I regard Cain’s dominance as just the latest sign of the degeneracy on the American right. He’s the ultimate candidate for a Palinized party: based on talk radio, uninterested in government, ruled by unreason, propelled by resentment, fixated on power.

I’d merely elaborate on the part about unreason to say that Cain seems to represent the worst tendencies on the right toward a proud anti-intellectualism and unseriousness. Cain seems so intent on portraying himself as an authentic, outsider, non-politician, regular Joe businessman that he apparently hasn’t found it necessary to familiarize himself with some basic knowledge about governance, policy and world affairs. He’s demonstrated notable and willful ignorance particularly in response to foreign policy-related questions. Here’s a pretty unbelievable example of what I’m talking about:

As seen above, Cain tends to play off these questions by either changing the subject with folksy business-management talk or giving non-answers that basically amount to, “I’ll get all of that information when I need to” or “that’s what I’ll have expert advisors for”. He’s essentially like a procrastinating student who tries to get around the need to study but (unlike many other candidates) is remarkably bad at BSing (I guess that last part is something that makes him appealing to some).

Cain is getting a lot of flak now for a painful recent interview in which he seems to completely draw a long blank on what has gone on in Libya and how he feels about President Obama’s handling of the situation. He then gives a long, fairly meaningless answer to scrub over the fact that he just hasn’t really bothered to look into it at all.

That’s pretty bad. But what really got to me recently were his answers to questions regarding torture in the last Republican debate. Responding to an email question about his general stance on torture, Cain said:

I believe in following the procedures that have been established by our military. I do not agree with torture, period. However, I will trust the judgment of our military leaders to determine what is torture and what is not torture. That is the critical consideration.

Then the moderator followed up by asking Cain his position on whether waterboarding constituted torture or “an enhanced interrogation technique”. Cain simply responds:

I agree that it was an enhanced interrogation technique. …Yes. I would return to that policy. I don’t see it as torture. I see it as an enhanced interrogation technique.

So here we see a little glimpse of Cain’s odd decision-making methodology in action. He doesn’t agree with torture, but he will let the field experts decide for him what is or isn’t torture. But wait, when it comes to waterboarding, something that pretty much everyone outside of Republican hawks believes is torture, and the Obama administration has made unlawful, Cain conveniently clings to the orwellian term that the Bush administration invented to get away with torture.

I’m sure Cain made that determination after gathering up all the relevant information and hearing all informed opinions and didn’t just say that because he thinks it probably scores points with the Republican base. Right?

Anyway, here’s a video clip of the debate. It’s worth watching in full from the 6:36 mark (where the questioning about torture begins), in part to see that Michele Bachmann is really far more frightening than Cain; She’s seriously hawkish and just makes things up out of the thin air in her own alternate reality with relative ease. But also note the response from Ron Paul; I have my severe disagreements with Paul, but when it comes to this subject at least, I’m always thankful he is up there, demonstrating some semblance of moral clarity and reason. Jon Huntsman, too, has a fine response against torture to wrap up the segment; but of course those two latter candidates have far less of a chance at the nomination than even Cain or Bachmann…

Oh, and for what it’s worth, here is President Obama’s unequivocal response to Cain’s and Bachmann’s support of waterboarding:

They’re wrong. Waterboarding is torture. It’s contrary to America’s traditions. It’s contrary to our ideals. That’s not who we are. That’s not how we operate. We don’t need it in order to prosecute the war on terrorism. And we did the right thing by ending that practice.

If we want to lead around the world, part of our leadership is setting a good example. And anybody who has actually read about and understands the practice of waterboarding would say that that is torture. And that’s not something we do — period.

I’d forgotten to mention this, but I remember thinking at the time that I could only really make sense of the responses from Perry and the crowd by imagining that these responses resulted from a very black and white view of the world. A view that says, we are the good guys, and there are very bad, bad people out there who do very bad, bad things. And merely if the good criminal justice system says so and so is one of those bad, bad people, we must unapologetically punish them accordingly without question or hesitation.

That, it seems, is the attitude of Florida state representative, Brad Drake. Last month, Drake filed a bill that would allow executions to be carried out only by electrocution or firing squad, rather than by lethal injection. Here’s Drake’s thinking on the matter:

“There shouldn’t be anything controversial about a .45-caliber bullet. If it were up to me we would just throw them off the Sunshine Skyway bridge and be done with it.” (link)

…

“I am sick and tired of this sensitivity movement for criminals,” Drake said. “Every time there is a warranted execution that is about to take place, some man or woman is standing on a corner holding a sign, yelling and screaming for humane treatment.

“I have no desire to humanely respect those that are inhumane.”(link)

Yikes. OK. Well, let’s look beyond the general cruelty and brutality in that sentiment for a minute. Drake’s attitude reminds me a lot of the attitudes of defenders of torture – or, ahem, ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ – over the last few years. The two disturbing components I would always catch listening to such talkers on the radio and whatnot were, 1), no concern over how the detained person in question is treated, because, “Hey, they’re a terrorist. This is what they deserve, if not worse.”, and 2), no question or concern over whether said person is in fact a guilty person in the first place.

The lingering presence of that attitude in our culture, whether it pertains to the justice system here at home, or conduct in wars abroad, seriously troubles me. In no small part, because, beyond the regardless ethical problems and inhumanity of executions and torture therein, neither area is anywhere near as black and white as people who support such methods seem to want to think they are. Evidence has shown that we get the wrong people all the time.

You’d think all the false convictions that have been overturned would have undermined support for the death penalty in this country more than they have. Radley Balko had an interesting article recently about why Americans still support the death penalty. Making this topic even more complex, Balko concludes the article with discussion of evidence that lethal injections might not actually be the most humane and painless form of execution. Instead, he suggests, we’ve opted for lethal injection because it simply appears humane and painless to us – because it comfortably “sanitizes” the death penalty.

Balko suggests that if we did do the kind of executions again which Rep. Drake wants, that would probably turn a lot more people off to the death penalty; I kind of liken that to the idea of asking supporters of the death penalty if they could actually pull the switch themselves. But if it’s true that most people would recoil at harsher appearing executions and rethink their support, then what does that say about the people out there like Brad Drake who not only have no qualms about executions at all, but really want them to not only be harsh and brutal, but really appear harsh and brutal too?

Last week, host David Gregory interviewed Cain at the top of the show (transcript/video), a reflection of Cain’s sudden rise to top of the Republican primary polls. Cain’s popularity is something that I kind of get and don’t get at the same time. He has this sort of folksy, no-nonsense persona, whereby he equates supposed simplicity with self-evident quality and cites his own political inexperience as some great qualification that will lead him to succeed in politics. Makes a lot of sense, I know.

Gregory began the interview with a discussion of the superficially simple cornerstone of Cain’s campaign: the gimmicky 9-9-9 tax plan. This plan would replace all current federal taxes with three flat rates: 9% national sales tax; 9% business tax; and 9% individual income tax.

I didn’t have the will to make it much further than the 9-9-9 portion of the interview, frustrated as I was by Cain’s flippant answers and Gregory’s apparent inability / lack of will to conjure up smart follow-up questions / stronger challenges to Cain’s dubious points. But the part that really got me reeling was when Gregory asked Cain how he could get such a big tax reform passed. Here’s Cain’s initial response:

…here’s how we get it passed.  First, throw out the current tax code.  Secondly, because the American people understand it, the American people are embracing it.  See, this is the problem that some people inside Washington have with 9-9-9.  The American people understand it. The American people are embracing it such that when I have this legislation–ask Congress to introduce this legislation, the American people will understand it, and they are going to demand it.  That’s how we get it passed.

Gee, who knew politics could be so neat and simple? Bear in mind what Cain is talking about here. He wants to not only throw out the current tax code, but then overhaul the tax system not once, but twice. First with the 9-9-9 plan and then later replace that with the Fair Tax. No big deal, right?

What gets me even more is the nice sounding throwaway line, “The American people understand it…are embracing it.” Really? Do they really understand it? A lot of clever people have been digging into what little details there are of this plan, and are still coming up with question marks and wait-and-sees over exactly how it would work.

Consider the business tax, for example. Do “the American people” know that several analysts, left, right, and in-between, have concluded that the business tax is less like the current corporate income tax and more like a modified value-added tax (VAT)? Do the people know exactly what a VAT is and how it functions? This is a kind of consumption tax, by the way, that Cain himself denounced as “the cowardly tax” just six months ago.

Do the American people know that many analysts, after concluding that the 9% business tax is a consumption tax not very unlike the national sales tax, now simply combine the two as an 18% consumption tax that will ultimately hit the end user and/or wage earner?

Do the American people know that this is what Cain wrote regarding a VAT back in April?

[A VAT] taxes each phase in the development of a product or service until it is ultimately sold to the end user, and you also pay any applicable retail sales taxes. These intermediate taxes are passed along to the consumer and are reflected as a net increase in the price of the goods or service.

The doubly outrageous aspect of the VAT is that it is on top of all the other state and federal taxes we pay.

Yet, when David Gregory pointed out to Cain that his national sales tax, combined with state and local sales taxes (where applicable) would have people paying as much as 17% tax or more on goods (19% where I live), Cain just waved away the concern; “That is muddying the water”, he said.

Do the American people know that all of this is just a transitional step to the Fair Tax, something I don’t think I’ve heard Cain directly say? Do they understand and support the Fair Tax, a national retail sales tax at a rate of 30% (or 23%, depending on whom you ask)? Cain doesn’t seem to take that for granted. The page for his plan on his website, under “Phase 2 – The Fair Tax”, reads:

Amidst a backdrop of the economic renewal created by the 9-9-9 Plan, I will begin the process of educating the American people on the benefits of continuing the next step to the Fair Tax.

I don’t mean to sound condescending. I only have a very loose grasp on all this stuff myself, even after digging into it over the last couple days. And that’s kind of the point. This supposedly simple, easy to understand 9-9-9 plan really isn’t so simple and clear at all. It kind of feels like Cain is making a lot of this up as he goes along too.

But hey, it is catchy and easy to remember. If this whole presidential gig doesn’t pan out, Cain could probably make some pretty mean infomercials. Just think of all the great little gadgets one might want to buy in quantities of 9 for 9 easy payments of $9.99.

The Salton Sea ©trryan 2009

Watching the film, I was promptly reminding of the aforementioned song by the band The Prayer Chain, from their 1995 album Mercury. The song is ‘Sky High’, a 9 minute sprawling anthem, reminiscent of The Verve or Siamese Dream-era Smashing Pumpkins. The direct lyrical references to the Salton Sea (‘take a breath by the Salton Sea’) and mention of ‘Salton Spies’ speaking of ‘rolling skies’ always put in my mind a majestic and spiritual place – an actual oasis in the desert of sorts.

Here comes the rust indeed

But I never would’ve guessed that would-be oasis has long been a toxic sea surrounded by ghost towns and abandoned tourist attractions. But of course, the repeated line in the song, ‘here comes the rust’, might have served as a little clue.

Naturally, there were a lot of emotional appeals and moralizing wrapped up in the Davis story. But not all of the protesting came from committed opponents of the death penalty. It seemed to me that most of the push-back came simply because there was “too much doubt” about Davis’s guilt; the idea being that if we are going to execute people, we, at the very least, better damn sure have done everything we can to prove their guilt beyond all reasonable doubt first.

But there’s the rub, right? If you start to recognize the doubt in the Davis case (a case which doesn’t seem to be any sort of anomaly), and then if the system can’t turn around and assuage that doubt, then does this not inevitably wind up calling the entire process into question, personal views of the death penalty notwithstanding?

I’m reminded of the former Illinois governor, George Ryan, who, on his way out of office in 2003, commuted to life the sentences of all death row inmates in the state in response to clear flaws in the state’s system. In contrast, I can’t help but also think of that Republican debate crowd which erupted into applause at the mere mention of Texas’s record number of executions under Gov. Rick Perry’s tenure. The applause immediately preceded Brian Williams’ question about whether Perry has ever “struggled to sleep at night” at the thought that one of those convicts may have been innocent.

I think what struck me the most about the crowd’s applause, and Perry’s “No sir, I’ve never struggled with that at all” response, was the evident lack of any room for doubt. Even if you believe that murderers deserve what Perry calls “the ultimate justice” of execution, I would think you should have at least a pinch of curiosity and concern about whether the system is, and is actually capable of, dishing out such punishment fairly and accurately (not to mention handle the discussion of death by anyone’s hand with a touch more sobriety).

But this question of fair administration of the death penalty is separate from the moral question of whether we should even have the death penalty or not. Though many see it as a cruel and barbaric punishment, it appears that the majority of Americans still support the death penalty. And so, for those in the minority, a dubious conviction like Davis’s tends to become a bridge in the conversation from simple fairness questions to the broader ethical questions (Are we really so committed to the death penalty that we’re willing to take the risk of executing innocent people in the process? And if so, why? Whom or what does the punishment really serve? Etc.).

It’s generally a tough topic, though, with lots of angles to consider I guess. But I just wonder if we really even have much of a grasp on why we’re still hanging on to the death penalty so tightly. Is it to set a firm example of what society will not tolerate? Is it out of a hope of deterrence to make society safer? Or is it just for retribution’s sake (a sense that “justice has been done”), to satisfy the general desire for vengeance? Is it ostensibly some of all of the above to some degree or another?

Whatever it is, I’m concerned that with our apparent need for dealing out death in return for death, we’ve laid in our path one giant obstacle to finding redemption and forgiveness in this life, as well as genuinely seeking the truth.

While reading news reports shortly after Davis was executed, I came across the following quotes from the mother of the police officer Davis was accused of killing:

“I’m kind of numb. I can’t believe that it’s really happened,” MacPhail’s mother, Anneliese MacPhail, said in a telephone interview from her home in Columbus, Ga. “All the feelings of relief and peace I’ve been waiting for all these years, they will come later. I certainly do want some peace.”

I certainly don’t want to judge anyone for the way in which they grieve. And a common challenge from death penalty advocates is “What if it were your child that was killed?” I don’t know. But I do know that the thought of this woman waiting around for twenty years for this execution, thinking this act of presumed retribution would be the thing to bring her peace, just makes me terribly sad. I do hope she finds peace and relief. But I can’t help feeling that she, and our society generally, has been looking for those things in the wrong place.

We also have to work sort of the dark side, if you will. We’re going to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world.

I remember that making the blog rounds years ago as a particularly damning quote, but as I heard it again, I thought to myself, “ah, maybe this was just a poor choice of words used to discuss standard covert operations.” But, no. He went on to make it clear that he was talking about a new, dark(er) mode of operations for the U.S. Here’s more of the exchange in context:

CHENEY: I’m going to be careful here, Tim, because clearly it would be inappropriate for me to talk about operation matters, specific options or the kinds of activities we might undertake going forward.

We do, indeed, though have obviously the world’s finest military. They’ve got a broad range of capabilities, and they may well be given missions in connection with this overall task and strategy.

We also have to work sort of the dark side, if you will. We’re going to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussions, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in.

And so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.

RUSSERT: There have been restrictions placed on the United States intelligence gathering, a reluctance to use unsavory characters, those who violate human rights, to assist in intelligence gathering. Will we lift some of those restrictions?

CHENEY: Well, I think so. I think one of the byproducts, if you will, of this tragic set of circumstances is that we’ll see a very thorough sort of reassessment of how we operate and the kinds of people we deal with. If you want to deal only with sort of officially approved, certified good guys, you’re not going to find out what the bad guys are doing. You need to be able to penetrate these organizations. You need to have on the payroll some very unsavory characters, if, in fact, you’re going to be able to learn all that needs to be learned in order to forestall these kinds of activities.

It is a mean, nasty, dangerous, dirty business out there, and we have to operate in that arena. I’m convinced we can do it. We can do it successfully. But we need to make certain that we have not tied the hands, if you will, of our intelligence communities in terms of accomplishing their mission.

RUSSERT: These terrorists play by a whole set of different rules. It’s going to force us, in your words, to get mean, dirty and nasty in order to take them on. And they should realize there will be more than simply a pinprick bombing. (all emphasis mine)

Cheney’s words here should’ve been a bit troubling at the time. But hearing them now, when we can look back across ten years of our waging the “War on Terror”, these words are terribly poignant and prophetic. Here we had the Vice President unequivocally saying that we shouldn’t let whatever prior commitments to morals and human rights we had in this area get in the way of pursuing total victory.

If there’s worth in reflecting on what 9/11 has actually meant for us as a nation over the last ten years, that interview I think is a great place to start. Knowing what we now know and seeing what we have seen of course, it completely foreshadows all that was to come: torture, indefinite secret detentions, preemptive war, a hyper-security state, etc.

Ironically, Cheney and others simultaneously wanted us to believe that we were merely attacked because of the good things about our society: i.e., our freedom, our democracy, our commitment to human rights. Earlier in the interview, in fact, regarding foreign policy and our relationship with Israel, Cheney said, “We’re not about to change our policies or change our basic fundamental beliefs.”

One might question just what Cheney meant by “fundamental beliefs” there, but the inherent paradox should’ve then be very clear: We had to defeat the terrorists, we were told, because they hated our democratic values and our way of life; yet, they supposedly posed such a unique and terrifying threat that we now had to compromise major aspects of those values and way of life in order to defeat them.

And just who is it, if anyone, that really “wins” that fight in the end?

The track has such a raw quality, because every element (the band, vocals, symphony, boys choir) was recorded live, in one take at Abbey Road Studios. I hadn’t realized there was video of that recording until just the other day. It’s a joyous thing to behold. Watch via youtube below:

[Youtube link]

For my part, after giving the album one full sitting, via NPR’s First Listen, I found myself quite taken with most of it. This was amplified for me by the fact that I’ve never really been that taken with Bon Iver before and had no particular expectations going in.

What quickly grabbed me about this record is how much fuller, richer, and varied it is in the instrumentation, arrangement, sounds, and dynamics department. Founder / Frontman Justin Vernon’s unmistakable voice is still very much present here, providing pleasantly floating and generally engaging melodies. But, on first impression, it seems that primarily the warmth of the fuller and more diverse instrumentation and arrangements has successfully pulled me in in a way that previous, more sparse Bon Iver releases have not.

Anyway, they’ve got quite a lock down on the album prior to release, it seems, so the only streaming / embeddable thing I could find to share is the video for the first single, ‘Calgary’. It’s not my favorite on the record, but it’s easily the most up-tempo, pop-ish track of the lot, for whatever that’s worth. Of course, at least until the album’s release tomorrow, you can also listen to the full record and/or individual songs at the NPR site. Highly recommended tracks: ‘Perth’; ‘Holocene’; and ‘Beth/Rest’. Go Listen here.

With regard to the idea of whether or not you have a right to health care, you have to realize what that implies; it’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.

Basically, once you imply a belief in a right to someone’s services – Do you have a right to plumbing? Do you have a right to water? Do you have a right to food? … You’re basically saying that you believe in slavery… that you believe in taking and extracting from another person. Our founding documents were very clear about this. You have a right to pursue happiness, but there’s no guarantee of physical comfort [or] concrete items. In order to give something concrete or someone’s service, you gotta take it from someone. So there’s an implied threat of force. …

Before I get to my remarks, I believe the good Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable has something he would like to briefly add in response:

While it’s tempting to merely scoff and laugh Paul’s statement off, I point to it, because I think it helps clue us in to something significant about the absolute property rights-minded libertarian / tea party-ish folks that occupy a large corner of the right wing.

When it comes to things like taxes, health care, and this-or-that government regulation, we hear so much bellowing from this crowd about theft, forced labor, and imagined slavery and oppression. Yet, if you press people like Paul, you’ll find that their preoccupation with absolute property rights causes them severe discomfort with moments in our history when government stepped in to curtail actual slavery and oppression, and/or some discriminatory injustice and expand human rights.

For example, last year Rand Paul got even more attention for expressing his disapproval of the section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which outlawed discrimination in privately-owned public accomodations. Paul was basically saying that, while racial discrimination is bad and government shouldn’t engage in it, private business owners nevertheless should be left free to engage in such discrimination if they so choose.

A lot of people seemed shocked by this, and I wondered why. This is, after all, the son of Ron Paul whose similar rigid dogma surrounding property rights we should be familiar with by now. And sure enough, Ron Paul recently told Chris Matthews pretty much the same thing as his son regarding the ’64 Civil Rights Bill.

I think this is pretty important stuff to realize. There are quite a few things I don’t like about the Pauls’ brand of libertarianism. But I think the line was really first drawn for me when I looked a little closer at Ron Paul, and especially some of his more doctrinaire friends like Lew Rockwell. It was then I discovered that many in this cohort tend to essentially be apologists for the South’s ‘massive resistance’ to desegregation and even the Confederacy, so deep is their unwavering commitment to absolute property rights and ‘states’ rights’, and their hatred of the federal government.

What all this boils down to is a position that stubbornly and cruelly holds property rights above people, and most other related concerns, regardless of the negative social consequences or imbalance of economic power. Now, that’s not to say such libertarians necessarily agree with or like any such negative consequences. It is merely to say that their worldview demands that they shrug and allow for those consequences, while refusing to accept any direct government / legal action to address such problems.

Of course, the irony, as Brad DeLong points out, is that these “get the government out” types implicitly want, nay, need, the government to protect and enforce the preferences of the propertied, even if those preferences severely disadvantage and limit the liberty (or shall we say limit ‘the pursuit of happiness’) of others. But then they apparently can’t abide the notion that the same government that gives their property claims teeth should also be able to temper those claims in the name of protecting the rights and equality of other members of the public and/or other elements of the public good.

So whenever you hear the Pauls, et al, going on about more freedom and liberty, you’d do good to first ask yourself, “more freedom and liberty for whom and at whose expense?”

I was satisfied by the download, but now I’m happy to see that the band is apparently officially releasing the vinyl single tomorrow, June 14. In the meantime, you can hear the two songs below. They’re quite nice and feel a bit reminiscent of the band’s 2003 album, Hail to the Thief. 

And in other good news, I learned today that Radiohead is going to be releasing a series of 12-inch singles of remixes from The King of Limbs. The first will come out July 4 and feature remixes from Caribou and Jacques Green. Sounds fun.