Posted inPolitics: National

Confederates in the attic

The tut-tutting that in some cases verges on hysteria about the
Virginia governor proclaiming Confederate History Month is misplaced on
many levels. For one thing, it only reinforces the bunker mentality of
many Southern whites — who do not by any means all live in the South —
that their customs, culture and history are under attack. Thus, it
drives them even more into the propaganda ministry of the white-right on
Fox "News" and talk radio. I'm also uncomfortable with the implied
censorship of those who would ban discussion of the Confederacy except
as an indictment of slavery. And it's an invitation to yet more
conformity in a big-box, chain-stored America that was once much more
diverse in its cultures.

President Obama is right in saying that one can't understand the
Civil War without understanding slavery. One can't understand even
today's America without understanding the Civil War, a lifetime quest.
And, I am sorry to tell my liberal and progressive friends, that one
can't understand all these things, as well as many of the questions
facing the union today, without a deep study of the Confederacy. Note
"deep study." Not a white-right call to ignorant "heritage."

Slavery was a great evil, one that was only partially atoned for at
places such as Antietam, Chickamuga and Gettysburg. It was not merely
the creation of the South, but the nation as a whole. More and more
histories of slavery are available, showing it in all its brutality but
also the courage of the people and richness of the cultures they
developed. Historians have also made great progress in plumbing
Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the era of lynchings — all essential knowledge
of our quest to make a more perfect union. As for Confederate history,
bring it on.

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Posted inPhoenix

Dogfight over Luke

We may know as early as today if Luke Air Force Base will be chosen as a training base for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The decision would give Luke further life once its primary tenant, the F-16 fighters, are phased out. Not surprisingly, the western suburbs of Phoenix are ambivalent, even if many support Luke publicly. Built up long after the base had been in operations, its residents are outraged at the jet noise. (Shoulda checked that out before you thought you were getting so much house for the money in that crapola lookalike subdivision). Encroaching sprawl, meanwhile, has had the base on a razor's edge of closing for years.

The group Luke Forward supports the base's continued existence. But Luke faces the mos powerful enemy: the Real Estate Industrial Complex. In other words, these economic elites — including, according to some sources, the Mormon Church, which owns land nearby — want the base to go away so they can continue building on the same sprawl model as the past 50 years. It's a big leap of faith: the old Growth Machine may not regain its health for years, if ever. But the Real Estate Industrial Complex is a simple-minded dinosaur. It feeds (builds tract houses, pockets quick profits). Its brain doesn't even realize its tail is on fire from economic, environmental and social tectonic shifts.

If Luke closes, to be replaced by more subdivisions and shopping strips, it will once again represent the colossal lack of imagination that keeps the Arizona economy backward (but highly profitable for the status quo).

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Posted inPolitics: National

The Republicans look to magic

Much has been made of the candidate for Republican National chairman, Chip Saltsman, circulating a CD with the song, "Barack the Magic Negro": maybe it's racist, it's certainly bad taste. But most of all it's a sign that a party that has become a largely Southern/rural Western regional party has no inclination to change. Today, Paul Krugman writes about the larger collapse of the Southern Strategy and how Republicans still haven't realized the magnitude of their failure.

I'm fascinated by what we might call The Strange Case of Mark Sanford. The South Carolina governor was prepared to let 77,000 of his fellow citizens go without (meager) unemployment benefits, refusing to ask for $146 million in assistance from the federal government. He finally relented, with only hours to spare, under pressure from citizens, politicians and those still-important newspapers. This case tells us more about the prevailing Republican mindset than Saltsman's song.

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Posted inPolitics: National

The problem with the Clintons

In a different world, with different Clintons — the idealized ones, not the real ones — Hill and Bill might have given more serious thought to their current endeavor. If she’s elected, her husband would not only be the first first gentleman, but a former president carrying the influence and power of that position.

George Washington was painfully aware that everything he did set a precedent, so he endeavored to set them with care and character. Bill Clinton set off in his usual fashion, the smartest man in the room, too smart for his own good. The Southern intellectual who forgot the redneck’s last words: "Hey, y’all, watch this!" With the Clintonian combination of recklessness and carelessness, he alone may have cost his wife the nomination by alienating so many in the South Carolina primary.

The Founders of this Republic frowned on anything smacking of the dynastic. And even when sons have followed fathers — twice — it hasn’t worked out well. Not for nothing did George H.W. Bush jokingly call his son "Quincy." The Clintons propose something far closer to real dynasty. He will be there, like his wife before him, as buy-one-get-two co-president. And, as usual, they seemed to be unaware of the magnitude of their ambition, and the care with which it needed to be presented to the nation.

Yet this may be one of the lesser problems with Hillary Clinton.

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