Nov. 2, 2010: The Day America Officially Became Hopeless
Let it not be said that Barack Obama did not achieve anything amazing in his first two years in office. Somehow, incredibly, in that short time span, he made possible the revival of a conservative Republican party reeling from large-scale political freefall. President Bush was historically unpopular, the war in Iraq was (and still is) a quagmire, and the only thing falling harder and faster than the G.O.P. was the economy--on the brink of total collapse thanks to a runaway, debt-driven system that amounted to a financial version of Russian roulette.
How can you have a record turnout of supporters turning out on a freezing day, ignoring their bladders in the cold just so they can get a glimpse of you and maybe shake your hand, while your predecessor sits--quiet, isolated, ridiculed--in ceremonial exile, and two years later find yourself right there, taking his place as the icon of rejection en vogue. How does that happen?
Because Obama has spent most of his first two years in office mimicking the policies of his predecessor and pandering to his political enemies who have made it no secret they wish to erase him from the political power game. As puzzling as yesterday's election and the resurgence of a seemingly has-been G.O.P. is, there are two pretty simple explanations: America's chronic conservatism, and Obama's reticence in attacking that conservatism--a symptom of his symptomatic conservatism.
How in the world could anyone want more conservatism after 2000-2008 and larger post-1980 Reagan Era? The social inequality, oppression, and malaise that come with conservative policies can't even be rationalized anymore by a booming economy based on a rejection of Soviet-style government regulation, not when the American economy fell apart precisely because it has been driven by subsidies, bailouts, and prohibition--all forms of government control of the economy--during the Reagan era.
So the American people elected Obama because they were tired of conservative policies that didn't work. Obama then gave Americans a similar version of the same programs, they still don't work, and now Americans have voted again for the same party they voted against two years ago when they voted for Obama, presumably because they now want the G.O.P. to continue the same policies that don't work instead of Democrats.
This knot of self-destruction is a vicious spiral of societal collapse, and Obama the conservative is clearly clueless that he is calmly paddling at the front of a sinking boat. When failure is systemic, no options work to correct and stabilize serious problems. The available options simply do not correspond in type or proportion to the problems that need to be stabilized. More mayonnaise doesn't help when the cupboard is bare. Obama and the Democrats have been rejected by voters who want a return to the very politics responsible for the mess they blame Obama for--yet as crazy as that is, the voters are right, since his policies have not made a measurable departure from the failed policies of the conservative era he was presumably elected to usher the country out of. The economy remains stagnant not simply because Obama has not had enough time to make it better but because it is just another version of trickle-down economics. That explains why GM, the banks, and the insurance companies are rolling on while the non-rich remain mired in a state of growing despair and desperation. Trickle down concentrates wealth at the top of the economic hierarchy, so that's where it stays. And as long as some version of that policy remains intact, that's what you'll get. You can have all the time in the world (which real people in the real world do not have) and your policies won't work if they are re-hashed versions of policies that have already been shown to fail. Simply putting someone from the other party in the White House and switching from a foolish conservative to a smug conservative doesn't change anything. Incredible, the American people associate Obama with an agenda that deviates too far from the policies that were in place before him, when a) one would think people would embrace such a mode of governing when it's obvious the old policies have failed and were never designed to work in the people's interest and b) when Obama's policies have failed not because they deviated too far from what came before but because they mimic them too closely and don't boldly move away from them. The voters are both wrong about why Obama has failed and wrong to fault a significant departure from prevailing policies, because those policies are failures. Hence the continued failure.
Taken as a whole, this is an ideological traffic jam: a dead end. By now, Obama has no one to blame but himself for failing to fight back against those who have attacked him and alienating those who supported him because they did rightly want him to change the policies that have led us to this present state of failure. In two short years, Obama has become the Louise Ridgeway of American politics, the doomed heiress in Agatha Christie's "Death on the Nile" who, in the observant eyes of detective Hercule Poirot, "makes enemies of them all." Obama, like America, is his own worst enemy, squandering a historical political moment and the opportunity of a lifetime simply because his own complacent, conservative motives have been in the way. It is apparent from the way he acts, talks, and governs that everything is more or less OK from where he sits. The only time he gets antagonist and goes on the offensive is when he's being interviewed by John Stewart. He lectures and condescends to the nation's smartest and most politically active demographic, one without which he would have never gotten to be President.
Obama is another Bill Clinton, a conservative who wanted to be President and got what he wanted thanks to the progressive, non-rich population, and then ignored them, instead favoring the pro-corporate, pro-war, pro-police state policies of what came before him. When things are bad and nothing ever changes, one thing is for certain: they've gone from bad to worse. Clinton's daughter goes to Stanford and has a world-famous celebrity wedding while we're supposed to believe he, Obama, and the rest of the Democrats actually care about the people of this country and have some coherent, unified agenda other than to make sure as many of them can stay in office for as long as they can. And they continue to operate this way even though they no longer can make credible claims that the conservative policies they effectively have supported in the Reagan era.
Social oppression can't be worth economic prosperity when there is no economic prosperity. But you can forget about any kind of intelligent conversation interested in explanations of how and why economies succeed or fail in this country, no matter how urgent the need for it is. As with yesterday, we'll get more of the same: "the economy goes in cycles," "the Lord will provide," "low taxes," and "deregulate" are beliefs and policies, not explanations. You can't operate something you don't understand, and if you can't explain how it works, you don't understand it, no matter how many times you go back and forth between two conservative parties and their chronically conservative candidates. That's the really troubling thing about Obama--by now he seems as clueless and conservative as the people who have supported him and rejected in two years because they have no interest in doing anything besides beating up on the punching bag of the day, a la Tea Party.
In early 1968, after a disturbingly narrow victory in the New Hampshire primary, when LBJ realized he had lost all support, he announced that he would not run for re-election. Obama must do the same. There can be no break from the conservative policies that are ruining this country as long as he remains the only option to those policies. Two short years ago he had off-the-charts popularity, widespread support, and an opposing political party on the ropes. Yet somehow, here we are today.
And that's just it: two years ago, who would have thought anyone could have done worse than the previous administration? Indeed, for Obama to have been bad enough at being president to make him even worse than what came before him is indeed quite amazing . . . especially for someone who's only been in office two years.
Showing posts with label conservatism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conservatism. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Yes, We Got Fooled Again!
As mid-terms approach, here's an appraisal of Obamerica, 2008-present:
The Good: George W. Bush stopped being President.
The Bad: January 21, 2009 - Present.
The Ugly: Afghan surge, 55 days of silence on the Gulf Oil Disaster, opposition to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," opposition to Prop 19, scapegoating teachers, empowering Republicans, condescending to the American people (for the sake of personal sanity and organization, I will stop there).
Two years ago the big worry was that Obama would lose to McCain-Palin, or that if he won, he'd get Martin Luther King-ed (assassinated). As these epic nightmares subsided, they deferred to a more realistic, insidious, and chronic nightmare.
The Agenda Remains the Same.
No, that's not the echo of Robert Plant from 1971, that's me, today, and you know I'm right. No matter what happens, what approach is taken, bold or patient, working within the system or rebellious activism, America is the land where nothing changes, where nothing good is ever going to happen again.
Let me skip around now since I'm too angry to be systematic about this. Last week, a front-page NY Times article reported gross discrepencies in arrests for marijuana possession for Black males compared to whites, even though statistics show whites use marijuana as much if not more than Blacks. So what does attorney general Eric Holder do? His best Bush-Cheney hardass authoriarian imitation, declaring that the White House will, by god, prosecute marijuana offenses in California, the democratic process be damned. May I ask how such a move is either politically practical or socially desirable? One, such a position is conservative, and Americans voted for Obama presumably because they were tired of conservatism and the widespread misery, failure, and destruction it has left in its wake in the name of abstract principles, like morality, "small government" and patriotism. But conservatives hate Obama's guts, and no matter how much he tries to mimic them or "work with" them, their undying mission in life is to live to see the day he is no longer President, period.
Okay then. Sometimes politicians do things knowing the consequences will work against them politically, but such moves are socially desirable, e.g. "the right thing" to do. LBJ has been quoted as saying that he was turning over the entire South to the Republicans when he signed the Civil Rights Act into law during the 1960s. He knew both he and his party would suffer politically as a consequence of formally endorsing Civil Rights by using his executive powers to make civil rights the law, but it was (and still is) the right thing to do.
The NY Times article on racist enforcement of marijuana laws likened them to Jim Crow laws, and the comparison is not only valid but impossible to ignore. The law, generally speaking, is a menace to society more often than it is an asset; the law and justice are not the same thing, and the law undermines justice more often than the law upholds justice. Any rebuttal to this point amounts to circular reasoning. As King wrote in "Letter from Birmingham Jail" there are just laws and unjust laws. The former apply to everyone equally, the latter only to a specific group.
Cannabis prohibition is an unjust law on at least two levels. As the NY Times article makes clear, its enforcement effects discrimination against blacks. It also discriminates against all recreational cannabis users, who unlike those who indulge in alcohol, nicotene, gambling, and "vices," cannot do so without risk of arrest and the attendant punishments and disgrace. So we have a legal system that says the drinker can drink, the nicotene-head can blaze down nicotene joints, the gamblers can blow their life savings out on the river boat, but cannabis users can't light up. Thus, cannabis prohibition is an unjust law because it's a law that apply only to one group and not everyone. Either vices are legal or they aren't. It prohibits indulgence in one group's vice but says it's OK for the other groups to indulge in their vice. If we really want to stop drugs, we have to stop all of them, and end all drug use, not just the drug use that drunks aren't interested in while they pour more money into slot machines and puff on nicotene joints.
Opposing Prop 19, then, obviously alienates liberals, progressives, and whatever other social groups that overlap in the venn diagram of people who are fans of the herb. But it also is NOT the right thing to do. Prohibition works against civil rights, equality, fairness, and justice. It is a bad law, driven by racism, perpetuated by a welfare system for police and the criminal justice system, and sustained by hate-mongering ignorance and hypocrisy.
The height of this hypocrisy is Obama himself, a (half-) black man who wouldn't have come within light years of a public water fountain, muchless the Oval Office, if the previous generation of Black leaders (King, et al.) had the conservative, status quo mentality Obama lives and governs by. The country is in economic dire straights. We have an overcrowded, overflowing prison system into which we put way more money than we do our failing and underfunded education system (see Kristoff's NY Times piece, 2010, Oct. 28 (and no, my failure to provide the link isn't because I'm stoned and unmotivated. If you don't want to find the article yourself, what have you been smoking? I'm a writer, not a filing cabinet.)).
Perpetuating Prop. 19 is neither socially desirable, nor politically practical. Continuing cannabis prohibition has no justification in either democratic principles or empirical study of its effects on individuals and society when compared with the effects of the above mentioned legal vices. The only rationale for opposing Prop 19 is to posture for the arch-conservative establishment that thinks Obama is a Kenyan socialist cousin of both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, and perpetuate the hate-mongering strong-arm police state we have lived in for the last thirty years. Perpetuating the status quo seems a puzzling politicial move for a President who got elected on the platform of "change."
From the standpoint of the institutional racism prohibition perpetuates, Obama's opposition to Prop 19 is a disgrace not even his White House predecessor could match. This political move betrays the essence of conservatism: not wanting for others what you want for yourself. Obama is where he is today thanks to the passionate progressive politics of the previous generation. But unlike the icons of that era, Obama does not want the next generation of Americans in general and Blacks in particular to live in a more just, equal, and democratic world than the one he came of age--and rose to power--in. Yet, in taking this position, he achieves nothing poltically pragmatic--he will never be conservative enough for the conservatives who hate him. Thus, his tenure as President is marked by perpetuating socially undesirable oppression, discrimination, and fiscal blindness with no political pragmatism to reap. When you're failing as both an idealist and pragmatist, it might behoove you to consider that adhering to some ideals--like the social courage that made it possible for a (half-) black man to be President--is a practical thing to do, especially in politics.
Equally puzzling and bigoted is the Obama administration's opposition of a court ruling overturning "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in the military. What good does this achieve? Again, this move is neither socially desirable nor politically pragmatic. It perpetuates discrimination and degrading treatment of the LGBT community--which supported Obama in 2008--and alienates a demographic that it would seem politically pragmatic to keep in good favor.
And what has been the political gain of Obama's betrayal of his own race and the other progressive, oppressed groups that ardently supported him in 2008? Mitch McConnell's pledge that the top priority for the next Congress will be to make sure he is a one-term President.
Meanwhile, Obama and his cronies just issued a statement to educators, reminding them that they are required by federal law to intervene in the kind of bullying that recently drove a Rutgers student to commit suicide, a nationally-publicized tragedy that has brought to light other instances of suicides by young gay people hanging themselves. The vitriol of homo-haters -- and haters in general -- points to the futility of Obama's attempts at pragmatism, and the great cost in suffering Americans incur because of his inability to put his words and ideas into action. Regardless of his intentions, those of us who need to see the results the most are not seeing any results that would come from a socially desirable agenda. Thus, his pragmatism is a lost cause, and social progress has been stalled for yet another two years of human existence -- maybe not a long time if you're Obama, but certainly a long time if you're a gay teenager, or a black man in jail for a joint.
I'm sorry to tell you, but Obama is a smug jerk. He has used all of these people -- progressives and oppressed groups of all sorts -- to catapult him to realize a personal dream, and now that he's a member of the club, these people aren't cool enough to hang with him anymore. What does he tell John Stewart? "Change takes time. It doesn't happen overnight." Well now, that's inspiring and insightful isn't it? The country is stumbling through the aftershocks of thirty years of conservatism, and Obama wants to cater to the conservative establishment that hates him while telling the rest of us that the change we haven't seen for those thirty years takes time. What does he think we think "thirty years" is? The temperature? As always, Obama's demenour on the Daily Show was smug and reserved, a personality that in no way reflects either the passion of progressives or the urgency of people who's lives teeter on the edge of desperation. He was on the Daily show for one reason and one reason only: his own political interest. As soon as he walked off that set, everyone connected to the Daily Show ideology instantly became useless to him.
Society does not go in cycles like a washing machine. Society is organic. Like anything organic, societies can and do grow old and die. The telltale sign of anything dying is something that cannot recover from what ails it; it cannot revitalize itself; it cannot change because it has become exhausted and thus resigned to being set in its ways, never to go beyond its current status.
I wish I had a pragmatic political strategy for what to do about Obama's betrayal. Maybe it would be worth the short-term agony of deliberately working against the Democrats who have betrayed us and letting the Republicans regain power as a means of conditioning the Democrats to realize that if they ever want to get elected and hold onto power again, they must be a liberal party. The only reason anyone votes for them is they don't want a conservative party in power.
But I think 2000-2008 was already enough suffering and humiliation for a lifetime, so here's a somber thought: there may be no winning move. It's checkmate, and unless you're the King, you're fucked . . . no matter what.
That bit of nihilism aside, whatever approach you take to this coming Tuesday's elections and the American era that continues to unfold at this grim point in history, I would say that you can't expect change from others until you demand it from yourself.
The Good: George W. Bush stopped being President.
The Bad: January 21, 2009 - Present.
The Ugly: Afghan surge, 55 days of silence on the Gulf Oil Disaster, opposition to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," opposition to Prop 19, scapegoating teachers, empowering Republicans, condescending to the American people (for the sake of personal sanity and organization, I will stop there).
Two years ago the big worry was that Obama would lose to McCain-Palin, or that if he won, he'd get Martin Luther King-ed (assassinated). As these epic nightmares subsided, they deferred to a more realistic, insidious, and chronic nightmare.
The Agenda Remains the Same.
No, that's not the echo of Robert Plant from 1971, that's me, today, and you know I'm right. No matter what happens, what approach is taken, bold or patient, working within the system or rebellious activism, America is the land where nothing changes, where nothing good is ever going to happen again.
Let me skip around now since I'm too angry to be systematic about this. Last week, a front-page NY Times article reported gross discrepencies in arrests for marijuana possession for Black males compared to whites, even though statistics show whites use marijuana as much if not more than Blacks. So what does attorney general Eric Holder do? His best Bush-Cheney hardass authoriarian imitation, declaring that the White House will, by god, prosecute marijuana offenses in California, the democratic process be damned. May I ask how such a move is either politically practical or socially desirable? One, such a position is conservative, and Americans voted for Obama presumably because they were tired of conservatism and the widespread misery, failure, and destruction it has left in its wake in the name of abstract principles, like morality, "small government" and patriotism. But conservatives hate Obama's guts, and no matter how much he tries to mimic them or "work with" them, their undying mission in life is to live to see the day he is no longer President, period.
Okay then. Sometimes politicians do things knowing the consequences will work against them politically, but such moves are socially desirable, e.g. "the right thing" to do. LBJ has been quoted as saying that he was turning over the entire South to the Republicans when he signed the Civil Rights Act into law during the 1960s. He knew both he and his party would suffer politically as a consequence of formally endorsing Civil Rights by using his executive powers to make civil rights the law, but it was (and still is) the right thing to do.
The NY Times article on racist enforcement of marijuana laws likened them to Jim Crow laws, and the comparison is not only valid but impossible to ignore. The law, generally speaking, is a menace to society more often than it is an asset; the law and justice are not the same thing, and the law undermines justice more often than the law upholds justice. Any rebuttal to this point amounts to circular reasoning. As King wrote in "Letter from Birmingham Jail" there are just laws and unjust laws. The former apply to everyone equally, the latter only to a specific group.
Cannabis prohibition is an unjust law on at least two levels. As the NY Times article makes clear, its enforcement effects discrimination against blacks. It also discriminates against all recreational cannabis users, who unlike those who indulge in alcohol, nicotene, gambling, and "vices," cannot do so without risk of arrest and the attendant punishments and disgrace. So we have a legal system that says the drinker can drink, the nicotene-head can blaze down nicotene joints, the gamblers can blow their life savings out on the river boat, but cannabis users can't light up. Thus, cannabis prohibition is an unjust law because it's a law that apply only to one group and not everyone. Either vices are legal or they aren't. It prohibits indulgence in one group's vice but says it's OK for the other groups to indulge in their vice. If we really want to stop drugs, we have to stop all of them, and end all drug use, not just the drug use that drunks aren't interested in while they pour more money into slot machines and puff on nicotene joints.
Opposing Prop 19, then, obviously alienates liberals, progressives, and whatever other social groups that overlap in the venn diagram of people who are fans of the herb. But it also is NOT the right thing to do. Prohibition works against civil rights, equality, fairness, and justice. It is a bad law, driven by racism, perpetuated by a welfare system for police and the criminal justice system, and sustained by hate-mongering ignorance and hypocrisy.
The height of this hypocrisy is Obama himself, a (half-) black man who wouldn't have come within light years of a public water fountain, muchless the Oval Office, if the previous generation of Black leaders (King, et al.) had the conservative, status quo mentality Obama lives and governs by. The country is in economic dire straights. We have an overcrowded, overflowing prison system into which we put way more money than we do our failing and underfunded education system (see Kristoff's NY Times piece, 2010, Oct. 28 (and no, my failure to provide the link isn't because I'm stoned and unmotivated. If you don't want to find the article yourself, what have you been smoking? I'm a writer, not a filing cabinet.)).
Perpetuating Prop. 19 is neither socially desirable, nor politically practical. Continuing cannabis prohibition has no justification in either democratic principles or empirical study of its effects on individuals and society when compared with the effects of the above mentioned legal vices. The only rationale for opposing Prop 19 is to posture for the arch-conservative establishment that thinks Obama is a Kenyan socialist cousin of both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, and perpetuate the hate-mongering strong-arm police state we have lived in for the last thirty years. Perpetuating the status quo seems a puzzling politicial move for a President who got elected on the platform of "change."
From the standpoint of the institutional racism prohibition perpetuates, Obama's opposition to Prop 19 is a disgrace not even his White House predecessor could match. This political move betrays the essence of conservatism: not wanting for others what you want for yourself. Obama is where he is today thanks to the passionate progressive politics of the previous generation. But unlike the icons of that era, Obama does not want the next generation of Americans in general and Blacks in particular to live in a more just, equal, and democratic world than the one he came of age--and rose to power--in. Yet, in taking this position, he achieves nothing poltically pragmatic--he will never be conservative enough for the conservatives who hate him. Thus, his tenure as President is marked by perpetuating socially undesirable oppression, discrimination, and fiscal blindness with no political pragmatism to reap. When you're failing as both an idealist and pragmatist, it might behoove you to consider that adhering to some ideals--like the social courage that made it possible for a (half-) black man to be President--is a practical thing to do, especially in politics.
Equally puzzling and bigoted is the Obama administration's opposition of a court ruling overturning "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in the military. What good does this achieve? Again, this move is neither socially desirable nor politically pragmatic. It perpetuates discrimination and degrading treatment of the LGBT community--which supported Obama in 2008--and alienates a demographic that it would seem politically pragmatic to keep in good favor.
And what has been the political gain of Obama's betrayal of his own race and the other progressive, oppressed groups that ardently supported him in 2008? Mitch McConnell's pledge that the top priority for the next Congress will be to make sure he is a one-term President.
Meanwhile, Obama and his cronies just issued a statement to educators, reminding them that they are required by federal law to intervene in the kind of bullying that recently drove a Rutgers student to commit suicide, a nationally-publicized tragedy that has brought to light other instances of suicides by young gay people hanging themselves. The vitriol of homo-haters -- and haters in general -- points to the futility of Obama's attempts at pragmatism, and the great cost in suffering Americans incur because of his inability to put his words and ideas into action. Regardless of his intentions, those of us who need to see the results the most are not seeing any results that would come from a socially desirable agenda. Thus, his pragmatism is a lost cause, and social progress has been stalled for yet another two years of human existence -- maybe not a long time if you're Obama, but certainly a long time if you're a gay teenager, or a black man in jail for a joint.
I'm sorry to tell you, but Obama is a smug jerk. He has used all of these people -- progressives and oppressed groups of all sorts -- to catapult him to realize a personal dream, and now that he's a member of the club, these people aren't cool enough to hang with him anymore. What does he tell John Stewart? "Change takes time. It doesn't happen overnight." Well now, that's inspiring and insightful isn't it? The country is stumbling through the aftershocks of thirty years of conservatism, and Obama wants to cater to the conservative establishment that hates him while telling the rest of us that the change we haven't seen for those thirty years takes time. What does he think we think "thirty years" is? The temperature? As always, Obama's demenour on the Daily Show was smug and reserved, a personality that in no way reflects either the passion of progressives or the urgency of people who's lives teeter on the edge of desperation. He was on the Daily show for one reason and one reason only: his own political interest. As soon as he walked off that set, everyone connected to the Daily Show ideology instantly became useless to him.
Society does not go in cycles like a washing machine. Society is organic. Like anything organic, societies can and do grow old and die. The telltale sign of anything dying is something that cannot recover from what ails it; it cannot revitalize itself; it cannot change because it has become exhausted and thus resigned to being set in its ways, never to go beyond its current status.
I wish I had a pragmatic political strategy for what to do about Obama's betrayal. Maybe it would be worth the short-term agony of deliberately working against the Democrats who have betrayed us and letting the Republicans regain power as a means of conditioning the Democrats to realize that if they ever want to get elected and hold onto power again, they must be a liberal party. The only reason anyone votes for them is they don't want a conservative party in power.
But I think 2000-2008 was already enough suffering and humiliation for a lifetime, so here's a somber thought: there may be no winning move. It's checkmate, and unless you're the King, you're fucked . . . no matter what.
That bit of nihilism aside, whatever approach you take to this coming Tuesday's elections and the American era that continues to unfold at this grim point in history, I would say that you can't expect change from others until you demand it from yourself.
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