Week of November 14, 2011
Thursday: Alabama, which passed the country's most draconian immigration law earlier this year, suddenly finds that it has instituted a requirement that one must present proof of citizenship in order to license a dog, not just a car, or to enroll a kid in little league baseball, or swim in a public pool. And the law also imposes penalties, some of them criminal penalties, for officials who fail to enforce the law as stringently as possible. So, suddenly, no one at the local courthouse is willing to renew a hair stylist's or a plumber's license unless the renewal application is accompanied by a birth certificate. So it's not just farmers who are complaining, due to the lack of field hands: real estate agents are complaining, too. And municipal water officials are fearful that they may be subject to criminal penalties if they inadvertently fail to terminate sewer service to a house where an "illegal alien" lives.
The law, you see, requires that any government agency obtain proof of citizenship before transacting any business with anyone.
What's wrong here? Simply that the law is doing what the hot-blooded legislators wanted it to do: make life miserable for The Other. And because demonizing people who aren't just like us is a favorite American pastime, especially in troubled times, the law is popular with 80% or so of the public. So now the legislature doesn't exactly want to repeal it, or make any serious amendments that might seem to coddle Mexicans.
I don't think Alabamans (Alabamites?) are any stupider than the rest of us --believe me, there are some questionable intellects roaming nice blue Illinois. But they seem to be better at us at electing officials who are stupider even than ours, and who cater heedlessly to the lowest common denominator when it comes to the prejudices of their citizenry.
They deserve all the confusion the experience. And I hope their crops rot in the fields. Alabama is Fop.
Wednesday: So now certain Republican "adults" --professional political actors of experience, reputation, and standing-- are getting upset at the performance of this year's crop of presidential contenders. Candidates don't know that China has nuclear weapons --has had them for virtually the candidate's entire life; they can't place Libya --is that one of those places where people don't put "u" after "Q"?--; they forget their own policies; they don't know where Pakistan is. And on and on. And the pros are worried: the GOP "brand" is at stake here; if people think Republicans are ignorant about world affairs, about foreign policy, well, then what happens to the Republican Party's reputation for expertise in these areas?
And inconsistency has become intellectually (bad word to use in talking about the GOP, but, hey) respectable: the Right wants the federal government to honor the states' prerogatives and allow them to adopt constitutional amendments to forbid gay marriage; but it doesn't want states to be able to allow abortion --the feds should prohibit that. It's "Live Free or Die" unless there's something specific I want to forbid to the other guy.
Sorry to say, folks, you can't have it both ways. When candidates boast about their inexperience, about the extent to which they are just plain folks, and argue that all we need is some common sense, they are endorsing Know-Nothingism. There was a time when Ross Perot's just-pop-the-hood-and-fix-the-thing approach was viewed as refreshing, funny, but just not quite respectful of the complexities involved. That time is past. It is now a badge of honor to know little or nothing. Because it's just common sense. And when party leaders refuse even to demur, let alone contradict, let alone condemn, stupidity and falsehood, well, then, they are polishing their petard. For future hoisting? The future is now!
Tuesday: Herman Cain ("Herman Cain is my name and I worked for the pizza chain. I found fortune and fame hawkin' mushroom, and sausage, and plain." etc) kinda got mixed up when asked whether he agreed with President Obama's policy on Libya. He "paused to gather my thoughts," known in the real world as drawing a blank. Presumably the blank was of the "which one is Libya?" variety rather than the "Obama ... Obama ... which one is he?" variety. But you can never be entirely sure with this season's Republican crop. They're like a genetically modified seed developed by Archer Daniels Midland, resistant to cross-pollination with anything resembling an idea.
Cain's real problem, of course, is that of almost every candidate, these days: you have to start from the premise that everything, absolutely everything your putative opponent has done or said is wrong, wrong, wrong. There's no room for thought, or for fair consideration of a question. Even where I actually agree, I perforce must disagree, so the basic function of speech and colloquoy is disrupted, leading inexorably from "words have the meaning I ascribe to them, regardless of what the rest of the world says" to "words have no meaning" to, ultimately, "ideas are superfluous, so why do I have to keep memorizing stuff about weird places and people with weird names?"
Herman Cain is a Fop-ette; but in this he is, today, in the mainstream Republican mold.
Monday: So now the "Super-Committee" of six Democrats and six Republicans, established to do the heavy lifting of the (completely unnecessary) crash program of deficit reduction has apparently decided to agree on the spending cuts, but to push the tax increases off to next year, and give them back to the tax-writing committees in the Congress. At last, the platonic ideal of "feckless." As one commentator asked recently, who in the world are the 9% of Americans who don't think Congress is doing an awful job? This Congress is the best argument, ever, for abolishing that institution.
