First Impressions

My earliest political memory is of the shitshow that was the aftermath of the 2000 election. I heard the words “Florida” and “Supreme Court” together so many times that 8-year-old me assumed that that was were the Supreme Court was located.  Growing older and looking back on the mess, on the miscarriage of democracy that was Bush’s victory in the Elector College, on the Supreme Court shutting down recounts of a razor thin margin on strictly partisan lines. I’ll say it plainly: I think the 2000 election was stolen by the Republicans. If democracy means anything it means that the people’s most preferred candidate wins. Not the candidate with 5 votes on the Supreme Court.That they were willing to steal it, and that having stole it defended their actions, and that American people didn’t hate them for this – all cements in my mind the conviction that even in America – perhaps especially in America – democracy isn't some fixed feature of our civilization, but a value system (an ideology!) that needs to be defended.

My second political memory is of 9/11. A teacher came in and said “there’s been an attack”, and everyone stopped and waited and watched. You could the tension with a knife, all the adults, and because of the adults, all the children were poised to flight, flee, or freeze. And I remember thinking: “An attack where in Bloomington?” and later: “We are in Bloomington, Indiana. New York and DC are far away. Why is everyone afraid?”. I’ve kept thinking that to this day – that the terrain of the terrorist is our psyche, the objective is to provoke stupid anger or paralyzing fear, and that overcoming them is as simple (and difficult!) as having courage and carrying on. But Americans were afraid, and vengeful, and foolishly they lashed out - invading Afghanistan, (and then Iraq). Children who were in that 2^nd grade class that day are now old enough to die in that graveyard of empire. I write this in 2018, and there is no prospect for withdrawal prior to 2019 – at which point someone born on 9/11 will be old enough to die in Afghanistan. All this – because vengeance drove us to war, and hubris keeps us fighting an unwinnable fight.

My third political memory is of a two-page spread in Newsweek. This was in the run up to the Iraq War, when Saddam let in UN inspectors to demonstrate that he didn’t have WMD’s, and the Bush Administration and the media weren’t willing to let a little thing like facts get in the way of war-fever. This was a two-page spread showing how Saddam could have hid is chemical weapons from UN inspectors using mobile labs and storage facilities. It was fascinating to a child. How intricate, how clever! But like many schematics that charm children, the notion falls apart at the slightest consideration of practicality. Why build mobile labs so far in advance when you didn’t anticipate inspectors? Wouldn’t transporting chemical weapons be very dangerous, and vulnerable to theft and attack? Why would and oil-rich dictator run his chemical weapons program out of facilities out of the equivalent of an RV meth lab?

Few at the time bothered with such questions. And those who did were derided and ignored. The Bush Administration lied – no not a lie, but rather fed us Frankfurtian bullshit with an utter disregard for the truth, and the media believed them, and people believed the media. And so, we piled up a trillion dollars in the desert along with tens of thousands of lives– and then set the whole heap on fire. How many among them apologized, or admitted their mistake – not just the politicians but the pundits and the rest of the chattering classes? How long has our endless war in the middle east gone on, without sign or hope of victory?

Especially among the right, those responsible, whether by negligence or malice, have lost little prestige, credibility, or readership and still linger in our national life. Time smooths rough edges and cools hot anger. But my first impressions of the Republican party, its policies and partisans, has given me an anger as cold and slick as ice.