Religious Right?

I've read plenty of analyses of how the American conservative right captured the hearts and minds of the faithful. These have been mostly discussions of the tactics; appeals and alignment on social issues (abortion, women's rights, gay rights), making sure that each and every Republican candidate makes the appropriate obsequious noises to god and country, prayer breakfasts and prayer meetings. What I haven't heard adequately explained is why.

Conservatives - politicians in general - are no more or less religious than the rest of us. In fact, given the level of the compromises made to their values daily, I would argue that as a class politicians may be less religious than just about any group in the country except scientists. And citizens who profess faith to one of the major religious cults and their offshoots - supposedly based on the good deeds of some ahistorical figure - should be looking to ally themselves with the party that makes care for their fellow citizens a prime plank in their platform. To borrow one of their own phrases, "what would Jesus do?" So how did that all go so wrong?

The Republican Party has become the party of the white, wealthy elite; that is self obvious. And yet, through the tactics I mentioned above they have captured the reactionary religious factions of the deep south and in a fair bit of the rest of the country. Getting these folks to consistently vote against their own and their children's best interests. But why? Their aims are not the same - at least not the aims they both profess daily. So the Republicans have thrown on the cloak of religion to capture a pretty large voting block, but to those who observe closely, these two groups just don't fit well together. What is it about the faithful do Republicans want (besides their vote)?

Their blind faith.

If someone can believe - against all scientific evidence to the contrary - that the world was created in six days just 10,000 years ago they will believe in Trickle Down Economics. If they believe that the Koran was dictated directly into the ears of a first century man in the Levant by god they will believe that the President was born in Kenya. If they believe that they can speak in tongues with little flames dancing over their heads, they will believe - despite mountains of evidence - that anthropocentric global climate change is a hoax. If they believe that an early first century Jewish teacher - who may or may not have ever actually existed - was the literal "son of god" they'll believe that corporations are people. If they believe any or all of the above, they'll believe just about anything you tell them.

That's why the Right has courted the religious in America. Their ideas and theories have been tested and found wanting many times. They were losing voters; they could see the future and it was not all white men nodding their heads sagely at the preachings of rich white men at the head of businesses looking only to improve the bottom line. But they were not in a hurry to let go of their power or their money. Maybe other writers have come to the same conclusion but I'm sure the editors of major publications would never let this be written for public consumption. In any case, I've never read this anywhere else. But it makes perfect sense. In a twisted kind of way.

And it scares the hell out of me.

Americans Are Stupid

A community center is not a mosque. Yet liberals have allowed the Tea Baggers and the rest of the xenophobes on the right to frame the discussion around a "mosque at Ground Zero." As Keith Olbermann stated, it's not a mosque and it's not at Ground Zero. But Keith is the only person of note saying so.

If the (absolute) least common denominator gets to set the frame how is it possible to have an intelligent conversation?

I'm Undecided About Undecideds

Who, in this age of instant and pervasive information, could really - honestly - be undecided about who to vote for this year?

Even Osama bin Laden knows enough about the candidates to have decided he likes the prospects of fighting us into bankruptcy better if McCain's in office. From his famous (apocryphal) cave in Pakistan he's been able to garner enough data to make a decision. So how is it that there are still Americans who are undecided?

I thought I had made up my mind that they must be idiots. Then I decided that maybe they are what they call "low-information voters." But I sort of figured that was just another name for an idiot.

Now I can't make up my mind. What do you think?

What Constitution?

Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann have gotten lots of mileage out of the fact that neither Sarah Palin nor McCain spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer could state the Constitutional role of the Vice President. While this in itself is disturbing - if for no other reason than it's reasonable to expect an applicant for a job to at least know what that job entails.

But, really, we shouldn't be surprised.

Just think of all the other aspects of our Constitution and our laws that Republicans have ignored over the past eight years:

1. Habeus Corpus? Check.
2. Extra-legal prisons on foreign soil? Check.
3. Trashing the Fourth Amendment? Check.
4. Illegal war? Check.
5. Lying to the American people? Check.
6. Suppressing and/or stealing votes? Check.

Well, you get the idea.

So while I appreciate Matthews' and Olbermann's humor, I just can't be surprised anymore. I can only hope that we can win in November with a large enough margin to swamp any attempts at stealing another election and we can move on towards healing.

But - just because we can - add to the comments your favorite "extra-Constitutional" activities of the last eight years. Don't be shy, there are plenty to go around!

Reflections on Race

I have to admit that growing up my family was pretty racist - in that casual, always been like that way - and in many respects are still that way today. Perhaps not as baldly as I remember growing up, but it's still not unusual for my parents to use the "N-word." Having grown up in Florida during the 60's and 70's - I was born in 1961 - I picked up a fair bit of that mindset. There were racial fights in my high school even in my Senior year, 1979. I'll admit to using racial epithets back then.

Entering the Military Academy placed me in a completely different environment. Not only is the Academy in New York, far from the open bigotry of the South, but the Army had been integrated for decades by that time and I worked and studied side-by-side with people of all races and faiths. In fact, like generations of soldiers before me, I had to learn to trust the person next to me with my life - regardless of what they looked like. Unlike the African-American "acquaintances" I had in high school, I made my first black friends.

As you can probably guess, it was Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama that brought on these memories. For the most part, until this year, I had mostly been able to forget that our country still has large areas where racism - the kind I grew up with - still holds sway. I am occasionally reminded of it when I visit my hometown when one of my parents or one of their friends lets slip the N-word as though it were nothing. Living in New York it's sometimes easy to forget about all of that.

I had thought that America had moved past (most of) such a shameful past.

Obama's campaign has been many things to many people; hopeful, inspirational, exciting. But it has also been an uncomfortable reminder of things in our past. And such reminders can provoke many of the opposites of these admirable things. Unfortunately, those opposites have been on display this year and most especially in the past couple of weeks. Think of Michele Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchannan, Palin's rally attendees; think of those who pass on the whisper campaign of racial and religious fear-of-other. Saddest of all, think of John McCain who lets all of this happen in his campaign, on his watch.

Perhaps the most important thing that an Obama win in two weeks could do is to move us closer to a time when we really have moved past such a shameful past. I now believe that it's been premature of commentators to say that we've come to a post-racial society. Maybe, we can actually - finally - get there.

I'm hopeful.

I Am a Liberal and a Democrat - But I'm Not Anti-American

If you watched Hardball tonight, perhaps you saw the segment with Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation and Republican Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. If you did and you're not as angry as I am, then you weren't paying attention.

Bachmann said that the press should "investigate" all the Democrats in Congress for being - and I shit you not - Anti-American. This was after a discussion of the tenuous connection between Barack Obama and William Ayers. She failed to appreciate the nuance that Obama was only eight years old when Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground or that when Obama was working with him he was a lauded member of the Chicago education system.

No, in the new Republican formulation - trotted out daily by the Caribou Barbie - any of us who disagree with the rabid Republican right are now Anti-American. Any of us who's business or charitable acquaintances were at some point in the past any less than pristine, Republicans are Anti-American. And a member of the US Senate has just said so.

Michele Bachmann, meet Joe McCarthy.

Bachmann, despite Vanden Heuvel's backing away from the word, is a fascist.

The Biggest Rat of All Jumps Ship

Now that Bush's Brain has abandoned the ship of state where does that leave the Bush of very little brain?

Does this mean that Uncle Karl avoids Congressional subpoenas? Does this mean that he's no longer protected by the ever-expanding sphere of Executive Priviledge?

Will this leave Bush literally running around like a chicken with its head cut off? Although, really, how would we know the difference.

And to Rove, leaving the People's White House; "don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out."

Oh, and this: "see you in court."

Vick's Got Nothing On BushCo. for Dog Abuse

If this administration were a dog it would be dead from whatever the animal version of shaken-baby syndrome is. At every turn Bush, Cheney and their coterie of Dementors has wagged the hell out of the dog with upgraded terror color alerts and bogus warnings.

Perhaps it was news that Bush is now less popular than the Head Death Eater Cheney, but suddenly - from out of nowhere - terrorists are conducting "dry-runs," practicing how to sneak explosives aboard airliners. Of course there are no specifics and TSA workers are told to watch out for "ordinary objects," including - I shit you not - block cheese.

Can somebody in Congress - anyone, really - just stand up and throw down a big bullshit flag on these bastards? Enough already.

Nancy Pelosi, are you paying attention at all? Pull that fucking rule book out and put Impeachment back on the table. You and the rest of your Democratic colleagues are standing by while the worst President - the worst administration - in our history is slowly destroying our country.

Bush has to go.

Now.

Romney Accidentally Reveals "Secret" Republican Plan to Destroy Our Government

Of course it's a poorly kept secret and anyone really paying attention already knows it, but I'm not sure any Republican has so baldly stated the case before.

If you've ever wondered why BushCo. has repeatedly assigned unexperienced political hacks to head important government agencies or continually interfered in the operation of formerly effective offices, wonder no more. In disparaging Democratic initiatives at universal healthcare he said the following, letting slip the real purpose of Rebublican meddling:

At a town hall meeting in Exeter later Sunday, he said, "I don't want the guys who ran the (Hurricane) Katrina cleanup running my health care system."

Of course the "guys who ran... Katrina..." were all Republicans; appointees who wouldn't know a cyclone from a vacuum cleaner. But that's the whole idea: these guys want government to fail. They want to be able to say things like Romney did, above. And they'll use the failures that they've caused to justify handing everything over to the private business sector.

Where their political contributors can profit the most.

Missing Arms and Missing Spines

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I went to visit my Alma Mater, West Point. She had never been and was excited to take in all the history and to learn a little bit more about such a formative place in my life. As always, going back there brought out mixed feelings in me; I still have dreams about not being prepared for something or another there. The feelings are a mixture of pride and apprehension along with a little longing to be back at school.

But something brought me up short in a way that nothing else could have. We were browsing through a very nice gift shop at the visitor's center when a couple of cadets walked by speaking with what looked to be a young officer, perhaps a graduate from a few years back. Nothing out of the ordinary for such a place, until the young man turned around and I saw that he had a prosthetic arm from the elbow down.

Obviously this young lieutenant had returned from a tour in Iraq having left a good portion of his body as well as his innocence on the Iraqi sands.

This incident had stayed in the back of my head ever since. Such a thing would not be unexpected at the place where future Army officers are trained and where so many of our nation's past warriors had studied. But when you see such violence done to someone so young (could I ever have been that young?) it brings into sharp focus the results of our tragic misadventure in the Middle East.

As for the missing spines in my post title, it's the Democrat's recent cave in on the war funding bills that brought the young lieutenant with the missing arm back into the forefront of my mind. It's absolutely true that they did not have the votes to override a Presidential veto. And it's absolutely true that funding - of some type and amount - needs to be approved.

But it's also absolutely true that Democrats were, in no small part, given control of the Congress last November precisely to rein in this administration and to start bringing the catastrophe that is Iraq to an end.

In this, they have failed us all miserably.

They have failed you and I, comfortably home but paying every day in national treasure and international influence. They have failed the families of the soldiers who must endure extended time away from their young loved ones, never knowing when the young officers in their dress uniforms will knock on their door. They have failed future generations, already saddled with the cost of this adventurism.

But most importantly, they have failed that young lieutenant who was trying so hard to convey that one bit of knowledge that might helps save those who will come after him.

Whatever else they may achieve, they have failed.