HOWARD ZINN HAS DIED

Howard Zinn, historian who challenged status quo, dies at 87

http://howardzinn.org/default/

YES, YOU MUST PICK A SIDE. MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHICH IT IS.

I've been reading (and reading of) a lot of criticism-- some of it quite harsh-- of Jane Hamsher for her take-no-prisoners approach to criticism of and activism against Obama and the Democrats for their advancement of what they allege is health care reform. I won't bore you with the details, but I will say that I am with Hamsher on this one. I'll let her explain herself:

The Obama White House has been working furiously to pass an enormous transfer of wealth to the insurance companies from the start. I don’t see how reporting this constitutes “attacking the administration,” or why it “hurts” the “progressive agenda” to do so.

I reckon I shouldn't be surprised at this point, but it still amazes me a bit to see self-identified liberals and progressives still toeing the Clintonian, New Democrat, neoliberal, pro-corporate line after all these years. It's clear to me that this approach has done nothing to help working people, and it has done nothing but help the middle class in this country immolate itself. It has also done little more than set the table for the GOP's more direct brand of anti-populist policy activism. Yet, even as they're slowly bleeding themselves and further alienating those who suffer under these 'centrist' and 'moderate' policies, they spare little vitriol for their fellows on the left who refuse to go along.

At least the teabaggers have the sense to point outside themselves to find scapegoats. This little dust-up over Jane Hamsher doesn't make me respect the nitwit teabaggers any, but it does demonstrate how much of the U.S.'s putative left is little better. The right wing noise machine has been so successful over the past four decades that liberals and progressives now fall all over themselves to avoid feeling worthy of the Dirty Fucking Hippie label. This is a recipe for both short-term failure and long-term disaster. Robert Cruickshank explains:

What I mean by "1990s politics" is the notion that progressives must abandon their own beliefs, desires, wants and needs, and sign on to a neoliberal, pro-corporate agenda that is inimical to them out of a deliberately misstated assessment of "political reality." 1990s politics was dominated by the notion, embodied in Bill Clinton, that progressive values may be correct, but they are fringe, unrealistic, fanciful, and when held fast, are a threat to incremental change and enables the possibility of a right-wing resurgence.

As we should have learned at the end of the 1990s, and especially during the 2000s, the exact opposite is true: it is neoliberalism and pro-corporate policies that are unrealistic and open the door to a right-wing resurgence. But few people seem interested in learning that lesson.

We can't 'hope' for 'change' from our elected leaders until we are willing to change ourselves.

AIRPORT 2010: THE DOCUDRAMA

Don't trust corporate media, and don't trust corporate-run government. Consider this key point slapped onto the end of an ABC story about the Boy Who Couldn't Blow Up His Underpants:

Published reports in Nigeria said Abdulmutallab's father had contacted the U.S. embassy six months ago about concerns his son had become radicalized and could pose a threat to the U.S. One report said the father could not understand why his son was allowed to board a flight to the U.S. given his warning.

The rest of the story reads like a summary of a breathless John le Carré knock-off, with all the outlandish details supplied by the requisite anonymous "authorities." Even if every detail offered (and dutifully transcribed without question by ABC) is true, though, evidently the young man with the makeshift M80 in his knickers wasn't competent enough to bring the world's most powerful nation to its knees (again). Maybe his alleged handlers should have given him a boxcutter, instead. In any case, the goof-ball wasn't considered enough of a threat to keep him from flying, but after the fact he's treated like the latest evil genius to almost make the sky fall on the Home of the Brave.

So now even more taxpayer money will likely be shoved at any number of 'national security contractors', and U.S. and U.S.-bound passengers will certainly be subject to even more intense and nonsensical rituals of humiliation and delay for a while. Are ya feelin' the Change that you had Hope for? Personally, I'm left asking one question:

THE REPRESENTATIVE REPUBLIC IS DEAD ON ITS FEET

I had a horrible feeling in the days immediately following the 9/11 attacks. It wasn't just that there were no planes flying (at the time I lived in Uptown, which is right under the eastern approach to O'Hare Airport). It wasn't just that the world's most powerful nation ever had been brought to its knees by a well-organized group of assholes wielding only box cutters. No, what gave me dark pause was the sense that the nation had just been given a surprise final exam, and that all signs leading up to that moment pointed to the likelihood of miserable failure.

The corporate media did their level best to make the Bush administration's horrible behavior look not so bad. They ignored what they couldn't obfuscate when they couldn't ignore it altogether. Still, it should have been obvious to anyone not sucking their thumb and hiding under a pile of their own soiled diapers that what remained of our long embattled and disputed national promise was being bludgeoned into a coma.

When millions of people lined up to elect the symbolically historic presidential candidate Barack Obama, I was barely amused and finding no cause for optimism. With the list of people Obama had as his advisers, I found no reason to expect a substantial change from the policies of the Bush administration. Turns out I was mostly right, and in no way is this more true than in immigration policy. Read it and weep, citizens, because this shit never rests. Unless it is called out and crushed, it will metastasize and engulf us all. And so dies the republic.

America's Secret ICE Castles

PROVE ME WRONG IN 2010

Liberals Are Useless

Liberals, I Do Despise

I am increasingly leaning toward labeling myself a socialist when asked about my political leanings. I no longer want to be identified as a liberal. It has nothing to do with shrinking away from successful right-wing efforts to transform the term into a pejorative. As the two articles to which I link may make obvious, it is due to the behavior of my erstwhile political fellow travelers.

As anyone who's been trudging through this tiny, remote fever swamp of mine for any length of time most surely knows by now, I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 and for Cynthia McKinney in 2008. I have also spent quite a few paragraphs constructing defenses of my electoral choices against the very lifelike Straw Man of liberal Democratic scorn. This little rant, however, is not one of those defenses.

Liberals and progressives, I don't want to hear any more of your bullshit about how we have to put Democrats in office in order to defeat Republicans and conservatives. When I say that there's far too much practical overlap between all three of those categories, history is my witness.

Yes, I know there are the occasional uncompromising progressive Democrats. These shining few-- like Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee, and Alan Grayson-- are exceptions to the rule, however. Their behavior usually does little more than expose the horrid contrast to their party mates. It highlights the reprehensible moral vacuum beneath the Democrats' biggest names, names like Barack Obama.

But I've scribbled and linked about these lesser politicians enough that you should know by now why I despise what they have done. Now I'm going to challenge you: in 2010, if it isn't too late already, you'll have the opportunity to show that what you've done to liberalism isn't irredeemable. You'll have the opportunity to challenge incumbent Democrats who've betrayed progressive and liberal ideals in favor of servicing corporate and imperial interests. You'll have the opportunity to show that the Democratic Party as a whole isn't just one incorrigible half of a bipartisan political scam. You'll be able to show that I am wrong when I say that our political future depends on forcing our system into something more parliamentary, a change that can only happen if enough of us unite behind Green Party candidates in national offices.

But until you accomplish that, liberal-Straw-Man-in-my-head, I don't want to hear one more fucking word about how I'm wasting my vote or throwing it to the Republican. Don't you dare look down your nose at me like I'm some kind of pie-in-the-sky dirty fucking hippie when it's your sensible, liberal vote and the millions like it that have put us where we are today. Because I'm starting to think that for all the disgust and scorn you heap on those idiot tea baggers, you might just be as bad as they are. See, they might be assholes and suckers who are prone to insane scapegoating, but at least they know they're getting fucked and have the sense to get mad about it. They'll fling their angry ape shit at almost any seemingly worthy target who catches their crazy eye, and sometimes they don't care if that target is a Republican. Does your liberal, sensible manner even allow for that much consistency, my liberal friend? Or are you willing to live with the vagaries of the policies your vote has supported because you think that the inequity can be righted just enough to not hurt you and yours if sufficiently competent Democratic technocrats are running things?

Show me in 2010.

CONSPIRACY THEORY

First let me say a little something about that term, "conspiracy theory." I think the concept of the conspiracy can be overused and underused in some very harmful ways. On the one hand you have government attorneys who've been given the prosecutorial tool of "conspiracy" in order to convict people who would otherwise not be legally tied to a crime. This is not necessarily a bad thing: if you suspect someone didn't touch the gun and was not there at the scene of the crime, but arranged details of the act with full knowledge and intent of seeing it happen, then a conspiracy charge is appropriate. However, especially in the so-called war on drugs, the conspiracy concept often takes on a Kafkaesque quality in our criminal courts. In any case, there are few citizens or media pundits who decry either concept, as few people ever oppose manifestations of state power that they don't perceive to endanger them personally.

On the other hand, you have the concept which is usually attached to the titular term. The concept usually encompasses governmental actions, and often expands to include the participation of other societal power centers like business corporations and corporate media. Thanks in part to corporate entertainment media (which have an unmistakable and profound influence on culture), this concept has been transformed into an eye-rolling cliché in the general public's perception. Myriad Hollywood offerings like Oliver Stone's "JFK" and the popular TV show "The X-Files" have done much to help train the public to reflexively dismiss the plausibility of any allegation of systemic or institutional malfeasance by governmental or corporate actors (or any combination of the two). Worse yet, that media training has diversified to include the ever-expanding 'news' and opinion industry of radio and television; if any allegation (regardless of importance or plausibility) that endangers the status quo begins to gain traction, you can be sure it will be openly ridiculed by the corporate guardians of public opinion. (Recall how the corporate media sold the stolen election of 2000 and the buildup to war in Iraq; when they aired skeptical voices at all, it was only to ridicule and marginalize them.)

This isn't to suggest that every conspiratorial allegation needs to be taken seriously. A good negative example might the 9/11 Truth Movement. These conspiracy theorists constructed a labyrinthine plot alleging that elements of the Bush administration intricately choreographed the events of that pivotal day. While there are arguably some things about the widely accepted, officially endorsed story that still beg for more scrutiny, even self-defined liberals and progressives who loathed the Bush administration's worst documented behaviors tend to disdain the 'Truthers'. The "Truthers" are understandably seen as diversions from both legitimate questioning of the events and those seen as culpable for the 'real' failures to protect the lives of US citizens.

There are more conventional and long-standing conspiracy theories still afloat in US popular culture: the Area 51 issue is one; there are numerous right-wing populist conspiracy theories that continue to circulate, as well. However, the 9/11 Truth Movement helped give corporate media an invisible fulcrum with which to leverage a huge rhetorical obstacle to legitimate questions about the Bush administration's culpability in failing to prevent the attacks; that obstacle was repackaged and further utilized as a cudgel for batting away legitimate questions about the Bush administration's brazen exploitation of the 9/11 attacks.

Ironically, I don't believe the Truthers are all that bad, even if they were secretly organized, encouraged, or funded by quasi-governmental operatives aiming to muddy the waters of public discourse*. If they went too far, they were at least on the right track. They were willing to believe that their government would willingly participate in the murder of its own citizens for political gain**. Most others, even liberals and leftists not inclined to trust the Bush cabal as far as they could collectively throw it, would not openly impute malice to what they were content to attribute to incompetence; these deniers would not--even in the face of a preponderance of evidence sufficient to sharpen and polish Occam's Razor-- accept that the Bush administration had been willfully inactive in preventing the low-tech, poorly hidden, screaming-to-be-thwarted 9/11 attacks. This brings me back to my point regarding the second cultural conception of conspiracy: as long as the public is reflexively disinclined to accept that their government and its corporate cohort are ready and willing to commit criminal acts-- up to and including allowing the mass murder of its own citizens-- to advance their ends, then such acts and their actors have the same innate impunity as Baudelaire's Devil.

The true genius of a nefarious operative like Karl Rove isn't that he is incredibly intelligent or preternaturally perceptive. He simply has an understanding of how well the public has been trained and of how the corporate media play their role. He knows how to work the system, because he helped build it. (It also helps that he seems to have no conscience when it comes to playing his role.) So when I read that Karl Rove or other Bush-friendly operatives may have been involved in the assassination of someone whose testimony may have put Rove (and perhaps others) in hot criminal justice water, I don't roll my eyes. Correction: I do roll my eyes, but only in exasperation at the notion that such a conspiracy will actually be honestly investigated and prosecuted. Hell, I wouldn't even put it past Rove and his ilk to be the ones who recruited and supplied the "real informant with inside knowledge about Connell's plane crash." It would be in keeping with their Nixonian love for the brazen dirty trick. It would also not surprise me if this story withers on the vine of increasingly credulous public attention.

*Ha, ha! Okay, I'm not really joking much there.

**Whaddya think the death penalty is, if not an institutionalized political stunt? It might seem like a stretch between killing a convicted murderer and allowing the mass murder of 3,000 innocent people, but we are talking about people who sandwiched 9/11 between a stolen national election and an illegal, blatantly dishonest invasion (and subsequent destruction) of a country that posed the US no threat whatsoever. Put that into your perspective, then tell me that they weren't capable and willing.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

Democracy Now! for 2 December 2009

Questions about Afghanistan

Anti-US Feelings Running High as CIA Drones Take a Civilian Toll

The links above take you to a relative wealth of information and perspective about the Obama administration's current and planned involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan. My main question is this: are we wise to put more troops into a known swallower of empires and to deploy more killer drones into an unstable, nuclear-armed neighboring country that is already seething with resentment toward us? I'm sure those whose feeble, anxious manhoods are tied into cheerleading any US military adventure think that wisdom is irrelevant and that we should just bomb the darkies into the stone age already. That straw man perspective aside, is this really what we want to dig ourselves into more deeply?