message for the rest of the year

Two excellent narratives have emerged on the blogs this week. Josh, Digby, and others are hammering home the idea that the Republicans want to stay in Iraq FOREVER. I want to hear this word "forever" 10,000 times between now and November, because this is really all that needs to be said by the party out of power. The Republicans are invested in nothing more than saving face for Dear Leader. The second narrative, highlighted by Digby and Kos, must be credited to Hilary, who came up with the idea of a "Privacy Bill of Rights", a political wedge issue if there ever was one. It also happens to be something the country desperately needs. Both of these talking points are a direct hit on the two greatest disasters of the Boosh presidency, the Iraq War and the slide towards dictatorship. I really wish the Democrats would understand that laying out specific policy proposals is not how it's done anymore. That does not at all mean that policy doesn't matter or that it does not become a central issue once we win back the House. But until, all you need is simple, two-pronged offensive strategy.

The Republicans want to be in Iraq forever.

We need a Privacy Bill of Rights in this county.

Period.

George Tenet's Betrayal

PBS Frontline's episode on Darth Vader, "The Dark Side", was a little disappointing in that it tells us little about Cheney we didn't already know. The main story, and I don't think it's been told this well before, is about George Tenet and his failures. He was the only real bridge between what the intelligence community knew and what the Cheney adminstration could get away with saying. He lost the fight against Cheney and Rumsfeld over Afghanistan, which could have been the CIA's moment of glory. But then he sold out on WMD's. He knew all the facts, and lied about it extensively to Powell and everyone else. Slam Dunk! Now we all know that this war was a con from the start, that Bush and the policy makers are completely responsible. But they needed Tenet to be their bitch, someone who could give Congress and Powell an excuse for their capituations to the White House. If Tenet had chosen courage and honesty, things would have been very different. I think the war would have happened one way or another, but it would have been more overtly dictatorial and probably less popular.

Tenet is an image of the corrupted civil servant, willing to sell the country in order to curry favor in Washington. We might have expected more from that great hero Colin Powell, but Tenet was the one person who really knew everything and had the most authority to stand up to the president. What a disgrace. The sad thing is that he doesn't seem to have particularly wanted war, unlike Judith Miller and most of the media establishment. It looks like he told all his lies simply in order to keep his player status in Washington. In a way that is more evil than warmongering, because it implies a total lack of faith in anything--neither America the war machine, nor America the democracy. Tenet is the ultimate careerist bureaucrat, willing to sell his country for personal gain.

burning the flag

A comment on what Hume's Ghost said about the flag-burning amendment over at Glenn's blog:

I have a dream: t-shirts, bumber stickers, logos everywhere that depict Bush setting fire to the flag. That is after all what is happening. And that is how you turn the politics of the absurd on its head.

a party of citizens

I wrote this comment on a post by the lovely Georgia10:

One could say something like this: the party needs to stand for equal opportunity, a brighter future, etc. Much better would be to issue a call for a new way of being related to society, ultimately a new way of being American. Right now we play the role of manipulated consumers: frightened, pandered to, lied to, etc. The Democratic Party should simply invite Americans to be citizens, in the political rather than the legal sense of the word. We should reclaim the right and the power to pass laws that protect our interests against the corporate-military behemoth. The danger of this approach seems to be that the content is too abstract: what are the policy proposals? In fact, everyone knows what kind of policy changes the country needs and any decent democratic majority in Congress would provide: healthcare reform, civil liberties, better domestic security against terrorism, etc. The fundamental malaise we live under is a sense of impotence before the powers that be. Just as the progressive blogosphere has become a new power on the scene because we have learned to think differently about ourselves and what we can do, so the Democratic party should reconstitute itself by simply declaring that it stands for what it is actually supposed to be: a coalition of empowered citizens who act for themselves. The GOP is fundamentally a top-down, authoritarian party. It does, of course, live off several populist myths. But a party of citizenship doesn't need myths. It simply needs to proclaim itself as the party to which people who really want to be citizens choose to belong. When the GOP says, "we'll protect you from terrorists and Hollywood homos", the Democrats in Washington want to say, "but we'll protect you from pharmaceuticals and hurricanes too!" This is all wrong. The message needs to be that the people are the party, and vice versa. Please, let's do away with the rhetoric of government doing this or that for a passive and stupid populace.

they stole it

I've been reading Robert F. Kennedy's article in the latest Rolling Stone about the massive evidence of voter fraud in 2004. I believe it. What makes it hard to believe is that something so dastardly could have happened without anyone in the media noticing. But you have to remember how adamantly they refused to entertain any such possibility the very morning of Kerry's concession. They were too busy celebrating. When you think about how degenerate the MSM is today, and about how badly the dark side wanted and needed to hold onto power, it's really not that implausible. But I get the feeling even in the liberal blogosphere, let alone the more entrenched sectors of the Democratic Party, that such talk is irresponsible, hysterical, politically stupid. It may indeed be the latter. Maybe the sense of futility that comes with raising and answering the question about 2004 is reason enough not to do so. But how dishonest is that? It may not be a talking point for future political debate, but that shouldn't make it taboo. At least not if we had anything like an independent press.

cives

The theme of this blog is citizenship. "Civis" is a great word, the root of our "city", "civilization", etc. In English, a "citizen" is merely someone who pertains to a country--the group is the primary concept. In Latin, however, "civis" is the root for "civitas" (city, commonwealth). The commonwealth or nation simply is that body made up of citizens--without them the city does not exist. How different is our modern understanding. One is supposed to be an American first, since America comes first. Only in relation to America, and thanks to the benificence of the state, are we citizens. This is a miserably passive concept.

The "civis" is someone animated by an ideal of political action. The idea can be variously expressed: liberty, autonomy, self-rule, etc. What is most important to the citizen is that he should claim the right and responsibility of governing himself and the community of which he is a part. He does not exist to serve or obey the government; the government is there to serve him. A citizen is necessarily a participant in a democracy. He cannot think of himself as privileged, as being a member of a ruling class. In seeing himself as an active participant in his own government and fate, he also must recognize everyone else in his society as citizens who have interests and dignity. He can only be a citizen along with them.

No one who cherishes the ideal of the citizen can embrace that degraded notion of patriotism, which says "my country over all others", "my country is the best, is special" etc. I feel a greater affinity to the genuine citizens of Canada and Mexico than I do to the denizens of this country who resign themselves to the brainwashing and tyranny of Leviathan, that monstrous coalition of corporate, military, and government forces that aims to enslave the people (and is largely successful). It is all too true that at the end of the day we get the government we deserve. But my point about feeling a greater affinity to the citizens of other countries is that one should be a citizen first, an American second. I cannot fully own my identity as an American, which is simply a product of chance. In the words of Chris Rock, you are not entitled to lay claim to the greatness of our country just because you came out of a pussy in Cleveland. I can make my country better, and take pride in that, but only by dedicating myself first and foremost to the ideal of citizenship. What passes today for patriotism is such a degraded thing. One has only to think about the founders, who had no America and had to start from the ideal of citizenship. It was all they had and ultimately all that really mattered to them.

This will be a poltical blog, but more an exercise in crticism and philosophy than a commentary on current events. I identify with the liberal blogosphere, of course, and my heroes are the usual suspects: Glenn G, Digby, Kos, Jane, Atrios, Josh. The quote above is from the Aeneid, from Laocoon's impassioned warning to the Trojans in Book 2 not to let in the monstrous horse. Our country has descended sharply (after a long, slow decline, of course) into "so much insanity". I wouldn't spend so much time in front of this computer if I didn't passionately believe in the importance of decrying this insanity. But I'm not going to try to do the job of my heroes above. I'm not that much of a news junkie, and my skills as a satirist are wanting. Satire is the one great weapon of the abused and trampled citizen. Today's bloggers follow in the steps of Juvenal, Tacitus, and Voltaire. One other person I want to mention as an inspiration for this blog is John Ralston Saul. I haven't yet read "Voltaire's Bastards", though I will soon. Last week I came across a set of lectures called "the unconscious civilization", which really set my heart on fire. It is a brilliant plea for the sceptical citizen, the humane individual who won't accept the insanity. In relation to Markos' recent post on the libertarian democrat, I want to make this suggestion. Please don't talk about how it's good for the libertarian to solicit the services of the government in defending him from the corporate slime. The existing power structure that is our government, especially inasmuch as it is entwined with the corporate-military complex, is nothing but a foe to the true citizen, the libertarian democrat. What we should rather say is that citizens have the right and the power to elect representatives who will serve their interests, and that this is not a case of asking the government to do us favors. If we talk in this way about the government as "them", we will always either play into the hands of Norquist & Co., or succumb to the narrative of alienation and despair. Rather, it is we who act, we who stand up for our own rights to be protected from corporate malfeasance and the rest. All this should be clear from the fact that we now have a government that is in the process of shredding the Bill of Rights.