Pictured you mean and I pictured you bold

26 01 2013

Sarah Palin has left the building.

Buh-bye.

Oh, I’m sure the half-guv will find some other way to lodge herself somewhere in the media’s eye, but she has diminished herself from log to speck, and Roger Ailes has figured out that specks just don’t produce enough ratings to justify the time or money. Perhaps she’ll return as a guest on one of his Fox-y shows, but her days of cashing a regular check from Murdoch are over.

Weep not for her, of course, as she and the rest of her clan have made millions in the years since she winked her way into our nation’s consciousness, and, as Rick Perlstein (among others) has demonstrated, there are plenty on the right willing to throw money at the those adept at stoking their furies. She’ll be fine.

And the rest of us? Oh, hush, we’ll be fine, too.


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You’re on your own now

24 01 2013

I’m not supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Nothing against First Lady/Senator/Secretary Clinton, JD, but I ain’t supporting nobody for 2016 because a) nobody has said he or she is running, and 2) it’s too damned early to think about.

Not that I’m not thinking about it. *Sigh*

If she does run, I’ll take a look, just as I’ll take a look at everyone else with policy proposals within the ballpark of the not-horrible. (A low bar, yes, but one which most Republicans and quite a few Dems haven’t managed to clear in years.)

Still, there is one thing I like very much about Clinton, regardless of any possible candidacy: She just doesn’t give a shit anymore.

I mean this in the best possible way, as a resignation which moves her beyond all of the Washington and pundit horseshit and into the realm of real political action. She has a job to do and she’s going to do it and fuck off to anyone who doesn’t like it or her.

You could see this movement into a kind of pure-practical politics during her reign as Secretary of State. She got along fine with President Obama and served his agenda well, but did so in a way which she clearly shaped. Beyond the Beltway she was free from the sniping about her clothes and her hair and the constant agita about her relationship to her husband and able, simply, to act on behalf of the people and policies which matters to both her and the president.

Pundits suggested she looked best in short hair; she grew it long. She defended the pantsuits for their practicality, then didn’t mention it again. She drank beer and danced with her staffers, and appeared in public at least once without makeup.

That last bit might seem a triviality—and as someone who hasn’t worn makeup in over 20 years, I truly wish it were—but for a sixty-something high-status woman to go face-naked in public is damned-near astonishing.

She doesn’t care.

I was leery of her in the 2008 run, tired of the “Clinton drama” and unsure of her temperament for the office. Yes, she had done good work as a senator, but I still remembered FLOTUS Hillary, and that Hillary was clearly pissed-off at having to perform a role which did not fit. Yes, she chose to marry Bill and to support his run for president, but as someone with her own political ambitions, “First Lady” had to feel like a crummy consolation prize.

And that her husband, with all of his political skills, nonetheless let his indiscipline hobble his chances for real legislative success had to have pricked at her in ways wholly distinct from the wounds of his personal indiscretions.

I don’t think Obama did her any favors in picking her for Secretary of State—he chose her because he thought she could benefit his administration—but he did give her a way to apply her own formidable intelligence and skills in a manner which both served him and freed her.

Oddly, my reconsideration of her began with an Onion article, about her return to the Senate after losing the nomination:

One anonymous Wisconsin senator told reporters that Clinton has been known to deliver a sustained, audible sigh while President ProTempore Robert Byrd calls the meeting to order; frequently votes by letting out an extended belch; repeats the title of every bill in a high-pitched, mocking tone; and, once, after her disruptions caused the former first lady to be escorted out of the Capitol, raised both middle fingers in the air and proposed that the entire Senate go fuck itself.

This was satire, of course, but I nonetheless liked the picture of her saying “fuck it” to the whole shebang, of her not caring what anyone thought anymore.

Fours years later, and she really doesn’t care—not about all of the nonsense that has hemmed her in for most of her adult life. She knows what matters, and fuck everything else.

I like that in a politician.

~~~

And yes, if she does run, that Bjork tune will be her theme song, at least on this blog.


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You’ll meet an army of me

23 01 2013

No, I haven’t decided who I’ll support in 2016, but. . .

. . .this will give nightmares to all the right people.

~~~

Photo credit: Image by Kevin Lamarque / Reuters


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This land was made for you and me

21 01 2013

A fine speech for an inauguration that happened to have fallen on the day honoring Martin Luther King.

This has been rightly highlighted as the highlight—

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began.  For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts.  Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.  Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.  Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country.  Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.

but I actually keyed in on the following:

That is our generation’s task – to make these words, these rights, these values – of Life, and Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – real for every American.  Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness.  Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time – but it does require us to act in our time.

For now decisions are upon us, and we cannot afford delay.  We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate.  We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect.  We must act, knowing that today’s victories will be only partial, and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years, and forty years, and four hundred years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall. [emph added]

We must act now, for now; we must do what we can.

This is politics, not eschatology.

Just so, Mr. President, just so.


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They say what’s up with him

31 12 2012

Presidents are assholes.

Too strong? Misleading, perhaps.

Allow me to clarify: asshole has come to mean something akin to douche or dick—I’ve used in that way when I’ve lamented my own assholish behavior—but there’s an older meaning, closer to prick, which might be captured by the phrase “arrogant asshole”, i.e., someone who thinks he’s all that, the one who’s better than everyone else.

I like President Obama, like seeing the pictures of him with his kids (or with anyone’s kids) or constituents, and there have been moments of his presidency in which I pumped my fist and hissed yes!

But I still think he’s an asshole.

How could he be anything but? He’s the most powerful person in the most powerful country in the world, performing an impossible job, with the only opportunities to be someone other than president tucked into those moments likes cracks in the wall of presidential responsibility. He has to be on, or ready to be on, at all times. He is never not the president.

Who else but an asshole could be president?

To believe that this is a job you could do, and do well, requires a scary level of self-confidence, the kind of calm self-regard that may—may—allow you to second-guess yourself, but only if it confirms your actions or moves you forward. You don’t look back, you don’t wonder what if; you make up your mind, and you do.

Because you’re the fucking president of the fucking Yoo-nited States, and if you can’t do it it can’t be done.

Remember when George W. Bush was asked about his mistakes, and he couldn’t really think of one? Or Bill Clinton’s refusal to admit his fling with Monica Lewinsky and his churlish apology for both the behavior and the lies? They were both so obviously and ridiculously wrong to any normal person—who doesn’t make mistakes? who does that hound dog think he’s fooling?—but normal people do not become president.

I saw a clip the other day of a Barbara Walters interview with the President and Michelle Obama, and there was some bit that Michelle was funnier. The president said, yes, Michelle is funny, but “I’m funnier than people think.”

Asshole. You’re the fucking president of the fucking Yoo-nited States, and you can’t let this one slide?

The president is rather famously competitive—the first lady noted elsewhere in the interview that she doesn’t like to play Scrabble with him because he’s “a little irritating when he wins”—so it’s hardly surprising that he’s going to want to be in it no matter what, but, jeez, man, let it go.

Except, of course, that presidents really can’t let things go. You run for president because you believe that you can catch the things the others let go, and we, the American people, vote for you because we expect you to catch those things and, occasionally, to sling it back out and past everyone else. You expect to win, and we expect you to win.

Is this a fault of the people who run for president, or of the people who vote for him? Both, probably, but even more to the point is the fact that the job is impossible. It is impossible to be president, and yet someone is, nonetheless.

You’d have to be some kind of arrogant asshole to believe you could do the impossible.


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You said you’d try to look for the end of the road

22 11 2012

It’s wicked, I know. I should stop, but I can’t.

I so enjoy reading GOP sob stories.

The flailing of arms, the casting of blame, the faux-introspection and real outrage: it’s just too delectable to be denied!

And no, I won’t be commenting on what went wrong, for precisely the reasons I mentioned earlier: I’m not a conservative, concern-trolling is annoying, and we leftists have our own messes to figure out.

These messes might explain why I am pretty much unrepentant in my snarfing down rightist blog post after rightist blog post: after all, any honest leftist of the past, pffft, four? five? six? decades has had to come to terms with some pretty nasty shit on our side of the ledger, and we still haven’t got it sorted.

Thus, it’s not so much that I’m unsympathetic—although I kinda am—as I am impatient with the bluster and bullshit and the apparent dedication to that same bluster and bullshit. I think something a former vice presidential candidate said about “lipstick on a pig” might just be applicable here.

Lemme put it this way: I started identifying as a feminist when I was in the eighth grade, and out of that grew an affinity for liberalism, then leftism, then socialism. And then at some point I had to come to terms with the fact that saying “the Soviets aren’t really socialists” wasn’t an honest response to repression in the old USSR and the Eastern bloc. If human rights and liberation were important to me—and they were and are important to me—I had to recognize that socialism as it was actually practiced in the world was not compatible with a free human life.

And then I had to choose.

I chose to hang on to the principles which led me both to liberationist politics and to socialism, and that meant I had to look honestly at those who claimed to liberate people under the banner of socialism—and criticize the shit out of them. There was no red flag large enough to wave away the barbed wire.

This wasn’t traumatic for me as I had never been invested in the myths of Soviet freedom or a Cuban paradise—not because I was so wise but because I came of political age in the 1980s and not the 1930s. The crisis of conscience wasn’t really so much a crisis as a click: Wellllll, shit.

The critical work is ongoing, while the constructive work is. . . lagging. I still call myself a socialist because I am persuaded by the left-critique of capitalism, but I am not at all convinced we have any replacement for capitalism. I am a kind of negative-socialist, seeking a positive program.

The elements of that program are there—a commitment to equality, to pluralism, to human being, among others—but do is there anything beyond welfare-state capitalism which might allow us to approach a fully human life? I think there must be, but I don’t know what it is.

So I’m a little impatient with Republicans who are gobsmacked by the 2012 results: You lost a fucking election, not a whole world.

You can wander around bellowing about the blindness of the electorate or the unfairness of change or the perils of pluralism or moochers and looters and other assorted layabouts, or you can put down the hanky and open your eyes and your ears and pay some damned attention to who and how your fellow Americans actually are, and go from there.

Your choice.


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Mayan campaign mashup 2012: Wrap it up

11 11 2012

And so ends the election season.

A few last points before I lay this theme to rest:

1. Winning is nice. I’ll enjoy it while I can, because wins don’t last. (And for those who lost, don’t despair:  losing doesn’t last, either.)

2. I understand how and why it happened—Gingrich, Trump, Cain, Santorum, Perry, Bachmann—but I’m still amused that the Republicans nominated the man who lost to the man who lost to Barack Obama in 2008.

3. Similarly, while I understand why it happened, it seems to me that a man who made his fortune as a financier was not the best person to send into the ring in the midst of a shaky recovery from a savage recession. It could have worked—turnaround specialist!—but that’s not really what Romney did, and his political personality didn’t allow him to transcend the sense that he was the boss who fired you, not the boss who hired you.

4. I won’t diagnose the ills of  the Republican Party or recommend fixes because a) I am not a Republican and b) concern-trolling is annoying, and c) I’d rather put my efforts in trying to figure out a left-political program than a right-political program.

(And that, it seems, is necessary. Barack Obama deserved the votes of leftists not because he was leftist but because, unlike his opponent, he would at least inch us toward something better. Those of us on the left need continually to make sense of that something better, and to find effective ways to blunt policies which are decidedly not better, e.g., regarding secrecy, surveillance, and the drug war. Oh, and that whole capitalism and immiseration thing.)

5. That said, developing some sort of philosophy of or program for governance might be worth considering. “No!” is a slogan, not a platform.

6. It is entirely too soon to begin speaking intelligently about the chances for possible candidates in 2016. For those who might want to run, however, it is not, unfortunately, too soon to begin thinking about it, and in a year (and certainly in two) to begin working toward it.

That is among the many reasons I am very glad that I am not now nor will I ever be a candidate for president of the United States.

7. That presidential campaigns are multi-year endeavors is a pox on our polity.

Election campaigns and governance are not the same thing, and what is required to win in elections can be detrimental to good governance. To the extent that we are fully in an era of the permanent campaign bodes ill for said governance.

8. I take back nothing I said about the “everything goes” nature of presidential campaigns, and I expect that same sensibility to drive the 2016 race.

Now, that lying didn’t always work this campaign doesn’t mean it won’t be a part of the toolkit for future campaigns—although, again, smart tacticians will recognize when such lying is counterproductive. Romney was able to make deft use lies during the primary, but the Obama campaign was much swifter (first debate excepted) in rebutting those lies than were Romney’s fellow Republicans, which meant that lying should have been abandoned in favor of more effective tactics.

The Romney tacticians didn’t do so, which speaks poorly of their abilities.

9. To be fair to those same tacticians, however, the road to the White House is always steeper for the challenger than for the incumbent—that’s just how it is.

There’s plenty of easily-available information on the advantages of incumbency, as well as the role that a declining, advancing, or stagnant economy plays in the election. The US economy was/is still weak in 2012, but it is also clearly in recovery. The Romney campaign focused on the first part without taking account of the second, and thus were unable to shape a message which matched the reality.

10. How much campaigns matter is still up for debate, but in the face of uncertainty, it seems prudent to act as if the campaigns mattered more than anything.

Romney said in his concession speech that he and his staff “left it all on the field”, and I don’t doubt that. But it’s also clear that the Obama campaign was demonstrably superior in organization, especially in voter mobilization. Whatever Romney left on the field, Obama had more, and better.

And, of course, Obama was a good candidate. Yes, he was flat in the first debate, but that misstep was so magnified in part because it was so rare. Romney wasn’t terrible as a candidate, but as the challenger he needed to be much, much better than the incumbent. He was not.

~~~

Herein lyeth the end of the Mayan campaign mashup of 2012. May we all find some peace and comfort before the circus beginneth again.


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Mayan campaign mashup 2012: It was sad, so sad

9 11 2012

I am so enjoying the wailing and gnashing of teeth among celebrity conservatives.

Oh no, we lost America! America died! The makers have taken over! Alas and alack, we are ruined! No marriage, no babies, just guns and ammo and hunkering down for the coming doom!

Et cetera.

TNC has a post up on the denialism of such reactions, and many, many others have corralled the increasing number of howls into lists of lamentations and these are all so. . . incredibly. . . amusing.

I have zero sympathy for the pundits and professional liars, so my joy in their sorrow is pure.

Regular folks, though, the people who make no money spinning bullshit into gold but who honestly believe that Republicans have the best ideas and that the country will now be worse off under Obama than it would have been under Romney, I do sympathize with them.

I’ve been there. It hurts. It hurt to care and believe and work and lose. It always hurts to lose.

There’s a tumblr called White People Mourning Romney that, yeah, I clicked through, but I felt bad for doing so (and am thus not linking to it). There are a few screenshots of the Fox-Cons, but most of the pictures were of ordinary Republicans looking sad.

I didn’t enjoy that. People shouldn’t be mocked for caring about their country or hooted at because they wanted to win and are crying because they lost.

Politics is about a lot of things, but at the center of it is love. Karl Rove might believe the crap he spews, but he’s also paid to spew; the volunteers and voters just believe, and they do the work because they love their country and believe that their ideas and politicians are the best for the country.

Yes, some of them hate—politics is also about hate—and motives regardless are almost always mixed. But let’s give the ordinary losers the dignity of their love and hope and dreams.

As for the rest of them—Krauthammer and O’Reilly and Coulter and Lopez and that whole lot—-do not let pity interfere with your enjoyment of their dismay.


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Mayan campaign mashup 2012: Tangled up in blue

7 11 2012

David Shankbone, Creative Commons License 2012

Beautiful!


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Mayan campaign mashup 2012: We don’t need another hero

6 11 2012

Presidents are not heroes.

Even the best of them—the brave, the wise—are leaders, not heroes. They are not here to save us, from ourselves or anyone else, but to guide us through the present and into the future with an open heart and an open mind and with malice toward none.

President Barack Obama is not a hero. President Barack Obama will not save us.

President Barack Obama is a leader.

There are things I like about his presidency and things I don’t, and I doubt that the things I don’t like—the continued drug war, the unilateral and heavy use of drones, the timidity on global warming, among others—will change much in a second term.

But the things I like—his efforts to use the state for rather than against the vulnerable, the concrete recognition of the rights of women to control their (our) own sexuality and for queer folk not to be punished for their (our) sexuality, good Supreme Court picks, his measured approach to international affairs—point the way toward a future which just might be better than it would otherwise be.

April 14, 2010. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

Barack Obama, 2012.


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