Tomorrow

There have been 3 elections in my adult life that have been super important--1980, 2000, and now. 1980 ushered in the era of Republican Party rejection of our country's struggle to improve our general economic well-being while paying heed to the environment, instead focusing on robbing the nation of both our natural resources (remember James Watt?) and selling off our assets. Lowering taxes on the rich led to us going from the world's largest creditor to the world's largest debtor in a matter of months while increasing the disparity between rich and poor for the first time since the Great Depression. 2000 resulted in finishing us off as a viable world power economically; we no longer "control our own destiny", to borrow a sports phrase. Not only has our debt risen to such heights that it threatens our very ability to pay it off properly, but the open greed and rapacity of the conservative movement has also diminished our standing in the company of nations. We are not envied or admired any more, we are despised throughout the entire world. The litany of lies and deceptions the Smirky Administration has perpetrated on us has reverberated around the world, making the United States of America the first superpower in history to be so reviled. (Other empires were feared or resented, but mostly they were grudgingly respected for a century or more until they could be overthrown by the locals wanting self-government. We didn't even last 60 years before becoming so hated as to encourage an attack on our own soil that was cheered on by many.)
The difference between the election tomorrow and those two was that this time, we know how high the stakes truly are. Ronald Reagan was seen as a joke by most people, even after he became the Republican nominee, except for the people of California, who had had to endure his term as governor--they knew what was coming. And Bush was even more of a joke; his only success in his entire life was in being elected governor of a state where the governor has no real power. The true horror of both those presidencies came in retrospect. What Reagan's presidency initiated, and Bush's finished, has been the almost complete dismantling of our system of governance.
Taxes, which are the primary method by which our government pays for what it does, have become so disdained that politicians fear to even say the word out loud, even when it is obvious that our fiscal standing is precipitously poised to collapse.
Trust in government at any level has eroded to the point that the Bush Administration, which by any measure is the most corrupt and venal in the history of the country, can do anything it wants without most people even noticing. Approve the torture of US citizens? Oh, gee, Clinton was worse. (Somehow.) Make up "facts" to convince Congress and the public to assent to make war on a country that did not attack us? Who cares. Launch a countrywide assault on the mechanics of elections themselves in order to cheat the actual will of the people? Wait, is that Paris Hilton over there?
The vaunted power of the press to curb any excesses of the three branches of our government has been either neutered or co-opted, first by the Reagan-era elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, which allowed for the creation of TV and radio stations which have no desire to even fake objectivity, and secondly by the similar neutering of any oversight bodies, which allowed for an egregious consolidation of media outlets. We no longer have much of a press, let alone a free press, in the US; less than a handful of companies own the vast majority of newspapers, and ownership of our broadcast media is even more concentrated. And all of these media are owned primarily by conservatives singularly uninterested in anything but the bottom line.
We may have already lost the battle to save our country, but one thing is for sure: if John McCain is elected, it is entirely possible we will have lost the last chance to do anything about it. This election, we know what is at stake. Does anyone truly believe that if McCain is at the helm, China and the other countries that own the paper--literally--on our country won't simply call in their loans, devastating us financially? Why wouldn't they, given McCain's unstable character and hawkish tendencies? They could do so simply as a means of protecting themselves from military attack! Does anyone truly believe that if McCain is elected, the crimes of the Bush Administration won't be erased even more completely than they have been already? Does anyone truly believe that if McCain is elected, the machinery of governance will not come grinding to a halt as a Congress that has just enough obstruction-minded conservatives left in it becomes unable to pass any worthwhile bill whatsoever that has a chance of being signed into law? (Since 2006, we've already seen how that will look.)
More loftily, though, this election is about the mindset of our country. The contrast between the two candidates could not be more stark. Barack Obama, to all but the most cynical or deluded, really does operate from a worldview driven by hope and pragmatism, while John McCain, to all, sees only scary things in the world that need to be suppressed. Do we want to continue on the same path that gave us Iran-Contra, Fox News Channel, Florida 2000, 9/11, the "War on Terror", the Terri Schiavo mess, waterboarding and Abu Ghraib, the mortgage bubble/collapse and our current economic meltdown, and Sarah Palin? (I know, I know, Bill Clinton had oral sex. The Horror!) Or do we instead want to try and fix some of the things that Republicans have done to us? I don't know if it's at all possible for Barack Obama to "change" much in the time he may have, but I damn sure know that McCain isn't going to do anything I want done.
Hope v. Fear: that is the storyline here. I hope that Obama can help, and I am deathly afraid of John McCain.

Deja vu

Tell me if you've heard this one before:
Major financial institutions, encouraged by a lawless Administration's lax enforcement of gutted regulatory statutes, make horrible investments and other fiscally questionable practices common enough for insiders to reap windfall profits, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill when the whole industry crashes.
Right! The S & L scandal of the mid-1980s!
Oh, wait, did you think I was talking about the current hedge fund/mortgage lending crisis? Well, I might as well have, given the parallels, and even some of the players involved.
Wake up, people! This is not a case of incompetence; rich Republicans have been gaming the system at the middle and lower classes expense for decades now, and non-wealthy voters have been enabling them to do so by voting against their economic interests ever since St. Reagan conned them into thinking it was somebody else (remember the fictitious "welfare queens driving Cadillacs"?) stealing from them.
Deregulation and stripping the government of its enforcement powers has done nothing except enrich the wealthy and erode the economy as a whole, and the Republican Party stands for nothing less than a continuation, if not an acceleration, of these destructive policies. The resultant slaughter of middle class financial security and near elimination of the possibility of true upward mobility represents a war against the non-rich, and it has been going on since Jan. 20, 1981. You can tell, because when anyone awake attempts to correct the imbalances these policies have created, invariably the right wing accuses them of fomenting "class warfare". This is classic right wing Republican rhetoric--accuse your opponents of that which you are practicing in a neat verbal sleight-of-hand. And that has been working since 1994.
More and better Democrats. Now.

Proud to be from Glendale

What really got me to write again was a simple (and truly simple-minded) letter to the LA Times dated April 10. Ken Artingstall from Glendale writes, and I quote the letter almost wholly here:

The United Nations now reports that global warming is "irreversible but could be moderated by large-scale societal changes." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), in a position to effect such changes, says "it is not too late to slow it down. We must base our actions on moral imperatives free of political interference." This is the same speaker who triumphantly passed a budget that eliminates all the Bush tax cuts after 2010, setting the stage for a huge tax increase. What will "large-scale societal changes" to attack global warming entail? Command-and-control government regulation of the economy and even more taxes, among other things. To all the fanatical global warming disciples and pro-big government Democrats, be careful what you wish for: A collapsing economy will surely be one of them.

Let's break this letter down, shall we?
1) Mr. Artingstall's comment about the new House budget is comprised of 4 clauses (if my decades-old memory of what constitutes a clause is correct), 2 of which are false. A) The Bush tax cuts were created to end after 2010, in a cynical ploy to both explode in a future Administration's face and grab ignorant Democratic votes in Congress; Pelosi had nothing to do with "eliminating" them; and B) This "sunset clause" was widely publicized at the time of passage, so only ignoramuses or ideologues like Mr. Artingstall could claim that the return to the previous tax levels represents a tax increase perpetrated by Democrats. Given inflation, the amount paid in taxes by those lucky few who have benefited from these lower taxes for 10 years will no doubt be less in real dollars after 201o than they were in 2000 anyway . . .
2) Mr. Artingstall's wholesale and reprehensible denial of global warming notwithstanding, his conclusion about what the UN means by "large-scale societal changes" is wholly unfounded by anything other than his own ridiculous biases against responsible governance. Did Mr. Artingstall quote anyone other than the voices in his head when he decided that the societal changes might entail "more taxes" or "command-and-control" government regulation (whatever that means)? Of course not; people like him are ideologically opposed to using facts, logic, or even simple human kindness when determining what to say or do. It is entirely likely that our government will decide to spur investment in alternative fuels by encouraging businesses through tax breaks or even direct subsidies, but we already do that for the oil companies! It would be a simple matter to redirect those breaks and subsidies elsewhere or for other purposes, with no (gasp!) tax increases.
3) Mr. Artingstall is so out-of-touch with reality that he concludes his letter with one of the oldest canards in politics, in combination with one of the newest. Where in politics, exactly, are these "pro-big government Democrats", Ken? You clearly haven't noticed that it is the Republicans who have grown government since Reagan took office 26 years ago, with the largest growth occurring under Smirky and the rest of the felons currently in power. (See here also.) And how exactly can you define "fanatical global warming disciples" so that it includes the majority of citizens, not just globally, but even in the woefully misinformed US? Wake up, Ken--it is you that is the fanatic. Get a grip.
This is hardly unusual thinking for Glendalians, I'm sorry to report. This city is home to some of the most conservative thinking in all of LA County, it seems, judging by letters to the editor of the local rag. I just thought it was time for someone to point that out, and as someone who lives there, I apologize to the rest of you for it.