We don't choose our parents. We do choose who represents us in government (when there are no Diebold machines).
Too often our representatives forget who they work for and in stead begin to treat constituents as children, as protectees rather than as thoughtful concerned citizens who chose to elect them.
Soon these representatives decide what information to give their "employers" (us), for a variety of reasons. And when information is withheld, informed political participation becomes impossible. A deeper effect of withheld information is that the voting populace becomes infantilized both in the perception of elected officials and eventually in their own sense of how impotent they feel when trying to get answers or even to be heard. Many develop the need to be told what to do and think.
We have been treated like children by a child President. Information has been withheld from us as it is from him. Our reality and experience - death and destruction of beloved families in Iraq, the disappearance of an entire city on our own now-eroded soil, astronomical gasoline prices, shamefully grand disparity between corporate heads and their employees, negligence in so many areas of social welfare and health - is not only uncontained; it is unrecognized.
At the same time, we the children remind our faux parent-leaders that we can think - that when presented with opportunities to think we can do so. And Lamont beat Lieberman. And the stupid Kansas educators who prefer superstition to thought were beaten.
Patriotism had become patronization. No more was questioning authority seen as a responsibility and virtue - it had become, rather, akin to adolescent rebellion and talking back to parents.
And a central adolescent characteristic is contempt for the "other" - be they parents, authority figures, the press, or citizens in general. Who gets treated this way depends on the adolescent's particular vertex. The other is stupid, beneath contempt. Parents and teachers got no respect, as Rodney Dangerfield used to say. That attitude is the psychological core of reactionary populism described so clearly by my namesake Thomas Frank. Rebellious hatred of authority becomes a caricature of itself, and devolves into slavish devotion to any anti-authority authoritarian.
George Bush is the adolescent in chief. And he treats those not in his peer group, his gang, as dunderheads worthy of contempt. He can say anything he wants to justify his behavior. He feels so superior that he is free to change his story at the drop of a hat or whenever his explanation for being caught with a six-pack (or no WMDs or levees) is challenged. That is how he's dealt with the press.
Lieberman was too much like Bush in this regard - puffed up and isolated and out of touch. And until the last week he fought like the Bush/Rove organization, using TV ads impugning .Lamont's fitness to hold office (he is independently wealthy and therefore out of touch) rather than facing the substance of his challenge. Interestingly, it has just been disclosed that Rove has been in contact with Lieberman.
Transparency is the name of the game. But it's not a game. Just ask families of the dead in Iraq - families too poor and marginal to have any voice or political clout. Their voice, now represented by Cindy Sheehan, is disgracefully dismissed by those in power. As of August 8 the USAT reported that Congress is cutting funds necessary to treat veterans of Iraq who suffered head injuries. Those acts leave one speechless.
Bush and his gang remind me of Reggie Mantle, the 17 year-old wise guy from the Archie comic strip. Reggie is the ultimate wise guy, always looking to pull a fast one on anyone he can find to victimize. He will be the first to tell you how handsome and cool he is, and that he is a great athlete. None of these things is true, though he is not bad looking. But his arrogance and self-involvement keep him from getting many dates - his 64 year-old clone lost in CT, while the most prominent Reggie ended up marrying his local librarian who never had a date herself? Most girls soon pick up on "what a louse he is." He is continually pulling pranks which drive everyone else crazy - whether grabbing Chancellor Merkel or running as an independent.
Jokes about "sore Loserman" are re-emerging. We have to remember that the unconscious prevails at the oddest moments - especially when we become our nemesis. This is what I feared when writing the book, that I would become like Bush - jumping to conclusions, seeing the world in simple terms, blaming people. I think Lieberman has become like Ralph Nader - a crank who puts himself above the needs of our nation, let alone those of his Democratic values. He runs on a platform of self-righteous arrogance, something long ago eschewed by the subtle Karl Rove - the link between the two Reggies called George and Joe.