“Electric circuitry profoundly involves men with one another. Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously.”
Marshall McLuhan, THE MEDIUM IS THE MASSAGE
McLuhan made this prophetic statement back when most homes had a single black-and-white television (controlled by knobs!) and one corded telephone. Radios were becoming portable, but they were still bulky. Music was recorded onto large vinyl discs and played on a revolving machine, attached to a cord. Computers were slow, big things. Some forty years later, most people in America and Europe, and many people living elsewhere, carry in one pocket a telephone, radio, TV, record player, computer, still and movie camera, and game board. Imagination is challenged to speculate what our inter-connected world will be like forty years hence. But there can be no denying we are in the global village, and as in any small town, everyone knows everything about everyone.
Some high-tech wizards have smugly assured us that privacy is gone and we just have to adjust. They’re probably right. We are glutted with revelations about the amoral habits of celebrities, and an endless cavalcade of commoners seeks a bit of fame by doing the same things. Tasting the so-called forbidden fruits will earn grateful snickering from our fellow humans. Doing nothing is equally exposed. The only bright spot in all this sunlight is the fact there are so many of us that we need to encourage gossip if we want to get more than a little of it.
Why, then, is our government shocked—shocked! at the Wikileaks exposure of so-called official secrets? In the first place, with an estimated 2 1/2 million names on the security list, secrecy is practically unattainable. In the second, there were no surprises. Wikileaks revealed that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are unwinnable. If our government really believes nobody knew that, it is effective only at keeping secrets from itself.
As for the embarrassing little tidbits about State Department staffers engaging in some petty behaviour – anybody who has ever worked with other human beings already knew that. If these facts elicit any thought on the part of us rubes, it is more relief than shock, to know that our government employs human beings much like ourselves. Wikileaks made public an incredible amount of information of no use to an enemy or to us, which accounts for the lukewarm reactions of Hilary Clinton, Robert Gates, and President Obama. And it just might demonstrate a real strength of democratic societies, as we can shake off exposure to embarrassing information.
The government has options. One is to reduce the number of official secrets it classifies. The advantages of such reductions are obvious. It is easier to keep secret a few items and strategies that would truly harm the country if they fell into the wrong hands. Nobody wants that. And if embarrassing facts are routinely brought to light, which is expected in both democratic theory and in law, the government will probably operate in a less embarrassing fashion, which means more effectively. And we can all benefit by our government’s taking a hard look at just what gets classified.
Obviously, in recent decades our elected government has been on a mission, sometimes a frenzied one, to classify more and more of its doings. Now that it can no longer get away with, it might as well operate openly and honestly, as elected governments are supposed to do. As far as giving advantage to real or potential enemies, we remember they are in the global village too. The first of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points: “Open covenants of peace openly arrived at,” could become reality, nearly a century later, as a response to the facts of life.
Governments (ours included) have one other option: to maintain secrecy through fear. Sadly, this option is behind the imprisonment of Bradley Manning, accused of leaking secrets to Julian Assange of Wikileaks. Assange will be tried in Sweden on unrelated rape charges. Should he be acquitted and extradited to the United States, he can afford lawyers who will assure him a fair trial. Manning, on the other hand, has been disappeared. The fate of the “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo and elsewhere is now being visited on an American citizen. He has had no “speedy and public trial”. No such thing is proposed for him. He lapses in solitary confinement, denied even the meager privileges granted to convicted criminals, and this, for all we know, is to be his fate. Manning’s absolutely un-constitutional punishment could serve as a terrifying example to future whistleblowers. If this situation endures, we will need to rewrite history, especially concerning which side won the Cold War.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
DIVIDE AND CONQUER
DIVIDE AND CONQUER
Desperate times conjure desperate actions. Fear breeds anger, and people are tempted to do things that are hard to undo. In 2011, people who work for a living are at odds with each other. Government employees are under assault, forced by insolvent and indebted governments to work harder for less pay and reduced benefits. Meanwhile the political class would eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees. And some workers in the private sector appear eager to see that happen.
Give credit to the politicians and their wealthy backers who have managed to drive so huge a wedge between people who have the same wants, needs and aspirations, who would be so much healthier, wealthier, and wiser if they would help instead of fight each other. It has taken a long time and sustained pursuit to get some working people to despise others. But if there be a legitimate grievance against public employees, it needs to be brought into the light for close inspection.
True believers of the doctrine that government is the problem in all cases are far gone into delusion. People who feel all government workers are lazy parasites cannot be reached with logic. Those who can ignore dams, roads, schools, parks, sewers, military, police, firefighters, and all other successful government projects are, if not happy, at least satisfied with their intentional ignorance. But most private company workers understand the need for a social contract and appreciate the work public employees do, to promote the general welfare. They know most public employees, like most private employees, earn their pay. But as human beings we all tend to annoy each other in many different ways, and in hard times minor irritations can turn into nasty resentments, with resulting harsh retaliations.
In the first place, in recessions, when businesses cut back and employees lose jobs, government workers tend to keep theirs. With the jobs they keep their good pay, holidays, vacations, medical insurance and other perks. In long recessions the relative prosperity of government workers can be especially grating as tax revenues go down, and governments seek new sources of revenue to maintain services. The argument against raising taxes to support government workers can be very convincing, with the citizenry struggling to get by.
Still, a look at all sides of the situation brings up more questions. Do tough times reduce or eliminate the need for government services? We know that more people need the safety net in recessions. So we find ourselves demanding public employees to work harder for less. And while such demands appear unfair, we are reminded that life is unfair, and that many workers in the private sector have seen their wages reduced and their benefits decimated. Everyone must learn to get along with less.
Well…not quite everyone. The rich have prospered, some obscenely so. Yet many in the media and in elected office (most of them well-off) say the very idea of taxing wealth, even a little more, is unfair. And many workers agree. Yes, they hold, it would be nice if the rich would share some of their abundance with the less fortunate. Some rich folks do. But if they choose to keep, squander or destroy their wealth to the benefit of no one, that is their right, and it would be wrong for the rest of us to tax them to help the needy. However, strangling government, leaving those truly desperate to their fate, is quite fair, according to advocates for the rich in media, politics and our neighbourhoods. They accuse their opponents of envy, which renders any attempt to use excess wealth to jump-start the economy as unworthy of debate. Rich people have something others want: their money. We can’t have it, end of discussion. But interestingly, the same argument does not hold regarding government employees. They have living wages and benefits, and a collective bargaining system to improve their lot. All workers want these. But since private employees have lost theirs, it seems only right to take them away from public employees as well. Then we’ll all be equally poor and downtrodden—except the rich, who apparently live in a galaxy far away.
We are at moral loggerheads on this issue, and until we see the writing in the sky, we can argue morals and get nowhere. We can, however, look at what we want and how to get it. Collective bargaining allows workers a “living” instead of a “starving”. As unions are decimated, workers’ living standards have fallen. Politicians and newspersons tell workers in the private sector that they have lost their union rights and they’ll never get them back. Public employees still have their rights. Citizens are urged to take those rights away so we’ll all be equal.
If American workers are ready to believe that, we’re in for a long, dark night.
Desperate times conjure desperate actions. Fear breeds anger, and people are tempted to do things that are hard to undo. In 2011, people who work for a living are at odds with each other. Government employees are under assault, forced by insolvent and indebted governments to work harder for less pay and reduced benefits. Meanwhile the political class would eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees. And some workers in the private sector appear eager to see that happen.
Give credit to the politicians and their wealthy backers who have managed to drive so huge a wedge between people who have the same wants, needs and aspirations, who would be so much healthier, wealthier, and wiser if they would help instead of fight each other. It has taken a long time and sustained pursuit to get some working people to despise others. But if there be a legitimate grievance against public employees, it needs to be brought into the light for close inspection.
True believers of the doctrine that government is the problem in all cases are far gone into delusion. People who feel all government workers are lazy parasites cannot be reached with logic. Those who can ignore dams, roads, schools, parks, sewers, military, police, firefighters, and all other successful government projects are, if not happy, at least satisfied with their intentional ignorance. But most private company workers understand the need for a social contract and appreciate the work public employees do, to promote the general welfare. They know most public employees, like most private employees, earn their pay. But as human beings we all tend to annoy each other in many different ways, and in hard times minor irritations can turn into nasty resentments, with resulting harsh retaliations.
In the first place, in recessions, when businesses cut back and employees lose jobs, government workers tend to keep theirs. With the jobs they keep their good pay, holidays, vacations, medical insurance and other perks. In long recessions the relative prosperity of government workers can be especially grating as tax revenues go down, and governments seek new sources of revenue to maintain services. The argument against raising taxes to support government workers can be very convincing, with the citizenry struggling to get by.
Still, a look at all sides of the situation brings up more questions. Do tough times reduce or eliminate the need for government services? We know that more people need the safety net in recessions. So we find ourselves demanding public employees to work harder for less. And while such demands appear unfair, we are reminded that life is unfair, and that many workers in the private sector have seen their wages reduced and their benefits decimated. Everyone must learn to get along with less.
Well…not quite everyone. The rich have prospered, some obscenely so. Yet many in the media and in elected office (most of them well-off) say the very idea of taxing wealth, even a little more, is unfair. And many workers agree. Yes, they hold, it would be nice if the rich would share some of their abundance with the less fortunate. Some rich folks do. But if they choose to keep, squander or destroy their wealth to the benefit of no one, that is their right, and it would be wrong for the rest of us to tax them to help the needy. However, strangling government, leaving those truly desperate to their fate, is quite fair, according to advocates for the rich in media, politics and our neighbourhoods. They accuse their opponents of envy, which renders any attempt to use excess wealth to jump-start the economy as unworthy of debate. Rich people have something others want: their money. We can’t have it, end of discussion. But interestingly, the same argument does not hold regarding government employees. They have living wages and benefits, and a collective bargaining system to improve their lot. All workers want these. But since private employees have lost theirs, it seems only right to take them away from public employees as well. Then we’ll all be equally poor and downtrodden—except the rich, who apparently live in a galaxy far away.
We are at moral loggerheads on this issue, and until we see the writing in the sky, we can argue morals and get nowhere. We can, however, look at what we want and how to get it. Collective bargaining allows workers a “living” instead of a “starving”. As unions are decimated, workers’ living standards have fallen. Politicians and newspersons tell workers in the private sector that they have lost their union rights and they’ll never get them back. Public employees still have their rights. Citizens are urged to take those rights away so we’ll all be equal.
If American workers are ready to believe that, we’re in for a long, dark night.
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