Stuck in the Middle With You
By David Glenn Cox
I consider myself a reasonable person; I have my beliefs and I adhere to them. Yet I can be swayed with facts, and will admit that I am wrong from time to time. I get almost all my news and information from the Internet. It’s easier to explain where I don’t get my information from: I don’t own a television, and I don’t go to CNN or Fox News or any broadcasting company website.
There are several websites that I view which I consider to be mainstream, and the reason that I go there is to see if: A) The story is being covered at all, and B) To read the comments of the thundering herd. I find many of these opinions not just out of the mainstream but outside of rational.
The man suspected of killing four police officers in Washington state Sunday was fatally shot by police in Seattle Tuesday morning. Maurice Clemmons was sought in the shooting deaths of four police troopers at a coffee shop the Seattle suburb of Lakewood.
“Lets hope they round them up and Jail them all.”
“Thank god he is dead.”
“We is/was a prison muslim convert. I wonder if he is with his 72 virgins?”
“OK, arrest his 'helpers' try them and THEN lock em up. They commited crimes against the state by helping this SOB, and they should be tried as such.”
Reading these remarks, all I could think of was the pursuit of Montag in "Fahrenheit 451." The comments calling for a trial or a hearing were in the minority; the majority favored an extra-judicial killing of a suspect. Mr. Clemmons might be guilty as sin, but this mentality of shoot first and ask questions later says a lot about our society.
It would be easy to marginalize these people as nuts and whackos, but we do so at our own peril. The politicization of every issue leaves us with a hammer and nail mentality. Our politicians are viewed as either good guys or bad guys, and if they are good they are almost saintly, while if they are bad they are demonic and consorting with Satan at every opportunity.
The fault line is Barack Obama. The right wing doesn’t just dislike him, they despise him. They portray him as a Godzilla monster destroying America until it reaches the point of silliness. The White House has specifically left the control of the health care debate in the hands of congressional leaders. So how does the Republican media refer to the congressionally mediated program? Obama care.
It does not matter what Barak Obama does, the Republicans and the thundering herd will find fault with it.
“Now Obama is intentionally increasing the risk of failure by sending only 34,000 new troops when a minimum of 40,000 reinforcements are needed. Obama appears to either be an incompetent commander in chief or to be naive and very very foolish not to provide our troops with everything they need to increase their chances of success.”
“If Karzai is not cooperating it may endanger our troops. I dont like the sound of this at all. This is not Chicago where you can go around people to get what you want with our troops lives, or a game of lets make a deal, this is life and death. OMG what will he think of next?”
“Bring the troops home!! They are needed to help fight violent crime in the ghettos and trailer parks of the US.”
This has reached a point of beyond the absurd. Never mind what happened yesterday, never mind how we got to this point in the first place, only the hammer. Hammer them again and again; kill the faceless bad guys. Kill, Kill, Kill, USA, USA, USA!
Either the hammer or the nail, if we don’t hammer them they will come hammer us. If you’re not the hammer, you’re the nail. But is it really that simple? After eight years of hammering what have we accomplished other than to hammer everything to pieces?
The generals and the Pentagon want more, more, more, and that is their job. They're no different than General McClellan telling Lincoln that he, too, needed more troops. Generals always want more troops. Lincoln opted for a different approach and replaced generals. It should be remembered that at the time the American Civil War was the largest land campaign ever fought, and some questioned whether it could be fought or won by either side. Yet it was fought and completed in little more than four years.
The Afghan populace views us as invaders come to subjugate them. The Pakistanis view us much the same way, so we are neither making friends nor influencing people. We are only pissing them off, and at great expense. Surely if our goal is to piss them off, we can find a more cost-effective method. The argument used is that we must hunt down al Qaeda. So we spend billions upon billions and al Qaeda disappears into the grass like so many jackrabbits, only to reappear again at some other time and place.
Do we follow? If so, how far? The more we follow the better they recruit, until eventually we must stop and ask ourselves what are we accomplishing? By what metric do we judge success? President Obama gave his speech last night at West Point. In measured tones and with soaring rhetoric, twenty-two times he mentioned al Qaeda, and a dozen more he mentioned 9/11 or referenced it. He wrapped himself up tightly in the flag until I almost forgot who I was listening to. For a moment I could hear that Texas drawl and the nauseating laugh. I suddenly realized that we’re back to making speeches at military bases.
I was in the grocery store yesterday and heard a little girl tell her mother, “I hate vanilla ice cream.” I wanted to correct her that she only disliked vanilla ice cream; that hate is far too extreme a word to describe ice cream. You hate Nazis, and you hate that children are starving to death around the world. You hate that the world’s rain forests are being cut down.
I do not hate Barack Obama, and I do not hate the men and women in Congress. I merely have disagreements with them that prompt me to call into question their motivations. The war in Afghanistan was begun by the Bush administration. It was handled badly and was handed off to the current administration that was elected by promising us hope and change. Because of this I question the expansion of the war.
The Bush administration, through its stated policy of deregulation, trashed the economy. It was Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that came up with the $800 billion banking bailout. Paulson, before becoming Treasury Secretary, was in charge of investment banking for Goldman Sachs. Mr. Paulson was replaced by the current administration with Mr. Geithner. Mr. Paulson described Mr. Geithner as "
very unusually talented young man... understands government and understands markets."
Geithner is indeed talented, there is no mistaking that. But Geithner’s resume is of a man who works inside the system and for the benefit of the system; you might see hope, but you won’t see change. Kissinger & Associates, Council on Foreign Relations, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Federal Open Markets Committee. I don’t hate Mr. Geithner, but I see him as not very different from Hank Paulson, and I don’t see Mr. Obama’s economic policy as very different from Mr. Bush’s economic policy.
So, when these things are coupled with Obama’s acquiescence to the Pentagon to expand the war in Afghanistan, I become concerned because I see a pattern forming. When the banks were in trouble they were given cash; when mortgagee’s were in trouble they were given a program that, by it’s own admission, is at best only assisting 14% of struggling homeowners.
A stimulus program that was 40% tax credits. Tax credits piled on top of the Bush tax cuts while the Republicans rail about the deficit. While the thundering herd rails about communism and socialism and Obama destroying the capitalist system, he’s instead feathering their nest and protecting them.
Finally, we have the healthcare debate that with every poll and survey shows strong support for the public option. Will we get the public option? Only time will tell. We might get the label of a public option, weighted down with ifs and whens and meeting certain conditions under certain circumstances and just for certain people. Democratic politicians jockey for position and move the goal posts to match whatever comes out of the committee at day’s end.
I don’t hate these people, and I don’t hate the Republicans and Democrats shilling for insurance corporations. I just remind them all that failure is failure no matter what you call it. That talking about reform isn’t reform, it's just talk. Talking about a jobs summit isn’t jobs, it's just talk. The cold are still cold and the hungry are still hungry. The homeless are still homeless and the ill will are still sick. I didn’t like it when the last President wrapped himself in the flag to sell a senseless war, and I like it even less in this President because I expected so much more.
I don’t hate Barack Obama, but by criticizing his policies I will be accused of it. Because the thundering herd runs in both parties. I disagree with his policies. I think he is a fine fellow, but I see him as a consensus builder. You want ten and I want one, so the answer is five. Some generals want 50,000 more troops while some want out, so the answer was 20,000 more, and now 34,000 more?
More trickle down economics and laissez faire capitalism on Wall Street? Expanding the wars? And talk of a jobs summit.
Barack Obama inherited the worst economic crisis in seven decades, and it is not his fault. In many ways it is worse than the last Great Depression as our industries then were only shut down and not completely exported. We weren’t fighting two wars and owing trillions of dollars to foreign governments.
I understand the difficult position that he is in, but don’t see any road out of it by continuing the same policies that got us here. A camel is a horse built by a committee, and the consensus always says to run in a circle.
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