The Case Against Scalia.

In the film The English Patient a Nazi interrogator muses over a question he thinks has great moral and metaphysical import. In the scene he and his henchmen are threatening to strip a detainees’ fingernails when the Nazi commander has a brainstorm: are thumbs fingers?

Such obsessively abstract logic chopping can engender a mind-numbing moral obtuseness. That’s the feeling I had as I watched “Justice” Scalia being interviewed on 60 Minutes Lesley Stahl. The subject of torture came up -- as did Bush vs. Gore -- but by Scalia’s reasoning torture didn’t fit in the punishment category. Presumably, torture is used on detainees to get information. Therefore, the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” doesn’t apply since no one is using waterboarding, thumbscrews, or the wrack to punish the aforementioned detainees. I’m glad “Justice” Scalia cleared that little moral conundrum up for me!

Scalia was equally disingenuous on the subject of Bush vs. Gore. He makes no apology for that ignominious decision, a verdict that is in the process of tainting his legacy and discrediting his judicial philosophy. He argues, implausibly, that the outcome would have been the same whether the Court intervened or not. Indeed, he has the temerity to blame Al Gore for getting the courts involved in the first place. Needless to say, Scalia blithely ignores inconvenient facts: namely, that tens of thousands of machine unreadable ballots were never tabulated, that Bush ally Katherine Harris misused her office as Secretary of State to thwart a recount, or that the chief legal rationale trumpeted by the Bush campaign (that examining the uncounted ballots would be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause) was right out of Alice in Wonderland.

The Bush administration is universally recognized as a catastrophe. But all the hallmarks of their opportunistic mendacity were on display during the election fiasco that led to current debacle. The sophistic legal reasoning, the fear mongering, and the pandering to the lowest common denominator all had a trial run as the Bush’s campaign took their case to what proved to be a kangaroo court.

“Justice” Scalia’s anxiety was palpable as Stahl queried him. He clearly wanted to change the subject. Bush vs. Gore, it should be clear, will not stand as a paradigmatic case that illustrates the values and principles that exemplify the highest ideals of the United States. Rather, it will mark a crucial moment where the ideal of a fair and impartial judiciary resorted to brazen political expediency. It is only poetic justice that those who lent their seal of approval to Bush’s dubious political ascension should be discredited the most by his disastrously incompetent reign. Justice Stevens was on the right side of Bush vs. Gore when he wrote in dissent that the biggest loser in all this would be the American people and the rule of law. “Justice” Scalia is an oxymoron.

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The Case for Gore/Obama

Hillary Clinton has risen from the dead more times that Count Dracula. She’s sending shudders down the Democratic establishment, however, since the more primaries she wins the less popular she becomes. Indeed, with Hillary’s likeablity rating hovering around 35% -- a virtual untenable number for a candidate who hopes to win the presidency – her only shot at winning the Democratic nomination lies in tarnishing Obama. Hence the paradox, the better she does against Obama the more despised she becomes among the younger and better-educated voters that represent the future of the Democratic Party.

Hillary is drawing kudos from conservative commentators for her tenacity. Her single-minded willingness to fracture her party in order to win the nomination is reminiscent of George W. Bush’s obsessive quest to “win” in Iraq even if it means destroying the U.S. military, the dollar, and America’s strategic position. The scorched-earth self-righteous obliviousness of the two “leaders” is more than a little eerie. No wonder right-wing pundits are singing Hillary’s praises; they recognize in her a kindred spirit.

Hillary’s penchant for distorting the truth, her top-down management style, her us vs. them outlook, and her proclivity to pander to the lowest common denominator make her seem like a liberal mirror-image of that discredited “compassionate conservative,” George W. Bush. I don’t believe the United States can withstand another four to eight years with a polarizing politician who has trouble acknowledging the truth and can never admit they’re wrong.

Hillary, however, has exposed significant weaknesses in Obama’s candidacy. The first African American candidate with a chance at winning the presidency has trouble connecting with the so-called Reagan Democrats. I’d like to think this has more to do with the fact that many of the blue-collar workers that have trouble with Obama are anti-intellectual rather than racially bigoted. To be fair, Hillary also has to contend with stereotypes and misogynistic attitudes that unfairly hamper her ability to be judged on the basis of her message, record, and character.

Hillary probably cannot catch Obama in terms of the pledged delegates or the popular vote count. But her efforts to pin the “elitist” label on her rival could well cost Democrats the election in November. It would be a catastrophe for the Democratic Party the country, and progressive values if the Clinton’s perpetual selfishness helps hand the White House to George Bush designated successor, John McCain. The best way to avoid political suicide -- particularly if Obama cannot convincingly close the deal in the remaining contests – would be for Democrats to turn to Al Gore to head the ticket with Obama as his running mate.

For those of us who support Obama – and see in him the potential to be a great president and a champion for progressive values – a decision on his part to accept the vice-presidential nomination would be disappointment, unless that figure was Al Gore. But a decision of that kind on his part would be in keeping with the kind of character Obama has displayed; he would be putting the needs of his country and his party above his own. More importantly, a Gore/Obama ticket would almost certainly present the most formidable team the Democrat’s could field in 2008. Indeed, a Gore/Obama victory would put the final nail in the coffin of the catastrophically tragic Bush era.

Presidential campaigns need to articulate grand narratives. Hillary has failed to do this. Indeed, it seems woefully clear that she lacks the capacity to be a figure that educates the public. Gore and Obama, however, are both leaders with the kind of vision and judgement to chart a new course for the United States after the debacle of Bush’s failed presidency. They were the only two major figures in the Democratic Party, incidentally, to speak out forcefully against the Iraq War, the torture and abuse sanctioned by the Bush administration, and Bush’s other abuses of power. Hillary loses my respect when she refers to Obama’s prescience on the war as “just a speech.” Speaking out against the war was an act of political courage, a quality that is difficult to associate with the competent but dismayingly prosaic and politically expedient Clintons.

Electing Gore and Obama would signal to the world that America has atoned for the morally hideous aberration of Bush/Cheney. Neither the seventy-one year old McCain or the baggage-saddled Clinton has quite what it takes to turn the page the way Gore and Obama would.

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Sean Hannity’s America: The Politics of Hate

Sean Hannity has taken journalism to a level even Joseph Goebbels would have to admire. In Hannity’s hands, insinuation and guilt by association are art forms. Indeed, his ability to make the worse argument appear better is virtually unmatched by any rhetorician I know of. He may be the finest sophist America has. But let’s give credit where credit is due. After all, Hannity’s success depends critically on the virtually unlimited obtuseness of his audience. It takes a rare and exceptional mind to fall for the same fallacies over and over again, but Hannity’s viewers are unvaryingly consistent in their credulity.

How does Hannity manage to pull the wool over the eyes of his audience while viewers flock away from liberal commentators? I believe this has something to do with the fact that the politics of fear and resentment has proven a winning strategy for the right wing in the past. Put simply, for a lot of voters it’s easier to imagine things that make them angry than to envision ways of solving the challenges that make them fearful and angry in the first place. Hannity’s genius, and that of his compatriots, is to deftly turn public figures like Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama into emblems that stir the anxiety and ire of a significant portion of the electorate.

Hannity and his ilk do this by twisting the words, exploiting gaffes, and manipulating images in ways that make candidates they oppose seem foreign, condescending, and disloyal to America. For instance, prior to the 2000 election Al Gore said he took the initiative in creating the Internet (which was true). But this was twisted to make it seem like Gore was claiming credit for inventing the Internet, which was supposed to feed into the notion that the VP was a serial exaggerator. Conservative commentators had a field day with John Kerry’s windsurfing, which they used to pigeonhole him as a flip-flopping elitist.

The tactics Hannity and company are using to disparage Barack Obama are no less inane, but they are arguably more subtle and potentially more pernicious. It is essential to expose the sophistic ploys they use to manipulate public opinion so that the 2008 election is decided on basis of ideas and character, not character assassination.

Hannity and like-minded conservative commentators are determined to paint Obama as not one of us. They have to eschew overt forms of bigotry, of course, so rather than attack Obama directly they resort to guilt by association. For example, there are determined to link Obama to William Ayers. Ayres was once a member of an extremist group that protested the Vietnam War forty years ago by building and setting off bombs. Ayres is now an English professor who happens to live in the same neighborhood as Obama. The two also sat on the board of an anti-poverty foundation. Barack Obama was eight years old when Ayers was engaging in his subversive activities and has condemned the acts in question as “detestable.”

If standards of logic and reason were applied there few if any inferences one could deduce from Obama’s tenuous association with Ayres. However, Hannity and his crowd are experts at twisting facts in order to generate and pin a negative emotional connotation on Obama. Here’s how they do it. First, they deliberately exaggerate Ayers’ moral culpability. They do this by stating that Ayers was part of a terrorist group that set off bombs that killed people, but they fail to mention two important facts: 1) Ayers did set off bombs, but no one was killed. 2) Three members of Ayers’ group were killed when a bomb they were making exploded accidentally, but these are the only deaths caused by the group. In other words, attempts to paint Ayers as public enemy number one are overblown.

Ayers, however, had the misfortune of publishing a book on the same day as 9/11. In it he says, “I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough.” Ayers claims that “I feel we didn’t do enough” refers to the efforts to end the war and that he did not mean that he wished he had set of more bombs. In fact, he has acknowledged feeling embarrassed by the arrogance, rigidity, and narcissism he and his compatriots exhibited at the time. Ayers, however, as clearly provided Hannity with the opening he needs to portray him as a terrorist in the same moral category as bin Laden, which he does by depicting Ayers as some one who unrepentantly hates America. After all, as Hannity boils over with righteous indignation, Ayers had audacity to make his “I feel we didn’t do enough” comment on 9/11.

Hannity next step is to keep referring to Ayers as a terrorist while mention the coincidental 9/11 connection over and over again. The idea is to plant in the minds of viewers that Ayers is a guy who attacked America and said these dreadful things on 9/11. Never mind that Hannity has interpreted Ayers’ views out of context -- and in the worst possible way -- while deliberately conflating Ayers and 9/11 in a disingenuous way. The final step of course, is to make the leap that because Obama sat on the same board and knew Ayers that this is the kind of person he surrounds himself.

Hannity also takes a relatively innocuous event, such as Obama’s participation in the Million Man march, and links him to radical black leader Louis Farrakhan. Snippets of Farrakhan are played repeatedly as Hannity makes insinuations about Obama’s associations: There’s a pattern here . . . he’s not who we think he is . . . he’s hiding something . . . etc.

The flap over Obama’s pastor, Reverend Wright, is a variation on this theme. Obama has repudiated the comments his pastor made. But by playing them in an endless loop, and piling one dubious insinuation upon another, Hannity makes several flimsy arguments seem more persuasive than they really are. He does through repetition and the juxtaposition of incendiary images (Rev Wright, Louis Farrakhan, and William Ayers) when discussing Obama. All of this is designed to create and imprint negative emotional feelings towards the likely Democratic nominee. Hannity’s method here is only slightly subtler than the conditioning Pavlov used to train dogs to salivate at the sound of a dinner bell.

Guilt by association, conflation, and other rhetorical slights of hand techniques are the same methods the Bush administration deployed to fallaciously link Saddam to 9/11 in the public mind. Can a well-oiled but increasingly decrepit right-wing propaganda machine hoodwink the American people once again? There’s an old saying, “Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.” The American people cannot afford to be fooled again.

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Elitism Test.

Everyone knows for a fact that elitists are out to ruin the good old US of A. Elitists are tree-hugging, French-loving, latte-sipping snobs who look down their liberal noses on Chuck Norris movies, the Grand Old Opry, and cultural events like NASCAR. Yes sir, if American-hating elitists ever had their way the U.N flag would replace Old Glory, George W. Bush would be indicted as a war criminal at the World Court, and Barack Hussein Obama would carry out his secret plan to get "Sean Hannity’s America" off the air. Thankfully, there’s a sure-fire test to identify elitists so that they can be exposed before they can cause too much trouble: Answer the following questions to see if you or someone you know is a closet elitist:

1) Can you down at least 12 shots or twelve beers in less than an hour and still bowl better than Barack Obama?

2) Would your wife or girlfriend prefer to stay at home and iron your shirts while the two of you watch reruns of "The Dukes of Hazzard" than have you take her across state lines to the nearest drive-in to see a George Clooney picture?

3) Do you resent the fact that Muslim fanatics housed at Guantanamo appear to have more amenities than the trailer park where you and your in-laws reside?

4) Do you identify with the mountain men in the film "Deliverance"?

5) Would you like the Bush administration to extend waterboarding to include smart-alecky liberal bloggers, political satirists, and other deviants

If you answered "yes" to all five questions: Congratulations, you are not part of the axis-of-elites. However, if you answered "no" to one or more question, then your I.Q. may be in danger of deviating from the mean. Please watch Fox News and then take the test again until you get it right!

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The Media and the Decline of Democracy

Plato equated democracy with mob rule. Watching the media debase the level of political discourse by constantly shifting debate and discussion to the lowest possible level it is not hard to feel the United States has entered a state of terminal senescence. The country is facing some of the steepest challenges in its history – the ongoing threat of terrorism, the disastrous war in Iraq, a housing/credit meltdown that threatens the foundations of the financial system, and an energy/climate crisis that will almost certainly destabilize the planet – but commentators are harping on flag pins, comments made by Obama’s pastor, and Hillary’s gaffe about evading sniper fire. Rome is burning, but the clowns that run the media circus can still divert the masses.

The price of oil just hit a new time high ($115 dollars a barrel). Food costs are soaring. And the record trade deficit means America is maxed out; since 2000 we’ve been borrowing against the future simply to sustain a standard of living the country can no longer afford. The plummeting dollar is a symptom the U.S. is basically insolvent, but Tweedledee (George Stephanopolis) and Tweedledumb (Charles Gibson) still think it’s appropriate to ask candidates Clinton and Obama to make a pledge not to raise taxes on working Americans.

How inane can you get! The Bush administration’s laissez-faire economic policies have led to the largest transfers of wealth in world history as U.S. consumers are now in hock to some of the most unsavory and anti-democratic regimes on the planet (China, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Russia), but the media mavens are trying to extract promises from politicians not to raise taxes on the middle class. What about the dwindling value of the dollar, interest to service America’s debt, and soaring energy/food prices are a stealth tax that Americans will be forced to pay because of the Bush administration’s imprudent policies? Americans are poorer for eight years of Bush’s borrow and spend economics, but they haven’t seen anything yet. The bill for the debacle in Iraq, which by some estimates will cost every American family $50,000, is only beginning to come due.

The credit crisis is just the tip of an iceberg that has capsized the American economy. Housing prices may decline a further 30 percent before things bottom out. This process may take several years, which means the days of homeowners using their homes as ATMs is over for the foreseeable future.

Against this dire economic backdrop John McCain has called for giving Americans a “tax holiday” on gasoline during the summer months. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton promises to investigate oil company profiteering. Neither proposal addresses the inconvenient truth that surging world demand for oil, coupled with the declining dollar, and the increased nationalization of petroleum companies across the globe, have created the perfect storm whereby Americans will have to pay a greater share of their wealth to foreign oil producers. American oil companies have been steadily losing their market share -- a trend the Bush administration hoped to reverse with the invasion of Iraq – and recycled petro-profits are now filling the coffers of Sovereign Wealth Funds in Venezuela, Russia, and the Middle East. Ignominiously, failing and ailing financial firms, such as Citigroup, are now begging these SWF to rescue them.

President Bush’s mishandling of the economy may rival even his mismanagement of the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina. It is now clear that the kind of deregulation and laissez-faire economics extolled by conservatives has brought the financial system to the brink of catastrophe. Free markets work, but only when there is some minimal government oversight. When the financial system is tasked with policing itself you inevitably get insider deals, mountains of bad debt that the taxpayers are expected to assume, and carnivorous CEOs carving up companies and feeding on the spoils, but leaving shareholders and laid off employees nothing but the remains. The CEOs at Bears Stearns and Countrywide did not create value so much as reallocate value, to themselves.

The next American president is going to have to institute measures that will restore credibility and integrity to the financial system, establish a new social compact with the American people (especially a minimum healthcare package), and reinvigorate America’s manufacturing capacity. Put simply, over the last several decades finance became the country’s growth industry as wizards on Wall Street found new ways to package debt, displace risk, and skim money from Main Street. Unfortunately, their financial alchemy did not create new wealth, so much as create the illusion of spectacular riches that would later vanish into thin air once they collected their conjuring fees.

The United States is roughly in the same position as the Spanish Empire under Phillip II. Attempts to plunder gold from the New World could no more keep Spain’s debt ridden empire afloat than the Bush administration’s efforts to establish U.S. hegemony over Iraq’s black gold. As the decline of the Spanish Empire shows, a country known primarily for manufacturing debt cannot thrive economically.

The presidential candidates need to articulate their economic philosophies and explain how they plan to revive America’s economic competitiveness. Unfortunately, the mainstream media would rather focus on trivial matters, such as Hillary’s sniper gaffe or comments made by Obama associates. This is not to say that such questions should not be asked at all, but rather that the media risks turning a presidential contest into a mud wrestling festival if it focuses on trite distractions instead of substantive issues. Needless to say, an army of right-wing pundits is mobilizing to ensure that a flap over flag pins, guilt by association, and other time-tested techniques designed to portray Obama as un-American, will trump the War in Iraq, the Bush recession, and eight years of an inept Republican administration.

The country is going to be in even bigger trouble if the right’s sophistry is able to deflect attention from the moral, economic, military, and strategic carnage conservative rule has wrought. It is positively chilling the way media bloviaters like Sean Hannity are able to manipulate and twist events, situations, and statements in ways that exploit the ignorance and a prejudices of an audience looking for objects upon which they can fixate their anger. Obama’s much maligned comments about small-town voters being “bitter” are right in this regard: if conservative commentators can succeed in making the 2008 election about god and guns they’ll almost certainly prevent the kind of debate the country needs to have to solve its problems.

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