Author: jameswagner

–before he was canonized by September 11.
Some of us will not forget the man who essentially presided over a regime of terrorism against the poor and the weak, and who encouraged its most visible instrument, the New York Police Department.
“Justifiable Homicide,” a documentary about the police shooting deaths of two young Puerto Rican residents of the Bronx, Anthony Rosario and Hilton Vega, opened November 6 at Anthology Film Archives in the East Village.

The filmmakers characterize the Rosario-Vega case as part of an epidemic of police shootings during the Giuliani administration, climaxing with the killing of Amadou Diallo in 1999. “Justifiable Homicide” is a sobering reminder that there was more to Mr. Giuliani’s mayoralty than Sept. 11.

Reuters headline today: “Democrats Pledge Cooperation After Defeat”

–and no one anywhere is doing much to change that, since the people involved are not men.
In Amsterdam, with a huge significant immigrant population dominated by those who share her religious heritage, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been trying to turn the lights on.

What Mr. Fortuyn did on the right, Ms. Hirsi Ali has done on the left. Many in the Labor Party, where she worked on immigration issues, were shocked when she told reporters that Mr. Fortuyn was right in calling Islam “backward.”
“At the very least Islam is facing backward and it has failed to provide a moral framework for our time,” she said in one conversation. “If the West wants to help modernize Islam, it should invest in women because they educate the children.”

Her life is now in danger.

[She has been] receiving hate mail, anonymous messages calling her a traitor to Islam and a slut. On several Web sites, other Muslims said she deserved to be knifed and shot. Explicit death threats by telephone soon followed. The police told her to change homes and the mayor of Amsterdam sent bodyguards. She tried living in hiding. Finally, last month, she became a refugee again, fleeing the Netherlands.

She’s planning to go back now, to stand for the Dutch Parliament. She’s going to need a lot of help, but even if it comes, it may not be enough to ensure her own survival.

Jane Smiley, not without a certain perverse delight, says, in a letter to the NYTimes editor, that she’s now rather pleased with the election outcome.

To the Editor:
Re “Into the Wilderness,” by Paul Krugman (column, Nov. 8):
The Republican Party now gets to create the world it has been saying for a generation that it wants.
The Republican world looks to many of us like a Hobbesian jungle, where the poor and the unlucky have to play by harsh rules, but the rich and lucky have no rules at all.
It will be a world of mistrust, especially at the international level.
It will be a world where every square inch of America will be up for grabs, where there is no sense of common property, common heritage or common good, where the only American dream is greed.
The voters have indicated that this is a world they want, and the liberals have been told to shut up.
After the 2000 election, when it looked as if this world was going to be imposed upon the country in spite of the popular will, I was upset and outraged, but this time, when the voters seem to have freely chosen it, or chosen not to care, I am rather glad.
If this is the world they want, this is the world they deserve. At least there’s clarity in that, and guess what? They can’t say they weren’t warned.
JANE SMILEY
Carmel Valley, Calif., Nov. 8, 2002

Quote of the day, found in the last sentence of the following excerpt from Frank Rich’s column:

As the reigning cliché had it, 2002 was the “Seinfeld” election — an election about nothing. But how could an election in the midst of one war and on the eve of another be about nothing? How could an election at a time of economic torpor be about nothing? Even Jeb Bush, in an arguably Freudian episode of one-upmanship after his victory, said flatly on TV that while Florida was doing well, “the national economy is weak.” This election was not about nothing; it’s the Democrats who were about nothing. That is hardly the ideal stance from which to fight someone like George W. Bush.

In one of the best pieces to appear since November 5, Thomas Scott Tucker talks, on his own site, about where the Democratic Party came from, where it went and where it now has to go, to survive.

In the wake of November 5, who will the leaders of the Democratic Party blame? The weather in Minnesota, the Greens in all fifty states, or the man in the moon?

The junta in Washington frightened, seduced or merely distracted, us with a war of its own invention. Is this nation cowardly, insane or just plain stupid?
Never mind. The consequences will be the same, regardless of the answer.
The people who illegitimately seized power in the last election now control every* institution of our national government and have free rein to accomplish their mean and dangerous program of greed and violence.
This was less an election than a second mugging.
The nation and the world are almost certainly doomed. What a pity it has all been accomplished without a real contest, and by such small minds.
Ah, but you and I both now see that it’s 5:30 in the morning! Won’t it look better in the daylight?
No.
* Think of all the federal judgeships in the land, and the nasty appointees on the way.
__________
For a somewhat less end-of-the-world reading, see Bloggy.

In the context of a letter to the editor responding to a really problematic NYTimes OP-Ed piece by Thomas L. Friedman, the writer includes a compelling european view of the U.S. today.

The United States is the friendly but overweight neighbor who owns a big house and a big car, has a pile of junk in his backyard, thinks he owns the block and walks around waving his gun. This neighbor doesn’t bring on envy, but he sure does raise some eyebrows.

[Barry and I are sharing this greeting today.]

An Election Day post courtesy of Thomas Scott Tucker’s “Open Letter.”
We knew there had been at least one reason why we had some negative feelings about Paul Wellstone:

Whatever can be said in favor of Wellstone’s record has been said by the editors of The Nation, the leaders of NARAL, and indeed by the editor of Open Letter. But the crude contempt the Democratic Party leadership shows for the historical record will also now be inscribed on the same historical record. Paul Wellstone’s votes for the Defense of Marriage Act, the Afghanistan war, and the Patriot Act reflected the rightward drift of his own party. That party is dominated by the Democratic Leadership Council, which even Wellstone never troubled to deny.