Short Stories, Long Odds

I’ve been wondering about the Ayers attack for months – I knew that the Republicans would try to make something out of nothing no matter what, especially if things started to look bleak for them. I thought this before McCain hired the Karl Rove-Lee Atwater Ice Capade Singers as his entire campaign brain, and after he did I knew it was only a matter of time.

That two men serve on a charitable board together – one made up of people from several, disparate backgrounds – in no way marries them ideologically, save for whatever cause the board may serve. On the other hand, being a registered member of a radical political party – say, one that advocates for the secession of Alaska even if violent means are required – is a certain statement of affiliation and shared belief.

But what if you are in the leadership of a group that has radical and virulent ideas? What if you identify so strongly with a radical right wing anti-Semitic group that funds Sandinistas and Central American death squads that you not only join the group but you let them put your name and elected office on their letterhead for several years?

If the results of several years of Republican policies weren’t melting the earth around us on a daily basis, the Ayers thing might have gotten legs, sadly. That said, I don’t know that it would have worked as well as I had initially thought. Not because the general American voter is better than I give them credit for, but because the target audience for racist attacks like this one is generally unmotivated by a boogeyman that is white and named Bill. Had Obama served on an education board with an Abu or a Shabazz that was, dare I say it, also brown, well… maybe the ultra-conservative, hyper-right-wing, racist independents who staunchly (or maybe maverick-ly?) decline to self-identify as Republicans might have been swayed.

Instead, John McCain’s total shedding of all dignity has led high-profile Republican elected officials to reject his campaign for the stupid bile factory it has become. Some of them are probably motivated by nothing more than being dragged down into electoral history as a loser by John McCain, but I have no doubt that a great many Republicans who champion fiscally conservative principles (and have likely never been at the bit of bigotry thinly veiled as social conservatism) are disgusted by what the presidential ticket has driven their party to become. If I were a Republican for whatever reason, I would be ashamed that a large contingent of my party were bigoted enough to believe that all Muslims or Arabs are bad or incapable of decency, or ignorant enough to think that Muslims or Arabs can’t also be citizens of the United States, or outright dumb enough to say half of the shit these people say on their way in to a McCain / Palin rally. The social conservative hardcore right wing base of the Republican Party is ruining the Republican Party for the rest of the Republican Party, possibly forever.

I thought I was appalled at the lengths to which Rove took Bush’s campaign in 2004, but what we see today is an incredible new horizon of craven horrors. Men that care very little about anything other than gaining and seeking power have concocted a campaign that whips thousands of people into a frenzy of rage. When I watch these rallies, where Republican voters scream out things like “Kill Him!” about the Democratic Party’s nominee for President of the United States, I am reminded of the mad dog, driven by equal parts abject terror and blind fury, that bites a stranger after a week of being stoned and tormented by mean kids.

It is sad and it depresses me but I am starting to believe that partisanship has advanced to real hatred on the Republican side, and I squarely blame John McCain and Sarah Palin – and by extension, Karl Rove – for it. This isn’t a spirited policy disagreement. This isn’t someone who thinks all Democrats will raise his taxes, or even talks about the creeping threat of socialism. This is hatred, inspired by fear. We know that a great many Republicans elected to office in this generation are fearmongers that abuse their power. We did not know for certain what depths their behavior could reach, but now we’re beginning to see it.

To be fair, I know plenty of Democratic activists that would never, ever vote for a Republican, and I even know some that think Republicans can’t be trusted as a rule, or that maybe the A-Team from the Bush administration deserves to go to prison for what they’ve done. I have seen disappointment, and frustration, and indignation, and outrage, deserved or not.

In my short time in political involvement, though, I have never seen a naked, stupid hatred for Republicans. I have never once heard someone yell “Kill Him!” when a Republican’s name is mentioned. I don’t know anyone that would openly advocate violence against anyone, let alone against political opponents.

Every day I observe violence being incited at Republican rally after Republican rally – and don’t kid yourself, if you think Sarah Palin’s words or John McCain’s campaign aren’t being heard as calls to war by some of their supporters, you are ignoring large swaths of political history in which scary things happened as a result of kinder language broadcast with a far smaller media budget.

The best analogy I can think of right now is this: I am a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan, and during the 2004 MLB playoffs, a New York Yankees fan was pulled into a van near Fenway Park and murdered by Red Sox fans. It was an amazing time to be a Red Sox fan, but when I think of 2004, instead of the Sox breaking the curse and winning the World Series, I think of the stupid people that did the unimaginable thing and killed someone. I’m ashamed and I wish it had never happened.

Do you think that guy who yelled “Kill Him!” about Barack Obama at a McCain / Palin rally will feel the same way if their rhetoric results in political violence and someone gets hurt? Do you think any of the people who really believe that Obama is a “one man sleeper cell” or a terrorist would feel ashamed or wish it hadn’t happened?

There’s no artful way to say it: I’m frightened by this behavior, and even more frightened by the fact that every condition that might make things worse exists all around us right now. And I’m not sure what could fix it.

You bet your life it is. I’d like to direct everyone’s attention to something I wrote in May of 2005, called Bleakonomics.

Uninvited
We’ll stay if we want
Searching through your closets
For your grandfathers gun
-Cake

Over the last several days, I have made several attempts at writing a piece for this site, or for the Dig, called “Minimum Wage Nation.” The basic thrust of the whole thing was going to be that, like most families in America, our beloved country lives far beyond its means.

This was recently proven to the American people by, of all things, hurricanes.

Oh sure, YOU knew it, and I knew it, but the American electorate did not. They did not realize how far in the hole we’ve been getting, or that we’ve been borrowing money hand over fist to finance the war in Iraq. They did not realize that Homeland Security funds have been ill-allocated, and that locales and programs that could truly benefit Americans and shore up their safety have had a hard time getting dollars, while, as previously mentioned here, Alabama and Kansas have gotten plenty of dough to combat terrorists on their native soil. They did not recognize rampant cronyism leading to appointments to positions of importance in national security: to be fair, cronyism is always rampant in federal appointments, but usually people get cush jobs at Interior dealing with things like ethanol, not jobs which require actually saving people or implementing shit that actually has to work.

Instead, Americans were treated to the third giant clusterfuck of this century. (You get two guesses as to what the first two were, and if you get it wrong, I’m not sure how you got here in the first place.) They watched on TV as New Orleans flooded and everyone in the federal, state, and local governments stood around with the collective thumb up the collective ass. They watched as everyone tried to blame each other and were unable to make much sense of who was actually responsible. The answer to that, of course, comes back to the federal government, no mater how sad you are for Generalissimo Jorge: when FEMA became part of Homeland Security, they got the power to override and commandeer state and local government decision-making and resources, which they failed to use during Katrina and are now Camaro-ing in the face of Rita.

So I kept trying to write – the gospel, righteous truth about how America is like a double-income, low-wage family struggling to make ends meet. A family, like most, that can’t afford health insurance and are unprepared for any sort of emergency. A family that, when little Timmy ends up with a busted leg for whatever reason, well, they end up losing the house. And I hate to say this, but I couldn’t do it.

After a summer of working for the Democratic Party and being met on some very important fronts with nothing but frustration, I began to wonder if maybe our party leadership is determined to fail. That maybe they like losing. That they are so wrapped up in a vision of the Democratic Party that never actually existed – the spineless, all-inclusive vision that is afraid to engage in real politics, the vision where Bill Clinton was elected because he was a really nice guy and was ready to fight on the front lines of our nation’s hearts and minds for gay marriage and abortion and being really “progressive,” a term which everyone seems to throw around (similar to ‘‘populist’) without anyone having any idea what they’re talking about. The vision where you can show up for politics without a bandana and a switchblade and still have a shot at winning.

Let me give you an example of what I mean: there’s this Denton County Constable – a Republican elected official – named Larry Floyd. Larry got in a spot of trouble because he drove to Colorado to solicit sex from a young girl via her mother, using the interweb. I urged the party to release something to the press, saying “We in the Denton County Democratic Party believe that our elected officials should hold themselves to the highest standards, and an elected official that administers the law even more so. We call for Larry Floyd’s immediate resignation at the behest of the Denton County Republican Party.”

Seems fine, right? Why wouldn’t we feel that way? “Oh no”, I was told.” We can’t touch that. We can’t play their game!” So then it comes out that the DENTON COUNTY REPUBLICAN PARTY KNEW HE WAS FILTHY. They knew he’d been accused o going after the kiddies before he ran for office, and they ran his ass anyways.

Guess what the party leadership dictated be done about it? Yeah, I bet you can guess.

So either I’m all out of outrage or I am so disappointed in the people leading my own local party that I can’t muster up the juice to throw down.

Wait, I totally just wrote about it! OH SHI

You don’t have to hear it from me to know that things have gone south for the reasonable among us in the month or so since I left you. The last, despairing cries of my undergraduate career are echoing in the halls of the clean, ill-lighted place my days have become.

By that, I in no way mean that things are bad. Don’t think it. If I’m not at the Democrat HQ surrounded by good people, I’m in German class, where we’ve become good friends during our own private war mit Deutschem. If I’m not in those places, I’m home spending well-deserved time with my wife.

Now that we’re all caught up, let’s talk about the world. Not one of my favorite subjects these days.

My friend Jason was a combat medic in the US Special Forces. He still has Top Top Secret clearance, so it was no surprise to him that he received a phone call from someone still in the uniform Thursday morning. His aquaintance had been on one of the trains.

“He got hit with one of the chairs, and he said people were blown all over the place,” Jason said.

“Never mind that,” I said. “Give me the numbers. You’re familiar with this sort of thing, and 2 dead, 70 wounded sounds low.”

“You can expect a lot more. It won’t be pretty.”

It turned out to be a lot more. The Radio Funhogs suggested that now terrorists are bad at their jobs because this attack was “unsuccessful” and that also now is the time to buy stocks. The selling of the world picks up when things explode.

So China bails us out on a regular basis with RedBucks and the War On Terror’s failures are being trumpted as the obviation of our need for George Bush. The pundits say that 4 simultaneous bombings of our closest ally is a failure and that the War On Terror is working. Sandra Day O’Connor retires instead of (or perhaps along with, but at least before) Rehnquist, and my brother-in-law joins the Navy because not many other options in the world we’ve inherited look appealing.

I spent some more time with my Uncles, and they had more good natured ribbing. “What would Democrats do on Defense, Josh?” they ask.

I say “We would sure as shit have the good sense to take care of our soldiers when they come home. We wouldn’t cut veteran’s benefits. We’d make sure our soldiers have the tools they need to do the job.” The words fell out of my mouth and I realized I was reciting talking points. These are things I believe my party would do, but I sounded like a flak and it got my goat.

“But never mind that,” I said. “Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Harry Truman were all filthy liberals, as your favorite guys like to call us. Harry Truman was a liberal, and he dropped the A-Bomb. Republicans can’t even make sure these guys have health insurance when they get sent home a leg lighter. How is that hard on defense?”

My words had become hard and my eyes flinty. My heart was full of ire and I hated more than ever that what is happening to my country is out of my control. I love these guys and I felt sorry for them, like they’d been ultimately mislead. None of us know anything but what the media tells us, so how am I any better than the guy with the W sticker on his car who thinks a little human rights abuse during freedom’s march is the cost of doing business?

A few days later I found myself in the company of another Deutschfreunden, a guy I call Metal Mike. We were having a cup of coffee outside the Jupiter House at 1 am and talking the hard talk of men who understand politics and can no longer dream big because the reasonable die lonely political deaths in the back alleys of idealism. Two guys sat next to us and played songs on their guitars.

Another patron of the Jupiter House turned to us after Metal Mike explained why he usually voted Republican but thought they were getting a little out of hand. The new guy said “You know, sometimes I wish Democrats would just come out and say that abortion is wrong but choice is important, or offer a plan about foreign policy. I couldn’t vote for Kerry because, while I knew Bush was bad, I didn’t have any idea how Kerry would be or what he would do. I did not vote”

I said “Never mind that. Gary Hart once told Hunter S. Thompson that part of the Democratic Party’s problem was that it ‘doesn’t have any policies. It doesn’t have any direction. People know that. They’d rather go with a Republican they know than a Democrat, a devil they don’t know.’”

This was in 1987. If it sounds familiar, well, there’s a reason for that. Later on in the conversation, Hunter told Hart that “we can’t afford another four years of these Half-Bright Rich Boys in the White House. Its time to win. We must maintain the bloodlines.”

This is a good point, and a true story. Its time to win, and to win will require the dirty work of a thousand guys like me in the back-water back-alleys of politics. It won’t happen in the smoke-filled room. There are no magic bullets and there are no quick fixes – every solution to one problem opens the door on another, bigger problem with a flat head and a mean mouth.

If we ever get to foreign policy, the clean, ill-lighted room will have gotten very large indeed.

I was out at my mother’s place last weekend to celebrate my brother’s birthday, and my uncles were there too. They are an excellent set of guys (and I mean set – when all are represented, the number is nine) but they like to rag on me hardcore for my politics. When they found out I was working for the Democratic Party, it was like party time.

They told me about how great it was to listen to Rush Limbaugh and how smart he is. They were just kidding. Later on, they were not just kidding when they asked me about John Kerry’s tax return.

“Hey Josh,” said Uncle Scott, “how come Kerry makes a bunch of money but he only paid like 7 million dollars in taxes over the last few years, and his wife paid not much more even though she’s like a billionaire?”

“Well,” I said, “why do you think the rich people pay less taxes proportionately than regular people do?”

Uncle Joe says “Because those liberals find ways around it!”

I said “No, rich people have a way around it and just pay less taxes to begin with because of Bush’s tax cuts, because of years of pro-business, pro-rich Republican economic policy.”

Quiet for a minute, and then “Pssshhh! Come on, really! Tell us the real reason!”

Me: ::Sighs::