What drives the debate?

Talking heads all over cable have spent a week parsing out the question of whether racism is having an undue influence on political discourse in this country. Former President Jimmy Carter has weighed in, attributing to racism an “overwhelming portion” of the ugliness directed of late at President Barack Obama — who, for his own part, has offered his predecessor a gentle rebuke, insisting that the heated arguments are really all about policy. This morning’s Washington Post offered parallel views of people in two South Carolina congressional districts; one represented by “You Lie!” shouter Joe Wilson, and the other, right next door, by the man most responsible for bringing congressional disapproval of that outburst to a vote, Majority Whip James Clyburn. Each appears to fairly represent the views of his constituents. Who’s right?

In my own irenic way, I’d like to suggest that everyone is right, sort of. Let me explain. No, is too much. Let me sum up:

On justice vs. compassion

Today, the Scottish government has released, on compassionate grounds, former Libyan intelligence agent Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people. He has been serving a life sentence for this crime in a Scottish prison.   He is now dying of cancer.

The United States has expressed dismay over this release.  Apparently, however, there is a provision in Scottish law allowing for such action on the basis of compassion. The talking heads on television are all over this today, drumming up outrage:   How in the heck can a government write compassion into law?

Can it have anything to do with the lack of separation between Church and State in a place like Scotland?  Are we, in the US, which sometimes styles itself as the first  country in  the world to be founded on Christian principles, horrified that in this instance, through an instrument of law, the teaching of Christ, famous for his compassion, has trumped our sense of Justice?

Can anyone hear the admonition:  “Go and learn what this means, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice”?

Or do we really believe that compassion has no place in law, no place in government?  And if that is true, have we not effectively excluded God from our way of life, whatever we do or don’t print on our money or recite in our pledge?

Let me break it down like this.  To Christians, at least, the injunction is given:  “Do not repay anyone evil for evil.”… and, “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written:  ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.”   But in our secular society, we turn this exactly on its head, and say that we humans must exact vengeance and leave it up to God to forgive if he wants.  Christians, at least, are required (not just permitted) to forgive.  Will “Christian” voices now become among the loudest to shout how wrong the Scottish government is in failing to exact the fullest repayment of evil for evil?  If this occurs, I can only then return to the words of scripture:

They will have justice without mercy who have shown no mercy; but Mercy triumphs over (=trumps) Justice! (James 2:13)

Associative Thinking

Just having noticed something, I thought I would run it by my vast readership. Pay attention, both of you!

It was with some distress and dismay that I observed, back in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, some rhetorical trickery which haunts us to this day, to the extent that there is still some debate about whether the matter should even be looked into. I for one was very cognizant  that in all the talk about “weapons of mass destruction” and the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein, official pronouncements never included any actual new factual information (the “sixteen words” and the delusions of Dick Cheney notwithstanding), just recycled bits of old information (such as the oft-repeated “used WMD against his own people,” which referred exclusively to the incident in 1983 when during one of the wars against Iran, Kurds in the border area were subjected to mustard gas supplied to Iraq by the United States). What happened was that the constant repetition of these old bits of information was strategically intermingled with discussions of the day’s news, so that a general feeling was aroused in the half-conscious public that all of these things were representative of a “gathering threat” — and the result was an unnecessary invasion of a non-belligerent country which had allowed UN inspectors onto its soil, and had complied (so it turns out) with all demands that it reveal the truth about its WMD programs — the truth being, as George W. Bush has recently admitted was his biggest “disappointment,” that those programs did not exist. But this post is not about all of this old news, it’s about the rhetorical techniques that made it possible, which are being employed anew on a new front.

Here’s how it went in those days, in talking points from any number of official sources: “mumble mumble NINE-ELEVEN mumble mumble SADDAM HUSSEIN mumble mumble TERRORIST ATTACKS mumble mumble IRAQ mumble mumble WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION mumble mumble….” you get the idea. It was never quite denied, in all of that, that no connection existed between the events of September 11, 2001 and the government of Iraq, or between the Saudis and Yemenis who boarded those planes and Saddam Hussein, or between Osama bin Laden’s training and planning operations in Afghanistan and any of those old-news, obsolete weapons programs…. it was enough that, as has been done by me here, all of these unconnected elements appeared near each other in the same sentence.

And never, in the same sentence, were we reminded that the weapons actually used on that fateful day were not chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, but box cutters.

By this means, an unwarranted association was built up in the minds of people, and crept into daily conversation, both on and off the airwaves, over a period of months, thus making what had seemed unthinkable, that the United States would make an unprovoked attack upon a sovereign nation, appear inevitable, and even morally justified.

This rhetorical technique is designed to narrow the debate on an issue and set its direction. Take notice: on a different issue, the talking points are there. Just pay attention to how often you hear this over the next weeks/months…..

mumble mumble BIPARTISAN mumblemumble TAX CUTS mumble mumble BIPARTISAN mumble mumble TAX CUTS ….

If I were a Republican congressman today….

[Warning... severe political cynicism follows...]

If I were a Republican congressman today…. I would do just what House Republicans did, and vote against the economic stimulus plan.  I would do so because of a cold political calculation that bets on one thing:  no matter what happens, or doesn’t happen, this economy is going down the tubes, so the only thing left to do is to engineer who gets the blame.  Let’s see how this works logically, with those givens.

The best thing that could happen from the point of view of the minority party is for the package as a whole to pass, with the loyal opposition in lock-step against it, so that when the economy fails, the blame can fall squarely on the Democrats.  However:

The worst thing that could happen from the same point of view is for their own opposition to succeed and the package to fail, because then the blame would fall just as surely on the obstructionists who got in the way of the only attempt on the table to do something big, dramatic, and immediately to try to forestall the now even-more-inevitable collapse.

So, there you have it.  A policy based on an expectation of failure.  Somebody tell me why I’m wrong here.

A Change We Need

On this day, December 1, 2008, seven weeks after the death of my mother, it’s time for me to break my self-imposed cyber-silence and talk about current events once more.

Today, President-Elect Barack Obama has announced his national security team. He is laying the groundwork for change by starting out with a strong foundation of people who know how things work, and thus are more likely to be able to actually implement changes system-wide when decisions are made. I want to talk about one very necessary change that has already been made by a number of governments, and should be made by this one on day one. I’m talking about a complete repudiation of the term “war on terror” as a counterproductive way of describing the actions of handfuls of stateless criminals, who act for the most part without the knowledge or support of any government.

By adopting the “war” rhetoric in the first place, the effect has been to elevate Osama bin Laden to the stature of a head of state.

For this and other reasons, it is time to abandon the “war on terror” rhetoric and start treating international terrorism, on every level, as a law enforcement issue of international scope, rather than as a matter of state or of purely military response.

Right now, in the aftermath of sophisticated, coordinated terrorist attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai, the “war” rhetoric about terror seems tragically likely to spill over into actual war between India and neighboring Pakistan, not because of any government action from that country, but because of the mind-set that associates governments, automatically, with the actions of people who come from those places. (Ironically, if such a mind-set had been in place in the U.S. on September 11, 2001, America would have immediately threatened war on Saudi Arabia and perhaps Yemen.) It’s time to re-brand the “war” on terror and call it an international crackdown on a specific kind of organized crime.

So long as terrorists are treated as international players, as opposed to stateless criminals, it can only raise tensions such as we now see between India and Pakistan. While states like Pakistan have tacitly supported militancy in the past, this policy was reversed after 9/11; but that reversal should be reinforced all the more with reminders that Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the now-governing party, was herself a victim of a terror attack.

This should be an occasion for all governments within the region to come together to cooperate on cracking down on this type of criminality, wherever it arises. This will accomplish several goals at once:

• Promoting cooperation at the highest levels
• de-legitimizing the terrorists by calling them criminals
• arriving at more effective anti-terrorist strategies and tactics that work across international boundaries
• and generally restoring the idea of the rule of law to supremacy  for the 21st century.

Under the leadership of the incoming Obama administration, perhaps this could even extend to some internationally recognized protocols governing the activities of clandestine agencies worldwide. Would there be opposition to such an idea? You betcha! But this is a change someone like me could really believe in.

The Real Problem

At the present moment in historical time, the United States government, and both political parties, are seeking, with a kind of quiet desperation, ways to shore up the financial system of Wall Street, and with it the national and even the global economy.  The bailouts, recent and contemplated, stagger the imagination in their scope.   The problem?  Overwhelming debt based on risky corporate decisions, compounded by an alphabet soup of derivatives, swaps, and other schemes that make Enron’s in-house deceptions look like children messing with play money.  The government is now taking on responsibility for huge amounts of debt, and everyone is talking about how much of this is going to become a liability for the taxpayer.

It’s time to talk about the one issue that no one is mentioning.

The best leadership (and the worst) is always by example.  The United States Government has set a terrible example, and the markets have followed:  it has put itself in increasing levels of debt, with no plan in place to repay the creditors. The guiding fiscal philosophy articulated by Vice President Richard B. Cheney that “deficits don’t matter” has been applied by large institutions, and unfortunately by many smaller entities including households, to their own situations. It’s that simple.

Until we do the hard thing that was done in the waning years of the Bush I presidency, and come up with a bipartisan plan to balance the budget (even if it violates someone’s sacred “read my lips” pledge), and go further and return to the action of the Clinton administration (in cooperation with a Republican congress) by coming up with a workable and working plan to begin in the present tense the task of paying down the national  debt, all we have done is kicked this ball further down the field, and the next thing you know it will be the U. S. Treasury that people will be talking about with comforting (?) words like “too big to fail.”

When the Bush II tax cuts were put in place, some responsible members of Congress recognized this state of affairs and required assurances  be made, specifically for some of those giveaways to the wealthiest among us (call it income redistribution) to expire beginning in 2010; otherwise some of those who voted to thus eliminate the surplus (remember surpluses?) would never have signed on.  Thus, any call to “make those tax cuts permanent” represents a deliberate breach of promise, and a betrayal of the trust of the American people, because no one can show how, with such an action, the debt will ever be repaid.

Until the United States gets its fiscal house in order, and enacts policies like we had in the 1990s, when there was prosperity, low interest rates, surplus budgets and no threat to Social Security in the process, global financial markets will be understandably and justifiably nervous.   This is the reality that will face the next President of the United States, and the incoming Congress.   Somebody is going to have to show some real spine.

Under the Radar

A fascinating tidbit that deserves a bit more airtime.

Why a Spiritual Advisor to President Bush Supports Obama

— Beliefnet.com

The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell is pastor of Windsor Village United Methodist Church, the largest United Methodist congregation in the nation. Often described as a ‘spiritual advisor’ to President George W. Bush, Caldwell introduced Bush at the 2000 Republican National Convention and delivered the benedictions at the 2001 and 2005 presidential inaugurations. He endorsed Senator Barack Obama for president in January.

Readers of the whole article will find some surprising things in here, including this minister’s take on the Rev. Wright:

Can you give an example of something Wright said that was “blown up” by the news media?

This whole G.D. America piece, that’s a great example. First of all, right after he says that, the next sentence, which they never play, says, “And that’s in the Bible.” Now, it’s not written that way in English, but the Hebraic expression basically says this: if America makes itself and views itself as God, and not Yahweh, or the Lord God Almighty as God, then America basically is committing adultery*, and then America is darning itself.

He never said “I would D. America.” He was saying that when the government begins to worship itself, then there is a price to be paid, and you basically fall into that category whether you want to or not.

*[blogger's note: Transcription error?  "idolatry" makes more sense here than "adultery"]

It sounds like you agree with the point he was making.

It’s not my role to agree or disagree with him, but I think it is my role to contextualize what, in fact, he was actually saying. No Christian that I know would agree that idolatry is acceptable to God, and clearly that’s a breach of the Ten Commandments, among other things. So, as I understand it, the point that Pastor Wright was making is that when America places itself–its own self in an idolatrous position, then you are basically positioning yourself for bad news….

And yes, this is the same minister that officiated last weekend at Jenna Bush’s wedding in Crawford, Texas.

The Swift Boating of Obama

Back in 2004, a group of people who were very interested for partisan and ideological reasons in derailing the viability of John Kerry’s candidacy created a major distraction that was designed to do one thing, and history shows that by and large the purpose was accomplished. The design was to transform one of Kerry’s greatest strengths — his status as a decorated war hero — into a liability. The chosen means was the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” who produced public information consisting of half-truths, distortions and untruths to cast an indelible shadow on the public perception of the candidate’s character. The tactic was successful in part because Kerry’s campaign was slow in refuting the half-truths and untruths, considering them beneath the dignity of a detailed response. By the time detailed responses became necessary, the damage was done, and the candidate never recovered. A tactic known as “swift-boating” entered the political lexicon.

I’d like to frame recent events along similar lines in the following fashion. This year, as political enemies of Barack Obama searched for a way to transform one of his greatest strengths into a liability, they found just the way to do it. Not being able to find a way to do him damage with respect to his message or his positions on issues, echoing the approach of the political enemies of a faithful public servant mentioned in Daniel 6:5, they began to turn to his associations, his identity as a practicing Christian in an active church, and must have spent many hours combing through the vast bulk of recorded sermons of his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, to find short clips that, when edited to greatest effect and made public, would do for Obama what the allegations of the Swift Boat group did for Kerry.

Taking the Wright approach

Yesterday, Barack Obama arrived late to a Philadelphia podium to give a speech that, if he failed to exceed expectations, could have effectively ended his political career. The issue of the day was being spun as: “Will he or won’t he put a sufficient amount of distance between himself and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his pastor for twenty years, his spiritual mentor, who has been shown on videotape saying outrageous, offensive and in some cases just plain untrue things? Will he both reject and denounce the man who led him to Christ, officiated at his wedding, and baptized his children?” The political class loves a good pile-on, and it was hard to see how this was not going to balloon into a ruination of a colossal order.

I watched that speech with considerable interest, tinged with skepticism

Destroying the New Deal

From the “heard it here first” dept…. the following comments were first posted online in February 2002. It is re-posted here at a time when the latest budget proposal has been unveiled, showing with more clarity than ever the nature of the agenda outlined here.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan ran for president promising that he would balance the budget and reduce taxes. His harshest words were aimed at “tax and spend” Democrats, who were responsible for the growth of Big Government and thus the rising federal deficits. Sure enough, within a few months of taking office a massive tax cut was pushed through Congress.

Hard on the heels of tax cuts came calls to cut spending in a large array of government programs, in the interests of balancing the budgets. On a Friday, the White House was heard to say that when it came to looking at things to cut from the budget, there could be no “sacred cows.” The following Monday, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger appeared before a congressional committee to argue that all of the (increased) spending for Defense in the president’s proposal was absolutely necessary. Obviously, the view that Big Government was evil did not extend to include a similar notion about Big Military. The budget, under Reagan, was never balanced; in fact the deficits grew significantly. As his term of office played out, it became evident that the anti-”tax and spend” rhetoric had been followed up by an actual “borrow-and-spend” policy. Much of that borrowing was from the hated Social Security system, whose annual revenue surpluses — enhanced by a payroll tax increase enacted early in Reagan’s first term — were brought on-budget for the first time, effectively hiding the massive scope of the deficits being generated.

To review, let’s outline the nuts and bolts of the Reagan Agenda at that time.

1. Push through huge tax cuts.
2. Push through huge military spending increases.
3. Point out that, hey, we’re short on funds, and it’s the fault of the Liberals who keep spending money on frivolous Big Government programs. You know — the ones that give lazy poor people a free ride by helping them do unnecessary things like eat, go to the doctor and have a place to live.
4. Insist that if the budget is to be balanced, it has to be done without raising taxes or cutting military spending.
5. Keep up the political pressure until Congress trashes most or all of the policies that have been in place since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal — or at least since Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.

Reagan succeeded in getting his agenda rolling, but something happened after he left office, namely on the watch of his vice-president and successor, George H. W. Bush; actually, a couple of somethings.

• Number one: the reversals of New Deal programs such as Social Security, or War on Poverty legacies such as Medicare, were shown to be such hot potatoes that even Reagan had to be heard saying he didn’t want to kill them, only “fix” them.
• Number two: Congress and the people were not as quick as the Reaganauts hoped they would be in cutting “discretionary” spending by eliminating whole programs.
• Number three: the Soviet Union (Reagan’s “evil empire” whose existence justified his military budget increases) collapsed under its own weight.

The senior Mr. Bush scrambled to find something to replace this convenient enemy.