4 posts tagged “liberals”

Oh, man, so I mentioned recently that when I took that quiz, the candidate I came up most matching with was Mike Gravel, right?  Then today I read this, and OH YEH, GRAVEL FTW!

Not that that will happen of course.  But imagine a world in which the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and the COMMANDER IN CHIEF of our big freakin armed forces thinks that war is never the answer!  Can you imagine?  It makes me all giddy just thinking about it.

I mean, seriously.  America is all about war.  And here he thinks that maybe we could find better things to do with ourselves than kill people?  It's...it's unimaginable.  It's also a strategy that will not get you put on any ballots anywhere in the country.  Super.

And another thing.  Since it looks like McCain is the likely Republican nominee, I've been thinking about the matchup, and I don't think Hillary can beat him.  Certainly she knows more about domestic policy, but the American people don't vote for someone based on what that person knows.  There is the war thing, of course, where Hillary claims to want to end it and McCain apparently doesn't care if it just sort of goes on forever. 

But.  McCain tends to attract right-ish Democrats and independents, whereas Clinton tends not to.  It is my humble opinion that McCain generally appeals to rural and Southern voters more, too.  And finally, and I think this may be a biggie--she's been running all this time as the "experienced" candidate, right?  I realize she doesn't have to keep a consistent message from the primaries to the general election, but a) she can't win the "experience" thing against McCain, no way, b) she can't become a "change" candidate because HELLO OLIGARCHY and anyway she represents politics as usual, and c) she will get hammered by the voters who already are inclined to dislike her for changing her message--wishy-washy liberals and the politician in her saying whatever it takes to get elected instead of what she really believes, etc.; we've heard this all before about many a Democrat candidate, no?  She could win on domestic policy because, again, she certainly knows a lot about the economy and health care that McCain does not.  But she can't win on foreign policy against him (she could have won on domestic and foreign policy against Romney, I think, and handily).

Now, Obama, I think, could beat McCain.  In Barack and John, I think there are two such completely different people--in temperament, in experience, in beliefs--that it wouldn't be a fight over who knows more or who has more experience.  Instead it would be more of a debate about what we believe and what kind of person we want up there, and I think Barack could win that.  Change!  Youth!  Handsomeness!  Diplomacy!  Heckuva wife!  Unity!  Hope!  Did I mention the handsome thing?

So, does that mean I'm voting Obama?  No way.  GO GO GADGET GRAVEL!  GRAVEL/EDWARDS '08!  With Richardson as Secretary of State.  There's your change.  Suddenly we're a nation of leftish libertarians who decides to use the money freed up by ending the war on drugs to implement real sex education and make sure all people can get their hands on (and know how to use) contraception.  Suddenly we're taking real steps to fight poverty.  Suddenly we have an experienced diplomat--someone who fundamentally believes in diplomacy and knows how to do it--as Sec. of State.  What a different world it would be.

And what about Barack, whom I have grown to like?  Make him Secretary of Unity and Hope and Smooth Talking.  Make him Secretary of Positive Thinking.  Make him Secretary of How to Keep Your Integrity by Not Voting for Senseless Wars (of course, we won't have senseless wars if we have Gravel--wooooo, Gravel!).  Make him Secretary of Handsomeness. 

I guess Hillary could be Secretary of Pantsuits and Overanalyzed Crying.  She could also be Secretary of Takin' Care of Business (workin' overtime!).

I've completely lost my head.  I need this election to be over.

P.S.  How the fuck has it come to be that someone can win the popular vote but not win the majority of delegates?  The results from some states are showing Barack with a popular win but Hillary with more delegates?  Did we not learn anything at all from the Gore v. Bush debacle, people?  THIS IS ALLEGEDLY A REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY, RIGHT?  COME ON, PEOPLE.  I believe we are supposed to be nominating the person the most people actually voted for. 

*sigh*

I've written before that I don't consider myself an "environmentalist."  I do care tremendously about the environment--keeping our air and water clean, preserving our vast and breathtaking national forests, stopping the destruction of the oceans, all of it.  I love and respect the world of nature more than the world of humans, really, although I harbor the silly and admittedly outdated notion that, ideally, the world of nature and that of humans are not separate and distinct, but intertwined and connected and part of the same great circle and cycle.  Actually, they are not separate and distinct, but some people like to pretend that they are.

But the rhetoric of environmentalists and animal rights activists (I will do some lumping of the two here, even though they are not always the same) loses me a lot.  Not just the rhetoric, really, but also some of the proposals and actions.  Let's start with the rhetoric, helpfully presented to us in this Sunday's newspaper.

There was an article about the problematic deer population in New Jersey.  I am given to understand that back there, deer no longer have natural predators.  Well, anyone with even a half-assed understanding of these things knows that, in the absence of predators, prey populations will escalate and start to invade suburban lawns and eat people's well-manicured grass (I love how the governor of New Jersey said there are too many deer on "our property."  Right, dude.  Your property, not the deer's.)  So, the governor has made some special 10-day hunt to reduce the populations, and apparently hunters are specifically being encouraged to kill the young ones.

In a meeting about this, some protestor shouted, I guess about the young ones, "We call them Bambi!"

Oh, OK, see.  You're just not even a serious person.  I cannot take your point-of-view seriously when your knowledge of wildlife is derived from a fucking Disney movie aimed at 5-year-olds.  For one thing, deer don't speak English.  Also, their eyes are not that disproportionately large.  I have to admit that when I was young and we often ate venison that my stepdad hunted, we used the term "Bambi burgers" rather a lot, mostly to irritate my vegetarian mom.  So, maybe I'm just coldhearted towards anthropomorphized forest creatures that giggle.

Then the protesters suggested birth control as an alternative, nonviolent means of controlling the deer population.  I can already feel the headache coming on.  Because so far man's intervention into the natural world has been so completely successful, let's try injecting pig proteins or gonadotropin-releasing hormones into deer to fuck about with their reproductive cycles.  Not to mention that, unlike predation (even human, gun-powered predation, albeit to a lesser extent), contraception is not going to select for the smartest and healthiest animals to reproduce or to get the greatest mixing of the gene pool to keep the herd strong.  It is more or less random.  And do we have any idea at all what the long-term effects on individual deer and the health of the herd are from this?  Not yet, not really. 

And let's not even forget that the deer contraception will not eliminate the need for predation and hunting to control the deer population in most places.  Hurrah! 

Who are these people?  How can they have so little understanding of or respect for nature?  I assume you know what I mean when I say they don't understand nature.  By "respect" for nature, I mean respect for animals for what they are and their animal-ness (and the animal-ness of humans, too.  Why do liberals, who typically advocate Darwinism or something like it, think it is reasonable and healthy to deny the primal animality of humankind?  I'm getting all hot under the collar just thinking about it). 

I wouldn't personally say that a deer's life is "sacred"--then again, I wouldn't say that about a human life, either.  I'm not much into that word.  I don't think a deer's life is worth less than mine.  What I think is that we exist in a natural relationship of predator and prey and that this relationship is healthy, efficient, and good.  As Michael Pollan pointed out so very many times in Omnivore's Dilemma, this relationship slowly but surely converts sunlight into sustenance.  The sun feeds the grass and plants that feed the deer; the deer feeds the predator; the predator eventually dies and becomes fertilizer for the grass which feeds ...  You get the idea.  To me, this is a beautiful and elegant cycle, and very energy efficient.  Every part of it relies on the other part--including predators.  In many cases, as we have eliminated so many natural predators, humans are the only real predator left.  To me, it is our duty to fill that role, and it is right when we do.  If you want to try to convince me that wolves would be better at it than us and that New Jersey inhabitants will stand for the introduction of large predators to their ecosystem, you can go ahead and try but you're probably not going to get far.

That being said, humans do need to exercise more restraint in how many animals they eat.  The industrial feedlot system is grossly inhumane and unsustainable, and we are decimating our ocean fish populations.  Both of these things are short-sighted.  Joel Salatin likes to talk about the "pigness of the pig"--if you really respect the pig as you do a human, then treat it like a pig and not like a human.  That doesn't mean you treat it badly or abuse it, but you respect the fact that pigs exist in their currently large numbers (and chickens, and cows, and dogs, etc) because at some time long ago, they struck a bargain with us that allowed them protection from natural predation and the elements and the ability to reproduce in great numbers.  In return, they provide us with things--milk, meat, hides, eggs, and in the case of many of them (not just dogs) a kind of companionship.  It's symbiosis.  Or it should be.  That symbiosis is now being greatly abused by our industrial food system and our great greed for humongous hunks of meat, but it doesn't have to be that way.

As for other environmentalists, those who would not advocate deer birth control or refer to deer as "Bambi," I'm mostly sympathetic, except in extreme cases.  Back when I lived in a little logging town in New Mexico, Earth First! was going around putting spikes in trees and, I'm sorry, but again you lose me.  I can't support that, no matter how much I love the forests.  And I'm not going to support ceasing logging on national forests when it often just means that wood is then imported from other countries that may have less oversight of the harvesting process than we do here.  I would gladly support the cessation of timber harvest on national forests if, say, people would stop buying second homes that required lumber to build.  I hate that kind of waste--you don't need a second home, but if you're going to have one, the materials to build it are going to come from somewhere.  You want to stop logging (or oil drilling, or mining, etc.)?  Try doing something about the avaricious, consumerist lifestyles Americans lead.

I also get hostile at enviros who blame the Forest Service for everything.  They make big, bold statement about how the Forest Service is failing to deal properly with the forest-fire situation (by, for example, failing to do prescribed burns) which are often outright false.  The Forest Service does, in fact, do prescribed burns.  It was funny--one time Redzilla wrote about this particular issue and earlier that same day I had been in my stepdad's office (he is the ranger on this district of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest) and he had been discussing a prescribed burn they were about to do with his staff, the impacts it would have on the flora and fauna in the area, and blah blah blah.  I don't know--I certainly don't know all there is to know about it, but I do know that those people who work there care about and know more about it than most of the environmentalists I've met.  (On the other hand, the Forest Service as it is a public agency has to also deal with other parts of the public, including ranchers and loggers and campers and fisherpeople and the people who build houses near forests and then fail to take their own preventive measures against forest fires and then can sue the Forest Service if their houses burn down.  Dummies.) 

Also, environmentalists and animal rights people tend to think that hunters and fisherpeople only destroy rather than conserve.  But that is silly.  It is silly because even if we assume the worst about hunters, that they are only acting selfishly, it is in their best interests to preserve the habitat of the species they hunt and also to protect the strength of those populations.  "User fees" including those paid for hunting and fishing licenses make up a great deal of state conservation departments' budgets.  Hunters and fisherpeople also support habitat-preservation and conservation groups such as Ducks Unlimited and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation in a big way.  Many hunters and fisherpeople go out and do the things they do because they love the outdoors and want to see the forests protected and preserved, even if they don't always bring home meat.  Not all of them, of course.  As with anything humans do, some of them are going to be assholes.

Now, if we're talking environmentalism such as that you get from Wendell Berry, Joel Salatin, Aldo Leopold, Teddy Roosevelt, that kind of thing.  Sure, I'm all for it.  But if we're talking about reducing the glory and grandeur of nature to the status of a museum in which the objects are untouchable--or, worse, to an animated kids' film--no, thanks. 

Here is the second exciting installment in my beef with the aforementioned devil groups.  The way this one plays out is quite different from the gun control episode though, so you'll want to hang around for the amazing conclusion.

I am not a person of faith.  I believe in no god or set of gods or religion.  I am not even a secular humanist, as my faith in humans is somewhat less than my faith in most of the gods I've heard of.  I would even go so far as to say that science, while it often brings us almost miraculous salvations, is not a basket I would stick all my eggs in.  And, as Marvin Gaye cautioned, I believe roughly half of what I see and none of what I hear. 

In other words, my feelings about Christianity and about the salvation offered by science (to take two examples only) are similar.  Atheists who devoutly believe that the scientific method can do no wrong (and, what's more, that incredibly fallible human scientists can do no wrong) are only somewhat less frightening to me than Christians who energetically believe that Christ will come again, and that is probably only because science continues to find new and ever-more-interesting means of birth control.

So, I am not a person of great faith, though I'm sure some of you will find things that I have faith in.  I believe, for example, in the basic and essential wisdom and beauty of nature and its cycles.  I believe that Wallace Stevens could save the lost soul of man if we let him.  I believe that the Beatles were better than the Rolling Stones.

All that being said, if I hear one more lefty say, "Well, Huckabee wants to impose his beliefs on the rest of the country," I'm going to scream.  Why do I keep picking on the Huckmeister, anyway?  I have no idea.  He unnerves me more than the other candidates, and many of my fellow lefties seem to feel similarly. 

Anyway, the reason this statement bothers me so much is not that it is untrue.  It is almost certainly true.  I am 99% certain that Huckabee wishes to impose his beliefs on the nation.  The reason it bothers me is because that is pretty much what all of us want to do, all the time.

Huckabee believes, for example, that choosing to live a homosexual lifestyle is immoral; that belief is based on the version of Christianity to which he subscribes, yes--not the only version of Christianity there is, mind you.  Believing it is immoral, he at the very least wishes not to sanction it by making gay marriage legal, and probably he wishes to actually recriminalize homosexual activities (not, like, dressing nice or something--I mean other kinds of activities). 

I, and probably all of you and most of America and the world, disagree with him that it is immoral to be homosexual.  I think homosexuality is of no particular moral import, and it is very difficult for me to understand the thinking of a person like Huckabee.  Yet there are people who believe the same things he does and have their reasons, I suppose.  And so we have a disagreement about morality, but we are similarly trying to impose our beliefs on our country.  If given an opportunity, we would happily run to Capitol Hill, declare that it is not immoral and that gay marriage (or any type of discrimination against gays) is a question of equal civil rights, and sign it right into law.  If we did that right now, most Americans would disagree with us, probably; I believe it is still the case that the majority of Americans still oppose gay marriage, although I believe that majority is slowly declining, too.  I could be wrong.  The point is that some significant portion of Americans would disagree with it, yet we would impose our beliefs on them.   Liberals are no less self-righteous and fascist in their desire to make everyone think the same way they do*.  I do not necessarily think we would be wrong to do so--that is what humans tend to do when we strongly feel that something is immoral, after all.  A significant number of Americans also opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it was signed into law, yet progressives managed to impose their belief that it was the right thing to do and did it, and now we've gradually come around so that I expect there is hardly anyone who would undo it (I know there are always fringe groups, neo-Nazis and the like, who would, but they are a very small minority, let's face it).

Now, Huckster Mike is no Lincoln or FDR (both presidents who imposed their vision and beliefs on the country), but what I want to say is that, though he's Christian and I'm not, I could be accused of the same thing--yes, I would impose my beliefs on everyone.  And so would most of us.  When you believe something, anything, strongly enough--and particularly if it is a question of morality to you--you will quite happily make people do that thing, however you have to go about it.  If I were President suddenly, would I force Congress to accept a single-payer health system?  Yes, you bet.  I can be very persuasive when I'm of a mind to be.  Would I force the sick bastards who make their dogs and cats become vegetarians start feeding their pets the chunky cans of dubious meat chunks in gravy?  Oh, yes.  I believe in whole foods (not the store--the actual foods), so would I find ways to make veggies cheaper than soda?  Yes, despite the fact that people really like soda better. 

See?  I'm just as willing to force you all to succumb to my evil will as a Republican is.  I used to tell a coworker that deep down inside we all have a little tiny Hitler trying to get out.  Maybe we should say "dictator" instead of Hitler, but the point remains.  Most people have strong beliefs about what is moral and what is not, and most people would gleefully force/coerce others to act the way they want them to act.

So, then, what (to me) is the acceptable reason we don't vote for the Huck?  The main thing, of course, is he wants to anally violate the Constitution.  The job of the President is to uphold the Constitution, and here he wants to just go and do it in.  It's like nominating John Bolton to the UN, man.  You're kind of disqualified by virtue of the fact that you cannot fulfill your most essential function.  Dubya has, of course, done some damage to the Constitution, too, by way of the Patriot Act and the Gitmo torture sessions and all of it, but he hasn't actually done anything to the Constitution itself, whereas Huckabee just wants to go in there and fuck around and make it so that the Supreme Court, say, has no choice but to declare sodomy laws constitutional.  The other things are that I obviously disagree with most of his views on the divisive moral issues, I find his economic policies suspect, and I don't like his eyes.

Now, liberals--don't get all self-righteous here saying that you don't want to fuck around with the Constitution yourself.  If you all could do something about the Second Amendment, I'm confident most of you would. 

*Incidentally, there is a book out about how liberals are the inheritors of the fascist tradition, not conservatives.  I haven't read the book, but I have read a couple of reviews and interviews with the author, and he makes some good points.  I have suggested that there is a possiblity that if the Democrats continue to irk me, I might vote Republican.  That actually is not a possibility.  What is a very real possibility, as I have done it in the past, is that I would vote Libertarian.  I don't dig the fascist thing, whether it's from right or left.

*And, please.  I'm not anti-science.  It's just that scientists, like Nostradamus, are frequently wrong, and they often contradict each other.  Besides, they also often proffer new medicines and such that they don't really understand, either.  So people who want to make policies based on newish findings of scientific research scare me a little.  Like, if back in the 1970s there was a law passed banning butter, thus forcing everyone to use margarine instead, that would have turned out to be incredibly bad public health policy, yet the science devotees would have touted the latest findings and research.  Mmm.  So, I just like to remain skeptical until, as Buck Turgidson would say, "all the facts are in."

I was just talking to my mom a bit ago about the Democrats and gun control, and she indicated to me that the Dems have started saying that gun control is an issue better left up to lower levels of government.  If this is true, this is the most politically savvy thing I've seen the Democrats do in a long time.  I had just been telling Mom that gun control is one place where Democrats and "liberals" usually lose me and make me want to give a spite vote to Huckabee (of course, deep down I really just like Huckabee because what a fun name!  How jolly it would be to refer to President Huckabee for 4 years of Bible camp!  It lends itself so nicely to Copy-Guy-style nicknaming--the Huckmeister, Huckarama, Huckabeetle, etc.  ahem.) because I believe most gun control policy at the federal level is an attempt to solve an urban problem with a universal measure. 

Let me explain.  Out here in Jesusland, guns are tools.  We use them to procure food for our families--not by holding up a Safeway but by hunting and/or killing our livestock.  We use them to ward off predators from our poultry and livestock.  We use them to put down suffering animals.  We also shoot for sport--targets, skeet, beer cans, whatever--but we grow up with them around as tools.  They have nothing to do with machismo or penis size, as some liberals will assert--I wish I thought they were only saying those things in jest, because it makes them sound simple-minded and bitter.  They have nothing to do with being tough or cool.  They just are.  They are akin to cars, only they often last longer, getting handed down from generation to generation.  My first rifle was my stepdad's first rifle, and it will be my son's first rifle.  If only our Toyota would last that long.

In cities, or so I am given to understand, gun crime is a gigantic problem.  Out here in Jesusland, there are virtually no murders--seriously, dudes, the most exciting stories on the news are usually about the weather.  (oooh, blizzard warning!  The lead story in spring/fall is often about whether we are anticipating frost.)  Gun crime is a problem for our nation, America as a whole, yes.  But out here we think, reasonably, that it might do to put more severe limitations on guns in circumstances where it will actually help prevent crime than impose it on someone who just wants to get the coyotes out of the chicken coop. 

And, essentially, every election cycle for years now, the Democrats have been losing votes on this issue (not only this one--there are others, but this has been a big one in the West).  It is never a Republican who dismisses sport/target shooting as stupid and frivolous.  It is never a Republican who dismisses hunters as barbarians (ah, because it's so much more civilized to eat meat that has been subject to the industrial feedlot system, killed for you with manure still on him, semi-cleaned, and wrapped in plastic).  It is never a Republican who wants to tell a farmer who has used a gun as a tool all of his life that he is irresponsible, likely to become a "nut" and a criminal at any minute, and go on a shooting spree down at the local bar.  Those kinds of statements always come from the left, and they alienate those of us who are Democratically inclined but rural. 

Also, why do you blame the gun for gun crime?  Do you blame the car for traffic fatalities?  Oh, and incidentally, last I checked, there were more traffic fatalities in America than there were gun-related murders.  Why aren't we more anti-car?  But I think this dude put it really well when he said,

Why do you cover high murder rates and seldom mention how unsafe our cities are for those driving, walking, or bicycling? I know the answer – it’s the same concept as when I get scared when my plane takes off and I don’t think twice about driving in a car – the fear of the spectacular. A plane crash and the murder of an innocent person are spectacular events. Unfortunately, the death of over 40,000 Americans each year in cars and the numerous deaths of pedestrians and bicyclists rarely make the news.

There are other issues where "liberals" alienate wide swaths of the population, myself included, and I've decided to go ahead and go over some of these in the next few days.  I am quite certain most of you will dislike it, but my point, it should be remembered, is that I am in essential agreement with nearly all liberal goals (as, incidentally, are most of the people of this country).  It's the fucking rhetoric that gets tossed off on the liberal side that threatens to totally alienate me, and I should think liberal types and Democrats would want to win over every Western/rural vote they can get.  Only winning the reliably blue urban/coastal areas isn't enough. 

I am not going to pick on the Republican/conservative rhetoric in the same way.  Why?  Yes, it is a mess as well, but a) it has been a more politically effective mess in recent years, and b) it is widely known that I already disagree with most of it anyway. 

And also, and keep this in mind, I am going to employ a shorthand in which I refer to several types of person under the very rough banner "liberal."  All of these people--academic types, "feminists" who publish "feminist" blogs, registered Democrats, Green Party geeks, gay rights activists, Nation columnists, and so forth--are prone to voting Democrat-ish and often identify themselves as "liberal" or "left," so I'm going to conveniently group them together and let them know exactly where they lose me and others like me.  I'm not doing this to be assy and vindictive--I'm going this because I want the Democrats to stop losing votes for senseless reasons and win.  I want them to understand why they have trouble out here in the Rocky Mountain West and, increasingly, in the South (when the South was traditionally Democrat) so they can come to some kind of solution and win the hell out of the next election.

On a brighter note, let us all stop for a moment and give thanks that we now have less than one year remaining of the Bush-whackery.  Perhaps we will survive.