'A pen warmed up in hell' | Reality-based commentary about Phoenix, Arizona, and the nation.
No CommentsIt’s easy to beat up John McCain for wanting to stay the bloody course in Iraq, indeed that America might have troops there for next 100 years. McCain’s strategy won’t be merely more of the same. It will be a push way down the slippery slope. But there’s much wishful thinking and dissembling on the part of the Democrats, too.
If Iraq really were another Vietnam, withdrawal would be without serious geopolitical consequences. Yet we shouldn’t forget the moral consequences of our withdrawal, with millions of South Vietnamese facing a brutal takeover and thousands who worked for us facing far worse. Hmong tribesmen who supported the CIA’s secret war in Laos are still on the run, abandoned by the superpower that so cavalierly used them. We should have gotten out. We shouldn’t forget that the cost was high.
But Iraq is not Vietnam, a fact that should be remembered every time a Democrat drives home from an anti-war rally in his SUV.
2Every time I hear the media say Sen. John McCain "of Arizona" it makes me crazy. McCain has done as little for Arizona as possible and it shows. The state is Mississippi in the Southwest, an Appalachia with golf courses, the epicenter of a brewing socio-environmental calamity. It is a place frighteningly behind in the competitive world of the 21st century, however much it provides a haven for a certain kind of rich person and, until recently, for real-estate players. Arizona was never anything but a national political platform for McCain.
If McCain had been governor, his apathy would be an especially tempting target. Even so, as a senator he has done as little as possible in education, research, transportation, health care, the environment…the list goes on and on. Most days one wondered if Arizona even had senators representing it, rather than trying to be national political figures.
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The iconic scene in “Deadline USA,” where Humphrey Bogart is a crusading newspaper editor in the pressroom. The mobster on the phone demands to know the roar he hears in the background. Bogart: “That’s the press, baby. The press! And there’s nothing you can do about it. Nothing!”
Mary McCarthy said famously of Lillian Hellman: “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.”
It’s tempting to say the same about the many diagnoses of what ails the newspaper world. We hear endlessly that the troubles are a result of the Internet, new technology, “people don’t read anymore,” and, my favorite, “people don’t have as much time as they used to.” As if there was once a 36-hour day, or people who once worked 12-hour shifts while raising large families had this abundance of time.
63When the New York Times wrote about the high-fliers coming to the Super Bowl, they didn’t fool around with the silly locution "the Valley." They wrote Phoenix, and Phoenix area.
Of course the local mantra is "Arizona’s Super Bowl." But Arizona is a big state, and that’s a little like saying the Super Bowl in Miami (it was also played in a suburban stadium) is "Florida’s Super Bowl." In other words, meaningless. Once again, the region will miss a great "branding opportunity" by continuing to deny itself the cool, distinctive name, Phoenix. It’s a world of competing cities, not geographies of nowhere (in Jim Kunstler’s apt phrase). But for Phoenix and "the Valley," it’s an old tale of self-destructiveness.
What’s less understood is why it happens.
8Angst and debate are allowed in Seattle. Unlike Phoenix, there’s little boosterism here (the city’s success is obvious), no pressure to just shut up and buy a house (with one of America’s best-educated populations, people are informed and involved), and the love and concern people have for Seattle is genuine (as opposed to, ‘at least it’s hot and sunny’).
Transportation angst is one of the big local sports, and yet not much gets done. Voters recently voted down a big package of roads and transit. And rightly so: it would have increased emissions by adding roads, as well as installed light rail in the wrong places. Plus, it would have taken 20 or more years to complete. Even the Sierra Club opposed it.
Still, any new measures will be long in coming, and I sensed some fundamental disconnects in the debate. Most of them go back to my basic premise that the next 30 years will be radically different from the past 30 years.
4There’s a great deal of silliness and sophistry about the economy at this dangerous moment, but why should it be different from anything else in American life?
Washington debates a “stimulus” package of tax cuts and newspapers write headlines to tell “average readers” (whatever the hell that means) that the feds will put hundreds of dollars in their pockets. Wall Street does a dead-cat bounce and commentators who were darkly warning of recession are now talking about a miraculous comeback. In the New York Times, the normally sensible David Leonhardt was saddled with a headline that emblemized the silliness: “Worries That the Good Times Were Mostly a Mirage.”
In reality, the economy risks finally tipping over from a series of imbalances and forces long in the making. The Fed is very limited in its ability to right the ship. And any “stimulus” risks making things worse, aside from extending unemployment benefits, which is somehow anathema to “conservatives.”
No CommentsPeople kept telling me they couldn’t believe I got away with what I wrote as a columnist for the Arizona Republic. I identified and questioned the vast power of the Real Estate Industrial Complex. While most of the local media were mindless boosters, I discussed the serious challenges to the state’s economy (which are coming true) and indeed to its future as a quality place to live (ditto). How, hundreds of readers asked, did I keep my job?
In the end I didn’t, of course. But for nearly seven years, I offered one of the few alternatives to local cheerleading and media growthgasms. And I was the only one to keep a sustained focus on economic, social and environmental issues — and how they were all tied together.
And yet, dear readers, I pulled my punches nearly every time I wrote.
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