As has become the norm these days, most of the media is agog over Obama’s Race In America speech. To his credit, the man tackled some of the controversies that led to this speech more directly than employ his usual forceful repetition of uplifting trivialities. The intent of this blog post is to ponder on the trend (in the way we talk about things) that seems to have reached its nadir in the rhetoric surrounding his campaign. I will offer two examples, at least one of which any member of the broad left will appreciate.

The first example is that incongruous claim of Fox News: that they are Fair and Balanced. It is not arguable (I hope) that even those who disagree on whether Fox can make this claim will agree that Fair and Balanced is a good goal for a news organisation. I believe that is not necessarily so. Why not instead Objective and Factual? We are aware of the valid critique of notions of objectivity and fact as offered by philosophers, post-modernists and relativists. Yet, all that suggests is that a fair and balanced approach is a good means to the end of informing the public in a critical manner of events and issues. Instead, a subtle (or perhaps not so subtle) substitution of terms occurs, where Objective is replaced by Neutral or Centred. As some have said: “Nazis and gypsies/Jews get equal time — we report, you decide!”.

Similarly, you have this class of political citizens now known as “independents” — the name denotes that these individuals are independent of political parties and (by some extension) ideologies. But where do they stand on right and wrong? After all, those who support this or that party or ideology do so (typically) not because of some arbitrary preference, but because they believe their ideology to be right or just. It should perhaps be unsurprising then that independents tend to be those who are least affected by issues of truth and justice.

A second example is the appeal, via Obama, of the term “unity”. We, the public, are “yearning for unity”, some sort of “middle path” (as one New York Times writer, Ron Klain, puts it), implying either that disunity is the primary problem facing us, or that unity can simultaneously serve as both the means and end. The real problem however is that it can be neither, exactly because it cannot be produced from thin air (or hot air, for that matter!), for the resolution of the issues of contention rightly preclude unifying behind a programme, agenda or methodology towards a common goal. We are often offered the analogy of ‘herding cats’ to highlight the problems of extreme fractiousness, and it is not an entirely invalid argument, but it is not the central problem. Feminists, labour activists, minority rights advocates, animal welfare activists and others are not acting out of a sense of feline disobedience, but rather constantly working on reconciling the righteous demands of their cause with the limits of immediate political change.

As in the case of creationism vs evolutionary theory, the divisions among political groups reflect fundamental disagreements in the way we see and project the world, how it is and how it should be. Unity cannot resolve the issues but rather the resolution of these issues can bring about unity: if the parties involved can agree upon a mechanism for resolution. And that, in my humble opinion, is the real issue. The divisions among groups remain intractable because these groups do not even share a methodology for resolving disputes. The routine fallback, in the face of this block, is the invocation of allegedly shared “values”, common roots, mythical glorious pasts, and such bromides. Which incidentally are a large part of many of Obama’s “inspiring” speeches. If you don’t believe me, here are the “greatest hits” from the Race in America speech as they appear in the first few paragraphs:

• Obligatory introductory reference and eulogy to founding fathers
• Unite for “our children and grandchildren” — childless need not apply!
• “Unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people”
• “… no other country on Earth is my story even possible” (why not?)
• “we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity” (this is a leap of rhetoric even for Obama, that people hunger not even for “unity” but for a “message” of unity. Jon Stewart pointed out something puzzling about George Bush’s speeches: the man would arrive at various spots facing emergencies and proclaim that he was there to reassure the people, and so on. What Stewart found strange was that Bush would tell us what he was there for, which is more or less obvious, but fail to give us a clue on how he planned to go about this task!).

Obama is possibly a more honest chap than many others in his sphere. Rather than capitalise on the Geraldine Ferraro controversy, by continuing the ongoing “framing” of her comments in a racist context (no doubt ably aided by her continued blathering), he astutely nails the crux of the criticism:

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap.

In case it isn’t obvious, I don’t speak for Ferraro or her psychologist, but the above is the legitimate form of what I would like to call the “Obama as a non-threatening black man advantage” thesis. And as noted in a previous post, this is the promise offered explicitly by Obama supporters like Oprah Winfrey: “[you] are free from the constraints of gender and race”.

With the backdrop of Obama’s shallow rhetoric about unity and hope, Stanley Fish takes aim at “Independent Voters” with an excellent piece in the NYT:

Against Independent Voters – Stanley Fish

[...]

Floating independently above the fray and inhabiting the marketplace of ideas as if were a shopping bazaar rather than a battlefield is an unnatural condition. The natural condition is to be political. To be political is to believe something, and to believe something is to believe that those who believe something else are wrong, and after all you don’t want people who believe (and would do) the wrong things running your government. So you organize with other like-minded folks and smite the enemy (verbally) hip and thigh. You join a party.

What do independent voters do? Well, most of all, they talk about the virtue of being an independent voter. When they are asked to explain what that means, they say, “I can’t stand the partisan atmosphere that has infected our politics” (forgetting that politics is partisan by definition); or “we like to make up our own minds and don’t want anyone telling us what to do (as if Democrats and Republicans were sheep eager to go over whatever cliff the leadership brings them to) or (and this was a favorite of those interviewed in Iowa and New Hampshire), “We vote the person rather than the party.”

And offers them timely advice:

If you are really interested in the way things should go in the country, come off the high pedestal and join the rest of us in the nurturing (and, yes, dirty) soil of the partisan free-for-all.

Worth multiple reads, even though he ends on a poor note, misidentifying Nader supporters with independents (Nader supporters were and are hard-core partisans and should be proud of that for the very reasons he outlines).

[ Link ]

When Ralph Nader pointed out that there are no significant differences between the Democrats and Republicans it was met with responses that ranged from insult to false outrage which persists to this day among idle commentors in the blogosphere who challenge Nader’s motives, personality and commitment! One presumes they consider their own hard commenting e-politicking in favour of the Democratic party the better alternative to Nader’s decades of activism. The 2006 Democratic victory, eked out based on a sad mixture of Bush’s unpopularity and a field of ex-Republican and “Blue Dog” candidates, was the crowning achievement of this hyper-cautious citizen politician “liberal”s. The expectation then would be that we would, in quick order, gather evidence of how wrong Nader was about the difference between the two parties. Well, here is Matt Taibbi:

Tension Mounts as Antiwar Movement Challenges Dems’ Commitment to Stop the War

[...]

Neither of these Democratic leaders, after all, are Huey Newton, or even Benjamin Spock. They are not going to get up on a table, shake a shoe in the direction of the White House, shout “Fuck you, pig!” and just turn off the money, consequences be damned. No, these are career bureaucrats, political herd animals who survive year after year by clinging for dear life to the concept of safety in numbers. They will watch the bushes with great big eyes to see what is rustling back there, and when exactly two-thirds of the herd decides to bolt, they all will — not just the Democrats, but the Boehners and McConnells too, leaping over logs, tearing off big chunks of fur against the bark of trees, etc.

[...]

So maybe Reid and Pelosi really are working the phones on this one, who knows. What I do know is this; there are elements of the Democratic-crafted Iraq supplemental that are not only severely regressive but would actually tend to encourage the continuation of the insurgency. Anyone who wants an example of why the areas in which the Democrats and Republicans are in agreement are more significant than the ones in which they differ need only look at the two parties nearly unanimous endorsement of the “Benchmarks” the Iraqi government must meet, according to the supplemental. The key passage reads as follows:

(2) whether the Government of Iraq is making substantial progress in meeting its commitment to pursue reconciliation initiatives, including a hydro-carbon law…

It is notable that the hydrocarbon law comes in first place in this clause, ahead of “legislation necessary for the conduct of provincial and local elections,” reform of de-Baathification laws, amendments to the constitution and allocation of revenues for reconstruction projects. For whether or not it really was “all about oil” at the beginning of the war, the fate of the occupation really does hinge almost entirely upon oil initiatives now, as the continued presence of U.S. troops in the region may depend on whether or not the Iraqi government bites the bullet and decides to eat the proposed hydrocarbon law in question.

The law, endorsed here by the Democrats, is an unusually vicious piece of legislation, an open blueprint for colonial robbery of the Iraqi nation. It is worth pointing out that if you go back far enough in the history of this business, the law actually makes the U.S. an accomplice in the repression of Saddam Hussein, the very thing we claim to be rescuing the country from.

[...]

The proposed Hydrocarbon Law is a result of pressure from the American government on the Iraqis to draft an oil policy that would adhere to the IMF guidelines. It allows foreign companies to take advantage of Iraqi oil fields by allowing regions to pair up with foreigners using what are known as “production-sharing agreements” or PSAs, which guarantee investing companies large shares of the profits for decades into the future. The law also makes it impossible for the Iraqi state to regulate levels of oil production (seriously undermining OPEC), allows oil companies to repatriate profits, and would also allow companies to hire foreign workers to man facilities. Add all the measures up and the Hydrocarbon law not only takes control of the oil industry away from the Iraqi state, but virtually guarantees that the state will profit very little from future oil exploitation.

[...]

Moreover, let’s just say this about the Democratic Party. They can wash their hands of this war as much as they want publicly, but their endorsement of this crude neocolonial exploitation plan makes them accomplices in the occupation, and further legitimizes the insurgency. It is hard to argue with the logic of armed resistance to U.S. forces in Iraq when both American parties, representing the vast majority of the American voting public, endorse the same draconian plan to rob the country’s riches.

Current blogosphere darling (though even that tide is turning) Obama has been on the forefront of the call for the Iraqis to show responsibility. No doubt his righteous scolding will accomplish this bogus goal, more so than the death and disorder that the Iraqis are enduring as a result of our assault. Taibbi addresses such callous nonsense:

But I’ll tell you what I can do without. I can do without having to listen to American journalists, as well as politicians on both sides of the aisle, bitch and moan about how the Iraqi government better start “shaping up” and “taking responsibility” and “showing progress” if they want the continued blessing of American military power. Virtually every major newspaper in the country and every hack in Washington has lumped all the “benchmarks” together, painting them as concrete signs that, if met, would mean the Iraqi government is showing “progress” or “good faith.”

The term offered by the blog-comment-osphere for their hyper-cautious centrism is “gradualism”. Taibbi comments:

Moreover, this endorsement of these neoliberal “benchmarks” by the Democrats makes me believe a lot less in their “gradualist” approach to ending the war. If they viewed the war as much of the world did, as a murderous and profoundly immoral criminal enterprise, they would understand that morally, they really have no choice now but to refuse to send Bush even a dime more for this war.

Howard Zinn wrote recently a timely piece pointing out that we are not politicians but citizens. But for the “progressive” blogosphere, the small bits of power derived from colluding with the Democrats (which they perceive as king-making, or at best productive engagement) perhaps offer greater satisfaction than the uncertainties of citizen activism of the type practised by Nader.

The Democrats have made a strategy out of underestimating the public, and that losing strategy is not bound to change, despite evidence to the contrary:

Most Support U.S. Guarantee of Health Care – NYT

While the war in Iraq remains the overarching issue in the early stages of the 2008 campaign, access to affordable health care is at the top of the public’s domestic agenda, ranked far more important than immigration, cutting taxes or promoting traditional values.

Only 24 percent said they were satisfied with President Bush’s handling of the health insurance issue, despite his recent initiatives, and 62 percent said the Democrats were more likely to improve the health care system.

Americans showed a striking willingness in the poll to make tradeoffs to guarantee health insurance for all, including paying as much as $500 more in taxes a year and forgoing future tax cuts.

Don’t expect the Democrats to take this to heart and at least lead from behind. They do watch the polls, but those are the personality horse-race type stuff.

We heard from Max on the Internet Left and the ensuing distress. For a change of pace, here is Matt Taibbi on the American Left:

AlterNet: Time’s Joe Klein: a Supreme Suck-Up

[...]

Let’s get this straight: there are no “leftists” in modern-day America. Or, rather, there about ten of them, and you can find absolutely every single one of them at the next antiwar or anti-anything protest in Washington; they all fit in one section of the park behind the White House, where you can find pretty much all of them passing out small stacks of socialist fliers, mainly to each other. These socialists are committed, dedicated, utterly serious political activists, which makes them absolutely atypical Americans, which is why there are so few of them.

The rest of the people that the Kleins of the world are calling “leftists” are mostly cautious consumers who watch a lot of Netflix movies, have maybe read Love in the Time of Cholera once or twice, and whose most aggressive step in the direction of socialism is a vote in favor of increased school spending. They might drive a foreign car, or willingly see a movie with subtitles. If that makes them “leftists,” what word are we going to use for real leftists?

It’s totally fucking stupid, and Klein is old enough and close to bright enough to see the absurdity of red-baiting the basically timid conservatism of the American TV-watching, net-surfing leisure class. If you gave the people Joe Klein calls “leftists” a choice — told them they could have an instant Scandanavian-style state-directed economy, but only if The Sopranos was pulled off the air — how many of them do you think would vote for even that kind of socialism? The A&E network has nothing to worry about, let’s put it that way.

[...]

Heh!

[ Link ]

[via Polling Report]

LA Times / Bloomberg poll (Jan 13, 2007):

“Do you agree or disagree with those who say that George W. Bush deliberately misled Congress and the American people about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and its ties with Al Qaeda in order to build support for going to war with Iraq?”

	Agree %	Disagree %	Unsure %
1/13-16/07	50	44	6

The latest howler from our beloved government: a revised citizenship test:

BBC | US unveils new citizenship test

[...]

Mr Gonzalez says those who want to become US citizens should not be allowed to do so by simply rattling off historical facts they have memorised but should show a passion for the country of which they are becoming an integral part. The new questions will require those taking the exam to demonstrate a deeper understanding of the American political system and its history.

[...]

They are going to test this new quiz on immigrant volunteers. What I would really like is for them to test it on some “real” citizens.

Here are some of the new questions:

Why does the United States have three branches of government?
Name two rights that are only for US citizens
Name two cabinet-level positions
Name one important idea found in the Declaration of Independence
What does the Constitution do?

I know! I know!!

[ Link ]

In the wake of their “thumping”, GOP and conservative talking heads, apart from wringing hands and pointing fingers, have been outdoing each other on the preposterous nature of their explanations. For instance, there was Michael Savage on talk radio with the mind-numbing analysis that George Bush, the liberal, intentionally threw the GOP under the bus in 2006 (I presume by invading Iraq and botching it).

Now we have Ramesh Ponnuru (who was left spluttering on the Jon Stewart show), a later entrant to the brown-noser hall of fame (home to such luminaries as Dinesh D’Souza, Bobby Jindal), with this beauty in the New York Times:

The real message of the last few elections is that, for the most part, social issues help the Republicans and economic ones the Democrats.

To understand what Ponnuru means by economic issues (during an election cycle where the GOP, among the usual techniques of hate-mongering and so on, ran on the economy) you have to read through the dicing and slicing of 2006 election results data that he offers in the article.

A look at the issues polls, exit polls and the election results suggests the voters chose, in essence, a reality-based world, in opposition to GOP and Bush policies and activities. While the numbers (and the pronouncements by the pundits) are rosy on the economy, the public voted (mostly) for reality on minimum wage (and a Nov 9 Newsweek poll finds increasing minimum wage a top priority for 68% of the population — more on the findings of this poll in a separate post) and health care. Abortion and stem cell? Only about 5% and 3% respectively considered this the most important issue that contributed to their choice. This despite polls (Time, Nov 1) showing that voters favour Republicans on “moral values”.

Distracting and rallying the public using fear and social issues as tactics help the Republicans and a return to reality helps the Democrats.

(Which is not to say that the Democrats are a great hope for mankind!)

The big idea in Democratic circles is the 50 state strategy, attributed to Howard Dean and a few others. This is the idea espoused by Dean during the 2004 Democratic primaries, in characteristic bluster, that he wanted to appeal to the southern guy in the pickup truck with the confederate flag. This idea, running counter to the seemingly patent loss of the South, has been picked up by online liberal bloggers (who use the word “netroots” to refer to their activism) who provide their version of the 50 state strategy, along with the reasoning behind their prescription.

I believe that as in most such things, the reasoning behind these two positions is not contradictory. Here is Thomas Schaller, from AlterNet on winning without the South:

How Democrats Can Win Without the South

[...]

Whatever the magnitude of the coming changes, two things are certain: The Democrats are going to gain seats in the 2006 midterms, and those gains will come from outside the South.

[...]

Republicans won every southern state in the past two presidential elections and now have 18 of the region’s 22 senators and two-thirds of its House seats. In 2004, despite Bush’s two-and-a-half-point defeat of John Kerry, outside the South the Democrats actually gained congressional seats in both chambers. That’s right: If the five House seats produced by the re-redistricting of Texas orchestrated by former majority leader Tom DeLay and the five Senate pickups made possible by those southern Democratic retirements are held aside, the Democrats won the 2004 congressional elections.

Rather than a 50-state strategy, he suggests we whistle past Dixie with this approach:

To forge a House majority, the Democrats will need to convert the purple Midwest states to blue, make the blue states of the Northeast bluer, and snag the odd seat here and there in the interior West. The Washington Post’s Dan Balz and David Broder confirm that top Republican strategists, speaking off-the-record about their party’s prospects, are predicting doom: “Republicans face potential losses in every section of the country, but the area that concerns strategists most is the arc of states running from the Northeast across the Midwest.”

The netroots bloggers justify their approach by pointing out that it is the 50-state strategy that yields unexpected pick-up opportunities, such as the seat vacated by congressperson Mark Foley. While that may be true, we cannot premise our planning (and use of limited resources) on the unexpected, nor can we hope for the monumental level of blunders (to put it mildly) perpetrated by the Bush administration before the South starts questioning its faith-based loyalty. They are at best foul-weather friends as Schaller’s data suggest. The netroots are right in forging a message that is national and putting up candidates in all regions at all levels, where possible. However, Democrats interested in winning control of Congress and the White House (short of righting the undemocratic electoral system — a bigger pipe dream) are better off ignoring the South in their arithmetic.

Not satisfied with my earlier attempt to use Frappr I created a very simple Google Maps API based map of our beloved representatives. Click on the image below to view it:

Keep checking the Crittr page for updates!

Update: I have created a blog category called “Crittr” (see sidebar menu on the right). You can now visit that category to see updates to the Crittr map. You can even subscribe to its RSS feed!

URL for category: http://platosbeard.org/tag/politics/crittr/
URL for feed: http://platosbeard.org/tag/politics/crittr/feed/ or feed://platosbeard.org/tag/politics/crittr/feed/