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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Would you go?

5 11 2012

Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion; bodies at rest, to stay at rest.

Newton’s first law describes the principle of inertia; for a body to change its inertial status, force must be applied.

When I was young, I was a body in motion: my default was Go. A party, a scene, a county fair, anything happening anywhere—go.

Go, go, gotta keep moving, gotta move on.

That worked, for a while, a long while, but as I fled into the molasses of depression, I wound down, and out, and the default shifted. It was a survival tactic: even amidst my self-destructiveness, there were parts of my life I sought to protect. I cannibalized my social and political life in order to feed my intellectual life.

That worked pretty well for graduate school, actually. There was no time, especially in those early years, for anything other than study, so withdrawing from social activity made both emotional and practical sense.

Yet, over a decade past my turning away from self-destruction, and I wonder if it is possible yet again to shift my default. I don’t need the freneticism of my youth, but this quietude is too much like passivity; this quietude has become passivity. It gets in the way of what matters.

I did finally make my way down to the Red Hook Initiative and put in some hours helping people, and since my downtown office will be closed tomorrow, I think I’ll head down there again. But it took me so long to get there, so much talking myself into doing what needed to be done. I hate it when anyone tells me that I think too much—I don’t think it’s possible to think too much—but I do too often think dishonestly, that is, I use my intellect to de-activate myself, to justify that de-activation.

I’ve said before that I am a polar person: I  swing too far in one direction, then too far in the other, and only after blowing past the far points can I make my way towards the center. Perhaps this has been one hella long swing from too much to too little. I’ve gotten used to being a bystander, but perhaps instead of saying This is how I am, I could say, A little push, and I’m on my way.

I don’t have to run and I don’t have to hide; I just need a new default for somewhere in-between.


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Mayan campaign mashup 2012: Hold it steady, hold it steady

2 11 2012

I’m off shortly to volunteer unloading and distributing relief supplies, an effort organized by the Red Hook Initiative, (and found through the Brokelyn website, via the Red Hook Recovers Twitter feed)—but before I go, a bit o’ political prognostication.

I think Barack Obama is going to win, both the popular and Electoral College votes, and by a comfortable margin. Not overwhelmingly, not a landslide, but with, say, more than 290 electoral votes.

And since I’m in a predicting frame of mind: The Dems retain the Senate, and while they pick up some seats in the House, Republicans will likely control that chamber.

I’m really going out on a limb, I know, but I’m usually allergic to predictions and this time I just feel so. . . calm about this.

This is not normal for me. I usually try to game the worst that could happen and prepare myself for that, partly because I genuinely believe the worst will happen, and partly as a hedging strategy: better to be pleasantly than unpleasantly surprised.

My new-found serenity may be due to an (over-)attentiveness to polling aggregators and explanations of Obama’s small-but-persistent edge by Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight as well as by John Sides  and the folks at The Monkey Cage and Jonathan Bernstein at a plain blog about politics: they offer good probabilistic evidence for confidence in re-election.

Still, I’ve rarely let evidence get in the way of my neuroses before, so why the calm this time?

I dunno, I truly don’t. Maybe it’s the sense that even if Obama loses and we end up with President Romney (may those words never truly be joined), things will be worse than they’d have to be, but we’d survive. Hell, we’re still here after eight years of the thoughtless, careless George W. Bush as president, so would the empty privilege of Willard Mitt Romney destroy us? No.

Anyway, since I’ve been quietly confident of the president’s re-election for some time, it seemed only right that I put it out there—if only to take my licks if I’m wrong.

But this time, this time I think it’s going to be all right.


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I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses

1 11 2012

I am beyond lucky to be bored.

CUNY reopens tomorrow, but since I teach on a T-Th schedule, I won’t be back until next week, and the office for my other job is closed tomorrow.

Upshot: A week off.

And what have I done this week? Fuck-all.

Dmf suggested this would be good writing time, and he was right! But did I write? Nope. I have a bunch of pants that need to be shortened and skinnied; did I haul out the sewing machine and do this? Nope. Files to go through, the Civil War site to be updated—nothin’. Sat on my ass, my near-but-not-yet-recovered-back  even keeping me out of the gym.

Now, I did think of volunteering, but since my work schedule was day-to-day, I didn’t want to sign up for anything and then have to back out. Thought I might donate blood, but it’s not clear that, as a shrimpy person, I meet the requirements (and I’ve been turned away in the past). I did manage to donate some money to a relief fund, but, really, how hard was that?

This is shitty to admit to feel, but it’s as if my city has gone through this horrendous event and all I’ve done is hang out in the alcove above the Real Action™,  refreshing my browser and wondering if I should do something. To put it more baldly, the Big Bad happened and I feel left out.

I know.

Now, I do immediately remind myself that I am lucky to feel left out, that it’s one thing to pine for a shared experience and another thing actually to, well, experience it. I’ve been in shitty situations and they’re called shitty for a reason: ain’t nothing fun in having the elemental supports of your life washed out from under you.

Anyway, I thought, Do I sit here indulging in self-flagellation, or do I actually get out and do something? Well, when you put it like that. . . .

So, yes, since I know I’ll be off work on Friday, I signed up through NYC Service to volunteer. I don’t know what, if anything, will happen, and of course I’m both kicking myself for not signing up sooner (shoulda played the work odds in the other direction) and fretting over my motives (am I doing this to help or because I want that Real Action™?), but, at least, it’s something.

And in this case, mixed motives or no, something is better than nothing.


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Stranded starfish have no place to hide

30 10 2012

Some of us are fine, some of us are not.

My neighborhood was barely hit: a lot of twigs, a fair number of branches, and a few trees down, but as far as I know, no flooding, no fires (Breezy Point!); there is electricity up and down the block.

As a weather nut, I thought of biking over to Red Hook or down to Coney Island to see what I could see, but then I thought, Well, if the police are doing their jobs, they won’t let in looky-loos like me, and besides, I’d only get in the way of work crews. Most importantly, the folks in the washed-out areas didn’t need a dipshit on a bike photographing them in their distress.

So this dipshit went to Prospect Park, instead.

The park got hit, and much worse than during Irene, but for the most part the damage was here-and-there, not overwhelming-and-everywhere.

Still, the clues to the damage were apparent at the Parkside entrance to the park:

Then right inside the entrance, a number of downed trees:

I went less than a mile and shot a bunch of downed trees, but after the fifth or eighth tree, I decided I didn’t need to shoot every sideways tree.

Still, I did take a few more shots. There’s a pavilion near the southeast corner of the park that I really like, so I checked to make it sure it was still standing and found this striking shot:

This tunnel leads to the bridge near the Audubon Center, so I trekked through to see how it fared:

It’s fine, as you can see.

I then made my way back to the road and circled the park. Leaves and needles and twigs  spackled the road, and in a few spots snapped trees blocked a lane, but at no point was the road completely blocked. There were plenty of walkers and runners and a few bikers, and dogs were eagerly pulling their people hither and yon.

Trucks were lined up along the west side of the park and crews were already beginning to chainsaw branches and chip up the mess.

And then, because I’d been sitting on my ass for over a week due to a bent back, I decided to take a few laps around the park in order to remind my body that it did, in fact, still move.

At the top of the second lap I stopped for a shot of the magnificent Grand Army arch and framing columns:

This part of Brooklyn, at least, still stands.

I planned on another lap or two, but the rain spat on that idea, so I headed home. I saw a couple of snapped trees on the way back, but, again, most of the houses and streets seemed to be in good shape.

The major concern for me at this point is how to get to work. The tunnels are flooded, and while I could grab a Q over the East River to Union Square, it’s not clear if any 4 trains would be running in either direction. My office in lower Manhattan and CUNY are both closed, but I don’t know if CUNY will be opening its campuses before the trains are back in service; if so, it’s not clear how I’ll get up to the Bronx.

Eh, I guess I’ll worry about that later; nothing I can do about it now. That maddening phrase makes a certain kind of sense, now: It is what it is.

Of course, it’s easy to say that when one’s home is intact and powered, and all its inhabitants safe.


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Red rain is pouring down: FrankenStormMageddonLypse!!! (Mayan campaign mashup 2012/We might as well try combo edition)

29 10 2012

That headline may not be long enough.

Anyway, I was going to lead with snark—I snapped a coupla’ pics yesterday that showed precisely nothing happening, weather-wise—but since the air pressure has dropped so much I can feel the blood pulsing in my face, my snark has dissipated  right out the window.

The bite, however, the bite remains, so of course I’ll chew on Mitt Romney’s ass for suggesting that the federal government get out of the emergency management business:

First Romney says: “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better. [emph added] Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?”

“Including disaster relief, though?” debate moderator John King asked Romney.

His response:

We cannot — we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all.

Makes perfect sense to worry about the well-being of those in the future, because using the federal government to keep people safe now certainly is craaaazy.

Two further thoughts: One, such sentiments indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of business, which is to make money. How will business make money from people who have none? Who is going to hire these private actors to clear trees and debris and search for survivors and bodies and repair roads and bridges and homes? If the feds don’t step in to pay these folks, who is going to do it?

Which leads to the second thought. Romney and his ilk may want to send this responsibility back to the states, but how many states can afford to take on this responsibility?

(And a third, stray, thought: weather tends to stray across state boundaries, so some kind of supra-state entity—like, say, FEMA—to coordinate responses might just make sense.)

If a President Romney (may these two words never be joined) were to get his way, it probably wouldn’t affect me all that much. I live in a wealthy city in a reasonably wealthy state, so if any place could take care its own, it would be New York.

But Louisiana? Misssissippi? Alabama? Screwed.

That ain’t right. No, I like neither the weather nor the politics of these places, but they are a part of the United States and the people who live in those states deserve both security and dignity. And if their states can’t or won’t provide it for them—if those same people vote for politicians who don’t care about their security and dignity—well, then, goddammit, the rest of us, via the federal government, should.

Let me be as explicit as possible: Not only do I not mind that my tax dollars would go to states and localities which may want to have nothing to do with my kind, I think my tax dollars should go to those places, if that’s where the need is.

And no, I don’t expect them to be particularly grateful, if only because citizens of this nation should expect that their fellow citizens will take care of them.

Because that’s what it means to be a citizen: To take care of one another, to take care of where and how we all live with one another.


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Mayan campaign mashup 2012: I ain’t no limburger!

28 10 2012

John Sununu, Romney surrogate and White Man, discerned the only possible reason for Colin Powell to have endorsed Barack Obama:

SUNUNU: You have to wonder whether that’s an endorsement based on issues or that he’s got a slightly different reason for President Obama.

MORGAN: What reason would that be?

SUNUNU: Well, I think that when you have somebody of your own race that you’re proud of being President of the United States — I applaud Colin for standing with him.

That’s some mighty fine deduction, John—may I call you John? Feel free to call me Absurd—so I hope you don’t mind if I extend your logic.

You’re a white man, right? Thus, by your reasoning—and I want to give you full credit for this calculus, John—according to your logic, the reason you’re voting for Romney is because he’s white.

Wait, there’s more! Clearly, you are a man, as is Mitt Romney, so, again, applying your own logic, you’re voting for Romney because he’s a man. (Since both Barack Obama and Colin Powell are men, I guess this one is a wash.)

I gotta bit of a corker for you, John. I’m a short white bisexual woman voting for a tall black heterosexual man.

What does this mean?!

Okay, sure, I’m a leftist, so perhaps that whiteliberalguilt thing is at play; does this mean you’re voting for Romney out of whiteconservativeguilt?

(And what is whiteconservativeguilt, anyway? Isn’t that just resentment?)

And that I’m a woman—HolyMaryMotherofGod, what do I do with this? I mean, it’s obvious, as I noted above, that you’re voting for Romney because he’s a man, but why oh why would I as a woman vote for a man?

I mean, that’s. . . that’s. . .that’s absurd, isn’t it?

There must be something else going on, right, John? John? Hellooooo. . . ?


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