In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull declaring “witches” as heretics. Shortly after the idea of a witch became gender-related to women and the stereotype of a witch that of an elderly and dangerous woman. The exact origin of this stereotype is not known. Yet it led to the deaths of thousands of women during the late Middle Ages; it is believed that more than 80% of executed witches were women.
middle-class Americans come out while they are in college, while middle-class Israelis come out during military service.
I did not come out until my IDF service (between 1998-2001), despite having spent several years earning my degree at Tel Aviv University. When I became an officer in the navy headquarters, my peers, friends and even commanders helped me gradually step out of the closet. Unlike the American army, the Israeli army pushes its soldiers to shape it in their own image.
President Ronald Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, October 2010:
"We've demonized taxes," he said. "We've created almost the idea that they're a metaphysical evil ... It's rank demagoguery. We should call it for what it is. If these [Republicans] were all put into a room on penalty of death to come up with how much they could cut, they couldn't come up with $50 billion, when the problem is $1.3 trillion. So to stand before the public and rub raw this antitax sentiment, the Republican Party, as much as it pains me to say this, should be ashamed of themselves."
Fareed Zakaria:
I would suggest three litmus tests to gauge whether the Republicans are serious about deficits: 1) Are they prepared to stop with the tax cuts? Because the deficit will keep widening with more of them. 2) Are they prepared to cut middle-class entitlements? Because the only places to find real reductions in federal-government spending are in the large, popular programs like Medicare and Social Security. 3) Are they ready to take on the Pentagon? Because at $717 billion, defense spending — more than half of all discretionary spending — has to be trimmed.
These are not political statements. They are mathematical ones, and it is on understanding math, not politics, that the third Republican revolution now rests.
via www.time.com
While in the US Congress nothing much happens relative to a comprehensive new energy policy and serious attention is given to conspiracy theories claiming global climate change is a hoax, in the UK, the Conservative-led coalition government has pledged to be "the greenest government ever," and everyone is getting to work on the problem--yes, with disagreements, and with the inclusion of skeptics who are not skeptical of climate change per se but details of causality. Regardless, they are all striving to get it right when it comes to policy. What is more, the debate mostly avoids the idiotic fear-mongering, incivility, and even vilification that marks debate in the US about energy policy. In the US, the political right is ideological about energy. In the UK, they are far more practical.
From a recent debate in the House of Lords:
Lord Marland (Conservative) - "I am concerned that some noble Lords do not understand the enormity of the task in front of us: we have an antiquated network; there has been a lack of investment in the good times and an overreliance on fossil fuels; and the increase in the price of oil by 80 per cent between 2004 and 2008 was outside our control. However, we must not be moaners; we must think positively. It is incumbent on us to all work together to provide a secure energy supply for a low-carbon economy in the future. We must also be mindful of the fact that we are custodians for future generations. We must not look at this issue in isolation and by ourselves. I am heartened that those on all sides of the House indicate a testament to our collective doctrine and demonstrate a passion for getting our energy policy right."
.....
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Labour) - There are twin goals to secure the nation's energy supplies, as the noble Lords, Lord Jenkin and Lord O'Neill, pointed out. We need to ensure new investment for a low-carbon future in both renewables and nuclear and we have to maximise the potential of our remaining coal, oil and gas resources in a way that meets the renewable targets set by the Labour Government and supported by this Government. We need to remove carbon from our electricity supplies. Our response to that challenge when we were in government was the mix-the trinity of clean coal, renewables and nuclear.
On Nov. 1, 1860, was less than a week before Election Day....
Lincoln held court each day in his borrowed statehouse office, behind a desk piled high with gifts and souvenirs that supporters had sent him — including countless wooden knicknacks carved from bits and pieces of fence rails he had supposedly split in his youth. He shook hands with visitors, told funny stories, and, answered mail. Only one modest public statement from him appeared in the Illinois State Journal that morning: a small front-page ad, sandwiched between those for a dentist and a saddle-maker, offering the services of Lincoln & Herndon, attorneys at law.
He knows I have a weakness for the atmosphere of Victorian genre fiction, from Raffles relieving the aristocracy of the burden of wealth to pissed-off ghosts chasing M.R. James's bumbling antiquarians. Who can resist an era in which first aid for any trouble begins with a shout of, "Brandy! For God's sake, bring her some brandy!"
via chronicle.com
Michael Sims looks at the origins of Victorian vampire tales, including origins in natural and social history, specifically the facts that "often people in the 18th century had an opportunity not only to see corpses but also to glimpse them again after they were buried" and "no one understood the process of decay within a subterranean chamber."
I wondered: If ordinary people were encountering the corpses of the recently dead or even long-dead friends and relatives, what were they actually seeing that they misinterpreted and then wove into a vampire mythology?
Sims notes:
Many natural changes after death were judged to be evidence that the late lamented had turned into a bloodsucker. Like hair, fingernails don't actually continue to grow after death, but as fingers decompose, the skin shrinks, making the nails look abnormally long and clawlike.... Dead skin, after sloughing off its top layer, can look flushed and alive as if with fresh blood..... In one eyewitness account from the 18th century, a vampire is even found—further proof of his vile nature—to have a certain region of his anatomy in a posthumous state of excitement. The genitals often inflate during the process of decomposition.
And what about the blood reported around the mouths of resurrected corpses?... Many bodies were buried face down, resulting in blood pooling in the face and leaving it looking flushed. Sometimes blood also gets lifted mouthward by gases from decomposition. Vampire stories recognize that death is messy.
A dysfunctional political system is one that knows the right answers but can’t even discuss them rationally, let alone act on them, and one that devotes vastly more attention to cable TV preachers than to recommendations by its best scientists and engineers.
via www.nytimes.com
It’s civic election day in Toronto today, and the polls indicate a dead heat. By the end of the day, the new mayor of Canada’s largest city will likely either be George Smitherman, who happens to be gay, or Rob Ford, who has been featured on this site twice for ridiculous, homophobic conduct.
UPDATE: Rob Ford won the election with approx. 47% of the vote to Smitherman's 36%. Various other candidates (there were more than 20) obtained the remaining 17% of the votes.
Story here.
“They’re trying to use global warming against the people,” Ms. Deaton said. “It takes away our liberty.”
“Being a strong Christian,” she added, “I cannot help but believe the Lord placed a lot of minerals in our country and it’s not there to destroy us.”
via www.nytimes.com
This gusher is courtesy of the 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision in January that allowed unlimited campaign spending by corporations and unions. That was the ruling, which will go down in infamy, where the court said that corporations had the same free speech rights as ordinary citizens.
The illogic of that logic was always apparent. But now it’s overwhelming, and omnipresent. Your average voter can dash off a letter to the editor, or fire up a blog, or put up a yard sign — a nice fantasy of citizen democracy. Your corporate equal can spend $23 million (the outsider amount spent so far in Colorado) to bludgeon the electorate. And, with loopholes in the tax system, they can do it while making it virtually impossible to know who they are.
These corporate and union interest groups shouldn’t suffer in the arena of public debate, the court wrote in the Citizens United case, “simply because such associations are not natural persons.”
Walter W. Winans (1852 – 1920) was an American marksman, horse breeder, sculptor, and painter who participated in the 1908 and 1912 Summer Olympics. He won two medals for shooting.... He also won a gold medal for his sculpture An American Trotter at Stockholm in 1912.
via en.wikipedia.org
When men were men who shot deer-shaped targets and were sculptors! And had big mustaches! And wore lots of tweed! Until 1952, the modern Olympic included competitions in the arts, too. And this chap--an American residing in Britain--is one of only two Olympians who won medals in both artistic and sports competitions, including competition in "Men's Double-shot Running Deer." (Huzzah?)
Imagine: Inspired by the past but eager to embrace contemporary life, the IOC will be adding competitions in speed tweeting and web design for the 2012 Olympics.
This gilded miniature galleon stands 3 feet high, and
is in fact an elaborate, automated clock. [It] played music, fired its cannons and trundled across the table at imperial banquets. Clocks like this were important status symbols in the courts of Europe in the 1500s and this clock is based on the great European ships that sailed the oceans during this period. It is unlikely that the clock's creator, Hans Schlottheim in inland Germany, ever saw an actual galleon.
via www.bbc.co.uk
In the program, historian Lisa Jardine declares that clockwork is magic in the sixteenth century. But, I think there might be a better metaphor. Magic often evokes myths and mythic feats of the past: things disappearing, the dead being raised. And magic works by deception and slight of hand. Clockwork does not. And there's little doubt in my mind that when a person of the early Renaissance beheld a clock for the first time, she saw the potential for progress, the promise of the future--even if at the same time the object's function spoke also to mortality and memories of time past.
The program features an excellent reading aloud of a description written about the object in the 1500's. (See below.) It's clear the writer is not baffled by the object, which is understood to be mechanical and impressive.
I think clockwork was more like computer technology, not magic, in the sixteenth century. We understand computers to work according to electricity and circuits, but most of us don't know the particulars. Like clockwork, computer technology can serve both entertainment and utilitarian purposes. Like clockwork, the best computer technology is the most expensive and is more likely to have an urban setting than a rural one. The people watching the galleon moving along the banquet table of Augustus I of Saxony were not mystified ignoramuses or Cro-Magnons the day before doing chalk drawings in caves. They knew that they were seeing something made by man, and they may well have been amazed and delighted, but probably not afraid. If anything, they would have been more fearful--and rightly so--of the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor that this clockwork masterpiece was meant to dynamically represent. In that way, magic and computer technology do have something in common: both can be used to serve political purposes, too.
The description:
A gilded ship, skilfully made, with a quarter and full hour striking clock, which is to be wound every 24 hours. Above with three masts, in the crows' nests of which the sailors revolve and strike the quarters and hours with hammers on the bells. Inside, the Holy Roman Emperor sits on the Imperial throne, and in front of him pass the seven electors with heralds, paying homage as they receive their fiefs. Furthermore ten trumpeters and a kettle-drummer alternately announce the banquet. Also a drummer and three guardsmen, and sixteen small cannons, eleven of which may be loaded and fired automatically.
This is the moment a lightning bolt struck the Statue of Liberty in New York. New York photographer Jay Fine had spent the night braving the storm in Battery Park City, Manhattan, in a bid to get the perfect picture. Jay spent nearly two hours poised with his camera and took more than 80 shots before striking lucky with this particular bolt of lightning at 8.45pm on 22 September. He said he had been waiting 40 years to get the picture.
To capture the shots Jay used a Nikon D300s with 60mm f/2.8 lens on the following settings: Aperture: F/10, Shutterspeed: 5 seconds, ISO: 200.
via www.bbc.co.uk
In a parking lot in a desolate corner of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where developers once planned to erect a high-rise condo, sits a 300-foot-long facsimile of a section of the Atlantic City Boardwalk, circa 1920.
Handcrafted for the acclaimed HBO series Boardwalk Empire, which premiered last month to rave reviews, it is the largest outdoor set ever built in New York.
.....
And happily, the show will go on. HBO renewed the series last month, less than two days after its premiere attracted a total of 7.1 million viewers, including repeats--the largest viewership for any HBO premiere in six years. With an estimated budget of $65 million per season, Boardwalk Empire could pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the local economy in the years to come.
Given the forces and arguments aligned against public-sector unions, what led to their enormous growth? Three conditions prepared the ground for the legal reforms that facilitated collective bargaining in the public sector (and the subsequent swelling of the ranks of unionized government employees).
The first was the weakening of party machines at the state and (especially) local levels. In many of America's large cities, the responsibility for filling government jobs fell to the party machines; turnover in government employment was therefore high, connected as it was to election results. In New York during the 1930s and '40s, for instance, the average tenure of a cop or garbage collector was five years. Another effect of the machines' influence over government hiring was political: People in patronage jobs inevitably devoted a portion of their nominal working hours to party affairs. Because government employment under the machine system was both relatively brief and partisan in nature, a culture of professionalism was never really able to take hold.
Reformers' chief weapon in the war against the machines was the enactment of civil-service laws. Such laws sought to deprive ward bosses of control over patronage, which was their lifeblood. Civic groups, the press, and public-employees' associations believed that greater professionalization of the government work force would draw in talent, increase efficiency, and reduce corruption. In the 1950s, according to historian Leo Kramer, the leadership of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) "saw itself as part of a great movement to reform government," one of whose principal aims was "the extension of the merit system to all nonpolicy determining positions in all government jurisdictions."
By the end of the 1950s, reformers had put the old machines on the defensive. And professionalization had had its intended effect: In their 1963 book City Politics, Edward Banfield and James Q. Wilson found that, by 1961, 52% of cities with populations over 500,000 had placed nearly all government employees under civil-service protections.
One important consequence of civil-service reform was that, with the end of election-based turnover--and with protections against undue political interference in hiring and firing--public employees gained nearly lifetime job security. This gave workers a long-term interest in their jobs and increased their capacity to express themselves collectively, thereby helping to make the unionization of public employees possible.
Turnout to hear Glenn Beck and Sara Palin has recently been less than impressive.
"Glenn Beck fails to fill seats at NJ rally"
Beck stepped on stage at 7pm, in a stadium that holds 8,500 people. He was supposed to have a sold out [crowd]. Problem was, roughly 800 people bothered to show...up.
"Palin makes stop at Houston church"
Members of the media were allowed to record only the first few minutes of her speech. However, attendees who stayed through the entire presentation said they got exactly what they were looking for.
.....
Organizers estimate about 1,200 people attended Tuesday's event. It wasn't sold out, though. The sanctuary at First Baptist Church can hold up to 3,000 people.
"Slow ticket sales force Palin appearance to smaller room"
"An Evening of Hope with Sarah Palin" was moved from the 2,936-seat Moran Theatre to the 609-seat Terry Theatre.
"Report: Palin Miami appearance postponed"
It is reported that the postponement was due to a scheduling conflict.
Estonian troops are still in Afghanistan, in case you've been worried that they'd left. The UK's Ministry of Defense has provided photographic evidence. (Photo at right; click to enlarge.)
Estonia's flag is my 4th favorite. You can see it as an arm patch on some of the soldiers in the photo. I won't post a representation of it here, because what's the fun in making it that easy for you?
A friend of mine who taught modern European history at a small private college in Iowa had a big Estonia flag pinned up on the wall behind his desk. I first met him in his office, and remarked on the flag, having also--of course--instantly identified him as a fellow dork. He was impressed with my vexillological prowess. This is dork bonding. He was also fluent in Dutch, one of the greatest and least useful of foreign languages, even for the Dutch.
“Well, [faith-healing] is often misunderstood. It doesn’t say you have the power within you to cure yourself. The crux of faith healing is that you believe in a power outside yourself…. But there are drawbacks with faith healing. One is that it doesn’t work. For some people that’s a minor quibble. But there’s the added problem that when it doesn’t work it’s your fault for not having enough faith, and not the healer’s fault for being a retired dinner lady with less medical knowledge than a moderately curious three year-old. So, as you’re dying of whatever you didn’t get cured of you have to add the burden of crippling guilt to the other agonizing things you’re suffering from. Other than that, it’s remarkably effective.” – Paul B. Davies
The adjective that best describes Washington's personality and instincts, ironically enough, is "English." He had a fair complexion that sunburnt easily; he bought his clothes and most other goods from London merchants; he never affirmed the divinity of Jesus Christ but actively supported his local Anglican churches; he rebuilt Mount Vernon (named after an English admiral) on classically English architectural principles; he was phlegmatic and disliked overfamiliarity; he even played cricket during the dark days of Valley Forge. Mr. [Ron] Chernow [in Washington: A Life] ascribes [Washington's] break with Britain to the moronic refusal of the British authorities to grant Washington a regular army commission. "His hostility to the mother country," Mr. Chernow writes, "was a case of thwarted love."
via online.wsj.com
Andrew Roberts' review of Chernow's biography of Washington concludes:
By the end of this well-researched, well-written and absolutely definitive biography, readers will conclude that George Washington was indeed a genius and a titan, but for very different reasons than the world thought at the time.
In the Tea Party narrative, victory at the polls means a new American revolution, one that will "take our country back" from everyone they disapprove of. But what they don't realize is, there's a catch: This is America, and we have an entrenched oligarchical system in place that insulates us all from any meaningful political change.
Matt Taibbi looks at the Tea Party movement, and after a year of interviewing members and attending events, writes what I suspect a lot of observers think, those observers being a sizeable chuck of the American population, given that the Tea Partiers are, in fact, not the majority of Americans:
[Tea Partiers are] completely blind to how offensive the very nature of their rhetoric is to the rest of the country. I'm an ordinary middle-aged guy who pays taxes and lives in the suburbs with his wife and dog — and I'm a radical communist? I don't love my country? I'm a redcoat? Fuck you!
Taibbi's observations that "Tea Partiers expound at awesome length upon their cultural victimhood," and "they're shockingly willing to believe...[that] white people in the age of Obama are some kind of oppressed minority" square with parts of Mark Lilla's analysis in The New York Review of Books, "The Tea Party Jacobins," which was based on Lilla's review of five recent books concerned with US politics. Here's Lilla observation, published earlier in 2010:
The new Jacobins have two classic American traits that have grown much more pronounced in recent decades: blanket distrust of institutions and an astonishing—and unwarranted—confidence in the self. They are apocalyptic pessimists about public life and childlike optimists swaddled in self-esteem when it comes to their own powers.
Taibbi's article focuses primarily on the Tea Partiers themselves, but he gives attention also to realities that dilute the movement's grassroots creditentials, specifically, how corporate and billionaire interests have pumped millions of dollars into the movement, and to how the movement's organizational and promotional efforts were honed early on, and continue to be, by organizations like Dick Armey's FreedomWorks.
Frank Rich in "The Very Useful Idiocy of Christine O'Donnell," in The New York Times notes that:
some Tea Party groups and candidates like Sharron Angle, [Rand] Paul and [Christine] O’Donnell are being financed directly or indirectly not just by the Kochs (who share the No. 5 spot on the new Forbes 400) but by a remarkable coterie of fellow billionaires, led by oil barons like Robert Rowling (Forbes No. 69) and Trevor Rees-Jones (No. 110). Even their largess may be dwarfed by Rupert Murdoch (No. 38) and his News Corporation, whose known cash contributions ($2 million to Republican and Republican-tilting campaign groups) are dwarfed by the avalanche of free promotion they provide Tea Party causes and personalities daily at Fox and The Wall Street Journal.
Taibbi asks: "So how does a group of billionaire businessmen and corporations get a bunch of broke Middle American white people to lobby for lower taxes for the rich and deregulation of Wall Street?" He declares, "That turns out to be easy."
One reason for the ease may be that pro-corporation billionaire families and the organizations that they back that aim to popularize their interests have been around since well before the Tea Party movement. They've had practice, and they've been patiently persistent. One can turn back to Matt Bai's 2004 article, "Wiring the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy," to learn about the funding of conservative and libertarian think tanks by billionaire Republicans going back decades, and as shown in a PowerPoint presentation created by Democratic operative Rob Stein, ''The Conservative Message Machine's Money Matrix." Bai writes of the presentation as making:
the case that a handful of families -- Scaife, Bradley, Olin, Coors and others -- laid the foundation for a $300 million network of policy centers, advocacy groups and media outlets that now wield great influence over the national agenda. The network, as Stein diagrams it, includes scores of powerful organizations -- most of them with bland names like the State Policy Network and the Leadership Institute -- that he says train young leaders and lawmakers and promote policy ideas on the national and local level. These groups are, in turn, linked to a massive message apparatus, into which Stein lumps everything from Fox News and the Wall Street Journal op-ed page to Pat Robertson's ''700 Club.'' And all of this, he contends, is underwritten by some 200 ''anchor donors.'' ''This is perhaps the most potent, independent institutionalized apparatus ever assembled in a democracy to promote one belief system,'' he said.
Jane Mayer's recent article in The New Yorker, "Covert Operations" concerns one especially powerful source of contributions to the institutionalized conservative message machine, the so-called "Kochtopus"--the billionaire Koch brothers heading the energy industry giant Koch Industries and their foundation, Americans for Prosperity, which recently
announced that it will spend an additional forty-five million dollars before the [2010] midterm elections, in November. Although the group is legally prohibited from directly endorsing candidates, it nonetheless plans to target some fifty House races and half a dozen Senate races, staging rallies, organizing door-to-door canvassing, and running ads aimed at “educating voters about where candidates stand.”
Rob Stein himself is cited in Mayer's article describing the Koch brothers as
at the epicenter of the anti-Obama movement. But it’s not just about Obama. They would have done the same to Hillary Clinton. They did the same with Bill Clinton. They are out to destroy progressivism.
And their patient commitment to a long-term plan may be paying off. Mayer interviews a Republican campaign consultant who has done research on behalf of Charles and David Koch. He remarkes:
The Koch brothers gave the money that founded [the Tea Party]. It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud—and they’re our candidates.
It might also be noted that those candidates are clearly less than ideally commited to purist anti-government Tea Party ideology. Again, Rich in his editorial on candidate Christine O'Donnell and the Tea Party:
most of the Republican Tea Party standard-bearers [besides O'Donnell] lack genuine antigovernment or proletarian cred. Joe Miller and Ken Buck, the Senate candidates in Alaska and Colorado, actually are graduates of elite universities like those O’Donnell lied about attending. Rick Scott, the populist running for governor in Florida, was chief executive of a health care corporation that scooped up so many Medicare and Medicaid payments it had to settle charges for defrauding taxpayers. Rand Paul, the scion of a congressman, is an ophthalmologist whose calls for spending restraint don’t extend to his own Medicare income. Carl Paladino, the truculent man of the people in New York, grew his fortune as a developer with government handouts and favors. His California bookend, Carly Fiorina, received a golden parachute worth as much as $42 million from Hewlett-Packard, where she liquidated some 20,000 jobs.
Like the donor network Stein spotlighted four and five years ago, the Tea Party phenomenon is not only billionaire-backed but also, for all intents and purposes, partisan. This flies in the face of the frequently heard Tea Party talking point that the movement is bipartisan or nonpartisan. Wendy Kaminer in "The Tea Party: phoney freedom fighters," draws heavily from a 2010 New York Times/CBS News poll, and relative to the partisanship at the heart of the Tea Party, she notes:
The Tea Party movement is sometimes at odds with the Republican establishment, but it is dominated by Republican voters (who constituted two thirds of members surveyed).... [T]he Tea Party movement, marketed as a novel, spontaneous uprising of mostly independent voters, is actually a more familiar, partisan revolt against a dramatic loss of power. Bush-era Republicans who envisioned a permanent majority were jolted out of their reveries by the 2008 election of a Democratic president, a clear majority in the House and (briefly) a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Neither party likes losing elections, but Republicans tend to win and lose them with a vengeance.
Kaminer also cites the finding of the New York Times/CBS News poll that 63% of Tea Partiers "say they get the majority of their political and current events news on television from the Fox News Channel:"
[Tea Partiers] simply don’t believe that the Democratic president and Congress represent the majority.... [T]he 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea-Partiers are convinced that they represent the majority instead: 84 per cent of them agree that ‘the views of the people involved in the Tea Party movement generally reflect the views of most Americans’. This is perhaps the FOX News effect: if you get all or most of your information from one partisan Republican source that confirms your status as a patriotic American and characterises your opponents – including moderate Democrats – as extremists, you might reflexively universalise your own convictions.
This suggests a strong echo chamber effect among Tea Partiers, which in part may also explain why 64% of Tea Partiers believe
that the president has increased taxes for most Americans, despite the fact that the vast majority of Americans got a tax cut under the Obama administration.
To be sure, both statistics, along with the fact that around 25% of all Americans and 41% of registered Republicans believe that President Obama is or probably is foreign-born, likely seems consistent with the observation of numerous commentators and journalists, and the complaint of many progressive activists, that the Obama Administration's communication efforts have been surprisingly bad. This failure may be particularly damning given that the administration and Democrats in general ought to have been able to anticipate a conservative offensive, even including some of its rhetoric, such as that regarding socialism. The Tea Party might be new, but the anti-government backlash it represents is not.
As Kevin Drum notes in his Mother Jones article, "Tea Party: Old Whine in New Bottles:"
Ever since the 1930s, something very much like the tea party movement has fluoresced every time a Democrat wins the presidency, and the nature of the fluorescence always follows many of the same broad contours: a reverence for the Constitution, a supposedly spontaneous uprising of formerly nonpolitical middle-class activists, a preoccupation with socialism and the expanding tyranny of big government, a bitterness toward an underclass viewed as unwilling to work, and a weakness for outlandish conspiracy theories.
But each time a Democratic president is elected, the rightwing extremist movement Drum describes is more effective than the time before:
The Liberty League withered after it failed to make even a dent in FDR's 1936 reelection campaign. The Birchers improved on that record, winning lots of local campaigns and eventually helping Barry Goldwater win the Republican presidential nomination in 1964, before collapsing under the weight of Robert Welch's increasingly bizarre rants. The '90s activists were more successful yet, helping Gingrich take over Congress in 1994, impeaching a president in 1998, and eventually sending George W. Bush to the White House.
Where will it end? Drum dares to make a prediction:
[The Tea Party's] core identity will slowly fade away...while its broader identity becomes subsumed by a Republican Party that's been headed down the path of ever less-tolerant conservatism for decades.
BBC Radio 4 listener Barry Yorke contributed to the webpages of A History of the World in 100 Objects, this fascist coin embedded in lava. (Click the image at right to enlarge it.)
It's a fascinating, rich fusing of symbols simultaneously marking both a moment of geological time and a short era in human political history; it’s a single artifact of two artifacts, which is quite unusual, I expect. And the potential layers of meaning are interesting: For example, the reoccurring destructiveness of an ancient, extant volcano and the mercifully short-lived destructiveness of Italy's fascist regime. The coin is derisively puny compared to the 1944 eruption’s tons of hellish ejecta and molten rock that this small piece of lava represents. The might that was ancient Rome came and went, and nearly 1500 years later, while Mussolini ludicrously invoked that past imperial might in order to promote his own enterprise that lasted less than a generation, Vesuvius is still there unaffected, enduring, and erupting just the same, as it has since and will again.
