DemocratsForProgress

DemocratsForProgress's Journal

November 28, 2012

Walter Rhett: An Epidemic of Untreatable Illogic

One of my favorite diseases—and I say favorite because it has a great moral associated with its diagnosis—is an old, discredited but useful look at how the views of power filtered down to popular medicine, a disease named drapetomonia. Ever hear of it? It was one of the first illnesses to have a very clear ethnic identity—it only affected blacks. It was also one of the first specific mental health diagnoses. Declared an epidemic among its target population, shortly after being discovered by a Georgian physician in 1851, its treatment protocols involved harsh whippings and restraints in chains.

Today, it is one of the few discredited diseases reemerging as one of the false equivalencies that increasingly characterize American views of politics–and global warming, evolution, education, economic growth, race, and religion. I see a new strain of the disease emerging, and clearly we have no cure, or even treatment or care for it.

My old favorite, drapetomonia, was a response to a social condition, slavery, and was diagnosed as the condition that made slaves run away. Flee toward freedom. Hide in the woods, outside of civil authority, living in a place of fear. The new equivalency has jumped the old ethnic bounds. But it sees itself as flying toward freedom. Leaving behind civil authority—and also living in a place of fear. The new strain is tied to the older drapetomonia by its implied inability to accept reality, but it is characterized by far greater frequencies of delusions. The old and the new, the up and the down have been with us since the beginning. As the poet W. H. Auden said, “the situation of our time surrounds us like a baffling crime.” But this new strain forgets why the old strain was discredited, lost its potency and went bust: it described a wrong reality; it was a projection of its own delusions.

So, too, today, in the new, unnamed strain is the double circle of logic whose answers assume the truth of its assertions. My favorite example this week was a radio interview with Virginia’s Attorney General, whose radio host pointed out that the President did not win the red states where a photo ID law was in place or early voting was drastically restricted, and the wins and loses of those states alone were sufficient to point to clear evidence of a pattern of widespread Democratic fraud being rampant throughout the country. Well, Barack Obama didn’t win those same red states last time either, in 2008, before restrictions of early voting or photo ID laws were enacted. And he won all of the states he won before, without a single reputable complaint of fraud, except in the mouths of talk show hosts and elected officials whose delusions are a double circle...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/11/28/an-epidemic-of-untreatable-illogic/

November 28, 2012

Nance Greggs: 50 Shades of Nay

Having listened to the whinging of you Republicans who still don’t understand how you lost the election, I thought it might be helpful if I spelled it out for you. As always, please seek assistance if you don’t understand the big words.

Since Obama’s first inauguration in January 2009, you have (1) been almost solely focused on ways to ensure he was a one-term president, (2) obstructed every initiative made towards things like job creation and healthcare reform, and (3) sought ways to embarrass, humiliate, and disrespect the President of the United States.

You have (4) proclaimed your allegiance to people like Grover Norquist, while (5) completely ignoring the best interests of the people who elected you to represent them.

You have consistently (6) lied to your constituents, and the citizenry as a whole, often fabricating “facts” and statistics that have no basis in reality in an effort to mislead and misinform...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/11/27/50-shades-of-nay/

November 21, 2012

Walter Rhett: Fighting the Wrong War

We like our victims pure. They never are. Which brings us to the latest round robin of characters whose mess is in the public square, inciting smiles, head shakes, and outrage, and returning us to the age-old debates about the relationship between women and men. Really, our ideas about relationships are telling not for the scandal unfolding, not for the overachievers at the center of the parody of power, but for how hard it is to talk when we agree.

We agree cheating on a spouse is bad. We agree the heads of organizations like the CIA and the European Allied Supreme Command, organizations whose major assets are personal integrity, singular commitment to missions, and a priority set that sidesteps distractions and turns aside temptations, should not be e-mailing civilians excessively, or circumventing national security by setting up a docs account online to describe what college students I know describe as “hot monkey sex.”

Where we disagree is who had the power. Do powerful men ever become weak? Do women ever gain the upper hand in those mutual but also one-sided relationships of power? Do men in power use women? Do women use men in power?

This morning, online, one New York Times commenter sees it this way. First, she quotes from Maureen Dowd’s column...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/11/21/fighting-the-wrong-war/

November 20, 2012

Nance Greggs: Make Room at the Kiddie Table this Thanksgiving

Look, I like kids as much as the next gal. I raised two – and survived. They can be cute, disarming, and have a penchant for saying the darndest things. But when they get to be adults and are still acting like children, it’s time to seat them at the Kiddie Table where they can spout their immature ramblings without interference, leaving the adults free to engage in more serious discussion over turkey with all the fixin’s.

The honor of being seated at the head of America’s Kiddie Table this Thanksgiving undoubtedly goes to Mitt Romney. After insulting those who cooked the turkey (or his goose during the election, as the case may be), he will regale the attendant youngsters with tales about how he could have been president, were it not for all of those unfair grown-ups who insisted on facts rather than his fictions, and voted accordingly.

He will also remind the other kiddies that if they find healthcare reform under the Christmas tree next month, it is not a matter of legislation meant to benefit all Americans, but is merely another “gift” to the undeserving 47% who voted for the guy who is willing to cram all of that “free stuff” into their stockings.

The next Kiddie Table honoree to be seated is John McCain, always welcome among his fellow foot-stomping non-adults who enjoy throwing temper tantrums at the holiday dinner table – and pretty much everywhere else. Despite a propensity to chase kids off his lawn on a regular basis, McCain will undoubtedly be revered by those same kids for having the balls to up-end the Candyland board at the end of the evening when he realizes that the game is not going his way...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/11/19/make-room-at-the-kiddie-table-this-thanksgiving/

November 14, 2012

Walter Rhett: The Sad News of A Bad Bet

The sad news is that Republicans have added to their list of the left’s conspiracies: the latest being the notion that Barack Obama actually won reelection as the President of the United States. Of course, Barack Obama received 62.26 million popular votes, won 26 states with 332 electoral votes—an electoral vote number that GOP pundits Dick Morris, George Will, Newt Gingrich and others predicted and called a “landslide”—for Romney! When the President actually achieved those numbers, becoming one of only five Democrats in history to twice receive 50 percent of the vote, the same bokors of make-believe called it a close election, becoming one of the few conspiracy groups in history to ignore the obvious.

Conspiracies are usually built around things unseen. In the dark mysteries of human ideas, conspiracies are born when people spring to action to carry out evil and destruction to gain power and turn human suffering into a demonic benefit that destroys the cherished good of freedom and prosperity. Conspiracies attack a life reasonably free of want, and crush to ruins a pride based on person production and skill.

History is filled with the great societies of prosperity and pride with a legacy of inside and outside conspiracies; ancient Egypt, the Mayans and Incas, the Dynasties of China and Persia, the Iroquois and the Sioux nations. These early societies had material wealth and superior knowledge, exhibited fantastic engineering success beyond their spectacular buildings. China and Persia, and the Mayans, for example, had extensive underground water systems, with reservoirs. But conspiracists no longer embrace global, historic or infrastructure success. For many conspiracists, these successes are an a priori sign of an invisible cabal, whose power is multiplied by the depth of its secrecy.

So of all the conspiracies attributed to Barack Obama, it was obvious that socialists carrying clipboards with petitions, illegal ACORN registrations, or backdoor gifts from socialist Europe or radical communist countries like Cuba, Estonia, Russia or China didn’t win the election. (Although the Romney-Sheldon Adelson connection offers fertile ground for outside influence by China and Israel!) It was obvious that the million mailed releases of a DVD tying Barack’s mother to Chicago labor leader Frank Marshall Davis, claiming a new baby daddy for infant Barack (one which incidentally would have firmly established his American citizenship—at odds with birther conspiracies!), didn’t work, either...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/11/14/the-sad-news-of-a-bad-bet/

November 11, 2012

Nance Greggs: Just Wonderin’

For the past few days, I can’t help but wonder how Romney/GOP supporters have justified their support and votes to the people in their lives.

How did you explain to your daughters that you voted for the party that wants to curtail their rights, and thinks that a pregnancy resulting from “legitimate rape” is a blessing from God?

What did you say to the disabled vet down the street about how you voted for the candidate who didn’t think them important enough to make his “laundry list” in his speeches, and the party that consistently votes against initiatives to protect their rights, fund their ongoing care, and put them back to work?

Where did you find the words to explain to your neighbor with a pre-existing condition that you supported the party that wants to repeal Obamacare – leaving them uninsured and facing the possibility of bankruptcy due to medical bills?

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/11/10/just-wonderin/

November 8, 2012

Nance Greggs: Losers/Weepers

After Obama’s re-election was declared, something both the SO and I never had any doubt would happen, we settled in front of the TV for what we’d long looked forward to as the most rewarding part of the evening: watching the GOP spokes-mouths and their RW pundit buddies cry and bemoan the outcome. Truth be told, we pumped up the volume way past acceptable, neighbor-friendly levels in the wee hours of the morning, so as not to miss the sound of teeth being gnashed and garments being rent.

Apparently, they were shocked to learn that their silver-spoon-fed candidate, who had flaunted his wealth and privileged status in front of the citizenry throughout his campaign, was not swept into power by the hard-working middle class whose jobs being outsourced served as a profit generator that increased his wealth as it destroyed lives.

They were dismayed to find out that a man who had evaded the draft during the Viet Nam years – instead choosing to fight in the hellhole that is Paris, France – was not embraced by the veterans who had served and sacrificed, nor the troops on the ground that he didn’t think were significant enough to even mention in his campaign speeches.

They were chagrined to discover that a man who dismissed 47% of the nation as lazy parasites did not capture the hearts-and-minds of those he’d labelled as irresponsible leeches looking for yet another government hand-out...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/11/08/losersweepers/

November 7, 2012

Walter Rhett: Remember Caution Is a Prerequisite of Success

I love history because I feel it. Others enjoy a kiss or music, great art; history flows deep in my soul with its own compass of beauty. My challenge is to wander outside of language’s cages and find how we are bound to freedom, for history is always about the drama of freedom. Barack Obama’s re-election is one of freedom’s greatest moments. I loved it. But every wisdom tradition warns that in the shadows of great moments are dangers and obstacles throbbing and alive with their losing gasp.

I congratulate the President—and the country—but I am going to write about the dangers swept up in that great moment; the dangers, though defeated and diminished, that are a threat to the freedom that I love. History shows dangers, after being pummeled, return redoubled. If dangers are not guarded against, the great moments of history become a pinnacle of achievement rather than a base camp for building greater success. And in the great success and jubilation of celebrating the re-election of Barack Obama with the support of states from east to west (and maybe south!), mighty danger lurks.

In a country where men and women from Kenya were captured, shipped and sold as property at public auctions and stripped of legal and personal rights, denied even the right to marry by Christian ministers and church elders, made into forced labor, compelled to accept forcible rape upon their women, our President, a descendant of Kenya, was told by an immigrant, speaking as his opponent’s surrogate, that he needed “to learn to be an American.” That immigrant overlooked that the sons and daughters of Africa know all too well and have learned too deeply what America means. The danger in the casual denial of his words hints at the old auctions, except the descendants are increasingly being marginalized. Their worth extracted, they are floss. The old story is still written in the wastes of higher unemployment, lower incomes, in communities overrun with crime, violence, and dropouts.

These communities must return to their history of self-help, established within the communities created by the auction block, communities that honored marriage and deeply embedded a self-love unbroken by violence and words, a self-love whose self-worth was tied to its ethics and pride in education, work and achievement. The African-American community need be painfully aware of the dangers that stand in front of its destiny, blocking its progress, subtly attempting to change its inner truth. At the moment of the highest achievement by one of its improbable sons, it stands on the precipice of imploding doom...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/11/07/remember-caution-is-a-prerequisite-of-success/

November 6, 2012

From Here to Anonymity (Man of a Thousand Farces edition)

Jeff Rosenzweig: From Here to Anonymity (Man of a Thousand Farces edition)

With a shudder, it occurred to me the other day that I’ve been writing about Willard Mitt Romney, off and on, for nineteen months. There are very few things I dream of spending nineteen months writing about, and he sure as hell isn’t one of them. Nevertheless, with Romney down to his final hours of pretending he can become President of the United States of America, the travail continues.

First, though, let me get Paul Ryan out of the way. Whatever he was thought, or hoped, to bring to the Republican ticket, what Ryan mostly brought was additional opportunities for ridicule, and even the shallow entertainment value thus provided got old fast. The vaunted conservative policy wonk – a “numbers guy” whose numbers (when he bothers to offer any) never add up, a “serious thinker” whose cherished political convictions are a bumper sticker pastiche of Ayn Rand’s Epistles to the Terminally Selfish, a small-government zealot whose entire life, pretty much, has consisted of feeding, if not gorging, at the public trough – has been surprisingly useless to the ticket. And I say “surprisingly” because I’d assumed that merely by naming a running mate, any running mate, the top of the ticket would receive a little less scrutiny, thereby benefiting the campaign. Happily, I stand corrected.

I was also convinced it was damn near impossible that a person could look more ludicrous than Ryan did in his now-infamous “Hey Girl” beefcake shoot, but I erred on that score, as well. In a world where Ryan could become the vice-presidential nominee of a major political party in the first place, not only was it possible, it was probably inevitable. When I saw the photos of the assistant-Commander-in-Chief-wannabe at a soup kitchen he was never invited to, stylin’ for the cameras as he scrubbed clean pots and pans, his grinning wife standing nearby, I experienced that vilest of emotions: feeling embarrassed for people too oblivious to be embarrassed for themselves. Mixed, of course, with newly refreshed loathing.

Yet even this sleazy perfidy pales beside the Romney/Ryan campaign’s crass exploitation of the Hurricane Sandy disaster, when a scheduled Dayton campaign rally was hastily converted into a “storm relief event.” BuzzFeed has a terrific piece on the debacle, brimming with ghastly details, but the short version is that Romney’s handlers rushed to Walmart, spent $5,000 on groceries and other items the Red Cross didn’t want, handed them out to attendees so that the attendees could then “donate” them back, and all the while were blithely unconcerned that the obviously phony event would be exposed as, well, obviously phony. Not quite as spectacularly phony as George Bush’s victory jig on an aircraft carrier, granted, but culled from the same Republican playbook. Not satisfied with this smarmy charade, Romney then embarked on some epic hurricane-driven flip-flopping over just what he would or wouldn’t do with FEMA were the country to lose its collective mind and elect him, and topped it all off Wednesday morning in Tampa by urging 2,000 perfervid supporters to dig, uh, not very deep..."

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/11/05/from-here-to-anonymity-man-of-a-thousand-farces-edition/

October 31, 2012

Walter Rhett: When A List Of Facts Don’t Tell The Truth

With all the crazy things he says, if Mitt Romney were a student on any of America’s college campuses, he would be profiled on a watch list. His radical speech continually advocating the abolition of the federal government while attending classes with classmates with tuition paid for by federal student loans would register as a blind contradiction and personality disconnect (dissociative identity) that could easily cross the line from blame and denigration to violence. Instead, he is running for President of the United States as a candidate for the Republican Party and ducking questions about his claims, saying conversations about inequity should be held in quiet rooms where, promising to “do more” if he could to cut jobs, he rails against 47% of Americans whose incomes are so low they are exempt from income taxes.

He is not alone in the group home; group homes are normally places where people with special challenges are given love and support and encouraged to break through their veils. But Mitt does a Mitty; his advocacy network of irrational politics has the power to make his cruelest fantasies real and impose them on the rest of us, no matter our own dreams. He and his ilk are well funded by operators who see dollars in the vast disability that shadow hims and others: parts narcissism, delusion, paranoid, manic, a bundle of anti-social behaviors including the lack of empathy, guilt, or remorse for pathological lying, a grandeur that writes its own morality and rules of the game.

For instance, Michael Brown, the infamous “Brownie” who let New Orleans turn into Atlantis, publicly chided President Obama for reacting to hurricane Sandy too soon, claiming the President’s actions were “premature.” Brownie is also on record claiming Obama “wanted” the Gulf oil spill so he could suspend offshore drilling. Brown never saw a disaster he couldn’t make worse or find faults and conspiracies in the tragedy. And he once ran the nation’s emergency response.

Or take Romney’s television and radio commercial claiming GM and Chrysler both intend to send American production jobs to China. Both companies have taken the unusual step of calling the “car guy” a liar. A GM spokesperson cited galactic-length differences between the Romney ads and reality. The spokesperson went on: “no amount of campaign politics at its cynical worse will diminish our record of creating jobs.” Chrysler’s CEO, calling the ads, “inaccurate,” pointed out Chrysler has added 2,900 jobs at downtown Detroit’s Jefferson Avenue plant, which builds Jeep Cherokees. Ironically, Romney’s father built Jeeps in China in the 1980s, as CEO of American Motors. Chrysler will build there, too, for China’s market, the world’s largest...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/10/31/when-a-list-of-facts-dont-tell-the-truth/

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