When a homeless teen gets pregnant, one of the things social workers have to contend with is her belief that the child will give her life focus and direction. This is not to say that homeless teens shouldn't have babies, though obviously there's an argument to be made that many of them should not. The point is that people whose lives lack focus and direction will sometimes commit themselves to a course of action that is harmful to themselves and others, in order to get focus and direction. You can see something similar in Vietnam vets, who talk about hating the war every minute they were there but not being able to let it go once they were back. The world is full of people who have very little to live for. Some of them go looking for ways to make their lives harder, so they can define themselves by that conflict. Some of them are placed in the conflict by circumstances beyond their control, and can't let go of it after the fact.
Those people you always hear about— those "lives of quiet desperation" types; the experience of having their actions matter in some way is like a drug to them.
There are about 300 million people in the United States, spread out over millions of square miles. We have the most powerful military on the planet. We spend more on defense than any other country in the world, by an order of magnitude. Our civilian population is armed. We have an extensive and well-armed law enforcement apparatus. We have layered telecommunications capabilities; radio, telephone, telegraph, satellite uplinks, internet, intranets, short wave, and cell phones. Every state maintains a National Guard. We have more resources in our reserves than any nation has ever dreamed of.
What Abraham Lincoln said a hundred and forty years ago is true today; no foreign power can conquer the United States. The Soviet Union, at the peak of its power, could never have subjugated the U.S.; their military options for a direct conflict were limited to the destruction of the planet. There isn't a nation on the face of the Earth today that could duplicate that threat. The age of global Armageddon is over. And nothing short of global Armageddon can realistically threaten the security of the United States of America.
The September 11th attacks took a terrible toll. Thousands of people died in a heartbeat. But that's still only one person for every 100,000 people in the country. If there was a September 11th style attack once a month for a year, the average American would still have better odds of being killed by air pollution.
The thing that used to freak me out about Michele's blog was he supposed normalcy. Her supposed reasonability. How she swung over from the left to the right. How popular her perspective is on the internet. But after this latest rant of hers, I've actually had something of an epiphany; Michele's just bored. Her enormous readership? Bored. Bored people with empty lives, trying to give their existence a little meaning by standing around screaming that the world has changed— everything's different! There's a terrible threat on the horizon! Everybody must band together—
So these poor bastards will feel less alone.
And, finally, I cease to care. Ah well.
Next!
From today's A Small Victory, discussing Ted Rall (And this is a woman who thinks I'm obsessed with her. Ha.):
[quoting Rall]If we're attacked by a foreign power, as we last were in 1941 at Pearl Harbor
So, is Rall saying that 9/11 never happened, or is that an innuendo that he thinks we attacked ourselves? Either way, that has to be the most powerfully corrupt thought Ted has come up with so far, and that's no small feat. This from a New Yorker who walked through the debris and saw the destruction up close.
So, okay— this is the kind of shit that's just fucking rampant in the pro-war crowd, and it really bugs me.
Because, obviously, what Rall's talking about is that we were not, in fact, attacked by a "foreign power" on 9/11; we were attacked by some guys, who were foreigners. And I'll take this back to an analogy I used recently in an argument with Ryan: when the Oklahoma City bombing took place, the guys who did it ran back to Montana. That wasn't a declaration of war against the United States federal government by the state of Montana. Furthermore, if Montana had insisted that the Fed observe laws and statutes governing the investigation of federal crimes while operating within the state of Montana, that still wouldn't be an act of war.
Afghanistan didn't have an extradition treaty with us. They were in no way bound to turn bin Laden over to the United States. Bin Laden wasn't a citizen of their country. They didn't fund the 9/11 attacks. Legally, it wasn't their problem. The United States may have been able to negotiate a settlement anyway, but we chose to invade instead.
And, in deference to the reading comprehension problem that seems endemic to the right wing, let me be clear about what I'm not saying: I'm not saying that we shouldn't have gone in after bin Laden, I'm not saying that the Taliban should have stayed in power, I'm not saying that I think women should be confined to burkas. I'm not saying any of that shit.
What I'm saying is that we were not attacked by a foreign fucking power. We were attacked by some guys. Legally and diplomatically, our beef was with those guys. We didn't have to go to war to handle that situation.
Allow me to reiterate: I'm not saying that Afghanistan shouldn't have been invaded. The Taliban needed to be removed from power, and I think the U.N. should have done it. But, in the immediate context of 9/11, the need to remove the Taliban was a separate issue.
Now, if Michele disagreed with that perspective, that'd be one thing. But you read that paragraph above, you'll notice that Michele doesn't even seem to be capable of grasping that perspective.
Ted Rall wants you to boycott the military. He wants the rolls to diminish. He wants the enlisted numbers to wane. Only then will he be happy. Imagine if Ted's dream came true and no one re-enlisted and no one volunteered. Imagine then another large scale attack on our country.
Here again: cognitive disconnect.
September 11th was not a "large scale attack on our country". It was one attack, carried out by 19 guys with box cutters. Nineteen guys. Box cutters. If you throw in their training budget and the price of the plane tickets, the whole operation probably cost less than $50,000. That's, like, the food budget for an aircraft carrier for one day. It was a fairly small-scale attack. It's like that famous "shot heard 'round the world". It's a big deal. It signified that something very important had happened. The consequence —the immediate human cost— was terrible. But, on the scale of war, it was a pretty small thing. The U.S. government has killed more civilians than that by accident since then and, at least at the policy level, shows very little inclination to feel bad about it.
A man who believes that believes in lies. It's no wonder he now subscribes to the myth that Vietnam veterans were never spit on or treated badly.
And just as a point of order: I think Ted Rall sucks. I am often amused by his cartoons, but the guy's politics make me want to hit someone. Whatever happened in the past, there's a documented record of self-righteous liberals calling a U.S. veteran "baby killer," during this war. In any event, Ted Rall's compulsive historical revisionism is just appalling. His analysis of the "myth" of Vietnam vets having been spit on has the stink of Holocaust denial to it— that stupid shit about, "it doesn't say anywhere, specifically, in writing, to kill all the Jews." Fuck that. It happened. We know it happened. Not everything that's said about the Holocaust should be accepted without commentary, but the bare fact of it isn't something that can be debated with integrity. Ditto "the spitting incident". If the exact thing was never recorded, the spirit behind it is clear on the face of contemporary accounts from the anti-war camp during the Vietnam war. Rall's attempt to lever his political agenda on the backs of soldiers who have risked their lives for their country is unconscionable.
Ted Rall is a piece of shit. Like Michael Moore, he's an ideologue who's enriching his own career by stoking hatred and widening divisions. But, while Moore's failures seem to stem largely from a kind of doctrinaire incompetence, Rall launches his attacks with malice aforethought, and a wanton disregard for the collateral damage inflicted by his viciousness.
None of that changes the fact that Michele is a delusional hack who, as nearly as I have ever been able to tell, aspires to be Michael Moore. Ah well. Good luck to her with that, I suppose.
So, two or three times a month Michele trots out some egregious insult that the
Michele tries to throw a cloak of relevance over her morbid fascination with the DU by pointing out that Kerry's website links to the DU frontpage. Well, whatever. The DU explicitly states that, "this web site is not affiliated with the Democratic Party, nor do we claim to speak for the party".
And, just for the record, let me take this opportunity to disavow any attempt to portray my own morbid fascination with Michele's antics as anything other than what they are: the byproduct of casual annoyance and an excess of bile on my part.
Which brings me around to my point. When the DU publishes something obnoxious, I'm mostly inclined to ignore it because— well, who cares what the DU thinks? When Michele publishes something obnoxious, I sometimes feel inclined to hack it apart here because— well, why not? But I'm basically in touch with the fact that me, the DU, and Michele are all functionally irrelevant in the larger scheme of things. So again, as they used to say in the glory and bygone days of my youth, "whatever."
But, when the GOP publishes something obnoxious, I'm inclined to take a little more notice because— well, it's the GOP, for god's sake.
Evidently the GOP has, for whatever reason, decided to publish a long, detailed, and frequently misleading smear sheet on John Edwards which, I am given to understand, has been mailed— like, "printed on actual paper and physically mailed" —to their membership.
Now, when Michele posts something obnoxious from the DU she usually goes through a little routine around it that looks something like this: "Look at what these crazy people are saying! These people are evil and stupid! And crazy! And these are the kind of people who support John Kerry for president! And he has a link to them on his website!"
This kind of generalization is of questionable relevance when aimed at the DU because the UD is, as they themselves are quick to declare, not affiliated with the Democratic Party, nor does it speak for the Party. On the other hand, such generalizations do seem a bit more relevant when applied to the, you know, actual Republican National Committee.
But getting back to that smear sheet...
Personally, my favorite part is this one here:
Edwards Claims “Natural Connection” With Rural People, But Flunked Funk’s Rural Q&A. (Matt Bai, “Nascar-Lovin,” The New York Times, 9/15/02; Tim Funk, “Q&A With John Edwards,” The Charlotte Observer, 5/26/03)
* Edwards Has “Never Done Any Serious Farming.”
* Edwards Doesn’t Follow Weekly NASCAR Races, Adds He “Doesn’t Follow Anything Except Politicking.”
* Edwards Hasn’t Hunted Or Fished “In Years.”
* Edwards Has “In The Past Been A Country Music Fan.”
* Edwards Can’t Even Remember Make Or Model Of His Own Truck.
In other parts of the letter, the GOP lists additional important points against Edwards, such as:
* Edwards Believes In Right To Privacy When It Comes To State Sodomy Laws.
* Edwards Sided With Unions Over Bush. Edwards sided with labor unions against Bush in the creation of a Department of Homeland Security, voting six times against the President’s plan.
For clarification, that last point regards the Bush administration's efforts to forbid employees of the largest government bureaucracy in the history of the nation from exercising their rights to collective bargaining.
So yeah. These are the kinds of people who support George W. Bush for president.
And please note that when I say "support" in this context, it means something very different from what it means when Michele rattles on about the Democratic Underground and the tinfoil hat marching band.
From today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
Friday, July 9, 2004 · Last updated 7:49 a.m. PT
Pentagon: Bush military records destroyed
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- Military payroll records that could more fully document President Bush's whereabouts during his service in the Texas Air National Guard were inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon.
In a letter responding to a freedom of information request by The Associated Press, the Defense Department said that microfilm containing the pertinent National Guard payroll records was damaged and could not be salvaged. The damaged material included payroll records for the first quarter of 1969 and the third quarter of 1972.
"President Bush's payroll records for those two quarters were among the records destroyed," wrote C.Y. Talbott, of the Pentagon's Freedom of Information and Security Review section. "Searches for back-up paper copies of the missing records were unsuccessful."...
The original constitution of the United States of America was written in 1787, and contained within it three provisions addressing the continuation of slavery in the new republic: Article I., Section 2(3); Article I. Section 9(1); and Article IV, Section 2(3). The first clause established a slave as three fifths of a free person for purposes of taxation and representation. The second clause essentially prohibited the federal government from interfering in the slave trade until a set date, 20 years after the signing of the constitution. The third clause, possibly the most oppressive of all the slavery compromises, established a responsibility on the part of all states to return escaped "Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof" to "the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due."
There was a good deal of debate about these clauses when they were written into the constitution. Various factors were involved; the economic foundations of slavery, the comparatively sparse free populations of slave-holding states and their consequent fears of being subordinated to the more heavily populated northern states, and so on. However, the political reality— then as now —was that there were certain interests that had to be appeased in order for the American republic to come into being. Those interests fed themselves by the blood and sweat of slaves, and any fledgling republic that threatened them directly would face their formidable opposition. So the framers stepped carefully around the slave interests, and built their republic as best they could.
However. It is important to note that, while the constitution does contain these concessions, it does not at any time specifically sanction slavery. No form of the word "slave" appears anywhere in the constitution. The three-fifths compromise refers to "all other persons." The sundown clause on slave importing addresses "Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit." And the clause in Article IV falls considerably short of sanctioning slavery. It addresses the handling of those "held to service" in a given state, but does nothing to sanction such holding in principle or in practice.
Fredrick Douglass later described this phenomenon as follows:
I hold that the Federal Government was never, in its essence, anything but an anti-slavery government. Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution need be altered. It was purposely so framed as to give no claim, no sanction to the claim, of property in man. If in its origin slavery had any relation to the government, it was only the scaffolding to the magnificent structure, to be removed as soon as the building was completed.
I agree with Douglass. I do so with a great deal of qualification, but I essentially agree with his point.
And those of you who have read this far are probably wondering where I'm going with this. I'm going toward a discussion of the "left" and the "right".
I mean, let's take a minute and hop into our way-back machine here. Let's cruise on back to the summer of 1787 and take a look at this question of the existence of slavery in a nation that proclaimed its independence with the words, "all men are created equal." What will we find back there in the 18th century?
We'll find a broad acceptance of the racial inferiority of Black people. Though, to put that in context, we'll also find a broad acceptance of the racial inferiority of Irish people. We'll find Southern states, sparsely populated by poor whites who have a social motive for believing that Black people should always be slaves. We'll find a lot of people who are essentially liberals; no friend to the Blacks, but advocates on principle of equality under the law. We'll find some more radical liberals, who feel that slavery is nothing less than a sin against God. And we'll find some very rich southerners, who have a powerful economic motivation for wanting to continue slavery. We'll find combinations of these factors, points in between, and views I haven't mentioned. But let's ask ourselves: which side of this debate would we choose, if we could go back to 1787?
With (and possibly without) our historical perspective, many of us no doubt like to imagine that we would do whatever was necessary to prevent those articles from finding their way into the constitution. We might hold protests. We'd might throw rocks. Some of us might write angry messages on walls. And, embarrassing as this is to admit, some of us might build giant puppets, take off all our clothes, paint ourselves blue and march down the street toward Liberty Hall chanting "This is what democracy looks like!" and "The people! United! Will never be divided!"
And so on like that.
Some of us, with our historical perspective (and, again, possibly even without it), would come to the conclusion that one or all of those articles are necessary for the founding of the American republic, and that the good done by the founding of the republic outweighs the collected evils of slavery.
Some would approach the slave interests directly and try to reason with them. Some would approach the slave interests directly and try to appeal to their morality. Some would approach the slave interests directly and try to buy them off. Some would try to sneak up on the slave interests in dark alleys and cut their throats for the good of us all.
Some people would go calmly to the polls, vote, and have done with it.
Some people would write angry letters to the framers. Some people would argue by overstating the evils of slavery. Some people would justify their positions by understating those evils.
And knowing what we all know— knowing that slavery lasted another 78 years, that millions of Americans were abused and died in slavery, and that it took the bloodiest war in U.S. history to end it— knowing what we know, we would still come to different conclusions. We would all handle things differently.
On May 24, 1856, John Brown and a small group of his supporters went to Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas Territory, removed five pro-slavery men from their homes, and hacked them to death with broadswords. He could have just shot them, or hung them. But John Brown wanted to send a message to the pro-slavery element in Kansas at that time, that those five men had been struck down by the wrath of God. Hacking them to death with a sword was as close as he could come, aesthetically, to that idea.
Today John Brown is regarded, almost universally, as a hero. But if John Brown had been around during the summer of 1787, we might not have a republic. There's no way to say for sure what that would have meant.
* * *
There was more to the question of slavery than the legal status of African Americans in the United States of America. The dissolution of their legal bondage didn't free them. The consequences of slavery outlasted the institution itself and lingers on into the present day.
* * *
The United States of America is currently involved in a broad war on several fronts, scattered across the face of the globe. Some Americans oppose that war. Some support it. Everyone comes at it differently. With a very few exceptions, nobody in the United States believes that killing people, invading countries, and toppling governments is a good thing to do. A great many people believe it is necessary under the circumstances. Others believe that the actions of the United States federal government over the last three years have been unconscionable; that no reason can serve as a justification for what has been done in the name of the "war on terror."
Some believe that the ramifications of "the war on terror" will go beyond immediate circumstances; that invading Afghanistan and Iraq have set changes in motion that will have a lasting— negative —effect on geopolitics. That the invasions are not merely a mechanical question of crossing a border and toppling a dictator, any more than slavery was merely a question of law positive law.
Others believe that the invasions are wrong and that the deaths they cause are terrible, but that these things are necessary for preservation of a larger peace. That the price is worth it; that the insurance is cheap at the cost.
Some people make shit up in order to get us into the war. Some people make shit up in order to try and get us out of it. Some people feed off the hatred of one side. Some people feed off the hatred of the other side. You've got your left-wing nut jobs. You've got your right-wing nut jobs.
And, at the end of all that, you've still got this question: is this the path of least harm and greatest good? Will the gains outweigh the losses?
I say no.
That's all.
I don't hate my country (as someone has suggested all lefties do). I don't think George W. Bush is a Nazi. I just don't think this is a good idea. I think the costs will outweigh the benefits. I'm not reading from a script; I honestly, all on my own, think this is a bad bad idea.
I agree with Fredrick Douglass, that the concessions in the constitution were like scaffolding to the magnificent structure of the American republic. The concessions were made in order to build the nation, and they were clearly meant to be removed at a later date. But I am not at all sure that those concessions were worth the cost, or that their removal has been as easily undertaken as was intended. I think the framers may have done better, all things considered, to have taken some other course; to have expropriated the slaves with a cash payment to the slaveholders, like Great Britain did, if that was required. Allowing slavery, even with the intention of removing it at some later date, was a step too far. It corroded the core values of the nation.
I feel the same way about the doctrine of preemptive attack; it's a step I'm not willing to take in defense of the republic. It's a step too far; it undermines the basic principles of the enterprise.
I'm not ready to hack anyone to death with a broadsword over this.
But there may come a time when we'll wish that someone had.
From today's episode of A Small Victory [on the subject of Saddam Hussein]:
He will always have his followers because there will always be people who believe that absolute power and might, made evident through the systematic abuses wrought upon those who stray the wrong way, are the only way to keep those below you in line. As long as they have their cash flow and their lives and the lives of their families are secure, the torture and abuse of others doesn't matter.
Sound like anyone you know?