MANY, MANY THINGS GOING ON

The District Qualifier for the National Debate Tournament is this weekend and we have been working very, very hard.

I am sorry I haven't finished my same-sex marriage essay. But I am happy that the Wyoming legislature won't be hearing the cowboy Defense of Marriage Act. It died in committee last week on a 3-2 decision. There are many reasons why I am particularly happy Wyoming will retain some sensibilities for now.

1. As a straight progressive male married to a straight progressive female, we want our gay friends to have the same rights and privileges as we do. We don't find anything particularly offensive about gay sex. But even if we did, we wouldn't feel that those offensive traits would be legitimate grounds for legally restricting its practitioners, provided everyone entered into those contracts competently and bindingly and no innocent people harmed.

2. As a Wyomingite, I have seen, time and again, the phenomena that is Wyoming politics. You won't find a more fiscally conservative state, but you also will find an attitude that exemplifies and encourages free agency, free assembly, freedom of conscience, and an open (albeit quiet) tolerance for differences. Former Republican Senator Al Simpson, a fairly conservative fellow, has written an important essay calling for a position on same-sex marriage that is so identical to my own I feel like buying the man a beer.

3. My church, the Unitarian Universalist Organization, has a solid history of promoting marriage, and performing same-sex marriages, and I am perfectly happy appealing to their authority in this matter.

I'm still working on the essay. I want it to be my best. I don't know why, exactly, I find myself more indignant about this issue than so many others, but I can no longer stand silent.


Meanwhile, in one of the most shocking (and so far, undercovered) events in recent memory, someone at the Pentagon has leaked a document calling global warming a greater threat than terrorism.

According to Agence France Presse:

The report was ordered by an influential US Pentagon advisor but was covered up by "US defense chiefs" for four months, until it was "obtained" by the British weekly.
The leak promises to draw angry attention to US environmental and
military policies, following Washington's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and President George W. Bush's skepticism about global warning -- a stance that has stunned scientists worldwide.
The Pentagon report, commissioned by Andrew Marshall, predicts that "abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies," The Observer reported.

Holy mother of God. I don't know why this isn't a bigger political story than it is a scientific story. This should make Bush look extremely bad, and it may even underscore one category of issues in which there actually are extreme differences between Republicans and Democrats (there aren't that many, but this one is clearly a defined difference).

I'm interested in others' commentary and speculations on both the politics and the implications of the new "Pentagon Papers." In the meantime, I am sure the coming CLIMATE WARS will provide Bush (or his cynical Democratic successor) with plenty of ammunition for future threat construction. As the Star Tribune puts it:

"What a remarkable disconnect: While the White House pursues policies that accelerate production of globe-warming gases, the Pentagon is war-gaming what will happen when the climate reaches a tipping point."



I am equally curious as to why nobody's talking about Israel's nuclear weapons...the ones they refuse to admit they have:

"February 22, 2004 Sunday WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- A new book written by a Washington Times veteran Pentagon reporter contains a Defense Intelligence Agency report that Israel has
82 nuclear weapons. The book [is] "Rumsfeld's War" by Rowan Scarborough..."

Umm...I was under the impression that building nukes and hiding them makes you a "rogue nation." Oh well.

(By the way, I don't like attacks on Israel that question its right to exist, or even [the questions get more complicated] its right to self-defense. I just want to know why it's okay for some nations to lie and not others.)


Finally, someone got on my bad side today on a listserve I am on, for falling into the familiar clap trap of trying to establish who --liberals or conservatives-- engage in more personal attacks and below-the-belt bashing. In this case, the poster in question was attacking liberals for personal attacks on conservatives, and actually made his claims in a loosely empirical sort of way (caveating, of course with a kind of "this is what I hear" framework).

Here's my angry response. It felt good to write, and y'all can draw your own conclusions from that:

What planet do you live on, sir?

First: All kinds of people on the left (not merely liberals) are attacking Bush for bad policymaking. If you don't believe me, read The Nation, Alternet.com, Mother Jones, and the World Socialist Web Site--there's a pretty wide range of leftism for you. I promise you that policy criticism outnumbers "personal attacks" at least 5-1 and maybe even more. Yeah there are a lot of personal attacks, just like there were against Clinton, because that's the way bourgeois politics works, and maybe even because BOTH CLINTON AND BUSH ARE SMARMY, PRIVILEGED ASSHOLES.

Even your use of the term "liberals" to refer to everyone who dislikes Bush kind of shows who is educating you in this language and baseless labeling.

Second: No less than three nationally prominent conservatives have attacked Kerry for marrying rich widows, and all three have used the term "widow-chaser." Clinton was attacked by legitimate figures on the far right (including representatives in Washington) for MURDERING Vince Foster. In every redneck bar Hillary was called a lesbian, and Rush Limbaugh showed a picture of Chelsea when talking about the Clinton's "new family dog." I could give you a list a mile long of conservatives who routinely engage in personal attacks, but that's not even the most important point.

Most of Clinton's policies actually withstood weak, halfhearted conservative attacks because they were pretty conservative policies. The smart right hated Clinton precisely because he captured much of their agenda and forced them to go even further right to define themselves.

Third: This charge of "personal versus policy attacks" is the biggest and longest-running red herring in contemporary political discourse, and I'm frankly disappointed that somebody on this list would so easily fall into it. The fact is that people on both sides utilize personal attacks at their leisure, and policy attacks when they can muster up the requisite clarity and research skills. Pointing to one side or the other as substantially more guilty of personal attacks is a pointless, empirically baseless exercise. And if you're going to answer "well, it's just my opinion...it just seems to me like these guys attack those dudes more than those dudes attack these guys," well, congratulations on being one of a couple hundred million Americans with opinions.