Joe Biden, speaking to the nation late last night as election results continue to trickle in:
In America, we hold strong views, we have strong disagreements, and that’s okay. Strong disagreements are inevitable in a democracy, and strong disagreements are healthy, they’re a sign of a vigorous debate of deeply held views. But we have to remember the purpose of our politics isn’t total, unrelenting, unending warfare, no. The purpose of our politics, the work of the nation isn’t to fan the flames of conflict but to solve problems, to guarantee justice, to get to improve the lives of our people.
We may be opponents but we’re not enemies--we’re Americans. No matter who you voted for, I’m certain of one thing: the vast majority of them, almost 150 million Americans who voted, they want to get the vitriol out of our politics. We’re certainly not going to agree on a lot of issues, but at least we can agree to be civil with one another. We have to put the anger and the demonization behind us. It’s time for us to come together as a nation to heal. It’s not going to be easy--we have to try.
Longtime readers of this blog will know that your Head Trucker is a thoroughgoing Anglophile who takes a continuing friendly interest in the scepter'd isle and its people, our not-so-distant cousins linked to us in all manner of ways, including law, language, literature, and custom, with amusing variations on both sides. Not to mention all those fascinating BBC historical dramas we have loved so much over the years.
In just the last few weeks, I have become - most unexpectedly - engrossed in their newest historical drama, broadcast in real time, and it's a doozy. I tell you what. Not even ol' Will the Bard himself could touch this for intrigue, passion, plot twists, comic foils, drama queens, and bitter tragedy. I won't spoil the plot for you - I can't, really, because there isn't one - but CBS Sunday Morning offers this helpful summary up through last weekend:
However, be advised that this summary is already clean out of date, events having moved so quickly over there in just the last four days. To give just one example: the well-starched Jacob Rees-Mogg, portrayed as one of the sternest champions of Brexit, has now done a complete 180 and is voting in Parliament for what he swore he never would, and encouraging others to do the same, whilst his boss, the embattled Theresa May, has promised (sort of) to step down as Prime Minister if only Parliament will pass her deal. Fascinating. This beats "Who Shot J.R.?" all to slap. I tell you what.
The dizzying cast of characters and shifts of allegiances back and forth, and side to side, are guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat. Of course, it's hard to tell the players without a scorecard, but I can offer you this clue: it does seem to your Head Trucker that the Leave people are very like our current Republicans (Make America Britain Great Again); whilst the Remainers are rather like our current Democrats, and about as well organized, but great at coming up with clever posters and fun protest marches. Enuff said.
Although billed as a comedy, I do very much fear that it will all end in tears, and eventually, the collapse of Western civilization on both sides of the Atlantic, not just ours. (Some people in Britain are stockpiling their closets with food and other essentials in case it all goes awry.) But what do I know?
Perhaps you should just tune in and decide for yourself. If you poke around in the Politics sections of the Guardian and the BBC, you will often find live broadcasts or blogs of the goings-on in Parliament, while Sky News usually has updates on the half-hour. I offer these particular links simply because they are free and require no subscription to access; there are of course many other news sources in Britain that you can google up on your own. The three I just mentioned are generally pro-Remain, neutral, and pro-Leave, respectively.
And for those few, those very few, of my fellow Americans who would like to hear a reasoned, impartial analysis of the Brexit mess, I recommend this lecture given two weeks ago by historian Vernon Bogdanor, one of Britain's foremost constitutional scholars, for your edification:
The Trump-O-Matic one of many intriguing prints and posters available at The Art of Mark Bryan
Robert Reich (b. 1946) is a political commentator, professor, and author who served as Secretary of Labor during the Clinton Administration. He currently teaches in the Goldman School of Public Policy at Berkeley. (Note for the benefit of my overseas truckbuddies: Berkeley, just across the bay from San Francisco, has always been a hotbed of left-wing thought. The 1960's were invented there.)
Reich has made a number of short, thought-provoking YouTube essays on the current constitutional crisis; here is a sampling.
The canny, acerbic H. L. Mencken wrote many a cutting observation still relevant to our politics and society. This quotation is making the rounds of the Internet now, but in mangled form; even the usually reliable Snopes.com doesn't get it quite right. So as a public service, your Head Trucker presents it now in its original form, which you may quote as you please:
First published in an article entitled "Bayard vs Lionheart" in the Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920, and reprinted in On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe, edited by Malcolm Moos, the Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956, on page 21.
I tell you these bibliographic details because, children, truth is more important than ever now in this grave new world where so many facts are quite literally at everyone's fingertips -- but so few can be bothered to lift one little finger to find them.
And if you casually, carelessly spread lies around, by whatever means, you have no reason to complain when one day they boomerang back and break your little necks, now do you?
In an earlier time - before all the hippified 70's psychobabble people eliminated the word shame from the public vocabulary in this country - Americans would have felt embarrassed to have the world witness the insane clown car spectacle that is the Republican party - which is glaringly obvious even to outsiders, as witness Fidel Castro's observation this week:
The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is — and I mean this seriously — the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Update: Alan Grayson, former Democratic Congressman from Florida, as usual gets right to the point about Gingrich's racist campaign:
And the stats he presents here are both eye-opening as well as nauseating:
For the sake of posterity, I have to post this unforgettable moment when our very own Clueless Leader of Texas, Butthead Perry, fucked himself in front of a live audience on nationwide television:
Even worse, he still had the audacity to show his face the next day and claim virginity:
Trust me when I tell you, boys: it couldn't have happened to a more deserving candidate. Also, my friends, I have to share with you Rachel's absolutely brilliant, wickedly funny deconstruction of Herman Cain's career as the biggest performance-art con man since Andy Warhol:
All of which would be roll-on-the-floor funny, if only there were a serious political party as the alternative, instead of the National Honor Society doing a Saturday-morning carwash. Andrew Sullivan on why the Democrats suck:
What happens to a country when there is no adult in the room? I guess we'll find out, won't we?
(Side note: shocking photo from the failed state of Mexico.)
With only a week left before the U. S. Government defaults on its financial obligations, the President addressed the nation tonight and urged citizens to take action:
Unfortunately, for the past several weeks, Republican House members have essentially said that the only way they’ll vote to prevent America’s first-ever default is if the rest of us agree to their deep, spending cuts-only approach.
If that happens, and we default, we would not have enough money to pay all of our bills -– bills that include monthly Social Security checks, veterans’ benefits, and the government contracts we’ve signed with thousands of businesses.
For the first time in history, our country’s AAA credit rating would be downgraded, leaving investors around the world to wonder whether the United States is still a good bet. Interest rates would skyrocket on credit cards, on mortgages and on car loans, which amounts to a huge tax hike on the American people. We would risk sparking a deep economic crisis -– this one caused almost entirely by Washington. . . .
Now, I realize that a lot of the new members of Congress and I don’t see eye-to-eye on many issues. But we were each elected by some of the same Americans for some of the same reasons. Yes, many want government to start living within its means. And many are fed up with a system in which the deck seems stacked against middle-class Americans in favor of the wealthiest few. But do you know what people are fed up with most of all?
They’re fed up with a town where compromise has become a dirty word. They work all day long, many of them scraping by, just to put food on the table. And when these Americans come home at night, bone-tired, and turn on the news, all they see is the same partisan three-ring circus here in Washington. They see leaders who can’t seem to come together and do what it takes to make life just a little bit better for ordinary Americans. They’re offended by that. And they should be.
The American people may have voted for divided government, but they didn’t vote for a dysfunctional government. So I’m asking you all to make your voice heard. If you want a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, let your member of Congress know. If you believe we can solve this problem through compromise, send that message.
You can contact all of your elected officials in Washington via USA.gov, and your Head Trucker hopes you will - while you can still pay the electric bill.
Update, 10 p.m. - Response to the President's message seems to be overwhelming Congressional servers. I was able to get an email through to my representative, but no luck so far with my senators.
Keep trying, guys. Or are you just going to lie there and let the teabagger fucktards keep gang-banging you?
Wayne Besen over at Truth Wins Out has written a very thoughtful piece on what he believes Obama's strategy is regarding marriage equality, you should go read it. First, he quotes what the President said in today's press conference:
This administration under my direction has consistently said we cannot discriminate as a country against people on the basis of sexual orientation…
What I’ve seen happen over the last several years and what happened in New York last week – I think was a good thing because what you saw was the people of New York having a debate, talking through these issues. It was contentious, it was emotional – but ultimately they made a decision to recognize civil marriages. And I think that’s exactly how things should work. And so I think it is important for us to work through these issues – because each community is going to be different and each state is going to be different – to work through them. In the meantime, we filed briefs before the Supreme Court that say any discrimination against gays, lesbians, transgenders is subject to heightened scrutiny and we don’t think DOMA is unconstitutional (sic – they do think DOMA is unconstitutional). So the combination of what states are doing, what the courts are doing, the actions we’re taking administratively, all are how the process should work…
I think what you’re seeing is a profound recognition on the part of the American people that gays, lesbians and transgender persons are our brothers, our sisters, our children, our cousins, our friends, our co-workers and that they’ve got to be treated like every other American. And I think that principle will win out.
Besen goes on to say, among other things:
Obama alluded in his statement to the idea that this process is working itself out on several fronts — state legislatures, court cases, the actions of his own administration that actually fall under his own set of responsibilities. President Obama simply cannot wave his magic wand and declare full equality for LGBT Americans. And I agree that it’s great that states like New York have used their legislative branch to move us forward. However, those who think that the civil rights of minorities should be solely left up to the whims of either voters or their elected representatives are idiots, as there comes a time in civil rights battles where the Supreme Court has to come in and gently explain to Mississippi that it’s time to stop playing with its own poop in the corner and join the other well-behaved children at the lunch table. (Can you imagine if we had waited around for Mississippi to deal with anti-miscegenation laws on a legislative level? My god.)
This brings us to why I think President Obama is deliberately being cagy on the subject of full marriage equality, at this point in time. Again, we all may not like it, but I do believe there is a method to the madness here. Going into the 2012 elections, the Obama administration is, unfortunately, more vulnerable than I think it should be, due to the economy, and due to the goldfish memories of many American voters, who do not remember where the shitty economy came from, but who simultaneously think that Obama should have been able to snap his fingers and fix it. And though the economy is improving, there are still a hell of a lot of Americans who are first and foremost concerned about the fact that they don’t have jobs. If that situation hasn’t improved much by the time next year’s election rolls around, he could be more vulnerable than we might have expected . . . .
Oh, but hell, if Obama is actually running around before the election, as Daniel Villareal said in the piece linked above, “guns blazing with a red, white, and blue hard-on for the queers,” I can imagine a scenario where that could tip one or more of those states into the red column. As it is, he’s letting the process play out and staying a bit above the fray, seemingly to me, to avoid handing the GOP that easy wedge issue going into the election. Now surely, he could come out for full marriage equality next week and prove me wrongity-wrong-wrong, but my gut just sort of says that’s where things are right now.
I get all that Besen says, and he's probably right. But something he doesn't mention is the bottom-line fact that even though Obama may be doing all the right moves, politically and Constitutionally - what's missing for us queer folk is the feeling of being loved.
Which is one thing Obama is lousy at communicating. Some people, some Presidents are good at getting that message across. Some just suck at it. Do you know what I mean, fellas?
Related: Whatever we may feel about the President, there's just no comparison between him and George W. Bush - remember? Obama's remarks today at the Pride reception in the White House:
We as Americans often confuse technological progress with societal progress. Whether this is more pronounced in America than in other countries I have no idea, but it is difficult to sit in a state-of-the-art convention center and imagine a Roman-style collapse of the republic. We have HDTVs, damn it. We have iPhones. Surely we have advanced far beyond those past civilizations, yes? Surely we are better than any current country could be without those things? We have stealth bombers, you primitive bastards. That makes us better.
But people do not progress as fast as their tools, and societies do not even progress at the pace a single person might. Countries might have prodigious technology, and yet still harbor virulent racism. No matter what progress is made, we are still all subject to the self-inflicted effects of war. The environment itself still overwhelms our every invented protection, and easily, with a single tornado, flood, or earthquake, or volcano, or with a slight mutation to a random virus that has always been there, or with changes to the very climate of the planet. In the end we are the stuff of our biology, and harbor the same tribal suspicions and hatreds, the same greed and jealousies, and the same rough ambitions.
There is nothing that declares with (ahem) certitude that our society will always progress, and never regress. Or even collapse. There is no country that is immune to going batshit crazy, from time to time. We do it ourselves rather often: generationally, mostly. Each generation either repeats the same damn mistakes or, overcorrecting, repeats the mistakes from four or five cycles back. I expect we could mostly render history books as generic documents: During the year Y, an overwhelming fear of X assisted in Z's rise to power, after which all went to hell in a handbasket before the countering B movement succeeded in reversing the trend in year Y+N. Cut and paste, kids, cut and paste. All the rest can be done with footnotes.
Today's latest chart of election polling, from CTV.com
Your Head Trucker admires a great many things about Canada, not the least of which is their public healthcare system, as well as their legalization of same-sex marriage back in 2005. So I take a friendly interest in the political happenings of our neighbor to the north; and this week, the rather placid (by American standards) political waters are rising fast in what might turn out to be an unexpected tsunami that will reshape the landscape for some time to come.
It appears that the New Democratic Party (softcore Socialists, shhhh!), led by Jack Layton, hitherto always in third place, is riding a wave of disgust with politics-as-usual that might put them into office as the official Opposition for the first time ever at the national level. Experienced pundits say there's slim-to-no chance of Layton becoming Prime Minister - but there is a chance that Conservative leader Stephen Harper might lose his grip on the office somehow, and the Liberals could be reduced to third-party status for the first time since Confederation in 1867, a major upset - all depending on just how the election returns shape up on Monday, May 2.
Speaking of which, they've only been campaigning since the end of March up there: Canadian elections last only about 5 or 6 weeks. OMG, isn't that a blessed thought?
Anyway, here's a clip of the Canadian leader's debate that was held a couple of weeks ago. Your Head Trucker watched the whole thing on youtube, and this short video montage is a fair representation of the tone of the whole. One Canadian journalist described it as something like "Jack Layton, a smiling, postive guy surrounded by three angry men," which is about right.
Harper, as you'll see, tries to smile angelically and play the abused-but-saintly leader, but don't be fooled: he came into office five years ago pledging to revoke the marriage-equality law. Some people up there call him the George W. Bush of Canada, for that and other reasons. But fortunately, when he tried to reopen the issue, Parliament voted down his nasty plan, 175-123, a moment your Head Trucker watched on live television and will never forget: imagine a nation's elected representatives resoundingly approving, for the third time in three years, under three different prime ministers, equality and justice for all.
What a concept. Imagine!
The NDP was solidly in favor of gay rights on that and all other occasions. I like Jack; he's a politician, but he seems very sincere, very down to earth, and clear on what's the right thing to do. Give him a try, google up the NDP platform, see what you think.
Below, Layton in an iconic picture saluting his supporters at a rally in Winnipeg yesterday, brandishing his cane. He's recovering from both prostate surgery as a well as a busted leg, but he's a scappy guy. Good luck to him. Maybe Canada, at least, will find some Change they can believe in.
If Democrats give in to the blackmailers now, they’ll just face more demands in the future. As long as Republicans believe that Mr. Obama will do anything to avoid short-term pain, they’ll have every incentive to keep taking hostages. If the president will endanger America’s fiscal future to avoid a tax increase, what will he give to avoid a government shutdown?
So Mr. Obama should draw a line in the sand, right here, right now. If Republicans hold out, and taxes go up, he should tell the nation the truth, and denounce the blackmail attempt for what it is. Yes, letting taxes go up would be politically risky. But giving in would be risky, too — especially for a president whom voters are starting to write off as a man too timid to take a stand. Now is the time for him to prove them wrong.
The cliché criticisms of Obama are (from the left) that he is a naïve centrist, not the audacious liberal that Democrats thought they were getting, and (from the right) that he is a socialist out to impose government on every corner of American life. But the real problem is that he’s so indistinct no one across the entire political spectrum knows who he is. A chief executive who repeatedly presents himself as a conciliator, forever searching for the “good side” of all adversaries and convening summits, in the end comes across as weightless, if not AWOL. A Rorschach test may make for a fine presidential candidate — when everyone projects their hopes on the guy. But it doesn’t work in the Oval Office: These days everyone is projecting their fears on Obama instead.
"Non-argumentative reasonableness" so far has prevented a second great depression, rescued Detroit, bailed out the banks, pitlessly isolated Tehran's regime, exposed Netanyahu, decimated al Qaeda's mid-level leadership in Pakistan and Afghanistan, withdrawn troops from Iraq on schedule, gotten two Justices on the Supreme Court, cut a point or two off the unemployment rate with the stimulus, seen real wages for those employed grow, presided over a stock market boom and record corporate profits, and maneuvered a GOP still intoxicated with failed ideology to become more and more wedded to white, old evangelicals led by Sarah Palin. And did I mention universal health insurance - the holy grail for Democrats for decades?
What do you say, guys?
What I Say: The reason I supported Hillary all through the primaries was that she was the most experienced candidate: she had been at the center of power, she knew the ropes, she knew the other side face to face. Government doesn't operate on high-minded principles; it's a give-and-take web of personal relationships - sometimes hardball, sometimes cutthroat - like every other major entity in life.
Every few years at election time, people get their hopes up that some outsider with no connections and no influence and no relationships among the power brokers and wheeler-dealers will come into the Oval Office and "clean up the mess in Washington" - but it just doesn't work that way, and that's reality.
Meanwhile, all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
The Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund today announced that more openly LGBT candidates won election to public office in the U.S. in 2010 than in any year in America’s history. At least 106 of the group’s record-breaking 164 endorsed candidates were winners [including:]
– David Cicilline’s election to Congress. The Providence, R.I. mayor will be the fourth openly gay member of the U.S. House of Representatives, joining Reps. Tammy Baldwin, Barney Frank and Jared Polis, who each won reelection.
– Jim Gray’s election as mayor of Lexington, Kentucky, the state’s second-largest city.
– Nickie Antonio’s election to the Ohio House. Antonio will be the first openly LGBT person to serve in the state legislature.
– Marcus Brandon’s election to the North Carolina House. Brandon will be the state’s only openly gay state legislator and one of just five out African Americans to serve as state lawmakers.
– Victoria Kolakowski’s election as a Superior Court judge in Alameda County. Kolakowski becomes the first openly transgender judge in America.
– Kevin Lembo’s election as Connecticut State Comptroller. Lembo joins just a handful of openly LGBT candidates to have been elected to statewide positions.
– Laurie Jinkins’ election to the Washington State House. Jinkins is Washington’s first openly lesbian state legislator, and could help her gay colleagues pass a marriage equality bill in the next legislative session.
– Maryland’s and California’s expanded LGBT state legislative caucuses. Each will include seven openly gay and lesbian lawmakers. In Maryland, the caucus is poised to help pass marriage equality legislation, which the reelected Gov. Martin O’Malley has vowed to sign.
No one has been more gravely disappointed and, at times livid, with the practically non-existent record of President Obama on LGBT equal rights. Over and over again I have held this administration's feet to the fire in an effort to force them to move forward in our struggle for freedom. As we all know by now, those pleas often have fallen on deaf ears. Our disappointment, anger and frustration is totally justified.
What is not justified is to allow those emotions to intrude on our ability to be intelligent voters this election day. We cannot and should not shoot ourselves in the collective foot because of the administration's actions.
Why is it important to vote? Let's get right down to it: If the House and Senate fall into Republican Tea Party hands on November 2nd, the LGBT community will be facing the most hostile United States Congress in our history. The election of these bonafide Teabagging wing-nuts could cause chaos, fear and intimidation in our political process. Their ascendancy to power would validate some truly dark and despicable forces operating in American politics. If we think it is hard to achieve equal rights now just try and do it in a Tea Party dominated Congress.
In recent weeks I've heard some of you call in and say you're not voting, sitting this one out because you're unhappy with the White House or Congress. Others have said they'll vote for a lesser candidate, pretty much giving their vote to a Republican in a close election. But I have said on the show for quite a while now, no matter how angry you are at President Obama or disappointed with the Democratic leadership -- and I've been one of the biggest critics around -- it is imperative that you get out and vote for the Democrats and against the tea party-backed Republicans.
The Republican Party would like nothing better than to see the discontent in the Democratic base help them install truly the most extreme lot of candidates we have seen in many years. We've exposed the tea party as nothing more than a reconfiguration of all the religious zealots, moral crusaders, racists and bigots who've been around for years. Do not attempt to punish the President or the Democrats by punishing yourself. This country has been in a very precarious state for a long time, in which the political winds can usher in something radical and extreme very quickly. Bad economic times are always an opportunity for those who seek to do that. We have demanded and will demand full accountability by the Democrats and President -- who is not on the ballot until 2012 -- but don't do it by giving power to your enemies. As David Mixner says . . . vote as if your life depends on it, because it does.
Keith Olbermann kicks ass and names names:
The [objective is] to elect a group of unqualified, unstable individuals who will do what they are told in exchange for money and power, and march this nation as far backward as they can get: backward to Jim Crow, or backward to the breadlines of the 1930's, or backward to hanging union organizers, or backward to the trusts and the robber barons. Result? The Tea Party. Vote backward, vote Tea Party.
And if you are somehow indifferent to what is planned for next Tuesday, it is nothing short of an attempted use of democracy to end this democracy. To buy America wholesale and pave over the freedoms and the care we take of one another, which have combined to make us the envy of the world. You do not think your freedom is at stake next Tuesday?
Think again. And if you city boys don't know how to use a gun, you'd fucking well better VOTE tomorrow, goddammit.
The President attended the GOP Issues Conference today in Baltimore: as Sullivan aptly says, going "into the lions' den." Above are his opening remarks, and I wish you would listen to them and take note of the calm, reasonable, conciliatory tone: pleading in a dignified way, without begging or unctuousness, for the good-faith cooperation and compromise that are quintessential to the workings of a little-d democracy, a little-r republic. The video of the question and answer session that followed is here; or read the full transcript here.
At this point, after all the puerile assininity and screeching inanity of the past year, your Head Trucker's instinct would have been to arrive for the SOTU blasting away like Yosemite Sam: All right you sonsabitches, sit down and shaddup while I tell you how it's gonna be around here . . .
And naturally, they would have taken my head off before I ever got out of the building. Grin. So it's really all for the best that it's not my job, you see.
Obama is a much cooler head. Unflappable is the word that comes to mind. All these things we've talked about here in the Blue Truck, he's aware of them. (The other day, the President mentioned to an interviewer that Andrew Sullivan's blog is something he often reads, a fact which Sullivan was proud to mention, as I would be too.) Obama knows what pigheaded stuff the Republicans and the Christianists and the teabaggers and all the other naysayers are doing and saying, the vile personal attacks as well as the totally goofball communist-muslim-atheist-fascist claims about his agenda.
And yet, after all that and after a whole year of obstinate stonewalling and sabotage by the other party, he still remains unruffled: steady and certain in his progress towards the goals he set for his administration, however halting the advance, or how slow the ascent.
And no one can watch him speak as he has this week without realizing that this is an honest man; a decent man; a man of principle, not politics; who measures his words and chooses his actions according to an inner moral compass, not the shifting winds of public opinion or political opportunity. For the most part, I mean: a morally decent man, not a perfect man. But what an enormous contrast with his immediate predecessor, whose every public utterance seemed to be spinning a yarn: the entrancing spiel of a snake-oil salesman. Remember?
It's the difference, I think, between warping reality to conform to a predetermined belief; and seeing reality clearly, the world as it is, and constructing a logical, workable plan to fix what is broken, and right what is wrong. Or to put it another way: the contrast between a rabbit's foot and a working compass, a four-leaf clover and a navigation chart.
It's not that I think Obama can do no wrong, or is infallible in judgment, not at all. He's a man, like you and me, and therefore by definition another flawed and fallible human being like anyone else. And as I've blogged here in the Blue Truck any number of times already, I have been disappointed, sometimes bitterly so, with his failure to live up to the tone, if not the letter, of his campaign promises to the LGBT community. But despite all our failed expectations of him, we have to admit that he has demonstrated both by word and deed that he does indeed respect our community, and respects us as people, as fellow Americans - as his remarks in the SOTU address reveal, which I have already noted in other recent posts.
If you doubt this, brother, just stop for one ten seconds and recall to mind the hateful words and deeds of his predecessor, and of all that ilk, when it came to us queer folks, and I think you'll realize the unmistakeable difference.
And I'm coming to realize that perhaps Obama does know what he's doing, after all; or at least, that he is pursuing the most reasonable and most necessary course of action as President, according to a well-thought-out list of priorities. Perhaps his seeming delay on advancing the issues we feel most acutely is not due to prevarication or lack of concern; perhaps he simply sees the bigger picture, the greater need to handle first things first, and do the greatest good for the greatest number.
Maybe, just maybe, like a good general, he sees more clearly than we do the need to reserve his main force to defend against the major thrust of the other side, and for now is leaving us to defend our outposts as best we can and wait for reinforcements later, when the tide of battle has turned.
I'm not a military man, so I'd best not carry that analogy any further. But what I can say with assurance is that I am continually reminded of, and refreshed by, the President's manifest intelligence, goodwill, and good sense. As well as his simple moral goodness. For all the hoorah about the color of his skin and his multicultural family, I see what some others overlook: the small-town, middle-class Kansas boy, not so very different from the small-town, middle-class Southern boys I grew up with: a decent guy, a good friend, smart yes but humble also, where it counts. He may have lived in some exotic places, and grown up in Hawaii; but I see the deep legacy of his grandparents in him, the solid heritage of hardworking, unassuming, neighborly Midwestern values. Just look at these pictures, and see how much Obama resembles his American grandfather, Stanley Dunham:
The kind of people who roll out of bed every morning and march off to work, rain or shine, early to bed and early to rise; who do what needs to be done without having to be told, people you can trust, you can count on to do the right thing, and usually in a pleasant, courteous way: the small-town types who just get on with it, quietly, methodically, without complaint, without drama. People who count the cost, who save for a rainy day, who number their priorities and get their ducks in a row. Methodical, dependable, and quietly determined to succeed, even if it takes a long time. The solid American personality, the can-do, not-a-quitter type that prevails in the end.
There are some limitations to that kind of personality, which can get bogged down in workaday details and local prejudices; but when coupled with a brilliant mind and unfettered imagination, those types can transcend all that and reach the mountaintops.
Maybe Obama is not all we hoped, not all we wanted him to be. But maybe, it seems to me, just maybe he is indeed what we really need at this point in the nation's life: a calm, steady hand at the wheel, judicious and thrifty of motion, calling and recalling all of us to reconciliation and common purpose - asking us time and again, with great forebearance, to see things as they really are. Asking us, with all humility, to trust and follow - and fret not.
Who else can we follow? Who else can lead this nation out of the mire and muck it was left in by the previous administration? Who else is there to trust, really? Just think about that for a minute.
Despite all the disappointments and setbacks for us gay people in the past year - and I feel them as sharply as anyone - perhaps we too, as well as the opposition party, need to pause, reflect, and look at the bigger picture. Perhaps both sides need to listen to the call to be one united people. Perhaps we all are guilty of straining at the gnat and swallowing the camel - to our peril.
it is the collapse of any desire for the common good, the evaporation of civic virtue that is our problem. No leader can save us from that. Only we can.
Athenian democracy flared up for a moment in history like a glorious flame, but was snuffed out by foolish internecine warfare and the lust for empire, despite the pleas and advice of good rulers and wise men. The Roman republic expired in civil conflict and was succeeded by a long line of absolute rulers who kept the forms but not the spirit of a republic, and reduced the free citizenry to servile spectators; as Gibbon famously wrote of the Roman people in the prosperous age of the Antonine emperors, outwardly the empire was flourishing, but in their hearts it had withered away.
When the yet to be completed annals of the American experiment are written, what will be said about us, our spirit, our character, at this point in the story? Here, still at the dawn of the third milennium, in the third century of our own republic, we are at a momentous turning point, I feel. But when the chroniclers of the future come to write about the American people at this juncture, which way will they say we turned?
In addition to my earlier reflections on the President's State of the Union address, I was also struck by the spectacle of a third or more of our elected representatives sitting on their hands throughout the speech, refusing to applaud even the most nonpartisan points of the speech, or indeed even to acknowledge the President's courteous and sometimes humorous attempts to reach out to them.
I heard the TV commenters point out at the beginning of the event that the Republicans had been strictly charged by their party leaders aforehand that there were to be no Joe Wilson outbursts on this dignified (well, dignified for U.S. politics) occasion. Well and good. Even so, as the camera panned across row after row after row of silent but accusatory faces with gleaming eyes, it was hard to evade the thought of a wolf pack held momentarily at bay. Silent, disdainful - and hungry for blood. Hardened warriors ready for battle, eager to storm the ramparts.
A chilling scene at the heart of our republic. And those faces were nearly all white, and nearly all male. The kind that were the big jocks in school. There were noticeably more women and more people of color on the Democrat side of the aisle.
The juvenile, assinine quibbling over which justice or general applauded or screwed up his face during the address is not worth commenting on, and misses the much more important point of a government brought nearly to a standstill by a reactionary minority party, convinced beyond a shadow of self-doubt of its own divine mandate, not merely to rule but to conquer. Sullivan reflects further on Obama's character, and the looming peril facing the nation at this critical juncture in its history:
My foreboding sense is that America may have already passed the point of no return in terms of civil, constitutional governance. I do not believe that in the Bush administration, the United States was effectively governed by its Constitution. The forms were still there, but the reality wasn't. Beneath it all, the desire for despotism ran, fueled by the despot's greatest ally, fear. Fear of foreigners, fear of terrorists, fear of gays, fear of immigrants, fear of the inevitable uncertainties of real reform.
It was entrenched by the military's own embrace of the role of imperial adventure, by the CIA's embrace of torture, by the president's assertion of total, extra-legal power in a never-ending war that now encompassed the US as well as abroad and citizens alongside non-citizens, and by a resurgent, right-wing partisan media that saw its job as fomenting propaganda rather than seeking any kind of truth, and liberal mainstream media so afraid of its own shadow and so intimidated by accusations of elitism that it became the equivalent of Harry Reid. . . .
So this fever feels to me like either the kind that precedes the final death of this republic into a carnival of FNC-directed war and debt and drama led by charismatic media-emperors or empresses - or the fever that finally ends the sickness, and restores some sense of civic responsibility and republican virtue. Last night, I saw one of the few men left able to see the depth of the crisis and not lose faith in this country's ability to overcome it. My faith in this country - so strong in the past - is not as strong as Obama's now.
But I sure as hell believe in fighting for it, and for him, against the forces at home and abroad that would truly end this experiment in self-government while pretending, of course, that everything is exactly the same. I believe our crisis is deeper than many now believe - because it is not just a crisis of economics, of debt, of over-reach, of an empire now running on its own steam and unstoppable by any political force, but because it is a crisis of civic virtue, a collapse of the good faith and serious, reasoned attention to problems that marks the distinction between a republic and a bread-and-circuses Ailes-Rove imperium.
Those, in my view, are the stakes. Are you ready to get back into the arena and fight? And if you don't, who will?
"Umm, what was that Abu Ghraib scandal all about? It started out as misconduct between men and women and then it steadily deteriorated into abuse of prisoners. The common denominator is lack of discipline. Once you break down discipline, good order and discipline and morale, everything that’s required for unit cohesion, you undermine the culture and the strength of the armed forces," - Elaine Donnelly, in an "argument" against gays in the military.
At this point, you realize that they really do live in an alternate reality, immune to evidence, hostile to reason. The Abu Ghraib scandal was about the torture and abuse techniques authorized by Bush and Cheney and supported by the vast majority of Republicans actually being photographed and documented. It was an example of what happens when a president unleashes torture in wartime as a legitimate tool. That it could be used to argue against allowing many servicemembers to serve their country without being persecuted for it is simply gob-smacking.
9:24 p.m., Texas time: some reflections on what I particularly noted in the President's address to Congress, which he just concluded. The New York Times has the full text here; curiously enough, I couldn't find it at whitehouse.gov.
First of all, listening to him speak so honestly and directly, so clearly and rationally, well, I have to tell you, boys - I felt some of that thrill once more that I felt on Election Night, 2008, and on Inauguration Day last year. And I thanked God once again that we have such a brilliant, eloquent, and thoroughly admirable man as our President; someone to be proud of, very proud, down the long annals of American history.
Now you fellas know I have at times been critical of Mr. Obama's words and deeds, or the lack thereof, in this past year, and I'll continue to criticize when and where I think it deserved. But that's my privilege as an American, which I bought with my vote; and it's your privilege too, under a free government ruled by laws, not men.
Overall, I thought it was a very good speech; could have been a little more fiery, but the tone seemed noticeably more assertive than in some speeches. A couple of deadpan-humor lines I appreciated:
To Congress, on working together: "Let's use common sense. A novel idea."
Another laugh line, about the bank bailout: "I hated it. You hated it. It was about as popular as a root canal."
After speaking about American efforts to help Haiti, and support people in other countries: "America must always stand on the side of freedom and human dignity."
"We abide by the notion that all are created equal, no matter who you are or what you look like. If you abide by the law, you should be protected by it. If you adhere to our common values, you should be treated no different than anyone else."
"Our administration has had some setbacks in the past year, some of them deserved; but nothing compared to what many families are going through. What keeps me going is knowing that the spirit of determination and optimism, the fundamental decency at the core of the American people lives on."
I especially like the vigor of his concluding words, delivered with some of that old fired-up, ready-to-go spirit he showed in the campaign:
"We have finished a difficult year. We have come through a difficult decade. But a new year has come. A new decade stretches before us. We don't quit. I don't quit. Let's seize this moment - to start anew, to carry the dream forward, and to strengthen our union once more."
A couple of surprises, for me anyway: he plans to get more nuclear plants built. I know there's always a risk with that, but how else can we realistically meet the nation's energy needs?
And he wants legislation to forgive your student loans after 20 years, 10 if you go into some unspecified "public service" jobs; and he wants to end the privileged (or should I say bloodsucking) role of banks in giving student loans (I well remember the sons of bitches charged me 9 percent on mine) and to increase Pell Grants, which in my day were called Basic Grants; and increase every household's tax credit for college education: "no one should go broke because they chose to go to college." A-fucking-men to that.
And of course I applauded when he said, "This year, I will work with Congress and the military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are. Because it's the right thing to do."
Oh my God, I have lived to see this day: not only did the President of the United States mention gay people in his State of the Union address, he also openly acknowledged their human worth as well as their patriotism. You young'uns under 40 cannot know how thrilling, how deeply moving that is for us guys who vividly remember an America where the word "homosexual" was damn near unpronounceable - almost always spoken, if at all, in a low whisper by straight people: an ugly, repellent, shameful thought.
As I quoted from Andrew Sullivan the other day, it behooves us even in the midst of our struggles for equal rights, always to be "insanely happy" that we are living at one of the rare periods in human history when being gay is not a ticket to the gallows or the stake.
But back to the President's address: I was disappointed that he did not speak more forcefully about getting healthcare reform passed, specifically, though he did call for the parties to keep working to pass the legislation. But I did appreciate very much his acknowledging that Americans are fed up with the totally irresponsible behavior of banks, corporations, the media, and Congress. And I liked very much that he took both parties to task:
To Democrats, I would remind you that we have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve some problems, not run for the hills. And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it's not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions.
All I could think was, my God: an adult in the house. Finally. A responsible parent. Or at least, a fair but firm schoolmaster.
Well, God bless him. What a helluva tough job he has, made doubly or triply worse - as he reminded the audience - by the financial and military mess made by his predecessor.
And though I reserve the right to criticize, I did ask myself: if it were me, standing at that podium in his place, just what in the world would I do, what could I do, that would be a bit better?
I had to admit - not a damn thing. Because the task is beyond my powers and above my comprehension in many ways.
But I do believe Obama is up to the task. Certainly much more, way much more than his predecessor, for which we can all thank God heartily. Obama acknowledged tonight that he has made some mistakes in the past year, and no doubt, being human, he will make some more.
But fellas - when all is said and done, I still have hope for this country as long as Obama is in the White House. And I am still so damn proud that this intelligent, moral, compassionate guy, this thoroughly decent man, is my President.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, harmony; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
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We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
and welcome to the Blue Truck, a blog for mature gay men with news and views on gay rights, history, art, humor, and whatever comes to mind. Plus a few hot men. The truck's all washed and gassed up, so hop in buddy, let's go.
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My Story
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Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?
It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual. You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race-infected society.
If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God.
