Weekend Edition

Following up on the last post, weekend links

A couple of important posts from the professional opinion world:

• With "The Centrist Cop-Out," Paul Krugman has produced yet another simple, easy-to-digest case for what's really wrong with American politics today: we have met the enemy, and he is the GOP. In Krugman's words, "making nebulous calls for centrism, like writing news reports that always place equal blame on both parties, is a big cop-out — a cop-out that only encourages more bad behavior. The problem with American politics right now is Republican extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse." Couldn't have said it any better myself.
• Timothy Egan follows up with "A Madman and his Manifesto," detailing Rightist European and American responses to the Breivik attacks in Norway. If you listen to that lot, Breivik sold himself short: the world understood his actions in days, not decades. From this side of the Atlantic: "The bodies of those Norwegian children slaughtered by a terrorist had yet to be fully recovered, let alone buried, when Glenn Beck compared the victims to Nazis. The summer camp were the children of the Norwegian Labor Party went for soccer, swimming, political debates and lectures 'sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler Youth,' Beck said in his national radio broadcast." Excuse me?! True to form, Beck's disciples piled on. The first comment on Beck's site Tuesday in reaction to the news that Breivik's attorney described his client as "insane" was "I really feel for the guy. He loves his country so much that to see his own culture eroded away by multicultures that the govt is letting in, drove him to this heinous act." God forbid American patriotism take the same turn. Oh, wait... Meanwhile, things don't look much better in Europe: Mario Borghezio, member of the European Parliament (!) and Italy's xenophobic Northern League, said in a radio interview, "Some of the ideas [Breivik] expressed are good -- barring the violence. Some of them are great." Read Egan's whole post for a great commentary on the wider -- and deeply troubling -- narrative surrounding Breivik's actions.
• Back to the GOP for a quick sec: Mother Jones's Kevin Drum points out that the level of personal animosity and vindictiveness in Congress today is something new and different. No longer do crusty Congressmen holler at each other all morning and then sit down and make deals all afternoon. "When he was trying to whip his troops into line to vote for his debt ceiling bill on Wednesday, [Boehner's] pitch was simple: 'President Obama hates it. Harry Reid hates it. Nancy Pelosi hates it. Why would Republicans want to be on the side of President Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi is beyond me.' That was enough for conservative firebrand Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.). Boehner's plan wasn't perfect, he said in a Facebook post, but 'the fact Pelosi, Reid and Obama hate it doggone makes it perfect enough.' " With Krugman, remind me again why we're determined to reach for headlines that portray the Dems and Republicans as equally intransigent?

Great Utne reads to enjoy this weekend:

• "The Great Republican Sacred Cow:" if you guessed "no new taxes," you'd be right...
• "Liberating America from Wall Street Rule:" there's a novel idea. Guess how we do it: start by making things with real value (as opposed to credit-default swap "value," which is merely printing money to line traders' and bankers' pockets with). And ultimately, it's about (un)employment, stupid.
• "The Coming Economic Disaster:" not to put too fine a point on things, here's one version of the coming car crash of the American, European and Chinese economies. It ain't pretty...

Thrilled the Sox are playing well and/or glad to have the NFL back in your life? Time to "get uncomfortable" about those, too. Here's controversial military/defense writer Andrew Bacevich on the Sox' "hoo-yah" Fourth of July celebrations and, even better, Dave Zirin on the horribly anti-moral co-option and corruption of Pat Tillman's legacy. Both writers aptly cover the growing and troubling links between professional sports and the military that have sprung up since 9/11. Regardless of what you think about NFL players "going to war out there" every Sunday, consider that "When military planes fly over the Super Bowl or General David Petraeus tosses the coin to start the Super Bowl, we don’t blink. If going to war isn’t political, then nothing is. Yet this mix of sports and politics seems perfectly natural to us. It’s not seen as political at all" (Zirin). In the specific case of Tillman, Zirin not only charges that he has been more useful to the politico-military spin establishment dead than alive, but clarifies that the greater part of Tillman's valor was not in forsaking NFL millions for the Army Rangers, but for standing up to The Man: "Tillman had very un-embedded feelings about the Iraq war. His close friend Army Specialist Russell Baer recalled, “I can see it like a movie screen. We were outside of [an Iraqi city] watching as bombs were dropping on the town. . . . We were talking. And Pat said, ‘You know, this war is so fucking illegal.’ And we all said, ‘Yeah.’ That’s who he was. He totally was against Bush.” " From Bacevich's extended meditation on the Red Sox' Fourth of July theater:

To stand in solidarity with those on whom the burden of service and sacrifice falls is about as far as they will go. Expressions of solidarity affirm that the existing relationship between soldiers and society is consistent with democratic practice. By extension, so too is the distribution of prerogatives and responsibilities entailed by that relationship: a few fight, the rest applaud. Put simply, the message that citizens wish to convey to their soldiers is this: Although choosing not to be with you, we are still for you (so long as being for you entails nothing on our part). Cheering for the troops, in effect, provides a convenient mechanism for voiding obligation and easing guilty consciences. ...The late German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a name for this unearned self-forgiveness and undeserved self-regard. He called it cheap grace. Were he alive today, Bonhoeffer might suggest that a taste for cheap grace, compounded by an appetite for false freedom, is leading Americans down the road to perdition.

From the "You Are What You Eat" Department: if you think you can trust the USDA and FDA to keep you safe, think again. Here's Tom Philpott on the latest agency self-censorship in the face of Big Ag voicing its displeasure. Basically, the USDA produced a document that pointed out that devoting 80% of antibiotics consumed in this country to factory farming might have consequences, for example that "A single antibiotic-resistant pathogen, MRSA—just one of many now circulating among Americans—now claims more lives each year than AIDS." I've had MRSA. It ain't fun. And it lives in your pork chops. Getting uncomfortable? (If you want to get really excited or really uncomfortable -- or both! -- about what you're putting in your body, click here for a range of TED talks on food. I highly recommend Michael Pollan, Mark Bittman [both on page 2] and Josette Sheeran.)

Finally, the requisite happy/intriguing ending: maybe we're on to something with all this, after all (and three cheers for travel and new experience!)