Author: Jonathan Schwarz

Two new articles I co-wrote have just been posted. One is at TomDispatch, about the Iraq investigations Congress should do, but won’t without pressure:

As humorist Bob Harris enjoys saying about the Bush administration, “It’s like a new Watergate every day with these people.” Congress could probably spend three decades profitably examining the last six years of the Bush administration. Unfortunately, they’ll have to do severe triage to select the areas of malfeasance where investigations will most benefit the country…

All these investigations are badly needed, not just for the sake of accountability but because the truth will end the war. Bush can continue his crusade only because most of the grim reality of Iraq remains in the shadows. Dragging it out into the sunlight is up to us.

The other, about how progressives should be thinking about the potential of networked volunteers, is at Tompaine.com:

One of the most remarkable, unexpected developments of the Internet has been the explosive growth of Wikipedia . At first glance, the Wikipedia concept—that thousands upon thousands of volunteers working with little central supervision can create a huge databank of accurate information—seems untenable. And yet the Wikipedia bumblebee flies anyway…

Politics, of course, usually boils down to the many versus the few. The conservative movement has always been able to raise large amounts of money from a relatively small number of sources. This money translates in turn into a relatively small number of people—politicians, lobbyists, think tank denizens, PR experts—paid to spend large amounts of time advancing the conservative project.

By contrast, we have the numbers on our side, but not many multimillionaires like Richard Mellon Scaife. What the web has done is allow progressives to start leveling the monetary playing field, by aggregating small donations from many sources.

This is an extremely encouraging development. But what may be just as important is to find ways to advance progressive goals by aggregating many small donations of time.

You may ask: does it gratify me to promote my writing for TomDispatch and TomPaine.com on the site of Tom Tomorrow? Yes…yes it does.

tom

Dennis Perrin has a new post well worth reading, jumping off from a column by Jeff Cohen about Jim Webb. It then considers the strategy of Progressive Democrats of America, which grew out of the 2004 Kucinich presidential campaign:

[Jeff is] after something bigger: namely, a progressive takeover of the Democratic Party. Jeff is now an active board member with Progressive Democrats of America, a group made-up of liberals and those a little further left who see the Dem party as the only realistic vehicle for serious political change. In our rigid, fixed political system, Jeff and his colleagues may be right, which is a pretty sad fact for the Greatest Democracy The World Has Ever Seen. Still, you deal with the cards that are dealt you. When Jeff informed me of this current strategy (which he predicts will take 10-20 years to fully come about), his piece on Webb made even more sense — praise that which you can honestly praise, gain some trust, position yourself for further possible influence, and keep moving through the party.

Jeff cites the Christian Right’s takeover of much of the GOP machinery as an activist model, though in my view, rightwing theocrats have more in common with their party than do progressives with the Dems. In other words, the fight on this side of the aisle is going to be much, much tougher, especially with the corporate stranglehold on the mules. At some point, serious differences will be unavoidable, namely, the mainstream Dem position on the Middle East, Israel in particular. Sooner or later, simply celebrating bits and pieces of the Dem platform will no longer suffice. When the shit truly hits the fan, that’s when we’ll know how far progressives can go in transforming the party altogether…

Yet, as Jeff insists, this may be all we have at this point in time. So, in the spirit of open-mindedness and as a nod to an old friendship, I’m adding the PDA to the roll, and will keep a steady, critical eye on their various campaigns. After all, if there’s even a small chance that my children might benefit from their efforts, not to mention the country and the rest of the planet, then it’s worth seeing what the PDA and others can do.

The rest.

I’m agnostic on this question, and will surely have my own blather to contribute at some point.

Recently Weekend Update on SNL has run some material I find a little…surprising.

Here:

SETH MEYERS: Christian and Muslim Britains joined forces yesterday to tell city officials to stop taking the Christianity out of Christmas, warning them that this simply fuels a backlash against Muslims. Also fueling a backlash against Muslims? Terrorism.

And several shows later:

SETH MEYERS: Muslim groups are concerned that the new season of “24,” which features Muslim terrorists setting off a nuclear explosion near Los Angeles, will foster hate against them and create a climate of Islamophobia. Also creating a climate of Islamophobia? Terrorism.

This is more than just unfunny. Given that we’re occupying Iraq and may be about to attack Iran, it’s the kind of thing that—thirty years later—ends up in museums as part of a display illustrating how a country went completely berserk and started a world war. If you don’t quite see this, rewrite the joke using another religion.

If you have any thoughts about this yourself—even thoughts that I’m wrong!—it’s being discussed over here at a new blog called “Rasputin Bigbodie.” R. Bigbodie is authored by alumni and staff of the Yale Record, Yale’s humor magazine, but everyone is welcome to come and chip in.

If you haven’t yet, I hereby assign you to read Arthur Silber’s on-going series “Dominion Over the World”:

Part I: “Iraq is the Democrats’ War, Too”
Part II: “Why the Stories We Tell Matter So Much”
Part III: “The Open Door to Worldwide Hegemony”
Part IV: “A ‘Splendid People’ Set Out for Empire”
Part V: “A Global Empire of Bases”

And if you have it to spare, God will bless you if you slip Arthur a few bucks. There are few worthier causes in the blogosphere.

Back in 1987 Bill Moyers produced a 90-minute documentary called The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis. Apparently in the 20 years since the full version hadn’t been available until now. It’s well-made and still alarmingly relevant. You can watch it below or full size here.

Many thanks to the King of Zembla for pointing this out. While he does of course rule as an autocrat in his own domain, he’s surprisingly encouraging about open government elsewhere.