The Real Snobs

Two weeks ago New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote a piece entitled "The Heyday of Snobbery," arguing that the Democrats, in taking back control of Congress, were gloating with unprecedented force. Further, he claimed that popular culture acts as an enforcer of snobbery, noting that movies like Borat cater to liberal-elite audiences (in his words, those who shop at Whole Foods) by making fun of mainstream Americans. Neither could be further from the truth.

When it comes to snobbery, no other group comes close to the arrogance displayed by the Republicans after the election of Bush in 2000. And no sub-group of Republicans has a more troubling history of "holier-than-thou" than the religious right. Here's a letter I wrote to the Times in response to Brooks:

On the subject of snobbery, what could be more arrogant than believing, “My sacred book is the absolute truth against which all others are false?” What could be more judgmental than believing, “I will go to paradise but you will go to hell?” What could be more intolerant than believing, “It’s not enough to follow my own principles--you must be forced to follow them too?” I may feel a sense of pride when buying organic produce, perhaps even a sense of superiority. But this is a far cry from the grandiose conceit of the religious right, a group of super-snobs David Brooks conveniently fails to include in his rigged, unfair fight. Intolerance is truly intolerable, especially when it rests on blind faith and superstition.

Concerning Borat, I wonder if Brooks even saw it. His description bore scant resemblance to the movie I watched. In it, Sasha Baron Cohen's character made fun of almost everyone, beginning in--of all places--liberal New York. How, for example, did playing an anti-semitic prank on a bed-and-breakfast owned by a Jewish couple cater to the liberal sense of humor?

Brooks can't see that labels like "liberal elite" and "people who shop at Whole Foods" are at least as snobby and judgmental as the attitudes he is trying--and failing--to criticize.

Indeed, does David Brooks believe that people living in rural areas think and act with the same tolerance and acceptance as people living in cities and forced daily to interact with others of vastly different backgrounds, customs, languages and appearances? This is a question of social science, and its answer rests on observation and statistics. But given his description of Borat, I'm not confident a response from Brooks will include accurate observation.

- JT Compton

What Terrorists?

They’re at it again. Reality-challenged conservatives are discussing our Iraq policy in terms of terrorists instead of insurgents. Ignoring consensus, conservative pundits spent weekend TV appearances insisting that the ongoing violence in Baghdad stems from foreign-born Al Qaeda fanatics instead of disaffected Iraqis.

This fiction serves the ultimate aim of keeping our forces in Iraq into the foreseeable future despite the fact that we are failing by almost every measure—security, stability, rebuilding and fence-mending.

The logic goes like this: If we set a timetable for withdrawal, the terrorists will simply wait until we're gone to take over the country and rejoice at their victory over the weak Americans.

But this logic rests on the flawed assumption that terrorists are responsible for the bulk of the violence in Iraq. The truth is, the vast majority of people doing the killing in Iraq are Iraqis. They're getting even for past grievances, projecting tribal power into the vacuum of actual power caused by an ineffective and quarreling coalition government, and lashing out at Americans they consider to be invaders.

The small Al Qaeda faction in Iraq actually owes its existence to our military presence. Once we leave, their rallying principle, the war against Western infidels, evaporates. They want us to stay so they can continue recruiting a new generation to replace the one destroyed in Afghanistan and to stoke the flames of theocratic hate and division. Our departure will turn the spotlight on them—also unwanted foreign invaders—and the people of Iraq will eventually kick them out, too.

So what does happen when we leave? Chaos and bloodshed, but not from Al Qaeda terrorists. From religio-ethnic tribal factions struggling for power. The magnitude of that violence will be a function of one thing—the ability of moderate Iraqis and their government to come together and reject widespread civil war.

Until we leave, we enable Iraqis to put off that ultimate reckoning. And meanwhile, Iraq slips further toward chaos and civil war anyway. So the sooner we leave, the greater the stability and energy remaining for Iraqis to face their future. The longer we stay, the more depleted and ravaged the country they must claim and revitalize on their own.

If we truly believe in freedom and responsibility, we should set a timetable for gradual withdrawal to force Iraqis to embrace both. Until then, Iraqis will not have true freedom, but will have our presence as an excuse to avoid the difficult and dangerous choices responsibility requires.

At this point, staying in Iraq only postpones the inevitable, at tremendous and tragic cost to us. But until conservatives admit that terrorists are not the problem in Iraq, we'll keep paying.

- JT Compton

Fundamentalist Threat

Now that America has kicked the Republican party to the curb we can expect less legislation threatening our constitution, our liberties, our environment and our economy.

But a grave threat to progress and liberty remains--the cancer of fundamentalism.

Though many Islamic fundamentalists want to do us harm from without, certain Christian fundamentalists remain committed to destroying America from within.

For many fundamentalists, like Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus On The Family, the loss of Republican control of Congress won’t stop them from pushing their radical agenda on Capitol Hill and elsewhere.

As David D. Kirkpatrick noted in the New York Times today, Dobson and other Evangelical Christians have become strong supporters of Israel, both politically and financially, because somewhere in the Bible it mentions something that can be interpreted to mean that a Second Coming of Jesus can only occur if Israel is safely in the hands of the Jews.

So despite the fact that Evangelicals blame the Jews for killing Jesus, they want to help Jews control Israel now...so the Jews can be sent to hell later when Jesus returns.

Notwithstanding the fact that much of this “theory” comes from the book of Revelations, which is a delusional, magical tome of blatant nonsense, it is both sad and horrifying that so much energy and passion are being directed toward such fantastical, abstract and wasteful goals.

Consider the case of the red cow. Apparently, another interpretation of some Biblical passage suggests that Jesus will return around the time that a red cow appears. So fundamentalists have been funding a bovine breeding team to try to come up with a red cow. Forget about Cancer, AIDS, Parkinsons--let’s spend millions to breed a red cow!

Behind the desire to usher in a Second Coming, fundamentalists hope to gain greater and greater control of the society surrounding them. Not content to live according to their own restrictions, they strive to force the rest of us to live by their mores, even if they have to scrap the constitution and democracy to do it.

But as long as preachers claim to be emissaries of the creator of the Universe, corruption is soon to follow. And as long as those same preachers claim that ancients books were written by the creator of the Universe, and are thus perfect and infallible, destruction and misery will eventually result.

For proof, just look at the Middle East. Terrorism based on religion is simply a cousin of tyranny based on religion. One uses physical violence while the other uses emotional and mental violence. Both are lamentable and antithetical to democracy and liberty. Both embody intolerance, arrogance and division.

Until people embrace a spirituality that isn’t predicated on ancient, static, fallible books, our laws, liberties and environment will remain in jeopardy. And until we Americans pluck the beam of literal religion from our own eyes, we can never hope to remove the splinter of fundamentalism from the eyes of anyone else in the world.

- JT Compton

Blowout

Bitter spin from President Bush today couldn’t eclipse the stunning midterm elections, which became a 3-in-1 victory for Democrats:

The Dems control the House.

The Dems will likely control the Senate.

And Donald Rumsfeld is gone.

(Did you notice Bush's lie about Donald Rumsfeld? - He claimed that he waited until after the election to fire the Secretary of Defense to avoid affecting the outcome. For God's sake, just admit the election defeat and recent military editorials forced you into it.)

A sane, inclusive, pluralistic, science-believing centrist couldn’t ask for more that this historic result. But two important points need to be clarified.

Firstly, this election wasn’t only about Iraq and George Bush. As I’ve written before, people were angry at the culture of corruption in Washington--and exit polls proved it.

It was not lost on voters that the Republican-controlled Congress a) did nothing to oversee the executive branch, b) fostered a climate of lobbyist-fueled pork whose earmarks infected every spending bill, c) allowed agencies to be staffed with cronies who were inept or whose interests ran counter to the mission of those very same agencies, d) tried to bend or overlook ethics rules on a variety of fronts, e) went out of their way to exclude and belittle their Democratic counterparts, f) chose the politics of smear, spin and innuendo at the expense of honesty, g) spent their time on divisive and ultimately trivial issues instead of enacting meaningful legislation, h) spent more time campaigning back home than governing in Washington, and i) gave themselves regular, ample raises while denying any increase to the minimum wage earned by the poorest Americans.

Along with this lamentable mix, add the grinding, ongoing failure in Iraq, the disgraceful mishandling of Katrina, the endless immigration mess, the unwillingness to enact suggestions of the 9/11 commission, and dropping the ball in Afghanistan--all making us less safe.

No wonder the election was a blowout.

It was the corrupt GOP, stupid!

Secondly, this election was a cry for accountability. Many scared and shamed conservatives have been preemptively whining that the Democrats shouldn’t go on any witch hunts--“we’ve got to look forward instead of looking back.”

How absurd. When someone robs a bank and gets caught later, do we say, “forget about it, it was in the past, let’s look forward instead?” Of course not. We press charges.

People have to be held accountable for their crimes, mistakes and failed policies, whether military contractors who defrauded the government, spy agencies who have broken the law, or politicians who lied to the American people in order to pursue an otherwise untenable agenda.

Washington remains a mess. And the Democrats have an uphill battle to enact meaningful change in the face of a stubborn Bush Team, who already pledged to dig in their heels and go kicking and screaming in any direction other than their own. Bush and his cronies insist that they must “do the right thing” and “stick to their convictions” despite a broad consensus against them. They refuse to accept that their convictions are dangerously wrong and the broad consensus holds far greater wisdom than their delusional cadre of ideologues.

Sadly, it doesn’t appear a landslide will be enough to pierce the bubble of arrogance and denial surrounding the Bush Administration. But at least they no longer have Congress as a partner in crime. Things may not get better immediately, but they are far less likely to get any worse.

- JT Compton

Repress-The-Vote Republicans

If you haven’t already, get out and vote!

And if you’re lucky, your vote may actually be counted.

Unless you plan to vote for a Republican candidate, you’re in the crosshairs of the Republican Repress-The-Vote Machine. While dirty tricks have been played by both parties over the centuries, Republicans have recently brought voting manipulation to a new low.

Whether requiring discriminatory ID’s at polling places, sending illegal notices to certain groups that they will be arrested if they try to vote, unleashing automated calling programs to annoy registered Democrats in the middle of the night, intimidating voters at the polls, challenging the registrations of entire precincts, or altering the vote counts in precincts under their control, the GOP has become the party of dirty voting.

What does it say about Republicans that they hold such a solid claim to the title? How has the GOP become the party of voter bullying and repression?

Could it be that their incessantly touted “morals and values” are a brazen sham? Could it be that they have little regard for ethics when it comes to staying in power? Could it be that they will stop at nothing--including debasing our cherished system of voting--to keep their radical and failing agenda from being thwarted? Their behavior over the last five years provides ample and conclusive evidence that the answer is “yes”.

Whether breaking the law to funnel campaign donations where they are not allowed, taking payments from lobbyists who then write laws that their politician lapdogs rubber-stamp, requiring government contractors to have no dealings with Democrats, enacting laws that their President is not bound to follow, filling legislation with massive earmarks that were never discussed in public--the Republican Party has run amok.

Hopefully, Americans will smack down the GOP at the polls today. But given the sleazy, disgusting tactics the desperate elephant has employed in these final hours of the election, the outcome is already suspect.

What a shame. And what a disgrace. Were I a Republican, I would feel deeply embarrassed and horrified that my party had sunk to such a pitiful and troubling low. Fortunately, I’m not. And I voted. I hope it counts.

- JT Compton

Electronic Voting Is A Disgrace

In an era filled with important, fascinating and shocking feature documentaries (Enron, Inconvenient Truth, Fog of War, Control Room), perhaps the most important of them aired on HBO tonight, entitled “Hacking Democracy," made by Seattle grandmother Bev Harris, founder of Black Box Voting.

This is a work of precise and illuminating investigative reporting. And after watching it, if you don’t think our electoral process is in grave jeopardy - and thus our democracy - you might be better suited living in a Communist dictatorship.

Electronic voting fraud is a far greater threat to our democracy than any terrorist, and our voting system is clearly in shambles. For the same reason that the music industry got Napsterized and the movie industry operates in a state of digital piracy terror, electronic voting creates enormous digital vulnerabilities and opportunities for fraud. It’s simple - digital data is extremely easy to manipulate and change, without leaving any trail at all.

Hacking Democracy sheds essential light on the suspicious results of the 2004 Presidential election, showing exactly how elections might have been stolen in the past, and certainly will be in the future. It also exposes the irregularities, conflicts of interest and outright lies of voting-machine makers like Diebold. To say the film is shocking, disturbing and disgusting would be an understatement...

This film is downright incendiary.

Few things are more sacred to America than the concept of “one person, one vote.” For that principle to be jeopardized should horrify us all, regardless of our political leanings. Hacking Democracy should be an urgent call to arms.

First of all, we need much greater transparency when it comes to the inner workings of voting technology. Second, every election should have a verifiable paper trail. This may not flatter our modern sensibilities, but there is no just or effective alternative.

Anyone who deems a paper trail unnecessary has a lot to answer for. And if you happen to live in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, your leaders have a lot to answer for, too. They spent twenty-two million dollars on a Diebold system after being alerted to its grave system faults. Shame on them.

If states don’t replace their paperless, electronic systems, people will eventually take public office who don't deserve to be there. Sadly, they may already have. What could be more un-American?

- JT Compton