On Priorities

Updated below @ 1820, 9/29

The American political scene will never be accused of being held captive by perspective. When even something as basic as "which of these numbers is larger?" can't be harnessed by the blathering press and political leaders, one can hardly expect to find the ability for relative comparisons running rampant. Two disparate issues stand out for me as cases-in-point: election fraud vis Iran and Afghanistan, and the Defund ACORN Act.

Everyone knows about the election fraud in Iran. It was on every channel for nearly a month, demonstrating the journalistic acumen of the American media (re: Bringing you the news in 140 characters or less!), and proving once and for all Iranian leaders are the evilest of all evil-doers the world has ever seen. Granted, said leaders are not great ambassadors for democracy (no one would make such a claim), but the elections were in the news for a reason. The same reason the brutal Egyptian and Saudi regimes don't make the news.

Compare that coverage with that of electoral fraud in Afghanistan. It's okay if you haven't heard of it. Not many have. Why would you? The person accused of fraud is our guy. That's enough to keep him under wraps. If electoral shenanigans were mentioned, it was only to point out Taliban violence. CNN did not do wall-to-wall coverage on things like this:

The shaky footage shows two election monitors inspecting a book of 100 ballot papers that are still stitched together, as they were intended to arrive at the polling station in rural Afghanistan. But something is wrong; instead of being pristine, ready for the voter to make his or her mark, each paper bears a large blue tick next to the name of one candidate: Hamid Karzai.

As the monitors flick through the pad, the back of the ballots clearly show the authorisation stamp of election monitors, validating them as votes ready to be put in the ballot box and counted.

"We found it the day after the elections," one of the monitors in the footage told me. "They were trying to put it in one of the [ballot] boxes but didn't have time, so we took it home and filmed it. If we had given it back to the election committee they would have used it again, so we burned it, but filmed it to protect ourselves if they come and threaten us."

Or this:

The Afghan elections, already tainted by widespread accusations of misconduct and fraud, received another body blow Wednesday when the head of the European Union's election-monitoring commission said that as many as 1.1 million votes cast in the vote were "suspect."

The latest dark cloud over the Aug. 20 election came as Afghanistan's election commission released a preliminary vote tally Wednesday showing President Hamid Karzai with 54.6 percent of the votes cast – enough to avoid a runoff if the total stands up to one official recount already launched and to mounting doubts like those from the EU.

The EU's general depiction of fraud was bad enough. But even more damaging to the Western-backed government of President Karzai was the finding by Phillippe Morillon, head of the EU monitor, that more than one-third of the votes Mr. Karzai received in his reelection bid – 1.1 million of about 3 million votes for Karzai – could be fraudulent and must be investigated.

None of this minimizes Taliban violence, but it does clearly indicate that American views on the world are guided more by a commitment to its allies and stock assumptions than democracy, despite public claims. President Obama has parlayed his campaign speeches into an Afghanistan policy still riding the opinion of Afghanistan as the good war. Meanwhile, the world's beacon of democracy has attached itself to the falling star of a loose coalition of corrupt warlords, most of whom are politicians in name alone. Any lingering notion that the Afghan government holds its own people in any due regard would have fallen away if such fraud was reported with the same fervency as it was regarding Iran.

The furor surrounding ACORN is better covered, mainly because it fits the tabloid model of American journalism. ACORN has always been a target of Republicans, but who would have thought the end would come with a topic so dear to their hearts: prostitution. David Vitter is surely proud.

Consider the thought process here. The defunding act would have no chance were it not for two random ACORN staffers doling out some helpful information on how to get in the flesh business. Okay, but consider the implication here. If followed to its logical conclusion, this would mean that any company that had any employee commit a federal offense would soon be off the government roll. Like these companies, for instance.

While we await that action with baited breath, let's consider a few of these offenses which might rise a little higher on the immorality of the scale. Maybe electrocuting US soldiers.

And while the Pentagon has previously reported that 13 Americans have been electrocuted in Iraq, many more have been injured, some seriously, by shocks, according to the documents. A log compiled earlier this year at one building complex in Baghdad disclosed that soldiers complained of receiving electrical shocks in their living quarters on an almost daily basis.

One study called electrocution "the most urgent noncombat safety hazard for soldiers in Iraq." And what bastion of liberalism made such a claim? The US Army. Nearly every facility constructed in Iraq by KBR/Halliburton contained dangerous electrical wiring. But, rest assured, putting American soldiers in mortal danger has not hurt the company's bottom line. Nor has the fact that its employees engaged in the gang rape and imprisonment of a female employee.

Then there's Blackwater. In the past months, Blackwater's compound has been raided by the ATF for illegal weapons trafficking, been accused of tax evasion through offshore havens, employed young Iraqi girls for oral sex, and had employees indicted on manslaughter. Yet, 90 percent of its income continues to come from the government.

So let's not kid ourselves as to the magnitude of these crimes here. If the actions of random employees loses a organization government funding, it's only fair to ask when rampant corruption and misdeeds will have their day in the self-aggrandizing Congressional theater. The bill itself states that the organization must be involved in elections, but surely the Republicans leading the charge don't intend for us to consider funneling millions into campaign coffers fitting the bill. But occasionally we may have to accept English at face value, rather than waiting for the political/media filter to deliver it to us.


Update:

The US has decided that Karzai will remain president regardless of final results.

The White House has ended weeks of hesitation over how to respond to the Afghan election by accepting President Karzai as the winner despite evidence that up to 20 per cent of ballots cast may have been fraudulent.

Abandoning its previous policy of not prejudging investigations of vote rigging, the Obama Administration has conceded that Mr Karzai will be President for another five years on the basis that even if he were forced into a second round of voting he would almost certainly win it.

The decision will increase pressure on President Obama to justify further US troop deployments to Afghanistan to prop up a regime now regarded as systemically corrupt.

[...]

Mrs Clinton told Rangin Dadfar Spanta, the Afghan Foreign Minister, that...Mr Karzai would remain President even if investigations now under way cut his share of the first-round vote to below 50 per cent.

Better get something to wash that democracy down with, Afghanistan. It's a bit bitter.


Related:

Supporting the Troops Through No-Bid Contracts May 6, 2008
When You Were Here Before...Couldn't Look You in the Eye August 9, 2009

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The Fallacy of Faith in the Rational Voter

Among several others, one of the topics that tends to pervade my writing on this site is cynicism regarding the intellectual and rational capacity of the average voter. One need only look at the style and substance of the typical campaign ads in an election year to see clearly that their appeals are being made to emotions and prejudice rather than the human capacity for reason. Michael Dukakis looks funny in a helmet, John Kerry looks effete while windsurfing, and too many other examples to name, all exemplify the emotional appeals that, more than simply influencing American politics, form nearly the entirety of the system.

Though the absence of rationalism in American politics appears rather obvious on the surface, it remains taboo to suggest that something is amiss. Politicians certainly will not broach the subject, especially those that wish to continue on for more than a single election. Journalists, too, (save for Mencken, of course) are adverse to insinuating the average voter is ill-informed or irrational, probably stemming from a combination of feelings of fraternity and the necessity of ad revenue. Thus, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the myth of a vast conglomeration of rational voters is perpetuated ad infinitum (and ad nauseum), and the accumulation of proof otherwise seems destined never to be addressed.

Writing for Newsweek, Alan Ehrenhalt, has given it a try, though his conclusions indicate that even as he calls out the electorate he is hesitant to speak in absolutes and still clings to the common conception of the rational voter as one would a faith learned since birth. In the end, Ehrenhalt agrees with the conclusion reached by Rick Shenkman, author of Just How Stupid Are We?, in claiming rather anti-climactically "We can have a smart electorate."

In proposing such a fantasy, Ehrenhalt assumes that there exists a single ingredient missing from the less-informed voters and a simple vitamin or even a vague allusion to eugenics ["how we might go about making more of them"] can save us from their torment. What Ehrenhalt and Shenkman both fail to see is that more than simply a lack of good voters, our political apparatus suffers because at its core it is founded upon these voters, and over the years has only grown as ivy over lattice to incorporate anti-rational voters into itself. The system does not suffer for lack of sufficient input, it requires the very input that it receives and as such would be incapable of functioning should the situation be otherwise.

The political advertisers and marketers have built their operations around the voter as he is found in nature, not the mythical voter as found in popular rhetoric. These con artists do not simply incorporate the ill-informed voter into their work, but establish their entire social function around him, so that without the current crop of voters the system would wither and die. Surely a new system would crop up, but the political marketing apparatus as it is currently constituted would cease to exist.

The supposition that we are but one step away from a league of well-informed, rational voters also belies the very nature of advertising, which at its core depends on irrational, emotional appeals even more than it feeds them. Differences between commercials from automakers and political campaigns scarcely exist, both seeking to paint a fantasy in the minds of the audience rather than appealing to some superstitious belief in the mental superiority of the common consumer. Whether the good in question is a vehicle or a politician, the sales pitch is the same.

These advertising schemes do not tolerate inanity, but thrive on it. The ill-informed public is a necessity, making the jobs of marketers (commercial and political) both essential and perpetual. Ehrenhalt's analysis of a man who believes in the rationality of voters, Samuel Popkin, is even more implausible than his faith-based acceptance of Shenkman's premise:

In a similar way, Popkin doesn't base his theory of the "reasoning voter" on claims that we go to the polls primed with information about the choices on the ballot. He says we practice "low-information rationality," piecing together scraps of knowledge gleaned from personal experience, historical events, media coverage and other sources to pull the lever based on what amounts to gut reasoning. But he believes that it works most of the time.

An electorate, in other words, is something like a jury. It's a panel of ordinary people, limited in their knowledge and training, who combine to produce a judgment of greater wisdom than any of them could make alone. The crowd, in some mysterious way, is wiser than the individual. The average voter may be no genius, but the electorate as a group is no fool. So the theory goes. It is a theory that allows candidates, scholars and journalists to get through the day without having to question the fundamental tenets of American government.

I don't contend that the theory is groundless. There is something in the wisdom of crowds.

At the root, Popkin is claiming that a well-informed voter is not even a necessary aim, as when enough faulty parts are conjoined, they form a functional whole. This is, of course, preposterous. You can't build a running car out of non-working parts any more than you can construct a functional democracy from an irrational populace. The belief in the "wisdom of crowds" doesn't even merit a retort.

That the voter is physiologically capable of becoming informed or utilizing the gift of rational thought passes without question, to be sure. But to suspect that we are but one or two steps away from such an occurrence is pure fantasy. Our entire political system is built on the ill-informed. Campaigns are constructed so as to best utilize emotional, anti-rational appeals, and little attention is paid to questions of policy. When policy is accidentally brought up, it is too often a cavalcade of half-truths and outright lies so that even these discussions devolve into evidence of baseless zeal.

In the arena of foreign policy, most Americans can't find Canada on a map, and care even less about the intricacies of policy half a world a way. All those that are not Americans are by definition "the others." Differences between Shia and Sunni, Punjab and Pashtun, have no bearing on the American mind, and thus never interfere with swift-boat politics. Nuanced, historically-literate discussion doesn't move product, tales of heroism and romanticized narratives do.

Political campaigns are simply a series of fantastical mirages of one candidate and farcical suggestions about the other, and the favor is always returned, so that we are left with nothing but a endless supply of supposed gaffes, faux controversy, and feigned outrage. Whether people vote against their own economic interests is off the table, and discussion must center on a single word ("cling"). Discussion of the efficacy of comparisons between the Iraq occupation and World War II are immaterial, and all roads lead to a intentional misinterpretation of statements on the subject (100 years).

Every so often, this farce is pointed out by an isolated opinion writer, myself included, but it remains true that the majority of American voters do not recognize their own failures, and remain even further from lending hope to a reversal. The problem here remains the weakest component of democracy, for a system that rewards every citizen with a vote must inevitably allow those that should not vote to do so.

As we cannot take away the vote, and should not desire to for fear of the alternatives, we must instead change the system. To do so requires more than simple wishful thinking and an interest in education. The entire system must be torn down from the base. Only after there ceases to be a market for the current state of political framing will politicians and political operatives be forced to use a different tact.

Previous appeals for a betterment of the system have centered on a wish for ad campaigns to appeal to intellect rather than emotion, but these have the sequence of events backward. If detailed specs of cars sold the product, the ads for them would illustrate that reality. If intellectual appeals sold politicians, we would not see ads claiming that a vote for a particular politician is equal to rape, homicide, or pedophilia. No, the system will not change for the voter. The voting base must change the system. We must eliminate the market for crap and in its place create one for genuine discussion and debate, and the prospects are not nearly as good as Ehrenhalt would have us believe.

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Republican Convention: Enterprising Pioneers, All

Party conventions, by definition, have become little more than over-wrought pep rallies; short on specifics and purpose, long on pomp and glitter. As I wrote concerning the Democratic Convention last week, conventions provide ample opportunity for party supporters to push aside credulity and lend unwavering support to the party's corporate overlords. They are a time for healing, by which I mean abandonment of any and all trepidation about the party platform's divergence from the will of the voters. Glenn Greenwald expressed concern over AT&T's exclusive party, yet never seemed to approach a realization that the Democratic Party itself was just such an organization.

Central to these conventions, which have lost all tangible purpose now that the nomination itself no longer takes place there, is indeed the central tenet of the entire American political system. Namely, they are a charade meant to present a narrative which intersects reality at no juncture, a cinematic presentation of candidates and platforms as they are meant to be seen, not as they are.

It is within this framework that the Republican Party, forever bedfellows with the ruling elite and corporate oligarchy was marginally successful at presenting itself as the party of the people, even -- more laughable, still -- agents of change. Change, of course, is perennially the platform of the non-incumbent party (George Bush was the candidate of change in 2000), but it strains even the few remaining strands tying American politics to logic and reality for the party in power to do so.

For John McCain to run a successful campaign as an agent of change by running on a platform which promises no deviation whatsoever from the standard right-wing fare is ludicrous indeed, but meets with marginal success due to the American electorate's staunch ignorance of words and their meanings. Reason and logic hold spectacularly less import in American politics than do appearance and presentation, and the Republican Convention recently closed in Minnesota was a clinic in that reality.

Only in an environment which never questions theatrical presentation could a beer baroness present herself as a pioneer. In fact, among the speakers, it was near impossible to find a single individual of privilege. Every last one was suddenly a pioneer, a frontiersman, a by-product of the American Dream. This narrative has been central to the Republican presentation for decades, convincing successive generations to vote against their own economic interests while simultaneously insinuating that they are doing precisely the opposite.

Thus, promoting policies which guarantee the elimination of small businesses in favor of multinational corporations becomes looking out for the entrepreneur. Promoting educational policies which would eliminate the teaching of evolution or sex education as enforcing choice and parental controls. Promoting the elimination of any safeguards against capital flight becomes creating job security. In this Orwellian fantasy we've established, it is no longer necessary to sprinkle speeches with small intrusions of fact, for no one questions clear falsehoods, no one asks that definite meanings be attached to words or phrases.

Sarah Palin, herself a political gimmick, utilized her husband as one in her own acceptance speech. Despite the Right's unwavering opposition to organized labor and higher wages of the working class, she posits that being married to a member of that class suffices to eliminate a century of history.

He's a lifelong commercial fisherman ... a production operator in the oil fields of Alaska's North Slope ... a proud member of the United Steel Workers' Union ... and world champion snow machine racer.

Throw in his Yup'ik Eskimo ancestry, and it all makes for quite a package.

Again the specter of that American Dream, and a quasi-minority no less.

Despite being chosen precisely to reassure the base and draw attention away from McCain's occasional infidelity to his Party, Palin attempted to present herself as a change, a threat to the "Washington elite." For the most part, such an outlandish proposition seems to be bought in sum by the majority of the mass media and electorate. She may have supported the Bridge to Nowhere, but she's a threat to the Washington elites. She may be for drilling on protected lands, but oil companies supposedly fear her. She may be for the elimination of choice in school curriculum, but parents across America will thank her for doing just the opposite.

This was the spirit that brought me to the governor's office, when I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau ... when I stood up to the special interests, the lobbyists, big oil companies, and the good-ol' boys network.

If by standing up to the big oil companies she meant adopted their policies as her own governing platform, then I suppose she is correct. If by standing up to the lobbyists she means joining a campaign up to its teeth in some of the most influential corporate and despotic-regime lobbyists in Washington, then she is being honest.

If, however, words are to have any meaning, if the American voter is to require that actual linguistic and logical standards be applied to the nation's political language, then her speech and all others in the past two weeks have been pure farce.

Despite all claims to the contrary, the bevy of orations engaged in over the past fourteen days have barely intercepted the will of the public at-large at any point. Promises and chilling narratives abound, but nowhere was there an honest accounting just how the lives of Americans will be better four years from now. This, I suppose, is to be accepted in a country as religious as the United States. Its citizens are more than willing to accept everything on faith, and hastily discharge with anything that seems to conflict with their reigning worldviews. Inconvenient facts become nuisances to be swatted away so that the Kool-Aid may be imbibed without interference.

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On Bias and Polarization

The two-party system that we've concocted in America requires us to view every occurrence, both foreign and domestic, through a myopic vision of our own political structure. Under this system, we act as if the women and children being slaughtered in Iraq are somehow concerned with the outcome of November elections. We presume that they are watching elections thousands of miles away, though they are without power and clean water for most of their daily lives. It is this supreme arrogance, this belief that the world hinges on the day-to-day banter in American politics, that precludes Americans from perceiving the distaste we leave in the mouths of others.

On the domestic front, the electorate seems only capable of adopting a stance of unfettered allegiance to one party or the other, unable to examine policy from the viewpoint of logic and reason, but only from the standard of whether it benefits the preferred party. The human mind seems unable to function in the presence of ambiguity. Everything must be pushed to one side or the other, to one wholly-inclusive worldview or another. Of these two acceptable positions, it is imagined that one is wholly true while another always false. As the world's religions operate on the pretext that of the thousands in existence one of them has everything exactly right, a statistical impossibility, so does American politics. That the holders of each faith believe that theirs is that single holder of absolute truth is responsible for the fanaticism tearing the world apart, leaving a trail of death and destruction in its wake.

The stakes may not be quite as high in domestic politics, but it is only within that framework that every opinion is met with charges of bias from one side or the other. Arguments are examined, not on their merits, but entirely on which of the two acceptable sides they support. Nevermind the rules of logic inherent in the argument, if it supports one side it is met with shouts of "bias" from the other.

Facts are not examined for truth, the truth is instead seen as arbitrary. The insurgency in Iraq must be filtered through the American political framework, replete with its designated enemies and allies, villains and friends. Statistics are discarded as bias, replaced instead with pre-ordained conclusions that remain firm in spite of all available evidence. Anti-smoking groups spread propaganda about the harmful effects of smoking, complete with scientific proof, yet they cannot be taken seriously in light of the beneficent tobacco companies whose own studies surely bear no bias. Greenpeace may be nuts, but that is no reason to suspect that the oil companies seeking to drill pure profit in certain regions are being entirely forthcoming in the area of the effects of such drilling. To believe such absurdities provides ample fuel for the counter-productive fires that burn in American politics and ensure that the truth takes a back seat to unadulterated conviction.

I don't read Democratic talking points any more than I read Republican ones. I don't want to be part of a team, I don't want to be part of a group that requires allegiance to its members above my own reason. Yet no matter what stance I adopt, it will be viewed by the other side as subservience to the other party structure.

Because I abhor groupthink, I have no difficulty mocking the people fainting and fawning over Obama. Yet, just the same, I refuse to concoct some wild tales of him and Michelle acting as some Manchurian candidates trying to destroy our system of governance. I'm not concerned about tracking down a forged birth certificate any more than I lose an ounce of sleep over the fact that McCain was born in Panama.

McCain's old. Obama's exotic. Unfortunately, nobody seems to be able to get past those points, and nobody wants to legitimately discuss any issues. Differences of opinion are laudable so long as they're based on reason and thoughtful examination, but those are severely lacking in our political system, on both sides. That I sometimes hold opinions that coincide with one side or the other is not a signal that I've bought allegiance to that 'team,' but merely intersected them for the moment.

I want to move away from this bipolar charade, this system which requires every occurrence, both domestic and international, be examined within the faulty framework of our two parties. I want to move to a point where arguments are examined on their merits rather than proscribing the speaker into one camp or the other where he's responsible for everything that that side has said and done. I want to move to a point where political decisions are made to provide the greatest benefit to the governed rather than the strategic aggrandizement of power for the politician.

The one thing I'm trying to get across with my writing is that I'm consistent with my reasoning. If you stick to the rules of logic (and there are rules), you can be forgiven for a difference of opinion. The problem with the two-party system is that you always end up on one side or the other -- you have to mathematically -- so the other side always assumes you're on some sort of hobby horse, that you've sold your soul to the perceived enemy.

The bipolar system never requires anyone to hold consistent views, never requires them to oppose the side that they support, never requires that they actually answer to the will of the governed. Politics are not discussed bound to rules of logic and reason, they are discussed only in a framework of two parties that require absolute allegiance in an arena with absolutely no historical literacy whatsoever.

In the Clinton years, I was with those that railed against Clinton's nefarious ways and dismissal of certain parts of the Constitution. My own constitution, however, will not allow me to simply switch my allegiance when the White House changes hands. This puts me at odds with former allies, but I still believe the same things; only my targets have changed. My reasons and principles remain unaltered: The President exists to serve the people, not his own crony or corporate interests.

I have not changed from one side to the other, but have stayed the same as the parties have rotated. I believe wholeheartedly in the ideals of this country. I believe in democracy and liberty above all else. The problem is, neither party is all that keen on promoting those ideals. Both parties are more concerned with increasing their own political viability while they pit the populace against each other under false pretenses so that they pay no attention to the dealings behind the curtain.

It is the system, not my actual arguments, that make it seem as though I have been the one who has changed, when in fact it is merely the fact that a Republican now holds power. Check clips from the late Nineties of Sean Hannity, and you will find him engaged in diatribe against Clinton's use of executive power. Yet, now that Bush holds office, he supports unbridled executive power, even in its still-more-perverted form of the "unitary executive" theory.

That can signify only one thing: he bases his stance not on whether or not executive power should be checked, but rather who wields it. That is a shifting and logically dishonest argument, based not on a consistent logical structure, but on what best amplifies the power of Republicans while curtailing that of the Democrats. This is a detriment to the political discourse.

So you may say that I'm biased if you want, but understand that it is bias toward my beliefs of Constitutional governance, not a particular party.

Conservatives say they vote for views and beliefs, yet in November we will see them vote for a man that they have railed against for over a decade, a man that they claimed didn't share those views and beliefs. So how far does that impenetrable nobility go? Democrats would certainly tell you that they do the same, but in November they will support a choice for VP that stands for everything their presidential candidate has founded his campaign against. In November, voters will ultimately vote for the D and the R, nothing else.

Republicans would have voted for Guiliani had he been won the nomination, despite the fact that he's had several mistresses, been divorced three times, dresses in drag and engages in any number of other things that those so-called conservative value-holders abhor (in public statements). Republicans would have supported as VP (or candidtate) the former governor of a state that legalized gay marriage and has a mild form of socialized health care. In the two party system, values are out the window in November.

Anyone writing an opinion piece has a bias, otherwise their writing wouldn't be an opinion, it would be nothing. Bias is typically defined as "an opinion different than mine," but the speaker refuses to see that they, too, hold opinions. If they were without opinions, I would check their pulse.

Some take everything Republicans say at face value, while accusing every Democrat of speaking with alterior motives, then accuse me of bias. I believe they're all full of crap, so who's biased here? Some look at a good speaker, then try and tear him down because he does so in the presence of teleprompters, while at the same time supporting fully a president who has barely a passing acquaintance with the English language, then tell me I'm biased.

Everyone's biased. No one is devoid of opinions. What matters is that these biases are consistent with reality and the rules of logic. When my bias tells me all politicians lie, I'm being consistent and intellectually honest. When their bias tells them that only Democrats lie, they're lying to themselves.

When my bias requires tangible proof through their actions that someone is a supporter of some Christian morality, I'm being consistent and intellectually honest. When their bias tells them that Republicans caught in men's rooms and with prostitutes can continue to spout off about "family values," they're lying to themselves.

Republicans love to paint critics of their policies as "America-haters," but nothing could be further from the truth. It's simply that we love the ideal of America as it was conceived. Loving the freedoms and opportunities provided by this country does not preclude anyone from criticizing the policies of its current leaders.

Parents love their children, and would never construe criticism of their decisions as "hating" them. Nor would punishing them for misdeeds be a signal of some nefarious allegiance to the neighbors' children.

Loving America isn't waving the biggest flag or sporting the biggest yellow ribbon on your car. It's supporting the ideals upon which this country was founded, and those ideals have been absolutely trounced in recent years, with the perpetrators all the while claiming that it is actually they, pillagers of the Constitution, that love this country.

So you can say I have bias if you wish. So long as you realize that my only bias is to the Enlightenment ideals of this nation and the documents that serve as the product of that intellectual milestone. America should indeed serve as a model for the rest of the world, but it must be the right model, we must take the right lesson from the 18th Century. We should indeed spread the lessons provided us by the Minutemen and the Constitutional Congress, and we should absolutely criticize our government when it instead spreads through the world the policies of the Red Coats and King George.

I am biased. I'm biased to the ideals this country was founded on. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else, and I will support whoever best supports those ideals at the moment. I hold no illusions that one party or the other holds a monopoly on those ideals. To believe that is delusional. All politicians lie. Members of both parties plot and scheme to accrue their own power. To believe otherwise is the worst kind of bias, for to believe that one side is wholly noble while the other fully nefarious is to serve a delusion that exacerbates not the will of the people, but the continuation of the aggrandizement of power in the hands of a detached ruling class.

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Conventional Folly

One of the defining characteristics of our bi-polar politics is the willingness, nay, eagerness, of the dedicated rank-and-file to shed all elements of doubt and reason in favor of throwing themselves in full support of the party structure, no matter how counter-intuitive it may seem on the surface. Republicans who have spent the last decade decrying John McCain as anything but a real conservative are more than happy to shuffle along in zombie-like fashion as the man poses as the reincarnation of George Bush, and Democrats are so desperate in their Quixotic search for a different (any will do, thank you) direction they ignore the glaring signs that Obama is anything but.

Glenn Greenwald personifies this delusional nature, writing about his shock -- shock! -- that the corporate sponsor of the Convention, AT&T, would act like, er, a corporate sponsor.

Last night in Denver, at the Mile High Station -- next to Invesco Stadium, where Barack Obama will address a crowd of 30,000 people on Thursday night -- AT&T threw a lavish, private party for Blue Dog House Democrats, virtually all of whom blindly support whatever legislation the telecom industry demands and who also, specifically, led the way this July in immunizing AT&T and other telecoms from the consequences for their illegal participation in the Bush administration's warrantless spying program.

Greenwald knows, whether he indicates it or not, that this party is but a drop in the bucket, a trifle compared to the billions already showered on all members of Congress in the past year by the telecommunications industry thanking them for their dutiful service to the poor, cash-strapped conglomerates of this great nation.

Greenwald uses the term "Blue Dogs" with derision, but it is plain for all paying attention that the vote to extend immunity for clear violations of the law was as inevitable as it was infuriating, and merely indicative of the state of American democracy. Lefties like to pretend that the Democrats are simple beings, led by only one cause, that of the people. That Democrats alone are immune to the influence of power, prestige, and corporate money showers is delusion bordering on lunacy.

Amazingly, not a single one of the 25-30 people we tried to interview would speak to us about who they were, how they got invited, what the party's purpose was, why they were attending, etc.

Really, Glenn, was it that amazing? Or was it an entirely predictable and natural offshoot of American democracy? There was no democracy to be had within the Convention, and what little there was outside was kindly put in its rightful place.

Individuals arrested at the Democratic National Convention will be processed at an industrial warehouse with chain-link cells topped by razor wire, a facility some have compared to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Groups planning marches, concerts and other events during the Aug. 25-28 convention dub the center "Gitmo on the Platte," for the nearby South Platte River...Video footage of the north Denver warehouse on Denver's KCNC-TV showed coils of razor wire topping chain-link cells. A sign read: "Electric stun devices used here."

This is what passes for democracy in America. Protests require permits, are constrained to preposterous "free speech zones," and performed under the threat of detention in a razor-wire rimmed Gulag. The chances that the participants inside the Pepsi Center would allow the wishes of these insignificant Americans to influence the party platform were about as high as President Bush allowing the whims of dying Iraqi children influence his foreign policy.

Inside the Pepsi Center, emotions ran exceedingly high, undeterred and unfettered by the loonies outside. Speakers were determined to leave no platitude unsaid, no empty phrase (change, anyone?) unuttered, secure in the assumption that their captive audience wouldn't dare call them on specifics or demand that the platform reflect their wishes.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the area of foreign policy. People have been successfully convinced by the Obama team that he represents a stark shift in direction from the past eight years, so much so that they have given up the formality of listening to actual words spoken and actions undertaken. Obama's foreign policy team is chock full of the typical imperial fare, nicely rounded out by last weekend's selection of Joe Biden as running mate, one of the most firmly-ensconced members of the foreign policy establishment, strongest purveyors of unbridled American expansionism, and avid supporters of the War in Iraq.

Anyone actually listening to the speeches of Biden and Obama would have been pummeled by images of continued American militarism under an Obama presidency, including -- but surely not limited to -- expansion of the war in Afghanistan, continued stoking of the flames in Iran, and diligently renewing the Cold War with Russia. If one didn't know better, one would think the Republicans just held their Convention in Denver.

But all this is par for the course. Politicians chant empty mantras like change (every challenger for the last several hundred years has offered a change of direction) without ever being held to such promises. Obama says "change," his supporters jump, and no one thinks to ask what that "change" might entail, or how it might manifest itself. By all outward signs, change will come in the form of continued militarism in a prettier package -- more engaging speeches and more empty gestures to international organizations (before ignoring them). Liberals don't oppose war, they oppose unsuccessful wars. Had the Iraq occupation gone as planned, Biden would still be all for it, as would all Democrats who spent all of five minutes questioning the decision of the "anti-war" candidate to take the "pro-war" figure as his running mate before climbing on board with nary a peep.


Related:

Change Personified, August 25
Renewing Afghanistan, July 21

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What Orwell Didn't Know

The idea for this piece was stolen from the collection of essays by the same name. Overall a mediocre effort, but a worthy idea.

One of the first things that struck me about Orwell, as it does about many historical figures, is that both sides (in our polarized world, it is imagined that there are only two worldviews, to be taken in whole or not at all) claim him as their own. The right, recalling 1984 sees him as a virulent anti-Socialist and anti-Communist, though it is clear that it is the tyranny he opposes rather than the economics. The left, likewise, revels in his scathing of totalitarianism while simultaneously ignoring their own talent for the same. Orwell, himself, saw much the same pillaging of Dickens in his essay, Charles Dickens:

When Chesterton wrote his introduction to the Everyman edition of Dickens's works, it seemed quite natural to him to credit Dickens with his own highly individual brand of medievalism, and more recently a Marxist writer, Mr. T. A. Jackson, has made spirited efforts to turn Dickens into a bloodthirsty revolutionary. The Marxist claims him as "almost" a Marxist, the Catholic claims him as "almost" a Catholic.

The argument is baseless from the start, as Orwell was writing for his own time, not to please one side or the other of this counter-productive, mundane, polarized muck we've found ourselves in. But also, one of his prevailing themes is the use of language and its effect as a vehicle for propaganda and abuse. Who, having witnessed the banality of our current campaign season, cannot see examples of Newspeak and Orwellian language in abundance? If not used explicitly for propaganda, then at least to obfuscate the fact that the speaker, while profusely spilling forth words, is indeed saying very little.

What is clear from Orwell's writing, especially Politics and the English Language, is that he would achieve no favor in either camp, Obama a master of flashy vacuousness, and McCain a great utilizer of phrases which have assumed meanings but whose definitions he intentionally fails to apply. Citing the lack of precision in his contemporary prose:

The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.

Both Obama and McCain are guilty of this fault, neither wishing to attach their prose to a specific meaning, preferring instead to allow the listener to paint their own canvas of what they want to hear. Boxing in their rhetoric with the concrete would force explanation and only inhibit their ability to woo as many people as possible.

The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.

It seems that a men like John McCain and George Bush were no less prevalent in Orwell's time, as both embody Orwell's laments in the above passage. Both are rhetorical fans of freedom, democracy, and patriotism, but both are equally opposed to applying a concrete definition to the words. In speech, both are avid fans of Iraqi democracy and sovereignty. In practice, they see the country as nothing more than the 51st state which just happens to contain an obscene amount of oil. By throwing the words out, however, the listener applies their own meaning, and as such is capable of seeing a process in which 100s of thousands of Iraqis die as a humanitarian mission and "for their own good." Cluster bombs don't spread death, they spread democracy and freedom. The words, in true Orwellian fashion, hide from view the practical outcome of their true meaning.

Likewise, Obama is greatly aided by the fact that he, himself, is a blank canvas, which only further strengthens the effect of his equally-vacuous words and phrases. Obamas followers paint onto him their own hopes and dreams, their own wishes for a "new direction," and little attention is paid to his actual words. Much of the recent presumption of Obama flip-flops stems from the reality that many are hearing his words for the first time, although he has repeated them often.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

It is in this manner that killing thousands of people becomes an act of good will, the sending of other parents' children to die an act of bravery, the calling for the addition of troops and the addition of a new country in which to fight as anti-war. What's more, the electorate for the most part does not ask politicians to eliminate euphemism or vagueness. For the most part, the voting public has no more desire to see the dark face of reality than politicians have motive for giving it to them. As such, to a large extent, the American public censors itself and consigns itself to orthodoxy.

Controlling the public in a totalitarian world is simple, in democracy a little more tact is needed. Propaganda has developed since the time of Orwell in a manner which invites the target audience to do most of the censoring and imbibing of falsehoods themselves. Under the guise of a free society, the public is bombarded with false images and half-truths to the point that they censor themselves, they begin to take as fact total falsehoods without the ruling party lifting a finger.

Americans are bombarded with images of materialism on a daily basis, convinced that all they need to be happy is more toys, and in this pursuit they shed all skepticism of the political structure and cease to ask questions, preferring instead to chase pipe dreams and manufactured illusions. The public clamors for coverage of Obama's bowling average, engages in ritualistic shock at nearly every phrase consisting of anything more than pre-fabricated euphemisms and phrases, all the while ignoring any significant discussion of topics which might actually affect them.

Great pains are taken to paint the two candidates as inhabiting the extreme ends of the ideological spectrum, which sucks the public into a false, polarized debate which ignores virtually anything of substance and import. Presenting Obama and McCain as the extremes of acceptable thought rules out any possibility that the public might begin to think outside that range, might begin to question facets of the system itself. A public that willingly chases red herrings will keep quiet in the corridors of power. A public that censors itself won't ask questions or seek a return on the empty, vacuous rhetoric employed by politicians of all stripes.

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A Tale as Old as Time

One of the great fallacies of this campaign season has been the widely-held notion that we are witnessing something entirely new, that both candidates are aberrations within their own parties and thus practice a "different kind of politics." But once all the self-congratulatory, pre-fabricated cliches fade away we are left with the same script that has been used since the time of Jefferson.

Putting the policies aside for a moment, at least those that have even been put forward, these two supposedly unconventional candidates have conducted a campaign that is as conventional as it is mundane. Obama may bring a flashy grip of his native tongue into the fold, and McCain may be buoyed by the illusion of his independent-minded past, but in the execution there is nothing to separate 2008 from 2004, 2000, or even 1800 for that matter.

The script is well-known by now. Americans are made to reject intellectualism as effete and feminine, out of touch with real Americans, and arrogant, a picture that has been applied to every Democratic candidate for decades and continues to find traction. What Americans want -- real, masculine Americans that is -- is a President like Grandpa John or Uncle George. A real man. A man who thinks with his gut, not with his head. A man who has no need for nuance, real understanding of world affairs, or that flashy education. No, when a real man looks at the world, he sees the clear lines separating the good from the bad, the light from the dark. Intellect simply renders those that possess it ineffectual. Americans want a man of action, a man of toil and sweat, not a sheltered college boy.

It is in this framework that a man such a George Bush, truly a man born into luxury and good fortune if ever there was one, can be presented as anti-elite. It is how Bush, though he embodies the very definition of 'elite' if the word is to have any meaning, can be transformed by the performing simple tasks on his quaint little ranch, dressing in simple clothes, and using simple language. Only then can a man with opportunities well beyond the dreams of most Americans be portrayed as a cowboy and a real American.

If rational thought ever makes its return to our shores, the scheme will be seen instantly as a farce, but for now the window is still wide enough for John McCain to climb through. Although I am no fan of Obama's foreign policy, it is painfully clear that he offers an understanding of world mechanisms that McCain has never even approached. McCain is in the vein of Bush, in that he sees what he needs to see -- good and evil -- and nothing more.

Words like 'victory,' 'freedom,' and 'democracy' provide him with all the understanding he needs. Any attempt to define those terms will be met with resistance, as it is much more beneficial to him to have the listener paint his own image of the word than for McCain to be boxed in with a constrictive definition. If 'victory' was defined, McCain wouldn't be able to declare it when he felt the time called for it. If we had clear aims, people might start asking questions about how they could be achieved.

Where contemporary liberals fail in their analysis of this pervasive motif, though, is in presuming that it began with their favorite straw man, Karl Rove. While Greenwald is correct in his assertion that the McCain campaign has been forced to diverge from discussion of the issues by a public that widely rejects his stances, he is wrong in assuming that this is an entirely new phenomenon. Karl Rove presents a bugaboo to Democrats looking for a scapegoat, but he merely represents the man most able to tap into prevailing themes in American politics that have been around since the early stages of the Republic. Rove didn't create the notion of ineffectual, effete intellectuals, he merely used it to greater advantage than anyone else.

William Loughton Smith wrote a pamphlet attacking Thomas Jefferson in 1796, the tone of which should be immediately familiar:

The characteristic traits of a philosopher, when he turns politician, are, timidity, whimsicalness, and a disposition to reason from certain principles, and not from the true nature of man; a proneness to predicate all his measures on certain abstract theories formed in the recess of his cabinet, and not on the existing state of things and circumstances; an inertness of mind, as applied to governmental policy, a wavering of disposition when great and sudden emergencies demand promptness of decision and energy of action.

Smith compares Jefferson disfavorably with Washington, who "was, thank God, no philosopher; had he been one, we should never have seen his great military exploits; we should never have prospered under his wise administration." Smith illustrates that even in the late 18th Century, military virtue was a good test of political leadership, a virtue that Jefferson, although one of the most important figures in American history, did not possess and was therefore unfit to lead. The parallel to the 2008 campaign is at once obvious.

In 1800, as the attacks against Jefferson continued, another typical American stalking horse appeared, animosity toward Europeans. Joseph Dennie writes:

At the seat of government his abstract, inapplicable, metaphysicopolitics are either nugatory or noxious. Besides, his principles relish so strongly of Paris and are seasoned with such a profusion of French garlic, that he offends the whole nation. Better for Americans that on their extended plains "thistles should grow, instead of wheat, and cockle, instead of barley," than that a philosopher should influence the councils of the country, and that his admiration of the works of Voltaire and Helvetius should induce him to wish a closer connexion with Frenchmen.

The language is of a different era, but the themes are familiar. Karl Rove, far from creating his attacks, merely represents the most recent bearer of arms that were developed centuries ago and have served politicians ever since.


Related:

Chasing Straw Men, July 29

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Chasing Straw Men

Since their victory in 2006, the only thing Congressional Democrats have demonstrated aptitude for is pageantry. The past two years have been full of hearings, hand-wringings, and witch hunts, all of which have succeeded in only one thing: preserving the status quo. The Congressional hearing is as stale a tradition as exists in American politics, an event which serves the dual purpose of allowing the side holding it to pretend it's doing something in response to public opinion while allowing the side under question to dodge questions all the while maintaining the ability to continue its scurrilous actions.

What, exactly, do Democrats and their supporters expect to gain from the testimony of Karl Rove? Surely no groundbreaking news that the current administration has been, gasp, a politicized affair. That point, I think, is beyond debate if available evidence is any guide, and certainly wouldn't be accentuated by testimony sure to resemble the award-winning performances of administration members who've gone before Rove in the sideshow on the Hill.

Americans are notorious for their lack of historical literacy, but are the Clinton years so far in the past as to be rendered unrecognizable? One would think that a period which included the impeachment of a sitting President wouldn't be so easily forgotten. Ann Coulter, even as she defends Bush to the last, just 10 or so years ago devoted an entire book to misdeeds by Clinton aides and friends, and even suggested the power couple was responsible for murder. Yet all of those on the left scandalized by such tripe are now on the other side performing that precise function.

And what is that function? To provide the populace with distractions and straw men to avert their eyes and minds from the realities of American democracy. To distort the true level of import that the average voter holds on Capitol Hill, which is next to nil.

In a totalitarian regime, manufacturing consent for the system is simple and straightforward. A democratic system however, must derive the consent from the people without force, something very easily accomplished by allowing the populace to censor themselves. It's done by feeding the public red herrings and other details to chase after, argue about, or vilify while the corridors of power remain unscathed. In China, the regime is supported through threats and force. In America, we dig our own graves.

In January, assuming the Democrats find a way not to screw up a sure thing, everyone will resume the roles they held in the Nineties, and business will continue as usual. Karl Rove will be gone from the scene, the last 8 years will go unmentioned and unprosecuted, and in their place will step new villains and new distractions. And power will still reside in the same place it does now: K Street.

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Obama's Predictable Posturing as Centrist and the Shocked Libs in His Wake

To hear the Kossacks tell it, you'd think Barack Obama's Centrist pose was something shocking and wholly unexpected, rather than the flagrantly predicable product of the typical American campaign season. What the Koskeyites forget is that Obama knows he's already got them in his pocket, and he won't spend a minute of his general election campaign tending to that particular flock. And why should he?

American campaigns have never been about ideas, and this year's product offers nothing contradictory to that nature, despite the presence of the Orator-in-Chief and Maverick himself. McCain has spent the campaign trying to prove he's just as crazy as Bush, and Obama will spend the rest of it proving to middle class, white America he's just like them. If the Joneses get a flag pin, he'll wear a bigger one. If McCain wears a flag tie on Independence Day, Obama and Hillary will wear a matching flag blazer and pantsuit.

You see, Americans don't really care about ideas. Most Americans don't even care enough to inform themselves about anything at all that can't be found by reading US, Star, or watching TMZ. What the liberal blog denizens forget is that the opposition to the Iraq occupation isn't so prevalent because of opposition to war in general, it exists because the war turned out to be more difficult than it was supposed to be. Americans don't like long wars, but that doesn't mean they don't support sending 18-year-old men into foreign nations to teach them the ways of being a better country.

Americans don't want to hear about Shia and Sunni. Americans don't want to know that there are different factions within those delineations. That's complicated. What Americans want is an enemy. An 'other.' And, Obama, in his quest to get elected is not about to break tradition in the rush to give them one.

We will also use all elements of American power to pressure Iran. I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, everything.

What the left generally forgets is that Americans have a short memory. While the boys and girls at Kos hold out hope that the country has learned the lessons of Vietnam, Americans demonstrate quite readily that they have already lost the lessons in Iraq that are still ongoing.

American foreign policy should serve American interests, but what American can't fathom is that every other country's foreign policy doesn't do the same. It's inconceivable that the Iranians would foster relationships they found beneficial to their own interests rather than seek America's guidance. It baffles the US that Russia would have the gall to support Russian interests.

That is why, with a prescient example of the likely outcome of an attack on Iran still happening in Iraq, the public is still hungry for candidates tripping over themselves to prove their willingness to do the same in Iran. That is why, despite all available evidence to the contrary, Iran can still be discussed as a nuclear power, and a blockade of Iranian trade can be considered without the slightest concern of its impact on the Iranian population.

But foreign policy isn't the only arena in which Obama has shown himself to be par-for-the-course. Timed well with the coming holiday, he has donned his best Super-Patriot cape and trotted out the dual symbols of flag and Cross.

I believe those who attack America's flaws without acknowledging the singular greatness of our ideals, and their proven capacity to inspire a better world, do not truly understand America.

This statement seems innocuous enough, as some tend to see flaws in America without recognizing its positive qualities, but then it diverges into a Bushian worldview in which those ideals, instead of being admired, are thrust forcibly upon the rest of the world. Patriotism no longer means an appreciation of America, it means the militaristic imposition of that appreciation on the 'others.' In that regard, Obama proves himself no different than the current administration or the potential next administration of his rival.

Asking for America to back off dictating how Iraqis or Iranians should live is not unpatriotic. It's anti-imperialistic. Bushian rhetoric dictates that America has, rather than colonized, liberated Iraq, and that instead of forcing its view on Babylon it has merely presented them the opportunity to choose their own path. But looking beyond the rhetoric and into the reality paints an entirely different picture.

The status of forces agreement that infinitely-benevolent America planned to foist on the Iraqis was nothing more than a contract in which the Iraqis would sign over any potential sovereignty to the Americans. But a position which holds that the Iraqis should choose their own path is indeed very rare in America. When it does appear, it is is instantly denounced as anti-American, rather than pro Iraqi sovereignty.

Americans aren't tired of war. They're tired of wars that can't be won post haste. That makes them open to conjecture on Iran, and Obama proves he has the audacity to conform to that ideal in his quest for the Presidency. Encyclopedic knowledge of world affairs is cute, but it won't win the hearts and minds of Americans anytime soon. In the two-party buffoonery of American politics, he who wears the biggest lapel pin wins the race.

Watching the coverage of the Presidential campaign, it becomes clear that it is not about ideas, it's about building constituencies. That means pandering to the ones you don't have and ignoring the ones you do. Where the liberals blindsided by Barack's about-face are mistaken is in their belief that his posturing is somehow antithetical to the system we've built. It's not.

On the contrary, it is the very essence of American politics. Pick out a demographic, tell 'em what they want to hear, then move on to the next. Those that see that aspect of politics as the sham it is are still lost on how to resolve it. The solution never hinges on making significant changes to the system, but always on finding better politicians. But politics is a capitalistic exchange, and as long as there's a market for bullshit, there'll be rich lawyers willing to exploit it.

The system won't be changed by better politicians, and they certainly won't come from the current bi-polar universe. No, change will come when Americans take away the market for hollow rhetoric and empty platitudes.

I'm not holding my breath.

Related:

American Foreign Policy, June 25
Obama Would Retain Contractors, March 3
The Folly of Iranian Policy, May 19

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