It is Tuesday morning. Part of my routine on this day of the week is to glance at the work of three op ed writers to see what they have to offer. Often this leads to my doing a diary on one of the columns. Today that will and will not happen. It will in the sense that I will, in passing, refer to the work of all three, offering a quote from each. And I will also find it necessary to refer to the work of a fourth, someone who far too often annoys with his obtuseness.
But this morning? I realize that the words penned by others may help me focus my own thinking, but cannot substitute for it, any more than the words I or others may offer here may perform that service for those who choose to read us. And that realization, however obvious it may seem now, is something that has not been part of my consciousness. It has implications, the responsibilities we each have to take the time to reflect, to think, to own our words. And to speak or write the perceptions we think we have reached, not because they are unique or so valuable, but because only in dialog can we hone our understanding and help to heal the nation and the world.
My normal Tuesday reading pattern travels from Boston, with Derrick Jackson the the Globe, to Bob Herbert of the NY Times, to Eugene Robinson of my local matropolitian paper, the Washington Post. But today, as I looked for Robinson's work my eyes lit on a column by Richard Cohen, and I must at least mention that. Since I find the man obtuse and annoying, let me start with him.
This morning Cohen write a column entitled McCain's Core Advantage for which the blurb on the opinion webpage tells you perhaps all you need to know: "A presidential race is only incidentally about issues. It's really about likability and character." Ponder that briefly. And then read this, the core of the column:
In some recent magazine articles, I and certain of my colleagues have been accused of being soft on McCain, forgiving him his flips, his flops and his mostly conservative ideology. I do not plead guilty to this charge, because, over the years, the man's imperfections have not escaped my keen eye. But, for the record, let's recapitulate: McCain has either reversed himself or significantly amended his positions on immigration, tax cuts for the wealthy, campaign spending (as it applies to use of his wife's corporate airplane) and, most recently, offshore drilling. In the more distant past, he has denounced then embraced certain ministers of medieval views and changed his mind about the Confederate flag, which flies by state sanction in South Carolina only, I suspect, to provide Republican candidates with a chance to choose tradition over common decency. There, I've said it all.
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But here is the difference between McCain and Obama -- and Obama had better pay attention. McCain is a known commodity. It's not just that he's been around a long time and staked out positions antithetical to those of his Republican base. It's also -- and more important -- that we know his bottom line. As his North Vietnamese captors found out, there is only so far he will go, and then his pride or his sense of honor takes over. This -- not just his candor and nonstop verbosity on the Straight Talk Express -- is what commends him to so many journalists.
REALLY? How self-contradictory can Cohen be? On the one hand he claims - an illustrates - that he has been critical of McCain's flip-flops, but then claims there is some core beyond which he will not go, all because he believes (although others disagree) that McCain abided by the responsibilities of the code by which all Americans taken as prisoners of war were supposed to abide. And on top of this, Cohen uses as a basis for criticizing Obama for his decision on campaign financing, and concludes his column strangely:
A presidential race is only incidentally about issues. It's really about likability and character. Obama is, to paraphrase what he said about Hillary Clinton, more than "likable enough" -- in fact, so much so that he is the most charismatic presidential candidate I've seen since Robert F. Kennedy. But the character question hangs -- not because of any evidence to the contrary and not in any moral sense, either, but because he is still young and lacks the job references McCain picked up in a North Vietnamese prison. McCain has a bottom line. Obama just moved his.
I think this is about as inane a column as I can remember from Cohen, and that is saying a lot, given for example his infamous column about Blacks in the first issue of the Washington Post Magazine several decades back.
So that is part of my thinking this morning. Jackson offers a column entitled Big Oil and the war in Iraq which was provoked by the news of negotiations by major oil companies with the Iraqi government. It begins with a simple declaration:
IT TOOK five years, the deaths of 4,100 US soldiers, and the wounding of 30,000 more to make Iraq safe for Exxon.
It goes through the abuses of KBR Halliburton, including moving its headquarters to Dubai and using overseas shel companies to avoid US payroll taxes, and whose parent company, once headed (and still partly owned) by Richard has recorded a 49% increase in profits. He reminds us of years ago statements by oil executives that if only they could get rid of Saddam how well their companies could do in Iraq. And he concludes with a rhetorical challenge:
Who will stop the bonanza or at least ensure that it is not an utter windfall for CEOs as US soldiers risk their lives keeping the peace and as Iraqis continue to struggle out of the rubble of the invasion? That is unclear. Of the two presumptive nominees for president, Democrat Barack Obama makes the most noise against oil profiteering and indeed, Republican John McCain has received more money overall from Big Oil. But Obama has received enough campaign contributions to leave it an open question as to how much leadership he would exert. We know Big Oil is in this for the money. Nothing says it is returning to Iraq in the name of the people.
Bob Herbert focuses on the suffering of our military serving to make Iraq safe for the oil companies in Wounds You Cannot See He reminds us how detached most Americans are from the conflict:
There is no draft. There are no shortages of food, consumer items or gasoline. We’re not even paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That multitrillion-dollar obligation has been shoved off to future generations. Incredibly, taxes have been lowered, not raised, since the wars began.
And he notes of those doing the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan
Increasingly, they are being medicated on the battlefield, and many thousands are returning with brain damage and psychological wounds that cause tremendous suffering and have the potential to alter their lives forever.
, pointing at a recent Time Magazine piece that seemingly did cause the uproar he thought it should, in which we read
"for the first time in history, a sizable and growing number of U.S. combat troops are taking daily doses of antidepressants to calm nerves strained by repeated and lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan."
There is an ever increasing need to properly treat the psychological wounds of our military, a need which is not being met. Herbert quotes someone familiar here at dailykos:
"This should be a top issue in the presidential race, and it should be a top issue in the news," said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of the advocacy group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "When you come home from Iraq, you feel like you’re lost in the wilderness sometimes. You feel like you don’t fit in."
Herbert closes with a powerful statement, one which is not new to those here, because I know I have not been alone in writing about it:
However one feels about the nation’s war policies, we have an ironclad obligation to look out for the short- and long-term needs of the troops we send off to combat. In the absence of any general call for sacrifice, it’s the least we can do.
Right now we’re not even doing that.
And Eugene Robinson writes about race and politics in Race in the Sunlight. He begins with a statement that is both necessary and obvious:
The question isn't whether race will be an issue in the general election campaign between Barack Obama and John McCain. Race is already an issue, even if it is largely confined to the shadow world of implication and coded language. Obama is now dragging the race issue into the sunlight -- a move that has to be considered both risky and inevitable.
Robinson writes in the context of the race so far, both the attacks on Obama for things like the words of Jeremiah Wright, and his own statements, including his calling attention to his expectation of attacks from the Republicans since they clearly cannot run on the economy. Robinson also notes the recent focus on Michelle:
Now some critics have turned to Obama's "feisty" wife, whose image as a tall, strong, confident black woman can perhaps be made to seem threatening to some people.
Obama is acting differently than recent Democratic nominees. As Robinson writes,
If there are voters who absolutely won't support Obama because of his race, there's not much he can do about it. But at least he can blow away all the smoke. He has served notice that he doesn't intend to be Swift-boated on race the way John Kerry was on his war record -- and that he will hit back even when attacks are more atmospheric than concrete.
Robinson then describes the general election ad that Obama began running in numerous states, and finally concludes:
It's hard to see the ad's iconography as anything but a reminder that while Obama is firmly self-identified as African American, he is also biracial. He is a black man who speaks with great affection and admiration for his white grandparents, who look like Middle America personified. The message: Race may be thorny and complicated, but it's no match for love.
Any of the four columns I have briefly described could well serve by itself as the basis for an extensive diary. And perhaps that might have been a better approach, but it is not what I chose. I found reading all four in a relatively brief period presented me with an opportunity to clarify my own thinking, or at least to attempt to do so.
Cohen serves to represent much of what we will have to address. I suspect that for many in the media their own lack of military service leads them to defer to someone like McCain, who undoubtedly suffered greatly while in Vietnamese custody. And in fairness, the senior Senator from Arizona has done much to heal the wounds between this nation and Vietnam, even if on a personal level he still struggled with the anger from that time, for example in his continued use of the pejorative "gooks." I find it hard to believe that Cohen can be as self-delusional as this column indicates, and that should serve as a caution of what we confront in dealing with McCain and how he will be covered: "he has a core for which he was tortured, so therefore there is something real." And of course "we know him" since he has part of the village, and "we don't yet know Obama." Calling out the Richard Cohens does not work - he has remained unaffected by challenges to his sloppy thinking for as long as I have been in DC, which is now more than 2.5 decades. We need to change the framing of the discussion. Political character is far more subtle than he chooses to describe, and political character also includes judgment, how one responds to adversity. And given the power of the office of the Presidency, stubbornness such as McCain has demonstrated with the so-called surge is less something to be praised than it is an indication of a willful obliviousness to the facts - and it is this pattern that can enable us to accurately portray McCain as running for the third Bush term as least as much as his many flip-flops to be in accord with Bush on policy are.
Jackson is of course right on the intentions of Big Oil. I can remember my students at the time who almost all insisted that the reason Bush-Cheney and co. wanted to invade Iraq was oil. In an administration dominated by those with connections to the oil industry, we have consistently seen evidence of this, whether it was the maps in Cheney's office dividing up the fields among American companies, the pushing for the petrocarbon law, the negotiations with the leaders in Kurdistan, or now this. Yet despite this, and even with all of the retrospective debunking of the manipulation of the nation into the war by the administration and its minions the press has yet to fully address this. And in a time when the cost of petroleum products is skyrocketing and possibly crippling our economy, one might expect an examination of the manipulation of the situation by Big Oil and its supporter in the administration would look at the entire picture. And yet, as Big Oil and the Republican push for further offshore drilling and drilling in ANWR, we cannot even get the MSM to clearly inform the American people that the oil companies are not even drilling in many of the leases they currently hold: they are sitting on a rapidly appreciating asset and have no intent at doing anything except maximizing the value of that asset, regardless of the impact upon our economy and the American people.
Herbert writes about a real issue, one that has received coverage, although the absence of outrage to the news that we are giving people serving in combat zones anti-depressants leads me to believe that we have all been anesthetized to the real costs of the conflicts.
Those three columns should all lead to anger, to outrage. And often it is outrage that can lead to political change, and thus there is a great temptation to wish to emphasize the outrageous in the hopes that it will motivate the electorate in a direction we favor. I think there is a great danger in that. Jackson points at it when he wonder how far Obama will be able to move given the financial support he has received. I would go further: we rightly complain about Republicans fomenting fear in order to gain political advantage; would not a too great - however justifiable - focus on outrage be a similar manipulation of emotion for political advantage?
That brings me finally to Eugene Robinson. Fear and hate can be powerful motivators. But that divides us, among ourselves and with respect to anyone we might be able to label as "other" in any fashion, whether by race, sexual orientation, religion, nationality or political philosophy. It CAN gain temporary political advantage for one election or perhaps several cycles. But following that path may make achieving positive change, which requires a healing of wounds, more difficult to accomplish. Robinson notes the thorny path of addressing race, but ends with something different, something worth repeating: it's no match for love.
So call me naive. I have come to understand that we must be prepared to shine light on the dark places, on the fears each of us have, on how some will seek to manipulate us. Such actors - be they economic actors like the oil companies, people seeking or holding power like McCain, Bush and Cheney, and so many others - can only use fear if we do not address it clearly, and expose it for what it is. My perception is that while we must acknowledge fear, we must go beyond it, to point at something that rather than dividing us brings us to together. Robinson calls it love. I would call it our common humanity. And for me the moment we cease to be willing to see our opponents as other than human, no matter what justification we can give for such refusal, and focus only on how dangerous they are for us, we both dehumanize ourselves and complicate the task of healing necessary if we are not going to continue down a path of destruction. A path of political destruction, of economic destruction, of a loss of hope, and thus of dehumanizing and diminishing ourselves.
Yes, point out the failings of our opponents, acknowledge the appeal to fear and unease they offer. But go beyond that - to what positive can we point? Why are our opponents afraid of hope, of love? Why is their view of humanity and society so narrow?
They will accuse us of being naive, perhaps, or try to scare the electorate by claiming we are not tough enough to keep them safe. How do we respond? I would return to our founding documents, to the ideal of inalienable rights that no government should be able to override regardless of the rationale it may offer about safety. I would emphasize that to live in the framework of fear is to deny the ideal of the pursuit of happiness, and that to distort the structure of government in the direction of executive authority on a claim of keeping Americans safe is to deny the principle of a more perfect union. And for the many motivated by their Christian belief I could find example upon example within Scripture which could be used to illustrate that however well meaning some may be what they propose is a denial of a basic Christian message of hope and - yes - of love.
Most of all, I would posit that unless we can demonstrate in how we live, campaign, and advocate, a broader and more open set of principles that include hope and love, we are subject to having our criticisms of the use of fear and division by our political opponents turned back upon us with the additional epithet which might then be applicable, that we are hypocritical.
I suspect that my suggestion will not find universal agreement here. So be it. And I acknowledge that my own writing can at times , like that of Cohen which I criticize, be seen as self-justifying of actions I take motivated by my own fears. I cannot allow the fear of receiving such disapprobation prevent me from attempting to walk a different path.
. . . to speak or write the perceptions we think we have reached, not because they are unique or so valuable, but because only in dialog can we hone our understanding and help to heal the nation and the world.
Those are my words, with which I ended the introduction to this set of musings. Let me end with the words of another, taken from a different context, but which I often find applicable, as I do now. And if you look back at my title, you will see that I end as I began. From "Little Gidding", the last of the Four Quartets, the set of poems by T. S Eliot:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
Peace