A Backward Glance

Quiz time: who is speaking?

‘All of us for years have been defending the presidential prerogative and regarding the Congress as a drag on policy. It is evident now that this delight in a strong presidency was based on the fact that strong presidents in American history have pursued policies of which one has approved. We are now confronted by the anomaly of a strong president using these arguments to pursue a course which can lead only to disaster. It is very hard to see how the Congress can restrain the presidential drive toward the enlargement of the war. Voting against military appropriations is both humanly and politically self-defeating. The only hope is to organize a broad political movement.’

Here’s a hint: the excerpt is from a personal journal written in 1967.

The author: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., confidante of the Kennedy and later the Johnson White House [reprinted in the New York Review of Books, Oct 11, 2007].

Even more revealing is an anecdote about a dinner with Hubert Humphrey when dissidents like Schlesinger were trying to get the vice president to stake out an independent position on the Vietnam war and pressure Johnson to change course. Humphrey, said Schlesinger, echoed the official line about ‘aggressive Chinese communism’ and evidenced a ‘dismaying lack of concern over the human wreckage’ caused by Johnson’s war policy. Sound like anyone you know?

The difference is that back then the seeds of a ‘broad political movement’ to end the war had germinated, and substantial popular opposition already had burst the confining bonds of the Democratic Party. Even so, it took another six years to bring the war to a close even though the deaths were not two dozen American soldiers a week but a couple hundred. Given the weakness of its contemporary counterpart, I would give the Iraq adventure a good ten more years, perhaps twelve, spanning both Democratic and Republican presidencies, before it is brought to its ignominious close.

As the Athenians learned to their dismay 2500 years ago, it’s easy to send the troops off to conquest in faraway lands, but far harder to get them back again in one piece and impossible to unspend the squandered treasure. The hen does not resume her egg.

Calleigh's Law

A sign that the CSI franchise is well into its decadent phase is its increasingly desperate focus on the private lives of the main characters, who were never central to the shows’ appeal. I gather that someone in Hollywood cribbed the idea from the various true-crime series on the Discovery Channel like “Medical Detectives” and “The New Detectives,” whose high-tech analysis of neat clues against the backdrop of human baseness and criminality made them irresistible. The cheesy set-ups, wooden acting, phony reconstructions and interviews with charmingly oddball lab technicians gave the original cable shows a gritty verité that the fictionalized version could never hope to pull off.

Instead, CSI turned the goofy, backroom dirt-comber nerds, Luminol sprayers and DNA salvagers into glamorpusses with centerfold bodies, and that’s okay because it’s a show, after all. And they added space-age toys that turned these golden youths into magicians, along with souped-up plots that got increasingly baroque and then formulaically weird as the seasons rolled by. But the kiss of death was planted when we started to hear about the bombshell lady cops’ childhood traumas and dysfunctional boyfriends. Now the shows are morphing into kitsch and are doomed to join Law & Order in TNT rerun eternity sooner rather than later.

But it was surreal to see the beginning of last night’s episode with Calleigh the steely avenger on CSI: Miami facing disciplinary proceedings for a clear case of self-defense while simultaneously watching the non-stop parade of real cops shooting real people on the New York local newscasts. The incidents are endless lately, and their plots look depressingly formulaic too: NYPD officers blast away; young, black males lie dead on the street. Some of the cases look more ambiguous than others, but the cumulative effect is a sense that Giuliani is still mayor and that the police force has a free hand to fire at anything that moves.

TV cops are portrayed as well-meaning types who get hit with unfair criticism while just doing their jobs. [To be fair I suppose ‘The Shield’ counts as an exception.] I once wrote for a tabloid detective magazine about a murder, and the editor instructed me to ‘always make the cops look good.’ I understand the need for morality plays in which Good triumphs over Evil. But we need nuance and justice, too, not just cozy cliché, both in art and especially in life.

Could it be. . . Satan?

I have hesitated to make fun of Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue raising his arms to the Most High on the steps of the capitol to ask for drought relief out of fear of offending any thrones, powers, dominions or archangels, i.e. the beings known to be partial to suburban strip malls and most likely to heed his prayer. However, I am wondering if in case there is a sudden weird dip in temperature leading to a hailstorm or if tempest-like winds blow in from the Atlantic whether Georgians will reach the obvious conclusion that Governor Perdue is consorting with Satanic forces.

This might be occurring even if he is unaware of it. After all, many old Bolsheviks were found by Stalin to have been cooperating with saboteurs, Whites, kulaks and all sorts of nefarious fifth-columnists for years without even realizing it. He was wise enough to allow them to confess, so that the workers' state could correct the dangerous tendencies these turncoats unwittingly had caused. I think if there is a hailstorm or even just a continuation of the drought that leaves Atlanta bone-dry and drinking its own peepee that Perdue should be led by the appropriate representatives of Jesus Christ to don sackcloth and ashes and publicly repent, perhaps through voluntary crucifixion on the statehouse lawn. I mean, one can’t be too careful when dealing with the wrath of the Holy Spirit.

Unseen Attack Ad

I wonder what kinds of TV ads we would be seeing today if a Democratic president were in the White House and the Republicans were on the sidelines. Wouldn’t the failure to catch Osama bin Laden be People’s Exhibit A?

Or what about a question like this for the presidential debates: Senator Clinton (or Senator Obama or Senator Dodd or Congressman Kucinic): Why haven’t you criticized Bush for failing to capture Osama bin Laden?

Or this follow-up: Why is it that reporters can find bin Laden and interview him while the Pakistani government can’t seize him?

I gather the answer is that everyone knows that Gen. ‘Perv’ Musharraf, dictator extraordinaire of Pakistan, knows where bin Laden is but is either so weak or so complicit with the Islamic radicals himself that he doesn’t dare bring in the top trophy for fear of an even worse rebellion than the one he’s already got on his hands. Wouldn’t that be a good case for handing Bush his butt on a plate? It’s simple, it’s clear, it’s undeniable—from a propaganda point of view, it seems unbeatable.

[Creepy music, grainy b&w photos of Bush grinning with Musharraf at the Crawford ranch.] Voiceover: ‘He gets billions of our tax dollars, but he refuses to arrest Osama bin Laden [picture of same grinning, towers collapsing]. Why is George Bush so friendly with this man?’ You wouldn’t even need to buy a 30-second spot, 15 would do.

If the Republicans were out of power, they wouldn’t be shy about drumming up a wave of hysteria over this abject failure even if it screwed up the war. Why are the Democrats such flame-outs? It’s a serious, i.e., not a rhetorical, question.

Headline of the Week: Over a rundown in The Independent of London on the obscenely lucrative new career of Britain’s former PM: ‘The Blair Rich Project.’ Ha ha. It notes that he earned 237,000 pounds (that’s a half-million of our debased U.S. dollars) for a 20-minute banquet speech to a boatload of Chinese gangsters. The article also won second prize with the kicker: ‘After-dinner Mint.’

Life & Destiny

That’s the lame title of one of the best books I’ve ever read, and it’s not new. It’s the twentieth century War & Peace, written in the 1950s by Vasily Grossman, who fell afoul of Stalin like any decent person. The book was smuggled out of the USSR after the KGB destroyed all known copies and even confiscated Grossman’s typewritter ribbon to try to suppress the work. Luckily, they failed. I’ve been sick most of the week, so it was a good moment to delve into a thoroughly absorbing (and long) work, which deserves far more attention.

Having just seen the masterful seven-hour Soviet version of War & Peace in two sittings at Film Forum, I was attuned to the rhythm and sweep of the original work and the way it wove the personal stories of Natalya, Prince Andrei, Pierre and the Rostov family into the backdrop of the Napoleonic invasion and the great battles of Lodi and Borodino. Grossman’s 900-page treatment of World War Two does the same thing with the battle for Stalingrad as the centerpiece and a similarly huge cast for his epic ambitions.

Having grown up on WW2 movies made from the American perspective, it’s an eye-opener to see how the individuals fighting on the Eastern Front had to navigate not only the murderous Nazis but also their own bloody-minded handlers weaned on the Stalinist poison and full of paranoia, stupidity and brutality, as well as plenty of old-fashioned anti-Semitism. Some of the book echoes Solzhenitsyn, but that hero of the post-Stalin thaw comes off as single-note and dull compared to Grossman. And I’ve read just about all the Holocaust accounts in existence but never actually accompanied victims into the gas chamber as Grossman does his fictionalized Ukrainian Jews. One is reminded of Primo Levi’s statement that the true story of Auschwitz could only be written by those who did not return.

Grossman thought the book stood a chance of publication during the Khrushchev thaw and tried to bring it out. The regime’s chief ideologue disabused him of that notion by saying it would have to wait 200 years—a backhanded recognition of its stature. In a letter Grossman said he wanted to ‘speak for those who lie in the earth.’ Ironically, no one could read his book until he had joined them.

Star-Spangled Burden

There’s a peculiar slant to the budget debates taking place now on whether we should continue to pour a trillion dollars into wars of conquest and attempts to seize other people’s resources or instead see about creating a more humane polity in our own 10 million square miles. But the choices are never cast in those crude terms because the consensus at the top from one end of the liberal/conservative, Democratic/Republican spectrum to the other remains that what’s gone on in the last six years in Iraq has something to do with our security in the face of ‘terrorism’ rather than old-fashioned colonial conquest.

In fact, the invasion of Iraq under false pretenses in 2003 has much more in common with the seizure of the Congo in 1885 by King Leopold of Belgium for its rubber trees than with any Pearl Harbor-like repelling of the 9/11 attacks, which provided the convenient excuse. The leaders of the Democratic ‘opposition’ struggle to mount an effective counter-discourse on the ongoing war due in part to their complicity with the underlying phony rationale.

Capitol Hill critics talk about the ludicrous mismanagement of the war and its frightful outcomes, but they can’t bring themselves to expose and denounce the original motivations for it. Bush’s defenders can then hallucinate in public about the war’s achievements and insist that the defeatist Democrats just stick it out a little longer so ‘victory’ can be achieved. No one questions that this illusory victory, i.e. successful conquest, would be a good thing.

As a result, solid liberals like Tom Harkin of Iowa appear in the sad role of fighting for health, education and infrastructure spending at home by complaining that Bush is squandering a fortune ‘giving’ the Iraqis all those things. Sure, Bush is tossing a trillion bucks down a hole, but Harkin and his peers should know better than to pander to American selfishness and to use the horribly abused Iraqis as whipping boy.

That kind of whiny critique of foreign aid used to be the stock-in-trade of the UN-baiting reactionaries. It’s one of the many ironies of the current situation that now it’s the Republicans who insist on giving Bush billions to waste overseas and who turn a blind eye to the stealing, graft and screw-ups that the not-so-well-meaning projects engender. What will be next? A Republican movement to expand the UNDP?

Despite their weaknesses the Republican’s monotonous flogging of ‘winning’ in Iraq and accomplishing the mission and staying the course and the rest of the repetitive drivel is hard to combat if you’re a Democrat secretly hoping that American companies eventually do get their mitts on the Iraqi oilfields. I suppose it’s unrealistic to expect our two parties to produce even a single proponent of a foreign policy based on real respect for the sovereignty of other nations and their people’s rights to the usufruct of their own belongings, including the oil underneath their sands. So it’s up to mere citizens to fill in the yawning gap.

All Things Being Equal. . .

An episode little noticed outside of the world of gay advocacy illustrates how the maturation of gay politics brings in its wake both advances and depressingly consistent displays of bipedism. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) was to be an historic declaration of equality for people of whatever sexual orientation, and the original version included gender expression as well. But in some backroom deals in the days preceding the vote, that tranny-friendly language was excised, and the watered-down version passed the House November 7 by a vote of 235 to 184.

Now one can take a variety of positions on the best tactics for achieving equality on this hot-button topic, but what is completely depressing and yet totally predictable was the dirty dealing that went on to split the gay advocacy camp—led by none other than the biggest gay advocacy organization, the Human Rights Campaign. The HRC provided the cover the nervous Democratic leadership needed to take out the tranny-friendly language and pass the weaker version. Smiling pictures of Nancy Pelosi and the HRC lobbyists followed, which will sure look great on the next fund-raising appeals of each.

Ironically, the smoke-filled-room deal to stiff the transgendered will have no practical impact since the entire bill is guaranteed to draw a Bush veto even if it could get through the Senate. So the LGBT camp was split for a cheap headline. Worse yet, the whole rancid double-cross was done behind the backs of the rest of the advocate groups.

Some people will say that the transgender issue is small beans compared to the ‘larger’ cause of gay and lesbian equality. But it’s precisely the debate over what constitutes a ‘real’ man or woman that makes people so nervous about homosexuality in the first place. It’s reminiscent of the early skirmishes among feminists about whether it would be wise to include lesbian demands in their program for fear that everyone would assume feminists are all dykes. That turned out not to be true, didn’t it? But a lot of people made those arguments at the time and tried to steer the movement into a ‘safe’ position by stiffing gay women and marginalizing them.

I’ve been away far too long to know all the skinny behind this, but a casual observer can see from HRC’s enormous Washington headquarters that they know how the money game is played. And given the many fine examples we’ve seen lately of Democratic collaboration with the worst reactionaries, such as the Feinstein/Schumer maneuver to get Mike ‘What’s Torture?’ Mukasey confirmed as Attorney General, one shouldn’t be surprised to see similar tactics applied anywhere and everywhere else. Once a social movement has arisen, the full-time opportunists will always figure out how to ride the wave to accumulate power and influence and then turn against it for personal or institutional gain. That’s nothing new, and now we have proof that gay bipeds are just like all the other ones. Vive l’égalité!