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Guns And Molasses

Frankly, supporters of gun controls have been naive.

It was naive to think "surely this time people will simply dismiss the NRA" - as if the NRA hasn't been doing exactly what it's done, successfully, for years. 

It was naive to assume that convenient polling - "90% of Americans want an assault weapons ban!" - told the whole story on creating successful gun policy.

It was naive to think that one incident, however horrific, could reverse decades of inertia and resistance to changes on guns.

After each terrible shooting the past few years, I've listened to people say we need to "do something" about guns and tried to point out that the other piece of the puzzle - the deeply disturbed individuals who seem to fall through the enormous cracks in our badly broken system of approaching mental health - deserves as much, if not more, attention. This time, after Newtown, a number of conservatives, faced with immediate cries for gun legislation, lurched to the same proposition: the real problem is mental health, and that's the best plac to start.

It's telling, I think, that much promised legislative alternatives to address mental health have gone nowhere; I keep patiently watching John Cornyn, the loudest voice I heard, who promised "significant mental health legislation" within months. And.... nothing. The issues around dealing with the deeply disturbed - the lack of treatment options, the turning of mental health into a law enforcement problem rather than a healthcare problem, the challeges of separating the truly dangerous from the merely ill - are complicated, multilayered and touch on issues (like the ability of adults to make their own choices), that don't lend themselves to easy, blanket proposals. There's nuance needed. Our federal system does nuance pretty badly.

I'd argue that nuance is part of the problem on guns; the assault weapons "ban" is example A of trying to issue broad brush rules where the devil is in the details, of what isn't said and what isn't ruled out. While the ban of 1994 was somewhat successful, a vast array of exceptions were created to get around the rules, and did. People get that. And I think the idea of a new ban never quite overcame the reality that rules are made, for some, to be broken.

As someone who lives in the cultural and social world where guns are anathema, I share the sense of frustration that nothing gets done. But I've had gun owning and gun advocating friends and spent my time talking and listening to conservaives; many people on the antigun side don't, I think, appreciate the equally passionate opposing views on the other side. While antigun people lampoon the NRA and see Wayne LaPierre as a joke, the NRA knows that we are not their target audience. And the message they've pursued since Newtown is geared, primarily to people they can actually persuade.

The most obvious leg of that strategy has been to gin up agitation among gun owners - gun sales, ammunition sales, magazine sales, all soared ("They're coming to take away your guns!"). Indeed, the NRA hardly had to write that script: it writes itself. But the less noticed and less discussed strategy has been to layer confusion and disarray into the debate - that gun legislation is "too complicated," "won't work," and "doesn't address the real issues." 

My own theory on guns was that if Newtown had an impact, it was on a significant margin: it was exurban residents, primarily women, who don't mind the idea of guns for protection, but are horrified by mass shootings, especially in schools, especially on kids. There was a moment, briefly, when these people were persuadable: it's time to do something; let's not keep doing nothing.

I think that's probably why we've seen as much progress on guns as we're likely to get - New York, Connecticut, and Colorado all saw fairly quick, bipartisan, comprehensive action, in part because the ground shifted in commnities further out from major cities (Newtown and the Danbury area of Connecticut, which abut Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess and Rockland counties in New York; Aurora and distant suburbs of Denver in Colorado). But the NRA has moved to beat back the tide and it worked. The further away you get from the epicenters of tragedy, the harder it is now to get action. Nationally, created inertia has set in: the NRA has convinced its target audience - those exurban women - that doing something is complicated, the proposals are not targeted, and it's better to wait. And yes... wait for what? More shootings? More contoversy? 

But the lesson here is one, I think, that coastal liberals have to relearn again and again: that we live in bubbles, that there's a world out there of people who don't see what we see, get what we get, know what we know. Believing, as some do, that "the nation is with us" on guns is a fallacy and a dangerous one. The guns issue is complicated and sad and we live in a violent country with a dangerous and seductive gun culture; that's hard to fight, and complicated to undo. There will be more shootings. We cannot just eliminate the reality of guns in our lives. We can do something, or we can throw up our hands... and do nothing.

So nothing, it seems, has won again nationally. We've done nothing to better address mental health, we may barely regulate more gun sales and require more background checks (which, though well meaning, don't fully prevent gun possession in the wrong hands). And some time, soon, we'll probably see another mass shooting. I think the question is... have the forces that lost this gun debate learned something from the failures? Has anyone figured how to slow, or stop, the reach of the NRA? That, I think, is the depressing part, because I think when this happens again, this same dance in the molasses will start again. And inertia will win.

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One Party To Rule Them All (The Galadriel Syndrome)

I had wanted to write this around the Inauguration, but time and travel intervened. Still, the State of the Union speech makes a good time for a similar point.

There's a moment in the first Lord of the Rings film - and I get to wear my "Honorary Geek" badge with pride here - where Galadriel explains to Frodo why she shouldn't have the Ring of Power he is transporting to Mordor. She explains how having so much power would convince her that what she was doing right and good, even as she turned herself into an omnipotent godlike presence, willing and able to destroy non-believers. Cate Blanchett does marvelous things with the speech, and the visual effects are striking, but I loved the scene for reminding us that the real danger of absolute power is not what you do with it so much as the fact that you feel that you are entitled to do it.

 

I was struck at the Inauguration, and with the politics that have unfolded in recent weeks, by the fact that, in many ways, we are a nation with one operating, successful political party. While Republicans did manage (weakly) to continue with a majority in the House, and have control of in a umber of states, this past election was a rejection of Republicans and conservatism by a new working majority that prefers Democrats. And the implications of consolidating that power - demographically, it appears to be harder and harder to imagine a route to national GOP victory - force some consideration of what it means to effectively have one party rule.

Take on banal example - the Inauguration Ball, which the Obama team consolidated into one monstrous, 40,000 person event in the DC Convention Center. Where there had previously been as many as 17 elitist, small events scattered across hotel ballrooms, now we have the equivalent of a keg party in your neighbor's field. That's liberals for ya, and my own sense of gay good taste cringes, but that's really beside the point of the optics , when the President and Mrs. Obama made three very theatrical, identical, and largely meaningless "first dances" on stages at different ends of the enormous venue. The effet was less elegant than carefully choreographed, meant to establish distance, not intimacy. And that distance and control, really, is a good indication of having the kind of power that cannot be questioned, and the impression of deserving it.

Republicans have a chance, after Obama's State of the Union, to present there own list of proposals for governance. There's lots of talk that Marco Rubio (!) will offer a thoughtful challenge to the President and a full throated defense of conservative ideas... but really, at this late date, what are they? On health care, the right has offered a "not that" argument against the Affordable Care Act and little more; they oppose any discussion of taxes that involves raising revenue; they support "spending cuts" but offer no specifics on where to cut, and on and on. On issue after issue, year after year, Repub;icans have offered less and less in terms of concrete proposals and almost no fresh ideas that get ahead of any politicla discussion. Gun controls? nope. Immigration? Not much beyond fences and arresting people.

Lately, I find myself watching panel discussions and Congressional hearings on C-Span - the other half of my "Honorary Geek" badge - and I'm struck, repeatedly, by the lack of substantive ideas, questions, or proposals coming from anyone on the right. Almost always, if the President proposed it, or the left supports it, it's simply bad. And the alternative is... doing nothing, or rolling back what's already been done (and is often already working). This is not any kind of approach to serious policy. And it's the deeper reason why, by and large, most Republicans and movement conservatives aren't being taken seriously. Including, for instance, Marco Rubio, whose jump to the front of the National GOP line has everything to do with the image he projects (of bright eyed, right wing Hispanic) and not the ideas he proposes. Rubio vaguely proposes to "do something" on immigration, but it's really too little to impress the most active Latin Americans on this issue, and his bravest notions won't really fly on the right. Moreover, he projects just the kind of youthful inexperience and naivete that defines right wing stardom these days - the more he has to chase approval on the far right, the less attractive he'll be to the mainstream. Or he'll defy the right, and marginalize himself to the fringes.

All of which is fascinating, I suppose... but as a leftie, I'm more concerned about being in the party that won. It's a far cry from my youth in the depths of the "Reagan Revolution," when our extinction seemed more imminent and our ideas seemed hopelessly out of fashion. But, well, at least we had ideas. And we kept having ideas, and rethinking and reshaping those ideas, until we adapted into the party of today. I don't love everything we've become, but that ability to adapt and rethink is the only way conservatives can survive. And right now, I think their ability to do any of that is dubious, at best. 

But what has "being a Democrat" become? In one sense I think "winning" has become the goal that defines us most, but not best; we've figured out how to win national elections, we've built a new coalition of engaged voters across a variety of interest groups, a "majority of minorities" who see that we do best when all of us have a chance. As long as we don't rock the boat, stay silent about poverty in any substantive way, and soft pedal areas of disagreement. The overt and covert silencing of dissent, the weakening of our ability to criticize our own, the papering over of internal tensions... it's these growing failures that signal the rot that starts from within. We can win another ropund of the Presidency (and her name is Hillary), we can hold the Senate, we can, even, retake the House, no matter how negatively its dismissed; but those victories, a return to one party dominance better than 2008, will mean little if all we do with them is perpetuate a new status quo. We need dissent, we need the tension of competing ideas, we need better answers than the ones our leaders just keep coming back to on their own.

If Republicans can't pull it together - and more than ever, I'm convinced they can't - than the question becomes whether One Party Can, in fact, Rule Us All. My own guess is, it can't, that we will, somehow, devolve back into two parties (at least), even if those two are drawn from a deep split within the left itself. Yes, the health of our democracy almost requires it, but it's more than that. At some point, we have to learn the lesson of, well, Galadriel: however well intentioned, it is never good to concentrate too much power into one hand. I don't know if this new feeling of Democrat ascendancy can handle knowing that, or handle dealing with it. But if we don't... the disaster that follows will, in some sense, be entirely of our own making.

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The Drone Wars

I don't buy the notion that there's an extensive "controversy" over the use of unmanned drones (or as I like to think of them... robot planes) being used to hunt down and kill identified terrorists, even when the terrorists turn out to be American citicizens. The lack of controversy is not because I think there's nothing to be upset about... but because this is another one of those issues where everyone had an opinion going into it, and not much changed in the past couple of weeks when various "dramatic" revelations seeped out. "Controversy," I think, kind of requires at least some of us to be shocked into changing our minds when new information is revealed.

Along these lines, I think a lot of liberals aren't so much upset about drones as they are, still, not really thrilled about anything the CIA does, ever. Or even with the idea of a CIA. Myself, I tend to think "intelligence" remains an embarrassing business of failing to meet the definition of the term for those who do it, but I've relaxed a lot of my rigidity about what the CIA does (this, you may not understand, goes back to when I was 15 and wrote my first research paper on the CIA's role in assassinating Salvador Allende, and I'm real good at research). Especially since 9/11, I think the work of stopping terrorism is, first and foremost, the task of operations like the CIA, rather than, say, The Army.

As for drones, I am on the (admittedly unpopular, especially on the left) side of generally being okay with it, a position I've taken before, and where I remain comfortable. I don't want more terrorist events in the US, and I think "taking out" those who lead organizations that plot such terror actions is a way to do that. 

I also tend to think that it's tenuous to say that Anwar Al-Awlaki is best described as an "American citizen" while running Al Qaeda recruitment in Yemen; Awalki himself tended to claim Yemeni citizenship, having been born in the US while his parents, from Yemen, were here for University. He grew up mostly in Yemen, attended college in the US on a foreign student visa, and his role as an Imam advising and encouraging others to jihad doesn't seem like the most, erm, patriotic of lifestyles. His father remains a top Yemeni government official. All of which tends to undermine laments that al-Awlaki should be seen as someone like a next door neighbor who just happens to be living overseas. The argument about drone strikes against Americans absent an American legal process seems murky at best given this person as a target.

I'm not thrilled about any government program of targeted killing, and I'm not remotely suggesting that the drone program, its legal justification or its operational practices, doesn't deserve extensive scrutiny and debate. This is not about "shut up and stop complaining." But I do think we should sort out the complaints and keep in mind the practical realities of the world in which we live while doing so. The theoretical legal doctrines of using drones on "American citizens" ought to be questioned, but a world in which the only "citizens" are in the al-Awlaki family thus far is where theory and practice need, probably, to both be taken into account. I don't know if I'd feel the same about a drone policy under George W. Bush. And just today, John Yoo, Bush's legal architect of torture policy, took to the Wall Street Journal to support the Obama drone strategy... but at the same time offering a "you're justifying it wrong" on the legal questions, arguing that simply labeling people as "enemy combatants" trumps questions of citizenship. It seems to me the Obama Administration is less cavalier than that, and that's probably a good, or at least a better, way of thinking about things like this.

Similarly, I don't think the question here is whether drone policy can hinder or derail John Brennan's appointment to head the CIA; Brennan's come across as thoughtful and deliberate in his public testimony, and his experience seems appropriate for the job. And like most post 9/11 policy, Congress isn't especially brave challenging approaches to attack terrorist threats. But more pointedly, I don't think a majority of Americans are anywhere near the hand wringing of the anti-CIA left on drones and targeted killings of suspected terrorists. That may change, but I don't think the events of these couple of weeks, the revelations of memos and uncertain numbers of "civilian" casualties, have changed many minds. 

If you don't like the CIA, if you don't like armed conflict, if you don't like military approaches to international issues... then it seems to me the drone policy is really just a detail in a much larger, more complicated, and in some ways very idealistic, argument. That doesn't make a passionate commitment to anti-violence less worthwhile... but in the context of  a debate that's less about whether to have a drone program but more about how a drone program will operate, that position seems pretty much left out of the whole thing. We may get there, and in some ways, I'd be relieved if we did; we would surely be living in a better, more enlightened world. And maybe I have just given in to being a cynical realist when it comes to accepting a world of guns, drones and random acts of violence. But for now, the Drone Wars seem like a reailty we'll be stuck with for a while, a reality many Americans seem willing to accept. The enormity of changing that reality isn't a reason to stop trying... but it's a lot to take on, and I'm not sure the Pro-peace Left is really equipped, at this point, to effect that kind of change. And isn't that the way the CIA likes it?

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Sandy Hook, And The Point Where Things Tipped

The sense of a tectonic shift on gun controls in the US strikes me as a surprising result of the shooting in Connecticut, mostly in a "why this one" sense. I mean, I think we all get that the depth of this tragedy is beyond the others - the number of kids, in an elementary school, obviously - but to suggest that this one is somehow "worse than the others" is to forget how bad what came before really was, and sets up a kind of hierarchy I'm loath to endorse.

But something shifted, and I'm fascinated at the cultural analysis. It's more than the kids. Other aspects of this tragedy, and its timing, have brought the usual defenders of absolute gun rights up short; there's a surprising silence, and an even more surprising amount of grudging acquiescence that staus quo on guns will simply be unaaceptable.

Part of what's tipped, I think, is location, in several senses; most obviously, this happened in the northeast, the bastion of liberals these days, as opposed to the recent examples in, say, Colorado or Arizona. And it suggests that the reactions of shock and horror were tempered by a sense, there, that gun culture is more commonly accepted. In the suburbs surrounding New York City, you get a lot (lot) less of that. And that's repeated along the coast, and coastal cities, from Maine to Maryland.

But I think one other locational aspect is that when you go north or west of the Eastern seaboard, one can forget how un-urban things get, real fast. Here in Northern Westchester, things get clear a mile or two out of town, especially at night: houses in the woods, well removed from bright lights and big cities, and big city notions of all sorts.  On one hand, as many commentators have noted, there's a sense of a suburban idylll being deeply disturbed; on the other, Newtown may really be more of an example of exurban, rather than suburban, life, where people really live out in the country, well away from an urban core. That's why the revelations of a survivalist, gun-heavy culture in rural CT may be less surprising than they seem at first blush. Anyone who's driven Route 84 across central Connecticut (and mid-Hudson Valley New York, for that matter) can attest to the odd lines between developed suburbs and truly rural country. And that lifestyle is not so far removed from other rural, exurban existences around cities South and West.

My point is that the tipping point here may not really about northeastern liberals and a sudden "here in our backyard" moment; no one needed to convince most liberals (at least the ones I know and experience round these parts, and in my lifetime) about the need for more gun regulation. And while some have pointed to this tragedy as another "urban vs. rural" tension, I think the real tipping point is that this happened in a semi-rural area which has deeply shaken the "can't happen in our suburban idyll" notions of many exurban dwellers, especailly (I'd bet), women. When the shootings happened in movie theaters and shopping malls (and one did, let's recall, in Newport California, less than 12 hours later), it was easy to separate those areas and activities from home. Strip malls may be dicey... but once you get off the main road and back to your neighborhood enclave.... it's all ok. When the shooting happens in the local area elementary school... that last illusion is shattered. Population density, like other demographic markers, may be the real key here. It's getting harder to find  a place to feel safe, even away from others. And that's a tipping point about how closely we want to manage the gun culture.

It's an interesting moment, this shift on guns; like a number of shifts in popular perception lately, I think politicians are playing catch-up with a public that's moved far and fast. That sense of catching up, combined with short memories, may not bode well for sweeping changes, or even modest incremental ones, on guns. But our next conversation on guns won't be like the least 20 years or so, I don't think. And still, we do have the problems around mental health, which are more complicated, and in many ways worse. And, as I've long suspected, it will be easier to focus on the guns and "do something" about them, than to look long and hard at how we deal with deeply disturbed people, especially disturbed young men. I don't think a demographic shift will fix that problem; that only comes when we develop more of a will to tackle the hard stuff. If ever.

 

The Serious Post About Marriage Equality And The Supreme Court

The week of dithering by the Supreme Court was, to me, way more fascinating than the ultimate decision to take the cases on marriage equality. For a minute there, it really looked as if they were going to avoid the whole thing, which in itself would have been a pretty resounding win for the forces for marriage equality.

I also used to say, years ago, that DOMA was doomed once gays had the right to marry, for one of two reasons, divorces or taxes. The public may not like gays or disapprove of our life choices... but taxes and divorce are legal matters that need clear standards. And here we are, where the Supreme Court is hearing a tax case that will likely eviscerate DOMA.

That case is about a couple who got married in Canada where the surviving partner faced a huge tax bill (er, "death tax"? anyone?) where spouses are normally exempt. That case, as I long suspected, is probably a slam dunk on the merits, but like the Prop 8 case, the complication here is that the Supreme Court may never have to decide the underlying issue, because the appeal is being brought by Republicans in Congress. The Obama Administration, if we'll recall, already announced that based on other decisions where DOMA was ruled unconstitutional, the Solicitor General does not defend DOMA anymore. That, in itself, is an interesting question without a lot of settled law - if the Executive Branch refuses to defend a law it doesn't like, does Congress have the ability to do that instead? And again, that decision, even one in favor of Congress, wouldn't necessarily help DOMA - it's easy to see a split verdict that says, oh 7-2 (Breyer, Sotomayor) or 6-3 (plus Ginsburg) that Congress can appeal a decision of a law they passed, but then says 5-4 (the liberals, plus Kennedy) or 6-3 (plus Roberts) that DOMA violates the 14th Amendment.

The Prop 8 case is even messier, since the State of California "lost" the original case. In fact California (under Jerry Brown) never wanted to defend Prop 8, but sent a team of the Proposition's supporters as their stand-ins, who promptly lost. The appeal of the case comes from those proponents of the originial proposition, and it is indeed unclear whether they have any right to appeal a decision that is actually aimed at the state. This is where the Supreme Court could rule that the appeal should never have happened... meaning the original ruling against Prop 8 would stand; or they could give the proponents standing, and overrule the 9th Circuit and the District Court.... or they could uphold all the decisions.

This, too, leads to intersting questions about standing... but I have a hunch that  the Court would be happy not to rule on Prop 8 and try to fight what does indeed seem to be a turning tide of supprt for gay people. What seems even clearer, as I joked before, is that the "one man, one woman" nonsense will most likely be relegated to some spirited dissenting opinion from Scalia or Alito. 

And though many Court watchers brought up less than salient examples of Brown vs. Board of Education and Roe vs. Wade, the real bellweather on this will be Loving vs. Virginia, the 1967 case that ended state bans on interracial marriages, and (my guess) Heart of Atlanta Motel vs. United States. Loving, of course, says that states can't just refuse couples the right to marry... but Heart of Atlanta is a big case on interstate commerce, that people can cross state lines and expect similar treatment. My guess is that the combination of the two is where gay marriage will, one day if not this day, wind up being upheld.

But of course, gay people could lose all of this. The right wing might prevail, and at least claim a narrow victory that would extend this fight for a few years more. As much as I think some people are deeply invested in winning, I don't know that a lot of gay people - certainly around my age or older - harbor a lot of illusions here. This could all go very badly, and if it does, we'll just have to start our work from wherever we end up. But the reason we can live with the bad outcome, as we have all along, is because marriage equality is simply common sense. And it may take the law a while to catch up to common sense... but I don't think it will be much longer.

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Benghazi Folds Five

I keep hoping, each time I hear a report, or watch yet anther pointless round robin of the usual suspects that some piece of information, some discussion... something, will finally end the national nightmare over "Benghazi". I'm not so naive - as some liberals were - that the election would silence the right, or prove them wrong... but surely, something had to come up that would shut this thing down.

I've given up on that thinking since Susan Rice went to Capitol Hill and apparently solved nothing by meeting with Senators who have been critical of her. Just what they're critical of, about her or the "talking points" she gave on Benghazi, still eludes me; but clearly, whatever happened in those meetings didn't help. Maybe, as some say, they could never have helped. But still, here we are.

What happened in Benghazi was indeed horrific and deserves to be examined and explained more fully. But I think the "problem of Benghazi" is, for our political discussions, something much more deep about three interlocking issues related to our current foreign policy that can't really be solved. 

The first is that just as Republicans lack a coherent domestic pllicy, they lack any sort of coherence when it comes to foreign policy issues as well. This was, if nothing else, the take away from the third Presidential debate, when Mitt Romney failed to really define any substantial foreign policy difference between himself and Barack Obama. Critics, and cynics, will point out that this is partly because the President is running a right-wing foreign policy, but I tend to agree more with people who say that we would benefit, mostly, from a robust debate of competing approaches to complicated foreign policy issues, and we're suffering for a lack of it. What we do "about Benghazi", how we deal with international terrorism, how we unwind our presence in Afghanistan... all of these issues and more (Iran? Israel?) are issues that don't even have a shrill, right/left partisan debate. Because, mostly, the right has nothing on most anything foreign. And that, really, is their problem, not the left's.

Second, this "debate over Susan Rice", even as it strikes me as stunningly pointless, tends to serve as a reminder that the President (still) has a small, insular group of insiders who serve as his primary set of advisors and confidantes, and he's done little or nothing to broaden that circle. I suspect that the President is deeply upset about how Rice has been treated, and lacks some perspective on the whole mess. I tend to think that attacks by people like McCain and Graham are similarly personally driven, and I don't think all of this is some triple secret scenario in which Senators want John Kerry to be appointed so Scott Brown can fill the remainder of his term. Mostly, I think something - I can't remotely speculate what - about Rice has been off putting or unfortunate, that it comes across in private discussions (though I think she was genuinely less than helpful in those "Benghazi explanation" appearances), and the objections to the idea of her as Secretary of State are meaningful and serious. I think the fact that a number of prominent Democrats - Kerry, Clinton, even the President - have let this mess unravel is indicative of some feeling that she's not going to get Secretary of State. I'll be fascinated to find out why.

But Third, the reason Rice and this "Benghazi scandal" is such a pointless exercise is because there isn't really a good answer about what to do about Libya since the removal of Qaddafi. Just as there's no good answer about how to deal with Egypt, just as there's little the US can do in the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. the reality of foreign policy at this moment in our history is that we are not in a position to be the World's Judge, Jury or Policeman. We're not good at it, and we don't have the resources for it.  Republicans, after all, in some ways really only want to bring up Benghazi because they think some military force should have, or could have, fixed it - a notion that is obviously and demonstrably incorrect. Beyond that, they've never had an answer about how to deal with Libya, because in some ways, in terms of our national interests, we were better off with even a crazy strongman like Qaddafi in charge than the uncertainty and danger of what's happened since.

And this, the thing about danger and uncertainty, the problems that our entirely beyond our capacity as a nation to solve, is the thing that explains a lot about why Americans don't particularly like to engage in the long, difficult discussions that revolve around American foreign policy. It's difficult, it's messy, our pratcical needs can't always (or maybe ever) live up to our notions of our good intentions and our best selves, and we, as a nation, tend to prefer the story in which we are the hero, and the doers of right and good, where bad and evil can be easily defined. And we haven't had it that easy since World War 2.

My friend J asked me, a few posts back, just how I could justify, in any way, the foreign policy of the Bush and Obama Administrations of using drones and targeted assassinations to combat terrorism. And the answer I have, is, like this post, only that I think foreign policy is messy, that we as Americans can't fool ourselves into simplistic ideas about being the heroes of our own stories, and that in a world with complexities and hard choices, I, like many others, am comfortable with the idea that drone strikes are an effective way to prevent future plans of mass terrorism in the US. Is that a good answer, or the right answer to how America should act on the international stage? No I suppose it's not right, it's not good... it's just the way things seem to be, just now. And until we get a better, more robust, more honest, and more reflective foreign policy debate in this country, I think we're just kind of stuck.  And "the truth about Benghazi" is certainly not going to set us free.

The Retail Worker's Dark Weekend

For various reasons, I try never to shop on "Black Friday Weekend", avoiding the post-Thanksgiving madness and the media-constructed frenzy of shop-til-you-drop consumerist Americans and their lemming-like trip to the malls. I've worked in retail too long to see the romance, I don't like crowds, and frankly, the "bargains" of this shopping holiday are overstated.

It's also the case, these days, that I will probably also be working for most of it.

Black Friday this year was notable for a couple of things - one was the encroachment of the shopping into the actual Thursday of Thanksgiving, and the second was a planned, notable, if debatably successful attempt at labor actions outside of many Wal-Marts around the country. Even by the organizers' generous assessments, the number of workers participating in these protests was in the hundreds, though media coverage did clearly amplify the noise and the effect of the protests.

The remarkable thing, really, is that it's taken much of my lifetime for Thanksgiving to be breached by retailers as sacrosanct; only Easter Sunday - and Christmas Day, I suppose - remain as the day of no shopping, and that anachronism may be the hardest to topple, but it's also the one that makes the least sense (at some point, Christian traditionalism will be damned). Literally 20 years ago, I was having conversations with family and friends that one day, obviously, retailers would launch the "Thanksgiving Day Sale" - I mean, heck, one day, Macy*s was sure to notice that there was a crowd of people outside the store after that darn parade, if nothing else - and one more domino would fall on the notion that for one day, at least, we could forestall the real American pastime (shopping, not football).

Let's be clear: we don't close stores for the sake of shoppers. Keeping shopping out of Thanksgiving wasn't some kind of "have respect for this important American holiday, consumerism can wait." No, the point of closing stores was simple human decency for the American worker. Let's take one day, just one day, and nobody, or almost nobody, should have to work. The problem with Thanksgiving, arguably, started with my company, Starbucks; we're the most major corporation I know of that sees no particular reason to close its outlets on any holiday at all. Almost all Starbucks are open on Thanksgiving, for at least some portion of the normal day. Many are open on Christmas. We are almost all open on Easter, normal hours. We close early on days like New Year's Eve and the Fourth of July. But we are open. Always open. And people get bewildered when we close, even for obvious practical reasons, like a hurricane.

But Starbucks isn't just a restaurant - food being the general exception to "closed on the holiday" - we are a retailer, and we are located in shopping centers and malls like the other retailers and we sell more than just drinks and food and we're helping, I think, to erode the idea tbat there's one day, any day, when a retailer should be closed. 

And the people who get punished, when we lose even one day of being closed... are workers.

I was struck, this year, by the fact that, however small, people (and the media) seemed to take nte of the workers. It wasn't a big story, and it was surely subsumed by the stories of stampedes and fights and all the attendant madness of crowds. But the Wal-Mart action and the Thursday opens did get people talking, and talking about what these things mean to workers. Which is, after all, almost all of us. We are a nation of service workers, now, and it means that many of us work to serve the rest of us. It's a different equation about work and what we think of people who serve and it's complicated... and I think we're only just beginning to sort out the cultural and social implications, never mind the political and economic ones.

The Wal-Mart action revived the favorite liberal topics of how bad the big W is, how badly its workers are treated... but Wal-Mart in many ways is really just a stand-in for most of retailing, where the wages are low, the hours are long, and the rights of workers mean but so much. Attempts to unionize most retail workers, in or out of Wal-Mart, are rarely successful, and are unlikely to succeed en masse or long term. To say this is to be labeled "anti-union", and I'm not; but the realities are stark. I've been in retail a long time, and I've known many, many of the women (mostly) and men who work there. Don't take my word for it... but most of them are not interested in a union. And won't be. They are students and mothers and transient and free thinkers. Not being organized provides a kind of flexibility and set of options many workers want, and even need. Unions have not found a way to convince retail workers, generally, of their value long term. And still, that's unlikely to change much.

Even more to the point, as I've said before, because we are no longer a nation of mostly manufacturing jobs, Unions do not really respresent the majority experience of most workers in this country now. Yet "Organized Labor" is allowed, mostly by Democrats, to serve as the "Working Person's Voice" even when the policies unions promote don't necessarily refelects the needs and opinions of most workers. What we need, really, is a change in how we talk and think about the issues of work and labor in this country, and try harder to develop a sensible labor policy that reflects who we actually are and what we actually do. That's why, I suspect, the Affordable Care Act has managed, quietly, to be  a key selling point of President Obama and the Democrats this past election - it's not perfect, but it makes sure many workers will get health insurance, a practical slution many people need. Similarly with the debates of contraception and abortion - in the place where airy philosophical debates mean less than the practical issues of real people actually face.

I don't think we can "save Thanksgiving" from the retail encroachment; the wall has been breached, business needs have overtaken simple decency and humane respect for workers and their families. We will, as we do, work around these new relaities. We are workers, after all. But I think this year may mark another, more refreshing turning point, one where the discussions around our working lives, and the pratcical need for a life beyond work, begins to become more public, louder, and more insistent. It doesn't mean service workers will unionize, and new laws may not be the answer (certainbly, that's not the whole answer); the change we need is cultural, social... not just political, and not just economic. 

And I could go on... but I really have to get on with my day - I have to work this evening.

We Will Marry The Crap Out Of Them

CollegeHumor's Favorite Funny Videos

 There's some issues of sexism attached (it's only boys, and a certain type of gay boy at that)... but I just find the underlying politics of it - gay boys taking back their power - somehow liberating. I do wish they someone would add lesbians to this... because that would make the mind-spinning complete. 

The Awesome Award: Speaking Truth To Fast And Furious

For weeks, I've been debating saying something - though never exactly sure what - about the "Fast and Furious scandal", Darrel Issa and Eric Holder. Like Kevin Drum, I figured I had a rough idea what the story was. And like Kevin, I heard about this article in Fortune. Well, it does turn out that the article is brilliant, and up-ends virtually everything we think we know about the whole story of Fast and Furious, and the ATF's attempt to reduce illegal gun sales in the Phoenix area. 

Quite simply, there's a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal. Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. Issa and others charge that the ATF intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn.

Katherine Eban is going on to suggest, apparently, that the Obama Aministration's real failure - shades of Shirley Sherrod - is that the White House is too skittish about giving conservatives ammunition for bad PR to actually figure out the underlying details of the manufactured "scandal." This, after all, rings far more accurately than suggestions of some massive "cover up" at the Justice Department, rather just the small, sad example, yet again, of an Administration to cautious to actually stand up for the actual people who are being wronged.

I haven't given an "awesome" award in awhile, but this article is genuinely awesome. It demands to be read and shared. Please try and do both.

Learning to Madison

I haven't written a lot about politics in a while. Hell, I haven't written much of anything in a while. Oh well.

Last night, I got mildly caught up in the angst of Wisconsin's recall election. But not too much... which probably goes some ways to explaining why a seemingly controversial, not exactly popular Governor managed to survive one of the few recall elections ever held (though apparently he's the only one who ever survived.

There's lots of talk about the "money in politics" part of this story, and no doubt, throwing millions and millions of dollars at a desired result has to help, but I just wanted to take note of a few of the less popular, less liberal friendly lessons this election might be giving us. Not to annoy anyone - even my closest friends have given up on me ever being a proper liberal - just to lay out some of the political issues that the left struggles with. So here, as they kind of occurred to me:

• Elections are local, and specific choices between actual people. There was lots of blather, last night, from people who don't live in Wisconsin, about the Governor's race, but I was struck by the fact that this election was basically a replay of the last one... and Tom Barrettt lost that one, too. I don't live there, I have no idea what Barrett's been like as Mayor of Madison. But apparently, Wisconsin does. There's a part of this story, I think, that both hasn't been told, and relates to the local scene. And I'm not sure many people not in Wisconsin really care what the details are. But they probably matter to how this election shook out. A corollary from this is that it's hard to extrapolate a "national message" here, though conservatives would like this to prove that Mitt Romney can/will beat President Obama. I don't buy that, not yet anyway. 
• Unions represent a small fraction of the entire populace. This is a reality that frustrates many lefties and makes it hard to come up with a new kind of liberal politics, because Union paricipation in the Democratic Party - financially, through volunteerism, and with expectations for return on investment - is out of proportion to that reality. We are well past the old romantic days of a manufacturing based working class well spoken for by union bosses, and liberal and Democratic Party politics have to move past those old mindsets. That's not an "antiunion" sentiment... but to the extent that this election was a referendum on public sector unions, the votes reflected a couple of unhappy corollaries: non-union households are not especially sympathetic to the remaining union gripes, and lots of people think it's reasonable to rein in government spending by cracking down on union benefits, which are perceived as plush.  Democrats can't stop Walker and Walker-like conservatives while clinging to outdated notions of "pro-union" boilerplate.
• Don't pretend there isn't a fiscal crisis. Walker's anti-union push was built on the noiton of making "hard choices" for how to deal with reducing government spending. I get that many liberlas don't like this, but Walker won by making these "hard choices" sound reasonable, and part of his success was that opposition to it sounded myopic and unrealistic. And while I don't think Wisconsin has huge national implications, there is a point to be made here about the coming budget, debt celing and tax fights in Washington: "raise taxes on millionaires" is hardly a serious approach to reining in spending or addressing revenue issues. 
• You can't fight money with nothing. Nobody wants to feel bought, and few want to think of themselves as mindless sheep, easily driven by propaganda to a desired result. All of the "this was about money" griping can't evade the fact that removing Walker was not unachievable, even with millionaires sinking lots of money into a desired result. Which is why I keep saying liberals need more of a call to action than anger and resentment towards a small number of rich people. People vote FOR things; and liberals who care should figure out why so many people - especially people who could have been persuaded otherwise - voted for Scott Walker. Again. Ideas matter, laying out a choice matters, and anger alone isn't a strategy.