Beyond the Numbers

Stewart catches Olmy napping, and the Israeli people speak out for justice (click to view)

A few weeks ago, I wrote that, no matter what we may think of its government's actions, Israel is a fairly healthy democracy--healthier, in fact, than ours is now. And here's further proof.

Next week, I'm going to take the wraps off some psychological research I've been doing into the leader of the free world. This is the kind of thing I have in mind. However, in case you haven't noticed, he's got plenty of company in the lunacy department: check out this nut and his baseball-is-like-Iraq rant. Do you think Jon Stewart is paying these people to feed him fresh material, right over C-Span?

I paid $25 to help get this ad about the Bush veto on the air; you may wish to have a look at it and decide for yourself.

Small money, indeed, but that's all I'm worth for now. But enough of all that, then. Here's a little piece about big money and statistics.

What can money not buy? It can buy the media; it can buy opinion or reputation; it can purchase a gleaming image, or a floating corporate island green in the middle of Rockefeller Center.

But it cannot buy sanity. In fact, when it comes to that, the more you use money, the further do you tend to drift from sanity. The more you rely on money to open doors around you, the further do you become unhinged within. The greater your dependence on purchase, the higher the cost to your true self. The slavish pursuit and use of money will inevitably trap you within a cage, whose four walls are conflict, conformity, estrangement, and cynicism.

Any one amid 300 million can be an American; any one among tens of thousands can become a representative of a great multi-national corporation; any one of about 2.5 million can be a millionaire; any one of billions can be a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, or a Buddhist. But to become your true self, to fully actualize the destiny that was born within you--that takes more than numbers. And less.
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Tomorrow: Harry Potter and the State

Monday with McKenna: Philosophy vs. Punditry

We're going back to back with Terry McKenna to start the week. He'll be with us today and Tuesday. You may recall Terry's piece on McCain from a few weeks back. As Frank Rich observed Sunday, McCain's lies (the subject of Terry's piece) have finally caught up with him (and W.R. Pitt of Truthout also weighs in with a similar insight).

Being a philosophy graduate myself, I feel a particular resonance with Terry's theme today. So here comes Part 1 of Terry's reflections on philosophy and punditry.


It’s the day after Easter; what better day to consider man’s search for meaning? Sadly, our era no longer values such a search. In an earlier era, the philosopher Rene Descartes corresponded with nobility and was granted a pension by the king of France. Half a half century later, Isaac Newton was England’s man of the age. But today, if a bright high school student admitted an interest in the study of philosophy as their college major, surely he or she would be vigorously discouraged.

Philosophers seem as irrelevant as poets and goldsmiths, though perhaps not quite so irrelevant as alchemists. We’ve replaced philosophy with journalism, and replaced philosophers with opinion makers such as newspaper columnists and the like. If philosophers created works of permanent value, today’s columns and OP-ED pieces are mere ephemera. If likened to food, the works of Plato nourished generations of scholars, today’s writings are mere snack food; useful only to fill our flabby minds with empty calories.

This week was a good one for our bloviators. In addition to the Iraq war and Nancy Pelosi’s unscripted comments during her middle east trip, we had the resolution of Iran’s seizure of fifteen British sailors and marines.

I’m happy for the sailors. Though their professional rigor turns out to be less than impressive (come on, you guys gave up about three days!) still they came home alive and unharmed, and in the middle east, maybe that’s remarkable enough.

Fifteen sailors and marines and a minor border incident don’t mean much in the scheme of things, but you wouldn’t know it from all the noise in the news media. For the bloviating class, the past two weeks became just another opportunity to show off in print, on the radio, or on camera. Were their guesses on the mark? Thing happened so quickly that it’s easy to check. It turns out no one was right (except maybe Tony Blair when he attempted to cool the rhetoric). The end came much sooner than anticipated. And – although there may have been some behind the scenes bargaining - it doesn’t look like either side gave away much. It could be this simple: Iran recognized that it got as much mileage as it could and ended it. But look at the headlines from a sample of articles (I selected a screen shot of sample articles via Google). Note the breathless energy (click graphic to enlarge).

So, if our pundits are full of shit (and if you track almost any issue, you’ll see that they are) then whither the search for information at a deeper level?

Sadly, the search for a deeper understanding of current affairs is led by the self same bloviators who are so disappointing. I had the opportunity to hear one of them on two occasions this past week, John Bolton. If you don’t remember him, he’s the hardliner that Bush appointed as UN ambassador (in a recess appointment). Though he’s a bully, he is also considered a serious man. He has spent a lot of time in and around government working on international affairs - particularly arms control. At the risk of over simplifying his position, he is suspicious of attempts to sign treaties with rogue states that have no intention of doing what they promise. His bottom line is that negotiating with such states quickly morphs into an attempt to reform them, and such efforts are doomed to failure. He prefers instead a policy of regime change.

Regime change sounded good until we found out that regime change is only half the battle. And war itself is much more complicated than just sending out a bunch of smart bombs. With the disaster in Iraq, we are now faced with the recognition that war is a dirty business that almost never yields the desired outcome. The deeper lesson is that the US is not quite strong enough to remake the world on its own terms.

—T. McKenna

Tomorrow: Part 2

"A Series of Tubes"

watch John "I'm a PC" Hodgeman explain the Net Neutrality issue with Jon Stewart

This Wednesday I'll be meeting with the freshman Rep. from our district in Brooklyn, Yvette Clarke, as a representative of Save the Internet, to discuss Net Neutrality. I'm going because I was asked, and because I think that Net Neutrality ties in with a lot of issues that many may think are more important, such as the war in Iraq, post-Katrina New Orleans, the economy, and global warming.

One of the reasons why there is such a groundswell of pubic opinion on such crucial issues of our time is that more people are better informed. They are better informed, I would argue, not because of the mainstream media, but because of bloggers and online independent media. Do you think we'd have half the knowledge we have of, for example, NSA wiretapping, the Downing Street Memo, torture in American POW camps, the genocide in Darfur, extreme rendition, the Abramoff / Libby / Foley (etc.) scandals, or the deplorable non-progress in the Gulf Coast if we relied solely on FOX News, Disney, or GE for our information?

Net Neutrality is therefore a big issue, and one that the Blue Congress needs to lock down and affirm once and for all, before the corporate-fed mass media bury it under pressure from our corporate administration in Washington. If it weren't for the online grassroots movement, big telcom operators would already be preventing you from viewing some of the content you're used to accessing online. Many of the outlets that we link to from DR would be among the restricted or nearly-inaccessible sites if Ted Stevens had been able to hand over the "series of tubes" to the full control of big telcom. These include:

IndyMedia, the fearless online radio organization whose headline stories always reach a few layers deeper than the mass media dare to tread.

Democracy Now! This is what TV News would look like in a naturally ordered society free of oppression or corporate greed. Amy Goodman is one of the treasures of our nation.

The Blogosphere: Check our Blogroll in the sidebar; most of the entries you find there would be either restricted or outright suffocated in the Ted Stevens world of corporate-owned bandwidth. Sure, a few big presences such as Daily Kos, Moveon.org, and Huffington Post—sites with a combination of private funding and advertising revenue—would survive in the era of a big-telcom Internet. But the truly grassroots voices and visions would all be repressed. We would most likely lose the likes of Digby and Juan Cole, Dahr Jamail, and maybe even Eric Alterman. These latter are the people who have been telling us what's really happening in Iraq, Palestine, within the neocon mass media, and providing the insight and perspective that made last November possible.

So this is why Net Neutrality matters, and why I ask you, no matter your political affiliation (right, left, center, or don't-give-a-damn) to sign the petition, call your legislators, and tell your neighbors why Net Neutrality matters, and why we need a free and open Internet—because it is practically all we have left of what we once knew as democracy.

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Thanks again--and again: I just had a look at the web stats and was stunned. In a short month and with ten days still to go, we've set a record for monthly page views--more than 15,000 through the 18th. As I've said before, Terry and I would probably write and spout on a desert island with no one to listen except the coconuts. But having people like you around sure makes it more fun and fulfilling. Many, many thanks to you all, and if you have advice, criticism, or questions for us, use the Comments link.

"I Resolve to be Non-Binding"

Join Sen. Kerry on setting a deadline

Like many of you, I was following the House vote today, until a question occurred to me: what the hell exactly is meant by "non-binding"? That led me on an Internet search, which led to this Daily Kos diary post. I'll be asking these kinds of questions of my local members of Congress when they come home for their winter break next week; you're welcome to join me if you like.

What does it mean to "resolve" something, but not be bound by it? Resolution is a fairly serious matter, I was always taught, and usually implies some degree of "binding". Is Congressional non-binding sort of like the final score of a spring training baseball game—it counts but doesn't really count? And what does it mean that such terminology is taken for granted by citizens to whom these people in Washington are supposedly accountable?

Monday with McKenna: Our Broken Government

First of all this week, congratulations to the Dixie Chicks. There is nothing like the inner reward of holding to truth, no matter what you hear around you; and fortunately there are outer rewards as well. It's just that in this culture, they are sometimes delayed.

Now you won't be hearing much out of us for a while about the contenders for '08—the phenomenon that Stewart has called "the clusterfuck". I tend to agree with Krugman that Edwards has some outstanding ideas that actually have some shape to them, unlike the nebulous Hillary rhetoric that otherwise prevails (incidentally, if you go way back to our January 2006 archives, you'll find a week's worth of posts from Terry that will sound a lot like what Edwards is now proposing, but that's OK—we'll allow that good minds can work in parallel, even if one of them has it out there a year ahead of the other). Meanwhile, Rich's points about Obama's promise are well taken. But it's too early, and right now we're looking the most earnestly for substance not from the '08 pack but from the heretofore pitiful collection of losers on Capitol Hill. They've got at least 8 years of lousy karma to flush away, and it had better happen fast. Perhaps, as Terry McKenna reminds us today, a glance backward will help to push these people out of the ideological mud they've been trapped in for so long. But as Terry adds below, this is no time to hold your breath or gamble the farm on that...


We have government that won’t govern. Is it poor design or do we just have the wrong players? Sadly, no one will say! In fact, almost no one among the governing elite even acknowledges that our so-called democracy is a failure. Most of our votes are meaningless and our legislatures unresponsive. Failure starts at the local level, but gets more pronounced as you move up the line - bad at the local level, worse at the state level, worse still in Washington.

A few examples

In New York State (where I work) this past week, the legislators reneged on a deal with the new governor, Eliot Spitzer. They had promised to select a new State Comptroller (the last one just pleaded guilty to malfeasance) from among a list picked out by a special panel. The panel chose three well qualified auditors but the legislators, seeing none of their own on the list, decided to abandon the quest for a qualified comptroller and instead selected Assemblyman Thomas P. DiNapoli. He has neither auditing nor management experience!

In my home state of New Jersey, the legislature was supposed to pass property tax reform. Our high property taxes are mostly dedicated to pay for public schools. The expected reform was an increase in state school funding matched with a proportionate decrease in local property taxes. An increase in the state income tax was also expected. What our legislators came up with instead was a plain old tax rebate, and one that goes to renters as well as property owners. Worse still, it starts decreasing for those with incomes above $100,000 – it stops altogether for those who earn more than $250,000. It’s not property tax reform.

In the national legislature, we have a charade over the Iraq war. Everyone agrees we need to debate the war – even right wing columnist David Brooks of the NY Times. If nothing else, we should start with a discussion about the president’s troop surge. We also need to discuss whether the US can risk leaving precipitately. Most opinion makers believe that if we leave quickly, Iraq will collapse in chaos. Folks like myself say its already mired in chaos so our leaving will do little. Perhaps we can get Iran, Syria and the Saudis to cooperate with a planned division into ethnic spheres of influence. Perhaps not, but if not, why stay! But so far, debate has been postponed by obstructionist Mitch McConnell, who is using legislative maneuvering to prevent anything other than a George Bush rhetorical victory. If not admitting the truth is a victory, then it’s a hollow one.

Was it always like this? Yes and no. Yes, politicians have been always been outsized egos fighting over turf. But what seems genuinely new today is the manner in which politicians communicate, and here, the changes have been profound.

Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell should look back to his political forebear, Everett Dirksen. A Republican Senator from Illinois, he was known for his smooth words, but also for his ability to compromise. Here is a famous line that he may never have uttered - “a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money” … the quote may be specious (just check the internet). Still, I believe I saw and heard him say it in a sound byte excerpted on a long ago evening news broadcast. As a man whose party was out of power, Dirksen attempted to steer Republican votes toward progressive policies. He supported many New Deal programs, and was a strong supporter of the Civil Rights bill.

Forty Years ago, our politicians said what they believed, and based policy on those same beliefs. For example, Kennedy based his defense policy on something that turned out to be incorrect – a perceived “missile gap” between the US and the USSR. He was wrong, but at least he believed what he said, and set his course accordingly. He also was willing to re-shape policy as circumstances changed. Thus he reversed course in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile crisis. After that frightening episode, he realized that the threat of nuclear annihilation was more pressing that an imagined need for an ever bigger nuclear arsenal. Yes, he still thought there was a missile gap, but he decided that the gap was less important than the survival of the World.

With political speech currently stuck in competing agendas – and this counts for both Democrats and Republicans (think of Hillary Clinton) what do we do now? Damned if I know. I think we are in a real fix. Some of our biggest problems include: an abandoned urban poor, an exploding immigrant population – most of them illegal; then we have a health insurance / health care crisis, and over the next decade, we will have to come up with ever more cash to take care of the elderly and their medical care.

The Republicans are not ready to solve these problems – except by resorting to free markets; when the democrats speak at all, they stay at the level of platitudes – afraid of asking for compromise from the innumerable interest groups that form their party’s base.

--T. McKenna

Friday Reflection: A Prayer for Maturity

Before we get to the Friday Reflection, time for some good news:

Keith Olbermann is still on TV: Click the graphic, watch, and listen. It's about sacrifice.

No more New Jersey jokes: They're actually looking down the path of abolishing the death penalty in NJ. These people have looked carefully at the statistics, consulted their common sense, and taken some excellent first steps toward a new policy of wisdom and justice. For a really great piece on the death penalty, with some marvelous reflections on the Saddam case, check out Eric Francis' piece, "The Hanged Man."

New York has a new governor: And he just might be a good one. In his first state address, Eliot Spitzer called for publicly financed elections to remove the influence of big money and special interests from campaigns. It's a cause worth taking up, and thanks to the folks at Public Campaign Action Fund, you can write your local legislators and let them know you're with the new Governor of New York on this one.

A Shopping Holiday (or holiday from shopping): These folks tried something that most of us wouldn't dare to dream of, and they found that it was not only easier than they'd thought it would be; it was illuminating. Could you try it? No shopping for a year (thanks to Nearly Redmond Nick for the link).

The 110th Congress starts cleaning House—its own: The Blue Congress took over today, and promptly took one baby step toward clean government. They've got a long way to go, so we'll have to keep an eye on them; but this is encouraging indeed.

Life Beyond Thought: And finally, a reminder that in a world of corporate demigods and the tyranny of intellect, true greatness is achieved in and by the ordinary, beyond the narrow space of calculation. If you haven't heard about it already, read the story of Mr. Wesley Autrey.

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Friday Reflection: Beyond Ignorance and Violence

What is worse, ignorance or violence? They are probably related—and intimately at that—perhaps as cause and effect, respectively. We grow in life by finding both within ourselves, and exterminating them. Find ignorance, and then disperse it, and you will have peace. Do not attempt to tame or disguise your violent emotions; but examine them: trace them to their source, and take back the energy that feeds them. Then you will be free from fear. All it takes is effort, and trust in the currents of the universal consciousness, and your deep connection with them.

Bush, Cheney, and all the spoon-fed rich ideologues of this world have never learned this simple lesson. That is because they were never allowed to. And so they resort to what every unloved and undisciplined child will turn to: a program of shrill fear-mongering fed by the passive-aggressive delusion. As the Zen poet of the Rinzai Roku said:

Though gold dust is precious,
When it gets into the eyes
It clouds the vision.

What the fools and demagogues of Washington lack is not intellect—there are many smart people among them—but maturity. We are being governed, in short, by children; or more precisely, by spoiled brats who never learned the lessons of maturity, and thus never grew out of the pit of ignorance and violence.

There is teaching in this for all of us who survive the depredations of these urchin kings, and our capacity to understand that teaching will help to influence the course of the next generation, and the one after. Think of this the next time you are moved to act aggressively or in hatred, whether at work or among your family. You can torture a man with weapons, or whip him with ignorance; it is torture just the same.

This is why some of the more illuminated psychological and spiritual traditions of the world have emphasized maturity. In the Bodhisattva's Vow, which is repeated thousands of times per day by Buddhists all around the Earth, the closing verse reads as follows:

May we extend This mind over the whole universe
So that we and all beings together
May attain maturity in Buddha's Wisdom.

Why, you may ask, do these people not ask for peace or universal brotherhood or the resurrection and the life of their God or Prophet? Because they know that maturity means all these other things, and so much more. They know that maturity is the path to freedom and liberation from the round of ignorance and violence; they know that illumination is not a glorified or ideal state achieved only by arhats or gods, but that it is an ordinary state of mind that arises in every mature thought, word, and act. They recognize that maturity is the secret of evolution, and that all the renewals and bloodless revolutions of society begin with a transformation within the self.

Evolution happens neither through the design of a god nor the theoretical conceptualizations of a biologist. It happens through the choice of each individual who lives his or her life in the open awareness that extends the mind across the universe toward the realization of maturity—not in a distant Heaven or Nirvana or Utopia—but in the living presence of every relationship, within every moment.

The Corporate Cold Shoulder

Maybe if you work for a company in corporate America, you'll understand what I'm talking about here: so often, workers will peel the skins off their backs to keep the company treadmill moving and productivity at least apparitionally positive. In return, they will be browbeaten, burdened with threats and suspicion, shafted at payday, bonus time, and the annual review, but most of all simply ignored.

If this sounds familiar to you, then you'll not be shocked to find that you are being treated exactly the same as a citizen of the United States of Corporate America. Tony Snow says that you and the remaining two-thirds of the American electorate are "out of touch" with the reality in Iraq. So it's time for a troop surge, some ten weeks after the American people had told this government, in the clearest possible terms, that they've had enough of this war and its endless escalation; and less than two weeks after our own nation's death toll had reached 3,000.

Next week will mark another milestone, the fifth anniversary of the opening of Camp Gitmo, Dick Cheney's personal torture laboratory, where all the other aberrations of justice and humanity that have marked this administration took root. The FBI has now released a horrifying report of what has gone on at Gitmo; and it resounds fairly exactly with what AI, HRW, the IRC, and other international NGOs have been telling us for years. Here's part of what our government did there, and repeated at Bagram, Abu Ghraib, and uncounted other places around the world:

Captives at Guantánamo Bay were chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor for 18 hours or more, urinating and defecating on themselves, an FBI report has revealed...Besides being shackled to the floor, detainees were subjected to extremes of temperature. One witness said he saw a barefoot detainee shaking with cold because the air conditioning had bought the temperature close to freezing.

This is what our government has been doing, even as it sent young men and women of our own to the most violent and horrible deaths and disfigurements imaginable; and as it prepares to continue to do tomorrow and next week, until we stop it. This is why I rise to disagree with all the Democrats who are saying that impeachment is the wrong direction to go. In fact, I don't see any other direction that will preserve this nation before its bespattered dignity is thoroughly corrupted and lost before the entire world.

In fact, our corporate analogy weakens only in the matter of the degree of the depravity involved. We corporate citizens have been treated worse than the lowest schlub in the company mailroom. We have been lied to, sneered at, taken for granted, economically stripped, driven, and most of all, ignored.

Will the new Congress change all that? Not unless we are all over them on it. Here are some options for making that happen:

Amnesty International's human rights pledge

Gold Star Families for Peace and the Walk for Change (today)

Code Pink's letter to Congress: Impeach Now

UFPJ's March (January 27)

If you know of anything else that's happening in your part of the world, by all means add it to the comments and I'll post it prominently here. The time to tear away the veil of corporate ignorance must be now.

Yes, Virginia, There Is Freedom of Speech

Quote of the week:

“How’s your boy?” asked Mr. Bush.
“I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” replied Mr. Webb, whose son, a Marine lance corporal, is risking his life in Mr. Bush’s war of choice.
“That’s not what I asked you,” the president snapped. “How’s your boy?”
“That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,”

That's an exchange between the new Senator from Virginia, James Webb, and the leader of the free world, excerpted from Paul Krugman's Monday column in the Times. It's certainly representative of the nasty, mean-spirited arrogance that we have noted in this Bush administration time and again here. I also hope it's representative of the character of the 110th Congress to come. Mr. Webb, I think the people of Virginia made a very, very wise choice.

More cause for muted celebration (muted, that is, while we await hearing who's next): Bolton is out. Bush and Co., of course, blame it all on the Democrats, though the opposition to Bolton was led in part by a GOP Senator, Lincoln Chaffee. I call this response a "mind-jerk reaction." Knees, of course, are made to bend; but the Bushian mind is made from reinforced concrete: as Stephen Colbert has observed of him, on Wednesday he will spit the same rhetorical spin as he spat on Monday, no matter what happened on Tuesday.

It is a recognizably corporate habit of perseveration: you have your Message, which is inscribed as indelibly and immutably as the Ten Commandments themselves, and no force of events or public opinion will change the Message (unless, of course, there is sufficient profit to be made from the revision). The Message appears in identical form across every public relations and advertising venue available to the corporation, and all that P.R. isn't cheap. Any refutation or disavowal of the Message, the Plan, and its proven value proposition, will meet with the same bitter and infantile reaction that Bush delivered to the media on the occasion of the Bolton resignation.

So it's not merely that corporations have, as Terry McKenna pointed out last week, bought the government; they have also infected it with their own peculiar model of fear-based conformity. Believe and repeat, and you will be retained, maybe even rewarded. Question or criticize the corporate Message, though, and you will be fired, ostracized, browbeaten, or otherwise punished. That's the way it works.

Well, maybe those are realities of work and politics that we just have to accept. But it goes further than that—in fact, it goes right into our daily lives, even into our family, personal, and individual psychological lives. Yes, I'm saying that the game of corporate conformity actually gets inside our minds, whenever we allow it to.

As Terry suggested last week, it derives from our false use of language. Whatever is wrapped in the stiff forms of corporate verbiage infects our relationships—our professional and personal relationships, and even our relationship with ourselves; the interactions amid the diverse functions of the personality.

It is, I suspect, a pervasive danger of our time. Later this week, we'll also hear from the author of our banner quote, who was delivering a similar warning some 50 years ago. Until then, I would merely ask you to just pause to consider how the corporate model of conformity and intimidation may have seeped into your life, into your relationships, into your mind. There are, incidentally, some very effective ways of getting it out, which we will discuss in future posts.

As for the government, we are very familiar with the currently prevailing delusion: dissent is an alliance with the terrorists; departure from the Message is "stubborn obstructionism" (Bush's characterization of those who thought Bolton was not the greatest choice for an Ambassador); and the slightest departure from the FOX News script of mute conformity is treason. To reverse that trend, we will have to be involved: one place to start is with UFPJ's Voters for Peace Pledge (see the graphic in the sidebar). There are petitions, call-in events, and local campaigns all across the nation and the world wide web: here's one.

We will also need more of our new and existing members of Congress to speak out as James Webb did—clearly, adamantly, and straight into the face of Power.

Monday with McKenna: Greed, Oppression, Power (G.O.P.)

New week, new banner quote. It seems a pithy comment on a certain trend that we hope only began last Tuesday. As always, if you think you know the author, post it in a Comment. Now for more in-depth analysis, who better than a Republican—that is, a clear-sighted one—to dissect last week's partial collapse of the GOP hegemony? Terry McKenna joins us now with his post-mortem.

Before we get to our analysis of the GOP's withering defeat and some recommendations for the victorious Democrats, let's remember how much the world lost because of the Republicans’ power grab. We have at least 150,000 Iraqi dead (some say 600,000). And the US army is in disarray. Our equipment is worn out and our reserves are exhausted. If anyone made a move against the US, anywhere on the globe, we’d be sunk. Maybe our air power could save us, but we’d have to use carpet bombing, not smart bombing. And the world is left with a near failed state in the Middle East.

Hey George, Dick, Karl, etc. … was it worth it? Huh?

Last Tuesday’s electoral rebuke of the Republicans was so stinging that it deserves the extensive critical analysis that it is getting.

So far, the consensus is that the failed Iraq war ended the Republican era – I don’t entirely disagree. Others suggest that it was conservatism itself that brought down the Republicans. That too seems reasonable. Paul Krugman places the blame on the good will of the American people who reacted to the Bush era with revulsion. That’s a good point. By the way, aren’t you tired of reporters who continue to confront Democrats with the question: “what is your plan for Iraq” – we are way past needing a plan – we need facts, lots of ‘em, and from all sides. Harry Reid proposes stronger Congressional oversight – that sounds good. Others have suggested an international summit, including all of Iraq’s neighbors – that means Iran and Syria. And then there is the Baker panel. Maybe they can share their insights now that the election is over (isn’t it ironic that Bush held back both Rumsfeld’s resignation and the results of the Baker panel because he feared that either would tip the balance against his party – considering how things turned out, the odds are that both would have helped his party).

But let’s return to the real cause of the Republicans’ demise. I think that their failure has its roots in the very same elements that make for a successful classical drama. Thus their fall was the result of a tragic (or fatal) flaw – several in fact. The Republicans’ failure is like that of Orestes and Oedipus or Hamlet and Macbeth. Well, maybe not that grand, but you get where I’m going. The Republicans’ failure was the consequence of old fashioned human frailty. The rest is just detail.

I’ve selected two traits - Greed and Hubris. The thought that they could craft a perpetual majority led Republicans to re-configure everything in terms of politics. Thus, they appointed unqualified party hacks and hangers on to serious jobs (remember Brownie) and they reduced Federal revenue while at the same time, increasing spending (wars cost real money, and then we have the Medicare drug benefit). When failure occurred, instead of looking for solutions, they tried to explain it away (so the looting in Iraq was spun into freedom, the insurgency was described as concerning just dead enders or outsiders agitators). The only question for me is which one came first—greed or hubris.

The irony here is that conservatives have for decades been preaching that all would be better if we just returned our education system to the teaching of the so called Great Books – otherwise called the Western Canon. The notion is that somehow these would inculcate lessons of traditional morality and honor. (Former secretary of Education, William Bennett is one of the more prominent bloviators in this matter. The western canon is worthy of study – but not for the same reasons put across by Bennett and his ilk and we might disagree upon which books.

Another aside - should we teach our high school kids the Bible? Taught as literature, the old testament gets pretty weird, though I bet the kids would love Solomon’s Song of Songs*…. In any case, the irony is… that despite their being steeped in traditional morality (don’t they all attend Bible study), conservatives fell victim to our old pals, greed and hubris.

An excellent assignment for a high school literature class would be to discuss which of the Republicans’ tragic flaws led most to their doom. I think it’s Hubris (but the modern usage, not the ancient Greek version – see Wikipedia for the difference) – for it was hubris that blinded them. Can’t you just imagine Karl Rove preening before a mirror, thinking of himself as the genius everyone said he was, and no longer able to hear the voice of his conscience? And what about Dick Cheney? Friday’s NY Times shows him sitting in the White House with the president and Nancy Pelosi – he certainly didn’t hear the clues – or didn’t care. By the way, in his picture, he looks like he’s eating a turd.

So the Democrats should not act like they have seized power, but instead should try to govern from the humble and moral center. Yes, I would love impeachment hearings - but the Democrats should get down to serious business. Find America’s agenda (whatever that really is) and stick to it.

If they do, they won’t have another 40 years of unchallenged leadership as they did prior to 1994, but they might win the next election in 2 years.


*When I first read this one, I thought – the Bible? Can’t be. I also don’t take seriously the commentary by pious Christians that the real message is of sacred love.