Dreadgeek's Meme-space

Today is my first Saturday back at Freegeek after a nearly two year hiatus! It’s been good to be back here. Today I’m doing Office Hours which entails sitting in a big lab and answering various and sundry Linux questions on a one-to-one basis. It’s good to be back at the ‘Geek’, as I call this place. These are my people, nerdy, geeky, excited about technology and progressive, very techno-hippy.

So the business part of the trip is over. We met with the property managers and I am now a landlady! That is a weird thing to say but there it is. The house that I inherited was one of my favorites and considering that my family tore whole thing down and rebuilt it in the late 70’s and the fact that this was the house that had the walnut tree out of which I fell and broke my collar bone at the age of seven.

This is my house:




I got sick as a dog and spent Friday night in bed, completely out of it. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t stay awake, it was utterly miserable and I was seriously thinking that this morning we were going to have to get up and drive back to Portland. Fortunately, nothing that drastic is necessary because I woke up and was, more or less, better although my stomach felt dicey at first but I realized that was because the last real food I had was Thursday afternoon and that was meatloaf from Denny’s! But I managed to get most of a tuna sandwich down and, of course, the all-important elixir of life and so we’re going to continue our trip.

I took Jaime on a sentimental journey around the old stomping grounds, the familial home, the old neighborhood, the old high school. Surprisingly, my old ROTC unit was open today so I poked my head in there and just looked around. It’s been almost a quarter century since I’ve been there!

At some point Sacramento became a gay mecca so now we are at Crepeville in downtown Sac having just finished up brunch and we’re about to get back in the car and drive down to SF for the next leg of our big adventure.

Jaime and I travel very well together. We’d already done one trip together but not a road trip, flying (for a couple of hours) is a different beast than driving for half a day and we’ve done it marvelously, my illness not-with-standing.

More later.

We left home around 8:30 and are now three hours into our very first road-trip. The fuse on the lighter/AC outlet on the console blew out when we stopped in Albany which presented us with the unenviable prospect of nothing but radio between Albany, OR and Sacramento, CA. The prospect of that didn’t fill me with anything that could even laughably be called joy. We stopped at some auto-parts store, where it was suggested that it might be a fuse. Like fools, we drove off, got down the road and then my wife, brilliant woman that she is, decided to check the manual to see where the fuses were. At the next rest stop we checked and, true enough, it was the fuse so we replaced that at our first truck stop of the trip and are now, once again, tooling down I-5 listening to Terry Pratchett’s “Men at Arms” read by Nigel Planer. Now we are in a Denny’s in Roseburg, OR. So far, I’ve only had one person almost ‘sir’ me and no one has called me Whoopi Goldberg, so I’m grateful for whatever small favors I can get at this juncture.

Today we drove the car to the coast. First we stopped at the Tillamook Cheese Factory where we bought way too much cheese before heading up to Cannon Beach. On the drive there, I managed to pour an Italian soda all over my new khaki chinos which I wore for the first time. Wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t gotten blackberry. At any rate, this precipitated driving past Cannon Beach to Seaside where I bought a pair of cargo pants at Eddie Bauer . Finally we managed to get back down to Cannon Beach where we ate a very late (and gigantic) lunch at Mo’s before driving into town proper and walking around.

At this point, a couple of observations are called for. The first is that I LOVE living now. When I was looking for someplace to buy pants, Fred Meyer’s or something, I pulled out my trusty iPhone (which if I could have it surgically implanted in my body I would) and searched for the closest thing I could find. Not only did it find the nearest Fred Meyers (just outside of Astoria) but gave me directions based upon where I was. Now, THAT is some insanely great tech right there! Later, when I needed to find the bar we are currently sitting in where I am blogging this again, I searched and found the bar not knowing the address just the name and city.

Another observation, on our drive from Tillamook to Cannon Beach, I got a chance to open up the Audi a bit and see what it could do. OH MY GODDESS I LOVE THAT CAR!!! At one point I had to sprint past an RV that was holding up the works, unfortunately, the passing lane was in a curvy part of the road. I punched it, she leapt forward and suddenly we went from doing 45mph (72kmh) to doing just under 70mph (112kmh). We’re hitting curves rated at 40(kmh) mph at 65 mph. The car just leaned into the curve, gripped the road and didn’t let go. I thought I had driven before but now I understand how fun driving really can be!

Today I become a luxury car owner. It’s ‘only’ an Audi A4 Quattro but it’s going to be ours! What a difference a few days make. Originally we thought we were going to get a BMW 328i. That was what I really wanted but the dealer didn’t come down far enough into my price range. Jaime managed to find, on Craigslist of all places, a 2000 Audi that a couple was selling because they had a baby and a sport sedan isn’t as parental as a Volvo. So their loss (more his than hers by the sound of it) is our gain.

It’s got a Bose sound system in it (this I like) and the instrument console has more of a space shuttle feel to it (and that has always been one of my desires is to get in my car and feel like I’m piloting the space shuttle) and it’s going to cost us less than 9K (albeit just under 9K at $8700).

I finally after so many, many years have a Mac. I’ve always liked Apple computers, certainly since the early 90’s when I was working at Gamescape in SF and we had two at work, along with the one my housemate owned and another that was owned by the person who hosted my D&D group. And now I have one. I love my Macbook! I’m sitting on the MAX, writing my little heart out.

My buddy Todd was teasing me that I would stop riding my bike to work and would soon be as out-of-shape as many of the other folks in the office. I told him “watch me not”. I’m determined that even though I have a car, I’m still going to ride most days. I might give myself the luxury of driving one day a week but the other days are definitely going to be spent on MAX and bike. That way I can write. I have a novel and a non-fiction book about race burning a hole in my head and I want to get them written. An hour each way on MAX will give me that opportunity.

At the request of a friend, I popped over and took a look at the doings on BF.com.  This was a mistake, particularly after having read Bill Kristol's column today in the NY Times.  (More on that in a bit)  My friend requested that I look at the White Privilege thread and, of course, it was the same old thing only this time regarding Barack Obama's masterful speech on race.  There was the usual denying of white privilege and the usual copy-and-pastes of the same lists of what white privilege is by the usual people.  Someone, in an obviously mistaken attempt at levity, posted a link to this article at the Onion .  This was met, quite predictably, by attention being drawn to how the satire wasn't funny (it is, in fact, quite funny) and how the words used in the piece were precisely what POC go through everyday, etc. etc. ad nauseum infinitum.  Didn't people actually listen to the speech or did they just hear that the speech occurred?   Here was an opportunity for the POC on BF.com to be heard and, as far as I could read, many of the whites just weren't interested in listening.  What's more many of the POC didn't appear to hear something Obama said about white privilege, to wit:

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

Now, to my mind these are some of the most insightful and bravest words spoken about race in America anytime in my lifetime.  Not only because it is definitely true that, in fact, this is exactly how many working- and middle-class whites feel when they hear the words 'white privilege' but the very idea that blacks have any kind of obligation to do so much as acknowledge that it might hold a grain of truth is entirely foreign.  I will admit that on more than one occasion I have heard whites talk about that and closed my hears to their words, however, as I have grown and lived a bit more and realized what kind of amazing privilege I grew up with because of class and realized that there have been and are white folks who grew up with far less privilege than I did.  This doesn't mean that they don't have white-skin privilege but they do not see themselves as privileged and, to take one example, it is hard to imagine how my best friend from high school could have felt privileged compared to me because he was poor and I lived in a huge house compared to the small apartment then duplex.  It is painful to watch and I didn't post anything on BF.com (and won't after the trashing I got) but it seems that both sides of this debate have entrenched and are now just doing a kabuki dance with one another, both playing their assigned parts to the hilt.  It's almost as if one were watching computers caught in a looping dialog. 

Barack Obama came to Portland and my partner and I got out of bed at 4:00 AM (a bit early for me, very much early for her) and groggily got on TriMet to go see him speak.  After thinking we couldn't get tickets as late as the night before.  Standing on line with a throng, thousands strong, shivering in the cold, damp, Portland air with rain threatening, was a bonding experience.  It gave me a true sense of how broad this man's support really is.  Immediately in front of us was a father and his two daughters who had driven down from Vancouver, WA.  One of the girls, who was celebrating her 18th birthday that day, had driven down from Idaho where she was attending college.  As we spoke, he told me that he had voted for Perot twice and Bush the Younger once but had become thoroughly disgusted and now supported Obama precisely because he spoke of bridging the differences and bringing the country together.  In back of us was a white couple with their son who was black or bi-racial (I didn't bother to ask).  Surrounding us were what seemed like three-quarters of the black population of Portland and a cross-section of peoples of all ages.  Some of us, like the quintessentially suburban family in front of us, were conventional and conservative in our appearances.  Some of us were decidedly unconventional in those same ways.  At no point in that crowd did my partner or I feel like we stood out in any kind of noticeable way, even though we are a bi-racial lesbian couple.

After they mercifully opened the doors twenty minutes early (it was about 3 degrees Celsius that morning) we sat in the Oregon convention center seating for another two hours before the proceedings started.  Just in front of us were a group of kids who were maybe freshmen in college.  Behind us a sweet couple who had recently moved here from Wyoming.  He was a reporter looking to change careers, I found out later when he went to the press platform to better get pictures of Obama. (Some of the pictures are mine some are his.)  I spied Vietnam vets and even a few World War II vets with their VFW hats on proudly. 

When Obama mounted the stage, it was like being at a rock show but a decidedly political one.  The man looks every bit the part of President. Imagine a young Morgan Freeman playing the President in some movie and you get a sense of his astounding presence.  Bill Richardson said very kind and flattering things as prelude to his endorsement and then the man himself got up to speak. 

Having listened to his speech on race and remembering his 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention, I knew he was a good orator.  This was not his best by no means, but his not-best is still extraordinarily good.  Words like electrifying come to mind.  Harlan Ellison, the science fiction icon, once wrote of another author's work "Possibly the only dismaying aspect of excellence is that it makes living in a world of mediocrity an ongoing prospect of living hell."  He is so good that he reminds those of us who are truly passionate lovers of language and long to be lifted up to soaring heights by it of just how much time we spend in the low-lying lands of the merely utilitarian oration that generally passes for political speechifying. We who cannot help but love that which others might dismiss as high-falutin' talk feel what Ellison, in that same forward called 'the subtle pertubation".  I am in Toastmaster's and I listened, rapturously, to his rhetoric for its own sake knowing that A> I wouldn't hear a lot of specific policy proposals and B> that I would go back later, reconstructing as much of it in my mind as I could in as objective a manner as I can manage. 

Let me stop here to say that I understand why some folks are critical of Obama for what, to some minds, is too many words and not enough actions.  There has been a concerted effort, on the part of Clinton and many of her supporters, to paint Obama has nothing so much as a very good orator, someone who you might want to give a toast at the Presidential dinner but not to be the President.  I understand why people say that.  That does not make them right nor does it make them tactically smarter.  Can  we all, at last, admit that if electing the best and smartest technocrats was the pathway to electoral victory, then the Kerry, Gore, Mondale and Dukakis would have won their respective elections?  Can we all face up to that?  This is not to say that I do not wish that it was the technocrats who could win elections as themselves!  Oh how I wish that the American people voted more rationally but the reality of things is that we tend to vote our emotions.  If it were not true, from a purely detached point of view, Hillary Clinton is the obvious nominee for the Democratic party and, if you believe that national security is going to be either the most important or second most important issue facing the country, then John McCain is the most obvious candidate for President.  The man has far more experience than either Obama or Clinton combined in the national security arena.  However, that's not how we make our political decisions and the sooner that Democrats and Progressives get that through our heads, the brighter our electoral fortunes will be. 

What we saw that morning was a Democrat who is able to communicate a vision of America that appeals on so many levels with so many different kinds of Americans.  Here is a man who understands that George Lakoff and those Progressives like him are right--or certainly more right than wrong--when they say that the Left has communicate its values and not its ten-point plans.  Did Obama talk about getting us out of Iraq?  Yes.  Did he pull up the Powerpoint and give us the details?  No.  What's more he needn't do so.  Here's another admission that Progressives are going to have to swallow so buck up; the next President is notother than a very delayed Tivo-viewing of Saigon in 1975, it'll take the better part of a year, possibly two to get it done.  I believe that Obama is probably smart enough to realize that this is the case and so I do not fault him for not being more detailed.  What's more, I know he's smart enough to understand his own limitations and therefore will make sure that his foreign policy team actually knows what the hell its doing.  He doesn't need to say that in a speech. 

Take his words about talking to adversaries.  At one point, he mentioned that Kennedy talked to Kruschiev, that Nixon talked to Mao and that Reagan talked to Gorbachev.  If you listen, you hear two important messages.  The first is that "here is how we answer those critics that say we cannot talk to our adversaries."  At the time, the Soviets and China were said to be existential threats to the United States so the argument that somehow this existential threat is different than that existential threat is going to have a hard hill to climb.  And as we all know there isn't a conservative Republican alive who would so much as claim that Ronald Reagan even thought of ever doing something that they would disapprove of.  The second is that it communicates the principle that needs to be communicated to Americans so that they buy into the Progressive vision; "as Progressives we believe that in order to reduce the risk of war, we must be willing to negotiate with nation-states we are in conflict with". What's beautiful is that not only is the contrast built-in (Conservatives don't believe in talking to their adversaries) but we can pull up examples where conservatives who are loved by the movement did precisely what they are now accusing Democrats of being soft for doing.  The elegant part is that conservatives can hardly help but do so and thus look petulant and, let's be honest, not a little bit clueless as to the way that diplomacy works.

Throughout his speech, there were these double-layered messages. To understand just how important this is, one need look no further than Reagan and Bill Clinton.  Both did things that were decidedly unpopular within their own party and got away with it.  How?  By communicating values, ideas and visions to people. 

Along with the typical political recitation of someone he met on the campaign trail, near the end he riffed on some specifics.  National service, universal health care, doing right by our veterans (a quick aside, this was one of the few lines that did not get a raucous applause in Portland, something that will have to wait for another blog.  For now, all I can is that Progressives had better figure out that it is not the fault of people in the military), investing in our physical and electronic infrastructure.  All things I support but not the real core.

Along with the war and our tanking economy there is a feeling of malaise about the land.  In a decade, we have done nothing significant about global warming and all of us know that the clock is ticking on that.  We have allowed class divisions to widen to dangerous levels and have done nothing on that.  We have allowed a situation to develop that on health and education issues, America now looks like a very rich Third World nation instead of an Industrialized nation.  And so much of it is because we have not had leaders with vision, or when we have had them they were either cowardly in putting them forth (Clinton) or had a vision supremely contrary to the Progressive vision and what is good for America (Bush).  What we need, along with all the practical programs, is someone who can and will communicate a Vision to We the People.  What we do with that Vision is up to us but the people need a vision.  Try to imagine, just imagine

We can nominate a technocrat or we nominate a communicator, a Great Communicator of our own, with the vision of a Roosevelt or a Kennedy and the communications gift of a Clinton.

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Now playing: Joan Lippincott - Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C Major, BWV 564: Toccata
via FoxyTunes    going to get American troops out of Iraq in sixty-days or ninety.  If this is going to be anything what it would look like for us to move to a renewable energy source economy.  Can't quite grasp it, can you?  It is vision that we need.

Let me start by saying that as much as I hope Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States, I have serious doubts that he will. I am pessimistic, moreso than at any point since I started following the senator's climb. The reason is that I think that he will be broken up on the reefs of American racial politics. I thought his speech, given today, was a brilliant one. One of the best political speeches of my lifetime, perhaps one of the best in the last 50 years. I think it will make next to no difference what-so-ever because of where the man goes to church. Here, again, is one of those times that we can see the double-standard that applies to race-relations in America. John McCain has the backing of a man who claims that Catholicism is a cult. That's okay. He can issue a half-hearted repudiation and move on with his life. George Bush can go to Bob Jones university where interracial dating is banned and while there is some tut-tutting that ensues, ultimately, it does no permanent damage to his campaign. Pat Robertson can say that 9/11 was brought on because America tolerates homosexuals and feminists in the populace and politicians will still clamor for his imprimatur. But let a black politician be involved, in any way, with a black minister who--admittedly--says things that are hyperbolic from the pulpit and that's it. It is OVER for Obama. Nothing he says will break through this. Even now, nominally progressive people, slam Obama for the words of someone who is not him but that doesn't matter. And this is the tip of the iceberg.

If you are black and politically progressive, any illusions you were holding onto--for hope or for sanity--should be well and truly dissapated by now. Watching progressive Democrats find reasons to put down Obama and gleefully trash the man for things that they would let a white politician (who was progressive and a Democrat) off the hook for is an education. As I posted on my other blog the other day, part of the problem white progressive Democrats are having with Obama is that he isn't in the box. He's got the 'wrong' kind of CV. Despite his work as a community organizer the fact of the matter is, he isn't a race-man. His campaign isn't all about race and if it were, white progressives could feel great about a black man running for President, knowing that he has no more chance of winning the nomination than does Santa Claus, make kissy face for the camera, make some mumbling nods toward the idea of one day (just not today and when tomorrow is today, it'll still be not that today either) America will see itself clear to elect a black President and then move on. But his campaign is about more than race and that makes a lot of white progressives very uncomfortable. What to do with a black man who doesn't fit the profile, even the very limited and half-conceived profile that white progressives have for an educated black man (think Cornell West). And these are the 'friends' of black America. The ones who claim to be so involved in anti-racism work and who pat themselves on the back while feeling oh-so-very-much more ethically superior to those nasty, nasty, Republicans who, as everyone knows, are unreconstructed racists. These are the folks who essentialize culture such that no black person is 'supposed' to break out of the box but not in the 'nigger know your place' sense. No, instead, it means that a black man or woman dispensing anger (provided the target is Republicans) or folksy wisdom is fine but not so much erudition or deep thought on law, science, geo-politics etc. In the minds of too, too many white progressives those are still the purview and baliwick of whites and the place that blacks have there is as object of discussion. We are the 'third world peoples' that get to be talked *about* but do not, necessarily, need to be heard *from*--unless we're dead, of course. Then there's the sincere expression of what the world has lost and then back to status quo ante.

Am I angry? Yes. Do I have reason to be this angry? Yes. I am angry because, just a few weeks ago, it looked like the Democrats were going to prove me wrong. For years I (and many other black thinkers) have figured that the first black President would be a Republican because it would be easier for a black Republican to be elected than a black Democrat. Then along came Obama and there was this glimmer of hope and I thought that maybe, just maybe, the Dems had figured out two important things: the first is that appealing to where people live works and is necessary to win elections and second, the ritualistic eating of our own only helps the GOP. But it appears that neither lesson has been learned and so we will, most likely, be robbed of the possibility of having a black President this time around. The irony is that the GOP will probably nominate Condi Rice next time out and she'll win because the GOP won't eat her alive for not being what black folks are 'supposed' to be in their framework.

More later. Right now, I just feel like crying.

And I started this election season with such high hopes and joyous anticipation.  A black man and a woman in serious contention, an opposing party in the doldrums, with a field of lukewarm candidates at best, a President so unpopular that his dog has probably abandoned him, an American public desperate for a change...how could the Democrats lose? Well, they are finding a way. 

It's not just that the Clinton campaign is handing McCain ad after ad for the fall, it's not just that we are watching some fairly cynical operators tear into one of the most promising political figures of my generation.  It *is* that but so, so much more.  It is that now, two women and one man whom I have admired for most of my adult life have shown their claws and become True Liberal Democrats.  What is a TDL?  A TDL is one who, for instance, will claim that they are non-racist, make all the right noises, perhaps even try to disguise (even to themselves) their problems with their child bringing home a black person as a significant other, and who went tut-tut at the comments of Imus and O'Reilly and generally make all the right noises about race; right up to the point where they are confronted by a person of color who doesn't meet the pattern.  Then that person is an affirmative action hire, any accusations of racial insensitivity are met defensively with a "they're only doing this to me because I'm white" or generally blown off. 

I am talking, of course, about the exploitation of race from the Clinton campaign.  From President Clinton's comments trying to diminish Obama '08 to Jackson '88 to Geraldine Ferraro saying what Senator Clinton could not say (namely, what is that black boy doing in my way) and all but calling Obama an affirmative action hire, the campaign of the first woman to have a real chance at being President have sunk down into a gutter.  One could raise questions about Obama's credentials without making the affirmative action hire reference, but they chose to take the race-loaded route because it would be more visceral and, using cold, Machiavellian logic, efficient.  Now, I don't think that the Clintons are racists, I genuinely do not think that is in them.  But they are both smart and worldly and they know that in the minds of a lot of working-class whites, any black person who has a better job or education MUST have gotten it by means of a 'quota' or through affirmative action.  I can't tell you how many times I have heard whites say that they knew someone who was black who was hired at some company because they 'needed' a black person but that black person wasn't qualified.  Now, I have not seen that myself.  I have not been, as far as I am aware, an affirmative action hire at any point in my academic or professional career.  Yet, one can hardly *ever* discuss the issue of race in America without hearing some anecdotal story about some black person getting the job ahead of some white man.  The unspoken assumption (and the one vehemently denied when it is called out) is that it was the white person's job, not because he was better qualified but because he was white.  Equal opportunity, in that frame, means that once all the white folks have jobs any left over that pay well can go to whomever.  Sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly rascally will ask the question "is there a black candidate you can imagine being qualified for that job, even in principle".  If I could talk to Ferraro that is the question I would ask, if she can *imagine* a black candidate qualified to be President.  I would like to ask it in a blind situation where she didn't know I was black so I could get the honest answer which, I suspect at the end of the day, is no.  I would suggest that for both Clintons the answer to that question is *also* no. 

Now, this might seem to contradict what I said earlier about them not being racists but bear with me a moment.  What I believe is that for Ferraro, for Clinton, for many TDL's black people have a role in American society.  They may even be so generous as to have a set of categories within which we can legitimately fall.  What are these roles?  We can be victims, we can be plucky and inspiring pioneers, we can even, in certain circumstances, be survivors.  We can be teachers, particularly in inner-city schools of English or Music but not math or science.  We can be even be college professors, black studies, English, etc.  We can be policy wonks as long as the policy is domestic (I cannot imagine the Democratic administration that would have not one but TWO black Secretaries of State in a row).  So in this calculus, a black man or woman could be head of Health and Human services or Housing and Human Development, sure.  Maybe even Attorney General and certainly Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.  But Secretary of State?  No.  National Security Advisor?  Nope.  Director of Central Intelligence (DCI)?  Not on  your life.  Not because these Democratic elites consciously believe that blacks *can't* do these jobs, rather that international affairs just isn't what black wonks 'do'.  We do domestic policy, not foreign policy.  That's our role.  So if Obama were a race-man, like Sharpton or Jackson, that would be okay.  But he persists in *not* being a race man.  Instead, he is being, well, Presidential and that, also, is not what black folks do.  That's not our role.  Stirring speeches? Absolutely, particularly if its given behind a pulpit on Sunday morning in front of the cameras.  But to *actually* lead the nation?  No, not so much, not a black person.

And so it comes to this...the Democrats, the party allegedly friendly to black folks, has as a candidate someone willing to use the racial prejudice of *others* to advance her political career  

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Now playing: Rachid Taha - Aiya Aiya
via FoxyTunes   

In all probability the 2008 election was decided last night and John McCain won.  Why? Because the Clinton campaign did what they do best and that is out Republican the Republicans.  Hillary Clinton won in Texas and Ohio by giving the McCain campaign ads that they can use in the fall against Obama if he should be the nominee (which may not happen).  I was hoping that she would lose one or both contests because the longer this goes on, the more savage the rhetoric will be against Obama and the more damage will be done to his campaign.  But since she won, she will continue to drag this out and either cripple Obama in the general election or win the nomination.  If she ends up at the top of the ticket then Obama might as well just plan for 2012 (I doubt McCain will be a two-term President) because McCain will win. 

Before McCain locked up the nomination, I was chanting, "Go Huck Go", not because I wanted Huckabee to be the President but because I knew the man wasn't electable and thus wanted him to be the GOP nomination.  In the wildest sugar-plum electoral fantasies of the most die-hard, civil-rights-were-bad-for-America, feminism-is-evil, Jesus-loves-America-best , Republican Clinton is the candidate they want.  Hell, if the GOP nominated Usama bin Laden or Satan as their presidential nominee *he* would win against Hillary Clinton, such is the level of visceral, irrational hatred of her.  This is a canonical example of the Democratic party snatching victory from the slavering jaws of defeat.
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Now playing: Rachid Taha - Ghanni Li Shwaya
via FoxyTunes   

And then there were two. So it comes down to Huckabee and McCain which means that the GOP nominee will be McCain. You know, gentle reader, as well as I do that the GOP is nowhere near suicidal enough to nominate Huckabee. Well, I guess that pack of kids Romney has sat him down, realizing that this was their inheritance flying out the door, and said "Dad, knock it quite the hell off. We have gotten used to being rich. We would like that tradition to continue."

Both of these worldviews, God-centered religion and atheistic communism, are opposed by a third and in some ways more radical worldview, scientific humanism. Still held by only a tiny minority of the world's population, it considers humanity to be a biological species that evolved over millions of years in a biological world, acquiring unprecedented intelligence yet still guided by complex inherited emotions and biased channels of learning. Human nature exists, and it was self-assembled. It is the commonality of the hereditary responses and propensities that define our species. Having arisen by evolution during the far simpler conditions in which humanity lived during more than 99 percent of its existence, it forms the behavioral part of what, in The Descent of Man, Darwin called the indelible stamp of our lowly origin. (Edward O. Wilson)

Ramen.

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Oh and I've changed my font, so it's readable for you. :)

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Andrew Sullivan writes on his blog:

Even with the war hobbling him, even with the massive advantage of the opposition party in this year of recession and occupation, I'd say McCain could beat the Clintons. With Obama, it's a whole different dynamic - and the narrative of the man in his 40s against the man in his 70s surely helps Obama. The Democrats aren't stupid, are they? The logic of their heads as well as their hearts now favors the senator from Illinois.

All I can ask is: has Andrew Sullivan ever met the Democratic Party?  Yes, Andrew, the Democrats may very well be just that stupid.       

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First, some definitions:

Tactics, then, are isolated actions or events that take advantage of opportunities offered by the gaps within a given strategic system, although the tactician never holds onto these advantages. Tactics cut across a strategic field, exploiting gaps in it to generate novel and inventive outcomes. Tactics are usually used to spoil the running context.

Strategy is about choice, which affects outcomes. Organizations can often survive -- indeed do well -- for periods of time in conditions of relative stability, low environmental turbulence and little competition for resources. Virtually none of these conditions prevail in the modern world for great lengths of time for any organization or sector, public or private. Hence, the rationale for strategic management. The nature of the strategy adopted and implemented emerges from a combination of the structure of the organization (loosely coupled or tightly coupled), the type of resources available and the nature of the coupling it has with environment and the strategic objective being pursued.

Strategy is adaptable by nature rather than rigid set of instructions. In some situations it takes the nature of emergent strategy. The simplest explanation of this is the analogy of a sports scenario. If a football team were to organize a plan in which the ball is passed in a particular sequence between specifically positioned players, their success is dependent on each of those players both being present at the exact location, and remembering exactly when, from whom and to whom the ball is to be passed; moreover that no interruption to the sequence occurs. By comparison, if the team were to simplify this plan to a strategy where the ball is passed in the pattern alone, between any of the team, and at any area on the field, then their vulnerability to variables is greatly reduced, and the opportunity to operate in that manner occurs far more often. This manner is a strategy.

The question I want to ponder today is what a long-term Progressive political strategy looks like.  All progressives would agree that we need to do something about what we are doing to the environment.  Let's take a look at how the question of strategy and tactics plays itself out in this arena.  Recently, Greenpeace sent a ship, the Esperanza to shadow some Japanese whaling vessels.  Now, the Esperanza had to turn back because of fuel issues but this is a prime example of tactical moves.  There's a gap, and you exploit that gap to your ends which they did because even though they had to turn back, no small amount of ink and bandwidth was consumed in reporting on their actions and Japanese whaling in general. However, it doesn't scale well and isn't a long-term strategy.  It's something you do when you can do it, namely when a whaling fleet sets sail and you're in the position to do so.

Strategy, on the other hand, is longer-term and it is this that I wish to focus on.  So what would an environmental strategy look like?  Let me say, at the outset, that environmental issues are not my forte'.  What I know is from secondary and tertiary sources and not primary sources (meaning I don't tend to read journals written by people who studied environmental science).  So there will be much to criticize in this post but the specifics are less important than the overall picture.

So, what does an environmental strategy look like?  I would say that in order to formulate one, you have to look at the problem as clearly as you can.  I will take just one factor to keep things simple; carbon emissions.  We all know that a large part of the problem is that we burn fossil fuels to power our cars and our cities and that is just in the highly industrialized West.  The big problem is still coming on-line and that is China and India.  We (all of humanity) cannot afford for either China or India to live and drive huge gas-guzzling SUVs in any kind of numbers like Americans.  Yet, we have no right to pull the development ladder up and say "sorry, we recognize that your two great and ancient nations represent a full-third of humanity but you got to the industrialization party too late.  You really should've gotten this far in the early 20th century..."  So how do we address, long-term, the issue of Third World industrialization and all of its attendant issues (deforestation is another big one which, of course, leads to species extinction) while not doing some kind of paternalistic ladder-raising?  So we have three populations (American, Chinese and Indian) that need to be convinced to either accept some more inconvenience and pain (Americans--let's be honest, we could restructure our society so we don't have to drive so damn much) or to take a different industrialization track than the West (ideally, if they could just skip the 19th/20th century style of oil/coal power as a primary energy source this would go a long way). 

Now, the technologies are out there to be used (the amount of carbon I use getting to and from work is minimal because I bicycle, take the bus and take light-rail and none of those are exotics or novel) and there's the potential of solar power to really provide the vast majority of our energy needs (get cars, buses and trucks off of fossil fuels and onto electricity, use regional solar power plants to provide power to cities and, incidentally, our vehicles except airplanes which will need to use fossil fuels for the foreseeable future).  But how do we convince people to change their lives?  My co-workers largely look at me as if I were insane for riding to work, yet they all say they are concerned about the environment--just before they get in their SUV to drive the five miles to their home.  This is the kind of strategic thinking and talking about that I hope to see more of from Progressives. 

As an aside (sort of) Barack Obama was more right than wrong when he said that for the last quarter century, the Republicans were the party of ideas.  They have spent the last quarter century thinking about how to frame their political wants and desires in a way that is palpable and how to counter Liberal and Progressive voices or make them outright irrelevant.  But now, it's the Progressives' turn.  We have the gap in the American body politic (tactics) let's exploit it by beginning to really do evidence-based politics where we try to come up with real solutions for real world problems.


Cheers

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NOW-New York State Press Releases

And so it comes to this.  Ted Kennedy, the liberals' liberal has betrayed women (No one asked me) when he endorsed Barack Obama?

According to NOW-NY:  "Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. "  This is the final, horrible logic of identity politics come to fruition.  No where in the press release is there anything about how Kennedy's endorsement was for a candidate who is less qualified than Clinton.  And the over-the-top language?  Ultimate betrayal?  Not endorsing a female candidate for President is the worst thing that the Massachusetts senator could do to women?  Really?  Do they actually believe that?

Later they go on to say:  "This latest move by Kennedy, is so telling about the status of and respect for women’s rights, women’s voices, women’s equality, women’s authority and our ability..."  Again, I ask really?  What does it tell?  Only that NOW-NY backs Hillary Clinton because she's a woman first and foremost.  Is it possible that, even taking very cynical realpolitik into account, that Barack Obama is the most electable Democrat running?  Might it even (gasp) be possible that he is imminently qualified to be POTUS? 

Now, if I were a race-woman then this paragraph would begin by accusing NOW-NY of racism because they are supporting a white woman for POTUS instead of a black man.  But I loathe identity politics with such a deep and abiding passion that I refuse to indulge that thought, even though it crossed my mind for maybe a minute.  I do not believe that NOW-NY had racist intentions, just that in their rush to be feminist (a cause I absolutely support) they have merely gone to the other side of the coin.  So let me make this clear:  If Hillary Clinton is the nominee (and I hope she is not for purely political and policy reasons) I will vote for her (what other choice do I have) and I will be well-aware that I am casting a historic vote and if we wake up on the first Wednesday in November and discover that we have elected a female POTUS I will be proud and happy and joyful because she is a woman and it is about damn time we elected a woman.  But it would be indefensible for me, as a feminist, to support Hillary Clinton merely because she is a woman.  It is no different, in either style or substance, than someone voting against her because she is a woman.  I support Barack Obama because I want a POTUS I can believe in.  In the last decade of last century, there was a man I believed was that politician.  I remember remarking to my parents that I finally 'got it' about their love of John F. Kennedy.  And then Bill let me down.  He let me down in policy ways and he let me down by being politically stupid.  But I still want a President I believe in.  Watching Obama, I really understand what people mean when they talk about Kennedy.  Do I think he would make a perfect candidate?  No.  Do I think he would make a perfect President?  No.  But, I am not looking for perfection, just someone competent and in whom I can believe--at least a little.  At present, I believe Obama when he talks about wanting to heal the divisions in America.  I believe him when he talks about trying to rise above the politics of personal destruction.  So far, so good.  I am, of course, painfully aware that he is a black man and that if he is the nominee I will have the opportunity to cast a historic vote and if he is elected I will be living through a historical event that I will be able to tell my granddaughter.  But I will not be voting for Obama because he is a black man, I will merely be voting for him because I believe he can do the job and happy that, finally, I get to cast a vote for a black man for POTUS. 

NOW-NY has succumbed to what many committed activists do; the sirens' lure of identity politics where what you are becomes who you are and thus constrains your movements because you have to do certain things.  As a woman, I'm 'supposed' (using NOW-NYs' logic) to support Clinton because she's a woman.  If I bother to actually study her politics that's all well and good and no one should hold it against me if I do.  But I'm 'supposed' to support her because she's a Democrat (I have a feeling that if it was Condi Rice running, she would not have NOW-NYs' backing but I could be wrong) and a woman.  Nowhere is the idea that there are other, more pressing, political calculations to make. 

Now, I want to be clear, I think Hillary Clinton is an inspiring figure.  However, if you like the sound of President John McCain then Clinton is the Democrat you want him to run against.  The GOP base may not turn out because there's no love lost between them and McCain, unless by doing so they can prevent Clinton from getting into the White House.  Clinton is beatable and obviously so, Obama is not quite so beatable.  But as a woman I'm not 'supposed' to take that kind of realpolitik into consideration.  Well, this woman does because this woman wants to see a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic Congress.  Above electing a black man (which I'd love to see) or a woman (which I'd love to see), I want our nation to stop this destructive slide we are on and I think that a Democrat in the White House is our best, last chance for doing so.  The Democratic party is famous for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory (2004 Presidential election anyone) and this is one year we can't afford to do that (we couldn't in 2004 either but we did anyway.  John Kerry?  Really, he's the best we could come up with?).

NOW-NY is out to lunch but, in the making lemonade from lemons department, hopefully this will be yet another nail in the coffin of identity politics.

Cheers

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Possummomma (aka, Atheist in a mini van).: Science

Interesting blog post about a kid's science project wherein he asks if 'unchristians' (his word) are less moral than Christians. 

Funny, sad but funny.

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