Let's stop acting surprised.

We're not really shocked, are we?, by instances of deceit, incompetence, greed and arrogance in the corridors of power?

Those of us who are convinced that civil liberties, free expression, free inquiry and democratic deliberation are the cornerstones of American society know quite well that lots of things are not as they should be. We know that, somehow, these essential principles and practices must be preserved, repaired and/or improved. We realize that we must continue to take these things seriously, remind one another of their importance and significance, and teach subsequent generations to preserve all that is best about the American project in republican self-governance.

We were, all of us, horrified by the self-righteous barbarity and callous disregard for the rule of law promoted, clandestinely (and then not-so-clandestinely), by former Vice President Cheney. We were dismayed to learn that various United States agencies had spied on American citizens, tortured prisoners of war (using methods borrowed from 1950s Communist China) and fabricated intelligence as a pretext for waging war. We thought the eleventh-hour first Bank Bailout, under Bush, was a bald-faced exercise in theft—that it revealed, to our dismay, the extent to which the American political system has become a fully owned subsidiary of powerful financial interests and an elite stratum of wealthy investors. And we thought that the second Bank Bailout, under Obama's watch, confirmed our suspicions about the current impotence of American democracy. To be sure, I'm not referring to its impotence in practice: we already knew all about that. No, what was confirmed was the impotence of American democracy as an idea.

So why do we act shocked when we encounter leaked footage of American soldiers in Afghanistan firing missiles at unarmed civilians? Why so surprised when Obama sells off—faster than Bush would even have dared—the American education system to a bunch of glorified loan sharks? Why are we taken off-guard when the Supreme Court overturns hundreds of centuries-old laws regulating the political spending of multinational corporations, on the basis of the notion—so argues the Court—that such laws restrict the (previously non-existent) Constitutional right of corporations to free speech?

I don't think that we are surprised by these things. I think that we are pretending to be surprised. I'm guessing that there are two (2) ways in which we pretend to be surprised, which coexist in varying degrees in any particular instance:

i. The first way in which we act surprised.
We want to be surprised by these things. Therefore, we either convince ourselves that we are surprised, or we act surprised in a semi-conscious attempt to simulate, for our own comfort, the feeling of being surprised. Or we act surprised out of sheer habit. In any of these cases—whatever our level of consciousness of our actions—we are motivated by a desire for comfort.

Why is the feeling of surprise comforting to us? Because surprise registers the phenomenon to which we are responding as something that is—as it were—beyond the pale. It's a psychological defense mechanism. We want so desperately to believe that everyone else values our Constitutional protections and civil liberties as much as we do. To us, this stuff is basic common sense, and it shatters our faith in humanity to recognize the truth: there are a substantial numbers of American citizens who would gladly give away their liberties in exchange for an illusory feeling of safety or security.

This brings us to:

ii. The second way in which we act surprised.
We hope that by expressing our outrage and shock in the face of the erosion of American civil liberties, we might be able to shock the aforementioned cadre of American citizens—a cadre that is in most other respects as heterogeneous as can be—out of its complacency and docility.

In other words, we like to believe that we are walking, talking George Orwells. That, if we talk frequently and loudly enough about how disgusted we are with our country's seemingly inexorable drift toward fear-mongering, surveillance state, that we will manage eventually to make them see the light!

The mistake we're making in this second instance is about as obvious as can be: do we really think that we can out-fear-monger the professional political-corporate-media fear-mongers?? I think this is a difficulty that faces those of us in the post-Baby Boom generations who believe that the only way in which our democracy can be repaired is through a reinvigorated civil discourse. At present, American political rhetoric is—like American political thought—beyond its moment of crisis. It is in a state of extreme fragmentation.

All I'm saying is, let's start admitting that we all know this. Let's stop acting surprised.

Obama: the bargain, the moment of truth and health care.

I've been asked by one of our favorite readers if I might weigh in as to my thoughts on President Obama's health care speech of last Wednesday. Here's my long-winded (but I hope not pedantic or, uh, boring...) reply.

In approaching the health care address, as in approaching all things Obama-related, I divide my assessments into two distinct categories: (1) substantive and (2) operational.

By the first category, I mean, you know, the content: What does it say as a matter of pure policy?, etc., etc. By the second, I refer to the impact and significance that the speech would appear to have operationally, specifically with respect to its embeddedness within salient and underlying political contingencies and discourses.

Some background for my thinking:

Obama differs from other presidents of my lifetime in that he has, in fact, managed to surprise me by occasionally saying something so smart and incisive that it strikes me as something more than simply operational or tactical. In fact, I'm convinced that that's what made Obama appealing to people on the left in the first place: At his best, he offers us much-needed relief from the interminable Samuel Beckett-speak of 20th Century Presidential Personae -- cant that has been particularly excruciating over the course of the previous four presidencies.

Obama speaks and thinks in a way that makes sense to us: It's partly a generational/demographic thing, and it's partly a matter of sheer charisma. It's could even be bollocks: he's got them. (Bollocks are testicles, kiddies.) Not compared to Theodore Roosevelt, maybe, but compared to pretty much any president since JFK. Of course, considering the competition, that's maybe not saying a whole lot...

I remember during the presidential primaries or something, I was explaining to my friend what I thought was actually potentially fresh and worthwhile about Obama, and I phrased it this way:

If you're not going to go out there and actively work to usher in The Revolution, then Obama's your man. In other words: OK, if you want to vote for Kucinich, do it. if you want to vote for Nader, do it. (I did that once and have no regrets.) I applaud you. If you want to start a new, intelligent leftish political movement, then go for it. God knows, we could use something like that. These are worthwhile and commendable projects.

But, I continued, if not -- i.e., if you're going to participate in the political system, warts (of which there are many) and all -- then Obama represents the closest thing to a genuinely progressive force that the political system can in fact, in this moment and time, successfully produce. Vote for Obama, and you'll know that at least you're supporting without a doubt the best thing that our tattered, and bought-and-sold-many-times-over political system can deliver.

Obama was and is NOT Dennis Kucinich. He's not Ralph Nader, and he's not Jimmy Carter. That is part of the point of Obama being Obama: He's not a lost cause and doesn't represent lost causes. He's a winner. He's one of the Beautiful People, with all of the good and bad that comes along with that.

Obama can and does play ball with the big boys. He is and always has been a political realist, and he sold himself to us as a political realist. He beat the Clintons not just because he represented a superior political vision (which he did, by an infinitesimal degree of difference), but because he out-smarted the Clintons.

It wasn't just luck that turned John McCain's campaign into such a disaster: It was the Obama campaign's tactical superiority: Out-flanking your opponent, faking him out, making him sweat over -- and waste money in -- the wrong state at the wrong time, by deliberately sending misleading signals about your own campaign's concerns.

Within a day of the McCain campaign's having trotted out Sarah Palin (as I remarked on that occasion), it dawned upon me: the Republicans are throwing the election.

In retrospect, it seems clear to me that part of the reason this happened is because the Obama campaign forced them into retreating. And: prevailing rhetoric and received wisdom aside, the GOP is still in retreat, if not chaos.

The trouble is that Obama's victory meant -- and means -- that those of us on the left who brought him to office would have to come face-to-face with the limitations of our screwed up and corrupt system, limitations that we didn't really have to face up to in the same way when we were toiling under the tyranny of the Bush/Cheney cabal. With those guys, we could take out our frustration on the other side, for stealing elections. We could decry the stupidity and self-centeredness of the idiots who actually preferred those asshole to Gore or Kerry (not that we loved those guys either...), who at least could speak in complete sentences.

It seems perverse to put it this way, but in Bush/Cheney, we had on our hands a fine distraction that was from the real culprits of the demise of the United States: our nightmare of a de-funded public infrastructure, the menace of neoliberalism and public-private partnerships, a completely unregulated financial sector, masses of political and economic capital concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people, the deterioration of the trustworthy news and information (not that we ever had much of that...), the calcification of class, status and racial divisions, a powerful neoconservative lobby, etc., etc., etc....

And so, entirely contrary to the conventional wisdom about Obama being a man who delivers pretty speeches, all form and no substance, for the first time in a long time we have a president who -- for better and, undoubtedly, for worse -- is something more than merely a symbol: He embodies the limited reach of the political left. Or, rather: Obama is the closest thing we have and can have to left-minded president.

And the ugly thing that nobody wants to face up to is that "the left" by this definition -- that is, the left, insofar as the left subsists in the realm of the possible -- is not very damn far left. It is to this phenomenon that I am referring with the titular "moment of truth."

It is this structural limitation that we see embodied in Obama. For a president is more than merely a man: he is a nexus of powerful political and financial interests. Just look at how people become president, what processes make it possible.

Presidents must, of necessity, be products of the status quo. Whether or not they are able (like the aforementioned Teddy Roosevelt and a few others), over the course of their tenure in the Oval Office, to become an active force in transcending or transforming the very status quo that produced them is a function of innumerable factors that lie outside of the control of a single man, and even outside of the control -- contrary to the view favored by conspiracy theorists -- of any single group of interested parties.

In any event, it is the left of -- appallingly -- Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, of Arne Duncan and the Clintons and Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. I mean, that's what passes for the left.

But people who get mad at Obama for this fact -- as we all do -- are wasting their energy, and they are pointing their finger at the wrong person. Obama is exactly what he said he was and exactly what we knew he would be. Even if we didn't know we knew it.

Sometimes it's not an easy thing to digest. Obama's not a hypocrite. To the extent that anyone has expected Obama's political program to be genuinely progressive, she has been kidding herself.

And so, anyway, that brings us back to Wednesday's health care speech. Here's what I thought: Substantively, it contained the inevitable disappointments and a few very positive developments. On the disappointment side, it seemed pretty eager to chuck the so-called "public option," but that was all but sure to happen. And anyway, I'm not all that convinced it makes much of a difference, considering that the government already owns all sorts of stuff that it doesn't own "on paper," like the big banks and the auto industry. So, when it comes down to it, what difference does it make what it's "called"? Now, being the tenacious opponent of neoliberalism that I am, I reserve the right to change my mind on that one, if, let's say, all health care is going to end up being "left to the market to...urm...solve." But even were that the case it wouldn't be anything new: It describes precisely the horrible non- system that we have now. Other substantive disappointments include Obama's continued pandering to senior citizens -- although somewhat less shamelessly than on previous occasions -- and that inevitable fact that Obama had to make a point of declaring a policy of 'fiscal prudence', especially as regards the federal deficit, which was politically a necessary move, but is also as far as I'm concerned completely bogus (like all claims within the bogus field of economics).

Substantively speaking, the best -- or most encouraging -- thing about the speech in my opinion had to do with the fact that it went some way toward framing health insurance reform in moral terms, which, as far as I'm concerned, is the Alpha and Omega of the health care issue. But, hey, that's me.

More important was that the speech was, operationally speaking, a bit of a masterstroke, as far as I'm concerned. As I've mentioned in the past, I'm fairly certain that the whole right-wing circus show of last month -- a.k.a., neo-Nazis at town hall meetings -- was something that the Obama administration and the Dems generally not only welcomed but allowed to crest (and then some!).

In the grand scheme of things, this 'August strategy' has served Obama and the Dems well in that it has:

1. linked perceptions of any putative 'Republican position' on health care to the handiwork of the Southern Racist Right,
   
   
2. galvanized the Democratic base through its visceral, disgusted reaction to the aforementioned SRR, and
   
   
3. fostered the commonsense presumption among 'mainstream Americans' (read: the upper-middle class suburban people who voted Obama into office in the first place and on whose support his health care agenda turns) that opposition to any moderate-yet-ambitious (read: Obamian) reform measure is identified primarily with people who are 'outside the mainstream' (read: poor, uneducated white trash, with whom upper-middle class suburbanites do not wish to be identified [and who pay their high property taxes for this very reason!]).

Therefore, the reason I think Obama's speech was an operational masterstroke has a great deal to do with its timing. The right-wing cant had escalated marvelously. A healthcare reform opponent performed a Heil Hitler salute in response to an Israeli man's impassioned advocacy of reform. Banners displaying images of Barack Obama with a Hitler mustache superimposed upon his upper-lip. The (hilarious) Barney Frank thing. Anti-reform protesters wielding loaded firearms in the vicinity of the President of the United States.

It had all lingered just long enough at its vomit-inducing stage, and Obama, who has been holding back and eluding the spotlight -- "But, Mr. President: your poll numbers!" -- and at the perfect moment, does a commendable job of delivering what might stand as among the skilled rhetorician's most-impressive-yet feats of oratory:

That large-heartedness -- that concern and regard for the plight of others -- is not a partisan feeling. It's not a Republican or a Democratic feeling. It, too, is part of the American character -- our ability to stand in other people's shoes; a recognition that we are all in this together, and when fortune turns against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand; a belief that in this country, hard work and responsibility should be rewarded by some measure of security and fair play; and an acknowledgment that sometimes government has to step in to help deliver on that promise.

This has always been the history of our progress. In 1935, when over half of our seniors could not support themselves and millions had seen their savings wiped away, there were those who argued that Social Security would lead to socialism, but the men and women of Congress stood fast, and we are all the better for it. In 1965, when some argued that Medicare represented a government takeover of health care, members of Congress -- Democrats and Republicans -- did not back down. They joined together so that all of us could enter our golden years with some basic peace of mind.

You see, our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains in security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, the vulnerable can be exploited. And they knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter -- that at that point we don't merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves.

That was true then. It remains true today. I understand how difficult this health care debate has been. I know that many in this country are deeply skeptical that government is looking out for them. I understand that the politically safe move would be to kick the can further down the road -- to defer reform one more year, or one more election, or one more term.

But that is not what the moment calls for. That's not what we came here to do. We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it. I still believe we can act even when it's hard. (Applause.) I still believe -- I still believe that we can act when it's hard. I still believe we can replace acrimony with civility, and gridlock with progress. I still believe we can do great things, and that here and now we will meet history's test.

Because that's who we are. That is our calling. That is our character. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)

I'm just as cynical as the next man, but I must say, this is some quality stuff.

If nothing else, it makes the Fox News thugs look one-foot-tall.*


________________
* In addition, that is, to sounding -- and being -- dumb.

HYPOCRITES!! (Part II): Health care, Medicare Part D and generational politics.

At the conclusion of Part I of this discussion, I mentioned the hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty of Republicans who oppose a public health insurance option, yet have nothing negative to say about Medicare and Social Security, which, when combined with Medicaid, represent by far the most expensive government entitlement programs currently in existence.

The Republicans, like the Democrats, would never be caught opposing these unfunded programs because they are massively popular with the most active and influential sectors of the electorate: the elderly. As the Baby Boomers continue to age -- and increasingly bottleneck the system -- this popularity of these programs is unlikely to decline.

So, somehow, these government-administered entitlements do not get mentioned in the same breath as Congressional/Obamian health insurance reform when hard-Right ideologues and thugs hit the pavement or spread lies over the Internet about death panels and whatnot.

Thing is: Many of those who decry health reform as "socialistic" are themselves willing and continuing recipients of Medicare and Social Security Benefits. Thus, I should like suggest that these people are a bunch of crusty old self-centered whiners and liars, and that we ought to declare a generational war!

Doesn't it shame them that they would deny to succeeding generations the same entitlements from which they themselves have benefited, from the Social Security Act to the GI Bill to Medicare to Medicaid, up to and including the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit for those 65 years of age and older that was passed, without funding and in between the two largest tax cuts for the wealthy ever to be passed into law?

Nothing -- including military spending! -- even comes close to the costliness of these programs. Apparently, Americans 65 and older are simply more deserving of this bounty than those of my generation. My generation, by contrast, has been weathering an inhospitable economic and educational environment. Ours is an age in which the notion of class mobility has long been a cruel joke. Our experience is one of the accumulation of debts, of forgoing health insurance, of meager opportunities.

I'm not arguing that the Great Depression was a walk in the park. I am, however, arguing that, in the wake of the Social Security Act, the radical expansion of opportunities for higher education represented in the GI Bill and in the proliferation of colleges and universities in order to accommodate the Baby Boom, the United States enjoyed a sustained period of economic, social and cultural progress.

Anyway, in my limited experience with such things, the clearest, most objective and most focused discussion of the recent political-historical context of Republican flip-flopping on government-coordinated public health insurance plans is contained in a recent episode of the PBS series Frontline, titled: Ten Trillion and Counting. (You may wish to click here for a link to streaming video of the entire episode, which is well worth your time.)

The piece actually tackles the subject of the United States' skyrocketing national debt. but its discussion of George W. Bush's passage of Medicare Part D -- sandwiched between the passage of the two largest tax cuts for the wealthy in United States history -- could not be more relevant to our present discussion. Here is that section of the episode:



Here's part of the transcript:

FORREST SAWYER: It finally passed by five votes.
[on camera] Why would a small government conservative initiate a program that is so massive?
JACKIE CALMES, The New York Times: Politics.
FORREST SAWYER: What do you mean?
JACKIE CALMES: There's no group that votes at the rate and in the numbers as those over 55, and 65 and over certainly. And Democrats, as well as Republicans, want to please seniors, and that's why our entire budget is tilted towards programs for seniors.
FORREST SAWYER: [voice-over] The reason that the Bush administration could pass Medicare part D was that the Republican Congress in 2002 had let a rule called "pay as you go" lapse. It was a rule established by the first President Bush and a Democratic Congress to enforce fiscal discipline.
GREGG IP: His father endured some very serious political pain to do the right thing to get the deficit down. And one of the steps was that a rule called "pay-go," or pay as you go. And this rule basically meant that if you wanted to introduce a new tax cut or a new spending program, you had to find a way to pay for it with an offsetting tax increase or spending cut. Well, in 2002, that rule expired.
ALICE RIVLIN, Dir., Office of Management & Budget, 1994-96: In the Clinton years, we had the "pay-go" rule, pay as you go, and that meant we couldn't pass a lot of good-sounding ideas, including Medicare prescription drugs. It's not that nobody thought of that in the '90s. A lot of people thought of it. But we couldn't pay for it. To pay for it, we would have had to have done a tax increase or cut out some other spending in major proportions, and nobody wanted to do that, so we didn't do it.
FORREST SAWYER: But the Bush administration did do it. With "pay-go" no longer restraining spending, they had pushed through Medicare part D, a program that's projected over time to cost as much as $8 trillion.
DAVID WESSEL: They did not come up with a way to raise taxes or cut spending somewhere else to pay for it, so they just passed this thing. It goes into law. It's a promise to elderly people that we'll pay- subsidize their drugs, and we borrow every year to pay for it. And in the end, it's more expensive than the war in Iraq because the war in Iraq ends at some point. Certainly, it will end now that Obama's president. But the prescription drug benefit will go on forever.
FORREST SAWYER: It will go on forever because it's a promise made by the federal government to its citizens. Seniors are entitled to this benefit, just the as they are entitled to Social Security and Medicare itself. These entitlements are all enormously popular, but they're also enormously expensive. Medicare part D alone will cost $60 billion this year.
JACKIE CALMES: The expense of that over time, unfunded liabilities for the government, at a time when more people are reaching retirement age and qualifying for Medicare, added more to the long-term obligations of the government than all of Social Security.
FORREST SAWYER: Medicare part D was the largest spending bill the president signed, but there were dozens of others. During his first five years as president, with a Republican-controlled House and Senate, George Bush never vetoed a spending bill. Fiscal conservatives in his own party accused him of being the biggest spender since World War II.

I think this is worth bringing up next time one finds himself in a bar, confronted by someone who insists that Obama is a socialist or that the Democrats are the big spenders... It was, after all, Bill Clinton who balanced the budget.

HYPOCRITES!! (Part I): Health care, ideology and rhetoric.

The elegantly monikered and frequently brilliant blog Phuck Politics brings to our attention a highly entertaining and singularly infuriating exercise in Far-Right talking points.

You know what talking points are, right? They're these bullet-pointed 'arguments' circulated among Far-Right activists, politicians, Fox News-"personalities" and, of course, the Brownshirts that have been doing their inbred, mouth-breathingly thuggish best to carry out the bidding of demagogues and insurance industry brass alike. Their goal?: to interrupt 'town hall meetings' that are being held by congressmen in their home districts in order to discuss health reform.

This is a phenomenon to which we may refer as "astroturfing," or perhaps with still greater accuracy as "astroweeding."

Anyway, Phuck Politics shares with us the talking points that are being advanced by something called the Liberty Counsel (sounds friendly enough: Who doesn't like liberty??!!), which is apparently the Joseph Goebbels-like misinformation-propagating arm of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University:

Sec. 59B, Pg. 170, Line 1 – Any NONRESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes. (Americans will pay for their health care.)

Sec. 1177, Pg. 354 – Government will RESTRICT enrollment of special needs people! “Extension of Authority of Special Needs Plans to Restrict Enrollment.”

Sec. 1233, Pg. 425, Lines 4-12 – Government mandates Advance (Death) Care Planning consultation. Think Senior Citizens and end of life. END-OF-LIFE COUNSELING. SOME IN THE ADMINISTRATION HAVE ALREADY DISCUSSED RATIONING HEALTH CARE FOR THE ELDERLY.

Sec. 2511, Pg. 992 – Government will establish school-based “health” clinics. Your children will be indoctrinated and your grandchildren may be aborted!

The late, windy Jerry "Tushy-Faced" Falwell. May he rest in piss.

The reader will observe that Phuck Politics has some astute and howlingly funny things to say about this, including an imaginative description of the type of dialogue that must have gone down among the Liberty Council staffers when they were cooking this stuff up.

I wish to weigh in specifically on the fourth item listed above, which for my money is the most ermm...side-splittingly hilarious. The idea of referring to health clinics as "health" clinics... Wow!

Let's have another look!:

Sec. 2511, Pg. 992 – Government will establish school-based “health” clinics. Your children will be indoctrinated and your grandchildren may be aborted!

This takes the idea of seeing the world through the prism of ideology to its paranoiac limits.

I mean...really. Were the (il)logic of this statement to edge a fraction-of-an-inch further in the direction of mechanical-pre-judgment of empirical reality, it would represent a brand new pathology, wherein bigotry, myopia, resentment and rank stupidity begin to chew away not only at its believer's capacity to relate to the world around him -- which clearly is already on the skids -- but at one another.

The myopia begins to resent the bigotry, the bigotry looks askance at the myopia, and all the while, the stupidity reproduces itself like a cancer, slowly reducing the entire thing into a kind of droopy incoherence.

There is something so reprehensible about this rhetoric, something so completely offensive and prejudiced and pathetic and self-serving and self-undermining and willfully dumb, that it becomes almost beautiful. The sheer absurdity of questioning the very notion that health clinics are concerned with health!

The nerve displayed in this deployment of the word "indoctrinated," which reads not so much as a shocking revelation, but as a casual aside. Like: Oh yeah, of course these supposed "health" clinics are actually no more than "indoctrination" clinics!!! Indoctrinated into what? Into viewing the practice of medicine as based upon empirical science?

And then, to top it all off with what could only be called an astonishing feat of transgression-for-transgression's-sake: "your grandchildren may be aborted"!

Round of applause, please!!!

Think about this for a moment.....while keeping in mind, of course, that it is not the sort of provocation that is designed to make people think. The fear that's being expressed here is that the reader's son's and daughter's daughter's yet-to-be-conceived-unborn child may be aborted.

This begs the question: What kind of children are the reader's sons and daughters raising? Don't they learn about abstinence at their Bible Camp??? Are America's preteen Evangelicals having wild parties with the close-dancing and the listening to that race-music?

One rather suspects that this particular exercise in Right-wing hysteria is directed against the idea of public schooling in general more than against the idea of having health clinics in those schools. Let us take a look at a few quotations on the subject of public education, from Rev. Falwell, Herr Hitler and President Jefferson:

I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be! -- Rev. Jerry Falwell

The idea of separation of Church and State was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country. -- Rev. Jerry Falwell

Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.... We need believing people. -- Adolf Hitler

Education is here placed among the articles of public care, not that it would be proposed to take its ordinary branches out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal; but a public institution can alone supply those sciences which, though rarely called for, are yet necessary to complete the circle, all the parts of which contribute to the improvement of the country, and some of them to its preservation. -- Thomas Jefferson

A bill for the more general diffusion of learning... proposed to divide every county into wards of five or six miles square;... to establish in each ward a free school for reading, writing and common arithmetic; to provide for the annual selection of the best subjects from these schools, who might receive at the public expense a higher degree of education at a district school; and from these district schools to select a certain number of the most promising subjects, to be completed at an University where all the useful sciences should be taught. Worth and genius would thus have been sought out from every condition of life, and completely prepared by education for defeating the competition of wealth and birth for public trusts. -- Thomas Jefferson

Hmmm... Looks like we have some disagreement here. Between Founding Father Thomas Jefferson in favor of public education and the dynamic duo of Rev. Falwell and Herr Hitler against.

But back to the talking points: Such is their unsurpassed incoherence that the only comparison I can come up with is to a black hole: the vortex at which space and time and light and matter and mass all collapse upon and within themselves. (Or something like that.....)

Come to think of it, doesn't this artist's rendition of a black hole a whole lot like the images adorning the covers of books published by weirdo Right-wing nut-job literalist Southern Evangelical religious people? You know, like one of those ultra-cheesy depictions of the Apocalypse or the Book of Revelation or whatever?

Anyway, in the second part of this discussion, to be titled "HYPOCRITES!! (Part II): Health care, Medicare Part D and generational politics," I shall explain why this ludicrous Republican rhetoric opposing health care reform is truly and deeply hypocritical: Have you considered the fact that the people objecting most strongly to health care reform are precisely those who benefit the most from Medicare?

And Medicare is the single most costly government program in existence, far exceeding anything else, including military spending?

That's right, people over the age of 65, many of whom live in the South, are the recipients of the most expensive public program in existence. The same people who are so fervently opposed to Obama's 'socialistic' proposal for a public health insurance program that would compete with the private insurers....

The expense of this government program increased by several orders of magnitude when George W. Bush signed Medicare Part D, which is the prescription drug benefit, without bothering to figure out how he was going to pay for it, and sandwiched between the two biggest tax cuts for the wealthy in American history??

Randomized Palin response generator!Also: Alaska's Shrillest represents the Boomers' potential betrayal of my generation.

Have you seen this yet?

This brilliant Web site, called Interview Sarah Palin, produces randomized responses to various typical interview questions about the economy, foreign policy, the separation between church and state, etc., etc.

Here's an example of the kind of question and response the site generates:

Q: How will you fix the economy?

Our economy and putting it back on the table. I think if you really think that I have understood the world is and how important it is in this nation at this time. People are getting sick and tired of that self-dealing and kind of grab it all or capture it all and pretend like they have all the time, I'll tell you, I still can't answer that I am the executive of. And there in Russia Diplomacy is about reform of government and these regulatory agencies back on the right reasons and serving for the other day and giving him my commitment, as John McCain's running mate, that we work with our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia.

The Web site's creator(s) explains that its "...answers are computer generated based on probabilities calculated from Sarah Palin's actual speech," producing results that are "surprising [sic] close to her actual answers."

As proof of this similarity in outcome, the site provides an example of a typical real-life Palin interview response, taken from her recent hilarious (and frightening) interview with CBS's Katie Couric (for whom I have begun to have tremendous respect, based upon the panache and professionalism with which she interviewed this truly absurd human being who wants to be second in line to the White House):

COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? Allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy? Instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That's why I say, I like ever American I'm speaking with were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the tax payers looking to bailout. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy - Helping the - Oh, it's got to be about job creation too. Shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americas. And trade we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive scary thing. But 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

Wow. No wonder arch-conservative publications like The National Review have called for Palin to step aside.

It really is quite shocking. Not only the extent to which Palin's responses tend to bear no discernible traces of a relation to the question posed; also that she clearly is reciting -- with varying degrees of success/accuracy -- talking points, words, phrases, etc. that she had been taught to memorize in intensive coaching sessions conducted by Bush's/Cheney's handlers. (I have heard that it is literally Bush's and Cheney's handlers that conduct these coaching sessions.)

What's scary is that she's not even cogitating. There is very little indication that Palin even bothers to try to comprehend the question itself. She's relying on muscle memory; certain words or phrases trigger one kind of response or another, much like the simple computer programs that I used to write back in the 1980's, using the BASIC programming language on my family's Apple IIc. The programs I would write would usually be a prank of one kind or another, tricking my credulous friends and family (in an era in which computer illiteracy was still the norm) into thinking they had wiped out all of the computer's memory, or something. Just simple stuff like: if keystroke x, then y; if keystroke v, then w; if keystroke z, then x; etc., etc.

Another way of saying this is that the level of intellectual competence that Palin demonstrates in her interviews is equivalent, roughly, to that of a Tickle-Me Elmo. (Remember those?) And, come to think of it, in a similar vocal register.

I guess that's the genius of the Interview Sarah Palin Web site. It spotlights the extent to which Sarah Palin is like a rusty old Apple IIc personal computer. This fits in unsurprisingly with the overall fact of Palin's existence: she's not a candidate; she's not even a human being. She's a cluster of images, projections, psychological associations, emotional triggers and mental short-cuts. She's a brand, like Pepsi. But without the cola. The (il)logic of the McCain/Palin ticket is that it is selling a bizarre kind of nostalgia for a time that never was and, in any case, could never again be.

My God Would We Be Fucked, were this ridiculous Palin gambit to actually work. It looks less and less likely that it will work, with each passing day. But it's still scary as hell. If McCain were to win, I believe that entire generations of Americans under the age of -- say -- 45 -- an already-disillusioned and cynical group of voters of which I am a part and which for the most part lacks a voice, lacks money and lacks representation -- will truly lose all faith in the idea of functioning, representative democracy in the United States of America. My god, that would be depressing.....

A McCain/Palin win would represent the ultimate betrayal of my future, at the hands of a myopic, ideologically tone-deaf and frivolous Baby Boom generation.

(Sorry to leave you on such a sour note....)