I don’t keep up with these things, but I remember that a couple of years ago Donald Rumsfeld felt compelled to abort a trip to France for fear of getting prosecuted as a war criminal. Now Bush has likewise cancelled a trip to Switzerland for the same reason. The problem is that these foreign countries who are part of ‘Old Europe’ actually feel somewhat obligated to honor the treaties they have signed that outlaw the use of torture. I kind of doubt that either France or Switzerland would actually follow through and arrest our former leaders, but it’s probably best not to test that theory.
What’s sad about this is that we just gave these folks a mulligan. Our former president has not, and probably will not, because he cannot, visit Europe for the rest of his life. He’s no different than Augusto Pinochet. And, yet, he’s a relatively moderate voice in this country’s right. If he ran for senate, he’d probably get a primary challenge from the right. I can almost guarantee you that the next Republican president will be much. much worse than Bush. It’s unlikely that they will have any moral compass whatsoever when it comes to repeating Bush’s sins, but they’ll take it up several notches by rejecting the idea that the federal government has any legitimate role at all outside of national security issues.
It’s the biggest problem facing our country.
You are right that it’s the biggest problem in the country, and it’s a total nail-biter because for the life of me I can’t point to any viable short-term solutions to it. I predicted to my wife last year, when she was really worried about this, that the Republican Party would go Whig within 20 years unless there was a radical change in the party’s direction, i.e., away from total insanity.
The obvious problem is that that prediction (and it’s only a prediction, to boot) doesn’t preclude a next Republican President. In my head I feel fairly confident (maybe a bad sign) that Obama will do well in 2012, above all because I really don’t see compelling national candidates in the GOP and because economic indicators are moving in a positive direction given capitalist constraints on real positivity. It’s almost like Democrats are trying to run out the demographic clock. The GOP is intensifying its whiteness as time passes, and the United States is in a strictly demographic sense diminishing its whiteness. If those changes manifest by 2016, I can breathe easier, but they may not. Politics may intervene, or they may not be sufficient.
Interesting point on another site I read this morning was that 54% of votes cast for the House in the last election were for Democrats, nationally. Gerrymandering meant that that 54% equaled a Republican takeover. Interesting, and one hopes that the limits of gerrymandering, which are very real, will soon be hit.
I hope I’m not completely naive.
<<Interesting point on another site I read this morning was that 54% of votes cast for the House in the last election were for Democrats, nationally.>>
This isn’t true. The Dems had about 45% of the House vote, the Republicans 51%. The original post on the other site has been corrected.
Thanks for the correction!
As far as the 2012 outlook is concerned, it might be that Americans like the idea of a Democratic president and a Republican congress, and they’ll keep that in place. One would think that the Republican views are too extreme to win a national election.
But then I look at the state-by-state breakdown, and I’m a lot less optimistic. Because of migration of electoral votes after the census, the Kerry states plus Ohio aren’t enough to win anymore. I don’t see Obama carrying even all the Kerry states.
I live in Wisconsin, which went (barely) for Kerry, and I don’t see Obama winning here in 2012. Wisconsin has become quite red. Besides which, a new voter suppression law will disenfranchise a lot of Democratic voters, including me. The effect of Republican control of state governments, meaning that they write the rules under which the elections are conducted, shouldn’t be dismissed.
I don’t see Obama carrying Ohio again, either. So he has to pick up the equivalent of Ohio + Wisconsin + some more electoral votes from states that didn’t go for Kerry. I don’t think Obama will carry the southern states that he won in 2008. Maybe he’ll keep some of the western states he won (New Mexico, Colorado), but that’s hardly enough electoral votes to give him a win.
The Left and Right exist, in our society and in others across geographies and time, because both are correct sometimes and have something to add to finding solutions to important problems.
At least that’s my belief.
But occasionally, over time, one side will just drift into insanity, silliness and/or irrelevance.
The Right in the US has been drifting there for 30 years. Now they are entrenching themselves in a place that MAYBE 30% of the nation can get behind.
That may win them a few elections here and there and is OK for creating reliable TV and radio ratings for guys like Beck and Rush, but it makes it really hard to actually govern.
Just look at health care. Repeal and replace? Replace with what? Health care consumes about 20% of GDP and it needs to be half that. Nothing, absolutely nothing the GOP can propose will come close to that. And Americans and business leaders will not stand for that, regardless of political ideology.
I think the same is true for foreign policy. Bush doesn’t give a crap if he ever goes to Europe again so long as he can cut brush on his ranch and get a good seat at the Super Bowl. And most Americans feel exactly the same way.
Until, that is, there is some crisis and they expect the US to respond effectively. At that moment they would take someone as questionable as Condi Rice or Powell, because they have actual experience, over Ron Paul.
It’s intelligent comments like this that bring me to this site daily.
Did Brendan steal your password? 😉
I didn’t! I sweartagawd!!!!
Booman and i agree on SOME things?: that George Bush is a war criminal who’s no different from Pinochet is one of those areas.
Booman, did you know that Donald Rumsfled is speaking at the Constitution Center in Philly tomorrow?
We celebrate our war criminals here in the US.
I just ate lunch. This is sick making. Rummy is doing his book tour. How disgusting.
and his debut is in Philly! At the Constitution center no less!
How much moire stomach turning can it get? Maybe he’ll give a live waterboarding demononstration.
Who needs Paris when you have Paraguay?
http://jischinger.wordpress.com/2008/11/02/bush-buys-land-paraguay/
The dude’s an international pariah and stateside he’s an elder statesman watching the Superbowl next to celebrities. I guess that’s par for the course when both the leadership of both parties hold up Reagan as the ideal.
Important to note that Pinochet wasn’t always a war criminal. After Chile first transitioned to democracy, he wasn’t subject to international arrest warrants the next day- he eventually retired to living like a lord in London, chummy with the Tory elite and Margaret Thatcher when his entire world was turned upside down by an ambition and brash magistrate judge from Spain. Pinochet is considered a war criminal today due to the tireless advocacy and research by international human rights groups and courageous judges like Balthazar Garzon.
The key, as with everything progressives claim they want, is to organize and build the alliances and networks to make progressive change possible. Obama’s decision not to investigate and launch truth commissions into Bush’s crimes doesn’t exonerate Bush, either at home or abroad. If we organize effectively and build the right progressive institutions, there’s no reason why a future administration in 10-20 years couldn’t take things in a different direction.
that might work in a country that has an attention spean more than– oooh ooh, puppy outside, puppy outside!!
Is it any more wishful thinking than those in Chile in 1990 who wanted someone to be held accountable for the torture and execution of their friends and family? We have to maintain the ability to envision a future where such things are possible. The alternative is bleaker than any institutional obstacles we are facing today.
well, bleak is my MO and it’s based on rational observation.
Anyone go to jail for Iran Contra? Anyone go to jail for funding the nun-raping and murdering in central America?
Any ceos go to jail for breaking the law by tapping our phones? Erik Prince: is he in jail for war profiteering and the various crimes Blackwater was involved in? How about those banks that sold people shitty mortgages on purpose and crashed the economy? Anyone been frogmarched yet, 3 years after the fact?
the answer to all of those is NO. Not only that, those responsible for the above will NEVER see the inside of a cell. And the same is almost surely true about the current regime. We will sweep it all under the rug, lalala, nothing to see here. Because that is how America (Fuck YEAH!) rolls.
I guess. I’m not going to argue you over the impunity and lack of accountability for our political and economic elites. But standing 20 years in the past, every major progressive achievement seems like a distant long shot, laughable in many instances. Now maybe we as progressives decide to let this one go and focus on issues like economic inequality or health care, but never in history have elites been held accountable just because. Its always been because of vibrant social movements working together across decades.
Can social movements manifest without community? If our communities are primarily online, as they increasingly seem to be for most of us, they’re subject to clean & easy removal. In traditional social gatherings, people gaze at their handheld devices, oblivious to everyone else in the room. If this is indicative of a communal intelligence in any useful sense, the Koch brothers are a socialist front.
Imho, much more serious than the destructive potential of a future GOP administration is the wholesale displacement of civic culture by corporate culture. If corporate interests = the public interest at the heart of the culture — because we, as individuals, can no longer see the difference — what matter the name of the party in power? There are no more human beings, only resources.