Still lying in bed, but always productive.
- I missed this the other day at Pandagon, having read the post about Vegas but not really looked at the picture with any care. This is actually where I got married. No, seriously. Over twenty-one years ago, which I am betting may be the longest single marriage to ever emerge from this place. And yes, I got married there before Michael Jordan. I get tired of that dude always emulating me.
- Our friend low tech cyclist inquired as to my thoughts on an Employee Free Choice Act without card check. Although I like the card check component for reasons I've written about earlier, federal labor law is so flawed when it comes to protecting union advocates that it would not be hard to improve it substantially even in the absence of card check. Stricter penalties, quicker elections, limitations on captive audience meetings -- there are a host of things that can be done to put some teeth in the law where presently none exist. If labor can get three-quarters of a loaf, it should grab it. The most important provision of all, even more important than card check, is the requirement for mandatory arbitration of first contracts. Having been involved in a couple of successful organizing campaigns that got nowhere when the time came to get a first contract, I would really welcome this provision. Wait for the employers to start going after this hammer and tongs. But it may be too late -- they got their way on card check and that should be the maximum that the Dems have to give away.
- Reading the work of young right wingers is sometimes very strange. I happened upon this essay by short-lived Washington Post blogger Ben Domenech the other day -- at least I'm clear that this wasn't plaigarized -- and was left mouth agape by its contempt for the individual choices that people make with respect to personal decisions like marrying and having children. The message from Ben is a simple one -- breed white people, breed, damn you! And women -- get back in the home now! There's a weird nostalgia here for an era that Ben never lived through and a completely ahistorical sense of what the times for which he longs were actually like.
It's actually a little difficult to unpack all of the wrong here, in large part because it is an incoherent, rambling mess. (Why did anyone think this guy could write professionally? More wingnut welfare I guess.) A couple of things stand out -- one, this all too common phenomenon among right wing men of needing to pay homage to the manly men of yesteryear. There is something pathetic about this generation of keyboard commandos and their fetishization of things military and quasi-military. Really, if you boys want to join the military or be a police officer or fire fighter, I'm sure opportunity abounds. I would point out a couple of things -- all of these people are government employees. Even the brave astronauts Ben so loves -- the heroes of "The Right Stuff" to whom he rather childishly pays homage worked on the government dime. (Ben also doesn't seem to understand that Tom Wolfe is a conservative, which is also amazing.) Indeed, the military is the ultimate socialist institution, with a leveling conformity at the heart of its ethic. (I won't even mention that 30% or so of the men of the greatest generation were union members or that many of them relied on government programs to get them through the Great Depression -- that would just be too depressing for Ben to contemplate.)
What really irritates him, infuriates him seemingly, is the unwillingness of his peers to get married young and start popping out babies. He sees later marriage ages and smaller families not as the assertion of personal autonomy, but rather the road to oblivion -- as if an America of 250 million or 200 million people would be a disaster. Severe demographic declines can be a problem in terms of maintaining a social welfare state -- Italy, Japan and to some degree Spain are all faced with issues in this regard. And what do those three countries have in common? Despite their progressive, democratic faces, these are three of the more male chauvinistic cultures left in the industrialized world. Women today, oddly enough, are not anxious to have children in countries in which the men will not do their share of the child rearing and housework. On the other hand, countries like Sweden and France, with extremely family friendly policies and a more egalitarian culture have basically maintained fertility rates that are comparable to those of the United States.
As with most right wingers today, Domenech is not interested in policy approaches to this issue, he would rather fulminate about our fallen nature. And this seems to be the right wing blogosphere in a nutshell -- beyond tax cuts and bombing people, they are not really interested in policy -- certainly not in politics as a means of crafting effective policies. Rather, politics is a means of conveying an attitude, of being a method to show your antagonism towards people you just don't like. Sarah Palin has become the exemplar of this -- she is a void in terms of policy, a walking embodiment of ignorant arrogance or arrogant ignorance if you prefer, someone whose entire political being is about not being an educated, liberal, coastal dweller. This politics of resentment has been rather potent for several decades in the U.S., but seems to have lost its allure for all but a small rump of the populace -- maybe 20-30% of the electorate. For the increasing majority of us, this is a baffling, nihilistic brand of politics.
I really dislike the politics of right wingers. However, I can't imagine devoting much time to how my life decisions or policy preferences make them feel. I have my own life to figure out, and it's complicated enough. The goals that l would like to see in society -- universal health care, drastic reductions in poverty, greater worker empowerment, an economy that is geared to the sustainable long-term greater good -- none of these things spurs me to disparage the personal choices of my opponents. If they want to marry young, have large families, go to church twice a week, live in the exurbs, hunt for sport, and eschew the pleasures of big city life, so the fuck what -- good for them. But one senses a deep insecurity in the other side, as if they know that the vision they are holding out -- welcome to the 1950s ladies! -- just isn't that compelling to people and they fear that in the proverbial "marketplace of ideas" that they don't have a chance.
