Pizza and Politiks 2: War Criminals

Join us in Bartlett Lounge next Monday at 7 PM for another exciting

Pizza and Politics!

We'll be watching the "War Crimes" (Not sure if its that title) Episode of West Wing and discussing American War Crimes and what should be done about them (ICC and the like) afterwards.






Pizza and Politics, where Hmmmm meets Mmmmm.

Ford-Lincoln-Mercutio

ROMEO: I dream'd a dream to-night.
MERCUTIO: And so did I.
ROMEO: Well, what was yours?
MERCUTIO: That dreamers often lie.

It is truly bizarre how despite the fact that most Republicans in Congress and around the country have turned their backs on Bush, some just can't be cured of their Bush fetishes. They seem to see him as some sort of visionary, a dreamer who is misunderstood by the world. Dispiritingly delusional, this group includes Rudy Guiliani, the would-be Republican presidential nominee.

Holding up as examples the top two presidents in the Republican pantheon, Lincoln and Reagan, Giuliani explained their leadership qualities.

“I don’t imagine that they had those favorable/unfavorable things back during the Civil War,” but Lincoln would not have fared well, Giuliani said.

Seeming to draw present-day comparisons, Giuliani noted that Lincoln even faced riots in New York City because people were unhappy with the war. “They wanted to quit because it was getting too tough.”

There were extensive casualties, the conflict dragged on and Lincoln had to fire many of his generals, Giuliani reminded the salad-eating crowd.

For right-wing crackpots, the comparisons go (or at least ought to go) beyond simply presiding over tons of casualties and firing generals. Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus, as has Bush. Both Bush and Lincoln thought they were engaged in existential struggles over the very fiber of our nation. Comparing Bush to Lincoln also provides the convenience of the fact that today just about everybody thinks the Civil War was worth fighting, whereas just about no one thinks that about Iraq. This comparison does not hold up very well overall, of course.

For one thing, as opposed to Iraq, the Civil War actually was an existential struggle. If the Union had lost, the country would have been literally ripped in two. The struggle today is nothing like so serious, since Bush says the only way we can lose is to withdraw from Iraq. (Sounds fine to me.) And I don't think the reason Lincoln is popular today is the huge death toll he racked up. To tell the truth, I think it's disgusting how many people died during the Civil War all for the sake of making sure I still get to be in a country that includes Alabama. But Lincoln's rationale was more that the states cannot opt in or out of the Union at any time, forcing us to stick together whether we like it or not. In the long run, I believe this has been a healthy precedent to protect.

Another difference between Bush and Lincoln is that Lincoln didn't really have to worry that much about economic ennui. The country secession of half the country was a substantial economic disruption that had a clear military solution, and the nature of the sacrifice must have been clear to the citizen of the day. Bush, on the other hand, expressly requires no sacrifices of Americans during our present existential struggle, preferring that they just keep buying stuff. So today no one really cares what Lincoln's economic policies were, but I think a lot of people are going to keep caring about Bush's.

And the number one thing I think of when Bush and the economy come up together is his support for the plutocratic corporate order. In an excellent article, William Pfaff provides the key to explaining both Bush's foreign policy blunders and his economic blunders. An overinflated sense of American exceptionalism is probably to blame both for quixotic quagmires overseas and
the unacceptable injustice all around us. As Pfaff says,

American efforts to deregulate the international economy and promote globalization, whatever its benefits, have been the most powerful force of political, economic, social, and cultural destabilization the world has known since World War II, providing what closely resembles that "constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation" forecast by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto.

For an example of the destabilizing injustice of the corporatist plutocracy, let's look at Ford Motors. Not because Ford is unique, but because it is recent and oh so typical. As Devilstower points out over at Dailykos, Ford posted its worst loss ever last quarter. This was because of short-sighted planning and market positioning by top brass, not because guys on the assembly line weren't working hard enough. The solution? Fire 40,000 and give bigger bonuses to the top brass!

This is the kind of system we get under Bush, and, for that matter, under Clinton. As Devilstower notes, though, Democrats like Jim Webb are not on board with this system; to Webb I would add other freshman Democrats like Sherrod Brown and old salts like Barney Frank. With sensible leaders like these, hopefully we can start to fix some of the worst injustices to the middle class at least and ideally to the poor as well.

Just for the sake of fairness and balance, let me tell you about a couple of Democrats who don't appear to have received the memo on making life more fair: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Clinton we always knew about, since she has the backing of all the elites and is so deeply allied with the DLC.

Since election to his Senate term, Obama has basically coopted the DLC playbook of valuing bipartisanship above all else. This is as self-serving and defeatist as it's ever been, but Paul Krugman is also right to point out that Obama's rhetoric about rhetoric is missing the point. A lot of people attack Obama for having a thin Senate record and wring their hands about his lack of experience, but his substance problem doesn't have that much to do with his record. Having been a civil rights attorney and spent some eight odd years in elected office, he has more substantive experience than Bush had when he became president. No, the substance argument against Obama is boils down to the fact that he thinks it's more important to establish a polite tone than to fix problems.

While Bush may be a dreamer, he is certainly no Lincoln. Neither is Clinton or Obama (who plans to officially announce his campaign around Lincoln's birthday in scenic Springfield, IL, hometown of Honest Abe himself). The next most admired leader we have will match Lincoln's courage in pursuing a dubious war with today's economic problems. In other words, we don't need a Lincoln to solve our war, we need FDR to save ourselves.

Blog Scholarship

FYI, I plan to apply for this scholarship for college political bloggers. Anyone else who posts here should think about doing so also.

Libby Sleeps with the Fishes

Scooter Libby's perjury trial started this week, and already there have been some exciting surprises. During the opening statement phase, when attorneys for both sides try to establish a narrative for the trial before introducing evidence, Libby's attorney took an unexpected tactic: he broke with the administration.

One of the most remarkable things about the heyday of W's presidency was the message discipline. Factionalism naturally springs up whenever you get enough egotistical people together to form a presidential administration. This means that most administrations usually supply a constant stream of leaks to the press as part of internal power struggles. But in the Bush administration, the only leaks that have, well, leaked out have been ones that were essentially approved by the powers that be.

To find a prime example of this, one need look no further than the leaking of Valerie Plame Wilson's identity as an undercover agent by the Bush administration in 2003. The leak was a retaliation move against Plame's husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had recently written an op-ed partially exposing the lies of the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Someone (Richard Armitage of the State Department, as it turned out) told a reporter about Plame as an off-the-record source.

It appears that Armitage was not really playing the game, but this was a classic move of the administration's media game. You tell the reporter you will give him or her some good dirt, but it's a sensitive issue and you don't want your name on the record. Well duh, every issue around a presidential administration is sensitive. None the less, the reporter wants that scoop and is willing to cite an "anonymous source highly placed in the administration", even if it's really Karl Rove doing the talking. So these leaks that really have no reason not to be on the record would come out anonymously, discrediting an administration opponent while keeping the leaker's hands clean. Only approved leaks got out, so it was all part of the incredible unity and discipline the whole team displayed.

As an aide to Vice President Cheney, Libby was a crucial cog in that message machine. Until yesterday during opening statements, when his attorney turned his back on all that. Libby had been expected to try to get convicted quickly and name no names in order to be eligible for a pardon before Bush leaves office. But instead he jumped ship, crapped the bed, took the low road, failed to forward the chain letter. Libby's attorney portrayed him as a scapegoat, a sacrificial lamb who was destroyed to save Karl Rove.

This means that Libby will probably be "accidentally" shivved to death during a serendipitous prison riot, because The Party appreciates loyalty. But it also means that the house of cards is continuing to collapse for Republicans. When you build an empire on lies, a small amount of truth can really start to snowball. And if there turns out to be any substance to Libby's accusation about taking the fall for Rove, a whole lot of fascinating stuff that has been kept behind the scenes is going to start seeing the light of day (remember that Cheney himself is scheduled to take the stand).

So if The Party collapses on Libby for breaking rank, his career as a conservative will likely be over. But he will have sacrificed himself something far more valuable than helping Karl Rove avoid indictment: letting the public see the inner workings of a secretive and evil regime.

Clin-ton and The Politics of Failure

Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for president on her website today. Senator Kang tells us, "The politics of failure have failed. We must make them work again!" Clinton's record makes me nervous that she will be the candidate to try to make them work again, although there is hope for her yet.

Clinton is the last gasp of the pointless wing of the Democratic party. She is the chosen candidate of the so-called centrists at the DLC, who have been the main repository for conventional Democratic wisdom inside the beltway for nigh on 15 years. This is the kind of wisdom that says don't attack Bush on Iraq. The wisdom that says the passioned, ideologically energized base should accept unity for unity's sake, as long as it's insider unity and not principled unity. The same wisdom that says anti-war activists are out of touch with the majority of Americans. (Presumably "majority" is some sort of slang for "11%", which is the support escalation is getting in national polls.)

The DLC and its ilk, with their money and their insiders, dominated the discourse when top-down media like TV were it. That domination got Democrats control of zero branches of government. Now that the internet has come into its own a little, the passionate people on the bottom have started building their way up. We now control two branches, and it's because we realized the center was whatever real people care about, not whatever the DLC says it is.

Even outgoing DLC head Tom Vilsack has apparently read the writing on the wall about campaigning on failure. In his presidential campaign, Vilsack is staking out a position on Iraq that relies heavily on opposing US involvement there. And fortunately for him, his old friends at the DLC will be supporting him by...backing Hillary.

But leaving the DLC alone for a minute, what did Hillary herself say in her announcement video?

"Let's talk about how to bring the right end to the war in Iraq." How about instead we talk about how you don't regret supporting the war in the past. Let's talk about how when you use the term "war" it makes people think there is some way to win, whereas when you say "occupation" and "civil war" it sounds more like something we shouldn't be a part of (and like what it is). Let's talk about how limp-wristed, squirmy nuances like not regretting giving Bush authority in Iraq but regretting "the way the president used the authority" don't convince anyone you're serious.

"You know, after six years of George Bush, it is time to renew the promise of America." You know, that is most idiotic political boilerplate you could have used. You know, this is the kind of endlessly repeated phrase that sounds great in a beltway strategy session but nowhere else. If you take two seconds to think about it, renewing the promise of America is actually completedly drained of meaning. This is the kind of stock phrase that makes everyone else wonder how politicians can say so many words while communicating so little.

"So let's talk, let's chat, let's start a dialog about your ideas and mine." So let's chat about how I've hired some high priced consultants to tell me that top-down doesn't excite people any more. Let's start a dialog about how I can send signals that I'm hip to the new reality by announcing online instead of in a traditional press conference. Let's talk about how this focus-grouped pandering strategy is actually the only real hope for her campaign: if she really does listen, she will hear how lame her position on Iraq is. She will hear how universal health care doesn't make any sense if it maintains a role for private insurers.

Don't get me wrong: if Hillary wins the nomination, she'll have my vote. And she'll have a better chance of getting the nomination if she does listen to people on the internet. But she's pretty well set up already.

The primary schedule gives a big bonus to whoever raises the most money by having the first four primaries at basically the same time (Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Carolina). And with California now looking to join the fray, things will only get more expensive. Clinton is certainly the candidate who can raise the most money. But running a campaign based on advertising forces you to listen to consultants, and listening to consultants means you're not listening to people. Listening to your backers, your colleagues, and your beltway think tanks is the central tenet of the politics of failure. Hopefully Hillary will follow through on listening to the people. The politics of failure can't and won't work again.

Democrats Can't Just Talk the Talk

If we are serious about making the Senate a serious place ( which it hardly it) besides the petty squabbling that goes on in closed hearings and the themed lunch days like " at the beach," the Senate needs a serious make over. Reid promised the American people that their Senator would work just as hard as they do *gasp! (recent polls shows Senators work on average 2 1/2 days a week). After the long MLK weekend which cut off Senate time, this weekend the Senate is not voting until Tuesday afternoon. Therefore, another long weekend is here. History only gives parties rare moments to change themselves and the course of a nation. Democrats are at this point, and we can hide away from the power (for fears of '08 blame) or we can seriously act like the party Americans believe it (and deserve).

Obamarama08 - Updated Repost

Note: I originally posted this when Obama for President started heating up in October. Now that he's declared, enjoy it in slightly updated fashion. --IVFK

Blacks in Chicago average about half the income of local whites. Barack Obama himself is probably doing his part to bring the average up, and good for him - he's a sharp guy who took advantage of his opportunities. But every politician has a pretty good living wage. What's sticks out about Obama? Why is he different from other politicians? Why do people love him so?

I think it's his silver tongue. Obama can give a damn good speech when he wants to, and frankly that's something recent Democratic Presidential nominees Kerry and Gore were unable to do. He's a charismatic guy, and he gives off the air of someone who is thoughtful, principled, and really smart. And what's more, he looks less stupid than most Democrats when he talks about religion. This is both good for Democrats and good for religion. The rampaging maniacs who currently control religion-in-politics are ruining us politically and ruining the reputation of religion. So on these two fronts, I think Obama is a great candidate.

Unfortunately, Obama doesn't meet the leadership standards I would really like to see, at least not at this point. My leadership standards are essentially the same ones that are being pushed across the internet by concerned rank and file Democrats. They include pulling the debate to the left instead of caving to the center and unplugging the influence machine in DC that puts its own above the country. But Obama came of political age at the tail end of the Clinton triangulation era, before these values rose to prominence.

In 2000, Obama was dealt an embarrassing defeat right here in Hyde Park. In the Democratic Congressional primary, entrenched incumbent Bobby Rush mopped the floor with him. His stated reason for tilting at this particular windmill was an astute observation that Bobby Rush is not a particularly responsive legislator.

For example, Rush is beloved across the netroots for his sponsorship of the legislation to destroy net neutrality. One begins to suspect some undue influence may have swayed his opinion on the issue, though. Telecom interests gave Rush hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars. He also helped arrange a hefty donation by telecom interests to a technology center in Englewood. I would argue the long term interests of his constituents are better served by having a measure of freedom on the internet than by having a technology center. Internet freedom is what allows jerks like me to fight otherwise unaccountable insiders like him. But at least Rush doesn't see a contradiction between constituent service and corporate corruption.

At any rate, Obama took his purified optimist shtick out for a test drive and was soundly defeated. He challenged the corrupted insider interests, and they put him in his place. The lesson he appears to have learned is not that he should try harder. Rather it is that he should play the insider game, even if he sticks to his populist rhetoric. For example, he has had problems respecting the will of the party's voters in Connecticut, where his show of support for Ned Lamont was tepid at best. He apparently feels it's OK to praise George Bush.

Obama also has some phraseology in common with Joe Lieberman. Of particular note is the unspecified phrase "a different kind of politics" to denote some sort of transcendent bipartisanship. I don't think anyone is saying that rancor, partisan or otherwise, is a good thing, but it's not a nuanced or sophisticated phrase to say. It basically tells to me, as a member of the liberal base, that Obama is committed to centrism. Again, no one is saying people shouldn't agree on stuff, but when you go for centrism, you move the whole debate to the right.

David Callahan recently wrote a book called The Moral Center in which he makes the case for (a) more moral bottom lines in political rhetoric, (b) more centrist policy solutions, and (c) more unity thereof. However, as this reviewer points out, the reason moral bottom lines would resonate is that they would appeal to people's hunger for (allegedly) Kantian absolutes. Per her interpretation of Kant, there is always one right thing and everyone should always do it. But if we take that interpretation, then "moral center" is an oxymoron and trying to find one will do nothing to sate the hunger.

But the point of pulling the debate to the left is that you have to if you want things to end up in the center at the end. If you start off shooting for the center, you get negotiated down by the right and end up with something right of center. For example, say you want to decrease income disparity. You can start (as Democrats are doing) by tinkering around the edges of the issue by lowering student loan rates. Doing so is a great idea, but it is certainly going to be opposed by the powers that be on Wall Street (who also happen to run the Treasury Department right now). To get anywhere, negotiations will need to happen and anything that ends up succeeding will probably be watered down significantly. In the end, not much will change with this pretty centrist approach. Whereas to fix the issue of income disparities between blacks and whites in Chicago will require a significantly more visionary, boldly leftist set of policies.

Offering up some bipartisan praise or refusing to go against a powerful guy at your office (especially if he's president of the US) aren't capital sins in and of themselves. But putting things like this together with co-opting Lieberman rhetoric leaves me thinking that Obama isn't on board with the grassroots platform. Not to say he would be a bad president (and certainly better than anything Republicans will ever offer), and not to say he couldn't straighten himself out, but I'm just not sold on him yet.

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOOOTBALLLLL!

Frankly I don't really think this post needs any introduction. Except to say that if the whole President thing doesn't work out, Obama definitely has a future in sports broadcasting...

He's Ready. Why Wait? Obama '08

Big news today in the race for the White House: Barack Obama, the first term Senator from Illinois, announced his intentions to run for president and has taken the first step in raising funds. He has filed papers to create an exploratory committee and will wait a few weeks to formally announce his candidacy. When likely democratic voters are polled, Barack Obama ranks among the top three candidates to be the party nominee. The big issue around Obama is the fact that a little more than two years ago, he was just an Illinois state senator and does not have the experience at the national level to be a legitimate candidate for president. (Keep in mind Abraham Lincoln only served one term in the House of Rep. and had no other national experience before being elected President. Granted it was a different time, but ponder that bit of information for a moment.)

His “inexperience” actually works to his advantage because he is inexperienced and yet people are serious when they talk about him. People don’t dismiss him as a potential candidate one day, there is a demand for him right now. During the ’06 campaign, the only other Democrat to attract bigger crowds at campaign rallies and fund raisers nation-wide was Bill Clinton! That is saying something!

But while others see inexperience as a problem, I see it as an opportunity. I know I am far from alone when I say that I get excited thinking about the prospect of Obama as the 44th President of the United States. That is saying something. It is rare and remarkable in politics to find someone who excites people the way Obama does. If you look at his public speaking skills and his energetic personality, it’s easy to see why so many people like him and would like to see him make a run for the White House. Obama is not even halfway through his first term as Senator, yet he has had enough time in Washington to get his feet wet. He is for all practical purposes a Washington outsider on the inside, a role that can easily play to his advantage in a political campaign. He does not carry the luggage other senators such as Kerry, Biden or even Edwards and H. Clinton carry, yet he serves as a member on the Armed Services Committee (a high profile committee particularly in today’s news) and is already a national celebrity.
Obama is special. He inspires a certain amount of idealism and passion that even few experienced politicians can muster. He’s a youthful figure that can energize the democratic base and he already has an established grass roots network that will come in handy in the primaries. Obama is ready and he has what it takes to be the future of the Democratic party.

The Smallness of our Politics

Today, Barack Obama announced that he is forming an exploratory committee to test the possibility of a presidential run. Assuming he decides to enter the race, he will be one in a crowded field, with John Edwards, Joe Biden, Tom Vilsack, and Christopher Dodd already announced, Hillary Clinton and Wes Clark about to, and Al Gore. While I won't bore you with discussion over his entire release, (http://www.barackobama.com/video/from_barack_transcript/ if you want to read it) one thing he mentioned struck me:

"Challenging as they are, it's not the magnitude of our problems that concerns me the most. It's the smallness of our politics."

We've seen the pettiness of the Republican Party manifest itself over the past six years, and we've seen some Democrats recently fall prey to this too, with James Carville practically demonizing Howard Dean and trying to stage a coup at the DNC. While certainly worlds better than God's Own Party, the Democrats cannot claim to be above partisan bickering.

But, you might ask, (curious little brat that you are) why is it this way? Why has Washington broken into two openly hostile camps? The easy answer, and one of the right ones, is that Tom DeLay is slimier than the cockroaches he used to exterminate, and the extreme right, driven by their fanatical bigotry and frightening determination, believes itself ordained by God to warp and twist this country into a horrid specter of what it stands for. Of course that's just continuing the partisan hackery, and despite how truly enjoyable it is, this country deserves better.

The better answer, then, is isolation. Rule by 51% leaves half of this country silenced (we won't even get into rule by 35%, like my home state of Texas) and only serves to continue to distance the American people from their government. With that distance, politicians become insular, focusing only on keeping that 51% and their jobs. What excites me about Obama is that he is different.

He is a Democrat who reaches out to evangelical Christians, holding an earnest conversation with them while standing by his positions and beliefs. He fights for progress without becoming a marginalized talking head, and he actually garners popular support, instead of being the lesser of two evils. (John "Not Satan but Beezelbub" Kerry)

But this post actually isn't about Barak Obama. This post is about how to end the "smallness of our politics," and Barack Obama is just a catalyst that can be used to start that. If you, dear Reader, support Obama, go out and get involved. Volunteer. Contribute. Phone Bank. If you detest the man, now-less-dear Reader, get involved. Volunteer. Contribute. Phone Bank. Politics does not shape people, it is shaped by people. A genuine grassroots movement cannot divide the American people, as they contributed to it as one. Recognize that, while different, we share many goals: a just society, equality, security, and a nation whose actions we can actually be proud of.

The true beauty of progressivism is not that once people get involved with politics as a positive tool instead of a domineering master, they see the possibility of government to do good, to be just. Progressivism is not an ideology to force a country into lockstep. It is not God's Own Party marching to marginalize everyone they don't see at church on Sunday. Progressivism is a movement of the masses seeking to better all our lives by bettering our government and our nation.

Barack Obama, whether you love him or hate him, can spearhead a new movement in politics. He, with our help, can make politics "big" again. So right now, it's not about my guy winning. It is becoming, and with all of us working for it, will surely become, about anyone who has a hope of winninghaving to be my guy, because standing beside me are a million others, all of whom are taking our country, and our government back. It's not We, the Party, in America, it's We, the People.

So in the words of Richard "Kinky" Friedman,

May the God of your choice bless you.
Benediktion

Why 20,000 More Troops Will Be As Effective in Stabilizing Iraq As Chewing Bubble Gum

Last week, King George II addressed the nation to announce that he would be increasing the troop numbers in Iraq to help stabilize the region and continue the mission of bringing “freedom to Iraq.” The immediate reaction of the Democratic Party and an overwhelming majority of Americans is that it is too little too late. The window of opportunity to increase troops and effectively stabilize the region has long since closed, and the reality of the situation is that we need to get the hell out of there.

After a fierce blow to the Republican Party in the previous mid-term elections, Washington has finally come to the conclusion that many Americans, myself included, realized some time in March, 2003: that victory in Iraq eluded us way before Boy George and to be frank, from the beginning of this war, the power to bring freedom and democracy to the region was never within our grasp. As much as we’d like to envision our nation as being the “Johnny Apple Seed” of Democracy, planting American-like governments across the globe, the truth is Democracy does not flourish where it is not hospitable. It is not a weed that can grow anywhere, and once it manifests itself in a field, spreads easily. Quite the contrary, it’s much more like a vineyard that needs close care and attention and the deserts of Iraq were not the right place for it. Our own democracy did not sprout over night, and it certainly did not come from another nation liberating us from the British. Democratic governments are born from internal strife and idealistic revolutions that are rooted within the people of a nation. It’s just plain common sense that a nation of people who go to church and Wal-Mart on Sundays can’t bring freedom and ensure tranquility in a country where sectarian polarization is so strong that they’d rather kill each other than even consider compromise.

Any progress and stabilization that will come to Iraq, will not come from sending 20,000 more kids my age. It is up to Iraq, and Iraq alone, to come up with a plan that will at least quell sectarian polarization. The violence that keeps escalating in Iraq is the product of political failure to compromise. Iraqi democracy can only come from Iraqi policy makers, and sending more troops at this point is sending the wrong message.

Three Lessons

Cassandra, Iraq

C. K. Williams

1.

She's magnificent, as we imagine women must be
who foresee and foretell and are right and disdained.

This is the difference between we who are like her
in having been right and disdained, and we as we are.

Because we, in our foreseeings, our having been right,
are repulsive to ourselves, fat and immobile, like toads.

Not toads in the garden, who after all are what they are,
but toads in the tale of death in the desert of sludge.

2.

In this tale of lies, of treachery, of superfluous dead,
were there ever so many who were right and disdained?

With no notion of what to do next? If we were true seers,
as prescient as she, as frenzied, we'd know what to do next.

We'd twitter, as she did, like birds; we'd warble, we'd trill.
But what would it be really, to twitter, to warble, to trill?

Is it ee-ee-ee, like having a child? Is it uh-uh-uh, like a wound?
Or is it inside, like a blow, silent to everyone but yourself?

3.

Yes, inside, I remember, oh-oh-oh: it's where grief
is just about to be spoken, but all at once can't be: oh.

When you no longer can "think" of what things like lies,
like superfluous dead, so many, might mean: oh.

Cassandra will be abducted at the end of her tale, and die.
Even she can't predict how. Stabbed? Shot? Blown to bits?

Her abductor dies, too, though, in a gush of gore, in a net.
That we know; she foresaw that - in a gush of gore, in a net.

(From the April 3, 2006 issue of the New Yorker)



The day we went to war, March 20, 2003, was the day I also debuted on stage at my suburban high school. It was a night of mostly comedic one-act plays, all directed by students. I had been cast in "The Swimmer" in which I played a delusional man stuck at a bus stop because he believed that the surrounding concrete was a sea of water. I'm sure there is an allegory there, but I'll let you do the analysis.

Honestly, I cannot remember one line from that play, even though I was onstage for 45 minutes. The only thing I can recall is that at one point I got billy-clubbed (unintentionally for real), and that I clipped a "No War" button to my costume. In my cozy little high school cafetorium, right down the street from Dennis Hastert's office, I was 'that kid' who didn't support our troops, and was unconcerned with the safety of the American People (this was way back when the war was about WMD's). We closed our one night show with mixed reviews, most people confused that I died in the last scene with no closure.

Nearing four years later, we're pumping 20,000 more troops into Iraq. What do I think about it? I'm no General--My military experience extends as far as conquering the Aztecs in Age of Empires in the eighth grade. But you know what you get when you cross a Greek Prophet, contemporary suburban drama, and a real-time strategy video game? A kid who knows enough about this world to gather good information, portray it clearly and honestly, and that all the other civilizations hate it when the most powerful civilization moves their ballistas in and starts exploiting the resources of the subjugated Aztecs.

New Bloggers

Welcome new bloggers!

We've recently added some new U of C undergrads as bloggers.

With that, I leave you with this civics lesson:

SUUURGE!!!

Tonight, George W. Bush will make his big speech on "surging" troop levels in Iraq, although apparently he won't use the word "surge" this time. I wish I could have found video of the old Surge ad that featured unexplained couch-jumping, but this hose-and-lawn-chair one will have to do. Incidentally, isn't it quaint how those Neanderthals in the late 90's thought it was a good idea to promote the "carbos" in their beverage? and how they called them carbos instead of carbs?

But back to Iraq, there are two main concerns for the diligent progressive observer: (1) the framing here really does matter - the alleged surge should be called escalation, and (2) the Democrats need to show some backbone in their response to the situation.

Using the word "surge" implies that the increase in Iraq troop levels will be temporary. On a geological timeline, it is true that anything Bush does will be temporary. But outside of that framework, there is really nothing very temporary about 18-24 months, and there is nothing strategically innovative about setting benchmarks for the Iraqi "government". So really it is what it is: an escalation of the existing strategy. Faced with a failing Iraq strategy, Bush will once again adapt by changing PR tactics.

If this is all just window dressing, why all this fuss and bother over PR tactics and framing? As it happens, Americans are dramatically more supportive of a temporary troop increase than they are of an escalation. (Note: still well under 50% of poll respondents support the temporary increase; it just looks like a lot when compared to Bush's approval rating on Iraq at 26%.) But here's the bottom line: people do not support this escalation, especially when they know what it really is. And well they shouldn't, since just like the rest of the administration's activities in Iraq, this one is horribly misguided.

It is difficult to tell precisely what the Democratic response will be, however. It seems as though their big bold breakthrough is going to involve a limp-wristed symbolic resolution. Yet it also sounds like legislators such as Ted Kennedy and John Murtha are planning on blocking it. Can you tell which option I prefer?

Bush has taken a classic Karl Rove tactic here: Democrats were elected in large part to stop the occupation of Iraq, and the first thing the Rove book says to do is attack your opponent right where he is strongest. Bush is therefore testing the Democrats to see who will show up. Will it be the milquetoast Democrats of 2002 and 2003? the ones that lost the 2002 midterms by playing the Republicans' jingoism game and then let themselves be fooled into supporting an unjustified war? Or will it be the principled Democrats who campaigned on standing up to Bush? the ones who eventually overcame their fears of being called troop-haters? If Democrats have truly grown and matured, they will support the troops by keeping them out of a civil war halfway across the globe. If they are ready to slide back into the cesspool they just emerged from, they will settle for a resolution.

Are Suburbs Immoral?

Two phenomena in particular cause me to wonder about the morality of suburbs. One is the fact that they seem to be hotbeds of the kind of conservative politics that I view as immoral. The second is that when it comes to addressing the biggest challenge our of young century, global warming, suburbs are part of the problem.

In the two maps of Chicago above (larger version available here), we see CO2 emissions displayed in full color - the more energy is used the redder the picture, and the less energy used the bluer. The left map is CO2 emitted per square mile. In this map Chicago looks like a humongous energy user, which jives well with anecdotal evidence about the Sears Tower (which supposedly uses as much electricity as a town of 35,000) and auto emissions and so forth. But in the map on the right, CO2 is measured on a per household basis, with red meaning more CO2 is produced per household and vice versa for blue. In this map it is clear that the denser areas of Chicago use much less energy per person, emit less CO2, and make less global warming impact.

In the Chicago region, and many others, the suburbs have been the force of conservatism, as compared to the liberalism of the urban core. Around here, that takes the form of machine politics in town and conservative values further out. In LA and DC, it takes the form of a large inner city black population versus affluent suburbs in Orange County and Virginia. The great exception may be San Francisco, where suburbs in Marin and Berkeley could give the most liberal regions in the rest of the country a run for their money.

Before I get too much further, let me define a couple of my terms. For my purposes, a prototypical suburb is a low density (one household per lot) town that is more or less coterminous with a combination of other such towns, countryside, and/or an urban core. There may even be a gate at the edge of the community. Energy use per person is high: life is more spread out, requiring more driving, and stand-alone dwellings do not have the same efficiencies of scale that large, multi-family structures in the city have. Suburbs often vote conservatively.

Everyone has his or her own definition or what's moral, but it is widely agreed that the essence of morality is taking other people into account when choosing actions; usually, concern is further directed to the well being of other people. Note that conservatism is recognized as being the ideology of individualism (e.g. private accounts for social security), which is the fundamental opposite of other-mindedness. This is part of the reason I consider conservatism immoral at heart.

It is often surmised that people in suburbs vote more conservatively because of issues like crime and the economy due to their possession of children and mortgages. I think it goes a little deeper than that, however. I believe that suburbs promote conservatism by removing a variety of impediments to selfish thinking that would otherwise be found in a more dense environment. To wit, as a suburban resident, you live in a detached house. You drive a car that you own, and you use it to take yourself (by yourself) between home and work along a roadway meant exclusively (or almost exclusively) for cars. You occasionally stop at the supermarket in the strip mall or your kid's soccer field. If you want to sunbathe or barbecue, you go in your own backyard. Other people only enter your world when they cut into your lane or steal your lunch out of the fridge. It isolates you and removes consciousness of other people from your usual frame of reference.

Living in a city, on the other hand, you are constantly exposed to other people and their problems, which can start to seem like your problems. If you HAVE to deal with that homeless guy on the bus, homelessness seems like your problem. If your kids get sick at school because their friends' families can't afford health insurance, health care seems like your problem. Even if you don't start feeling like you share problems, I think it makes a difference in your consciousness to just see that homeless people or people without health insurance are real people that are trying to live real lives. And for that matter, you may see how people interact with each other around pollution, and it may give you a better sense of the importance of environmental issues. Issues like how much energy you consume compared to someone else.

Some holes are appearing in the argument that suburbs are conservative, however. For example, Democratic Senator Jim Webb, newly elected in Virginia, probably owes his victory to the increasing size and liberalism of D.C. suburbs. However, much (though not all) of this growth is occurring in places like Ballston (pictured here), which is really nothing like the prototype I've described. It's more like a small city right outside a larger one - it features dense development clustered around transit hubs and puts residents close to jobs. Plus, on a more puerile level, Ballston is one of the all-time funniest/most homoerotic city names in the country, although it's only one vowel switch away from being dethroned by nearby Manassas.

At any rate, Ballston and the rest of suburban Virginia seem to be part of a national trend whereby so-called inner suburbs are becoming denser and more liberal. This appears to be true even in suburban Chicago, where the sixth Congressional district has always been a reliable Republican seat. The last couple of elections, though, Democrats (Cegelis, then Duckworth) have provided strong challenges. Places like DuPage County are still a long way from cleaning up their environmental behavior, however. This is where some doom sayers have started to seem cautiously optimistic.

This key is this phenomenon of peak oil, whereby oil will become so expensive as it runs out that it will become uneconomical for most of its current uses in a very short timespan. Many of its adherents envision a world where suburbs are simply no longer viable, doomed by the death of the personal automobile. This seems like a pretty safe bet to me, since (a) we know that oil will run out eventually and (b) we're not doing anything about it right now. To support the kind of population we have now, it seems clear that we will have to find a way to live more densely sooner or later.

And that brings us back to the environmental side. There is one guy in particular, Joel Kotkin, who addresses these issues frequently in various opinion pieces and articles for relatively mainstream publications. Kotkin is really more of a hack making a career as a "thinker" by peddling one contrarian idea: that predictions of the demise of suburbs are overblown because people like living in them. Telecommuting and the relocation of high-paying jobs to suburbs will make travel from suburbs into cities obsolete, thinks Kotkin.

But to a certain extent, I think Kotkin is arguing against a straw man. If pressed, I don't think any environmental alarmist, myself included, would really say that the very existence of a suburb is immoral and everyone needs to live in a city. Some even think that cities will be every bit as obsolete as suburbs, once the crisis hits. Denser, more efficient and transit-oriented suburbs would be (and are starting to be) delightful for both political and environmental concerns, in fact. It's the outmoded, automobile-based prototype of the suburb that breeds immorality, and that is the version that needs to go.

Meeting Tonight

At 6 PM in Barlett Lounge we're meeting (for all blog readers in Chicago).

We'll have Free Food from the delicious Cedars Restaurant along with some well deserved gloating.

Here's a flyer we've been putting up for the event:



Burn.

Protesting the First 100 Hours

An article in today's Washington Post highlights just how much work Democrats have ahead of them in their first 100 legislative hours and beyond. Winning the midterms was a terrific victory, but it seems that two Democratic groups in particular are at risk of regressing. The rank and file needs to embrace ways of solving problems that don't include protesting, and the Democratic elites needs to learn that there are other ways of seeking the middle than doing something half-way between what they actually want and what Republicans would do.

The protesters described in the WaPo piece are planning demonstrations surrounding the swearing in of the 110th Congress tomorrow. They will reportedly demand more focus on the things they think dragged on Bush's approval ratings the most in 2006: Iraq, civil liberties, and human rights. Holding these protests is tactically inadvisable.

For starters, the activists in question aren't giving Democratic leaders the chance they deserve. The 100 Hours initiative might as well be called the Low-Hanging Fruit Initiative. Everything on this list is so obvious and has so much support that there should be little opposition, and most things are relatively simple problems with similarly simple solutions.

• Lobbying reform - this is a gimme because it was a huge part of recent Republican corruption scandals, meaning its opponents will not be bold. It is sound policy because the Supreme Court keeps ruling that campaign contributions oughtn't to be regulated; lobbying reform is a great way to get around the regulation of contributions.
  
• Implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission - duh.
• Minimum wage increase - just about everyone thinks this is a good idea. If we are serious about promoting the social ideal that working is the ticket out of poverty, we need to make it so that working actually can lift you out of poverty.
• Fixing the Medicare drug supplement - only a drug company could appreciate restricting Medicare's power to negotiate drug prices. Even conservative values, which ostensibly favor market competition, ought to support this measure. In the real competitive marketplace, Wal*Mart is huge and can negotiate lower prices; Medicare is bigger than Wal*Mart, so restricting it from negotiating is tantamount to a price support, which true economic conservatives hate.
• Stem cell research - unless you define human life as beginning at the moment daddy first winks at mommy and she asks her roommate to walk her dog tomorrow morning, you favor this.
• Cutting interest rates for student loans - student loans are crucial for the middle class, so the original Republican ploy to save a couple hundred million by making them more expensive seems chintzy and shouldn't be hard to repeal.
• Energy independence - again, you'd have to be an oil company to think this was a bad idea.
• Fighting against privatizing social security - this isn't really a proactive agendum, but large majorities are opposed so why not put it on your list?
  

So Democrats have this list of easy-to-get things that everyone wants. They can use it to establish a baseline of productivity for themselves and build up a head of steam heading into the real battles over Iraq, rights, and liberties. The protesters are basically protesting the lack of their favorite projects on this particular list.

Tactically, this puts the protesters at least two steps behind. Back in the pre-1994 days, when Democrats had reliable and safe majorities in the House, liberal groups learned to try to claim as large a slice of the pie as they could by competing with other liberal groups. Everyone's project was the one that couldn't wait - abortion or gun control or the environment was the one big thing that had to be taken care of first. Liberal groups had to fight against each other for attention. That was Step 1.

Step 2 was the 12 recent years when Democrats were out of power. Liberal groups kept working against each other, and Republicans kept winning. Groups like NARAL and Sierra Club might support a Republican, like Lincoln Chafee, if the Democratic candidate didn't meet the requirements of their issue checklist. Meanwhile Republican groups were maintaining power by having weekly breakfast meetings with Grover Norquist. In these meetings, they would cooperate and take turns because they knew that eventually flag burning or tax cuts or anti-abortion would make it on the agenda. Step 3 for Democrats cannot be a return to Step 1.

But getting back to protest as a tactic, well, there is a time and place for everything and this is neither for protesting. Protesting works when (1) you are frozen out of conventional channels of power to which you have some claim and (2) you have something specific to accomplish, which is usually joining those channels.

• Works: Gandhi successfully protests British rule in India because Indians are not permitted to participate in shaping their national future, leaving protest as the only option for self-determination.
  
• Doesn't work: no amount of free concerts in the park is going to convince China to let you participate in the discussion about Tibet. Freeing it is probably a great idea, but U2 has no recognizable moral inside track on wanting it so.
  
• Works: Cindy Sheehan didn't end the Iraq occupation by camping out in Crawford, TX during August 05, but she did a great job of putting the pressure on the entrenched wielders of power because she had a legitimate claim to some answers about her dead son.
• Didn't work: protesting the beginning of the Iraq war failed to have any effect on the course of the war because peace supporters were not at a moral disadvantage in society, they were just being bowled over by better organized forces.
  

Protesting tomorrow will not do anything good either. At this point, the people doing it look childish because they are renouncing any power to work within the system - they could have legitimate influence over sympathetic lawmakers who are now in charge, but they choose to protest instead. They look childish because they want their issue dealt with now, before everybody else's issue. And they look childish because they just protest everything on a knee-jerk basis, protesting almost just for the sake of protesting. And looking childish plays right into W's trap of acting fatherly.

Here's the catch, though. Just because protesters are tactically wrong doesn't mean they are wrong about their fundamental assumption - Democrats need to pressure Bush on civil liberties, human rights, and Iraq. Democratic lawmakers are indeed threatening to abandon the strong moral principles that swept them into office by embracing the weak principles which kept them out for so long. Let's check in with Sen.-elect Ben Cardin (D-MD):

"The Democrats have to be careful not to fall into these [partisan] traps that I think paralyzed the Republicans," Cardin said.

Of course no one is arguing that Democrats should fall into traps. But what Cardin is saying comes dangerously close to the pre-2006 Democratic tactic of trying so hard not to offend anyone that everyone gets offended anyway. True, the Republicans were ultimately undone in part by their partisan zeal. But if everyone always agreed on everything, we wouldn't need leaders. Leadership comes from taking positions that not everyone completely agrees on.

Bush seems to recognize this truth, as he is banking on a "surge" in troop levels that is opposed by roughly two thirds of the country to rescue his occupation and his presidency. Democratic legislators need to rise to his challenge by vigorously opposing such an escalation. As Yousir puts it in his most recent special comment, saying "surge" implies temporary, when in reality it will be the most permanent thing conceivable for the next brave young man or woman to die in Iraq.

So everyone has a little cooling down and reassessing ahead of them. The protesters need to back off a little, but legislators need to remember the essential moral issues being protested as 2007 and 2008 unfold.