The Sotomayer attacks: destructive politics when Americans are in need of constructive solutions.

Republican's identity politics are becoming increasingly odious:

We have Rush Limbaugh:

She's got a -- she's an angry woman, she's got a -- she's a bigot. She's a racist.

Newt Gingrich goes the extra mile, and tweets his accusation from Auschwitz:

White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.

Pat Buchanan spews on MSNBC:

She is also an affirmative action pick, Chris.

And from Tom Tancredo:

I’m telling you she appears to be a racist. She said things that are racist in any other context.

Republicans are courageous defenders of those who face discrimination--right? Yglesias sees this view as problematic:

I’ve made this point a million times, but it’s fascinating to me the kind of double standard conservatives apply to these issues. You never hear Rush Limbaugh decrying everyday racism against non-whites in the United States. You never hear him recounting an anecdote about an African-American man having trouble hailing a cab or being followed by a shopkeeper. He doesn’t do stories about how people with stereotypically “black” names suffer job discrimination. He doesn’t bemoan the fact that the United States has an aircraft carrier named after a fanatical segregationist. Which is fine. Everyone’s interested in some things and not in others. Rush isn’t interested in racism. Except that like most conservatives, he’s actually very interested in allegations of racial discrimination against white people. He sees the defense of white interests as integral to his political mission.

Shouldn't they at least attempt to disguise their xenophobia as attacks on Sotemayer's liberalism? That would certainly be an easier case to substantiate (though she appears to be rather centrist). Why the ignoble attacks? Isn't the Hispanic vote becoming increasingly important? Well, perhaps not as much as you would think:

Hispanics were not a key component in Obama's win. However, this is not to say that the Republicans should not try to contest the Hispanic vote. As the last scatterplot above shows, further losses of Hispanics would make the Democrats competitive in Georgia, Texas, and Arizona. In some sense this is no big deal, at least at the presidential level: If the Democrats remain at 53% or 54% of the vote, they'll win nationally in any case. If we imagine a national swing of 3% or so toward the Republicans, so they're competitive nationally, then their big risk if they lose Hispanic votes is to no longer be viable in Florida (where we estimate McCain to have won 43% of the two-party vote among Hispanics in 2008). That's the state where Republicans really can't afford to abandon the Hispanic vote.

I figure there could still be a backlash from other immigrant groups against the Republican blitz. These unsubstantiated attacks on Sonia Sotomayer tend to be racially justified and could still be seen as xenophobic by other immigrants who would tend to identify with Hispanics socio-economically. Either way, outside the base there will certainly be some cost. This leads to a frightful but increasingly obvious conclusion: Republicans are pandering to their base with malignant bile with no concern for other groups, and/or they sincerely feel whites are being marginalized by minority voices.

Either avenue is frightening. The United States faces grave challenges and her people face genuine hardships (particularly those working class rust belt voters who inexplicably gravitate towards the Republican party). Hateful mainstream conservative discourse has done nothing in response to those challenges (no healthcare plan) and dialogue is becoming increasingly xenophobic, crowding out moderate Republican voices. The way a heavily militarized United States confronts those ignored challenges--ignored in favor of odious populist pandering--will have profound consequences for the rest of the world. Will the hapless be mobilized towards constructing a progressive plan of action or will they be mobilized towards an enemy (illegal immigrants, terrorists, drug dealers, rappers, 'activist judges', ect.) who is supposedly responsible for their plight?

The Tancredos and Limbaughs of the world have made their choice clear--a choice Noam Chomsky has encountered before:

Now, if you listen to early Nazi propaganda, you know, end of the Weimar Republic and so on, and you listen to talk radio in the United States, which I often do—it’s interesting—there’s a resemblance. And in both cases, you have a lot of demagogues appealing to people with real grievances.

Grievances aren’t invented. I mean, for the American population, the last thirty years have been some of the worst in economic history. It’s a rich country, but real wages have stagnated or declined, working hours have shot up, benefits have gone down, and people are in real trouble and now in very real trouble after the bubbles burst. And they’re angry. And they want to know, “What happened to me? You know, I’m a hard-working, white, God-fearing American. You know, how come this is happening to me?”

That’s pretty much the Nazi appeal. The grievances were real. And one of the possibilities is what Rush Limbaugh tells you: “Well, it’s happening to you because of those bad guys out there.” OK, in the Nazi case, it was the Jews and the Bolsheviks. Here, it’s the rich Democrats who run Wall Street and run the media and give everything away to illegal immigrants, and so on and so forth. It sort of peaked during the Sarah Palin period. And it’s kind of interesting. It’s been pointed out that of all the candidates, Sarah Palin is the only one who used the phrase “working class.” She was talking to the working people. And yeah, they’re the ones who are suffering. So, there are models that are not very attractive.

One shouldn't need to descend this far to realize that inciting populist anger can be a pernicious enterprise.

We all play identity politics, stop feigning indignation

Krugman provides a little perspective on the crude accusations that the Sonia Sotomayer pick was an act of petty identity politics:

But is this any crazier, when you come down to it, than the Cult of Bush that ruled much of Washington for years? It was positive, not negative (though there was plenty of that too), but it was similarly about identity politics — you were supposed to support Bush, not because of how he did his job, but because he was, drumroll, a regular guy

Krugman is right for pointing out the cult of personality surrounding Bush. But we can't forget that Obama-mania propped up a messiah caricature, while the President has in actuality significantly betrayed his lofty image as principled defender of civil liberties, peace, and the rule-of-law. People on the left like Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman who rightly point to Obama's contradictions with respect to the treatment of detainees and AfPak strategy can only do so given that President Obama's campaign was largely void of substance--steeped in vague proclamations of American values and propelled largely by identity politics (a dearth of specifics allows for liberals to project their ideals onto him). Don't get me wrong, the Obama presidency has been positive in many respects, but even people like myself who find a home in the left must acknowledge that the fervor created by the abstract campaign was an impressive orchestration of identity politics. Obama was even commended by the advertising industry, awarded the title of marketer of the year for his campaign. How often have you known advertisers to value substance?

That's not to say President Obama himself is shallow, or that Sonia Sotomayer was an imprudent pick (it appears that she is a rather prudent one), but lets not kid ourselves--neither party has the right to cast the identity-politics stone. Both parties will pounce on any particular decision that has the optics of political posturing rather than principled judgment. Claims of indignation ought to be disregarded entirely; identity politics is the norm, not some morally depraved aberration.

The 'Weaponized Gospel of Jesus Christ' pt. 2

A couple of weeks ago I made a post regarding the increasingly pervasive influence of evangelical denominations within the US military.

If there remains any doubt of the threat these maniacal crusaders pose to the integrity and perception of the armed forces, look at Donald Rumsfeld's assault on the separation of church and state (and graphic design aesthetics).

http://gawker.com/5258524/donald-rumsfelds-judgement+happy-scary-bibilical-defense-briefing-art

A repositioning of torture

President Obama has ceased to employ the torture policy of the last administration. This rather important policy shift in ending torture policies (much like closing Guantanamo) is only symbolic when one understands the abundance of abuse that continues just a short step removed from the areas of unambiguous American responsibility. Those more ambiguous areas where torture is implicitly endorsed by the United States--undertrained Afghan jailers, extraordinary rendition, monetary support for ignoble regimes, ect--are where torture will continue. Noam Chomsky maintains that this has long been the standard:

Ordinarily, torture is farmed out to subsidiaries, not carried out by Americans directly in their government-established torture chambers. Alain Nairn, who has carried out some of the most revealing and courageous investigations of torture, points out that "What the Obama [ban on torture] ostensibly knocks off is that small percentage of torture now done by Americans while retaining the overwhelming bulk of the system's torture, which is done by foreigners under US patronage. Obama could stop backing foreign forces that torture, but he has chosen not to do so." Obama did not shut down the practice of torture, Nairn observes, but "merely repositioned it," restoring it to the norm, a matter of indifference to the victims. Since Vietnam, "the US has mainly seen its torture done for it by proxy -- paying, arming, training and guiding foreigners doing it, but usually being careful to keep Americans at least one discreet step removed." Obama's ban "doesn't even prohibit direct torture by Americans outside environments of 'armed conflict,' which is where much torture happens anyway since many repressive regimes aren't in armed conflict ... his is a return to the status quo ante, the torture regime of Ford through Clinton, which, year by year, often produced more US-backed strapped-down agony than was produced during the Bush/Cheney years."7

Sometimes engagement in torture is more indirect. In a 1980 study, Latin Americanist Lars Schoultz found that US aid "has tended to flow disproportionately to Latin American governments which torture their citizens,... to the hemisphere's relatively egregious violators of fundamental human rights." That includes military aid, is independent of need, and runs through the Carter years. Broader studies by Edward Herman found the same correlation, and also suggested an explanation. Not surprisingly, US aid tends to correlate with a favorable climate for business operations, and this is commonly improved by murder of labor and peasant organizers and human rights activists, and other such actions, yielding a secondary correlation between aid and egregious violation of human rights.8

These studies precede the Reagan years, when the topic was not worth studying because the correlations were so clear. And the tendencies continue to the present.

Obama's decision is most certainly an important step in the right direction. Howevever, the history of surreptitious and indirect American torture strategies would suggest that we cannot be assuaged by this shift. The danger of another war justified by coerced intellegence will persist if there is no concerted effort to ensure all American allies cease their practice of torturing detainees.

Subconscious Racism

http://www.reallygoodfriend.com/index.php?category=45

I come from a country that lauds itself for being a veritable cornucopia of cultures and ethnicities. Toronto and Vancouver, large urban centers, boast immigrant populations soaring to over 40% of total population. Business is said to prosper as a result of how quickly these diverse immigrant populations become accustomed to (and thrive in) the workforce. Moreover, Canadians trumpet their multiculturalism--embracing unique perspectives rather than homogenizing them with the 'melting-pot' philosophy--and garner world-wide respect for their tolerance. All these soaring principles are pervasive in the rhetoric of the typical Canadian and customarily employed by political figures--Which is why I was somewhat surprised when I saw this in today's Globe and Mail:

You are more likely to land a job interview if your name is John Martin or Emily Brown rather than Lei Li or Tara Singh – even if you have the same Canadian education and work experience.

These are the findings of a new study analyzing how employers in the Greater Toronto Area responded to 6,000 mock résumés for jobs ranging from administrative assistant to accountant.

Across the board, those with English names such as Greg Johnson and Michael Smith were 40 per cent more likely to receive callbacks than people with the same education and job experience with Indian, Chinese or Pakistani names such as Maya Kumar, Dong Liu and Fatima Sheikh.

These findings should give any sensible Canadian pause. We must stop perpetually asserting the superficial slogans of Canadian pluralism that render genuine concerns to the periphery. There is no doubt that Canada is a particularly tolerant place, but past successes cannot allow us to become complacent in the face of humiliating statistics.

Employer discrimination likely lives in a subconscious level and presents itself through instinctive decisions within the immediate pressures of sifting through a plethora of potential candidates. To address this issue would be complicated. The statistics suggest something systemic and pervasive. The challenges of discrimination are too immense to be remedied by the typical calls for sensitivity or chants of pluralistic platitudes.

President Obama stands defiant to candidate Obama-like criticisms

Obama strained relationship with the left took another hit:

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Obama superficially rejects the left labeling Obama's civil rights decisions as substantively similar to Bush's. In response to calls for a truth commission, Obama disparages the option for being "distracting."

I commend the left for not compromising their principles and fearlessly attacking Obama sternly when rhetoric diverts from policy. What is disturbing here, if we are to believe the account of this off the record meeting, is that Obama is not willing to face those criticisms frankly and substantively. Signals that Obama has shrugged off these very real criticisms from civil rights liberals--those whose views are best articulated by Candidate Obama's rousing calls for transparent governance, the rule-of-law, and the preservation American values in the face of adversity--is an omen of impending struggles with the principled left.

Democracy and Freedom

Richard Florida discusses a remarkable new study which analyzes 59 different factors that are potentially 'democratizing'. Surprisingly, just five factors encourage the growth of democratic regimes, while four factors defend a standing democracy. Most interestingly:

The study finds that GDP per capita is negatively associated with the transition to
democracy. Contrary to "modernization theory", the study finds that richer countries are not more likely to become democracies. Richer countries are more likely to remain democracies once they become one.

This study is significant as it presents strong empirical evidence of the failure of economic liberalization in promoting the proliferation of democratic regimes. Of course, you wouldn't need to show an academic study to prove this to an Argentinean or Chilean or Iraqi who has witnessed first-hand that economic liberalization without proper democratic institutions only serves to line the pockets of corrupt politicians and multinationals. But for those who have for so long trumpeted the Washington Consensus and Friedmanian policies for their alleged democratizing effects: I would point to this study as strong support for the intuitive notion that structural reforms and their potential democratic externalities only occur when those reforms emerge from democratic channels.

Inflaming anti-American sentiment: Photography

Employing a bizarre line of logic, President Obama has decided to withhold hundreds of images of Abu Ghrraib-like detainee abuse. President Obama reversed his earlier decision to release the photos May 28th on the grounds that they would only serve to "inflame anti-American sentiment."

Such a conclusion has rather nefarious implications. First, Obama is withholding stark evidence of abuse of power while at the same time trumpeting the virtues of transparent governance. Obama's reversal suggests two dire aspirations: cultivating an electorate to trust the government's capacity to decide what information is and is not suitable; and defending the faulty assumption that abuse was simply a matter of 'bad apples' by withholding evidence of systemic abuse.

More striking though is the logical conclusion of Obama's justification for withholding the pictures: the way to defend American prestige is to hide the evidence of her crimes--as if photography is a danger to American sentiment but not what is being photographed.

First of all, even if this move successfully minimalized damage to the American image, the incident serves as a clear indication that the Obama administration will compromise its promise of transparency as long as it is politically advantageous to do so. It should not come as a surprise that governments are concerned with crafting a particular image that is sometimes incongruous with reality, but to proclaim it so definitively as Obama has done is positively Orwellian.

Not only is such a defense wrong on moral grounds--contradicting the very principles Obama is so quick to trumpet--but it obviously won't even succeed as a PR matter. The contradiction serves as fodder for radicals who can point to American hypocrisy, and sparks the imagination of those who wonder why these pictures are too much for our bleeding little hearts. Does the Obama administration not know that such teasing only serves to provoke our morbid imaginations? The shock of the initial photographs are now but a starting point for imagination to take us to new depths of sordid depravity. Isn't this a predictable psychological conclusion?

Why are threats from parents and authority figures always veiled and ambiguous? Why are the most provoking and salacious clothes not necessarily the most revealing? It is clear that we are most petrified by and most captivated by what we can't see and what we can't have. Just like the boogy man who hides underneath my bed at night, these pictures--shrouded by executive privilege--will warp fears beyond what is warranted. Only if the evidence of our systemic torture abuses is released and dealt with can we move on and justly face those who charge us with hypocrisy and tyranny. Will Obama let us confront this very real boogy man?

Tinkering with tyranny

In a recent statement President Obama has pledged to continue the use of military commissions for detainees in Guantanamo, albeit reforms proposed by the Obama administration are said to respect the rights of the accused and maintain the rule of law.

Candidate Obama decried the commissions as "enormous failures" and harsh Bush-era criticisms in main-stream press labeled the "kangaroo courts" as clear perversions of justice. Moreover, candidate Obama stated unequivocally that the standard legal avenues--courts and the Uniform Code of Military Justice--would be sufficient in keeping Americans safe. Despite condemnations, President Obama has opted for the pragmatic approach in refining the existing military commissions.

The reforms, if we are to take them at face value, are substantial:

The extra safeguards for detainees include a ban on evidence obtained by harsh interrogation; restrictions on hearsay evidence; giving detainees more leeway to choose their own lawyers and protecting detainees who refuse to testify, the statement said.

With a broad spectrum of legal voices--including Glen Greenwald and the former candidate Obama--trumpeting the ability of the existing legal framework to handle sensitive national security cases, one begins to wonder where exactly the need for military commissions comes from.

Originally:

Military commissions have been around since the Revolutionary War. But they've always been used to try spies that we find behind enemy lines. It's normally a situation, you're on the battlefield, you find an enemy spy behind your lines. You can't ship them to national court, so you provide a kind of rough battlefield justice in a commission. You give them the best process you can, and then you execute the sentence on the spot, which generally means executing the defendant.

Ultimately these 20 or so detainees are more a matter of optics than of national security concern. But optics of an executive acting, in the words of William Safire, "as investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner," are not good. Obama needs to proclaim, unequivocally, that he will not waiver or compromise in his repudiation of Bush's perversion of the rule of law. But to do this would mean more than the hyperbolic value-laden language of American principle, this would mean actually employing the existing legal structure that remains the envy of the world.

To compromise with refined military commissions fundamental undermines the independent and impartial rule of law. If these detainees dubious charges will not stand in an American courtroom, then they are to be dropped. The Obama administration may not get the harsh convictions it aspires for using the just system, in which case they would likely face the frivolous criticism of 'coddling terrorists'--but to tinker with the tyranny of military commissions as a means to achieving those politically advantageous ends is still tyranny.

Greenwald put it best:

What makes military commission so pernicious is that they signal that anytime the government wants to imprison people but can't obtain convictions under our normal system of justice, we'll just create a brand new system that diminishes due process just enough to ensure that the government wins. It tells the world that we don't trust our own justice system, that we're willing to use sham trials to imprison
people for life or even execute them, and that what Bush did in perverting American justice was not fundamentally or radically wrong, but just was in need of a little tweaking.

Colbert: Closet Conservative?

A new study highlightned on Mother Jones contends that many conservatives actually interpret Stephen Colbert's caricature of a firm conservative ideologue as genuine. I always suspected that the more rigid ideological conservatives had cognitive dissonance and the complete inability to interpret material outside of an ideological prism, but this study is an incredibly frightening indictment beyond anything I could ever contemplate.

I cannot imagine anyone understanding Colbert as a closet-advocate of his preposterous diatribes and invectives. What Colbert does is arrange slogans, buzz words, and distortions in a manner that exposes the fallacy of conservative punditry logic. The slogans, buzz words, and distortions Colbert considers to be comic gold are clearly something more important for herds of Palin-ists. This is troubling because it is empirical evidence that Colbert, to some degree, hardens ideological predilections. However, doesn't it take Colbert's humor to new heights knowing that these people actually exist?

Update I

Olberman discusses the study with the author: