A jaundiced look at the world we live in.
I was going to blog about Mitt Romney’s appalling and inappropriate effort to make political points in the midst of a foreign policy crisis, but along with most commentators and responsible officials in both political parties, The American Conservative has already covered it.
Money quote:
That’s more than hasty and stupid; that’s unconscionable.
CommentsI’m officially pissed.
The rant I’m about to embark upon was triggered by the City’s recycling contractor, Republic, which–for the third straight time–picked up everyone’s recycling except ours. We’ve had plenty of reasons to be less than enamored of the recycling program, which charges extra for the service (thus incentivizing environmentally irresponsible behavior). My biggest gripe has been the refusal of Republic to come down the alley, as our regular garbage pick-up does. Since we live in the city–the “hood”–that means we have to schlep our container down one alley, then another, in order to get it to the street. Not only is this inconvenient for elderly folks (and we’re pretty elderly!), it means that the street looks cluttered and trashy for two or three days, while cans are taken out and then returned to garages.
It isn’t just recycling. Regular trash pickup has gotten hit-or-miss of late. Crime in our neighborhood has increased to a worrisome degree–initially, the increase was mostly petty thefts, or cars being broken into, but more recently, people have been mugged and homes invaded while the occupants were still there. Scary stuff that we haven’t previously experienced.
When apartments being built a couple of blocks from our house caught fire a couple of months ago, it took IFD what seemed like a long time to arrive. That may have been an incorrect impression, but several people in the neighborhood reported a discomfiting wait between their 911 calls and the first truck. In those minutes, the blaze became a huge conflagration (we could feel the heat on our front porch, which is a good two and a half blocks away, and the flames could be seen for miles).
Not far from where that fire raged is a city park that–despite repeated promises–continues to shows signs of neglect. It has a very nice pool, but the hours of operation have been sharply cut back since it first opened.
It’s hard to remember that during the Hudnut Administration, streets in the Mile Square were swept every day. Now, from the looks of it, they aren’t being swept at all.
Part of the problem is management. Construction and especially street repairs drag on for weeks more than necessary (and let’s not even talk about the Cultural Trail segments that kept parts of Mass Avenue and Virginia Avenue closed for months on end while little or no work got done). Accountability for garbage collection is a management issue. But the major culprit is lack of money. So we have too few police, too few lifeguards, too few managers generally.
It’s bad enough that we’ve starved local government; it’s worse that we’ve actually built that starvation diet into our state constitution. Indiana taxpayers have spoken, and what they’ve said is that they don’t care enough about the quality of public services to pay for those services.
Unfortunately, we get what we pay for.
One of the unintended consequences of a city with inadequate public services and a deteriorating quality of life is that the people who can, leave. And they take their tax dollars with them, triggering a cycle of further decline.
We aren’t there yet, but the signs are ominous.
CommentsThe party’s conventions are over, and if there is one thing they showed us, it’s that Democrats and Republicans live in very different realities (as the President noted in his speech, Democrats understand that climate change is not a hoax) and have starkly different approaches to the age-old question: how should we live together?
From the composition of the crowds to the policies offered by the speakers, Americans saw two very different messages. It wasn’t simply that–as the President memorably noted–the GOP’s prescription for everything and anything that ails us is “Take two tax cuts and call me in the morning.” It was the difference between a longing for the past–for an America that only existed, if it existed at all, for a small group of middle-class white guys–and a determination to build a fairer, more inclusive, more stable future.
That difference in focus goes a long way toward explaining why the GOP has so much more party discipline than the Democrats do. When you are focused on defeating the other guys because you believe that will magically reinstate a time when women knew their place, gays were hiding in the closet where they belonged, immigrants picked the crops and then went home (or at least stayed out of sight), and black people did not occupy statehouses and most definitely did not live in the White House, the goal is clear and cohesion around that goal relatively easy.
When you are trying to cope with real problems, trying to come to agreement about the future you are trying to build, rather than focusing solely on the man and party you are trying to defeat, the conversation is different. There are many more areas of disagreement–where, precisely, do we want to go? What are the policies most likely to get us there?
Despite the Tea Party’s insistence that Obama is a socialist, what was striking about the rhetoric coming from the Democratic convention was its full-throated endorsement of market economics, of the meritocratic vision that used to be a Republican vision before the party was captured by its anti-rationalist extreme. That affirmation of an economics that rewards hard work and innovation differed from the exaltation of wealth we saw at the Republican convention, however, because it was situated in a larger concept of citizenship and mutual obligation.
The President said it clearly. “We also believe in something called citizenship – a word at the very heart of our founding, at the very essence of our democracy; the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another, and to future generations.”
In November, we’ll see which worldview American voters endorse.
CommentsThe Daily Show’s Jon Stewart is a penetrating observer of today’s politics, and the other night–while delivering a very funny review of Clint Eastwood’s “dialogue” with an empty chair at the Republican convention–he delivered one of those “Aha” moments.
Stewart noted that he’d had trouble getting his head around many of the accusations Republicans leveled at Obama, but that now he understood: there are TWO Barack Obamas, one of whom only Republicans can see! It’s the invisible guy they keep talking about!
There’s more than a little truth to that, and it is unfortunate for a lot of reasons.
I’m not the only person who has been mystified by charges that a moderate Democrat implementing a healthcare program devised by Republicans is somehow a “socialist,” or that a President who has presided over the slowest growth in government spending since Eisenhower is engaged in ruinous and unrestrained spending. I’ve been stunned by accusations that a man who entered the national consciousness with an “only in America” speech at the 2004 Democratic convention is routinely accused of “hating America.”
Stewart is right, of course, as he usually is: the Barack Obama who is the target of these accusations isn’t the Obama who actually occupies the White House. It’s the Barack Obama of fevered–and let us be honest here, essentially racist–imaginations.
There are two major problems with the nature of these attacks. The obvious one is that the Romney campaign’s willingness to “go there,” to engage in dog whistles and worse, exacerbates an ugly divide that America has tried hard to erase. It is analogous to picking at the scab on a still-unhealed wound. If the strategy wins–if, in the wake of the election, Romney is perceived to have benefitted from it–racial tensions will make it even harder to rebuild a politics of reason.
The other problem with the Republicans’ fixation on an imaginary Obama is that it has foreclosed debate on the actual policies of the actual Obama. This President–like all of his predecessors–has implemented, or failed to implement, a wide variety of policies that deserve to be critically examined. Like most citizens, I agree with some and disagree with others. Elections are intended to provide citizens with discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of policy positions held by the candidates, as well as giving voters a sense of the character of those who are asking for our votes.
That discussion–that reasoned critique of this Administration’s performance and priorities–has been virtually absent from this campaign. It has been drowned out by hyperbole and outright fabrication.
The campaign against the real Barack Obama has been obscured by the one directed at the invented version sitting in the empty chair.
CommentsIn the wake of the firestorm over remarks made by incumbent Representative and Senate candidate Todd Akin, most members of the GOP establishment loudly distanced themselves from him. At the same time, the platform committee was adopting his position–no abortion and no exception for rape or incest. There’s been a lively discussion about the number of Republican candidates and office holders who agree with him but have been too politically savvy to say so publicly. (Yes, Mike Pence, I’m looking at you.)
But ignorant comments about rape and contraception are beginning to look tame. There’s the candidate who recently “explained” that the AIDS virus can only be spread through homosexual encounters–never mind Africa, where the disease is almost entirely a heterosexual phenomenon.
Of course, the use of anti-gay stereotypes and rhetoric is almost a requirement for Republicans these days. Anything short of Fred Phelps-variety homophobia is unlikely to elicit a reproach from the party’s powers-that-be. Ditto anti-immigrant animus.
Race is a more delicate issue. We’ve come a distance (how far is a matter of opinion) since Nixon’s (successful) Southern strategy, and for several years, moderates and people of good will within the party tried to avoid racially inflammatory rhetoric. Those people have largely abandoned the GOP, however, and this election has seen considerable backsliding in that regard. During the primaries, Gingrich and others referred to Obama as “the food stamp President,” and Rick Santorum made his infamous remarks about “blah” people. (“Black?? I didn’t say black!!)
More recently, the Romney campaign has doubled down on a claim debunked by every reputable fact-checker–that Obama has “gutted the welfare work requirement,” and Romney himself has engaged in a little lighthearted birtherism. It’s not exactly subtle. The campaign has clearly determined that they need the votes of resentful whites–racists, to be blunt–if Romney is to have any chance of unseating Obama. If that requires playing to the fears and biases of a voting bloc described as older white men without a college education, why, full steam ahead. (For the record, I doubt that Romney is racist himself–despite the Mormon church’s unfortunate history with African-Americans. I think he wants very badly to be President and is willing to do whatever he thinks will work. His lack of integrity is so profound, it may be worse than genuine racism.)
It’s pretty clear that the GOP has written off the black vote, and the rhetoric aimed at Latinos hasn’t exactly endeared the party to the fastest growing demographic in the country. Then there are the Muslims–granted, a small minority, but one that is culturally conservative and could have been expected to be fertile ground for the party–who have been characterized by numerous Republicans as jihadists and terrorists. The recent, shameful effort by crazy lady Michelle Bachmann to target Huma Abedin, an assistant to Hillary Clinton who is married to Anthony Weiner, a Jew, as some sort of double agent is just one example.
Now we have the spectacle of Arthur Jones, 64, a Lyons, IL, insurance salesman who evidently organizes “family-friendly” neo-Nazi events around Adolf Hitler’s birthday. Jones is running in the Republican primary that will choose a candidate to run against Democratic Congressman Dan Lipinski in Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District.
“As far as I’m concerned, the Holocaust is nothing more than an international extortion racket by the Jews,” Jones said. “It’s the blackest lie in history. Millions of dollars are being made by Jews telling this tale of woe and misfortune in books, movies, plays and TV.”
When I first became active in the GOP, older family members were wary. They warned me that the Republican party had long harbored anti-Semitic factions, and that history goes a long way toward explaining why so few Jews vote Republican. The party has persistently wooed the Jewish vote, mainly by being more rabidly pro-Israel than most modern Jews, but people like Jones do keep surfacing.
I expect Party “elders” will condemn Jones. But thing about the Jewish vote is this: thanks to our own history and experience, most Jews understand that we are not safe in a society that discriminates against any minority. As long as we see the GOP engaging in anti-Muslim, anti-gay, anti-black rhetoric–as long as we see Republicans as the party of old, white, heterosexual men unwilling to accord equal treatment even to their own wives and daughters–most of us just aren’t going to vote for them.
The uglier the rhetoric gets, the louder the “dog whistles” become, the clearer it becomes that the GOP has become a party willing to exacerbate some of this country’s deepest wounds and divisions if that’s what it takes to win an election. Members of minority groups understand that when people like that are in charge, no one is safe.
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