I get a kick out of libertarians, and it’s not where kicks are well received. Libertarians preach rugged individualism and self-sufficiency and rant against Big Government like there’s no tomorrow…and in their view there will be no tomorrow as long as BG gets in the way of individual freedom.
The latest iteration of their uproar over BG is their call to repeal Obamacare because it requires everyone to buy health insurance. One of their representatives, a federal judge in eastern Virginia, recently ruled that requiring health insurance is unconstitutional. Libertarians can take care of themselves, thank you, and no government should be able to require a person to buy anything he doesn’t want. The problem with this thinking is that when the libertarian gets sick enough to go to a hospital, unless he has a lot of spare cash in his mattress, we the people who do buy insurance end up paying higher premiums because the cost of the libertarian’s stay in the hospital is spread among us premium payers. In other words, the libertarian ends up mooching off the rest of us.
Another pet peeve of the libertarians is gun control. However, thanks to them and their great lobby, the NRA, we have loose and easy gun laws in this country. This looseness enables Mexican drug cartels to sneak across the border in Texas or Arizona, but particularly in Texas, and buy all the semi-automatics and ammunition they need to add to the 30,000 of corpses they have already strewn around northern Mexico. Our libertarian-inspired gun laws or lack thereof have enabled drug cartels to assume such power in Mexico that the Mexican government can’t begin to gain control of its own country. No wonder Mexicans want to come to the United States. We have made Mexico unsafe for habitation, thanks to our libertarian gun laws. But that’s just part of the story.
Of course our libertarian attitude toward drug use in the U.S. has also provided the funds for the cartels to be able to buy the weapons to kill their people, but that would be pointing the finger at a whole different species of libertarians who think they ought to be able to ingest any substance they feel like and to hell with the law and the social and economic cost to the rest of the law-abiding public. Drug users are unwittingly willing to sacrifice Mexican lives and the health of American culture for another selfish hit toward personal oblivion. It is their liberty to do so, they insist.
But maybe there is a silver lining in this selfish behavior as other libertarians see it. If the drug-addled libertarians keep buying drugs, most of which come from Mexico, and the cartels then can buy more guns from the U.S., America’s trade imbalance is improved. Moreover, if the cartels help keep down the population in Mexico, we can make those libertarians in Arizona happy because there will be fewer Mexicans crossing the border to take American jobs. It’s a win-win for everyone, except Mexicans. But who cares about them. After all, the libertarian motto, which is featured on the New Hampshire license plate, is “Live Free or Die.” Translated, it means we’ll live free and you’ll die. But that’s your problem, not mine. After all, we’re all libertarians and should look after ourselves. That’s what “real America” is all about.
Then again, if we go back to the libertarian healthcare issue, why not let them have their way and not require health insurance. However, when they show up at the hospital with a life-threatening injury or illness, make them pay up front for any anticipated costs. It may take a while to assess their situation, but they can simply plunk down a $100,000 - $500,000 deposit, depending on the severity of the case, and any surplus left after service will be returned to them. If the libertarian can’t produce the deposit, that’s too bad. He can go take care of himself. In that case, the motto shifts to “Live Free and Die. But a “real” libertarian wouldn’t have it any other way.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
The Dream Act
The Dream Act is about to be shot down by the lame duck congress with the excuse that it takes away jobs from existing citizens and will cost too much to implement when we are looking for ways to cut the deficit. The argument FOR the Dream Act is essentially this:
Over three million students graduate from U.S. high schools every year. Most get the opportunity to test their dreams and live their American story. However, a group of approximately 65,000 youth do not get this opportunity; they are smeared with an inherited title, an illegal immigrant. These youth have lived in the United States for most of their lives and want nothing more than to be recognized for what they are, Americans.
The DREAM Act is a bipartisan legislation ‒ pioneered by Sen. Orin Hatch [R-UT] and Sen. Richard Durbin [D-IL] ‒ that can solve this hemorrhaging injustice in our society. Under the rigorous provisions of the DREAM Act, qualifying undocumented youth would be eligible for a 6 year long conditional path to citizenship that requires completion of a college degree or two years of military service.*
I have a dream. It’s bigger than The Dream Act sponsored by Senators Orrin Hatch and Dick Durbin. Why not make all teenagers apply for American citizenship as the privilege it should be rather than the natural right it is now? Of all the entitlements that cost the U.S. taxpayer money, the entitlement to citizenship is the greatest. If all residents of the U.S. were required to apply for citizenship the way they have to apply, say, for a driver’s license, we would be giving them the opportunity to earn citizenship rather than merely letting them take it for granted.
I know, it would be a radical idea no country has ever tried, but just think of what it would do to improve the work ethic and ambition among that portion of today’s youth that is lethargic, directionless, and dilly-dallying.
Here are some of the gains we would make as a society:
1. Education would take on more meaning for more students.
2. The military would have a greater and better educated supply of applicants.
3. The labor force would develop the skills industry needs to become competitive.
4. People would become more committed and informed citizens.
5. We would all truly become a nation of immigrants in that we would earn our place.
6. The sense of entitlement index would fall.
7. Productivity would rise.
8. People would be taught early on to “earn” their way.
9. People would learn to assume responsibility much earlier.
10. Citizens would also be more apt to take civic responsibility seriously as well.
The problem with this plan, you might say, is what to do with those who do not qualify. I would suggest that deporting them is not an option, unless we can find a country that would take them off our hands. That’s unlikely, unless we pay some desperate country to take them, but that won't help the long-range need to lower the national deficit, although getting rid of these slackers would cost us less in the long run. Right now the status quo has them in our midst anyway, except they are granted all the rights and privileges of citizenship. By denying them those rights unless they earn them, we would be giving them an incentive to seek citizenship or otherwise be temporarily disenfranchised in ALL respects.
When they turn 19 and have failed to graduate from high school, draft them into boarding “prep” schools and finish the job of educating them by addressing their academic deficiencies and providing the discipline and structure that they and their families did not while they were in regular high school. If this does not work, draft them into a military/community service corps that rebuilds America’s infrastructure on an ongoing basis. Make it a kind of compulsory job corps which they complete when they have their high school diploma. Any of these alternatives will be less expensive than prison, although those will continue to be needed for true criminals.
If only we had an Australia as the British did back in the 18th Century. We could ship them all off to a remote land and be done with them. (Not incidentally, that experiment turned petty criminals into successful pioneers). However, because of the lack of available real estate on the planet in the 21st Century, we will have to deal with the fallout ourselves. I welcome suggestions beyond what I have offered.
Limiting this Dream Act opportunity to a relatively small number of undocumented immigrants seems both unfair to others who might benefit from it and unfair to the productive citizenry of the United States. We need to be more inclusive and draw from a much larger pool that already is bequeathed their citizenship without lifting a finger. It is time to fulfill the dream of JFK who said: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
As an educator of at-risk youth for the last seven years of my 39 year secondary school career, I know how motivated undocumented youth can be. Many of the truly successful students I oversaw were undocumented. Unfortunately, their citizenship path is currently blocked by law. I know they would make models citizens, but currently we are shooting ourselves in the foot by denying them a path to citizenship while letting less willing youth automatically qualify by birth. That’s why I propose a much greater campaign to transform more American youth into the kind of citizens we need and want.
*http://dreamact.info/
Over three million students graduate from U.S. high schools every year. Most get the opportunity to test their dreams and live their American story. However, a group of approximately 65,000 youth do not get this opportunity; they are smeared with an inherited title, an illegal immigrant. These youth have lived in the United States for most of their lives and want nothing more than to be recognized for what they are, Americans.
The DREAM Act is a bipartisan legislation ‒ pioneered by Sen. Orin Hatch [R-UT] and Sen. Richard Durbin [D-IL] ‒ that can solve this hemorrhaging injustice in our society. Under the rigorous provisions of the DREAM Act, qualifying undocumented youth would be eligible for a 6 year long conditional path to citizenship that requires completion of a college degree or two years of military service.*
I have a dream. It’s bigger than The Dream Act sponsored by Senators Orrin Hatch and Dick Durbin. Why not make all teenagers apply for American citizenship as the privilege it should be rather than the natural right it is now? Of all the entitlements that cost the U.S. taxpayer money, the entitlement to citizenship is the greatest. If all residents of the U.S. were required to apply for citizenship the way they have to apply, say, for a driver’s license, we would be giving them the opportunity to earn citizenship rather than merely letting them take it for granted.
I know, it would be a radical idea no country has ever tried, but just think of what it would do to improve the work ethic and ambition among that portion of today’s youth that is lethargic, directionless, and dilly-dallying.
Here are some of the gains we would make as a society:
1. Education would take on more meaning for more students.
2. The military would have a greater and better educated supply of applicants.
3. The labor force would develop the skills industry needs to become competitive.
4. People would become more committed and informed citizens.
5. We would all truly become a nation of immigrants in that we would earn our place.
6. The sense of entitlement index would fall.
7. Productivity would rise.
8. People would be taught early on to “earn” their way.
9. People would learn to assume responsibility much earlier.
10. Citizens would also be more apt to take civic responsibility seriously as well.
The problem with this plan, you might say, is what to do with those who do not qualify. I would suggest that deporting them is not an option, unless we can find a country that would take them off our hands. That’s unlikely, unless we pay some desperate country to take them, but that won't help the long-range need to lower the national deficit, although getting rid of these slackers would cost us less in the long run. Right now the status quo has them in our midst anyway, except they are granted all the rights and privileges of citizenship. By denying them those rights unless they earn them, we would be giving them an incentive to seek citizenship or otherwise be temporarily disenfranchised in ALL respects.
When they turn 19 and have failed to graduate from high school, draft them into boarding “prep” schools and finish the job of educating them by addressing their academic deficiencies and providing the discipline and structure that they and their families did not while they were in regular high school. If this does not work, draft them into a military/community service corps that rebuilds America’s infrastructure on an ongoing basis. Make it a kind of compulsory job corps which they complete when they have their high school diploma. Any of these alternatives will be less expensive than prison, although those will continue to be needed for true criminals.
If only we had an Australia as the British did back in the 18th Century. We could ship them all off to a remote land and be done with them. (Not incidentally, that experiment turned petty criminals into successful pioneers). However, because of the lack of available real estate on the planet in the 21st Century, we will have to deal with the fallout ourselves. I welcome suggestions beyond what I have offered.
Limiting this Dream Act opportunity to a relatively small number of undocumented immigrants seems both unfair to others who might benefit from it and unfair to the productive citizenry of the United States. We need to be more inclusive and draw from a much larger pool that already is bequeathed their citizenship without lifting a finger. It is time to fulfill the dream of JFK who said: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
As an educator of at-risk youth for the last seven years of my 39 year secondary school career, I know how motivated undocumented youth can be. Many of the truly successful students I oversaw were undocumented. Unfortunately, their citizenship path is currently blocked by law. I know they would make models citizens, but currently we are shooting ourselves in the foot by denying them a path to citizenship while letting less willing youth automatically qualify by birth. That’s why I propose a much greater campaign to transform more American youth into the kind of citizens we need and want.
*http://dreamact.info/
Monday, November 8, 2010
Keeping Up with the Joneses
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
-Emma Lazarus
We, the people, have this expectation that by now we should have this have-have not issue sorted out by now. The truth is American life has become so compartmentalized, gated, isolated, stratified, segmented, and cocooned, two statues within close proximity of each other in New York City can have two very different takes on the concept of opportunity. I am referring to the Charging Bull on Wall Street and the Statue of Liberty in the New York harbor. The practices of Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman-Sachs, and the poetry of Emma Lazarus are worlds apart. The land of opportunity has become the land for opportunists. The opportunists, if given a chance, will own everything; we, the people, will own nothing.
At this point in American history the Wall Street opportunists see developing markets abroad, cheap labor abroad, and could care less about what happens to the American people. The American people have nothing to do with Wall Street's self-interests unless the American people can make them richer. When they can't, the Wall Streeters and their ilk turn elsewhere. Their loyalty is to their own increasing wealth. It's all about making money, never mind the tired and poor left behind.
Yes, a segment of America has gotten fat, tired, lazy, and entitled. Yes, keeping up with the Joneses has turned into keeping up with the Dow Joneses. We also became a vigilante consumer culture: buy now, ask questions later. The poor, who have nothing but TV to inform them, are conditioned to buy-buy-buy even when they have no purchasing power. However, there are those who have tried their best and still have failed. They are the ones who need help from somewhere.
If our culture and its chief agency, namely government, could better distribute opportunity rather than wealth, that would go a long way toward leveling the playing field. Affirmative correction has done that for some individuals, but the effort has to be orchestrated for whole communities, not just individuals. It does no good to remove a few rough diamonds and polish them, except for the diamonds themselves.
Teach for America is a good start. If businesses can be given tax incentives to hire and train Americans rather than ship jobs overseas, that would be an effective way out. But to rely on more taxation as the means of redistributing wealth simply won't sell. The rich hold the purse-strings of the economy as well as the government, Democrats and Republicans alike. We are kidding ourselves if we think otherwise. Therefore, tax break incentives to create and maintain jobs in America are the pragmatic way out of this burgeoning inequality.
Then again, not taxing the rich more than we currently do will leave the growing national deficit a terrible liability for our children’s future. Sooner or later, we'll have to raise taxes. Since 2% of the population earns 24% of the wealth, they should shoulder 24% of the tax burden. Currently they fall far short of that.
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
-Emma Lazarus
We, the people, have this expectation that by now we should have this have-have not issue sorted out by now. The truth is American life has become so compartmentalized, gated, isolated, stratified, segmented, and cocooned, two statues within close proximity of each other in New York City can have two very different takes on the concept of opportunity. I am referring to the Charging Bull on Wall Street and the Statue of Liberty in the New York harbor. The practices of Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman-Sachs, and the poetry of Emma Lazarus are worlds apart. The land of opportunity has become the land for opportunists. The opportunists, if given a chance, will own everything; we, the people, will own nothing.
At this point in American history the Wall Street opportunists see developing markets abroad, cheap labor abroad, and could care less about what happens to the American people. The American people have nothing to do with Wall Street's self-interests unless the American people can make them richer. When they can't, the Wall Streeters and their ilk turn elsewhere. Their loyalty is to their own increasing wealth. It's all about making money, never mind the tired and poor left behind.
Yes, a segment of America has gotten fat, tired, lazy, and entitled. Yes, keeping up with the Joneses has turned into keeping up with the Dow Joneses. We also became a vigilante consumer culture: buy now, ask questions later. The poor, who have nothing but TV to inform them, are conditioned to buy-buy-buy even when they have no purchasing power. However, there are those who have tried their best and still have failed. They are the ones who need help from somewhere.
If our culture and its chief agency, namely government, could better distribute opportunity rather than wealth, that would go a long way toward leveling the playing field. Affirmative correction has done that for some individuals, but the effort has to be orchestrated for whole communities, not just individuals. It does no good to remove a few rough diamonds and polish them, except for the diamonds themselves.
Teach for America is a good start. If businesses can be given tax incentives to hire and train Americans rather than ship jobs overseas, that would be an effective way out. But to rely on more taxation as the means of redistributing wealth simply won't sell. The rich hold the purse-strings of the economy as well as the government, Democrats and Republicans alike. We are kidding ourselves if we think otherwise. Therefore, tax break incentives to create and maintain jobs in America are the pragmatic way out of this burgeoning inequality.
Then again, not taxing the rich more than we currently do will leave the growing national deficit a terrible liability for our children’s future. Sooner or later, we'll have to raise taxes. Since 2% of the population earns 24% of the wealth, they should shoulder 24% of the tax burden. Currently they fall far short of that.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Trickle, Trickle, Little Drip
Trickle, trickle, little drip;
All I want is just a sip;
Tip the pot and you’ll be hip;
Oh a drop to touch my lip.
Wall Street, let me earn some cash;
Let me forage through your trash;
All my dreams have turned to ash;
Government’s fault there was a crash.
Throw the tea into the bay;
Keep the taxes low, you say;
Help the rich to never pay;
Keep them rich, come what may.
Wear your cute tri-cornered hat;
Austerity is where it’s at;
Drink their Kool-Aid; chew their fat;
Will you never smell a rat?
So keep the tempest teapot strong;
And keep that sense that you belong;
Perhaps you’ll wake before too long
And figure out that you were wrong.
All I want is just a sip;
Tip the pot and you’ll be hip;
Oh a drop to touch my lip.
Wall Street, let me earn some cash;
Let me forage through your trash;
All my dreams have turned to ash;
Government’s fault there was a crash.
Throw the tea into the bay;
Keep the taxes low, you say;
Help the rich to never pay;
Keep them rich, come what may.
Wear your cute tri-cornered hat;
Austerity is where it’s at;
Drink their Kool-Aid; chew their fat;
Will you never smell a rat?
So keep the tempest teapot strong;
And keep that sense that you belong;
Perhaps you’ll wake before too long
And figure out that you were wrong.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Gopher: Pioneer of Split Estate
It must have been the gopher that inspired the split estate law in the West. If you ever tried to plant a garden anywhere there are gophers, they eat it out from under you…literally. That’s what the split estate law [a combination of the Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 (SHRA) and the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 (MLA)] has wrought. Today, an oil and gas company can lease the land under your garden and “drill, baby, drill” until your well, health, and property values are ruined beyond repair. Unlike the gopher, legally, the mineral leaser’s interests trump your surface rights. You can try to trap, poison, drown, or otherwise dispose of the gopher, but you can’t touch the driller.
“The business of America is business,” said President Calvin Coolidge in the 1920’s not long after the two acts mentioned above were passed. It has been business as usual ever since. That peculiar expression of hubris that resulted in the Great Depression was revived by the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street in the last decade and resulted in the Great Recession of 2007-9. But to many a capitalist the bubble and bust cycle of business is just natural, not something to fix. There are always winners and losers, so why worry about crashes and bankruptcy: they are all part of the market system that always self-corrects.
A lot of these true believers in the market-as-God also believe in property-as-God. They like to trace their arguments to the concept of natural rights. John Locke was one of the first “modern” thinkers to come up with a threesome of them: life, liberty, and property. According to Locke, men are born with certain natural rights that no government can ever take away. Since the founding fathers of the United States, taking Locke’s lead, came up with three of their own (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) this idea of natural rights has had a legacy here in the USA. What makes them “natural” as opposed to legal remains debatable, unless, of course, you see them as the equivalent of appendages or body organs as in everyone has a natural right to a liver and liberty.
What’s interesting is that the Locke natural right of property got left out of the founding fathers’ list. In its place the concept of the pursuit of happiness was added. Maybe property got left behind in 1776 because America promised so much available land at the time that the founding fathers believed land would never be an issue. Or maybe they were worried the Indians would realize that they also could “own” property and hold the founding fathers accountable for large scale confiscation of their lands. In any case, property was not highlighted as a natural (inalienable) right in the Declaration of Independence.
However, as the West was being settled thanks to the Gold Rush of 1849 and Manifest Destiny, the religious thrust behind further confiscation of land by Anglos, as well as the Industrial Revolution and the waves of immigrants that came to America starting in the 1840’s, the U.S. Government eventually came up with not only a property right but a “two fer” lease: the split estate. Maybe politicians began to feel that property was something to pay more attention to because not only did industry need more resources and ranchers more land, men were being forced by law to share political power with women the same year that the Minerals Leasing Act was passed (Women’s Suffrage, 1920). MLA passage may be just a coincidence or it may have been a way of placating the men-folk who were eager to have some kind of compensation for their loss.
The split estate seemed like a good idea at the time, just as slavery or denying women the vote seemed like good ideas at an earlier time. There was so much land out west it never occurred to the power brokers in Washington that surface use and sub-surface use could ever come in conflict. Today, now that we are beginning to see the greater interconnectedness of life through ecology, the idea of split estate is obsolete. No knowledgeable person could go along with the continuation of such a law knowing what we now know. Ecology is the thrust behind the abolition movement of the 21st Century. Sooner or later, justice and rightness will prevail. The split-estate law will be abolished, and the idea that mineral rights can take precedence over surface rights will go the way of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. It is not only ecologically insane; it is morally wrong.
How can it possibly be morally wrong?
I hear a lot of talk coming from the conservative camp that the national deficit is the greatest threat to the prosperity of future generations of Americans. It is not the GREATEST threat. The greatest threat is environmental degradation by current high-impact, low-cost, expedient mining and drilling practices as well as excessive hydrocarbon use throughout the United States and the planet as a whole. Water quality, air quality, and fertile land quality are far more critical than our need for hydrocarbons. Moreover, if hydrocarbons are so important a finite resource, we should be preserving as much as we can for use by future generations. You cannot argue about the threat of national debt, a reversible liability, and ignore the conservation of resources if you are concerned for future generations. It simply does not make sense. The present generations should turn to alternative, sustainable, non-hydrocarbon sources of energy now so that future generations won’t have to use energy to cool the planet.
Meanwhile, I think I’ll go out to the garden and try to figure out how I can get rid of those gophers that keep undermining my organic dream.
“The business of America is business,” said President Calvin Coolidge in the 1920’s not long after the two acts mentioned above were passed. It has been business as usual ever since. That peculiar expression of hubris that resulted in the Great Depression was revived by the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street in the last decade and resulted in the Great Recession of 2007-9. But to many a capitalist the bubble and bust cycle of business is just natural, not something to fix. There are always winners and losers, so why worry about crashes and bankruptcy: they are all part of the market system that always self-corrects.
A lot of these true believers in the market-as-God also believe in property-as-God. They like to trace their arguments to the concept of natural rights. John Locke was one of the first “modern” thinkers to come up with a threesome of them: life, liberty, and property. According to Locke, men are born with certain natural rights that no government can ever take away. Since the founding fathers of the United States, taking Locke’s lead, came up with three of their own (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) this idea of natural rights has had a legacy here in the USA. What makes them “natural” as opposed to legal remains debatable, unless, of course, you see them as the equivalent of appendages or body organs as in everyone has a natural right to a liver and liberty.
What’s interesting is that the Locke natural right of property got left out of the founding fathers’ list. In its place the concept of the pursuit of happiness was added. Maybe property got left behind in 1776 because America promised so much available land at the time that the founding fathers believed land would never be an issue. Or maybe they were worried the Indians would realize that they also could “own” property and hold the founding fathers accountable for large scale confiscation of their lands. In any case, property was not highlighted as a natural (inalienable) right in the Declaration of Independence.
However, as the West was being settled thanks to the Gold Rush of 1849 and Manifest Destiny, the religious thrust behind further confiscation of land by Anglos, as well as the Industrial Revolution and the waves of immigrants that came to America starting in the 1840’s, the U.S. Government eventually came up with not only a property right but a “two fer” lease: the split estate. Maybe politicians began to feel that property was something to pay more attention to because not only did industry need more resources and ranchers more land, men were being forced by law to share political power with women the same year that the Minerals Leasing Act was passed (Women’s Suffrage, 1920). MLA passage may be just a coincidence or it may have been a way of placating the men-folk who were eager to have some kind of compensation for their loss.
The split estate seemed like a good idea at the time, just as slavery or denying women the vote seemed like good ideas at an earlier time. There was so much land out west it never occurred to the power brokers in Washington that surface use and sub-surface use could ever come in conflict. Today, now that we are beginning to see the greater interconnectedness of life through ecology, the idea of split estate is obsolete. No knowledgeable person could go along with the continuation of such a law knowing what we now know. Ecology is the thrust behind the abolition movement of the 21st Century. Sooner or later, justice and rightness will prevail. The split-estate law will be abolished, and the idea that mineral rights can take precedence over surface rights will go the way of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. It is not only ecologically insane; it is morally wrong.
How can it possibly be morally wrong?
I hear a lot of talk coming from the conservative camp that the national deficit is the greatest threat to the prosperity of future generations of Americans. It is not the GREATEST threat. The greatest threat is environmental degradation by current high-impact, low-cost, expedient mining and drilling practices as well as excessive hydrocarbon use throughout the United States and the planet as a whole. Water quality, air quality, and fertile land quality are far more critical than our need for hydrocarbons. Moreover, if hydrocarbons are so important a finite resource, we should be preserving as much as we can for use by future generations. You cannot argue about the threat of national debt, a reversible liability, and ignore the conservation of resources if you are concerned for future generations. It simply does not make sense. The present generations should turn to alternative, sustainable, non-hydrocarbon sources of energy now so that future generations won’t have to use energy to cool the planet.
Meanwhile, I think I’ll go out to the garden and try to figure out how I can get rid of those gophers that keep undermining my organic dream.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
God in America
While watching the second part of the PBS special God in America last night, I was struck by how blindly drawn to certainty a large segment of the country has always been. Better to be dead right than maybe wrong. Both sides of the Civil War believed God was on their side, but as Lincoln concluded, both could not be right and possibly neither was. Then Lincoln went from being Deist (God set in motion this mechanism called life) to Evangelical (God told me what to do) in a sudden revelation which resulted in the Emancipation Proclamation, the just cause the North needed to win the war.
America pretends to have one God but in practice has many. There are personal gods, sectarian gods, and secular gods. What the people who believe in them all have in common is a faith that their god will deliver “the good” and sometimes the goods.
For many the belief starts with absolute trust in a text. The trust is so absolute that every word in the text is sacred. Even though the text has been translated and modernized over time, every word somehow remains sacred to those who buy into fundamentalist teaching. This tendency to see certain texts as sacred (Bible, Torah, Koran) helps explain how some also view The Constitution as a static document to be preserved at any cost as opposed to a living document that is subject to adjustment according to the needs of the people and the times. Literal interpretation of texts, it is assumed, requires no interpretation. It is simply ingesting. You swallow whole, never chew.
This tendency or proclivity to absorb wholly and directly is carried into our economic lives as well. There are those believe in the Market as if it were a god. Just trust in the Market to take care of business. We need not any tinkerers or adjusters or certainly not any government bureaucrats messing with our god. In God We Trust to these purists means In Market We Trust.
America has had an element that wants to purify or sanctify something ever since the Puritans landed in 1620. It also has had an element that has always felt uncomfortable in the stiff clothes of doctrinaire thinking and texts. Printed words and human institutions are not chiseled in stone. They are created by man, not dictated by God to man. God has never exclusively endorsed a specific text as his word and has never left a note to say he had.
Belief is a “time out” from thinking. It is the product of the anti-intellectual’s unwillingness to venture into the arduous world of reason. It is the surrender to assumption and blind belief, not the victory of truth.
True believers are inevitably skeptical of science because science is so skeptical. Science has hypotheses and theories, probability and statistics, not absolute truths. It is the very uncertainty of science that horrifies the true believer. We can’t trust science to give us truth on a platter, only carcasses of old ideas left on the dissecting table and new theories tentatively offered in their place. How messy and unsatisfying it all is.
On the other hand, moderately religious people who focus on service and helping the needy are good to have around. They keep their religion to themselves and simply do good deeds. There are no strings attached to their efforts.
However, our nation suffers from an inordinate lack of faith in the power of reason to sort out our difficulties. Instead, we have our centers of power polluted by a preoccupation with preponderant principle over pragmatic progress. Some true believers are paralyzed with fear because they consume the fast food of facile belief containing empty spiritual calories rather than exercise their mental capacities toward solutions. Thinking is hard work, but a certain portion of America has always shunned it because it might disturb the literal narrative it has always blindly trusted.
However, the chief reason Americans hang onto their beliefs is the ever broadening heterogeneity of the country. We have always been a nation of immigrants and continue to be so. We are also the most religiously diverse nation in the world, but unlike the foods we bring to the American table, we do not embrace each other’s religions the way we enjoy each other’s ethnic dishes. New foods are a lot more digestible; new beliefs are not.
True believers see other beliefs as a threat to their own, not a complement. It leaves them “thinking” that they must reinforce their own beliefs rather than question them. The notion of turning to reason simply does not occur. It’s in a different realm of being.
Meanwhile, absolutist belief will continue to be the sacred cow that wanders through and disrupts American progress such as stem cell research while engineers of growth elsewhere in the world (China, India, for example) will pass us on their freshly constructed by-passes and freeways. Their de facto separation of church and state will trump our de jure separation any day now.
America pretends to have one God but in practice has many. There are personal gods, sectarian gods, and secular gods. What the people who believe in them all have in common is a faith that their god will deliver “the good” and sometimes the goods.
For many the belief starts with absolute trust in a text. The trust is so absolute that every word in the text is sacred. Even though the text has been translated and modernized over time, every word somehow remains sacred to those who buy into fundamentalist teaching. This tendency to see certain texts as sacred (Bible, Torah, Koran) helps explain how some also view The Constitution as a static document to be preserved at any cost as opposed to a living document that is subject to adjustment according to the needs of the people and the times. Literal interpretation of texts, it is assumed, requires no interpretation. It is simply ingesting. You swallow whole, never chew.
This tendency or proclivity to absorb wholly and directly is carried into our economic lives as well. There are those believe in the Market as if it were a god. Just trust in the Market to take care of business. We need not any tinkerers or adjusters or certainly not any government bureaucrats messing with our god. In God We Trust to these purists means In Market We Trust.
America has had an element that wants to purify or sanctify something ever since the Puritans landed in 1620. It also has had an element that has always felt uncomfortable in the stiff clothes of doctrinaire thinking and texts. Printed words and human institutions are not chiseled in stone. They are created by man, not dictated by God to man. God has never exclusively endorsed a specific text as his word and has never left a note to say he had.
Belief is a “time out” from thinking. It is the product of the anti-intellectual’s unwillingness to venture into the arduous world of reason. It is the surrender to assumption and blind belief, not the victory of truth.
True believers are inevitably skeptical of science because science is so skeptical. Science has hypotheses and theories, probability and statistics, not absolute truths. It is the very uncertainty of science that horrifies the true believer. We can’t trust science to give us truth on a platter, only carcasses of old ideas left on the dissecting table and new theories tentatively offered in their place. How messy and unsatisfying it all is.
On the other hand, moderately religious people who focus on service and helping the needy are good to have around. They keep their religion to themselves and simply do good deeds. There are no strings attached to their efforts.
However, our nation suffers from an inordinate lack of faith in the power of reason to sort out our difficulties. Instead, we have our centers of power polluted by a preoccupation with preponderant principle over pragmatic progress. Some true believers are paralyzed with fear because they consume the fast food of facile belief containing empty spiritual calories rather than exercise their mental capacities toward solutions. Thinking is hard work, but a certain portion of America has always shunned it because it might disturb the literal narrative it has always blindly trusted.
However, the chief reason Americans hang onto their beliefs is the ever broadening heterogeneity of the country. We have always been a nation of immigrants and continue to be so. We are also the most religiously diverse nation in the world, but unlike the foods we bring to the American table, we do not embrace each other’s religions the way we enjoy each other’s ethnic dishes. New foods are a lot more digestible; new beliefs are not.
True believers see other beliefs as a threat to their own, not a complement. It leaves them “thinking” that they must reinforce their own beliefs rather than question them. The notion of turning to reason simply does not occur. It’s in a different realm of being.
Meanwhile, absolutist belief will continue to be the sacred cow that wanders through and disrupts American progress such as stem cell research while engineers of growth elsewhere in the world (China, India, for example) will pass us on their freshly constructed by-passes and freeways. Their de facto separation of church and state will trump our de jure separation any day now.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Chillin' in Chile
Now that the 33 miners trapped in the Chilean mine are about to ascend to freedom, let’s not let this disaster go to waste. A lot of money and effort has gone into constructing the escape route. Why not, when all the dust settles on this harrowing experience, turn this construct into a whole new form of eco-tourism? The Chilean government, in conjunction with, say, the United States or even the United Nations, could “invite” some of the latest and worst ecological offenders who perhaps will suffer only minor financial setbacks at best or maybe a little time in a cozy and lush country club style detention center, to spend some time in the space vacated by the Chilean miners.
They would not have to spend a long time down there, but just enough to give them time to contemplate their sins. It would be a kind of “time out” for corporate executives. Those in charge of the “eco-lodge” could market the experience as a kind of innovative VIP rehab or an Executive Appropriate Transcendental Synergistic Highly Intensive Transformation to be known as EATSHIT.
Some of the candidates that come to mind are Tony Hayward of BP and the CEO of the aluminum factory in Hungary that recently sent a sizeable cocktail of hazardous waste toward the Danube. Certain to make the exclusive list would be Don Blankenship of Massey Energy who ignored all sorts of infractions before one of his mines blew up killing 29 miners last spring. Perhaps he should be the first to attend this exciting adventure.
On the other hand, it might be a great rite of passage for any national leader from any country that develops energy or mineral resources. A visit to the site and a trip down the shaft might keep national leaders from giving their people the shaft by not enforcing sound protocols pertaining to energy and mineral extraction. Better that they experience firsthand what it is like to survive a mine disaster so that others may survive as well.
Eco-tourism to this point has been altogether tame and precious. It has amounted to no more than an opportunity for ecology converts to strengthen their beliefs…a form of “preaching to the choir.” The people who tend to do eco-tourism are limousine liberals. Isn’t it time the world and business leaders are exposed to an experience that might give them pause to continuing the reckless exploitation of the world’s ever-shrinking resources and the cavalier disregard of sound protocols that save lives?
They would not have to spend a long time down there, but just enough to give them time to contemplate their sins. It would be a kind of “time out” for corporate executives. Those in charge of the “eco-lodge” could market the experience as a kind of innovative VIP rehab or an Executive Appropriate Transcendental Synergistic Highly Intensive Transformation to be known as EATSHIT.
Some of the candidates that come to mind are Tony Hayward of BP and the CEO of the aluminum factory in Hungary that recently sent a sizeable cocktail of hazardous waste toward the Danube. Certain to make the exclusive list would be Don Blankenship of Massey Energy who ignored all sorts of infractions before one of his mines blew up killing 29 miners last spring. Perhaps he should be the first to attend this exciting adventure.
On the other hand, it might be a great rite of passage for any national leader from any country that develops energy or mineral resources. A visit to the site and a trip down the shaft might keep national leaders from giving their people the shaft by not enforcing sound protocols pertaining to energy and mineral extraction. Better that they experience firsthand what it is like to survive a mine disaster so that others may survive as well.
Eco-tourism to this point has been altogether tame and precious. It has amounted to no more than an opportunity for ecology converts to strengthen their beliefs…a form of “preaching to the choir.” The people who tend to do eco-tourism are limousine liberals. Isn’t it time the world and business leaders are exposed to an experience that might give them pause to continuing the reckless exploitation of the world’s ever-shrinking resources and the cavalier disregard of sound protocols that save lives?
Monday, September 27, 2010
The Endless War
I bet you think this piece is about getting out of Afghanistan. It is not. It is about another war that has been hot and cold since the founding of the United States. Of late it has heated up again, taken on the nuances of the 21st Century, and raged like a forest fire in the Rocky Mountains. Its essence is two conflicting narratives about the direction America needs to take.
One narrative is espoused by environmentalists, liberals, and climate change adherents. It is best encapsulated in the treatise called The Tragedy of the Commons first named and described by Garrett Hardin in 1968. The other narrative embraced by conservatives, free market enthusiasts, and libertarians is probably best articulated in Matt Ridley’s latest book, The Rational Optimist, the thesis of which I would suggest is represented by the phrase The Comedy of the Infinite.
Hardin uses Alfred North Whitehead’s definition of tragedy: “The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things…This inevitableness of destiny can only be illustrated in terms of human life by incidents which in fact involve unhappiness. For it is only by them that the futility of escape can be made evident in the drama.” I am using a simple literary definition of comedy: a work that ends happily.
Until I had read Ridley’s book, I had never run across a more complete, comprehensive articulation of the conservative perspective on why we should not concern ourselves with so many of the fears that liberals are constantly fussing about, like coal-mining, gas drilling, off shore oil extraction, greenhouse gases, nuclear energy, population bombs, or genetically modified crops. Ridley is not only firmly but absolutely convinced that the combination of technology, free markets, and his perception of human nature will lead the world toward greater prosperity and well being so long as governments and pessimists don’t get in the way. Even Africa will prosper sooner or later.
From the beginning of the book I tried to float along with the flow of his argument as well as I could, leaving all of my usual liberal snags to puncture my raft of hope another day, and by the end of the book I was actually asking myself, what if?…what if Ridley is right? Then I began to have my doubts. My old liberal cautions kicked in, the BP disaster in the Gulf surfaced in my mind once more, and I was back to hosting a panoply of fears I have about the future of the planet and the human race.
Then I recalled Garrett Hardin’s thesis, The Tragedy of the Commons, and realized that it represented one of the most distilled forms of the liberal-environmental perspective. It also stood nearly in direct opposition to the optimism of Ridley. First and foremost, it insists that there are no technical solutions for some problems. He uses the example of the conclusion reached by Wiesner and York about the nuclear arms race: “It is our considered professional judgment that this dilemma has no technical solution.” Hardin then goes on to say that population is one of those problems. He cites Malthus, the finite planet, and the “fact” we must somehow plan to make better use of diminishing finite resources and meanwhile begin to develop sustainable ones.
Ridley, on the other hand, disputes Malthus. Ridley believes that there is sufficient evidence scattered around the planet today that by increasing prosperity through free markets and global economic development we are seeing a leveling off of population growth in countries or regions that have attained a level of prosperity and education well above subsistence. All we have to do is encourage or invest in those regions that have yet to achieve such a level, and all will be well. The big IF for Ridley is getting rid of political corruption that interferes with the natural tendency for people to develop market economies. If governments can be brought to focus primarily on improving infrastructure and avoid interference, then they will literally and figuratively pave the way for progress.
As far as resources are concerned, Ridley has nearly absolute faith in technology. He believes we will develop better sustainable sources of energy in the future, but meanwhile we should continue to drill for gas and oil, mine coal if we can find a way to make it clean, and especially get back in gear with nuclear energy. He believes it is safe, clean, and cheap in the long run. Continued use of all of those resources will buy time for technology to evolve to make solar power efficient. On the other hand, he has little use for ethanol from crops or wind power.
As far as climate change is concerned, Ridley thinks it may very well go the way of acid rain after the 1970’s and 80’s. He also cites the “fact” that polar bear populations are actually increasing. However, he may be confusing actual polar bears with polar bear club membership, and perhaps he himself has taken a few too many dips in frigid water. Nevertheless, his optimism, regardless of the prevailing scientific data, does not have room for fears about climate change. It is at worst a blip on the cosmic screen of inevitable progress.
In The Tragedy of the Commons Hardin cites Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776) as the book that “contributed to a dominant tendency of thought that has ever since interfered with positive action based on rational analysis, namely, the tendency to assume that decisions reached individually will, in fact, be the best decisions for an entire society.” He then goes on to explain his famous tragedy of the commons using cow herdsmen and a common pasture. Sooner or later, as each cow herder grows his herd, the capacity of the common pasture is exceeded. The individual freedom of each herdsman to expand his herd ultimately destroys the commons. “Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.”
The Comedy of the Infinite, on the other hand, presents a different world view. Ridley not only cites Smith as a primary initiator of his thesis but turns to Friedrich Hayek as the author of the defining term which Ridley adopts: catallaxy. Catallaxy is “spontaneous order created by exchange and specialization.” It is this concept on which Ridley and Hayek base their optimism. Ridley insists that “[i]t will be hard to snuff out the flame of innovation, because it is such an evolutionary, bottom-up phenomenon in such a networked world.”
From recalling Hardin and reading Ridley, I am left with the notion that perhaps we should stop being so pessimistic and trust in our capacity as human beings to make the world a better place. We simply need to be smarter about it and not reckless and cavalier. Neither pure self-interest nor pure environmentalism is the rational answer, although both camps claim reason as their guide. Warring camps of ideological purity will get us nowhere. We need the best minds from both sides of this endless debate to work together, not win at all costs. One side by itself will lead us to resource depletion and planet desecration; the other will lead us back to subsistence. Neither alternative is a wise path.
Accepting that Adam Smith’s “guiding hand” that leads self-interest to naturally contribute to the greater good is as comforting to a liberal as asking NFL football players to call penalties on themselves. There need to be referees to make sure unnecessary economic disasters don’t occur because someone cheated or got greedy. The recent debacle on Wall Street is a case in point. There were no actual referees.
On the other hand, too much regulation can stifle economic growth and innovation. There need to be enough rules to keep economies pointed in a positive direction without benefiting the few at the expense of the many as happened on Wall Street in 2008. Keeping the spring of innovation bubbling and the prosperity trickling down is what government should be promoting and often accomplishing by actually getting out of the way.
It seems we should follow the old Quaker proverb: Proceed as the way opens. And we should do as much as we can to anticipate the unintended consequences of our deliberate as well as spontaneous evolution. To err is human, but to evolve is natural. Pointing all of our useful human institutions toward the greater good is the noble task before us.
The concept of sustainable growth is the hybrid term that best describes the ideal merger of environmental and economic principles. Enterprises that pursue genuine sustainable growth are those that will be the fittest and survive in a knowledge-based world. All others will fall away. It is the only path remaining. Sustainable Growth addresses both The Tragedy of the Commons and The Comedy of the Infinite by focusing on long-term large scale thinking rather than short term or selfish thinking. Saying that the market or the individual is enough to bring this about is to throw logic and knowledge under the bus. It does not rule out competition; it does not put growth in the hands of government. It simply says that, as a primary operating principle, sustainability and growth must be symbiotic if the human species is to have a future. Getting everybody to think that way is everybody’s job, not IBM’s or the Government’s. It is taking Adams Smith’s principle of self-interest and simply educating it to have greater reach and scope. It is about always putting long term sustainable growth ahead of short term gain.
Finally, making this ageless debate into a war of conflicting certainties is no way to behave or accomplish anything. Both sides are right to some degree, and wrong to some degree. Neither side has absolute truth in hand. If you think the war in Afghanistan needs to end, this ideological war between the right and the left needs to de-escalate back to a statesman-like debate with each side recognizing the essential goodness in the other’s perspective with the goal of finding common ground.
After all, I am word processing this piece on a Toshiba laptop and not etching it on the side of a smoke-filled cave.
One narrative is espoused by environmentalists, liberals, and climate change adherents. It is best encapsulated in the treatise called The Tragedy of the Commons first named and described by Garrett Hardin in 1968. The other narrative embraced by conservatives, free market enthusiasts, and libertarians is probably best articulated in Matt Ridley’s latest book, The Rational Optimist, the thesis of which I would suggest is represented by the phrase The Comedy of the Infinite.
Hardin uses Alfred North Whitehead’s definition of tragedy: “The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things…This inevitableness of destiny can only be illustrated in terms of human life by incidents which in fact involve unhappiness. For it is only by them that the futility of escape can be made evident in the drama.” I am using a simple literary definition of comedy: a work that ends happily.
Until I had read Ridley’s book, I had never run across a more complete, comprehensive articulation of the conservative perspective on why we should not concern ourselves with so many of the fears that liberals are constantly fussing about, like coal-mining, gas drilling, off shore oil extraction, greenhouse gases, nuclear energy, population bombs, or genetically modified crops. Ridley is not only firmly but absolutely convinced that the combination of technology, free markets, and his perception of human nature will lead the world toward greater prosperity and well being so long as governments and pessimists don’t get in the way. Even Africa will prosper sooner or later.
From the beginning of the book I tried to float along with the flow of his argument as well as I could, leaving all of my usual liberal snags to puncture my raft of hope another day, and by the end of the book I was actually asking myself, what if?…what if Ridley is right? Then I began to have my doubts. My old liberal cautions kicked in, the BP disaster in the Gulf surfaced in my mind once more, and I was back to hosting a panoply of fears I have about the future of the planet and the human race.
Then I recalled Garrett Hardin’s thesis, The Tragedy of the Commons, and realized that it represented one of the most distilled forms of the liberal-environmental perspective. It also stood nearly in direct opposition to the optimism of Ridley. First and foremost, it insists that there are no technical solutions for some problems. He uses the example of the conclusion reached by Wiesner and York about the nuclear arms race: “It is our considered professional judgment that this dilemma has no technical solution.” Hardin then goes on to say that population is one of those problems. He cites Malthus, the finite planet, and the “fact” we must somehow plan to make better use of diminishing finite resources and meanwhile begin to develop sustainable ones.
Ridley, on the other hand, disputes Malthus. Ridley believes that there is sufficient evidence scattered around the planet today that by increasing prosperity through free markets and global economic development we are seeing a leveling off of population growth in countries or regions that have attained a level of prosperity and education well above subsistence. All we have to do is encourage or invest in those regions that have yet to achieve such a level, and all will be well. The big IF for Ridley is getting rid of political corruption that interferes with the natural tendency for people to develop market economies. If governments can be brought to focus primarily on improving infrastructure and avoid interference, then they will literally and figuratively pave the way for progress.
As far as resources are concerned, Ridley has nearly absolute faith in technology. He believes we will develop better sustainable sources of energy in the future, but meanwhile we should continue to drill for gas and oil, mine coal if we can find a way to make it clean, and especially get back in gear with nuclear energy. He believes it is safe, clean, and cheap in the long run. Continued use of all of those resources will buy time for technology to evolve to make solar power efficient. On the other hand, he has little use for ethanol from crops or wind power.
As far as climate change is concerned, Ridley thinks it may very well go the way of acid rain after the 1970’s and 80’s. He also cites the “fact” that polar bear populations are actually increasing. However, he may be confusing actual polar bears with polar bear club membership, and perhaps he himself has taken a few too many dips in frigid water. Nevertheless, his optimism, regardless of the prevailing scientific data, does not have room for fears about climate change. It is at worst a blip on the cosmic screen of inevitable progress.
In The Tragedy of the Commons Hardin cites Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776) as the book that “contributed to a dominant tendency of thought that has ever since interfered with positive action based on rational analysis, namely, the tendency to assume that decisions reached individually will, in fact, be the best decisions for an entire society.” He then goes on to explain his famous tragedy of the commons using cow herdsmen and a common pasture. Sooner or later, as each cow herder grows his herd, the capacity of the common pasture is exceeded. The individual freedom of each herdsman to expand his herd ultimately destroys the commons. “Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.”
The Comedy of the Infinite, on the other hand, presents a different world view. Ridley not only cites Smith as a primary initiator of his thesis but turns to Friedrich Hayek as the author of the defining term which Ridley adopts: catallaxy. Catallaxy is “spontaneous order created by exchange and specialization.” It is this concept on which Ridley and Hayek base their optimism. Ridley insists that “[i]t will be hard to snuff out the flame of innovation, because it is such an evolutionary, bottom-up phenomenon in such a networked world.”
From recalling Hardin and reading Ridley, I am left with the notion that perhaps we should stop being so pessimistic and trust in our capacity as human beings to make the world a better place. We simply need to be smarter about it and not reckless and cavalier. Neither pure self-interest nor pure environmentalism is the rational answer, although both camps claim reason as their guide. Warring camps of ideological purity will get us nowhere. We need the best minds from both sides of this endless debate to work together, not win at all costs. One side by itself will lead us to resource depletion and planet desecration; the other will lead us back to subsistence. Neither alternative is a wise path.
Accepting that Adam Smith’s “guiding hand” that leads self-interest to naturally contribute to the greater good is as comforting to a liberal as asking NFL football players to call penalties on themselves. There need to be referees to make sure unnecessary economic disasters don’t occur because someone cheated or got greedy. The recent debacle on Wall Street is a case in point. There were no actual referees.
On the other hand, too much regulation can stifle economic growth and innovation. There need to be enough rules to keep economies pointed in a positive direction without benefiting the few at the expense of the many as happened on Wall Street in 2008. Keeping the spring of innovation bubbling and the prosperity trickling down is what government should be promoting and often accomplishing by actually getting out of the way.
It seems we should follow the old Quaker proverb: Proceed as the way opens. And we should do as much as we can to anticipate the unintended consequences of our deliberate as well as spontaneous evolution. To err is human, but to evolve is natural. Pointing all of our useful human institutions toward the greater good is the noble task before us.
The concept of sustainable growth is the hybrid term that best describes the ideal merger of environmental and economic principles. Enterprises that pursue genuine sustainable growth are those that will be the fittest and survive in a knowledge-based world. All others will fall away. It is the only path remaining. Sustainable Growth addresses both The Tragedy of the Commons and The Comedy of the Infinite by focusing on long-term large scale thinking rather than short term or selfish thinking. Saying that the market or the individual is enough to bring this about is to throw logic and knowledge under the bus. It does not rule out competition; it does not put growth in the hands of government. It simply says that, as a primary operating principle, sustainability and growth must be symbiotic if the human species is to have a future. Getting everybody to think that way is everybody’s job, not IBM’s or the Government’s. It is taking Adams Smith’s principle of self-interest and simply educating it to have greater reach and scope. It is about always putting long term sustainable growth ahead of short term gain.
Finally, making this ageless debate into a war of conflicting certainties is no way to behave or accomplish anything. Both sides are right to some degree, and wrong to some degree. Neither side has absolute truth in hand. If you think the war in Afghanistan needs to end, this ideological war between the right and the left needs to de-escalate back to a statesman-like debate with each side recognizing the essential goodness in the other’s perspective with the goal of finding common ground.
After all, I am word processing this piece on a Toshiba laptop and not etching it on the side of a smoke-filled cave.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
The Mob and the Other
Given the outbreak of bedbugs across the country, you would think that the bedfellow index would be down. But no: we have found the Other again, and this time the group target is Muslims. In the 50’s it was communists among us. Thanks to the leadership provided by Joe McCarthy, the junior senator from Wisconsin, America was treated to a witch hunt that brought down a good many otherwise respectable folks who were arbitrarily painted with the communist brush. While the red brush was not slapped on a particular ethnic group, it was enthusiastically supported by Roman Catholics who had experienced their share of suspicions by long-settled Protestants as waves of Catholic immigrants coming from all sorts of European countries and speaking all sorts of languages landed on American soil during the Nineteenth Century and early Twentieth Century.
However, the immigrant Catholics had only a religion in common and therefore created their own churches organized by ethnicity. Poles went to their own churches; Irish went to predominantly Irish churches; and Italians went to Italian churches. Catholics dug no secret tunnels to connect those ethnic churches nor did they dig any to the Vatican.
The same human tendency that enables us to make constellations out of random stars drives our propensity to see conspiracy where there is none. Unlike the scientist, who collects vast quantities of data to test the validity a hypothesis, the all too common man can develop a certainty out of coincidence. Once the common man latches on to an idea, he runs with it beyond belief, especially if his fellow travelers or friends believe the same certainty. Doubt is for sissies. Skepticism is for Doubting Thomases.
And that is how we, as humans, have invented gods as well as constellations. True believers would personify or deify certainty in order to give it even greater power rather than trudge the slow road of the scientist who must learn to live with the fact that his hypothesis is seldom a safe bet, that today’s truth may be tomorrow’s mirage.
The truth about Muslims is that they represent even more diverse ethnicities than the Roman Catholics did. They come from all over the world, not just Europe. They speak more diverse languages and represent more varied cultures than the Protestants ever dreamt about the Catholics. If attributing conspiracy to Catholics turned out to be a herding-cats enterprise, then doing so with Muslims is as logical as counting on unanimity happening at the UN.
Religious faith conditions the mind to stop thinking. And it enables the mind to accept as truth notions that have no provable basis. After all, that is what faith is all about. Faith is a sort of blindness cloaked in the disguise of light. Darkness is a placed called Hell, a place to avoid, not an obscurity in need of intense illumination. The conspiracy-inclined mind can generalize false assumptions without evidence because evidence can contradict belief. Never doubt; just believe, and you shall carry the light. The scientific mind works inductively: it gathers facts first and then reaches a tentative conclusion, seldom a certain one. Scientists are proved wrong by discovery. True believers are right by fear-driven, self-contained, hermetically sealed belief. It is the common, everyday, Immaculate Conception. Any contradiction only detracts from the purity of thought, however wrong.
Seeing a bear in a cluster of stars poses no threat; attributing terrorist ideology to a mainstream world religion does*: it gives power to those few like Al Qaeda who would use the religion for its own evil ends by persuading the religion’s mainstream believers that they are demonized. Al Qaeda merely says to the mainstream: “See? I told you so. They are bent on destroying you, so join us in destroying them first.” That does not mean the mainstream will join them en masse, but it does invite the young and easily radicalized to join the extremists.
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.” said Emerson. Small minds tend toward conspiracy theory. They want to see cause and effect where coincidence lies. And they firmly believe coincidence lies, for everything is the intention of someone or something: God, if you are a religious believer: the government or the corporation, if you are not.
Let’s give Muslims the benefit of our inevitable doubt, for inevitable it will be. We got over fear of Catholics and then fear of Communists, although we have lately, thanks to fear-mongers in the Republican contingent, experienced a recrudescence of anti-socialist rhetoric aimed at that Muslim-born, foreign-born, socialist, community organizer named Barack Hussein Obama. They are trying to make him the Other. Recently, they have gained some ground in doing so, thanks to fear-driven faith of the vigilante minds that shoot first and ask questions never.
* All the religions of Abraham have outrageous pronouncements tucked away in their hallowed texts which both inspire extremists and abhor critics. That’s the problem with literal interpretation of texts of any kind, including the Christian Bible. Literal interpretations can be recipes and justifications for heinous crimes against humanity, all in the name of God.
However, the immigrant Catholics had only a religion in common and therefore created their own churches organized by ethnicity. Poles went to their own churches; Irish went to predominantly Irish churches; and Italians went to Italian churches. Catholics dug no secret tunnels to connect those ethnic churches nor did they dig any to the Vatican.
The same human tendency that enables us to make constellations out of random stars drives our propensity to see conspiracy where there is none. Unlike the scientist, who collects vast quantities of data to test the validity a hypothesis, the all too common man can develop a certainty out of coincidence. Once the common man latches on to an idea, he runs with it beyond belief, especially if his fellow travelers or friends believe the same certainty. Doubt is for sissies. Skepticism is for Doubting Thomases.
And that is how we, as humans, have invented gods as well as constellations. True believers would personify or deify certainty in order to give it even greater power rather than trudge the slow road of the scientist who must learn to live with the fact that his hypothesis is seldom a safe bet, that today’s truth may be tomorrow’s mirage.
The truth about Muslims is that they represent even more diverse ethnicities than the Roman Catholics did. They come from all over the world, not just Europe. They speak more diverse languages and represent more varied cultures than the Protestants ever dreamt about the Catholics. If attributing conspiracy to Catholics turned out to be a herding-cats enterprise, then doing so with Muslims is as logical as counting on unanimity happening at the UN.
Religious faith conditions the mind to stop thinking. And it enables the mind to accept as truth notions that have no provable basis. After all, that is what faith is all about. Faith is a sort of blindness cloaked in the disguise of light. Darkness is a placed called Hell, a place to avoid, not an obscurity in need of intense illumination. The conspiracy-inclined mind can generalize false assumptions without evidence because evidence can contradict belief. Never doubt; just believe, and you shall carry the light. The scientific mind works inductively: it gathers facts first and then reaches a tentative conclusion, seldom a certain one. Scientists are proved wrong by discovery. True believers are right by fear-driven, self-contained, hermetically sealed belief. It is the common, everyday, Immaculate Conception. Any contradiction only detracts from the purity of thought, however wrong.
Seeing a bear in a cluster of stars poses no threat; attributing terrorist ideology to a mainstream world religion does*: it gives power to those few like Al Qaeda who would use the religion for its own evil ends by persuading the religion’s mainstream believers that they are demonized. Al Qaeda merely says to the mainstream: “See? I told you so. They are bent on destroying you, so join us in destroying them first.” That does not mean the mainstream will join them en masse, but it does invite the young and easily radicalized to join the extremists.
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.” said Emerson. Small minds tend toward conspiracy theory. They want to see cause and effect where coincidence lies. And they firmly believe coincidence lies, for everything is the intention of someone or something: God, if you are a religious believer: the government or the corporation, if you are not.
Let’s give Muslims the benefit of our inevitable doubt, for inevitable it will be. We got over fear of Catholics and then fear of Communists, although we have lately, thanks to fear-mongers in the Republican contingent, experienced a recrudescence of anti-socialist rhetoric aimed at that Muslim-born, foreign-born, socialist, community organizer named Barack Hussein Obama. They are trying to make him the Other. Recently, they have gained some ground in doing so, thanks to fear-driven faith of the vigilante minds that shoot first and ask questions never.
* All the religions of Abraham have outrageous pronouncements tucked away in their hallowed texts which both inspire extremists and abhor critics. That’s the problem with literal interpretation of texts of any kind, including the Christian Bible. Literal interpretations can be recipes and justifications for heinous crimes against humanity, all in the name of God.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Swallowing More Than We Chew
America is now fearful enough to make blessing counters seem almost obsolete. There is the fear of global warming, the fear of Al-Qaeda, the fear of the growing deficit, the fear of unemployment, the fear of inflation, the fear of deflation, the fear of rising taxes, and the fear of fear itself. There is, in fact, enough fear out there to make a fear-monger blush.
The latest news polls indicate that the American public, in increasing numbers, fears the President of the United States is a Muslim, even though he has insisted he is a Christian over and over again. Well, they don’t exactly fear it: they want to make him a Muslim so they can loathe him. It’s not as if we have to invent fears in this fearful age in order to keep the fear index uncomfortably high. There are enough fact-based fears to keep us rational folks busy as it is. But there is something contagious about fear: the more we fear, the more it seems to spread. When FDR proclaimed: “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself” he was stating as absolute truth our tendency to exaggerate. Most of our fears are unfounded or at least much greater than reality would suggest.
Fear is the most effective self-fulfilling prophecy humankind has ever adopted. We have a greater capacity for fear than almost anything else. Once fear gets going, it is hard to control it. It is like a hot air balloon on a windy day. When it takes off, you have no idea where it will land.
One such fear being fanned by certain believers is the fear of national debt. Thanks to the Bush tax policies, the Iraq War, the War in Afghanistan, the bank bailouts, the government takeover of GM, the stimulus package, and the Great Recession, the American national debt is now measured in trillions of dollars, not just billions. For those with valuable assets, the debt is the greater fear. For those who are unemployed, the lack of available jobs is the greater fear. To the environmentalist, global warming and continued degradation of the environment are the greatest fears. Since we cannot seem to agree what the greatest fear is, perhaps what we need is a national fear inventory or poll to assess what our fear priorities really are and begin addressing them accordingly. Otherwise, we will remain in a paralyzed state of generalized fear with no prospects of working our way toward some degree of fear reduction. I realize a state of national serenity is a utopian dream, but efforts toward fear reduction are the practical steps we can take as a country, once we have identified our fear priorities.
America has always been a faith-based nation. Not only is it still highly religious in nature, it puts faith in the beliefs of various economic philosophers who offer contradictory solutions to man’s economic problems. Some American economists insist that Keynes is the guy to follow while others worship Adam Smith. Whatever economic philosopher you align with, their theories are simply beliefs wrung through the uncertain wringer of rational thought and assume an uncertain understanding of human nature. If human behavior were predictable and rational, we would not have the need for philosophers, who, along with scientists, give us the best available tools for understanding ourselves and our world. And yet, we are a far cry from fully understanding human nature any time soon.
Our inclination to put faith in something is our national propensity. Our faith, in turn, sets the stage for an outbreak of fear. Rather than doing the hard work of honing rational tools, we rely on faith and fear to govern our lives. They are two of the most primitive and irrational behavior modes that trace their roots back not only to the cave but to the species that gave birth to us. We would rather throw our hat into the ring of perceived purity and perfection than do the hard rational work of incremental progress. Scientists do the latter; faith-healers do the former.
Right now one issue America is grappling with, and one driven in some circles by irrational fear, is the building of a Muslim cultural center near Ground Zero in New York City. Rather than dealing with the fact that Al Qaeda does not represent mainstream Islam any more than the Ku Klux Klan represents mainstream Christianity, some Americans find it easier to demonize the entirety of a world religion and thereby play into the hands of Osama Bin Laden rather than do the relatively easy task of separating extremist elements from the otherwise benign elements of the mainstream faith. But no: those who put all their eggs in one basket will gladly do the same for others.
On the other hand, one could argue that all religions represent an irrational response to life’s vicissitudes and therefore should be avoided in favor of a more rational approach. But a ban on religion would be as successful as the War on Drugs or Prohibition. Taboo has never served as a deterrent but rather as a magnet. People need to choose to be rational, not forced.
Smart people diversify their investment portfolios. They would be wise to do the same with their beliefs and ideas. Rather than latch on to the next fad, the next faith or fear monger, the next fabulous offer, or the next fib sold as fact, maybe we ought to start educating ourselves using the best available information gleaned by the use of rational tools rather than continue to backslide further down the evolutionary track through lazy and listless reliance on faith and fear. That starts with broadening our sources of information beyond those which give us false comfort and exercising the tools that a lot of hard work exercised by previous generations has honed and made available to our brains.
One of the greatest epidemics of our time is physical obesity. Reason would dictate that getting fat is a bad idea. Our lives are shortened, our health is compromised, and our health care costs are rising as a result of this epidemic. No reasonable person would choose to be obese. I would contend that we are also suffering from an obesity of mind. We are becoming a nation of fat-heads, full of false certainty and empty thoughts, just as our bodies are full of fast food and empty calories. The next generation of children will be at even greater risk of suffering from both physical and mental obesity. We need to start exercising our whole beings, not just our bodies, and start feeding ourselves with truly wholesome food as well as truly wholesome food for thought. A diet of faith and fear is just another form of fast food. In more ways than one, we are what and how we eat.
The latest news polls indicate that the American public, in increasing numbers, fears the President of the United States is a Muslim, even though he has insisted he is a Christian over and over again. Well, they don’t exactly fear it: they want to make him a Muslim so they can loathe him. It’s not as if we have to invent fears in this fearful age in order to keep the fear index uncomfortably high. There are enough fact-based fears to keep us rational folks busy as it is. But there is something contagious about fear: the more we fear, the more it seems to spread. When FDR proclaimed: “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself” he was stating as absolute truth our tendency to exaggerate. Most of our fears are unfounded or at least much greater than reality would suggest.
Fear is the most effective self-fulfilling prophecy humankind has ever adopted. We have a greater capacity for fear than almost anything else. Once fear gets going, it is hard to control it. It is like a hot air balloon on a windy day. When it takes off, you have no idea where it will land.
One such fear being fanned by certain believers is the fear of national debt. Thanks to the Bush tax policies, the Iraq War, the War in Afghanistan, the bank bailouts, the government takeover of GM, the stimulus package, and the Great Recession, the American national debt is now measured in trillions of dollars, not just billions. For those with valuable assets, the debt is the greater fear. For those who are unemployed, the lack of available jobs is the greater fear. To the environmentalist, global warming and continued degradation of the environment are the greatest fears. Since we cannot seem to agree what the greatest fear is, perhaps what we need is a national fear inventory or poll to assess what our fear priorities really are and begin addressing them accordingly. Otherwise, we will remain in a paralyzed state of generalized fear with no prospects of working our way toward some degree of fear reduction. I realize a state of national serenity is a utopian dream, but efforts toward fear reduction are the practical steps we can take as a country, once we have identified our fear priorities.
America has always been a faith-based nation. Not only is it still highly religious in nature, it puts faith in the beliefs of various economic philosophers who offer contradictory solutions to man’s economic problems. Some American economists insist that Keynes is the guy to follow while others worship Adam Smith. Whatever economic philosopher you align with, their theories are simply beliefs wrung through the uncertain wringer of rational thought and assume an uncertain understanding of human nature. If human behavior were predictable and rational, we would not have the need for philosophers, who, along with scientists, give us the best available tools for understanding ourselves and our world. And yet, we are a far cry from fully understanding human nature any time soon.
Our inclination to put faith in something is our national propensity. Our faith, in turn, sets the stage for an outbreak of fear. Rather than doing the hard work of honing rational tools, we rely on faith and fear to govern our lives. They are two of the most primitive and irrational behavior modes that trace their roots back not only to the cave but to the species that gave birth to us. We would rather throw our hat into the ring of perceived purity and perfection than do the hard rational work of incremental progress. Scientists do the latter; faith-healers do the former.
Right now one issue America is grappling with, and one driven in some circles by irrational fear, is the building of a Muslim cultural center near Ground Zero in New York City. Rather than dealing with the fact that Al Qaeda does not represent mainstream Islam any more than the Ku Klux Klan represents mainstream Christianity, some Americans find it easier to demonize the entirety of a world religion and thereby play into the hands of Osama Bin Laden rather than do the relatively easy task of separating extremist elements from the otherwise benign elements of the mainstream faith. But no: those who put all their eggs in one basket will gladly do the same for others.
On the other hand, one could argue that all religions represent an irrational response to life’s vicissitudes and therefore should be avoided in favor of a more rational approach. But a ban on religion would be as successful as the War on Drugs or Prohibition. Taboo has never served as a deterrent but rather as a magnet. People need to choose to be rational, not forced.
Smart people diversify their investment portfolios. They would be wise to do the same with their beliefs and ideas. Rather than latch on to the next fad, the next faith or fear monger, the next fabulous offer, or the next fib sold as fact, maybe we ought to start educating ourselves using the best available information gleaned by the use of rational tools rather than continue to backslide further down the evolutionary track through lazy and listless reliance on faith and fear. That starts with broadening our sources of information beyond those which give us false comfort and exercising the tools that a lot of hard work exercised by previous generations has honed and made available to our brains.
One of the greatest epidemics of our time is physical obesity. Reason would dictate that getting fat is a bad idea. Our lives are shortened, our health is compromised, and our health care costs are rising as a result of this epidemic. No reasonable person would choose to be obese. I would contend that we are also suffering from an obesity of mind. We are becoming a nation of fat-heads, full of false certainty and empty thoughts, just as our bodies are full of fast food and empty calories. The next generation of children will be at even greater risk of suffering from both physical and mental obesity. We need to start exercising our whole beings, not just our bodies, and start feeding ourselves with truly wholesome food as well as truly wholesome food for thought. A diet of faith and fear is just another form of fast food. In more ways than one, we are what and how we eat.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Monotheism and the Culture of Absolutes
I have been reading James Joyce’s Ulysses with a small group of retired men in the small western town of Crestone, Colorado. Crestone used to be a mining town in the 19th Century. Today, it is the locus of spiritual retreats representing most of the world’s religions. Some of the men have connections with one or more spiritual organizations while others do not. The discussions have turned out to be one of the highlights of each week for all of us.
Because the novel follows loosely the story of ancient Ulysses (or Odysseus, if you use the Greek rather than Latin name) the notion that man, in ancient Greece, interacted with many gods and often found himself in conflict with them or having to please more than one made life more complex and confusing at times. Seldom did ancient man find himself serving or reacting to one god alone. He had to adapt to the demands of various gods as he encountered them. Man had to be flexible and inventive in order to survive his hostile world. His religion reflected that “reality.”
Today a large percentage of the world has concentrated the powers of the gods into a single entity, a single god. Although there are a variety of those single gods, for the most part the monotheisms (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, for example) believe in a sole god. They believe their god is the only god, and that any others are either imposters or nonexistent. They may tolerate the existence of someone else’s god, but they do not believe in it.
What happens when you put all your spiritual “eggs in one basket “is you make yourself vulnerable to the concept of the Absolute. One way becomes the only way. Things become black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. Power gets concentrated into an absolute power. Once this concept of the absolute takes root, it is able to spread to all other spheres of thinking. An absolute religious god can give rise to an absolute economic or social one. The mind set can be transferable. This notion is the thesis of a great little classic by Eric Hoffer called The True Believer.
The founding fathers of America saw this problem of concentrated religious power. They saw that America was composed of all sorts of religious sects, many of them allegedly escaping persecuting regimes in Europe, but in reality they themselves were often so “pure” in their beliefs and practices that they had little tolerance for any other beliefs. Even Roger Williams’ colony of Providence Plantations which opened its doors to Jews as well as various Protestant sects would not admit Papists (Catholics). (Ironically, it turns out Catholicism is the major religion represented in Rhode Island today.)
Most of the founding fathers were, to one degree or another, Deists, a term which is foreign to most 21st Century Americans. Deists were not Christians. Deists believed that a supreme being created the universe but that by using reason and the observation of nature man could ascertain truth without the need of faith or organized religion. While the Deists were technically monotheists, they did not organize and codify around that concept to the extent that a hardened religious doctrine evolved from it, as has happened with orthodox aspects of monotheistic religions. In other words, it was a way of thinking about the world rather than a doctrine. Those founders who either claimed to be Deists or were influenced by Deism were Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, possibly Alexander Hamilton as well as less famous figures like Cornelius Harnett, Gouvenor Morris, and Hugh Williamson.
In short, fundamentalist Protestant thinking did not play a major role in the construction of the U.S. Constitution. It was reason that dominated the discussion. The whole balance of powers and checks and balances that were woven into that document was intended to ensure that no concentration of power could take place in any branch of government. Absolute power of any kind was something to be avoided or held in check.
Today in America there are no dominant religious gods except perhaps in the Bible Belts of the South. As an example of how the South is different, the Texas state school board just recently decided to subtract Thomas Jefferson from the list of influential figures that inspired revolutions in the 18th and 19th Centuries because he introduced the phrase “separation of church and state.”
During the 19th and 20th Centuries the Protestant god dominated the country and was used to inspire such fervors as Manifest Destiny in the 1840s and 1850s and Prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1950s Joseph McCarthy latched on to an issue which initially and fervently appealed to his fellow Roman Catholics: the communist witch hunt. That issue brought the 20 percent of Americans who were Roman Catholic into the mainstream of religiously inspired causes embraced by a large segment of the Protestant mainstream and paved the way for the country’s acceptance of its first Roman Catholic President, John F. Kennedy in 1960.
However, although there are no nationally dominant gods, that does not prevent groups of Americans from promoting their gods as absolutes whenever possible. Whether it is the god of fundamentalist Christianity, the god of free enterprise, the god of government regulation, the god of anti-abortion, or the god of medical marijuana, America is full of folks who try to push their gods to dominance. Therefore, the founding fathers knew what they were about. Let us hope that this cauldron of vigorous monotheisms can still be transformed into a melting pot of ideas and a living, responsive but responsible set of laws rather than reducing itself to a one stock soup of narrow belief.
Because the novel follows loosely the story of ancient Ulysses (or Odysseus, if you use the Greek rather than Latin name) the notion that man, in ancient Greece, interacted with many gods and often found himself in conflict with them or having to please more than one made life more complex and confusing at times. Seldom did ancient man find himself serving or reacting to one god alone. He had to adapt to the demands of various gods as he encountered them. Man had to be flexible and inventive in order to survive his hostile world. His religion reflected that “reality.”
Today a large percentage of the world has concentrated the powers of the gods into a single entity, a single god. Although there are a variety of those single gods, for the most part the monotheisms (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, for example) believe in a sole god. They believe their god is the only god, and that any others are either imposters or nonexistent. They may tolerate the existence of someone else’s god, but they do not believe in it.
What happens when you put all your spiritual “eggs in one basket “is you make yourself vulnerable to the concept of the Absolute. One way becomes the only way. Things become black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. Power gets concentrated into an absolute power. Once this concept of the absolute takes root, it is able to spread to all other spheres of thinking. An absolute religious god can give rise to an absolute economic or social one. The mind set can be transferable. This notion is the thesis of a great little classic by Eric Hoffer called The True Believer.
The founding fathers of America saw this problem of concentrated religious power. They saw that America was composed of all sorts of religious sects, many of them allegedly escaping persecuting regimes in Europe, but in reality they themselves were often so “pure” in their beliefs and practices that they had little tolerance for any other beliefs. Even Roger Williams’ colony of Providence Plantations which opened its doors to Jews as well as various Protestant sects would not admit Papists (Catholics). (Ironically, it turns out Catholicism is the major religion represented in Rhode Island today.)
Most of the founding fathers were, to one degree or another, Deists, a term which is foreign to most 21st Century Americans. Deists were not Christians. Deists believed that a supreme being created the universe but that by using reason and the observation of nature man could ascertain truth without the need of faith or organized religion. While the Deists were technically monotheists, they did not organize and codify around that concept to the extent that a hardened religious doctrine evolved from it, as has happened with orthodox aspects of monotheistic religions. In other words, it was a way of thinking about the world rather than a doctrine. Those founders who either claimed to be Deists or were influenced by Deism were Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, possibly Alexander Hamilton as well as less famous figures like Cornelius Harnett, Gouvenor Morris, and Hugh Williamson.
In short, fundamentalist Protestant thinking did not play a major role in the construction of the U.S. Constitution. It was reason that dominated the discussion. The whole balance of powers and checks and balances that were woven into that document was intended to ensure that no concentration of power could take place in any branch of government. Absolute power of any kind was something to be avoided or held in check.
Today in America there are no dominant religious gods except perhaps in the Bible Belts of the South. As an example of how the South is different, the Texas state school board just recently decided to subtract Thomas Jefferson from the list of influential figures that inspired revolutions in the 18th and 19th Centuries because he introduced the phrase “separation of church and state.”
During the 19th and 20th Centuries the Protestant god dominated the country and was used to inspire such fervors as Manifest Destiny in the 1840s and 1850s and Prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1950s Joseph McCarthy latched on to an issue which initially and fervently appealed to his fellow Roman Catholics: the communist witch hunt. That issue brought the 20 percent of Americans who were Roman Catholic into the mainstream of religiously inspired causes embraced by a large segment of the Protestant mainstream and paved the way for the country’s acceptance of its first Roman Catholic President, John F. Kennedy in 1960.
However, although there are no nationally dominant gods, that does not prevent groups of Americans from promoting their gods as absolutes whenever possible. Whether it is the god of fundamentalist Christianity, the god of free enterprise, the god of government regulation, the god of anti-abortion, or the god of medical marijuana, America is full of folks who try to push their gods to dominance. Therefore, the founding fathers knew what they were about. Let us hope that this cauldron of vigorous monotheisms can still be transformed into a melting pot of ideas and a living, responsive but responsible set of laws rather than reducing itself to a one stock soup of narrow belief.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
LeBron James: Friend or Foe?
What did LeBron James do when he became a Cavalier? He appointed his best friends from high school his managers. What did he do this weekend? He attended a friend’s wedding: Carmelo Anthony’s. What motivated him to join the Miami Heat? Two friends with whom he played on the Olympic team were either there or going there, and he saw a chance to be with his friends and, of course, a chance to win an NBA championship.
Friendship has always dominated LeBron’s ethos. From the time he was a young boy living a hard life with a single parent, friendship was paramount. Moving around so much in childhood, he learned to make friends quickly and to use basketball skills as a means to do so. Loyalty has always been his strong suit, but loyalty to real friends, not fans or cities or franchises, has been his history. It holds true today. Yes, LeBron is looking to use his skills in the pursuit of an NBA ring, but he would rather do it with true friends than by himself, which was both the history and prospect in Cleveland. Should he be faulted for that? I think not.
His handlers, who happen to be his friends, were not apparently cognizant of the backlash the ESPN “The Decision” program would create. It was all done in very poor taste and clearly choreographed by either a cynical cretin or a bumbling buffoon. It left the whole production doomed to not the benefit but the liability of doubt. Sometimes friends can be more hurtful than foes.
Still, LeBron’s greatest asset, his role as friend, will remain his strongest value. For someone who, as a child, spent a lot of time wandering, he has a great need for a sense of belonging. And home-boys play an important role in establishing his home. Dan Gilbert, the owner of the Cavaliers, was just that: an owner. No self-respecting black man in America wants to see himself as owned, and that is the message Gilbert conveys in his rants. The theme is essentially “I invested in you, and you turned into my junk bond.” That is not exactly the kind of bond LeBron cherishes.
I wish LeBron good fortune in Miami, not because I live there and root for the Heat. (I am a Nuggets fan and root for Carmelo Anthony, Birdman, and Billups.) I wish him well because I can imagine how much friendship means to LeBron, given his rootless beginning. The roots he plants in friendship today are far more important than the roots of his fans or the rants of his owners. We all need roots. Isn’t it great that he gets to choose them and plant them himself.
Friendship has always dominated LeBron’s ethos. From the time he was a young boy living a hard life with a single parent, friendship was paramount. Moving around so much in childhood, he learned to make friends quickly and to use basketball skills as a means to do so. Loyalty has always been his strong suit, but loyalty to real friends, not fans or cities or franchises, has been his history. It holds true today. Yes, LeBron is looking to use his skills in the pursuit of an NBA ring, but he would rather do it with true friends than by himself, which was both the history and prospect in Cleveland. Should he be faulted for that? I think not.
His handlers, who happen to be his friends, were not apparently cognizant of the backlash the ESPN “The Decision” program would create. It was all done in very poor taste and clearly choreographed by either a cynical cretin or a bumbling buffoon. It left the whole production doomed to not the benefit but the liability of doubt. Sometimes friends can be more hurtful than foes.
Still, LeBron’s greatest asset, his role as friend, will remain his strongest value. For someone who, as a child, spent a lot of time wandering, he has a great need for a sense of belonging. And home-boys play an important role in establishing his home. Dan Gilbert, the owner of the Cavaliers, was just that: an owner. No self-respecting black man in America wants to see himself as owned, and that is the message Gilbert conveys in his rants. The theme is essentially “I invested in you, and you turned into my junk bond.” That is not exactly the kind of bond LeBron cherishes.
I wish LeBron good fortune in Miami, not because I live there and root for the Heat. (I am a Nuggets fan and root for Carmelo Anthony, Birdman, and Billups.) I wish him well because I can imagine how much friendship means to LeBron, given his rootless beginning. The roots he plants in friendship today are far more important than the roots of his fans or the rants of his owners. We all need roots. Isn’t it great that he gets to choose them and plant them himself.
Turning Down the Heat
This is turning into a long hot summer for America. The East Coast just went through a record-breaking heat wave; La Nina is forecast for the Pacific which usually fries the Midwest; collars are hot all over the Gulf Coast, thanks to the man-made oil-gushing disaster; Main Street is still hot about Wall Street; Republicans are hoping the country will remain hot about bailouts through November; and the Democrats are hot about the blame they are getting for unemployment stagnation, even though the paternity of the Great Recession is easily attributable to the previous administration. Cleveland is hot that Lebron James did not turn down the Heat and remain in Cleveland; and hurricane season is heating up.
Summer is a time of betrayal and intrigue, usually limited to beach novels. Not this summer. Starting with Lebron’s betrayal of Cleveland (but not his dreams and friendships), tossing in the spy exchange just orchestrated by the Russians and the United States, adding the development of the “Spy Pigeon” Drone our military now has available, plus the report that Google Street View has been spying “inadvertently” on American citizens, (no wonder China has agreed to restore its license), Fox should be working on a new reality program called: “Can You Trust a Fifth Grader?”
“Under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. The McCarthy witch hunt for communists had a lot to do with encouraging our country’s leaders to adopt the phrase. Clearly, we could not trust our neighbors to be fully American and not communist, so we came up with an ironclad theocratic phrase to confront the Iron Curtain. Today, given the economic uncertainty of the times, we have become suspicious of anyone and everyone, especially government. We expect government to solve our national problems, and yet we want it to be less intrusive in our lives. We want it to be effective, but when it is not, we want it smaller. Our trust in ourselves as a nation is so low, we want to get rid of or blame the latest wave of immigrants who always, over time, add to rather than subtract from the growth and goodness of our nation.
The spies we just rounded up accomplished nothing while they were here, except that they integrated themselves so successfully they had their neighbors and co-workers completely fooled, but not the FBI or CIA. Those are government institutions, by the way. Want to shrink those agencies now?
Just maybe it is time to renew our trust in our government, and our trust in ourselves to be generous, positive, hopeful, and adaptable. Maybe it is time to put all the anger, mistrust, and misunderstanding aside and renew our pledge of allegiance to the idea of America, not as it is but as it should be: inclusive, magnanimous, and moving in a positive direction. Yes, government should be more efficient and less costly, but I would rather have it strong enough to ferret out spies in our midst as well as put corporations and banks in their place when they start serving only their own short-term interests instead of the greater good. Rather than limit the institutions we can with our vote, we better think twice about what power they can wield on our behalf in the face of spies, BP, and Goldman Sachs. Making government less powerful will only play into the hands of those who would control it if they could and let loose a limitless concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the few, rather than spread among the people.
The heat is on, and it is time to cool our heads and warm our hearts, rather than letting the reverse rule the day.
Summer is a time of betrayal and intrigue, usually limited to beach novels. Not this summer. Starting with Lebron’s betrayal of Cleveland (but not his dreams and friendships), tossing in the spy exchange just orchestrated by the Russians and the United States, adding the development of the “Spy Pigeon” Drone our military now has available, plus the report that Google Street View has been spying “inadvertently” on American citizens, (no wonder China has agreed to restore its license), Fox should be working on a new reality program called: “Can You Trust a Fifth Grader?”
“Under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. The McCarthy witch hunt for communists had a lot to do with encouraging our country’s leaders to adopt the phrase. Clearly, we could not trust our neighbors to be fully American and not communist, so we came up with an ironclad theocratic phrase to confront the Iron Curtain. Today, given the economic uncertainty of the times, we have become suspicious of anyone and everyone, especially government. We expect government to solve our national problems, and yet we want it to be less intrusive in our lives. We want it to be effective, but when it is not, we want it smaller. Our trust in ourselves as a nation is so low, we want to get rid of or blame the latest wave of immigrants who always, over time, add to rather than subtract from the growth and goodness of our nation.
The spies we just rounded up accomplished nothing while they were here, except that they integrated themselves so successfully they had their neighbors and co-workers completely fooled, but not the FBI or CIA. Those are government institutions, by the way. Want to shrink those agencies now?
Just maybe it is time to renew our trust in our government, and our trust in ourselves to be generous, positive, hopeful, and adaptable. Maybe it is time to put all the anger, mistrust, and misunderstanding aside and renew our pledge of allegiance to the idea of America, not as it is but as it should be: inclusive, magnanimous, and moving in a positive direction. Yes, government should be more efficient and less costly, but I would rather have it strong enough to ferret out spies in our midst as well as put corporations and banks in their place when they start serving only their own short-term interests instead of the greater good. Rather than limit the institutions we can with our vote, we better think twice about what power they can wield on our behalf in the face of spies, BP, and Goldman Sachs. Making government less powerful will only play into the hands of those who would control it if they could and let loose a limitless concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the few, rather than spread among the people.
The heat is on, and it is time to cool our heads and warm our hearts, rather than letting the reverse rule the day.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
The Force
(with apologies to Dylan Thomas)
The force that through the hedge funds drives the bet
Drives my car’s wheels; that blasts the I.E.D.
Is my annuity.
And I am dumb to tell myself
My soul is lost to the same hungry fever.
The force that spews the oil from the pipe
Drives my blood cold and coats the coastal tides
Is my slick slave.
And I am dumb to mouth unto its slime
How at the gushing well we all suck.
The hand that casts the vote pumps the gas
Dials the broker who buys the BP stock
That drills for more
And I am dumb to tell the tarball force
How it rolls on from sea to slippery sea.
The soaring eagle becomes the tar-draped pelican
The sanctuary is made a mortuary
All life destroyed.
And I am dumb to tell the lusty marshy life
How it is lost to human greed for profit margins.
And I am dumb to tell the womb turned tomb
How through my hair goes the same oily comb.
The force that through the hedge funds drives the bet
Drives my car’s wheels; that blasts the I.E.D.
Is my annuity.
And I am dumb to tell myself
My soul is lost to the same hungry fever.
The force that spews the oil from the pipe
Drives my blood cold and coats the coastal tides
Is my slick slave.
And I am dumb to mouth unto its slime
How at the gushing well we all suck.
The hand that casts the vote pumps the gas
Dials the broker who buys the BP stock
That drills for more
And I am dumb to tell the tarball force
How it rolls on from sea to slippery sea.
The soaring eagle becomes the tar-draped pelican
The sanctuary is made a mortuary
All life destroyed.
And I am dumb to tell the lusty marshy life
How it is lost to human greed for profit margins.
And I am dumb to tell the womb turned tomb
How through my hair goes the same oily comb.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Dick Cheney: Go to Guy By
With all the head-scratching BP executives and the federal government have been doing about the Gulf Oil Disaster (G.O.D.), I wonder why no one has called for the former ace oil executive/clandestine way paver Dick Cheney. No one combines the skills of back room deal-making and oil drilling expertise better than the former CEO of Halliburton and ex-VP of the United States. Even if he has not been called to duty, it is surprising he hasn’t contributed his expertise by joining Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, with practical solutions to this blip on the screen of an otherwise error-proof and risk-free industry. Dick and Bobby could be a great team, bad-mouthing the way too cautious deliberations of the White House while they roll up their sleeves in front of the TV cameras and get to work saving the Louisiana coastline.
Dick Cheney, even when he is after small game, can bag a big game trophy with his fire-ready-aim approach. He has shown that skill while quail-hunting. As VP of the United States of Halliburton, he was able to acquire for his former company a no bid contract for a substantial part of the non-military support needs in the Iraq War. If he can do that, he surely can plug a little leak in the Gulf. After all, it is only a small hole in the floor, and with all that oil going to waste, which nobody seems to be focused on, something ought to be done and done now.
Therefore, I nominate Dick Cheney to be head of a federally appointed task force to solve the G.O.D. damn problem. Why, he probably would come up with a solution that would not only plug the hole, but take care of reducing another expensive and deteriorating inventory, namely nuclear stockpiles and waste. Instead of spending all that money on dismantling nuclear missiles and burying atomic waste under Yucca Mountain, why not plug the damn hole with some really heavy stuff, not just so-called “mud” that has nothing more than some classified chemicals in its composition. Send a nuclear missile or two down that hole or pump some really heavy mud down in there with some real density to it and then sneer at those hapless environmentalists who have the TV networks all worked up about a few pelicans. Hell, you can’t even eat pelican!
I just can’t understand why we haven’t heard anything on this one from Dick Cheney. He has thrown in his two cents on a number of other issues since he left office. Why would he hold back now when the issue is one he should know more about than say how Obama is soft on terrorism. Maybe he’s off hunting somewhere. Or maybe he’s lying low because of some deals he hatched back in 2001 with the oil and gas industry that enabled a reckless oil drilling culture to develop that led inevitably to the G.O.D.
Dick Cheney, even when he is after small game, can bag a big game trophy with his fire-ready-aim approach. He has shown that skill while quail-hunting. As VP of the United States of Halliburton, he was able to acquire for his former company a no bid contract for a substantial part of the non-military support needs in the Iraq War. If he can do that, he surely can plug a little leak in the Gulf. After all, it is only a small hole in the floor, and with all that oil going to waste, which nobody seems to be focused on, something ought to be done and done now.
Therefore, I nominate Dick Cheney to be head of a federally appointed task force to solve the G.O.D. damn problem. Why, he probably would come up with a solution that would not only plug the hole, but take care of reducing another expensive and deteriorating inventory, namely nuclear stockpiles and waste. Instead of spending all that money on dismantling nuclear missiles and burying atomic waste under Yucca Mountain, why not plug the damn hole with some really heavy stuff, not just so-called “mud” that has nothing more than some classified chemicals in its composition. Send a nuclear missile or two down that hole or pump some really heavy mud down in there with some real density to it and then sneer at those hapless environmentalists who have the TV networks all worked up about a few pelicans. Hell, you can’t even eat pelican!
I just can’t understand why we haven’t heard anything on this one from Dick Cheney. He has thrown in his two cents on a number of other issues since he left office. Why would he hold back now when the issue is one he should know more about than say how Obama is soft on terrorism. Maybe he’s off hunting somewhere. Or maybe he’s lying low because of some deals he hatched back in 2001 with the oil and gas industry that enabled a reckless oil drilling culture to develop that led inevitably to the G.O.D.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Myth Rules America
America is a nation of believers. Americans may not always be right, but they are seldom in doubt. The current mood of the country is that experience is nothing; change is everything. If at first you don’t succeed, try something else. We are now like men on Christmas Eve, which today means pushing the various buttons on electronic toys until we get them to work. It is all trial and error. It is a wilderness to conquer, not a manual to study. The first time politicians displease us because they have had to make a tough decision, off with their heads.
Tolerance is a product of good times; impatience is a product of bad. Belief strengthens in the face of uncertainty; doubt subsides. We are a decisive people who take action, often before we have thought very hard. Intellectuals think hard, and that leads to nowhere otherwise known as complexity, like that bridge Sarah Palin referenced throughout her VP campaign. We don’t trust complexity, because it smacks of obfuscation. It is a brier patch that no lawn mower can make into a green carpet. We want our lawns spotless; we want our universe well-ordered.
Americans know what is right, and nothing Washington does is ever quite right. Instead, it is mostly or completely wrong. Everything congress puts out looks like a Trojan horse or Mark Twain’s definition of a camel: a horse put together by a committee. A congressional “horse,” no matter what, is never a winner. It is mostly a construct that is disdained by the minority members and passed with held noses by the majority. The recent health care bill was a Trojan horse to both extremes: one group would not even look the gift horse in the mouth and the others were focused on how much the other end produced.
All of this is the product of mutually opposing myths: government can and should steer the American people; government can and should get out of the way of the American people. The libertarians think they have the answer by calling for as little government as possible. Liberals believe that government can serve the people well if only the lobbyists would go away.
As David Brooks pointed out on the News Hour Friday night (May 21, 2010), the centrists have no discernible platform; the moderates have no place. Compromise is corruption. Purity is all. If you’re in the middle, you are merely indecisive. Both sets of extremists insist you are part of the solution, or you are part of the problem. A pragmatist, by definition, prostitutes principles.
America seems to default to principles, even if the principle of by the people, for the people turns out to be by the rich, for the rich. And our principles are faith based, not rooted in actual fact. Libertarians trust self-interest as the governing principle; liberals trust community. We’re either all batters at the plate, or we’re all rowers in a boat. Either the parts are greater than the whole, or the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
No one is right on this, except the folks somewhere in the middle, who see life as a balancing act between individual needs and the greater good. We would surely perish as a people if we all became Gandhi or the guy whose operating principle is: “He who dies with the most toys wins.” Just as a good marriage depends on compromise, not do or die, so does a good society.
Let’s get back to the middle ground where the meeting of minds takes place, rather than trying to live on the wilderness edge of extremism where self-destruction lurks and people shout of freedom out of fear of losing what they have rather than striving for a greater goodness. That means electing and supporting people as our representatives who will do the next right thing, disdain personal gain, and serve the people, not the lobbyists and the corporate giants.
Tolerance is a product of good times; impatience is a product of bad. Belief strengthens in the face of uncertainty; doubt subsides. We are a decisive people who take action, often before we have thought very hard. Intellectuals think hard, and that leads to nowhere otherwise known as complexity, like that bridge Sarah Palin referenced throughout her VP campaign. We don’t trust complexity, because it smacks of obfuscation. It is a brier patch that no lawn mower can make into a green carpet. We want our lawns spotless; we want our universe well-ordered.
Americans know what is right, and nothing Washington does is ever quite right. Instead, it is mostly or completely wrong. Everything congress puts out looks like a Trojan horse or Mark Twain’s definition of a camel: a horse put together by a committee. A congressional “horse,” no matter what, is never a winner. It is mostly a construct that is disdained by the minority members and passed with held noses by the majority. The recent health care bill was a Trojan horse to both extremes: one group would not even look the gift horse in the mouth and the others were focused on how much the other end produced.
All of this is the product of mutually opposing myths: government can and should steer the American people; government can and should get out of the way of the American people. The libertarians think they have the answer by calling for as little government as possible. Liberals believe that government can serve the people well if only the lobbyists would go away.
As David Brooks pointed out on the News Hour Friday night (May 21, 2010), the centrists have no discernible platform; the moderates have no place. Compromise is corruption. Purity is all. If you’re in the middle, you are merely indecisive. Both sets of extremists insist you are part of the solution, or you are part of the problem. A pragmatist, by definition, prostitutes principles.
America seems to default to principles, even if the principle of by the people, for the people turns out to be by the rich, for the rich. And our principles are faith based, not rooted in actual fact. Libertarians trust self-interest as the governing principle; liberals trust community. We’re either all batters at the plate, or we’re all rowers in a boat. Either the parts are greater than the whole, or the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
No one is right on this, except the folks somewhere in the middle, who see life as a balancing act between individual needs and the greater good. We would surely perish as a people if we all became Gandhi or the guy whose operating principle is: “He who dies with the most toys wins.” Just as a good marriage depends on compromise, not do or die, so does a good society.
Let’s get back to the middle ground where the meeting of minds takes place, rather than trying to live on the wilderness edge of extremism where self-destruction lurks and people shout of freedom out of fear of losing what they have rather than striving for a greater goodness. That means electing and supporting people as our representatives who will do the next right thing, disdain personal gain, and serve the people, not the lobbyists and the corporate giants.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
The NRA: A Deflection
The stars must be aligning. The constellations are achieving greater resolution. And there is a new one to be seen through our telescopes, or better yet sight-scopes mounted on our high-powered rifles. In honor of the National Rifle Association’s annual conference, I felt the need to offer a theory.
The constellation is not the military-industrial complex of the Eisenhower era or the healthcare-insurance-lobby or the real estate-sub-prime mortgage-derivative-credit default swap complex of 2008. No, it is the “Can’t–afford or can’t admit- I-need Viagra-thanks to hormone-injected meat –gun lobby called the NRA.
Here’s how the theory works. Manly men seldom admit to needing a sexual performance enhancing drug to enable their “pistol” to operate effectively, so they deflect their frustration at the government who, they believe, might take away their right to bear arms. Some of them choose to depend on firearms (notice the term and its components: fire-implying heat and arms suggesting appendages) for reliable firepower because their natural firepower appendage no longer works properly. A manly man needs to be able to count on his tools, and when the most precious one fails, he turns his focus to external ones that he can always count on. The most symbolic are those that have the power to destroy (gun) which are the opposite of those that procreate (penis). If he has not lost the biological capacity yet, he is fearful of losing it and therefore stockpiles weapons against the day he actually does find himself “softening.”
One of my favorite sayings is from Oscar Wilde: “All criticism is autobiographical.” When I see the NRA folks hooting and hollering about the 2nd Amendment and how the government is going to take away their guns, I now see this phenomenon as another example of Wilde’s observation. What the gun folks are really mad about is their own loss of sexual virility.
My theory about this epidemic loss which has resulted in one of the most lucrative products in the history of the pharmaceutical industry (Viagra, Cialis, etc.) is the growth hormones pumped into commercially produced meat in the United States. Unless you are buying hormone-free meat products or going Vegan (which manly men never would consider) and you are a man, be prepared to see yourself developing female-like breasts growing on your chest and limpness where you wish there were salutes at attention. These are the same hormones that are causing young girls to mature prematurely. Clearly, what gun owners need to do is eat more of what they shoot, so long as they stay away from aiming at very large cattle and people who eat them.
Therefore, the USDA is tacitly approving the emasculation of the American male which results in his compensatory accumulation of firearms and surrogate firepower. Not only is it embarrassing to admit impotence, it is more expensive to buy Viagra than ammunition. Typically, Viagra pills cost $20 a piece whereas you can get a whole box of live ammunition for that amount of money.
Now some population control fanatics might argue that we need to let well enough alone. We may have to begin shooting people just to keep the lid on exponential population expansion, not that we don’t do that already in the name of promoting peace and prosperity around the world. If the USDA starts banning the use of growth hormones in meat, we might have to actually start taking the idea of birth control seriously. But I digress. This was about trying to explain why the NRA folks are so angry.
Now you might say, well, what about the women of the NRA. The Viagra-impotence argument doesn’t hold any water with them. All right, you asked for it. The answer, of course, is penis envy. There is no better symbol of penis envy on the part of women than a picture of a woman holding a gun. Some women wish they had that natural appendage and the privileges of power that go with it, strange as it may seem. They want to be just like men. Their sense of impotence, however, derives from their traditional historical status as second class citizens; and, like those who suffer from any sort of inferiority complex or actual inferior status, they want to compensate for it somehow, and nothing symbolizes power more than a gun, except, of course, that natural and fully functioning appendage attached to a man.
Therefore, that new constellation we can witness if we look long enough through our scopes is the one I mentioned in the first paragraph, which I won’t introduce again here except to say that the NRA could stand for No Reproductive Activity or Never Really Adjusted or No Reasoning Ability or Never Read Anything or Not Rational Americans….
The constellation is not the military-industrial complex of the Eisenhower era or the healthcare-insurance-lobby or the real estate-sub-prime mortgage-derivative-credit default swap complex of 2008. No, it is the “Can’t–afford or can’t admit- I-need Viagra-thanks to hormone-injected meat –gun lobby called the NRA.
Here’s how the theory works. Manly men seldom admit to needing a sexual performance enhancing drug to enable their “pistol” to operate effectively, so they deflect their frustration at the government who, they believe, might take away their right to bear arms. Some of them choose to depend on firearms (notice the term and its components: fire-implying heat and arms suggesting appendages) for reliable firepower because their natural firepower appendage no longer works properly. A manly man needs to be able to count on his tools, and when the most precious one fails, he turns his focus to external ones that he can always count on. The most symbolic are those that have the power to destroy (gun) which are the opposite of those that procreate (penis). If he has not lost the biological capacity yet, he is fearful of losing it and therefore stockpiles weapons against the day he actually does find himself “softening.”
One of my favorite sayings is from Oscar Wilde: “All criticism is autobiographical.” When I see the NRA folks hooting and hollering about the 2nd Amendment and how the government is going to take away their guns, I now see this phenomenon as another example of Wilde’s observation. What the gun folks are really mad about is their own loss of sexual virility.
My theory about this epidemic loss which has resulted in one of the most lucrative products in the history of the pharmaceutical industry (Viagra, Cialis, etc.) is the growth hormones pumped into commercially produced meat in the United States. Unless you are buying hormone-free meat products or going Vegan (which manly men never would consider) and you are a man, be prepared to see yourself developing female-like breasts growing on your chest and limpness where you wish there were salutes at attention. These are the same hormones that are causing young girls to mature prematurely. Clearly, what gun owners need to do is eat more of what they shoot, so long as they stay away from aiming at very large cattle and people who eat them.
Therefore, the USDA is tacitly approving the emasculation of the American male which results in his compensatory accumulation of firearms and surrogate firepower. Not only is it embarrassing to admit impotence, it is more expensive to buy Viagra than ammunition. Typically, Viagra pills cost $20 a piece whereas you can get a whole box of live ammunition for that amount of money.
Now some population control fanatics might argue that we need to let well enough alone. We may have to begin shooting people just to keep the lid on exponential population expansion, not that we don’t do that already in the name of promoting peace and prosperity around the world. If the USDA starts banning the use of growth hormones in meat, we might have to actually start taking the idea of birth control seriously. But I digress. This was about trying to explain why the NRA folks are so angry.
Now you might say, well, what about the women of the NRA. The Viagra-impotence argument doesn’t hold any water with them. All right, you asked for it. The answer, of course, is penis envy. There is no better symbol of penis envy on the part of women than a picture of a woman holding a gun. Some women wish they had that natural appendage and the privileges of power that go with it, strange as it may seem. They want to be just like men. Their sense of impotence, however, derives from their traditional historical status as second class citizens; and, like those who suffer from any sort of inferiority complex or actual inferior status, they want to compensate for it somehow, and nothing symbolizes power more than a gun, except, of course, that natural and fully functioning appendage attached to a man.
Therefore, that new constellation we can witness if we look long enough through our scopes is the one I mentioned in the first paragraph, which I won’t introduce again here except to say that the NRA could stand for No Reproductive Activity or Never Really Adjusted or No Reasoning Ability or Never Read Anything or Not Rational Americans….
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Neanderthals Discovered in Arizona
I just returned from visiting a family member in Arizona over the past weekend. I felt safe from harassment by police enforcing the new laws declaring undocumented folks criminals and human-animal hybrids illegal because I entered the state from the north and confined my stay to the Flagstaff area. As far as I know, I am all right in the documented department but after last week’s announcement by some researchers who have decoded the entire genome of the Neanderthals and found that most folks of European and Asian stock probably have from 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal genes floating in their systems, the second law on hybrids makes me feel a little uneasy. After all, we are not quite sure Neanderthals are classified as humans or merely as some sort of advanced apes, but the combination of the new Arizona law (SB 1307) and the new genetic discovery that most of us white folks carry some percentage of Neanderthal blood in us presents this new hybrid law with something of a challenge.
Of course a further study, say of Democrats and Republicans, might reveal that one party might carry a greater percentage of Neanderthal blood than the other, in which case, a proposal could be made to outlaw the party with the greatest percentage of Neanderthal blood, thereby keeping the human population from being subjected to counter-evolutionary forces that might retard or even reverse human advancement.
My bet is the party with the most Neanderthal blood would be the Republicans. The irony would be that they are the ones who are busy making sure that our blood remains as pure as possible by questioning the legitimacy of Latino presence in the state of Arizona (SB1070), the legitimacy of the U. S. President’s birth certificate (SB 2937), and the close proximity of animals to human fertility labs (SB 1307).
Speaking of President Obama’s pedigree, he undoubtedly carries less Neanderthal blood than any other former president because half of his ancestry is African. According to the Neanderthal genome researchers, Africans contain not even a trace of Neanderthal blood, making them the purest of the purely human.
What the Arizona Republicans really want is for the whole state to become a gated community by spending billions of tax dollars building a wall across its southern border. Only a Neanderthal could come up with such a preposterous construct, so I assume, based on that evidence, that the Republicans have already broken their new SB 1307 law and are therefore no longer qualified to be residents of their own state.
Of course a further study, say of Democrats and Republicans, might reveal that one party might carry a greater percentage of Neanderthal blood than the other, in which case, a proposal could be made to outlaw the party with the greatest percentage of Neanderthal blood, thereby keeping the human population from being subjected to counter-evolutionary forces that might retard or even reverse human advancement.
My bet is the party with the most Neanderthal blood would be the Republicans. The irony would be that they are the ones who are busy making sure that our blood remains as pure as possible by questioning the legitimacy of Latino presence in the state of Arizona (SB1070), the legitimacy of the U. S. President’s birth certificate (SB 2937), and the close proximity of animals to human fertility labs (SB 1307).
Speaking of President Obama’s pedigree, he undoubtedly carries less Neanderthal blood than any other former president because half of his ancestry is African. According to the Neanderthal genome researchers, Africans contain not even a trace of Neanderthal blood, making them the purest of the purely human.
What the Arizona Republicans really want is for the whole state to become a gated community by spending billions of tax dollars building a wall across its southern border. Only a Neanderthal could come up with such a preposterous construct, so I assume, based on that evidence, that the Republicans have already broken their new SB 1307 law and are therefore no longer qualified to be residents of their own state.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
What History We Remember Determines All Our Institutions*
The Arizona legislature and current governor are acting as if their new immigration law is predicated on an almighty firm foundation. However, what they should fear the most is not the undocumented worker but the lawyer who decides to pursue the larger justice of restoring what is now the State of Arizona to its rightful heirs, the ancient tribes of Native Americans who historically roamed that mostly desert territory. Yes, the U.S. won Arizona as part of the settlement with Mexico after the Mexican-American War of 1848 and it justified fighting that war and taking that territory in the name of Manifest Destiny, a doctrine that said it was God’s will that we mostly white U.S. Protestants take that land from the perceived “lesser beings” who occupied it at the time.
The Arizonians who are behind this new illegal immigration law are starting from the premise that they are the rightful owners and legitimate citizens of what is currently called the state of Arizona. However, their legitimacy is based on the rather shallow roots of relatively recent history. That land was first “owned” by various tribes and then occupied by Spanish and eventually Mexican people. Since the U.S. has broken more treaties, especially with Native Americans, than it has ever kept, a long tradition probably carries more moral weight than a U.S. treaty in the larger scheme of things.
To complicate matters further, our Social Security system would probably be bankrupt right now were it not for the contributions to the SS system by undocumented workers who use phony or borrowed SS numbers with no hope of ever receiving a benefit. They, as it were, are keeping the system afloat as we the people sort out how we are going to finance that benefit in the future.
So rather than having law enforcement confront every suspicious Latino it sees in Arizona, it might be wise to count the blessing of the rather dubiously obtained privilege of Arizona citizenship on the part of Anglos and leave sleeping dogs lie. Or maybe count the number of lawyers you have and start worrying which one will find it lucrative enough to go after your historically questionable ownership.
*Modified from Emerson’s English Traits which said, “How man views nature determines all his institutions.”
The Arizonians who are behind this new illegal immigration law are starting from the premise that they are the rightful owners and legitimate citizens of what is currently called the state of Arizona. However, their legitimacy is based on the rather shallow roots of relatively recent history. That land was first “owned” by various tribes and then occupied by Spanish and eventually Mexican people. Since the U.S. has broken more treaties, especially with Native Americans, than it has ever kept, a long tradition probably carries more moral weight than a U.S. treaty in the larger scheme of things.
To complicate matters further, our Social Security system would probably be bankrupt right now were it not for the contributions to the SS system by undocumented workers who use phony or borrowed SS numbers with no hope of ever receiving a benefit. They, as it were, are keeping the system afloat as we the people sort out how we are going to finance that benefit in the future.
So rather than having law enforcement confront every suspicious Latino it sees in Arizona, it might be wise to count the blessing of the rather dubiously obtained privilege of Arizona citizenship on the part of Anglos and leave sleeping dogs lie. Or maybe count the number of lawyers you have and start worrying which one will find it lucrative enough to go after your historically questionable ownership.
*Modified from Emerson’s English Traits which said, “How man views nature determines all his institutions.”
Friday, April 30, 2010
Goldilocks and the Three Banks
Once upon a time there was a pretty young lady whose name was Goldilocks. For her birthday, her grandfather gave her ten dollars and advised her to put it in a safe place where it could grow and become more than just ten dollars. Goldilocks asked her grandfather where that might be, and he said that the best place to take money where it might grow would be to a bank.
Now Goldilocks had saved some other money she had received on previous birthdays as well as her allowance which she earned by doing chores around the house, but she had kept all of her money in her “piggy” bank until now. Actually the piggy bank was in the shape of a small bear symbolic of her namesake’s encounter in the fairy tale. Her total accumulated savings now amounted to $100.00.
So, Goldilocks decided to take her money to the nearest bank, which was a very small local bank in her home town of Bear Bones. When she entered the bank, she was greeted by the President who had his desk in a private office in a corner of the building. The only other people in the bank were the teller behind the counter and Mrs. Ursine who was doing some sort of business with the teller. The bank President recognized Goldilocks as one of the town’s children who walk by his bank on the way to school and introduced himself as Paw Settee.
When Paw asked Goldilocks, “How may I help you?” she asked what kind of instruments he had available so that she could deposit her $100.00 and start earning some interest or dividends from her investment. Paw shook his head and said that the only two instruments he had available were CDs and savings accounts, both of which earned on average a measly .75 % per annum. Goldilocks clearly had higher expectations for her investment, so she thanked Paw and returned home. Clearly the local village bank was too small.
Goldilocks then decided it was time to get on the internet and see what other kinds of banks were out there. She poked around all sorts of sites and decided she would look into two others: one was Bear Stearns, which she initially liked because it had the first same name as her town and sounded sort of familiar. However, low and behold it had disappeared from existence. It had been a much larger bank than her village bank and yet it had disappeared. “Oh my” said little Goldilocks. It must have been like the dinosaurs and become extinct.
While she was looking around the internet she found out that a bear market was not a good thing to have and that a bull market was much more desirable, so she gave up on looking for things that had to do with bears, her favorite animal, and decided to look for things that had more to do with bulls, although she had read about Ferdinand and had heard about bulls rampaging through china shops but she also knew that China was a huge country and had plenty of room for bulls to roam around, but I digress.
Then she happened across a site for a bank named Goldman-Sachs. It sounded quite promising on two counts: It started with the same term her name did, and it sounded as if it must have a lot of money as in sacks of gold. So she tried to get in touch with its CEO, Lloyd Blankfein (whose name Charles Dickens might have chosen for it contains elements associated with Lloyds of London and another concept such as ___________check.) However, she got nothing but a robo-receptionist who went on and on about all the different divisions and products they had available until poor Goldilocks gave up listening and now needed an Aleve.
Later she heard on the news that the federal government was investigating Goldman- Sachs for fraud and deception and that it had received a huge federal bailout because it was too big to fail. After reading about the Bear Stearns extinction, she did not understand how there could be anything larger than a dinosaur but clearly in some people’s minds there were such things. These things larger than dinosaurs were apparently immortal and began to act as if they were, so she decided that she would shop her investments elsewhere. She didn’t want a bank that thought it was God. It was clearly way too big.
Finally, she found a bank that was actually able to serve her long-term interests. It wasn’t the tiny little local bank that had very few offerings and not nearly a broad enough base of investments to withstand a serious recession because all of its income was based on very local loans. It wasn’t so large and so committed to instant profits for itself that it bet against its clients in order to expand its own sphere of influence internationally. It kept its eye on the long view and on serving its clients and its region well. It operated on a human scale and wished to serve generations of citizens, which is to say it was a regional bank with enough territory in its scope to satisfy a hungry bear and a herd of bulls as well as a little Goldilocks who had only a hundred dollars to invest. Little Goldilocks no longer had to worry about being gobbled up by bears or trampled by bulls because the people in her banking world knew and trusted each other. There was no more than two degrees of separation among the subscribers to the regional bank. They all knew someone who knew someone else among the whole banking constituency. It was neither too big to fail nor too small to succeed. It was just right.
The lesson Goldilocks learned from her experience is that the concept of “just right” is not just personal. It is universally human. The problem is that we as humans lose track of scale and either bite off more than we can chew or put ourselves on a diet that cannot possibly sustain us. We lack humility on the one hand and courage or common sense on the other. If only we asked ourselves, “Is this suitable or comfortable or fitting in the long run?” Instead we default to “more must be better” or “self-denial is a virtue” or “I want it now no matter what.” We end up behaving like the bulls and bears we use as symbols instead of the human beings we ultimately want to be and actually are.
Now Goldilocks had saved some other money she had received on previous birthdays as well as her allowance which she earned by doing chores around the house, but she had kept all of her money in her “piggy” bank until now. Actually the piggy bank was in the shape of a small bear symbolic of her namesake’s encounter in the fairy tale. Her total accumulated savings now amounted to $100.00.
So, Goldilocks decided to take her money to the nearest bank, which was a very small local bank in her home town of Bear Bones. When she entered the bank, she was greeted by the President who had his desk in a private office in a corner of the building. The only other people in the bank were the teller behind the counter and Mrs. Ursine who was doing some sort of business with the teller. The bank President recognized Goldilocks as one of the town’s children who walk by his bank on the way to school and introduced himself as Paw Settee.
When Paw asked Goldilocks, “How may I help you?” she asked what kind of instruments he had available so that she could deposit her $100.00 and start earning some interest or dividends from her investment. Paw shook his head and said that the only two instruments he had available were CDs and savings accounts, both of which earned on average a measly .75 % per annum. Goldilocks clearly had higher expectations for her investment, so she thanked Paw and returned home. Clearly the local village bank was too small.
Goldilocks then decided it was time to get on the internet and see what other kinds of banks were out there. She poked around all sorts of sites and decided she would look into two others: one was Bear Stearns, which she initially liked because it had the first same name as her town and sounded sort of familiar. However, low and behold it had disappeared from existence. It had been a much larger bank than her village bank and yet it had disappeared. “Oh my” said little Goldilocks. It must have been like the dinosaurs and become extinct.
While she was looking around the internet she found out that a bear market was not a good thing to have and that a bull market was much more desirable, so she gave up on looking for things that had to do with bears, her favorite animal, and decided to look for things that had more to do with bulls, although she had read about Ferdinand and had heard about bulls rampaging through china shops but she also knew that China was a huge country and had plenty of room for bulls to roam around, but I digress.
Then she happened across a site for a bank named Goldman-Sachs. It sounded quite promising on two counts: It started with the same term her name did, and it sounded as if it must have a lot of money as in sacks of gold. So she tried to get in touch with its CEO, Lloyd Blankfein (whose name Charles Dickens might have chosen for it contains elements associated with Lloyds of London and another concept such as ___________check.) However, she got nothing but a robo-receptionist who went on and on about all the different divisions and products they had available until poor Goldilocks gave up listening and now needed an Aleve.
Later she heard on the news that the federal government was investigating Goldman- Sachs for fraud and deception and that it had received a huge federal bailout because it was too big to fail. After reading about the Bear Stearns extinction, she did not understand how there could be anything larger than a dinosaur but clearly in some people’s minds there were such things. These things larger than dinosaurs were apparently immortal and began to act as if they were, so she decided that she would shop her investments elsewhere. She didn’t want a bank that thought it was God. It was clearly way too big.
Finally, she found a bank that was actually able to serve her long-term interests. It wasn’t the tiny little local bank that had very few offerings and not nearly a broad enough base of investments to withstand a serious recession because all of its income was based on very local loans. It wasn’t so large and so committed to instant profits for itself that it bet against its clients in order to expand its own sphere of influence internationally. It kept its eye on the long view and on serving its clients and its region well. It operated on a human scale and wished to serve generations of citizens, which is to say it was a regional bank with enough territory in its scope to satisfy a hungry bear and a herd of bulls as well as a little Goldilocks who had only a hundred dollars to invest. Little Goldilocks no longer had to worry about being gobbled up by bears or trampled by bulls because the people in her banking world knew and trusted each other. There was no more than two degrees of separation among the subscribers to the regional bank. They all knew someone who knew someone else among the whole banking constituency. It was neither too big to fail nor too small to succeed. It was just right.
The lesson Goldilocks learned from her experience is that the concept of “just right” is not just personal. It is universally human. The problem is that we as humans lose track of scale and either bite off more than we can chew or put ourselves on a diet that cannot possibly sustain us. We lack humility on the one hand and courage or common sense on the other. If only we asked ourselves, “Is this suitable or comfortable or fitting in the long run?” Instead we default to “more must be better” or “self-denial is a virtue” or “I want it now no matter what.” We end up behaving like the bulls and bears we use as symbols instead of the human beings we ultimately want to be and actually are.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Wall Street's Wilderness
The SEC has no intention of winning the case against Goldman Sachs. It only wants to prove that is has insufficient tools by which to manage Wall Street. The key is to get Goldman Sachs to take the bait and fight the case. How to keep Wall Street on the hook for this fight is going to take some canny fly-fishing on the part of the SEC. If Goldman Sachs were a smart cutthroat trout, it would not take the bait and would simply buy off the fishermen, forcing the SEC to play catch and release. Fighting the SEC and then wriggling off the hook will only lead to greater measures of control in the future. Let’s hope Goldman fights all the way.
The Masters of the Universe, a term used by Tom Wolfe in Bonfire of the Vanities to describe the self-image of high rolling Wall Street investment bankers, is the modern manifestation of the rugged individual taming the American wilderness in the 18th and 19th centuries. Instead of the forest and the Indians, the modern Natty Bumppo has a world economy to conquer. He fashions tools such as derivatives and credit default swaps instead of animal snares and saw mills. Since the physical wilderness is no longer a viable medium for heroic exploit, the emerging and increasingly complex global economic wilderness is the only wilderness left where individuals with the capacity to cut paths to riches are able to hack their way to glory and success. The physical wilderness, meanwhile, has been mostly set aside for worship and recreation, except where oil and gas may exist.
There is something in the American psyche that loves the single combat warrior, an ancestor to the master of the universe concept and also identified in another Tom Wolfe book called The Right Stuff. We canonized that warrior in our stories and then movies about Davey Crockett, Daniel Boone, the Lone Ranger, and a host of John Wayne or Clint Eastwood characters. Gradually they were urbanized and began seeking justice on the streets instead of on the prairie or in the woods. But they were always associated with justice for the little guy against the monstrous forces of unbridled or corrupt power. By the late 20th Century, we even saw women in the role with the production of Erin Brockovich and Norma Rae.
Today, the combat warriors of Wall Street are no longer single or heroic. They work for too-big-to-fail banks; they are faceless like the Lone Ranger, but they serve themselves and their employer and not the little guy or justice. Their only defense for their greed is a rationalization called “trickle down” economics.
The sea was once a wilderness as well as the forest and the prairie. Herman Melville captured its wonder and seeming limitlessness in his epic novel Moby Dick. At one point in the novel an African-American character named Fleece, the Pequod’s 90 year old cook, is coaxed by Stubb, the playful, teasing, and cruel second mate, into giving a sermon to the sharks that are tearing into Stubb’s whale tied along side of the ship. The sermon, in essence, is as follows:
“Your woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don’t blame ye so much for; dat is natur, and can’t be helped; but to gobern dat natur, dat is the pint. You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not’ing more dan de shark well goberned…Don’t be tearin’ de blubber out your neighbor’s mout, I say…I know some o’you has berry brig mout, brigger dan oders; but den de brig mout is not to swaller wid, but to bite off de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can’t get into de scrouge to help demselves.
Stubb then calls Fleece’s sermon Christianity, but Fleece loses patience with the sharks and condemns them for their uncontrollable greed which will lead to their deaths by gluttony. The sermon also foreshadows Ahab’s uncontrollable rage against the great white whale.
While Wall Street likes to see itself as a collection of hunters and gatherers in an economic wilderness or on an open sea of opportunity, unfettered by rules and laws, it has a higher duty to deliberately assure that the small fry get their needs met and not simply assume that some crumbs fall off their table. They also need to make sure they are not pursuing phantom whales as they harvest the bounty of the new economic wilderness and that their weapons are not financial boomerangs which end up circling back, attacking their clients and eventually themselves.
Given human nature, we know beyond any doubt that self-government and an appeal to higher duty seldom works. Something larger than ourselves needs to be in place to provide the rules by which we play safely. The best thing we have come up with so far is representative government. Too often, however, we end up electing or appointing the same sharks that have wreaked havoc with our economic well being.
We don’t need big government or small government but rather good government run by good people. The kinds of people we do not want in government are voracious sharks or especially sleek barracudas who pretend to care for the little guys and then feed on them all the way to the bank.
The Masters of the Universe, a term used by Tom Wolfe in Bonfire of the Vanities to describe the self-image of high rolling Wall Street investment bankers, is the modern manifestation of the rugged individual taming the American wilderness in the 18th and 19th centuries. Instead of the forest and the Indians, the modern Natty Bumppo has a world economy to conquer. He fashions tools such as derivatives and credit default swaps instead of animal snares and saw mills. Since the physical wilderness is no longer a viable medium for heroic exploit, the emerging and increasingly complex global economic wilderness is the only wilderness left where individuals with the capacity to cut paths to riches are able to hack their way to glory and success. The physical wilderness, meanwhile, has been mostly set aside for worship and recreation, except where oil and gas may exist.
There is something in the American psyche that loves the single combat warrior, an ancestor to the master of the universe concept and also identified in another Tom Wolfe book called The Right Stuff. We canonized that warrior in our stories and then movies about Davey Crockett, Daniel Boone, the Lone Ranger, and a host of John Wayne or Clint Eastwood characters. Gradually they were urbanized and began seeking justice on the streets instead of on the prairie or in the woods. But they were always associated with justice for the little guy against the monstrous forces of unbridled or corrupt power. By the late 20th Century, we even saw women in the role with the production of Erin Brockovich and Norma Rae.
Today, the combat warriors of Wall Street are no longer single or heroic. They work for too-big-to-fail banks; they are faceless like the Lone Ranger, but they serve themselves and their employer and not the little guy or justice. Their only defense for their greed is a rationalization called “trickle down” economics.
The sea was once a wilderness as well as the forest and the prairie. Herman Melville captured its wonder and seeming limitlessness in his epic novel Moby Dick. At one point in the novel an African-American character named Fleece, the Pequod’s 90 year old cook, is coaxed by Stubb, the playful, teasing, and cruel second mate, into giving a sermon to the sharks that are tearing into Stubb’s whale tied along side of the ship. The sermon, in essence, is as follows:
“Your woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don’t blame ye so much for; dat is natur, and can’t be helped; but to gobern dat natur, dat is the pint. You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not’ing more dan de shark well goberned…Don’t be tearin’ de blubber out your neighbor’s mout, I say…I know some o’you has berry brig mout, brigger dan oders; but den de brig mout is not to swaller wid, but to bite off de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can’t get into de scrouge to help demselves.
Stubb then calls Fleece’s sermon Christianity, but Fleece loses patience with the sharks and condemns them for their uncontrollable greed which will lead to their deaths by gluttony. The sermon also foreshadows Ahab’s uncontrollable rage against the great white whale.
While Wall Street likes to see itself as a collection of hunters and gatherers in an economic wilderness or on an open sea of opportunity, unfettered by rules and laws, it has a higher duty to deliberately assure that the small fry get their needs met and not simply assume that some crumbs fall off their table. They also need to make sure they are not pursuing phantom whales as they harvest the bounty of the new economic wilderness and that their weapons are not financial boomerangs which end up circling back, attacking their clients and eventually themselves.
Given human nature, we know beyond any doubt that self-government and an appeal to higher duty seldom works. Something larger than ourselves needs to be in place to provide the rules by which we play safely. The best thing we have come up with so far is representative government. Too often, however, we end up electing or appointing the same sharks that have wreaked havoc with our economic well being.
We don’t need big government or small government but rather good government run by good people. The kinds of people we do not want in government are voracious sharks or especially sleek barracudas who pretend to care for the little guys and then feed on them all the way to the bank.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Taxes, Triggers, and Tea
Times have been tough for a lot of Americans these past couple of years. One of the things that tough times tend to generate is fear. Roosevelt saw that tendency and tried to negate its magnetic pull by declaring: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” However, this time around, there was no Roosevelt to reassure us. There was a black man sitting in his former seat.
I say black man because that is how a certain portion of America still sees the President. They cannot get past the fact that the country elected a black person as President of the United States. Some called “birthers” keep trying to insist that he cannot be the President because he was not born in the U.S. Others dismiss him as a spendthrift liberal who is giving what is left of the country to his fellow black people. Still others reject him on the basis that he used taxpayer money to bail out the big banks and Detroit but left the average white guy behind holding his up-side-down mortgage, facing the loss of his home and his job, and burdening him with the cost of health care for 32 million folks without health insurance.
None of these fears are made true by the policies set forth by the President, but that does not prevent these fearful folks from embracing and focusing those fears. Yes, we have yet to see all the bailouts paid back or rules put in place to prevent another Wall Street bubble disaster, but the economy has come off life-support and is beginning to stroll around the block; and it is dreaming of running another marathon some day, albeit at a much slower pace. The task now is to engage the general populace so that it too can participate. How that is accomplished has yet to be revealed, but there are signs that it is beginning to happen. Remember, under capitalism, which is what we still have as our economic system, the workers are the first to be let go and the last to be brought back.
However, meanwhile, there are two distinct but overlapping groups of white folks who are determined not only to take what they see as justice into their own hands but to stop the President from bringing what they call “socialism” to full throttle in our midst. They are The Tea Partiers and The Gun-Hoes. The Tea Party consists of the angry white folks who generally do not carry weapons or cling to them the way small children cling to security blankets. They use their voices to mouth the half-truths and outright falsehoods they hear from Limbaugh on radio or Hannity on Fox News. When they are interviewed or when they make their placards, they never get out a message that makes any sense for their own well-being. Their placards and pronouncements imply if not call for, in effect, self-inflicted wounds such as loss of Social Security or Medicare. In short, they want to be taxed less but still receive their government benefits which are paid for by taxes. They want their cake and eat it too.
The Gun-Hoes, on the other hand, tend to be rural types or rural wannabes who go to the woods on weekends and play war games in preparation for that anticipated time when they will be “forced” to defend the Constitution from the corruption by Washington, Wall Street, and Socialism in general. These militia groups have bubbled and deflated in size and number proportionally to the rise and fall of unemployment and to their perception of the degree to which Washington is controlled by liberals. With the 2008 election of a black President and a majority of Democrats in both houses, the number of background checks in the U.S. rose immediately by 42 percent the month after the election. Although gun purchases have leveled off in the past six months as joblessness has, it has not been simply because of a decrease in fear but also because of fully loaded saturation levels of gun-toting whites. The gun cabinets are full because the Gun-Hoes ascribe to the other Roosevelt’s adage: “Speak softly and carry a big stick”
Not all gun purchasers join militias or even tea parties. Many are quiet, isolated, individuals who are not joiners by nature. They quietly buy their guns and store ammunition in fear that they may have to defend their homes in the face of some sort of takeover by an “enemy adversary” who may appear in the form of a government agent, an illegal immigrant, city folk, or simply a non-white or non-resident alien. They hate the government in general, but they fear the individual or group who might threaten their sense of libertarian peace or rugged individualism. The ones the public needs to fear most are the ones driven by “voices from God” such as the nine from the group that calls itself Hutaree who were recently arrested in the Midwest.
Uncertainty produces fear, and fear brings out the worst in us. The more diverse and larger a population and the fewer jobs, the more fear and suspicion reign supreme. Fear has a way of transforming the golden rule into “Do unto others as you suspect they would (or will) do unto you.” It is a preemptive and projective strike, the product of selfishness and fear. We project our fears onto others who are different and imagine them acting out what we might be capable of doing ourselves or have already done and therefore fear retribution. As Oscar Wilde once said, “All criticism is autobiographical.”
That’s why the Tea Party, hosted by that screech owl Sarah Palin, is so noisy and the gun sales so bountiful. I’ll reluctantly put up with the noise so long as the guns stay quiet, and I’ll try to keep in mind the nursery rhyme about sticks and stones and meanwhile try to ignore the saying about the squeaky wheel.
I say black man because that is how a certain portion of America still sees the President. They cannot get past the fact that the country elected a black person as President of the United States. Some called “birthers” keep trying to insist that he cannot be the President because he was not born in the U.S. Others dismiss him as a spendthrift liberal who is giving what is left of the country to his fellow black people. Still others reject him on the basis that he used taxpayer money to bail out the big banks and Detroit but left the average white guy behind holding his up-side-down mortgage, facing the loss of his home and his job, and burdening him with the cost of health care for 32 million folks without health insurance.
None of these fears are made true by the policies set forth by the President, but that does not prevent these fearful folks from embracing and focusing those fears. Yes, we have yet to see all the bailouts paid back or rules put in place to prevent another Wall Street bubble disaster, but the economy has come off life-support and is beginning to stroll around the block; and it is dreaming of running another marathon some day, albeit at a much slower pace. The task now is to engage the general populace so that it too can participate. How that is accomplished has yet to be revealed, but there are signs that it is beginning to happen. Remember, under capitalism, which is what we still have as our economic system, the workers are the first to be let go and the last to be brought back.
However, meanwhile, there are two distinct but overlapping groups of white folks who are determined not only to take what they see as justice into their own hands but to stop the President from bringing what they call “socialism” to full throttle in our midst. They are The Tea Partiers and The Gun-Hoes. The Tea Party consists of the angry white folks who generally do not carry weapons or cling to them the way small children cling to security blankets. They use their voices to mouth the half-truths and outright falsehoods they hear from Limbaugh on radio or Hannity on Fox News. When they are interviewed or when they make their placards, they never get out a message that makes any sense for their own well-being. Their placards and pronouncements imply if not call for, in effect, self-inflicted wounds such as loss of Social Security or Medicare. In short, they want to be taxed less but still receive their government benefits which are paid for by taxes. They want their cake and eat it too.
The Gun-Hoes, on the other hand, tend to be rural types or rural wannabes who go to the woods on weekends and play war games in preparation for that anticipated time when they will be “forced” to defend the Constitution from the corruption by Washington, Wall Street, and Socialism in general. These militia groups have bubbled and deflated in size and number proportionally to the rise and fall of unemployment and to their perception of the degree to which Washington is controlled by liberals. With the 2008 election of a black President and a majority of Democrats in both houses, the number of background checks in the U.S. rose immediately by 42 percent the month after the election. Although gun purchases have leveled off in the past six months as joblessness has, it has not been simply because of a decrease in fear but also because of fully loaded saturation levels of gun-toting whites. The gun cabinets are full because the Gun-Hoes ascribe to the other Roosevelt’s adage: “Speak softly and carry a big stick”
Not all gun purchasers join militias or even tea parties. Many are quiet, isolated, individuals who are not joiners by nature. They quietly buy their guns and store ammunition in fear that they may have to defend their homes in the face of some sort of takeover by an “enemy adversary” who may appear in the form of a government agent, an illegal immigrant, city folk, or simply a non-white or non-resident alien. They hate the government in general, but they fear the individual or group who might threaten their sense of libertarian peace or rugged individualism. The ones the public needs to fear most are the ones driven by “voices from God” such as the nine from the group that calls itself Hutaree who were recently arrested in the Midwest.
Uncertainty produces fear, and fear brings out the worst in us. The more diverse and larger a population and the fewer jobs, the more fear and suspicion reign supreme. Fear has a way of transforming the golden rule into “Do unto others as you suspect they would (or will) do unto you.” It is a preemptive and projective strike, the product of selfishness and fear. We project our fears onto others who are different and imagine them acting out what we might be capable of doing ourselves or have already done and therefore fear retribution. As Oscar Wilde once said, “All criticism is autobiographical.”
That’s why the Tea Party, hosted by that screech owl Sarah Palin, is so noisy and the gun sales so bountiful. I’ll reluctantly put up with the noise so long as the guns stay quiet, and I’ll try to keep in mind the nursery rhyme about sticks and stones and meanwhile try to ignore the saying about the squeaky wheel.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
The Privilege of Paltry Principles
“And it is not difficult for them to maintain their principles at the cost of the discomfort of others.” W.S. Maugham Cakes and Ale
Maugham was referring to the English and a lack of fire in the grate of a drawing room in summer; for the English were notorious for not lighting fires before October 1st even if the weather warranted it. This instance reminds me of the contemporary American conservative’s use of one principle against another as a means of assuring good returns on investments even if those investments stifle competition rather than encourage it. Conservatives call for smaller government and freer competition, but when it comes to competition, they won’t invest in a start-up unless it has not only identified a niche but secured it with an intellectual property patent.
The latest exposure of this inconsistency in principle (free market vs. secure investment) is the patenting of genes. It seems that biotech companies have been able to secure patents on parts of the human body even though nature is not supposed to be patentable. CBS’s 60 Minutes exposed this whole can of genes on their Easter Sunday show. The piece revealed that a biotech company called Myriad Genetics had patented the gene that indicates susceptibility to breast cancer in women. Therefore, the only place you can get tested for the gene is through Myriad. The cost of the procedure is $3200. While most insurance plans cover the cost, some do not cover the complete cost.
However, cost coverage aside, does any company have the right to isolate and patent a gene? Apparently, only in America has it been legal so far. Then again, that may change now that the courts have gotten involved, thanks to a case involving a New York woman whose insurance would not pay the full fee to Myriad.
I can see where an investor would want to secure an investment by investing in something protected. Surely a patent on some sort of cure would be reasonable. But to prevent any other research on a gene because of a patent seems, well, patently immoral. Under what circumstances should property rights and profit protection take precedence over saving a life? Doctors may take the Hippocratic Oath, but business treats even parts of human beings as property to buy and sell. It is slavery piecemeal.
To me this is a prime example of how the modern scions of capitalism defended by conservatives have run amok of principle. They may hold life as sacred at the point of conception, but if an adult is in need of a service she cannot afford because her gene is owned by a corporation, that’s too bad. What principle could possibly explain this ambivalence about human life?
Private property has always been the basis of capitalism. Making anything and everything, including genes, own-able takes us backwards as human beings, not forward. Making money for the few at the expense of the many never had a noble ring to it either. It’s trickle up, not trickle down.
As 60 Minutes pointed out, Jonas Salk, who invented the cure for polio did not patent the vaccine for his own profit. He was happy to have made a contribution to society by eliminating a dreaded disease. Today, one wonders what the pharmaceutical industry is up to when all we see advertised are maintenance drugs rather than cures. If they can get us to buy a drug that makes us feel better or improves our health without curing the problem, then we feel better and they continue to make money on the endless refills we purchase.
Where are medical heroes of today? Where are the actual cures? I suspect that the principle of profit takes precedence over the principle of medical solution, thanks to investment strategies and greed. It simply is not profitable to come up with cures for disease. It is highly profitable to come up with maintenance relief of symptoms.
This may all sound cynical, but it shows just how far we have strayed from doing what is right. Instead, we would rather do what is profitable. The market system does not serve us; we serve it. And until we regain control of it and put it to our own best use as a species, we will continue to see our body parts not auctioned off to the highest bidder but patented in isolation and for someone else’s profit.
Principles are meant to be questioned. If they do not stand up to the test of greater goodness, they should be discarded. Making money and hiding behind principles of free market or Caveat Emptor are as nonsensical as not lighting a fire in the drawing room because it is not after October 1st. Moreover, they are a whole lot more threatening to civilization as we know it.
Maugham was referring to the English and a lack of fire in the grate of a drawing room in summer; for the English were notorious for not lighting fires before October 1st even if the weather warranted it. This instance reminds me of the contemporary American conservative’s use of one principle against another as a means of assuring good returns on investments even if those investments stifle competition rather than encourage it. Conservatives call for smaller government and freer competition, but when it comes to competition, they won’t invest in a start-up unless it has not only identified a niche but secured it with an intellectual property patent.
The latest exposure of this inconsistency in principle (free market vs. secure investment) is the patenting of genes. It seems that biotech companies have been able to secure patents on parts of the human body even though nature is not supposed to be patentable. CBS’s 60 Minutes exposed this whole can of genes on their Easter Sunday show. The piece revealed that a biotech company called Myriad Genetics had patented the gene that indicates susceptibility to breast cancer in women. Therefore, the only place you can get tested for the gene is through Myriad. The cost of the procedure is $3200. While most insurance plans cover the cost, some do not cover the complete cost.
However, cost coverage aside, does any company have the right to isolate and patent a gene? Apparently, only in America has it been legal so far. Then again, that may change now that the courts have gotten involved, thanks to a case involving a New York woman whose insurance would not pay the full fee to Myriad.
I can see where an investor would want to secure an investment by investing in something protected. Surely a patent on some sort of cure would be reasonable. But to prevent any other research on a gene because of a patent seems, well, patently immoral. Under what circumstances should property rights and profit protection take precedence over saving a life? Doctors may take the Hippocratic Oath, but business treats even parts of human beings as property to buy and sell. It is slavery piecemeal.
To me this is a prime example of how the modern scions of capitalism defended by conservatives have run amok of principle. They may hold life as sacred at the point of conception, but if an adult is in need of a service she cannot afford because her gene is owned by a corporation, that’s too bad. What principle could possibly explain this ambivalence about human life?
Private property has always been the basis of capitalism. Making anything and everything, including genes, own-able takes us backwards as human beings, not forward. Making money for the few at the expense of the many never had a noble ring to it either. It’s trickle up, not trickle down.
As 60 Minutes pointed out, Jonas Salk, who invented the cure for polio did not patent the vaccine for his own profit. He was happy to have made a contribution to society by eliminating a dreaded disease. Today, one wonders what the pharmaceutical industry is up to when all we see advertised are maintenance drugs rather than cures. If they can get us to buy a drug that makes us feel better or improves our health without curing the problem, then we feel better and they continue to make money on the endless refills we purchase.
Where are medical heroes of today? Where are the actual cures? I suspect that the principle of profit takes precedence over the principle of medical solution, thanks to investment strategies and greed. It simply is not profitable to come up with cures for disease. It is highly profitable to come up with maintenance relief of symptoms.
This may all sound cynical, but it shows just how far we have strayed from doing what is right. Instead, we would rather do what is profitable. The market system does not serve us; we serve it. And until we regain control of it and put it to our own best use as a species, we will continue to see our body parts not auctioned off to the highest bidder but patented in isolation and for someone else’s profit.
Principles are meant to be questioned. If they do not stand up to the test of greater goodness, they should be discarded. Making money and hiding behind principles of free market or Caveat Emptor are as nonsensical as not lighting a fire in the drawing room because it is not after October 1st. Moreover, they are a whole lot more threatening to civilization as we know it.
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