Why the poor love the rich and other political mysteries
October 28, 2008 by Julia King · 2 Comments
My teenage daughter has been texting up a storm with a neo-conservative classmate. As my husband and I sit in the living room talking with friends, she rushes in with the boy’s latest declaration. “Obama’s a SOCIALIST. That’s what he’s saying now!” she says.
It’s a familiar charge, this “socialist” catch-all tossed at Obama. As a canvasser, I’ve heard it before, mostly from people who can’t explain why they want John McCain to be our next president. The fascinating thing about the charge is that it comes from people living out modest lives in modest homes in modest neighborhoods.
After a string of strangers made the accusation against Obama on an afternoon of door-to-door, an acquaintance (who lives in a trailer) followed-up by asking me in earnest about the dangers of “class warfare.”
“Isn’t it class warfare to make someone pay more taxes just because they’re rich?” She asked with puppy-dog eyes. I asked if she thought it might be class warfare for the owner of a company to take home millions while his lowest paid employees don’t take home enough money to pay rent or purchase healthcare. She said she hadn’t really thought about that.
So, how is it that kind-hearted people are compelled to champion hard-working multimillionaires but not hard-working janitors or hotel maids? What is the political Right doing right that the Left is doing wrong?
How and why does one simple (yet highly complex) word — “socialism” — manage to whip the masses into line? Should all forms of socialism pack the same punch? Are there scary kinds and not-so-scary kinds? Do tell, people. Do tell….
Blindness
October 26, 2008 by Ed · Leave a Comment
By Edward C. King
A man in a car at a stoplight suddenly is stricken blind. Another man drives the blind man to his home, but then steals his car. The doctor who examines the blind man becomes blind the next day. The “good Samaritan” who stole the car also goes blind. It appears the blindness is spreading, possibly from a virus. The authorities decree that those who have become blind must be isolated from society, lest they infect those who still have sight. The original blind man, the doctor, the doctor’s wife, the car thief, and many others are taken to a former prison and left. Guards are stationed outside the prison to prevent escape, but no one is stationed inside the prison and the occupants are not examined or treated in any way to avoid exposure. The guards periodically deliver food to the gate of the prison, but otherwise leave the afflicted to fend for themselves.
Blindness continues to spread. Blinded guards become prisoners. The guard ranks thin; and before long, the food stops coming. Within the prison, the most aggressive people gain control and extract gross actions from the others in exchange for small shares of food.
Eventually, those imprisoned find their way to the outside and learn that everyone is blind. There has been a complete societal breakdown. Businesses have been abandoned, as have hospitals and all social service systems. There are no cars or transportation systems, no sign of government. Sewage systems do not work. People find food by scavenging. Many are homeless because they are unable to find their homes, or have been ousted from them. Some die in the streets. When they do, dogs preserve themselves by devouring human remains.
This is Blindness, a novel written in 1995 by Jose Saramago, the 1998 winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. While reading the story, one questions whether the scenario is realistic – until grasping that Saramago is describing not literal blindness, but a failure of leadership. In Saramago’s tale, there is no measured national dialog. The afflicted are immediately treated as outcasts with no regard for the fact that blind people are capable of playing useful roles, even exercising leadership, in society. Nor is there due process. The doctor and his wife are picked up and taken away without prior notice and without choice or the opportunity to be heard. The people themselves are so swept up by events and fear that reflection seems impossible. There is prompt and resolute governmental action, but it is born merely of impulse. There is no reflection, no sophistication, no search for alternatives, no governmental vision.
I read Blindness several years ago. It is a powerful and profound book. Yet, I did not recommend it to my wife, to my kindred spirit adult daughters, to my thoughtful and highly literate older grandchildren, or to friends. This in part was because the descriptions of what happened to people are as horrific, disturbing, and disgusting as anything I have ever read. I also felt the book’s importance was somewhat diminished by what then seemed to me its unrealistic premises. At that time, I doubted that such a catastrophe would or could occur in any society, and I was unwilling to consider carefully whether it would be possible for a body of people to abandon civilized institutions, values, and actions so quickly and heedlessly. On the basis of those rationalizations, I decided I could not justify putting my loved ones through the experience of Blindness.
Yet, in recent years, we have all seen several instances of unthinkable, catastrophic events, followed by governmental blindness. First, there was 911. The tragedy of that day was unthinkable. The aftermath, though, was in many ways even more disturbing. Instead of carefully considering alternatives and working with the many friendly and empathetic nations who wanted to cooperate in a united response, our government worked in isolation to fashion its own response, then insisted that other nations join the approach or stand aside. We attacked Iraq, although that country played absolutely no role in causing the 911 attack on this country.
Also–even more shocking to me as a lawyer, former judge and teacher of law–we chose not to tailor our response to our own country’s proudest historic possession, our constitutional safeguards, or to the international protocols we and other nations had agreed to in the Geneva Convention. Instead, we sought to minimize and avoid those bulwarks against inhumanity so that we could torture and hold prisoners indeterminately without counsel or an opportunity to be heard.
Then Katrina. We knew a hurricane was coming, but government showed no vision and failed to prepare. Many with disabilities or without cars were unable to leave New Orleans and were simply abandoned. The televised scenes were eerily reminiscent of Blindness: desperate people waving from roofs; bodies floating in the water; looters raping households and people; all with no effective governmental response. Congratulatory statements such as, “Great job, Brownie,” confirmed that our highest officials were blind even to their own failures.
Now we face one more stunning, unanticipated and potentially catastrophic event — a financial crisis.
This time governmental blindness–failure to regulate–has played a role in creating the crisis. And governmental insistence on immediate action has exacerbated it. Secretary of Treasury Paulsen put forward a $700 billion rescue package but he and President Bush insisted that it must be enacted immediately. Although neither was able to articulate what the government would do with that vast amount of money, both resisted efforts within Congress to consider alternatives and permit a modicum of reflection and fine tuning. The resulting massive governmental action does not seem to represent any vision. The market is un-assured, and the economy remains at risk.
In the midst of this financial crisis, with New Orleans still unrecovered, and with the nation still struggling with the effects of our unilateral and misguided decisions in response to 911, we have the opportunity to choose new leadership. Plainly, we should attempt to choose vision, not blindness.
Senator John McCain, a war hero in the sense that he persevered through five years of harsh imprisonment at the hands of the enemy during the Vietnam War, surely is an honorable man. But has he shown any signs of genuine vision? Senator McCain is a member of the party in power during all
the events described above, and has supported the government in its response to those events. A recent article by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic gives us a clue as to why this has happened. The article, Why War Is His Answer, describes McCain and his father, Admiral John S. McCain, Jr., as true believers in the Vietnam War and in the notion that America’s failure to do what was necessary to win that war was at great cost to our national honor. The article concludes that Senator McCain’s approach to the war in Iraq also is driven by his concern for national honor.
Honor, a laudable and perhaps even necessary quality, is not sufficient. An effective president must have vision. A decision-making process based on honor can be short sighted and lead to disastrous results. Throughout history, millions of soldiers and civilians have killed and been killed in the name of national or personal honor.
Evaluating the outcome of the Vietnam War exclusively on the basis of national honor is a form of blindness. When one looks at Vietnam as that country exists today and recognizes how fundamentally erroneous was the domino theory that impelled our nation during the Vietnam War, it is difficult to imagine that anybody could mourn The United States’ refusal to add additional deaths to our efforts to win that war. Indeed, one can more reasonably think that to fight on in Vietnam to save face would have led to more needless deaths and would have been the ultimate dishonorable act.
More to the point now, if a President McCain were to become fixated on “honor” and “victory” in Iraq, this would lead to many more deaths and cause us to lose sight of numerous other important considerations, such as Afghanistan and the need to develop cooperative approaches with other nations.
Similarly, Senator McCain’s opposition through the years to more efficient automobile fuel standards, and his calls now to, “Drill, baby, drill!,” suggest that a President McCain would not be a man of vision, looking for alternatives and new ways, but instead would be rigid, clinging to old ways without regard to the peril.
The alternative is Barack Obama. Although many politicians, including Senator McCain in the past year, have pronounced themselves to be candidates of change, Senator Obama has been calling for change since he first appeared on the national stage. With his mixed racial heritage, his years in Hawaii and Indonesia, and work with the poor as a community organizer, followed by his exceptional achievement in becoming president of the Harvard Law Review, his ten years as a scholar and teacher of constitutional law, then his service in the Illinois legislature and the US Senate, Obama himself is a symbol of change and openness for America. He has demonstrated a remarkable capacity to draw to him the wisest advisors, like financier Warren Buffett and law scholar Laurence Tribe, to help him identify and analyze key issues and determine the best course of action.
I see now that I erred in failing to bring Blindness to the attention of my family and friends. I now understand that the book’s premise was realistic, that civilized society is fragile and must be nurtured and protected, and that in a time of emergency or crisis, lack of governmental vision can be fatal.
We now have before us two candidates. One represents vision, change, and a search for new ways. The other, a supporter of the policies that have put us where we are, holds himself out as a man of experience and honor. What would Saramago say?
Now, now, Madonna
October 17, 2008 by Julia King · Leave a Comment
Kick Sarah Palin’s ASS?? We don’t KICK PEOPLE’S ASSES. We use our WORDS. Of course, Madonna is unlikely to incite actual violence from her finger-snapping, club-dancing fans, but the point is that WE DON’T DO THAT. We don’t do it because it’s wrong, but also because if we have a throw-down with the conservatives, they’ll win. They have guns. We have the brains and they have the brawn (with the exception of old-schoolers like George Will who is prissier than Madonna’s prissiest fan).
