Of Sandy and Presidents

I haven't been posting here much for the last couple of months. There are several reasons for that. For one thing, I'm in the midst of a couple of very big projects and they are consuming almost all my time. For another, there have been so many important things going on the world—-first superstorm Sandy and then the election—-that my own little observations seemed almost fantastically unimportant…even ridiculous.

But, I can't help tooting my own horn just a wee bit. You'll recall that in my last entry I wrote about climate change requiring an interventionist government.

Well, in some ways I think that's exactly what a majority of the American voters decided in the 2012 presidential contest. They saw Sandy…the world's most horrific campaign volunteer…in all its hideous fury. They saw FEMA and the rest of the Federal government reacting with amazing speed to deal with the storm's destruction. And, maybe most of all, they saw Chris Christie and President Obama side by side…like a pair of titans…working to restore New Jersey to the living.

(Those amazing photos of the two men, burying their differences to do real good, may have won the election for the President all by themselves. And, of course, whatever the photos left undone, Christie's praise of his new friend and partner finished.)

I think a lot of people saw all that and wondered…would a government headed by Romney, and controlled by ideologues opposed to federal intervention on any level have done the same?

Thus, if I did not call the election, I think I identified one of the mechanisms that determined the winner. It is a small triumph, but these days I'll take anything I can get.

Dare not speak its name...

I have been following with interest the spate of stories about the sudden emergence of the "N-word" in connection with President Obama. A sticker reading "Don't Re-Nig: 2012" has appeared on car bumpers and on the web. A nationally read blogger posts a cartoon of the president as a chicken-eating spook. And on and on.

So, finally, it is all beginning to break, isn't it? The fog lifts. The concrete appears behind the vast abstraction. The reality: the virulence of the Right, of its hatred of Obama, has nothing to do with economics, nothing to do with being a "socialist," or a liberal, nothing to do with foreign policy or the support of Israel or energy…

It is about Race. It has always been about Race. It always will be about Race.

But, then, we knew that already, didn't we?

We just didn't dare say it.

politics and passive aggression

Years ago, I "monetized" my blog, explosive-cargo. That means that Google puts ads on it and, if those ads should ever do something interesting like earn money, I'll get a cut.

To date, I've not received a penny. But that doesn't concern me at the moment. What is amusing is the ads that show up on my blog. They appear automatically, you see, I presume in response to certain key words. (As you'd expect with a blog called "explosive-cargo," I get a lot of inserts from companies that do haz-mat stuff. Terribly disappointing for everyone, I'm sure.)

A while back I did a piece that basically compared the GOP primary challengers of 2012 to a pack of braying idiots. When I checked in on the blog a while later, I was startled to find a huge ad under my piece from some extremely right-wing organization. It more or less openly called Obama a Communist and hinted at the birther fantasy. I'm guessing that some bit of software on some server saw the names of Republican candidates in my post and assumed that I favored them.

For a moment, I was furious. I was going to contact Google and demand that the ad be removed. But, then, I had an odd thought. The right wing organization in question paid good money to make that advertisement. If it appears on my site, with my more or less left of center readers, then it will do its makers no good at all. It will be a waste of their time, their effort, and their money.

There is something satisfying in that. It is a kind of negative power. The ultimate in passive aggression…