I protest.

The "crimes" of Bill Clinton.

A few days ago, one "CP" left a comment on The Better Man calling me an idiot and accusing Clinton of "rape and humiliation of several women." I replied there and in email, to which he replied that I had "really told him" and again called me an idiot. Having a hobby of teaching pigs to sing, I sent him another email, requesting solid proof of his accusations of Clinton and asking him just what it's so important to him that Clinton be a criminal. I suggested in parting that

It's not idiocy to prefer proof before making a judgement. It is, however, extremely foolish to believe uncritically the statements of those with extreme political agendas and a willingness to do anything at all to advance those agendas.

In other words, if you think you hear truth from Limbaugh, Coulter and all the rest (those two being only the most extreme examples), then you really, really need to seriously think about where you're getting your information.

To which he replied at length, but I'll let him speak for himself:

Murder??? I don't remember saying anything about murder. Oh, you must mean Vince Foster, Ron Brown, several Arkansas state troopers and a couple of ladies rumored to have been Monica's predecessors. No, I am sure this was all just an odd string of coincidences.

Rush Limbaugh? I find him to be just slightly more opinionated and narrow minded than you. Ann Coulter? Have never listened to her, but I'll have to check her out.

Clinging tightly? Not quite. I am neither Republican nor conservative. You jump to an amazing number of conclusions based on a single statement. Feel proud, though - you are an exemplary Clinton apologist.

If the current president, or any republican president, were to be accused of even a small fraction of the Clinton shenanigans, I am sure that you & those of your ilk would be shrieking from the roof-tops, demanding resignation. (Remember Newt Gingrich?)

So, my dear Frank - I do not fit the mold you not-so-eloquently placed me in. I do check facts, more thoroughly than you, it would seem. I am independent in my views and associations, I do not buy into the drivel that seems to masquerade as intellectual honesty.

Finally, you "brave man", I write anonymously to possibly protect you and those like you. You see, once upon a time, a gentleman, (and I use the term loosely), with whom I had shared a similar internet conversation, came to my home and attempted to physically persuade me to see things his way. Let's just say he left my property in a different vehicle than the one he came in.

You seem like a nice guy. My "idiot" comment was uncalled for - I sincerely apologize. I would hope that you could re-examine the facts, even the ones you don't like, and arrive at an independent conclusion. But, then again - you have too much invested in your position, yes?

And now my reply, posted here just because I spent some time on it and thought it was worth more attention than a single email.

When someone uses argumentum ad hominem ("you're an idiot") rather than actually trying to address the substance of that with which he disagrees, he should expect what he will get, that is, to be lumped in with the mindless horde of limbots, dittoheads and freepers. That having been said, your apology is accepted.

You, on the other hand, should, as it were, mind the log in your own eye before attempting to remove the speck from mine. Given that one can never prove a negative and that I therefore cannot prove Clinton's innocence of your accusations of "rape and humiliation of several women," do you care to actually provide evidence, or at least a pointer to a (nonpartisan, please) source of such evidence?

Given Ken Starr's ten-year crusade, one would think that something would have been found that would stick. All that was found was a semen-stained dress, an affair, and a President that lied about said affair. Due to the hysteria of the Right, that resulted in a failed impeachment and a collossal waste of time and taxpayer money.

Rape is very serious, and to my knowledge no one outside of the fringe Right has even accused him of that crime.

Assertions are not evidence, and to date assertions are all that exist. Well, along with numerous distortions and outright lies on the side of the ultraconservatives. I still find it astonishing and perplexing that the Right so loathes Clinton.

If you're not a conservative, you certainly are echoing their opinions. That Clinton is a criminal is Conservative dogma these days. I can only go by what I see, and what I see is someone parrotting the ultraconservative line. You can call yourself "independent" all you like but until you stop with the unsubstantiated assertions and actually start providing evidence, I cannot take you seriously.

For myself, I do indeed think that Clinton is the better man and was by far the better President. I'm also convinced that history will agree resoundingly. I suspect in fact that history will condemn Bush, although it remains to be seen of just what his legacy will consist. If anything, Bush has made Clinton look better by contrast.

As for "shrieking from the rooftops," I don't form my opinions of politicans based on something as ultimately trivial as adultery. I don't give a good god damn what politicians stick their dicks into, as long as it's not the backside of the American public. Politicans, including Presidents, have affairs, it is the way it has been and is undoubtedly the way it will continue to be, for good or ill. (My objection to Newt was not his infidelity but his hypocrisy.) Unfortunately, George W. Bush is raping not some woman but the entire country, in the name of taking care of his friends the ultrarich. And meanwhile the working poor (not to mention those well below the poverty line) are taking it in the ass.

Worse, he has arrogated to himself powers that the Constitution does not give him. He has tried to place himself above the law with respect to the torture of prisoners and has denied American citizens of their Constitutional rights in cases such as that of Jose Padilla. And don't even start with the "terrorist" bullshit, because Padilla is a United States citizen who, theoretically at least, is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. So at this moment they have held an innocent man in a cell for more than two years, at the say-so of George W. Bush.

And then there are the lies that got us into the morass in Iraq, but that's an entirely different set of issues. Just let me say that I knew before the first bomb fell that it was a huge, huge mistake. Now Al Qaeda is back in business and our entire military is bogged down in an unwinnable situation.

For the record, I make just slightly under 100,000 per year as a software engineer in Southern California. I'm not one of the working poor but my parents were and I would very happily pay quite a bit more in taxes to see that those in need have the help they require. Unlike, for example, George W. Bush, who by his own admission doesn't even know any poor people and doesn't understand them.

The liberal's dilemma.

Dave Neiwert points us to an article by his friend Rob Salkowitz, "Defining Dissent Down. In that article, Salkowitz criticizes those "moderate/centrist columnists" (his term) who are "expressing distaste for the harsh quality of criticism coming from the Left." He then completely destroys the argument that such harshness is either unwarranted or damaging to the goals of today's progressives. As he says,

We live in a time when liberal values are under sustained and merciless attack. Our opponents are not interested in reasoning with us or compromising. They don't give a damn what anyone to the left of Colin Powell (if that) thinks about anything and are so convinced of their own rightness that they seize every opportunity to cut opponents out of the conversation. They lie, mislead, withhold important information, shout down and belittle critics rather than engage their ideas, and respond with dark threats when their authority is challenged.

He points out that "[e]very time the center-left has extended Bush and the Republicans the benefit of the doubt, … they have been made to look like fools and dupes." Even conservatives of a somewhat less belligerent stripe have been attacked relentlessly by the Right simply because they weren't the right kind of conservative:

The conservatism of Democrats like Mary Landrieu, Max Cleland and Martin Frost didn't buy them a whit of slack from the Republican attack machine, which pulled out all the stops to slime and defeat them by fair means and foul.

OK, message received: this is hardball. The only principle at stake is the maintenance of conservative power in government, and toward that end, any means is permissible. Those are the ethics of our opponents. So why are liberal-leaning opinion leaders still hemming and hawing, taking Republican spin-points about Moore and "leftist rage" seriously? How many times do we have to get played before we realize that it's time to close ranks and quit giving cover to people who have no use for the least of our values?

That's a damned good question. As those who read my rantings here are undoubtedly aware, I consider the time for "civility" to be when there is a real dialog. At the moment, though, there's nothing but one attack after another, one lie after another and more and more evidence that the Right will stop at nothing to attain their goals, primary among which is the destruction of every one of the advances we as a society have made since 1929. In most third-world countries, children work just because they have no choice, because it is that or starve. There is no social "safety net" that can catch those who, for one reason or another (and, contrary to the lies and distortions of those who have never had an instant's want in their lives, not by any fault of their own) fall between the economic cracks. In the United States, though, at the moment, we have such safety nets, federal and state social programs that give those with no other resources a way to survive until they find or create new resources.

In my own case, I received Pell grants and state-insured student loans that let me go to college; I paid my loans off years ago and I've since paid back in taxes by many, many times the grants I received. The Right, though, as embodied by the Republican Party, is doing its best to destroy these social programs, these so-called "entitlement" programs. They would have us live in one of those third-world countries. Worse, they would deny those with whom they disagree the ability to express our views, labelling us (this includes me, and you, too, if you are to the left of Colin Powell) "traitors" and "America haters."

Salkowitz goes on,

I understand the impulse to be fair and reasonable, but really, trusting that Bush's motives are anything but completely alien to moderate and liberal American values is an abdication of responsibility by the loyal opposition. Civility is a two-way street: you give in order to get. In today's climate of fear and loathing fostered by right-wing extremists, the only purpose served by civility on the left is to keep the truth from being spoken too loudly or too honestly.

Again: Civility is a two-way street.

In game theory there is a classic problem called the "Prisoner's Dilemma." For a formal definition of this problem please see Kuhn, Steven, "Prisoner's Dilemma", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2003 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). In essence, there are two prisoners who cannot communicate with one another. If one confesses ("defects") he goes free while the other serves five years. If both defect, both get three years. If both remain silent (they "cooperate"), both get one year. When one plays only one round, the obvious strategy is to defect, but what about when one plays multiple rounds?

Although it may not be obvious, there are many applications of the Prisoner's Dilemma in reality and the liberal-conservative communication is one of them. It's pretty obvious that the Right has chosen to defect in every case, that being the obvious (but simple-minded) strategy. It turns out, though, that a better strategy when playing an indefinite number of rounds of the game (which is the case in reality) is a tit-for-tat strategy. That is, to achieve the best outcome for both parties, start with cooperation. If the other party defects, on the next round defect. If the other party cooperates, on the next round do the same. This can also be referred to as the "golden rule" strategy.

So how is this applicable to Salkowitz's statement regarding civility? It seems obvious to me. The Right has consistently defected in every case since 9/11, but the Left, as is often our wont, is still trying for the better outcome, expecting each time that the Right will cooperate. Do I have to say that this strategy is just as simple-minded as the strategy of the Right?

The answer is simple. Gore has seen it, Salkowitz has seen it, many, many on the Left have seen it, but those "moderate/centrist columnists" just don't seem to get it. The Right is defecting. Time for the Left to do the same. We'll get around to cooperating again when the Right does so. Only this time, they'll have to do it first.

Salkowitz sums up:

Al Gore, that raving lunatic, said it best last week:

Having painstakingly created the intricate design of America, our founders knew intimately both its strengths and weaknesses, and during their debates they not only identified the accumulation of power in the hands of the executive as the long-term threat which they considered to be the most serious, but they also worried aloud about one specific scenario in which this threat might become particularly potent — that is, when war transformed America's president into our commander in chief, they worried that his suddenly increased power might somehow spill over its normal constitutional boundaries and upset the delicate checks and balances they deemed so crucial to the maintenance of liberty.

My goodness, how shrill, how crazy — accusing Bush of wanting to usurp the powers of our democracy! How offensive to the delicate sensibilities of the American people. Funny, the Supreme Court pretty much agreed with Gore on almost every point. But, of course, they were polite about it.

Yes, and the Supreme Court can be polite. The rest of us, however, cannot.

Kip on gay marriage.

Kip at Long story; short pier writes with eloquence of his dismay that the bigots in Oregon have managed to get an initiative on the ballot to enshrine their bigotry in the Oregon constitution, in Defending marriage.

I, too, am appalled. Once again, we have the fury of mindless fear and ignorance making a mockery of our claims to be a civilized nation and "the land of the free." No, it's the land of the "free, except for a long list of those kinds of people we don't like." Like Kip, I'm sneering at the bigots. Of course I am, because those who embrace bigotry don't deserve respect. When they continue to cling so tightly to their ignorance, fear and intolerance in the face of the reality before them, they will never be persuaded that they're wrong.

The bigots who opposed the Civil Rights movement in the 1950's and 60's were never persuaded, they were just outnumbered. That bigotry, in fact, still exists, as Trent Lott exemplifies.

It is a fight, a war between ignorance and intolerance on the one hand and understanding and acceptance on the other. And no matter what happens in Oregon this November, or in the Senate next week, or anywhere else at any time, the understanding and accepting will continue to fight the ignorance and intolerance.

Kip finished with something that I wish I had written. His words say it all:

(Defend marriage? You pathetic, deluded fools. Same-sex couples have been getting married all around you for decades, and they'll keep on doing it, long after you've passed your little amendment. Men will kiss their husbands as you clap yourselves on the back, and wives will continue to feed each other cake, whether you will it or no. They've always had the love and the cherish and the honor, and the recognition of their friends and family, and nothing you can do will take that from them. Nothing. All you'll manage to do is rewrite the tax code. Make it more of a grinding hassle to deal with insurance and wills. Keep loving families apart at times of illness and accident and death. Condemn children to needless, nightmarish legal quagmires. You will tarnish all our rings, and when we open our mouths to take our vows, we will taste ashes. —In order to save marriage, you will destroy it. Fools.)

He's alive.

After an extended period of sixty-, eighty- and hundred-hour weeks, I have managed to deliver on my latest project and am now able to give some attention to the rest of my life. To that end, I'll be blowing some of the dust off this weblog and posting a bit, as it strikes me.

Due to the intense pressure of the end of the project, I was able to see exactly none of the Democratic Convention, but I was able to catch snatches of coverage through Atrios and others. Very cool and a definitely different way to see it. I also listened a bit to the Al Franken Show and watched a couple of Daily Shows (thank the gods for Tivo), which were amusing. (Particularly amusing was Joe Biden, who was easily as funny himself as Jon Stuart.)

It looks like I'll be voting for Obama in 2012 or thereabouts, if he keeps it up. (Hmm, Obama/Newsom in 2012? I could vote for that.) I didn't catch the speech itself, but he certainly said all of the right things. While I am not affected emotionally by such appeals, I do recognize them and it sounded like he believed what he was saying. And it couldn't be more different than what the Republicans are saying these days.

I must say that I believe that Bush will be shown the door on November 2, in no uncertain terms. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the biggest turnout in recent years, nor if Bush loses by a fairly large margin. The house of cards the Bush administration has built is beginning to fall apart. Abraham Lincoln was right, and while some are still fooled, the rest appear to be waking up to reality. It doesn't help Bush that the economy is cooperating with him no better than it did with his dad. I find it singularly satisfying that every tactic the Republicans have been trying to use has backfired on them. It is really nice to have the truth on our side. It must really be damned inconvenient for them to have to keep trying to come up with more and better lies, as the old ones are demolished as fast as they are uttered.

Heh. It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of assholes.