It Never Ends

Goddammit, people.  I'm sick of this.  Right now my actual biggest fear about the election is that afterwards Jon Stewart isn't going to be funny anymore.  I don't know if any of you ever liked Dennis Miller or P.J. O'Rourke, but I think something is going to happen to Jon Stewart that happened to them.  It's funny when you make fun of everyone more or less equally.  It's not as funny when you get bitter and pick a side and start focusing your bitter jokes only on the side you dislike.  This will be a sad thing, because I really enjoy The Daily Show.  But Stewart's starting to lose his grip a little.  This election cycle is clearly making him angry; Palin clearly makes him angry.  The fact that his rage leans one way more than the other is starting to show.  Don't get me wrong; I agree with a lot of what he says about McCain, but really?  Really, the best you can do with Obama's performance in the debate is that quoting all those numbers is boring? 

He said the other night, and I forget who the guest was, that he doesn't see what's so great about small towns versus New York, since New York is just like a bunch of small towns, all stacked up on top of each other.  I'm not going to say that small towns are "better" than big cities, but he can't literally mean that they're the same.  Right, Jon?  Because if they were the same, then you could live in one just as easily as the other and the issues in Manhattan would be precisely the same as the issues in Idaho, but neither of those things is true, is it?  People usually have a clear idea about whether they are city people or country people.  I love cities; they're fantastic, but I don't like living in them, and I do not want to raise a kid in one.  I'm not passing judgment on people who do raise their kids in cities, because all it means is that they've decided that different things are important for their kids.  I remember when my son was about a year old, we took him to Seattle, and it was an unholy nightmare.  I love Seattle from the very bottom of my heart, but we had to restrain my son at all times because of the traffic and the bikes and the strangers and the unknown dogs.  Life there would have meant life on a leash for him.  Some people think the cultural activities and access to things like airports are worth that trade; I don't.  So, they live in cities, and I don't, and it's OK that we're different.  It's funny to me that city people think "diversity" means something completely different from what I think it means.  To me, the important kind of diversity is not based on skin color or sexual orientation; it's based on values and beliefs.  I think we need people with different kinds of intelligence, all kinds, and talents and values and beliefs, and I think that we all need to learn to respect each other's differences (notice I did not say tolerate; tolerance is for pussies--respect is more difficult).

Then he had Sarah Vowell on and she said something like, "If the Eastern Seaboard was American enough for al Qaeda then it's American enough."  True.  Did someone say that the Eastern Seaboard wasn't American?  Some Republican operative?  And did anyone take that seriously?  Because, listen, Sarah and Jon:  I realize that we all believe now that Afghanistan and Iraq were huge, pointless wastes of life and time and money, but the soldiers who went off to war because they were told that this was defending their nation mostly come from the red states, from the South and West, and I have not ever heard a soldier complain that defending New York was not what they had signed up for.  I'm sure all the New Yorkers are like, "Well, they're not defending us.  Iraq has nothing to do with 9/11."  True.  But not everyone realized that at the time.  I believe the junior Senator from New York, in fact, voted to invade Iraq.  Am I wrong?  Anyway, fuck off, we know you're America.  Damn, we wouldn't have Martin Scorsese if not for you people, and we're glad to have him.

On the other hand, I'm trying really hard to remember a time when the Smithsonian published an essay that was more full of self-congratulatory twaddle than Joan Acocella's essay (in maybe April or so of this year...hang on...let me Google...found it) about why New Yorkers are smarter than the rest of the nation.  This is, to my knowledge, an otherwise respectable magazine, so jeez, it must be true that New Yorkers really are smarter than us rednecks out here.  Jesus.  If I wrote a piece for a major, essentially nonpartisan magazine about why rural people are smarter than New Yorkers, and I am pretty sure I could make an argument at least as convincing as hers, you think they'd publish it?  Right.

But then, THEN!  Tonight I found this delicious document.  I especially love how he uses a picture of a Code Pink demonstrator at the top, because Code Pink is not an extreme fringe, not at all.  This thing is sure to build the trust of rural, working-class people--just sure to!  I'm going to take a few of the points and respond to them:

I think Karl Marx had some valuable insights into capitalist economies!  He did.  Unfortunately, because of that whole vanguard thing and state socialism, so far every Marxist government has been extremely oppressive and has simultaneously sucked at economic issues.  Adam Smith had some valuable insights into capitalist economies, too, although some of his most valuable are routinely ignored now.

I think Mormons are kooks!  No comment, I guess.  I don't know what to say about pundits who think that comments like this should enter the national dialogue.  I mean, gee, what if we replaced "Mormons" with "gays" or something?  Yeah, it's only OK if it's a religious minority that is mostly white, I know.  Because religion and whiteness have become the fucking cardinal sins. 

The Second Amendment does too allow government to ban handguns!  Well, unfortunately, the Second Amendment does not say that, and the Court has disagreed with you.  It is possible to make an argument that had the people who wrote the Second Amendment been able to see what our country is like now, that they would have made other provisions for regulation of guns.  I'm sorry--this one particularly irritates me because a) the problem with handguns is almost exclusively urban, b) this is part of the Constitution, equivalent in status to freedom of speech and religion and all of that, and c) Democrats bitch constantly, and rightly so, about how certain elements on the right want to enforce conformity to a specific standard of morality, and well, so do Democrats, at least on this issue.  And by the way, I don't own handguns and I don't use them or really want them in our house, especially not with a little kid in the house.  If you take away the initial dependent clause of the Second Amendment, it says pretty clearly that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."  Infringed?  I think "banning" constitutes infringement, don't you? 

Promiscuity between consenting adults is good exercise!  And also a good way to have unintended pregnancies and to pass around STDs.  Hey, I don't have a problem with that.

Saving the boulder darter was worth a few thousand jobs!  Well, probably not to the people who lost the jobs.  I'd like to make a few points about this.  The first thing is that the US Fish and Wildlife Service and state Fish and Wildlife services receives a very large portion of its funds from hunters and fishers, two groups that liberals tend to dislike (well, hunters get most of the ire; for some reason people don't see fishing as "killing" or something).  In other words, it is probably not big-city liberal tax dollars that paid for that shit; much of the funding came from the same rural rednecks y'all hate so much.  Probably some of the funding came from the same people who lost their jobs because of it (if any--I can't verify that anyone lost their jobs over this particular fish, but that's what Slate says).  Also, most of the actual research and work was done by the same types of people.  But the main thing about this kind of argument is that in rural areas, the loss of a few thousand jobs can mean the death of an entire region, because those few thousand jobs support a few thousand families who in turn support a whole bunch of businesses large and small.  It's fine to be all gleeful about the death of small-town America, but it brings very real and very serious economic consequences when there are no other jobs available.  I wonder if liberals would be so glib about the loss of jobs in an area of urban poor; from what I've read, I'd have to say that they would not.  Or, really, how would a New York Democrat respond if I was flip and joyful about all those Wall Street brokers losing their jobs? 

If Israel isn't out of the occupied territories in six months, we'll cut off all aid.  I doubt you can find a Democrat running for any political office who would even take this seriously.  I mean, I would personally be OK with cutting off all aid to Israel right now, but this isn't really a Republican thing.  The love for Israel is bipartisan and apparently total.

Higher gas prices are good because they make everybody bike and take public transit like they should!  Ah, yes, I know a lot of people who already believe this.  And I believe it, too--for city dwellers.  The simple fact is that people in rural America do not have access to public transit and frequently cannot reasonably bike the distances they have to travel.  It is not economically feasible to bring mass transit to most of rural America, except possibly bringing back Amtrak between major towns.  I have to drive 45 miles to get groceries; you want that I should do that on bicycle?  Would you?  Of course, we don't have to live out here, I guess, but this is where we can afford a house and anyway someone has to live out here to do the types of work that can't be done in urban areas.  So, the upshot is that high gas prices hit rural drivers who have little or no choice about how much they drive (and also, overall, have lower incomes already than urbanites) very hard.  I can understand that Democrats don't give a shit about that, but it doesn't reassure me in their ability to govern the entire nation that includes rural people as well as their beloved mass-transit-riders.

America's official languages should be English and Spanish!  This is more or less already the case, isn't it?  In every state I've lived in, official documents are available in both languages, and translators are available for free for Spanish-speakers.  I don't have a problem with this, although I don't really see what would be gained by making it official.  I don't see why this deserves an exclamation point. 

Judges should legislate from the bench if they want to. Conservatives do it, so why not liberals?  *sigh*  Do you not understand the Constitution, in theory or in practice?  For one thing, judges are not lawmakers; that is nowhere in their job description.  They are interpreters of existing law.  Period.  For another thing, just because "conservatives do it" doesn't mean it's then OK for liberals, too?  Ever hear that thing about two wrongs not making a right?  Also, the Founders specifically kept the judiciary and the legislative branches of government (and the executive) separate but equal because there are supposed to be these checks and balances.  This means that, in theory though not always in practice, lawmakers make laws and the judiciary judges whether they are coherent with pre-existing laws, namely (in the case of the Supreme Court) the Constitution.  The reason we have this system is to prevent wild swings between extremes; when the Democrats controlled all three branches, for example, we would have legislation that violates pre-existing law in the form of the Second Amendment, and then when the Republicans regained control of the three branches, we would have violations of previously existing laws regarding things like "due process."  If you're going to bitch mightily when lawmakers blatantly disregard court decisions and keep making laws they know will be found to be unconstitutional, then it is somewhat absurd to argue that the real problem is that the courts don't just go ahead and do the same thing the legislators do.  Bloody hell.  This is pissing me off.  Judges should not legislate from the bench, no matter which side they're on.  They are there to interpret the Constitution (or other laws) as best they can.  This is one of the things I most respected about Sandra Day O'Connor; she was appointed as a conservative, but she didn't legislate as a conservative.  She judged as a Constitutional scholar. 

What's so great about the Judeo-Christian tradition?  Haha.  And Democrats wonder why people accuse them of just having an anti-Western prejudice.  It's not that it's so great; it's that it's what we've got.  You can ignore it and deny it and rail against it, but it's still the tradition we've got.  I prefer to take the approach that it's worth being knowledgeable about because it forms the underlying and usually unconscious frame of reference for very much of American life.  Sorry.  It isn't better than other religious or mythological traditions, but it has more to do with the development of our culture.  The Jewish tradition in particular has a great deal to do with our values and belief in charity and compassion.  Is that really something you want to throw overboard just because you dislike religion?  This is a problem with "progressives" and "liberals"--so often they seem to want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  (For mcco's sake I will note that one of the problems with conservatives is that they seem to want nothing to change, ever, which is ludicrous, especially because they often don't seem to mind keeping the bad parts of traditions along with the good.  Fair enough?)

Big-city values are better than small-town values!  And, again, you have to wonder why small town people don't vote for assholes like this.  OK, so what are "small town values?"  Some Republicans have pandered to the people using these terms, but what are they supposed to be?  I don't really know.  I mean, as I've pointed out before, nobody in small towns considers it their business if you keep chickens or hang your clothes out to dry so long as you do it on your land.  So, there's that.  Most of the small-town people I know believe that if you're capable of working, then you ought to be working, and that applies even to kids.  I suppose there is a greater tendency to be religious out here, but I haven't noticed any pressure on those who aren't (I only ever went to church when I was in Arkansas, and that was mostly because there was nothing else to do--nobody in the small towns I've lived in in New Mexico, Texas, Idaho, or Alaska has ever asked me about it or bugged me about it).  I think in general small towns, at least in the West, have a libertarian sensibility.  Are those the things that are meant by "small town values?"  If they are, then what's so bad about them?  And what are "big city values?"  And what's so great about them?  If I have a hard time generalizing about small town values, then how much harder is it likely to be to generalize about "big city values?" 

We're going to need affirmative action for a long time.  I don't know if I have the energy to go into this one in depth, but I disagree.  At the very least, I disagree with basing affirmative action on skin color and gender; if we're going to use the government to promote equality of outcome, then at the very least, it should be gauged on a more diverse set of factors, such as socioeconomic status.  I realize that Democrats don't give two shits about poor white people and certainly not poor white people who are also conservative, and so it is anathema to think that a poor white might get a leg up out of poverty via affirmative action, but you can't be serious about social justice and fighting poverty and ignoring the problem of poor whites, many of whom are rural and face similar problems to urban poor who are often minorities (i.e., lack of access to education, lack of access to jobs, lack of means by which to effect lasting change in their lives, etc.).  Also, I find some of Clarence Thomas's arguments on the subject compelling, and believe me, I really never thought I would say something positive about Clarence Thomas.  Damn.

We're undertaxed. Look at Europe!  I'm kind of tired of looking at Europe.  If the Europeans want the tax structures they have and the government they have, that's fine for them.  That doesn't mean I have to want it.

Many welfare moms kicked off the rolls by the 1986 welfare-reform bill are worse off in their crappy jobs!  I don't really remember what the 1986 bill entailed, but the same thing can be said of President Clinton's 1996 bill.  Of course, some of them are also better off, but it's true that many of them are worse off.  This isn't necessarily a good argument for welfare as it was, though.  I see it more as an argument that America has ceased to do what it was once great at and that was making sure that there were good jobs available even for undereducated people.  Democrats and Republicans alike have supported the measures that have brought us here. 

Broad availability of gay marriage: good. Broad availability of gay divorce: better!  Uh, fine on the first part, but why the second part?  Why the enthusiasm for divorce?  What good, exactly, does divorce do for society or even for most individuals?  I know a lot of people believe before a divorce that they will be happier once divorced, but in my experience, this does not always pan out.  A lot of these people are merely suffering from "grass is greener" syndrome.  It's extremely weird to me that divorce as a general thing is "better" than marriage.  Freaks.

You want to know why George W. Bush was a lousy president? Because he's stupid!  Huh.  I know a lot of uneducated rednecks who could articulate why he has been such a lousy president much better than this.  But it's so much easier if he's just "stupid!" 

The problem with public schools is private schools!  This doesn't even really make any sense.  There are a lot of problems with public schools.  I personally oppose public schools on a theoretical level because I think they are a tool of social indoctrination rather than of actual education, and that goes for all public schools.  Actually, early educators like Dewey were quite clear about that being their goal, but that seems to have been forgotten now.  But anyway, if you believe in public education, the problem you need to deal with isn't private schools.  The problems are:  the ways teachers are "educated" and I use that term very loosely because "education" degrees are a fucking joke, worse than a joke because then we have a bunch of semi-literates teaching our children; the way public schools are funded which guarantees inequality; the emphasis on things like "self-esteem" and "computer and/or media literacy" in lieu of critical thinking and, well, actual literacy; the "experts" who keep passing off total crap like "new math"; the way most schools necessarily teach to the lowest common denominator, or at the very least to the middle, and very bright students get bored and don't live up to their abilities because they have no real way to do so; text messaging during class and parents who won't allow teachers and administrators to take cell phones away from students, but anyway if students are primarily in school to be taught "self-esteem" and how to be a good little worker bee and also to provide a babysitting service for the parents, then I guess they can keep the damn text messaging up because they don't really need to pay attention anyway.  Fie on public education.

Meh.  If I thought that Obama believed most of that shit, I would have VERY serious concerns about his fitness for the presidency.  Oh, right, he's only supposed to respond to the needs and concerns of urban folks.  Fuck the rest of us, right?  Right!  Hey, let's hear it for divorce!  Woo!  Go Europe!  Yay, social indoctrination!  Hurrah for public transportation!  I'm so jazzed to go vote for this program now.  This is going to be sooooo cool.

Sorry for the bitter sarcasm at the end.  I am very tired of this.  For the record, let me unequivocally state that while I do not wish to live in a big city, I don't have an actual problem with big cities or city dwellers.  There were also a lot of points in that essay that I agreed with, but bloody hell.  I'm so sick of all of this.