Forecasting! Woo!

Every once in a while I check in with the future and try to lay down tabs on what I think the future is going to be like... I have about a 50% success rate (oh Secretary of State Richard Clarke...). It's the political equivalent of brackets.

Since January, my "2012 election bracket" had Scott Brown in the nominee slot for the Republicans. He has one major advantage: plausible deniability from the Bush Era. Don't forget how much of a boon Obama got from not being part of the US Senate that approved the PATRIOT Act (which only Russ Feingold refused to vote for) and declared war on Iraq. So Scott Brown has enough credentials to run against Barack Obama (although he won't have spent quite as much time in the Senate), and he has the opportunity to craft a new message. And hailing from Massachusetts gives himself the latitude to reach out to Independents without really stepping on the toes of people from back home.

That's, I think, the background to this story, which is about Scott Brown's refusal to say he's joining the 'Repeal the Bill' crowd. Mitt Romney, the de-facto voice of the GOP Establishment (which is kind of how he positioned himself from the start of the '08 Campaign) has come out against it, which is all kinds of stupid. But Romney's problem is Brown's problem too; Brown has said he is not against Massachusetts' Health Care system.

So Brown is at a fork. If in 2012 he wants to run for the nomination, he's going to have to run against Health Care. But if in 2012 he wants to run for re-election, he's going to have to run in favor of Health Care. So there we have the story that posits that Brown hasn't read the Reconciliation Bill yet. Bullfeathers, Mr. Brown. If you haven't had at least a point-by-point summary of what the bill means, you should fire your staff, since you've had five days.

So I guess what I'm saying is, I'm erasing Brown from my 2012 bracket and waiting to see what happens next amongst the GOP. I'm certain it won't be Palin, or Romney (unless really nobody else emerges), or Pawlenty. If Brown can't untangle himself from Health Care, I'd add him to that list.

Grassroots + Power VI: Separation Between Arts and State ctd.

So I was wondering the other day about the separation between arts and state, and I want to return to that subject, because I don't think I delineated exactly what I meant. The arts are, for instance, used by the State Department. They're used by the MTA. To discuss "arts" and "the state" blithely as though it's all the same is not the level of specificity I'd like to leave the discussion on.

Let's start with political content. One thing you'll notice is that many artists, even when they strive to be political, try not to be ideological -- they at least say they want to present "both sides" or "provoke debate." They certainly aren't out there to propagandize. I occasionally meet an artist who has an agenda, but rarely, so very rarely. It's a taboo. (I also tend very much not to like their work, so I'm definitely part of the taboo).

The reason I bring this up is because recently, I've been watching some vintage Capra with my family off of Netflix. Specifically, we saw Meet John Doe. What a fantastic, fantastic, film.

Also, a very blatantly ideological one. Most of the characters are incredibly one-dimensional, in a way that isn't bothersome -- the setting is basically that, in unstable and corrupt times, people are reduced to base instinct or strategy. The female protagonist will do anything to keep her job, the paper owner will do anything to sell papers, the politician will do anything for votes. The only character who doesn't fit into this is the film's "John Doe." But he doesn't have an ideology. He's just pushed around, a vessel. You spend the length of the movie debating within yourself which ideology he should allow himself to accept (a sneaky way of saying you spend the movie wondering which strain of thought is right). Finally, at the end, everything ends discredited except common human decency.

Or the Frank Capra we saw last night, You Can't Take It With You. (By the way, I think Eugene Jarecki should have used this instead of It's A Wonderful Life for the Move Your Money campaign -- here too the antagonist is an evil banker). The Turner Classic Movie synopsis says it all: "A girl from a family of freethinkers falls for the son of a conservative banker."

It's a far cry from the way politics is tackled in my favorite film, 12 Angry Men. There, each character is represented, and -- like the trial it mirrors -- each side gets to make its persuasive case. There are shades of emotional complexity and doubt in each character, and each character honestly believes he's out to do something good. The victory of 20th Century Realism over 20th Century pedagogy.

I'm mulling over: what are the rules of making a piece that emphatically asserts an opinion? I've heard before that art is about the question, not the answer. For a while I've believed that. And I still think it's usually true.

But a while back I spoke about my conviction that culture is a conversation, and each cultural act we perform, be it an ad or a play or a book is just a moment in the conversation.

If that's the case, then why the hell isn't there some way of asserting something? Just as we don't have to find ourselves trapped permanently in the passive-aggressive mode as we talk naturally, there has to be some way we can assert the things we believe in ways that are respectful, insightful, and useful.

It's surprisingly tough in spoken language. I've seen plenty a conversation where somebody had the gall to assert an opinion -- on some topics, not others -- and the conversation has ground to a halt.

When I was in Prague, I had the strange experience of living with one of those conservatives we're always seeing on the news. Someone whose approval of Sarah Palin grew when it turned out that she tried to ban books, and who didn't believe that we should have national health care. The fact that he supported Mitt Romney and Romney's health care reform didn't particularly sway him.

He was a very well-educated young man from a wealthy background, he was studying to be in the communications industry, and every time he went to downtown Boston he carried a concealed weapon tucked into the back of his pants.

We were all at lunch, and somehow the conversation turned to gun violence, and someone said something along the lines of how problematic it was that guns are so easy to get access to, and he hotly stated that anyone who wanted to limit access to guns was taking away his right to defend himself. There was a halt in the conversation. Slowly, we tried to discuss the issue. I was fascinated simply watching people slowly figure out what they could or couldn't say. Nobody wanted to argue, but they wanted to discuss, and clearly this was something he was very passionate about, and nobody wanted to say the things that would explode the anger.

At the same time, sometimes he would say things that were absolutely horrifying. I won't repeat them on my blog, but a lot of time people would simply let it slide because it was easier than arguing with someone that angry about issues. He felt persecuted, because every time he would drop one of these incredibly offensive statements, people would get angry at him.

It reminded me that sometimes -- just sometimes -- we have to stand by what we believe. Not on everything. I, for one, believe that a public option would be important. But it's not the battle we should fight to the death, certainly not at the expense of the health care bill as a whole. But on the other hand, the fight against torture is something that I'm willing to say is an imperative. There are some things that we can assert, decidedly.

Some of our most beautiful cultural legacies -- the Declaration of Independence, Edward R. Murrow's address from Buchenwald, the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of the execution from the Vietnam war -- these cultural legacies are not handed down because they were a question. They also were not handed down because they were the "answer," a single, immutable, truth. They don't speak a single universal moral. But they speak to one moment, one crucial crossroads that our culture faces, and it passes a specific judgment, asserts a specific impact.

That's why I get mad about media equivalency, about headlines like Reid's Race Comments: Was There Truth In His Comments? Sometimes -- not always -- you just have to say what the hell is on your mind. There are times when it's simply not appropriate to use the question mark.

This doesn't mean we have to yell, or vilify, or engage in all of the rancor that is attached to fighting over passionate issues. It just means we sometimes have to find the way to make our case clearly, concisely, and with a period at the end of our statement.

2012!

People are floating a lot of names for 2012. Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee. There isn't a lot of impact behind any of the names -- I happen to think Mitt Romney is going to emerge the victor as the conservative base splits amongst Palin and Huckabee.

But.

This week there's been rumors about a Lou Dobbs run, and there's also this week Glenn Beck's continuing his 9/12 Project insanity by becoming a "Community Organizer" (har har it's so meta). If these folks enter the race, I'm willing to put all my money behind Lou Dobbs being the Republican Candidate. He comes across more genuine than Romney, smarter than Palin, more memorable than Pawlenty, more marketable than Huckabee, and more stable than Beck. He's still a very solid conservative without getting trapped in too many of the excessive crazy that all of the other candidates have on the record (except Pawlenty -- Palin's desire to be rid of witches, Romney's "double Guantanamo", Huckabee's HIV-Positive quarantine camps, and basically everything Glenn Beck says). Lou Dobbs can appear on The Daily Show or MSNBC and still be treated with a respect that very few of the other candidates can still muster.

I'm not going to make any forecasts until a year before the primaries, since I love forecasting and I love being wrong. But I will say that having to watch a Dobbs-Beck debate moderated by Brit Hume is the sort of thing that makes me think the Mayan Calendar thing might be right...

"An Historic Night"

Last week's election was truly historic. Not because of race.

Yes, I mean, it was historic because of race, but something which I find to be equally important is another reason: class.

There were four candidates running head to head. One came from a reasonably successful family (a distinguished military, the McCains) and had married into even more wealth.

The other three came from truly working-class backgrounds.

P-E Barack Obama grew up in the tough parts of Chicago. His father left him when he was young, he went to live with his grandparents, he got involved with drugs.

I'm not saying P-E Obama was poor when he got elected. I'm just saying that he started out poor.

VP-E started on the streets of Scranton. He also is not poor nowadays, but even with the setback of losing a wife and child in a car accident, he managed to keep struggling forward until his success today.

Sarah Palin, say what you will about her, was born to two teachers in a rural community. With not the most prestigious of degrees (sports journalism) she too worked her way up to something you will call a reasonable amount of success.


What history showed is that you don't have to have a name from a well-known family (the Clintons actually go back to the founding of the country; George W. Bush is at the end of a dynasty, the Kennedys became a dynasty) and he didn't grow up in a rich white background. They're not the first in this respect, but to have so many--and for them to be so successful, it still something very important to note.

Expelling Heretics

The term "dissident" comes from a latin word, "dissidencia," which was first used in the Middle Ages during meetings of various factions of The Church (pre-schisms), and the term meant "Those who seek the same goal by a different path." The importance of the emergence of that term was that it gave space to those in The Church to voice their dissent without being heretics. This is important, because a healthy movement cannot remain healthy unless it gives space for its members to have less than 100% loyalty. Martin Luther King Jr, as an example, did not think America was perfect. But he loved it, and he helped it change for the better.

The Republican Party is in the middle of asking itself: dissident or heretic?

For the right, from Red State (I refuse to link to them) via Matthew Yglesias:

RedState is pleased to announce it is engaging in a special project: Operation Leper.

We’re tracking down all the people from the McCain campaign now whispering smears against Governor Palin to Carl Cameron and others. Michelle Malkin has the details.

We intend to constantly remind the base about these people, monitor who they are working for, and, when 2012 rolls around, see which candidates hire them. Naturally then, you’ll see us go to war against those candidates.

Clearly, RedState has an answer: Heretic. Anyone who opposes Governor Palin, anyone who doesn't toe the... well, not even the party line, but the party-base line, the ideological line, must be cast out. Expelled. They're a heretic.

Now, I have to say that these McCain campaign workers who are going around after the fact complaining about Sarah Palin and talking about how bad she was even though they worked tirelessly to try and get her in the White House... well, I have as much respect for them as I have for Scott McLellan or Colin Powell, who may have discretely voiced dissent at the time but pretended to be 100% partisans in public, thus denying us the ability of private debate. But that's a different issue, that stems to me all the way back to the Saturday Night Massacre, when a huge chunk of the Attorney General's Office were fired because they refused to replace the Independent Prosecutor in charge of Watergate.

But still, they are members of the Republican Party. Even if they're complete hacks, they get to choose their political affiliation. If Republicans will hire them, or they win primary elections for the Republican Party, they're in the Party, and they can lend their voice. They can dissent, even if they choose not to when it matters.

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: 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.

2008: Sarah Palin

Just a brief post here. I thought I'd play a little game. Sarah Palin is a vice presidential candidate, and, well, I've kind of harbored a little bit of a desire to run for office later in my life. But I'm worried. Would I be qualified? Would I be the sort of person that John McCain could turn to for advice?

I have no experience in public office. I am still studying for an undergraduate degree in college (studying Drama and Theater Production). My best executive experience was directing a play last year (on a budget of $300, and with a cast of 7 and a crew of 6). So, clearly, my credentials are not quite as good as Sarah Palin's.

But then I thought further. And I realized that I am more qualified than Sarah Palin in several fields.

• Foreign Policy Experience: I was born as a passport holder. I travelled to Israel every year--and stopped in plenty of European countries every year! That means my family lives in Israel--and they're neighbors with Syria and Lebanon. So I keep an eye on Syria and Lebanon, which means that I guess I'm pretty qualified in their affairs.
• Knowledge of Law: Sarah Palin could name one Supreme Court Case: Roe v. Wade. I can name Roe v. Wade, but I can also name the more accurately applicable Supreme Court Case (Casey v. Planned Parenthood) which changed Roe v. Wade's absolute protection of abortion into a more qualified one. How about the Dredd Scott case, which ruled that African-Americans were not human beings under the law, and couldn't sue--and that property transported over state lines remains the property of the owner, regardless of law? Or how about Plessy v. Fergussen, which ruled that "separate but equal" was the prevailing standard, and Brown v. Board of Education, which overturned it? What about Marbury v. Madison, which established Judicial Review? Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, which ruled that the Cherokee Nation had the rights to their land--but was overturned informally by Andrew Jackson's "You've made your decision, now let you enforce it?" Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree. I'm clearly qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice, at this rate. John McCain: make me your Harriet Myers.
• Following of the News: Sarah Palin was unable to name any newspapers or magazines she follows current events in. Here's mine:
  --Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish
  --Michael J Totten's blog
  --Google News' roundup (which includes the major newspapers, AP, Reuters, the major networks, etc.)
  --The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The Bugle (three major satirical news programs; the latter from overseas)
  --BoingBoing (a technology / libertarian blog)
  --Slashdot (news for geeks)
  --15 or so Art Blogs
  --Prague Post/Prague Daily Monitor (I'm in Prague right now)
  --The official updates of Representatives Carolyn Maloney and John Campbell (my two representatives)
  --Lawrence Lessig's blog
  --Creative Commons' blog
  --SCOTUS Blog (updates on the Supreme Court)

That's about it. Clearly, from my resume, you can see that I'm as qualified to be the Vice Presidential candidate. Also, I can bring in the Jewish vote, the young vote, and the purely hypothetical vote, because I'd never accept a position as your running mate.

Conversationlism + Pragmatic Theater + 2008: Sarah Palin And Tina Fey

I don't think I have to make a very long post here. Tina Fey's satire of Sarah Palin is a revitalizing moment for Saturday Night Live. I hope they can keep the satire up this sharp and fresh. It might strike you that Tina Fey's satire of Sarah Palin is fairly straightforward and basic. I just want to highlight the reason it's working so well.

Required Viewing

What can you notice about this side-by-side comparison? Tina Fey has discovered something about satire. Sometimes, all you have to do is present the truth in a frame of satire, and the laughs will come in themselves. It takes me back to an old South Park episode which mocked Scientology. All they had to do was tell the tale at the basis of Scientology, with a disclaimer at the bottom: This is what scientologists actually believe.

I sometimes see or hear the same thing out of Jon Stewart: "I'm not making this up!" All the satirist has to do sometimes is present the absurdity of the moment, shrug, and say, "That's reality."

To see members of the press--serious members of the press--still arguing on behalf of Sarah Palin as a serious candidate is ludicrous. And all you have to do is introduce perspective. Sometimes that's all that comedy has to be: perspective.

One Example 1

Example 2

Those two examples, I think, exemplify Jon Stewart's role as the satirist providing perspective.

Conversationalism + Identity + 2008: Sarah Palin + Katie Couric

Required Viewing

I felt a deep pathos for Sarah Palin during that interview. Many of her positions are abhorrent to me, and I am shocked that anyone would have believed that she would be good on the ticket. But she struck an emotional chord within me, a chord of fear, while watching specifically these sorts of moments in her interview, and having thought about it, I'm starting to realize what it is.

Sarah Palin is trying to learn a foreign language.

When I was growing up, I was taught Hebrew, because I was Israeli-born and American raised. My family all spoke Hebrew, and indeed from my parents' generation upward Hebrew was the dominant (if not the only) mode of communication there was. When I was young, the frustration of learning a language drove me wild--I hated it, and I consequently dropped Hebrew lessons.

Part of me regrets that to this day, but my abortive attempts to learn language since then have made me feel that I was correct in my choice. A year of Spanish I in middle school, four years of French in High School (culminating in a 2 on the AP French exam), and, just this year, studying introductory Czech--and each time, I have not done well.

But there is something more fundamentally frustrating or disturbing than not doing well in language classes, which I only realized today. It's a frustration I feel when I try to speak to a Czech person in Czech, and they respond in English (recognizing instantly my inability to communicate). It's equally the frustration I feel when I have to dumb down my language to get across to someone who thinks they know English, but don't.

Before action, comes the word, and part of my self-awareness is my self-awareness about how I communicate. Part of the urge that creates a writer, after all, is the love of words--and furthermore, an identification with words and communication. Before I am anything else, I am a creator--and the first step in the act of creation is writing and planning; placing ideas in definite grammatical structures. George Carlin talks about how you start with an airy, indefinite thought, and then you attach a word to it, and BAM-- you're stuck with that word for that thought.

But what happens when it becomes impossible to communicate? I can imagine myself happier unable to walk than unable to speak. I have a definite fear of loss of speech, which is in fact tied into my fear of death. I identify myself with my thoughts, my ideas, and my opinions; death extinguishes them. So the solution to death is to spread my thoughts, my ideas, my opinions. Shakespeare's body may have died, but his thoughts/ideas/opinions live on because they have gained traction. I not only fear dying, but I fear dying and taking everything I think and feel with me.

That's why I write: if no one will listen to my ideas and thoughts and opinions, I must write them down, so that if the time comes that someone is interested in them, they will be waiting for them. I have a fantasy in my head that, after I die, people will come through my computer, looking for my ideas and thoughts and opinions. And they'll discover that I laid it all out--my computer is laid out with a highly organized filing system, so that people will know what I thought, what I was here for.

Imagine if I lost all of that. Imagine if I lost the opportunity to make myself known. Imagine if I dealt with someone who is trapped in seeing me as "The Other" because I cannot make myself clear to them. Imagine that. It is the same tragedy as a paralyzed athlete: he who identifies himself with physical action will mourn the loss of that action, and he who identifies himself with communication (not just thought; communication) will mourn that in a deep way.

I have trouble watching Sarah Palin in these interviews. It was alright for me when she was just speaking, saying foolish things like "Thanks but no thanks" or "The difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull...". She knows how to speak like a politician. But watching her try to speak like a statesman, is like watching my comrades in Czech 1 trying to form a sentence about their family when they've forgotten all the vocabulary involved.

You can see her clutch to phrases she knows. Take, for instance:

"So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americas."

Let me diagram this sentence for you:

[Positive initiative 1] + [positive initiative 2] + [positive initiative 3] + [positive initiative 4] + [positive initiative 5]

Furthermore, if you notice, Positive Initiative 2, 4, and 5 are all the same initiative: raising taxes. They're just different phrases for the same thing.

She memorized the vocab, and she's struggling to deploy it. It deeply unsettles me, emotionally, because I can't imagine the horror of being tested on language I don't know. The inability to communicate, in its sharpest form.

If Sarah Palin's nomination only accomplishes one thing, let it be that it gave me a little more insight into the darker side of myself.

Conversationalism + 2008: How Our Conversation's Going

Culture is a conversation, and in a democracy, one of the most important culture-defining conversations is an election. Overall culture is often given many defining characteristics by its leaders: often, much of the culture defines itself in response to that. In a democracy, the choice of leaders is, in effect, a choice of cultural values and guiding philosophies to engrain in our culture. As our candidates compete, not only are we voting for policies, we are voting for the philosophies which underly policies. Hence, in previous elections, you get candidates winning on platforms built on the Bible or Reaganomics, even they don't necessarily apply in the situations they're being applied to. Why? Because the voters are responding to principles they agree with, regardless of the actual issues.

So, how is our conversation going in this election cycle?

I think it's going really well. It's still having some problems, but it's alive. Two points:

• The Debate: This nearly was a debacle. If McCain had stuck to his intention not to attend, it would have crippled one of the key moments of conversation in this election. After all, the chance to actually put two candidates in conversation with each other is not seen anywhere else in the campaign--and putting the candidates in conversation forces the core supporters and the undecideds to really see both candidates side-by-side, responsive. Having no debate would have been a truly souring event, and it would have set an incredible precedent: that candidates have no responsibility to the national dialogue in the lead-up to the election.
  
  As for the debate that actually happened: both candidates were (mostly) respectful (McCain's body language was rude, but it wasn't overtly rude). Both candidates (mostly) addressed the issues (as much as politicians have ever been seen to previously). And both candidates were (mostly) sticking to the facts.
  
  There is a way to go, for both sides. But the fundamentals of this debate were strong.
  
  The format of the debate was better than many before. Unlike the laughably constructed CNN or Fox Debates (and the horrendous ABC-Gibson/Stephanopolis Debates), Jim Lehrer tried to get the candidates to speak clearly and directly to each other. I actually agree with the candidates that speaking directly to each other is not necessarily the best way to frame it, but it does need to be responsive--Question Time in the House of Commons is a fantastic example of that balance. Diffuse the tension without losing responsiveness.
  
  
• John McCain/Sarah Palin's Relationship to the Press: This has been one of the more disappointing aspects of the campaign. The refusal of Sarah Palin to face the press, and the refusal of both candidates to answer straightforward questions, has been disgraceful. The same goes for certain blatant lies that have been repeated by both sides. Up until the Bush Presidency, there was a tradition that politicians would sometimes lie, but once caught, they would retract those lies. The idea that a politician can simply continue to insist that his lie is true is flabbergasting. I hope that this idea is put to rest when he loses.
  

Hard Sexism Vs. Soft Sexism

Racism and sexism are emotional issues. Everyone interprets them differently, even within the groups which are affected. I recall a time in one of my classes when, attempting to create a work about gender issues, I chose to use the song "My Humps" by Black Eyed Peas. Asked why I used "My Humps", I responded (rather off-handedly) because it seemed like the most anti-feminist song I could find. Of course, I'm sure that the young lady who sings that song does not agree, but I had assumed that she, like many young women, had been trained to give men what they want, to enable objectification.

My brief analysis (I didn't go very far into it because I'd hit a nerve with a number of women, and it's not my intention to do so) was debated for a long time by many of the women in the class (the men had the sense, overall, to keep their mouths shut). Half of the women in the class believed that the song was about female empowerment; a woman getting men to serve her, to attend to her needs (material and sexual) as she pleases, putting her in a position of power. The other half were of the opinion that the blatant objectification that the young woman subjects herself to denies her any sort of respect or equal standing with men; they may think she's special, but only as an object.

I agree with the the latter argument, because of Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs, (which I agree with), which would show that she's giving up self-actualization/esteem/love+belonging in the long run for physiological in the short run.

At any rate, what this discussion proved to me is that there is no one definition as to what is sexist and what isn't sexist, and that things that are seen as empowerment from one angle can actually be demeaning from another angle.

I discussed hard and soft racism in the last post, and you can basically substitute hard and soft sexism (or hard and soft homophobia) here. Hard sexism is an ideology that women are inferior; soft sexism is an attitude or action which demonstrates negative attitudes or associations with regard to women.

Since I covered this exhaustively in the last post, I'm just going to say something more briefly about hard/soft sexism: I believe Sarah Palin's nomination is soft sexism.

The reason is this: there are many, many qualified women in this country. Even among Republicans. Kate Fiorina, the CEO of HP. Condoleeza Rice (since apparently Bush's policy isn't discredited, as I had previously thought). Senator Olympia Snow. A controversial pick might be Democratic governor Cathleen Selebius, who I had considered a possible candidate for Obama's political ticket.

But even if Sarah Palin was the best woman that could have been chosen, she would have had to be vetted. The fact that McCain waltzed in, decided to pick a woman he'd spoken to once as his VP, and assumed that this would endear him to the women of the country is insulting. And that's what I mean by soft racism. I don't think McCain thinks women are inherently bad. But he clearly doesn't take them seriously enough.