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Friday, August 06, 2004

. . . and why I’m glad I’m not a real leftist, either

From Paul Street’s righteous takedown of the liberal bourgeois ideologist Barack Obama on ZNet:

Serious left vision is about all-around leveling before, during, and after the policy process. The world view enunciated in Obama’s address comes from a very different, bourgeois-individualist and national-narcissist moral and ideological space. . . .

Real leftists are suspicious of those who downplay internal national divisions, “patriotically” privileging “homeland” unity over class differences and over international solidarity between people inclined towards peace, justice, and democracy. We are deeply critical, of course, of war and empire, which advance inequality and misery at home and abroad. Global humanity - the species - and not “fatherland” or nation-state, is the “reference group” that matters to us.

That’s why many leftists cringed when they heard the newly anointed Great Progressive Hope Obama refer to Americans as “one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”

OK, so Street didn’t care for that bit about how “If there’s a child on the South Side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child.  If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandparent.  If there’s an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.” National-narcissist smokescreens for US imperialism, like this one, aren’t everyone’s cup of tea—I understand that.

But for future reference, folks, that’s how you can tell who the real leftists are in the Popular Front rallies—they’re the ones over there cringing.  “Cringe, cringe,” they cringe.  “We wanted to work with the people—just not these people.”

Posted by Michael on 08/06 at 08:53 AM
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Thursday, August 05, 2004

What would Jarome Iginla do?

On the AP wire today, one more reason to consider John McCain an honorable man, and the boys in the White House as something else altogether:

WASHINGTON - Republican Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, called an ad criticizing John Kerry’s military service “dishonest and dishonorable” and urged the White House on Thursday to condemn it as well.

The White House declined.

I’m not going to go on about the Swift Boat Veterans for the Ministry of Truth, or the GOP camp followers who drudge up this stuff, or the Instawankers who endorse it (and who now claim that the Kerry campaign is “crushing dissent” by writing to station managers and advising them that the ad is libelous), or even the Hannity girlie-men who hawk it.  Not me.  I just want to know this.  How will Kerry respond?

If he tries to stay “above the fray” on this one, he might just as well make it official and change his name to Dukakis-- and start preparing now for a nice quiet life in academe or on the board of a nonprofit organization.  If he simply has his attorneys send letters to TV stations, he’s a wuss, and I don’t want him on my hockey team.  This is well beyond ordinary cheap-shot territory.  This is more in the range of career-ending, life-threatening attempts to injure.  This is why people drop the gloves and go at it.

Now, Kerry is rumored to play hockey.  (It’s one of the things I like about him, as many of you already know.) Hockey players know what happens if you don’t respond to goons and thugs-- they’ll haunt you, they’ll make you hear footsteps, and they may take you out permanently.  If Kerry really wants to be seen as a leader, especially among the groups this ad is targeting, he’ll hit this bunch of wingnuts and he’ll hit them hard.  And if the Democrats really want to be seen as “strong” (and yep, this is all about hypermasculinization), they have to show people that they’re willing to stand up for one of their own.  Or they could wind up looking like the 1974 New York Rangers, who stood around like a bunch of Bidens and Liebermen while Philadelphia Flyers thug Dave Schultz pounded lanky defenseman Dale Rolfe into a coma.  And even I wouldn’t entrust the U.S. national security apparatus to people who behave like the 1974 New York Rangers.

As for me, I am the most mild-mannered of men.  In the five years since I started playing again, I haven’t started a fight once.  But when someone takes a serious cheap shot at me-- usually with a hard slash to the back of my legs or a cross-check to the back of my head-- I pick them up and throw them to the ice and hold them there.  I don’t hit them, I don’t throw punches, I just pick them up and throw them to the ice.  That way, you see, they can’t hurt me, and next time around they won’t want to try.  Also, I had another four-goal game last night.  So I think I’m pretty well qualified to advise the Kerry campaign on matters of strategy.

Keep the pressure on the Bush-Cheney campaign, guys.  Force them to reply.  Keep Jim Rassmann out there.  Get David Alston ("If John Kerry came up to us and said we had one more swift boat mission and we were going to hell, he would have a full crew") on the ice.  Forecheck Bush and make him cough up the puck.  And as for John E. O’Neill and Roy Hoffman (whom even conservative activists and writers have called a “crazed extremist” and a “Kurtz-like psychopath,” respectively, as you can see here), well, I’m too mild-mannered to say anything, but surely one of these guys can make some suggestions.

UPDATE:  Oops, almost forgot about the assiduous forecheckers over at Media Matters.  Good work, folks.

Posted by Michael on 08/05 at 09:56 AM
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It would be irresponsible and divisive to say that Bush lied about Iraq

And that’s why I just don’t listen to people who say things like this:

In his March 17, 2003 address preparing America for the Iraq invasion, President Bush stated unequivocally that there was an Iraq-al Qaeda nexus and that there was “no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”

In the context of what we now know the White House knew at the time, Bush was deliberately dishonest. The intelligence community repeatedly told the White House there were many deep cracks in its case for war. The president’s willingness to ignore such warnings and make these unequivocal statements proves the administration was intentionally painting a black-and-white picture when it knew the facts merited only gray at best.

That has meant severe consequences for all Americans. Financially, U.S. taxpayers have shelled out more than $166 billion for the Iraq war, and more will soon be needed. Geopolitically, our country is more isolated from allies than ever, with anti-Americanism on the rise throughout the globe.

And we are less secure. A recent U.S. Army War College report says “the invasion of Iraq was a diversion from the more narrow focus on defeating al Qaeda.” U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi put it this way: “The war in Iraq was useless, it caused more problems than it solved, and it brought in terrorism.”

These statements are borne out by the facts: The International Institute of Strategic Studies in London reports al Qaeda is now 18,000 strong, with many new recruits joining as a result of the war in Iraq. Not coincidentally, the White House recently said the American homeland faces an imminent threat of a terrorist attack from a still-active al Qaeda operation in Afghanistan. Yet, the administration actually moved special forces out of Afghanistan in 2002 to prepare for an invasion of Iraq. Because of this, we face the absurd situation whereby we have no more than 20,000 troops in Afghanistan hunting down those who directly threaten us, yet have 140,000 troops in Iraqóa country that was not a serious menace before invasion.

Of course, it is those troops who have it the worst. Our men and women in uniform are bogged down in a quagmire, forced to lay down life and limb for a lie.

You all can go read the entire essay by David Sirota and Christy Harvey if you like, but be warned, it’s full of more of the same mean and spiteful stuff.  As for me, I will continue to believe that the President is a good man who, as I have said before, has been grievously led astray by our unscrupulous and incompetent intelligence services.

Posted by Michael on 08/05 at 09:27 AM
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Wednesday, August 04, 2004

Party of death

Following the release of a new psychological study that indicates voters prefer George Bush over John Kerry only when they are asked to think about death, Director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge has raised the terror alert level to “black,” the White House revealed today.

The new level-- “higher and worser” than red, according to President Bush-- suggests that a terrorist attack is only minutes away and will involve either flesh-eating bacteria or gradual disembowelment.  However, Ridge stressed in a press conference today that the threat was “nonspecific.” “All we know is that they’re coming for you and your infant child, perhaps as we speak,” Ridge said.  “The information is highly reliable, and is absolutely not based on intelligence that is three or four years old, like our last warning.  Therefore we are asking Americans to go about their business as usual, but to remain in a state of gut-wrenching fear at all times.”

The new terror alert reflects a dramatic shift in administration policy over the past week, as high-ranking cabinet officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, reported that the Bush campaign had jettisoned plans to present the GOP as the party of “hope” and “optimism” in the 2004 elections.  Instead, officials say, Republicans now prefer to be seen as the party of death.

“Hope?  Screw hope.  Optimism?  Optimism can go fuck itself.  Check out this passage from the CNN story,” said one official:

“There are people all over who are claiming every time Bush is in trouble he generates fear by declaring an imminent threat,” said Sheldon Solomon of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, who worked on the study.  “We are saying this is psychologically useful,” said Solomon. . . .

No matter what a person’s political conviction, thinking about death made them tend to favor Bush, Solomon said. Otherwise, they preferred Kerry.

“It doesn’t get much clearer than that, does it?” continued the official.  “That report came out last Friday, and we raised the terror level on Monday.  Now we’re simply taking it to the next level.  Look-- voters now prefer Kerry on the economy, on education, on health care, on ‘cares about people like me,’ even on Iraq, for Chrissake.  We’re tied in the South, and we’re even tied among veterans. What the hell do we have left?  Well, I’ll tell you what.  We have death.  And death kicks ass.”

Despite the remarkable speed with which the terror level was raised following the release of the new study, White House sources say that there has been internal dissension in the Bush administration, with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld arguing that the Republicans should be the party of “swift and certain” death, and Vice President Dick Cheney insisting that the GOP should be associated instead with “protracted and agonizing” death. 

“The fact that we’re talking about flesh-eating bacteria and gradual disembowelment,” said Lex Luthor, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, “suggests to me that Cheney has won this round.”

Political analysts note that the new strategy poses risks, however.  “The Republicans haven’t run as the party of death in forty years,” noted Jimmy Olson of the Brookings Institution, “not since back when Barry Goldwater famously declared that ‘thermonuclear apocalypse in the defense of liberty is no vice.’ That didn’t work in ‘64, but I don’t know about now.  Personally, I’m considering switching to Bush.  He may be a disaster on the economy, on the environment, on energy policy, on civil liberties, and on the war, but he just might be the only man who can save me and my children from flesh-eating bacteria.”

In a related development, former Vermont governor and Presidential candidate Howard Dean was detained by federal officials and is being held indefinitely at St. Elizabeth’s Psychiatric Hospital for “observation.” “The terror level is black,” said one distinguished psychiatrist assigned to Dean’s case.  “We can’t have a complete lunatic like Dean running around out there.”

Posted by Michael on 08/04 at 02:25 AM
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