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June 1, 2008 Edition
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The shot above is of Penelope Cruz in the 2006 Pedro Almodóvar film Volver, nicked from the satirical Spanish literature website trazegnies.arrakis.es. Penelope, in this shot, make's a perfect model for the femme fatale depicted in RAR's satirical sexcapade "Para Conquistarle"; another bit of sound clip silliness courtesy of "Sexy Spanish" and a site I have lost (still looking) where a guy says things like "I like the meat raw," which strikes me as funny in this goofy context. Click on the photo above to hear another RAR original, "Para Conquistarle."
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ESSAY If you are a person like myself, easily put off by ranting people who think they know everything about everything, you might want to skip this page. A lot of ranting and knowing here. If you must read on, please refrain from moving your lips so that this may remain a silent revolution.
Current Entries Making Fangs Work CHRONICLES OF CHAOS: Is America's moment of elevation turning to glass? What's Wrong With Hillary? Sick of Obama Yet? 2008 Election Fields - RAR Picks American Health Care and the 2008 Elections General Betray Us, The Invasion of Iraq and Please MoveOn.Org Oh Cisco! You Are A Villain? The Nature of People Where I Stand on the Gordian Knot of America Guitars on Stands The Ten Commandments - Gotcha! Serious Doubts In the Ranks of the Color Guard Give Willie His Pot Back! The Secret Life of Hyperlinks How Effective is Democracy in the U.S.? What's So Great About History? Why Can’t Democrats Exploit the Minimum Wage Issue? Why We Never Talk About Public Policy Democracy in Decline – The Death of Net Neutrality The Soul of the Simpler Machine First Appeared in the June 1, 2008 Edition It is a Good Year to Be An Independent Making Fangs Work My
wife has been a staunch supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton for a long time, but
Tuesday night, on the last night of this election cycle’s presidential primary
season, she broke rank – spiritually. She
didn’t like the way Hillary behaved in her “non-concession” speech, that
she didn’t praise Barack Obama the way he has, of late, been praising her. My
wife finds Obama shallow and ambitious, a deplorable tandem, but she thought
Hillary’s performance that night revealed something about her candidate that she didn’t like. “Hillary showed her
fangs,” I heard her comment in phone conversation with a girl friend, another
Hillary supporter. She wasn’t gracious, which even other women expect a woman
to be. Ironic, isn’t it? To them Hillary seemed like the proverbial, i.e., “bitch.” After
what, in many ways, has been a 7-year long campaign to become President of the
United States of America via a Senate seat in an adopted state, their hopes of
having a “First Woman President” in Hillary Clinton were dashed by an
ill-conceived primary system and a cultural phenomenon represented in a person
and a public attitude. They
were dashed by an upstart junior senator who had “cut in line” ahead of
Hillary on the strength of a casual way with words and sheer audacity, and my
wife and her friends, like other Clinton supporters, found that galling. That he
benefited from a long-germinating seed of political
correctness that insulated him from criticism was to them infuriating. That
he behaved better than her once he had rested the mantle of “presumptive
nominee” from her was for them disheartening. That
Hillary got better and better at detailing her prescription for change,
consistently winning the important
swing state primaries, and yet was shedding “Super Delegate” potentials like
dandruff flakes was…well, the story of the campaign season. Why
did the Democratic party leaders, many of whom were beholden to former President
Bill Clinton for his strength in standing up to the onslaught of the Republican
Revolution (1994’s Contract With America) and reinventing the Democratic party
in a way that allowed it to remain viable and at least a little true to its core
values, abandon the Clintons? My
sense is, they abandoned the Hillary,
it seemed in retrospect, was never going to do that. The History,
the party leaders have reasoned, is on young Barack Obama’s side. Whether
or not this turns out to be true will be witnessed in stages if he defeats
McCain to become President. Election to the office would be historic, of course,
but what we could expect after that is anyone’s guess. Like many Hillary
Clinton supporters, I don’t believe that Barack Obama is a fully formed leader
or visionary, but rather a marginally charismatic avatar of unspecified change.
If elected, he will have a friendly Congress to work with and will be given a
honeymoon period. Maybe the hope is that Congress will advance landmark
legislation that Obama can promote and sign into law and in that way expand his
legacy beyond being a “first.” But
what of Hillary Clinton? Has she “shown her fangs” in a way so disappointing
that it has damaged her legacy? Can she go back and be a junior senator and
continue to be an important figure in the Democratic Party? Can she become a
Supreme Court Justice, as some have suggested? I
am guessing much depends upon her speech Saturday to her supporters, her belated
concession. She can probably reverse the negatives coming out of Tuesday night
with the kind of grace in defeat that losing Democrats Gore and Kerry did way
too well. (What is it with Democrats that they can’t make a compelling and
eloquent argument for anything other than their own concessions?) I
hope Hillary isn’t hoping to become number two on the Obama ticket, because
that isn’t going to happen. For her to try to force her way on to the ticket
would only further diminish her, which is a shame. I
continue to feel that in Hillary Clinton, the My
sense is that the Democratic Party has become a shell of a party, not really
championing anything other than election and re-election and holding on. Maybe Obama will generate ideas that will change that.
His more likely legacy is as an ambassador to the world, a fresh face of the Personally,
I would like to see Hillary jettison the entire Democratic Party and carry on an
independent run for the office. She has the strongest platform of the three
candidates and could capture the middle ground vote. She wins the female vote,
sucking the air out of the Obama ticket, and the independent vote, stealing
McCain's only chance at the office. She out performs both in debates. In a
three way race, I think Hillary, who captured 50 percent of the Democratic
primary votes, wins the key states of Were
that to be the crux of her speech planned for Saturday night, then suddenly the
fangs of Tuesday are attractive things that need never be retracted. What they
need is purpose beyond resentment. I don’t see her getting that opening any
longer within the turncoat Democratic Party. On the other hand, the one signal that has been sent consistently throughout this campaign season is that it is a great year to be an Independent. Just ask Lou Dobbs. - RAR ____________________________________________
RAR entertaining the "troops" at an impromptu MoveOn.Org rally in Benicia, CA (Jan. 11, 2007) against Bush Administration plans to escalate the "war" in Iraq. ____________________________________________ From the April 12, 2008 Edition of RARWRITER.com CHRONICLES
OF CHAOS:
Is Are
you getting a creepy feeling about where the Democratic Party’s laboratory
experiment in democracy is taking us? That in creating a system of primaries
dedicated to the purity of proportional representation that they have put a
lacerating laser light on the party’s make up and heated it to glass halves?
And that each of these fragile pieces are but a minority subset of “John
McCain” is actually a subset of “Republicans,” but that is part of what
makes this situation so interesting. Republicans are “winner take all” and
the pox on proportional representation type of folks. They are masters of
simplification, and they have simplified their early nomination process to the
point where old John is already old news and now feels he must wander around
reintroducing himself while the Democrats continue internecine warfare for their
Party’s nomination. McCain is polling less than 50 percent in his own Party
more than a month after his last best rival, dinosaur rider and bass player Mike
Huckabee, finally stepped aside. And yet do you sense he could win this thing? I do.
And it doesn’t have anything to do with my contempt for the Democrats’
nominating system, though I have problems with the whole primary and caucus
process. I
have been surprised by the legs under the Barack Obama phenomenon. He seems way
over his head to me, but as his momentum has grown so has my fear that by the
time his callowness is revealed that he will have the Democratic nomination
wrapped up. That may yet be the case, and certainly already would have been the
case had the Democratic Party not been so “democratic.” Obama’s
statement on the motivations of small town People
in rural communities are not really bitter, in my experience. In fact, my
amazement with them has always been how extraordinarily self-righteous and
self-assured they are. In their relative isolation, which is being obliterated
by the digital age, they often view themselves as living at a fortunate distance
from the rest of the world and its misplaced priorities and weird obsessions.
These people are not dependently clinging to their guns and their religions;
they are just carrying on the traditions of their kind, which to them are part
of the fabric that makes them superior to their counterparts in the big cities.
I think they feel lucky. The
“bitter” people Obama is talking about may be those in his own limited
experience, the inner city people he did outreach for 20 years ago, and from
that he is projecting. That is the problem with this guy, his projections.
But
here is where it turns to glass. Barack
Obama is going to implode and with him are going to go the hopes of a certain
percentage of the Democratic base. If he
implodes this week, following his extraordinary misstep regarding “bitter”
people, the beneficiary will be Hillary Clinton, who could build momentum
insufficient to capture the nomination but way sufficient to puncturing the
Obama myth. In that case, Obama limps into the general election watching some
unknown percentage of the Hillary vote slip away to the maverick McCain, who on
many issues is close enough to being a Democrat to gain him crossover voters. Or,
if Obama’s implosion is really big, maybe Hillary wins by margins sufficient
to edge her ahead in the total popular vote and thereby buy herself some favor
with undecided Super Delegates. But what happens to the black vote at the core
of the Democratic base if their favorite son Obama doesn’t get the nomination?
I think the If
Obama implodes later in the year it could only be offset by some stunt on the
part of the doddering McCain. That is really the wild card in this, is what
gaffe will old John make that will be his own undoing, like Bob Dole falling off
that stage late in the 1996 presidential election. That is who McCain strikes me
as, this year’s Bob Dole. At least McCain hasn’t been stupid enough to give
us his Senate job. He is still probably a few years away from peddling Viagra. I
sense that Barack Obama is only days away from inadvertently shattering one of
those parts of the Democratic crystal. ____________________________________________ From the February 15, 2008 Edition of RARWRITER.com If Hillary Can't Puncture the Obama Balloon, Does She Have What It Takes to Be President? While I believe Hillary Clinton has done a far better job of being a presidential candidate than I would have imagined she would, there are holes in her performance that make me wonder about her potential as a world leader. In Barack Obama, she has a Teflon rival, one who is casually skilled at deflecting questions and criticisms. He seems particularly immune to Hillary's calculations and prepared attack lines. A case in point comes from the debate in Texas on February 21, when Hillary allowed Obama the leeway to present himself with an attitude that made him seem plausibly presidential. Worse, he used Hillary's failed 1994 attempt to establish universal health care to negate any perception that Hillary has it all over him political expertise-wise. He blunted the "experience" issue. Or, more to the point, she fumbled the experience issue. Hillary needs to let people know what happened with health care reform in 1994. Then, as a 46-year old idealist, Hillary and husband Bill made critical missteps that torpedoed their good intentions. They decided they would achieve sweeping change in Washington D.C. by virtue of their own cleverness and willpower. They determined to use public sentiment to bludgeon the health insurance industry and replace their for-profit schemes with a national single-payer system similar to those "socialized medicine" models in place in most other advanced nations. Bill and Hillary, it turned out, didn't understand some fundamental things about how Washington D.C. policy making works. And Hillary had been around these legislative processes since the Nixon administration, when she worked on the impeachment inquiry staff advising the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives. That was 20 years before the '94 health care initiative, and she was fully engaged in law, public service and politics, presumably growing her knowledge and expertise in those areas all along the way. And yet, she bombed on the important health care endeavor because she failed to understand and respect the political culture of Washington. She bungled the planning, which was handled as if she was secretly plotting a coup, and she completely mishandled the presentation of her proposal. Hillary, in 1994, was the age Barack Obama is now. Even with all the experience she had previously in Washington D.C., which is far more than Obama has now, she just wasn't ready. Barack Obama isn't as prepared to affect change in Washington D.C. in 2008 has Hillary was in 1994. Hillary is 60 now, with 14 more years of deep Washington experience. And one suspects that now she is ready. She dedicated 8 years to the United States Senate, which was a calculated decision to get herself to this point of readiness. If Obama is truly dedicated to the big picture, to the long-term betterment of the United States of America, what would be so wrong with him first getting the experience, and establishing the skills he needs, to be a "transformative" figure? His too-early decision to contest for the Democratic nomination bespeaks the personal ambition of a young fool. What would be so wrong with Obama doing the work, paying the dues, and preparing himself for a run eight years from now, when he'll still only be 54 years old. That age of 54, by the way, is the age George W. Bush was when he assumed the presidency. There was a guy who had been around national politics his entire life, and even had the experience of "running" an administration (Texas governorship). Even "Dubya" had better credentials than does Barack Obama, though in retrospect Bush Jr. was clearly never going to be ready. Obama's answer is that he sees "the process of change" differently. My first rule of political perception is "Beware leaders who first seek to re-define the world we know to exist." It signals that their plans will work only if we adopt an entirely new paradigm, a new reality, and that we embrace this change. It is this thinking that George W. Bush, with his Cheney-Rumsfeld coalition, brought to Washington D.C., and it doesn't work. It locks us into a brain freeze while we try to reconcile our experiential truth with the alternative truth being promoted by someone seeking to skew perception to his advantage. In our high tech world of inputs and outputs, the output of re-definition initiatives is BULLSHIT. If Barack Obama's cult celebrity carries him to the White House, are we all going to have to live through yet another leadership debacle while another Washington D.C. neophyte, whose main skill is that he taps U.S. voter needs to associate with their president on some personal identity level, fails to deliver on his well-intentioned promises? I think America was at a critical "Y" in the road in 2000 and the country turned wrong. Eight years later the path before us is winding and rutted and the situation has turned critical. We simply cannot afford the luxury of another arrogant young lion at the nation's helm. So why can't Hillary seem to make that case? And what does the fact that she can't make that case say about her?-RAR Barack Obama and the Making of that "Fairy Tale" Several weeks ago, in January 2008, while supporting his wife Hillary's campaign in the South Carolina primary, former President Bill Clinton caused big trouble for his wife's campaign by describing as "a fairy tale" Sen. Barack Obama's description of his prescient vote against Bush's appropriation request for the funds that would eventually be used for the Iraq War. That same criticism became a "race card" statement when Bill Clinton also likened Obama's South Carolina primary win to Jessie Jackson's win in that state in '84. (Jackson also won a South Carolina caucus in 1988.) Bill Clinton was almost universally chastised for his statements, and he was uncharacteristically chastened as a result, retreating to a milder, less precise version of his thoughtful and more amiable self. Unfortunately, the damage to Hillary's campaign has been in the form of near total erosion of the number of black voters who once formed part of her base. Blacks are now voting for Obama over Clinton by a margin of 8 to 1. Something worries me about this and it has to do with the "neuro-transmitter" relationship that the press has with the "body politic," the rank and file voter. That circuitry has been known to be compromised by the introduction of viral strains, and it was inevitable that Americans' feelings about "race" would surface as the most aggressive of those. Voter profiles from the primaries and caucuses to date indicate that race trumps gender identification issues. That is the lift presently being felt beneath the wings of the Obama campaign, the wave of black voters rushing to his support now that he appears to be a legitimate contender. It feels like recognition of that movement is driving the U.S. press corps to the sidelines, in its role as public Ombudsman, in much the same way that they were during the 2000 elections. It is an exile self-imposed by reason of sensitivity to the public's will. In 2000, George W. Bush, campaigning on a platform slightly more specific than the one Obama is campaigning on this election season, seemed to be given a pass by the press. They didn't do much of anything to delve into his record, or even his resume. The toughest questions of that election year may have come from David Letterman, who talked a reluctant Bush onto his show and then asked if some of his policy ideas, like drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, weren't "just crazy." All these years later the press corps, consisting largely of the same cast of characters still around from the 2000 cycle, is aware of the criticism of their performance that year, and yet they can't seem to help themselves. They seem utterly incapable of reporting on the substance of the issues, instead focusing entirely on their analyses of "momentum" and voter exit polls. They are covering the campaign, while the world balances precariously on the edge over issues that will likely define the first half of the 21st Century. A RECORD WORTH REPORTING: Part of the problem the press had covering the candidate Bush (in 2000) is the same problem they are presently having in covering Barack Obama, that being that there isn't a great deal of legislative record to look at. In fact, Barack Obama's resume is remarkably thin. Writing as a person who competes for consultant opportunities in the competitive San Francisco market, I think a guy with nine years of "real world" work experience, split between four different career paths, may have a tough time getting hired to even a mid-level position in the Bay Area, particularly in a top law firm. Obama has a prestigious background differentiator in his time spent as editor of the Harvard Law Review, but even that is just academic work. Were he a guy just walking into an employment agency with that resume, a counselor would see that he has done some low level research, some community work, some legal. And then he has taught at the university level. Let's see, do we have anything in the $100,000 box? Obama does have another dozen years of experience in elected office, mostly at the state level. There are primarily two types who seek elected office: established leaders in the legal or business (and sometimes social and academic) communities, and persons for whom being an "elected official" is a career objective and a means of putting one's self on an equal footing with established leaders from such "esteemed" groups. Obama;s call to service comes from the latter category. The Obama's of the world must hone skills specific to their political calling, which include communication, negotiation and compromise. They must serve their constituencies while establishing coalitions with powerful interests. Obama's first three years in the Illinois legislature were unremarkable, save for his struggle to overcome a perception in the black community that he was strictly an Ivy League elite. But Obama was nothing if not ambitious. In 2000, against all counsel, he challenged for the seat of incumbent U.S. Representative Bobby Rush, a former Black Panther Party leader. Obama got trounced. There was a sense in Chicago that Obama wasn't black enough, and following the Rush defeat he set out to address that image through outreach to the black churches in his district. Things in the Illinois legislature did not go smoothly for the ambitious Obama, who gave himself a "black eye" over a controversial gun-control bill that was fiercely opposed by the National Rifle Association and the Republican majority leader of the state Senate. The legislation had been hammered out through tough negotiations between Democratic Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and the Republican Governor George Ryan, but passage was going to be close and every vote was needed. When the vote was called, Barack Obama was on vacation in Hawaii with his family. (Does this sound familiar? Crawford anyone?) Though Obama had supported the bill rhetorically, he refused to return to Chicago to cast a vote, saying his daughter was ill and he couldn't leave her side. The measure went down to defeat. The Chicago Tribune, noting that plenty of his fellow politicians had left sickbeds and vacations to do their civic duty, blasted him as "gutless." In further point of fact, the "gutless" charge is also leveled at Obama for the large number of non-committal votes of "present" that he cast in the Illinois state house. He didn't come across as a stand up guy on this set of "tough" issues:
Obama didn't vote for or against any of these. He took the third option offered to legislators in the Illinois state house: he voted "Present." The things that Obama did play a role in are also wrapped in enigma, an example being his involvement in the revival of the Chicago public school system. My teacher-wife had a conversation recently with a school administrator in California, a black woman who had worked in the Chicago schools. This lady had high praise for the turnaround of that public school system, and she stated flatly that "Obama did that." This sentiment is shared by the Chicago Teacher's Union, who recently endorsed Obama for President. What the school administrator is referring to is Obama's support of Democrat Mayor Richard Daley's "Renaissance 2010" program, a controversial initiative launched in 1995 that gave the City the authority to privatize portions of the Chicago school system and relocate students as certain public schools were closed and then reopened as charter schools. This peculiarly "Republican privatization concept" has been reviled in some quarters as "corporate school reform" as promoted by educational theorists at the University of Chicago. These include Arne Duncan, who is an advisor to Obama's presidential campaign. Daley, Obama and those UC theorists have all been accused of having overly chummy associations with corporate interests. The Chicago Teacher's Union endorsement is equally perverted in terms of the way liberal Democrats typically view teachers' unions. The Chicago teachers broke ranks with the Illinois Federation of Teachers, the state teacher's union, back in 2003 to endorse Obama for Senate. But Obama is a Hyde Park-Richard Daley man, and in the tradition of "Chicago politics" is not really seen as a friend of the union worker. It may also be worth noting that Barack Obama sends his kids to private school, not one of the public schools he is credited with rebuilding. Obama's primary claim to fame on the national stage is that when running for the Senate in 2002, he filled out a questionnaire for the Chicago Sun Times that indicated that he would not "have voted for the $87 billion supplemental appropriation for Iraq and Afghanistan" and made speeches to that effect from the stump. Hillary Clinton was among 29 Senate Democrats (of 50 total, at the time) who voted for H.J.Res. 114; Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. (Click here for a recap of that vote. You'll note that Barack Obama endorser and 2004 Democratic Presidential Nominee John Kerry also famously voted "Yes" on the resolution.) Obama wasn't even around to vote at the time of the initial resolution, but he has voted in lock-step with the Democrats in favor of additional Iraq appropriations since he has been in office. His claim that he was "right" in opposition to the Iraq War is probably correct, but like much of his record it is meaningless. This is what Bill Clinton described as "fairy tale." Obama wasn't faced with actually making a real-world decision, he just filled out a survey. * * * * * It has not been all that easy for me to educate myself to Barack Obama, and I think that is part of why the press also seems to be struggling so. If Obama has momentum that carries him into the White House, I would expect that to be better than having a Republican in residence there. And I can certainly appreciate the feeling within the black community for whom the election of a black president would be a tremendously uplifting historical event. It even has the potential of improving the United States' international image. But then again, so would the election of a woman President. On the other hand, I suspect this early primary / caucus season, and this early nominating process, may work against us Democrats in Obama's case. I worry that Obama may get enough delegates to capture the Democratic nomination just before people start to take a deeper look at who they have committed themselves to. I fear that "buyers' remorse" will set in. I suspect that John McCain will come across as significantly more seasoned than young Barack, whose rhetoric will start to sound a little pathetic, and somehow the Democrats will blow it again. It will be just like us. Somehow the Republicans are canny enough to win with a puppet front man like George W. Bush while you sense that in Barack Obama we have a scarecrow who may well blow away with his own windy call for an unspecified change.-RAR ____________________________________________ 2008 Election Fields - RAR Picks From the January 1, 2008 Edition of RARWRITER.com From the November 15, 2007 Edition of RARWRITER.com
Is Help Finally Coming? American Health Care and the 2008 Elections Hendrick Hertzberg has an interesting opening "The Talk of the Town" piece in the October 1 edition of The New Yorker, in which he reports on the leading Democratic candidates' healthcare proposals. Hertzberg, in writing about how Hillary Clinton is maneuvering to avoid the obstacles she encountered in her 1994 attempt at health care reform, points out that - "Every Democratic President since Harry Truman has been elected on a platform of national health insurance, and, in spite of public support for the idea by majorities as big as those in Europe, every one of them has failed to get it enacted." He goes on to talk about how insurance lobbyists impact the labyrinthine process of passing legislation in our system, which has effectively safeguarded the status quo, protecting private industry profits while maintaining America's standing as "the only advanced capitalist democracy on earth that does not guarantee health care to its citizens." RAR Note: The subtext to the health care issue in this country is found in the Molly Secours story above, and it has to do in part with employer-provided health insurance coverage. The very concept of employer-provided coverage, as we all know, tends to force people into the wage pool "for the benefits," though the healthcare meltdown in progress is tied to employers covering less and less of the total costs of coverage, and more and more declining to offer coverage at all. Americans' actual earning power has stagnated and receded for years, as health insurance costs have eaten more and more of the available cash flow of employees and employers alike. And for "rebels" like Molly Secours, who have elected to live "outside the system" of standard employment, the healthcare system has simply opted out entirely through imposition of impossibly expensive private insurance premiums and refusal of coverage due to "pre-existing" conditions. The Clinton, Obama and Edwards plans all provide a flexibility of choice that undermines one of the key Republican arguments against "government run" healthcare. The pillars to each of their plans are these:
Here are the kickers:
There is a stealth initiative underlying this new Democratic strategy to address the big government concerns of the "Harry and Louise" crowd. (Remember those adds that ran in 1994 suggesting that the Clinton healthcare proposal was just more wasteful, big government bureaucracy that would raise taxes and limit your choice of doctors?) The Democrats are mounting a slow motion assault on private insurers, guessing that if this new program passes, and people who are buying expensive private insurance see that people in the public plan are getting the same level of care at less personal expense, that they will leave private insurance in droves, thereby shrinking that industry. Why will this work? Because the Republican arguments against big government healthcare are neutralized by the success and popularity of the Medicare and Veterans Administration programs (Walter Reed fiasco aside). (Ask any World War II or Korean era vet, like my father, and they'll speak appreciatively of the V.A. system.) And here is the truth about those Republican claims that big government is wasteful: Medicare administration expenses are 2 cents on the dollar, where administration expenses among private insurers are 15 cents of every dollar. The 13 cent difference primarily covers the costs of keeping sick people uninsured and finding ways to deny benefits to those who are insured. __________________________ GENERAL BETRAY US, THE INVASION OF IRAQ AND PLEASE MOVEON.ORGOn
a recent episode of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” author Salman
Rushdie suggested that one of the reasons dialogue about the “Iraq War”[i]
has been so unproductive is that the Bush Administration has been so good at
steering the dialogue toward talk about the war rather than the war
itself. This was in response to Republican “outrage” over the MoveOn.org
“General Betray Us” ad and the New York Times’ reduced-rate support. Salman
Rushie’s is a good insight. The Bush message team has blunted the points of
war critics – enough that the “thing” drags on, even without apparent gain
– by portraying anti-war people as unpatriotic Americans who turn their backs
on “our troops.” Language
within a conflict is loaded however you use it, and “our troops” is a
particularly conflicted notion. They are “our troops” in the sense
that they are our neighbors and they are in uniform in a conflict overseas. But
anointing them as representatives of all that is American is part of the mindfield
that has been planted by Republican operatives between the realms of logic and
reality. One would think that would be tough terrain to negotiate effectively,
but hats off to the Bush crowd for consistently doing it with enough success to
maintain the status quo without public support. That’s brilliant, when you
really think about it. There was a research study recently, revealed as “bogus” by Slate.com, that purported to show that liberals are “smarter,” or at least better able to adapt to new information, than conservatives. Nothing that takes place in reality would seem to support this finding. My team – the “progressive liberals” represented by such as MoveOn.org – seem utterly incapable of doing what conservatives do with ease. However ridiculous their argument, “conservatives” – an effectively loaded noun – state their case with confidence, as truth that one can reasonably take unquestioned. So why can’t we do that? The truth about MoveOn’s “General Betray Us” ad is that it demonstrates incompetence on a par with that MoveOn accuses of the Bush Administration. Messaging hasn’t really been MoveOn’s strong suit so much as has been web savvy achieved a little ahead of the curve. They are not really “content” people so much as they are Internet geeks who have succeeded to a new plateau of scrutiny, and there they are hard to relate to as “our troops,” the voice of the liberal left. “General Betray Us” is grade school-level clever, extraordinary in its lack of sophistication, stupid in its understanding of the nuances of media and political culture. It embarrasses our side of the aisle. It does not illustrate any evidence that “we” have a better grasp on the complexities of our world than do our simple-minded counterparts in the Republican party. On the other hand, what would one expect of a group that names itself in response to a specific event in history – the impeachment of Bill Clinton – but has no real message to move on with other than that conveyed in their name. To be sure, MoveOn.org has demonstrated the effectiveness of the Internet as an organizing tool, but a few exchanges with a MoveOn.org CSR – they actually have them – may leave you believing that political enlightenment is less a goal than social networking. For we “progressive liberals” (more loaded bullshit) MoveOn.org’s “General Betray Us” spot did way too much to swell the ranks of activists who detest the left. And isn’t that what we argue the indefensible “War in Iraq” is doing for Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalists? Republicans attempted to make much of Democratic presidential candidates' refusals to speak out against the spot. This speaks well of Hillary, Obama, Edwards, et al. They know enough to stay well clear of a stinker. Now that’s messaging.
[i]
I cannot reference the “Iraq War” without the quotes, because
this doesn’t seem like a war in any traditional sense. I could
comfortably reference “Iraq Invasion” without the punctuation support.
Do you ever feel like somehow you got selected to be one of those people things "happen to?" Not necessarily good things, not things that happen "for you." It makes all the difference in life, whether it is a tapestry of joy or a sea of pain. I suppose we all get to knit and sink, and life's "losers" have stories as nicked by fate as do life's "winners." That it is usually hard to perceive the karmic justice - that bad things happen to good people - only darkens the waters. That in our new age of social and professional networking we are engaged with strangers only perpetrates the surreal and increases the likelihood of the unexpected occurring. Around
the first of the year, I was sitting at my desk in the office of the engineering
company I was working for at the time, when I started getting calls from this
friendly guy named Bill Davis. Here is where the surreal part starts. Bill had
found me on the Internet, where I have a big presence because I'm an Internet
junky. You can learn almost everything there is to know about me on the
Internet, I'm an open book. You can even hear me warble off key, if you've a
mind. Bill told me he had an opportunity for me as a Bid Developer with Cisco Systems. I'm perfect for the job, he said. It paid $104,000 per year and, among the benefits, I would work from home. I am a California mortgage slave. I not only have to work, I have to make dollars almost out of the range of an English/Journalism major, even one with 30-plus years of professional experience. (Having a certificate in technical writing ups my market value.) Still, I'm screwed for anything beyond about $4,000 in monthly mortgage-related payments. I was working for a good firm, one that had made its reputation doing environmental remediation and cleanup projects. The people were pleasant. It was the kind of place where I would bring my kids. In fact, one pleasant graphics person there had Lego sets that "needed to be built," and my son Griffin would sit in a cubicle and go to town on the construction. One could hardly hope for a better company, except that they weren't quite paying me enough to keep me from sliding ever further into debt. It is hard to feel optimistic in an employment in which you work all the time only to have your fortunes decline. There is that disconnect again, that surreal aspect of modern life. Which brings me back to Bill Davis. Bill, it turned out, is with a Florida company called K&J Consulting and he told me that his firm has a standing deal with Cisco Systems to provide technical support, and he needed to fill a Bid Developer position for his client. He repeated, "It's $104,000 per year..." In fact, he started playing that drum pretty hard. "$104,000 per year..." Now $104,000 per year in California money isn't a great amount, purchasing-power wise, but it is more than I was making. Plus, this wasn't just some IT firm Bill Davis was touting, it was Cisco Systems. Cisco has "rigged" 70 percent of the entire existing Internet! More importantly to me, they are annually touted as "One of the 100 Best Companies to Work For in America," maybe even the best. I stalled Bill for awhile, while I thought about making a move. The company I was working for had just given me a raise, 100 percent of the maximum under their system of managing pay increases; it more than matched the rate of inflation. And around Christmas the proposal group treated me to an expensive night out with them at Bing Crosby's place in Walnut Creek, and they gave me a little gift over dinner. It was not easy for me to leave these people who had been really good to me, but Bill Davis was offering better money and "Cisco Systems" on my resume. He assured me that K&J was in good with Cisco and had maintained a client relationship for nine years, with no reason for it to stop. Over Christmas break I went into San Francisco and met some "Proposal Experts." That is the name of the group I was being hired into - the Proposal Experts. The two experts I met with seemed like pleasant guys, which sort of cinched the deal. I decided I couldn't say no to Bill Davis and his $104,000, so I called him back to accept the offer, but not after first confirming what I thought I had understood to be "the deal." It turned out I had the salary right, but the benefits did not include health insurance. In fact, they only included expense reimbursement and two weeks paid vacation the first year. Without health insurance, Bill's $104,000 package shrunk significantly, but I felt confident that we could purchase individual coverage health insurance and still be money ahead. Besides, my company at the time was offering Great Western health insurance, which is practically like having no health insurance anyway. In retrospect, I was lost in heedless optimism regarding the practicality of buying individual coverage health insurance, but it was part of a broad trend. I was headed into the weird realm of Cisco Systems and their dark underling K&J Consulting. Click here to read the complete "Oh Cisco! You Are A Villain?" essay, an account of mendacity in the staffing of Internet giant Cisco Systems.
Where I Stand on the Gordian Knot of America In 333 BC, Alexander the Great, wintering in Gordium, a province of the Persian Empire, gave the world a great metaphor. He cut the Gordiian Knot. Legend had it that the individual who could undo the knot, which tied the ox cart of King Midas to a pillar post in Phrygia, would go on to rule all of Asia. Young Alexander, who would have been about 23 at the time, found the knot impossible to untie, so legend has it that he drew his sword and whacked the knot in two, thus simply circumventing this most vexing challenge. His became known as the "Alexandrian Solution," and he did go on conquer all of Asia Minor. Now, in 2007, with the United States of America in steep decline, hated in much of the world for our wrong-headed foreign policies, embroiled in an insane war abroad and hell-bent on fomenting more violence, too morally bankrupt to entertain any notion that doesn't have financial gain as its bottom line, feted on the ignoble diversions of sports and pop culture entertainments, it is time for us to cut our own knot - the one that binds us to ignorance often tied to our own myths. We have become so lost in the forests of our own bullshit that we need an American Solution as pure and simple as the Alexandrian's. We need a new bottom line, a fresh start. Here is my take on what needs to be done to right the U.S.A.:
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