Doom and Gloom

I greatly enjoy reading Jim Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation. His pessimism and apt descriptions of the decline of American culture tickle me pink.

For example:

The fashion and body language of male youth in 2007 comes from three sources: prison, the nursery, and the pimpmobile. It's an old story now that many conventions of gangster fashion come out of the jail experience, where they take away your belt and shoelaces so you won't hang yourself... Jail being a kind of accreditation device these days, the message may be: I passed the entrance exam.

Less obvious is the contribution of the nursery. Pants that are ambiguously neither long or short, worn with XX-large T shirts, tend to make grown men look like babies. Babies have short legs and large torsos compared to grown men. They also make big awkward gestures and touch their sex organs a lot...

The pimp connection is too obvious to belabor -- meant to mock normal executive attire while signifying an existence of total leisure and the enjoyment of unearned riches. The trouble is that the worship of unearned riches -- based on the belief that it truly is possible to get something for nothing -- has now become normal at all levels in American life... The catch is that men who live by this code almost always come to a bad end. They get their throats cut with razors, or go to prison, or manage to lose all their unearned riches (and the investments of many strangers, too).

The portrait of the young American male in 2007, therefore, is of an impotent, infantalized being lost in grandiose fantasies of power and importance. It's a picture of men without real confidence, and no idea how to achieve it, who wish to project a transcendently ferocious image complete with odds-and-ends of manner taken from comic books and movies based on comic books, in order to be taken seriously.

I have not seen a better description of people, namely men, of my generation. Perhaps that's the real source of my pessimism about the fate of humanity. Those fuckers are going to be running things someday.

I do find his doom and gloom message to be somewhat tiring. Kunstler's predictions, while correctly timed, are a hundred times worse than what actually happens. Last summer, he predicted the market meltdown. Based on that prediction and my own observations, I cashed out most of my investments. And it just so happens that I cashed out at the top of the market. Of course, we still haven't hit the Depression that Kunstler predicted back then and is still predicting today.

I think we're at the beginning of a long, slow decline of the American empire, if not the American experiment in general. With energy prices soaring and no hope of sustained relief, lots of hard choices will have to be made and Americans will see a gradual shrinking of their wealth and quality of life. Nevertheless, we're not on the brink of catastrophe (yet).

Nowhere Else To Go

I occasionally wade into the nether regions of Hillary blogtopia.  What can I say?  I'm something of a masochist at heart.  A common argument over there is that Obama has to earn Hillary's supporters, namely women.  Incidentally, there doesn't seem to be much acknowledgement that not all Hillary supporters are women.

For examp:

...the women who are angry about the way that Clinton was treated during the campaign, and about Obama's silence...are not under any illusions that John McCain is better on women's issues than Obama would be.

I've been paying attention to the people who are fed up with that line, and I can say one thing:  that's just not going to work anymore.  They've heard this for decades now, and nothing gets any better, because the party knows they have nowhere else to go.  It's not about McCain being some champion for women's rights;  they know he's not.  What it *is* about is Obama, and the Democratic Party, and the fact that Obama is running to be President on the ticket of the Democratic Party, which is ostensibly supposed to champion women's rights.  But this year, that was revealed to be an expedient lie.  And the people who are fed up with the lies want to give the Party a wakeup call, and to let the party -- and Obama -- know that they expect action, not just promises and lies.

Roe has had only one use for the Democratic Party in the past 25 or so years -- as a club to beat women with every four years.  Because they have nowhere else to go, right?

Fair pay?  Health care?  Domestic violence?  Where has the Party been on those issues?

(Emphasis mine)

Christ on a cracker.  Nothing in that screed indicates any kind of sensible rejection of a candidate or the Democratic Party.

1.  There's the careful parsing of McCain not being "better" on women's issues.  There's no admission that Obama is head and shoulders above McCain on women's issues.  No, McCain isn't "better", which is to imply that he's not worse.  McCain is also not a champion of women's issues, which is to imply that he won't do everything in his power to reverse every political, economic, and social gain that women have won in the past several decades.

2.  It's fucking bullshit to say that nothing gets any better and to put the sole blame on the Democrats.

Conservatives have been fighting for decades to take over the government.  They've been fighting for decades to turn the American public over to their side with great success; the majority of Americans barely support reproductive rights, and most of them are very squeamish over abortion.  Any chipping away at Roe has been at the behest of the American public.  Look to them for the blame.

What's amazing is how little comparative damage the Republicans have managed to wreak over the past few decades.  It's a testament to our founders' foresight when they created this country, and evidence for why it's so difficult for Democrats, even when they have large majorities in Congress, to make sweeping reforms.  You'd think someone with a law degree would understand that, but then you'd have to assume this is actually about the Democrats and not sour grapes over the female candidate's loss.

3.  The Dems' concern for women's issues has hardly been revealed to be an "expedient lie." Having a bunch of men rush in to defend a woman's honor is a thornier issue than it first appears.  What would have happened had Obama defended Hillary from sexist attacks?  If anything, it would have seemed as though he were operating under the assumption that Hillary couldn't defend herself.  Meanwhile, she did handle it herself, with grace and aplomb, although unfortunately only addressed it directly at the very end of her campaign.

4.  I hate to break it to the tiny minority of Hillary supporters determined to sit this one out or vote McCain, but Obama is going to win in a landslide, barring something really terrible happening.  If women actually do sit this one out (not that I'm saying they are, because they AREN'T), and Obama wins anyway, the ultimate message will be that the Democrats don't need women to win, and I don't really think that'll help anyone.

5.  That "promises and lies" line:  My impression from that is that there's nothing Obama can do at this point.  This writer is determined not to believe anything that comes out of his mouth.

6.  Damn straight women don't have anywhere else to go.  The past eight years should have been more than enough to demonstrate the consequences of a protest vote.  Perhaps this writer thinks that things can't get worse, so women have the luxury of voting against Obama.  Things can get worse.  Great Depression worse.  Things can get worse for women, for men, for children, for people around the world.  And McCain is just the pasty-faced walking corpse to make that happen.

Anyone with any sense has nowhere else to go.

7.  Fair pay, health care, domestic violence, really?  The party as a whole supports the fair pay act, supports some solution for our health care crisis, and has been working on DV issues for decades.  For frak's sake.  And while not every Democrat agrees with the party's stance on those issues, I do know where the Democratic candidate for president stands, and I'm voting for him largely because of those positions.

Lastly, why does Obama have to specifically reach out to women voters?  On every issue, every issue, that is or could be important to women he's far and away better than McCain.  Putting specific women's issues aside for a moment, women are affected by the economy, crappy health care, Social Security and Medicare, war, environmental destruction, and civil liberty violations just as much as men.  In some cases, they're more affected by those things.

What this writer wants is not for Obama to take a specific stand on "women's" issues; he's already done that.  What she wants is hand holding, for him to pay special attention to her and other disgruntled Hillary supporters and coddle them.  Not surprisingly, this specific critic of Obama constantly criticizes him for being insincere and being an empty suit, and for the kind of "I feel your pain" politicking that she now wants from him!  I'm not imagining a reaching out being accepted in good faith.