From the Cabinet to the Cabal

It's always uplifting when a Cabinet Official goes from ostensibly safeguarding the interests of the American people to working for a rapacious corporation like Shell:

Gale Norton is back providing oversight of energy development issues on public
lands in the American West, this time as a key legal advisor for a major global
oil company. Months after she resigned her cabinet post as President Bush's
Interior Secretary—and then seemed to disappear from public view—the Coloradan
apparently has accepted an offer to serve as counsel for Royal Dutch
Shell PLC. Shell, one of the world's largest producers of oil, was also one
of the companies that Norton's Interior Department routinely engaged on matters
of drilling in sensitive ecological settings.

You can get the full story here. What is even more uplifting, I might add, is how nary a single major media outlet covered a story like this one. The noticeable lack of coverage of the seamless transition for Sec. Norton between Government and Big Business--between 'protecting' our land and developing it to enlarge the treasure chests' of a few men--is a good example of the decaying state of American Democracy. This may, of course, be seen as alarmist, as a hysterical extrapolation of a relatively isolated event. But I ask you this: if this was indeed isolated, it would be considered newsworthy. But it is not, and so our politicians are guilty of serious and systemic ethical violations, and our supposedly free press is guilty of enabling these violations through their silence. Until we demand that our local and national news sources start covering stories like these, our politicians will perpetually forget who they work for--us--and they will continue their dialectic of money and power, at the exclusion of everything else.

Changes At The Conscientious Objector

As you may have noticed, I'm no longer the only poster at the CO. In an effort to make this more of a full-scale journal with a variety of opinions, we will slowly be opening up posting to a small number of bloggers. We believe this will foster more of the kind of debate so lacking in contemporary American social/political discourse.

So I'm excited to introduce the newest addition to the CO, Jakubo. I know he'll provide a challenging--and probably contrarian--point of view to whatever topics he chooses to delve into.

Happy Holidays from the Conscientious Objector---much more to follow in the coming year.

Prolegomena to a Future Grassroots Politics

I had a conversation last night with someone who, like myself, works in the social justice/nonprofit sector in the Bay Area. The Bay Area is (in)famously known for its identity politics, which is, on my estimate, a major factor in the fragmentation of the contemporary Left. That is, the emergence of issue-based groups in the 1960's--the so-called 'New Left'--left the Democratic party both composed of and beholden to specific narrow interests that jealously guarded their cause, many times at the expense of, well, winning.

Our conversation reminded me of a meeting I attended a few weeks previous as a representative of the organization I work for. The meeting assembled different elements of the grassroots Left, and dealt with a serious foreign policy concern. But it went like this, to boil it down:

A: "let's have a protest!"
B: "Where should we have it?"
A: "Where we always protest!"
B: "When should we have it?"
A: "When we normally protest."

This encapsulates at least an hour of debate that it took to reach that point. I should also note that about half of the time was spent debating procedure. I left the meeting exhausted, as well as frustrated with the methods of leadership truculently retained since 1967.

Which leads us to the recent changes in Left wing or so-called "progressive" politics. The most significant of these changes is the emergence of the netroots. I say this not simply because this is my preferred medium of choice, but because perception--and in many ways we can say perception is reality--of the influence of the netroots grew exponentially in 2006. When Harold Kurtz is quoting Kos in Media Notes Extra, you know things have changed. The increased attention given to the netroots, plus its growing fundraising prowess, are indicative of a movement on the upswing.

What I admire about the netroots is that, contrary to some dominant narratives in print and TV journalism, they are largely strategic pragmatists. That's not to say, of course, that they aren't idealistic--on the contrary, I've seen more unbridled enthusiasm for fundamentally changing Beltway culture, the Democratic Party, etc., online than anywhere else. What I find fascinating is just how holistic--and I use that word purposefully--their approach is. Social moderates with populist leanings in Reddish Midwestern states. Primary challenges for conservative Democrats in Deep Blue areas. The supposed fanaticism of the Lieberman primary challenge was actually quite sensible and strategic, given the character of Connecticut. The netroots has become interested in winning, and as they are not beholden to single issue advocacy groups, it is they who will become the most innovative melting pot of ideas for the Democratic party in the next century.

Edifice Wrecked

Ah, the Bush Administration is finally abandoning its intellectually vacuous "Stay the Course" rhetoric for a more 'balanced' approach to Iraq, right? Today's NY Times reports that Bush is considering "significant changes" to his Iraq policy after the Iraq Study Group releases their much-chattered about report on Wednesday. Does the release of the report portend a major shift in Administration policy, especially after the 'thumpin' Republicans received in the Midterm Elections?

Don't hold your breath. On Sunday's 'Meet the Press', National Security Advisor Steven Hadley simultaneously tried to advance the idea that Bush has undergone some type of personal glasnost while actually stating that Bush is as intellectually incurious and stale as ever. For example, Hadley stated "that the principal goal of helping Iraq become a self-governing country that can defend itself would remain, and that a withdrawal of troops 'regardless of what was happening on the ground' would not be adopted. 'That’s cut and run, and of course, as the president has said, cut and run is not his cup of tea,' Mr. Hadley said."

It would be prudent for Customs Officials to confiscate Bush's passport to examine what planets he been traveling to in the last, say, month or so. To recapitulate: Moktada al-Sadr has withdrawn his block from the Iraqi Government, and it appears that if the elections were held today, Sadrists would receive a substantially larger portion of parliamentary seats than they currently hold. Baghdad is a war zone, with bombs and kidnappings more common than sustained electricity. The radicalization of the Iraqi public along sectarian lines has created a state that is itself untenable. Iraq is now a fantasy. It is an apparition, the smoke coming off a car bomb that has been ticking ever since the British affixed it many years ago.

The most prescient option would be some variation of Senator Biden's plan to split Iraq into a Kurdish North, Sunni Center, and Shia South with Baghdad run under some kind of UN mandate, at least until some kind of self-government can be established. Turkey will react extremely negatively to a free Kurdistan, but with enough pressure from the EU, they'll live with it, as long as the EU remains serious about admitting them. The Shia south may ally itself with Iran, but this was an inevitability anyway. The Kurds will most certainly let the US have a military presence in the region, satisfying the Defense Department. Meanwhile the Sunni's will no longer fear oppression by the Shia majority--even if it comes at the price of oil reserves, they'll have self-government.

In fact, this situation is the most democratic of all, and should thus satisfy the Bush Administration's drive for democracy in the Middle East. Bush II will then have vanquished the ghosts of Bush I, and Baghdad may perhaps be able to emerge from its smoking rubble. That is, of course, if the President truly accepts the reality of Iraq and fundamentally changes his strategy. Because if Bush doesn't prepare for partition, it may come anyway, and the possibility of an unplanned-for surgical splitting of Iraq into thirds should terrify us all.

The Northeastern Political Realignment of 2006

An American political realignment has truly come into fruition in 2006. No, it's not the great Conservative majority prematurely chattered about in 2004, following Bush's razor-thin electoral victory, or the Republican Party's retention of the Senate where the Democratic minority had more actual votes from the American people. The untold narrative of 2006 is the Democratic consolidation of the Northeast into a largely one-party region.

In New England, only one--one!--Republican representative remains: Chris Shays of Connecticut, a moderate (although a supporter of the Iraq War) and well-respected Republican from the Connecticut suburbs of New York City. Shays has fought two close battles for re-election in the last two cycles, after cruising to victory in elections past. And he is the only one left in the whole New England Republican delegation. Furthermore, when New York is added to the equation, the picture looks even bleaker. There are now 23 Democrats and only 6 Republicans representing the State of New York, after an election where a retiring moderate Republican (Sherry Boehlert in NY-24)was replaced by a Democrat, and two longstanding incumbent Republicans were defeated by Democrats. Sue Kelly, representing Westchester and Putnam counties in suburban and exurban areas near New York City, was the victim of changing demographics; John Sweeney's defeat in a massive gerrymandered district stretching from the Catskills to the Adirondacks portends a much more ominous future for Northeastern Republicans. Sweeney's district was gerrymandered with input from the Republican-controlled State Senate. That district should have never even been within the realm of possibility for Democrats.

But it was, and to the surprise of many, Kirsten Gillibrand managed to capture a district that stretching through hundreds of miles of forests, farms, and mountains. Granted, all the other competitive races in upstate NY in seats held by Republicans stayed Republican. But they barely did so, most winning races by less than 5 percentage points.

The South and the Northeast are, once again, exhibiting antithetical voting patterns . As the South is now a mostly one-party region, except in African-American districts,the Northeast is now similarly uncompetitive for the vast majority of its districts. That is, with this major exception in mind: Democrats are winning in rural areas that have long been comfortably Republican--look at the ouster of both of New Hampshire's Republican representatives this election--while the racial divide will continue to dominate Southern politics. There will always be African-American Democrats representing (hideously gerrymandered) Southern districts. There may not, however, be anyone, of any creed or color, representing a Northeastern district soon who is not a Democrat. We should simultaneously lament the loss of two-party competition in the region, and the existence of a Republican Party moderate enough to house the descendents of the proud Northeastern Rockafeller Republican tradition.

Landscape Maintenance

Excuse my tardiness in not updating this site more often; It's been hectic here, and I'll try to update at least twice a week in order to facilitate more discussion.


Much has changed in the American political landscape since my last post, the major news being the Democratic takeover of both the House and the Senate. The House takeover was indeed the predicted wave, higher than my prediction of 25 seats, although not by much (the current count stands at +29, with 8 close races undecided. Each undecided race has a Republican in the lead. Only candidate Darcy Burner in WA has any chance of coming from behind). A 29 seat pickup is a serious, rare electoral event, but well behind the 50+ seats the Republicans picked up in 1994. Why did the Democrats fail to pick up as many or more seats in such a poisonous political environment for Republicans? For one, redistricting has made more and more seats off limits to real competition--a fact that I think, whether one is from the Left or Right, is anathema to democracy. But what is haughtily termed Political Science cannot allways predict people's behavior; thus the unexpected tossing out of longtime incumbents long rated 'safe' in their pork-fed districts.

Another difference between 2006 and 1994 was that in 1994, the Republican party consolidated its power in the South, defeating scores of conservative Democrats(the Democrat's consolidation of the Northeast in 2006 is the most important and least talked about facet of the election, and I will explore the topic in a later post). The South was on its way out for the Democrats, and they were going to lose it sooner or later anyway. 1994 was a bad political year that coincided with a somewhat independent ideological, historical shift. The same cannot be really said for the Democratic party's gains in 2006. The shift in the Northeast is not analogous to the South in 1994.

Now, these factors considered, it's fair to say the Democrats had a very strong showing this year, given the structural disadvantages built in to the system (i.e., capturing Senate seats in Missouri, Virginia, Ohio, and defeating 3(!) incumbents in Indiana). Don't let the apologists on the Right fool you--Krauthammer, Hannity, etc., this was a disaster not only for the corrupt Republican party of 2006, but for modern conservatism as a viable movement.

Articles of Faith

Much has been remarked about the growing power of the American Evangelical movement, and its growing power within the Republican party. No religious practice or philosophy, however, is historical (arguments for the eternal truth of a metaphysics not considered here). Religious practices arise, change, and cessate depending on external societal, economic, environmental, and political conditions. Of course, religious beliefs effect these factors as well, creating a complex feedback mechanism where inputs are everywhere but a linear 'beginning' and 'end' is nowhere.

Contemporary Evangelicalism provides a fascinating example of a belief system where foreign, but deeply ingrained, societal and political ideologies have become so incorporated into the religious doctrine that the order of their inception has been inverted, and the external political ideology has become a central, internal, metaphysics. The outside has become the inside.

Looking at the vast megachurches especially predominant in the South and West, we witness the commercialism of religion. These communities are fostered with an eye towards the maximization of spiritual consumers, with a delectable, metaphysically cheapened message edible for common consumption. We are asked to give nothing but a few hours of our time a week in exchange for eternal salvation. Religion is compartmentalized--the sacrifices asked of us are few, but the ostensible benefits are manifold.

Here I may be accused of being anti-religious, or condescending towards 'people of faith'. On the contrary, my critique is aimed at pulling out the inconsistencies of modern faith in America to allow for the reemergence of a new, invigorated American spirituality. Our shared faith in democracy and egalitarianism should not be confused for a metaphysics. Indeed, it is the infiltration of these political and social ideologies into religion and their seemingly God-given status that retards our ability to think beyond them, and towards the cultivation of the religious, and towards a betterment of liberal democracy. If democracy is taken as religion, then there will be heresies taken advantage of by politicians attempting to subjugate the people. It works to their advantage to take certain choices from us completely by pretending that they are not in fact choices. Couple this with these very political ideologies masquerading as intrinsic articles of faith, and a very dangerous, if not ironic, subversion of democracy occurs from the purported guardians of faith and politics, our spiritually democratizing megachurch pastors preaching a cheapened and impotent faith, and our democratically elected leaders that work systematically to suppress true democracy, both at home and abroad.

The Balkanization of the Right

As the midterm elections grow near, Democrats find themselves in near orgiastic elation at the possibility of their capture of one, and possibly both, houses of Congress. This excitement is certainty justified; after all, six years of radical one party government has caused tremendous tensions in the American socio-political fabric. Today's feverish opposition to the Republican party is not inherent to one party rule, but is instead a direct result of the way the Republican majority has chosen to govern.

In today's Washington Post, Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey criticizes the current Republican majority for neglecting its conservative principles at the expense of pandering for votes on the Religious Right. Armey, in the appropriately titled "Where We Went Wrong", asks: "Where did the revolution go astray? How did we go from the big ideas and vision of 1994 to the cheap political point-scoring on meaningless wedge issues of today -- from passing welfare reform and limited government to banning horsemeat and same-sex marriage?". Armey's plea will not go unheard in intellectual conservative circles. Many on the Left have been far too self-referential to explore the recent balkanization of conservatives--an event, it should be noted, that is equally important as whatever electoral or philosophical successes liberals may achieve in the current weeks or months. Ask George Will or William Safire if they're happy with the state of modern conservatism; James Dobson
may give you a similar answer but a radically different rationale.

A balkanized opposition has been the Republican party's greatest natural political advantage over the last fifty years. If the Democrats wish to maintain the Congressional majority they will likely possess after November 7th, they should explore the fissures, dissonances, and ideological conflagrations that are quietly consuming the Republican party. This, coupled with a truly alternative vision for America, will provide not only a moral majority, but a strategic one as well.

A Dream Deferred (or does it explode?)

The title, of course taken from that very wonderful, as well as prescient, Langston Hughes poem. Although I believe Hughes--and my interpretation is basic and standard--was speaking of the African American experience, I believe it is an apt metaphor for the development of American democracy.

All nations are predicated on a series of half-truths; thus this unsettling claim about the U.S. applies equally to all nations. What differentiates the U.S. from previous governments is the very lofty goals enshrined in our revolutionary rhetoric. We are a nation endowed with a prophecy--the prophecy of equality and freedom, which, it should be added, are inherently in tension. And it sometimes appears like a cruel joke for our Founders to have embedded these principles so deeply in our national psyche. Other times, however, we cannot be thankful enough that these principles exist for us so concretely. It provides the philosophical backdrop for our internal revolutions: our suffrage movements, our civil rights battles, the various currents that have racked American society.

During the hypernationalistic currents that have swept America time and time again, dissent is suppressed, contrarians are marginalized for crimes against a reified State, and rationality is seen as secondary to unity. We may be slowly winding ourselves out of of one such period.

The upside to this recurring situation is this: these periods are as temporal as they are visceral.

It does seem like a lifetime ago that the Bush administration decided to cross the invisible line of democratic ethics by engaging in a war of choice; what remains to be seen, however, is where the events of the last few years have pushed the American people. More important is where our politicians will be led. Our chains may be daisy-covered, but their wilt is palpable.

Ex Post Facto

Welcome to the Conscientious Objector. I hope this can be a truly open forum--one beyond the normal right/left dichotomies present in political blogs. Not that I don't enjoy a little bomb throwing now and then, but I'd like this to be a different kind or discourse.

To begin: Foleygate, or Political Pragmatism in Lieu of Ethics.
It should come as no surprise that Speaker Hastert, or any of the Republican leaderships, for that matter, plausibly ignored the evidence that Congressman Foley was a sexual predator. Politics does not contain, at least in its current form (but perhaps throughout all politcal systems) any kind of moral imperitive. It is a purely pragmatic affair, insofar as it is an art of war. And although politicans can and do behave morally, it is only when it is their best interest to do so. That goes for Democrats as well as Republicans. Especially in electoral politics, we should remember that the accumulation of power, and the perpetuation of one's power, is what is truly at the forefront of the political. That's not to say, of course, that politicans do not act morally, or justly, or out of imperative. It's just that they won't--99 times out of a 100--do so when it threatens their own self-interest. Thus the deafening silence from the Republican leadership about who knew what when. But it is important for us to acknowledge this silence because it is where the heart of politics lies. And it is our civic duty, if such a thing exists anymore, to be vigilant of this silence even when the din of pragmatism drowns it out.