Follow Me Here is five years old today, and I wish a happy weblogiversary to all of you reading this. When I started this, I actually set five years as a mental milestone to reassess whether this remained worth doing. I am pleased to say that I generally enjoy putting FmH out on the web more and more. I have found a voice I like here and am confident it has some value to my readers. Thank you for your continued support and encouragement. Sometime during the past year, I passed half a million page hits on FmH; here’s to the next half million. I look forward to many more years in your face.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Bush Dream Redux
The poet wrote me with some history of the poem, which I had posted after being given it by her sister, with whom I work.
“This poem was written in November, 2002, before the US invaded Iraq. It was read at several Peace Rallies, open mic poetry readings, and for a cable show in Hull, Massachusetts. It was also passed out at the January 2002 Peace March on Washington, and was handed directly to Representative Cynthia Mckinney and actress Jessica Lange.”
I hadn’t expected that the poem had been written prior to the re-election, for some reason.
Slapping the Other Cheek
You’d think the one good thing about merging church and state would be that politics would be suffused with glistening Christian sentiments like ‘love thy neighbor,’ ‘turn the other cheek,’ ‘good will toward men,’ ‘blessed be the peacemakers’ and ‘judge not lest you be judged.’
I’m getting more the feel of a vengeful mob – revved up by rectitude – running around with torches and hatchets after heathens and pagans and infidels.
One fiery Southern senator actually accused a nice Catholic columnist of having horns coming up out of her head!” — Maureen Dowd (New York Times op-ed)
What Wal-Mart Knows About Customers’ Habits
“Wal-Mart amasses more data about the products it sells and its shoppers’ buying habits than anyone else, so much so that some privacy advocates worry about potential for abuse.” (New York Times) But, apart from the privacy concerns, you avoid shopping at Wal-Mart already despite the cost savings, right? There’s the fact that their enormous market share supports sweatshop labor; their union-busting exploitation of their employees; their leadership in the trend to lock after-hours workers into their stores, preventing emergency egress; and their destruction of indigenous businesses wherever they open…
To Avoid Divorce, Move to Massachusetts
Family values? Massachusetts has ’em in spades: “If blue states care less about moral values, why are divorce rates so low in the bluest of the blue states? It’s a question that intrigues conservatives, as much as it emboldens liberals.” (New York Times ) My wife and I, here in Massachusetts, were just struck by the fact that, contrary to our expectations, more than 80% of the gradeschool classmates of our two children come from two-parent families (although, scandalously, in some of those families the two parents are of the same sex!).
Lock and Load
“Nothing kills Democratic candidates’ prospects more than guns. If it weren’t for guns, President-elect Kerry might now be conferring with incoming Senate Majority Leader Daschle.” — Nicholas Kristof (New York Times op-ed)
A Legitimate Recount Effort in Ohio
“An effort led by Common Cause and the Alliance for Democracy is underway in Ohio to conduct a statewide recount.
Efforts to launch an official statewide recount of the Ohio presidential vote are underway. While it’s unclear if a recount will result in a Kerry victory, it’s likely to highlight many flaws in Ohio elections that may have tilted results toward Republicans and against Democrats.
…While there have been many accounts of problems associated with the Ohio vote, from reports of 90,000 spoiled ballots, to software glitches resulting in more votes tallied than the number of registered voters, to new voters not being notified where their polling places were, to too few voting machines in Democratic strongholds, the only legal process that could immediately address some of these concerns is a recount.
The recount would be just that: a recounting of all the votes cast. If the results change, meaning more votes are added to Kerry’s total – then the official result, what the secretary of state certifies, is changed.
“It’s re-certified,” Arnebeck said. “If Kerry emerges victorious, he’s president.” Of course, a certification in Kerry’s favor for Ohio won’t take away the fact that Bush won the popular vote by 3.5 million votes.
And the clock is ticking on the Ohio process. In coming days, the Ohio secretary of state is expected to announce that the provisional ballots have been counted. A losing candidate for president then has 5 days to request a recount, filing the paperwork and filing fee. That cost is $10 per precinct, which comes to slightly more than $110,000. As of Friday morning, $35,000 had been raised. There is a possibility that not all Ohio counties will finish the provsional ballot count, which would prompt those seeking the recount to pursue other actions, Arnebeck said.” (AlterNet)
U2: The Catharsis in the Cathedral
“As the band plunged into ‘Vertigo’ and ‘All Because of You,’ the sound of early U2 – the Who’s power chords blasted into U2’s own domain of spaciousness and yearning – was merged with an added 25 years of experience, experiments and world-beating success. Standing with one leg forward and one behind him, Bono rocked back and forth and belted, ‘I’m at a place called Vertigo/It’s everything I wish I didn’t know/Except you give me something I can feel.’
Tensions between intellect and passion, and between pragmatism and faith, drive the songs on ‘How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb’; so do burly guitar riffs, galvanizing crescendos and fearlessly emotional vocals. The album easily stands alongside the best work of U2’s career – ‘Boy,’ ‘War,’ ‘The Joshua Tree’ and ‘Achtung Baby’ – and, song for song, it’s more consistent than any of them.” — New York Times rock critic Jon Pareles.
Can Bush Deliver a Conservative Court?
“By promising to appoint strict constructionists, Mr. Bush has embraced the mantra of every Republican president since Richard Nixon, who first made that promise in his 1968 campaign. Yet Republican presidents have largely failed in their efforts.
In the last 36 years, four Republican presidents have appointed all but two of the current nine justices.
But on the most contested social issues – abortion, affirmative action, school prayer and gay rights – the court has sided with liberals, while only modestly advancing the deregulatory agenda of the Republicans.” (New York Times)
Howard Dean Disputes Media View that ‘Values’ Swung Election
‘Though Dean, a Democrat, complimented President Bush, saying he “ran a great campaign” and was “very disciplined,” he compared the president to former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, at least in one regard.
“The truth is the president of the United States used the same device that Slobodan Milosevic used in Serbia. When you appeal to homophobia, when you appeal to sexism, when you appeal to racism, that is extraordinarily damaging to the country,” Dean charged. “I know George Bush. I served with him for six years [as a fellow governor]. He’s not a homophobe. He’s not a racist. He’s not a sexist. In some ways, what he did was worse … because he knew better.” ‘ (Editor and Publisher)
And:
On ‘Moral Values,’ It’s Blue in a Landslide: “There’s only one problem with the storyline proclaiming that the country swung to the right on cultural issues in 2004. Like so many other narratives that immediately calcify into our 24/7 media’s conventional wisdom, it is fiction. Everything about the election results – and about American culture itself – confirms an inescapable reality: John Kerry’s defeat notwithstanding, it’s blue America, not red, that is inexorably winning the culture war, and by a landslide. Kerry voters who have been flagellating themselves since Election Day with a vengeance worthy of ‘The Passion of the Christ’ should wake up and smell the Chardonnay.” — Frank Rich (New York Times)
‘Evangelical Christianity Has Been Hijacked’
An Interview with Tony Campolo: “Speaking out on gays, women and more, a progressive evangelical says ‘We ought to get out of the judging business.’ Interview by Laura Sheahen (Beliefnet)
Curbing Your Enthusiasm
The coming war against sex: “You just know high-ranking members of the Bush administration stay awake at night thinking that somewhere out there people are masturbating, and they have to do something to stop it…” (Wired)
Green, Libertarian Candidates Demand Ohio Recount
“David Cobb and Michael Badnarik, the 2004 presidential candidates for the Green and Libertarian parties, today announced their intentions to file a formal demand for a recount of the presidential ballots cast in Ohio…
The candidates also demanded that Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who chaired the Ohio Bush campaign, recuse himself from the recount process…
The Cobb and Badnarik campaigns are in the process of raising the required fee, estimated at $110,000, for filing for a complete recount. The campaigns are accepting contributions through their websites. The Cobb-LaMarche website is http://www.votecobb.org. The Badnarik-Campagna contribution page is https://badnarik.org.
The Cobb and Badnarik campaigns have displayed a level of cooperation and civility rarely found in electoral politics. The campaigns jointly participated in and/or sponsored a series of independent debates. Cobb and Badnarik were also simultaneously arrested in St. Louis protesting their exclusion from the restricted, two-party corporate-sponsored debates. “
A Legitimate Recount Effort in Ohio
“An effort led by Common Cause and the Alliance for Democracy is underway in Ohio to conduct a statewide recount.
Efforts to launch an official statewide recount of the Ohio presidential vote are underway. While it’s unclear if a recount will result in a Kerry victory, it’s likely to highlight many flaws in Ohio elections that may have tilted results toward Republicans and against Democrats.
…While there have been many accounts of problems associated with the Ohio vote, from reports of 90,000 spoiled ballots, to software glitches resulting in more votes tallied than the number of registered voters, to new voters not being notified where their polling places were, to too few voting machines in Democratic strongholds, the only legal process that could immediately address some of these concerns is a recount.
The recount would be just that: a recounting of all the votes cast. If the results change, meaning more votes are added to Kerry’s total – then the official result, what the secretary of state certifies, is changed.
“It’s re-certified,” Arnebeck said. “If Kerry emerges victorious, he’s president.” Of course, a certification in Kerry’s favor for Ohio won’t take away the fact that Bush won the popular vote by 3.5 million votes.
And the clock is ticking on the Ohio process. In coming days, the Ohio secretary of state is expected to announce that the provisional ballots have been counted. A losing candidate for president then has 5 days to request a recount, filing the paperwork and filing fee. That cost is $10 per precinct, which comes to slightly more than $110,000. As of Friday morning, $35,000 had been raised. There is a possibility that not all Ohio counties will finish the provsional ballot count, which would prompt those seeking the recount to pursue other actions, Arnebeck said.” (AlterNet)
Police use stun gun on 6-year-old boy
Most of the attention this has gotten on the internet stops right there, with the headline. The impression is justifiably chilling, horrible. But if you read on you find that the boy was “wielding a piece of glass and threatening to hurt himself, officials said Thursday.” As a physician, I am not familiar with the potential lethality of this ‘sub-lethal’ weapon when used on a child of 6. A quick medline search has nothing to say. And I am sure that the policemen wielding the weapon had no idea how ‘sub-lethal’ it might be in a 6-year old, never anticipated using it on a child that small. Insofar as the electric shock did not stop the child’s heart, did they ‘dodge a bullet’?
But assuming for a moment that it was not merely sheer luck that the shock did not kill him, he was efficiently disabled at a time he was potentially quite lethal to himself, having already cut himself on the face, hands and leg. The article takes pains to note that, while one officer shocked him, another grabbed him to prevent a violent fall to the ground. Perhaps this was, thus, lifesaving heroism in a desperate situation. I cannot underestimate the value of a minimally injurious way of disabling someone who might be on the verge of, for example, opening up an artery and bleeding out. It is pretty likely that a six-year old cannot appreciate the finality of death and the concept of the potential lethality a chosen behavior; some thinkers deny that there can be true suicidality in someone so young. Regardless of whether you believe that certain adults can make a rational decision to end their lives and that preventing them from having the discretion to do so is immoral, the same cannot be said in children; I believe that all self-destructiveness in children requires and justifies preventive action.
But unlike the usual authoritative posts on psychiatric topics to which FmH readers are accustomed, in which I lead with my confidence and opinionation in my chosen field, here I remain bewildered and befuddled. This turns out to be a deceptively complex and difficult situation for me to make sense of as a psychiatrist, someone who treats deliberately and inadvertently self-destructive people day in and day out. I cannot actually metabolize that this was a 6-year old who was so disturbed. Both as a psychiatrist who cares for adults and has seen most of the things adult psychopathology can throw at me (and has no training or experience in child psychiatry) and as a father, whenever I hear about such derangement in a 4-, a 6-, a 7-year old, I can only reel with incredulity. My hospital has a child unit, but I stare at the daily census in blank incomprehension when I read the ages of the kids hospitalized there. Does such a young child even have the capacity to be so disturbed on their own, or is it only in the eyes of the (adult) beholder? And, once conceived of as so disordered, does it have a self-fulfilling prophetic influence on their behavior? What must some adult have done to them for them to present in such a deranged fashion? And what would it take to ever conclude that your child’s care, no matter how out of control in acute crisis, needs to be abandoned to the hospital instead of your dropping everything to care for him at home (with professional assistance in the community)? Despite utterly believing in the premises of the psychiatric hospitalization of adults, something in me balks at extending those rationales to child psychiatric admissions, especially realizing that they are subject to the same managed care pressures and bastardization of psychiatric training that mitigate for cost-cutting measures, an inability to deliver nurturance and individual attention, and an obscene rush to overmedicate. (No, medication practices with children are not likely to change appreciably even with the new ‘black box warning’ of enhanced suicide risk associated with SSRI antidepressants…)
Grappling with this has me wondering, what if there were no such thing as a child psychiatry ward? Where would these children be? The opportunity exists to look at that issue since, with such a severe shortage of child psychiatry beds throughout the country, many kids in crisis are turned away from being hospitalized if any other setting will do.
Collectible: 52 Most Dangerous Liberals in America
“…(T)he brand new ’52 Most Dangerous Liberals in America’ Card Deck features the politicians, Hollywood ‘activists,’ and media elite who pose the worst political threats to America. Each card features a ‘Dangerous Liberal’ and a self-condemning quote to back up why they’ve been chosen to be included in this notorious deck. These liberals share their views on banning guns, spending your tax dollars, and of course, their undying affection for all things Clinton. Some quotes will make you laugh, and others will make you cringe.” (National Review)
(Some might make you sick to your stomach, in which case you might vomit and, if you aspirate some of your vomitus, develop a nasty aspiration pneumonia with possible dire consequences. So, National Review reader, if you were so inclined, you probably ought to forego buying this deck of cards, and leave them for the liberals who might treat them more reverently.)
R.I.P. Iris Chang
![//graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2004/11/12/arts/Chang75.jpg' cannot be displayed]](https://i0.wp.com/graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2004/11/12/arts/Chang75.jpg "Iris Chang")
Chronicler of 1937 ‘Rape of Nanking’ Dies at 36. Chang, who took an unflinching, breathtaking look at one of the worst human wartime atrocities of the modern age, and is the mother of a young child, took her own life by gunshot at 36. (New York Times) This is very very sad. She had struggled with severe depression and some around her have suggested that ending her life in despair was connected to the intimate examination she made of human depravity in her work.
Police identify officer who shot lethal pepper-spray pellet:
‘Less-than-lethal’ weapons don’t kill people…people kill people. Nice to see that the Boston Police were finally able to figure out who committed this crime back on Oct. 21st. (Boston Globe)
Nod to Gonzales prompts guarded praise
“Hispanics laud nomination, with some concerns.” (Boston Globe )I would hate to think he is going to get a pass at confirmation because he is Hispanic. Other political analysis has called Gonzales an improvement over Ashcroft because he is less strident and his political views less clear. But the niceties of his politics fall by the wayside for me in the face of his calling the Geneva Accords “quaint” and “obsolete” (MSNBC )(no, I am not taking him out of context) and using his position as White House counsel to advise Bush on how to evade the illegality of torturing detainees in Guantanamo and Iraq. (Washington Post) This first heinous appointment of the post-‘mandate’ Bush is where those concerned about his reign should draw a line in the sand.
US using white phosphorus in Fallujah seige
Via boing boing, which singles out the following paragraphs for your consideration from the San Francisco Chronicle‘s reporting about U.S. drive into heart of Fallujah:
“Some artillery guns fired white phosphorous rounds that create a screen of fire that cannot be extinguished with water. Insurgents reported being attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns.
Kamal Hadeethi, a physician at a regional hospital, said, ‘The corpses of the mujahedeen which we received were burned, and some corpses were melted.'”
And how, do you suppose, can they tell that a corpse melted by an incendiary shell had been a fighter rather than a civilian?
Frying-Pan-to-Fire Dept:
[This is actually, unfortunately, a sub-department of the ‘Good Riddance’ Dept. I inaugurated below in celebrating Ashcroft’s departure].
Bush’s nominee is indeed Alberto Gonzales (New York Times ), who he called “a calm and steady voice at times of crisis”. Write or call your senators and urge them to oppose the nomination of a zealous advocate of the legality of torture for the highest law enforcement post in the country.
Gaudy complexity
Another Neal Stephenson interview on the occasion of the completion of The Baroque Cycle.
“I think that the period is interesting because of its sheer gaudy complexity – its baroqueness — and difficult to write about for the same reason. One cannot really make sense of all the wars and intrigues without a wall-sized family tree of the royal houses of Europe. I cheated by making the book long, which gave me space to explain at least some of these complexities. Other eras are simple by comparison; one can simply write ‘Napoleon had conquered most of Europe and wanted to invade Britain’ and the stage is set. But trying to set up the War of the Spanish Succession is a nightmare of forensic genealogy.
Setting those difficulties aside, this period is fascinating because so much was going on, and so much of it was brilliant and dramatic. The Turks at the gates of Vienna, the Barbary Corsairs and other sorts of pirates, gold-galleons on the Spanish Main, the court of Louis XIV at Versailles, the invention of modern science and finance, the Mogul Empire in Hindustan—all of this was happening at one time. I don’t think there was any other period of history to compare with it…” (Guardian.UK)
Halo 2 released
I am not at all a gamer but I had to mention this. The Catbirdseat comments: “Young Americans are advised to pick it up and ‘practice’: you’ll find yourself in real ‘strange lands’, fighting real ‘alien warriors’, soon enough.”
If you’re worried about election fraud…
Do you have some time to spare? You could do worse than to make some phone calls, as this email I’m reproducing suggests:
….These members of Congress are reportedly looking into the issue – and those on the committees should be. Please urge them to introduce a bill to investigate voter fraud and suppression in Ohio and Florida:
Rep. Henry Waxman of CA – 202-225-3976
Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones of OH – 202-225-7032
Rep. Dennis Kucinich of OH – 202-225-5871
Rep. Tim Ryan of OH – 202-225-5261
Democratic & Republican Members of the House Judiciary Committee:
Rep. Robert Wexler of FL – 202-225-3001
Rep. Maxine Waters of CA – 202-225-2201
Rep. Chabot of OH (R)- 202-225-2216
Rep. King of IA (R)- 202-225-4426
Democrat & Republican Members (call both) of the Senate Judiciary Committee:
Sen. Patrick Leahy of VT – 202-224-4242
Sen. Ted Kennedy of MA – 202-224-4543
Sen. Joe Biden of DE – 202-224-5042
Sen. Russ Feingold of WI – 202-224-5323
Sen. Charles Schumer of NY – 202-224-6542
Sen. Arlen Specter of PA (R) – 202-224-4254 (thank him also for having urged the Pres. to not choose anti-abortion judges and taking the body blows)
Sen. Mike DeWine of OH (R) – 202-224-2315
Sen. Chuck Grassley of IA (R)- 202-224-3744
Federal Elections Commission:
Audit Division
Joseph Stoltz, Assistant Staff Director
Telephone: 800-424-9530 (press 0, then ext. 1200)
Inspector General
Lynne McFarland, Inspector General
Telephone: 800-424-9530 (press 0, then ext. 1015) [thanks, Molly]
Good Riddance Dept
(Hoping for a number of posts to this newly-opened dept. of FmH…)
Ashcroft Resigns: “Attorney General John Ashcroft and Commerce Secretary Don Evans have resigned, the White House said Tuesday evening.
Ashcroft’s resignation will be effective upon confirmation of his successor, a Justice Department official said.
The White House released their resignation letters Tuesday evening. Ashcroft’s was hand-written and dated November 2, the day Bush was re-elected; Evans’ was dated Tuesday.
President Bush met with his Cabinet on Thursday and held a news conference later that day. At that time Bush said he had yet to make any decisions about replacements for any people who resigned.” (CNN)
We should all have some dread about who will replace him, of course, although it would be difficult to imagine someone who matches his bizarreness. After all, Ashcroft was the man who spent thousands of dollars to have curtains obscure the bare-breasted statue of Justice in the lobby of the Justice Dept. And the same one who had Clarence Thomas anoint him with oil at his swearing-in, just in case we did not have enough confusion about whether he was appointed or Elected. One thing that will probably be unmatched in his successor is Ashcroft’s divisiveness, since it is difficult to conceive of how the country could be more polarized than it already is at this juncture, unless “Bush the uniter” brings forward the name of faithful proto-fascist White House counsel and torture tactician Alberto Gonzales, as sources indicate is likely. I actually look forward to the vicious confirmation hearing, perhaps the first opportunity for the chastened minority party to flex its muscle, if members have the guts to take a principled stand. The new Senate minority leader, Harry Reid (D.-Nev.), is supposed to be a masterful parlimentarian strategist; this would give him an early chance to show us all what he’s got. Pundits also mention Larry Thompson, loyal no. 2 man at Justice under Ashcroft, to succeed Ashcroft. His confirmation would be far less controversial. With Bush’s “mandate”, his plan to “spend my political capital”, which choice appears more likely?
Heaven forfend: could Ashcroft be in line for the first vacancy on the Supreme Court (which, with Rehnquist’s apparently advanced thyroid cancer, may be imminent)?
Druggists refuse to give out pill
“For a year, Julee Lacey stopped in a CVS pharmacy near her home in a Fort Worth suburb to get refills of her birth-control pills. Then one day last March, the pharmacist refused to fill Lacey’s prescription because she did not believe in birth control.” (Yahoo! News) Welcome to Bushland, Julee.
A Message from Cam Kerry on Counting All the Votes
I had initially dismissed concerns about voting fraud during the presidential race, as you know from a post below, as an expression of our collective denial about the finality of the traumatic outcome. However, evidence accumulates. I am glad to see someone coordinating an effort to examine the issue further, toward whatever action turns out to be warranted. Here is an email being circulated; feel free to send it around broadly.
November 9, 2004
I am grateful to the many people who have contacted me to express their deep concern about questions of miscounting, fraud, vote suppression, and other problems on election day, especially in Florida and Ohio. Their concern reflects how much people care about the outcome of this election. I want to you to know we are not ignoring it.
Election protection lawyers are still on the job in Ohio and Florida and in DC making sure all the votes are counted accurately. I have been conferring with lawyers involved and have made them aware of the information and concerns people have given me. Even if the facts don’t provide a basis to change the outcome, the information will inform the continuing effort to protect the integrity of our elections.
If you have specific factual information about voting problems that could be helpful to the lawyers doing their job, please send it to vri@dnc.org rather than to me. The election protection effort has been important to me personally, and I am proud of the 17,000 lawyers around the country who helped. It’s obvious that we have a way to go still, but their efforts helped make a difference. Their work goes on.
Thank you,
Cam Kerry
Canadian border phrase translations
“Hello. Are you a Canadian border guard?”
“Bonjour. Êtes-vous une esti de garde canadienne de frontière?”
“I would like to apply for permanent residence”
“Je voudrais solliciter la résidence permanente”
“I am a political refuge. The reason? My former country has been overrun with morons and rednecks.”
“Je suis un chris de refugé politique. La raison? Mon ancien pays a été débordé avec des asti d’innocentes et des batardes.”
“Before I step over the border, I have a couple of questions for you.”
“Avant que je passe la frontière, j’ai un couple des questions pour vous.”
-“Can the Prime Minister say the word ‘nuclear’?”
-“Peut le premier ministre dire le mot ‘nucléaire’?”-“Is Canada at war with anyone for no good reason?”
-“Le Canada à la guerre avec n’importe qui, et est-il pour aucune bonne raison?”-“Do you allow pretend cowboys to be in positions of power?”
-“Laissez-vous des osti de cowboys dans des positions de pouvoire?”
“Yes, no, and no? Fine. Let me the f%#k in.”
“Oui, non, et non? Et ben, Laissez-moi rentre la dedans chris de tabarnaque de callis.” [thanks, Nathalie]
“Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It’s
what everything else isn’t.”— Theodore Roethke
What’s 40% bigger than the mother of ’em all?
Eglin AFB Studying Massive 30,000-Pound Bomb: “The Air Force built a weapon so big it was nicknamed ‘Mother of All Bombs’ on the eve of the war with Iraq, but MOAB would be dwarfed by a much larger munition now under study.
The proposed Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP, would weigh 30,000 pounds, nearly 40 percent more than the 21,000 pound MOAB — officially Massive Ordnance Air Blast — that never saw combat.” (local6.news [Fla.])
I guess the boys’ toys still aren’t big enough.
Best Buy hopes to exorcize devil patrons
“As far as the old adage “the customer is always right” goes, Best Buy doesn’t buy it. The massive retailer is being vocal about something that at first might sound a little uncouth: frankly, they’d rather not have 20% of their customers as customers. In an age where it seems like everyone casts their nets as wide as possible to bring in more eyes, feet, and wallets, Best Buy is doing the opposite. They believe that a small portion of their customers are bad for business, and they’re looking to shut them out. Of course, Best Buy loves their ‘angel’ customers who buy things regardless of price, and load up on high ticket items. The problem is that the details are about the devils.
The devils are its worst customers. They buy products, apply for rebates, return the purchases, then buy them back at returned-merchandise discounts. They load up on ‘loss leaders,’ severely discounted merchandise designed to boost store traffic, then flip the goods at a profit on eBay. They slap down rock-bottom price quotes from Web sites and demand that Best Buy make good on its lowest-price pledge. ‘They can wreak enormous economic havoc,’ says Mr. Anderson.
Some see this as Best Buy trying to ‘have its cake and eat it too,’ by wanting to keep rebates, loss leaders, and massive promotions going, but exclude those who make routine use of them. Why not just stop with the marketing games?” (ars technica)
"Bernard Lewis Revisited" by Michael Hirsh
“The invasion of Iraq has given Osama bin Laden a historic gift, vindicating his claim that Americans as Crusaders.
Firefox 1.0 is released
Immediate availability for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux as a free download or on CD…. and you will be glad you got it.
Jargon Watch: ‘pastede on yay’
I have just started to see this silly vocal mannerism popping up everywhere.
Germs, Germs Everywhere
Are You Worried? Get Over It. (New York Times)
Long After Kinsey, Only the Brave Study Sex
“Decades after the sexual revolution, sex researchers in the United States still operate in a kind of scientific underground, fearing suppression or public censure. In a culture awash in sex talk and advice in magazines and movies and on daytime TV, the researchers present their findings in coded language, knowing that at any time they, like Dr. Kinsey, could be held up as a public threat.” (New York Times)
The British Way with Words
God Help America: “They say that in life you get what you deserve. Well, today America has deservedly got a lawless cowboy to lead them further into carnage and isolation and the unreserved contempt of most of the rest of the world.
This once-great country has pulled up its drawbridge for another four years and stuck a finger up to the billions of us forced to share the same air. And in doing so, it has shown itself to be a fearful, backward-looking and very small nation.” [read the entire editorial] (DailyMirror.UK [via Jill])
U.S. Judge Halts War-Crime Trial at Guantanamo
“A federal judge ruled Monday that President Bush had both overstepped his constitutional bounds and improperly brushed aside the Geneva Conventions in establishing military commissions to try detainees at the United States naval base here as war criminals.” (New York Times)
This disturbing map pair
may speak volumes to the demographics of the Bush vote. [thanks, Jerry]
Voting Without the Facts
More on the role of lack of intelligence on the part of the voters in the outcome of the election:
“I think a case could be made that ignorance played at least as big a role in the election’s outcome as values. A recent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that nearly 70 percent of President Bush’s supporters believe the U.S. has come up with ‘clear evidence’ that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda. A third of the president’s supporters believe weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. And more than a third believe that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion.
This is scary. How do you make a rational political pitch to people who have put that part of their brain on hold? No wonder Bush won.” — Bob Herbert (New York Times op-ed [thanks, Jerry])
And , prophetically:
“When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack, or count himself lost. His one aim is to disarm suspicion, to arouse confidence in his orthodoxy, to avoid challenge. If he is a man of convictions, of enthusiasm, or self-respect, it is cruelly hard.
The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even a mob with him by the force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second or third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.
The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
–H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920
Beware Explanation
“Why did this race end up 51-48? Most pundits can’t answer to that question, and don’t even know how to approach it. We make this suggestion: Beware explanation. Many aspects of this election are worth discussing. But most of the pundits you see on TV won’t even know what they are.” [more…] (Daily Howler)
The curse of Bush II
“Yes, the devastation will be extreme. The good news? He’ll sow his own destruction.” — Dennnis Jett (Salon)
Praying for a Different Outcome??
“When the Personal Shouldn’t Be Political: It should concern us that declarations of ‘faith’ are quickly becoming a condition for seeking public office.” — Gary Hart (New York Times op-ed)
“Time to Get Religion: Democrats need to give a more prominent voice to Middle American, gun-shooting, Spanish-speaking, Bible-toting centrists.” — Nicholas Kristof (New York Times op-ed)
Kerry Won. . .
“I know you don’t want to hear it. You can’t face one more hung chad. But I don’t have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage called American democracy, it’s my job to tell you who got the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry.” — Greg Palast (Tom Paine)
Too many voting ’irregularities’ to be coincidence
“Right now there is no hard proof, but the circumstantial evidence is a mile high. Looking at all of these ’irregularities’ it’s hard to imagine how one could conclude that this election was clean.
1. There were complaints in several states about the touchscreen voting machines not working properly.
2. Stryguy on the DemocraticUnderground.com found a huge anomaly in Franklin County Ohio.
3. Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell is this year’s Katherine Harris.
4. The amazing ’coincidence’ that exit polls were accurate in non-swing states, but were way off in key states like Ohio and Florida.
Wouldn’t it be nice to get beyond this circumstantial evidence and into some hard proof that this election was rigged? That what Bev Harris is doing at blackboxvoting.org — she’s filed Freedom of Information Act requests for vote records in over 3,000 counties with more to follow. If you care about our Democracy, the future of our children, and that of children in Iraq and other countries about to be invaded, please go to blackboxvoting.org and get informed, do what you can to pass this info on.” (Bellaciao )
Kerry Won. . .
“I know you don’t want to hear it. You can’t face one more hung chad. But I don’t have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage called American democracy, it’s my job to tell you who got the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry.” — Greg Palast (Tom Paine)
The Ultimate Felony Against Democracy
“The hot story in the Blogosphere is that the ‘erroneous’ exit polls that showed Kerry carrying Florida and Ohio (among other states) weren’t erroneous at all – it was the numbers produced by paperless voting machines that were wrong, and Kerry actually won. As more and more analysis is done of what may (or may not) be the most massive election fraud in the history of the world, however, it’s critical that we keep the largest issue at the forefront at all time: Why are We The People allowing private, for-profit corporations, answerable only to their officers and boards of directors, and loyal only to agendas and politicians that will enhance their profitability, to handle our votes?” — Thom Hartmann (Common Dreams)
IQ and Politics
Here is some further thought-provoking, although inconclusive, discussion of the relationship between intelligence and political stance in modern America, in light of my discussion below.
Related: Jane Smiley writes:
“The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry.
…The reason the Democrats have lost five of the last seven presidential elections is simple: A generation ago, the big capitalists, who have no morals, as we know, decided to make use of the religious right in their class war against the middle class and against the regulations that were protecting those whom they considered to be their rightful prey—workers and consumers. The architects of this strategy knew perfectly well that they were exploiting, among other unsavory qualities, a long American habit of virulent racism, but they did it anyway, and we see the outcome now—Cheney is the capitalist arm and Bush is the religious arm. They know no boundaries or rules. They are predatory and resentful, amoral, avaricious, and arrogant. Lots of Americans like and admire them because lots of Americans, even those who don’t share those same qualities, don’t know which end is up. Can the Democrats appeal to such voters? Do they want to? The Republicans have sold their souls for power. Must everyone?” (Slate)
Is it any surprise
to anyone that the assault on Fallujah began as soon as Bush had the election in the bag? Make way for the body bags.
Sorry…
for the two lengthy posts below. They are hardly the norm here. At times like this, I do tend to go on. Please persevere and read through them if you will. I would really be interested in my readers’ reactions and critiques.
Moving On, Moving Left
“I agree with Eliot’s emphasis on the nation’s cultural divide and his call for more militant action. I touched on these issues when I reacted two decades ago to Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election. I still don’t think the Democrats can become the force for popular resistance Eliot and I apparently agree we need. Instead, as I wrote a couple of years ago in a piece called When in Doubt, Go Left, we should “aim for the society we really want, far different from the tepid goals of most Democrats. If we’re right, our vision should appeal to the vast majority. If it doesn’t, let’s find that out too, and determine together how to go left more effectively.”
Where I think Eliot treads on thin ice is in blasting “the intelligence of the American people.” I share his emotional response, though his final note about the impact of media spin, ignorance, and manipulation is more on target. However, even granting that, I think Eliot gives too little emphasis to his important point about social and cultural value differences. It seems to me value issues related to religion’s role in public life – abortion, gay marriage, public prayer, and more – divide the public much more than liberals and leftists often acknowledge in a serious way. Many of us on the left think religion should be a private concern in a live-and-let-live society. We underestimate the degree to which strongly felt religious belief demands a community focus, though the escalating religious fundamentalism among Christians, Muslims, and Jews may finally make the rest of us realize that our own liberal distinction between public and private departs from global norms.
Value differences may stem in part from different factual assumptions about human nature and about the consequences of particular policies, but it doesn’t seem to me intelligence is the most important factor. Both cultural conservatives and cultural liberals come in smart and stupid versions. So as I’ve noted before, those of us on the left need to take conservative perspectives seriously rather than simply shrug them off. That doesn’t mean compromising our own principles. It does mean figuring out how to subvert the dominant paradigm, as Eliot says, combining rational persuasion with militant resistance.
I don’t think the Democrats are up to that task. “
I appreciate Dennis’ thoughts, with which I largely agree (returning Dennis’ favor). I should say a little more about two things, though — what I mean by more ‘militancy’ (Dennis’ word, not mine, although it is a neat encapsulation) and what I mean in derogating the intelligence of the electorate.
In the post to which Dennis was responding, I was mostly urging transcending the narrow political aspects of the struggle. It seems a given to me that, for the forseeable future, third party movements aside, most of the elected officials in the US will be Republicans or Democrats and the battles for political power will be waged within the two-party system. While I certainly thought this campaign struggle was one worth fighting, I don’t think it is useful to continue to confine ourselves to that venue. It was clear that, even with an unprecedented populist movement in the form of grassroots funding, activist organizations emerging in parallel to the DNC, excursions to neighboring battleground states, etc. the Republican machine, which focused on getting out the vote of their core constituents, was more effective still. I would love to see an analysis telling me I am wrong and that we just didn’t try hard enough, but I don’t think the answer in 2008 or whenever is more of the same. The electorate does not strike me as like a soaked sponge from which, the harder you press, the more votes you can squeeze out. Alot of commentary will blame the lack of clearly-enough articulated alternatives to aspects of the Republican agenda we were criticizing, the lack of appealing personality to the candidate(s), etc., but they are barking up the wrong tree. The Democrats ran as good a race as they could have in the face of Republican machine politics and their lock on the media. Not only do the Republicans have a stranglehold on electoral support, now and for the forseeable future, but opportunities for fundamental change are largely filtered out by working through a political system which has evolved to constrain us in essentially conservative directions. A two-party system, especially with the current electoral college mechanism, forces a regression toward the mean (Dennnis’ characterization of the Democrats’ goals as “tepid”) and inherently disenfranchises those who lose out. A 51% majority becomes a wholesale “mandate”, and there is nothing the other 49% can do about it. It is time for the left to start reading revolutionary theory again; there is a reason that fundamental change in any society occurs outside the constraints of the political system extant in that society at that time. Here in the US, the important social advances of the twentieth century for equal rights, gay rights, women’s rights, etc. were not won by adherents trying to squeeze out enough votes in one particular election, and their proponents were not broken by single defeats at the ballot box. Rather, they were (and continue to be) essentially consciousness-raising movements and protracted struggles. The votes followed. The political process should be a tool for the popular will, not the other way around.
So I come to the basis for my belief in the importance of cultural activism as a foundation for political change. It is fundamental, especially to one accustomed to thinking psychologically, that assumptions and values shape perceptions of reality, give weight to evaluations of relative significance, and influence all decisions in the social as well as the personal spheres. All the commmentators who, identifying this election as having been won on ‘moral values’ are on the wrong track to suggest, for example, that people voted their ‘family values’ even at the expense of their pocketbooks. It’s all values! The inequities in distribution of wealth, their accentuation under the current administration; the prosecution of a war, a preemptive war, a war without national consensus or international support, a war fought on a deceptive basis, a war executed with no thought toward adequate funding and manpower, a war with no attention toward the stabilization of the war-torn aftermath, a war without sufficient command structure to prevent horrendous and illegal violations of captives, and without sufficient commitment to thee prevention of indiscriminate collateral civilian casualties; the baldfaced mendacity of administration officials; the trampling on fundamental domestic privacies and civil rights — these are all moral issues. And IMHO the most profoundly ‘family value’ I oculd ever live is to fight so that my children and their children inherit a liveable, peaceful and just world. Republicanism is anti-family and, as I quoted in another post, Republicanism isn’t morality.
As narrow and rigid as their delineation of the sphere of values, they should not be allowed to define the terms of the debate and have a lock on the moral plane. Let us not forget that the Republican agenda has essentially reactionary roots in humiliation and defeat, both on the political and personal levels. Politically, it was Johnson’s betrayal of the southern Democrats with the Civil Rights Act that drove them into the Republican fold and created the modern bloc of red states, along with voting rights, school prayer, legalized abortion and the defeat in the mistaken militarist adventurism of Vietnam. On a personal level, Bush’s rigid born-again fervor was the reaction of a cognitively limited man to a need to be ‘saved’ from a directionless, dissolute ne’er-do-well life. Now we are facing a zealous convert (with whom everyone knows, as the old saying goes, that there is no arguing). Reactionary rigidity should not be the defining source of the values of a vibrant and constructive society.
Dennis thinks my final note about the impact of media spin, ignorance and manipulation is more to the point than blaming the public’s lack of intelligence. But I think that falling mercy to manipulation, spin, allowing one’s mind to be thoroughly colonized by a destructive and dominant meme, is a lack of intelligence. In this society, one is given enough opportunities to examine one’s assumptions and values that to accept the unexamined ones with complacency is contemptible. Certainly in a democratic state, anyone is entitled to have any set of values they choose, but that does not mean all are equivalent in terms of logical consistency or moral import. Certainly, as Dennis opines, there is both intelligence and stupidity on both the right and the left, but it is far easier to be stupid, and thus it is more prevalent, in the service of the unchallenged dominant paradigm than if one has to thoughtfully construct for oneself an alternative set which bucks the cultural norms.
Bush has made a deliberate appeal to a deep-seated anti-intellectual trend in the American psyche. Quite simply, those not confident of their intellectual abilities are intimidated by those they perceive as more articulate and informed. During the 2000 campaign, I found it impossible to believe that the voters did not see how limited Bush was, until I realized that they did realize it and not only did they not care, they welcomed it. Nevertheless, my incredulity got the better of me again during the 2004 campaign and especialy during the debates. It is not that the American people are not bright enough to recognize Bush’s limitations; it is that they are not bright enough to care. The extent of most of the voters’ assessment of the relative qualifications of the candidates was how “nice” they are, how good a drinking buddy each of them would make. Let’s face it, people find Bush a nice guy. (They ought to; he has worked incredibly hard at expunging every ounce of East Coast patrician blue blood that might scare them off from his pitiful “jes’-folks” sham-Texan persona.) Badda bing.
A corollary of the deliberation and conscientiousness with which one examines and constructs one’s value system, and another touchstone of intelligence IMHO, is the ability to articulate and defend the basis for one’s values and assumptions, and not all value systems are equivalent in that regard either. The “echo chamber” concept got under my skin several years ago, readers may recall. I worried that I, and most webloggers on the left, only talk to likeminded individuals and that there is no meaningful exchange or refinement of our thinking going on. But weblogging among thoughtful people is burgeoning; among people smart enough to be daunted if it were not meaningful communication and not waste their time on it. So, recently, I am reassured of several things — that within a basic community of belief, real communication around nuanced differences and clarifications is possible; that it is useful in refining stances, tactics and strategies as a change agent; and that there is a substantial contrast between the left and the right with regard to their willingness and ability to dialogue thoughtfully about principles and assumptions. In the weblogging world, there has been no talking to the War Bloggers. In the past several years, they have come to inhabit a different universe. I am sorry, but I continue to feel that the ability and willingness to examine one’s own beliefs and enter into dialogue about them on a confident but open basis is a hallmark of intelligence. And I continue to feel that, in those terms, this election demonstrated that the cowed and manipulated, cognitively colonized electorate is, well, unintelligent and inattentive, contemptibly so, to what has been done to them. A mind is truly a terrible thing to waste.
Asked by some readers to be more specific about the militancy I propose, I have to say I am preoccupied with a comment someone made sometime earlier in Bush’s reign that this ought to be a very good time for bohemians. The models I find most useful for challenging the dominant paradigm come from countercultural precedents throughout history. As Timothy Leary put it in one of his last pieces of writing,
“Counterculture may be found in (sometimes uneasy) alliances with radical, even revolutionary political groups and insurrectionary forces, and the memberships of countercultures and such groups often overlap.
But the focus of counterculture is the power of ideas, images and artistic expression, not the acquisition of personal and poluitical power. Thus minority, alternative, and radical political parties are not themselves countercultures. While many countercultural memes have political implications, the seizure and maintenance of political power requires adherence to structures too inflexible to accommodate the innovation and exploration that are basic to the countercultural raison d’etre…”
Of course, what is most pungent for me is the countercultural movements to which I have been exposed, and to some extent lived, during my lifetime, as exemplified by the Beats, the ’60’s efflorescence, the cyberculture of the ’90’s, and the anticorporate/antiglobalization movement best exemplified by Adbusters and No Logo. Since ‘culture’ is essentially used in two senses — to refer to both a society’s collective beliefs, customs, values and their idiomatic expressions; and to refer to those groups and societies themselves which live those values and beliefs — ‘counterculture’ is in opposition to both of those. It challenges people’s sensibilities and it often offends people. I haven’t felt that the in-your-face confrontational aspects of counterculture have been very evident since the ’60’s. We have to be brazen about our challenges to the moré’s and conventions, to the limited and limiting conceptions, to the mandate to do business as usual, to the intolerance and injustice. We have to revel in provoking xenophobia. I can’t get this out of my head:
“We are all outlaws in the eyes of Amerika.
In order to survive we steal,
Cheat, lie, forge, fuck, hide and deal.
We are obscene, lawless, hideous,
Dangerous, dirty, violent…and young…”
as Jefferson Airplane sang. And,
“We are forces of chaos and anarchy
Everything they say we are we are
And we are very
Proud of ourselves…”
I know the ’60’s counterculture is often tried and convicted on its excesses and its naiveté, but a little more of that would not be harmful in the ’00’s IMHO. And I have to say a word about that word “young.” In many ways, the gains of the ’60’s counterculture have been, partly correctly, framed as struggles for the trappings of youth, and it has been dismissed and diminished as being merely an expression of perennial and perhaps superficial youthful rebellion — music, dress, hair, sexual experimentation, etc. This discounts several important forces shaping the ’60’s counterculture, into a more profound world-changing model. Certainly, opposition to war has a long and venerable social history, but, shaped perhaps by the threat of being drafted, antiwar sentiment during the Vietnam era suffused a more substantial segment of a population than perhaps ever before in any society; and played a substantial part in ending the war. The appeal of nonviolent civil disobedience as a mode of political action was vastly magnified. Sigificant challenges to limited conceptions of family and social structure and indeed to our relationships to our own bodies have had such a profound impact that they now seem mundane. A central role for esoteric xenospirituality did more to loosen the reign of established religion on the hearts and minds of America. The new paradigms for the exploration of consciousness in both meditative and devotional practices on the one hand and, on the other, mind-altering drugs were crucial to the creation of a profound skepticism about received wisdom and conventional truths about the nature of reality and of personhood. Among other things, they arguably form the philosophical underpinnings of the profound relativism of deconstructionism and the post-modernist artistic ethic. I am also convinced that the ’60’s counterculture instigated an ethic of interdependence, honest communication, empathy, and compassionate dedication to helping those in need that it perhaps its most enduring legacy. (I certainly think that my career choice of a helping profession with little regard for earning poitential was an expression of a commitment to countercultural values which have suffused me and which I hope to convey to my children, with no illusions about how much more difficult it will be for them to make the same choices…)
People who are interested in exploring one aspect of the ’60’s counterculture should run out and rent the eye-opening 2002 Siegel and Green documentary on the Weather Underground. As much as it is a portrait of the ultimate extremists of the era, it is a social history of the context of massive upheaval — which you are either too young to recall or no longer appreciate to its full extent — to which an entire generation of passionate and committed people were driven by an American government and society in many ways the precursor to that which we face now, during a similar illegal and immoral war.
Perhaps I say it now because I am older (at least in chronological terms), but: let us get beyond youthful rebellion, at a time when it is clear the struggle is for the survival and flourishing of people of all ages, but build on the venerable countercultural traditions. I argue for the preservation of rage as well as the ethic of mutual aid and compassion. Of course, some reading this post and that below about ‘depression’ will say that my anger is my blindspot, a part of my character pathology; or that it is merely a time-limited reaction to Tuesday’s setback. It is often said that the artist’s creativity comes in two flavors — a youthful, exuberant, energetic version and a more sober, reflective, ‘mature’ form. I know this will be a controversial statement but, while subtle expression can be mind-changing and transformative as well, I fear that when the passion and anger are extracted, while art may be luminal, ‘mature creativity’ is too often in the service of the reaffirmation of traditional values and the maintenance of the status quo, usually performed by those who no longer have the energy or the will to struggle.
So, to transform our society and awaken those in the cultural trance, reasoned sober left-brain argument should be counterbalanced by right-brain exuberant crazy wisdom, irreverence, and both subtle subversion and outrageous provocation.The movement is inclusive, and spread by unprecedented modes of instantaneous communication, with the benefit of unprecedented historical and crosscultural memory and appreciation. If we transform consciousness, the reactionary movement cannot succeed.
We can afford nothing less.
Lotta Blue People in the Blue States
![[Image '2004electionchart.jpg' cannot be displayed]](2004electionchart.jpg "Sequence of Emotions")
A number of my friends have written to me, as a psychiatrist, to ask for four-year prescriptions for antidepressants. And, with a little less levity, several people have asked me to write from my perspective as a mental health practitioner on coping with post-election emotional difficulties. I have been reluctant to do so for several reasons. First, it has been difficult to rouse myself from my own torpor. Second, should post-election stress be treated as a mental health problem and pathologized? Certainly, somewhere around 50% of the voting public are grieving at the present moment. One of the characteristics of most psychopathology is that it is suffered in loneliness and isolation from those around you, who have a hard time understanding the distress. But once a condition crosses a certain prevalence threshold, considering something pathological yields to treating it as a feature of the population . Most of us who are in distress about the results of what many of us called the most important election struggle of our lifetimes at least have others around us who share our sentiments and support our suffering.
It is true that we often turn to mental health professionals after a traumatic event which affects an entire population; this is highlighted after plane crashes or, most recently, as psychological practitioners poured into New York City after 9-11. But I have long considered it a dubious proposition that the training and experience of psychotherapists and psychiatrists in ministering to individuals are necessarily pertinent to the demands of ministering to traumatized populations. Certainly, it is good preventive medicine that people whose degree of distress is beyond the range of ‘expectable’ reactions to a trauma be identified and followed, but not the traumatized population as a whole, even if we could. After 9-11 a closer look suggested that crisis intervention with the population based on trauma-treatment principles turns out not to have a measurable preventive effect. Not only that, it can apparently impair people’s native abilities to cope and further traumatize them.
Finally, even if we were experts on coping with mass trauma, we cannot ignore the fact that there is not just one single prescription for dealing with distress at a time like this. People’s ways of experiencing the trauma, and the coping strategies and resources they have on hand to bring to bear, vary tremendously. In what turned out to be a rather surreal experience, I listened to one of NPR’s call-in talk shows yesterday afternoon which had a psychiatrist on talking about dealing with post-election stress. Listeners would call telling him how they had been getting by, or asking whether he would recommend certain things they had thought of doing — getting more politically involved, taking a break from political involvement, getting out of the country for awhile, putting their head under the covers. His answer to each and every suggestion was little more than a variant on, “Yes, that would be a good idea. Yes, that would be a good idea too…” Yes, everything is acceptable (nothing is forbidden).
(By the way, one of the most constructive suggestions I have heard is that progressives should have much more sex, not only to lighten up and start enjoying things more but to procreate more. Liberals seem to be having fewer children than those in the religious right, the argument goes, and more and more decisively losing the demographic race for a voting edge. So if we want to take back the White House and Congress in our children’s generation, start now…)
But, more seriously, I find that most helpful framework for understanding what we are going through is what has been popularly called the “five stages of grief.” Popularized by the late psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in the ’60’s to help people dealing with terminal diagnoses, this paradigm had actually been a way of understanding how we cope with receiving any catastrophic news; only more recently was it hijacked as a way of understanding grief. The five stages, probably familiar to many of you, are denial(“Bush didn’t really win”), anger (“Why the f**k did this happen to me?”), bargaining (“If I’m only energetic enough as a political activist, it’ll nullify the impact of Bush’s victory, I promise”), depression (in which one is paralyzed by the outcome) and acceptance.
A couple of things to notice. First, tuning in to the progressive media like Air America in the first couple of days after the election, many of their personalities seem still to be stuck in the denial stage, with elaborate arguments on how the votes just needed to be retallied and we would find that Bush hadn’t really won. Get real; if anyone can give me a convincing reason to see this as a realistic concern and not just a stage in attempting to cope with the devastating reality, I would be impressed. (Of course, I still believe Bush never won in 2000, so in another sense this ‘reelection’ is not legitimate. But that’s water under the bridge.)
Second, while the bargaining phase in which many of us find ourselves (how many times have you heard people saying since the election that the answer to how they are feeling is to get more involved?) sounds like it promises a fresh and overwhelming influx of activists for the next time around, if it precedes a thorough-going acceptance of the proportions of the problem, it is unrealistic and will be unsustainable. Bargaining is based on deluding yourself that the uncontrollable is really controllable, promising that bad outcomes will never occur if one’s efforts are just perfect enough. It is essentially a grandiose way to try to comfort oneself. In this light, all the analyses you are hearing, or will hear, about why the Democrats’ ran an imperfect race, and we will win next time if we only clean up our act, are flawed. Organizing has to start from the realization that we are not destined, or even likely, to win any particular campaign. (That is certainly what led to an effective Republican machine, as everyone’s comparisons to the Goldwater defeat of 1964 indicate.) To be effective , the devotion of energy has to be based on disabusing ourselves of the notion that we would inevitably win if only…
So, although there is no absolute timeline for passing through the stages, I would be more impressed with someone who resolves a week or a month from now to step up their political activity, once they are past their depressive lassitude and pessimism, and past the omnipotent bargaining. Some say that “grief work’ — in which one, accepting the reality, can truly and genuinely experience the pain, adjust, and reinvest energy in productive activity — can only begin after negotiating all five stages of the grief reaction.
Curmudgeon that I am, I am tempted to suggest that one should not fully abandon phase II, the angry phase. But unconstructive anger that it happened has to be supplanted, again after acceptance, by constructive anger at the perpetrators. Although in many ways we live in a pathologically anger-averse society, it can be a tremendous source of productive energy. You know I am a great fan of rage, properly directed. Some have said that I am at my best when I am finding fault with others. Well, there is something to be said for that! There’s a bumper sticker I like that says something like, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not really paying attention.” (IMHO, it ought to say “…enraged…”.) Even classical psychoanalytic theory speaks of the reciprocal relationship of anger and depression; that the latter is the former turned inward. Certainly, militant acting up is a better solution than remaining a suffering victim self-perpetuating the violence that Bush’s reelection has done to us all by taking it out on ourselves.
It’s not the naive anger of “I’ll be damned if I am going to let myself suffer while living the next four years in Bush’s America”. Get real, Eliot, you are going to suffer. But I’ll be damned if I am going to suffer in silence, and if there isn’t going to be hell to pay for the Republican assault on our freedoms, our security, our peace of mind, our environment, and the world my children and grandchildren will inherit.
‘Our Traditional Non-Traditional Wedding’
With all the talk about how the fear of gay marriage won Bush the election, I think this straightforward paean by my friend, writer Steve Silberman deserves to be read.
Deceptive use of maps overstates Bush victory
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“The overwhelming majority of U.S. counties are Republican; however, counties carried by Democrats are generally more densely populated. The county-by-county map, therefore, visually overstates the Republican share of the vote, because the Democratic votes are concentrated in fewer counties that cover a smaller land mass.” (Media Matters) I would add the obvious fact that a region will show red whether the vote in favor of Bush was 70-30% or 51-49%. The ‘sea of red’ out there in the heartland is really a sea of purple, as boing boing pointed out. [Oh, how I wish I lived in a land of multiple political parties, coalition government, proportional representation and instant runoff voting…]
Media echoed conservative claim on Bush "mandate
“Following President George W. Bush’s victory over Senator John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election, conservative media rushed to declare that the election was a decisive mandate for Bush’s agenda, and mainstream media outlets have followed their lead….But such pronouncements neglect important facts that suggest Bush’s narrow victory is far from a decisive endorsement of his agenda:
• With the exception of the 2000 election, Bush’s popular vote margin of about 3.6 million votes (out of approximately 115 million total votes cast) was the smallest since 1976, when then-Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter (D) defeated President Gerald R. Ford (R) by about 1.7 million votes.
• Though Bush won more votes — 59.2 million — than any presidential candidate in U.S. history, Kerry’s vote total — 55.7 million — was still greater than any U.S. presidential candidate in history prior to 2004. That means more Americans cast their vote against Bush than against any other presidential candidate in U.S. history.
• As Wall Street Journal Washington editor Albert R. Hunt pointed out (WSJ.com subscription required) on November 4, “It was a GOP sweep, but it also was the narrowest win for a sitting president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916.”
• Percentage-wise, Bush’s victory was the narrowest for any wartime incumbent president in U.S. history. (For the purpose of this calculation, Media Matters for America counted the following presidential elections as wartime incumbent elections: 1848, 1864, 1900, 1944, and 1972. Popular vote data for 1812 is unavailable.)
• A Gallup poll conducted just after the election found that 63 percent of voters would prefer to see Bush pursue policies that “both parties support” compared to only 30 percent who want Bush to “advance the Republican Party’s agenda.”” (Media Matters )
‘My President Bush Dream’
I want President Bush to have a dream
like the one that Ebenezer Scrooge had
I want him to be visited by the ghosts of Iraqi children
who cry out, “But mankind was your business”I want all the Tiny Tims of the world
to get their 401k money back
from the white collar criminals who stole itI want them to not go to war
for oil, good ratings, or weapon sale quotas
because this white collar mafia is in powerI wish President Bush would have an affair
I wish he’d take off his black pointed cowboy boots
and took at the moon more oftenAnd then I wish he’d wake up
and be inflicted with what Jim Carey had
in the movie “Liar Liar”I wish all the billboards across the country read:
“Give back the votes your brother stole”
and the poets would shout from every street corner,
“The emperor wears no clothes”I want his mouth washed out with soap
every time he says “weapons of mass destruction”
and for him to wear a Darth Vadar helmet
if he ever says “the axis of evil” againI hope President Bush looks out his White House window
when we descend on Washington marching for peace
like hordes of starlings who know their way home
because it is in their natureI want President Bush to have a dream
like the one that Martin Luther King had
I want him to be visited by the ghosts of King,
John Lennon, Paul Wellstone, and the KennedysI want the New York Times to cover the story
when his father scolds him for being a bully
I hope he gets some Gi Joes for Christmas
and starts to play with real toys and not with real peopleI think President Bush should go back to school
and look up some words in the dictionary
or study history – like the Roman EmpireI’d like him to write on the blackboard 100 times,
“I will not promote propaganda – or the far right agenda”‘
“I will not join gangs”I want President Bush to be haunted
by the ghosts of our Founding Fathers
until he learns this lesson:
that killing civilians is a terrorist act
and pre-emptive strike is invasionI want him to break out in song
at his next Address to the Nation
singing “Give Peace a Chance” is all we are saying
and “We Shall Overcome”I want President Bush to have an epiphany
or else I want him gone
I want Americans to say “yes” when the polls ask,
“Should regime change begin at home?”And I want him to stop shouting “Fire!” in the theatre
when he is the one with the matches
I want him to care about children
more than slogans and re-electionsIf President Bush doesn’t have a real dream soon
he should step aside for those who do
He should impeach himself
and ask for forgiveness
For imposing his nightmare on the world
Specter warns Bush on high court nominations
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“The Republican expected to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee next year bluntly warned newly re-elected President Bush today against putting forth Supreme Court nominees who would seek to overturn abortion rights or are otherwise too conservative to win confirmation.
Sen. Arlen Specter, fresh from winning a fifth term in Pennsylvania, also said the current Supreme Court now lacks legal ‘giants’ on the bench.
‘When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, overturn Roe v. Wade, I think that is unlikely,’ Specter said, referring to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.
‘The president is well aware of what happened, when a bunch of his nominees were sent up, with the filibuster,’ Specter added, referring to Senate Democrats’ success over the past four years in blocking the confirmation of many of Bush’s conservative judicial picks. ‘… And I would expect the president to be mindful of the considerations which I am mentioning.'” (Houston Chronicle)
From the Cruel to the Unusual
“Okay, turning to the Senate, we now have a whole crop of Republicans who are either certifiably crazy — or who hold such hateful or prejudiced views that they might as well be.
In Kentucky, we have Jim Bunning, who has been experiencing paranoid delusions. Mr. Bunning recently mistook his opponent, Daniel Mongiardo, for one of Saddam Hussein’s sons, and also accused Mongiardo of beating up his wife. (Even nuttier, though, is the fact he doesn’t read the papers and stays informed exclusively through Fox News.)
Then, there is Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who assumes that being the daughter of the previous senator makes her qualified to succeed him.
In Florida, Mel Martinez –who opposes abortion rights and minimum wage increases–accused one of his primary opponents of siding with ‘the radical homosexual lobby.’
Jim DeMint, in South Carolina, feels that gays and unmarried pregnant women shouldn’t be allowed to teach in a classroom. DeMint, by the way, is in favor of outlawing abortion even in cases of rape or incest.
Finally, new Oklahoma Senator Brad Carson performed sterilizations on women without their consent, and thinks blacks are genetically inferior. He calls treaties between the U.S. and Indian nations ‘a joke’, complains about ‘rampant’ lesbianism in Oklahoma public schools, and advocates the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions.
Welcome to Bush World!” (BAGnewsNotes)
Too Little, Too Late
Will the left finally look itself in the mirror? “Much has been made of the neo-conservative influence on the Bush administration. And the legacy of the Project for the New American Century has been a subject often discussed on GNN. But what about the Progressive Policy Institute, PNAC’s alter-ego on the Democratic side of the aisle? How many of us have spent any time reading their own manifesto, which calls for “the bold exercise of American power” at the heart of “a new Democratic strategy, grounded in the party’s tradition of muscular internationalism.” Championed by the new tier of leaders now taking power in the party, John Kerry included, this strategy would “keep Americans safer than the Republicans’ go-it-alone policy, which has alienated our natural allies and overstretched our resources. We aim to rebuild the moral foundation of U.S. global leadership …”
Feels like neo-con lite to me.” — Stephen Marshall (Guerrilla News Network)
Editor’s Cut
“‘America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have turned our language inside out who have taken the clean words our fathers spoke and made them slimy and foul
their hired men sit on the judge’s bench they sit back with their feet on the tables under the dome of the State House they are ignorant of our beliefs they have the dollars the guns the armed forces the power plants
they have built the electric chair and hired the executioner to throw the switchall right we are two nations.'” — John dos Passos (1938), USA (via Editor’s Cut)
National Museum Of The Middle Class Opens In Schaumburg, IL
“The Museum of the Middle Class, featuring historical and anthropological exhibits addressing the socioeconomic category that once existed between the upper and lower classes, opened to the public Monday.
A waitress from Chicago learns what the middle class was.
A waitress from Chicago learns what the middle class was.
‘The splendid and intriguing middle class may be gone, but it will never be forgotten,’ said Harold Greeley, curator of the exhibit titled ‘Where The Streets Had Trees’ Names.’ ‘From their weekend barbecues at homes with backyards to their outdated belief in social mobility, the middle class will forever be remembered as an important part of American history.'” (The Onion [thanks, walker])
The Broad Mandate to Divide and Rule
Joshua Micah Marshall writes: “Yesterday, in an overnight post, Andrew Sullivan wrote, President Bush ‘deserves a fresh start, a chance to prove himself again, and the constructive criticism of those of us who decided to back his opponent. He needs our prayers and our support for the enormous tasks still ahead of him.’
I thought about this when I read it. And, to put it simply, I didn’t agree. What I considered writing was that given the track record he’s compiled and the way he ran this campaign, he’s really owed no fresh start. That would be graciousness at war with reality.
It would be up to the president, I thought of writing, to show concrete signs of a willingness not to govern in the divisive and factional spirit from which he’s governed in the last four years.” (Talking Points Memo)
Divide and rule … for now
“…It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but one that should hopefully lead to a brighter future. Bush owns his messes, and now he’ll be forced to clean them up. He won’t be able to hide behind 9/11 seven years into his term. Unless the Republicans can engineer a recovery of epic proportions, they will have a great deal to answer to in the 2006 midterms and 2008. And God help Bush if this nation suffers another terrorist attack.
But best of all, we’ll continue to see this great resurgence in progressive activism – the kind not seen in American politics in over a generation. None of these new activists heeded the call to arms only to abandon the fight today. We are energised, and will continue to fight for a better future for our country…” — Markos Moulitsas of daily kos, writing in (Guardian.UK)
Wallow In Chaos, And Laugh
One enormous bitter pill and you without your vodka: “So then, to much of Europe, Russia, Asia, Canada, Mexico, the Middle East — to all those dozens of major world nations who want Bush out almost as much as the educated people of America, to you we can only say: We are so very, very sorry. We don’t know how it happened, either. For tens of millions of us, Bush is not our president and never will be. That’s how divisive. That’s how dangerous. That’s how very sad it has become.
The GOP steamroller appears to be just too powerful, just too well oiled and blood soaked and fear inducing to be stopped just yet. After all, the Right has been working on this master plan and building their takeover strategy for about forty years. It’s gonna take those of us working for change and progress and raw spiritual juice a little more than one or two years to dissolve it away like the cancer it so obviously is.
Apparently, there are lessons yet to be learned. Apparently, we must hit some sort of new low between now and 2008, attain some sort of seriously vicious status in the world before we will snap out of it.” — Moark Morford (SF Chronicle)
Electing to Leave
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(image via boing boing)
Electing to Leave: “So the wrong candidate has won, and you want to leave the country. Let us consider your options.” (Harper’s) Don’t worry, FmH could still be written and published from Europe…
‘Moral’ does not mean ‘Republican’
Religious Revival?: “I gotta say, it doesn’t help much when exit polls and sloppy reporting use terms like ‘moral values’ and ‘moral issues’ as shorthand for very narrow, divisive issues like abortion and gay marriage, feeding into twenty years of Republican rhetoric. Opposition to the war in Iraq is a moral issue. The alleviation of poverty is a moral issue. Concern about abortion is a moral value, yes, but you can stay at the level of empty rhetoric about a ‘culture of life’ or you can talk about how to actually reduce abortion rates, which is what most people care about more. (Did you hear once during this election season that abortion rates have risen under W. after they fell dramatically during Clinton’s eight years in office?)” — Amy Sullivan (The Washington Monthly)
Dismal Day
Of course we all understood how close it would be, and of course Ohio is technically still in play, but it appears to be all over but the shouting. Hard to imagine the provisional ballots, and drawing this out almost another two weeks, can make a difference. There will be endless analysis of how this happened but faced with the prospect of four more years of the most destructive and inept president of my lifetime I have two things to say. First, this was a referendum mostly on the intelligence of the American people and the bankruptcy of the political process; people get the leadership they deserve. And, secondly, he is not my president.
Almost as discouraging as Bush’s win would be if the chastened Democrats conclude from Tom Daschle’s defeat in South Dakota that they should be less obstructionist. Quite the contrary; the only chance for American politics is if there is a genuine principled, nonopportunist opposition. Let us hope the Democrats on Capitol Hill do not roll over with the outrages we can expect the Bush Cabal to commit with a claim of popular mandate. And let us hope for the growth of a new and truly effective movement of popular resistance and ongoing civil disobedience as well. Let me make it clear — I don’t think we are just talking about another four years of a terrible president. Bush and his madmen are already well on their way down the path of irreversible and catastrophic damage to the economic stability, peace and freedom, and environmental liveability of the US and the world, as well as everything I hold dear in social values. Their agenda is to dismantle most of the social progress of the second half of the twentieth century, and they are well on their way, and I will be damned if I will passively accede to living in a crypto-fascist theocracy.
I am not at all sure how effective a role FmH, and weblogging in general, can play in what must be done; I have to reassess how best to devote my energies. Although it was not clear when I started this weblog, it has been increasingly clear to me that its value is as a change agent. Indications are that the fundamental divide in US society is not around specific political issues like the war or the economy as much as around social and cultural values. I know I have said this before and, with the compelling nature of the electoral struggle, I have gotten diverted, but I think that my narrow-minded obsessive focus on political issues, and certainly the short-term ones of any particular campaign season, is a waste. FmH and other progressive weblogs have to be tools for a broader culture jamming and subversion of the dominant paradigm.
A word about the electoral college. My first reaction was that it is disingenuous of progressives to have made so much of Gore’s winning the popular vote in 2000 and now to deemphasize the fact that Bush has polled three million more votes overall than Kerry and focus on hopes for an electoral college win. It is clear that the really insidious effect of the electoral college system lies in the disempowerment of those not in “battleground” states. The candidates do not have to be accountable to voters elsewhere, who thus have no impetus to consider their merits in any depth. In that sense, it is a sham to say that even a majority vote is a reflection of the popular will. It is a reflection of media spin, ignorance and manipulation.
Bin Laden’s Deadly Warning to ‘Red’ States
“Osama bin Laden warned in his October Surprise video that he will be closely monitoring the state-by-state election returns in tomorrow’s presidential race — and will spare any state that votes against President Bush from being attacked, according to a new analysis of his statement.
The respected Middle East Media Research Institute
, which monitors and translates Arabic media and Internet sites, said initial translations of a key portion of bin Laden’s video rant to the American people Friday night missed an ostentatious bid by the Saudi-born terror master to divide American voters and tilt the election towards Democratic challenger John Kerry.” (NY Post)A Quick Guide to Problems at the Poll
I am posting in full an email I received today from TrueMajority.org:
“Don’t Let Problems at the Polls Take Away Your Right to Vote
We’ve read news reports about plans to challenge voters at polling places around the country. Don’t let some political hack deny you your most fundamental right as an American citizen — your right to vote. Below, we’ve created a short guide to protect your rights and advise what to do if someone tries to take them away from you. I encourage you to do two things:
1) Print out this email and take it with you when you go to vote. That way, if you have any trouble, you’ll know what to do — on the spot.
2) Forward this email to everyone you know who might be voting tomorrow. It may make the difference between their voting and not voting.
Hoping you won’t need this,
Andrew Greenblatt
Online Organizer
A QUICK GUIDE TO AVOIDING PROBLEMS AT THE POLLS
Before you go to the polls:
- Find your correct polling place. Click here: http://www.mypollingplace.com. They are getting crushed with requests, so if you don’t get through right away, try again later or just call your local Board of Elections.
- To avoid confusion and save time, study the ballot. Check your local newspaper for a copy.
- Find a form of identification to bring to the polls. Unless you are a first-time voter who registered by mail without sending identification, you have the right to vote without providing ID. However, to avoid hassles just bring ID anyway. A government-issued ID is best (such as a driver’s license), but you can also bring a utility bill, paycheck stub, phone bill, or similar papers with your name on them. If your ID does not have a signature, bring two forms of identification.
- Allow plenty of time to vote, preferably in the morning. There may be lines. Bring something to read. If the line is really long, consider getting a box of donuts or cookies to share to lighten the mood. Someone might be challenging voters just to slow things up in the hope that long lines will scare away voters. If this is happening, let folks in line know so it stiffens their resolve to stay and cast vote.
Learn your voting rights:
- Even if you are not on the voter list, federal law gives you the right to a “provisional ballot.” Insist on one and vote. A regular ballot is preferable, so you should do whatever you can to get a regular ballot first, like going home and getting a second form of identification or going to the polling place where you are definitely on the voter list. But rather than be turned away, demand a provisional ballot.
- You have the right to vote if you are in line when the polls close. Stay in line until you vote.
- Find out if your employer will give you time off to vote, if necessary.
At the polls:
- If you are confused about ANYTHING or feel you are being harassed, ask the official poll workers to help. Do not rely on fellow citizens for advice about the ballot, how the voting machines work, or why you are not on the rolls. If someone is challenging your right to vote, ask the poll workers to intervene.
- If someone harasses you, don’t cause a ruckus. Just ignore the harasser, report it to a poll worker, and let the voting process continue. What kinds of things might somebody try? Well, in the past people have insisted on more ID than is required or argued that someone is at the wrong polling place.
- If something goes wrong, document it. Write down what happened, when, and descriptions of the people involved, including their names, if you can get them. If you have a camera or camera-phone, take pictures.
- Report voting problems to an organization ready to respond to problems at the polls:
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- Common Cause: Call 1-866-MYVOTE1. This is a hotline you can call to report any voting problems.
- 1-866-OUR-VOTE. This hotline has been set up by a coalition of nonpartisan groups to deal with the most serious problems on Election Day. They have hundreds of lawyers standing by to immediately respond to the most egregious problems. 1-866-OUR-VOTE is the “911” of voter suppression hotlines. Please don’t call unless your problem is serious enough that you have to talk to a lawyer immediately.
- Contact the media. If something is going terribly wrong at a polling site and you have reported it to the folks above, you might want to then call local radio, television, and newspaper reporters. Often problems clear up quickly after a reporter arrives.
It’s odd that it’s come to this. But given how hard Americans have fought for the freedom to pick our government, it ought to take a lot more than these inconveniences and ham-handed attempts by desperate political operatives to dissuade us from casting a ballot. See you at the polls.”
Burn in hell, Illinois Democrats
“Alan Keyes compared voting for Barack Obama to committing a mortal sin. The Republican Keyes says Obama stands for the destruction of innocent life and against the male-female family. He also said Catholics who vote for the Democratic Obama make themselves part of that evil, just like people in Germany who supported the Nazi Party did.” (KQWC News)
Playing the Nazi card and manipulating credulous Catholics in one fell swoop! It takes the breath away. Sputter on, Keyes, into the obscurity you deserve after your humiliating defeat tomorrow, which will satisfy me perhaps more than any other result tomorrow night save Bush’s defeat.
Open thread: Who else would you single out as someone you are desperately yearning to see go down to defeat at the polls tomorrow?
Redskins’ loss augurs Kerry win
“John Kerry supporters have a welcome omen for their candidate: The Green Bay Packers defeated the Washington Redskins on Sunday.
If history holds, the 28-14 result portends a victory for Kerry on Tuesday because the result of the Redskins’ final home game before the presidential election has always accurately predicted the White House winner. If the Redskins win, the incumbent party wins. If they lose, the incumbent party is ousted.” (ESPN)
Karl Rove in a Corner
“This summer, with the presidential race looking as if it would be every bit as close as the one in 2000, I spent several months examining the narrowest races in Karl Rove’s career to better understand the tendencies and tactics of the man who will arguably have more influence than anyone else over how this election unfolds. Rove has already generated a remarkable body of literature, including several notable books and numerous magazine and newspaper articles. I spoke to many of Rove’s former candidates and their opponents; to his past and present colleagues and the people who faced off against them; and to political insiders and journalists—primarily in Texas and Alabama, where Rove has done the majority of his campaign work. I learned much about Rove that hasn’t made it into the public sphere.
…Clearly, there are many differences between the circumstances in which Rove has been victorious in the past and those he faces now. But that is no reason to discount his record. By any standard he is an extremely talented political strategist whose skill at understanding how to run campaigns and motivate voters would be impressive even if he used no extreme tactics. But he does use them. Anyone who takes an honest look at his history will come away awed by Rove’s power, when challenged, to draw on an animal ferocity that far exceeds the chest-thumping bravado common to professional political operatives. Having studied what happens when Karl Rove is cornered, I came away with two overriding impressions. One was a new appreciation for his mastery of campaigning. The other was astonishment at the degree to which, despite all that’s been written about him, Rove’s fiercest tendencies have been elided in national media coverage.
…He seems to understand—indeed, to count on—the media’s unwillingness or inability, whether from squeamishness, laziness, or professional caution, ever to give a full estimate of him or his work. It is ultimately not just Rove’s skill but his character that allows him to perform on an entirely different plane. Along with remarkable strategic skills, he has both an understanding of the media’s unstated self-limitations and a willingness to fight in territory where conscience forbids most others.
Rove isn’t bracing for a close race. He’s depending on it. ” — Joshua Green (The Atlantic)
The Great Old Pumpkin, by John Aegard
HP Lovecraft meets Charles Schultz [via the null device]
What is Art? (And what is bioterror?)
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Logoizing Abu Ghraib: ‘When I first saw that photo of a hooded man in Abu Ghraib’s sickly light, arms outstretched and fingertips wired, I wondered if I was seeing art – Goya meets Matthew Barney, Hannibal Lecter meets Christ on a crate. But the fact that it was orchestrated by American military men for maximum humiliation, rather than aesthetic effect, intensified its macabre allure. Could they have known that their prankish snapshot would fascinate us so, ending up on front pages worldwide, on folk-art murals in Iraq, on a Los Angeles highway overpass accompanied by the words “The War is Over,” a suggestion of its inherent rhetorical force? Advertising’s supercharged images had nothing on this.’ (Adbusters)
Happy Samhain
A reprise of my Halloween post of last year:
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It is that time of year again. What has become a time of disinhibited hijinx and mayhem, and a growing marketing bonanza for the kitsch-manufacturers and -importers, has primeval origins as the Celtic New Year’s Eve, Samhain (pronounced “sow-en”). The harvest is over, summer ends and winter begins, the Old God dies and returns to the Land of the Dead to await his rebirth at Yule, and the land is cast into darkness. The veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead becomes frayed and thin, and dispossessed dead mingle with the living, perhaps seeking a body to possess for the next year as their only chance to remain connected with the living, who hope to scare them away with ghoulish costumes and behavior, escape their menace by masquerading as one of them, or placate them with offerings of food, in hopes that they will go away before the new year comes. For those prepared, a journey to the other side could be made at this time. It is fortunate that Hallowe’en falls on a Friday Sunday this year, as there is evidence that the pagan festival was celebrated for three days.
With Christianity, perhaps because with calendar reform it was no longer the last day of the year, All Hallows’ Eve became decathected, a day for innocent masquerading and fun, taking its name Hallowe’en as a contraction and corruption of All Hallows’ Eve. All Saints’ Day may have originated in its modern form with the 8th century Pope Gregory III. Hallowe’en customs reputedly came to the New World with the Irish immigrants of the 1840’s. The prominence of trick-or-treating has a slightly different origin, however.
The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for “soul cakes,” made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul’s passage to heaven.
Jack-o’-lanterns were reportedly originally turnips; the Irish began using pumpkins after they immigrated to North AMerica, given how plentiful they were here.
The Jack-o-lantern custom probably comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree’s trunk, trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree.
According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.
Folk traditions that were in the past associated wtih All Hallows’ Eve took much of their power, as with the New Year’s customs about which I write here every Dec. 31st, from the magic of boundary states, transition and liminality.
The idea behind ducking, dooking or bobbing for apples seems to have been that snatching a bite from the apple enables the person to grasp good fortune. Samhain is a time for getting rid of weakness, as pagans once slaughtered weak animals which were unlikely to survive the winter. A common ritual calls for writing down weaknesses on a piece of paper or parchment, and tossing it into the fire. There used to be a custom of placing a stone in the hot ashes of the bonfire. If in the morning a person found that the stone had been removed or had cracked, it was a sign of bad fortune. Nuts have been used for divination: whether they burned quietly or exploded indicated good or bad luck. Peeling an apple and throwing the peel over one’s shoulder was supposed to reveal the initial of one’s future spouse. One way of looking for omens of death was for peope to visit churchyards
The Witches’ Sabbath aspect of Hallowe’en seems to result from Germanic influence, and fusion with the notion of Walpurgisnacht. (Who knows the magnificent musical evocation of this, Mussorgsky’s Night on Bare Mountain?) Although probably not yet in a position to shape mainstream American Hallowe’en traditions, Mexican Dia de los Muertos observances have started to contribute some delightful and whimsical iconography to our encounter with the eerie and unearthly as well.
What was Hallowe’en like forty or fifty years ago in the U.S. when, bastardized as it has become with respect to its pagan origins, it retained a much more traditional flair? For my purposes, suffice it to say that it was before the era of the pay-per-view ‘spooky-world’ type haunted attractions and its Martha Stewart yuppification with, as this irreverent Salon article from last year [via walker] puts it, monogrammed jack-o’-lanterns and the like. Related, a 1984 essay by Richard Seltzer, frequently referenced in other sources, entitled “Why Bother to Save Halloween?”, argues as I do that reverence for Halowe’en is good for the soul.
“Maybe at one time Halloween helped exorcise fears of death and ghosts and goblins by making fun of them. Maybe, too, in a time of rigidly prescribed social behavior, Halloween was the occasion for socially condoned mischief — a time for misrule and letting loose. Although such elements still remain, the emphasis has shifted and the importance of the day and its rituals has actually grown.
…(D)on’t just abandon a tradition that you yourself loved as a child, that your own children look forward to months in advance, and that helps preserve our sense of fellowship and community with our neighbors in the midst of all this madness.”
That would be anathema to certain segments of society, however. Halloween certainly inspires a backlash by fundamentalists who consider it a blasphemous abomination. ‘Amateur scholar’ Isaac Bonewits details academically the Halloween errors and lies he feels contribute to its being reviled. Some of the panic over Hallowe’en is akin to the hysteria, fortunately now debunked, over the supposed epidemic of ‘ritual Satanic abuse’ that swept the Western world in the ’90’s.
The horror film has become inextricably linked to Hallowe’en tradition, although the holiday itself did not figure in the movies until John Carpenter took the slasher genre singlehandedly by storm. Googling “scariest films”, you will, grimly, reap a mother lode of opinions about how to pierce the veil to journey to the netherworld and reconnect with that magical, eerie creepiness in the dark (if not the over-the-top blood and gore that has largely replaced the subtlety of earlier horror films).
In any case: trick or treat!
Vote For A Man, Not A Puppet
This is doing the rounds as an email chain letter and is being posted to many places on the web. It is supposedly a plea to vote for Kerry from a “very conservative” Orlando Sentinel columnist. The email I got says,
“He’s a Conservative Republican who is anti-abortion, anti-tax-and-spend, loudly critical of legislation by the judiciary, doesn’t think much of ulticulturalism or secularism, has suggested Clinton “turned the Oval Office into a whorehouse,” thinks Ronald Reagan is the greatest thing to come down the pike since canned beer, and voted for Bush in the last election.”
Reese’s ‘column’ begins,
“Americans should realize that if they vote for President Bush’s re-election, they are really voting for the architects of war – Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of that cabal of neoconservative ideologues and their corporate backers. I have sadly come to the conclusion that President Bush is merely a front man, an empty suit, who is manipulated by the people in his administration. Bush has the most dangerously simplistic view of the world of any president in my memory.”
The only problem is I cannot find anything like this piece, or anything by or about Charlie Reese, by searching the Orlando Sentinel site. Much as I would love to believe in this religious conversion from the dark side, it sounds to me like a spam troll by an anonymous Kerry supporter to get conservatives to give the Democratic candidate another look. Snopes, my favorite debunking site for the abuse of the credulous (like myself!), has nothing about “Charlie Reese.” Does anybody know any more?
Addendum: It turns out I couldn’t find anything because it is “Charley Reese”, not “Charlie…” (Thanks to the comment from reader NWD). Reese was with the Sentinel until 2001 but has posted his columns on lewrockwell.com since then. Here is a link to “Vote for a Puppet, Not a Man.” Here is a more accurate capsule biography of Reese:
“Charley Reese [send him mail] has been a journalist for 49 years, reporting on everything from sports to politics. From 1969–71, he worked as a campaign staffer for gubernatorial, senatorial and congressional races in several states. He was an editor, assistant to the publisher, and columnist for the Orlando Sentinel from 1971 to 2001. He now writes a syndicated column which is carried on LewRockwell.com. Reese served two years active duty in the U.S. Army as a tank gunner. Write to Charley Reese at P.O. Box 2446, Orlando, FL 32802.”
I apologize for my initial skepticism.
A Death in the Box
“By the time Jessica Lee Roger was discovered on the floor of her prison cell on Aug. 17, 2002, it was too late. In the 24 minutes since guards had last checked her, she had tied a bed sheet around her neck and, after many attempts over three years in prison, finally strangled herself. When word of Roger’s suicide spread through the cellblocks of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility that sultry weekend, two correction officers cried. Fellow inmates were angry. The superintendent, who was away for a few days, was devastated. A mentally ill young woman had died, and she had died in the most stressful and isolating place in the New York state prison system. Jessica Roger, 21, killed herself in the ”box,” and many thought she didn’t belong there.” (The New York Times Magazine)
Land of 1,000 Vanillas
“If presenting ice creams to an ice cream maker seems very coals-to-Newcastle, it is a >reality of selling flavorings in the year 2004, when more than 100 companies nationwide compete to provide flavors for new food products.” (The New York Times Magazine)
Losing It
Why Queens Matters
“…(I)n the 1960s New York’s political class did its best to destroy the old Queens though high taxes, inattention to schools and crime, and bad social policy. Today, as New York’s political culture lurches back toward the left, the city is again growing hostile to middle-class families and entrepreneurial business owners of the sort that Queens has in abundance. It’s therefore worth remembering what Queens once was, and what almost destroyed it, as we take the measure of how powerful an economic and political force the new Queens has become.” (City Journal)
This is where I grew up in the ’60’s.
The Immigrant Gang Plague
“Hispanic gang violence is spreading across the country , the sign of a new underclass in the making… Immigration optimists, ever ready to trumpet the benefits of today’s immigration wave, have refused to acknowledge its costs. Foremost among them are skyrocketing gang crime and an expanding underclass. Until the country figures out how to reduce these costs, maintaining the current open-borders regime is folly. We should enforce our immigration laws and select immigrants on skills and likely upward mobility, not success in sneaking across the border.” — Heather Mac Donald (City Journal)
Why the insurgency won’t go away
Iraq’s chaos: “Iraq is overridden with partisan warfare by former regime loyalists, organized rebellions by disgruntled Iraqis, terrorism by foreign and domestic Islamist extremists, and a wave of crime by organized gangs.1 Rather than an all-out war of national liberation against coalition forces and Iraqi authorities, groups with nothing in common—except the demand that the coalition leave—are fighting against U.S. forces in an insurgency that spikes and ebbs. We may also see different ethnic or sectarian groups pitted against one another in a massive fight over who gets what, and when and how. Signs of such multi-layered conflict do not augur well for Iraq’s future stability.
…The insurgency can evolve, and indeed, from the vantage point of summer 2004 appears to be evolving, into patterns of complex warfare and violence. Should this evolution continue, the prospects for American success in bringing about Iraqi security, political stability, and reconstruction will be nonexistent.” — Ahmed S. Hashim, a professor of strategic studies at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island; he returned from Iraq in April 2004 (Boston Review)
UK blogger takes on ‘toughest sheriff in US’
“A British stockbroker in jail in the United States has been lifting the lid on a controversial prison regime through a compelling weblog.” (BBC)
The Soldiers Who Said No
Lip Stink
“A brief history of the ultimate pop faux pas” (Village Voice). And also see the story below, also about lip-synching:
NASA photo analyst: Bush wore a device during debate
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“Physicist says imaging techniques prove the president’s bulge was not caused by wrinkled clothing.” (Salon) I don’t think you actually need the Photoshop enhancement techniques to tell that he is wearing a wire. It is even evident on the original (left) photo.
Battle for Senate Gets Closer, and Lower
“In a year when early analysis showed Republicans having a definite edge, the fight for the Senate could come down to a Republican-held state that nobody expected to even be close. In Kentucky, the prospect of defeating incumbent Jim Bunning has Democrats all worked up.” (Washington Post)
The article goes on to detail Bunning’s history of bizarre and erratic behavior behind Democratic innuendoes that he is demented (in the clinical sense; not just name-calling). Republicans counter with homophobic smears about his Democratic challenger.
IRS probes NAACP after Bond’s anti-Bush talk
“The Internal Revenue Service is investigating whether a speech by NAACP Chairman Julian Bond in July that criticized the Bush administration violated a federal law that prohibits tax-exempt charitable organizations from engaging in most forms of political activity.
Bond said he felt the probe was politically motivated and meant to have a chilling effect on the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in particular its efforts to register black voters, who support U.S. Sen. John Kerry overwhelmingly.” (Detroit Free Press)
Tie Goes to the…
With our Byzantine electoral college system, it is actually possible that John McCain will end up inaugurated as the next president in January. Here’s how. (Tech Central Station)
Music and the Brain
“What is the secret of music’s strange power? Seeking an answer, scientists are piecing together a picture of what happens in the brains of listeners and musicians.” (Scientific American)
You Must Vote. It’s the Law
Australia requires citizens to vote. Should the U.S.? — Eric Weiner (Slate)
Related:
Americans love to vote—for pop singers, soft drinks, or World Series predictions: “It’s a commonly held misperception that Americans don’t vote. Americans love to vote. The problem is that we vote for inane things. We vote on competing but really conspiring blends of Coca-Cola. We vote on who we believe will win the World Series or whether a given coach bungled a crucial third down. We vote people to the zenith of prefab pop stardom, often over the objections of bona fide talent scouts. We vote on issues of other people’s matrimony and during the commercial breaks, Internet providers and cable music video channels mainline election-year imagery and jockey for our ‘votes.’ We are quizzed in the streets, on the Web, and on television for our views. The language of ‘voting’ is everywhere when, in reality, it usually amounts to nothing more than a bar graph and the threat of future spam. Democracy? The free expression of ideas? Civil society? Sometimes it seems like Americans can’t get enough of it.” — Hua Hsu (Village Voice)
Tumultuous Noise
Why are religious conservatives still the squeaky wheels? By The Rev. Chloe Breyer: “American religious life has undergone a seismic shift. If, as statistician John Green’s report ‘The American Religious Landscape and Politics, 2004’ suggests, religion no longer breaks down as ‘Catholic vs. Protestant’ on issues like abortion, John Kerry’s record, or pre-emptive warfare but now divides into ‘traditionalists vs. modernists,’ why do the traditionalists still get all the attention? If the political fault lines between religious people have really shifted, the troubling question arises for orthodox believers with liberal political convictions: Why are they still upstaged by their ‘super religious’ conservative sisters and brethren?” (Slate)
Katinka Matson
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‘a full-force storm with gale winds blowing’
Edge conversation with Robert Trivers: “For the last ten or fifteen years, I’ve been trying to understand situations in nature in which the genes within a single individual are in disagreement—or put differently, in which genes within an individual are selected in conflicting directions. It’s an enormous topic, which 20 years ago looked like a shadow on the horizon, just as about a hundred years ago what later became relativity theory was just two little shadows on the horizon of physics, and blew up to become major developments. In genetics it’s fair to say that about 20 years ago a cloud on the horizon was our knowledge that there were so-called selfish genetic elements in various species that propagated themselves at the expense of the larger organism. What was then just a cloud on the horizon is now a full-force storm with gale winds blowing. “
Godzilla vs. Mothra: The Prequel
“A tiny conical tooth embedded in a pterosaur neck bone is all that remains of a 100-million-year-old battle between a flying reptile with a 12-foot wingspan and a 26-foot-long crocodile-snouted spinosaur.” (Discover)
Cats suffer stress, experts say
A recent New York Times article said that prominent webloggers, including Kevin Drum and Glenn Reynolds, have increasingly moved to a ‘feline Friday’ model of weblogging in which Friday is given over to posting pictures of their cats. Now we are cat lovers; we have two at home (as well as our dog) but I have never thought they are very blogworthy. This, however, is a cat-related item interesting enough to post:
Cats’ stress level is ‘comparable to humans’: “Cats can suffer from stress-related illness like humans, a study by animal experts suggests. Rivalry with another cat is the biggest source of feline anxiety closely followed by moving home or the arrival of a new member of the owner’s family.” (BBC)
What is Art? (And what is bioterror?)
Logoizing Abu Ghraib: ‘When I first saw that photo of a hooded man in Abu Ghraib’s sickly light, arms outstretched and fingertips wired, I wondered if I was seeing art – Goya meets Matthew Barney, Hannibal Lecter meets Christ on a crate. But the fact that it was orchestrated by American military men for maximum humiliation, rather than aesthetic effect, intensified its macabre allure. Could they have known that their prankish snapshot would fascinate us so, ending up on front pages worldwide, on folk-art murals in Iraq, on a Los Angeles highway overpass accompanied by the words “The War is Over,” a suggestion of its inherent rhetorical force? Advertising’s supercharged images had nothing on this.’ (Adbusters)
If Bush Wins–or Steals–This Election, Don’t Just Sit There
Protest zones: “…(I)f we wind up with another 2000-style deadlock–if election results are contested in Ohio or Florida, or if Republicans try to stop people from voting in any state–that’s where the real action will be. Protestors with guts should head to those states to make their voices heard. And if Bush manages to steal the election, then we’ll see you in D.C. in January. Bring some eggs.” (The Stranger )
