Monday, November 29, 2004

Fair warning

This will be one of my extremely rare political pages. Given that Mike Norton’s political blogging routinely generates zero comments, I hereby excuse all my readers (the four of you) from posting any responses, either. But there’s a lot of stuff in the paper today I want to comment on.

Right vs. Right

Occasionally political parties die out. This usually happens when another political party simply overwhelms them ideologically. When the voting population of an ostensibly democratic nation becomes so thoroughly polarized to one end of the political/social spectrum or another, the party that drew its strength from the opposite end generally simply fades away. First there is a period in which that party starts repositioning itself on the political spectrum, creeping closer and closer to the center, to try and keep at least some of its adherents and maybe pick up a few moderates. But eventually, when that opposing party starts to seem rather indistinguishable from the more dominant faction, well… it just expires.

The next thing that inevitably happens is that the dominant party splits into two or more sub-parties.

This has happened before in American history. In Washington’s time, the two dominant political parties that grew up around the central issue of his two administrations (states’ rights) were the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists.

If you’re wondering how these two parties corresponded to the two parties we have in America today, it may help to know that the Anti-Federalists, or the states’ rights advocates, were also known rather more commonly as “Jefferson’s Republicans”. A part of which vernacular phrase later came into more common usage than the admittedly clumsier “Anti-Federalists”.

So the Republicans have been around since nearly the first day of, well, the Republic. The Democrats came into being rather later. And, unfortunately, they seem to be on the way out again, too… all of which leads me to believe that the majority feeling in this country… the ideological bedrock on which this nation was founded, and which continues to inform the mainstream consensus… is a cussed, ornery isolationist impulse to just have everybody in authority shut the hell up and leave us the hell alone.

An article in today’s St. Pete Times, reprinted from the L.A. Times without a specific byline, indicates that the Republican dominated Supreme Court may be about to anticipate the national political trend over the next twenty years or so, by dividing along the lines of certain principles regarding certain key cases that the current administration has asked them to review.

Early on, the article gave me some small smidgen of hope by stating “The social conservatives seek more government enforcement in areas including abortion, pornography, drugs, immigration, and gay rights. The small-government, free-market conservatives seek fewer restrictions on private behavior.”

Those small-government, free-market conservatives who want fewer restrictions on private behavior… hey! I like the sound of those guys. Where the hell have THEY been for the last thirty years?

Unfortunately, a bit further on in the article, the rhetorical smoke clears a bit, and we see things with more clarity:

“In the past decade, the high court’s conservative justices, led by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, served notice that they wanted to restore the limits on Federal power. They did so by focusing on the Constitution’s main source of federal power, the provision that says Congress “may regulate commerce among the several states”.

In other words, this isn’t really a situation where anyone is particularly interested in your rights, or my rights, as individuals and private citizens, to behave and express ourselves in any damned way we please, as long as that behavior and self expression does not interfere with anyone else’s similar rights (which is tricky enough).

What this is, is a case where one faction likes the idea of a strong central authoritarian government just fine, as long as that central government is being run by fundamentalist religious bigots who share the faction’s own peculiar brand of fundamentalist bigotry.

The other faction, on the other hand, doesn’t like the idea of a strong central authoritarian government at all. It would prefer that the various states be allowed to each profess their own particularly provincial and woolly-headed brands of bigotry without interference from The Man.

Now, there’s a temptation here, as I alluded to above, to jump right in on the side of the Anti-Federalists. Right now, Big Brother looks pretty scary, wearing as he does the various different faces of scared, prudish little tin-pot wannabe moral dictators and crusaders for decency and family VAL-yews like John Ashcroft, Dick Cheney, and ol’ Dubya himself. Nearly anything that puts up a few traffic barriers between Us and Them would seem very welcome right now. And it must be admitted that the Anti-Federalist faction is on what I have to consider to be the sane, rational side of the issues the Court is being asked to pronounce judgement on. If the Court comes down on the side of States Rights, then Ashcroft will be told to go stuff himself regarding his raging, foot stamping need to send the Federal drug Gestapo after patients in Oregon and California who smoke medical marijuana. He’ll also be told to sit down and shut up about Oregon’s right to die laws. In cases where the only legislative sanity to be found in all of America is within a tragically few State Legislatures, our overwhelming temptation as thinking beings who cherish our own freedom as well as the freedom of others must be to side with these avid States’ Rights Partisans.

However, a strong central government has, in my opinion, done far more good than harm over the past two hundred years, and States’ Rights is a clarion cry that has done far more harm than good in that same time period. If our current Supreme Court comes back firmly with a decision to kneecap the Federal government in these regards, deciding to enforce an absolutely strict interpretation of the commerce clause, well, the look on Dubya and Ashcroft’s faces at that moment will definitely be a Kodak moment. (The look of stunned disbelief and terror writ large on every thinking American’s face a few moments later when Dubya orders the Marines into Oregon and California will be less amusing, though.)

However, it behooves us, as thinking people (I know all four of you reading this are) to remember that it’s not just Oregon, with its admirably libertarian social views regarding a person’s right to end their own terminal agony when they want to, instead of when a distant God decides they should, or California, with their entirely sane notion that any medicine that eases someone’s pain or actually helps to improve their impaired health somewhat should be considered a valid treatment, that will prosper with such a ruling. To put it bluntly, Confederate flags will once more fly over state capitols throughout the South, should the Supreme Court decide to bitch slap Washington D.C. in this manner.

Beyond that, it’s simply not something that is going to pull America together as a nation, and Americans together as a people. Any strong movement for states’ rights will, in my opinion, not go far enough. We may as well go whole hog and let the cities declare their independence from the surrounding countryside, as that is where the real political divisions lie in our country. The simple fact of the matter is, people who live in relatively densely populated urban areas have to learn to tolerate their neighbors peccadilloes and respect their privacy, simply as a survival trait. It’s only in areas where everybody knows everybody else’s name that people feel comfortable meddling in everyone else’s business.

Me, I’m still kind of hoping that if and when the Democratic Party vanishes and the Republican Party divides itself, those apparently mythical small-government, free-market conservatives who seek fewer restrictions on private behavior will come out of the woodwork and form the core of one of the more prominent Republican splinters. We could really use those guys right now. I would hail them as True American Heroes, if I ever caught so much as a glimmer of any of them, even in a fuzzy photograph.

I myself have seen little to no evidence they actually exist, but I suppose there’s always hope. After all, Bigfoot is real…

No, wait…

Rumors on the right

Tamar Jacoby, who seems to be very learned, judging from what I just Googled about her (do it yourself, I have enough typing to do), especially for a neo-conservative Bush supporter, has an editorial in today’s St. Pete Times (again, reprinted from the L.A. Times) talking about Bush’s push to reform America’s immigration policy. She claims that it’s a work of courage and vision on Bush’s part to take on an issue that is so vehemently opposed by his rabid right wing constituency. Given that one of the Google references I pulled up about her was a foaming at the keyboard, spittle flecked denunciation of Ms. Jacoby penned by some right wing nutjob who proudly claims authorship of a book entitled America Extinguished: Mass Immigration And The Disintegration Of American Culture (I mean, geez, you can practically see the swastika armband on this guy, can’t you?), I’m tempted to give Ms. Jacoby the benefit of the doubt. Maybe Dubya is doing something principled, something that he actually believes in, regardless of the political price he’s going to pay. And maybe, just for once, that principled something, that Dubya honestly believes in, isn’t something totally scary, like blowing the arms and legs off a ten year old in downtown Baghdad, or locking up a swarthy skinned American without trial or legal representation or filing actual charges because we suspect he may be thinking about doing something bad at some point in the future, or herding everybody who waves a sign he doesn’t want to read into a ‘free speech zone’ ten miles down the street and behind several buildings.

Maybe.

I don’t know. I like Dubya’s public stance on space exploration, too.

It could just be the law of averages. He’s been so appallingly wrong so many times that he was due to lob out a couple of things I could get behind. Eventually.

Anyway, Dubya apparently wants to create a new status for illegal immigrants in our country: “guest workers”. An informal entry process would be forgiven, and “guest workers” could register for driver’s licenses and file tax returns without having to worry about being immediately deported. This is such an utterly sane, sensible, pragmatically useful, and genuinely compassionate idea that I’m honestly astonished to be told it originates with the current Oval Office holder. Honestly, I don’t know what to say. “Go, Dubya” seems about right… but, no, now I’m choking…

Immigration is, of course, one of those hot button issues that brings out an enormous amount of emotion in people. I myself was somewhat ashamed, a few years ago, to realize, when I subjected my views to rigorous self analysis, that although I was strongly in favor of an open borders policy, reasoning that America, after all, had historically thrived on the cast offs, dregs, exiles, refugees, and other such flotsam of supposedly better nations throughout the world (I’m a hopeless romantic; sue me), when I envisioned such proud, teeming hordes washing onto our shores and immediately colonizing the West in Conestoga wagons they built with their own two hands, or erecting steel factories from scratch on an empty vacant lot somewhere in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of New York City, well… those people in my daydreams were always rather pallid of complexion. Cau-CAS-yun, don’t you know. Sometimes they had golden blonde pigtails and adorable freckles as they toiled tirelessly across the American prairie in their wooden shoes right alongside their strapping oxen, and other times they were brunettes or redheads smoking pipes and gnawing on potatoes as they hopped off the boats from County Cork and immediately set up pleasantly rustic looking whiskey distilleries in their one room shanties, but, well, they were all pretty goddam WHITE. And when I made the mental effort necessary to transform those imaginary visages into something considerably more reflective of 20th and 21st Century immigration trends… in other words, when I cranked up the melanin content considerably and changed the accents from Northern European to Hispanic and Latin and African and Asian… well, honestly, my hackles went up.

I can’t deny it. Emotionally, I’m all in favor of us benevolent Americans letting in all the white refugee European peasants we can get. And giving them large tracts of land to set up mills and steel plants and railroads and malt shops on, too, by jingo. But when it comes to little brown brother, well, emotionally, I want troops on the border and a damned big fence and 15,000 snarling Dobermans.

Just like, I suppose, that lunatic neo-Himmler and his Disintegration of American Culture tract.

Intellectually, well, I realize my bigotry and I’m not proud of it, and I’m perfectly willing to admit that immigrants with darker skin and more exotic accents have just as much right to come here and live and work and play and die, and just as much ability to strengthen the American economy and make contributions to American culture while they do it, as anyone else. And if Bush sincerely wants to make it somewhat easier for those with rotten lives in other, worse countries, to come here and put in an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay in our less rotten, clearly better one, well…

Yay, Dubya.

Geez, that’s hard to type.

Fairness often sucks

And yet, it compels me to mention an Associated Press piece, also in today’s St. Pete Times, in which it is reported that an independent count conducted by the Miami Herald shows that Bush’s overwhelming win in several north Florida counties was, indeed, legitimate.

While these counties were, indeed, overwhelmingly Democratic as far as their residents’ registered affiliations went, interviews by reporters sent to check the vote tally showed that most of these north Florida residents were staunchly conservative Christians who registered as Democrats so they could vote in local Democratic primaries. (Sneaky little fucks.)

However, in terms of their actual social and political agendas, well, lets just say that they all spell potato with the terminal ‘e’, and if you’re running for a local legislative office, you still can’t go wrong by beating the ‘family VAL-yews’ drum.

Especially if you’re careful to pronounce it just that way.

So the suspicious landslide of supposed Democrats voting overwhelmingly Republican turns out to be… well, sort of fraud, yes, in that it’s due to a lot of miserable conservative Christians lying their asses off, in legal court documents, so they can short circuit the democratic process on a routine basis by packing the Democratic party with the most moderate to conservative candidates they can get on the ticket.

But at least everyone’s vote was counted properly.

The Miami Herald, in case you’re wondering, endorsed Kerry in our recent election.

And, yes, I know, I had a piece a few weeks back advocating that liberals should all join the Republican party so we can cull the really rabid right win nuts out at the primary level, too. But I was more or less being ironic when I said it, because the problem with liberals is, we are generally too principled to actually do stuff like that.

Which is, most likely, why we are very nearly extinct.

RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, "Wow, I didn't recognize you in men's clothing". According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I'm reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I'd take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here's The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people's blogs, you MUST NOT:

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin's Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron's blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don't really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren't related to me by marriage, I'd most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I've learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don't care if you:

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I'd get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don't Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.