Another deeply unappealing decision

Just a few thoughts on the highly probable nomination and rather likely ultimate victory of Hillary Clinton as the next POTUS:

1) Criticism of Clinton is not inherently sexist.

2) A lot of criticism of Clinton WILL be and IS sexist. And not just from Trump.

3) Anyone about to criticize Clinton would do well to pause long enough to ask 'would I criticize a rich white male candidate the same way?'

4) Names are going to be tricky. First man? Mrs./Madam President? When she visits Saudi Arabia, will she wear a head scarf? Lots of etiquette to grapple with.

5) Clinton is somewhat to the left of the American median on certain social issues, particularly those pertaining to women. In every other respect, she is center right or (in foreign policy) an out-and-out hawk. She is not a liberal ...

5a) ... I think. It's hard to say given how quiet she is on actually positions. This isn't as bad as it was to start the campaign, but she still shies away from actually opining on anything controversial, or as in Keystone, she waits until public opinion is clear and then sneaks out a presser where it's sure to be buried by the Pope's visit or other major news stories.

6) She is to Obama on transparent government and civil liberties as Obama is to John Yoo. That's not a compliment, and it's not just her email, either. She just doesn't seem to care about these issues.

7) She is thoroughly artificial and, as shown by the ongoing charlie-foxtrot of her emails, more than a little dishonest.

8) Not all of which is entirely her fault. The dishonesty, yes, but if I spent 25 years, sometimes bruising and often intensely personal, in the political spotlight, I'd probably be a little control-freakish myself. That doesn't make it a good quality to have in a president - it isn't - but it's probably unavoidable if we're going to have candidates with the depth and breadth of experience Clinton brings.

9) I could see myself voting for a moderate Republican over Clinton.

10) No such Republican has a chance of facing her. Trump isn't going to win, but neither is anyone who is willing to stand up and tell his voters that everything he's promising is bullshit.

And 11) Unless something truly bizarre should occur, I'll be voting for her in 13 months. Woo.

(inspired by this column from a few months back: http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/columnists/charles-krauthammer/2015/04/21/krauthammer-queen-hillary-coronation/26090519/)

Yesterday, evil won

EDIT: I appear to have placed too much faith in the Great State of South Carolina: contrary to statements below, it appears the Confederate flag outside the capitol building was NOT lowered to half mast when the US and SC flags were lowered. Instead, they left it at full height. So that's, you know, horrifying. http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20150618/PC16/150619374

Ok. Let's talk about Charleston.

First off, in case anyone was still puzzled about whatever could have inspired Dylann Roof to kill 9 people in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church (Looking at you, Rudy Gulianihttp://talkingpointsmemo.com/…/rudy-giuliani-charleston-chu…), let me lay your confusion to rest: He hated black people. He wore clothing with apartheid-era flags from African nations, he told his roommate (who should be remembered for the rest of his life as a feckless imbecile who could have spoken up and didn't) repeatedly that he wanted to spark a new civil war between whites and blacks, and he told one of the survivors in the church that "You rape our women and you’re taking over our country and you have to go." This was not a jilted lover going overboard, this was not a bout of delusion or mental illness, this was racism.

What makes America exceptional

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/06/03/obama-and-american-exceptionalism/?tid=sm_tw

This is an interesting article, and one that helps me understand a distinction I had not previously recognized. I do not believe America is the greatest country on Earth. Even if such a subjective statement could be quantified, there is no possible metric by which America can be said to stand above all others (and yes, the opening monologue from The Newsroom is on point here) ... except, perhaps, for aspiration.

More people want to be in America, to become American, than any other nation. The reason for that is not (or shouldn't be) quality of life; otherwise, the most popular nation on Earth would be Sweden, probably. And yet people aspire to be like us, or like our best vision of ourselves, because moreso than any other country, we aspire to be better too. And as the article says, it's not been the wealthy and privileged who've striven for continuous improvement in America: it's been "the ability of the unsung and the outsiders to challenge the country’s elite and force change."

Not one stone will be left on top of another

Fuck Baltimore.

I can't find the post now, but at one point during the resurgent riots after a Missouri prosecutor massaged a grand jury to ensure he had a fig leaf not to charge Darren Wilson, I wrote on one social media or another something to the effect that I was torn, that rioting would only be more ammunition for those who support police in their brutality, but that if I were a young black man in Ferguson, I'd probably be out there overturning cars as well.

I am no longer conflicted.

The definition of insanity

The definition of insanity, of course, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So we are told by Albert Einstein, who was a marvelously smart man, although I'm not aware of any particular credentials he held in the field of mental health. Still, let's accept that as at least a valid definition of insanity.

And has there been any better example of such repetitive insanity in the last 50 years than American policy toward Cuba?

Let me state upfront that I'm not a fan of the Castros. They appear to have been brutal thugs when they took over 50 years ago, and they continue to be brutal thugs today. Their removal from power in Cuba is a worthy goal, both on behalf of the Cuban people and in terms of American regional interests. I believe that this motivation was a significant portion of the reasoning behind the American embargo that was put in place after our catastrophe at Bay of Pigs and remains in place to this day. (If I'm feeling generous, I'll say that it was the primary motivation, although other motivations definitely played a large role, i.e. 'showing the Soviets that our penis is bigger than theirs' and 'protecting the economic interests of American companies and businessmen who have been using Cuba as their private fiefdom with our political support for a generation.')

There's only one problem. It hasn't worked.

Thoughts on the election

Well, that's over and done with. I'm mildly disgruntled about the results, on both a state and national level. It's not like the Democrats particularly deserved to win either, but the number of positions shifted to the GOP, as well as the overall strength of their victory, means the crap that won't get done over the next few years will be slightly more unpalatable than the crap that wouldn't have gotten done otherwise.

As a copy editor, I get to follow election news whether I like it or not. As such, here are a few of my takeaways from Democalypse 2014:

Fault and responsibility

I've been pondering for a while that there is a shortcoming in the English language. If someone does something bad, it's their fault. If someone is in charge when a bad thing happens, it's their responsibility. But we don't really have a word or phrase to describe someone whose actions knowingly make it more likely that someone else will do a bad thing. It's not their fault; the person who actually does the bad thing needs to get the blame. They're not responsible for the bad thing, because they didn't do a bad thing and weren't in charge of making sure other people don't do bad things. And yet, if they hadn't done what they did, the bad thing would not have happened (or at least been less likely to happen).

This has been on my mind for personal reasons - during a disagreement, I used fault/blame language, implying that the person I was speaking to would be to blame if a third party did a bad thing, when what I wanted to say was that his/her actions were making it enormously more likely that a third party would do a bad thing; this did not do a lot to resolve the disagreement. I'm hoping that in the future I'll be wiser about using language that addresses causes without apportioning blame.

But in addition to my own experience, this distinction between fault and contributing cause also, I think, is very relevant to the latest outbreak of bloodshed between Israel and Gaza. If you're fed up with that whole situation and don't want to read about it any more, this is your cue to wander off; otherwise, read on.

Spend your principles wisely

Missed my update earlier this week, but I have another day off today, so here's a somewhat belated post.

I mentioned in my last post the "Lost Fleet" books by Jack Campbell, which I've been rereading lately (the main reason I didn't have a post together on Monday). While I'm still not convinced that the books are 'good' by any conventional standard, they do have the occasional flash of very keen insight so contrary to the general level of the books that I wonder if they slip in by accident (example: earlier today I read a passage where a character witnesses an orbital bombardment and muses that this is what hell must be: not a place of torment, but a place where death has come and gone and human hands have wiped away any trace that life - human or otherwise - was ever here. I had to stop and think about that one for a bit.)

Another bit that has stuck with me comes from an earlier book. A central theme, inasmuch as these books can be said to have themes, in the series is the conflict and mistrust between military and political institutions and mindsets. One character, attempting to explain the latter to the former, uses an interesting comparison. While military leaders must carefully husband their forces and, if necessary, risk and sacrifice them reluctantly and only in pursuit of essential goals, a political leader must do the same with his principles, defending and stewarding them until the day comes that they must be dearly spent for a more urgent purpose. I thought that was very insightful at the time, and the more I've thought about it sense, the more it has affected my understanding of both military and political conflict and leadership.

Which brings me to the present.

I got a speeding ticket from the thought police

First, some housekeeping: in the last 6 months, I have completed courses for a digital photo and video certificate through my local tech school, which should improve employment prospects; unfortunately, it also put a moratorium on job searching while I've been stuck in place. But done now: woo! I've also been promoted to full-time as a newspaper copy editor, which is a welcome development, and spent several months as a freelance writer on Elance before gradually backing out due to coursework and increased work hours; I may return now that classes are done.

I've not been posting much, obviously, in part because for a while I took a break from following much of the news (as much as one can while working as a copy editor). I think I was a little burned out after the high-grain focus of the govt. shutdown and Healthcare.gov rollout (I think I intended to write a blog post about that; at any rate, I had a draft with no text but the title 'who left the three stooges in charge' when I opened blogger after my long hiatus), and I've also been much more engaged in following local politics; our city government in general and mayor in particular have been up to shenanigans, most of which have been exposed and reported by us. In any case, I've lately been getting back on the horse, as it were, and resuming my regular perusal of national and international news, and once again am starting to encounter thorny issues about which I need to ponder. And as always, one of the best ways to test my own thinking is to write about it and see if my thinking holds up.

There are three recent incidents that I've been pondering: the brief and tumultuous tenure of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich; the racist spurging and subsequent ostracization of LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling, and the homophobic tweeting and shunning of Miami Dolphins player Don Jones. The third will undoubtably be a flash in the pan, and I'll not be surprised if the Wikipedia section I linked to is gone in short order, but it was big enough news to make it onto Google, and it ties into the other two.

The questions I'm puzzling over are to what extent, if any, the consequences these three gentlemen have faced for their positions are just, and whether or if at all their rights (moral, rather than legal) have been abrogated. I'm certainly far from the only one who is connecting these dots and asking these questions, but I've yet to see anyone come up with a result I'm fully satisfied with, so let's see if I can do better.

How can we fix this?

I'm going to start by establishing a pair of basic premises, which I hold so staggeringly self-evident as to need no defense or articulation: the current government shutdown is bad, and the current government shutdown is the Republican Party's fault.  If you disagree with either of these foundation arguments, you're not going to get a lot out of what comes after. You have been warned.

Of course, I could get a lot more specific about the second argument.  Instead of blaming the Republican Party, I could blame those 80ish Republican representatives that signed the infamous letter supporting the shutdown ploy, who seem most in tune with the Tea Party zeitgeist.  I could blame Sen. Ted Cruz, who whipped them into a frenzy and seems to be the source of their initial deadlock-breaking strategy (fund only those parts of govt. that we like and then look surprised when the Senate laughs in our faces).  I could blame John Boehner, who makes the decisions about what gets a vote in the House and therefore has the power at any moment to permit a vote on a 'clean' budget resolution.  He has not, either (charitably) to avoid a civil war in the party going into the debt limit hike, or (cynically) to prevent them from booting him from the Speaker's chair.  But what all 3 of those options have in common is that they act under the aegis and with the apparent blessing of the Republican party, so that's where the blame can most reasonably be stuck.

When Congress last shut down the government, the Republican party suffered for it.  The next two election cycles eroded their ranks and bumped Bill Clinton handily to a second term.  If one looks at opinion polls today, one might expect the same outcome: Republicans shellacked, House leadership rebuked, Obama and the Democrats strengthened.  And maybe this will happen.  One certainly may hope.  But the funny thing is, House Republicans can see all the same national polling data that the rest of us can, and they aren't budging.  Why?

Find out ... after the jump!