Brad DeLong (who I religiously read, even though he has deleted me from his blogroll…I’m not hurt *sob*…really…) proposed a damn good Blogger’s Motto:
But to that I reply: “We’re the good guys. We benefit in the long run from elevating the level of the debate at every opportunity.
I think I’ll put that on the masthead…

Riffing on Teresa Neilsen Hayden’s great comment, I want to try and explain (again) why I keep harping on this issue (she defined it incisively:I believe there’s a largely unacknowledged divide between politicians who still believe we’re all members of the same polity, all citizens together; and those for whom I’m just a member of the voting audience, watching but not otherwise a participant in our regularly scheduled pantomime of democracy.).
It relates closely to why I refuse to support Gray Davis, and why I harsh writers like Hesiod and Tom.
Let me make a metaphor first.
I’ve done a fair amount of first-aid training; I’ve participated in risky sports – climbing, sailing, racing cars, bicycles, and motorcycles – most of my life, and a long time ago, someone died as a part of one of my sports activities when I was a freshman in college, driving home the point of risk and of shared responsibility.
Part of the responsibility is taking proper precautions (why I’m sometimes called ‘the Safety Nazi’), and part of it is taking responsibility for consequences – hence the first aid.
One of the things they train you to do (and here the more advanced medical bloggers are free to comment and clarify) is to evaluate someone’s condition, and deal with the most critical issues first.
A compound fracture is and looks bad, but a blocked airway is worse.
You have to look beyond the superficial symptoms and try and determine what underlying conditions are serious and how best to deal with them.
This was brought home to me last week when someone I know on an internet list died. He was in what appeared to be a relatively minor accident, received superficial care from the attending EMT’s, who transported him to the hospital, where it was discovered that he had severe bleeding in a lung, which couldn’t be controlled, and he bled out and died. I don’t know all the facts, and certainly don’t know from my limited information if better diagnosis would have made a difference to him (and his grieving family). But I do know that that is the practitioner’s nightmare…to fix the scraped knee and miss the bubbling lung.
Our country – our world – is definitely not short of scraped knees, and people with band-aids ready to fix them, if only we’ll vote for them.
But some of us…including me…hear a frightening bubbling coming from the lungs.
We face huge systemic challenges, coming from rising population, misallocation and shortages of key resources, a huge gap between the First and Third World, compounded by closer economic, informational, and transportation ties that will make these challenges abroad into ours.
We have challenges at home, in poverty and alienation, as well as education, health care, and the environment.
To deal with these wisely will require that we restate our commitment to some common goals, and to some processes – some governmental, some political, some private – that will tie us to these common goals. And we must do it while maintaining and improving both freedoms – the freedom to, and the freedom from. And it is exactly that shared commitment to some set of goals, and that shared sense of common citizenship that is eroded by the kind of politics and kind of commentary that I criticize.
If we don’t deal with these, our country and our world will look far different and far worse than if we do. The worlds of Blade Runner and Snow Crash aren’t impossible dystopias. They are very possible dystopias, and I don’t want my children to live in them.
I’ve talked about this a lot. Here’s one quote:

We’re at a point in our history when we need to find the threads that bind us into a nation and a polity. Sadly, ‘win at any cost’ politicians (c.f. Gray ‘SkyBox’ Davis), and culture warriors of one stripe or another are happy to drive wedges, if they believe the fractures serve their short-term political interests.
And we’re at a point in our political history that’s been made by single-issue warriors…for and against development, for and against abortion, for and against parks for dogs…and damn those on the other side of the issue.
I had the unique opportunity to have dinner once with then-State Senator John Schmitz. He was a genuine John Birch society member, elected from Orange County, who lost his office when it was discovered that his mistress had sexually abused their sons. (His daughter is also Mary Kay Le Tourneau, so I’ll take as a given that the family had…issues…). He was still in the Senate, and made a comment that I’ve always remembered:

When Moscone ran the Senate, he and I used to fight hammer and tongs all day, then go out and have drinks over dinner and laugh about it. We differed on where we wanted the boat to go, but we recognized that we were in the same boat. These new guys would gladly sink the boat rather then compromise.

And that’s why I think the [pledge]decision was stupid, and why the forces behind it…the Church of My Wounded Feelings…and their soldiers, the Warrior Cult of the Single Issue…are incredibly destructive. And right now, we don’t have the time for it.

Yes, Gray Davis has put some good band-aids on the scabs I think are important. Yes, a Republican Congress would probably put band-aids on scabs I think are totally unimportant, and worse, damaging. I’ll clearly continue to argue for the things that matter to me, no matter how small.
But I’m just done participating in a game of ‘kiss the boo-boo’ and believing that I’m really doing anything to help the patient. I want to get the heart and lungs examined, and I want to find and support people who support making sure the patient doesn’t die before they worry about the cuts and bruises.

Via Electrolite:
Teresa Nielsen Hayden commenting on modern politics (go to her comment on this post):

I find I care less than I used to about the hairsplitting fine points of a politician’s positions, and more about hearing his or her disintermediated voice. It isn’t just a matter of aesthetics. I believe there’s a largely unacknowledged divide between politicians who still believe we’re all members of the same polity, all citizens together; and those for whom I’m just a member of the voting audience, watching but not otherwise a participant in our regularly scheduled pantomime of democracy.

What she said!!
[It’s ironic that I’d misquote a book when talking about an editor, isn’t it?]

May just be the bravest, most honest man I know. Read this, and do it somewhere quiet, where you can read and think and cry all at once.

I’m having a horrible time accessing any blogs hosted on Blogspot today. Is anyone else seeing this??

From Rough & Tumble:
A Robert Novak piece suggesting that the race is a dead heat:

The nightly tracking poll taken for the California Teachers Association, made available to Republicans last Friday morning, was startling. Thursday night’s telephone interviews about the race for governor showed beleaguered Republican candidate Bill Simon leading Democratic Gov. Gray Davis 34.2 percent to 33.7 percent. The three-day tracking roll gave Davis a mere 2.7 percentage point lead.
Those numbers collide with Democratic surveys that show a double-digit lead for Davis.

He goes on to outline the tactical issues this presents for Bush … to come out and campaign, and maybe pull off an immense upset, or stay out rather than risk tarring his reputation with a Democratic blowout.
The losers are, as usual, those of us who live in California. His comments about Davis couldn’t ring more true:

Diluting these immense advantages, Davis is undoubtedly the most unpopular governor of California that anybody can remember. Prominent Democrats privately express contempt for him as a relentless fund-raiser without principles. One well-known elected government official told me he had endorsed Davis as far back as the 1998 Democratic primary but now considers him ”another Nixon.” He rages that Simon is about to be wiped out, propelling Davis into the White House. He plans to vote for Green Party candidate Peter Miguel Camejo.

As do I.
And while I await my critical missive from Ann, fighting the good fight for the local Dems, the rubbernecker in me hopes for a dramatic Election Day.
The Times this weekend buried a potential bombshell in the race, as convicted influence-peddler-to-the-stars Mark Nathanson’s 1993 statements are due to be released.

In a ruling that could embarrass Gov. Gray Davis in the final days of his re-election campaign, the U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for the release of a corrupt state official’s secret assertions about a decade-old bribery scandal at the California Coastal Commission.
En route to federal prison in 1993, Mark Nathanson, a Beverly Hills business executive who had confessed to orchestrating a $734,000 bribes-for- permits scheme while serving as a coastal commissioner, offered information about a state official with whom he said he worked to get campaign contributions from commission applicants, court records show.
Prosecutors dismissed Nathanson as a liar and refused to cut a deal, and he wound up serving three years in prison. Two letters detailing his allegations were sealed for years by a federal judge, then made public only in heavily censored form.
But on Oct. 7, the Supreme Court refused to hear a last-ditch plea to keep the documents secret and their release is believed imminent.
The timing is terrible for the official whom sources familiar with the case say Nathanson accused — Davis, then the state controller, and now a governor running for re-election.

Stay tuned, folks, it may turn out to be a ballgame.
I just wish I could care more about the outcome.

No, that’s not a typo, that what comes out when I repeatedly bang my head on the keyboard.
During my allotted ¾ hour of blog reading this morning (I’m not an addict, I’m not!), Jeff Cooper sent me over to Thomas Spencer, someone I haven’t read before.
About four paragraphs in, I started banging my head.
I’m not going to do a graf by graf ‘fisk’ of him, that’s so 1Q 02; I’ll simply pull some quotes and make some general comments.

W’s approval numbers are coming down. It’s time for some more war-mongering. But, wait, that’s not working. How about war itself? Surely that’ll work won’t it? It might get a few folks killed but, hey, who gives a damn about that, right? (Don’t you know Karl Rove has said something just like that to W recently?)
The sniper thing in the D.C.-area continues. Of course, we all know it’s the gun control folks behind it all, right?
Even W’s Justice Department can’t ignore how Enron and the big energy companies were gaming the California electricity grid. I suspect they’ll try though. As we all know, the public’s watchdog was bought off two years ago by their buddies in the energy business. We’ll see I guess. Don’t hold your breath that “Kenny Boy” sees the inside of a jail any time soon.
Here is more proof that the Heritage foundation is just a mouthpiece for the White House’s war effort. Of course, we already knew that, didn’t we? Is there really such a thing as a “conservative think tank?” Thinking? Really?

On that note, I’ll add – ‘thinking, really’?? Tom, you’re not a commentator, you’re a cheerleader. You need some pom-poms and a letter sweater with ‘DNC’ on the front. I hope your plan works, and the rhetoric gets you ‘seen’ and picked up by the party – those staff jobs can pay well – but even as partisan rhetoric, this makes me want to take a shower.
Now, other than damaging my delicate sensibilities, this matters for two reasons.
First, because the average American isn’t a moron, and knows when they’re being shilled…and both parties are shilling like mad…and the disgust of the voting class is palpable.
Next, because it conveniently ignores the culpability of his team (sadly, it’s mine as well) in looting the public purse, and building Sky Boxes to keep the unwashed at bay. We are in an era when the entrenched political classes have sold their souls to powerful monied interests, to the clear detriment of the average American. From top to bottom, good people go into the system and venal functionaries rise to the top.
As long as each party can blow enough smoke at the other guys as the cascade of scandal unfolds, they have some prayer that their own venality, self-interest, and corruption will get overlooked. Because I’m a liberal, I’m supposed to overlook the sins of ‘my guys’ and put a magnifying glass to the sins of the ‘other team’. Well, fuck it. They’re all sinners, and until enough of us are willing to stand up and point to the dirt on our hems, this problem isn’t going to go away.
This isn’t a sport, we aren’t divided into teams, and my children’s world is at stake.
So good work, Tom, catch you later. And Jeff – what the hell are you thinking?
[Update: I went over to Tom’s blog, and no, I don’t think I read it too carelessly. Tom, do me a favor: find three things you’ve said in the last 90 days that challenge any Democrat in remotely the manner you attack the Republicans…I’ll be standing by.
Now look, partisanship is a Good Thing. I don’t think we can, or should, all live in the mushy middle. And hardball politics has been a part of American politics (not to mention, say, Florentine poltics) for a long damn time.
But as I note here, the way it is being played now, it’s a loser’s game.

Who says Doonesbury stopped being funny and relevant about ten years ago??…me, for one…but now that he’s mentioning blogging, do I have to reconsider??

Via Andrew Edwards, Thomas Friedman’s column in the NYT. The key excerpt:

Think of it like this: There are two ways for a government to get rich in the Middle East. One is by drilling a sand dune and the other is by drilling the talents, intelligence, creativity and energy of its men and women. As long as the autocratic leaders of Iran, Iraq or Saudi Arabia can get rich by drilling their natural resources, they can stay in power a long, long time. All they have to do is capture control of the oil tap. Only when a government has to drill its human resources will it organize itself in a way that enables it to extract those talents — with modern education, open trade, and freedom of thought, of scientific enquiry and of the press.
For all these reasons, if we really want to hasten the transition from autocracy to something more democratic in places like Iraq or Iran, the most important thing we can do is gradually, but steadily, bring down the price of oil — through conservation and alternative energies.

Yeah!! What he said!!
The sad fact is that the oil-producing countries are rich junkies; their lives and health are falling apart, but the trust fund manages to keep them afloat, hooked, and unhealthy. Without it, they would hit bottom and have to change. With it, the decline is prolonged.

The newly-laid-out LA Times has some pretty good stuff on the editorial pages this morning (registration required, use ‘laexaminer’/’laexminer’):
First, a great article by David Friedman on the changing job climate in California, and some of the longer term implications.

Few Californians seem aware of the state’s disturbing economic circumstances. The economy is losing well-paying blue-collar and middle-class jobs at an astounding rate, especially in the Bay Area. Meanwhile, growth is increasingly concentrated in a handful of outlying counties. As a result, California’s economy is fragmenting as never before between slow-growth, politically powerful population centers and pro-growth, politically marginal counties that surround urban cores. And California’s leaders seem indifferent.

Next, a great column by the sometimes infuriating, sometimes enlightening John Balzar on the ways our perception of terror are driven by the media:

A while back, Americans could wring their hands because their nation had become too callous. Now, if we’d only take a deep breath we would see that we’re too callous and too fearful at the same time.
Terrorism in its many forms, whether school shootings, shopping-center shootings, far-off truck bombings or poison-by-mail, is not just a physical danger but also a rising threat to our mental composure. Lately, I’ve found myself in any number of macabre conversations in which people seem to have slipped their moorings entirely.

Finally, a column by my personal muse, Jill Stewart on the role and demise of the New Times, and the role of media in Los Angeles…

Some hated us, prayed for us to disappear. Others, although certainly not happy with our coverage of them, came to like New Times because it skewered their enemies, too. We were equal-opportunity lambasters. We just wanted to force crucial issues into the open, to keep our massive region from devolving into a West Coast urban nightmare a la Detroit.

…an honorable goal, and one that we should all share.