When did being “populist” become a positive thing?

Crossposted at the Young Sentinel

About a week ago during a discussion I participated in on the Young Sentinel blog having to do with education the eponymous author replied to a point I made about teachers unions by saying that “Another thing: teacher’s unions (and unions in general) are a good thing for the country. We need to return to a national psyche when unions are appreciated for the good work that they do.” Coming from someone who regularly condemns corporations for being “greedy” and “only caring about their own profits” this puzzled me somewhat (not that I’m picking on the YS mind you, his attitude is just representative of many liberals.)

After all, what truly separates a corporation from a union? Both are groups of people who come together to more efficiently sell a commodity and to make the maximum amount of money possible in doing so; one group sells a product or products, while the other sells its labor. The important part is that (in theory at least; random philanthropy notwithstanding) both are essentially selfish institutions, dedicated to enriching their members at the expense of the greater society.

It is true that after 8 years of Republican rule our governments and laws have become biased towards corporations, but as oppositions are wont to do the Democrats/liberals have overcompensated, casting corporations in general as the Great Satan who exist only to greedily take the money of the common people. This mindset has spread across the country to the degree that even the Republicans are championing their VP choice’s anti-corporate credentials, with much being made of the fact that her husband is a union worker, and Karl Rove himself going so far as to call her “populist”.

Some thoughts

Some random and scattered thoughts about the Democratic Convention, the Republican VP pick, and other errata:

• Quite frankly, the Democratic Convention scared me. I think its unhealthy for any one person to have that much attention and adulation, much less someone who might be the next President. Not that this is any reflection on Obama – he can’t help it, and to his credit he has handled his celebrity rather well. But when I saw that massive cloud of Obama banners and his supporters chanting and cheering and crying shivers ran down my spine. Such mass idolization might be helpful for Obama the candidate, but it is certainly harmful for the nation over which Obama wants to preside
• Still, Obama has continued his position as the lesser of the two evils in my eyes, especially after McCain’s VP pick. I was desperately hoping for him to throw us moderates a bone and choose Lieberman, perhaps as part of a realization that the kind of pandering to the hard right that worked in 2000 and 2004 just isn’t going to cut it anymore and that if he wants to have a chance at beating Obama’s war machine he has to remember the existence of the moderates and independents he used to court. In that sense his choice of Palin as VP was more than just a VP choice. It was another stop, and a big one on the Straight Talk Express’ steady journey to the right.
• Being on vacation I had to watch the convention on Indian hotel TVs that didn’t have CSPAN, and so I was forced to subject myself to the endless punditry and jabbering that is modern political news coverage. Even the normally commendable BBC filled their “American politics special” with the same few speeches being repeated over and over, each time followed by a fresh wave of punditry and speculation. Some day the cable news networks are going to realize that they could cut costs immensely by taking two out of work actors, handing them the transcripts of a few old episodes of Crossfire and having them read random lines out loud in no particular order. The audience would never know the difference.

Vacation

I’m going to be gone for two weeks starting today, and I’ll be back August 30th with a whole flock of half-baked ideas to blog. See you then

What’s the matter with Georgia?

Unless you’ve been hiding behind the giant NBC logo shaped rock that is the Olympics for the past few days you’ve probably noticed that we have a splendid little war (or to be more precise a “peacekeeping conflict”) on our hands in Georgia. In case you have been hiding under that rock, on the seventh of August Georgian forces invaded the seperatist region of South Ossetia, breaking an hours-old ceasefire. The next day Russia invaded Georgia to support its quasi-client quasi-state, and chaos ensued.

Then on the 10th of August the Georgians, having realized that they tried to bite off more than they could chew declared a ceasefire and ordered their troops to leave South Ossetia. However, Russia was in no mood for a ceasefire and continued to merrily tear its way through Georgian territory, today moving into Georgia from Abzhakia the other breakaway province under Russian protection. Georgia meanwhile is spiraling into chaos, having declared a state of emergency and recalled its 2000 man deployment in Iraq, the third largest in the country after the US and Britain.

To me with my love for historical allusions this entire situation seems like Korea redux, except this time with the places switched. Just like in Korea Georgia launched a surprise offensive in the hopes of reuniting a split nation. Just like in Korea after a few early successes the aggressor found itself pitted against an intervening superpower that decisively turned the tide of the war, and now just like in Korea the attacker finds itself on the ropes and in retreat.

So it falls on the United States to play its part in this little historical reenactment – that of China. Just as Mao warned United Nations forces not to cross the 38th Parallel, so we should warn the Russians to stop their incursions into Georgia, while allowing them to maintain control over Abzhakia and South Ossetia, and be ready to back up our warnings with force if need be.

Like Vietnam – in more ways than one

Many Democrats love to compare Iraq to Vietnam, usually with the words “disaster” and “quagmire” thrown in. Of course that kind of rhetoric has been toned down a bit as things start getting better, but in a way that improvement makes Iraq resemble Vietnam even more.

In Vietnam by the middle of 1967 things were getting to the point where it was possible for the public to imagine an end to the war, to see the light at the end of the tunnel. A large part of this was due to a new strategy of “attrition” pioneered by a General William Wesmoreland who became a celebrity of sorts, completely identified with the war and its conduct. Sound familiar? It should. Replace “attrition” with “surge” and Westmoreland with Petraeus, and you have a perfect description of the current state affairs in Iraq. The scary part is what came next.

Book Review: The Man with The Iron Heart

The Man with the Iron Heart

Harry Turtledove

Ballantine Books; 532 Pages

The Man with the Iron Heart is the latest book from author Harry Turtledove. Harry Turtledove is the master of “alternate history”, a rather niche genre, but one that I find fascinating. Those who are fans of Turtledove and the genre in general should be able to jump right into this book and enjoy it. Those who are new to the genre might need a bit of an introduction.

The basic premise of most alternate history novels is that somewhere, at some point in our history something changed, and like the butterfly flapping its wings the effects reverberate across history, changing its course. These changes are called “points of departure” (PODs) in alternate history terminology, and in The Man with the Iron Heart the point of departure is the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich a Nazi SS officer who in our timeline was killed by Czech assassins in 1942 but in the book survives as a result of a machine gun jam.

What’s in a Name?

I’m looking for a name to describe the hyper-partisan, energetic, and youthful masses that have so quickly coalesced around Obama, turning him into “the world’s biggest celebrity”. In contrast to the McCain campaign, where various Republican groups have not so much coalesced as coagulated around the candidate, Obama’s campaign seems to have created a veritable movement, much as the Reagan Revolution reinvigorated the Republican Party. Just as Reagan built a coalition of varied interests by capitalizing on an unpopular President and a disaffected public, Obama is doing the same. In doing so he is creating an ideology and movement that will affect politics for years to come.

Welcome

Hello, and welcome to whoever is reading this (if anyone is). This blog is called Voice from the Middle because that’s what it is – the voice of someone tired by the partisan sniping, close-mindedness, and polarization that is sweeping the country.

Now I’m not Fox News – I won’t claim to be “fair and balanced”, because I’m not balanced; I tend to shift slightly to the left. What I can promise is to always be open for discussion. If you want to start a discussion in the comments or by email, I can promise that I will go in with an open mind, and that I will keep talking for as long as you want. I believe that reasoned discussion and debate, where both sides are open to changing their minds is the cornerstone of any democracy, and one that is being replaced by mere partisn shoutfests. Here’s hoping I’m wrong.