The Tragedy of Mitt Romney

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Monday March 19, 2012 · 11:12 AM PDT

2012/03/19 · 11:12

A perfect tragedy should … not be the spectacle of a virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity: for this moves neither pity nor fear; it merely shocks us. … Nor, again, should the downfall of the utter villain be exhibited. A plot of this kind would, doubtless, satisfy the moral sense, but it would inspire neither pity nor fear; for pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves. Such an event, therefore, will be neither pitiful nor terrible. There remains, then, the character between these two extremes — that of a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty. – Aristotle, "Poetics"

His rivals -- Santorum, Paul, Gingrich -- are infuriating clowns. But I feel something altogether different when I watch Mitt Romney: frustration, because he's an authentically tragic character who could have been much more than he is. I'll explain why on the other side of the squiggle. Read More

Republicans Have Gone Crazy Before

Pericles

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Monday February 20, 2012 · 9:03 AM PST

2012/02/20 · 09:03

The most comforting thing about reading history is that you know the story comes out at least sort of OK. After all, if the world had really ended back then, you wouldn't be sitting here reading this book.

This week I've been reading Rule and Ruin: the downfall of moderation and the destruction of the Republican Party from Eisenhower to the Tea Party. You might imagine that story would be depressing, but I'm finding it strangely hopeful, for this reason: Republicans have gone crazy before, and they more-or-less recovered from it.

So they might recover again. How? Glad you asked.

Pericles

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Sunday February 19, 2012 · 6:00 AM PST

2012/02/19 · 06:00

I'm sure you've already seen the Rick Santorum clip where he says that contraception is "not OK" and expounds various other medieval ideas about sex.

Here's what probably you don't know: That's not even the most alarming piece of that interview. This is:

Just like we have certifying organizations that accredit a college, we'll have certifying organizations that will accredit conservative professors. If you are to be eligible for federal funds, you'll have to provide an equal number of conservative professors as liberal professors.

Federally empowered political commissars controlling our universities. What could possibly go wrong? Read More

What Abortion Means to Me

Pericles

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Monday February 13, 2012 · 11:24 AM PST

2012/02/13 · 11:24

I'm a guy. So I've never been pregnant, never worried about being pregnant, and never had to decide whether I should have an abortion.

But I've also been married for -- it'll be 28 years next month. So it annoys me when reproductive rights gets consigned (along with breast cancer, day care, and equal pay) to the special ghetto of "women's issues". If you take marriage seriously, you live in the same ghetto your wife does. Especially when it comes to reproduction. Because if your wife has a child, you have a child. That's how it works.

Here's how it worked for us ...

Pericles

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Monday February 06, 2012 · 11:31 AM PST

2012/02/06 · 11:31

Now that the dust seems to be settling, what can we step back and learn?

Two things hit me: First, having gotten elbow-deep into how Komen works, it's now obvious to me why charity can never replace government.

Second, we need to go on offense, not just with plans and programs, but by attacking the philosophical, religious, and moral sacred cows of the religious right. We've got to stop granting the assumption that anti-abortion folks are talking a principled moral stand.

Pericles

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Monday January 30, 2012 · 1:20 PM PST

2012/01/30 · 13:20

Discussions raised by the recent NYT and Atlantic articles about manufacturing all seem to arrive at the same question: Why couldn't American companies either (1) bring jobs home or (2) improve the treatment of workers overseas by asking the consumer to pay a little more? AlterNet's Robert Cruickshank quotes an estimate that all-American iPhones would cost $65 more, and says:

I would personally pay $65 more per iPhone if I knew it was going to American workers.

So why doesn't that happen? Let's think it through.

Pericles

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Monday January 23, 2012 · 12:44 PM PST

2012/01/23 · 12:44

If you strip it down to its essence, the battle over SOPA/PIPA is Property vs. Freedom: the media companies want to defend their intellectual property, while Internet-users want to defend their freedom.

You won't often hear it characterized that way in the corporate media, though, because simply saying the phrase "Property vs. Freedom" marks you as some kind of extreme Leftist. All right-thinking people know that Property can't possibly oppose Freedom -- they're inseparable, like Love and Marriage. Sing it, Frank:

This I tell you, brother:

You can't have one without the other.

Pericles

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Monday January 16, 2012 · 4:04 PM PST

2012/01/16 · 16:04

This year it's hard to discuss any of the honest ideological gulfs the country needs to bridge -- on the role of government in the economy, inequality of wealth and income, climate change, what to do about the 50 million Americans without health insurance, how to handle the 11 million undocumented immigrants -- when conservatives have put so much effort into trumping up issues that are pure fantasy.

This tactic is so outrageous that most Americans have trouble grasping it. Voters are used to hearing rhetoric that makes mountains out of molehills. But making a mountain out of the pure flat plain is something totally different and relatively new. "Surely," the average voter thinks, "there is some fire under all that smoke."

On these four "issues", not so much.

Pericles

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Monday January 09, 2012 · 11:51 AM PST

2012/01/09 · 11:51

The corporate media gives way too much coverage to manufactured events like August's Iowa Straw Poll, which in retrospect did not even say much about last Tuesday's manufactured event, the Iowa Caucus. But we don't get nearly enough deep background coverage of the structures the insiders all know.

I thought I'd fill in one of those gaps by asking: What is this thing called "the Republican Party"? What are its components? How do they fit together? And how do the various candidates relate to them?

To start with, there are four basic flavors of Republican: Corporatist, NeoCon, Theocrat, and Libertarian.

Pericles

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Monday January 02, 2012 · 12:37 PM PST

2012/01/02 · 12:37

One of the big debates on the economic blogs right now is whether the upbeat end of 2011 was just a blip or the beginning of a genuine trend.

"What upbeat end to 2011?" I hear you ask. So let's back up and start there.

Pericles

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Monday December 19, 2011 · 12:10 PM PST

2011/12/19 · 12:10

Sources I trust are all over the map on President Obama's non-veto of the NDAA. Mother Jones' Adam Serwer assures me that Senator Feinstein fixed the worst of it before it got out of the Senate:

The bill no longer authorizes the indefinite military detention of Americans captured in the US.

Marcy Wheeler and Lawfare's Steve Vladek say otherwise.

Clearly this is tricky, so let's start from scratch: In the beginning was 9-11 ...

Pericles

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Monday December 05, 2011 · 11:55 AM PST

2011/12/05 · 11:55

For some reason, all the world's big news stories revolve around debt: U. S. federal debt, state debt, personal debt, European debt. It's all anybody seems to talk about.

While each of those stories has its individual nuances and details, there's also One Big Story there, a story that's hard to think about because it's so big.

Two recent articles and a book can help us get a handle on the big picture: Adam Haslett's This Is Our New Normal, Michael Hudson's Debt Slavery, and the book Debt: The First 5000 Years by fellow Kossack David Graeber.

They all agree on one thing: The debt issue is not just about economics, it's about democracy.

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The Tragedy of Mitt Romney

Republicans Have Gone Crazy Before

Santorum Calls for Conservative Education Commissars

What Abortion Means to Me

Two Take-Aways from the Komen Fiasco

Ignorance is bliss. Bliss has market value

Property vs. Freedom

Four Fantasy Issues of the Right

The Four Flavors of Republican

Is a boom coming in 2012?

Let's Review: Detention Without Trial

Forgive Us Our Debts