Politics
December 06, 2004
CBS & NBC say opposing intolerance is "too controversial"
A new TV ad campaign by the United Church of Christ (including the Congregationalists) shows a conservative church with a velvet rope and bouncers turning away anyone who is gay, non-white or weird looking. The ad says, "Jesus didn't turn people away. Neither do we. No matter who you are, or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here." CBS and NBC have refused to air the ads. "Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations," says CBS, "and the fact the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the [CBS and UPN] networks." NBC, home of Will & Grace and Queer Eye, just said it was...Full entry: CBS & NBC say opposing intolerance is "too controversial"
November 11, 2004
I did not work for Kerry
November 7, 2004 I did not work for Kerry, though I was hoping he'd win. I'm in politics, and I used that as an excuse -- I was already working for the cause, so I didn't need to also work for Kerry. But the truth is I had no desire to. When Dean was running, I found time to help his campaign; somehow, I didn't find that same time for Kerry. This despite my intimate knowledge of the stakes involved. I have been in formal and informal meetings these last few days that inevitably turn into post mortems on the election, and several times I've heard people echo my reaction: annoyance at the fact that I ever let myself be OK with Kerry being the candidate. When this whole thing started, Kerry was down near the bottom of my list...Full entry: I did not work for Kerry
November 10, 2004
the real voter map
This is really fascinating and made me feel a lot better. There have been all these maps all over the media showing the vast red expanse and little strips of blue on the northern coasts. This map is the real story though. Regions are distorted to match area size to population, and shades of purple represent mixed red/blue for areas where the vote was close, most of which show as red on other maps even though the republicans won my a narrow margin. Note that there are many areas that are heavily blue-Democrat and only a very trivial number of areas that are solid red-Republican. I looked them up on the non-baloony version of the map and the one near the top left that looks like a Star Trek Federation badge is Utah, and the vertical line to its right a bit is the vertical strip of South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and northwest Texas.
The site where you can find this and the other views, and commentary about the statistics, is here: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/.
I sure wish our media treated things like this with an approach of helping people understand the data, rather than just spewing misleadingly simplistic facts.
Full entry: the real voter map
November 02, 2004
picking up the thread we let go of in the morass of the 70s
Whether Bush wins and is a lame duck or loses and is blamed for the loss, we are perhaps about to witness the end of the Republican Party as we know it -- the coalition of fiscal libertarians and social conservatives. The combination has never made sense and only worked when they were united against Communists and 60s radicals, which is now irrelevant. It is only the support of the fiscal conservatives and traditionalists that has given the radical right a legitimate voice in American politics these past few decades.
About 3/4ths of Americans are liberal on social issues and I believe we are about to embark on an extended run of responsibly liberal governance that will bring us back in line with Europe and the rest of the "developed" world. I was talking with a friend from England last night and she said that while, of course, there are people and politicians in Europe who have radical right views, they know they have no shot at controlling the government and overturning liberal values like the social welfare contract and choice and gay rights. Not to get too blue-skyey, but I see us picking up the thread we let go of in the morass of the 70s and continuing our political evolution: reaffirming society's responsibility to its weaker members, reengaging the world community, rejoining the environmental movement.
Full entry: picking up the thread we let go of in the morass of the 70s
October 24, 2004
Leading conservatives endorse Kerry, Nader
This is fascinating. Pat Buchanan's magazine, The American Conservative, decided not to endorse anyone this election, but instead run separate endorsements from the individual editors. Buchanan, while he disagrees with Bush on most things, decides to endorse him anyway. But the number two, Executive Editor Scott McConnell goes the other way. Altogether, the editorials break down: 1 for Bush, 1 for Kerry, 1 for Nader, 1 for the Libertarian, 2 for the Constitution Party, and 1 for staying home. They're all interesting, and from these links, you can check out all the others. Given, there's an unsavory anti-immigrant angle in some of it, but putting that aside, there is fascinating material in here supporting my long-standing and oft-reiterated view that there is nothing conservative about this president. The Kerry endorsement is here: http://www.amconmag.com/2004_11_08/cover1.html. Equally interesting to me, as a former Green leader and long-time proponant of decentralism is the Nader endorsement, http://www.amconmag.com/2004_11_08/cover2.html,which asserts that his anti-corporatism is pure small-c conservatism.
Full entry: Leading conservatives endorse Kerry, Nader
October 19, 2004
On Alter's 10/18/04 Newsweek column Try a Slice of Humble Pie
To the Editor,
In Jonathan Alter's October 18, 2004 Newsweek column, Try a Slice of Humble Pie, he says: "From the outset, Bush has treated John Kerry like a terrorist".
The proper logical construction is not that Bush treats Kerry like a terrorist; it's that Bush treats anyone who disagrees with him, anyone who sees things differently, as "them", the Other. The woman who asked the debate question about whether he had made any mistakes, the media, the terrorists, Democrats, non-Fundamentalist Christians, cabinet members who've criticized him, are all evil, out to get him (and goodness in general.)
A tactical benefit of seeing one's enemies as "them" is that it allows one to maintain a facade of civility while waging battle using inhuman tactics. There is no strategic difference between Abu Grab and the Swift Boat ads; they both assume an any-means-necessary approach justified by the ends.
Bush doesn't treat John Kerry like a terrorist; he sees John Kerry as a terrorist. To George W. Bush, if you are not with him, you are against him, and if you are against him, you cannot be a righteous person. This way of thinking in anyone is dangerous; in the leader of the free world, it is catastrophic.
Phil Rose
New York, New York
Full entry: On Alter's 10/18/04 Newsweek column Try a Slice of Humble Pie
On Alter's 10/11/04 Newsweek column Your Gut Only Gets You So Far
To the Editor, In Jonathan Alter's October 11, 2004 Newsweek column, Your Gut Only Gets You So Far, Alter betrays a wrong-headed understanding of the thesis of Malcolm Gladwell's upcoming book, Blink. I hope Alter hasn't read the book but only heard about it around the cocktail party circuit; otherwise, his characterization is inexplicable. Gladwell's broad thesis, as I understand it after reading the impressive book, is that people often distrust their gut reaction and overthink a problem, that their initial decision is not a simplistic instinct-only response but a relatively sophisticated one, and that, not recognizing this fact, they spend a lot of time proving it out. His secondary point is that this proving is really only so they can feel OK about the view they already arrived at; it often adds nothing to the decision and, critically, can...Full entry: On Alter's 10/11/04 Newsweek column Your Gut Only Gets You So Far
October 13, 2004
On Hanson's 10/08/04 National Review Online column, Sizing Up Iraq
On Victor Davis Hanson's October 08, 2004 column in National Review Online, Sizing Up Iraq by Philip F. Rose [This was submitted to National Review as a letter to the editor, but I haven't noticed they ever publish letters from non-conservatives, only praise and minor squabbling, so I'm more than doubtful they will publish it.] Hanson's analysis, based he says on "constants across 2,500 years of time and space that presage victory or defeat" leaves out one rather significant area: Is it right for us to be there? Is it moral? Ethical? Worthy and obtaining of respect in the world? I realize it was not his task to answer this question, but I find it immoral in itself to ask only whether we can win without asking whether we have a moral leg to stand on as we shoot up...Full entry: On Hanson's 10/08/04 National Review Online column, Sizing Up Iraq
June 24, 2004
White's unobjective attack on Moore and film
(Note: The first paragraph of this piece ran as a letter to the editor in the 6/30 issue of NYPress. Go to www.nypress.com/17/26/mail/TheMail.cfm and scroll down to "Moore vs. White, XII".) Armond White's piece on Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11, in the June 23, 2004 issue of the New York Press, is a biased political screed, not an honest review of the film. I did not start out a fan of Moore's, but each of his films has been less sentimental, more cohesive and more fact-based. This film is almost there -- gimmicks are few and non-central, documentation is substantial. Moore was careful on this one, because he didn't want it to be attackable on these grounds. White doesn't care; his blanket swipes at Moore suggest someone who didn't watch the current film with anything like objectivity. Nor is there...Full entry: White's unobjective attack on Moore and film
July 09, 2003
Formative Green reading list
The Green movement in America in the 80s and early 90s was like the proverbial elephant and blind man. Depending on how you arrived at it and with whom you practiced it, you could have quite different perceptions of what it was about. Below is a list of the books I believe were most influential in the early stages of US Green activity, before it abandoned many of its non-dualistic ideas and solidfied into a Left-progressive group. It's an eclectic collection, and I am definitely not saying I agree with everything said in all of them. Far from it. But if you were there, as I was, and you weren't strictly beholden to one ideology, then you might have read any or all of these in the process of understanding this new political groundswell. Note that this is not...Full entry: Formative Green reading list
June 08, 2001
On Warrior Dreams by James William Gibson
Warrior Dreams explains how the gun culture relates to the absense of a clear delineation between good and evil in this post-modern era. It also challenges the common belief that we lost in Vietnam because we didn't fully commit -- which Gibson proposes is a convenient lie to justify modern militarism. I've always been an anti-gun-control Original Intenter, though my steadfastness has been getting thin. This book has given me more to think about. It is with that compound caveat that I offer the following few comments challenging some points it makes. I do this not to be contrary, but because I think that the book paints an overly negative picture, one that was not justified at the time it was written, but especially is not now. I realize I can do this with hindsight that Gibson did not...Full entry: On Warrior Dreams by James William Gibson
January 01, 1993
Neither Left nor Right
The debate over labels that may be — perhaps should be — of minor importance in political and social thought has vexed me regularly. The need to define certain positions as belonging to one camp or another seems quite important to most people. Categorizing things makes people feel they have a handle on them. Maybe this is human nature, but it gets in the way, I fear, of understanding the true nature of things. In particular, I am vexed by the plethora of labels attached to various political positions: pro-America = Right; anti-free-market = Left; pro-personal-liberties = liberal; pro-tough-laws = conservative; pro-protecting-the-environment = Left. The list could go on for paragraphs. The danger of these labels is that people feel compelled to put themselves into one camp or another. Once this is done, people further feel compelled to fit...Full entry: Neither Left nor Right
July 01, 1992
Community-affirming politics in Waldo County (Belfast Coop newsletter, Summer 1992 issue)
As I put each part of the political year behind me, I more fully learn a basic lesson: Politics, if performed properly, can be a valuable community-building exercise. When I came to Maine I was already a political activist, but from the outside. I was in the national leadership of The Greens and saw the two major parties as impenetrable obstacles to citizen-based politics. On top of that, I was in a role talking at rather than with the general public — convincing them of what was "right" — a role I was never comfortable with. But here in Maine, I have reaffirmed what our Founding Fathers knew, the power of real grassroots politics. Community is at the core of it. My first encounter with community and politics working together was the infamous New England town meeting. Here people sort...Full entry: Community-affirming politics in Waldo County (Belfast Coop newsletter, Summer 1992 issue)
September 01, 1991
The Radical Middle #2
Greens, at the level of national structure (just try to get most locals interested in any of this) are at somewhat of a crossroads. While there was a lot of forward momentum at the national conference in Elkins in August, much of that momentum leaned to the Left. Detroit Summer, 500 Years of Resistance and the Ron Daniels presidential campaign may be worthy projects, but I fear that the national Green body is on a track towards defining itself by those projects and others like them. As I have said before, a strategy of defining the Greens as a coalition of special interests is not only against the key values of the movement, it is also foolish politically. The Greens as conceived in early works like Charlene Spretnak's book "Green Politics" were a break from the old Left. Slogans...Full entry: The Radical Middle #2
May 02, 1991
Radical Middle #1
The Radical Middle #1 [published in The Green Paper, Issue 2, May 1991] We hear from the anarchists and the socialists in the Green movement all the time. My goal with this column is to explore the exciting new territory that some Greens and some other groups are staking out — the territory that I believe is the future of the Greens and of American politics. Greens who think this way take the slogan "Neither Left nor Right, but in front" very seriously. For many, it was the singular thing that attracted them to the movement. They recognize the flaws in the capitalist system, but know that socialism is part of that same system — that both are based on growth, progress, and the exploitation of natural resources and people. They care about suffering in their fellow human, but have...Full entry: Radical Middle #1