Thursday, February 25, 2010

O, Canada!


I was half asleep, listening to (but not really watching) MSNBC's "Too Early" show this morning, when I heard what has to be the mother of all Olympic tie-ins. As part of its quest to bring us everything possible even remotely connected to the Vancouver Olympics, NBC's cable affiliate took a totally unscientific poll to discern who is the greatest Canadian of all time.

The suggestions apparently poured in. [There must be many, many more people awake at that hour than I can imagine.--Ed.] Neil Young made the list, as did the Canadian scientists/researchers who first developed insulin for human use (worthy nominees all). But according to MSNBC, the top three, in reverse order, are:

Bronze: Michael J. Fox
Silver: Dudley Do-Right
Gold: William Shatner

My eyes were now opened wide as I nearly fell out of bed, laughing. Any poll that has a lovable rascal, an animated naif, and the ultimate space cowboy as its top three is a poll whose results I can endorse!

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Quick And Cogent Observations


Observation the first: the governors of the fifty states have been meeting this weekend. Liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, they all seem to oppose the "intrusion" of the federal government into their lives and statehouses. I am not unsympathetic; I don't have a great deal of love or respect for unfunded federal mandates, myself.

However, I must take issue with the governors' assertion that the states are 50 laboratories which can each do experiments and find solutions for their own pressing problems. (What works best for West Virginia may not work best for Utah, as it were.) True enough, and tailored clothes always fit better than off-the-rack ones. But when it comes to issues like the problems with our current healthcare system, implementing 50 solutions is like shooting 50 BBs at a rampaging grizzly bear. Ain't gonna stop him--only gonna make him madder.

National problems require national solutions. In the case of healthcare reform, BBs won't work. Only high-powered rifle bullets will have any lasting effect. Besides, just because one is buying one's clothes off the rack, it doesn't mean that they don't fit or suit [pun intended--Ed.] their intended purpose. It just means one is wearing a brand-name and not a designer original.

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Observation the second: two weeks ago, an associate professor of politics at the University of Virginia, one Gerard Alexander, wrote an op-ed piece for the Washington Post wherein he decried the condescending attitude of liberals toward conservatives. As a female who follows certain sports diligently, I have been on the receiving end of condescension, and I agree, it's no way to behave. However, Prof. Alexander failed mightily to prove his point. He kept saying that conservatives have good ideas, but he didn't spell out any of them. Thus one must look to what other conservatives are saying to determine whether Alexander's point is well-taken, and in light of the healthcare reform debate alone, the paucity of Alexander's complaint becomes glaringly clear.

So far, the conservatives' "good ideas" consist of "death panels" (a/k/a "killing Grandma"), "socialized medicine," and "higher costs to you, the consumer." The size of the cost is a legitimate concern, but what the conservatives spouting that bit of "wisdom" fail to address is just how much higher the costs of doing nothing will be than will be the costs of doing something. "Death panels" and "socialized medicine" repeatedly have been shown to be outright lies. "Death panels" are what we have NOW, when corporations whose profits depend on denying coverage decide what level of care policyholders will get; "socialized medicine" is impossible under the current plan being debated, seeing as how it is a public "option." Nor does providing the public option put us inevitably on the road to socialized medicine. One would think that our over 40 years' experience with Medicare adequately demonstrates that.

One of the first things that law students learn is this hierarchy of argument: when you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. After all, facts are the strongest possible support for your case. When you don't have the facts, argue the law. Laws already on the books frequently bolster an argument that is unsupported by the facts, so it's the second-best line of attack. Only as a last resort should you make blatant emotional appeals, because resorting to the same demonstrates that you have neither the facts NOR the law on your side . . . and thus is an indication that you have no case.

Yet the conservatives in this country present their "ideas" in terms of distortions and even outright lies, as the second paragraph of this essay-in-miniature demonstrates. Their tactic of first--not last, but first--resort is to incite fear and anger. That's a blatant emotional appeal, which by its very existence proves that conservatives have no case (except their own greedy self-interest). It is hard not to be condescending toward that.

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Observation the third: I am beyond being sick unto death of conservatives claiming that only they love and revere the US Constitution, as the editor of The National Review [whose name escapes me at the moment. My apologies.--Ed.] claimed during the NPR broadcast of All Things Considered which aired locally last night (starting at 4 p.m. CST). I love and revere the Constitution just as much if not more than any of them. I daresay I know it better, too, having taught college-level courses on the history of same and having studied it as one of my fields of particular interest all my adult life.

What conservatives revere is their own interpretation of the Constitution, which is designed to protect and defend their own advantages, too often at the expense of the vast majority (by sheer numbers) of us in this country. Anyone who wants to pooh-pooh that idea must first consider this: if there were only one way to interpret the Constitution, we wouldn't NEED the Supreme Court at all, because there'd never be any disagreements about what the Constitution means and thus how it applies in any given situation.

And don't even get me started on "original intent." I've covered that ground before in this blog, in great depth and detail, so I will not bore you by repeating myself--at least not beyond saying that just because Shakespeare didn't know of, use, or even invent the term "psychological drama," it doesn't mean that he didn't write any.

The More Things Change, The More They Don't


Even after absorbing the considerable wisdom of the analysis provided by the book What's the Matter with Kansas? and after factoring in my self-proclaimed status as both a Civil War buff and an Abraham Lincoln admirer, I knew I was missing something while trying to connect the dots of American history in my own mind. And then I saw a PBS rerun of Ken Burns' The Civil War. Specifically, I saw the episode wherein Shelby Foote [may he rest in peace--Ed.] explained why so many poor, landless, non-slave-owning whites fought for the Confederacy. In his sublimely subtle Southern drawl, Mr. Foote imagined a Confederate foot soldier talking to his Union counterpart: "Y'all came down here."

I had what can be described accurately only as a true "light-bulb" moment. The average Confederate couldn't care less about "Union," slavery, or any of the larger issues supposedly driving the war. He cared about feeling threatened, put-upon, literally invaded.

And so it occurs to me that even with all the technological and scientific and other advances humanity has made in the past 150 years, humans themselves have not changed--only their roles in society have. Land- and slave-owning Southern patricians have become corporate and banking CEOs (and other high-level managers); poor Confederate foot soldiers have become Tea Partiers; abolitionists have become political progressives . . . and we still have a tall, lanky, President from Illinois whose goals are larger and for the betterment of ALL of us, much more so than many of the country's citizens seem able to imagine.

OK, that last was a bit of a stretch, and said slightly tongue-in-cheek, but the general analogy holds. I don't know why I didn't consciously recognize it sooner. After all, I've been saying for decades that if we all had been alive 300 years ago, everyone on Wall Street would have been pirates.

Saturday, February 06, 2010

Wait . . . What?!?


An NPR report this morning confirms that Sarah Palin has been comparing the Tea Party movement to the US civil rights movement. So blacks (and whites) in the 1950s and 1960s who were beset by police attack dogs, blasted with fire hoses opened to full blast, jailed for politely asking that they be served in segregated lunch counters, bus stations, retail stores, and other establishments, and even murdered, are the spiritual forebears of a group that applauds Tom Tancredo for complaining that people who cannot spell "vote" helped elect President Obama? A group that seems to delight in "clever" name-calling ("Obamanation" anyone?) and which has nary a minority member amongst its adherents? A group that has full access to the political process in this country but is mad because it's no longer in power?

I can't decide whether to call on the spirit of George Orwell or the spirit of Lewis Carroll.

The Tea Party is not the spiritual heir of the battle for civil rights. The Tea Party doesn't want to expand the promise of America to cover all its citizens. The Tea Party is merely the current generation of the white supremacists who sicced the attack dogs and turned the fire hoses on the civil rights demonstrators forty-some years ago.

In a twisted way, then, Palin is right--she's just pointing to the wrong side of the historical equation. The Tea Party is actually the modern incarnation of the 19th century Know Nothing party, a group of xenophobic anti-immigration (and especially anti-Catholic) zealots who made a lot of noise but who, thankfully, amounted to not much. May the Tea Party suffer the same fate.