Midnight on the Forecastle

Health Care Reform as Radical Political Bellwether

So they're going to pass some version of health care reform.  Like any big legislative initiative, nobody really knows how it will interact with reality once it takes effect.  Most political partisans seem pretty unimpressed with it; which is weird, since the final bill will be very impressive... politically speaking.  I haven't seen this kind of belief in the power of government to make positive change in the lives of average Americans in my lifetime.  In recent decades, Americans have voted for (and seemingly preferred) a government that has not only abdicated its charge to work in the interests of civic good, but has actively set about dismantling every institution of collective betterment.  I wouldn't go so far as to declare the era of Laissez-faire governance over, but I do think that we're moving in the right direction for the first time in a long, long time.

This is the real reason that the Republicans have united in opposition to the health care bill: it represents an ideological shift away from official neglect and towards participatory activism.  The specifics of the bill never really mattered to those that opposed it.  The "public option," abortion provisions, "death panels," Medicare buy-ins... all of these contentious provisions were resolved with deference to the preferred solutions of hardline conservatives, and they still opposed the bill unanimously.  The truth is that they simply don't believe that the government can play a useful regulatory role... in anything.  The defeat of congressional conservatives herein represents a defeat of that worldview; this may not be the next "New Deal," but it's a great deal more hopeful and progressive than anything we've seen make it's way through the legislative process since the days of LBJ.

Contrary to the incessant whine from committed leftist ideologues, this really is the change we voted for.  It's not fast, it's not pretty, it's not perfect, and it's far from being done... but if we keep at it we can, over time, become a more equitable and a more just country.  Yes we can.

Anthony Weiner on Morning Joe

I know.  MSM Internet detritus.  But I like it.  I like Anthony Weiner.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Iran and American Sabre Rattlers

Some thoughts that popped up today regarding the American Right and the uprisings in Iran piqued my interest.  First, Yglesias makes this point:

It’s worth keeping in mind that the people trying to loudly position themselves as the Iranian people’s greatest friends are the exact same people who wanted to drop bombs on Iranians just a couple of weeks ago.

Now we have Sullivan chiming in with a similar point:

The key point is that many neocons actively want war with Iran and they are doing all they can in this crisis to precipitate one. Whether it be hoping for an Ahmadinejad win, or trying to goad Obama into making this critical uprising into a US vs Iran showdown, their goal is conflict. Everything they say needs to be filtered through that prism.

I’m not convinced that everyone wants conflict right now, but there’s certainly no question that it has been advocated in the months and years leading up to the latest election.  What have been the positions taken up by prominent American conservatives toward Iran?

• They are meddling with fatal result in Iraq and such meddling must not go unanswered.  We should initiate military operations in Iran.
  
  
• Ahmadinejad is batshit crazy and therefore cannot be negotiated with or allowed to speak at the U.N.  Open hostility and a policy of regime change are the only legitimate Realpolitik responses to Iran.
  
  
• Although Israel is a nuclear power with the strongest military in the region, Iran
  poses an existential threat because Ahmadinejad is batshit crazy.  Therefore, we should fully support Israeli military action against Iran.
  

• Iran supports terror and is part of the Axis of Evil that justified the Global War on Terror (GWOT).  This is a war with real enemies that need to be defeated, not tolerated or coddled or negotiated with.

Remember how John Kerry was ridiculed for advocating that terrorism should be reduced to the level of a nuisance? Indeed, the conservative stance of late has been interventionist, pathologically militant, and decidedly anti-everything else.  While there is little disagreement in America about praising the uprising in Iran, there are still deep and abiding differences of opinion about what American foreign policy should be with respect to that country.

Many who voted for Obama were well aware of the disastrous role that the CIA played in creating the enmity that has come to define US/Iran relations.  Foreign meddling has a price, and it’s never one that can be accurately predicted.  What concerns me now is that the factions of American public opinion that have been such staunch advocates for war will be in no ways enlightened by the ungovernable caprices of national movements or the revealed impermanence of our national enemies.

§ Racism: Sotomayor v. White Males

The Republican Establishment response to Obama’s nomination of The Hon. Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is awesome.  It was also predicted.  (For the record, please note Matt Yglesias’ excellent posts about racism and modern Republicanism: here, here, here, etc.)  I’ve long maintained that the Republican Party will eventually purify itself of its idiotic adherence to Caucasoid hegemony, if for no other reason than the inevitable ascendance of gigantic and untapped reserves of conservative political capital in minority communities.  Certain pundits, however, hell-bent on preserving their own positions via firebrand invective, have gleefully sabotaged the interests of their party.  It’s hysterical.  Witness my favorite (beloved, really) red-meat Republican, Pat Buchanan (via Think Progress):

Spectacular.  There’s nothing more welcome to liberal politicians than an opposition fully committed to reinforcing the most damning conservative stereotypes imaginable.

ADDENDUM: Pat's Back!

Politicizing Disease & Blaming the Victim

This from the WSJ’s most distinguished jackass, James Taranto:

The AP dispatch is titled "Swine Flu Worse in Mexico Than US, but Why?" There's no definitive answer, but here's one of the possibilities:

Access to medical care has been an issue in Asia, where a rare bird flu--which does not spread easily from person-to-person--has killed more than 200 over the last several years. Maybe Mexican patients have also had trouble getting medical care or antiviral drugs, some have speculated--even though the government provides health care.

Wouldn't this paragraph make more sense if it ended ". . . because the government provides health care"?

I can’t even begin to describe how completely screwed up this is.  So I won’t.  I’ll just recommend John M. Barry’s book, The Great Influenza.  Suffice it to say that the 1918 pandemic likely emerged in the heart of Kansas and proceeded to devastate the world – including its country of origin… which did not (and does not) have “socialized medicine.” 

UPDATE: Why Only Deaths in Mexico?

There are no hard answers, but a consensus is emerging: The disease in Mexico has likely been around longer and infected more people than investigators can confirm.

"Do we really know all of the cases that existed in Mexico or is this just the tip of the iceberg?" asked Louis Sullivan, a physician and former head of Health and Human Services under President George H.W. Bush.

McKenna said it's possible "there is much more flu in Mexico than we know because it hasn't been counted. That would mean that there are mild cases there as well, but that you have to get to a certain number of cases before, statistically, you start to see the very serious ones, and the U.S. hasn't had that many cases yet."

Cafeteria Citations

From an article on CNN.com:

More than half of American adults have changed religion in their lives, a huge new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found.  And there is no discernible pattern to the change, just "a free for all," one of the lead researchers told CNN.

"You're seeing the free market at work," said Gregory Smith, a research fellow at the Pew Forum.  "If people are dissatisfied, they will leave.  And if they see something they like better, they will join it.”

Nonsense.  To ascribe the changes in American religiosity to “the free market” is intellectually lazy gibberish.  People have long been free to apostatize in this country; or to create new religions out of whole cloth.  Any theorizing about this phenomenon worth half a hot damn would take into account the liberalization of our society as a whole.  The evolution of social mores - in conjunction with the scientific maturation of humanity in general - is, I believe, largely responsible for the increased availance of our license to shift (and/or abandon altogether) religion.

Here’s a revealing little twist of phrase attributed to our intrepid research fellow at Pew (but more likely contorted into a sordid subtlety by Richard Allen Greene):

The survey supported a study released last month in that it found about 16 percent of Americans are not affiliated with any religion. The American Religious Identification Survey, from Trinity College in Connecticut, found the number to be about 15 percent.

But Smith warned against labeling those people "secular."

Why not, pray tell?

"Upwards of one-third of newly unaffiliated people say they just haven't found the right religion yet," Smith said.

Oh.  Because “secular” apparently doesn’t mean “unaffiliated," so how can it mean something similar… like “temporarily unaffiliated” or “soon to be affiliated” or “unaffiliated with cause?”  The reasoning behind this, of course, is that “secular” is a filthy, naughty, rancid little insult and we should all refrain from using it when speaking of people who are grappling with religions and/or their doctrinal differences.  Interestingly (to crib a loaded word), Wikipedia cites a CNN article from over a year ago with the following observation:

…the fluidity of religion in the country is high, with studies showing around half of American adults leave the faith tradition of their upbringing to either switch allegiances or abandon religious affiliation altogether.

So where’s the news here?  Seems to me like nothing so much as an opportunity to assure faith-heads that the “free market” is still akin to the godhead and we need not fear the secularists behind the curtain.

The Unlikely Ascendance of Bible Spice

There are a number of reasons that no posts have appeared here in two months.  The most salient two are as follows: (a) my employer’s firewall now blocks TypePad (see below), and (b) John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate flung me into a psychologically overwhelming fantod of political ennui.  I shall now address the latter.

There is something unnerving about an opponent who broadcasts their utter disdain for the contest in which they are engaged.  I recall a tennis match I played when I was a member of my high school tennis team.  I was a terrible player, as was my doubles partner.  We were soundly defeated straight away.  The pair that beat us quickly deduced that we were unfit for competitive sport.  Instead of simply defeating us in a gentlemanly manner and moving on, they decided to abuse us for their pleasure.  They began to mock us mercilessly and lob easy balls over the net while laughing hysterically.  It was a revelatory display of unsportsmanlike conduct.

John McCain reminds me of those two bastards on that tennis court years ago.  Not, of course, because he’s a sore winner – he was (and is) behind in the polls – but because his behavior revealed a grotesque disregard for the electoral process, and, by extension, all Americans.  It was, frankly, as if he had chosen fitness guru Richard Simmons to be his Vice President.  The message couldn’t be clearer: “This whole election is an enormous farce, and I’m going to rub it in America’s face by locking arms with a snowbilly clown to prove it.”

Contrary to what some pundits believe, I don’t think the selection of Sarah Palin is exclusively a gimmicky move or a stunt on the part of John McCain (although it undoubtedly is those things).  What bothers me is that it’s the move of a bully who only dares his sycophants (as well as his opponents and referees) to defy him because he’s arrogantly confident that they won’t.  He was right, hence my ennui.

We’ve had eight years of this, so I ought to be inured.  However, George W. Bush has been acting under the imprimatur of the neoconservative brain trust.  As distasteful as this has been, at least there’s been a clearly defined ideological standard under which his inept bullying has operated.  Even in his most egregious transgressions, Bush has enlisted the OLC, John Woo, David Addington, Dick Cheney, Presidential Signing Statements, et al. to give intellectual luster to his bullying.  Maybe I’m just comfortable with the enemy I know, but McCain seems intent upon taking this rot to a whole new level.  And the polls seem to indicate that America doesn’t really care.

Here are some links: one, two, three, four.

Medieval America

I've been spending the last few days reading Jane Mayer's new book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals.  (Here's a brief interview with the author).  It's yet another fantastically well written exposé of executive and bureaucratic malfeasance that will undoubtedly go unread by those who need to read it most; namely, anyone who ever gazed admiringly at the words, "take the gloves off."

 

The writing itself is terse, clear, unrelenting and supremely confident.  As a result, it stimulates an intellectual and emotional outrage which is wholly warranted, entirely justified, and (at least in this reader) unforgivably anesthetized by years of media and governmental complicity.  

 Here's a quote that got me thinking:

At this point, a remarkable internal rebellion broke out on the island.  It was led not by political opponents of the Bush Administration, nor by human rights activists, but rather by seasoned professional law-enforcement and military men who were appalled at the direction the government was taking.

I understand why she phrased this the way she did.  However, it says something about how deaf our collective ears have become to "political opponents of the Bush Administration" and "human rights activists," as if it is understood, prima facie, that these are categories which are mutually exclusive from "seasoned professional law-enforcement and military men."  The more I read about CIA "black sites", the infamous "torture memos", and other ghastly blights on our national character, the more convinced I become that the great political error of the Bush Administration is shared in equal parts with its surrogates, advocates, and sympathizers in the Republican Party: they all viewed "liberals" as anti-American enemies of their own particular brand of patriotism, rather than as the only committed defenders of certain bedrock principles of American history and law.  In other words, they misunderestimated (and misunderstood) their principle domestic political rivals.

Savvy observers of politics understand why Barack Obama is seen as a restorative candidate.  It's not all about a botched war or a sick economy; it's also about an administration which has done more harm to our country's character and ideals than any bomb-wielding terrorists ever has.

UPDATE: NYT Book Review.

What Happened Matters

From a speech Bill Moyers gave nineteen years ago yesterday:

In his account of Vienna at the turn of the century, Carl Schorske wrote that "the modern mind has been growing indifferent to history because history, conceived as a continuous nourishing tradition, as become useless to it." Nathan Teitel describes as one of the most disquieting features of American life "the lack of historical continuity and communication between generations. What is happening today, this hour, this minute, seems to be our sole criterion for judgment and action."

What a sad world it is that exists in the present, unaware of the long procession behind us.

Sad, and dangerous, too. It is no accident that Big Brother, in the novel 1984, banishes history to the memory hole where inconvenient facts simply disappear. The power of despotism described by Orwell relies on the police for enforcement, but it rests on an obliteration of the past. O'Brien, the personification of Big Brother, says to Winston Smith, the protagonist: "We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves." And they do. People are made to remember only what they are taught to remember and the content of their memory is changed overnight. The bureaucrats in the Ministry of Truth destroy the records of the past and publish new versions. These in turn are superseded by yet more revisions, until history becomes one long erasure for the convenience of the state.

Why do those in charge go to such lengths to wipe out memory? Because they know the past is indispensable to freedom. People without memory are at the mercy of their rulers because there is nothing against which to measure what they are told today. Winston Smith says, "History has stopped."

I think about our relationship with history whenever someone like Scalia barks "Get over it." Moreover, it's what I think about whenever I encounter someone who predicates an assessment of a way forward with, "However we may have gotten into Iraq…" or "Whatever mistakes were made in the past…" or "Regardless of what happened earlier…". The pundits are fond of ridiculing Obama's "Change" sloganeering by saying that "every election is about Change" or, more significantly, "every election is about the future, not about the past." While there's truth in this view, there's also truth in the view that the past matters. That's what came to mind today while I was watching this:

It's not simply sour grapes or petulant frustration that fuel these kinds of rants; it's also a genuine yearning for Americans to acknowledge that it is a duty of citizenship to hold our government responsible for its own history – and to learn from it.

The Underpants Speech

I believe that "people of faith" have a positive role to play in America. In fact, I think every American has a role to play; that's how democratic societies work. Today we learn that Mitt Romney may have a different view on the subject:

A spokesman for the Mitt Romney campaign is thus far refusing to say whether Romney sees any positive role in America for atheists and other non-believers, after Election Central inquired about the topic yesterday.

[…] the only mentions of non-believers were very much negative. "It is as if they're intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They're wrong," Romney said, being met by applause from the audience.

Personally, I found Atrios' quip subtly apropos:

Really it would just be crazy if anyone tried to start a new religion in America... oh, wait.

Since Romney's goddamn speech on religion there has been a lot of chatter about the separation of church and state and the proper role religious belief should play in electoral politics. It has been enlightening chatter, at least to me. I've learned that my views on the subject are unique; that I am at odds with pretty much everyone in the country. This has made me feel quite "special" (in the pejorative sense of the word).

You see, I think that the Constitution forbids the establishment of a religious test for candidates, but that voters can devise any goddamn test they want. If a citizen wishes to discriminate in the voting booth (e.g. against Catholics, Mormons, the undead, women, zipper-heads or Texans), they're free to do so. This kind of discrimination has given us the government we've known and loved for over 230 years. But this kind of discriminatory "litmus testing" of candidates is the province of the electorate, not of the government. When government officials begin to call any religion (or, oxymoronically, "secular religion") "wrong," we have a problem.

I'm willing to respect Romney and all his underpantied coo-coo colleagues irrespective of whatever kind of goddamn horseshit they believe, just as long as they return the favor. This willingness to tolerate those who are fucking crazy different is what makes pluralistic societies safe. How many people has Romney shut out of this essential – albeit symbolic – reciprocity? Let's see…

According to the CUNY Graduate Center’s “American Religious Identification Survey” preformed in 2001, 14.1% of the American population self-identified as Atheist, Agnostic, or having no religion. I understand that some conservative groups have protested that number because after all, the survey was preformed by a (presumably liberal) college.

But according to the CIA World Factbook, 10% of the American population has no religion. Certainly that’s not the 14.1% of the CUNY study, but it is still a significant number. There are about 300 million Americans, and depending on which estimate you believe there must be between 30 million and 42 million nonbelievers.

Wow. That's a number almost as high as America's uninsured!

I cheerfully invite Mitt Romney to go someplace quiet (Utah?) and pound sand up his ass.

ADDENDUM: Keith's Take.