I’ve written previously that the Great Unmentionable in American politics, the elephant that is always in the room but must never be acknowledged, is the existence of what I’ll call (for lack of a better term) an honesty gap between the left and the right. Or to put it slightly differently, it is simply not the case that partisans from each side of the aisle are equally willing to lie and mislead in pursuit of their political goals.
It is understandable why people insist that the right and left in this country are mirror images of each other. We do, after all, live in a country with only two major political parties, parties that have been fairly evenly matched historically and have enjoyed a similar degree of political success. This, combined with the American journalistic norms of objectivity and balance, naturally leads to a sort of symmetrical, yin and yang approach to covering politics. Nancy Pelosi is treated as the left-wing equivalent of Tom Delay. Al Franken is the left-wing equivalent of Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. And the editorial position of the New York Times is the yin to the Wall Street Journal’s yang.
For some reason, we are all supposed to pretend this is true, that the only real differences between the left and the right are ideological in nature. It’s completely taboo to point out what every close observer of American politics knows, i.e., that the difference between the left and right is not just ideological but tactical. Put simply, there is a far greater willingness among right-wing partisans in this country to push the boundaries of honest discourse, to move beyond mere spin and into the realm of outright deception. Our political discourse is asymmetrical.
Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that there are no hacks or demagogues on the left or that all right-wing partisans are dishonest. I’m merely suggesting that, on balance, there is a real and significant difference in the tactics that right- and left-wing partisans are willing to employ to achieve their desired political ends.
Perhaps someday when I have more time I’ll try to write a book defending this thesis, but for now you’re going to have to settle for a single (albeit highly illustrative) example. This week there were a number of developments, in both the House and the Senate, with respect to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act legislation. These events resulted in dueling editorials in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.
The Times editorial board was, not surprisingly, disappointed by what happened in Congress. The Times editorial describes the House and Senate bills and the legislative wrangling that produced them, and then chastises the Democrats for not putting up more of a fight. While argumentative throughout, there are no claims in the editorial that are misleading factually. The bill and the state of the law are accurately described. The most provocative line, by far, in the whole piece is this:
The question really is whether Congress should toss out chunks of the Constitution because Mr. Bush finds them inconvenient and some Democrats are afraid to look soft on terrorism.
That’s certainly an argumentative claim (as you would expect in an editorial), and there’s no doubt that supporters of the Senate bill would find it very unfair. They’d claim that the bill helps the government better protect the American people and is not unconstitutional. Ultimately, though, the “truth” of this claim depends on how you interpret the Fourth Amendment, which in turn hinges on what you think constitutes a “reasonable search.” In other words, we are far from the realm of demonstrable falsehood. Whether you agree or disagree with the Times’ conclusion, it’s pretty clear that it is genuinely held and is not a calculated attempt to deceive.
Compare that with Monday’s Wall Street Journal editorial on the same subject. The Journal’s editorial board offers lukewarm praise for the Senate compromise bill and then observes:
This is a major defeat for the political left and most House Democrats, who want to treat the war on terror like domestic law enforcement. Under their preferred rules, a U.S. President couldn’t even eavesdrop on a foreign-to-foreign terror call if by chance that call was routed through an American telephone switch.
This is, and I can’t put too fine a point on it, an intentional and demonstrable lie. Indeed, it is false on several different levels. First, as a general matter, no member of the “political left” or the Democratic Party has ever suggested that the president should not be allowed to eavesdrop on terror calls. The debate is about when officials should be required to get warrants (which a secret court stands ready to approve at a moment’s notice and which can even be sought after surveillance has begun). More important, though, it is simply not the case that House Democrats want the law to require warrants for foreign-to-foreign communications, even when they pass through American telephone switches. The very first section of the Democratic House bill would clarify beyond all doubt that no warrants are required for such surveillance. The Journal’s editors know this and are intentionally lying to their readers.
The Journal’s editors then go on to critique what they see as the major “problems” with the compromise bill. They write:
Worse for Presidential authority, the Administration has agreed to let the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court pass judgment after the fact on its overseas wiretap findings and procedures. This is an expansion of judicial power from the 1978 FISA law, which applied to domestic wiretaps.
Again, this is just not true. The 1978 FISA law, Section 101(f)(2), requires individual warrants for “the acquisition by an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device of the contents of any wire communication to or from a person in the United States, without the consent of any party thereto, if such acquisition occurs in the United States.” In other words, warrants were required not just for domestic calls, but for international calls to or from someone in the United States. The Senate compromise bill would not require any court oversight of purely foreign communications, and it would allow the government to intercept international calls involving someone inside the U.S. subject only to an after-the-fact review of the procedures used to ensure that no purely domestic calls are intercepted. That is, by any definition, an expansion of the executive’s surveillance powers and a contraction of judicial power. To suggest the opposite, as the Journal does, is ridiculous.
In the very next line, the editors write:
No President has ever conceded that his ability to eavesdrop on a foreign enemy abroad could be second-guessed by judges. And no court has found that the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful searches apply to foreigners working out of Karachi. This bill creates a bad precedent on both counts.
This passage is incredibly misleading. While it is true that no court has found the Fourth Amendment to apply to foreigners in Karachi, Pakistan, this is a complete non sequitur because no one has ever claimed otherwise and nothing in the proposed bill would provide any protections to foreigners in Karachi. The limited oversight measures contained in the bill are intended solely to protect the rights of U.S. persons, and as stated previously, the bill actually dilutes the protections that existed under the 1978 law. And to the extent the Journal’s editors are claiming that no president has conceded that his ability to spy abroad can be subject to judicial oversight, that too is simply not true. FISA has always applied to wire-based communications between someone inside the U.S. and someone abroad, and no president until the current one has ever asserted the power to disregard FISA’s warrant requirement. They all followed the law. But again, the editors know this; the goal here is not to inform but to deceive.
I realize these two editorials together provide only a single example of the sort of rhetorical asymmetry I’m alleging exists, but I think they’re fairly representative. Again, if I had a lot more time, I might try to document this phenomenon in a more comprehensive way, but alas, I have a day job. Moreover, this is the kind of thesis that could never be proved in a way that would convince right-wing partisans. I do wish, however, that more mainstream journalists and pundits — who, at least on some level, know that what I’m saying is true — would acknowledge it once in a while. The truth is that the right and left are not mirror images of each other, and the two sides don’t always fight by the same rules.
I’m not holding my breath, though. Many of you may remember the controversy that erupted in the fall of 2004 when someone leaked an internal memo written by then ABC News political director Mark Halperin. Halperin wrote:
The current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done. Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win. We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn’t mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides “equally” accountable when the facts don’t warrant that.
What Halperin wrote was obviously true. By this point in the campaign, Bush was essentially running against a completely fictional caricature of John Kerry. His stump speech and campaign commercials completely misrepresented Kerry’s positions on just about every major issue. And the reverse was simply not true.
Nonetheless, when Halperin’s memo was leaked to Drudge, conservatives went nuts (Power Line: “Drudge has the most astonishing media bombshell ever”) and cited it as evidence of the media’s intense liberal bias (which is kind of funny if you actually know anything about Mark Halperin). The fallout from that episode, which led to calls for Halperin’s head, will no doubt discourage others from pointing out the asymmetry of our political discourse, even internally. This phenomenon, this honesty gap, shall remain — at least for the foreseeable future — the Great Unmentionable.
Associated Press reporters, after a seven-month investigation, were able to identify teachers punished for sexual misconduct — 2,570 in total, found in every state in the U.S. and Washington, D.C. And that’s only between 2001 and 2005; the charges ranged from fondling to viewing child pornography to rape. One case in Berwyn, Ill.:
The teacher, Robert Sperlik Jr., pleaded guilty last year to sexual abuse and kidnapping of more than 20 girls, some as young as 9. Among other things, he told prosecutors that he put rags in the girls' mouths, taped them shut and also bound their hands and feet with duct tape and rope for his own sexual stimulation. According to court documents, he rubbed their inner thighs and shoulders and forced them to sit, while bound, in closets and school storage rooms. At least one girl told prosecutors that when Sperlik stood behind her, she could feel his erect penis on her back … Though experts who deal with sexual abuse say victims tell the truth more often than not, the ordeal is often worsened when the community around them is drawn in, and people take sides. Often, victims and their families face uncooperative administrators, disbelieving neighbors and an agonizing legal journey.
One cannot look at this madness without thinking about the predatory-priest scandals in the Roman Catholic Church, which not only resulted in millions of dollars paid out to those harmed but brought to light massive cover-ups and victimization of families. It also resulted in a witch hunt by the Vatican to purge its seminaries of gays — as if one's sexual orientation has anything to do with being a sexually deviant criminal.
In fact, if we want to go there and paint a whole group of people with one brush, it appears, based on this roundup of predators in education, that heterosexuals shouldn't be able to teach, either.
One report mandated by Congress estimated that as many as 4.5 million students, out of roughly 50 million in American schools, are subject to sexual misconduct by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade. That figure includes verbal harassment that's sexual in nature.Some examples:
Oelwein, Iowa — Gary C. Lindsey was fired from his first teaching job and was bounced around as at least a half-dozen sex abuse accusations mounted, continuing to teach for decades in Illinois and Iowa. When questioned about one incident, he said that he had touched a fifth-grader's breast during recess. "I guess it was just lust of the flesh," he told his boss. A former student who was 8 at the time said Lindsey forced her hand on what she called his "pee-pee."
East St. Louis, Ill. — Joseph E. Hayes, a former principal, impregnated a 14-year-old student. Despite DNA evidence confirming this, he was never charged criminally; his license was suspended in 2003. He refused an order to surrender his license.
Polk County, N.C. — Donald M. Landrum, a high school teacher, had been warned by his supervisors not to meet alone with female students; they obviously knew he had a "problem" because they installed a glass window in his office door — which Landrum promptly papered over. Pornography and condoms were later found in his office by law enforcement, and he was suspected of preparing to have sex with a female student. His license was revoked in 2005.
Redwood City, Calif. — Not to leave women out of this, former teacher Rebecca A. Boicelli conceived a child with a 16-year-old former student. The incident was investigated while she was on maternity leave, but she was hired by another school district that hadn't been told about Boicelli's case.
What's alarming is the reluctance in some states to do anything about these cases.
While some schools and states have been aggressive about investigating problem teachers and publicizing it when they're found, others were hesitant to share details of cases with the AP — Alabama and Mississippi among the more resistant. Maine, the only state that gave the AP no disciplinary information, has a law that keeps offending teachers' cases secret. Meanwhile, the reasons given for punishing hundreds of educators, including many in California, were so vague there was no way to tell why they'd been punished, until further investigation by AP reporters revealed it was sexual misconduct.
And in Hawaii, no educators were disciplined by the state in the five years the AP examined, even though some teachers there were serving sentences for various sex crimes during that time. They technically remained teachers, even behind bars.
Again, no one has called for all heterosexuals to be banned from teaching America’s children.
Unfortunately, if you’re a law-abiding gay, lesbian or transsexual teacher, there are many places in this country where you can lose your job if a parent or school finds out about your orientation or objects to your gender presentation or identity.
This situation is why the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is before the House this week. There has been quite a bit of controversy about which version of ENDA would end up being debated — one that includes protections for gender identity (H.R. 2015) versus one that provides workplace protections on the basis of sexual orientation only (H.R. 3685). The latter bill has passed committee; Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., the only other out gay member of Congress aside from Barney Frank, D-Mass., has submitted an amendment to restore transgender protections. This has been a long road of squabbling and rancor within the LGBT community about political strategy. (You can find plenty of viewpoints and emotion about the past few weeks over at my blog, where regular readers have not held back.)
While the internal family tiff rages on, what is clear is that there has been a mind-boggling disinformation campaign about ENDA by the right-wing religious fringe that borders on hysterical. Imagine substituting the word “heterosexual” where “homosexual” is when you read this diatribe by “Christian” extremist Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth Against Homosexuality.
And please, do not be deceived by those who tell you ENDA is simply a nondiscrimination measure. That argument is a red herring — an argument designed to shame decent, sensitive and feeling folks into not opposing ENDA.
After all, who wants to be in favor of “discrimination”?
The truth of the matter is: There is NO national epidemic of discrimination against homosexuals in the workplace … PERIOD! It simply does not exist! The real untold purpose behind the passage of ENDA — like the so-called hate-crimes legislation before it — is much more sinister. If passed, how would this vile law work? Simply put, ENDA would force employers with deeply held religious beliefs to hire people they know are committing acts that they consider immoral — and to hire them precisely because they are committing these acts. The Boy Scouts will be forced to hire homosexual scoutmasters — even those who flaunt their perverse and obscene appetites! Day-care facilities, adoption agencies and Christian schools will likewise be investigated and targeted for federal prosecution if found to be “discriminating.”
Sigh. And that’s a tame one.
A long list of companies, large and small, support ENDA as originally written — with transgender-inclusive language; this fact has unnerved professional anti-LGBT organizations such as the Traditional Values Coalition, headed up by the barely tethered to reality Lou Sheldon. TVC made ludicrous claims that ENDA would require religious organizations to hire pedophiles and multiple “sexual orientations” such as:
apotemnophilia, asphyxophilia, autogeynphilia, bisexual, corprophilia, exhibitionism, fetishism/sexual fetishism, frotteurism, heterosexuality, homosexual, gender identity disorder, gerontosexuality, incest, kleptophilia, klismaphilia, necrophilia, partialism, pedophilia, prostitution, sexual masochism, sexual sadism, telephone scatalogia, toucherism, transgenderism, transsexual, transvestite, transvestic fetishism, urophilia, voyeurism, or zoophilia/bestiality.I’m not kidding.
Sheldon graphic: Mike Tidmus
Interestingly, the above-mentioned Peter LaBarbera is convinced, through his sources, that the Bush White House is trying to throw the religious right under the bus by allegedly helping to craft ENDA’s religious exemptions.
“Americans For Truth has learned that a White House official has boasted to pro-family leaders attending a private administration briefing that White House staffers were involved in the negotiations to craft expanded religious exemption language for the new ENDA bill,” according to Peter LaBarbera’s Americans For Truth organization. “At the briefing, the White House official did not commit to the assembled evangelical leaders that the president would veto [ENDA], saying that they will wait to see the bill’s final language, according to our source. This is troubling in that vetoing ENDA in any form is regarded as a ‘no-brainer’ by pro-family activists, who are counting on Bush to stop it,” he continued.
It’s tough times out there as the fundamentalists raise the level of paranoia in its rabid ranks in order to fill the coffers.
Most of you probably know me from past guest-blogging stints here at Unclaimed Territory, but for those of you who don’t, I — like Glenn Greenwald — am an attorney and I blog regularly at my own site and, less frequently, at Crooks and Liars, both under the terribly unoriginal pseudonym “Anonymous Liberal” (I use a pseudonym because, unlike Glenn, I’m still a litigator by day.) I want to thank Glenn for once again giving me the opportunity to post here.
The subject of this post is Iran and the incoherence of the competing rationales for war being offered by the Dick Cheneys and Bill Kristols of the world.
A number of bloggers have already noted the ominous parallels between the speech Vice President Cheney delivered over the weekend and statements he made back in 2002 and 2003 regarding Iraq. As he did with respect to Iraq in 2002-2003, Cheney warned that if Iran stays on its present course, it will face “serious consequences.”
Needless to say, I too found Cheney’s speech to be deeply concerning (though not particularly surprising). But instead of trying to predict what the Bush administration will do, I want to focus on the various substantive rationales for war that Cheney laid out in his speech.
There are two principal arguments that Iran hawks make for confronting Iran militarily, both of which were represented in Cheney’s speech. The first centers around Iran’s nuclear ambitions. We’re told that Iran is run by a uniquely irrational regime, one that is undeterred by traditional means. This regime cannot, therefore, be allowed to get its hands on nuclear weapons because if it does, it is likely to use them (despite the fact that the U.S. and/or Israel would surely retaliate in kind and obliterate the country). Cheney even quotes Bernard Lewis in his speech, the same guy who — as Fareed Zakaria reminds us — predicted in an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal last year that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would try to end the world on Aug. 22, 2006.
The second argument, which is of more recent vintage, centers around Iran’s alleged meddling in Iraq. According to this argument, Iran’s leaders are not crazy and irrational, but clever and strategic. Here’s the way Cheney described Iran’s strategy in his speech:
Operating largely in the shadows, Iran attempts to hide its hands through the use of militants who target and kill coalition and Iraqi security forces. Iran’s real agenda appears to include promoting violence against the coalition. Fearful of a strong, independent, Arab Shia community emerging in Iraq, one that seeks religious guidance not in Qom, Iran, but from traditional sources of Shia authority in Najaf and Karbala, the Iranian regime also aims to keep Iraq in a state of weakness that prevents Baghdad from presenting a threat to Tehran. Putting aside for a moment the validity of these claims, has anyone noticed that the behavior and motives being attributed to Iran under Argument for War 2.0 are inconsistent with the claims of Iranian irrationality that are central to Argument for War 1.0?
The truth is, of course, that Iran has an enormous interest in the outcome of our Iraq experiment, and it is perfectly rational for Iran’s leaders to attempt to influence events there. Remember, Iraq is a country that invaded Iran in 1980, leading to a bloody eight-year war in which nearly a million people died, the majority of them Iranian. It’s probably fair to say that nothing is more important to Iran’s national security than the character of the regime that eventually emerges in Iraq. To expect that Iran would just sit back and not try to influence events there is profoundly naive.
And it is clear, even accepting the administration’s largely unproven and at times illogical allegations of Iranian meddling in Iraq, that Iran is being very careful and strategic in what it is doing. The chief allegation the administration has made is that Iran has been supplying a certain type of deadly improvised explosive device to Iraqi “militants” (a vague term used by the administration to obscure the reality that Iran is, at worst, only supplying Shiite groups, not the Sunni insurgents who are responsible for the vast majority of U.S. casualties). But why just IEDs? Iran indisputably possesses much more sophisticated and deadly weapons. If its goal were primarily to hurt U.S. troops, why not supply Iraqis with missiles or shoulder-fired antiaircraft weaponry, the kind of stuff it supplies to Hezbollah?
The fact that Iran is not alleged to be supplying Iraqis with anything of this sort (at least for use against the U.S.) suggests that Iran is not particularly interested in harming U.S. troops but, rather, in bolstering Shiite elements in Iraq vis-à-vis their Sunni rivals (which is perfectly rational given that the previous Sunni regime invaded their country!). Iran’s priorities could change, of course, should we do something reckless and provocative like, say, attacking Iran. It would be tragic if we had to learn the hard way what real meddling is like.
If the Iranian government is indeed attempting to cause harm to U.S. troops by supplying IEDs to Shiite militants, I don’t mean to belittle that or suggest that it’s not important. But whatever you want to say about Iran’s policy toward Iraq, it’s pretty hard to argue that it is either overtly aggressive or irrational. Cheney himself describes a cautious policy designed to advance Iranian interests in Iraq, but always under the radar screen and in a way calculated not to provoke a fight with the United States. This is the behavior of a rational regime (though on the latter score, the Iranians may have overestimated the rationality of our leaders).
Moreover, this second, Iraq-centered argument for attacking Iran presupposes that Iran has a rational regime that can be deterred by force. The idea is that if we bomb the country, it will know we mean business and will stop meddling in Iraq. But if the Iranians are a bunch of nut jobs with a death wish — a regime with no “residual rationality,” as Rudy Giuliani recently put it — what reason is there to believe that bombing Iran will do anything to change their policy?
It’s well past time to force the Iran hawks to settle on one consistent rationale for war; they can’t keep having it both ways.
I’ll leave you with this passage from Zakaria’s latest column in Newsweek, which I think helps put things in some perspective:
The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is “like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism.” For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence. Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland’s and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?
When the relatively moderate Mohammad Khatami was elected president in Iran, American conservatives pointed out that he was just a figurehead. Real power, they said (correctly), especially control of the military and police, was wielded by the unelected “Supreme Leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now that Ahmadinejad is president, they claim his finger is on the button. (Oh wait, Iran doesn’t have a nuclear button yet and won’t for at least three to eight years, according to the CIA, by which point Ahmadinejad may not be president anymore. But these are just facts.)
In a speech last week, Rudy Giuliani said that while the Soviet Union and China could be deterred during the cold war, Iran can’t be. The Soviet and Chinese regimes had a “residual rationality,” he explained. Hmm. Stalin and Mao — who casually ordered the deaths of millions of their own people, fomented insurgencies and revolutions, and starved whole regions that opposed them — were rational folk. But not Ahmadinejad, who has done what that compares? One of the bizarre twists of the current Iran hysteria is that conservatives have become surprisingly charitable about two of history’s greatest mass murderers.
I will open my first guest post here at Glenn Greenwald’s Salon home base with a thank you and a bit of introduction in case you are not familiar with my musings at Pam’s House Blend. My areas of interest are LGBT rights, the never-ending battle with the hypocrisy of religious fundamentalism in this country and race matters — and the difficulties of having an open and productive conversation about them.
I’m blogging to you from Durham, N.C., where we have some interesting developments going on in this red-turning purple state.
The Democrats have had difficulty fielding a candidate to run against Elizabeth Dole, who has a significant war chest (raising $2.8 million during the first six months of 2007) and astonishingly has a 50 percent job approval rating among North Carolinians. But a closer look at the Elon poll figures shows a vulnerable Dole when respondents are asked about specific issues:
Respondents indicated various levels of satisfaction with Dole’s representation of North Carolinians on public policy issues. Those indicating they were satisfied or very satisfied: Family values: 54 percent
Education: 47 percent
Transportation: 40 percent
Economy: 39 percent
Political corruption: 35 percent
The Iraq war: 32 percent
Healthcare costs: 32 percent
Immigration: 28 percent
Even more telling, when asked whether they planned to vote for Dole, only 35 percent said yes. Even with this potential, state Sen. Kay Hagan of Greensboro and state Rep. Grier Martin of Raleigh, who both briefly considered jumping into the race, decided to remain on the sidelines.
Enter investment banker, former Democratic presidential fundraiser and Chapel Hill resident Jim Neal. For those of you who may have missed this story over the weekend, my friends at the progressive blog community BlueNC broke big news, as Neal participated in an online forum with readers and moderator James Protzman (“Anglico”).
He came out of the closet. And he did so in a very matter-of-fact manner that should be a lesson to all of the closeted head cases in the GOP, writhing in the pathology of their self-loathing that usually turns into anti-gay positions and policies — and sometimes hilariously into scandal. This was refreshing:
I’ve heard …
Submitted by omega_star on Sat, 10/20/2007 — 10:09am. I’ve heard you’re gay …
Gay
Submitted by JimNeal on Sat, 10/20/2007 — 10:18am.
I am indeed. No secret and no big deal to me — I wouldn’t be running if I didn’t think otherwise.
The political breakthrough here is significant. According to the Victory Fund, which is dedicated to increasing the number of out elected officials, more than 380 openly LGBT people have won at the ballot box — up from only 49 recorded in 1991.
The fact is that these candidates won by addressing their sexual orientation, then moving on to the business at hand — telling voters how they planned to serve their towns, cities and states. While electing gay officials may be old hat in deep blue states, it still takes courage to run openly in red-state America — but they are still winning without having to play closet games. It may surprise you to know that there are only six states without any openly LGBT elected officials at all: Alaska, Louisiana, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota and West Virginia.
So Neal has a lot of company out there, though he faces a very high-profile race with a lot of money in play. Like most of the openly gay officials out there, he plans to focus on the issues.
There are plenty of politicians in Washington. What we need now are a few more leaders. I’m running for the U.S. Senate because we can’t afford any more of the same. It’s time to bring our troops back from Iraq and redirect our resources to what matters most — protecting our economic security, making health care available to every family, and strengthening our communities back here at home.
Seven generations after my working family joined others to help shape North Carolina, I’m ready to help shape the next generation.
My opponent is a good person trapped in a bad system. Like many Washington politicians, her values are upside down. She lets taxpayers fund her own health care but votes against extending that care to them. She gives irresponsible tax cuts to her rich campaign donors but votes against Pell Grants to make college more affordable for middle-class families. She still backs the aimless Bush-Cheney policy in Iraq even after costing taxpayers nearly $1 trillion and more than 3,800 of their loved ones’ lives.
Other strong points for Neal:
He’s a native Tar Heel, born in Greensboro; he’s not parachuting in.
Neal has family values that put quite a few serial-marriage GOP pols to shame: He has raised two sons as a single parent for 15 years; both support his decision to run.
He knows how to raise money.
As I noted above he doesn’t even face a primary at this point.
Neal knows Dole is beatable. North Carolinians have had such poor service from Liddy Dole (she’s rarely in the state, and she has been little more than a megaphone for George W. Bush), and she parroted the White House line and gleefully voted against the State Children’s Health Insurance Program bill. There are probably some of you out there saying — “What is the point — a gay man will never be elected in North Carolina.” The state is not the same state it was when it repeatedly inflicted Jesse Helms on the U.S. Senate. While there’s not much I can say that’s positive about the former senator, what he did excel at was constituent services, something Dole does an abominable job of at every level. The ability to connect with voters explains a lot of Sen. Helms’ popularity; what popularity Dole has is an inch deep.
North Carolina has strong areas of blue with large numbers of progressive and moderate voters — the Triangle (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill), the Triad (Winston-Salem, High Point, Greensboro), patches on the coast (Wilmington, where our one out state senator, Democrat Julia Boseman, hails from) and in the mountains (Asheville). Our General Assembly has been in Democratic control for ages (unlike our neighbors to the north and south — Virginia and South Carolina), even as state goes red nationally.
In fact, outside of Florida, North Carolina is the last state in the South without an amendment banning gays and lesbians from marrying. Bills have died in committee three years in a row. Neal was asked about marriage equality in the BlueNC forum, and didn’t hesitate or try to finesse a response — he framed his answer well:
Gay Marriage
Submitted by omega_star on Sat, 10/20/2007 — 10:28am. Where do you stand on gay marriage?
It’s okay if churches want
Submitted by JimNeal on Sat, 10/20/2007 — 11:05am.
It’s okay if churches want to unite same-sex couples; it’s okay if they don’t. That’s their Constitutional right which I support 100 percent. But when it comes to the Government, I’m not in favor of any laws that discriminate against anyone for any reason.
The bigger picture here is the power of addressing and dismissing sexual orientation as something to fixate on in these races. It’s not as if the GOP isn’t going to bring out the gay boogeyman — in fact, we can count on it. They clearly can’t run on the issues or Dole’s record of putting the screws to the working man and woman in North Carolina:
Minimum wage: Dole voted NO to increase the federal minimum wage. (Amend the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938; S. Amdt. 4322 to S. 2766, June 21, 2006)
Jobs and the economy: Dole voted NO to repealing tax subsidies for companies that move American jobs offshore. (Tax Subsidy for Domestic Companies Amendment; S. Amdt. 210 to S. Con. Res. 18; vote number 2005-63 on Mar 17, 2005)
Prescription drugs: Dole voted NO to allowing the federal government to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices. (Prescription Drug Amendment; S. Amdt. 214 to S. Con. Res. 18; vote number 2005-60 on Mar 17, 2005)
Veterans affairs: Dole voted NO to healthcare benefits for veterans. (S. Amdt. 2735 to S. Amdt. 2707 to HR 4297: To support the health needs of our veterans and military personnel and reduce the deficit by making tax rates fairer for all Americans.)
Education: Dole voted NO to provide $52 million for after-school programs. (Amendment to Agencies Appropriations Act; Bill S. Amdt. 2287 to HR 3010 ; vote number 2005-279 on Oct 27, 2005)
Make no mistake — it will be a challenge for Neal to overcome the tough hurdles in the conservative counties of the state. He plans to counter bias by doing what works best — face time with voters. As I’ve said to my readers many times on my blog, the most powerful antidote to anti-gay bias is to know an out gay person. The fear and smear tactics of the religious right — and we’ve got grade-A wing nuts here already, never mind what James Dobson and Co. will ship down here as things heat up — are not as effective when the target of the vitriol is talking about the issues, shares your outlook as a North Carolina native, understands the problems you face and isn’t afraid to be who they are and blows away the stereotypes. It’s going to be a hard slog, but Neal knows what he’s up against.
It remains to be seen whether the party infrastructure will give him the support he needs. It’s quite telling that as of this writing, no mainstream media is reporting, locally or nationally, about Neal’s unique position in this race.
However, what Neal will not have to face is a whispering campaign to out him. That’s off the table. What we also know is that the GOP is going to have to spend money in North Carolina to keep Dole afloat — something they desperately don’t want to do, given the lack of money flowing into the coffers.
See also: “Working for LGBT rights here in flyover country …”
Outrage follows outrage, surrender follows surrender: Every day the unreality of our political discourse worsens, even as the reality on the ground grows more bitter and uncontainable. As we approach the anniversary of the Democrats’ recapture of Congress — an event that was supposed to mark the repudiation of the Bush administration’s lawless, blood-soaked enterprise — it is undeniable that the situation is actually worse now than before.
The prospect of a Democratic victory in 2006 was for many people the last, flickering hope that the degradation of the republic could be arrested and reversed within the ordinary bounds of the political system. This was always a fantasy, given the strong bipartisan nature and decades-long cultivation of greed, arrogance and militarism that has now come to its fullest bloom in the Bush administration. But desperation can crack the shell of the most hardened cynic, and no doubt there were few who did not harbor somewhere deep inside at least a small grain of hope against hope that a slap-down at the polls would give the Bush gang pause and confound its worst depredations.
One year on, we can all see how the Democrats have made a mockery of those dreams. Their epic levels of unpopularity are richly deserved. At every step they evoke the remarks of the emperor Tiberius, who, after yet another round of groveling acquiescence from the once-powerful Roman Senate, dismissed them with muttered contempt: “Men fit to be slaves.” The record of the present Congress provides copious and irrefutable evidence for this judgment.
After 10 full months of Democratic command in the legislative branch — 10 full months under the “liberal,” “progressive,” “antiwar” Democratic leadership — where are we? The Iraq war, far from being ended or even curtailed, was instead escalated by Bush in the face of popular discontent and establishment unease: the first, and most egregious, Democratic surrender. Bush’s illegal spying on Americans was not only not punished, it was formally legitimized by Congress, whose Democratic leaders are now hastening to give their telecom paymasters retroactive immunity for taking part in what they knew to be a massive criminal operation, as Glenn Greenwald has often noted here. The Military Commissions Act — which eviscerated 900 years of habeas corpus, as even Arlen Specter admitted (before slavishly voting for the bill anyway) — remains on the books, unshaken by the Democrats, despite all the cornpone about “restoring the Constitution” they’ve dished out for the rubes back home.
And now we stand on the brink of another senseless, useless, baseless war, this time with Iran — a conflict that, as Juan Cole pointed out on Salon recently, is likely to make the belching hell of Iraq look like a church picnic. Dick Cheney’s bellicose outburst Sunday in a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Studies — a reprise of many similar war dances he performed in the run-up to the unprovoked invasion of Iraq — takes us one step closer to this new crime. But Cheney’s assertions of Persian perfidy — all of them unsubstantiated, and in the case of the nuclear program, refuted by the IAEA — were simply the culmination of a remarkable bipartisan campaign of demonization in which the Democrats have actually taken the public lead, repeatedly castigating the administration for not being “tough enough” on Iran, and repeatedly vowing that “all options are on the table” against the mad mullahs: strong words indeed from the only nation on earth that has ever exercised the “nuclear option” against another country.
(And no one has limned the moral insanity of the new war fever with more power and urgency and eloquence than Arthur Silber. He has demolished the bogus arguments, exposed the true context and fatal delusions of the “debate” and proposed practical solutions to try to head off the coming disaster. Check out his work for a most unsentimental education about the realities of our time.)
The Democrats have already overwhelmingly — and officially — accepted the administration’s arguments for war against Iran. The first on-the-record embrace came in June, on a 97-0 Senate vote in favor of a saber-rattling resolution from Fightin’ Joe Lieberman. As I noted at the time:
“The bipartisan Senate resolution … affirmed as official fact all of the specious, unproven, ever-changing allegations of direct Iranian involvement in attacks on the American forces now occupying Iraq. The Senators appear to have relied heavily on the recent New York Times story by Michael Gordon that stovepiped unchallenged Pentagon spin directly onto the paper’s front page. As Firedoglake points out, John McCain cited the heavily criticized story on the Senate floor as he cast his vote.”
It goes without saying that all of this is a nightmarish replay of the run-up to the war of aggression against Iraq: The New York Times funneling false flag stories from Bush insiders. Warmongers citing the New York Times stories as “proof” justifying any and all action to “defend the homeland.” Credulous and craven Democratic politicians swallowing the Bush line hook and sinker.
To be sure, stout-hearted Dem tribunes like Dick Durbin insisted that their support for declaring that Iran is “committing acts of war” against the United States should not be taken as an “authorization of military action.” This is shaky-knees mendacity at its finest. Having officially affirmed that Iran is waging war on American forces, how can you then deny the president when he asks (if he asks) for authorization to “defend our troops”? Answer: You can’t. And you know it.
But even this was not enough. A few weeks later, there was a new resolution, carefully calibrated to mesh with the all-out propaganda blitz surrounding the appearance of Gen. David Petraeus on Fox News in September. (He also put in an appearance on Capitol Hill, it seems.) Once again, the majority of Senate Democrats voted with the monolithic Republicans for yet another Lieberman-sponsored measure, which effectively if not formally authorized military action against Iran by declaring the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard a “foreign terrorist organization” and tying it to attacks on American soldiers in Iraq.
Even the clueless Joe Biden — last seen marshaling a measure advocating the partition of Iraq (also known as the “Ethnic Cleansing Act of 2007″) — gets it. He told George Stephanopoulos Sunday that Bush will seize on the resolutions exactly as predicted: “The president’s going to stand there and say … ‘Ladies and gentlemen, as the United States Congress voted, they said these guys are terrorists. I moved against them to save American lives.’”
But Bush is not the only president — or potential president — who might seize on the Senate votes. Last week — just a few days before Cheney’s speech — Hillary Clinton weighed in with a “major policy article” in Foreign Affairs that regurgitated the administration’s unproven allegations against Iran as indisputable fact. This too is ominous stuff, coming from a strong front-runner who not only is leading in the opinion polls but is also way out in front among an elite constituency whose support is much more important and decisive than that of the hapless hoi polloi: arms dealers. Clinton has surpassed all candidates — including the hyper-hawkish Republican hopefuls — in garnering cash payments from the American weapons industry, the Independent reports. Obviously, these masters of war are not expecting any drop-off in profits if Clinton takes the helm.
And indeed, beyond her “all options” thundering at Iran, Clinton has vowed to do the one thing guaranteed to breed more war, more ruin, more suffering, more “collateral damage,” more terrorist blowback: keeping American forces in Iraq, come hell or high water. Clinton’s “withdrawal” plan calls for retaining an unspecified number of “specialized units” in Iraq to “fight terrorism,” train Iraqi forces and protect other American troops carrying out unspecified activities. Is it any wonder that she’s the apple of Lockheed Martin’s eye?
But in fact, the “antiwar” plans of the other “liberal” candidates — the “serious” ones, that is — are remarkably similar. In other words, the Democrats are promising a permanent (or in the current weasel-word jargon, “enduring”) U.S. military presence in Iraq — which of course has been one of the primary war aims of the Bush administration all along (even before it took office). Credible analysis shows that up to a million people or more have been slaughtered in this ghastly enterprise — and still the Democrats will not act to end it or, God forbid, try to remove its perpetrators from office. Instead they will keep the red wheel of death rolling toward the ever-vanishing horizon.
So this is where we’ve come to, one year after the people spoke at the ballot box, fighting through government propaganda, media distortions, pundit scorn, terrorist scares — and the Karl Rove vote-skewing, vote-suppressing, vote-stealing machine — to deliver a strong call for a new direction, for an end to war and torture and tyranny and corruption and lies. They believed — perhaps for the last time — that their vote might make a difference, that the “consent of the governed” might still retain some meaning.
So they turned to the only serious alternative the system provided: the Democrats. And this is what they got: more war, more torture, more tyranny, more corruption, more lies.
What should the people believe now? What should they hope for from the system now? And what new nightmares await them in the second year of this perverse union between a power-drunk president and a cowardly, corrupted, complicit “opposition”?
