The Great American Novel

I can't wait for the new National album, which you can preview here. (If you're expecting genius, listen to Bloodbuzz Ohio). These guys see America as it is:

It was supposed to be the National’s moment. After years of mostly anonymous struggle, the National’s two previous albums, “Alligator” (2005) and “Boxer” (2007), were so full of strangely isolated songs about friendship, romance and work that they had created for this new release the sort of expectant critical murmur that has been rare to hear since the end of the age of record shops. “Alligator” and “Boxer” did what excellent rock ’n’ roll albums did in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s: transcended the sum of their singles to offer something larger. In the National’s case, it was a powerful, probing feeling for the inner lives of average people out in the American heartland. So good was the music that with it came the promise of what might follow, the heady potential that the National would soon take things one step further, go ahead and make the great Middle American novel as music, an album for our time.

[...]

With the National, it’s never only rock ’n’ roll. Watching them record a song is like looking on as a group of skilled chefs make a sandwich together; even in a B.L.T., they can foresee endless possibilities. They are now five men in their mid- to late 30s, with mortgages, children, wives or serious girlfriends and musical tastes that have likewise settled into convictions. Each National song is a microbatch creation integrating their obsessive, often-diverging feelings about rock ’n’ roll. These range from the formally inventive, high-art aspirations of Bryce to the garage-band purism of Matt, who, Aaron says, “is all about if there’s heart or purpose in it. He has no interest if it’s theoretical.” By striving to accommodate these disparate points of view, the National gets what all bands want and few achieve, a sound of its own. Michael Stipe, the lead singer of R.E.M., told me that when he took Mike Mills, R.E.M.’s bass player, to hear the National perform in London, it took Mills only half of one song to exclaim, “This is the most amazing thing I’ve heard in years.” Stipe explains: “It’s instantaneous. It touches you.”

THE NATIONAL SOUND has a layered, seductive quality that is filled with intimate male feeling and uneasy cinematic portent: a storm coming up outside the window; leaves blowing in the road. It’s distinctive music born of an apparent limitation — Matt’s voice. His is a classic baritone with a resonant, melancholy timbre, but it lacks range and tonal variation; Matt often half-talks his vocals in the style of singers like Tom Waits and Nick Cave. Over the years, the band’s solution has been to create shifting instrumental shapes and colors just beneath the vocals. The twins’ signature is a hocketing guitar line, their instruments chiming in and out, mirroring each other as they share the melody. All the intersecting sounds mesh with Matt’s voice in a way that seems to deepen his texture, and with repeated listening the songs achieve emotional intensity. In part this is because the drums are given unusual prominence. A very good drummer controls the beat; a better one defines it. When Bryan’s cymbals splash in a song about a rainy-day loss of faith, you don’t just hear the water; you see a thousand dead umbrellas. Since Matt excels at writing about sensitive people whose lives slump within that chapfallen key, the result is songs that are rich with mood, slow-cooked all the way down. [Emphasis mine.]

Every word is true. There is nothing like it. (OK, maybe Springsteen, but not since the 80s.) Boxer and Alligator are religion. Of course, what do you expect from Midwestern expatriate Gen-Xers?

Update: Musically, very good. Viscerally, though, it falls short of Alligator and Boxer. I'll have to see how it wears with repeated listening.

Quote of the Month

"If anyone this conspicuously unintelligent has ever sought national office, I can't think of who he/she is." Benen (on Palin).

A Well-Regulated Revolution

These people are fucking retarded:

"It is our own fault that we are in this situation," Vanderboegh intends to tell those assembled, according to a draft of his remarks. "Each time these revolutionists of gradualism against the Founders' Republic took another bite out of the Constitution and shoved us back from the natural exercise of our God-given and inalienable rights, we have backed up, grumbling. We have not shoved back."

Gravelly Point, where the demonstrators will take turns going to from Fort Hunt, was chosen because it is as close to the District as they could get while carrying guns and also comply with local and Interior Department regulations.

When they stand on the river banks Monday and preach an activism that sounds to some like sedition, the armed demonstrators will have the full support of the federal government they fear, carefully detailed in the 26-page event permit, complete with the gun regulations of both Virginia and the Interior Department and a commitment to provide fencing, barricades and bike racks for the event.

"We handle tens of thousands of demonstrations of a First Amendment nature annually," said Dave Schlosser, spokesmen for the U.S. Park Police, "and we are handling this event no differently than any of the others. We assess what their needs are to allow us to facilitate a safe and successful demonstration so they can exercise their rights to free speech and free assembly without interference." [Emphasis mine.]

This would be hilarious, if it weren't so damn dangerous.

Point of Personal Privilege

Thank you, Steve!



Detroit will rise again.

But I Said Taxes!!!

The empty rhetorical trick of comparing taxes to tyranny has finally worn too thin to be tolerated by those of us interested in actual problem solving. Tom Schaller simply destroys Jonah Goldberg today:

Goldberg says he "bring[s] this up because many in the Democratic Party and in the news media have a hard time understanding what the 'Tea Party' crowd is talking about when it complains of incipient tyranny and intrusive government." Yes, many of us do, including that uber-Democratic media maven and former Reaganite Bruce Bartlett, who surveyed tea partiers and discovered they have no idea what the true tax burden in the country is. Their average response for what share of GDP goes into the (federal) public sector was 42 percent--more than twice what it actually is.

However, trying to engage Goldberg in an intellectually honest discussion seems like a futile effort at best. He's never struck me as anything more than a partisan/ideological hack, just like his mother.

Return of the Pragmatic Conservative

It looks like Frum is leading the charge. Another conservative speaks out:

I am an old Republican. I am religious, yet not a fanatic. I am a free-marketer; yet, I believe in the role of the government as a fair evenhanded referee. I am socially conservative; yet, I believe that my lesbian niece and my gay grandchild should have the full protection of the law and live as free Americans enjoying every aspect of our society with no prejudices and/or restrictions. Nowadays, my political and socio-economic profile would make me a Marxist, not a Republican.

[...]

I did not like Medicaid and Medicare when they were passed. I was opposed to them. Maybe I was too young, too strong, and too ideologically confined. Yet, over the years, I saw how Medicare helped millions of elderly Americans. I saw how Medicare helped my mom in her final years battling emphysema caused by years of smoking. You have to be blind to oppose those programs. You have to be blind to wish for the suffering of millions of Americans just because you believe in personal responsibility.

[...]

Then something happened in the 1990s. The leaders of the GOP grew belligerent. They became too religious, almost zealots. They became intolerant. They began searching for purity in Republican thought and doctrine. Ideology blinded them. I continued to vote Republican, but with a certain unease. Deep down I knew that a schism happened between the modern Republican Party and the one I grew up with. During the fight over the impeachment of President Clinton, the ugly face of the Republican Party was brought to the surface. Empty rhetoric, ideological intolerance, vengeance, and religious zealotry became the common currency. Suddenly, if you are pro-choice, you could not be a Republican. If you are for smart and sensible taxes to balance out the budget, you could not be a Republican. If you are pro-civil rights, you could not be a Republican.

It started with minorities: they left the party. Then women; they divorced the GOP and sent it to sleep on the couch. Then, the young folks; they left and are leaving the Republican Party in droves. Then, someone stood up and told my niece and my grandchild that they are not fully Americans — just second class Americans because they are homosexual. They wished hell and damnation upon my loved ones just because they are different. Are we led by priests or are we led by rational politicians? Now, we have became the party of the Old Straight White Folks. We should rename the Republican Party the OSWF rather than the GOP.

[...]

We are living through tough times. We are being challenged like I have never seen America being challenged before. China is a formidable foe, and it is out there competing against us on every field and beating us on several fronts. While our education budgets are being slashed in every state across the nation, China is doubling and tripling theirs. These are the challenges and challengers that we are facing. And we need our best and brightest to lead us, not a half-term governor or radio/TV talking heads.

Maybe I am too old and too cynical, but I think the Republican party is in the last stages of agony. If nothing happens, we might win an election or even two, but in the long run we will lose America.

GOP Projection

If you want to see GOP projection at its finest, I suggest reading Breitbart's latest shitpile:

The first Alinsky president is now using surrogates to split this nation into two hostile parties so he can puppeteer the have-nots against the perceived haves.

[...]

Linking the health-care bill, which has nothing to do with black and white, to the divisive civil-rights period, while simultaneously accusing its opponents of being racist, is an evil strategy — literally. Charles Manson would approve.

[...]

The media is doing their job for them by speaking of an unhinged white Tea Party mob. Absent any evidence other than creatively selected hand-crafted signs from the fringe of the audience that are presented to represent the whole, the media is simply repeating assumptions that Democrats and media elites have against fly-over types. What we have here is hardcore media elitism mixed with politically correct class warfare.

[...]

Change the subject, misdirection, their side caught with their pants around their ankles, don’t look there media, there’s nothing to see here.

[...]

The Democratic party has been exposed as trying to create a Kristallnacht to save the Obama presidency along the fault line of race and the essence of the First Amendment. If the GOP does not have the intestinal fortitude to fight back, a growing number of disenchanted and disenfrachised Tea Party participants will have to do it themselves.

[...]

The only good thing to come of this is that we can now officially put to rest the laughable notion that Obama was going to be the first post-racial president.

I imagine it's really painful to be so full of shit. How do we know Breitbart is full of shit? Because he continues to lie about the ACORN affair :

I am still dealing with the same press telling me we didn’t prove that ACORN was aiding and abetting criminal activity because we “did not provide enough audio and video evidence.” (Insert laugh track.)

And objective third-party evidence to the contrary continues to accumulate. The Attorney General of California concurs:

While the secretary of state's office found four instances of voter fraud in San Diego during the 2008 election campaign, the attorney general's report found no "evidence of actual fraudulent votes being cast."

Brown's office did not determine whether the filmmakers violated the state's privacy laws but criticized them for creating "heavily edited films" that overstated the goings-on at ACORN.

"The evidence illustrates," Brown said, "that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality. Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor."

Objective facts illustrate that the ACORN tapes were entirely fabricated! Nevertheless, Breitbart sees his treatment on that matter as a double standard:

Is there not a blatant double standard at play here? Nancy Pelosi tipped her hand that race was a central part of her strategy. She invoked the Civil Rights Act and compared it with the universally reviled health care bill. Her caucus is doubling down on the civil-rights rhetoric. There are no coincidences. [Emphasis mine.]

It's amazing how often their line of attack betrays subconscious guilt. But why spend all morning on Friday writing an essay arguing that the Democrats are engaged in aggressive propaganda efforts to discredit the Tea Party? Easy ... to rationalize the next move:

Who is calling the shots here? Is it the White House, by way of Chicago? Or is it Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid? The press refused to tell you the truth about this president. It refused to tell you of his proud adherence to the teachings of the original Chicago “community organizer” Saul Alinsky. We have now entered the first full-fledged Alinsky presidency. The only way to beat Alinsky is with Alinsky. The Democrats and President Obama will not give up this tack. Do you think the GOP will win the day in November and in 2012 if its strategy is to apologize for every manufactured “right wing fringe” outrage?

With President Obama over the last week calling attention to the Tea Parties and their “heated” rhetoric, he has officially connected himself to the civil war his minions have flailingly attempted to inflame. [Emphasis mine.]

Are you fucking kidding me?

Facts to Fit the Ideology

A large swath contemporary behavior on the right can be explained if we assume that they only believe facts consistent with their ideology. We see this with Fox news, the Kenyan birth certificate and many other less exciting daily domains. A particularly alarming case of this aggressive myopia is discussed in McClatchy Thursday:

In articles and speeches, on radio and TV, conservatives are working to redefine major turning points and influential figures in American history, often to slam liberals, promote Republicans and reinforce their positions in today's politics.

The Jamestown settlers? Socialists. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton? Ill-informed professors made up all that bunk about him advocating a strong central government.

Theodore Roosevelt? Another socialist. Franklin D. Roosevelt? Not only did he not end the Great Depression, he also created it.

Joe McCarthy? Liberals lied about him. He was a hero.

Some conservatives say it's a long-overdue swing of the pendulum after years of liberal efforts to define history on their terms in classrooms and in popular culture.

Update: Benen finds the same theme and runs with it:

If today's conservative Republicans reject reality, it stands to reason that they'll reject history, too.

But it's nevertheless a reminder of why conversations with those immersed in a right-wing ideology tend to be rather frustrating, if not futile, experiences. In order for political discourse to have any meaning or value, there have to be certain agreed upon facts that serve as a foundation for the dialogue. But as the McClatchy piece notes, that foundation is no longer stable -- conservatives frequently choose to believe versions of events that aren't real, because the make-believe version makes them feel better.

The result is an American history in which every era can be distorted to satisfy the far-right ego. Indeed, it continues to apply to more contemporary events -- tell the typical Republican that Ronald Reagan raised taxes in six of his eight years in the White House, and he/she will probably look at you as if you've lost your mind. That is, in fact, what happened, but the right chooses to reject this history, because they don't like it. (Tell these same Republicans that Barack Obama's health care plan is in line with what moderate Republicans have supported for years -- and that the individual mandate was actually a GOP idea -- and you'll get the same reaction, even though it's true.)

For all the talk about getting reasonable people with different ideologies into a room to find common ground on a host of complex issues, it's worth remembering that for many political actors in 2010, there isn't even agreement on the basics. When dealing with a large group of influential conservatives who believe FDR created the Great Depression, Theodore Roosevelt was a socialist, and Joe McCarthy was a hero, what's there to talk about? [Emphasis mine.]