What Bobby Jindal is talking about

On Monday night CNN published a very satisfying editorial by Jay Parini.  The title alone, "Bobby Jindal doesn't know what he's talking about," is rousing in its own right. Parini is reacting to some absurd assertions laid out by Jindal during a speech this week in London.

He (Jindal) announced confidently to a group that included a number of British parliamentarians that the police in the United Kingdom don't dare to tread in these zones, where Sharia law is widely used. "Nonassimilationist Muslims establish enclaves and carry out as much of Sharia law as they can without regard for the laws of the democratic countries which provided them a new home," he said

This is the sort of ill-informed fantasy that plays well in certain right-wing circles. This probably works for Jindal back home in Louisiana.

Oddly enough, Fox News got into trouble recently on the "no-go zone" nonsense, too, as when Steve Emerson, a so-called terrorism expert, explained to the American masses that Birmingham, a major British urban center, was populated entirely by Muslims and that "non-Muslims just simply don't go in."

British Prime Minister David Cameron correctly labeled him "a complete idiot," and Emerson's remark caused a spokesperson for the network to admit that Muslim "no-go zones" don't actually exist, not in Britain, not in Europe.

You know it's bad when David Cameron thinks you are a "complete idiot." On the other hand, that's probably exactly what Bobby Jindal wants. Here's Jindal not backing down one bit when confronted after his speech by a reporter.

But later, he was confronted by CNN’s Max Foster to back up these claims. “Look, I’ve heard from folks here that there are neighborhoods where women don’t feel comfortable going in without veils,” Jindal said. “That’s wrong. We all know that there are neighborhoods where police are less likely to go into.”

“But you need to have proper, sort of, facts to back that up,” Foster replied, saying he, as British man, has never heard of “no-go zones” for non-Muslims.

Jindal said that’s why he added the word “so-called” before “no-go zones” in his speech before turning the accusations around on liberals. “I think that the radical Left absolutely wants to pretend like this problem is not here. Pretending it’s not here won’t make it go away,” he said.

As Foster continued to press him for evidence and accused him of “exaggerating” the situation, Jindal replied, “I think your viewers know absolutely there are places where the police are less likely to go. They absolutely know there are neighborhoods where they wouldn’t feel comfortable.”

Jindal doesn't care what this guy thinks any more than he cares whether or not it makes Cameron or any other strawman elitist choke on his porridge.  Facts are stupid things anyway.  Why anyone still insists on living in the "reality-based community" anymore is beyond comprehension.

Jindal is purposefully talking past these twits directly to the "viewers" who "know absolutely" that Muslims/immigrants/poors whoever they're most worried about are very scary.  The more flack he catches from  fact-addled "leftists" over it, the better. Jindal has "heard from folks" what the real deal is and that's good enough for him.

I continue to recommend  Rick Perlstein's The Invisible Bridge about the rise of Ronald Reagan for further insight into the backlash base Jindal is trying to tap into.  The book picks up with Nixon's politicizing the POW issue and proceeds through Watergate up into the 1976 election where Reagan challenged Ford as a fringe candidate.

The consensus view of Reagan during the late 60s and early 70s was that he was a nut, and not a particularly smart nut, either. He was often the lone national figure who would blindly adhere to the furthest right wing talking points even as they were discredited by facts. The mainstream treated him as a laughing stock... sort of the way they do Jindal now. 

But Reagan kept plugging away. Impressing the eggheads wasn't his goal.  He wanted to make the impression that he was talking past intellectuals in the media and appealing directly to the people who really knew what was going on. Whatever the facts may appear to be according to the elites, Reagan and Jindal are sure to have "heard from folks" that something different is actually happening.

I'm far from the first person to observe that Jindal is deliberately trying to mimic Reagan's strategy in moving onto the national stage as best as he can. This doesn't mean it's going to work out as well for him, but, as stupid as he makes himself look, don't think there isn't a method to it.  

Of course, sometimes a typo is just a typo.

I’ll save you 45 mins. Obama will decry Republicans, beat up on private business and argue for more “free stuff". Your welcome. #SOTU2015”
— Gov. Bobby Jindal (@BobbyJindal) January 21, 2015

Other times, though, I kind of wonder.

You know who else was fiscally irresponsible?

Clancy DuBos really piles on here calling Bobby Jindal "the most fiscally irresponsible governor in modern Louisiana history." Clancy wonders how Jindal thinks he's going to explain himself out on the campaign trail. 

Well, not quite nothing — he is laying the groundwork for a quixotic presidential run. I’m not sure how he’s going to explain $1 billion in cuts to higher education, especially when he’s touting himself as the savior of public education in Louisiana. Then again, the national media rarely look beyond press releases, and voters in Iowa and New Hampshire have no clue what a liar Jindal is.

That is certainly true. The societal and media impetus to always "move forward" in politics will no doubt limit attention to the the carnage Jindal is leaving behind in Louisiana.

But, in order to better understand Jindal's... um.. optimism in these matters, it helps to look back and remember that his personal hero, Ronald Reagan's lasting legacy in California has also been a fiscal nightmare.

What is commonly known as Proposition 13, was a 1978 ballot initiative that severely limited the state of California's capacity to raise revenue via income taxes.  Like Jindal's reversal of the Stelly tax plan and his later failed "tax swap proposal", Prop 13  dramatically shifted the state tax burden in the wrong direction.

It immediately reduces property-tax bills approximately 57 percent by rolling back the maximum rate of tax to 1 percent of the property’s 1975-76 assessed valuation, and restricts futures levies to 2 percent per year. The initiative further requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of the state legislature to approve increases in any other state tax.

Howard Jarvis, the chief architect of the initiative in concert with Paul Gann, a retired real estate salesman, spent $28,000 to secure 1,264,000 signatures, more than twice the 500,000 need to place his petition on the ballot. And amid the hoopla of his lavish public relations campaign, a number of insidious provisions in the initiative were obscured. For example, Proposition 13 states that property will be assessed at current market value “when purchased, newly constructed, or change in ownership has occurred.”

As houses are built and change hands, they will receive far higher assessments than voters were led to believe. And because families move more often than such corporate giants as Standard Oil, Lockheed, Chevron, and B of A [Bank of America], the heaviest property tax burden must shift from the corporations best able to bear it, to individuals.

It also plunged succeeding California governors into a state of perpetually recurring budget crisis. 

By then, Reagan was long gone, of course. In fact, he was already out of office by the time Prop 13 had passed. Reagan actually raised taxes on multiple occasions during his time as Governor.   But his political legacy is universally associated with the "taxpayers' revolt" that Prop 13 signaled.  This is because Reagan was not only a public spokesperson for Prop 13, he had previously campaigned in favor of similar proposals.  This video shows Reagan, in 1973, promoting a "Prop 1" initiative which ultimately failed.



Of course, for Reagan, none of this had anything to do with fiscal responsibility. Reagan was merely building a brand.

Proposition 13 was a watershed moment in American history, the first crumbling of the post New Deal consensus that supported an activist government intent on educating its citizens and providing them with an adequate safety net. California’s own native son, Ronald Reagan, rode the ideological wave of Proposition 13 right into the White House, and launched an era in which Republicans successfully devoted themselves to crippling government at all levels for decades. Proposition 13 broke California’s government.

And so it is with Jindal.  Like his hero, Reagan, Jindal has used his governorship merely as an opportunity to burnish his ideological bona-fides as he prepares to spring into national politics.  Is that working out for him?  Right now, the national zeitgeist casts Jindal as a far-right joke.  However, if we look back, we might remember that in the 1970s, the national zeitgeist  viewed Reagan in very much the same way.

United States of nostalgia

This is from a Jarvis DeBerry column last week.  He's writing about his disappointment in the President's remarks about Ferguson.  But really this is a lament about the dumb nature of the job of being President.

"First and foremost," the president said, "we are a nation built on the rule of law."
 
You could make a stronger case that this nation was built on stolen land; that it was built with stolen labor; that the descendants of those who had their labor stolen are yet struggling to have their humanity recognized.

You could, but the president of the United States cannot.  Leading America requires declaring its goodness. And not just that. Leading America requires declaring that America always has been good, that it always has treasured the law. Never mind that the law failed to prohibit the destruction of one people or the enslavement of another.

DeBerry's thoughts echo those of Ta-Nehisi Coates who wrote this in The Atlantic.

In the case of Michael Brown, this is more disappointing than enraging. The genre of Obama race speeches has always been bounded by the job he was hired to do. Specifically, Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America. More specifically, Barack Obama is the president of a congenitally racist country, erected upon the plunder of life, liberty, labor, and land. This plunder has not been exclusive to black people. But black people, the community to which both Michael Brown and Barack Obama belong, have the distinct fortune of having survived in significant numbers. For a creedal country like America, this poses a problem—in nearly every major American city one can find a population of people whose very existence, whose very history, whose very traditions, are an assault upon this country's nationalist instincts. Black people are the chastener of their own country. Their experience says to America, "You wear the mask."

In 2008, Barack Obama's task was to capture the presidency of a country which historically has despised the community from which he hails. This was no mean feat. But more importantly, it was not unprecedented. And just as Léon Blum's prime ministership did not lead to a post-anti-Semitic France, Barack Obama's presidency should never have been expected to lead to a post-racist America. As it happens, there is nothing about a congenitally racist country that necessarily prevents an individual leader hailing from the pariah class. The office does not care where the leader originates, so long as the leader ultimately speaks for the state. On Monday night, watching Obama both be black and speak for the state was torturous. One got the sense of a man fatigued by people demanding he say something both eminently profound and only partially true. This must be tiring.

It is beyond reasonable expectation that the President would speak "for the state" and also speak truthfully.  It is beyond reasonable expectation that the President would tell us anything other than a comforting lie.

Why don't we expect better of our leaders? It's not a new question.  In his new book (which I've been talking a lot about, I know), Rick Perlstein looks at the last time Americans seriously asked it of themselves. The Invisible Bridge covers the mid-70s period dominated by Watergate and the gradual rise of Ronald Reagan from fringe nut to Presidential contender.

Among Perlstein's more intriguing themes is the country's yearning for nostalgia as a means of escape from the difficult questions of the day.  When confronted with harsh questions about corruption and injustice in American life, the public gravitates toward the most comforting lie.  In Perlstein's telling, voters seek a kind of comfort... a belief in their essential goodness.. first from Jimmy Carter but later in more colorful, heroic fashion from Reagan.  

Here is an interview with Perlstein conducted by Thomas Frank where they talk a little bit about this.  It's difficult to read this book and not find multiple parallels between that time and ours both in the political and popular cultures.  Here's a passage where they talk about pop culture retro fetishes.

Well. So the culture of nostalgia in the ’70s — I mean, everything from “Happy Days” going on the air in 1975 to Bette Midler having a huge hit with the “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B,” to all these restaurants like the Ground Round and Shakey’s that kind of promise this 19th century kind of…

Yes. The vogue for the 1890s—what was up with that?

…vaudeville experience. Yeah. Or “The Sting” which is about the 30s but has music from the 1890s. And then, the signal example being “American Graffiti,” which literally, the tagline of the movie was: “Where were you in ’62?” And invites people to kind of imaginatively place themselves before the 60s happens. Which was part of the huge appeal of the POWs. This idea that they had somehow skipped the 60s. And they are these perfect innocents. So, yeah, they were like these Rip Van Winkles. They devote a whole hour of the “Today Show” to explaining to the POWs what had happened in their absence. But we’re the POWs. We want to be them. We want to miss the 60s.

Now, where the disaster rhetoric and the nostalgia rhetoric come together most profoundly is something around which I organized an entire chapter which is this fascinating movie which actually did better box office than “Gone With the Wind” — “The Exorcist.”

What year was that?

’74, January of ’74, in which people are waiting in lines around the block in the middle of this really vicious winter in New York. You have this symbol of our perfect innocence, our daughters, our young daughters, who are basically possessed by demons, which of course was happening all the time. This was the winter of Patty Hearst.

And to make a long story short, the plot of the movie is that science and modernity avails us nothing to fight these demons. If you remember, there’s this kind of faithless priest who is a psychologist, and the mom takes the daughter to all these doctors who have all these fancy machines and they’re not able to do anything. And finally what restores her to sanity is this ancient orthodox priest, this medieval rite. The exorcism. And then the last scene is really striking, because you have the mom, who I’ve heard is based on Shirley MacLaine, who is this kind of liberated, pants-wearing Hollywood liberal actress. And her daughter, in the last reel when she’s exorcized, she hugs the priest who has found his faith again, the young priest, and mother and daughter are wearing outfits that make them look like Jackie Kennedy in 1962.

Again the throwback.

The throwback. So again, you have the disaster being redeemed by the nostalgia. Which is Ronald Reagan.

Anyway I don't want to reproduce the whole thing here but there is this last exchange which really brings the whole thing home.

Is anyone nostalgic for the ’70s?

I am. And for the following reason: If you read my preface, I explain that Americans at the level of popular culture, at the level of grassroots politics, were thinking very hard about what it would mean to have a country they didn’t believe was God’s chosen nation. What would it mean to not be the world’s policeman? What would it mean to conserve our resources? What would it mean to not treat our presidents as if they were kings? That was happening! And the tragedy of Ronald Reagan most profoundly wasn’t policy — although that was tragic enough — but it was robbing America of that conversation. Every time a politician stands before a microphone and utters this useless, pathetic cliche that America is the greatest country ever to exist, he’s basically wiping away the possibility that we can really think critically about our problems and our prospects. And to me, that’s tragic.

As long as we're willing to accept the comforting lie, as long as we believe that, as Deberry puts it, "leading America requires declaring that America always has been good, that it always has treasured the law," our political apparatus is never going to allow us to think critically about our problems.

Creeping medievalism

Hunting witches

North Carolina Pastor Charles Worley shared with his congregation this weekend how he thinks the country should deal with the scourge of gay men and lesbians: Lock them into a pen with an electrified fence, drop food down to them, and because they can’t reproduce, they will die out.

Worshiping relics

LONDON — A Channel Islands online auction house has angered Ronald Reagan's foundation by claiming to offer a vial that once contained his blood.

The PFCAuctions house says the vial contains some of Reagan's dried blood residue. The auctioneers say it was used by the laboratory that tested Reagan's blood when he was hospitalized after a 1981 assassination attempt in Washington.

Buying indulgences

Further, (Tom) Benson has undergone an almost St. Paul-like conversion in his personal life, thanks in part, friends and associates say, to the faithful work of his wife.

In recent years, he has made millions of dollars in contributions to Catholic Charities, Ochsner Medical Center, Loyola and Tulane universities. And for every lucrative donation, there've been countless more behind-the-scenes gestures.

The library part might take a while

Herman Cain: “We need a leader, not a reader.”

It's a motto that makes at least part of this grand plan more difficult to conceptualize.

Cain is apparently already making his post-presidency plans.

“I call it a journey, not just a campaign, because it doesn’t stop,” he said. “We’re in the primary. Then you run for president. You win the presidency, serve four years. (Then you) might have to serve eight at the insistence of the people. Then after that, launch a Cain library,” then a post-presidential speaking tour, he mused.

And along the way, the interns... oooh the interns. It's a sweet ride to be sure.

In fairness, though, theoretical President Cain would be far from the first non-reader to lead us. Ronald Reagan, for example, famously received several intelligence briefings in the form of rather unchallenging videos like this one on the Chernobyl disaster.



And then there's President Obama who reads books by Fareed Zakaria, which really only barely qualifies as reading. In much the same way, Obama's first term in office has only barely qualified as leading.

Anyway, thanks to Cain for pointing out that the fact that those two words rhyme must imply some sort of symmetry between the concepts they represent. We'll keep an eye out to see if we can determine the nature of this relationship.