"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

Michael Moore

Saw Mr. Moore yesterday at Berkeley with Luke and Kim. I went pretty much to see what the nuance of act was like, how he pulls it off and where he's going with the whole thing. See, I fancy myself a player these days, and keeping up on the scene is job one if you want to be in the game.

The two things I was happiest to hear was his sense of general optimism about the chances of getting rid of the current administration come November '04, and his call to arms for us young people to seriously participate by running for office. That's something I've thought about, and I'm glad someone in a position of power is out there blowing the conch if for no other reason than it makes me feel less egotistical for thinking I might someday hold some elected office.

But Michael Moore deals almost exclusively in rhetoric, so I end up having problems with a lot of what he says. He's Rush for the left, though hopefully without the junk habit, and as such I'm glad he's there. But I'm also chagrined that he falls into so many of the same polemical pitfalls -- hypocracy, hyperbole and other hy-isms I'm sure -- that we lambaste the Bad Guys on the other side for wallowing in. For instance, he trumpets the statistical demise of the angry white man, yet is undeniably one of said species himself. For instance, he says of Howard Dean that people aught to work him on his less-progressive positions (e.g. death penalty) yet trumpets the entry Wes Clark while only quiely and off-handedly admitting that many of his positions are completely unknown.

And he plays a dumb game called "stump the Yank" where he pulls some C-student Canadian and a straight-A's American (actually three of them) on stage and quizzes them in a rigged fashion. This after bringing up the National Geographic study which showed just how little young Americans can locate on a map. The first question to the Canadian player is "what is the name of the current US President?" which he of course answers. The accompanying query to the US student is to name the Prime Minister of Canada, which none of them can do. Everyone's a good sport about it, but I don't think this is particularly edifying or even worthwhile as an exercise. There is a point, that we Americans tend to be self-centered, but there's also the strong counterpoint that the President of the US, whoever it is, has vastly more geopolitical importance than the Canadian PM.

More broadly, I strongly dislike things which suggests that people are stupid. I find that to be a disempowering position to take as an agent for change. My preferred reading is that there are lot of people who lack a lot of knowledge, but this is more because they've been treaded like idiots by their culture and educational system than because they're inherently dumb in any way. The power of suggestion is strong, and if you treat people like they're stupid, they'll often react in a stupid fashion. I firmly believe that if you treat people with respect, communicate well, and assume they have intelligence, they'll more often than not rise to the occasion.

We need more of the latter if we're to turn things around here, and it seems to me that Michael Moore as an author and speaker deals too often in radical oversimplification and passive-aggressive condescention. As a filmmaker I find him far more deep and provocative, but when he puts himself in the focus he seems to inspire more ditto-headed "yup yup, those bastards" knee-jerk criticism of the Right than actual critical thought. We are at war -- politics is war by any other means -- but Moore's brand of attack seems to have relatively little consideration for securing the peace after the battle is won.

But I knew I didn't really like Moore's style as a speaker going into the thing, so it's no shock that I'm less than a cheerleader for his methods. As I said, I'm glad he's out there. He's a warrior, but I can't get behind him with my whole political heart. It certainly made for good dinner conversation with Luke and Kim and Nick.

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Consistancy: the Proof is in the Pudding

So let's wrap our heads around this; Tommy gets 9 months for paraphinalia and Rush goes to rehab in spite of trafficing in 1000s of pills. I'm not saying Rush should go to jail; I wouldn't advocate sending an addict to prision, much as the perverse irony of forcing the mother of all windbags to follow his own advice appeals to the political warrior in me. It would be fun, but it would also be wrong.

Let's talk about the truth and chemicals. It's true that drug use, abuse and addiction can all be destructive for individuals and communities. It's also true that none of these are necessarily so, that in fact the reverse may be true depending on the individual circumstances and the substance involved. It's also true that sending people to prison is perhaps the most expensive and least effective way of dealing with the social problems that drugs create. Finally, it also seems true that if we're going to have a free society, that freedom aught to include chemical liberty, the recognition that our bodies are our own property, and as such we have sovereignty over our own phisiology.

Perhaps Rush's admission will cause the mindlocked debate over drugs in our society to shamble forward a step or two. Perhaps it will cause people to stop demogauging about substances and start thinking about how we might inject a little sanity into our legislative system. I think it will probably take a new generation -- probably mine since generation X seems to do fuck-all -- to get this country off it's 100-year puritan rampage and back into the smooth groove of reason. It's going to take people stepping away from ideology and lore and into the realities of human experience. On a meta level, this is movement that's picking up steam, so maybe there's cause for hope yet.

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Groping For Meaning

There's a serious problem in this country when paragraphs like this appear from prominant (Maureen Dowd) columnists in major (NY Times) newspapers with regards to the recent re-revelation of gubernatorial candidate Ahhhnold's shabby treatment of women:

Now Republicans who thundered against Bill — not Arnold, who scorned impeachment as a waste of time and money — argue that peccadilloes are not relevant to governing. And feminists who backed Bill are ushering Arnold gropees up to the Democratic microphones.

Let's get something fucking straight. Bill Clinton received consensual oral sex from an intern in his office, and while this wasn't an issue in the attendant media circus, I'll bet he reciprocated too. Arnold Schwarzenegger on the other hand made several specific, aggressive, crude, unwanted, unsuccessful and non-consensual advances towards women, detailed quite sickeningly here. These are completely, utterly, and indisputably different sets of actions with absolutely separate moral content and value. One guy I understand, the other makes me ashamed to have the same gender.

You can argue that Clinton abused his power in an indirect way with regards to his affair w/Ms. Lewinski, but the situation still boils down to two consenting adults having fun with one another. He's a playboy in a long tradition of playboys, and while I wish dearly he'd have had the spine to admit it at the time (might have dragged this country forward a step) I still maintain that he didn't do anything all that wrong. He fucked around with someone, and that is essentially personal -- between he and his mistress and his wife.

Arnold's actions, on the other hand, showcase a completely different set of values. He's either a straight-up abuser, or he doesn't have the human sensibility to know when his advances are unwanted, goes around humping people whenever he feels like it. Looking at his sum total history, one gets the sense that a lot of what he does is about power, and that his crudely aggressive sexuality is an extension of that. His blatant use of power -- both physical and professional -- to sucessfully perpitrate these ugly sex pranks really makes the whole thing take on a dark tone; it's not fun or good or happy. It approaches the realm of evil.

And if he weren't an enormously powerful man, he would have been kicked in the nuts several times by now and probably learned his lesson. But he hasn't, and his attitude towards women is not funny, right, nice or even excusable. He's a fucking dick, the guy at the party everyone just wants to leave, and his behavior enrages me personally as a man.

The fact that his past actions are being paralelled with Clinton's would be laughable if it weren't so sick underneath. Are we still too puritanically straightlaced to be honest about sex and power? Do people seriously not see the difference between consenting sex (even if it is adultry) and aggressive harassment? If so, that's pretty fucking degrading. It's a shameful reflection of this nation's maturity and still-lingering misogyny that these two types of sexual interaction are being equated in the national political press.

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Roses are Red

So Tom Tomorrow as the text of a poem by our Commander in Chief. What's the worst part? The carrier reference? The fact that he referrs to his wife as "lump in my bed?" I don't know, but it makes me feel uneasy in new and perilous ways.

I havn't been pushing out the same quantity of political observations lately. Partly that's because I've moved and have lots of personal observations that I think are worthwhile. Partly that's because I'm kind of fulltime on politix and I don't always have as much mojo left at the end of the day. Partly it's because I'm reaching for a mannifesto; trying to build something up that's more than a couple paragraphs of the same old same old. We'll see.

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Thoughts on a Movement

My underwriter buddy Britt Blaser is continuing to pound out some righteous bits:


My concern this Presidential election cycle is that the free trade of ideas and their stakeholders may be as threatening to politicians as to entrenched commercial interests. That's why I've established the Free the Internet Contribution page at Dean for America. Dean is the only candidate with a vested interest in a free and open Internet, so he's the only candidate we can trust to defend it against the establishment.

That's what it is, friends. My man Howard Dean is set to raise more money this quarter than any other Democrat has ever done in the same period, and it's being done largely on the backs of small contributions; average size hovering around $100.

Imagine the implications here. I was taking the train today with some people on their way back from an anti-occupation protest, one fellow with a "tired of being fucked by politics?" button depicting hot Elephant on Donkey action. While I don't take that stance, I do see where this kind of frustration comes from. If we can maintain the momentum and growth of the Dean campaign, we'll be well on our way to making that particular brand of apathy obsolete.

There was one protester who had to borrow a couple bucks on the BART to pay his way out -- part of the eccentricity of that particular mass-transit system -- but most of the sign-carrying folk were well attired and had an air of material comfortability about them. So I wanted to ask them to get their hands dirty and buy a share of the process, but I didn't; too tired. But I wish I had. This time around everyone's a tycoon if they want to be.

And if you don't have the cash to spare that's allright too; you probably have time and friends and a spark of ingenuity. In spite of how easy it is to imagine a massive populist war chest -- just a million people giving a thousand each -- the likely reality is that Dubya will be able to outspend anyone. The difference is going to be made up by soul; by volunteer hours and word-of-mouth advertising; by human-centric processes happening over bi-directional networks, both personal and packet-switched. The difference is going to be individuals who've awakened to their agency in the process and who are exercising their right to be participants, to be producers of politics and not just consumers. The difference will be you and me.

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Landed; Off and Running

I'm in California now. Working it full-time double plus. I live and breathe the revolution for a year now. Light updates for a while as ramp-up begins. If you can, give money to Howard Dean. The amount you spend on a night at the bar is enough to make a difference.

Also, on Dean and Clark and the Eisenhower precident, Britt's got some interesting analysis from a friend. I tend to think that this election cycle has no real precident, but if people are going to shuffle through history, they might as well get it right.

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Negative Campaign Websites

Dick Gephardt's campaign is the first to launch a negative campaign website against another Dem candidate. See deanfacts.com for all the ugly business. There's also another site -- waffle powered howard -- which does about the same thing with less accuracy and without attributing its source, but a whois query tells us it's registered to Eric Huebner, who also runs this pro-kerry site so I think that mystery is solved.

Hopefully these are the last, but I fear that won't be the case. This is total bullshit for three reasions:

  • Going negative, especially this early, against another Dem is bad for the party -- it's free ammo for Bush
  • The quotes are circa 1995 -- if we wanted to dig through everything anyone said over the past 10 years, we'd probably find some things that conflict with his or her positions today
  • This tactic is intended to supress participation -- to keep people dispirited and out of the process

The last reason is the one that really gets me. This election is about whether or not we can break the cycle of fear and non-participation that has dominated politics for so long, and become intolerable over the past few years. Gephardt's campaign and at least one member of Kerry's grassroots are giving in to the dark side. Let's keep our eyes on the prize, and let's keep turning people on with participation.

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Krugman For Dean!

In an interview with the Guardain, Paul Krugman -- my own American Idol -- appears to give a non-endorsement endorsement of Howard Dean:

. "One of the Democratic candidates - who I'm not endorsing, because I'm not allowed to endorse - has as his slogan, 'I want my country back'," Krugman says, referring to the campaigning motto of Howard Dean. "I think that's about right."

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Brooks Slams Dean Again

David Brooks sure does have it in for my man Howard Dean. In his last column, he went after the Doctor Governor for being too similar to Bush, attacking Dean's populist base of support by painting him as a playboy elitist. I debunked that here. In todays NYT, Brooks devotes his second consecutive column to attacking Dean, this time by putting forth the notion that the GOP would love to face him. It's a shrewed attack, but utterly baseless.

First of all, Brooks is an opinion columnist and a known GOP operative, not a journalist. He's playing for the other team, so the fact that he's attacked Dean twice in a row and is trying to push the notion that Bush is laughing at the prospect of facing off with Ho Ho should be taken with a shaker of salt. He doesn't name names or quote anyone. His objective is quite clearly to sew doubt among Dean's base of support.

Secondly, Bush is polling consistantly in the low 50s. An internal White House poll pegged him at 49%. He's not laughing at the prospect of facing anyone right now.

David Brook is attempting to sew Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt among the ranks of Democrats with regards to Dean. It's a pretty blatant and transparent attempt, so I don't think it will work. Mostly, it's up to the rest of to laugh this kind of BS off.

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VT Safari

Speaking of my dancing feet, it's Dean season and I just got my tags. I'm headed up to Burlington tomorrow with Britt Blaser and he tells me there's not a hotel to be booked in the whole damn town. Summer tourism is done and the fall leaf tours have yet to begin, so what's drawing the crowds to Vermont? I'm thinking it has something to do with the next president of the United States.

Britt and I will be friendly IT Angels, helping out with whatever needs doing. I'll also be connecting with Deanspace honcho Zack Rosen (who works for DFA) and try and spread the word about Music For America. Hopefully it will be a fun time. It should be.

Britt and I are going to be doing some kind of co-blog of our official adventures. We'll probably co-post some of the same content. We're also taking suggestions as to things we should plant in the ears of the Dean campaign. Let me know if you have any gems.

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