Energizing Our Base

With all this Sarah Palin business, it seems to me that we Democrats need to think about ‘energizing our base’.

Republicans take pride in being called ‘conservative’. Yet, ‘liberal’ is still a term shunned and avoided by Democrats. Barack Obama, in a speech in Austin, stridently denied that the policies he was advocating - reducing money in politics, making sure there is health care for all, treating our soldiers properly when they come home - were ‘liberal’ policies.

Listen: if we’re not liberal, what the hell are we?

Are we conservative? If so, why not just say so? Why stay in a party that does not define itself as conservative? Why not just go to where the conservatives are?

And, if we aren’t conservative, then what else would we be?

What are the values that we as Democrats claim to embrace?

We want health care for all, not just for those wealthy enough to afford it, right?

We want out of this grotesque conflict that we’ve been lied into which has claimed the lives of thousands of Americans, as well as uncountable innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, and has sullied our honor and credibility all over the world, isn’t that so?

We want a decent wage for those who work for a living, and a safety net for those who need it the most - not tax giveaways for those who are already so wealthy they don’t need it, don’t we?

We want government whose first loyalty and duty is to attend to the need of its people, not the greed of its corporations, wouldn’t you agree?

We want transparency, honesty and accountability from our elected officials, not secrecy, spying, stealing and stonewalling, don’t we?

We want all of our citizens to be treated equally under the law, with the same rights as everyone else, regardless of race, creed, gender or sexual orientation, right?

We want government to do its job - working for the interests of its citizens, and the private sector to do its job - making a profit; not the other way around, where government is expected to be a mere dollars-and-cents balance sheet, and the private sector is put in charge of meeting the needs of human beings, which may or may not be ‘profitable’.

We want our Bill of Rights, right? We want privacy in our homes and communications, the freedom to speak out and to assemble peacefully without government or police harassment, the right to face our accusers and see the evidence against us; the freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. We want a press whose only allegiance is to the public’s right to know, not to its corporate paymasters.

Then why the fuck don’t we say so?

We are missing the point here by a country mile, and wondering why this Republican freak show is kicking our ass.

If the Republican party is defining itself by its values, and giving those values a name (conservatism) and the Democratic party is merely asserting that it isn’t the Republican party (not-conservatism) instead of naming and claiming our values as liberal, then all we are doing is writing our own epitaph - as a party, and as a social idea. As Dr. George Lakoff says, to ‘not think of an elephant’ is to think of an elephant. To define ourselves as ‘not-conservative’ is to reinforce the conservative frame as the dominant frame and to define ourselves as lacking that frame.

Liberal values are American values.

And the conservative frame, the conservative philosophy and blueprint for government, have brought us the very opposite of the things we want and were promised as Americans.

In my new book, the Price of Right, I talk about why conservatism is incompatible with American values and ideals. When conservative policies are not balanced with liberal policies, we devolve into feudalism. Conservatism is not content with being part of the whole; by definition it wants to have the whole pie to itself. The goal of a 'permanent Republican majority' shows exactly what conservatives think of other points of view, and why they see compromise as weakness and surrender. And the 'base' that the Republican party is dizzy with excitement to have engaged once again with Sarah Palin, the Christian fundamentalist/evangelicals, is very clear that it will brook no other views. To them, tolerance and diversity are not American values, but Satan's trickery.

American values are liberal values.

I know that people are afraid to use the ‘L’ word. That’s all I hear, over and over. The fear of being called ‘liberal’ is enough to make the toughest newscasters and most outspoken pundits soil themselves, backing off, groveling and apologizing for the least whiff of that dreaded epithet, ‘liberal media’ (which has not existed in at least 30 years.) Yes, yes, I know. Use the ‘L’ word and you’ve lost your election. So I’ve heard. But we haven't won by not using it, that's for sure!

The right has been extremely successful in demonizing the word that describes the Democratic party’s position. The problem is, and the Republicans knew this when they started doing it in the late 60s, that when someone takes away the word that identifies you and your ideals, there is nothing to ‘hang your hat on’ in terms of party identity, and you are forced to identify your party, not on its own terms but on the terms of the other party. And I’m sorry, but when you have only two political parties and they’re both defined by one party - one is ‘for’ and the other ‘against’ - ‘for’ will beat ‘against’ every single time. A positive always beats a negative.

This has been said by a number of people - that Democrats need to say what they’re for instead of what they’re against. But it never gets past that. No one ever says exactly how that is supposed to be done.

We’ve tried to substitute the word ‘progressive’ for ‘liberal’; I use it myself. In truth, they are similar in meaning, if you’re thinking in literal terms instead of framing terms - connecting with our deepest . But it’s like substituting Sweet ‘n’ Low for sugar; it’s yet another way to say “I’m not liberal; I’m ashamed to say that word”. Not consciously, but frame-wise, it is denying our ideals. That’s why the word ‘progressive’ has not succeeded in countering ‘conservative’.

It’s too late in this particular game to expect to make the switch to naming and claiming liberal values. But I believe that’s why we have no ‘base’ to energize at this point.

How great would it be if Obama was to operate out of a position of strength, conviction and passion, instead of a position of fear - fear of being labeled ‘the Angry Black Man’, fear of looking ‘sexist’ by criticizing Sarah Palin, fear of Republican retaliation by attacking McCain hard? Fear of not being ‘nice’ and ‘above it all’? Fear of the ‘low road’?

I can assure you, Republicans are not the least bit afraid of the ‘low road’.

I believe that Democrats are waiting for someone to stand up and get mad. That’s another Luntzian trick - keeping Democrats from speaking out by calling them ‘angry’ if they object to the abuse heaped upon them and implying that it’s a bad thing to get mad when you’re stepped on. But it’s long, long overdue.

If Obama were to take a real, strong stand and show that he believes in Democratic values bad enough to fight for them, and fight for us; if he were willing to go out on a limb and say what it is that we as Democrats stand for, and give our values a name that defines them on their own, and shows that these values are American values - not by merely saying it, but thundering it - then I think we would see an outpouring of Democratic passion and excitement such as we haven’t seen in a generation - perhaps two generations. Democrats are starved for leadership, for passion, for commitment. We need to be more than ‘not conservative.’

There is a Democratic ‘base’ out there, but no one has energized it. It’s out here, just waiting to be called by its name.

It’s not too late.

Yet.

"The Price of Right" by Alicia Morgan - An Introduction

I'm excited to be able to tell you all at last about The Price of Right!

We have been paying this unacceptable price for long enough.

I have been trying to encapsulate what the book is about in as few words as possible, and failing miserably. I could just say that it's about the dangers of the conservative ideology, but that's only a part of it. Equally important (IMHO) is looking at the factors that go into each person's choice of a worldview, which I have tried to do in this book - to understand not just why conservatives think the way they do, but what contributes to their becoming conservative in the first place.

So I've written this rather long (longer than I'd like, anyway) overview of my book, and what I'll do is break it up into smaller parts and post it in sections, till I can figure out how to whittle it down to something manageable and succinct, like a real writer is supposed to do.

(takes a deep breath and jumps in)

"The Price of Right" by Alicia Morgan - An Overview - Part 1

Why are the chickens voting for Col. Sanders?

Why do people fervently support political parties, policies and politicians who are detrimental to their own best interests?

This was the question burning a hole in my head after the 2004 presidential election. This was the question that prompted me to become a blogger - and this was the question that led to my new book The Price of Right.

As I write this, we are hanging by our ragged, bleeding fingernails trying not to slip off of the edge and plunge headlong into economic, social and political collapse. The last eight years have brought us to a place that many of us could never have imagined that we would see in our own country - a nation at the mercy of a rogue-elephant administration, with seemingly no remedy in sight.

We are teetering on the brink of a second Great Depression and a Third World War, yet as the middle class are becoming the working poor, as the working poor are becoming the indigent and homeless, as we become an aggressor nation which is feared and loathed instead of respected, as any moral authority we once possessed as a nation is long gone, and our Constitution and Bill of Rights, once the pride of a free and fearless nation, has been ripped to shreds, there is still a sizable group of people who fervently and enthusiastically (dare I say ‘religiously’?) support the ideology which brought us all these things.

I began looking into the core principles of conservatism, since this has been the ideology that has dominated our government with precious little opposition or mitigation for the last few years. It soon became clear (to me, at least) that there was a gigantic disconnect between the stated aims of conservatism and the actual results. To give only one example, we were assured that massive tax cuts for the rich would lead to prosperity for the rest of us - the ‘rising tide that lifts all boats’. The conservative theory was that reward and punishment were the prime motivators for society, and if those who ‘achieved’ were properly rewarded for their ‘hard work, discipline and risk’, instead of being penalized for their success, then the results of that bounty would be reflected in the rest of society. When the exact opposite, happened, however, and a large budget surplus inherited from the Clinton administration turned into a horrifying and unprecedented deficit, to my astonishment not only did conservatives not reject this policy, but embraced it as the solution to the problems it caused!

The cognitive disconnect between stated policy and measurable results confounded me. And as I continued to find example after example of this disparity between theory and fact, I had to ask - what in the blue blazes is going on in the conservative mind? Can’t they see what has happened to this country and the world as a result of conservatism in action?

Before November 2004 I was still under the impression that if people only knew the facts, they would reject these ideas and the people who perpetrated them.

How very, very wrong I was.

The flip, easy answer is to label conservatives as stupid, crazy, or just plain evil. The problem with that is that it is not true. Of course, there are conservatives who are stupid, crazy, or evil, but there are liberals who are stupid, crazy or evil also. And it leaves out many conservatives that I know - close friends and family, who I know for a fact are good-hearted, honest, decent people who are doing the best they know how to be moral people and good citizens. So why do they trust the people who are stealing their jobs, money, security, freedom, and indeed their very lives?

"The Price of Right" by Alicia Morgan - An Overview - Part 2

The more I looked at conservatism (as an ideology/movement, not as people who call themselves ‘conservative’) the more I realized that, as much as I loathed George W. Bush and his puppeteers with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns, he was not the cause, but the culmination - the pinnacle, if you will - of the unfettered, whole-hog implementation of conservatism itself, without the balance of liberalism to restrain its more destructive tendencies.

Why does a person become a liberal or a conservative? What factors contribute to the choice of a worldview? As I searched for the answers to this question, I found myself wallowing around in neuroscience, anthropology, genetics, and cognitive linguistics as well as history and philosophy. And as I perused these disparate fields, I found information in each that managed in some way to connect to the others.

John Dean’s book Conservatives Without Conscience brought to my attention the work of Dr. Robert Altemeyer, a psychology professor at the University of Manitoba who is a noted expert on authoritarianism - a name given to a set of traits exhibited by people who are most likely to comply unquestioningly with those in authority. This in turn led me to the first serious study of the authoritarian personality, Adorno et al., which in the aftermath of World War II, a group of social scientists headed up by Theodor W. Adorno undertook at the University of California, Berkeley to see if what happened in Nazi Germany could happen in America. It is estimated by Dr. Altemeyer that 23-25% of the population are authoritarian followers.

Another perspective came from Dr. George Lakoff at UC Berkeley, a cognitive linguist and social scientist who has written about ‘framing’. Cognitive science says that every person conceptualizes the world through mental structures that people use to process and understand reality called frames. We interpret and make sense of the world through these frames. The frames hold within them certain metaphors or associations between two separate concepts. Dr. Lakoff gives as an example the “well-being is wealth” metaphor, sometimes referred to as the Moral Accounting metaphor:

For example, if I do you a favor, you say, “I owe you one” or “I’m in your debt.” Doing something good for someone is metaphorically like giving him money. He “owes” you something. And he says, “How can I ever repay you?”

Americans view their government through a nation-as-family frame. We have Founding Fathers and Daughters of the American Revolution. We have Uncle Sam. We send our sons and daughters off to war. We view everything in our nation in a familial sense.

Dr. Lakoff uses two models to define the family: the Strict Father and the Nurturant Parent. The two represent the conservative and liberal views, respectively. The Strict Father model is hierarchical and authoritarian in nature. Life is seen as fundamentally difficult and the world as fundamentally dangerous. Evil is conceptualized as a force in the world, and it is the father's job to support his family and protect it from evils – both external and internal. Order – God over man, people over animals, men over women – and obedience are seen as the most important values in this frame, without which society would collapse entirely. Fear (of punishment, of harm) is an important part of the Strict Father frame. If a person is not afraid of being punished – by parents, by the law, by society, by God – then there is no way that person can ever be “moral” or “good.”

In the Nurturant Parent family, the highest moral values are empathy and responsibility. Effective nurturing requires empathy, which is feeling what someone else feels – parents have to figure out what their baby's cries mean in order to take care of him or her. Being responsible to others (not for others) and oneself requires cooperation. In society, nurturant morality is expressed as social responsibility that requires cooperation rather than competition, as well as a recognition of interdependence. The main tenets of progressive morality of empathy and responsibility are the same values that motivate liberal political issues.

"The Price of Right" by Alicia Morgan - An Overview - Part 3

Conservatives and liberals agree on the need for moral behavior in society, but they disagree on the methods used to obtain it. Conservatives believe that the way to enforce moral behavior is by reward and punishment - the part of the Strict Father frame that says that reward and punishment are the tools a good father uses to instill self-discipline and self-reliance in his children. The children do not need to figure out what is right or wrong for themselves. As “good” children, they need to do as they are told by their legitimate authority, their father, who knows better than they do what is right and wrong. Then, when they are grown, they will be self-disciplined as a result of being disciplined by their father, and will become an authority figure themselves. By being self-reliant and self-disciplined, they will do well in society, and be rewarded financially for it. This is how character is built. If a child is not sufficiently disciplined or self-reliant, then his/her punishment is financial hardship. And if a child is not punished for a lack of discipline and/or self-control, then he/she will never learn to be “good.” This is why conservatives believe that a social safety net is not only useless and wasteful, but immoral! Conservatives believe providing for the poor only serves to encourage and reward “bad” behavior. Not only that, but it punishes the “good” people who have played by the rules by making them support the “bad” people.

A broad generalization of the difference between the conservative and liberal worldviews can be described as vertical versus lateral, in that in the conservative view, authority is carried out through order, like a stack of blocks, so that if any person moves out of their appointed place, the entire structure will fall. The liberal value structure is lateral – authority is conferred by purpose, not merely for its own sake (the sake of hierarchy and order) and does not need to be defined by dominance to be effective. The prime values of empathy and responsibility extend to and from all members of the group. Thom Hartmann calls it “the ‘me’ society versus the ‘we’ society”. In conservative economic theory, if each person looks to their own self-interest, the interests of all will benefit. So the conservative is expected to take care of ‘me and mine’. The problem with that is that anyone who is not considered ‘me and mine’ becomes ‘the other’ – not like us. And this, I believe, is the core cause of injustice, hate and war.


In Dr. Lakoff’s analysis of the two models, he explains how the seemingly contradictory positions taken by conservatism (which correlates to the Strict Father metaphor) fit together when viewed through that frame, and why a fact that does not fit into the frame will not be accepted as such at all - it will simply slide off. All people have and utilize both frames in different aspects of their lives, but the stronger or more dominant one frame is, the more it will tend to neutralize the traits corresponding to the other frame. Republicans long ago discovered that framing could be used to connect the conservative agenda with the deepest-held beliefs, needs, and fears of a large segment of the population.

These ideas helped me to understand why it was very difficult if not impossible to change the mind of the people who fall into the category of that 23-25%. Any information that does not mesh with the frames in place is literally not heard. In his book Don’t Think Of An Elephant, Dr. Lakoff states:

Neuroscience tells us that each of the concepts that we have – the long-term concepts that structure how we think – is instantiated in the synapses in our brains. Concepts are not things that can be changed just by someone telling us a fact. We may be presented with facts, but for us to make sense of them, they have to fit what is already in the synapses of the brain. Otherwise facts go in and then they go right back out. They are not heard, or they are not accepted as facts, or they mystify us: Why would anyone have said that? Then we label the fact as irrational, crazy or stupid. That’s what happens when progressives just “confront conservatives with the facts.” It has little or no effect, unless the conservatives have a frame that makes sense of the facts.

These ideas helped me to understand why conservatives think the way they do – but how do they get that way in the first place? Why do some people turn out to be fierce liberals, some people turn out to be die-hard conservatives, and others stay somewhere in the middle? Is it nature, nurture, or both? Why is it that brothers and sisters raised by the same parents in the same home under much of the same circumstances can be polar opposites politically? You can, of course, ask the same question about a pair of siblings raised in a home where money was tight. One might respond by spending money freely, claiming “It’s because I grew up poor, and now that I have it I enjoy being able to spend it,” while the other sibling might respond to the same situation by not spending money, and giving the exact same rationale: “I grew up poor, so I’m uncomfortable with spending money.”

Many factors are involved, a mixture that includes the personality you’re born with, the environment you’re raised in, the world you’re exposed to, the critical incidents that happen to you. It’s a mixture of nature and nurture that accounts for a personality type. We all know people who, at times in their lives, make a dramatic, 180 degree shift in outlook. Usually this shift has to do with a seminal event that causes a person to change his/her viewpoint: religious conversion, being robbed or assaulted, losing a job, having a baby, going to war - all can alter a person’s way of thinking. Others change slowly over time through a set of life experiences. Nevertheless, there is plenty of evidence, both empirical and anecdotal, that many personality traits are genetically transmitted.

"The Price of Right" by Alicia Morgan - An Overview - Part 4

I was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD) as an adult, and came across a fascinating book by Thom Hartmann called ADD: A Different Perception in which he posits that ADD, rather than being a deficit or a disorder, is a leftover set of survival traits passed down to us from when humans lived in a hunter/gatherer society.

Hartmann’s theory is something like this: the traits that are described as ADD – short attention span coupled with hyper-focus at times, distractibility, restlessness or inability to sit still, impulsivity, aggressiveness, independence, disorganization, distorted sense of time, impatience, risk-taking and disregard of consequences, a tendency to be easily bored, desire for immediate gratification – are all qualities that a hunter would need in order to survive.

On the other hand, a farmer needed to be patient, focused, capable of long-term planning and execution, able to delay gratification, and able to sustain a steady, dependable effort. It was important to be organized and methodical. Farmers had to be time-conscious and able to pace themselves. It was necessary to be a team player and cooperate with others. It was important to be able to stick with the tried –and true, and to be able to execute instructions step –by step without leaving anything out. A capacity to tolerate boredom and repetition was a helpful trait. You needed to do things at certain times – plant in the spring, harvest in the fall. If you decided to plant in the fall instead of the spring, you (and your community) would starve. If you got distracted and forgot a step, like watering your crop, you would starve. If you got impatient, and yanked your plants out of the ground because it was taking too long for them to grow, you would starve. Once a system of farming proved successful, it was imperative to stick with that system. Caution and care, even fear, was necessary to avoid danger to the crops.

A hunter, on the other hand, required a different set of traits entirely. If a hunter was to catch an animal, he must be alert and scanning his environment at all times, ready to drop whatever he was doing and change course to catch his prey. He needed to be aggressive and fearless – even reckless – to chase and kill an animal that could be a danger to him. Adaptability was necessary for a hunter. There was no telling when and where his animal would be, and he needed to be ready at all times. Independence, innovation, and ingenuity enabled him to do whatever was necessary to catch his prey. And when a hunter goes after his prey, he turns on the turbo-jets and does not stop until his objective is achieved. He is wired to expect immediate results. Without these traits, he would starve.


However, many of the hunter traits would be useless in an agricultural society. If a farmer had to live in a hunter society, the traits that served him so well on the farm would doom him as a hunter. No one would tell him that at three this afternoon a gazelle would be coming by. The fear that protected him as a farmer would hamper him as a hunter. He might not see the necessity for immediate action, nor have the aggression or fearlessness necessary to put himself in danger in order to catch an animal. If he was expecting an animal at one place, he might not react quickly enough if the animal came from another direction.


The main purpose of Hartmann’s book, ostensibly, was to give those who had been labeled with a deficiency or disorder a way to gain some self-esteem and feel positive about themselves rather than handicapped, defiant, lazy, stupid or crazy. I wondered, though, if there was scientific validity to the hunter/farmer concept – that these groups of traits could be in fact leftover survival traits that have come down to us from two very different points in human societal development?

Most people I raised the question with asserted that heritable traits like these could not evolve that quickly, and that it was a nice way to make ADDs feel better about themselves and nothing more. However, some recent studies in the field of genetics have yielded some interesting data to support my theory. Dr. Mauricio Arcos-Burgos, a geneticist with the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, and presently at the University of Miami, has written a paper published in Current Opinion in Genetics & Development (2007) on the genetic origins of ADHD in which he finds that the traits associated with ADHD are evolutionally positive. He states that “Recent molecular and clinical evidence supports Thom Hartmann’s Hunter–Farmer theory, reaffirming that ADHD might be an anachronic behavioral trait”, meaning that those traits that make it difficult for those with ADHD to fit into our modern ‘farmer’ society are anachronic – that is, traits from another time in human social development. The label applies to those at the farthest end of the ‘hunter’ scale, but a more modest amount of these traits would be a good definition of those with a liberal outlook.

"The Price of Right" by Alicia Morgan - An Overview - Part 5

We live in a farmer society, where farmer traits such as patience, memorization, organization, docility, cooperation, acceptance of delayed gratification, long-term planning and methodical execution, and respect for tradition and rules are hallmarks of the successful student, employee, and citizen. People who have a preponderance of hunter traits find it more difficult to manage in our society, starting with school and continuing on through later life. Again, as with the two family models (Strict Father and Nurturant Parent), nobody is all one or the other. Everyone has both hunter and farmer traits.

What about a religious outlook? Farmers and hunters might have completely different relationships to a higher power. A farmer’s authority would be the authority of nature. It is one-way only. It cannot be seen or communicated with, negotiated with, challenged, bartered with, or connected with in any way. It can only be accepted and accommodated to. Therefore a farmer’s God might be an authority to be obeyed without question. Although a hunter must deal with nature also, his relationship with nature is much different. His sustenance comes from his own physical effort and battle with a living creature somewhat akin to himself. It is through his own decisions and actions that his animal dies and becomes his food. A hunter can challenge nature where a farmer cannot. So perhaps this might account for the differences in the way hunter types and farmer types view and relate to God.

I bring this subject up because I think that hunter-and-farmer models could apply to political orientation, as well. For instance, what if the traits that usually apply to those who consider themselves liberals are hunter traits, and those that apply to self-described conservatives are farmer traits that have been genetically passed on to us from our ancestors? If you have the tendency to be comfortable in going along with a group, with accepting authority without question, comfortable with having a a role in a hierarchy in which to belong, and are more affected by and susceptible to fear, it seems likely that you will call yourself a conservative. We are all susceptible to fear, but studies have shown that self-described conservatives are much more affected by it, and it will influence their behavior in a way that it does not influence liberals. This is why the Bush administration has been so successful in its use of fear to implement its agenda. The threat of terrorism and the Islamo-fascists who want to kill us is much more real and frightening to conservatives than liberals. Fear is a necessary survival trait, but hunters, more than farmers, must be able to shrug off fear in order to survive. Fear is the trump card for Bush Co., and they play it like Diamond Jim Brady every time.

Well, if conservatives are so fearful and liberals are so fearless, you might ask, why does the Democratic majority cower before the Republicans, refusing to challenge even the most egregious wrongdoings of this administration and cravenly co-signing every vile, illegal, immoral piece of legislation that is excreted in their direction?

The way I see it, Democrats, as liberals, are hostages to their framing as well. They operate from the deep-seated Nurturant Parent assumption that if you want to get, you have to give, and the converse – if you give a little, then your counterparts across the aisle will give in return. Like Charlie Brown with Lucy and the football, Democrats make concession after concession, believing against all evidence that this will earn them cooperation from Republicans, somehow not processing the fact that conceding is perceived as weakness by the authoritarian Republicans, and merely results in more aggressive steam-rollering from the right. What we see as cooperation, they see as submission, which triggers even more dominating, leg-lifting behavior.

Both the Strict Father and Nurturant Parent frames have drawbacks that cause problems in our society. Within the Nurturant Parent frame, it is the tendency of liberals to try so hard to find a consensus that satisfies everyone that the result is that no one is happy and nothing gets accomplished.

What makes the Strict Father frame more dangerous, though, is that the inclination to obey their chosen authority is so strong in conservatives (especially the authoritarian followers) that it is difficult, if not impossible, for them to challenge or defy a bad authority once they have accepted the validity of that authority. What is usually a society-building trait can have devastating consequences if the wrong people are in power. When your need to comply with authority trumps any conscience you might have, the end result is disaster.

Dr. Altemeyer says:

[The] vast majority of us have had practically no training in our lifetimes in openly defying authority. The authorities who brought us up mysteriously forgot to teach that. We may desperately want to say no, but that turns out to be a huge step that most people find impossibly huge--even when the authority is only a psychologist you never heard of running an insane experiment, and your obedience means you are probably going to kill someone. From our earliest days we are told disobedience is a sin, and obedience is a virtue, the “right” thing to do.”

But is it really “the right thing” to do?

The Price of Right attempts to connect the dots and point out the correlation between the implementation of conservative policies - social, economic and political - and the demise of our middle class, our rights to free speech, free press, habeas corpus, privacy, the rule of law and the foundations of our democracy. We have paid a terrible price. Is it too late to stop payment on the “blank check” that Bush and company have squandered like drunken sailors?

I do believe it is possible. But I also believe that whether it is possible or not should have no bearing whatsoever upon whether we should try. What kind of principles are only worth fighting for if you are assured in advance of success?

As liberals, we should be aware that the ability to push aside fear when necessary is one of our strengths. We should utilize this strength more than we do. We are currently playing to our weakness, when we should be getting in touch with our rebellious, disobedient, reckless, fearless side. The United States of America was created by people who risked everything in pursuit of a better way to live; not only for themselves, but for everyone. Our forefathers could very well have stayed colonists (that's the conservative way); they could have easily accepted the status quo and made the best of it. But the hunter traits that gave them the impetus to challenge injustice and the willingness to fight for an ideal when there was no guarantee of success are traits that we liberals need to re-discover. Our flabby muscles of resistance need exercise, and our willingness to take risks is our biggest asset in the fight to get our freedoms back. So, gird your loins and grab your spear – the hunt for justice is on!

Take Cover, Conservatives - My Book Is On Its Way!

I just got some news from my publisher Sterling and Ross - my book The Price of Right is at the printers and is expected to be shipped by the end of August!

I'm excited and a little nervous, but mostly excited. I never in my wildest dreams expected to write a book, and I'm so grateful to have been given the opportunity to say what I want to say in print. Now that I have an actual ETA, I can start talking about it in earnest, and I'm relieved that it will be out before the election.

To recap (I'll be quoting from some of my older posts) - this book came about in a very interesting way.

Like so many of you out there, the 2004 selection left me absolutely gobsmacked. Although I've always been a liberal, I never felt a particular need to be active - I figured there were other people who were doing that sort of thing. I knew even before the 2000 election was stolen that Dubya was a bad, bad man. I knew this when I heard about the Tucker Carlson interview with Bush when he was still governor of Texas, in which he mocked Karla Faye Tucker, the woman on Death Row who had become born-again while in prison (much like Bush himself) and asked him to spare her life.

I don't believe there is any other elected office in the United States that has the direct power of life and death other than a state governor - certainly not one which is called upon so often to exercise that power. I am very much against the death penalty; nevertheless, I would hope that the people who have been granted that power by the government to decide if someone should live or die would make that decision with the utmost respect, dignity and humility. Instead, this sociopath (who set records in Texas for the number of executions carried out during his term as governor; Time magazine reported in August of 2000 that "George W. Bush, who has had more executions during his five-year tenure in Austin than any other governor in the nation since capital punishment was reinstated, has made his support for executing mentally retarded inmates clear.") dared to defile his office by mimicking and mocking a woman (however guilty, still a human being) he was about to put to death. That story alone told me all I needed to know about the character (or complete absence thereof) of that evil man, and I believe my observations have been borne out.

When the Supreme Court handed the Presidency to George W. Bush, even I, who had the lowest opinion of him imaginable, figured that he would be in and out without much fuss, given his past record of complete incompetence in every situation that was handed to him. Even I, who had the lowest opinion of him imaginable, was absolutely stunned at the damage this idiot was able to inflict upon our nation. I pinned my hopes on the 2004 election, when he would surely be booted out by the Americn people, who now knew from first-hand experience what a hazard to democracy he was.

But after that election, which he touted as a 'mandate' and a fortune in 'political capital', which he intended to do with as he pleased, I was completely and utterly shaken. What Bizarro-World did I wake up in?

I couldn't get out of bed for a day. I spent a couple of days in a disoriented haze of helplessness and frustration. Then I got mad. Then I started Hooterville.

I had no further goals than expressing myself and setting down my thoughts, but I was happy to find other like-minded people and a wealth of information about what was happening in our country. As a high-school graduate who had never written so much as a term paper, I did not think of myself as a writer. My blogging was my lifeline to sanity, and through blogging I began to understand how important it was to be, not merely informed, but involved. As I read other blogs, and developed friendships with other bloggers and commenters, I discovered a hitherto-undiscovered aspect of myself - the political activist. Reading led to writing, writing led to talking, talking led to walking.

Every once in a while I would send a post to radio talk show host Mike Malloy, who would sometimes read it on the air. This post, written almost exactly two years ago, was one of them. He mentioned my blog address, and I got some very nice e-mails. One of those e-mails came from someone at a publishing company who asked if I would be interested in discussing writing a book about why Americans vote against their own best interests. At first I thought it was a hoax or a vanity-press thing ('for only $2500, you can be a published author!') but upon using the Google, I found out that the company was a real publisher. The person who contacted me said that they had been looking for someone to write this kind of book, and my writing apparently fit the bill.

I'm really, really excited about this, as you all know how I feel about this subject. I'm hoping to be able to explain this in a way that regular people (non-bloggers or non-political junkies) will understand. But what blows me away about this is that it came about strictly from blogging. It didn't happen because I 'knew' anyone or had any literary contacts whatsoever. In fact, before I became a blogger, I never wrote at all. But I figure, if literary professionals think I can write a book, who am I to doubt them? They know more about it than I do!

It is a testament to the egalitarian nature of the Internet that I wrote this book - that simply putting one's work out there - casting your bread upon the waters - can result in it finding a home and an audience. So I have to include all of you in this - all of you who have come here to comment and allowed me to get to know you; all of you whose own writing and passion for making our country better have inspired me; all of you who have shared your own selves on your blogs, and have become personal friends as well as blog friends.

This is the time to take it to the right, and lay the blame where it belongs - at the feet of the conservative ideology which believes that "wealth equals morality" and "might equals right." The 'Invisible Hand' has strangled us long enough. We need to remind Americans that the ideals that inspired our Founding Fathers to rebel against the first Mad King George and "form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty" are liberal values. We became an independent nation because of this radical idea that all Americans should benefit from our union, not only the rich.

It is my hope that this book will at least raise these questions with people who have not been exposed to any other ideas by the woefully negligent 'mass media', which has long since abandoned its First Amendment obligations.

Happy Independence Day from a Daughter of the New American Revolution

Greetings, freedom-lovers everywhere!

Welcome to the last Fourth of July that will be sullied by this evil and putrid Administration.

I plan to use this day to think about what the founders of our nation sacrificed to bring forth the United States of America, and why they decided it was worth putting everything they had on the line to break free from tyranny. Many of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence lost their health, money, property, and families because they chose to challenge the status quo.

I will be thinking in particular of the last man to put his signature to that document, Matthew Thornton. My paternal grandmother always asserted that we were related to him in some way, but the connection was somewhat hazy. She thought that the first McCracken (my maiden name) to come over from Scotland married Dr. Thornton's daughter, but a quick scan of the history books put the kibbosh on that, so I thought it was more wishful thinking than anything else. However, once I got hooked a couple of months ago on my new crack, Ancestry.com, I found that although we were not directly descended from Thornton, we were indeed related - my great-great-grandfather George Washington McCracken's wife Mary Edgerly Thornton was the great-great-granddaughter of William Thornton, brother of Matthew Thornton. I wish my grandmother had lived long enough to find that out (although she was alive both times the Red Sox won the World Series!)

It's a revelation to go back and read the history of the Revolution within the context of having a relative involved, and realizing how determined these men (and women) were to forge their own destiny, and fight their oppressors. Matthew Thornton was born in Ireland of Scottish descent; the Scots-Irish (Northern Ulster Presbyterians or 'Orangemen' as they were known, to differentiate them from Celtic Irish Catholics) who came to America around that time were fiercely committed to the cause of independence. His father James Thornton brought his young family to America in 1718, settling in Brunswick, Maine; on July 11th, 1722, a band of Native Americans attacked the town. The Thornton family fled from their burning home and escaped by canoe. Narrowly escaping death they made their way initially to Casco Bay Maine. From there they moved to the Scots-Irish settlement of Worcester, Massachusetts, where my father's people have lived ever since.

From an article by Alister J. McReynolds:

In Worcester Matthew Thornton received a classical education at the Worcester Academy. The family subsequently left Worcester as a result of the bad treatment meted out to the Scots Irish of the town by the Congregationalist Puritan burghers. Matthew Thornton completed his studies in Medicine in Leicester and then in 1740 opened up his medical practice in Londonderry New Hampshire. This proved to be a position which was financially lucrative and Thornton became a wealthy citizen. Londonderry was relatively small at this time but by 1775 it had grown to become the second largest town in New Hampshire in both populationand taxable wealth.

In 1745, five years after he had hung out his Doctor’s slate in Londonderry, Matthew Thornton was still a bachelor and decided to volunteer his services as a military surgeon on the ‘Fort Louisburg’ expedition to Cape Breton. This was a major British campaign against the French and ended with the taking of the aforementioned French fort at the mouth of the St Lawrence waterway.During this campaign Matthew Thornton’s skill as a surgeon was particularly noted. In spite of the magnitude of the operation, consequent from the fighting only 6 lives were lost on the British side. After this ‘tour of duty’ Matthew Thornton returned home to Londonderry New Hampshire where he remained in the local militia and eventually in 1775 received a commission as a Colonel from Governor Wentworth. Realistically however at 61 he was too old for active service. We have descriptions of Dr Matthew Thornton in 1750’s which portray him as tall, clear-eyed and handsome and added to this possessing a charm and storytelling capability that kept his friends enthralled for hours on end.

Matthew Thornton was 46 years of age when he married Hannah Jack in 1760 and the couple were to have five children*. From the outset Thornton took an active part in the overthrow of the British governance in New Hampshire and was prominent in his opposition to the Stamp Act. In 1768 Matthew Thornton and the other members of his family were granted the township which still bears his name – Thornton.

In 1775 Matthew Thornton was elected President of the Convention and over the next decade held a series of positions as Chairman of committees and President of the Constitutional Convention. Subsequently he became President of the fifth Congress which adopted the first Constitution of the Colonies on January 5th 1776. He also chaired the 5 man committee which drafted the document.

Although not elected until November 4th 1776 and thus after the passage of the Declaration of Independence, Matthew Thornton was allowed to sign the engrossed copy of the document. He had attested and it had been fully accepted that retrospectively he was fully in accordance with the voting on the issue. Thornton arrived in Philadelphia just one day before he signed the Declaration and commenced his two year stint in Congress. Some 18 months prior to his arrival in Philadelphia Matthew Thornton had written a letter to Congress advocating complete independence from Great Britain. This was a view that was not universally supported at the time. However by November 1776 it was the almost unanimous viewpoint of the activists in the Colonies.

*A story told in the History of New Boston NH states, "she was a beautiful young girl of eighteen (when they married), whom he had promised, when a child, to wait for and marry, as a reward to her taking some disagreeable medicine."

In a book written about the signers in 1823, the section on Matthew Thornton ends thusly:

The grave of this eminent man is covered by a white marble slab, upon which arc inscribed his name and age, with the brief but noble epitaph— "AN HONEST MAN."

I hope that we can take heart and courage from the example that our founding fathers gave us, and I hope that we can find the fortitude to do whatever is necessary to keep that flame of freedom burning. Are we, like they, ready to "pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor"? If not, we may find that most or all of it will be taken from us anyway.

Worse Than Dying - Part II

I've been front-paged on the Smirking Chimp (one of my very favorite sites since I began blogging in 2004) since the beginning of this year, and what I write usually seems to be well received - I get a lot of reads and a lot of positive 'votes'. This latest post "Worse Than Dying", however, seems to be scaring people away. I've gotten about a quarter of the number of reads as is usual for me, and only two comments.

One of the commenters remarked upon the conflicting feelings we have towards our soldiers when we hear about the atrocities perpetrated by some in the military; in Haditha or Abu Ghraib, for example. It's hard to sympathize with our soldiers when we hear of these awful horrors being done in our name. And, as progressives, we tend to be on the side of peace, not war. It's difficult for some to identify with people who choose the military as a career - who join the armed forces knowing they will be trained to kill. Even though the incentives offered are varied - college money, career training, discipline, citizenship, patriotism, family tradition, a leg up out of poverty or gangs - the bottom line is that every soldier who signs on the dotted line, in peacetime or in war, knows that they will be trained to kill and may be asked to.

Most soldiers who join the military voluntarily do so because they want to serve their country, and love it enough to lay their life on the line for it. However, there have always been a certain percentage of people who join the armed services simply to have a socially sanctioned outlet for their natural cruelty and desire to dominate others. This is true of the police, too. But we now have a new factor to consider. As people become more and more skeptical about the war and the reasons we are over there, it is becoming more and more difficult to come up with enough soldiers to feed the gaping maw, and the military is becoming less and less selective about who they recruit. This has resulted in more soldiers who should never be allowed to hold a loaded weapon - people with criminal records, mental and emotional problems, drug problems, antisocial tendencies, aggression and anger-management issues - all people who would be 'unfit for service' during a more rational time. And when you add these unstable people to the mix, give them weapons, amp them up and turn them loose, they may not have the self-control to stop when ordered to. You end up with a Haditha; with an Abu Ghraib. But the ultimate responsibility for that atrocity rests with those in command, who design the agenda, set the parameters, create the culture and wield the authority. Abu Ghraib, for instance, was the result of overall policy dictated and approved all the way from the top, not a 'few bad apples' at the bottom. Above all, soldiers are trained to obey authority without question, not make their own policies, and to think that the same methods of torture used in Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and other war prisons were simultaneously and independently dreamed up by low-level guards and interrogators is to be seriously or even intentionally deluded. Soldiers take their policy from the top, and our recent revelations about torture policy coming all the way from the White House and approved by countless high-level members of government bears this out absolutely.


When a soldier is placed in harm's way by his superiors, he must be equipped to survive and succeed in his mission. If he is unable to defend himself when attacked, or kill the enemy when ordered to do so, it is a criminal act to put him in that position. But as normal humans, the resistance to killing is so deeply ingrained that the training to overcome that resistance must be equally as intense. The techniques of desensitization, conditioning and denial are employed to enable this basic resistance to be overcome and to enable the soldier to obey the orders he is given. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman explains how conditioning works:

When people become angry, or frightened, they stop thinking with their forebrain (the mind of a human being) and start thinking with their midbrain (which is indistinguishable from the mind of an animal). They are literally "scared out of their wits." The only thing that has any hope of influencing the midbrain is also the only thing that influences a dog: classical and operant conditioning.

That is what is used when training firemen and airline pilots to react to emergency situations: precise replication of the stimulus that they will face (in a flame house or a flight simulator) and then extensive shaping of the desired response to that stimulus. Stimulus-response, stimulus-response,stimulus-response. In the crisis, when these individuals are scared out of their wits, they react properly and they save lives.

Conditioning enables the soldier to do what he is told under extreme duress, without thinking about it consciously. He simply reacts the way he has been trained. ‘Muscle memory’ bypasses the midbrain’s deeply-ingrained resistance to killing another human. Add desensitization (wallowing in violent imagery until it no longer has any emotional effect upon the subject) and denial (the defense mechanism that enables us to function by pretending and believing that something objectionable does not exist) and you have a human grenade with the pin pulled. But as successful as we have been in removing the resistance to killing, we have not been anywhere near as successful in rebuilding what has been torn down when the soldier leaves the battlefield; a part of him is destroyed which can never be fixed.

Since we are a nation which has a standing military, and live in a world with nations that still wage war against each other, we must acknowledge the important role our military plays in our democracy. We must have a fighting force ready, willing and able to defend our nation at need. And, sadly enough, that involves killing. As a person who believes in peace and works for peace, for me to deny the reality that the military is an integral part of the structure of our society would be worse than naïve. It would be irresponsible. That is why I think it's so very important to never, ever ask someone to shoulder the horrific burden of causing the death of another person unless it is unavoidable. We owe that much to every single soldier that puts on the uniform of the United States of America. This is not to say I approve of war; I wish that no nation chose to solve differences by attacking other nations, and my goal is to work toward that aim no matter whether it is possible or not. It is because I value peace that I respect those that have volunteered to put their lives on the line for us, and it is because I honor their service that I am outraged that their service has been so disrespected by those who command it. And a war of choice, of greed and profit and imperialism - is murder, plain and simple. With ‘special circumstances’, as the prosecutors put it.


In the aftermath of Vietnam, and the lessons we learned at such a terrible cost, the Weinberger doctrine (named for Caspar Weinberger, Reagan's secretary of defense) attempted to lay a moral foundation for determining our war policy. It stated that:

• "The United States should not commit forces to combat unless our vital interests are at stake."
• "We must commit them in sufficient numbers and with sufficient support to win."
• "We must have clearly defined political and military objectives. "
• "We must never again commit forces to a war we do not intend to win."
• "Before the United States commits forces abroad, the U.S. government should have some reasonable assurance of the support of the American people and their elected representatives in the Congress .... U.S. troops cannot be asked to fight a battle with the Congress at home while attempting to win a war overseas. Nor will the American people sit by and watch U.S. troops committed as expendable pawns on some grand diplomatic chessboard."
• "Finally, the commitment of U.S. troops should be as a last resort."

Every single one of these directives was ignored by the Bush Administration. And the Weinberger doctrine did not even consider the possibility of lying to Congress, the soldiers, and the American people about a casus belli - the very idea was unthinkable. Who would imagine the need to list it as a possibility, much less actually have it happen? The war cheerleaders are constantly harping on 'winning', it is true; they love to use the phrase "Don't you want us to win?" to bludgeon Democrats or anyone who objects to our continued and unwanted presence in Iraq. But one cannot define 'winning' without 'clearly defined political and military objectives.' How can you 'win' when there are no rules to the game? They use the word 'win' without any context whatsoever and imagine they are 'supporting the troops' by doing so. You can't ignore every other guideline and then bray about 'winning'. And instead of looking for the best way to end our part in this conflict, they insist that the sacrifices of those that have fought and died will mean nothing unless we continue to send more men and women to fight and die. 'Winning' means whatever they want it to mean this week - whatever suits their political or financial interests at the moment. And if you don't agree, you're a Troop-Hating, Terrorist-Loving Traitor.

This loathsome Administration sent men and women to die - and to kill - for shabby, venal, self-serving, and ultimately criminal reasons, and lied to them about why they were really over there, knowing full well that if they told the truth about why they wanted to attack Iraq, that they would not have been allowed to "use force", as they so euphemistically call it. It's easy to spill someone else's blood when you're talking in terms of numbers and statistics and tactics. When you are removed from the actual dying, the actual killing, you can ask for 'x' number of 'units' to go here or there, do this or that. 40,000 troops ; 75,000 troops ; 150,000 troops - just numbers, units, a recipe for war. Add 50,000 units and mix well, then fry until crisp. But what about that one soldier - your own son, daughter, husband, sister?

The America I believe in does not attack another sovereign nation that presents no danger to us. The America I love is an example of the best we can be as humans, not a thug to be feared and despised. And the America I am working towards is one that will not defile its military of which it is justly proud by allowing it to be used as a tool to further the greed and power-lust of amoral sociopaths who will steal our future as well as our present.

That is an America worth fighting for.

Update - during the time it took to write this, I did receive one more comment that touched me very much. Do yourself a favor and read that1guy's story.

American Liberalism Project - new to Hooterville!

I'd like to let you all know about a site I have been invited to write at. It's called the American Liberalism Project, which supports what I've been talking about for some time - the value of liberalism. I'm glad to be a part of this fine site that promotes the liberal values I hold dear, and if you'd like to stop by and say hi to JB and SueZ, they would love to hear from you.

Worse Than Dying

cross-posted at the Smirking Chimp and the American Liberalism Project


“The soldier above all other people prays for peace, for they must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.”

General Douglas MacArthur

What is worse than dying?

Killing.

What is worse than loss of your life?

Loss of your soul.

When we talk about the horrors of this gruesome and unjust conflict in Iraq, most people (including myself) talk about the outrage of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

But what about the soldiers who are sent to do the killing?

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a West Point psychology professor, Professor of Military Science, and an Army Ranger, has made a lifetime study of the psychology of violence and killing, which he calls, simply enough, ‘killology’. His Pulitzer prize-nominated book On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society explores the history and psychology of killing. In a time of so much death and destruction that has largely been sanitized and deliberately kept vague and abstract, out of the way of the American consciousness, to the extent of forbidding photographs of flag-draped coffins returning from overseas, the administration has substituted rah-rah jingoism and ‘flag-pin patriotism’, but remain curiously silent about those they send to do their unspeakably dirty work under the false premise of ‘protecting America’. Bush and his cohorts have taken base advantage of the best and noblest instincts of those who love their country enough to volunteer to serve and defend it with their lives, and repaid them by destroying not only their bodies and minds, but their souls.

Approximately 98% of people are averse to killing other human beings. The other 2% have been observed to have a “predisposition toward aggressive psychopathic personalities.” U.S. Army Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall was an Army historian during World War II, and he headed up a team of historians who interviewed thousands of soldiers in more than four hundred infantry companies immediately after close combat. The results were shocking, to say the least:

“only 15-20% of the American riflemen in combat during World War II would fire at the enemy. Those who would not fire did not run or hide (in many cases they were willing to risk great danger to rescue comrades, get ammunition, or run messages), but they simply would not fire their weapons at the enemy, even when faced with repeated waves of banzai charges.”

These figures are borne out in other war accounts throughout history – up until the Korean War, this percentage of soldiers who chose not to kill was roughly the norm, from Alexander the Great on up through World War II. However, military science has evolved new training methods based on ‘operant conditioning’ and other psychological techniques which raised the ‘firing rate’ from 15 percent in WWII to 55 percent in Korea, and from Vietnam on, up to 90-95 percent.

These 'operant conditioning' techniques rely on simulating combat conditions as realistically as possible, with the soldier in full combat equipment firing at targets that look human and pop up randomly, rather than traditional marksmanship training that uses bull's-eyes at a known distance. With this training, with the psychological tools of depersonalization and denial, and variables such as revenge for losing friends and comrades in combat and physical and emotional distance removed from the target, soldiers are more able to fire their weapons on the battlefield.

While this is desirable from the point of view of the aim of war, which is to defeat the opposition, the price paid by the soldier and by society as a whole for every kill is enormous. When psychological damage and trauma of combat veterans are compared with that of victims of war – POWs, victims of attacks or civilians in bombed areas – the combat veterans sustain far greater mental and emotional trauma than the victims of war. Obviously, were we in a situation where we were attacked and needed to defend ourselves (which is the only legal reason to go to war), the ability of the soldier to do his duty on the battlefield is imperative, and if he is placed on the battlefield, he must be allowed to succeed. But when we ask a soldier - a normal human being with a built-in aversion to killing - to go against every instinct and kill another human, to deprive him of the moral justification which would help him to deal with the trauma inherent in killing is worse than criminal; it is evil. It is stealing his soul. Lt. Col. Grossman writes:

"(t)he higher the resistance bypassed, the higher the trauma that must be overcome in the subsequent rationalization process. Killing comes with a price, and societies must learn that their soldiers will have to spend the rest of their lives living with what they have done."

In World War II, there were a number of factors in place that kept veterans from suffering the type of PTSD that our Vietnam vets have experienced. Public recognition, respect, gratitude and appreciation - parades, memorials and monuments help to meet their desperate need to know that what they did was right, necessary and ultimately life-saving, and that they were welcomed back by the society to which they had literally given their lives and souls. Soldiers also returned home as a unit, and had days together on a troopship to 'decompress' - share their griefs, their fears, and process their war experiences with the only people who truly understood what they had been through: their fellow soldiers. Our Vietnam vets were deprived of most of these sanity-saving rituals and processes, and the psychiatric casualties are still affecting them and our society today.

Today's volunteer soldiers put not only their lives on the line for their country, but their very souls, with repercussions that extend into the rest of their lives, and the society as a whole. We must acknowledge this when we decide to engage in a conflict. To my mind, this is the worst of what has been stolen from us by George W. Bush and his neoconservative chicken-hawk puppeteers, greedy for domination, as well as his corporate war-profiteer cohorts, lip-smackingly eager for the unlimited riches which corporate sponsorship of war can generate.

The theft of the souls of these men and women who give their most priceless possession as a gift to the country they love is an unforgivable sin. And it is doubly vicious that those who are the most eager to spend American lives are the least willing to offer up those of their own. How dare Bush take this precious, irreplaceable resource and piss on it and then toss it away like so much Charmin? How dare he steal these souls with a lie? And then, when they come home, deny them health care, mental care, disability, and financial help in return? But the worst thing he has denied them is a just cause. How dare he?

The price of war cannot be measured merely in deaths and dollars. The uncounted cost of the mental and emotional trauma of those who must kill to do their duty is one we must account for if we are to be able to call ourselves a moral society. And by not holding the Bush regime accountable for these most heinous of all crimes, we are complicit in them. This is a wrong that can never be made right, and to allow Bush to add insult to injury by abandoning these soldiers whose lives he has already destroyed for his own ego, power and profit is to abandon our own souls. May God help us.

The Crime of the Century

I drank up Vincent Bugliosi's book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder like a thirsty person in the desert. Or, perhaps, like a drunken frat boy at a kegger. 

I have admired Mr. Bugliosi ever since Helter Skelter. He pulls no punches and has a passion for truth and justice. I believe him when he says that if it were a Democratic president who had perpetrated these crimes, he would be writing the exact same book. 

But the most important thing that I took away from this book was the reminder that the invasion of Iraq facilitated by lies is the most egregious crime that this pack of criminals has perpetrated upon the world, and not merely one of the many failures of the Bush Administration. In its magnitude it must not be compared to anything else, but stand alone in its atrocity, horror and shame. We can't lump it in with the other misdeeds such as wiretapping, tax cuts for the rich while stealing from the poor, protecting corporations while it attacks individuals, decimating a formerly robust middle class, gutting or usurping government agencies and laws that are supposed to be safeguarding the American people and putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse; although all of these are related and all of these are heinous in themselves, they pale beside the indisputable fact that our beloved country was lied into a war of choice. Not our choice, mind you; the choice of Bush and his 'advisors' the PNAC neo-conservative crowd, and the defense corporations and 'support' corporations who profit massively from it.

I still can't believe that we aren't screaming about this each and every day. It's like saying Hitler murdered six million Jews, and also had bad breath. No crime can be more vile than sending a nation to attack another nation without need; to kill hundreds and thousands of innocent people! The media will breathlessly report on the mysterious disappearance of one blonde white woman, and the nation roars its outrage as one. Yet let people act the same way over the Iraq 'war' and they are derided as left-wing lunatics who should just shut up and go along with the program. I still can't believe that the response from much of America, when confronted with the fact that we were lied into a bloody, greedy occupation, is, like that of our self-selected vice president (who really puts the 'vice' into vice president), "So?"

Everything this pack of psychopaths, murderers and thieves has touched since 2000 has been destroyed or perverted, to be sure. But, as far as I'm concerned, this groteque and monstrous 'war' is the Crime of the Century, and if we don't get it now, the world will hold us accountable later. Bugliosi points out that, unlike any other real 'war president' (Bush's own proud appellation), he is consistently cheerful, upbeat and - well, happy while hundreds of thousands who have died by his signature rot in their graves, and the millions of survivors and their family members who did not physically die on the battlefield have the hopes of a happy life destroyed forever. Bill Clinton was mocked for 'feeling our pain', and he certainly had his shortcomings, but I'd rather have someone 'feeling our pain' than feeling no pain. The grinning frat boy just goes on his merry way, leaving death and despair in his wake and thinking no more of it than he worries about the fate of the empty beer bottles that get thrown out (aren't they called 'dead soldiers'?) after a fraternity bacchanal. But it is the American people that will have to suffer the hangover, the shame and disgrace of the morning after.
 

Update From Alicia

Hi friends -

Just wanted to let you know that I'm taking a short breather from Hooterville - that is, as far as regular, up-to-date commentary is concerned. This primary has made me feel the need to step back and take a break, as I simply cannot involve myelf in Dem-on-Dem bashing while the criminals who have seized power are continuing to rape this country under the radar. While I'm waiting for news about my book release, I've had to put that on my mental back burner too, as it will drive me crazy otherwise. I'm still staying involved - this morning I have a meeting, along with another PDLA member, with Congressman Brad Sherman to discuss his war funding vote. I will also be a pollworker next Tuesday, and I'm still active with Americans United.

Speaking of criminals who seize power, I'm reading the new book by one of my heroes, Vincent Bugliosi, called The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. In addition to being the prosecutor who put away Manson and Co. and wrote the best-seller Helter-Skelter about the case, he wrote an outstanding book about how the Supreme Court gave away the Presidency in 2000, The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President. Bugliosi gets it right every single time, and this book is no exception. I feel like crying when I read how clearly, succinctly and inexorably he outlines the case for, not impeachment, but murder. In his usual acerbic, no-nonsense style he makes obvious what we left-wing nutjobs have been screaming about for the last seven-and-a-half years. I wish he was trying it himself, although he has offered to assist any attorney who will take it on.

I'm not gone, so feel free to comment or e-mail me, but I will be taking it easy and recharging my batteries for the fight in the fall - the fight for the future of our democracy. I am going to be all over that like ants on a neckbone, and will continue to keep active in the meantime.

Protest Music 2008

My son interviewed me the other day for a school project. The subject was 'what have you done in your life that you would consider the most meaningful' and my answer was getting active for political change, instead of merely talking about it. He wanted to articulate some of the differences between anti-war activism in the 60's and today. Of course there are a lot of differences; the social and political climate is completely different, as is the fact that the draft is not in effect. But one difference that I noted was the fact that there is not a definite 'protest music' movement like there was in the 60s. There is protest music being made, to be sure, but not a lot of people are hearing it, and many of the big-name artists that are doing protest music are the same ones who were doing it in the 60s, like Neil Young.

I think that we still haven't found our way as far as real protest is concerned - we are mostly falling back on what we did in the 60s - marches, sit-ins and other forms of civil disobedience. But I have a feeling that the public response to it is not what it was 40 years ago. It is still looked upon as something from the past, an outmoded and dated echo of the 'hippie days'. Something else needs to happen to engage the public, and I don't know what it is yet.

Be that as it may, I'm still hoping for a stronger presence for protest music. When I have time for a break from regular writing, I want to do some more protest music myself. Someone who has been doing wonderful protest songs for a few years now is my best girlfriend Paula Sorcé. She is someone who started doing this in the 60s and has never looked back, and she's my hero. The core of her band Just-Truckin' originated in the 60s and has re-formed again, and they are a classic Bay Area horn band a la Cold Blood. She has always written about what's important to her in a way that draws you in, with her strong, fierce, soulful vocals, burning horns and driving rhythm section.

I invite you to check out her latest, 'Trust You'. The video along with it is very cool also.

Her band's website is here if you'd like to hear more of Paula. My girl rocks!

Thank You, Friends!

Well, I went down to the caucus this afternoon, and gave my little speech. There were 16 men and 17 women signed up (although about a quarter of them didn't show up, including my friend Mutant Poodle - I saw your name there, pal!) When I got there, I could see that I was woefully unprepared. The real true-blue Go-Bamas were in full force, along with their fan base. Not only could I see that I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell, since I was there by myself with nary a follower to my name, but I could see that just about everyone there deserved to go a lot more than I did. These are the people who have been there all along, doing the phone-banking and door-to-door canvassing - the real grassroots, nuts-and-bolts work. So I looked at it as an opportunity to practice speaking about politics in public - even if it was for only 30 seconds. It's funny; I've been on stage for over 30 years, and if I'm doing music I am completely comfortable. But take away that crutch and it's a different story.

Thank you all for your kind words of support. As goofy as it sounds, just knowing that y' all had my back was a comfort to me. Even my friends who don't support my candidate support me and I love you for it!

Last-Minute Heads-Up - I'm Running To Be An Obama Delegate!

Hello from Crazy-Land! I have been so completely slammed this week that I forgot to mention that I'm running to be an Obama delegate tomorrow. I'm finishing up the final editing of my book with my editor, and we're planning to be all done by Monday night - then, off it goes to be published! Plus, I'm back at work - I had to write a brand-new curriculum for my 'Keyboards for Singers' class last week - I think it's turning into a book too! And my husband is out of town making his rounds in Nashville, so I've got the kids by myself (although I have to say that this weekend they have been awesome - my big son is taking care of the littles and they're all cleaning the house and are going to have a movie party at home tonight while I'm out at a gig. Oh, yes - did I leave that out? I also have a gig tonight an hour away in Moorpark, which means I'll get home at 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning.

I've never done anything like this before, and I may never again. I signed up for the caucus in January, not thinking much about it, and then this week find that I'm on the ballot and that I actually have to campaign! And give a speech! Only one minute, but a speech nevertheless. So I'll be spending the day split between working on my book and writing a speech and a little bio about me and why I want to be a delegate to make a flyer to hand out to people at the caucus to get them to vote for a nobody.

Bottom line: I'm running to be an Obama delegate and to have a true progessive voice and vote at the Democratic Convention. The more real committed progressives we get at every level - from bottom to top - in the Democratic Party, the better chance we stand of making a change. As you all know, I'm a big proponent of 'preaching to the choir', because I feel that it's more effective to try to motivate liberals on the sidelines than to try to convert conservatives. We have enough people who believe in progressive values; we're the majority, as a matter of fact. It's getting them involved and active that is our real challenge, but it's a challenge I see as more doable than changing the mind of a conservative. So I am trying to take my own advice and not just talk but do something, and this is a golden opportunity to do just that. This election could prove to be one of the most important Presidential elections ever - literally the difference between war and peace, between economic collapse and the hope of mitigating it; not to mention the judiciary where the remaining judges who are not radical right-wing are now in the most tenuous position imaginable and some will be replaced in the next four years. We cannot allow the judiciary to be hijacked for the next thirty years., which is what will happen if another Republican gets into office.

I have never asked anyone to vote for me before, so it feels really awkward - but if you are a registered Democrat in my congressional district (the 28th CD in California) or you know someone who is, I'd like to ask you to come out to the caucus tomorrow and vote for me. The caucus is being held here:

North Hollywood Recreation Center
11430 Chandler Blvd.
North Hollywood, CA 91601

Here's how you get there.

Caucuses open at 2pm - you must be in line by 3pm in order to receive a ballot to vote. Caucuses are open to registered Democrats who live in that Congressional District.

And you can check out the California Democratic Party website for more information.

Thank you!

What Regular People Are Hearing

(cross-posted at The Smirking Chimp)

Yesterday, I went for my long-overdue hair appointment with the Prince of Peroxide, my friend Eddy James (who is a miracle-worker, I must say - he did not ask me for a plug but I'm giving it anyway!) He asked me how my book was coming and I told him it was in the process of being edited, and then he and I got talking about politics, as we usually do at that point. He's Canadian and his wife is American, but he's a pretty progressive guy for a 'normie' (i.e. someone who isn't up to his tits in the interwebs about politics.)

In public, I don't launch into my tirades unless someone asks me enough times that I can't help myself. We started by talking about the possible SAG/AFTRA strike, and the acrimony between the two unions - disheartening because I belong to both and they've been seeking rapproachment for a while, but it's falling apart at this time. The subject went to unions in general, then the economy. Next came the state of the media, and I started talking about news programming and the fact that since news is now expected to draw ratings like a sitcom or game show, we get more flash and spin and less substance, and how we're losing out as citizens because the people entrusted by the protection of the Constitution to keep us informed have abandoned their responsibility to the public interest. We pretty much concurred that you can't trust the media to tell us the truth.

When we got around to the primary races, the girl who was assisting Eddy, and who up to this point had not made a peep, piped up and said, "Well, Obama wants to take the Pledge of Allegiance out of public schools!"

My jaw dropped.

I had just finished talking about Bush's Rovian dirty campaigning tricks that had been used against both Ann Richards in the race for the Texas governorship and John McCain in 2000 - the 'push-polling' where operatives would call up people and ask them if they would vote for so-and-so if they knew that they had a gay agenda (Richards) or had an illegitimate black child (McCain).

I asked her where she had heard that. She said that someone forwarded her an e-mail.

After explaining where it had come from - that someone took a picture of Obama standing with other candidates without his hand over his heart during the National Anthem, which is not the Pledge of Allegiance ("I was taught by my grandfather that you put your hand over your heart during the pledge, but during the Star Spangled Banner, you sing!" Obama said) - I was struck by the fact that this is how the majority of people in the United States get their information about politics, and about politicians. Since I don't spend a lot of time talking to regular people about the things that I rant about as a blogger and writer, it was a bit of a shock to hear something that to me is a well-known fabrication unworthy of the least bit of consideration regarded as gospel truth by someone else. This girl who works in the salon looks like somewhat of an 'arty' type, as do many people in the hair business. She certainly did not come off as overly conservative. She didn't seem especially interested in politics at all.

But she 'knew' about Obama wanting to take the Pledge of Allegiance out of schools.

This is what we're up against, folks.

This is why I'm going to take opportunties as they come up - not to harangue or harass people with my political worldview, but to try and do my part to put correct information out there whenever I can. It's not the dyed-in-the-wool conservatives I'm trying to reach. Their minds are already made up, and a pesky and unwelcome fact is not going to intrude upon their worldview unless it already fits into their frame of reference. It's the people who have progressive values but not the information to back it up; people who don't understand that what they're hearing isn't necessarily always true, that I want to connect with. And I do believe that most Americans have progressive values. That's why I write this blog; that's why I wrote my book. If I can compete, even in my own limited way, with the misinformation - both deliberate and unintentional - I feel that I have a duty to do that.

When I talk to people like this young girl, what I tell them is check for yourself. Don't take my word for it any more than you would take the word of a forwarded e-mail. But I do tell them that it's important to understand that what you hear from the media and from 'other sources' may be inaccurate, incomplete, or just plain-out lies, and since the media no longer feel any obligation to the public interest, but only to the interests of their shareholders and advertisers, it is now necessary to check and double-check your sources. Otherwise you will be making decisions and casting your vote from an uninformed standpoint - and that has already proved to be deadly.

The idea that we can take everything we hear on faith has come and gone. We must be responsible for our own knowledge as information consumers. If this girl had taken even a minute to Google some different sources, she might not have taken that ridiculous and mendacious e-mail as the basis for her opinion of a candidate - an opinion that could very well influence her vote. And that's what the people who propagate these falsehoods are counting on.

I don't expect anyone to take what I have to say on faith. Please, look up anything you hear me say. And consider the source.

An informed society is a free society. An uninformed society?

Not so much.

Carnival of the Liberals #61 - Better Late Than Never!

My abject apologies go out to everyone who sent in an article, and especially to the esteemed proprietor, the Neural Gourmet, who I enjoyed meeting in DC last November with Americans United for Separation of Church and State (the long name with the short URL!). If it was not for my horrendous computer crash it would have been up yesterday.

So, I would like to belatedly offer up for your perusal and edification the cream of the liberal blogging crop for Carnival of the Liberals #61. I now have more new great blogs to add to the ol' BlogRoll.

Starting us off with a bang is Divided We Stand, with an ode to the departing doughball that is Denny Hastert, "Oh Denny Boy" (appeals to my Irish heart), and what it signifies for the implosion of the Republicans.

Tracee from BlogFabulous makes a point that ought to be front and center of any discussion of the abortion issue - Stop Abortion, Vote Healthcare!

The mighty T of The Republic of T tells it like it is about the 'Ownership Society', or, more correctly, the Society of the Owned, Pt. 1. This is a series, BTW, and one that you should read every installment of.

Are you as sick of the selfish smugness of Objectivists as I am? Matthew Wilder, the Wild Philosopher, undresses Ayn Rand with Philosophically Fucking Humanity.

Although I understand we don't cotton much to 'candidate chatter' around the Carnival, I think my reasonably conservative friend Jon Swift has a word or two worth noting about the way Dems (and many liberal bloggers) are attacking each other and doing Grampa McCain's dirty work for him in Hillary Clinton Supporters at Daily Kos Go On Strike! C'mon, you krazy kids, knock it off, why don'tcha?

Greta Christina, she of the eponymous Blog, is a blogger I didn't know before, but who I will be reading regularly now that I have discovered her. Her post On The Amazingness of Atheists...and Why It's Doomed is thought-provoking and smart.

MBB at Money Blue Book has an informative and pithily-titled post up about Making Fun Of Late Night Infomercials Using Hotties With Assets To Sell Get Rich Schemes. Another blog very much worth visiting, especially in this economic free-fall.

Another blogger that I was fortunate enough to meet in DC with Americans United was the formidable PZ Myers of Pharyngula, a free-thinking evolutionary biologist who is on the front lines of the battle between science and superstition. He was interviewed for the pro-'intelligent design' film Expelled!, featuring the always-scintillating Ben Stein. Since he was rather prominently featured in the movie, he and some family members planned on attending a screening at the local theater. I won't give away the details to those who don't know the story, but Greg Laden, a biological anthropologist and scienceblogger of...wait for it...Greg Laden's Blog, has all the details in PZ Myers Expelled, Gains Sainthood. You'll laugh, you'll cry...no, you'll just laugh. It's that rich.

Charles H. Green of Trust Matters brings us a word to the wise with Great Moments in Self-Regulation: Financial Planners and CFP Board. Any time you hear those magic words 'self-regualtion', hold on to your wallet and run the other way! The fleecing is about to commence.

Well, that's it for my first edition of Carnival of the Liberals. Many thanks to all the bloggers who sent posts. See you on the merry-go-round!

Back Up. Back Up. Back Up.

It has taken me an entire day of troubleshooting, and finally completely erasing the drive and reinstalling the OS and restoring in order to get my laptop (with my whole life on it) working again.

Can I tell you how glad I am that I had made a complete backup of my drive the day before?

I've always known that you're supposed to back up, but I'm ashamed to say that for years and years I always put it off till 'later'. I've been unbelievably fortunate in that I've never had the kind of crash where losing everything was an option. When I put Leopard on my laptop, it has a great little backup program called Time Machine and I actually only started using it a month ago.

I will continue to make regular backups from now on. Religiously.

Carnival of the Liberals

Will be up as soon as possible - I have had a massive crash after an update, so please bear with me.

I Got Mine - A Conservative Worldview

(cross-posted at The Smirking Chimp)

My kids are big fans of the 'Blue Collar Comedy Tour', and especially of Larry the Cable Guy, a comedian so conservative that he named his daughter Reagan (I kid you not.) They have Tivo'ed several of the shows and so I hear a lot of it from the living room. Most of the time I tune it out, but one bit of Larry the Cable Guy's caught my attention. He was extolling the virtues of Wal-Mart, and deriding liberals who don't like Wal-Mart because they pay their employees so little. His advice to those weenies who don't like how employees are treated at Wal-Mart is - "Don't work at Wal-Mart!"

Those four words (or five, depending on whether Wal-Mart is one word or two) sum up the basic precepts of conservative philosophy.

You'll hear conservatives say, "If you don't want to work at Wal-Mart, then get an education and work hard and you won't have to." Pull yourself up by your bootstraps; put your nose to the grindstone; have some self-discipline. The old 'personal responsibility' routine.

What that does not address is the question, "If I don't work there, then who else should be working there?"

In other words, a job that pays so little that a full-time worker is still below the poverty line and is eligible for welfare is fine and dandy - as long as it's not me working there?

That's the essence of the conservative worldview: as long as I've got mine, I don't care if you have yours. The idea of everyone pursuing his or her own self-interest, then by the invisible hand, the self-interest of all will be maximized, or in the parlance of the Eighties, "Greed is good!" - is the one-size-fits-all answer to poverty, to injustice, to inequality. But what it boils down to in real life is "I've got mine." The idea that every person that works full-time is due enough compensation to support themselves, let alone a family, doesn't even enter into the calculation. It's okay for other people to be underpaid, overworked, taken advantage of. All that matters is - it's not me.

This is why conservatism just plain doesn't work - at least for the kind of society we say we want as Americans. There has to be some kind of consideration for more than just 'me and mine'. The place we're at right now - teetering on the brink of an economic collapse that could easily become a depression, embroiled in a grotesque, bloody occupation with no end in sight, pretending to be 'liberators' with no concern as to whether the country we're occupying wants us there or not, with a Vice-President who doesn't care how many Americans object to the war (apparently the two-thirds of Americans who say it's not worth fighting are merely exhibiting 'fluctuations in opinion', like toddlers who don't like apple juice today, but loved it yesterday), with the largest divide between rich and poor since the robber barons of the Gilded Age - is a place that conservatism, with its selfish, childish and short-sighted "I got mine" has brought us to.

And eventually, my conservative friends, even you may find yourself holding the short end of the stick. You may end up being the one treading water while someone else roars away to safety in the speedboat, oblivious to your cries for help. The policy of "I got mine" only leads to fewer and fewer people who have "got theirs" and more and more people who get next to nothing. Sooner or later, you'll be one of the latter. It's just a matter of time.

If you don't object to the mistreatment of your brother or sister, what will happen when it's your turn? Maybe you'll end up competing with Larry the Cable Guy for that swell greeter job at Wal-Mart.

How uniquely American.