Taller ants

I agree with Liberal Seagull's last post (big surprise).

I want to add only that I really don't feel like I need to entertain allegations of "intolerance" from people who are not only themselves highly intolerant, but are accusing me of intolerance specifically for objecting to their intolerant views.

If you're at all outspokenly liberal, you know the argument I mean: "So you're unwilling to tolerate my belief that gay people should be beaten to death with sticks? So much for your liberal tolerance!"

Let's be abundantly clear, here. Saying that you think someone is wrong, even objectively wrong, even catastrophically wrong, is not in and of itself an act of bigotry. It may be "intolerance" by the dictionary definition of the word. Merriam-Webster's first definition for the word "intolerant" is, in fact, "unable or unwilling to endure." I would say that I am unable or unwilling to endure the notion that some members of society, who are doing no harm, should be denied the same rights everyone else enjoys simply because a loaded interpretation of a bronze-age religious text says they should be according to some people.

But the second definition offered there is A: unwilling to grant equal freedom of expression especially in religious matters; B: unwilling to grant or share social, political, or professional rights : BIGOTED." And I think, when people throw around the word "intolerant" in political discussions, this is the operative definition.

So, the argument conservatives who call argumentative liberals like myself "intolerant" are making is, in essence, "you're guilty of not believing in equality, because you refuse to regard my belief in inequality as being just as valid as your belief in equality."

To accept that, you must accept, logically, that believing in equality means believing that it's just as legitimate not to believe in equality. That logic rapidly disappears up its own butt and never re-emerges.

I'm going to continue to believe that being a bigot is, logically and morally, inferior to not being one. And I am never going to apologize for thinking that.

Is tolerance overrated?

Liberal Eagle's recent post got me thinking about the subject of tolerance. It's common to see conservatives accusing liberals of being intolerant of their views. This is especially true of religious views on issues like homosexuality, abortion, and contraception. Since "tolerance" is usually regarded as a positive trait, this causes considerable angst. No one wants to be accused of intolerance.

Conservatives generally don't believe abortion, homosexuality, and ready access to contraception should be tolerated. Is a tolerant person required to accept viewpoints that are, themselves, intolerant? If so, tolerance is a sure path to political irrelevancy, since it would seem to preclude objecting to someone's stand on those issues -- or, in fact, on any issues.

Either "tolerance" is being defined overly broadly, or it's overrated as a personality trait. To refrain from objecting to anyone else's views in the name of tolerance is to completely abandon political debate, and that's definitely not a positive thing.

Things that annoy the eagle

One thing I'm pretty thoroughly sick of being told is that I'm intolerant of differing views.

This is, really, almost always supported by the evidence that, since I openly disagree with differing views (by definition--I mean, what am I supposed to do, agree with everything anyone says?) I must therefore consider those views illegitimate.

That is, to be nice about it, such total crap I shouldn't even have to refute it, and yet, from time to time I find myself having to decide whether to explain once again that disagreeing with someone does not equal wanting to put them in concentration camps.

I'm serious. Someone actually said that to me, a couple years ago. It was one of those snarky one-line e-mails, something like "So, when do you plan to start putting us conservatives in concentration camps?"

This post was inspired by some idiot, more recently, lecturing me that "you believe that your view is the only possible right view and to hell with anyone who may have a different idea, ESPECIALLY if they're a member of the opposition party." (Funny, I thought I was in charge of what I believed, but evidently not.)

The lecture on the value of open debate continues: "You have to have dissenting opinions in order to have checks and balances. The problem is that being the opposition has turned into being the enemy and therefore they are the enemy and deserve no respect or quarter. That's what is destroying the American political system."

Apparently, if you have strong opinions and tend toward one end of the spectrum (the American spectrum--in most of the western world my views would be considered very centrist, but the American spectrum is pretty skewed to the right at the moment) you must therefore feel that people who disagree with you should be cleansed from the face of the earth. It is, apparently, inconceivable to some people that it is possible to hold strong opinions, forcibly argue them in public, and still see dissent as legitimate and even valuable.

I'm going to say this one final time: I think disagreement is legitimate and important. I will advocate my views, and I fully endorse the right of others, who hold different views, to do the same. I have never said otherwise. It is stupid to think that just because I have opinions, I must hate people who disagree.

Okay?

Holy Frist?

Bill Frist has stated he will not run for President in 2008. That's not really news; it's been obvious for a while that he didn't really have a chance. More interesting is the file photo CNN chose, which makes Frist appear to be wearing a halo:

Nutjobs for Bush

I'm sure most people who read this blog will be shocked--SHOCKED--to learn that according to a new study, there is a direct correlation between being psychotic, and voting for Bush.

According to the same study, Kerry voters were a lot more knowledgable than Bush voters, about current events. I know, duh, right? But it's nice to have outside confirmation.

Houses of cards

Big shock, here: I think Atrios is absolutely right. I also think it ties in nicely with my own last post:

When the history of this era is written, I hope it is remembered that the President of the United States created a deck of cards with "bad guys" on it. The media, rather than seeing this is a bizarre and infantile thing, thought it was wonderful. So wonderful that they dutifully printed the graphics on their newscasts, and created lovely interactive web features around it.

We are ruled by dangerously silly people.

War is hell; hell is other people

One frequent criticism of the warmongers currently running this country revolves around how few of them ever served in the military. In fact, a large number of them actively avoided it. George Bush, of course, famously got his dad to get him into a Texas Air National Guard unit stocked with the too-rich-to-fight-in-Vietnam (then skipped out on that). Dick Cheney has said he had "other priorities" during Vietnam; his wife also gave birth to their first child exactly nine months after Dick's type of draft deferment was ended. Rush Limbaugh had a cyst on his butt. Tom DeLay's excuse is that there were too many minorities serving, and they'd taken up all the slots (I swear I am not making this up).

I could go on.

There's nothing inherently wrong with supporting a war if you yourself have never been in the military. I myself have never been in the military. Not only that, I'd probably dodge the draft so hard I'd get motion sick, if it came up. (I can't imagine it would. I both ask and tell, among many other disqualifications.)

Nevertheless, I reluctantly supported the invasion of Afghanistan. Reluctantly not because of my own failure to serve, but because, well, any time you support a war it should be reluctant. Once again I find myself pointing out the bleedin' obvious, but war is bad. If war is sometimes necessary--and, sadly, I guess it is--that's because we have failed at preventing it. War is the breakdown of everything that makes humanity worthy of this earth.

Lao Tzu wrote that the best soldier fights without anger, and in fact goes into battle as if he were going to a funeral. I really believe in that. Which brings me to my personal issue with the supporters of this war. It's not just that they want other people to die in wars but skipped town when their turn came along. It's that there's this football spectator quality to the whole thing.

You know what I mean? That "we're goin' in there to kick some ass! Wooooooooooo!" quality of much of the original support for our current military engagements, most particularly Iraq.

My distaste for that sort of jingoistic cheerleading goes back to when I was a kid and the first Gulf War broke out. From how most people, on TV and on the radio and around me, reacted, you would have thought we were playing Iraq in a football game, instead of killing people (and getting Americans killed). I remember a Saturday Night Live sketch from the time, in which Dana Carvey's "Church Lady" character has Saddam Hussein on her show, and he starts explaining why he felt he had a right to invade Kuwait, and the Church Lady gets up and starts kicking Saddam's ass, and the audience goes "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" and apparently I'm the only one who's not happy.

Even when you think a war is necessary, you should conclude that sadly and reluctantly. You should not enjoy war. Ever.

That's why my contempt for George Bush was solidified when I learned that, in 2002, a full year before he stopped pretending he might not invade Iraq, he flippantly told some senators "fuck Saddam, we're takin' him out." Of course, he couldn't act like that in public, and he went around for a full year after that playing the part of a Very Serious Person who was only going to go to war if he was forced to to protect American lives. Which was always ridiculous; American lives were never on the line in Iraq, and the war was never avoidable once the neocons saw their moment to wage it. But a lot of people were duped into thinking we had no choice.

In a way, it's hopeful, to me, that what sold the war was the idea that there was no other choice. That tells me that even the casual warmongers were aware that most people don't view wars as a spectator sport. But there were people running around making arguments that made me really want to hurt them. Like the Washington Post's Richard Cohen, arguing that, after 9/11, we needed to start a war because it would be "therapeutic" (did Richard blink and miss Afghanistan?). Or Dennis Miller, who has really become a smug waste of space, grinning a shit-eating grin and declaring that, well, we had to go over there and mix it up with somebody to show we were tough, you know?

There's an obvious racism to both those arguments, at least in my mind. They seem to boil down to "we got attacked by brown people, so if we go attack some other brown people, that'll be a good response--they're all pretty much the same, right?"

And then you had the essential neoconservative argument, which, really, is what got us into Iraq to start with. All the talk of WMDs was pretty much a sales job; the Project For a New American Century, featuring such intellectual lights as Cheney and Wolfowitz, had been arguing since the early 1990s that if we knocked over Saddam and installed someone like Chalabi in his place, pro-western democracy would break out in the middle east.

Apart from being unrealistic, this has the distinction of being an argument for war as a first resort, war as a good thing in and of itself, put forward by a bunch of guys who mostly say they believed in the last war but avoided serving in it any way they could. When war threatens them, it's real. When they're not personally at risk, it's at best a pet ideological theory, and at worst a cheesy spectator sport.

And that's the part I find contemptible.

Liberal Eagle's weekly top five

All Toad edition.

5. Toad the Wet Sprocket, "I Will Not Take These Things For Granted"
4. Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Windmills"
3. Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Something's Always Wrong"
2. Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Before You Were Born"
1. Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Fly From Heaven"

Why profiling doesn't work.

I frequently hear conservative commentators complain that our approach to airport security is being crippled by political correctness. Their argument is that we should be focusing on Muslim-looking men, instead of inconveniencing everyone with random searches. Their example of how silly our current system is always involves some elderly grandmother being searched.

The problem, of course, is that terrorists adapt. If you only search people who fit a certain profile, they'll start recruiting people who don't. This was dramatically demonstrated today, when a 68-year-old grandmother detonated a suicide bomb, wounding two Israeli troops in the Gaza strip.

It's easy to fall into the trap of always fighting the last war. Just because all of the 9/11 hijackers were male and looked Arab doesn't mean the same will be true of the next attack. That is why random airport searches, to be effective, have to potentially involved everyone -- including 68-year-old grandmothers.

Fair and balanced

1994: Republicans sweep into control of Congress, including picking up a 26-seat margin in the House. Not a single Republican incumbent anywhere loses.

Media conventional wisdom: The country has given the Republican agenda a broad mandate, and decisively rejected the Democrats.

2006: Democrats sweep into control of Congress, including picking up a margin of at least 26 House seats, probably more. Not a single Democratic incumbent anywhere loses.

Media conventional wisdom: A pox on both their houses. The voters have rejected partisanship, and want both parties to work together.

1994: Incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich backs a political ally for Majority Whip, who goes on to lose to Tom DeLay for the post.

Media conventional wisdom: It doesn't matter; Newt is still the man. He's hailed as probably more powerful than President Clinton. Time Magazine names him "person of the year."

2006: Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi backs a political ally for Majority Leader, who goes on to lose to Steny Hoyer for the post.

Media conventional wisdom: Pelosi seriously blew it. She's damaged goods, now. She cannot plausibly lead.

Liberal media, my tailfeathers.

Sometimes, imitation is the highest form of flattery. Other times, it's just lame.

Slog (as well as many other news outlets) reports that Fox News is looking to launch their own news satire show, along the lines of the Daily Show, to lampoon "the sacred cows of the left" that they feel get a pass from existing satirical news outlets. This won't work, and not because there are no funny Republicans; there's something more generic wrong with it.

There's a long history of Republicans attempting to create their own, conservatively-slanted versions of products that express views they disagree with. Michael Moore Hates America, for example, was a direct response to the popularity of Bowling for Columbine. Unlike Bowling for Columbine, hardly anyone saw it; other than video sales and some screenings arranged for right-wing groups, it mostly sank without a trace. Perhaps even more absurdly, the Wood Flooring Manufacturers Association produced a book called Truax, complete with school lesson plans, to counter the anti-logging message of Dr. Seuss's The Lorax. You probably haven't heard of that one either.

The lesson here is that taking something cool and popular and trying to clone it, but with a different political slant, rarely works. It's calculated, for one thing, and calculation is the enemy of cool. (While the political right is most often guilty of this, it's worth noting that the left's attempt to clone right-wing talk radio, Air America, has not exactly been a resounding success either.)

There's something else wrong with a right-wing news satire show, though. The whole concept of right-wing satire borders on the grotesque, as anyone who has listened to Rush Limbaugh ridicule homeless people will attest. To quote Molly Ivins, "...satire can be quite a cruel weapon. It has historically been the weapon of powerless people aimed at the powerful. When you use satire as a weapon against powerless people, it is not only cruel, it is profoundly vulgar." While the Republicans' political influence is currently waning, they still represent powerful people -- corporations and the wealthy. They endorse policies that generally hurt the most vulnerable Americans. To then turn around and mock those people isn't funny, it's simply cruel.

Oh, the things he knows

The dumbass right-wing hack who "delcared war on" me recently has called me a "wet-nosed little androgynous metrosexual" in his latest laughable attempt to "rebut" things I say.

I can't let this slur on my character stand. Metrosexuals are straight. The correct slur is "queer." And, there are others--it's a rich tapestry. But I deeply resent the suggestion that I date women. Get it right, sir.

Tragedy, in the Greek sense

I recently watched the Frontline special about former Spokane mayor Jim West. You really have to feel for him. He was ruined by his own hypocrisy, it's true; but he was driven into that by the intolerant society he grew up in. That is the really sad part of the story. A man so tormented and so deep in the closet that, in spite of being gay himself, he once worked for legislation to prevent homosexuals from working as teachers. His life must have been hell.

Preaching to the choir, but...

Henry Kissinger says Iraq is unwinnable.

Tony Blair admits Iraq is a disaster.

Richard Perle, Kenneth "Cakewalk" Adelman and a host of other neoconservatives are scrambling to blame Bush for the catastrophe, lest we all think invading Iraq was a stupid idea to begin with.

Can we please dispense with the notion that the war is going fine and it's only the "liberal media" and "defeatocrats" who say otherwise?

EDIT: I hate to link to Newsmax, but Seagull pointed out an article there in which Ben Stein says we were better off with Saddam in power.

Liberal Eagle's weekly top five

1. Beck, "Lost Cause"
2. Suzanne Vega, "In Liverpool"
3. Foo Fighters, "Virginia Moon"
4. James Blunt, "Wisemen"
5. Bob Dylan, "Cold Irons Bound"

Bad news for the GOP?

The Stranger (a Seattle alternative weekly) has an article by Brian Mann that paints a bleak picture for Republicans. It's no secret that the Democrats generally carry the big cities, but in recent elections it appears the Republicans are now alienating people in the suburbs, as well. If the trend continues, they're going to be left with only white rural voters -- and while the U.S. electoral system gives rural voters disproportionate clout, that won't be enough to save them.

Part of the problem is the rise of blog culture and Internet video sites like YouTube. As Brian points out, it used to be Republicans could run as "stealth" conservatives -- saying one thing to urban crowds and another to rural gatherings. That doesn't work anymore, because every moment is recorded, and any gaffe or contradiction can be almost instantly spread around for people to mock and analyze.

The GOP needs to adapt or die, and a return to "traditional conservative values," as many conservative pundits are arguing, is not going to help. As often happens when a party suffers a major loss, various competing interests are arguing that this proves the party should have been doing what they've been arguing for all along. It'll be interesting to see if the party leadership figures out they need to find a way to appeal to urban moderates, or if they yield to pressure from their base to toe a hard-right line.

If you can't fix the problem, just change what you call it.

News flash: No one in America is "going hungry" anymore. They just have very low food security.

The New York Times reports that U.S. bishops have voted to accept new guidelines for how clergy members should deal with homosexual church members:

The guidelines welcome gay people, but they also affirm church teachings that “homosexual inclinations” are inherently disordered. While having such inclinations is not sinful, gay sexual activity is, according to the core teachings.

This is being taken as a traditional stance, and in some ways it is. But Christianity often teaches that thinking about someting sinful is itself sinful -- e.g., coveting your neighbor's wife. The idea that homosexual inclinations are, in themselves, not sinful seems like progress. My take is that the Catholic church is making a very slow three-point turn, and right now they're at that awkward point where they're crosswise to traffic with their front wheels against the curb.

And ye shall know the truth, maybe once in a while

From Jonathan Schwarz: this disturbing account of how much more the national press corps likes the establishment than they do the public.

What if they gave a war and nobody showed up?

This is actually pretty amusing--a certain fifth-tier radical-right-wing webcartoonist has formally "declared war" on me, whatever that means.

I only know of this particular troglodyte's existence because, back in the day, he used to hang out on the Ozy and Millie mailing list, spewing homophobic bile and insulting people; he was eventually banned for making crude threats of physical violence against various list members (in hindsight I can't believe I was as patient with his temper tantrums as I was).

Of course, it takes two to have a war, and other than this post I intend to ignore him entirely. As Liberal Seagull once told me, when I was weighing a response to an even more mindless verbal assault, "don't get into a mud wrestling match with a pig. You'll both get dirty, but the pig will enjoy it."

But I can't resist quoting this bit:

D.C. Simpson, militant liberal, left-wing propagandist, slanderer and libeler, had the immense misfortune one night to be the one who pushed my ire at liberal malfeasance over to critical mass. He will not be the only one to get the sharp edge of my tongue, but he will be the first.

Yes, you read that correctly. This raving homophobe just announced his intention to give me tongue. Sorry, man, I'm taken, and you're really not my type.

Some day I hope to get some better enemies, but to get to being called out by the O'Reillys of the world, I guess you must first be spat at by the lowest of the trolls.

Tips for voting machine activists

The vulnerability of voting machines is a serious issue, so it bothers me when I see it argued badly. Here are some suggestions I've come up with:

1. Talk about process, not implementation.

Arguing against specific voting machines or specific voting machine manufacturers is not productive. At best it's a game of whack-a-mole; even if everyone ditched Diebold machines tomorrow, there's nothing to say they'd replace them with something better. Focus on guidelines for deploying and using the machines that will prevent fraud and mistakes, or at least allow them to be detected. An example would be post-election audits in which hand counts of the paper ballots (or ballot receipts) from randomly-selected precincts are compared to machine tallies. Another example would be a requirement that machines be rigorously tested before each election with a stack of known ballots -- a stack which should include mis-marked and spoiled ballots. The machines should be adapted to the process, not vice versa.

If you push for good voting processes, good voting hardware will follow.

2. Talk about the future, not the past.

Arguing about whether a past election was stolen just opens you up to charges of being a sore loser. Even if you steadfastly believe the 2000 election was stolen, it's too late to fix it now. Talk about the how to make sure the next election is honest. This resonates with a wider audience. Only the people who backed the loser care about fraud in past elections, but anyone can see it as a threat in the future.

3. Make the case with facts, not speculation.

There are plenty of verified examples from the media of voting machine problems. There's no need to rely on hypotheticals -- stick to cold, hard facts.

"Conservative" Democrats?

All over the "mainstream media," I'm seeing the notion that the Democrats only won the election by running a bunch of fairly conservative candidates. Conservative bloggers and commentators take this even further, arguing that the Democrats won because the Republicans were insufficiently conservative, and this election is therefore actually a mandate for more conservative policies.

Personally, I think that's wrong. All successful political parties are coalitions. At the moment, the Democrats have successfully assembled a center-left coalition--that is, they won with centrist candidates like Jim Webb and Jon Tester, and also won with very liberal candidates, like Sherrod Brown. The Republicans, who for a while had a coalition of religious fundamentalists, free-market and small-government libertarians, and people they'd scared the shit out of, have meanwhile seen their coalition break down, as the libertarians grew restless about the size and intrusiveness of the federal government and the scared people stopped being quite so scared and started thinking rationally about their own interests.

Even the centrists who won in this cycle are, by and large, rather populist, even liberal, on issues like the minimum wage and environmental protection--expect progress on both fronts. And, I think there is now a majority for getting us out of Iraq. The truth is, the majority of the country supports liberal policies on most issues, so liberal policies, by and large, are centrist.

That's why I think this Democratic coalition could hold up a while. I hope I'm right.

Myths

Myths that were more or less dispelled by the 2006 elections:

1. Karl Rove is an unbeatable political genius.

In fact, Karl Rove is a reasonably smart political consultant, who knew how to take advantage of a terrified public in the first two post-9/11 elections. But, as 2006 demonstrates, he had no backup plan when that didn't work.

2. The country is now going to have an enduring Republican majority.

Clearly the Republicans themselves believed it, because they put a lot of rules in place that make the minority party's life miserable (now I almost wish they'd gone through with eliminating the judicial filibuster). But I think the opposite is true: I think the country would have trended back toward the Democrats in 2002, had 9/11 not terrified everybody into voting for Bush and his party. I think this election was less about fear and more about actual policy than any in years, and the Democrats won decisively. I think that will hold up for at least the next few years.

3. The Republicans are just going to steal elections with rigged voting machines. As Adam Felber said over at Fanatical Apathy:

If the Democrats DO manage to win a house or two, many of us will owe the Republican establishment a gigantic apology for alleging that their money-changing and machine-fixing ways had stolen our democracy. That apology CAN take the form of something like “I’m sorry I thought you were a lot better at cheating than you actually are.” Still, that does count as an apology.

Mind you, I'm not saying the Republicans don't play dirty pool--there are plenty of examples. But Diebold is not being used to ensure Republican victories.

Liberal Eagle's weekly top five

Special "the Democrats took Congress" edition:

1. The Beatles, "Here Comes the Sun"
2. R.E.M., "Shiny Happy People"
3. Pearl Jam, "Bushwhacked"
4. Tori Amos, "Pretty Good Year"
5. The Who, "Won't Get Fooled Again"

Twelve years in the wilderness

My political awareness began in earnest just before the hammer fell.

Oh, sure, I'd been dimly aware of the Reagan/Mondale election when I was 7, and then by the Bush/Dukakis election, I was involved enough, at 11, to be genuinely disappointed by the outcome. But it was 1992, when I was just starting high school, that I really started reading the papers and knowing what was going on. Or at least the press version of what was going on.

Bill Clinton. The first Democratic president since I was a toddler. I knew from a young age that I wasn't a Reagan or Bush fan, but Clinton...him I really believed in. I felt like there was some hope in politics now.

Two years later, the Republicans swept into Congress. It was like getting punched in the gut. And oh, the gloating. And oh, the media paeans to Newt Gingrich's eternal genius. And oh, the awful things those guys went around saying about the things I believed in. We were decadent. We were "counterculture McGovern-niks." We weren't "real Americans" like them. These were the people who'd ridden a tide of popular support, who were going to sail in and dismantle everything I believed in.

What can I say? I was a teenager. I had a flair for the dramatic. But the thing is...it really turned out to be that bad. We got welfare reform and environmental neglect and total inaction on health care. We got the gay-bashing Defense of Marriage Act. We got the impeachment of that first president to really inspire me, on charges that were nobody's business.

Then they stole the presidency, and we got the fearmongering, warmongering, environment-trashing, gay-bashing nightmare that was unchecked Republican power. For six years.

My age has almost doubled since the Republicans swept into power. Now that they've been swept back out...well, you know how when you're in actual physical pain, after a while you stop noticing? And you don't even think about it again until it stops? That's what this is like.

I'd forgotten what it was like not to lose. To have some respect for the people in power. To believe that legislation I'll actually like has a decent chance of passing, that the issues I actually care about might get discussed.

I'm actually hopeful. It's a huge adjustment.

All I can think is...

Why oh why did I not buy champagne?

Factcheck.org 2006 awards

Many of you are probably familiar with Factcheck.org, a website that attempts to verify claims made in political ads. It's been a busy election season for them, and tonight they decided to have some fun, posting their awards for the most notable (read: funniest) political ads of 2006. It's worth a look just for the screen shot of a Colorado ad that featured someone dressed up like Moses criticising a minimum wage amendment.