Democracy and Dreams

We in America profess strongly our love for democracy in all kinds of ways. We love our democracy dearly, or so we claim, but why is it that a man who acts as if it is completely ok for someone to be ashamed of our political process is the frontrunner of the presidential race? When Michelle Obama espoused her idea that she had not been proud of our political process since she became an adult (though she initially, of course, claimed to not be proud of our country at all until her adulthood), Obama jumped in to clarify that she meant our political process, as if that would make it all ok.

Why isn’t she proud of it? If you profess that democracy is the greatest system of government in history, shouldn’t one be proud of the most perfected form of it in the world, which is the United States’ political process? But she’s not. Why? I can only produce one answer: because we’re not perfect.

That is the great problem with dreamers in a democracy. They are dissatisfied, disappointed, and ashamed of anything less than perfection in all things. They are particularly dangerous in a democracy or any place that is not rigorously ordered because they will espouse their ideology and ideas, some of which are highly dangerous, everywhere.

Case in point: Russia during World War 1. Czar Nicholas II of Russia had a weakening grip over his vast, heavily populated country after its defeat at the hands of the Germans. Ideological dreamers we now call Communists ran wild, espousing their belief in a perfect government. After the war, the Russian Royal family was too weakened to maintain order, and was overthrown by the Communist rebels. We know the story from then on out, and this is simply one example of a dream, so noble on the face of it, gone horribly wrong.

I’m not making the case for the Czars, though their government was undoubtedly was many times less harsh than Communism. I’m making the case that anyone who says anything, including and even especially government, can be perfect, or even 95% perfect, is wrong and that idea is deeply dangerous. I’m making the case for satisfaction (something I think America has lost sight of entirely for the past 60 years) with the greatest democracy, the greatest government, ever seen by men. Contrary to what Hilary Clinton says, some people have gotten things by dreaming, but these things received were as often evil as they were good, regardless of the moral content of the dreams.

The Obama’s dream is that of a people whose hope is in the Obamas. That is the simple truth of it. Think about it. When Obama says, “I’m not asking people to take a chance on me, I’m asking them to take a chance on their dreams and aspirations,” he’s repackaging the ancient political request, “vote for me” to make it sound much more glamorous (and I wouldn’t go beyond accusing him of playing the race card in that sentence, after all, what other dream could he be talking about than an African-American president?) What are you really doing, by taking a chance on dreams? You’re voting for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. Period. There’s no getting around it. He is asking you to take a chance on him, no matter what he says, because that’s where his ideas lead to via a logical progression. You will vote for Obama if you are to take a chance on your dreams because Obama is your dreams and aspirations.

All of this dreaming is dangerous for many reasons. The first of these reasons involves the most fundamental difference there is between liberals and conservatives: liberals believe America is inherently flawed and must be fixed by government, conservatives believe America is inherently good and must be allowed to work its further good by the government. That Obama acts as if his wife’s shame about our political process is completely acceptable puts him firmly inside the liberal side of that divide. The dreaming is dangerous, then, because if our electoral process, one of the cleanest and best in the world, is shameful and must be fixed by government, where does that take us, exactly? How is Obama going to improve it? Given his professed extraordinary taste for politics of any kind but a vague “hope”, I am left with some very dark thoughts.

Should all of this danger stop us from ever dreaming? Of course not. We may dream away, in a realistic context. My point is that this dream that Obama is selling must be scrutinized to the utmost degree, because the dream of his, the dream of a Kingdom of Heaven on earth and a perfect government bringing it, is a dream that has killed millions and destroyed nations. Scrutinized does not meant rejected, necessarily, though it probably will, but it means we must look with a jaded cynic’s eye on everything a politician says. Obama, in fact, warrants heavier criticism than most politicians because he rails against the jaded eye (he favors the hopeful, teary type of eye, and both have a place in democracy, both are necessary to create the irreplaceable balance between truth/fact and hope/faith that they do, but Obama fails to realize this). He professedly can’t stand cynicism and is all about hope, which is all the more reason for cynics to stiffen up. We hope for the best (that he isn’t anything we think he is) but we plan for the worst (that he’s everything we think he is). 

The Olympics and China

As you no doubt know, the Olympics are being held in China this year, much to many people’s chagrin. China is a human rights violator to a large degree, with its militant invasion and repression of Tibet to its southwest being the most obvious violation. Furthermore, it holds no semblance of a democracy, and has perpetually been trying to control, using brutal and soft methods, any religions within its borders (it has a very sizable Christian minority, with smaller groups of Muslims, Buddhists and other religious groups present as well, and all are repressed). Their domination of Tibet, continued threatening of Taiwan, ever-looming threat to Japan, and their ally and step-brother North Korea’s threatening of South Korea are all grave concerns to the United States.

China’s objective is obvious enough: an East Asian empire. But I can save that geopolitical discussion for another day. Right now, the issue is what to do about the crackdown in Tibet. What I believe is necessary is to, like France has openly spoken of, boycott the opening ceremony. We must also threaten a boycott of the Olympics themselves, if China does not open up its western regions to the media and cease the bloodshed. We must follow this up with continued private pressure on China to lighten up on its religious oppression and to begin the start of democratic processes within their government. Traditional, State Department bureaucratic wisdom is that China will become more capitalist and democratic with time. It will likely become more capitalist, as it has. But what we’re seeing China attempt is something that has never succeeded (and to my knowledge, even been tried): capitalistic-Communism with a dictatorship. The only ideology behind these seemingly contradictory doctrines is success, both in economics and military power.

Capitalism is often a given direction that countries and peoples tend towards: it is the most basic of human economies. Capitalism is something that happens when government oppression and control of the market doesn’t happen. Government oppression and control of the market is highly difficult and generally illogical, and this is why every country leans towards capitalism. Democracy, on the other hand, is not something we all naturally move towards. It is something that, for most cultures of the world, thousands of years of culture and sometimes religion lean against. How many times has China been ruled by a democracy? None. How much has China had mostly-free markets? The majority of its history, most likely. The only society in the world where democracy is truly ingrained is in Greece, its birthplace. (Democracy rails against human nature because it is equality, and superiority is in every human’s instinct rather than equality). That is why democracy is not something that happens naturally, it is something that must have a conscious force behind it, whereas capitalism needs only unconscious force (though conscious force helps as well) to succeed.

That is why, this year and for years to come, we must take it upon ourselves to be that conscious force that pushes democracy in China, and we can’t simply expect it to happen. A good start would be a strong showing of pressure to end the terror in Tibet.

Condescension 101

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." – Barack Obama, at a fundraiser in San Francisco.

You have, no doubt, heard of this many times on the news. You probably understand how insulting this quote is as well. As a religious gun owner, I find the notion that I “cling” to these things due to economic depression insane. Americans have been religious and owned guns since the founding of our country, and for good reasons. When one uses the word cling, one spawns images of a person in a shipwreck desperately clinging to a board or a barrel, or perhaps one thinks of a child holding desperately onto their toy as someone tries to pry it out of their hands. Either one of these images used as an explanation of why I believe in my faith or why I own guns is absolutely insulting. Just as insulting is the idea that economically depressed people in small towns are universally bigoted towards “people who aren’t like them”. But you’ve heard of all this already.

What you may not have heard of is the book What’s the Matter With Kansas? This book, by Thomas Frank, asks the question of why Kansans are some of the most conservative people in the nation. It shows a common strain in liberalism’s latest trends that Obama’s comments are in line with: middle-class, religious whites vote Republican because of, essentially, fear of secular progressives, fear of gun control, hatred of abortion, and fear of gays. Basically, middle class whites are too stupid to see the truth of liberalism because evil Republicans blind them with talk of gays and guns. They don’t see the “real”
 issues at stake here, and they have to be helped.

This is what Obama was communicating to his crowd of San Franciscans: that these rednecks in Pennsylvania like their guns and their Jesus and don’t like those Mexicans or gays, and that’s why they vote Republican.

And Democrats wonder why they consistently lose the white, middle-class religious vote? It’s partially because of condescending statements like this. In fact, I might even be willing to go so far as to accuse Obama of prejudice against lower-class whites, something no one else seems to want to do. I saw Pat Buchanan on MSNBC (my brother was in charge of the remote, forgive me) shortly after this happened saying that if it was John McCain in Chicago saying this about blacks, there would be a firestorm, and that it’s only ok to say this type of thing when you’re picking on low-class whites.

As for just what is the matter with Kansas and other people outside the state who may share Kansans’ views, it is not that Republicans blind them with guns and gays issues. How it started is that these people simply decided that Republicans and conservatism represented their views better. So they got to voting that way for some time, and then the liberal attacks started. Liberals and their predecessors, Progressives, have been attempting to belittle their opposition for all time. Indeed, conservatives have been guilty of it often, too. But liberals, unable to see how people can see what they see and disagree, have made this a habit when talking about religious, white middle/lower class voters.

This pattern is only perpetuated by their arrogance, and Barack Obama, contrary to his promises to unite the country, is playing this game once again.

One More Thing…

“You’re only taking two or three sentences and using it to condemn a man who spoke millions upon millions of words in his sermons!” – Everyone defending Jeremiah Wright.

I’ve heard this argument a couple of times lately, and indeed, Barack Obama himself used it. This hypocrisy is palpable. Were these not the same people calling for Don Imus’ head? Were these not the same people demanding Trent Lott resign? I’ll list the comments each man said that inflamed so many people and let you make the call on which statements are more condemning, which ones are more resignation worthy, and which ones are more controversial.

(Italics are used here to denote the emphasis the speaker used in each quote)

“So I was watching the women’s NCAA championship last night… those Rutgers girls looked tough. Like some nappy headed ho’s.” – Don Imus

“If Strom Thurmond had been elected back then, we wouldn’t have a lot of the problems we have today.” – Trent Lott

“Should we sing God Bless America? No, no, no, God d*** America! That’s in the Bible!” –Jeremiah Wright

“Hilary has never been called a n*****!” – Jeremiah Wright

“Barack [Obama] knows what it’s like to be a black man livin’ in a country run by rich! White! People!”- Jeremiah Wright

“[These] Whiteys…” – Jeremiah Wright.

“The government lied about the AIDS virus when they made it to destroy people of color! – Jeremiah Wright.

“9/11 was America’s chickens coming home to roost!” – Jeremiah Wright.

“Jesus was a poor, black man being oppressed by the rich white men!” – Jeremiah Wright

“The Romans, which meant they were Italian, which meant they were white, [simply] stared down their garlic noses at Jesus…” – Jeremiah Wright

I rest my case.

McCain Vs. Obama

Obama and the Democrats have recently been ripping McCain for his 100 years comment regarding Iraq. Obama, especially, has been distorting him ridiculously, claiming repeatedly that McCain wants a hundred years of war in Iraq, when McCain clearly said 100 years “as long as Americans are not being killed and wounded”, meaning that McCain would like 100 years of some kind of U.S. military presence in Iraq, much like we’ve had military presence in Germany and Japan for 60 years, South Korea for 50 years, and Kuwait for 17 years (McCain actually used these examples in his original statement).

What this is, on Obama’s part, is typical election politics. I don’t blame him. It’s what politicians do; it’s part of the game. What I blame Obama for is claiming to be different when, just like a standard politician, he is distorting McCain’s words to the extreme. To say that McCain wants a hundred years of war is an outright falsehood, McCain has already reputed that idea multiple times and clarified himself again and again (even though, if one actually reads or hears his words, his intent is clear enough in the original form). We have a term for a person who claims to be above something and different from something and yet participates in it: hypocrite. In fact, we have two words, and the second is liar.

This McCain-Obama scuffle here is just a taste of what we’re going to see come the general election. But another taste is in Obama’s claim that McCain represents “the politics of the past”. I don’t expect the air headed college students at his rallies to question just what he means by that, and I don’t expect the fawning media to, either. So I am left to wonder just what on earth he means by “politics of the past,” and how on earth McCain represents them. Are the politics of the past compromising sometimes to get things done? Making realistic assessments and suggestions for national security? Leading members of both parties to get things done? Speaking your mind, almost no matter what is on it, to the American people? Staking your campaign on something few others believed in at the time but you knew was right? Fighting against wasteful spending within the federal government?

If all of that is the past for Obama, I’m not sure I want to know what the future is.

Obama doesn’t offer a further explanation, naturally, because he’s just trying to take a cheap shot at McCain. What he’s really talking about is age, here. McCain has, in absolutely no way, been pushing the politics of the past for his life in public service. Rather, he represents many of the timeless values that all Americans hold: individualism, honor, commitment, and honesty. Obama’s only shot boils down to age. You can argue whether that’s a legitimate criticism, if you please, but if Obama wants to critique McCain on age, why won’t he come out and do it openly? Instead, like everything else he does, it’s just sugar coated, knife-in-the-dark attacks against his opponent. Once again, I accept knife-in-the-dark attacks as legitimate enough. But Obama’s claim to be above it, once the pretty surface is ripped off, is outright false, just like his charges against McCain’s 100 year statement. 

The Pakistani Problem

Al Qaeda’s largest stronghold in the world right now is not in Afghanistan, and it’s not in Iraq: it’s in the northern strip of Pakistan. Pakistan, though you probably already knew this, is just south of Afghanistan, west of India, southeast of Iran, and north of the Indian Ocean. It’s a country of about 120 million people, is almost entirely Muslim, has a professional, well-equipped military, and some 60 nuclear weapons. It is a U.S. ally led by the sort of half-dictator, half-elected official, a style of leader that is becoming more and more popular these days (his name is Pervez Musharraf). Musharraf is pro-America and has been a pretty good friend, as far as friends go, to our country and our fight against Islamic extremism.

The problem is that he is lonely in his country: most of them have strong sympathies with Al Qaeda’s cause, for one reason or another, and dislike America to some degree. Now, it’s been said that as long as Musharraf has the support of the three A’s (Allah, the Pakistani Army, and America) he can remain in power indefinitely.

Musharraf wants to help the United States in its war on terror; he realizes it is in Pakistan’s best interests to do so, but his hands are tied by an unwilling populace. Al Qaeda’s sanctuary areas are in the northern and western regions of Pakistan, those regions close to the border of Afghanistan, and Musharraf attempted to send the military in once in order to defeat them. This was a highly unpopular move, however: not only do his people sympathize with Al Qaeda, but his military was uneasy about killing “fellow Muslims”. Musharraf then worked out a deal giving these northern and western regions, infested by Al Qaeda, a kind of semi-sovereignty where he wouldn’t mess with them, and they wouldn’t mess with him.

The problem is that Osama Bin Laden and company are all in those areas, and America needs to go after them. Al Qaeda’s Iraqi regiment is being scattered badly by the American (almost) victory there, and countries like Somalia, Morrocco and other north African countries are where the small remnants are headed. Bin Laden’s wing of Al Qaeda, the older, in-charge wing that caused 9/11 directly, is primarily regrouped in Pakistan once they were kicked out of Afghanistan.

So if Musharraf can’t handle it, who can? Barack Obama suggests invading these areas of Pakistan and hoping the rest of Pakistan just understands what we’re doing. This is idiotic: Pakistanis sympathize with Al Qaeda and they don’t view their country as separate entities at all. If we invade Pakistan, we’ll be invading Pakistan. Musharraf won’t want to fight back, but his people may not give him a choice (even dictators must answer to the mob, if they cannot control it sufficiently). We would win against Pakistan, of course, but it would require a mass draw-down of forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a new occupation and a new insurgency. Obama’s plan, while it sounds nice on paper, is ridiculous in reality when one considers that Obama won’t have the guts to fight an insurgency.

There’s no good answer to Pakistan, in the end. My only idea would be to beef up special operations incursions into Pakistan as well as airstrikes, two things that won’t provoke war but won’t let Al Qaeda off of the hook. Furthermore, some kind of isolation of that region of Pakistan is in order, meaning that our own CIA and NSA intelligence services must work hard to track anything or anyone coming in and out of Pakistan, with Pakistani intelligence’s help. In the long haul, these measures, with continuous pressure on Musharraf to crack down on terrorists as much as he can without upsetting his populace, are the only ways to deal with terrorists in Pakistan directly. Direct military force must be placed entirely on defeating the terrorists in Afghanistan itself, which is something we can and hopefully will do. 

Want to Have a Conversation on Race?

Ever since Barack Obama’s speech on race, people everywhere have been blathering about starting a new conversation on race, or perhaps the first conversation on race. The idea that we have not ever had conversations about race is preposterous: pundits have been talking about race for the last 60 years almost incessantly. But there is no way to have a true national dialogue on race: you can’t have 315 million people (the illegal immigrants surely will want a say as well) talking at once. Each of the 315 million people harbors their own individual opinions upon race, and that is why the term conversation is flawed in and of itself.

Here’s another couple of facts: whites generally don’t care to talk about race. The majority of Hispanics don’t, either, and I’ve yet to see any Asians care about it. In fact, blacks are the only ethnic group that cares to talk about race on the whole, and they tend to only wish to speak of it as it pertains to white racism. Hispanics, a minority group much larger than blacks, and Asians, a minority group that will be larger than blacks in the not-too-distant future, are largely left out of the conversation that blacks want to have. How can you have a national conversation about race when 20% of the country’s opinions are, at the very least, shoved aside?

A factual look at the history of Asian-Americans and Hispanics shows that they have, since Reconstruction, faced almost as much prejudice and racism as blacks have from whites. Many Chinese and Mexican immigrants were not welcomed by employers in the west and southwest, and there were many laws in place in these regions that rivaled Jim Crowe in the south. The internment of Japanese-Americans during World War 2 was one of the greatest civil rights violations in American history, and was committed against Asians only.

I’m not making the case that any minority has faced what blacks have, as a whole. I’m saying that I’ve yet to see many Hispanic or Asian rights activist on TV, definitely not in the numbers that there are for black rights (interesting, considering that Asians and Hispanics combined outnumber blacks 2-1). Heck, you don’t even see any Native Americans on TV complaining. Proportionally speaking, within the last 140 years, Hispanic, Native and Asian Americans have a remarkably low ratio of complaints-to-injustices when compared to blacks.

The reason whites don’t want to talk about race is multi-fold. There is the most obvious of reasons: some blacks often get trigger-happy when it comes to shouting racist. When Don Imus used the term “nappy-headed hoes” to describe a women’s college basketball team of 14 blacks and 1 white, he was publicly executed, in a sense (never mind the fact that he commented that their opposing team of similar racial make up was “pretty cute”, therefore almost wholly nullifying the notion that he, personally is a racist). What Imus said was stupid and insulting, but if a black man said a similar thing about white women, he would’ve gotten suspended a week or two at worst. That’s because there are no white head-hunters whose job it is to race-bait and go after anyone who says anything insensitive, like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. There is no National American Association for White Peoples, either. Though there are similar organizations for Asians and Hispanics, they do not hold nearly the prestige and power that the NAACP and Sharpton do, and in fact, I suspect most Hispanics and Asians don’t care to associate with their ethnic organizations.

I think another reason whites don’t like to talk about race is that it makes us angry and frustrated. This frustration stems from the fact that many blacks, at the same time, beg for rescue from the ghetto and blame whites for their being in the ghetto. Many blacks seem to spend a lot of time looking inward and glorifying their own culture or abilities, and they seem to spend plenty of time looking outward at white racism, but at the same time, they tend to ignore two things: what they are doing wrong, and what whites are doing right. I believe one fundamental difference in white and black American cultures is that while white Americans view their individual identity as superseding their identity as whites on every level, every time, while blacks tend to view their blackness as superseding their individual, or being so fundamental a part of it that it theoretically supersedes their individual. To give it a formula, my description of myself is a person who is an American of Caucasian descent. A black individual might describe themselves as a black person from, or even simply in, America. Being black is much more important to a black than being white is to a white, in other words, as far as blacks and whites see themselves. (I suspect this plays into the hesitancy by many mixed-race people like Obama to call themselves mixed race: the black parent and culture stresses blackness as a virtue and something of importance, the white parent and culture doesn’t really care, partially because they might be called racist if they did, and this hesitancy on the part of most mixed-race people leads me to admire other people like Tiger Woods, who, risking the ire of the black community, acknowledges and embraces his Asian and white blood and doesn’t call himself black.)

Whites are frustrated by this black obsession with blackness because it encompasses a deadly group think mentality: you’re one of us. Whites, as I implied before, tend to be individualistic by culture here in the U.S., and look on with great scorn when Jeremiah Wright and Michelle Obama bemoan the evils of “middle-class-ness” encouraging blacks to stay in the ‘hood, because if you don’t, you’re betraying your community and your race. We see the same thing when blacks excel in school, and are often ridiculed by other blacks for “acting white”. You can blame white racism all you want, but it is the culture of conformity-to-poverty (and the out-of-wedlock births, abortions and drug use that come with it) that truly damages blacks more than anything.

In my opinion, if blacks truly seek to integrate into American society and get to the top of Dr. King’s proverbial mountain, they must shed their confusing of authentic African-American culture with poverty, and if they are to succeed, they must do it themselves by integrating and assimilating into white-Asian-Hispanic culture. If that is not done, then they will continue to be that 10% of America that nobody wants to talk about.