i personally resent all of this

[solarbird]

I've spent so much fucking time on all this fucking political warfare over so many fucking years and hated every fucking minute of it. Tonight I spent a couple of hours discovering the previous post's new obscenity, chasing down reasonable sources, thinking about historical precedent, and trying to figure out what the fuck to say this time, and it's a complete fucking waste of time because it is not going to get any fucking better for it, and I could have, and fucking should have, spent those two hours on music, or something I don't hate and that might be worth something, and fucking well didn't.

And that's my own goddamn fault.

Look - those of you following my journal for the politics, here's my schedule. I'm still paying attention through the end of the FISA amendments/PAA extension/retroactive immunity/domestic spying fiasco. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Reid should have everything Chief Executive Mr. Bush, the GOP, and the telcos want through the Senate by the end of the week, unless something big changes. (And the Presidential candidates in the Senate are reportedly going to be skipping these votes, which, if true, means none of them get my vote, period.) It has been suggested that the idea is to run it up against some deadline - I forget which - so that there's not a conference committee on the bill, and the House just votes to accept the Senate version. That's just rumour, but it's credible - it's good parliamentarianism, and Senator Reid knows his way around Congress. It's certainly a good way to pretend to oppose something while doing everything you can to get it passed.

Regardless, though; win, lose, or draw on this - and I'm suspecting I'll be on the losing side yet again, but you never know - politically, after this fight, I'm going to ground for a while. At least, I'm going to try to. I needed to walk away already, and I didn't, because I wanted to see the FISA/PAA thing out, and because at this point there's a lot of habit, and a lot of investment, and a lot of pain already endured. (Yay, priour investment fallacy!) But really, I've lost. I need to get that into my head, and figure out how to cope.

I know a lot of you Obamaniacs are convinced he's the Real Deal and will Turn Things Around. I'm pretty sure that won't happen, at least, not in a direction I care about. The limited-powers Constitutionally-constrained government - necessary for any concept of rights as innate rights, rather than privileges awarded by government - is dead. (Maybe it's time for another reminder that I'm not a liberal? Assume I wrote one here.) Maybe he'll Be Something New. Or at least, maybe he'll be a benevolent and less incompetent Chief Executive. Who knows? Hopefully, you fans of his are right. Good luck.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

My apologies if I was a downer. Hopefully what I just put up will make up for it...

[solarbird]

What? Oh, no, I read yours, but not until I'd written this.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry that our national politics are such a mess, and I'm sorry that it's taking such an emotional toll on you. I won't try to reframe things in a more optimistic way, because you have every reason to be fed up. I will say that even though I disagree with you on a few (often key) points, I'm glad that you've taken the time and energy to look into all of this and write about it. By all means--take a rest from this stuff for your own well-being. But these posts will be missed.

One point. I you're not suggesting that liberalism is opposed to the idea that people have rights innately, and that government flows from those rights and not the other way around. Because whether you mean classical liberalism or what we now call liberalism, that's not true. A realistic acknowledgment that in practice our rights are not recognized when we collectively don't exercise them is not the same thing as saying that those rights aren't innate. They are, and they are both independent of and the foundation of political power.

[solarbird]

Modern liberals, by virtue of wanting government to do more, are innately unlikely to support the ideas of a strictly limited government. The problem that falls out of this is that once you decide a government can do anything - which is, in all fairness, the classic idea of government in most of the world - is that "anything," which initially means "anything good and useful," becomes "anything the current parties in power want," which doesn't particularly have to have anything to do with either "good" or "useful," and which most particularly does not recognise a limit to powers, which, finally, means that it does not respect any form of "right" it does not want to recognise.

Basically, there's an internal philosophical contradiction here which pretty much has resolved itself the wrong way. And if we're going to have a government of unlimited powers, then we need to have a government structured for that, not the structure we have now. This structure combined with that philosophy is pretty much death on a stick, as we've been seeing. Chiefly, the balance has to shift to the legislature in order for the result not to be like this. Parliamentary systems with titular executive heads of state have clear advantages under this philosophy; the election of 2006 would have lead to the formation of a new government immediately, for example. That would have been a functional repudiation through election, as opposed to the failure we have ongoing.

However, as it tends to be with such things, reform will almost certainly not come before some unignorable form of system failure.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

I don't think that the philosophical contradiction of liberalism has resolved itself one way or the other. I think our government has stepped entirely away from liberalism (both classical and modern), and that's the problem. Liberalism is about (collective and/or individual, depending on the type of liberalism) self-government, so that even when the state is governing it's doing so in the name of the people and is accountable to them. When a government deliberately blocks off the accountability channels, it's no longer liberal and its actions can't be said to have anything to do with liberalism. Our current federal government is openly authoritarian.

I know this is not just a matter of a compliant population because I know that people care about this, and in large numbers. One reason I can't write off the Democratic Party is because when I actually talk to people in the local party, they're all fed up about stuff like FISA and other abuses of power. The problem is the disconnect between the activists and the votes of elected officials. I think money is the big corrupter that creates this disconnect, and it's most noticeable at election time because that's about the only bit of democratic accountability that exists anymore, and so if that process is bought off there's really nothing left but open exercise of power.

[archanglrobriel.livejournal.com]

*nods* I had to do the same thing. I realized that every time I'd read about politics or hear the news reports, the rage would twist my guts in knots. And it was a helpless rage, because no matter what I did or how invested I became in -anything-, no matter how many letters I wrote or calls I made or conversations I started....nothing changed. I'd lose, every time. And it started to affect my quality of life and my health. So I've had to walk away. And that goes hard for someone who has been as invested in politics as I have been in my life, but...to continue this, when I am so clearly not in step anymore with the direction this country is going? I can't do that. I can't stop it. I can't even slow its growth, so right now I'm just concentrating on spreading happiness as much as I can, keeping people's spirits up and keeping my own spirits up and trying to ride this thing out.
Maybe that's foolish of me, but I can't see the benefit of bashing my head against a wall repeatedly to no effect.
So, for the record though? I have really, really appreciated your efforts here and I know how much work that's been to keep up with. I hope that your hiatus proves restorative and that soon we all have reason for hope enough that we can come back to the field again.
Thank you, for all you've done and given.

[emrecom.livejournal.com]

Not to be pollyanna, but in a bigass country l;ike this, any positive change is molasses slow and incremental.

I look at this election as a possible act of triage against the anti-human forces. It's not much; it's something.

[brombear.livejournal.com]

*snugs* I'm glad that you're going to take time for yourself. The one problem that our country has, that the politicos always exploit, is that we have a short attention span, and we want change now. We have to learn to be patient. So...what was I talking about...Hmm...Oh well. Anyway...grab Anna, and Spazz, and get out and tromp through the woods, go do something and regroup!

[darkphoenixrisn.livejournal.com]

I know a lot of you Obamaniacs are convinced he's the Real Deal and will Turn Things Around.

They're welcome to their delusion. The reality is that major party presidential candidates support the status quo. I haven't seen anything from Obama to suggest that he's any different.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

Obama has said that he will restore habeas corpus protections, close Guantanamo Bay, and end surveillance of American citizens. He sponsored stand-alone legislation to restore habeas corpus, and he was a co-sponsor of Chris Dodd's more thorough "Restore the Constitution" (http://chrisdodd.com/node/2252) act (also see http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:SN00576:@@@P).

That bill (currently held up in committee in both houses for the last year) would:

Restore habeas corpus for anyone in US custody.
Narrow the definition of unlawful enemy combatant.
Require the US to adhere to the Geneva Convention, and allow detainees to invoke Geneva rights at trial.
Give lawyers back to defendants in terror cases.
Prevent abusive collection of evidence.
Exclude hearsay evidence in military tribunals at the judge's discretion.
Authorize the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces to review decisions by the military commissions.
Limit the authority of the President to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions and include congressional and judicial oversight.
Clarify the definition of war crimes in statute to include certain violations of the Geneva Conventions.
Provide for expedited judicial review of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 to determine the constitutionally of its provisions.

This isn't a total repudiation of Bush's legacy, but it's a damn good start, and it creates a framework for further rollbacks. Obama can't do this alone, but it's unrealistic to expect a president to work miracles. You can only ask him to be on the right side, and his record suggests that he would be as president.

For the record, Hillary Clinton was NOT a co-sponsor of this bill (nor was Joe Biden). But since it hasn't gotten out of committee, we don't know how she would vote.

[poodlgrl.livejournal.com]

WE ARE THE CHANGE WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR! I'm out to caucus for Obama Saturday. HOPE. SPRINGS. ETERNAL.

[darkphoenixrisn.livejournal.com]

Oh, he definitely represents the liberal side of the status quo, but I think talk of his changing the world is naive idealism bordering on hero worship. I can remember some people saying the same thing about Bill Clinton.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

Any positive change is worth supporting. I think it's just as naive to reject all change if it isn't sweeping, particularly when the reality of human nature is that sweeping change rarely occurs outside of an acute crisis.

I'm not naive. I've been voting for 20 years and following politics closely for several years before that. I've gone through several phases of pragmatism, idealism, and cynicism. (If you include every presidential candidate I've supported in some form since I've known enough to have an informed opinion, it goes 1980: Ted Kennedy, Carter, 1984: Gary Hart, Mondale, 1988: Hart again, preferred Jesse Jackson but voted for Dukakis, 1992: Jerry Brown, briefly Ross Perot, Ron Daniels (Peace and Freedom Party), Bill Clinton, 1996: Colin Powell, Ralph Nader, 2000: Bill Bradley, John McCain, Nader, 2004: Howard Dean, John Edwards, John Kerry, 2008: Kucinich, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, briefly Hillary Clinton but only for the NH primary, Edwards again until he dropped out, and now Barack Obama.)

I'm very skeptical of messianic or hero-worshipping tendencies in any form. I think some Obama supporters are zealots. I know that anyone I vote for will disappoint me to some degree. Yet I'm proudly voting for Obama on Saturday, because he's the right person for the job at this historical moment. If he's elected, the responsibility falls hardest on his supporters to hold him accountable and push him toward the changes that are best for the country.

[tinlail.livejournal.com]

Expecting anyone who went into politics to see government as something to place limits on is silly at best.

My best hope has been to vote so that when it all auger in to have the tools need to protect myself.

I am not hopeful, that the right to self defense will be protected by any of the choices likely.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

I think the key is to realize that WE are the government, and the people doing the work of government are our contingent staff. But that means holding them accountable and responsible for their excesses. Voting is one way to do that, but the problem is that voting is entirely affirmative. Even if you're voting for candidate A to stop candidate B, your vote is registered for A, and for all that A stands for. On the other hand, the reason we have organized government is that the people disagree, and so an institutionalized form of compromise is necessary, which means individuals can't just opt out on the issues where they are a minority. How do we use other means of accountability to protect what's really important while still accepting the idea that in a democracy no one gets their way on everything?

I think the best thing we can do is to exercise the rights we want to have, whether that's to vote, to speak out, to join organizations of all kinds, to go to church or to choose not to go to church, to practice responsible ownership of the means to our self-defense (or choose to abstain from ownership without expecting everyone to do likewise), and to complain loudly and repeatedly and with all means at our disposal whenever our rights are infringed, so that there's a clear cost evident to those who would consider violating our rights the next time around.

I also think it helps to have an open civic attitude that respects the exercise of rights by others even if they are different from us. Often, the apparent conflict of two different rights is just the failure to understand individual or cultural differences. I think this is often true when it comes to gun ownership, when people on different sides of the debate have entirely different experiences with gun ownership ranging from respectful multi-generational family traditions of hunting, self-reliance, and self-protection to centuries of having family members killed or threatened by mobs of gun-wielding vigilantes and criminals. Having a conversation with those experiences out in the open, instead of a rote ideological debate, is the path toward bridging that gap.

If everyone actively used their rights and listened respectfully to the experiences of those unlike themselves, we'd be able to build common ground on many issues that now seem intractable. The details would work themselves out, and we might have a functioning body politic again based on mutual respect and principled disagreement.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

I want to say thank you for doing all that you have done on this front. Your political stuff was a substantial part of why I started reading your journal, and through that, I've gotten to some other resources (principally dark_christian) that have really opened me up to a side of this world that I'd never seen before and gotten me more politically active and aware than I've ever been before. You've made a substantial change for the better in my life, and for that I thank you.

That said, go take a break and take care of yourself for a while now. You deserve it :)

[blues-kun.livejournal.com]

I don't expect Obama or anyone else to magically fix the United States, but I get the impression that he'll at least do less damage.

I also don't think he'll win, ultimately, but eh.

Anyway, it does seem like you need a break... I know it takes a lot of time to wade through a sufficient amount of bullshit to produce one of your articles and you've been doing a lot of long ones lately. Politics in general is annoying to me but I know I should attempt to keep up on it even though I'm a noob, so I do appreciate your articles. Thanks for writing so many.

Thank you! Found what I was missing . . .

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Ah, this post and the one after it and all the news therein arrived while I was still reeling from Zoe's death (well, we both still are, but I at least a little less so now) and was still extremely, extremely sick (still am, but again, less so).

I had to call someone to drive me to the store and by the voting booth Tuesday, where I got to vote provisionally because my absentee ballot never got to me, and where the person told me they weren't sure I was still on the rolls because they couldn't find my name at the polling place (huh? I did get the *sample* ballot, and the registrar's office knew who I was when I called to ask where my real one was).

Probably won't suprise you in the slightest that I voted for Hillary, or that I've gone from being enthusiastic about Obama to having as much deep loathing of *him* as I picked up for some of his crazier supporters a while back, but even so, should he win it, I have to vote for him over McCain even tho I find McCain much more personally likable, simply because, as you said, the man is extremely smart and I suspect he'll be competent, and his self-interest will be more or less enlightened, despite his horrific book I'm hoping he won't sell out women's reproductive freedom or civil rights or the environment with judicial nominees, he's not likely to invade anyone for a while, and his enthusiasm for nuclear power pales in comparisom McCain's, who has already sold out women's reproductive freedom (I've heard him talk on the issue and I'm convinced he actually favors a pro-choice position but not enough to stand up for it) and who I think will be a well-meaning fuck-up in international relations and the economy (I assume why voting for Obama over Huckabee, in the event of a monumental come-back, doesn't need an explanation?)

Also, I *am* a liberal, but do agree w/you on the concept of rights as innate & the limited power government, even if we might not agree on exactly where to draw the line always.

Oh good god, I'm a moron

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

forgot to even comment on the horrors of yet another surveillance bill, and Obama & Clinton are sitting this one out? Have to run now but will check this over the weekend.

Re: Oh good god, I'm a moron

[solarbird]

Yeah, they've mostly been sitting it out. Obama reacted more quickly and with a stronger statement than Clinton did, but neither have been coming around for votes. (Neither has McCain, of course.)

Re: Oh good god, I'm a moron

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they both voted right last week when people were paying attention; guess this is what happens when they're not (well, unless the vote was on Tuesday, and evenso, you'd expect one of them to really try to distinguish themselves here). I'm shocked the Reid-ites brought this up again so soon and without anyone noticing. Or has it gotten coverage and I've just been in a stupor?

Re: Oh good god, I'm a moron

[solarbird]

It's gotten pretty much the same complete lack of media coverage it got in December. I've been covering it similarly as then, and it's gotten a small bit of blog noise. But that's been all.