History

Last night history was made. After a year of debate, political gamesmanship, stall tactics, obstructionism, sensationalized claims, rallies, and everything else that made this feel very much like a political campaign that just wouldn’t end, this was the scene at the White House as congress finally signed the bill that gave health care reform a starting point.

This is success. Not only for President Obama but also for millions and millions of Americans. When I saw this man speak for the first time at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, I thought he was amazing and hoped that I’d be seeing him in national politics. As it turns out he was responsible for the biggest sweeping change in social legislation since Medicare.

And to those who doubt the historical impact that this will have, realize that George W. Bush isn’t known for his attempt to privatize Social Security. I’d bet many of you barely remember it because it was such a colossal failure. He’s forever going to be known for his “Mission Accomplished” banner that was engulfed in anything but success in the war he started.

But I think the best summation of events comes from none other than Josh Marshall at TPM. His insight is nearly always right on the mark.

Today, when David Frum wrote that this was turning out to be the GOP’s Waterloo, he had two interlocking points — one focused on policy, another political.

The US has had several runs with major pieces of social legislation. And the record is that they don’t get repealed. They’re expanded and become embedded in the national political economy. That was what was at the heart of Bill Kristol’s famous (or infamous) memo on reform from 1994. Once Health Care reform is passed; the middle class will like it. And there will be no repealing or doing away with it. And its success would create a new generation of Democrats. That was his fear.

To that end, Frum’s policy point was, who cares if the Republicans take back Congress? Majorities come and go. But reform is permanent. For conservatives it’s a catastrophic development and if they’d actually been part of the dialog they probably could have gotten a bill much more to their liking. The second point is political, though he’s less clear in this case. Republicans, he says, are probably overestimating their chances this fall in any case.

To that last point I want to make a special note to watch the future ramifications of the Republicans’ decision to actively obstruct this legislation. Instead of putting forth a genuine effort to come together for the good of reforming a broken health care system, they instead banked everything on turning this into a political shell game with which they could reap the benefits of its failure. I know I’m called a cynic, but I’ve got nothing on this level of cynicism. And it’s all I could think about last night as I watched the final debate and the final votes. To the last Republican member, they flailed wildly, hoping upon hope that they could scare those few Democratic members who may at the last moment change their vote.

And then I saw a tweet from David Frum, who Josh linked above, who correctly noted that this all has and will continue to backfire on Republicans. It was at that point that I realized it was only the hyperpartisan who hadn’t yet realized it. Obama and Democrats invested the lion’s share of his overwhelming political capital that he had won in the 2008 election into this legislation. Don’t think for a moment that its success doesn’t mean they’ll win a great deal of it back. And the opposite is true as well; Republicans are going to ultimately end up losing more than they ever thought possible.

History will not remember the process, they’ll only remember the result. And though much of that process got extremely ugly on the part of the opposition just a day or two before the vote by protesters who called out racial and sexual denigrations towards members of congress, and held up signs threatening the use of violence if this bill passed, the result is what history books will tell.

That said: Yes. We. Can.

Patton (the wife) and I had to day off yesterday and finally got out to see the Pompeii exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota. But rather than assume that anyone who is reading this knows that I’m talking about, here’s the short-short-short version: about 2,000 years ago the city of Pompeii (Italy) was buried under the effects of the eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius. Many of victims died from a volcanic mudslide of sorts which left the world with last fossil records of these poor people in their last moments.

The exhibit was a bit pricey, but when you view all that they have to share you’ll quickly determine that it was well worth the money. I’m a sucker for artifacts, and the exhibit is filled with them. Everything from coins to the everyday items people used such as stoves, braziers, combs and even carbonized bread that was still in the oven. The entire exhibit is labeled with numbers that one can punch into a little hand-held guide that will play for the user extended information about any given subject in the exhibit. But it’s the final part the exhibit which truly takes your breath away.

You round the corner, see an enormous version of Karl Briullov’s ‘The Last Days of Pompeii’ and this is the first piece you see.

To the uninitiated, the victims of Pompeii were wiped out by pyroclastic slides, which is basically volcanic mud. I know that sounds oddly relaxing, but this is the kind of mud you don’t want to relax in at some spa. With temperatures estimated at 644°F (340°C) it’s life-snuffing. But when it encased the people of Pompeii and hardened into rock, the people inside eventually turned to dust leaving little natural cavities in the earth that some guy named Giuseppe Fiorelli had the brilliant idea of filling with plaster, letting it harden and then uncovering them. The result is nothing short of breathtaking.

Patton was very moved by the exhibit, and I reassured her that most of these people didn’t live long enough to suffer much. I was also struck by how close the SMM would allow visitors to get. I assure you that I’d never take my children there because I can’t even trust them with my TV remote, much less clearly labeled “DO NOT TOUCH” plaster artifacts. But after I left I was struck with the old mom adage “Are you wearing clean underwear” thing and I couldn’t help but laugh.

If you get the chance to see this kind of exhibit, I’d definitely make plans to do so.

There’s a woman in Florida who’s snapped her cap and decided that book-burning isn’t just for the swastika-adorned anymore…

Eighty books in high school library stacks are corrupting students with tales of abortion, homosexuality and atheism. That’s according to a West Palm Beach mother who has appealed to the school board to remove the books from the shelves of Dreyfoos and Royal Palm Beach high schools.

Laura Lopez has been fighting since September to ban these books that she says “promote sin and lies.”

*snip*

Lopez admits she hasn’t read a single one of the objectionable books cover-to-cover.

*snip*

“My oldest son doesn’t believe in God,” she said. “I guess he kind of thinks I’m stupid.”

Oh, at this point, my dear, there’s quite a few more of us out there that don’t just think you’re stupid — we know it.

And the morning invocation in the Senate chamber was opened for the very first time today by a Hindu. Well, um, sort of…

The three protesters, who all belong to the Christian Right anti-abortion group Operation Save America, and who apparently traveled to Washington all the way from North Carolina, interrupted by loudly asking for God’s forgiveness for allowing the false prayer of a Hindu in the Senate chamber.

“Lord Jesus, forgive us father for allowing a prayer of the wicked, which is an abomination in your sight,” the first protester began.

“This is an abomination,” he continued. “We shall have no other gods before You.”

I keep hearing the words of the late Bill Hicks in my head whenever I read stories like this: “I think God sent you here to test my faith, dude.”

But see, the fun links to bat-shit crazy people stories don’t end there. TPM was kind enough to provide a link to this particular group of ignorami. Let’s say, for example, you wanted to know their mission.

Operation Save America unashamedly takes up the cause of preborn children in the name of Jesus Christ. We employ only biblical principles. The Bible is our foundation; the Cross of Christ is our strategy; the repentance of the Church of Jesus Christ is our ultimate goal. As the Church changes its heart toward unborn children, God Himself will hear from heaven, forgive our sin, and bring healing to our land. We believe that Jesus Christ is the only answer to the abortion holocaust. It is upon our active repentance in the streets of our cities that the Gospel is visibly lived out. We become to the church, to our city, and to our nation living parables which rightly represent God’s heart toward His helpless children.

There are no cheap political solutions to the holocaust presently ravaging our nation. Like slavery before it, abortion is preeminently a Gospel issue. The Cross of Christ is the only solution.

That’s it. There is no more. I don’t know about you, but I’m still wondering what their mission is. If Jesus is indeed the “only answer” to the “abortion holocaust”, what the hell do you people think you’re doing? Leave it to Jesus. Tell you what — I’ll sit and wait for him with you. You bring the popcorn and I’ll bring an ice-cold case of common fucking sense with some cold hard facts to keep it chilled.

So, as one would imagine, the press release offered by the clinically deranged makes about as much sense.

Ante Pavkovic, Kathy Pavkovic, and Kristen Sugar were all arrested in the chambers of the United States Senate as that chamber was violated by a false Hindu god. The Senate was opened with a Hindu prayer placing the false god of Hinduism on a level playing field with the One True God, Jesus Christ. This would never have been allowed by our Founding Fathers.

Actually, you backwoods, factually-challenged nimwits, they would’ve stood for it. They would’ve applauded it. I think I finally understand why you people hate major universities — they actually teach true history and the version that’s been shot through the God-prism that’s available at Liberty “University”. That’s the place that carefully cleanses out the parts, written by the hands of our Forefathers, that pretty clearly shows that few of them believed Jesus was divine. We are a nation founded by English settlers so it’s no mystery how God became so popular. I think had we equal parts from the Asian subcontinent and England it would’ve developed rather differently.

And here’s the silly part: These hunyucks have the audacity to get upset and claim their religious rights were violated. Never mind the theological ass-raping they attempted on Rajan Zed — these people were removed from the Senate chambers. Oh heaven forfend…

When I was still fairly ambivalent to politics, and not quite attuned to the history of my man TJ, one of the most striking memories I have was a brief discussion with a friend of mine who can only be described as an otherwise well-intended, gun-toting evangelistic Christian. I think he’s a good 25 years my senior, and it’s been too long since I’ve spoken with him, but I can still remember some of the things he told me in dead earnestness.

“You know, Thomas Jefferson never really intended for there to be a wall between religion and the government — that’s a myth.”

“It’s true,” piped in our mutual friend who isn’t quite so gun-toting but makes up for it in religious fervor, “Jefferson regretted that it was taken in that direction.”

In my naivety I just nodded and smiled, knowing there was something afoul with what they were proclaiming based on what little I had picked up on in history class. As a sort of blessing in disguise, it was in fact-checking what they told me that began a life-long adulation of my man TJ. Oh, and in case some rightie tells you the same horsepuckey that Jefferson was disappointed in having a separation of church and state, point out that the University of Virginia was established by Jefferson with the following statement to Thomas Cooper: “a professorship of theology should have no place in our institution”.

The funny thing is that this proof of fallacious attempts at rewriting history doesn’t even seem to slow down the factually-challenged. As pointed out by the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, PBS is airing a program which calls into question not the fact that there is a separation, but instead calls into question the intent of our nations founders.

“…[W]hat would surprise most Americans,” it asserts, “is the discovery that this is not what the Founding Fathers of our country intended when they established our nation and wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights. They in fact had a radically different definition of establishment and the role of religion in state and federal governments than we do today. So radical, in fact, that some say the modern understanding of the role of religion in the public square is exactly the opposite of what the Founders intended.”

Like renaming creationism to intelligent design, the righties are attempting to repackage the same argument. The problem is that there’s no theories involved here. Want proof that the founders didn’t want America to be a religion-driven country? One need look no further than the Treaty of Tripoli. Take a peek at Article XI.

“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

This treaty was written under the Washington administration, accepted by his successor John Adams, and ratified unanimously by the United States Senate in 1797. The intentions of what our founders envisioned America simply couldn’t get any clearer. And this isn’t a he said/she said — if you insist on believing that our founders had different ideas about the role that religion should play in the United States government, you’re wrong. You’re not even a little right, okay? You’re wrong. Take it like a champ and move on with your life.

You can, however, argue about the benefits of having a government entwined with a national church. I can point out England, the country from which we upstart Yanks separated from, was a country with a supreme leader of both church and state. It was that very unitary sovereign that our founders used as an example of what not to do when they established this nation. Oddly enough, our cousins across the pond have slowly seemed to come around to our perspective at the very same time that the fundamentalists in this country are arguing for a religious government. That is a difference of opinion. Unfortunately, I have the founders on my side. You have the ancient kings and queens of England on yours. Good luck.

I’ve been occupying myself with some rather dry listening material lately – specifically the lectures by Professor Dennis Dalton entitled Power Over People: Classical and Modern Political Theory. It’s the perfect mixture for me: History, politics and philosophy.

I know – I’m the perfect nerd. You don’t have to tell me this as I am consistently reminded when I tell my friends what I’m listening to. But as I explained to a friend my entire life is wrapped around why people do what they do and what shapes them into who they are.

ocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Marx, Gandhi—these exceptional thinkers sculpted, piece by piece, Western political thought from its inception in 5th-century (B.C.) Athens.

In so doing, they grappled with such imposing questions as:

• What is the correct relationship of the individual to society?
• What is the connection between individual freedom and social and political authority?
• Are human beings fundamentally equal or unequal?

About mid-way through the lecture on Emma Goldman’s Anarchism, I was struck with something that I wanted to share with you.

When it comes to political-minded people, we’re all accused at one time or another of reading books that affirm what one already believes. That’s apparently why right-wingers pick up books by O’Reilly and why I pick up Franken. There is a grain of truth to this accusation, but I think people are genuinely comforted when they know their beliefs are not unique in the world.

What I realized was to what extent I was seeing the tactics and policies of the current administration in the writings of Machiavelli and Hitler. That isn’t meant to be inflammatory, it’s just an observation. I’m not accusing Bush or Cheney of being anti-Semitic either. Specifically, when it comes to Machiavelli’s work The Prince, and it’s mountains of unendurably pragmatic observations that are made by the Grand Inquisitor, you can’t help but wonder if it isn’t on the Neoconservative required reading list.

Take Bush’s stances of “I’ll continue if it’s just Barney backing me” or “I don’t pay attention to polls” or “you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists” and compare them to this statement:

From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both: but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.
-The Prince chap. 6

And Hitler? Well, consider how tied to the Religious Right Bush is and how convinced he is that his actions are in accordance with his Almighty.

I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.
-Mein Kampf pg. 46

I don’t think that I read things to reaffirm what I already believe. I just continue to find evidence that human nature tends to repeat itself throughout history before people notice.