The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot

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Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree – domestically – as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government – the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens’ ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors – we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don’t learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of “homeland” security – remember who else was keen on the word “homeland” – didn’t raise the alarm bells it might have.

It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable – as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise.

Naomi Wolf, The Guardian, Tuesday April 24 2007

When I was a young man– 25 or 30 years ago– we tossed around the word ‘fascist’ like it was candy. It was our favorite epithet, as useful for a grumpy friend or an unfriendly store clerk as for Reagan and his ilk. So whenever I hear the term outside of very specific historical contexts, a red flag goes up.

So I was a little suspicious when I heard about Naomi Wolf’ new book, The End of America, and the series of talks she has been giving on what she calls the closing of open societies. How do you go from a democracy, however flawed, like Germany, to fascism?

I am not certain I am persuaded by the above interview, but some of her questions are chillingly perceptive. We think we know what fascism looks like she says, only because we think of the jack-boots and violent armies of WWII. It began quite differently, of course, in a society Wolf shows we would feel was very familiar. If you check off her list of 10 steps it’s a little too close for comfort.

Wolf’s ideas suggest that electing a democratic president, as well as a more strongly democratic Congress, has a very literal meaning this time. I haven’t had the time to read the book but there’s a great series of videos where she sets out her basic argument. This seems to me exactly the right context for the next election. Somehow, I don’t think that cranky old Republican grandfather is going to help.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Language, War, Writing

Monday, Monday

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It is easy for cynics to write off Obamania as a passing fad, as lofty rhetoric that can’t and won’t hold up on close inspection — another bout of the kind of naive and romantic enthrallment that occasionally claims American voters until common sense sets in. This is surely what Hillary Clinton and my friend from forty years ago are counting on. But if the Clintons stop to think back to what they felt and understood in those years leading up to 1968, they may come to a different conclusion, as have I.

Neither John F. Kennedy nor his brother Robert were idealists. They were realists who understood the importance of idealism in the service of realism. They grasped the central political fact that little can be achieved in Washington unless or until the public is energized and mobilized to push for it; the status quo is simply too powerful. The ideals they enunciated helped mobilized the nation politically. That mobilization contributed to the subsequent passage of civil rights and voting rights laws, Medicare, and environmental protection. For purposes of practical electoral strategy as well as high-minded moral aspiration, they never tired of reminding the nation of its founding principles — most fundamentally, that all men are created equal.

Robert Reich, February 23, 2008

Obama is different, really different, and that in itself represents “change.” A Kenyan-Kansan with roots in Indonesia and multiracial Hawaii, he seems to be the perfect answer to the bumper sticker that says, “I love you America, but isn’t it time to start seeing other people?” As conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan has written, Obama’s election could mean the re-branding of America. An anti-war black president with an Arab-sounding name: See, we’re not so bad after all, world!

So yes, there’s a powerful emotional component to Obama-mania, and not just because he’s a far more inspiring speaker than his rival. We, perhaps white people especially, look to him for atonement and redemption. All of us, of whatever race, want a fresh start. That’s what “change” means right now: Get us out of here!

Barbara Ehrenreich, February 14, 2008

We are definitely cursed by interesting times. I feel like I have to mark this odd moment in some way, perhaps so that I can come back to it in a year or so and try to figure it out. I definitely don’t like the Clinton brand of corporate politics. They messed up national health care and brought us NAFTA and the end of welfare as we know it, among other things.

Yet I confess that Bush has left me longing for the Clinton’s, well, professionalism and competency, however technocratic. Maybe they are market fanatics, but at least they did not leave such a huge mess in their wake. I think that’s why Obama is so unappealing. His calls for unity ring hollow; he wants unity with people that I feel ought to be in jail. Maybe that just makes me an old-fashioned partisan.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics

Obsolete Skills

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Robert Scoble came up with the idea in a recent blog post to make a list of ‘obsolete skills.’ He describes these skills as things we used to know that no longer are very useful to us, and provided a few examples including:

* Dialing a rotary phone
* Putting a needle on a vinyl record
* Changing tracks on an eight-track tape
* Shorthand
* Using a slide rule
* Use a product or service before doing a blog post?
* Optimizing 640K-worth of memory
* Using Wikitext?
* Refilling a fountain pen
* Operating a dictaphone
* Using the eraser ribbon on a typewriter

The community has started to create a much larger list of these obsolete skills, check out the full A-Z list. Feel free to contribute more if you can, and if you have the time, please make a page with a short description of the skill.

Obsolete Skills

I drove to Chicago for an interview a few weeks ago and just before I got there a slow, steady snowstorm started. It’s freaky enough on the tollway, even in good weather, but in a snowstorm it’s a nightmare. One reason it’s so difficult is that windshield wipers just can’t keep up with the snow and slush.

You have to pick just the right speed, and even then the windshield goes dark periodically, obscured by buckets of gray muck thrown up by the semis. And all of this is happening at 50 miles an hour or more, although step by step the traffic was slowing down to 30 or 40 miles an hour.

In the midst of all of this I notice that my windshield wiper fluid had run out. This means that each time the windshield fills with the gray muck I can’t wash it off. Instead, the muck smears like thick mud. Now I am peering franticly through dark smears on the windshield, barely able to see to drive.

I’ve got to get off– that in itself is no easy matter on the tollway– and get some water. I make the exit and, after three or four tries, realize that the convenience stores that sell gas have air hoses but not water. It seems like such a simple thing: water. But it’s not available.

I briefly considered bottled water and then, at the last moment, looked up to see the familiar blue jugs of fluid. It had been so long since I even opened the hood of my truck, much less fill up the windshield wiper fluid– that I had completely forgotten what I needed to do!

It seems like a stupid mistake but, on reflection, it makes perfect sense. I bought my truck about six years ago on an extended warranty that required– and paid for– regular service at the dealer. They were wonderfully efficient, maintaining and filling every possible fluid and oil. No news was good news.

I thought about all of this when I found out about the obscure skills website, which lists odd little abilities many of us used to rely on regularly. I used to change and set the spark plugs in my car, and I’ve done brake jobs and replaced water pumps. No more.

Partly, of course, because I’m older and occupied with other things. Whatever the reason, I’m not sure how sentimental I can be about these changes. On the one hand, I don’t like ‘sealed box’ technologies. On the other, it just seems like a kind of hobby I once loved.

Sometimes, too, even an oil change could be a nightmare; it wasn’t always as easy as it sounds. I can remember laying on the driveway in the heat of the Texas summer, struggling to turn that odd wrench that we used for oil filters. It was irritating and messy. It’s not the technology we miss, I think, it’s something else.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Online Places, Writing

Still Disgusted

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On hearing the news, I had to ask myself yet again, how many more fucking times does this need to happen? Omaha, Virginia Tech, and now this (with plenty of other less publicized shootings in between). Not only can the NRA go fuck itself for blocking sane gun control legislation, the Democrats can fuck themselves sideways for running away from the issue like the useless cowards that they are.

posted by Werner Herzog’s Bear at 6:25 PM

Yesterday was the anniversary of Chicago’s ‘St. Valentine’s Day Massacre’ on February 14, 1929, and today is the anniversary of the attempted assassination of President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the killing of Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak on February 15, 1933. These events led to one of the few gun control laws still on the books, the National Firearms Act of 1934. Our recent gun violence should also lead us to take action.

Today, as we grieve with the victims and families of this latest mass shooting, I call on college and university presidents across America to join with us in demanding that the presidential candidates – as well as the U.S. Congress and President George W. Bush – support meaningful action to prevent gun violence. Much more needs to be done to help make our schools and communities safer.

Statement Of Brady Campaign President Paul Helmke, On Northern Illinois University Shootings, February 15, 2008

I’ve been looking around in my usual haunts over the last few days in order to see if there’s going to be a response to the murders at NIU. Maybe folks are trying to be cautious and not take advantage of tragedy by using it for publicity, but so far the reaction has been remarkably low-key, if not invisible. Herzog’s Bear got it just right, I think.

This is the complete post but it’s worth a visit to the site to see the comments. One of the most striking argues that the problem is not too many guns but not enough guns. I heard something similar on Fox the other day. The idea is that these incidents could be prevented if we allowed people to carry concealed weapons.

The irrationality of that argument makes it almost impossible to refute, like trying to convince someone that they were not abducted by aliens. Even worse is the idea that we need these weapons as insurance against our own government. Insurgents, as recent history has shown, don’t need cheap handguns to fight.

In any case, even if we did have to fight our own government we would be silly to mount a violent campaign when a non-violent war would be so much more effective. Maybe one way to counter this silly self-defense notion is to read more about what happens when Americans do take up arms against their own government.

“Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman,” is Cathy Wilkerson’s remarkable memoir that tells this very story. It’s easy to forget that this romance of violent resistance was once a central story in progressive circles, just as it is a central story now in mainstream right wing circles. Wilkerson might be telling the right cautionary tale for our times.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Language, Online Places, War