That’ll Do, Blogosphere

Barack Obama’s campaign has waded into major gaffe territory by inviting gospel singer Donnie McClurkin to perform at a campaign function in South Carolina; McClurkin is one of those guys who claims to have been “cured” of latent homosexuality through prayer (aka: closet case) and now spreads homophobic rhetoric wherever he goes. Obama has issued several statements reiterating that he does not share McClurkin’s beliefs and brought a gay preacher to the same event for “balance,” but has refused to pull the guy altogether.

My biggest issue here isn’t with Obama’s terrible handling of this, but with the progressive blogosphere’s reaction, most notably at Daily Kos. Now, I read Daily Kos fairly often and consider it a great source for news that tends to slip through the mainstream media’s enormous cracks. But I get a little irritated when its community, which often subscribes to opinions far from the Democratic mainstream, pretends to be a major guiding force in political discourse. In this case, they’ve decided to claim Obama’s mistake here as an “epic flameout” that will sink his candidacy, and various members of the community have called him a “bigot” and “cynic” for allowing McClurkin to perform. Meanwhile, the mainstream press has already started losing interest in the story, and most of the voting public is casting it aside as the minor piece of news that it is.

But in the isolated world of the “netroots,” a major blog’s declaration of the severity of this issue has transformed it into an implosion of the Obama camp; one commentor in the above link actually started laying out plans for Edwards to absorb the Obama voters who have apparently all dropped ship over this one mistake. And the funny part about it is that Obama actually has one of the most progressive voting records regarding GLBT rights among any of the candidates (barring probably Kucinich); apparently, allowing a homophobe to sing some songs at a fundraiser says far more about Obama’s views on gay rights than his actual policies and voting history. So chill out, blogosphere; not only is this a non-issue, but you don’t actually have the influence to turn things that are huge deals on your comment sections into huge deals for anyone else.

I guess I should feel like a dope for writing this diatribe on a blog of my own, but I have no delusions about the irrelevance of my ramblings.

The Myth of Bootstraps

          Of all the justifications conservatives tend to give to justify their apathy towards the poor and disdain for social programs, none annoy me more than the claim that anyone can “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” with enough hard work. Grew up in an inner city where education money gets funneled into the suburbs and the only successful peers are drug dealers? Have a physical, psychological or learning disability that makes ordinary life twice as hard as the next guy? Belong to a race or gender that just plain gets paid less than another? Not to worry, you can overcome any of these obstacles with enough elbow grease and gumption, and if you don’t, you’re just too lazy and shouldn’t expect some nanny government to bail you out!

 

            Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of personal responsibility; in fact, I think too many people across all social strata tend to fail to live up to the consequences of their own actions these days. However, the marginalization of social leg-up programs in the name of personal responsibility is based on a myth of what it actually means to be personally responsible. For instance, most conservatives agree that welfare stifles personal responsibility because the government provides goods to the temporarily unemployed; but where does one draw the line when it comes to relying on the state? Are truckers being lazy leeches when they depend on public roads to transport goods? Am I being less personally responsible by just calling the cops when there’s a disturbance by my home instead of handling it myself with a shotgun? Most Stetson students (myself included) rely on federal grants and loans to help pay tuition; is this reliance on the government to pay for education somehow more noble and compliant to rugged individualism than getting meager welfare checks for six months?

 

            So as we can see, there’s a big difference between the belief that one can get ahead through hard work and the claim that government assistance denies us of the incentive or ability to do so. With the exception of “welfare queens” (who are so rare and grossly exaggerated as to almost be considered myths themselves), the recipients of social benefit programs use them to try to combat the effects of a disadvantaged circumstances and get to a point where they can fend for themselves. Pulling oneself up by the bootstraps is based on the notion that everyone is actually born with the opportunity to improve their lot in life; in fact, this just isn’t true, given the vast disparities in educational quality across local areas and the remaining de facto bigotry apparent in the professional world (even the phrase itself underscores its absurdity, since it’s physically impossible for one to lift oneself up by the shoelaces). In the face of these discrepancies, social safety nets are an effective way to help turn the ideal of personal responsibility into a reality; programs like welfare and Medicaid don’t discourage people from pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, but rather give them the chance to do it in the first place.

My Lil’ Punditry Kit Part VI: Jack Bauer’s Bane

This is the final piece from the particular column I’ve been writing for, and concerns CIA rendition/”enhanced interrogations.”

Waterboarder? I Hardly Know Her (10/6/07)

A debate is again raging over the treatment of terror suspects thanks to rumors of a 2005 Justice Department memo encouraging the CIA to use “the harshest interrogation techniques” they’ve ever employed, apparently issued just months after a public memo condemning all torture by US forces. The Bush administration denies condoning torture, but the punchline is that the White House has been actively trying to redefine “torture” for years to justify human rights violations.

In 2002, contradicting all legal definitions, the administration attempted to define torture only as activity leading to “organ failure or death.” Since then, violent yet non-lethal questioning methods have been labeled “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques;” interestingly, this term was coined by the Nazis for their treatment of political prisoners and involved many of the same methods defended by Bush today. Most notable is the practice of waterboarding, a technique of simulated drowning made famous by Pol Pot, denounced by nearly every authority (including US law) as torture, but described by Dick Cheney as “a dunk in water.” So whenever you hear Bush claim that he doesn’t condone torture, remember that he’s using his own definitions.

Additionally, Bush’s denials only seem to apply to actions taken directly by US personnel; unfortunately, extensive evidence exists supporting the allegation that the CIA often ships terror suspects to nations where local authorities are known to employ extreme interrogation. A 2006 EU investigation claimed that the CIA maintained secret “black sites” in Eastern Europe and shipped detainees to nations such as Egypt and Uzbekistan, where the police have little legal incentive to follow the Geneva Conventions.

So why does this matter? Despite being illegal and immoral, torture has long been established as ineffective and actually detrimental to our efforts against terrorism. Several intelligence experts have argued that torture simply isn’t effective in eliciting accurate information. Most experts reject the “ticking time bomb scenario” popularized by Jack Bauer, in which eminent threats can justify torturing people with pertinent information; in reality, such situations rarely happen, and torture usually leads to inaccurate confessions. Furthermore, hatred and resentment against the US over its “enhanced interrogations” breed more terrorist sentiment than could be neutralized by waterboarding and induced hypothermia. Simply put, we have nothing to gain from the use of torture; one would think this was obvious, but times have sadly reached a point where some people need to be reminded of it.

My Lil’ Punditry Kit Part V: Obamania

This was the result of me being tasked with endorsing a presidential candidate; a tough choice, given the options.

Obamarama (9/29/07)

I get depressed every time I read about the current presidential election; I find most of the frontrunners for both parties either unimpressive or downright frightening. Seriously, we’re probably going to end up with Rudy “Never Forget (My Exploitation of Tragedy)” Giuliani versus Hillary “Soulless Janus-faced Bitch” Clinton; the idea of either of those people becoming president just makes me shudder. The only thing keeping me sane is the hope that a better candidate might make some headway before the primaries, and for me, the preferred candidate to do that is Senator Barack Obama.

 

First off, say what you want about his beliefs, but the man is damn charming. He emanates a charisma that’s almost Kennedy-esque, and speaks with a sense of purpose and humility that’s incredibly refreshing. You may consider this a shallow thing to consider when picking a president, but one of the position’s most significant roles is to act as the representative voice of the nation; after seven years of this capacity being filled by a reclusive man who can’t string together a coherent, much less thoughtful sentence, I think we’re due for a genuine person in the White House.

 

Obama’s platform appeals to a common sense liberalism to which I can relate. He supports expansions of social programs, but unlike conservatives who only pay lip service to fiscal responsibility, he helped revive the “pay-as-you-go” system that forces Congress to submit more balanced budgets but was killed by Bush in 2002. He supports a universal healthcare system that offers full insurance for all Americans and would save money for families and businesses. On foreign policy, he supports a renewal of diplomatic networks with potential enemies such as Iran and North Korea; this would end the current policy of sticking our fingers in our ears and giving them lists of concessions to be made before they can be given the privilege of talking to us (I can only imagine how the Cuban Missile Crisis would have ended if Hillary or Rudy had been in office, refusing to meet with the Soviets as the bombs started dropping). And of course, he supports withdrawal from Iraq.

 

All things considered, Obama’s pretty much the best chance we’ve got to put someone reasonable in the White House. Unless you want to use NYPD caps as currency, consider giving him your vote.

L’etat, C’est Moi

The White House withholding information about its domestic spying program from Congress is nothing new at this point, but I was angered anew when I saw this gem on Daily Kos; apparently, telecommunications companies are refusing to tell Congress whether they’ve given private records to intelligence agencies, citing the apparently new executive privellege of the president being allowed to prevent private citizens from testifying against him. The best part was that the execs claimed that the federal government prohibited them from testifying to Congress; this implies that the Executive branch alone makes up the “federal government,” apparently making the Legislative branch a subordinate body. Between this and Mitt Romney basically stating that he is the Republican Party, I think we’re starting to see the GOP turning into a personalistic structure.

My Lil’ Punditry Kit Part IV: For Your Health

This one’s a major issue for me that I really think should be a no-brainer, but unfortunately is not.

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For Christ’s Sake, Just Accept Universal Healthcare (9/22/07)

 The state of health care in this country is by far its most pressing concern. Frankly, I find it disgusting that the wealthiest nation on the planet fails to provide such an essential service as health care for all of its citizens, as is the case in every developed nation (and even impoverished countries such as Cuba). It all seems pretty cut and dry, but there are still so many people willing to fight to the death to deny full medical treatment from the lower and middle classes; the arguments for doing so tend to boil down to languid cries of “Sooooocialism!” For most critics of universal healthcare, incredibly sensible policies are apparently completely out of the question if they can be attached to the scare-word of “Socialism;” the same thinking was used in arguments against the FDA and federal interstates, which most people acknowledge to be beneficial and necessary today (except for guys like Ron Paul).

 

Despite the cries of naysayers who claim that universal healthcare would be unbearably expensive, most single-payer proposals would make more economic sense than the bloated and inadequate system in place today. In fact, Barack Obama’s proposed healthcare plan claims to actually save money in its removal of the current pointless bureaucracy of insurance subsidies. Government healthcare would free American businesses from the crippling costs of insurance, and other nations have shown us that a healthier workforce is more productive. Furthermore, it just makes sense from a moral perspective; no country with the means to pay for the healthcare of its citizens can deny such a service to them and claim to be working in the best interest of its people.

 

Opponents of sensible healthcare can make all their fallacious arguments about inefficient bureaucracies and strains on the federal budget, but I can’t help but hear them as simple and genuine disdain for the idea of helping poorer people. For example, Bush has recently promised to veto a bipartisan allocation of more funds to the SCHIP program, which provides affordable care to uninsured children, because he claims that giving the children access to treatment would put them “at risk”; I can only explain such an absurd view in light of simply not wanting poor kids with cancer to receive care. Several presidential candidates have already offered sensible healthcare plans to end this absurdity; please do America a favor and support them.

 

Since this column, Bush vetoed the S-CHIP appropriations bill; he accused the Democrats of being inflexible for not settling for a smaller budget after they had already slashed it by billions. Hopefully, this bill will at least come back to haunt GOP Congressmen up for election next year.

My Lil’ Punditry Kit Part III: Guns Galore

In this one, I exposed one of my less rational beliefs: total rights for the possession of any type of firearm (hey, me and ol’ Ron Paul can at least agree on this one).

Pro-gun Liberalism: It Makes Sense (9/16/07)

Despite my status as a loony lib in most regards, I’m a rabid supporter of the Second Amendment; for example, I recently read a tongue-in-cheek piece by Reason magazine called “The Right to Own a Bazooka” and found it highly informative rather than horrifying. So instead of using this space to play the Devil’s Advocate and rehash standard pro-gun control arguments, I’m going to show why it’s perfectly acceptable to integrate a pro-gun attitude into the liberal agenda, and why doing so may prove vital in order to wrest the Heartland from the Republicans next year.

No aspect of progressive ideology contradicts or precludes the right of individuals to arm and defend themselves; at times, gun control advocates even seem to spit in the face of progressivism. One of the main stated goals of gun control is to combat violence in inner cities and other low income/high crime areas; rather than focusing on the social ills that create such atmospheres of conflict, as any good liberal ought to do, gun control advocates seem to think that byzantine restrictions on property rights will alleviate the deeper issues. Such thinking is akin to combating drug use in impoverished areas by simply upping the sentences for drug possession: efforts to sell and use drugs are not deterred by such threats, and the abysmal educational facilities and nearly nonexistent job markets that lead young people to turn to crime for income are left underfunded and unaddressed. Instead of fighting ills such as gang violence by increasing focus on community development, educational initiatives (children are actually less likely to be shot in school than just about anywhere else) and social leg-up systems for the young and unemployed, we pour countless funds into police coffers and confiscate guns in violation of constitutional and fundamental rights.

Last year, the Democrats made big gains in Congress thanks in part to a wave of Midwestern “Blue Dogs” who tended to be both progressive and pro-gun. Single-issue gun voters represent a decent chunk of the population, particularly in the South and Midwest; people who otherwise despise the GOP’s authoritarian bend vote for them just because they’re afraid that the Democrats want to take away their property and their right to self-protection. This needs to change, especially if we want to retake the White House next November.

Ron Paul is Nothing New, Please Stop Eating Your Shit Over Him

I wrote this one while hungover and annoyed with smarmy extremist libertarians.

 The 2008 US presidential field is filled with duds and shitheels, but none get me as riled up as fringe Republican candidate Ron Paul. It’s not just his asinine policies, inconsistent voting record and archaic 19th century worldview; it’s also the fact that his hordes of internet followers have been collectively creaming their pants over him for the past 5 months now. It’s admittedly refreshing to see an anti-war Republican on the stage, but that doesn’t justify the cult of personality being built around him, especially when you factor in the fact that he wants to return to the gold standard and phase out public education. Just Google Ron Paul and you’ll find a wealth of bizarre, Stalinist devotion, often manifested in hilariously stupid images such as the one above.

The worst offenders of Ron Paul mania are the masses of 19-year-old, bright-eyed idealists who think that his ideas are new, revolutionary, and would work great if only someone would put them into practice. The obvious punchline is that the US was operating under Paul’s libertarian paradise for basically the first half of its history. And guess what: the food and drug companies didn’t self-regulate in the absence of the FDA (in fact, they were dumping snake oil and arsenic into their goods with impunity), the gold standard wasn’t inflation-proof (Oh how I long to return to constant and wild spasms of inflation and deflation), and a lack of public schools left much of the population too illiterate to perform most of today’s jobs.

So here’s my simple plea to you, you noble captains of the good ship RONPAUL: keep your beautiful dreams of pulling out of Unicef and abolishing the FBI to yourselves instead of spewing your nonsense and peddling your shit candidate on totally unrelated Youtube and Digg comments (Lord knows those outlets already have more than enough retarded in them). Thanks in advance.

My Lil’ Punditry Kit Part II: Border Battles

In this piece, I attempt an argument for amnesty and open immigration.

The Case for Amnesty (9/8/07)

I noticed while watching last week’s Republican debate that despite the subtle differences between the various candidates’ positions on immigration, they all seemed to hold the unspoken notion that amnesty would be a catastrophically terrible policy. As John McCain noted matter-of-factly, “No one, by the way, is for amnesty;” I have just one question: why not?

One can make both moral and practical arguments in favor of amnesty and a free flow of immigration. Our current policy does little to stop the flow of immigrants; in reality, it only serves to create a permanent underclass of migrant workers who are forced to accept Third World conditions and wages within our nation. This both lowers America’s overall quality of life and transports the social and economic problems of the immigrants’ original countries to many of our own agricultural and industrial communities. Furthermore, history shows us that attempts to stifle immigrant groups, from the Germans and Irish to the Poles and Italians, have been unsuccessful, unnecessary and fueled by racism; in fifty years, we’ll probably be hearing naturalized Americans of Mexican and Central American descent make the same complaints about waves of immigrants from some other nation (say, Iraq) that German/Irish/Italian/Polish Americans make against them today.

From a more practical standpoint, keeping the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants currently in the US here and working is a significant benefit to our economy. For instance, full amnesty would suddenly lead to millions more wage earners paying appropriate income and payroll taxes; many illegal workers already pay into Social Security without any hope of seeing the money upon retirement, which is distressing in its own way. Also, one of the most respected pro-market think tanks, the CATO institute, regularly asserts that waves of unskilled immigrants do not “steal” native workers’ jobs or reduce overall wages among citizens, but in fact play an essential role in our economy. One would think that so-called pro-business Republicans would take the side of some of the nation’s brightest pro-market experts, as well as the multitude of business owners who rely on immigrant labor to remain competitive.

So, regardless of your views on immigration, don’t follow the example of most politicians and reject amnesty out of hand. And don’t believe old man McCain when he tells you that “no one is for amnesty.”

My Lil’ Punditry Kit Part I: Gen. Petraeus, or Gen. Red Herring?

Sometimes, I get to write tiny columns for my campus newspaper. In order to fill this space, I’m posting them here. BE AMAZED as I try to assess current events and social issues in 1/10 of a tabloid page! STAND IN AWE as I use such space limitations to completely ignore the facets of my arguments that are utterly indefensible!

Bush’s Last Stand (8/27/07)

In a couple of weeks we’ll hear Gen. Petraeus, commander of US troops in Iraq, give a much-anticipated report to Congress on the state of the Iraq war and the successes/failures of the Bush administration’s “troop surge.” One would think that with Democratic majorities in Congress, public opinion shifting steadily against the war, and prominent Republicans such as Senators Chuck Hagel and John Warner calling for a withdrawal of American troops, this major re-assessment of our presence in the country will mark the beginning of the end of US military involvement in Iraq. However, the White House has already begun what will likely become a last stand in the battle to prolong the war.

The Administration is utilizing now-familiar strategies to convince Congress and the American public to “wait a little longer, there’ll be progress by next time, I swear.” At a VFW convention in Kansas, Bush used a classic equivocation of the current war with more popular wars in US history such as World War II to stress the importance of not “retreating;” he even brought in the ever-taboo Vietnam War, claiming that the conflict would have been a great success if only we’d given that “surge” more time (hopefully, he won’t propose a Middle Eastern version of bombing Cambodia). The Administration has also used the fact that the report will be given by Gen. Petraeus instead of a White House official to argue that it merely follows the words of the commanders on the ground without concern for political implications; in reality, though, the report is being written by the White House based on “input” from commanders, leaving Petraeus to simply read what Bush submits to him. And as a final touch, the report to Congress is scheduled for September 11; the Administration claims the timing was coincidental, but I’m sure I’m not alone in suspecting another attempt by the White House to exploit that tragic event and link it to the unrelated Iraqi campaign.

But whoever wins this final battle over the future of American troops in Iraq, the true losers will be the Iraqi people, who will probably spend the coming years in a semi-anarchic state of sectarian slaughter regardless of whether US forces leave their country. Hopefully, we won’t hear some president in thirty years defend a failed occupation by pointing to the “Iraq example,” but unfortunately, history has a habit of becoming skewed, as Bush’s views on Vietnam show us.

Little did I know at the time that, rather than make any meaningful decisions regarding Iraq, Congress would waste everyone’s time by passing resolutions about a fucking rhyming pun in the New York Times. I hope MoveOn.org learned a lesson about accusing generals who bend to the will of political leaders instead of giving honest military assessments of betraying their forces!