Imagination is Reality

If you're a Tea Partier, what now? Enjoy that the sun's a little sunnier and the air's a little airier now that the government's been taught a lesson in fiscal responsibility? I don't think so. This came in the email yesterday in a Tea Party newsletter:

What was meant as a defensive tool to protect our beloved nation may, in the wrong hands become a weapon of manipulation and Constitutional destruction? In the wake of the September 11th 2001 attacks the Bush administration recoiled with an all-encompassing doctrine of legislative action, commonly known as Homeland Security Presidential Directive-20.

Believe it or not, this directive grants broad sweeping power to not only the President of the United States, but also to those appointed to deal with a "Catastrophic Emergency." However, the concept of "Catastrophic Emergency" "Continuity of Government," "Continuity of Operations," while well-conceived, lacks in safe guards.

Consider this: Who decides what a "Catastrophic Emergency" is? What are the parameters and when will a "Catastrophic Emergency" come to an end? The concept of "Enduring Constitutional Government" becomes a moot point when interpreted in the light of the Liberal concepts of the present administration for if the Constitution is a living breathing document it will need enduring care indefinitely.

Just in case all those question marks left you confused, Bush enacted Homeland Security Presidential Directive-20 and the Tea Partiers are concerned that Obama will arbitrarily declare a catastrophic emergency and remake America, presumably as a Socialist Hell. What evidence do we have that the president who starts every negotiation by taking any faintly radical idea of the board will suddenly declare martial law and come for the Tea Partiers, their guns and their tax dollars? The possibility that it might happen. The scenario is absurdly unlikely, but the fact that they can imagine it seems to give the idea the power of certainty.

The Tea Party Needs Your Help To Stop The Obama Regime

Aren't regimes things that we overthrow? I don't understand Obama's desire to work with people who consider Democratic presidents illegitimate and possibly criminal (remember Rush's daily countdown during Clinton's presidency, declaring the number of days America was held hostage?).

In short, will Conservative actions meet the threshold of an open and known danger to the Continuance of Government if the definition of those actions challenge defined the ideals of a small group of powerful men with a socialist agenda?

Impossible, how about this: Will refusing to curb spending be interpreted as just as much of a threat to America as a terrorist or nuclear attack? Will Homeland Security jump into action when they perceive our nation is in danger if we refuse to balance our budget or perhaps if America stops printing money?

Astonishing isn't it? Are there no limits to the power of Homeland Security Presidential Directive-20? Would President Obama brandish such power in the name of saving America and restore U.S. financial institutions in a manner the government becomes the manager of ALL financial transactions?

Why not? The power is before him, why would he NOT grab the power of ultimate control and pronounce salvation by the use of Homeland Security Presidential Directive-20?

Then again, one would have to believe our government and the people who run it are power hungry, agenda driven and of course are willing use existing law to further their plans.

Ridiculous isn't it! Need proof?

Yes! That passage asks nine questions. It doesn't state that anything's actually happening or offer up even a shred of evidence to lend credence to the possibility that Obama will invoke Homeland Security Presidential Directive-20, but the absence of answers is to be taken as confirmation that the takeover is nigh. This is written as if the absence of answers proves the existence of a conspiracy that doesn't want you to know their foul, socialist agenda.

In fact, what we see is the Conservative tendency to imagine a loophole, then assume someone's going to use it because they can't imagine someone not doing so. Anchor babies? Not a problem, but some Republicans want to fight them because they can't understand why countless undocumented immigrants aren't taking advantage of this possibility. Homeland Security Presidential Directive-20 offers the opportunity to enact such sweeping change that they assume Obama must be looking for the pretext to use it because they can't see why anyone would leave such a powerful instrument untouched on the shelf.

No Escape

There's nothing quite like the right wing vitriol that accompanies Christian, white middle-aged males discovering that other voices count too. Any diminution of the remarkably wide sphere of influence they're used to is greeted as if it were part of a plot to dig a big hole and bury them all alive. Unfortunately, there's also no escape from that hostility, most of it directed toward President Obama. Today in my Google alert for Christmas music - an obsession - I found that the War Cry of the Wounded Conservative naturally extends to discussions of Christmas music.

A Criminal Matter

During the Clinton presidency, Rush Pumpkinhead started each show with the day count for "America Held Hostage." The implication was that Bill Clinton seized an unwilling country, and now Republicans are similarly treating Obama's presidency as illegitimate. First, birthers claim he's truly illegitimate by challenging his birth certificate and his well-documented accounts of his own origins, while others have attacked him as a socialist and a Nazi out to undermine the American way of life. When he proposes to speak to schoolchildren to "challenge them to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning," many Republicans around the country see this as something suspicious - perhaps an occasion for indoctrination from the dark side.

The premise is absurd, but it's further evidence of Republicans' efforts to reduce American politics to a Holy War - a clash not of reasoned, evidence-based notions about what's best for the country but simple belief. Belief is the central tenet of Christianity - that you accept things you can't see, take them on faith, and act as if they're true. Over and over, Republicans retreat to this position, whether on large matters like the unquestionable rightness of the free market, or on specific issues like the non-existent "death panels" and the non-existent threats to seniors posed by health care reform. They choose to believe regardless of what evidence says to the contrary, and those who don't are heretics, spiritual outlaws whose ideas should be criminal because of the threat they pose to America as Republicans believe it to be.

Politics as Holy War can't be laid solely at the feet of Conservatives. Cable network news has long had an investment in a clash of the ideologues. After Michael Kinsley left CNN's Crossfire, Christopher Hitchens says he was asked to take his place on the left debating Pat Buchanan. He passed, he says, when he found out that his job wouldn't be to take the liberal position but to defend Clinton no matter what. And the Holy War fervor has prompted some Democrats to push back reflexively and others are equally automatic in the belief in their own rightness.

Still, it's instructive to remember that the one president whose claim to the White House was genuinely questionable was never treated by Democratic legislators as illegitimate or a criminal, and though his speech gave listeners reason to question his wisdom and his arguments for war in Iraq were as much propaganda as policy, he was never treated as an enemy of the state by the opposition. (The irony is that he was one. With the Patriot Act, he did more long-term damage to the American way of life than terrorists ever could. 9/11 was a remarkable success in that it scared the Bush White House and American government into changing itself in ways no outside force ever could.)

A Good Question

See here. And a similar question - why was Barack Obama referred to as Obama during the Democratic primary season but Hillary Clinton was referred to as Hillary?

The Post-Modern President

[Update January 23]

Yesterday's inaugural speech marked Obama as our first post-modern president, performing his version of church-based, African-American politician speech.

... and as we say goodbye to Bush, we're debating in the office: is "not intellectually curious" mediaspeak for "stupid"? I think we all know the answer to that.


Update: More on the references in Obama's speech here, courtesy of Douglas Wolk:

That last phrase, though, is particularly freighted with subtext. "Glorious burden," in recent decades, has most often referred to the Presidency itself, rather than the condition of being American; it's the title of a 1968 book by Stefan Lorant, The Glorious Burden: The American Presidency, and of a more recent Smithsonian exhibition about the history of the office. But it's also a phrase Obama has used at least once before. It appears in his memoir Dreams from My Father, in a description of the attitude his mother tried to instill in him: "To be black was the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to bear."

Letting it All Sink In

Now that the reality of Obama's election is starting to sink in, people are contemplating what it means. Here in New Orleans, letter writers to The Times-Picayune are complaining that his election means we're in for a radical redistribution of wealth (duhhhh). Salon.com's "War Room" asked a number of writers and bloggers "What Does Obama's Victory Mean?", and not surprisingly, the answers are more provocative and nuanced than that. My favorite:

It means the 9/11 era -- of dealing with the world 9/11 created rather than using 9/11 as a political club -- has finally begun.
-- Brad DeLong, economics professor, UC-Berkeley

In the Spirit of the Moment, Pt. 2

No sooner than I wrote about the desire to enjoy this moment when six kids ranging from 7-ish to 12 or so in my neighborhood marched down the street drumming and chanting, "O-Ba-Ma, ooh na nae / O-Ba-Ma, bom-ba-yae."

In the Spirit of the Moment ...

... I'll focus on the second half of John McCain's concession speech - which sounded genuine in a way he hasn't for over a year - and not the first few minutes, which seemed to minimize Obama's accomplishment as simply a feat for African Americans. I'll also make little of the squalling people who attended McCain's speech, who couldn't simply boo, and the role of McCain's campaign in creating that sort of fractious mess. This is too good a day to spend time chipping on McCain.

I'd rather simply enjoy the moment.

McCain's Tear Ducts

A lot has been made this morning of John McCain's blinking last night during the debate, but more disturbing was his grin each time he thought he'd just zinged Obama. Football coaches try to get players who score touchdowns to act like they'd been in the end zone before, and McCain could have used some similar advice.

Really, though, more telling was how often McCain ended a segment with a non-sequitur. After Obama laid out his tax plans and how 95 percent of the country would see tax cuts, McCain followed that by simply asserting that Obama wants to raise our taxes. After Obama pointed out what a small percentage of the budget earmarks make up, McCain reiterated the importance of cutting earmarks. After Obama conceded that McCain had differed with Bush on torture - but only for a while, I'll add - he voted consistently with Bush on economic policy. McCain responded by naming a number of non-economic issues where he split with his party. These exchanges allowed him every opportunity to confront Obama's plans and charges, and in these cases and many others, he had no meaningful, substantive response.

Last thought - hands down, the best debate format and best moderator.

Ugly in the Echo Chamber

The video of McCain and Palin appearances and the hostility and suspicion toward Obama is appalling, but it's hard to imagine that playing well outside of the party faithful. This campaign started absurdly early, so people have spent more than a year seeing and hearing Obama. Are the moderates and undecided going to really decide that this calm, seemingly measured guy is really a terrorist? An enemy of the state? Similarly, it's hard to imagine that Ayers and Wright will have any traction outside of the faithful because the stories themselves are old news having first come up months ago during the primary season. McCain and Palin don't have fresh news, or even fresh spin on them; all they have is greater volume and urgency, brought on by the nearness of the election.

Who are moderates and undecideds going to go to - the guy who has seemed on message and engaged in issues for the last year-plus, or the guy who has skittered erratically from crisis-oriented decision to crisis-oriented decision in radical steps? And will they really believe that the guy who thought Palin was a good idea, who gambled and tied himself to an economic crisis that's likely to get worse before it gets better, and who runs as an outsider despite a quarter-century in Washington when he tries to tell voters they don't know the real Obama? I think the polls are telling us the answers. Desperation is sad stench, and it's strong on him.

Details, Details

For the last week or so, we've marvelled at Sarah Palin's remarkable inattention to details. She can't name Supreme Court decisions, magazines and newspapers she has read, or regulatory stands McCain has taken. Contrast that with Barack Obama's appearance this morning on ESPN's "Mike and Mike." He casually and comfortably talked about the teams he grew up watching, the White Sox pitching rotation and ABC's The Superstars. It's not genius stuff, but accessing a memory really shouldn't require finals-like cramming for anyone, and certainly not for someone in one of the most important jobs in the country.

The First Casualty of Elections

As I finish my morning blog-reading, I'm naturally depressed by the possibility that the country really doesn't give a shit about the truth. At The Nation, Ari Berman refers to a Ron Suskind piece from 2004 in which a Bush aide said:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality--judiciously, as you will--we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Also at The Nation, Adam Howard celebrated the tough-ish questioning John McCain received on The View, which emphasizes the point that the way to reach voters is not through CNN or traditional news outlets, and the voters people are after aren't reached or appealed to through traditional means.

I hope the Obama campaign is shifting out of Sarah Palin mode, and rather than catching her in lies - which obviously isn't working - use her to illustrate John McCain's shaky judgment. With all the Republican talent available to him - male and female - he chose one of the least known and least prepared to assume the presidency should something happen.

Obama Art

A friend who was in Denver for the Democratic National Convention sent me photos of Obama-inspired art from a Manifest Hope show that was surprisingly good. Much of it riffs off of established graphics and styles, and it embraces the cultures that have come together to support Obama. I'm trying to decide what speaks to me more: the Warholesque Obama-as-Lincoln, or the pair of Air Obamas.

Go here for photos, and an account of organizer Shepard Fairey's arrest for postering to hype the show.

What Happens Next

Now that it looks like Hillary Clinton will finally bow out, the next question is whether America will elect an African American. Friends in the office are skeptical to the point of doomy; I'm less so, for reasons Jeff Chang discusses yesterday's post at Can't Stop Won't Stop.