Your media narrative is going kill us all (part 2 - updated)

The current media narrative is that the elections in November are going to be a disaster for the Democrats, with massive numbers of Republicans getting elected. (This message is often accompanied by metaphorical battlefield narrative, with the victorious conquerors striding over the bleeding bodies of their fallen foes.)

And this has many people panicked about the fate of America, with teabaggers coming into office and strengthening the obstructionist Republicans who are doing their best to ensure that the first black president's term in office is an abject failure. Because, after all, Americans have notoriously short memories and will always choose instant gratification over long-term gains: it actually sounds plausible that, since Obama did not immediately create untold wealth and prosperity, the small-minded people will decide to give the keys back to the people who drove the car into the lake in the first place.

What they're failing to rememeber, of course, is that the media narrative is usually wrong. For one thing, it's being driven by people who are motivated to tell you that the Republicans will save us all.

While right-wing media chooses stories that serve its political agenda, progressive media increasingly covers the same "news." True, the focus is on disproving right-wing accounts, but from the "death panels" for granny to the alleged "Ground Zero" mosque, the right wing is setting the agenda for the progressive media.

No wonder Americans are unaware of President Obama's many accomplishments, or think that he, rather than President Bush, signed the unpopular bank bailout bill. With progressive media primarily focused on rebutting conservative "news," little time is left to promote stories that build support for progressive policies.
...

And, unlike progressive media, Fox and right-wing radio feel no obligation to cover stories that boost their opponents. The right-wing media avoids news that does not serve their cause, which limits stories from echoing through the broader public.

That's why so few Americans know about the Ensign, Vitter and other Republican political scandals, but everyone knows about Charles Rangel's problems. And why so many are unaware of the jobs created and preserved by the Obama stimulus, or about the many positive actions Obama officials at the EPA have taken to improve the environment.

Many noted how the media never connected former President Bush to the Exxon Valdez spill, but directly associated Obama with BP's reckless conduct. That's because Fox News and others made Obama the issue from the start, and traditional media either parroted this line or joined progressives in noting that the Bush Administration imposed lax oil drilling regulations; either way, Fox's framing of Obama as a central figure in the spill prevailed.

The slant even makes itself apparent in who they choose to tell the narrative. A new study from George Mason University School of Law shows that among the panel guests making up the Sunday Morning talk shows, "diversity" is a myth. The most common panelist is overwhelmingly an older, white, male Republican.

The study, of the five network Sunday shows from February to December 2009, found that while 14.6 percent of members of Congress were minorities, just 2.5 percent of the Congressional TV guests were minorities; and that while 16.9 percent of members were female, 13.5 percent of the guests were female.

A supplement to the study also singled out a group of “30 white, male U.S. senators in office six plus years” who represented 5.6 percent of the Congressional populace, but 61.4 percent of the TV guests.

Other fine examples of media compliance with promoting a false narrative can be found with allowing Republicans to call the act of allowing the Bush tax cuts expire a "tax increase." Or the continual references to a community center as the "Ground Zero Mosque." Despite the fact that it's partly modeled on the 92nd Street Y, which is a Jewish community center, which nobody ever calls "the Upper East Side Temple".

So, where does that leave us? Where should we turn?

Perhaps to the facts.

Flash back with me to February, 2008. Check out the headlines. If you alter the search terms from "Clinton leads" to "McCain can win", you get results like this. I love that first headline, don't you? October 29, 2008, just a couple of days ahead of the election, and the headline from the Seattle Times and others around the country is "McCain can still win..." Just for more fun, look at the news results for August-September 2008 when Palin came onboard -- she was a "game-changer".

We don't know what will happen. But really, we almost never do.

In the end, all we can bring away with us is that things are probably not as cut and dried as the "liberal media" would like us to believe.
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Update (9/16): So meanwhile, if you're looking for more reasons to doubt the media's narrative about the unstoppable GOP machine, perhaps you should consider that the Republican party is currently curled up in the corner, trying to gnaw its leg off. And as for the public, well, it turns out that while they don't like the Democrats much, they like the Republicans even less, and they believe the Democrats have a better chance of fixing the mess we're in. So, you know, calm down. And don't forget to vote.

Let it bleed

"What about the Jewish heart and Jewish compassion and Jewish morality?"

asks Elie Wiesel. Perhaps those are no different from anyone elses heart, compassion and morality: just ornaments to wear on parade and to mock when it's not profitable or when we're not comfortable. People who are troubled by plans by the State of Israel to deport people born and educated there; sometimes minors, who speak the language and often no other language because their parents, brought in as 'guest workers,' have overstayed their visas.

In a country offering automatic right of citizenship to any Jew, born there or not, it seems inconsistent, unless we consider that universal human tendency to surround one's self with one's ilk. These native residents are not, of course, Jews and apparently the official design of Israel as a "Jewish State" is threatened by religious diversity -- and who or what country remains moral when threatened? Not the US, not Israel.

Eli Yishai, Minister of the Interior and the man who oversees immigration policy invokes the "bleeding heart Liberal" straw man so well used by right wingers everywhere as though compassion, mercy and indeed, morality had no place in that questionable construct: the Judeo-Christian ethos.

The US doesn't seem to be in a position to offer criticism or guidance, of course. We have our own problems reconciling our facade with what goes on, and like Israel, we cling to the word illegal as though it were a solid refuge against moral condemnation. People; small children who are illegal as a result of no action of their own and who have had no ability to comply with immigration laws rightly make one's heart bleed if one has a heart with blood in it. Indeed it can be said of both nations, that they make a big issue of alleging Biblical origins for their laws while using the law as though morality were too expensive, too inconvenient and too frightening.

It's ethnic cleansing and it's always a dirty business and these days our tendency to continue to make such noble statements as one finds on the Statue of Liberty reek of hypocrisy concerns me more than the admittedly real problems with uncontrolled immigration. Perhaps we should come clean and put an "If you're white, you're all right" in Lady Liberty's hand or at least stop pretending our laws are a salute to Jesus. If we follow through on the assault on the 14th amendment, making people born and raised as Americans, who pay taxes, have jobs and businesses but never knew there parent's weren't citizens, we're going to inherit the same moral dilemma. I have to wonder in fact, as to whether, having had a grandfather who was never a citizen, my mother would retroactively be an alien, making me, after 65 years as a citizen, subject to deportation and constant fear lest there be a midnight knock on the door by a black gloved fist.

If there's no moral problem with sending a kid who speaks only English back "home" to Azerbaijan or Guatemala with no chance of appeal, then it's time we stopped pretending we're any different from anybody else.

TWO OCTOPODES MOMENTS

In another 100,000 years, cephalopods

will be farm-raising human beings.

SHAW EXPOSES IDENTITY THEFT AND RIGHT WING CYBER-TERRORISM RING

Side Show Slam

True confession: I have found further evidence that I am easily distracted from serious matters by loud, fast, shiny irrelevancies. And I do so hate that admission, since it eye-rolls in the face of my self-image--the serious, duty-bound, research-loving, non-fiction reading, television abhorring me. (I blame Slutticia, my alter ego, who sneaks Amy Winehouse's "Amy, Amy, Amy" onto my iPod between my "On Point" podcasts from NPR.) Specifically, I refer to the Glenn Beck/Sarah Palin ado-about-nothing in Anchorage last night. I get it. I was hooked by the hoochy-koochy show at the fair. I bought the snake oil. I'm a dupe for diversion. I got the side show mixed up with the big tent.  For the last time.

Hat tip to Octopus, who warned that we should follow the serious money, the Kochs and Murdoch, if we want to know what's hauling the conservative voting pool toward the ranting right.

So dazzled and distracted was I that I actually went looking this morning for the big announcement Beck promised from the Anchorage...um, performance. I can't call it a rally and it wasn't a political fundraiser, although Beck announced that his speaking fee, an undisclosed amount, would be donated to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. That's the same organization that lent its name to the Beck/Palin rally on the Mall and that insisted the speakers stick to non-political topics, according to Time Mag.

 Remember that the fundraising efforts for the August 28th rally (which restored an honor that hadn't gone missing except at Fox News) went first to support what Mother Jones calls, "Beck's tribute to himself." Only the remainder, after all costs were paid, went to SOWF. Disingenuous of Beck and Palin.  Because, of course, all of us are clueless about their politics, so we don't assume that they might represent any particular political viewpoint, right children? Anyone? Anyone?

Time Mag thinks there's genius in Beck's plan to link his appearances to SOWF, a non-profit that pays the college tuitions of the children of special operations personnel who died in training or battle after 9/11. Beck would find the job too important to be left up to the US government. But the G.I. bill was expanded by The Marine Gunnery Sergeant John David Fry Scholarship, which pays in-state tuition for the children of ALL military personnel killed in the line of duty after 9/11, regardless of age or marital status; Public Law 111-32, sponsored by Democratic Congressman John Boccieri of the 16th District of Ohio.

 Beck's announcements in his gatherings would lead his audience to believe that it is by his efforts and his alone that the children of the deceased special ops veterans receive an education, when, in fact, the SOWF organization only supplements the amended G.I. Bill, only for children of deceased special operatives, and only expands it to private colleges...not an unworthy goal, but not critical in a country with outstanding state university systems. Time Mag may think it genius on Beck's part, but I call it disingenuous...again.

So what was Anchorage all about? Nothing...if we still care, and even if we don't.

The Alaska Dispatch reported that Beck didn't seem aware that he was insulting the state when he complained about how long it took to get there and essentially said that he and his wife had thought of vacationing in Alaska, but chose Idaho instead. He made a crude reference to Palin, saying she had just come back from caribou hunting and still had blood under her fingernails. And he said it all made him feel "like a girl again."

Read that last line one more time. Yep, I think going after that, as the Dispatch did, would produce some copy at least as interesting as the stuff I read on Mr. Obama's wedding ring. In fact, I'll let the Dispatch write about Glenn and Glenda a bit:

He was at turns bombastic, self-effacing, philosophical, funny, historical and even tearful as he prowled the stage lamenting the collectives that rule American politics today, stressing the value of the individual and suggesting, without ever actually saying so, that those in the attendance form a new collective. Stand together, he said; take strength from each other; and take back America.

The mostly white crowd loved it. Not that Beck's message wouldn't have had something for any race or nationality. There were, as is often the case with Beck, so many messages scattered through the presentation that there was something for anyone.

He said to find God, but then he stressed it could be any God, even a mountain top. He attacked the bureaucracy, something with which almost [every] American has had a run-in at some point, although he referred to them as the "administrators.''

He said everyone should read their history, though his livelihood is dependent on people watching an electronic box instead of reading. He said he'd already made enough money to be set for life, but that he was carrying forward his message for the good of the country.

It was very good theater. Those leaving had all kinds of reactions to the message, although they seemed mainly to have gotten the theme that they should find the Christian God and fight to shrink government.

Beck's last pitch was to call on them to join his 40 Days/40 Nights campaign of self-awareness, which includes the search for God, after which "our politicians will be replaced." The new ones, he suggested, wouldn't fight so much, which would probably be a first in American's cantankerous political history.

Would that mean that they wouldn't fight each other so much? Those darn democrats just insist on governing when they have the majority and the presidency.  Or does that mean they wouldn't fight other countries so much? Oh, brother; let's don't even go there. And the 40 days and 40 nights? No shame to his name.

So, with their special genius, Beck and Palin managed to co-opt a second significant calendar date--August 28th, the anniversary of Dr. King's death and 9/11/10, the ninth anniversary of the death of America's sense of security and 2,976 innocents--and turn it into another paean to...well, if they are to be believed and it ain't about the politics, it must be just another performance of the Glenn and Sarah Show. Not the main event, after all.

Politico Sinks to New Low in Non-News Reporting

The main stream media has been receiving a lot of harsh criticism over the last couple of years, decades maybe, for using bad news judgement, most of it well deserved. Politico just beat the crap out of them by sinking to the bottom of the cesspool.

Are these non-entities serious? Where is the news worthiness in this banal non-news story? Has all judgement been flushed down the toilet? Another time of the year, I would think it was an April Fools joke or that I had landed at the Onion by mistake - or at Fox News.

In what is undoubtedly the most inane news story I have ever had the misfortune of reading, reporters

Patrick Gavin and Amie Parnes (requires two to write this garbage?) take the president to task for - hold your breath - going ringless at today's "presser." Oh my God! Rates right up there with jobs and medical research don't it?

Sometimes, a White House press conference can be a chance for a president to take some weight off his shoulders ... but weight off his fingers?

Eagle-eyed reporters noticed that President Barack Obama wasn't sporting his wedding ring during Friday's White House press conference.

"big to-do over potus not wearing his wedding ring today," Tweeted The Hill's Sam Youngman, who was at the presser.

Presser? Please, somebody tell me this is a joke. I actually read this piece of shiitake three times to make sure I wasn't missing something. The comments indicated it was meant as an honest-to-God news story.

Jim in Houston:  Which ring, the one for his finger or the one in his nose? Big Meshell leads him around like a dog on a leash.

MAC59: He is probably getting it adapted to fit in his nose. 

maxovrdriv: I just figured he wanted his favorite verse from the Quran put on it.

But this conservative says it best:

zjak10: BFD! I mean who the heck cares, really?

So, why do I care? I don't.

Your media narrative is going to kill us all

In case you've been living in a cave for the past several months, Terry Jones, relatively unknown pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center and Yosemite Sam impersonator, burst onto the world stage by threatening to burn Qu'rans on 9/11. Well, now he's cancelled that event, although he isn't clear on the reason: at first, he said he'd cancel if plans to build Park51 were scrapped, or perhaps if he got a call from the president.

Despite that, it seemed only fair to call it off, since he was told that this was a bad idea by pretty much everybody in the world, from both sides of every political and religious spectrum: from President Barack Obama to professional quitter and loudmouth Sarah Palin, to the Prime Minister of Canada; from every possible Islamic organization, to a major group of atheists and free-thinkers, to the National Association of Evangelicals and even the fucking Vatican.

The thing is, this wasn't something that should ever have been seen in the national news. This self-important pastor was a self-aggrandizing lunatic, known to create potentially newsworthy controversy, simply to increase his own notoriety. There were only fifty people in his congregation! How did he become an international headline?

It was the media who felt that his voice should be amplified, to be heard by the entire world. Terry Jones should have been ignored, except that "news" organizations, desperate for ratings, saw conflict in his story. Had he been simply overlooked, like some random racist screaming "nigger," he would have faded away as nothing more than a blip on the world radar screen.

(In a rational world, you could even ask why the burning of a group of bound pages would make anyone angry. Then again, ask PZ Myers why the "desecration" of the Eucharist would cause death threats and controversy. So we'll just take that argument as a given.)

Of course, as each voice spoke out to tell him he was wrong, Jones gained power. The President of the United States should have had nothing to say about some minor ruckus involving a redneck Florida lunatic with a bad mustache. But, by exaggerating Jones's profile, the media forced Obama's hand. (And god knows Obama seems more than willing to jump in whatever direction the media is pointing this week.)

Really, with every word Jones spewed out onto the public scene, this jumped-up Florida firebrand proved that he didn't even care about his own religion, much less the random mythology of the Middle East.

After all, he'd been denied a permit to burn anything. In order to perform his ignorant display of bigotry, Jones would have to break the law. And, just for giggles, what does the Bible say about that?

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. (Romans 13:1-2 NIV)

Of course, if you're going to be rude enough to go to the Scripture, you should also consider words from earlier in that same book.

Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things. (Romans 2:1-2 NIV)

But it hardly mattered that Jones was a crappy Christian; he reflected the media's narrative about the "holy war" between Islam and the western world. And even better, this was a new slant - instead of a radical imam screaming "Death to America!" this was a radical priest screaming "Death to Islam!" (Sadly, a philosophy echoed far too often these days).

So the news networks gave Terry Jones his unjustified fifteen minutes.

In the end, the problem is simple. Radical adherents to any religion are dangerous. They don't need to have their voices heard - they need to be ignored. If Terry Jones hadn't been elevated to an international stage, he would have been considered a random lunatic with a minor cult following him. Instead of a flashpoint inciting riots.

But sadly, because of the current, violently partisan political scene, where the most insane people are considered newsworthy, there's a good chance it will happen again.

The best option? A counter-protest. But a relatively peaceful one (emphasis on the "relatively"). Terry Jones wanted headlines for burning the Qu'ran, and he got them.

So, with the news media in full force, you have to wonder what the reaction have been if he was met by a small group of people with no weapons and no combative attitude. Just fire extinguishers.

People willing to spray down everybody in the neighborhood with non-toxic white foam.

Sure. There would have been some danger - these aren't just idiots, they're armed idiots. But sometimes, your only choice is to change the narrative.

It's just a thought.

Things that ring in the night.

If there is any part of "our freedoms" that must be defended more than the right to risk irreparable disaster for profit, the right to sell fraudulent securities, bogus debt reduction plans and to buy election results, it's the right to harass people at all hours of the day and night in their homes, in their cars and at work in the process of fleecing them.

Yes, there are laws regulating telemarketing: no call lists, restrictions on times called, restrictions on robocalls that tie up the line until they're through telling you how evil Nancy Pelosi is or how they can get you out of debt by lending you more money at 400% interest. These laws are scrupulously ignored and lawbreakers are carefully protected by the phone companies who in turn are allowed to buy the privilege of ignoring not only the law, but common decency. Virtually all these calls, including the call that woke me at 3:33 this morning are untraceable. "Hell-O - are you late in your mortgage payments???" I was ready to kill someone, but thanks to an FCC that is owned by the telecommunications industry, I'm not allowed to do what I would be allowed to do if someone in a black ski mask showed up in my bedroom at the same hour. That I don't have a mortgage and am not in debt adds a certain edge to the anger. That I only got 4 hours of sleep hasn't allowed it to dissipate.

I may have to give up my land line. Even in a non-election year, I average about 8 telemarketing calls every day, usually most frequent at 8 O'clock AM, again around dinner time with a late peak at 9 to 10 PM. It rings when I'm in the shower, in the pool, up on a ladder trimming trees or under my car changing the oil. Of course it's nearly twice as bad this year.

My number is registered on that most pathetic of places, the Federal no-call list. I wonder why I bothered to register it. So is my cell phone and yet every loan shark and financial con man sends me text messages and calls me at the most inopportune times, so I have to remain unreachable, which largely defeats the purpose of owning one. Yes, this continues when one is overseas and for some reason, candidates all over the country continue to call me even when I demand to be removed.

Of course, I'm just a crank with no knowledge of how evil Liberals are and no proof that the ever further to the right corporate shills still calling themselves Republicans aren't the cause of our woes. After all, it's just freedom I'm objecting to and the will of the proletariat is that the will of the corporations be the law -- and isn't it typical of loser liberals like me to promote such Communo/Fascist ideas like a right to be left alone by scam hawkers and sleazemongers and political flim flam artists who have a far greater right to use a service I pay for than I do.

Masturbation, Mutilation and Tea

Apparently, my feelings about the Tea Party are very funny over in Trollhattan, because I'm regularly accused of stupidity and dishonesty and the entire list of standard calumnies when I mention the evidence of insanity in the house of Tea. "Proof" is the usual demand of the rightly accused and of course there's never proof of insanity; but not only do most people know it when they see it, they also know the preponderance of evidence when they're drowning in it.

Take Christine O'Donnell -- please. Masturbation, says the Delaware Tea Party Express candidate soon to appear on primary election ballots, is the same as adultery and as "proof" she offers the Bible. Yes, the same book that tells us that a cheeseburger is an abomination and damnation results from using cotton thread to sew a linen shirt.

"the Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can't masturbate without lust."

Of course when she says "the Bible" she's referring to a Gospel and it's inclusion under the biblical rubric is a matter of dispute and a matter in which proof has no place. It's also a document which, like the Koran, has no legal status in our country, yet she rolls on with rapturous certainty:

"When a married person uses pornography, or is unfaithful, it compromises not just his (or her) purity, but also compromises the spouse's purity. As a church, we need to teach a higher standard than abstinence"

she told MTV, some years ago. Of course we're a secular Republic and not a church, but can you think of something of a "higher standard" than abstinence that doesn't include genital mutilation? I can't, but one does not expect the words of a Tea Party candidate to mean what they say any more than one expects Biblical cosmology to reflect reality.

One does expect however that when one refuses to list one's place of residence while running for Representative, using the excuse that her house was broken into, when in fact it wasn't, one will be called a liar as well as a nutjob. Please feel free to do so with my blessing.

Again, I'm sure I'll be called names and "proof" will be demanded. I'm sure I need not remind you that it's the guilty party that demands proof of their guilt, while the innocent often has more faith in the evidence. If there are more nuts in that misbegotten party than in the fruit cake you threw away last Christmas, perhaps this will serve as one more chewy bit of that evidence.

Prank Nation

If I never hear again that foul-mouthed bloggers killed the news media, it will be too soon.

In a stunning media error, the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart referred to “California Republican Congressman Jack Kimble” in a post last night. Problem is, there is no Congressman Jack Kimble:

The fictional Kimble claims to be from California's 54th district -- California only has 53 districts -- and his twitter page is adorned with corporate logos including Cargill, Fidelity Investments and Toys R' Us. At first glance, Kimble's posts appear to be in line with conservative ideology, but they are in fact subtle digs at the conservative movement.

I almost feel sorry for Capehart except that this embarrassing incident was completely self-inflicted. How many times have we DFH’s bemoaned of our national press, “can’t you people Google?”

The typical rejoinder one gets is that news is now a 24/7 business and deadlines are awful and no one pays for fact checking or copy editing blabbedy blah blah. Yeah I hear you, it sucks, we’ve all made mistakes, I’ve made some bad ones but the thing is no one is fucking paying me for my blog, this is something I do on my spare time for free and if I fuck up it’s my own fuckup, not another scar on fast-eroding 130 year old tradition. I mean seriously, if you can’t take the time to Google the Congressman and his district and realize it’s a parody then what the hell are you doing writing for the nation’s oldest newspaper?

This story is stupid, and trivial; Keith Olbermann and Jon Stewart will have a moment of fun at Capehart’s expense and we'll all move on. But I wanted to talk about it because the problem is bigger than Jonathan Capehart. This incident points to a larger issue. All around us our institutions are proving themselves completely inadequate to the task at hand, be it educating our kids or fixing our economy or fixing our levees and roads or fixing our politics. And if anyone ever wonders how the nation got dragged into a war of choice in Iraq, it's because we’re a nation of incompetents and low standards.

I’ve often thought that 9/11’s biggest impact on America was that it struck a major blow to an already wounded national morale, and we keep taking hits. Sept. 11 came at the completely wrong time (if a “right” time could be said to exist), since the national psyche was still reeling from the Clenis fallout: all of that angst over a presidential blow job that should never have been international news yet somehow was.

This was followed by the botched 2000 election which cast a pall of doubt over our entire electoral system. It was the kind of thing you read about happening in third world countries and places like Iran, not here. And then some guys armed only with boxcutters hijacked three airplanes and launched an attack on the U.S.? And then the crash of the Columbia space shuttle, followed by invasion of Iraq which, it would soon become clear, was based on misinformation and lies -- I mean, even if you believed it was the right thing to do, that it was totally worth it, where are the WMD’s? Still? To this day? And then the Northeast power grid failure, the levees failing in New Orleans and the major Hurricane Katrina failure and then a bridge collapses over the Mississippi River in Minnesota? And then the financial collapse and the real estate bubble bursts? And an oil well spewing filth into the Gulf of Mexico for months on end?

(And what am I forgetting? Anything else sucky about the past 10 years I’ve overlooked? Doping by sports heroes? Political philandering?) America sure has had that merde touch for the past decade, n’est ce pas?

Against this entire backdrop we’ve got people like Glenn Beck selling crazy juice to the nation. I mean no wonder the nation feels like crap. This kind of stuff used to happen to other countries, not us. America the mighty and strong, America the first to walk on the moon, America whose interstate system and military might and radical yet peaceful regime change every few years were the envy of the world!

It all hit the shitter at once, didn’t it? We the people are completely demoralized; now we have reporters who can’t even hit the Google and Vice Presidential Candidates pwned by Canadian comedians. What in God’s name happened? (And no, I ain’t blaming this on teaching evolution, gay marriage and abortion. Be real.)

I’d like to say Mercury has been retrograde over America for the past 15 years, but I suspect this national lowering of standards happened long ago and we're just now reaping that harvest. Our education system has been crumbling for years yet we ignored the warning signs of falling test scores and Why Johnny Can’t Read reports and our national cluelessness about geography. This is an empire in tailspin, and I suspect it’s been happening a lot longer than any of us realized.

How we get out of this mess is anyone’s guess. I suppose we could all try a little harder to be our best (fill in the blank...). Maybe some great national project, a manned mission to Mars or something. I dunno. Electing our first black president sure got everyone feeling hopey-changey, until the Republicans decided to stick their feet in the mud and answer “no you can’t” to every “yes we can” cheer. Honestly I have the feeling that one group of Americans just wants to wallow in feeling really really crappy right now while another group is wanting to think happy thoughts, which is really hard to do when you’re given bad news at every turn.

So I don’t have any answers. I know the nation is turning its hopeful eyes to a lot of someones and somewheres, but everywhere we look we see just a spectacular fail.