Pimpgnosis

I have long been of the opinion that political letters are sort of like putting the toilet seat up when you’re taking a piss.  It doesn’t really make that much of a difference if you do it or not, but if no-one ever did it the whole place would become a cesspit in no time.

Wow.  That metaphor got out of hand quickly.  Let me try a different one:

Political letters are like the candles people light in the side-chapels of Catholic churches.  It pays for a small part of the upkeep of the edifice, puts out a little bit of illumination, and provides a fair bit of comfort for the faithful.  But only the sexton ever reads the prayer-cards, and the messages laid there never end up in the sermons except on the rarest of occasions.

Better, and mostly accurate, but pretty smarmy.  And probably kinda of patronizing as regards the personal power of prayer.

Me, I like to think of my political letters as kind of like the personals ads at the back of my alumni magazine: read, if at all, by a select few and only for their amusement value.  Certainly written on the assumption that the only people reading it are jaded beyond measure at the presumptively naive pose of the entire genre.

Recently I’ve taken to pushing the boundaries of what’s normally included in political letters by judiciously quoting scripture.   Or injudiciously, if you ask Da Partner.  This practice was not unusual in Texas, though giving a liberal spin to (say) the incident of the Samaritan woman at the well, or (say) a queer reading of the dialogue with the rich young ruler…those were probably not things the good US Senators from the Lone Star State were used to hearing.  Which lent a frisson of epater les Farisees, or somesuch, to the exercise.

But doing something like that here in California?  That’s…if anything a little edgier, a little crazier.  It’s not so much “ironic” as it is “out of context” and therefore probably shades into “kinda weird.”

Still and all, the reference to the prophet Daniel seemed entirely apposite to the particular situation in question.

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Pandering.

No, literally.

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The toughs gets all racist and sh*t.

Let’s leave aside for the moment the fact that Sherrif McGinness apparently made some kind of rounding error that led to this little brouhaha about whether we’re going to have to fire 200, or 130, patrol officers.

No, let’s focus on two hi-larious little tidbits:

#1: “Ken Berling, a Carmichael resident, warned that people and businesses would flee if the board didn’t find more money for the Sheriff’s Department. ”

Really? 

Where, precisely, would you flee to?   Texas, Nevada, or Florida?

Oh, but wait, those places have worse crime rates than we do, in addition to doing a substantially more (ahem) effective job of locking people up. 

Which, as everyone with two brain cells to rub together knows, really means locking up Blacks and Hispanics.

So, by all means move to Okla-fuckin-homa if you want to, buddy.  It’s just like Texas, after all.  Just dirtier, and with less.   Which brings us to our second quote of the day:

#2: “Deputy Chris Huffman elicited loud applause when he called for cutting social programs to save public safety jobs.  ‘If, as the county executive would have us believe, we are truly out of money, then I would say that the time for massive social programs and taxpayer-supported giveaways has to come to an end,’ he said.”

I do not now, nor have I ever, understood the trope of “massive social programs.”  Now, maybe it’s because I went to a fancy-pants college and all.  Or maybe it’s because I have a parent who worked in social welfare (no, not him.  The other one).  But it has always seemed perfectly obvious to me that “welfare” is a straightforward wage subsidy that ensures a supply of cheap, expendable labor that in turn (a) ensures a steady supply of inexpensive consumer goods and services for the rest of us, and (b) staves of the kind of desparation that leads to civil unrest. 

Evidently the direct connection between (i) seasonal agriculture, and (ii) homelessness; or alternatively, between (iii) “temporary assistance for needy families” and (iv) the labor supply for fast food restaurants; or yet again between (v) summertime employment and recreation activities and (vi) not having another Rodney King on our hands, is all too abstract for some folks.

Let’s break it down a little more simply then:  it’s cheaper to keep McKinley Pool open — one of those “massive social programs” the Jaspers keep yapping about, with all of its subsidized day care and recreational swim activities, not to mention cushy employment for otherwise criminally bored youths — than it would be to pay for the officers it would take to lock up all those erstwhile juvenile delinquents. 

Or yet again: it is, quite literally, cheaper to pay a social worker to keep track of a caseload of alkies and semi-loons than it would be to pay for a thug to round them all up for gray-market petty entrepreneurship (I’m sorry I slipped into jargon there.  I meant to say aggresive panhandling, dumpster-diving, and vagrancy).   

And while I am sorry that Officer Huffman’s job is on the line, that is no excuse to fall into latter-day welfare-queen race-baiting. 

If the county is out of money, then it is time to talk about priorities.  And either we are willing to pay to live in paradise, or we are not.   And if we are not, then for pity’s sake move before you turn my home into the kind of vicious, mean, and hateful penitentiary I so recently escaped.

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With all due apologies to William Shakespeare…

“Oh that we now had here a hundred thousand donors to do the work to come. 

That’s what political consultants say.   But no, my friends — if we are marked for the ballot box, we are enough to make all Californians proud; and if to sue, or testify, or just to live our own sweet lives, then the fewer we are the greater share of honour. 

It’s true: I wish not one couple more were married back last summer.  I do not covet money, nor do I care what fancy firms sign up to make our radio ads.  I do not quite care what silly TV spots may say — such stupidity is all beside the point.   No; our own words and deeds are all the armor, all the message that we need.  If it be bad policy to think that door-knocks and postcards are the fairest way to win, then I am the worst politician alive. 

In faith, my friends, wish not we had one more consultant on our side.  I would not lose so great an honor as to be part of your company, would not share it with one blessed couple more.  Instead proclaim it, friends, in every way you can, that those who have no stomach for for this fight, let them depart.  Sit by the sidelines.  Watch TV.  Wait for the lawyers to do our work in federal courts. 

I would not die to be in such a company as that.  Such as fear to cast their fellowship in sweaty grassroots politics.  This decision came on Memorial Day — know you what this feast day celebrates?  It  celebrates all who died to unshackle slaves; all who fell that we might be free, my friends. 

You who outlive this day, and come safe home to make a marriage, will stand a tip-toe when this day is named in times to come.  You will rouse your fellows at the name of Proposition 8.   You who outlive this day and make a marriage will yearly on the vigil feast your neighbors and say “tomorrow is Memorial Day.”  Then will we stretch out our hands and show our rings and say “This is what I won on Memorial Day.”

Old men will die, and some will forget; but we will remember the rights we won and the feats we did to win our marriages.  Then shall all our names, those that knocked on doors, or wrote a letter, be in our flowing cups sweetly remembered. 

This story will we teach our children.  And Memorial Day shall never go by, from this day to the ending of the age, but we in it shall be remembered. 

We few, we 18,000, we band of married couples.  For all today who walk with us shall be our friends.  Be they straight or gay, and all that’s in between, but this day shall queer all conditions; and gentlemen asleep tonight in Fresno or Anaheim will weep with shame, and curse themselves they were not here; holding their values cheap while any speaks that walked with us upon Memorial Day.”

Okay, yeah, it’s cheesy.  I guess I just needed to get that out of my system.  But God I wish somebody had given if not that speech, than something equivalent.

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I have to give the man credit not just for saying he was wrong, but for saying explicitly that free-marketeerism is a fundamentally flawed way of understanding the way the world works.

Hindsight is a bitch, but it takes guts to do what he did.

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Moved by the debates, I went back and read Age of Reform (1955), mainly because I wanted to get the original context for one of the best phrases yet composed in socio-historical writing (see below).  And after reading it in full, I took away two conclusions regarding current politics.  One of these conclusions Mr. H. states explicitly.  The second he implies. 

As to the first, H. notes, and I quote, that “a great part of both the strength and the weakness of our national existence lies in the fact that Americans do not abide very quietly the evils of life” (pg. 16).*  The methods by which we choose to rectify those evils generally derive from one of two cultural traditions which H., writing in the 50s, identifies with (a) Yankee Protestantism, and (b) immigrant machines.  It is worth delving into his definitions of these “two thoughly different systems of political ethics” (pg. 8). 

The Yankee-Protestant tradition, in H.’s view, was founded “upon middle class life, assumed and demanded the constant, disinterested activity of the citizen in public affairs, argued that political life ought to be run…in accordance with general priciples and abstract laws apart from and superior to personal needs, and expressed a common feeling that government should be in good part an effort to moralize the lives in individuals while economic life should be intimately related to the stimulation and development of individual character” (pg. 9).

There is a great deal to unpack in this long sentence, but as a whole it could be applied as equally to the “reform”-minded rhetoric of today as it could to the Progressive and Populist movements of 100 years ago.  It is the posture struck by every campaigner who assails the power of “special interests,” who fulminates against corruption among the mighty, who strives to change any structure of society so as to benefit “the people” rather than some definable group.  In fact, I would assert, it is precisely this rhetorical tone that Obama has struck so successfully in his campaign.  His call to reform hearkens back, in other words, to a tradition in American politics running right through to his Congregationalist forebears, the ones who stepped off the Mayflower and began the project of building a city upon a hill. 

The second tradition — and again I quote at length — was founded upon “unfamiliarity with independent political action,” and instead “familiarity with hierarchy and authority,” taking “for granted that the political life of the individual would arise out of family needs, interpreted political and civic relations chiefly in terms of personal obligations, and placed strong personal loyalties above allegiance to abstract codes of law or morals” (pg. 9).

This second political tradition Hofstadter identifies with European immigrants, bossism, and urban machines.  The old-style machine we have mostly, but not entirely smashed — especially at the municipal level.  It lives on in memory, however, and to some degree in practical fact at the state level (viz., Richie Ross and Willie Brown, Massachusetts and Louisiana).  More importantly, it arose from the grave we thought we had buried it in, arose in all its putrescent muck in the zombified administration of George W. Bush, a man who rewards nothing if not personal loyalty and who administers by nothing that could be charitably described as principle. 

As to McCain, he has certainly appropriated the rhetorical mantle of Yankee Progress with his self-denominated title of “maverick”(tm).  The aura of mavericity, with its implications of sticking to principles, of bucking tradition, of being one’s own man — all of these are intended to place Mr. McCain within the tradition of Yankee Protestantism.  However, where his actions — the nomination of Palin, the appointment to his campaign staff of the same gang of bastards responsible for swift-boating his ass in 2000 with the ugliest racist horseshit imaginable, and yes, his record as a member of the Keating 5 — where those actions place McCain within Hofstadter’s two political traditions isn’t quite so clear.

What’s even more striking than this imperfect mapping onto current political debates is the way in which the partisan distinctions of “reform” and “machine” have shifted so thoroughly since Hofstadter wrote.   In current politics, the closest parallel between H.’s “Yankee Protestants” and “immigrant machines” are (a) the secular, urban, educated, professionals who today form the shock troops for Dean, MoveOn, and now Obama; and (b) conservative Evangelicals.  Both of which groups, it is worth emphasizing, were reliably Republican into the fifties and even the 70s (at least in the North). 

The second conclusion that I draw from H. is not explicitly his.  Instead it’s something I commenced to worrying over in my brain like a rubik’s cube.  And it has to do with the nature of…not liberalism precisely, but maybe something more general — call it “this-worldly engagement” (to mangle Weber), or maybe just “crusading” — of which liberalism is one variety.   Towards the end of his book, H. describes how the Progressive movement soured and became bitter, how the Prairie Populists of the 1890s who marched behind Bryan turned right around 20 years later and burned crosses for the Klan, bought Anti-Jewish propaganda like it was candy, and smashed saloons with hatchets.  To quote H. at his urbane, drippingly judging, intellectual best:

“The strongest enthusiams of the rural and small-town Americans who understood and loved Bryan were now precisely what the more sophisticated urban Progressive leadership disdained: the crusade to protect fundamentalist religion from modern science…the defense of the eighteenth amendment** from criticism at all costs; and the rallying of the Ku Klux Klan against the Catholics, the Negroes, and the Jews.  The pathetic postwar career of Bryan himself, once the bellweather for so many of the genuine reforms, was a perfect epitome of the collapse of rual idealism and the shabbiness of the evangelical mind… The truth is that Prohibition appeared to the men of the twenties as a major issue because it was a major issue…[It] was the skeleton at the feast, a grim reminder of the moral frenzy that so many wished to forget, a ludicrous caricature of the reforming impulse, of the Yankee-Protestant notion that it is both possible and desirable to moralize private life through public action…Prohibition was a pseudo-reform, a pinched, parochial substitute for reform which had a widespread appeal to a certain time of crusading mind.  It was linked not merely…to the evils that accompanied [drunkenness], but to the immigrant drinking masses, to the pleasures and amenities of city life, and to the well-to-do classes…It was carried about America by the rural-evangelical virus.”

As an aside, I mark the decline of America’s professoriat, of its commentariat, hell, of the entire superstructure of the chattering classes tout court, with the disappearance not of the first course (natch), but of precisely this sort of mandarin, magisterial, language from popular discourse.  But perhaps that is merely peevish jealousy at the glaring fact that I could never write that beautifully.

In any case, what I would emphasize here is that H. notes that to speak of “conservatives” and “liberals” at that moment (indeed, I would argue, most moments in American history) is to miss the broader point that both draw from a common well of crusading fire-water.  As appalled as I am at the thought of the editing into the Constitution a new Prohibition on abortion, and no matter how corrosive it (and other) efforts to moralize private life through public action may be, there is less difference between myself and the sponsors of Prop 8 (or Prop 4) than there is between myself and people that don’t vote .  The really confusing cultural mismatch occurs when I speak to someone (such as one of my colleagues at A Large State Bureaucracy) who literally sees no difference between McCain and Obama and so who intends not to show up on election day. 

To this sort of person I have quite literally nothing to say.  The veil between us is too opaque to cross, too robust to rend.  I simply cannot fathom what sort of logic would lead one to look at the current election cycle and say “hunh.  I think I’ll sit this one out, thanks.  It’s all Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee to me.  My participation doesn’t matter.”  I would quote my mother-in-law here (thank you California Supreme Court for making her “in-law” and not simply someone that I know socially, as it were), but that would be to suggest things that are almost certainly beyond the pale.

In a word: evangelicalism I understand.  I hate its shabby heresies, its pretensions to orthodoxy.  But I understand it.  It is quietism that I do not understand, and by which I am utterly baffled.

*Try imagining what the opposite of this statement would look like.  When we Americans wonder why other peoples do not rebel against injustice — as we did in 1776-91, again in 1861-65, and again in 1956-64, not to mention all the grand social movements in between — what we find puzzling is why anyone would abide evil.  We tend to assume that to cry out against injustice is somehow natural.  Would that this were true.  It is not. 

**The Prohibition Amendment.

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I tried not to care, really.  I tried my durnedest not to give a fat rat’s ass about the primary.

But then the good folks at TPM pointed out something that was actually kindasorta interesting, and in fact sort of a conundrum, having to do with open primaries: 

See, open primaries are a funny thing.  These are elections where, no matter what party you “register with,” on the day you show up at the polls you can vote in whatever primary you want to.  This occurs in some states, but not in California, though the does idea get batted around quite a bit.*  Among the other practical effects of open primaries, they probably dilute partisan loyalty (the value of which depends entirely on (i) the particular moment in history, and (ii) one’s own partisan position).  But on a theoretical level, they can also illuminate some of the fascinating ways in which various forms of identify overlap with partisanship. So, for instance, how might we explain the following little puzzle:

In states with open primaries, a certain number (usually less than 10%) of the population “cross-files” — which is to say, they vote in the “wrong” primary.  Normally this is difficult to detect, unless you catch it with savvy polling.  Just who are these people, and why are they cross-filing?

In Missouri, for instance, Republicans voting in the Democratic primary (6% of the total votes) supported Obama 75-25.

In Ohio (9% of the total votes), it broke 50-50.

In Mississippi, on the other hand, Republicans voting in the Democratic primary (12% of the total votes) supported Clinton 75-25.

I suppose there’s some kind of story here, and I’m halfway tempted to try and puzzle it out.  But then I recall how comforting it is not to give a shit.

UPDATE:

So last night (Thursday 3/13) I took an informal poll (n of 2) and the consensus on this question (honest, I’m trying not to care) is that it’s a combination of;
a.) moderate Republicans (e.g., Missouri)
b.) that plus working-class white Democrats (otherwise known as “Reagan Democrats) in Ohio, who see in Barack Obama the dreaded specter of affirmative action.  The problem with this explanation, of course, is that it was in fact Hillary’s husband who flushed Ohio down the shitter with NAFTA.
c.) Jasper and his crew concluding that they’d take anything — including a woman openly referred to as the Anti-Christ — over a black man.

Not exactly satisfactory, or for that matter parsimonious, explanations.  Oh well.  Back to reading about what the going rate on call-girls is.  God love you, SF Chronicle, for being absolutely shameless.

*An example from real life: when I voted in the California primary, the woman behind me in line got really really pissed over the fact that she “she couldn’t vote for her candidate,” who happened to be Barack Obama.  The precinct staff had to explain — quite calmly and professionally, I thought — that, because she was registered with another party (in her case, Peace and Freedom), she had to vote in that primary.  She then demanded that they re-register her as a Democrat.  They explained (again quite professionally) that they would be happy to do so, but that had no bearing on that day’s election — the deadline for registering was some weeks prior.  I don’t know if she voted or not.  IMHO this is what comes of NCLF and the elimination of civics classes in the public schools.

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When President Bush says “I respect the jury’s verdict” in the trial of Scooter Libby, and then proceeds to vacate that jury’s sentence of 30 months in prison for the crimes of perjury and obstruction of justice, his statement that he “respect[s] the jury’s verdict” is, quite simply, untrue.  His actions vacate his statement of all truth and of all meaning; they reduce his statements to DaDa, nullity, pure and utter nonesense. 

Or, to put it more simply:

President Bush’s words: I respect the American judicial system.

President Bush’s actions: Bend over and grab your ankles, Lady Justice.  Now breath deep.  Yeah, that’s it, bitchez. 

I leave aside that President Bush has, by this action, condoned by his deeds criminal acts not just of lying, but lying for the express purpose of endangering our national security.  Whatever his unknowable thoughts, and whatever his fallacious, sophistic, and utterly nonsensical words, he has condoned criminal acts.

Another year and a half, ladies and gentleman, another year and a half.   Lord what damage can he do in that remaining time.

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Oh, but yes, she did.

Not only did the junior senator from New York openly compare herself to a mobster…

But she allowed herself to be sandbagged by her own supporters into choosing a Celine Dion song as her theme.

I’m sorry, but is someone actually getting paid to give her this sort of advice?  Is this what the best and the brightest at Georgetown (or wherever they hire fresh-faced young consultants from these days) could come up with?

Hillary Clinton as a mobster.  And not just any mobster, but one whose primary “legitimate” business consists of profiting from the exploitation of women’s bodies (in booming PA voice: “Paging Catherine MacKinnon, paging Catherine MacKinnon.  Please report to the lecture hall for an emergency session on semiotics with the junior senator from New York.  The situation is critical.  We need your presence immediately.  Paging Catherine MacKinnon, paging Catherine MacKinnon…”). 

A song by a Canadian.  And I love me my Canadians.  They’re fabulous people.  But for pity’s sake, she’s running for PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.  Pick a song by a naturalized immigrant, at the very least.

I’m very sorry, but this is a stupid, and very unfunny, joke.

*Said, by the way, with a glottal stop.

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The good folks at Lawyers, Guns, and Money get the point, I think, basically right: whatever else may produce anti-gay mobilization, the idea that making gay marriage legal, followed by taking a vote on the matter twice, will somehow lead to a mass attack of the vapors, is simply more of the kind of shite that Rev. King addressed in the opening passages of Letter From a Birmingham Jail.  Mealy-mouthed go-slow-itism is, to be quite precise about the matter, either cowardly or mendacious.  In either case, it is shameful. 

If you don’t think gay people ought to get married (or even if you don’t care), fine: be honest about it.  If you think we have more important issues to be fighting about (like oh, I don’t know, 3500 Americans dying for a lie), fine: be honest about it.  And if you support gay marriage, then for pity’s sake do something about it.  But whatever the case, don’t resort to utterly stupid arguments to support your POV. 

Just sayin’.

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