While the candidates—all the candidates—were showering us with fuzzy-warm TV spots of happy multiethnic crowds bursting with finely-tuned emotion and American flags waving in the breeze, the Bush White House was getting ready to go back on the offensive—something for which neither Obama nor Clinton really have the knack.
Not content with getting a pass from Senate Democrats on the loathesome Michael Mukasey, who refused to condemn torture when nominated to be the nation’s top legal officer, Bush went one better Thursday: he said torture’s just great.
But the best joke is the faux shock that followed.
There’s something brilliant about this counterintuitive strategy from someone who is allegedly on the political ropes. And yet it’s always Bush who determines the playing field and the terms of the debate. When pushed up against the wall by the Baker-Hamilton report on the war, for example, he told the wise-men coalition advising a prudent pullback in Iraq to wipe his thighs with it and announced he was going in deeper.
It’s a pity those in the misnamed ‘opposition’ camp don’t take a lesson from this eat-me-raw approach to politics. Instead, we get whiny outrage from the fully complicit Dianne Feinstein and other Demowimps. “This is a black mark on the United States,” moaned the California senator, pretending she had nothing to do with it. Recall that it was Feinstein and my own ophidian senator, Charles Schumer, who broke with the Democrats and handed Bush a success on Mukasey’s nomination despite all the grotesque waffling on torture.
Sorry, Deedee, they ain’t waffling no more.
Given the morally repugnant debate about when torture might be kinda okay—a debate that reached as far as the pages of The Nation magazine in 2001—it’s bracingly clarifying that Bush should demand to bring it back given the ‘right circumstances.’ After all, that’s what everyone argued at the time and many still do: that the thumbscrew and the rack should be allowed, along with neutron bombs and, hey, why not?—smallpox and anthrax cannisters, to stave off a hypothetical threat.
That’s because we don’t really love freedom, despite W’s rhetoric. We love safety.
Furthermore, we only object to weapons of mass destruction when they’re in the hands of our supposed enemies, which is why, my esteemed fellow bipeds, they’ll proliferate and persist forever.
The intellectual abetting of torture that dominated our polity from September 2001 onward is still with us. Bush is only the most egregious example, which is why his autistic refusal to live in our world remains perversely triumphant.
Friday, 8 February 2008
Thursday, 7 February 2008
Life as a Biped
I get my hair cut at a peculiar little barbering school on Third Avenue near NYU full of very serious immigrant men from Russia, Jamaica, Honduras, Egypt and you-name-it. They’re adorable with their kits and their accents, asking each other’s advice and barely cracking a smile as they try not to nick you in the ear.
Once in a while one of them will engage the customers in conversation although, humor being the last thing you pick up in a new language, one doesn’t get far trying to horse around. The cut costs $5, and they seem quite happy with the $3 tip I throw in—see, you can still get a bargain in New York.
The best part, though, is just seeing all these newcomers trying to nail down a trade so they can have an income and a life in their new surroundings, amidst which you can witness them groping forward in the most winningly awkward way. The customers are another smorgasbord of ethnicities, and it reminded me of the segregationist argument from the 1960s that white-only barber shops existed because cutting African-style hair was just such a different technique. Sure, that’s why Sergey, Ahmed and Mario learn it in ten lessons.
The guy next to me smiled placidly while getting a clipper-cut down to his bald head that looked for all the world like a scalp massage. Guys, go forth and multiply, and let hair of all colors fall to the earth.
***
Oh yes, and Hillary looked pretty tough to beat on Tuesday, reminding me of my estrangement from the biped species. Several people in my daily environment were quite pleased even though they are not of a warlike nature nor particularly fond of the little adventure in Iraq she continues to quietly endorse. Politics is the art of doing one thing and projecting another on the large screen behind you, so I suppose we should be impressed with those talents of hers, at least.
***
It was 68 in New York yesterday, breaking the former record by 10 degrees. This is some consolation for those who do not believe in reincarnation—by the time things melt completely, we should be well dead and not have to come back to endure the consequences.
Once in a while one of them will engage the customers in conversation although, humor being the last thing you pick up in a new language, one doesn’t get far trying to horse around. The cut costs $5, and they seem quite happy with the $3 tip I throw in—see, you can still get a bargain in New York.
The best part, though, is just seeing all these newcomers trying to nail down a trade so they can have an income and a life in their new surroundings, amidst which you can witness them groping forward in the most winningly awkward way. The customers are another smorgasbord of ethnicities, and it reminded me of the segregationist argument from the 1960s that white-only barber shops existed because cutting African-style hair was just such a different technique. Sure, that’s why Sergey, Ahmed and Mario learn it in ten lessons.
The guy next to me smiled placidly while getting a clipper-cut down to his bald head that looked for all the world like a scalp massage. Guys, go forth and multiply, and let hair of all colors fall to the earth.
***
Oh yes, and Hillary looked pretty tough to beat on Tuesday, reminding me of my estrangement from the biped species. Several people in my daily environment were quite pleased even though they are not of a warlike nature nor particularly fond of the little adventure in Iraq she continues to quietly endorse. Politics is the art of doing one thing and projecting another on the large screen behind you, so I suppose we should be impressed with those talents of hers, at least.
***
It was 68 in New York yesterday, breaking the former record by 10 degrees. This is some consolation for those who do not believe in reincarnation—by the time things melt completely, we should be well dead and not have to come back to endure the consequences.
Tuesday, 5 February 2008
An underground moment
I really had to track down the Obama headquarters to get a button and wear it the last 24 hours that it mattered, i.e. today. Heading up the east side it attracted subtle looks from the white people who live over there, non-committal in that New York way. It took a trip up the island to my neighborhood past Harlem and Washington Heights to get a rise out of anybody. There, a black kid jazzed me and mocked the button, saying Obama was going to be creamed by Hillary, his obvious favorite. ‘You’re going to loooooooose!’ were his exact words.
To recap: the middle-aged white guy wears the Obama button, and the black teenager is ready to do battle for the Caucasian lady from the suburbs. It’s superficial, of course, but it says something about the state of racial politics in our city. I say hooray.
To recap: the middle-aged white guy wears the Obama button, and the black teenager is ready to do battle for the Caucasian lady from the suburbs. It’s superficial, of course, but it says something about the state of racial politics in our city. I say hooray.
Monday, 4 February 2008
Sign me up
All sentient beings know that the New York Giants staged a stunning upset Sunday night in which our favorite modest and slightly goofy quarterback totally kept his cool, broke free of four tacklers and launched two impossible but successful forward passes, the latter ending in the end zone for a true Cinderella triumph.
I don’t pay much attention to these spectacles, but it was delightful to see the unexpected happen in the last few weeks as the lowly Giants picked themselves up from a bad season start, reshuffled their ranks and gelled as a team based on some sort of rookie enthusiasm and lack of awareness that they couldn’t do it.
Dare this be an omen of things to come?
Barack Obama was not my first choice, and I still find him an unknown quantity. He could be a disaster as president though at this point, who cares? Worse isn’t in the dictionary. His policy formulations may be a little fluffy, and his experience limited (which counts as a plus these days in any case, given the hoarier examples). But we know—oh, do we know—that the others who paint prettier pictures will promptly burn them in the fireplace once they become inconvenient. Ergo, it matters not.
Curmudgeonly skepticism aside, Barack clearly sets people on fire, especially including people who arrived on earth three decades after I did. God knows we need something fresh and new, and Obama’s what the kids want. I’m down with that.
I don’t pay much attention to these spectacles, but it was delightful to see the unexpected happen in the last few weeks as the lowly Giants picked themselves up from a bad season start, reshuffled their ranks and gelled as a team based on some sort of rookie enthusiasm and lack of awareness that they couldn’t do it.
Dare this be an omen of things to come?
Barack Obama was not my first choice, and I still find him an unknown quantity. He could be a disaster as president though at this point, who cares? Worse isn’t in the dictionary. His policy formulations may be a little fluffy, and his experience limited (which counts as a plus these days in any case, given the hoarier examples). But we know—oh, do we know—that the others who paint prettier pictures will promptly burn them in the fireplace once they become inconvenient. Ergo, it matters not.
Curmudgeonly skepticism aside, Barack clearly sets people on fire, especially including people who arrived on earth three decades after I did. God knows we need something fresh and new, and Obama’s what the kids want. I’m down with that.
Sunday, 3 February 2008
Unscientific Diner Poll
My cousins gathered at a diner last night, and of course the Democratic Party primary in New York came up. First we commented on who is likely to win, and the consensus was that Hillary has a strong edge given her significant base in the state as its senator.
But when we moved onto whether or not each of us would actually vote for her, the discussion changed. Without abusing their confidence with specifics, I can say that the appeal of a female candidate to my female relatives is overshadowed by Hillary’s love affair with military force.
There are other issues, but her vote to pursue the Iraqi invasion and her continuing enthusiasm for that adventure has pushed my liberal family away from the Clintons, despite their positive feelings about the Clinton era. If you believe the poll numbers showing that the war has been eclipsed by economic concerns in the minds of the electorate, you wouldn’t expect this topic to sway votes. But it does.
Meanwhile, if John McCain is the Republican’s front-runner, those guys are in serious trouble. His line about the Democrats ‘waving the white flag of surrender’ is true enough but only if you apply it to their supine posture upon the approach of George Bush. The idea that people are going to perceive the eventual opposition candidate as a tool of bin Laden sounds as crackpot as it is, and added to McCain’s moral obtuseness, sets the stage for an electoral wipeout. Let’s see if he has the same slobbering glee about killing people from the air when he’s on the business end of the massacre.
Crystal balls are notoriously unreliable, but to suggest that people have forgotten about the ongoing catastrophe Bush brought us in the Middle East and the trillion dollars of our money that he’s spent on it is nuts. I see no evidence that a stimulus gift bag to be spent at Wal-Mart is going to save his friends’ behinds in November.
But when we moved onto whether or not each of us would actually vote for her, the discussion changed. Without abusing their confidence with specifics, I can say that the appeal of a female candidate to my female relatives is overshadowed by Hillary’s love affair with military force.
There are other issues, but her vote to pursue the Iraqi invasion and her continuing enthusiasm for that adventure has pushed my liberal family away from the Clintons, despite their positive feelings about the Clinton era. If you believe the poll numbers showing that the war has been eclipsed by economic concerns in the minds of the electorate, you wouldn’t expect this topic to sway votes. But it does.
Meanwhile, if John McCain is the Republican’s front-runner, those guys are in serious trouble. His line about the Democrats ‘waving the white flag of surrender’ is true enough but only if you apply it to their supine posture upon the approach of George Bush. The idea that people are going to perceive the eventual opposition candidate as a tool of bin Laden sounds as crackpot as it is, and added to McCain’s moral obtuseness, sets the stage for an electoral wipeout. Let’s see if he has the same slobbering glee about killing people from the air when he’s on the business end of the massacre.
Crystal balls are notoriously unreliable, but to suggest that people have forgotten about the ongoing catastrophe Bush brought us in the Middle East and the trillion dollars of our money that he’s spent on it is nuts. I see no evidence that a stimulus gift bag to be spent at Wal-Mart is going to save his friends’ behinds in November.
Saturday, 2 February 2008
Race, the Race and War
What is the first task of government? Bush would certainly argue that it is to provide security, even if that means dismantling 200-year-old civil protections put in place to guard against absolutism.
Given that vision, wouldn’t a better yardstick by which to judge the Iraqi war situation be the security of the Iraqi people in their lives and persons, instead of, say, the casualty figures among the occupiers? Thursday’s new round of massive terrorist bombings in Baghdad’s public markets is a reminder that whatever else the invasion did or does in the future, it has failed in this primary responsibility of maintaining public order.
The mantra coming from this administration and now from the candidates to continue it has been, We keep you safe. If you believe the invasion of Iraq was part of that mission, then you willingly traded the physical integrity of those 22 million people for your own comfort—rather an un-Christian attitude.
Be that as it may, what can we assume about the Iraqis feelings toward the Green-Zone state that ostensibly rules them? By the Bushite criteria, we could safely conclude that they find it so far off the scale of legitimacy as to be laughable, were there anything droll to be found there.
I engage in this exercise only to offer a reminder that the initiation and pursuit of this war was also about race, just as was the assault on Vietnam in its time. As our country contemplates the possibility of a non-white president for the first time in its history, there will be a lot of discussion of how far we have come from the color bar and de jure ethnic separation. That was racist, and the system was dismantled; but its spirit lives on in our vision of the world and its peoples.
Given that vision, wouldn’t a better yardstick by which to judge the Iraqi war situation be the security of the Iraqi people in their lives and persons, instead of, say, the casualty figures among the occupiers? Thursday’s new round of massive terrorist bombings in Baghdad’s public markets is a reminder that whatever else the invasion did or does in the future, it has failed in this primary responsibility of maintaining public order.
The mantra coming from this administration and now from the candidates to continue it has been, We keep you safe. If you believe the invasion of Iraq was part of that mission, then you willingly traded the physical integrity of those 22 million people for your own comfort—rather an un-Christian attitude.
Be that as it may, what can we assume about the Iraqis feelings toward the Green-Zone state that ostensibly rules them? By the Bushite criteria, we could safely conclude that they find it so far off the scale of legitimacy as to be laughable, were there anything droll to be found there.
I engage in this exercise only to offer a reminder that the initiation and pursuit of this war was also about race, just as was the assault on Vietnam in its time. As our country contemplates the possibility of a non-white president for the first time in its history, there will be a lot of discussion of how far we have come from the color bar and de jure ethnic separation. That was racist, and the system was dismantled; but its spirit lives on in our vision of the world and its peoples.
Friday, 1 February 2008
Change
We will hear from our friends and acquaintances over the next four days—let us fervently hope not the next ten months—endless variations on the theme that George Bush has been a disaster and yet two of his main enablers are the solution to it.
On Iraq: Hillary Clinton is indistinguishable from GWB on the war except possibly insofar as she might have been less incompetent at managing it. Bill never criticized the conquest while it was gestating, despite his baldfaced lie to the contrary. When Bush made the silly statement a week ago that al-Qaeda is ‘on the run’ in Iraq at the State of the Union address, HC lept to her feet to applaud. The Clintons are hawks in sheep’s clothing, and it is impossible to both support them and think that the conquest of Iraq was a catastrophic and sinful act. The two do not go together.
On gender: I refer to the Clintons in the plural because it is obvious that they are preparing us for a co-presidency. Depending on how that dubious experiment plays out, Hillary’s election could easily be a setback for the status of women in this country.
On domestic policy: the Democratic centrists represented by the Clintons have done nothing to reverse any of the unhealthy trends in the nation’s economy. Even the radical infusion of the Christian religion into the public sphere barely registers on their radar—witness the bribery offered to the Republicans with more ‘abstinence-only’ funding for schools. They stood by while Bush appointed more reactionary justices to the Supreme Court. The list is endless.
If this pair is swept into the nomination on Tuesday, it means that for all their moaning and head-shaking, the Democratic-leaning half of the country is not really all that bothered by the direction W has taken us during his eight miserable years. They may also be surprised to discover that when offered the choice in November between two Republicans, voters opt for a Republican.
On Iraq: Hillary Clinton is indistinguishable from GWB on the war except possibly insofar as she might have been less incompetent at managing it. Bill never criticized the conquest while it was gestating, despite his baldfaced lie to the contrary. When Bush made the silly statement a week ago that al-Qaeda is ‘on the run’ in Iraq at the State of the Union address, HC lept to her feet to applaud. The Clintons are hawks in sheep’s clothing, and it is impossible to both support them and think that the conquest of Iraq was a catastrophic and sinful act. The two do not go together.
On gender: I refer to the Clintons in the plural because it is obvious that they are preparing us for a co-presidency. Depending on how that dubious experiment plays out, Hillary’s election could easily be a setback for the status of women in this country.
On domestic policy: the Democratic centrists represented by the Clintons have done nothing to reverse any of the unhealthy trends in the nation’s economy. Even the radical infusion of the Christian religion into the public sphere barely registers on their radar—witness the bribery offered to the Republicans with more ‘abstinence-only’ funding for schools. They stood by while Bush appointed more reactionary justices to the Supreme Court. The list is endless.
If this pair is swept into the nomination on Tuesday, it means that for all their moaning and head-shaking, the Democratic-leaning half of the country is not really all that bothered by the direction W has taken us during his eight miserable years. They may also be surprised to discover that when offered the choice in November between two Republicans, voters opt for a Republican.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)