On "Real Americans"

All of the talk about "real Americans" coming from Sarah Palin and those of her sociopathic ilk has stirred a contempt in me that swells daily. The sleight-of-hand by which these people turn themselves into victims fleeced of their earnings and their dignity by haughty elitists never fails to impress me for its unbounded shamelessness. What is even more amazing, however, is that, at long last, it does not seem to be working.

One of the most useful exercises when one hears something that intuitively seems absurd or dishonest is to extrapolate the implications of the offending statement. When Sarah Palin speaks of her joy in addressing "real Americans", the implication is clear: there are "unreal Americans" out there somewhere.

Sarah Palin makes this exercise a bit too easy, and perhaps that is why it is finally failing. Sarah Palin seems to really believe that she represents a "real Americanism" that is shared by others she relates with but by none with whom she cannot. For Sarah Palin, "real Americans" are from small towns, vote Republican, are practicing Christians, etc.

The disquieting thing about this is that if Sarah Palin is a "real American", then apparently America is overrun by "unreal Americans". Why? Because most Americans don't shoot moose from helicopters (elitist), most Americans do not receive yearly checks from an oil company (socialist), and most Americans do not receive yearly torrents of cash from the federal government (welfare queen).

Sarah Palin has an image of a condescending, un-American urban elite that in reality accounts for about 80% of the entire country. And here is where the sleight-of-hand comes into play. If two-thirds of the American people (I assume both "real Americans" and "unreal Americans" were polled) say that they do not consider Mrs. Palin to be qualified for the presidency, how do Mrs. Palin and her legions reply? They condemn the opinion as being a vicious assault on small-town America, on American values, on Christianity, on civilization itself.

If I say to Sarah Palin, "you are not qualified to be president", she will respond as if I had said, "people who live in small towns are incestuous, Bible-thumping retards who spend their weekends burning books and shooting tin cans with shotguns."

If I say, "the war in Iraq was illegal, immoral, and unnecessary", she would respond by saying, "I really wish your respected the troops who gave you your freedoms instead of denigrating their sacrifice." (Just for the record, God and the Constitution gave me my freedoms, and Americans soldiers invading Mesopotamia does nothing to secure my right to a speedy trial, as far as I can see.)

These "real Americans" are so well-practiced at aggrieved indignation and constantly casting themselves as the victims that they are oblivious to the reality that THEY are the ones who hurl insults and slurs at their own countrymen as well as their (probably) future president.

The elitists tax you too much? No, blue states pay their own bills AND a sizable proportion of red states' bills as well. For every dollar a red state spends, maybe 70 cents of it is theirs. The rest of it is from the elitists, the "unreals".

I know I belabor this point, but it can't be said enough: self-sufficiency is the ultimate self-imposed delusion of the "real Americans", who are kept afloat by their "unreal" countrymen who actually do work for a living, despite what the "real Americans" may think.

In fact, blue-staters work so much that they have far less time to murder each other and get divorced nearly as often as folks indulge in those pastimes in "real" America.

Barack Obama, the godfather of the "unreal" Americans, is a "'socialist" because he believes in a progressive income tax whose function is to "spread the wealth around"? You know, like how pagan pothead fornicating slum dwellers like myself "spread" some of my wealth to the "real" America so they can have electricity?

Since every president in the last century has approved of and imposed a graduated income tax, then by the logic of the "real" Americans, Ronald Reagan was a "socialist" too. In fact, since Reagan's top tax rate was HIGHER than the top rate proposed by Obama, Reagan was even more a "socialist" than Mr. Obama, according to the unexplored "logic" of "real Americans".

In addition, Barack Obama is a "terrorist" or "appeaser" or some selfsame slur because he wants to talk to enemies of America. Okay. Ahmedinejad? Wackjob. But not very bad in the pantheon of bad guys who naive American terrorist appeasers such as Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, or socialist legend Ronald Reagan have sat down with.

The two biggest mass murderers in history were Mao and Stalin (Hitler wasn't even close). Both of these men met, shook hands with, smoked cigarettes with, posed for photos with, indeed, PALLED AROUND WITH American presidents. Would the "real" Americans tell us that every post-World War II American president was a naive terrorist sympathizer?

Perhaps the best intellectual exercise would be to imagine Barack Obama speaking in Chicago or New York or Los Angeles and saying, "its nice to be among some REAL Americans....some folks with real pro-American feelings!" Hard to imagine? Impossible to imagine? Exactly.

And this is why the "real" Americans must not fear; we ain't mad at cha. We don't look at people who spend 20,000 dollars per week on clothes for her VP campaign as an "unreal" American. We may doubt her integrity, her judgement, her fitness to serve, but never her Americanism.

The beauty of America, according to this "unreal" American, is that it resembles any single human being; a fundamentally good thing, but also a fundamental contradiction, a volatile mix of angels and devils, but something we must love regardless. Sarah Palin is as American as apple pie. And so am I.

What's Left?

It is a stock-in-trade assumption among both eggheads and Joe the Plumber types that fascism is a right-wing phenomenon.

Among other similarly absurd yet just as widely and blindly held beliefs are "the United States played the lead in defeating Nazi Germany" or "American slavery was no different from the slavery practiced since time immemorial" or "Mahmoud Ahmedinejad runs Iran" or "George W. Bush won the 2000 election" or "the Democratic Party is the historic defender of African-Americans", and so forth.



The assumption about fascism being right-wing, however, and about how it should therefore be understood as the opposite of communism, is so profoundly wrong that it distorts the present even more than it distorts history. Communism is left-wing tyranny. That much is true. But so is fascism. Indeed, ALL tyranny is left-wing. Only anarchy is right-wing.



The battle between fascism and communism was not a battle of opposites. It was, instead, a civil war within leftism, and it serves to remind us that the narcissism of the small difference often leads to more brutal conflict than would otherwise be the case. Keep in mind, Stalin killed a lot of people, and he accused most of them of being heretical leftists rather than unrepentant rightists.



In other words, communism vs. fascism was not like crips vs. the salvation army, or vice versa; it was more like crips vs. bloods, with each side massacring each other over differences which prove remarkably opaque to the disinterested observer.

Any political system which operates under the premise that the state is the proper arbitrator of most or all aspects of a citizen's life is, by definition, left-wing. A system is only right-wing if it revolves around the premise that government governs best when it governs least. Each of these ideologies can be put to either good or ill ends, but that is irrelevant to the ideology itself.

Communism and fascism both empower the state over the individual. Whether this power is harnessed to eradicate illiteracy or to eradicate Jews is of course very relevant, but it is utterly inconsequential as pertains to whether said system is left-wing or not. ANY system that empowers the state over the individual is left-wing, and we, as individuals, are left to hope that the all-powerful state is benevolent.

A right-wing state empowers the citizen over the state. In such societies, government is for the people to control and manipulate, whereas in left-wing societies, the people are for the government to control and manipulate. A right-wing society, at its best, protects god-given liberty. At its worst, it stands impassive in the face of tragedy or abuse. Just as with left-wing regimes, there are both benefits and risks.

Fascism is left-wing. Need more proof? Look at the very name of Hitler's party: Nazi is an acronym for the German equivalent of "national socialism". Socialism! It's right there in the title! And so is "National", and therein lies the distinction between the communists and the fascists. The communists were internationalists. The fascists were nationalists. But they were ALL socialists.

The cry of the Communists was "workers of the world unite!" The cry of the Nazis was "Germans of the world unite!" Germans are, how shall we say?...pretty into nationalism. A German worker was much more likely to "unite" with a German aristocrat or a German peasant than with a foreigner of similar station.

So the communists and the fascists had identical views of the proper role of the state; they simply differed on what DEFINED the state. For communists, the state was defined by class. For fascists, the state was defined by race. But the state was always the God. And that is left-wing.

It is impolitic to point out that the Nazis "made the trains run on time" but they did not run (they WERE elected, let us not forget) on a platform of world war and genocide. They actually had close to a decade of peace in which they harnessed the German state to vastly improve life for most Germans.

In the perfectly crafted words of Jonah Goldberg: "So, we are supposed to see a party (the Nazis) in favor of universal education, guaranteed employment, increased entitlements for the aged, the nationalization of industry, the expansion of health care, and the abolition of child labor as objectively and obviously right-wing?" He made it a hot line, I made it a hot blog.

The point remains: the lessons learned from both fascism and communism are identical, and therefore singular: the consequences of exalting the state above all else, always with the best intentions of course, are always invigorating, often a net positive, but potentially catastrophic.

Yet we NEED the state to maintain the standards to which we are accustomed. Politics, therefore, is a delicate and endless dance between the relative exaltation accorded to man's twin idols: the state and himself.

The Tone

The photograph above depicts one America's first computerized mass mailing. It is an indictment for treason leveled against the President of the United States. This indictment was mailed to tens of thousands of Texans in November 1963.

The interesting thing about the Kennedy assassination is that the President was killed by a lone communist, but almost everybody, up to including the slain president's friends and family, were invested in the idea of a right-wing conspiracy.  

That psychodrama is beyond the purview of this piece, but the atmosphere that was ginned up before John Kennedy was murdered is very pertinent, regardless of who pulled the trigger.  

The wave of revulsion following the slaying washed over the right-wing because the logical conclusion of their attacks on the president were now painfully laid bare.  For although the men who made the flyer above did not murder the president, they publicly accused him of treason, and the penalty for treason is....precisely.

A similarly dangerous quickening of rhetoric occurred in the 1990's among right-wing militia, who harbored what were in my mind several legitimate critiques of abusive federal power in the wake of Waco and Ruby Ridge.  Their rhetoric, however, came to overtake their legitimate grievances, and it only took one deranged acolyte, in the person of Timothy McVeigh, to permanently discredit that movement.

Oklahoma City did what the Kennedy killing(s) did; it illustrated in graphic and visceral violence the logical conclusion of certain rhetoric.  If the president was guilty of treason, he must be executed.  And if federal buildings are legitimate targets for attack, then the children attending daycare in those buildings are combatants.

Now I bare horrified witness to an agonizingly familiar but uniquely despicable radicalization of rhetoric.  For Sarah Palin to accuse Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists" is such a grievous sin against decency that it took several days for me to fully absorb the weight of her words.

First, there was the crowd.  The crowd that seemed primed for blood.  The crowd that lustily booed the very mention of the New York Times.  Were they booing reading?  Were they booing New York?  This rabid anti-intellectualism must be understood as part and parcel of this insidious rhetoric, which peaked when Mrs. Palin accused Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists."

"Terrorists"  Plural.  With no qualifying adjective.  For Sarah Palin to speak this sentence in post-9/11 America is beyond comprehension for me.  Does this woman genuinely not understand what she has said?  That Barack Obama "palls around with terrorists" does not just mean that Obama is naive or liberal or elitist; it means that he is literally one of the enemy.

Post 9/11, it became this country's policy that no distinction would be made between "terrorists" and those was harbored them, aided them or, one would presume, palls around with them.  Mrs. Palin placed Mr. Obama clearly with the "terrorists".  And if that were true, well the only remedy to be sought be a concerned patriot would be....
McCain and Palin are putting an energy into motion that they cannot hope to contain.

Even when McCain feels compelled to make pro forma defenses of Mr. Obama, he is booed by the audience.  Yes, when Mr. McCain pointed out that Mr. Obama is not "an Arab", he was booed.  

When someone was heard to yell, "Kill him!", or "Bomb Obama!", Mr. McCain lost his only chance to attempt to gain control over this train.  Any decent American patriot, including an earlier incarnation of John McCain, would have responded thusly: "How dare you, sir?  How dare you direct such an ugly attack at a fellow American?  I don't want your vote, and I don't want you at my rally."  That didn't happen.  And history will remember that.

This actually brings to mind a moment about 2 years ago when someone yelled from the audience at a Bill Clinton speech that the Bush administration had orchestrated 9/11.  "How dare you...how DARE you?" said Mr. Clinton, eyes narrowing and face pinkening.  That was the proper reaction.

But now, I realize, this thing has been let loose.  There are thousands of citizens who go to McCain rallies not to cheer for Mr. McCain but to congregate in an orgy of self-reinforcing hatred for Mr. Obama.  Only in such a crowd is one liberated to yell, "Kill him!"  And from these crowds, killers are born.

Really? REALLY?

I'm not sure if I've blogged on this issue before, or if it was relegated to the cupboard while I went sans Internet for the last month, but this is something which arose again at the recent presidential debate and which I found ethically and intellectually despicable, both in its utterance and in the solemn silence that met it, indicating that the premise was accepted by the witnesses.


Mr. McCain is fond of informing us that "he knows how to do" certain things. There are two specific things he repeatedly claims to "know how to do" which raise disquieting questions, at least among those devoted to intellectual honesty and to the future of our nation, not to put to broad a point on it.


The first, much more ambiguous, and slightly less tenuous assertion is that John McCain "knows how to win a war." This declarative assertion raises the logical question: what war has John McCain won? "Know" is a strong word. A 4-letter word.


When Mr. Rumsfeld said 6 years ago, and I do quote "We know where the WMDs are", the entire inertia of the drive to war should have screeched to a halt. "If you KNOW where the WMD's are, why don't you just tell the inspectors so they can destroy them?" a halfway competent journalist may have asked him.

Mr. Rumsfeld was lying of course; nobody KNEW anything about WMD. They THOUGHT plenty of things, but KNEW nothing. As soon as they used the word "know", however, they strayed from paranoid conjecture to criminality.


When John McCain says "I know how to win a war", we should rightly inquire of him, "what evidence do you have for that declarative statement? What war have you won?"


Well, John McCain fought in the Vietnam War. The United States lost that war, perhaps because it did not ask John McCain how to win it. At any rate, Vietnam is not evidence that Mr. McCain "knows how to win a war." Was he referring to the first Gulf War of 1991? Perhaps, but he has never said so explicitly, nor claimed to have played any decision-making role in that conflict other than voting to endorse it.


Was he referring to the Iraq War? Deep down, we assume he must be, despite the fact that we have not won that war. So what is he talking about?

Well, it strikes me that Mr. McCain is similar to Mr. Bush in this regard; they both view themselves as so pure of motive and so unshakable of character that reckless statements and precipitous actions are justified post facto by the manifestly pure motives of the man, which is manifest to none so much as the man himself.


So, if Mr. Bush oversees torture, it's not really torture because Mr. Bush says it isn't and Mr. Bush is a Christian. If Mr. McCain recklessly nominates a woman for vice-president who is clearly leagues out of her depth, that decision could not possibly have been venal or misguided because John McCain is an honorable man.


In other words, John McCain gets away with saying "I know how to win a war", offering absolutely NO evidence, because he's John McCain. And John McCain is an honorable man. And a maverick. So he must be right.

The more troubling of the "I know how to" assertions, however, is Mr. McCain's oft-repeated statement that he "knows how to get bin Laden." Really? REALLY?

Eviscerating this assertion is small bore for even the most average of intellects. Country First, Mr. McCain. If you "know how to get bin Laden", why don't you go ahead and tell the commanders on the ground exactly how to do so?

Does Mr. McCain expect us to believe that he "knows how to get bin Laden", but for some reason has failed to share this insight with the American military? Does he infer that he is waiting to "get bin Laden" until he takes office?

In short, if ANYONE at such a high level as Mr. McCain "knows how to get" bin Laden, then I would respectfully query the right honorable gentleman, "then where the fuck IS he?"

Mr. McCain doesn't "know how to get bin Laden". If he did, we would "get bin Laden." But we haven't gotten him because apparently nobody in a position of authority for the last 7 years has "known how".

The problem is that Mr. McCain makes such patently disprovable assertions, and erects such combustible rhetorical strawmen, and he is not challenged on the audacity of his statements. The unspoken logic is "John McCain was a POW, so of course he knows how to get bin Laden."

Perhaps I'm wrong; that happens often enough. Maybe Mr. McCain does "know how to get bin Laden". But if it turns out that he doesn't "know how to" win an election, perhaps the Senator could share his secrets with the rest of us. Country First.

Welfare Queen

I'm not mad that Sarah Palin is a bulldog with lipstick.  I'm not mad that she is a Joe 6-pack American, because she isn't; I could kill her in either iteration of a 6-pack contest, be it beer or be it sit-ups.  I'm not mad that Sarah Palin is a conservative, for the simple reason that Sarah Palin is NOT a conservative.

If Alaska were a caricature bandied about by the right wing, it would not be one of flinty self-reliance and individualism, a mosaic of men who wrap splints around their broken bones and women who scoff at the notion of welfare cheese.

If Alaska were appraised for what it really is, it would be seen as a Socialist paradise populated by welfare queens.  Let's think about what Alaska really is.

It's not a contiguous or defensible part of this country.  It's a step-child.  It's the ultimate example example of American arrogance and disquisition.  Hey, lets put an enormous and perpetually vulnerable and militarily indefensible American "state" right next to Russia!

I don't think Alaska and Hawaii should be states.  I'm old-school.  I grew up with 3-channel black and white TV, rotary phones, cloth diapers, and baths in the sink.  Countries must be contiguous, in geography as well as culture and political priority.

What is my relationship with Alaska?  Alaska is a place I send money to.  I don't have the money to move out of what most people would call a ghetto, but I have sent money to Alaska.  

There are states in this dyspeptic federal system who pay in.  And there are those who pay out.  Now, considering what Republicans say about fiscal responsibility and local prerogative, who do you suppose it is that is fleeced by the Feds?  

Well, it just so happens that the states that pay more to the federal government than they get back are the states that vote for Democrats.  So, the states that bitch about how much the federal government taxes them are actually the states that are receiving money they never earned from the very government they condemn.

Sarah Palin plays the role of a self-reliant capitalist ass-kicker.  But where does most of Alaska's money come from?  The money that allowed her to "cut taxes"?

Alaska's money came from two places: the oil companies and the federal government.  First, for the oil companies.  

This "conservative" ran a regime under which every resident of Alaska got a check from the oil companies.  Wow.  Socialism, anyone?  Is this not what some say Chavez  should be killed for?  Dispersing private profits to the people?  To paraphrase from Richard Nixon in 1948, Palin's pink right down to her underwear!

Secondly, the federal government.  I am not a huge fan of the federal government, and one of the sources of my dyspepsia is states like Alaska.  Alaska gets more money from the federal government than any other state.  

So what does that mean?  That means that Alaska is our welfare queen.  It's that state that we send money to and that never gives back.

Okay maybe we need to prop up some of our neighbors.  But here's what I will not abide:  I will not abide a welfare queen bitching to me about wasting money.  

Sarah Palin complains about the federal government.  If it wasn't for the federal government, Sarah Palin's "state" would've been swallowed by Canada or Russia.  If it wasn't for the federal government, Sarah Palin's "state" would have no running water, roads, hospitals, or any of the other things that she cites as her heritage.

The issue here is hypocrisy, and how casually it is tolerated.   This woman comes down from Siberia and tells us that we're interfering in her state.  I'd be glad to cease said interference.  I'd be glad to stop spending my money to Alaska.  

However you spin it, I've be coerced into sending money to Alaska and Sarah Palin has the ovaries to go onto national TV and act like she'd have been better off without it.  Well, I'd have been better off without giving it to her. 

Sarah Palin runs a welfare state masquerading as Lord of the Flies.  This is the masquerade that must be unmasked.  This woman collects money from us and scolds us for interfering.  Sorry for intruding onto your liberty by building roads.