Category Archives: Random Blogging

Nuts and Bolts

As the Republican party has continued to move to the right, long-time GOP operatives responsible for the nuts and bolts of elections and messaging are become more concerned. A lot of the grumbling has been behind the scenes, but some party officials are “coming out” with their criticisms. Case in point:

“Colorado Republican Party Chairman Dick Wadhams dropped his reelection bid on Monday, and fired some parting shots at the Tea Party and the hard-line conservatives he thinks are hurting the party’s electoral success.

“I have tired of those who are obsessed with seeing conspiracies around every corner and who have terribly misguided notions of what the role of the state party is while saying ‘uniting conservatives’ is all that is needed to win competitive races across the state,” Wadhams wrote in a memo to the Colorado Republican State Central Committee obtained by The Denver Post.”

When the man who had been dubbed “Karl Rove’s successor” tells the Denver Post that he  has “loved being chairman” but is “tired of the nuts,” it’s telling.

It is hard not to sympathize with Wadhams. It sometimes does seem that the inmates are running the asylum.  A friend shared a recent “Petition” sent from one Leo Toby, of Orleans, Indiana to Speaker of the House John Boehner and the Republican leadership; it began with a variety of “whereas” clauses, followed by a demand that they vote not to raise the debt ceiling, and it concluded with the following paragraph:

“Republicans and Democrats,

Let there be no doubt that if the mandates of the election of 2010 are not realized by the Republican Congress, we will vote you out of office in 2012. We are not joking when we tell you that we have had enough. Got it????

We expect nothing from the Marxist Democrats that (Including John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, and some other Republicans in name only) will save the republic because they have demonstrated over and over again their intention of destroying the United States . They intend to reduce us to a third world country. Making the entire world miserable is not the answer and we will fight to the bitter end no matter what it takes.”

In what alternate universe is Lindsay Graham a Marxist?

Nuts indeed.   No wonder Republicans are bolting.

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Snow, Ice and Climate Change

As predictable as it has been, it is discouraging to hear climate change denialists point to the massive amounts of ice and snow as evidence that “global warming” is imaginary. These are not folks who are conversant with science, so perhaps we should explain–very slowly and carefully–why global climate change, aka “global warming”–really is responsible for the bad weather.

As one climate scientist recently explained, there’s approximately four percent more water vapor in the atmosphere now than there was in the ’70s; that’s because the oceans and the air are warmer, and the added moisture in warmer air returns to earth as heavy rain and heavy snow.

This may not make sense to Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin, but most rational people can connect the dots, and understand why we need to limit carbon emissions. If we don’t, climate change will continue to cause extreme and unpredictable weather.

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As the World Turns…

My very first “official” political position was as chair of something called “the 71 Committee for Lugar for Mayor.” It was a Jewish community group supporting Dick Lugar for Mayor back in 1971.  I continued to support Lugar over the years, even as he became more and more conservative, and even after I left the GOP, partly because he is so solid on foreign policy and partly because the Democrats have thus far failed to offer any strong candidates as alternatives.

The recent Tea Party opposition to Lugar’s re-election is a perfect example of what has happened to the Republican Party. As the party has become more radical, officeholders have found it necessary to pander to a base that is increasingly composed of rabid ideologues. Highly intelligent people like Dick Lugar have had to choose between playing to the sensibilities of that base and losing elective office. Thus far, Lugar has managed that balancing act pretty adroitly; he’s been sufficiently right-wing on domestic issues to placate the crazies, and that strategy has allowed him to pursue the sensible, nuanced international policies for which he is known.

However, the right wing of the party has gotten steadily more intolerant of any deviation from their “agenda” of bumper sticker platitudes, and increasingly suspicious of anything that looks like intellect. The continued “Palin-ization” of the GOP can be seen in its increased hostility to complexity, its dismissal of science and rejection of empirical evidence, and its absolute opposition to anything that smacks of “elitism”—which apparently is defined by actually knowing what you are talking about, or (God forbid) having a degree from a decent university.

So now we have Richard Mourdock, our intellectually-limited State Treasurer, announcing a primary challenge to Lugar. Mourdock’s last foray into public policy was his lawsuit to withdraw Indiana from the Chrysler bankruptcy settlement negotiated by the creditors—despite the fact that he had previously signed a binding agreement to abide by whatever settlement the creditors’ committee negotiated and despite the further fact that Indiana did better financially under that settlement than it would have if he won the lawsuit.

In a sane world, Lugar would make short work of someone like Mourdock, and the odds still favor that result. But given the current mindlessness and anger of the Tea Party folks, and the fact that they are far more likely to come out to vote in a primary than the party’s dispirited moderates, I would be reluctant to place a very big wager.

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Leaving the Star

If you are reading this message—via Facebook, my blog, or email list—it is because I want to ask a favor.

For the past fourteen years, I have written a regular column for the Indianapolis Star. Most recently it has run every other Monday.

I have enjoyed the opportunity to make my opinions known in newsprint, but it has become increasingly clear that the traditional media environment is undergoing profound change. One result is that fewer people access my columns by reading the Monday Star than do so through my distribution list, Facebook, or my blog.

I had been mulling over the implications of these changes when I received an email from Tim Swarens, the Star’s editorial page editor. Tim informed me that he was reducing the frequency of my column to once a month, in order to bring in new community voices.

After thinking about it, I’ve decided that the time has come to sever the relationship. While a once-a-month column makes sense for certain subject matter, my columns have always reflected on the broader implications of current events, and it is very difficult to be “current” or timely in a once-a-month column. (It has been hard enough in a twice-a-month gig!)  The beauty of the internet is that it makes timeliness not only possible, but the norm. (The downside, of course, is that speed doesn’t always favor accuracy…but that’s a concern for another day.)

Anyway—back to the favor.

If you have enjoyed my columns, please follow me via www.sheilakennedy.net. Bookmark the blog or subscribe to the feed (http://sheilakennedy.net/feed/). If you like a column, post the link to Facebook. If you have a blog of your own, link to mine and I’ll link back. If you twitter—I don’t—tweet me. Or whatever you call it. And please, use the comment function to talk back, argue or agree, and keep our conversation going!

I’m stepping out of the “horse and buggy” world I know, and dipping my toe—okay, my computer—into the 21st Century, and while I’m excited, I’m also nervous.  I may be too old and outdated to make it in our brave new cyberspace world, but I’m hoping that you all will help me make a successful transition.

Thanks in advance, and let’s see what happens!

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The Language of Crazy

For the past several months, in these and other columns, I have tried to explain (to myself as much as to my readers) the rising tide of anger and vitriol that seems to have engulfed our country.

I’m not naïve, and I’ve read enough history to know that we haven’t suddenly been uprooted from some past Garden of Eden. There have been plenty of other angry times in our nation’s history; the Civil War was the worst, but hardly the only example. In my own adult lifetime, Martin Luther King, JFK and his brother Bobby were all assassinated. The Sixties gave us the Weathermen and the Yippies, the Chicago police’s display of brutality at the Democratic National Convention, the Kent State massacre and the Watts riots. (It wasn’t all Woodstock and “Flowers in your hair.”) A complete list would fill this newspaper and then some.

But there was something really chilling about the news that an Arizona Congresswoman was shot through the head in an attack that killed several others—including a nine-year old child and a federal judge. Representative Gabrielle Giffords was holding a “Congress on the Corner” event at a local supermarket—one of those predictable, “keep in touch” “meet and greet” events that politicians routinely sponsor—when she and the others were gunned down in broad daylight. As I write this, the Congresswoman is in critical condition following brain surgery; her survival—and if she does survive, her condition—remains in doubt.

In the aftermath of this horrific episode, the national conversation has focused on whether the debased nature of our political rhetoric encouraged a mentally unstable person to take violent action.

Congresswoman Giffords was one of twenty Democrats who had been “targeted” during the off-year elections by Sarah Palin. Palin’s webpage had featured photos showing each of the twenty as seen through crosshairs on gun-sights. (Not surprisingly, Palin quickly removed the page, and scrubbed the inflammatory photos.)  The language employed during the campaign by Representative Gifford’s Tea Party opponent was filled with gun imagery and dark allusions to “Second Amendment remedies.” And who among us did not see the earlier coverage of unhinged people brandishing guns and screaming obscenities at Town Hall meetings about health care reform?

For those who refuse to believe that language has consequences, think about the gay youngsters whose suicides have followed repeated taunts of “faggot,” and other homophobic slurs. Think about the generations of GLBT folks who stayed far back in the closet as a result of the constant, offhand dismissal of gays and lesbians as somehow less than human, less than “normal.”

I am not suggesting that intemperate language “created” this tragedy. There are plenty of other cultural culprits, beginning with the zealots who believe that any restriction of the right to carry a gun, no matter how reasonable, is part of a communist plot. Indeed, last year Jan Brewer, the intellectually-challenged Governor of Arizona, signed into law a bill that lifted all restrictions on the right of Arizona residents to carry concealed weapons. One of the restrictions eliminated by that measure was a requirement of a background check that might have kept a mentally troubled individual from carrying a handgun.

But while violent imagery and intemperate language don’t cause such acts, they absolutely do contribute to the creation of an environment within which the unthinkable becomes just another possibility, where violence becomes a viable option to be explored, and where grievance—real or imaginary—justifies barbarism.

When this sort of rhetoric is employed in the service of bigotry, and a seething, resentful anti-intellectualism, as it currently is, we should not be surprised when violence erupts.

It creates, as they say, a perfect storm.