Sabotage, treason, and free-booting

Race is America's original sin. In the wake of the largest flare-up of open and barely-concealed racism since the 1920s and during the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, I must recommend an excellent volume that helps explain some of the insanity roiling about the republic.
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States) by James M. McPherson covers all the ugliness from the Mexican War to Reconstruction and all the social, economic, political, and military events in between. First published in 1988 as part of the authoritative Oxford University series on American history, the tome has been reissued and updated to keep up with changing historiography, and is also available in audio format narrated by the incomparable Jonathan Davis (not the lead singer of Korn). Battle Cry is available at just about any public library and is a standard textbook of the war in undergraduate classes.

Why recommend a twenty-five year old book on events so long ago you ask? Americans have traded the railroad and horse power for automobiles, AR-15s for muskets, and high-tech machinery for slave labor but one thing has not changed. Tension between reform and the status-quo, and between sections has been a constant in American history broken only by extraordinary circumstances. It is ironic in a Niebuhrian sense that a nation founded in the reform spirit has suffered from such weakness in the forces of reform during its history. By contrast, defenders of the status quo are always ferocious and powerful. The tensions broken by extraordinary circumstances are too often simply due to a stumble or weakening of conservatives and allowing pent up demand for change to finally trickle over the levees. The issues change, but the conservative attitude remains constant; angry, aggressive, bullying, irrational, and committed to the defense of power.

There have been efforts, going back almost to the beginning of the republic, to undermine or destroy opposition during wartime. There is strong evidence that the Constitution, so revered by the American right (ho ho), and the Bill of Rights attached to it is just a piece of parchment when it is most needed. Normally, but not exclusively, conservatives are responsible for the trampling of American liberty in times of crisis, real or imagined. Though trying to track ideology over the centuries is difficult, suppression of American's rights rarely occurs during periods of reform.

The Civil War was an anomaly as President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, suppressed some pro-confederacy newspapers, and so on. But Southern politicians prior to the war suppressed all manner of petitions concerning slavery, tabled many bills concerning the peculiar institution, and even invented a tool called "nullification" to disregard laws they did not happen to like. Lincoln was empowered to his extraordinary acts by the Constitution, that document specified some powers and implied others to suppress insurrection. During the war, Confederates had no qualms about abridging freedom for dissenters anytime the freedom to hold human beings as property was threatened.

Today, the authoritarians masquerading as conservatives are fond of referring to the "Democrat" party, or "Democrat" career politicians. When the authoritarian slave oligarchs battled the new party after 1854 they similarly dubbed them the "Black Republicans." Imagined terrors were rife, then as now, Lincoln was going to force the whites to marry off their daughters to big, buck negroes for instance. Just as the specter of socialism lurks everywhere from the moderately conservative Barack Obama. Authoritarians then as now understand one thing very well, a significant slice of white America is paranoid and prone to hysteria.

Southerners of the Antebellum period were content to remain in the Union, as long as they controlled it. Most presidents after Andrew Jackson were either Southerners themselves or "doe-faces" that is Northern men with Southern principles. The shrinking South as a proportion of the Union guaranteed parity in the Senate with the Missouri Compromise that free states could only be admitted with a slave state inverse. For a time Southerners milked the 3/5ths clause for all it was worth to keep up representation in the House but opportunity for immigrants in the North and the end of African imports of slaves meant the South and its values soon became a minority. It was only a matter of time before the North ran and elected one of its own as President.

This was the sabotage and eventual treason of the South, as soon as Dixie lost its grip on the Federal Government we were a nation no more. The so-called compromise of 1850 was a turning point in that control, what else can it be called but sabotage when the rules were changed for Kansas? The Southern slave power thumbed its nose at all precedent and inspired popular movements to invade Kansas for slavery, turning that territory into a civil war in miniature. Federal power was hamstrung by Southern obstruction in all cases save one, the slave power demanded public protection for their "property." The slave power was not content with the national armed forces swallowing half of Mexico as fertile ground for planting slavery. The popular party line (or aptly "sectional line") was that Southerners fought and died in the US Army to conquer Mexico so they should be able to enjoy their property in that vast new territory. All northern soldiers and expenditure be damned of course. But the threat that some of this manifest destiny might be reserved for freedom sent private armies of filibusters into the Caribbean and Central America to carve out new slave kingdoms there. Filibuster translates from Spanish as pirate or free-booter. Treason against their country in the form of secession naturally flowed from the loss of domination by the minority.

Ted Cruz Won (for ted cruz)

Senator dumbass from Texas has finally finished his sham filibuster. As expected, it accomplished nothing for the United States but it may win cruz a golden spot in the authoritarian propaganda complex in the long run. After reading a few articles commenting on the farce (meathead apparently did not even speak the whole time, getting breathers from fellow asshats), I was reminded of Matt Taibbi's first impression of sarah palin as recounted in Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History where the rightist 'wingers are not representing the country or even their party anymore but themselves. A brand of one, if you will.

At issue is senator dumbass' continuing obsession with denying health insurance for millions of Americans, a staged advertisement for callousness that many of his constituents find endearing in defiance of common sense. Let us remember where the word "filibuster" comes from for a moment and republican abuse of the procedure (usually without lifting a finger mind you) fits into their ideology of government by sabotage like a glove. Filibuster is an Anglicized version of the Spanish word "filibustero" meaning pirate or free-booter, which is why it was the adopted name of people like William Walker back in the 1850s as they led private armies to conquer Caribbean and Central American nations for slavery.

Cruz may not be angling to take over Nicaragua, but neither is he recreating the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland as Charles Pierce alleged, no offense to Pierce's analysis I could tell why and where he wanted to use that analogy. This is for the simple reason that Irish nationalist and republican obstructionism bear no relation to each other. Catholic Ireland struggled for centuries to resist British domination and exploitation, the republicans have been running the United States for a long time and not in their craziest fever dreams have any conservative Americans experienced official government persecution as did the Irish resistors. Maybe, as an American of Celtic descent who has studied Irish folklore and music, I am being overly sensitive to Pierce's argument.

Chez Pazienza, the irascible grump at The Daily Banter, agreed that cruz has changed the dynamic of crazy in wingnut land:

As Pierce spells out, by turning his back completely on the kind of politics we’ve come to expect from Washington — partisan, yes, but at least somewhat engaged in with the goal of keeping the country functioning — and thumbing his nose at everyone, he’s become a folk hero to the only people who matter: those who’ll put his relatively useless ass back in office when the time comes. More than that, though, Cruz is spelling out and dictating in no uncertain terms that his small splinter cell within the establishment GOP is so vocal that it is the GOP. This could certainly be the death throes for the Tea Party, but think about how many times we’ve heard that song sung.

But why would a pampered, over-privileged bully like cruz be satisfied with the peasant wages of the US Senate? He may have learned from sarah palin's burnout after abdicating her elected position to cash in as a venom-spewing fox pinup and will serve out his term. But as Thomas Frank has pointed out numerous times, the revolving door to riches overrides even ideology. Especially if the rumors about cruz' arrogance at Harvard is to be believed, even representing beer-swilling rednecks in Texas is too much like slumming. After monkey-wrenching Washington D.C. for six years from the inside, expect him to land a lucrative position in sabotage and piracy on the outside in short order. Whether libeling the enemy on fox news, representing think tank cons, or as an operative separating fools from their money in some pressure group, yes, ted cruz won.

Last Stand of The Vital Center?

Political factions have been unraveling the United States for more than thirty years and any consensus of how the republic should be governed that may have existed during the Cold War has long since vanished. Big questions of war and peace, guns or butter, honest and accountable officials in government and business or corruption, and the simple acceptance of a uniform set of facts went out the window little by little after the demise of the Soviet Union. Monstrous as it was, the Soviet Union kept American elites in check and anchored in reality. Foreign interventions, exploitation of workers at home and abroad, and discrimination by race or creed became difficult during the Cold War to sustain, if only in trying to counter Soviet propaganda.

Correlation or causation? It matters less than the results, nothing needs to be efficient or just in the US anymore. As long as organized money gets what it wants, the larger society can collapse. Elite abandonment of the public good has given rise to extremists to the double detriment of American freedom.

Not long after the end of World War II, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. published a prophetic work entitled The Vital Center where he argued among other things that the non-communist left would have to work with the non-fascist right to maintain freedom in the republic if the United States was to survive the new modernity. It is one of those odd facts of history that the idea of freedom must be explained. Schlesinger's freedom was not the flag-waving, swaggering definition that has come to dominate discourse in contemporary America. That perversion of thought should be obvious as privilege because the maniacs espousing this brand of freedom recoil in horror at the thought of granting the same "freedom" to anyone outside of their little tribe.

While this version of freedom is appallingly embraced by most American "conservatives", there are a number of fanatics on the left who have also jumped aboard this crazy train to hell. Schlesinger referred to writers and intellectuals who shoot themselves in the foot by embracing "pie-in-the-sky idealism" without keeping the other foot grounded in the real world of the possible within American politics as "wailers." Wailers used to be confined to a few left-wing journals of dissent, one could live their entire lives without encountering one. One problem with wailers was their frequent embrace of theoretical Marxist ideas without practical, real world application. This led idealists of the left to crusade for economic and social policies without regard for how they would work for a society that did not share their values. Another problem was that communism was a real, going concern in those days. Agents of communist countries often found the wailers receptive to ideas more conducive to strengthening the eastern bloc than creating a more just western world. With real espionage going on, it was hard to tell what was a genuine appeal for a better America, and what was a cynical ploy to stir up unrest for the benefit of the Soviet Union.

These things were real, not in the McCarthyesque cartoon of communists everywhere, but there was a real Cold War and spies on both sides played the game. Our side probably played the game better by offering material comforts to a broad swath of communist society, or at least the illusion of our higher standard of living. Embittering the regular people with evidence of their own deprivation is probably a more effective strategy than winning over converts to theoretical systems. Today, the situation is very different. While during the Cold War republican amateurs could campaign by red-baiting liberals (see Richard Nixon) and tarnishing genuine reform efforts with the stain of communism, at least there really was an outside force that could occupy professional servants of organized money, often drawing them into public service instead if busting unions. With the end of the Cold War, these hyper-patriots had less opportunity to screw with other countries. It is no surprise that many former anti-communist zealots have found their way into right-wing think tanks and continued their crusades on American liberals.

While Schlesinger advocated a robust non-communist left at home and abroad to blunt communist appeals within wailer intellectual circles and the labor movement, an intellectual on the other side warned how freedom in the liberal sense could undermine American institutions directly. James Burnham started his career as a Trotskyist and morphed into an anti-communist conservative of the very right-wing variety. Though outside Schlesinger's Vital Center coalition in both guises, Burnham's ideas have resonated down to contemporary politics a half-century after he wrote them. Liberalism in Suicide of the West is described by Burnham in theoretical terms akin to the Marxist literature in which real world events are less important than how theory dictates those events should play out. Liberals in Burnham's view are incapable of learning from mistakes and guilty of other transgressions against good governance, but not evil or mentally defective in the way right-wingers caricature Democrats today.

One of Burnham's most important observations about freedom in liberal America is its dependence on all political actors playing by the same rules. When a non-liberal faction refused, believers in traditional American liberties such as freedom of speech and association had no real recourse. Liberals either upheld their standards and stood by helpless while totalitarians took over by lying and cheating, or compromise the very ideals liberals most cherish. "Liberalism granted a free hand to its assassins" as Burnham wrote, comparing politics to a football game where one side played by the rules and the other simply wanted to disrupt the game (obviously these were the communist provocateurs). Many years later Thomas Frank expounded on the idea of free market-obsessed theoretical republicans gouging and kicking their way through middle-class America and the institutions built up over decades of compromise between business and the people. But Burnham could have found a parallel in Nazi agitation against the Weimar Republic. Monsters like Joseph Goebbels did not sit by and allow his enemies the freedom to think for themselves but perhaps that was too easy and did not indict communists.

Twelve years after the most deadly attack on American soil and five years after the great economic collapse our country needs a Vital Center more than ever. Whether we will actually get one is still up in the air.

Never Again

I get angrier every year on this day. I am never exactly sure why, it could be the recognition of everything that came after the disaster, it could be the zeitgeist of pseudo-patriotism, or perhaps the outpouring of saccharine sentimentality from people. The anniversary has morphed into nostalgia, WTMJ just asked viewers "What's your most vivid memory of 9/11?" Facebook is inundated with recollections of where the writer was that day. Every news channel plays up the memory, ahistorically, as though context is meaningless. That context was that the United States at the time was being run by the most corrupt, incompetent, venal, bunch of gangsters in our history. The American experience of 9/11/01 should include a commitment to never, ever, again let the fabric of our nation be so torn apart.

Of course, it is impolite to remind people of this. As though living through the corruption, war crimes, and devastation once was enough. Americans need to remember though, just how close we came to dictatorship and collectively vow not to let it happen again. A giant hole seems to have built up around 9/11 to the point that right-wing commentators sometimes try to get away with asserting that "no terrorist attacks occurred on US soil during the Bush administration." The entire business: the wars, the torture, the rendering, the privatization of government operations, the debt, the deficit, the tax cuts, the corporate colonization of Iraq and its oil, the witch hunts of dissent, the color-coded terror alerts, the no-bid contracts, and the marketization of fear were just what the Nineteenth Century Austrian foreign minister Klemens von Metternich called "politics by other means." The total war on liberalism taken to its highest form by the most vile foes of democracy and good government this country has ever seen.

Right-wing sociopaths in this country have long memories for the slightest errors committed by Democratic administrations, but reminders of real crimes by right-wing heroes are met with either unbelievable screeching or refusal to even admit they happened. If somehow the admission by a bush official that "you don't roll out new products in August" (in reference to the buildup for war in Iraq and the beat down of anyone expressing doubts) ever got as much repetition as the throwaway line by Rahm Emmanuel that you never let a good crisis go to waste, America might find the resolve to resist making aggressive war on other countries "just because."

So much for that Constitution worship

ThinkProgress today reports that a small, republican-dominated county in Northern California voted to secede from the state and form a new, fifty-first state. Proving yet again that conservatives are nothing but whiny little babies with absolutely no concern or respect for anything.

"We want our way." Emphasis on the period, there is no 'and' there is no 'but' it is not even an 'or else'. From now on, "Jefferson" should be the only response to any, any conservative or republican screed about the constitution they claim to revere. That is the name these children want to give to their new state, as in "Davis". You know, president of the rebel confederacy. Seceding from the Union outright in Barack Obama's America has become a nonstarter, a pipedream held now only by the most deluded of conservative babies. But, aha! Seceding from blue states! That's the ticket.

The state of Jefferson, as TP writes: "if Siskiyou [county] formed its own state, those 45,000 people would receive exactly the same amount of representation in the Senate as the nearly 850 times as many people who live in the rest of California." And the littlest state would have one representative in the House that would be ten times as powerful as a congress member from normal areas. This is just as obvious a power grab by rural old white conservatives as the numerous attempts on high to give the GOP continuing relevance in an America that is utterly sick of them. From Gerrymandering to voter ID to dividing California's electoral votes, if you can't win fairly-just cheat.

TP concludes with a passage from the constitution that will test whether there is any strength left our union to oppose blatant authoritarian drives for power. Article 4, Section 3 of the second most sacred document to these children after the Bible very clearly states that this action is unconstitutional.

Will the powers that be roll over to satisfy a tiny population of whiners in Northern California or Northern Colorado? And in doing so effectively transform the United States into an authoritarian dictatorship? Prior to the 21st Century I don't think anyone could have imagined how easily laws are trampled, progress thwarted, and privilege reinforced in America circa 2013. Power will do what power wants now and the rest of us are just spectators.

Intentional Community Thought Exercise II

One plan for building a cooperative neighborhood would be a roughly square block larger than average with private houses around the perimeter and a commons in the center. If the member residents can agree to make their yards as small as possible, thereby reserving more space for the commons, considerable gains can be realized. A park for the children, bigger and better than any individual backyard can be. Communal garden space, even greenhouses or space for some livestock would be possible. Residents could share the cost of a pool or public clubhouse nicer than any individual household could afford. Childcare, a communal kitchen and dining area could save a lot of money for members not having to procure those services from outside, for-profit firms. Workshops, wind or solar energy production and distribution, compost, bio-gas digesters, there are a lot of possibilities. Ironically, once upon a time working together was a no brainer. Affluence drove us apart after the Second World War; polarization and inequality could bring us back together.

I readily admit that many communities still possess public spaces: libraries, parks, town squares, and so on. The Progressive movement, such as it is and that outside of the supposedly neo-libertarian far left, should absolutely work to defend these institutions. Schools as well, education is the absolute core of the public sphere in America and undermining it for purposes of privatization has to be the biggest coup by the fascist idiocracy and their authoritarian masters. At this point is there any way back for parents who want their children to actually be educated? The [every] child left behind act has set us back so far that generations of Americans will probably be crippled intellectually. Recently this picture has been making the rounds:


Some measure of public attitudes can be gauged by how often something like this lands in your news feed or inbox. The problems with public education in this country are legion. To take just a few: each school district is decentralized and atomized, making it easy prey to ALEC and their evil demands; as we saw from [E]CLB when authoritarian republicans sneak into office at the top they can wreak havoc on even somewhat successful school districts; and the steady demonization of teachers (especially their unions) have led to parents internalizing the propaganda and allying with the privatizers.

Then there are the often long-forgotten Progressive victories. It is all too appropriate on Labor Day to share this one:



Hooray for ingratitude:



This is the crux of why I am giving up on any hope of large-scale organizing for the betterment of all. When "we" win, the idiocracy benefits, when "they" win only the elite win at our expense. Call it the free rider problem on a national scale and spilling out from the shop floor into the political and social spheres. Maybe I am vindictive and bitter, maybe I have a low opinion of most of humanity and very little expectation of change but I see no evidence that the divisions in our society can ever be healed. Those gaping divisions between members of the idiocracy and normal people who are influenced by them prevent any kind of solidarity in the non-elite. In short, I give up.

"But wait," you might be thinking, "are you saying that you want insulated, suburban cubical mice to start milking their own cows?" In a nutshell, yes, but only the people that can realize why it is important that we become more self-sufficient and mutually supporting. There have to be some Americans out there who reject the meaning of life as buying stuff we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.

Intentional Community Thought Exercise

It is now five years since the great crash of "the housing bubble" i.e. an enormous con job perpetrated by every level of the financial and real estate scam machine and its willing agents. Five years after revealing themselves to be spectacular failures, the giant wall street banks are still in charge with more power than ever. There is negligible evidence or prospect of ever bringing them to heel, or even punish a single banker that bundled and sold America's future for bonus glory. It is also increasingly evident that the political system controlling regulatory agencies that might curb future abuses has been bought by the predatory class. If regular Americans have any chance of protecting themselves, they (we) will have to do it on their own.

The American population has been split outside the ruling class into an authoritarian idiocracy and a bewildered, atomized mass. The former is, well, hopeless. The latter is by and large resistant to organizing due to residual traditions about individuality, distrust of authority, aversion to compulsion or coercion, and private property. This residue of course goes out the window concerning employment, which is coercive and compulsory by definition. The first and last traditions come from the Horatio Alger mythology perpetuated by the extremely rare success stories and the simple aspect of human nature encapsulated by "mine." Trust issues abound in America as con artists, hucksters, speculators, and other assorted specialists in separating the people from their money have flourished here since the foundation of the republic.

Perhaps what is needed is a new organizational model on a smaller scale than factory-wide trade unions or D.C.-based outfits like Greenpeace or the ACLU. Small, cooperative units about a large suburban block in size that could make use of the new normal to prosper. Not hippie communes, or evangelical communities centered around a church but a group of regular Americans sharing for mutual benefit. Small sacrifices of convenience for great gains in efficiency and cost control. But the central idea is trust and accountability, the final form is less important. Being able to see and communicate with democratically designated authorities directly and having a voice in what they do. The kind of democracy that is almost impossible on a national scale anymore.

There are already intentional communities like this all over America, Google it and take a look. What I have in mind is to take advantage of their models and incorporate existing realities. Child care and education is expensive, durable goods such as stoves or furnaces are also; sharing the things that regular people can do themselves will make life less expensive for all members. Then we have already-existing institutions like credit unions, time banks, community gardens, and so on that can thrive even in deep-red sections of the idiocracy. It is so much more efficient to borrow a book from the library, why not a lawn-mower? Time is so important, and in such short supply that people are willing to buy bad food at bad prices from restaurants rather than spend the time to cook good meals. Our jobs increasingly suck all quality time from our lives, forcing us to spend falling real wages on expensive daycare for our children just to name one more example.

Good jobs that pay are increasingly scarce, if we think in terms of [blaaaahhh] markets the supply of labor is too large. How many people do you know who spend their days "pounding the pavement" for jobs that most are just never going to find anymore? Most of the effort expended in chasing employment is just waste, the game of musical chairs has finally closed out a lot of us. There is so much more we could do instead that would actually be a productive use of time but does not produce an income. Why do people play the lottery or otherwise desire to be rich in many cases? So they don't have to work and can concentrate on what they like to do. The nature of our "go-go-go" economy makes doing something you enjoy, say teaching or restoring cars just as an example, far less enjoyable if you are doing it in the employ of someone else.

We can work together in one way or another, or we can take our chances of starvation separately. The idiocracy has made its choice, they will ritually sacrifice each other to the false god "market" as long as there is one dollar among them. We do not have to follow.