Politics is one part ballet, two parts theatrical performance, with the same players taking different roles as the latest situation requires.  It is a shifting sort of organic arrangement, whereby that who is one’s ally in the morning can be one’s enemy the next.  The most successful politicians know this instinctively and recognize that this degree of constant posturing and shape-shifting should be attributed to the profession itself, not to the practitioner.  We, however, do not live in such a world of allegiances that shift like tectonic plates.  We do not easily recognize that political pronouncements have a shelf life of roughly three hours time, upon which they are superseded by the latest changing of the wind, or, for that matter, changing of the guard.        

Still, we try to apply the code of conduct and rules of the game that exist in our world of resolute, lasting convictions to that of the politician. This is what leads us to great frustration.  This morning some are criticizing President Obama for not coming down more punitively on Joe Lieberman when he had the chance.  A week ago, Republicans were lashing out at Olympia Snowe for her duplicitous perfidy.  A week before that, Progressives were purple with rage at Senator Max Baucus.  A week from now, a new target will arise, align himself or herself with something we either support or oppose, and the game will begin again.  The process reminds one of nothing less than an endless round of musical chairs.  Those congressional leaders involved in an active tug of war will always reposition themselves on safer ground as need be, while the ones who stand firm are often likely to find themselves without a seat.

In this eternal game of chess,

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag –

It’s so elegant

So intelligent                                                        

“What shall I do now? What shall I do?”

I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street

“With my hair down, so.  What shall we do to-morrow?

“What shall we ever do?”

– T.S. Eliot

Observe the ballet, though the steps may be a bit quicker, the pace may be sterner, and the tempo deliberately accelerated.  As regards politics, in which there is always something tangible to gain or to lose, I only believe in the last statement made by whomever utters it.  This would be considered exceptionally pessimistic in the real world, but makes complete sense within the realm of political discourse.  Lament it if you will, but even a charismatic figure elected to shake up Washington and a largely underwhelming speaker could not betwixt the two of them figure out how to drain the swamp.  It takes more than legislation to undo a complex, frequently befuddling system of strange allegiances and stranger bed fellows.  The skillful politician is a master of both slight of hand and cerebral dexterity.  He or she rarely gets caught in a lie or a half-truth, while the less skilled end up without a chair when the music ends.  The results when tabulated might be half chance, like everyone’s else’s, but they are always composed of calculated risk, with the hope of ultimate profit and gain.              

We may have a rough idea of the relative platform our Senator or Congressperson stands upon, but beyond that, one needs an actuarial table to correctly calculate where he or she might go from one moment to the next.  Risk assessment doesn’t just stop with insurance and rare is the incumbent who can count on an easy re-election campaign, year in and year out.  If we were all more or less the same in allegiance and conviction, then politicians could be reliably counted on to talk out of only one side of their mouth.  Until then, we are stuck with the system we have, which satisfies few and enrages many.    

To better explain my case, I sought to divine what was the historically highest possible Congressional approval rating ever recorded.  While I certainly was inundated with sources which told me what the lowest approval rating for the both chambers had been at many points in time, attaining its compliment, however, provided elusive.  In the data I did find, Congress never polled above 45%, which means that if it as a collective body ran for office, it would never win and probably never even trigger a runoff.  This fact also underscores what a convenient target the legislative branch is for many of us, but also proves that its overall popularity is pointedly meaningless unless it drops to single, or near single digit lows.  By contrast, even the least popular Presidents in modern memory still managed to poll slightly above 20% in their lowest periods and some scored nearly 80% in their times of highest popular favor.  As Americans, we favor personalities over collective bodies, perhaps because we can relate more to a individual rather than a frequently flummoxing deliberative entity whose ways are misunderstood even by the highly educated.    

Returning to the matter of effective analysis, the most skillful strategies for determining future courses of action might be found within the brains of those who think three and four moves ahead while recognizing that events are always subject to change.  This is not to imply that some method to the madness exists, either.  Best intentions are often preempted by breaking news and any schedule ought to be penciled in, rather than chiseled into granite.  Those public servants who are caught flat-footed or utterly unawares are always the easiest targets for ire and criticism.  They also tend to not survive.  That who we have in our cross-hairs today will often be our firmest unforeseen ally with time.  As for the present moment, which is all we are ever granted in politics, the once and future Health Care Reform proponent assumes a temporary position in our affections and our current antagonist draws boos and jeers.  The Public Option is dead, long live the Public Option.  This is, of course, until the funeral is called off and the coronation resumes, once more.

One-hundred and eighty-one years ago, this nation was engaged in similar debate over similar issues.  A recently elected Democratic president by the name of Andrew Jackson had won the office by vowing to uphold the rights of the people, not the small circle of well-connected and powerful brokers that had run Capitol Hill for close to a quarter of a century.  Had there been highways then, or, for that matter, cars, one might have dubbed these new money, self-proclaimed, unapologetic aristocrats the Beltway elites.  Jackson’s election was nothing less than an abomination to these sorts, since they placed no faith, nor any trust in what they considered to be the under-educated, ill-informed grumblings of the partisan rabble.  Government of the people, by the elites was their governing philosophy, and it had gone unchallenged since the beginning of the Republic.    

Though Old Hickory sought to carry the banner of the common person, this didn’t necessarily mean he supported progressive reform in all of its incarnations.  

…Jackson fretted about what were drily known as internal improvements–projected roads and canals that were to be funded by the federal government.  The issue was at the heart of a philosophical argument.  Was Washington’s role to be a limited one, leaving such matters to the states except in truly national cases, or was the federal government to be a catalyst in what was know as “the American System,” in which tariffs and the sales of public land funded federally sponsored internal improvements?  As President, Jackson favored the former, John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay the latter.  Related, in Jackson’s mind, was the issue of the national debt (the money owed by the federal government).  To him, debt was dangerous, for debt put money in the hands of creditors–and if money was in the hands of creditors, it could not be in the hands of the people, where Jackson believed it belonged. (Bold mine)

–American Lion:  Andrew Jackson in the White House by John Meachum

A true son of the South, Jackson was understandably squeamish to impose too much federal authority upon state government, even if it promised desperately needed infrastructure to industrialize and modernize a country which was still largely agrarian and rural.  However, his reluctance to take on debt for any purpose, no matter how worthy, is not the same sort cited by Republican politicians of our day.  Perhaps the question we ought to ask ourselves in age is “Who holds our debt and do they have our own best interest at heart?”  Jackson did not live in an age where globalization had complicated and expanded monetary policy to the degree that foreign investors were heavily involved in the process;  he did, however, hold an oversimplified point of view that saw money as belonging either to the moneychangers or the people with no overlap in between.  Today’s GOP eagerly sounds the warning regarding our spiraling national debt but certainly has no credible plan, nor plausible solution that would place it firmly in the hands of their primary constituents.  If such a thing were proposed by a Democrat, Republicans would surely claim that doing so would “spread the wealth around” in a radical redistribution scheme that, once enacted would destroy the country’s economic structure.    

Meanwhile, we have now commenced with hand-wringing in response to a less active electorate this time around.  The below passage disproves the idea that fickle and transitory voter participation is unique purely to our day.  

A Scottish visitor to Albany in the late 1820s noted an American love of what he called “the spirit of electioneering, which seems to enter as an essential ingredient into the composition of everything.”  But it was a highly personal kind of electioneering:  “The Americans, as it appears to me, are infinitely more occupied about bringing in a given candidate, than they are about the advancement of those measures of which he is conceived to be the supporter.” (Bold mine.)  

Ibid.  

We love the chase but then quickly lose interest with the implementation stage.  Media saturation, short attention spans, rock star politics, and all the other theories currently proposed that aim to explain why voter participation and interest is down from its height of this time last year might be simply explained as Americans acting like Americans.  To be sure, activists never lose their focus or their drive, but most of us are not activists.  Jackson was one of the first politicians to whittle down complex issues for the easy digestion of the average citizen.  Had there been television in his day, one might have called them sound bytes.  This, of course, oversimplified often contentious and complicated policy decisions, but Jackson’s belief was that the American worker had no time to devote from his busy day for in-depth political study and contemplation.  This assertion is one that frequently frustrates activists of our times—who demand larger participation but recognize too that the time and energy commitment needed to push reform is often more than many people are willing or able to devote.        

Regarding Presidential strategy, Jackson was cautious not to box himself in, even though this left him open to charges of playing politics when candor and taking a firm stand might seem to be a better strategy.  An immensely popular President upon taking office, he had a knack for strategic positioning and a marked refusal to provide his enemies an easy target, likely due in part to his years as a military man.  It was also a response to the well-known fact that the General had more than a few enemies in high places who coveted his office for themselves and would use any means necessary to achieve it.  

[Jackson’s] first inaugural…was purposely vague.  Gazing out on the admirers gathered at the foot of the Capitol steps, Jackson saw that he was the object of wide affection—but he was not yet certain of the depth of that affection.  The people hailed him today but might not tomorrow.  Better, then, to proceed with care, to be general rather than specific, universal rather than particular—for specificity and particularity would give his foes weapons to use against him.  Many leaders would have been seduced by the roar of that crowd, lulled into thinking themselves infallible, or omnipotent, or secure in the love of their followers.  

But Jackson knew that politics, like emotion, is not static.  There would be times where he would have to tell people what they did not want to hear, press a case they did not want to accept, point them in a direction they would prefer not to go.  Best, then, to preserve capital to spend on those speeches and those battles.

(Bold mine.)

Ibid.

President Obama is fortunate that the relative weakness of the Republican party and the still ample approval among those in his own party do not leave him vulnerable to direct challenges to his authority as Chief Executive.  Unlike Jackson, he does not relish making enemies and in so doing, challenging them to duels.  Some of us would prefer a President cut from that same cloth, though I do note that nothing unifies otherwise disparate elements only tangentially related to each other more than a common enemy.  This course of action does not make for theatrical governance or high drama, certainly, but perhaps the boring way is the best way.  Any President is compelled to occasionally be the bearer of bad tidings, the purveyor of necessary, but unpopular policy, and the leader pointing the way against a headwind of reluctance and even stubborn refusal.  The more change one pushes for, the more one must assume such mantles.  Many will feel short-changed, disregarded, and under-represented in the process.  Lament it, if you will, but be sure to acknowledge the substantial challenges that face those who attempt its removal.  This New American System combined with a still very New American President might not require as much patience as it does a fundamental understanding of the balancing act and slight-of-hand required of any politician.  Our response never changes, but what does change is how quickly we forget that these struggles are not exactly unique to our times.  

We in Western society frequently latch hold of the concerns of the Third World in a laudable desire to reform, enlighten, and correct the injustices which exists in countries who do not enjoy our same basic freedoms.  Though this impulse is meant to bring light to the darkness, we must also be careful not to let our own biases and own paternalistic impulses overshadow the good work we seek to accomplish.  When the reform we seek thinly veils our own individual internal struggles, then we are not truly working for unselfish means.  However, rather than beating ourselves up when we fall short, we would be wise to forgive our shortcomings and strive to listen more and hector less.  It is only with listening and absorbing the complete picture that truly effective change ever comes to be.  If short-cuts guaranteed successful outcomes, we’d have colonized Mars by now, viewed a time where same-sex marriage was illegal as unspeakably barbaric and nonsensical, and learned to take for granted a single payer health care system.

The controversy over women who demand the right to wear the Niqab or the burqu despite laws banning it altogether has become a highly politicized issue in Western Europe and even in our own country.  Feminist activists, particularly female feminist activists, have grabbed hold of the head scarf and veil issue as a clear-cut visual example that shows conclusive evidence of brutal Patriarchal oppression.  When sexism and anti-feminist offenses are so often disguised and ingrained within a society, the head scarf has become an endearing image to invoke due to its unquestioned visibility.  If one takes into account a purely Western point of view, nothing could be a more suitable example of the malicious intent of men harshly imposing their will upon women.  In comparing their perceived interpretation of the custom to their own lives and their own hard-fought struggles as women, they have incorporated the practice into a Raison d’etre of a particular school of thought.  This endearing symbol pushes social justice and personalizes the lack of human rights rightly due to oppressed women through the world.  The cause has been so heavily politicized and eagerly embraced that few have felt any need to examine the subtleties that sometimes contradict and frequently complicate any resounding rallying point or slam dunk.  The reality, as it so often is, is full of subtle nuances that make any black and white reading much more complicated or even impossible.

Count me among those who have listened with no small annoyance to the incessant alarmist chorus of worry and hand-wringing regarding the White House’s decision to go on the offensive for once and attack Fox News.  I have always known the political process to be fickle and seemingly designed for the sake of those who would split hairs and raise concerns, but I have never seen so many degrees of second-guessing from so many different corners as I have with the President’s bold attack.  Articles like this one prove my point.  Any effective governing coalition requires placating not just the base, but also moderates, independents, and conservatives.  This should be common sense, but the purveyors of news and politics easily forget it.  The big tent is supposed to be big.      

If any Democrat in power states a position, it will be automatically criticized for being too partisan.  If one doesn’t flex one’s muscles, the lack of strong response will be lambasted as being spineless and wimpy.  A shift to the left will be criticized as catering only to the base.  A shift to the right will be criticized as forsaking liberals to appeal to a transparent sense of phony bipartisanship.  Aiming for the middle will win critics on both the left and right who would much rather prefer their concerns winning precedent rather than having a foot in one side and a foot in the other.  One could almost argue that a President, any President, can’t manage to do much of anything right, except be a combination egalitarian punching bag and dart board.  Any majority coalition is going to have natural fissures and at times conflicting interests, but the best leaders find a way to not sweat the small stuff and instead advance the common thread upon which all can agree.    

Returning again to the recent condemnation of Faux News by the Obama Administration, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that some were so quick to make a Nixon analogy.  I personally was surprised that the White House had the courage to take a chance by stating the unvarnished truth for once.  Many of us in the netroots had been arguing similarly for years, i.e. that Fox News was not a network that aimed for any kind of objective, unbiased spin in its “news” coverage.  That this was decried in some corners as a kind of Chicago-style kneecapping that utterly contradicted the President’s earlier stand advancing post-partisanship is petty politics to the extreme.  I doubt seriously that Obama keeps a constantly revised hate-list of enemies in the desk drawer of the Oval Office.  Post-partisanship is fine but as we have seen over the months it also requires cooperation from the not-so-loyal opposition, who have wished to play by their own rules in their own sandbox thankyouverymuch.  Once hopes in future that the substantive networks and news agencies no longer have to chase the narratives and outlandish pseudo-news set in motion by Fox.

Like many, I was among the ranks of the skeptics when our President continued to advance an optimistic agenda that sought to supersede political ideology in favor of cooperation.  This Era of Good Feeling lasted, if memory serves, about three full months.  As much as it pains me, we’ve still not evolved yet to the point that we can set aside our selfishness and our suspicion of the other side to truly work hand in hand.  One of the open secrets of Washington legislative politics is that many Senators and Representatives do routinely reach across the aisle in formulating worthy bills and many, shockingly enough, even have friendships with those in the opposition party.  They are, however, always cautious and careful to prevent this from becoming common knowledge back home among their constituents.  Few wish to be accused of “palling around with Democrats” after all.

Part of what drives conservative opposition is the fear of being surrounded and outnumbered.  This rally-round-the-flag response I see constantly when I am back home in Alabama.  Having a long history of feeling marginalized and having its concerns discounted by the rest of the country provides a substantial ability and precedent to band together. After having fallen out of power altogether, it is a well-worn identity that can be easily embraced yet again.  Not only that, at this point at least, Republicans really have everything to gain and nothing to lose.  They can afford to speak with more or less one voice projected directly towards their base because, as has been exhaustively reported, moderate voices are currently few and far between.  Energy does not need to be devoted to keeping everyone on board.  Liberals and Democrats can be easily vilified as smug oppressors, forcing their version of ill-suited progress upon a public which would like nothing more than to be left alone to run its affairs in its own way.  Still, at some point free will and laissez-faire produces more harm than good and intervention is necessary.  

In the meantime, it might be best for us to embrace, for the first time in decades what being the majority party entails.  We seem to have gotten out of practice over the years. It means being inclusive without papering over differences and knowing also how to engage different wings and blocs in honest conversation without degenerating into fratricide.  On this point, the media seems poised and eager to pronounce a party at war with itself because doing so promises rapt attention, increased readership, and a steady stream of interesting, lurid headlines.  Let’s not go there, please.  What I see is not exposed fault lines in stretched tautly in anticipation of a major tremor, but rather something quite different.  I see the inevitable stress and strain which characterizes the democratic process at work, one which never provides a satisfying rallying cry for anyone until its conclusion, or until its effects are judged by the direct impact made upon those whom it sets out to help.  At times we forget that the formulation of reform is often much less important than its role in improving the lives of others, but the former does make for good theater.  The latter might not make for interesting copy, but it is upon this standard that we ought to judge success or failure.  In so doing, we ought to act and choose our words accordingly.  

 

The Australian actress Nicole Kidman testified yesterday before the House International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight Subcommittee on the subject of violence in film, in particular the sickening amount of onscreen violence against women.  Kidman stated that many roles portray women as weak, as mere sex objects, or as both and that this permissive attitude of debasement contributes greatly to real life acts of violence perpetrated against women.  The actress’ intent was not merely to condemn the film industry for its excesses but also to advance the larger issue of unchecked, infrequently prosecuted violent acts committed against women across the globe.

The Oscar-winning actress said she is not interested in those kinds of demeaning roles, adding that the movie industry also has made an effort to contribute to solutions for ending the violence.  Kidman testified before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee that is considering legislation to address violence against women overseas through humanitarian relief efforts and grants to local organizations working on the problem.

That notable stories like these get submerged underneath the incessant back-and-forth of partisan or even inter-party bickering surprises me not one iota.  Such stories are often pigeonholed as merely “women’s topics” or moved to the back of the soft news queue, with the tacit assumption that celebrities are incapable of advancing much beyond their own careers or the manufactured drama designed to garnish publicity.  As for this particular example in question, Kidman is notably treading cautiously here, not willing to assign full blame to Hollywood because of her stated belief that it has devoted committed and serious internal efforts towards self-regulation.  Forgive me for being skeptical, because I know that few major money-making industries do an adequate job of policing themselves from within.  Specifically regarding the celluloid conglomerate, it took the Hays Code and then the puritanical Production Code before Tinseltown ever strongly curtailed the content found in moving pictures.          

At least one major network has recently devoted much time to advancing and promoting women’s rights, and it is in that spirit that I offer this post.  Gender discrimination, in particular, is complicated to the extreme by the fact that gender as a construct is so loosely and inexactly defined.  What constitutes “masculine” as well as “feminine” leaves more than ample room for debate and indeed it varies considerably from person to person.  Moving targets are notoriously difficult to hit.  We might define gender the same way Justice Potter Stewart famously remarked about pornography:  “I know it when I see it.”  Perhaps, but looks can be deceiving.    

Recently I watched the 1951 Swedish film, Miss Julie, which was based on the play of the same name written by August Strindberg.   Strindberg’s tortured psyche and resulting tumultuous love life must certainly have factored in to the equation, as he sees the relationship between men and women as being a combative, loathing affair in which both sexes are driven together only by carnal lust.   The two main characters, Miss Julie and her nominal lover Jean, spend the majority of the film variously exchanging insults, spilling forbidden details of each’s dysfunctional childhood, while desperately striving to keep away the barely concealed desire that so strongly pulls them together.   This, to Strindberg, is what characterizes every romantic pairing at its basest core.  The war between the sexes is just that, war, and a particularly bombastic affair where victory quickly gives way to defeat.

While I might not agree with said statement, I do grant that the playwright does deserve some praise for being ahead of his time to some degree.   Power dynamics, particularly those regarding types of privilege are explored in much detail, especially the means by which gender inequality trumps class distinction and vice versa.   Miss Julie holds power over her working-class, though highly educated lover because her background is aristocratic.   Jean, however, has power over Miss Julie because he is male and is not restrained by upper-class values.   Ironically, the aristocracy is shown to create its own needless restrictions and its own cages, and though the working-classes might have less money or influence, they also live lives of greater freedom than their social betters.   As for Jean and Julie, their flirtation is as much about control as it is about lust, and in it neither character wins the upper hand for very long.   Instead, we the audience are left with a maddeningly unresolved squabble that, by the film’s conclusion, is never really put aside.

As a feminist, however, what I found most appalling is the presentation of Miss Julie’s mother.   She was not a part of the original play and was instead added later by Alf Sjöberg, whose screenplay also fleshed out the character of the count considerably.  A woman who comes across as a sadistic parody of first-wave feminism, her character reads like a laundry list of male privilege paranoia.   For starters, she broaches propriety by being unwilling to get married because she does not wish to be seen as her husband’s property.   Loathe to give birth or to be a mother, she nonetheless becomes pregnant, while plainly hating the child that emerges from her womb.   Her daughter is forced to dress in boy’s clothing, forbidden to play with dolls, or to embrace even the most modest of female gender roles.   All of this is meant, as the playwright asserts, to prove that women are equal to men.   However, these draconian tactics lead to much misery and confusion for the child who finds traditionally male pursuits like hunting or plowing a field either perplexing or impossible.   She is therefore raised as a boy would be, learning the same chores and same societal obligations as would a male offspring, though the implication is that gender role distinctions to some degree exist for a good reason.  The mother’s designs even fall upon the workers of the estate.   Women servants are required to perform men’s work and men servants are required to perform women’s work.   Neither does so competently and before very long the family is nearly penniless.   It is then without much surprise that Sjöberg notes how much Miss Julie’s mother hates, fears, and mistrusts men and seeks to pass along this same perspective to her daughter.  The mother’s belief in radical feminism crosses the line from empowerment into misandry and it is this gross distortion of feminism that still finds its way into modern conservative discourse, particularly in the bluster of Rush Limbaugh’s frequent rantings about so-called femi-nazis.

Returning to the film, it is at this point, unsurprisingly, that the established patriarchy attempts to re-establish control and save the day.  Her husband, Miss Julie’s father, is a well-meaning and kind-hearted count who patiently tolerates his wife’s behavior until he takes a firm look at the balance sheet.   At this point, he insists that a more traditional means of both raising a child and conducting business will be employed.   He liberates his daughter from boy’s clothing, dressing her in what he believes to be gender-appropriate fare.   He arm-twists his wife into a marriage ceremony and exchange of vows, much to her extreme distaste.   However, he fails to take into account her perfidy and bitterness, as she sets fire to the estate, forcing the family to take on more debt and leaving them without a place to live until the Count finds the means to rebuild.  She then suggests that her husband should borrow money from a close personal friend, one that she happens to be having an affair with, no less.   The money borrowed is secretly her own that she has hidden away, but she lies deliberately to entangle her husband into an economic arrangement that could have been otherwise avoided.   The Count discovers what she has done, but due to the insidious nature of the transaction cannot file charges or seek justice.

Strindberg’s own views were frequently perplexing and capricious.   At times in his life he advocated for women’s suffrage but also made misogynistic statements that completely negated his original position.   He was, quite unsurprisingly, married three times, each of which ended in bitter, acrimonious divorce, due in large part to the fact to the fact that he was hypersensitive and highly neurotic.  It is easy for us to come down harshly on those who make anti-feminist statements or who state shocking offensive opinions.   Criticism is always justified, but I try to, as best I can, take into account the circumstances and the state of mind of those who make patently inappropriate public as well as private statements.  Words do matter, as do statements of brazen misogyny and unrepentant sexism, but without excusing such behavior, I do seek to find its root in an effort to formulate a solution.  The past several months have shown a marked uptick in what seems like a perpetual cycle of insults, retorts, charges, counter-charges, and the like.  I know this sort of behavior goes along with the territory but I still wonder about the ultimate impact.  Whether our dialogue is somehow coarser now than before I can’t say and whether our children are more or less inclined to violence is a matter of debate, but the fact remains that so long as we fail to seek a common humanity, we’ll always be at war, not just with our enemies, but also with ourselves.  

Taking the time to contemplate the vast amount of right-wing smears that have been either facilitated, advanced, or concocted by conservatives over the past several months is an overwhelming task.  Within each of these petty, partisan, often nonsensical parries and thrusts I am reminded again of the excesses of the Pharisees.  Wishing to have everything on their own terms and in accordance with every selfish demand, modern day Pharisees are found not merely in the opposition party, but regrettably sometimes among our own ranks, particularly in the form of people who fail to neither understand nor respect the vast amount of indignation felt when crucial reform legislation is watered down or vaguely outlined due to nothing more than political expediency and self-preservation.  If this sort of thing was limited to politicians, it might be more easily challenged, but one sees it everywhere.  Most recently, those well-connected business types who long ago lost their souls in selling the whole world are also guilty as charged.

I’ve recently relocated to the Washington, D.C. area. In so doing, I’ve recognized the vast amount of good that can be accomplished with a combination of concentration of wealth and an educated populace situated in one precise location.  The all-important achievement of critical mass proves itself essential yet again.  Still, I have to say that I won’t ever be inclined to take these gifts for granted, like so many in this town seem inclined to do. Growing up where I did, even in the suburban South, I was raised without certain benefits and expectations upon which residents in this city would pitch a fit in protest if they were ever not provided.  For example, I did not have the ability to utilize adequate public transportation. Nor was I inundated with places to purchase organic produce or earth-conscious consumer goods.  I was never reminded to bring my own reusable grocery bags to the supermarket. Walmarts were never banned, instead they were embraced. Republicans were the people one lawn over, not someone miles away far removed from the hustle and bustle of the city.  Likely some family in the neighborhood refused to celebrate Halloween, leaving two bowls full of untouched religious literature instead of candy, thoroughly disappointing trick o’treaters in the process.

Every day on my way back and forth to do daily errands, I wade through a stream of college students whose parents must overwhelmingly well-off.  I know the parents must be, because these students never seem to have to work and I doubt they could afford the things they have on a waiter or waitresses’ salary.  Their privilege shows plainly, down to their expensive clothing, high-priced accessories, and nonchalant, dismissive attitudes.  Despite my best intentions, I admit with no small discomfort that I find it hard not to resent them.  In my own college days, admittedly still not that far in the rearview mirror, I recognize some slight similarities between them as they are now and the person I was a few years back, though the differences are far more glaring.  In seeking to avoid building my own personal mythology upon a foundation of smug superiority or paternalistic moralizing, I instead share my own story.

Though I was a scholarship student, my full college tuition was awarded on the basis of my being disabled.  Though there had been ominous rumblings ever since my birth, namely that I was a frequently sick child, the proper onset of my illness did not arrive until midway through high school.  After frequent, lengthy hospitalizations and other disease-related distractions, my grade point average plummeted.  Until then, I had been on track to go to more than a few schools whose very names themselves connoted mystical respect and unquestioned prestige.  However, by the time college appeared on the horizon and emerged from my latest pleasant hospital stay, I only qualified for in-state offers.  As such, I made my final decision purely on the sensible basis that I ought to stay close to my doctors, since it was highly likely I’d need extensive treatment in the near future. In hindsight, it was a wise decision, and one that proved to be correct, but to this day I have a hard time choking back my bitterness.  How I would have loved attending a prestigious school in a solidly blue city!

At the time, I didn’t realize that often the quality of instruction and educational merit of colleges and individuals isn’t vast, especially since college success is directly proportional to what one puts into it, but what cannot be discounted in the least are the networking opportunities that arise from attending a well-connected school.  What has made my recent job search difficult is that I simply did not have the opportunity to attend a noteworthy college or university.  I do recognize that this fact is due to external factors upon which I had absolutely no control and, as such, it’s not like my own laziness or academic underachievement are to blame.  Still, in this abysmal job climate, who you know, or who you know who knows someone who will go to bat for you is much more important than achievement or merit.  This is especially true in politics and probably has always been.

For example, my tenth grade English teacher became Laura Bush’s press secretary based on having been in a sorority with someone’s daughter, whose father happened to be a well-connected Republican.  On the Democratic side of the ball, I note that this past weekend I attended a huge house party held not far from Capitol Hill. Most of those who attended were Hill staffers, and though it would be a vast oversimplification to state that most of them clearly had not gotten their jobs based on their intellectual prowess alone, they did give every impression of being of the former frat boy persuasion.  One could also safely wager that they had achieved their positions in much the same fashion as my former teacher.  I need to point out here that those of us who believe in government’s inherent capability to skillfully, and competently solve a multitude of problems might have emerged somewhat less certain of it after spending a few hours uneasily rubbing shoulders and listening to conversations.

Andrew Jackson was the first President to advance the spoils system without any apology for the procedure, but I doubt he was the first to utilize it to reward supporters and well-connected constituents.  A rather large and glaring discrepancy exists between the system as it is and the one upon which we place our full trust.  Over the years, a multitude of reforms have been passed to level the playing field, which include everything from Affirmative Action to campaign finance reform, but regardless of intent, interpersonal connections or the lack thereof circumvent our best intentions.  To some degree, it’s understandable that we function in such a way. Anyone in a management position will feel more comfortable hiring someone whom he or she knows he or she can trust or whose good name can be reliably vouched for by someone he or she knows personally.  Even so, it’s people like me who never had the ability to make those sorts of connections in the first place who end up shortchanged.  Nor is this a system that leaves out purely the disabled.

Many highly-qualified candidates get shuffled to the bottom of the deck automatically. If they do not have an in to the established network, then they are much less likely to make it past the very first step.  Nor is this regrettable situation solely applicable to job seekers. It wasn’t until I moved here that I realized how overwhelmingly the Northeast corridor shapes so much of our national discourse and our national identity.  I have observed that those in the news business at times express a justified consternation at the kind of unilateral narratives that are advanced by the Washington-to-New York pipeline at the expense of the rest of the country’s news agencies.  Sometimes these mini-narratives hold water but often they prove themselves to be not quite as notable, nor as important as they’d like to believe.  Even as a child, I recognized how even the stories and historical anecdotes found in the textbooks I read in elementary school focused heavily upon the cities of the East Coast, as though by implication they themselves were all of America.  If the South, by contrast, was ever mentioned, one either read of a romanticized notion of chivalry and gallantry nearly a century out of date or as an invocation to hear again of the shameful history of a racist past—a past never allowed to be forgotten.  At times I feel a sort of kinship with modern day Germans, since I imagine they are never allowed to forget about the Holocaust, either.

As for the problem between the favoritism we have and the meritocracy we believe we have, this is a disconnect that will not change so long as the existing power structure does not recognize the problem and does not make the needed internal reforms.  Much like the entitled rich kids I file past every day, I doubt most even contemplate their own complicity in a system that, if they ever were questioned about it, they would wholly justify by saying that they were merely the latest to inherit it.  Like so many institutionalized and enmeshed inequalities, few feel any compulsion whatsoever towards reform because few give it serious contemplation.  If you’d like my unvarnished opinion, I think that until we get this particularly unfortunate discriminatory practice under control, we’ll run into complication after complication in every other reform measure we push.  It has been my experience that the most virulent ills are not the ones we can plainly see, but the overarching underpinnings and framework that are common to everyone, regardless of identity group or leaning. The basic premise of preferential treatment is not necessarily unjustified, but when we assume that brand name, family name, or college name trump everything else, then we run into massive problems.  The clothes do not make the emperor.

I admit that I have always been skeptical and unaffected by the majority of human interest stories.  It’s not that these efforts to tug at America’s heart strings leave me cold and uncaring, but rather I rightly see them as an attempt to tug at our purse strings as well.  Every so often a story, such as the brave pilot who quite incredibly landed a commercial aircraft in the Hudson river will come to light; situations like those deserve every mention and every laudatory bit of praise.  However, for every one genuine story of high drama and unselfish heroism, there are four which are cynically leap upon and patently designed to hook in viewers. These are then given the hard sell by the excited, tension-building cadences of television anchors, compelling us, if not begging us to watch the story develop in front of our faces.    

Though the Media (and certain members of the Obama Administration, if the story is to be believed) will chide us for our irresponsibility in jumping to conclusions or not taking into account the whole picture, in situations like the recent story regarding the six-year-old little boy who was said to be dangerously being carried by a runaway balloon when he was in fact hiding in his family’s attic, the media looks more foolish than the most clueless blogger.  Attempting to save face, the media is now questioning whether the entire matter was a cheap stunt.  Whether it was or not is largely immaterial.  News reporters rapaciously jumped aboard this story when only the most basic of facts had been confirmed, and the most glaring offenders were the twenty-four hour cable news networks.  Child + perilous situation + novelty + human interest + potentially heroic rescue = media catnip.    

Teachable moments™ like these can be direct at a variety of offenders.  I might start with a few news outlets whose desperation to use this non-event for their own ends led them to play a bit fast and loose with journalistic restraint.  Everyone stands to gain from a particularly juicy story, of course.  Still, pardon my skepticism, what would have been accomplished if the matter had turned out to be true?  What if there had been a stirring rescue followed by at least an hour’s worth of self-congratulatory talk from the active participants in the rescue effort?  A three-day-dialogue on bad parenting skills?  A picture of the young boy on the cover of People?  A satellite interview with the family and the child himself on the morning pseudo-news/variety hour of one’s choosing?  An eventual appearance on Oprah™?  Aside from a nice distraction from our lives of quite desperation, how does this help?    

It did not, of course, turn out this way.  As it stands, the media does not like to be punk’d, yet the irony in this instance is that the mainstream players unintentionally punk’d themselves.  It is for reasons like these that the phrase “human interest” elicits yawns rather than heightened curiosity within me.  I suppose maybe I see news purely in terms of substantive critique and a presentation of important information.  My life is boringly normal enough and I don’t need validation of mutual humanity in the form of the latest person who has bravely faced some challenge or distinguished himself or herself from the rest of the pack.  Most of my personal heroes never faced a television camera in their whole of their lives and, if they ever exist in the public consciousness at all, they are often mere footnotes and shadowy phantoms in someone’s forthcoming book or dissertation.    

Fame is ephemeral enough, but soft news fame is its own kind of ephemeral cotton candy—here now, gone quickly, likely never to return.  Those who court it know that the quickest way to maintain attention is to resort to sensation and to devise their own means of achieve it.  When I was in undergrad, the Mass Communications 101 class I took taught us each of the ways which could be employed to grab the attention of the media.  Those whose stated internal agenda is to achieve the spotlight would be well to memorize them, since they are truer now than ever, especially in a time of great transition.  In a different time, this whole child in balloon facing great danger story would not have been instantly transformed into an established motif of vulnerable child fighting against a harsh environment.  Facts would have been checked more judiciously.  With three main cable networks fighting for the attention of an audience, each seeks to outdo the other.  Competition can be good for everyone involved, but while each has carved out its own particular niche, one can still plainly observe squabbling over the coveted title of number one.  A media with egg on its face again would be wise to not invest in eggs, since they have a way of boomeranging back to their thrower.

I admit I have been reluctant to write about the War in Afghanistan for each and every one of the reasons and reservations shared by most Progressives.  For starters, this is an inherited, hand-me-down conflict that is not Mr. Obama’s War and I am not motivated to hang an undeserved albatross around his neck.  While I understand the reasons why the President has committed troops, precious resources, and money we really don’t have to win this fight, I wonder if this is the best way to refute the long-held conservative myth that Democrats are unwilling to take up arms to defend our country.  Republicans love to invoke President Carter and in so doing, never let us forget the depressing sight of a downed helicopter, destroyed by impact—the final resting place of Marines deployed on a hastily conceived and poorly planned rescue mission to Iran to liberate hostages.  Obama should be given credit for seeking to counteract that conception, but Afghanistan might not be the best means to accomplish said objective.    

Some have tried to make a tentative contrast between this war and Vietnam, which is neither an accurate, nor a congruent comparison.  Many leftists, myself included, were understandably quick to draw parallels between the Iraq War and that horribly divisive protracted conflict, and indeed, some of those characterizations did hold water.  It also helped that the war was being waged quite incompetently and by our political opposition.  However, this struggle easily resembles nothing we have dealt with before and if I were forced to make any contrast with other wars in our nation’s history I might concede that it is more closely akin to the Korean conflict.  Both are sloppy, inexact, confusing, and contradictory affairs that are as confusing to those who lived, fought, and died as they are to scholars and pundits attempting to make sense of them.  When our Afghan struggle draws to a close, whenever that shall be, few concrete conclusions will be drawn and those attempting to point at evidence to support their assertions will have their work cut out for them.    

Afghanistan nor Korea have many clearly defined objectives, satisfying victories, nor demoralizing defeats, but what they do have are perplexing stalemates reluctantly adopted to avoid the very real fear of expanding the fight to nearby hostile regions or adjacent unfriendly nations.  The Korean War might very well have been the first instance in American history where we realized superior military force does not necessarily translate to resolute and inevitable victory because, in part, acting too aggressively threatens to draw in neighboring countries and, in so doing, transform proxy war into hot war.  Creating a wholesale conflagration between major players is as much bad policy and potentially catastrophic outcome then as it is now.  Nearly sixty years ago, the United States could not afford to start a declared war between itself and the Red Chinese, specifically since a war with the Communist Chinese always ran the risk of a shooting war with the Soviet Union.  Nowadays, particularly when one contemplates how much of our debt China holds, I can’t help but be grateful that cooler heads prevailed.  Though China may own us, their own developing economy is dependent upon our recovery, and if we fall, so do they.  

In Afghanistan, we are utilizing a strategy honed in Iraq which believes that the best way to combat terrorist groups and in so doing eliminate them is to use small, precise skirmishes in a highly strategic fashion.  The gloriously sweeping open field battles of yore may forever be a thing of the past.  What we are trying to avoid, of course, is expanding the fight into Pakistan in means other than the occasional specifically targeted bombing raid.  Even so, resentments have been created when we act in that fashion, particularly because Pakistan’s leaders believe we are threatening their sovereignty in launching raids, though it must also be added that they themselves have never firmly committed to eliminate Al-Qaeda from within their own borders.  Threatening the stability of the entire Middle East is the foremost omnipresent threat we must keep in mind and while a wholesale invasion of neighboring countries might be a temptation to some, it is hardly any solution.  Warfare in the Twenty-First century has proven to be a different kind of containment that puts out fires as they are discovered and faces a guerrilla enemy who recognizes full well that the only way to stay alive to fight another day is to resort to a strategy of hit and run.  In an older era, this was considered unsightly, cowardly, and against the unwritten rules of engagement.  The Taliban feels no shame, nor any compulsion to adhere to a antiquated standard that, if adhered to, would quickly lead to its demise.

In Korea, the one wholesale success of UN forces was General Douglas MacArthur’s amphibious Inchon landing, which succeeded in occupying almost all of the Korean peninsula.  In response, Chinese dictator Mao Zedong deployed a exceptionally large contingent of troops to combat the threat and reclaim lost territory.  These soldiers owed a large share of their funding and support to Soviet leader Josef Stalin, whose infamous paranoia might have worked in his own favor for once in this situation.  As such, UN forces were driven back past the 38th Parallel and into South Korea; it is at this juncture that the war reached an unsatisfying Mexican standoff which still is in place today.  The Korean War technically never ended.  A state of war still exists between North and South, though it has been superseded by an long-standing truce.  The effects of this can be seen today with the saber-rattling and manipulative posturing of the North Korean government, particularly with its desire to obtain a nuclear program or at least its desire to play cat-and-mouse with the rest of the world.

Though the United States may have the most formidable weaponry and military, this alone will not necessarily produce victory.  I often doubt whether war over terrorism will ever be firmly declared with any satisfaction, or whether the best we can ever hope for is a kind of mutually agreed upon ceasefire and even partition.  The only way one could really destroy every terrorist cell would be to either invade or bomb a garden variety of countries, most in the Middle East, which would inflame tensions around to the world to such a fevered pitch that World War III would certainly become a strong possibility.  Changing the mindset of those won over to a combination of radical Islam married to terrorist tactics might be a better option.  Proving how such attitudes are counter-productive, counter-intuitive, and ultimately futile would be needed strategies in accomplishing this task.  

A combination of skillful diplomacy and a policy of military containment would seem to be as plausible as any strategy yet attempted.  In saying this, I hasten to use the phrase “military containment” because it is beholden to another age where it served as frequent justification to stem the spread of Communism.  Perhaps we ought to redefine for our own age what containment really means, and in this regard, I don’t think it connotes long term occupation of any country.  I do not have the answers and do not advance a strategy, because I am as flummoxed as even those in charge seem to be.  Even those in the driver’s seat of this operation have little more than educated guesses themselves upon which to justify their decisions and my hope is, as always, that we will embrace the most sensible course of action and always be willing to learn from what came before, regardless of whether it is welcome or unwelcome.          

The Parables of Jesus were spoken in symbolic language which lends them to a variety of different, though often interrelated interpretations.  Indeed, the very structure of the words which form them make any one sole meaning impossible.  It is this fact in particular that has made me skeptical of any church or any faith which stakes a claim to the “real” way.  Biblical scholarship has revealed nuance and even irony in the original text itself, both of which must be taken into account before forming any one-sided reading.  Jesus often spoke indirectly to avoid persecution by both Roman and Jewish authorities, but beyond the obvious, I have always seen the Parables much as I would an excellent work of poetry, one which provides a new, helpful, before unseen resonance with every subsequent reading.  The intrinsic thread remains constant, but new permutations arise as I age and depending on what frame of mind I am in at that particular juncture in my life, I always glean something brand new.

When we talk about our own complicity in a system where those at the top dictate the course of action for those subservient to them, I return to the Parable of the Talents.  In this day and age where we often believe that our own power, income, and sphere of influence owes its existence to making compromises with unethical major players, this Parable address our messy moral dilemmas.  Here, the version in the Gospel of Matthew, which is cited most frequently.    

An article written in today’s Washington Post posits whether or not the foul-mouthed chorus of immature slights and sharp elbows that characterizes an internet world shows a new degree of rudeness or whether said dialogue merely reflects a new awareness of the democratic insult.  I myself received an tremendous amount of hateful, childish comments when a few seconds of the iReport I posted online to CNN was chosen for broadcast and aired on the network itself.  What I had been attempting to convey in my talk were the many complexities of the life of Ted Kennedy, but what I quickly noticed were that the personal attacks I received did not even come close to directly addressing what I said.  No one was really listening to or even contemplating my words, rather they just wanted to vent.  I think the most bizarre and gratuitous insult I received was the poster who told me to “comb [my] f__king hair”.      

For all the debate and the analysis, true civility might very well be an ideal rather than a reality.  The instant feedback and information deluge of our internet age gives us the realization that human discourse provides us equal, ample evidence of every conceivable shade of good and bad.  Nowadays, we often believe we live in the worst of all possible worlds.   A pessimistic approach does not provide much in the way of comforting, helpful answers, but neither does the kind of radical optimism rightly savaged by Voltaire in Candide.   As the article addresses, looking into the past to find evidence of a time where the trains always ran on time, every imaginable need was cheap and readily available, and people treated each other with courtesy and respect is wistful nostalgia for times that never really were.  

Mary Schmich’s opinion column entitled “Advice, Like Youth, Probably Just Wasted on the Young” includes this bit of advice.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

There have been as many pronouncements that society is on the brink of self-destruction as there have been prophetic sureties of the imminent Second Coming of Christ or the End of the World according to calendars of ancient indigenous peoples.   The Post story addresses how the conservative pitchfork rabble falsely accused a DC area author and government worker of having some secret connection to the now infamous rap song, recorded in a New Jersey school over the summer by students, the lyrics of which dared to praise the President.   The unfortunate subject of this massive knee-jerk, Charisse Carney-Nunes, voices how many of us feel when subjected to another pitched volley of irrationality hurled at us by an army of plate glass window-smashing malcontents.            

Carney-Nunes spends a lot of her free time teaching children how to bridge divides, but she has no idea how to build a dialogue with those who attacked her.

“How can I talk to those people?” she said. “These are people who persist in believing that Barack Obama is a Muslim, that he isn’t a citizen of this country. You tell me: Where is the beginning of that conversation?”

Contentious times produce contentious disagreements.   We still believe, as did those who shaped this nation, in a liberal line of logic that insists, provided enough education, people can become self-aware, rational beings.   The flaws in this argument are particularly glaring now, when education alone, or as the Right likes to call it, indoctrination, seems to be insufficient in the face of emotional excess.   From a distance, it is interesting to observe the internal conflict within many people now up in arms over something that shows itself whenever passions are overheated.  As though at war with both hemispheres of their brain, they bounce back and forth from uncivilized raw emotion to some degree of civilized restraint.  That they themselves seem incapable of recognizing this is problem enough.  

“Completely false allegations incubate in the fringe and jump within days to the mainstream, distorting any debate or progress we can have as a society,” said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which released a report last month noting a rise in the “militia movement” over the past year. “What’s different is that a great deal of this is real fear and frustration at very real demographic and cultural changes.”  

I believe that we are on the right side of history and that our cause is just and good.   Yet, I resist strongly the temptation to gloat or to condescendingly dismiss those who fear that reform, any reform, means destruction and that change, when enacted, can never be undone.  Being snide and condescending only makes matters worse.   Every meaningful conservative has one foot in the past and values the sanctity of the status quo.   But as we have seen, merely returning to old ways does not provide simple solutions.  The past is too messy and composed of too many ironies to be anyone’s Golden Age, either for us or for them.   We ought to take the lessons of the past as they are, without smoothing away its rough edges or glossing over the bits that don’t serve our purpose.  The Past, in its pure form, has no bias to Left or Right.  It can be frequently be instructive, so long as we know that it calls us out as much as it calls out our opposition.    

Returning to the subject of common decency or the lack thereof,  driving much of this conservative grassroots backlash is the reality that this nation will soon consist of an ethnic and racial plurality, and many on the Right fear that balancing authority among separate identity groups, each with its own cultural peculiarities and goals, will lead to disunion and strife.   Pat Buchanan and others have advanced this argument before and I fully expect to see more instances of it as the Caucasian majority in this country begins to slowly, but surely recede.  We portray these people as foolish or intent on selfishly benefiting from a sense of white privilege and entitlement at our own peril.  Fighting fire with fire in this instance is the surest way to eventually cause an inferno.  Anyone with an itchy trigger finger is merely looking for a reason to pull it.  And as for us, any self-contained group does an excellent job of talking to itself, but finding a way to know how to converse with the broader universe is the key challenge.  Much of our discourse could be rightly described as choir practice, which is good to some extent, but we would probably be better served by developing ways to speak to the vast majority of Americans who do not embrace the politics of the conservative nutroots.