We the People, and the New American Civil War

robertreich:

The vitriol is worse is worse than I ever recall. Worse than the Palin-induced smarmy 2008. Worse than the swift-boat lies of 2004. Worse, even, than the anything-goes craziness of 2000 and its ensuing bitterness.

It’s almost a civil war. I know families in which close relatives are no longer speaking. A dating service says Democrats won’t even consider going out with Republicans, and vice-versa. My email and twitter feeds contain messages from strangers I wouldn’t share with my granddaughter.

What’s going on? Yes, we’re divided over issues like the size of government and whether women should have control over their bodies. But these aren’t exactly new debates. We’ve been disagreeing over the size and role of government since Thomas Jefferson squared off with Alexander Hamilton, and over abortion rights since before Roe v. Wade, almost forty years ago.

And we’ve had bigger disagreements in the past – over the Vietnam War, civil rights, communist witch hunts – that didn’t rip us apart like this.

Maybe it’s that we’re more separated now, geographically and online.

The town where I grew up in the 1950s was a GOP stronghold, but Henry Wallace, FDR’s left-wing vice president, had retired there quite happily. Our political disagreements then and there didn’t get in the way of our friendships. Or even our families — my father voted Republican and my mother was a Democrat. And we all watched Edward R. Murrow deliver the news, and then, later, Walter Cronkite. Both men were the ultimate arbiters of truth.

But now most of us exist in our own political bubbles, left and right. I live in Berkeley, California – a blue city in a blue state – and rarely stumble across anyone who isn’t a liberal Democrat (the biggest battles here are between the moderate left and the far-left). The TV has hundreds of channels so I can pick what I want to watch and who I want to hear. And everything I read online confirms everything I believe, thanks in part to Google’s convenient algorithms.

So when Americans get upset about politics these days we tend to stew in our own juices, without benefit of anyone we know well and with whom we disagree — and this makes it almost impossible for us to understand the other side.

That geographic split also means more Americans are represented in Congress by people whose political competition comes from primary challengers – right-wing Republicans in red states and districts, left-wing Democrats in blue states and districts. And this drives those who represent us even further apart.

But I think the degree of venom we’re experiencing has deeper roots.

The first is the nation is becoming browner and blacker. Most children born in California are now minorities. In a few years America as a whole will be a majority of minorities. Meanwhile, women have been gaining economic power. Their median wage hasn’t yet caught up with men, but it’s getting close. And with more women getting college degrees than men, their pay will surely exceed male pay in a few years. At the same time, men without college degrees continue to lose economic ground. Adjusted for inflation, their typical wage is lower than it was three decades ago.

In other words, white working-class men have been on the losing end of a huge demographic and economic shift. That’s made them a tinder-box of frustration and anger – eagerly ignited by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and other pedlars of petulance, including an increasing number of Republicans who have gained political power by fanning the flames.

That hate-mongering and attendant scapegoating – of immigrants, blacks, gays, women seeking abortions, our government itself – has legitimized some vitriol and scapegoating on the left as well. I detest what the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Rupert Murdock, and Paul Ryan are doing, and I hate their politics. But in this heated environment I sometimes have to remind myself I don’t hate them personally.

Not even this degree of divisiveness would have taken root had America preserved the social solidarity we had two generations ago. The Great Depression and World War II reminded us we were all in it together. We had to depend on each other in order to survive. That sense of mutual dependence transcended our disagreements. My father, a “Rockefeller” Republican, strongly supported civil rights and voting rights, Medicare and Medicaid. I remember him saying “we’re all Americans, aren’t we?”

To be sure, we endured 9/11, we’ve gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we suffered the Great Recession. But these did not not bind us as we were bound together in the Great Depression and World War II. The horror of 9/11 did not touch all of us, and the only sacrifice George W. Bush asked was that we kept shopping. Today’s wars are fought by hired guns – young people who are paid to do the work most of the rest of us don’t want our own children to do. And the Great Recession split us rather than connected us; the rich grew richer, the rest of us, poorer and less secure.

So we come to the end of a bitter election feeling as if we’re two nations rather than one. The challenge – not only for our president and representatives in Washington but for all of us – is to rediscover the public good.

[rights]

arashikami:

As we near Election Day 2012, where we choose whom we want representing us and our interests, I’d like to address my fellow Japanese Americans very specifically about the topic of civil rights.

I am a fourth generation Japanese American. Among other things, Executive Order 9066 and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II is part of our cultural heritage. Even though my family was fortunate enough to live in an area that they wouldn’t be removed from, they still felt the effects. Differently than those at Manzanar or Tule Lake, to be sure. But affected nonetheless. Their civil rights as American citizens were taken away because they were also Japanese. Eventually, reparations and apologies were made, blame was accepted, and so on. But it still happened, and we, as Japanese Americans share this.

So, when I see or read of other Japanese Americans supporting candidates and/or legislation that would RESTRICT THE CIVIL RIGHTS of other Americans because they are [Pick one: Women, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, Black, Hispanic, Muslim, Arabic, etc.], I am left positively dumbfounded. Seriously.

You may be of the belief that abortion is wrong, or that homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed to marry. And that’s fine. Those are YOUR beliefs, and it is your right as an American is to express them. (Which also means you bear the responsibility that comes with expressing your opinions, but that’s another topic.)

What I am saying is that regardless of your reasoning, be it moral, ethical, religious, or other, as a Japanese American, you CANNOT back anyone or anything that would violate the rights of another American citizen in a legal fashion.

Before you make up your mind in a very definitive way by voting for a law or a candidate, I urge you to think about our history as Japanese Americans. Let our legacy be the protection of everyone’s civil rights.

I Would Like To Make A Point About Abortion And The Upcoming Presidential Election

When GWB was in the White House, the Republicans who had control over all 3 houses (for the majority of the time he was in office) and didn’t do anything about abortion. They never brought it up, they never made it a priority, they never did anything about it. 

So why then when Obama got into office (or shortly thereafter) did all the sudden it become a priority for them to stop women from having safe access to abortions? 

Oh, cause they needed something to distract the populace away from the real issue of how they are impeding the Presidents ability to create a strong economy that will benefit the Democratic party politically in the long run and make them look even worse than they already do. 

When you vote for President in the coming election, remember the Republicans main priority in the coming election was to make sure Obama was a one term President. Not to help the jobless, not to lessen the burden on the unemployed by extending benefits, not creating an atmosphere where jobs could flourish, not to reign in spending on an out of control military industrial complex that is ruining the world and certainly not to help women with their reproductive rights which were already established decades ago.

The Republican parties actions over the last four years have been nothing less than unpatriotic at best and damn near treasonous at worst. Republicans are more concerned with political posturing than doing their goddamned jobs and legislating to the benefit of the populace. They have shown time and again they do not care about the American people, well unless we are talking about corporations, which are people too my friend…

Remember this when you go to vote this coming election. 

Why Romney and Ryan are Going Down

robertreich:

Unemployment is still above 8 percent, job gains aren’t even keeping up with population growth, the economy is barely moving forward. And yet, according to most polls, the Romney-Ryan ticket is falling further and further behind. How can this be?

Because Republicans are failing the central test of electability. Instead of putting together the largest possible coalition of voters, they’re relying largely on one slice of America — middle-aged white men — and alienating just about everyone else.

Start with Hispanics, whose electoral heft keeps growing as they become an ever-larger portion of the electorate. Hispanics now favor President Obama over Romney-Ryan by a larger margin than they did six months ago.

Why? In last February’s Republican primary debate Romney dubbed Arizona’s controversial immigration policy – that authorized police to demand proof of citizenship from anyone looking Hispanic — a “model law” for the rest of the nation. 

Romney then attacked GOP rival Texas Governor Rick Perry for supporting in-state tuition at the University of Texas for children of undocumented immigrants. And Romney advocates what he calls “self-deportation” – making life so difficult for undocumented immigrants and their families that they choose to leave.

As if all this weren’t enough, the GOP has been pushing voter ID laws all over America, whose obvious aim is to intimidate Hispanic voters so they won’t come to the polls. But they may be having the opposite effect – emboldening the vast majority of ethnic Hispanics, who are American citizens, to vote in even greater numbers and lend even more support to Obama and other Democrats.

Or consider women – whose political and economic impact in America continues to grow (women are fast becoming better educated than men and the major breadwinners in American homes). According to polls, the political gender gap is widening. 

Why? It’s not just GOP senatorial candidate Todd Akin’s call to ban all abortions even in the case of “legitimate rape” (because he believes women’s bodies somehow reject violent sperm). The GOP platform itself seeks to bar all abortions, with no exception for rape or incest. And on several occasions Paul Ryan has voted in favor of exactly such legislation.

Meanwhile, Republican legislators in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Idaho, and Alabama have pushed bills requiring women seeking abortions to undergo invasive vaginal ultrasound tests. All told, over 400 Republican bills are pending in state legislatures, attacking womens’ reproductive rights.

Republicans have repeatedly voted against legislation giving women equal pay for the same work as men. Republicans in Wisconsin have even repealed a law designed to prevent employers from discriminating against women.

Or consider students – a significant and growing electoral force, who voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2008. What are Republicans doing to woo them back? 

Paul Ryan’s budget plan – approved by almost every House Republican and enthusiastically endorsed by Mitt Romney – would have allowed rates on student loans to double, adding an average of $1,000 a year to student debt loads. (Under mounting political pressure, House Republicans came up with just enough money to keep the loan program going safely past Election Day by raiding a fund established for preventive care in the new health-care act.)

Now Romney wants to hand the federal student loan program over to the banks, which will charge even more. Earlier this year he argued subsidized student loans were bad because they encouraged colleges to raise their tuition, and suggested students ask their families for money.

Republicans have even managed to antagonize seniors by seeking to turn Medicare into vouchers whose value won’t keep up with rising healthcare costs, and cutting $800 billion out of Medicaid (which many seniors rely on for nursing home care).

And, of course, they’ve come out against equal marriage rights for gay couples.

Romney, Ryan, and the GOP don’t seem to know how to satisfy their middle-aged white male base without at the same time turning off everyone who’s not white, male, straight, or middle-aged. Unfortunately for Romney and Ryan, the people they’re turning off are the majority.