North Sonoma County Democratic Club: News

Welcome to the North Sonoma County Democratic and Progressive Club!

The North Sonoma County Democratic Club is organized to promote progressive ideas and local candidates. The club serves Cloverdale, Healdsburg, Windsor, and several smaller areas south on the Russian River.
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A Manly Man

It occurred to me the other day that patriarchy has been a disappointment.

A case in point was President Obama's pledge during his campaign two years ago to wind down the pointless war against Iraq and build up the useless war against Afghanistan. Why would someone as thoughtful as Obama promise to fight a useless war? The answer: he wanted to get elected.

In a patriarchy nobody wins the highest office by pledging to end two wars at once with no victory. Obama had to promise to fight at least one war or go back to the senate. (This resembles a history story from Ancient Greece.)

Once elected, President Obama began to withdraw troops from Iraq, bringing home about 100,000 Americans. The last 50,000 are scheduled to leave by the end of his term in office. So far, he's getting away with that part of his plan. According to internet sources, Obama is secretly funding 150,000 mercenaries at triple the pay to replace the departing troops, but that would be insane.

I understand that recent Presidents have been senile or clowns or burned out substance abusers, but I'm not ready to agree that Obama is insane.

Meanwhile, despite his campaign promises, Obama has said he plans to wind down the war against Afghanistan and start bringing home troops before the end of next year. That's not manly at all. Maybe Obama plans to run for reelection wearing a dress.

If he does, I'll vote for him.

--Gary Goss

Delusions

In the September HARPER'S, Garret Keizer commented, in an interesting essay, on the delusion of our society, "not so much its materialism as its faux spiritualism . . . in which the elect live everlastingly and communicate telepathically while flying in disembodied splendor above the heads of the Mexicans mowing the lawn." This idea, unsurprisingly, has a long pedigree. We should focus on making this material world a better place.

Some disagree about our main delusion. I recall a French officer sent to help in the American Revolution, who reported back that "these people worship money." That sums up a lot of our recent history.

I doubt if the spiritualist delusion is our worst. About 20% of Americans believe that the Sun travels around the Earth. A third of all Americans, including members of congress, believe that the Constitution protects freedom of religion only for religions that are well liked by the majority.

Among the most deluded are the members of the Tea Party who worship, more or less, our Constitution. In fact, the Founding Fathers wrote a Constitution deliberately designed to frustrate Tea Party types (and most of the rest of us, for that matter). The Founding Fathers had a distrust of direct democracy that was based, I suppose, on their knowledge of the conflicts in ancient Athens, their sense of the people around them, and their studies of philosophers like Plato and Socrates, who were totalitarians.

The Constitution the Fathers adopted divided sovereignty into many parts (states vs. federal government, President vs. House, House vs. Senate, voters vs. the Supreme Court, etc.) The effect of this was to slow the pace of possible change to a crawl. That is our frustrating system.

There is much that the Founders did not see coming. They did not expect multinational corporations to take on the funding of our major political parties, assuming control over our financial lives. They granted ordinary citizens the right to bear one-shot rifles that took a minute to reload, not expecting the rise of machine guns. But they did get the Tea Party right. The Tea Party will be stopped by the muddling devices for slowing things down in Constitution they think they love.

We are faced now with an election in which the Republicans of all sorts are going to make gains. It is up to us to get out and limit those short term gains if we can.

Gary Goss

I Saw A Red Door

Loony Sharron Angle, the Republican Senate candidate in Nevada, once ran successfully for the school board while arguing that black was an ungodly and wicked color that invoked the devil. Her attempt to prevent the local high school football team from wearing black uniforms succeeded.

Angle has described her current campaign as divinely inspired. God called on her to run for the Senate. This might be the case--God might have arranged for the Republicans to nominate the only candidate so ludicrous that she would lose to Harry Reid.

The Islamic Community Center

I've been looking through Facebook where many pragmatists have come out with doubts about the Islamic community center--I suspect it is because they don't want to hurt the feelings of the local residents. Yet a recent poll showed that a majority of the people of Manhattan favor building the community center. Community Board 1, which represents the area, including the 9/11 site, voted 29 to 1 in favor of the community center. Manhattan itself is polyglot. And, as Hendrik Hertzberg put it, anguish "is not an entitlement to abandon rationality."

Gary Goss

Good News & the Idiocracy

The good news is that the last American combat brigade has left Iraq. Some of us, including former soldiers, have worked for that safe exit for eight years now, and it's a relief to bring home, out of harm's way, our combat troops. Still at risk, of course, are 50,000 advisors and support troops, along with the forces fighting in an apparently pointless war in Afghanistan.

The bad news is that 20% of Americans are morons--I refer to the 20% who maintain that President Obama is a Muslim. I'm not sure what this does to our intelligence bell curve, but it can't be good.

About 60% of us are religious bigots. This figure includes women like Democratic County Supervisor Shirley Zane, who opposes the Muslim cultural center located in Manhattan near the Twin Towers site (which the cultural center predates). Of course she might think that Manhattan is in Kansas or near Occidental, so let me add that the Manhattan in question is found at one end of Long Island in the state of New York. That's a long way from Santa Rosa, but bigotry is elastic enough to stretch around the world, the Bill of Rights be damned.

Finally, THE PROGRESSIVE reports that the New York Times, which consistently referred to waterboarding as torture in the past, changed its ways during the Bush administration. From 2002-2008, the Times called waterboarding torture 1.4% of the time. The reason the Times editorial board gave for its grammatical shift was "We are moral idiots" (not really).

--Gary Goss

Make Love, Not War

On Wednesday gays will once again be able to marry in California, which reminds me of a 1960's slogan: "Make love, not war, or marry and do both." Anyway, in an era when skies often seem gray, it's nice to catch a few moments of bright sunlight. I'm going to put on k.d. lang, pour some whiskey and toast the idea that we are all human together.

Dr. Laura

In case you don't know, Dr. Laura is a stupid but successful radio talk show host who, yesterday, used the "N" word repeatedly on the air in order to demonstrate, I suppose, that a White person can use a term that is used by some Black persons. She felt it necessary to do this because she is, after all, a racist--Dr. Laura has a history of related episodes.

I mention this because I know a four-year-old who is genuinely repelled by dark skin. She talks about it openly. She did not pick this up from her parents (progressives with advanced degrees) or her teachers. She did not get it from Sesame Street. And this has not been an easy matter to fix. Her family, friends and teachers have not made much headway.

You might ask where this prejudice came from. The answer, I think, is that the election of President Obama did not erase racism from the American scene. Racism is in the water we drink, where it goes almost unnoticed. But a tot can see that Barbie is a blue-eyed blonde. We swim in a lake of cultural biases that progressive adults have learned to get beyond (we hope), but under the surface lurk unseen carnivorous fish.

I'm not talking about the rampant racism of the Tea Party Republicans. I'm dumbfounded that racism reaches down to wonderful children in some unknown way.

----Gary Goss

Lafayette

On my vacation I read an autobiography of the famous Marquis, who turned out to be more than the absurdly young general who once led the charge at Yorktown. Lafayette grew up with a famous name but not much money, spending much of his time running through the woods with peasant children. Unlike most noblemen he was used to physical hardship. As a teenager he inherited a gigantic fortune and went to court (he was apparently tall and likable and welcome everywhere). He joined the French army. Believing that all men (including slaves) should be free, when the King refused permission for Lafayette to join the American Revolution, he bought a boat, loaded it with his friends and followers, and sailed anyway. The American rebels, who had no chance without French cannon, ammunition and soldiers, welcomed him.

Lafayette was not one of the foreign experts who came to train the provincial Americans. He had come, he kept saying, to learn. The Americans, mostly, loved him.

In France after the American Revolution, Lafayette was a hugely popular figure who went on to help dethrone several kings and a dictator (Napoleon). In the French revolution, Lafayette commanded the people's army and worked to set up a constitutional government. His views gradually lost out to the Terror, which Lafayette survived only by crossing the border into Austria, where he was imprisoned in foul conditions for five years until President Washington secured his release. America did not forget Lafayette, and he came back to visit twice. At the time of his death Lafayette was probably the most beloved figure in France and in America.

I came away with this thought. When you look at the popularity of successful progressive leaders, you may detect a pattern: they are hated (as Lafayette was) by the Right and attacked by Far Left (who find them too pragmatic). The most passionate on both sides go after them. That comes with the job. No wonder so few apply for it.

--Gary Goss

The Two Chelseas

I'm unsure which Chelsea I like best, Chelsea Handler or Chelsea Clinton.

Chelsea Handler is a striking woman who was born in 1975 in New Jersey to poor parents, a Jew and a Mormon. If you never heard of her, she's an award winning stand-up comic with a long-running talk show on cable. She's quite funny if you don't mind cringe-worthy smutty jokes (okay by me). Her sidekick on the talk show is a dwarf.

Chelsea Clinton was born in 1980 and grew up in the White House where she learned good values from her wealthy Protestant parents, a President of the United States and a future Secretary of State. Today she is a hedge fund manager, and she is about to marry in a ceremony that will cost a rumored 3 million dollars. She did not invite the Obamas to her wedding. (Well, we are in a depression, and money is tight.)

This reminds me that in 1965 I invited Lyndon Johnson to my wedding at City Hall in Los Angeles. He didn't come, but someone in his office sent a nice note and signed his name.

I think in the end I have to go with the older Chelsea. The younger one is not all that amusing.

--Gary Goss

The Irrelevant Press Democrat

Last Sunday's Press Democrat ran its usual confused commentary on "warring tribes" in local and national politics. "The issues that motivate these warring tribes are no longer relevant," someone wrote. The issues he cited as irrelevant are mostly environmental, including resistance to big chain stores and doubts raised about massive land development by multinational corporations. The PD, a decent paper in some ways, has never met a corporation whose backside it didn't fondle.

The newspaper's curiously ahistorical claim is that the warring political tribes are dying off, being replaced by young sane centrists. The evidence cited for this major change is the Sonoma County elections of Supervisor Efron Carillo in 2008 and the election of Supervisor Mike McGuire in 2010.

In fact the struggle between greedyguts and compassion predates written history and shapes each new generation as it matures. Greedyguts doesn't become irrelevant in the same sense that newspapers become irrelevant.

I don't remember what position the Press Democrat took on Carillo when he ran in 2008. I do recall that the PD opposed McGuire, who won without its useless endorsement.

***

From my perspective, what has been happening is not the rise of new neutral or conciliatory generation but the demise of the local Republican party. Sonoma County voters today are overwhelmingly Democratic. The local plutocracy has responded to this fact in three shrewd ways. (1) They have encouraged Republican politicians to switch parties and run as centrist Democrats. (2) In races that end up being contested by two progressive Democratic candidates, Republican voters are advised to vote as a block for the more polite Democrat. That can decide a close election and give the well-funded and well-organized Republican machine a little clout with the winner (they hope). (3) The plutocracy has orchestrated a campaign (see the claims above) to convince Carillo and McGuire that they are and should be political castrati.

Are Carillo and McGuire the sort of Democrats who believe in science (climate change), equal rights for gays, compassion (immigration reform), fiscal sense, no unnecessary wars, careful county planning, full employment, etc? I don't know Carillo, but he has forcefully resisted racial profiling (and been denounced for it). I've known Mike McGuire for ten years, and it's obvious that his core values are progressive. The Board of Supervisors has not shifted to some neutral pro-corporation center, as the Press Democrat hopes. The Board has moved Left.

Gary Goss

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