Op-Ed
With varying degrees of confidence or even complacency, many people
have assumed that the jig is almost up for the horrendous political era that
began when George W. Bush became president. Always dubious, the assumption
is now on very shaky ground.
The Bush-Cheney regime may be on its last legs, but a new incarnation of right-wing populism is shadowing the near horizon.
Much as modern capitalism is always driven to promote new products in the marketplace, the corporate-fundamentalist partnership must reinvent and remarket itself. We’re now seeing the rollout of a hybrid product under the McCain-Palin brand.
After watching Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech and the laudatory responses from many TV journalists, I remembered wandering around the floor of the Democratic convention in Denver. At the base, the two major parties are even more different than the speeches are apt to indicate.
The Bush-Cheney regime may be on its last legs, but a new incarnation of right-wing populism is shadowing the near horizon.
Much as modern capitalism is always driven to promote new products in the marketplace, the corporate-fundamentalist partnership must reinvent and remarket itself. We’re now seeing the rollout of a hybrid product under the McCain-Palin brand.
After watching Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech and the laudatory responses from many TV journalists, I remembered wandering around the floor of the Democratic convention in Denver. At the base, the two major parties are even more different than the speeches are apt to indicate.
What does it say about John McCain that he picked not only the least experienced Vice Presidential nominee in America’s history, but someone he really doesn’t know? Departing so far from any normal concept of appropriate background, he should at least have had a sense of why this individual is so special. Meeting Palin once at a Republican governors’ conference and having a single phone conversation on the eve of her selection just doesn’t pass muster—particularly for the oldest presidential candidate ever, who’s had four malignant melanomas.
What makes Palin such a cynical choice is that McCain doesn’t know her and doesn’t know what drives her. Until she was selected by the Karl Rove types running his campaign (like campaign manager and Rove protégé Steve Schmidt), McCain might not even have recognized her on the street. Instead, she’s a category selection, made for the crassest reasons by the same kinds of political operatives who brought us George W. Bush.
What makes Palin such a cynical choice is that McCain doesn’t know her and doesn’t know what drives her. Until she was selected by the Karl Rove types running his campaign (like campaign manager and Rove protégé Steve Schmidt), McCain might not even have recognized her on the street. Instead, she’s a category selection, made for the crassest reasons by the same kinds of political operatives who brought us George W. Bush.
Bad bear!
Within the false outrage coursing through much of mainstream politics and the media, there is a grudging reverence for the brutality of the latest world crisis, if evinced only in the satisfaction that America has found its next enemy. Cold War sentiments stir in their hibernation, the McCain campaign has a bete noir to rail at more ferocious than Paris Hilton, and God’s in his heaven once again.
Maybe Russia is the perfect enemy, in that the country is too big and powerful to actually attack directly — not even the most unhinged neocon has so far suggested that — and therefore we can sustain rhetorical hatred and huge defense budgets without fear of a new quagmire.
Oh, what a world it would be if humanity and compassion had a collective presence that wasn’t fleeting, if a crisis of aggression somewhere in the world was followed by cries from politicians and ordinary citizens alike to beef up the peace budget.
Within the false outrage coursing through much of mainstream politics and the media, there is a grudging reverence for the brutality of the latest world crisis, if evinced only in the satisfaction that America has found its next enemy. Cold War sentiments stir in their hibernation, the McCain campaign has a bete noir to rail at more ferocious than Paris Hilton, and God’s in his heaven once again.
Maybe Russia is the perfect enemy, in that the country is too big and powerful to actually attack directly — not even the most unhinged neocon has so far suggested that — and therefore we can sustain rhetorical hatred and huge defense budgets without fear of a new quagmire.
Oh, what a world it would be if humanity and compassion had a collective presence that wasn’t fleeting, if a crisis of aggression somewhere in the world was followed by cries from politicians and ordinary citizens alike to beef up the peace budget.
Bob Fitrakis, with the Ecological Options Network crew, interviewed Rep. Tubbs-Jones after the 2004 election debacle and subsequent 2005 challenge to the Ohio electoral votes. Watch it here:
By now, across the progressive spectrum, some familiar storylines tell us
the meaning of the Obama campaign. In a groove, each narrative digs its
truths. But whether those particular truths are the most important at this
historical moment is another story.
We can set aside the plotline that touts Obama as a visionary pragmatist who has earned the complete trust of progressives. The belief has diminished in recent months -- in the wake of numerous Obama pronouncements on foreign policy, his FISA vote to damage the Fourth Amendment and the like -- but such belief was never really grounded in his record as a politician or his policy positions.
A more substantial narrative concedes that Obama has "compromised" on numerous fronts but assumes he has done so in order to get elected president, after which time his real self will emerge. This kind of dubious projection is as old as the political hills, and inevitably becomes a kind of murky exercise in armchair psychology. All in all, projection is not useful for assessing where political leaders are and where they’re headed.
We can set aside the plotline that touts Obama as a visionary pragmatist who has earned the complete trust of progressives. The belief has diminished in recent months -- in the wake of numerous Obama pronouncements on foreign policy, his FISA vote to damage the Fourth Amendment and the like -- but such belief was never really grounded in his record as a politician or his policy positions.
A more substantial narrative concedes that Obama has "compromised" on numerous fronts but assumes he has done so in order to get elected president, after which time his real self will emerge. This kind of dubious projection is as old as the political hills, and inevitably becomes a kind of murky exercise in armchair psychology. All in all, projection is not useful for assessing where political leaders are and where they’re headed.
Peace is no more — and no less — than the audacity of sanity, reaching past the dubious geopolitics of national self-interest and standing, as Hank Brusselback did, underneath the ancient bridge in Esfahan, Iran, listening to the men who had gathered to sing.
It's called civilian diplomacy, and it is one way we will create the peace our leaders don't believe we're ready for.
It's called civilian diplomacy, and it is one way we will create the peace our leaders don't believe we're ready for.
Here it is: Fifty Pages of Fluff. Jonathan Tasini, among others, has posted a draft of the AT&T Democratic Convention Party Platform: Here's a PDF. It's not all fluff, but it's packaged that way, and you have to plow through 8 pages of stomach-turning platitudinous cowardice before getting to anything worthwhile. There is, in the end, a good deal of worthwhile stuff in here, and a good deal of head fakes in the right direction with no substantive detail.
When Nancy Pelosi recently remarked that she was avoiding impeachment in order to be bipartisan, she wasn't kidding. And this is introduced as a bipartisan platform. It opens by, admirably, noting that we face crises of war, economic collapse, and environmental disaster. What to do? "Abandon the politics of partisan division." Yep, that oughta about fix things. The next sentence even throws in the word "accountability" with no shame whatsoever. The platform makes no mention of the governmental crimes of the past 7.5 years, no promises to punish the perpetrators, and no suggestion of ways to deter their repetition. Just vague desires to do better.
When Nancy Pelosi recently remarked that she was avoiding impeachment in order to be bipartisan, she wasn't kidding. And this is introduced as a bipartisan platform. It opens by, admirably, noting that we face crises of war, economic collapse, and environmental disaster. What to do? "Abandon the politics of partisan division." Yep, that oughta about fix things. The next sentence even throws in the word "accountability" with no shame whatsoever. The platform makes no mention of the governmental crimes of the past 7.5 years, no promises to punish the perpetrators, and no suggestion of ways to deter their repetition. Just vague desires to do better.
Almost every time House Speaker Nancy Pelosi explains why she won't impeach Bush or Cheney she says that the Republicans want impeachment and that therefore she must oppose it.
She originally took impeachment "off the table" in response to a May 2006 Republican National Committee announcement that (contrary to all existing evidence) talk of impeachment would benefit Republicans in the November 2006 elections. (In fact polls showed a majority believing that electing Democrats would mean impeachment, and we elected 30 new Democrats and not a single new Republican.)
Pelosi made the same claim in this week's Time Magazine:
"I think the Republicans would like nothing better than for us to focus on impeachment and take our eye off the ball of a progressive economic agenda."
She also made the same claim in this week's Nation Magazine:
"You know who wanted us to impeach the President...it was the Republicans." Over and over again she argues that the Republicans want impeachment.
She originally took impeachment "off the table" in response to a May 2006 Republican National Committee announcement that (contrary to all existing evidence) talk of impeachment would benefit Republicans in the November 2006 elections. (In fact polls showed a majority believing that electing Democrats would mean impeachment, and we elected 30 new Democrats and not a single new Republican.)
Pelosi made the same claim in this week's Time Magazine:
"I think the Republicans would like nothing better than for us to focus on impeachment and take our eye off the ball of a progressive economic agenda."
She also made the same claim in this week's Nation Magazine:
"You know who wanted us to impeach the President...it was the Republicans." Over and over again she argues that the Republicans want impeachment.
In the evolving neocon scheme of unconstitutional US governance, the job of running the country may belong to the office of the Vice President, while the primary duty of the president (other than following orders and acting like he's in charge) may be to pardon the Vice President and all of his henchmen for their crimes.
We have survived (just barely) seven and a half years of life under a government that has eliminated the legislative and judicial branches, installed a certified moron in the oval office, and placed dictatorial power in a new fourth (or first) branch of government located wherever Dick Cheney casts his shadow. The Republican candidate to succeed George W. Bush is a bumbling idiot and senile to boot, clearly incapable of remembering what he had for breakfast, much less running a global empire. (And he lost any right to take pride in his torture victimhood when he began supporting the torture of others.) If he chooses a new Dick Cheney as his running mate, we will know that his role is puppet-in-chief and primary pardoner.
We have survived (just barely) seven and a half years of life under a government that has eliminated the legislative and judicial branches, installed a certified moron in the oval office, and placed dictatorial power in a new fourth (or first) branch of government located wherever Dick Cheney casts his shadow. The Republican candidate to succeed George W. Bush is a bumbling idiot and senile to boot, clearly incapable of remembering what he had for breakfast, much less running a global empire. (And he lost any right to take pride in his torture victimhood when he began supporting the torture of others.) If he chooses a new Dick Cheney as his running mate, we will know that his role is puppet-in-chief and primary pardoner.
Last week two judges encouraged me to look to courts to help us recover from the damage done by an outlaw executive and a spineless corrupt legislature. The first was Bush-appointed federal Judge John Bates who ruled that people must comply with Congressional subpoenas even if they used to work for the president, and this because - you know - the law requires it. The second was Judge William Price in Iowa who was hearing the case of citizens arrested for trying to make a citizens' arrest of Karl Rove. When told what they had been trying to do, the judge said "Well, it's about time!"
Sort of makes you want to go out and arrest a war criminal or two, doesn't it? Here's how: http://afterdowningstreet.org/citizenarrest
Next month, on September 13th and 14th in Andover, Massachusetts, a major conference will be held to discuss the possibilities for prosecuting high-level American war criminals, including Bush and Cheney. The agenda and information on how to attend can be found at http://war-crimes.info
Sort of makes you want to go out and arrest a war criminal or two, doesn't it? Here's how: http://afterdowningstreet.org/citizenarrest
Next month, on September 13th and 14th in Andover, Massachusetts, a major conference will be held to discuss the possibilities for prosecuting high-level American war criminals, including Bush and Cheney. The agenda and information on how to attend can be found at http://war-crimes.info