We're headed square into the jaws of another presidential primary season. Bowers begins the roundup process, and it's looking like a lackluster affair all around.

I don't know what if any part I'll take in this. Probably not much other than to commentate, maybe do some stuff to try and alert my friends and family that John McCain and Rudy Guiliani are both pretty undesirable as presidents.

The other thing I want to do is try a little issue advocacy. I think using a similar process to the artistic cycle I outlined below, one could create a series of persuasive political message pieces that, in absence of an exciting campaign, might get the juices flowing.

Some topics I'd like to address:

• Ending the occupation in Iraq, and generally why our foreign policy should be to diversify ownership of the 20th Century empire we built.
• Free health care for everyone, because goddamnit it's time.
• Pushing the Public and State to evolve and become more like the internet: free, open, transparent, inclusive, connective.

These ideas are not represented very well by any of the candidates at this point. Realpolitik says the #1 thing is winning, and I think there's an even chance of that, but I also think those chances improve if the eventual nominee is powered by an authentic decentralized network.

I'm not paying real close attention, but my scan of the news reveals two big statements by Secretary of Defense to-be Robert Gates:

1) We're not winning in Iraq.

2) We're going to be required there for a "long time."

Does that seem nonsensical to anyone else? How long do we have to keep losing (killing and dying) before we meet our "requirements?"

Glenn Greenwald just fucked Thomas Friedman up:

Tom Friedman is a morally bankrupt narcissist whose only devotion is to the self-love of his own genius. He emphatically advocated the war beforehand but included every caveat possible so that, no matter what happened, he could claim to have been right, which is exactly what he has been doing.

But tragically, there is nothing unique about Tom Friedman. What drives him is the same mentality that enabled the administration's invasion of Iraq and, so much worse, it is the mentality that is keeping us there and will keep us there for the indefinite future. We stay in Iraq in pursuit of goals we know are fantasies, because to do otherwise requires the geniuses and serious establishment analysts to accept responsibility for what they have done -- and that is, by far, the most feared and despised outcome.

This all seems true to me, and it's going to change very slowly if at all. Totally depressing. The hope is that as the current crop of individuals who comprise the current "Establishment" begin to retire or finally lose relevance, they are not replaced by more of the same, but rather by something structurally different.

I enjoyed this.

It doesn't happen often, but today I may be a dittohead:

Fine, just blow the place up. Just let these natural forces take place over there instead of trying to stop them, instead of trying to use -- I just -- sometimes natural force is going to happen. You're going to have to let it take place. You can spend all the time you like with diplomacy, and you can spend all the time you want massaging these things with diplomatic -- you're just -- you're just delaying the inevitable.

Some on the left blogosphere (e.g. Atrios) have lumped the first sentence in the above with the "More Rubble Less Trouble" strategy advocated by the anti-Atrios Instapundit and other less visible wingers. I think the positions are distinct. "More Rubble Less Trouble" means more indiscriminant use of long-range explosives with the idea that this will work out better. It's both inhumane and incorrect (c.f. Cambodia, bitches), but it's not the same thing Rush is advocating.

Limbaugh's tone is petulant and nihilistic; he's "just fed up with it," expressing demoralization, wants to take his army and go home. He's clearly bitter and a bit passive-aggressive about the whole thing. However, his point seems to be we should withdraw regardless of the consequences. This is the only strategic direction we can take, and it's better to take it by choice than to be forced.

I don't post much about Iraq because honestly it feels like a big pointless downer. George W Bush is the only one in a position to make any kind of differences, and he thinks the lesson of Vietnam was "if we don't quit, we win." Cocksucker.

It's impossible to ignore the civil war now. When you move beyond sectarian militias, blow right past death squads and get into neighborhoods shelling one another, there's not much question.

Sadly I think it's probably all downhill from here. The only question is how ugly it will get for us before we are forced out, or how long the "lesson of Vietnam" will keep Bush prolonging the process with our presence.

For the first time in my young life, I have participated in Black Friday, the day-after-thanksgiving consumer orgy during which many retail businesses go from losing to making money for the year (from red to black, natch). Or, to put it another way, I broke with my traditional observance of Buy Nothing Day.

I don't really feel any moral qualms. I need a new laptop for my job, and I have a one-day chance to get the one I want (one of Apple's new MacBooks) for $100 less than normal. I'm high-rollin' enough to buy a new laptop, yeah, but not enough that I can sneer at a hundo discount, let alone pay Apple's "black tax" for the darker cased model.

It's a matter of public record that I detest the consumption-oriented nature of our culture and economy. I believe it trivializes and perverts the human spirit while simultaneously bringing ruination to the natural world and a sentence of servitude to millions (perhaps billions) of would-be Galileos. We must find a better way.

That being said, I don't think not buying something on a given day -- even if it were done by a statistically significant portion of the population -- is all that great a tactic. Economically, it's as impactful as the Don't Buy Gas For One Day urban legend. If you want to break out of the consumer cycle and trap, it's got to be a buy less life, not just a day that averages out over the year.

Now, I recognize that part of the value of Buy Nothing Day is as sort of personal act of observance, a keeping of the faith, but I don't need that. I don't need to go to Church to feel spiritually and morally whole either.

I've got an opportunity (Allah Akbar!) to do a little retrospective writing about my days on the Dean campaign, the whole DeanSpace thing in particular, and perhaps maybe get it published as part of an anthology style book. So I'm going to be writing about this.

My style is to write what I feel, and some of what I'm doing is good, I think, but off-topic. Hence, this post.

Epilogue
For a minute it seemed like we might be branching out of the mean zero-sum game of traditional politics, like we could break the old muscle game, the turf wars, the whole 51% shuffle, everyone fighting over the same endorsements, the same TV show slots, the same pool of "likely voters." It felt like we really might grow our way to victory, take the prize simply by doing the right thing and widening the circle of participation.

Implicit in this vision was that if we went all the way, this is how the Dean Administration would be run as well. It represented the idea of a complete recapitulation of the Bush/Cheney gestalt -- not just a reversal on policy, but on the means and modes of governance as well. We dreamed of building an inclusive and transparent movement that could not only win elections, but also support a true national consensus; of the re-emergence of that classic standard of democracy, the Public Interest.

It was happening, and I believed -- still believe -- it would have kept happening if we'd made it past Iowa.

You can see why he's on the rise and O'Reilly is on the fall. Should maybe end with "Good night, and good luck."

Glenn Greenwald:

That really is why we are in the situation we confront in Iraq. Because Richard "Only a fool -- or possibly a Frenchman -- could conclude otherwise" Cohen and his ilk demonized and caricatured the Howard Deans of the world as pacifist, amateur, naive, stupid, frivolous, dangerous French hippies even though everything Dean was saying was true and prescient and everything Cohen was saying was false and idiotic. And they're still doing that.

Atrios:

Someone finally gives Dean some props.

On a more depressing note, while hunting for something I came across this article Yglesias wrote. In May. Of 2004.

I can't believe we're still having the same goddamn conversation.

I strongly doubt that we'll see much of an uptick in accountability or integrity from the existing class of media figures and political pundits. They made their career choices a while ago; they live in that other world now. However, these people will probably continue to slide ever further into irrelevance.