I think I might actually be starting to believe. I had been waiting and waiting for what Paul Krugman termed "The Great Revulsion" when Americans finally broke the spell and realized they don't like working longer, getting less, shrinking benefits, disappearing job security, and so on.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
The crushing and revulsion
I've had a lot on my mind lately and although I think I finally understand that it is not my responsibility to fix the world I have to at least get some things off my chest. Hunter S. Thompson used to refer to "us" as the doomed, I wish I knew more about his philosophy to elaborate but what it means to me is that the bottom 80% of Americans are at the mercy of the other 20% to a large degree. Many of us like to maintain that we make our own destiny and are responsible for the choices we make, but so many of our choices are narrowed before we make them because of circumstances beyond our control. For example, we don't choose our parents and we don't have much influence on the choices our parents make for us and it is increasingly important to be born lucky in this regard because so many of the resources which influence how are lives turn out is dependent on what happens in our minorities. But this is just an example, where you live, what jobs are available there, the potentials of starting a family, and whether or not the HR person hires you, the banker gives you the startup loan for a business or mortgage for a house, or a potential mate acceeds to your advances are really not entirely up to you. And so on, we make choices within a spectrum of the possible.
So, what I am concerned with is that spectrum of the possible and lately that spectrum has been shrinking to the point where the downward velocity seems unstoppable. I've heard an expression attributed to Adam Smith, "the vile maxim of the masters of mankind: All for ourselves and nothing for anyone else." Not sure if I used that before but it seems to be the modus operandi of the business elite, that top 1% that has such an outsized slice of the pie. To define my terms, the elite I refer to is not the sports and movie stars that so many people complain about when the subject turns to who gets paid too much, neither do I mean the "trial lawyers" allegedly sucking so much money from "responsible" business, or the "labor bosses" allegedly doing the same. What I refer to is the CEOs who suck the money out of the companies they run, those companies sucking money out of people's pockets through wage and benefit cuts, and higher prices through collusion and monopoly. The trust fund princelings who depend on and enable those executives to do the sucking, and the entire apparatus of propaganda, misdirection, and deceit which serves them both. A friend posted this link to charts showing how far we've moved toward this group gaining "all for ourselves."
George Orwell, speaking through his character Winston Smith, asked "I understand the how, I just don't understand the why." The how in our system is by rewriting the rules so that legal entities called corporations can concentrate economic power and decision-making into fewer and fewer hands while undermining any group that could check this concentration and using scientific propaganda techniques to distract, redirect, divide, and diffuse any potential opposition from the public. The why is somewhat puzzling, what do they really gain by tearing the society apart, destroying so many people's lives here and around the world? I mean how much money can you really use? At what point is there no more privilege to be gained? Can this system be stabilized to the point where it is perpetual or at least continued over several generations? Why? Is it simply what O'brien told Winston during their reconditioning in 1984? "Imagine a boot stomping on a face, forever, that is what we want, total power for it's own sake." Perpetual war, perpetual shortages, insecurity and anxiety, blind obedience to the system from all concerned and the everpresent threat of violence. Is that all?
The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once defended the post-WWII American system of "democracy" because in his philosophy social conflict was inevitable and democracy could allow proximate solutions to insoluable problems, giving us a tolerable justice through balance of power. Interest against interest, power checking power, this was Niebuhr's realist version of utopia because human nature would always be flawed and democracy allowed social conflict to play out through channels other than violence and forceful coercion. Companies could pursue profit with no myopic central planning system or burdening aristocracy, entrepeneurs could direct engineers and enable technology to progress and innovate. Labor could organize and collectively bargain, consumer groups could check the business practices of companies and both could keep them from getting too powerful. Religious and scholarly groups could influence the morality of society through reason and religion. Social justice could be achieved to a tolerable degree through the balance of interests and their competition. It did work to a remarkable degree, business elites were humbled enough by the stock market crash to enable a competing interest, New Deal liberals, to gain a position of power. This then allowed workers to organize legally for the first time and keep the business in check. Government is not an end in itself, and too many people think that unions outlived their usefulness because we have laws to protect workers and consumers and the environment. A cursory examination shows pretty well that laws are only as helpful as the people enforcing them. Even the constitution is only a piece of paper if the people in power don't care what it says.
And not caring is probably as close as we can get to the why. The elite just doesn't care. About you, about me, about the future, about the planet, and certainly not anyone living on it that doesn't belong to the club. Niebuhr called these the "Children of Darkness," evil and sinful, they care only about their own self-interest and to hell with everything else and are willing to use any means to achieve it. Self-interest is a powerful motivation, altruism is harder but we have the capacity to transcend selfishness. The "Children of Light" can lead, motivating and organizing those masses of people who want to be good but as in today's situation, this is extremely hard. The tolerably just society lasted as long as the CoLs remained engaged enough and the CoDs humbled enough by their failures to balance the situation. In the 1970s, for various reasons, this balance broke, the center did not hold and self-interest gained the upper hand. Now, they hold so many of the economic cards that anyone wishing to get ahead must accept the CoD's philosophy and do their bidding.
So, every time we have a ridiculous national conversation, from "did John Kerry get shot enough times in Vietnam?" to "was pres. Obama born in the US?" I want to claw my eyeballs out. Are Americans really that stupid? Have we really reached the point where the masses of idiots out there are willing to believe the most fantastic lies and are never satisfied with legitimate answers? Niebuhr constantly criticized liberals like John Dewey who thought the only obstacles to a rational society governed by reason were ignorance and bad institutions, the answer being education and reform of those institutions. While qualifying the criticism by understanding that an educator would naturally want to better educate people, Niebuhr explained that human nature was simply flawed and while education and reform can help, it will never eradicate social conflict or the irrational and selfish choices that people make as part of a group. One of the secondary sources I have researched lamented that Niebuhr assumed engagement on the part of nearly everyone, that he paid little attention to possibility that large numbers of people in a society would simply drop out of the public business but that is what America looks like today. Apathy is the watchword of a society where people become atomized and hopeless. Though poll after poll shows that the majority of Americans believe in a more just and equal society, they hold these views in isolation and believe that others will reflect what they see on tv.
So, we are at the mercy of the CoD who hold very anti-social views and are able to organize and push their views onto society at large. This self-reinforcing cycle has to have a bottom somewhere, there has to be a point where a critical mass say "enough is enough" and start pushing back but it won't happen until we realize that it is much easier to defend what we have together than seperately. We did it before, the CoD thought they had America by the throat during the Great Depression and despite the kkk, America Firsters, Father Coughlin and the antisemites, and the open racism, people did come together and enable the New Deal. Economic collapse will make it far more difficult to control the American empire, corporate disengagement from America is already helping people understand that we don't need them, and eventually people will have to decide between eating and cable tv. When all our fancy gadgets become unaffordable and recreation means interacting with other real people again, then the atoms will melt into community. Then a better society could be achieved, it will be a long and hard road but it is possible.
So, what I am concerned with is that spectrum of the possible and lately that spectrum has been shrinking to the point where the downward velocity seems unstoppable. I've heard an expression attributed to Adam Smith, "the vile maxim of the masters of mankind: All for ourselves and nothing for anyone else." Not sure if I used that before but it seems to be the modus operandi of the business elite, that top 1% that has such an outsized slice of the pie. To define my terms, the elite I refer to is not the sports and movie stars that so many people complain about when the subject turns to who gets paid too much, neither do I mean the "trial lawyers" allegedly sucking so much money from "responsible" business, or the "labor bosses" allegedly doing the same. What I refer to is the CEOs who suck the money out of the companies they run, those companies sucking money out of people's pockets through wage and benefit cuts, and higher prices through collusion and monopoly. The trust fund princelings who depend on and enable those executives to do the sucking, and the entire apparatus of propaganda, misdirection, and deceit which serves them both. A friend posted this link to charts showing how far we've moved toward this group gaining "all for ourselves."
George Orwell, speaking through his character Winston Smith, asked "I understand the how, I just don't understand the why." The how in our system is by rewriting the rules so that legal entities called corporations can concentrate economic power and decision-making into fewer and fewer hands while undermining any group that could check this concentration and using scientific propaganda techniques to distract, redirect, divide, and diffuse any potential opposition from the public. The why is somewhat puzzling, what do they really gain by tearing the society apart, destroying so many people's lives here and around the world? I mean how much money can you really use? At what point is there no more privilege to be gained? Can this system be stabilized to the point where it is perpetual or at least continued over several generations? Why? Is it simply what O'brien told Winston during their reconditioning in 1984? "Imagine a boot stomping on a face, forever, that is what we want, total power for it's own sake." Perpetual war, perpetual shortages, insecurity and anxiety, blind obedience to the system from all concerned and the everpresent threat of violence. Is that all?
The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once defended the post-WWII American system of "democracy" because in his philosophy social conflict was inevitable and democracy could allow proximate solutions to insoluable problems, giving us a tolerable justice through balance of power. Interest against interest, power checking power, this was Niebuhr's realist version of utopia because human nature would always be flawed and democracy allowed social conflict to play out through channels other than violence and forceful coercion. Companies could pursue profit with no myopic central planning system or burdening aristocracy, entrepeneurs could direct engineers and enable technology to progress and innovate. Labor could organize and collectively bargain, consumer groups could check the business practices of companies and both could keep them from getting too powerful. Religious and scholarly groups could influence the morality of society through reason and religion. Social justice could be achieved to a tolerable degree through the balance of interests and their competition. It did work to a remarkable degree, business elites were humbled enough by the stock market crash to enable a competing interest, New Deal liberals, to gain a position of power. This then allowed workers to organize legally for the first time and keep the business in check. Government is not an end in itself, and too many people think that unions outlived their usefulness because we have laws to protect workers and consumers and the environment. A cursory examination shows pretty well that laws are only as helpful as the people enforcing them. Even the constitution is only a piece of paper if the people in power don't care what it says.
And not caring is probably as close as we can get to the why. The elite just doesn't care. About you, about me, about the future, about the planet, and certainly not anyone living on it that doesn't belong to the club. Niebuhr called these the "Children of Darkness," evil and sinful, they care only about their own self-interest and to hell with everything else and are willing to use any means to achieve it. Self-interest is a powerful motivation, altruism is harder but we have the capacity to transcend selfishness. The "Children of Light" can lead, motivating and organizing those masses of people who want to be good but as in today's situation, this is extremely hard. The tolerably just society lasted as long as the CoLs remained engaged enough and the CoDs humbled enough by their failures to balance the situation. In the 1970s, for various reasons, this balance broke, the center did not hold and self-interest gained the upper hand. Now, they hold so many of the economic cards that anyone wishing to get ahead must accept the CoD's philosophy and do their bidding.
So, every time we have a ridiculous national conversation, from "did John Kerry get shot enough times in Vietnam?" to "was pres. Obama born in the US?" I want to claw my eyeballs out. Are Americans really that stupid? Have we really reached the point where the masses of idiots out there are willing to believe the most fantastic lies and are never satisfied with legitimate answers? Niebuhr constantly criticized liberals like John Dewey who thought the only obstacles to a rational society governed by reason were ignorance and bad institutions, the answer being education and reform of those institutions. While qualifying the criticism by understanding that an educator would naturally want to better educate people, Niebuhr explained that human nature was simply flawed and while education and reform can help, it will never eradicate social conflict or the irrational and selfish choices that people make as part of a group. One of the secondary sources I have researched lamented that Niebuhr assumed engagement on the part of nearly everyone, that he paid little attention to possibility that large numbers of people in a society would simply drop out of the public business but that is what America looks like today. Apathy is the watchword of a society where people become atomized and hopeless. Though poll after poll shows that the majority of Americans believe in a more just and equal society, they hold these views in isolation and believe that others will reflect what they see on tv.
So, we are at the mercy of the CoD who hold very anti-social views and are able to organize and push their views onto society at large. This self-reinforcing cycle has to have a bottom somewhere, there has to be a point where a critical mass say "enough is enough" and start pushing back but it won't happen until we realize that it is much easier to defend what we have together than seperately. We did it before, the CoD thought they had America by the throat during the Great Depression and despite the kkk, America Firsters, Father Coughlin and the antisemites, and the open racism, people did come together and enable the New Deal. Economic collapse will make it far more difficult to control the American empire, corporate disengagement from America is already helping people understand that we don't need them, and eventually people will have to decide between eating and cable tv. When all our fancy gadgets become unaffordable and recreation means interacting with other real people again, then the atoms will melt into community. Then a better society could be achieved, it will be a long and hard road but it is possible.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
The rhetoric of an assassination
Yeah, osama bin laden is dead. This was my response to the news: "
"Let's be VERY clear on this: OBAMA did NOT kill Bin Laden. An American service member, who Obama just a few weeks ago was debating on whether or not to PAY, did. Obama just happened to be the one in office when OUR service member found OBL and took him out. This is NOT an Obama victory, but an AMERICAN victory!! REPOST IF YOU AGREE!!!!"
Kind of like a hateful game of telephone right? I wonder where it started. Given the schizophrenic nature of the message, it begins with a partisan attack on the president, then attacks him for supposedly not wanted to pay our servicemembers, then shifts gears to a unifying message. I have to think this piece of demogaugery originated in either a basement cubicle of an Heritage foundation intern, or the feverish mind of an amateur dittohead. Because it can't decide whether to play to the birther crowd that hates the president under all circumstances, or the more moderate crowd that just wants us to all be Americans. George w. bush played to both crowds pretty well, his actions appealed to the "hate at all costs" crowd that is now the tea party/birthers, while his rhetoric unceasingly insisted on unity.
Here is one representative comment on the original message I'll post, then the president's announcement and I'll let you decide where reality resides.
"The way the guy talked, he repelled from the chopper himself, single-handedly took out OBL's personal guard, and popped that SOB in the head w/ one "surgical" shot... and all while smoking a cigarette."
Did you hear any kind of bragging? What I heard was more like a guy taking responsibility for ordering a murder. But, this is the American business now, we do what we want. After so many years of hearing from "the swaggering cowboy chickenhawks" about how Gore would have surrendered to obl and numerous other eyerolling and baseless allegations, it is ironic that he was caught and killed by a Democratic administration. Hence the "Obama just happened to be the one in office" quip, never admit your enemy did anything worthy. Then the "OUR" servicemember, which sounds innocuous but remember that the conservatives spent the better part of the bush years appropriated the military as their private reserve, so the green beret that actually pulled the trigger was a "real American" who killed obl for all the other real Americans and not the wimpy Democrats. I have no formal rhetorical training, but even I can see the dog whistle appeals in this message, just like walker's shenanigans in WI, this was a poorly constructed piece of propaganda.
It was the republicans in congress, not the administration, that desperately wanted to shut down the government. Now, I don't have the details of the averted shutdown to say but I was in the Army the last time republicans shut down the government and I still got paid, both times. So, alleging first that the essential members of our military wouldn't have gotten paid is ridiculous and doubling down by saying the president, who bent over backwards to prevent a republican-engineered shutdown, would have been responsible for it is beneath contempt. But, this keeps the specter alive and transfers blame from the party that hates government to the party that at least tries to govern.
In that video, I did not see anywhere the president taking credit for the "victory" I saw him accepting responsibility for murder. I can see how the switch can be made by neanderthals though. Nor did I find any commentary claiming partisan victory, it would be interesting to see if anyone posts some in response. But I suspect most liberal commentators would be more aghast at the celebrations following the announcement than trying to take credit for "our guy" getting obl. What I did find was an article lamenting the death worship angle of it all, that Americans no longer stand for freedom and opportunity, but as Buffalo Springfield put it so well "Cheer hooray for our side." Just like the ancient Romans, cheering the spectacle of death in the gladitorial arena. On the flipside, remember the reaction from these very serious people and their very serious leaders when "we" killed saddam hussein's kids? Or "mission accomplished?" If the bush administration hadn't completely called off the search for obl once they got their war in Iraq because keeping the boogeyman alive was more politically advantageous, they would have called a national day of celebration and paraded his body through the streets of Washington. Okay, maybe that's excessive, but rove &co. certainly would have milked the murder for all the political points it was worth.
If this assassination was politically motivated for the 2012 election, don't you think it would have made more sense to announce it... closer to the election? President Obama will gain nothing politically from this event, his "base" would not cheer for death to begin with, nor will this win him back any supporters who based their support on the idea that he wouldn't do this sort of thing. Nor does it really comfort all the people unemployed and thrown out of their homes. The professional conservative movement will come up with spin to dismiss it and reassure the tea baggers and dittoheads. And Democrats never have the courage to bring up anything that might help them win anyway. This will all be forgotten before 2012 even gets here. Just another case of insecure conservative wackos projecting their own actions and desires onto their enemies, reading into the actions of the president what they would have done and celebrated. That which they need to deny at all costs and somehow turn into a failure. This rhetoric is a half-assed attempt to do it.
"Let's be VERY clear on this: OBAMA did NOT kill Bin Laden. An American service member, who Obama just a few weeks ago was debating on whether or not to PAY, did. Obama just happened to be the one in office when OUR service member found OBL and took him out. This is NOT an Obama victory, but an AMERICAN victory!! REPOST IF YOU AGREE!!!!"
Kind of like a hateful game of telephone right? I wonder where it started. Given the schizophrenic nature of the message, it begins with a partisan attack on the president, then attacks him for supposedly not wanted to pay our servicemembers, then shifts gears to a unifying message. I have to think this piece of demogaugery originated in either a basement cubicle of an Heritage foundation intern, or the feverish mind of an amateur dittohead. Because it can't decide whether to play to the birther crowd that hates the president under all circumstances, or the more moderate crowd that just wants us to all be Americans. George w. bush played to both crowds pretty well, his actions appealed to the "hate at all costs" crowd that is now the tea party/birthers, while his rhetoric unceasingly insisted on unity.
Here is one representative comment on the original message I'll post, then the president's announcement and I'll let you decide where reality resides.
"The way the guy talked, he repelled from the chopper himself, single-handedly took out OBL's personal guard, and popped that SOB in the head w/ one "surgical" shot... and all while smoking a cigarette."
It was the republicans in congress, not the administration, that desperately wanted to shut down the government. Now, I don't have the details of the averted shutdown to say but I was in the Army the last time republicans shut down the government and I still got paid, both times. So, alleging first that the essential members of our military wouldn't have gotten paid is ridiculous and doubling down by saying the president, who bent over backwards to prevent a republican-engineered shutdown, would have been responsible for it is beneath contempt. But, this keeps the specter alive and transfers blame from the party that hates government to the party that at least tries to govern.
In that video, I did not see anywhere the president taking credit for the "victory" I saw him accepting responsibility for murder. I can see how the switch can be made by neanderthals though. Nor did I find any commentary claiming partisan victory, it would be interesting to see if anyone posts some in response. But I suspect most liberal commentators would be more aghast at the celebrations following the announcement than trying to take credit for "our guy" getting obl. What I did find was an article lamenting the death worship angle of it all, that Americans no longer stand for freedom and opportunity, but as Buffalo Springfield put it so well "Cheer hooray for our side." Just like the ancient Romans, cheering the spectacle of death in the gladitorial arena. On the flipside, remember the reaction from these very serious people and their very serious leaders when "we" killed saddam hussein's kids? Or "mission accomplished?" If the bush administration hadn't completely called off the search for obl once they got their war in Iraq because keeping the boogeyman alive was more politically advantageous, they would have called a national day of celebration and paraded his body through the streets of Washington. Okay, maybe that's excessive, but rove &co. certainly would have milked the murder for all the political points it was worth.
If this assassination was politically motivated for the 2012 election, don't you think it would have made more sense to announce it... closer to the election? President Obama will gain nothing politically from this event, his "base" would not cheer for death to begin with, nor will this win him back any supporters who based their support on the idea that he wouldn't do this sort of thing. Nor does it really comfort all the people unemployed and thrown out of their homes. The professional conservative movement will come up with spin to dismiss it and reassure the tea baggers and dittoheads. And Democrats never have the courage to bring up anything that might help them win anyway. This will all be forgotten before 2012 even gets here. Just another case of insecure conservative wackos projecting their own actions and desires onto their enemies, reading into the actions of the president what they would have done and celebrated. That which they need to deny at all costs and somehow turn into a failure. This rhetoric is a half-assed attempt to do it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)