“One thing about the current generation of conservatives: Getting mugged by reality hasn’t changed the way they look at the world.”
Katrina Vanden Heuvel
“So be it.”
John Boehner
Has capitalism become a religion? If so, is this a sign that, according to Eric Hoffer in THE TRUE BELIEVER, “its workability and advantages have ceased to be self-evident?” The gospel of free enterprise, put forth by Saints Ayn, Ronald and Milton, has attracted many true believers who seem to put free enterprise principles above the practical workings of economics. High priests Rush and Grover (and their countless minions), despite the enormous prosperity of a few and stagnation and impoverishment for everyone else, preach the doctrine that “government is the problem” with unquenched fire. The stronger the evidence that marketplace magic is not working very well for most of us, the more fervently do the faithful servants of Mammon cling to their belief in capitalism’s triumphant goodness. With their complete disdain of government in any form comes joyful reverence for avarice. According to these true believers, we are left with only six deadly sins, greed now being credited as the sole source of human progress, perhaps the single human virtue. Therefore, those who profit from their greed should be allowed to keep all their gains lest they be discouraged from getting more, which would throw all mankind into a new darkness. The leap of faith required to believe this dogma is a long one, but this presents no handicap to those who believe.
Some of Mammon’s faithful hold to the hardcore conviction that even a kind thought toward those less fortunate will stop progress dead in its tracks. Then there are those who feel rich people can share with others if they want to. But under no circumstances, no matter how great the need, should the wealthy be compelled, especially through taxes, to share the wealth, because after all taxes are for government, and government is always the problem. If a rich man wants to help the poor, he may. But if he does not, the poor must endure or die. Free people in a democracy are free to starve, but they are not allowed to use their democracy to provide for those in need, if those who possess a surfeit refuse to share.
This is a tough creed to swallow.
It is understood that need is a subjective emotion. Some people are aware that they need very little to be happy, but who are they to force their Thoeauvian simplicity on everyone else? Who is to say that material comforts and pleasures are not the just rewards of a job well done? But for one man to need many mansions, several yachts and planes, many cars, warehouses full of expensive clothes and jewels galore (not to mention pockets stuffed full of politicians) is a bit of a stretch, for most of us who do not have all that. And if the same rich man can look at millions who live in squalor, hunger and privation, and say these people have all they need, credibility fails completely.
The servants of greed are left with a religious conviction to stand on, a conviction holding that human greed, for all its resultant hardships, dislocations, warfare and suffering, is the only source of human progress. Obviously, we can understand why a mega-rich empire builder would spout such a creed. But why should anyone else believe it? The rest of us are expected by the adherents of this faith to endure any amount of hardship for the benefit of the few who have it all, believing that if we let their selfishness run rampant, some day all humanity will be materially better off. Again, this creed is tough to swallow.
In this capitalistic religion, there is no nirvana to look forward to. No heaven with its pearly gates and streets paved with gold, no celestial virgins waiting to reward us in afterlife for enduring this vale of tears. There is only faith in a better economic life for our descendants, someday, maybe. We must accept our poverty, disease, and injustice, live with our misery. . .and BELIEVE! If free enterprise depends on blind faith, then its practical advantages are no longer obvious. Under this creed, commonsense solutions to everyday problems are now sins. Unfettered greed has become the highest virtue. Adults ought to know better. Most of us do.
Historically, unbridled capitalism always concentrates too much wealth in the hands of too few people, and productivity always exceeds consumption. With consumers spending too little, surplus production backs up. Workers are fired and privation becomes widespread. Private charity is overwhelmed. Practical solutions to this problem include government spending on public works to increase employment so people will buy things again. Some wealth must be redistributed to maintain balanced prosperity and social stability, which benefits rich, poor, and those in-between. Free enterprise, constructively regulated and shared by all, is an effective tool for society’s improvement and human progress. But the people it serves must make it serve. Like fire, capitalism makes a bad master.
And greed is still not a virtue.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
COUP D'ETAT, U.S.A.
COUP D’ETAT, U.S.A.
“We are Wall Street: It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable….Go ahead and take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: we’re going to take yours….We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive.”
E-mail circulating on Wall Street, reported in FINANCIAL TIMES
Resembling sophisticated Huns or Vandals, the barons of industry and finance sneer about doing “God’s work” as they sit like Smaug the dragon atop mountains of plunder, and smugly acquire more at everyone else’s expense. Having grown accustomed to getting their way, all the way, under the last presidential administration, they have no intention of sharing or compromising now. Barack Obama, to any impartial observer, is not a socialist. He would be a “liberal Republican” by definition forty years ago, when there really were such things. He has tried vainly to compromise with current Republicans, who have moved far to the right of the canonized Ronald Reagan, and now prefer to obliterate the national government, rather than make any deals with Democrats. Centering in Wisconsin but extending nation-wide, the filthy rich are using the 2010 election to pull off a coup d’etat. This way they have no need to compromise. The servants of the corporate elite, egged on by the Tea Party, have staged their takeover in broad daylight, for everyone to see. Though not clever, it is bold, and it is happening, right now, in the good old land of liberty.
While the Tea Party Republicans ran for election promising more jobs, as soon as they took over they moved rapidly to shut down all opposition. Pausing only briefly to issue what corporate tax breaks they could (first things first, right?) they declared an emergency, which they claimed required drastic action to avoid total disaster. First on the list of hardship measures: to destroy public employee unions. Private company unions being already decimated, the attack would eliminate a major source of opposition to corporate supremacy. Then corporations, already given full citizenship by the Supreme Court, can use limitless funds to swamp any further opposition in a tsunami of propaganda. The servants of corporate oligarchy are then free to take advantage of whatever government machinery serves their purpose, and dismantle what might get in the way of profits. Of course, no one is forced to believe all that corporate “free speech”. But big business is awfully good at sales pitches. If it can spread its message without concerted, effective response from the opposition, there is no opposition. There will be no doubt about who rules. This is the goal of a coup.
Scott Walker did not take office in Wisconsin. He took control, CEO fashion. And typically, a CEO does not ask the underlings what they might think of policy. He tells them what he wants, and if he does not get it, he makes changes. This is the principle reason why, in a democracy, government cannot be run like a business. Walker, serving the corporate elite, has to trash the democracy. Furthermore, it is obvious that when people awaken to actually understand how adversely they will be affected by these Tea Party actions, Walker and his cronies will be sent packing. Hence the coup. If Walker can pull it off, his future in politics is rosy. If he is rebuffed, he will have proven himself a solid team player, and will prosper nonetheless.
The coup in Wisconsin has roused considerable organized opposition, from many who work for a living. This opposition has spread around the country, and many Americans who were content to live and let live have awakened to resist a real threat. A sense of worker solidarity has been revived, for the first time in quite a while, and it is being transmitted at electric speed, everywhere. If this solidarity can endure, it could be strong enough to turn back the coup—this time. But working people dare not succumb to complacency. The servants of greed will never stop attacking.
The coup in Wisconsin, and elsewhere, should leave no doubt that class warfare is ongoing, even though the working class did not start it. The corporate class will never stop seeking absolute power, and only consistent solidarity among the workers can prevent the upper class from having it. The ultra-rich will cooperate, will share, if they must, to the benefit of workers and the wealthy--all but those totally consumed by greed. But it is up to those of us not in that upper class to make them cooperate and share. The alternative, sadly, is some kind of servitude, with its accompanying penury. Eternal vigilance still being the price of liberty, we must keep watch for wherever our liberty is threatened. Sometimes the enemy is foreign. This time the threat is homegrown.
“We are Wall Street: It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable….Go ahead and take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: we’re going to take yours….We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive.”
E-mail circulating on Wall Street, reported in FINANCIAL TIMES
Resembling sophisticated Huns or Vandals, the barons of industry and finance sneer about doing “God’s work” as they sit like Smaug the dragon atop mountains of plunder, and smugly acquire more at everyone else’s expense. Having grown accustomed to getting their way, all the way, under the last presidential administration, they have no intention of sharing or compromising now. Barack Obama, to any impartial observer, is not a socialist. He would be a “liberal Republican” by definition forty years ago, when there really were such things. He has tried vainly to compromise with current Republicans, who have moved far to the right of the canonized Ronald Reagan, and now prefer to obliterate the national government, rather than make any deals with Democrats. Centering in Wisconsin but extending nation-wide, the filthy rich are using the 2010 election to pull off a coup d’etat. This way they have no need to compromise. The servants of the corporate elite, egged on by the Tea Party, have staged their takeover in broad daylight, for everyone to see. Though not clever, it is bold, and it is happening, right now, in the good old land of liberty.
While the Tea Party Republicans ran for election promising more jobs, as soon as they took over they moved rapidly to shut down all opposition. Pausing only briefly to issue what corporate tax breaks they could (first things first, right?) they declared an emergency, which they claimed required drastic action to avoid total disaster. First on the list of hardship measures: to destroy public employee unions. Private company unions being already decimated, the attack would eliminate a major source of opposition to corporate supremacy. Then corporations, already given full citizenship by the Supreme Court, can use limitless funds to swamp any further opposition in a tsunami of propaganda. The servants of corporate oligarchy are then free to take advantage of whatever government machinery serves their purpose, and dismantle what might get in the way of profits. Of course, no one is forced to believe all that corporate “free speech”. But big business is awfully good at sales pitches. If it can spread its message without concerted, effective response from the opposition, there is no opposition. There will be no doubt about who rules. This is the goal of a coup.
Scott Walker did not take office in Wisconsin. He took control, CEO fashion. And typically, a CEO does not ask the underlings what they might think of policy. He tells them what he wants, and if he does not get it, he makes changes. This is the principle reason why, in a democracy, government cannot be run like a business. Walker, serving the corporate elite, has to trash the democracy. Furthermore, it is obvious that when people awaken to actually understand how adversely they will be affected by these Tea Party actions, Walker and his cronies will be sent packing. Hence the coup. If Walker can pull it off, his future in politics is rosy. If he is rebuffed, he will have proven himself a solid team player, and will prosper nonetheless.
The coup in Wisconsin has roused considerable organized opposition, from many who work for a living. This opposition has spread around the country, and many Americans who were content to live and let live have awakened to resist a real threat. A sense of worker solidarity has been revived, for the first time in quite a while, and it is being transmitted at electric speed, everywhere. If this solidarity can endure, it could be strong enough to turn back the coup—this time. But working people dare not succumb to complacency. The servants of greed will never stop attacking.
The coup in Wisconsin, and elsewhere, should leave no doubt that class warfare is ongoing, even though the working class did not start it. The corporate class will never stop seeking absolute power, and only consistent solidarity among the workers can prevent the upper class from having it. The ultra-rich will cooperate, will share, if they must, to the benefit of workers and the wealthy--all but those totally consumed by greed. But it is up to those of us not in that upper class to make them cooperate and share. The alternative, sadly, is some kind of servitude, with its accompanying penury. Eternal vigilance still being the price of liberty, we must keep watch for wherever our liberty is threatened. Sometimes the enemy is foreign. This time the threat is homegrown.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
WIKILEAKS – ANY SURPRISES?
“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.
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.
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.
Monday, February 28, 2011
WHITHER OUR WITHERED DEMOCRACY?
“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
James Madison
Excitement in Egypt fades, unrest follows all over the Middle East and spreads to our Midwest. America, seemingly powerless in foreign affairs, has an effective option: to remove our military presence from Iraq and Afghanistan, now. No action would help the fortunes of people promoting true democracy in the region more than the cessation of U.S. warfare on people who live there. Ending our imperial adventures there would also be healthy for the state of American democracy. In addition to lives and money, Americans have lost precious freedoms, as a direct result of our prolonged state of war.
Whatever our objectives for these deadly, destructive wars were originally, they have not been fulfilled, and they won’t be. Wikileaks told us nothing new. The insanity of the wars and the ineffectiveness of the occupations have been obvious for some time. Our involvement is costing 2 1/2 billion dollars each week, in borrowed funds. While most Americans can still ignore the death and destruction, not being personally involved, many of our political, business and media leaders are screaming against our ballooning public debt. The debt can be dramatically reduced, with virtually universal consent, simply by bringing the troops home.
Mainstream conservatives and liberals, as well as peaceniks and tea partiers, are increasingly united in their calls for wars’ end. The neocons, loudly pounding the war drums in the beginning, drowning out all opposition, have gone undercover, excepting an occasional mumble about mistakes that were made. Only the heroism of our military people stands as an emotional, but not reasonable, excuse for “staying the course”. “We cannot let them die in vain.” But if we are sending others to die only because some have been killed already, then we must conclude that all have died in vain. “We cannot support the troops unless we also support the mission,” which means we must leave them there to kill or be killed. We can see why the founding fathers tried to make it difficult to go to war. How can we have the hubris to force democracy on Afghanistan and Iraq while lending only lukewarm support to democracy elsewhere in the area, and letting it die here?
Most people dislike war, and the more we learn about it, the less we approve. A special election nationwide would bring the troops home the next day. Yet we have continual warfare. The establishment, controlled by the scarcely hidden military-industrial complex, will make sure that the issue never gets to a popular vote. The peoples’ will always takes a drubbing in war, as do human rights. Wire-tapping, routine searches, citizens spying on each other, secret kidnappings and torture, imprisonment without habeas corpus, all get people to fear their government. The longer war lasts, the blurrier becomes the distinction, for the rulers, between “them” and “us.”
Despite growing resistance from all sides, our two ruling parties keep the wars going, each terrified that the other side might use the heroism of our troops against them. Regarding the casualties, one side would help the families of the dead and rehabilitate the wounded, while the other side would toss the “dead wood.” Nobody in actual power proposes to immediately stop the carnage. We see plans to start bringing the troops home in the near future, but the plans are rotten with loopholes, and already our leaders have begun to hedge. We are guaranteed a long lasting, unwanted American presence in the Middle East, killing, dying, and letting the future pay for it.
During the Vietnam conflict Eisenhower’s warnings about the power of the “military-industrial complex” to subvert our freedom were amplified. Those warnings have been proven true, though historical revisionism transformed the Vietnam War from an unneeded, colonial war to a “noble cause.” The revisionists were then able to get the country involved in more “noble causes” in the Middle East. The doublethink, whereby we know the military-industrial complex subverts our democracy at the same time we believe in the noble cause of all American warfare, allows war to continue indefinitely. And whenever someone dares to present the truth, the establishment counters by waving the bloody shirt, rendering further resistance futile.
The revolution in Egypt was peaceful. America can encourage peaceful steps to democracy by ending war with Egypt’s neighbours. At the same time we can start to repair the deep injuries to our democracy due to ceaseless war. Recent stories from Afghanistan tell us that the latest surge has been successful. People over there like us. How many times will we continue to believe the “light at the end of the tunnel” stories? Our fortunes will vastly improve, in the long run, when we stop blowing up people, places, and things. To build democracy there, we rebuild it here: if we play it right, we could get a win-win.
James Madison
Excitement in Egypt fades, unrest follows all over the Middle East and spreads to our Midwest. America, seemingly powerless in foreign affairs, has an effective option: to remove our military presence from Iraq and Afghanistan, now. No action would help the fortunes of people promoting true democracy in the region more than the cessation of U.S. warfare on people who live there. Ending our imperial adventures there would also be healthy for the state of American democracy. In addition to lives and money, Americans have lost precious freedoms, as a direct result of our prolonged state of war.
Whatever our objectives for these deadly, destructive wars were originally, they have not been fulfilled, and they won’t be. Wikileaks told us nothing new. The insanity of the wars and the ineffectiveness of the occupations have been obvious for some time. Our involvement is costing 2 1/2 billion dollars each week, in borrowed funds. While most Americans can still ignore the death and destruction, not being personally involved, many of our political, business and media leaders are screaming against our ballooning public debt. The debt can be dramatically reduced, with virtually universal consent, simply by bringing the troops home.
Mainstream conservatives and liberals, as well as peaceniks and tea partiers, are increasingly united in their calls for wars’ end. The neocons, loudly pounding the war drums in the beginning, drowning out all opposition, have gone undercover, excepting an occasional mumble about mistakes that were made. Only the heroism of our military people stands as an emotional, but not reasonable, excuse for “staying the course”. “We cannot let them die in vain.” But if we are sending others to die only because some have been killed already, then we must conclude that all have died in vain. “We cannot support the troops unless we also support the mission,” which means we must leave them there to kill or be killed. We can see why the founding fathers tried to make it difficult to go to war. How can we have the hubris to force democracy on Afghanistan and Iraq while lending only lukewarm support to democracy elsewhere in the area, and letting it die here?
Most people dislike war, and the more we learn about it, the less we approve. A special election nationwide would bring the troops home the next day. Yet we have continual warfare. The establishment, controlled by the scarcely hidden military-industrial complex, will make sure that the issue never gets to a popular vote. The peoples’ will always takes a drubbing in war, as do human rights. Wire-tapping, routine searches, citizens spying on each other, secret kidnappings and torture, imprisonment without habeas corpus, all get people to fear their government. The longer war lasts, the blurrier becomes the distinction, for the rulers, between “them” and “us.”
Despite growing resistance from all sides, our two ruling parties keep the wars going, each terrified that the other side might use the heroism of our troops against them. Regarding the casualties, one side would help the families of the dead and rehabilitate the wounded, while the other side would toss the “dead wood.” Nobody in actual power proposes to immediately stop the carnage. We see plans to start bringing the troops home in the near future, but the plans are rotten with loopholes, and already our leaders have begun to hedge. We are guaranteed a long lasting, unwanted American presence in the Middle East, killing, dying, and letting the future pay for it.
During the Vietnam conflict Eisenhower’s warnings about the power of the “military-industrial complex” to subvert our freedom were amplified. Those warnings have been proven true, though historical revisionism transformed the Vietnam War from an unneeded, colonial war to a “noble cause.” The revisionists were then able to get the country involved in more “noble causes” in the Middle East. The doublethink, whereby we know the military-industrial complex subverts our democracy at the same time we believe in the noble cause of all American warfare, allows war to continue indefinitely. And whenever someone dares to present the truth, the establishment counters by waving the bloody shirt, rendering further resistance futile.
The revolution in Egypt was peaceful. America can encourage peaceful steps to democracy by ending war with Egypt’s neighbours. At the same time we can start to repair the deep injuries to our democracy due to ceaseless war. Recent stories from Afghanistan tell us that the latest surge has been successful. People over there like us. How many times will we continue to believe the “light at the end of the tunnel” stories? Our fortunes will vastly improve, in the long run, when we stop blowing up people, places, and things. To build democracy there, we rebuild it here: if we play it right, we could get a win-win.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
THE PARTY FAITHFUL
"The broad movement of American politics in recent decades has been toward greater inequality, the discrediting of public institutions and a near idolatry of private markets at the expense of corporate accountability."
Katrina Vanden Heuvel, THE NATION, January 24, 2011
"If free enterprise becomes a proselytizing holy cause, it will be a sign that its workability and advantages have ceased to be self-evident."
Eric Hoffer, THE TRUE BELIEVER
Economically, things are rough all over, excepting a tiny minority that waxes ever richer. Meanwhile some Americans, calling themselves Tea Party Patriots, are so sure of the righteousness of this inequality that they enthusiastically elected politicians who have pledged not only to uphold the situation, but to eliminate remaining social safeguards. While our capitalist economy is imploding, these people fear impending socialism. After many years of capitalism's gradually being released from constraints imposed after the last Great Depression, the predictable collapse has happened, and the only thing we have to fear, apparently, is another round of constraints upon private enterprise.
The Tea Partiers, their prodders in the media, and their secret exploiters among the extremely wealthy, feel no need for logic. Their loyalty, "near idolatry", to the economic system that brought on this current persistent recession is based on faith alone. Free enterprise is good, freer enterprise, better. Socialism in any form is evil. Economic inequality is right. The rich are entitled to their luxuries just as the poor are entitled to their privations.
To rational people, economic systems are tools, to be used by societies for the mundane purpose of delivering more and better goods and services to more people. As human beings progress, we learn from mistakes, so we can improve on existing systems. The social safety net, along with business and industrial regulations and public works projects, were enacted when it became clear that unbridled free enterprise morphs into a sophisticated piracy that causes misery on a scale traditional pirates can only dream about. Knowing this, a return to free-range capitalism would be insane. Yet to the Tea Party faithful, this is where we need to go...not because it is sensible, but because it is morally right.
Tycoons and entrepreneurs know that economics and morals do not make a good fit. Right is getting a product or service and selling it at a profit. Wrong is failing to do so, thus losing money. It's a primitive impulse. Our forebears could not look too closely at how mastodons might feel about being hunted. People needed food. Bring down a mastodon and many people get to eat. It was a collective operation, too. Faithful devotion to rugged individualism in mankind's early days would probably have nipped the human race in the bud. Human progress depends on doing what works.
Communism taught us the horrors of unhampered collectivization, which not only killed and enslaved millions, but failed miserably to ease poverty. Modern liberals are not looking around for a new Lenin. But common sense shows that some collective action by society can have positive effects, that it does not pave the road to Gulag. We know we can have sensible controls on free enterprise without stifling initiative. As citizens of a democracy we are naturally free to evaluate our government's effect on our economy, to make adjustments, to set goals. We're not stuck with anything.
As citizens of a democracy, we are free to argue over the effectiveness of any plan, any procedure, to discuss the price, to compromise, to revise. Human institutions being imperfect, reasonable people can always make improvements. The Tea Party faithful, however, insist on a narrow, subjective reading of the Constitution, by which the national government has no power but to protect business from government. Profit is sacred, it's every man for himself, and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must be fought for and preserved, apparently, at gunpoint. Planning and cooperation are sins. Has capitalism taken on a religious reverence because it no longer works?
In the current disaster, government bailed out the financial and automobile industries and invested in job creation. And though prosperity is not yet around the corner, these moves are understood to have averted a worse catastrophe. To the Tea Party faithful, the right thing would have been to let the disaster go as far as it would go. Bank failures, industrial bankruptcies, joblessness on an enormous scale--these would have been acceptable alternatives to socialism. At least we would all be free to get and keep whatever we can. No nirvana, no celestial virgins, no eternal planet, no streets of gold--the Tea Party paradise is an earthly one, where government has no hold on anybody. If this does not sound promising, it's what comes from confusing philosophy and religion with the unexciting process of economics.
Katrina Vanden Heuvel, THE NATION, January 24, 2011
"If free enterprise becomes a proselytizing holy cause, it will be a sign that its workability and advantages have ceased to be self-evident."
Eric Hoffer, THE TRUE BELIEVER
Economically, things are rough all over, excepting a tiny minority that waxes ever richer. Meanwhile some Americans, calling themselves Tea Party Patriots, are so sure of the righteousness of this inequality that they enthusiastically elected politicians who have pledged not only to uphold the situation, but to eliminate remaining social safeguards. While our capitalist economy is imploding, these people fear impending socialism. After many years of capitalism's gradually being released from constraints imposed after the last Great Depression, the predictable collapse has happened, and the only thing we have to fear, apparently, is another round of constraints upon private enterprise.
The Tea Partiers, their prodders in the media, and their secret exploiters among the extremely wealthy, feel no need for logic. Their loyalty, "near idolatry", to the economic system that brought on this current persistent recession is based on faith alone. Free enterprise is good, freer enterprise, better. Socialism in any form is evil. Economic inequality is right. The rich are entitled to their luxuries just as the poor are entitled to their privations.
To rational people, economic systems are tools, to be used by societies for the mundane purpose of delivering more and better goods and services to more people. As human beings progress, we learn from mistakes, so we can improve on existing systems. The social safety net, along with business and industrial regulations and public works projects, were enacted when it became clear that unbridled free enterprise morphs into a sophisticated piracy that causes misery on a scale traditional pirates can only dream about. Knowing this, a return to free-range capitalism would be insane. Yet to the Tea Party faithful, this is where we need to go...not because it is sensible, but because it is morally right.
Tycoons and entrepreneurs know that economics and morals do not make a good fit. Right is getting a product or service and selling it at a profit. Wrong is failing to do so, thus losing money. It's a primitive impulse. Our forebears could not look too closely at how mastodons might feel about being hunted. People needed food. Bring down a mastodon and many people get to eat. It was a collective operation, too. Faithful devotion to rugged individualism in mankind's early days would probably have nipped the human race in the bud. Human progress depends on doing what works.
Communism taught us the horrors of unhampered collectivization, which not only killed and enslaved millions, but failed miserably to ease poverty. Modern liberals are not looking around for a new Lenin. But common sense shows that some collective action by society can have positive effects, that it does not pave the road to Gulag. We know we can have sensible controls on free enterprise without stifling initiative. As citizens of a democracy we are naturally free to evaluate our government's effect on our economy, to make adjustments, to set goals. We're not stuck with anything.
As citizens of a democracy, we are free to argue over the effectiveness of any plan, any procedure, to discuss the price, to compromise, to revise. Human institutions being imperfect, reasonable people can always make improvements. The Tea Party faithful, however, insist on a narrow, subjective reading of the Constitution, by which the national government has no power but to protect business from government. Profit is sacred, it's every man for himself, and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must be fought for and preserved, apparently, at gunpoint. Planning and cooperation are sins. Has capitalism taken on a religious reverence because it no longer works?
In the current disaster, government bailed out the financial and automobile industries and invested in job creation. And though prosperity is not yet around the corner, these moves are understood to have averted a worse catastrophe. To the Tea Party faithful, the right thing would have been to let the disaster go as far as it would go. Bank failures, industrial bankruptcies, joblessness on an enormous scale--these would have been acceptable alternatives to socialism. At least we would all be free to get and keep whatever we can. No nirvana, no celestial virgins, no eternal planet, no streets of gold--the Tea Party paradise is an earthly one, where government has no hold on anybody. If this does not sound promising, it's what comes from confusing philosophy and religion with the unexciting process of economics.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
THE STARS AND BARS FOREVER
In South Carolina some solid citizens recently celebrated the 150th anniversary of their state's secession from the Union, and the start of the Civil War. The celebrants, being White, claim surprise that Black citizens are less than enthusiastic about the festivities. Blacks, having suffered over two centuries of slavery, and another of Jim Crow segregation, which was not much different, can be forgiven for harbouring distrust and trepidation when the Whites dress up in plantation garb and declare their good intentions toward Americans of all races. The lot of Afro-Americans has only been improving in the last half-century, and those improvements have been in many quarters grudgingly given, and not only in the South. Who can blame them for being just a bit edgy?
If the South Carolina secession celebration had been an isolated incident it might be easier to believe the partygoers when they declare they are merely hailing the South's proud heritage of liberty, not the part where people owned other people, even though owning human property was the freedom secession was going to protect. But Southern politicians have recently been talking openly of secession, nullification and states' rights again, which happen to have been major issues in the slave states in the years leading up to the Civil War. And these issues have re-emerged at the same time America elected a Black man to the presidency. Just coincidence, they all say.
It is tempting to believe that all this ante-bellum talk has nothing to do with Barack Obama. Otherwise we must confront the very real possibility that racism is still quite strong in this country. Racism has been a defining thread in our history since Jamestown--since Columbus. In reality it goes back to humanity's hunter-forager beginnings. While racism probably assured mankind's survival in small, close-knit tribal groups for many millennia, this deep-seated emotion has become a threat to mankind's survival and most of us would sooner have it just go away. On our tightly wired, inter-dependent, small planet, the human race has evolved into one clan. Just about all of us (some gladly, some grudgingly, most of us both) are aware of this new reality. Still, survival techniques reaching back to our evolutionary roots do not go quietly into a good night.
Worldwide, not only are most of us at least intellectually aware that seeing the world as one is beneficial, but in an age of fast, relatively cheap travel and virtually universal access to instant electronic communications, even the most isolated inhabitants of Earth have some personal knowledge of how alike we all are. For this reason, ongoing eruptions of racism, in others and within ourselves, are situations we would rather not deal with. These episodes are ugly in others, terrifying when they enter our personal thoughts. It is much more pleasant to pretend the whole dilemma never existed, to travel to a fantasy land of long ago, when life was quiet, when both masters and slaves were content, to pretend we can return to a life that was like we wanted it to be. Raise high the Stars and Bars and celebrate a fine heritage of liberty.
That Confederate flag represents a chaotic view of our history. Though none live who remember the time, a vivid ancestral memory abides. The wounds are deep, and scars plentiful. The sins of the fathers really were visited on the sons, and the sons kept heaping up more sins on their descendants, to this very day. And though the sins of racism are not confined to South Carolina or even to Dixie, the poison is currently most obvious in the South. The Stars and Bars are being raised again. What does this flag mean?
Heritage, some say, slavery say others. Maybe both viewpoints are correct. Slavery is part of America's heritage, just like mint juleps and black-eyed peas. Slavery, unlike food and drink, is not something we can take or leave. It sticks to our heritage. Therefore it should be examined from all angles, lest we only re-package the problem and fail to progress, at a time when we cannot afford to stand still. Slavery as an institution left one group of Americans with little choice but to justify forced labour, for no pay, on another group, and as such indicates continuing problems for our national integrity. But as an economic system, slavery benefitted only a miniscule part of our population. The plantation owners waxed very rich while the majority of White Southerners found their work vastly undervalued. Many lived in penury due to a system based on free labour.
When secession came, most poor Whites in the South stood by their aristocracy, and bravely fought and died for the preservation of a system that stifled their prospects. Their only advantage was that the slaves were worse off, and that was good enough. The Stars and Bars represents their willingness to fight to keep an economic and social system that worked against them. Raise it high, fly it proudly. It serves to remind us that we humans can forego not just our enlightened self-interest, but our base self-interest, for some unquestioned higher cause. It offers an opportunity to examine our ancestors' motives, to learn if the same shortcomings might yet be present within us. The answers might not be pleasant, but the truth is supposed to set us free.
First we must confront it.
If the South Carolina secession celebration had been an isolated incident it might be easier to believe the partygoers when they declare they are merely hailing the South's proud heritage of liberty, not the part where people owned other people, even though owning human property was the freedom secession was going to protect. But Southern politicians have recently been talking openly of secession, nullification and states' rights again, which happen to have been major issues in the slave states in the years leading up to the Civil War. And these issues have re-emerged at the same time America elected a Black man to the presidency. Just coincidence, they all say.
It is tempting to believe that all this ante-bellum talk has nothing to do with Barack Obama. Otherwise we must confront the very real possibility that racism is still quite strong in this country. Racism has been a defining thread in our history since Jamestown--since Columbus. In reality it goes back to humanity's hunter-forager beginnings. While racism probably assured mankind's survival in small, close-knit tribal groups for many millennia, this deep-seated emotion has become a threat to mankind's survival and most of us would sooner have it just go away. On our tightly wired, inter-dependent, small planet, the human race has evolved into one clan. Just about all of us (some gladly, some grudgingly, most of us both) are aware of this new reality. Still, survival techniques reaching back to our evolutionary roots do not go quietly into a good night.
Worldwide, not only are most of us at least intellectually aware that seeing the world as one is beneficial, but in an age of fast, relatively cheap travel and virtually universal access to instant electronic communications, even the most isolated inhabitants of Earth have some personal knowledge of how alike we all are. For this reason, ongoing eruptions of racism, in others and within ourselves, are situations we would rather not deal with. These episodes are ugly in others, terrifying when they enter our personal thoughts. It is much more pleasant to pretend the whole dilemma never existed, to travel to a fantasy land of long ago, when life was quiet, when both masters and slaves were content, to pretend we can return to a life that was like we wanted it to be. Raise high the Stars and Bars and celebrate a fine heritage of liberty.
That Confederate flag represents a chaotic view of our history. Though none live who remember the time, a vivid ancestral memory abides. The wounds are deep, and scars plentiful. The sins of the fathers really were visited on the sons, and the sons kept heaping up more sins on their descendants, to this very day. And though the sins of racism are not confined to South Carolina or even to Dixie, the poison is currently most obvious in the South. The Stars and Bars are being raised again. What does this flag mean?
Heritage, some say, slavery say others. Maybe both viewpoints are correct. Slavery is part of America's heritage, just like mint juleps and black-eyed peas. Slavery, unlike food and drink, is not something we can take or leave. It sticks to our heritage. Therefore it should be examined from all angles, lest we only re-package the problem and fail to progress, at a time when we cannot afford to stand still. Slavery as an institution left one group of Americans with little choice but to justify forced labour, for no pay, on another group, and as such indicates continuing problems for our national integrity. But as an economic system, slavery benefitted only a miniscule part of our population. The plantation owners waxed very rich while the majority of White Southerners found their work vastly undervalued. Many lived in penury due to a system based on free labour.
When secession came, most poor Whites in the South stood by their aristocracy, and bravely fought and died for the preservation of a system that stifled their prospects. Their only advantage was that the slaves were worse off, and that was good enough. The Stars and Bars represents their willingness to fight to keep an economic and social system that worked against them. Raise it high, fly it proudly. It serves to remind us that we humans can forego not just our enlightened self-interest, but our base self-interest, for some unquestioned higher cause. It offers an opportunity to examine our ancestors' motives, to learn if the same shortcomings might yet be present within us. The answers might not be pleasant, but the truth is supposed to set us free.
First we must confront it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)