Your Department of Redundancy Dept.

Two more days and it'll be over.  Well, almost.  Or maybe not; some pundit suggested the other day that the presidential race might be close enough to force a recount, which could delay closure for some time.  Contrary to some white right-wing fantasies about the outcome of an Obama defeat, I think there's real danger of white right-wing riots in the event of an Obama victory.  As usual, they're projecting, and the Right has been working itself into a gigantic snit ever since Obama won in 2008, and blah blah blah ... this is not exactly rocket science, is it?

While I do hold the Republicans I know responsible for their hysteria -- I was forthrightly mean to the guy I knew vaguely in high school who posted the above photo to Facebook, especially since it wasn't the first time he's posted such garbage* -- I also hold Democrats responsible for matching the Republicans' frothing.  If they were as rational as they like to think they are, the Intertoobz wouldn't be full of cute-Obama pictures, Ryan-as-Eddie-Munster caricatures, Romney binders-full-of jokes, and worse.  Gary Younge has a not-crazy piece at the Guardian in which he argues that a Romney victory would merely reward the Republicans for bad behavior.  I agree, but an Obama victory would merely reward the Democrats for their bad behavior.  (As I've argued before, an Obama defeat will not convince the Democrats that they should have been more liberal; it will convince them that they should have been more like the Republicans.  But an Obama victory will also convince them that being more like the Republicans was wise politically.)

My law professor friend and I exchanged a few more barbs last night.  She introduced some more wacked-out defense of Obama by saying that she's not partisan.  I said she was, she repeated that she wasn't.  But if she weren't partisan, she'd make the same excuses for Romney and for Republicans generally that she makes for Obama: If you demand a candidate who's perfect you might as well not vote.  Mitt has to say those things to please his base, he couldn't get elected if he said what he really believes.  He'll be different after he's elected; then we'll see the real hope-and-dreamy Mitt he's had to hide all along, just like Ann says.  That a highly-educated person like her can spout such idiotic blather -- and she's far from the only who does it: these are Democratic Party talking points -- is a sign of how much highly-educated partisans have abandoned rationality in favor of lockstep groupthink.  Though "think" isn't really the right second syllable there, is it?

This article is more of the same.  If you don't vote, then you can't bitch.  Not that it matters, because I do vote, but: Excuse me, but I think I can bitch.  There is no provision to that effect in the First Amendment, but besides, it doesn't matter.  If you don't vote for Obama (whether by voting for one of the children of Satan who dare to run against him, or by abstaining), you aren't allowed to criticize him.  If you do vote for Obama, you aren't allowed to criticize him.  Nobody is allowed to criticize him; you can admit being disappointed by him as long as you atone for it by supporting him even more fanatically.  (I don't care what Dembots don't allow, gonna criticize Obama anyhow ... )  But people who take positions like this have, like antigay bigots, declared themselves outside the realm of rational discussion; there's nothing much left to do but mock them.

*The first time I noticed him posting such garbage, it was a photo of Obama taking his shoes off before entering a mosque on a campaign appearance.  "He prays with the Muslims!" was the caption.  I posted a link to a video clip I'd just seen of Texas Governor Rick Perry dancing awkwardly around his desk with some ultra-orthodox Rabbis, and commented, "He dances with the Jews!"  That got no response, of course.  Maybe I should have posted a picture of George W. Bush holding hands with a Saudi king ... but there's been enough homophobic pants-shitting about that by Democrats already.

What Is The Use ... ?

A day or so ago my liberal law-professor friend was crowing on Facebook because the right-wing British publication The Economist endorsed Barack Obama for reelection.  "That's not 'liberal media,'" she commented.  True, it's not.  I can't help wondering if she'd be so triumphant if Fox News endorsed Obama, or the Daily Caller, or some even more deranged right-wing media.  Would that prove that Obama was the better man, or would it cast doubt on him?  How far can you go in that direction?

All The Economist's endorsement indicates to me, I commented on her link, is that Obama is not a liberal, and I don't need them to tell me that.

My friend's reaction -- so typical of Obama loyalists the past few months (well, okay: years) -- was that it doesn't matter if Obama is a liberal or not, what matters is who is the better candidate.  "Or do you plan not to vote?" was her parting shot.

To be fair to her, I had been provocative.  But she knows perfectly well that I plan to vote.  I always vote.  I've had to tell her this numerous times as the campaign has dragged on.  I (virtually, of course) rapped her knuckles sharply on that point.  I suppose I should thank her for giving me yet another example of someone who can see only either/or alternatives, and can't conceive of more than the two; as if I needed any more.

The difference between "the better candidate" and "the less awful candidate" might be irrelevant in practice, when it comes time to vote.  But I don't think it's meaningless.  Certainly Obama cultists have refused to consider it.  My friend is another one of those Democrats who will, if cornered, concede that Obama has been a "disappointment" and feel like they're going out on a limb by doing so.  Which they might be, given the fanatical groupthink that Obama devotees have been cultivating the last four years, if they really meant it.  But it's really only a tactical move; they are not really disappointed by him at all.  They've worked very hard to repress any less than enthusiastic thought about their President, which is probably why it infuriates them so much when they encounter people who've allowed thoughtcrime to run free in their minds.

If your favored football or basketball team loses a game or even a championship, that is a disappointment.  (My friend's main subject on Facebook, aside from the election, is the fortunes of her college's football team.  I don't think that's a coincidence.  Football is politics is war.)  If George Lucas sells his production company and its prime properties to Disney, that is a disappointment.   If the President of the United States prosecutes whistleblowers to an unprecedented extent, kills American citizens without due process, demands the power of indefinite detainment, prolongs the wars he inherited and starts several more, and gives priority to the interests of the top one-tenth of one percent of the citizenry over the interests of the other ninety and nine, he's a murderous thug and a corporate enforcer.  As well as a congenital cheap pig.

Which of the two main contenders is "the better candidate" is not the issue.  It's really not of much interest to party loyalists on either side.  They begin with the conclusion of their guy's superiority and work backwards.  A person who isn't committed to this cult of personality has to approach voting differently.  Which candidate is less awful?  It doesn't follow from the fact that I consider both Romney and Obama to be loathsome -- and Romney is a comparatively unknown quantity; we have the evidence of four years of Obama's iniquity -- that I won't vote.  But how to vote?  Voting LOTE, or the Lesser of Two Evils approach, is scorned by many, but sometimes in life we have no tolerable options available, and must choose the less or least intolerable.  Whether that applies in this election is for each person to decide.  There are other candidates on the ballot in some states, who can be written in in other states.  One might decide not to vote at all, or not to vote for a presidential candidate; and despite the catcalls of "purist!" from the loyalists, non-cooperation is a time-honored option in some cases.  Again, each person must decide what to do, and such decisions are not necessarily made by pure rationality; they may just come from a gut feeling like This far but no farther.  I've made my own decision on this, but I recognize that other people might reasonably make others.  This recognition is also difficult for loyalists to think about, so they usually don't; lying is so much easier.

Such decisions can be debated, but as this campaign has shown, most people aren't interested in debate.  As I told my friend, more in anger than in sorrow, the extent to which Democrats have thrown out rationality and any concern with facts during this campaign has outstripped my own most cynical imaginings.  That's especially true with people I know personally, like my friend: two doctorates, one in mathematics and one in law, both fields in which reasoning and fact play significant roles.  Yet where the election is concerned, she falls back on pure emotion, the appeal to fear, the cult of personality -- so much so that she can't remember from one day to the next that I both intend to vote and urge everyone else to do so.  I don't know who she believes she's talking to, but it isn't me.

It occurred to me today how similar this situation is to the weeks right after the September 11 attacks.  (Eleven years ago; hard to believe.  Time flies when you're getting old.)  I was out of touch with my law-professor friend at that time, which is probably for the best.  I watched numerous liberals, people I knew personally as well as journalists, politicos, and pundits, fall into line behind George W. Bush, gnashing their teeth with lust for Saracen blood.  Some of them were forthright about throwing out rationality, since this crisis was too important to think about.  It was an unprecedented historical moment, a time of trial by fire, and you were either with the President or you were against him.  If you didn't think it was a good idea to attack Afghanistan, you obviously were on Bin Laden's side.  (This, although the best evidence then and now was that Bin Laden hoped to entice the US into a ruinous, self-destructive war, not only making more enemies all over the world but spending ourselves into collapse -- just as the USSR did in Afghanistan.  As I suggested earlier today, I consider the harm done to others more important morally than the harm we've done to ourselves; but that doesn't mean that the latter isn't significant too.)

Which reminds me of something the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote to his former student Norman Malcolm in 1939.  I've quoted some of it before, but I'm adding some more bits that seem especially relevant today:

You & I were walking along the river towards the railway bridge & we had a heated discussion in which you made a remark about "national character" that shocked me by its primitiveness. I then thought:what is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc., & if it does not improve your thinking about important questions of everyday life, if it does not make you more conscientious than any ... journalist in the use of the DANGEROUS phrases such people use for their own ends ... You see, I know that it's difficult to think well about 'certainty,' 'probability,' 'perception,' etc. But it is, if possible, still more difficult to think, or try to think, really honestly about your life & other people's lives. And the trouble is that thinking about these things is not thrilling, but often downright nasty. And when it's nasty then it's most important.

I'm not sure how much philosophy would actually help in this election season.  I don't think it can even help in choosing between the candidates; reason can only be part of that decision.  Still, philosophy can encourage a becoming modesty about one's own opinions that is strikingly absent among the partisans in this election campaign.  As Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in "Portrait of the Anti-Semite", a lot of which is pertinent to more general issues today:

The rational man seeks the truth gropingly, he knows that his reasoning is only probable, that other considerations will arise to make it doubtful; ...he is "open." He may even appear hesitant. But there are people who are attracted by the durability of stone. They want to be massive and impenetrable, they do not want to change: where would change lead them? This is an original fear of oneself and a fear of truth. And what frightens them is not the content of truth which they do not even suspect, but the very form of the true -- that thing of indefinite approximation...They want to exist all at once and right away. They do not want acquired opinions, they want them to be innate; since they are afraid of reasoning, they want to adopt a mode of life in which reasoning and research play but a subordinate role, in which one never seeks but that which one has already found.

Rational or not, it'll all be over in a few days.  And then we'll see what happens.

Pearls Before Swine

Okay, this is something I just don't get, and it has been a frequent complaint by Democrats.  First, the demand that "our elected officials should be cooperating like this all the time, not just in the face of terrible disasters."  Really?  So Cleage approves of Democratic politicians' willingness to cooperate with George Bush, ratifying his tax cuts for the wealthy and his nomination of some of the vilest people available to important posts, going along with his criminal invasions of other countries, passing on his use of torture and ignoring his contempt for the Constitution?  Really?

Somehow I doubt it.  What I think Cleage means is that Republicans should "cooperate" with President Obama, and maybe with any Democratic President.  Ironically, they have often done so, though usually in the worst cases, like the NDAA.  If Mitt Romney wins the election next week, will Cleage demand that the Democrats work with him as he slashes Social Security and other support programs, invades Iraq, repeals Obamacare, bans abortion, and legalizes polygamy?  Or will Democrats be exempted from the requirement of "cooperation" when a Republican is President?

I suppose the underlying idea is that politicians should "cooperate" to do the right thing and the best thing for the nation and the world.  That sounds really nice, but under the best of circumstances people differ about the best and the right thing to do.  You could make a case that the Republicans should have cooperated more with Obama than they have in fact, because the policies he was trying to implement were mostly Republican policies, and they opposed them simply because he was a Democrat.  Much the same happened when Bill Clinton was President, after all: he was aggressively business-friendly, pushing through the North American Free Trade Agreement, trying (but failing) to pass GATT, and "reforming" the welfare system while nurturing a couple of major market bubbles -- in Internet stocks and housing -- that made lots of money for the rich before they came crashing down.  The Republicans never appreciated how helpful Clinton was to their aims, just as they don't appreciate Obama now.

It is reasonable to call for cooperation on shared goals, but I don't think Cleage really wants to acknowledge that Obama and his opponents share so many important goals, though they certainly do.  Where one side wants one thing and the other wants the opposite, cooperation really isn't the right approach, especially when one side believes that the others side's aims are wrong.  Then it's entirely appropriate to dig in your heels and refuse to budge.  You might still be wrong -- as I've said before, consistency is only a virtue if you're consistent about the right things -- but refusing to cooperate for the right reason, on the right issue, is a virtue.  Surely Cleage, with her background in the Civil Rights Movement, knows that.

It was hypocritical of the Congressional Republicans to refuse to raise the debt ceiling for Obama last year, when they'd done it without complaint for Bush and his predecessors.  They were caught flat-footed when Obama wanted to "intervene" in Libya, because they couldn't very well defend Qaddafi but didn't want their nemesis Obama to look good by shedding Muslim blood while posing as a champion of democracy.  Similar difficulties arose when our good friend Hosni Mubarak experienced some trouble in Egypt: on the one hand, democracy against dictatorship is Good, so Obama should let Mubarak fall; on the other, Mubarak was repressing Muslims, so Obama should support him -- preferably he should do both at once.  Even his violation of the War Powers Act after the Libyan intervention didn't bother them much; why should it?  And so on.  But addressing these points would require pointing out where Obama was wrong, so Cleage and her fellow devotees can't really go there.

Which brings me to my second point.  We have been told indignantly over the past four years that it's foolish to expect idealism or principle to triumph in politics. That's not what politics is about.  At the same time, Obama represents the triumph of idealism and principle.  Anyone who expected Obama to stand by his progressive-sounding promises was naive or a cynic. True Obama supporters, by contrast, are just cynical enough.  They understand the necessity of Realpolitik as Obama practices it.  Politics is a brutal, heartless game, a blood sport, and we should cheer on our star player without being Monday-morning quarterbacks; we can't know what he knows, and we must trust him.  Whatever Barack does is good, by definition.  He knows best, certainly better than we do.  The true believer must hold the two opposing beliefs in mind at once -- Obama is pragmatic, dirtying his hands in our service; Obama is a shining idealist, fighting amoral opponents with the power of true goodness -- unified by faith.  Those who fall away due to lack of faith are anathema; don't even mention those who never had faith to begin with: their god is their stomach, their glory is in their shame, their destiny is destruction.  Obama is great by ascription; there cannot be any valid criticism of him, because by definition he is always right.  He may perhaps disappoint, but even there the fault lies with you for being disappointed.

The trouble with reason and principle, to loyalists like Cleage, is that they are unpredictable: they may lead to unacceptable conclusions.  You might discover that what you wanted to believe is not true after all.  You might end up criticizing or -- horrors! -- condemning someone you revere.  What counts to a loyalist is the conclusion you reach, not the process by which you reach it; the loyalist starts with the conclusion, and works backwards.

A Good Day to Meme

I saw this meme on Facebook today, just a day after I read Richard Seymour's post on memes at Lenin's Tomb.  As is sometimes the case, it's fair enough as long as you keep your partisan blinders on: yes, the Republican candidates are not good on Social Security and Medicare.   But neither are the Democrats.  Obama also wants to raise the retirement age and cut benefits for future generations; as I've already mentioned, he has been quite open and consistent about this, and we can expect him to make a move after the elections, no matter how they turn out.  Former President Bill Clinton, who's been getting a lot of adulation from Democrats lately, was interested in privatizing Social Security until he got entangled in the sex scandal that almost cost him his office.  Obama even said during the first presidential debate that on Social Security, he suspected that he and Romney have "a somewhat similar position."  So what's his grade?

Go back to that last link for a moment, where Obama declared his agreement with Romney on Social Security.

Indeed, Romney, in his book "No Apology," said he backs changing the payment structure for Social Security benefits and said that there is a "certain logic" to increasing the retirement age at which one begins to receive Social Security payments, while protecting those who may be physically unable to work.

"Many older Americans are healthy, vital, and want to stay engaged in meaningful work," he wrote. "If we increased the retirement age, we would encourage seniors to stay healthier longer, keep their minds active and alert, and at the same time, we would relieve the terrible Social Security burden our children and grandchildren face."

That's some interesting sleight-of-hand going on there.  It reminded me of something an old friend from high school said the other day on this very subject: he also said that he wasn't interested in retiring, he wasn't happy unless he was working.  He said he'd retire when his health failed and he could no longer work.  But "the retirement age" doesn't mean the age at which you must retire; it means the age at which you can retire, if you wish to and if you can afford it.  Someone like Joe doesn't want to retire yet, so he doesn't have to.

This same move kept turning up during the fuss earlier this year, over the requirement that employees' health care plans must include contraception coverage.  The Right talked as though employees would be required to use contraception, whether or not they needed or wanted to.  But they wouldn't, any more than I have to have surgery every year just because my insurance plan covers it.  Do Republicans actually believe that "the retirement age" means mandatory retirement at that age?  Some do, I suspect.  So, I suspect, do some Democrats, and if Obama moves to raise the retirement age as he has said he wants to do, many of them will use exactly this argument to defend him.

I retired last year at the age of 60, and began drawing my state pension but not (yet) Social Security.  Quite a number of my age mates had done so at the same age or younger, not because they were infirm (though some were), but because they were eligible for a pension, or (like me) took advantage of an early-retirement incentive plan.  Yes, employers, public and private, often want their high-seniority workers to retire early, and will sweeten the deal with lump-sum payments and other incentives.  I know US military personnel who retired after twenty years -- which means, in their forties -- with full pensions, often quite comfortable since they were officers.  Some of them started new careers while continuing to draw their pensions.  Would Romney or Obama care to tell them that they are contributing to the tax burden of their children and grandchildren?  (If so, I'd enjoy watching.)

If anything, it's raising the retirement age and cutting benefits -- the same thing, really, in different guises -- that will increase the burden on coming generations by increasing the numbers of indigent seniors.  As Dean Baker wrote recently, cutting benefits "might be reasonable policy if we had some cause to believe that workers in the future will be better prepared for retirement than current retirees; however there is no evidence to support this view."

Earlier retirement, say at 62, doesn't contribute to any burden of present or future taxpayers anyhow: Social Security is fully funded by the contributions that go into the Social Security Trust Fund.  The same is true of the state pension I'm now drawing, as far as I know.  The currently diminishing interval before the Social Security fund will start giving out more money than it takes in is due in large part to drastically lower growth in the US economy.  I recall seeing, when I first began paying attention to this issue a decade ago, that the official estimates were based on the assumption of 2 percent growth per year -- which at that time was a very conservatively low assumption: growth was higher than 2 percent at that time.  Thanks to the economic policies that produced the crash of 2008, economic growth has slowed to less than 2 percent per year.  I'm not saying that was deliberate, but it was convenient for opponents of Social Security, and the overall lowered growth hasn't hurt the rich.  So one way -- practical and better in the long run, though unpopular among the richest Americans -- to protect Social Security would be policies that foster economic growth.

Another would be meaningful job growth, by which I don't mean minimum-wage, no-benefits jobs of the kind that most people are scrambling for since Reaganism took over this country in the 1980s.  Whether this is possible given the current political climate, it is necessary.  I've been seeing more journalists and economists raising the same question that a working-class interviewee in one of Michael Moore's films asked years ago: If all the jobs go overseas and people in the US can't earn a living wage, who's going to buy the products of American companies?  The answer, it turned out, was people overseas, buying products made by American companies in other countries: automobiles made by Jeep in Chinese factories for sale in China, for example, where the profit margin is higher.  Which is fine for the people who'll rake in those profits, but not for the rest of us.  (True, computers and other electronic gadgets have gotten progressively cheaper, which is fine as long as you have electricity; but try eating them.)

The US economy could support Social Security easily, and probably Medicare too.  The trouble with Medicare is that our privately-controlled profit-driven health insurance system is wasteful and, well, profit-driven, not directed by people's actual health care needs.  The Medicare system is cost-efficient itself, but is not allowed to have much effect on the costs of health care and medication.  Private insurance companies, even constrained slightly by the Affordable Care Act, are about making money, not about people's health.  And in these areas, there really is little if anything to choose between Obama and Romney.  I give them both an F.

There's Just Not Enough of the Pie of Sacrifice for Everybody!

Lately I've been seeing more people claiming online that Obama intends to push for cuts in Social Security and Medicare after the elections.  Whether he wins or not, Congress will be in a lame-duck session, and Obama himself will be beyond accountability, either as a lame-duck president or a re-elected incumbent, free at last to do what he wants, not what his base wants.  This wouldn't be surprising, since Obama already put these important social programs on the chopping block during the great Debt Ceiling wars of 2011, and had spoken the requisite code words ("reform" for example) even before he was elected the first time.

But then it emerged that Obama gave an "off-the-record" interview to an Iowa newspaper in which he gave the game away.  After the newspaper "pitched a fit" (via), the "campaign allowed it to be published."  There are numerous WTFs here, starting with a newspaper allowing an entire interview to be off the record, and continuing through asking the campaign's permission to publish it.  I'd like to think they would have gone ahead and published it anyway.  What were they afraid of, that the President wouldn't grant them any more off-the-record interviews?

Anyway, Obama said:

It will probably be messy. It won’t be pleasant. But I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain that essentially I’ve been offering to the Republicans for a very long time, which is $2.50 worth of cuts for every dollar in spending, and work to reduce the costs of our health care programs.

And we can easily meet -- “easily” is the wrong word -- we can credibly meet the target that the Bowles-Simpson Commission established of $4 trillion in deficit reduction, and even more in the out-years, and we can stabilize our deficit-to-GDP ratio in a way that is really going to be a good foundation for long-term growth. Now, once we get that done, that takes a huge piece of business off the table.

Just in passing: The Bowles-Simpson Commission (easily and credibly called the Catfood Commission) did not "establish" anything.  Although Obama packed it with deficit hawks, the Commission was unable to agree on recommendations, so its chairmen, Bowles and Simpson, released their own recommendations, which have ever since been treated by the media and by the President as the report of the Commission.  (I've noticed that I've made the same mistake in some posts here; I should make some corrections.)  Bowles and Simpson "essentially saw deficit-reduction as an opportunity to redistribute income upwards: by capping government revenues, cutting tax rates for the wealthy and corporations (while raising them for the middle class), lowering Social Security benefits and making the elderly pay more for their healthcare."  This is not only a very unpopular course of action (except among the very rich and their toadies), it will be harmful to the economy and to most of the country (though not to the very rich and their toadies).

So this is what, according to President Obama, he hopes to achieve.  He even referred in that interview to "the commitment of both myself and my opponent -- at least Governor Romney claims that he wants to reduce the deficit" to carry out this agenda.  Just in case you had any illusions about differences between the candidates on this little matter.

I posted a couple of links about this to Facebook today, and soon had an angry comment from my Obama-Democrat liberal law-professor friend.  First she lectured me that there's never going to be a candidate I agree with 100%, so I should not whine or make posts that "undermine" President Obama, because he's not a Republican (I hadn't said that he is), and today's Republicans would never agree that he was.  "I hope that Social Security won't have to be sacrificed," she wrote.  Obama apologetics of the campaign's final month in a nutshell, you see.

I replied that of course no candidate is perfect, which is why I can't see why she hates on Romney so much, even if he has been something of a "disappointment" to many Democrats.  As for "undermining" Obama, why the hell not?  But then, as my friend knows very well (we have some of the same right-wing frother friends in common), I've spent just as much time "undermining" Romney on Facebook, so it all balances out.  As Avedon Carol pointed out anent Richard Mourdock in the same post, "I swear, it's as if they are doing damage control for Obama - no sooner does he step in it than they come in swinging to punch themselves in the face."  And if anyone has undermined Obama, it has been Obama himself.

And it really makes no difference: Obama cultists have consistently thrown tantrums over any criticism of their God-king from the time he became nationally prominent and a contender for the Presidency.  I fully expect that if he is reelected, they'll continue to denounce any criticism of Obama in the same terms, with fabricated accusations and no substantive rebuttal, forever.  (See examples, mostly anonymous, in the comments under Susan of Texas's post here.  This one, say, and this reply.)

But "I hope that Social Security won't have to be sacrificed"?  My only reply to that was "Jesus H. Christ", though I'll probably have more to say to her about it later.  The sheer dishonesty and stupidity of that remark floored me.

Let me begin by pointing past the blind passive in what she wrote: Obama doesn't have to sacrifice Social Security.  It doesn't contribute to the deficit; there's no fiscal necessity to cut the program.  As with the pre-emptive tax cuts in his 2009 stimulus bill, Obama offered cuts in social programs to the Republicans during the debt-ceiling fight without their having to demand them.  He's not obligated to accept Simpson and Bowles recommendations, since they aren't binding, but he accepted them anyway -- and he did appoint those two deficit hawks to his deficit-reduction commission, knowing in advance that they are advocates of cutting Social Security and Medicare.  Nor is there support in the general population for cutting Social Security and Medicare; they are both very popular, which is why Social Security has long been called the Third Rail of American politics.  Only Obama's wealthy campaign donors support his intentions, but as both his left critics and his right-wing supporters have been saying, once he's re-elected he'll be beholden to no one.  He doesn't have to cut Social Security and Medicare -- he wants to.  And he's always wanted to.

As for today's Republicans' denial that Obama is a Republican -- which, I repeat, I hadn't said, but attacking a straw man is so much easier -- they love his policies but hate the man, for well-known reasons.  Much as with Clinton, who pushed through much of Ronald Reagan's wish list (NAFTA and "welfare reform," for instance), Obama has continued and extended many Bush policies. Even some of Bush's people have praised him for it, especially on foreign policy and civil liberties, and he has returned the favor.  If Obama were a white, card-carrying Republican, the Republican fringe would adore him.  That's why they have to attack him on fictional grounds -- that he's not a citizen, that he's a Muslim, that he's a socialist, etc.  For their part, his Democratic defenders have to defend him on largely fictional grounds.

The problem is not that I don't agree with Obama 100%, as my friend put it.  I'm not sure how to quantify it, but it's probably in the ballpark to say that I don't agree with him even 50%, maybe not even 10%.  The Obamabots keep falling back on the Supreme Court and they really have nothing else to point to, so it might even be 1 percent.  It's like the "disappointment" line.  The dishonesty of the Democratic loyalists rivals that of the Republicans.

Six Out of Seven Spin Doctors Agree

I'm grateful to the zealous guardians of public health who've been warning Americans of this ominous new health threat.  We should all be vigilant against it!

But in the excitement of our struggle against Romnesia, we shouldn't forget another malady that has been spreading across the US like a radioactive virus for the past four years: Obamnesia.

Murder of civilians? Bombing cities? Kill lists?  Support for dictators against popular uprisings and the threat of free elections?  Assault on civil liberties at home? Protecting corporate fraudsters and CIA torturers from accountability? All down the memory hole. It's all summed up in a few simple words: "Look to the future, not to the past."  If messy, negative memories threaten to erupt from the depths of your mind, just repeat that motto.  Obamacare, however, doesn't cover it.

(Personal note: I'm disturbed to find that what seemed like writer's block turns out to be my mind's refusal to write on subjects other than politics and especially the current election campaign.  There are other subjects that matter to me.  But for some reason, writing about them is a struggle compared to dishing out snark about the candidates and their cheering sections.  The words just fly from my fingers.  It's as though I were channeling them.  Depressing.)

Whose Ox Is Being Gored

True, and if Springsteen's recommendation made any sense, it would have been right to vote, say, for the man who "got" Saddam Hussein.  Right?

Glenn Greenwald posted to Twitter that "Chris Matthews breaks the story of a major violation of the Constitution by Mitt Romney."  Matthews, it turns out, objected to Romney's telling Obama "You’ll get your chance in a moment. I’m still speaking."  Lèse-majesté! A gutter commoner dared to disrespect the sacred person of the POTUS!  Byron York of the Washington Examiner wrote:

After the clip ended, Matthews seemed appalled. “I don’t think [Romney] understands the Constitution of the United States,” Matthews said.  “He’s the president of the United States.  You don’t say, ‘You’ll get your chance.’”

Now, it’s entirely possible for one to think Romney was rude to Obama during that moment in the debate.  A president is of course entitled to some deference, and some people undoubtedly thought Romney was insufficiently deferential.  Others thought Romney’s behavior was entirely acceptable.  But just for the record, there is nothing in the Constitution barring one from saying “You’ll get your chance” to the President of the United States — no matter what his supporters on MSNBC say.

I know, I feel kinda dirty linking to and quoting the Examiner, a mostly scurrilous right-wing rag on the level of the Daily Caller or the National Review Online.  But York is right in this case.

But if it had been the other way around -- a trashy Democratic challenger trampling on the prerogatives of a Republican President -- right-wing journalists would have been as indignant as Matthews was the other night, and liberals would have jeered at them for it.  One of the commenters on York's post raved that Obama deserves no respect, because he put his "filthy feet" on the holy Oval Office desk.  (This was a right-wing meme a year or so ago, debunked by Snopes.com, who found a picture of George W. Bush with his filthy feet on the same desk.  The truly faithful can ignore such irrelevancies, of course.)

This incident actually makes me like Romney a little more, because US Presidents probably don't get told to hold their horses very often, and a little bit of healthy disrespect won't kill them.  I have to wonder how much of Romney's attitude came from wanting to put an uppity black man in his place, and I suspect racism played no small role.  Notice, though, that what riled Chris Matthews (and, I'd bet, for many other liberals) was irreverence to the President.  He'd probably have been upset if any other President -- even a  Republican -- had been told to shut up, and I don't agree.  There's too much reverence for the Presidency in this country as it is, and Americans need to remember the supposedly egalitarian roots of our system of government.  Respect for the executive is one thing, a slavish deference another.

Byron York, it appears, has in the past exhibited a treacherous ability to see the clay feet of his allies, which has won him attacks by his brethren despite his usual ideological loyalty.  It's easy to exercise one's critical-thinking skills on political or other opponents, just as it's easy to see the crimes of official enemies; and contrariwise it's much harder to see the irrationality and criminality of one's allies.  So it's normal for partisans to demand deference when the incumbent president is of their party, and to complain when he doesn't get it.  Democrats were jubilant when Joe Biden repeatedly interrupted Paul Ryan during their debate, and Republicans were indignant, but of course Ryan is only a Congressman.  Republicans were happy when Romney triumphed over Obama during their first debate, while Democrats were downcast.

(By the way, some of the Right have been predicting "riots" by Teh Black if Obama loses the election next month.  Based on recent history, I think riots by white Republicans are more likely if Obama wins.   If Obama loses, I foresee that African-Americans will react with demoralization, and white liberals will retreat into depression, as they did when George W. Bush took office.  But I digress.)

Ta-Nehisi Coates did a couple of good posts on Tagg Romney's expressed wish to punch President Obama.  While I basically agree with him about the racial dynamics involved -- such issues are never wholly absent -- I think that young Romney could have said exactly the same thing about a white opponent.  Coates asked for examples of a "black man associated with a credible black candidate for the presidency, joking about beating down the incumbent president of the United States."  A National Review writer offered an anecdote about Michelle Obama, which Coates dismissed on the grounds that Michelle is a black woman, not a black man; he might also have objected that she was talking about a former President, not an incumbent.  The gender issue isn't irrelevant here, but think of white politicians fantasizing violence about other white politicians, like (via):

media executive Harry Evans, who reportedly exclaimed at a party celebrating Hillary Clinton's U.S. Senate win in New York, "I want to kill Nader." Hillary, affirming her support for capital punishment, reportedly responded, "That's not a bad idea!" Nader said Evans had apologized to him but Clinton hadn't returned his call.

And I'd already thought about this, but someone posted about it before I did.  Credit where credit's due:

(Or kids in other countries.) If Obama had a son, he'd look like Abdulrahman al-Awlaki.

Liberal journalists and pundits often do a very good job of shooting holes in right-wing discourse; sometimes conservatives effectively and rationally refute liberal discourse.  But it's relatively rare for them to use their critical abilities on their own side.  That, I think, is why people go wrong: because they won't subject their own beliefs and plans to the same scrutiny that they apply easily to others'.  As Nietzsche wrote in one of his notebooks: "A very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions!!!"

Disappointment?

It's a humbling experience to realize how long it takes me to sort out and focus my thoughts on some subjects.  I take some comfort from people like Noam Chomsky, who has often remembered how timid at first was the movement against the US invasion of Vietnam.  The same goes for my responses to Obama loyalists during the present election campaign.  But tonight I think I managed to clarify something in my own mind, if in no one else's.

One of my Facebook friends linked to someone's tweet, to the effect that Governor Romney blamed parents for the violent tendencies of their children.  "Then, Tagg Romney said he wanted to punch the President."  Fantasizing about violence against one's political enemies is popular among the ruling elites, let alone ordinary Americans, and Tagg's remark (like his Dad's "binders full of women" remark) mainly served as a distractive tactic for Obama's fans to dwell on.

Who, I asked, should I blame for Obama's violence (not just tendencies -- he has a lot of blood on his hands)?  My friend surprised me by answering "Obama."  That, at least, was honest, and I said so. My friend replied:

In all seriousness, Obama's use of drones is one of the reason that I consider him a disappointment as a president. He'd be better, all things considered, than Romney but he also hasn't done enough to distance the nation from the arrogant bomb-first attitude of the Bush administration. That said, I don't know of anyone out there who'd be much better; I doubt Ron Paul would really break that much from previous policies overseas -- too much of the economy is organized around the military to cut the defense budget as drastically and immediately as he has indicated he would do.

... Which wasn't honest, on any level. I replied:

What boggles my mind is people who say things like Obama's use of drones being a "disappointment", and think that has appropriate gravitas. He's a war criminal and a bloodsoaked butcher, not a disappointment. (This also relates to the Obama devotees who sneer about Obama supporters who've been "disappointed" by his failure to save the world in six months etc. "Disappointed" is not the word. I was never an Obama supporter and never had any illusions about him, any more than I had illusions about Bush, though I admit that both turned out to be much worse than even I had expected. The Left has often been accused of cynicism, but once again Obama has shown that we aren't nearly cynical enough.)

Let alone the fantasy that Obama ever intended to "distance the nation from the arrogant bomb-first attitude of the Bush Administration." Why do you bring in Ron Paul? I don't, and never have, endorsed or supported him. Nor does it matter if there's "anyone out there who'd be much better." It doesn't matter if there's any candidate who would do what I think should be done. I can still criticize the existing candidates for what they do and what they fail to do. (In Romney's case, remember, all such considerations are purely speculative. I know what Obama has done as President.)

Remember too that serious social change is not brought about by voting. It's brought about by direct action -- organizing, demonstrating, and so on. To cite a minor example: Harry Truman didn't issue an executive order forbidding racial segregation in the military because people voted for it, he did it because he was threatened with massive protests in an election year. There's a limit to the effectiveness of such tactics, but they are much more effective than voting. Change doesn't come from elected officials, it comes from groups of people putting pressure on them. Obama might have been less destructive if people had done the same to him, instead of sitting around in a puddle of drool over him and his adorable family. The moral vacuity of American liberals these past four years has been an education to me, though.

I think I put my finger on something here: the use of the word "disappointment" by Obama supporters to express their admission that the POTUS isn't perfect (though he's still awfully good), while remaining convinced of their own great seriousness, unlike Obama's shallow, immature, drug-addled critics from the left.  Some other Obama critics, including VastLeft I think, have pointed this out too, but I hadn't realized before how much weight that one word carries in apologetics for Obama's administration.  Imagine someone defending a serial killer, or a child rapist, by saying that they couldn't think of anyone out there who'd be much better.  That, of course, keeps the focus on personalities instead of structural factors, but also keeps the discussion (to use the word loosely) within the gamut from A to B that is typical of normal political discourse.  Real "transformative" hope and change don't come from political business-as-usual, they come from people who refuse to work within the system as it exists.

It's About Me, Me, Me!

An Obama fan posted her reasons for liking Obama, and why she's "better off" since he became President.  Here's one of them, which is typical of the lot:

War: In my lifetime, there have been three wars – Viet Nam, where I worried for years that my brothers would have to go; the Line In The Sand, where I worried about my oldest son being deployed on a daily basis; and Middle East wars, where my granddaughter’s husband is deployed and where I worry that my grandson will go. Under Obama, we are set to pull out after training Middle Eastern forces to defend themselves. Under Romney-Ryan, they are set to give trillions more to the military, even though they didn’t ask for the money. That tells me there is another war agenda looming in the future. How many more lives should we sacrifice to pay for big corporation agendas?

First of all, as you can see, It's All About Us: she worried about her brothers who might have to go to Vietnam, about her oldest son "being deployed" in the first Gulf War; about her grandson who might go to "Middle East wars."  If she's worried about the millions of innocent non-Americans who were killed in those wars, she doesn't mention it.

Second, Bush didn't start the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to train "Middle Eastern forces to defend themselves."  And that's the last thing either Bush or Obama would want Middle Eastern forces to be able to do: that's why Obama is trying to crush Iran, after all -- so that Iran won't be able to defend itself against American or Israeli attacks.  The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not born of any altruistic concern for the self-defense of "Middle Eastern forces," but from lust for blood vengeance against Muslims, any Muslims.  If this writer thinks otherwise, she should praise Bush and the Republicans for starting those wars. Yet at the end, she claims that the wars are about "big corporation agendas" -- what happened to America's altruistic concern for Middle Eastern self-defense?  And how does any of this make her better off since Obama became President?

Here's another "reason" why she's glad to wake up and Barack Obama is President:

Gay rights: I know that you can’t choose who you love or who you are attracted to. It’s an innate chemistry. It just is. I don’t see any difference in love between two same sex partners or two opposite sex partners. Love is love. To deny benefits to one couple while allowing them for another couple is biased and sexist. While I don’t think government should step into the bedroom, if fairness needs to be enforced by a law, I’m for it.

This is a mess in several ways.  Government stepping into the bedroom is exactly what civil marriage is.  As Wendy Kaminer once put it, "When you marry, you sign a contract you've probably never read, written by the state."  Several times I've encountered people who expressed their support for same-sex marriage by saying that they wanted the government to get out of the marriage business: but that was exactly what they didn't want.  They wanted the government to sanction and reward (with various benefits) certain couples.  Another speaker on a panel for a human sexuality class today said that people should be allowed to marry whoever they want, and again, he didn't really mean that.  I'm sure he was willing to leave our age of consent laws in place, and presumably he doesn't think brothers and sisters, or brothers and brothers for that matter should be allowed to marry.  And what about first cousins?  There wasn't time to bring this up as part of the discussion, or I would have.  I'll have to ask him about this.

As for the writer I just quoted, I'd ask her the same questions and add unmarried couples to the mix: should you have to get legally married to get those benefits, and if so, why isn't that a "biased" requirement?  Like most Obama fans, she has chosen to forget Obama's oft-stated, and only recently toned-down, opposition to same-sex marriage.  And I'm baffled by "... if fairness needs to be enforced by a law, so be it."  What kind of law does she have in mind?  Does she think that the law should require churches to recognize same-sex marriages?  Given how many people are vague about the difference between civil and religious marriage, I wouldn't be surprised.

So, someone wrote that (and more), and someone else decided to post it to a high-traffic group on Facebook.  I don't suppose a person should have to have good reasons for supporting a candidate or office-holder, or that their arguments must be either rational or factually accurate.  But this writer is well within the mainstream of the pro-Obama people I encounter.  And I found that profoundly depressing.

But I'm a Cheerleader!

Now that we're only a month away from Election Day, the flood of sheer nuttery has burst the levees.  I've been considering blocking the Facebook feeds of several more of my friends there for the duration, especially those who have nothing much of their own to say but will pass along every meme attacking the opposition that comes their way.

Today I began wondering wondering why they do this.  Do they really think believe that these soundbytes are going to change anyone's minds?  It might be -- they're mostly clueless enough -- but a lot of the stuff they're posting, especially the Democrats, has to do with the importance of voting.  (That which isn't about Big Bird, that is; I almost forgot.  Maybe I was trying to repress the memory.)  And here I must confess, I'm generalizing from my own position.  I don't understand why so many people don't vote, though I'm aware of the voter-suppression projects that have always characterized American elections.  After you've been blocked and intimidated enough times, giving up would feel reasonable.  As an educated white male, I've never faced anything like that, and I've always voted.

So I'm not surprised by the people of color I know who are concerned to ensure that would-be voters are registered and will get to the polls and past the obstruction tactics the Republicans are making ready.  The people who baffle me are the ones like me.  They've got their photo IDs, they should have no trouble at the polls.  But they seem anxious, and I have the impression that they're afraid that they won't vote.  Is their Obama-worship secretly wide-stance?  Are they afraid that the Devil will take control in the voting booth and they'll suddenly vote straight Republican?

The reaction among liberals to their President's lackluster performance in debate with Romney last week has something to do with my feeling about this.  I suppose they entertained fantasies that Barack would "clean Romney's clock", blacken his eye and knock out a few of his teeth, or send in some Navy SEALs to gun him down.  Some whimpered that it was like The President didn't even want to win!  His campaign manager "had to pep up a demoralized staff in Chicago."  You'd have thought he lost the election that night, instead of merely putting in an uninspiring performance at a largely meaningless media spectacle.  But will they abandon their President in his hour of need?  Are they going to stay home on November 6 because Obama isn't a great debater?  If so, no wonder they throw vitriol at anyone who criticizes him: they're afraid they'll lose their own will to vote.

No, You Hate America!

Back to "tribalism" for a moment.  I don't watch TV, so I haven't seen Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and had no idea what it was even about until it came up in a post at alicublog earlier this week.  As usual, Roy Edroso was discussing a rightblogger who'd been making a fool of himself online, "talking about [the] 'last remaining undecided voters in America,' and bases his characterization on the fact that a reality TV show about hillbillies beat out some reality TV shows about rich politicians making promises to America." Which, as Edroso noted, seems like a reasonable preference. The rightblogger called for an adjustment of Republican rhetoric to appeal to "the Honey Boo Boos": "the headlines need to be as unsubtle as possible, but still hewing to reality — reality through our lens."

Edroso continues:

I'll spare you: It mainly means recreating rightwing talking points like "OBAMA TEAM TWEETS COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA" in oversize red letters. "Even a Honey Boo Boo can get through those headlines," he says; "they’re short enough to survive the three-second attention span."

That someone actually thinks this about his fellow citizens doesn't surprise me, but I am a little surprised that he would say it out loud in a public forum. It suggests to me that Zombie is not actually concerned with influencing those voters. He's like a teenage boy who doesn't have a girlfriend and declares it's because girls prefer jerks, and so he'll be a jerk himself, and then they'll all come running. Having been a teenage boy myself, I recall that such a person is usually not seriously mapping out a seduction strategy, but looking for sympathy from like-minded loners.

Ah, the populist piety of campaign season!  Those whose memories are not properly disciplined may remember how, after the Kenyan usurper's false victory in 2008 and just before his 2010 comeuppance, rightbloggers high and low claimed that conservatives respect ordinary voters, while the liberals despise them.  I suspect this (false) claim had something to do with the fact that the Tea Party was flush with corporate money, and the Democrats were suffering from voter disenchantment, so the Republicans were feeling strong and of course they'd want to justify this by declaring their faith in the wisdom of We The People.  At the moment, however, the shoe is on the other foot: Romney and Ryan are flailing around helplessly, other Republican candidates are in trouble, Obama is confident, and many Democrats are already (and prematurely) proclaiming victory, so Roy can afford to be generous.

Of course I agree that it's not wise politically to say derogatory things about the voters, such as that we must not "underestimate how stupid the voting public is," that the wise elites "are always talking policy but the voters are always choosing on personality," that "the vast majority of voters don't vote on policy or logic or history but rather on tribal loyalties and misunderstood rumors."  However, this is how liberal Democrats talk sometimes.  While Roy Edroso was circumspect in this post, his commenters promptly began laying on the Hee-Haw jokes, obese hilljack couch potato jokes, Cracker jokes, White Trash jokes, etc.  One commenter wondered whether "the Honey Boo Boos (Does he mean the actual mo-rons of the show, or the ninnies who watch, btw? Pretty sure there's a difference.) are registered, let alone 'likely,' voters."  That was the rightblogger's point: that the show's subjects and audience were "undecided" and must be won over to the Romney-Ryan cause.  Evidently some Democrats feel that they'll never convince such people that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

The difference between this kind of "tribalism" and the kind that many leftbloggers decry is that it's not specifically racial, in the sense of dividing humanity up by skin color or language.  It is, however, related to scientific racism, which divides humanity according to class, years of schooling, IQ and other "cognitive" traits.  Class includes not only income and wealth but class markers, such as the kind of entertainment consumed, or one's religious affiliation: if you must be religious, then join a respectable denomination like the Episcopalians, or be a Reform Jew.  Though some crude forms of Social Darwinism are stereotypically associated with the Right, contempt for the poorer, fatter, and less schooled as a lesser breed is endemic among liberals, progressives and leftists.  Most of the right wingers I know are petit bourgeois, many are college graduates, and judging by their Facebook photos are pretty well-kept -- no doubt the result of many years' feeding from the public trough -- yet too many liberal Democrats stereotype the Right as obese trailer trash gorging themselves on Cheetos in front of the TV.  Not that they'd be justified even if it were true.

Obama Exceptionalism

Greenwald is right, but I don't think what he's talking about is anything new.  Elections aren't about issues, after all: they're about which candidate you'd want to have come over for dinner.

I posted this clip on Facebook, noting that neither Greenwald nor I really expect the Right to voice valid complaints against Obama; the Right's actual complaint seems to be that he's being President While Black, which is hard to voice in a way that won't be 'misunderstood.'  (I put 'misunderstood' in scare quotes because usually this locution refers to things that will be understood all too well, as in "If two men have sex in the street in broad daylight, they might be misunderstood as being gay.")

My liberal law professor friend moved to defend her President, using a popular one-two approach that is typical of American political discourse among the educated classes.  First the apologist poor-mouths the subject: sure, he hasn't done everything I'd have ideally liked him to do, President Obama is just doing the best he can against hateful Republicans who set out to make him fail!  Then the apologist distorts or flatly misrepresents the subject's record, touting all the wonderful things he's done, ignoring the less-wonderful things.  These two sit poorly together, since the first shot acknowledges how uninspiring the subject's record is, while the second magnifies his name as choirs of angels shout Peace on earth, good will to men.

In this case, my friend conceded that she wished the wars would end -- a bold move, since the official Obama line is that he's ended the wars.  But I guess wishing that the wars would end admits that they're going on without admitting Obama's role in extending, escalating, and multiplying them.  I had mentioned Obama's appointments to his cabinet of retreads from previous administrations, which my friend took to refer only to Robert Gates although I'd mentioned Larry Summers, a retread from Bill Clinton's day.  She couldn't quite manage to acknowledge this, just repeated that Obama's cabinet appointments, while not those she would have chosen, were his attempt to "reach across the table."  (Even if I had been talking only about Republicans, it's not clear to me that "reaching across the table" to a gang of war criminals, financial frauds, and general bad guys is either ideal or sensible politically.)

In the end, she retreated to the accusation that I was demanding "political perfection, not political reality", since obviously no one was going to prosecute Republican war criminals.  Most obviously, it's revealing that she (like so many educated liberal Democrats) considers massacres of civilians, escalation and multiplication of aggressive wars, an ongoing assault on the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, increasing suppression of dissent by "whistleblowers" and in the streets, active collaboration with the Right on the deficit and social programs, and much more, to be mere imperfections.  More subtly, I notice again the tacit acknowledgment that most of Obama's campaign promises were mere fantasies, pandering to the unrealistic hopes of his base, that he never intended to deliver.  (This surely applies as well to Romney's current hard-line promises to get rid of the Affordable Care Act and so on; if elected, he'll surely disappoint many of those who vote for him.)  Those of us who warned during his campaign that Obama was a right-wing Democrat closer to the Republicans than to his progressive supporters, and who were vilified as cruel cynics at the time, turned out to be prophets without honor in our own land; well, it wasn't the first time, nor will it be the last.

I don't think this is deliberate.  I don't think such people are self-aware enough to realize what they're doing.  (This is ironic, given their level of education and their scorn for the stupidity of the Republicans.)  The important thing is to keep up the team spirit and root for the good guys, basking in their reflected glory and hoping that one day you might even get to shake his hand or gasp attend a White House dinner.  Winning isn't everything, as a football coach reportedly said, it's the only thing.

Do the Americans Believe in Their Myths?

I know I should let it drop, but it's getting to me, this cult of personality.  An intelligent friend of mine on Facebook quoted today someone else's remark that "Seriously, Michelle [Obama] is like...the statue of liberty. Only with more compassionate eyes, and better fashion sense."  This comparison -- to an inanimate object, mind you! -- seems totally loony to me.  Luckily, Democrats base their politics on principle and fact, not on emotion.

The Onion has a good piece that sums up my reaction to Mrs. Obama's speech very well: "Good Evening, It's An Honor To Be Used As A Political Prop In My Husband's Campaign."  After reading a few more status messages gushing inanely over her speech ("Regardless of if you like President Obama, how can you not want First Lady Michelle Obama back?!"), I posted a link to the Onion piece.  A right-wing acquaintance of mine, who'd been drooling over Clint Eastwood just a few days ago, shared the link.  I commented, "Funny, you didn't feel that way about Ann Romney's speech"-- and she didn't ("a darn good speech at the RNC.  Who knew!").

But enough of this.  I decided to write this post to quote a couple of writers quite unrelated to one another whose remarks feel relevant to the way intelligent, educated adults act as though they believe that national politicians and their families are their personal, intimate friends.  One is from Glenn Greenwald:

Indeed, as I've written many times, "trust" is appropriate for one's friends, loved ones, family members and the like -- but not for politicians. That's what John Adams meant when he said: "There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." "All" means "all" and "none" means "none."

But that's not how our political culture works generally. Our politics have become entirely celebretized. Political discussions typically resemble junior high chatter about one's most adored and despised actors: filled with adolescent declarations of whether someone "likes" and "trusts" this politician or "dislikes" that one. "I trust Obama" has long been a common refrain among his most loyal supporters. The fact that, as Krugman says, that is much less true now is quite significant, even if "trust" is an inappropriate emotion in the first place to feel towards any political official.

While I agree with Greenwald's basic point about trusting politicians, I disagree that American political culture is any more celebritized than it was in the past.  The scale has increased vastly from the original thirteen states, and mass media have extended its reach so that millions of people at a time can adore their rulers in closeup.  In fact, I believe that electoral politics is primarily glorified "junior high school chatter" about who's the dreamiest and most popular; concern about issues, logic, and fact is at best secondary.  Whether anything can be done about this I don't know; I'm inclined to doubt it.

The other quotations come from Paul Veyne's book Did the Greeks Believe Their Myths? (Chicago, 1988), page 81:

Indeed, the pleasure that citizens took in hearing an orator pronounce the panegyric of their city cannot be believed. These speeches of praise were a fashion that lasted for a millennium, up to the end of Antiquity. People spoke of mythical origins and of kinship among the cities of Greece as often as the people who frequented the salons of the fauborg Saint-Germain talked genealogy, and for the same reasons. … “When I hear praised,” Socrates says ironically, “those who have just died in battle and, with them, our ancestors, our city, and ourselves, I feel more noble and great; each of the other listeners feels the same on his part, so that the entire civic body comes out of it exalted, and it takes me three days to get over this emotion.”

And from page 90:

Worship and love of the sovereign reflect the efforts of the subjugated to gain the upper hand: “Since I love him, therefore he must wish me no harm.” (A German friend told me that his father had voted for Hitler to reassure himself; since I vote for him, Jew that I am, it is because in his heart he believes as I do.) And, if the emperor demanded or, more often, allowed himself to be worshiped, this served as “threatening information.” Since he can be worshiped, let no one think to contest his authority. … [91] Under France’s Old Regime, people believed and wanted to believe in the king’s kindness and that the entire problem was the fault of his ministers. If this were not the case, all was lost, since one could not hope to expel the king as one could remove a mere minister.

The chorus of adulation for the President's wife (who, to repeat, is not running for office herself), the widely-expressed wish to have a Celebrity Death Match between Betty White and Clint Eastwood, and the endless flood of cute pictures of the Holy Family -- all this and more keeps reminding me that Democrats, even the more "liberal" or "progressive" ones, are no more rational than the Republican opposite numbers they scorn so lightly.  Who scorn them as lightly in return, with as little basis.  Whether, and how, we might construct a sensible politics in this country I don't know.  But it won't be built by either party.

The Decline of the West

So all my liberal friends are slobbering over Michelle Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention.  I didn't watch it (my TV doesn't receive digital signals, and I don't have cable or satellite), so I don't know.  But who cares?  She's not running for office.  I also don't trust their judgment, since most of these people have also rhapsodized over what a great speaker Barack is, and I know that he isn't. Besides, they are all team players.  Michelle gave a better speech than Ann Romney because she's on Our Team.

Aside from that, they've been speculating gleefully that Betty White would perform at the DNC, to show Clint Eastwood how it's done.  So many people have been dwelling on the fantasy that they seemed to have begun to believe it was really going to happen.  White is a charming, funny lady, but I can see no reason why she should give a major speech at a national political convention.  Who'd write it, I wonder?  She wouldn't be allowed on the podium with a speech that hadn't been vetted.  Maybe the same people from Comedy Central who contributed jokes to the President's speech threatening the Jonas Brothers with death by predator drone.

I've noticed that the Obama cultists who spammed their feeds last week with jokes about the Republicans' convention center ("You Didn't Build That" -- it was built largely with public funds) have been silent about the site of the Democratic National Convention: the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina.  As Amy Goodman reported today,

... earlier this summer, Democrats organizing the party’s convention stopped calling the venue Bank of America Stadium, referring to the site instead as Panthers Stadium, even though Bank of America purchased the sponsorship rights in 2004. The move appeared to mark an effort by the Democratic National Committee to distance itself from symbols of the Wall Street bailout like Bank of America after reneging on a pledge to stage the convention without corporate donors.

Not only that, Goodman mentioned

 ... the nation's largest utility, Duke Energy, and its role in bringing the Democratic National Convention to Charlotte, North Carolina, where we’re broadcasting from. The company’s chief executive, James Rogers, held fundraisers, donated his company’s office space, even guaranteed a $10 million loan to the convention committee.

So of course my Democratic friends are kvelling about Michelle and Betty.  But it could be worse.

On the other side, my Right Wing Acquaintance Number One was delighted by a Forbes article which hopefully announced "New York Times Proves Clint Eastwood Correct -- Obama Is Lousy CEO."  "That rings true to me," RWA1 commented.  The Forbes staff writer, shaking his head in disbelief, declared "A Sunday New York Times front page story — New York Times! — might have killed President Obama’s re-election hopes." He sums up:

Imagine, for a minute, that you are on the board of directors of a company. You have a CEO who is not meeting his numbers and who is suffering a declining popularity with his customers. You want to help this CEO recover, but then you learn he doesn’t want your help. He is smarter than you and eager to tell you this. Confidence or misplaced arrogance? You’re not sure at first. If the company was performing well, you’d ignore it. But the company is performing poorly, so you can’t.

With some digging, you learn, to your horror, that the troubled CEO spends a lot of time on — what the hell? — bowling? Golf? Three point shots? While the company is going south?

What do you do? You fire that CEO. Clint Eastwood was right. You let the guy go.

The President of the United States isn't a corporate CEO; a government isn't a company; voters aren't customers.  And I'd like to know who the writer thinks "you" are.  From a corporate point of view, Obama has done very well: the stock market is booming, and corporate profits are at record highs; he's also still quite popular with his "customers" -- certainly more popular than George W. Bush was by the end of his second term.  Obama has also sheltered the corporate sector from accountability for the crimes and mismanagement that nearly destroyed the US economy in 2008.  And while RWA1 may wish that Bush hadn't bailed out the banks (with Obama's and McCain's collusion), or Obama the auto companies, I doubt the corporatists agree with him.  I hold no brief for Obama, as readers of this blog will know, but it's also worth pointing out that a major faction in upper management (the GOP in Congress) did its best to sabotage him from the day he took office.  (I've also been trying to remember when Republicans like RWA1 were bothered by Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush's excessive fondness for vacations.)  A CEO like Obama wouldn't be dismissed, but even if he were, he could still count on a generous golden parachute of stock options and severance pay.

So that's the state of political discourse in America these days.  We're doomed.

Keeping on Message

There's a good post at Counterpunch today by Russell Mokhiber, "Ten Reasons I'm Not With Barack."  It's a good list of what is wrong with Barack Obama as President, and it ends like so:

Last month, [Obama's former Harvard Law Professor Roberto] Unger said that you “must be defeated in the coming election.”

I agree.

Anything less sends the wrong message.

Ah, sending a message.  Or creating an image, or presenting one.  That sudden swerve into corporate-media PR gabble threw me. 

What's interesting about it is that, as I said, it ends there: Obama delenda est.  No consideration of who would be defeating Obama.  It's highly unlikely that Jill Stein will place her foot on his neck and cry victory.  Nor will the masses, the glorious working people of America defeat him.  It will be Mitt Romney, whose main selling point to Republicans is that he's Not-Obama -- just as Obama's selling point, when the faithful were confronted with his less than progressive politics, was that he was Not-Bush.  This year he's Not-Romney.  He's Not-Rick Santorum, Not-Newt-Gingrich, Not-Michele Bachman, Not-Herman Cain.  Such a collection of negative virtues.  Obama's a man of many faces, at least when it comes to who he's Not.

It's beginning to look to me, as I survey the present state of the campaign, that people like Russell Mokhiber are as unwilling to address the consequences of an Obama defeat as the President's devotees are to address the consequences of an Obama victory.  They're just as apt to personalize the campaign (That'll settle his hash!) as Obama Democrats are (Don't let him be a one-term President!).  Far from being a thoughtful radical strategy for bringing about political change, what Mokhiber demands sounds to me like the old "Throw the rascals out!" cliche that I keep hearing from the Right.  We did that in 2008, though the Right prefers to forget that their boys were the "rascals" that time around, and look how well it's worked.

The trouble with voting is that it doesn't send a message.  Whatever voters think they're doing, they're voting for candidates, not issues or policies, and their message isn't binding anyway.  It was widely believed that when Lyndon Johnson defeated the right-wing wacko Barry Goldwater in 1964, he had a mandate for peace, particularly in Vietnam.  In fact Johnson had already been planning to escalate the US invasion before the election, and he did exactly that.  Exit polls showed that people who voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 did so overwhelmingly because they liked him personally (in whatever sense you can "like" someone you know only as an image on a TV screen), not because they approved of his policies.  What they got, of course, was Reagan's policies, which plunged the country into a serious recession with Depression-level unemployment.  Barack Obama can be left as an exercise for the reader; just remember that what his victory signified was hotly contested in the Beltway media, who interpret every Democratic victory as a mandate to "move to the center."

What "message" will be sent by an Obama defeat -- and let's not kid ourselves, if he's defeated it will be by a Republican, not by a Green -- in 2012?  Will he, and Democrats generally, conclude that they erred by not being "progressive" enough?  Of course not.  They have never drawn that conclusion from an electoral defeat.  They've never even drawn it from a victory.  The loss of the House of Representatives to the Republicans in 2010 was blamed on the Professional Left who'd stabbed the President in the back by keeping voters away from the polls -- by main force, apparently.  It's as certain as anything can be that Democrats will say the same thing about a Romney victory in November; hell, they're already saying it, to get in practice.  They'll probably be wrong, but how will voting (or not voting) tell them otherwise?

I also can't help thinking about Afghanistan.  When the Taliban defeated the Northern Alliance, they were welcomed by most people, who'd suffered under the Alliance's violent and repressive rule.  When the US and the Northern Alliance defeated the Taliban, they were welcomed by most Afghans, who'd suffered under the Taliban's violent and repressive rule.  I admit that Mitt Romney's no Taliban, but I make no assumptions about what he'll do if he's elected.  I didn't think Barack Obama could be as bad as Bush, but was I ever wrong.

You don't send a message by voting.  You send it by other means: by writing letters and making telephone calls to your government, preferably in concert with other people.  By demonstrations and protests.  By joining groups that achieve enough clout to talk to elected officials directly.  This makes the government uncomfortable, of course, so it enacts laws making demonstrations effectively illegal.  (The latter law, the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act, was passed with only three votes against it in Congress, and signed into law by our Constitutional Scholar in Chief.  You see, bipartisanship can work!)  It's true that Democrats and liberals / progressives generally will be more likely to organize in opposition to a Republican president -- it's virtually a cliche by now that Obama co-opted most of the left -- but as I've said before, I didn't notice that organized opposition to Bush II cramped his style much.

I've been hearing more eulogies on the importance of the vote lately, from Representative John Lewis on Democracy Now! for example.  It's ironic that African-Americans didn't get the vote by voting: they had to use direct action.  Chris Floyd, in the post I linked above, points out that the icons of human rights activism beloved by American Liberals -- Gandhi, Mandela, Solzhenitsyn, Thoreau, etc. -- didn't put voting at the center of their work, for very good reason.  I'd add that it's arguable that to the extent that their societies embraced voting, they undercut the changes that people fought and gave their lives to achieve.  Not always -- there have been some significant elections that had some effectiveness -- but over the long haul, yes.