Juxtaposition

Banner headline at NYTimes.com right now.

• Day of Reckoning as India Toll Passes 170

Further down the page, under the "more news" heading

• Hundreds Feared Dead in Riots in Nigeria
  

I've been a bit perplexed by the American media's wall-to-wall coverage of the ongoing tragedy in Mumbai.  There surely hasn't been this much coverage of dead non-Americans since the Boxing Day Tsunami, and that was certainly a tragedy of a much more immense level.  While I'd like to think otherwise, I don't expect this signals the sudden start of new concern in the American press for the plight of people in the non-Anglophone world.  There are specifically two things at work here. 

1.  The Mumbai attacks were "terrorism" and that word, of course, piques special interest in its paradoxical role of giving Americans new things to be terrified about. 

2.  The attacks occured at two upscale luxury hotels, and several international business leaders were either victims or were at the scene.  This certainly attracts more ruling-class interest than hundreds of worthless Nigerian peasants being trampled to death, but even the London tube or Madrid train attacks didn't hold the media attention over several days the way this past week's events have.  

Shorter New(speak) York Times

Obama Tilts to Center, Inviting a Clash of Ideas

• Orthodoxy is diversity

The prophets and practitioners of Broderist Magical Centrism have wasted little time in applauding the incoming president's hassle-free embrace of center-right Beltway conventional wisdom. Obama is following the blueprint perfectly, eschewing "ideology" (i.e., dirty hippies) for "pragmatism" (i.e, the same shuffling of ruling elites that's been going on for decades). It is, of course, absurd to suggest that Obama is surrounding himself with a Lincolnesque "team of rivals;" every selection so far has come from the same centrist mold. Somehow, even though the actual proposals of Magical Centrists can be reliably guessed, it is not an ideology itself. Glennzilla, in his usual perceptive way, explains.

If one discards the need for ideology in favor of "pragmatism" and "competence" -- as so many people seem so eager to do -- then it's difficult to see how one could form any opinions about questions of this sort beyond a crude risk-benefit analysis (i.e., "pragmatism"). Are there military and economic benefits to be derived for the U.S. from invading Pakistan? Bombing Iran? Lending unquestioning support to Israel? Escalating our occupation of Afghanistan? Remaining indefinitely in Iraq and exploiting their resources? Propping up dictators of all types? Deposing Hugo Chavez? Torturing suspected terrorists for information, or detaining them without process? If so, then those who are heralding "pragmatism" as the supreme value -- or at least something that should trump "ideology" -- would have no real basis to oppose those actions. It is only ideological beliefs that permit opposition to those polices even if they are "beneficial" to our "national self-interest."

This gets to it. The ruling class can't be constrained by "ideology," whether its right or left, because that would place limits on how much it could act out of its own self-interest, which is truly the only ideology it's concerned with. It may seem odd to hear such denigration of anyone with political principles, until you realize that this is the only way the Beltway class can reliably get what it wants.

The search for pragmatism, naturally, is also a bottomless rabbit hole. Magical Centrism always has the pragmatic solution to every problem. There's no reason for Obama to have any lefties on his team, because The Left by definition never has a solution that works. He is only doing us a favor; making government work more efficiently by cutting out the middleman and listening only to the MC's.

Armistice Day

There's probably little hope in reclaiming the original intent of the November 11 memorial from the jingofied, American Legion war party that it and every other patriotic holiday has become. The American ruling class doesn't want anyone to think too long about the first world war, for we may take the wrong lesson about the pitfalls of imperial glory. Plus, we might discover how our freedom'n'liberty loving government enthusiastically jailed anyone speaking against the war on trumped-up sedition charges. So most Americans, to the extent they know anything about that war at all, have a very simplified view of it; as something very different from the war immortalized in Willfred Owen's famous poem.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
pro patria mori.

No more excuses

lenin puts it succinctly, as usual.

But this myth, that America is a uniquely conservative country, has just been heartily dispatched. The alibi won't stand: the Democrats control all three branches of government, with expanded majorities in the Congress and Senate. They have moved deep into Republican territory, including Indiana, which looks like it will fall to Obama by a narrow margin after having been Republican since the 1968 election.... When Obama 'reaches out' to Republicans and starts blustering about bipartisanship, and when he appoints someone like Robert Gates as his secretary of defense, there will be no excuse. If he fails to carry out even his most limited reforms, he has no scope for blaming the Right. If he doesn't close Guantanamo and restore habeus corpus, he has no one else to blame.

All I'm saying is, to those hundreds of thousands of people marching and dancing in the streets, be prepared to be back on the streets soon. The system is designed to lock you out as quickly and quietly as possible.

Indeed. One of the positive outcomes of this election is that we'll no longer have to hear how many bunnies per capita we would have if Saint Gore hadn't been robbed of his rightful place on the throne by Teh Ebbil Ralph Nader and his privileged white male supporters (well, forget it, we'll never be rid of that). Nor should we have to hear how Obama must play rhetorical homage to the Sensible Middle to win elections. The Democrats won a crushing victory because most of the country has recognized the bankruptcy of conservative ideology.

But Obama has already started to fill out his roster with recycled Clintonites. Rahm Emanuel, a congressman from Illinois and former member of the Clinton White House, has been tapped for Obama's chief of staff. A typical hawkish, neoliberal DLCer, Emanuel was loathed by many online activists for favoring centrist candidates over progressives while he was head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Some of this should be expected. After all, the Clinton era is the only other Democratic presidency since 1980, meaning that Obama will have to choose some Clinton veterans if he wants anyone with experience inside the White House. The question, then, is which of three possible options will Obama take?

1. Re-assemble the entire Clinton team person-for-person
2. Balance Clinton veterans either with Republicans and holdovers from the Bush years or
3. With a mix of newer, more progressive voices.

The voters, by taking Obama's promises of "change" seriously, have declared the first two options unacceptable. But this may be the key conflict of Obama's presidency. Will he be able to manage the swelling social movement that so enthusiastically supported him and celebrated in the streets Wednesday morning, believing that he would bring progressive policy changes to the country, into supporting his pro-business and pro-empire presidency? I have only modest doubts.

Good morning, Communist America!

No need to wait for the morning news papes, getcher election news right here!

...

It appears Obama is going to win a major haul of electoral votes while slightly under-performing expectations in the overall popular vote. He's done this by eeking out some razor-thin margins, especially in Indiana and North Carolina, where he's currently leading by a combined 35,000 votes. Neither state has been confirmed final yet; same with Missouri where McCain leads by less than 6,000 votes. Thank whatever celestial authority you like that this was not a close election overall.

...

To repeat, Indiana's gone for Obama. I expect the sun to rise this morning, but if it doesn't I'd understand. The kids did it; under-30s were the only age group Obama won outright here.

...

As expected, no drama in the Eighth. Ellsworth did carry Daviess County; we weren't even his lowest supporters (that'd be Fountain County). I'll have to check decimal places to see if we were the heaviest McCain county. Dropped to 67%, slackers.

....

If there's a grey lining for the Democrats' night, it's that they haven't done as well in Congress as they might have expected. Yesterday I said it would be a major surprise if the D's fall short of 57 Senate seats, but, with three seats still outstanding and a current total of 56, there's a decent chance they may just get one. The Minnesota race between Franken and Coleman has been bitterly fought and may not be over yet. The current tally has Coleman leading by approximately 2,500 votes with precincts reporting stuck at 99%.

This has not been a good two months for the reputation of Alasks in the lower 48, and it's not been improved by their eagerness to defy expectations and common decency to send a convicted felon back to the Senate. There may be some strategic voting at play here; Stevens could win and retire, forcing a special election the Republicans would certainly win, maybe with Bible Spice herself.

The Senate race in Oregon is also a dead heat at this point (538.com scored it a 92% Merkeley likelyhood), but there's still a decent number of precincts yet to report.

...

It also appears the Democrats will fall a bit short of the optimistic pre-election projections. The Times currently scores 18 Dem pickups, a nice gain but less than the 25+ hoped for. I wonder if there was late movement in some GOP districts toward keeping the overall Democratic gains in check. Luckily, Michelle Bachmann will be returning to Washington to snuff out all the traitorous un-Americans among the new representatives.

...

Ballot initiatives were a mixed bag. Most distressingly, it looks like Prop Hate is going to pass in California. This will give the social conservatives a boost coming out of the election. They never liked McCain anyway, and now have some ammunition to claim he lost because of not being conservative enough. Anti-gay measures also passed in Florida, Arkansas and Arizona (didn't we just beat one there two years ago?).

Speaking of reruns from 2006, South Dakota swatted away a slightly-modified version of its abortion ban by an almost-identical margin. Voters also defeated a parental notification clause in California, and wholly scorned an attempt in Colorado to declare personhood for fertilized eggs in the state constitution. I suspect the years are numbered for abortion as a major political football in this country.

Michigan had a good day, voting to legalize medical marijuana as well as stem cell research.

Center-Right Nation

Election returns haven't yet started to come in, but the eminently predictable defining narrative surrounding the election is already starting to play out amongst the establishment. David Sirota calls it "Center-Right Nation," the idea that, regardless of how large the Democratic victory is tonight, they should in no way interpret it as a mandate for liberal government from the American people. Glenzilla, blogging with Sirota at Salon's election day blog, writes;

Obama hasn't even won yet, and already the standard cast of Beltway status-quo-perpetuators are demanding that he scorn his base, stay as far away from "liberals" as possible, and fill his cabinet with old Clinton establishment retreads and even Bush administration appointees. In other words, the only way that Democrats can be successful is if they look as much like Republicans as possible -- the same sorry advice Democrats have been following (and failing with) for decades.

Greenwald and Sirota cite many of the usual suspects, the DLC, New Republic, and MO Sen. Claire McCaskill on Fox News. Also, on last night's Charlie Rose, Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report was making a similar argument; Obama must reach out to those paranoid McCain supporters and reassure them he isn't a black Islamocommie. Everyone gets one vote, but, if you're really really afraid of Obama, apparently your vote counts for more.

I suspect, however, that this meme is being laid down precisely because it will give Obama the cover he needs to do what he wants to do anyway; govern from the right. I watched the quadrennial Frontline special on the candidates' lives on Monday night, and its clear that compromise of this sort has been a defining characteristic in Obama's past. If he were working at an animal shelter and had the choice of giving a dog to someone who wanted to adopt it and someone who wanted to eat it, Obama is the kind of guy who would cut out a few organs for the latter and give the dead carcass to the former. That's a good analogy for the kind of political "compromises" Obama will be asked to accept by the Beltway establishment, and Id guess he's more than amenable to them.

Votin' man

I'm really quite an awful all-around citizen. I abstain from almost all county and city level races on the presumption that one shouldn't vote in races without some knowledge of the candidates (not that having any familiarity with local races here would change my mind about abstaining). But I feel guilty about leaving a great portion of my ballot blank, so I usually vote for Democrats in statewide races, figuring they'd be the ones I'm likely to hate least if I knew anything about them.

Anyway, there's still time to make some predictions, so here goes.

Electoral College: Obama gets 326 EVs, loses IN, FL (I have a hunch the geezers will break for their man, plus, shenanigans), and GA, gets NC.

Popular vote: I think it will be toward the high end of the final polls. 53.1% to 45.2%

Senate: I'll take the over on the Donkeyman's 57; that should be the absolute minimum barring a major upset. Franken wins to make it 58 w/Holy Joe, and I'll take a flier on one of the three Southern seats falling.

House: No idea, 260 sounds about right, but I'll go a little lower than that.

CA hate amendment loses narrowly; the No folks finally got their act together in time to push back the Mormon money.

McCain gets 75 percent in the DC, and we'll be the only county in the Eighth District to go for the Bircherite.

Battle of the techno-babble

My family has decided that we are all going to the Creation Museum as a Christmas vacation.  This surprised me somewhat because, while I knew my siblings were going off into Dobson-land, I wasn't aware of the extent to which they've purchased citizenship.  (The Creation Museum, it should be noted, is backed by a group promoting young-earth creationism, an idea so ludicrous many conservative evangelicals find it incredulous.) The old-school Mennonites used to be pretty unimpressed by big-money celebrity Christianity, but the whole story of how my community and apparently most of my family got sucked into the vacuum of fundamentalist chic will have to wait for another day.  Anyway, I suppose I'm going, because I tend to put off confrontation as long as I possibly can.  I don't talk to my family about politics or religion, so they're not really sure of what kind of strange beast I am, just that I'm an apostate of some sort. 

Kenneth Miller, a Catholic evolutionary biologist who has authored several high school biology textbooks, wondered in his book critical of creationism from a Christian perspective why so many in the church have staked the totality of the Christian faith on whether evolution is real.  He notes that they are practically daring scientists to produce irrefutable proof and, should that happen, they'll shut down the whole Christian project.  That seems like a lot of weight to put on something that doesn't seem theologically critical.  Why can't Gensesis 1 and 2 be taken metaphorically?  The idea that humanity is descended from a common ancestor, and thus one long, extended family, seems perfectly agreeable to me as a socialist.  

In fact, Genesis 1 and evolution are essentially telling us the same thing.  We're all descended from a common source, and we should act with that in mind.  But our fundamentalist friends aren't much interested in the well-being of their human or environmental family these days, which is odd given the implications for their "pro-family" platform by what they claim is literally true.  

The truth is, they aren't much interested in those implications.  These fundamentalists are less concerned about doing right and more concerned about being right.  They don't want people to be convinced by the persuasiveness of their moral philosophy; they want to reassure themselves that what they've believed unquestioningly since they were old enough to walk is the literal and objective truth.  You had better become like them because, even if you think their God is evil and vindictive, He has the power to burn you on a spit forever for rejecting them.  Nyah nyah nyah, etc.  It's power-worship; their god is real, so they have it and you don't. 

According to its Wikipedia article, the Creation Museum makes all employees sign a statement affirming, among other things, 

"no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record."

So Miller's concern that they could ever be convinced to surrender the faith looks impossible.  So why does the museum exist if they admit no contrary evidence could ever sway them?  Remember that fundamentalism is not anti-modern at all; in fact, it wouldn't exist without modernism.  They demand empirical verification of their belief system, otherwise they may as well chuck it aside.  But most of them don't understand the scientific concepts they would need for this.  Heck, most people, regardless of their beliefs, probably don't understand science that well.  If you don't have much of a background in biology or have otherwise studied the topic, I'd be willing to bet you would struggle in an argument with a well-oiled creationist.  

That's why the Creation Museum is here.  It presents a veneer of credibility to fundamentalists who are worried that they are being swamped the great majority of the scientific community and a picture of dueling techno-babble to the general public which doesn't have the tools to pick apart the mounds of pseudoscience horseshit.  Both groups are then left to rely on authority.  The former you'd expect.  The latter is left to trust that the whole of the science world is being straight with them.  Which works well-enough, I suppose, though I'm a believer in people having the knowledge for themselves.  

I still haven't answered the questions of why the fundamentalists choose this particular battle to get so worked up about.  Frankly, I don't know.  Ask one; you can't expect me to explain everything (anything?) can you?  I also don't know what I'm going to do as pennance for supporting this bollocks.  I'm thinking of sending a $25 donation to Planned Parenthood; that should piss them off appropriately.  

Fun election fact

In 2004, Daviess County went for Bush more heavily than any other county in Indiana (there are 92, if you're unaware) with 74.9% of the vote. Whad'ya got kids? Do you think we can break 75 percent for McCain this year and hold onto our title? The Donut Counties surrounding Indianapolis were our major competition in 2004, and, if this report from Salon is any indication, the yuppies may be turning slightly purple. I think we've got it in the bag.