The conspicuous capitalist candidate and the battered spouse party

Paul Krugman explains it all, again:

"[Romney's] case for becoming president relies, instead, on his claim that, having been a successful businessman, he knows how to create jobs.

This, in turn, means that however much the Romney campaign may wish otherwise, the nature of that business career is fair game. How did Mr. Romney make all that money? Was it in ways suggesting that what was good for Bain Capital, the private equity firm that made him rich, would also be good for America?

And the answer is no."

Just as in 2008, the economy and domestic concerns are front and center in our quadrennial popularity contest. Leaving the president and his bland centrism, muddled language, and fighting with his hands tied aside, romney might be the most conspicuous example of predation and callous cruelty to ever carry a major party banner.

I sit here listening to tone-deaf Gene Sperling of the president's economic council or some crap repeat republican language and already admitting defeat in the election. "Tax Relief, we need to give tax relief to middle-class and small business... we need to have the conversation on extending relief for the richest Americans." Sick, sick, sick. Taxes are not a crushing burden or a disease that fat cats need relief from. The president's speech was alright, but barely adequate for the tax fight we should have had two years ago much less today. So it is blah from our side as usual, "please don't hit me more... I deserved it before" and every other rationalization for being the battered-spouse side of the corporate power party.

As Kornacki at Salon showed, if the Democrats cannot beat this meathead romney then the republic really is lost. We have finally crossed that last line and become a dead man walking. Also in Salon, the print warm-up to fighting for the middle class limp-wristed style and everything you ever wanted to know about the pampered, spoiled elite that back romney and keep the pain coming. I would be remiss if I didn't quote from this to show the arrogant assholes who embody privilege:

"Romney donors complain about lack of VIP entrance: Mitt Romney held a series of high-dollar fundraisers on the Hamptons this weekend, producing scenes of elitism that seem hard to believe are real. “Is there a V.I.P. entrance. We are V.I.P.,” a woman in a black Range Rover, one of 30 luxury cars waiting to pull into a multi-million-dollar mansion, complained to a Romney aide, according to the New York Times.
At the next event, another woman in a luxury SUV protested to the Los Angeles Times, “I don’t think the common person is getting it.” “The baby sitters, the nails ladies — everybody who’s got the right to vote — they don’t understand what’s going on. I just think if you’re lower income — one, you’re not as educated, two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work,” she explained."

Makes me sick. Not that they have so much and we have so little, but that they shit on everyone else and pay propagandists to make us love it. Alright, they do not deserve such wealth, no one does. Especially when they cannibalized so much of America to steal it, the way romney and bain capital did. And despite polls, focus groups, protests and the rest screaming to cut these assholes down to size, our dear leaders will wave a hand and second that woman, "you just don't know how this works."

Finally Krugman contrasts romney with his father, showing that today's louts really are the scummy "burn down the other guy's house to collect the insurance money because you just don't give a shit" that Matt Taibbi has been desperately trying to convey since the great crash gangsters that have taken over the country. Romney sold himself as the best champion for business because he was so successful at eating everyone else's seedcorn, but now has to shroud his ill-gotten gains in mystery. And mafia-style pilfering has come out of the basement to be the official standard for how business is done, all the other companies have to get on board and burn the poor to keep warm or be eaten themselves by the financial vultures.

The Bad South

Much effort has been expended by Northerners to understand the Southern mind. Is the South fundamentally different from the rest of the country? Sara Robinson's article in Alternet is a recent attempt to dissect what in the world is going on south of the Mason-Dixon line. Conservative Southern Values Revived: How a Brutal Strain of American Aristocrats Have Come to Rule America separates the average southerner from the elites that shape generalizations in the region and how they project elite values onto the nation. Robinson's article is well-researched and builds on established, if sometimes controversial, scholarship about the American South. Of particular interest is her interpretation of southern "liberty," which is very different from the definition we normally think of and shows how language is such a powerful device in politics.

"When a Southern conservative talks about "losing his liberty," the loss of this absolute domination over the people and property under his control -- and, worse, the loss of status and the resulting risk of being held accountable for laws that he was once exempt from -- is what he's really talking about. In this view, freedom is a zero-sum game. Anything that gives more freedom and rights to lower-status people can't help but put serious limits on the freedom of the upper classes to use those people as they please. It cannot be any other way. So they find Yankee-style rights expansions absolutely intolerable, to the point where they're willing to fight and die to preserve their divine right to rule." (emphasis mine)

Though Robinson does not explicitly state it, this definition of liberty and freedom is what teabaggers screech about at their rallies, and on tv, and on the radio, and in their books, articles, and pamphlets. The rest of us understand their ideas about freedom and liberty as privilege, especially the "fervent belief among these elites that they should completely escape any legal or social accountability for any harm they cause." Think Abu Graib. This is also why when you ask an epsilon semi-moron teabagger what rights or freedom they have lost, you get shouted down because they cannot actually think of one. Elite attitudes are only one dimension of the bad south, as I argued in my Reconstruction post the values of absolute control over others with zero accountability or responsibility seeped from southern planters to northern industrialists.

The South cannot be understood one-dimensionally. I do not mean to generalize too broadly, but to understand what has happened to America we need a starting point. My best friend in the Army was from Charleston, S.C. and he was nothing like the elites described by Robinson. Nor were many other Southerners I knew then. Even the Texans were not all chest-puffing braggots. If you stripped away the manufactured labels, guys from all over had a lot in common even if most of these commonalities involved beer and girls. The point being that many of our attitudes are artificial, the elites go to great lengths to impose their values on the rest of society. Allan Kulikoff examined some of these propaganda campaigns in Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800. Robinson more or less described the elite of the deep south as importing a slave state mentality from the Caribbean, but colonial Barbados had more in common with ancient Sparta than Virginia. Except the color of Caribbean helots, planters and their minions had to practice martial values and remain ever vigilant against the possiblity of a revolt just as the Spartans did. Kulikoff explained that in the Chesapeake, the planters brought in African slaves for the expressed purpose of creating a dispised laboring class that lower-status whites could feel superior to. This is the foundation of attitudes today that always look down instead of up for the source of problems.

Four centuries of reinforcing the class war frame has left an indelible and lasting tradition of racial animosity in America. What Robinson exposed in her analysis of the cruel plantation elite's value structure is the incredible privilege that coincides with deep paranoia and suspicion of those at the bottom of the social hierarchy. She quoted Colin Woodward that "Deep Southern culture was based on radical disparities in wealth and power, with a tiny elite commanding total obedience and enforcing it with state-sponsored terror." Today "[o]ur police are being given paramilitary training and powers that are completely out of line with their duty to serve and protect, but much more in keeping with a mission to subdue and suppress." Robinson also echoed Thomas Frank's characterization of trader louts giving the "giant middle finger to their guests" through conspicuous and deeply private consumption. Writing "Southern elites sank their money into ostentatious homes and clothing and the pursuit of pleasure -- including lavish parties, games of fortune, predatory sexual conquests, and blood sports involving ritualized animal abuse spectacles."

To be continued...

Reconstruction

This is another undergraduate paper I wrote that will bear on later posts about the South. At least as it relates to the socioeconomic elite in America. It was one of the first intellectual/historiographical analyses I wrote, before I even knew that was what I wanted to specialize in. This paper actually holds up pretty well all things considered.

The end of the Civil War in America left the victorious North with the daunting task of reconstructing the rebellious states and re-forging a new Republic from the ashes of the old. Very briefly the period of 1863-1877 consisted of the lenient Presidential reconstruction of Southern States, a stricter program from Congress and finally home rule or redemption of the former Confederacy. Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, wrote A Short History of Reconstruction in large part to dispel the popular version of events as written by William Dunning and John Burgess while not falling into the absolute reversal of the modern Civil Rights movement. The former cast the Southern Republican coalition as usurpers of power, exploiting black voters and lining their own pockets at the expense of powerless whites; while the latter placed idealistic halos over the heads of Radical Republicans.

            Professor Foner analyses the period from a social class perspective and finds an aggressive class war waged by the supposed losers of the war (Southern Democratic planters) against the alleged winners (The Freedmen). Large landowners generally refused to admit that their former slave property now had economic and political rights and the planters resisted changes that would reduce their power. While in the North, values associated with plantation “labor discipline” are internalized by the captains of industry and applied to workers in the nation’s corporations. (173)

            In the antebellum period, American society was characterized by a free-labor north and slave power south; with the latter modeled more on feudalism than enlightenment principles. The election of Abraham Lincoln from the new Republican party was such a threat to slaveholders that they seceded from the United States in order to maintain their peculiar institution. President Lincoln prosecuted the war in order to preserve the Union but it soon became evident that emancipating the slaves would shorten the conflict. His thoughts on the subject of the Freedmen matured to the point that he “publicly endorsed black suffrage” for the “very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers” right before his assassination. (33) Foner illustrates the depth of debate over what form freedom should take for the emancipated slaves because as it stood, any changes would need to be imposed from above by the federal government. Wartime expediency tied Lincoln’s hands in the short-term, but the president “did not turn to peacetime with a ‘fixed plan’ of Reconstruction” and may have been willing to press Radical change upon the defeated Confederacy. (33)

            For his successor, Andrew Johnson, who “shared neither the Radicals’ expansive conception of federal power nor their commitment to political equality for blacks” and “never wavered from the conviction that the federal government could not impose such a policy [of black equality] on the states.” (83-4) The new president issued proclamations of “amnesty and pardon” for “former Confederates who pledged loyalty to the Union” with less than $20,000 in taxable property while those with more could petition individually for a pardon. (85) In effect, this put the old (Democratic) power structure back in place by also denying blacks the vote, thus allowing a virtual re-imposition of slavery through “Black codes”, labor contracts, punishment for vagrancy; with the effect of controlling labor and “limit its economic options.” (93) These events showed that left to themselves, southern states (and their ruling class) would do everything possible to ignore the outcome of the war and reassert control over the workforce. Foner argues that “the planter class… had no intention of presiding over its own dissolution.” (99)

            Northern capitalists, bankers and merchants of the upper class supported Presidential Reconstruction in order to quickly resume production of cotton and other southern staple agricultural goods. Radical Republicans balked at the abandonment of the Freedmen and Northern public opinion turned on letting the Confederates right back in to office as though nothing happened. Radical Reconstruction then, in Foner’s view, was a reaction to letting what northerners saw as the war aims fall by the wayside and Congress did much to rectify this situation. Failure stemmed from not forcing the redistribution of land to give Freedmen an economic base for their self-improvement, lacking this basis “a powerful national state must guarantee blacks equal political standing in a free-labor economy”. (108)

            Despite a great deal of political organizing by African-Americans in the South, without land of their own they remained at the mercy of their white landlords. The United States had no tradition of strong federal government and a severe depression caused a retreat in Reconstruction to deal with the national crisis. Republicans at state and national levels had spent a great deal of public money on aid to railroads, which was used both for legitimate economic development and dangerous speculation. The latter caused the collapse of the Northern Pacific Railroad; and with it many financial institutions and supporting industries like coal and steel suffered. Layoffs and wage reductions led to strikes, which in turn led to strike-breaking and “brought European-style class conflict to America.” (217-18)

            Foner demonstrates the similarity in language by Northern and Southern ruling classes in dealing with the “labor question”. (217) “Tramps” were dealt with in a similar fashion in the North as “Vagrants” were in the South, “making unemployment a crime… bore more than a passing resemblance to the Southern Black Codes of 1865-66.” (220) The Northern press branded union leaders “enemies of society” but found no problem with “the proliferation of trade associations” for industrialists. High tariffs and subsidies to private industry are fine but “public assistance” and “private relief” were to blame for labor unrest. (219) Southern planters decried loss of coercion for control over their black labor force, just as Northern capitalists gained the services of the state militia for strike-breaking. (245)

            Economics, class distinctions and the rights of laborers in a market system are certainly not the only elements of Dr. Foner’s thesis; but these represent the basis for telling the story of Reconstruction without resorting to the racist assumptions of the Dunning/Burgess school or idealistic revisionism. It certainly cannot be said that capitalist/labor tension in the US only began after the Civil War, or that race relations in the South would have been better if Reconstruction had not been imposed by Northern Republicans. This analysis of economic causes for the failure of Reconstruction succeeds in demonstrating the difficulty in remaking a society in a radically different image. I agree especially with his conclusion that “[t]he tide of change rose and then receded, but it left behind an altered landscape.” (254) Recalcitrant Southern whites not only outlasted Northern occupation but poisoned the labor relations there by recasting free-labor ideology into little more than slaves for rent, workers with no rights. That said; Twentieth Century Civil Rights activists were able to use many precedents of Re-construction to challenge white supremacy after an enormous amount of political organizing by African-Americans. And a New South did emerge after the idea of a strong national state became more accepted post-New Deal, with the power to force equal rights on the region.

            After reading this book though, the question could be asked: “Was the Civil War really worth it?” Could history have taken a different course, if President Lincoln had merely let the southern states go, recognized their independence and blockaded their ports, clandestinely smuggled African-Americans out of the Confederacy to colonize the territories;  and in that way letting the South collapse under its own contradictions? Given the immense, and ultimately unsuccessful, effort to forge a New South in the Nineteenth Century, could economic warfare have unseated the planter aristocracy when force of arms could not? This counterfactual question can never be satisfactorily answered of course. But Foner’s analysis shows that “winning” does not necessarily give the victors the right (or ability) to impose any conditions they wish upon the vanquished as Julius Caesar once noted. For anyone wishing to understand the socioeconomic history of the United States, Professor Foner’s interpretation of Reconstruction is required reading.

Misfire, part III

Much of owen's blog attacking the perfectly reasonable proposition that the West Bend Library be off-limits to concealed carry of deadly weapons hinges around a slippery-slope argument. It is tricky to understand, but seems to go like this: "I have a preconceived idea of what the 2nd Amendment means, that it guarantees my individual right to carry a deadly weapon anywhere I want and any objections by the community are trumped by my individual right." Therefore, anyone who asks for just a little space to be left alone, the way it was, after the radical expansion of deadly weapons pushed on all of us by [i'm with stupid] is a tyrant seeking to limit freedom.

This is what passes for conservatism in West Bend. My freedom is dependent on my right to carry a deadly weapon at all times and in all places. That is how they do things in texas apparently, where owen is from. So it follows to ask the question why so many Wisconsin natives take this foreigner with radical ideas seriously? It should also be noted that the freedom of speech these radicals scoff at for anyone protesting the radical inequality or other injustices in our society is taken very seriously when making anonymous ad hominem attacks on their enemies.

Taken this morning in front of the Slinger Piggly Wiggly

If owen saw this, I'm sure he'd just wave his hand if confronted and dismiss it as "not what he believes" but this is your side's doing buddy, own it. Given the rigid structure of gun-maniacs beliefs about deadly weapons, I imagine they would be hard-pressed to disagree with rep. Allen "80 card-carrying communists in congress" West's recent statement that government should force everyone to buy a deadly weapon or be "taxed."




Face it owen, your side and your beliefs about guns are ridiculous. If your logic says you should be able to carry a gun anywhere, especially when children are around, then get on board with this massive, "liberal" expansion of government.

I for one will contine to enjoy the ability to walk down the street unarmed. "When being unarmed is outlawed..." Owen and all the gun-maniacs always seem to forget that if they can carry and everything up to actually pulling the trigger is legal, it goes both ways. The "bad guys" they seem to fear almost as much as paying a cent more in taxes, will enjoy that right too. Show me an instance where more guns meant less crime. When your beloved ronald reagan was shot he was surrounded by some of the best-trained gunmen in the world, it didn't stop the guy.

"The blade itself incites to violence."

Zombie Apocalypse

It's the latest fad right? All sorts of books, movies, and TV shows have come about recently about the living dead taking over the world. My favorite is AMC's The Walking Dead, but Jonathan Maberry, Max Brooks, Colson Whitehead, and so many more have been writing really good stories too. Zombies lurked in popular culture for a long time before now though. The modern canon of reanimated corpses resulting from a virus, radiation, or neurotoxin that are aggressive but can be stopped by destroying the brain comes from the great George A. Romero. Night of the Living Dead premiered in the awful year 1968 when American society seemed to be coming apart at the seams. I first saw it when I was 12 and have been hooked ever since.

My favorite zombie movie though has to be The Return of the Living Dead, written and directed by the late Dan O'Bannon, sure it's a black comedy but the ending is so great. I won't give it away, but let's just say it doesn't end well for our heroes. O'Bannon was also responsible for the great ideas in Alien, specifically the facehugger scenes which he described as the most horrific fate a man could imagine, oral rape.

The zombies in RLD were fast and did not shut down or die when you destroyed the brain, leading one character to exclaim after they were discussing Night of the Living Dead "you mean the movie lied!?!" The latest round of zombie apocalypse stories take place after the big event has already occured. Max Brooks' World War Z is told as an oral history, Jonathan Maberry's Rot and Ruin series takes place fifteen years after First Night when the dead rose. Why not tell a story, based in our real world, that details the apocalypse itself?


A friend of mine says she loves disaster movies so much because they usually show humanity coming together and rising above themselves to meet the challenge. She has a really good heart and I have no doubt that she would rise up to meet a disaster, but what about the rest of us? After all, after 9/11 so many Americans were ready to do whatever was necessary and the president told us to go shopping. "Go shopping, visit Disneyland, we'll take care of this just be really scared when we tell you to and reelect the great president who kept us safe." Now, with polarization at practically a fever pitch, would it even be possible for us to "come together" in a huge zombie outbreak?

RLD put the fictional facts to ronnie reagan's "nine scariest words in the English language, 'I'm from the government and I'm hear to help.'" The deadly trioxin gas is released from a drum after James Karen's character says "no they don't leak, these things were made by the Army Corps of Engineers." Anyone remember the space shuttle blowing up a few years ago? That disaster occurred not because NASA is incompetent, but because the private contractors and sub-contractors cheaped out on maintanence. Tragic yes, but what if one of these incompetent contractors who bribed a congressman to get hold of lucrative contracts to secure one of DARPA's projects and cheaped out knowing that they wouldn't be held accountable?

So, an improperly secured bunker at Ft. Meade or an equivalant base explodes due directly to privatization and corruption, showering nearby population centers with a trioxin-like gas that first kills you, then reanimates you as a shambling, aggressive zombie. It also mixes with rain and seeps into graveyards, further augmenting the ranks of the undead. The smaller amount of trioxin in the rain takes longer to kill people it falls on, allowing the "slow burn" cases to get out all over the place. Bites spread what becomes a contagion, but these first cases are completely reanimated so destroying the brain does not stop them. Burning the first wave simply releases the trioxin into the atmosphere and spreads the outbreak faster. Yee-Haw!

What happens next? In this story, all the things we have in the real world still exist, the canon of zombie literature that says shooting them in the head works. For people bitten it does, but not the first wave. Pile on to that our utterly disfunctional government, tea party people who hate taxes and such, fundamentalist wackos, nra gun maniacs, impotent suburbanites with no idea how to survive on their own, and of course the uber-rich schmucks who care far more about their ill-gotten loot than their country. I'd love somebody or something to convince me otherwise, but I don't believe there is enough goodwill or common ground for Americans to come together for this kind of disaster.

How do you think a government practically bankrupted by years of unneccessary wars of aggression, corporate welfare, and tax cuts for the greedy would fare? How would a society wrent by years of scapegoating, economic segregation, and culture war respond? Finally, how would the rest of the world react to a zombie apocalypse in the US? What do you think? Send me your ideas, I have never written a fiction story before. Or if there is a story like this out there already that I missed, let me know okay?

Misfire, part II

And so we return to my long and unpopular crusade for public safety. I only made it through about three lines of owen's radical and dangerously extreme response to Al Rudnitzki's emotional plea for sanity regarding the spread of gun mania last time around. So, though in the frame of journalism and blogging this exchange is already ancient history, I mean to continue without regard for timeliness. I am an historian and as such issues do not even really enter my horizon for twenty years. However, we do not have that kind of time.

The above picture perfectly encapsulates the gun-maniac radical agenda. And we have owen to thank for laying bare what the gun-maniacs are after. Not hunting rights, not the right to collect things, not the right to defend their homes and families; power. That's it. Pushing relentlessly to expand the public places where private individuals can carry a concealed weapon allows gun-maniacs to dominate others. This turns any public place into a potentially dangerous area. Let's examine some of owen's words and how they relate to and reinforce the ideas conveyed in the picture. Al asked:

"Where does this gun mania end?"

Mania, eh? If supporting the 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights is a “mania,” then count me as a maniac. Thanks for your permission, from now on Owen Robinson is a maniac.

          "What is the danger we face in the library?

The same as anywhere else. Last time I checked, there weren’t armed guards in the library or security checkpoints. Any fool with a gun could walk in there. Why can’t an armed citizen? Again, who but a maniac is worried about other fools with guns going into the library?

As I argued last time around, this attitude is not conservative. Nor is it very American. In fact the attitude that you need a gun concealed on your person anywhere you go is deeply radical, the mindset of institutionalized anarchy.

Something to think about tomorrow

From Huffington Post:

"America is a country made by war. The war for independence created the myth of freedom fighters -- those willing to die today for the freedom of those yet born. The Civil War extended that myth through violence so overwhelming in scope that Abraham Lincoln implored his fellow countrymen to rededicate themselves to the ideals of the nation so that the thousands killed in the war had not "died in vain." Every war since then has echoed this legacy -- those who kill and die for America do so to affirm ideals apparently revealed most clearly in times of war."

I have been noticing a few salutes to servicemembers in preparation for the 4th, is this something new? Have I had my head buried in history books so much that I missed the celebration of war part of Independence Day? I get embarrassed enough when people "thank me for my service" on Memorial Day. Can't we just celebrate the founding of our country and not glorify the attendent violence?

"Why does war seem to have such power? We believe that war transcends politics, revealing the soul of the nation, and forging a faith between a people and their country. The American experience with war acts like a civil religion -- a way for Americans to affirm and assess national ideals for which generations have been called to give their last full measure of devotion. It is a glorious, dangerous, heroic, terrifying cross to bear. In a word, it is ironic."

Irony in history is a very difficult concept to master, but I think this is the clearest example of it. Reinhold Niebuhr put war, defense, and security at the center of his formulation of The Irony of American History. The corrollary is American optimism and exceptionalism, specifically the difficulty accepting that bad things can happen to good people. The irony here is prizing our freedom and liberty so highly and getting angry with other countries when they refuse to accept our intervention. Also the reason we had almost an entire decade of brooding after "losing" Vietnam. America flattened that country for seven years, dropping many times more bombs than during all of WWII. The Communists in Vietnam would not submit, so we needed national therapy.

"For the first time since 1992, war will not be a major part of an election cycle. Yet war will undoubtedly continue as a presence in American life. The most respected institution in the nation is the military. We honor soldiers -- fallen and living -- as national heroes for their willingness to sacrifice for America's civil religion. Perhaps it's time to consider their service as something other than national martyrdom, for they fight, kill and die for us and our government, not some abstract notion of the nation. War does not merely affirm the best of America but also the worst. It remains our collective cross to bear." (emphasis mine)

Where our freedoms, rights, and liberties really came from and how they are maintained is too big a subject for this blog, but I think Professor Haberski is on to something with that statement.