09.04.17 I’m 98% anti antifa

I almost giggled the first few times I heard that right-wingers were using terms like “extremist left” and “alt-left.” Of course, it wasn’t just the people every progressive could identify as right wingers doing this. Rather it was the New York Times and The Washington Post showing how not in thrall to the left they were. In pursuit of mainstream credibility, they were shy about refusing a platform to the GOPs anti-science freaks and pushed a general narrative of (false) equivalence: if the right was increasingly extreme, then surely the left was equally so.

All the while, anyone who paid attention knew that the lest vestiges of a violent left disappeared from the US in early ’70s.

I have my own extremist conspiracy theories and violent fantasies. I believed in the aughts (and still suspect) that if the corporate elite suspected elections might actually reform the system, elections would be canceled and tanks would roll in the streets. Obama’s election certainly didn’t disprove this: after all, Obama proved himself to be the ultimate Wall Streeter at the same time that he was among the worst civil liberties presidents in history (particularly in his full backing for the NSA).

I do think that armed revolution is probably the only way our political and economic systems could be pried completely from the grips of the selfish wealthy and their amen corner in hard-right churches across the country. Further, I think the “low information” nature of the United States is at least partly due to purposeful conspiracy on the right: the use of consumer baubles, cultural icons, and religion to create a dumbed down education system with TV as the opiate (now add opioids to that mix).

Yeah, 2% of me wants that armed revolution and would like to see all the corporate elite begging for food, while (by-then-former) GOP officials swing from trees.

But here’s a fundamental reason why I don’t embrace violence and revolution: what comes next?

This is the same reason why I have turned against the philosophically justified “responsibility to protect,” the international doctrine under which great powers like the United States have a duty to intervene to stop moral atrocities around the world. A quick survey of US international interventions – even those with some portion of noble intent – reveals that almost every single one has left things worse than they were before we got there. It is horrific to stand back while Assad and Putin slaughter millions. But if the US were to send in the Marines, would the bloodletting cease or would who is doing the slaughtering simply change for a time, with no reduction in carnage? And if we took the place over, how long would before our main purpose there became enriching General Dynamics and Apple?

So, you say you want a revolution (the classic Beatles song is going through my head)? It would be nice to see the bad guys dead or deposed. But do you really think the poor, women, and people of color would end up better off? At a very basic level, what if all the violence shut down those nasty coporations, which – until now – have been getting food from farms to tables all over the country and kept the water running? (Look at Venezuela! Yes, some poor are better off then under the oligarchs, but now there’s starvation on every corner and the health care system has collapsed.)

Or to get even more basic: When systems of order collapse, the power of the powerful becomes absolute.  I’m not a woman, but if I were, I might rather be out and about where there are imperfect institutions of order – even ones that abuse equal rights every day – than if the local strongman got to determine by himself whether I became his sex slave or made it home.

I hate unfettered capitalism. I hate institutionalized racism. I hate the Trump Regime. But, to replace them, there has to be a plan to replace them. There needs to be very careful thinking about the proverbial “day after” and it damn well better be better than the day before. Will there be a way to measure who has benefitted from violent overthrow and how the overall balance works out (in order to calculate whether the greatest possible good has been achieved for the greatest number of people)?

It may not be satisfying, but change within our deeply flawed system is the only means to try to help those who need it most to get at least something. Destroying the entire system at once means blood in the streets. Are you positive whose blood it will be?

As I have written, I believe the only chance to stop our current slide into fascism and dysfunctionality will be by electing folks who believe in democracy and will replace those who don’t. And it won’t – in our two-party system – be the Greens who get elected. It will be Democrats. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they are our only path to progress, however unsatisfying the pace may be.

In this complex world, we don’t get to choose exactly what we want. The unjust system might be overthrown and replaced by something even less just. I might elect Democrats and they might disgust me. But if the result they produce is less bad than that produced by the GOP, it is good.

And now it appears the violent left has sprung back to life. The Antifa’s black-hooded, club-wielding, anti-free-speech goons aren’t going to launch or “win” a revolution. What they are already doing is grabbing headlines from the Nazis, the KKK, and the racist GOP. Since Charlottesville, the word “antifa” is suddenly everywhere (are there now more mentions of it than there are of Confederate statues?). So far, the newspapers of record that are reporting breathlessly on the phenomenon are reminding us in some of this coverage that the crimes of the right are far worse. Who thinks that Fox and the Wall Street Journal are being so careful? And how long until the Times and the Post re-embrace false equivalence in all its glory, by sowing fear of the left to match fear of the right?

The Antifa is discrediting Bernie progressives and moderate liberals at the same time. Two-thousand-eighteen is around the corner. The forces of reaction are already making the TV ads that will capture the hearts of low-information voters everywhere.  You can bet those ads will be full of Berkeley fires and DC property damage. If the left draws a single drop of blood these coming months, it will be smeared across the living rooms of the nation. You will see the face of some moderate Democratic senator morph into that of a communist hoodlum and that Democrat could lose because if it, keeping Congress in GOP hands.

Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi proved the value and moral rightness of nonviolence. In the current US political environment, though, violence on the left is not only morally condemnable, it is just plain STUPID.

Progressives and the “liberals” they dislike so much need to stand up together NOW to denounce the Antifa. Like me, you may at times silently cheer the injuries inflicted on those who so richly deserve it. But what we must do publicly is to develop Democratic candidates and bench strength (including some Dems we don’t much love) and win some goddam elections. It may be mildly nauseating to join hands with Nancy Pelosi to condemn the (left) mob, but it’s what we have to do.

I am scared, though, that the Antifa cannot be crushed and holds too much righteous anger to collapse on its own. If that is true, woe unto us, for now we face enemies on both sides.

©2017 Keith Berner

07.02.17 Purity or victory: What’s a progressive to wish for?

So much hand wringing in the Democratic Party, ever since Trump unexpectedly beat Hillary Clinton! The intensity of the anguish only increased after Democrat Jon Ossoff failed to beat Karen Handel in Newt Gingrich’s former Georgia district in June. This put the Dems’ record at 0 for 4 in special elections this year. The sky must be falling more rapidly than ever.

After last November, many argued that Democrats failed to capture the White House because they hadn’t run on a clear economically populist message. This view continues to hold sway despite subsequent polling showing that Clinton lost not on economics*, but on her own failures and how culturally alienated (not economically alienated) Trump voters were. (You can read “culturally alienated” here as racist; though other cultural memes such as guns and religion certainly played a part.)

Some commentators have jumped on this latter bandwagon, lecturing Dems that it’s time to give up on “identity politics” (the right wing’s term for giving a shit about minorities and women) and abortion rights. That is, if only Dems would sell their souls, they’d start winning: Without the Neanderthals on your side, you’re toast!

Leftier Democrats (including most Bernie Sanders supporters) buy the economic argument lock, stock, and barrel. The solution, in their view, is to go whole hog for single payer, more regulation, and higher taxes on the rich. Your blogger fits well within this policy camp, but, as we shall see, not wholly with the proposition that this approach is a panacea for electoral woes.

The first thing required of Democrats at this point is some perspective:

• The Democrats didn’t lose the presidential election. Our candidate won the popular vote by over three million votes. She lost the electoral college by only 70,000 votes in three states. And, of course, she was a terrible candidate and a certain foreign power put a thumb on the scale against her.
• Compared to previous results in the districts the Dems have lost this year, their totals have improved dramatically. All four special elections thus far have taken place in deep-red places. We should be encouraged by the results, rather than discouraged.

So, my proposition is that Democrats do not need to renounce social and racial justice, or even economic centrism, to win at the presidential level. I don’t believe, in fact, that die-hard racists – those who would rather give up their own health care before seeing any of “those people” get any – can be won over in any case.

Nonetheless, Democrats were wiped off the map across most of the country at the local and state level during the Obama years. As admirable as the former president is in many ways, he was a terrible politician – he paid no attention to the fate of the party and the party, for its part, utterly lacked integrity and competence. This has been and remains an unmitigated disaster for at least three reasons:

• State office holders (legislatures and governors) create electoral districts. In our horribly flawed democracy, when the GOP controls those levers, it assures that Democrats can’t win at any level.
• Local and state offices are the bench from which candidates for Congress (and the presidency) emerge. If you have few Democrats holding these offices, you’ll have fewer ready to run for Congress.
• Losing begets losing: Local voters who only see Democrats as losers or as incompetent or as out of touch with their issues become accustomed to rejecting them.

A progressive neighbor of mine (almost all my neighbors are progressive) asked me to comment about abortion rights, in this context. This question gets to a struggle in most political parties: which is more important, purity or victory? The GOP has certainly struggled with this question and has answered it by booting all the moderates out of their party. This has not hurt them – yet – because our system is tilted in their favor (the built-in advantage for less-populated areas), because they already control most of the levels of power, and because of Democrat incompetence.

So, should Democrats accept anti-choice politicians (or gun nuts) as the price of winning?

Recently, Democrats who were never particularly comfortable with Bernie Sanders to start with, along with many progressive women (for obvious reasons), excoriated Sanders for assisting the mayoral campaign of an anti-choicer in Oklahoma City. This particular struggle has also played out in venues like January’s Women’s March, where anti-choice women’s groups were made personae non gratae.

Abortion rights, gay rights, immigration rights, and the importance of black lives are litmus test issues for me. But I’m here in Montgomery County, Maryland, where I will never be faced with a dilemma in choosing a Democrat over a Republican.

How about in Oklahoma City? Or the suburbs of Atlanta?

There is a moral dilemma. If we insist that our party be pure, we may be hurting a Democratic candidate who could win and do a lot of good for people who need it. Think that if a somewhat distasteful Democrat wins over an evil Republican: they may help lift more black folks out of poverty and devote more resources to the needs of single moms and their infants and the schools those kids will go to. Is it moral to, in effect, facilitate the victory of a Republican, who will help only the wealthy and, most likely, be even worse on social issues than the flawed Democrat?

I also think purity is bad strategy. Progressives cannot win the school board seats, the city halls, and the state legislatures everywhere with an identical message or set of priorities. And, we have to understand that the only thing that matters in January of a new Congress is the numbers of Ds (and Is aligned with them) vs. Rs. It’s the votes for Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader that determine everything that follows. There must be more Ds than Rs, even if I don’t love every single D.

We also have to be practical in our thinking: how much difference is the mayor of Oklahoma City going to make on reproductive freedom? He (it is a man) doesn’t have any authority on that issue and lives in a state where even a solid pro-choicer would have zero influence.

Another example worth considering is Joe Manchin, the Democratic – but rather right-wing – senator from West Virginia. He only votes with other Democrats about 60% of the time. He is wrong on guns and coal and numerous other issues. But, the key question is: if we “primary” him and beat him with a reliable progressive, can that progressive win in November?! Remember, Manchin is standing with Dems right now in opposing Trumpcare. And he will vote for a Democrat to lead the Senate in 2019.

(I’m not declaring absolute opposition to a race against Manchin. I am saying that this is not the no-brainer purist lefties may proclaim.)

Democrats in blue states and counties have a responsibility to move the party left. There should be no room in Montgomery County for Democrats who favor powerful, wealthy development interests. There should be no room in Maryland for Democratic state legislators (or governors) who support the bail bond or gambling industries or downplay racial injustice.

But, if we are to stop the GOP agenda and the party’s racist and xenophobic acolytes across the country, we have to beat them at the ballot box! Maybe if Dems were politically dominant right now, I would be fine with kicking out every Wall Streeter and abortion opponent. But protest marches and candlelight vigils are not going to take our country back. The only thing that can do that is winning elections. Towards that end, we need to temper the virulence of our internecine battles and tolerate some politicians we’d rather not. The Democratic Party must be a big tent.

So, to answer the neighbor who asked me to address this question: I can live with a mayor in Oklahoma City whom I disagree with completely on abortion. And I can live with a Joe Manchin in one of the most racist, Trump-friendly states in America. I feel this at the same time I feel it is past time to kick the right wing Dems out of Montgomery County and Maryland.

As a college football coach famously put it in 1950: “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” That needs to be progressives’ and Democrats’ mantra for at least the next few years.

*It was apparent that within days of the election that Trump voters, on average, were more wealthy than the rest of the country.

(c)2017 Keith Berner

01.19.17 Shame on America. Shame on Americans.

Any critical thinker will find that the United States has more often than not behaved in direct opposition to its proclaimed values. From the Indian genocides, to slavery, to Jim Crow, to the overthrow of elected governments around the world, this country has put its hypocrisy on display over and over again.

The election of a racist, misogynist, xenophobic, Putin-loving, authoritarian, is – as I’m hardly the first to note – a new nadir of horrific depth. Yes, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. But there is no denying that the overwhelming land area of the country and about half of the population are getting in Trump exactly what they wanted.

On both right and left, there is a popular trope afoot that a neglected, impoverished sector of the American populace — the white working class — had good cause to rise up for change.

On the right, this is self-serving bullshit, because the GOP has never given a hoot about those people. Sure, some of the rednecks were too dumb to realize they being duped. But the above-the-national-income average of Trump voters reveals the falsehood in the claim. Trump voters were not primarily driven by hope for a better life or by stupidity. No, they voted the way they did because they are racist pigs. These people don’t care if they lose their health insurance, as long as they are certain that African Americans, Latinos, and all those other “outsiders” aren’t getting any. (Oh yeah, and as long as women and gays know their place.)

On the left, this lie is just another round of way-too-common self-flagellation. Again, it’s utter bullshit to believe that the Democratic Party platform and the Clinton campaign forgot about people in need. Hundreds of pages of policy were devoted to improving the lives of the poor and middle class.  Could there have been more emphasis on those policies in the campaign’s public communications? Maybe. But it’s ridiculous to think that racists would have voted any differently with more information. It is the very fact that Democrats are proud to be diverse that resulted in our loss.

The reality is that this is a deeply racist country without any deep commitment to democracy and justice. Unless we face this fact, we on the left are going to keep shooting at each other and avoiding reality. There is no other side – whether among elected officials or their near-fascist followers – that is worth negotiating with, nonetheless catering to.

The only way to overcome American Shame is to beat those who perpetrate it. There should be no talks with Republicans, no visits to Appalachia to feel poor white men’s pain. No, we must find and organize righteous voters. We should be recruiting righteous candidates. We should be forcing the hard right (the only right remaining in the US) to own its failures and alienate at least some of its racist supporters (those who decide that they need to eat, even if that means black people get to eat, too).

So, no votes for Trump nominees from Democrats. An unbreakable filibuster for every Trump court appointment. No cooperation in Congressional committees or Democratic votes for GOP bills in the House and Senate.

Barack Obama tried turning his cheek for his first five years in office. We must not repeat that mistake. And we can start by rejecting the claim that there was any blame on our side (apart from party incompetence and Clintonian misjudgment) for the beatings we have taken everywhere.

None of this means that the Democratic Party and the left in general have nothing to learn or change. But it does mean that we must focus on victory and call the bigots what they are, today and from now on.

©2017 Keith Berner

 

01.14.17 Israel. And the Democrats who support it.

I’m Jewish. (I feel I have to start all my comments on Israel by declaring my ethnicity, because so many Israel supporters conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. I am not a self-hater.)

The US actually allowed passage of a recent UN resolution condemning Israel’s settlement policy. Not that our country actually supported the resolution. But, by abstaining (i.e., by refusing to express a view), rather than vetoing (as the US almost always does when the topic of Israel comes up), our country took a baby step towards bringing its Middle East policy in alignment with its stated values.

Oh, the uproar this caused. AIPAC and other Likud-aligned US organizations expressed their customary outrage with their customary breathless bluster. Then, a majority of Democratic House members (109-76), including new MD Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD-8), voted to denounce the UN resolution, saying it was unfair to Israel. They joined an overwhelming majority of Republicans (233-4) to undermine President Obama’s gentle turn against rubber stamping everything Israel does.  (This gentle turn comes only after Obama committed $38 billion of our tax dollars to underwriting Likud and illegal settlements for 10 years to come).

Two years ago, our Senator — Ben Cardin — joined only four other Democrats to oppose the nuclear deal with Iran, perhaps Obama’s foremost foreign policy achievement. The other three “traitors” to the president were Robert Menendez (NJ), Joe Manchin (WV), and Chuck Schumer (NY). This graphic tells an interesting story:

Manchin is the outlier here: he is from a deep-red state and does not have a great record of party loyalty. The others, though, are rock-solid Dems who cast a rare vote against their party and president. And what do they have in common? Jewish identity (Schumer and Cardin) and reliance on Jewish support (those two, plus Menendez).

Is Israel being treated unfairly by the US and the world?

Certainly, there is a great deal of hostility to Israel from hypocritical anti-Semites whose behavior differs little from what they go after Israel for. Certainly, Israel has a right to paranoia, based on the Holocaust and the Arabs’ unremitting hostility and aggression.

But, even for those of us who believe Israel has a right to defend itself in a hostile world, there was never any justification for civilian occupation of foreign land or for Israel’s unjust treatment of its own Palestinian citizens. Since 1973, Israel’s aggressive de facto appropriation of other people’s land and sovereignty has turned it from victim to perpetrator. Even under brief periods of Labor Party rule (including right after the Oslo Peace Accords), Israel has never stopped expanding its settlements on the West Bank, stealing property that doesn’t belong to it.

Israel’s apologists in this country say (more or less), “Hey, no fair criticizing Israel, unless you rebuke in equal measure the knife-wielding Arabs who attack us.” A knife versus the most powerful military force in the region. Resident uprisings, sometimes violent, in the face of daily humiliation and nonstop brutality. At this point, it’s hard for me to see any distinction between the plight of the Palestinians and that of the Africans who had to battle Apartheid for decades, against all odds and the concerted power of South Africa, the US, and Britain. People with no recourse to justice and no hope of progress explode. Wouldn’t you?

Yeah, but what about all the other countries in the world that are oppressive, racist, and/or aggressive? Well, I certainly hate illiberal, bigoted regimes like Russia’s or Hungary’s, not to mention the numerous African states who are murdering and imprisoning their homosexual citizens. Obviously, Israel has no monopoly on outrageous behavior.

But there are three reasons why Israel deserves special opprobrium (at least from me):

1. Most of the other outrageous countries in the world are not fundamentally kept afloat by my tax dollars. The fact that I am paying for Israeli racism and oppression gives me a right – nay, a duty – to forcefully oppose its behavior and US support for it. (For what it’s worth, I’d love to see an end to US support for Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well.)

2. I have special contempt for democracies whose people choose racism, oppression, or aggression. Israelis have been voting for right-wing governments for most of the country’s history. The last three elections have produced governments that are ever narrower, ever more nationalist, ever more fascist. I don’t blame the Saudi people the way I blame Israelis: Saudis have no input on their leaders, nor say in their policies.

I am hardly being unfair to Israel. I maintain a boycott list of countries where the citizens themselves are responsible for their countries’ policies, including Austria, Hungary, and Poland. If I weren’t an American, I would throw this country into that same category: a country where a functional majority chooses bigotry and imperialism.

3. The very fact of my Jewishness requires for me to take greater responsibility for the state supposedly founded in my name. I was raised without the Jewish religion. Rather, our religion at home was that of the Civil Rights Movement and opposition to the Vietnam War. I grew up understanding that — as a member of a historically oppressed people — I could not turn my back on oppression of others. My progressivism is rooted in my heritage. I would be betraying my parents if I were to support Israeli aggression or even only turn a blind eye to it.

How Jewish-American politicians contribute to anti-Semitism:

I get how Joe Manchin could side with the right-wing on the nuclear deal. I get how Jewish Americans who have long sided with neocon aggression or spent decades supporting authoritarian freaks in the name of anti-communism could find themselves on the “wrong” side on Israel. At least they’re being consistent with their values.

It’s another matter when the Cardins, Raskins, and Schumers of the US body politic vote against their party, their president, and their proclaimed values on only one issue: Israel. The more these politicians give Israel a hypocritical pass, the more they reinforce the idea in the rest of the world that there is no gap between Jewishness/Judaism and Likud. The more they destroy the very possibility (in the eyes of others) that Jews can be just, that Jews can be peaceful, that Jews can respect human rights and human dignity, the more hatred against Jews they engender.

And this leads us to the great self-defeating tragedy that Likud Jews are engaged in. Israel cannot survive as a democratic, Jewish state if it will not allow a two-state solution. Likud and the majority of Israeli voters who support it are dooming themselves either to a future of apartheid (I would say it has already arrived) or to being a minority in a new Palestine. The Israeli people are assuring a disastrous future for their homeland.

And hypocritical Jewish liberals in the US are undermining Jewish security and safety everywhere by demonstrating that they cannot be trusted on this topic. They sap their own power as progressives (making us progressives less likely to support them) and feed right into the thinking of anti-Semites who want to see Jews has a fifth column with a nefarious agenda.

Is the UN being unfair to Israel? Not this time, in any case. Am I being unfair to Israel? Excuse me, but no fucking way!

It is time for the US to join the rest of the civilized world (however much of that remains in this year of democracy-in-peril) in condemning Israel. (Abstention is not enough!) Further, we must stop underwriting that horrific regime and its racist people. It well past time for my elected representatives, no matter their ethnic or religious affiliation, to be true to their values and to earn my vote not only through a commitment to civil rights and civil liberties at home, but also abroad.

©2017 Keith Berner

04.16.16 Chris Van Hollen for Senate

This is a long piece. If you don’t know Chris Van Hollen well and have not been following the story of Donna Edwards’s lies about his record, you’ll learn by reading all of it. Otherwise, the executive summary is clear: Chris Van Hollen is an unusually effective progressive leader. Donna Edwards is unusually ineffective and lacks the character to be in public office.

Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-8) is a superstar. He offers a rare combination of deep progressive values, legislative expertise, and being part of the Democratic Party leadership. His talent is demonstrated by the fact that it took very few years after his election to Congress in 2002 to become a member of the leadership and that he did not have to become a corporate sellout to do so.

There have been times when your blogger has disagreed with Van Hollen. Two instances I recall were when he floated a potential unilateral concession to the GOP during budget talks several years ago, a move that I found distressingly similar to Barack Obama’s long period of negotiating with himself, while the GOP gave nothing. Another instance was when he briefly sided with the anti-privacy Senator Diane Feinstein regarding the NSA.

Otherwise, Van Hollen has been a champion of almost everything progressives hold dear: the environment, political reform (more on that, below), gun control (more on that, below), women’s rights, gay rights, Wall St. reform, responsible foreign policy. You name it, our congressman has been far more than a sidelines cheerleader. Rather he has provided real leadership over and over again.

Part of leadership is seeking compromise in service to the public good. Guess what? You cannot move legislation (or negotiate an arms control treaty), without giving up something to get agreement with the other side. There are limits to what concessions moral leaders can make. But ultimately, good compromise means calculating that what you’re winning is worth more than what you’re giving up.

Which brings us to Chris Van Hollen’s sponsorship of a campaign finance reform package in 2010 in the wake of Citizens United. The bill would have forced transparency regarding contributions to and expenditures by PACs. In order to gain support from red-state Democrats, the bill exempted the NRA (and, to appease other Dems, the Sierra Club) from its provisions. Most pro-gun-control Democrats supported the measure (which ultimately passed the House, but failed in the Senate) because the finance transparency to be gained was far more important than the potential lost insight into the NRA, whose agenda and actions were hardly a secret to start with.

Fast forward to the Maryland Senate campaign of 2016. For weeks, Congresswoman Donna Edwards (D-4) has been portraying Chris Van Hollen as being in bed with the NRA, based on the 2010 bill, which had nothing to do with gun control. Given Van Hollen’s “F” rating from the NRA (which Edwards shares), your blogger considers this beyond distortion: it is an outright lie. Edward’s own advertising has featured this libel.

This past week, Edwards’s libel gained national attention, as a heretofore little-known PAC called Working for US, featured Obama’s image in a new ad making the same spurious claim about Van Hollen. The ad implied (1) that Obama opposed to the 2010 campaign-finance bill (he did not) and (2) that Obama had endorsed Edwards (he had not).

The President does not usually intervene in primary races between Democrats. But, the PAC’s ad (as put by the Washington Post in an April 14 editorial) was “beyond the pale.” Barack Obama publicly called for the ad to be pulled. In short order, House and Senate Minority Leaders Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Harry Reid (D-NV) followed suit. (Van Hollen is part of Pelosi’s and Reid’s team. Would they be likely to work with Edwards now?)

If Donna Edwards had not already been spouting the same lie as the PAC promoted, she might have been able to distance herself from it. She can’t and, in fact, has reasserted it in recent days.

Party because the 2010 campaign-finance reform bill didn’t become law, it’s not easy to understand a PAC’s inner workings. Nonetheless, John Fritze at the Baltimore Sun reported on April 14 that the major funder of the noxious ad was a Maine-based hedge fund manager, S. Donald Sussman. (Kudos to Jonathan Shurberg at Maryland Scramble for pointing me to the Sun article.) Fritze writes:

Van Hollen’s campaign found irony in the fact that the ad was paid for a hedge fund manager. The Edwards campaign has said for months that Van Hollen is too cozy with Wall Street.

“Chris Van Hollen has been leading the fight to close the loophole that lets hedge fund managers pay less in taxes than working people,” Van Hollen spokeswoman Bridgett Frey said. “That she claims to take on Wall Street is clearly the height of hypocrisy.”

Your blogger worked hard to get Chris Van Hollen elected in 2002. I have remained a fan over the years, but entered 2016 also positively inclined towards Donna Edwards. Her voting record is nearly identical to Van Hollen’s and she offers the bonus of adding much-needed diversity to the overwhelmingly white, male US Senate. What Maryland progressive would not be proud to be represented by an African-American woman?

At the same time, I was disturbed by the pervasive stories of Edwards’s apparent inability to get along with others. Her lack of support in this race from the Congressional Black Caucus or many Prince George’s County political leaders has been striking. Various analyses have deemed Edwards among the least effective members of Congress, in terms of legislation passed or contributed to.

Nonetheless, I flirted with political neutrality in the contest between Van Hollen and Edwards. Van Hollen’s effectiveness is highly compelling. So is Edwards’s stated commitment to principle – I don’t mind having some progressive bomb throwers in power.

Edward’s despicable campaign decisively ends my flirtation. She is a hypocrite on campaign finance. Her claimed purity about the NRA helped damage an effort to do something about the issue.

It’s worse: her inability to get along with anyone makes her not a Bernie Sanders figure (who is rather pure, ideologically, but has a record of being able to work with those who don’t agree with him on everything). No, Donna Edwards is the Ted Cruz of Maryland progressive politics. Bomb-throwing that inspires a movement can be laudable. Alienating produces no value for anyone. The mendacious, hypocritical campaign Edwards has run saps any remaining attractiveness from her candidacy.

Your blogger feels almost guilty for toying with a decision not to endorse Chris Van Hollen. Racial and gender balance are important objectives. But they cannot outweigh the substantial differences between candidates for a single seat. Chris Van Hollen has the character, the skills, and the record of accomplishment Maryland needs in its next senator.

©2016 Keith Berner

03.05.16 Responsibility to protect: A moral dilemma in the Middle East

I just finished watching “The Square,” a moving documentary about the brief rise and harsh fall of the Egyptian revolution, 2011-13. In the film, we follow three activists (two liberals and one Islamist) who take part in the massive people-power overthrow of brutal dictator Hosni Mubarak. We see the military hijack the revolution and the Muslim Brotherhood betray it, resulting in the absolute religious dictatorship of Mohamed Morsi. The film ends as first the people and then the military, led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, overthrow Morsi.

“The Square” doesn’t show us the aftermath, as el-Sisi reinstates an absolute military dictatorship, murders thousands, and eventually releases Murbarak from prison. Neither do we witness the increase in terrorism across the country as Brotherhood supporters and the crushed remnants of liberal democrats wage a war of attrition against the military in a destroyed nation.

When I see or read about events like these, my heart breaks for the people on the ground. At the same time I am outraged about this country’s complicity. For decades, a United States, obsessed with stability for Israel, supported Mubarak with a blind eye to his terrors. (The Clintons, who consider the Mubaraks good friends, are – perhaps – the most complicit of our fellow citizens.) For a brief time, perhaps half the time that the liberal revolution seemed to have a chance, the US seemed to be on the right side in Egypt. But then the US backed the blatantly unfair elections that put the Brotherhood in power (elections do not equal democracy!).

The US switched back to supporting military oppression as soon the Morsi was overthrown. Only months after the el-Sisi massacre in Tahir Square and the full institution of rule by brute force, the shameful John Kerry (backed, of course, by Barack Obama) was in Cairo, embracing the butcher and praising him as a democrat.

The broader lessons here are (1) the US fails (at least its stated values, if not its great-power interests) when it chooses sides in fraught situations, (2) the US fails when it embraces dictatorships in the name of stability over human dignity, and (3) the US has been failing every single day for 50 years in supporting Israeli security over nearly every other priority.

+++++++++

In the international human rights field (where I spend my working hours), there is a concept called “responsibility to protect” (RTP). This noble principle is meant to prevent further Holocausts, Rwandas, and Srebenicas (to name three of myriad examples). The idea is that the rights of human beings trump those of regimes, that state sovereignty is subordinate to preventing atrocities and genocides. In fact, states with the means to intervene in such situations are required to intervene.

If one cares about human life and dignity, this seems an unimpeachable moral philosophy. Indeed RTP is why I supported US intervention, as Muammar Gaddafi prepared to slaughter his opponents in 2011. The recent two-part series in the New York Times “The Libya Gamble” focuses on Hillary Clinton’s advocacy for intervention and the irony of her hubris about positive outcomes, with the Iraq War disaster still in the present. Not only was I with Clinton in 2011, I was also – briefly – on the side of US military intervention in Syria in 2013.

The NYT stories cover not only the decision making leading to US intervention, but also the aftermath, as the West loses interest and Libya slides into chaos, becoming (perhaps) a greater hotbed of international terrorism and human suffering than even in Gaddafi’s worst years.

This story is not really about Clinton or just Libya. Rather is it about the helplessness of the West to predict or manage outcomes, even on those relatively rare (in my view) occasions when its intentions align with its values. The US destroyed Iraq, increasing Iran’s power and creating ISIS. The US helped turn Libya into a failed state. The US repeatedly supported the wrong side in Egypt.

So, what does this mean in regard to RTP? It is a terrible moral dilemma. How do the lives lost in Libya’s collapse compare to those if Gaddafi had massacred his opponents? How does human suffering in Syria compare to an unknown outcome if the US had started bombing the in 2013? Do we have more blood on our hands by staying (mostly) out of conflicts or by intervening and “owning” the result?

My belief in RTP has been fundamentally shaken by the NYT series, as I have related it back to events of the past 15 years.

The GOP and its unrepentant neocons admit no moral dilemmas. For them, the answer is always intervention and always military. They never acknowledge the great hypocrisy of US foreign policy over 170 years, as the US preached democracy, but propped up dictatorships in service to US business interests. They never give up their simplistic and arrogant ideology, in the face of complexity and limited ability to dictate outcomes.

I have not become a complete non-interventionist. We should have stopped the Rwandan genocide (the country is now ruled by a dictator who has brought universal healthcare and massive economic development to his impoverished people – another moral dilemma) and were right to stop the one in the Balkans (where a cold peace rules and underlying issues have never been resolved).

I guess where I land is that principles and ideology (whether RTP or GOP/neocon) are no excuse for not thinking, not seeking to grasp complexity, and – above all – not acting with humility. We can’t declare we will never act. But if we do not face the world with an acknowledgement of limited power and understanding, then positive outcomes are utterly impossible. Ultimately, morally fraught situations must be considered individually and after deep deliberation, rather than through a single, simple moral lens.

I have reluctantly come to agree with Obama’s decision not to become enmeshed in Syria (though, I condemn the shear incompetence that led him to declare “red lines” he was unwilling to enforce). In the midst of this horror, nonintervention is more responsible than the alternative. (And, we cannot know whether doing a better job of arming the so-called democratic rebels in 2012-13 would have made us proud. We can see a long history of US-supplied arms being used against us after we exit the bloodbaths we have created). But, deciding not to intervene militarily, does not, cannot, excuse US support for the el-Sisis of the world. Egypt is a case where the moral thing to do was to exit with our tail between our legs and let el-Sisi sink or swim on his own. (As for Israel, it deserves no support at all from the United States as long as it remains a racist, hegemonist power.)

©2016 Keith Berner

08.26.15 Maryland’s Senators Silent on Iran Deal

Here is my open letter to Senator Ben Cardin. I will be sending a similar letter to Barbara Mikulski. Maryland Democrats should be outraged that both of our senators appear to be in thrall to Likud and AIPAC. Express your views to Cardin (202-224-4524) and  Mikulski (202-224-4654) or by visiting their websites. Though this should hardly matter on the substance of the issue, Cardin is Jewish and Mikulski is not. Just the same, the latter has been known to consistently take the AIPAC line on Israel.

Dear Senator Cardin:

I read in yesterday’s New York Times, that you are undecided on the nuclear deal with Iran.

Your fence-sitting is disturbing, because the logic in favor of the agreement is an absolute no-brainer: whether or not you love the details or the way Obama and Kerry negotiated, the horse has left the barn. The sanctions regime is dead, dead, dead.

If you liked the George W. Bush administration’s cowboy unilateralism, you’ll love US foreign policy after Congress kills the agreement with Iran. The US would be on its own internationally (with Israel is its sole ally). Not only will usual suspects, like Russia and China, rush to do business with Iran, but so will Europe. In fact, the rush is already on. And without any international sanctions regime, the only remaining leverage the United States (and Israel) will have will be military.

If you oppose this agreement, do you have a plan for recovering US influence and prestige afterwards? Do you relish a unilateral war that will cost enormous blood and treasure and only briefly delay Iran’s nuclear progress?

The question is not whether this negotiated agreement is perfect (by definition, no negotiated agreements are), but rather, what is the alternative? I have yet to hear a rational one from the belligerent right.

We know why the GOP is lockstep opposed to the agreement. First, there is the party’s long history of opposition to negotiations and arms control in principle (see this Times article reminding us of right-wing opposition to even Reagan’s and Eisenhower’s talks with the Soviets). And there’s the fact that anything and everything Obama does sends the GOP into paroxysms of feigned rage.

We know why Israel is opposed: it is in thrall to the racist, hegemonic regime it elected. That regime is, sadly, behaving contrary to Israel’s own interests, but is blind to this fact, as is the aggressively right-wing pro-Israel lobby in this country (led by AIPAC).

I cannot fathom why any Democrat – regardless of creed – would be in opposition. I am embarrassed that the only Democrats in stated opposition are Jewish (Schumer of NY) or count on Jewish votes (Menendez of New Jersey and Schumer).

I am a Jewish American. I use that formulation, since – in an irony of English-language construction – it is the second element of that phrase that is dominant. That is, I am American more than I am Jewish.

Are you? If you are, then your equivocation is uncalled for. You must prioritize US interests over Israel’s (notwithstanding Israel’s current inability to recognize what its true interests are).

Ben Cardin: You face a choice. Are you going to be a Democrat representing Maryland or a Likudnik representing Israel? Maryland Democrats can wait no longer for you to make up your mind and do the right thing.

Sincerely,

Keith Berner

©2015 Keith Berner

06.08.14 Obama the incompetent (again)

Earlier this week, (moderately) conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks articulately defended President Obama’s decision to swap Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay for US Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had ben held captive in Afghanistan for several years. Brooks makes that case that it doesn’t matter whether Brgdahl was AWOL, now sympathizes with the Taliban, or has a father with a long beard. All that matters is that the US doesn’t leave its soldiers in enemy hands, an admirable principle.

The fact that a Republican makes this point highlights the disgusting hypocrisy pervasive in the GOP, which clamored for Bergdahl’s release until Obama secured it and is now nearly uniformly opposed to it.

Unfortunately, it was not sufficient for Barack Obama to do the right thing. No, he had to make a political stunt out of it, by holding a Rose Garden ceremony that backfired, handing his enemies more rope to hang him with. Obama’s political incompetence and tone-deafness were also not helped in the least by over-the-top praise for Bergdahl from UN Ambassador Susan Rice, of Benghazi talking-points fame.

Bergdahl is an ambivalent figure. We don’t know (at least not yet) whether he really abandoned his comrades. So, a smart political leader would have quietly secured his release and then let the chips fall where they may. But Obama is the opposite of competent. He seems to live for handing opponents all the amunition they need to destroy him. If Obama’s reputation were all that was at stake, I’d chuckle with schadenfreude as the sharks chewed him to pieces. But when the GOP takes the senate this fall, the rest of us will pay for another unforced Obama error.

I have written before about Obama’s incompetence. I’m still no closer to accepting it and shrugging it off.

©2014 Keith Berner

 

05.11.14 Don’t carry Assad’s water

An old friend of mine (call him “Joe”) withholds a small part of his federal income taxes every year to protest various US policies and writes an annual letter to the IRS detailing the reasons. This year, his top policy objection was Obama’s promised cruise-missile attack on Syria as punishment for Bashar al-Assad’s alleged chemical-weapons use last year. Joe points to an excellent article by Seymour Hersh in the London Review of Books that sows considerable doubt about Assad’s responsibility for the particular use of sarin gas. With W and the neocons’ manipulation of evidence to justify the unjustifiable in Iraq, I’m with Joe and Hersh at this point: very willing to disbelieve US intelligence and the politicians who decide how to make use of it.

I have trouble with Joe’s selection of this case, though. First, he’s going after a policy that was stopped in its tracks by public opposition in the US and UK. The US attack on Syria never happened, so why waste ink on it as a lead instance of US wrongdoing?

Second, Joe is willing to admit that “Assad may have used chemical weapons in the past” but elsewhere declares that Assad “was not violating international law.” Well, I guess the meaning of “was” is the bone of contention here. For Joe, the fact (which is in dispute) that Assad didn’t use chemical weapons on one occasion absolves Assad of guilt for use on other occasions. In considering Assad’s guilt or innocence under international law, Joe also blithely ignores Assad’s use of mass starvation and cluster munitions against civilians, which are in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Ok. I get the very narrow argument Joe is making. US bluster and threats of violence were uncalled for in response to a single crime that there is reasonable doubt about. Never mind the rest of the crime spree.

Now, Joe and I have a very deep philosophical disagreement. He is almost a pure pacifist, which I’m not. I believe as much in the duty to shoot an individual who is about to kill 100 as I do in an international duty to protect: the responsibility of bystander nations to stop atrocities that (1) they know about and (2) have the means to stop. Though I find US foreign policy to be replete with imperialist aggression and violence against the innocent, this does not, in principle, change my view that the US must sometimes use force to stop evil, as we did in the Balkans (some years too late) and didn’t do in Rwanda. Yes, I distrust US motives and policymakers. No, I do not believe the US can never do good by opposing evil.

Readers of this blog may recall that I ended up opposing US intervention in Syria last year because of a third principle of justified intervention: near certainty that the good to be achieved through such an intervention will outweigh the harm caused. I didn’t believe then and don’t believe now that Obama and those in his administration who supported a war policy had thought for a moment past the initial strikes they planned. They were not bothering to weigh ends, means, and consequences. I ended up believing that this poorly thought-out policy would likely result in a much larger scale of death and suffering than it could possibly prevent. (This mirrors, in part, my well-borne-out opposition to the neocons’ Iraq war: their ideology had so blinded them to the need for advance planning and consideration of consequences that, even if one believed Hussein had WMD [and I admit I allowed myself to be duped in 2003], there was just no possibility that W & Co. could be trusted to conduct a rational and balanced policy around it that would minimize death and suffering.)

Back to Joe. It disturbs me when thinkers and leaders on the left, in their eagerness to oppose the US or imperialism, choose to let other evildoers off the hook — even climb into bed with them. Joe denies that he is aligning himself with Assad by declaring the latter innocent under international law. It sure smells like alignment to me. I find this somewhat analogous to Hugo Chavez, who — in justifiably fearing US aggression against his desire to redress social and economic ills in Venezuela — found the need to make friends with North Korea’s Kims, Zimbabwe’s Mugabe, Putin, and (of course) Assad. Sure, Joe: go after the US, but do you need to carry Assad’s water to do so?

I admire Joe’s withholding of tax payments out of principle. (I don’t make that same decision, because by paying my taxes, I feel better equipped to fight against the Kochs and others who oppose all public expenditures.) There are many things I regret seeing my money go for: US subsidies to industries that drive up food prices or worsen global warming; horrific amounts of spending on unnecessary weapons systems; the money put into the NSA and others who threaten civil liberties; elimination of estate taxes on the mega weathy. Why choose as your #1 target a policy that never was implemented (and which hardly any money was spent on) and make pals with a horrific mass murderer in the process?

PS. “Joe” is a real person, but his views are more nuanced than I present them here. Consider this fiction in order to make a point.

©2014 Keith Berner

04.19.14 “This thing is working” (or, why you need to write a check to the Democrats now)

President Obama was spot on when he said this week that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is working. Eight-million enrolled. Thirty-five percent of them under 35 years old. Millions with health insurance who wouldn’t have it, otherwise. Millions more who will be covered in coming years, people whom our convoluted health care system would have left to die impoverished. It’s hard to be more successful than that.

Writing in the New York Times, columnist Charles Blow noted today that the president’s words came across as more defensive than triumphant.  Indeed. And the president and Democrats are largely to blame. Obama’s lies (yes, that’s what they were) about no one’s having to change plans,  and nearly incomprehensible mismanagement of the site’s rollout, took the country’s mind off of the GOP government shutdown last October and directed it back to the screaming “death panel” liars on the right. No matter that the ACA is now working — the majority of the country still opposes it and the GOP have staked their entire campaign on portraying its (made up) horrors. (Note that the GOP, as usual, has neither proposed any alternative to the ACA nor positive plans to fix any other problem the country faces.)

As Blow points out, this vapid GOP tactic should fail. Why might it not? Because the spineless, inarticulate Democrats are refusing utterly to shout (or even gently mention) the truth: THIS THING IS WORKING. Even without Obama’s help, the Democratic Party has a long history of trying to seem Republican, because they are t0o scared or too bought off by corporate power to stand for a fucking thing. GODDAM IT, YOU LOSERS: STAND UP AND BE COUNTED!

Midterm elections following a president’s reelection always go badly for that president’s party. The deck is further stacked against the Democrats by a supreme court that is deeply hostile to democracy. If someone doesn’t stand up and fight, “badly” will end up being “disastrously,” making 2010 look pretty. GET THIS, YOU STUPID DEMS: YOU COULD LOSE THE SENATE!

I have written plenty about Obama’s flaws. This is hardly the first time I have characterized the Democrats as misguided losers. My disgust with the president and his party is overwhelming. (It is not by accident that I am not referring to the Dems as “us” in this post.) If you are a progressive civil libertarian and support economic justice, you no doubt agree with at least part of my critique. But, here’s the thing we can’t forget: we may be critics, but we are critics from the left. The Koch brothers are real. The Supreme Court’s persistent evisceration of democracy is real. There is unmitigated evil on the right and it must be stopped.

I gave up on the Democratic Party, per se,  years ago. But, this is the year to choke back moral queasiness and write a check to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. There isn’t a chance in hell the Dems will take back the House in 2014, so forget about it. But we must, must, must stop the Koch brothers and company from owning the Senate. Even though Democratic elected officials are failing to do their job — hell, because they are failing to do their job — we must stop the right-wing behemoth by any means necessary, including by writing checks to a bunch of losers whose only redeeming characteristic is being less evil than the other guys.

PS. For readers in Montgomery County, Maryland: Don’t forget that Hans Riemer is a liar. Do not reelect him to County Council. (Just as Gail Collins in the NYT reminded us in nearly every 2012 column that Mitt Romney once strapped his dog to the roof of the car on a trip to Canada, I will proudly remind voters in every post between now and the June primary about Mr. Riemer’s persistent problem of pretending that he has done things he hasn’t and is something he isn’t. We owe it to future generations to stop Riemer’s political career here and now.)

©2014 Keith Berner

 

11.23.13 Impeach Obama

Readers of this blog know  I am not suggesting impeachment based on Obama’s being a Muslim socialist who was born in Kenya. (Oh that he were a socialist!) My bill of goods against the president starts with his right-wing stands on civil liberties (and Wall Street) and ends with his complete, nearly incomprehensible incompetence.

Civil Liberties

Barack Obama lost my enthusiastic support in the summer of 2008, when he switched sides on telecom immunity. Until then, he had supported holding the telcos (led by the always-evil Verizon) accountable for  sharing customers’ private data with the government. Then he suddenly decided  these corporate behemoths were golden. I voted for Obama in 2008 and cried when he won. But I knew then that the man others would accuse of socialism was at best a tepid liberal and at worst a  bonafide right-winger.

Obama has gone on to be the worst civil liberties president in American history. Apart from ending torture (which, granted, is a big deal), this administration has taken nearly all of W’s extra-legal, barely legal, or it’s-legal-because-we-say so surveillance and detention tactics and expanded them. It has pursued a drone war that doesn’t discriminate between the guilty and innocent or US citizens and foreigners. And, of course, there’s the NSA, which has shown the big lie in Obama’s promise to lead the most transparent and open government ever. Obama’s obsession with secrecy has led to the highest number of prosecutions against leakers in history, along with truly frightening attacks on the press, the essential institution for holding government accountable and preserving freedom.

The extent of this president’s obsession is shown by his reaction to Edward Snowden. When Obama backed out of a summit with Vladimir Putin earlier this year, do you think it was because of Putin’s dictatorship, with its attacks on civil society or its encouragement of violence against gays? Hell no! It was because Russia had taken Snowden in. Then, the mere possibility that Snowden might be aboard the Bolivian president’s plane, as it transited Europe in July, was sufficient for the US to get pliant allies to ground the aircraft so that our agents could see for themselves.

Incompetence

After the GOP shut down the government and nearly forced the US to default on its debts this fall, prognosticators were reporting lowest-ever ratings for that party and predicting Democratic gains in 2014. Since then, it is Obama’s ratings that have fallen off a cliff and Democratic candidates are running scared across the country, as they try to figure out how to distance themselves from the president. The political world has reversed course in little more than a month!

The Obamacare disaster not only has the potential to set back the cause of health-care reform for a generation, but has also breathed new life into the right-wing extremists who own most of the land area of the country and one house of Congress. If the GOP takes the Senate next year, there will be one man to blame: Barack Obama.

No, it wasn’t bad enough that the president forgot to pay  attention to whether the rollout of his signature achievement was going to work. He had to compound that self-inflicted wound (a European friend of mine referred to  it as an “own goal” – when a soccer player scores one for the other team) by repeatedly, knowingly lying to the American people about their right to keep their existing policies. What did Obama think – that no one would notice?!

(Substantively, I have no problem with forcing the cancellation of policies that would undermine the whole system. It’s the lying about it that is the problem.)

So then Obama tried to undo the damage by announcing a “fix” that will allow people to keep these lousy policies. And immediately, analysts declared the fix unworkable. We are now learning day after day (thanks, Washington Post) about the details of the failed website: how the administration hired the wrong people to build it and ignored clear, persistent warnings that it wasn’t going to work.

The operational incompetence is stunning. The lying continues a long pattern of Obama political incompetence. It took nearly 3-½ years for the president to recognize that the GOP wasn’t interested in negotiating a deal, any deal – no matter how right wing. He kept negotiating with himself – publicly — continuously moving farther and farther toward GOP positions and getting nothing in return.

The Obamacare debacle began in 2009, when Obama abdicated all leadership on the matter to Congress, which – of course – was in thrall to the insurance industry and other corporate interests,  producing the complex mess that is teetering on the edge today. Obamacare – if it survives – will do at least as much to enrich private interests as to lower costs (higher than any other industrialized country) or produce better outcomes (worse than any other industrialized country).

In 2010 Obama (granted – with the complicity of spineless Democrats in Congress) ceded the entire political dialogue to the rising Tea Party and the likes of Sarah Palin. While talk of death panels dominated the media in summer and fall of that year, Democrats headed towards a crushing defeat at the polls. I’m not just referring to the loss of the House, but also the loss of statehouses, coast to coast. The GOP dominance in the states then produced the gerrymandering and voter suppression measures that will keep the GOP in power at least until the 2020 census, if not beyond. Much of this is due to Obama’s mind-numbing inability to use the bully pulpit, build effective political alliances, and buck up scared-of-their-own-shadows Democratic lawmakers.

Consider foreign policy. In a space of two years, Obama has taken the US from being a moral, human rights champion to being a realpolitik status-quo power that Henry Kissinger could love. Your blogger (who works for a human rights organization) is sometimes torn between idealism and realism in foreign policy. I get that this stuff ain’t easy. But to go from an embrace of Hosni Mubarak (a personal friend of Bill & Hill) to supporting the Muslim Brotherhood (who were, after all, the winners of a democratic election), to praising Abdul Fattah al-Sisi’s thugs as if they were akin to Thomas Jefferson (why can’t John Kerry just shut his fucking mouth?!)?

The result is that everyone  in Egypt hates and distrusts us, even as we continue funneling billions of dollars to the brutal murderers who now run the place. For god’s sake: if you’re going to support a military dictatorship, at least do so in a manner that wins that dictatorship’s trust and respect! We learned this past week that al-Sisi is trying to negotiate closer ties with Putin.

The promised “pivot to Asia”? Gone south due to other distractions. The relationship with the European allies (who were practically drooling at the chance to start over following the horrific reign of W’s cowboy neocons)? Toast, because of our spying and a general sense of US fecklessness.

And then there are the “red lines.” Use chemical weapons, Obama says, and we’ll do something really, really bad to you. Except that we don’t really mean it. And so when we get a face-saving opportunity to back away from the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria, we jump at it.

Whether or not to bomb Syria was not an easy decision – see my post on the topic. The problem was the stark declarations from Obama without, apparently, any consideration of what should come next. This administration doesn’t stop and ask: hey, what will we do if the other guy doesn’t respond the way we expect him to? There is no Plan B. Only destined-to-fail Plan As.

Facing Facts

Now hear this, Obama fan-boys and –girls: we are not comparing Barack Obama to W or Mitt. Of course Obama is better than any GOP alternative!

We ought to be comparing Obama to what he could have been and to what this country (and the world) need. We ought to be holding this man accountable for repeatedly handing our enemies (the Tea Party right) the rope to hang us with.

To those who say, “Well, being president is hard. What do you expect?” – I ask, is it too much to expect basic competence and a commitment to tell the truth (at least in our own self-interest)? Is it, really?

The title of this blog post is serious. I don’t expect it to happen, but I would be delighted to see Barack Obama resign or be removed from office. Let’s give Joe Biden a chance to see if he can get the basics of governance and leadership right.

The Obama administration is finished, kaput, done. All two-term presidents lose power as their lame-duck status grows. None has experienced a collapse of this magnitude at the very inception of the second term. None has faced entrenched, fanatical enemies like the GOP is today. Democrats and progressives would be smart to move on, to try something — anything — rather than sitting back and whimpering as this failed president sets the table for GOP victories to come.

©2013 Keith Berner

09.08.13 Against a US strike on Syria, with misgivings

I have been tearing myself to shreds over this one. As recently as last week, I supported a military strike because chemical weapons use is so horrific. A discussion with my remarkable colleagues at Freedom House* (at all levels of the organization) has caused me to refocus on outcomes, rather than punishment. I now oppose a US military strike on Syria. If there were more domestic and/or international support and if there were any reasonable means to predict what our action would do for/to innocent civilians (short-term and long term), I would feel differently. Regardless, I hold my position with misgivings: I believe that acting  and not acting will both produce catastrophic results. I have merely concluded that the catastrophe produced by action would likely be greater than that produced by inaction. Following is my rationale.

Act only if you can act well, components of which are:

• Acting morally (including seeking best outcomes for victims and innocents, both in the short and long term)
• Acting competently, which includes
  • Gathering full and balanced knowledge
  • Challenging assumptions
  • Rejecting unsupported ideology
  • Defining objectives
  • Considering alternatives
  • Planning for contingencies, including worst-case scenarios
  • Performing cost benefit analysis that is as holistic (not financial), long-term, and objective as possible
  • Garnering sufficient support: acting solo decreases the probability of desirable outcomes, because one is deprived of allied resources (intellectual, diplomatic, economic, military), reducing ability to ride out short-term setbacks in the effort. It is not necessary to have both overwhelming international and domestic support, but some combination of both is a must.
  • Getting desirable results (I.e., the ultimate measure of whether one has acted well is in the accomplishment of desired objectives)
• If “responsibility to protect” exists (and I believe it does), previous behavior of an actor willing and able to take action against evil should be irrelevant: the point is to stop evil in that moment. That is, even if the US has been a perpetrator of evil (e.g., selling chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein and turning a blind eye to use of them), it should still be called upon to do good, when it can.  (In fact, though, past behavior — and experience — have profound impacts on the actor’s ability to gather necessary support for the effort. In this case, Bush’s unjustified war on Iraq has almost completely destroyed US ability to put together an international coalition to support its policy and to persuade a justifiably weary and skeptical public at home).
• If responsibility to protect exists, it must be allowed to trump international law, in specific instances (ie, international law is a means to and end, not an immutable good, in and of itself). Falling back on “we can’t stop evil without UN authorization” allows evil states on the UN Security Council to veto acts of good.
• Every case is unique, including the era and context in which it appears: inability to intervene everywhere must not negate the possibility of intervening anywhere — consistency is not a reasonable aim of national policy
• Chemical weapons are abhorrent, but pale in relation to overall civilian suffering (a reverse of my position even a few days ago)
• Fighting for pride is absurd
• Credibility is important, but only a means to a (hopefully moral) end, not a goal to be pursued for it’s own sake: having drawn a red line is not sufficient reason for war
• Inflicting punishment is insufficient justification for war, by itself: a war must be likely to produce better (hopefully moral) results than any other alternative
• Using too little power may produce worse outcomes than using a whole lot more — or none at all
• US intelligence is to be taken with a grain of salt, but widespread agreement with US intelligence increases its credibility. Even as I remember being duped by Bush/neocon propaganda in 2003 (I ended up opposing the war, just the same), I have little doubt that Assad is responsible for the gas attack, since most credible international actors agree with the US assessment on this.
• The ability of this administration and Congress to act competently is to be doubted. I see no evidence of strategic thinking or what-next planning.

In the current case, recent US history has made it impossible for the country to garner significant support for war, domestically or internationally. The US would be nearly alone internationally and the president would be severely isolated domestically, both of which bode ill for positive outcomes. (As soon as something goes wrong following a US strike, Obama will be instantly abandoned by Republicans and Democrats alike. That is, even to the extent the administration has thought through what-ifs and next steps, it will not have any support for carrying them out.)

Also, the results of any particular action or inaction taken in Syria are impossible to foresee, which — in turn — makes costs and benefits incalculable.

Chemical weapons use must be deterred. Slaughters of civilians must to stopped. But one cannot intervene everywhere, every time. This time is not right. The situation is too fraught. The odds of producing worse outcomes are too high.

That having been said, if the US chooses to strike, may that strike be powerful enough to make a difference: a weak effort will demonstrate — by its very nature — a lack of any purpose beyond punishment, pride, and pursuit of credibility for its own sake.

If the US does not strike militarily, it may not morally turn a blind eye to the carnage in Syria. It must engage in concerted efforts to arm and train the “good” rebels (to the extent it can distinguish them), with as many international allies as it can gather.

Attack or not, Syria is the defining — and probably fatal — moment for Obama’s presidency. That is, sadly, of his own making.

*I am relieved that Freedom House will not be making an official statement on this issue. While the organization is on record in support of democratically inclined rebels in Syria, urging for or against a military strike is tangential to the organization’s human rights mission.

©2013 Keith Berner

12.16.12 Guns: equivalent extremism?

Don’t you love when apologists for the right claim that the left in this country is extremist? Here’s a recent incident, from a very well respected Takoma Park opinion leader, excerpted from a community listserv:

I hope if there’s a national dialog about this, we can exclude the extremist rhetoric from left and right.

I served on the city Committee on Gun Violence umpteen years ago. It looked at this issue in great detail and I came away with three main conclusions.

First, the NRA and the gun-ban lobby both inflame passions about this because they all want to keep their jobs. Neither side has any interest in winning, just keeping the passions going.

Second, you can’t believe any statistics from anyone, except maybe the FBI, because even though the interest groups may use legit sources, they skew them to fit their views. For example, the anti-gun people cite the correct number of annual gun-deaths, but they don’t tell you half of them are suicides, instead leaving the impression they are all murders.

Third, there is common ground between pro- and anti-gun people.

And here’s my reply:

I am very disturbed by your claim of equivalent extremism on both sides of this issue. This reminds me of the highly irresponsible media who have spent the last decade trying to claim equivalence between starve-the-government, enable-the-plutocrats, global-warming-deniers, evolution-deniers, theocrats on one side and scientists and (mostly) moderate-center-lefties on the other. Sometimes, just because there are two sides on an issue does not mean that their claim to rationality or legitimacy is equivalent. Nor can one always adjudicate two sides of an issue by splitting the difference. Just because (for example) the GOP moves further and further to the right on issue after issue does not mean that the the split-the-diffference midpoint between them and the Democrats, which is dragged ever further to the right, is the place to be.

I am particularly disturbed by your claim that folks in the Brady Campaign (for example) are in this to protect their jobs and are not seeking solutions. That claim is truly offensive.

In the gun debate, one side: the NRA and collectors/sportsmen has owned all of one party and most of the other. The huge amount of cash they control has enabled them to completely out-gun the gun-control community (do you really mean to imply that both sides have the same firepower?). Though many of us in that community might love to ban guns entirely (indeed, I do), 95% of us have accepted that the the gun lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment has been upheld and is the law of the land. While one side refuses to discuss any restrictions at all on gun acquisition and ownership, the other is working to make marginal changes that would improve public safety. Equivalence? I think not. The Supreme Court has moved the midpoint much further to the right. I don’t like it, but it is so and I and the rest of the gun controllers are working in that new middle.

I get the home-defense part of the gun lobby, even if I would never place a gun in my house, knowing that they are most often used against those we know (including ourselves) rather than against unknown intruders.

As for sportsmen and collectors, I stand by my view: one person’s hobby or sport is not worth the loss of a single innocent life not involved in that “sport.” (Football players are welcome to maim each other: they all choose to be there.) Defense is one thing (however misguided). Hobbies are quite another.

And let’s not forget the part of the gun lobby that is made up of true right-wing extremists: those who claim that Obama and the UN are planning midnight attacks on American liberty. These folks are a not-insignificant part of the huge increase in gun proliferation in recent years. When those on the moderate right refuse to engage in common-sense discussions of gun control, they are enabling this extremely dangerous element.

There may indeed be common ground to be found between pro-gun and gun-control folks, but to claim equivalence between the two sides hardly helps us navigate the path to find it. It is like claiming that Democratic position in the “fiscal cliff” talks needs to come halfway toward the make-no-compromise-hold-the-country-hostage position of the GOP and the Tea Party.

©2012 Keith Berner

12.15.12 Fuck guns. Fuck the NRA. Fuck “freedom.”

Big thanks to local blogger Newsrackblog for presenting links to several articles about yesterday’s massacre:

Fuck You, Guns by Katie J. M. Baker

“[We] refuse to talk about how to prevent fucking massacres from happening over and over again thanks to how fucking simple it is for practically anyone to get their hands on some nifty automated mass murdering weapons. Fuck everyone who says today isn’t the time to politicize gun violence. Most of all, fuck the NRA and all of its political cronies. This is your fault.

Fuck you, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, for saying that “today is not that day” to discuss gun control. The only acceptable explanation for that statement is that you got cut off from saying, “because yesterday was.”. . .

Today, we don’t need prayers. We don’t need thoughts. We need action. We need to politicize this, and we need to politicize this now. Fuck everyone who isn’t ready to talk about gun control. You’re the reason 27 people (and counting) died today. Don’t forget it.

This article provides a helpful link to a list of the members of Congress who received NRA money in this past election cycle.

Shame on Jay Carney. Obama should fire him immediately. We don’t need a Democratic president’s press secretary acting as NRA spokesman!

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The NRA is the enabler of mass murderers by Alex Seitz-Wald:

New York Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler said yesterday: ““Al-Qaida killed 3,000 people in the World Trade Center in 2001. The United States went to war because of that. Because of the NRA, we’ve lost 10,000 people last year unnecessarily. It’s time we went to war.”

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Five Lies The Gun Lobby Tells You by Zack Beauchamp:

The five lies are:

1. More guns don’t lead to more murders
2. The Second Amendment prohibits strict gun control
3. State-level gun controls haven’t worked
4. We only ned better enforcement of the laws we have, not new laws
5. Sensible gun control is prohibitively unpopular.

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Now’s the time to talk guns by Joan Walsh:

“I beg to differ [with Jay Carney]. Today is precisely the day. It’s true, we still don’t know details about the weapons the school shooter, or shooters, used in Connecticut. But we know that there are too many guns, and that the gun lobby fights all efforts to regulate them. The grief and outrage sparked by the Newtown tragedy ought to strengthen the arguments of those who fight for sane restrictions, as well as broader mental health services.

Guns in national parks. Guns in church. Guns in schools and day care centers. All over the country, the spaces that used to be gun-free zones are now open to them.

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Fuck Everything, Nation Reports in the Onion:

“Americans reported feelings of overwhelming disgust with whatever abhorrent bastard did this and with the world at large for ever allowing it to happen, as well as with politicians, with the NRA, and above all with their own pathetic goddamn selves, sitting in front of a fucking computer instead of doing fucking anything to help anyone—Christ, as if that were even fucking possible, as if anyone could change what happened, as if the same fucking bullshit isn’t going to keep happening again and again and fucking again before people finally decide it’s time to change the way we live, so what’s the point? What the hell is the goddamned point?”

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I wonder today how this country has the chuztpah to lecture Bashar al-Assad as he oversees the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Syrians. What moral standing does this country have to tell anyone anything? Far from a shining city on a hill, we have become the example of government-sanctioned mass murder that serves as a warning to all peoples who contemplate where to draw borders between individual rights and public rights.

US obsession with individual freedom has long passed the point of worthy respect. It has descended into the utter hell of “collectors'” and “sportsmen’s” freedom being considered more valuable then the tens of thousands of lives lost to gun violence in this country each year and where billionaires’ rights to double their billions comes while middle class families sink into penury and the already poor lose their access to any help at all.

American freedom can be — and often is — a beautiful thing. It is also despicable. Only when we face our demons and beat them down can we progress.

+++

So do something! Candlelight vigils are fine for sharing our collective grief. But we cannot forget that laws get changed by presidential leadership and Congressional action. Call or write your legislators today. Tell them they have blood on their hands if they are part of the NRA. Tell the others that the time of spinelessness and silence is passed. Tell them to hold the president accountable (he must not be allowed to follow his press secretary’s lead!). And send a check to the Brady Campaign, the best and strongest gun control organization out there.

Copyrights belong to the individuals and publications quoted. My comments are ©2012 Keith Berner.

12.14.12 It harder to vote in this country than it is to acquire and use a firearm

Sportsmen’s “rights” are not worth a single innocent life, period.

Assault weapons, armor-piercing bullets, automatic and semi-automatic weapons have nothing to do with home self-defense.*

Meaningful waiting periods with serious background checks and without loopholes do not threaten home self-defense.*

The NRA owns the entire GOP — lock, stock, and barrel — and a plurality of Democrats, as well.

We will now see if Barack Obama has any moral fiber in him whatsoever. Because, gun violence is now THE most pressing issue facing our country. If the president cannot lead on this, what is the point of the presidency?

*I find home-defense arguments for private gun ownership to be ludicrous, because guns at home are much more likely to be used against those we know than against intruders. But I accept that taking away all those pistols in dresser drawers just ain’t gonna happen.

©2012 Keith Berner

12.14.12 John McCain: traitor and liar

John McCain’s campaign slogan when he ran for president in 2008 was “Country First!” Then he chose as his running mate a small-state governor with only two years in that office under her belt, whom he only new from about one hour’s conversation: a dangerous dimwitted demagogue with a giant chip on her shoulder and just about zero understanding of any public policy issue. “Country First” was a horrific lie. If you love your country more than you love a risky shot to shake up poll numbers that have been trending against you, you do not put Sarah Palin on your ticket. Especially not when you have a history of heart trouble.

Now he’s done it again. Notwithstanding my view that Susan Rice was not worth the political capital it would have cost Barack Obama to get her confirmed as secretary of state and notwithstanding my concerns about her financial stake in the XL pipeline, there is no question that she is fully qualified to be secretary of state. But the GOP, with McCain in the lead, decided that partisan maneuvering was more important than unity in foreign policy. That’s right: with absolutely no substantive justification on his side, McCain attempted to make Benghazi the sole issue in the presidential campaign’s waning days and then went on to smear Rice’s character enough that she had no choice but to stand down.

Rice’s withdrawal from consideration yesterday was the right thing for her to do. She put the country’s interests in front of her own (though, her move — in it’s shear nobility — certainly helped in one stroke to repair her “brand”). Would that small-minded, mean, and self-centered John McCain would ever do the same.

©2012 Keith Berner

11.30.12 Susan Rice: global warming bad guy

Just because John McCain is evil, doesn’t ipso facto mean that any and everyone he targets is good.

(It infuriates me that McCain retains any power or audience at all after he, Mr. “Country First,” tried to put Sarah Palin a heart attack away from leading the country — an act of treason, if you ask me.)

Yeah, McCain, Lindsey Graham, et al. have been playing politics with the country’s diplomacy by going after Rice, for the HUGE CRIME of believing CIA reports that the Benghazi attack was spontaneous and saying so ONE SINGLE TIME on TV. I gotta ask: what the fuck difference does it make that first impressions about the nature of the attack were one thing and reality turned out to be a another, especially when the GOP had cut funding for diplomatic security?

I was already coming to the conclusion that, as unjustified as the GOP’s lynching was, it would be stupid of Obama to waste political capital on saving Rice, when there are one or two other things to spend that capital on. But now this: a New York Times report that Rice and family own between $300k and $600k of stock in . . . TransCanada, the firm that wants to build the global-warming and ground polluting Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico.

Not only is Rice yet another member of the disgusting 1% club*  (given that she has enough wealth to have that much of it invested in one company). Not only does she own a share of one giant evil-doer in the  global warming industry. But as secretary of state, it would be her job to determine whether the pipeline goes forward!

So, I say, drop Susan Rice like a hot potato and turn to John Kerry. Yeah, Kerry is another one with plutocrat wealth, but at least he doesn’t seem (yet) to be actively promoting global warming.

*Yes, I am actively engaging in class warfare. Got a problem with that?!

©2012 Keith Berner

11.11.12 Mandate?

I assumed there would be no mandate from this week’s election. Even as it became clear (to all except those in the Fox News Bubble) that Obama was going to win and the Democrats were going to hold control of the Senate, I was focused on Obama’s failures (being the political pessimist I am). Even on election night, I was celebrating the aversion on a great catastrophe, rather than achievement of a great victory. The tiny margin of Obama’s popular vote edge hardly spelled triumph to me.

Over the next couple of days, the significance of this election has become more apparent. The fact that the Democrats increased their margin in the Senate (55!) – beating every single wing-nut in competitive campaigns – and Obama’s near complete sweep of the swing states (except for North Carolina) meant something. And the Dems picked up seats in the House. Sure, the GOP held control there, but this says more about the power of incumbency and the gerrymandering out-of-existence of competitive elections. It has nothing to do with ideology.

Even the small popular-vote margin for Obama hides a more fundamental truth: it is only the huge run-ups of Romney votes in deep red states that kept that vote close. As I wrote a couple of days ago, it hardly matters what the red states and their Neanderthal voters think. They don’t matter!

The churning inevitability of demography (oh, those poor angry white men!) and the fact that a billion dollars of broadcast lies didn’t buy very many victories for the rabid right, prove the point: this week marked a profound victory. This victory was hardly about Obama or (unfortunately) an endorsement of progressivism, more broadly. But it was an enormous rejection of a return to medieval social values and the right-to-wealth and dominance of plutocrats.

None of this means Democrats can relax. Demographic change is unstoppable, but it is way too early to predict that lies and cash can’t win elections. Further, we cannot forget how spineless, inarticulate, and corrupt so many Democratic elected officials are. If any party can figure out how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, it is the incompetent Democrats.

But there is no doubt that a particular weltanschauung (view of the world) was defeated this past week. For that, we can be very thankful.

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Didja see where. . .

. . . Karl Rove is still advertising what a great job he did?

. . . Karl Rove is accusing the Democrats of vote suppression?

. . . Donald Trump called the election results illegitimate (and seems to hint at armed revolution as the solution)?

. . . Ann Coulter (who is apparently more in touch with reality than Rove and Trump) declared that there is no hope for the future?

. . . Nobody gives a shit about what Romney is thinking, feeling, or planning?

Yessss!

©2012 Keith Berner

11.08.12 Why we need the GOP to deal with reality

A major reason for Barack Obama’s victory this week was the continuously increasing share of minority voters. Notwithstanding intense voter-suppression efforts (or, perhaps, in reaction to them) Latinos and African Americans stood in line for hours to plant their ever more important stake in the ground of the US body politic. The white share of the electorate is dropping, to the extent that one analyst says – barring other factors – the GOP loses an additional 1.5% of the vote every election cycle.

As the GOP licks its wounds, we are hearing from some  in the tiny “reality-based” wing of the party that they had better do something to expand their base in coming years. Even some of the folks firmly rooted in a world without science or truth are making some of these noises. They’re toying with how to adjust their brand to make people of color more excited. The thing they are missing is that, except in the Deep South and the great unwashed rural stretches of the country (where are aren’t very many people of color to start with) people don’t want to buy what they’re selling.

(None of us should care about increased sizes of GOP victories in places like Alabama, Idaho, and Oklahoma. These people are a different species from us. They will never be able to accept freedom on conscience on social issues or communitarian economic values. Frankly, I wish we could just kick them out of the union and issue them tourist visas when they want to come visit.)

The GOP cannot revive by tweaking its campaign tactics or adjusting its messaging. It can only come back if it is willing to actually change its policies. There will be a huge battle in ensuring months and years between those in the GOP who get this and the huge majority in the GOP who don’t.

There is another way the GOP could spring back to life: if the Dems nominate bad candidates, continue to be utterly incompetent, and become increasingly corrupt.

And this is why we actually need a coherent, center-right party that is rooted in truth and presents a realistic alternative and its own worthy ideas. Maryland is a perfect example of what happens when the Dems control a one-party state: worst gerrymandering in the country, a tiny machine (think State Sen. Mike Miller) running a totally closed and corrupt political spoils system, a governor in thrall to the gambling industry, highways (the ICC) built at huge environmental and fiscal cost (without providing any clear benefit), an ensconced top election official (Linda Lamone) who has singlehandedly prevented the institution of a paper-trail voting system in the state for a decade. You get the idea.

Sure, it would be fun to watch the GOP continue to marginalize itself  and lose elections (and I predict it will do so for at least another four-year cycle), but I have to wonder if that is really what we want in the long run.

©2012 Keith Berner

11.06.12 Could This Be the Last We Ever Hear of Mitt Romney?

Just about four years ago this time, I blithely predicted that John McCain had made himself so unpopular in both parties that we would be spared his bloviating henceforth. Alas, I had neglected to consider the fact he was a sitting senator with a lifetime free pass for war-mongering and other mischief, along with perpetual access to media microphones.

If Nate Silver’s brilliant poll analysis holds up, Mitt Romney should be at home licking his wounds quietly tomorrow, making plans to move out of the state that — having bequeathed him on us in the first place — has voted against him 75 to 25. The entire GOP will blame him for his loss, declaring him to have been too moderate. Who (other than his personal friends who own Nascar teams and Olympic horses) will ever talk to him again or give a shit what he’s thinking? Wouldn’t that be grand?

At 4:55pm EST on Election Afternoon, I am not yet celebrating, notwithstanding Nate Silver’s analysis that Barack Obama now has a 92% chance of being reelected.

Why not? Answer: Ohio (where I was born and bred)!

A substantial number of voting machines in Ohio are owned by right-wing firms. The GOP also holds many state offices and has been in all-out voter-suppression mode. There has been rampant speculation that the GOP stole the 2004 presidential race for W, when his win there was way out of alignment with exit polls (which, historically, have been nearly as accurate as actual vote counts). So how did Obama win Ohio in 2008? Easy: the GOP underestimated the number of votes they would have to annihilate to send their man over the top. They are less likely to make that mistake this time.

My gut sense (with no data to back it up) is that any Democrat must win by a good 5% statewide in Ohio to come out with a 1% victory.

The good news is that Obama may surpass that tonight. Further good news is that Obama can win the election without Ohio (which Romney can’t).

Whatever happens, we can sleep poorly knowing that our Great Nation — the greatest ever in human history, according to the entire GOP and most idiot Democrats  — doesn’t have a clue about how to run transparent, (small-d) democratic elections and where one of the two Great Parties is deeply opposed to (small-d) democracy from the core of its being.

©2012 Keith Berner