The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben S. Bernanke, and the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., have thrown their party's theories aside and dived into the financial crisis determined to avoid the mistakes that turned a depression into the Depression. The New York Times chronicles in its business section (here) how the "professor" prevailed against the "banker," the crisis returning us to a valuing of intelligence over savvy, of education over "gut." All the adolescent absolutism and macho aggressiveness of laissez-faire business dealings so beloved by the Republican Party have been shown once again to be neither wise not prudent. I can only hope that people will see that, in a real world, the only things that work for long are "nuanced" and the "complex," awake to history so that we don't repeat it and educated in how to see beyond the end of one's ambition.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Deregulation and Privatization - Terrible Twosome
Can you imagine if the Republicans had gotten their way during the Clinton years and if Social Security had been privatized and was dependent on the very financial institutions now collapsing? And McCain wanted to put your health insurance in the same pocketbook. Sure it sounds good: you make your own choices and have more control. But this is the same rationale my dad made for not wearing a seat belt: he imagined he could throw himself out of the way of the accident, never mind the physics of 2 cars moving at 65 miles per hour. It sounds good, but the laws of physics are not amenable to personal ideas.
Privatization and deregulation are masks for corporate greed. Talk about government taking over health care and the cry against "socialized medicine" goes up and people figure if it's like the old Soviet Union and must be bad. But what are these bailouts but all the bad parts of socialism - no responsibility, taxpayer supported fat cats - without any of the benefits. Unregulated businesses make tons of money taking foolish chances for quick profits knowing they will receive bailouts when their house of cards collapses. The Republican Party, for all its "free market" posturing, only wants government to stay out of the way of its own greedy backers, but when they overreach, they expect we-the-people via our government to bail them out WITH NO STRINGS ATTACHED. No regulation. No personal responsibility. So you and I essentially buy the failed banks' bad debt. Then the Republicans will say we need to let the private sector handle money, and so some corporation will buy the failed banks at pennies on the dollar for what we paid to help them. We eat the loss and the private buyer reaps the rebound profits. This is socializing risk and privatizing profit.
But when individual taxpayers fall on hard times, all the babble is about personal responsibility and letting the market correct itself through foreclosures. There is no bailout for you, the taxpayer, even as you foot the bill for the banks. Not even bankruptcy will clear your debts now or ever.
Banking on Health in a McCain World
You better stay healthy if McCain gets elected. McCain was quoted recently in a business magazine, Contingencies, saying that the way to fix health care was to use the deregulated banking industry as the model.
"Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation." (full article here)
To be fair, this isn't just McCain. It's the whole big business arm of the Republican Party. The Reagan Revolution deregulation and trickle-down tom-foolery have left us all holding the bag.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Palin Quoted Racist
Sara Palin quoted Westbrook Pegler in her acceptance speech, "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity and dignity."
The writer a person quotes approvingly is likely to be a writer that same person reads and enjoys, especially if the quote is not some famous old saw or the words of an emblematic public figure. Like is drawn to and values like. So it says a lot about Sarah Palin, her reading habits and her taste in thinkers when she quotes a writer.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had these words to say about Pegler, the author of that quote.
Fascist writer Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about my father, Robert F. Kennedy, as he contemplated his own run for the presidency in 1965, that "some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies."
It might be worth asking Governor Palin for a tally of the other favorites from her reading list.
Hunting Bulwinkle - Palin's Idea of Sport
Paul Theroux brought me Thoreau on hunting moose today here and I am now ashamed that on hearing about Palin's love of moose hunting, I didn't question the 'sport.' Where is the sport here?
All this talk about moose hunting! It is as though, because of the animal's enormous size and imposing antlers, bringing one down is a heroic feat of marksmanship. Nothing could be further from the truth. As Henry David Thoreau wrote in "The Maine Woods," killing these big, gentle, myopic creatures is more "like going out by night to some woodside pasture and shooting your neighbor's horses."Theroux goes on to make a parallel between hunting style and political style. And when I understand how moose hunting involves no skill or bravery, but just brute force inflicted on something bigger yet peaceful, I fear Palin even more.
Thoreau's descriptions of the moose he saw in Maine are inspired and fanciful. "They made me think of great frightened rabbits," he wrote.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Survey Says...
So many people are writing about how the poll numbers they are seeing cannot be correct. I, too, am weirded out by them and have been trying to figure out how these stats can be true. One of my friends suggests that poll answerers are a self-selecting group, and that folks like my friends or like me do not answer them. So today, I took my first poll in over 10 years.
The last poll I took was a push-poll in Seattle, a "poll" designed to promote a big pro-big-business renovation project. I was so angry at the sly, slanted questions that I wouldn't finish the poll and swore never to take one again. But I see how polls are used to drive the public opinion and news coverage, and so, like voting, I want to make sure my voice and the voices of people like me are included in the data.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Palin Budget Cutting-Folks-Off-At-The-Knees and Giving Herself the Keys to the Chevy
As reported in the New York Times, Palin's style of budget cutting has all the empathy of a Mafia don.
The mayor quickly fired the town’s museum director, John Cooper. Later, she sent an aide to the museum to talk to the three remaining employees. “He told us they only wanted two,” recalled Esther West, one of the three, “and we had to pick who was going to be laid off.” The three quit as one.Budget problem solved.
But Slashin' Sara doesn't only cut costs. When it's important, she finds the funds for vital equipment like a new white Chevy Suburban for her own use.
Ms. Palin ordered city employees not to talk to the press. And she used city money to buy a white Suburban for the mayor’s use — employees sarcastically called it the mayor-mobile.
You have to admire such moxie. But you don't have to vote for it.
Palin's Call to Embrace the Dark Side of Our Nature
Deepak Chopra wrote a column called Obama and the Palin Effect that explains the appeal of Palin. Instead of looking at the facts of the candidates or the role of the press, he looks at the unconscious emotional dynamics at play in the electorate. The press may be promoting the idea that the McCain Republican campaign is once again outfoxing the Democratic machine, but the real culprit is found in the American psyche and how people may wish for change in the abstract while being terrified about losing the little they have should change really happen. It is the call for change that is triggering this fear; the Republicans are simply fanning the flames and capitalizing on it.
In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision.Here lies the the key Bill Clinton's, and to a lesser degree, Hillary Clinton's success. They did not just inspire people to their cause; they simultaneously soothed the fears that their call for change evoked. Folksy and friendly, they reassured the populace that the changes that were coming would not ask anything of them and give everything to them.
Look at what she stands for:
--Small town values -- a denial of America's global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.
--Ignorance of world affairs -- a repudiation of the need to repair America's image abroad.
--Family values -- a code for walling out anybody who makes a claim for social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don't need to be heeded.
--Rigid stands on guns and abortion -- a scornful repudiation that these issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.
--Patriotism -- the usual fallback in a failed war.
--"Reform" -- an italicized term, since in addition to cleaning out corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who doesn't fit your ideology.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Palin Poor Judgement and Abuse of Power Evidence Keeps Comin'
Todd Palin Subpoenaed in Troopergate
Palin, cast at last week's Republican National Convention as a supportive husband, oil rig worker and championship snowmachine racer, has emerged in the days since as also a powerful figure in his wife's administration. Despite holding no government position, he attends official meetings and is copied on e-mails concerning state business. (italics mine)
Whatever the outcome of the Troopergate investigation, the fact that a governor gives an unelected spouse surrogate power in running the government reveals a Mafia mentality management style. How would you feel having your government job overseen not only by your boss but the boss' husband? I remember the public outcry over Hillary being in charge of the health care task force under Clinton which was at least above board and in her area of expertise. But this kind of shadow power given to family members in government is just creepy.
Saturday, September 06, 2008
When Elephants Forget
The elephant and the donkey. Republican and Democrat. Elephants are supposed to remember. Remember when you opposed integration - of the military, of baseball, of schools? You were angry and resentful. Remember that? All the liberals you hated and now you have to admit, it was the right thing to do.
Remember when you said going after Osama bin Laden was a Clinton ploy to draw attention away from the Monica Lewinsky scandal? How you spent our national will on an impeachment instead of stopping a terrorist? The terrorist who masterminded 9/11? Do you feel at all responsible? Clearly not, as you still insist your party keeps us safe where we Democrats would not.
Time and again, you sneer and gleefully block the liberal bogeyman, and end up harming this country while you moan about how much you love America. And time and again, when the liberals do get in power, yes, they bring about change that you only later admit was fair, but they also bring higher net paychecks to your bank account, lower taxes on working people, and general prosperity for the country. Always.
Maybe we should trade symbols. You take the donkey. You sure seem stubborn enough. You ignored the hated liberals and gave Bush a blank check and now you won't admit you prefer seeing American young men and women kill and die or come home broken by a criminal war than admit it was criminal, that you fell for his lies because because you wanted to. You probably still deny it. But I promise you, like an elephant, I will remember.
Friday, September 05, 2008
Palin's Gives America the Finger
My mother told me long ago, "when you point a finger at someone else, you are pointing three back at yourself." The Republican playbook runs the 'finger-pointing, name-calling' game and wins with it time and again. The names work for the simple reason that there is truth behind them. Not the truth of the accusation. The truth is in the accuser.
And so it is that the shockingly joyful response to Sarah Palin's snide speech reveals the flaws of the party members and un-self aware independents who cheer her. Palin points a finger for them, and they join in enthusiastically, because they are three times more guilty than the Democrats of every single accusation she makes. Yet the jiu-jitsu of projection allows them to believe they are happily innocent in their righteous hatred of their enemies.
I don't blame Sarah Palin. I blame every Republican and Independent who votes for people like her. They are the ones who refuse to take the schoolyard truth from their own hands and see where most of the fingers are pointing.
When my niece was a toddler, if you asked her who licked the frosting off the cake or drew with crayons on the wall, she would reply, "I can't know that." My niece grew up and now takes responsibility for her errors, even the ones made in good faith. She has become an adult. The Palin cheering crowds are emotional toddlers willing trade their country and mine for their own illusion of innocence.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Obama Tagging
Obama’s opponents are trying to tag him like a gang in the ghetto of American political speech. I’d like to see the candidate boldly incorporate the tags, redefining them and making them part of his platform. If people see this divisive language being defused and de-clawed, they will begin to have hope again for the future of American politics, and isn’t that what his campaign is all about? Here is one tag I’d like to see him embrace.
He will raise taxes. Two-thirds of all corporations paid no taxes last year. Your darn right, we need to raise taxes. Make no mistake. Corporations use the benefits from taxes more than individuals. It is trucks that eat up roads, not cars, and taxes are needed to build heavy-duty highways and to keep them in repair. Corporations use a disproportionate amount of the national infrastructure. Their massive requirements for energy and water and waste management depend on massive public utilities networks. Schools educate their workers for them. They damage the environment and then the public needs to clean up. It’s time they started paying for what they use instead of getting a free ride on the back of the average American worker.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
The Cult Vs. the Culture of Life
Cult - a closed group or religious sect devoted excessively to one idea or person; an unothodox or false religion
Culture - growing, cultivated organisms or social community; refinement
A cult is narrowing and hierarchical. A culture is expanding and communal.
Cults point the finger outward and find everyone else evil and advise either isolation or evangelism to cleanse it. Cultures hand everyone some seeds and a hoe and sends them out to the garden together.
Cults are ultimately about death. Cultures are about life.
Evangelical Christianity is a cult. Liberalism is a culture.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
An Election of Hoaxes
A flock of birds. A herd of cows. A school of fish. An exaltation of larks. Many nouns in English have another, special word to designate a grouping. In the run up to the elections, I have been listening to the reports being circulated about the candidates and noticing they resemble nothing so much as those emails friends forward with capital letters and exclamation points, full of dire warnings or outraged sensibilities that turn out to be pure hokum. The aggregate of the missives is what I propose we call “an election of hoaxes.”
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Our Expensive Third-World-Quality Health Care System
In San Francisco for the BlogHer Conference last weekend, I met a young woman who had just arrived from Canada to study medicine at Stanford. Her mother is a physician in Canada and her mother’s associates had encouraged her to study in the US because, "You’ll see a lot of crazy things there.” I thought she meant culturally, but no. Apparently, doctors see many diseases in far more advanced stages here than in Canada where public medicine means lots of preventive care and diseases are often caught early. The US health system provides a clinical laboratory where disease is allowed to wreak its damage on humans unchecked and untreated. People are more afraid of the economic consequences of disease than the physical ones, and so they wait to go to the doctor until they cannot bear it any more.
I remember reading stories from my childhood and teens of American doctors going around to third world countries to help the sick. They described with great pity the advanced stages of diseases they would find in those places. I was shocked that people should suffer long and lingering deaths from diseases we had cured or could cure if caught soon enough. When I traveled in my college days, I was warned off with horror stories from going to doctors or dentists in Europe. The evidence of my friends' actual experiences confirmed that the United States had the best medical treatment in the world and I was grateful for it.
That idea may be fixed in my brain but it is simply no longer true. We rank 37th in the world, right after Costa Rica and just ahead of Slovenia when it comes to the quality of oour health care. When I look at my life and how I use the health care system, I understand. I have health insurance that only covers one checkup a year and then doesn’t kick in again until after I have spent $5000 each benefit year. This is the level of care that I can afford. Chronic or serious illness would not only limit my ability to work and thus reduce my income, my deductible amount would mean that the first $5000 I earned every year would go for doctor bills. I cannot afford to get sick.
Earlier this year I went to a doctor for palpitations. When I asked the cardiologist to discuss how to investigate the problem with an eye to cost because I had such a high deductible, he dismissed my request, saying, “That was your choice.” To him, my lower coverage was a choice to be like the grasshopper and not the ant in the Aesop fable. He must have figured I had fiddled instead of saving, coming as he does from an income bracket with excess income where saving is an option.
It turned out that my problem was no health risk and I would just have to live with thepalpitations. I was upset at having to spend so much money on doctors and tests to find out it was nothing. Yes, I know it is important to know for sure, which is why I went. But now I sit here trying to decide on whether I should have other preventive tests that doctors recommend for women my age: mammogram and colonoscopy. I’m not sure I can afford them. What would be the harm if I waited another year? Or two.
You might ask why taxes should pay for these tests if I am not willing to do it on my own. I am willing to pay several hundred dollars a month for health insurance so that if I find I have a serious problem, I will not find myself in the pitiable place of those childhood third-world ghosts I carry around in my mind. If and when that happens, the insurance will have to pay much, much more if it is discovered later rather than sooner, but the financial calculus for me does not encourage me to discover it earlier. Once I have a serious health problem, I am looking at financial ruin on top of ruined health. So I delay. I tell myself I should go but never get around to scheduling the tests. Time passes.
Yes I have my head in the sand. The cardiologist was wrong. I am not a grasshopper. I am an ostrich. I am an American.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
The Softball Ex-Press
The blogosphere and supporters of Barack Obama have been railing over the mild-mannered treatment John McCain has received from the main stream media. The examples of glossing over his inconsistencies, mistakes and downright lies are so numerous, the voices pointing them out sound like broken records in their call for more balanced reporting. There are several reasons, however, why this gentle treatment makes sense, though none of them are about truth or the interests of the body politic. They are all about the nature of the news in the post-journalism era and the human preference for equally matched opponents.
The MSM is fighting for its life. The advertiser-driven model that pays for news wants eyeballs on the page. The big problem in covering McCain in the news is that nobody really cares about him. Obama is the story. Obama gets the eyeballs glued to the TV so that the advertisers can market their razor blades or deodorant. It has nothing to do with fairness. Obama is a celebrity, and every detail of his day will be picked apart endlessly by a ratings-driven broadcast news system (thanks to Reagan) hosted predominantly by spokesmodels instead of reporters. (Who but a bevy of spokesmodels would think that photoshopping a competitors face would be a legitimate attack against their reporting as was done at Fox News this week?) Since ratings are all, the ‘news’ must find or manufacture controversy and excitement in the subjects of interest to its viewers. And the only political subject of interest is Obama.
But it seems the media are actually bending backward to try and frame McCain’s failings and gaffe’s in a positive light. McCain’s non-joke that exporting cigarettes to Iran would have the benefit of killing our enemies was headlined by the Associated Press as a moment of fun spousal play when Cindy McCain poked hubby in the back for his comment. Or how about the headline that shows McCain leading Obama among the all-important voting bloc of pet-owners. This goes beyond picking apart Obama. It seems the MSM is actually supporting McCain by white-washing his image for him.
The election year ratings are at the core of this artificial 'balancing' of the candidates. If only one candidate is likely to be elected, if there's no real contest, then there's no news. Some semblance of a competition has to be maintained if coverage of the election is going to draw enough viewers and readers to keep news departments afloat. That presidential press corps is expensive. What's the point of spending all that money if the race is over. People will not watch a sport if the outcome is known beforehand. The Yankees playing my office baseball team would not draw much in the way of fans. After the 217th home run by the Yanks in the first inning, who would keep watching. Golf lets people of unequal skill play each other. Think of the MSM bias as being McCain's high handicap score. The media is actually raising McCain and trying to lower Obama so that the American people will be uncertain of the outcome and tune in.
Some argue that this is a betrayal of the protections offered the Fourth Estate. News should be impartial and serve the public interest. And the public needs to know just how awful McCain is. These folks are looking at the McCain campaign as a fair fight and want the blows by each side to be covered evenly. But let's face it; on a human level, it's not a fair match. No one wants to see the shame of an old man brought to face his decrepit and degenerated state. The more awful McCain is, the more I see a pathetic old man. And hitting a weak man when he’s down elicits a reaction against the messenger. The news tries to be a happy place despite the litany of death and destruction, and rubbing grampa’s nose in the mess he’s making smacks of senior abuse. They can’t admit it because he is the presumptive Republican nominee, so they avoid noticing his decline and keep us all focused on the glory that he enjoyed in his prime.
Such is the softball game played by the press with the McCain campaign. It is not a love affair with him and his maverick image. It is a self-serving posture of neutrality with all the trappings of a kangaroo-court where the verdict has been decided beforehand: the two Presidential Candidates are locked in an even battle for the White House. Details at 11.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Vampire Republicans
Vampires - they suck your blood, infect you with their curse of bloodlust, and have no reflection that is the mark of soullessness. They might be creatures of fantasy in the literal sense, but metaphorically speaking, they are all around us making pronouncements on the television, strolling the halls of power, and debasing their enemies real and perceived in interrogation rooms around the world.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the Republican Party is worried about losing big in the coming Senate races. Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, lists a host of problems facing candidates from his party. These are all problems of what teachers would call 'plot' and not 'character.' Bad things have happened to the party. Nowhere is there an examination of whether the party's mindset and values has any responsibility for the disastrous situation.
It is not schadenfreude that makes me want to see them grovel, wear hair shirts, and climb the steps of the Capitol on their knees. Unless they see that they committed the sin of pride, dismissing with contempt their opponents on legislation and political action simply because they held all the reins, they are going to continue to support policies harmful to the body politic. Now that they see their control over the reins slipping, they moan about bipartisanship. Without acknowledgement of their fundamental failure to do the right thing - share the power when they had it all - their bipartisanship is a sham.
Amends need to be made. I know it is an election year, but the Republicans must do for their nation what Hillary has done for her party. She still believes she is the better candidate, that Barack cannot win, and if he does, his policies will sometimes take us in the wrong direction. But she has put on a smile and is supporting him absolutely.
After 9/11 the Democrats did that for the President and his party. Sometimes they held their noses and voted with the majority trusting that the other side also had the nation's best interests at heart. Republicans now trying to blame the President for all the failings of his administration look in the mirror of history and do not see themselves at all. Like vampires, they sucked out much of the wealth and national standing in the world gained during the Clinton years and now are wringing their hands wondering what went wrong. They look in the mirror and do not see their own faces. Like the vampires, they have lost their soul.
If the Republican in the Senate want to salvage some of this next election, they have to make amends to redeem their souls. Not just apologize, but support the Democrats on issues important to them as a way of admitting that the elephant in the room is not always right. The reality of this country right now shows that their policies were often wrong-headed. How can we trust giving them the means to govern again unless they can demonstrate that they have eyes to take a good look at themselves in the mirror in the light of day?
Friday, April 04, 2008
Family Squabbles
The death of the head of a large family with a substantial estate reveals, in the power struggle that ensues, all of the unhealed wounds and undeveloped characters of the family members remaining. Sometimes, the family members' inability to reconcile with one another means that the inheritance will be squandered in the fighting with little or no benefit ever passing on to those who grabbed so fiercely for it. In the end, everyone loses but the lawyers.
Substitute "the Republicans" for the dying person and "Democrats" for the inheritors and as for the estate, that would be the States. And while Uncle Elephant may not be quite dead yet, the brutality with which the family is grabbing at the chance to be the executor of the will of the People, namely President, has convinced me that a Democratic Congress and Administration will be paralyzed with infighting once in the power.
Look at the issue of what to do with the 'delegates' from Michigan and Florida. At a recent party fundraiser in NYC, several major donors got into it with Howard Dean for not providing leadership on this issue. All sides have a sound-bite opinion about the right thing to do which curiously matches the decision that would most benefit them. It may very well be that the Bentley (or Air Force One) was promised to both claimants and sure, she did have the use of the Bentley on loan for years, and yes, he has never driven a stick shift before, but that is not the issue. The issue is that the sides are lining up, and each side is identified with only one outcome or else. Any 'leadership' in the 'wrong' direction yields escalations of rhetoric and more damage done.
I also look at how the Democrats, now in charge of both chambers of Congress, have been unable to use that majority to counteract the worst excesses of the current Administration. The Senate margin may be slim, but the Republicans passed miserably partisan proposals with the same slim margin. Yet from Mukasey confirmation to the recent gutting of the mortgage bailout of every Democratic initiative that might have actually helped for a watered-down bill that came out of committee was watered-down and only really had provisions to help builders and lenders and only a nod for the actual people in distress. Now the Democrats say they need a larger margin, but that will only up the stakes, not change the SOP. Look at the way the family is feuding in the election and you would feel justified in discounting the Democrats in the manner of the worst cliches of right-wing talk radio.
Some say the party will come together once the nominee has been chosen. I don't see it. But having lived in a family and observed the volcanic consequences of spiraling power struggles among those who know and love one another best, I do not see this settling sweetly into greeting card warmth any time this year or next. The time is past for the canditates to vie for the job based on their own statements about themselves and their own record of actions and initiatives.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Maintaining Innocence
Thinking about the current political and social polarity in America as a fight for innocence, or more precisely for a veil of innocence, modulates many of the oppositional motifs into comprehensible themes. What I mean by the "veil of innocence" is a blanket denial of any guilt or responsibility for complex social phenomena in which one plays a part, large or miniscule, even to the point of denying responsibility for one's own feelings of discomfort. This allows an individual to be free of the need to think or act in a way that might relieve the outer problem in any sustained way. A donation to the Katrina relief fund and they return to their carapace content that Americans are generous and America is doing all it can for New Orleans. It is sacrificing reality for inner harmony. When people are willing to sacrifice others to maintain their self-image, this is the definition of evil. (Scott Peck, The People of the Lie)
Looking at the actions of our government and at all the books written about why Americans vote against their self-interests, one sees a larger self-interest in the average person's investment in his or her own innocence of all the wrongs that swirl about in this Great Experiment called the United States. "I am not prejudiced" or "I am not greedy" or "I am not hypocritical" are, for most people, basic tenets of their lives. When the country has institutionalized prejudice, rewards greed and hypocricy, the "we the people" are the people who want to think well of themselves. They do not want the bad news. Great leaders take social wrongs and get us to mobilize from the position that " we are a good people who do the right thing" allowing us to think well of ourselves as we address the problem. Tyrants mobilize their people by embodying and projecting an absolute innocence that a populace in difficult times thankfully embraces and then accumulating power and wealth dishonestly while the masses, who have made their Devil's bargain for absolute innocence, cannot afford to let themselves see the evil in their leaders for fear of taking back their old guilt, along with the pile of new responsibilities their abdication to the tyrant permitted.
Thus Clinton was almost impeached, not for actions inimical to the Constitution, but for actions that caused most people to abandon their association with his innocence. Bush, although directly attacking the Constitution, has so far survived assaults on the co-dependence of innocence that binds his constituency to him. Caught red-handed time and again, he stonewalls - as Clinton did. If the equivalent of the blue dress is found, I believe the rejection will be just as absolute.
Other social trends, such as the anti-intellectualism of Christian Coalition and the anger at liberals, if seen in the light of innocence, is about another veil, the veil of necessity. If a person derives his or her innocence from an unquestioning faith in the Church, then unquestioning faith becomes a prerequisite for innocence. Thus the cost of unquestioning faith goes unremarked. But a person without such faith who claims the same level of innocence is anathema, because the ever greater cost of unquestioning suddenly becomes visible and intolerable. The unbearable is thrown off on the 'other' and blissful innocence returns.
The dangers of a profit-driven press and educational system becomes evident. Certain institutions are all about un-veiling, and the more invested a population is in veiling itself from its own existential responsibilities, the more the press and the schools will be limited. In Kansas, is not the institutions of government that seek to modulate Science with Faith, but the citizenry itself that can't let itself know anything objecting for fear of knowing terrible truths about itself.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
The End of Marriage
The nomination of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court may please the far right, who see themselves as holding the line on morality in society, but the short-sighted victory may have exactly the opposite effect. Alito believes a husband has dominion over his wife and that an abortion should require his permission, whether or not it is his child. If such a practice were put in place, my solution would be simple: don't get married. Live together.
Marriage has to give equal benefits to each partner or it is not a partnership, it is ownership. Would the wife have to be consulted before the mistress could abort? Can you imagine a fully responsible adult having to go before a judge and PROVE that the spouse would beat her if he found out she was pregnant before being given permission by the judge to abort? And what if the judge said no? Can you imagine how you would feel after humiliating yourself before the court to be sternly and parentally sent back to your husband? These personal issues should be outside the domain of government.
Marriage is part of the legal system because it is seen not just as a personal relationship or a sprititual relationship. It carries property rights with it. And the history of those property rights are from the woman to the man. Only in my lifetime have women had the right to credit in their own names without the signature of a man - any man. Perhaps the real reason the conservatives are against gay marriage is that they see that a marriage between two people of the same sex would destroy the last vestige of this inequality at the root of marriage. There will no longer be an a priori master of the house.
