Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

There was something very odd about last night’s Democratic presidential debate on ABC. Certainly the bulk of the debate was directed at challenging Barack Obama on issues that Hillary Clinton has tried to make hay off in the last month and a half. Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos were not shy about going after Obama with every right-wing talking point available, including a question given to Stephanopoulos by right wing talking head Sean Hannity. But, even with all the attacks thrown at Obama on the excuse that Republicans would attack him with these so the moderators should, there was something very odd about the debate. Last night I could not put my finger on it.

Then tonight I read this post by Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News and this one by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo. The posts are about Nash McCabe, the woman who asked Obama the flag pin question via videotape. She asked:

Senator Obama, I have a question, and I want to know if you believe in the American flag. I am not questioning your patriotism, but all our servicemen, policemen and EMS wear the flag. I want to know why you don’t.

It was a question that of course was challenging Obama’s patriotism. It is an "issue" that the right wing has been trying to manufacture for months now. It was odd that ABC would inject it into the mainstream on a prime-time Democratic primary debate. It was odder still that ABC would use a citizen to broach the topic, rather than have the moderators do it. It was meant to be a question that ordinary voters care about. One imagines that ABC went to Pennsylvania and asked voters what questions they would like to ask the candidates, and from among the many they gathered, they picked a few that were representative of what was on voters’ minds. Not so.

It turns out ABC found Nash McCabe not from the neighborhoods of Pennsylvania, but from the pages of the New York Times. McCabe was featured in this article earlier in April that appeared on the New York Times. Her issue was the flag pin and why she didn’t like Barack Obama:

Ask whom she might vote for in the coming presidential primary election and Nash McCabe, 52, seems almost relieved to be able to unpack the dossier she has been collecting in her head.

It is not about whom she likes, but more a bill of particulars about why she cannot vote for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

“How can I vote for a president who won’t wear a flag pin?” Mrs. McCabe, a recently unemployed clerk typist, said in a booth at the Valley Dairy luncheonette in this quiet, small city in western Pennsylvania.

Mr. Obama has said patriotism is about ideas, not flag pins.

“I watch him on TV,” Mrs. McCabe said. “I keep looking for that lapel pin.”

Now, it is bad enough that ABC would seek out a person specifically for a pre-determined question that was being pushed by fringe elements of the American right wing. It has the feel of a hit job. It gets worse when you realize that the title of the New York Times piece was "In Ex-Steel City, Voters Deny Race Plays a Role" and the article dealt with the the role of racism and the varying reasons voters give to mask their reasons for voting against an African-American candidate. The article continues:

Americans have a long tradition of voting against candidates rather than for them. But in the first presidential campaign with an African-American as a serious contender, there may be a new gyration in the way voters think, the need to explain the vote against the candidate who is black.

“I don’t say this because he’s black, but the guy just seems arrogant to me, the way he expects things to go his way,” said Harry Brobst, a truck driver who had never registered to vote until this year.

Mr. Brobst said he would vote in the primary “not so much for,” but against.

…

But when dismissing Mr. Obama, voters in this former steel center, whatever their racial feelings, seem almost compelled to list their reasons, if only to pre-empt the unspoken race question.

Because he voted “present” too often as an Illinois state senator. Because he speaks very well, but has not talked about reviving the coal industry. Because he would not command the respect of the military. Because there is something unsettling about his perfect calm, they say.

…

He said he did not “know what to make of Obama.” Mr. Musick said he had liked the senator but then decided that he did not “for a bunch of reasons.”

“It’s not about race,” he added. “It’s about a feeling I have.”

Regardless of what McCabe’s actual motivation may be, ABC News surely knew that the New York Times article was about race. In the context of the article, the flag pin question was a proxy for racism. That ABC chose to seek this woman out for this very question puts ABC News’ journalistic credibility in serious jeopardy. We may have watched a new low in American journalism last night. Exactly how low ABC went last night is only now becoming clear.

Today the United States Supreme Court dealt a severe blow to the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education. In a 5-4 decision Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the following in an opinion joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito (Justice Kennedy cast the deciding vote for the majority but did not sign on to Roberts’ opinion):

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

With those lines, the Supreme Court rolled back much of Brown v. Board of Education while claiming to have upheld it.

On May 17, 1954 the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education struck a death knell to the long era of racial segregation in America by overturning the 1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. Plessy had upheld racial segregation and the doctrine of "separate but equal" as constitutional.

In writing for the majority in Plessy Justice Henry Billings Brown wrote on May 18, 1896 the following:

Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation.

Over a century after Plessy, Chief Justice Roberts’ words echo the words of Justice Henry Billings Brown. In Plessy, Justice Brown went on to write:

We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it. … The argument also assumes that social prejudices may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured to the negro except by an enforced commingling of the two races. We cannot accept this proposition. If the two races are to meet upon terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual appreciation of each other’s merits, and a voluntary consent of individuals.

…

If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.

It was the Supreme Court’s affirmation of segregation so plainly handed down in Plessy that Brown rejected, overturned and aimed to remedy. Today that changed by Justice Robert’s throwback to Plessy’s position that government’s attempts to counter segregation is in itself discrimination.

In a scathing dissent today, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote:

The lesson of history … is not that efforts to continue racial segregation are constitutionally indistinguishable from efforts to achieve racial integration.

The legacy of Brown vs. Board of Education is now in serious jeopardy after today’s ruling - the ruling today aims to effectively strip school boards of tools that they have used to counter racial segregation. In that we have returned to the days of Plessy, by turning Brown on its head.

In 1954, on behalf of the unanimous Supreme Court in Brown, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote:

Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

…

We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

Today’s was a landmark decision that effectively rendered Brown toothless. Save for Justice Kennedy not signing on to Justice Roberts’ opinion, it would have been a complete overturning of Brown v. Board of Education.

When we last saw Tony Soprano, he had gone to the mattresses. Bobby Bacala was sprawled out over a train set and Silvio was clinging to life. Tony was lying in bed with his weapon at the ready; and Phil Leotardo was nowhere to be found.

Tonight we find out if Tony can survive another hour of The Sopranos. It would be a tragedy however if Phil did not get what has been coming to him for a number of seasons.

Regardless of who David Chase decides to whack, The Sopranos sleeps with the fishes tonight.

My popcorn is ready. Now on to the show…

On this day in 1968 Robert Francis Kennedy lost his life to an assassin’s bullet.

In mourning him today we also celebrate his life. It was a life that gave the world hope. And with hope comes possibility. He said:

"Men without hope, resigned to despair and oppression, do not make revolutions. It is when expectation replaces submission, when despair is touched with the awareness of possibility, that the forces of human desire and the passion for justice are unloosed."

Rest in peace, Bobby.

In remembrance:

• Robert Kennedy’s speech at University of Cape Town
• Edward Kennedy’s tribute to Bobby Kennedy

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified yesterday about Mr. Gonzales’s late night visit to the hospital to convince an ailing attorney general John Ashcroft to sign off on Mr. Bush’s domestic wiretapping plan which the Justice Department had already deemed illegal. It was riveting testimony. There is not much I can add to Mr. Comey’s testimony in this post. My best advice is that you watch the entirety of it - it is well worth the time.

I was reminded of the famous scene in "The Godfather" where Vito Corleone lies in the hospital unguarded and Michael Corleone rushes to save his father’s life.

To get a flavor of the kind of attorney general Alberto Gonzales is, as Alfredo points out in the comments, consider his remarks at the National Press Club soon after Paul McNulty resigned:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that his deputy, who is resigning, was the most important player in the controversial decision about which U.S. attorneys should be fired last year.

…

"You have to remember, at the end of the day, the recommendations reflected the views of the deputy attorney general. He signed off on the names," Gonzales said. "And he would know better than anyone else, anyone in this room, anyone — again, the deputy attorney general would know best about the qualifications and the experiences of the United States attorneys community, and he signed off on the names."

Gonzales, who called McNulty’s pending departure "a loss" for the Department of Justice, said that his chief of staff had only coordinated the process of evaluating U.S. attorneys, while McNulty’s opinion "would be the most important.

"The one person I would care about would be the views of the deputy attorney general, because the deputy attorney general is the direct supervisor of the United States attorneys," Gonzales said.

Gonzales said he was reassured by McNulty as recently as March that the firings all were justified.

Gonzo. Pathetic. Worse than Watergate.

This is truly disturbing. It is outrageous. A 91 year-old veteran of World War II was beaten mercilessly by a carjacker in a public parking lot in Detroit as people looked on and did nothing. The entire incident was caught on tape.

There is something horribly wrong when a carjacker feels the need to punch an aging veteran 21 times before stealing his car.

Here is the video of the carjacking. It is difficult to watch, and even more difficult to believe that this is happening to a senior citizen and a veteran.

The world lost another of the Mercury Seven today. Walter M. Schirra, Jr. died of a heart attack today at the age of 84.

We live in a world where men have walked on the moon. Space flight has become mundane. It barely makes the news when NASA launches another vehicle into space.

What we take for granted, Wally Schirra and his fellow space travellers made possible.

A few weeks ago I took my six year old daughter to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. The first spacecraft we saw as we entered the museum was Friendship 7, the capsule that carried John Glenn around the Earth on February 20, 1962. As I lifted my daughter up to peer through the small window into the capsule, I knew my daughter had caught the "space bug". I caught the same bug three decades ago when my own father took me to the very same museum. Wally Schirra and his fellow Mercury astronauts, including John Glenn, made it possible for kids like me, and now my daughter, to dream a little bigger.

Wally Schirra, may he rest in peace.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds, —and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air….

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark nor even eagle flew—

And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

- John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

[Via mcjoan]

In the aftermath of the tragedy at Virginia Tech, some have revealed themselves to be subhuman.

There is this from John Derbyshire at the National Review:

As NRO’s designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn’t anyone rush the guy? It’s not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness’ sake—one of them reportedly a .22.

 

 

At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren’t very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can’t hit squat. I doubt this guy was any better than I am. And even if hit, a .22 needs to find something important to do real damage—your chances aren’t bad.

 

 

Yes, yes, I know it’s easy to say these things: but didn’t the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything? As the cliche goes—and like most cliches. It’s true—none of us knows what he’d do in a dire situation like that. I hope, however, that if I thought I was going to die anyway, I’d at least take a run at the guy.

College classrooms have scads of young men who are at their physical peak, and none of them seems to have done anything beyond ducking, running, and holding doors shut. Meanwhile, an old man hurled his body at the shooter to save others.

Something is clearly wrong with the men in our culture. Among the first rules of manliness are fighting bad guys and protecting others: in a word, courage. And not a one of the healthy young fellows in the classrooms seems to have done that.

When Kip Kinkle opened fire in Thurston High School a few years back, he was taken down by students, led by one who was already wounded. Why didn’t that happen here?

Like Derb, I don’t know if I would live up to this myself, but I know that I should be heartily ashamed of myself if I didn’t. Am I noble, courageous and self-sacrificing? I don’t know; but I should hope to be so when necessary.

* The murderer has been identified by law enforcement and media reports as "a young Asian male."

* The Virginia Tech campus has a very large Muslim community, many of which are from Pakistan (per terrorism investigator Bill Warner).

* Pakis are considered "Asian."

…

Why am I speculating that the "Asian" gunman is a Pakistani Muslim? Because law enforcement and the media strangely won’t tell us more specifically who the gunman is. Why?

Even if it does not turn out that the shooter is Muslim, this is a demonstration to Muslim jihadists all over that it is extremely easy to shoot and kill multiple American college students.

And finally this from Ms. Schlussel after the Chicago Tribune reported that the shooter had the words "Ismail Ax" written in red ink on one of his arms:

Hmmm . . . Ismail–the Arabic name for Ishmael–considered the father of all Arabs and a very important figure in Islam.

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, right? Doesn’t mean anything. Right.

Maybe "Ismail Ax" is the name of a friend of his. Or maybe he wanted to remind himself to buy an Ax for his friend Ismail for next Ramadan. Or I’m sure we’ll hear some other similarly absurd "explanation." We’ll see.

So, if I understand it correctly, the subhuman speculation is that the Virginia Tech students are cowards and the shooter must be connected to Islam somehow.

Mssrs. Derbyshire and Blake simply have no shame.

Ms. Schlussel embarrasses herself yet again. She goes for a two-fer on her first post, by pointing the finger at Muslims and then using the racial slur "Paki" to refer to Pakistanis. There’s a Muslim hiding under every rock in Ms. Schlussel’s hateful world.

Incidentally, the Washington Post reports that the shooter had "Ismale Ax" tattooed on his arm, not "Ismail Ax". Here’s some wild speculation for you, Ms. Schlussel. How about an anagram, how does "I Axl same" sound to you? I figure the shooter writes about being abused and writes about Guns N’ Roses songs in his plays. Axl Rose fits the bill just fine: he claims he suffered child abuse and he and Guns N’ Roses sang the song ‘Mr. Brownstone‘.

———————————-

Here in Virginia people are shaken by the massacre at Virginia Tech. Its hard to not run into a Hokie in Northern Virginia - at the workplace, in the neighborhood, everywhere. Almost everyone here either has a child studying at Virginia Tech or knows someone who has a child studying at Virginia Tech. The day after the massacre our thoughts remain with the victims - the sons and daughters of Virginia.

———————————-

Some on the blogosphere however could not help themselves. Within hours of the tragedy they had sunk to subhuman depths.

Subhuman.

First, let me make the statement that will ensure that I am persona non grata in Bangladesh:

"The latest in a long line of despots, General Moeen U Ahmed, has now taken effective control of Bangladesh. By doing so, this latest South Asian megalomaniac has substituted his judgment for the judgment of the people. He says he does not believe in "elective democracy". He has struck the death knell to an experiment in democracy that began over 35 years ago. The military, which had taken power once before in 1975, had been unceremoniously chased back into the barracks in 1991. But, now, with tacit American and Western support they have overthrown the world’s fifth largest democracy, however imperfect it was. The "elite" of Bangladesh, the leeches that have fed off the millions of impoverished people of the land that I love, have welcomed this military takedown of a secular Muslim majority nation. The leader of the "war on terror" never raised an eyebrow as real terror entered through the front door in Bangladesh."

There you have it. I suspect I will not visit Bangladesh any time soon after the above statement - almost certainly not until the military is chased back into the barracks and democracy returns there.

My opinion, I fear, is a minority opinion in Bangladesh, at least among the "elite" (or "civil society" as they are called in Bangladesh) who run the country’s economy. It is unclear what the majority of the people, those living in poverty think - no one has ever bothered to ask them. For background on how this slow-motion military coup in Bangladesh was orchestrated, read my posts from January here and here. At the time, when the army started its crackdown on "corruption", I wrote the following:

A State of Emergency has been declared in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has, by a quirk in its Constitution, been legally transformed into a dictatorship. A democracy of 125 million people is now at the mercy of a handful of unelected rulers and the military.

Bangladesh has given up a lot of essential liberty for a little bit of temporary security - it remains to be seen whether it deserves or will get either.

…

It remains to be seen whether democracy will return to Bangladesh any time soon. The Caretaker Government has already started to go well beyond its constitutional mandate. It currently has public support because the people are looking for solutions to the rampant corruption that has plagued the country. However, unelected governments have a logic of their own - and fairly quickly such governments’ perception of the public good becomes skewed.

Already a crackdown on "criminals and other disruptive elements" has started…

I wonder how long before the definition of "disruptive elements" is broadened. Forgive me if I am wary of crackdowns by the military - I still recall the Pakistani army’s crackdown on "miscreants" on March 25, 1971.

History will teach us nothing.

Today the New York Times published an editorial highlighting the crisis in Bangladesh:

Promoting democracy, especially in Islamic countries, is supposed to be a major goal of President Bush’s foreign policy. But his administration has raised little protest as Bangladesh — until January the world’s fifth most populous democracy — has been transformed into its second most populous military dictatorship.

Washington is being dangerously shortsighted. Democracy can be messy, and in Bangladesh it was extraordinarily so. But military rule offers no answers to the grievances that fuel Islamic radicalism, as can be seen from nearby Pakistan (the world’s most populous military dictatorship). By stifling authentically popular mainstream parties and their leaders, military regimes often magnify the political influence of religious extremists.

This year’s democratic eclipse in Bangladesh did not follow the classic script for a military coup. A civilian caretaker has been nominally in charge since January, after troubled national elections were indefinitely postponed. Meanwhile, the generals consolidated power behind the scenes and began harassing and jailing many of the country’s top civilian political leaders.

Last week, Sheik Hasina Wazed — who served as prime minister from 1996 through 2001 — and top leaders of her 14-party alliance were charged with murder in connection with violent pre-election protests. Her longtime rival, Khaleda Zia, who both preceded and followed her in office, is now under virtual house arrest. More than 150 other senior politicians have been detained on corruption charges and the timetable for new elections keeps receding. [Emphasis added by me.]

The New York Times makes a singularly important point: that military regimes magnify the political influence of religious extremists. I would go a step further. I would say that military regimes in Islamic countries in fact collude with, and enable, religious extremists to consolidate power. Military regimes and Islamists are natural allies - they both are undemocratic and believe in rule by force. There is plenty of evidence that such collusion is not only a theoretical possibility, but has in fact been the case in recent history. It was after all, the military dictator Zia-ul-Haq, who, in 1979, instituted Sharia law in Pakistan. In Bangladesh, after the military takeover in 1975, the secular country was briefly called the "Islamic Republic of Bangladesh". It was the military in Bangladesh that allowed exiled Islamists to return to Bangladesh in 1978. Since then, the Islamists have steadily grown in strength and have worked to undermine the secular democracy in Bangladesh.

General Moeen Ahmed declared in a speech on April 2nd that he did not want "elective democracy" in Bangladesh, instead:

Bangladesh will have to construct its own brand of democracy recognizing its social, historical and cultural conditions with religion being one of several components of its national identity.

Bangladesh was formed as a secular state in direct response to the oppression of a country that wanted to rule on the basis of religious national identity, namely Islamic rule. The General wants to now reinstitute that "religious national identity" that led to the persecution of millions of Hindus and the slaughter of 3 million Bengalis. It should not be surprising to anyone that the General’s words echo those of the 1975 coup leaders in Bangladesh - a slide into Islamist rule is a characteristic of these military megalomaniacs.

Many will argue, in reading the preceding, that this military takeover is different from the previous one of 1975 - that the situation on the ground (the rampant corruption) was so bad that this step, though undemocratic, was essential to restore faith in governance. That is the "historical necessity" argument. It is a favorite one of military dictators, it was employed by Zia-ul-Haq in Pakistan and by the 1975 coup leaders of Bangladesh (click here to read the August 16 1975 editorial from the Bangladesh Observer claiming the coup was a "historical necessity" ). It is an argument often used by megalomaniacs who want to substitute their judgment for the judgment of the people.

Others may still argue that this military regime, as announced by the figurehead civilian front man, in Bangladesh has promised elections in 18 months. To them, I say, the promise of elections is a standard item from the military coup playbook. To wit, read the promise of elections from a similar speech given by the military backed figurehead civilian president of Bangladesh on October 3, 1975 - that pledge resulted in the military relinquishing power 16 years later.

Finally, it is my contention that the current corruption of the political culture in Bangladesh is in large part a legacy of the military takeover of Bangladesh in 1975. A military takeover, far from "fixing" a democracy, corrupts it further. It does so by setting a precedent that the rule of law can be subverted in service of the "national interest". This license to ignore the rule of law is the essential ingredient of any form of government corruption. When the military decides to "fix" things, it corrupts the system further. It sets a precedent that laws can and should be ignored when there is a "historical necessity". That is an invitation, not only to corruption, but to autocratic and dictatorial rule.

So, while "civil society" in Bangladesh cheers this military takeover, and while President Bush is busy ignoring a real threat to stability in the 8th most populous country in the world, democracy and human rights collapse in the world’s 5th most populous democracy.

UPDATE (4/15/2007 11:00 PM):

• I cross posted on the Daily Kos where, to my pleasant surprise, it became a recommended diary. Read the diary and the comments here.
• Raw Story has picked up the Daily Kos diary and linked to it here under the title "Bangladesh falls to military rule".

Cross posts:

• Cross posted at Diatribune.
• I will be cross posting this article on Taylor Marsh tomorrow evening.

An Inconvenient Truth just won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Congratulations to Al Gore.

Let the 2008 Presidential race begin.