Intellectual dishonesty

Here is Chris Bowers' (MyDD :: Trying To Tie This All Together...) plaintive appeal to be taken seriously, now that one of the adults, er we mean "major candidates" has echoed his personal stance on Iraq:

Bill Richardson appears to be the first major candidate to articulate my personal stance on Iraq. It was sweet for a candidate to not only state that he was for full withdrawal, but to also, you know, actually propose total withdrawal in policy terms. I was excited about this, because I have regularly seen my position dismissed as naïve, not serious, and a bunch of other patronizing terms. However, with Bill Richardson making the argument, this position can't be brushed off as "not serious" or "naïve" anymore without belying [sic] obvious intellectual dishonesty on the part of the person making the dismissal.

He probably means "betray" not "bely". But more importantly, he should mean "Kucinich" when he writes "major candidate", not "Richardson". Such a correction would be intellectually honest and serious. To expect the correction would of course be naive on our part.

Copyright blues

Left Itch readers are not the most well read -- how could they be if their time is spent reading this blog? It is entirely feasible therefore that they are unaware over the comic skirmish that has erupted over a YouTube video by an ex-Obama advertising hack who borrowed a bit from an Apple ad which uses Orwellian imagery to present Apple as an alternative to mindless drone alternatives. The ex-Obama hack's twist was to use the Apple ad to poke fun at Hillary.



That Orwell's work is at the center of this is appropriate at each of the multiple iterations of outrage. First that a corporation could use such an image without irony is itself a reflection of the mindlessness. Second that someone like Obama, a rherorical hoodwinker, could be (again without irony) offered as an alternative to the "system" (indeed ably represented by Hillary). Third that the owners of the copyrights of the Orwell work would be outraged by all this appropriation (not for purist reasons, but because it dilutes their cash cow). And finally in the latest twist, that the "netroots" would get hyper-righteous about it all (MyDD :: 1984 Copyright Holder Threaten 1984 Hillary Ad). Says Matt Stoller:

Via Boingboing, I'm watching this power grab by copyright lunatics.

"Power grab"! "Copyright lunatics"! The sort of invective usually reserved for principled leftists like Kucinich. Rhetoric to match their idol indeed! And if he can get away with false populism while raising $25 million, they should be permitted to eat the system and have it too.

A long way from the Second International

The "progressives" are not getting anywhere, and there is much hand-wringing among the netrootsarati. Cries abound for a new paradigm to save and rejuvenate liberalism and leftism. And amazingly answers are found. And in places and terms that would leave an outdated leftist or humanist scratching her head -- for the solution, my dear comrades, lies in that word that we learned in the 80s: "entrepreneurship". We at the left itch are poor satirists, but fortunately the original material (MyDD :: How liberal entrepreneurship can help solve the progressive money problem) leaves no need for such explication:

Support entrepreneurs. The New Progressive Coalition, which I profiled several months ago (see this summary of the NPC), is the clearest example of supporting liberal entrepreneurs I have yet seen. NPC helps connects builders of progressive organizations with potential funders, and also provides organizations with practical tips and advice. This is a very useful organization, but its membership fees are rather high and tend to lock out a lot of people who can provide a little bit of help. (On the other hand, the fees are fairly low for anyone who's serious about organization building, considering the myriad other costs involved in such a venture.)

Unfortunately, there are not many other resources available to liberal entrepreneurs. Sure, there are plenty of resources for people who run non-profits, and there are a handful of resources available to people who run grassroots political organizations. But those resources are insufficient, because they just don't cover the kind of organizations liberal entrepreneurs might want to run. Where are the resources to support a for-profit company which provides consulting to candidates to help them reach religious liberals? As you may have guessed by now, this sort of problem is exactly what I'm looking to solve.

At a time when union membership continues to decline and the few remaining members vote against their own class interests, what better strategy than to take on the method, or at least the language, of the masters? This, I believe, is what our young friends in the "netroots" call a "framing" issue. This may be a brilliant attempt at frame inversion?

Smear fear

Demonstrating the maxim that the bully is at heart a coward, Chris Bowers speaks of his fear of popular GOP candidates for president (MyDD :: Direct Democracy for People-Powered Politics):

John McCain and Rudy Giuliani remain two idols of the establishment media and punditry elite, and the Republican Noise Machine is still better at smearing Dems than we are at counterattacks.

The man is too modest! MyDD (and its fellow netrooters) are as good, if not better, better at smearing Dems than the Republican Noise Machine. Or has it slipped their collective memory that Kucinich is a Democrat?



Setting aside the humor of it, the netroots crowd are not well-suited for the bullying they indulge in occasionally. Unfortunately, their ignorance of their destructive attitude is as dangerous as their left-baiting would be if it was intentional.

Uncivil war on Lieberman

The rodent from Connecticut deserves every bit of misinterpretation thrown at him, so we note the below (Think Progress » Lieberman: There Is No Civil War In Iraq (But Even If There Is, We Should Stay) mostly in jest:

Lieberman claimed the “facts” suggest Iraq is not in a civil war. But seconds before, he said, “Why do proponents of withdrawal from Iraq keep insisting that [our] American troops shouldn’t be policing a civil war?”

Lieberman, contrary to what Think Progress is implying, is not necessarily contradicting himself. It is possible that he is right that Iraq is not a civil war (perhaps in Lieberverse) and also right that we should police it if it turns into one.

Rinse and repeat

Once again the "gradualist" hard-nosed "netroots" -- the very youngsters who played up Obama while ridiculing Kucinich -- learn a vital lesson about politicians. They are unhappy (Daily Kos: Obama caves to Bush) with their idol Obama's take on Iraq war funding:

Obama just surrendered to Bush.

Well maybe no lesson learned after all. Obama did not "just" surrender to Bush. He just made it clear to the few impressionable followers he has that he is not much different from Bush. We await the inevitable bone throwing and reconciliation. Or perhaps a new netroots candidate? A greater gradualist to save the day! Joseph Biden?

Intellectually speaking...

Here are two startling ideas that you have probably not hear before:

• There is a strong anti-intellectual streak running through the American collective psyche.



• Republicans/Conservatives benefit from this tendency.

But then we have Matt Stoller announcing (MyDD :: Needed: A Line in the Sand on Iraq) the demise of the conservatism, as an intellectual brand:

Obama, who is more and more staking out progressive territory (not boldly, but he is going there), is appealing to a group of independent voters that are increasingly sympathetic to liberalism. This makes sense. Conservatism has died, intellectually speaking. After watching New Orleans in tatters, Iraq in flames, and a government engulfed in corruption, the Republican brand is gone. And yet the Democratic brand, while slightly improved, is not sparkling with dynamism.

What are we to make of these claims? Conservatism (in its personification as the Republican Party) suffered an electoral defeat. Is this an intellectual defeat or a political one? If the 2006 election results were indeed a signal that government is a necessary and positive element in societal progress, then it would follow that the conservative demonizing of it has finally been challenged and rejected. This is however, at best an optimistic conclusion. It is far more parsimonious to conclude that the people, especially independents, did not intend any sort of ideological message in their recent choice, but merely their mild discontent with the most excessive acts of the Bush administration (and the GOP). A quick glance at PollingReports will assuage any worries the right might entertain that "independents" are anything more than those who sit in the middle of an already right-centered narrow range of differences between Democrats and Republicans.



The truth (at least the more justifiable version of it) is that the Democratic Party and liberalism have been intellectually dead for a few decades now. While the party continues to shuffle the deck chairs of populism, fickle labor support and a Dixiecrat legacy, the party faithful and their commanders are divided between DLC triangulators and "netroots" tacticians. If indeed there is an anti-intellectual streak running through the populace, it should be no suprise, in such an atmosphere of retreat from principles. The liberals have nothing to offer. Intellectually speaking.

Screaming progress

One might as well say that in the land of the blind, the few one-eyed humans are unseen. So we have the constant replay of ahistorical analysis such as the below offering a generalization from the personal (Rudy Giuliani: "I Disagree with Myself on Some Days." | The Huffington Post):

It's often been said that Rudy Giuliani was one of the heroes of 9/11. Fine. I, too, joined the rest of the country in raising Giuliani on our collective shoulders in the days after 9/11. However, I've grown increasingly uncomfortable with the "Rudy-the-Hero" industry ever since. And here's why: When Mayor Giuliani remained in downtown Manhattan after the first tower fell, when he ran toward the fire, instead of away from it, when he ran toward the victims, when he embraced the city in the hours, days, and weeks following that tragic day, did he go beyond the call of duty? Or is that kind of leadership actually, simply, the call of duty?



We seem to be so accustomed to our politicians running away from danger, so used to our elected officials following polls instead their hearts and minds, that we fall all over ourselves the minute one of them does what we hope and vote for, the minute one of our leaders actually leads. On 9/11, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani did a stunning job as a leader on a day that we were screaming for one. But, we're still screaming for one.

Seitzman's "we" would be so much more comforting if it extended to instances other than when he wants us to share responsibility for his error. Fortunately, Seitzman is surrounded by similar reformed leftists that he can remain blissfully unaware of the marginal left that has known the fraud that was Guiliani and the silliness of the idea that someone barely performing his job is a "hero".



We, the marginal left that is, shall now patiently await Seitzman's realization, no doubt upcoming in a year or two, that on 9/11 Giuliani did no "stunning job" but instead significantly worsened the situation. We, the marginal left that is, are not screaming for leaders. We would settle for not having all you newly reformed leftists not scream at our leaders. You know, like you used to when you were centrists, moderates, conservatives, whatever!

Big fat smear

In keeping with their slick approach to left activism, the Net Turks spend a lot of their e-life worrying about the money. Who raised what, whom did they give it to... that sort of thing. So Kos tallies up what Democratic incumbents gave to the DSCC (Daily Kos: Senate spending, 2006) and figures, while at it, why not take a pot shot at Kucinich, only to realize that his haste got the better of him:

To round out the numbers for the presidentials, Obama gave a paltry $150K, Biden $200K, Dodd $200K, and Kucinich a big fat $0. [Update]: My bad -- I missed that Kucinich gave $125K.

Meet the Old Dems

The centrist left ("progressives") that is the vanguard of the current Internet-based activism is no braver than when raining insults on those to their left. Mimicking their own treatment by the right, they resort to smear and false analysis when confronted by a more principled position. One of their magical beliefs is the idea that the Democrats (especially the new ones, the ones they supported) are not only a significant change in the right direction, but are the only vehicle for such a change. Matt Taibbi (AlterNet: Unhinged Republicans Can't Even Get Their Insults Straight) provides a bit of Dem history on Alternet that will no doubt fail to penetrate the echo chamber:

In the two years of the 109th congress, the Republicans allowed only one completely open rule. This was a reflection of a decades-long general evolution in congressional procedure away from bipartisanship and in the direction of unilateralism. The trend really began with the Democrats -- in 1977, when the Democrats were the majority party, eighty-five percent of all bills went to the floor as open rules. By 1994, when the Democrats were kicked out of power, that number had dropped to thirty percent. Particularly during the Reagan years, congressional Democrats had turned the House floor into something of a bully pulpit.

Con science

A common error among English speakers is to confuse the words "conscious" and "conscience". Allan Hunt Badiner attempts not mere confusion, but complete indoctrination of the unconscious, on AlterNet (AlterNet: Can Barack Obama Become President?), in supporting Obama, a man who has excelled more at making a science out of conning, than exhibited a conscience. Writes Badiner:

With the campaign's starting gun only just fired, Obama is already perceived as a powerful threat to Hillary Clinton's well-funded political juggernaut and John Edwards' carefully planned strategies, and has emerged as the presumptive speaker for the conscience of the country in the 2008 presidential sweepstakes.



Many are excited just to be passionate again about a presidential campaign, even if it turns out be the classic brief dance of an underdog.

While Obama employs his silvery tongue to con the masses, Badiner resorts to the simpler right-wing tactic of brazen assertion: offer a falsehood boldly without attempting substantiation, in the hope that it will then be perceived as patently true. So we have Edwards' using a "planned strategy" while Obama speaks from the heart and to the conscience. Thus a leap of truth is accomplished over the trivial facts of Obama's recent pandering to the AIPAC, his vapid "bipartisan" rhetoric (why be partisans of truth and progress?). And if you bought that bit and continued, then surely you will be able to ingest, without choking, the notion that Obama (or his campaign) is an underdog. The underdog who, according to Badiner raised $1.3 million, not from the grassroots but:

Even sitting presidents can't always raise the $1.3 million taken in by the Obama campaign during a single fundraising event in Los Angeles on Feb. 20 sponsored by Hollywood moguls Steven Spielberg, Jeff Katzenberg and David Geffen.

And if one right-wing technique works, why not try another highly successful one? Racist and class stereotypes:

For many, Sen. Obama represents a modern and positive image of blackness. He is a worldly, well-educated man married to a well-educated professional black woman.

A masterstroke of a simultaneous insult to black and poor people, and yet another simple outrageous claim: that the non-representative Obama is the best representative of his group; and if they do not do well in a match-up against him, well it's their "image" that is to blame. We suppose. And as the use of right-wing technique might intimate, the climax, the final attack, that all this is preparing the reader for is an attack not on conservatives and religious nuts (the latter criticism could apply to Obama after all), but "intractable liberals":

A sizable percentage of the progressive sector may not be happy with any candidate who does not agree with them on every issue. They have already shown a surprising lack of concern for the political and practical consequences of their inflexibility. The following that Dennis Kucinich, and Ralph Nader enjoyed are cases in point. Intractable liberal voters are like window shoppers who feel most comfortable going home empty-handed and later whining that they couldn't find something they liked. They may have been as responsible for reelecting Bush as his hard-core conservative base.

Has America under George W. Bush dropped into an abyss of moral and economic bankruptcy? Sadly, this is what our nation now represents to the rest of the world. Perhaps the most groundbreaking aspect of an Obama presidency would be the message it sends globally: The post-Bush era of American governance has arrived.

For someone interested purely in effect issues (e.g: Iraq War) it might be unintelligible that a sizable percentage of progressives may not be happy with a candidate who does not agree with fundamental progressive principles. So it is these "intractable liberals", who support Nader and Kucinich, who are to blame for the poor showing of Gore and Kerry. This despite the lack of a Nader "threat" in 2004 and the simple fact that Kucinich is a candidate for the Democratic primaries, not the presidential election.

The "intractable liberals", that Badiner whines about, that support Nader and Kucinich are anything but "window-shoppers" or "whiners". Both leaders and a large part of their supporters have worked hard and without egregious compromises to create and sustain an unlikely and impossible movement. They were in the front-lines of the protest against the Iraq war (as a matter of principle) while the "tractable" liberals where deriding such protest or actively supporting the war. They (principled leftists) are aware of the difficulties of furthering their agenda, and that even the smallest successes are hard won. Those are the lessons learned from the history of left activism. They are in it for the long run, not "to win it" as Badiner and his kind are. If Badiner is looking for examples of "whining", he needs no more than a mirror -- as the passage above demonstrates: "Wah-wah ... intractable liberals are so inflexible. They won't let my posterboy win".

Badiner also adopts the fine tradition of the American right in considering the rest of the world a bunch of fools, or perhaps he presumes that they are no smarter than he is, and might choose to drink the Obama Kool Aid. Surely Palestinians will celebrate the coming humanism of American action after Obama's coronation, based on his stirring speech at the AIPAC?

Churchill, Bush and Memory

Offering (for substantiation?) pictures of Churchill (who looks simultaneously constipated and impatiently in wait for his turn at the loo) and our boy Dubya, Shakespeare's Sister offers a link (Shakespeare's Sister: Smackdown) to a Carpetbagger Report post mocking young George for comparing himself to Winston Churchill. One supposes that the photograph of the constipated Churchill is intended to recall the mythical nature of the man, if at all white people need further reassurance of his towering status in their collective memory. If 9/11 is the event around which modern mythology is built (an immediate example is the "leadership" of "America's Mayor" Giuliani, a myth that this very "netroots" is unwilling to adopt), World War II is the equivalent for the recently aware -- those who are obsessed with making history than learning it.

The less fortunate who had to live that history (much as their modern contemporaries of "Giuliani Time") might remember a different man. And what they recall might substantiate Dubya's fantasy, albeit in an unflattering light. The similarities between the man who held that one should feel no queasiness in gassing "uncivilised tribes" (Iraq) and the fool who went back there looking for some (chemical weapons) can be summarized by that one nation-destroying adventure. But why stop? John Lukacs (Boston Globe) introduces us to Churchill thus (while still subscribing to the myth of the man):

Winston Churchill had a very long political career. Until the 65th year of his life (1939) he had few successes and many failures.

The similarities start there and follow fast and furious. Here is the early life of young Winston (source: History Learning Site):

Winston Churchill was born in 1874 into a wealthy and famous family. His father was Lord Randolph Churchill and he was the grandson of the 7th Duke of Marlborough. Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. He was schooled at Harrow where it is said that he only put his name on the exam entrance paper to get in.

A conservative "Liberal" (at a time when the "free market" was still a liberal idea), his actions against workers and his use of the military offer examples of parallel malignancy:

As Home Secretary, Winston Churchill used troops to maintain law and order during a miners strike in South Wales. He also used a detachment of Scots Guards to assist police during a house siege in Sidney Street in East London in January 1911. Whilst such actions may have marked him down as a man who would do his utmost to maintain law and order, there were those who criticised his use of the military for issues that the police usually dealt with.

As one struggles now with the failed project for a new American Empire ("spread democracy through the middle east"), the other struggled almost 80 years ago to keep together a crumbling old one (The idea of independence, or even self-government, for India, "fantastic ... criminally mischievous"). And keep it together at any and all costs, employing surprisingly similar rhetoric: [Without the British] "India will fall back quite rapidly through the centuries into the barbarism and privations of the Middle ages".

As the agents behind Bush stoked civil unrest between rival religion factions, so did his white colonialist ancestor, who approvingly encouraged Muslim-Hindu tension, astutely gathering that "that is all to the good". That Bush is largely illiterate saves him the honour of such a record as Churchill's "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion". And if Bush's fellow conservatives question the intelligence of Katrina victims (black) or the growth of minority populations (Hispanic), no doubt they derive inspiration from Churchill's analysis of the Bengal famine victims: "Indians breeding like rabbits".

Winston Churchill was defeated by a person he described as a "half-naked fakir", a pacifist and humanist who wrote that "we must become the change we want to see in the world". It may be futile to expect today's "progressives", who consider such notions "New Age pap", to therefore heed such advice: why "become" when you have already arrived?

Elites and eLites

Back in 1995, when every "user" with a borrowed IP stack on his POS Windows toy had finally got on the "web", laying down the ground for such horrors as webmail, MySpace and yes blogging, there was already a bunch of snake oil salesmen waiting for these innocent hordes. The trick was trivial: add an "e" to any old world business and you got the New Economy. eToys. eTrade. ePinion?! So now meet the new media criticizing the old media (MyDD :: Low Information Elites and Fox News):

If you're a policymaker, or if you pay attention to elite discourse such as that in the New York Times while living in a high information culture, it's easy to ignore television and/or cable news. even easier to pretend that the televised propaganda coming at most Americans every day isn't important or relevant, or even that it does not exist.

[...] Fox News is a partisan Republican outlet, as opposed to MSNBC or CNN which aren't, even though they have mostly partisan shows hosted by Tucker Carlson, Joe Scarborough, and Glenn Beck. It's not that these low information elites particularly like or respect cable news, it's that the marginal difference between cable news channels are not necessarily noticeable. [...]

Anyway, one specific way that bloggers and activists differ from elites in the party is that we notice and take Fox News and the right-wing radio circuit seriously as a part of public discourse. We believe that people watch and listen to these outlets, and believe what these outlets say. We recognize these outlets as affirmative carriers of diseased misinformation, not as market suppliers for a conservative public. Roger Ailes and Fox News aren't just an inevitable part of the news environment; they are adversaries, as much as Mitch McConnell if not more so. They are powerful purveyors of Republican propaganda, but it's both possible and important to damage their capacity to deliver information to the public branded as newsworthy. Even if journalists refuse to distinguish between what they do and what Fox News does, we believe that this distinction is important.

Low information elites don't see any of this. They haven't been educated as to the purpose of Fox News, and often believe that the public can simply see through Fox News or any of the other cable news channels. After all, it's obvious to these elites what is and isn't true, because they have access to the newsmakers or elite information streams themselves. Many of them hope to get onto Fox News, because they don't realize that Democrats don't gain from going on a Republican propaganda outlet. They do not distinguish between Fox News and MSNBC, and they do not understand why and how right-wing media works. There's just a lot less media and communications literacy among these low information elites than there is among bloggers and activists, mostly because we are at the receiving end of the propaganda and being insulted, lied to, marginalized and then blamed for the poor state of the party and the country gets old after awhile.

Well played! There is one unsettling thing... were we to substitute Fox News, right-wing media etc with the "netroots", "information" with "principles" or "truth", "Republican" with "centrist e-activists" (eLites?), the result is... well, unsettling:

If you are a principled politician, if you pay attention to honest and logical discourse such as that in intelligent times while living in a humanist culture, it's easy to ignore blogs. It's even easier to pretend that the blog smearfest coming at online leftists every day isn't important or relevant.

But many within the real left are unaware of the full online environment. They don't for instance get that the "netroots" is a partisan centre of left outlet (literally an outlet for any real rage at the state of things, the sort of rage that demands truth and principles, not simply tactics).

One way that the principled can differ from eLites in the party is that we can notice and take the "netroots" circuit seriously. We can recognize that these outlets as affirmative carriers of diseased lack of information. They are powerful purveyors of centrist ("gradualist") Obama-esque propaganda.

Naive principled leftists do not see any of this. They haven't been "educated" as to the purpose of the "netroots" and often believe that the public can simply see through the tactics and smear, for its obvious what is and isn't principled, rational and true. We, the principled left, should know because we are at the receiving end of the propaganda and being insulted, lied to, marginalized and then blamed ("Nader cost us 2000") for the poor state of the party and the country.

I exaggerate. These are well meaning young people, but they do fail to see how important even the little of the analogy that is applicable to them is. And as long as they live in an internally focused self-sustaining echo chamber they will continue to hurl insults at Nader or Kucinich or Chomsky rather than learn from them.

Or else ... like do something tough

Some may be stuck in the embarrassing language of New Age pap, but not so the literary giants at DailyKos who can dish out such sophisticated bromides as "[the troops are] in harm's way" in a peice that threatens dire consequences for the Democrats if they do not get us out of Iraq (AlterNet: War on Iraq: Democrats: Work to Get Us Out of Iraq ... or Else!):

We do not know what the next year will bring, but we know how to start getting where we know the endgame of Iraq will eventually go, and the most essential task we currently have to to ensure that no more lives than necessary go towards the political cowardice of the current institutionalized quagmire.

Now that's the sort of sentence (perhaps along with "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities") that probably gives his colleague MissLaura a hard-on. But this is not just about impressive rhetoric; there is a deadline attached to the threat:

There are no more acceptable six month windows to see if the same "plan", called a different name, will produce different results.

Impressive, especially in light of the approval elsewhere in the "netroots" of the latest Democratic proposal on Iraq, this one calling for some sort of withdrawal in 2008 (yes that's an at the end of those digits). Fortunately there is raw fury elsewhere:

You have no idea how much raw fury there is out there, just under the surface. And all the "Democratic apologists" like me are on our very last ounce of patience, and all the grassroots supporters have torches lit and and at the ready, and all the Democrats and Republicans in your district are watching to see whether you're really different from the Republicans or not...

You mean... no... you couldn't... you mean, like Nader said?

Marginal hate

It's good news all around on the "netroots" front! Referring to recent polls, Chris Bowers writes (MyDD :: Two New National Polls):

[I]t is heartening to see that nearly half of all respondents refused to refuse to support any of the candidates during the primary season. And what's up with the marginal candidates having so many haters?

Why the puzzlement? Why not celebrate both effects as victories for the "netroots"? On the one hand, 50% support for anyone (which is a pack led by the likes of Clinton and Obama) endorses the

"[almost] any Democrat will do" gradualism. At the same time, the effort to marginalize and denigrate principled candidates ("trophy candidate", "height becomes relevant", "New Age pap") can be claimed to be yielding payoffs based on the second finding (haters for marginal candidates). This is no time to rest on laurels -- work remains for only 11% of respondents hate Kucinich, as opposed to 100% of the "netroots"! The people, as is their ignorant wont, trail the leaders significantly.

Progressive propaganda machine

Sometimes progressives say the darndest things! DarkSyde laments the power of the right-wing propaganda machine (Daily Kos: Chuckle With Charley) but ends on the positive note that we might be able to use our correspondence to reality to build our own propaganda:

The reason right-wing propaganda is so effective is because they've built up an interlocking network of think-tanks, media venues, and grassroots political organizations -- some of the latter in the guise of legitimate, mainstream churches. The think-tanks take ideas that would normally be considered revolting if presented in the nude (Take from the poorest and give to the richest) and craft it into appealing, clever sounding deceptions (It will stimulate the economy and help the poor!). Right-wing media spreads the deception, nurtures racism, and demonizes opposition (Liberals want to give your tax dollars to welfare queens!). Wingnut clerics dress it up in pleasant sounding bits of religious doctrine and beat it mercilessly into the heads of their congregations week after week. It’s a seamless, well-oiled, machine.



But there's a chance progressives can build something similar, and we do enjoy one advantage: We don't have to create and constantly reinforce a high-maintenance pseudo-reality that ends up killing people or ruining lives.

Judging by the demonizing of the opposition (and by opposition I obviously mean the leftist types like Nader and Kucinich, who are after all far more reality based) that is already underway in the progressive blogs, this is a project slated for success.

Obama's heavy stones

As everyone aspiring to high elected office has to, Obama went to AIPAC to kiss some ass, but fortunately TPM and MyDD see his performance as not bad at all (Text of the Obama Speech at AIPAC today | TPMCafe). The speech continues the usual meaningless rhetoric that is Obama's signature:

It won't be easy. Some of those stones will be heavy and tough for the United States to carry. Others with be heavy and tough for Israel to carry. And even more will be difficult for the world. But together, we will begin again.

The only thing I can think of doing "together" with Obama is not having a "conversation" with Hillary. But if Obama decided to leave his stones at AIPAC, he sure was right that they are some heavy ones. Here are some of the top hits:

But I am also fortunate to have seen Israel from the air.

On my journey that January day, I flew on an IDF helicopter to the border zone. The helicopter took us over the most troubled and dangerous areas and that narrow strip between the West Bank and the Mediterranean Sea. At that height, I could see the hills and the terrain that generations have walked across. I could truly see how close everything is and why peace through security is the only way for Israel.

Our helicopter landed in the town of Kiryat Shmona on the border. What struck me first about the village was how familiar it looked. The houses and streets looked like ones you might find in a suburb in America. I could imagine young children riding their bikes down the streets. I could imagine the sounds of their joyful play just like my own daughters. There were cars in the driveway. The shrubs were trimmed. The families were living their lives.

Then, I saw a house that had been hit with one of Hezbollah's Katyusha rockets.

I suspect that I have quoted too much and risked losing you as you collapse in a mixture of laughter and tears of incredulity. Perhaps you are wondering if Obama got to see some of the Palestinians in refugee camps and in the bantustans that Israel has created. Or you may be curious as to whether Obama managed to score any civilian hits -- he was in an IDF helicopter after all. Maybe the IDF helicopter even strayed into Lebanese territory, as the Israelis accidentally do every now and then, giving Old Stones Obama a look at the territory from where the dastardly Katyusha rockets were launched. In passing I will also note our silver tongued wunderkind's turn of phrase in aid of upturning the truth: "peace through security" is his prescription to complement Israel's unwillingness to achieve it's much desired security, through peace. Do not let your mind wander far though, for there is more:

It is important to remember this history—that Israel had unilaterally withdrawn from Lebanon only to have Iran supply Hezbollah with thousands of rockets.

Ah yes, history lessons. Obama's hyper-religiousness (I presume), which usually includes magical beliefs about the origin of things, permits him to visualise an arbitrary starting point for history: the withdrawal of Israel from Lebanon. That Israel "withdrew" might clue a less self-certain person to what Israel did to require its withdrawal, but such mere facts are no match for the verbal footwork of Obama's "unilateral withdrawal". The facts of the recent Israeli terrorist strikes against Lebanon, killing and displacing thousands of civilians, before it had to once again "withdraw" its laughably vaunted troops -- those facts too might give pause to those lacking the heavy stones. Obama, made of sterner stuff, marches on:

That effort begins with a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel: our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy.

It is fortunate for Obama that his history starts with Israel's "withdrawal" from Lebanon, for that absolves him of pondering about democracies in the region, such as the elected government of Mossadegh in Iran, which we toppled.

Perhaps the best measure of progress (for progressives) is how we treat (or let others in power treat) the most disadvantaged members of the human population -- such as the Palestinians. By that measure, support of individuals like Obama is one of the most regressive acts we can indulge in.

The appropriate use of "faggot"

From the "he didn't just put it that way, did he?" department we have Matt Stoller (MyDD :: Direct Democracy for People-Powered Politics) outraged by Coulter referring to Edwards as a "faggot". The thing that seems to bother Stoller is that Coulter called Edwards a "faggot":

Anyway, one thing to keep in mind, aside from the conservative uncoolness, is that she called a major Democratic candidate a faggot. Ok, she's an entertainer, so whatever. But keep in mind that prior to her appearance, most major Republican Presidential candidates appeared on the stage to make appeals to the audience. I wonder if they support Coulter's statement. Do they think it's appropriate to call John Edwards a faggot?

Well, this raises the question of whether Stoller thinks it is appropriate to call anyone (including a gay person) a faggot? Whether the person is a major Democratic candidate is irrelevant. The issue here is not what Edwards was called, but that someone used the term "faggot". Surely Stoller can see that?

The irresponsibility of people

As he unleashed dictatorial terror in Chile, Kissinger remarked that he didn't see why "we should have to stand by and let a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people". Kissinger was no liberal, but it is not difficult to find eager proponents among liberals of the idea of limiting the options available to the people, as evidenced by the character assassination of Dennis Kucinich by elements of the "netroots" (see entries in this blog for examples). Speaking about a Marine pilot who wrote with perverse glee at the killing of civilians in Iraq, Matt Taibbi (AlterNet: Why Can't We Talk about Peace in Public?) writes:

I believe that Marine pilot is driven by the same forces that render the presidential candidacy of someone like Dennis Kucinich impossible in America. A country that feeds itself through the manufacture of war technology is bound to view peace, nonviolence and mercy as seditious concepts. It will create policies first and then people to fit its machines, finding wars to fight and creating killers to fight them. If that's true of us, and I think it is, our troubles won't be over even if someone brings the Iraq war to an end. We'll be treating the symptom and not the disease. And the reason our elections are a sham is that the disease is never on the table. Excepting the occasional Kucinich, no one in either party is interested in trying to change who we are, no matter how sick we become.

The "new progressives" may not find Kucinich's ideas of peace seditious, but they are on record with the more amusing claim that these ideas are "New Age pap". The Iraq war and winning elections, and setting the right "frame" in pursuit of these goals, are the limits of this new pragmatism, and what is good for the goose should suffice for the people.

Center of left

The term "progressive", it appears, commits one to a constant fear of the past. In particular one's forerunners: patricide is the easy path to the throne! Matt Stoller, worried about the "netroots" report card from the CBC (MyDD :: Fox News and the CBC) reacts with the tried and tested "It wasn't us! It was the old progressives!":

[P]eople like Amy Sullivan talk about the religious left and the need to reach out to 'values voters' as if black churches have not been an important backbone of progressive politics for fifty years. The CBC doesn't recognize that the netroots are not actually the old progressive movement. We are new, and much more open to collaboration and working together with a newly energized African-American political progressive movement.

The indignation is premature. Indeed black churches have been an important backbone of progressive politics. And it has not only historically collaborated with liberal elements (such as in the Northeast) -- including our current favourite nemesis Joe Leiberman -- but also reached across history (and geography) to tap into and draw inspiration from the deep humanism of other leftists/progressives (one example is Martin Luther King's encounter with the thoughts and legacy of Gandhi, who in turn applied some of the ideas of Thoreau). There is a strong and continuous thread running through the history of humanist leftism, arguably the only one that has produced sustainable results.



The "old progressives" were neither ignorant nor uninterested in this history and this association. To the contrary, it is that shared humanism that enabled the collaboration between them. It is (or should be) hence unsurprising that an "End of History" attitude arouses suspicion, especially when accompanied by intolerance and disrespect.

Meanwhile, I hope that progressive African-American leaders begin to recognize that the progressive white world is not monolithic, and that there are real allies here who are trying to figure out a way to deal in good faith with those with whom our interests are aligned.

Alignment of interests serves short-term interests (and there is nothing necessarily wrong with that). Left movements are built on alignment of principles. And in that sense, the "progressive white world", monolithic or not, may become irrelevant in the future to the progressive world, judging by growing leftist groundswell in the so-called "third world".



The difference between the "old progressives" and the new "netroots" is spelled out wittily by Bitch|Lab (Flicked Off) who quotes Alternet / In These Times:

Yet when it comes to issues of diversity, A-list bloggers like Moulitsas and Stoller can get defensive, and at times, dismissive. “Take a look at what you have today. Take a look at the folks who’re leading the party, dominating the media, or even within corporations. Do you think the top ranks of any of those institutions is any more representative?” responds Stoller, his voice rising in indignation.



[...]



In his [Markos Moulitsas] view, it’s simply absurd to demand what he sarcastically describes as an “affirmative action of ideas” within an inherently meritocratic medium such as the blogosphere: “I don’t see how you can say, ‘Well, let’s give more voice to African American lesbians.’



[...]



As for the relative paucity of top female progressive bloggers, Moulitsas is indifferent: “I haven’t given it a lot of thought. I find it totally uninteresting. What I’m interested in is winning elections, and I don’t give a shit what you look like.”

And Bitch comments:

Of course, but shouldn’t Kos care about that and wonder why? It seems to me to be at the heart of what a more progressive vision of the Democratic party was supposed to be all about. Yes? The paucity may not have to do with lack of talent, as Kos implies, but lack of interest in what women are writing about. Why should women support people who find what we have to say “uninteresting” and not meriting your concern?



[...]



[A] hiearchical system has been forged with Technorati rankings and Blogad networks where members have the right to deny membership. And it comes complete with justifications about natural deservingness that ring hollow to anyone familiar with the vicissitudes of oppression and injustice.

But those aren’t really things people who “just want to win elections” care about. Afterall, elections are very much about accepting procedural justice and equality of opportunity as the sine qua non of politics. It’s a passive politics, an episodic politics. It’s the kind of politics enthusiasts pushing for a more substantive politics rejected as alienating and unresponsive to the desire of people to actively participate in the decision-making processes that affected their lives.

As long as we don’t question the eternal naturalness of a procedurlistic, episodic politics, and forge something new, then there will never be democratic participation, just endless reinstantiations of new hierarchical social relations, new hegemonies which justify the everlasting natural order of it all.

Active passivism

The legend goes that Gandhi when asked about passive non-violence responded that he does not call for "passive" anything, but rather active non-violence. The netroots, perhaps because they are easily embarrassed by such plainly-spoken pap, seem to choose the more sophisticated approach of active passivism (how else can one describe the timid pragmatism of placing all of one's eggs -- i,e., "activism" -- in the Democratic Party?)! So we hear from Chris Bowers (MyDD :: Democrats, Activists and Ending the War):

Direct Activism. There is already a decent amount being done on this front, including mass protests, the "virtual march," and occupying offices. In my opinion, however, virtually all of this will be unsuccessful either in pressuring Democrats to do more or in convincing the progressive base that not enough is being done, unless it is tied to a single legislative plan of attack. What I mean is that this activism needs to be geared toward pressuring reps to pass the Murtha plan, and to rewrite the AUMF. If the direct activism is out of synch with the legislative drift, it is hard to see how the former can impact the latter.



One problem with this is that dramatic activism, such as occupying congressional offices, does not tend to be done on behalf of gradualist policy, such as rewriting the AUMF or the Murtha plan. I actually got into an argument about this with someone as Dailykos yesterday, who was arguing on behalf of occupying congressional offices but simultaneously arguing against the Murtha plan because it didn't go far enough. It strikes me as self-defeating for anti-war activists to engage in activism opposing a plan to end the war. My dream would be direct activism of all sorts targeted against Democratic members of Congress who are not supporting Murtha's plan and / or the rewrite of the AUMF. However, I am not particularly confident that is going to happen.



I also worry that one of the reasons the left does not want to engage in activism on behalf of the gradualist plans to end the war is because, in the event that the plans fail to pass, they don't want to be tarnished with those failures themselves. Better to be tagged with a plan that occupies the moral highground but that never had any chance of passing, than with a compromise plan that had a real chance to pass but did not.

To summarise:

• Impacting "legislative drift" is the primary goal and all activism needs to be tied into "pressuring reps" towards this goal, in particular this goal identified by a single proposal.
• Anything else is "dramatic", not just direct. A "gradualist policy" is the vehicle of choice and a particular plan is the expression of that.
• The impulse to engage in any activism other t han the prescribed one, gradualism, is mere righteousness, as opposed to the allegedly feasible gradualist goals.

There is a way out of this self-inflicted wordsmithing paradox. If your conclusions seem more self-serving than accurate, its possibly that your assumptions are wrong. For example, the goal of direct activism can be anti-war without having to support a particular anti-war plan. It is the assumption of the supremacy of gradualism that creates the perceived conflict between direct activism and opposition to a particular gradualist plan. Similarly, it is not righteousness (the desire to occupy a moral high-ground) that necessarily motivates such activism. Instead, it could be the realisation of the limits, if not futility, of active passivism or gradualism. After all, gradualism has not, by the author's own admission (and search for a suitable tactic in the post under question), met with much success in this matter.



That the vaunted compromises of gradualism are unsatisfactory is reflected in the laments on the lack of attention from the party machine to the base, and the desire to somehow end "the grace period".



Chris Bowers writes (in the same piece):

However, I am not particularly confident that is going to happen.

And that is the crippling limitation of the espoused gradualism. We are advised to finesse our way towards our ultimate goals, but as LeftItch folk wisdom goes, nobody ever finessed their wanking into real sex (though in this case, perhaps the opposite is true, for the Democrats have made a hobby out of fucking the base over). We are leftists! The probability that anything worthwhile that we desire is going to come about, at the time of conception of our goal, is quite slim. What makes it happen is our activism, and what fuels that is the strength we draw from our "moral high ground". What gives us confidence that something might happen is the efforts of those who acted before us when there was not much confidence regarding the same effect. Or as the guy said, black people didn't get the right to vote by voting. Well, I have drifted a bit, I am afraid. So be it.

The Democratic Incredibles

One can hope that the species will at some future date attain a sustainable level of wisdom, and at that point, explanations will perhaps be available for the formation and resilience of cults. Until then however, we shall remain nonplussed by such anomalies as the blind faith, found in some segments of the liberati, in a politician like Barack Obama. Markos quotes (Daily Kos: No traction for anti-war Democrats? Hogwash) Des Moines Register's David Yepsen:

[E]verybody wants out of Iraq and bashes the war. The question is finding a credible way to do it, and Democrats are having trouble agreeing on a plan.

And responds:

Does Yepsen really think that Obama's Iraq message is materially different than Vilsack's used to be? The difference being that Obama has credibility on Iraq. Vilsack had none.

The question that is begged is: Obama's credibility in the eyes of whom? Certainly not those interested in the record and historical analysis. Writing for the Black Agenda Report, Glen Ford gives ample evidence of the weathercock that is Obama (Barack Obama and the Winds of War):

One year after his bland and idea-less speech on Iraq to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (see Obama Mouths Mush on War, December 1, 2005), Obama returned to mush more of the same to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. The U.S. should begin to move towards a phased redeployment of American troops from Iraqi soil, he told the business-oriented crowd. Since the objective reality on the ground in Iraq and in U.S. public opinion had changed dramatically in the intervening year resulting in Democratic capture of the House and Senate Obamas failure to substantively revise his previous, timid prescriptions actually amounts to a turn to the right.

In contrast to Sen. Feingold’s proposal that U.S. troops “redeploy from Iraq” by mid-summer, and Congressman Jack Murtha’s proposal that Washington “immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces,” Sen. Obama calls for “a phased redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq on a timetable that would begin in four to six months…. Such a timetable may not need to begin in 2007, but begin it must.”

It gets worse! Apparently in an attempt to go mano-a-mano with Hillary (The responsibility of ineffectuals) on the macho lecturing front, Obama, as Ford notes, scolds the Iraqis:

“To reach such a solution, we must communicate clearly and effectively to the factions in Iraq that the days of asking, urging, and waiting for them to take control of their own country are coming to an end. No more coddling, no more equivocation."

One way to measure his credibility is to see how well Obama's triangulation corresponds to the wishes of his constituents, and fortunately, Ford gives us the answer:

Just two weeks before Obama delivered his pablum-filled Iraq speech, his constituents across the Illinois voted overwhelmingly to stop the war and “immediately begin an orderly and rapid withdrawal.” In Chicago, the ballot measure passed by a whopping 80-to-20 percent. Similar results were tallied in suburban Cook County, Evanston and Oak Park – wherever the measure was on the ballot.

The voters, from both political parties, are way ahead of Obama and his fellow senatorial shufflers. Nationwide, more than 70 percent of Democrats – the people who nominate the party’s presidential candidates – favor an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. To lead, Obama would have to run to catch up.

It should come as no surprise to us then that Obama voted NO on the Kerry troop deployment amendment (Senator Obama on Troop Redeployment Amendment). Here is Project Vote Smart's synopsis of the amendment:

Vote to adopt an amendment that requires the President to withdraw troops from Iraq by July 1, 2007 and states that some forces shall remain in Iraq to train Iraqi security forces, conduct counterterrorism operations and protect U.S. personnel and facilities.

Leave alone attempts at credibility, Obama appears to have underestimated the public in what is edible on the matter of Iraq. Perhaps in 2008, the public shall return the favour and mark their ballot: Eat me!

In it only to win it?

One more thing needs to be added to the previous post. You can call yourself a leftist, liberal, or progressive in the [decreasing] order in which you are threatened by the right's stigmatisation of us. But you cannot call yourself any one of these things if you are concerned with nothing more than winning, at the end of the day. We are the minority, by the very nature of things. No "50 state strategy" or "frame" is going to change that. And that status is something that we should embrace gladly, for it means that we are pushing the limits of human socio-political thought (ethics, morality, liberty, and all those words and ideas that we should find no embarrassment in).

Without doubt, it is necessary to truck with various creatures and entities in pursuit of furthering our ideas. But it is a pathetic betrayal of principles to drown in such compromises, to the point where we are able to write that someone's height or similar factors are legitimate targets because of some alleged attitude of the person. We oppose discrimination on the basis of gender, sexual identity, race (and I would assume other factors such as height) based on fundamental principles. And these principles are what we are willing to abandon in order to dismiss a candidate who is principled because his presence does not suit our agenda.

We might as well go the whole hog then! Republicans, much more worthy targets than Kucinich, have candidates who are Italian American, or Catholic, or women, or black (for Presidential and Senate races). Why not employ anti-Catholic, racist, sexist criteria too, to shoot these people down?

An embarassment of cliches

As is the case with teenagers of all ages, a MissLaura (Daily Kos: The Two Faces of Dennis Kucinich) is embarrassed by the expressions of adults. The particular bit from Kucinich that turns her pink with shame:

"Fear," he said, causes us to be "disconnected from our ability to make peace with our brothers and sisters" and stunts our spiritual, emotional, and social growth.

If this is fodder for embarrassment, one fears the worst if and when MissLaura encounters orators such as Gandhi or Martin Luther King! For a generation of online activists that came of age during (and as part of) the Dean debacle, this is rather surprising sensitivity! Or is such sensitivity the result of the scream that displaced Munch's creation in popularity?

And if Kucinich's sort of clear communication is "New Age pap" the opposite of that must be high erudition and we are offered some examples:

He was effective at answering right-wing frames, as when asked about the financial burdens of social programs.

Frames, in case you are not yet in receipt of your Journal of Bad Pomo, 2006 edition, is the new buzz word, the new "paradigm". As Georges Seurat might have said, it's all about the frames and you put the monkeys in the right frame and they ring the right bell, or rather pull the right lever. The opposite of New Age indeed.

Here is another one:

There is a significant role for such issue-oriented candidates and campaigns.

Alas this reassuring promise, that such old fashioned ideas as "issues" still have a significant role, is a fleeting one. The question arises immediately:

With long-shot candidates, though, the fundamental question is what role they fill in the race as a whole.

Every line provides further relief from New Age pap. The above for instance educates us that the fundamental question with regard to candidates is what role they play in a race. This perhaps will be taught to future generations as the "Democracy as a Race" Frame. And when poor old Kucinich is evaluated using this hard-nosed criteria, he is found much wanting, due to the alleged conviction he holds that "he can win". This makes Kucinich a "candidate-centered" ... candidate? Just like the others we suppose, who are less susceptible to such criticism, for they spout less New Age pap (and more "my God is an awesome God" analysis), and enjoy lesser disadvantages:

That being the case, the effectiveness of his individual advocacy, the New Agey stuff, his height, all become relevant - because he's made it about him.

So, let us follow this logic to its natural end. Hillary Clinton is clearly out too, for she is a "candidate-centered" candidate who has made it about herself, and her gender becomes relevant. Obama? Candidate centered. Out: because his half-blackness becomes relevant. And so on.

(There is, one might as well add, no evidence provided to sustain the claim that Kucinich has "made it about him[self]").

When Nader ran for President, among the various complaints against him was that he could have done it within the process. Participated in the Democratic primaries. The hollowness of such pleas is made obvious by the treatment of Kucinich, exemplified by the above.

A liberal dose of authority

Each new day brings news of growing discontent among particular subgroups in the right-wing coalition. From Paul Craig Roberts to old man history Fukuyama himself, conservatives have not just distanced themselves from the hideous pestilence that now rules over us, but also, in the case of some, offered stinging criticism. Despite this fissure, it is true that a large part of the party faithful on either side think and act if not in terms of power at least in terms of misplaced loyalty or hope. Under the title "Why Giuliani is Winning" we find on MyDD this exposition of the above point with regard to the Republicans:

Like a lot of us, he thinks that Republicans base their political judgment on issues, ie. gay rights, abortion, national defense, taxes, etc. He makes the same mistake that a lot of Democrats make, assuming that conservatives think the way that we do. They don't. They are authoritarians. Gay marriage, abortion, taxes, national security, none of it really matters to them. What they are looking for is an authoritarian to look like he's taking charge, and the way an authoritarian takes charge is to attack liberals and stomp on people who aren't like them.

Authoritarians! Take charge by attacking liberals! Stomp on people who aren't like them! Hold me back before I do something wild!

MyDD, with all its contempt for "single-issue" thinkers, and its unflinching focus on Iraq (as the mother of all issues? if you will forgive the pun), had this to write about Democratic candidate (the only "issues" candidate at this point) Dennis Kucinich:

Yea, he's mostly been right about Iraq

Their conclusion about Kucinich?

This is a trophy candidate who doesn't deserve a second chance

Ah yes, indeed! No stomping of liberals who aren't like us, here, folks! Keep it moving. It's all about the issues!

Minority retort

For centuries, Divide and Conquer has been an effective strategy of the powerful, and nobody does it better than our very own GOP. Those seeking evidence need look no further than the erosion of the union vote. There are some limits, however, to how much you can get an individual or group to act against their own interests. Unsurprisingly therefore, there was much skepticism when the irrepressible right-wingers embarked on appropriating the black vote. The wedge (apart from a rather lame "what have they done for you lately?" argument) was to be "family values". Seeing their own jaundice reflected in their fellow believers, they appealed to general revulsion against a myriad of "social issues", primary among them the permissibility of two XY-chromosomoids to get it on. Nobody, including our friends at MyDD, are buying it (More Evidence Blacks, Jews Won't Soon Jump Ship from Democratic Party):

Of course non of the poppycock about Jews and African-Americans switching their allegiances from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party was proved to be founded in reality. According to exit polling from 2004, John Kerry received about 88 percent of the African-American vote and 74 percent of the Jewish vote...

But whence the introduction of Jews into this picture? That comes from the fact that Jews in general resisted similar seductions from the party of bigotry. However, there is a difference: the wedge, in the case of Jews, is one grounded in reality -- the issue of Israel. As MyDD's own quotation of Gallup shows, Jewish support for Democrats (thankfully) does not correlate (tightly) to their position on Iraq:

The greater opposition to the war is not simply a result of high Democratic identification among U.S. Jews, as Jews of all political persuasions are more likely to oppose the war than non-Jews who share the same political leanings.

The corollary to this is the possible alterations in Jewish opinion in response to further isolation of Israel (as the level and number of atrocities mount) and any possible progressive influence on the Democratic party that could swing it away from its current pandering attitude (we refer you to Hillary Clinton). The community hotshots are already halfway across the line, and for that I refer you to Lieberman, Dershowitz (who is turning loonier by the day) and Friedman (What was it? Given war a chance?). And since we are talking black and Jews, I will even throw in a Eli Weisel: "racism as such has vanished from the American scene".

The responsibility of ineffectuals

The insightful young turks who gave us live coverage of the DNC earlier, through which we learned that Kucinich is a "trophy candidate", have dialed it down a bit sadly. Downright sober, in fact:

Liveblogging the Carson City AFSCME Forum

To lead, Stephanopoulos asks Clinton about her position on Iraq, why her vote wasn't a mistake. Clinton states that she has "taken responsibility for" her vote, that no one should be let off the hook for their vote.

That's awfully commendable of old Hillary to take responsibility, sort of like old George does when one of his pet projects fails. Now, C-Span, in its slightly more radical coverage, provided details from Hillary on Iraq and responsibility. A view that can be summarised thus:

It's the Iraqis stupid! That's right, boys and girls. Hillary is mad at the Iraqis for being irresponsible about this whole matter of getting themselves killed in the hundreds of thousands. She is tired, comrades, of "our boys and girls" doing all the hard work. No worries: she has a solution. Let's cut off their funding she kindly submits! That will teach them, yeah! Getting raped, starving, losing your entire family... not that much fun any more is it? Here's the good lady:

My legislation will also say to the Iraqis: Enough! We are not going to fight your battles, we are not going to send our young men and women in. You have to be on the front lines of your own defence. And as far as I am concerned, people ask me, "Why don't you just cut money for American troops?". I want to cut money for Iraqi troops. [applause]

Think you can stomach it? Watch it at C-Span (caution: the link is to an annoying RTSP URL which is how C-Span links it -- actually its worse but I shall spare you the details). Found a better link.

Of brats and supermen...

Children are easily puzzled by this bit of mathematical trickery: three typically late tenants surprise the landlord by paying their $100 rent (each) on time. Eager to encourage this behaviour, the landlord hands $50 to one of them, to be shared equally by all three. The recipient, a clever fellow, pockets $20, and splits the $30 remaining between himself and the other two tenants. Now for the puzzle: Each tenant has effectively paid $90 thus making the total $270. The dishonest chap has $20 in his packet bringing the total up to $290. What happened to the remaining $10?

Centrist "pragmatist" Democrats, it seems, are equally gullible where we to substitute, in the puzzle above, "$10" with "Florida votes". Where, they question, did the few votes that cost Gore Florida in 2000 go? Their answer: To Nader, of course!

Here is Crooks and Liars:

Whether or not he wants to accept responsibility for it, Nader's campaign arguably did contribute significantly to Bush's ultimate placement in the White House.

They go on to quote the San Francisco Chronicle:

[..]"To an awful lot of people, Ralph Nader appears to be threatening, once again, to play the role of a spoiled brat whose purpose in life appears to be … electing Republicans by draining off votes from Democrats,'' said (Phil) Trounstine, who heads the San Jose State Center for Policy and Research.

Nader's presidential aspirations are viewed by many as evidence that he is on "an enormous ego trip with potentially destructive impact,'' Trounstine said.

Nader's is the subject of a searing new documentary, "An Unreasonable Man,'' which chronicles his early work as a consumer advocate and the turn in his career toward presidential politics. In the film, critics lambaste Nader, the author of "Unsafe at Any Speed,'' for abandoning his consumer advocacy, and suggest he is the ultimate egotist.

Does one assume such blatant hand-waving and ad hominem constitutes a surrender on the part of the expositor? That might be hasty in this day of Bush-Rove-DoubleSpeak. So, let us take these children seriously! Perhaps we should remind that the title "An Unreasonable Man" is from George Bernard Shaw:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

One need travel no further than the website for the documentary to find the attribution to G.B.Shaw. Now, Shaw, I am afraid (for the chroniclers of all things San Franciscan), is talking about a Superman, not a brat, while laying down some maxims for revolutionists. Revolutionists, not bloggers like you and me. Centrist Democrats one is left to surmise, identify with the more conservative Chesterton on the matter of revolutions.

Only in a place of pretend democracy and a time when draft-dodger question triple-amputee veterans might we come across such a fantastic notion that an individual participating in a democratic process is an "egotist" and a "spoiled brat" -- spoiled by dedicating an entire lifetime to a wide range of causes a tiny bit larger than blogging, perhaps?

The dismissal of democracy is unsurprising, for the illogic is not an insult of Nader alone, but of the public (the public being the democracy is of and for, if such things still make sense) as well. For the assumption is that Nader voters would have flocked to Gore were it not for the vile snake-charmer brat.

Insulting the public is to be the national sport, after all. Iraq and 9/11? Why not. WMD? Sure! Mushroom clouds! Capabilities and plans for WMD program activities! If all that is grist for the mill at a time we "no longer worry" about bin Laden, why not "potential destructive impact" of an egotist brat as a pretext to perpetuate the actual destructive impact of a duopolistic system tending further right at each juncture (the symptoms of which being the likes of Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman, as also such ugliness as Welfare Reform).

The mundane truth is that Nader is a mirror to the spoilt brats. His lifetime of activism an unreasonable intrusion of potentials on the actuality of a life behind a keyboard and a lifeless party.

A paralysing loss of memory

Our comrades at MyDD quote the New York Times (see below) with distaste, in a post titled Perhaps it's Time for The New York Times to Retake Congress 101:

Yet after six weeks in power, the Democratic-led House and Senate have yet to agree on a final bill. The obstacle is the same one that stymied Republicans time after time when they had control: paralyzingly thin margins in the Senate.

Jonathan Singer, of MyDD, lays bare the silliness of the NYT's reasoning that six weeks of power should suffice for the Democrats to produce and pass the relevant bill. What Singer and the NYT fail to note is that the Republicans were not much stymied by "thin margins" when they were in control. Let us review just a few of the greatest hits:

• The threat of the nuclear option against Democratic attempts at filibuster
• The "compromise" of the Gang of 14, result: confirmation of both Roberts and Alito (the latter of Concerned Alumni of Princeton fame, the concern being the grave danger of women entering the august institution)
• Extension of tax cuts, the so called Patriot Act
• The Torture Bill of 2006
• And that wonderful bit of midnight legislation: The Terri Schaivo Act

WireTap magazine sums it up rather neatly (along with providing other examples of the output of the wondrous 109th):

It could be argued that if the 109th Congress wasn't entangled in so many schemes, scams and sex scandals, it might actually be able to meet more and do a better job of helping the American population withstand a full frontal assault on their rights and checkbooks. But that would be jacking into the type of hyperreal matrix that talking heads and other media hacks love to fortify in lieu of stating the obvious, which is not so glamorous or complex.

The reality is this: The 109th Congress is far from a clot of "Do-Nothing" politicians. Having secured a majority in both houses and a strategical collusion with the executive branch, they have done something no other Congress has managed to do in American history: Give the president of the United States power and abilities -- to monitor, to prosecute, to incarcerate, to torture, to kill -- that approach those of the most totalitarian regimes in recent memory. It may not be 1948 or 1984 anymore, but the new millennium, with the help of America's elected representatives, is primed to look more and more like a pre-millennial dictatorship than ever. And for that, you can thank the fighting 109th, the most defeated Congress in American history.

See also: Matt Taibbi "Worst Congress Ever".

Obama and Lincoln: Kristol clear!

It is not entirely surprising that the younger Kristol stands accused of mugging reality liberally, but this bit (quoted and critiqued at Crooks and Liars) fails to back up the charge:

KRISTOL: We’re electing a war president in 2008. If I can go back to Obama and Lincoln for just one second, Lincoln’s “house divided” speech in 1858 was a speech saying we cannot live as a house divided on slavery. And he implicitly says we’ll have to fight a civil war if necessary on this.

Obama’s speech is a “can’t we get along” speech — sort of the opposite of Lincoln. He would have been with Stephen Douglas in 1858. Let’s paper over these differences, rise above politics and all get along.

C&L are understandably offended by the obvious strangeness of the suggestion that a black man would not fall on the anti-slavery side. The analogy Kristol is after, however, seems different and fairly sound: Lincoln went to war to unite the house on a principle (well, at least so the conventional story goes, and we shall adhere to it for this affair). If Kristol's summation of Obama's rather different attitude does not suffice, here is Obama's own web site:

Americans are tired of divisive ideological politics, which is why Senator Obama has reached out to Republicans to find areas of common ground. He has tried to break partisan logjams and take on seemingly intractable problems. During his tenure in Washington and in the Illinois State Senate, Barack Obama has accumulated a record of bipartisan success.

Lest we have lost track, a reminder: these are disturbing days. Illegal wars. Systemic corruption. Erosion of rights. To mention just three significant crises we live amidst. These one could parsimoniously presume are what Americans may be tired of. Ideology sounds like a 4-letter word only because of the way politicians like Obama use it. Without an ideology you stand on nothing. And that perhaps makes it possible to reach willy-nilly and make deals.

A Blogger's Apology

The saga of the blogger meltdown at Edwards HQ has taken a turn for the worse. Token street cred blogger #2 has now exited the building, causing much consternation among the rest of the blog world. In multiple posts ([1], [2]) the lads at MyDD have taken great umbrage to all the apologising, including that by Democratic candidates. Why cannot politics imitate the normalcy of the blog world, they bemoan! Digging deep into Greek etymology, Chris Bowers writes:

If you go back far enough, the etymology of the word "politics" derives from the Greek word polis, which simultaneously refers to a city and a sovereign governing body. It is in this way that politics can thus be seen not just as governance, but as the inevitable process of creating a means of working out relationships between a group of people who decide to live together. It is thus bitterly ironic that a process that is, at its deepest root, about finding ways for people to live together has become infested with utterly inhuman expectations and behavioral norms.

[...]

When we attack people for going off message, for not being 100% consistent with everything they have said in the past, or for saying something that others could potentially construe as offensive, we are attacking people for doing what pretty much everyone in the entire country does as a matter of course in our daily lives. We all do it, yet somehow in our contemporary political and media world we are eager to crucify people who do so in public.

[...]

People think that most politicians don't say anything meaningful because, well, most don't say anything meaningful for fear of going off message, contradicting themselves at some point down the road, or pissing anyone off.

Now these are the young gents who disdain all "single issues" in favour of electing Democrats. And as the Google-bombing and the colourful opinions demonstrate, tactics are the means to that end. We have therefore, Jerome Armstrong (of MyDD -- one of the big boobs?!), "live blogging" at the DNC meeting covering presidential candidates:

Kucinich: I lost all respect for Kucinich when told his Iowa supporters to caucus for Edwards the day before the caucus, and then went on to be contest the entire primary season. Kucinich lets you know he's married, and has mentioned his wife's name Elizabeth over a dozen times in his speech. Yea, he's mostly been right about Iraq, but this is a vanity candidate that doesn't deserve a second chance. At least he didn't segue into singing poetry like he did at the CA Democratic convention in '03.

Kucinich of course being the only candidate (and perhaps only member of Congress) who says meaningful things without worrying about "going off message". Compare against Obama with his "awesome God", Edwards on Iran, Hillary on pretty much everything. Unfortunately Kucinich's tactical action disqualifies him for any respect, reducing him to a trophy!

As an old adage here on LeftItch goes, you can only straddle the horns of the donkey for so long. The time has come, it seems from these laments, to choose between principled positions, or tactic and bluster. Principles don't put food on the table, as Patrick Ewing famously observed, and bluster has its merit. Choosing bluster is a smart move -- principles are tough beasts -- but if they be your thing, you have to be able to punch back at more than just a hapless ex-single congressperson who is "mostly right".

Left speechless

Here's how it happened: to beef up his net cred Edwards hires two bloggers. Blogging being what it is, it is not too long before someone digs up some colourful opinions by said bloggers from the past. Cue opportunist religious nut to jump in and threaten the pretty boy from Carolina (read the details at ABC News). Enter the rest of the blogosphere until we have MyDD -- don't get your hopes up, there be no big boobs to be had there -- challenging the "religious left" to counter the attack from their fellow fairy-tale believers:

MyDD :: Step Up, Religious Left

It's time for the religious left to step up and stop letting these bigots speak for them.

Yes indeed. But then again, when the non-religious left has this guy speak for them, or at least making the loudest noises, can you blame the religious left for lying low? It is not often that a fool comes around who can make us feel sympathetic and almost in agreement with a leader of the Christian right.

Full props nevertheless to the two ladies!

Barack: black enough?

Out in Amish country it is possible a few lucky souls have escaped the endless coverage of wunderkind Obama, but their ignorance is not to be blamed on the right-wing, which has grasped at the merest of straws (Did you know that his middle name is Zarqawi?) in valiant effort to discredit the young man. Crooks and Liars are peeved:

Crooks and Liars » Ann Coulter, Up To Her Usual Tricks

In reference to Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), Coulter said that "the first black president should be an American black, and a Republican."

[...]

Stanley Crouch in the November 2, 2006, New York Daily News that "Obama did not — does not — share a heritage with the majority of black Americans, who are descendants of plantation slaves."

Dare I note that Coulter's statement, taken as a prediction (and ignoring the "American" part, which one has to learn to silently drop when parsing conservative text), is probably on the money? Young Barak, according to reliable anonymous sources, is not even a black dude. Henry Louis Gates is all the rage these days with his DNA analysis of Oprah's roots. In so doing, the Oprah fanboy has found his own ancestry including white people on more than one line. So, yeah, in that sense, perhaps we have already had a black president? And the Crouch fellow... he makes a class point doesn't he?

Neither Coulter nor her comrades will know truth if it popped out of their Adam's apples, but as the old saying goes, even two broken rights can clock in, every now and then.

[ Link ]

Flip Flop Flap

The smart fellas at ThinkProgress seem to have caught ye olde Maverick McCain in rapid reversal. Here is what they offer in evidence: They demonstrate that at first the man, nay saint, held:

MCCAIN: Took us a long time to get in the situation we’re in, and to say that — and somehow assume that in a few months, that things are going to get all better I think is not realistic.

Only to shortly thereafter opine:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You say it’s all in. How long are you going to give it to work?

MCCAIN: I think in the case of the Iraqi government cooperating and doing what’s necessary, we can know fairly well in a few months.

One can legitimately question whether one needs to deal fairly with hypocrites, but assuming one should, it need be noted that the Maverick has not really contradicted himself above. There is a slight difference between the first statement (which says things will not get better in a few months) and the second (which says that we can know if things will get better). The difference is probably a bit more significant than the old coot's positions on agents of intolerance.

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