She turned me into a Newt! (I got better)

To be clear, I do not think that Newt Gingrich stands a hope in hell of being nominated as the Republican candidate for president. There is simply way too much stacked against him: he has proved to be an inept campaign manager, he can’t come close to matching Romney’s money, the Republican establishment loathes him, and (perhaps most important of all) South Carolina played too perfectly to Newt’s strengths in a way that is highly unlikely to be repeated as the primary battle drags on.

My prediction: Newt rides the momentum of SC for everything it’s worth, fighting until his last dollar is gone. Perhaps he wins another, perhaps he comes close; in either case, he deals irreparable damage to Romney. I have to wonder if the worst damage hasn’t already been done: three states down, and the presumptive Republican candidate has won (then lost—the recount in Iowa went to Santorum) in a squeaker, won respectably in New Hampshire, and got his ass handed to him in South Carolina. This could potentially go on for a long time, and every primary and caucus that passes without Romney locking in the nomination bleeds him more. It’s not like four years ago in the protracted battle between Obama and Hilary—there, we had two strong candidates with devoted and indeed worshipful followings, and whatever resentment might have lingered, there was never any question that the loser would get behind the winner.

That isn’t a certainty here. Quite the opposite, actually. The antipathy to Romney is powerful, powerful enough to elevate wingnuts like Bachman, Cain, and Perry, a religious bigot like Santorum, and … well, honestly, I don’t know how to classify Newt. All of the above?

Mind you, I’m not totally counting out Newt. Just mostly. “Not a hope in hell” normally means no chance whatsoever, but having followed this carnival for what feels like ten years now, I don’t want to commit myself to the reasonable prediction. If I was a betting man, I’d say the good money’s on Romney … but I’d be really, really tempted to put a dollar down on Newt’s long odds. The old chestnut, “That’s so crazy, it might just work!” needs a re-jigging here. The Republican base is so crazy, they just might nominate Newt. How’s that?

For what it’s worth, I think an Obama-Gingrich showdown is precisely what the Republicans need. Would I be utterly gleeful to see Newt get destroyed by Obama? Yes. Would I be over the moon to watch the FOX/Limbaugh industrial-complex stymied? YES. A thousand times, yes. But I also want conservatism in the U.S. to return to its senses, for all our sakes. I think it needs its Goldwater moment again, to be so thoroughly destroyed that it has no choice but to reject the Palin/Bachman/Santorum wing of the party, to discredit the FOX contingent, and to embrace its intelligent spokespeople.

Of course, I say this knowing that a Gingrich-Obama showdown holds a 1% chance of Newt winning. At which point, Newfoundland doesn’t feel far enough away and I might start looking for English-language universities in Sweden.

And you thought "teabaggers" was bad ...

Oh, Rick Santorum ... as of this moment, you are the #1 reason Jon Stewart has the easiest job in show business. Seriously.

Apparently, Santorum has just launched a new fundraising group (or PAC, or SuperPAC, I'm uncertain of the distinctions these days), named "Conservatives Unite Moneybomb."

Got that? Yes. He has in fact started an organization whose acronym is C.U.M. Which meant that this morning I was treated to this headline in Google Reader:

(Which would not have been quite as bad if I hadn't been drinking a slightly gelatinous breakfast smoothie. Blerg.)

Besides going down (heh) as the most inopportune acronym since Canada's right wring briefly united under the moniker Conservative Reform Alliance Party, it also reflects so well on Santorum. Or at least it does from my perspective. His unrelenting and frequently unhinged attacks on gay marriage, gay rights, and the LGBT community generally echo the unreconstructed racism of people like George Wallace railing against civil rights even as the tide of history swamped them. That's what Santorum has to look forward to, but with a particularly cruel twist. Dan Savage's revenge--making "Santorum" synonymous with, and I quote, "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex," and making it the number one result when one Googles the name--has effectively made the former senator's very name a joke ... and which added a rather revolting double entendre during the Iowa Caucus, when pundits and commentators spoke of him "surging" in the polls.

The Conservatives Unite Moneybomb won't do nearly as much as Savage's savaging, but it has the added bonus of being self-inflicted. And the fact that America's most vocally anti-gay mainstream politician will go down as a footnote to history forever associated with bodily fluids and gay sex ... well, to quote Buffy Summers, as justice goes, it's not unpoetic.

The unbearable cynicism of Mitt Romney

There once was a time during this extended carnival of the Republican race for the nomination that Mitt Romney seemed like the one sane person in the asylum, and his inability to establish a commanding lead an indictment of the current state of the Republican base. Seriously: the best thing that can be said about the successive surges of the non-Romney candidates—Bachman, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, and, most recently, Santorum—is that they all proved unsustainable, that in the end all but the most froth-at-the-mouth evangelical nativist wingnuts conceded that these people were at the very least unelectable. (I won’t speculate on how many would still be backing the likes of any of these candidates if they were conceivably electable; it’s enough relief to know the vast majority of Americans run screaming from the prospect of President Gingrich).

I’ve never liked Romney, always seeing him as basically fake, a reasonable simulacrum of what Hollywood imagines presidents to look like. But he was at least moderate and reasonable, as his record as governor of Massachusetts shows. And I can forgive a certain amount of flip-flopping in the name of campaigning, as that’s really just the nature of the beast. To be certain, I would have more respect for the man if he were to say something like “I passed liberal policies like health care in Massachusetts because Massachusetts is essentially a liberal state and I am not an autocrat.” Of course, that wouldn’t get him many votes among the party faithful, but it would earn him more respect than his relentless pandering.

At any rate, what I said two paragraphs ago about once seeing Romney as the sane one? Not so much anymore. And it’s not so much that he’s batshit as that he is appallingly, cynically mendacious. I watched his victory speech in the New Hampshire primary and was just left open-mouthed. It basically broke down to: (1) Obama is not American; (2) Obama is waging war on the private sector; (3) Obama is attempting to reshape America along a European socialist model; (4) hence, this election is about saving America’s soul; (5) and finally, Obama is an appeaser who wants to denude American military might, something he (Romney) will reverse and return America to its proper global military hegemony.
Seriously. Watch it:



When I hear someone like Michelle Bachman say this kind of horseshit, I’m at least convinced that she believes it. But Romney? He can’t possibly be that stupid.

These days I find myself increasingly reading conservative bloggers and essayists inveighing against precisely this kind of mendacity. When David Frum becomes the voice of reason in conservative circles, the time is out of joint. One of their frequent refrains is that such patently false accusations as Obama’s antipathy to capitalism—to say nothing of birtherism or the attempts to characterize him as an “anti-colonialist Kenyan,” to borrow Gingrich’s memorable phrase—completely miss the boat when it comes to issues on which Obama is genuinely vulnerable, such as his appalling record on civil rights and executive power (which, incidentally, are issues on which certain segments of the left and right vehemently agree).

Speaking as a committed liberal, the complete asshattery of the Republican presidential hopefuls distresses me on two fronts. The first is that I firmly believe a rational and reasonable right wing is vital to national discourse, not least because it keeps those of us on the left on our toes. The second is because it is not inconceivable that Romney might be the next president … and he has shown himself to be a man of no principle whatsoever, entirely beholden to whomever he happens to be wooing.

Back to school. Oh, and Republicans.

Well, it’s my first day back teaching, and I have the usual back-to-school thrill that accompanies that. With an extra edge this morning: while having my coffee, I’ve been watching some clips from the Republican candidates’ debate, and for some reason it has me thinking about the importance of having an education.

Seriously. I thought Sarah Palin represented the nadir of know-nothingness in American politics when she first made the stage three years ago, but sometimes it seems the current crop of Republican presidential hopefuls are vying to outdo the grizzly queen. Michele Bachman in particular appeared to be working from the Palin template, but she’s even scarier—unlike the feckless Palin, she embodies an effective and focused ignorance, as highlighted in Ryan Lizza’s recent profile of her in the New Yorker.

And then Rick Perry threw his hat in the ring. Here’s Jonathan Chait’s spot-on comment about his performance in the debate: “Perry treats questions as interruptions. What scientists do you trust on climate change? I don’t want to risk the economy. Are you taking a radical position on social security? We can have reasons or we can have results.”

We can have reasons or we can have results? Seriously? What dim bulb on his staff crafted that particular genius sound bite?

But my favourite of his pithy answers was a comment on his climate change skepticism: “Galileo got outvoted for a spell.” Yes, yes he did. But here’s the thing, and here’s why listening to Perry made me think about the importance of education. Galileo frequently gets cited by climate change skeptics and advocates of creationism and intelligent design, which is a neat little rhetorical gambit: “All you ‘scientists’ think you have the answers, but really you’re just as mired in groupthink as those who persecuted Galileo.” This is of course particularly galling when it comes from creationists, but let’s consider two reasons why bringing up Heavy G in these contexts is inane.

1. Galileo’s single most lasting contribution to the discipline of science was not his astronomical theories, for which he was persecuted, but was in fact the invention of the discipline of science. Galileo pioneered what we now call the “scientific method,” the process of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, conclusion (usually with a whole lot of revised hypotheses and more experimentation in the middle) that is the standard practice in labs the world over. It is, in fact, how we have arrived at the theories of evolution and climate change. So to hold up Galileo as your patron saint when advocating against either is particularly inane.
2. Far be it for me to defend the Catholic Church, but Galileo didn’t do much to help his case when summoned to Rome to account for his heliocentric theories. He knew from observation that the solar system was sun-centered, but he didn’t have the model or the math to back it up. When ordered to prove that the earth spun on its axis, he ended up producing a half-baked justification based on the tides that, forgive the pun, simply held no water. And the Pope’s people responded predictably. The great irony was that there was ironclad mathematical proof that had been around for some time in the form of Johanne Kepler’s Astronomia Nova … proof Galileo would not use because his egomania would not permit him to cede the stage to another genius. Which just goes to show what happens when even a great scientific mind departs from the wisdom of his own scientific method. 

Three years ago I was writing with great enthusiasm on this blog about Obama’s candidacy, and then his election—largely based on the perception that the know-nothingness and willful ignorance of the Bush years looked finally to be coming to an end. I have since then known countless disappointments with this president, but my greatest despair comes with the fact that the American right has doubled down on what Al Gore called the assault on reason.

It inspires two thoughts: first, I am happy to be a Canadian. Second, I go to my first classes today with renewed purpose. Perhaps I’ll drop a comment or two about Galileo.

Taking encouragement from odd sources

Just a few days ago, Proposition 8 was struck down in California, making gay marriage again legal in that state. The court case leading to this decision has been fascinating, and Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling will likely stand as a milestone decision in the history of human rights.

There are many, many aspects of this decision that are encouraging about the mainstreaming of the presence of gays and lesbians in contemporary culture. I want to cite two of them today.

Here's one: the principal lawyer in the team arguing against Prop 8 was Ted Olson, a conservative most famous for representing George W. Bush in Bush v. Gore 2000. Olson did an extraordinary job of taking down Prop 8 on its constitutional flaws, and we see his mad skillz here in an interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace:

That this former Bush proponent can argue so eloquently for the right of gay marriage doesn't encourage me so much because he's a conservative taking a stereotypically non-conservative position, as that the intellectual basis for his constitutional argument is so solid. Don't get me wrong: I'm always happy to see conservatives endorse socially liberal philosophy, but it's comforting to see so strong a vindication of a secular humanist reading of the U.S. constitution.

The second thing to which I want point was Ross Douthat's editorial the day before yesterday in the NY Times. It was a little garbled. From what I can gather, he attempted to articulate his opposition to gay marriage by way of a defence of heterosexual monogamy as something somehow exceptional. He writes:

The point of this ideal is not that other relationships have no value, or that only nuclear families can rear children successfully. Rather, it's that lifelong heterosexual monogamy at its best can offer something distinctive and remarkable — a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations — that makes it worthy of distinctive recognition and support ... But if we just accept this shift, we're giving up on one of the great ideas of Western civilization: the celebration of lifelong heterosexual monogamy as a unique and indispensable estate. That ideal is still worth honoring, and still worth striving to preserve. And preserving it ultimately requires some public acknowledgment that heterosexual unions and gay relationships are different: similar in emotional commitment, but distinct both in their challenges and their potential fruit.

To my mind, it's the bit suggesting "lifelong heterosexual monogamy" is "a microcosm of civilization" that makes this art. Seriously? This would be less absurd a claim if he had not already, in the name of acknowledging certain anti-gay-marriage arguments as wrong-headed, dispensed with a clutch of their standards in his opening paragraph. For example, he cites the old saw that "Marriage is an ancient institution that has always been defined as the union of one man and one woman, and we meddle with that definition at our peril." These arguments, he admits, "have lost because they're wrong."

They may be wrong by Douthat's own admission, but he then essentially advances the same argument by different means. The argument by way of nature doesn't work, he acknowledges; anyone claiming homosexuality as unnatural must needs account for genetic and biological evidence, to say nothing of the Central Park Zoo's homosexual penguins. So he reverts to an argument by way of civilization. Heterosexual monogamy, he further acknowledges, is unnatural in itself: "If 'natural' is defined to mean 'congruent with our biological instincts,' it's arguably one of the more unnatural arrangements imaginable." However—and here is his basic point—it is in its unnaturality that heterosexual monogamy deserves to be enshrined and protected, as it is the basis of Western civilization: it is in fact, to repeat his words, "one of the great ideas of Western civilization."

I'm not really sure where to begin here. Maybe pointing out that heterosexual marriage was not the sole provenance of Western civilization—I'm pretty sure ancient Chinese and Indian cultures practised something comparable. Secondly: dude, have you read Plato's Symposium? If there's any consensus on what the cradle of Western democratic and humanistic ideals was, ancient Athens is kind of it. And, um, not to put too fine a point on it—but they did quite love their man-on-man encounters, to the point where Plato (he to whom all of Western philosophy is but a footnote, remember) enshrined it as the most perfect expression of aesthetic love. Also, Sappho—let's not forget Sappho either.

But really, that kind of nitpicking (as fun as it is) is kind of beside the point. The point is the sheer incoherence of Douthat's piece. It reads as the flailing of a conservative thinker—a religious conservative at that—who on one hand is too intelligent to accept the standard anti-gay arguments but also cannot abandon the basic precepts of his faith and political convictions. Which leads to a kind of desperate re-framing of the issue: same-sex marriage isn't the natural order of things, but it's a great idea we abandon at our own peril—much like school prayer. Or white presidents.

Of course, once Douthat acknowledges same-sex marriage as an idea among other ideas, he cedes the absolutist ground on which the Right tends to frame the issue of marriage—kind of like how those Biblical passages "proving" the earth's centrality had to be re-read as allegorical in the face of the Copernican Revolution, or legislative racism gave way before the U.S. constitution's basic promise of human rights. There's still a long way to go, but it's always comforting to have indicators of hope.

This week in historical revisionism

Several days ago, the Republican candidate for the New York 19^th district and apparent Ann Coulter-wannabe Kristia Cavere wrote a column for the Record-Review, an upstate New York newspaper, in which she argued that every "advancement of freedom" in American history has been carried out by Republicans.

Unfortunately, the Record-Review does not publish an online version—which is a shame, because I would really love to see the justification for her suggestion that "The Republicans are the ones who liberated Europe in World War II."

Catch that? Let me repeat it, just for the double-take factor: "The Republicans are the ones who liberated Europe in World War II."

So, who's got two thumbs and thinks Kristia Cavere is a political hack who needs to retake remedial American history? This guy:

In an observation I wish I had made but will have to settle for just quoting, Attaturk at Firedoglake.com says that, since the larger portion of Europe was actually liberated by the Red Army, if we pull out our Glenn Beck Chalkboard^TM, we can thus demonstrate that Republicans are Stalinists.

Hoping for a slow news day

It's April 19^th, and in the latest of a string of Tea Party-style demonstrations, today will feature an "armed march" on Washington D.C., in which gun fanatics—I'm sorry, Second Amendment advocates—will march on the Capitol with firearms proudly displayed in a symbolic gesture asserting their constitutional right to bear arms.

I wrote a much lengthier post on this subject, and on the paranoia infecting anti-government groups and their media cheerleaders on Saturday afternoon while invigilating an exam. I'm shelving that one for now, as it was turning into a much broader commentary on the paranoid style. I'll satisfy myself today with just observing that the criticism of the broader Tea Party movement as irrational, paranoid, hysterical, and racist has been broadly accused of cherry-picking the fringe elements and tarring the entire movement with that brush.

I have no doubt that, to a certain extent, this charge is true. I also have no doubt that a great many people flocking to the many, many various protests over the last few weeks and months are genuinely angry, and concerned over government spending. There are many points of valid argument to have here.

But when a protest involving weapons is scheduled on the anniversary of Timothy McVeigh blowing up the Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City? At that point it becomes difficult not to do a whole bunch of tarring with a rather big brush.

A few interesting articles:

• Frank Rich on Confederate History Month.
  
• Sarah Palin's ignorant imperialism.
  
• Andrew Sullivan's careful critique of the Tea Party.
  
• The SPLC's annual report on extremist groups.
  
• Rachel Maddow on corporate money in the Tea Party.
  

I hope everyone joins me in wishing our American brethren a monumentally uneventful April 19^th.

Jefferson v. Board of Education

In the last few days, all the left-leaning political blogs I read have had stories about how the Texas Board of Education has recently made changes to the Social Studies curriculum to make it conform to a social and religious conservative perspective. This is not new: since the beginning of the year, the board has made over one hundred changes in this respect. Ten of the fifteen people on the board comprise a solid conservative bloc that has introduced and ratified such changes as dropping the suggestion that Japanese internment in WWII was motivated in part by racism; teaching that the constitution does not enact a separation of church and state; introducing a defense of McCarthyism because "there were some communists who were discovered"; teaching that sexual identity, eating disorders and rape are a matter of "choice"; and requiring that students learn about "positive" things like "Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association."

One of the changes that went through most recently is at once the most puzzling and most revealing. The headline at Think Progress reads "Texas Board of Education Cuts Thomas Jefferson out of its Textbooks." Upon further investigation, what was "cut" was a reference to Jefferson in the context of Enlightenment thought. The original standard in the social studies curriculum was to "explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present." The amended now directs teachers to "explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone."

So while I have to assume that Think Progress is being a bit misleading and that Thomas Jefferson still resides in social studies textbooks in some form, this change is nevertheless interesting and wants parsing. For one thing, though the amended version seems more or less the same as the original, minus Jefferson and plus Calvin, Aquinas and Blackstone. However, what is significant is what is what else is elided in the revision: namely, references to the Enlightenment and political revolution.

That conservatives would seek to throw Jefferson out of the boat is odd, to say the least. The Founding Fathers of the U.S. constitution, especially the resonant names of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin and Madison, tend reliably to make their way into American political argument on both sides of the ideological coin to lend rhetorical weight; liberals and conservatives and everyone in between remake the Founders in their own image again and again for the simple reason that they stand as a key touchstone of American political discourse signifying all that is positive and exceptional about the U.S.

Hence, it is rather puzzling that the conservative faction on the Texas Board of Education would elide Jefferson rather than refashion him in a way that lets them claim him as one of their own. A New York Times article about these changes suggests that Jefferson was not popular among the conservative on the board as he was the one responsible for the phrase "separation of church and state"—and indeed, much energy seems to have been specifically devoted to erasure of that idea. One board member declared that "I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state," and a subsequent amendment introduced to explore how "the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others" was firmly voted down.

However, the rejection of Jefferson in favour of Aquinas et al has a more pernicious element than the church and state falsehood being peddled. The facile reason offered for this change is that Jefferson was himself merely influenced by the other philosophers listed, as if he offered no substance of his own but merely parroted his predecessors. Someone with even a casual familiarity with late-eighteenth century history and philosophy however will know that Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and the American Revolution more generally had a seismic impact on European politics—Jefferson was not merely a conduit for other thinkers, but was a brilliant philosopher in his own right whose words and ideas resonated through the storming of the Bastille and the tumultuous revolutionary spirit of nineteenth-century Europe. More importantly however, Jefferson was very much a product of his time, a product of the fundamentally secular Age of Reason. The rewriting of the above educational standard is, more than anything else, a rewriting of the specific historical context that made the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, and the United States itself possible. Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Jefferson comprise a continuum of thought that broke from the religious traditions informing Aquinas and Calvin. The rewritten standard not only drops the Enlightenment down the memory hole, it tacitly suggests continuity where there is breach.

The substitution of Blackstone for Jefferson is a particularly deft move—Blackstone, a prominent British judge in the mid-eighteenth century, wrote Commentaries on the Laws of England. This treatise was effectively the legal standard in pre-Revolutionary America and which is still frequently invoked by the U.S. Supreme Court as a resource for understanding the legal and intellectual contexts of the nation's founding. Again however, this substitution suggests false continuity, for in the rewriting of the standard we lose reference to revolution, American or otherwise. Further, rather than citing a genuinely revolutionary thinker like Jefferson, we instead have a conservative jurist writing in and about a nation without any formal separation of church and state.

It is odd that the American Revolution itself would be effectively deleted from the standard by a group of vocal conservatives, especially at a moment when so much of the American right seeks to identify itself with the revolutionary fervour of the Boston Tea Party, and Jefferson's admonition about the Tree of Liberty being watered by the blood of patriots and tyrants adorns many a tee shirt and hand-lettered sign at rallies. I suppose one could sigh and shrug and chalk it up to the increasing incoherence of the U.S. right wing today, but it is more deeply troubling when that incoherence finds its way off the 24/7 news cycle and into the pages of curricula.

Of course, my reading of the change to the educational standard grants a subtlety of thought that those responsible for it probably don't deserve. To wit, faction leader Dr. Dan McLeroy (the title of "doctor," I discovered while researching this, refers to his degree in dentistry) said of his methodology in shaping curriculum, "We are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan—he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last 20 years because he lowered taxes." Presumably McLeroy means the economy up to but not including autumn 2008 and since; and the last time I checked, Reagan might have preached the gospel of lower taxes, but after his initial cut in 1981, systematically raised taxes for pretty much the rest of his tenure. That I would like to see pointed out in Texas social studies textbooks, but I suppose I shouldn't hold my breath.

Like a train wreck, I can’t look away ...

God love Rachel Maddow. Need any more evidence for the hypocrisy of the current Republican party? Watch:



I hope Obama watches this.

Putting “alternative lifestyle” to bed (so to speak)

I have been following two fairly momentous events in gay rights south of the border—the trial in California challenging "Proposition Eight"—the California injunction passed in the last election against gay marriage—and the Senate hearings on the deeply flawed Clinton measure "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which prohibits gay servicemen and –women from being open about their sexuality while in the military. Both of these events have been notable for the way in which the anti-gay factions in government and society have been forced into increasingly untenable positions to justify their prohibitions, as the standard lines about the dangers of homosexuality to the institutions of marriage and the military have their illogical and indeed irrational bases exposed.

I will not rehash the various arguments being thrown back and forth (some summaries here and here); what's got me thinking about this today is the pernicious quality of the term "alternative lifestyle," which has become synonymous with "gay." I've always disliked the term, both for its implied decadence, and for the suggestion that homosexuality—or any sexuality—is somehow a choice. It's been some time since I've argued this question with someone (one of the benefits/drawbacks of the university life is a radical reduction in the number of people with socially conservative perspectives you encounter on a regular basis), but the idea that individuals "choose" homosexuality is completely at odds with common sense. Let's be clear here: I'm talking not about experimentation or private fantasy, or those fortunate enough to find themselves in accepting and open families and communities. If one's sexuality were genuinely a matter of choice, gays and lesbians would be exclusive to urban and progressive enclaves. To put it another way: I went to a Catholic high school in the late 1980s, and that school remains the most overtly homophobic milieu I have ever experienced; teachers could hold forth on the sinfulness of homosexuality with impunity, and opine that AIDS was God's punishment; one teacher characterized gay sex as "dirty and furtive anonymous encounters in gas station bathrooms." (I hasten to add that this is not a sweeping characterization of the entire teaching staff, but of a very vocal minority, who nevertheless set the broader tone as a loud few often can. Many of my teachers were open-minded and generous in temperament and character, and bore, in hindsight, obvious antipathy to the handful of religious bigots).

If there was a group of people less tolerant than the teachers, it was the student body (or large segments of it, at any rate). The greatest insult was to be labelled a fag; the easiest way to destroy someone's reputation was to spread rumours he or she was gay; homophobic language was common, as was the suggestion of violence where gays were concerned.

When arguing against the suggestion that homosexuality is a choice, I have always related my own high school experience, and asked who, in the midst of this homophobic nightmare, would actively choose to be vilified, ostracized, and possibly subjected to violence? And yet I know of more than a few people with whom I went to high school who came out of the closet years later. I can only imagine the private hells they endured, and the courage it took to finally overcome the years in which their ostensible perfidy was preached at them.

Hence, when I see or hear the phrase "alternative lifestyle," it irks me. More properly, "alternative lifestyle" should really mean any lifestyle choice that deviates from the norm, and here as well the concept is deeply problematic. The question is: alternative to what? If the LGTB community and the prospect of gay marriage finds itself getting increasing cultural traction, I do think it has as much to do as anything else with the concomitant awareness that the idea of "normality" is itself something of a fallacy. "Alternative" family structures involving divorced parents, unmarried parents, multiple households, stepchildren and stepsiblings, have been eroding the myth of the Cleavers and their white picket fencery for some time. I'm not the first to wonder why those vociferous defenders of marriage are so upset about gays wanting to wed—shouldn't they be welcoming any movement toward re-establishing marriage as desirable in the face of all these other "alternative" arrangements? Shouldn't they be happy that these putative sexual degenerates want to embrace commitment, monogamy, and the comfortable tedium of married life?

These questions, of course, are entirely disingenuous, but offer an insight into why "alternative lifestyle" has become effectively synonymous with "gay." That anti-gay proponents frame gayness as a "lifestyle choice" betrays their own particular bigotry; that is, their resentment that anyone would lead a lifestyle alternative to their own. To argue from a cultural studies perspective, the term more appropriate is "subculture." The images animating anti-gay discourse—those who, for example, claim that gays serving opening in the military will lead to cross-dressing, body art, and overt display of "exotic forms of sexual expression"—are more or less the same images conservative newspapers splash across their front pages the day after a Gay Pride March. Anyone who has celebrated Gay Pride knows this frustration: no images of parents marching in solidarity with their gay children (or vice versa), no images evoking the general sense of joy or celebration that pervades the event, no images of people dressed innocuously; rather, we are treated to a slew of those images most calibrated to shock staid sensibilities. Not that this is in itself a bad thing (after all, the sixty-year old men in the assless chaps and the transgendered float in homage to Priscilla, Queen of the Desert likely want to shock staid sensibilities); but what gets lost in translation is that this is the pageantry of a specific subculture (or rather, a diverse set of subcultures) that has developed in defiance of exactly the kind of cultural forces determined to prevent gay marriage in California and the repeal of DADT in the U.S. military. It is not a lifestyle, any more than the denizens of New Orleans exchange beads for casual nudity 365 days a year.

One of the frequent analogies made to the repeal of DADT is that of Truman's desegregation of the military in 1948. Similar arguments were made then, about unit cohesion and the disruptive effects of having black and white soldiers serving side by each. This, I think, is a useful comparison to make, especially considering that the political forces organized against anything resembling civil rights legislation in the 50s and 60s were far more pervasive and vociferous than the outliers denouncing homosexuality today—and the integration of the U.S. armed forces was a slow and arduous process that paralleled the integration of the country more generally. Then as now however the greatest fears tended to be stoked by that catalyst that always inspires fear—the unknown. The average personal journey from prejudice to understanding only really happens through experience. I say "understanding" rather than "acceptance," because the latter has a quality of condescension. One arrives rather at an understanding of the other, ideally, through familiarity. This was indeed my own experience: I won't be disingenuous and suggest that I was somehow above the homophobic milieu of my high school, was more enlightened and progressive. I was a product of that context as much as anyone else. But when one of my best friends came out to me, I had to make a choice. It wasn't easy, but that friendship was more important to me than my own fears and misgivings.

It is for this reason that I look at the repeal of DADT as a crucial milestone—whatever the brave stands being taken by the higher command against congressional anti-gay forces, I have little doubt that the broader portion of the rank and file is at least ambivalent and at most hostile to openly-serving gays and lesbians—just as they were to integrating the forces in the 50s. But both history and personal experience tell me that the first step in social progress is simple contact, which forces people to confront prejudices and, more often than not, teaches them that common humanity outweighs what differentiates them.

It's worth noting that the original formulation of the policy was "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Flaunt"—which echoes the typical "I'm not homophobic, but ..." disclaimer that states "I don't care what you do in your own life, just don't flaunt it in front of me." Of course, one person's flaunting is another person's simple living. This is the pernicious aspect of DADT, for it requires silence about one of the crucial defining aspects of self. Andrew Sullivan, in his blog "The Daily Dish" at The Atlantic online, responds to those who dismiss the difficulty of concealing one's sexual orientation with this simple thought experiment: "If you're straight, try it for one day. Try never mentioning your spouse, your family, your home, your girlfriend or boyfriend to anyone you know or work with – just for one day. Take that photo off your desk at work, change the pronoun you use for your spouse to the opposite gender, guard everything you might say or do so that no one could know you're straight, shut the door in your office if you have a personal conversation if it might come up. Try it. Now imagine doing it for a lifetime. It's crippling; it warps your mind; it destroys your self-esteem."

Seriously. Imagine it. Think you could pull that off?

This month in democracy

All things being equal, I should probably be feeling a lot more deflated and cynical vis à vis democracy and its discontents these days than I am. Three big blows to the democratic process have been landed, two in the U.S. and one here: (1) Stephen Harper’s prorogation of parliament, (2) the U.S. Senate’s stagnation and obstructionism, and finally (3) the recent decision by SCOTUS to reverse a century of legislation restricting corporate political contributions, effectively opening the floodgates for corporate money to influence and/or buy elections and elected officials.

I have watched the special Massachusetts election of Scott Brown, which took away the Democrats’ supermajority, and the ensuing commentary with bemusement. The Village Voice captured the absurdity most succinctly with their headline, “Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate.” If ever there was a moment in which the American electoral system was showing its flaws, surely this is it—the pros and cons of the current health care reform bills notwithstanding, surely an eighteen vote advantage should be enough to pass legislation? Apparently not with the threat of the filibuster hanging over it.

The U.S. Senate, it should be pointed out, is a pretty undemocratic body to begin with. It was originally designed to be the “sober second thought” in the crafting of legislation, with senators having six year terms as opposed to congressmen’s two ostensibly leading to a more stable, mature consideration of proposed bills. The senators were also fewer in number, and—most importantly—not determined by the populations they represented. Rather, each state gets two senators, regardless of size. This was less of a problem back in the late eighteenth century when there were only thirteen states, which did not have vast discrepancies in population; however, when the people of California (population thirty-six million) have the same representation in the Senate as Vermont (population six hundred thousand), the influence small states wield is wildly asymmetrical.

But that’s neither here or there—the filibuster has become an increasingly common tool for blocking legislation, to the point where, in practice, an obstructionist minority only interested in preventing votes (such as we now see in action) can grind the wheels of the legislative branch to a halt. Employment of the filibuster has increased more than fivefold—between 1951 and 1960, it was used an average of 3.2 times a year, whereas between 1981 and 2004 the yearly average was 16.5. (For a good breakdown of the procedural issues, read here and here).

The filibuster has a quasi-romantic quality in the popular imagination—from its very name, which means “freebooter” or “pirate,” to Jimmy Stewart’s Mr. Smith, to the West Wing episode “The Stackhouse Filibuster”—connoting a lone heroic individual standing up against the system. And indeed, certain instances of individuals filibustering do conform to that idea (though not always on the side of the angels, as with Strom Thurmond’s attempt to block the Civil Rights Act). More and more however it has become standard operating procedure for the minority party to thwart the majority agenda. While its use has traditionally been that of last resort, it has become business as usual.

I can’t help but see a parallel to Stephen Harper’s use of prorogation, insofar as it too is an arcane parliamentary procedure of last resort. The argument could be made that last year’s invocation of it was just that, a desperate manoeuvre to circumvent an undemocratic power grab by the opposition (not an argument I agree with, but it could be made nevertheless); no such claim could me made however about the decision to prorogue parliament this past December 30. This time, it was so blatantly and baldly a move to avoid having to address the Afghani detainee scandal until after the Winter Olympics, by which time (Harper would hope) the public’s attention would be elsewhere.

The use of prorogation twice in the space of a year is worrisome, not least because it would seem to set a new precedent for the PM’s autocratic powers, and redefine the relationship between the PM and parliament. For me, Stephen Harper’s most troubling quality has always been his obvious desire to arrogate presidential power to the PMO and overturn the Westminster standard of “first among equals.” The high-handed use of prorogation—both times—bespeaks both arrogance and a disdain for the checks on prime ministerial power that are a cornerstone of parliamentary democracy (to say nothing of the disrespect to the Governor General, and of all the bills before the House of Commons that now die).

What keeps me buoyed in the face of these events however is that it puts these governmental flaws on people’s radar. Prorogation Part Two would certainly seem, at this point, to have backfired for Harper. If he banked on Canadians’ apathy to see him through, the early signs aren’t good for him: his poll numbers have dropped, and people across the country are speaking up angrily. Nor have I heard anything in the way of support for Harper’s actions—the right seems more or less mum on the subject, which is a tacit admission that the PM was way out of line on this one. I have reason to hope that this may have been one bridge too far for Harper.

Similarly, there is also some real discourse in the U.S. happening about the filibuster, and the Senate’s arcane procedures more generally. I have less hope that anything will happen on that front than I am about prorogation being Harper’s Waterloo, but it is heartening. One way or another, Obama seems to be fired up: he’s taking a more oppositional and populist tone than he has since the election, and he has re-hired his campaign director David Plouffe to chart a new course. Hopefully, after a year of being conciliatory, he’s pissed off. The State of the Union should be a barn-burner.

Finally, the Supreme Court’s ruling last week taking the restrictions of corporate political donations doesn’t have me as outraged as I might have imagined. A large part of my calm was summed up nicely by Glenn Greenwald, who observes that any lament about the certain corporate interference in American government necessarily suggests that this is not already the case:

The reality is that our political institutions are already completely beholden to and controlled by large corporate interests (Dick Durbin: "banks own" the Congress). Corporations find endless ways to circumvent current restrictions—their armies of PACs, lobbyists, media control, and revolving-door rewards flood Washington and currently ensure their stranglehold—and while this decision will make things marginally worse, I can't imagine how it could worsen fundamentally. (Salon.com)

Sadly, I can’t disagree with Greenwald’s argument. Furthermore, in looking closely at the case and the decision, one finds that there are in fact some significant First Amendment issues that would have made the reverse ruling problematic from a free speech perspective. That the court decided to overturn a century of precedent on the funding of elections strikes me as something of a baby/bathwater situation, but it is fairly clear that there was no easy extrication from this case one way or another.

On the other hand, the ruling has evoked a storm of condemnation on both sides of the political coin, and may ironically do more to draw attention to the need to reform the way election campaigns are funded than any previous endeavours.

So, to recap: the U.S. Senate is broken, but so visibly so it has excited serious discussion about how to fix it. Stephen Harper has prorogued parliament in autocratic and arrogant fashion, and in the process ignited a grassroots protest and sent his numbers into a tailspin. And America’s Supreme Court has formalized corporate ownership of elected officials, which may well lead to a bipartisan effort to scale back the excesses of soft money. Of course, none of these eventualities may pan out—I sit here with fingers crossed. But if one or more of them do, it would be a vindication of the principle that sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better.

The illusion of substance

A student sent me this, possibly in retribution for something—one way or another, it made my head hurt.



I have little doubt about two things here: first, that it is entirely likely there were any number of answers of substance and intelligence that didn’t make the cut because they didn’t fit the overall narrative; and two, that one could have easily cobbled together a comparable series of interviews at Obama’s election night rally in which people vapidly spouted empty rhetoric about hope and change. However, there is a third thing I have little doubt about as well, and that’s that the Palin supporters who can speak substantively to the issues are always going to be vastly outnumbered by Obama supporters who can.

I can claim this with confidence for two reasons. The first is simply the law of large numbers: whatever spin has been put on Palin’s popularity, she is actually a lot less popular than she has been made out to be; and her favourability rating is significantly lower than Obama’s (see Christopher Beam’s astute distinction between “favourability” and “job approval” here—he makes the point that Palin’s job approval rating can’t be measured because, well, she has no job). Hence, the proportion of naturally-occurring intelligence translates into higher numbers for Obama.

More importantly however, the number of Palinites able to speak substantively to policy issues will be significantly less because Palin herself has no substance. None. And it has been exasperating and baffling to read a series of op-eds this week and see otherwise intelligent people falling victim to the illusion that Palin’s largely media-driven persistence on the American stage is evidence of substance. Rex Murphy in The Globe and Mail and Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich in The New York Times all opined that people on the left (and some on the right) claiming that Palin is a “joke” need to rethink their position—that she does in fact possess political wiles and savvy well in excess of what people imagine. Dowd states that Palin “reigns over thrilled subjects thronging to a politically strategic swath of American strip malls” and that “Democrats would be foolish to write off her visceral power.” Rich claims, “Palin is far and away the most important brand in American politics after Barack Obama, and attention must be paid.”

It was however Rex Murphy’s column in this past weekend’s Globe that most dismayed me, as whatever issue I might take with some of his positions, I can usually count on him for good contrarian common sense. His column was particularly irritating because he made some spot-on observations, but framed them in assumptions about the character of Obama supporters, and brought it all to an embarrassingly (for him) wrong-headed conclusion.

He says, “It will make Obama fans perspire to hear this, but Ms. Palin has a more forceful bond with her supporters than he with his.” This observation is exactly right, but I wonder why he feels the need for the caveat—Obama supporters are well aware of Palin’s forceful connection with her base. Indeed, it is one of the key things that worries many people about Palin: the bond is not intellectual but instinctive, proceeding not from the mind but the gut, and it is a manifestation of the most troubling elements of American reactionary nativism. In this she is not, as Mr. Murphy suggests, a unique new force in American politics, but the latest of American conservative politicians (following the likes of Dick Armey, Karl Rove and Mike Huckabee) to achieve a radioactive half-life balanced somewhere between actual elected officials and pundits like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. She is, to coin a term, a politainer: a political actor concerned not with policy or governing but her own specific brand, and when she pronounces on policy delivers what Jon Stewart (always the voice of sanity) calls “a conservative boilerplate mad-lib … delivered as if it were the hard-earned wisdom of a life well lived.”

It is his conclusion however which is most egregious: “Ms. Palin has rare gifts and stamina enough to give them play.” Certainly, she has a keen ability to cater to in reactionary American nativism; whether that counts as a “rare gift” is doubtful. But stamina? This is the governor who quit well before her term was up, just when tanking oil prices put Alaska’s economy in a spin; who didn’t actually write her own book; and whose political pronouncements emanate from Facebook and Twitter, not exactly forums that allow complex or nuanced thought.

Yet, Mr. Murphy observes, people respond to her intuitively and viscerally, and where there’s smoke there must be fire—forgetting, presumably, that in politics where there’s smoke there’s more likely to be mirrors. The abject loathing not just from the left but from the conservative intelligentsia equates presence, apparently; he writes, “A truly dumb and witless person would not have the demure columnist David Brooks hissing dismissively, angrily in fact, on a Sunday morning talk show that Sarah Palin ‘is a joke’ … Empty vessels do not inspire such venom and fury.” With all respect, Mr. Murphy needs to take a longer look at the culture of celebrity today—empty vessels fire the popular imagination as they never have in the past, and the heat they generate is no evidence of light.

Friday round-up

Because all of my perceptions of U.S. politics tend to be filtered through The West Wing, I keep hoping in the midst of this health care train wreck that there will be a "Let Bartlet be Bartlet" moment for Obama. Except that the problem there is I think Obama is being Obama in this increasingly futile attempt at fashioning a bipartisan bill. Being conciliatory and accomodating is admirable, but not so much when those you're attempting to accomodate are essentially saying--out loud and publicly--that under no circumstances will they vote yes on any health care reform.

It's time to circle the wagons, use the majority, and beat the Blue Dogs with a hose until they toe the line. Where's Rahm "attack dog" Emanuel in all this?

***

I'm now linking to Hendrik Hertzberg's blog at The New Yorker, because I'm reasonably certain that everything he says is right.

***

A colleague of mine sent around this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education this morning, and I'm of two minds on it. On one hand it makes some excellent points about what in humanities academia has come to go by the rubric "professionalization" -- in short, a premium put on research and publishing, with the emphasis on volume and a hierarchy of value with peer-reviewed journals and academic presses at the top. What has resulted, the article argues, is a dizzying increase in scholarly publishing with a concomitant reduction in reading audience for this scholarship.

On one hand, I tend to agree that the elevation of peer-reviewed writing to the level of the sacrosanct tends to make literary scholarship increasingly specialized and obfuscatory. I further tend to think that professors have a responsibility to the larger community as public intellectuals, but that kind of writing and publishing doesn't happen when one is under the gun to get as many articles in peer-reviewed journals published as possible come tenure review time.

On the other hand, the article makes a few false distinctions. The question of "audience" for peer-reviewed work is a bit of a fallacy, because that's a bit beside the point. Speaking personally, my own motivation for research and writing and (ultimately, hopefully) publishing -- besides the carrot/stick of tenure and promotion -- is my own interest in my subject matter, and the desire to keep sharp for the sake of my students.

There's also a a false binary in the article between "interpretive" (which seems to be synonymous with New Criticism) and "performative" (which I take to mean "theoretical") reading. What about historcist scholarship? Or more sociological approaches? Or the simple fact that literature's relevance changes depending on the realities of our given historical moment? That is, after all, why we keep returning to Hamlet.

A modest proposal

After reading this column by Gail Collins in the NY Times this morning, I reflected that this new, worrying phenomenon of anti-health reform mobs packing heat at town halls poses an interesting health-care question. Namely, if an anti-reformist does an injury to himself with his gun, what is the likelihood that his insurance will cover it?

I say that with my tongue firmly in my cheek of course, but the ongoing saga of anti-reform mobs—and yes, “mobs” is the proper term here—pre-empting discussion and dialogue at the behest of lobbyists in the employ of the health insurance industry, to say nothing of the egregious disinformation being disseminated, represents a depressing nadir in U.S. political discourse.

But I’m off topic. It was the issue of guns that sat me down to post this morning. More specifically, it was the bizarre fact that all of the guns on display in the cases outlined by Ms. Collins were entirely legal.

I find it interesting that those most adamant defenders of the second amendment tend to share political ground with those who favour a “strict constructionist” interpretation of the constitution—namely, the belief that the constitution should not be re-interpreted to suit new historical contexts, but should hew as closely as possible to what the Founding Fathers intended when drafting it.

Now, speaking as an English professor, I think this entire approach is a bit wonky. Interpreting a text on the speculation of what was in its authors’ heads is an invitation to fallacy. On the other hand, I’m willing to grant that there is a lot of daylight between matters literary and legal. That being said, I’m not sure how a strict constructionist approach to the second amendment translates into “guns for everyone!” It reads, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Here, a little historical context is helpful. The Founding Fathers were deeply suspicious of professional armies such as the British redcoats, seeing them as the tools of tyranny. The original idea was that the U.S. should not have a professional army, but a people’s militia. To that end, it was the citizenry’s obligation to have weapons on hand to prevent (to quote The Simpsons) King George from coming into your living room to push you around.

Well and good. Of course, that particular prejudice against a professional military class didn’t last, and today the U.S. spends as much on its defense budget as the rest of the world combined.

See, if I was being a strict constructionist, I would parse the amendment as follows: the first clause regarding the “well regulated militia” (key word regulated) that is necessary for the “security of a free state” (i.e. national security resides in this militia) modifies the main clause “the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Gun-rights advocates tend to decontextualize the main clause, leaving out the modifying clause—which ultimately stipulates that the right to bear arms is predicated on being a militia reservist.

The fact of the professional U.S. military sort of derails a strict constructionist reading of this amendment. I do however have a solution—two solutions, actually.

Seeing as how the second amendment implies the illegality of a professional military, it should be dissolved and everyone gets to stockpile as many guns as they want. Failing that option, in exchange for surrendering their firearms, every American will be issued one Brown Bess musket—which was undoubtedly what the Founders had in mind when they spoke of “arms”—to have on hand should King George ever feel like throwing his weight around again.

Looking on with something akin to horror

I have been asked on occasion why I pay so much attention to American politics on this blog and not so much to Canadian. There are a couple of reasons, perhaps the biggest one being that it goes more or less hand in hand with my academic specialization—I am an Americanist, and one who focuses on issues in postwar and contemporary American literature and culture. Given that my approach to literature is broadly historicist, much of what I teach and study is thus necessarily politically inflected. (In teaching a 20th-century American novel course last year focused on issues of race and identity, it would have been an egregious elision not to couple it with material on civil rights and the legacies of slavery, to say nothing of the immediate context of Obama’s historic campaign and election).

There is also the significant factor of being the outsider looking on at times with something akin to horror. There are those who characterize Canadian politics as boring, which is not an evaluation I agree with at all; that said however, we do seem to lack the extremes of American political discourse and the virulence with which those extremes are expressed. Which is not to suggest that Canadian politics is genteel (just watch your average Question Period), but that we have a broader ground for consensus.

The ongoing debate about health care south of the border has really brought this into sharp relief. I have found it extremely educational, while with every passing day making me not just proud but relieved to be Canadian. So much of the debate seems to me fraught with nothing less than profound cognitive dissonance, but then that probably betrays my own cultural prejudices—as a Canadian, the right to health care is a no-brainer. Nor is this a specifically Canadian sentiment, but one shared by most of the developed world, in which even our most conservative governments won’t scale back public health care. The U.S. is the odd man out on this issue. Advocates of a public option or single-payer model in the States must grind their teeth in frustration at the specter of the rest of the developed world looking on in puzzlement at America’s apparent inability to enact what Europe and Canada have had for decades.

I really have been watching the debate unfold with something akin to horror, and that has proceeded less from the ideological argument than the fact that what we’ve been seeing is not ideological so much as rabidly partisan. The ideological argument would at least be interesting, and would be educational in what it would have to say about the social contract. However, from where I sit it seems to me that the opponents of public health care would have difficulty making the ideological argument—the position they can’t make candidly is the principle that health care is not a right, but a luxury.

As far as philosophical positions go, this one is fair enough. I obviously disagree vehemently with it, but would have more respect for American lawmakers if they would at least be honest. However, this is not a tenable position, considering that poll after poll shows an electorate that wants, at the very least, a public option, and I can’t imagine standing up telling people they don’t deserve health care because they’re not wealthy enough would result in many victories come election day—especially considering the fact that employees of the federal government have about the best health insurance in the country. Further, the free-market fundamentalism espoused by the American right, which hews to the dogma that private business is invariably more efficient, cost-effective, and competent than government-run anything founders on the reef of the actuality of the American health insurance industry. We must always remember that private insurance companies make their money in not paying out claims; if you grant the principle that health care is a right, the horror stories one hears of people being denied coverage for major surgery based on inaccuracies or elisions in the way they filled out their policy—or the cynical practice of writing legal loopholes allowing the company to deny coverage into the policy—become that much more egregious.

I firmly believe that health care, like education and really anything that protects the health and well-being of citizens (ranging from water treatment to the police force), needs to be firmly in the public sphere, for privatization of these sectors of society puts the focus on profit rather than where it should be—namely, the citizenry these sectors serve. The conservative argument would contest this with the position that the bigger government this necessitates is inefficient, wasteful, and intrusive, and that private ownership would result in a situation not only more streamlined and effective but also one in which individuals’ access to these services would be proportional to their own success and hard work.

Well and good. I’m happy to have that debate with any comers, but again, if we’re seeing these positions articulated in the current American health care debate, it happens obliquely at best.

There are two principal arguments being made against “Obamacare,” one valid and the other cynically mendacious. The valid argument is over paying for health care reform, and while the numbers have been twisted and spun on both sides, at least it proceeds from a genuine concern.

The second argument isn’t so much an argument as a strategy, as it contains a multitude of arguments of varying degrees of untruth. This strategy is, very simply, to smudge and obfuscate the Obama administration’s message, and if it also manages to scare the crap out of some people, so much the better. A representative selection:

—under Obama’s plan, you will be denied treatments that a faceless government bureaucrat deems too expensive or unnecessary

—the government will dictate your choices in everything from hospital to doctor

—public-run health care is socialism

—access to your doctor will be complicated by a series of government bureaucrats you’ll have to get through first

—seniors will be visited by government employees and made to decide how they want to die


This last one is my favourite, and seems to have been the falsehood that has—predictably—gone the most viral (so to speak).

All of these claims are at the best disingenuous and at worst cynical falsehoods, and can all be disproven by the simple expedient of looking at the public health-care options already provided by the federal government—Medicaid, Medicare, and USVA coverage. Medicare in particular is an excellent example of an extremely popular public program, to the point where any legislator seeking to repeal it would be committing political suicide. In fact, in a misapprehension that would be comical if it weren’t indicative of the disconnect at work in this debate, many seniors have expressed their fear that the Obama health care reforms would eliminate Medicare.

The right has done a good job of propagating such misunderstandings, and while the deliberate falsehoods are appalling enough, the cynical political brinksmanship on display is breathtaking. The Republicans, probably correctly, see that a loss for Obama on health care would cripple the administration, and so are doing everything in their power to block, slow, dilute, and crush the nascent legislation. Meanwhile, public support for the Obama plan has been eroding steadily, pretty much in direct proportion to the loss of progressive elements—that is to say, each hint that the public option will be weaker or gone altogether denudes support, which of course the right wing opportunistically points to as evidence that the electorate doesn’t want health care reform.

As I said at the outset, all this makes me happy, proud and above all relieved to be a Canadian. Our health care system is by no means perfect, but it is an extraordinary comfort to know I’ll never have to take out a second mortgage to pay for a procedure because I was denied health insurance for leaving off my childhood bout with chicken pox.

A constitutional question

So it has been suggested that the media backlash against Lou Dobbs’ ill-advised support of the “birther” conspiracy theory—that Obama was not in fact born in Hawaii and is therefore not a natural-born American—will go to great lengths to subdue the movement, as high-profile endorsements will likely be scarce now. I’m skeptical, but here’s hoping.

Instead, I have a constitutional question. I read this article in Salon.com this morning arguing that the law prohibiting American citizens born elsewhere from being president should be repealed by a constitutional amendment. It makes a good case, but what makes me curious is that the law specifically excludes the President and Vice President, with nothing said about the rest of the line of succession. If both the President and Vice President die or are unable to govern, then the Speaker of the House becomes president; after Speaker, the President pro tempore of the Senate, then Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defense, Attorney General … then from there on down through the cabinet.

There are no laws prohibiting U.S. citizens who immigrated from elsewhere from being elected or named to any of the positions listed above. So my question is this: if a catastrophe occurred that eliminated a chunk of the line of succession (if the Capitol Building was bombed during the State of the Union, say) leaving the Secretary of Education as the next in line, would that person be legally able to assume the office of the President if he or she was not a natural-born U.S. citizen?


As a postscript to all this, the Salon article points out that the two categories of “natural-born” citizenry are “to be born on U.S. soil, to U.S. citizens or foreign nationals” and “to be born to one or more U.S. citizen parents abroad.” Huh. So unless the birthers want to challenge Obama’s mother’s citizenship, their argument is kind of moot, no?

Robert McNamara, 1916-2009

It is, I suppose, a testament to the impact Robert McNamara had during his tenure as Secretary of Defense between 1961-68 that his death has not been eclipsed, like almost every other story in the last week’s news cycle, by that of Michael Jackson.

Indeed, there has been a significant amount of discussion about McNamara’s legacy, with a lot less forgiveness for his failings than one tends to see in eulogies for major figures. His death has opened a lot of old wounds. It has served in part as a reminder to the post-Vietnam generations of just how traumatizing that conflict was. While some commentators have offered McNamara’s later-in-life contrition for his mistakes as a mitigating element—contrasting his honesty and willingness to admit error with the bloody-mindedness of the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz troika—at least as many have said there can be no forgiveness for the primary architect of the Vietnam War.

For me, as for many of those who have written about McNamara this past week, the irreducible sticking-point, the element that no amount of contrition can efface, is not that he admitted he was entirely wrong about Vietnam. It’s that he admitted he knew he was wrong about Vietnam as early as 1964—that he looked at the war and realized it could never be won the way it was being fought. And he then proceeded to be silent as the conflict deepened and tens of thousands of Americans and millions of Vietnamese died.

Nor was this a man given to timidity or who blushed in the face of authority. If there is any aspect of his legacy that could serve to balance Vietnam, it was that he stared down the Joint Chiefs during Kennedy’s presidency. He arrived in his office at the Pentagon in 1961 and found himself faced with perhaps the most hawkish American military command in history, and who were, we now know, seriously considering a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, and who tried to use the Cuban missile crisis to manipulate the Kennedy Administration into war.

That someone with the stones to stare down the Joint Chiefs would keep silent about what he recognized as a futile and useless war is baffling, and ultimately that is what is unforgivable.

I’ve been reading Thomas Ricks’ book Fiasco, which is about the buildup to the war in Iraq and the series of mistakes, blunders, misapprehensions, and sheer bloody-mindedness on the part of the civilian leadership and some parts of the military that led to, well, the fiasco that Iraq for the most part has been. Reading what has been written about McNamara and the legacy of Vietnam, it is discouraging to see the same sort of mistakes made, in many cases willfully so. McNamara, one of Kennedy’s “best and the brightest” is an example for history of how sometimes the brightest aren’t always the best.

Some thoughts on politics and craziness

On the heels of my post on Sarah Palin yesterday, I am compelled to wonder aloud: what is going on with U.S. governors?

I used to have a theory that batshit insane people in politics tended to concentrate themselves at the mayoral level—that mayor was about the highest office you could hold before craziness became an impediment to moving up the political ladder.

I arrived at this theory through the serendipitous conjunction of three things I saw/heard in the space of a day or two a while back: (1) New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin’s notorious “chocolate city” speech; (2) Rick Mercer’s “Canada’s Craziest Mayor” contest; and (3) former St. John’s mayor Andy Wells haranguing City Council. This serendipity got me thinking: sure, there are lots of batshit insane people in the U.S. House of Representatives as well as a couple of wingnuts who get elected to our own House of Commons, but there seems to be a definite tendency towards loopiness in mayors.

One is tempted to dismiss the wingnuttery that surfaces in legislative politics for the reason that it tends to have less affect; the vagaries of day-to-day life, however, are far more influenced by municipal considerations, so one would think we’d be more concerned to have mentally stable mayors. Crazy-ass congressmen or members of parliament can spout off with little effect at the level of parking tickets or property taxes, but we still seem to elect—consistently, and repeatedly—municipal chief executives whom I wouldn’t trust to house-sit for me.

Seriously, I think—or used to think—that there was something about the nature of the job of mayor that allowed (or even encouraged) not just the election of narcissistic, sociopathic, paranoid, bellicose and/or reality-challenged individuals, but their re-election again and again (for some reason, Mel Lastman springs to mind here). Honestly, I think this deserves serious study. What is it about the office of mayor? Is it something to do with the parochial nature of municipal politics that enables this phenomenon? Is the talent pool at the municipal level simply that shallow? Is it a combination of limited voter turnout and pay-to-play politics? Or is it a tendency to look at mayors less as leaders than mascots, so that we see their insanity as endearing rather than worrisome?

At any rate, this was my theory, and while I think it still holds water, I’ve been watching in horrified fascination as a string of U.S. governors prove that you can be batshit insane at the gubernatorial level as well. If there is any cause for befuddlement these days, it’s that Arnold Schwartzenegger has emerged as a model of stable, moderate, reasonable governance while numerous governors in states-not-California (which further compounds the weirdness—if you figured on a crazy governor, you’d think California would be the ideal place for it) have been proving themselves booby-hatch-worthy. Nor is this limited to Republicans, given that Exhibits A and B—Rod Blagojevich and Eliot Spitzer—are both Democrats. Blago I would have thought took the cake—you weren’t likely to find another person so narcissistic and politically tone-deaf as the chief executive of a major state. An aberration, many said, a product of the morass that is Illinois politics.

And then along came Mark Sanford. Where to even begin?


He just doesn’t stop—he’s like the Energizer Bunny of crazy. What should really have been an open-and-shut adultery scandal, his “Appalachian Trail” disappearance notwithstanding, has turned into the Saga of Sanford’s Great Love. You know, when members of your own administration start saying loudly and publicly that you should really just shut up, you have to wonder how far from the fold you have wandered.

And in a turn almost beautiful for its symmetry, the governor staying in office when his resignation seems a no-brainer is followed by the governor who suddenly resigns with eighteen months remaining in her term, presumably as a scandal pre-emption. If you haven’t seen or listened to Sarah Palin’s goodbye speech, by the way, you should:



It’s a veritable classic of Palinese, filled with the kind of contradictory sentiments, elliptical allusions and logical cul-de-sacs that make George W. Bush seem like Cicero by comparison. (For a great parsing of the speech’s absurdities, see Maureen Dowd’s column in it). Perfect, really, for her departing word—though as I said yesterday, it’s unlikely to be her last. The big question for me is is: who’s next? And will it be another Republican presidential hopeful? And come 2012, will Mark Sanford still be holding forth on the saga of his Great Love? My bet is for yes.


**EXTRA CREDIT ASSIGNMENT: Is Sarah Palin’s gubernatorial craziness merely an extension of her mayoral craziness, or is there a qualitative difference between the two? Discuss.

Oh Sarah Barracuda, we hardly knew ye

I must admit to a profound ambivalence about Sarah Palin’s surprising retirement last Friday, though it proceeds at least in part from entirely selfish reasons—namely, I’ll miss having her around on the national stage as an object of ridicule. That being said, perhaps it’s all for the best … she did, after all, make it a little too easy.

In all seriousness however, I am genuinely ambivalent, because on one hand I’m relieved that the Palin saga, surely one of the most discouraging in recent history for anyone desiring high-minded political discourse, finally looks to be ending. On the other hand, her departure removes a singular embodiment of intellectually bankrupt nativist conservatism that would, I think, have ultimately hamstrung the Republicans for years to come and finally mobilized thinking conservatives to reimagine the Republican brand—the first eventuality benefiting liberal-left politics in the States, the latter benefiting the country overall. I have to believe that this will happen anyway, but Palin made for a useful galvanizing figure on this front.

Of course, her abrupt departure has fuelled all sorts of speculation about what she’s up to. I think we can safely say that this isn’t the first step in setting up a 2012 run for the presidency, for the simple reason that William Kristol claims that it is. Given that pretty much everything Kristol has claimed, declared and predicted over the last seven years has been not just wrong but exactly wrong, I think we can safely say any remaining presidential aspirations on Palin’s part are a non-starter.

(As an aside: never mind Kristol’s consistent wrongness on everything from Iraq to the 2008 presidential campaign, his bafflingly stubborn cheerleading of Palin even to the present moment dictates that he has to surrender the moniker “prominent conservative intellectual.” Being wrong is forgivable, but why would someone ostensibly valuing intellect and intelligence so consistently champion someone epitomizing the opposite of that? To quote Milan Kundera, he’s acting as the brilliant ally of his own gravediggers).

So we all now wait for the other shoe to drop. I’m putting my money on an ethics scandal—the good word seems to be that this investigation into the awarding of contracts in exchange for favours (specifically, the building of her house) is going to blow up into something big, and she’s getting out to get ahead of the story. Or perhaps she’ll get a talk show. Either way, I suspect she won't be out of the public eye much, so my ambivalence about her departure is probably premature.

Teabagging update

Well, the Tax Day Tea Parties in the States have come and gone. In lieu of boring everyone with a recap of the absurdity of it all, I leave the commentary to those better suited. First, Jon Stewart.

And secondly, a guide to conservative teabagging.



That is all.