Month: October 2007

I posted the Onion’s TV analysis of the "core bullshit issues" of the election campaign on Friday. A friend asked whether I’d followed the crawl they have at the bottom of the screen. I hadn’t. I should have. Classic – and hilarious – Onion stuff. If you missed the crawl the first time, it’s worth a few seconds.

A reader writes:

The video you link to of the guy smashing his work computer because he sees a reference to porn almost perfectly encapsulates the modern Conservative movement in the US, and even more broadly the approach of religious conservatives to things they don’t like. Notice that the star of the spot can’t simply close the window. He can’t just click through to a different screen. Instead, his reaction is violent–he has to destroy the computer.

Does that suggest he can’t handle the temptation?

I’m almost reminded of the crazy conservatives in Afghanistan who can’t handle goats without diapers, since they might be too tempting. Or with conservative Islam which requires that women cover themselves completely and remain quiet, because to do otherwise would tempt men too much.

Well: it was supposed to be humorous, of course, but the violent lashing out is still revealing, I’d say. Another reader writes:

Watching this video as a woman, it’s more than creepy — it’s terrifying. What if the boss that came in and handed him a cup of coffee weren’t an older man, but a beautiful woman in a skirt and open blouse?  What would the subtext be in this case — having just seen him absolutely rip apart and destroy the computer with the tempting images?

The fundamentalist psyche is deeply terrified by the choices of modernity, and fundamentalism’s refusal to allow for small or moderate concessions to human nature makes a violent response to temptation almost inevitable. In a way, that was 9/11 and much Jihadist violence: a lashing out at those more at home and successful in the modern world than they are. Notice that no one in the fundamentalist Christian video seems particularly concerned that the guy has destroyed someone else’s property either. Fighting evil often seems to incur collateral damage. Ask the Iraqis.

A reader writes a long email on the strange overlaps and confluences of this moment in American and global politics. My own thoughts and allegiances are in transition, which can make for some provisional confusion. But I’d rather foster confusion on a real-time blog than a clarity that is based on refusing to see all the options before us. My reader makes one central claim that I endorse completely:

Conservatism isn’t about being rich – it’s about being free.

We may be on the verge of a real realignment. I’m a refugee right now, the kind of refugee who sees Ron Paul and Barack Obama as the harbingers of a new politics. I’m not the only one:

I’ve met a fair number of people who would ordinarily be pretty far to the left who are fans of Ron Paul. They love his opposition to the war. I’ve been trying to think about what that means. In our system, any party that wins is necessarily going to be built on coalition.  And for a long time, the components of the coalitions that the two parties have tried to put together have been pretty much fixed. I think that what’s going on, really, is that the old coalition blueprints are falling apart. You’re a great example of this. You’re a certain kind of conservative, and traditionally, guys like you have felt most at home in the GOP. But the coalition doesn’t work for you any more — the Christianists and the torture enthusiasts make it more or less impossible for you to stay in the party. You’ve been orphaned — the coalition that’s been your traditional home has become inhospitable, but guys like you haven’t yet been integrated into a new coalition. There’s nowhere for you to go, really. I didn’t really read you before your blog, but my impression is that you circa 1994 would have been dead set against a guy like Obama. So this is what it’s come to.

I’m in the same boat. When I hear Hillary talk about torture or the war, I know I can’t stomach her.

I like what she says about a lot of things, but there are core issues for me upon which the Democratic party simply isn’t acceptable. My situation is a little different — my traditional home, the Democrats, are winning by default because the Republicans are so bad now.  Hillary is bad on the war, but I’d vote for her over Guiliani who would be worse.

But if the old coalitions don’t work, what will the new ones look like? Eventually someone will put together something that holds together with a reasonable amount of internal consistency, and which can win.

I have a pretty vague idea of where you stood on things before the blog started, and I might be wrong about some of what I’m going to say. But my impression is that you were a big Reagan supporter, and that you backed his administration’s support of the Contras.

That’s interesting to me, because it seems to be incompatible with where you’re at now, with the guy who rails against torture. I don’t know if we have different ideas of what happened in Central America during Reagan’s years — I suspect we do.  But I wonder if maybe you weren’t able, in those days, to turn a blind eye to some of the problems with our policies in that region in a way that’s similar to what so many of your former conservative compatriots are doing now.

Someday I’d be interested in what you have to say about that — if you stand by what you thought then, or if what has happened recently has changed your views.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that the coalition I’d like to see now would have two or three main pillars.

One  piillar would be rooted in the idea that less is better than more when it comes to government — that less regulation is better than more regulation, that decisions ought to be made by people close to problems, that markets ought to sort things out when possible.

Another pillar would be rooted in the traditional processes of our constitutional system,  It would be based on an appreciation of the wisdom built into our system — the value of checks and balances, the necessity of spreading power around, the importance of oversight, and even a real commitment to collegiality and a rejection of smears and ad hominem attacks in political discourse.

The third leg of the tripod, though, is the interesting one, because it’s something that comes out of the far left.  In fact, it’s so far to the left that it wouldn’t fit into today’s Democratic party.  I’d like to see an acknowledgment and rejection of some of the brutality of American foreign policy.  I’d like us to explicitly own and reject what we did in places like Iran before the Shah, and in Guatemala.

We have a choice now, and it’s an echo of one we’ve made over and over again, and always the wrong way.  We can try to reduce our dependence on oil, or we can use our military to try to guarantee easy access to oil at favorable prices.  Your answer to this has always been the proper one — let’s tax oil, and use bikes, and mass transit, and everything else.  But the answer that will carry the day is going to come out of the military.

And really, it’s out history of making that same choice that’s at the heart of our problems in the middle east today.  It’s why we have to prop up a fairly brutal saudi government that exports extreme wahhabist islam throughout the world.  And it’s why monks can be killed with impunity in Burma.  That and our economic dependence on China.

Your traditional home coalition has always included people on the opposite side of that issue — people who want our gunboats to protect the oil companies.  But really, if you think about it, it’s the other side that’s more in line with what you believe — in freedom, and in the value of letting local people make their own decisions, and so on.  Conservatism isn’t about being rich — it’s about being free.

So maybe if we didn’t have the oil, and we needed to use mass transit, we couldn’t have as many McMansions.  Maybe those neighborhoods don’t make sense in a world with fewer SUVs.  But it would be more in line with that old fashioned Yankee self reliant freedom — something that’s not so fancy, but which is solid and substantive, and genuinely infused with a spirit of liberty.  And a genuine desire to share that liberty with others.

I know this sounds crazy — that some new conservative coalition would incorporate this radical left wing view of cold war american foreign policy.  But really, I don’t know if it’s any crazier than some of the lefty types I know swooning over Ron Paul.  I think these are strange times, and that interesting things are possible now.

"I’m personally grateful that the American Constitution is an essentially secular document – not because it protects atheists from rampaging Christianists, but because it allows orthodox Christians like myself to be loyal to America’s government without requiring us to accept, whole hog, the not-quite-Christian political theology that has infused American political life from the Declaration of Independence onward. That’s the beauty of our Constitutional order: It allows one to be American without being an Americanist," – Ross Douthat.

I should also respond to Ross’ point about the threat of Christianism, that I elaborate in my book. It is not a threat to the Constitution as such, unlike, say, Cheney’s views on neo-monarchical executive power. It is a threat to conservatism because it introduces religious fundamentalism as the core characteristic of the right and so distorts our politics into ever more uncivil culture wars. And its resistance to empirical debate, its assertion of constant absolutes, its unquestioning deference to authority, and its contempt for judicial checks on majority rule are threats to liberty and sound governance. The use of Christianism as a term – to repeat myself yet again – is not designed to suggest that James Dobson is a terrorist; it is to suggest that he sees the Gospels as political fodder for one political party and its agenda, and has interpreted the Gospels to include such matters as abortion, gay rights and end-of-life issues that the Gospels do not address and that are subject to much more doubt and nuance than the Christianists want. Although the Christianist interpretation of the founding of America can lead to a terribly distorted view of what America means, by and large, the Christianists’ approach to the Constitution has been … Constitutional. I.e. they need to amend it – and have tried on the matters of gay equality and abortion. I think that’s a sign of how incompatible the Constitution is with religious fundamentalism writ large, but the Christianists in no way threaten the constitution in the way that Cheney, Bush and Giuliani do, in their eccentric views of total executive power in a war that is officially without end.

The country increasingly feels like a police state if you come and go as a non-citizen. If you’re an artist trying to get a visa, good luck. Maybe once Americans have to deal with the agonies of entering and exiting this country, they will begin to see how sealed off and hostile America increasingly feels to foreigners.

His latest poll suggests that a Clinton nomination could be dire news for the Dems:

The online survey of 9,718 likely voters nationwide showed that 50% said Clinton would never get their presidential vote. This is up from 46% who said they could never vote for Clinton in a Zogby International telephone survey conducted in early March. Older voters are most resistant to Clinton – 59% of those age 65 and older said they would never vote for the New York senator, but she is much more acceptable to younger voters: 42% of those age 18–29 said they would never vote for Clinton for President.

Obama, Huckabee and Richardson are the least polarizing candidates in the poll.

Port Lorne, Nova Scotia, 1.09 pm.

False life! a foil and no more, when
              Wilt thou be gone?
Thou foul deception of all men,
That would not have the true come on!

Thou art a moon-like toil; a blind
              Self-posing state;
A dark contest of waves and wind;
A mere tempestuous debate.

Life is a fix’d, discerning light,
              A knowing joy;
No chance, or fit: but ever bright,
And calm, and full, yet doth not cloy.

‘Tis such a blissful thing, that still
              Doth vivify,
And shine and smile, and hath the skill
To please without eternity.

Thou art a toilsome mole, or less,
              A moving mist.
But life is, what none can express,
A quickness, which my God hath kiss’d.

– "Quickness" by Henry Vaughan.

An English rugby icon says that Buddhism has helped his life and career.

Some fascinating new research suggests that the pachyderms have learned to distinguish between two different tribes of potential human predators – depending on the humans’ smell and even clothing.