The Moral Minority

78% of the electorate did not consider morality the number one issue facing the nation.  Listening to the pundits you would think a significant majority placed it above the combined woes of terrorism, Iraq and the economy which simply is not at the case.  What one journalist characterized on C-Span as "most voters" was in fact 22% that selected morality, which any seasoned researcher knows is an ambiguous descriptor, in exit polls.  Morality, widely used as a code word for the religious right's social agenda, may have polled higher than any other single option but let's not get carried away with ourselves.  Probably more revealing is that after this long campaign there is no national consensus about what is our most urgent problem.  Perhaps even the famously focused Mr. Rove was unsuccessful in providing singular focus, but more likely it's another indication of how complicated are the problems we face going into Bush's second term (even writing those words hurts).  In this world, even the public has to "walk and chew gum at the same time".

I don't for a minute want to minimize the powerful role played by the religious right in this and the 2000 elections.  With their help, the country has been tilting conservative for a long time, most especially on the so-called cultural issues.  The next few months are likely to prove particularly troubling to many of us the President starts paying off his campaign debts, "spending his political capital".  Hold on to your seats, it's likely to be a rough ride.  But the lockstep analysis notwithstanding, we're looking at a influential moral minority not a majority of the population.  Moreover, I simply don't see the religious resurgence now taken as a truism in our media.  The fact remains that in this purportedly deeply religious country less that half of us belong to a church or synagogue.  More telling is that among the affiliated, no more, and often much less, than 40% of them attend religious services with any regularity.  If you don't believe me, stop in at your local house of worship any weekend and do a head count.  I say stop in, because most of you who read this, affiliated or not, also attend only occasionally, if at all.

Without question, religion is playing a huge role in this troubled time, and it is largely its extreme right that holds center stage.  Whether the fundamentalist fanatics who are blowing up the innocent in the name of God or their more docile counterparts who are trying to impose their ideology on the body politic, we find ourselves captives of their designs.  The religion whose face we see in the daily media is pretty unattractive if not frightening.  But to a great degree, we are not merely captives of it, but accomplices.  We complain that Moslem moderates have not raised their voices against the militants who are using their religion to justify violence, and rightly so.  But where are the moderate religious voices, the counterpoints to no less fanatical Fundamentalist Christians and Ultra-Orthodox Jews who want to impose their morality, their world view, on us?  When will the majority and the mainstream religious leaders wake up and challenge this notion that morality belongs only to the fringe or, for that matter, only to believers?  When will we stop being cowed by the hype and offer an alternative, more compelling, view?

We live in dangerous times and the religion that presents itself most vigorously is a huge part of the problem.  If we continue on this course of silent acquiescence don't expect our kids, already largely absent, to sign up for faithful duty.  Who can blame them?

2000 All Over Again, Not!

Much time will be spent in the coming days weeks and perhaps years analyzing the election of 2004.  In the final analysis, I believe this election proves that being for something and someone trumps being against.  The stark fact is that, while many of us happily voted for John Kerry, few felt any real passion for him.  It isn't as simple as saying we don't like him, for in fact most of us both like an admire him.  But, to use a popular expression of the kids, "he's not to die for."  With the possible exception of Howard Dean, none of the Democrats evoked real passion among their supporters and I doubt if any could have done better including John Edwards who somehow disappeared from the screen during this campaign.  People still vote for Presidents on both sides and even mediocre running mates don't amount to meaningful dragging anchors if Number One is up to his game.  Howard Dean evoked passion, but scared the hell out of the establishment that saw success only in the middle.  But more important, his campaign was largely against and his wipe out in the primaries should have been seen as a significant sign for the perils that lay ahead.  That said, I still don't think Kerry had voter passion going for him rather than against Bush which probably made the margin of difference.

Make no mistake about it; The United States has become a conservative country dominated politically by a right religious tilt.  Political tides change, but that's where we are as the lingering votes are sorted out in 2004.  The frustrating thing about 2000 was that the country as a whole saw no great difference between Bush and Gore (speak about passionless candidates).  When the Supremes cast their vote, many Democrats were saying that it really wasn't a big deal.  What could a mandate-free President do?  Right.  This election was vastly different.  Everyone saw two distinct candidates and two distinct ideologies.  Nobody thought or thinks it won't make a difference, particularly on domestic issues over which in the final analysis President's have the most control.

John Edwards is fond of saying there are two Americas, those who have and those who need.  That may be true, but politically the two Americas don't divide over possessions but over ideology and regionalism.  We Liberals, a term that I use broadly to define the heart of the Democratic Party, are cultural pluralists who are uneasy when our personal and particularly our religious predilections are brought into the public discourse, much less used to determine public policy.  The Conservatives, read Republicans, feel just the opposite.  We Liberals are coastal (which has become somewhat of a cliché but is nonetheless true) and excursions into the heartland are, language and Shopping Malls aside, more akin to visiting a foreign country than a next door neighbor.  The reverse is equally true.  We don't talk to each other, because we don't really speak a common language.

If the religious-cultural thing, what Conservatives like to call values (a term that they have co-opted much as they have "life') is so important than we might look at what role that played in planting the seeds of this election.  This time around I don't think it was abortion, but rather the decision made by the Massachusetts Supreme Court on Gay Marriage, one with which I happen to concur.  More than inclusion of this issue on the ballots of half a dozen states was the unspoken homophobic rage that still exists in our society, particularly in the heartland.  The fact that John Kerry is so much a son of Massachusetts where it all started should not be underestimated.  His remark about the Vice President's daughter which I don't think was either calculated or malicious nevertheless underscored this connection and was even unnerving to many of his supporters.  The induction of an openly Gay Episcopal Bishop, also from New England, didn't help.  Homosexuality in this conservative environment is like Color was (and sadly still very much is) in earlier times.

This was a bad day for Liberals.  I think it was also a bad day for science and, considering the illness of the Chief Justice and an aging Court, a potentially bad day for Choice.  I shudder to think that we are headed once again for back alley abortions.  All of this brings us to religion which may be the bottom line of this election.  Not merely is America considered the most religious of Western countries, functionally we have become a right tilting Christian country which, lip service to the contrary notwithstanding, is increasingly intolerant of other points of view.  Taking an international perspective, this is a very ominous development.  In fact, I would contend that we are moving rapidly toward replacing the Communist Menace that we lost in the Soviet Union's demise with the Moslem Menace.  Perhaps George Bush didn't literally mean Crusade when he said it, but there is no question that for some democracy is simply a code word for a certain religious belief.  That is not good for either the country or the world.  The record of holy wars and their impact upon the world, not to mention on minorities caught in the cross fire, is not pretty.  We dare not let that happen.

After the Vote – Now What?

The campaign is drawing to a close and I truly don't know what the outcome will be when we go to the polls on Tuesday.  Is it too close to call, or have a majority of Americans decided on change or continuation?  Needless to say, in casting my ballot for John Kerry, I'll be hoping for change, even yearning for it.  However, in a way what really concerns me now is exactly the same thing that troubled me on March 9, 2003 when I wrote a blog about the Iraq war entitled "After".  Millions of words have been spoken during this campaign, but what happens after?  The conventional questions are how many of those promises will be kept and how will governing differ from campaigning?  These remain valid, but my real concern is about something totally different.

We're told time and again that the nation is deeply divided.  Being skeptical about oft repeated truisms, I am prone to suspect such pronouncements.  Sadly, I find it difficult to refute them.  I was struck in this morning's Times Book Review by the title of Ann Coulter's most recent book, "How to Talk to Liberal (If you Must).  Of course, Ms. Coulter is part of that slick group, both Conservative and Liberal, who engage in Crossfire Speak focused as much on provocative rhetoric and entertainment as expressing a coherent point of view.  Nevertheless, the troubling fact is that our national discourse has been poisoned in such a way that most of us old enough to have lived through many of the 20th Century's ups and downs have never before experienced.  This is not to suggest that there weren't times when people didn't speak past each other, but the arguments never got quite as personal.  Also in the Times was the photo of a couple sitting angrily side by side in bed, his wall decorated with Kerry posters, hers with Bush's.  They are staring straight ahead, certainly not talking to one another and that tells it all.

Leaving aside where one stands on the various foreign policy and social issues that hang in the balance as we move toward Election Day, I think all of us should mourn the tragic fact that George W. Bush's single greatest failure may have been not delivering on his promise to bring the nation together -- "a uniter, not a divider".  He made it during a campaign that also was conducted against the backdrop of division, but incredibly what we thought of as polarization four years ago pales in comparison to what we experience today.  What's even more damning is that the President squandered a historic opportunity of binding the wounds of division immediately after 9/11, something that in the long run may have caused even greater damage to the nation than the horrendous events of that day.

I am a Liberal.  I believe in a government that supplies a safety net to those in need, that treats the citizenry with equality, that doesn't impose one ideology over another, that affords us the right to manage our lives and control our bodies and that really goes to war only as a last resort.  Other's believe differently, sometimes diametrically so.  I am convinced of my beliefs, they are convinced as well.  Why can we no longer talk about those differences, defend our beliefs, without acrimonious character assassination?  Ann Coulter doesn't want to talk to me, and I really don't want to talk to her.  That's where we are, and nothing good can come of it.

The campaigns are coming to an end.  I'm glad.  I can't stand listening to another of the same speeches or hearing the predictable scripted spin from each side's spokes folk.  I've given up on hearing about all those unspoken issues and most assuredly won't be burdened with anything thoughtful in the next two days.  I hope John Kerry is our next President.  If he is, then in addition to bringing together his new cabinet, I hope he spends some time, and political capital, in bringing us back together.  I hope George Bush is defeated, and that his loss is decisive.  If he loses, historians may look back to 9/12 and the opportunities cast aside.  If he wins, and despite all the evidence of his ability to do so, I hope he too will look at bringing us together.  The campaign is over.  Now what?

God Troubles

This isn't a good time for God.  Listening to those who claim to talk or act upon God's behalf, and who have collectively brought more havoc than solace into our lives, one has to wonder what's in it for all of us.  Let's just mention a few of the wonderful things wrought by Divine direction.  Suicide bombers are being sent into the world and killing more innocents than combatants.  God imbued settlers are occupying the land of their neighbors on the West Bank and in Gaza.  Medieval Crusade-like conflicts are threatening human survival in a nuclear age.  The Catholic Church covered up horrendous sex abuse perpetrated by men of God.  The Anglican Church is outraged that an openly gay priest was elevated to Bishop and now, after denouncing homosexuality as a sin, has essentially adopted a don't ask don't tell position on the subject.  Science, arguably the essential of human survival, is being dragged back into the ideological constraints of the Middle Ages by people who seriously are still fighting Darwin.  We are being taken into war because God wants us to be there.  Well if that's what God is all about, I want no part of Her.

Religion is in deep crisis, not spiritual revival.  It has become, or more accurately reemerged, as a tool of political necessity and agendas.  God has been hijacked and used to justify the imposition of one point of view over another.  Our diverse pluralistic society which was founded on tolerance and a clear separation of Church and State is in danger of being subsumed into broad scale theocratic governance.  We're returning to the world of "some of my best friends" where neighbors of a different point of view or belief system pay lip service to tolerance but move aggressively forward with an agenda of submission.  All this in the name of God.

I don't know for sure if there is a God.  I live under the assumption that there is.  I don't know if there is a God, but I sure know that God doesn't whisper into my ear.  In fact, we all used to think that such a notion fell into the kook category, the hearing of voices by the unbalanced.  I still think that's true, but the bother is that the kooks have truly taken hold of the asylum.  God's whispers are scary.

Perhaps worst of all, moderate voices are, for all practical purposes, silent.  Anti-God talk, which is what any challenge is labeled, is an untouchable hot potato.  Moreover, they are frightened, consciously or unconsciously concerned for their personal safety.  You don't have to be paranoiac to be scared of people who murder doctors at abortion clinics or who blow up children at play.  The threat of governmental power used in the name of security – read that protecting the will of God – may not reflect a current reality, but its there hovering in the air.  Philip Roth's chilling it could happen here metaphoric novel is looking less fanciful by the day.  Moderate voices, especially the voices on the pulpit need to be heard, regardless of the risk.

God's trouble?  Only we can redeem what we all know is God's humanly tarnished reputation.  If we don't have the will or we can't, God help us.

Post-Debate Thoughts

What Dan Rather has appropriately termed the "joint appearances" are now history.  Of course I thought John Kerry won -- no I really do think he won, and big, in the larger sense.  Even those who support George Bush will have to agree that either man is plausible as President.  No Franklin Roosevelt, Jack Kennedy or Abraham Lincoln here, but plausible.  That is a big win for a challenger as Jerry Ford, Jimmy Carter, or George 1st will attest.  Kerry, unlike Terry (Brando), is a contender.  He's seriously in the game and now all he needs is a knockout, even a technical knockout.

What strikes me about the joint appearances, and the campaign at large, is not so much what is being discussed, however superficially, but what is totally absent.  In general both candidates seem to be going the extra mile not to offend or stir controversy.  Yes they will make some statement on a hot topic, but it's always nuanced or "caveated" to death.  Bush can't bring himself to say he's against choice and Kerry can't quite mouth the words Pro-Choice in anything much above a figurative whisper.  That doesn't mean that they don't have real convictions about this, they just want to be careful not to rock a boat that is maneuvering through a very narrow channel.  I for one feel that we are less safe since Bush and company began their Iraq folly, but equally feel that we are far too safe when it comes to confronting real issues in the campaign.

Have you noticed, just to use two examples, that there has been scant discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and no mention at all of Abu Ghraib?  It boggles the mind that we are discussing an exploding Middle East and Moslem-Western culture conflict and not seriously addressing solutions to the unending Holy Land turf war that increasingly threatens world stability, not to mention brings death an destruction to thousands of innocents and both sides.  It isn't mentioned because neither side wants to offend the American Jewish Community – my community – which they assume to be single minded on the subject.  I hear Jews saying they are voting for Bush because he so strongly supports Israel and it astounds me.  Speak about the big lie.  Bill Clinton spent inordinate time and personal capital on seriously seeking a negotiated solution that would ultimately safeguard a Jewish State and bring about a legitimate Palestinian homeland.  In the end his time ran out, but there is no doubt that had the Constitution permitted a third them, the effort would have continued.  George Bush has done nothing except to mouth support for a Palestinian State (with which I agree) and bolster his fellow Rightist Arial Sharon (with which I strongly disagree).  Roadmaps, notwithstanding, there has been no peace process under this Administration.  And, to his discredit, John Kerry has not added much to the discussion or risked telling us how he would get it started again.

With the absence of WMDs, the entire Iraq argument has rested on bringing the wonders of democracy, including one would assume moral decency, to the unwashed multitudes in backward Moslem states.  Thank God for America.  Abu Ghraib, more than anything else has sullied those high purpose platitudes, calling into question why democratic states are any different or better than the combination of dictatorships and monarchies in place.  The fact that not a single senior official has paid in any way for this monstrous breakdown in stewardship is shocking and a serious threat to our moral fiber and national reputation.  The fact that abuses have also taken place in Afghanistan and, one must now assume in Guantanamo, speaks to an underlying cultural problem that at the very least seems prevalent in our military, but most disturbingly may also reflect something more wide spread.  The truth is that "everything is not fair in love or war," and whoever is in charge of conveying that message seems to lack a moral compass.  That John Kerry has not made something of this very fundamental issue is disturbing and disheartening.

I'll vote for John Kerry and without any doubt that he is the superior of the two.  America will be safer and better off with him in the White House.  I'll feel more sanguine about the social issues from environment to scientific research.  I wish George Bush had been asked an updated version of the Kitty Dukakis question, "what would you do if Laura had suffered spinal damage and there was a cure developed from stem cell research?  Would you  let the doctors cure your beloved wife?"  With Kerry on Pennsylvania Avenue I'll feel better about Constitutional issues, about a daughter's right to control her own body and about Dick Chaney's daughter's right to wed.  I hope everyone will vote for John Kerry, early and often.  He says we can do better.  I agree and perhaps, if we get our heads straightened out during his days in the White House, we will.  I yearn for an FDR somewhere in the future and for a time when more Westsiders will be wearing buttons for rather than against someone during a Presidential campaign. 

Joining the Campaign Trail

In what could easily be mistaken for a campaigning running mate, Ayad Allawi the "independent" acting prime minister of Iraq blew into town.  Listening to his carefully nuanced pronouncements, one could not help being stuck by their verbal consistency with the Bush campaign rhetoric.  This was especially evident in an interview given to PBS's Jim Lehrer last evening.  Echoing language used by Bush, Allawi kept on referring to those opposing our occupation, and consequentially his rule, as terrorists.  When asked how many Iraqi's had been killed along with more the now 1037 US service women and men, he responded that about 3,700 civilians had been killed by the terrorists.  Of course that number does not include civilian losses during the heavy bombing of the days prior to "mission accomplished."  But Allawi went further in claiming that rather than a fight against insurgency, this was a battle against terrorism on behalf of the entire world.  After all, Saddam, he suggested as if it were an absolute fact, worked hand in glove with the terrorists who perpetrated 9/11.  I guess the 9/11 Commission which came to just the opposite conclusion should have interviewed him more carefully.  I wish Jim Lehrer had challenged on those self serving, but hardly self evident, allegations, but that's another subject.

There is no doubt that brutal acts of terrorism are being carried out in Iraq and, of course other places.  There is equally no question that all, and perhaps most, of the hostilities should not be described as such.  When people resisting occupation blow up tanks and Humvees these may be lethal acts of rebellion, but it's not the same as a suicide bombing or kidnapping of innocent civilians.  Donald Rumsfeld likes to remind us that war is messy and it sure is.  Part of the way we get clarity is to distinguish between horrible hostile acts, a painful but important process.  Picking and choosing descriptors is complicated.  Are individuals lining up to join the army or police force potential combatants or civilians?  Perhaps both, but trying to thwart the buildup of opposing forces, no matter how we may feel about their potential mission or how awful it is, can't simply be labeled another act of terrorism.  For a segment of the Iraqi community the mission accomplished is simply not acceptable and that includes people who were not the Saddam regime.

There is another dimension to this renewed emphasis on terrorism as the central player in Iraq, one that goes beyond the renewed implied connection with 9/11.  This one has a moral component and a very disturbing one.  It appears that the Administration is now acknowledging that terrorists, not previously there, were drawn to Iraq in the Post-Saddam era.  This is now being portrayed as a good thing because, it's better to have them there than elsewhere, specifically on American soil.  No one wants another terrorist act in this country, but the implications of that thinking are in themselves abhorrent.  Taking Mr. Bush's logic when he makes such assertions, one has to conclude that it is, if not alright, then better for Iraqi civilians to die than Americans.  I find such thinking by a man who likes to talk of his doing God's work to be morally reprehensible.  Sadly, it represents the continuing isolationist strain that has always been embedded in the American psyche.  Better over there than here at home.

We always talk about how a President's hardest decision is to put American military personnel in harm's way.  We rarely mention that, in doing so, he is also putting a much larger group of human beings, mostly non-combatants, in mortal danger as well.  The right-to-lifers who are so bent on protecting the unborn, might give a little more thought to how many viable lives we have cut short in our excursions around the globe, some legitimate but some, like the invasion of Iraq, out of transparent self interest, often economic self interest.  The terrorist card continues to play in this election season and it continues to be its most misleading and disturbing component.

Time for Kerry to Speak

I think there are a lot of people out there ready to jump the Bush ship, but they simply haven't been given the reason to make the move.  They're not happy with W and his policies, but wonder what will really change with a Kerry administration.  It's all well and good to complain that the public and consequently the campaign has been distracted by vicious attacks filled with half truths or even outright lies, but that's no excuse for not getting straight and clear talk from the candidate.  Let's face it, our world is in a real mess and John Kerry has to tell us exactly - specifics not platitudes - what he will do about it. 

Without question the economic issues are real as are the anxieties about healthcare in general and Medicare in particular.  An under funded "No Child Left Behind" can't go on if we are to remain competitive with an increasingly well educated developing world.  That great "sucking noise" of jobs exiting the country predicted by Ross Perot is a top priority in the industrial states and no less so in the corridors of Tech Valley.  A woman's right to choose and the future direction of the Supreme Court can't be overlooked.  On all of these Kerry has spoken out, but in the final analysis I don't think any of them turn the election even though they probably have the most immediate impact upon our daily lives.

The key question for those who might opt out of the Republican column this year, and for most of us as well, is what will John Kerry do about the two burning international issues that have dominated our attention in the past three years: terrorism and Iraq?  How does Kerry view these two life-threatening problems and what specifically is he going to do about them? 

It is now a cliché to say that the so-called war on terrorism will be with us indefinitely.  I accept that.  But what is this war, who are we really fighting and, beyond the preventative measures and reflexive "hit backs," what are we going to do to reduce the underlying causes of terrorism?  What steps will we take to mitigate the desperation felt by young people in the many oppressed lands around the globe?  How will a Kerry administration work toward making the powerless feel empowered, focused on building their own lives not destroying ours?  What will it do to finally bring peace to Palestinians and Israelis, bring it not pay mere lip service to it?

Many of us vigorously opposed the war in Iraq, but here we are mired in its aftermath.  So what now and what exactly are our objectives in Iraq?  What is the exit strategy and how specifically will we engage the world community in helping fix the mess we have made?  What about the current Administration's inotion that democracy cures all, the modern day reverse domino theory?  Does John Kerry buy it?  Who will he put in charge of righting this disaster and why do they have the smarts and credentials to accomplish success where others have so miserably failed?  How will he personally engage in this process and who among other world leaders does he think are essential partners to accomplish his goals?

There are many questions and a desperate need for answers if we – the decided and the undecided – are to have the confidence that voting for John Kerry is not simply voting change for its own sake.  It's time to stop wearing defeat George Bush buttons and start wearing ones that say vote for John Kerry, but that won't just happen.  We need some answers.  John Kerry, you have the floor.  It's time to use it.