Friday, April 25, 2014

The Hamburger Revolution: Crossroads

From the Department of the Painfully Obvious: Cliven Bundy is a racist, along with being a deadbeat millionaire, and lately a domestic terrorist.
I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.
“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”
 
The only part of this passage that was remotely surprising was about abortion. Perhaps the rural bigots out West are a little different from the Midwestern variety, but having spent an inordinate and painful amount of time around the latter at various jobs I can say it is the lack of abortions and contraception that most sticks in their craw. Perhaps it has to do with population density?

"Freedom" Mr. Bundy keeps using that word, but one gets the feeling it means something very different to him than the way Merriam-Webster defines it. The idea of "having something to do" as freedom is about the only possible connection Bundy's rant on race could even tangentially have with his "war" on the Federal Government. You know, the one he refuses to recognize and whines is illegitimate.

It is truly delicious, reading the authoritarian right walk back their support for this "patriot" and Chez at Banter has been cataloguing all the ways these rats are abandoning their paunchy hero now that he touched the third rail. Left unsaid, of course, is why openly expressing the ignorant belief that all African-Americans should be lumped in with the problems that some individuals face is a bad thing, beyond common decency and all that silliness about "liberty and justice for all." Generalizations about an entire group of people are very tricky to make, educated professionals can sometimes draw conclusions about tendencies by running statistical analyses. But even in those cases the data can only find evidence of those tendencies. Why liberals and other rational, humane people shrink from generalizing about race, or sexual orientation, etc. is that the constant in the equation is inherent, people are born with dark skin or light skin, blue eyes or brown; they do not choose to do so. It is easier to generalize about beliefs and ideas, therefore you can get stronger correlations with ideology. Unfortunately, even with ideology you can get crossed wires. Take what Rachel Maddow presented last night:


We must first examine what Fox News is; at its core Fox is the propaganda arm of the Republican party. It's job is to elect republican candidates, defend them once in office, and undermine the Democratic party and liberalism by character assassination or guilt by association. Fox will therefore grab at any shiny object that fulfills this function, or appears to. Dr. Maddow exposed the lie that all right-wingers are in absolute lockstep, that there are people out there more disgusting than Sean Hannity. I was worried I would have to go all the way back to Bacon's Rebellion and the foundation of slavery in America to get where Dr. Maddow brought us. Phew!

So why is open racism, as espoused by Cliven Bundy, bad for Fox and the Republicans? Simple economics. The vestige of middle class America, safe from the world in their tucked away suburbistans and hanging on by their fingernails, forms at least a plurality of conservative voters. They like to believe they are above vulgar racism and shy away from open declarations such as Bundy's. Suburban conservatives and their even more remote cousins in exurban McMansions are the beloved demographic of advertisers, the Americans who have slightly more income than required for subsistence. I'll admit it looked like this bulwark of polite society seemed to have been overrun with the emergence of the tea party and its myriad racist appeals, but Fox did manage to gloss that over and pretend did not happen to reassure the skittish suburbanites who do not want to support an openly racist party. However, it keeps popping up.

Therefore, despite what Sean Hannity et al. may or may not believe personally they must take pains not to offend this group. Because billionaires and white trash do not an electoral coalition make. Also, it is hard to sell gold, cars, or "erectile dysfunction" pills to Walmart shoppers.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

The Hamburger Revolution



This story just keeps on giving.



History is the study of, chronicling of, analysis of, and appreciation of; change. History only exists because change occurs and humans are able to record those changes. It may be a fallacy to think of "timeless" cultures, hunter-gatherers or peasant societies, as having no history because nothing changes but this is something all human societies face from time to time. The small-minded occasionally fall into a trap of thinking tradition is good for no other reason that it is tradition, we have always done it this way therefore it is the best way. Never challenging why the tradition exists, questioning where it came from, or whether there are better ways of doing things. This is almost a textbook definition of conservatism, do not ask questions, do not assume you know better than those who came before you. What is occurring in Nevada on Cliven Bundy's "ranch" however, is nothing short of revolutionary and as far from conservatism as you can get.

I really need to throw some links up because this story and the media circus around it, specifically the right-wing authoritarian infotainment complex (thank you Bob Cesca), is by now so vast that it is difficult to know where the cattle end and the hamburger begins. NBC has a pretty decent running collection of facts on the story here that also contains quite a few facts helpful for getting your head around the weirdness. This site will also connect you to the hard news report from Reuters for the basics. Media Matters for America has been trying to keep a collection of fox news spin, though this is admittedly a herculean task. I was trying to keep up with the discussion at the Daily Banter on Cesca's excellent analysis. And Thom Hartmann's show pointed out some of the less-than-polite realities glossed over by most media coverage, putting a slightly different emphasis on what's at stake by always referring to "millionaire" Cliven Bundy.

But Steve Benen at Rachel Maddow's show put it pretty well when he wrote: "it’s unsustainable to think a group of well-armed extremists can simply block the enforcement of American laws in the United States... that’s not how the American system works. Indeed, that’s not how any system of government can ever work."

Might makes right is the law of the jungle. When the Federal Government, which theoretically has a monopoly on violence in society, decides to back down in the face of an armed mob for whatever reason the government then abdicates its place as the law and becomes just another actor in American power relations. And while Hartmann is absolutely correct in noting the class and wealth angle, money is secondary to power here. Though it is way above my pay grade to make a serious argument on that note. Money is power and power is money, one begets the other and vice-versa. Power to use others, to disregard and hold in contempt anything laws or will that conflicts with self-interest. These are the issues that all other distractions like race, immigration, the proper role of government, etc. attempt to deflect from.

Hamburgers. Is there a more potent symbol of Americana? I love them, so do you probably. But I, like anyone with even a basic understanding of economics, the environment, or biology, know that beef is a very inefficient and wasteful source of protein. Beef cattle are high-input, high-waste, poor conversion rate animals requiring a huge amount of space to raise without a correspondingly high investment of capital. Cheap hamburgers and all of the market distortions necessary to put them in Americans' stomachs is a self-evident example of why so-called "conservative" economics are complete BULLSHIT if you'll pardon my French. The artificially low grazing fees on public land are one instance of the perverse agricultural policies America has evolved since FDR and the New Dealers first tried to regulate the chaotic way food gets to your table many moons ago.

I have an acquaintance here in Wisconsin who's family owns and operates a dairy farm. The difference between a Midwestern dairy farm and a Western cattle ranch is so great that it is hard to believe they are raising almost the same kinds of animals. Bundy and other ranchers out there ought to be thanking fate, the government, and the machinations of history for putting them in such a fortunate position. Instead of being grateful for his incredibly low operating costs relative to farmers in the civilized portion of the United States, we get to witness the petulant arrogance that only a true Child of Darkness can display.

I realize this is getting rather long but there are two great American thinkers whose ideas reflect quite well on this story. When Reinhold Niebuhr first introduced the idea of Children of Darkness he was referring mainly to ambitious people seeking power within a state or government structure. These individuals recognize no law or restriction that conflicts with their own self-interest. The Children of Darkness do what they please unless restrained by some more powerful force. Cliven Bundy likes to portray himself on his many television appearances as a humble man seeking only to be left alone but the length and duration of his refusal to play nice puts the lie to this image. He is a selfish bastard who refuses to recognize any interests other than his own, and does not care how his actions affect others.

The other is University of Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner. Turner's Frontier Thesis has been the fount of so much cowboy folklore ever since he first introduced it in 1893. All of our American ideals about democracy, liberty, egalitarianism, and rugged individualism sprang from frontier society in Turner's thinking. As long as there was a frontier in America, virtuous pioneers would boldly move there and build society on their own according to the resources, climate, and temperament of the area. By this process the American frontier steadily moved west and then inland from the West Coast. Of course this process also brought along another, seedier, American ideal; speculation and the first claim mentality. Unscrupulous parasites have been ripping off productive Americans since veterans of the Revolution were compensated in bonds. Nearly worthless at issuance, those bonds gained value when bought up by speculators who then lobbied the government to redeem them at face value. But pioneers could grab the best land and pass it on to their heirs, leaving the less valuable land for late coming settlers, and garbage to remain public.

Turner believed the frontier had closed in 1890 and became concerned that innovation and democracy would suffer. What it could have meant was that we were going to have to start getting along and leave the cowboy crap behind. Unfortunately there are still these relics around like Bundy who act as though they are not only beyond the reach of civilization but above the law as well. A century ago, people living at the margins could pretend they are not part of a larger society but not anymore.

So, we have a private army of heavily armed vigilantes ready to fire on government officials and possibly die, for a deadbeat cowboy who thinks he is still living in the Nineteenth Century. Why did tradition freeze at the point of maximum selfishness for Cliven Bundy? History and most of America left this cowboy business behind a long time ago. Clinging to it in defiance of the law does not make Bundy a hero, it makes him a leech. Perfectly happy to keep the goods of raising his moos in a modern society, but claiming he still has the "perfect liberty" of a pioneer. Heads I win, tails I still win.

And we are letting him get away with it.