CSotD: Just Like Old Times
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Yeah, I know, it's not a cartoon. It's a movie poster. We'll get to the cartoons.
But last night my granddaughter and I watched "The Candidate," which was made in 1972, the year her father was born. She's about to turn 21 and has volunteered in campaigns since high school, so was an excellent audience for a movie that holds up surprisingly, distressingly well.
Filmmakers then were playing with a kind of handheld cinema verite style, which was perfect for capturing the chaos in which the message of an idealistic young candidate for the US Senate gets overwhelmed by crowds and consultants.
I was afraid I'd have to provide background throughout the film, but the moment Robert Redford's old-line establishment opponent opened his mouth, I relaxed.
Same old same old, 45 years later.
She volunteered for Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, so has experienced the pamphleting and sidewalk handshakes of a winning campaign, and she worked for Bernie and saw the frustration of a campaign that faced establishment opposition before it even came to a general election.
After the movie, we talked about Hillary's book and the fingerpointing blame game and she noted that, in her concession speech, Clinton sounded human and approachable and real … and, at that point, should have gotten the hell off stage.
Smart kid.
But Hillary is back with a book, like Glenn Close rising up out of the bathtub in "Fatal Attraction," and Chip Bok captures the mood well, because it's not just that nobody wants to relive the campaign but that, for the Democrats, moving forward includes not looking back.
Yes, you learn from your mistakes. But you correct them, you don't obsess over them.
When I first moved to Denver — about the time "The Candidate" was being made — the Denver Broncos were one of the most hapless teams in the NFL, which might not have been so bad if their coach had had better judgment and a little class.
But he'd go on the weekly coach's show each Monday and explain how this player or that player had missed an assignment and how a ref blew a call and basically how none of it was his fault.
It's not just that this didn't change the final score of last week's game, but his litany of excuses didn't change the score of next week's game, either.
They went 4-9-1.
Correct your mistakes, but don't obsess over them and don't drag down the rest of your team by finger-pointing and shaming and deflecting blame so that nobody believes in them either.
It was hard to be a Broncos fan in those days, and it's hard to be a Democrat now.
A few years later, in 1975, the Church Committee came out with its report on the abuses in our intelligence operations, which I mention because of the recent report about Russians buying ads on Facebook.
As Clay Jones reports in an absolutely epic anti-Facebook rant, we're all shocked, shocked.
Facebook was the target for Russian trolls and useful idiots sharing fake news during the campaign, but Facebook assured us that no foreign outlets were purchasing ads from them. And just like every single member of the Trump campaign, they had collusion with Russia that they conveniently forgot about.
When the Church Committee revealed that the feds had been opening our mail and tapping our phones and screwing with our lives, I was pleased to see it finally out in the open.
And Senator Church did more than simply recap the past. He also offered this caution:
In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. (…) Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left: such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide.
If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.
I was pleased, but, still, the idea that these were "revelations" was offensive.
They weren't "revelations."
They were "confirmations."
The only difference between what the Church Committee reported and what young dissidents had been saying for years was that the guys on the Church Committee were old and wore ties.
I feel much the same about the "revelation" that Russian troll factories were posting phony comments on Facebook, starting rumors and spreading misinformation and stirring up confrontations that undermined the campaign.
Golly gee. Might that explain why so many people were saying it throughout the campaign?
Next they'll tell us black motorists are more apt than white motorists to be stopped by police.
And then there's this:
One of the other things we talked about last night after the film was the dearth of credible Democratic presidential hopefuls under 70.
While the young Republicans are largely Tea Party types (who may have little appeal if the GOP continues to self-destruct), the Democrats have brought forward few young people at all, and "young" in Presidential terms includes people like Kamala Harris, who is 52.
But, as Keith Knight points out, it won't matter if we don't have a trustworthy system for counting the ballots.
Maybe we should get someone who understands security and privacy to work on a foolproof system.
Someone like Equifax.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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