What compounds our frustration and bewilderment over our fellow Americans’ negligible participation in the political process is the overarching irony. We’re citizens of the nation that put participatory democracy on the map for God’s sake. How did we arrive at this sad state of affairs, which I call the enduring enigma of the American public?

Among the many reasons advanced, first here’s a selection from the obvious:

1. Our “dumbing down” thanks to the “escapism” found in television and other electronic media in general.
2. In the same vein, the isolation of modern life, which militates against congregating for the common good.
3. Loss of faith in legislators, most of whom are perceived to be on the pad.

Next, three explanations for apathy with which we’re likely less familiar:

1. According to polling and focus groups conducted by John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, authors of a respected work of political science entitled Stealth Democracy, Americans are adverse to the conflicts, debates, and compromises inherent in participatory democracy. In other words, though we may still be rabble, we’ve had the rough and tumble ironed out of us.
2. Some libertarians maintain that the size of our government and the sheer number of issues that fall under its auspices leave us standing, jaws agape, in stunned silence. Thus do they make it seem like the success of participatory government is dependent on the implementation of one of their pet causes, downsizing government.
3. Speaking in psychological terms, we don’t speak up for ourselves because we suffer from low self-esteem and don’t believe we (nor others) deserve justice.

This final rationale for apathy is mine:

There’s a glitch in our wiring: In other words, blame God. He, or whatever higher intelligence — or lack thereof — to which you subscribe, endowed certain individuals with leadership qualities. But He (or She or the Nonentity) failed to note that left little space on the hard drives of their DNA for ethics. Equally appalling, it also seems to have escaped His attention that said failings needed to be compensated for by a mechanism in the rest of us that would act as a safety net for our leaders’ moral failings.

Apathy, of course, aids and abets corrupt leaders. But it wasn’t until the publication of a book in 1996 that I realized apathy might be socially redeeming. Titled Who Are You, Really? (Carroll & Graf), it was written by Gary Null, the noted (and controversial) nutritionist who is also that rarity in this day and age — a Renaissance man.

You may have heard of a personality assessment questionnaire used by prospective employers, among others, called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. If it was an acknowledged product of Carl Jung’s book Personality Types, Myers-Briggs, in turn, seems to have been the inspiration for the categories into which Null divides us humans. You can find the heading under which most of us fall in his chapter “Most of the People You’ll Ever Meet: Adaptive Supportive.”

What, you ask, is an Adaptive Supportive? Null explains:

Adaptive Supportives generally do functional work. They may be clerical-level employees or blue-collar workers in government agencies or factories. They may work at the checkout counters in retail establishments or at construction sites. … sticking with a job year after year sometimes constitute an unrecognized act of heroism on the part of members of this group.

In fact. . .

Adaptive Supportives play an absolutely essential role in our culture, as in any. Without them, the inner workings of society would simply cease to function. … Because there are so many of them, their values and way of life pervade our culture.

Summing up. . .

Adaptive Supportives are the followers in life — the vast majority of the people who adapt their lives to prevailing belief systems. … Their whole lifestyle is supportive of the status quo and they thrive on the sense of belonging that comes from “fitting in.”

In other words, it’s time to stop libeling them as apathetic. It’s just how they’re wired: Their passivity is in the service of fulfilling their role as the bedrock of society. But, as with all personality types, you take the good with the bad. Of course, the liberal left is more familiar with how harmful they can be to society, as well as themselves. Gary Null again:

The real danger with Adaptive Supportives is that they will cling to faulty belief systems. They have a strong sense of trust in one authority, and they feel vulnerable and threatened if an idea or person challenges that authority. … They relinquish control over their own lives, giving more power to authority figures than they do themselves. That gives them a myopic view of life and closes off many avenues of growth and transformation.

Can They Transcend Their Limitations?

Here’s Null’s answer:

When Adaptive Supportives do change, it’s usually because an authority figure has given them “permission” to do so. When the authority in their lives changes, they’ll shift course and go along with whatever the leader expects of them. If the pope were to allow women to become priests, the masses would adapt to the change and support it. … The irony is that Adaptive Supportives could be a tremendous force in society, simply by virtue of their numbers.

Resolving to act against injustice tends to result from personal growth, about which Null writes:

. . . Adaptive Supportives must recognize that there is nothing intrinsic about them that prevents personal growth. … But they have to take charge of their own development. They can’t wait for some big boss figure to give them permission to change, to say it’s okay. The few Adaptive Supportives who do break through the “big-boss barrier” become very excited about their own untapped potential. … The catch is that they may need someone to work with them — generally a more dynamic personality — to keep them motivated and to supply structure and direction.

Just because Adaptive Supportives embody the turning-ship cliché doesn’t mean we should be discouraged. In fact, Null’s analysis should encourage us to cease lecturing them and throwing up our hands in exasperation. Instead, engaging them individually, we can draw out their needs and fears, and address them without the harshness — toward themselves as well as others — to which Adaptive Supportives are accustomed.

Still, it can’t be denied that engaging them on subjects such as politics, culture, and the future of the planet can be a thankless task. The most hidebound are best left to stew in their own juices. But, in the long run, most Adaptive Supportives would probably be glad to be weaned off those who prey upon their insecurities.

I have been thinking a lot about Byron in the last week, partly because it used to be a ritual of my misspent youth to celebrate his birthday each year by engaging in as much debauchery as my financial and physical health could stand, partly because I wasted four hours of my life last week watching the mini series Byron on Ovation Television even after I’d realized that the narrative construct focused almost entirely on Byron’s scandalous love life. (There were passing references to Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and Don Juan, and I think The Corsair was mentioned, too, in relation to Edward Trelawny who makes a cameo near the end of the program, but perhaps I mis-remember).

This Byron – Byron the scandalous celebrity – is the Byron the media believes the public wants.So influential has his lordship been on popular culture that the term “Byronic” is a common term used among educated persons to refer to males who adopt a pose of mysterious (and often manipulative) aloofness. And a new and celebrated biography ascribes Byron’s lasting importance as much to his creation as a celebrity as to his poetic canon.

But the other Byron – the progressive who spoke against the death penalty for Luddites for breaking factory equipment and the admirer of the Greek struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire who died at Missolonghi while training freedom fighters – is largely forgotten – or ignored – today.

But what we should remember, especially today on his 222nd birthday – is that Lord Byron used his wealth and position and celebrity to speak – and act – for the displaced, downtrodden, and despairing.

Perhaps Arthur Dixon, my undergraduate Romantic poetry professor, put it best in response to my complaint that we read too much Wordsworth and not enough Byron: “This is a literature class, more specifically a poetry class” he said. “And Wordsworth is a great poet. A greater poet than Byron.”

“But Byron is a great poet,” I protested.

“You misunderstand,” said Professor Dixon. “I did not say Byron was not a great poet.”

He paused.

“Think of it this way,” he continued.  ”We remember Wordsworth because he was a great poet. We remember Byron because he was a great man.”

Happy Birthday, your lordship….

Overturning key provisions of McCain-Feingold campaign finance law and flouting a century of precedent, the decision opens the floodgates to a torrent of spending by banks, insurance companies, energy companies, automakers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, chemical producers, agribusiness giants and media oligopolies — both domestic and foreign – to sway races by buying candidates. And to trash American democracy in the process.

“Because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy — it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people — political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it by design or inadvertence,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority. The irony in Kennedy’s logic is profound, as the Court has in essence granted the status of personhood — of individual citizenship — to corporations, who are the least likely entities on earth to hold officials accountable to anyone but their own interests.

When Goldman Sachs, for instance, finds itself with a $16 billion (that’s with a “b”) bonus pool for top executives, what is the likelihood they are going to make campaign contributions to any political candidate who supports a tax on such bonuses, despite the government’s bailout for Wall Street?

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), who was in the room for the Court’s announcement, condemned it as “the worst Supreme Court decision since the Dred Scott case. It leads us all down the road to serfdom.”

Yet it may be that prospect that offers the only remaining hope to unite a nation so fractured by partisanship and anger. In the face of this ruling, average Americans will become disenfranchised laborers, with no access to any ability to affect the political system in their favor. The grassroots donations of $10 here and $25 there that Barack Obama credited with momentum for his victory will be so much chump change in the face of these new playing rules. While labor unions and other groups will also be exempt from previous spending limits, it is the staggering power of corporations to shout down ordinary citizens through an exponential ability to outspend them that poses the gravest threat to our common welfare.

The real divide in this country is not so much left vs. right as haves vs. have-nots. Most Americans want health care reform. We just disagree on the best route to get it. Most Americans are disgusted at Wall Street’s escape from the economic hardship average people face every day, losing their jobs and homes and worrying about feeding their kids. Some think Democrats should be punished for the banks’ bailout; others insist it’s a Republican legacy for which the right must bear blame. Today’s decision, however, cements the already-entrenched power of the ‘haves’ to control public discourse and thereby the political agenda toward their own ends.  But if anything can galvanize the populist base of this country – and that is our true, uniting base – it must be today’s catastrophic court decision, which threatens to undermine our jobs, our health, our safety, our environment, the air we breathe and the water we drink, our access to information, virtually every element of the quality of life and freedoms we jointly value as Americans.

In the wake of this decision, progressives have more in common with teabaggers than either of us ever dreamed possible. We’ll need a lot more strange bedfellows to come together to save our democracy, fractious and scarred as it is. Congressman Grayson has introduced a set of bills to bite back – learn more here.

Q: Let’s say you’re sick with a potentially deadly disease. Who do you want for a doctor?
A: The smartest, most experienced and highly qualified expert in the field.

Q: You’re looking to invest your life savings. Who do you trust to handle your money?
A: The brightest, most agile financial mind I can find.

Q: You’ve been selected to participate in a “private citizens in space” program. Who do you want in charge of building the rocket?
A: The most brilliant and reliable engineers in the nation.

So far, so good. One more.

Q: You live in a time of unimaginable complexity and danger. Who do want to be the leader of the free world?
A: Somebody I can have a beer with. You know, a regular guy, a Joe Sixpack.

It’s said that people tend to get the leaders they deserve, and I can’t imagine better proof than the United States. At present we’re watching as a new president attempts to arm-tackle an array of national political and economic crises of evil supervillain jailbreak proportions, and at this early stage it’s far from clear that he’s Rushmore-bound.

• He may or may not get health care reform passed, and if he does it may or may not be as comprehensive as the programs pursued by previous arch-progressives Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower.
• He may or may not bog us down in a vastly expanded quagmire in Afghanistan, although at present only an idiot would bet on him meeting his campaign promises regarding getting the heck out of Iraq.
• He may or may not decide to honor the pledges he made to the gay community.
• He may or may not spearhead a green revolution that saves the species from itself.
• And his economic policies may boost us to new, unprecedented levels of universal prosperity. Or they may plummet us nards-first into a meat grinder of a global recession so epic it will make the Great Depression look like a weekend in the Hamptons.

So the jury is still out on Mr. Obama. But… While past performance is no guarantee of future results, there’s also that thing about those who don’t understand history being doomed to repeat it. And America’s history of electing dolts, buffoons, scoundrels, knaves, low-jackers, pig-fuckers, gomers, dog-whistlers, Kloset Klansmen, recidivists and sheep pimps to the Highest Elected Office in the Land does not make one optimistic about the prospects for Barackapalooza. I’d love to be wrong, but let’s be honest. An indicator that can pick a loser 100% of the time is every bit as valuable to the shrewd investor as one that always picks the winner, and the Electoral College is as reliable a Finger of Doom as the world has ever seen.

Let’s review, shall we?

George W. Bush: Worst president ever? Dumbest president ever? Hard to say for certain, although put me down for “hell, yes.” The nation apparently elected a string of semi-housebroken wombats in the 1800s, and contemporary polling feels obliged, in the name of “balance,” to humor the estimations of conservative “scholars” who rate him the sixth-best ever. For my money, that opinion alone is sufficient for the credentialing institution to revoke the PhD, but such is the price we pay for the privilege of living in an society that not only tolerates fools gladly, it gives them television shows.

Bill Clinton: In so many ways, Clinton was the archetypal president of our age. He was the distilled, undiluted essence of the modern political animal. He was like everything in Washington, only moreso. And I don’t mean that in the good way.

Bubba may not be the man who invented the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, but he was damned sure the one who established it as the only wing that mattered. The irony, of course, was that he was reviled by the GOP. I’ve always wondered if the source of that rage was that Clinton was a better Republican than they were.

In addition, he cheapened the office at every turn: whether renting out the Lincoln Bedroom to the highest bidder, pardoning Marc Rich or “hiking the Appalachian Trail” like mink freebasing Viagra, it seemed as though his every action left us feeling the need for a shower. From the poor house to the penthouse to the whore house, we’ve never seen anything like him. God willing, we never will again.

George HW Bush: It’s still hard to fathom how this mealy-mouthed little wimp stumbled into the White House. All the Democrats had to do in 1988 was find a candidate with a pulse. Instead, they trotted out Mike Dukakis, a man with all the charisma and passion of an accountant on a phenobarbital drip.

Bush the Elder was the latest incarnation of an established and thoroughly corrupt dynasty, and between him and his fuckwit kids there is no better argument, could be no better argument, in favor of a 100% inheritance tax. If they’d had to earn anything on their own merit their only entree into a country club would be as assistant assistant assistant greenskeepers reporting to Carl Spackler at Bushwood.

Ronald Reagan: Wow. Where to start. Back in the 1960s Marshall McLuhan, in writing about where television was taking the culture, predicted Reagan in terms so accurate that you’d think you were reading a history instead of a precognition. The only thing missing was the name and home address. The failing in McLuhan’s analysis, if there was one, was this: as cynical as he was, the reality turned out to be even worse than he feared.

Ronnie was as anti-intellectual a leader as we could have imagined prior to Dubya. A man who somehow managed to remain immensely popular despite the fact that most Americans disagreed with his policies. One of the most corrupt collections of advisors, staffers and appointees in history. And the man who represented the grand triumph of years and years of scheming by wealthy conservatives bent on by god rolling the rich-poor gap back to feudal levels. An intellectually void, amoral cesspool of a human being who will nonetheless go down as one of our “great” presidents.

Jimmy Carter: Carter has the distinction of being one of the very few politicians that Hunter Thompson ever said anything nice about, and his record since leaving the White House has made clear what an outstanding statesman and humanitarian Carter really is. History will not mark him down as the most adept practitioner of the presidential arts, however, and for those who bemoan the erosion of the line between church and state, let’s remember just how very publicly Baptist Jimmy was. Now, thanks in part to him, we’ll never get the smell of the fundamentalists out of the furniture. (Which reminds me – Phish is playing four dates at Red Rocks, so those of us who live in downtown Denver are hoping the wind isn’t blowing straight west-to-east for the next few days.)

Gerald Ford: Nice enough guy, seemed like. For a politician and all. But he wasn’t ever elected.

Richard Nixon: Please tell me we don’t really need to talk about this one.

Lyndon Johnson: Ever heard of Vietnam? It’s hard to recall the last time somebody took an idea so bad and managed to make it even worse. He does get credit for important civil rights legislation, at least.

Still, in the final analysis he was a president from Texas with a lust for illicit, unwinnable wars. If that reminds you of somebody else, don’t blame me. I’m just reporting the facts.

John F. Kennedy: He invaded Cuba, and once the troops started landing he changed his mind. He nearly got us into a hot nukular shooting war. Then there was that Vietnam thing – he and LBJ can share this honor. Marilyn Monroe was either a plus or a minus, depending on where you stand with respect to the marital infidelity issue.

Ultimately, though, the only thing that saved his legacy was death. Had he lived to serve out his term(s) he’d be judged today based on his record, which falls somewhat short of the legend.

So, when was the last time America elected a president it could be proud of? By today’s standards Ike isn’t looking bad at all, and his two predecessors, FDR and Truman, also score high marks.

If you look at that chart in the link above, it seems like maybe the country’s ability to elect somebody half decent runs in cycles.

Let’s hope that’s the case, and that the wheel is turning back in our direction. Because damn, America is due.

It’s been entertaining watching American public “discourse” since the election. (I use that word in its broadest, most ridiculous sense, since nothing that hinges so completely on self-absorption, rank ignorance and pathological dishonesty can be accurately characterized by such a noble word. But indulge me. I’ve been working on my irony lately.)

On the one hand you have conservatives fainting dead away that we’re now in the clutches of a “socialist” president. Never mind that these folks wouldn’t know a real socialist if he was gnawing their balls off. Never mind that most of these folks think “socialist” is the French word for Negro. Never mind that Obama demonstrably is to socialism what Joe the Plumber is to brie-sucking Northeastern intellectualism. As arch-conservative TV pundit Stephen Colbert says, “this is a fact-free zone.”

On the other you have the righteous outrage of the progressosphere, which feels six different kinds of betrayed by a president who promised them the moon and stars and has now left them to what looks like at least a four-year walk of shame. If I might borrow from an old fraternity joke, imagine the following scene from the Oval Office:

Barack: Hey everybody, what’s the difference between a progressive and a toilet?
Rahm: I give up, Mr. President.
Barack: The toilet doesn’t follow you around after you use it.
[Entire Cabinet]: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

A few days ago Chris Bowers, one of the progressive blogosphere’s smarter and more influential voices, announced that he was becoming a conservative Democrat. His reasoning was compelling. Let me sample a bit for you (and encourage you to go read the rest as soon as you’re done here).

You can “endorse someone other than a Democrat for President, and then have the Democratic leadership do whatever it takes” to keep you in the Party. “You get ten times the media mentions that one gets being a progressive.” You get “more money, too. You can proclaim that you are a conservative Democrat, and still have small, progressive, grassroots donors be by far your top contributors.” You can “hold up, water down, and threaten whatever Democratic legislation you want” with no consequences at all. “You get frequent meetings with the President and proclamations that he is one of your own.” If you bitch about it you get “threats about never hearing from the White House again.” You’re “far more likely to receive a major cabinet appointment. Not even counting the Republicans, New Democrats outnumber Progressives in President Obama’s cabinet by 7-1.” And that’s not nearly all.

Okay, so maybe Bowers isn’t really abandoning his fellow progressives. Maybe he was just being a smart-ass to make a point. I can’t say I approve of such tactics, but hey, my old pal Jonathan Swift was known for the occasional snark, so who am I to judge?

The point is that progressives have a beef with the new fauxcialist administration, and regardless of what you think about their issues, their analysis or their personal hygiene, a review of the facts certainly justifies their pique. Think about it.

• Obama the Campaigning Man was pretty clear in his disdain for the Defense of Marriage Act. Obama the President has apparently decided that gay rights can wait. (Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? Don’t bother.)
• Candidate Obama was balls-to-the-wall about greening the economy, and I mean yesterday. President Obama, whose favorability rating is running better than 2-1 for, seemed unable or unwilling to expend some of that political capital on the just passed ACES bill, which many experts think will accomplish diddley (or worse). (Again, whatever the eventual reality about this bill turns out to be is irrelevant – the point is that Obama did not act in accordance with the more progressive stance he had taken earlier.)
• And what about health care? A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed overwhelming support for “a government administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans.” How overwhelming, you ask? Overall 72% were in favor of the “public option,” and 57% said they’d be willing to pay higher taxes to get it. Hell, 50% of Republican respondents want it. So, you have very high approval ratings. And you certainly have a significantly greater mandate than George the Conqueror did after nipping John Kerry in 2004. You have significant majorities in both houses of Congress. You have overwhelming popular support for a public option. And you can’t get it done? Seriously?

I’m sitting here trying to figure out why corporate America, which would stand to benefit tremendously from having the burden of insuring the citizenry lifted from its shoulders, isn’t in open revolt. (That part of corporate America that doesn’t include the insurance industry, I mean.)

It has been observed that the Republicans seem to be more effective with a minority than the Dems are when they have the entire country by the balls. GOPpers derail the train by threatening a filibuster, but the Democrats can’t seem to head off a bad idea with a damned-near buster-proof majority. How the hell is this possible?

This, of course, is what’s known as a “rhetorical question.” The butt-obvious answer is that the contemporary Democratic Party is not really a party, at least not in the same way that the GOP is. Instead, it’s a bizarre amalgam of progressives, “moderates,” bipartisan fetishists, “New Democrats,” DINOs and opportunistic Republicans (see Specter, Arlen). The median at present lies significantly to the right of Richard Nixon, who despite the recent revelation that he was in favor of abortion in the case of half-breed fetuses, posted a record that would make him pretty darned progressive by 2009 standards. (Good thing you dodged that bullet, huh Mr. President?)

Ultimately, Bowers and other frustrated progressives are right. The Democratic party just isn’t that into them. They’re useful when votes are needed, but are utterly incapable of leveraging that into actual influence. As far as the “responsible” centrists are concerned, progressives are the late-date with no self-esteem, the unwitting fat chick at the pig party.

So, what to do?

Playing along isn’t working. So how about rounding up all the members of the Progressive Caucus (and their many allies around the country) and opting out? Leave the Democractic Party. Form a third party of their own (or just join the Greens). All of a sudden the Democratic Party has a numbers problem. All of a sudden they lose majority status, chairmanships, agenda-setting stroke, etc.

I’m no expert on the rules of the American legislature, so I’m sure there are nuances I’m missing. Nonetheless, I imagine the Republican wing of the Democratic Party would wet itself. And in the short term this could be very good for the GOP, which would find itself in the plurality.

Longer-term, though, it seems like the progressives can make an argument – and one that is supported by some actual evidence – that they represent the will of a goodly slice of the American public. Even better, given how the youth vote seems to be trending, they can also argue that their hand is going to strengthen over time. Are these premises accurate? Hard to say. But they are testable hypotheses, and the posit is certainly plausible enough to be worth examining.

Maybe the remaining Dems respond by making the reality of the situation official and decamping for the GOP. Maybe the Blue Dogs and the “moderate” wing of the GOP abandon those pesky snake-handlers on the right and form a new “centrist” coalition. Who knows. If that did happen, however, America would at least have the refreshing luxury of an opposition party that, you know, opposed. We could get all that corporatist DC clutter, which thrives because it dominates both parties, up for a real referendum. What a campaign hook – America vs. the Beltway.

Part of me says “what if it backfires?” But the other part of me looks at the state of the current union, at the looting of the last eight (or, depending on your taste for the long view, 29) years, at the energy way too many Americans have to devote to worrying about what happens if they get sick or injured, at the staggering cost associated with continuing to fuck around with the environment, at the fact that millions and millions and millions of citizens have no hope at all of financial solvency, at the knee-buckling stupidity of a populace that’s been victimized by a brilliantly conceived War on Education, at…. Fuck it. You get the picture.

Off your knees, progressives. The worst that happens is more of the same. At the least do us the favor of dying on your feet.

In truth, the problem runs deeper than just “our side’s” billionaires, or so it appears. It started the other day when some prominent Left Blogistanis decided they weren’t going to keep their mouths shut anymore. The first shot was fired in a Greg Sargent piece at Who Runs Gov:

Some of the leading liberal bloggers are privately furious with the major progressive groups — and in some cases, the Democratic Party committees — for failing to spend money advertising on their sites, even as these groups constantly ask the bloggers for free assistance in driving their message.

It’s a development that’s creating tensions on the left and raises questions about the future role of the blogosphere at a time when a Dem is in the White House and liberalism could be headed for a period of sustained ascendancy….

“They come to us, expecting us to give them free publicity, and we do, but it’s not a two way street,” Jane Hamsher, the founder of FiredogLake, said in an interview. “They won’t do anything in return. They’re not advertising with us. They’re not offering fellowships. They’re not doing anything to help financially, and people are growing increasingly resentful.”

Hamsher singled out Americans United for Change, which raises and spends big money on TV ad campaigns driving Obama’s agenda, as well as the constellation of groups associated with it, and the American Association of Retired Persons, also a big TV advertiser.

“Most want the easy way — having a big blogger promote their agenda,” adds Markos Moulitsas, the founder of DailyKos. “Then they turn around and spend $50K for a one-page ad in the New York Times or whatever.” Moulitsas adds that officials at such groups often do nothing to engage the sites’s audiences by, say, writing posts, instead wanting the bloggers to do everything for them.

John Aravosis was quick to chime in:

At some point, Democrats – progressives – need to start investing in the future. And by “the future,” I don’t mean large organizations that have been around for years but haven’t accomplished anything in the past two decades. I mean investing in progressives who can kick ass, and have a proven ability to do so.

There is the perception on the right that all of the top liberal blogs are funded by George Soros. I wish. We, for example, are funded by advertising and by your individual donations. Both are dropping in a terrible economy. No one subsidizes my blog. I wish they did. But they don’t.

For our blog to survive – for the liberal blogosphere to survive – we need support. Unlike many of the top bloggers on the right, many of the top liberal bloggers blog for a living (many of the folks on the right have “real” jobs, a lot of them work as lawyers, and blog on the side). This is our job. It’s our career. It’s our passion, to be sure. But it’s also how we pay the mortgage, invest in our retirement, and put food on the table. It makes no sense that Democrats have not found a way to invest in the blogosphere, and help us not just survive, but grow and become even more powerful. It’s almost as if we don’t want to win.

These comments touched off some lively conversations – much of it behind the scenes – and I don’t think I’d be out of line to suggest that while there are nuances aplenty, the consensus is that yes, it sure would be nice if our brightest and best didn’t have to fight the war for America’s future in their spare time, what little of it there is.

The problem here isn’t quite the same as with my hypothetical legion of prog billionaires, though. To put it simply, I’m not sure the large organizations being railed at by Hamsher, Moulitsas, Aravosis and others see much practical value in advertising to the choir. If these groups were to take those bloggers and their readers for granted – where, after all, are they going to go? – it might be hard to argue with them. Maybe. Sure, those bloggers might not campaign for the individual causes in question, but their work on behalf of others who shared the same general mission would lift all the boats together, right? Whether this is accurate or not, it’s certainly a plausible hypothesis.

Would they go so far as to say that the enduring victories we’re after require us to win the hearts and minds of those not already firmly on our side? This is ShoutWorld, after all. If we were persuaded that supporting the faithful would pay off through their redoubled energy – a very solid proposition – that would change the equation. Still, we might find ourselves wondering about diminishing returns or the incremental value of spending on new markets instead of further saturating established ones.

Regardless, the behavior of those with money suggests that not all of them are worried about their intellectuals or their footsoldiers. And those being taken for granted are in a tough spot. You can make your point by withholding your time and effort next time around, but think about the price. Eight more years of whatever neo-Bushevik wins the 2012 GOP nomination isn’t just cutting off your nose to spite your face.

No, folks, that’s more like taking an assault rifle to your nards.

We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas. – Natalie Maines

I don’t even know the Dixie Chicks, but I find it an insult for all the men and women who fought and died in past wars when almost the majority of America jumped down their throats for voicing an opinion. It was like a verbal witch-hunt and lynching. – Merle Haggard

Last night over dinner the subject of The Dixie Chicks came up, and I got mad all over again. Which is unfortunate, because when you think about artists that talented the last thing on your mind ought to be anger. But still, it’s been six long years now since “the top of the world came crashing down,” and I can’t quite free myself of my rage at the staggering ignorance that led so many Americans to piss on the 1st Amendment by attempting to destroy the careers of Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire and Emily Robinson. Frankly, I don’t know how Natalie can make it through a performance of “The Long Way Around” or “Not Ready to Make Nice” because I can barely listen to the songs without wanting to take a folding chair to every goddamned corporate radio executive and program director in America responsible for driving them from the airwaves.

No doubt that this makes me a lesser man than I should be. I can’t imagine that the Chicks would approve of my violent impulses (which, I have to admit, are a little too literal for my own comfort), given the grace with which they have navigated the turbulence surrounding their lives in recent years. In truth, they haven’t taken the long way around so much as they have taken the high road, and I regret that I’m not quite worthy of the example they have set for those of us trying to lead civilized lives in the midst of so much willful ignorance.

In recognition of their willingness to risk their careers speaking truth to power and for their courage in facing the backlash (which included death threats, let’s remember) that’s all too frequently aimed at uppity women in the less advanced corners of our nation, Scholars & Rogues is proud to honor The Dixie Chicks as our latest Scrogues and accord them a place in our masthead of fame.

And, if it isn’t obvious, then I’ll apologize in advance for not being up to the standards that Natalie, Martie and Emily have set. They’re not to blame for my tribute to them.

What Did the War on The Dixie Chicks Teach Us About Our Freedoms?

Some time back I read a story in the international press about the rise of fundamentalist Islam in one of Europe’s leading nations – I believe it was the Netherlands, but can’t recall for certain. They’re apparently facing the prospect that one day this minority could grow to the point where it could go to the polls and, using the legitimate engines of the democratic system available to it, vote to eradicate the nation’s religious freedoms. A politician was asked what should be done in this case. His answer was that nothing should be done – it must be allowed, since it would be the result of a democratic process.

Quite a conundrum, that. What to do when democracy is used to dispose of democracy? Obviously America is under no immediate threat from organized Islamist voters, but we do have our own Christian Taliban problem, don’t we? What should we, here in the Land of the Free^®, think about those who do not value actual freedom of religion? How many Americans would we send off to die to preserve the free speech rights of those who’d squelch the free speech rights of their fellow citizens? What should a true patriot do when confronted with the reality that the tools of liberty are being used against Lady Liberty herself?

My own code of ethics has always said that you cannot allow a barbarian to use your civilization as a weapon against you. A man who insists on fighting according to a set of honorable rules while his opponent is using a tire iron to liquefy his testicles deserves what happens to him. In my angrier moments I’ve said that no, you don’t fight fire with fire. You fight fire with a flamethrower.

But that’s just me, and you’ll recall from earlier that I’m perhaps not to be taken as a role model. Still, we do live in a nation with many who do not share our respect for Constitutional freedoms. Exactly how many I can’t say, but I feel comfortable with “millions and millions.” It’s certain that without such people we’d not have had to endure eight years of Bush/Cheney thuggery.

I’m Not Ready to Make Nice

I made my bed and I sleep like a baby
With no regrets and I don’t mind sayin’
It’s a sad sad story when a mother will teach her
Daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger
And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they’d write me a letter
Sayin’ that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should

This was the message – “shut up and sing.” You’re not being paid to think, you mouthy little bitches, you’re being paid to entertain us. Now dance, girlies. God Bless America.

History will validate, with a minimum of controversy, the sentiments Natalie Maines expressed at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire theatre on March 10, 2003. Hopefully the record will point to our present moment and note that already the momentum had shifted and that within a generation people would have an impossible time imagining how such an affront to freedom was ever possible. Hopefully.

For the time being, “mad as hell” doesn’t begin to describe the indignation that those of us working to move this culture forward by promoting genuinely intelligent and pro-human values ought to feel, even now. I won’t tell you how to think and act, of course – you have a conscience and a brain, and you can be trusted to take in the information and perspectives around you and form an opinion that you can live by.

But for my part, I have a message for the “shut up and sing” crowd: I’m not ready to back down and I never will be. Your values are at odds with the principles upon which this nation was founded and true liberty cannot survive if your brand of flag-waving ignorance is allowed to thrive. You will not be allowed to use the freedoms that our founders fought for as weapons to stifle freedom for others.

You have declared a culture war, so here’s where the lines are drawn: I’m on the side of enlightenment, free and informed expression and the power of pro-humanist pursuits to produce a better society where we all enjoy the fruits of our shared accomplishments.

What side are you on?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In a perfect world, the stock market would decline another 70 or 80 percent along with the shuttering of about that fraction of our nation’s banks. Yes, unemployment would rise as hundreds of thousands of formerly well-paid brokers and bankers lost their jobs; but at least they would no longer be extracting wealth at our expense. They would need to be fed, but that would be a lot cheaper than keeping them in the luxurious conditions they’re enjoying now. Even Bernie Madoff costs us less in jail than he does on Park Avenue.

Alas, I’m not being sarcastic. If you had spent the last decade, as I have, reviewing the way a centralized economic plan ravaged the real world over the past 500 years, you would appreciate the current financial meltdown for what it is: a comeuppance. This is the sound of the other shoe dropping; it’s what happens when the chickens come home to roost; it’s justice, equilibrium reasserting itself, and ultimately a good thing. [emphasis in the original]

Lest you reflexively dismiss Rushkoff as a crackpot, let’s be clear on something – he’s a very smart and thoughtful man. Whether you ultimately choose to buy his argument or not – and I’m guessing the “nots” will carry this one handily – he’s making some important points about the house of cards we now find collapsing around us, points that we’d do well to understand as we set about picking up the pieces and rebuilding.

I want to make an observation about the article and conclude with a couple of responses.

The Army of Ludd

First the observation: Rushkoff’s position aligns him with the neo-Luddite movement, and he is not alone in advocating it.

I don’t mean “Luddite” in its commonly (mis)understood, pejorative sense – there are few words in the English language that are more frequently misrepresented. A brief history lesson illustrates the point. The original Luddites revolted against technological advances in the British textile industry from 1811 to 1816. While the term “Luddite” popularly connotes someone who is anti-technology, the actual rebellion was more critically aimed at technology which threatened the sanctity of culture (Rybczynski, Pynchon). Their reaction was not against progress per se – they themselves gladly used the newest weaving technology available, and were “interested in innovation and technical improvements to make their work easier” – but were instead opposed to the dehumanizing dislocations of the industrial economy.

At the turn of the 19th Century, factory looms were the latest innovation, and a factory job meant arriving at dawn for a 15 to 18 hour working day, and the door was locked behind you in the morning and not opened until the end of the shift. To the Luddites, the factory looms spelled the end of a way of life, of craftsmanship, of community and of family (Murphy).

From the perspective of modern-day Luddites, the “original rebels against the future” reacted against technological encroachments on the natural order of human society.

The Luddites had no objection to many technologies such as the carding engine and the spinning jack that supplemented human labour, but were not a threat to their livelihoods. By contrast, the inhuman machines that characterised the Industrial Revolution were new and different in that they were independent of nature, of geography, and season and weather, of sun, of wind, or water, or human or animal power. They not only destroyed jobs, but marked the beginning of an environmental catastrophe (Ludd).

As I was reading Rushkoff’s polemic I couldn’t help thinking about one of today’s leading neo-Luddite voices, Kirkpatrick Sale. I first encountered Sale when working on my dissertation, and his take on the Internet was scalding. For instance, in response to the popular claim that the Net would foster a stronger democracy, finally enabling a truer Jeffersonianism than was ever possible before, Sale replied that, “You can’t democratize – you can’t control – a technology that was established for other reasons.” Created for control and consumption, “This technology does not come with democracy in it” (Robin).

As it turns out, Sale has some thoughts on our current economic situation, as well. Last November, in delivering the keynote before the Manchester Convention, he invoked Thurber (“If you live as humans do, it will be the end of you”) and characterized the 2008 election as a boxing “match fought between two big palookas.”

What can you say about a system that spends nearly a billion dollars and takes two years every four years to produce two palookas to run for high office? What can you say about a system that allows that money effectively to let corporate America buy politicians of so-called “both” parties to serve at its bidding for the next term of office?

What can you say about a system that openly, blatantly proves that its politicians are craven lackeys of the financial plutocracy by having an administration that could invent and a Congress that could pass a measure that robs the public treasury of a trillion dollars, for the benefit of financiers and bankers who created the mess this money is supposed to fix ? And what can you say when that open, blatant admission of corruption, vice, graft, and evil is met by no roar of outrage, no righteous uprising, but passive acceptance by the great majority of the so-called citizenry, who go on to elect a man who thoroughly supported it?

The United States has never shown itself to be more unmanageable and incompetent, more venal and degraded, more undemocratic and ungovernable, than in the last three months.

I don’t want to put words in Rushkoff’s mouth, but I’m not hearing much here that I think he’d quibble with, especially in light of Sale’s comments just last month in Counterpunch.

We’ve got two choices. One is the Lincolnesque way that Obama seems to promise: government subsidies for the larger corporations and banks (as Lincoln pushed in his day, especially for the railroads), refurbishing of the infrastructure (ditto), nationalization of the financial system and reckless printing of currency, increased centralization of the government and its hold on the economy, continuation and expansion of warfare and the war machine (all ditto). That is a continuation of the past, and it is amazing that the nation largely does not recognize it as a recipe for continued collapse. It is in fact not sustainable, nor is the environment in which it is floundering.

The other way is to rejigger, to dismantle, the entire system.

If this all seems a bit radical to you, let’s at least acknowledge the good faith of the authors, who clearly yearn for a better, more sustainable and just way of life for us all. Let’s also acknowledge that it gets harder by the minute to refute Rushkoff’s assessment of our system: “We do not live in an economy, we live in a Ponzi scheme.”

So what went wrong? Nothing. The system worked exactly as it was supposed to.

Bernie Madoff and AIG may be the faces of the crisis as reported by the corporate media, but surely we’re all smart enough to understand that we didn’t get where we are because of them. Surely we’re intelligent enough to distinguish between the disease and a couple of symptoms.

The solution? Well, in Rushkoff’s view (shared by Sale and a great many other extremely intelligent commenters out there), Obama is making it worse, not better.

President Obama may be smarter than most of us, but he’s still attempting to rescue the very institutions that robbed us in the first place. He’s not a socialist, as conservatives may be arguing, but he is a corporatist. Using future tax dollars to fund government job programs is one thing. Using future tax dollars to give banks more money to lend out at interest is robbing from the poor to pay the rich to rob from the poor. [emphasis in the original]

So, he says, “let it die.”

The Natural Trajectory of Complex Systems

In 1995, Wired’s Kevin Kelly conducted an interview with Sale, and if ever there’s been a one-on-one between two people with more divergent views of the world, I’ve never seen it. At one point, Kelly asks Sale “why are we here? What are humans here for?” The exchange tells us a lot about Sale, and also, I would suggest, about Douglas Rushkoff.

Sale: [Pauses.] To exist.
Kelly: So, what would be a measure of a successful human culture?
Sale: That it’s able to exist in harmony with the rest of nature.

Rushkoff’s closing comments don’t herd us all back into caves, but they do, very explicitly, advocate what we might call a “simpler way of life.” I suspect a lot of us find a certain allure in this, especially now, when the dire complexities of our economic meltdown weigh heavily on us.

History, though, teaches that there’s an inexorable tendency toward more complexity in societies, and if we study what has gone before we can see a pattern: growth, increasing complexity, [something goes wrong], call for return to simpler way of life. Lather, rinse, repeat. Complexity theorists believe that Newton’s second law is countered, in some contexts (biological sciences, economics, social structures, etc.) by an as-yet-unstated law explaining the drive toward ever-higher orders of organization (Waldrop). Obviously economies are one area where we have seen an unrelenting pressure toward greater complexity, and it seems an elementary enough observation that as complexity increases, our ability to fully perceive the system in question and predict its consequences diminishes. If we add the principle of “sensitive dependence on initial conditions” – aka the “Butterfly Effect” – to the equation (which we certainly should) our inability to comprehend, predict and control very quickly becomes functionally infinite.

The problem, as I see it, isn’t the complexity of the economic system per se (although I agree that we have to be careful about what are essentially autonomous systems). Instead, it’s the political economy serving them. Put another way, what we need isn’t necessarily a simpler way of life, it’s a more pro-human set of guiding principles for the “complex adaptive system.”

I say this because idealizing some moment in a simpler past is always easy, but a close examination of that moment in context almost never reveals it to be the utopia it’s imagined to be. If we look at Rushkoff’s pre-corporate banking moment we’ll find that we knew a lot less back then about things like medicine, for instance. On the health front – infant mortality, life expectancy, succepitibility to communicable disease, and overall quality of life – we’re a lot better off than we were. This matters because economic systems don’t exist in a vacuum – without the massively complex growth in our economy, it’s likely that many other elements of our society would be closer to 1509 than 2009, as well. The small, localized economies that Rushkoff wants to return to weren’t capable of generating the massive resource pools necessary to tackle many of the large challenges we’ve overcome in the last 500 years.

We know that complex adaptive systems operate according to fundamental bottom-up rules. That is, they are not governed (at least not effectively) by lots of tinkering and commanding from on high. Instead, there are a very few fairly simple foundational principles, and in the case of our current system one of those rules driving the behavior of capital appears to be something along the lines of “seek out and remain in close proximity to other capital.” Or maybe this rule isn’t even needed, since chaos theory has taught us enough about “attractors” to know that things accumulate – especially things like money and power.

In any case, what I think Rushkoff wants is a system where the basic rules keep wealth from accumulating in too few hands, instead seeking broader and more level distribution patterns.

If you’re thinking that somewhere in the past few paragraphs this discussion got really academic, you’re probably right, because regardless of whether Rushkoff is right in what he thinks he wants or I’m right in correcting his aim, no plan currently on the table in Washington is going to arrive us in either place. And while I do regard Mr. Obama as someone acting in good faith (by politician standards), and there’s no question that he was the best of the viable options on the ballot in November, he’s certainly the corporatist that Rushkoff accuses him of being. This shouldn’t need illustration, but if it does, ask yourself whether Obama appears committed to saving and “fixing” the existing system or, as Rushkoff advises, letting it die and replacing it with something else entirely.

And now, an honest discussion of the costs

Rushkoff understands that getting from Point A – where we are now – to Point B – his ideal economy – will be hard. He acknowledges that it will be painful.

As painful as it might be to watch, and as irritating as it might be to those with shrinking retirement savings, the collapse of the centralized corporate economy is ultimately a good thing. It makes room for a real economy to rise up in its place. And while it may be temporarily uncomfortable for the rich, and even temporarily devastating for the poor, it may be the fastest and least violent way to dismantle a system set in place for the benefit of 14th Century monarchs who have long since left this earth.

There are a number of moving parts in that graf, so let’s take them one at a time. And in doing so, let’s afford him the benefit of the doubt.

…the collapse of the centralized corporate economy is ultimately a good thing. It makes room for a real economy to rise up in its place.

Perhaps. More on this in a minute.

And while it may be temporarily uncomfortable for the rich…

“Temporarily” is a prediction that we simply have no foundations for. I’ve been reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan of late, and I recommend it highly for those engaged in predicting anything about anything.

…and even temporarily devastating for the poor…

What I just said about “temporary.” Also, we’ll talk in a second about that word “devastating,” because I’d like us to walk away from this discussion clear-eyed about exactly what it means.

…it may be the fastest and least violent way to dismantle a system set in place for the benefit of 14th Century monarchs who have long since left this earth.

Yes, it “may” be. Or it may be the surest path to the most violent civil war the planet has ever witnessed.

Like a lot of people, I oscillate back and forth between my idealist and pragmatist poles. There are moments when I can be dreamier than a doe-eyed schoolgirl and other times when my cynical side would give the shivers to Machiavelli himself. As I read Rushkoff’s modest little proposal I found myself torn. The part of me that lives in Magic Wand Land recognizes the fundamental corruption that Rushkoff describes and believes passionately that we’d be better off living in an economic system that served us all. Truth be told, “Ponzi scheme” is a mild descriptor for our current hegemony, and there are lots of people who deserve worse punishment than they’re likely to get (for that matter, worse than is allowed by the 8th Amendment).

My pragamatic side can’t get past the path from Point A to Point B, though. The only term in Rushkoff’s whole essay milder than “Ponzi scheme” is “devastating.” If we “let it die,” yes, it will be hard times for “hundreds of thousands of formerly well-paid brokers and bankers.” It will also be tough on a lot of other people. For instance:

• Millions will lose their homes. And not just the millions in trouble right now. All of them and millions more.
• When the stock market declines another 70-80%, we’ll go from a nation where pensions are at risk to one where nearly no one has any retirement cushion at all. Any money that isn’t hidden under a mattress will be gone.
• Forget universal health care – good luck finding health care period. Yes, all those doctors will still exist but their practices and hospital facilities will be history. Maybe a few will be able to get out the door with something more than their little black bags, and if you know one you may be able to barter for care should you or someone in your family fall ill. If not, pray that the doc in question is a saint and isn’t worried about having to feed a family.
• And about feeding a family – if you’re not a farmer, you’re in trouble, because the whole infrastructure is going to collapse. No more supermarket – you’ll either be a farmer or a hunter-gatherer.
• Got a gun? Because you’re going to need one. When your choice is steal or die, steal is going to win a lot of times.
• It’s hard to say whether what emerges at this point is really war, because the sides may be a little fuzzy. Organized civil war is one possibility, but heavily armed neighborhood gang warfare is another.

In other words, people are going to die. Lots of people. Children are going to starve to death in the streets. Maybe your children, but if not, almost certainly the children of someone you know. And since America is so central to the global economy, let’s try not to imagine what happens in areas that are already impoverished.

If we’re lucky enough, at some point, to emerge from this holocaust, it’s pure fantasy to assert that a “real economy” is what results. It’s at least as plausible to suggest that instead we’ll wind up with a system that makes the Bush/Cheney years look like Mother Teresa at Disneyland by comparison.

Think I’m painting a dark picture here? Fine – feel free to explain how Rushkoff’s prediction is more plausible, given what you know about wealth, power and basic human nature.

The Problem with the Future

If I’m landing on Rushkoff a bit hard, I hope it’s at least clear just how much I agree with him concerning both the problems we all face and our desire for a more sustainable, equitable economy. I also applaud him for having the courage to step up and say these things in a public forum, because let’s be honest, not everybody out there is going to be willing to hear the core message. I wonder how many readers never made it past the first sentence.

However, I don’t have a magic wand and neither does he. Perhaps he believes that the price we’d have to pay to “let it die” is worth it. Maybe he’d look hard at the possibility of hundreds of millions dying – and maybe more – and still say that in the long run that would beat the alternative. There are those who argue that our planet is horrifically overpopulated and that the best thing for both it and us (“us” being the species) would be if all but a few million people were to die.

In the long term, in the macro, perhaps these things are true. But if so, and if that is in fact the argument, then let’s acknowledge the full weight of the word “devastating,” which describes the epic brutality of what would happen in terms so tame it barely qualifies as a euphemism.

Further, let’s demonstrate a little more humility about our ability to predict the future. I’ve always been pretty utilitarian, but have had to accept that doing that which will result in the greatest good is a fine goal, but it’s so afflicted with uncertainty and unknown, uncontrollable variables that it’s an impossible course, literally.

I’m sorry that I can’t offer up a solution here, because I know that would be comforting for some (and would give others an even larger target to shoot at). All I can really do is suggest that as we address our economic system, we do so with those foundational principles I mentioned earlier in mind: does a particular action serve the interests of the hyper-wealthy or does it structure the investment so that it seeks broader distribution and geater equity?

That may be all we can do.

____________
UPDATE: Since I posted this piece I’ve been contacted by someone at Arthur Mag named Jay. A quick glance at their masthead suggests that this is probably the editor, Jay Babcock, who is writing to accuse me of shamefully misrepresenting Rushkoff’s positions. (And “shameful” is his word, not mine.) There is a follow-on to the original essay, in which Rushkoff seeks to clarify his positions, I assume because the response he’s received has convinced him that people are missing the point. I recommend this piece as well as the original.

Now, to Babcock’s charge: First, I can only respond to what Rushkoff writes. If his position is somehow different from what’s in the essay, it’s hardly my fault for “missing” it.

However, I don’t think this is what’s happening. I think Rushkoff makes his case clearly and coherently and I can’t see where I have misrepresented it at all. If I have, I quote liberally and link to the original, and am glad to amend if I’ve inaccurately portrayed the intent of the essay.

Second, I think Babcock is the one who misunderstands what’s going on, and in Rushkoff’s second article I think I see the source of the confusion. There are a couple spots that illustrate. First:

For reasons I cannot understand, people seem to think that my explaining this phenomenon somehow means I want us to go back to a hunter-gatherer stage. Or that I long nostalgically for a return to a late-middle-ages lifestyle. Or that I am somehow renouncing my earlier enthusiasm for new technology and media.

Nothing of the kind.

And here:

When I say it’s okay if the Dow Jones goes down another 70 percent, I’m not calling for an apocalypse. I’m calling for the re-balancing of the speculative economy.

In both cases Rushkoff is correct. Nothing he wrote in either place suggests that he wants to return to the wilderness, nor is he hoping for an apocalypse. Instead, he has a vision of a re-balanced economy based on genuine commerce instead of a rigged game of speculation.

My reaction above makes clear that I think what he’s suggesting would cause the bad things I describe to happen, however. Not that it was Rushkoff’s intent, but rather that it could/would be an unintended result. I didn’t spend all that time talking about uncertainty, our inability to predict and the Butterfly Effect for no reason. My point is that as much as I share his sense for what our economy ought to be, and as much as I sympathize with his assessment of our current rescue policies, I do not believe that his proposed course of action – allowing the market to die, an epic crash where it loses up to 80% of its value, etc. – will get us from Point A to Point B. Or that if it does, it will do so at anything like a tolerable cost.

This, Mr. Babcock, isn’t misrepresentation. It’s a basic disagreement over implications. If you’re going to write people to harangue them about intellectual dishonesty, you’d do well to know the difference.

I have asked Babcock to show me examples of where I have misstated Rushkoff, and as of this update said examples have not arrived. If a credible response eventually does turn up in my mailbox I’ll note it and offer a reply here. ____________
UPDATE 2: It’s Sunday and the ed. at Arthur mag, as anticipated, still hasn’t stepped up to back his charge that I was misrepresenting Rushkoff’s positions. He did, however, make time to delete my comment on the post and a follow-up comment I made a few minutes ago, so his lack of response to my request isn’t because he’s taking the weekend off.

I think I may write Rushkoff directly and invite him to respond here if he so chooses. I may even go so far as to invite him to post at S&R if he likes. He hardly needs us, but we could provide him a with a marginally larger audience and an editor who knows the difference between legitimate disagreement over outcomes and intellectual dishonesty.
____________

• Ludd, Eliza & Ned. “New Luddite: Challenging the Legitimacy of Science and Technology.” November 1995. World Wide Web. February 4 1999.
• Kelly, Kevin. “Interview With the Luddite.” Wired June 1995.
• Murphy, Gary Lawrence. “Are We the Neo-Luddites?” February 1998. World Wide Web. February 4 1999.
• Pynchon, Thomas. “Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?” New York Times Book Review October 28 1984: 1, 40-41.
• Robin, Michael. “Technology for the Coming Millennium: Progress, Technology and Society According to Kirpatrick Sale.” MicroTimes March 4 1996: 138-144, 282-284.
• Rybczynski, W. Taming the Tiger: The Struggle to Control Technology. New York: Penguin Books, 1983.
• Sale, Kirkpatrick. “Lessons From the Luddites: Setting Limits on Technology.” The Nation June 5 1995: 785+.
• Waldrop, M. Mitchell. Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos. Simon & Schuster, 1992.

If this essay has, against all odds, somehow made its way to your desk, please, bear with me. It’s longish, but it winds eventually toward an exceedingly important conclusion. If you’ll give me a few minutes, I’ll do my best to reward your patience.
_______________

In the 2008 election, Barack Obama won a landmark political victory on a couple of prominent themes: “hope” and “change.” He has since been afforded ample opportunity to talk about these ideas, having inherited the nastiest economic quagmire in living memory and a Republican minority in Congress that has interpreted November’s results as a mandate to obstruct the public interest even more rabidly than it was doing before. Reactions among those of us who supported Obama have been predictably mixed, but even those who have been critical of his efforts to date are generally united in their hope that his win signaled the end of “movement conservatism” in the US.

There are perhaps reasons for optimism. Politics in America can be cyclical, and by that thinking our current reactionary hegemony may have run its natural course. The Millennial Generation, which is between 75-100 million strong and extremely active socially and politically, skews heavily away from the policies that have defined the nation since Reagan. And some believe that Obama is the sort of once-in-a-lifetime charismatic who, like John F. Kennedy, can redirect the course of the culture through sheer force of vision and will. If any or all of these things are true, then there is room for … hope.

But while hope is an occasionally helpful frame of mind, it’s no substitute for intelligence, insight, planning, hard work and cash.

As I consider the state of the Republic some 49 days into the Obama era, I find in that formulation a variety of reasons to worry. For starters, it strikes me that very few people – very few, even, of the most visible lights in the progressive firmament – truly understand the magnitude of the conservative climb to power or the nature of the strategy employed. It’s not well understood how long it took, for instance, or how complex the effort was, or how deeply the foundation was poured, or how much it cost. The shallowness of our popular history is a dangerous condition in an age of instant gratification, when winning a skirmish is all-too-easily mistaken for winning the war, and it’s nothing short of terrifying to think that some saw January 20 as the end of the struggle instead of the beginning.

Yes, it was a triumph, and we were right to pause and celebrate, to mark the achievement of a critical milestone, but afterward the collective sigh was nearly audible. I don’t want to overstate the effect, though. I’m not suggesting that a majority of American progressives think the hard part is over, that we can put our society on cruise control and that the wicked Republican Nosferatu is dead once and for all, because that’s simply not the case. Instead, I’m suggesting that we may not sufficiently understand the nature of our opponent and that the failure to stake it through the heart now, while it’s down, assures that it will rise from its all-too-shallow grave to terrorize us once more. The landscape has changed, for sure, but the fundamental engines that propelled the modern reactionary right to power in the first place are alive, well, and already hard at work plotting their resurrection.

The Long War Against America

Let’s take a second to understand a few of the relevant facts regarding the war that still rages around us.

1: The conservative revolution was a generation in the making. Those who laid the groundwork for the eventual ascent of the Republican kwisatz haderach took a long view – an astoundingly long view by American standards – and accepted the occasional tactical setback so long as the eternal march of the faithful continued. One of the godfathers of the movement, Daniel Bell, published his foundational The End of Ideology in 1960, and his intellectual contributions to the landscape we now inhabit can hardly be overstated. In The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973), for instance, he gushed about the coming “information age” and painted a rather rosy picture of the life of the “information worker.” This new post-industrial age would be marked by certain significant shifts in axial principles, and among his more powerful claims was the assertion that growth in the information sector resulted necessarily in prestigious knowledge-based employment. Information sector jobs were depicted as automatically better-paying and more fulfilling.

Krishan Kumar’s 1978 retort (Prophecy and Progress: the Sociology of Industrial and Post-industrial Society) aptly demonstrated the fallacies in Bell’s reasoning. Information-based enterprises, like the industrial sector enterprises which preceded them, have a set of basic operational needs which are neither information nor expertise-based. A software operation, for example, requires the same custodial services as a manufacturing operation. Bell’s rhetoric, however, counts such menial employment by the same standards it uses for programmers and managers. In many practical respects, though, the daily operations of service sector businesses differ little from the industrial sector, and claims that a shift in the type of “product” offered from goods to services equals a change in the fundamental structure of employment ought to be greeted cautiously.

So, there you have a pointed exchange from Daniel Bell and Krishan Kumar, two men that you’ve probably never heard of. But ask yourself, which of the perspectives strikes you as rhetorically familiar? Which argument have you heard, and in service to what kinds of policies?

Right. And here’s how complete the rout was. The most enthusiastic parroting of Bell’s construction I’ve ever run across came from Al Gore when he was Vice President. The Democratic Vice President. Take this snippet from a 1994 speech to the International Telecommunications Union:

Approximately 60% of all US workers are “knowledge workers” — people whose jobs depend on the information they generate and receive over our information infrastructure. As we create new jobs, 8 out of 10 are in information-intensive sectors of our economy. And these new jobs are well-paying jobs for financial analysts, computer programmers, and other educated workers (Gore 1994).

One assumes “knowledge” companies don’t need janitors. Regardless, when we reach the point where our “liberal” leaders are reading directly from the script authored by conservative intellectuals, it’s safe to say that the progressive possibility is in deep, deep trouble.

2: The conservative revolution was built on a strong intellectual and academic foundation. (I do not, by the way, use the term “intellectual” to signify correctness or moral righteousness – one can be intellectual while being wrong and evil.) Given how effectively conservatives have kneecapped education in America, it’s remarkably ironic how important academics were to empowering the movement. Daniel Bell is noted above; he and other intellectuals like Irving Kristol, Milton Friedman, William F. Buckley, Russell Kirk and those associated with a host of conservative “think tanks” like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution worked diligently to re-engineer the very DNA of America’s popular ideology. They sought to understand the collective psyche in ways that could be shifted, altered and exploited, and their efforts to deconstruct and re-encode our shared vocabulary is among the grandest achievements in the history of human propaganda. Turning “liberal” into a dirty word was barely the beginning.

These efforts mattered more than it is possible to quantify. As the neo-Marxist scholar Stuart Hall explains, the “battle of signification” is everything. Whoever wins the struggle to dictate to vocabulary used will win the debate.* Think about the abortion “debate” and the clever, almost-always unchallenged construction of “unborn human life.” If that phrase is allowed to stand, the pro-choicer has nearly zero chance of winning the argument.

3: The conservative movement was incredibly well-funded. And still is. One source estimates that between the late 1970s and late 1990s alone 12 major conservative foundations funneled hundreds of millions of dollars – at least – to think tanks, policy organizations, individual scholars, media apparatuses, legal organizations, advocacy groups and more. The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Koch Family foundations, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Scaife Family foundations and the Adolph Coors Foundation are five of the biggest donors.

In 1988, the Olin Foundation alone distributed $55 million in grants. The Scaife family has donated more than $200 million over the years. Million dollar annual grants to individual think tanks are routine.

These Foundations have also been instrumental in creating the most famous think tanks. The Heritage Foundation, considered the leading think tank in America, was created in 1973 with $250,000 in seed money from brewery mogul Joseph Coors. The Cato Institute, the nation’s leading libertarian think tank, was founded in 1977 by the Koch family foundations. )

….
According to the Center for Policy Alternatives, the major conservative think tanks in Washington had a combined budget of $45.9 million, while the major progressive think tanks had a combined budget of $10.2 million. What this means is that far-right think tanks are better able to publicize their findings, stage more conferences, lobby harder for their policies, and present more and better-packaged information before Congress.

Not too put too fine a point on it, but conservative interests have a lot of cash and they’ve proven conclusively that they’re willing to invest it in programs that assure their continued political, social, cultural and economic domination.

And while I hate to oversimplify complex dynamics, it must be said that the points I have just made go a long way toward explaining the last 30+ years of American political history. Yes, there are other factors, but subtract the cash and the intellectual groundwork it bought and our current landscape would look dramatically different. Whether that’s a good thing I’ll let you decide for yourself. My opinion is probably obvious, but I’m not a billionaire.

What Must Be Done

In The Conscience of a Liberal, Paul Krugman does a meticulous job of explaining how we got here from there – “there” being the New Deal society that stands today as the Golden Age of American prosperity. Toward the end he sounds an optimistic note, suggesting that some of the factors that played key roles in the rise of movement conservatism are waning – racism, for instance – and that without their broad mobilizing power the conservatives are in deep kim-chee. There is ample evidence supporting his claims, so perhaps he’s right. I certainly hope so. But if I might return to my vampire metaphor from earlier, when you have the soul-sucking undead bastard down, you don’t stand around hoping. You drive a stake through its evil, demonic heart.

Right now, almost 50 days into the Obama administration, we have Dracula on the canvas. And this is where you, my friends, come in. The way we assure an enlightened future for our nation is to act, and act resolutely, to make sure that movement conservatism stays down. In order to accomplish this, we need to proceed along the following fronts:

We must empower progressive intellectuals the way the Right has empowered theirs. As researchers like George Lakoff have demonstrated, much of the conservative success emerged from how they framed issues and re-encoded the very language we all speak. Political lingustics is an important field – as noted earlier – and if we can successfully keep the English language from being transformed into Newspeak we will hamstring the conservative noise machine in a meaningful way.

However, Lakoff’s Rockridge Institute recently closed its doors and various of its brightest lights are currently seeking to find funds to build on its work. Put simply, the bright lights on the Right are living well while our brightest and best are, as is so often the case, struggling to survive.

We must restore credibility and integrity to the media. As I’ve noted elsewhere, things began to unravel in earnest when Reagan’s newly appointed FCC apparatchiks were allowed to decree, with a straight face, that “the public interest is what the public is interested in.” Newspeak, indeed. Now reporting has been replaced by “fair and balanced” and there is a frighteningly real risk that journalism – real journalism – is dying.

Its future, if it has one, perhaps lies in endowment. I’ve heard a variety of ideas tossed around, including Mother Jones’ new tilt at non-profit journalism. I can’t say what the successful model will look like at this point, but if it emerges, it will center on the insulation of reporting and analysis from the influence of cash and spin.

We must revitalize our educational infrastructure around the imperatives of intellectual inquiry and critical thought. We have seemingly convinced ourselves that the only proper function of education is job training, and that’s an ideology that serves an identifiable master. Specifically, let’s ask ourselves who benefits when an ed system cranks out people with “marketable” skills but no capability for asking uneasy questions about their condition.

There is no surer innoculation against tyranny than a critically minded citizenry. To this end we must invest in education – and I say “invest” instead of “spend” because every dollar you spend is returned to you several times over – and invest mightily. Invest in educational innovation, in new ways of teaching everything from basic math and science to advanced reasoning skills. Invest heavily in early childhood reading programs, because nothing better energizes subsequent, lifelong learning. And most of all, invest in public education. The next time you hear somebody ranting about the marvels of vouchers and “competition” in education, remember a few things.

First, America has historically out-learned, out-taught, out-researched and out-innovated every nation on the face of the Earth. The people who did that were, in most cases, the products of public education.

Second, we’ve always had alternatives to public ed – “competition,” if you will. Private schools, parochial schools, and so on. If competition cured all ills, then how do we explain the state of contemporary public ed?

Third, we have more alternatives than ever today. We have the options noted in the previous item, plus Montessoris and Charters and again, all this competition seems not to have solved our problems.

Finally, the next time you hear rosy conservative rhetoric that seems at little at odds with the empirical world you live in, remember – we live in an age where the language has been re-tooled to serve the ends of a narrow minority. It’s possible, just possible, that you’re hearing propaganda instead of fact. And always feel free to backtrack the data. It may just come from one of those marvelously well-funded conservative “think tanks.”

In summary: Dear Progressive Billionaires, America needs your money. And I don’t mean a million here and million there. I mean hundreds of millions, even billions. If we are to realize any meaningful dreams of hope and change, we must have a world where our brightest and best can apply their minds to our shared problems as professionals. When their intellects are doing it for a living and ours are trying to carve out a couple hours after work, we lose. When their brightest minds are primarily concerned with crafting winning policy and ours are constantly distracted by desperate concerns about their ability to feed their families, they win.

Money isn’t everything, but since you’re a billionaire I’ll assume that you understand a thing or two about what it can accomplish.

Thanks for your time. If you find some value in what I’ve said but aren’t sure where to start, click the Contact button and drop me a line. I know people who are worthy of your generosity and people who will reward your support a thousand times over.

Sincerely,

Sam Smith

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* See “The work of representation.” in Stuart Hall (ed.) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage/The Open University, 1997), 13-74.

It’s not yet known who was behind the attack.

Paul Preston, who runs the network, was understandably at the point of despair early today, posting a note saying that the operation was dead. Fortunately his latest missive notes that things are stabilized and moving ahead, and for this we’re grateful.

With luck today’s events will result in the development of a more reliable infrastructure. Paul has done heroic work building and maintaining SoapBlox, but like a lot of us out here, he’s been doing so with precious little support or resources. Perhaps today’s hack was inevitable, and I hope that it won’t be long before we can all look back and say things like “that was the best thing that ever happened to the progressive blog network.”

UPDATE: New statement from SoapBlox provides additional details.

Meanwhile, I don’t know if anyone has yet had time to call the FBI. If not, it needs to happen soon. Never mind the nature of the views being expressed on these sites – this attack was a naked broadside aimed at the very infrastructure of public speech and discourse in America, just as surely as if vandals had destroyed the presses used by the likes of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine back in the 1700s. As long as the United States professes to be in the free speech business, actions like these cannot be allowed to stand.

Those responsible need to be found and brought to justice, and we at Scholars & Rogues hope that the incoming Attorney General feels as strongly on this point as we do.

S&R, on the other hand, writes about music. About literature and poetry. About art. Education. Sports. Culture and popular culture. The Ramsey case and what it tells us about the state of media. And now that the election is over, S&R is writing about politics less than ever.

So really, what is S&R?

One response might argue that tout est politique. I’ve never been terribly comfortable with totalizing positions like this, though, because they tend to trivialize – if everything is politics, then nothing is. However, there’s no denying the fundamental truth that many things we don’t commonly associate with politics are powerfully political in their implications.

Take popular music, for instance. It’s impossible to consider the sweeping cultural and political upheavals of the 1960s without the soundtrack – Dylan, The Beatles, Woodstock…the list goes on and on. Some of those artists were quite explicitly agitating for political reform while others wove themselves into the social tapestry in less obvious ways, but the sum total of the music of that decade was inherently political.

Contrast that with the music of the Bush administration. Where was the protest, the outcry? Who was the Dylan of the 2000s? What record will we be comparing, come 2024, with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band?

The absence of such a voice was not an accident. Part of the grand conservative plan, the blitzkrieg that was launched upon Reagan’s inauguration, was the neutering of music’s political possibility. When Ronnie’s FCC hacks, Fowler and Brenner, decreed that “the public interest is what the public is interested in,” it did so in order to subvert, once and for all, the power of the creative social mind to the will of corporate logic. It dismantled radio ownership limits that assured a massive diversity of options for artists and audiences alike, and found its ultimate expression in Clear Channel’s pro-war, pro-Bush rallies and the banishment of those who chose to give voice to their dissent (the most notable case being the attempted silencing of The Dixie Chicks).

So when our generation needed to be marching in the streets and demanding an end to the outrage in Iraq, where was the soundtrack? Who ultimately benefited from those policies way back in the early ’80s? We’re fighting an unjust invasion and occupation and the rallies in the streets are for the war?! Corporate-sponsored pro-war rallies?!

When I’m writing a TunesDay piece on some band or another, providing a video link or encouraging you to check it out at eMusic, part of what’s going on is purely and simply about the music as art. But it’s also about the bigger picture, about the need for our culture to build a strong platform whereby artists can be heard. If they use this platform to sing silly love songs, that’s fine, so long as the platform is there when they need to sing about injustice. I recently did a piece promoting The Well Wishers, Maximo Park and The Dandy Warhols, and none of these bands may ever contribute a note to the cause of world peace. On the other hand, if I flash back to 1997 and Green Day’s Nimrod, I’m not sure I could have predicted American Idiot, a manifesto so powerful that not even the soul-deadening corporate might of Clear Channel could contain it.

What political blogs do is important, especially in a society where the legacy press has largely abdicated its responsibility to watchdog our institutions of power. Who Obama selects to run the State Department matters. His choices for Treasury and Defense and our various intelligence and military leadership posts matter tremendously.

But empires rarely rise and fall as a result of a couple close-in political knife fights. In my view, a great deal of what even the best poliblogs do is tactical, street-level and near-term. This isn’t true across the board, of course. There are outstanding thinkers and writers who are looking at the big picture and the long term. And this is where I think S&R has done and will continue to do its best work. Not in the political battle, but the culture war.

We may debate some of the nuances and specifics amongst ourselves, but in general it’s safe to say that those of us here at Scholars & Rogues have a shared vision of a more progressive society. I don’t use that word in any sort of conventional, partisan sense. By “progressive” I mean more enlightened; better educated; more appreciative of the cultural arts; better informed about the forces shaping our world; more productively spiritual (and less dogmatically sectarian) in our approach to life; more generous and charitable; more tolerant and more willing to understand the value of diversity; more committed to community and the common good; more literate; more intellectually curious and prone to critical thought; more responsive to the well-reasoned than to the passionately felt; and above all, more insistent that those we choose to represent us, to lead us and to govern us be the best America has to offer, not the worst.

Some of the solutions that get us to our destination may be “liberal” by our current reckoning, some “conservative.” The best ideas may be “idealistic” or they may be “pragmatic.” But in the end, I think most of us believe that a society that reads – in an environment uncluttered by censorship, either active or passive, governmental or cultural or corporate – is in better shape than one that doesn’t read or won’t. A society whose citizens not only have knowledge in their heads, but who have been trained to use it in innovative ways is more likely to solve more problems faster and more effectively. A country that thinks and thinks relentlessly is nearly immune to the machinations of despotism. A nation whose mythologies make clear that war is the last resort, not the first, is more likely to achieve greatness both at home and abroad. A nation whose media structures are designed to foster the best that is thought and created is one whose streets are less likely to flow with the blood of aggrieved citizens. A culture where competition aims to help people up the ladder instead of keeping them in their place is one that maximizes its collective genius. A political economy where genuine opportunity arises from a level playing field is certainly more likely to produce spectacular successes than one where the reality is that of a rigged game played beneath a banner of cynical egalitarian rhetoric.

And the most actualized of all possible societies is one where happiness and satisfaction have nothing at all to do with purchasing power.

This is what I think Scholars & Rogues is. We’ve covered a lot of ground since we launched less than two years ago, and at that point I deliberately chose not to compose a mission statement. Our philosophy was simple: invite the smartest people we could find to share their thoughts and trust the power of that intellect to start great conversations, attract more great minds and build the foundation of a thriving community. With that in place, I wanted to learn what we were rather than dictating what we would be.

Some of what we write may look trivial at first, and the occasional item may even prove trivial in the final analysis. But I think we now have a good sense of what we are and why our readers keep stopping by. We hope our political writings are worthy in the coming months and (if we’re lucky) years, and we expect that our audience will grasp the deeper political mission embedded in our far-flung musings.

Meanwhile, we’ll continue to work toward a better culture, and in doing so will trust that if you enlighten the people and establish social structures that exalt the best they have to offer, the merely political will take care of itself.

State populations in the South and Southwest will have grown appreciably more than in the Midwest and Northeast, reflecting immigration and migration trends that took root after World War II. Consequently, the shift of political power from the latter to the former will continue (see map). For example, the population of California, the most populous state in the union and larger than all but 34 nations, will grow nearly 8 percent from 2000 to 2010 — but California will lose a seat in the House.

Following redistricting is important because reapportionment and redistricting may shift power in the House of Representatives. How great a shift depends on an intricate political calculus involving party control of legislatures and governorships.

This decennial dance may determine which party is best positioned to retain or regain control of the House following 2012 elections. That’s why Howard Dean, chair of the Democratic National Committee, pushed his “50-State Strategy” to rule as many state legislatures as possible to take control of mapping new congressional district boundaries. The Democrats now control both chambers in 27 states. But did it really work? In the 21 states expected to gain or lose House seats, 16 seats are at issue with the GOP holding the upper hand for more than half.

In this post, S&R examines states likely to lose or gain House seats through reapportionment and the role and influence of state legislatures and governors in redistricting.

Redistricting is complex, controversial

Given the recent gerrymandering debacles in one state alone — Texas — the early months of the next decade are likely to show American politics at its worst. After all, the deposed speaker of the House, Tom DeLay, demonstrated how to redraw congressional district lines to unduly influence the ability of Texas Republicans to gain seats in the House. Now, here’s the bad news — after reapportionment following the 2010 census, Texas is expected to gain four seats in the House. And you betcha that they’ll be carved out to add four Republican seats in the House that could erode the current Democratic majority. Think Mr. DeLay’s still out of politics? He may be, but the political processes he used are assuredly not.

Redistricting is perhaps the most complicated and mysterious of American political processes because 1) it may differ from state to state due to law and what party controls what arms of government, 2) it is often involves horse-trading out of the public eye, and 3) it has habitually been inadequately covered by the press because of the previous two reasons. As John Dean wrote in Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches:

Political pundits and commentators dismiss “process issues” by claiming they are of no interest to Americans. They are wrong. … Today, in Washington, process is the name of the game, and those who do not understand this fact are operating in ignorance. Political observers who do not make an effort to understand process matters will remain uninformed.

To understand redistricting, a useful text is “A Citizen’s Guide to Redistricting” by Justin Levitt and Bethany Foster of the Brennan Center for Justice, available as a pdf.

Mr. Levitt and Ms. Foster point out that redistricting matters because it allows politicians to choose their voters, eliminate incumbents — or challengers — from opposing parties, pack districts with partisan supporters, dilute the influence of minority voters, and split communities along unnatural lines.

Therefore it’s important for political observers in any state to be aware of who redraws district lines. In each state, the usual recipe of influences includes the governor, the leaders of the state House and state Senate, and, sometimes, members of “advisory commissions” on redistricting. In most states, the legislature redraws districts with the governor enjoying veto power, which, in turn, can be overridden by the legislature. And, of course, when no one agrees, the courts step in.

Now, imagine differing combinations of party control in a state: One party holding the governorship and both chambers of the legislature; one party holding the governorship but neither chamber of the legislature; and one party holding the governorship but the legislature divided by party. This is where redistricting can get messy.

Reapportionment after 2010: Winners and losers

Here’s a look at the states expected to gain or lose House seats following the 2010 census. (Clark Benson of Polidata, a political research firm, provided the estimates of gain or loss. Redistricting schemes are primarily drawn from the Brennan Center guide.)

ARIZONA: currently 8 seats; gains 2. Voted for Sen. McCain, 54 percent to 45. Senate: even; House: GOP. DEM Gov. Janet Napolitano. Uses a commission (two DEM, two GOP, one Independent) with exclusive authority. Governor cannot veto. (If Gov. Napolitano gives up her seat to become head of the Department of Homeland Security, GOP Secretary of State Jan Brewer will automatically become governor.) Current seats: 5 DEM, 3 GOP.

CALIFORNIA: currently 53 seats; loses 1. Voted for president-elect Obama, 61-38. Senate: DEM; House: DEM. GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Legislature draws districts; governor can veto. Current seats: 34 DEM, 18 GOP.

FLORIDA: currently 25 seats; gains 2. Voted for president-elect Obama, 51-49. Senate: GOP; House: GOP. GOP Gov. Charlie Crist. Legislature draws districts; governor can veto. Current seats: 15 GOP, 10 DEM.

GEORGIA: currently 13 seats; gains 1. Voted for Sen. McCain, 52-47. Senate: GOP; House: GOP. GOP Gov. Sonny Perdue. Legislature draws districts; governor can veto. Current seats: GOP 7, DEM 6.

ILLINOIS: currently 19 seats; loses 1. Voted for president-elect Obama, 62-37. House: DEM; Senate: DEM. DEM Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Legislature draws districts; governor can veto. Current seats: 12 DEM, 7 GOP.

IOWA: currently 5 seats; loses 1. Voted for president-elect Obama, 54-45. Senate: DEM; House: DEM. DEM Gov. Chet Culver. Nonpartisan legislative staff draw district maps sans political or election data that are submitted to the legislature for approval. If the legislature cannot agree, the state Supreme Court may approve the maps. Current seats: 3 DEM, 2 GOP.

LOUISIANA: currently 7 seats; loses 1. Voted for Sen. McCain, 51-49. Senate: DEM; House: DEM. GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal. Legislature draws districts; governor can veto. Current seats: 4 GOP, 1 DEM.

MASSACHUSETTS: currently 10 seats; loses 1. Voted for president-elect Obama, 62-36. Senate: DEM; House: DEM. DEM Gov. Deval Patrick. Legislature draws districts; governor can veto. Following the 2000 census, the Democratically controlled Legislature overrode the then-Republican governor’s veto of new district maps. Current seats: 10 DEM.

MICHIGAN: currently 15; loses 1. Voted for president-elect Obama, 57-41. Senate: GOP; House: DEM. DEM Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Legislature draws districts; governor can veto. (If Gov. Granholm is tapped for a post in the Obama administration, her seat would be filled by DEM Lt. Gov. John Cherry, but the new lieutenant governor would be chosen by the GOP-controlled state Senate.) Current seats: 8 DEM, 7 GOP.

MINNESOTA: currently 8; loses 1. Voted for president-elect Obama, 54-44. Senate: DEM; House: DEM. GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Legislature draws districts; governor can veto. Following the 2000 census, with no legislative agreement, state Supreme Court drew lines. Current seats: 5 DEM, 3 GOP.

MISSOURI: currently 9; loses 1. Voted for Sen. McCain, 50-49. Senate: GOP; House: GOP. GOP Gov. Matt Blunt. Legislature draws districts; governor can veto. Following the 2000 census, absent legislative agreement, a court drew district lines. Current seats: 5 GOP, 4 DEM.

NEVADA: currently 3 seats; gains 1. Voted for president-elect Obama, 55-43. Senate: DEM (change); House: DEM. GOP Gov. Jim Gibbons. Legislature draws districts; governor can veto. Current seats: 2 DEM, 1 GOP.

NEW JERSEY: currently 13 seats; loses 1. Voted for president-elect Obama, 57-42. Senate: DEM; House: DEM. DEM Gov. Jon Corzine. Uses political commission selected by majority and minority leaders and state major party chairs; governor cannot veto. (If Gov. Corzine, a former U.S. senator, takes a post in the Obama administration, DEM Senate President Dick Codey would succeed him.) Current seats: 8 DEM, 5 GOP.

NEW YORK: currently 29; loses 2. Voted for president-elect Obama, 62-39. Senate: DEM (change); House: DEM. DEM Gov. Paterson. Uses an advisory commission; governor can veto. Current seats: 26 DEM, 3 GOP.

NORTH CAROLINA: currently 13 seats; gains 1. Voted for president-elect Obama, 50-49. Senate: DEM; House: DEM. DEM Gov. Mike Easley. Legislature draws districts; governor cannot veto. Current seats: 8 DEM, 5 GOP.

OHIO: currently 18 seats; loses 2. Voted for president-elect Obama, 51-47. Senate: GOP; House: DEM (change). DEM Gov. Ted Strickland. Advisory commission draws districts; governor can veto. Redistricting, controlled by the GOP in 2001, may be more contentious with a divided legislature. (If Gov. Strickland, a prominent early supporter of president-elect Obama, leaves office for an Obama administration post, he would be succeeded by DEM Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher.) Current seats: 9 DEM, 8 GOP.

OREGON: currently 5 seats; gains 1. Voted for president-elect Obama, 57-41. Senate: DEM; House: DEM. DEM Gov. Ted Kulongoski. Legislature draws districts; governor can veto. Following the 2000 census, DEM Gov. John Kitzhaber vetoed a Republican-backed redistricting bill; a court drew the lines. Current seats: 4 DEM, 1 GOP.

PENNSYLVANIA: currently 19 seats; loses 1. Voted for president-elect Obama, 55-44. Senate: GOP; House: DEM. DEM Gov. Ed Rendell. Legislature draws districts; governor can veto. Current seats: 12 DEM, 7 GOP.

SOUTH CAROLINA: currently 6 seats; gains 1. Voted for Sen. McCain, 54-45. Senate: GOP; House: GOP. GOP Gov. Mark Sanford. Legislature draws districts; governor can veto. Following the 2000 census, DEM Gov. James Hovis Hodges vetoed a GOP-backed legislative plan; a court drew district lines. Current seats: 4 GOP, 2 DEM.

TEXAS: currently 32 seats; gains 4. Voted for Sen. McCain, 55-44. Senate: GOP; House: GOP. GOP Gov. Rick Perry. Legislature draws districts; governor can veto. Following the 2000 census, no agreement was reached by the GOP governor, GOP Senate, and DEM House; the redistricting battle was partly settled by the U.S. Supreme Court and cemented Rep. Tom DeLay’s iconic reputation through what writer Jeffrey Toobin called “a Promethean display of political power.” Current seats: 20 GOP, 12 DEM.

UTAH: currently 3 seats; gains 1. Voted for Sen. McCain, 63-34. Senate: GOP; House: GOP. GOP Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. Legislature draws districts; governor can veto. Current seats: 2 GOP, 1 DEM.

Some states, while not gaining or losing House seats through reapportionment, may have to redistrict because of changes in population density within the states, perhaps producing changes in which party holds specific seats.

The struggle to control state legislatures

The 2006 and 2008 elections left America with the fewest number of politically divided legislatures since 1982, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Democrats control 27 statehouses, the Republicans control 14, and 7 statehouses are split. (Nebraska is unicameral.)

The Democratic Party believed control of the House of Representatives could in large measure be achieved by focusing on gaining control of both chambers of state legislatures. Democrats underwrote that effort principally through the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, according to Rachel Morris, writing in Washington Monthly:

[M]any national Democrats have been turning their attention to elections for state legislatures, which in all but eight states draw the boundaries of congressional seats according to the census. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), a K-Street political organization focused on state races, is helping candidates in places like Michigan with money, fundraising assistance, training, and logistical support. Emily’s List, a large political action committee that aims to elect more pro-choice women to Congress, is also pouring resources into state campaigns, and training both male and female candidates with the aim of winning legislative chambers to control redistricting. And this August, the DLCC, along with other national groups, established a tax-exempt organization called Foundation for the Future, which plans to raise and spend $17 million to coordinate Democrats’ long-term redistricting efforts. Political reporters this year have been understandably consumed with the few dozen close congressional races that could shift the balance of power in Washington after November. But they’ve missed a similarly fierce and focused battle over state legislative seats, one that could be just as important in determining control of the House in the not-so-distant future. [emphasis added]

That strategy appears, at first glance, to have succeeded. Democrats now control legislatures in 27 states, compared with the GOP’s 14. Of the 21 states (listed earlier) expected to gain or lose House seats, state legislatures draw district boundaries in 17. Of the 21 lose-or-gain states, Democrats control 11 legislatures; the GOP controls 6.

But the states held by Democrats represent a net loss of 8 seats; those controlled by the GOP represent a net gain of 9 seats. The states legislatively controlled by Democrats have a combined 113 Democratic House seats and 49 GOP House seats. The states legislatively controlled by Republicans have a combined 35 Democratic seats and 53 GOP seats.

Is it possible that despite controlling more state legislatures in gain-or-loss states, the Democrats could actually lose seats in the House through reapportionment and redistricting? State legislators are politicians. Within the limitations set by law, they will use redistricting to protect their parties’ interests. But if the Democrats control states that will have net loss of seats in the House, how will their party be best served?

The power of governors

Governors enjoy potent political influence over redistricting. As politicians, they are the titular heads of their parties. Through patronage, they can reward or punish the behaviors of others — such as legislators. They can choose to campaign — or not — for legislative incumbents or challengers. Governors simply know too many people — and have influence over them — throughout their states for their political clout to be ignored during redistricting battles.

In many states, governors, while by law not the principal author of new district lines, hold veto power over legislatively drafted districts. (Note that in cases where governors and legislatures cannot agree, courts often step in to draw district lines.) Obviously, it is to the advantage of a party to control both the governorship and both chambers of the legislature.

Following the 2008 elections, Democrats control governments in 16 states; Republicans are in charge in only 9 states. But …

Democrats rule over 16 states that represent, after reapportionment, a net loss of 5 House seats; The GOP commands 9 states that represent a net gain of 9 House seats.

More change is ahead. Writes Sam Stein at HuffPo:

An abundance of [governorships] are in play. There will be 36 gubernatorial races in 2010, compared to 11 such elections this cycle. Of those 36, 19 are for state houses currently held by Democrats. And of those 19, ten will involve Democratic governors who won’t be running for reelection (either because of term limits or retirement). …

In 28 states, the governor has the authority to veto any redistricting plan. In eight separate states, the governor can veto only a congressional plan. In another five states, the governor is responsible for appointing members to the redistricting board. And in three states — not separate — the governor is directly involved in redrawing the district him or herself. In only eight states does the executive body actually not play a role. As both Democratic and Republican officials readily acknowledge, the partisan makeup of a newly shaped congressional district will almost certainly reflect the politics of the sitting governor. [emphasis added]

The Democrats have enjoyed enormous successes in Congress since 2004 and now control the federal government. A Democrat will sit in the White House. Democrats will run the Senate and the House. But the key to continuance of Democratic control lies in the states. Over the next three years, 49 states will have gubernatorial races. Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson has written that “[r]ight now, the GOP is executing a plan to take 38 governorships over the next three years. If they accomplish this, they will have the power to shrewdly alter election district borders and steal back Congress.”

Similarly, margins of Democratic control in state legislatures are often narrow. A statement on redistricting by the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee says, “Currently, of the 36 state legislatures that control Congressional redistricting, 27 chambers in 21 of these states are within 5 seats of tying or changing hands. These 21 states control 260 Congressional districts.”

Democrats and progressives may rejoice at the televised images of a chastised GOP being driven out of D.C., its tail between its legs.

They shouldn’t get too comfy, and they certainly ought to keep their eyes on coming races for state legislatures and governorships. That’s where power will be maintained — or lost.

So I spent some time digging, looking for data that may tell us something about how America is constructed at our current moment in time. Specifically, I went in search of information that would reveal something about the cultural progress we’re making. I’m not the first to do something along these lines – this red state/blue state comparison from after the Bush/Kerry election was revealing, to say the least – but I think it’s important to continue tracking ourselves according to how we’re doing on the values that are most likely to drive us onward and upward.

I focused on things like basic measures of prosperity, education, the arts, and so on. My reasons are pretty simple – education, in particular, is probably the single most important determiner for achievement and social health. More educated people earn more money, engage in fewer anti-social behaviors, contribute more to the economic and tax base, drive more innovation, and so on. Education is strongly linked to any number of economic vitality measures, and a recent study “finds the number of jobs created by increasing education spending is larger than jobs lost from raising taxes to support that spending.” On the whole, there’s no desirable social quality I’m familiar with that doesn’t correlate strongly with education.

I doubt my findings are going to tell you anything you probably don’t already know, but still, maybe the pictures will be interesting.

First, a note or two on methodology. What I did, in essence, was note that we have 51 jurisdictions voting for the president – 50 states + Washington, DC. Obama carried 29, McCain 22. So I color-coded each measure according to that 29-22 break in a way that will make sense once you look at it. Blue represents the high side – the top 29 jurisdictions – and red the low 22. This is not scientific, nor is it intended to be. The data I was able to find is imperfect in places, and I wish some of it were a little more current. The break around the 29-30 mark is often based on minute differences, and so on. So take these maps for exactly what they are – rough depictions of how our nation breaks down along a variety of subjective measures.

Let’s start by having a look at the electoral results from the presidential election.

Next, let’s see how these results correlate with financial well-being. The first graphic here indicates average pay.

Per capita income rates are obviously quite similar…

…as are median household income rates.

It appears that Obama did well in states where people are comparatively better off financially.

Now, let’s compare these maps with a few that tell us about our commitment to education. First, have a look at this graph, which depicts adult population levels with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

If you’re noticing that there’s a higher concentration of grads in blue states, maybe it’s because these states tend to spend more on education.

We don’t exactly lavish our teachers with money anywhere, but again, they have it better in blue states.

I’m not exactly sure what this next map tells us, but it’s interesting to note the relationship between income levels, attendance rates and voting behaviors.

At this stage, we at least have enough evidence to suspect a relationship between academic achievement, financial success and education. We probably won’t be surprised at what happens when we begin adding arts expenditures to the equation. Here, for instance, we see state appropriations for arts organizations.

The Americans for the Arts Action Fund report card evaluations returned results that look strikingly similar.

Do you see a pattern? I know I do. And I suspect that if I had excellent data on every measure of progressive tendency I can think of, the pattern would be even stronger. Is the correlation perfect? Of course not – if you overlay all these maps, what emerges looks like this:

So no, we’re not as perfect bifurcated as we might fear. And that’s good news.

While I hate how we’ve had our country turned into a red vs. blue battleground, for now the colors illustrate something important. Here, blue stands for prosperity, educational achievement and a commitment to the pursuit of our higher selves. And on these measures, bluer is better.

Sources

• National Education Association
• US Census Bureau
• ArtsUSA.org
• Arts Action Fund.org

I begin with this because in the last month or two some of my progressive allies have been getting on my nerves. Case in point: the just-won’t-die AIG fake scandal. Many of the Dem types I read and occasionally interact with are fine people with noble intentions and a relentless commitment to working for a better and more equitable society, but not all of them have much in the way of actual experience and knowledge where the conduct of real business is concerned. Sometimes I find myself reading opinions and “analysis” that make me wonder what kinds of jobs the writer has actually had. Beltway progressive advocacy org: check. Low-level Congressional staffer: check. Job with for-profit business: not so check.

The unfortunate upshot is that some of these folks wind up talking out of their asses.

When the story of AIG’s $400K retreat broke, my colleague JS O’Brien, whose impeccable, unimpeachable progressive credentials are augmented by tremendous amounts of business experience and particular expertise as a compensation specialist for large corporations, penned an informed, reasoned, insightful explanation for why this wasn’t a scandal at all. I injected this piece into a raging debate on one of my lists, and followed it up with some comments of my own – because I, too, have spent a good portion of the past couple decades working in and with corporate enterprises of one sort or another. Here’s what I said:

It’s not about whether the thing COULD be done so much as it’s about whether doing it one way gets better results than another. What JS O’Brien explains in the post is dead-on – a big part of my job over the past few years has been sales training and I’ve worked one president’s club for a big company that was my client. Salespeople respond to money, sure, but you won’t believe the lengths they’ll go to in order to earn their way into the PC.

At the core, this is a math question. Spending $X might seem extravagant (and the one I worked was in fact quite extravagant), and it’s easy to point to it and say hey, that’s ridiculous (or even obscene, if you like). But if spending $X results in behavior that returns $5X, it’s not a bad deal at all. This is especially true when that $5X allows the company to expand, hire more people, enter new markets, and so on.

Additionally, that outlay goes to people who work for a living. Bartenders, grounds crews, all kinds of service types at the hotel and resort, and then you factor in the money these people spend shopping (often at local places) and on activities. For instance, the company I did the project for spent a small fortune with local tour businesses, like the mud-bogging tour I got to do. The kids running that tour were the furthest thing from fat cats, and the simple fact is that this one lavish corporate outing put a lot of money in the pockets of those that people like us are working on behalf of – if I might stereotype a second, the honest American worker.

By the way, the company I worked for at the time was a small consultancy made up of good people trying to survive some hard times (this was back in early 2004, I think, and the company was not in great shape). The money we earned was important to the firm and it was extremely important to a couple of people who worked there – myself included.

This is not as simple a case as the MSM has made it. I can’t say specifically in the AIG case whether the money they spent turned out to be a good investment, but in general it’s a common practice that produces results that are good for the people we care about.

Those in the forum who bothered to acknowledge me at all were dismissive, and one prominent member responded with something along the lines of: “Screw this. AIG should be hung.” I may not have his words exactly right, but this is the extent of his analysis. No evidence. No reasoning. No engagement with a single word that either JS or I had written. Just “fuck it – hang ‘em all.” It was like trying to debate a pre-schooler.

And of course, you can’t debate a pre-schooler, any more than you can an ideologue.

(I should make clear here – because I don’t want to be guilty of knocking down straw men – that not everybody on the left [and not everybody on the forum in question, either] is as simplistic and, well, silly as the person I call out above. In fact, a couple people who’ve had business experience wrote to make roughly the same point that JS and I were making. So all isn’t lost – I’m just hoping to hear more from the latter than the former over the next four-eight years.)

Tim Reason, writing at CFO.com, points out how genuinely non-outrageous AIG’s latest sins against common decency really are:

Financial planners, of course, recommend insurance products to their clients, so this is a marketing event for AIG. Moreover, AIG managed to get 93 percent of the tab paid for by sponsors, and the financial planners paid a registration fee and their own travel. AIG paid the remaining cost — about $23,000 — out of pocket. That works out to about $153 per financial planner — an extraordinarily low cost.

$153 per potential channel partner? Damn, where can my company find that kind of efficiency?

Not only that, but “the company has canceled more than 160 meetings or conferences in the past month.” Reason asks, quite rightly: what are companies supposed to do? Quit marketing?

If they did suspend business operations and refrain from profitable activity – which is pretty much what we’re talking about here – what possible way would it benefit … well, anybody?

Nobody has to tell me about out-of-control corporateering. Part of working in this world as long as I have involves seeing stupidity, excess, wastefulness, stupidity, greed and stupidity. A lot of America’s convicted corporate leaders deserve what they’ve gotten, and unfortunately too many others have been allowed to profit from incompetence and bad faith actions that wrought severe damage in the lives of good, hard-working citizens. I wish the very worst for these and will support, as strongly as I am able, business and regulatory reforms aimed at ending the looting once and for all.

But I won’t sit quietly while allegedly smart people pretend that all business leaders are criminals and that every expenditure is treason.

In a follow-up piece, Reason acknowledges past instances of bad behavior by AIG but sensibly explains that punishing good behavior is counter-productive. He then puts the onus on the press, the politicians and public, explaining that

The inability of the media, the government, and the public to distinguish between corporate excess and ordinary business is the result of the very same financial illiteracy that got us into this mess in the first place.

Exactly.

Now that the Busheviks have been deposed us progressives find ourselves in a new role, and this is going to be a particular challenge for those of us whose brands have been defined by outsider bitching. We have to find ways of harnessing our intellects and energies to the task of governance, of driving policy and reform, of finding a balance between supercharging that which is good about capitalism while disabling that which is bad.

I hope I’m able to do my part without getting drummed out of the Enlightened Brotherhood, but if that’s how it has to be, well, I’ve never been much of a joiner, anyhow…

For the longest time progressives were the opposition, the outsiders, and were in a sort of no-lose position. It’s easy to bitch (especially when you’ve got an administration like Bush’s providing more targets than you have ammo to shoot at), but being in charge of the agenda and having the power to actually do things, well, that’s another situation entirely.

Sara Robinson, who’s quite simply one of the brightest minds in the whole darned blogosphere, has some extremely useful thoughts on the subject of what comes next. In a nutshell, she says we need a community, not a movement. A snippet:

It’s not uncommon for movements to fall prey to the old Zen principle, “What you resist, persists.” We’re all familiar with lefties whose battles against The Man eventually left them every bit as authoritarian and paranoid as the power structures they worked to overthrow. The eternal tendency to become that which we most despise makes permanent opposition an inherently unsound way to organize a group for the long haul.

Communities have a different purpose, and different internal dynamics—and this model may be better suited to the new environment we find ourselves in now. Like organizations, they’re built to last. But where organizations are founded to achieve goals that they too often outlive, communities are living, renewable, organic entities that are held together by a workable social contract, a common cultural identity, complex social and family structures, dependable bonds of trust, and a strong set of shared values. They’re about inclusion, not exclusion; and exist for mutual support and survival, not status. They are an end unto themselves, not in opposition to anyone. And they can endure for centuries, if not millennia.

Sara’s reasoning is impeccable. Give it a read.

Ivins – populist wisecracker, incorrigible riler of conservatives, feisty foe of George Dubya Bush – was an ardent defender of democracy. And surely with the historic election of an African-American president outside the conventional boxes, she would have concurred that we were witnessing the democracy she cherished struggling back onto its wounded feet. For if Obama’s victory is anything, it is an achievement that happened from the bottom up, from grassroots volunteerism and $25 donations (though Ivins would have castigated him for flip-flopping on public financing), from the willingness of a populace to embrace words that they – like Ivins — refused to see as hollow, like hope, and change.

But it helped that Obama had a little extra moxie to him, too: shortly before she died, when Ivins was asked in December 2006 whether Obama should run for president, she said, “Yes, he should run. He’s the only Democrat with any ‘Elvis’ to him.”

Obama’s inner Elvis may have been muted at times beneath his steady, cool campaign exterior, but Ivins recognized leadership mojo when she saw it. And it was a new kind of leadership, the kind Barack Obama embodied to the American public as it went to vote Tuesday, that Ivins yearned for along with the rest of the electorate. In a January 2006 column she opposed a Hillary Clinton candidacy as more of the same, tired Washington, saying, “Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone.”

What the country needed was someone shaped in a different mold, even a mold-breaker. How prescient her words seem now, reflecting on the death of Eugene McCarthy:

“The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It’s about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief. If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it.”

McCarthy’s bid for the presidency wasn’t successful, but the junior senator’s from Illinois was. And in that, Ms. Ivins would have almost certainly seen further encouragement for her call to democratic renewal.

Her liberal populism and glee in flouting propriety developed in the most unlikely of circumstances.  A Texan through and through, Mary Tyler Ivins was born and raised in privilege in the affluent Houston neighborhood of River Oaks, daughter of a powerful Republican oil man.  At a friend’s house she discovered The Texas Observer, a muckraking periodical that fueled angry arguments with her father about civil rights and the Vietnam War. She carried her independent thinking into journalism, which she pursued with a master’s degree at Columbia University, following studies at Smith College and the Institute of Political Science in Paris.

In 1970, Ivins leapt at an offer to become co-editor of The Texas Observer after starting out at the Houston Chronicle and the Minneapolis Tribune. Here, she honed the irreverence for which she became (in)famous, finding in the Texas legislature endless political hilarity to lampoon. Her renegade style didn’t fit in so well at the New York Times, which wooed her away in 1976: she often showed up to the newsroom barefoot, in blue jeans, accompanied by her dog named Shit. The Times obituary for Ivins said she complained the paper’s traditional editors “drained the life from her prose. ‘Naturally, I was miserable, at five times my previous salary,’ she later wrote. ‘The New York Times is a great newspaper: it is also No Fun.’”

Ivins returned to Texas in 1982 when the Dallas Times Herald offered her a column in which she could write whatever she damn well pleased. She did, to the consternation of politicians, industry executives, advertisers, and plenty of conservative Texas readers. Ten years later her column was nationally syndicated, leaving more than Texans to ask, “Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?” — the title of her first book.

Her career grew as big as her personality, with more books, magazine articles in all the big-league intellectual periodicals, TV appearances, and speaking tours. I laughed till I cried every time I heard Molly address the annual Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where she was a beloved raconteur. In 2005 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Women’s Media Foundation.

It’s a shame Ivins hasn’t been here to opine on the campaigns, to share in the magnitude of what American voters did last Tuesday, and to skewer what’s left of the Bush Administration as it skulks out, leaving a swath of financial and environmental wreckage on its way.  But the model she left behind exemplifies the potency of being both scholar and rogue.  While her wit and style were uniquely her own, she grounded her opinions with the solid reporting of an old-school journalist. She was never a blowhard, shouting obnoxiously about things she didn’t understand. Her knowledge of politics and culture was both broad and deep. Yet she wasn’t afraid to push and challenge, to irritate and enervate, to speak truth to power wrapped in humor that could dupe and delight even the targets of her invectives (she would have relished Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin).

Molly, iconic Scrogue, we miss you. May our humble efforts here at S&R pay a smidge of earnest homage to the example you have set. And may our new president help democracy bloom, now that we’re finally getting a chance to whack back the bushes. I hope that somehow you can see it.

West:  “You may recognize this famous quote:  ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.’  That’s from Karl Marx.  How is Senator Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around.”

Biden:  “Are you joking?  Is … is this a joke?”

West:  “No.”

Biden:  “Is that a real question?”

West:  “That’s a real question.”

Biden, of course, being caught by surprise, could say little that would be of much use on a television screen.  He could have made the point that all taxation does, in some manner, spread wealth.  Even soldiers are paid from tax dollars and, while they earn their pay, there’s no question that they are being paid from taxpayer’s wealth.  Anyone being paid to serve taxpayers, from dog catchers to police, are part of a wealth spreading scheme of some sort.

What Biden should have done, had he not been blind-sided, was to make the point that all Obama is doing is adjusting the progressive income tax structure that was supported by none other than Adam Smith, the patron saint of free markets, and introduced to the US, originally, by Republican Abraham Lincoln.  Later, the progressive income tax was supported so heavily by Republican Teddy Roosevelt that the Constitution was amended to accommodate the income tax, and Roosevelt made it clear, in a speech delivered in 1910, why he thought a progressive tax was the right way to go.

No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered, not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective, a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.

When it comes to redistributing wealth, good ol’ Republican Teddy was pretty clear, wasn’t he?  Maybe Teddy Roosevelt was a Marxist.

What about Republican Ronald Reagan, the modern patron saint of conservatism?  Reagan was a big supporter of the earned income credit (EIC), a distribution from wealthy taxpayers to less wealthy ones, saying it is, “the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress.”   Both Reagan and George Bush the First increased funding for the EIC.  Are they both Marxists?

But perhaps the most effective response might have gone like something like this:

Barbara, I’m glad you asked that question, because words like “socialist” and “Marxist” are getting tossed around by people who are afraid of losing an election, hoping that these words will sway enough votes to get them into the White House, riding on a lie.

The fact is, Barbara, that if there is a socialist or Marxist in this race — and I don’t really believe there is — then it has to be Sarah Palin.

In Sarah Palin’s state of Alaska, every citizen gets a check from the government every year for doing absolutely nothing.  Not for work.  Not for anything they’ve earned.  They get that check just for breathing and living in Alaska.  Last year, that check amounted to $3,269 per taxpayer.  And all for nothing.

Do you know where Alaska gets that money?  They get it mostly from the oil companies that pump oil from the state.  More than half of Alaska’s total tax revenues come from separation taxes, which are basically taxes on oil and minerals taken from the ground.  Another 25% or so comes from corporate taxes.  Because companies are paying so much, Alaska citizens pay no income or state sales taxes.

But they do get a check generated from the wealth those big companies generate.  And there is no other state in the Union that doesn’t require either a sales or income tax from its citizens, yet gives them a check every year from money those citizens didn’t earn.

I don’t really think Sarah Palin is a Marxist, Barbara.  I think that’s a word made up by desperate people who will do anything to win – even tear our country apart by demonizing their opponents.  But if there is a Marxist in this race, Sarah Palin would have to be the one.

Maybe we could get Michele Bachmann to investigate Sarah for being un-American.

That’s the debate I’ve been having with an old college friend whom I’ve recently reconnected with. He’s become a Catholic since we knew one another back in the ‘80s, and is a deep-thinking, deeply principled man. He will not be voting for Barack Obama in November. Nor will he be voting for John McCain. He will vote, but he will cast a blank ballot. He urges me, if I am serious about my moral commitments, to do likewise. Neither candidate, in his opinion, cares enough about ‘life issues’ to merit an affirmative vote.

The New York Times reports that other Catholics are struggling with what do with in the upcoming election. The most troublesome issue for many remains abortion. Some, like Joe Biden, believe we must make accommodations for differing views in a pluralistic society, despite his own embrace of personhood at conception. Others, like my old friend, see Biden’s support for legal access to abortion as no different from espousing the Holocaust – if not in deed, then in complicity.

Can a Catholic possibly vote for a Democratic candidate who has regularly received a 100% approval rating from Planned Parenthood and indeed, as a state senator, voted against an Illinois version of the Born Alive Infant Protection bill passed by Congress? Can I, as a person of faith who believes all life is sacred? I am going to answer ‘yes,’ and in so doing, proclaim myself also a utilitarian and a realist, with all the moral conundra that pragmatism involves.

If you’ll stay with me in this somewhat lengthy exposition, I’ll do my best to lead you through my reasoning. Along the way, I want to call liberals and conservatives alike to a fresh engagement with these most critical of issues, questions of the nature of our humanity and our obligations to one another, scrutiny of our mutual hypocrises, and a renewal of our willingness to tackle these profound dilemmas in a manner that can help us reach “common ground for the common good,” an expression used often at the inaugural Faith Council caucus at the Democratic National Convention, and at the DNC panel discussion of Democrats for Life. Only by refusing platitudes and rejecting ideology will we ever begin to achieve progress on these divisive concerns that continue to rend our body politic and erode our civility.

Although I am not Catholic, I am drawn to the “seamless garment” perspective that proclaims a holistic reverence for all life, and calls for a consistent pro-life ethic that seeks to protect life wherever it is threatened, whether by abortion, war, poverty, racism, capital punishment or euthanasia. I share the goal expressed by Consistent Life, a network of progressive pro-life interests, that what we are trying to achieve is “a revolution in thinking and feeling, an affirmation of peace and nonviolence, an infinite gentleness, a value for the life, happiness and welfare of every person, and all the political and structural changes that will bring this about.”

Within that overarching moral framework I see complexity, particularly when the pro-life interests of individuals conflict. Which is more deserving of protection, embryonic stem cells, or an adult suffering and ultimately dying from Parkinson’s disease? Is it ever justifiable to sacrifice thousands of civilians in a war to resist an evil regime that would otherwise kill even more innocents? Can one insist on the birth of all conceived babies while at the same time support, even laud, the use of capital punishment in a race- and class-biased system where innocent people are wrongly killed? Are the lives of babies lost to abortion more important than the lives of AIDS orphans in Africa lost to poverty and disease and warfare? Is one murder by intention and the other murder by neglect, and are there therefore moral distinctions between the two?

The challenge for shaping public policy in a manner that honors life amid such philosophically complex and often conflicting “life interests” does not lend itself to cut-and-dried, black-and-white terms or positions. What does “pro-choice” really mean? Does the fetus get a choice? Does it deserve one? Are conservatives willing to create a social structure in which a mother can choose life and be confident that the quality of her child’s life is also part of that ethos? Are liberals willing to examine the moral inconsistency of a worldview in which prairie dogs are accorded more value than unborn human life? There are plenty of folks in Boulder, Colorado, where I live, who regularly campaign for the welfare of the proliferating rodents yet refuse to recognize that a woman’s “right to privacy” involves a private choice to kill developing human life, which is what happens when you “terminate a pregnancy.” Their opponents on the right, however, disdain the importance of protecting the very ecosystems on which all life relies, failing to recognize, for instance, that the prairie dog is a keystone species whose presence contributes to a rich diversity of life that sustains us. Often, those who are first to speak against abortion are the same people, like Sarah Palin, who are also quickest to advocate destruction of the very environment that a Christian worldview deems God’s sacred creation, to be stewarded with care for all generations (for more on this, see Tom Yulsman’s 9/17 post).

The irony, the non sequiturs, the hypocrisy, are enough to turn anyone into a cynic, or at least further jade an already polarized society unwilling to engage one another in good faith on these enduring concerns that continue to split our electorate. Is it foolish to speak of “common ground for the common good”? Can we, amidst a field of always-flawed candidates, still find enough faith to vote in relatively good conscience and hope that within the parameters of our decisions, we can work toward policy outcomes that reflect at least some of our basic shared values? In this regard, should we not be able to agree on at least the fundamental premise that reducing the number of abortions in this country, or the number of lives lost to war, is a desirable thing?

To do that, we must summon the willingness, the energy, and the character to plunge into further discussion on life issues in a manner that seeks such bridge-building. The Democratic Party was right to include events such as the first-ever interfaith caucus, and to sanction Democrats for Life, as part of this essential effort. At the same time, the party is home to secularists as well, with whom we – including conservative Republicans — must co-exist.

As Jim Wallis, moderator the DNC Faith Council, said, the answer to the religious right is not a religious left, but a moral center. But few on either side seem invested in trying to get there.

My sense on the streets of Denver during the DNC was that many convention-goers were tired of, dismissive, even bored with the graphic photos of dismembered fetuses held high on signs outside the gates to the Pepsi Center and displayed in bloody, brutal relief on the sides of the Operation Rescue truck driving through downtown. Some turned away but most ignored the images, including that of a perfect, miniature hand laid against a quarter, perhaps the size of George Washington’s head. More chose to pay attention to equally gruesome photos of Falun Gong torture victims, whose faces were methodically burned by electric batons, or whose genitals were torn off.

I was arrested by all of these images, which were paraded side by side along a full block of 15th Street. Though I adamantly reject the harsh, often hostile efforts to engage passersby by many anti-abortion demonstrators in Denver (I was told by one that I was “going to hell” when I challenged him to use more Christ-like methods in his delivery), I just as adamantly believe there is a place for their message, including such photos. If liberals are going to argue against Chinese terrorist methods used in religious suppression but support the suctioning of late-term fetuses’ brains while their heads are exposed outside their mothers’ bodies, there needs to be an honest, explicit engagement with that apparent moral disconnect, and non-combative efforts to explain why. If conservatives are going to reject all embryonic stem cell research, they need to make a careful case as to why the sacredness of those microscopic cells is greater than that of my uncle who is declining with Parkinson’s and will likely see a premature end to his life as a result.

And if Senator Obama agrees that it is infanticide and a crime when a new mother discards her newborn infant in a trash can, yet supports doing nothing when a fetus survives an abortion and is placed in a medical waste can, then he needs to be forced into an engagement with the moral incongruity of that position. Obama has claimed that the reason he did not support a similar Illinois state version of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act that was simultaneously passed by a unanimous vote in the U.S. Senate is because of a concern (and I am paraphrasing here) that it would create an undue burden on the mother who sought the abortion, and would create a slippery-slope situation potentially leading to an undermining of legal abortion access of any kind.

Obama has claimed that his position on abortion is one that respects the plurality of moral views in American society. He wrote in The Audacity of Hope, “If I am opposed to abortion for religious reasons but seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.”

With regard to the overwhelming bipartisan support for the Born Alive Infants Act, Obama is clearly outside the critical mass that deems that fully born infants should not be left to lie alone to die. Obama’s critics are correct: he is in effect saying that the potential erosion of a woman’s right to choose is more important than the life of a baby that emerges alive from an abortion. It is more important to let that baby die than to jeopardize – even hypothetically — abortion rights.

I could not disagree more. And yet I am going to vote for him in November. As my Catholic friend beseeches me to explain, “Why??” How could I?

And there is where my pragmatism comes in. On virtually every other issue that ties into the preciousness and quality of life, an Obama presidency would be more beneficial than another round of failed Republican policies and philosophies that serve the rich and powerful far more than those most in need. From the economy to health care to energy to climate change and the very future of our ability to live on this planet, an Obama administration would be more likely to effect policy change that would realize the social justice aims that are so important to many voters of faith, including my own progressive Christian faith.

One prominent Catholic is in agreement with me, and it’s gotten him banned from taking communion, just as Joe Biden has been. Douglas Kmiec is a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University and a former law faculty member at Notre Dame and Catholic University. He was also head of the Office of Legal Counsel for Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He spoke on an interfaith panel at the DNC Faith Council where he provided an answer to that posed in the title of his new book, “Can a Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Question About Barack Obama.”

Kmiec has stunned fellow conservatives with his endorsement of Obama, acknowledging as he addressed Democrats of faith at the DNC that “It’s unusual to be here.” Challenging those “who are making the argument under the guise of faith that it is a sin to vote for Barack Obama,” Kmiec has come to see Obama as “the best representative of the Catholic ‘path of life’” and a man of “deep faith…great intelligence, great integrity and great honesty.”

“That label of pro-life has to be a commitment to all of life, to a culture of life,” Kmiec said, contending that such a culture includes things like a living wage, adequate shelter, access to health care, and a recognition that we must live in community together.

But how does Kmiec, or how do I, or any other voter concerned about abortion as a moral crisis, ignore Obama’s views on such a central component of a consistent life ethic? We don’t. We search for and work together for that common ground. A Catholic, Kmiec argues in his book, can support the “non-negotiability of protecting human life” through the use of “imaginative means within Catholic social teaching to supply that protection.”

Kmiec quotes Obama:

“And so for me, the goal right now should be – and this is where I think we can find common ground, and by the way I have now inserted this into the Democratic Party platform – is how do we reduce the number of abortions, because the fact is that although we’ve had a president who is opposed to abortions over the last eight years [not to mention a majority of Supreme Court justice and federal judges who are Republican appointees – my addition], abortions have not gone down.”

Kmiec continues:

“If Republican Faith Partisans [those who condemn a vote for Obama as a sin – my addition] were actually capable of protecting human life through their singular focus on overturning Roe, the claim might have greater plausibility.”

Here again my pragmatic bent enters in, yet it is not incompatible with my overarching philosophical/religious orientation: I do not believe that Obama’s extreme views in support of abortion rights — and they are extreme, if we look at a basic bell curve of American opinion, with Obama on one end and Sarah Palin on the other – are likely to gain real traction in Congress or among the judiciary. Nor, for that matter, would Palin’s or McCain’s positions be likely to be turned into policy, given the moderate views held by most Americans. I do not anticipate that the Freedom of Choice Act will be passed, nor that Roe vs. Wade will be reversed, and even if it were, how likely is it that real inroads would be made in reducing the abortion rate as a result? The matter would merely be thrown back to the states for even more contentious and vitriolic political wrangling. The approach advocated by Obama and embraced by Kmiec, to enact policies that would reduce current abortion rates, is much more likely in the realm of political reality to be effective.

Polls continually show that Americans see abortion as a complex, multi-faceted moral issue. Most make distinctions between taking a morning-after pill that would expunge a fertilized egg versus a partial-birth procedure that sucks the brains out of a potentially viable, developed baby’s head. And most see a difficult continuum of developmental stages, each with ramifications for the morality of “choice,” in between. In a 2008 Gallup poll that asked voters whether they supported abortion in “all circumstances, some circumstances, or no circumstances,” respondents came down largely in the middle.

Many Christians, even Catholics, see such a spectrum of gray. My Catholic friend does not, and I respect him for the consistency of his position. Within his moral framework, human life – human personhood – begins at conception, and to destroy it for any reason is equivalent to committing murder. We have laws against murder in our society, and they trump our right to privacy. A woman enduring domestic abuse may wish to make the private decision to murder her abuser, but society says his right to life trumps her individual choice. If one believes, as my friend and many Christians do, that abortion is no different from murdering anyone already born, then there is a moral imperative to deny the legality of such a practice. To his credit, he is consistent on sanctity of life issues: unlike far too many religious conservatives, he doesn’t oppose abortion, then turn around and vote for a candidate who supports the war in Iraq or policies that keep kids in ghettoes well stocked with machine guns and assault rifles so they can keep killing each other (the same invalid slippery slope argument Obama makes applies most of the time to gun rights advocates, too).

I cannot make that same choice not to participate. As I see it, we humans are fallen and flawed and our institutions are, too. But they are the only structures we have within which to work toward our nobler goals of justice, fairness and the common good. There is a lot we can do outside of government. But government, whether a “necessary evil” or agent of our “better angels,” is a fixture in our collective welfare, and I believe we have a moral obligation to participate in it.

When it comes to resolving the social problems that prompt so many women to have abortions, I have faith that Democrats can do more to solve them than anything Republicans are proposing, despite their claim to be the pro-life party. As Kristen Day, head of Democrats for Life, said in an interview with the New Republic last month, “Republicans do nothing to help pregnant women who are facing pregnancy…Many women don’t have the resources to sustain a healthy pregnancy, let alone a child.” Data shows that Democratic policies such as those espoused in the Pregnant Women Support Act endorsed by Obama – providing prenatal resources, expanding health care – are effective in helping to reduce abortion rates.

It is one thing to speak out about against abortion, as Republicans do, but quite another to take action that makes meaningful inroads against its prevalence. Toward that utilitarian realization of an end, as Day said, “If a voter’s top priority is reducing abortion, she should vote Democratic.”

For many Catholics, abortion is that top-priority issue. For me, the whole gamut of issues that concern our quality of life as human beings, on earth, in community with one another, are just as central. Those are central concerns to many conservatives, too. As my staunchly Republican cousin claims whenever we talk politics, “We really want the same things in the end…we just disagree on the means to get there.” In many respects I think he’s right. But where I think he is wrong is in believing that yet more Republican policies will get us anywhere near our shared desire for a more humane society. My faith is buoyed, however, that we are talking, that I am talking with my Catholic friend, that we are being honest and respecting one another while cultivating conversation. The seeds of that elusive common ground we so desperately need in this country can only germinate in the soil of civility fertilized with integrity.

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Last week, Grist ran, with permission, an amazing investigative piece by Marianne Lavelle of the Center for Public Integrity, Mixing oil and politics is formula for Newt’s ‘Solutions’. Simply put, what Lavelle discovered was that the drilling campaign has propelled ASWF into third place in total fundraising for 527s, behind only the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and America Votes. She did not find, however, that ASWF was funded by the usual suspects, in this case companies and individuals with ties to oil giants like ExxonMobil, Conoco-Philips, etc. Instead, the main donors of unregulated money too ASWF are actually billionaire conservatives, and the only energy company in the top 40 donors is Peabody Coal (and Fred Palmer, Peabody’s senior VP for Government Relations).

UPDATE: Brad at The Wonk Room ran a series back in late July/early August about ASWF and its connections to Bush Pioneers (the largest bundlers of Bush campaign cash) and McCain donors. He’s got good information on several more of the Bush billionaires for ASWF and McCain’s change from opposing OCS drilling to his present “Drill, baby! Drill!” stance. Or you can get yourself some hot cocoa and settle in for an hour to read everything Brad’s written on the topic by clicking here.

This raises a couple of interesting questions. First, why aren’t there oil companies directly supporting ASWF? Gingrich has a proven track record of being able to deliver on big political themes (such as the Contract with America) – you’d think that oil companies would be clamboring to support ASWF. The main reason I can think of is that they’re concerned that direct support would tarnish ASWF’s coveted “non-partisan” and “outsider” status. But the donor list already includes one of the first Swift Boat supporters, Crow Holdings (chaired by big Republican benefactor Harlan Crow and donor of $100,000 to the Swift Vets group – has also donated another $102,000 to Republican PACs and candidates this election cycle). Carl Lindner III alone has given about $154,000 to Republican candidates and Republican Party election committees (such as the National Republican Congressional Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, the Leadership Circle PAC, and the Republican National Committee), and his wife has given about as much. Richard Farmer, founder of Cintas and resident of Cincinnati, has given another $81,000 to Republican committees and candidates, including $5,000 to the Republican Party of Kentucky, ostensibly to help keep Republican control over Kentucky. Shelden G. Adelson, the single largest donor to ASWF, has also donated another $81,000 to Republican candidates and committees.

Interestingly enough, every donor I looked closely at had donated the maximum amount of money they were legally allowed to certain candidates outside of their home states and districts, with Minnesota’s Norm Coleman as the single greatest beneficiary of their generosity.

How exactly does being funded almost exclusively by billionaire Republicans who are bankrolling the candidacies of a number of vulnerable Republican candidates make the ASWF a “non-partisan” group?

Second, why is Peabody Coal the only energy company putting money into ASWF? Frankly, I don’t know. I know that The Wonk Room at Think Progress (associated with the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress Action Fund) thinks that ASWF is a front for coal. And the fact of the matter is that it’s hard to dispute that Peabody Coal wouldn’t be supporting ASWF if they didn’t think they’d get something in return for their support. But again, it’s not like all Peabody’s the largest donor – they’re just the largest corporate donor. I’d expect that ASWF would be funded deeply by energy companies given the group’s hard-line support of drilling, shale development, and climate-unfriendly “solutions” to our energy problems in general, but most of the supporters aren’t energy related.

Anyone who wanted ASWF to appear untainted by partisanship has failed. But too few people have the time and energy to dive deep into who the donors to groups are, so most regular voters will probably be sucked in by the false claims of non-partisanship that ASWF makes. Drill here, drill now, pay less is a lie, but it’s a lie that people want to believe, and having the allegedly post-partisan Gingrich running a bogus non-partisan 527 hasn’t helped. It’s up to groups with media heft like Think Progress, 1Sky, Archetecture 2030 and Green Jobs Now, to name just a few, to publicly and loudly oppose Gingrich’s lies.

All donation data is from OpenSecrets.org.