Insight Cliff

I said to myself (and to my husband, Marc) Tuesday night as the returns came in and Barak Obama was declared winner of a second term as POTUS, that we should be nice to the losers.  I don't know, though; it's not easy to be nice when being nice gets lost in the morass of delusion, fabrication and self-deception that characterizes this new breed of Republicans, the FrankenGOPs.  Stitched together out of whole cloth, they are walking blind, their clenched hands waving before them as if by some miracle their hands, or the money they are clutching, will prevent them from stepping over the edge.  Only opening their eyes will prevent that.  They seem unable to do that; their eyes have been closed for so long, and after awhile even eyes will atrophy and seal up if left unused. 

Here are a few articles illustrating the lengths to which the Frankengops have gone in order to maintain their delusion of grandeur, sense of entitlement and illusion of self-righteousness.

Sabrina Siddiqui, in the Huffington Post, summarizes their stabs at denial after being blindsided by Obama's re-election.  (Of course they were "blindsided" only because they couldn't see to begin with.)  Their narrative explaining Mitt Romney's quite predictable loss (predictable, that is, if one paid any attention to his inability to clearly represent himself as standing for one issue or another or to the unpopularity of the issues he did sporadically support, not to mention the polls) covers a lot of ground:  the media highlighted his gaffes and downplayed Obama's; hurricane Isaac  disrupted their convention; Romney was too nice; Chris Christie was too nice to Obama during Hurricane Sandy's aftermath; Obama won by "suppressing the vote" (by running ads about Romney and Bain Capital); Romney wasn't conservative enough; the electorate is uninformed; and the fact checkers were biased.  Siddiqui effectively fact-checks these flaccid attempts by Republicans to avoid facing the truth at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/09/conservatives-mitt-romney-presidential-election_n_2099504.html.

In spite of statewide Republican efforts to make voting more difficult in those areas likely to support Obama, people waited doggedly in long lines for long hours to cast their votes.  It was when there were reports of huge turnouts in northeastern Ohio, northern Virginia, central Florida, Miami-Dade--Obama strongholds--that the Romney folks got their first glimpse of reality, according to Jan Crawford of CBS news.  The article, at  http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57547239/adviser-romney-shellshocked-by-loss, describes the election night onion of denial being peeled away, leaving Romney and Ryan in shock, and their wives in tears.

Their are, contrary to all-too-common Frankengop opinion, some logical explanations for their electoral losses.  Condoleeza Rice, who may be seeing the light, has suggested the Republicans' mixed messages in regard to immigrants and women may have been part of their undoing.  Frank Rich, in New York News and Features, pinpoints a penchant for duplicity and fantasy-based insularity as the Frankengop's achilles heel.

At the policy level, this is the GOP that denies climate change, that believes low tax rates drive economic growth, and that identifies voter fraud where there is none. At the loony-tunes level, this is the GOP that has given us the birthers, websites purporting that Obama was lying about Osama bin Laden’s death, and not one but two (failed) senatorial candidates who redefined rape in defiance of medical science and simple common sense. It’s the GOP that demands the rewriting of history (and history textbooks), still denying that Barry Goldwater’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy” transformed the party of Lincoln into a haven for racists. 

 His article, "Fantasyland", can be found at http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/gop-denial-2012-11/. 

Matt Taibi, in his blog at the RollingStone, attributes Romney's loss to the Republicans' inability to spread their message, 

because they have so much of their own collective identity wrapped up in the belief that they're surrounded by free-loading, job-averse parasites who not only want to smoke weed and have recreational abortions all day long, but want hardworking white Christians like them to pay the tab. Their whole belief system, which is really an endless effort at congratulating themselves for how hard they work compared to everyone else...is inherently insulting to everyone outside the tent – and you can't win votes when you're calling people lazy, stoned moochers.

Taibi's article, "Hey, Rush Limbaugh: 'Starting an abortion industry' won't win you female voters", is at http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/hey-rush-limbaugh-starting-an-abortion-industry-wont-win-you-female-voters-20121108. 

While some Republicans are calling for introspection, reflection and recalibration (see Daily News at  http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/gop-urged-inclusive-temper-social-views-article-1.1198516), others continue to stumble across a perilous terrain of self-deception, unable to distinguish between their magical thinking and evidence-based reality.

I may be wrong about the insight cliff.  It's quite possible Frankengop has long since stepped over the edge.  Next stop (and it's a short walk), oblivion.

To Wally for his 99th Birthday

   Dear Wally,

Tomorrow would be your 99th birthday, had you lived as long as we would have liked. Since we just had the most important election of my lifetime, I've been thinking back on that card I made for you in 1966--about halfway between my college graduation and induction into the Peace Corps--for your election day birthday, November 8.  It turned out Ronald Reagan buried Pat Brown and became Governor of California.  I don't think any of us knew what a slippery slope that landslide was to be.

Clipped from Edward Sorel's Bestiary, Ramparts, 1966

You've missed a lot in the years since you died prematurely of pneumonia, following surgery to remove a cancerous growth from your lung caused by years of heavy smoking likely due to chronic angst about your failure to avert the country's growing appetite for reactionary demagoguery.

That appetite has since become a manifold addiction to fear-mongering, stereotyping, xenophobia, jingoism, false patriotism, and religious fundamentalism, all of which were lucratively exploited by Reagan during his presidential campaign and subsequent two terms in office, from 1980 to 1988.  During those eight years, boosted by a well-oiled and cleverly engineered right wing perception management machine, Reagan ratcheted up fears of communism and initiated unprovoked, unauthorized, self-justified military action against sovereign nations;  devised his "trickle down" economics, involving tax cuts for the rich and increased military spending, which reversed the growth and prosperity of the middle class and caused an income disparity between the wealthy and others which continues to grow larger to this day; amped up bigotry against the disadvantaged who were receiving welfare, implying that their needs were fraudulent; deregulated big business while easing up on environmental restrictions; and sold weapons to countries that would later foster terrorism and be targeted by us as enemies, while hinting at wanting to start a nuclear war with Russia.

Since Reagan's presidency, a mutation of conservatism has evolved, continuing to establish itself even through two terms of a very effective Democratic president who reduced our deficit and had our economy on solid footing, without waging any major wars.  This new species, as embodied by the GOP and cultivated during the last Republican two-term presidency--which saw two costly wars, an attack on the credibility of science, and a major financial meltdown--has taken form as something closely resembling the John Birch Society, grafted onto Ayn Rand, and deeply rooted in spiritual fertilizer from religious extremism.  This has been hybridized as libertarian, neo-conservative, white supremacist, religious right and, more recently, something called the Tea Party, which is little more than a big movement of plutocrat-funded, angry white people who need something to hate--just as McCarthyites needed to hate Communism--and have been guided by more demagogues and right-wing media outlets to hate liberals and Muslims and Hispanic immigrants and probably blacks, although they will swear on their "Don't Tread on Me" snake flags that there is no prejudice left in our great nation.  Through their not-so-subtle influence, and thanks to the power of the money that is behind them, we have seen calls for "second amendment rights" to step in where voting fails (to get their people elected), massive sales of guns and ammunition, a new crusade against Muslims, an effort to shut down government, vilification of higher education, a campaign (with some success) to take away the rights of women to have dominion over their own bodies and to be able to choose whether to have an abortion or even whether to get pregnant in the first place, and the proliferation of conspiracy theories and phony research to discredit science, government, education and anything that has as its goal social justice, equality of opportunity or environmental preservation if such goal is perceived in any way to have the potential of trumping plutocrats' profits.

That's just the nutshell of what you've missed.

But yesterday, with the re-election of our first African American president, I have renewed faith that the American people are seeing through the demagogues and are regaining their sense of balance and relocating their moral compass.  In spite of four years of Republican obstructionism, misinformation and character assassination, President Barak Obama has managed to take major steps toward re-establishing our country as a land of opportunity, equality, and responsibility.  His accomplishments are listed below, in Appendix 1, just so I won't forget.

This was the most important election of my lifetime, partly because we let Reagan slip by us and we've been watching the reverberations of his presidency shatter our sense of what America stands for.  If the Republicans, in their present incarnation, had won, we would be back to where you were when you joined the Manhattan Project to help end the war against fascism.  We would be desperate for a new, as yet undeveloped, tool to reverse the tsunami that threatens to inundate our personal and economic freedoms. 

I just thought you might like to know.

Love,
Wendy

Appendix 1 -- A Few of President Obama's Accomplishments



1. The first bill President Obama signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, to help women fight back when they don't get equal pay for equal work.

2. His Recovery Act supported millions of jobs and helped to stave off a second Great Depression.

3. He pushed for and won middle-class tax cuts that benefitted every American worker, and saved the typical family $3,600 in taxes over the last four years.

4. President Obama rescued the auto industry, and now GM and Chrysler are healthier than they've ever been. The American auto industry has added nearly a quarter of a million jobs since June 2009 -- and they most likely wouldn't exist right now without President Obama's leadership.

5. He doubled funding for Pell Grants, helping to make college more affordable for nearly 10 million families.

6. His student loan reform ended billions in subsidies to banks serving as middlemen and reinvested those savings directly into students.

7. The President established the American Opportunity Tax Credit, worth up to $10,000 over four years of college.

8. His Race to the Top Initiative helped spur nearly every state to raise academic standards.

9. His tax cuts, social-welfare programs, and economic policies lifted nearly 7 million Americans above the federal poverty line in 2010.

10. President Obama has signed 18 tax cuts for small businesses since taking office.

11. We've seen 5.2 million new private-sector jobs over the last 31 months.

12. The unemployment rate is at the lowest level since President Obama took office.

13. Health care reform -- passed after decades of failed attempts by every previous President -- provides affordable health coverage to every American and will lower premiums by an average of $2,000 per family by 2019.

14. Obamacare expanded access to lifesaving preventive care such as cancer screenings and immunizations with no out-of-pocket costs for 54 million Americans.

15. Obamacare ends insurance discrimination against the 129 million Americans with pre-existing conditions.

16. Because of Obamacare, over 3 million more young adults have health insurance today than would if the new law hadn't passed.

17. The parents of over 17 million children with pre-existing conditions no longer have to worry that their children will be denied coverage.

18. President Obama has ordered the overhaul of federal government regulations to make them smarter, practical, and more efficient. Just a fraction of these commonsense initiatives will help save businesses $10 billion in the next five years alone.

19. His historic investments in clean energy have helped more than double the amount of electricity we obtain from wind and solar sources and helped increase biofuel production to its highest level in history.

20. President Obama is doubling fuel efficiency standards, which will save drivers more than $8,000 at the gas pump, not to mention lessen the impact of automobiles on our environment.

21. President Obama has taken unprecedented action to address climate change, reaching historic international agreements to curb carbon emissions, and taking action here at home to reduce carbon pollution from our vehicles and promote clean energy production.

22. He has taken historic action to protect our environment -- signing one of the largest expansions of protected wilderness in a generation and putting in place standards to reduce toxic air pollution that will save thousands of lives.

23. President Obama fought for and won landmark Wall Street reform that reins in the abuses that led to the financial crisis and ends the era of taxpayer bailouts and "too big to fail."

24. Wall Street reform created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the nation's first federal agency focused solely on consumer financial protection -- and the Bureau is already protecting families from unfair and abusive financial practices from Wall Street banks and shadowy corners of the financial industry.

25. As part of President Obama's commitment to transparency, the White House has posted its visitor records online for the first time ever.

26. President Obama's all-of-the-above approach to energy has helped cut the United States' dependence on foreign oil to its lowest level in 20 years.

27. President Obama responsibly ended the war in Iraq.

28. He announced a plan to end the war in Afghanistan and transition security responsibility to the Afghan people.

29. President Obama sent the largest security assistance package to Israel in history and funded the Iron Dome system, which is protecting Israeli homes and schools from rocket attacks.

30. President Obama rallied the international community to implement the toughest sanctions on Iran in history.

31. Through the President's historic increases in Veterans Affairs funding, he has expanded and improved healthcare and job training access for our returning veterans.

32. President Obama negotiated the New START Treaty with Russia to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in both countries. At the same time, he also secured commitments from dozens of other countries to lock down nuclear materials.

33. His administration naturalized 11,146 military service members as U.S. citizens in 2010; more than in any year since 1955.

34. President Obama set a bold new plan for the future of NASA space exploration, using the skill and ability of the private sector for short trips to the International Space Station, while building a new vehicle for exploration of distant space, and doing everything in his power to support the economy on Florida's Space Coast.

35. President Obama recognizes that tourism is one of America's largest economic engines; he's worked to encourage international visitors to come here, maintaining our security while keeping millions of Americans in good, paying jobs.

36. He has affirmed his personal support of marriage equality, directed the Justice Department to stop defending DOMA in federal courts, and took the practical and compassionate step of extending hospital visitation rights to same-sex partners.

37. He fought for and won the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, allowing gay and lesbian members of the military to serve openly for the first time in history.

38. When Congress failed to fix our broken immigration system, his administration did everything in its power to improve it, streamlining the legal immigration process and announcing a policy that lifts the shadow of deportation from hard working young immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

39. Oh, and he gave the order to send troops in after Osama Bin Laden -- and has decimated al-Qaeda's senior leadership.

The Truth about Tumbleweed

     My memories of life in the desert have almost invariably included images of that ubiquitous, errant, dried brush--tumbleweed--caught on the fence surrounding the Naval station, rolling across the road in the path of our car, needling my legs as it's atomized by the spokes of my bicycle.  Even more than sage or creosote, tumbleweed stood out for me as the characteristic ground cover along the highway stretching from Lancaster to Little Lake.

       I was mistaken, however.  The dominant plant that I've always associated with the desert is more likely a shadscale scrub, possibly four-wing saltbush, a perennial native to the area.  Although related to tumbleweed, it doesn't have the prickly leaves that dry up and blow havoc throughout the desert.

Probably some type of saltbush

     But tumbleweed, an annual, gives up the ghost after a brief but hearty life, and breaks away in the fall to wander aimlessly and sow its seeds indiscriminately.  It is at once the presumed bane of desert life and a peculiar symbol of western individualism--as in the old Bob Nolan song, which we sang with conviction on long road trips in our Hudson:

See them tumbling down
Pledging their love to the ground
Lonely but free I'll be found
Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds

     It's also a noxious invasive.  Russian Thistle, a member of the goosefoot family of plants, is native to Southeastern Russia and western Siberia, and came to South Dakota in the 1870s by way of contaminated flax seed brought by Russian immigrants.  It traveled by railroad in cars transporting cattle to Lancaster, California and, like many who have visited the Golden State, decided to stay.  According to the University of California Integrated Pest Management Program (http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7486.html), our maverick tumbleweed affects agricultural yields, depletes soil moisture, harbors pests and crop diseases, interferes with water delivery along the California aqueduct, and threatens native plant ecosystems.  It also can trigger contact dermatitis and allergies.

     Who'da thunk?  All these years I just accepted it as a natural inconvenience of desert life.

     Efforts have been made over the years to eradicate or control Russian Thistle, which is now known to comprise more than one species and a few hybrids to boot.  Although some biological control agents are still being tested, the default strategy is herbicides.

     Where am I going with this?  Am I about to make an analogy between the unintended consequences of importing agricultural products and the potential damage wrought by fracking or offshore oil drilling?  Am I leaning toward supporting xenophobic GM crops that would help eradicate this alien pest?  Is this an indictment of rugged individualism?  Am I railing against the widespread disregard of humans in general to the impact they might have on the environment due to any and all activities to which they feel entitled by virtue of being human?

     Or am I just drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds?

The trash, not the plants

  Various Invasives:

Alien fish net

And this would be the infamous tumbleweed

Just Desert

     I suppose I was due for a walk down memory lane.  But I hadn't anticipated a two-month long trek.  When I got a call asking if I wanted to take one of the California assignments they were having a hard time filling, I cringed; I had no intention of taking another assignment until next year.  I had just started my vegetable garden, now protected by a proper deer fence and fitted with planter boxes which the young vegetables were clearly loving already.  I was enjoying mornings with my cats and evenings with Marc.  We were starting to let the horses out again, after almost nine months of being on stable arrest due to Dante's failing ligaments.

     But when the caller mentioned China Lake as being among the difficult-to-fill assignments, with a time frame that got me home just as Marc started teaching again, I took only a day, after consulting with Marc, to decide.

     "You'll take what?" the scheduler said when I called her back.  She had assumed I wanted  San Luis Obispo.  It is, after all, what any normal person would want for an assignment.  But besides the fact that it was a longer assignment, and China Lake was only two months,  I was suddenly overtaken by an eerie sense that my old home base was calling me, and by a strange delusion that the Mojave Desert in June, July and August was just the treat my soul needed.

     Marc and I had pretty much made up our minds we weren't going to take our planned, week-long vacation -- a trip on Amtrak to Colorado.  We would have stayed in Estes Park and done some hiking and painting.  But Marc was starting to get nervous about leaving the cats and the horses, we were having a hard time finding a housesitter, and there's always the money issue. 

     So instead of fleeing flames in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, I'm facing fiery gusts of desert wind at Ridgecrest, California.

     There is something about the Mojave Desert.  There are those who look out across the vastness--glaringly pale sand dotted with tumbleweed and creosote bushes--and see nothing.  Others see opportunity -- a cistern here, an irrigation system there, and voila!  A circular field of alfalfa, a housing development, a weapons testing range.  Some have an affinity with the austerity of the desert, or are in awe of the stark contours of mountain ranges and rock outcroppings, or are fascinated by the history of the Shoshoni populations who decorated the Coso range with petroglyphs.   That's all well and good.  My relationship with the lands that lie within Indian Wells Valley is less noble or ambitious. 

     This is where I made my first friend, where I started school, where I framed out ambiguous relationships with my sister and brother, where I saw my first fireworks while trembling with fear on the roof of our prefab duplex, where I learned to ride a bike, swim, bowl, and read.  Where I first went horseback riding.  Where I hiked with a friend up B Mountain.  Where I had my first boyfriend, and then, after he broke up with me, my second.  Where I learned to square dance, went with my brother to stamp collectors' meetings, and played Murder-in-the-Dark with him and his friends on hot summer evenings.

     This was my foundation.  So when I drove through the sentry gate, past the school which was built around the time I entered 2nd grade, up the road where two of the old duplexes still remain, to the museum  housed in what used to be the officers' club--still saturated with the smell of old cigarette smoke--where I would sit in the bar drinking Shirley Temples while my parents drank Manhattans, I understood why I had come back.  This odd community, born of war in the middle of virtually uninhabitable terrain, no doubt a shock to my mother's upstate New York sensibilities and a consort serving my father's lust for adventure, was my fundamental reality.  I was formed from this place, and have carried its outline with me wherever I've gone.  It isn't just a desert.  When I got out of my car at the Chinese fast food restaurant which now sits next to the old Bank of America building and behind the house I'm convinced was ours, and stood in the searing heat looking down the gully toward the dry lake bed where we would walk, barefoot, to see the brine shrimp when it started flooding from winter rains, I recognized this as the only place that has ever truly been my home town.

NOTS, China Lake, California
1946-1953

A view of B Mountain, China Lake, 2012

Speak Up

As Jay Ambrose stated in a Guest Editorial (“Home of the free, the brave, the endangered,” Napa Valley Register, March 12, 2012), major change can result from small, barely noticeable changes.  It’s the frog in the pot syndrome, and we are seeing this in all sorts of things, from atmospheric changes fueled by industrialization and fossil fuel consumption which are having a decided effect on our climate; to government intrusions into private lives which then compromise our freedom; to nations turning to authoritarian leadership for security.   My worry, as is Ambrose’s, is here in America.  I am concerned, but for entirely different reasons than he is.

Ambrose is “scared”, he states, because we are approaching the “tipping point” on many issues, although he gives little substantial information about the issues, and I suspect his claim of being “scared” is more of that conservative tactic used to foment fear in the audience.  Because if the audience is made to feel fear, they can then be offered a dominant, authoritarian leader who promises to make decisions for them and protect them from harm.

For instance, he refers to “debt grown obese”.  Certainly the debt--after the post-WWII decline—has grown, starting in the 80s, declining somewhat in the 90s, and leaping to 70% of GDP by 2008.  I’m sensing he’s trying to criticize the Obama Administration for increasing the debt further in the service of recovery:  successfully turning around unemployment and getting the market back on its feet after it tripped up so badly.  I wonder if he knows that the budget proposals of Gingrich, Santorum and Romney would result in higher debt in ten years than does Obama’s 2013 proposal.  

Ambrose also cites “liberty grown skinny”.  It’s not clear what he means by that.  Guns haven’t been taken away or even effectively regulated; we still have free speech, as evidenced by right-wing talk radio hosts; and our taxes have gone down.  He couldn’t be referring to the Blunt-Rubio bill, because thankfully it didn’t pass.  If it had, we would have had a Republican-sponsored law that would allow employers to decide what was covered in our health insurance policies, based on what they might deem morally objectionable.  And we can still vote, in spite of efforts by Republicans at the state level to prevent certain classes of voters from going to the polls, so we still have democracy (except in cities where Republican state Governors have decided to replace the duly elected city government with “emergency managers”).

Ambrose is also scared because of “children with scarcely a chance in this world because their single-parent homes did not give them one.”   I think he must mean children who are born into poverty and into homes where the parents are either too busy working or don’t know how to give their children a chance under the circumstances.  He may have been confusing “debt” with “children”, because the rate of obesity in children is actually pretty scary.  And parents who don’t have much money and don’t have the means to prevent unwanted pregnancy, and then lack adequate pre-natal health care and access to healthy nutrition, are much more likely to see lack of motivation, cognitive deficits, and poor achievement in their children.  I wonder if he knows that the Republican proposals to do away with health care reform and block the provision of contraceptives and women’s health care is one of the most egregious assaults on our freedoms that we have seen since the Patriot Act.  And who saw it coming? 

Does he know about the growing income disparity which squeezes poor and middle-class families facing inflation and has made it difficult for all but the wealthy, who qualify for substantial tax breaks, to provide adequately for their families and ensure good education?  I suppose Ambrose is aware that Romney’s tax proposal would give huge tax cuts to the wealthy while cutting Medicaid, the bulk of which goes to children, the disabled and the elderly.  Does he also know that the taxpayers are paying the medical bills of one of the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit to overturn Obamacare?

Ambrose is frightened of postmodernism, multiculturalism,  group consensus and what he calls “scientism” (which he defines as “science as God”-- I don’t think there is any such thing as “science as God”, except in the minds of conservatives, who discard sound science when it conflicts with their religious ideas or their political ideology.)

 The concepts he rakes over his coals of judgment aren’t particularly scary.  Postmodernism has encouraged us to look at how we come to know reality through our culture, language, religion, power structure, and motivations, and has the potential of fostering critical thinking and a more universal code of ethics than the various codes adopted under threat of punishment by an authoritarian “God”.  Multiculturalism is inevitable as various factions of our global community intermingle regularly.  Understanding and appreciating one's culture of origin does not have to depreciate another’s.   Group consensus weaves personal involvement and reasoned dialogue into our democratic process and contributes to prudent global economics, resource management and development.

Those trends so feared by Ambrose--rather than reducing whatever vestige of “exceptionalism” we have left after economic collapse, political buffoonery and botched attempts at world dominance--all seem to be natural outgrowths of the Enlightenment that informed our founders.  

The real concerns—I won’t say scary, because that compels a fight or flight reaction and concern calls for solutions—have to do with the permeation of public policy by cognitive distortion and moralistic authoritarianism.  The religious right has encircled us and appears to be closing in, gnashing teeth through cries of “freedom”, and "take back the country".   At risk are the freedoms and protections we have earned, as women, minorities, immigrants, voters and workers.  We can no longer stay passive and silent in the heated waves of disinformation created by the incendiary rhetoric of would-be plutocrats and theocrats.  Whenever we hear or see the attacks on hard-won liberties coming from the rapacious right, we need to speak up.  

Repeat: speak up.

And then repeat.