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
Showing posts with label Tea Party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tea Party. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
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
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
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
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
“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
Friday, August 12, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, May 2, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Trickle, Trickle, Little Drip
Trickle, trickle, little drip;
All I want is just a sip;
Tip the pot and you’ll be hip;
Oh a drop to touch my lip.
Wall Street, let me earn some cash;
Let me forage through your trash;
All my dreams have turned to ash;
Government’s fault there was a crash.
Throw the tea into the bay;
Keep the taxes low, you say;
Help the rich to never pay;
Keep them rich, come what may.
Wear your cute tri-cornered hat;
Austerity is where it’s at;
Drink their Kool-Aid; chew their fat;
Will you never smell a rat?
So keep the tempest teapot strong;
And keep that sense that you belong;
Perhaps you’ll wake before too long
And figure out that you were wrong.
All I want is just a sip;
Tip the pot and you’ll be hip;
Oh a drop to touch my lip.
Wall Street, let me earn some cash;
Let me forage through your trash;
All my dreams have turned to ash;
Government’s fault there was a crash.
Throw the tea into the bay;
Keep the taxes low, you say;
Help the rich to never pay;
Keep them rich, come what may.
Wear your cute tri-cornered hat;
Austerity is where it’s at;
Drink their Kool-Aid; chew their fat;
Will you never smell a rat?
So keep the tempest teapot strong;
And keep that sense that you belong;
Perhaps you’ll wake before too long
And figure out that you were wrong.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Taxes, Triggers, and Tea
Times have been tough for a lot of Americans these past couple of years. One of the things that tough times tend to generate is fear. Roosevelt saw that tendency and tried to negate its magnetic pull by declaring: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” However, this time around, there was no Roosevelt to reassure us. There was a black man sitting in his former seat.
I say black man because that is how a certain portion of America still sees the President. They cannot get past the fact that the country elected a black person as President of the United States. Some called “birthers” keep trying to insist that he cannot be the President because he was not born in the U.S. Others dismiss him as a spendthrift liberal who is giving what is left of the country to his fellow black people. Still others reject him on the basis that he used taxpayer money to bail out the big banks and Detroit but left the average white guy behind holding his up-side-down mortgage, facing the loss of his home and his job, and burdening him with the cost of health care for 32 million folks without health insurance.
None of these fears are made true by the policies set forth by the President, but that does not prevent these fearful folks from embracing and focusing those fears. Yes, we have yet to see all the bailouts paid back or rules put in place to prevent another Wall Street bubble disaster, but the economy has come off life-support and is beginning to stroll around the block; and it is dreaming of running another marathon some day, albeit at a much slower pace. The task now is to engage the general populace so that it too can participate. How that is accomplished has yet to be revealed, but there are signs that it is beginning to happen. Remember, under capitalism, which is what we still have as our economic system, the workers are the first to be let go and the last to be brought back.
However, meanwhile, there are two distinct but overlapping groups of white folks who are determined not only to take what they see as justice into their own hands but to stop the President from bringing what they call “socialism” to full throttle in our midst. They are The Tea Partiers and The Gun-Hoes. The Tea Party consists of the angry white folks who generally do not carry weapons or cling to them the way small children cling to security blankets. They use their voices to mouth the half-truths and outright falsehoods they hear from Limbaugh on radio or Hannity on Fox News. When they are interviewed or when they make their placards, they never get out a message that makes any sense for their own well-being. Their placards and pronouncements imply if not call for, in effect, self-inflicted wounds such as loss of Social Security or Medicare. In short, they want to be taxed less but still receive their government benefits which are paid for by taxes. They want their cake and eat it too.
The Gun-Hoes, on the other hand, tend to be rural types or rural wannabes who go to the woods on weekends and play war games in preparation for that anticipated time when they will be “forced” to defend the Constitution from the corruption by Washington, Wall Street, and Socialism in general. These militia groups have bubbled and deflated in size and number proportionally to the rise and fall of unemployment and to their perception of the degree to which Washington is controlled by liberals. With the 2008 election of a black President and a majority of Democrats in both houses, the number of background checks in the U.S. rose immediately by 42 percent the month after the election. Although gun purchases have leveled off in the past six months as joblessness has, it has not been simply because of a decrease in fear but also because of fully loaded saturation levels of gun-toting whites. The gun cabinets are full because the Gun-Hoes ascribe to the other Roosevelt’s adage: “Speak softly and carry a big stick”
Not all gun purchasers join militias or even tea parties. Many are quiet, isolated, individuals who are not joiners by nature. They quietly buy their guns and store ammunition in fear that they may have to defend their homes in the face of some sort of takeover by an “enemy adversary” who may appear in the form of a government agent, an illegal immigrant, city folk, or simply a non-white or non-resident alien. They hate the government in general, but they fear the individual or group who might threaten their sense of libertarian peace or rugged individualism. The ones the public needs to fear most are the ones driven by “voices from God” such as the nine from the group that calls itself Hutaree who were recently arrested in the Midwest.
Uncertainty produces fear, and fear brings out the worst in us. The more diverse and larger a population and the fewer jobs, the more fear and suspicion reign supreme. Fear has a way of transforming the golden rule into “Do unto others as you suspect they would (or will) do unto you.” It is a preemptive and projective strike, the product of selfishness and fear. We project our fears onto others who are different and imagine them acting out what we might be capable of doing ourselves or have already done and therefore fear retribution. As Oscar Wilde once said, “All criticism is autobiographical.”
That’s why the Tea Party, hosted by that screech owl Sarah Palin, is so noisy and the gun sales so bountiful. I’ll reluctantly put up with the noise so long as the guns stay quiet, and I’ll try to keep in mind the nursery rhyme about sticks and stones and meanwhile try to ignore the saying about the squeaky wheel.
I say black man because that is how a certain portion of America still sees the President. They cannot get past the fact that the country elected a black person as President of the United States. Some called “birthers” keep trying to insist that he cannot be the President because he was not born in the U.S. Others dismiss him as a spendthrift liberal who is giving what is left of the country to his fellow black people. Still others reject him on the basis that he used taxpayer money to bail out the big banks and Detroit but left the average white guy behind holding his up-side-down mortgage, facing the loss of his home and his job, and burdening him with the cost of health care for 32 million folks without health insurance.
None of these fears are made true by the policies set forth by the President, but that does not prevent these fearful folks from embracing and focusing those fears. Yes, we have yet to see all the bailouts paid back or rules put in place to prevent another Wall Street bubble disaster, but the economy has come off life-support and is beginning to stroll around the block; and it is dreaming of running another marathon some day, albeit at a much slower pace. The task now is to engage the general populace so that it too can participate. How that is accomplished has yet to be revealed, but there are signs that it is beginning to happen. Remember, under capitalism, which is what we still have as our economic system, the workers are the first to be let go and the last to be brought back.
However, meanwhile, there are two distinct but overlapping groups of white folks who are determined not only to take what they see as justice into their own hands but to stop the President from bringing what they call “socialism” to full throttle in our midst. They are The Tea Partiers and The Gun-Hoes. The Tea Party consists of the angry white folks who generally do not carry weapons or cling to them the way small children cling to security blankets. They use their voices to mouth the half-truths and outright falsehoods they hear from Limbaugh on radio or Hannity on Fox News. When they are interviewed or when they make their placards, they never get out a message that makes any sense for their own well-being. Their placards and pronouncements imply if not call for, in effect, self-inflicted wounds such as loss of Social Security or Medicare. In short, they want to be taxed less but still receive their government benefits which are paid for by taxes. They want their cake and eat it too.
The Gun-Hoes, on the other hand, tend to be rural types or rural wannabes who go to the woods on weekends and play war games in preparation for that anticipated time when they will be “forced” to defend the Constitution from the corruption by Washington, Wall Street, and Socialism in general. These militia groups have bubbled and deflated in size and number proportionally to the rise and fall of unemployment and to their perception of the degree to which Washington is controlled by liberals. With the 2008 election of a black President and a majority of Democrats in both houses, the number of background checks in the U.S. rose immediately by 42 percent the month after the election. Although gun purchases have leveled off in the past six months as joblessness has, it has not been simply because of a decrease in fear but also because of fully loaded saturation levels of gun-toting whites. The gun cabinets are full because the Gun-Hoes ascribe to the other Roosevelt’s adage: “Speak softly and carry a big stick”
Not all gun purchasers join militias or even tea parties. Many are quiet, isolated, individuals who are not joiners by nature. They quietly buy their guns and store ammunition in fear that they may have to defend their homes in the face of some sort of takeover by an “enemy adversary” who may appear in the form of a government agent, an illegal immigrant, city folk, or simply a non-white or non-resident alien. They hate the government in general, but they fear the individual or group who might threaten their sense of libertarian peace or rugged individualism. The ones the public needs to fear most are the ones driven by “voices from God” such as the nine from the group that calls itself Hutaree who were recently arrested in the Midwest.
Uncertainty produces fear, and fear brings out the worst in us. The more diverse and larger a population and the fewer jobs, the more fear and suspicion reign supreme. Fear has a way of transforming the golden rule into “Do unto others as you suspect they would (or will) do unto you.” It is a preemptive and projective strike, the product of selfishness and fear. We project our fears onto others who are different and imagine them acting out what we might be capable of doing ourselves or have already done and therefore fear retribution. As Oscar Wilde once said, “All criticism is autobiographical.”
That’s why the Tea Party, hosted by that screech owl Sarah Palin, is so noisy and the gun sales so bountiful. I’ll reluctantly put up with the noise so long as the guns stay quiet, and I’ll try to keep in mind the nursery rhyme about sticks and stones and meanwhile try to ignore the saying about the squeaky wheel.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Smaller Government?
The Tea Party Express rolled into Denver yesterday. I saw on the news the signs they bounced in their hands in a didactic gesture of insistence. “Small government” was one of the more prominent ones they shook with anger and self righteousness.
And then reality began to confront their plea in my memory bank. I began to think about the last time I stood in line for any length of time. No, it wasn’t to get tickets to the opera or the symphony or even a play at the Space Theatre. It was at the Post Office. I had gone there to retrieve my mail after being out of town for a few weeks. There was one person working behind the counter, there were two people in front of me, and there was a line forming and lengthening behind me as we waited for the woman who was insuring a package, buying stamps, and generally accomplishing all of her little missions that had brought her to the Post Office that morning.
I can remember a time when no matter how long the line was, I could get in and out of the Post Office in a few minutes because there were three people working the counter. Not today. Today, thanks to smaller government, I have to wait about a half hour to forty-five minutes to get my mail early in the morning on a Monday or Tuesday.
Then I began recalling the last time I had to go to the DMV for a car registration or a driver’s license renewal. I remember spending hours trying t get what I needed and lost almost a full day of work in the process. It seems the volume of business at the DMV is far greater than its capacity to handle it, so small government in this instance appeared to be costing productivity in the workplace a great deal.
When I was in New Zealand a couple of months ago, I noticed that road crews were everywhere patching and sealing the already magnificent roads and in the process completely eliminating any road hazards due to potholes or cracks. At this time of year in Denver, unless you have a large SUV with oversized tires, you are apt to put your front end out of alignment by dropping into some significant potholes everywhere around town. Of course, New Zealand has a more socialist government than we do, so they put social services such as national health care and road repair ahead of any shorter-sighted call for lower taxes and smaller government.
I don’t know about you, but I remember what happened when we relaxed some rules governing Wall Street during the last thirty years of the 20th Century after we seemed to forget what brought them into existence to begin with, thinking that a freer Wall Street and less government interference would be a good thing for everybody. And so we bought into trickle-down or supply-side thinking for a few decades. It turned out the government had to act about as big as you can get in the end in order to salvage the world economy from complete collapse. Had it stayed a bit bigger and more powerful to begin with, the collapse would have been prevented.
Today we have these multinational corporations that have budgets larger than most countries out there doing business in their own interest, as they are designed to do. Without big or powerful government, who is going to ensure that these corporations contribute to the greater good at the same time they make a profit for their stockholders, who tend to be rather insistent that their investments yield short term returns on a regular basis. Who is going to help guide these huge corporations on a long term course that raises the world’s quality of life as well as the already high standard of living enjoyed by investors even higher? Would you suggest The United Nations? I think not. The only government capable of doing that is the U.S. government, unless we shrink it and let the Chinese and its directed economy bury us. And unless it remains large and powerful, it will be run over by all sorts of powerful entities with a lot more resources than the Tea Party crowd.
You want “smaller government”? Corporations, China, India, even the European Union are licking their collective chops! What are you thinking, Tea Partiers! If you want to protest something, protest against fast food and industrialized agriculture, not big government. The former will shorten your lives; taxes never have. And drink some green tea instead of throwing it in the sea of your misdirected discontent.
And then reality began to confront their plea in my memory bank. I began to think about the last time I stood in line for any length of time. No, it wasn’t to get tickets to the opera or the symphony or even a play at the Space Theatre. It was at the Post Office. I had gone there to retrieve my mail after being out of town for a few weeks. There was one person working behind the counter, there were two people in front of me, and there was a line forming and lengthening behind me as we waited for the woman who was insuring a package, buying stamps, and generally accomplishing all of her little missions that had brought her to the Post Office that morning.
I can remember a time when no matter how long the line was, I could get in and out of the Post Office in a few minutes because there were three people working the counter. Not today. Today, thanks to smaller government, I have to wait about a half hour to forty-five minutes to get my mail early in the morning on a Monday or Tuesday.
Then I began recalling the last time I had to go to the DMV for a car registration or a driver’s license renewal. I remember spending hours trying t get what I needed and lost almost a full day of work in the process. It seems the volume of business at the DMV is far greater than its capacity to handle it, so small government in this instance appeared to be costing productivity in the workplace a great deal.
When I was in New Zealand a couple of months ago, I noticed that road crews were everywhere patching and sealing the already magnificent roads and in the process completely eliminating any road hazards due to potholes or cracks. At this time of year in Denver, unless you have a large SUV with oversized tires, you are apt to put your front end out of alignment by dropping into some significant potholes everywhere around town. Of course, New Zealand has a more socialist government than we do, so they put social services such as national health care and road repair ahead of any shorter-sighted call for lower taxes and smaller government.
I don’t know about you, but I remember what happened when we relaxed some rules governing Wall Street during the last thirty years of the 20th Century after we seemed to forget what brought them into existence to begin with, thinking that a freer Wall Street and less government interference would be a good thing for everybody. And so we bought into trickle-down or supply-side thinking for a few decades. It turned out the government had to act about as big as you can get in the end in order to salvage the world economy from complete collapse. Had it stayed a bit bigger and more powerful to begin with, the collapse would have been prevented.
Today we have these multinational corporations that have budgets larger than most countries out there doing business in their own interest, as they are designed to do. Without big or powerful government, who is going to ensure that these corporations contribute to the greater good at the same time they make a profit for their stockholders, who tend to be rather insistent that their investments yield short term returns on a regular basis. Who is going to help guide these huge corporations on a long term course that raises the world’s quality of life as well as the already high standard of living enjoyed by investors even higher? Would you suggest The United Nations? I think not. The only government capable of doing that is the U.S. government, unless we shrink it and let the Chinese and its directed economy bury us. And unless it remains large and powerful, it will be run over by all sorts of powerful entities with a lot more resources than the Tea Party crowd.
You want “smaller government”? Corporations, China, India, even the European Union are licking their collective chops! What are you thinking, Tea Partiers! If you want to protest something, protest against fast food and industrialized agriculture, not big government. The former will shorten your lives; taxes never have. And drink some green tea instead of throwing it in the sea of your misdirected discontent.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
The McCarthy Legacy
Back in the early 1950’s America was haunted by a witch-hunter named Joseph McCarthy. He was a mainly a one man show who managed to work up an anti-communist frenzy across the country which resulted in a lot of professional lives left in ruin and a national paranoia the likes of which has not been seen in America until the election of our first black President and the subsequent rise of the Tea Party movement. I remember the McCarthy hearings well, for they were the first day time television I had witnessed as a child growing up among what would be called moderate Republicans today.
Ever since the Obama election liberals have been the proverbial frogs in the kettle of water. In these times, there are numerous voices heating up the witch-hunt, fueling the fire that heats the water that eventually will boil the frogs unless they have the wisdom to simply stop sitting there pretending they can take the heat of the conservatives’ cauldron when in fact the temperature is near the boiling point. These heat-generating irrational voices come from Fox News, talk radio, the House of Representatives, the Senate: in short, they are a siren-like chorus that enchants and infuriates the public to such a degree that the bricks and spit have already begun to fly. Guns and grenades may be just around the corner. Enough of taking the heat.
Meanwhile, the national conversation has shifted to such a conservative extreme that what was once moderate Republican thinking is now labeled socialist or liberal. For example, the health care bill that the House just passed is a mere shadow of what Nixon proposed in the 1970’s. What used to be Republican thinking is now labeled socialist, and what is now Republican thinking is simply anti-governmental or the party of NO.
Most of the Tea Party types are losers. They think like losers and act like losers. That’s what happens when you think only defensively, only reductively, only negatively. You define your existence by what you are against, not for. You score no points because you are too busy trying to prevent the other side from scoring any. It is a strategy that goes nowhere but down.
The Democratic Party seized the middle of the political spectrum in the last election and has slowly but carefully maintained a centrist course, much to the chagrin of true liberals, who would much rather have seen an expanded Medicare program come out of congress than this 30 million new accounts cornucopia for the insurance industry.
However, the new McCarthy-ites are not having any of it, even if the bill is mostly derived from old Republican ideas. They want less government, or even no government, because they have nowhere to go philosophically except further right into some wild new frontier of libertarian nihilism, the middle ground having been occupied by the Democrats because the middle ground was vacated by the right as they looked for higher ground from which to look down on the land they relinquished. They sooner or later will find that the soil is rather thin the higher you go. So they are left with nothing but denial: No nothing. No. Just say no.
The problem in America is that the true liberal has been left behind, disenfranchised, by the Democratic Party shift to the middle. You would never know it as a problem because the extreme right holds most of the apparent microphones and megaphones. In fact, actual liberal views are buried beneath whatever ground is being managed by the party in power namely, the Democrats.
The good news is that as long as the Tea Party folks have sway over the Republicans, the Democrats can rest assured that the Republicans will be a long time in trying to reclaim that very fertile middle ground.
Ever since the Obama election liberals have been the proverbial frogs in the kettle of water. In these times, there are numerous voices heating up the witch-hunt, fueling the fire that heats the water that eventually will boil the frogs unless they have the wisdom to simply stop sitting there pretending they can take the heat of the conservatives’ cauldron when in fact the temperature is near the boiling point. These heat-generating irrational voices come from Fox News, talk radio, the House of Representatives, the Senate: in short, they are a siren-like chorus that enchants and infuriates the public to such a degree that the bricks and spit have already begun to fly. Guns and grenades may be just around the corner. Enough of taking the heat.
Meanwhile, the national conversation has shifted to such a conservative extreme that what was once moderate Republican thinking is now labeled socialist or liberal. For example, the health care bill that the House just passed is a mere shadow of what Nixon proposed in the 1970’s. What used to be Republican thinking is now labeled socialist, and what is now Republican thinking is simply anti-governmental or the party of NO.
Most of the Tea Party types are losers. They think like losers and act like losers. That’s what happens when you think only defensively, only reductively, only negatively. You define your existence by what you are against, not for. You score no points because you are too busy trying to prevent the other side from scoring any. It is a strategy that goes nowhere but down.
The Democratic Party seized the middle of the political spectrum in the last election and has slowly but carefully maintained a centrist course, much to the chagrin of true liberals, who would much rather have seen an expanded Medicare program come out of congress than this 30 million new accounts cornucopia for the insurance industry.
However, the new McCarthy-ites are not having any of it, even if the bill is mostly derived from old Republican ideas. They want less government, or even no government, because they have nowhere to go philosophically except further right into some wild new frontier of libertarian nihilism, the middle ground having been occupied by the Democrats because the middle ground was vacated by the right as they looked for higher ground from which to look down on the land they relinquished. They sooner or later will find that the soil is rather thin the higher you go. So they are left with nothing but denial: No nothing. No. Just say no.
The problem in America is that the true liberal has been left behind, disenfranchised, by the Democratic Party shift to the middle. You would never know it as a problem because the extreme right holds most of the apparent microphones and megaphones. In fact, actual liberal views are buried beneath whatever ground is being managed by the party in power namely, the Democrats.
The good news is that as long as the Tea Party folks have sway over the Republicans, the Democrats can rest assured that the Republicans will be a long time in trying to reclaim that very fertile middle ground.
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