I am reading Rick Perlstein’s book Nixonland. It is an enjoyable stroll through the period when Nixon entered politics to his exit in 1974. Richard Nixon is one of the most fascinating people ever to enter U.S. politics – a complex, twisted, tortured and brilliant man, one who knew the globe like most of us know our own city streets. Even Henry Kissinger admired his intellect, and what could have been. His famous quip “He would have been a great, great man had somebody loved him.

I think he was a great man, though I certainly do not love him.

I am currently following Perlstein through the sixties and the civil rights riots and debates. I was very young then, and was as naive a spectator as has ever lived. I was very conservative, and very much feared black uprising, even in Billings, Montana. Pundits of the time on the far right ascribed the discontent to socialists and communists. Many allusions were made to Hilter. How little things have changed.

This ties up many loose ends for me. Back in 1988 I sat in our family room in our house on Pine Street reading, and was struck by a thunderbolt. Communism, I realized, posed no threat to us. The Russians did not threaten us, nor did the Chinese.

Not too long after I realized they posed no threat, the Soviet Union collapsed. The world since that time has been confusing and hard to understand. It will never get easier. But it is different since that day in 1988, and would have been different for me back in the sixties had I achieved the breakthrough earlier.

I’m not afraid. In the months in years after that day, I grew more liberal, and eventually eschewed conservatism and all right wing thought. It’s a natural progression. Absent fear, the mind is clearer, the world safer, people less threatening. Liberal and progressive politics and absence of fear go hand-in-hand.

What I see all around me with teabaggers, right wing web sites, immigration debates and health care reform is fear. The right wing is afraid. The are manipulated by fear, governed by people who rely on their fear to advance agendas having nothing to do with safety.

In the post below, which I wrote yesterday, I was making fun of certain right wingers for being stupid. I knew was I was doing – I was poking them with a stick. Yesterday afternoon as I drove to the store, a caller on talk radio hit on an excellent point. Right wingers, he said, are not stupid. That’s not why they behave the way they do, or believe what they believe. They are afraid. Their minds are polluted by fear, and it distorts thought processes. It makes the world a muddled and scary place full of demons and bad guys. It makes people defensive and accusatory. It allows them to call on Hitler to help them demonize every politician they do not like.

I lived in that neighborhood. I grew up during the Cold War. I was manipulated, my thought processes were muddled. People who were not afraid, like George McGovern, scared me. People who exploited my fears, like Richard Nixon, were my ideals.

So I invite anyone on the right wing who reads this to experience what I did, to feel the weight of the world lifted from your backs. There are no new Hitlers, socialism is not scary, national health care works everywhere it is tried, illegal immigrants are responding to rational economic impulses (which need to be addressed), there are no terrorists of any note, you are safe when you fly, and most of all, there is no conspiracy of liberalism to enslave you. Life is a beautiful thing when you just cast your fate to the wind, drop the load from your shoulders, and do what Atlas did – shrug.

P.S. Osama bin Laden, far from hiding in the hills of Pakistan, most likely suffered an ignominious death, probably in late 2001 and surrounded by a few of his fellows of no note. He spirit lives on in films, where he has gotten noticeably younger.

See Update!!! and Update II and Update III and Update IV below.

Michele Bachmann on Joe Wilson’s outburst:

Update!!! I am told I got that quotation wrong. She did not say “stupid” conservatives like her. She said “strong”. I want to set the record straight, and keep the journalistic integrity at this site above average.

My bad.

Update II: Shortly after posting this I got an email from Halberto Fredlund at the Institute for IQ Evaluation in Landover, MD. According to Fredlund, Bachmann “is indeed stupid, by our measurements. Her grasp of issues is narrow, and her frame of reference is ‘us’ versus ‘them’ where ‘them’ are ‘elites’ and ‘pointyheads who brag about their education as if it gave them ‘common sense’, which I have a lot of,'” in Bachmanns’ own words. “Such defenses,” said Fredlund, “are standard for the low-IQ reactionary, and are especially prevalent among conservative Christian right wingers.” I can only add to that a study done by Jonas Beerston of the Paramount Institute, which quantified the IQ of various public figures by measuring the quality public rhetoric and scaling it according to broadness of frames of reference, reactionary nature of thoughts, and “black” vs “white” thinking. According to Beerston, Sarah Palin’s IQ was “almost negligible, perhaps in the low 80’s”, while Bachmann scored a good deal higher, at 90. Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, scores in the high 130’s, indicating that there are indeed significant intellectual abilities are in the Republican party, but that they seemed confined to a few very smart leaders who have many dumb followers. The Democratic Party, said Beerston, is “pretty much the same.”

Update III: Another emailer, this from a reader in New Hampshire, says “Cut the snidety! You ain’t no Einstein.” To which I confess, I ain’t no Einstein. I could be in way over my head, not understanding negotiating and confrontation theory and all. Still another emailer, this one from Montana, says “There is more knowledge about journalism in a thimble than you possess.” To which I confess, I know nothing about modern journalism, other than it isn’t very informative.

Update IV: True sotry: Police in Radnor, PA, interrogated a teabagger accused of a crime by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine. The message “He’s lying” was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the teabagger wasn’t telling the truth. Believing the “lie detector” was working, the teabagger confessed.

Please submityour stupid teabagger jokes here.

September 11 should not pass without remembrance of honorable people who died in an act of disgraceful cowardice. A building symbolic of democratic government had its dome blown to bits. A respected president died of an apparent suicide in the face of probable execution at the hands of thugs. Then followed concentration camps and inquisitions, and a fascist government installed – one of the great criminals of the 20th century, Augusto Pinochet, came to power.

September 11, 1973 was the day the democratically elected government of Chile was overthrown in a US backed coup d’etat. It is a dark day in history.

May we never forget Pinochet or the thousands of victims left in his wake. May we 36 years later vow that it never happens again.

The Heritage Foundation’s 2009 Index of Economic Freedom: Singapore, #2. (This was triggered by a A news reporter in that country who was just sentenced to twenty years hard labor for reporting on the country’s Tamil rebel force. In that country, that means “supporting terrorism”. Sound familiar?)

Freedom House ranks Singapore at 4.5 (on a descending scale of 1-6, 6 being the worst) on the freedom scale, placing it in league with Haiti, Uganda and Pakistan.

The moral: Economic freedom often goes hand-in-hand with oppression. Another way of phrasing it: Economic freedom = rule by wealth.

I had an unfortunate accident this morning. I had stopped at Starbucks on my way to Whole Foods, and spilled my decaf skinny Carmelatto Latte on the seat of my Prius. It got all over my Utne Reader too.

Without comment, two articles next to each other in the “World Briefs” section of today’s Denver Post:

Iran Defense-Job Nominee Wanted in’94 Bombing
CAIRO: The man nominated to serve as Iran’s defense minister is wanted by Interpol in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural Center in Buenos Aires, confronting Iran with yet another challenge to its international reputation.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad nominated Ahmad Vahidi on Wednesday to serve as defense minister. Vahidi was the head of the secret Quds Force, and arm of the Revolutionary Guards that carries out operations overseas.

The July 18, 1994 bombing at the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association was Argentina’s bloodiest terrorist attack. The bomb killed 85 people and wounded 200.

Missile Strike targets a Taliban chief
A U.S. missile strike Friday targeted a Taliban commander blamed for masterminding ambushes on American troops in Afghanistan, the latest assault by unmanned aircraft in northwestern Pakistan, intelligence officials said.

It was unclear whether Siraj Haqqani, who also has close ties to Al Qaeda, was among the 12 people killed in the house near the Afghan border, officials said, adding that three women were among the dead. Haqqani is known to have visited the house.

Today marks our seventh day in Boulder. Small sample size, I admit, but we are loving it here. Boulder is a lively town, and sits in the shadow of a big city, so we have access to everything, and yet peace and quiet too. Our house is on a quiet street in the southwest. The city has a great parks and recreation department, a very efficient bus line, and is surrounded by a spaghetti mess of trails to walk on. Air fare to anywhere is cheaper than before – Portland, where three of our kids live is $159 round trip. It was closer to $350 from Bozeman.

Apparently the green movement started in Boulder in 1967. At that time the city instituted a special sales tax that was to be used to buy lands surrounding the city. They have completed the major purchases, and the “Green Belt” now insulates the city, ending urban sprawl. That means that things like bus lines and bike lanes are important, as the city itself can be quite congested. But I don’t feel any tension as I drive around – people smile at each other, yield in traffic – the guy on a bike that I almost hit smiled and waved at me. (Must have seen the Montana plates.)

Of course, limiting growth meant that existing real estate was going to become more valuable, and it did . It’s not unusual to see people adding second stories to their homes. Apartment space is pricey, and townhouses and condos are hard to come by. That means that many people who work in Boulder commute here from the outlying towns. There is a long line of traffic everyday to Louisville and Longmont and Golden. Those are very nice communities, but the work to be had is in Boulder.

One thing we are not used to – recycling. In Bozeman, it meant taking papers and plastic and cardboard into town occasionally and on a strictly voluntary basis. Here it is required. We have three trash cans – a large one for “single stream” recycling of cans, bottles, paper and cardboard, a smaller one for “compostables”, or food scraps and stuff like that (which attract bugs and smell), and then another small can for regular garbage. We have to look at the list before we dispose of anything to see where it goes. Not a bad system at all, especially the ‘single stream” part, which eliminates the sorting that people in other communities have to do.

It’s a college town, so there’s that bustle going on, young people and football games and a constant flow of foot traffic on Broadway. Compared to Bozeman, our old home town, it’s a busy place with a lively and diverse culture – not unusual to hear drums and solo guitarists and singers down on Pearl Street Mall. The town newspaper carries liberal letters to the editor and op-eds – it may be the only liberal newspaper in the country. For the time being, we are taking the Denver Post, which seems to be a very good newspaper.

And then there’s this: A Boulder Festival going on tonight and tomorrow – music and food and get this: tonight eight Boulder breweries selling their beer, and tomorrow night eight more. Sixteen breweries in this little town.

Not that it was part of our decision to come here. Well, maybe a small part.

P.S. No WalMart in Boulder.

Denver radio host Mario Solis-Marich had a forum today with Congressman Ed Perlmutter. Right wingers had been pestering Solis-Marich to open up the forum and let them have their say, as if that were not already the case. So he did just that, and no one showed up. Not one. The right, for a change, gave us blessed silence.

Solis-Marich could not figure out whey the noisy right did not show. For one thing, it was a radio show, so they could not shout in unison. For another – and this is as plain as the nose on my face – nobody told them to.

Think Progress reports that 39% of Americans think that the government ought to stay out of Medicare.

They also think that Saddam Hussein personally flew a jet into the World Trade Center, and then later that morning, the Pentagon.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

This was not an ordinary interview. It’s got the usual stuff about movies and all of that, plus some vicariously satisfying political things, like Richard Nixon saying that Ronald Reagan was a “dumb son of a bitch”. But it was the part about drugs that caught my attention. Stone says that drugs were part of his growth process, and that of the soldiers he knew in Vietnam, it was the ones who were smoking grass who maintained their humanity.

I love counterintuitive.

Addendum: I almost forgot why this grabbed me. Stone mentioned that Nixon was plagued by “self loathing”, and hence had great doubt. Doubt is one of the most useful of human intellectual activities. It leads scientists to debunk previous science, formerly religious people to reject religion. Nixon was a complex man becuase he doubted himself.

Neither Reagan nor Bush I or II ever doubted. That is a sign of their intellectual vacuity. Nixon may have been one of our smartest president, the Bushes and Reagan among the dumbest. Clinton was smart and unprincipled.