Extreme Masculinity in America

Like human beings themselves, nations have a male and female side to their sense of being. Healthy nations keep a balance between the two aspects, but sometimes a country gets out of balance because of external forces or internal malaise. Some are naturally or constitutionally (make-up, not parchment) oriented more one way or the other, but most cultures make their masculine and feminine sides evident in some healthy proportion.
After World War II, the United States essentially forced Japan and Germany to emphasize their feminine sides, having had enough of the hyper-masculine version of Japanese and German cultures in the form of Pearl Harbor attacks, death marches, blitzkriegs, and concentration camps. The reconstruction of both Japan and much of Germany was done mostly under the direction of a fatherly western alliance that ensured no hyper-masculine recrudescence occurred in either country for at least a generation.
Today in America we are witnessing the stern father side of our masculine-feminine continuum attempt to grab hold of dominance in the form of the Tea Party politics and impose a masculine order on what the Tea Party sees as a cultural morass of self-indulgence, spend-thrift behavior, loose morals, and irresponsibility all marinated in a cauldron of “feminine” entitlements that date back to the New Deal.
This “disciplinary action” taken by the Tea Party and their chosen Zombies, the regular Republican Party, is not unexpected. It is all part of the “correction” to the perceived imbalance between masculine and feminine elements in American culture as seen from a neo-conservative perspective. The problem is, they have it mostly wrong.
America has always been one of the most masculine nations on the planet from the outset. It has celebrated hyper-masculine men in the form of single combat warriors: Daniel Boone, Davey Crockett, and their fictional equivalents The Lone Ranger and Dirty Harry; in the form of self-made men: Abe Lincoln, Ben Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Warren Buffett; and in terms of physical giants: Paul Bunyan (fictional) as well as the entire panoply of players in the NFL and NBA.
America’s women have followed suit in producing and celebrating great athletes, space pioneers, star CEOs, and great writers. No flower arranger would ever make the top ten in America culture. In short, even America’s women are measured in terms of masculine success.
Like it or not, America is a highly masculine culture. It makes no attempt to balance traditional masculine-feminine elements. It continues to become the most workaholic, achievement-driven, wealth accumulating, body-sculpting, competitive country on the planet.
In fact, women may be winning the race to pure masculinity. They represent 60 percent of all college graduates; they are gradually closing the income gap; they are choosing to remain single in greater numbers in order to not be held back by relationships or child-bearing; they are gradually replacing men in all but the most physical arenas.
How healthy is this evolution or final frontier conquering for American culture? Will it mean that the former purely masculine spheres of American culture will be feminized and that all of this masculine hustle on the part of women is merely a means to an end? And will stay-at-home dads bring masculinity to home-keeping, cooking, diaper-changing, and Tupperware parties? Will a new synthesis emerge such that the balance of female and male will be found in the individual and the culture as a whole and not rigidly reflected in or expected from gender groups?
No telling how this will play out. Meanwhile, the Tea Party in name and concept is at least triply ironic in its mission, its make-up, and its name. It wants to remind America of and return America to a mythical golden age when the masculine discipline of individual responsibility was king. No more of this feminine social welfare crap that puts cooperation over competition or common welfare over individual achievement.
What the Tea Party will have to continue to ignore is the fact that corporations want to destroy competition and gain oligarchic if not monopolistic control of both markets and resources. The only possible defense against such control is government. Better to reform government than weaken it enough to drown it in a bathtub, as Grover Norquist wishes. The alternative to better government, which gun sales would indicate is growing in popularity, is a different kind of social security, one that produces questionable security and little sleep: a Smith and Wesson nestled under your pillow. Question: Does that mean we all become our own “head dick+” or merely dick-heads?
Today our popular culture reinforces hyper-masculine absurdity in the form of endless football games on television, grandiose, gratuitous violence passing for action movies, and Animal House behavior dominating male-oriented advertizing. Just watch any football game on television and try to find positive male role models among the ads.
America’s hyper-masculinity is so pervasive, so multi-faceted, we cannot see it for what it is: a dangerous condition that is affecting our whole culture. It is high time to bring some balance not only to our lives but to our cultural milieu. It’s going to take more than a course in flower-arranging to move us toward greater balance.

+ slang nickname for detective

Time to Remove the Conservative Appendix

The conservative perspective is like an appendix, and I don’t mean the one at the end of a scholarly book. It serves no purpose now that we walk fully erect; it can only cause trouble when irritated; and it can bring down the house if it is not removed in time. In short, it’s an old organ associated with ancient times when survival was the threshold of nobility and getting enough fiber in our diet was the least of our problems.
Conservatism is a lean and mean ethos applied by fat cats to the weak and frail. It says that success comes when you try hard enough; failure is a sign of laziness; and rich people deserve all they have. It concentrates power and wealth in the hands of the few and blames the many for their failure to achieve similar success. Its catch-all refrain, when all else fails to explain, is life is not fair, so just live with that fact.
There is a sociopathic dimension to this primitive perspective. It pins any notion of progress on survival of gauntlets, never on trying to make the gauntlet less severe. In fact, it celebrates the severity of gauntlets as opportunities to earn badges of courage. It says “I made it on my own;” therefore, you can too if you try hard enough. It’s as if the meaning of life necessitates an enormous struggle, an overcoming of great difficulties, and a self-confidence that is proclaimed to have existed only after the success is achieved. It is easy to say this when you stand atop the mountain. It’s patronizing and cruel to say it to those who will never get there even with your help.
The conservative’s notion of a stimulus package is a whip. That’s what reductions in services will feel like if conservatives have their way. By cutting aid to the poor and disadvantaged, the conservatives hope to balance the federal and state budgets without costing themselves a dime more in taxes. If you think that is fair, by all means vote Republican. If not, be sure to do whatever it takes to keep conservatives from wreaking havoc with America ever again.
Conservatives say mutual aid through organized communal action should always be local. Never mind that resources may be unevenly distributed from community to community. If you are not on your own, your community is. Take what you have and do the best you can. Never mind the fact that you don’t have the tools and wherewithal to do it.
Meanwhile, the myth of equal opportunity is promoted as if it actually exists. Beneath that myth is the game-fixing structure that keeps poor neighborhoods poor, poor schools poor and poor people poor. The poor start the race with cement shoes even if they wear ill-afforded Nikes like the rich kids. But life is not fair. That’s the way it is, says the conservative perspective.
I, for one, am sick and tired of the conservative perspective. We need to cut it out of the body politic like the useless appendix to civilization it is. We can best do that at the voting booth next November. Just pay attention to who mouths the conservative perspective and be ready to remove him or her from office or from ever holding office in the first place. It is the only hope America has at this point.

A Sign from the Fashion God

Just maybe we are in for an unconventional turn of events in the on-going saga about the world economy. Just as Ground Hog Day is used as a predictor of how much longer winter will last past February 2nd, it now seems that how high women’s heels are is no longer a measure or reflector of how well the economy is doing. In an article I just read in Daily Finance (http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/11/21/low-heels-will-spike-this-winter-countering-recession-trend/) historically, high heels would “spike” during recessions, but this winter, they will go flat according to this article. Did they spike traditionally out of hope, in order to provide a longer view, in order to suggest to the stock market that it too should spike instead of redline? Who knows? What we do know is that the projected lower profile or center of gravity for women’s shoes must be a harbinger of something. In fact, it not only is a reflection of new developments on the horizon, it is very much a precipitous event that will set in motion a chain of events of global proportions.
Perhaps it is merely a reflection of the subconscious acceptance by fashion that the world is becoming flat, as Thomas Friedman predicted in his book, The World is Flat. Or perhaps it is a forecasting indicator that the haves are lowering their profile and preparing to be more like the 99% of the rest of us. Will the “one percenters” still wear spikes, or will they lower themselves and their expectations and regain their humanity in some way? Will they be shamed into being less extravagant in order to appear more modest, even if they keep their 90 percent of the wealth? In any case, low heels are in. Whether or not the well-heeled follow the trend remains to be seen. As F. Scott Fitzgerald said in ‘The Rich Boy”: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.”
All of this may seem absurd on the surface, and no one wants to be measured by a heel let alone become one. Yet, there is something “freakonomic” about the whole idea. It is taking one aspect of human behavior and trying to apply it to a whole other context. Given the ideas and fears that send the stock market skyrocketing one day and augering in the next, a connection between the height of heels and the economy is not so far-fetched. What it suggests is the human tendency toward cause-effect as the default way secular beings “reason” when we really do not know. Religious beings simply turn to God or the “chosen text” (Bible, Koran, etc) for an answer. In any case, it will be interesting to see how many of us heel to this theory and whether or not it signals any healing in the economy.

Greek Mythology Cannot Hold a Candle

It is no wonder the Greeks are in trouble financially. It all began with ancient Greek civilization and their belief in polytheism. They had all sorts of gods like Zeus, Apollo, Hera, and Poseidon. They were not perfect gods by any means and often imitated human behavior. In other words, they were projections of human beings on a screen writ large and given immortality to boot. Lately, the Greeks turned their will and their lives over to the care of politicians who promised them an Elysian Field full of benefits they could not pay for, and now the Greeks are going to suffer drastically for their folly.
Why is it we humans invite gods into our lives and then allow them to rise and take over our lives? Here in America today we have allowed the development of titan corporations and banks that appear to be headless when you look at them but nonetheless are more powerful than any gods the Greeks could conjure up. America’s gods are real, and they are allowed to run rampant over our thought-processes, our values, and our well-being.
Much of this can be laid at the feet of monotheism. By proclaiming that there is only one true God, we have lain ourselves open to allowing corporations to become real gods in our midst. We cannot see them as such because of our predominant belief system. We cannot believe a corporation could possibly become a god. There is no such thing because there is more than one corporation and there can be only one god. It’s a beautiful set-up for corporations. They can go about the business of gobbling each other up, shipping their profits off-shore, finding cheaper workers in other countries, and swallowing politicians from both parties because corporations have been declared legal persons and therefore are human, not god-like. We cannot see the gods they are because of the human label we have bequeathed.
We have made some of them gods in another way by proclaiming them “too big to fail.” If that isn’t a sign of man-made immortality, then it is a sign that we bow before titans of our own making. Save the god or we’ll all suffer.
We are taught daily, even hourly, to worship the products of the corporate gods. Some of us may go to church for an hour each week, but we spend much more time in front of a TV screen (over four hours each day on average) being told incessantly that we cannot live without product X. You name it: drug, car, beer, cereal, or car insurance, we are taught over and over that we should believe certain products will restore our health, our happiness, our sense of self-worth, and our social net worth. In other words, these corporate products will do for us directly what that church god many Americans pray to will only occasionally if ever do for them.
Some corporations have divvyed up the national politicians according to industry, in some cases, while others buy both sides of the isle to ensure they have influence no matter what. Oil and gas corporations tend to purchase Republicans while Wall Street of late has favored Democrats. Our national and even local political scenes are controlled and marketed by corporate lobbies that barrage the TV networks with “enemy attack” and “pro-industry” advertisements in the guise of what once were public service announcements.
Unions that once championed the working poor have risen to match the god-like power of the corporations and have become self-serving gods in their own right. The NEA, for one, stands in the way of genuine reform of public education in America by protecting bad teachers from being replaced by good ones. Gods have a way of inspiring opposition to match, but it only creates more gods, not fewer.
So the next time you turn on your TV, computer, iphone, or ipad, look for the gods in your life, recognize them for what they are, and begin to think of ways to reduce their influence in your life. The Greeks may have been early to god creation, but America has produced the most powerful titans ever created, and they are very much in our midst today.

A Confederacy of Dunces?

You would think that the Republican Party would put forth a varsity line-up capable of winning a national election. Alas, they are, shall we say, more democratic than they would like to admit. They have allowed just about anyone to run for the highest office, not just some hand-picked lot screened for basic intelligence, general knowledge about the world, and common sense.
Here are some of the latest fumbles, dropped passes, and fouls by various members of the team:
Gingrich……turns out he was paid between 1.6 and 1.8 million dollars by Freddie Mac, a government-sponsored mortgage company he has criticized;
Bachmann…..still hollering about brain damage from HPV vaccine;
Cain……………doesn’t know Libya from Dubya; catches the brain freeze epidemic apparently running rampant through the team; will have trouble attracting women;
Paul……………wants to make friends with Iran;
Perry………….has a brain freeze about one of the three departments he would eliminate if elected;
At this point the two Mormons, Huntsman and Romney, are looking like the epitome of clear-thinking, grounded, science-based, rational pragmatists, even if their chief religious text is the playful target of a sold-out musical sensation on Broadway.
Ever since the Democratic Party moved right of center under Bill Clinton and started taking huge donations from Wall Street to compete with Big Oil donations to Republicans, the Republican Party has had to move even further to the right in order to seem pure and, well, righteous. Actually knowing something has lost its luster. Gone is nuance. Gone are actual facts. It is all about ideology, theology, and strict interpretation of two documents: the Bible and the Constitution.
Ultimately this orthodoxy will enable an actual political centrist like Romney or Huntsman to overcome their peculiar religious orientation and be accepted as mainstream. The nuts on the current team will make the pair look like disciples of Descartes.
What about Santorum, you may ask. His problem is his name. It sounds like an old potion like Geritol or even worse, a toilet bowl cleaner. It also rhymes with forum, and the country has had enough of political forums like the super-committee where nothing gets done. His name is just too chemical/political sounding.
There is someone else I am missing. Ah, yes. The former governor of New Mexico…what’s his name…Johnson. “Send in Johnson” is hardly a battle cry. It simply does not carry. The country is screwed already. We don’t need any more Johnsoning.
Obama, at this point, could be Alfred E. Newman of “What? Me worry?” fame and still win. There is no contest at this point. Maybe when the dust settles, the GOP selection is made, and the real battle begins, we’ll see some rational distinctions to vote on. Meanwhile, the GOP is providing the best entertainment around, except, of course, for that sold-out Broadway musical called “The Book of Mormon.”

When the going gets tough, the tough get going*

If there is an American adage, this is it. The saying is meant to imply that when times are tough, those willing to try harder will succeed. The American creed is about doing and doing it better, faster, and more powerfully.
In World War II General Patton was able to surprise the Nazis time and time again with his superhuman expectations of his troops and their superhuman delivery on those expectations. His Third Army moved faster, covered more ground, surprised more enemy and conquered more territory in less time than any army in history.
When those troops who survived came home to America, they put that work ethic to work rebuilding our economy. Today, American troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have less opportunity to find jobs because expanding American companies have become multinational entities and have shipped jobs abroad that our returning troops might have gotten in the good old days of post-WWII America. While the troops stay loyal to America and continue to risk their lives for our freedom, our largest corporations have abandoned loyalty for profit. Wherever corporations can make profit by lowering labor costs, that is where corporate America goes, and calls it euphemistically a “business decision”; as if that label excuses any hint of abandonment, disloyalty, and lost opportunity for American workers.
The motto of the 21st Century corporation is a corollary to Vince Lombardi’s famous line: “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Today multi-national corporations seem to have adopted the notion that “profit isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Once you no longer belong to a country, I guess you lose your loyalty. That’s why so many corporations seek tax shelters off shore.
Whatever happened to corporate civic responsibility? Here is what happened: Corporations got larger; pleasing stockholders became a short-term rather than a long-term goal; labor became expendable rather than honored; and economies became global rather than national. The local company in the local community became obsolete.
While factories were being exported, schools were turned into factories producing athletes and scholars, and the rest be damned. If you were not on a college track either through athletics or academics, you were left behind to pick up skills on your own or you were taught skills that were obsolete by the time you got to the work place.
Meanwhile, the workforce doubled without counting immigrants or population growth. Women entered the work force with the zeal and determination of first generation immigrants, the kind of work ethic we see most noticeably among Mexican and Asian immigrants today.
At the same time, traditional labor jobs disappeared, service jobs exploded. Brains replaced brawn, and women, by and large, fit the bill better than men. Today the American male, by and large, faces a bleak future. Sixty percent of college degree earners at all levels are women. Young men, in many cases, are left behind to hang around sports bars, drink beer, and behave foolishly as TV sports ads teach them to behave.
Unless corporate America starts taking serious responsibility for the unintentional but nonetheless devastating neutering of the average American male, we will be headed for disaster as a culture. Black males are the canary in the mines. They are already in dire straits in great numbers. The rest of the male population is not far behind.
I call on the Republican politicians to stop deceiving America and themselves by preaching the problem will be solved by lower taxes. Lower taxes will not solve unemployment if the educational system is broke and broken already and there is a large pool of unemployable (skill-less) folks out there in America. Lowering taxes is the economic equivalent of blood-letting.
I call on Democrat politicians to stop deceiving America and themselves by preaching the problem will be solved by more spending. We are in debt up to our gills and headed for default if we don’t change the trajectory of our debt toward a soft landing somewhere in a definable future.
I call on the Tea Party to stop deceiving America and themselves that suddenly shrinking government and so-called entitlements is a solution to our debt crisis. That is like trying to land a jumbo jet on an aircraft carrier. It won’t augur well; it will auger in. A long runway and a soft landing is the only way to land massive flying machines.
I call on the Wall Street to come up with a new derivative that makes civic responsibility and loyalty to Americans a foremost priority in investment. Instead of measuring success selfishly in terms of dollars earned, why not start playing a game that awards bonuses to those investment bankers who have done the most good for Americans and America in a given year as measured by a panel of foundation presidents who assess those values. Maybe that will be enough incentive to tip Wall Street back in the direction of “doing God’s work” in a real sense rather than a cynical one.
We are facing tough times. Isn’t it time we saw some trickle down “civic responsibility” on the part of corporations and Wall Street bankers to see who can do the most for America rather than pad the purses of the “already-have-alots”?
* Attributed to Joseph P. Kennedy

Class Warfare

Every time a tax increase on the rich is proposed, the Tea Party front men, Boehner and McConnell, holler “Class Warfare” as if any attempt at accomplishing justice and balancing budgets at the same time is somehow wrong. Calling tax increases on the rich class warfare is like calling affirmative action in college or corporate admissions the same. It is all part and parcel of the convenient compartmentalized thinking called privilege.
Privilege is the real class warfare and it is on-going. It is so pervasive it is subtle. We have heard of “too big to fail” when the Big Banks were bailed out. Privilege is too big to see.
Privilege starts with assumptions. It assumes that certain people deserve more than others based on distribution of wealth as it exists. It assumes, for instance, that white people deserve more than black people because white people have a larger share of the economic pie to begin with and always have had. In other words, never mind looking at how that picture came into being and is sustained. Just look at the picture, and assume that it exists by tradition, not privilege. Assume that the educational opportunities for blacks and whites are the same, that job opportunity is the same, and that we make of life what we put into it. Also assume that we do not have to think about these things because we have been taught a so-called self-evident truism that “All men are created equal.” We all theoretically come out of the starting blocks as equals.
Privilege is never to examine these assumptions. Privilege is being able to play along with the status quo and to assume we all get to climb the same ladders to success, or at least that we all have ladders to climb. The pervasive class warfare waged since the founding of this country has been the deliberate as well as privileged exclusion of groups of people from the most lucrative mainstream channels to success.
Taxing the rich is a way of reinvesting in the process that broadens the playing field for those less fortunate. It is not class warfare. Waiting for the rich to invest voluntarily in mechanisms that produce jobs in America is like waiting to win the lottery: the chances of winning are miniscule. There are too many opportunities worldwide to invest in that might yield a better return, especially through investing in the developing world.
What we need in America right now is for rich Americans to see their vast resources as a privilege rather than a right. With privilege comes responsibility. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates both see their wealth as a social responsibility, not as a personal hoard. When Buffett says he needs to be taxed more, he is recognizing his responsibility to his country and his privileged status. He also sees government as a proper vehicle in tough times through which opportunity can be expanded to include more citizens contributing to the greater good. Certainly, in a perfect capitalist world, opportunity would best be provided by private investment. However, investors, like consumers, look to invest in the best available investments regardless of country of origin. When a country is suffering a recession, global or otherwise, it is government that is most likely to invest directly in its own country’s economy through improved infrastructure. It may also invest in what it sees as future sources of domestic economic growth areas, but it can make some bad bets as the Obama administration did in Solyndra, the California solar collector company. Sticking to infrastructure reform is probably the better investment.
So when the Republicans, at the behest of Tea Party extremists, scream “Class Warfare,” just answer with the same answer that confronted the so-called unfairness of affirmative action. Affirmative action as a concept actually describes an affirmation of privilege in that the sons and daughters of privilege get to have their own lower entrance standards to college admission under the label “legacy.” While the less fortunate may also be held to similar standards under the same label of “affirmative action,” they would be better described as candidates for “affirmative correction.”
Taxing the rich is just another form of “affirmative correction.” “Class warfare” is a paltry cry made from privilege, and, in reality, an accurate assessment of a chronic condition.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors?

I wonder if gated communities around America contain any liberals. The way liberals have been attacked for the past four decades you would think they would be busy building gated communities and even moats to keep the conservatives from spinning their fixed-axle tired beliefs across liberal lawns. But few liberals actually live in suburban gated communities and they generally do not spend their weekends mowing acres of grass as conservatives do in ritualistic homage to their real or imagined ancestors who once mowed fields of hay. Of course I am fantasizing. Most of them hire illegal immigrants to mow their fields of dreams.
Right now the Republican presidential candidates are debating about, among other efforts to fortify or dismantle, who can build the toughest, most impenetrable defense against unwelcome border crossings from Mexico. If conservatives can build a wall to keep law and order, they will. That you can count on. It is one of the ways orthodoxy maintains its purity.
Robert Frost has the narrator of his poem “Mending Wall” raise the question about walls that inevitably must be asked: “Why do they make good neighbors?” The narrator was responding to his neighbor’s saying: “Good fences make good neighbors.” The neighbor could not explain how the wall made good neighbors; he simply repeated the statement, as if it were self-evident.
Conservatives like what they perceive to be self-evident truths such as “life is not fair” and "that government is best which governs least."* They take the notion of self-evident truth from the preamble to the Declaration of Independence where self-evident truths are proclaimed in America’s famous formal declaration. There, Thomas Jefferson declares that “all men are created equal” except, of course, for those who are not considered in the count such as African-Americans and non-property holders at the time of the Preamble’s writing.
America has always had rebellious sorts represented in its literature. Huck Finn, for instance, when confronted with what are for him the orthodox strictures of the widow Douglas and Miss Watson, complains very early in the novel that all the food provided to him by the pair “was cooked by itself.” Then Huck delivers a cosmic statement that applies to much more than the separation of foods: “In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and things go better.” In that single statement author Mark Twain is suggesting that separation is not the solution. America is, in effect, a barrel of odds and ends and needs to let the natural evolution of things take its course. Separation is artificial, unnatural, and unsavory. Twain is preparing the 19th Century reader for the relationship Huck soon after develops with runaway slave Jim.
21st Century America is gradually “browning” and not because of global warming. Demographers project that by 2042 the majority of the U.S. population will be non-white.** We will be more of a blend of non-white minorities than a majority of whites. Huck would happily adapt to such an America.
Walls, like principles, can provide security. They can keep us anchored to a place in space, time, and thought. They can also bind us or confine us. We can become prisoners of our own creation. We can wall ourselves in as we wall something else out. There is always a loss for every imagined gain.
In fact, the wall along the Mexican border may end up protecting Mexico more than the United States. Mexico’s economy is on the rise; its birthrate is dropping; and there is less need for Mexicans to come to America where jobs are hard to find. By the time we build a sturdier wall along the border, we may no longer need one, but Mexico may.
Some of the most famous walls in history are monuments to ancient times reminding all who encounter them that they, too, are of questionable practical value beyond serving as tourist attractions. The Berlin Wall (what’s left of it), the Great Wall of China, and the many walls left by the Roman Empire scattered across Europe are reminders of how temporal the intentions of man are and how vestigial are his monumental works of stone.
Today the wall that keeps the Palestinians away from the continual expansion of Israeli settlements into their former land serves a short-term solution for Israeli immigrants and exacerbates a long range problem for the region. The Mexico-U.S wall may do the same. We, too, are walling out because we say we want law and order so long as it benefits those who hold power in the United States. At the same time we want freedom from law and order in order to exploit the weak by paying them a wage that brings a lower standard of living. Barriers to keep immigrants out of the country are good; barriers such as unions which protect workers from having to accept a lower standard of living are bad. What is your wall of protection is someone else’s barrier. No wall is neutral.
Frost ends his poem “Mending Wall” resigned to the fact that his neighbor will not question the principle handed down to him by his father even when the fence no longer serves any practical purpose:
I see him there/ Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top/In each hand, like an old stone savage armed,/ He moves in darkness as it seems to me,/ Not of woods only and the shade of trees./ He will not go behind his father’s saying,/ And he likes having thought of it as well/He says again, “ good fences make good neighbors.”
* The latter quotation was first made popular by that counter-culture icon Henry David Thoreau who used it in the opening sentence of his essay “Civil Disobedience.”
**(http://articles.cnn.com/2008-08-13/us/census.minorities_1_hispanic-population-census-bureau-white-population?_s=PM:US).

America: Modern Greece or Ancient Greece?

It turns out, when times are tough, capital gets concentrated and constipated. Moreover, competition is reduced. There are fewer players in any given game. There are more on the sidelines. Banks become conservative rather than cavalier. They lend less and only to sure bets, which means the tried and true, not the innovative and adventuresome. Banks get lean and mean. One needs to look no further than the 30,000 mere mortal employees to be released by Bank of America in the near future to understand the magnitude of the problem.
The elite in Washington, which includes both parties, have offered two scenarios for recovery. The Obama recovery plan includes a carrot-stick approach with tax incentives to stimulate small business and the loss of tax loopholes for the rich. The Republicans have nothing but carrots for the rich and sticks for the downtrodden. Their message to the poor is grab hold of your bootstraps, pull them up, and that gesture will pull you up as well. It’s a neat trick, like smoke and mirrors, and costs nothing. It also does nothing but leave the poor further behind and out of the running for the American Dream.
Government’s role in good times is to act as referee in the game of capitalism. In bad times it needs to act as re-distributor of wealth and initiator of play. Bad times are like end-games in Monopoly. There are no more properties to buy; there are no more hotels to place; the game is in the hands of the winner; the game is over, and it is time to start a new game, a new beginning. The meaning is in the journey to Park Place, not in sitting there at end-game.
Imagine an NFL season where all the top players are concentrated in one team. There would be no season. The sport would die. The results would be so predictable no one would subscribe. It is the uncertainty that makes the NFL vibrant. On any given day, any team might beat anyone else. There are mechanisms in place to assure competition. If we are so committed to competition in that arena, why are we so hesitant to foster it in our economy? Why do we not have strong mechanisms in place to ensure good competition in the marketplace?
The answer is capitalists try to eliminate competition. They do not thrive on it. A famous capitalist named John D. Rockefeller once proclaimed that competition is a sin. It therefore is up to government to make sure that capitalist entities do not destroy competition through monopolization of markets. Anti-trust laws are written to prevent monopolies.
Market winners continually try to fix the game in their favor. They grow so powerful and so large they are deemed economically immortal (too big to fail). They are made into “gods” who have their own games they play way above mere mortals who must struggle below and sift the fallen scraps for paltry rewards, which is what real trickle-down looks like. The “gods” (masters of the universe) have the resources to purchase politicians who work for their benefit both in and out of office. The professional politicians are either agents of preserving one form or another of the status quo while in office or they are lobbyists directly representing the “gods” and their business entities. The whole game takes place in the economic equivalent of very exclusive fraternity houses. No mere mortals need apply, unless you are a genius who can make one of the “gods” some real money.
America, alas, has become like Ancient Greece except the “gods” are real rather than imagined. The “gods” actually do control the lives of the masses and limit their growth by failing to keep the economic game open. Instead, the masses are given unsustainable entitlements and then blamed for not playing the game from which they have been excluded by the very blamers. The “gods” invest less and less in their less fortunate compatriots, export their jobs, and then blame the losers for not taking responsibility for the outcome.
Of course there are many companies that have chosen names from the time of Ancient Greece. There is Elysium Wealth Management, Centaur Pharmaceuticals, Hercules Incorporated, Hermes Financial Group, Amazon, Atlas Van Lines, and Delphi Energy, to name a few. However, the real titans of the business world today have more mundane names such as General Electric, Exxon-Mobil, and Goldman-Saks.
Yes, the masses were told by the minions of the “gods” that they, too, could have a piece of the American Dream if they bought a house with a sub-prime mortgage they could ill afford, but that failure is blamed on the duped buyers under the rubric of caveat emptor. They should have known better. Meanwhile the “gods” made out like bandits.
Now the Tea Party may look like a rebellion orchestrated by a segment of the masses, but it is actually a false rebellion orchestrated by the “gods” to convince the masses that they, the masses, are to blame for their problems. It’s another neat trick the “gods” have played on mere mortals.
The American “gods” warn that America could go the way of modern Greece if drastic austerity measures are not taken when, in fact, America has been acting out a modern day version of ancient Greek mythology: the “gods” always win. Now maybe we mere mortals will awaken to confront the duplicity and hypocrisy of the “gods” and send them all to Hades, otherwise known as Federal Court. But that possibility is remote as long as the “gods” and their political minions keep our attention on that unsustainable national debt which, according to the “gods” is the result of too much indulgence in entitlements for the masses.
As Francis Bacon once said, “Of great riches there is no real use, except in the distribution; the rest is but conceit.”

A Business Decision

I keep hearing the expression “It was a business decision” and have begun wondering how the expression came to be. I know “a business decision” is almost never good news for workers. I have yet to hear it used when describing a plan to hire more people. That usually occurs under the rubric of “business plan,” not “business decision.”
“A business decision” appears to be a euphemism much the same as water closet, powder room, or rest room is used to describe a room with a toilet. The term “business decision” is a way to gloss over the harsh reality of firings or layoffs the way “powder room” softens the harsh reality of defecation or urination.
“Downsizing” is another term used by management to describe the same process, but it carries a description or forecast of what the move involves, so it is a bit closer to the truth.
What all of these euphemisms do to one degree or another is lessen the harshness of the message for the purveyor more than the receiver. If we call job loss the product of “downsizing” or a “business decision,” it makes power holders feel more civilized, more removed from the other end of the process that results in job loss. The power end of the chain of command maintains distance through language.
The ultimate example of this is Hitler’s use of the term “final solution” in World War II. Six million Jews met death under the term “solution” which, for the Nazis, even put a positive spin on a horrible atrocity. “Final solution” was the ultimate euphemism, the ultimate gloss over, the ultimate expression of distance from truth.
But euphemism is not the only mechanism by which power “manages” the less powerful painlessly (again, for the deliverer, not the delivered). It also does so through program and principle. For example, the Tea Party is calling for smaller government, the elimination or privatizing of entitlement programs, less regulation of business, and lower taxes. The idea is that free enterprise will be freed up to stimulate economic recovery and growth. The only things holding back a recovery in the U.S. economy is government and its rising debt, according to Tea Party thinking.
The truth is radical surgery on government, entitlements, and current debt would throw the economy into terrible chaos. Even the business community would rather see a gradual reduction in debt and government services over time than a radical upheaval of the status quo. It is about trajectory, not a screeching halt. Business can cope with, even benefit from, an encouraging trajectory for government spending. It cannot cope with uncertainty that either the maintenance or an upheaval of the status quo would bring.
Meanwhile, what about the workers? What about unemployment? Tax rates for the rich have been lower for about a decade, and unemployment is still high. Calling for even lower taxes is the economic equivalent of “blood-letting” if lower taxes have not stimulated the economy to grow since the so-called end of the Great Recession.
The greatest problem for the American worker is “out-sourcing,” another familiar euphemism developed by the business world to soften the harshness of more American job loss. According to the Wall Street Journal:
U.S. multinational corporations, the big brand-name companies that employ a fifth of all American workers, have been hiring abroad while cutting back at home, sharpening the debate over globalization's effect on the U.S. economy.
The companies cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show. That's a big switch from the 1990s, when they added jobs everywhere: 4.4 million in the U.S. and 2.7 million abroad.*
If major powers in the business community are not hiring Americans, who else is going to take up the slack? If the government reduces corporate taxes in the U.S. from 35% to 25%, will corporations hire enough workers to justify the loss of corporate tax revenue? I say let’s give it a try by reducing the corporate tax rate on those corporations that show a significant increase in domestic hiring, thus reversing the trend outlined by the Wall Street Journal. Do it on a corporation by corporation basis.
Until then we the privileged will continue to hear the euphemisms bandied about and drift along inured to the harsh reality of what it is actually like to be unemployed because we the privileged remain removed from the actual fray. We can sit at our computers and send out our verbal drone missives through space and hope they penetrate the best defenses of the dogmatic, agenda-driven extremists who are certain about their solutions, and give them pause to consider the possibility that there are human beings suffering out there in America, who, regardless of principles, need a long-term solution they can earn, embrace, or even endure that puts actual food in their mouths and an actual roof over their heads. “Out-sourcing,” “business decisions,” and “downsizing” will not answer.

*http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704821704576270783611823972.html

The New and Improved Department of Defense

Numerous right wingers have called for the elimination of the federal Department of Education. All right let’s do it. Let’s get rid of it and, instead, put education in the hands of the Department of Defense. Here’s why.

It would kill two birds with one stone. The “birds” the move would kill is the wishy-washy Department of Education that sets standards then gives waivers to any state that requests them. Would the Department of Defense do such a thing? I think not. Noses would be held to the grindstone? You betcha! The other “bird” would be the federal government's tendency to use the Department of Defense to start wars in other people’s back yards and thus leaving a semi-permanent bad taste in the mouths of those who are left to live in those yards. They would now be so challenged by educating American youth they would not have the time or energy to run off to, say Afghanistan or Pakistan to fight another away game. They would be forced to maintain a home schedule.

Now, some would argue that a department whose motto of late is “Don’t ask. Don’t tell” is probably not the one to foster open inquiry or a search for truth, but not to worry. They would have so much money available compared to the old Department of Education, Defense could easily reduce school size to, say, that of a company (max: 190) and class size to that of a squadron (max: 12). There would be no more problems with dress codes, haircuts, child obesity, class-cutting, classroom discipline, or graduation rates. Standards would be upheld, waivers would be non-existent, and attitudes would be positive, or else.

The federal government, through the Department of Defense, in turn, would have to focus on a real enemy instead of having to invent one. That real enemy, of course, is ignorance. Since there is no danger of running low on that omnipresent commodity, we need never worry about lacking a genuine, legitimate target. All of our defense resources could be focused against this enemy with full confidence we are doing the right thing. It’s a win-win situation all around.

The federal government would have to use the Department of Defense, in turn, to focus on the real enemy instead of having to invent one. That real enemy, of course, is ignorance. Since there is no danger of running low on that omnipresent commodity, we need never worry about lacking a genuine, legitimate target. All of our defense resources could be focused on that enemy without ever fearing that the public would get tired and disillusioned and want to withdraw from the fight. Since ignorance, like terrorism, comes in many forms and includes terrorism itself, we can open up our offense full throttle.

Imagine putting the ingenuity of Lockheed-Martin or GE or even Halliburton in the fight against ignorance. Why even they might benefit from seeing ignorance as the enemy and develop better tools and weapons to combat it perhaps even within their own midst once they are able to identify the nature of true ignorance, thanks to the help the Department of Defense will undoubtedly give them.

All in all, it is a great move, one that will save the country, reform our youth, and provide our richest department with a useful opportunity to invest its seemingly unlimited resources. I say, let’s do it. Let’s turn our Department of Defense loose on ourselves instead of on foreign entities and look forward to a better America.

You Are The Sum Total of the Stories You Believe

The 19th Century versions of Three Little Pigs were bloody and fatal to the two pigs who built their houses of straw and sticks. Their houses were blown down and they were summarily eaten by the wolf. The only survivor was the shrewd and more deliberate pig who built his house of brick. He even ended up eating the wolf, alone.
Today in Europe we have countries (Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, to name a few) that have built straw and stick entitlement houses and are now begging the brick builders, Germany and France, to bail them out. The straw and stick “houses” were constructed by smoke and mirror financing and left to future generations to pay for them. Unfortunately, the birth-rate dropped and there were fewer new little pigs to earn the income to pay for the straw and stick entitlement houses, and the folks who were financially and strategically able to build brick houses in the first place are now footing the bill for those whose straw and stick houses are in danger of being blown away.
The brick-builders of the world are the ants in the Aesop fable The Grasshopper and the Ant. They listened to the story and took it to heart. They did not frivolously play and spend the summer of their lives only to find they had not enough to carry them through the winter years of retirement. Bully for them. But does that mean they get to be bullies?
A more modern version of Three Little Pigs has the straw-building pig running to the stick-building pig for shelter when the wolf blows his house down. Then, when the wolf levels the stick house, the two pigs finally run to the bricklayer pig’s house where they survive, thanks to his foresight and generosity. One wonders that the generation who grew up seeing in cartoon form this later version did not internalize its message and now suffer the consequences of not hearing or believing the more Darwinian one.
In Europe the Germans and French so far are taking in their profligate brethren in Greece and elsewhere. They are lending them the money to ostensibly rebuild firmer and sustainable houses. Whether or not the Greeks or Italians actually do that remains to be seen. Meanwhile, in America, the on-going Wild West version of the story looks more like the 19th Century one. The Brick-builders who keep getting richer by the minute are not about to take in the suffering pigs who were counting on Social Security and Medicare to keep the wolf at bay and carry them through old age. Instead, they are throwing bricks at them and blaming them for their stupidity in believing the slippery, cunning faux bricklayers in the first place that they too could have a brick house if only they signed right here on the dotted line. It turns out the loans were made of straw and the less fortunate got nothing but a stick in the eye. Meanwhile, the slippery banker faux brick-layers made millions or even billions.
We are at a cross roads in the world economy and in America. Which version of the Three Little Pigs will play out? Will we take in those who were duped and destroyed by the Buy Now, Pay Later ethos of the late 20th Century, or will we simply shut the door on them and leave them to the wolves?
In a sense the early version of the story is very Old Testament in flavor. The God of Wrath is alive and well and comes to us as the wolf that devours two out of three pigs – not a bad haul. Only the wily, clever, and long-range thinking pig survives, but he has no brethren. It’s the old bomb-shelter mentality of the Cold War.
The more modern version is more New Testament, more so-called Christian, more God of Love. The short-sighted pigs are taken in by the wiser brother and cared for while they presumably learn an important lesson and start building sustainably this next time.
Is it not strange that the religious Christian right seems inclined to adopt the Old Testament version rather than the New? That it is more inclined to smite than to suffer the foolish and forlorn? If the Germans and French can turn the other cheek and open their purses for foreign profligates, why cannot wealthy Americans do so for their very own countrymen by taxing themselves a little more as they bring government spending and entitlements to sustainability?
Is it the strain of self-righteousness (a form of narcissism) that drives the brick-layers to become brick-throwers? There is no tea being dumped by the Tea Party. There is only “I told you so” brick-throwing. It is time to stop the cruel self-righteousness which is the opposite of how almost any religious or humane philosophy suggests we behave. Enough is enough. It is time for real problem-solving, real brick-laying, not pretense and theatre.

Who Has a Locke on Natural Rights?

It is clear now. He who has the most property wins. Life IS a Monopoly Game in America and perhaps throughout the globe. The object is to amass the best pieces of property, develop their potential worth, and rent them out at good rates of return. If you don’t have property, you lose. When Jefferson threw in the Pursuit of Happiness and took out Possessions from the Declaration of Independence, he assumed mention of possessions was unnecessary. After all, the founding fathers were all propertied gentry, and they were the only folks that counted, then and even now, as it turns out. It seems English philosopher John Locke’s (1632-1704) list of natural rights was right on: Life, Health, Liberty, and Possessions (Property).
We keep hearing about the widening gulf between rich and poor or between whites and people of color, and clearly the Republican strategy to reward propertied people with even more property is winning over any other strategy out there. For instance, while the banks got bailed out for their unfortunate investments in mortgage-backed securities, which were none other than risky loans to people who could ill-afford the houses they were enticed to buy with sub-prime mortgages, the poor suckers who took out the loans suffered while the bankers made out like bandits. “Too Big to Fail” was the mantra rationalization for the big bailouts while “Too Small to Win” was the fate for the soon property-less masses who suffered foreclosure.
The Republicans are making sure right now that the upper 2% of income earners in America are protected from any compromise of their disproportionate earnings by more graduated taxation while the poor folks try to survive on the cheapest food available: fat and fast. (There goes Locke’s inclusion of health as a natural right.) The Republican argument is that increased taxes would shrink jobs, but the fact is that throughout the past three years job growth has stagnated under lower taxation because most companies have outsourced jobs overseas. The holdings of cash that the typical multinational corporation once residing in the United States keeps abroad for fear of having to pay American taxes is a testament to the shift of production away from America and to foreign sites. Moreover, the stockholders are first in line to receive the rewards of profit-making while workers are at best secondary.
Republicans are interested only in preserving the property of the rich, which they assume is rightfully earned. In fact, those so-called earnings are because of the systematic, deliberate laws hammered out over the course of history that preserve the holdings of the rich whether they are tax laws, property laws, or stockholder rights. For example, mineral rights law (split estate) which gives mineral rights owners the advantage of being able to drill for natural gas within 350 feet of your house beneath your surface property is typical of the advantage the corporate rich have over regular folks. You have no say in whether or not they can drill there. They simply can by law.
Now the Democrats are shifting further and further toward the right in order to show some attempt to reduce the truly alarming national debt as well as the equally alarming rate of debt increase plaguing our national economy. But to put the burden of correction on the poor and middle class while the rich continue to distance themselves from the masses economically is the most egregious injustice imaginable. There is no trickle down thanks to corporate labor outsource policy, so taxation became the only way left to create jobs in America and that hasn’t worked either. The private sector simply won’t do it. And there is no incentive to do it.
What we have today is the corporate equivalent of the rich individuals who once upon a time squirreled their fortunes away in Swiss bank accounts. The wealth of America is off-shore, and many corporations are unwilling to bring their money back to the States.
If we lowered corporate taxes (we have one of the highest rates in the developed world at 35%) to something more competitive, would that solve the problem? Perhaps it would. Perhaps more money would flow into the Treasury coffers because corporations would import their profits more readily. So why is that idea not on the table? Why is it all about cutting spending?
But no matter how low we lower corporate taxes, will corporations not continue to seek out places to do business in the developing world where labor is cheaper and tax rates are still even lower? Of course they will because corporations, almost by definition (there are exceptions) are loyal to stockholders first and countries of origin when it is profitable. There is no loyalty unless a particular owner or CEO decides location of factories does not simply go to the lowest bidder. Her decision may include some sense of loyalty to national pride or her particular community. That used to be the case and still is to a select few corporate leaders such as the CEOs of Lincoln Electric or Smuckers.
The irony is that public ownership often brings a diffusion of responsibility and ethics because the ownership itself is so technically broad that CEOs can hide behind a veil of principles that say maximizing profit is all-important. To try to satisfy particular constituencies with other agendas is simply too difficult. Unless the stockholders themselves voice alternative priorities the CEO may pursue, the default priority is always profit. If we can’t hold our politicians accountable to serve the greater good, how can we possibly hold CEOs accountable when their “natural” priority is sheer profit?
Of course profit enables purchase which results in property: real estate, cars, and other stuff. The stock market has rebounded handsomely since 2008. The job market has stagnated. The purchasing power of the propertied classes has grown; the purchasing power of the working class has shrunk.
The fact is politicians, no matter what party, are propertied people. There is not a truly poor or actual working class person among them. It is in their self-interest, therefore, to preserve the status quo, to preserve the propertied privilege of the few over the many. Locke was more down to earth than Jefferson, more pragmatic it turns out. The Pursuit of Happiness is an ephemeral thing; property, on the other hand, is a real estate. As new politicians they may enter the political arena with the idealism of Jefferson, but sooner or later they will succumb to the reality of property as the driving force overpowering any other nod to virtue or altruism.
Therefore, we will continue to be a country not for the people or by the people; we will continue to be first and foremost a country for the propertied. Locke had a lock on what would become reality in America long before Jefferson sat down to write the Declaration of Independence. History has shown that no matter how man tries to move mankind in the direction of equality, property will always be the great separator of even those who allegedly were created equal.

Can You Afford Republican Principles?
By
Bruce A. Blodgett

When I see Republican Eric Cantor (aptly named) singing the tired and downright dangerous song “No New Taxes” even when the majority of the country is behind the idea of restoring a graduated tax code that only barely begins to address the only seemingly sustainable aspect of the economy: the ever-widening gap in income between rich and poor, I think of George Bernard Shaw’s character Alfred Doolittle of Pygmalion. Doolittle is trapped into middle class morality at the end of the play because, for a lark, Professor Higgins had suggested to Ezra D, Wannafeller (thinly disguised John D. Rockefeller) that the most original moralist in England is none other than Doolittle. As a result, Doolittle is “forced” to accept a generous stipend for a half a dozen lectures a year on behalf of the Wannafeller Moral Reform World League and become one who is “touched” by everyone rather than the one who “touches.” Before this all happened, Doolittle was a mere dustman who was free and easy.
Eric Cantor has become spokesman for the self-appointed moral reform society of America which is an apt description for the Republican Party. Unlike Robin Hood, this moral reform society wants to make sure that no matter what happens, the most important principles of property, wealth, and privilege must be preserved at any cost. If the poor suffer, so be it; if the old suffer, so be it; if the struggling masses yearning to be free suffer, so be it. What matters most is preservation or even enhancement of the way of life for the few at the expense of the many. Opportunity is for the quick and the resourced. The rest can live on the trickle down crumbs that haphazardly spill from the pockets of the rich. There is also a religious phalanx of the party that is pro-choice for light bulbs but anti-choice on abortion.
The main difference between Cantor and Doolittle is that Doolittle is a self-proclaimed member of the undeserving poor (before Wannafeller intercedes) while Cantor is a member of the self-appointed deserving rich. In Doolittle’s world there are the deserving poor, undeserving poor, and the middle class; in Cantor’s world, there appear to be simply the deserving rich, the struggling middle class, and the undeserving poor.

Doolittle sets forth his philosophy in Act II:
When asked by Pickering : “Have you no morals , man?”
Doolittle replies: “Can’t afford them, Governor.”
He continues to explain:
“I’m one of the undeserving poor: that’s what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he’s up agen middle class morality all the time. If there’s anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it’s always the same story” ‘You’re undeserving so you can’t have it.’ But my needs is as great the most deserving widow’s that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don’t need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don’t eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement cause I’m a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything….I ain’t pretending to be deserving. I’m undeserving; and I mean to go on being undeserving. I like it; and that’s the truth.”
When Pickering suggests Doolittle will make bad use of the five pounds he has asked for the sale of his daughter Liza to Higgins, Doolittle replies with a shake of the head at middle class morality: “Not me Governor, so help me I won’t. Don’t you be afraid that I’ll save it and spare it and live idle on it. There won’t be a penny left of it by Monday. I’ll have to go to work as if I’d never had it. It won’t pauperize me, you bet. Just one good spree for myself and the missus, giving pleasure to ourselves and employment to others, and satisfaction to you to think its not been throwed away. You couldn’t spend it better.”
In the next part of the dialogue Doolittle refuses to take ten pounds offered by Higgins because it is too much money and would instill prudence at the expense of happiness. What Shaw is showing is how some self-denigrating poor may actually feel and why they remain mired in poverty; how the inevitable anti-materialistic counter-culture of a particular generation thinks; and at the same time Shaw is questioning the whole idea of the accumulation of wealth producing happiness and what truly and immediately provides employment for others, namely, consumerism.
Eric Cantor’s world is middle class morality on steroids. Undeserving rich is practically an oxymoron. The only possible people in this category would be those found guilty of breaking the law: the Ponzi- schemers, the Mafia, and the insider traders would be the candidates for this rarefied category in Cantor’s world. The deserving rich is almost a tautology. Of course the rich are deserving. Their wealth is a measure of their virtue. It’s been that way since the advent of capitalism. Never mind how the money is obtained, so long as the process is legally protected. If you have accumulated considerable resources, you are in a much stronger position to hold your position because you can afford the best legal defense of both your monetary and schematic means.
If a private equity firm can buy a company, squeeze more profit for investors at the expense of workers’ jobs, then in the name of efficiency that’s perfectly legal and moral in Cantor’s world. For example, if a Wall Street mogul could somehow take a company like Lincoln Electric which guarantees employment for workers in return for meritocratic piece-work wages, that would be just because it would be legal. We are a nation of laws, and just because the law favors the rich and powerful over the little guy, that’s just fine.
So long as Cantor sings “No New Taxes” for the upper 2% of incomes in America, you can bet that not much will change in terms of relative opportunity in America. The divide between rich and poor will continue to mirror the divide in opportunity access for rich and poor as well. The only means available for the redistribution of wealth and therefore opportunity in America is taxation. Industry has proven, by and large, not to be interested in providing the tools by which opportunity may spread across the classes in America. Therefore, only government will. May it do so now by providing funds for retooling the American workforce through grants to community colleges and technical schools utilizing income from increased taxes on the very rich.
We cannot afford to preserve the status quo that enables the rich to become richer and the less fortunate to stagnate. The Republican principles that they hold so dear are killing this culture slowly but surely. Like Alfred Doolittle, we cannot afford the principles of privilege and never could. We have a new generation of Robber Barons who hide on Wall Street and manipulate the markets to their benefit at the expense of the masses. If that is legal, it sure isn’t justice.

Our Puritan Legacy

While reading Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Discipline, I began to realize something startling: Puritanism is alive and well in America. It takes many forms today, but the essential spirit of it is preserved. It allows various groups to attach themselves to beliefs so rigid and adamant that no facts or contrary information need apply. These groups are posited on the right and the left of any issue and inevitably suffer the hubris of certainty. In all cases they are truly anti-scientific in process and instead begin with self-appointed truths rather than hypotheses. Hypotheses are for pragmatists and other promoters of relativism.
On the left there are puritanical environmentalists who would rather see people starve than introduce genetically engineered crops because they are “unnatural” or who would ban nuclear energy in favor of renewable sources such as solar and wind even though solar and wind will assure a continued gap-filling dependence on burning coal that will kill tens of thousands more people than nuclear energy ever has or will.
On the right we have “Gospel of Wealth” true believers who insist that the Market will solve all economic problems and continue us down the road to progress if we can only free it from intervention by evil government. And we have true believer religious fanatics who are certain what God wants us to do and not do who are perhaps the most direct descendants of Puritanism. Finally, there are those who refuse to believe in climate change because Al Gore does.
In either case, the trial and error shiftiness of science with its hypotheses and murky data are not to be trusted. Science is just too full of doubt and uncertainty to warrant serious consideration, unless it reinforces one of our existing beliefs. Then its evidence is selectively plucked from the tree of knowledge, polished until it gules, and presented as an additional commandment, even when additional data and syntheses suggest that the original hypothesis was wrong.
For example, genetic engineering, the process of which actually does occur in nature, is considered evil by the puritan strain of environmentalists who insist that hybridization or cross breeding is the only natural way to develop pest resistant crops. They are so married to their idea of organic, they cannot entertain the notion that genetic engineered food is safer and less risky scientifically and rationally than hybridization is. Hybridization is the equivalent of a sawed-off shotgun approach to advancement as opposed to engineering which is more the rifle and scope approach. (Brand uses the analogy of marrying a whole village as opposed to marrying a spouse without in-laws)
On this 4th of July, as we celebrate our independence from the British, perhaps we can consider gaining independence from the certainty of belief and submit to the slow, deliberate process of science. Just as we get frustrated with democracy at times because we have to put up with all kinds of theories and notions that get bandied about in the general discourse of our nation, we get frustrated with science’s grinding, deliberate method. And yet it is the best tool we have yet developed to move away from ignorance and toward truth. If it does not produce ready answers to everything, we should still listen to what it has to offer, which is far better than some undocumented, untested belief that we latch on to at our probable peril.
The loudest voices preach; the quiet ones consider.

Claim-Jumping the French Revolution

Drawing parallels is a dangerous game, but some parallels are more dangerous than others.
A blog called The Virginian [http://moneyrunner.blogspot.com/2010/09/french-revolution-coming-to-america.html] tried to make the case early on that the rise of the Tea Party was inspired by some of the same factors that occurred in the French Revolution. The Virginian argues that the absolute rule of the monarchy in France before 1789 is analogous to Big Government in America today, and that “the people,” represented by the grass roots development of the Tea Party, will rise up and reduce the power of government, thereby allowing the free market to flourish. What finally happened in the French Revolution and this interpretation are miles apart.
Yes, the wealth concentration in France in the 1780’s and what we see in America in the 21st Century are somewhat similar. In the United States at the end of 2001, 10% of the population owned 71% of the wealth and the top 1% owned 38%. On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation's wealth. Distribution has only gotten worse since the Great Recession. In 1785 France, Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison to report that “the property of this country [France] is absolutely concentrated in a very few hands.”
In actuality, the Tea Party in America is more like the Jacobins, a second wave more radical that their predecessors, the Girondists, but still an exclusive segment of French society. Furthermore, it is as if The Tea Party is also funded by the American equivalent of the Girondists, the first wave of reformers who represented the wealthier mercantile class mostly from a department (section) in southwest France. Rather than take on the government directly, Big Business [our Girondists] in the form of the Koch brothers, along with other shadowy funders, choose to sit on the sidelines and let the more common Tea Partiers make the ruckus. In France the Jacobins gained power for a while after overthrowing the Girondists, but meanwhile the poor continued to suffer and finally under the name of the Sans-culottes the poor and heretofore disenfranchised masses including small shop keepers rose up and overthrew essentially all privileged classes. The economic trickle down never occurred under the Jacobin or Girondist regimes, and so finally the comprehensive bloody massacre of the privileged ensued.
America is poised to fulfill the promise of the French Revolution in its entirety if it is not careful. The majority of American people feel, according to various polls, that government may be unresponsive, bloated, and deadlocked, but the key issue is that wealth in America is poorly distributed and getting worse. Most Americans feel that rich people and corporations do not pay their fair share of taxes; that corporations and rich people “own” an egregiously disproportionate share of political and economic power; that there is decreasing hope for the little guy to earn an honest living wage in a country that ships so many jobs overseas. The discontent is growing, and the Tea Party’s message is starting to sink in, and not in the way it expects. The Tea Party is looking more and more like the Jacobins or Girondists, just another self-serving elite group that wants to enhance its own position and leave the rest behind to fend for themselves.
America likes to think of itself as “the land of opportunity.” It needs to enhance that opportunity in real terms for all Americans as the major focus of any reform it makes. Balancing budgets and making government efficient and cost effective may be desirable for the long run but does not address opportunity directly. These government reforms mostly serve the immediate desires of the already haves and have mores, not the left behinds.
The assumption so many haves have is that left behinds do not try, do not take responsibility for themselves, deserve to suffer, are a burden to society, can’t find their bootstraps, or are just plain lazy. Let them eat cake. Even if this were true, they are still there. Want a real revolution? Just keep them there, take away any maintenance programs that keep them housed and fed, let them rot, and see what happens. OR figure out what might actually give them hope, a sense of self-worth, a salable skill, and invest in a structured, accountable process that will provide those things successfully.
How a civilization treats its losers is a measure of its relative humaneness. The French in 17 85 were a far cry from serving as a model of goodness. How America handles its poverty in the 21st Century will be watched by the world. Will the challenged but still richest nation in the world lead by example? Can it find a way to reduce poverty, instill or provide a legitimate opportunity for the attainment of self-sufficiency and sustainable solvency among its poor? Will it simply stop trying in the name of balancing budgets over bringing greater socio-economic balance to its culture?
The Founding Fathers created this country as an experiment. It chiseled nothing in stone. It left to future generations the opportunity to make adjustments as needed. The Constitution of the United States is not some holy document that true believers must hold sacred in the original or suffer perdition. Conservatives make the mistake of seeing the rules of the American game, the American experiment as finite, a given, a done deal. It is not and never shall be. That’s why George Washington left office after two terms because he knew he needed to turn the presidency over to someone else, to a newly elected group who might have even better ideas. And if they proved wrong, change them again.
The same can be said for economics. For the past three decades we have been taught to believe in the Free Market as the only way to organize economies. That belief is predicated on Adam Smith’s belief that individuals are rational and know their own self interests better than others do. Smith believed that self-interest is the great motivator of human behavior. Unfortunately, as it turns out, that belief is as reductive as Freud’s belief that all motivation is sexual by nature. There are many gods, many motivations, and man is far more complex a being than any reductive analysis has tried to assume. Karl Marx made the same mistake by assuming that man was essentially altruistic by nature.
Therefore, if man is not mostly self-interested or altruistic or sexually driven, no economic system should be organized around any single belief. A more nuanced understanding of man’s motivations and a more nuanced way of organizing human behavior is required. That, in turn, calls for a nuanced system of checks and balances as well as cooperation both in government and in economic organization that addresses a variety of human motivations and assures real opportunity. In America we need to make changes that enable more people to work and succeed, not rely on a system that produces far more losers and “stagnators” than winners.
The Sans-culottes were the lower class French guys who didn’t wear long stockings below their breeches that ended just below the knee. (The French upper class men looked like football players without pads and helmets). In contrast, the lower class wore trousers. They had no finery, nothing but bare essentials and a sense of having everything to gain and nothing to lose. We see the same impulse playing out across Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Tunisia today. The masses have reached a critical mass of desperation and a way to organize, thanks to technological innovations like Facebook and Twitter. You don’t find many of these guys in the current Tea Party because the Tea Party membership is mostly have something and are interested in keeping more of their hard-earned assets… although they probably will sooner or later figure out that Social Security and Medicare are pretty good deals that we ought to try to figure out how to sustain rather than throw out with the bureaucratic bathwater.
In any case, like it or not, even if your creed is “do no harm” to the other while you take care of number one, there is the problem of unintended consequences and displaced impact that sometimes results in harm to many and huge benefit to few. Capitalism is now borderless. It no longer is contained and forced to play within nationalistic borders. It is now globally “open range.” It may help a few of the globally poorest people gain a higher standard of living so long as capitalism seeks the cheapest form of labor available worldwide. What has happened, however, is American domestic labor that once enjoyed a higher standard of living is now losing employment ground to cheaper labor elsewhere. The only solution posed by Free Market true believers is to develop a more sophisticated, tech-savvy domestic labor force that stays ahead of the curve globally. That means retooling American education to serve that purpose rather than simply aiming public education toward the lately evolved American dream of attending a liberal arts college and losing a high percentage of kids to school drop-out because they see no way to that future. They also call for a greater emphasis on the teaching of math and science to address our growing need for engineers and mathematicians. Instead, the Free Marketeers are busy cutting spending on education in the name of balancing budgets instead of taxing themselves to make schools better.
Our American-based multinational corporations and rich folks might resurrect the notion of civic responsibility which our Founding Fathers very much had and invest more enthusiastically in American education to help prepare the country for the future. That means doing so at the primary and secondary levels of education, not merely investing in research grants at universities. It also might do everything it can to bring manufacturing back to the United States. If we don’t find a way to enfranchise our 21st Century equivalent of the Sans-culottes, we may be facing a bloody revolution that will make the current Tea Party look more like the one in Alice in Wonderland than the one that happened in Boston harbor.*

*although the one in Boston were actually white guys dressed as Indians in order to make it look like an “act of savagery” rather than a frustrated group of colonials rebelling against British imperialism. It is interesting how they hid behind the guise of poorer Native Americans who never got the opportunity to drink imported tea.

Donald Trump Song

(to be sung to “Old Macdonald had a Farm”)





Donald Trump is on a stump

EIEIO

And on his stump he’s got a bump

EIEIO

With a rating here and a rating there

Here a stat; there a stat

Everywhere a stat, stat

Donald Trump is on a stump

EIEIO



Donald Trump the big tycoon

EIEIO

Is now a GOP big buffoon

EIEIO

He’s a birther here, a birther there

Here a birther, there a birther

Everywhere a birther, birther

Donald Trump the big buffoon

EIEIO



The falsehood Trump must keep alive

EIEIO

From where does the President’s birth derive

EIEIO

With a trump up here, and a trump up there

Here a trump up, there a trump up

Everywhere a trump up

It’s the only way Trumpster will survive

EIEIO



Questioning Obama’s birth

EIEIO

Shows just how much Trump’s thoughts are worth

EIEIO

With a small thought here and a small thought there

Here a lie, there a lie

Everywhere a lie, lie

Donald Trump is just a chump

EIEIO



Now Trump’s “truth” shows great fatigue

EIEIO

He wants Obama out of the Ivy League

EIEIO

With a “why Columbia?” here and a “Why Harvard?” there

Here a degree, there a degree

Magna cum laude at Harvard Law? Gee!

Trump makes shit up but that’s his creed

EIEIO


Right now Trump’s in second place

EIEIO

This is the fact we all must face

EIEIO

With a billion here and a billion there

Here some bucks, there some bucks

Everywhere some big bucks

Trump could win the Republican race

EIEIO



The only way to stop Trump cold

EIEIO

Romney shows he’s bright and bold

EIEIO

With a trump Trump here and a trump Trump there

Here a trump, there a trump

Everywhere a trump Trump

Romney forces Trump to fold

EIEIO


Alas, the Mormon’s tongue got loose:

EIEIO

He says Obama should wear a noose

EIEIO

With a cinch knot here, and a lynch knot there

Here a cinch, there a lynch

Everywhere a cinch lynch

Romney really cooked his own goose

EIEIO

The Truth in an Easter Egg

Easter is just around the corner and it reminds me that one of the great traditions connected to that event is the Easter egg hunt. I have a suggestion: let’s all write our congressional representatives and senators and invite them to an Easter Egg Hunt on the Washington Mall. The purpose would be to condition them to actually look for an answer instead of assuming they already have one. Somehow they all seem to have lost their way to the truth and have lost the capacity to actually discover it. Since the truth is often hiding in the tall grass of doubt, maybe the Mall is not such a good place because the grass is too short to make the search an adventure. Maybe we need to move it out of town to some neutral ground where green blades of grass outnumber greenbacks. Maybe some farm in West Virginia could host the event. It could be a kind of Woodstock event for congress.

In any case, we need to encourage both Republican and Democratic congressmen and senators to cast off their cloaks of certainty and re-learn the scientific method of searching for truth they supposedly learned in high school. The scientific method, for the most part, is based on trial and error. You set up an experiment; you try out a hypothesis; it works or does not; and then you make adjustments and try again.
Right now both sides are approaching problem-solving entirely wrong. The Democrats come up with social programs and then sit on them like brooding hens, regardless of whether or not they will hatch some real results. The Republicans, rather than proposing fixes, simply want to burn down what they see as hen houses of brooding Democrats sitting on rotten eggs. Neither side continues to tinker, to experiment, to improve, to progress.

The whole process is a false binary in which conflict is supposed to result in the production of truth, when, in fact, the process always leads to merely a temporary victory for one side that will soon be reversed when the other side obtains a majority. Majority rule does not result in truth. The majority is almost never right no matter which side wins. Consensus is the only process that leads to truth because consensus is the only way a body of people can actually get there. Here’s why.
Back in 1906, an in-law of Charles Darwin named Francis Galton, the coiner of the term eugenics, of all things, went to a fair in western England where he tabulated the guesses by the participants in a guess-the-weight-of-the-ox-carcass contest. When all 800 of the contestants had finished guessing, none had come very close to the actual weight. When Galton calculated the mean of the guesses, the contestants as a body had come within a pound of the actual weight: 1,198 pounds. The mean was 1,197 pounds. Ironically, the guy who believed in eugenics had actually shown that a large body of regular folks could actually ascertain the truth while none of them could do so alone.

Would it not be a wonderful development if our elected representatives put away their one-sided certainty and actually did their own thinking, worked as a body, and reached consensus? We’d all be so much better off in developing and improving successful government programs rather than sitting on failures or throwing out the whole idea of government programs as a waste of money. Right now it’s a lose-lose deadlock.

There is too much emphasis on conflict in American culture and therefore in government as well. Our justice system is meant to operate on the principle that out of a fair and thorough conflict between prosecution and defense will result a fair verdict. However, we all know that the side able to afford the best lawyers has a better chance of winning regardless of the truth. We also know that the lobbyists with the most money have greater influence over congress than do the regular folks. If we could somehow find a way to elect politicians who can and will think for themselves and not be influenced by big money and party line then we have a chance of getting ourselves governed well rather than governed least or big, a Morton’s Fork at best. If we truly want to move away from adversarial thinking, we need to stop electing so many lawyers and start electing more scientists. Science is the most uncertain discipline where theories don’t pass for fact. That’s why there is considerable humility among scientists who seldom argue their case by ignoring evidence in order to maintain a belief.

The Easter egg hunt is a good place to start. Those congressmen who collect the most eggs get to lead the discussion and present their best legislation for consideration. It would be a far better system than the one we have now.

The Audacity of Cuts

Young Paul Ryan has a plan
EIEIO
And In that plan he has some Cuts
EIEIO
With a Cut Cut here, and a Cut Cut there
Here a Cut, there a Cut, everywhere a Cut Cut
Young Paul Ryan has a plan
EIEIO
Paul Ryan should work in a deli. He can deliver cold cuts faster than a baloney factory. But he’s not alone by a long shot. He is simply the point man for the Republicans who think cold cuts are the answer to America’s woes because to suggest that increasing taxes might be part of the answer is to fly in the face of conservative ideology: taxes are bad; tax cuts are good; government is bad; free enterprise is good.
If their god “Free Enterprise” aka “Free Market” were such a great, all-worthy god, why are so many people out of work two years after the economic meltdown? Why are the rich getting richer during this same period? Why is there so little trickle down? And why do Free Market worshippers continue to believe that by making the rich even richer that somehow that will result in a better life for the masses?
Blind faith in a system, any system, is a mistake. To believe that a final answer has been reached economically and that answer is Free Market Capitalism is simply dead wrong. Anything man invents or evolves is simply a link on an evolutionary chain, not a Nirvana. There is no perfect plane or car or atomic power plant. Tinkering must continue. Rethinking must occur if things are to improve. To make an economic system a holy untouchable is to render it a god. As Robert Frost said in his poem “The White-tailed Hornet,” “Won’t almost any theory bear revision?”
What Free Enterprise advocates do not take into account are the losers. They ignore losers; they blame them; they fail to take them into account; they let them eat cake. And eat cake they will. As George Orwell once said, “When you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want to eat something a little bit tasty.” And you end up with an obese nation, but that’s another topic even if it signals the essential difference between the rich and poor modes of thinking.
Rich people or winners have the privilege of being able to think long term and are patient about the future which will also belong to them if they play their cards right. Poor people are so focused on survival and instant gratification today that long term thinking is sheer luxury. Planning for the future is something to get around to tomorrow when there is enough food around for beyond today.
There was a time when poor people left home, even left their country to find a better life. It is still true for people who immigrate to America today. In the past when the United States was still being settled, if you ran into trouble, you could go west, find land, homestead it, and start a new life. Today there is no land to homestead. The West is settled. If you were a southern black, you could move north and find a job in a factory. Today, there are fewer factory jobs because many factories have moved abroad where cheaper labor can be found. The poor are essentially stuck without resources or wherewithal to make a move to a better life. They have mostly terrible schools in their neighborhoods, a fact which signals they have little means of escape even for the next generation.
Conservatives are all about conserving the status quo whereby they remain the winners and losers just need to find their bootstraps. Losing has to do with individual character and slothfulness, not a structural flaw in the system. After all, if the poor just started to develop some long-range plans, they too could succeed. The problem is you need to believe that tomorrow can be better in order to even consider long-range thinking. If you are just scraping by, a long range plan is less realistic than winning the lottery. That’s why the poor per capita are the most frequent players as a group. In many cases winning the lottery is their only hope.
Meanwhile, we’ll watch the Republicans try to save one of their own, this time Congressman Ryan rather than Private Ryan, as they foolishly and consistently tear down all those liberal bridges to nowhere called entitlements while their constituency, the Haves and Have Mores, bask in the sunlight of the conservative spirit.
Robin Hood must be rolling in his grave.

Illumination

Freedom fighters unite! The damn government is trying to force us to use CFL light bulbs instead of incandescent ones. It’s an outrage. I said outrage, not outage. It’s just another example of creeping socialism that is taking over the country. First it was death panels, now its light panels. Every time the government thinks, an oxymoron if there ever was one, it comes up with yet another regulation to stifle freedom. Now it’s the requirement to use CFL lights because they supposedly save energy. What a crock.
Just because CFLs last ten times longer and use one fifth the energy an incandescent does doesn’t mean they are more efficient. It means they are weak, pusillanimous, pussy-footing sources of light compared to the light bulb our own Thomas Edison invented. If God had wanted a CFL light bulb, he would have made Edison make one in the first place.
I don’t care if a coal plant has to work harder and give off more mercury to light an incandescent. Taking off the top of a mountain to feed a coal plant to light a man’s light bulb and throw off a little mercury in the process just helps the economy, creates jobs, keeps other professionals busy such as doctors who take care of the workers with black lung and such, and the whole economy keeps humming right along just fine. Mountain topping also levels the playing field, which you liberals are always yakking about.
Let’s be reasonable. The CFL has mercury as well, but it can’t compete with the coal plant that puts out 4.65 times more mercury per incandescent equivalent than is contained in that wimpy CFL. Hell, there isn’t enough mercury in a CFL to kill a cat let alone a human being. The CFL just does not have the stuff an incandescent does. If you want a powerful bulb, you go with an incandescent.
Besides, back in the day when men were men and men could swear generously, one of the best of them was Mark Twain. One time he took after an editor and laid into him something fierce. He called him a “quadrilateral, astronomical, incandescent son-of-a-bitch.” Now, did he use the word florescent? Hell no. He picked out the hottest words he could muster and one of them was incandescent.
I rest my case.

The Bully Pulp Pit

Congress is back in session. The Republicans are in charge. Instead of focusing on job creation and budget balancing, they go after the weakest thing they can find and try to squash it because part of its work flies in the face of one of their cherished principles: the rights of the unborn. They are busy swatting flies while the lion roars.
Funding for Planned Parenthood is on the block because it pays for poor people’s abortions. Better to have a child grow up to find out his father was a rapist. Better he grow up in a slum with a single parent who did not want him in the first place. That’s bound to have a good outcome. There may be occasional exceptions, but I will bet there are many more drug dealers than Lions Club members coming out of that scenario. Ensuring unwanted unborn rights and removing the rights of rape victims is small ball with little risk because the oppressed in this case have no political or economic clout. They are usually poor.
It seems that no matter what party is in power, there is a tendency to try for victories over small issues rather than go after big game. Health care was not exactly small game, but it was in comparison to the budget deficit, the recession, and job creation. The form of health care that eventually passed was somewhat flawed, but it still amounted to an attempt to get more comprehensive about health care in America. The way we had gone about it in the past was obsolete. We had to go in a different direction. We did, but not in an effectively sustainable one. The healthcare baby may be worth saving, but the bath water needs cleaning up.
Maybe political bodies and politicians themselves are like some college football programs that begin the season by playing some patsies before getting to the tough league schedule. Or maybe they never get to the tough schedule because they are too busy picking on small adversaries and claiming victory the way a bully does. Planned Parenthood is a small adversary. So are illegal immigrants small adversaries. And so are small town foreclosure sufferers.
A short alert by Freakonomics in the February 4, 2011 New York Times cited a study that links negligent or inattentive fatherhood to a propensity for bullying. Apparently the study points to the role of a child’s perception as to whether or not he or she is being paid enough attention by the father. If a child feels neglected by the father, he or she will have a greater tendency to bully.
If this is true, I wonder how many politicians, particularly Republican politicians, have been the victims of neglectful fathers. If their fathers were so busy making a living or getting rich that they did not spend time with their children, this phenomenon could explain the mean-spiritedness that characterizes some politicians in congress and in state legislatures today. They would rather pick on the little guy than go after big game such as the deficit and unemployment.
Whatever the case, I wish politicians would show a little more courage and go after the big issues rather than beat to a pulp the little issues and little guys that already live on the margin. Beating up little guys takes no courage at all.