve entered the Age of the Cowards. May it be a short epoch, and may we find our courage before it’s too late.
|
|
|
Post by dgarr on Nov 8, 2014 14:32:13 GMT -5
a political system on life support By Liberal Librarian
The results of Tuesday’s “earth shattering” election are quite revelatory, but not for the reasons bruited about by your average MSNBC/Fox/CNN vacuous pundit.
Although President Obama won’t use the word—and bless him for it—it was a “shellacking” which the voters meted out to the Democratic Party. But let’s examine this “mandate” a bit further.
The turnout for the midterm election stands at 36%, a low not seen since the 1940s. That’s 36% of registered voters. Voter registration in its turn doesn’t encompass all eligible voters. This Al Jazeera article has this telling paragraph:
Election turnout is often cited as an indicator of the strength of the mandate of winning candidates, but it can be a misleading statistic: Turnout is usually measured as a proportion of registered voters rather than of those eligible to vote — and census numbers show that more than 70 million U.S. citizens of voting age are not registered voters. Get that? 70 million Americans who are eligible to vote aren’t even registered. What does this mean? That the number of registered voters is at best a bare majority of eligible voters. And then that the voters who turned out were a minority of that number. And then that the GOP “landslide” depended on a further minority of registered voters, which in turn doesn’t account for all eligible voters.
This opens up a veritable cornucopia of delicious dysfunction.
On one side we have the Democratic Party. Democrats are what I like to call “sexy voters”: they only vote when the election is sexy. Thus they swamp the polls in presidential elections. This will almost ensure a Democratic successor to Pres. Obama in 2016.
The problem is that when the election isn’t sexy—”Oh God, who cares about Congress/judges/school boards?”—Democrats are far less likely to turn out. Which leads to what happened Tuesday.
On the other side, we have the Republican Party. If there’s one thing you can depend on Republicans doing is turning out to vote. There’s one slight problem with that: they’re dying off. GOP demographics trend older, male, and white—exactly the demographic going into rapid decline. Democratic voters are the ones who will own the future. But, even though Democrats outnumber Republicans, it doesn’t reflect in who shows up at the polls for off-year elections. Thus, aside from the 2007-2011 interregnum, the GOP has had a chokehold on the House of Representatives since 1995, a grip which doesn’t seem about to be loosened soon. (Because, remember, Democrats don’t turn out for non-sexy elections, so the GOP death brigade decides state legislatures, which in turn decide Congressional redistricting. Funny how things mesh like that.)
What does this mean? This means that in 2016, if the pattern of the past two decades holds (because remember, in 2000 Al Gore won the popular vote, and in 2004 G. W. Bush scared the country sufficiently to win an election he should have lost), the Democratic nominee will win the Presidency, and Republicans, who will have to defend 20+ seats in the Senate to the Democrats’ ten, will lose control of that body. However, in 2018, the coalition which propelled the Democrats to a third consecutive national triumph will most likely fail to show up at the polls. The excuses will be the same tired ones, centering around not “being inspired” to vote, as if the serious business of self-government is akin to a childhood crush. And the GOP will continue its grip on the House, and may make up ground in the Senate.
Thus the delicious death spiral continues. Republicans can’t win national elections. Democrats can’t—or rather, don’t care to—win midterms. And the gridlock repeats into the distant future.
One can say many disparaging things about the US political system. But up until recently, the one thing it was was stable. Both parties were broad coalitions which sought to make deals across the ideological aisle. Ronald Reagan was saved not by values voters, but by Tip O’Neill.
But now in the Democrats we have a party which can’t seem to win local elections. And in the Republicans we have a party which can’t win national elections because it’s seen as too extreme. So each party dominates one branch of government, in an infuriatingly unstable tango. The US political system has taken on the trappings of those unstable parliamentary systems at which we like to tut-tut. But at least those systems, for the most part, can function, even if messily. The World’s Greatest Democracy™ has a political system awash in untraceable money, doing the bidding of silent corporations, unable to deal with the challenges facing it, lurching from one crisis to another. Democrats aside from Barack Obama don’t know how to formulate a reason for voters to vote for them. Republicans are in thrall to Know-Nothings on the one hand, who provide the shock troops, and a cabal of the super wealthy who want to trim the state to nothingness. It doesn’t make for a cheerful prospect.
But, of course, there is hope. Not for the Republicans; that party must fail root and branch, and its demographic demise is unavoidable. However, the Democratic Party has demography and history on its side. But that’s not enough. It has to build the sort of grass roots movement at which Republicans have excelled. But Democrats can do an even better job of it, due to the demographic advantages they have. However, ultimately Democrats have to stop being ashamed of being Democrats. They have to get on the mass media and passionately defend Democratic ideas. They have to out-argue and out-shout the right wing demagogues. They have to meet fear with hope, division with inclusion, irrationality with reason. They can’t back down, but have to be as in-your-face as the most reactionary Republican, with the difference that they have a better argument. Democrats have to take the “kick me” sign off of their asses and glue it firmly to the GOP. Democrats have to, as the kids say, “grow a pair”, not in some fake, macho way the way the GOP does, but show that they passionately believe in their ideas, and will tirelessly promote them.
Liberal ballot propositions won all across the country on Tuesday, from marijuana to the minimum wage. Democrats didn’t. That should tell the Democratic Party something. Liberal ideas resonate with the public. It would be nice if there was a party which could embody and fight for those ideas. That is the party’s task for the next two years. Otherwise, the future looks very grim.
|
|