The Fantasy Years
Jan 28 at 5:05pm by Jagwire X
Everyone should read The Fantasy Years. It’s a novel by Charles Baker about how America was lead astray by an assault on reality by right-wing (read neo-con) pundits. I’ve know about it for a while now but I haven’t gotten that far into as yet.
From the site:
The Fantasy Years is a novel about the magical effect a particular strain of popular politics has had on Americans throughout the 1990s. The blook is just as much about the forces that helped seed and shape extremist political views among the public as the end result of such views. Rush Limbaugh and right wing think tanks form the chorus, a handful of Americans muddling through the 1990s make up the cast.
Once again I recommend it to everyone interested in how we got from the Greatest Generation to where we are today.
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Bruce Sterling’s SXSW keynote
Mar 17 at 3:03pm by Jagwire X
You can listen to Bruce Sterling’s SXSW Keynote here. As usual Bruce gives the audience a number of interesting bits about emerging technologies but mostly he speaks about the future we are creating and what we ought to do about it. He goes on to say that the real challenge to the future is that the worst people in the world are running things and that the United States government is for all intents and purposes a new Soviet Union (inflexible and corrupt, generally looked at as illegitimate by the rest of the world, not mention a lot of many Americans as well.) And in much of the world things are very bad indeed.
“When you actually ignore reality for years on end, the payback is a bitch brother! … We’re seeing just frantic collisions of fundamentalist delusion with objective reality… We’re on a kind of slider bar between the unthinkable and the unimaginable now, between the grim meathook future and the bright green future. There are ways out of this situation; there are actual ways to move the slider bar from one side to the other, except that we haven’t invented the words for them yet.”
He goes on to say that if you look honestly at the world, you will see a new story emerging. One with smart and dedicated people locked in a great struggle to guide us towards a better future using every tool in their power. “That’s a big story!” And then he reminds those who are part of that story of the motto of the old Soviet-era Eastern European dissidents: “Make no decision out of fear.”
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EFF Publishes Legal Guide for Bloggers
Jun 16 at 8:08pm by Jagwire X
If you are a blogger you might be interested in this. From the EFF Newsletter:
Whether you”re a newly minted blogger or a relative old-timer, you’ve been seeing more and more stories pop up every day about bloggers getting into trouble for what they post.
Like all journalists and publishers, bloggers sometimes publish information that other people don’t want published.
You might, for example, publish something that someone considers defamatory, republish an AP news story that’s under copyright, or write a lengthy piece detailing the alleged crimes of a candidate for public office.
The difference between you and the reporter at your local newspaper is that in many cases, you may not have the benefit of training or resources to help you determine whether what you’re doing is legal. And on top of that, sometimes knowing the law doesn’t help - in many cases the law was written for traditional journalists, and the courts haven’t decided yet how it applies to bloggers.
But here’’s the important part: None of this should stop you from blogging. Freedom of speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Internet bullies shouldn’t use the law to stifle legitimate free expression. That’’s why EFF created the “Legal Guide for Bloggers,” compiling a number of FAQs designed to help you understand your rights and, if necessary, defend your freedom.
Follow the links below to read the guide and learn more about ways EFF is fighting to defend bloggers’ rights:
EFF: Fighting for Bloggers’ Rights
Press release: “Justice for Bloggers”
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Curiouser and curiouser
Jun 16 at 1:01pm by Jagwire X
A former chief economist for the Labor Department now doubts the official 9/11 story. The claim is that it was a controlled demolition with the implication of possible government foul-play and criminal implications.
Take a look at the story here.
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Ohio Election Redux
Jun 14 at 2:02pm by Jagwire X
Gore Vidal has an excellent article about our current plight as a “democracy”. It’s interesting that in countries that are supposedly less democratic than ours any citizen is allowed to ask their leaders real questions. Instead we get a dog and pony show of hand picked audiences asking trivial questions with useless answers. In addressing the problems of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, Vidal, makes it obvious that there were too many discrepancies for the election to have been anything but tampered with.
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Rove’s True November 2nd Surprise
Oct 23 at 3:03pm by Anonymous
It wasn’t Bill Clinton and it wasn’t Nader. It wasn’t Hillary Clinton nor Howard Dean. Neither Kucinich nor Al Gore. It was Karl Rove who awoke the sleeping giant of the American Left. Ironically, he doesn’t see this, which underscores why he’s not a genius—evil or otherwise. Rather, he’s a tragic fool who will be blamed for helping marginalize the GOP for the next 30 years. It’s amazing what Rove, an ardent student of history, cannot see. But bigger mistakes have been made in Western political history..
The Soviets for too much of the 1930s welcomed the rise of Nazi Germany. The Communists’ radicalized worldview told them their way would thrive even better in an industrialized Germany once Nazism – a mere symptom of capitalism – failed. The tragic punch line, of course, is that by the time Nazism really got itself going, the Russians couldn’t stop it without paying the price in millions of lives.
The lesson of this factoid isn’t about Communism nor Nazism as much as it is about human nature when blinded by ideology. It was a stunning miscalculation, as we’re seeing now with Rove’s assertion that he’s going to transform the Republicans into the majority party for the next 30 years. He’s not; he’s going to assure the GOP a minority status for a generation to come.
Our nation is just ending a thirty year cycle of Republican dominance that began with Nixon, was briefly thrown off course by a little scandal called Watergate, but moved full stream ahead for 22 years under Reagan, Bush the Elder who continued Reagan’s flirtation with fascism and, for 8 years, under Clinton who did everything to advance the Republican pro-business, deregulation agenda.
But Rove can’t see that. Rove drinks deeply from the well of persecution sensed by all disgruntled Republicans from Nixon’s time. The persecution fantasy is the same reason why so much rightwing posturing and propaganda has the air of an edgy, “fed-up with liberals” defense. Persecution and estrangement was the feeling among devoted Republicans after Nixon stepped down. Nixon’s 1972 campaign was, as we all know, when Rove first cut his teeth in national politics. Moreover, that’s when the seeds of the Republican revolution were planted. The same seeds that gave us a network of think tanks, of readymade pundits and right-leaning opinion proffers on Sunday morning talk shows. Everything, in fact, that has framed the political discussion in America for the last 30 years.
But with the GOP in control of the three branches of the government the “fed up with liberals” line is, at best, a pose. Quite an unsatisfying one at that. Especially for an electorate living with the consequences of right-wing mismanagement. The urge to accuse liberals when Republicans are confronted with trouble of their own making is only excuse-making writ large.
The underlying truth of the matter is the Republican agenda is simply not popular enough to carry the GOP forward further. The Republicans, according to Rove, should be growing more popular with an ever-widening slice of the electorate in 2004; but Bush couldn’t even win the popular vote in 2000. The Republicans couldn’t win the 2002 mid-terms without cheating in Texas by funneling illegal corporate contributions into political campaigns. (See Tom Delay’s current ethics commission problems). Upon winning, Texas Republicans called an unpopular special session in the State House to cement their victory for years to come through a redistricting battle. In California, they pulled a fast one on the sitting Democratic governor—citing Bush v. Gore, by the way—to seize power.
And they call this winning?
Technically, I suppose it is. But it’s not anything like winning with the support of the citizens, which is what it takes to stay in power in a democracy. It’s not like winning comfortably. Confidently. It’s not the kind of winning that will last.
The Republicans are desperate. They will try anything, legal or otherwise, to win again in 2004. But they’re going to be surprised by the new militancy of Democrats and liberals a like.
For that reason, Rove has the Secret Service screen out all dissenters from the crowds appearing at Bush’s campaign stops. Those who are admitted must sign loyalty oaths. (Sounds real American, doesn’t?). If Bush was exposed to the real public he would be treated as he was on his inauguration day. You saw the footage of the eggs hitting his limo rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue.
What I mean to say is, we live in a time of total Republican political dominance but it looks much more like the last desperate grasp of a party about to exit the political stage for good. The Republicans can barely keep the populace down. Stories about 250% surges in the registration of voters in Democratic precincts in swing states foreshadow a different America after Nov. 2, 2004.
Rove either can’t see this or refuses to. Yet Rove’s shortcomings are larger than this. Most of his direct mail and political consulting experience comes from clients in the Mid-west and South. The bulk of Rove’s campaign management experience comes from work in Texas and Alabama: two states trending conservative at the time. Rove knows winning in familiar territory but he’s in way over his head on a national scale. He’s a naïve and dangerous provincial in this way, who understands nothing of the motives of the other side.
Does he know, for instance, that nearly a century ago in states that had enforced segregation, farmers crossed racial lines to form cooperatives to protect themselves from the predatory business practices of big business? Does he understand that during the Depression, the New Deal sought to help Americans regardless of their color or ethnic background? No. Such matters and the motivation to do these things baffle him. He would write them off as examples of an aberrant idealism, yet these events happened precisely at America’s most desperate moments. Rove doesn’t understand that the true culture war in America is the endless question: how much of a culture of freedom do we have? How often can the citizens be duped into ceding their rights? With what righteous indignation will they reclaim it? These are the true questions of the American people. One thing is certain: Americans will not be satisfied to live under eternal fear. They will not be satisfied with a secretive, evasive presidency with ties to foreign powers (like, say, the Saudis). It’s a culture that, even should Bush win, will not rest until transparency and integrity is restored to government.
Rove is still operating on the antiquated Southern Strategy that came about in the time of his political education. The Southern Strategy was developed in a time of white flight from the cities, bussing and federally enforced desegregation. Apparently, he hasn’t noticed that bussing has ended, the city centers are repopulating, and the people in the suburbs want not just national security, but economic, health and environmental security. Because Rove rode into power on the now-fossilized strategy of Nixon’s campaign he’s shown little ability to adapt to the changes of this time. He’s a one-trick pony, who is adept at raising tensions between voting blocks, but is oblivious to the deeper history of the nation.
Rove likes to cite President McKinley’s ability to appeal to urban and minority voters in the election 1896 as a precedent for Bush’s 2004 victory. But Rove doesn’t need to look that far back. He need only look back to his parents’ generation: The GI generation.
The Generation that grew up in the time of the Depression and went on to fight WWII knew intimately what a world of war and inequality meant. They made up the moral and electoral backbone of the Democratic party. What FDR did for the country through the Depression and into WWII, assured that the Democratic Party was the default party, the mainstream party, the checks-on-power party.
In contrast to Reagan, whose legacy was that he “made people feel good” FDR and the Democrats of yore actually did good. This is what made the legacy of the New Deal so damnably hard to defeat for so long by Republicans. The Dems delivered. This is why the apex of the Republican revolution, which is drawing to a close, was Reagan’s two terms. But an important reading of the Reagan legacy, especially in regards to the sought after Reagan Democrats is the simple fact that Baby Boomers were too old for their youthful talk of revolution and but not satisfied with the unpleasant truths the Democrats had to offer in 1980. The Baby Boomers, true to their roots, opted to feel good. They crossed party the lines to vote for Gipper. Karl Rove should not be looking for a “feel good” vote in 2004.
In fact, the psychic damage Bush, under Rove’s direction, has done to the American electorate has added insult to the injury of 9/11 by exploiting what happened on that day to create an atmosphere likely to be associated with Republicans for years to come. Rove might be surprised to learn that, pre-Bush, liberals like me enjoyed discussing politics with my conservative counterparts. Outside of Washington, there was civility between liberals and conservatives in a time when just finding someone who cared about politics could mean more than finding someone to agree with.
But that’s gone. In its place is anger and resentment. Suspicion and doubt.
Americans don’t like being at each other’s throats day after day. They don’t like shouting matches with their fellow citizens. Americans don’t like living in a world defined by fear and stark choices, made under unforgiving circumstances.
I’m not sure Rove can understand this. Yet, I believe this anger, frustration and resentment was a part of life in the 1930s. Certainly FDR thrived as he fought the root causes of such turmoil. Voters reacted favorably. “Nothing to fear but fear itself” were FDR’s words not after Pearl Harbor but years earlier at his inauguration.
If Karl Rove really wants a lesson from history to inform the current situation, he doesn’t have to look back a century. He’d be well served to look at the legacy of the FDR Democrat generation. Each succeeding generation is a reaction to what came before it. You could make the argument that the rise of Clinton and the DLC coincided with the decline of the influence of the FDR voters in the Democratic Party. With fewer FDR Democrats around to keep the party focused on bread and butter issues of political and economic power, Baby-boomer Democrats fell for the image-rich social wedge issues framed by the Republicans. Liberals through these years have pretended that if they just ignore the angry, aggressive Republican Party, it would simply go away. What that got them—and the world–was the Bush Administration, rightwing radicalism and consequently, this mess in Iraq. Now, with their backs against the wall; liberals are in the fighting mode for the first time in, well, a generation.
For voters coming of age in this extreme time, the realities of the Bush Years will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Not unlike the experience the Depression had in shaping the political conscience of the FDR Democrats.
Young people today are facing an excessive national debt, a possible reinstatement of the draft, college costs spiraling out of reach, jobs moving overseas as they migrate to cheaper labor markets, and corruption throughout the federal government. They will be voting against inequality and for checks on power for the rest of their lives. The one person who masterminded this political wake up and its call to arms is Karl Rove. He has no one but himself to thank.
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Whoops! Sorry about all those lies we presented as fact…
Apr 15 at 1:01pm by Jagwire X
Washington Post tells a different story for the record. Turns out there was no uprising underway.
People in Basra Contest Official View of Siege
Life Was Mostly Normal, Residents Say; Doctors Report Many Civilians Killed
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 15, 2003; Page A13
BASRA,
Iraq — There was nothing resembling a popular uprising against the Iraqi militiamen who controlled this city during its 13-day siege by British forces. Life continued largely as normal in many neighborhoods, with police directing traffic and residents doing their best to avoid fighting.
Doctors at local hospitals treated scores of civilians wounded by British artillery and U.S. bombs during the siege, despite briefing-room claims of pinpoint accuracy. Many others were killed.
These conclusions about life under siege emerge from a week of interviews in Basra and they differ in many ways from accounts offered by military and other sources before the city’s fall. Reports of large numbers of Basra residents being forced to take up arms and militiamen firing from behind human shields were similarly not borne out in the interviews.
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What you missed while watching the war
Apr 8 at 2:02pm by Jagwire X
The supreme court hands a big victory to corporations. They have limited the punitive damages awarded to victims of corporations. Since the only language corporations understand is profits and losses, the supreme court has effectively dismantled the right of a citizen to sue a corporation into compliance. Corporations will now have even less of a motive to follow the law knowing that the awards they pay out will never significantly impact their bottom line.
Did you see this in your local paper? No, it was all war talk. It’s one of the benefits of All War All the Time. It allows for a distracted public while the Radical Right Wing can further insure that the United States is a republic for business and not for its citizens.
Read all about it in The Financial Times.
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Oregon Law Would Jail War Protesters as Terrorists
Apr 3 at 1:01pm by Jagwire X
This is truly frightening. Oregon is attempting to pass law that would equate protesting with terrorism. Obviously it hasn’t occurred to these vapid lawmakers that the point of the protests is to get their attention because something is TERRIBLY WRONG (this country is becoming more and more oppressive, it’s wages unjust wars on nation that post not real threat to us, etc., etc.) with this country and as a lawmaker YOU SHOULD DO SOMETHING to rectify it. Instead they try making it more oppressive. Bad solution.
Senate Bill 742 identifies a terrorist as an individual who “plans or participates in an act that is intended, by at least one of its participants, to disrupt” business, transportation, schools, government, or free assembly.
There is a conservative radio pundit (Lars Larson, whom you may want to contact with your opinion of his fascist views) who is promoting this bill. No doubt making protesters out to be callous, uncaring individuals who frighten grandmothers and prevent ambulances from getting where they need to go. This is unlikely to be true. And if business gets a bit snarled, well, get the point: THIS WAR IS WRONG and we want you to do something about it. No you don’t get to have business as usual, as citizens of this country our consciences dictate that we must do whatever we can to alter the course of events.
The bill carries a very heavy very immoral and very wrong automatic 25 year sentence. This is not the America I was born in. This is not the America our founders had in mind. It’s beginning to sound a lot more like the England our founders fought to be free of.
This may be the most oxymoronic bill ever introduced anywhere at any time.
This would also technically make the police and lawmakers terrorists the moment they disrupt or plan to disrupt a free assembly of individuals who are protesting.
Oregon Law Would Jail Protesters
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