What Ailes Us

Many of us find ourselves wondering how U.S. politics got into such a sorry state—sorry enough to produce the Tea Party downgrade and the radical extremism rampant in the Republican party. Certainly one answer to our puzzlement can be found in the 24/7 propaganda machine that calls itself Fox News. The paranoia, fearmongering, manipulation, and distortion that beleaguer us all emanate from the twisted vision of one man: Roger Ailes, the chairman of Fox News. He peddles his influence on a staggering scale. His "dear friend" Rush Limbaugh "is a reflection of him." And Ailes is not content that Fox News and the Republican Party should be made in his image. He is determined to remake the United States in his image as well, and he is doing a damned good job of it.

As nauseating as it is, it's worthwhile to bone up on the Ailes juggernaut. Tim Dickinson has a thorough piece that first appeared in Rolling Stone as "How Roger Ailes Built the Fox News Fear Factory." I don't even know how to begin to fight such extraordinary power, but I do know that fight we must. And one of the first steps is knowing the enemy.

From the "U Frame It" Files: Moral Imperatives

Radical right-wingers are really good at framing the debate ("the presentation of political ideas and principles so as to encourage one interpretation over another"), in part because they're good at coming up with catchy, sticky, snarky frames and in part because the right-wing-owned mass-media propaganda machine loves those catchy, sticky, snarky frames and repeats them incessantly until all of us are repeating them without ever giving them a second thought.

So I propose to do just that—give them a second thought—as a now-and-then feature of the Worley Dervish. We'll call them the "U Frame It" files.

Today's installment: entitlements, as in "entitlements are the greatest domestic challenge the nation faces" (straight off the Heritage Foundation's website).

Really? Really? Not joblessness. Not our imperiled economy. Not the rapid disappearance of the middle class. Not our crumbling infrastructure. Not three—count 'em, three—wars. Not poverty. Not homelessness. Not corruption. Not out-of-control military spending. No, "entitlements" are our greatest domestic challenge.

More from the Heritage Foundation website (I'm still cringing from actually having gone there. It feels like I mighta got some on me. Ewwww...): "The middle class retirement programs, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, will cause federal spending to jump by half, from the historical average of twenty percent of the economy to thirty percent by 2033. This tsunami of spending is a major threat ..."

"Tsunami of spending." Yowzer. That's truly elegant. And completely twisted.

We must protect the prior earnings of American workers set aside in Social Security or private pensions. They have been earned through hard work and discipline. Taking these earnings away is theft, despite the Right’s use of the word "entitlements." (George Lakoff, emphasis mine)

Calling those programs "entitlements" makes their privatization and the theft that that entails more palatable, much less morally reprehensible than it actually is. It enables greedy, morally reprehensible people to dismantle our democracy for their own profit. It takes us that much further down the road that turns the middle class into feudal serfs.

Medicare, if made available to all Americans, would not only save us money; it would make us, well, healthier. And for many, it would truly be a matter of life and death. Life and health are not "entitlements." The Common Good is not an "entitlement." Life, health, and the Common Good are moral imperatives.

Your mission for today (or this week, or this month), should you choose to accept it, is to read Lakoff's recent column "Why Democracy Is Public." When you're done, read it again. Bookmark it. And then recommend it to everyone you know. It's really, really, really that important.

Dear Congress,

We here at the United States Postal Service are requesting your approval so we can violate the contracts we negotiated with our employees via the postal unions. We know that the elimination of the layoff protections in our collective bargaining agreements is an extraordinary request, and we do not make this request lightly. In fact, we’ve been working our way toward making this request for many years now. And we're proud to announce that at last we’ve managed to create the “exceptional circumstances” that we hope will inspire you to approve these “exceptional remedies.”

"Thanks to our [mis]management policies—for example, making sure to charge less for services than they actually cost—the Postal Service is facing dire economic challenges that threaten its very existence. [Oh my!] If the Postal Service was a private-sector business, which we hope it very soon will be, it would have filed for bankruptcy and utilized the reorganization process to eliminate, er, uh, restructure its labor agreements to reflect the new financial reality (so brilliantly modeled by Walmart).

We need to reduce the USPS workforce by, oh, say, 120,000 career positions by, let's say, 2015, in addition to the 100,000 we expect to lose through regular attrition and the ones who, you know, go postal. Never mind about all the jobs that will be lost. We can hire some of those people back as casual employees (lower wages, no benefits, no unions!). We suppose that some of the 120,000 could come through buyouts and such, but we would really enjoy laying some of them off, especially those blasted union people. Man, are they ever a pain in the butt!

Unfortunately, the collective bargaining agreements between us and our unionized employees contain layoff restrictions that make it impossible to reduce the size of our workforce by the amount we want by 2015, so we are asking you to wave your legislative magic wand to make what is now illegal legal. After all, some of our best friends contribute generously to your campaigns. And besides, these USPS employees don't need layoff protections when every other self-respecting American enterprise is happily laying people off left and right and shipping their jobs overseas. And if private-sector employees have to put up with that kind of stuff, it's only fair that USPS employees should have to too.

We're hoping that the critical financial situation we've got going here will convince some of you waffly Democrats to go along with our union-busting, privatizing, lining-our-pockets plan. After all, what could be more effective in reducing costs than dismantling the postal service altogether? You wouldn't want another BAILOUT, would you? That would be so upsetting for all those little people who pay taxes. (Never mind that the postal service doesn't use a dime of taxpayer money. That'll just be our little secret, k?).

We expect that with enough per$uading, you good folks in Congress will agree that the present crisis warrants these extremely lucrative, er uh, these extreme measures.

$incerely,

The [mis]managers of the USPS

Please sign the petition to keep the USPS from being destroyed! Thank you!

Chin up, Wisconsin! It's a Long Uphill Fight

We knew it was a long shot, and given all we were up against, we did great and we made real progress. We did not lose. We just didn't win quite as much as we were hoping for. But the fight isn't over, and it won't be over for a long time. Consider how much "dark money" poured into Wisconsin for these recall elections. Mike McCabe of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign estimates that a total of nearly $31 million was spent on the Wisconsin recalls in about four months, whereas $3.75 million was spent on all of the state races in 2010. The obstacles are formidable indeed.

So today is a good day to shake the dust off, renew our resolve, reassemble our forces, and rescrew our courage to the sticking place, as it were.

Ian Millhiser at Think Progress reminds us of how truly remarkable yesterday's accomplishments are, given that the the recall rules stipulate that only those who have been in office for one year or more are eligible for recall.

All of the Republican state senators who were eligible for recall in yesterday’s elections were Republicans who held on in 2008 despite the fact that they had to stand for election during a Democratic wave. Likewise, all of the Republicans who were elected in 2010 only because they were fortunate enough to run during a Republican wave were immune from recall. Come 2012, however, all of this changes.

John Nichols of The Nation appeared today on Democracy Now! and rightly asserted that Walker took a serious hit last night. (Take that, you big bully!) Mike Tate, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, proclaimed that yesterday's recall elections amounted to "an accomplishment of historic proportions" and "showed just how vulnerable Republicans are in the November 2012 elections—and how vulnerable Gov. Walker is to a recall election himself."

So chin up, Wisconsin! We have a long, hard haul ahead of us, but we have proven ourselves to be fierce and formidable, and we've got them shaking in their boots. So here's to you, Wisconsin, and Scotty, we've put you on notice. We're coming for you!

My Own Highlander Folk School

I spent much of my day today researching nonviolent resistance (when, of course, I needed to be working on my current copyediting project). Alas, this was triggered by a post that appeared in my Facebook newsfeed about a recent issue of Sojourners magazine devoted to the subject of nonviolent resistance. I was especially intrigued by Jeannie Choi's interview with civil rights leader Bernard Lafayette. Lafayette describes the training in nonviolent resistance he received when he first became involved with the civil rights movement.

John Lewis [now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives] and I were good friends, and he was the one who persuaded me to come to those workshops. I was a little reluctant because I didn't have time; I was a student and had a couple jobs on campus and a job downtown during the lunch hour washing dishes. But through the training, I learned to see the world through another person's eyes. That was an important step in my personal development.

What methods were used to train you in nonviolence?

Myles Horton, who was in charge of the Highlander Folk School at the time, would always ask provocative questions that got us to think and analyze. At one point, he started making some racist comments like, Why do you black people want to be eating with whites? Don't you enjoy being by yourself? I started challenging him and arguing! Now I laugh at how I responded to that. But I learned so much from that experience. The entire training program was to get people to think about how to put yourself in another person’s position and see the world through their eyes. That was so helpful for me in being able to embrace nonviolence.

We practiced "loving, not judging" your opponent, but thinking about the fact that there was a reason your opponent behaves the way they do. It's important to understand that if you want to bring about change. We learned that the idea is not just to get rights, but to behave in such a way that we would win our opponents over. That was the difference between simply demanding your rights and the goals of the civil rights movement: We were concerned about others.

I want to go to that school. I want lessons in how to be an effective, persuasive change agent. Because it certainly does seem that there's a lot of increasingly powerful evil that needs to be resisted these days, and I want to do my best to resist it in ways that are effective and strategic.

Another thing that's driving me is that lately I feel overwhelmed by all that's going on in the world. "I don't even recognize the world I'm living in" runs through my mind on a regular basis. The assault on the workers and the middle class, the scapegoating of immigrants, racial profiling, the ever-widening chasm between the extremely rich and everyone else. My reaction to feeling overwhelmed is to read, because I can't shake the idea that the better I understand something, the better I can cope with it. And there sure is a lot to cope with and understand these days.

Another thing rattling around in my head a lot lately is a theory that I've read recently that we're still fighting the Civil War. That idea is spurring me to learn what I can about the history of the Civil War and race relations in the United States. I found a ton of stuff that I could download onto my Kindle for free: Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Souls of Black Folk, Up From Slavery, to name only a few. Maybe I've enrolled myself in my very own personal Highlander Folk School.

Bait and Switch

Yesterday I clicked on an ad in the right-hand column of my Facebook page. (I know. This is probably never a good idea.) It said something along the lines of "Support immigration reform" or "Make your voice heard about immigration reform." Yes, there was a photo of Obama on the ad. I really should have known better.

So my click teleports me to Obama's page. I still stupidly think I'm saying something about my support for comprehensive immigration reform (silly me!). So I click on the next thing that just says "Count me in!" Sure enough, this counted me in to support Obama's bid for reelection. Apparently it had nothing to do with immigration reform.

I know about bait-and-switch. But really--really? So I unsubscribed after I got an email today from the Obama campaign about volunteering. (Again, it said nothing about immigration reform.) In the very tiny box where I was given the opportunity to give my reason for unsubscribing I wrote: "I signed up to voice my support for comprehensive immigration reform, not to support Obama's reelection. There's a difference. I hope you guys know that."

So far, all Obama's done regarding immigration reform is talk nice about immigrants and give his lukewarm support for the Dream Act. And the only action we've seen is the increase in reinforcement of our very broken and very unjust immigration system (for lack of a better word--it doesn't even deserve to be called a system). More raids. More deportations. More broken families.

I'm underwhelmed.

I do support Obama's reelection. I guess. Because whatever the Republicans cook up to run against him will undoubtedly be extremist in the extreme. Although, I have to say, if there's a good candidate running against him in the primaries, I just might vote for her.

I'm really, really, really sick of Obama doing more to appease the extremists than to do the work we elected him for.

In 2008, it was the Latino vote that turned many previously red states into blue ones. Without Latino support Obama never would have made it into the White House. He needs them. Big time.

But so far he's gone way out of his way to show the extremist xenophobes that he's "serious about enforcement." Why is he eager to cater to them? They're not the ones who elected him. And no matter what he does, he cannot please them.

So is it too much to ask for him to go out of his way to do what his supporters elected him for in the first place?

Moral war?

Every so often someone applauds what he calls a "moral" war, as Krugman does once again here: "the Civil War and World War II are the two great moral wars of our history, and they should be remembered with pride."

Once again, I have to respond:

The Civil War was never about slavery. "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."--Lincoln Lincoln preserved the union to preserve its power. Shame on you, Professor Krugman, for calling Lincoln's war moral. You know better. If Lincoln had permitted the states to dissolve the union, we would not have the power to do the great evil we have wreaked in every small country we've meddled in since the end of WWII.

We entered WWII to punish the Japanese, who attacked our war-making capability in the Pacific. We prided ourselves in fighting the evil Hitler. In beating him, we became him. The list of countries the U.S. has attacked with our military, CIA, gifts and sales of weapons, gifts of money for weapons and military . . . is almost endless. The tail of war profiteering has wagged the dog of U.S. policy since Eisenhower succeeded in his quest, begun in WWI, to create the military-industrial complex he warned us of too late. "I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."--Mohandas Gandhi The enemy is not an evil dictator. The enemy is evil itself. We do not win by doing evil.

--TomRW