The Elephant In The Room

NOTE: Apologies for the small font in the second half of today's entry; I have been unable to fix it. Use your browser's Zoom feature to make the type bigger and easier to read. -CK

The July 19/26 issue of The Nation features a series of brief essays on the economic theme of "Inequality in America and What to Do About It." The authors include Dean Baker, Jeff Madrick, Katherine Newman and David Pedulla, Orlando Patterson, Robert Reich, and Matt Yglesias. All are worth reading and make good -- if predictable -- recommendations such as raising the top marginal tax rate, taxing financial assets, additional stimulus, competitive trade policy, and financial aid to education. Reading the essays, though, I couldn't help but think of the poem about the blind men and the elephant: Each essay accurately described the animal, but none got to the true nature of the beast.

As a boy, I liked connect-the-dots puzzles. As the pictures emerged, I learned to discern patterns and trends. For example, consider the teabagger "movement":

• comprised almost exclusively of conservative whites
• reduces the Constitution to the 2nd and 10th Amendments (states' rights)
• refers to the president, clearly a mainstream liberal, in overwrought code words like "socialist"
• reacts with over-the-top hysteria to a health care bill grounded in old-school Republican policy
• dismisses the stimulus bill, which included tax cut for the middle-class, as "porkulus"
• blames the financial meltdown on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the people who took out predatory loans rather than the institutions that made them
• supports the Arizona anti-immigrant law and blames only President Obama for the undocumented workers in the country
• assumes as an article of faith that the president hates white people (including, presumably, his loving mother and grandparents)

When I connect the dots, I see a gang of whites angry that President Obama is (supposedly) transferring hard-earned white wealth to lazy, undeserving, and often illegal minorities. Moreover, they want to arm themselves to prepare for the virtual (in their minds) certainty that Obama's government will come after them. (Think about the Oklahoman who want to form an official state militia to fight off the government.)


Ronald Reagan, that master of coded language, told the American people that government had become the problem. He hearkened back to the Puritan ideal of a shining city on a hill, invoking a time when American life was simple and uncomplicated by vexing social issues. What he meant -- and what many unquestionably believed -- was that government had stopped working for the heirs of this America, and that it was only interested in spending their tax dollars on undeserving welfare queens. The solution, Reagan claimed, was to remove the government from everyday life by drastically reducing taxes and eliminating regulations on businesses that only meant well, leave the unworthy to their own devices, and let society take its natural course. All would benefit, especially the dependent poor who would learn to stand on their own two feet. "Poor," of course, was one of many conservative code words for "minority."

It's unquestionably true that Reaganism enabled a very few Americans have become obscenely wealthy on the backs of everyone else. But it also encouraged the gut conviction in a huge swath of white voters that anything the federal government does benefits minorities at someone else's expense. And, the right-wing media fosters and reinforces this conviction with an assortment of code words (like "socialist") and the cynical argument that it is liberals and minorities who are the real racists. These voters have become impervious to any argument that the rich are screwing them; rather than blame fellow whites, they'd rather believe that blacks and browns are at fault. This is the true legacy of Reaganism.

The Nation ennobles this repulsive development by blessing it as "populist rage," when in plain fact it is racism, that eternal scourge of the American Dream. Racism has taken a new form wherein the advantaged imagine oppression at the hands of the disenfranchised, but it's racism nonetheless. Psychologically subtle and twisted, perhaps, and galling, but as plain as the sneer on Glenn Beck's face.


Until and unless progressives shift the terrain of the public political dialogue from race to class, they'll have to settle for frustrating incremental gains. Right now, progressives are at a distinct disadvantage: Their most obvious asset -- the president -- symbolizes what Orlando Patterson calls African-American success in the public sphere; his existence contradicts the very idea of racism as most people understand it. Moreover, the right has become adept at throwing the racism argument back in progressive faces: It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to stick and distract, and be constant and loud. The endless pounding of the essentially the same specious comments on news stories and blogs reveals a concentrated effort to accomplish no less than a redefinition of the term "racism." 


I don't know how progressives change the discourse, or even if they can. For starters, though, it would help if those progressives who occupy their time attacking President Obama would figure out that the real enemy is on the right.  But in the end it comes down to this: Too many people in this country would rather be bigoted and anti-intellectual than better off economically. In fact they're proud of it. It's not a pretty picture, but it's what we've become...


Don't miss the Media Matters take on the ridiculous assertion that the Obama DOJ won't investigate black intimidation of white voters...


Robert Reich needs to get out more. He's a good man with an unmatched grasp of policy, but he regularly falls into the progressive trap of believing that good, rational ideas will inevitably carry the day because, as he writes in his Nation article, "...we are a sensible nation." On what does he base this assertion?...

Gosh, what a surprise...

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...

There's No Business Like Shoe Business

During his first debate with John McCain, Barack Obama said that the Wall Street financial crisis was the final verdict on the Bush economic policy. Now, the final verdict on Bush's foreign policy is here, and it came in the form of two hurled shoes. The man threw the second shoe, he said, for "...the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq..." Although security guards kicked the man repeatedly, he has apparently become a folk hero in the Arab world. As Robert Scheer writes in The Nation, once again American intentions fell victim to the simple reality that an occupied people tend to hate and resist the occupying force.

It's an article of faith among the right wing that ungrateful Iraqi people have turned on their selfless American friends who want only to bring that country into the cozy bosom of democracy. (Don't miss this gem, which contains such penetrating observations as "Iraq is a large country" and "U.S. troops have been trained to be nice to Iraqis.") American foreign policy makers have long had difficulty distinguishing between benign, theoretical intentions and hard consequences. In Iraq, the results of this failure are dismal.

Last Friday, the Senate Armed Services committee released a bipartisan report concluding that "senior officials" sanctioned the torture techniques used at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. Besides causing severe damage to the reputation of the United States, torture has likely contributed directly to the deaths of American soldiers. One committee witness testified that

there are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq – as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat – are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Moreover, the report concluded that the truth about Abu Ghraib and Gitmo bolsters Taliban and Al Qaeda recruiting. And to what end? The report also states that the torture techniques were "...based, in part, on Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean war to elicit false confessions" (emphasis mine). Think about this for a second: The Bush administration sanctioned an approach to interrogation that it knew led to false confessions. What, then, could possibly have been the motives of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al.? 

Consider this story from last Sunday's New York Times about a 513-page federal history now under review that covers the failure of reconstruction efforts in Iraq. The money quotes:

Among the overarching conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale.

The bitterest message of all for the reconstruction program may be the way the history ends. The hard figures on basic services and industrial production compiled for the report reveal that for all the money spent and promises made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed.

Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the history concludes, “the government as a whole has never developed a legislatively sanctioned doctrine or framework for planning, preparing and executing contingency operations in which diplomacy, development and military action all figure.”

Thus we and the Iraqis are force-fed the rotting fruit of undeclared, preemptive war and the reliance on military power at the expense of diplomacy. And Bush gets away with a ducking a pair of shoes, a failed administration, and a certain historical verdict that will rank him among the worst presidents ever. Hardly seems fair...

The history also quotes then Secretary of State Colin Powell as complaining that the Defense Department  “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000," an assertion backed up Paul Bremer and General Ricardo Sanchez. This rang a bell, so I conducted a little research. 

Sure enough, on October 29, 2004 during his first debate with John Kerry, Bush claimed that 

...that the best way for Iraq to be safe and secure is for Iraqi citizens to be trained to do the job. And that's what we're doing. We've got 100,000 trained now, 125,000 by the end of this year, 200,000 by the end of next year...

We now know that those numbers were not merely inflated, they were pulled out of thin air and offered to the American people as plain fact...

Eric Alterman writes that claims that United States is a "center-right" country is just another conservative canard...

Obama's nomination of Colorado senator Ken Salazar as Secretary of the Interior creates yet another vacancy in the Senate. (The other two are New York and Delaware.) Hendrick Hertzberg writes that some appointed senators have had distinguished careers...

Over at FiveThirtyEight.com, Nate Silver wonders whether the Republicans are a national party any more. Democrats won 219 House races by 15% or more; 218 are needed for a majority. He also argues that Obama's victory was even more decisive than it seems...

Some people should never, ever have children...

Morning After Musings...

T. and I hope that everyone had a great day yesterday and that you all ate far too much. That way, we'll feel less guilty ourselves! We had a house full of college students; besides eating and drinking, we played games, watched the Seahawks get trounced, watched the Longhorns trounce the Aggies (ha ha!), and debated the merits of...

Quantum Of Solace. Chase scenes by foot, motorcycle, car, boat, and plane. Incredible amounts of mayhem. Two maybe three jokes. Stereotypical charming-sociopath villain. Thirty-seven minutes shorter and still too long. But...Daniel Craig makes a fine Bond, a killing machine instead of a charming rogue. Very nice turn by Italian star Giancarlo Giannini as a retired operative. Great global location work. Compelling climax that manages to outdo the previous action scenes and that features a nicely ironic bit of vengeance on Bond's part. And...

...I am not a Bond aficionado (an ethically and critically neutral position), and two who are pointed out a few things to me. First of all, better no jokes than the tired wit that had seeped into the franchise. That Craig's Bond relies on wit, athleticism, and skills -- no gadgets that had become progressively laughable. (In fact, other than a super turbo turbo turbo turbo charged Aston Martin, no gadgets at all.) That the Bond women, while as attractive as always, serve a plot function other than him getting laid. In fact, amazingly enough, he doesn't get the girl in the end. He's left alone, having helped some people and hurt others while, of course, saving the world. And the movie offers a pointed reminder that the most precious resource in the world is not oil. It's...well, you'll have to watch Quantum Of Solace to find out...

Molly the Dog tells of a sad yet engrossing encounter with a schizophrenic woman who wants to keep her baby:

I was contacted by CPS after her visit with me and told them although her behavior was erratic, and I don't trust her, there is nothing "reportable". They told me she'd already had 2 children taken from her and had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and was refusing her medication. She had also been violent in the past, including to a police officer. My goal was to get her to trust me and then I could keep an eye on her and the baby.

The situation is laden with troubling implications and hard questions...

The Nation On-line features an essay/interview by Sean Penn with the reclusive Raul Castro, as well as an account of a group interview (himself, historian Douglas Brinkley, and writer Christopher Hitchens) with Hugo Chavez...

Three Joan Baez CDs I like:

• In Concert, Part 2. Not only did my mother own this one, the consensus of user reviews on iTunes and Amazon is that this is the early Baez album to have. Beautifully remastered by Vanguard, In Concert, Part 2 one includes her mighty version of "We Shall Overcome."
• Ring Them Bells. 1995 live album now available in a 2CD set, Bells shimmers with gorgeous harmonies between Joan and guests the McGarrigle Sisters, Mimi Farina, Janis Ian, Mary Black, Dar Williams, Tish Hinojosa, the Indigo Girls, and Mary Chapin Carpenter.
• Day After Tomorrow. Her newest, produced by Steve Earle. She ably handles 10 songs by contemporary songwriters (including three by Earle) and benefits greatly from Earle's rootsy production. Reviewed here. 

Friday's Choice: A 1963 duet by Baez and Bob Dylan of "With God On Our Side," Dylan's great polemic exposing American Exceptionalism. Baez has said that this is the first Dylan song she learned.

What About The Rest Of Us?

Yesterday, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton participated in a Faith Forum in Grantham, Pennsylvania. (John McCain declined an invitation.) They answered questions about abortion, human rights, and global warming. But the most important issue concerning faith and politics never came up, so I'll phase it here:

Many people believe that an individual's faith or lack thereof is a personal matter, something private that should be kept out of the public sphere. They believe that one can easily infer candidate's values from the positions they take, and that public professions of religious belief amount to pandering. Furthermore, they look at the historical impact of religious fundamentalism -- be it Christian, Islam, or anything else -- on public policy and find it largely negative. My questions: What distinctions do you draw between personal values and religion? Are they one and the same, or is religion one of many possible influences on personal values? At what point does religious faith become an inappropriate influence on public policy? Has this ever happened with Christianity in the United States? Has it happened recently? Please cite examples...

Fred Kaplan dissects Bush's speech last week endorsing the 45-day pause in Iraq troop drawdowns requested by General Petraeus. It's an especially interesting read because the brevity of the statement allows Kaplan to parse it word-by-word in some places. For example:

Bush: "As a result of the surge, a major strategic shift has occurred. Fifteen months ago, America and the Iraqi government were on the defensive; today we have the initiative."

Kaplan: "This isn't really true. Yes, "progress"—tactical progress—has been made. But U.S. and especially Iraqi forces are still, by and large, responding to crises when and where they occur. The recent (and unusual) attempt at taking the initiative—the offensive in Basra, which Bush last week called "a defining moment"—played out badly, as Gen. David Petraeus admitted at his Senate hearing on Tuesday. The operation revealed that the Iraqi army is nowhere close to being capable of leading a major fight, and it confirmed that the Iraqi police are nearly hopeless."

Bush: "Gen. Petraeus has reported that security conditions have improved enough to withdraw all five surge brigades by the end of July."

Kaplan: "I hope a few people on the speechwriting team blushed when they penned this passage. Those five surge brigades were going to pull out this July no matter what the situation in Iraq happened to be. Their 15-month tours of deployment will be up by then; they will go home; the Army has no combat brigades ready to replace them. This was always the calculation. It's the product of arithmetic, not policy."

Bush: "As Iraqis assume the primary role in providing security, American forces will increasingly focus on targeted raids against the terrorists and extremists."

Kaplan: "The key word here is the first word in the sentence: "as." As the Iraqis take on "the primary role," we'll reduce our role. The Iraqis are not close to doing this now. So we won't be shifting down for the foreseeable future, either."

Again, read the article. It's an excellent example of how to analyze and interpret political doublespeak. That's something we really can't get enough of...

''We need to think about charging some of the high-value detainees because there could be strategic political value to charging some of these detainees before the election." Attributed to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England on 9/29/06, in reference to Guantanamo detainees.

It's not big news that the Bush Administration has no problem with politicizing the judicial process, nor is it big news that the MSM appears to have completely missed the impact of this story. The Nation didn't though, pointing out that "political interference at that level would lead to indictments in any other American courtroom." But, that didn't stop them in 2006 and won't stop them this year, either. As The Nation argues, "it has become painfully clear that the Administration's concern is to have not a credible, transparent trial of 9/11 conspirators but election-year convictions at any cost."

What's also painfully clear is that this Administration figured out a long time ago that a broad assault on the democratic process will numb the mainstream media to the point of ignoring it. Either that, or take advantage of the MSM's simpleminded tendency to report everything in a he said-they said context, thus conferring legitimacy on any idea no matter how harebrained or dangerous.