Dave,
What's more condescending:
--pointing out that some people are being cynically manipulated by right-wing looters and thugs
or
--cynically manipulating people in order to loot the populace and consolidate power?
Once again, if the right wing accuses the left of something, it's because they are doing it first (and more).
ie, What Patrick Said.
Kevin,
I think you may be pointing at a red herring, a bit. If the issue is governmental reparations, then your mother's personal culpability is not at issue. The government is hers as much as it is any other citizen's, and its responsibilities are incumbent upon its citizens, just as its benefits are conferred: your mother did not personally fight in the Civil War or demonstrate to get suffrage for women, either, but she is equally benefited by the results of those actions.
Even in the realm of personal culpability, though, I think there is some argument to be made that your mother, though she did not personally come here during the time of slavery, did, upon her arrival, begin participating in and benefiting from a system that derived from the days of slavery. And certainly, if she came over in the 60s, she participated in the cafeteria of racial discrimination that was Jim Crow laws and FHA restrictions and redlining and discriminatory lending practices, etc etc.
I am not in any way saying that she was an *active* participant in perpetuating that system, but it was the system in place when she arrived and she could not help but be part of it. How that relates to any compensation is a much more difficult question, absolutely.
I have thought about this a lot, since my maternal grandparents came here after WWII. I suppose I could say that they had no responsibility for anything that happened before they got here...but then why did they come, if not to become part of the country, part of the process, and as such part of the continuum?
Note that this argument does not work well with my grandmother when I debate with her about Native American sovereignty, though. :)
Clark said: Besides everybody knows Democrats vote that way because they are all gun grabbers who envy their neighbor's guns and want to tax their ammunition outrageously.
Better keep an eye on your precious bodily fluids too.
Done and done. Thank you for the tip.
Stephanie: IIRC it was 3/5 rather than 2/3
Sorry about that.
And I'm even hitched to a U. S. historian.
There's also the disquieting fact that prisoners are counted as part of a region's population when it comes to apportioning representatives, but are not able to actually vote, which skews influence in the favor of those areas that have big prisons (and also smacks of the 'slaves count as two-thirds of a person for representation but of course don't vote' days).
I suppose there is always the possibility that, in the same way that the GOP enforced party discipline in 2000 about Bush being moderate and compassionate and big-tent, the DNC this year might also be going for the "say you're middle of the road enough times and folks will still think you are even when you begin to give stuff to the base" strategy.
Of course, it'll be harder for them to pull off, because the press will never let the Dems pass off any old assertion without question (however comical or blatantly untrue), the way they did for the Bush campaign. And I have no empirical evidence to back this speculation up.
But it's something to consider.
OTOH, ditching Margaret Cho was idiotic and infuriating, and won't even play well with the soccer dads because it's...flip-flopping.
Erik:
I understand the anger that you're expressing. I had it too in 2000, that idea that the Dems were just taking my vote for granted and I refused to let them do that any more. Then I realized that it's awfully hard for my party to know what I want if the only way I communicate is by ignoring them pointedly once every 4 years.
So, I started to become more involved (and my sweetie *much* more involved), and for what little that's worth, at least I know that I can tell the people I meet, and talk to on the phone, and write letters to, etc. what I think and that I am voting not just with my vote but with my time, energy, talent, and money. FW(L)IW.
This is not meant to be glib or to say you aren't right that it's infuriating to watch everything skew further and further right, and to feel/be shut out of the party as money and consolidation tighten their grip on our nation's throat. With all due respect, I'm just not sure that dropping out (and thereby leaving the party to the DNC altogether) does much to change that.
Also, I myself truly feel that there is no credible left-alternative party candidate in the US this year. Nader is a grotesque right-backed parody of his former self, and I sincerely feel that the Greens need more time in the trenches building their party by winning local elections (like my City Council rep, Dean Zimmerperson) before they can or should aspire to the Presidency.
Patrick,
Actually, bellatrys made that point about money tainting politics (credit where it's due!).
FWIW, I wholeheartedly agree with you, both about the need to grab those opportunities and the fact that it's been done by the right and can/should be done by us now.
School board, neighborhood board, board of water management, library board, etc etc etc. If for no other reason, these offices are important because they are the proving ground for the next rungs of politics.
For inspiration, there's always the example of Paul Wellstone, who ran on a relative shoestring and made his lifetime of grassroots campaigning pay off. May he rest in peace-- and may the green bus (Wellstone's bus) keep on driving.
Lenny,
Your idea of victims being able to hold individuals in government responsible for bad acts, versus depleting the treasury, is satisfying, in a visceral way. But I have to say that I disagree, for the fundamental reason that when it comes to liability the government of this country should be indistinguishable from its citizenry.
In other words, if we are really a democracy, if we really put our money where our mouths are, we must stand behind our government's actions.
By that, I do not mean that we must blindly support whatever the President or Congress is doing (a la “America—love it or leave it”), if we don’t agree with those actions; but we must accept that as citizens of a democracy, everything the government does is done in our names. If we don’t like what it’s doing, it is our responsibility, because it is our right, to speak up against it and do all that we can to change it.
By singling out Rumsfeld, Bush, et al. for reparations, you are letting us off of the hook. And as much as I detest their machinations, I think that disowning them is even worse, because it makes it that much easier to ignore that we are fundamentally liable for all that they do...or worse, makes us into cynics who have manufactured for ourselves the luxury of disowning policy because “we didn’t vote for” X.
This is one of the reasons I am disturbed by the word “congresscritter,” also. It bespeaks the sort of cynicism that denies that that critter represents you.
The government is not a collection of individuals, it is a collection of our representatives: as such, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The whole is, well, all of us. To treat the government as individuals is to devalue the government as a collectivity.
(PS—I do personally think that Bush and crew can and should be held responsible, as individuals, for crimes against the state.)
Keith,
Being Minnesotan, I'm sorry to say that that was not Utah but Minnesota, where State Rep. Arlon Lindner boycotted the Dalai Lama's address to the MN State Legislature because Buddhism is "a cult."
May 9, 2001. I'd link but the only one I can dig up is an AP story archived on Lexis-Nexis.
CACI is recruiting new interrogators. How well does that bode in all this?
Note especially the part of the job description about operating "under minimal supervision." Not for long, I hope....
ps--sorry about the goofy quote marks in the above. It's cold here and too much of my brain must obviously have been devoted to cursing the vagaries of Minnesota springs. :)
Chad,
In light of your (and others') comments about religious lefties' work not being visible, it's worth mentioning that lots of the people out at the giant March for Womens' Lives were there representing religious groups. The comment thread at Daily Kos* mentions one group of over a thousand Unitarians marching, under the banner of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice," and another poster mentions her "very-photographed "Texas Southern Baptist For Choice!" sign"; Guardian coverage (linked to by the lefty, secular mag The Nation) mentions Catholics for a Free Choice being there too.
All of which is wonderful, and a quick rebuttal to anyone who says that liberal, religious people aren't out there in public under banners that say who they are and what they're up to.
So I gotta wonder what's up with the guest poster at Kevin Drum's blog, who, with his political credentials, should be out there calling attention to the participation of the religious left, not drumming up yet another round of "religious people can be lefties too"/"no they can't," which does no one any good. If a high-level Democrat can't even look around at the march he's attending, and maybe say to himself, "hey! More people should know how many allies we have!" well, then, I guess we have to take the Kos comments and make a few waves ourselves. :)
*-you have to scroll through a lot of posts to find these types of comments, though: the thread is mostly about the numbers.
If you hang out with a lefty group and tell them you're a Jew, they probably won't start on the anti-religion screed. If you let them see that you *practice Judaism*, watch out for the rants about Patriarchal Monotheistic Religions (tm) to fly.
I've got to say, you're using an awfully large brush there.
This is stupid. Would you rather have Bush and his cronies out of the White House, or would you rather hang on to your habit of spouting weary cliches about religion?
At the risk of lobbing a grenade into an already frought discussion, people on the Green side of the Neverending Nader debate have made the same plea for tolerance of their (also liberal) viewpoint on this site and others, and been (often) dismissed. Certainly I have dismissed them in person, when speaking with friends who pulled the fatal 'Green' lever in 2000.
I think now I should have been more respectful. I can be equally dismissive of religion and religious people, though generally just among people who, like me, are not religious. I tend to avoid the subject altogether with people who are, and I hope I am respectful though I'll think about how to be more so.
The hard thing for me in reading this discussion, though, is that it's so unclear what "religion" means in this context. Certainly, as Sylvia, Anna and others have mentioned, "religion" can be almost a personal-language word for "the people who abused me and the reason they did so." In this discussion, I think there are also ways in which "religion" is being used as shorthand not just for "Christianity" but for "mainstream culture." This is of course ironic because many, many Christians feel opposed to (not to mention oppressed by) mainstream culture.
To speak for myself, I am neither Christian nor religious in any other modality. And I experience religion, and Christianity, in my (American, Minnesotan) culture as a gentle-but-constant abrasion. We get lots of missionaries in my neighborhood, especially at this time of year, and I always say 'no thank you' and yet the minor annoyance of it mounts up in the same way that the annoyance of telemarketing does, or spam. And the same goes for the way that Biblical movies appear on the History channel (whereas "Clash of the Titans" does not). Or that liquor stores are closed on Sundays. Etc. There is a way in which Christians who decry the material nature of Christmas, Easter, et al. as they are manifested by public holidays miss the fact that to those on other sides of the debate the entrenched nature of certain beliefs is what's significant, not the accuracy of the portrayal.
Here's another issue. "Religion" is also used to describe "the force that gets legislatures to pull shit like this." It is very difficult for me to grok that people who successfully enact stuff like this, that allows doctors *not to treat gay people*, are oppressed in any meaningful sense of the word. Hence, again, in such a context remarks that dismiss or deride religion can seem to me to be the remarks of the less-powerful speaking against the more-powerful.
I was fortunate enough to live a month in a Fransican convent, and the sisters there have come to define energy, commitment, and compassion for me...on many levels. But the same commitment that gave them the strength to serve so admirably made them adamantly opposed to reproductive rights, feminism, and any sort of equality for queers like me.
An acquaintance in High School lost most of a year to leukemia. Her strong faith helped her through her battle, which was successful. That same faith led her to say to me (while still in treatment herself) that AIDS was God's punishment for homosexuality.
For me, that's the dilemma. But I think I've been using entirely the wrong language to get at it, and have maybe given offense where it was not meant, or criticized the wrong things.
You have given me a lot to think about, as always... thank you.
vote Green for local elections, vote Democrat for the national.
While this strategy has merits, another thing to consider is that local elections materially affect national elections. In its area, the local Democratic party machine has a great deal to do with the national campaign, and if Democrats are in office, the machine is that much more effective.
I am not necessarily saying not to follow the above strategy, or that the Dems are always the best choice for local office (or even that party machines don't carry their own set of unpleasant connotations). But it's also important to remember that local elections do materially impact national ones.
You may want to take Campenni's letter with a bit o' salt:
Check out Atrios.
I was just noticing this. It's a lovely convenience! No more scrolling!
Thank you so much in general for the work you've put into the blog format. All that spam was/is a terrible inconvenience, and those of us who can't get by without our dose of Electrolite/Making Light are grateful that you chose to retool and keep going instead of taking the easier route of cutting off comments or just stopping. Thanks.
A couple of things:
If the Tampax factory had been willing to change Ms. Payne's hours to a steady day shift, there would have been no need for her to leave that job and she'd still be in her house. If companies in general didn't still pay the same exact pittance they did 30 years ago, as though there were no such thing as inflation and housing prices hadn't gone through the roof, then this would all be moot.
And as long as we're discussing entities who take advantage of government largesse, let's point our fingers in the right place: Ms. Payne is living in state-subsidized housing and getting health care through Medicaid while she is *working* as a cashier. That means that taxpayer money is going to *subsidize the substandard wages of that bloody store*, which otherwise would have to pay its employees enough to pay rent, have health care, and buy food. We are not subsidizing Ms. Payne, we are subsidizing Wal-Mart.
One more thing: for people who disdain Ms. Payne's TV/VCR ownership (I've seen it here and on Crooked Timber and Brad DeLong), I would argue that a TV and a VCR are actually a sensible investment for poorer people: once the units are bought, it adds up to virtually free entertainment (except electricity which is pretty negligible). Movies, plays, concerts, and other activities cost money, either to attend or to get to or both. As many people here know, books can also cost money, and public library hours are shrinking as a rule. Especially if you have a child, and especially especially if you don't have a lot of time yourself, TV is a way to make what time off you do have at least semidiverting, and to take the edge off the pressure of child-rearing.
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