The Fierce Urgency of Whenever

[solarbird]

Saved up in tabs - I hate it how I just HAVE TO post this crap sometimes:

You should read Andrew Sullivan's short essay from last week, The Fierce Urgency of Whenever, on the Obama administration's plans - or lack thereof - for dealing with GBLT issues. He wrote it right after spending a couple of days talking to people on the Obama team last week. Here's a taste:

Here we are, in the summer of 2009, with gay servicemembers still being fired for the fact of their orientation. Here we are, with marriage rights spreading through the country and world and a president who cannot bring himself even to acknowledge these breakthroughs in civil rights, and having no plan in any distant future to do anything about it at a federal level. Here I am, facing a looming deadline to be forced to leave my American husband for good, and relocate abroad because the HIV travel and immigration ban remains in force and I have slowly run out of options (unlike most non-Americans with HIV who have no options at all).

And what is Obama doing about any of these things? What is he even intending at some point to do about these things? So far as I can read the administration, the answer is: nada.

Dan Savage concurs, unhappily.

Note that the end of the HIV travel ban was actually passed by the previous Congress and signed by Mr. Bush. Mr. Obama's administration has actually delayed implementation. "Oops."

eta: more today! Lesbian and gay soldiers are being kicked out at the same, steady rate as under the Bush administration (eta2: according to the radio story I heard on NPR, the trend has continued through this year, but I don't have a link so they could have got it wrong or I could have misheard or misremembered it; the data in the print story I link stops last September), and the Pentagon says there are no plans to repeal the policy. Let me emphasise: no. plans. No plans, no planning process, no movement, including the anticipatory work you'd do if you thought this was coming down the line. New York Magazine has commentary here, talking about the political reasons to put it off, then noting, "None of that, of course, changes the fact that Obama could get a bill to repeal 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' on the floor in Congress if it were really important to him. Gay activists and journalists alike are just coming to terms with the fact that, most likely, it isn't."

Comments

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

Clinton Administration, Term III.

Unfortunately.

[solarbird]

Yeah. And fuck that. And fuck him. The HIV travel ban revocation passed without meaningful opposition and was signed by Mr. Bush. And 75% of Americans polled want Don't Ask/Don't Tell to end. 75%. I'd be surprised if you could get 75% of Americans to agree that Earth revolves around the sun if you didn't phrase it just right, but you've got 75% here.

And. Yet.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Gallup poll; 1/3rd of Americans believe the bible is the literal truth (http://www.gallup.com/poll/27682/OneThird-Americans-Believe-Bible-Literally-True.aspx).

Not exactly sure how you could phrase the question to get 75%...

[solarbird]

And new today!

Lesbian and gay soldiers being kicked out at the same, steady rate as under the Bush administration, and the Pentagon says there are no plans to repeal the policy. New York Magazine has commentary here, talking about the reasons to put it off, then noting, "None of that, of course, changes the fact that Obama could get a bill to repeal 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' on the floor in Congress if it were really important to him. Gay activists and journalists alike are just coming to terms with the fact that, most likely, it isn't."

[avram]

Lesbian and gay soldiers are being kicked out at the same, steady rate as under the Bush administration

Those figures are from the Bush administration. Specifically, "for the fiscal year that ended September 30", according to that Boston.com story you linked to. That article's headline should not be using the present tense, unless they actually have figures to verify that gays are still being kicked out at the rate of about 50/month.

[solarbird]

Ah, crap. Yes. The radio story I heard (NPR News, a few hours ago) said that the rate had continued into the Obama administration, but the print story I found does not say that, so I've edited the post to explain. I could've heard it wrong, NPR could have it wrong, or Boston.com could have edited badly.

This is the problem of hearing something on the radio then going and looking for a print story about the same thing. Sometimes they don't line up.

Regardless, there has been no change whatsoever in policy.

[avram]

Mind, if it turns out that the rate hasn't decreased, I won't be a bit surprised.

Don't worry, it's all part of the grand plan!

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Don't you know this is all part of the brilliant Obama effort to get everyone really outraged so that eventually, he will have the political capital he needs to oppose the daunting conservative majority!

C'mon, give the poor guy a break -- his poll #'s suck and he's got a Republican congress and hostile media to deal with.

He *has* to be manipulative like this!

Besides, other people theoretically might have been worse, so even if it turns out his brilliant strategy succeeds only in furthering Bush policies beyond what Bush could have done, it's still great that we have Obama! Because it's all okay and non-icky when he's the one doing it!

Serious question

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

I still haven't decided which of these is true, though I think it varies depending on the situation . . .

If you think I'm missing an option, let me know . . .

The Democratic leadership since, oh, the 90's sometime, are:

(1) Easily bullied gutless wonders on a scale of cowardice that is truly staggering

(2) Filled with people who are mediocre at tactics and complete morons at strategy

or

(3) Actually a lot closer to Republicans in ideology than they like to let on.

For Obama, I'm voting (3). Except he doesn't even hide it much and people just get snowed by the charisma and media narrative. For the rest of the dems, I'm not sure . . .

Re: Serious question

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

I'm not so sure about your timeline. I don't think the pre-1990s Democratic Party was so great either. My attention to politics started in the 1980s but what I remember is a bunch of Democrats voting for Reagan's military build-up, opposing arms control agreements, supporting the Contras, helping cover up the Iran hostage scandal, attempting to censor music they didn't like, giving no attention to the economic concerns of most Americans. It was like today only gay rights were completely off the agenda.

All the good changes that have happened in my life were the result of social and political activism, not the Democratic Party. Many individual Democrats and local party organizations, as now, were good people, but the party establishment was as useless then as now.

Go back further than my direct memory and you have a Democratic Party cheering on Vietnam, dragging its feet on civil rights, leading a useless arms race with the Soviets.

There have been some good things along the way, but even the best policies of Democrats (Social Security) were enacted only when Democrats were pushed to do the right thing by public outrage or severe national crisis. And even then, they were done half-assed (Social Security was originally envisioned to include national health care but FDR took it out to ensure passage.)

Of course, Republicans are worse in every way.

I stand at least partly corrected . . .

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Certainly, the Anita Hill / Clarence Thomas hearings in the late 80's spoke of the same sort of rot we have now, so it goes at least that far back.

Earlier, while agreeing they did bad things w/the good and some of the good things half assed, my memory is more that they at least were doing a fair amount of substantially good things, and trying to move the country in a progressive direction. I don't think this can be said of at least half the democrats in congress or leadership any more.

To the extent things didn't become more progressive, it was due to mostly accurate views of public perception, combined w/some fairly conservative Southern democrats. Now, it's not a matter of taking out a couple of good things to ensure passage of something else; it's a matter of actively enforcing, continuing and expanding bad policies, and making sure that public outrage produces the least progressive changes possible. And while the leadership may use the blue dogs as an excuse, the leadership actually consists of conservatives (Reid & Hoyer) and people who went out of their way to put more conservatives in power (everyone who backed Casey has a lot to answer for, and especially people like Rahm who masterminded this brilliant strategy)

And one doesn't have to go back to FDR to find Democrats who actually gave us our concept of what Democrats should act like in some significant matters--there was an otherwise over-rated Kennedy keeping us out of war in the Cuban Missile crisis (and possibly trying to keep us out of war in Vietnam even while authorizing the beginning; dunno what to believe about that one); LBJ pushing civil rights and The Great Society (granted expanding Vietnam was not the world's best trade-off, if that's what it took); a democratic congress pushing the EPA under Nixon (and impeaching Nixon over far less than what we have to go after Bush/Cheney& co.); and despite the general bad rep of his presidency, if Carter's energy policies had gone through the whole world would be in immensely better shape now, and so would our economy. Even Clinton, for all that I realize he is, ummm, hated on this blog, tried to do a lot of good things, did accomplish some of them, and a lot of the bad ones can (and I think should) be put down to a holding action against an orchestrated conservative media campaign that was more or less tacitly supported by most of the democratic leadership (and which started before he took office, come to remember). (welfare reform and allowing media consolidation don't fall under this heading; the first was a wrongheaded idea of his own and the second was plain stupid).

Now? Other than the first couple of weeks in office, w/the ledbetter act returning us to a saner status quo and lifting the global gag order and a better-than-Republicans-were-advocating budget, I can't think of a single good thing this administration or congress has done, while I can name a host of bad ones, on the environment, civil liberties, and the economy. (I've been busy and missed the fuel economy stuff this week; will check that out later, and more on something I will send via e-mail. )

Re: Serious question

[solarbird]

It's just evidence of the political class and its primary interest in defending itself and its interests, as I've described before. Public opinion matters, but with a typical retention rate of 98%, it doesn't really matter very much. So of your options, I'd say three is the one most likely to be correct.

Re: Serious question

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

I worry more and more that this is the case with an ever greater number of actors. I'd still like to think that most of these people went into public service because they wanted to do good (seriously, why else go into a profession that circumscribes your life in so many ways?), but their idea of the highest public good seems to be "what's best for large corporations over the next 10 years as best we can predict it", w/everything else subservient.

Which is stupidly shortsighted even from a corporatist point of view.

Best thing to do in that case is start tossing all of them who ignore us out willy nilly.

[ummdruff.livejournal.com]

Is it hypocritical to be offended because gays are being kicked out of a military engaged primarily in mass murder? Does that mean you're advocating for a larger US military and budget? Big picture, people.

[solarbird]

The main issue here is official discrimination written into Federal law and continued in policy, including by this administration. The remainder is go fuck yourself.

[ummdruff.livejournal.com]

I bet the discrimination is most pronounced in the special forces assassination rings and Gitmo IRF (torture) forces. How can we get more women in those jobs?

Also, with a skin that thin, maybe politics isn't for you?

You are correct!

[solarbird]

I hate politics. Loathe it. I hate all the work I do in it; I hate keeping up with it; I hate continually fighting these losing battles. It's absolutely not for me, you are spot on there! Often, it's really traumatising. I have nightmares about it.

It's just too bad for me that my circumstances don't permit me to ignore it. Otherwise, I assure you, I would!