Race to the Bottom

Let the pandering begin! The race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination has certainly begun, and a number of potential candidates are already in full campaign mode, playing to likely Iowa caucus goers and anyone else from the far right. Unfortunately, this race to the bottom requires the contenders to outdo one another in an effort to sink to a new low. This forces some candidates to give up either their presidential aspiration or their honor.

Take the example of Donald Trump. He's toying with the idea of a 2012 presidential run so he's trying to gin up support among Republicans. To that end he has now become a "birther," which is to say someone who at least purports to question whether or not Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. I say purports to question because even Bill O'Reilly doesn't believe Trump is sincere about this, which buttresses my point. Trump isn't that stupid, ignorant or blinded by hatred, but he knows that people who are now make up a sufficiently large percentage of the Republican base that he has to pander to them. His attempts at playing this ridiculous game have been embarrassing and his claims can be reduced to ashes with the greatest of ease, but that doesn't matter because his target audience is impervious to facts or reason. To make matters worse, Trump is also playing to these people by spewing anti-Islamic bigotry.

Speaking of anti-Islamic bigotry, Donald Trump has his work cut out for him if he wants to catch Herman Cain. Mr. Cain, who's one of only three Republicans to have formed an exploratory committee (there are no formally declared candidates yet), has publicly proclaimed that as president he would appoint no Muslims to his cabinet nor to the federal bench. His rationale for this discrimination is his fear that they will impose Sharia law on this country. Perversely, he justifies his position of treating one religion differently from others with the First Amendment, because it prevents favoring one religion over another. He also states that Muslims should act like Christians and not try to impose their religious values on others, even though his core supporters want us to impose their version of Christian values on this country. Most importantly, this fear of Sharia law is a bogeyman constructed exclusively by bigots for bigots. Proposed laws to bar Sharia are unconstitutional, unnecessary and embarrassing, but defending them will get you a standing ovation at a Tea Party gathering where Herman Cain won the presidential straw poll.

Yes, I'm saying that far too many conservative Republicans have a fear of Islam that extends well beyond legitimate concern regarding terrorism and into the lunatic fringe. Newt Gingrich was counting on that when he warned an audience that we could become a "secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists." That's right; he tried to doubly terrify the stupid by simultaneously advancing the mutually exclusive specters of atheism and religious extremism. Newt's spokesman tried to rescue him by saying that he meant either atheist or radical Islamist, not both. That would make Gingrich's remark slightly less moronic but still utterly worthless since he can't decide which of two polar opposite directions the trend line is moving.

Finally, Mike Huckabee's entry into the race to the bottom makes me the saddest, because I honestly thought he was better than that. Yes, Newt Gingrich made headlines last year by suggesting that President Obama is incomprehensible to us unless we understand the mindset of a Kenyan anti-colonialist, but such words from Gingrich are predictable. Governor Huckabee, on the other hand, was a big disappointment when he essentially took a page from Gingrich's book and tried to paint President Obama as an anti-American, anti-Western, anti-colonialist who grew up in Kenya, sympathetic to the Mau Mau revolution and hostile to the British. Mike Huckabee may not know a Mau Mau from a muumuu, but like the others, he knows how to fertilize the field where fear and hatred grow, a particularly apt metaphor considering what they're spreading. Republicans who now seek the presidency apparently subscribe to the belief that, "The only thing we have to exploit is fear itself." If they insist upon playing to the dregs of their party, they should expect the scorn and contempt of decent people.

The Double-Edged Sword

In my last post, I discussed the claim by some on the religious right that we are and have always been a Christian nation. I want to continue the discussion on differing views regarding the foundations of our society, but I first want to clarify where I stand on religion. I know that someone reading my posts might infer a certain hostility toward religion, but such an inference would be wrong. I'm no more opposed to religion than a foe of pornography is opposed to filmmaking. My quarrel is solely with fundamentalism and certainly not with religion as a whole. I see religion as a double-edged sword that gives us both the best and worst of humanity, Mother Teresa on one side and Osama bin Laden on the other. I've seen up close how people's devout faith can drive them to lead lives of astounding kindness and generosity.

Religious faith can do for the spiritual being what some miracle drug can do for its corporal counterpart. It can make you whole, offering healing, strength and even salvation, but taken in an excessive or improper dosage, it can be fatal. It seems to me that the difference between using religion for good and using it for ill depends on whether someone is driven by that faith to perform acts of charity, compassion and service to others, or if someone is using religion as a blunt object with which to beat people into submission. It's the difference between volunteering to be an ambassador of mercy for a loving god and becoming a vigilante aligned with a vicious and wrathful god.

Fundamentalists often master trivial minutia about their religion yet somehow manage to miss the larger point entirely. If they knew baseball the way they knew The Bible, they could easily tell you that Jack Cusick hit two triples as a member of the 1951 Chicago Cubs, but they would have no idea how many outs complete an inning. This disconnect comes from picking parts of The Bible they like, claiming they are the inerrant words of God by virtue of being in that book, while ignoring whatever biblical passages don't suit them. They also greatly overstate the impact that The Bible has on society. For example, look at Alabama's former Chief Justice, Roy Moore and his band of followers, whom I call "Moore-ons." Judge Moore was a hero to these people for refusing to remove a giant monument of the Ten Commandments, which he had installed in his courthouse. He argued that these commandments provide the moral foundation of U.S. law. Needless to say, he's not even close as I intend to show by this brief hypothetical tale:

Sanjay came to the United States with little more than the clothes on his back. His parents, devout Hindus (as is Sanjay, who keeps a statue of Vishnu in his room), demanded that he stay in India but the pull of America was too strong. He dreamed of having the things that Americans had, and he worked extremely hard, often seven days a week, all the while being a model citizen with no vices besides his mild profanity. He became successful and even married the woman of his dreams after she left her no-good husband.

In this profile of the American Dream, our hero just broke seven of the Ten Commandments (see if you can spot them). That leaves only murder, theft and perjury, but I would point out that the correct term for people who think these three things should be illegal is not "Christians", "Jews" or "Americans"; the correct term is "Everybody". These were proscribed by societies before Moses was born and their prohibition is universal. The Ten Commandments all fall into one of three categories: 1) self-evident and thus redundant; 2) fairly inconsequential; and 3) flat out contradictory -- since "keeping up with the Joneses" is as American as apple pie, we would make coveting mandatory long before we would prohibit it. Moreover, does anyone really believe that a rape victim who takes God's name in vain by screaming, "Oh God, stop it!" has fundamentally violated our morality but the rapist hasn't?

When I look at hardcore right-wing "Christians" in this country I see little that would make Jesus proud. Jesus taught humility but these people maintain a hypocritical sanctimony much like the Pharisees Jesus detested. Jesus preached sharing whatever we had and condemned those who would amass wealth instead, but conservative Christian America swears that a system reflecting the motto, "I want more, more, more no matter how poor others may be" is the only one that isn't immoral. Where Jesus preached peace and loving our enemies, I see warmongers who kindle animosities as they spread division and hatred. Those who scream at the top of their lungs that they're Christians may not be the complete and perfect opposite of real Christianity, but they're certainly close. Gandhi said, "I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." This is terribly unfortunate since the path outlined by Jesus is a wonderful prescription for living, as are many spiritual paths advocated by other religions and by non-believers who push for a world of kindness, decency and peaceful coexistence.

From the Halls of Philadelphia to the Shores of Tripoli

Any wishful thinking that the Tea Party might push the religious right off the Republican stage for the moment was ill-founded and we should have known better. As soon as Republicans picked up seats in Congress but naturally couldn't fix the economy or unemployment, they immediately returned to pushing irrelevant wedge issues designed to rile up their base. Frankly, this was as predictable as the night following the day. As more nonsense is sure to come, let me address the periodically recurring and patently false claim that we have always been a specifically Christian nation, but secular socialists are trying to undo this long tradition.

Our government, unlike all that preceded it, was built on the enlightened principles of reason and popular sovereignty. Our founders believed that the just power to govern was derived from the consent of the governed, while other societies held the more primitive and superstitious belief that governing authority reflected divine providence. The U.S. Constitution's Preamble, which sets the tone for the rest of that document, begins, "We the people", and by that authority alone we "ordain and establish" the world's first such constitution. That entire document lacks a single reference to God, let alone Jesus Christ, and the only references to religion are to disentangle it from the legitimate authority of our government. Article VI prohibits any religious test for holding public office, and the First Amendment prohibits the government from establishing a religion or interfering with the free exercise thereof. This was wisely done to protect the institutions of both church and state from one another.

As I turn on the news and see unrest in Libya followed by reporting on an anti-Islamic witch hunt in Congress, I'm reminded of The Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States and Tripoli, which was drafted in late 1796 during the Washington administration and ratified in 1797 in the early days of the Adams administration. On May 26, 1797, the treaty was read aloud to the Senate and was unanimously approved. This was only the third instance of such unanimity among the hundreds of times that a recorded vote was required in the Senate. Article 11 of that treaty reads as follows:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

Can you imagine Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) voting to approve a treaty proclaiming that we're "not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion"? Can you picture Glenn Beck's hysterical reaction if such language were drafted today? Both men would be outraged that we would betray our founders in that way, which should provoke laughter from anyone who knows that these words are in fact our founders'. We can listen to what Glenn Beck says the Founding Fathers say or we can listen to what the Founding Fathers say the Founding Fathers say. The choice is ours; we can either open our minds or we can wallow in a pit of fear and ignorance.

None if this is to deny that many of our founders espoused some form of Christianity, however, that's really neither here nor there. The ideas and principles that set the United States apart from the rest of the world came from Christians, Deists and Unitarians who were students of The Enlightenment. These men valued reason over church dogma and were often fiercely critical of organized religion. Christianity was popular in the Colonies but we need to be careful with our assumptions. We shouldn't claim a Christian foundation for a society that was built on universal truths and natural rights rather than anything mystical any more than we should conclude that the faith of "turn the other cheek" provides the theological underpinning for the musical genre of "I'ma bust a cap in yo' ass" just because some rapper wears a gold cross and thanks Jesus when he wins an award. While our society was and is imperfect, it became the envy of the world and the model for others to copy. It would be an unconscionable rejection of our national birthright to take a giant leap backward towards a medieval theocracy.

War Is Peace Freedom Is Slavery Ignorance Is Strength

The title of this post is taken from George Orwell's novel, 1984. Specifically, these were the slogans that were displayed on the Ministry of Truth building. I'm not suggesting that Orwell was prescient or that our society resembles the dystopian nightmare laid out in that book, but I can't resist commenting on how these words are important to the book 1984, the year 1984 is so important to conservative Republicans, and how these words from the book express the right wing philosophy.

The movement conservatives who currently dominate Republican politics look upon the "Reagan Revolution" with unparalleled reverence. 1984 is perhaps the most celebrated year in terms of Reagan's presidency. In that year he was reelected President with a 49 state landslide. Although purely coincidental, it's still amusing that these slogans from the book 1984 would capture the essence of political thought for right wing Republicans who cherish Reagan and 1984.

War is peace is the most obvious. At one time, conservative Republicans were opposed to foreign entanglements and simply wanted to be left alone to make money, but now Neo-conservatives love war, despise diplomacy, and can scarcely fathom the concept of peace without a body count. Whether it's war abroad or more guns at home, actual or threatened bloodshed is their only path to tranquility.

Ignorance is strength has also become a doctrine for the far right. They routinely spurn science, nuanced thought, and anything that challenges their preferred orthodoxy, in favor of a mindless adherence to a party line teeming with misinformation, unchallenged erroneous assumptions, and wishful thinking. This willful ignorance is the reason such a disturbing number of Republicans believe that President Obama is a Muslim or was born overseas or that Glenn Beck is worth listening to as he weaves his tapestry of nutty conspiracy theories. The right has built a great deal of its strength because the ignorant masses in their ranks mindlessly repeat what they hear rather than doing 45 seconds of research, and I'm not even counting the religious right.

The third contradiction, freedom is slavery is perhaps the most troubling. The right wing's confusion between freedom and slavery is central to their agenda, and it will harm society for generations if we don't push back now. When the almighty overlords completely subjugate the masses, most people would call this slavery. The political right calls it their freedom agenda. Whenever there's a conflict between powerful forces and average citizens, the answer for conservatives is to strip whatever power the little guy has in order to make an already uphill fight unwinnable. If a battalion of machine gunners fought some poor schmuck armed with a rock, conservatives would correct this imbalance by taking away the guy's rock.

If workers have some leverage against powerful corporations or governments, eliminate their bargaining power, as they're trying to do in Wisconsin. If we pass laws that protect consumers against abusive and corrupt practices in the financial world, gut the enforcement mechanism, as they're now trying to do in Congress. For years, the only suggestion Republicans made to combat skyrocketing health care costs was to limit an injured person's right to seek redress through the courts. A little guy going up against a giant hospital corporation and an insurance company wasn't unfair enough for them; they had to give the mighty an artificial advantage to supplement the natural dominance they already had. After all, a court case involves lawyers against lawyers and an impartial judge and jury. Such a fair system is intolerable because justice is anathema to the right.

By freedom, conservatives mean the freedom of the few to enslave the many, and we need to stop them. Being rich and powerful has always had its advantages and we don't need to sweeten the deal for those at the top. Moreover, most Republicans will be hurt by their own agenda. Yes, A few will score big and be thankful that we discarded our former national greatness in order to further tip the scales in their favor, but most conservatives are, metaphorically speaking, Titanic passengers who have been too blinded by greed and ignorance to see their self-destructive stupidity in supporting the iceberg. The rest of us mustn't be so foolish.

Mourning in America

In his first inaugural address, Ronald Reagan said, "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." He was referring specifically to the rising debt through deficit spending, but in a general sense he was also expressing his desire to reduce the government even if we had sufficient tax revenues to balance the budget. Although he spent a number of years as the head of government at both the state and federal level, Reagan openly expressed his contempt for government. He's also famous for saying, "The nine most terrifying word in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

Remarkably, Reagan was somehow able to preach the Gospel of anti-governmentalism while simultaneously convincing people that happy days were here again. His sunny optimism was infectious even as he conveyed the disturbing message that our freely and fairly elected government, of which he was the leader, was plaguing us like a disease. It takes someone with Reagan's skills to convince people that a central institution of our society was destroying us but we could still rejoice because, as his reelection campaign trumpeted, "It's morning in America." Alas, the conservative Republicans who have followed in his footsteps have mastered the hatred of government but they lack Reagan's jovial nature that allowed him to work with people of all stripes. This has become a serious problem.

Even with all of his charm, Reagan failed miserably in his effort to reduce government and rein in the debt. On the contrary, the national debt skyrocketed under his administration and we went from being the largest creditor nation on earth to the largest debtor nation. He presided over huge tax code changes, steadily increasing government spending and, despite all of his bluster about reducing government, no peacetime president before him was anywhere near as reckless with the ballooning debt as he was. His conservative Republican successors, both named George Bush also did their damage, although George H.W. Bush did far less harm than his son. Democrat Bill Clinton did a much better job as illustrated here and here.  You may also find this interesting.

We shouldn't be surprised that Reagan proved to be a complete hypocrite when it came to controlling the debt. Running this country is hard and I can't imagine anyone with such disdain for government being particularly good at governing. Likewise, I wouldn't expect Pope Benedict XVI to be an effective head of Planned Parenthood, and PETA president Ingrid Newkirk wouldn't be the go-to person to run a meat packing plant. Reagan is also to blame for much greater problems than just runaway debt. Ronald Reagan is the father of modern governmental irresponsibility. He and his ideological followers did damage that will likely be measured in decades because they not only left us with severe problems, they largely gutted our ability to create solutions. They conditioned the public to believe that we shouldn't have to sacrifice; we should have all the bloated military spending and other pet projects we want, and if any responsible grownup comes along suggesting that we need to raise revenue to pay for the shiny new toys we buy ourselves, he or she must be ferociously condemned as a communist hell-bent on America's destruction.

Like it or not, we need a strong public sector. While Reagan harmed the institution of government, those who claim to be his disciples are far worse. The GOP should change its logo from the elephant to the Trojan horse because conservatives now seek entry into elected office in order to wreak havoc, not as the people's representatives they purport to be, but as saboteurs. They campaign their way into government's inner sanctum in order to smother government with a pillow.

For the past 30 years, the very rich have done extremely well while the rest of the country has struggled. As Warren Buffett said, the richest Americans have seen their wealth take off like a rocket ship while lower income workers have been on a treadmill. This is the sad legacy of Reaganomics, which is clearly not the trickle down system it was alleged to be, but instead a siphon up system where the broadly shared prosperity that once typified American society has been replaced by increased struggle for the many so that the few can live like sultans. Somehow the character flaw of outsized greed became a virtue consonant with Reagan's philosophy that the poor had too much and the rich had too little.

Today, on the centennial of Reagan's birth, we should resolve to put the American dream back within the grasp of most Americans and stop sacrificing it on the altar of wretched excess.

Palin 2012: God's Gift to Obama

Last month, after nearly two months of post-election wrangling, Tea Party candidate Joe Miller's final attempt to have the courts overturn the will of Alaska's voters was rebuffed and the last death rattle of his Senate campaign finally fell silent. Sarah Palin had backed Joe Miller, and his defeat was a blow to her reputation as a kingmaker, particularly since this happened in her own backyard and at the hands of the voters who had once elected her. Also, while this defeat on its own may be a bitter pill for Palin to swallow, the broader narrative may be devastating to her.

Combining this loss with those of Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O'Donnell in Delaware we can perhaps connect the dots and draw certain inferences. In Delaware, Republican Mike Castle looked like a shoo-in to pick up a seat but the party didn't nominate him, and in Nevada, as I pointed out in a post this summer, Republicans could have easily ousted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid with any credible candidate, but instead they chose Sharron Angle. The common thread in all of these cases is the limitation of anger and resentment. While the most radical faction of the Tea Party may cast enough votes to foist an embarrassing candidate on the Republican Party, the general electorate is still unwilling to select a candidate who is clearly unqualified for the position he or she seeks. Unless the public reverses this trend and develops an appetite for manifestly unqualified candidates, Sarah Palin will never win another election.

If Abraham Lincoln were alive today he could use Sarah Palin as "Exhibit A" in support of his words, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." These days she seems unable to open her mouth without her stock plummeting. She has a rabid base of hardcore supporters who tend to show up at Tea Party rallies ranting, raving and wielding cardboard signs of misspelled hate speech, but there aren't enough of these fanatics to help her win a general election. The ranks of those who hold a favorable view of Palin keep dwindling while the ranks of those who view her unfavorably continue to swell.

More importantly, to the extent Palin continues to be such a force in the Republican Party as 2012 approaches, President Obama benefits mightily.  Look at the two speeches given on the same day in the aftermath of the Tucson tragedy.  When the nation needed a leader, President Obama showed us what a leader looks like.  Sarah Palin by contrast revealed her true character as a petty, self-absorbed opportunist who lacks enough presidential timber to build a matchstick. The unavoidable comparison of these two speeches sent public opinion of these two people in opposite directions. It became hard to picture Sarah Palin as a great president of the Miley Cyrus Fan Club let alone the United States of America.  Palin's apologists say that she had to come out and defend herself as she did because she was the target of unfair accusations, and President Obama had the luxury of being above the fray.  This is so absurd that it's hard not to laugh out loud. Yes, Palin had some stones unfairly cast her way, but for every such pebble directed at her, President Obama has had an entire quarry of rocks thrown at him by, among others, Sarah Palin herself.

Palin could be an unwitting blessing to Barack Obama's reelection in a number of ways. The dream scenario would be her running as a third party, perhaps Tea Party, candidate, which would give neither her nor the Republican nominee a prayer of winning.  Failing that, if she goes deep into primary season beating up on fellow Republicans, the damage could provide the margin of victory for a second Obama administration. Also, if she seeks the nomination and is roundly rejected by the voters who know she can't win a general election, this could strip the all-important enthusiasm factor from the far right fringe of the party, which is her base and an increasingly important voting bloc for the Republicans. Finally, if she just continues sucking all the oxygen from the room, diverting attention away from serious men and women who seek the Republican nomination, she does her party a disservice and gives President Obama a great gift.

Either Stand by Your Words or Shut the (BLEEP!) Up!

The right wing hate machine just can't seem to help itself.  The usual suspects, Beck, Limbaugh, Palin, etc., are simply being themselves, which is to say acting shamefully.  Yesterday Sarah Palin released a video in which she lashed out at those who decried the incendiary tone of the hate machine's rhetoric, especially those who suggested it might have influenced Jared Loughner. Since Palin and others were at least partly blamed for this tragedy despite the fact that their vitriol appears to have no causal link, she had the perfect opportunity to take the high road and come out smelling like a rose, but unsurprisingly she chose not to. In her video she said that acts of criminality "begin and end with the criminals."  No one else bears any share of the blame.  In the very next paragraph, without a trace of irony, she says that because words are not responsible for inciting hatred and violence, people who claim otherwise are reprehensible because their words are responsible for inciting hatred and violence.

Huh?!

Of course in that same sentence she made the great faux pas of referring to the assertions of journalists and pundits as "blood libel", which was very offensive to many in the Jewish community.  The stupidity is compounded when you consider that Palin was trying to express either real or feigned concern for Gabby Giffords as she lies in a hospital bed clinging to life, and that Giffords is the first Jewish woman Arizona ever elected to Congress.  Palin obviously didn't write the speech herself and since her ignorance is well known, we can excuse her offensiveness since she was in all likelihood completely oblivious.  Palin was merely reading aloud.  Although she lacks the intellect and eloquence to have written that speech, I have to give her full marks for finding a writer who could capture the Palin essence of petty vindictiveness.

Turning to Glenn Beck, in more theater of the absurd, Beck was outraged that anyone in the media would offer this sort of innuendo, painting someone as contributing to something bad without specific proof.  (Hello, Kettle?  Yeah, hi, it's the pot.  I'm just calling to say you're black.)  Every single day Glenn Beck goes on the air and pushes his wild-eyed conspiracy theories, gesticulating wildly as he tries to terrify his audience into believing that anyone to the left of the far, far right is seeking to enslave us all in a country that will be indistinguishable from Nazi Germany.  His ranting sounds as though it should be coming from a chronic drooler who has to wear a hockey helmet at all times.

Beck and Limbaugh make their living by spreading fear and hatred every day for the entirety of their broadcasts.  They want us to believe that the consequences are apocalyptic if we stray from their brand of arch conservatism, yet they become enraged at the suggestion that they might drive someone over the edge just because they constantly bombard their disciples with their message that left of center America is the Great Satan that must be confronted with the fury of a holy war or we face imminent destruction.  Now Beck is out there saying he hates violence and doesn't want anyone harmed.  Well, which is it?  Were you lying then or are you lying now?  If all men are mortal and John is a man then John must be mortal; it's called a syllogism.  If anything comparable to Hitler's reign of terror must be stopped by any means at our disposal and the current administration fits that description, then it must be stopped by any means at our disposal.  Beck supported preemptive war in Iraq and has foamed at the mouth about appeasement of monstrous regimes, so a claim that he means wait for the voters to replace President Obama is a dog that just won't hunt.  So again I ask, Glenn, were you lying then or are you lying now?  Either this evil must be stopped by any means if we are to avoid national Armageddon, or the hate speech you use to poison the minds and souls of people with a pervading unease and a great amount of undirected anger is a patent fraud perpetrated by a loathsome fraction of a man who is too cowardly to own up to being the charlatan that he is.  If you aren't prepared to defend what you say on your broadcasts then SHUT THE (BLEEP!) UP!