Candidates for Disqualification

Daily Kos held a straw poll recently, looking for early favorites for the next Dem nominee. I say we start instead by setting some rules...

Rule #1: No more than four years' worth of legislative sala-morphosis.
Rule #2: One shot, unless you lose to the future Pres. You may try for the nomination only one time; you only can have a second shot if the candidate that beat you went on to win the general election. So, you had better try hard to win (Sharpton!). At the same time, you had better not inflict too much damage on your competitors and you better put all your weight behind the winner if you lose, because you only can have a second shot if the winner takes the grand prize.

You may notice that I have cleverly double-disqualified Mr. Biden, Mr. Gore, Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lieberman. Don't ask how we should enforce these rules exactly. I am not an election lawyer. Anyway, not every rule has to be legally enforceable in order to have power.

Desmognathus Senatus

Recent news: Durbin caves. Biden running for Pres., again.
These guys are hopeless. It's just the same people and the same patterns.

We desperately need new people with spines that can hold their original shape when some force is applied. There is a reason why so few presidents and so many failed presidential candidates are former legislators. Contrary to the CW, it's not just the long voting record to supply the other side with ammunition. It's that nobody wants one to be President, because they are salamanders. Behold:

"Salamanders look very much like lizards only without scales or claws...Some are vibrantly colored, and some are dull...Salamanders have also developed senses to help them survive. Their eyesight helps them find food and escape from predators. The smelling and tasting senses are controlled by the Jacobson's organ [Interesting! Further research necessary]...Salamanders with flashy colors like to show them off...Salamanders also have another interesting adaptation. If a salamander is being attacked, then its tail falls off. That distracts the predator long enough for the salamander to make a quick getaway. If the salamander happens to lose any limbs in the process, it can regenerate or re-grow any of its body parts... Salamanders also shed the outer epidermis layer of skin, sometimes as often as once a week. The epidermis splits around the mouth and the salamander slips out of it gradually, twisting and turning..." Here is a familiar subspecies.

Republican legislators are very much the same, there are just more of them. That and they eat their offspring (making them more like newts). Reindeer takes this idea that extra step.

Bush's Baby

Like millions of Kerry voters, I took the 2004 election result hard. I was angry about the way the campaign played out, the lines of attack, and the way that Kerry (no thanks to our loathsome press) took hit after below-the-belt hit, then opened himself up for more. Also, I dreaded -- mourned, really -- what Bush would do to our country over four more years. And there was Bush, everywhere on the television and radio, gloating unabashedly, bragging about what he was going to do with his supposed “political capital," strutting and grinning like an ass.

Now I'm thinking that our boy John, famous for rushing the enemy when in a tight spot, may have had an inkling that winning the election wasn't worth the exertion -- ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ and all that. I remember the mumbo-jumbo from the Bush campaign about how Kerry needed to suggest a better alternative if he was going to criticize the way the war was being handled. And I remember him offering a few modest suggestions. But so much had been done wrong by then, what could he really suggest? Actually, I was amazed that the Bush folks kept hammering the lack of alternatives; it seemed only to emphasize the magnitude of the predicament they had placed us in.

So, maybe, on the occasions when Kerry was against the ropes, being battered again on another non-issue out of left field and all of us were yelling, "FIGHT!" Kerry was wondering to himself why exactly Bush would go to such lengths to keep possession of the big fat mess he had made.

Don't get me wrong. I think Kerry was serious about his campaign for the same reasons that many people, like myself, voted for him: Fear of four more years worth of damage. But maybe his heart was not completely in it. Jus' sayin'.

More and more, I think the result may have been for the better. (May have been. Lots more bad can happen in the next three years, not to mention decades of a Scalia S.Ct.) If Bush has really lost his mojo this early on, then there is hope of containing the catastrophe. Moreover, where would we be today if Kerry had won? Congress would still be in Republican hands. The Supreme Court would have reversed the Schiavo decision just so Rehnquist could be kept alive to hold on to his seat for four more years (kidding on that one). And Iraq would still be a scrambled egg. Maybe Kerry would be doing something different in Iraq, saving some American lives, where Bush is stubbornly "staying the course" as if that was a winning strategy and tens of hundreds of our soldiers were not already dead. But I doubt if Kerry could either unscramble the egg or make an omelet from it. We would be hearing so much bull about how good it was going before Kerry took over and botched it, and people would be buying that.

"Brownshirt Conservatism"

As I mentioned in my last post, accusations of fascism are made too lightly in our political discourse. Still, just because little red hens may have been mistaken about the sky falling innumerable times in the past does not mean that intelligent people should not keep an eye to the heavens. With that that in mind, I would recommend PhilosoPundit's series of posts under the category of "fascism alerts" as food for thought. I would also like credit his discovery of this excellent article by Scott McConnell of The American Conservative, who does seem to be capable of recognizing fascistic tendencies among some in the Republican tent. Nevertheless, I am concerned that McConnell's observations are not more readily acknowledged by other conservatives. I am perhaps more perturbed still that Americans who espouse what I consider to be fascistic opinions (that expression of dissent is equivalent to treason, that America's actions are inherently always good and right, etc.) honestly believe themselves to be steadfast advocates for freedom and democracy.

Nazis Everywhere?

I wonder if there has been a contentious political issue since the end of WWII that has been debated without references to Hitler, Nazis, Fascism, the Gestapo, Goose-stepping, Stormtroopers, yada, yada. At the moment, it seems everyone is up in arms about Senator Richard Durbin's comparisons between the detention facility at Guantanamo and Nazi practices. I will avoid that debate. Though I share the Senator's broad concerns about how the treatment of our prisoners hurts our interests and undermines our values, there is little doubt that (so far and so far as we know) Nazi's behaved much worse.

Almost whenever Nazi's et al come up in political debates, it seems to me that the comparison is unfounded or exaggerated. Usually, it represents the point when considered argumentation has broken down and name calling is all that remains for the participants.

I am, however, troubled by Nazism and Fascism as social forces. Despite the concern that everyone seems to have with being labelled as such, and as quickly as we seem to recognize it in others, does anyone know how to recognize it in themselves? Short of one's friends saying, "Hey, look, you have grown a short mustache and amassed a formidable swastika collection," how does someone recognize when they have headed down the road of fascistic thinking and advocacy? As much as we seem to fear it, I do not think we broadly understand it. I do not think enough of us can define it.

Who Do You Love: Humans or Humanity?

Overheard: "Republicans care about humans, but not humanity; Democrats care about humanity, but not humans."

I think I am more concerned about society than Republicans seem to be. A sink or swim, go it alone, state of nature approach just seems horribly uncivilized. Should we not strive to model our society after strong, healthy families? Members of disfunctional families flaunt their advantages, put one another down, scrap and fight for everything. Resentment builds. Bad faith increases. Everyone is miserable, except whomever is dominating and, when push comes to shove, there is little to hold the family together. So, as for humanity, I would say I care.

Now humans, that is harder; I cannot speak as generally. Nevertheless, my gut reaction is to be offended by the statement above. Certainly there are many individuals that I love greatly. Others, I prefer to keep at a distance. So, I wonder what underlying generalizable truth there may be to the (simplistic, insulting?) statement. I have little doubt that Republicans and Democrats have drastically different world-views, though I have difficulty defining the differences in a useful way.

The Beginnings

This is an anonymous political pamphlet of sorts.

Though I keep my political opinions to myself in my daily life, the current state of affairs has motivated me to to contribute my small voice to the growing chorus of frustration, anguish and disaffection with current American political leadership.

I intend to post anonymously on this blog. This is partly, I freely admit, because I am unwilling to risk any direct personal consequences for what I write here. I want to be free to express myself candidly. There is another reason as well: I think that personality can distract from and distort intellectual discourse. I wish for my ideas to be judged on their own merit. I wish my arguments to be judged on their collective soundness.

So, with that said, let's see what happens....

-Your Host