OK, Bush won. Fair and square — or not. The last 4 years have shown that it doesn’t really matter, as long as Bush’s ass ends up warming the chair in the Oval Office. Like many, I really, really, really REALLY didn’t want to see a second Bush term. Not that I was particularly enthralled with Kerry — he was better than he seemed at first glance, but certainly wasn’t offering the kind of radical change I think this country needs. But still, he was someone I felt we linkies could work with, someone who would at least open his eyes and ears (and maybe even his heart) to the American public now and again, and even act on what he saw, heard, and felt coming from us.
But — and this is strange as all hell — while watching the Bush victory speech today, I felt… I dunno, almost joyous, for a brief moment. It’s part of the ritual for the losing candidate to declare that “the fight’s not over” and that he will “keep fighting for the American people”, so although Edwards gave me warm fuzzies, I wasn’t particularly reassured. Gore promised the same thing, remember? And where has Gore been hiding for the last 4 years? But watching Bush play out the role of the gracious winner (yeah, right) I did feel this moment of elation — this isn’t over. We’ve been given a chance, at long last, to shrug off the dead weight of the Democratic Party, the way I see it. In 2000, the Dems could, rightly or (I think) wrongly, point to Nader and somehow convince themselves that their own wishy-washy politics weren’t to blame for the loss. This time around, we’ve seen an overwhelming desire for change. Bush didn’t win this, any more than Kerry did — nobody wants either of them in office, as far as I can tell. As far as I can tell, Bush stayed in office because a) he’s the evil we already know, while Kerry is the evil we don’t know, and b) in the absence of any moral core to current American politics, a lot of Americans were willing to substitute for the cheap replacement for morality offered by Bush.
It seems to me that the field is now open for whoever can present a set of real issues — things that directly touch the lives of Americans in real, tangible ways — grounded in a real moral vision. Not a moralistic vision, mind you — a real sense of right and wrong and of the subtleties and difficulties involved in choosing well. More than that, though, I think it’s time that candidates, politicians, and engaged participants (that’s us citizen-types, y’know?) start addressing voters as individuals (what could be more American?) than as representatives of various voting blocs: blacks, working mothers, NASCAR dads, evangelical Christians, cultural liberals, etc.
I’m not sure the Democratic Party has anything to do with this kind of future. I’ve kind of resigned myself to the impracticality of third-party solutions on the national stage, given the demands of modern politicking. So what I’m really advicating — what struck me as Bush platituded his way through his speech — is the creation of a second party, a real alternative to the Republican machine that, sooner or later, cultural conservatives are going to realize is using them as a smokescreen for the dissolution of the American government.
I’m willing to entertain the notion that this is just crazy-talk. It may be that, after a brief high, alcoholism returns as the only rational response to a Bush presidency. But I don’t think it’s all crazy-talk. There hasn’t been a real issue discussed on the American political scene in a long, long time. Gay marriage is not an issue, it’s a campaign ploy! What we’re not talking about is who is making the decisions that shape our daily lives — and here’s a hint: it’s neither us nor our government. Real issues might not play well on TV — but shit, we got the Internets now, right? And I think we’ve got to take a big step back, to the early days of the Dean campaign, when the promise of the Internet seemed about to take root. We’ve got two years before the next elections, and an electorate that’s actually excited about the democratic process for the first time in decades — seems to me that we’ve got a lot to work with, no?
Given the depressing post-election news, I’m down to two options as to how to face the next 4 years:
- Take up alcoholism;
- Live in Denial. Insist that Kerry won in a landslide, taking the electoral vote in 49 states with a 38% lead in popular votes.
Maybe both….
Going through some back posts the other day, I came across this post, written in the first few days of the war on Iraq, that seems eerily prescient. OK, I’m not really a genius (well, not based on this, anyway) — the thing is, it was so very easy for right-minded folks to see exactly where the invasion of Iraq would take us, making the surprise expressed by our media and co-Americans seem all too unlikely. Listen:
What is the objective of military intervention? The administration says “regime change” but hasn’t given anything but the fuzziest idea of what to change the regime to. They’d like “democracy” but have assured the Turks it won’t be too democratic. The big question is, how will we know when we’ve won? It was my understanding that the rise of Powell in the administration signaled an acceptance of his admonition to have clear military objectives and a clear exit strategy, but I don’t see how military tactics in Iraq relate to the goal of establishing “democracy” in the region. Will we be done when Saddam’s head is on a pike outside the Presidential Palace? The administration has been indicating that this is, indeed, the goal, but even they must see that we won’t have created anything but chaos at that point. Will we be done when an interim government is put in place in Baghdad, as was done earlier in Kabul? We don’t seem to be done in Afghanistan, at least as far as military action is concerned (our resolve to establish “democracy” there seems to have flagged, however). Will we be done when contracts for rebuilding are issued to American corporations? Given the amount of tension this is likely to create among Iraqis cut out of the rebuilding process, I imagine they’ll have to work in the protective involvement of the American military. Will we be done when we’ve conclusively demonstrated the existence of the so-far-invisible Iraqi WMD development efforts? What if it turns out, as seems likely, that we were wrong, and there simply aren’t any WMDs? Will we be done when we bring our troops home? Trust me, we will never be bringing our troops home. (emphasis added; corrected for typos)
[[image:onenationsm.jpg:Republican Flyer — small:center:0]]
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It’s Swing State time here in Nevada, which means every day my mailbox is chock-a-block full of flyers from both Republicans and Democrats. Today, I got a flyer exhorting me to “Vote Republican” next Tuesday, from the party whose presidential candidate seemed very upset, during the debates, about the idea that “under God” might be dropped from the “Pledge of Allegiance”. What’s interesting is that the slogan on the flyer, the little catchphrase that’s sposed to fire up my patriotic sensibility and get me to vote for the party that aims to protect my right to impose on atheists and other non-Christian folks a particular conceptualization of a supernatural being watching over this nation and its interests, this slogan printed in big, glowy letters, says: ONE NATION…With liberty and justice for all. Where’s the Bearded One? There’s an ellipsis there to show me that words were removed, and I’m well-educated enough to know what words those are, too — those Republicans don’t know who they’re dealing with! (Though, to be fair, after what they’ve done to education, I spose they figgered they could count on people not going in for reading and all that.)
Via BoingBoing comes this more-than-slightly-creepy story about a toystore that was visited by Homeland Security. The complaint: Pufferbelly Toys was stocking a Rubik’s Cube knock-off called “Magic Cube”. Citing protection of the Rubik’s Cube patent, the agents ordered the owner to remove the toys from her shelves, which she did while the agents observed. After they left, she called the manufacturer, who informed her that the patent on Rubik’s Cube was long-expired.
Apparently HS made a mistake (No, really? Not Homeland Security?! But, but, but… they’re faultless!) in determining whether the toy violated patent laws. What’s creepy is that they went after a single toy store, instead of the manufacturer (who could, ostensibly, issue a recall if such was called for) — what about the thousands of other stores that stock the toy? What’s even creepier is the statement by Virginia Kice, of Immigration and Customs Enforcement:
One of the things that our agency’s responsible for doing is protecting the integrity of the economy and our nation’s financial systems and obviously trademark infringement does have significant economic implications.
“Protecting the integrity of the economy“?!?!?! That’s Homeland Security’s mandate? Yes, trademark infringement does have significant economic implications, and while I can see HS dealing with that as a sort of side-benefit of customs work, I would think that legal issues like trademark and patent infringement would be Dept. of Justice issues — how are store owners (or the agents who harass them) supposed to know the intricacies of intellectual property issues? But even so, the idea that something as vast and intricate as “the integrity of the economy” should be considered part of our national security… Well, that just creeps me out.
AFTERTHOUGHT: You can order a Magic Cube from Pufferbelly Toys here.
There’s an interview with Walter Mosley in this week’s Las Vegas Mercury. Mosley was in town last week for the Vegas Valley Book Fest (yeah, people read here — sheesh!), and gave a great talk on “the literary life”. During the signing, my girlfriend asked him to put some “words of wisdom” for a young writer in my copy of Futureland; after responding with “I have no wisdom” (which I thought was a great response), he wrote simply “Write every day”.
In any case, the interview covers a lot of the same ground as the Q&A session after his talk, and is interesting in its own right, but what really struck me is his last statement. One of Mosley’s least-known works is Working on the Chain Gang: Shaking Off the Dead Hand of History, an essay on race and politics on the cusp of the 21st century. Readers of Mosley’s books shouldn’t be surprised to find that Mosley has a complex and nuanced take on modern politics; what might surprise them is how very Marxist his understandings are. This is the book that made me from a mere reader into a devoted fan — and is the book I chose to ask him to sign when I met him last week.
In the Mercury interview, Mosley discusses our obligations, as Americans, to the Iraqi people, and our responsibilities in this ongoing war against them:
The thing I don’t get is this: There’s a guy who has a wife and two kids living in Baghdad, and one day bombs start falling. Every sixth or seventh week a bomb kills a member of the family. Then someone tells him, “Oh, no. There were no weapons of mass destruction.” Not only have you killed his whole family because of a guy he didn’t even vote for, but the excuse [Bush] gave for killing his family was false. I am an American, and whatever America does, it’s my responsibility. I as an American am not right to have killed that man’s family. America needs to understand that we are committing a crime by murdering a man’s family.
I know it’s not proper, in these days of Burly-Man politicking and punditry, to think in terms of morality and ethics (unless, of course, God is your bitch), but in this short statement, Mosley does far more to sum up the problems involved in America’s bid for Empire than all the Friedman’s, Kaplan’s, Hitchen’s, and other Burly-Men combined.
Does anyone else find it odd that, in this election where so much has been made of John Kerry’s lack of committment to a fixed position and Bush’s almost blasphemous certainty in the rightness of his actions, both parties are madly scrambling to enlist the support of undecided voters who are still, with all the facts more or less in from of them(maybe I should say “facts deemed appropriate for public consumption by the administration”?), wavering and uncertain?
“I don’t disbelieve in universal truth; I just disbelieve anyone who tells me that he or she knows what the universal truth is.”
I can’t even begin to express what a balm that simple, to-the-point statement is for the heart of an unrepentant postmodernist sympathizer like myself.
Physical therapist did the deep tissue massage yesterday. O the Pain. I weep.
According to BoingBoing, Snap.com, a new search engine, has a ridiculous linking policy (Section 15 C):
Unless a User has a written agreement in effect with us which states otherwise, User may only provide a hyperlink to the Site on another Web site, if you comply with all of the following: (a) the link must be a text-only link clearly marked “snap.com” or “www.snap.com”; (b) the link must “point” to the URL “http://www.snap.com” and not to other pages within the Site; (c) the link, when activated by a User, must display the Site full-screen and not within a “frame” on the linking Web site; and (d) the appearance, position and other aspects of the link must not be such as to damage or dilute the goodwill associated with our name and trademarks or create the false appearance we are associated with or sponsor the linking Web site.
What I wonder is if Snap actually sees this linking policy as reasonable enough to follow themselves? Especially the parts about labelling sites only withtheir URL and not linking ot pages within a site? If it’s not good enough for them, why on earth would they think it would be good enough for anyone else?
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