Thursday, May 28, 2015

Supporting Progressive Media

I woke up to see this from Bob Cesca this morning:
Instead of organizing boycotts, when will the left divert that energy to organizing support for shows like [Rachel] Maddow, Stephanie Miller, Free Speech TV and other media?
If he were a shameless self-promoter I imagine he would have included his own show and the Patreon campaign he and Chez started to get their show into 5 day a week production. I'll include it because I listen to the show and read a lot of their articles on The Daily Banter so if I can help promote them it is the least I can do. The sentiment in his post sparked a lively discussion and I thought I would throw in my two cents worth here because it is somewhat lengthy and would just get lost in the sea of other thoughtful comments.

Since Bob started this push to expand his show and decided to crowd fund or crowd source in lieu of overly commercializing the show they have expounded at length on the difficulty of getting individual financial support. Chez has taken to scolding the audience for being cheap and noting that when a conservative monkey says "pay me" all the other little monkeys snap to and open their wallets. It is kind of a turn off but I get it, obviously. They have had kind of a wake up call as to why there isn't more Progressive media and why it is so hard to get any going. I personally am broke, neck deep in student loans and other debt that I have no hope of ever getting under control. My car is on it's last legs and my computers are dying. I literally cannot spare anything. And I understand how hard it is to generate any revenue from any kind of political writing, since I monetized this blog it has yet to pay anything. But I do this because I want to, not because I think it will make me rich.

I started getting into politics after I got out of the Army, and little by little learned more and figured out where I stand and what I believe in. By the time Howard Dean ran for president I had more or less "matured" on political awareness. Progressing through college then honed that awareness as well as encouraging study on matters I would not have undertaken on my own. I mention Dean not because his candidacy imploded on mainstream media hypocrisy but because I noticed during a meeting of his supporters among our local Democratic Party revealed a great deal about why left/liberal, center/left, etc. people have such a hard time getting anything going.

You see, at that meeting everyone wanted to talk and no one wanted to listen. Each person already had the answers, knew everything, and had no patience for anyone else. It could just be a Wisconsin thing but I think a lot of political ideas are held in isolation by liberals even in a big city. The feeling of being correct but unpopular pervades much of that thinking. So supporting a Progressive media figure or program means to many people an admission that they do not know everything and they have to listen to someone else. People active on the left tend to be more intelligent and better educated than the average American, they also tend to be more anti-authoritarian and do not want to take orders from anyone. However subtle, that is what a leader does. A media figure can be a leader, setting the agenda, formulating strategy, and coordinating followers but liberals resist being handled this way.

Speaking of resistance, maybe again it is just my Wisconsin upbringing but I have noticed a strong tendency among people I know to just be stubborn for stubbornness' sake. I have lived a lot, tried to learn as much as possible, and gain wisdom from experiences and mistakes. But so often I have ran into situations where someone will make a statement like "I wish I could save money on [cable, cell phone, tobacco, or some other thing]" that I have some experience with, so I casually mention a similar situation and how I dealt with it, the person immediately locks up, digs in their heels and dithers as though they just wanted to complain without any intention to do anything about the problem. Occasionally this phenomenon extends to political matters.

When someone complains that the rich are getting richer and they especially are getting left behind, a guaranteed way to watch them turtle up is to suggest raising taxes on the rich while making it easier to join a union or something like this. I believe it is because the right has so successfully seeded the framing of ideas with their own poison that the mere mention of progressive policies to fix social and economic problems is painful to think about. It is not simply through fox news and hate radio that disciples of the right get their message out. I remember enjoying the show South Park for a while, thinking that it stimulated out of the way ideas and had a rebel quality about it. Then I learned about libertarianism and how rotten it is, and how preachy Trey and Matt really are on that show. Even when you know that the things they do are bullshit you can't help mentally picturing images from South Park whenever an idea parodied on that show comes up in another media form. So people outside of the right wing bubble are still influenced by the garbage they peddle, liberals who explore around them and don't compartmentalize ideas the way conservatives do are likely to be infected.

Bob and Chez already talk to death about identity politics and how it balkanizes the left. The problem of "special snowflakes" who fight against the mere idea of being presented with ideas they disagree with. The inability to tolerate less than perfect political correctness among certain tribes of the left and the general condescending, even ham-handed, way liberals go about getting their message out. If you get 20 social justice warriors in a room you will probably get 19 different priorities and no one genuinely will set aside whatever their pet issue is for the sake of unity. There are others for sure, I hate to believe that is true. Perhaps because I am that rare animal, a liberal military veteran, I can tolerate differences among my teammates and set aside my ego enough to work with others but I have seen this "me first" attitude emerge in so many discussions that it is more than an unfounded generalization. The few other center/left veterans I know also have demonstrated a patience and team spirit not often found in civilians. This kind of solidarity can't be exclusive to the military, maybe more union organizing could help in this regard.

Or maybe we could all try to get a Niebuhrian Renaissance going. Reinhold Niebuhr was a champion of real justice and equality in society, and he did it while stressing humility. All three of these ideas are in short supply these days but the latter could be the key to the former. If we could agree that as the saying goes "an injustice to one is an injustice to all" also has the corollary that increasing justice for one increases it for all, then we could see that one issue does not preclude the rest. But we have to prioritize and be inclusive at the same time, more progressive media can be a means to this end. So I encourage everyone to support people like Bob Cesca and all the others he mentioned. If not financially then by other means but be part of the solution with thoughtful and humble interaction. We must all accept that we will make mistakes and be wrong on occasion. It's not the end of the world.

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Scott Walker is no Herbert Hoover

History is a series of interlocking stories with numerous actors driving even more numerous causes. The agency of actors then creates effects which in turn give us the facts of history. Those events lead to new stories, driving new actions from the changing situation; and hopefully, sometimes, maybe, new motivations in the causation of events. When it comes to the governor of Wisconsin though, we see history repeating as farce in exactly the way Marx meant it.

Much has been written comparing the financial meltdown of 2008 to the Great Depression and stock market crash of 1929, but the comparison here will make you weep for humanity. Wisconsin has always had a populist mentality, our first constitution considered a ban on commercial banking in the state. The Republican Party was founded here with the radical idea that free labor was preferable to that of the slave. The Progressive movement was very strong in Wisconsin, first in the GOP then it's own party, pioneering railroad and other business regulation among many other positive changes. The Wisconsin Idea was something of a revolution in bringing the knowledge, wisdom, and expertise of the state university to government. Wisconsin was a leader in the burgeoning environmental movement, passing protective statutes before the federal government, and while Gaylord Nelson (founder of Earth Day) was a Democrat he was joined in the environmental protection and cleanup effort by many Republicans in state government.

So it is no surprise that many Wisconsinites have a strong affiliation with the Republican Party and the good it has done in the past. However, then is not now and today's GOP has no interest in good governance or responsibility to anything other than how much cash they can pile into private hands from the public purse. Cheeseheads got a sneak preview of modern Republican graft and incompetence when Scott McCallum made a mockery of the governor's office during his brief tenure after Tommy Thompson left to join the Bush Administration. But that did not seem to alert anyone to the dangerous nature of the modern "conservative" wrecking crew nor taint the name of Scott with servile irresponsibility.

Swept into office on the coattails of tea party fervor and possibly voter fraud, college dropout Scott Walker has been the biggest embarrassment to Wisconsin since McCarthy. While there is an entire blog devoted to cataloging his every crime and many bloggers keeping track of his every move both in Wisconsin and nationally, so far no one has noticed the historical parallel between the "troubled" Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation and Herbert Hoover's vehicle of fighting the depression, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." However simplistic this opening line of The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley may seem, it is one of the first ideas a budding historian must internalize because it is true. Remembering this maxim is also the first rule in comparing one historical event to another. So the creation of the RFC is different from the creation of WEDC, the circumstances around them are different, the actors involved are obviously different, and importantly the ideologies driving their creation are radically different. In the first place, Herbert Hoover started his administration by predicting the end of poverty in America. Scott Walker began his by declaring teachers and their unions to be public enemy number one. Hoover was a brilliant mining engineer whose talent and accomplishments made him a very wealthy man on his own merits before entering politics. Walker's only talent seems to be swindling people and parasitically living off of public largesse. Hoover's failure to stem the depression flowed from his inherent optimism that people could work together to solve problems without coercion, whatever else can be said. Walker thrives on confrontation and destroying his enemies. Finally, Hoover would have been remembered as an outstanding President in non-crisis period of American life while Walker would be equally divisive and destructive of anything he touched no matter the larger circumstances.

It is actually ironic that the so-called tea party movement began as a populist reaction to government bailing out powerful and well-connected financial firms. WEDC was not designed to bail out irresponsible businessmen the way TARP was, but loan taxpayer money to private businesses in order to "create jobs" in Wisconsin. Therefore it was an intervention in the "free market" to "pick winners," something that is supposed to be anathema to conservatives. Not only does this expansion of government (pattern?) into the economy ignore the basic tenets of economics but it just happens to be a giant pile of "pay to play" corruption that so-called conservatives are also supposed to abhor. So, as Scott Walker toured the state (on TV ads at least) during his campaign in 2010 with his little brown paper bag he promised that he had big, bold ideas to bring 250,000 jobs to Wisconsin and WEDC was part and parcel that idea. And as usual, Capper at Cognitive Dissidence put it best:
Not only did Walker and WEDC fail miserably to perform as promised, but the agency has been plagued with corruption and ineptitude. Audit after audit showed that the agency lost track of tens of millions of dollars, didn't follow its own rules regarding giving loans and spent money on things like iTunes and Badger football tickets.

In the most recent audit, it was learned that Walker's top aides were leaning heavily on WEDC to give a construction company a $4.3 million loan. The loan ended up being $500,000 but the company created no jobs, went under and never repaid the loan.

It was further revealed that Walker was aware of the progress on securing the loan. You see, Walker had a personal interest in this loan going through since the company owner had given Walker's campaign a $10,000 campaign donation.
Walker went into damage control mode and called for his agency to stop all loans, basically admitting to the failure and corruption of WEDC, which he oversaw.

Days later, it was revealed that Walker had tried to slip into his budget a rule that WEDC would be exempt from FOIA requests.
Which brings us to the last point. Capper also linked to a Capitol Times article that in turn cited a study by a good government watchdog group that showed how these quasi-public entities charged with handing out taxpayer loans to private business both do not work and are rife with corruption. Other states have finally "learned their lesson" and are getting rid of these things but Wisconsin is 20 years behind the rest of the country it seems so they are doing it now. When Herbert Hoover and the Republicans of 86 years ago confronted the depression they had very little information to work with on how to fight the horrific cycle of a collapsing economy. FDR did not have all the answers either but he was unafraid to try things that went against the orthodoxy of the day. Hoover was trapped in that orthodoxy and the things that had worked in the past did not work on the Great Depression. Today we do know what causes horrific bubble-bursting crises, and we know how to fight them. Scott Walker may not be a brilliant engineer but he had to know that simply shoveling money out the door and hoping jobs would some how be created without any of that money going to stimulate demand would not work. Meaning that it was a completely cynical way of hacking open the state to reward the people he really works for.

So it is easy to state that Scott Walker is a worse leader than Herbert Hoover. Let's not make that mistake again.

Monday, May 11, 2015

No Counterprotests

In the spirit of false equivalence that brought you "teaching the controversy" or "George Soros gives money to Liberals" or even this...

Comes the outrage by American Fascists manifested as "#coplivesmatter". Fortunately there is a simple answer to "Why... is #BlackLivesMatter not protesting the death of NYPD cop Brian Moore[?]" Adam Johnson in AlterNet yesterday answered the question in a post titled Dear Idiots On My Facebook Feed: Here's Why Calling for Protests Over Slain Cops Makes No Sense

Before analyzing the article a few small ideas need to be presented. First, in the context of the above picture is that the right wing in America persistently believes that it is 1968 all the time. Not the historical 1968 where protestors in Chicago got their heads bashed in by Daley's PD, or 1970 when the National Guard shot student protestors at Kent State, or even Bull Connor's men attacking Civil Rights marchers with police dogs and fire hoses. But a mythological Nineteen Sixties where "the Left" was all-powerful, protestors always got what they wanted, and government always sided with trouble-makers and punished the law-abiding citizens. Who exactly is afraid of offending Muslims? Pamela Geller or her minions who put on a "Draw Mohammed" contest in Garland, TX? Liberalism is a dead horse that 'wingers never tire of beating while simultaneously believe is running the show. See Thomas Frank's The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Ruined Government, Enriched Themselves, and Beggared the Nation for a much more in-depth and erudite description of this phenomenon.

Second is that 'wingers so successfully compartmentalize conflicting ideas that they can condemn racism while espousing racist views. This phenomenon is explained from a scientific perspective by Bob Altemeyer in his book The Authoritarians. Dr. Bob surveyed group after group with a personality test to measure levels of Right Wing Authoritarianism in individuals. He found that those individuals scoring highly on the test consistently displayed behaviors and reactions defined as authoritarian, such as aggression, self-righteousness, and traditionalism; and would also consistently side with symbols of authority such as political leaders or the police no matter how they behaved. Therefore it is appropriate to generalize about the behaviors, attitudes, and expressions of these right wingers. The ferocity of belief may vary as may the practical ramifications, but right wingers believe very similarly; as in they believe whatever their chosen leaders tell them to believe. In this case, racism is bad but those black people in Baltimore are thugs for protesting. "If they'd just stop breaking the law..." Racism is something other people (especially liberals) do and it is bad, condemning all black people for the actions of one or a few individuals is just "common sense."

Finally is the problem of needing to reduce complex problems into simple slogans that "everyone" should understand and support. Cops are law enforcers right? So everyone should support them uncritically because we are a nation of laws in a society where everyone is equal. Criticizing policemen is akin to supporting chaos. Manichean thinking like this, where every situation is binary and not being on "my" side automatically puts you on "their" side, encourages severe and even violent responses. Recognition that there are many kinds of people in the world and nearly infinite points of view causes anxiety and discomfort in individuals who agree with #coplivesmatter, a feeling only relieved by anger.

So why are there no protests or marches for police officers who are killed in the line of duty. Because "one doesn’t protest something the system already agrees is bad." As Johnson also points out, the murderer of a police officer is almost always immediately caught and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We do not have a situation in NYC or anywhere else like the fictional Detroit of Robocop movies where the police are being systematically assassinated. Anyone who advocated killing cops will be vilified to a point Ice-T could never imagine. Oh, but someone stepped on an American flag, therefore all black people want to murder police officers or something.


The following quotation helps show that it is not only compartmentalized thinking but simple comprehension skills that are a problem. "And this is where this jab gets exposed for the asinine talking point that it is. It acts like #BlackLivesMatter is outraged by murder per se, rather than the broader system of white supremacy, inequality, and police immunity that leads to so many senseless murders by police a year - the vast majority of which hardly register a blip on the media radar, let alone lead to a protest." I will end where Johnson began:
[L]et’s be clear about one thing: those asking this question [see below tweets] don’t really care about slain NYPD officer Brian Moore. To them, the death of Brian Moore is a political prop. Sure, they don’t wish it happened, but they probably didn’t think about it beyond the degree to which it could trivialize anti-police brutality protesters. These are smear artists, so desperate to seek out liberal hypocrisy they’ll knowingly spout this sophistic talking point knowing full well it’s basically bullshit. It’s the laziest kind of pseudo-opinion - a testiment to our pundit classes’ fetish for gotchaism at the expense of critical thought. [emphasis mine]

Life is cheap and money is the only value...
 
 

Thursday, May 7, 2015

But It Is Different With Islam? Introduction

There has always been an element of the American population that dislikes foreigners. Sometimes the "conflict" is about religion, sometimes ideology, and occasionally simple skin color or cultural differences. There were the know-nothings in the 1850s who railed about the Irish Catholics, then there was the Klan in the 1920s convinced that Italian Catholics were going to take over the country and make the Pope king of America. Xenophobia is such a basic vice, people want to be with others like themselves, and fear people who are different. Even if those differences are small, the "my tribe is superior" is an easy and lazy pattern of thinking to fall into. The United States, founded with the words "all men are created equal" somewhere in our baptismal documents, has always had this this conflict those who want to come here and those already here that do not want "them" here. Too many pronouns in that proposition I know, but this news cycle is going to be taken up with hypocrites defending freedom of speech while freaking out about the "other."

I lifted these images from another blog that goes into much greater detail because they fit into one of the two themes I want to concentrate on in my next few posts. There is a great synergy of dumb out there right now, fanatics of so many stripes displaying barbaric behavior. There are just a few definitions to deal with before diving into some analysis. Because there are some real misunderstandings about key concepts in the great public dialogue of current events.

I keep reading in comment sections about how "Islam is not a race" therefore Islamophobia is not racism. Congratulations, all of you little trolls out there got one right, sort of. Islam, like Christianity, is a universalizing religion. This means that Muslims actively seek to convert people to their religion, just as Christians do. You can be a Muslim no matter what color your skin is or where on the globe you call home, but most Muslims are not "white" so most of the attacks on Islam are also attacks on people that are non-white. The attacks are often made because the Islamophobe is white and claims to be superior, their intent being maliciously discriminatory and bigoted, means that yes it is still racism.

However, there are about a billion Muslims in the world so they are not exactly some tiny, oppressed minority. As much as that may offend the ultra politically correct crowd. And until the end of the First World War, much of the Middle East was ruled by the Ottoman Sultan, not European Imperialists. There are predatory authoritarians in the Muslim world who oppress their people, they happen to collaborate with predatory authoritarians in the West for profit sometimes but they do just fine on their own too. Toss in the fact that much of the world's oil supply is controlled by Muslim governments and you find that the Muslim world is far from powerless. Which is exactly why it plays so well into the "Clash of Civilizations" worldview.

There, have I sufficiently offended both extreme ends of the American political spectrum? Good, on to the next point: Freedom of Speech. This concept seems to be very misunderstood. What does the First Amendment state? "Congress shall make no law... abridging freedom of speech." So what Constitutional Freedom of Speech means is that the government will not restrain freedom of the people to criticize it, though there are exceptions. Just as xenophobia is part of human nature, a bad part for sure, so is the desire to control the expression of others. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. once wrote that what is remarkable about our system is not that the government and people sometimes try to censor ideas or expression, that is basically the norm of human societies, but that we rather quickly snap back from those episodes and feel national remorse. That occurred after the Alien and Sedition Acts of John Adams' administration and other wartime or crisis flare ups of censorship during the Civil War, WWI, the McCarthy period.

What Freedom of Speech does not mean is freedom from criticism. Yes, you are free to say really dumb and untrue things like Sarah Palin regularly does, but others are equally free to call you on your lies and stupidity. You are then free to respond, and vice versa ad infinitum until Godwin's Law is violated multiple times and every logical fallacy is perpetrated repeatedly. What you are not free to do is pick up a gun and use violence against someone whose speech offended you.

So what I would like to explore in the next few posts is whether or not Islam as an enemy to western authoritarians (conservatives) is in any way different than the previous enemy civilizations as they saw them. Some of these include in no particular order, communists, the Soviet Union or Russia, socialists, immigrants of Southern European stock, immigrants of other nationalities or religions. Is there any difference between Cold War rhetoric and that of the so-called "War on Terror?" What about different audiences, is there a difference between elite and popular Islamophobia? I am certainly not an expert on any of these questions but I would like to add what I can to the discussion. Every little bit can help to diffuse the anger and maybe head off the desired confrontations of both sides and their will to dominate.

Friday, May 1, 2015

Fifty Shades of Sanders

The big news this week for political junkies, the kind that pay attention between elections and sometimes naively believe that progress is possible, is that Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has announced that he will seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2016. He has always caucused with the Democratic members of Congress in both houses while a member there, but remains an Independent. If there is one thing you should take away from this post and every discussion about Sanders, it is that he is the real deal. It is hard to look at his life and his record and not see that this is a genuine and sincere leader who really cares about people. Average people, working people, middle-class people; Sanders stands for them and stands against the very wealthy and the powerful interests who have made it so hard to get ahead. He is exactly the kind of person who should be president.

When James Madison wrote about the checks and balances in the Constitution, he made it clear that the people who debated and formulated our government's founding laws knew that the people who would lead and make laws were not angels. Thus, many safeguards were put in place because even the best of intentions can go wrong. Madison would be shocked to see how the men who are furthest from being angels have circumvented those checks on power to ram through all the abuses we have seen in recent history. All while the checks and balances have restrained those closer to the angels from cleaning up the mess or fixing things. Madison knew all about the parasitic courtiers who wrung special favors and privileges out of monarchic governments in the name of mercantilism, he would not be surprised by the web of lobbyists and corrupting money built up around the Capitol. Nor would he be surprised that special interests are able to craft legislation while the public is cannibalized. This blog tries very hard not to believe in white knights who would govern in the public's interest. I have prided myself on being practical, skeptical, and realistic. So believe me when I say I have spent a lot of time thinking about reasons why we should not support Senator Sanders. I can't think of any.

That is not to say I do not see all the potential pitfalls. The right has made it a cottage industry to discredit any possibility of good people running for office, the amount of mud that will be slung against Bernie Sanders and anyone who supports his campaign will be unbelievable. Will any of it stick? Well if the devious and well-funded agents of fox news and the Koch brothers are able to set the terms of debate, yes. But it is a long road to November of 2016, and this time could be the one where we actually start talking to each other. Open and honest debate between real people would go further towards shielding ourselves from their lies than any mainstream campaign damage control method ever. And Senator Sanders will attract the kind of honest, big-hearted people that would never consider getting involved with the standard "business as usual" campaign.

It is high time idealism got an honest chance to change the conversation. We need big ideas with personal ramifications to cut through the usual wedge issues that divide us. It is time to remember that the younger generation are not some species apart, spoiled little brats that can easily be tarred with whatever vice happens to be on the tongue of Bill O'Reilly today, but they are our children and our friends' children, etc. Then we can remember that seniors are our grandparents, not just grumpy gray-haired monsters who believe everything fox news tells them. Instead of worrying about what others are doing that we may not approve of, a new conversation could start asking questions like "why is my cell phone bill so damn high?" "Why do I keep making payments on my credit cards and student loans but the balance never seems to go down?"

These and others are the questions we can ask in a Sanders campaign. These are the questions that need to be asked, and if enough of us start asking them we can finally cut through the supply-side, free-market fantasy and demand that the wealth needs to be shared. That there is nothing so valuable that a CEO can do to warrant their multi-million dollar compensation packages while so many of us struggle just to keep the lights on. The Koch brothers have stated that they plan to spend almost a billion dollars to lie to us and buy the government, so they can keep stealing from us. A Sanders campaign will not shy away from stating that no individual or family should have a billion dollars lying around to buy the government.

Bernie Sanders is the real deal, he has proven it time and again. This country doesn't deserve him, but maybe we can cut the crap for once and get a good leader we can believe in.