A Simple Thing

Here's a simple thing you can do...

When considering the murders and multiple shootings at Planned Parenthood in Colorado...

...Simply say, "I condemn the violence."

 After having to watch the constant loop of the horrific shooting death of Laquan McDonald...

 ... Simply say, "I condemn the violence."

While trying to understand why the city of Chicago is powerless to stop dozens of children from being murdered each year...

...Simply say, "I condemn the violence."

While trying to absorb the atrocities of American bombs destroying a Doctors without Borders Hospital, and Russian bombs claiming the lives of 500 civilians, including 100 children in a bombing campaign in Syria which is just weeks old...

...Simply say, "I condemn the violence."

While we hear each day that a Palestinian has stabbed an Israeli civilian at a bus stop, or driven their car into a crowd, and we see the swift retribution of the IDF which weighs little distinction between children and fighters, even as leaders on both sides remain calcified in their inaction...

...Simply say, "I condemn the violence."

As terrorists attack in Paris, Beirut, Tunisia, and Kano, Nigeria...

... Simply say, "I condemn the violence."

As the UAE fields a force of Columbians, several hundred strong, in a program once managed by the American Mercenary company "Blackwater", to allow the Emirates to carry the fight against Iran in Yemen...

...Simply say, "I condemn the violence."

At every moment when we are tempted to believe that somehow our violence has some noble qualification greater than that of the other...

... Simply say, "I condemn the violence."

Having thought about this, read some responses, and heard more news out of Colorado, simply, as I wrote condemning the violence seems wholly inadequate. I do not mean to suggest that it is not a step and a valuable one towards something like a “beloved community”.

I’m trying to get at something and don’t even know if I can.

As I thought about the first few words and started to write yesterday I was trying to address something, a feeling, a sense of something that I wished to push back against. Does it really matter that the site of the crime was a Planned Parenthood medical facility? Well, yes, and no. Yes, of course, because after months of politicians claiming PP was harvesting parts of aborted fetuses for sale and profit, it cannot be classified as an odd coincidence that this lunatic chose this facility in Colorado Springs. And no, because the face now broadcast across the world is the face we have seen before. Here is another in a long string of mass murderers with crazy hair and dead eyes. These events-- New Town, Aurora, Charleston, and Oak Creek, and on and on and on—all demand some accounting, but out of that we are seldom allowed reconciliation or understanding.  

So, part of what I wanted to say is that it just doesn’t matter what caused this guy to unload on health care givers and young women seeking medical care. Our society is entrapped in a vortex of mass shootings, and so whatever we learn that gives some understanding to the events in Colorado Springs will matter little because another event with other supposedly knowable-- and one would think preventable-- motivation and circumstances is right around the corner.  

The argument seems to be that if only Fiorina and several Republican Congressmen had not uttered their fatuous lies, than three people would still be alive. It mirrors statements that suggested the climate of racial hostility in the country, much of it attached to the President, was the cause of the church shooting in South Carolina. In regards to Charleston, I drew that conclusion myself. But that seems so inadequate now. While there is truth in claims to these connections, in the wake of so many incidents they feel like half-truths. So much so that one has to wonder if not these incidents than what else? So there’s that as my friend Pete would say…

And then there’s this other thing I was trying to get to and missed wildly. Most of us are able to righteously condemn the violence we abhor. But in general we have a tolerance for much more than we should. Rather than condemn violence as method of reconciliation, we condemn that violence, the violence of the other. I will not go through all the examples I sited yesterday, but it’s fair to say our tolerance level is pretty high. We find it easy to condemn here, and explain there. I am not sure we ever had it, but if we were on path, we have lost our way. We have been driven by fear and misery to strike before being struck, and to see the other as somehow less worthy of human understanding.

There is no need for those who oppose Police violence to shy from the overwhelming challenge of crime in poor communities. If there’s one understanding I have held from reading Ta-Nehesi Coates it is the literal understanding that police violence and gang violence are two sides of the same coin in poor communities. For Coates, a young kid in Baltimore, both had to be navigated just as they are by kids in Chicago today. As a society, we can claim to want to do something about the violence, but these are hollow pills until we do something about the circumstances of extreme poverty, including red-lining and other discrimination, inadequate educational opportunities, healthcare, employment and so forth. While the Police must be reformed, suggesting that as a one stop solution to the problems of our cities is a lie.

On the world stage there is near uniform support for bombing campaigns in Syria. The President who has called for nearly 6,000 raids previously is being pressured to step up and do more. Russia, with no compunction to limit civilian casualties, has been roused to reign destruction in cities and towns that were already unrecognizable from what they were just a few years ago. From our arm chairs we look at Paris and demand our leaders call out the bombers. But isn’t that violence too? Are children spared when cities are levelled? In the US and the West, with the exception of a few liberals speaking in opposition, ground troops are being considered again. Our temper it seems always outlasts our memory. When will it end? Or to put it less philosophically, what is the end game? How do any of these militarist scenarios play out differently than those that came before?

And if we’re going to give peace a chance, or at least leaven some aspects of the current strategy with real commitment to hearts and minds, what would that look like? Perhaps we start with condemning the violence, no matter how inadequate that seems, all of it. At minimum we might acknowledge how each hurt builds towards the next. Then rather than pointing to all the institutions which facilitate such tragedy, and there are many that deserve such opprobrium, looking inward and demanding the same judgment. Maybe we would not hurt, but what hurt is done in our name? Are we silent in the face of it? Or do we speak in the name of peace? Demand change? Demand justice? Can we ask for the guns to go silent even for a day?

Isn't It Ironic

I find it smashingly ironic that those frustrated with the President’s calm tone in the face of hysteria about ISIS are now referring to the last President as a model as to how to respond to terror attacks.

These are the same people who in 2012 wanted to send carrier groups to the Mediterranean in response to the terror attack in Benghazi, who supported the war in Iraq until it was clear that it was a colossal mistake, which if the truth were told was already apparent late in 2003, and who wanted to arm the Syrian opposition and still do. Though they refuse to acknowledge it, their end game is always war. This was true in their response to Iranian nuke deal, and it is as true now in the battle in Syria and Iraq with ISIS.

How ironic too, the shattering silence in response to mistakes along the way. There is nothing complicated in their world view. Yesterday, when the Turks shot down that fighter jet, the Russians sent in a helicopter to try and retrieve the pilots. One of those helicopters was shot down by a TOW missile supplied by the US to its NATO ally Turkey. The rocket caused the death of one of the Russian helicopter pilots. The President of Turkey, Tayyip Erdoğan, while nominally working in opposition to ISIS has nonetheless, allowed IS fighters to travel freely across its borders. Now having shot down the jet, the US and our European allies are obligated by treaty to defend Turkey from any military confrontations with the Russians. If the situation would escalate to that point the US would be engaging militarily against the Russians to support a so-called ally who is a prime reason that the IS has grown to become the danger it is.  

Erdoğan, and many of our so-called Sunni Arab allies in the Middle East, see ISIS as potentially the only counterweight to the growing influence of Iran. While it is more than fair to point out that the vacuum of US forces, especially in Iraq, as well as the agreement in Iran, are parts of what is causing anxiety in Turkey and Sunni Arab states, this still brings us around to what strategies would be proposed by those now crying so loudly for this President to do something, which is short of war. And not just war, but war in this area of the Middle East in a theatre where the Russians are now engaged and determined to go their own way. They decry what they call Obama’s missteps, especially those that led to this point. What  they specifically mention most often is our complete withdrawal from Iraq, something that 80% of Americans wanted including many of those now shouting the loudest. They forget, conveniently, that the withdrawal was negotiated, or actually not negotiated but more agreed to, by the Bush administration. They forget, or willfully fail to mention, that the Iraqi had had it with the US at that time. Part of that was righteous weariness, and part was the desire by an elected though still brutally dictatorial, Shiite dictator in Iraq , Nouri al-Maliki, that no longer wanted the US reigning in his campaign to destroy Sunni opposition.

All of this, every last bit of it, was and IS the result of the catastrophic decision to invade Iraq, under the pretense of fears over 9-11 and WMD. To this day Cheney still promulgates the lie that Hussein was engaged in the planning for 9-11. Moreover, let us not forget that Iraq was a failure not only for the lies which led Congress and a majority of Americans to support it, but also because of the incredible arrogance of the neo-cons in prosecuting the war, and the complete failure to administrate the country after Hussein’s ouster.

This CNN piece on a Rumsfeld press conference in April of 2004, 20 days or so after the start of the war, perfectly encapsulates the utter stupidity of those in charge.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/04/11/sprj.irq.pentagon/

“Democracy is messy”. Indeed.

Polls now indicate that Americans want to see more action. In a poll released just this week 49% say they would support a “war against ISIS”. These numbers will only go up, especially if there is another terror attack, but these same people will move in the opposite direction the minute American blood is spilled.

For me I don’t know the way out, and I certainly don’t know what the days ahead will bring. This President is under enormous pressure to do something. Many are openly mocking the President.  Except Rand Paul and the candidate every GOP candidate would commit troops, as would Sec. Clinton. The same group is almost uniformly advocating for a NO-FLY zone which would bring us in direct contact with the Russian Air Force.  Hysteria is in the air. I recognize that I stand on a shrinking island of public opinion, but I stand with the President.

Mad As Hell

This essay was written before the terrible events in Paris. French President François Hollande has declared the attack an “act of war” and vowed “merciless” retaliation. It seems very clear that we are not close to the end of the cycle of war that was set off at by the downing of the World Trade Center and the attacks aimed at Washington. I have no words to express for the great loss of life and the pain the people of Paris are now enduring except to express my complete and utter heartbreak. I was fortunate enough to visit Paris a long time ago. I saw the city then as a beautiful, almost magical place. Regardless of these events I know it will be that way again.

The more Enoch sermonizes, the clearer it becomes that faith is his only bulwark against chaos and nothingness. (Stephen Holden)


 ***

Jennifer Rubin, in a Washington Post editorial titled, “Is Donald Trump Losing It?” included a short excerpt of the famous Howard Beale Speech from the 1976 movie Network.

We can thank the writer, Paddy Chayefsky, along with the  actor, Peter Finch, and the director, Sidney Lumet, for their prescient brilliance.

Chayefsky anticipated a moment in a not too distant future where humanity was hollowed out from what was being broadcast on the public airwaves. His screenplay captured Beale, a rumpled, beaten down, TV anchorman as a product of the culture, and so in ways a reflection of what was available and happening.

Rubin’s recollection from the movie crystalized thoughts that have been meandering in my mind for weeks. In political cycles stretching back decades, there has been conversation that politics is little more than entertainment. Frank Zappa was quoted as saying that politics was the entertainment division of the military industrial complex.

Every cycle the marketing gets slicker and slicker until voters can barely comprehend the difference between what is real and what is not. Everyone complains about the negative ads and campaigns, but then we change our opinion and our vote the second the slime starts to ooze across the airwaves. John Kerry, a Vietnam War Veteran, was swift-boated out of town. Thank you for your service, my ass. Get lost.

The candidate, it seems to me, is the pinnacle of that process. Make no mistake we built him, or at least we acquiesced to the construction. Here we have a man screaming, practically at the top of his lungs, that he is authentic, because that’s what we say we want. Just tell us the goddam truth.

And so here it is…

One scratch of the surface reveals just another slick, insincere, politician. A lot of voters haven’t caught up to him yet, but the candidate is literally just like all the rest. What is more cynically manipulative than to cleverly avoid almost all talk on policy? The reason nothing gets done in Washington is the two sides are polarized on policy. Ironically, in my view, this is because of the extreme influence of cashing supplied by billionaires. The candidate knows that talking about policy is a short cut to challenging poll numbers and has chosen instead to dwell on anger. With each passing day he swerves closer and closer to the edge, but with few exceptions never too near to policy.

In Alabama he tells the audience the Bible is his favorite book. Every other speech it’s nothing but love for the vets. Nor is there anything like policy prescriptions that would fix the broken VA. He’s a “big second amendment guy”. Opposed the Iraq war in 2004, a year after we got into it. That same year a public opinion poll noted that 2/3 of Americans thought the US went to war under “incorrect assumptions”.

I’ll admit he’s taken his chances, painting Mexicans as drug dealers and rapists, and smearing the honor of John McCain, practically calling him a coward.

At every moment the crowd roared the candidate must have wondered, “What would happen if I took it further?” Remind you of anyone?

The cackling hyenas in the mainstream media offered the candidate up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. No network has given him more air time than MSNBC. He candidate gets his ass kissed there in the morning, then gets it kicked in the afternoon and evening, and it’s ALL just entertainment.

Meanwhile he is a petty, intensely narcissistic, vindictive little troll, certainly not presidential, barely American in his bitterness and victimhood, at least as far as what we would normally aspire to in a presidential candidate. Except, except he is exactly and precisely American, a perfect amalgam of the worse of what we are and what our corrupted political process has become. The billionaire candidate who decries the corruption of PACS wants to, as someone on the Chris Hayes show said recently just “cut out the middleman”.

Chayefsky’s moment, including the near meltdown, we saw from the candidate a few nights ago, seems to me very near. Not to over exaggerate, as it was said in jest, but to see the candidate for the presidency ask for a knife in the middle of an arm-waving, wild-eyed, tirade in front of thousands was jaw dropping.

Here is Howard Beale…

“I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

“We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be!

“We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy.

“It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.

“Well, I'm not going to leave you alone.

“I want you to get mad!

“I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

“All I know is that first, you've got to get mad.

“You've gotta say, ‘I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!’

“So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, ‘I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!’"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/
 

Operation Wetback and The Candidate

Last night, early on in the debate, a remarkable moment of clarity offered an opportunity to view Trump’s position on “Illegals” exactly as it is. Sadly, few people have picked up on it. Donna Brazile mentioned it in post-debate coverage on CNN. I would not have known about it but for my friend, Peter Hernandez, posting a Washington Post article, which the put it up on their website again today. Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone released a short blog post today as well. Other news stories, including one from AP have been poppoing up through the day.

On their face the candidate's comments were ugly enough. He mentioned a program started by President Dwight Eisenhower. “Everyone likes Ike, right?” Good guy.

In 1954, Eisenhower's Attorney General initiated a plan to ship “illegals”-- the candidate's derogatory term for human beings from across our southern border-- back to Mexico.  Last night the candidate told us how Eisenhower sent them back across the border, and when that didn’t work they sent them further south, and then when that didn’t work, they sent them even further south. Ha, ha. Showed them, didn’t we. That's how we'll make America great again.

The hyper thin-skinned, arrogant, outrageous billionaire playing to the rabble’s fear and anxiety, how nice.

Historians dispute the numbers. The INS claimed to have deported 1.3 million workers, but disputes arise because it is widely believed that those numbers may have been purposely exaggerated at the time to discourage other Mexicans seeking work in the US.

The program’s name was named “Operation Wetback”. If any other candidate or any of the debate moderators had known the history, and asked the candidate on national TV to tell us all the name of the program no one would be talking about anything else today and his candidacy would be mortally wounded.  

The US did send hundreds of thousands of Mexicans back alright, and as well, an unknown number of American citizens of Latino heritage who were swept up in the raids across several Border States. These roundups reached as far as Missouri, Oregon, and Washington State. When you’ve got to move hundreds of thousands of people quickly, and you set aside the Constitution and Due Process rights, shit happens. Some deportees were left in the desert with limited provisions. 88 died of heatstroke in one incident. More would have been lost if not for the intervention of the Red Cross. Initially INS used trains and trucks to transport workers back to Mexico. Later in the campaign when the goal became moving people deeper south, and cargo boats were employed, eight more drowned after jumping from a ship. Without the brutal mayhem, and the racist provenance, this is all pretty much as the candidate described it last night. Today he announced his plan to "have a deportation force" and "do it humanely". Nothing rings quite as close to the true north of humanely like "Deportation Force". 

As the program escalated it became clear that American growers did not want to see a reduction in their access to cheap, pliable,  labor and so they continued to encourage the migration. Then, human need being what it is, Mexican field workers continued to return in large numbers. The Eisenhower administration then decided that ships offered the best chance to return these workers far enough south so they wouldn’t come back. Conditions on the vessels on the crossing across the gulf of Mexico were likened to that of slave boats with hundreds of young men held in the cargo hold, with unsanitary conditions, lack of food and water and all the rest of it.

We would do well to remember the candidate has told us how his program will return 11 million in a “humane” way. So it’s perhaps ironic, or alternatively, a moment of blazing truth, that he would reference “Operation Wetback” which clearly had a racist motive, a brazenly racist title, and moved workers like cargo with no concern for life or liberty.

“Operation Wetback” grew in response to another program, called Braceros, which was actually a series of legal and diplomatic agreements between the US and Mexican governments. FDR signed the agreements in 1942 in response to a severe shortage of agricultural workers brought on by the war. Ironically, the agreements were actually part of an effort by the Mexican government to maintain some control of their own workers so that there were adequate numbers of them available for the Mexican agricultural industry. Rather than a full on opening of the gates, it was thought at the time that a managed flow was better for both countries. Hundreds of thousands of workers moved back and forth across the border according to the growing seasons. Beyond the planned scope of the program American growers, hungry for cheap labor, exploded the scope of migration planned in Braceros, encouraging and facilitating what became a massive movement of undocumented workers from Mexico to the US.

Early on voices were raised among the worker community. Complaints that the American farmers were providing poor diet, substandard wages, and sometimes no wages at all were rife. A series of strikes were held, most of which led to little improvement in the lives of the workers. According to the Texas State Historical Society, “Mexico excluded Texas from the labor-exchange program on the grounds of widespread violation of contracts, discrimination against migrant workers, and such violations of their civil rights as perfunctory arrests for petty causes. Oblivious to the Mexican charges, some grower organizations in Texas continued to hire undocumented Mexican workers and violate such mandates…” The 1956 George Stevens movie, Giant, which featured James Dean, gave America a small glimpse of what Texas might have looked like in that period.

As today, there was labor on one side of the border and the need for work on the other. While the workers were made out as villains, and smeared with the term "wetback", a slur I heard often as a kid in Illinois, American growers owned primary responsibility for creating and exploiting the system in their pursuit of cheap labor. Just a few years later, in 1962, Caesar Chavez, an American born farm laborer, started the American Farm Workers (AFW) Union as a direct response to the exploitation of both American and Braceros workers in the fields.

The candidate’s main campaign slogan is “Make America Great Again”.  Inherent in so much of the conservative nostalgia is a gauzy image of a simpler America. Never mentioned in these kinescope reels is any honest recollection of the ways that America dealt with issues of race and class.  It is our unwillingness as a nation to honestly address this past which presents the greatest danger for our political future. The preamble to the Constitution contains the following:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

So said the slave owners and freedom fighters who are responsible for the birth of our nation. While they skirted truths, and allowed slavery to be enshrined in our founding documents, there was still an acknowledgment of the goals, and the state of things: “a more perfect union”. Not a perfect union, a “more perfect union”. Something closer to the truth. If only…

The Narrative Changes

Can't help but notice that the narrative has fallen apart. For months all we've heard is this is the year of the outsider. Both parties they tell us. Look at how little ole Bernie Sanders is pushing Hillary. Who can believe it? She's really damaged goods, email scandal, Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, bla, bla, bla. Looks more and more like wishful thinking , shared between hysterical conservatives and media types who love nothing more than hysteria. Reporters and pundits don't care who wins, so long as the contest stretches out and gets sort of ugly.

Bernie is raising a LOT of money, but he's NOWHERE with minority voters, and without them when the nominating contests move from NH and Iowa, it's going to be brutal. To me his candidacy is settling into what it appeared to be at the outset, a principled effort to shape the dialogue and push/ pull Mrs. Clinton into more progressive policy positions.

Clinton could still implode. Conservatives are already--comically-- laying plans to impeach her if elected, so we can be sure they'll be investigating here throughout. That said as the days go by, it looks increasingly like they are going to be out of gas by next fall. They'll still run their ads. They'll still drive up her negatives, but one has to wonder how any of it resonates, especially with independents, after years of fruitless and often foolish grandstanding.

Many of us will continue to struggle with Clinton's calculation. We'll wonder if she can be trusted. What does it mean when a candidate claims drug companies as an honored enemy, but then raises more pharmaceutical money than any other candidate? Obama, far more liberal than her, has been weak on Wall St. What could we possibly expect from her? Will she maintain a commitment to address global warming? Will she feel compelled to show her well documented toughness on foreign affairs and lead us into another military quagmire?

Meanwhile the GOP is blessed with an obsession with outsiders. Time was Rubio would have looked radical right, but now he's the establishment guy. The radicals want to build a wall, throw 11 million people out of the country, and arm the clergy, kindergarten teachers, and ticket takers at your local movie theatre with high powered weapons. And their supporters are really angry, like f***ed up, drunk on Saturday night angry.

Their candidates are merely representing that. One of them thinks evolution is the devil's work, literally, and the other thinks he can bluster and bully people and no one will ever tire of it. Why should they? None of his well compensated employees ever did? For all of the support he's getting in the polls I still think the candidate has a billionaire's delusion about his success and the state of our country. I'm not sure how far he'll go, but I remain convinced America is neither as mean or as angry as he assumes.

Narratives change. It happens. This one will change again. I was just wondering when people would notice it changed already.

Belief and Bigotry

Once again, those who do not believe, as Mr. Carson does, are accused of religious bigotry. I have personally spent a lot of time navigating these waters the past few years. I first came to understand that I no longer felt connected to the faith I was raised in. Then I had to learn to steer through a new understanding where my lack of faith did not become a new faith of narrow mind or intolerance.

The world is sick with religious bigotry. I see it in my community among those battling Hassidic Jews over land and water rights. Principled civil arguments have sometimes been couched in bitter language. On a national stage, leading liberals, some of whom I greatly admire, have marginalized a billion Muslims, into the narrow confines of the evil other. Their arguments assume the primacy of religion over human aspiration. In the world they see religion is not manipulated. It manipulates. They see decades of oppression under brutal dictatorships, at the root, as a failure of religion rather than a willful manipulation of the most primal part of the human condition. In their arguments they ignore a millennium of abuse by people of all faiths.

 Just as Stalin represented an extreme perversion of Communism, Hussein, Qadaffi, Al Quada, the Ayatollahs in Iran, and ISIS all represent radical perversions of Islam. Their governing principle is fascist hegemony. Any ideology or theology around that is purely for the consumption of the masses. One need look no further for the proof of this manipulation than to Google search images of Iran in the 1960's.

 For me, I find I often need to separate my lack of faith from the way I see and understand others who come to the world with different beliefs. Since summer I’ve spent enjoyable moments in a Muslim neighborhood in Queens watching fathers and mothers in the joyful immersion of their families. In recent weeks I've shared equally warm moments with the Hasidim on the Heritage trail. I struggle to honor both faiths while holding an absolute commitment that their beliefs are contrary to most everything I stand for. This is especially true in the diminution of women that both Islam and Judaism share.

Christian fundamentalists, it seems to me, deserve no more or no less respect. We are all entitled to our belief. But if I choose not to accept the subjugation of women as a central tenet of some religions, then I can also find exception with Christians who isolate Leviticus from the love of Christ to justify their fearful bigotry.

None of the monotheistic faiths get a pass on science. The biblical stories of creation, though powerful as allegory, perch at a base of knowledge substantially below that of science. To still believe the earth is 6000 years old, or that dinosaurs roamed the earth with primitive man is at this point just militant foolishness. I read an extended portion of the remarks Carson first made on the pyramids. To be sure in the totality of his comments he was not spewing complete lunacy to the graduates he was addressing. But that part about the pyramids was loo-loo-loo-loopy nuts. You want to tell me that homosexuality is a choice because people "go into prison straight -- and when they come out, they're gay", than I'm going to call you a homophobic bigot. An argument that a stance in favor of rights is religious bigotry, or somehow occupies the same ethical space, is not worthy of response. Carson's claim that "secular progressives are ridiculing" his faith may be good politics for his followers, but I doubt that will give him much of an escape route with the general public. He's entitled to believe, but there are a lot of secular people now and there numbers are growing. Not all of them are progressives, so good luck with that.

Post script…

I have heard powerful argument which suggests that biblical stories, taken metaphorically, or as allegory, need not be an impediment to pure belief in an almighty being. This argument would suggest that you can set all of that aside, Adam and Eve, Noah, Jonah and the whale, the transgressions of war, the maintenance of slaves, and still believe in an all-knowing and beneficent God. It is a good argument, at least for me one I can wrap my head around. But in the end it falls flat for me. This is not to doubt that belief or its power, but here I merely mean to say that it does not enter my logic in a way that counters what I believe through my understanding of science. We live on a little dot in a barely measureable universe that has been evolving for nearly 15 billion years. While other life may exist in the cosmos, advanced civilizations as we see on earth are at minimum rare, and that to me is awesome enough.

Ya Been Took

There is a governing coalition and has been for the whole of the Obama presidency, the Democrats in the House along with a handful of establishment Republicans have passed all the budget bills, often after a proper bloodletting. The basic assumption is that compromise of this sort caused Cantor his seat, and McCarthy his shot at the Speakership. I have little doubt that GOP voters would punish Republicans that get caught "siding" with the Dems, and their Kenyan, Islamic, President.

It becomes easy to blame politicians in DC, but the GOP voting base largely does not want compromise. This is maybe one in three voters, hard core conservatives, inflamed by the radio right. A majority of them believe the President is a Muslim. In a recent focus group of GOP voters, ten of ten agreed with Carson that a person of Islamic faith should not even be considered as President. These folks are second amendment absolutists, true believers in arming kindergarten teachers and Baptist preachers in the sanctuary of their churches. They want smaller government, protesting loudly during the debate over ACA that government needed to stay out of their Medicare.

But this is the problem. There's a great speech in Spike Lee's Malcolm X movie. Apparently Malcolm never said the words. Lee cribbed them from another speech:

"Oh, I say and I say it again, ya been had!
Ya been took!
Ya been hoodwinked!
Bamboozled!
Led astray!
Run amok!
This is what He does...."

Yes, ya been hoodwinked. You're views are not predominate any longer. The governing coalition is younger, mixed race, mixed gender, and yes, even mixed sexual orientation.

You own lots of guns, more and more each year. Studies show, however, that while the number of guns is increasing, the number of gun owners is declining.

Climate science is just that. Science. I'm sorry, and I feel bad to have to tell you this, but the politicians waving snowballs on the floor of the senate, telling you this is all a conspiracy, are--you may want to sit down-- on the payroll of big oil! Countries around the world, including China are abandoning coal, and pursuing green energy. The President is not having a war with coal, and the foot dragging of the GOP has actually slowed progress that every other advanced country has already made, especially in the last 20 years. When we talk about America's greatness, most of us think of advancements in medicine and science, space travel, interstate travel, economic equality and access. Now the narrow coalition of Tea Party members of congress has managed to block even basic infrastructure bills. How is this possible?

Ya been bamboozled. There is no broad consensus to move against social programs, and no electoral path to reduce such programs. The ACA might still be overturned or weakened, but this won't happen while Obama is president. More than 16 million have ask access to medical insurance because of the ACA. They GOP can't tell you the truth so I will. They're all in with symbolic votes, but real repeal is increasingly out of political realm of reality.

Adjustments need to be made to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but these programs are going to be in place for decades. Your leaders keep grandstanding on food stamps but the real money is in defense, entitlements, and tax policies for corporations and the wealthy. Paul Ryan has taken his shots at Medicaid, a program which provides care mostly to poor people, but even his very detailed budgets have left Social Security and Medicare largely intact. Unable to address truths about the dimension of entitlement programs, Republican leaders work to further impoverish the poor and call it serious policy.

Me, I'm a single payer guy, but I know the political climate is not in place for the heavy lift that would require. It's call reality.

Ya been led astray, especially, most especially, those of you who are of moderate or limited means. Citizens United has unleashed a torrent of campaign cash. A lot of that is going to slick PR campaigns designed to convince you that there is some sort of silent, let's be honest, mostly white majority, if we all just showed up in the polls we could get some stuff done. I feel for you. Your leaders have been edging you out to the cliffs of oblivion since Reagan. They lied to you and didn't know how, and actually don't know how, to tell you.

Ya been run amok. You're not losing national elections because your party is not radical right enough. That calculation assumes an electorate made up of far more old, white, straight, and male voters claiming European ancestry than will ever exist again. The only place you have political numbers is state houses which define Congressional District lines, and by the gerrymandering that grows from that, the House of Representatives. A filibuster proof Senate is increasingly unlikely, and good luck in the Presidential election with a platform which attacks gay marriage, tries overturning the ACA, and proposes sending 11 million undocumented workers back to where they came from.

Meanwhile, know this. While we've been fighting over this bullsh** going all the way back to the Reagan years, the one constant, the only constant really has been the ongoing concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people. The pure economic impact of the tax plans of every GOP candidate who has announced one would continue and accelerate that pattern. The billionaires funding these campaigns do not give a f*** about your social issues. They want tax breaks for themselves and a lax regulatory environment for their businesses. Reagan ran on an anti-abortion platform, passed the first large trickle down tax package, which really benefited his rich friends, and didn't show up at the political events organized to attack Roe.

The money people don't give a f*** about the deficits either. Reagan and Bush II both exploded the deficits, Bush I made limited progress, but the GOP base slaughtered him for raising taxes. Clinton and Obama both made dramatic reductions in deficits, but the Koch brothers are aligning $900 billion in the cause of overturning the policies that led to that progress.

The problem is not only the Republican leaders in congress. They've lied to their voters though, so it's hard to feel bad for them. Many Republican voters have also lied to themselves. They've been betting for 40 years that an adhoc coalition with billionaires would both make them rich and overturn Roe. Billions have been spent in advertising convincing them of that.

Fear has been a great motivator. America's sickness on race, our utter dishonesty about it, even in liberal circles, has been absolutely debilitating. We've gone from Nixon's closeted bigotry, and cynical Southern strategy, to a war on crime that has devastated communities of color, to Reagan's Philadelphia, Mississippi campaign kickoff and vilification of welfare cheats. Then Willie Horton. Then the SCOTUS decision eviscerating the Voting Rights Act, and voter ID laws specifically spoken of as discouraging turnout among African Americans. Most recently we get self-deportation, then rapists, drug dealers and "illegals" with calves like cantaloupes, and then send them all back.

As the drama in DC unfolds, what is left for us? We take stock. We watch. Those so inclined say a prayer. Even as we hope for leadership, disillusionment sets in. America is not willing to face real truths.

Perhaps all we can do is whatever uplift each of us can do in our daily lives. Bide our time. Wait for sunlight and enlightenment. My sister has been working in her community this week to help those devastated by historic floods, likely exacerbated by global warming. My wife and I made a small contribution to that effort this week. What else?

“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

― Robert F. Kennedy

Which Side Are You On

The candidate is a coward. He is afraid to stand up to the gun lobby.

"You're going to have these things happen and it's a horrible thing to behold, horrible.

"It's not politically correct to say that, but you're going to have difficulty and that will be for the next million years, there's going to be difficulty and people are going to slip through the cracks,What are you going to do, institutionalize everybody?"

Jeb Bush is a coward. He is afraid to stand up to the gun lobby.

"Look, stuff happens. There’s always a crisis and the impulse is always to do something and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do."

Ok, Jeb...What did we do in the years since Newtown? Or since Gabby Giffords was assaulted? Or after Virginia Tech? Or Fort Hood? Would a response to any of those atrocities also be a rash or impulsive move? Coward.

If I'm going to be fair, I have to say Bernie Sanders is a coward on guns also.  I plan to follow the President's advice and be a single issue voter in the next election. If Sanders does not make a clear and definitive policy statement in support of sane gun laws I will not consider voting for him in the Democratic primary in NY.

"I don’t know that anybody knows what the magic solution is. What we do know is the current situation is not tenable. It is clearly not working. And as the president indicated, we can and must do a lot better … You can sit there and say I think we should do this and do that. But you’ve got a whole lot of states in this country where people want virtually no gun control at all. And if we are going to have some success, we are going to have to start talking to each other."

80% of Americans believe a background check should be conducted before all gun purchases, regardless if the gun is purchased at a gun show or a retail outlet. Background checks have a proven record of success in reducing gun violence in states that have enacted them. So Sanders statement is factually inaccurate. He must know that, and he deserves no more tolerance or acceptance in his capitulation to the gun lobby than we would give any Republican.

Chicago's, a city with very strict gun laws, and its level of violence is often pointed to as a distorted example of the hopeless nature of legislation in a country with 300 million guns. But, in a study conducted in 2013 by the CPD, 15,000 out of a total of 50,000 guns tracked  were purchased in the exurbs which are a short driving distance from the city. 4,000 were traced to a single state, Mississippi. Studies by the NYC PD indicated a similar pattern of gun traffic from a few southern states with lax gun laws along the I-95 corridor.  Localized gun laws, while effective in saving some lives,will never be as effective as national legislation.

While I understand that gun safety legislation will have a limited effect on mass murders committed by people struggling with their sanity, there is ABSOLUTELY NO DOUBT that gun safety laws enacted at the federal level will save thousands of lives, most especially in poor communities like those in Chicago racked by gun violence.

Politicians who point to mental health as the core of the problem, but then vote against legislation to require insurance companies to provide expanded mental health coverage  are playing voters for fools. Pro gun legislators have in the past few years blocked laws designed to limit access to guns by domestic abusers and a long list of people that any sane, or to put it more correctly, any uncompromised representative of the people would ever stand for. Sanders voting record is atrocious. The two Senators from NY, and the Representative from my CD all stand for gun safety laws, where do your political leaders stand?

The only candidate who has spoken without qualification of her intention to fight for sane gun laws is Hillary Clinton.

"It is just beyond my comprehension that we are seeing these mass murders happen again and again and again. And as I have said, we have got to get the political will to do everything we can to keep people safe."

This is the only acceptable response.

Of those that have spoken on the GOP side beyond Trump and Bush, almost all of offered their condolences and their meaningless "thoughts and prayers". Coward. Coward. Coward. Coward. Coward. Coward. Coward. Coward. Coward. Coward. Coward. Coward. Coward. None of them, from the liberal Pataki to the libertarian Paul to the Conservative and the especially despicable Huckabee have any intention of standing up to the gun lobby. Without exception they stand in opposition to 80% of all Americans.

We must also note the racial hypocrisy of the gun zealots. Reagan enacted strict gun laws in direct response to the rise of the Black Panther Party. Now as we debate guns and police violence against people of color, we see a great divergence on the right. Guns are urged on us everywhere except in poor communities where a child like Tamir Rice is shot while playing with a toy gun and a man is shot in a Wal-Mart while in possession of a pellet gun. Do open carry advocates imagine this doctrine would have value in Baltimore? Easy access to guns is a policy built on fear. Directed mostly at whites, it has its roots in the racist law and order propaganda which was spawned in the 70's, a direct response to the Civil Rights movement.

While I am gratified to see a bipartisan consensus forming to address the the mass incarceration of a couple generations of African Americans, what Ta-Nehesi Coates called "the age of mass incarceration", it must be said that so long as America accepts this level of gun violence, any promise of reform will ring like a hollow bell on empty street.

I stand with my friends, like Dan Olmstead, and with the president. We are more than tired of the Newtowns and Umpquas, but we are just as appalled with the utter carnage in Chicago, New Orleans, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and poor communities in every state in the country. We find the advocacy  which claims safety can be found when more people open carry in church's, theaters, and schools to be morally bankrupt.

As we stand here today, we must understand that we may be years away from reform of our gun laws. A year from now 30,000 more Americans will be dead. In just two years more American lives will be lost to gun violence than were list in the whole of the Vietnam war. We mourn those lives in a solemn memorial in Washington, but the only logical honor we can bring to the folly of our addiction to guns is to say no more.

No more.

No more.

Which side are you on?

At Long Last

Over the weekend I listened to a lengthy Rachel Maddow interview that she conducted with Jon Stewart in 2010. There was a lively back and forth, and contrary to what one might expect there were points of disagreement. Maddow struggled and pushed back, for example, on one of Stewart’s central points; the idea that the media promotes a right-left, red-state-blue-state dichotomy built on a false premise. To Stewart's point of view the real conflict was not between Republicans and Democrats or even between conservatives and liberals. The real conflict, the real heart of the matter was the battle between what Stewart called “corruption” and everyone else. Obama himself made remarkably similar comments in the Marc Maron interview.

Stewart's argument was that corruption was not best confronted by, or at he suggested the fight ought not to be confined by, narrow political views of like-minded Americans. The battle for real right against real wrongs, real evil, was far too important for such a restricted dialogue.

He argued that on this basis both FOX and MSNBC shared certain traits that were worthy of criticism. Maddow, pointing to several cases of well financed and choreographed so-called protest, suggested Stewart was positing a fall equivalency between real protest on one side and movement on the levers of power on the other. For the most part I thought Maddow got the better end of the argument, but Stewart’s idea of opposition to corruption without party affiliation, especially the freedom it must provide in contrast to party dogma, was compelling.

I am so liberal, so attached to my own secular theology, that I get sick of myself sometimes. I am frustrated with the Democratic Party, often finding it a weak counterpart to the colossus of wealth and power which is today’s GOP. Though I prefer no label or category, I find progressive or liberal so much more an agreeable attachment or location to occupy than Democrat. Millions of Republicans have made it pretty clear they feel the same away about the GOP.

So it seems to me that this must mean that there ought to be some things we can agree to, moments when we all should be able to identify the corruption among us. There should be moments when we don't attach our flag of political belief, either in support or opposition, to someone, and we should not always define our most firmly held beliefs in a purely political context.

In recent weeks, we have been subjected to a series of statements that ought to on their own give us pause.

There are over five million undocumented Mexicans in America. Is it possible that all of them are criminals?  I look at all the immigrants in my community. I see mothers and fathers with their children, tiny voices dancing on the summer wind, and workers, sun-baked men with clothes worn from the activity of physical effort.  At the bagel store, the grocery, and in the public space or the bike path, I see my neighbors, and cringe at the words that have been repeated in our public discourse, ad naseum. Do I need to be a follower of one political party or another to denounce the awful things that were said, to feel the urgent desire, indeed the demand, to stand with my neighbor?

Assuming that the practice institutionalized in the term “anchor baby” is actually a real thing, the term still refers to the use of a baby, an innocent and helpless child. The Washington Post has run more than one article pointing out the folly of using your children as an immigration strategy, so much so the political argument, though repeated endlessly, is null and void. But even if the practice were true, have we no mercy for the family or the child at the heart of such desperation?

Critics on both right and left use Nazis and the Holocaust as metaphors for any and all manner of political exercise with which they disagree.  During the Iraq war protesters frequently carried images of Bush and Cheney with the Hitler mustache, and during this administration conservatives have trotted out the Hitler analogies for all manner of protest, including opposition to the Affordable Car Act.  Some, who like me, are extremely frustrated with the militarist policies of are so-called ally Israel have tried to use the imagery of those memories as a blunt sword to cut down Netanyahu. Nothing could be more obscene. Every time I hear these comparisons I feel the wound on the souls of the six million. Rather than a metaphor for evil, the Holocaust is the greatest known example of the existence of evil. Now to score cheap political points rather than point to the final solution as an evil for all times, it’s thrown around like a sports statistic, against which modern day players can be measured.  

And now this.

Appearing at the Eagle Forum, Former Arkansas Governor, Mike Huckabee, said this about the refugees pouring into Europe from the Middle East:

“Are they really escaping tyranny, are they escaping poverty, or are they just running because we’ve got cable TV? I don’t mean to be trite — I’m just saying we don’t know.”

As a political statement this is an awful, appalling, sentiment. But we have grown numb to awful, immune to appalling. The hypocrisy is enraging, especially this statement, coming from a man who has spent the better part of the last several weeks vaingloriously espousing his so-called Christian values.  

I'll be the first to admit that the religious faith of my younger years is lost to me now. I cannot decipher the scriptures in the way many of you can and I’m sure still do. But I understand the admonition-- common to all monotheistic religions-- that places love and charity at the highest altar of human endeavor. 

"For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in;"

I have heard these words dozens of times before. When the challenges are deemed insurmountable we are told to have faith. Heard those words too. I never understood the statements to be orders, but even on the road I now travel they seem to be fairly important aspirations. I posted briefly about Huckabee’s words last night, but they linger with me even now. What Huckabee said is more than out of step with how I feel or the political views of the party I will support in the next election. To me, they should stand, as Stewart suggested, in an area where red-state blue-state should carry little value.  They are more than improper. If we respond to them purely on the basis of our political perspective, don't we surrender something to the inherent political calculation that inspired such immorality?

Are we truly lost to this now? So committed to winning political victory or scoring points in that arena that no morality or shame penetrates the personal armor of our ego or our political arguments?

Joseph Welch was the chief counsel for the United States Army while it was under investigation for Communist activities during the McCarthy hearings. He is famously quoted as confronting the abusive Senator, who destroyed countless lives with the question, “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” 

I feel that way now, or rather the way I can only imagine some must have felt then. We are caught in a vortex that only spirals faster and deeper. Every day seems to bring a more astounding surrender of our ethics and values. We are told we are a Christian nation, or at least one of profound faith, but our politics too often either reflect none of that or a distorted fun-house mirror image of what true morality would look like.  Huckabee's comments are cynical, ugly, and selfish, and that is the best that can be said of them. They are easy to condemn, but tomorrow's another day, and another opportunity for fresh moral compromise.

The refugee crisis is a metaphysical crisis for America and for the world. Easy solutions are not in sight. We can choose now to stand with those who are suffering, in spirit and action, or we can excuse corruption.

Does this mean America should volunteer to house 800,000 refugees as Germany has done? Probably not. Is this the time to sort out who was at fault and whether western powers  shredded an opportunity presented  by the Russians in 2012 to get Assad to step aside and leave the country as reported in the Guardian today?  I hope not.

But maybe, just maybe, we can hope and put that hope into action through political power. Let us hope  that in our collective conscience we still have some sense of decency, at long last some tiny shred of decency.

Progressivism V. Cynicism

If you want to know why there is no compromise among the political parties, let this be exhibit one. Wherever one stands on matters in the Middle East, especially is it pertains to Israel and issues that Israel is deeply engaged in, like the recent negotiations with Iran, there is an overwhelming force, one wealthy  individual,  pulling the American political center in one direction.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/09/sheldon-adelson-is-ready-to-buy-the-presidency.html

Sheldon Adelson is an 82 year old billionaire who made his money in casinos. While he diddles in various issues, he is basically a one issue donor. Israel. Adelson is a huge supporter and personal friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, and his Super-PAC campaign donations have been a primary reason that Republicans have increasingly allied themselves with unquestioning support of Israeli policies, especially those of Netanyahu’s right wing Likuid.

In the last election cycle Adelson donated close to $100 million, much of that going to Newt Gingrich. Adelson’s financial support may be only a tenth that of the Koch Brother’s network this time around, but he expects so much less in policy terms than the Kochs. Other than the Israel issue, Adelson is against marijuana legalization. He favors casino expansion, and generally tilts in favor of low-tax business-friendly policies espoused by most of the other billionaires. But make no mistake. Israel is the fuel that drives Adelson’s political giving.

The Republican brand is already closely tied to the right wing Israeli political movement. Since Reagan, Evangelicals have become far more unquestioning and supportive of succeeding Israeli governments, even those that moved further and further right than the broad diaspora of American Jews supported. Adelson’s narrow focus and mega dollars  have been a magnet, drawing most of the GOP candidates into making a pilgrimage to Adelson's offices in Las Vegas, some with great enthusiasm and some more surreptitiously. As the article points out Cruz and Walker are virtually tumbling over each other to latch onto the teat. Meanwhile, Bush is playing a more nuanced game. All GOP candidates are lined up against the Iran deal though, and the entire field is tilting further and further to the right in policies towards the Middle East generally, and Israel in particular.

Much of Israel's political support is legitimate political principle, but in 2015 there is so much money at stake, it’s hard to tell where principle leaves off and hunger for campaign cash picks up. Since these matters brush up directly against US military policy, the way in which these matters are decided is critical to every Amercian.

As with the ACA, it’s unlikely when the votes for the Iran deal come up in the House, and if they come up in the Senate, that even one GOP elected official will side with the President. That’s the kind of commitment to principle that ONLY money can buy.

This is what democracy looks like in a Citizen’s United country. Americans on both right and left decry the partisan gridlock, but as this article clearly points out if you want access to Adelson’s $100 million, there can be no grey in your policy statements towards Israel. You must do more than support the Israeli people; you must support the policies of the right-wing Israeli government without qualification or hesitation. You must agree that the Palestinians are, as Adelson says, a “made up people”. If you are going to venture anywhere in the direction of the real compromise that would be required to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israel and Palestine forgot squeezing a dime from Shelley Adelson.  As it pertains to policy towards Iran’s containment, you better be willing to put forward an overt military component, almost certainly requiring American troops on the ground. Anything short of these policy positions will be seen by Adelson as little more than milquetoast blathering. If you want a taste of Adelson’s dollars get on board or get lost.

Polarization in the US, driven by campaign cash, has combined with a hard right Israeli Government, publicly hostile to any negotiation, in such a way that no administration since Clinton has wandered into the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Even as Netanyahu made overt appeals to race in the closing days of his campaign, criticism from the US government was muted. Obama let it be known he didn’t like it, but aided by a small cadre of Democrats, the Republican right wing has neutralized any moves towards removing US policy from the noose of Likuid control. Aid to Israel, mostly military, has continued to flow. The whole world watched in horror has Israel bombed Gaza in the summer of 2014. But while the US complained about civilian casualties-- perpetuated almost completely by advanced rockets and other weapons produced in and provided by the US-- the Pentagon simultaneously re-supplied the Israeli stockpile.

In the same way that huge majorities support efforts at gun control, but Congress never enacts legislation consistent with those aspirations, votes in Congress pertaining to Israel follow a similar pattern. Amongst voters, Democrats when polled are far more tepid in their backing, but rock hard Republican support ensures that public opinion is seldom reflected in Congressional votes.

Line up ten billionaires with unlimited resources, each with a narrow agenda, and you will see uncompromising gridlock on ten issues. Line up a dozen corporations or their wealthy overlords, those willing and able to bundle tens of millions of dollars, and you will see Washington hopelessly tied up on 12 additional issues. The resulting gridlock drives more cynicism, which opens the field up further to narrow financial interests. Then more gridlock, then more cynicism, then more narrow interests, and so forth. Sprinkle generously with emotional issues like civil rights, gay rights, and abortion, all of which have proven quite effective in getting poor and working class whites to vote against their own economic interests and you’ll find yourself cruising to a landing in the political environment of 2015.

Ironically the bulwark against these purely financial considerations is the Obama coalition: African Americans, Latinos, the LBGT community and their supporters, young people, and liberals, especially in the Northeast and on the West Coast which account for a huge junk of the Electoral College. I say ironically, because what we are seeing at the moment is that financial interests are empowering extremist candidates, which by their very action are strengthening and mobilizing the progressive coalition.  

In an even match between big money donors and the progressive base of the Democratic Party, all but the most flawed candidates should carry Presidential Elections for the Democrats. Hillary is flawed, though I doubt she’s far enough gone to make people forget the GOP brand, and Sanders for all his principle will have the mighty mountain of “Socialist” to climb if he gets the nomination. That won’t matter, even a little in California or New York, but in the suburbs that ring major cities in every swing state in the country that’ll be a thing.

On the upside, as we have seen over these last months, Republicans are almost constitutionally committed to overreach on social issues. They literally can’t help themselves. The real danger both in this election and beyond is the sense of deep cynicism which is swallowing our politics. There is little danger in my view of the Obama coalition breaking up, but will they show up? Money, as I said, is the most common ingredient in the recipe for political cynicism. Adelson doesn’t care if his hoary cavalcade so disgusts the electorate that half the voters stay home in disgust on election day, so long as those that show up are willing to support candidates that are blindly pro-Israel. The awful choice isn’t really between Democrats and Republicans. It’s between progressivism and cynicism. Regardless of the polls this race is much closer than people think.