Some Healing Solutions
For Dubya--
Honestly, the idea of Dubya as a centrist out to create his legacy is funny enough to be worth all the angst of the past months. Kerry lost, and in several respects that's good. Second terms haven't been kind to presidents in my lifetime. In this case, this administration will get to reap what it sowed in the first term. Countries have gone broke before and come back, so we'll see about that one.
He's actually doing Item 1 of my proposed agenda: dump Ashcroft. Here's a man who took the job expecting only to bash perverts and wreck several parts of the Bill of Rights, who got stuck with trying to chase terrorists. What John-boy would have done had Sept. 11 never happened is something to think about with awe. What the terrorist game revealed was the man's fundamental cowardice. His body English on several key occasions has been that of someone scared shitless.
Alberto Gonzales? I sat through the patronising drivel that accompanies the nomination of every "deserving" nominee and only one thing struck me:
3. Surprise everyone and select his Supreme Court nominees on the basis of quality, not ideology. The latter, after all, has been a slippery standard for a long while. Judges expected to do nothing (like Warren) change the world, allegedly liberal judges become conservatives, and vice versa. The transformation that goes with responsibility to a higher principle has been around at least since Thomas a Becket. Since the first writing, smart money is on another string of mediocre ideologues. Again, we run up against the problem of the intelligence of the person at the top. Someone who is limited but secure will usually seek out smarter people as assistant. Someone like Dubya, limited and insecure, will pick people at least as limited as himself unless forced to do otherwise.
4. Get his own side to lower the volume. Have Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh,Coulter, et. al., over to the East Room or down to Crawford one at a time. He could make it clear he appreciates their interest, but he would also like it very much if they focused on real enemies instead of demonising American liberals. A steady diet of little perks and favoured leaks would be available to the cooperative. The uncooperative might be out of sources and ultimately out of work.
5. When the average American thinks "morality," I bet gay marriage isn't front of mind: Janet Jackson is. (I can think of several good reasons to lock her up and lose the key, but never mind.) However, isn't it odd that the media "bombarding" these poor people who evidently can't afford a remote are predominantly Republican, or at least good contributors. Isn't it time for Dubya to call in a chit or two for all the favours he's done them? There are a wide range to taste judgments open to media that fall short of censorship. Dubya should let it be known that he'd like those options exercised, show supporters like Rupert Murdoch that their envelope-pushing offends a majority of adults (and bores the rest). Make compliance with his wishes the key to future benefits or the payback for past ones.
For the Democrats
1. For Crissakes, start now to identify and groom new talent. The results of 2004 show that Americans aren't all that averse to inherited rule (they'll learn) but I am. That's why I've never been comfortable with Kennedys, and that's why I'm not thrilled with Hillary.
2. Get some dialogue going nationally. I believe it's true that the Northeast isn't listening to the South and West, nor is the West Coast, nor vice versa. Actually get people together to explore differences and find common ground.
3. Working quietly, drive some wedges to break up Republican constituencies and issues.
3a. I think the easiest would be to develop a working consensus on gun control that shuts out the animal rights, anti-hunting extremists, absolutely guarantees responsible possession of defined sporting arms, and puts reasonable curbs on arms meant solely for people killing. Yes, I've used guns and hunted. Anyone who has knows the difference between the two types. So don't bullshit me. This is an issue on which many liberals need to tone it down. Remove the white male complaint that "they'll take my guns away," and you've taken a large pile of fuel from the fire.
3b. If there are any journalists left out there (that is, people who dig around to find out the truth behind spin) let's have a hard look at the actual numbers of evangelicals and the differences between them and fundamentalists. I keep seeing obscure statistical studies that indicate evangelism is shrinking, not growing. When Christians meet in conference, one of the principal topics is how to stop loss, and whether Christianity will survive the 21st century.
The reason that so much of evangelical/fundamentalist rhetoric is the language of a threatened minority is that they are a minority. Very quietly, in the past year, the proportion of Americans who are members of an organised religion fell under 50 percent for the first time. Evangelical/fundamentalist enrollment is said to have fallen in ten years from 20 to 12 percent of that minority of religion members. This is in sharp contrast to the much-cited study of 2000 or so claiming 40 percent of Americans identify as "evangelical Christians." They may tell the pollster that, but they ain't dropping into church or dropping cash in the plate.
3c. Not only are they are a minority, they're a contentious minority. Liberal Democrats have done evangelicals a great favour by seeing only the generic mass of "the religious right. " Right now, The Southern Baptist Conference is reportedly looking for wiggle room to move a little to the left of more extreme sects. Presbyterianism and Methodism are on the verge of schism over fundamentalist theology as well as social issues. Fundamentalists and Mormons appear to live on the edge of actual bloodshed over their differences. Moreover, as David Brooks has remarked, the majority of those churchgoers don't hold extreme opinions. In much of the country, you join a church as a social, not a theological, activity. Most of this social Christianity is invisible in Manhattan or inside the Beltway. A thoughtful, underground Democratic strategy involving committed believers with progressive politics would exploit and widen sectarian differences. It would increase the apparent distance between the rank and file church members and the intolerant extremists who profess to speak for them. Heck, they might even recruit a few new liberal churchgoers.
Doesn't sound like healing? If you consider religious interference in the state a toxic and divisive trend, it's healing to isolate the poison and treat the body politic.
4. Few people spend most of their time worrying about morality. Insider Democrats need to pay better attention and observe that people upset about social issues are often directing their anxiety, anger and frustration about more basic issues onto matters that seem easier to handle. Democrats understand Rust Belt unemployment fairly well. They seem less aware of a huge geological shift. Much of the Middle West may well be uninhabitable within a generation, since it seems the much-despised 19th century geographers were right. The region is a desert; it won't sustain agriculture indefinitely, and since we've paved over much of the truly arable land further east and west, the whole country could be in deep shit. However, the shit is much deeper and more immediate if you live in much of Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, or the Dakotas. Democrats have long been good at both empathy and solutions in such situations. Get out there, empathise and innovate, and one may find that many of those social issues become less urgent when people's daily problems are being addressed.
5. My wife suggests the Clinton riff on abortion for the present: "safe, legal, and rare." That defuses some of the less committed opposition. There's scope for more grass-roots wedge driving, especially on gender grounds. Most of the people who fulminate and moralise about abortion are men. Most of those who agonise about it are women. It is not unreasonable to suggest abortion, like any surgical procedure, ought to be a last resort. It is long past time medicine took up and resolved the question of what signs exactly indicate sentience, when it begins and in what species. The next step would be a general recognition not of sentimentalised "rights" for embryos, but of fundamental respect for sentience wherever it appears. These are decisions for scientists, not politicians or theologians. One cannot logically oppose abortion, and ridicule protection for cetaceans or primates if the test of our actions is sentience.
Similarly, terminating a pregnancy is ultimately the decision of the owner of the uterus in question, not the state. As I would oppose eugenics, or any state act that directs a woman to terminate a pregnancy, so I must oppose any state act that prevents her from doing so.
On the one hand, I believe the function of an opposition in a free society is to oppose and not to be intimidated out of opposition. On the other, let the other guy start the fight. I'd give Dubya all the rope he needs to hang himself: he won't be long about it.
I do think Dubya's idea of "reaching out" is "do it my way." I'll have a whole other set of ideas once that's proven beyond doubt.
Honestly, the idea of Dubya as a centrist out to create his legacy is funny enough to be worth all the angst of the past months. Kerry lost, and in several respects that's good. Second terms haven't been kind to presidents in my lifetime. In this case, this administration will get to reap what it sowed in the first term. Countries have gone broke before and come back, so we'll see about that one.
He's actually doing Item 1 of my proposed agenda: dump Ashcroft. Here's a man who took the job expecting only to bash perverts and wreck several parts of the Bill of Rights, who got stuck with trying to chase terrorists. What John-boy would have done had Sept. 11 never happened is something to think about with awe. What the terrorist game revealed was the man's fundamental cowardice. His body English on several key occasions has been that of someone scared shitless.
Alberto Gonzales? I sat through the patronising drivel that accompanies the nomination of every "deserving" nominee and only one thing struck me:
Considering the likelihood that the new Attorney general has been chosen to be a yes man, chalk up another one to the unintended humour of Dubya. The only thing missing is having someone call Gonzales "a credit to his race."Gonzales' political career has flourished under Bush's patronage.... "I am grateful he keeps saying yes," Bush said.
3. Surprise everyone and select his Supreme Court nominees on the basis of quality, not ideology. The latter, after all, has been a slippery standard for a long while. Judges expected to do nothing (like Warren) change the world, allegedly liberal judges become conservatives, and vice versa. The transformation that goes with responsibility to a higher principle has been around at least since Thomas a Becket. Since the first writing, smart money is on another string of mediocre ideologues. Again, we run up against the problem of the intelligence of the person at the top. Someone who is limited but secure will usually seek out smarter people as assistant. Someone like Dubya, limited and insecure, will pick people at least as limited as himself unless forced to do otherwise.
4. Get his own side to lower the volume. Have Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh,Coulter, et. al., over to the East Room or down to Crawford one at a time. He could make it clear he appreciates their interest, but he would also like it very much if they focused on real enemies instead of demonising American liberals. A steady diet of little perks and favoured leaks would be available to the cooperative. The uncooperative might be out of sources and ultimately out of work.
5. When the average American thinks "morality," I bet gay marriage isn't front of mind: Janet Jackson is. (I can think of several good reasons to lock her up and lose the key, but never mind.) However, isn't it odd that the media "bombarding" these poor people who evidently can't afford a remote are predominantly Republican, or at least good contributors. Isn't it time for Dubya to call in a chit or two for all the favours he's done them? There are a wide range to taste judgments open to media that fall short of censorship. Dubya should let it be known that he'd like those options exercised, show supporters like Rupert Murdoch that their envelope-pushing offends a majority of adults (and bores the rest). Make compliance with his wishes the key to future benefits or the payback for past ones.
For the Democrats
1. For Crissakes, start now to identify and groom new talent. The results of 2004 show that Americans aren't all that averse to inherited rule (they'll learn) but I am. That's why I've never been comfortable with Kennedys, and that's why I'm not thrilled with Hillary.
2. Get some dialogue going nationally. I believe it's true that the Northeast isn't listening to the South and West, nor is the West Coast, nor vice versa. Actually get people together to explore differences and find common ground.
3. Working quietly, drive some wedges to break up Republican constituencies and issues.
3a. I think the easiest would be to develop a working consensus on gun control that shuts out the animal rights, anti-hunting extremists, absolutely guarantees responsible possession of defined sporting arms, and puts reasonable curbs on arms meant solely for people killing. Yes, I've used guns and hunted. Anyone who has knows the difference between the two types. So don't bullshit me. This is an issue on which many liberals need to tone it down. Remove the white male complaint that "they'll take my guns away," and you've taken a large pile of fuel from the fire.
3b. If there are any journalists left out there (that is, people who dig around to find out the truth behind spin) let's have a hard look at the actual numbers of evangelicals and the differences between them and fundamentalists. I keep seeing obscure statistical studies that indicate evangelism is shrinking, not growing. When Christians meet in conference, one of the principal topics is how to stop loss, and whether Christianity will survive the 21st century.
The reason that so much of evangelical/fundamentalist rhetoric is the language of a threatened minority is that they are a minority. Very quietly, in the past year, the proportion of Americans who are members of an organised religion fell under 50 percent for the first time. Evangelical/fundamentalist enrollment is said to have fallen in ten years from 20 to 12 percent of that minority of religion members. This is in sharp contrast to the much-cited study of 2000 or so claiming 40 percent of Americans identify as "evangelical Christians." They may tell the pollster that, but they ain't dropping into church or dropping cash in the plate.
3c. Not only are they are a minority, they're a contentious minority. Liberal Democrats have done evangelicals a great favour by seeing only the generic mass of "the religious right. " Right now, The Southern Baptist Conference is reportedly looking for wiggle room to move a little to the left of more extreme sects. Presbyterianism and Methodism are on the verge of schism over fundamentalist theology as well as social issues. Fundamentalists and Mormons appear to live on the edge of actual bloodshed over their differences. Moreover, as David Brooks has remarked, the majority of those churchgoers don't hold extreme opinions. In much of the country, you join a church as a social, not a theological, activity. Most of this social Christianity is invisible in Manhattan or inside the Beltway. A thoughtful, underground Democratic strategy involving committed believers with progressive politics would exploit and widen sectarian differences. It would increase the apparent distance between the rank and file church members and the intolerant extremists who profess to speak for them. Heck, they might even recruit a few new liberal churchgoers.
Doesn't sound like healing? If you consider religious interference in the state a toxic and divisive trend, it's healing to isolate the poison and treat the body politic.
4. Few people spend most of their time worrying about morality. Insider Democrats need to pay better attention and observe that people upset about social issues are often directing their anxiety, anger and frustration about more basic issues onto matters that seem easier to handle. Democrats understand Rust Belt unemployment fairly well. They seem less aware of a huge geological shift. Much of the Middle West may well be uninhabitable within a generation, since it seems the much-despised 19th century geographers were right. The region is a desert; it won't sustain agriculture indefinitely, and since we've paved over much of the truly arable land further east and west, the whole country could be in deep shit. However, the shit is much deeper and more immediate if you live in much of Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, or the Dakotas. Democrats have long been good at both empathy and solutions in such situations. Get out there, empathise and innovate, and one may find that many of those social issues become less urgent when people's daily problems are being addressed.
5. My wife suggests the Clinton riff on abortion for the present: "safe, legal, and rare." That defuses some of the less committed opposition. There's scope for more grass-roots wedge driving, especially on gender grounds. Most of the people who fulminate and moralise about abortion are men. Most of those who agonise about it are women. It is not unreasonable to suggest abortion, like any surgical procedure, ought to be a last resort. It is long past time medicine took up and resolved the question of what signs exactly indicate sentience, when it begins and in what species. The next step would be a general recognition not of sentimentalised "rights" for embryos, but of fundamental respect for sentience wherever it appears. These are decisions for scientists, not politicians or theologians. One cannot logically oppose abortion, and ridicule protection for cetaceans or primates if the test of our actions is sentience.
Similarly, terminating a pregnancy is ultimately the decision of the owner of the uterus in question, not the state. As I would oppose eugenics, or any state act that directs a woman to terminate a pregnancy, so I must oppose any state act that prevents her from doing so.
On the one hand, I believe the function of an opposition in a free society is to oppose and not to be intimidated out of opposition. On the other, let the other guy start the fight. I'd give Dubya all the rope he needs to hang himself: he won't be long about it.
I do think Dubya's idea of "reaching out" is "do it my way." I'll have a whole other set of ideas once that's proven beyond doubt.
posted by Uncle | 06:35
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