Responding to Unreasonable Hopes

So, Tom over at TACT looks at a young student with a seemingly unreasonable and unshakable faith that one day, he will be famous. He says:

He is a victim of what I have come to call the “fame factor” in theatre education. It exists not only in theatre, of course, but across the culture. Created almost entirely by the pervasiveness of mass media, young people no longer pursue success; they pursue fame as well. The writer of this email simply believes he will be famous someday and win the Academy Award, and he needs nothing but the simple fact of his belief in that idea to make it come true for him (except maybe a little more help from me with his acting, as if I could make such a difference – another illusion).

(...)

The sad truth is that, for all their dreaming of fame, the statistics say that most of our students will not achieve their dreams. Perhaps for 15 minutes, maybe. If we want to be honest educators, we need to start telling students the truth, and build better options for them for their theatrical futures. It can be done if we have the will, and perhaps if we are willing to re-think our own dreams of fame.

99 Seats disagrees strongly, saying:

Let's think about it this way. A student in a history seminar takes a liking to the course work, even though she's not a major and writes the professor a message saying, "I know my last paper's haven't been great, but I'm really excited by this material and the coursework and I want to be the best student I can be. And, who knows, maybe I'll wind up as President and can invite you to the inauguration! I hope so!" Do you think the professor should respond with, "Well, since no women and only 43 people have ever been President of the US, it's not a very realistic or conceivable goal. You should think about your other options right now!"? Is that going to further this student's career? Their growth? Honestly, we wouldn't even expect a teacher to say that. And way more folks have won Academy Awards in acting (nearly 300) than have won the presidency.

When I first read the exchange, I was very solidly on the side of "Let-them-have-their-dreams." After all, we're living in the "Yes We Can" era when hope turns out to be a strategy, in some regards. And if you don't aim high, you won't have anything to lose out on. Either you settle now, or you settle later -- or, if you're one of the lucky few, you look out on Oscar night and say "And thank you to Professor Tom Loughlin for always believing in me."

But then I read a little further down my blogroll, and I saw Ian Moss' response to the Internship conversation:

Here are my thoughts, in brief. I think there are two separate issues going on here. First, we should make a distinction between internships and “working for free.” There is a name for working for free; it’s called volunteering. Volunteering is done with the understanding that the volunteer is doing it for the good of the cause; the volunteer’s reward is the good he or she is doing for the community or the world through his or her work. An internship, on the other hand, is explicitly supposed to be an educational experience. In this context, whether or not the internship is paid is of secondary importance; what really matters is the nature of the internship, and whether it really is educational or is just an excuse for the hiring organization to unload some undesirable tasks on an unwitting subject. ... As such, the real issue is truth in advertising...

Emphasis mine. But I think that concept of truth in advertising is the bridge between the internships and the advice conversations.

There's two possibilities of the mindset of the young student coming to Professor Loughlin for some words of advice:

1. The student who looks ahead and sees a wasteland of terrible, strenuous years up until his hard work and talent pays off and he wins an Academy Award.
2. The student who thinks that he's talented, will find an agent who appreciates him and opens the right doors, and will win an Academy Award.

In other words, does the student know what he's getting into? If he knows what he's getting into, then who cares if he dreams big? He's going to need a big dream to make long hours at poor pay worth it. He's going to need to have something real at the end of whatever bullshit internships and volunteer gigs and summer-stock in Atlanta in a bear suit sweating bullets or whatever other horror stories are waiting for him.

If the student knows what's coming in the near future, then I say yes -- full speed ahead, batten down the hatches, and we're all behind you. But if the student has no clue how hard the real world is, then as a Professor (or really a human being) you are honor bound to let him know. This is not an easy thing you are going to do.

Throughout all of my training, I have been read the riot act ten ways come Sunday about how hard this is. Long before Outrageous Fortune, I knew I was going into a shit field with shit pay and shit conditions. My father always counselled me to take a second major in something that it will be easier to support myself on an entry level job, and I followed his advice (sort-of) without ever giving up my personally megalomaniacal dreams.

In The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama talks about the state of race in America, and he says:

To think clearly about race, then, requires us to see the world on a split screen to maintain in our sights the kind of America that we want while looking squarely at America as it is, to acknowledge the sons of our past and the challenges of the present without becoming trapped in cynicism or despair.

Our mentors, teachers, and professors should be preparing us to enter this field with this split-screen vision: to see the world where we want it to be, and to know the world as it is.

I am here because I dream big.

My dream is that, like Bertold Brecht, I can offer new ways of tackling the theater, new tools for expanding its influence. So that people will use my writing to clarify their thinking and have some measure of debt to me in their own. Part of this dream is that when I write things, it will be published -- and not only that, but that I'll be on The Daily Show making the things I like relatable to the 17-35 market. I dream that I'll have my own little theater where I can make what I want and that it will find the audience that it resonates with, that I'll be considered part of the conversation, and that I'll while away my years in happiness.

But I also know that for the next few years I'm going to have to split my time between doing well at a job that isn't related to my personal life dreams, and working hard in evenings for little-to-no reward and likely at personal cost. Maybe I've accepted too much of the toil, and I should be holding out for better conditions, but the size of my dreams has not (hopefully) divorced me from reality. I hope I have the energy and the day job to be able to grind away at this however many years it takes to hit even a fraction of that dream.

This is not the only dream I've ever had.

When I was a child, I wanted to be President so very badly. Unfortunately, I can't:

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President...

So instead, I dreamed about the Supreme Court. My hero is Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (although I'm jealous of Taft for being both President and Supreme Court Chief Justice), whose utterances became central pillars of judicial precedent. He could write a phrase like "clear and present danger" and not only would it be a central legal tenet, it would also be the catchy title of a best-seller.

Why didn't I go and pursue Constitutional Law? Why did I give up on a dream and a life-path that will, let's face it, probably be more likely to pay off in the end than some pipe dream about experimental theater?

Because I realized, watching my aunt struggle through positions as a law clerk, that I realized I wasn't so enthralled about everything that leads up to being a chief justice. I didn't like all of the small things that lawyers do; all of the paperwork drafting and the contract reading and everything. Sure, some bit of it appeals to me, but long before I'd get to face up to judicial philosophy I would probably burn out on the tiny things that I'd be forced to do.

And that's why theater is the only place I can really truly belong -- because (like in a relationship), I love it so heartily at its worst. And I know what its worst looks like.

So to sum up: if that students knows the worst, and is committed to the worst, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for all the days of his life -- then let him dream. But only if he knows the worst.

And only if he's read that stuff about internships. Seriously, they blow.

Anger II: A Little More on Malcolm X

I took a moment in the last post to poke at Malcolm X, as quoted by Don Hall, and I did want to mention a profound influence Malcolm X had on my life.

I'm actually a big sucker for speeches -- great flourishes of rhetoric like the one I cribbed from after HCR passed, or the one that nearly makes me cry sometimes, LBJ's speech on behalf of civil rights. The part that always gets me is when LBJ says, in his deep southern twang:

There is no Negro problem. There is no southern problem. There is no northern problem. There is only an American problem.

And I know that the moment I was 100% behind Obama was the moment when he cribbed the same speech:

Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.

So I definitely went through a phase where I was hell-bent to uncover all of the great American speeches and be sure to listen to them all -- really listen to them. I had them on my iPod (where they more than once came up on shuffle when I was trying to liven up a party... my social life, she suffers!), and I liked to walk or drive while letting the words really sink in.

Malcolm X's "The Ballot or the Bullet" speech was one of those landmark speeches I came across. And I was most interested by a passage that I had never heard associated with Malcolm X before, which goes like this:

The economic philosophy of black nationalism is pure and simple. It only means that we should control the economy of our community. Why should white people be running all the stores in our community? Why should white people be running the banks of our community? Why should the economy of our community be in the hands of the white man? Why? If a black man can't move his store into a white community, you tell me why a white man should move his store into a black community. The philosophy of black nationalism involves a re-education program in the black community in regards to economics. Our people have to be made to see that any time you take your dollar out of your community and spend it in a community where you don't live, the community where you live will get poorer and poorer, and the community where you spend your money will get richer and richer.

Then you wonder why where you live is always a ghetto or a slum area. And where you and I are concerned, not only do we lose it when we spend it out of the community, but the white man has got all our stores in the community tied up; so that though we spend it in the community, at sundown the man who runs the store takes it over across town somewhere. He's got us in a vise.

So the economic philosophy of black nationalism means in every church, in every civic organization, in every fraternal order, it's time now for our people to be come conscious of the importance of controlling the economy of our community. If we own the stores, if we operate the businesses, if we try and establish some industry in our own community, then we're developing to the position where we are creating employment for our own kind. Once you gain control of the economy of your own community, then you don't have to picket and boycott and beg some cracker downtown for a job in his business.

It's an amazing principle, that's based on the idea that any system can be transformed, given an understanding of the system. Unfortunately, history proved that it wasn't that easy -- probably for similar reasons to the "Move Your Money" campaign that doesn't appear to have much traction (reasons like me).

It's just a pity that this isn't what Malcolm X was known for -- or the parts of his philosophy where he talks about the social health of the community.

Sustainability III: Legitimacy Pt. 2

So, if I just left you with the last post about the importance of legitimacy in arts organiztions as a key component of sustainability, it would be one of those frustrating things I see on the blogosphere where they make a solid claim ("Integrity is important!") without really giving you an approach to applying the claim. I can't promise I'll have a strong recipe for legitimacy, but here's one part of legitimacy, told yet again through our sociopolitical narrative lens.

(by the way, it is important to use the sociopolitical narrative lens to look at this sort of stuff because, as the Thriving Arts Report put it, our strength is drawn from status as a social movement)

So, at the beginning of the campaign, even as far back as the 2004 Keynote Address, it was clear to me that Barack Obama was a different candidate from others. I can't say I knew back then that he'd be a President, but I knew I wanted him to be a President. And it was from the way he spoke--I knew little about his platform, and he certainly hadn't emerged with his practical-idealist hybrid of society-changing reforms.

A lot has been made of his eloquence, but it's more than simple eloquence. In fact, not a lot has been made of the absence of his eloquence for a long time. For me, the greatest of Obama's speeches are far behind him: the rhetorical flourishes of the "Yes We Can" speech in South Carolina are substantively different from solid speeches like the Reverend Wright speech or the Inauguration speech.

For the rhetorical, "eloquent" speeches, he was channeling passion and a beautiful mastery of images and linguistic skill. The Inauguration speech was a far more minimalist speech, but it was simply revolutionary in terms of its content. But it wasn't "eloquent," it was simply straightforward.

Yet I would argue that it was that second mode of speech that got him elected, rather than the "eloquent" speeches that fired his base early in the primary. Why?

Jon Stewart was asked once why he backed Obama so strongly. He had backed John Kerry in 2004, but only a bit implicitly. He still had a lot of scorn for Kerry, and he clearly wasn't happy about the choice. In the time that I've watched The Daily Show, I haven't seen him excited about really any other candidate.

When asked why, Jon Stewart had simple answer. He said that Obama was the only candidate he'd seen in a long time who seemed to describe the world the way he personally saw it. He was sick of standing in the rain and hearing politicians tell him about how sunny it is.

That simple ability to look reality in the face and describe it accurately is what drove Obama into power, not the "eloquence" with which he wrapped those realities. That "eloquence" was him describing the world in the way that the excitable, idealist base of the Democratic party would see it. But when it got to the general election, he espoused a far more Moderate worldview. Because that's the world view that most independents and centrist Dems/Reps could agree with.

When Obama talked about our energy crisis, it rang true with a younger generation who had agreed with Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. When he talked about health care, he talked about it in a way that rang true with all of the uninsured or poorly insured. When John McCain talked about the world, it rang false--and let's not even talk about Sarah Palin. (We should be careful to over-generalize, because there are quite a substantial part of the population to whom McCain and Palin did ring true).

At any rate, this isn't meant as a political post, this is a post about art development. So what is this discussion of Legitimacy?

The point is that if you want to be a legitimate organization, you need to understand the worldview of the people you're trying to serve, and you need to be careful not to contravene it. There are a number of theaters that try to tackle "issues," but rather than trying to tackle the local issues that are close to the hearts of their neighbors, they tackle big global "issues," which to the local folk might not be as crucial.

If you want to be a Legitimate (and therefore Sustainable) organization, you need to tell people it's raining when it's raining, and tell people it's sunny when it's sunny. They have to trust your judgment when you describe the world. You need to look around at the community, and figure out how their day-to-day existence meshes with your artistic aims.

This, by the way, is why artists are most successful at making art for other artists: their personal day-to-day matches the day-to-day of their audience. But it doesn't necessarily match the day-to-day of their audience. And that makes them hard to get legitimacy there.

(not that everything has to outwardly resemble the day-to-day... try not to be overly reductionist with my argument!)

This, I think, is why in Germany they did a "theater piece" in which a man went into a field and farmed every day for a month, and other farmers came to watch. It's sort of a perverse over-the-top version of what I'm describing.

"The Office" is successful because it very, very accurately describes the awkwardness and absurdity of the way people actually interact, not in the way Hollywood thinks we interact. (note: "The Office" is NOT successful because it accurately describes office life. You could make a perfect representation of office life and it would bore the crap out of people. It's an expressionistic representation of the experience of office life).

So, that's one of the ways to cultivate legitimacy: to really strive to understand what people are actually going through, and find ways to represent that.



(a little closing note: this is my 200th post, and is very slowly growing in readership, which I hope might be a sign of this blog gaining just a tiny fraction of that legitimacy!)

2008: Election

I'm going to write it down right now, just to see how my predictions stack up. You can all mock me as these predictions turn out not to be soon.

FEDERAL ELECTIONS:

Presidency: Obama
VP: Biden

Obama selects cabinet:

Secretary of Defense: Robert Gates (or Wesley Clark, but not likely)
Secretary of State: Bill Richardson (or Colin Powell, but not likely)
Secretary of Homeland Security: Richard Clarke
Secretary of the Treasury: Warren Buffet (or somebody we've never heard of)
Attorney General: Patrick Fitzgerald (or Cuomo, but not likely)

The rest of the cabinet will be nobody we've ever heard of. I don't think Hilary Clinton's going to make an appearance.

Federal Reserve Board Chairman: Dan Bernanke remains
UN Ambassador: Somebody we've never heard of, or possibly Richardson if he doesn't get State.

CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS:
House: Dems: 350 Seats
Senate: Dems: 55 seats (not counting Bernie Sanders or Joe Lieberman)

JUDICIARY
No appointments in the first term of Presidency.

CALIFORNIA:
PROP 8 Fails (but by a terrifyingly narrow margin)
PROP 1A [High Speed Rail] Succeeds

NEW YORK:
Federal Justice Department blocks term limit lengthening Bloomberg's term. Sucks to be him. Christine Quinn does not win the primary to run to replace him. This may just be wishfulfilment on my part.

2012: These predictions on my part are sketchier. It depends on the leadership of the Republican Party after this election. My guess is that RNCC Chair Mike Duncan is going to be forced to step down after this disastrous election. Now, the RNCC Chairmanship is selected by the Republican President, or by the association of state party chairs; depending on who winds up selecting the new RNCC Chairmanship, it might have different results.

My hunch: Sarah Palin emerges as party chair of a party that's tacking even further to the right, but in 2012 Mike Huckabee wins over the nomination by appealing to the same right-wing values that Palin has tapped into in a manner not seen to be as self-destructive.


(UPDATE: I originally posted this on my Facebook, and decided to put it over here. In the meantime between my posting that there and posting it here, I suddenly realized that I had forgotten an important name in my considerations of Obama's cabinet--Holbrooke! I'm not going to change the prediction, but I really should have remembered that Holbrooke is almost certainly going to feature in the foreign policy. Also, while I'm at it, I should point out that while I didn't mention this before, I think that John McCain will not stand for re-election in 2010. In the off-chance that he is bloody-minded enough to run, I don't think he'll make it. Right now, he's on the verge of losing the Presidential election in his own home state.)

Open Letter To The Conservative Minds

Hello to the Conservative Minds of America;

Hello to Christopher Buckley--(loved Thank You for Smoking!), hello to Kathleen Parker, hello to Andrew Sullivan, hello to David Frum and David Brooks. I'm addressing this to you because in recent weeks, a divide has come between you and the Republican Party. The real source of this break is Sarah Palin, and some of you have observed that the Republican Party has left you, rather than you having left it.

The news this week, written in the Times and in your blogs and all over the media-sphere, is that you all have broken with McCain-Palin '08, and for that you are the target of your party's vitriol and attack. Conservative minded papers are breaking with McCain-Palin 08, turning Democrat for the first time since 1964. So the question remains: where now for you all?

Many triumphant liberals have taken it that you have endorsed Obama-Biden. Some of you have. Some of you have said that you're not going to vote. I certainly haven't heard anyone endorsing Bob Barr, but that's not surprising--after all, you're smart conservatives and a "Libertarian" who voted for the PATRIOT Act is no more appealing to you than the current McCain Palin ticket. But the question remains: where now for you all?

It's interesting that the date 1964 is the last time the Republican Party has been torn apart like this. Admittedly, I wasn't alive them, but from my reading of history, it appears that that was the date that "conservative" Republicans seemed to take the ball from "moderate" Republicans, as they were labelled in those days. That was when Barry Goldwater took the nomination, over Governor Rockefeller's brigades (note that there was a Romney in that primary too, as pointless as that trivium is). When Reagan won in 1980, George Will wrote:

It took 16 years to count the votes [of the 1964 election], and Goldwater won.

But Barry Goldwater was a libertarian on social issues, after all, he said:

When you say "radical right" today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.

We've got a party that, on certain issues, falls to the right of Barry Goldwater. We've got a problem, and you all know that. The step to the right that Barry Goldwater started, and the step to the right again that Ronald Reagan took, is becoming a step too far. But you all know that, that's why I'm writing you this email.

I'm just begging one thing of you: don't let the Party leave you.

You all are the brightest of the Conservative movement, the ones who give it brains and sophistication. A party which hates the elite is deliberately dumbing itself down as fast as it can, so that it can't provide any meaningful solutions, or counterbalance to the Democrats. That's why they need you, even if they don't know it yet.

You can't give up. The fate of the country needs you.

The Democratic Party needs you, just as much as the Republican Party needs you, and almost as much as the American Public needs you (as much as they'll scream that they don't). You see, intellectual rigor improves everybody. When Democrats are right, they'll be able to prove it in a field of difficult discussion. When they are wrong, they won't be able to get by while being wrong. And the same should work vice versa. Constructive criticism is the most important social function that we can exercise as citizens. I have full faith that you won't stop. But right now, just criticism isn't enough.

Bill Kristol created this Sarah Palin monster. The fringe of the Republican Party is very good at getting attention; for their allies, they appeal to the base instincts of fear and greed and get them excited. For their enemies, they also appear to fear: fear of what their opponents could become in power. Sarah Palin gets a large share of attention because her insane, nativist rants against the "other" are far more 'interesting' than intelligent discussion on the merits and drawbacks of nationalizing the banking system. Not just to the huddled masses who she's playing to, but even to us intelligent people: we may agree or disagree with various policies, but Palin hits us right where we hurt: a vision of what politics could be if we don't fight this right now.

So what are you going to do, Conservative Minds? Might I make a suggestion? Find the anti-Palin. Go out there, look at Conservatives. Find someone you respect. And put them forward. We've noticed Barack Obama's quiet and calm demeanor. He launched himself into the public eye in the Primary by being loud and eloquent. But some Republicans out there might be quiet and calm all the time. They're not going to get much face time. Start making their names known.

Who do you look up to in the Republican Party? Do you see any rising stars? I've heard a few names thrown around; Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, for instance; or older figures like Senator Olympia Snowe. Get them involved. Contact them for statements. Light a fire under their ass, and make them take back the party.

The Republican Party can't keep moving right forever. If they lose more and more people, there won't be a Republican Party. The next time the Republican Party has a Presidential Primary, they're going to need someone to do what Barack Obama did for us in the Democratic Party: to show us a respectable future, a future that we as party members can be proud of.

And Barack Obama's creation as a figure on the national stage is not an accident. Somebody noticed him, among all the other freshmen senators, and decided to make him keynote the 2004 Democratic Convention. That's when I first heard him. And when he said that night that there aren't Red States and Blue States, but rather these United States, I knew that I had a future in the Democratic Party that wasn't Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid, both of whom I dislike and would prefer not to be represented by. In fact, I didn't self-identify as Democrat until Barack Obama had won the primary. It might be hard for you all to call yourselves Republican until you have another Ronald Reagan to make you proud to be Republicans (or for Mr. Sullivan, another Margaret Thatcher).

It's going to be difficult. Many people are going to want to style themselves as the second-coming. If McCain-Palin loses, Palin's career will most likely be over; it's rare for a defeated VP candidate to make a convincing Presidential candidate later on, especially since if this election plays out the way it looks like it's going now, she's going to wind up shouldering the blame. Every Conservative who has turned against McCain Palin has been vocal about citing her selection as a turning point in their lack of support, and if part of the core of conservatism blames her, it'll be easy to see her negative effect on the election. So she'll be out.

Who's going to represent you in 2012?

What are you going to do about 2010? Where are the Congressmen to send back to Congress? Every few weeks we hear about abuse of power and sexual misconduct from Congressmen. They continue to cater to President Bush's agenda. They don't represent the future of the Republican Party. Who will?

That's your challenge for the next several years. These issues are too important for you all to withdraw, to say that the Republican Party has left you behind, and to just sit back and wait until someone does come along. It's up to you to construct the party of the Big Tent once more.

Yours,

Guy Yedwab

P.S. Just don't remake your party too well. I still want liberals to run the country!

Conversationalism + 2008: Humor: Response to Andrew Sullivan

(You can read the post I was responding to here)

As one of these newly emerging youth voters, and also am a huge fan of shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, I'd like to expand a little about what you said when you said "The next generation is deadly serious about this country but they also manage to have fun with it. That's the Millennials' real message, it seems to me." It's something a little more serious than fun: it's humor. See, one of the cores of humor is perspective: in order for things like irony or sarcasm to work, the joke implicitly creates perspective towards the truth. If you can remember the terrible rip-snorting fun that was the 2006 Press Correspondent's Dinner with Stephen Colbert, you'll know that it was funny (or really not funny, depending on your perspective) precisely because of the truth that was imbedded in every joke.

I'd like to point out that both Barack Obama and John McCain were frequent guests on the Daily Show (McCain was at one point--and may still be--the most frequent guest of the Daily Show). They both share an ability to laugh at themselves, to poke fun, to show a little bit of perspective. As the campaign marched forward, I was afraid John McCain had lost it completely, but at that dinner recently he showed himself able to. And how did he appear at that dinner? A lot more in touch with the truth than he has been lately. Comedy requires that self-awareness that you and I both look for in a candidate, and it also means a candidate has to give up their self-importance a little in order to make a self-effacing joke. After all, Stephen Colbert's Press Correspondent's dinner was far more effective than if Jon Stewart had done it because Colbert made himself an image of mockery, and then included Bush and others into that mockery. Note that Nancy Pelosi has, on a couple occasions, warned Congressmen not to appear on the Colbert Report lest they get a mocking that they can't recover from.

I want a candidate who'll have a sense of humor. I mean, I wouldn't choose humor over healthcare, but at the same time, the ability to laugh and joke and break the ice, to see oneself clearly and have perspective on the world around us, to be able to burst self-importance and relax the walls a bit--that ability gives me a lot of faith in their ability to pass healthcare. And in this pompous age of ideology, vitriol, and hatred from both parties toward each other, maybe the future of both parties needs to have a lot more humor. Like Reagan deftly joking about his age, Bill Clinton's ability to connect with people (he hasn't seemed very funny lately, though). Even Nixon's memorable "Checkers" joke separated him from a pact of less worthy candidates. I'm not saying Nixon was a great candidate, but if you look at the way that Nixon and Mao were joking around together, you'll see why it was that it took Nixon to go to China.

Of course, in 2008, there is a limit to the sense of humor I'll take. As someone who wanted McCain to be a different candidate than he turned out to be, I feel pretty "punk'd."

Conversationalism + 2008: Palin And The End of the Line

I take the injunction of the AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer and it must be. I have to say it.

Required reading for the post.

Sarah Palin and John McCain have officially embarked on a campaign of discrimination.

Now, I'm not saying it's necessarily a racist campaign; Sarah Palin's remark that Obama "doesn't see America the way we do" could be equally anti-Democrat, anti-Elitist, anti-black, anti-Liberal, etc. The point, however, is that Sarah Palin is claiming to have a monopoly on America.

I want to talk about one of the most crucial point of the Vice Presidential Debate for me. In terms of our culture, and our cultural dialogue, there was a clear choice that was presented at one point. Ifill asked the two about how to turn around the partisanship in Washington.

Here's Joe Biden:

Mike Mansfield, a former leader of the Senate, said to me one day -- he -- I made a criticism of Jesse Helms. He said, "What would you do if I told you Jesse Helms and Dot Helms had adopted a child who had braces and was in real need?" I said, "I'd feel like a jerk."

He said, "Joe, understand one thing. Everyone's sent here for a reason, because there's something in them that their folks like. Don't question their motive."

Here's Sarah Palin:

But the policies and the proposals have got to speak for themselves, also. And, again, voters on November 4th are going to have that choice to either support a ticket that supports policies that create jobs.

You do that by lowering taxes on American workers and on our businesses. And you build up infrastructure, and you rein in government spending, and you make our -- our nation energy independent.

Or you support a ticket that supports policies that will kill jobs by increasing taxes. And that's what the track record shows, is a desire to increase taxes, increase spending, a trillion-dollar spending proposal that's on the table. That's going to hurt our country, and saying no to energy independence. Clear choices on November 4th.

In other words, in terms of bipartisanship, Biden says we shouldn't slander each other's motives, and Sarah Palin says you should pick the party that isn't out to "kill jobs," "hurt the country," and "say no to energy independence."



This is ludicrous.

So, a few days later, seeing that the polls still aren't backing her ridiculous brand of folksy anti-elitism, she has decided to kick it into gear, and make the heart of their campaign an attempt to question Barack Obama's motives. Because yes, clearly, a Hawaiian born Christian who was a civil rights lawyer, a professor, and has been two years in the Senate, doesn't see America the way 'the rest of us' do. He sees it the way terrorists do. Oh, and by the way: nobody has spoken as much about the exceptionalism of America as Barack Obama--it's the heart of his Yes We Can campaign. I wish he'd truck that out.

But this is unacceptable. Whatever McCain or Palin are trying to do, this is an unacceptable move in the campaign. I cannot repeat this enough. This is unacceptable.



I wanted McCain to be the end of the Republican Party as partisan hackery. I wanted him to show that two parties could both decide to stand a little taller and live up to America a little better. Where has McCain gone?


This is unacceptable.

Conversationalism + 2008: Conversations About Race

Required Reading. For this post, and for Life.

That gentleman is the Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO. I mean, if we're talking about the "blue-collar white man" that allegedly hasn't been out to back Obama in the polls, this is the guy.

But I don't want to talk politics. I want to talk conversation.

Back in the Primary Season, Barack Obama was called to respond to a scandal brewing over Reverend Wright. And he did. But he did something more profound than disavowing Reverend Wright. He talked about our relationship to race in this country.

He summed up his speech in this part of the text, I think:

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. ...

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time."

He was calling on this nation to begin a dialogue, a true conversation about race. That's kind of my gig, and I was thrilled when I saw it. I was going to write something about it, but time slipped away and I let it fall.

And then nothing happened.

There was no discussion of race. We had blundered through a few minor but painful racial gaffes (Geraldine Ferraro, for instance). And at the end of the day, we went back to pretending that there was nothing different about Barack Obama, and that nobody was going to treat him any differently. And that race would not be an issue in this election. For the most part, it won't be. We have advanced a long way, and from the electoral maps I'm seeing right now, it seems fairly likely that Obama will still win.

But the question remains: what about our racial dialogue?

Although the speech I posted at the beginning from the AFL-CIO chief was mostly a stump speech for Obama, I have to tease out two major, major points he made.

• We Cannot Stand By While Racism Happens
  
• Getting Involved Doesn't Mean Accusing People Of Racism; It Means Engaging Them

That's a fantastic basis for the beginning to our conversation about race.

I'm very proud of our country tonight. I'm very proud that we have a man who can make that speech. He is winning no easy medals by bringing up a topic that most people have a much easier time avoiding.

More, America. We need more discussion.

Conversationalism + 2008: On The Street Where You Live

Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

This is the paragraph, in 2004, that turned me into an ardent Barack Obama supporter. It was a promise that there was an idea of America separate from party politics. And a rejection of the cutting and dicing of America. It contrasted sharply with another political candidate of the time:

Today, under George W. Bush, there are two Americas, not one: One America that does the work, another that reaps the reward. One America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks. One America - middle-class America - whose needs Washington has long forgotten, another America - narrow-interest America - whose every wish is Washington's command. One America that is struggling to get by, another America that can buy anything it wants, even a Congress and a president.

This is an older meme, but it gained equal traction when John Edwards deployed in 2004. Like the Obama view of America, it unites people regardless of ideology--but unlike Obama, it still creates a huge division in America. The "narrow-interest" America versus the "middle-class" America. It harkens back to How The Other Half Lives. But it's still a politics of division. A politics of the enemy. The rich, entitled (bourgeois?) versus the everyday, ethical man.

In 2008, it reared its head again not just in the visage of John Edwards (still under the Two Americas name), but under Mike Huckabee:

I'm not a Wall Street Republican, I'm a Main Street Republican.

Perhaps a testament to the lasting influence of Huckabee is that now, during this economic crisis, you literally cannot open your mouth to talk about the bailout plan without saying the phrase "It has to work for Main Street, not just for Wall Street."

Even Barack Obama has been using this phrase, which makes me sad. What happened to "These United States of America?" Certainly, it hasn't been visible in Nancy Pelosi's "leadership," which most recently consisted of blaming House Republicans for this mess. That doesn't mean that House Republicans don't share the blame--the point is that we're not even talking about the issues, the solutions, or reality.

Instead, we're trumping up this economic division. Is everyone in the financial industry evil? Maybe the CEOs and the Investment Branches. But I have several close friends who work as bank tellers. You know who suffers if Washington Mutual or Wachovia branches close? They do. I agree that there have to be strings attached, etc. etc., but if we start employing the language of a culture war, we start setting our priorities incorrectly: our priority is not to punish the financial industry, or to find blame. Our priority is to straighten out the markets.

We can start creating accountability, rewriting the legislations, straightening things out after we've guaranteed that our inaction hasn't caused a 700 point in the DOW Jones. Just to reiterate: the stock market is not just for rich speculators: people have their savings there. Banks are not just for rich speculators: people have their savings in there.

Notice: when Americans are asked how they feel about the bailout, they react strongly against it. When they are asked how they feel about a rescue package that has exactly the same terms as the bailout but isn't called a bailout, they react strongly in favor.

And what this really boils down to is: why are we using any of the language of politics right now? Why are we debating "Wall Street" and "Main Street"? In fact, why are our Congresspeople publicly debating the Bailout package? They should be in meetings, privately debating the bailout package. This is the moment for Congress to quickly and quietly get to its work.

I don't mean that it should be secret--Congresspeople should keep the American public informed as to how the package is going, and once an agreement has been reached, it should be presented to the public. All I'm saying is that trying to play the political game at the same time as the statesman game is going to hold us back.

All I can do is remind you: we have no red states, or blue states: only these United States. There isn't a Rich Person's Economy and a Poor Person's Economy: there's the World Economy. When you find it more important to debate whether the free market solves everything, or to vilify the very House Republicans whose support you need to pass this bill, not only are you watching the US market decline, but the Eastern market, the European markets. Everyone hurts.

Suspend This -- The Stakes

I can't believe I spent last night on a post about theater when this bullshit is going on.

When I went to bed last night, I'd heard about this "Suspending the campaign" mguffin, and I was confused about it. This morning I woke up, and Andrew Sullivan (writer of the most popular single-person political blog--see sidebar link) had posted me to this gem:



Alright. I've got a full tank of spleen to vent, so, here it comes.

• We've been told that this is a historic campaign, but the magnitude of the historical event has not before been clear to me. Each side wants to influence history in a bunch of ways. The Democratic Party has stood behind a black candidate for President and a new initiative on National Healthcare (which could bring the United States up to Europe's place in history). They also could have gone with a woman and healthcare, or (and this was admittedly a long shot, a Hispanic president.
  
  What "historic" choices have the Republicans made? They've chosen the oldest candidate in history, backed him with the most inexperienced vice presidential candidate in history, and given that vice presidential candidate less press access than any vice presidential candidate in history (Ahmadinejad has given more press conferences than Palin since the Republican Convention), and now this historic move: suspending a campaign.
• Of course, suspending this campaign is Grade-A horseshit. If you tell the world that you're suspending the campaign, you don't get to go on the news. You can't have you cake and eat it too! You can't say "campaigning is too much work" and then trot out onto Katie Couric's show.
• Shame on Katie Couric for allowing him on the show. If I was Katie, every question would be: What are you doing here? Why aren't you in Washington? How is this not campaigning? Isn't this publicity right now?
• Horseshit. As David Letterman points out (David Letterman is taking shots at your campaign! David Letterman! Do you know how hard it is to make that guy really take sides? Historic!), you could have just put Sarah Palin forward. Wait, why can't you? You're refusing to let her hold press conferences? In actuality, this "suspended campaign" is really just an excuse to shield Sarah Palin more. Oh, of course Palin can't talk to the press--McCain is in Washington.
• McCain is suspending his campaign in an economic crisis: McCain did not suspend his birthday DURING HURRICAINE KATRINA. He sat there eating Cake with President Bush while a city sank and millions of peoples lives were forever changed for the worse.
• McCain is suspending his campaign less than a week after a pair of bombings against an Embassy and American allies. He's on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Wasn't that important enough to suspend the campaign?

I've been meaning to write this post for a while, but nows as good a time as any.

The stakes in 2008.

When we go to vote in 2008, some people will tell us the war is a big issue. It is. Some people will say that the economy is a big issue. It is. Some people will say social issues are the big issue. They are.

But when you go out to vote, you'll be making a choice on an issue bigger than all of them: The United States Government. Because the "change" that has been talked about in this election is not about policy. It's about governance.

Our Government is at a historic low. Not just because of Republicans: Democrats under Nancy Pelosi have proven just as incapable of addressing our Nation's problems without partisanship in mind. But when Barack Obama accepted that party's nomination, it became his party. It became his platform.

In 2008, we're voting for more than Obama versus McCain. We're voting on the very concept of good governance.

Look at this horrific campaign that McCain has been running. He chose for a running mate a woman accused of tampering with independent investigations, a woman who tried to ban books, a woman whose political ambitions have destroyed the political career of everyone in her way. Yesterday I probably wouldn't have gone with a reference to Senator Joseph McCarthy, but yes: Senator Joseph McCarthy was not above any of those things. Richard Nixon was not above those things either.

John McCain has decided that the truth is not absolute, and that it can conform to party politics the way that he has. He has decided that "lobbyists are people too" (as Hilary Clinton put it--and lost). He has decided that transparency is not a virtue; perhaps in his mind, the Bush Administration's failing is that it wasn't opaque enough, and that we got to see all of the things it was doing.

McCain's economic advisor had a bed made for him by Merrill Lynch. McCain still seems to be unaware of this. I cannot trust McCain's contribution to the current bail-out debate. How could anyone, in the light of those allegations? Merrill Lynch, a substantially interested party, is having access to McCain pre-paid.

When you vote in this election, you need to think about what makes the best government.

After all, an honest man who disagrees with you is far better than a dishonest man who, today, says that he agrees with you. Isn't he?

John McCain, thank you for suspending your campaign. Please take it, and go to one of your seven (or so) homes.

EDIT: A few days have passed, McCain has abandoned this ridiculous idea, and my anger has subsided. I must say in context that I feel incredibly betrayed by the current McCain campaign--I remember vividly in 2004 saying that I was looking forward to McCain running in 2008, and that if Democrats put forward someone from the Pelosi end of the party, I would probably back McCain. Indeed, when Hilary Clinton started to go off the rails at the very beginning, I turned to McCain, but I was already watching his campaign devolve.

After suspending his campaign, McCain took a full day to arrive in Washington; before he arrived, a deal had already been reached; after he arrived, he brought the House Republicans to the table with their deal-breaking objections. He set the deal back three more days, and during the rest of the negotiations, reportedly said little. In the meantime, Obama (with less histrionics) was there as well. My anger was still justified, and I regret the tone even if I don't apologize for it, and still stand by it.

Hard Racism vs. Soft Racism

Our language has simplified over the last generation. Simplified language often leads to simplified thought: thought is, after all, encoded in the logic of language.

So when two phenomenon share the same word, confusion may arise when multiple people misinterpret the same word to mean different things.

This applies to various "isms;" racism, sexisim, ageism, and homophobia (it doesn't end in ism but it's the same sort of sentiment). We use the term racism carefully in this country. But we also throw it around a lot. We have a lot of anxiety about what's termed "racist" and what is not termed "racist." People who use it too much devalue the word; people who use it too little let racists get away with defamation. I'm going to focus on racism right now because Barack Obama invited this nation to have a dialog about race (which has not been followed up on), but this can be applied to sexism as well--that installment is coming soon.

So let me begin by splitting the term 'racism' into two categories: "hard" racism and "soft" racism. Hard racism is a very plain sort of racism, and thus we don't hear it spoken aloud anymore. Ever since the Civil Rights Movement, our culture has decided, as a majority, that it is unacceptable to be a hard racist aloud anymore. This isn't to say that there aren't hard racists; but whenever a statement that is hard racism is heard aloud, that person is pretty much chased out of any public position they might hold.

"Hard" racism is an extreme form of racism. "Hard" racism is holding the belief that one or more races are inferior to one or more races. Adolf Hitler was a hard racist. Racial eugenicists are hard racists. Jim Crow Laws are hard racist laws. They codify the notion that one race of people is objectively (in their eyes) worse than another race of people. People who speak hard racism aloud are tagged, unequivocally, as bigots.

Today, we don't see nearly as much of that. But what we do see is a lot more of "soft" racism. "Soft" racism is hard to define. "Soft" racism is non-absolute; it does not hold that one race is absolutely worse than another. But it has a lot of negative connections with a race. One type of soft racism is ignorance. Another sort of soft racism is resentment.

Barack Obama, in his speech about race, talked about "white resentment," caused by pro-minority actions such as Affirmative Action. It is unsurprising that if one group gets preferential treatment, there will be resentment by the other. And these resentful emotions will spill over into negative attitudes. A hostility; an avoidance.

Now, these people who feel resentment toward African Americans may say that they do not think African Americans are worse, as race. Most probably genuinely believe that. But they do still feel a racial tension which cannot be dismissed as being completely non-racist. And this racial tension, or negative attitude toward African Americans may manifest itself in negative action. And that negative action will be racist, no matter how you dice it.

If both "soft" and "hard" racism are still racisms, why is it important to distinguish? Because soft racism can usually be bridged by better communication, more cooperation, and more information. For instance: affirmative action is only necessary in a community which acknowledges that all of its poor will not get opportunities to education. If a leader brings the white community and the black and latino and asian and etc. communities to work together to improve the opportunities of college education to everyone, then the resentment will decrease.

Hard racism has to be fought. I remain highly doubtful that the Jim Crow laws and segregation could have been ended simply by having Martin Luther King Jr. and Strom Thurmond sitting at a table discussion solutions. Strom Thurmond's belief that the black man was inferior was an ideology; it was entrenched in how he approached the world. And we have no need to give that any time or respect.

The reason is because "hard" racism is an ideology of racism and "soft" racism are facets or actions of racism; the latter being bad, but not as all-encompassing as the first.

Another reason "soft" racism needs to be addressed is that it often causes subconscious soft racism. People who are nervous when black men approach them in the street are exhibiting racism in a way, but it would be ridiculous to put that in the same class as joining the Klu Klux Klan. The imagery and the stereotypes and the cultures which give rise to these soft racisms need to be addressed. They cannot be ignored.

For instance, in the Amadu Dialo case, the officers involved had an ingrained soft-racism; their assumptions were that a black man of a certain age might be violent. And because of it, their reflexes (in under seven seconds; a core part of Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink) led them to shoot a man over 40 times before they could accurately and dispassionately appraise the situation. Do I think they were hard racist--that they think the black man is inferior? No, I don't believe that. But I do believe that they were soft racists; taught to expect trouble from men of a certain description. And although I have only met a few hard racists, I have barely met anyone who doesn't exhibit the occasional sign of "soft-racism" (Exhibit A: "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist" from Avenue Q).

It is important to confront these soft-racisms and make everyone aware when they are going on. Because the conscious mind can overcome subconscious soft-racism, and the conscious mind can address the causes of soft-racism. Unquestioned, they might simply fester, and lead to those cases of hard racism that we want to avoid.

And one last notice: hard racism nowadays masquerades as soft racism; sometimes it is barely detectable. This makes it hard to point to. For instance, I personally detect a hint of hard racism about the McCain campaign's allegation of Obama as "presumptuous" (David Gergen, a Southerner, called it a code-word that everyone in the South would recognize as standing in for uppity). But of course I wouldn't be able to prove it, any more than I can prove that Obama's "out of touch" ad is ageist, the way the McCain campaign alleges it is. When Trent Lott famously said that if they'd elected Strom Thurmond, we wouldn't be in "this mess," did he actually mean that we should have a segregationalist country? It seems pretty clear to me and to most people, but because of this conflation of hard and soft racism, it loses its impact.

Be on the lookout, America.

Fear of Unity: Why I'm Disheartened About The Republican Party

Before I begin: I consider myself an independent, but because of my personal beliefs and my more pragmatic approach to politics, I wind up aligned (most of the time) with the Democratic Party.

That being said, I find myself a lot more invested in the Republican party than most Democrats (or fellow-travelers). There's two reasons for this, and they are interlinked.

I am what most people would call a Democrat, but I don't fall lock-step into the party platform. And therefore, although I want there to be Democrats in Congress, I do still want there to be Republicans (or oppositional Democrats, or Independents) which represent issues on which I disagree with the Democrats. For instance: the Democrats have made a lot of issues of change part of their platform, but fiscal responsibility is still not their strongest suit (they're doing better, in my mind, than the Republican Party in general, but it's not the top of their agenda). Between the sum of two or more parties, all of my desires will be represented in the dicussions of Congress.

The second reason, which is tied into the first, is that I don't ever want one party to rule. Even if it's the party I support. Even if it was a party led by Barack Obama, taking completely his words to be law. And believe me, I'm excited about Barack Obama. But I want Obama to feel the opposing force of dedicated, intelligent conservatives. Opponents who will correct the flaws in Obama's policy, and make it better for the criticism.

Which is why right now, I'm disheartened by the Republicans. When I went into Primary Season, I hoped against hope that John McCain would win. Instead, he lost. He may be the nominee, but the ideas and platform that I remember supporting John McCain for got lost. Very early in the primary, my support for him was destroyed.

I want two parties who agree on one single principle: the truth is important. I was fiscal conservatives who agree on the hard truth that we don't have an infinite credit card; I want socialist-leaning candidates who agree on the truth that taking care of the poor is necessary. I want people who can agree that nothing is absolute, and that both sides of the issue merit examination.

I was thrilled that Obama came out on this side, because I believe he believes in the truth, in consistency, in good governance, and in dialogue. And the old John McCain believed in that. The new John McCain hides his VP from the press, lies and lies and lies, hews to whatever opinion is popular, and in general acts with a total disregard of the truth (Harry Frankfurt's definition of Bullshit).

By the end of the primary season, I was rooting for two ponies in the Primary Season. One was Mike Huckabee. Huckabee, to a certain degree, is not my favorite man in the world: I think that his social conservatism is a holdover from an age we should leave behind. I refuse to accept anything less than equal rights for all genders and sexualities. But on the other hand, Huckabee came across as a thinking social conservative. He has always been respectful of Obama (the only one at the Republican Convention with anything nice to say) and of his Republican enemies (at a time when Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani were content to question patriotism and adherence to Reagan). I can imagine that if Mike Huckabee were to take the Presidency and the Democrats retain their hold on Congress, social issues might continue to be a mess but things like health-care reform and poverty issues would be able to be discussed in a bipartisan manner. I can't prove, of course, that Mike Huckabee might not get McCained, and I am extremely unhappy at the fact that he (unlike my other pony in the race) was willing to be at the Republican Convention and tout McCain at all.

But I don't believe in vilifying enemies unless they actually are villains, and certainly I think we'd have a healthier national discussion right now if Mike Huckabee was the VP candidate rather than this Sarah Palin character.

The other horse I had in the race is Dr. Ron Paul. Dr. Paul, like Mike Huckabee, attracted a significant base (in many areas, up to 15%, like Huckabee) of people who strongly agreed with him and believed in him personally. Paul, like Huckabee, is not prone to baseless character assassination. Paul, like Huckabee has a sense of humor (which you should never underrate in a politician--a lack of a sense of humor indicates a lack of a sense of perspective).

It is disgraceful of the Republican Party, by the way, that this group simply get ignored and dismissed. No representation in the Republican Convention, unless they want to be sycophantic and fall in step behind John McCain. I suppose it is his party, but what has the party done to appeal to Paul's movement? Considering all of the pandering which goes on toward the evangelicals (such as the Palin nomination).

And who is Dr. Paul's movement fueled by? Dr. Paul speaks to a group that I want more represented in politics: Libertarians. My brother is a Ron Paul libertarian, and we have discussed this at length. One of our debates centered around the Internal Revenue Service, which Dr. Paul wants to get rid of in lieu of a flat sales tax. Now, I disagree with the flat sales tax. On the other hand, Paul wants a simpler, more straightforward, less loophole-prone tax code. Even us big-government socialist Democrats can see the virtue in that, for many reasons (one of which being the fact that a complicated, time-consuming tax code winds up costing the poor and benefiting the rich). There's common ground. We can work together.

Another discussion: healthcare. Now, libertarians, in general, don't believe that everyone should be forced to have healthcare. I suppose I agree with that... if someone is determined that they don't want health insurance, that (I suppose) is their right. Now, if someone wants not to insure their child I'm more against that. One of the points my libertarian brother raised, however, is that the problem isn't that people don't have health-care, it's that healthcare is too expensive for people to have. Therefore, finding out how to lower the price of healthcare and increase its efficiency is the first step. If you lower the price of health insurance, then less people would need help paying for health insurance. And then we can discuss who the government should help in terms of health insurance.

Democrats may be too blinded by their drive for an English-style National Health Service to realize that it is just as important to lower the prices of medical care than to help pay for it. And that's something that I hadn't thought of. Libertarians had. Probably because they have a lot of economists on their side.

Now, I'm unhappy about this upcoming election because the Republican Party still seems rather lock-step behind the Neoconservative movement that I thought had proven itself bankrupt. The problem with neoconservatism isn't necessarily their platform (although certain parts of the platform are extremely unpleasant to me and to people of my political background), it's the ideology of the background. Neoconservatives are not out to govern better. They are out to pass their agenda. Compromise has not been in their history. We need compromise. We need thoughtful conservatives, not ideological conservatives.

I actually feel the same, in reverse, on a state level. My home state of California has a very bankrupt politics as well. If you don't know, a few years ago we had a Governor named Gray Davis. He promised a lot of money for a lot of things during the years when we had a huge surplus, and then the state got defrauded by the energy market he deregulated (read: Enron), the tech bubble boomed, and he rolled back parts of his platform. The state now has ballooning debt, and is governed by Governor Schwarzenegger, who replaced Davis.

The problem with California is two-fold. The major problem is the initiative system. The initiative system is a great system for passing laws, but because of a lack of distinction between laws and government programs, the voters get to directly propose and vote on government programs--in essence, the budget is decided by popular vote. And as you might expect, the California voters continue to vote to spend more money and take in less taxes.

This is a ridiculous situation. Nobody will tell the voters otherwise, because if they do, they'll lose their office immediately. But it is necessary to balance the budget. You cannot run a government with a broken fiscal system, any more than you can run it with a broken political system.

The second problem is the Democratic Party of the State of California. When Gray Davis was being recalled, there was an strange method: on the same ballot was two separate votes:

vote 1: Recall Gray Davis?
vote 2: Who would you like to replace Gray Davis?

The latter vote being dependent on the first being passed. Now, from the perspective of the Democratic Party, they need to run a candidate in the latter. It obviously can't be Gray Davis. Now, common sense would dictate that you should support Gray Davis, and find someone else (plausibly distinct from Davis) to run for vote 2.

Instead, the Democrats ran Bustamante, the Lieutenant Governor, who ran on a platform of "I promise to continue Gray Davis' platform."

Well, that was stupid. Obviously, once the recall passed, a majority of Californians were against continuing Gray Davis' platform. And since the Democrats didn't give them any other option, they got to choose between Schwarzenegger and Ariana Huffington (Independent), or a Republican who was even more conservative than Schwarzenegger). Clearly, Schwarzenegger would win. But this gave poor Schwarzenegger the mistaken idea that he had a mandate to try and balance the budget. And ever since then, he's been at war with the bureaucracy of the state of California, and with the people who supported him.

And it has been several years since then. The only opponent who has come against Schwarzenegger was Phil Angelides (Davis' treasurer), who was just as equally unpopular. He turned out to be a crooked character too. So the question is: why can't we do better, Democrats? Schwarzenegger wants to balance the budget. This is something that needs to be done. Democrats will not win any battles by saying we should continue ridiculous debt spending. Instead, they need to confront Schwarzenegger and say, "Yeah, he wants these things, but we can deliver it. We can negotiate; Schwarzenegger can only threaten."

So until then, I support Governor Schwarzenegger's ridiculous guerilla tactics against the Teacher's Union and the state legislature. Schwarzenegger may not be the best politican we could have asked for, but he's the only one in the state taking things seriously. Where is the Democratic Party? Who else are going to tackle those problems?

We live in a two-party system in this country. That means we need both parties. And the better each party is, the better our country will be.

Identity Politics

Today, in my Culture of Dissent class (taught by the inimitable Jan Urban, a Czech dissident from the Velvet Revolution and an excellent journalist in Bosnia, and Kosovo), we discussed the rather difficult question of why Communism proved to be popular.

The answer, from my point of view, is one having to do with the nature of identity in the 20th Century. There are many people who don't believe themselves to be very philosophical in their everyday life (philosophy being a very 'elite' passtime), but in point of fact, everyone has philosophical ideas and worldviews. And one of the big philosophical questions is, "Who am I? What is my identity?"

People base a surprising amount of their political convictions and idealisms based on who they think they are. For instance, one of the reasons that Americans have consistently voted for tax cuts for the wealthy is an array of polls which show that Americans consistently think that they are wealthier than they actually are (which corresponds to the way that they think they're thinner than they actually are).

We talked about the appeal of communism in the Industrial Revolution era. In order to understand it, you need to take a village-eye view of the change. The poor serfs, living in small rural communities, lived in an era with very little mobility. They were engaged in occupations passed down to them from generations, among a small community of people they knew. As the industrial revolution came to pass, serfdom was abolished: they were not necessary anymore. A vacuum formed, which sucked these serfs into the city. Suddenly they were in a huge community, much larger than themselves. Whatever they had previously been known for, through their family, was no longer a mark of identity. They passed by nameless and faceless masses everyday; they worked alongside nameless and faceless masses that did exactly what they did. There was no honor in their new work: they were (proverbially) just another cog in the machine; just another brick in the wall. They had been robbed of their identity, their purpose, and their security.

It was rather like going to a large college after being in a small high school.

At any rate, they needed a new identity. Communism provided that. It gave them a name for themselves: proletariat. It gave them a cause for their misery: bourgoisie. It told them that not only were the proletariat powerful, they were the single most powerful force of history: and that it was historically determined that they must succeed.

So, to turn to contemporary politics: during the Cold War, these identity politics broke apart into large dualisms: Communists and Capitalists on the world stage, and Democrats and Republicans on the American stage (note that third parties were still a noticeable force until World War Two). Ideology became, for one of the few times in American history, a primary source of identification: Democrats, Reds, Anti-Communists, Republicans, Socialists, Peaceniks, Hippies. All of these tags were ideological in nature. They gave people a sense of identity.

Today, these two grand coalitions seem more fractured. At least, the Republican camp seems to have split decisively into moderates, libertarians, neoconservatives, and social conservatives. A messy primary season filled with candidates who did not fully appeal to any of these groups (with the exception of Mike Huckabee for social conservatives and the Ron Paul movement for Libertarians) left people on the right with a lack of a sense of direction. Many of these people identified themselves as Republican strongly, without being on board with many of the actions or beliefs of other Republicans.

A big tip-off to me that this identity politics is coming apart? Obama has a large following of so-called Obamicans (Republicans for Obama). Notice, of course, that they are still calling themselves Republicans despite voting for Obama. I'm not necessarily saying that they aren't actually Republicans, but I'm noticing that their insistence is on defining themselves by a party affiliation which, in this election, may not be entirely accurate.

One of my favorite sayings to hear is "I've been a life-long Republican, but I'm considering voting Democrat." Notice the phrase "life-long." This is put forward as a positive, even though being a life-long Republican might imply that you've supported characters like George W. Bush, Nixon, or Reagan (in the same way that a life-long Democrat must have supported Carter, Dukakis, McGovern).

But this is the way people have previously identified themselves.

But with a hyper-specification of polls, there is a new level of identification going on. We hear it today on the news all the time. Demographics. Very small clusters of identity. How are middle-aged women going to vote? What about older men? Young black men in rural towns? These statistics can all be coallated. And apparently, they matter. And although women's groups have been condemning Palin since she was first put on the ticket, the latest poll shows that McCain has indeed spiked among women.

The question, I suppose, is whether we can move past identity politics. Barack Obama (in my opinion) has a way of addressing that. He appeals to people to vote not as Democrats, or Republicans, or as black and whites, but as Americans. This isn't just a trite slogan of identification: he's asking us to identify ourselves as America, and vote in such a way that doesn't just benefit my group or your group or any group, but benefits all of America.

And the question is: will it work.

The Conversation: Confrontation in Politics

• "You'll get a chance to answer [sic] your questions but you
• "All you gotta do is be courteous, that's all." Respect. Clearly.
• His return to speaking to the young man. It would have been shameful if he hadn't returned to ask the question, but it is important nonetheless.
• "I made a promise to you but also that means I want you to give your mic back after you ask your question or make your comment." ---- A statement of the responsibility of both sides. Obama will give legitimacy to the question if the heckler will give legitimacy to the answer.
• Audience response: Obama does not leverage the sympathetic audience against the heckler; rather, he attempts to restrain the audience, at one point saying "Hold on a second, everybody, I want everybody to be respectful, that's why we're having a townhall meeting. This is democracy at work. Now he asked a legitimate question, so I want to give him an answer." (Emphasis mine).
  
• The Kicker: "Now, I may not have spoken out the way you would have wanted me to speak out, which is fine, because ... that doesn't mean that I'm always going to satisfy the way you guys want these issues framed, which gives you the option of voting for somebody else, it gives you the option of running for office yourself. Those are all options, but the one thing that I think is important is that we're respectful towards each other, and...the only way we're going to solve our problems in our country, is if all of us come together..."

The conversation is sustained by new voices, provided those voices are respectful. The key, which Obama returns to and is rather the point of my discussions on conversation, is respect of opinions.