The Mobutu Presidency (Donald Trump is Willing to Burn Down America for Power)

When Mobutu Sese Seko took over the Congo (which he later renamed Zaire) in 1965 he inherited about 5000 miles of paved roads left by the heinous Belgian colonists.  When he fled the country in the face of a successful guerilla war he left the less than 500 miles of paved roads.  The roads didn’t just disappear due to the guerilla war or lack of maintenance.  Mobutu systematically and deliberately destroyed much of his road and bridge system for a simple reason.  The guerillas he was fighting used the roads to move around.  Mobutu’s army, however, was equipped with helicopters (courtesy of the United States.)  Destroying the roads gave Mobutu a major military advantage that helped him to hold on to powers years longer than he otherwise might have.  Destroying the roads also contributed to making his country one of the poorest in the world.  Such is always the choice of dictators – they are always willing to impoverish their citizens to maintain power.

Flash forward to Donald Trump who today admitted on Fox his reason for underfunding the post office was to prevent what massive fraud in mail-in ballots even though there is no rational empirical basis for this belief. And even though doing so will produce widespread harm to America’s people and economy.  Trump is self-admittedly trading the public good for his own political power.

Welcome to the Mobuto presidency.

If President Trump is actually so grossly ill-informed  as to believe his mail-in voter fraud fantasy the correct response is not to try and destroy the Post Office to prevent the fraud.  That’s like burning down the bank to prevent a robbery.  Millions of Americans depend on the USPS for everything for receiving and sending checks to getting Amazon packages the USPS delivers for that “last mile” to getting critically needed medical prescriptions. If Trump cared about the American people he would be focusing on how to solve the problem of mail-in ballot fraud. But therein is the President’s own fraud.  His own commission on voter fraud had to disband in the absence of finding a credible problem (something experts and politicians of both parties could and have told him.)

President Trump may be trying to cripple the USPS  to help win the election by blocking mail-in ballots.  But the mail-in ballots he claims will be fraudulent will still eventually be counted. And experts in both parties understand mail-in ballots don’t yield partisan advantage to either side.  Trump’s real goal may simply to create confusion, illegitimacy and anger when the final election results are delayed because of the backup in counting mail-in ballots due to delays in processing them by an underfunded USPS.

And there is likely the true goal, at least for those in the administration with a true Machiavellian bent (which is pretty much anyone who has survived this long having being consistently willing to sacrifice the long-term public good for the short-term political gain.) Whereas mail-in ballots in total tend to break evenly between the parties, pro-GOP voters tend to send their mail-in ballots in earlier than Democratic voters who are more likely to wait until the last minute. Which means in critical swing states the early (and even end of) election night returns may well favor Trump as GOP ballots sent in earlier than election day are counted. But as the days go by and the mail-ins from bluer suburbs and blue urban areas finally get counted Trump’s lead may disappear and Biden ends up winning.  Trump will then claim fraud.

The question is if Trump’s endgame is to deny a Biden victory legitimacy making it hard for Biden and Democrats to govern (think Bush post-Florida and pre-9/11) or is Trump going to try and invalidate the election and stay in power.  While the likelihood is the former, I’m not certain even Trump knows exactly what he’s thinking.  He acts on a 48-hour event horizon. The other question is how much violence breaks out. In either case President Trump’s purpose is clear: he is willing to take a page from the Mobutu playbook and burn down the USPS and the national election system, no matter the cost, to keep power.

The president’s predilection for dictators is already well established.  But this? Really?  Congress, where are you?

 

 

 

 

Primal Scream

We live in an age where the voices of experts and scientists are drowned out by the rants of pundits and politicians.   Witness the faux mask controversy, which conservative columnist Tom Nichols recently traced to one simple basic feeling from Mask-resisters: “You’re not the boss of me.”  American individualism, he argues, has reached a rancid and rabid stage where many people are unwilling to be told what to do by anyone for any reason.   What Mr. Nichols left out was the obvious declarative that naturally accompanies the “Boss”  statement as certainly and irresistibly as the culmination to “Shave and a hair cut…”

“You’re not the Boss of me. F*ck You.”

It’s not just that people don’t want to be told what to do that is the problem in America today.  It’s the visceral anger and id-unchained rage people now feel entitled to direct at anyone who tries to tell them what to do. We live in the extended cut of Taxi Driver – “You lookin’ at me? You want a piece of me?” We live in the age of FU.  And if we don’t get out of it, it will be the death of our liberal democracy.

On the left the The FU-ing of American politics plays out with months of street protests lacking clear end-goals.  Protestors celebrate their rejection of “leaders” but that means they cannot present coherent demands to their fellow citizens for negotiation – leaving endless confrontation.  In saying  no-one is their boss  they’re flipping the bird to real conflict resolution.

The FU-ing of American politics is visceral on the right. Some argue the 2016 election was the product of white blue-collar workers suffering through decades of deindustrialization. Some point to white fears Democrats would challenge their future social status and give their wealth away to “underserving” minorities. So they voted for President Trump for policies that would protect their sense of entitlement and status and make them “great” again.

But voters are not naïve.  You don’t buy the products sold on late night infomercials because you think the juicer is really that good.  You buy it because, for a few moments, that waste of money makes you feel good, feel in control. Trump voters know Trump can never deliver on all his promises–decades of failure to achieve his agenda by presidents of both parties tell them as much.   But at least in the face of this reality, Trump gives them a good FU to that “other”  America – the coastal elite, women and minorities, the college-educated, the “mainstream media,” the  groups that seem in ascendance in an age of their own perceived decline.

President Trump has never sold ideas.  He sells a brand.  This is the lie exposed when his supporters  complain about the his style – the endless Twitter barrages, the coarseness – while liking his policies. This is absurd.  The fact is any Republican elected in 2016 would have pursued the same policies (and probably more successfully) and Mitch McConnell would have rammed through just as many conservative judges.   Saying you like Trump’s policies but not his manners is like saying you went to the Ozzie Osbourne concert hoping he wouldn’t bite the head off a chicken.  Trump voters knew what they bought when they bought Brand Trump: a President whose entire campaign and administration has been one primal “FU” directed at any and all critics and challengers to their world view.

If Naked Athena represents the essence of Millennial/Gen-Z wokeness, the Baby-Boomer “Me” generation is represented by the protestor ragefully extending a middle digit to police in Chicago in 1968.  President Trump is just the natural terminal point of the beatitudes expressed by the patron Saint of Baby Boomer grievance, Ayn Rand.   Blessed are the makers – the people like themselves who work hard for their money.  Damned are the takers – everyone else who challenges their presumptions of entitlement.  Rand’s philosophy is essentially one, primal, FU, Carrie getting revenge on her tormenting classmates at the prom.  And 2016 was as much her victory as Trump’s.

There is an implicit violence in the phrase FU– a violence of forced sex, of rape. You say FU when anger overcomes reason, contempt overwhelms compassion, when insult replaces dialogue. You say FU when rage is so great you have no other place to channel it except into outright violence. When you say FU in a bar you’re heading towards a fight.  When you say FU in a personal relationship you are heading towards a really big apology, therapy or a breakup.  The same with our national relationship.  If our national dialogue is now reduced to, “You’re not the boss of me. FU,” we are in big trouble.  Democracies, like all relationships, cannot survive if both sides see the other with contempt.

Commencement 2020: The Future is Now. The Future is Yours.

Here is the commencement address I would give to a class of students graduating into the most uncertain and trying times in 50 years.

To the Classes of 2020:

You graduate into the most uncertain and trying times our country and world have seen in decades.  I don’t need to tell you the challenges your generation faces – an economy in free fall, a society divided by racial, economic and gender inequality–divisions which now have flamed into anger, protest, violence and death, a world in disarray as American global, leadership falters, a global environment in peril. Oh, and just to make things more interesting for you we are going through the most dangerous pandemic in modern history.

It’s against that backdrop that I stand (virtually) before you today to share with you four things:

Be a long-term optimist. Don’t listen to the naysayers who tell you these are the worst of times and things are destined to decline ever more.  You enter your place as the next generation of America’s leaders on the cusp of a golden age of humanity.

And chief amongst the naysayers, don’t listen to my people, the baby boomers. (Okay, do listen to me for a few minutes but after that you’ve got the helm.)  We Boomers were born on third, thought we hit a double then stole second base.  We traded the hope and optimism of our youth for cynicism and solipsism in our maturity, expressing an unprecedented willingness in policy and politics to throw the next generation –your generation (which is, obscenely, our children’s generation)–under a bus of growing debt and declining opportunity, mortgaging the future to maintain the lifestyles our parents fought world wars to provide us and we then took for granted as a God-given right, everyone else be damned.

Listen, instead, to History – for History tells us that, yes, things for mankind do get bad, really bad, yet the story of humanity has been, over years, decades, centuries and millennia, one ultimately of hope, progress, and the never-ending opportunity to dream and realize better days, better lives and better selves.  History tells you that, if you are willing to take on the burden and pay the upfront costs to change the world – something my generation was never willing to do – you can and will produce a better world.  Indeed, you will produce the best world ever known to humanity.

To achieve these ends, listen to your inner better angels and live the Ethical Life, a life recognizing that community must always come before self and that it is our obligation as moral beings to establish affinities to the broadest, most inclusive concepts of community we can achieve.  And that community, ultimately, is the community of Humanity.

And have trust and faith in yourselves—and, more importantly, each other, that you have the ability, the spirit and the destiny to do better for humanity—much better, in fact—than any generation in American and, indeed, world history.  Yours can be the Greatest Generation.  Yours must be the Greatest Generation.  Yours is the Hamilton generation – History has its eyes on you.

Reject the naysayers who preach that the government of we the people cannot help we the people. You know what “politics” means?   “Poli” – the many – and “tics” – blood sucking leeches.  I pause for your laughter.  Except that joke, that politics and the government that comes from it is inherently bad, a joke I’ve heard so many times told by so many basically good people, is perhaps the single most insidious and greatest lie of our lifetime.  It is a joke told to you by those that want you to stay out of politics and government so they  can control government for their own ends and not the ends of the common good.

“Politics” for the Greeks meant turning  the “Poli,” the “Many”  into the “Polis”, the “Community.” Politics means E Pluribus Unum – out of many, one.  Politics means “We the People.” And “We the People” means Ohana – family–and family means no one is left behind and forgotten.

“We the People,” that is the ideal our founding fathers, for all the their flaws and the failures of their time, understood to be the purpose of our American experiment, a never ending journey  in forming an ever more perfect union.

Yes, our country was founded in part on slavery, inequality and repression.  But it was also, founded on the ideal that we, each and every generation, can do better and live up to the five words that define us as a people, as a nation: “All Men Are Created Equal.” We are better at living up to this ideal today than 1776, when slavery was an untouchable institution and women had no public voice. We are better at living up to it today than in 1896 when the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was as American as apple pie and the Saturday cross burning and women lacked the vote.  We are better at living up to it today than in 1950, when segregation reigned strong and women might have had the vote but were still treated as second class citizens.

Yes, there is always the backlash against every expansion of rights as those who see others gain take it foolishly as their own loss.  Yes,  sometimes we do take backward steps. Yet for all the crises of inequality and inequity today, an age of  that produced Gay rights, climate awareness,  #MeToo and  #BlackLivesMatter demonstrates that we are still  striving to do better. Of course we have not achieved enough. But that is the call to your generation from mine: Do better than us.  Doing so is your generation’s moral and ethical obligation and imperative.

Ethics comes from the root Ethos: the characteristic spirit of a culture, era, or community as manifested in its beliefs and aspirations. For the Greek’s the Ethos of the community was the highest moral good which is was that which benefited all members of the community.   For the Greeks the citizens who dedicated their lives to the good of their community were the most revered.  They lived the life of ethos, of community, of the ethical life.

My generation produced a profoundly unethical—indeed,  a post-ethical age, in which Ayn Randian self-interest and selfishness somehow became a virtue a Speaker of the House taught his interns.   This post-ethicalism produced a generation of political leaders who mistook winning at any cost for actual leadership, that prioritized individual short-term economic gain at the cost of long term general prosperity, a generation of leaders who forgot there is no “I” in “We the people.” You must change that and restore the ethical life, the life of community before self, to American society.

Don’t listen to the purveyors of pessimism and cynicism who say “throw up your hands you can’t do anything about it so binge watch Netflix and wait for the darkness to fall.”  These prophets of doom preach these lines either for profit with a book tour or to make you stay home and get out of their way while they grab more power.

Your generation will be the wealthiest, best educated and longest lived in the history of our species.  You are a book bet to live into your 100s – and anyone who doesn’t want to live that long is an idiot because 100 for you will be the new 70. Your children will walk on the surface of alien worlds.

But as the future True Greatest Generation in Human History you, more than any generation before you, must confront the Peter Parker Principle (a principle my generation has largely ignored): With great power comes great responsibility. Don’t accept the world the way my generation is passing it down to you. Change it.

When they tell you to that to save the global environment you’ll have to live less well than previous generations, laugh in their faces.   Tell them in an infinite universe there is infinite stuff that we can use to repair this planet and give everyone on it – and all the planets humankind eventually spreads to – a quality of life that will make what we have today look like medieval times.

When they tell you our political system shouldn’t be changed because this is the system the Framers gave us, smile at their ignorance and remind them that the Framers are dead and life and government belongs to the living. And tell them if the Framers were here they’d say “What the hell are you talking about?  We changed our government and you can change it too.”

When they tell you our political system can’t be fixed because of gridlock, corruption and powerful interests tell them thank you for the warning but if they don’t want to join you in changing this system then they best get out of your way, least they be run under by the wheels of history driven by a new generation.

Yes, Class of 2020, you are coming of age in challenging, difficult times.  The old systems of government and economics which worked well in an age industry are not working as well in our post-industrial age, here and across the world. Democracy is in decline, populism and authoritarianism on the rise.  But as John Kennedy said, the Chinese character for “crisis” consists of “danger” and “opportunity.”  Yes, there are tremendous dangers in the world today. There always have been.  But there is also unprecedented opportunity through the ethical application of technology, politics and economics, to produce the greatest age Humanity has ever witnessed.

That, then, is the challenge of your generation:  restoring vibrancy to democracy, restoring Ohana to our American Community and putting humanity back on the road to enlightenment and prosperity.

Make government work for everyone.

Make our communities inclusive of everyone.

Make our economy advance the wealth of everyone.

Put the “We” back into “We the People.”

Do not hesitate in taking on this challenge – embrace it.  Make it the centerpiece of your public life.  For if you do you will secure the blessings of liberty for yourselves and your posterity.  You will earn the gratitude of your children and your children’s children for generations to come.

And that is the definition of the Ethical life.

 

Summer Reading: Nixon the Musical

Given the dark times we live in I thought a little levity might be called for as a minor respite before we get on with the serious business of saving our country and the world from the fires of rabid populism and illiberalism.

In 2016 America was (and now remains) more divided than at any point since the 1960s and the tumult of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and the Nixon presidency.  We survived those divides times as a nations though the scars–and, in many cases unhealed wounds–of that time are with us still.  Thinking about how we got through the Nixon years as a country inspired me and my colleague at Mesa College, Joe Mac McKenzie to create a  musical based on the Nixon-Kennedy friendship-turned-bitter-rivalry—a relationship straight out of Shakespeare and Greek Tragedy—which could provide today’s audience with a simple but needed message: If we, the American people, could survive the tumult of the ‘50s, ‘60s & 70s—Nixon and Kennedy, Dallas and Watergate, civil rights and sexual revolution, Vietnam and the threat of nuclear Armageddon—and remain a united people, then we can survive the problems of today.

Think of it as Moulin Rouge & Rock of Ages meets The Best Man & All the President’s Men.

The musical traces the Kennedy/Nixon relationship—from budding friendship nurtured by a shared vision of America triumphant to bitter enemies driven by blind ambition—as a mirror to the rise and fall of American post-war optimism.

If you ever wanted to envision Richard and Pat Nixon singing “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” and JFK going the full Freddy Mercury with “Don’t Stop Me Now,” this musical’s for you.  (Or how about Nikita Krushchev and “Great Balls of Fire,” Henry Kissinger and”War” and the Rev. Billy Graham and “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show?” Has your interest been piqued?)

So, with your permission and indulgence, I present for your perusal,  distraction and entertainment,  Richard Nixon: The Musical*

 

nixonthemusciallibretto_compressed  

PS — If you know anyone in the Theater Biz who might be interested in developing this project, by all means connect us.  

*All rights to Original Materials Reserved.

 

 

 

Mask Strong

For those of you who object to people wearing masks in public or don’t see the need for me to do so, please understand the following:

I wear the mask when in public.  I don’t wear the mask to protect myself. I don’t wear the mask because I’m a sheep blindly following some secret agenda to enslave us all. I don’t wear the mask because I am blinded by fear, phobia or hypochondria .

I wear the mask in solidarity with all the doctors and nurses and healthcare providers, first responders, delivery people, store clerks and service providers of all kinds that every day put their health at risk just to provide the rest of us with the things we need to survive this crisis. I wear the mask because, while I know the odds of my transmitting the virus to you are extremely low, the cost to me in wearing the mask (minor personal discomfort and fogged sunglasses) —are  laughably nothing in comparison to the potential damage my spreading the virus could – even if remotely – have on you.  I wear the mask because I care about you, I care about others and I care about my nation.  I wear the mask to show that I am one with all of you who care about others, their communities and our nation.

If you don’t wear the mask I would suggest you’re either misinformed, misanthropic or, in some (hopefully few) cases actively malevolent. .  When you criticize me for wearing the mask rather than thanking me for at least caring about protecting you – even if you don’t think you need to protection – you are being rude.  When you criticize me for wearing a mask as not being needed, then you are misinformed according to every reputable health professional.  When you walk towards me not wearing a mask you’re acting like a misanthrope who doesn’t give a damn about me or my family.  When you protest the pandemic public policies without masks but with guns, implicitly threatening violence if your views do not prevail, you are malevolent. In none of these instances are you acting as a good neighbor, a good citizen, a good American.

Wearing the mask in a time of pandemic, in a time where every major healthcare expert tells us at best doing so will save lives and at worst is like chicken soup – it couldn’t hurt!—is the minimum we all can do to pull together for the common good. Wearing the mask is a simple statement of empathy and caring for our fellow Americans, a public statement that we are willing to share a common burden and make a little sacrifice for the general welfare.   Wearing the mask is the essence of patriotism.

So go ahead and protest quarantine restrictions and try to change government policies. That is your right. But wear the damn mask while doing so to show everybody that your protests and complaints aren’t all about you, that you care and want to protect everyone and not just yourself. Otherwise you just might be a misanthrope, if not malevolent.

The Titanic Society

Bad Government Sank the Titanic: Will it Sink Us Now With COVID-19?

Pop quiz: what sank the Titanic? If you said “an iceberg,” well, not so much. If you said a failure of public policy in the form of lack of government inspections and oversight at the Belfast shipyard that built the Titanic, then you’re correct.

Among the things James Cameron brought back from the wreck of the Titanic as he was filming his epic blockbuster were bits of the ship’s hull plating and rivets that held the plating together. Metallurgical scientist studied these and concluded that the Harland & Wolff shipyard building the Titanic used substandard rivets on the ship’s hull plating. Why? Because the shipyard was in serious financial straits and someone in management decided they could pad the bottom line by shaving a smidge of a pence per rivet using substandard materials. No doubt they figured that, as long as the ship’s captain didn’t do something stupid like hitting an iceberg, everything would be fine. When the boat struck the iceberg the initial hole caused by the ice shouldn’t have been enough to sink the unsinkable vessel. As a scene in the movie portrayed, it was the substandard rivets that popped all down the starboard side of the boat after the impact—POP POP POP–that caused multiple compartments below the water line to flood, dooming the boat and 1500 hundred souls. And how did Harland & Wolff get away with cheating the White Star Line of its boat and passengers of their lives? That’s right – lack of government regulation and inspection at the Belfast shipyard. In short the Titanic’s victims were victims of bad government policies.

Flash forward to our current COVID-19 crisis. A pandemic of this magnitude would be disruptive and dangerous under the best of government policies. But couple this pandemic with 40 years of government policies fixated on short term economic gains for some while undercutting long term public health and general economic security for all and we have the real potential for the current crisis to turn in to an unmitigated national catastrophe. Forty years of bad policy, like so many substandard rivets holding together our national boat, now threaten to pop our economy and society at the seams and sink us all—even the corporations and investors the policies were supposed to benefit.

We adopted supply-side economic policies prioritizing investors over workers. The resulting decades of low/no growth wages now results in millions of paycheck to paycheck households having to chose between public health and going to work to pay rent and buy food–and catch/spread COVID-19. POP. We failed to provide for affordable universal healthcare so people now delay seeking costly testing and treatment for the virus resulting in greater exposures to the rest of the population. POP POP. We never passed universal paid family and sick leave compelling millions of Americans to continue working even if possibly exposed to the virus. POP POP POP. We made it easy for businesses to fire workers relying on parsimonious unemployment insurance to keep laid off households solvent rather than providing polices to maintain stable employment thereby keeping households and businesses solvent during economic hard times. POP POP POP POP. We tied health insurance to employment so as millions lose their jobs due to a pandemic they lose their healthcare and their families ability to deal medically with  the pandemic cruelly intensifying suffering and loss of life.   POP POP POP POP POP.

We did it all to allow corporations and their investors to reap ever greater profits in a globalized economy with the hope they’d plow the largess into greater worker productivity—and pay—even as they plowed huge shares of profits into a stock buy backs and other financial chicanery creating successive bubble economies that popped three times in the past four decades and is now popping again. And now the government of We the People, so starved of revenues for decades through massive tax cuts for some of the people that we’ve dangerously shortchanged investments in our national health infrastructures and social safety net, is looking to bailout these same corporations and investors to the tune of trillions while throwing comparative crumbs—a few hundred dollars a week more– to workers. POP POP POP POP POP.

One by one all of these short sighted bad policies have left us incredibly vulnerable to precisely the sort of pandemic crisis we are now experiencing. Republicans and Democrats in Washington in responding to the crisis, however, continue the same old arguments — Republicans fighting for sending government support to corporations and investors and Democrats for sending way too little money to keep average households—and the national economy–afloat. Does anyone outside of Washington really think an extra $600 dollars that won’t reach most households for weeks is the economic Horatio at the Bridge we need to stop a looming Depression? Does anyone really think that the trillions being used to prop up companies and markets will trickle-down once we’re all underwater? Perhaps this is what happens when the passengers in First Class — Congressmen living in the top 10%, funded by contributors in the top 5%– get together to figure out what to do for the bottom 90% traveling in steerage. They would all do well to remember that if our national Titanic sinks, it will take the Vanderbilts along with the no-named.

We may well (prayers offered, fingers crossed) ride out the COVID crisis and return to something like normal. But in a global age there will inevitably be more pandemic icebergs – be they biological or economic or both—that we will run into. And at some point we’re going to hit one that’s going to sink us completely unless we rebuild our national boat to be sure everybody is safe.

That’s why we need to get America into dry dock and replace the bad rivet policies of the past forty years with a new rivets – a new national social contract that proves when we say “We the People” we mean All the people, and not just the investment class.  The COVID crisis is the defining moment of our times – the ultimate measure of the trickle down economics and social policies of the past 40 years, a test that Laissez-Faire politicians, CEOs and conservative media pundits can’t cheat their way through with rhetoric and sophistry.  There may be lies damn lies and economic statistics –but you can’t hide corpses. Just ask the passengers on the unsinkable Titanic.

Goodbye Ruby Ridge Tuesday (and Hello Joe Stack Thursday?)

A crazy man with tax trouble and a chip the size of the US debt on his shoulder plows his plane into an IRA office in Austin.

Bloggers on the right immediately (and correctly) react by saying you can’t pin this nutjob on Tea Party anti-tax activists.

Bloggers on the left, off course,  immediately began crowing that the excesses of the anti-Obama, anti-tax, anti-government, anti-stimulus, anti-healthcare reform, anti-fluoridated  Tea Partying  honchos  have come home to roost.

Yes, the more extreme (or is it “mainstream”?–sorry, couldn’t resist) of the  Tea Party activists have been carrying  signs around depicting Obama as a commie fascist and calling  the Federal government an oppressive totalitarian tyranny.  It’s one thing, however, to carry around signs stating stupid things.  It’s another to do a really evil thing and try and kill people with a plane.   Joe Stack was whacked.  That should be the end of it.

It doesn’t help matters when a newbie politician to put his foot in it, forgetting that campaign trail rhetoric doesn’t  always serve the post-campaign world.   Scott Brown’s comments  working the words “people are frustrated” and “no-one likes to pay taxes” into the discussion of Stack’s attack is evidence that behind Brown’s  good looks and successful campaign slogans is possibly a whole lot of empty intellect.  Which makes the junior Senator from Massachusetts a natural addition to what has become the world’s greatest debased debating society.

His–let us just call them “unfortunate”–remarks .  also provide fodder to the left-wing blogosphere trying to link the attack to stupid statements on the right.

Of course many of conservative bloggers  wasted no time in making a similarly specious connection between the nutjob who shot up a US army base and radical Islam and, indeed, Islam in general.  But extrapolating from the deranged actions of the one to the  foolish actions of the few and from there to corned actions of the many does nothing to contribute to a vital national debate on anything.

As, unfortunately is par for the course of current American discourse.

One can only hope that the Stack incident will be allowed to sink into the depths of  forgotten depravity  as is deserved and the Mr. Stack will find the justice he thought he sought in this life in the next.  I don’t think he’d like it very much.

Unless, that is, whackos on the right undermine  conservative bloggers attempts to disassociate the conservative movement from conservative whackos on the right  like Stack.    Eighteen years after a shoot out at Ruby Ridge left  two civilians and one deputy US marshal dead one can still find and buy Ruby Ridge long-sleeve T-shirt  o-line for a pricey thirty bucks.   Randy Weaver is still a folk hero.

So, will Joe Stack’s face start showing up on Tea Partier T-Shirts?  If it does then the movement has gone over the cliff.

Anyone want to start a pool on when the first Joe S. T-Shirts hit the stacks, by the way?

Last Hurrah

 

I spent spring break completing revisions to the chapter on George W. Bush in the presidential anthology Public Pillars/Private Lives.

Thee volume, attempts to give a balanced history and assessment of modern presidents since FDR.  A new edition, including the assessment of the second Bush term plus a chapter on the 2008 election comes out this spring.   Here’s a taste:

From the Conclusion of the chapter on George W. Bush:

Bush’s legacy will be judged ultimately by two things. First, would his aggressive, unilateral foreign policy–the boldest assertion of American power since Reagan, certainly, and perhaps even Teddy Roosevelt a century before–be judged to have ultimately improved America’s global  power, position and security?  Or would future historians looks back at the Bush Doctrine and its unprecedented pursuit of Pax Americana as the critical  moment when hubris and strategic overreach resulted in the slipping of US hegemony and the rise of new global powers destined to make the 21^st Century the Chinese or Indian—and not yet another American—Century?  Second, would Bush’s economic legacy be a continued protection and preservation of the pro-business and laissez faire policies of the Reagan Revolution?  Or would the worst economic downturn in generations result in a public repudiation of the laissez faire policies that had dominated US policy for the previous generation?

 

Was Vice President Richard Cheney, undoubtedly the most powerful  occupant of the office in history, too powerful, too much of a Svengali, too much the unaccountable puppetmaster? Had his rigorous pursuit of governmental privatization resulting in the unprecedented rise of the use of unaccountable outside contractors irredeemably obliterated  the line between public and  private sector?   Had Bush, through his unrelenting drive for unrestrained executive privilege and power, resurrected the ghost of the Nixonian Imperial Presidency with long-term—and potentially dangerous—implications for American constitutional balance?  Had the administration’s embracing of “enhanced interrogation techniques”—which had, according to international institutions and human rights groups, many foreign governments and even previous American standards, crossed the line into torture—irreparably eroded US’ global image and influence as to offset any strategic gains from such tactics?  Had the Bush administration’s aggressions in the War on Terror crossed the lines into war crimes? So dramatic, ultimately, was the Bush presidency that such issues—each critical in their own right—pale in comparison with his legacy of war and economic collapse.

 

Bush’s legacy might ultimately, therefore,  hang on the consonant “D.”   Would the  economic crises left in Bush’s wake be labeled a “Depression” by future historians, the worst economic crisis in a century?  If so, Bush’s fate may well be to be remembered as a 21^st century Herbert Hoover.  If the economic events of 2008 are eventually, though,  seen as a recession—a particularly bad one, no doubt, but one of a number of such bumps in the road to greater national prosperity—Bush may end up being seen as a Jimmy Carter or a G.H.W. Bush, a president who had the misfortune to see the economy hit a snag on their watch but, otherwise, had some significant victories to look back on.  That George W. Bush might, though, one day be reconsidered and recast in the light of a modern-day Harry Truman—someone who left office underappreciated and unpopular but whom, in the hindsight of history, would see his reputation and legacy restored–seems unlikely, claims and protests of President Bush to the contrary.  When Harry Truman left office in January, 1953,  the unpopular Korean war that began on his watch would be over inside of six months. Gains in income, standard of living, education and home ownership were the greatest during any presidency of American history.  Unemployment had been all but banished as  eleven million new jobs were created.  Social security benefits had doubled.  Wages—including the minimum wage—increased across the board. Millions of returning veterans had gone to university under the GI Bill  (an extension of which for Iraqi and Afghani war veterans  Bush himself had opposed as costing too much.) The country was set to move through a decade that would later be named the Fabulous Fifties and Harry Truman would be seen as one of its creators. 

 

Such was not to the case at the exit of  George Walker Bush. 43^rd president of the United States, from the national political stage.  In a  highly publicized poll of over a hundred historians conducted in April, 2008, sixty-one percent of the professional historians rated Bush as the worst president in history; ninety-eight percent rated his Presidency a failure.   The public was no less severe in its final judgment, awarding him the lowest outgoing approval ratings in modern history—the exact inverse of the valediction his predecessor received.  His own political party seemed to go out of its way to repudiate him throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, with not one contender to replace him as GOP standard bearer invoking the name “Bush” in their campaign. Each claimed to be, in their own way, Reagan men.  Bush was further repudiated at his party’s summer nominating convention where  he was allowed to attend only as a ghostly video image on a screen, so loathe had his party  become at being seen actually physically associating with the man they had raucously re-nominated four years before.  Bush suffered indignity even in the quality of the indignities heaped upon him in his final months in office.  Richard Nixon, resigning in disgrace, went on to see operas written about the drama that was the man.  Indeed, as Bush packed up his personal effects in the White House the movie dramatization of the Frost-Nixon interviews was playing to rave reviews.  Nixon got operas and academy award nominations. George W. Bush satirical-comedy: Will Ferrell, his dumb-meets-dumber television doppelganger, playing him viscerally on Broadway in  “You’re Welcome America: A Final Night With George W. Bush.” For his legacy to recover from such an immediate and harsh historical judgment seems dubious.  Then again, that the prodigal son of a prominent New England  family might rebrand himself a son of the Texas south, might overcome his hellion youth to become an icon of solid family values, might overcome his personal and familial  penchant for political loss to become the most successful Republican politician in a generation, was dubiousness incarnate.   Dubya  made a career of accomplishing the dubious. His final hope was that he might do the same with history’s perception of his presidential legacy.   

He’s Baaaack. Maybe. Kinda. We’ll See.

Got an email from the reigning voice of radio progressive talk yesterday, Stacy “Yeah we had a growing audience in a really sweet, well-heeled demographic but the suits pulled the plug anyway” Taylor. Looks like there’s a chance he might be back on the airwaves of the late KLSD’s mothership station, KOGO starting 12/3 in the post-drive time 6pm slot. Nothing is final and he may yet end up on the air elsewhere (more the loss to diversiity of thought in San Diego). Giving Taylor a later PM time slot on KOGO is, admittedly, a small bone for KOGO and Clear Channel to throw the listners of KLSD. But a bone’s a bone and a slot is a toe still in the door.

My only question is will this be the new, progressive “Al Gore rocks/G.W. sucks” Taylor of KLSD or will it be the conservative-lite Taylor of KOGO days past. Which, admittedly,

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