The Scam of the Century

 If you follow more than a couple of the more liberal-leaning sites on social media, you have probably seen a meme or two starring venture capitalist Nick Hanauer. He says things that seem to be more along the lines of what Trump followers believe that the vulgar talking yam splutters from his puckered pie hole. You know, if the Republicans following Trump weren't utterly consumed by racist hatred. Yes, a member in good standing of the American billionaire club actually saying things and working in support of American workers. And in a pragmatic, realistic way. The meme to the right is the subject of this post and puts the issue in terms that I have struggled to find for a long time. This year, this crazy election, has finally seen the culture war nonsense of religious nut balls fall by the wayside to reveal the throbbing heart of racial resentment in the conservative movement, it is about time that some of the beloved scams of the class war fall with them.

Of course, the election season started out with the usual claptrap about religious liberty, the zika virus, and *shock and horror* transgendered men using the ladies room to [something, something] little girls. Then Trump came in and sprinkled some populist economic rhetoric about trade into the spicy brew of racism, sexism, and islamophobia so popular among the white bumpkins who have finally put away their tea bags. Thus completely upending the Koch/Rove formula of riling up those deplorables with code words and getting them to vote for conventional deplorable republicans that will deliver the tax cuts and other goodies favored by the parasitic 1%. Oops, now the perfect script of resentment over the first black president not fixing everything from the last three decades (in spite of perfect obstruction by the same people who fucked things up in the first place) has to be rewritten for the scam to continue.

The kind of ad-hoc coalition of activists and unions pushing for a strong minimum wage increase were being handled by corporate media in the usual way for some time before Hanauer gave them a real voice within the establishment. The demonstrations were framed by corporate media as disruptive and demonstrators as "whiners looking for a handout" among the standard free market replies. Perhaps they have finally gone too far after years of demonizing teachers and other state workers, it is too soon to tell, but Americans seem to finally be reaching their breaking point over stagnant wages and workplace concessions.

 So it was a great surprise to see Nick Hanauer, billionaire and venture capitalist, take up an almost Gore Vidal-like role as "critic and reformer from inside the elite" with a lengthy article reposted on the PBS NewsHour website. I am so going to quote extensively from this incredible essay because this is the kind of clear, concise, communications skills you acquire as a billionaire venture capitalist as opposed to a son and grandson of factory workers with a graduate degree from a second-tier public university and a huge chip on your shoulder about the oligarchs and liars.

"Minimum wage opponents continue to deride every proposed increase as a surefire job killer, while reporters and pundits reliably characterize the passage of every minimum wage ordinance and statute as a dangerous experiment that threatens to harm the very people it’s intended to help."

This is how Hanauer characterizes the thesis of his article, the claim that "if wages go up, jobs go down isn’t a description of reality at all. It is a negotiating strategy used by employers to keep wages down and profits high."

Finally! Someone finally called them on their bullshit! It took someone on the inside to do it, but it finally was said. Just about every mainstream journalist, columnist, teevee host, radio host, pundit, guest "expert" repeats the standard conventional wisdom that if anyone tries to raise wages or improve working conditions the economy will collapse and businesses will close and then you won't have any jobs at all. Okay, maybe I'm setting up a strawman with that sentiment, media people are trained to work the commandment of their masters in the executive suites into any statement or commentary with nuance, the sort of "of course if you throw a ball in the air it comes back down" causation subtlety that requires real effort to challenge. Either by rote repetitive internalization of trickle down orthodoxy or sincere conviction that the poors better fucking respect the hierarchy and know their place in the starving games or we'll really fuck them up, this conventional wisdom is the soundproofing that keeps wages low and profits high and never even gets a serious airing in our national conversation.

"But the confidence of the doomsayers and the anxiety of the pundits might make more sense to me if they hadn’t been making the same dire predictions since the minimum wage was invented 78 years ago — or if at least some of these dire predictions had actually managed to come true. In fact, contrary to the cautionary headlines, there is nothing “experimental” about raising the minimum wage. The federal minimum wage has been raised 22 times since it was first established in 1938 (state and local minimum wages have been raised hundreds of times), sometimes by as much as 87.5 percent in a single year — far more than the annual increases $15 advocates propose. So if the minimum wage opponents were correct, it should be incredibly easy to find overwhelming empirical evidence that minimum wage hikes cause the job losses they always predict"

 HOLY SHIT! YOU MEAN THERE IS ACTUALLY SOME KIND OF RECORD WE COULD LOOK AT ABOUT THE PAST THAT COULD EXPLAIN WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED?!? WHAT COULD THIS POSSIBLY MEAN!!!!

Yes, OMG there actually is a way to look at not only the doomsayers' predictions and actual results. Economic and labor historians that actually study these things are a pretty resigned bunch, I don't know many but they all kind of hang their heads and mumble a lot because there's no way in hell they'll ever get on the magic teevee machine to tell the American public that yes, every time there is an effort to raise wages or legalize unions or in some way address the staggering economic inequality the capitalists and their mouthpieces in media go into full court press mode to decry the falling of the sky. Hanauer cites a letter sent to our political leaders and signed by 600 economists who studied the actual, empirical evidence regarding raising the minimum wage who conclude that it does not affect employment. Did you ever hear about this letter? Did it ever make it onto the nightly news or cable news? Not that I recall, yet it is all there. We just have an entire class of oligarchs, businessmen, media types, and others who have a vested interest in making sure that the truth about their scam never reaches the public.

I wish we could say that the democratizing intertubes have made it an easier proposition to get the truth out there, but man, is there any truth out there that everyone agrees on? Donald Trump claims during the debate that millions of jobs are being outsourced every day and millions of illegal immigrants are coming in to steal our jobs every day... and his blinded idiot supporters believe it. There is no one source that can unify what constitutes reality anymore. No one face that everyone can believe. But if there is ever going to be progress, we who want that progress towards social and economic justice have to start somewhere. In any event Nick Hanauer's efforts are important in showing that there is no uniformity in class efforts either, we can have a billionaire on our side instead of at our throats. That's a good place to start.

It is a crazy year, the culture warriors used to have a focused plan, whether it was guns, or God, or gays they could reliably change the conversation against making the tax code more progressive, regulating what companies can do to their workers, customers, and the environment, or God forbid actually raise the minimum wage or expand the social safety net. Now with Trump's scatterbrained bigotry spinning the script out of control there is a small window to get a national conversation going about the bread and butter issues on the economy that doesn't involve starting a trade war.

Ur-Fascism in the USA

When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross - Attributed to Sinclair Lewis

While the author of It Can't Happen Here may not have actually said this, the spirit of the quotation is more poignant today than it was even in the 1930s when fascism really was on the rise. While everyone should read the cautionary tale of how fragile democracy can be, how the masses can be manipulated by would be dictators, and how difficult it can be to distinguish a real dyed-in-the-wool fascist from a dangerous but ineffectual bully, praising this story is not the primary goal of this essay.

So many words have been written about the bad ideologies; authoritarianism and its offshoots, fascism, Nazism, totalitarianism, communism, and so many images placed in popular memory about them that so many people are guarding the wrong gates. The first misconception to address is that fascism does not equal Nazism. Being on the lookout for fascism in America, you can more or less safely ignore the occasional skinhead. While they may be dangerous in person, in close proximity, someone in a Neo-Nazi uniform is not likely to attract a mass following. A real fascist in America is likely to be the one denouncing the skinhead louder than anyone else, and public racism, government spying, censorship, etc. because words and actions in fascism are inherently out of joint. This is a chameleonic philosophy that can say or do anything because the end is what is important. Fascism is intolerant of everything except its own contradictions and that is why Orwellian doublethink functions so well in fascism and its enablers.

Before the mass rallies, before the book burnings, before the violence, fascism creeps in among the disaffected as an underlying second layer behind the words. Like a virus slips in undetected to take control of a cell, fascism waits under conscious thoughts until the time is right for it to ignite. This is the eternal fascism as analyzed by Umberto Eco. Ur-fascism is very difficult to spot because it mutates so readily within a culture, but any one of the fourteen features Eco identified is enough to allow undiagnosed fascism to fester until it strikes. The reason guarding against Nazism, as so many on the American Right do to the point of absurdity, is practically useless is that ur-fascism is exactly that, eternal. Eco noted that ur-fascism is not grounded in any historical expression but is obsessed with a primordial truth that was revealed and then lost. There are no empirical examples that ur-fascism needs for expression, it is both new and ancient at the same time and thus tolerates contradictions because any document or myth can only reveal a sliver of that truth.

For the common American fascist, that truth is revealed in his understanding of our foundational documents. The Constitution is a part of that primordial truth, it exists outside of history alongside that other ahistorical document, the Holy Bible, and they both contain the elementary essence of humanity. No thinking or understanding needed. As these documents are interpretations of truth larger than any mortal author can grasp, the "mistakes" that do not say what he wants to hear can be explained away by his superiors who possess the gift of divining the secret truth. That the secrets just happen to line up exactly with what he wants to believe simply confirms the universality of his beliefs.

The leader who can convincingly preach the truth will earn a following of true believers who will defend his every horrible action and attack the unbelievers who dare question his motives. Adorno and his colleagues may have been criticized for many of their findings and conclusions in The Authoritarian Personality but it is undeniable that fascists exist, both leaders and followers. It is also undeniable that their ranks swell during periods of upheaval and/or shock. The great irony is that American fascists scream the loudest about freedom and liberty but are the most willing to submit and obediently surrender their freedom.

The freedom most dear to the American fascist is the freedom to conform. Second is the freedom from worry that comes with thinking. Perhaps not unique to American fascism but vitally important is the freedom from responsibility towards your fellow citizens; in other words the freedom to be selfish. Eco characterizes many features of ur-fascism as cults, the cult of tradition, the cult of action, the cult of technology, the cult of heroism, and of permanent war. These contradictory ideals are never settled but as Bob Altemeyer discovered during decades of research on the authoritarian personality is that fascists are okay with that. The secret to accepting so many contradictions is in compartmentalized thinking, and this is a feature the American system excels in. We are taught from kindergarten that there is a time for everything, play time, learning time, nap time. Later this is expanded in school and bells chime when it is time to drop everything and switch subjects. It is a short leap for the mind to start putting conflicting concepts in separate mental boxes and only draw on one at a time. Thus can the fascist hold racist views and react with violent anger when witnessing racism, because another box tells him that racism is bad.

There is no way around the another very important point of applying Eco to American fascism, contempt for the weak. Fascism is both popular as a mass political movement and elitist as a hierarchical system. This is what differentiates fascism from simple authoritarianism, it must originate in a democratic or parliamentary system where voters can choose their government. Similarly, that government must be perceived as rotten. It does not matter that the system was broken by the fascist leaders themselves. The government is so broken that we need a strong leader who will unite us and purge the degenerates and filth from the land. It is simply amazing how strongly the myth persists that government taxes the productive, sober, white men and gives to "them." How often does the bumper sticker slogan "work harder, millions on welfare are depending on you" appear? American fascists are so angry at the poor while claiming to be good Christians. In recent years this hatred and contempt has expanded to government workers, especially teachers. Why?

It would be best to simply end this essay with Eco's words verbatim.

The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life. The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.
Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Hermann Goering's fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play ("When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun") to the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "eggheads," "effete snobs," and "universities are nests of reds." The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.
4. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.
In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.
5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.
Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

Everything that has come out of the American Right in recent years has been witnessed by history before. We simply need to understand it for what it is and stop reinforcing their frames by pretending the radical reaction coming from national GOP leaders, traitorous industrialists like the Koch brothers, all the way down to your angry uncle who screams about welfare cheats and illegal immigrants is "conservatism" because it is not.

Right of Way Outrage

I stumbled onto a story yesterday completely by accident, I am sure it is too little for MMFA or any other group on the lookout for proto-fascism in our midst. However, it is just one little tile in the mosaic of virulent nationalism and scapegoating that is essential if you want to plow under a rotting republic in favor of a dictatorship. Check out this headline:

Florida man ordered to remove American flag display draws huge support

 Contrast it with the original source:

Hundreds of flags line Cape Coral roads

Basically, the manager of a hardware store put up a bunch of little flags on the public right-of-way grass between the street and sidewalk, someone complained that it violated a city ordinance, and the city asked him to move them back onto private property... about 6 feet. This incident has 2 amazing similarities to 1984. First, that "hundreds" of people turned out to further violate the ordinance and put up a shitload more flags in exactly the way the telescreen announcer on Airstrip One constantly repeats how "workers spontaneously demonstrate to show their gratitude and joy." Second, is that the original story has disappeared down the memory hole. Originally, there was a segment from the Ministry of Truth (fox news) where they interviewed the guy involved and he admitted voluntarily removing the flags... until the patriotism police showed up and put up almost one hundred times more flags. Now, anything that might indicate that this incident began as a simple and easily resolved disagreement between an individual and the city is gone. In its place is a confrontation between unfeeling, unaccountable government mindlessly enforcing arbitrary rules and the patriotic masses standing up to the tyranny of right-of-way ordinances.

Wow, in Oceania it took dedicated effort by a huge bureaucracy to collect all copies of newspapers or other documents, destroy the item that the Party wished to change, and reissue them. Now with a few clicks the job can be done by one or two individuals in a few moments!

Orwell is rolling in his grave.

Glenn Greenwald: Wailer

When I first encountered him on salon, Greenwald seemed to me to be a slightly pushy moralist trying to parrot Noam Chomsky but without the latter's erudition and childlike whimsy. I had him confused with Robert Greenwald the documentary filmmaker and as such gave Glenn the benefit of the doubt.

Glenn exhausted that particular benefit after just a few pompous columns however, and he was firmly affixed with the label Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. came up with in The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom for naively idealistic and ego maniacal writers with zero responsibility; the wailer. It is almost eerie how so much of Schlesinger's tome remains relevant or perhaps re-established its relevance to the contemporary world. The wailer in 1940s America was a writer/commentator for a left wing periodical ("left" being synonymous with "communist" or fellow traveler then, understanding that really nails how far the ideological fifty yard line has moved) who had no experience in the practical reality of governing. This aloof intellectual could therefore make high, moralistic demands upon government or society for whatever drew their fancy without having to deal with or even admit the practical ramifications. If you ever looked at an objective analysis of the abolitionists in pre-Civil War America, you might find them kindred spirits. So, just as paranoid right-wingers have always been with us, so too have puritanical idealists. It is up to the humane realists to deal with the responsibility of reform and governance.

So this Greenwald, who apparently lives in Brazil and therefore has no real stake in US policies, has built himself a little niche of like-minded purists on the strength of his reputation for moral certitude. And since the election of Barack Obama, he has taken to showing his independence by bashing the Democrats and especially the President for being just as bad as republicans and bush jr. How hipster of you Greenwald. For specifics check out The Daily Banter website, where his pseudo-intellectualism and sheer obtuseness is a regular topic.

The thesis of this little essay has to be to never stop exercising your critical thinking skills. Skepticism is healthy, but like anything else, moderation is important too. People are all very different, dogmatism is dangerous in a republic no matter where it lies.

Reason #3924 why hannity is a tool

I have a bad habit of turning on am radio from time to time and listening to whichever Goebbels wannabe happens to be yelling at that moment. And there was a doosy yesterday, sean hannity the Irish ape/college dropout, was getting all holy about Michael Jackson's funeral ceremony. It was an interesting tack, the "liberal" media was being horrible by covering it and not the deaths of American servicemen in Afghanistan that day. I agree, only I was also concerned about that years ago right through yesterday. All during that time hannity would baselessly attack the same media outlets for trying to read the names of fallen soldiers on the air, you see, because it was a propaganda stunt then to try and turn the squishy Americans against the war.

You know, we are at war with East Asia, and allied with Eurasia, we have always been at war with East Asia and always been allied with Eurasia.

It is a political show, but how is it that every event somehow can be molded to fit hannity's strange worldview that the media (of which he is regrettably a part of, and prominent at that) wants to destroy "his" America. Apparently this is such a minor smear that Media Matters for America doesn't have a entry for it. But I feel that a man who savaged John Kerry for "flip-flops" really should be called on this, shameless and contradictory attempt to grandstand on a funeral. I mean, at this point the half-dozen or so fans he still has will believe he can fly if he proclaims it on our airwaves. But it is more likely this is simply cynical propaganda to keep up the lie of hannity's "watchdog" status, at least in his own mind. Thank God we have this honest and intellectually forthright champion of the truth to do our thinking for us.

I suppose hannity would play the victim at this point and whine with self-righteous fury about the big, bad gloomy historian bullying him. LOL. It must be asked though, how do the die-hard conservatives who eat up his every word deal with a case of doublethink this blatent?

The truth of course is that at some point in the recent past, stories about the war dropped procipitously. I think most people are just exhausted, especially people who opposed invading Iraq and/or Afghanistan from the beginning (like me) and tuned out. The fighting continues, blood and treasure are still being wasted upon the sand but it seems so far away and unconnected from our daily lives. I wish we could get the same kind of large-scale, coordinated protests against the war today as there were when bush dismissed them as "focus groups", that might get the Obama Administration moving on actually withdrawing.