One of the problems with highly ideological politics of the sort we have these days is that there is no Republican or Democratic way to pave streets and pick up garbage. At the local level, very few voters care whether the Mayor is pro-life or pro-choice; they are much more likely to rate their political leaders on such decidedly non-partisan and practical matters as police protection and snow removal.
Here in Indianapolis, that homely truth is apparently unknown to Mayor Ballard. Snow removal last year was abysmal; you would think that our Mayor might have used the summer to correct the problems preventing acceptable snow removal. Evidently not.
At 8:00 a.m. this morning, I approached the interection of 15th and College. Now, living downtown, I’m used to MY streets, at least, being plowed and/or salted. Since traffic coming into the regional center is a given, past administrations have taken care of the major streets in the mile square no matter how well or poorly they did elsewhere. This morning, however, with a mere 2″ of snow, traffic was crawling down College on a sheet of ice. I saw no city trucks anywhere during my (admittedly short) commute. I also saw no evidence that there had ever been trucks–not on College, not on Central (!!), not on Michigan. It wasn’t until I reached the IUPUI campus that I saw signs of snow removal–courtesy of IUPUI’s buildings and grounds folks.
This is unacceptable. It’s bad enough when the Mayor bills his junkets as “Economic Development” even though he takes his wife and NOT his Deputy Mayor for economic development. It’s bad enough that he has taken all sides in the debate over broadening the smoking ordinance. The LEAST he could do is see to the nuts and bolts of municipal governance–the basic tasks we expect any Mayor to discharge.
Andrew Sullivan is a genuine conservative of the “old school”–i.e., the sort of thoughtful conservative who drew so many of us to the GOP back when the party was a responsible participant in policy deliberations.
There has been a fascinating “book club” discussion about authoritarianism over at Talking Points Memo Cafe. This post, in particular, is worth thinking about. The observations of the book’s authors parallel several of the conclusions I reached in the research I did for my book God and Country:America in Red and Blue.
The question, of course, is–assuming these conclusions are correct–what do we do? How do we make our political discourse productive, and our governing institutions functional once more?
I left the Republican Party in 2000, after 35+ years of active participation, including stints as a precinct committeeperson, appointed government official and candidate for Congress. Despite that level of participation, a number of those in the party shrugged off my departure (or said “good riddance”) as the foreseeable decision of a “liberal” who had never really belonged.
What they refused to see–or admit–was that I hadn’t left the GOP. It left me–and many others. The party I had joined was fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Goldwater Republicans believed in limiting the power of government in both the boardroom and the bedroom. We believed in fiscal responsibility. (Those Republicans would never have gone to war without bothering to pay for it, to give just one example.) The party I left, on the other hand, was fiscally liberal and socially conservative.
Since my departure for an occasionally uncomfortable berth in the Democratic party, I have watched the GOP steadily shrink, as control has become concentrated in its most fanatical, hateful and reality-challenged elements. And it is getting more difficult to attribute the growing pace of defections as coming only from “liberals” and civil libertarians. When notables who are clearly on the right have had enough, you know the party is on the verge of self-destruction.
This morning, MyDD reported that conservative blogger Charles Foster Johnson, founder of Little Green Footballs and co-founder of Pajamas Media, has parted ways with the right, and blogged on the matter outlining his rationale:
” 1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)
2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)
3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)
4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.)
5. Support for homophobic bigotry (see: Sarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.)
6. Support for anti-government lunacy (see: tea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.)
7. Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.)
8. A right-wing blogosphere that is almost universally dominated by raging hate speech (see: Hot Air, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, etc.)
9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.)
10. Hatred for President Obama that goes far beyond simply criticizing his policies, into racism, hate speech, and bizarre conspiracy theories (see: witch doctor pictures, tea parties, Birthers, Michelle Malkin, Fox News, World Net Daily, Newsmax, and every other right wing source)
And much, much more. The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff.
I won’t be going over the cliff with them.”
Johnson, who is also a respected jazz musician, started blogging in 2001. In a recent interview, Johnson said the main reason that he has parted ways with “right wing blogosphere . . . is that most of them have succumbed to Obama Derangement Syndrome. “
In his post, Johnson went on to note the following:
“One “nontroversy” after another, followed by the outrage of the day, followed by conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory, all delivered in breathless, angry prose that’s just wearying and depressing to read.
It’s not just the economic issues either. I’ve never been on board with the anti-science, anti-Enlightenment radical religious right. Once I began making my opinions known on issues like creationism and abortion, I realized that there just wasn’t very much in common with many of the bloggers on the right. And then, when most of them decided to fall in and support a blogger like Robert Stacy McCain, who has neo-Nazi friends, has written articles for the openly white supremacist website American Renaissance, and has made numerous openly racist statements on the record … well, I was extremely disappointed to see it, but unfortunately not surprised.”
All this is just very sad. The party I joined over 40 years ago, the party I enthusiastically supported and worked for, no longer exists. What has taken its place is both dangerous and terribly depressing.
The Indianapolis Star has been advocating rather forcefully for laws to tighten restrictions on the lobbyists who exercise increasing power at the Statehouse. The Star argues that such restrictions are necessary if we are to restore a modicum of trust in our legislative body.
They’re right.
My most recent book—“Distrust, American Style”—was an inquiry into the current American “trust deficit.” I learned a lot.
In recent decades, old-fashioned corruption and greed combined with regulatory dysfunction to undermine business ethics. Enron, WorldCom, Halliburton, the sub-prime housing market meltdown—these and so many others are the stuff of hourly news reports. Many business scandals were enabled by failures of federal regulatory agencies; others were traced back to K Street influence-peddlers.
But it goes well beyond Wall Street greed and government incompetence.
Religious organizations haven’t been covering themselves with glory, heavenly or otherwise. Revelations ranging from misappropriation of funds to protection of pedophiles to the “outing” of stridently anti-gay clergy have discouraged believers and increased skepticism of organized religion. In that other American religion, major league sports, the news has been no better. High profile investigations confirmed widespread use of steroids by baseball players. An NBA referee was found guilty of taking bribes to “shade” close calls, and others have been accused of betting on games at which they officiate. Michael Vick’s federal indictment and guilty plea on charges related to dog fighting was tabloid fodder for weeks.
Scandals have even involved charitable organizations; a few years ago, United Way of America had to fire an Executive Director accused of using contributions to finance a lavish lifestyle, and other charities have been accused of spending far more on overhead than on good works.
In short, the institutions of our common civic life have seemingly unraveled.
Perhaps—as my more cynical friends believe—things have always been this way. But in earlier times, we did not have 24/7 cable news, millions of blogs and assorted broadcast pundits constantly telling us about it. If Americans are less trusting than we used to be, it’s no wonder.
Unfortunately, when citizens don’t know who they can trust, everything becomes fodder for suspicion and urban legend. Eventually, government grinds to a halt, and even the most routine tasks fall victim to conspiracy theories and fear-mongering. We are perilously close to such a meltdown in American civic life.
Our system of government was deliberately structured around the notion of checks and balances. The founders recognized that not all public servants would be trustworthy; their response was to create structures and competing power centers that would force accountability and transparency—to create a system we could trust, even when some people in that system weren’t trustworthy.
Perhaps the Indiana legislature is filled with the innocent do-gooders that Pat Bauer and Brian Bosma touchingly describe. But many of us have our doubts. The modest reforms supported by the Indianapolis Star would be a welcome step toward removing those doubts and restoring a measure of trust in our governing institutions.
