politics

I made the mistake of reading this over on the Huffington Post and my head exploded.

Mayor Bloomberg points out, reasonably enough, that if someone is placed on the terrorism watchlist/no-fly list, that person should be denied when going through the background check to purchase a firearm. Makes a certain amount of sense, yes? If the FBI thinks you shouldn’t fly, maybe you shouldn’t buy a gun or explosives to cause mass havoc on the ground.

But NO!

The same cast of idiots who want to strip accused terrorists of their citizenship and drag them off to camps to torture them would never think to deprive these same people of their Second Amendment Rights. Because dammit, that potential terrorist can have all the guns he (or she) wants until he or she converts to a real terrorist and kills people! And at that point we remove all their rights, except the Second Amendment one, and torture them until they tell us where they got the guns, which may or may not be “Meijer.*”

Now, granted, there is a serious argument about innocent people on the terrorist watch list who may be deprived of their right to own a vast collection of firearms. And supposedly these people don’t fly and would only realize this when they went to buy a gun. That doesn’t make the suggestion less reasonable. It exposes a need for transparency into this terrorist watch list and an appeals process to get off it.

This hurts my head.

* If you’re a Michigan terrorist. But we don’t talk about those cuz they’re not brown.

I cannot believe I need to say this but the Internet has gone insane. To be clear:

1. The United States is a Representative Democracy.
2. Citizens elect representatives to represent their local interests on a Federal level.
3. Representatives then represent their constituents in Congress.
4. Congress shall:
- Lay and collect taxes, duties and excises
- Pay for debts for the common welfare
- Borrow money on credit for the United States
- Regulate commerce with other countries and between states
- Establish a uniform rule of naturalization
- Provide punishment for counterfitting
- Establish a post office and postal roads
- Promote science* and technology and the arts
- Punish piracy.
- Declare War.
- Raise and support armies and navies.
- Call up militia
- Make life hard in Washington DC
- To make laws

The United States is not:
1. A direct Democracy.
2. Ruled or have legislation crafted by referendum**.
3. Ruled or have legislation crafted by talking heads, political pundits, or pollsters.

Representatives vote for legislation they ran in the previous election, not what they are going to run on in the next election.*** A bill passed by Constitutionally and Legally elected majorities in the House and Senate is how the system works. The Constitution is here. The Federalist papers are here. If you are not happy, you have a right to voice your opinions at the ballot box every two years when every Representative of Congress is up for reelection. Senators, of course, are up only every six years.

I expect people who are not happy will suddenly discover American Civics and find themselves at the ballot box in November. Or, perhaps, get involved on more than a “posting on the Internet” level. Just as I was equally unhappy over the Iraq War. Or the Bush Tax Cuts. If that results in a swing in November, then that is American Civics in action.

* They need to get on that.
** Unless you’re the state of California but that is another story.
*** In theory. Not so much in practice.

I always admired two qualities of Barack Obama: his tenacity and his convictions. Be it polls or news cycle or stories or protesters, the man does not blink when it comes to something he absolutely believes in. He will wait everyone out and do not what he thinks is popular, but what he thinks is right, from the point of social justice. A news cycle is just a news cycle. Gibbering talking heads on radio stations are just talking heads whose job is to sell more ads on radio stations, not govern. All these things pass. Wait. Be patient. Lose the battles you must to win the war. Then win the war. He is the Buddha Master of American Politics. All things pass — and if you stand on the courage of your convictions and refuse to blink, you win.

How easily we forget this is the first Black President and how momentous that simple fact is. We forget the primary battle. We forget the election. We forget how the simple fact he exists is remarkable on the face of it, and how doubly remarkable that he will stake his entire Presidency on his convictions. We forget he is already a major historical figure in US History. Yes, he bobbled issues in his first year but he has found his stride. Now, from a political standpoint, he can rally the oft wandering off in the woods members of the Democratic Party and say, we can do this, we can win, we can change things, we just need to stand there and do the work.

Will it work for him?  Who knows.  We’ll find out.

I don’t believe the process was American Fascism any more than the march to the Iraq War was American Fascism or Bush Tax cuts were American Fascism. We are a representative democracy. We elect representatives and send them to Congress. They vote on the wills of their constituents. Democrats campaigned in 2008 on health care. People elected them on the campaign for health care. Elections have consequences. That’s why you go and vote. We are not a Parliamentary System. We are winner take all.

It was a brilliant maneuver* on the part of the GOP to trot out the ugliness of American Democracy for a populace wholly ignorant of their own history. The populace saw the sausage making and went, “ew.” It is, by necessity, an ugly process of deal-making and compromise. It is horrible. It is ugly. It is the sucking chest wound of American Democracy. But this is what it is and has been since the beginning. We had fist fights over the assumptions of debt over the Revolutionary War. We’ve long since forgotten, say, the horrible ugliness of the fight over the Second Bank of the United States — hell, those people who dissented with Andrew Jackson**, He That Is On Our Money, dissented so violently they ran off and formed the Whig Party. That’s how badly they reacted to his success. Those who forget their 19th century history are doomed to repeat it. Jackson’s stand on nullification! Jackson’s stand on populism! Autocracy! We must defeat “King Andrew!”

And that worked out well for them. Who is Henry Clay again?

That is such an important point I am going to say it again: Those who forget their 19th and early 20th century history are doomed to repeat it. Sometimes American politics is trapped in Battlestar Galactica: all these things have happened before and it will happen again. Slavery! Reconstruction! Unions! Social Security! Civil Rights!

Of course, no one knows what happens next, now that the Senate version of health care reform is magically being poofed from a bill to a law other than we will be subjected to tedious Vote-A-Rama in the Senate on the Reconciliation Bill. Likely, nothing will change initially but I, for one, am happy and relieved I am not going to get the nasty “you have pre-existing conditions so screw off and die” call one day, a call that was otherwise inevitable. I’m not crazy about the bill. I feel it is weak and watered down. People ought to be allowed Medicare buy-in. But it is something.

So props to the Man.  For good or ill, he won a big fight.

* Props where props are due. By focusing on process over substance, the GOP nearly won, because US political process is beyond ugly***. It’s the equivalent of the attack ad. David Foster Wallace wrote a marvelous piece of John McCain for Rolling Stone during the 2000 Republican Primary. The full writeup is in his book, “Consider the Lobster,” which shined light on the practice of exposing the horrors of the US political systems to the electorate to turn them off and make them go away.

** As a side note, I am not a huge fan of Andrew Jackson at all, but he won his battles simply by being the meanest guy in the room. And he makes a great example. Personally, I believe Barack Obama is much closer to Theodore Roosevelt in style and temperament.

*** Remember, Alexander Hamilton was shot and killed by Aaron Burr over what was essentially a 12-year long “your mother.” That’s how ugly it is — and has always been. At least no one is shooting at anyone today.

My Only Comment on Ex-Rep. Eric Massa…

I wish gay politicians would come out and be gay politicians. Proudly. Happily. Like an adult. This bizarre combination of gay guys attaining office and then gay-hating or gay-hiding or gay-bashing or pretending to not be gay while engaging in bizarre tickle fights with staffers is an embarrassment to the country.

Come on, guys. It’s 2010. If 10% of humanity is, to some extent, gay, and there are 435 of you in the House of Representatives and you are representative of the population as a whole, 43 of you are gay and one of you is heavily into swinging. Statistically, with Barney Frank, 42 of you are closeted. Give it up.

Hell, enough of you ought to be gay that you can have your own caucus.

And there’s Roy Ashburn…

… who at least manned up on his sexuality. But since he’s voted against his own personal interest again and again and again, and now he is, woo hoo! outed! he will have a hard time at gay bars for the rest of his life. Hopefully.

Meanwhile, Gay Marriage in Washington DC…

… is awesome. DC is proud to be Gaytopia. DC is the gay capital of the US. We have all these nice gay people! See: gay Congresscritters and all their gay staffers; above.

I saw a documentary called Outs about outing these gay politicians (who seem to be both Democrats and Republicans), why they hide in the closet (optics! media!) and why they consistently vote against their own personal self interest (gay marriage, gay rights, gay adoption, etc). I don’t completely agree with the above documentary — it makes some pretty odd leaps of logic — but I find myself in favor of getting rid of these closeted guys for actually Out and Sane guys. These closeted guys always get caught in weird, embarrassing, and difficult to explain away situations. They are full of self-loathing and hiding and pretending. Layers upon layers upon layers of levels of stupid settles into a stratified cake of lying and politician ooze. I know perhaps the gay thing wasn’t so electable in the past and thus wasn’t a big political positive but hey, we’re growing up as a society and putting on the big boy boots. Not too long ago, black people, Hispanics and women weren’t so electable, either. Perhaps it is time to consider moving and running in liberal districts instead of living with your ambition and personal hate…

Just a thought.