Five Before Chaos

This is from a diary post of mine over at Green Mountain Daily about an onging discussion about what the idea of what a good, local liberal think thank would look like.

My thread on Peter Welch and the state of liberalism has prompted some good discussion on here, especially abot the possibility of a good ‘think tank’, and what it would entail. So, I’m gonna take a stab at it.

In the comments of that post, when talking about Brookings, CAP and such, the term ‘center-left’ has come up. Well, the first thing our theoretical think tank would require is an abandonment of the term ‘center’, for several reasons.

First, what is commonly called the ‘center’ of American politics has moved so far to the right that it offers us on the left very little to chew on. ‘Centrism’ still embraces the tired and oft-disproven mantra, for example that our healthcare crisis can be fixed by ‘market-based’ solutions. How long have we been hearing that one now? HMO’s were the solution? Centrism seems to still blindly hold to the notion that the free market offers the best solutions to ‘insert problem here’. Bullshit. The free market cares not if you live or die, if you’re sick, whatever. Now, I’m not an anti-capitalist as many of my buddies are, but I’m not stupid enough to believe that market-based solutions can fix all of our problems. The point I’m getting at here is that ‘centrism’ in its current form works against many of the things we’re striving for , whether it be healthcare, labor issues, enviro issues and so on.

The next problem with today’s ‘centrism’ is the fact that it implies a compromise with the other side. Well, here’s something to remember. The other side (meaning the Republican party and their followers circa 2006) has no interest in compromising with us. On anything. That should be quite obvious to us by now, considering that Democrats have to hold hearings and such in small congressional offices and are often threatened for doing so by the Republican leadership. Plus there are too many things that we should not be willing to compromise on. Torture. Invasions of foreign countries that didn’t attack us. Congressional oversight and accountability. Reproductive freedom. Do I really need to go on? Further, we need to remember that there are many of those on the extremities of the right that would completely destroy us if they had a way to get away with it. If you can stomach it, listen to right-wing radio or go to Free Republic or Little Green Footballs. They talk of interment camps, torture, murder, all that great stuff. I’m not kidding and you know it. Now, I know they don’t represent all of the right-wing. Regardless, they are an influential part of it. I don’t want to compromise with them on anything, so we need to stop acting like we’re dealing with rational people here. And often, the rare chances we do get to ‘compromise’ are hardly good at all. Heck, look what the Torture Bill ‘compromise’ looks like; it’s not all that different from the pre-compromise torture bill.

My last little problem with ‘centrism’ is that great change rarely come from the center. The Repubs aren’t getting all of the things they want because they’re coming from the center. The ‘Contract with America’ didn’t come from the center. Neither did the New Deal, the Great Society or the Voting Rights Act. So we need to stop thinking that coming from the ‘mushy middle’ is somehow going to inspire the masses to rise up from their American Idol-induced stupor to support us. If we’re not going to stand proudly in the face of criticism for what we stand for, we might as well just sit down. Heck, lay down.

So that’s the first part of what an effective lefty think tank needs. More to come.

Ok, if my Mr. T video didn’t drive you away from here permanently, this oughta do it. Apparently, the new hot sex toy is the George W. Bush butt plug. Not kidding. Now, if you don’t know what one is and can’t figure it out by the words ‘butt’ and ‘plug’, I can’t help you. If that’s too tame for you, they also have a ‘Baby Jesus butt plug.

Oh, the rich opportunities for social commentary this offers. Is it used an interrogation tool in Gitmo? Is it an ordinary household appliance for Karl Rove? Perhaps every American citizen should have one, if only for the symbolism of what he does to each and every one of us every day. Maybe just the Democrats should have one, considering they don’t seem to miss an opportunity to bend over for the real G.W. Bush whenever they get the chance to.

Now here’s someone we know has one in his arsenal. This time, Joe’s expressing dismay that the NIE briefing that basically confirms Bush is full of shit regarding everything he says about terror and Iraq, has been leaked. Jeez, he really wants to get reelected, doesn’t he?

Ok, going to make that rare excursion into VT politics again. I’ve just returned from a ‘house party’ for Peter Welch, who is running to fill Bernie Sanders’ seat. Now, for those of you not in the know, in Vermont, due to our smallness factor, we have ‘house parties’ for candidates at the local and statewide level (I’m sure other states do this too, I just don’t know). Anyways, sometimes they’re publicly advertised, sometimes private invite. Since I’ve gotten more involved in VT politics working on the Osman senate campaign, and have gotten to know many more of the ‘movers and shakers’ (god, I hate that term), I seem to get invited to a lot of these house parties, or ‘coffees’ as they’re called. They are kinda cool, because they give one the opportunity to meet the candidate one-on-one, look them in the eye, and question them… and give them follow-ups if they give you the typical politician non-answer. Lots of schmoozing. And, of course, the opportunity to raise cash.

So, anyways, Jenni and I went to the coffee in Marshfield. There were lots of people I knew there. When Welch showed up, I approached him, and thanked him for acknowedging my Rainville bash letter to the Times Argus. He remembered it and thanked me again.

Anyways, after lots of good cheese, pastry and almost too much wine, I went into the big room to hear him speak. His speech was heavy on the Bush-bashing, but more importantly laying out some of the things he wants to do in Congress, such as bringing the troops home, fixing the Medicare D donut hole, protecting Social Security, and repealing the tax breaks for the wealthy and the oil companies. Welch is a very personable guy, not slick at all, and that was a plus in my book. He’s quite soft-spoken, not the Bernie firebrand type.

After the speech, he took some Q&A, and I asked him that basically, time and time again, whether it be torture, war, wiretapping, 9-11, whatever, the Dems drop the ball and roll over, time and time again. I asked him what his thoughts were on that, and considering how unpopular Bush is in VT (the 20′s), it would be politically quite safe to take on Bush, and how agressive would he be in regards to holding Bush and co. accountable?At first he was treading dangerously close to being a bit evasive, repeating his plans to fix things. So I followed up, “Peter, that’s great, but what about accountability? What about investigations and such?” He brought up a good point that often investigations and such can derail other initiatives and be turned against the party (while they are important, they cannot be the only focus), but also talked about the power of committees, in that they can stop a lot of things from seeing the light of day in the first place. He agreed that the Dems have been too timid in taking on Bush and that he would not back down from agressively fighting the president. So he sounds like he would be an obstructionist to the Bush agenda, which is what I was looking for. Every other question from the audience was pretty in-depth and intelligent, and he answered everything straight on, not giving the stock answer. He’s not the pandering type.

Peter’s an intelligent, thoughtful down-to-earth kind of guy, with none of the slickness(such as Bernie), which is a plus in my book. Of course, he’s not as leftie as I would like but I can be quite far to the left of the spectrum, but he needs to get elected, and I don’t think statewide that kind of radical leftism will sell. I donated some to the campaign and also volunteered to drive him around if he needs it. I’ll vote for him, and won’t feel bad about it, unlike when I voted for Kerry. I encourage you to do the same. I think he’d make a great congressman.

Several people approached me afterwards and thanked me for ‘putting his feet to the fire’. Other conversations I had with some of them there agreed that we need to take the gloves off and start getting agressive. Many liberals, for some reason, find this hard to do, whether it be because of political correctness, or the idea that agressiveness is never good, it’s too masculine, whatever. Bullshit. I was having some beers on Friday with my longtime friend Wes and spent a lot of time talking about this liberal hypersensitivity, and how it’s crippling us. That, as well as an overreliance on magical thinking. Libs often offer up these silly, hippie-dippie answers, with no basis in reality and we get mocked by the right-wing even more, because we feed into the stereotypes. Or we offer answers that are hopelessly idealistic, and don’t take into account the political and social realities of America (like the Bible Belt). Enough. I’ve had it.

That is the big difference between the lib/progressives of today and the 60′s radicals. Backbone. For whatever reason, whether because of political correctness or whatever, it’s been lacking, and we get our asses kicked on the political stage constantly since Reagan.

These people fighting us don’t want to compromise; they want to destroy us, and that seems lost on many on our side. Whining and playing defense while worrying about offending people is not a winning strategy, it’s a recipe for disaster, and certainly not a way to win anything.

Wes and I half-joked about starting up a think-tank for rational, proactive liberalism, unburdened by magical thinking, naivite and hypersensitivity, and that plays offense as well as defense. We then realized how few people we knew that we could ask to join. But it’s time for a realignment in the liberal movement that is aggressive, fights back, and commands the dialogue. In some ways , yes, be more like the GOP, except tell the truth and not make shit up like they do. And no, I’m not talking about self-described ‘anarchists’ who go to rallies and throw trash cans through windows – they make themselves feel better about themselves and the futility of their movement, and alienate lots of people who might otherwise agree, but I fail to see how they’re helping the cause progress in any way. Now, I’m not saying the Black Panthers, Weathermen, SDS, or the Yippies did everything right. But dammit, at least they knew how to fight. It’s time we did , too.

So, now, apparently, there is a rumor out there that the French have found out that Osama Bin Laden is possibly gravely ill or even dead from typhoid. So if this turns out to be true, what are the ramifications of this, especially in regards to the upcoming election?

If true, either way it isn’t gonna help the Republicans, because there goes their #1 boogeyman. What I’m intrigued of, to get off into la-la land for a minute, is the possibility that he is dead and the Repubs already knew this, and it was going to be their ‘October surprise’ right before the election. I’m sure it would have been framed that he was ‘taken out’ by U.S. special forces, or something like that. Then another big hurrah for Bush, because he ‘got’ Bin Laden.

As much as I’d like to see bin Laden brought to justice, I really hope the above scenario turns out to be true. What would make it even better is if somehow the above-said plan was leaked out from somebody in the gov’t. The schadenfreude we’d be feeling knowing that Rove and Co.’s plan backfired on them would be mighty high, indeed, and that it was revealed by the right’s favorite country to beat up on, France, would make it even sweeter. Let’s keep our fingers crossed on this one.

I know it’s all over the left blogospere, buy you really need to read the transcript of Bill Clinton’s appearance on FOX News Sunday. He calls Chris Wallace on his bullshit. Have a look.

Better yet, watch the video.

Found a good, funny atheist blog today. Check out Positive Blasphemy.

I was digging around yesterday and found a new op-ed by Sam Harris in the LA Times, called, ‘Head-in-the-Sand-Liberals’. Sam, after laying out his bona fide liberal creds, lays out his case for how liberals by and large don’t get how dangerous Muslim extremism really is.

“Given the degree to which religious ideas are still sheltered from criticism in every society, it is actually possible for a person to have the economic and intellectual resources to build a nuclear bomb — and to believe that he will get 72 virgins in paradise. And yet, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism.”

“In their analyses of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, liberals can be relied on to overlook the most basic moral distinctions. For instance, they ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) seek to avoid doing so. Muslims routinely use human shields, and this accounts for much of the collateral damage we and the Israelis cause; the political discourse throughout much of the Muslim world, especially with respect to Jews, is explicitly and unabashedly genocidal.”

He also take a dig at 9-11 conspiracy theorists, too. Now, what I do love about Sam Harris is his constant recurring theme that we need to take the gloves off and start criticizing religion as we would anything else in our society, and point out its absurdities. I’m 110% behind that. However, one of the things in The End of Faith that I found so unsettling was the idea that somehow Harris thinks that obliterating Muslim extremism through military might is somehow an option. When he gets going on Muslim extremism, sadly, a lot of his rhetoric sounds like Bushspeak, giving the U.S. and Israel a free pass – “we don’t intentionally murder noncombatants”. A quick glance at the news will expose that as a crock of shit. Granted, we don’t do the ‘human shield’ thing, but we don’t seem to have a problem bombing those human shields, either. So much for not intentionally murdering noncombatants.

I’d like to point you to two criticisms of Harris’ latest screed, the first from RJ Escow, called ‘The Sad State of Atheism Today’. Now, Escow is no atheist. He takes on Harris for ignoring data:

“I met Sam when we both participated in a group seminar on faith and progressive politics. He seemed pleasant enough, but when I cited the exhaustive works of research that have been conducted on fundamentalism in Islam and other religions he pointedly refused either to discuss them – or even to express willingness to look at them.

How can anyone argue for the virtue of knowledge and reason over faith and emotion, yet refuse to either examine the data or subject one’s own arguments to logical challenge?

Specifically, Harris would not acknowledge the research of Martin E. Marty and the Fundamentalism Project, whose complex multidisciplinary study found several intriguing patterns in the distribution of fundamentalism throughout all faiths.

Among the Project’s findings was the discovery that fundamentalists, who average roughly 20% of any major faith today, all seek to acquire power using similar techniques and belief systems. Their beliefs share much more in common with fundamentalists of other faiths than they do with their co-religionists, a finding that challenges the notion that Islam is an especially evil religion.

This finding challenges an assumption that is deeply cherished by Harris and his ilk, and equally beloved by Bauer and the Christian Right: that Muslims are more extremist than other people. That makes great fodder for recruiting wavering Christians to atheism, or convincing Americans who question the Iraq invasion that we’re at war with a world of “Islamofascists.”

He accuses Harris, as well as Richard Dawkins, of promoting a form of ‘Evangelical Atheism’. Now, when I hear Harris or Dawkins get up on thier soapbox in regards to thier strong support of science and the insane irrationalities that being religious entails, I tend to agree with them strongly, and often find myself taking that same approach. But I don’t think that approach wins over too many people on the fence.

Over at Huff Post, Air America radio host Marty Kaplan also takes on Sam with his ‘Atheists for Cheney’. His is more the criticism of how Harris’ dissing of liberals feeds right into the RNC talking points. I tend to agree.

I present this all in the interest of fairness. I still admire Sam Harris, but I don’t quite agree with his take on Muslims, it has always hinted at stereotyping. One of Sam’s points in the End of Faith was that religious moderation can be as harmful in many ways as extremism. I agree with that, I just don’t agree with his premise that somehow Muslim extremism represents the majority of Muslims, because whether that’s his premise or not, it’s how it’s coming off.

As I was out searching for another tree to cut for firewood this weekend, I had to go and get my camera and take some pics of this army of honey mushrooms camping out, plotting their next moves in the War on Terrah.

Well, there’s another missing white baby alert going on now, so hopefully I can tear you all away from it to give you a new Christofascist Idiot Watch Update.

First up, it’s ‘Jesus Camp’, a film about the rising evangelical youth movement. It’s a camp where young, malleable minds are brainwashed into intolerance, unquestioning faith, and a willingness to die for Jesus. Hey, go right ahead, I won’t stop you, just go off in the corner somewhere. As the camp’s creator, Pastor Becky Fisher says,

“I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are in Palestine, Pakistan and all those different places,” Fisher said. “Because, excuse me, we have the truth.”

Uh, excuse me, pastor, but those suicide bombers ‘have the truth’, too, don’t they? Maybe you should all get together someday. So does that mean suicide bombers will be showing up at Planned Parenthood or the local gay bar soon? Scary stuff.

Next up, the Pope sets off another clash of civilizations, as the religions duke it out about as one fictional belief system upsets another! You probably know by now about Pope Nazinger’s speech in which he referred to an ancient Catholic emporer who put the smackdown on Islam. But, the speech it was taken from was basically about how reason is such a problem nowadays, that it is wrong of us to want empirical evidence before believing something. Oh, the horror.

Anyways, I give you the incomparable Sam Harris’ take on the Pope’s latest nonsensical blathering: ‘God’s Rottweiler Barks’:

“The pope suggests that reason should be broadened to include the empirically unverifiable. And is there any question these new “vast horizons” will include the plump dogmas of the Catholic Church? Here, the pope gets the spirit of science exactly wrong. Science does not limit itself merely to what is currently verifiable. But it is interested in questions that are potentially verifiable (or, rather, falsifiable). And it does mean to exclude the gratuitously stupid.”

Have a look. Enjoy.