Tag Archives: obama

Political Rants

Race talk.

Okay, so why is a middle-aged white dude writing about race? Mostly because I experience it more from the perspective of the oppressor than the oppressed. A funny thing happens sometimes when I am alone amongst white folks – they occasionally say openly racist things, and they say them with the confidence of someone who is amongst his/her own kind; people who share their prejudices, and will likely concur with their grisly sentiments. I don’t believe I’m unique in this regard – I have to think that a lot of white people have this same experience.

Higgerson family reunionSo sure, I smirk a bit when I hear people opine that racism is dead and that the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow is behind us. Though it seems a little retrograde, I suspect racism is not only alive and well but concentrated amongst those of us north of age thirty, with generally increasing intensity as you climb the ladder of age; so, the average 70-year-old white person is more bigoted than the average 35-year-old. (The current under-thirty generation is probably the least bigoted ever with regard to race, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, you name it. That, more than anything else, gives me hope.)

I’m in my fifties, and I can tell you that if it hadn’t been for my vehemently anti-racist mother (thankfully still amongst us), my fair-minded working-class father,  and my very cool elder siblings, I would likely have been as racist as some of the people I’ve known over the years. Throughout my youth, all of the external inputs were negative. Schoolmates were almost ubiquitously white racists, particularly in New Hartford, where there were no people of color whatsoever. Some of my teachers were openly racist, particularly my third grade teacher in New Hartford, Mrs. Higgerson, who used the n-word as a show-and-tell item. (My junior high school swimming teacher, recently departed, once cautioned me that if his generation hadn’t won WWII, “you would have slanted eyes right now;” no lie. He was lecturing me for wearing a “Solidarity with Indochina” button, apparently unaware that the Viet Minh (precursor to the Hanoi government) fought the Japanese during the big one.)

So … with respect to racism, like most non-racist white folks I’ve whistling past the Klan meeting pretty much all my life. Just thought it was worth saying on this anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. We have a ways to go, folks.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Boots on the ground.

I won’t waste any breath on much of what’s happened in politics this week … that Hobby Lobby suit before the Supreme Court has got me hopping mad, but I’ll hold that for another week while I take the President to task for his speech to “European youth” about the Crimean crisis. One particular passage is very worthy of attention:

Russia has pointed to America’s decision to go into Iraq as an example of Western hypocrisy. Now, it is true that the Iraq War was a subject of vigorous debate not just around the world, but in the United States as well. I participated in that debate and I opposed our military intervention there. But even in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system. We did not claim or annex Iraq’s territory. We did not grab its resources for our own gain. Instead, we ended our war and left Iraq to its people and a fully sovereign Iraqi state that could make decisions about its own future.

Laugh away.

Here, Barry seems to be saying that it’s all right to ignore the clear will of the UN Security Council (and General Assembly) and invade another country, so long as eight years later you leave what’s left of them to sort out their political future ( this after their refusing to sign off on a status of forces agreement we were pushing for). It’s as if the dubious notion that we had a “vigorous debate” (perhaps in the street, but certainly not in the mass media) prior to starting the Iraq War somehow makes up for the fact that we went into that country on obviously false pretenses, over the objections of major allies and partners, including Russia.

That was bad enough. But just the fact that we are comparing Russia’s incursion into Crimea (death toll: less than ten, to greatly exaggerate the actual number) unfavorably with our attack on Iraq (death toll: hundreds of thousands, with fratricidal violence still killing thousands a year long after our exist) is craven beyond belief. He didn’t even mention the continuing conflict in Afghanistan. Small omission.

Finally, the resource point is a red herring. We didn’t go into Iraq to “grab its resources for our own gain”, though how that fact makes us virtuous is beyond me. Still, if Iraq’s main export was chicken wings, we would never have been there. It isn’t about stealing the oil; it’s about having a say in where it goes and where it doesn’t go. That’s as old as the American empire, and twice as thick.

Russia is a bad actor, no denying it, but we are far worse. Before we start condemning them for mustering their soldiers within their own borders, we might consider pulling ours out of the scores of countries where they are stationed, all around the world.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Bad guys.

When I watch news reports about the Ukraine crisis, I’m reminded of that Dave Mason song from back in the seventies, that went something like this:

So let’s leave it alone
Because we can’t see eye to eye
There ain’t no good guys
There ain’t no bad guys
There’s only you and me and
We just disagree

Are you scared? Really scared?Right, well … I was never a big fan of Dave’s, but you get the idea. Part of the problem with our once-over-lightly media culture is that there is an extraordinarily rapid resort to black-and-white, wrong vs. right narratives that are easy to report, easy to digest, easy to repeat again and again. In all that, we lose the sense that it’s possible to have two assholes in a fight – adversaries who are divided by conflicting claims, not by a contrast between absolute good and absolute evil.

I guess what particularly galls me about the current state of play is that when you draw attention to this fact, you are accused of being an apologist for the Putin regime. Fact is, Putin’s regime is the model of governance in Russia that the United States clearly preferred, one we actively encouraged and supported relatively uncritically until the falling out around the Iraq war. What we’re staring in the face right now is the product of two failed American policies: (1) support for a strong executive in Russia from the Yeltsin years forward, and (2) insistence not only on perpetuation of NATO after the end of the Cold War, but expansion of the alliance deep into eastern Europe, over the vehement objections of the Russians.

Russia’s objection to NATO expansion? Well, this is just a guess, but I’m pretty sure they are against any major military alliance on their western flank, probably because they were invaded four times, starting with Napoleon, the last time nearly destroying Russian society. That’s a living memory for some in Russia, and something no doubt written in their DNA at this point. You can say they’re a little sensitive about threats from their west. Just a little.

That doesn’t excuse beastly behavior, but you have to admit … compared to the suppression of Hungary or Czechoslovakia, this invasion and  annexation of Crimea has been pretty tame. I’m just saying, we need to dial it back a little, and remember that we still have thousands of nuclear weapons. Indeed, there can be no military conflict between Russia and the United States that won’t practically guarantee the destruction of all of humankind.

If we fight, no one wins. Take that to the bank.

luv u,

jp