Nader? Really?

Norman Thomas, probably running

Well yes, I do think Chamberlain is a decent comparison for the situation, particularly if you understand that Chamberlain, at the time, may well have been making the best deal he could make, since obviously the Brits were absolutely and certainly not ready for the German war machine.  That's what Dunkirk proved, right?  So to actually understand Chamberlain you have to understand that.  The name isn't a cuss word.

So now Lawrence O'Donnell has a panel of Alan Grayson, Jane Hamsher, the editor of Tikuun, and Nader?  Nader?  Mr. Nader has certainly over his extensive public authorial life had many intelligent things to say about the American condition.  He was in the forefront of those who recognized that, no, corporations really didn't care so much about the citzen's wellbeing, other than that the citizen had enough money and credit to purchase the Mcguffin of choice.  That is, Ralph Nader understands that corporate power has molded America into a corporate vision of democracy, where "freedom" means the economic freedom to operate.  This corporate molding of America has gone on apace until now corporations are actually citizens, and since they have most of the money, they are in fact, taken as a group, the most influential citizens, owning probably a majority or at least a relevant minority of Senators, and plenty of House members, and quite a few governors, state houses, county commissioners, sheriffs, and justices of the peace.  Nader saw it coming early, and he's been fighting it, with some success, for a long long time.

But back in 2000, let us recall, Mr. Nader managed to accomplish the election of George W. Bush.  This is  a kind of existential proof.  Just like Dunkirk.  So, I understand the frustration, the exasperation, the annoyance.  I would like to see Congress simply let the Bush Tax Cuts expire, and see how things actually shake out after that.  I would like to see the Democratic Party, and Mr. Obama's Administration, make the argument, and forcefully, that if the Bush Tax Cuts expire, this is the last consequence of The Bush Tax Cuts and not current administration policy.  And I would like to see the Administration, and the still-Democratic Senate, then present bills to remedy the problems with the tax code which will follow the restoration of Clinton era rates, hopefully without including new mistakes, such as lowering the "social security" tax rate.  Hell, maybe they could raise the social security tax rate ceiling just a bit?  Who understands why there's a ceiling on that?

But there's two things about Nader, and the idea that Obama needs primary opposition to some how "make" him toe the line.  One is, Nader got George Bush elected.  The other is more from Obama's side of it.  It's unseemly for Obama to be arguing the case I'm arguing, which without mentioning Nader by name, he sure is.  Obama cannot say "look, make a primary fight and it'll be just like Kennedy-Carter, or Nader-Gore, and you know how that turned out."  But Democrats cannot forget that either.

This is exactly the difference between words and events, the demarcation point.  The Democratic Party must attempt to remain in the real world, where events occur, rather than retreating to yet another abstract world, where anything goes.  The Republicans already live on an abstract planet where anything goes.  We don't need another major party to go "there."  Democrats are and must remain reality based.

Mr. O'Donnell, of course, is yet another shrewd journalist/entertainer.  He's fine with bringing Nader into it.  But it's a cynical play, and Republicans and Fox News already own cynicism pretty much.  If he must bring Mr. Nader's voice into the conversation, then Mr. O'Donnell owes us to have a discussion of Don Quixote next week.  The country can't afford another round of George Bush.  Or some gawdawful President Huckabee, or President Gingrich, or President Pawlenty.  Republicans aim to entrench still further, with each turn of the wheel, the America of International Corporate Citizenry.  In this America, its former human citizens, who love, bleed, have children, sing songs, cry, get sick, get well, die--people--are "a means of production." 

We can only hope that at some point the contradictory alliance between vast numbers of ordinary people with simple religious or "small town" values (which sadly include, too much of the time,  unconsidered racial  and minority prejudices--see, e.g., Uganda's "kill the gays" bill, discussed in depth just prior to O'Donnell's show), and a fundamentally materialist philosophy which views those people as fodder; that this contradiction will become more apparent.   At that point, if there is still a vote, the winds may change again.  Meanwhile, we all need to stay in the real world, where there are two parties, and a vote for a "third" choice is nothing but a kind of illusion, making the voter feel briefly better, but doing nothing but most likely the opposite of the hoped for result.

Peace In Our Time

The Rude Pundit makes a pretty good point today:

This may be one of the last chances the Democrats have to blame Bush successfully. Remember: Republicans voted to raise your taxes at the end of 2010. George W. Bush signed that into law. That's a fact. That's history. Anything that's done now is something new.

The President should call the Republicans' bluff. Say he'll veto anything that includes a tax cut for millionaires. And the Rude Pundit doesn't want to hear the bullshit about "What are you going to do about unemployment benefits?" If you make that argument, you are playing with the Republicans' loaded deck. They are the ones who tied the two together (and added in START and DADT). Make them hold up the extension of unemployment checks in order to secure tax cuts for Donald Trump. And, frankly, why should Democrats trust that Republicans would keep any word on a deal? Anyone who pretends that the GOP negotiates with honor or good will is a fucking idiot. Goddamnit, at the very least, make them have to decide whether or not to raise, check, or fold. Don't cede the pot on the deal every time.

(Note: The most pathetic thing? Even with the grand capitulation about to happen, the White House hasn't framed it right. The "Bush tax cuts" are over at the end of the month. Any tax cuts that the President signs on to ought to rightly be called the "Obama tax cuts." But even that slight bit of marketing eludes the messaging buffoons in this administration.)

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2010/12/another-day-another-democratic.html

Down at the Texaco my good buddies were always saying to me, "Give it up on the Bush thing.  He ain't president now, Obama's president.  It's Obama's economy, it's Obama's war(s), it's Obama's Gitmo.  Bush is outa there."  Of course they started saying that at one minute after noon on January 20, '09, when they started counting the hotdog wrappers left by the huge Inauguration crowd as being proof that these hippie liberals were uncouth and messy, just like we always told you.  Limbaugh used to use the falling Dow as an instant poll on Obama's popularity amongst the voters who had the cash to actually "vote" on his policies.  He did that right down to the very moment when the Dow started back up the hill.  Then he was on to the next thing.  But right along, all the critics were seriously put out when anyone said that Bush's various catastrophes were making it hard for Mr. Obama to make immediate headway.  "Stop bringing Bush into it," they'd say.  "Ain't rite."

Well, as Mr. Pundit points out, we are at a moment when an actual Bush policy is passing into history.  It was Bush policy to have these tax cuts expire at the end of this year.  Bush and his Republican Congress made that firm, bright decision back even before there was an Iraq War.  A great many of Bush's fellow Republicans are still leading the Congressional Republican cohort.  Starting in January, decisions concerning our tax policy will be Obama Administration policy (even if there's a divided Congress).

As Mr. Pundit also pointed out in his piece today, one of the lynch pins of the Health Care Reform Act was that it was to be funded in part by the revenue achieved by ending the rediculous top end tax giveaway that the Bush people had put into place--and ordered ended at the end of this year.  With this compromise, Mr. Obama has removed one argument supporting the Health Care Reform Act, and at the very moment when people who have campaigned on the promise of rolling back the reforms come into Congress.

Sheesh.  Is this what it felt like to watch Neville Chamberlain in operation?

Update. More than one viewer of the passing parade seems to have thought of Chamberlain.  (See my comments sec. below).  I'm pleased to note that I thought of it before Keith Olbermann said it last night (of course I can't attest to when the comparison entered his mind).  Watching Lawrence O'Donnell's "The Last Word" last night, I thought he focused the general consternation greatly by noting that if Democrats do call the Republican hand, taxes will rise by a whopping fifty percent on the lowest tax payers, from a current tax rate of 10% up to the Clinton era rate of 15%.  This is what Obama means by "hurting the hostages."  The other extremely important point O'Donnell made was that it must be accepted that the Republican Party is utterly uninterested in the issue of who gets hurt at the bottom--that is, the Republicans are basically unshame-able, and will be delighted to play to their base (some of whom will of course be in that bottom bracket), arguing that Democrats "raised your taxes."  Behind the Republicans in this specious argument (since if taxes go up due to the Bush tax cuts expiring, that is REPUBLICAN POLICY!) is a 24/7 media propaganda barrage devoted to asserting that it was the socialist Democrats and their Kenyan Usurper leader who "failed" to act to avert this tragedy.  So, as O'Donnell I think correctly asserted--this is the lay of the land which Obama faces, and as Obama is a kind man who believes his job is to protect all the citizens, he has acted in that regard, hoping to save the "little folk" from further economic pain in various ways, for at least another year.

I certainly understand this line of reasoning.  I believe the Republican strategy with regard to Mr. Obama, from the get go, has been little short of un-American, and continues to be so.  The Republicans are out to make a very different America, and they are succeeding with each ratchet of the wheel, while the Democrats are a party that is significantly "sold out" to the very same interests, and otherwise shocked and aghast.  The fact that the Republicans are living in a dream world--e.g., the extension of the top bracket tax cut will seriously affect the already serious deficit, which they are also claiming is the top issue to deal with--gives them the same power of argument as possessed by an intelligent lunatic in argument with his psychiatrist.  Moreover, I am not the one deciding whether this collateral damage is to be accepted or not.  Mr. Obama has that weight to bear, and all of us in the peanut gallery always need to keep it in mind.  Talk is cheap.  That all being said, it's hard to see--from here at least--just why this isn't the place for Mr. Obama and the Democrats to take a real stand.  Next year, and 2012, will be worse if a stand isn't taken, in my humble opinion.  This was Chamberlain's mistake.  A good, kind man trying to save lives, set in motion events which led to Dunkirk, and the remarkable and successful retreat of the British Army at Dunkirk might almost be proof that some god, somewhere, really did care about the evil that Hitler was unleashing on Europe.

We should be so lucky.  Or to put it another way, Obama has not rescued the hostages with his "deal."  He's just gotten them some warm soup and a piece of bread. 

Nina Simone

 
 I rented "Jazz Icons: Nina Simone: Live in '65 & '68" from Netflix, and got around to watching the DVD last night, after the Ole Ball Coach went down so far with that Hail Mary halftime play that there was obviously no coming back for the Cocks (which is an absolutely prescient nickname for the public university of South Carolina, although the team seemed earnest and made a valiant effort against the Auburn juggernaut).  The first time I heard Nina Simone was on a juke box at Harry's, in Chapel Hill, sometime before 1963.  She was singing some sort of R&B style song.  The next time I heard her was on television, singing "Four Women."  That was probably about 1967 or so.  It's a remarkable song, featuring four black women who each "stand for" a way of being.  The first is an old "aunt" who has worked her life in the field.  The last is a very angry woman who will kill you if you look at her wrong, and song ends with her almost screaming, "Call me Peaches."  It's just reporting, something Ms Simone did, over and over again, all through her wonderful, brave career.  Nina Simone never looked away.  Although the view was so painful that she did move away, to Europe.

So, at the end of this fine documentary of two or three of her European performances, in the '60s, she sings "Why? (The King of Love is Dead)."  It's not long after Martin Luther King was assassinated, and how she gets through the song I just don't know.  The audience is crying, and the song even has a line: "cry, cry, your tears don't mean a thing."  But her sorrow is far beyond tears.  I couldn't help crying, over 40 years later.  There are some versions of her singing "Why?" on youtube, but I couldn't find this one in a cursory search.  All the more reason for you to rent the DVD.  Musically, her phrasing and delivery is just remarkable--the simple poem of the song barely conveys what she puts into it, which is of course true of many songs and one of the wonderful things about the art of singing.  Ms Simone was as good as anyone singing in the second half of the 20th Century.  But she refused to look away. 

Meanwhile, all the people who found Martin Luther King an inconvenience, all the people who today actually presume to deny that there is racism, toiled mightily first to resist all efforts at combatting racism, then, finally, grudgingly created a holiday for the good Doctor which, just like Christmas, is anything but about what he was about.  Not that there's any big surprise here.  After the conclusion of the American Civil War it only took a few years for things to get back to "normal" sans explicit slavery, and many supposedly serious historians still argue about whether the Civil War was "about" slavery at all. 

Lincoln, on the other hand, would seem to have "gotten it."  From his Second Inaugural Address, spoken scarcely a month before he was murdered:

Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether".

"Why?" raises such profound questions as well, particularly in the nuance of Ms Simone's rendering.  Although the country has worked mightily to obscure the truth of King's murder, with endless gossipy irrelevances concerning his life and work, the song has it right.  And speaking as one who was marginally "there," in the sense that I did attend the March on Washington in 1963, and also participated to a very small degree in the efforts to integrate Chapel Hill that same summer (which was by no means as fearful a project as standing against the deadly violence further to the south--spoken to in another of Ms Simone's wonderful songs, "Mississippi Goddam), I still view the murder of Dr. King as the most profound historical turning point in the second half of 20th Century America, the boulevard not taken, the opportunity lost, possibly forever. 

King represented a moment of deep change for America.  He spoke again and again to America's heart.  Instead, even from a President who did succeed in getting very significant legislative advances in the Civil Rights cause, we got Vietnam.  And perhaps from the utter cynicism which grounds Vietnam, much which seemed fundamental has been lost.  The new Senator from Kentucky, after all, holds the view that "private" racial segregation, such as that maintained by all facilities open to the public south of the "Mason-Dixon Line" up until the passage of the Civil Rights laws in 1964 and '65, should still be the order of the land. 

Big historical "events" frequently do not happen in an instant.  I couldn't help thinking that Ms Simone was still exactly right: we're all still "heading for the brink."  I'll paste the words to "Why?" below, but they are only the shell.  Ms Simone fills them with the tragic life they deserve.  They really ought to sing this one in church once in a while. 

Why? (The King of Love Is Dead) 

© Calvin Eugene Taylor and Nina Simone   1968

Once upon this planet Earth lived a man of noble birth

Preaching love and freedom for his fellow man.

He was dreaming of the day, peace would come on Earth to stay,

And he spread the message all across the land.

Turn the other cheek, he'd plead, love thy neighbor was his creed,

Pain, humiliation, death, he did not dread.

Yes with his bible by his side, from his foe he would not hide,

It's hard to think, this great man is dead.

[chorus]:  He had see the mountain top, and he knew he could not stop,

Always living through threat of death ahead.

Tell your parents they'd better stop and think,

Cause we're heading for the brink,

What's gonna happen, now that the king of love is dead?

Will the murders never cease, are they men or are they beasts,

But the people, what do they think they have to gain?

Well will your nation stand or fall, is it too late for us all?

And did Martin Luther King just die in vain?

You know he was for equality for all, for you and me,

Full of love and good will, hate was not his way,

He was not a violent man, so tell me honey, if you can,

Why was he shot down the other day?

It was prejudice, it was hate, bigotry sealed his fate,

Go on cry cry, your tears won't change a thing.

Will my country ever learn, must we kill at every turn?

We've got to know by now what the consequences will bring.

[chorus]: He had seen the mountain top, and he knew he could not stop,

Always living through threat of death ahead.

Tell your parents they'd better stop and think,

Cause we're heading for the brink.

What's gonna happen, now that the king of love is dead?

I don't know about you, but I can't find any lies in that song.  

Plumbing

If you've been musing about the Wikileaks thing, what it means, how good/bad it is, etc., I'm not sure if you'll get much distance towards your own conclusion by just watching tv or listening to the radio. Here's the best complete picture of the event I've seen. Consider how wonderfully convincing Brooks is (I think you'll find, as I did, that he seems to make a lot of sense). Then consider how, when the point of view is enlarged to include a bit more reality (history in this case), your judgment of the event changes. And consider, too, that this is not just a situation of "bbbbbut they did it too," which is about all I could glean last night from MSNBC. The dangers of collective amnesia are real, and continuing. Thank you, driftglass.

http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2010/12/david-brooks-is-not-amused.html

Scott Horton, in Harpers Magazine, also makes a cogent addition to the discussion (via Digby):

"In Spain, the WikiLeaks disclosures have dominated the news for three days now. The reporting has been led by the level-headed El País, with its nationwide competitor, Público, lagging only a bit behind. Attention has focused on three separate matters, each pending in the Spanish national security court, the Audiencia Nacional: the investigation into the 2003 death of a Spanish cameraman, José Cuoso, as a result of the mistaken shelling of Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel by a U.S. tank; an investigation into the torture of Spanish subjects held at Guantánamo; and a probe into the use of Spanish bases and airfields for extraordinary renditions flights, including the one which took Khaled El-Masri to Baghdad and then on to Afghanistan in 2003."

Update. Digby put up the following post yesterday.  Remarkable.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/truth-as-duty-when-did-we-decide-to.html

The unconsidered agreement by the mainstream media on certain issues is always worth searching out.  And then considering.  It's exactly the same problem we all encounter in our personal lives, and being open to such consideration is exactly what the Limbaughs work tirelessly to deter people from embarking on.  It's an indication of something (possibly a moment when the radical right becomes so radical that it meets Uncle Joe Stalin coming around the next corner) when Keith Olbermann interviews David Stockton about American economic policy.