Tag Archives: Mitt Romney

Letter to an Ignorant but Beloved Friend

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I get it.  You’re in a different place than I am.  You weren’t into school, or it just didn’t work out for you.  Or you did that but your career didn’t pan out like you thought it would.  You didn’t have any job security.  You don’t make enough money.  You’re raising a family.  You’ve had health issues.  You can’t afford cable.  So all of your information comes from free media — in other words, Fox, Rush, and word of mouth.

If I tell you that you’re being fed information by corporations whose only interest is themselves, you say both sides are biased. It’s all opinion. Yes, I’ll, grant you, it’s true.  But you’re listening to the stupid side.

You know what I learned in school? Something called “critical thinking.”  You may have learned it at one time yourself, but you’re just too tired or busy to deal with it. You turn on the TV to relax, not to think.

Well, friend, if you’re willing to do a little critical thinking, you’ll discover some pretty important stuff.  Like the fact that Fox is controlled by a single billionaire whose only real interest is in remaining a billionaire.  Said billionaire has freely admitted that he used his media to support the Bush agenda. Certainly it kept people watching, “Shock and Awe” and all. That’s one man.  Just one man has enough power to manipulate the opinion of millions through something he calls “news.”  You bought the product he was selling.

Critical thinking leads to the discovery that Rush is paid by CC Media Holdings, which owns Clear Channel Communications, Premiere Networks, and over 850 radio stations across the country.  Headquartered in Texas, 70% of the company is owned by two partners, one of which is Bain Capital (Romney’s old haunt).  Do you seriously think these people are interested in what’s good for you?  Please.  They’re interested in selling you the products of their advertisers, and their programming had better keep you listening. That Rush guy is pretty compelling, isn’t he?

Let me save you the time and give you the benefit of the critical thinking I’ve already done:

Money = Power;  Wealth = Control;  You = Screwed.

Get the picture?  Now turn off the damned TV.

Fear of a Black President

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Sarah Palin

Palin accuses president of ‘shuck and jive’ on Libya – Erik Wemple – The Washington Post.

Excuse me, “shuck and jive”? WTF, Sarah Palin? Who uses that kind of language these days? Are your bedsheets doing double duty at KKK rallies?

Let’s just call this the racism that it is: the racism of Sarah Palin’s America.

We heard the McCain-Palin campaign blowing the dog-whistles of racial hatred during the last election, when a huge and ignorant swath of the American public convinced itself that then-Senator Obama was a Kenyan Muslim. We heard it even in the so-called compliments paid him: He was so “articulate” for a – well, you finish the sentence. We hear now it in Newt Gingrich’s characterization of Obama as the “Food Stamp President.” By that logic, we ought to christen Reagan the “Crackhead President.”

The level of hatred directed at this President is unprecedented. I have looked and cannot find any campaign imagery comparable to the 2008 posters of Obama in white-face, Obama as The Joker, Obama as Hitler. I can’t recall anyone putting a Hitler mustache on George W. Bush.*

I have looked and cannot find a previous Congress so specifically dedicated to denying a President a second term, such that it votes against its own ideas to avoid making him look good. Even Bill Clinton had greater cooperation from the opposition.

It’s only been about fifty years since the official end of Jim Crow, when African Americans were fully enfranchised as voters. There are plenty of white folks still around who remember the days of segregation fondly, when they didn’t have to compete with non-whites for jobs or college admissions. There are lots of people who have never worked or socialized with African Americans and who would be happy to keep it that way. They are simply not comfortable with people who are not like themselves. They never have been, going back through the generations. There are plenty of white folks who resent the handouts of welfare without knowing that they are its primary beneficiaries.

When you live in the Northeast or on the West coast of the U.S. – the blue states, yes – you tend to see the world a certain way. Your point of view is inflected by the diversity of the population. You grow up with Americans whose families have come from all over the world, with people of all faiths and colors, and this to you is normal. It’s true, to a large extent, of any port city or point of entry for immigrants; they often remain where they land.

When you live in middle America, however – in the red states, yes – you are more likely to spend your entire life in a small town surrounded by people who are a lot like you. You are rarely exposed to a point of view that differs from your own and when you are, your peer group shoots it down.

If we held an election where the popular vote alone determined the outcome, the result would always skew to the political left. That’s because the great majority of the population lives in cities, which provide employment and transportation and which therefore attract outsiders.  These places are always necessarily more diverse and more progressive. The fact is, we could hold the election exclusively in America’s largest cities and obtain a representative vote.

Rural middle America has too much say. It is numerically over-represented in the Senate (2 Senators per state, regardless of population) so it has disproportionate power over policy. Relative to urban America, rural America is less diverse, less progressive, and less comfortable with the 21st century global culture that city dwellers deal with every day. Rural America has barely come to grips with the 20th century.

Mitt Romney is counting on two types of voters to make him President: People who believe he’ll be a better leader than our current one, and people who will vote for anyone but a black man. I believe there are far more Romney voters in the latter category – and so does Sarah Palin.

* While I have recently been corrected by a reader and directed to some photos of Bush with a Hitler ‘stache (see Comments), I stand confidently by the rest of this essay.

Hey David Axelrod! Here’s some debate prep for the President.

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A Happy President Obama

Mr. President, you need to be clear tonight. When you want to tell the YouTube generation what time it is, you have to say it straight:

You’re a middle class guy with middle class values; you’re one of us. Your opponent was an entitled rich kid who grew up to look down on us. He just plain doesn’t like us.

You believe in helping people who can’t necessarily help themselves. Your opponent couldn’t care less about them. He thinks they’re freeloading scum.

You believe that America should be a place where everyone has access to the same high quality medical care regardless of their circumstances. Your opponent’s math goes like this: BANK ACCOUNT = MEDICAL BUDGET = LIFE SPAN.

You believe that women are equal to men and therefore have a natural right to control their own bodies; your opponent, well, who knows what he believes? But his running mate is in favor of forcing a woman to bear her rapist’s – even her father’s – child. Sort of like an American Taliban.

You are a student of history, a believer in science, and a fan of reality. No one knows what your opponent believes, since he denies ever saying anything.

You believe in the DREAM Act. Your opponent is a NIGHTMARE.

Say it all with the soundtrack from 8 Mile playing in your head.

Welcome to Oceania

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Romney Etch-A-Sketch

Mr. Etch-A-Sketch, the Master Debator

These are Orwellian times. They are doubleplusungood for language, politics, memory, and sanity. Lies stand unashamedly as lies, passing for truths. The existence of videotape is somehow of no consequence. We see and hear it for ourselves but then misremember it. We are blackwhite in the Newspeak sense– willing to know that facts are revisable and experiences are unreliable. You say it’s black? Looks black to me. No wait, you say it’s white? Right. Clearly it’s white. You’ve always said it was white.

One candidate is being held to account for the unfulfilled promises of a wholly obstructed presidency; the other won’t be accountable for the last five minutes. Seriously. What he said five minutes ago – he no longer believes it. Didn’t mean it. Never happened.

Early on, he expressed concern for the poor but later moved on to claim a lack of concern. When it played poorly in the press, he grew concerned again. Passionately against abortion and outspoken in his belief that life begins at conception, this candidate nonetheless supported the “morning after” pill and vowed to “preserve and protect” a woman’s right to an abortion. He has said that he feels “very deeply about the need to respect and tolerate people of different social or sexual orientation,” but holds that “marriage should be preserved as an institution for one man and one woman.” These last two statements were actually made within the same perfect sentence: one that encapsulates the essence of man who will say anything and then stand by it.

Mr. Contradiction Man, the King of Doublespeak, is running for the Presidency of Oceania. How many of us are willing to live there with him?

47%? 30%? Let’s make it 100%!

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King George III and George Washington

According to Mitt Romney, 47% of Americans believe that the government should take care of them in some way. Paul Ryan, the numbers guy, says it’s 30%. They say it like it’s a bad thing. It’s not. The number should be closer to 100%.

Let me explain: We had a revolution quite some time ago which freed us from the tyranny of a kingdom and established a democracy. Whereas a king rules by right of inheritance, a president is elected through the will of the people. A king stands above all others; a president is first among equals.

A king typically inherits his right to rule through a line of ancestry that connects him to a figure recognized as important to the establishment of the country.  His power is legitimized by his biological connection to the birth of the people and of the culture, and his authority is conceived in paternal terms. The country is his; it belongs to him and he may do with its land, its people, and its army as he sees fit. He is, however, obliged to see to it that his lands are farmed, his people are fed, and his armies are supplied.

Did these responsibilities of government just fade away when we replaced a king with a president? Clearly we are still subsidizing our farmers and supplying our armies, so what happened to the other piece of it?

Remember this: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . .”

Was this not what Jefferson was talking about? How can one be entitled to life but not medicine? Liberty but not food? A shot at happiness but not the benefit of shelter?  Don’t these things all go together? I believe that Jefferson thought his language was broad and inclusive: Let’s see, he reasoned; what three words can I use to represent all “unalienable Rights”? Oh, yes! I’ll say, “among these,” and cite the big ones! “Life,” for crying out loud! How much more inclusive can I be?

Conservatives deride an American sense of “entitlement” (oh, the irony!), where people think they deserve government assistance for which they should not have to work or pay. They think a lot of us are stupid, irresponsible, and lazy. The truth is, we are all raised to believe that life is meaningless without work – which includes raising children – and that we are useless without it. Most of us want to make an honest living. That, it’s patently obvious, is not always possible.

It has always been the job of the government to see to it that people’s basic needs are met. From chiefs to kings to parliaments, the primary charge is to keep the peace and provide the food – the latter being necessary for the former. As long as there has been government, that has been the case.

Democracy didn’t change that; capitalism did.

Mormon Mitt

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Joseph Smith Translate the Book of Mormon by Looking into his Hat

Joseph Smith Translates the Book of Mormon by Looking into his Hat

I know I’m going to be out of line here, especially for an anthropologist, but why is talking about the fact that Mitt Romney is a Mormon off limits? I have a problem with this.

First of all, there’s the tithing thing. I’m not comfortable with the idea that 10% of the President’s income would wind up in the hands of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. That’s the people’s money. That’s my money. I’d sooner see him spend it on another private jet than have him hand it over to a church. Any church. Something feels vaguely unconstitutional about it.

Second, anyone who believes in the literal truth of any religion is  intellectually challenged in a manner that should disqualify him from seeking higher office.  I’m sorry,  but it has to be said: The miraculous foundations of every deist faith are patently ridiculous.  This is easily explained by the fact that these things date to a time before the advent of science and technology, when humans beings were still in the intellectual Dark Ages.  First they thought that the sun was pulled across the sky by an immortal charioteer; later, they were certain that a man had parted a river to allow his people to escape their captors.  Still later, a virgin gave birth to the child of God, who then went on to turn water into wine.

Yeah, sure.  Tell me another one.  That’s what passed for knowledge in those days, before the scientific revolution.  Before anyone was aware of the facts of reproduction, at least as far as the ovum was concerned.  Back when people believed in alchemy and were busily trying to turn lead into gold.  Back when being left-handed or epileptic was the work of the Devil, for crying out loud!

The Mormons are a special case because their faith dates to the 19th century, long after our intellectual awakening; they have no excuse for their ignorance.  In the 1820s, an established con artist claimed to have received a series of revelations including the “fact” that Jesus Christ traveled to the New World after his resurrection, where he ministered to the Native Americans — who, by the way, were a lost tribe of the Jews who migrated there several hundred years before the birth of Christ.  Never mind the fact that people have been present on this continent for a minimum of 10,000 years.  And while the Old and New Testaments at least contain elements of history and records of real places, the Book of Mormon has a cast of characters acting in locales that do not actually exist.  Joseph Smith wasn’t big on fact-checking the crap that came out of his hat.

It’s one thing to be a religious literalist, but it’s another thing entirely to base your politics on it.  Politics cannot be faith-based; they must be reality-based. This does, of course, disqualify the entire Republican field at the moment. Mr. Romney, however, has the special distinction of membership in a Church that baptizes Holocaust victims and tells its people that they can themselves become gods.  God himself, by the way, is an alien man from another planet.

As an anthropologist, I want to say that all religions are valid, legitimate and deserving of respect, but they do not represent a reality on which everyone can agree.  They are composed of metaphors, allegories, histories, and outright fictions intended to bind a people together in a specific time and place, and they are not applicable outside of their own particular temporal, cultural, and geographic boundaries.  They are best understood as products of and exclusive to the cultures that create them. They have no place in the politics of a modern, multicultural nation.  You might as well go put your face in a hat.