Abby knows I love my stories, in this case the 75 or so blogs I subscribe to and read regularly (believe me, at one point it was over 150, so this is nothing). Most tend to be meaty, and incredibly satisfying to me, but this complexity creates a barrier to entry. (And yes, I am aware that I do the same thing here.)
I know not everyone knows or cares about these or any other blogs, but people just like you and me are doing incredible work to uncover the truths about our recent past and define a more harmonious way forward. As I read them, I always search for the one sentence or couple of paragraphs that really cut to the heart of the matter; and when I blog about them here, I want to share with you something that’s immediate and obvious, easily digestible and eminently repeatable.
I hope to find a better way to simplify and amplify these ideas, but for now I’m more interested in identifying what strikes me as illustrative and meaningful. With that in mind, here are a few gems from this past week:
- Environmentalism: “We’ve also got to toss aside the mindset that the status quo is reasonable.” Imagine What Comes After Green by World Changing.
- Patriotism: “It’s one thing for gluttony to be an individual right, cherished as much as freedom of speech. It’s quite another for it to be a rite of patriotism. And it’s still another for it to put us in direct conflict with other nations that profit from and/or reject the monetary policy that piggishness requires.” Outeat Them Back To the Stone Age by The Cunning Realist.
- Conservatism: “The labor movement is the greatest anti-poverty program in American history, but to the corporate profiteers, it means one less yacht in the harbor.” Sam’s Club Conservatism by dday at Digby’s blog.
- Corporatism: “Do we need razors with ten blades — or a single blade that never dulls?” America’s Addiction and the New Economics of Strategy by Umair Haque. This post truly requires a more complete quote:
Let’s re-examine the house of cards that is the global financial system. Emerging markets seek export-led growth: they undervalue their currencies, so their exports are more competitive purely in terms of price. That’s essentially a subsidy to consumers on the other side of the table — those in the developed world. As emerging markets accumulate surpluses, they recycle them: they lend them back to the US and UK in the form of government and mortgage debt, stabilizing their economies, and amplifying the existing consumption subsidy through leverage.
Amplifying that artificial cheapness is the simple fact the true costs of production haven’t been factored in — until now: very real costs like pollution, community fragmentation, and abusive labour standards.
So we’ve been able to consume mercilessly and remorselessly — with no regard for the human, social, or environmental consequences, to us or to others.
It’s not just cheap oil we’re addicted to: it’s cheap everything. And the world we’re entering isn’t really of Peak Oil as it is one of Peak Consumption.
But consumption wasn’t the only choice we could have made. We could have chosen, instead, to invest. In what? In anything: anything would have been a more sensible choice than naÏve consumption — education, energy, healthcare, transportation, even a more sensible and rational kind of finance.
Umair is almost single-handedly moving this entire discussion forward.
- John McCain: “McCain’s primary talent has always been his ability persuade simple-minded people (i.e. his media cheerleading claque) that he is flipping or flopping as a matter of great personal principle and at great possible cost to his political career — even as he has used his various flips and flops to climb the greased pole and become the presidential nominee of his party.” The Great White Hope by Billmon at Daily Kos. Here’s more:
Now, finally, all that hard work and twisting and turning have paid off, and McCain IS the GOP establishment candidate. In April, as Clinton and Obama were tearing into each other (or rather, as she was tearing into him) the McCain campaign clearly saw an advantage in positioning their guy above the fray, as the “kinder, gentler” candidate — the better to pick off supporters of the loser in the Democratic primary race. Thus McCain’s promise to run a “respectful campaign.” (He didn’t explain that what he meant was respect for HIM.)
But McCain and his new team of Rovian handlers now realize they won’t have a prayer in November unless they can motivate the conservative base and (to use Lee Atwater’s charming phrase) “strip the bark” off Obama. And they have to do it NOW, so McCain can pivot back to a softer, more upbeat message in September.
So that’s exactly what McCain is doing – instantly, unapologetically, without shame or embarrassment. His enormous cynicism about the political process and his contempt for the voters – not to mention his vast sense of self-entitlement - have led McCain to take exactly the same low road as the Bush family and its various henchmen (Atwater, Rove): Whatever works; whatever it takes.
Billmon quit blogging at Whiskey Bar a few years ago, but I never unsubscribed — it’s the only dinosaur in my feedreader! Needless to say, I was thrilled to see this new post at the Great Orange Satan. It’s a lengthy post, but well-worth the read, and I guarantee you will never see anything written about McCain that’s as open or brutally honest as this is.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that George W. Bush’s Republican party is hell-bent on preserving the political and economical status quo in America with the election of John McCain. Baring that increasingly impossible feat, they will stop at nothing to destroy anyone who attempts to call any of their policies into question. Which is the perfect segue into this:
- Me: “Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.” Rules for Living from Nassim Taleb by Barry Ritholtz.
I have had this inverted for much too long. Even as I railed against the powers that be, my skepticism has always been directed inward. At me. Never willing to trust my instincts. Always questioning the fitness of my ideas and doubting my power to critique, curate, and communicate a more considerate and compelling narrative.
If you read through any of my earlier posts, you’ll see this theme emerge time and time again. Until now, I never realized the barrier was my own relationship to my strengths and the things that make me, well, me.
Truly, finding my voice and using my gifts to bring about a more honest and equitable world is not a matter of large consequence, it’s small and aesthetic. It’s what I do. It’s who I am. And that freedom to be imperfect, foolish, and human is incredibly liberating.
On the often overlooked and seldom discussed fact that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove in particular relied on an inherently weak and thoroughly obedient Alberto Gonzales to lend an imprint of propriety to their rampant lawlessness, Sidney Blumenthal saidbest:
From the beginning of his rise with George W. Bush until the day of his abrupt resignation, Alberto Gonzales was anointed, directed and protected by Karl Rove. At the Department of Justice, Gonzales served as Rove’s figurehead. In the real line of authority, the attorney general, a constitutional officer, reported to the White House political aide. Bush did not nickname Gonzales “Fredo,” after the weak brother in “The Godfather,” without reason.
As White House counsel and attorney general, Gonzales operated as the rubber stamp of the two great goals of the Bush presidency — the concentration of unaccountable power in the executive and the subordination of executive departments and agencies to partisan political imperatives. Vice President Cheney directed the project for the imperial presidency, while Rove took charge of the top-down politicization of the federal government. Gonzales dutifully signed memos abrogating the Geneva Conventions against torture, calling them “quaint,” and approved the dismissal of U.S. attorneys for insufficient partisan zeal.
Fittingly, his routine indifference to matters right and wrong, to say nothing of legal and illegal, was not his downfall. Rather, Gonzales is now leaving office due to his inability to keep up the barest semblance of competency in his job and coherence in the face of his critics. Let’s face it, he failed to register even a modicum of respect from his own Republican party, which is a pretty low bar indeed!
In the end, it all comes down to keeping up appearances. That, of course, was once thought to be Rove’s one true gift, but now like nearly everything else he has touched — in this case propping up a man who had no business being Attorney General — his ultimate undoing. And that is precisely why the real story here has nothing to do with Gonzales…
So make no mistake, Gonzales is not leaving because of Rove, rather it is Rove who had to leave because of Gonzales. Don’t be fooled by the inversion, and the implied causality here. This is due to a gross miscalculation on Rove’s part — that Gonzales could lie to Congress with impunity — necessitating yet another elaborate cover story to escape his crimes. I have to wonder if Bush has even pieced this one together yet.
As thrilled as I am to see them both go, and believe me I am ecstatic, I sincerely hope we haven’t seen the last of them just yet. Congress must continue to press these two and hold them accountability for all of their lies told and laws broken. That is truly the only way we can prevent this absurdity from ever happening again.
On the subject of Bill O’Reilly and his thinly-veiled, ill-conceived attempts at demonizing the vibrant community at Daily Kos, Nightprowlkitty saidbest:
I hear posters sometimes say “we’re better than that” or “we’re better than them.” I don’t agree. I think our faults, our weaknesses, as human beings, are no different than the 29%’ers. We can be just as petty and small.
But our ideas and values, those are very different indeed. We believe in giving folks a hand up, not leaving them to fend for themselves. We believe government can work for everyone, and that the people of this country, given a fair voting system, will do the right thing in electing representatives that reflect that notion. We believe that working together we can solve the problems of our country, that no one should be left behind and no one is not worth helping.
…
And that is what the O’Reilly’s and Coulters and Roves and Cheneys are so afraid of, why they attack us personally and try to shift the debate to that level — because they know they will lose if that debate is about ideas rather than who’s more holy and pure and without sin.
I have followed Daily Kos for as long as I can remember, well over four years (largely due to Howard Dean in fact), and I still frequent this site more than ten times a day, if not more. I read just about everything that gets front-paged and/or pushed to the top of the recommended list, but in spite of that I have never seen that picture of Bush and Lieberman. Yes, it’s tacky and tasteless (and funny too), but it’s so far removed from the typically thoughtful tone of the vast majority of posts.
Chris Dodd effectively and courageously echoed some of the same thoughts as well:
He did not apologize for engaging the Daily Kos community and neither should we for believing in it. It’s well past time for us to recognize our growing clout in the political process, and to use our power to shift the debate. We are far from perfect, but thankfully perfection is not our goal. We simply seek the opportunity to pursue policies that benefit more than the wealthy few, that support and nourish those in need, and that give life to innovation and new opportunities for all.
Is that hateful? Is that un-American? I think not, and I believe the American people will agree if we can find a way to cut through this crap. It’s demagoguery pure and simple.