A Pilgrim's Digression

There is a contradiction at the heart of American conservatism that I’ve always found fascinating to contemplate.  Even in the days when I considered myself a conservative, I could not help but notice that among the most right-wing of conservatives, there is an almost treasonous dislike of the U.S. government and its representatives, with the exception of the people holding the guns: the military and those involved in law enforcement.  Myself, I’ve never been able to divorce the government from those charged with enforcing its will upon people.

Although I have high regard for individuals who serve in the military or the police, in short, I don’t trust either of  those entities as an indiscriminate unit.  This is especially true for the police.  I’ve always thought the British have a much healthier attitude towards their law enforcement.  Over there, the cops are called “the filth,” as in “the filth took away my license.”  That’s a much more powerful term than even the antiquated Americanism, “pig,” but it conveys (I think) a healthier sense of what the police are capable of.  A policeman can be as filthy as the next person.

I know there has to be someone in a society who holds the gun to our heads, otherwise society as a whole falls into anarchy; however, I don’t like that fact.  I can live my life just fine without either the government or its enforcers, as long as other people leave me be.  Of course we don’t live in that perfect world.  Anyway, all this is leading to a point I want to make.

I love reading news stories about bad cops.  There is something uplifting in a story about the disgrace of someone charged with keeping others in check, to the point that he can even kill us, if he feels it is necessary.

We have a small local newspaper here in town, seperate from the “official” paper that reports on all the light and happy topics in the community.  It’s called The Advocate, and it has a reputation for reporting the stories that the official paper won’t touch.

Our county sherrif’s 18 year-old son and a friend used his Dad’s police band radio to call in a false report of a crime, resulting in officers from all over the county as well as state police being scrambled.  The boy received barely more than a reprimand from the judge.  The Advocate reported on this travesty.   Somehow I think if an ordinary citizen had broken into the Sherrif’s car and used his radio for such a purpose, the punishment would have been pretty severe.

In another story, a deputy lost control of his car on his way to a report of a crime and crashed into a citizen’s house.  The resident was in the shower at the time, and she was injured and transported to the hospital.  The Advocate reported that when the homeowner tried to sue, the judge threw out the case because the county has “absolute immunity” from such lawsuits.  Not only that, but the county’s insurance provider doesn’t have to pay.  I guess this is why we take out homeowner’s insurance–just in case some cop crashes into our house while on duty.

My wife actually had a run-in with the cop in the above story, in a  restaurant here in town, which makes me completely unsympathetic to him.  I wouldn’t feel bad if he lost his job, at the very least because he damaged his patrol car.  Does that make me unpatriotic or unsupportive of “the police” as an entity?  Yeah, it probably does.  However, on the other hand, there are local cops I’ve met and liked; one of them even goes to our church with his family.

In another case I read about in The Advocate just today, a cop on the local drug task force has been suspended because his confidential informant claims to have had an affair with him.  He gave her money to buy meth so that he could arrest her buyer, but apparently something went wrong with the buy and her cover was blown.  When she was arrested on previous charges that were going to be dropped, if she cooperated, she claimed to have had an affair with the officer and that he fathered her child.  The paternity test exonerated the cop, but he failed a lie detector.

I don’t know why I like stories such as this so much.  I think it validates my perception that cops are just human and not to be trusted any more than anyone else.  I feel much the same about military personnel.  I appreciate that someone has to do that job, and it’s not easy.  However, I think it’s absolutely imperative not to be blind to the possibility that those in authority over us can do great harm–whether that person is a President, a congressman, a policeman, or a soldier.

I’d also like to add a bit of a plea here for papers like The Advocate.  It’s a monthly, so I’m sure its circulation is low, but it does a powerful job of exposing those in power in our community.  I’m sure those on the receiving end of its stories call it a “rag” and say that it spreads rumors and gossip, convicting innocent people in the process.  I guess that makes me a gossip-monger, because I truly love it.

Fair warning, this is going to be a discursive blog post.

My landlady is probably close to death at this point. I say “probably” because, even though she’s 95, she has had close calls before and somehow pulled out of it. I don’t think she’s pulling out of this one. Her doctor says there is nothing to treat her for, she’s just very old and her lungs and heart are slowly shutting down.

Ordinarily the death of a landlord or landlady would hardly be worth mentioning–and might be cause for celebration by some. But I’ve lived with this woman several days a week for over six years now, since January 2003. I’ve lived in her home, ate dinner with her two nights a week, kept her company in the evenings while we watched the evening news, listened to her paranoid fears about Democrats, illegal immigrants, and minorities in general, and also listened to her stories about her childhood in the 1920′s and 1930′s.

By now I know her stories probably as well as she does, but even when I know she’s about to launch into the same story I’ve heard dozens of times, I let her tell it. Her stories are important to her. When she dies, I will probably have to tell a few of her stories here, just so I don’t forget them.

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I’ve noticed a meme developing in the mainstream media that suggests the Republican party is resurgent and that the conservative philosophy is finding its voice, as well as legs to stand on in the Obama era. What’s I find most interesting is the portrayal of this resurgence as something new and different.

The Washington Post has a story today about this movement, titled Republicans see long-term victory in negative stance. A House member, Pete Sessions, is even quoted in the article “[suggesting] the party is learning from the disruptive tactics of the Taliban, and the GOP these days does have the bravado of an insurgent band that has pulled together after a big defeat to carry off a quick, if not particularly damaging, raid on the powers that be.”

The problem is, I’ve heard it all before. I’ve been around awhile now. I was a Limbaugh conservative in 1991, before the name Bill Clinton was first spoken with a sneer in conservative circles. I distinctly remember that after the defeat of 1992, there was a similar “insurgency” aimed at defeating Clinton’s proposals and bringing down the man himself.  I’m just surprised that Limbaugh hasn’t begun playing his old “America Held Hostage” theme song from the early nineties.

Conservatives need to ask themselves, if in nearly 20 years they haven’t achieved their goals–broadly defined as smaller government and a defeat of liberalism on philosophical and pragmatic grounds–then when are they going to achieve their goals? And if conservative generals like Limbaugh are basically still fighting the same war they were fighting in the nineties, with no victory in sight, isn’t it time to fire the generals and bring in some new blood?

It took only a couple years of losses for Lincoln to fire McClellan. Limbaugh has been the de facto leader of conservatism for far longer than that, and to no good purpose. What has he accomplished for the conservative movement? It’s a philosophical movement without any appreciable effect on American culture or government.

I just can’t get over how it seems like conservatism is right back in 1993 all over again. As the Post article cites, even some Republicans “see this moment as equivalent to 1993, when the party handled a new Democratic president by resisting and capitalizing on any perceived overreach.”

But again I ask, to what purpose? If today we behold the Democrat party stronger, more united, more revitalized than it was even with the election of Bill Clinton, how can conservatives say they achieved anything in the almost 20 years since 1993?

If I were a conservative today, I’d be asking myself first whether the Republican party is worthy of my support (judging by the Bush administration’s many failures, and judging by the nomination of John McCain to run for President, I’d conclude not). The second question I’d ask myself is, with so little to show for my support of conservative ideals, and with a country trending more and more liberal and democratic, maybe the problem is not with my country or with liberalism, but with me.

Conservatives risk becoming philosophically Amish, that is, retrograde and irrelevant. The country is moving on around them, finding new solutions to old problems, changing in ways many find disturbing, but conservatives seem unwilling to recognize a need for change themselves. In their view, the problem they had in 2008 was not unwillingness to adapt, but a failure to cling more stridently to their outdated belief system.

If only Sarah Palin had been at the top of the GOP ticket.

Thus in 2009, we are witnessing a recap of the 1993 session when Republicans had no answers to our national problems, only defiance to the solutions proposed by the other side. If I were a conservative, I’d be saying, “No thanks, let me off this ride. I’m not going through this again.”

The road ahead for them is another dead end, if conservatives allow deaf old men like Limbaugh to lead the war effort with a two decades-old battle plan. In 20 years conservatives will once again be fuming about their betrayal by the Republican party, the loss of power in Washington, and the lack of any tangible change in the way our government works.

Maybe that’s the way people like Limbaugh like it. It sort of gives their contract a built-in renewal clause every couple decades or so.

As the George Bush presidency enters its final week, it looks like we are going to be treated to daily retrospectives, some of them provided by the President himself.  Interesting that no one seems to be particularly nostalgic, least of all President Bush himself.

As a friend told me, you look in his eyes and you can tell he’s already thinking about the fishing trip he’s going to take as soon as he gets back to Texas.

Really, I think the only retrospective that I’m really interested in right now is what the President himself thinks about his eight years.  Everyone else made up their minds long ago–for that matter, George Bush did, too, but it’s still interesting to see if his mind has changed any, now that he can for all intents and purposes speak honestly and openly.

Are we really surprised to discover that, no, nothing much has changed inside that thick skull of his?

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So far, I have refrained from commenting on the fact that, more than a month after the election, the Obama campaign is still soliciting money from prior contributors.  Today’s solicitation email really made me kind of angry, though.  Below is a screen capture of the “Your ticket to history” email (click for a larger version that is more readable).

Your ticket to history

The email looks like any other campaign email I received during the election, and it is signed by David Ploufe, “Campaign Manager.”  The email reads as follows:

Between now and January 8th, 10 supporters and their guests will be selected to join the Inaugural activities.
If you make a donation — in any amount — to make the Inauguration a success, you and a guest could be flown to Washington, D.C., put up in a hotel, and be there as Barack is sworn in as the 44th President.

Will you make a donation of 25$ or more right now?  You and a guest could receive your ticket to history.

Unlike past inaugurations, this year’s event will not be paid for by Washington lobbyists or corporations.

This campaign was funded by 4 million ordinary people giving only what they could afford, and Barack and Joe are counting on you again. Help start this administration off right — independent of the special interest donors who have shaped Washington for too long.

This Inauguration will be open to as many Americans as possible. We’ll all come together to celebrate the hope and optimism that define this movement for change.

But you could be one of 10 selected to join us in Washington for all Inaugural events. Any donation you make between now and January 8th counts — whatever you can afford.

Show your support for a different kind of politics and a different kind of inauguration with a donation of $25 or more today.

I have to agree, this is definitely a different kind of politics.  I’ve contributed to several political campaigns, among them John McCain’s run for President in 2000 and (I’m embarrassed to say) John Edward’s campaign in 2007-2008.  True, I’ve never contributed to a winning ticket, yet this solicitation by the Obama people seems extraordinary to me.

As I understand it, the Inaugural Committee, which oversees any and all events surrounding the inauguration, is a Senate committee chaired by Senators.  It is therefore a taxpayer funded operation.  The Architect of the Capitol oversees construction of the platform on which the President is inaugurated, for example.

Why, or rather how, can a President-elect solicit donations for his inauguration?  And to what exactly am I contributing if I donate my $25.00?

This just sounds very shady as far as I am concerned.  If the money is going to the DNC, as seems most likely, then the email ought to be a solicitation on behalf of the DNC.  Somehow I don’t think as many donations would pour in.  It sounds to me like a bait and switch, in which the donor gives money for one purpose and it is routed to another purpose.

I have no evidence of that, just going on common sense here.  I can’t think of any expense the Inaugural Committee can’t or hasn’t covered, thus soliciting donations on its behalf seems rather disengenuous.

I am also a bit peeved that tickets, as well as air fare and a hotel stay—a veritable vacation package–are being given away in a sort of lottery, when tickets are so hard to come by for ordinary people.

The whole thing just seems wrong.  This is not the kind of change people voted for.

I came to this video series via Wonkette, who posted them on her site.  I’ll link to the original blog where the videos appear, blogger interrupted.  This is video of a McCain-Palin rally in Ohio.  As you’ll see when you watch it, the video is meant to showcase some of the up and coming intellectual lights of the new Republican party—ordinary Joe and Sarah Six-Packs, who have been so underrepresented in American politics until Sarah Palin came along.

Here’s Part One.

And here’s Part Two.

Be sure to check out blogger interrupted, as well.

These videos remind me of how Sean Hannity uses Man on the Street interviews with Obama supporters as a way to highlight what he considers the vapidity of the liberals.  Looks like there is some astonishing ignorance on both sides.

I also found the child’s comment, “You need gloves to touch him,” ironic in light of the trite political boxing metaphor of “taking off the gloves.”  How many times have we heard that McCain and Palin are taking the gloves off, over the last week or so?  I guess some of their supporters are putting on gloves instead of removing them.

What do you think the kid meant by that comment, anyway?  Have the parents told her that Obama is dirty or foul in some way?  No child is going to make a statement like that unless they have heard it from their parents, wouldn’t you agree?  Any thoughts?

This diatribe from Rush Limbaugh caught my attention.  I won’t bother with a link because his material disappears into the abyss of his pay site after one day.  Emphasis mine.

The depth of experience [in the debate] was on display.  As soon as we got to foreign policy, the depth of experience, life experiences, Obama was clearly, yeah, you know, One L.  Obama came across as professorial, elitist, smooth.  Charles Krauthammer, who I love, I just have so much respect for Charles Krauthammer, I can’t tell you.  For every aspect of his life, he had a huge accident, he’s in a wheelchair, he’s just overcome it, just brilliant, he’s just brilliant, but I felt so strange disagreeing with him in his analysis.  He said that Obama came off as elegant.  Obama’s a Chicago street thug. Obama’s running ads lying about everybody — me, McCain.  There’s nothing elegant about Obama.  Karl Rove described him accurately.  He says, (paraphrasing) “You’ve never met this guy but you’ve seen him.  He’s the guy at the country club standing up against the wall in the corner with a cocktail and a cigarette and his gorgeous little woman with him, passing judgment on everybody that walks by, thinking he’s high above ‘em.”  Elegant is just not how I would describe Obama.  But everybody wants to comment on his intellectual prowess that they’ve bought into and his mannerisms and so forth.  But who is Obama?  He’s not elegant.  He gets to play elegant while all the thugs are out destroying everybody that’s in his way, or trying to.  Anyway, I had to get that off my chest.

I don’t know whether it’s racist for a white man to call a black man a “thug.”  I’m not the kind of person who tries to police the language.  What’s interesting, though, is the contempt for Obama both because he is “elegant” and elitist, and because he is a thug.  Which is it, Limbaugh?

The contradiction is striking because I think it reveals what really hits conservatives in the gut about Obama: he’s a black man who came from nothing (a thug) who has risen above his roots, to use an Appalachian phrase.  He’s gotten too uppity.  Rove’s “country club” metaphor reveals much the same prejudice.  It’s irritating to conservatives that Obama can get away with acting white when we all really know he’s nothing more than an angry, resentful street thug.

Anyway, not to belabor the point (as Katie Couric famously remarked to Sara Palin) my impression of the debate was much more in line with Krauthammer.  Obama was elegant, statesmanlike, calm.  McCain was irascible, condescending, and on edge.  After hearing McCain say for the umpteenth time “Senator Obama doesn’t understand…” I felt Obama would have been justified in at least one eye-roll or a sigh.  No one deserves to be talked down to like that.

What I found most interesting is how under the lights of the debate hall, McCain threw out his recent argument that he represents change and fell back on the old “Experience” argument.  That’s where the arrogance came from–McCain quite simply felt that he was more knowledgeable, more experienced, better than Obama.  It was like McCain could barely tolerate being on the same stage as this presumptuous young man.

Obama knows how to deal with condescension, however.  It all rolls off his shoulders.  What liberals miss when they complain about Obama not being angry enough is that an angry Obama is not what has attracted people to him.  Calm, steady, assured, and yes even elegant and elite (in the sense that he is among the best young men this country can produce)…these are the words to describe Obama.  He’s not erratic.  He doesn’t need Hail Mary passes, such as the Palin selection, to move his campaign forward and generate momentary excitement.

It’s the smile and the coolness.  That’s what got Obama this far.  And I believe in the end, people are going to choose him because he is calm, not because he is angry and excitable (“passionate” is the word liberals use, but what they really mean is “mean”).  If there’s a thug behind his smile, he has betrayed no hint of it as far as most of us are concerned.  The fact that some people see him as a thug probably says more about their own fears than Obama himself.

The word is that the FBI is going to report the 2001 Anthrax case “solved.” The more I read about the supposed murdered, Bruce Ivins, the less certain I am that he is the culprit, however.

Today’s Washington Post story, “Tales of Addicton, Anxiety, Ranting” only confirms in my mind that like Stephen Hatfill before him, Ivins is a scapegoat for investigative incompetence. At first glance, an alcoholic who, so his therapist says, made threats against his colleagues, would seem a likely suspect. However, his descent into addiction and mental illness seem only to have occurred after the FBI made it clear he was their prime suspect.

Some of the ways in which the FBI harassed him included telling his children and wife their father was a murderer–once going so far as to stop Ivins and his wife in a public mall and telling his wife that her husband was a murderer.

They also tried to entice Ivin’s son to implicate his father by offering him the reward money plus a sport’s car of his choice.

I think addiction, anxiety, and suicide look less and less like guilty behavior, and more like a natural response to this kind of stress.

Anyway, the FBI is going to lay out their case against him soon. FBI to Show How Genetics led to Anthrax Researcher. At this point, I am a skeptic. I don’t think there can be a case made proving him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, or even on a preponderance of circumstantial evidence. I am more inclined to believe that an over-zealous government hounded an innocent man to commit suicide.

I have to say, I am a little disappointed with how the economic stimulus money is being distributed. Let me tell you a few of the things my wife has found out, in researching when we would get our money.

1. The money is disbursed according to the last two digits of your social security number. And if you’re married, that means the husband’s social security number, because traditionally the man is the first person on the tax return. The higher the number, the longer you will have to wait. Even if your wife has a low number, if she is not first on the tax return, it will be disbursed according to the husband’s social security number.
2. So you’ve got a low number. You’ll receive your money almost immediately, right? Not necessarily. If you did not have your April tax refund direct deposited into your bank account, the IRS will not disburse your money until early July, and you will get a paper check.
3. “Well,” you say, “I had my money direct deposited by H and R Block, the third party company that I used to file my taxes.” I am sorry to report that if you used a third party tax preparation service, and you allowed them to take their fee from your refund, no matter whether your tax refund was direct deposited, you will receive a paper check in early July.

Lynn and I are in the latter category. We used H and R Block online, and I allowed them to take their fee from our refund. What that means is that the bank account the IRS has on file for direct deposit is H and R Block. H and R Block received our refund first, and they disbursed it into our account after taking their fee.

We won’t get our stimulus payment until early July.

Really, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me why the disbursement must be on a rolling schedule anyway. We aren’t talking about the 19th century here, where the IRS employs hundreds of employees to sit at a desk sealing checks in envelopes and manually depositing each and every stimulus payment into citizens’ bank accounts. We live in an electronic age where, conceivably, all payments, by check or direct deposit, could be disbursed in a matter of a few days.
My opinion is the government wants the use of our tax dollars for as long as possible, so by stretching out the payments it minimizes its own loss.

Still, it’s aggravating. Our neighbors received their payment yesterday. We will have to wait until July. The only upside is that we will probably go on vacation about the time the stimulus arrives, so it will be a nice extra chunk of change to spend in New England this year.

I am not complaining really. If the government wants to give me back some of my tax dollars, kind of like an extra refund, then by all means I will take it. If Obama is successful in getting another stimulus package passed by the fall, I’ll take that one, too. I just don’t understand how this money stimulates the economy when there are so many restrictions on how and when people will receive it. It becomes a trickle of money going back into the economy, not a flood.

Few things make for a greater scandal than hypocrisy. Partly, it’s because the public has a genuine appetite for seeing hypocrites brought low; partly, it’s because the media love bringing them down. Add in sex and you’ve got the makings of the archetypal political scandal; but add in gay sex and you’ve got a blockbuster of a scandal guaranteed to make people pay attention.

It’s hard to believe that Democrats would get so lucky as to have two gay sex scandals in one year, and yet Republicans have rewarded them with just that. What makes the Larry Craig story so delectable, maybe even moreso than the Mark Foley scandal that preceded it, is that Craig has been such a fierce opponent of gay rights. In fact he still opposes gay rights. Yesterday, he so adamantly denied that he was gay that one gets the impression he can imagine nothing worse than being gay.

And yet he gets caught soliciting sex in an airport bathroom, like some George Michael wannabe. I think like a lot of people, I am left wondering how a hypocrite such as Larry Craig lives with himself.

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