The War On Terror Is A Bipartisan Fuck Up (Oh And I Was Wrong About Drones)

“SAY HELLO TO THE NEW BOSS”

I have not written much over the past few weeks for a variety of reasons. School work has picked up and the news has centered mostly on the various ways in which both parties are seeking to use “teh deficit” to continue decades long tradition of transferring our collective wealth into the hands of the 1%. Furthermore cataloging the various stupid shit that conservative pundits and activists say and pretending that the existence of such insanity will prompt a change within the GOP is also a waste of my time. However something did strike me about the argument here in leftblogistan over the nomination of John Brennan for CIA chief. It’s a familiar sense that the hippies have this one right yet again, and that those of us who fancy ourselves politically astute might want to start and listen to them before it is too late.

It has been almost 10 years exactly since the previous President decided to stake his place in history by engaging in our most pointless war on a series of lies that the media had breathlessly repeated for the previous year. I was a teenager at the time and was frankly amazed at the universal failure of virtually ever major institution that I as a citizen expected to act as a check against the narrative. Sadly despite the rather obvious progression that lead to this complete disaster we as a society seemingly learned little from the experience, as evidenced by the current intransigent nature of our discussion concerning National Security.

Democratic voters responded to the Bush Administrations draconian fervor to destroy the world by falling way to the left of their elected counterparts. While powerhouse politicians like John Kerry, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton allowed their judgement to be swayed entirely by idiotic village thinking concerning the imminent threat of Sadamm Hussein (i.e. they saw what happened to Max Cleland in 2002), voters were uniting around a virulently anti-war ideal. Howard Dean almost became the nominee for President in 2004 and Barack Obama’s entire career was provoked by being one of the few establishment voices against the conflict. Nevertheless here we are in 2013, talking about the legal potential for an American citizen to be killed within this country based on the mere belief that the individual provided material support to the nebulous enemy of terrorism.

Something has gone seriously wrong, and it is unfortunately our (meaning progressives) fault.

In a similar vein to those dull Democrats who actively seek out the “A” rating from the NRA for its political gain, the “Hawk” Democrat has in the last forty years become a standard part of our party. Their existence persists no matter how such beliefs run counter to the overarching philosophy of our voters, partly because of the media’s obsession with authoritarianism, but mainly because of the nature of the defense industry. Liberals like Sherrod Brown or even my own Congressman here in Long Beach know that the Defense Industry is one of the few domestic manufacturing employers left in the country, and Boeing/Lockheed/Northrup/etc have astutely spread out their offices and plants throughout the country regardless of whether the district was blue or red. The result predictably is the creation of a perpetual war machine that (like any other capitalist venture) demands growth in order to survive.

Regarding the drone issue specifically Liberals as a group have engaged in a series of circular arguments concerning the nuances of the policy itself (where the strikes should take place, the legal steps that must occur in order for due process to be fulfilled, etc). Those of us who see the drones as necessary evils of the post 9/11 era look at the Glenn Greenwald’s of the world as at best politically naive or at worst tools of the reflexive right-wing (who as a group obviously love to see a discordant opposing side). I too engaged in the difficult defense of the policy, especially around the time of the election when I saw such debates as counter productive towards the goal of preventing a Romney/Ryan White House from having access to the kill list. However now I see the error of my ways and wish to step back into sanity.

To put it succinctly:  drones are a problem, but they are just a microcosm of the immense insanity that we have cultivated over the past generations.

Fortuitously while the conformation hearings for Brennan were going on I happened to be watching a few documentaries on the news media and their coverage of the War in Iraq (as well as a few on the War on Terror in a general). These works mainly consisted of interviews that I had either seen before or I had seen their subjects speak at other points after 9/11, but the context in which I saw them now allowed me to recognize my own faulty conception of the world that we live in now. Back in 2006 or 2007 I would have seen someone like John Brennan, Robert Gates, or Richard Armitage as lackeys of the Bush Administration and consciously dismissed virtually everything that they said as being consistent with the dominant culture of employing lies for the greater good of inflicting malice on the rest of the world. Now that those same people (or their analogous counterparts) are working with my guy or appear on the liberal MSNBC, I take them seriously and at least accept their justifications as being based on actual facts.

This phenomenon is a serious issue for liberals, and it needs to be corrected before it is too late.

Make no mistake, John Brennan is a terrible person and his policies and worldview are despicable no matter what Obama says about him. Brennan is yet another member of the extensive club of sociopaths in suits that have plagued Washington since the Cold War began (think Robert McNamara, Kissinger, and other killers who perfected the efficiency and corporatization of our foreign policy). Virtually every military or foreign policy decision that we as a country have made since World War II has been shaped by a culture of armchair warrior fanatics, whether it is Rumsefld and Cheney on the right or Diane Feinstein and Joe Lieberman on the left. Despite the fact that doves have been correct in their predictions concerning every single military intervention that the US has undertook, they remain a mocked minority throughout the political establishment.

As liberals we have a duty (especially since the other side obviously isn’t big on the whole self-reflection thing) to examine our own responsibility for the perpetuation of this incredibly awful set of policies. Let’s use the same jaundiced eye towards our own guy concerning war that we gave Bush (a task that should be rather easy given the repeating cast of characters). When we are being told that extra-judicial killings are being performed with the highest respect for the law, imagine that the person telling us that just happens to be Liz Cheney. The “imminent” threat of terrorism existed on 9/10/2001 and disappeared as of 9/13 of that same year- yet for some reason we keep on killing people.

Beyond the fact that this policy is counterproductive (and more than likely based on the same pile of lies and fear that we dismissed when it was presented in Bush wrapping paper) is that there is diminishing political value of such wariness. In the past thirty years only a handful of elections have been decided due to what was happening on the foreign policy front, but for some reason Democrats still feel reluctant to embrace the sensical idealism of supporting international human rights and peace as electable values. The Republicans will probably recognize the shift in a few years, as the Lindsey Grahams and John McCain’s of the world are pushed aside for the traditional Rand Paul styled isolationism (foreigners, in the GOP lizard brain, are to be either bombed or ignored dependning on the direction of the breeze that day). Furthermore it makes little sense to constantly defend the bloated defense budget while “compromising” on necessary entitlements that traditional Democratic voters actually like.

The truth of the matter is one that we as a society will always refuse to admit. The nature of the enemy in this never ending War on Terror is that it is impossible to destroy it. Terrorism is a chronic condition within a free and democratic society, and the best that we can hope to avoid it is to either do our best to address its systemic causes (i.e. stop supporting the assholes in the House of Saud and the Likud Party) and to punish those responsible in the same manner that we would any other crime (actual judicial due process versus the facilitating martyrdom of the extremists). However Americans do not like to confront their own mortality, and for some reason are convinced that they will die a preventable violent death rather than the much more likely preventable “natural” death related to their increasing poverty. As a result both sides of the political divide will continue to patronize to their base that they know the best way to kill our way into safety, regardless of the actual facts of the matter.

“Conservative Ideology” Is Nothing But A Fancy Term For Sadism

Tennessee State Senator Stacey Campfield wants to make being gay the functional equivalent to having lice for children in public schools

I’ve mentioned few times before my favorite recent Chris Rock observation concerning modern politics, but it bears repeating once again:

“Kids always act up the most before they go to sleep. And when I see the Tea Party and all this stuff, it actually feels like racism’s almost over. Because this is the last—this is the act up before the sleep. They’re going crazy. They’re insane. You want to get rid of them—and the next thing you know, they’re fucking knocked out. And that’s what’s going on in the country right now.”

I look to that passage frequently as a way of taking solace in the news, especially when (to paraphrase Charlie Pierce), the Methlabs of Democracy known as our state governments begin to cook up their newest batch of blue crystal crazy. Despite how it might appear at times on this blog, I do try my best to keep the big picture and more or less ignore the more blatant acts of trolling that dark red legislatures puke up from time to time. However this one out of my old home of Tennessee piqued my interest:

Tennessee’s so-called ‘Don’t Say Gay‘ bill died with theadjournment of the state assembly last year. But now the measure is back — with new, harsher requirements.

The bill, SB 234, still bars Tennessee teachers from discussing any facet of “non-heterosexual” sexuality with children in grades K-8. But the newest iterationalso includes a provision requiring teachers or counselors to inform the parents of some students who identify themselves as LGBT.

The exact political viability of measures like this is irrelevant. This law could pass, or it could again be effectively lobbied out of existence due to the attention it is receiving from the internet, but it would be a mistake to view this as a serious attempt by the bills author to change the law or even to strengthen his own base of support. This law and it’s equally insane headline-grabbing counterparts in other states are a not-so-subtle threats to the progressive community in this country. We should start to conceptualize these “ideas” not as acts of trolling, but as serious acts of violence.

The “we’re under siege” mentality of the white Christian conservative is, and always has been, the most dangerous and uncontrollable force in American politics. Whenever the unbridled rage of the white working class and poor receives direct encouragement from established conservative power centers (like the church or big business), the rest of us who do not see this democracy as a mere pretext for continuing White Christian supremacy face real tangible violence. Today’s daily assault of insanity from the Red States are no different.

Sadly too many of us, particularly moderates who falsely believe that these people can be reasoned with (or that the insanity is a bipartisan phenomenon) simply do not understand the reactionary mind. This is an area in which I have some personal experience, having done two tours of duty living in the deep south as a liberal. The self-identified christian conservative of today does not intend to negotiate with people they see as having achieved power in an illegitimate manner or even as innately sub-human. They intend to accumulate as much influence as they possibly can, and utilize that authority in order to exact revenge on those they perceive to be a threat to their way of life.

The sadistic methods of using the law as a punitive device against minority groups has become a trend in recent years as the Bush era of confident conservatism gave way to it’s current iteration of extraordinary paranoia. Whether it’s using policy to place children who are perceived to be gay in Tennessee at risk of serious injury at the hands of their family or the ritualistic humiliation of people receiving state aid during this time of economic hardship, the “ideas” of Conservatives have continually been centered around a concerted effort to effectively extort non-crazy people into taking the “middle ground” of just eliminating the facilities and resources that are supposed to serve the public. Policymakers in these communities do not care how much people suffer as a result of these laws and regulations, because inflicting harm is the entire point of what they are doing.

However this is not just about policy.

Despite whatever idiotic and ahistorical thesis that Ben Shapiro tries to justify with his usual word vomit of angry prose, the fact of the matter is that the right wing in the country has and will continue to be the home to hardcore domestic terrorists and their allies. The strength and number of hate groups always correlates with times when conservatives are out of power, and the current hysterical pro-gun rhetoric from the NRA has long abandoned any pretense of defending any other position than outright violent sedition against political movements with which they disagree. These are not folks to be reasoned with, and left of center politicians have a real threat of violence over their heads that their counterparts are more then conscious of when negotiating policy measures (the Tea Party summer of 2009 with people showing up to public forums with assault rifles being a prime example of this).

We could easily dismiss whatever novel and creative way to make life miserable for people that they despise as simply stupid, or remember that they are effectively becoming less and less democratically influential after each election. However this attitude of passive ignorance to the problem that these people pose is at least premature, and at worst is an act of appeasement. The Bill O’Reilly’s of the world know that their time of unchallenged influence is going to end soon, and instead of accepting that fact (or evolving) they have instead chosen to burn down this experiment in self-government. They have facilitated their own apocalypse, and they fully intend to carry it out with the most collateral damage possible.

These are not trolls, idiots, flat-earters, or any other derisive analogy that you have heard (or that I have undoubtedly repeated). These folks in elected and appointed positions of power throughout Red State America are fanatics, pure and simple. We should regard them with disdain and seek (as Paul Ryan warned his own supporters) to delegitimize them at every point. They, through legislation and administrative policy, have signaled that they intend to target anyone who opposes them with a level of violence that should be unacceptable in any society, much less one that supposedly prides itself on representing the truest form of democracy and respect for human rights. It is time to speed up the end of their influence through exposing the depravity of their ideals.

Fear And The Loathsome Individuals Who Profit From It

Here’s something which you have probably seen (or heard) a million or so times, and yet in a manner that was completely out of context:

That was of course Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who is still tied with LBJ as our greatest President) at his first inaugural speech. The line, “nothing to fear but fear itself”, has since taken a life of its own. The speech and the quote were part of the newly elected President’s plan to address the myriad of problems facing the country after the 1929 stock market crash and resulting depression. Sadly in modern times this concept of being “free from fear” has been misappropriated into referencing FDR’s leadership during WWII. As we enter a new year it is important that we look back on the lessons of the 1930′s for several reasons, but specifically this idea that our government’s economic and social priorities must be designed to eliminate “fear” needs to enter the forefront of our minds once again.

Over the holidays I found myself frequently engrossed in the same conversation with friends and family concerning why the Republican Party continually convinces people to vote against their own economic and social interests in order to benefit the wealthiest 1%. The simple answer is that those in the right wing have successfully marketed fear, in its rawest and nastiest form (see also “welfare queens” and “moochers”), towards populations of older white people who are likely to maintain a strong GOP presence in state and federal legislative bodies. The genius behind this marketing is something that the Democrats have emulated on certain baseline issues, but sadly the leadership in both parties have recognized the power behind this strategy and have each chosen to use it in a way to further strengthen class divisions and income inequality. The result of this cynical form of governance is the kabuki idiocy that we see today, when our congress is being unfavorably compared to the worst examples of reality TV.

It’s a crazy time to live in a period where reasonable, evidenced-based arguments concerning the defense of redistributive economic policies are tarred with the slur of “communism”, while the opposition goes unchallenged while spouting screeds that are blatant defenses of Social Darwinism. It is not enough to debase the welfare state as a “failure” (while providing no evidence to support this assertion), instead the “very serious” economists and their associated politicians are going after the entire idea of social insurance and progressive taxation. All the while the dim witted press corps who supposedly acts as a safeguard against those who would intentionally lie to the American public is fixated on whether John Boehner told Harry Reid to go fuck himself.

A real examination into the true intentions of those who are protesting our national debt or the supposed need for “entitlement reform” would expose these people as outright thieves from the upper class. Eliminating social security, establishing a regressive taxation system, re-branding the estate tax as an affront to the constitution, and designating welfare recipients as failures are all calculated measures and evil marketing methods designed to instill a permanent aristocracy whose status and wealth goes unchallenged by members of the other classes. To put it another way, there is a conscious effort to instill fear in us as a way to directly prevent any legislation that would allow for a more broad based economic recovery- a fact that no one in power outside of Tom Harkin and Bernie Sanders have the gaul to bring up.

For a generation now we have been told to abandon the security of a guaranteed defined pension, or to reject the extension of “entitlements” into covering healthcare or income assistance out of the need to make our lives “more efficient”. In reality polices that encouraged individual investment in the stock market, reduced the tax burden for the wealthy, and gradually eliminated the remnants social safety net, were really only “efficient” in the sense that they redistributed the middle class gains of the post war generation back into the hands of the class who had control over our government and society before the advent of the 16th Amendment. We are all victims of a grand campaign of thievery, and to make matters worse we were entirely conflict in the con.

Obama’s plan to avert the more negative aspects of the “fiscal cliff” could have been much worse (especially compared to the other various deals that the President offered to the Speaker). However the most disappointing aspect behind this compromise was the complete abandonment by the Democratic leadership to the ideological and frankly moral defense of the progressive nature of our economic policies of the past. How does someone keep a straight face and tell the country that someone making $400k a year is a member of the middle class? Why does Paris Hilton get to keep 60% of an estate for which she did nothing to earn? Why are the insane cuts to social programs only delayed by two months?

Like many people who voted for the President last November I am certain that I made the right decision, and yet wary of both the his negotiation skills (which are terrible) and his commitment to preserving economic opportunity for the lower class (personally I think he drank the David Brooks kool-aid back at Harvard Law). Given this deficit of trust, it is up to us a supposedly enlightened populous to reject this constant campaign of fear and hate that is designed to have us gamble away our future security and to vote in a way that denies the chance to succeed to other people. Let us finally recognize the impact that class warfare has had on legislation and social conditioning for the last 30 years and consciously refuse to listen to the patronizing messages from asshole CEO’s like Howard Schultz. Our democratic system is the only open-ended apparatus in which each of us as individuals has a more or less guaranteed method of deciding how our society will be shaped. Perhaps it is time to recapture its power instead of simply abdicating that responsibility to those who at one point convinced us that they know how best to govern. If anything the last 12 years should have demonstrated that this trust was misplaced.

The Fight Goes On

Fantine says that Stefan can’t give in to despair until he gives away his first-born, sells his front teeth, and becomes a tuberculosis-ridden prostitute.

Anyone who knows me knows that I hate playing the role of cheerleader – I would much prefer to spend my days as the Debbie Downer in a crowd of irrational optimists. But when I see something like this I can’t let it stand without a proper response.

Less than three weeks ago, we handed the unholy alliance of Pharisees and Ayn Rand acolytes a stunning defeat by rejecting their chosen plutocrat and his merry band of rape philosophers. We held onto the presidency, strengthened our position in the Senate, and won major victories at the state level. Until this month, the “bedroom police” were undefeated in statewide initiatives on gay marriage. Now they’ve suffered four losses, and in three of those cases gay marriages are now recognized by the state. If Stefan is right that everyone in America is too “too embroiled in our individual battles or too full of hate or distrust of one another” to “care about each other’s welfare,” then there must be a staggering number of LGBT people in Minnesota, Maryland, Washington, and Maine. Because in a world where nobody gives a shit about their neighbors (especially neighbors who aren’t exactly like you), heterosexuals don’t vote in favor of recognizing homosexual relationships.

I can’t make quite the same point about marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington (if you told me a majority of people in CO enjoyed reefer I might believe you), but the end result is the same: a favorable change in state laws that came about through the efforts of people who were willing to put aside rhetoric of fear and division and bring some sanity to government. And here again, we are talking about a political development that is unprecedented in modern American history. It’s only a beginning, but you can’t have a finish without a start.

Stefan is bummed out because he’s worried about the poor kids who are virtually invisible in American society. And he’s right to be worried – nobody is mobilizing on behalf of those kids and their (much-slandered) parents in the same way that people have mobilized for immigrants or gay rights. But to think of this as some kind of unraveling is to indulge in  ill-conceived nostalgia for a world that never existed, when in fact the world has usually been more like a certain Christmas Day musical. (side note: if liberals were clever, they’d be planning a campaign to highlight the stories of poor Americans in conjunction with said musical – see my last thought at the end of this post). And however ignored and marginalized these children are, I have to believe that they are no less so than they were before Occupy Wall Street helped reawaken awareness of inequality in this country. In fact, in a certain way small liberal victories are responsible for Stefan’s depression – if we didn’t have a government-backed public TV network churning out documentaries about these kids (and remember, in Romney’s America, we wouldn’t), Stefan would have never seen the Frontline special to begin with! And yes, publicity like this is only a small beginning, not an ending – but it’s a damned sight better than nothing.

Stefan says we got lucky, and I largely concur in that assessment. But in the wake of our psychologically-devastating wins this month, our political opponents are disorganized and despondent. There are rumblings that they may abandon their campaign against LGBT rights, embrace a humane immigration policy, and even capitulate on tax increases for the rich (thank you, fiscal cliff!). On the other hand, the GOP may persist in its stupidity. In that case, we’ll win more elections. Either way, though, it appears that liberal ideas (if not liberal politicians) are gaining momentum in some key areas. The fact that this momentum does not extend to treatment of the struggling poor is a real tragedy, but not by itself grounds for despair – certainly not when we just managed to hold the line against a plutocrat whose contempt for impoverished Americans was so obvious.

Campaigns aren’t won in a day, or a month, or even a year. They are won by a collection of victories large and small, interspersed with setbacks and bloody draws where you manage to hold the line against a determined opposition. We have not won any of the campaigns I’ve referenced above – not for LGBT rights, not for an end to the war on drugs, and certainly not for a greater commitment to addressing child poverty. But in all of those areas we have either gained ground or held the line against furious assaults. That is cause for thanksgiving and inspiration, not despair.

I will close with one more thought: liberals have not been as creative in their messaging and strategy as they could be. There are key areas where our rhetoric and ideological posturing has failed to exploit our opponents’ weaknesses. If I manage to avoid failing my own final exams, I hope to identify some of those missed opportunities in future posts and discuss ways we can fracture the GOP coalition while seizing control of the prevailing political narrative. But I actually take comfort in those areas for improvement – they reassure me that liberal ideas have not “maxed out” their appeal and effectiveness within American society. If we are patient and humble and willing to carefully study the groups we are attempting to enlist in our cause, then we may find greater success in the future.

2012: We Got Lucky

Like many of you I thoroughly enjoyed the hell out of Tuesday night- especially the despondent rambling of the thoroughly broken individuals over at Fox News. Seeing those jackals once again reduced to weeping piles of nonsense provides my soul with enough nourishment to withstand the inevitable Ayn-rand spouting idiot that I will encounter in my final semester in Law School. However before we get too far ahead of ourselves in the gloating department, let’s remember the steaming pile of shit from 2009 known as Citizen’s United that the Supreme Court firmly distributed throughout our democratic system, and how it will remain a problem for years to come.

One of my good friends from college (who has since sadly embraced the stone age economics and politics of that neo-confederate asshole Ron Paul) asked if the results of this election essentially render the dissenting reasoning from that now infamous case moot. In other words, did Sheldon Adelson and his friends basically prove that money is analogous to speech, and  its unregulated presence in the “market place” of ideas that is our democracy does not necessarily present an existential harm to the survival of the entire process? Well in a word, no.

The liberal glee over the hundreds of millions of dollars blown on Romney’s quixotic bid for the White House is understandable, especially given the absolute terror that we were in after the 2010 midterms. However the Romney failure was a management problem combined with a personality flaw. In retrospect it is arguable that no amount of money could have elected a man who was that awful of a candidate on every level possible. In truth Rove (who let’s remember is 12 years older than he was in the peak of his influence in 2000) treated this campaign as a money making opportunity more than any further chance to extend his influence over the country. Those billionaires that he scammed were fleeced using the same tactics that any grifting asshole uses to fool rich people, and America simply lucked out that Rove chose this time to line his own pockets via “administrative costs” instead of once again building the conservative infrastructure necessary to turn an election for the ownership society. Plenty more hungry, intelligent, and connected strategists exist in conservative land, and  be rest assured that they will be in place by 2014 or 2016 in order re-enforce the white rich power structure that allows Bill O’Reilly to sleep at night.

The reasoning behind opposing Citizens United remains true, that money is and always will be a corrupting agent when it enters our political system. This one national just proved that stupid strategic mistakes and structural incompetence cannot be solved by simply dousing everything with the money hose. Plenty of federal, state, and local races will still be a the mercy of assholes like the Koch Brothers, who will decide what society needs instead of the people who are constitutionally (and morally) supposed to have that choice.

We liberals also lucked out in having a candidate who understood how to run a formidable and frankly unstoppable electioneering infrastructure that used technology and rhetoric to unite the usually discordant elements within the post 1968 Democratic coalition. Obama since 2007 has proven to be this generation’s most masterful campaigner, a man who uses the lessons of the past (and the software from Howard Dean) to quietly craft a literal machine of political science that will serve as a model for the next few election cycles. What is missing from that calculous however is policy.

Brand Obama might be able to absolutely destroy the likes of Mitt Romney and John McCain, but its inability to render easy targets like John Boehner and Jim Demint (the real leader of the GOP Senate) essentially powerless will leave the next head of the Democratic ticket in a severally weakened position. If Obama fails on any of these key pieces of legislation: immigration reform, filibuster reform, voting reform, (illicit) drug reform, proper funding for state and local governments, and the proper filling of the federal courts with appointed judges, then the efforts of all of those now famous Obama volunteers (including my ass by the way) will have been for nothing and will atrophy into the familiar stench of liberal self-loathing.

So this week, pat your self on the back for a job well done. Next week follow Robert Reich’s advice and start hitting the phones/facebook again (three hours a week at least goddamit!) to make sure that the Democrats follow through on their promises and continue to make this country a better place than how Reagan and Bush left it. Rest assured that the other side is doing that right now.