Suite101.com

I've decided that for at least the time being I will do freelance writing over at suite101.com. My first article entitled, Ideologically Conservative, Operationally Liberal & In Distress was just published on their site. I'll leave the Intrepid Liberal Journal up where my posts since 2005 can still be read and over thirty podcasts listened to.

At suite101.com I'll primarily write about politics and current affairs. However, I'll also venture into other topics of interest to me such as information science. Whenever a new article is posted I'll provide a link for it here at my old blogspot home. My thanks all those who followed me here at Intrepid Liberal Journal and I hope you'll continue to read me at suite101.com.

Bernie Sanders Gets It & Says It

 Alas, Sanders is only one of the remaining few willing and able to fight the good fight.

Arc of Identity

I’ve been a loyal Democrat and devoted liberal my entire life. Even as a teenager when Reagan was popular with my generation, intuitively I knew his vision was wrong. So I worked my butt off for the party and registered voters. I did this on faith that the Democratic Party would be a vehicle for economic and social justice.

Yet a lingering disenchantment with the party always lurked like a nagging conscious and whispered doubts in my ear. Personal friends from my youth may recall how I often quipped that Republicans were the party of evil and Democrats the party of gutlessness. Alas, our winner take all system reinforces the two party duopoly, so I saw no viable alternative. And perhaps there never will be.

The good thing about the gutless party is that at least it wasn’t out to get me. Whereas those nasty Republicans seemed to suggest that if I as a secular Jew didn’t accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior, support school prayer and engaged in casual sex, I was condemned to eternal damnation. Furthermore, if I didn’t fully embrace the principles of predatory capitalism and aggressive military nationalism, I was not a loyal American in their eyes. The Republican Party’s racist “southern strategy,” gutter tactics and homophobia, also repulsed me.

So I rationalized supporting Democrats against what I deemed the party of evil. If we didn’t stand up for Bill Clinton then Newt Gingrich and his apostles of hate and greed would run amok. With respect to policy the Clinton administration made all sorts of compromises I didn’t agree with such as welfare reform. But his heart seemed in the right place and the technology bubble provided an illusion of prosperity and hope for wage earners across the board. Meanwhile, the Republicans had the temerity to impeach our duly elected president for getting a blowjob. I didn’t approve of Clinton’s personal conduct but abusing our Constitution over it bothered me more.

Through the year 2000, I remained a staunch liberal both ideologically and temperamentally. By temperament I mean I was willing to debate and listen to ideas from conservative acquaintances and relatives, even as I contradictorily regarded the GOP itself as an evil institution of hate mongering greed. I’ve never believed that I had a monopoly on wisdom and perhaps through the power of reason and a good faith give and take, we could find “common ground” for the greater good. Yeah, once upon a time I really did believe that.

After all, most of the conservatives I knew were decent people and didn’t perceive themselves, as enablers of hate mongering greed. I didn’t equate them with Republican politicians. So ideologically, I remained a traditional New Deal sort of liberal but in personal disposition I also believed it was important to remain intellectually flexible and receptive to changing realities. I still believe in that personally but in this country it doesn’t seem to work politically.

Then George W. Bush stole the 2000 presidential election. No need to rehash the tale we all know so well. Suffice to say that I was PISSED! Pissed at how an American electorate could make an election close enough so Bush could steal it because they preferred him as someone they could have a beer with. Pissed that Ralph Nader and his supporters actually claimed there was no difference between Bush and Al Gore.

Pissed at a Democratic Party that crawled into a fetal position after Bush’s ascendancy and 9/11. Pissed at the reign of indecency under a Christian-fascist regime guided by neocons, immoral nationalists, predatory crony capitalists and religious zealots. A century from now, if the human race is still here, historians may well trace America’s decline to that 2000 election when predatory capitalism’s crusade that was launched by Reagan achieved its nirvana of destruction under Bush, Cheney and their merry band of “End Times” misogynists, corporatists, Ayn Rand fetishists and delusional believers of American exceptionalism.

During the 2002 midterm elections I looked upon my party of gutlessness in a new light. While Democrats would not overtly do me any harm they also wouldn’t stand up for me when Republicans pursued irrational wars or allowed predatory crony capitalism to destroy the American dream. It seemed the entire party was a self-gelding machine of ineptitude suffering from battered wife syndrome.

Then along came Howard Dean, a centrist governor from Vermont, who nonetheless was one of the few Democrats bold enough to fight the madness with his famous “What I want to know” March 15, 2003 speech in Sacramento. Inspired by Dean, a “netroots” movement took off to emancipate the Democratic Party from elite consultants and lobbyists to represent regular folks. Or so we believed.

For liberals like myself it was cathartic to encounter others who realized America was on a collision course with calamity and hungered for a Democratic Party with the spine to stand up and fight. In that despair and anger we felt under Bush and a corporatist media that failed to challenge the Bush administration’s distortion of reality emerged an exhilaration that we regular people would “force the spring” with a counter narrative of “truth.”

To my disgust Bush stole another election in 2004 and portrayed John Kerry, a man with four purple hearts, as soft. In opposition, both to the Republicans and status quo insider Democrats, many of us dug in our heels to save the party and the country. In February 2006, I posted an essay I was quite proud of entitled “Pro-Business Liberalism.” It was the first post I did that achieved any sort of notice and within the opening paragraph I identified a flaw that remains pervasive in the Democratic Party today:

“Meanwhile, the Democrats are enduring the worst perceptions among voters from both wings of their party: liberals reluctance to identify with pro-business policies makes the party appear in favor of handouts while the DLC reinforces the suspicion among voters that the Democrats are just as corporatist as the Republicans. It’s an odd contradiction and a rare feat of political ineptitude: the two wings of the party have managed to make Democrats appear socialist and corporatist at the same time.”

Over four years later and little has changed! President Barack Obama this past week was compelled to defend his administration for not being anti-business even as millions of Americans perceive it as beholden to predatory capitalists on Wall Street. The duality is undermining Obama’s administration and the Democratic Party’s effectiveness.Sadly, what the Democratic Party offers is predatory capitalism lite and nationalism with a veneer of multinational diplomacy.

And that leaves liberals like myself feeling adrift. My ideal of liberalism is to provide an indispensable alternative to revolution and reaction. I always envisioned liberalism as facilitating tangible positive change and reform at a pace that can be absorbed by society as a whole. I’m not a revolutionary. Revolutions are bloody. Reaction is also bloody. Hence, liberalism to me represented a means of how society could evolve and adapt to changing realities without bloodshed or overly harsh policies that hurt the most vulnerable among us. And hopefully empower and lift up those left behind in the free market’s rough and tumble.

In 2010 however, liberalism as defined by Democrats under Barack Obama is pursuit of that holy-grail independent voter who stands on the political fifty-yard line. The end result is the center of political gravity being pulled further to the radical right as liberalism continues to lose ground. And the body politic as a result can’t even do something modest like extend unemployment benefits as plutocratic millionaire corporatists complain about the deficit they largely created during the Bush years.

So as I reflect upon my political identity today it can be defined as weary of slogans, promises and personalities. I don’t believe in political parties or their platforms. I don’t believe in the dogma of ideology, be it left, right or middle. I don’t believe in silver tongued icons. I don’t believe in special interests, net roots movements, so called grass roots movements, moralizing politicians with nice haircuts, blow dried talking heads or careerist pundits with stock dividends in the system. I don’t believe in big government or the free market. I never believed organized religion could save anyone.

I do believe most people are decent, reasonable and competent. Our salvation, if it is to ever come, will happen on the community level when people pool their collective resources against predatory capitalists and their enablers in power with their own businesses, local financial credit lending institutions and reduce our own carbon footprints. Otherwise, in my lifetime, a bloody revolution, reaction or even a xenophobic civil war is inevitable.

Alas, liberalism never seemed so far away.

Independence Day & George Carlin

Is there any country on this Earth more contradictory than mine? The late comedian George Carlin once observed in a classic rant that, “this country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free.” Indeed, in that little rant, Carlin defined America’s contradictory soul: freedom and oppression.

I am proud of a country that allowed someone like Carlin to freely express himself and did not incarcerate him for his views. The man never spent any time in a gulag for telling it like it is and I love my country for that. And yet how sad that in two centuries plus our society has not evolved beyond a violent and greed based culture that wages war under the guise of freedom for the benefit of sociopathic multinational corporations.

So, on this Independence Day, our 234th birthday, I’m thinking about soldiers, fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, killing civilians, in the name of freedom as politically connected contractors benefit and cities such as Detroit disintegrate. I'm thinking about the millions of citizens who did nothing wrong and are unemployed thanks to Wall Street permissiveness. Those marvelous thieves who we bailed out and will continue to steal under the protective legal cover of financial reform. I'm thinking about a country founded by rationale secular men who believed freedom of religion also meant freedom from religion yet struggles to teach the theory of evolution in its classrooms. And I’m thinking about George Carlin and wondering what he say about it.

Predatory Conservatism Is Like A Venereal Disease

A short post this evening. After President Obama’s speech last night I pondered how the hell we got here. I’m not simply referring to the oil spill but America’s and the world’s rapidly decaying condition.

Under George W. Bush liberals warned that America was on a collision course with calamity. I suppose one could describe the Bush regime as the culmination of forty years of predatory conservatism that favored wealth over work and corporate power over community interests. Sadly, Americans were seduced by predatory conservatism’s false promises of freedom, wealth and benevolent nationalism as our center of political gravity lurched to the radical right. As of 2010, America’s predatory conservative movement boasts a legacy of economic calamity, two failed military occupations, a crumbling infrastructure and an epic environmental catastrophe as the world spirals towards global warming at breakneck speed.

It’s almost as if predatory conservatism as personified under its prodigal son, George W. Bush, unleashed a metastasizing venereal disease upon our institutions, culture, fiscal solvency and sense of social responsibility. The disease requires bold aggressive treatment. Instead, under President Obama, conservatism’s venereal disease is being treated with mild ointment.

At best Obama’s ointment can reduce the sting somewhat. But it’s not reversing the disease, which continues to metastasize. Even worse, America’s body politic is recoiling from the mild ointment as if it’s worse than the disease itself that enabled Wall Street permissiveness and the British Petroleum oil spill.

I retain my personal admiration in President Obama. But that’s where we are today.

Support Chris Owens For State Committee

It seems that entropy has been unleashed upon our lives. Hyper-sized banks, corrupt institutions, out of control developers and a political culture that wages class warfare against regular folks has taken a wrecking ball to the American dream. Here in Brooklyn, it seems that corporatist wrecking ball is on steroids. The best antidote is to support the best and the brightest of authentic progressive reformers locally.

I was reminded of that recently when Chris Owens shook hands at my Bergen Street subway station in Brooklyn last week. As readers of this blog may recall, Chris was my first podcast interview in 2006. He’s a true progressive who champions wage earners and community over the interests of developers. Chris is just the sort of person we need to represent core progressive values of decency and fairness with the Democratic State Committee for Brooklyn’s 52nd Assembly District. He's an independent voice and not part of the machine.

His campaign slogan says it best,

“Stop the corruption! End the dysfunction!”

As with any campaign, true progressive reformers such as Chris Owens are going up against well financed Goliaths who want no part of his people first agenda. Hence, support from the grass roots is critical.

I realize we’re all burned out and jaded on politics these days. That’s especially true with the horrific corruption and insipid governing happening in both Washington and Albany today. Action is empowering however and supporting Chris Owens to represent Brooklyn’s 52nd Assembly District in the State Committee is a means of thinking globally by acting locally.

That’s why I’m supporting his campaign and I hope you will too. Please click here to either join Chris Owens campaign as a volunteer or make a donation.

We need him.

If Only I Could Laugh

If I didn’t care so much, if the stakes for civilization were not so high, if the fate of our ecosystem didn’t hang precariously in the balance and our blood and treasure were not so casually tossed aside on behalf of a crumbling empire, I could laugh. A hearty-belly laugh at the absurdity of current events, our mediocre at best leadership, the irredeemable whores of big industry, and the mindless corporate mouthpieces with expensive haircuts masquerading as journalists. Yes, I could laugh at the whole damn mess.

I could laugh at America’s bizarre political math that says unless sixty votes can be cobbled in the Senate we can’t do a damn thing without achieving some faux centrist nirvana at the expense of meaningful financial reform, overhauling immigration, a cleaner environment and energy independence. I could laugh at the even more bizarre math that says stimulus spending to create jobs is bad while spending trillions in Afghanistan and Iraq is good.

I could laugh at a political culture that simultaneously portrays President Obama as a radical Black Muslim Bolshevik and Wall Street corporatist hoping to score Goldman Sachs cash. I could laugh at how the Supreme Court will be even more hostile to wage earners, whistle blowers, the environment and civil liberties at the end of President Obama’s first term then it was at the beginning. I could laugh at how American tax payers may eventually bail out British Petroleum to clean up its mess in the Gulf.

I could laugh at how my home state of New York is on the brink of fiscal insolvency as mendacious Albany politicians grease the patronage mill for contracts that fatten their wallets, borrow and spend from pension funds and cut needed services for the poor, the elderly, the young, the old and the disabled. I could laugh at my Mayor Michael Bloomberg, as his let business be business philosophy allowed mob corruption to metastasize in the New York City Buildings Department, undermine the health and safety of millions of New Yorkers while his Honor retains the image of an above board technocrat. Heck of a job Mike!

I could laugh at how America’s center of political gravity is defined by xenophobes who belong in a lunatic asylum. We have Republican candidates in 2010 that want to return to the gold standard, privatize Social Security for the benefit of Wall Street parasites, and support more off shore drilling and even repeal civil rights legislation. And America's center-left is folding like a limp noodle. How funny is that?

I could laugh at how conservatism defines decency down. Nixon was crazier than Goldwater who today would be considered too liberal in the Republican Party. Reagan was even more of a ruthless class warrior against wage earners than Nixon and George W. Bush even more of a war monger then all of them combined. Then I could laugh at how the Tea Party makes George W. Bush and Dick Cheney almost seem like moderates. And I could laugh at how the American people might just put these people back in power in November 2010 and 2012.

I could laugh at how a Democratic White House gloated over the defeat of organized labor’s backed candidate in Arkansas Bill Halter in favor of the pro-corporatist Blanche Lincoln. I could laugh at how former President Bill Clinton who coveted organized labor’s support during his campaigns and his wife’s, demonized those who stood up for wage earners, health care and the environment.

Then I could laugh at how Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln’s first vote after her primary victory was in favor of a resolution to take away the power of regulating greenhouse emissions from the Executive Branch at the behest of the energy industry and the Chamber of Commerce. Thankfully the resolution was narrowly defeated but remarkable that faux populists like Blanche Lincoln can with a straight face say their vote is not for sale. I could laugh at that too.

If only I could laugh at it all. But none of it is damn funny.

Helen Thomas Speaks Her Mind

As a teenager between the hours of 6PM to 9PM I often listened to sports talk radio host Art Rust, Jr. on WABC. Rust was a pioneer who as a black man broke down barriers to become a prominent media personality and important influence. Rust's call in talk show went well beyond sports and focused on our society as a whole. He had an enormous influence on me.

Rust was a courageous journalist who claimed illegal drugs were an epidemic in sports long before others in his profession did. It was also Rust who first made me aware of a subtle form of racism that existed in our culture when he observed that well spoken black athletes were typically described by white commentators as "articulate" as if we should be surprised they could speak. Rust often noted dryly that the same observation was seldom made about well spoken white athletes.

One evening in the late 1980s, Rust's program had callers voicing opinions about comments made by Isiah Thomas of the Detroit Pistons who claimed that if Larry Bird were black he'd be regarded as just another good player in the NBA. A black caller attempted to make excuses for Isiah Thomas about how he was interviewed after the heat of battle against the Celtics in the playoffs and wasn't responsible for his words. As I remember it, Rust cut him off and said, "Caller he spoke what was on his mind."

Helen Thomas (obviously no relation to Isiah Thomas!) spoke her mind last week when she said Jewish people should leave "Palestine" and return to where they come from to countries such as Poland, Germany and the United States. Historically, her comments are absurd. Millions of Jews were liquidated in Poland and Germany during the Holocaust. Israel was created largely as the result of a refugee crisis created by the Holocaust from countries who didn't want to accept any more Jewish people. Among the countries that had stringent immigration laws against Jews was the United States! And the reference to Germany and Poland suggests Jews should have just remained among people who had demonstrated their homicidal hostility against them.

Practically speaking, as I wrote in my previous post, if your position is that the Jews should simply leave Israel and give up on the Jewish state then you're not serious about a judicious peace. Israel has existed for over six decades and its not giving up its sovereignty any more than the United States is likely to give back territory it seized from Mexico in the 19th century. That is a non-starter. Yes, a symbolic admission of the Palestinians right of return and the hardships they endured from losing their homes in 1948 should be agreed too. I'm intensely critical of Israel's continuing occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza. To suggest however that the Jews should simply leave Israel and return to where they came from is blatant anti-Semitism.

I have long admired Helen Thomas's career as a journalist. She often asked questions of Presidents that no one else dared. Her career also broke down barriers and made it possible for more women to cover the White House. A bigot is a bigot however and that is how she will be remembered. Even worse, her anti-Semitic diatribe has made it more difficult for an honest critique of Israeli policies and discussion of the disproportionate influence of the Israeli lobby. The happiest people of all right now about her comments are none other than AIPAC and Bibi Netenyahu.

Heck of a job Ms. Thomas. And good riddance.