from “Special” Correspondent T. S. deHaviland
I saw a bumper sticker the other day that read “If you aren’t outraged, you haven’t been paying attention.”
Amen.
It’s amazing that, even after the rollback of the Constitution under the USA PATRIOT act, even after the memos suspending the human rights of “enemy combatants,” even after the withdrawal from ABM treaties and the International Criminal Court, even after waging war on false pretenses, even after the total failure to find Osama bib Laden, even after the tax cuts that enrich the wealthiest 1%, and after squandering a budget surplus and a return to deficit spending to support that cut, after the loss of 3 million jobs and the creation of 1.4 million more poor, even after the award of an $8 billion no-bid contract to the vice-president’s former company to rebuild the country we destroyed on false pretenses, even after the decimation of reasonable
environmental legislation and overtime rules – even after all that – there are still people who support George W. Bush, who think he’s a paragon of morality, who really think that he’s brought integrity back to the White House.
Maybe they think this because it’s hard to accept that we got took.
Because the whole nation got took – took like a Tijuana whore in the back of a broke-down Chevy van.
It’s hard to admit that we got duped by a dumb guy, even if he is a dumb guy with some very clever and very corrupt friends. It’s hard to admit we’re a nation bent over, grabbing our ankles, ass in the air, yelling “Thank you, sir! May I have another?!”
It is interesting that our greatest recent successes in the War on Terror have been arrests in Pakistan and Great Britain that look a heck of a lot more like the good, old-fashioned police work John Kerry envisions than the (literally) bombastic “smoke ‘em out of their holes” approach favored by George W. Bush.
This seems surprising to a nation steeped in action-flick morality: shoot first with a bigger gun. But it’s less of a shock when you consider that police work is meant to enforce the rule of law in a civilized way, whereas war is the breakdown of law and civilization itself. Policing is directed at behavior, not ideology; it is a governing authority saying, essentially, “We’re not judging your thoughts; we’re judging your actions.” Ideology, after all, is generally strengthened by war, not destroyed by it, and bin-Laden and his followers espouse an ideology more than anything else. Had Nazism not been tied to the notion of the nation state, it might be more popular than it now is. But make no mistake about it: Nazism as an ideology is still around. It has just been discredited in the minds of most moral and reasonable people by Dachau and Auschwitz. You can still think like a Nazi; you just can’t act like one.
Likewise, the defeat of Stalinism was a matter of practicality much more than ideology. It just couldn’t keep up. And those few states that still cling to it – Cuba and North Korea – feel pretty embattled and isolated, which is part of what keeps those systems alive.
And the people who hate America don’t hate it because those people are evil or hate freedom, rather because the U.S. drops bombs on them. If the only people bold enough to fight back are Islamic extremists, then that is going to be seen on the Arab street as a pretty attractive ideology.
Our main problem is that we fail to ascribe basic humanity to the enemy. Certainly, much of what they do is inhumane, but so is supporting the repressive actions of recent Israeli administrations, and so is funding proxy wars in Central America, and so is attacking Iraq on false pretenses. If one were to consider that the terrorists are human just like we are, one would be forced to realize that we’d do much the same thing if we were in their shoes – or worse because, on the whole, Americans are even better armed. If we were in the position of the Iraqis, for instance, we’d not just shoot and bomb our occupiers every day; we’d do it every hour on the hour, taking potshots at the invading army with our 12-gauges and 9 millimeters, our .30-06 deer rifles and our Daisy Red-Riders.
But it is just so much easier to think of “them” as monsters whose blood is comprised of corpuscles of pure evil. That way we don’t have to be deliberate or cautious in our approach; “they” are just so many minions of the Mummy or Dr. No.
Careful, cooperative policing gives the clearest signal of all: you can think what you want, but we’re civilized, and we insist you act that way as well. Non-civilized actions will result in a firm, but civilized response. Terrorism is beyond the pale, and we’ll only listen to you if you stop it. But then we’ll have to start listening . . .
Now, I can’t be accused of being a political moderate. In fact, I’m so far left that my childhood nickname was Pinky von Redsickle. In high-school I was voted “Most Likely to Defect.”
But it seems to me that the big shift in American politics was not away from the left, but away from the center. The left, after all, is about as big as it ever was, if not as strong or as organized as in the ’60s and ’70s.
The extreme right, especially as measured in terms of religious and social issues, is both bigger and stronger than ever. But we’ve got a dwindling supply of people in power who, say, support both lower taxes and the right of a woman to choose, even though there are still plenty who would agree with both those positions.
This is partially the result of the terrifically effective grassroots takeover of the Republican political machine by social conservatives beginning probably with Reagan and coming into its own during the Great Congressional Turnover of 1994. It’s been supported recently by well-funded political action committees. In my own state of Kansas, where I used to joke that there were three political parties, the Conservative Republicans, the Moderate Republicans, and the Democrats, I can now in pretty good conscience say there’s really only one: the Conservative Republicans, who control just about everything except the governor’s mansion.
This last week’s primaries saw a moderate Republican with a strong record for growth and revitalization on the civic level soundly trounced by an incumbent in the state Senate so far to the right that she gained national attention by trying to police what a university professor could teach in his human sexuality class. Her campaign was aided by a good deal of grassroots support, but also by a Washington-based anti-tax group funded largely by Koch Industries, a Kansas-based, privately-held (thus the incentive to abolish most if not all taxes, especially for the uber-wealthy) conglomerate.
This despite the fact that moderate Republicans probably make up the majority of Kansans when it comes right down to it. The conservative/moderate split is so severe in local politics that we actually elected a Democrat to the governorship because the Republican vote was so fractured (and, admittedly, Sebelius ran a damn good campaign).
While the shift to the extreme right is a bit satisfying since it tends to split votes on the right wing, it demonstrates the lengths the conservative ideologues will go to to wield power, and how ineffective merely being the majority can be when you’re politcal machine gets hijacked out from under you.
What if, when Mary had the insurmountable task of naming the Savior, the Son of the Lord God in Heaven, the one and only perfect human to ever live, she fumbled a little. What if she called him Steam Harry? Pastors would bellow righteously, “Trust in the name of Steam Harry to deliver us from our sins, and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever!” Kids would wear bracelets asking philosophically, “What would Steam Harry do?” There would be a national debate about whether to allow time to pray to Steam Harry in the classroom.