This seems to me such a dark time in America, with a darkness that is only growing. At every turn, the forces of conservatism, inequality and oligarchy are racking up victories, with little or no or only the most pale and weak-kneed opposition from the more "liberal" or socially progressive voices in our political structure. Though some see rays of hope in such accomplishments as the increasing acceptance of the right of homosexuals to enter into marriage, I see this as only a very small drop in the bucket when we consider the larger problems of stagnant wages for the many and ever-expanding fortunes for the few, the increasing dominance of the wealthy elite and large corporations in many areas of our life. Even the supposedly ultra-liberal cable news network MSNBC runs the self-congratulatory and pro-fracking advertisements of the carbon fuel industry, and the supposedly liberal New York Times increasingly caters to the Wall Street-financial services crowd that now dominates New York City as well as the American economy.
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the largest international body of climate scientists in the world, released a new report on March 31st detailing how the climate is already changing with catastrophic effect, and how the dangers and crises now occurring will only be magnified if the world is unwilling to take action. As an educator, I see the trend toward increasingly standardized and regulated education only gaining strength, as influential figures from the President on down seem to be abandoning the ideals of liberal arts education in favor of increasingly vocational, job skills oriented education. When people are no longer allowed to think freely and openly, to freely explore the riches of cultural heritage and to freely experiment with ideas and activities that are freed from the stifling grip of monetary evaluation, but when the education system only trains the bulk of people to perform the tasks and functions deemed valuable by the high priests of the high-tech companies and the corporate economy, an economy organized around the maximization of corporate profits and stock market dividends, not the fulfillment of human needs, I shudder to think of the cold, heartless, fearful, high-tech prison of a society that we are building for ourselves, digital brick by dividend brick. Profits will increase but human freedom and happiness? I doubt it.
I am starting to reach the conclusion that others before me have, a conclusion that I have always resisted; the feeling that there may be no hope for saving America from its drift and decline. I actually sympathize to some extent with the right-wingers and Tea Partiers who range and rant about our country going wrong; I agree that our society is sick, but I disagree with them about the nature of the malady and the treatment to be administered. Many on the right seem to think that the root of the problem is Big Bad Government; I disagree completely. I would grant that our government can do stupid things, that some policies, regulations and programs may be misguided and counterproductive, but that calls for fixing and improving the policies, regulations and programs, not abolishing them all in favor of an unregulated libertarian utopia. I think that vision, if ever achieved, would only result in a dog-eat-dog, every-gun-for-himself, zero compassion dystopia. I see the problem lying in the power of large corporate business interests to manipulate everything to their advantage, without caring enough about the suffering of the poor or the desecration of the planet. If corporations were able to function as good public citizens and be effective stewards of society and the environment, I would be all in favor of total free market capitalism, but I do not see that being the case at all.
Without pressure from the government with its pesky rules, regulations, policies and taxation, many companies and wealthy individuals would do nothing for the benefit of others or of the world in general, but only seek to further enrich themselves and increase their plunder and power. That's what happened in such periods of economic "freedom" as the "robber baron" era of the late 1800s, in the Roaring Twenties, and in our recent period of financial deregulation and financial collapse. You may have noticed that since the bleakest days of the 2008 downturn, the stock market has recovered, big banks and financial companies are running up great profits, but many people are now working for lower wages than before the crash, many others cannot find work at all, and many people have lost their homes and had their lives ruined. In this case, the government functioned effectively to rescue the financial elite, but not the rest of us. What I conclude from that is not that we need to abolish the government, but need to radically reform it to make it more responsive to human needs. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court's ruling in the McCutcheon case this week will only make our politicians more dependent on big-money, fat-cat donors, so the situation is not likely to improve anytime soon.
I do see a ray of hope in my little corner of the Pagan world. Recent communications with a number of Norse Pagans in America have again demonstrated that I am not alone in wishing to develop a new form of American Asatru that would be politically progressive, environmentally concerned, anti-racist, anti-military, and pro-social justice. I think there are enough of us to do it. So, please do get in touch with me if you are on this wavelength. Send me a message to this blog including your email address, and note that you do NOT want this published on the blog. I will contact you off-blog and we can start networking, sharing ideas and planning. This may be a dark time, but we can do our best to be a source of light and vision, love for the earth and caring for humanity--ALL humanity and ALL the earth. A universal Paganism based in Norse traditions but not limited to them. If this resonates with you, please communicate with me.
Showing posts with label Tea Party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tea Party. Show all posts
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Thursday, November 14, 2013
A Season of Silence, and Why
My my my...How the time flies. I can't believe it has been more than two months since I have written in this blog. This autumnal season of silence came about partly for the reasons one might expect: work life very busy, leading to exhaustion capped by a touch of illness. Tra-la-la! There was also a more pleasant reason for my inability to find the time or energy to write here. I had a trip to Lithuania to participate in a project aiming at promoting inter-religious tourism in Lithuania and Latvia, both of which are lands blessed with amazingly rich histories of religious diversity, from their Pagan heritage to their long histories of Jewish and Muslim communities along with varied Christan contributions. This was a great pleasure but also quite exhausting.
There is however, another reason for my persistent silence. I am finding the current state of American society and politics so depressing, so frustrating, that I feel a growing sense of hopelessness for this country of my birth. The forces of obstruction and ignorance are so many and so immense in our declining, divided, self-destructive nation. I can only compare our situation to scenarios imagined in mythology and religious prophecy, like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that usher in devastation and destruction in the Biblical Book of Revelations, or the ten plagues that descend upon Egypt in Exodus, or the dark forces that take down the world in flames and flood in Norse Ragnarok, or the dread dance of Shiva that beats out its world-crushing rhythm when humanity has become so stupid, so cruel, so lost, so impervious to guidance or wisdom that the gods decide that the world must be put out of its misery and cleared away to make space for a new world yet to come.
We today in America are facing a really sinister and powerful combination of retrograde forces. These range from carbon-based energy industries that do not want to see any movement toward a greener, healthier planet and economy, to the gun lobby that refuses to even consider very modest measures to reduce the danger of guns and gun-related materials falling into the possession of mentally imbalanced individuals who go on shooting rampages or into the hands of immature youths who are eager to settle scores with bullets. The list goes on to include the greedy, self-important minority of super-wealthy plutocrats who do not wish to see higher wages for people at lower strata of our highly unequal and unfair economy, to the Tea Partiers and libertarians who do not want the government to do anything besides putting people in prison and maintaining a grossly oversized military whose continued existence and immense expenditures can only be justified by continual conflict and crisis and propaganda inflaming our fear and hatred against whichever foreign country is now top of our enemy-of-the year list. I fear that our interlinked military-intelligence-industrial-political sectors will keep pushing us to either use or threaten to use force overseas as often as possible, even though this may only inflames others against us. Then we have the disheartening spectacle of the Supreme Court that is gutting and discarding decades of Civil Rights progress and returning us to a time when state and local politicians could enact all kinds of barriers to prevent African-Americans or other disfavored social groups from having any voice in our supposed "democracy," which the Court has also damaged terribly by allowing more freedom for wealthy individuals and corporations to dominate the political process through unlimited political advertising and financial contributions to the causes that perpetuate their interest and privilege.
In the embattled world of academia, which I know from the inside, the forces of misguided "reform" seem to be pushing us in the direction of a standardized, bureaucratized, heavily managed and number-driven form of education in which teachers will have little autonomy or job security, and in which liberal arts education, which can waken people to higher visions of life and a desire to create a more equal and less cruel society, will be pushed aside by an obsession with job-training out of a mistaken belief that training young people with the right technical skills will somehow overcome the problems of corporations seeking to send jobs overseas to lower-paid workers, or to bring lower-paid workers to America to replace highly skilled workers here, so that the majority of college graduates, even if highly trained and skilled will have to compete for low-paying jobs in corporations that refuse to share their profits with their workers. If we do not change the rules of the economic game, simply training people will solve nothing. Since the 1970s, American workers have become more and more productive, but rarely been allowed to enjoy a fair share of the profits generated by their productivity, and unless we have a revived labor movement or some other mechanism to force companies to pay better, there seems little hope for the American worker.
And as for the media's favorite pipe dream that high-tech millionaires and billionaires will show us the way, let's not forget that it was great geniuses like Steve Jobs who sent so much high-tech manufacturing to countries like China and India. Entrepreneurs will never lead the way to a more equal economy. They often make their millions and billions from the hard labor of workers who are paid as little as possible. It will require some kind of external pressure to force the high-tech folks to share much with the common man and woman. The popular adulation of high-tech entrepreneurs as economic saviors is a joke. They are in it for themselves, not for us. And since our government is increasingly at the beck and call of consummately greedy and self-interested companies and corporations, not only the high-tech toy-makers but also the oil companies, the multinational banks, the pharmaceutical industry, Wall Street financial firms and so on, I find it hard to escape the conclusion that we are entering a new Middle Ages, in which a small class of ruling elite will live in splendor, in beautiful mansions, surrounded by servants and flatterers, like kings and barons living in castles of olden times--and aren't our modern gated communities just an updated form of castle fortresses?--while the rest of us will eke out an insecure living through hard labor, deeply in debt, but unable to challenge our social superiors.
I am mentally and emotionally exhausted. That is why I am not writing much these days. I look for rays of hope, but see so very few. The advent of the Affordable Health Care Act, aka Obamacare, a modest attempt to re-structure our primarily corporate health care system to provide better care to more people, has only unleashed new ferocity among the various groups who oppose any kind of government activity apart from military action, and see any kind of social reform or even the slightest effort to provide assistance to the growing ranks of poor and needy persons in our society as a foul betrayal of freedom and liberty. I see anti-government zealots ready to cut food benefits to the hungry and who smile when 800,00 government workers are cut off from their salaries for weeks on end, and who don't even care if their actions push the international economy to the brink of financial disaster. I see the President mocked when he tries to negotiate peace with Iran.
The only comfort to me right now is the election of Bill DiBlasio to the office of the mayor of New York City. At last, a leader who speak about income inequality and rising poverty as problems that all society, and especially government, must address. His election is an answer to those who dismissed the Occupy Wall Street movement nearly two years ago as a silly, leaderless, rudderless social fad that would have no effect. It was the Occupy movement elevating the issues of financial institution greed and wealth inequality in New York that lit the spark that became the bright light of the DiBlasio candidacy. No doubt DiBlasio will not be able to satisfy all the hopes and ambitions of those who supported him, but I think he will at least try to push back against the trend toward plutocracy that is at the heart of so many of our ills. I am glad to see someone, somewhere, making some kind of stand and articulating an alternative vision.
But sadly...anyone who knows America knows that New York City is an anomaly in this country. I live some distance from NYC, and I know that many of my fellow citizens here believe the old Reaganite narrative constantly reiterated by right-wing media like FOX, but increasingly in evidence across the culture, that "government is the problem" and that cutting taxes, shrinking government, and "unleashing" business and entrepreneurship are the solutions, that the military is sacred and that we must "support the troops" and never question what the troops are called upon to do and why, nor the effects of those actions, and that if you are not a "success" in America--something measured primarily, if not exclusively in materialistic, money-making terms--that you only have yourself to blame. The alternate, liberal narrative of "we are all in this together," and that we could use government as a vehicle to share out resources to create a better life for everyone, not just the elite few, is not convincing to most people.
I am facing the reality that the things I really believe in may no longer have any place,or at the very best, only a very marginal,vestigial place in this sad, misguided, self-delusional and self-destructive country, this very dis-United States of America. The pendulum may someday swing back to more equality and compassion in this country, but I don't see it happening in my lifetime.
It is these thoughts that crush me into silence. Perhaps this will spark a renewal of my spirituality; I hope so. Maybe it is time to turn inward, and to seek refuge with other spiritual refugees in this very hard and fearful time, while no longer expecting the larger society to improve or change very much, at least not in any foreseeable future. The Buddha taught that the fundamental truth of life is suffering, and that this is the starting point of spiritual insight. Perhaps that is the crossroads that I am facing. I don't know. All I know is that it seems very dark outside indeed.
There is however, another reason for my persistent silence. I am finding the current state of American society and politics so depressing, so frustrating, that I feel a growing sense of hopelessness for this country of my birth. The forces of obstruction and ignorance are so many and so immense in our declining, divided, self-destructive nation. I can only compare our situation to scenarios imagined in mythology and religious prophecy, like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that usher in devastation and destruction in the Biblical Book of Revelations, or the ten plagues that descend upon Egypt in Exodus, or the dark forces that take down the world in flames and flood in Norse Ragnarok, or the dread dance of Shiva that beats out its world-crushing rhythm when humanity has become so stupid, so cruel, so lost, so impervious to guidance or wisdom that the gods decide that the world must be put out of its misery and cleared away to make space for a new world yet to come.
We today in America are facing a really sinister and powerful combination of retrograde forces. These range from carbon-based energy industries that do not want to see any movement toward a greener, healthier planet and economy, to the gun lobby that refuses to even consider very modest measures to reduce the danger of guns and gun-related materials falling into the possession of mentally imbalanced individuals who go on shooting rampages or into the hands of immature youths who are eager to settle scores with bullets. The list goes on to include the greedy, self-important minority of super-wealthy plutocrats who do not wish to see higher wages for people at lower strata of our highly unequal and unfair economy, to the Tea Partiers and libertarians who do not want the government to do anything besides putting people in prison and maintaining a grossly oversized military whose continued existence and immense expenditures can only be justified by continual conflict and crisis and propaganda inflaming our fear and hatred against whichever foreign country is now top of our enemy-of-the year list. I fear that our interlinked military-intelligence-industrial-political sectors will keep pushing us to either use or threaten to use force overseas as often as possible, even though this may only inflames others against us. Then we have the disheartening spectacle of the Supreme Court that is gutting and discarding decades of Civil Rights progress and returning us to a time when state and local politicians could enact all kinds of barriers to prevent African-Americans or other disfavored social groups from having any voice in our supposed "democracy," which the Court has also damaged terribly by allowing more freedom for wealthy individuals and corporations to dominate the political process through unlimited political advertising and financial contributions to the causes that perpetuate their interest and privilege.
In the embattled world of academia, which I know from the inside, the forces of misguided "reform" seem to be pushing us in the direction of a standardized, bureaucratized, heavily managed and number-driven form of education in which teachers will have little autonomy or job security, and in which liberal arts education, which can waken people to higher visions of life and a desire to create a more equal and less cruel society, will be pushed aside by an obsession with job-training out of a mistaken belief that training young people with the right technical skills will somehow overcome the problems of corporations seeking to send jobs overseas to lower-paid workers, or to bring lower-paid workers to America to replace highly skilled workers here, so that the majority of college graduates, even if highly trained and skilled will have to compete for low-paying jobs in corporations that refuse to share their profits with their workers. If we do not change the rules of the economic game, simply training people will solve nothing. Since the 1970s, American workers have become more and more productive, but rarely been allowed to enjoy a fair share of the profits generated by their productivity, and unless we have a revived labor movement or some other mechanism to force companies to pay better, there seems little hope for the American worker.
And as for the media's favorite pipe dream that high-tech millionaires and billionaires will show us the way, let's not forget that it was great geniuses like Steve Jobs who sent so much high-tech manufacturing to countries like China and India. Entrepreneurs will never lead the way to a more equal economy. They often make their millions and billions from the hard labor of workers who are paid as little as possible. It will require some kind of external pressure to force the high-tech folks to share much with the common man and woman. The popular adulation of high-tech entrepreneurs as economic saviors is a joke. They are in it for themselves, not for us. And since our government is increasingly at the beck and call of consummately greedy and self-interested companies and corporations, not only the high-tech toy-makers but also the oil companies, the multinational banks, the pharmaceutical industry, Wall Street financial firms and so on, I find it hard to escape the conclusion that we are entering a new Middle Ages, in which a small class of ruling elite will live in splendor, in beautiful mansions, surrounded by servants and flatterers, like kings and barons living in castles of olden times--and aren't our modern gated communities just an updated form of castle fortresses?--while the rest of us will eke out an insecure living through hard labor, deeply in debt, but unable to challenge our social superiors.
I am mentally and emotionally exhausted. That is why I am not writing much these days. I look for rays of hope, but see so very few. The advent of the Affordable Health Care Act, aka Obamacare, a modest attempt to re-structure our primarily corporate health care system to provide better care to more people, has only unleashed new ferocity among the various groups who oppose any kind of government activity apart from military action, and see any kind of social reform or even the slightest effort to provide assistance to the growing ranks of poor and needy persons in our society as a foul betrayal of freedom and liberty. I see anti-government zealots ready to cut food benefits to the hungry and who smile when 800,00 government workers are cut off from their salaries for weeks on end, and who don't even care if their actions push the international economy to the brink of financial disaster. I see the President mocked when he tries to negotiate peace with Iran.
The only comfort to me right now is the election of Bill DiBlasio to the office of the mayor of New York City. At last, a leader who speak about income inequality and rising poverty as problems that all society, and especially government, must address. His election is an answer to those who dismissed the Occupy Wall Street movement nearly two years ago as a silly, leaderless, rudderless social fad that would have no effect. It was the Occupy movement elevating the issues of financial institution greed and wealth inequality in New York that lit the spark that became the bright light of the DiBlasio candidacy. No doubt DiBlasio will not be able to satisfy all the hopes and ambitions of those who supported him, but I think he will at least try to push back against the trend toward plutocracy that is at the heart of so many of our ills. I am glad to see someone, somewhere, making some kind of stand and articulating an alternative vision.
But sadly...anyone who knows America knows that New York City is an anomaly in this country. I live some distance from NYC, and I know that many of my fellow citizens here believe the old Reaganite narrative constantly reiterated by right-wing media like FOX, but increasingly in evidence across the culture, that "government is the problem" and that cutting taxes, shrinking government, and "unleashing" business and entrepreneurship are the solutions, that the military is sacred and that we must "support the troops" and never question what the troops are called upon to do and why, nor the effects of those actions, and that if you are not a "success" in America--something measured primarily, if not exclusively in materialistic, money-making terms--that you only have yourself to blame. The alternate, liberal narrative of "we are all in this together," and that we could use government as a vehicle to share out resources to create a better life for everyone, not just the elite few, is not convincing to most people.
I am facing the reality that the things I really believe in may no longer have any place,or at the very best, only a very marginal,vestigial place in this sad, misguided, self-delusional and self-destructive country, this very dis-United States of America. The pendulum may someday swing back to more equality and compassion in this country, but I don't see it happening in my lifetime.
It is these thoughts that crush me into silence. Perhaps this will spark a renewal of my spirituality; I hope so. Maybe it is time to turn inward, and to seek refuge with other spiritual refugees in this very hard and fearful time, while no longer expecting the larger society to improve or change very much, at least not in any foreseeable future. The Buddha taught that the fundamental truth of life is suffering, and that this is the starting point of spiritual insight. Perhaps that is the crossroads that I am facing. I don't know. All I know is that it seems very dark outside indeed.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Dear President O-bomb-a...
Dear President O-bomb-a,
I was a supporter of you in your first Presidential campaign and took great pride in the election of an African-American person to the presidency of the United States. However, I now reflect that in many ways, that achievement, that breakthrough, was the true high point of your Presidency, and that it has been just a downhill journey of one disappointment, compromise and betrayal after another ever since. A brief list would include:
(1) A response to the financial crisis of 2007-08 that did much to help large banks and financial institutions but little to help the huge number of ordinary people who were losing their houses due to mortgage chicanery on the part of the very banks and financial institutions that you saw fit to provide a lifeline to. Years later now, still little has been to help the common homeowner, and Wall Street is swimming in cash. After years when your administration let Wall Street get off the hook for its past malfeasance and fraud by merely paying fines that though large, were minor business expenses for companies with multi-billion dollar global operations, your team has begun to more aggressively prosecute Wall Street criminals, but this is too little, too late.
(2) An Economic Stimulus program that was too small and too watered-down to do much good. You made it one-third tax cuts, to sweeten the deal for anti-tax Republicans, and hopefully attract their support, but this failed on two levels. It did not attract the Republicans, and it meant less money for public works programs and other such things that could have done much good. To give credit where due, the Stimulus program did help save us going off the cliff altogether in 2009, but our crumbling infrastructure and continuing high rate of unemployment testify to the inadequacy of this program and what has come since. Of course, you are not completely to blame for the incredible level of Republican obstructionism, but I do fault you for how you have responded, or failed to respond to this; see below.
(3) Pro-corporate Health Care Reform. When it came to putting forward a new health care reform, you gave up very quickly on the reform that many Democrats and progressives wanted, a truly national, single-payer plan, on the order of health care systems in Canada or the UK. Showing your tendency to cater to corporate interests, which also was no doubt a factor in your failure to take strong action against Wall Street as noted in item #1 above, you instead put your stamp of approval on a health care reform plan that strongly caters to the needs and wishes of for-profit health care and insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry. More people will now have access to health care insurance, which is a good thing, but leaving health care in the hands of profit-driven health care companies may mean that we will still not be able to achieve any reduction in the soaring costs of health care, because ever-increasing costs also mean soaring profits for these companies. Even if it was truly politically impossible to advance such a program all the way through the process, I wish you had at least started out making a strong case for the benefits of a single-payer program. Then, if you had to cave in to the many and moneyed interests calling for something more pro-corporate and less pro-public, you would have at least helped advance a more comprehensive, more truly public program in the national political conversation, setting a standard that could be a reference point for future conversations and policy discussions. But no. As usual, you demonstrated either a lack of guts or a lack of vision, or perhaps you were just showing us that deep down, you are not really a progressive, a liberal or a Democrat: you are really just a moderate Republican, pro-corporate as much as possible, though with some sensitivity to certain liberal issues such as minority rights, gay marriage, etc.
(4) Failure to educate the public. This to me is perhaps your biggest failing. Nearly every initiative you have advanced has been blocked if not crushed by vehement Republican obstructionism, yet you have failed to explain this to the public, resulting in the public tending to think that the problem is "too much partisanship" and "Washington gridlock" rather than putting the blame where it truly belongs, the ideologically-driven, anti-government extremism of the Republican Party, particularly its Tea Party wing. When you make statements, as you have many times, such as "Washington is broken....we can do better," you make it sound like the Democrats are equally to blame as are Republicans for the current state of affairs in which so little positive is being accomplished. No doubt there is opposition between Democrats and Republicans such that a superficial glance at the situation may cause one to ask, "Why can't both sides compromise? Why can't they get along?" That is however a terrible inadequate analysis of the situation. The Democrats of today are not pushing for anything extreme or radical. They are only standing up for the same kinds of programs that have existed for decades: Food Stamps, unemployment insurance, voting rights, Head Start, public works programs, supports for arts and science. It is the Republicans who are pushing a radical, extreme agenda. They want to either greatly reduce or do away with that same list of programs just mentioned above. This is NEW.
In the pre- Tea Party era, most Republicans accepted the value of at least SOME of those programs, and often worked with Democrats to modify such programs or introduce new ones, like the CHIP (Children's Health Care Initiative Program) that Dems and Repubs worked together on not many years back. But now.... oh my god. The current crop of Republicans are the most wild, extreme, truly RADICAL anti-government Republicans this country has ever seen. This needs to be discussed. This needs to be known. This is not just "Washington Gridlock." This is one side of the table not wanting to negotiate or achieve anything positive, but simply over turn the table and set it on fire. In this respect, the current crop of Tea Party-dominated Republicans are arsonists, willing to burn down every public-oriented program, any and every thing done by the government for the people, in search of their
anti-government utopia. You, Obama, should have educated people about this, but instead, you took the cowardly, mushy approach of declaring Washington "broken" without saying enough about who had done the breaking. In this, as with your refusal to fight for a truly PUBLIC health care system, I see you being more devoted to your own political survival and reputation as Mr. Reasonable, Mr. Above the Fray, than to actually advancing progressive, liberal or democratic causes.
(5) Education reform that is just the Bush policy warmed over with some fresh cheese on top. As an educator, I was very hopeful that with your election, we would have seen a turning away from the Bush era of "No Child Left Behind" so-called "education reform" and its focus on endless testing of students, micro-mananagement of teachers, classrooms and curricula, "accountability" systems which mean huge and expensive growth in bureaucracy rather than more support for low-income school districts. Instead, what you and your Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have given us is NCLB ("No Child Left Behind") on steroids. You fail to grasp the basic point that social, economic and income inequality in our society are the main factors in why students in poor districts perform more poorly on tests. If you really want to improve education and close the achievement gap between rich and poor, white and non-white, for god's sake, look at the many types of inequality that separate these groups and look for ways to lessen that inequality. Anyone with half a brain should not be surprised that kids from poor families, in underprivileged, crime-ridden, poverty-wracked neighborhoods achieve less in school than kids in lily-white, upper-income suburban Shangri-Las. One group of kids grow up in poverty, have little access to books and culture, and suffer malnutrition to boot while other kids get private tutors and therapists, and culturally enriching summer trips to Europe. Who will do better? Hmm..... Is that really so hard to figure out? If you want to equalize the education, equalize the resources and the social circumstances. Ask any fifteen-year old who they would expect to do better in school, rich kids with lots of resources, or poor kids with little, and they can see this.
Oh, but you and Arne and your team of profit-driven, corporate-oriented education experts know better. Your approach is to subject students and teachers to ever more testing, ever more assessment, ever more collection of data, with all of that data then being used to punish teachers, schools and students by closing down schools, laying off teachers, and depriving students of continuity and stability when they do not know from year to year if their schools will be open or closed and if their favorite teachers will still be around. Your and Arne's signature education policy of "Race to the Top" is just "data-driven" bullshit! It only sounds good to those who have swallowed whole the anti-teacher, anti-teachers' union, anti-public education propaganda of groups like the Gates Foundation, the Walmart-based Walton Foundation and the Broad Foundation. Your good pal Arne has ties to these groups, and I guess you must like them too, Mr. President. I guess that is why you show so little support for public education and see so much good in dismantling, privatizing, standardizing and corporatizing it. Oh yes, and kudos too for your great solution to the student debt problem. Letting interest rates fluctuate on the market will really make Wall Street happy and give some nasty surprises down the road to students and their families when they find their loan interest rates changing radically from one year to the next. The Market always knows best, right?
(6) War, Security and Syria. I have previously expressed my regret and anger over your rising use of drones as a supposedly risk-free way of attacking other countries and killing people our National Security people decide deserve to die. I will not rehash all the ways in which that policy is in my view totally misguided. Now, though, we face the prospect of major military action against Syria, in response to the apparent use of sarin gas or other chemical weapons by the regime of Bashar Al-Assad. I have no love for Assad, and I also feel great sympathy for the suffering people of Syria, but I find it extremely sickening that you are putting so much energy into advancing this very questionable rush to war, whose effects are so unpredictable and potentially calamitous, when so many other issues right at home in the USA need attending to. You seem much more concerned with this than the steadily mounting damage being done to our own most vulnerable citizens by things like food assistance to the poor and education assistance for children being cut off by mean-spirited Republicans in Congress. President Obama,you seem to be morphing into President Bush before our eyes.
Beyond the myriad possibilities for very bad things coming out of this so-called "surgical strike," from the deaths of hundreds or thousands more Syrians sure to be caused by our bombing, to possible retaliation attacks by Syrian-sponsored terrorist groups, to greater Russian involvement in order to support their side in the conflict, I come to the inescapable conclusion that you have been totally co-opted by the National Security State--the mind-boggling, multi-billion dollar hugeness of our military forces, defense contractors, national security and surveillance organizations and the many private companies who suck at the teat of national security, and militaristic-minded people and organizations who always see military action as the best, if not only solution to ANY international problem. I fear that our militaristic tendencies have become so entrenched, so financially lucrative and so politically self-sustaining, that any President from now on into the foreseeable future will behave just like you, who I now dub President O-bomb-a the I, but probably not the last. America makes so little effort at real diplomacy, that I am afraid it is really just window-dressing for our military operations. I don;t think we have really tried very hard to bring together the different parties in Syria. Even in the Vietnam War period, there were the Paris Peace Talks. Any equivalent effort today? I am not aware of it.
It is a very sad state of affairs, which leaves me doubtful that America will play any truly positive or creative role in world affairs in coming years. In the last ten or so years, we have seen America provide zero leadership on the most important issue for the survival of the planet, this being Global Warming, which some prefer to call Climate Change. Instead, America seems capable only of pushing for more war, more strikes, more surveillance, more drones... We are like one of our bad "boom--boom--boom blow up the bad guys!" action movies translated into international policy. I just wish I could leave the theatre...
This will be your most lasting legacy, President O-bomb-a. I voted for you in 2008, but I voted for the Green Party in 2012, and if you were running for a third term, which thankfully you cannot, I would vote Green again. America and the world deserve better than a leader who only shows a spine when it comes to attacking other countries and raining down death and destruction.
I was a supporter of you in your first Presidential campaign and took great pride in the election of an African-American person to the presidency of the United States. However, I now reflect that in many ways, that achievement, that breakthrough, was the true high point of your Presidency, and that it has been just a downhill journey of one disappointment, compromise and betrayal after another ever since. A brief list would include:
(1) A response to the financial crisis of 2007-08 that did much to help large banks and financial institutions but little to help the huge number of ordinary people who were losing their houses due to mortgage chicanery on the part of the very banks and financial institutions that you saw fit to provide a lifeline to. Years later now, still little has been to help the common homeowner, and Wall Street is swimming in cash. After years when your administration let Wall Street get off the hook for its past malfeasance and fraud by merely paying fines that though large, were minor business expenses for companies with multi-billion dollar global operations, your team has begun to more aggressively prosecute Wall Street criminals, but this is too little, too late.
(2) An Economic Stimulus program that was too small and too watered-down to do much good. You made it one-third tax cuts, to sweeten the deal for anti-tax Republicans, and hopefully attract their support, but this failed on two levels. It did not attract the Republicans, and it meant less money for public works programs and other such things that could have done much good. To give credit where due, the Stimulus program did help save us going off the cliff altogether in 2009, but our crumbling infrastructure and continuing high rate of unemployment testify to the inadequacy of this program and what has come since. Of course, you are not completely to blame for the incredible level of Republican obstructionism, but I do fault you for how you have responded, or failed to respond to this; see below.
(3) Pro-corporate Health Care Reform. When it came to putting forward a new health care reform, you gave up very quickly on the reform that many Democrats and progressives wanted, a truly national, single-payer plan, on the order of health care systems in Canada or the UK. Showing your tendency to cater to corporate interests, which also was no doubt a factor in your failure to take strong action against Wall Street as noted in item #1 above, you instead put your stamp of approval on a health care reform plan that strongly caters to the needs and wishes of for-profit health care and insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry. More people will now have access to health care insurance, which is a good thing, but leaving health care in the hands of profit-driven health care companies may mean that we will still not be able to achieve any reduction in the soaring costs of health care, because ever-increasing costs also mean soaring profits for these companies. Even if it was truly politically impossible to advance such a program all the way through the process, I wish you had at least started out making a strong case for the benefits of a single-payer program. Then, if you had to cave in to the many and moneyed interests calling for something more pro-corporate and less pro-public, you would have at least helped advance a more comprehensive, more truly public program in the national political conversation, setting a standard that could be a reference point for future conversations and policy discussions. But no. As usual, you demonstrated either a lack of guts or a lack of vision, or perhaps you were just showing us that deep down, you are not really a progressive, a liberal or a Democrat: you are really just a moderate Republican, pro-corporate as much as possible, though with some sensitivity to certain liberal issues such as minority rights, gay marriage, etc.
(4) Failure to educate the public. This to me is perhaps your biggest failing. Nearly every initiative you have advanced has been blocked if not crushed by vehement Republican obstructionism, yet you have failed to explain this to the public, resulting in the public tending to think that the problem is "too much partisanship" and "Washington gridlock" rather than putting the blame where it truly belongs, the ideologically-driven, anti-government extremism of the Republican Party, particularly its Tea Party wing. When you make statements, as you have many times, such as "Washington is broken....we can do better," you make it sound like the Democrats are equally to blame as are Republicans for the current state of affairs in which so little positive is being accomplished. No doubt there is opposition between Democrats and Republicans such that a superficial glance at the situation may cause one to ask, "Why can't both sides compromise? Why can't they get along?" That is however a terrible inadequate analysis of the situation. The Democrats of today are not pushing for anything extreme or radical. They are only standing up for the same kinds of programs that have existed for decades: Food Stamps, unemployment insurance, voting rights, Head Start, public works programs, supports for arts and science. It is the Republicans who are pushing a radical, extreme agenda. They want to either greatly reduce or do away with that same list of programs just mentioned above. This is NEW.
In the pre- Tea Party era, most Republicans accepted the value of at least SOME of those programs, and often worked with Democrats to modify such programs or introduce new ones, like the CHIP (Children's Health Care Initiative Program) that Dems and Repubs worked together on not many years back. But now.... oh my god. The current crop of Republicans are the most wild, extreme, truly RADICAL anti-government Republicans this country has ever seen. This needs to be discussed. This needs to be known. This is not just "Washington Gridlock." This is one side of the table not wanting to negotiate or achieve anything positive, but simply over turn the table and set it on fire. In this respect, the current crop of Tea Party-dominated Republicans are arsonists, willing to burn down every public-oriented program, any and every thing done by the government for the people, in search of their
anti-government utopia. You, Obama, should have educated people about this, but instead, you took the cowardly, mushy approach of declaring Washington "broken" without saying enough about who had done the breaking. In this, as with your refusal to fight for a truly PUBLIC health care system, I see you being more devoted to your own political survival and reputation as Mr. Reasonable, Mr. Above the Fray, than to actually advancing progressive, liberal or democratic causes.
(5) Education reform that is just the Bush policy warmed over with some fresh cheese on top. As an educator, I was very hopeful that with your election, we would have seen a turning away from the Bush era of "No Child Left Behind" so-called "education reform" and its focus on endless testing of students, micro-mananagement of teachers, classrooms and curricula, "accountability" systems which mean huge and expensive growth in bureaucracy rather than more support for low-income school districts. Instead, what you and your Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have given us is NCLB ("No Child Left Behind") on steroids. You fail to grasp the basic point that social, economic and income inequality in our society are the main factors in why students in poor districts perform more poorly on tests. If you really want to improve education and close the achievement gap between rich and poor, white and non-white, for god's sake, look at the many types of inequality that separate these groups and look for ways to lessen that inequality. Anyone with half a brain should not be surprised that kids from poor families, in underprivileged, crime-ridden, poverty-wracked neighborhoods achieve less in school than kids in lily-white, upper-income suburban Shangri-Las. One group of kids grow up in poverty, have little access to books and culture, and suffer malnutrition to boot while other kids get private tutors and therapists, and culturally enriching summer trips to Europe. Who will do better? Hmm..... Is that really so hard to figure out? If you want to equalize the education, equalize the resources and the social circumstances. Ask any fifteen-year old who they would expect to do better in school, rich kids with lots of resources, or poor kids with little, and they can see this.
Oh, but you and Arne and your team of profit-driven, corporate-oriented education experts know better. Your approach is to subject students and teachers to ever more testing, ever more assessment, ever more collection of data, with all of that data then being used to punish teachers, schools and students by closing down schools, laying off teachers, and depriving students of continuity and stability when they do not know from year to year if their schools will be open or closed and if their favorite teachers will still be around. Your and Arne's signature education policy of "Race to the Top" is just "data-driven" bullshit! It only sounds good to those who have swallowed whole the anti-teacher, anti-teachers' union, anti-public education propaganda of groups like the Gates Foundation, the Walmart-based Walton Foundation and the Broad Foundation. Your good pal Arne has ties to these groups, and I guess you must like them too, Mr. President. I guess that is why you show so little support for public education and see so much good in dismantling, privatizing, standardizing and corporatizing it. Oh yes, and kudos too for your great solution to the student debt problem. Letting interest rates fluctuate on the market will really make Wall Street happy and give some nasty surprises down the road to students and their families when they find their loan interest rates changing radically from one year to the next. The Market always knows best, right?
(6) War, Security and Syria. I have previously expressed my regret and anger over your rising use of drones as a supposedly risk-free way of attacking other countries and killing people our National Security people decide deserve to die. I will not rehash all the ways in which that policy is in my view totally misguided. Now, though, we face the prospect of major military action against Syria, in response to the apparent use of sarin gas or other chemical weapons by the regime of Bashar Al-Assad. I have no love for Assad, and I also feel great sympathy for the suffering people of Syria, but I find it extremely sickening that you are putting so much energy into advancing this very questionable rush to war, whose effects are so unpredictable and potentially calamitous, when so many other issues right at home in the USA need attending to. You seem much more concerned with this than the steadily mounting damage being done to our own most vulnerable citizens by things like food assistance to the poor and education assistance for children being cut off by mean-spirited Republicans in Congress. President Obama,you seem to be morphing into President Bush before our eyes.
Beyond the myriad possibilities for very bad things coming out of this so-called "surgical strike," from the deaths of hundreds or thousands more Syrians sure to be caused by our bombing, to possible retaliation attacks by Syrian-sponsored terrorist groups, to greater Russian involvement in order to support their side in the conflict, I come to the inescapable conclusion that you have been totally co-opted by the National Security State--the mind-boggling, multi-billion dollar hugeness of our military forces, defense contractors, national security and surveillance organizations and the many private companies who suck at the teat of national security, and militaristic-minded people and organizations who always see military action as the best, if not only solution to ANY international problem. I fear that our militaristic tendencies have become so entrenched, so financially lucrative and so politically self-sustaining, that any President from now on into the foreseeable future will behave just like you, who I now dub President O-bomb-a the I, but probably not the last. America makes so little effort at real diplomacy, that I am afraid it is really just window-dressing for our military operations. I don;t think we have really tried very hard to bring together the different parties in Syria. Even in the Vietnam War period, there were the Paris Peace Talks. Any equivalent effort today? I am not aware of it.
It is a very sad state of affairs, which leaves me doubtful that America will play any truly positive or creative role in world affairs in coming years. In the last ten or so years, we have seen America provide zero leadership on the most important issue for the survival of the planet, this being Global Warming, which some prefer to call Climate Change. Instead, America seems capable only of pushing for more war, more strikes, more surveillance, more drones... We are like one of our bad "boom--boom--boom blow up the bad guys!" action movies translated into international policy. I just wish I could leave the theatre...
This will be your most lasting legacy, President O-bomb-a. I voted for you in 2008, but I voted for the Green Party in 2012, and if you were running for a third term, which thankfully you cannot, I would vote Green again. America and the world deserve better than a leader who only shows a spine when it comes to attacking other countries and raining down death and destruction.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Telling the Truth about Tucson
It is very interesting to see the reaction in the American media to the mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona last Saturday night (January 8). Some are taking the view that no one can be blamed for the actions of a clearly deranged individual. Others are saying that while the shooter was indisputably insane, both sides of the political spectrum need to take responsibility for heated political rhetoric in the last several years that may have inspired this demented young man to pick up a gun and shoot a politician, a judge and a number of others.
Bullshit. There is only one political party in America on one side of the political spectrum that has made a specialty of drumming up intensive hatred of the government and that has repeatedly encouraged people to consider taking up arms against the government. That party is the Republican Party, with its young Frankenstein monster the "Tea Party" movement never being told that it should calm down and be less angry and extreme. There is a very long trail here that simply has no counterpart in the Democratic Party or on the left-wing side of the spectrum.
Barry Goldwater, Republican candidate for President in 1964, made the famous statement during his campaign that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." This was in the same time period when peaceful Civil Rights activists were being beaten by right-wing supporters of racial inequality and in some cases killed by lynch mobs in the South. Goldwater made clear where he stood by voting against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was much appreciated by Southern opponents of Civil Rights and desegregation. The South was the one area of the country where Goldwater did well in the 1964 election, setting the trend of solid Southern support for Republican candidates for President in nearly every election since then.
Ronald Reagan, running for President in 1980, made his first speech after winning the Republican nomination at a site in Mississippi just a few miles from an infamous spot where Civil Rights workers had been brutally slain in 1964. He talked of restoring "states' rights," an unmistakable reference to right-wing, Southern opposition to the Civil Rights movement, which made clear that his choice of location for his first major speech as Republican Presidential candidate was no mere coincidence. Reagan was laying claim to the heritage of violent opposition to the Civil Rights movement, and saw no need to pay homage to the Civil Rights martyrs of that region. Reagan would go on to coin the phrase, "Government is not the solution; government is the problem," which has ever since been the mantra of the anti-government conservatives.
In the 1990s, Republican politicians often shared the sentiments of the anti-government, gun-crazed militia movement, which was in many ways a forerunner of the Tea Party movement. Bill Clinton,a Democrat and a liberal, was demonized with outrageous accusations by right-wing, conservative politicians, including the claim that he had engineered the killing of his friend and aide, Vince Foster. Among conservatives and militia members in this era, there was much paranoia directed toward the United Nations, which they feared was setting up a secret government that would soon enslave Americans and take away their liberties. The mood of anti-government hatred and the glorification of anti-government violence reached its peak in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murray government building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh in 1995.
Under President George W. Bush, right-wing hate and anger cooled down a bit, perhaps because Bush's continually expanding wars against Muslim nations provided an external outlet for conservative anger and paranoia. Though there was angry left-wing opposition to Bush's policies, especially his wars, it never led to the kind of mass cult of paranoia and violence that was typical of the Clinton era. With President Obama's election, there was a resurgence of 1990s-style anti-government sentiment and a renewed glorification of anti-government violence. Once more, wild, extreme accusations were made about a Democratic, liberal President, whose African-American heritage seemed to inflame conservatives into paroxysms of rage and paranoia. Sales of guns and ammunition skyrocketed. The right-wing media, which had been in their infancy in the Clinton era, were now well-tooled operations of mass propaganda and coordinated fear-mongering, and were able to terrify many Americans that the quite mild, liberal and pro-corporate policies of the Obama administration, such as a health-care reform effort that was quite disappointing to liberals and the left wing, were pushing the country to the edge of the apocalypse. The spring and summer of 2009 saw the rise of the Tea Party movement, with angry opponents of Obama and Democratic policies showing up at political rallies armed with guns and shouting out their paranoia and anger with red-faced fury. In Texas, an anti-government zealot flew a plane into a building. The FBI issued a warning about rising activity by right-wing extemists and militia groups.
Then came the 2010 election season. Republican politicians were eager to cozy up to the Tea Party, seeking to harness their passion and fury. Rarely did any Republicans, even those previously known as political moderates, speak out against the paranoid fantasies and violent rhetoric of Tea Party members and right-wing extremisists. Instead, they openly or implicitly endorsed such sentiments. Republican Congresswoman and Tea Party groupie Michelle Bachman urged her followers to be "armed and dangerous" in opposition to new energy policies under debate in Congress. Sarah Palin urged conservatives, "Don't retreat; instead, reload!," and placed gun-targeting cross-hairs on an internet map of Democrat candidates whose defeat she was advocating on a website. One of the candidates targeted on this map was Gabrielle Gifford, the Democratic Congresswoman shot in the head on Saturday night. Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for Senator in Nevada, spoke approvingly of "Second Amendment remedies" and armed insurrection against the government.
In all of these ways, the Republican Party and its right-wing, militia and Tea Party allies have poured huge amounts of energy into creating mass hysteria, paranoia and anti-government, particularly anti-Democrat, anger. It is one thing to express opposition to policies, but it is something very different to give explicit or implicit approval to people brandishing guns and fantasizing about heroic violence against politicans and the government.
The Tucson shootings were aided and abetted by the Republicans and the right-wing in America. There is nothing equivalent on the Democratic or left-wing side of American politics. It is time to call a spade a spade and not pretend that there is equal blame to go around on both sides. There is only one side that is dedicated to pushing fear, hatred and violence. Those who have made their careers and even considerable fortunes by feeding these flames of fury, fear and violent fantasy need to be held responsible.
Furthermore, it is time to realize that the massive amount of violent fantasy and imagery in our culture is a sickness. It plays into a worldview that the only solution to any problem is through heroic violence. Consider how government is represented on American television shows. It is portrayed as useless, corrupt, evil. The only government agencies shown in a positive light are those engaged in violence: police and soldiers. Almost no other part of government is represented in an appealing manner, while violent vigilantes and brothers-in-arms are continually glorified.
So, if you were a deranged young person like the shooter in Tucson, you would find massive encouragement in American culture and right-wing politics for becoming a gun-toting, tyranny-resisting hero in your own twisted fantasy of violent manhood. We need to start speaking out and turning away from this. We need to start valuing our government officials and public servants, in contrast to the right-wing campaign now under way to villify teachers and others on the public payroll. They are not our enemies. They work for us. Are they perfect? No. Are we perfect? No. Do they deserve to die for trying to do their jobs? What do you think?
Peace. That is not a wimpy, foolish thing. It is sanity. We need it. Badly. We do not need more glorification of war, weapons, violence. We have already had too much.
Bullshit. There is only one political party in America on one side of the political spectrum that has made a specialty of drumming up intensive hatred of the government and that has repeatedly encouraged people to consider taking up arms against the government. That party is the Republican Party, with its young Frankenstein monster the "Tea Party" movement never being told that it should calm down and be less angry and extreme. There is a very long trail here that simply has no counterpart in the Democratic Party or on the left-wing side of the spectrum.
Barry Goldwater, Republican candidate for President in 1964, made the famous statement during his campaign that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." This was in the same time period when peaceful Civil Rights activists were being beaten by right-wing supporters of racial inequality and in some cases killed by lynch mobs in the South. Goldwater made clear where he stood by voting against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was much appreciated by Southern opponents of Civil Rights and desegregation. The South was the one area of the country where Goldwater did well in the 1964 election, setting the trend of solid Southern support for Republican candidates for President in nearly every election since then.
Ronald Reagan, running for President in 1980, made his first speech after winning the Republican nomination at a site in Mississippi just a few miles from an infamous spot where Civil Rights workers had been brutally slain in 1964. He talked of restoring "states' rights," an unmistakable reference to right-wing, Southern opposition to the Civil Rights movement, which made clear that his choice of location for his first major speech as Republican Presidential candidate was no mere coincidence. Reagan was laying claim to the heritage of violent opposition to the Civil Rights movement, and saw no need to pay homage to the Civil Rights martyrs of that region. Reagan would go on to coin the phrase, "Government is not the solution; government is the problem," which has ever since been the mantra of the anti-government conservatives.
In the 1990s, Republican politicians often shared the sentiments of the anti-government, gun-crazed militia movement, which was in many ways a forerunner of the Tea Party movement. Bill Clinton,a Democrat and a liberal, was demonized with outrageous accusations by right-wing, conservative politicians, including the claim that he had engineered the killing of his friend and aide, Vince Foster. Among conservatives and militia members in this era, there was much paranoia directed toward the United Nations, which they feared was setting up a secret government that would soon enslave Americans and take away their liberties. The mood of anti-government hatred and the glorification of anti-government violence reached its peak in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murray government building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh in 1995.
Under President George W. Bush, right-wing hate and anger cooled down a bit, perhaps because Bush's continually expanding wars against Muslim nations provided an external outlet for conservative anger and paranoia. Though there was angry left-wing opposition to Bush's policies, especially his wars, it never led to the kind of mass cult of paranoia and violence that was typical of the Clinton era. With President Obama's election, there was a resurgence of 1990s-style anti-government sentiment and a renewed glorification of anti-government violence. Once more, wild, extreme accusations were made about a Democratic, liberal President, whose African-American heritage seemed to inflame conservatives into paroxysms of rage and paranoia. Sales of guns and ammunition skyrocketed. The right-wing media, which had been in their infancy in the Clinton era, were now well-tooled operations of mass propaganda and coordinated fear-mongering, and were able to terrify many Americans that the quite mild, liberal and pro-corporate policies of the Obama administration, such as a health-care reform effort that was quite disappointing to liberals and the left wing, were pushing the country to the edge of the apocalypse. The spring and summer of 2009 saw the rise of the Tea Party movement, with angry opponents of Obama and Democratic policies showing up at political rallies armed with guns and shouting out their paranoia and anger with red-faced fury. In Texas, an anti-government zealot flew a plane into a building. The FBI issued a warning about rising activity by right-wing extemists and militia groups.
Then came the 2010 election season. Republican politicians were eager to cozy up to the Tea Party, seeking to harness their passion and fury. Rarely did any Republicans, even those previously known as political moderates, speak out against the paranoid fantasies and violent rhetoric of Tea Party members and right-wing extremisists. Instead, they openly or implicitly endorsed such sentiments. Republican Congresswoman and Tea Party groupie Michelle Bachman urged her followers to be "armed and dangerous" in opposition to new energy policies under debate in Congress. Sarah Palin urged conservatives, "Don't retreat; instead, reload!," and placed gun-targeting cross-hairs on an internet map of Democrat candidates whose defeat she was advocating on a website. One of the candidates targeted on this map was Gabrielle Gifford, the Democratic Congresswoman shot in the head on Saturday night. Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for Senator in Nevada, spoke approvingly of "Second Amendment remedies" and armed insurrection against the government.
In all of these ways, the Republican Party and its right-wing, militia and Tea Party allies have poured huge amounts of energy into creating mass hysteria, paranoia and anti-government, particularly anti-Democrat, anger. It is one thing to express opposition to policies, but it is something very different to give explicit or implicit approval to people brandishing guns and fantasizing about heroic violence against politicans and the government.
The Tucson shootings were aided and abetted by the Republicans and the right-wing in America. There is nothing equivalent on the Democratic or left-wing side of American politics. It is time to call a spade a spade and not pretend that there is equal blame to go around on both sides. There is only one side that is dedicated to pushing fear, hatred and violence. Those who have made their careers and even considerable fortunes by feeding these flames of fury, fear and violent fantasy need to be held responsible.
Furthermore, it is time to realize that the massive amount of violent fantasy and imagery in our culture is a sickness. It plays into a worldview that the only solution to any problem is through heroic violence. Consider how government is represented on American television shows. It is portrayed as useless, corrupt, evil. The only government agencies shown in a positive light are those engaged in violence: police and soldiers. Almost no other part of government is represented in an appealing manner, while violent vigilantes and brothers-in-arms are continually glorified.
So, if you were a deranged young person like the shooter in Tucson, you would find massive encouragement in American culture and right-wing politics for becoming a gun-toting, tyranny-resisting hero in your own twisted fantasy of violent manhood. We need to start speaking out and turning away from this. We need to start valuing our government officials and public servants, in contrast to the right-wing campaign now under way to villify teachers and others on the public payroll. They are not our enemies. They work for us. Are they perfect? No. Are we perfect? No. Do they deserve to die for trying to do their jobs? What do you think?
Peace. That is not a wimpy, foolish thing. It is sanity. We need it. Badly. We do not need more glorification of war, weapons, violence. We have already had too much.
Friday, February 26, 2010
ADS: American Depression Syndrome
Hello friends. I have not posted in this blog for some time as I have been feeling increasingly disillusioned with the gutless, corporate-favoring tendencies of the Obama administration and the rise to prominence of the wacky right-wing "tea party" movement, which seems determined to replace all elected officials in the USA with members of the John Birch Society. I have long faulted Obama, supposedly the greatest political communicator since Reagan, for failing to offer a convincing counter-narrative to replace the one implanted in our consciousness by Saint Ronnie: "big government = bad; big military = good; military invasion = good; social programs to help the poor = bad; all hail the entrepreneur and the sacred tax cut."
Obama, like Clinton before him, continues to govern as if there were no possible alternative to the Gospel of Ronnie. Remember Clinton kowtowing to the Republicans and helpfully declaring, "The Era of Big Government is over?" Obama is no better. As with Clinton, we are going to see lots of small, positive actions by the government, things like improved civil rights enforcement, tighter environmental and financial industry regulations, all of which are welcome in themselves, but which fail to be supported and protected by any kind of overarching ideological framework. And so when Republicans attack Obama for increasing the size or role of government, he is unable to make a clear case for why in certain areas of society, it is GOOD to have "big government," unable to cogently explain why leaving things to "big business" over the last thirty-odd years has not really worked out very well, as evidenced by the growing gap between rich and poor in this country, the failure of businesses to raise the average worker's wages even when companies realize enormous gains in productivity and profit; and finally, the coup de grace, the collapse of Wall Street followed by the government bail-out of Wall Street.
I want a leader who is actually PROUD of our government and the liberal tradition of successful government programs from Social Security to the minimum wage to civil rights legislation to environmental regulation to Medicare and Medicaid to student loans, all of which were opposed by anti-government Republicans. I don't want a leader who apologetically whimpers, "Well, people, we're going to have to expand government a little bit to help with the current situation, but DON'T WORRY, it is only a temporary measure, and we will turn management of most things over to the wise management of the corporate sphere as soon as possible." With the huge problems we are facing, such as massive unemployment and collapsing infrastructure, to name but two of the most pressing, we really need a major government response, not just little tax cuts, grants and financial incentives here and there as the Obama administration is providing.
The unemployment and infrastructure problems could be simultaneously addressed by a massive public works program to rebuild highways, bridges, train tracks, sewers and public schools, all of which are badly in need of repair and renovation, the lack of which will seriously hamper our future economic growth if they are not attended to quickly. But is the Obama administration boldly pushing in this direction? NO. They are making some small moves, but nothing near to commensurate with the actual scale of need. One third of last year's much-maligned $787 billion stimulus program was TAX CUTS, a nod to the Republicans, who as you will recall, loudly and cheerfully commended Obama for reaching out to them in this matter. (Note: sarcasm.)
Since neither Obama nor the Democrats in Congress are boldly and expeditiously advancing programs to quickly put people to work and take care of other pressing needs like mortgage foreclosure, they are perceived, with some justification, as only caring about the financial elite on Wall Street, who did after all get very quick and thorough attention when they were in crisis, unlike the millions of Americans suffering unemployment and loss of their homes. This has given an opening to the right-wing Tea Party types, who may have no real answers to any of these problems, but do know how to articulate anger and frustration, play on fears of "big government," and throw in occasional racist allusions, to please the older white voters who were never entirely thrilled about electing a black president to begin with. Ugh! What a mess.
Why doesn't Obama step up and tell people the truth: that America needs to wake up and start catching up with the rest of the industrialized world, where government does provide universal health care, does maintain infrastructure, does support arts and culture, does provide a social safety net for the poor and unemployed such as we threw away in the last 30 years, and so on and so on. He won't do it because he is scared of the anti-government conservatives, who continue to rule the roost as far as the general American mindset regarding government's role in society is concerned. It would be a hard-fought battle to alter that mindset, to get back to a time when the American people trusted their government to do big things like send a man to the moon, instead of relying on the corporate world to provide space travel services, which is the latest news out of NASA under the Obama administration, incidentally.
It has been the dream of anti-government conservatives since the 1980s to so degrade and cripple the federal government that people would turn against it, and it seems they have succeeded. Coming into office on a platform of hope and change, Obama had a chance to re-write the narrative, to forcefully reject the anti-government mindset. At this time, it seems that not only has he has failed, but that he didn't even try very hard. His strange devotion to "bipartisanship" has been extremely regrettable, as it has played right into Republican desire for deadlock as "proof" of the evils of government.
I do despair. I fear we are headed for third-world status, to a society with mediocre schools and public services, where corporations rule what is left of the people's government, where the average person sits drooling in front of televisions and computer screens blasting sports shows, mindless "reality" programs, and endless variations on police and hospital dramas, and where the only areas in which America is truly #1 is in the number of people we keep in prison, and a bloated military endlessly invading and harassing other people around the world, predictably inciting vicious terrorist responses, justifying further U.S. invasions in the name of "protecting our freedoms" while in actuality only advancing the corporate interests of the military-industrial complex and swelling the ranks of those willing to take up arms against the American aggressor.
Welcome to the 21st Century. Remember, you (Americans) are living in the greatest country in the world. Everyone else envies you. Everyone around the world wishes they could come to America, shop in our shopping malls, experience learning in our fabulous schools, live in our ugly McMansions, which typify our famously high regard for architecture and aesthetics, enjoy the art and culture so generously promoted in every community, seek financial success in our wonderful casinos, and should they not find it, enjoy the full range of social services provided free of cost in our prisons. This is indeed paradise. Thank the Great White God that Big Government did not stand in the way of our attainment of perfection.
Obama, like Clinton before him, continues to govern as if there were no possible alternative to the Gospel of Ronnie. Remember Clinton kowtowing to the Republicans and helpfully declaring, "The Era of Big Government is over?" Obama is no better. As with Clinton, we are going to see lots of small, positive actions by the government, things like improved civil rights enforcement, tighter environmental and financial industry regulations, all of which are welcome in themselves, but which fail to be supported and protected by any kind of overarching ideological framework. And so when Republicans attack Obama for increasing the size or role of government, he is unable to make a clear case for why in certain areas of society, it is GOOD to have "big government," unable to cogently explain why leaving things to "big business" over the last thirty-odd years has not really worked out very well, as evidenced by the growing gap between rich and poor in this country, the failure of businesses to raise the average worker's wages even when companies realize enormous gains in productivity and profit; and finally, the coup de grace, the collapse of Wall Street followed by the government bail-out of Wall Street.
I want a leader who is actually PROUD of our government and the liberal tradition of successful government programs from Social Security to the minimum wage to civil rights legislation to environmental regulation to Medicare and Medicaid to student loans, all of which were opposed by anti-government Republicans. I don't want a leader who apologetically whimpers, "Well, people, we're going to have to expand government a little bit to help with the current situation, but DON'T WORRY, it is only a temporary measure, and we will turn management of most things over to the wise management of the corporate sphere as soon as possible." With the huge problems we are facing, such as massive unemployment and collapsing infrastructure, to name but two of the most pressing, we really need a major government response, not just little tax cuts, grants and financial incentives here and there as the Obama administration is providing.
The unemployment and infrastructure problems could be simultaneously addressed by a massive public works program to rebuild highways, bridges, train tracks, sewers and public schools, all of which are badly in need of repair and renovation, the lack of which will seriously hamper our future economic growth if they are not attended to quickly. But is the Obama administration boldly pushing in this direction? NO. They are making some small moves, but nothing near to commensurate with the actual scale of need. One third of last year's much-maligned $787 billion stimulus program was TAX CUTS, a nod to the Republicans, who as you will recall, loudly and cheerfully commended Obama for reaching out to them in this matter. (Note: sarcasm.)
Since neither Obama nor the Democrats in Congress are boldly and expeditiously advancing programs to quickly put people to work and take care of other pressing needs like mortgage foreclosure, they are perceived, with some justification, as only caring about the financial elite on Wall Street, who did after all get very quick and thorough attention when they were in crisis, unlike the millions of Americans suffering unemployment and loss of their homes. This has given an opening to the right-wing Tea Party types, who may have no real answers to any of these problems, but do know how to articulate anger and frustration, play on fears of "big government," and throw in occasional racist allusions, to please the older white voters who were never entirely thrilled about electing a black president to begin with. Ugh! What a mess.
Why doesn't Obama step up and tell people the truth: that America needs to wake up and start catching up with the rest of the industrialized world, where government does provide universal health care, does maintain infrastructure, does support arts and culture, does provide a social safety net for the poor and unemployed such as we threw away in the last 30 years, and so on and so on. He won't do it because he is scared of the anti-government conservatives, who continue to rule the roost as far as the general American mindset regarding government's role in society is concerned. It would be a hard-fought battle to alter that mindset, to get back to a time when the American people trusted their government to do big things like send a man to the moon, instead of relying on the corporate world to provide space travel services, which is the latest news out of NASA under the Obama administration, incidentally.
It has been the dream of anti-government conservatives since the 1980s to so degrade and cripple the federal government that people would turn against it, and it seems they have succeeded. Coming into office on a platform of hope and change, Obama had a chance to re-write the narrative, to forcefully reject the anti-government mindset. At this time, it seems that not only has he has failed, but that he didn't even try very hard. His strange devotion to "bipartisanship" has been extremely regrettable, as it has played right into Republican desire for deadlock as "proof" of the evils of government.
I do despair. I fear we are headed for third-world status, to a society with mediocre schools and public services, where corporations rule what is left of the people's government, where the average person sits drooling in front of televisions and computer screens blasting sports shows, mindless "reality" programs, and endless variations on police and hospital dramas, and where the only areas in which America is truly #1 is in the number of people we keep in prison, and a bloated military endlessly invading and harassing other people around the world, predictably inciting vicious terrorist responses, justifying further U.S. invasions in the name of "protecting our freedoms" while in actuality only advancing the corporate interests of the military-industrial complex and swelling the ranks of those willing to take up arms against the American aggressor.
Welcome to the 21st Century. Remember, you (Americans) are living in the greatest country in the world. Everyone else envies you. Everyone around the world wishes they could come to America, shop in our shopping malls, experience learning in our fabulous schools, live in our ugly McMansions, which typify our famously high regard for architecture and aesthetics, enjoy the art and culture so generously promoted in every community, seek financial success in our wonderful casinos, and should they not find it, enjoy the full range of social services provided free of cost in our prisons. This is indeed paradise. Thank the Great White God that Big Government did not stand in the way of our attainment of perfection.
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