Head to Head Polling

Tonight I conducted a quick tracking poll of google space. George Bush vs. John Kerry in a two way race: who gets the most result hits for the search phrase: candidate-name plus "sh*thead"? The results are in, and the race is tight. John Kerry receives 944 to George Bush's 991. The president has a slight edge, which could bode well for his prospects come November. When factoring the modified names "George W. Bush" and "John F. Kerry", however, the president gains 1690 votes to Kerry's paltry 112 -- a veritable landslide. Trends indicate a decided uptick for the president in this important character issue.

Dark Side

I barely made it through the end of the week -- head throbbing, devastated by the workload of seven classes at two schools plus 4 hours in the writing center, 2 1/2 of which were spent combing through ESL errors on a 90 page graduate compsci thesis -- such was my my first day back. This mustang's done been broken already. Howdy doody.

We'll diplomatically sidestep yesterday morning's shriekerific road rage, glued to the wheel amidst a 15 minute volume jam on 352, and my tardy entree to the 8 am communications class. We'll also trip lightly over my failure to work the combination lock to the classroom (thankfully the cleaning lady rescued me). To provide more bone-mashing details would needlessly depress my ego even further.

What a wonderful bundle of nerves we are, when our schedules -, the faces -, the mirror images-, change. Being at a virtual standstill robs me of substance, others swirling past, accelerating without pity.

So it was a blessing to make it back home Friday afternoon, to flop on the couch, aspirin coursing through veins, to shower and change, and then to be up here at the iMac writing, listening to Dark Side of the Moon complete, volume cranked, the music slaking my desire to zone out and dive deep. Redemption comes at the oddest hours.

Praise the higher power for this week's unsung saviors: the cleaning lady, white pills, shower heads, and Pink Floyd.

Just Say No

This week's Newsweek cover story speaks to the problem of saying no to your kids. How do you tell them they can't get everything they want, when they're being carpet bombed by 40,000 ad impressions a year, when they're drowning in shark-infested materialistic neighborhoods and peer groups, and when weak-willed, overworked parents are all too willing to bail their way out of guilt-prison? Oh, the problems we overstuffed Americans are faced with.

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice

In his Republican National Convention wrapup editorial Feel the Hate, Paul Krugman explains why the R's are so scary and hateful. When he says "[n]othing makes you hate people as much as knowing in your heart that you are in the wrong and they are in the right," I am reminded of Mark Crispin Miller's latest book Cruel and Unusual, in which he posits a theory of psychological projection to explain the right's irrational attacks on its political enemies. The hateful motivations you feel that your conscience can't accept get projected onto your enemy.

Right wing angerman's conscience also tells him that tax cuts are not the answer to every economic problem. It tells him that the president misled us into war with Iraq. It tells him that those in power are exploiting tragic events to grab more power and violate all tenets of fiscal responsibility. But rightwing angerman's ideological bias cannot accept these powerful truths. So he demonizes the enemy and projects the hate.

An example of this phenomenon can be found in the "flip flop" rhetoric of the right wing propagandists. Because Bush has been trapped by his own mistakes, inconsistencies and misdeeds (in Iraq, with the economy, against civil liberty and church/state separation), the only way to free him from the trap is to proclaim him a strong leader, forthright, stable, steady, who won't give an inch, waver or wobble. Kerry gets tagged with being the unsteady flipper. But let's look at examples of Bush's own flapjack policy turns (which can never be admitted by the intellectually dishonest true believers). In campaign 2000, Bush opposed nation building (see Iraq and Afghanistan). Bush said he'd bring partisans together and govern from the middle. Bush said he'd fight the war on terrorists, then attacked a country that had little to do with the terrorists. Bush flopped on his reasons for going to war in Iraq. Bush said he'd be compassionate and has been anything but. Says "mission accomplished" when it isn't. Says the war can't be won, then it can. Proposes programs then doesn't fund them properly. Claims to be a fiscal conservative then turns surpluses to deficits. Says you're safer, but you should stay afraid.

Looking back at the convention, I'm reminded of 1964 at the Cowpalace, when nominee Barry Goldwater said famously (in a tone that would be echoed last Wednesday by keynoter Zell Miller): "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." There you have in one line the theme of the Republican convention, circa 2004. We'll go to any extreme to protect the nation. We'll kill, maim, torture, strip, rape, detain, bomb, intimidate all enemies, real and perceived. Abu Ghraib and camp Xray are only the beginning. In 1964, Goldwater's ultra-right cold war threats gave people the willies and they flocked to the liberal Democrats, electing LBJ in a landslide. We must realize that the Republican party of today signifies the triumph of this Goldwater-style conservatism, which produced Ronald Reagan and a generation of attack dogs like Gingrich and Delay. In 1964, this was scary fringe stuff. Now it's national policy.

So when I look at the crazed Zell Miller evoking images of Goldwater and Lester Maddox, all but calling John Kerry a traitor for opposing the president, I start to wonder where that leaves us as a people. And I think we're approaching a tenuous moment. I'm not sure if this is going to be a sea change moment or a tumbling off the cliff moment. If it's a sea change, we're approaching the end of an era, the playing out of the old fashioned cold war Republican politics of the past: of Goldwater and Reagan, of J. Edgar Hoover and Jerry Falwell. It certainly seems like a tired and shopworn ideology: morally bankrupt, economically diastrous, w/ roosting chickens swaggering towards home. Now that the Republicans run the country, I don't get the sense that they really believe their rhetoric anymore. The gas tank's on E. They believe the rhetoric can get them elected, but when it comes to governing, it's purely a land and money grab. Pigs and chickenhawks at the trough, running up defecits, dolling out contracts, cashing out. When the facts belie the ideology, the string pullers govern cynically, leaving only the true believers to champion the cause. We might not be at that sea change moment yet; maybe it will take another 4 years of Republican dominance and many thousands more casualities to bring it on, until a clear majority will see through the charade and the left-liberal politicos will come up with a more coherent, plausible case for change.

The other possibility is that we're headed for the cliff. And that means the extremist ideology gets even more extreme, pushing our country over the edge, falling into financial default, economic crisis, wars on many fronts, and a government with an increasingly fascistic face: less democratic, more nationalistic, imperial, more irrational and theocratic, dominated by the cult of personality, the big lie, and a coopted media.

Is it the beginning of the end for right-wing extremism? Or the end of the beginning? Is this Act V or Act II? Honestly, I don't know. Let' just say like Krugman, I'm scared.

Thoughts on the shrub's speech

I wouldn't vote for Bush if you paid me, but I felt a certain civic obligation to entertain his nomination acceptance speech last night at the RNC. A few quick observations are in order. First, it was too long. My wife fell asleep halfway through. Two-thirds-in the back of my head was nestling into the couch pillow too. In order not to flub, Bush paced the speech way too slow, at times talking the way you might to a senile hard-of-hearing grandparent or down syndrome child. The interruptions by protesters provided some much needed drama, and to be fair, his rhetoric improved in the last part of the speech when he talked about his god-given mission to spread freedom -- pure fiction, but delivered with hints of personality and conviction. A joke, but some will swallow it.

The laundry list of domestic proposals was utterly unconvincing, the subtext being, I have a vision...see, and I can pander to various constituencies. Another subtext (you really have to read between the lines and have done some research to see it) is, I and the Republican congress are going to finish off the New Deal welfare state. We're going to rewrite the tax code, gut Social Security, and bankrupt domestic spending -- drain the swamp and then slash and burn what remains. Of course, you can't be that honest in a politcal speech, so you dress it up in vague, benign slogans like "ownership society." but really, we're talking about a return to William McKinley era priorities.

So, it was about 15 to 20 minutes too long, short on specifics, slid right past most of the major issues facing the country on domestic and foreign policy fronts, and mostly appealed to the Republican base issues, hard- and softcore. And September 11 was repeated about a hundred times. Can't we let these dead people rest in peace, for Chrissakes? By the end I was begging to be put out of my misery. One word summary: boring. I sensed that the people in the hall were antsy, wishing it was all over too. Please shut up and let us all go home to our police states.

The prespeech video montage was idiotic and hilarious. It, I think, was trying to make the connection between Bush's bullhorn speech atop the rubble of the twin towers (his finest rhetorical moment?) and throwing a baseball at a New York Yankees game. ??? Whatever. I guess it was supposed to be a moment of bravery to reach homeplate while wearing a bulletproof vest. In and of itself, that baseball toss really solidifies claim to a second term, don't you think.

The postspeech celebration was zombie central. Laura Bush being Laura from Stepford. Cheyney being forced to almost smile and make certain hand flip gestures that could be interpreted as waving. Bush looking doped up and glassy eyed, also stiffly pacing around the center stage. As spectacle, it was uninspiring and tired. Either that they don't want to be forced to mime their way through this charade because they're overconfident, or they don't believe in this because the internals tell them they don't have a shot to win this thing unless they steal it. But they outdid the Dems on balloons and confetti. So let's give credit where it's due.

It was a strained, almost somber speech, the more I think about it. Hardly inspirational, unless you buy into the theocratic fascism of crusading blind faith freedom invasions. Perhaps it will appeal to baseline Republicans, but there's little to nothing here that will stick in the memories of undecided voters three days from now. Maybe the goal was to make it through without fucking up. And it's clear that Karl Rove and co. operate on the working assumption that you should never underestimate the stupidity of the American people. For boobus Americanus, the race boils down to fear, flag, and freedom vs. faggots, france, and flip flops.

The real news of the night was Kerry's coming out at a midnight rally in Ohio with a bare knuckle, charismatic attack on Bush/Cheyney, citing the VP's draft deferrments and Halliburton shenanigans and ripping Bush as a misleader unfit for command. I think the rope-a-dope tactics of August are officially over. We'll see if Kerry is the campaign finisher he's supposed to be. It's going to be all red meat and body counts from here to November....