Today’s ruling by the California Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of gay marriage throws yet another twist into the 2008 Presidential campaign. A similar ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 2004 helped to mobilize social conservatives-especially in the swing state of Ohio—to come out in election-winning droves to vote for George W. Bush. Bush and the GOP enticed conservative voters by dangling the prospects pushing through a marriage protection constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in the second Bush term.

Alas, like many campaign promises, this one went unfulfilled. Disappointing, to be sure, for social conservatives but lack of action on Bush’s part meant the anti—gay marriage drum could be kept to beat on in the 2008 campaign (much as much touted anti-abortion, term limit and balanced budget constitutional amendments have been dangled by the GOP in front of conservative voters for decades.)

I wrote in April of 2004 that the Massachusetts gay marriage decision had probably handed the fall election to the GOP on a silver wedding platter. Turned out I was correct. This time, however, the impact of the California decision of the fall election will be more complicated. That’s because, of course, GOP standard bearer St. John The Moderate broke with his party in 2004 to vote against the Marriage Protection amendment. The California decision will agitate and invigorate social conservatives but, with McCain leading the GOP ticket, they have nowhere to electorally go. Sure, there may be a big proposition fight in California over a proposed anti-gay marriage state constitutional amendment that may or may not make the November ballot. But this brouhaha will hurt McCain more than it helps him as it will soak up state and national political money that otherwise might have found its way into his campaign pockets. It won’t provide him with anything approaching the pro-Bush push the gay marriage issue provided the GOP in 2004.

Hillary Clinton supporters are increasingly saying they’d vote for John McCain over Barack Obama (up to almost 30% of the pro-Hillary voters in West Virginia, for instance.) If that happens Obama’s electability drops significantly.

Meanwhile conservatives are expressing increasing doubts about John McCain–especially after his remarks on global warming. (just listen to the talking heads of conservative talk radio lambast the fellow. You’d think McCain was Jimmy Carter’s long lost brother.) If McCain doesn’t come out against the California gay marriage decision (which he can’t do without looking like he’s doing what he’d be doing if he did it—pandering too the grossest extreme) social conservatives are liable to stay home come in election-losing droves. Worse for McCain, social conservative might vault the GOP to vote in protest for third party candidates yet unnamed, like former Republican representative and bane to Bill Clinton’s existence Bob Barr who’s trying to secure the Libertarian party nomination. Losing conservative voters makes McCain’s electability drops significantly.

Which leads to the interesting conclusion that, come November, neither Obama, McCain or anyone else can win! Constitutional Monarchy, anyone?

Mike Aguirre is, once again, probably right. Under the strong Mayor system of Government the Council will have to, today, vote yes, no, or defer on the Mayor’s strong-armed proposal to end the City’s defined benefit retirement plan for new City employees. The plan will save a paltry (and, in the Pension deficit scheme of things, $49 million over eleven years is small fiscal potatoes, indeed) at the expense of souring whatever sweetness is left in the municipal waters sipped by management and labor. It will drive any ambitious and qualified person seeking municipal employment to other municipalities within the county and state. And the two-tier pension system will bring even more discord to City Hall as animosity grows between old hands still covered by the defined-benefit plan (like Jerry Sanders) and the newbies. It’s bad policy, through and through.

Jerry Sanders has cast his lot against the much maligned municipal employees and their unions. He’s also cast his lot against good governance. The Council shouldn’t throw him a life preserver and try and modify (probably illegally) his labor plan. Jerry’s a strong mayor now. It’s time for him to swim or sink on his own.

Let’m sink, City Council.

Just Say No.

Last Sunday, May 4, the Marine Amphibious assault ship Peleliu and its Task Force departed San Diego for points unknown (or, at least, undisclosed) in support of the war on terror. Might someone have an idea where such points unknown in the war on terror might be? Perhaps a Place that is spelled like “Iraq” but for one critical ending consonant change? The Peleliu is the point at the end of the Marine spear. Where might it be inserted next?

Sorry I’ve been off line for a bit, my frequent reader. I’ve been battling migraines which leaves precious little time except to get my day job (which often extends into nights and weekends) done. I’ll try and post a few before the all important, probably won’t change much June Primary.

Change much like City Hall’s reaction to the latest shoe/minor atomic bombshell whichno-one seemed to notice dropped last month by the SEC. A month ago the SEC charged five former San Diego officials, including “Former-by-virtue-of-having-been-defenestrated-by-then-mayor-Dick-the-Murph-Murphy” Michael Uberuaga, for fraud in misleading Wall Street investors over the City’s finances while raising a quarter billion in bonds. Gee, isn’t that what Mike Aguirre’s been saying since the beginning of time: That a City the size of San Diego doesn’t go down the financial tubes merely due to incompetence, good intentions gone awry or lousy breaks? That it takes the determined, deliberate effort of a large number of people more willing to break laws and violate ethics than risk their jobs and careers by telling people the truth about how badly they’d screwed things up? Aguirre has been saying there is a culture of such corruption at the top reaches of San Diego government for years. And been pilloried for it. Usually by those in the top reaches of San Diego government—and those who benefit from them being there.

I’ve waited for the last month to see City leaders—on the Council, in the Mayor’s office—express the sort of outrage they should over these SEC charges. What the SEC is telling San Diego is that its body Bureaucracy and Politics is infected, diseased, corrupt. And the City has, in the last month, done nothing to bleed any of these noxious humours from its municipal blood, or even acknowledged just how damning the SEC action is.

Of course, this is the same City that has seen three councilmembers indicted for corruption, two convicted, and a Mayor resigning in failure and responded with a “business as usual,” put a nice, former cop in the figurehead position and life goes on.

Is it any wonder the City is still out of the bonds markets, months after Jerry Sanders announced he saw the light at the end of the bondless tunnel?

Let me tell you about two cities lying across the American border from each other. You guess what towns they are.

The first is a relatively affluent place. Not everyone is living great but most people at least have reasonably decent houses in safe, clean neighborhoods. People can park their cars with out undoing worry they’ll be stolen or broken in to and walk the streets and parks without fear of crime. The town is a thriving tourist destination, with travelers from around the world coming to see and experience the local sights. There are numerous upscale hotels and more moderate motels, plenty of good restaurants and even a few nice casinos for visitors and locals to enjoy. There is a good medical system in place and enough business and industry to provide a decent leaving for most. Unemployment and poverty are low. The local and national governments, while not universally beloved, have done a good job over the years of maintaining infrastructure and helping their people to achieve a globally high quality of life.

The other town is, to be polite, a total mess. Unemployment is in double digits with large number of residents living in poverty. Drugs, crime, gangs and violence are rampant. The government has cracked down on the large crime cartels but they still have great sway. One drives with the doors locked and avoids driving through large swaths of the town if at all possible. Walking, even in the public parks, can be dangerous at certain times of day. Housing is in disrepair, with the number of boarded up windows rivaling the number with pane glass still intact. While the town has the same opportunities to attract tourists as it’s neighbor across the border, fear of violence, urban squalor, the general disrepair of roads and neighborhoods has greatly diminished the number of visitors willing to cross the international line. Government is seen as corrupt and incompetent. A general feeling of hopelessness pervades the population.

Okay, what two towns am I describing? San Diego and Tijuana you might think? Not in this case. I’m talking about a tale of two Niagaras: Niagara Falls, Ontario and Niagara Falls, New York, both of which I just returned from.

I was called back to the Luna ancestral homeland (both my parents are from Niagara Falls, NY and I have second, third, fourth and thirty-eight cousins, most of which I haven’t seen in years if ever, on both sides of the border) unexpectedly last Tuesday. My mother’s 87 year old sister (my Aunt and godmother) had a massive stroke and was on life support. I flew out with my wife to be with her and her son in her final hours. For those of you who have been through it, you know the drill. Lots of grief followed by a whirlwind of funeral homes, relatives, dinners, shared memories, more grief, some laughter, the melancholy of life slipped away, a few new memories and then the journey home. Life goes on.

The most vivid memory I take back with me is just how bad–economically, socially, politically, culturally—things had gotten in Niagara Falls. Back in the sixties and seventies, when my family lived in Pittsburgh, we used to make the journey home a couple of times a year. Even then Niagara was a town in decline, part of the rusting bucket of east coast industrial America. Downtown was looking shabby, the chemical and manufacturing companies that had formed the backbone of the local economy were scaling back.

Now it looks like a throwback to the inner city poverty I remember seeing in the worst areas of Pittsburgh back in the ‘60s. Only it’s the 21st century and it’s pretty much the whole town of Niagara. Block after block of formerly tidy, working and middle class homes now reduced to ruin, residents mired in intractable poverty and unemployment. Good news: you can buy a three story brick house in Niagara within easy walking distance of one of the world’s great natural wonders for around seventeen thousand dollars. Bad news: the house will probably have a boarded-up house on one side from which drugs are being sold and an empty, trash filled lot on the other where the old house had been burned for the insurance money. Given that the median income in the area is less than twenty-thousand dollars, not many locals can even scrape up the seventeen k anymore, anyway.

Oh, and more bad news: if you did try to walk to one of the world’s greatest natural wonders you’d run a good chance of being mugged. That’s what happened to my elderly uncle a few years back when he went to take the same walk around the Falls he’d been doing for eighty years. He seldom leaves his apartment, now.

Industry has largely left the region leaving nothing behind except rotting factory shells, unemployment and toxic wastes from decades of chemical industry carelessness. (It is the land of Love Canal, after all.) The only thriving business is the Indian casino in the middle of downtown (or what’s left of it, Main Street being eight blocks of shuttered, abandoned buildings). Located in what had been the Convention Center, conventioneers long since having given up on the decaying former honeymoon capital of the nation and defecting to the Canadian side or Vegas, the casino’s clientele consists mostly of locals, disproportionately old, spending their welfare, social security and disability checks for the hope of winning a big enough jackpot to maybe get out of Dodge.

My wife and I stayed, meanwhile, on the Canadian side of the Falls, traveling back and forth across the Rainbow Bridge to spend time with my cousin and attend to the funeral preparation and consummation. The Canadian side is not a paradise—there are some ratty areas, particularly where my Great-Grandmother used to live off Ferry drive. But most of the town is in reasonably good shape and the tourist areas are thriving, the hotels beautiful and reasonably priced, even with the weakness of the US dollar, and the casinos are filled with well-healed international tourists. (And, of course, the place is also filled with Canadians, a people so polite that if you ran one of them over with your car they would apologize for having smeared

Barack Obama got into a flap while I was away for having said that small town America is “bitter,” clinging to religion and guns. Senator Obama is wrong. No-one I met in Niagara Falls seemed particularly bitter about the unfortunate circumstances they now found themselves. Depressed and melancholy, yes. Depressed over how plain depressing it was to live in such a depressing, declining place. Melancholy over how much things had changed for the worst over the course of lives that spanned decades. But bitter, no. The one word that best captures the zeitgeist of Niagara is “sad.” Everyone is sad over how bad things are. Everyone wonders how things came to this.

The last time we drove back into Niagara Falls, USA across the Rainbow bridge we chatted with the young INS agent manning a border control booth. After talking briefly about life in San Diego (you mention you are from San Diego to anybody who’s not from San Diego and they tend to have yearning tales of how they’ve been to San Diego once and want to go back that they want to share with you…) we remarked on just how sad things had become in the town. She said, “You know, it’s been down hill ever since they drove the mob out.”

Niagara Falls was actually better managed when the mob ran the place. How does it come to that?

Hillary Clinton said it takes a village to raise a child. I say it takes the determined effort of many people – corrupt and/or negligent government, short-sighted business, rapacious criminals—to ruin a once vibrant town filled with hard working, god-fearing, country-loving people.

How you bring back communities like Niagara Falls and all the Niagara Falls across this nation is the most important and least discussed elephant in the national living room of this Presidential campaign. Given the economic storm that is forming, perhaps the candidates for our nation’s highest office—and we, the nation as a whole—ought start fretting more actively over the plight of our Niagara’s, for what happened to them can easily happen to the rest of the villages, towns and cities of this proud Republic.

(And yes, I’ve used the title of this piece before but whaddahey.)

With my post below on Iraq, I’m off for a while (spring break). See you all (metaphorically) back on these funny pages sometime next week. If you are bored beyond repair with all this free holiday time on your hands I give you an early gift for your Easter Basket (feel free to return it for something you really want. You’ll find below the preface and first chapter of a story I’ve been plugging at: a worrisome warning of a tale of what 21st century American politics could become subsequent to the next, even larger terrorist attack. I’ll post addiitional chapters down the pike subject to your interest or protests….

(And apologies for the line-breaks between paragraphs–can’t get WordPress to indent for me..)

And To The Republic
(A work in progress by Carl J. Luna.)
Preface

The bourbon was particularly good. He inhaled the smoky aroma, enjoying the glint of the amber liquid within the cut crystal, savoring the woodsy flavor, the taste of fiery peat, as it rolled across his tongue.

Thirty years old. Perfect. That the bourbon came out of the cellar of a man now dead, a man he despised and in whose death he took no small relish, only made the liquor all the more precious. That he had helped engineer the man’s death—he hadn’t pulled the trigger but he had most certainly done everything but cock the gun and place it in the poor bastard’s hand—only added to the moment. And that he had managed to buy the deceased’s entire wine and spirits cellar at fire sale prices—the desperate widow trying vainly to fend off the voracious creditors, the IRS first amongst these–completed the tour de force. All he had to do to achieve total victory over his vanquished foe would be to sleep with the wife.

But he wouldn’t do that. He was happily married. And he was a good Christian man. An agent of the Hand of God, indeed. God’s axe with which to hew and clear away the treacherous. And there were a lot more trees in that particular forest to fall.

He gazed out of his private office window down the steps of the Capitol and across the mall. There at the far end, past the World War II memorial, past the great testament to Washington, old Abe sat in his marble temple. He toasted the slain president.

Lincoln had been correct. Well, maybe not about violating the rights of states and, thereby, siring the power hungry whore that would become the Federal Government. But he was right that a house divided against itself could not stand. And the house of the United States had been divided for too long. Divided between the patriotic and the scurrilous, the god-fearing and the profane, the right and the wrong. It was time to put the house of the United States in order. The divine Hand had marked the United States as His chosen people, His most exceptional people. And he would be an agent of His Hand, clearing from the path those who would bring their own country low.

He would crush and destroy anyone who got in the way of his divine mission. For the greater good, of course. And for the power. The power to finally reshape America as it should be, to finally complete the revolution begun thirty years, four presidents and two terrorist attacks ago. And he would finish that revolution, vanquishing its foes for a hundred years – a hundred hundred years—thereby guaranteeing America’s exceptional role in the affairs of God and man in perpetuity. It was war. Jihad. And he would win it.
He took another long sip of the bourbon, allowing it to roll across his tongue, producing a most delightful burning sensation. He swallowed. That was enough. Just a finger of the delightful fluid. He put the glass back on the sideboard. Temperance in all things had always been his motto. All things but the accumulation of power, of course.

His private phone rang. He crossed over to his massive, hand carved desk and lifted the receiver.

“Yes?”

“This is the White House operator. Please stand bye for the President of the United States.”

POTUS on the line for him. He smiled.

“Mister Speaker,” the receiver reverberated with the familiar, deep southern drawl of the current President of the United States.”

“Mister President, a pleasure,” he drawled back.

“I want to thank you for all you did today, Mikey. I always know I can depend on your, boy.”

“Anything I can do, Mister President. I am always at your service.”

“I’m flying down to the house this weekend. Want you and Belle to drop by.”

“That’s most kind of you, sir.” He would be flying south this weekend, anyway. Always had to work on the base, even as strong and resurgent as it was. Perhaps he would have time to drop in on the leader of the increasingly freer world. But business came before pleasure. And he had a significant piece of business to deal with this weekend. Perhaps not as pleasing as the business which had placed that particularly fine bourbon in his possession, but just as, if not more, important. “Belle and I will most certainly try and take you up on your kind offer.”

“Atta boy. Night, Mikey.” The phone disconnected. The Speaker of the House of the United States of America returned the phone to its cradle. He walked back to his window and looked out over the mall. He could just see a portion of the White House down Pennsylvania Avenue.

POTUS.

Maybe some day, he smiled. Hell, even with the repeal of the 22nd Amendment, the current holder of that office couldn’t hang on forever. And as he continued to gather more and more of the reins of real power, well, who would be the most natural heir to the mantle of the revolution they had been forging, despite the occasional interrruption over the last forty years?

He looked back over at the bourbon and briefly considered having one more small glass, but rejected the idea. Discipline in all things was another one of his mottos. It was discipline that had brought him to the heights of power. It would be discipline that would bring him to the absolute summit of power.

And God help anyone who got in his way.

Chapter 1

“Please stop by an see me before you leave—Travis.”

I looked at the note for a long moment, the usual anger and nausea I felt whenever Travis invaded my life swelling from bowels to throat. I fought off the temptation to crumple the note into a wad and chuck it into the corner wastebasket even as my fingers, sensing their master’s mood, began to close in on the foul little missive. Travis would want to see the note—in tact—in my hand. A final confirmation that I was indeed doing his bidding, the summons alive and answered.

Travis. What a piece of work. He could just as easily have left me a voice mail or emailed me with his “request.” But taking the time to deliver hand-written notes to people’s mailboxes was just another of his many anal retentive—and effective—ways to monitor and control. We now were supposed to check our boxes twice a day, as opposed to the once in whenever the hell I got around to it of years past. Years long past, so they felt, even though they really weren’t. A lot can change in a man’s life in a short time.

Miss stopping by your box twice a day and you ran the risk of missing a message from the big T. Oh, it wasn’t like that would be the end of your career or anything. You certainly wouldn’t be bundled up and shipped off to Bismarck. But Travis would make note of it as he checked the boxes that night on his way out to be sure they were empty, their contents picked up by their owners. An orphaned note would be another tick against you. Just a little tick. Get enough, though, and you would be ticked out.

No, not to Bismarck. None of us were that important. Just to the unemployment line. Where, with the endless recession and all (or, as the Administration preferred to call the “R” word, “net positive economic growth”) a displaced academic could cool his heels for quite a long time. Not too long, of course, what with criminalization last year of long-term unemployment. They wouldn’t send you to Bismarck for that, either, of course. Just to county detention where you would be subcontracted to one of the manpower corps as part of your sentencing. Impressed pool cleaning in the tonier neighborhoods of town not being my particular thing, I had managed to get into the habit of checking my box the requisite twice a day.

I carefully folded the note and slipped it into the breast pocket of my Dockers. While the new dress codes—professors and staff now were expected to wear full business regalia to the campus, from shoes you couldn’t play sports in to the real deal jacket and tie combo– were both insulting and juvenile, they did mean I also had at least one pocket available at all times to tuck something into. Couldn’t do that so easily back in the T- or Polo-shirt wearing days. Change can do a man good.

I emptied the rest of the box’s contents – nothing but memos and other miscellaneous paperwork that could just as easily been emailed but, if they had been, would have left nothing to put into our boxes to justify the twice a day pick up requirement. One must always marvel of the self-reinforcing circular logic that marks a bureaucracy. Or a dictatorship.

As I left I carefully closed and locked the mailroom door with a swipe of my ID card– another protocol, to protect the memos and, more importantly, Travis’ notes from paper thieves, no doubt–and walked back towards my office on the other side of the building. Pulling my cell phone from yet another of those darned convenient jacket pockets, I checked the time. Four fifteen P.M. A brilliant piece of control, that. Schedule a face to face just after four-thirty to be sure the talent wasn’t skipping out of work a few minutes early. Not that any of us really could, any more. I slid my ID card through my office lock, resulting in an audible, mechanical “click.” The lock scanner not only read my card and opened the door, it also recorded my entry time. When I left I had to slide the card again – a ridiculous extra effort, as the door could just as easily been left in a default locked setting. But, then, they wouldn’t be able to gather the data on when I left. And Travis wouldn’t have all those files delivered to him weekly to pour over to be sure all the children had stayed in their rooms when they were supposed to. And anyone cutting out early would eventually be detected. And they would receive a tick.

Tick. Tick.

But, in 2014, that was the lot of most people, college professors included. And I am a college professor. Or, at least, I was. An academic. An academic living in a dictatorship. At least a developing dictatorship. A developing dictatorship called the United States of America. Not that anyone actually called it that. Dictatorship, I mean. Developing or otherwise.

They would send you to Bismarck for that. Ask Streisand.

You can find my comments on this, the fifth year anniversary of the Iraq War in the pages and bytes of this week’s City Beat. Meet you all at Dick’s Last Resort (that would be the one run by Dick Cheney in that party capital, Baghdad) after work for the party. First round of Mujehedin Martinis–Bombay (emphasis on the “Bomb”) Star Saphire straight up and dirty. With, of course, an IED instead of an olive.

Cheers.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Mike Aguirre must have been born under a lucky star. Which will serve him well through June though it might go into eclipse by November.

The City Council doesn’t like him, the entrenched city bureaucrats don’t like him, the city labor unions don’t like him, the cops don’t like him, the Chargers want him to fall in the bay (right in front of where they’d like that new, downtown stadium, if possible, the Union Trib loathes him, the Mayor is sticking pins into his little Mikey voodoo doll and the public has become progressively less enamored with him. (Rumors that his dog has declared “undecided” in a recent poll appear unfounded—I don’t think he has a dog. I do hear that his fish is looking at him with suspicion, however….)

And a recent Competitive Edge poll (the local gold standard on the public pulse) shows Mike Agonistes losing to all three of his major competitors: Judge Jan, President Peters and, well, Brian Maienschein—a guy so blandly nice that its hard to even come up with a handle for him. (Note to self: Call W on this one. He’s always got a good nickname or two…) Goldsmith beats him by 23 points, the other two by less than half that.

Conventional wisdom has Agonizing Mike surviving the June primary with maybe 25% of the vote, enough to win in a field divided between Aguirre and everybody running as “Not Aguirre.” But then he goes bye-bye come the November big show.

Not so fast. The assumption here is that those who will vote for different candidates to replace Aguirre June will rally around the second place winner in the fall—which, according to the CE poll, seems to be how likely voters are currently thinking.

But likely voters are still seeing June as a race between Aguirre and his competitors. It’s not. The race is now between Goldsmith, Peters and Maienschein. And, according to the CE poll, Goldsmith is in the lead in the race for second—but not so far out in front (17.6% to Peters 14.2% to Maienschein’s 9.5%) that he’s a juggernaut. With attorney Dan Coffey dropping out of the race and endorsing Peters, if his 2.1% of supporters throw in with Prez Peters he and Goldsmith are almost tied.

Had Jan Goldsmith been allowed to challenge Mike Aguirre Mano-a-Mano without the other wanna-be Mike whackers piling on Aguirre’s plight would have been dire indeed. Given the abysmally low voter-turnout likely in June—consequence of the early March Prez Primary—which would favor a more conservative candidate like Goldsmith, Aguirre might have been turned into a lame duck before the June Gloom had cleared.

But it’s not. Peters and Maienschein, both realizing their paycheck ends this year, decided a) they didn’t like Aguirre enough to run; and b) they might be able to beat him. (And, if either was the only candidate against Aguirre in June, they might have—though Peters was and is clearly the more logical City Council candidate to take vengeance on Menacing Mikey.)

So now if either hopes to advance to the title bout in November they have one job: convince the anti-Aguirre voters that “Mr. Ferret” (as a Republican assemblyman Goldsmith’s major accomplishment was to unsuccessfully push a bill to legalize the private ownership of the furry little rodents) is not the guy to take on Mauling Mike. That means they have to aim their energies at making Goldsmith look bad.

For both Peters and Maienschein this means showing San Diego voters that Goldsmith is a) an outsider originally from Poway (where he was Mayor) and who had to move his residency from Coronado to Little Italy so as not to appear the carpet-bagger he is); b) that Goldsmith is an outsider from Poway (where he was Mayor) and who had to move his residency from Coronado to Little Italy so as not to appear the carpet-bagger he is) who has had almost no experience in local San Diego City politics; and c) that Goldsmith is an outsider from Poway (where he was Mayor) and who had to move his residency from Coronado to Little Italy so as not to appear the carpet-bagger he is) has the worst hair in San Diego politics. Peters can also throw in that, being a Democrat, he is the safe Democratic alternative to Aguirre compared to the other two Republicans.

Goldsmith, meanwhile, is taking the high road of running against Aguirre as the generic establishment candidate. But if he doesn’t pay attention he could well be pulled down by the hounds of ambition nipping at his heels. Which could yield the unusual result of having two Democrats running in a City-wide general election for a higher office—Peters and Aguirre. Which, also, could also be the best chance for anti-Aguirreistas to remove him from office.

Come fall the political landscape changes dramatically. Especially if Barrack Obama is the candidate. Come November the combination of an energized Democratic base (and the city is now majority Democratic in registration) and depressed Republicans base (at least conservatives, of which San Diego has more than its share) uninspired by their party nominee could translate into a surge of voters more inclined to go Mikey should he be running against establishment Republican Goldsmith. If Peters is the opponent it becomes much murkier.

And, probably, nastier, as all the city’s dirty political laundry gets recycled yet again.

My money (all $7.39—don’t let my kids know or they’ll raid Dad’s wallet…) is that Aguirre survives into a second term by another narrow margin.

I find it interesting that Dennis Prager has not responded directly to my own email to him last week , criticizing him for having stated that the internment of Americans of Japanese descent had no racist dimension and asking him to reconsider that position and retract it. He did respond to a member of the Japanese-American community who was alerted by my complaint and wrote in to him. Here is the text of his response:

Dear Ms. XXXXXX:
I never in my life “spoke out against the Japanese.” Any references to Japanese-Americans I ever expressed have been in the positive.
You will notice that the professor, another one of those people who yell “racism” where there is none and thereby damage the fight against real racism, never once quoted me directly.
I did say that the internment, which I consider a moral wrong, was not animated by racism. I still believe that. Unlike the professor, quick to judge America 66 years after Pearl Harbor, I do not believe that Franklin Roosevelt and all the other Democrats who supported him were racists.
Thank you for contacting me. Dennis Prager

Okay, Dennis, you want me to quote you directly? No problemo.

The context of Mr. Prager’s comments was a segment he was doing towards the end of his show Thursday entitled: Has America been Good for you? (You can listen to the broadcast yourself here ).

The segment began with Mr. Prager saying he wanted to discuss a proposition he had recently gotten a Hindu Professor to agree to that US is least xenophobic country in the world. (Which, is in itself, not an unreasonable argument, by any means.) His first caller, a Kathy from Granada Hills stated she had moved to the US from Costa Rica in 1977 when she was ten years old and that she had ever felt prejudice or racism (in Florida, Virginia or Boston until she moved to LA. Now she finds herself being categorized as now Hispanic. She said it was “Probably because of the kind of foreigners we have here and their not so American behavior.” Prager’s response was:

“the irony is the more homogenous white America has become for you, that’s been less xenophobic.” He continued: “What has happened is the left has played the pol—remember, race geneder and class, those are the three determinants of human behavior for the left, and so they are far more race, ethnicity oriented and celebratory than American values are and mainstream America is. And so you are in a place which is very, very politically correct on racial/ethnic matters and, therefore, far more sensitive to it in a way that draws attention to it. Where as the average American couldn’t care less.”

In other words whatever feeling of exclusion the caller was feeling came from left wing political ideas. As opposed to right wing, anti-Hispanic rhetoric which has flourished in recent years, particularly in Southern California and particularly on AM talk radio and which, of course, has not the slightest tinge of xenophobia about it. (The Minutemen are, of course, as concerned about illegal Irish immigrants in Boston and collusional Canucks sneaking across the Canadian border as they are about Hispanics coming up from the south.) Or because the increase in the number of organized anti-Hispanic hate groups (up by more than 200 over the last five years according to the Southern Poverty Law Center in a report release just yesterday.) But, then, they must be just another collection of looney liberals. Prager’s formulation is simple: anything perceived as wrong in America is the product of America-hating leftist propaganda. All is perfect in Pleasantville, USA. I

Indeed, according to Mr. Prager’s logic, once all Hispanic-Americans—or Americans of whatever hyphenation—become more homogenous to White Americans the more they will be accepted by White America. What some may perceive as racism or discrimination therefore becomes, what? The fair price to be paid for daring to be different and heterogenous?

The next caller, Jennifer in Des Moines Iowa, teed up the Internment issue. She began by saying she hadn’t ever really heard the expression xenophobic used to describe American politics. But she went on to talk about the internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during WWII. Mr. Prager immediately corrected her saying,
“They weren’t concentration camps. The word shouldn’t be used. They were detention camps. It’s important that we not use the term.”

As I pointed out in my blog yesterday, Dictionary.com defines “concentration camp” as:
“a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc., esp. any of the camps established by the Nazis prior to and during World War II for the confinement and persecution of prisoners. [Origin: 1900–05, applied orig. to camps where noncombatants were placed during the Boer War]”

Based on this standard definition of the term calling the Interment Camps “concentration camps” is, at least technically, correct. You could also call them Prison camps, State detention facilities or even Coercion-based Year-Round Summer Camps With Attitude. I concede Mr. Prager’s underlying point, however, that the term “concentration camp” is historically and politically charged—though so, too, is the underlying issue of Internment. If the purpose of using the term is to equate the treatment of Americans of Japanese descent to Jewish and other peoples incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps the usage is totally inappropriate. The Nazi camps were death camps dedicated to one goal: systematic genocide. The American Internment camps were driven by security concerns and those incarcerated, while seeing their general standing of living decline, were not treated with brutality or subjected to excessive (as in life ending) hardships.

If the point of using the term Concentration Camp is, however, to point out that the mass detention of peoples of a particular social, ethnic or racial group without probable cause and due process, even without the presence of mass lethality, a direct perversion of the rule oof law and the Constitution, then I believe its usage is appropriate. In any event, if the people who went into such camps (which would include by own niece’s grandparents) and their descendents chose to use that term I find it inappropriate for those who did not share this experience to quibble with them.

Jennifer went on to say that, with 9/11 she saw rising suspicion of people looking Arabic. She reported she knew of a gas station who’s windows were smashed in after 9/11. She said, “One thing I think that should be thought about too, is, you know, that we can get kind of suspicious of anybody who’s a little different from us when things start happening.”

Prager responded: “Well, those are two examples and they are…America’s embarrassed about the issue of the internment camps, the Japanese-American internment camps. The issues is that we were at war with a country that had attacked us and then had committed enormous atrocities in Asia, and there was a fear that the, the…those who had moved here from that country may have a split loyalty in that war. Whether that fear was founded or not I don’t know. But it wasn’t based on racism, it was based on—on a, on a concern—and it may have been an illegitimate concern-but it was based on a concern—I mean afterall, other Asians were not locked up. IT was only a matter of Japanese and since there was such a, a deep, deep emotional connection to Japan and to the Emperor it was thought of—by a liberal administration, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration—that these people should be removed from society for the time being—they were well fed, they were taken care of, they were returned to their jobs. It is an embarrassing chapter in American history, but it is not specifically racist. It wasn’t done against any other Asian group or against any other different racial group. They were the people who attacked us, who were committing all of these atrocities and there was that worry. “

An “embarrassment,” Mr. Prager? (As opposed to, say, an injustice, an abomination, a disgrace? ) Why was the internment of Americans of Japanese descent for no greater reason than they had a Japanese lineage an “embarrassment” if, as you say, it was a rational response based on legitimate security concerns of a nation that had just been attacked by another nation engaged in atrocities in Asia?

You state that Japanese-Americans had “deep, deep emotional connection to Japan and to the Emperor,” because of which, the implication being, Japanese-Americans must not have assimilated as well into American society as had other immigrants and, therefore, their loyalty could be challenged prima facie without any additional proof or verification.

Do you, Mr. Prager, have any evidence—any qualified studies, facts, measurements—to demonstrate that Japanese-Americans indeed could reasonably be seen as suffering from “split loyalty” any more so that Italian Americans attending Son’s of Italy Dinners or German-Americans attending anti—war Bund meetings? Or is that just a gut-instinct because making this critical assumption about Japanese-American loyalties is necessary to advance any rational argument that the Internments had the slightest real justification? Given that the overwhelmingly vast majority of the interned proved themselves to be loyal Americans – so loyal that, even after their internment, they did not actively protest their unjust treatment by their own government—a reasonable person might just have to concede that, indeed, in retrospect, there was absolutely no justification—security or otherwise—to justify the forced incarceration of over one hundred thousand American citizens.

You do state that concern over Japanese-American loyalties may have been “illegitimate.” Yet just before that you state that the fear of split loyalty may have been justified – you just didn’t know? So why not give the benefit of your doubt to FDR and the people living 66 years ago? After al, you castifated me in your email response above for being “quick to judge America 66 years after Pearl Harbor.” If you have the courage of your convictions why not simply say that, under the circumstances, the Internment was justified, especially since it was not race-based in any way?

Oh, and as for FDR—you stated in your email “I do not believe that Franklin Roosevelt and all the other Democrats who supported him were racists,” meaning Roosevelt could only have supported a racist policy if he, himself were a dedicated racist and that, if he were, anyone who supported him must have been a racist too. You stated on your show that the Internment policy was “by a liberal administration, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration “ implying that, since liberals have never been racist, the policy could not have been racist. Both are historically inaccurate assertions and logical non sequiturs. The fact of the matter is that the Roosevelt with the strong record against racism was Eleanor, not Franklin. FDR deliberately chose not to engage the race issue in America for political reasons. And many of his Democratic supporters, particularly in southern states, were proud to embrace racist doctrines, particularly when it came to African-Americans, Catholics and Jews. To say the either none of FDR’s supporters were racist or all of them were makes no historical or logical sense. Many economic and social liberals in the 1930s and 1940s harbored social racist viewpoints, just as many Republican conservatives were anti-segregation. In any case, the direct racism , or lack thereof. of Roosevelt or his supporters is not evidence, one way or another, of whether or not the policy itself was racist. It is the intent and consequence of the policy that must be judged.

After a break you made the following comment: “By the way, a point to be made as well about the Japanese internment camps—it was only on the west coast because of fear of Japanese attack on the west coast, so if it was race-based it should have been for Japanese—Amerricans everywhere in the country.” That statement paired up with your statement before the break—“I mean afterall, other Asians were not locked up.”—are also non sequiturs. According to this argument – unless all Japanese and Asian Americans were the victims of a state-sponsored racist policy then none can be considered victims of racism is akin to saying “Since every state in the Union did not allow slavery or segregation and every person of color was not a victim of slavery and segregation slavery and segregation were not racist. “ Which, of course, is complete horse-hockey. As is the argument you made concerning the Internment.

You concluded the segment by saying that “It may well have been wrong—and probably was—but it wasn’t rascist.” Again, what do you base your assertion that the policy was wrong upon, given how systematically you laid out its defense? Unless you do understand that this was not simply a policy decision gone awry?

Finally, as for your categorizing me and my complaints about your illogical and insulting argument on Internment as “another one of those people who yell “racism” where there is none and thereby damage the fight against real racism” I have a question for you. If the internment of Americans of Japanese descent precisely because they were Americans of Japanese descent isn’t racist, what is? Slavery and only slavery?

You concluded by saying: “ That’s all, I’m talking about how unxenophobic Amerrica is, how welcoming it is, of all backgrounds.” Was the systematic discrimination against the Irish, Jews, Italians, Eastern Europeans, Catholics, Hispanics and just about every new group that ultimately melted its way into our cultural melting pot an example of Americans’ being “welcoming”? Or is it an example of the true success of American history, that, despite the prejudices and fears we, as Americans, carry within ourselves we have, over time, managed to conquer these baser all-too human emotions and rise above them to create a country that is strong enough to admit when it has made mistakes and corrected them in the future?

I’m not arguing, Mr. Prager, with your underlying assertion that the US is the least—or, at least, one of the least, there being Canada and all that—xenophobic nations on earth. But being the least doesn’t mean being without. It is precisely in recognizing where we have had are darker, xenophobic moments as a nation that we become best prepared to avoid repeating those past mistakes.

Thus the correct argument you should have advanced in support of the supposition that the US is not a xenophobic nation was not that the Internment of Americans of Japanese had no racial dimension but, rather, that we learned as a nation from that moral and constitutional wrong and avoided doing something similar to Americans of Russian descent during the Cold War and Americans of Arab descent after 9-11. American democracy is an experiment in learning to live up to five simple words: “All men are created equal.” We weren’t very good as a nation on the equality thing in 1771 or 1788. We were a little bit better at it by the end of the Civil War. We were certainly better at it by the 1960s compared, say, to the 1890s and the era of State-sponsored segregation. And there is still great room for improvement. Does that mean the US is a terrible country? Of course not. The US is a great country—but can, and should, be greater still. Achieving that greatness and perfecting it is the duty and obligation of each generation of Americans.

You, Mr. Prager, however, prefer the lazy approach to patriotism: never criticize any action by America and condemn anyone who does as being un-American—a product of the America-hating liberal left. But, then again, you never seem to hesitate in criticizing precisely those Americans who disagree with your own narrow-minded, revisionist view of this country and its history.

AM talk Conservatives (which I consider a separate and minority breed compared to mainstream, main street conservatives I have known) always blast those they disagree with for being “Politically Correct.” Yet AM talk conservatives like yourself practice your own brand of “PC”: America, love it or leave it or, at least, shut up about it; tobacco doesn’t kill; any reference to global warming is a sign of insanity; anyone can make it in America so those who don’t deserve not to; anyone who complains they are a victim aren’t—they’re just liberal whiners; etc. In your overarching imperative of proving your point that America is not xenophobic (a point, which I hope I have made clear I, for the most part, agree with) you were willing on your show to reduce the a historical injustice of historical proportions to nothing more than a policy “oops”—probably unjustified, probably shouldn’t have been done but not a symptom of any deeper problem in American culture and society of the time. In so doing you emptied your argument of any legitimacy and logic it may have had. That you simply reject this charge without the slightest amount of deep reflection is regrettable.

The irony of all this is that, of the various voices on the AM talk spectrum, I typically find yours to be one of the more rational. Indeed on topics of inter-personal relations and religion, in particular, your observations are usually well-founded and insightful. It seems to be in the discussion of things political that you have the greatest tendency to allow ideology to overcome reason, history and logic. Such is the sad case with your unfortunate and inaccurate statements on the internment of Americans of Japanese-descent. These statements added nothing to the understanding of just how America has, over time, been able to emerge as one of the least xenophobic societies on Earth. Instead, they were needlessly provocative, insensitive and detracted from the legitimacy of your argument.

I hope that, in the unlikely event you actually read this missive, it my give you cause for pause and reflection on this topic. Unfortunately, experience with people who have turned to becoming ideologues is that such reflection diminishes the more ideological

Respectfully,
Carl Luna

I posted this as a comment in response to a series of comments I received for Friday’s Blog, “Dennis Prager is an Ass.” But it’s jjust so spiffy a comment I find myself compelled, in my ego, to publish it as a whole blog:

Mr. Nolan:
A word or two on the meaning of words. Dictionary.com defines “concentration camp” as:

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - concentration camp–noun: a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc., esp. any of the camps established by the Nazis prior to and during World War II for the confinement and persecution of prisoners. [Origin: 1900–05, applied orig. to camps where noncombatants were placed during the Boer War]

As the entry points out, the concept of the concentration camp was not developed by the Nazis but by the British to incarcerate Boer civilians during the Boer War so as to deprive Boer guerillas of the support from said civilians. Given that the internment centers for American’s of Japanese descent were a series of “guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities…” the use of the term “concentration camp” to describe them is factually accurate. It is, also, emotionally loaded, admittedly. But, then so to is the legacy of that policy.

“Racism,” meanwhile, is defined as:

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) -rac·ism [rey-siz-uhm] –noun
1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.
2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
3.hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

Was slavery racist? Was segregation? Or were these institutions based on legitimate security concerns or sound policy initiatives based on the historical contexts of their times? My father told a joke about his experiences as a swarthy-skinned Sicilian doing military training in the deep south: A swarthy Sicilian-American gets on a bus in Biloxi, Mississippi during WWII. The bus driver looks at him and says “Back of the bus, back of the bus.” The Sicilian-American fellow says, “I’m not black, I’m Sicilian.” The bus drive looks at him and says, “Off the bus, off the bus.”

Did my father experience anything that might meet the dictionary definition of racism in his experiences in the South during WWII? Are you, Mr. Nolan, arguing that America has never experienced intense, institutionalized racism in its history?

Mr. Nolan, you dismiss my argument as being “based on an irrational hatred for your country and an over-zealous eagerness to see racism at its heart.” Many people profess to “love” their country when what they are really in love with is their sense of self. Such people, having no empathy for the problems of others, reject any criticism of any reason for the country they “love” because it is an assault on their own ego. To love someone is to want the best for them—not one’s self. Criticism of one’s country when that country is legitimately wrong, with the hope of making one’s country an even better place, is far more of a demonstration of “love” than is willful ignorance of mistakes and injustices simply for the ego-satisfaction of saying “my country is perfect and, by inference, so I am. This is not love of country. It is the love of Onin disguised as patriotism.

Three last points. First, you state in your third post that “Nearly half of those interned were of European ancestry.” That statement is simply in factual error. An estimated 11,000 people of European ancestry (primarily German) were interned during the war (as opposed to over 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent). Most of these were foreign German nationals who, in many cases, had family members voluntarily accompany them into internment. There was nothing voluntary for the Americans of Japanese descent who were overwhelmingly American citizens. Given the small number of Americans of Japanese descent in the overall population, especially given the huge percentage of Americans at the time of German descent, to argue that the treatment of these two groups was equal is simply ludicrous.

Third, you ask “Why not take your argument a step further and say that our entire involvement in WWII was a pretense for stealing land from Japanese Americans?” That is also a ludicrous non-sequitur. Well, actually, the US did enter the war to protect property – our battleships, to be precisely, bombed at Pearl Harbor. American entry in to WWII was, by any measure, a just and noble cause. But what we did to Americans of Japanese descent—and the fact their properties were seized and never returned—was simply neither just nor noble.

And, given all the justifications of the internments you provide, why do you then hesitate and say it was “probably a mistake?” What is the basis for your reversal? Why do you simply not have the courage of your convictions to argue that yes, indeed, the internment WAS justified and that under similar circumstances a similar policy might be justified in the future (or even the present)?

Finally, you advise me to “be careful when throwing around the term ‘disingenuous’.” Here I must agree with you. Dictionary.com defines disingenuous as:
dis·in·gen·u·ous [dis-in-jen-yoo-uhs]–adjective
lacking in frankness, candor, or sincerity; falsely or hypocritically ingenuous; insincere: Her excuse was rather disingenuous.

As such, it is an inaccurate word to use to describe Mr. Prager’s remarks. Ultimately, I fear, he—and you—actually believe you can reinterpret words and history at whim to make them comport to whatever world view you hold. “Delusional” would, therefore, be the appropriate adjective to describe Mr. Prager’s—and your—opinions.