Archive for August 1, 2008

The Desperation of Cynicism: Out-of-Touch McCain Incoherently Defends His Politics of Mockery

Who knew that hope could be a liability? McCain’s campaign ads have taken a turn for the negative, the cynical, and the sickeningly pessimistic, by inverting Obama’s lofty rhetoric, selectively quoting his self-effacing humor, and essentially chiding the American people for believing in a candidate. How dare we?

In his latest ad, reproduced below, McCain attempts to turn Obama’s belief in a happier tomorrow into an indictment of the man’s leadership credentials. The ad is long on mockery – clip after clip out of context, in the style of a parody of prophecy – and light on content. On in the last ten seconds are we treated to the McCain message, and it’s the same message we’ve heard before: is Obama ready? Sheesh. Someone stick a fork in this guy.

I for one do think Barack Obama is ready for the presidency. But, quite apart, given the choice between an experienced but grumpy man, disgusted by hope and willing to mock another’s success and happiness, and a less experienced, optimistic figure, I’ll take my chances with the candidate who at least dreams of a better future, rather than delighting in bringing low a promising young dreamer. Talk about out-of-touch: McCain doesn’t even seem to understand how important it is to have hope on the horizon.

God willing, this will backfire. McCain may be “experienced” in the sense that he’s been around the block, but he’s obviously not experienced enough to know that, just as much as a tested leader, America needs to believe again. I don’t want my President to lecture me for eight years about dreaming too big; I want an appropriate mixture of hope and substance, which McCain simply cannot deliver.

Now is not the time for negativism, and I think that, deep down, McCain may know that. When questioned on his negative turn, watch McCain fumble to explain himself:

I’m, we think, it’s got a lot of humor in it, and we’re having fun and enjoying it. And that is what campaigns are going to be like, that’s what every campaign that I have been involved in. I am going to enjoy it and I’m the underdog.

Huh? That’s probably the second most incoherent thing I’ve ever read.

Even he’s not comfortable with the message. But he’s doing it, because he thinks it’s the only way he can win. Doesn’t that tell you everything you need to know about John McCain, right there? Damn his experienced and principled yesterday; let’s talk about his out-of-touch and slick today.

Grumpy, cynical McCain has finally come out. I don’t like him. And I don’t think you do, either.

Whither “The Confluence”?

I’m continually flabbergasted by the popularity of “The Confluence,” a site haunted by ex-Kos bloggers and Hillary supporters who long outlived their welcome. For one, the site seems to be fast approaching its inevitable end in disappointment, as more and more “shadow campaign” groups give up the ghost.  Most of the posts lately, like the one linked above, are geared towards staging a “netroots” upset at the Democratic convention, to force a fast-fading Senator Hillary Clinton to the nomination.  Once this goal fails in disappointment and anger, the site’s raison d’etre seems likely to vanish.

A more important question, though, is what if it doesn’t?  When Hillary doesn’t receive the nomination, what if groups like this attempt to fight on, to the general election, sowing discontent and anger in a party that desperately needs unity?  There’s every indication that “Confluence” bloggers will never be happy – they demand that the convention be “fair, open and transparent with an authentic nomination for Hillary and arguments for her, and yes, maybe even some disunity before the final vote,” or they’ll “walk.”  But there are enough soft factors in that demand to guarantee that there’ll always be standing to object, and always reason for Hillary Democrats to “walk.”  But why?  After the inevitable failure, what’s the point?

Although Obama remains ahead in the polls, it’s not by a comfortable margin.  A continuance of party disunity, after the Convention, risks a McCain Presidency, which is likely to be even less to the liking of Hillary Democrats than Obama.  If Hillary stood for feminism, McCain stands for gutting women’s rights.  If Hillary stood for a fighting chance for middle America, McCain stands for more of the past eight years.  Talk about not seeing the forest through the trees.

Chain Letters: “Why I’m Voting Democrat”

The latest chain letter making its round on the internets, “FW: FW: FW: FW: RE: Why I’m Voting Democrat,” shares the same punchy aphoristic style and damning dearth of substance, ably mocked by Slate, common to all internet mass-mails. Even setting aside the deliberately incorrect truncation of the Democratic Party’s name, the Savage-brand oversimplification of the issues running throughout the mail is still an insult to the intelligence of the American voter. Let’s analyze (letter in bold, reply in plain):

• I’m voting Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would. How unsurprising that a paean to the Republican Party begins on the note of the pocketbook.  This argument against taxes fundamentally misunderstands the role of the citizen and the government.  While “you” can probably better spend elements of your money, “you” can’t spend your money to build roads or fund the national defense; “you” delegate that spending power to the government, which represents your money and its potential uses.  We can debate about the proper size of taxes, but this argument doesn’t even present that issue.
• I’m voting Democrat because freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it. A common conservative tactic, this talking point conflates the legal bounds of freedom of speech with the cultural bounds of politeness, to frame “political correctness” as a form of thought control that runs contrary to the First Amendment. Wrong. The “liberal” belief in political correctness is simply a commitment to respect, not a threat of criminal sanctions against the impolitic. No-one wants to criminalize speech simply because it’s offensive (except the late Jesse Helms, Focus on the Family, and other theocrats), and while freedom of speech allows us to say what we want, it does not immunize you from criticism for our rudeness.
• I’m voting Democrat because when we pull out of Iraqi trust [sic] that the bad guys will stop what they’re doing because they now think we’re good people. First, neither party advocates “pulling out” of Iraq: Obama’s plan leaves a residual peacekeeping force in the country to be used for limited counterterrorism missions – the original goal of the war on terror (remember that?). Second, it was Republicans – not Democrats – who naiveley thought that, if we gave the Iraqis “democracy,” they’d start thinking we were good people, and fall into line.
• I’m voting Democrat because I believe that people who can’t tell us if it will rain on Friday can tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don’t start driving a Prius. This point fosters a mistrust in global warming science by pretending that scientists are little more than weather men. Interestingly, your weather man is not a peer reviewed, published scientist, but environmental biologists, et al, are. The scientific community, after decades of research, has concluded from retrospective analysis of climate trends that global warming is a reality. That’s a far cry from Doppler Radar.
• I’m voting Democrat because I’m not concerned about the slaughter of millions of babies so long as we keep all death row inmates alive. Arguably, it is contradictory to oppose the death penalty and favor abortion – if we all agree that fetuses are “human.” Which we don’t. This point glosses over and muddles the real difference between “liberals” and “conservatives” on these issues (what is “humanity”?), to attempt to catch Democrats in a contradiction that doesn’t exist. The converse position – pro-death penalty, anti-abortion – is, however, a real contradiction. Just ask the Pope: the “sanctity of life” doesn’t end at birth.
• I’m voting Democrat because I believe that business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as THEY see fit. Which Democratic legislator argues this, again? Straw man. In the sense that this is just a hyperbolic criticism of the tax code, it’s still wrong. Small business under Obama would do better than they would under McCain, whose tax breaks go to large corporations and individuals earning over $150,000 a year. And taxing large corporations makes sense, as a way of managing the externalities they tend to create.
• I’m voting Democrat because I believe three or four pointy headed elitist liberals need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would NEVER get their agendas past the voters. Anti-elitism at its finest. No, no, we can’t trust those “smart” people. Burn them!!! This argument miscomprehends the goal of a republican democracy. Direct democracy is intended to give voice to the majority; the law, and other republican institutions, are meant to prevent the majority from running roughshod and unjustly over “discrete and insular” minorities. The Constitution exists to protect the minority from the majority, as we have periodically needed in our nation. If we didn’t have “pointy headed elitist liberals” looking out for the “kooks” of the world, we wouldn’t have desegregated our schools until, probably, yesterday. The law and the Constitution, as interpreted, not rewritten, exist to vindicate those deserving “kooks” who the rest of us don’t understand.
  
• I’m voting Democrat because I believe that when the terrorists don’t have to hide from us over there, when they come over here I don’t want to have any guns in the house to fight them off with. Grammar aside, are we really concerned about a homeland invasion by Al Qaeda? And which modern Democratic legislator actually wants to outlaw handguns, again?
• I’m voting Democrat because I love the fact that I can now marry whatever I want. I’ve decided to marry my horse. Gaze in wonder at a rare hybrid: a straw man fused with a slippery slope argument!  Obviously no Democrats want to extend the marriage right between species, and, as I’ve written before, same-sex marriage does not inevitably terminate in interspecies marriage.  To posit this slippery slope is intellectually dishonest and needlessly inflammatory.
• I’m voting Democrat because I believe oil companies’ profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn’t. Apples and oranges, no?
• Makes ya wonder how anyone would EVER vote Democrat , now doesn’t it? No.  But it does make me wonder how Republicans get into office with arguments like this.  While I know many honest, well-spoke, brilliant Republicans – two people who comment on this site come to mind immediately – it amazes me how different they are from the base of the Republican Party, who’re apparently willing to swallow this intellectual backwash.
  

Debasing American Discourse: Celebrating 20 Years of Rush Limbaugh

My friends and fellow Americans, has it really been that long? This week, the mutual admiration society division of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy – you know, the one that tries to name everything after Ronald Reagan – has pulled out all the stops to honor Rush Limbaugh as a voice that “remade American politics,” by providing a conservative venue in the “mainstream media.”  If Limbaugh opened the venue, though, I still question its value: Limbaugh has, in his illustrious career, appealed only to the lowest common denominator of American society, and encouraged a level of political debate that’s at least empty, and at worst harmful.

Rush has built his empire – and, accordingly, the empire of modern conservatism – on the subordination of sense to spin, and the abandonment of intellect for ideals. Bill Buckley gave conservatism a plausible intellectual foundation, but whither intellect? Rush took the road more traveled and stuck with the old constants, mixing xenophobia, bigotry, intolerance, anti-intellectualism, irrational fear of change, and simple ignorance into an ideological hodgepodge, and called it conservatism. If he has seen farther than others, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants… and betraying their movement to the lowest common denominator.

Where respected thinkers on all sides of the political spectrum have thought through America’s future, and tried to blaze a reasoned path, Limbaugh has stuck with the stragglers, fighting the culture war for the sake of rich white men everywhere, but mostly for its own sake. Conservativism for Rush is just a way of passing off hatred as “political” rather than blind bigotry. How else to explain these -

Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.

I think this reason why girls don’t do well on multiple choice tests goes all the way back to the Bible, all the way back to Genesis, Adam and Eve. God said, ‘All right, Eve, multiple choice or multiple orgasms, what’s it going to be?’ We all know what was chosen.

That’s not “conservative” or “liberal.” It’s just pointless hate. Hypocrisy and, where reason fails, insults – that’s what American discourse has become under the watch and will of the likes of Limbaugh. I would be more welcoming of the praise the right so willingly heaps upon Limbaugh if I could see, just once, a positive contribution to the national dialogue.

While Limbaugh is entertaining, no doubt – “wow, that’s crazy, what’ll they say next!” – to somehow equate shock jockery with a positive contribution to politics boggles the mind. And, let it never be said that I won’t critique equally: Air America, at least Randi Rhodes’ portion of it, was no better. The suzerainty held by empty intellectual calories over talk radio – a race to the bottom started by Limbaugh, and mitigated only by NPR, which now counts one less jewel in its crown – makes the entire medium practically a waste.

By all means, let’s praise Limbaugh for his influence. But let’s not pretend that his influence was positive.