Dashiell

I Got Nothin'

2011-04-03T11:13:00.000-07:00

My creative energy seems to be inspired only by the short form (Twitter) or the book I'm writing. In the meantime, for those few who care, I apologize for the dormant nature of this blog.

The Crime of Silence

2011-02-13T12:09:00.001-08:00

It’s been a month since the attempted assassination of my Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, in Tucson. Six people were murdered in the massacre, including a nine-year-old girl, and twelve others were wounded.

I have felt the desire to write at length about this many times in the past month, but the pain, sorrow, and anger made it impossible. I was actually surprised by how deeply it affected me. Giffords is a centrist Democrat, not even very liberal by my standards, and I’ve been critical of her in the past. Nevertheless, I voted for her last November. Her opponent was a “tea party” fanatic, a loud-mouth nobody, representing the ugliest and most reactionary aspects of Arizona politics. She barely squeaked by to a victory, which in itself is a cause for disgust if not despair. In any case, she is my representative in Washington, and by all accounts a very nice person. Somebody saw fit to shoot her in the head, and it felt like a ripping apart of the veneer of civilization in Tucson. If someone this moderate is at risk, then we are a lot closer to fascism than I thought.

Of course the rightists have spent a lot of time protesting that they had nothing to do with this. The shooter at least appears to be nuttier than a fruitcake, and in any case there is rarely a provable, direct cause and effect link from rhetoric to crime in cases like this. Even in incidents where a shooter was clearly influenced by right-wing rhetoric, such as with the guy who killed two people at a church in Tennessee in 2008, the rightists always deny any responsibility. After all, they say, who can tell what will set off a crazy person?

The crime is really an occasion to question the entire thrust of right-wing rhetoric, and to decry its effect on the atmosphere. Because, you see, a constant barrage of high-decibel lying and hate talk does have an effect on the atmosphere of public discourse. Fox News, for instance, works 24 hours a day spreading lies and fomenting anger and hatred about a multitude of mostly phony issues that they dream up for just that purpose. AM talk radio features one bellicose demagogue after another, always doing one thing—attacking liberals as dangerous enemies of America.

The rightists would have you believe that this has no effect on the atmosphere of the country. If that were true, it’s hard to imagine why they do it. There is no discussion involved, no exchange of ideas, no openness of any kind. Slogans, talking points, and fabrications are simply lobbed out into the airwaves in order to dominate and distort gullible minds.

There is a long list of despicable human beings who make a living dividing us into warring camps. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, Tammy Bruce, Erick Erickson, Megyn Kelly, Bernard Goldberg, Dick Morris, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and quite a few others comprise this shameless bunch of liars. They are not patriots. Their aim is not to disagree, but to destroy. They have no morals, no standards, no credibility. Yes, the Constitution protects their right to free speech. I also have the right to not buy products from companies that pay for these unscrupulous hucksters. I have the right to let other people know who sponsors them, and to let the companies know what they’re paying for as well.

Don’t tell me it’s not political. It’s all political. Rush Limbaugh would shoot you in the head himself if he knew he could get away with it. We saw what right-wing hatred could do in the 20th century when it had total power and was unrestrained by law. And that’s what these people represent. Through the power of their media, their fascist rhetoric irradiates the land. The mentally unstable are especially prone to seduction by the paranoid fantasies, the sociopathic projections of fear, the unthinking xenophobia, misogyny, and racism. So when some nut starts believing all this crap like it was the word of God, he snaps and ends up shooting people. And scum like Hannity or Beck shrug and say, “Who me? I didn’t do anything.”

But I reserve my greatest contempt for those who should know better, the media establishment figures outside of the Fox News-AM radio nexus, who turn a blind eye to the destruction of our sociopolitical life, buying into the lies and the talking points, helping to push the phony narrative. People like George Stephanopoulos, David Gregory, Diane Sawyer, Tom Brokaw, Chuck Todd, Wolf Blitzer, Jake Tapper, Brian Williams, and all the mainstream pundits on TV and in the newspapers who think that this is normal, that this kind of thing is business as usual and to be expected, and who always frame every issue through the right-wing prism provided them by the extremists. They abandoned journalism and took on an “objectivity” that doesn’t exist, in which one side gets to lie with impunity without any consequences, and the tenets of reactionary Republican doctrine are never seriously questioned. These are the cowards that watched the third estate die, and yawned over their martinis.

When you don’t speak out against evil, you assent to it. You allow it. The most shameful appeasement of our time is the media’s surrender of responsibility, its groveling before the rightists and the imperial state. They are the hollow men, the hollow women, the empty husks from which nothing can be hoped for and nothing can be believed.

When people of decency marched in the millions against the invasion of Iraq, let the record show that the American press and media ignored them, and marginalized their views. And let the record show that when a bogus “movement” of white resentment, paid for by right-wing operatives, staged a display of thuggery calling itself a “tea party,” the same press and media rolled over like little dogs.

So to you reporters, pundits, anchors, experts, and analysts I say: I will no longer listen to you. You have failed, and the answers to our problems will not come from you, but only from those people of conscience left unseduced by your lies. You will keep talking on and on into the empty air, but your time is over.

Nobodaddy's Last Stand

2011-01-05T21:12:00.001-08:00

William Blake, a Christian himself, albeit a highly unconventional one, called the jealous, judgmental, anthropomorphic god of Western tradition “Nobodaddy,” surely one of the cleverest verbal constructions ever made. He is Nobody, because he is silent and invisible, and Daddy because he lords it over us as the first father of patriarchy.

I have written elsewhere of God as a metaphor for the “self” or “subject” of the world, and how this poetic identity between existence and experience validates the inherent necessity of conscious life, especially in the face of death—or rather the human awareness of death, which created that struggle for meaning unique to our species.

But this understanding of the metaphorical nature of theism has become practically irrelevant in terms of the social and political problems posed by god-based organized religions. The relationship of the soul to a personal god or gods has a purely subjective value. The supposed relationship of a personal god to the social order, on the other hand, has consequences that have everything to do with the wielding of power and almost nothing to do anymore with personal experience.

Nietzsche was the most important critic of Christianity, and of theism in general, because he evaluated it in historical, cultural and political terms. The rationalists of the Enlightenment, such as Voltaire, Hume, and Thomas Paine, criticized Christianity primarily in terms of logic, disproving the logical arguments for a god and exposing the logical absurdities of scripture and church doctrine. The present-day leaders of atheist or skeptical thought, such as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, seem to follow mostly in their footsteps rather than Nietzsche’s, defending reason and science from the irrationalism of religion. They often display a lack of interest in the complex phenomena of religion and spirituality, and talk as if merely demonstrating the illogic of theistic arguments will change people’s minds about God. They seem to think that religion is a mere superstition like being afraid of the number thirteen, or not walking under ladders.

Nietzsche attacked the Judeo-Christian God as a metaphor for a social order that hated nature and life, and that posited a second “other” world by which human beings would be effectively controlled. This potent critique has often been misrepresented or ignored. I don’t think it’s complete, and my view of the spiritual impulses within Christianity is more favorable in many respects. The important thing is that Nietzsche criticized theism from the standpoint of what it sought to accomplish in terms of social, cultural, and political power, rather than as a merely abstract thesis to be logically refuted.

Nobodaddy has many faces; too many to enumerate here. One of the most important is the all-seeing eye. God sees everything—not only everything you do, but everything you think and feel. It’s like having your father looking over your shoulder, forever. A sort of double consciousness is developed in which the person not only experiences life, but imagines another being, usually a male authority figure, observing him while he experiences life. Fear of this being, who has the power to punish and reward in this life and after death, will supposedly motivate you to behave morally, i.e. however morally is defined in your religion.

It’s not as if some group of evil priests got together and decided to propagate this belief in order to control people. The belief is very ancient, and it helped human beings work together in larger groups. The social order, including the priesthood, was gradually formed in alignment with it. When human consciousness was narrowly focused on the collective, the belief in the all-seeing god wasn’t that much different from the general belief in social cohesion itself. But as the human ego gradually developed, with a broader self-awareness that included a heightened awareness of private thoughts and feelings, the sense of being watched by an all-seeing god became more problematic and ultimately more oppressive. The contradiction between self-motivation and motivation through fear of authority became more acute, and that contradiction continues to cause problems down to the present day.

For one thing, Nobodaddy as watcher failed to create a moral society, because at some level people could not believe that any being could possess omniscience, and because the moral values propagated were so various and arbitrary. It turned out that Nobodaddy was only against killing in certain cases, but in other cases it was sanctioned. His negative attitude towards sexual behavior, as well as many other natural functions, tended to be both cruel and self-destructive. In mythical terms, the interest of the creator of all things in the petty concerns of human interaction came to seem more and more ridiculous. The personality of God, if you will, displayed the fussy and obsessively narrow concerns of his human acolytes, in a way that belied his supposedly divine and cosmic nature. In short, God’s nature as a projection of human thoughts and desires becomes more evident over time, even if only subliminally.

Theism has often purported to provide meaning for events and circumstances by saying that there is a divine plan. Although the higher levels of religious thought had long questioned this simplistic notion—even many centuries before the Book of Job—it has stubbornly maintained its popularity. Here we are confronted with the famous “problem of evil,” the solution to which always involves a contradiction, if one assumes an all-powerful and benevolent personal Being. The “divine plan” line of thought was part and parcel of the historical God, Nobodaddy as the architect of history. The apostle Paul’s rhetorical contortions explaining why Gentiles could inherit the promise of the chosen people is a striking example of the lengths that religious people can go to in trying to make sense of historical events in terms of a plan. Unfortunately, anyone can play this game, interpreting history in terms of prophecy or vision, and of course, anyone does. The simple truth staring us in the face—that history is an abstraction that only offers conditional lessons, and that injustice does not represent a mysterious higher good—is too painful to admit, since it removes all possibility of a divine plan and knocks down the house of cards set up by religion to justify whatever the social order might be.

We are left with ourselves, which is no contradiction for a mystic, but is outright treason to organized theism. The duality of self and other has been reified by religion into the duality of the mortal human being (a sinner) and the Being who created him, rules over him, and requires submission to his laws, as spelled out in the scriptures and interpreted by the religious leaders and experts.

As the social order has become more repressive in the modern age, political structures have brushed aside all but the most strictly authoritarian forms of religion. In the 20th century, the Nazis, Stalinists, and Maoists relied on submission to authority without reference to any metaphysical entity, at least not overtly. The democracies give lip service to religious principles while demonstrating their true allegiance, which is to capitalism and imperialism. Fundamentalist versions of Islam and Judaism gain greater influence in the Middle East, while the more liberal factions and sects are made ineffectual and irrelevant. Fundamentalist Christianity is encouraged by the American ruling class, and continues to struggle for dominance of the American sociocultural landscape through its political influence. Where are the liberal forms of Christianity in the current American political discourse? They are marginalized, partly because of their own integrity in refusing to breach the church-state wall of separation.

Fundamentalism is the doctrine of Nobodaddy stripped of almost all efforts towards the development of subjective spiritual experience. The fundamentalist is allowed to feel righteous and superior without any of the work involved in self-questioning or self-improving. Only adherence to the authoritarian rule book is required. The true expression of fundamentalism is not a relationship to God, but an antagonistic relationship to those outside of the fundamentalist group. The fundamentalist Nobodaddy spends all his time judging and condemning those who are different from the idealized standard of the core group, and he fumes and obsesses over those who, like homosexuals, deviate from the norm.

It is in this context that we must view controversies between theism and atheism, or religion and science. God has developed primarily into a tool of destruction. It is now simply a flag or banner for patriarchal domination. The atheist argument, then, is an argument against the principle of domination and its attendant violence and repression. The religious people of the world need to wake up and acknowledge that the authoritarian metaphors have failed and are invalid. God as king, God as punishing authority, must be repudiated. Meanwhile, Nobodaddy makes his last stand on the ramparts of fundamentalist hatred. The alternative, whether personalized or not, is a spirituality and ethos of non-violence and love.

What Hasn't Been Tried

2010-11-24T17:09:00.000-08:00

For the last two years, many of us who sincerely wanted Barack Obama to succeed have repeatedly called for the administration and the Democratic leadership to concentrate on rallying their liberal base. It is our belief that elections are won by getting your base to vote, not by taking it for granted and going after that elusive sliver of the electorate misleadingly referred to as “independents.”

In the run-up to the midterms, liberals tried to get the base to the polls by pointing out, quite correctly, what a disaster the Republicans represent for the future of our country. I believe that most of the liberal voters who are well-informed about what is going on in Washington realize the importance of voting. What many such liberals don’t understand is that a large percentage of the base are not particularly well-informed, and need to be rallied and courted in terms of their beliefs and interests in order to be persuaded to vote, especially in a non-Presidential race.

Obama and the Democratic leadership still cling to the Clinton-era strategy of aiming towards a supposed “center’ in order to win “moderates” and “independents” away from the Republicans. They conveniently forget that this strategy lost the Congress in 1994, made the 2000 election so close that it could be stolen, and continued to fail until the implosion of the Bush administration made the resurgence of 2006 possible, followed by Obama’s win in 2008.

Hillary Clinton ran a predictable hawkish, centrist, corporate-friendly campaign in 2008. Obama defeated her by running to her left. The fact that Obama was black was a volatile wild-card element in the primaries, and I think it made the latter stages closer than they might otherwise have been. Such is the sad truth about our country, which has been reinforced a thousandfold by the behavior of the Republicans since Obama’s victory.

Obama was never much more liberal than Clinton. But liberal voters propelled him to the White House. Once he was in there, to the dismay of those of us who are well-informed on these matters, he appointed centrists and Clintonites to almost all his major posts. He kept Bush’s defense secretary, and he even tried to appoint a right-wing Republican as his Commerce Secretary.

The President’s apparent conviction that he could work with Republicans proved false, as is now evident. I find it amazing that he didn't already know this. Eight years of Bush clearly showed the country that the Republicans were all about ruling absolutely, without compromise, and throwing red meat to their base. The Presidential campaign itself was a disgraceful display of racist code words and fear mongering, with Fox News leading the way in branding Obama a radical leftist, secret Muslim, black nationalist, and terrorist sympathizer. The empty suit McCain followed the script, and lost convincingly.

In the last two years, as the Democrats saw themselves losing the PR game to the 24-hour onslaught of Fox and its Republican parrots, the Obama team expressed frustration with the “left.” It seems that the left could never be satisfied, that they were ruining it for the Democrats, looking for perfection instead of progress, and so forth. Significantly, no one on Obama’s team would address substantive criticisms from the left concerning its war and anti-terror policies, which did not reverse the illegal actions of the Bush administration, but continued them and even reinforced them.

In any case, the “left” that the Obama administration complained about was a small group of columnists and bloggers who dared to think independently, and whose influence compared to the right wing noise machine was ludicrously overestimated. But in practice, what Obama did was exactly what Bill Clinton had done earlier—take his base for granted instead of wooing them. After all, the reasoning goes, where else do they have to go? This is, sad to say, very true, but what they don’t take into account is that the base becomes apathetic when its interests are taken for granted. Sure, it’s dumb and self-defeating for the base not to vote—nevertheless this is political reality. If you don’t stir up your base, it will become apathetic and you will lose.

The die-hard Clintonite centrists would of course dispute this point. And admittedly, there isn’t enough solid evidence to prove what I’m saying to be sound political advice. Why? Because it’s never really been tried. Not in the last forty years, at least. “Liberal” became a bad word, and the substance of liberalism was whittled away to nothing. The story of the push-over Democrat, the weak, wimpy, indecisive, cave-in Democrat, was tailored by the Reaganites, and then the Democrats tried the suit on themselves, and it fit.

Obama seems to be taking exactly the wrong lesson from the midterms. Rather than recognize the failure to rally his own base, he seems to believe that the voters are more conservative than he thought, and that he now has to kowtow to the right wing. It’s a spectacle profoundly depressing to witness.

To understand why the Democrats pursue their failed strategy over and over, instead of trying to be a liberal party as they must do in order to win, is not as difficult as it may seem. The simple truth is that they’re afraid of the corporate elites who wield such enormous power in this country. Most of them are tied to corporate money, and would never have been elected in the first place without those millions of dollars flowing into their campaigns. Most of the rich are conservative. It doesn’t matter that they are much more conservative than the majority of voters—their money and power offsets that fact. So the Democrats try to walk a tightrope between their need to appeal to an essentially liberal base and their need for corporate backing. The result is the appearance of constant gutlessness and waffling. The Republicans have no such conflict. The beliefs of their conservative base coincide for the most part with the demands of the corporate elites. So they don’t need to compromise or practice bipartisanship, and they don’t.

On a purely strategic level, the Clintonite strategy is a loser. When a party makes massive political gains as the Democrats did in 2008, they don’t evaporate in a mere two years unless the strategy is fatally flawed. The Democrats can’t rely on the awfulness of the Republicans to keep winning. Once the Democrats are in power, the Republicans can just blame everything on them, and the voters will fall for it. Why? Once again, because the liberal base is being taken for granted, ignored, discounted, and minimized. The Democrats don’t do this because they’re stupid, but because their alliance with the corporate elites makes it almost impossible to stand firmly and equivocally with their liberal base.

The true challenge facing the Democratic Party, then, is quite sobering. In order to win and keep winning, the Democrats will have to defy their corporate backers. They will have to campaign against corporate rule in all its aspects—Wall Street, the banking system, the military industrial complex, and the right-wing corporate noise machine. They will have to do this quite explicitly and without compromise. It might mean going “into the wilderness” as the conservatives did after being slaughtered in 1964, reemerging with a winning strategy in 1980. The alternative is to keep losing.

It seems highly unlikely that this will happen. It’s more likely that the Democrats will continue to try to play their wishy-washy centrist game. Which leaves the liberal base with a stark choice: form their own party, or actively work within the Democratic Party at every level from the grassroots on up to transform it into a truly liberal party. Both are very difficult challenges. But the only other choice, as I see it, is to be crushed by the right.

Springtime for Hitler

2010-10-08T13:52:00.001-07:00

Hitler has made a comeback. Maybe you’ve noticed. The execrable tea baggers have made a habit of equating Obama with Hitler and the Holocaust. Their deranged pied piper Glenn Beck has indulged in this inflammatory rhetoric repeatedly, and more than a few Republican politicians have played the Nazi card as well. On the other side, anti-Bush protesters were not always above the occasional Bush = Hitler sign, and Naomi Wolf was only one of the more popular figures on the left warning against the coming of fascism, and using parallels with Germany to make their points. Dick Durbin compared torture at Gitmo to similar practices by the Nazis and others, which I thought was fair, but being a liberal Democrat he was forced to apologize soon after. You won’t hear Newt Gingrich or Michele Bachmann apologizing for their loose metaphors. Not in this lifetime.

The standard objection to all this is that it trivializes Hitler, Nazis, the Holocaust, World War II, and all the people who died during that terrible time. It’s a valid objection. Making such glib comparisons exposes you as an ignoramus, or at best a dilettante of history. It also arouses violent emotions without illuminating present issues and conditions. In most instances, it’s simply a way for a demagogue to manipulate a mob, and that is never a good thing.

However, I think it is important to examine why Hitler and the Nazis are such emotionally charged subjects, and why they would gain currency as rhetorical weapons at this point in our history.

In politics, historical events are always in danger of being turned into abstractions. Ideologues are adept at viewing human beings as objects of an impersonal process, but the rest of us are not immune from this distancing effect. History can become a series of markers or cues triggering a limited set of images and responses. Think “Holocaust” and you might picture a pile of dead bodies, or photos of emaciated prisoners in striped uniforms. Without connecting to the reality of historical events, we end up regarding them as symbols.

Yet the reality still affects us at a level well beneath our conscious mental strategies. One description of this reality as it affects us, for instance, might be that in living memory, in a modern world of cars and airplanes and movies, in a supposedly civilized world, a government of a modern country rounded people up by the millions and methodically slaughtered them like animals. The Holocaust taught us that a movement, gaining power as a state, could commit crimes of greater savagery and extent than was thought possible. Since then, of course, we have learned of mass murder in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, and elsewhere, but the Nazis were our first awakening to the horror of what totalitarianism can do.

A common denial mechanism has been to focus on Germany as a special case, as if there were something peculiar to that country that made it capable of such enormous crimes. There were of course social and cultural factors special to Germany that have to be taken into account, but there were enthusiastic Nazis in other countries, including France and England, and even a few in the United States. In any case, an authoritarian ideology won’t necessarily look exactly like Nazism in a different country, but it might have very similar effects. Many Americans seem to think that there’s something magical about being American that will prevent us from succumbing to a dictatorship. This is pure childishness.

This terrible historical event, then, this trauma that occurred a mere sixty to seventy years ago, has cast a shadow over us ever since. To read about what happened to the victims of Nazism is to try to imagine, however inadequately, what it would feel like to have your own loved ones, your own family, and the very world you grew up in, be at the mercy of an overpowering and merciless evil. It happened to them. The fear, perhaps unspoken, is: could it happen to us?

The Cold War did little to allay such fears, but at least they were generally projected onto the other, the enemy. But after the Cold War, the United States has been the one preeminent military power. Since the invention of nuclear weapons, the state has means of destruction at its disposal that Hitler could only dream of. What, then, if a similar evil came to power in America? What could the world do to stop it?

The ever-increasing police powers of the modern state raise justifiable fears as well. Governments continue to push for more surveillance, wider abilities to tap into communications, more cameras, less privacy. After the September 11 attacks, the White House used the threat of terrorism in order to gain untrammeled powers for the executive, including imprisonment without trial, kidnapping, torture, and assassination. Antiwar and other protest movements saw themselves identified with terrorism so that the government could shut them down. The militarization of police forces is another ominous sign of authoritarian ideology suppressing dissent and other civil liberties.

Hitler comparisons are coming out into the open because of fear. As we see with the Tea Party, fear is easily exploited by reactionary political figures for their own ends. But as irrational as much of the fear that is expressed publicly can be, it has roots in reality. People feel insecure and powerless in the face of huge economic, political, and military interests that obviously have much more control of what happens than they do. And since the Nazis showed us that we cannot trust in a supposed inherent goodness of human nature to prevent the worst and most unimaginable crimes from occurring, they end up representing our insecurity and fear and powerlessness today.

“Godwin’s Law” is a humorous acknowledgment of an inevitable cliché: Nazism will be used to characterize something we don’t agree with. But the experience of Hitler, the Holocaust, and the war are still so central to the political dilemmas of modern history that we can’t simply rule it out of order. It is necessary to learn what we can from the history of the Nazis. We can make comparisons and contrasts between the actual political conditions of pre-war Europe and today. From this we can draw general conclusions about authoritarian ideology, racism, the mass psychology of crowds, the use of scapegoating as a political tool, militarism, the dangers of executive power, and many other things. These philosophical insights, and not superficial comparisons using imagery and symbolism, can help us avoid falling into barbarism again.

Super Duper

2010-08-23T22:13:00.001-07:00

Lest anyone forget, the United States is a superpower. “Superpower” is a term coined by a strategy wonk named Nicholas Spykman in 1943, and then picked up by every think tank parasite since then. It might seem odd at first that the Marvel comic book perspective would take on such geopolitical gravitas, but when you look more closely you notice that United States foreign policy since the end of World War II has closely resembled the power fantasies of an adolescent weakling.

When politicians and their media toadies talk about how they love America, they’re not thinking about the Constitution or John Adams or any of that crap. To them, America is big battleships and jet fighters, pounding the rest of the world into dust. It’s also oil rigs and luxurious mansions and piles of money. And for the people, the luckiest people in the goddamn world, it means strip malls and TV and a McDonald’s at every exit. But above all this looms the superpower, the bald eagle, Captain America, the indispensable busybody who keeps the world from spinning off its axis by exporting freedom in the form of aid, especially guns—lots and lots of guns.

Most of us were raised with the superpower belief drummed into us. It was the status quo. It was just assumed that if the United States didn’t take a “leadership” role in the world, unimaginable chaos would ensue. There was always the Soviet Union and China to keep us on our toes. Curiously, the end of the Cold War did not inspire the Captain to take off his star-spangled suit and retire to private life. No, sir. Now we were the only superpower left standing, and the neoconservatives believed that this was the moment when America could be king of the world. We could reshape the Middle East in our image. All we needed was a terrorist bogeyman, and off we went. Operation Iraqi Freedom!

That turned out to be Operation Destroy an Entire Country, but has that made our leaders question the superpower ethos? Not at all, for we still need to win in Afghanistan. Iran, of course, is always a threat. And don’t forget to staunchly support Israel no matter what crazy things it does.

I suppose this might be some kind of a thrill ride for a small portion of the ruling class. But for the rest of us, superpower status hasn’t been that great. With most of our money being soaked up by the military or the spook agencies, squandered in foreign adventures, and looted by our duly elected criminals for their private gain, there’s not much left for us, our schools, our hospitals, our roads, our cities, or our homes. Some of us are beginning to think it would be nice to live in just a normal country rather than a superpower—a country that wasn’t in charge of everything, just there to help its actual population seek life, liberty, and happiness.

However, there are a lot of us who still think that the world will collapse if we don’t have military bases in every corner of the globe. There are a lot of us who won’t love their country any more unless it acts like an overweight bully with a trigger finger like them. There a lot of us still addicted to comic books featuring fights between pure good and pure evil, and dialogue featuring words like “Pow!” and “Splat!”

I don’t know what it will take for Americans to get tired of all this supercrap that impoverishes us, makes us stupid, and leaves the field of government vacant for the most vicious among us to rule. The irony is that if we pulled out of the Middle East, got rid of our military bases, and concentrated on our own welfare, and used what strength we had to set an example of peace, the world would not fall apart. It might even flourish.

What Happened? (After '68)

2010-07-31T18:55:00.000-07:00

1968 was a bad year for the left. MLK and RFK, two leading figures of hope, were conveniently murdered. Antiwar protests at the Democratic Convention in Chicago were met by a full-scale police riot, which of course the Republicans blamed on the demonstrators. In November, Richard Nixon was elected President, ensuring seven more years of war in Vietnam.

The movement for peace and human rights continued in the 1970s, and the new women’s rights and gay rights movements sprung to life, but in hindsight we can see that 1968 was the peak year of a leftist revolt that was then beaten back by an extended reaction from the right wing. With this reaction consolidated by the victory of the Reaganites in 1980, a development that has marginalized progressives right up to the present day, it is natural that we ask ourselves: What happened?

Two main factors are evident: 1. The concerted backlash by reactionaries, and by extension, the corporate-political establishment of which they formed a major part. 2. The shortcomings and internal contradictions of the movement itself, which made it vulnerable to this reaction.

In our zeal to examine the second factor, it is easy to underestimate the importance of the first. The FBI’s secret COINTELPRO actions, initiated by the rabid anticommunist and racist FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in the late 1950s, went into high gear when antiwar protests and black liberation movements started rocking the nation in the 1960s. This was an illegal program designed to circumvent Supreme Court rulings protecting dissident groups from government spying. Progressive groups were infiltrated by agents posing as activists, who would then foster disunity by advocating violence and even committing violent acts to discredit these groups. They would create feuds within groups by sending fake letters to movement leaders from other leaders that caused personal animosity and splits. They planted false stories in newspapers and on TV attributing words and actions to individuals and groups that were untrue. They created false evidence in order to convict dissidents in court, and suborned perjury by officers for the same ends. They vandalized groups’ offices, broke in and stole documents, contrived to have dissidents threatened with violence, beaten, and assassinated. (The murder of Black Panther Fred Hampton by Chicago police was part of a COINTELPRO operation.) They tapped phones, conducted surveillance, and used the IRS as a weapon against people, including Democratic politicians. This is only a brief summary. The range of illegal FBI activities against the movement was extensive. The targets weren’t just militant groups, either, but also nonviolent groups like The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the NAACP; along with numerous public figures who expressed antiwar or pro-civil rights views, such as Dick Gregory or the actress Jean Seberg.

A significant example of the right turning events to its own advantage was the indictment of eight prominent leftist leaders for inciting a riot at the 1968 Democratic convention. The charges were absurd, and the verdicts were eventually overturned, but this outrageous circus trial sidelined these leaders for over a year and focused the country’s attention on personalities and sensationalism rather than the real issues of racism and the war.

On the public side, Republicans and right-wing Democrats demonized the movement as violators of “law and order,” which was one of Nixon’s campaign mantras. They exploited white racial fears, stoked by the black riots in the cities, to characterize black activists as anti-American criminals that needed to be put down. The “get tough” approach to crime resulted in a beefed-up “war on drugs” that conspicuously targeted blacks. With the advent of Reagan, mandatory minimum sentences were combined with a massive investment in new prisons to create a huge prison population, close to half of which was African American. Fringe groups like The Weathermen were given prominent attention in order to cast the entire movement as dangerous. In the absence of the internationally revered Dr. King, black leaders such as Jesse Jackson were routinely ridiculed and marginalized.

The right was deeply humiliated by the failure in Vietnam, and set about scapegoating the protesters and the press as the culprits for “losing” the war. Myths such as the protestor spitting on the returning veteran at the airport were widely propagated. The campaign against the media for being too “liberal” frightened the media elites into the cowed subservience and abandonment of journalistic principles that we see today. Similar backlash efforts were made on the political and cultural fronts against the women’s movement, stereotyping feminists in the public mind as scary man-hating radicals who were destroying the country’s morals. After the 1973 decision legalizing abortion, the right used abortion as a wedge issue to marginalize the women’s movement. The gay rights movement has also, of course, met with continued public backlash.

The combination of secret illegal harassment and political reaction was so massive that it can’t be fully catalogued here. Racism was a major element, but the reaction was a broad-based one against all movements towards peace and social justice. Even if the movement had been more disciplined and unified, and had been able to overcome its failings, it is doubtful that it would prospered under such an onslaught. The people who own the country were determined to have their own revolution, against the Great Society and the New Deal, and for the complete deregulation of business.

So after this exhausting description of right-wing reaction, what can we say about the shortcomings of the human rights and antiwar movements? With the distance of four decades, we can look back without being blinded by passion, or by the knowledge that the movement was, in most important things, right. We were right about the war, right about racism, right about the inherent inequalities of the system. Yet self-examination can perhaps help new generations to avoid our mistakes.

First of all, the antiwar movement was primarily a student-led movement. Young people were the ones threatened by the draft, so naturally they were the ones that spearheaded opposition to the war. Some of the tactics, such as shutting down the universities, spurred opposition, but that was to be expected. There’s an element that will always be offended by any kind of demonstration, and there’s no point in trying to mollify that element. The antiwar movement succeeded in drawing the public’s attention to the war, and turning public sentiment against it.

But some of the youthful anger expressed itself in counterproductive ways. Against the background of a youth culture explosion, there was a fairly overt hostility to the older generation. The struggle was characterized as between freedom-loving youth and repressive old people—“Don’t trust anyone over 30” and similar nonsense. A movement must build bridges between age groups, not put up barriers. The frequent stridency and absolutism of the rhetoric tended to alienate middle-aged and older Americans who were otherwise sympathetic to more progressive visions of society. A similar effect occurred regarding class differences. The movement generally ignored economic issues that affected working people. It failed to exploit the rampant inequalities of the American economy, which cut across racial lines. Instead, the cultural aspect intruded—the youth culture inveighed against “straight” people with short hair and more conventional social habits as if there were no commonalities of interest. To a large degree, the working class turned its back against the movement, perceiving it as just a group of spoiled, well-off brats. Some of this was inevitable, but it might have been mitigated by a conscious effort to welcome a much more diverse cultural mix into the movement.

Youthful rage also expressed itself against authority in ways that were politically naïve. I’m thinking of the widespread and popular use of the term “pigs,” especially referring to police officers. Yes, the police were tools of repression. But calling them pigs only increased the divide between the majority of middle and working class Americans that respect the police, and the student-dominated movement.

The civil rights movement made great gains against incredible odds. As long as the issue was segregation, the public sympathized. A more difficult task was ahead: the bringing of the struggle to the whole nation rather than just the South, coupled with a broader protest against economic inequality. Dr. King was making steps towards that goal. Meanwhile, younger black activists got fed up with the brutality aimed against their communities, and a more militant wing of the movement emerged, starting with Malcolm X and continuing with the Black Panthers and others. Malcolm was demonized as an instigator of violence, but in fact he was advocating self-defense. That, and an outspoken defiance of white supremacist assumptions, made him a powerful voice. There developed, however, a tension between the proponents of nonviolence such as Dr. King and the black militants. I think it was a mistake for Malcolm to criticize the nonviolent movement as he did, which only served to create a rift in the movement that was readily exploited by its enemies. It would have been wiser to express support for Dr. King, and not emphasize the tactical differences in public. One may discount the important of this, but I remember African American radicals who despised Martin Luther King as some sort of Uncle Tom. There were also black liberals who condemned Malcolm X. A movement needs to support its strategic allies, even if there are major differences in ideas on how to go about making change, rather than fight one another while the movement’s enemies sit back and enjoy the show.

A major misstep of the movement was a general rallying around the idea of “revolution” as a goal. Elements of the movement, historically naïve regarding the history of the Soviet Union and China, embraced a “Third World” brand of Marxism. Mao, Ho Chih Minh, and Che Guevara became heroes of the movement. This was so outside the mainstream of American political consciousness that it was doomed to failure from the start. An armed revolution was always impossible in this country, and to advocate it was really nothing more than youthful folly. With the might of the military-industrial complex facing us, the belief that a few militant groups could overthrow the government was lunacy. To be fair, the majority of the movement knew that political progress was incremental, but the cry of revolution, fueled by the urgency of Vietnam and the absolute necessity of ending the war, became a rhetorical cache that produced nothing but a massive political backfire. It was natural to sympathize with the forces struggling against imperialism in the Third World, and this led to open support of the North Vietnamese and “Vietcong,” with Vietcong flags flying at demonstrations, and so forth. As it turned out, the Vietnamese resistance established yet another authoritarian statist regime after their victory in 1975. Leftists didn’t anticipate that, and perhaps they shouldn’t have been expected to. But in terms of practical politics, there’s a great tactical difference between protesting a war and openly siding with the people who are shooting at your country’s soldiers. Regardless of the ideological issues involved, it was bound to create an alienating effect. The most prominent symbol of this effect was the widespread demonization of Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam in 1972. As usual, public perceptions are watered down into personal terms by the media, and then turned into fodder for the right.

An American progressive movement, then, must embrace America and its Constitution in order to succeed, not advocate the overthrowing of America. Some of that wisdom was expressed in the movement, but not enough to undo the damage done by unreflecting anger and ideology. A corollary to this is that the movement needed to work both inside and outside “the system.” One can’t abandon the field of practical politics and expect to succeed. Many people refused to vote for Hubert Humphrey in 1968 because of his connection to Johnson and the war. The feelings are understandable, but the alternative was Nixon, and there was a far better chance of ending the war, and a lot of other needed things, if Humphrey was in the White House.

I have mentioned the cultural context a few times. This is in fact central to the wider public’s perception of the “60s,” and gives us a key as to some major movement flaws. Coinciding with the predominately youthful civil rights and antiwar movements was a cultural youth explosion. There were a lot more of us, because of the postwar “baby boom.” Rock and roll became more popular than any adult would have predicted. As a reaction against the emotional repression of their upbringing, young people also started experimenting with drugs, especially ones that heightened perceptions and feelings, i.e. cannabis and psychedelics. Combined with a sexual mores, this resulted in the proverbial “sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll,” a catchphrase for a new supposed “counterculture.” Since the leftist movement was predominately youthful in character, the counterculture influenced it with a broadening of sensibility and outlook. The influence worked the other way as well, with youth in general being exposed to progressive political views, but this influence was not of the same strength or degree. Most people were not politically active, and that applied to counterculture people as well. Reactionaries have always equated the two, hating them both equally as the same thing, but events have proved that they were different in important ways.

With a few exceptions, most rock groups were not overtly political, outside of a general advocacy of love and peace. And the notion that music was a revolutionary force was soon proven illusory. The potential for big profits from rock music became obvious, and the groups went from peace and love festivals to stadiums in fairly short order, while the music itself lost most of the faintly progressive flavor it once had. By the end of the 70s, rock’s message was basically “let’s party and have fun,” which is what it was in the 50s. The arrival of punk heralded a general rejection of mainstream values, but not a political consciousness of any significance. Capitalism has proven that it can swallow almost any cultural phenomenon and turn it into an affirmation of itself. Long hair on men was originally a startling note of defiance, and it suggested a redrawing of assumptions about gender roles. A little bit of that still remains, like an aftertaste, but it’s really just a hairstyle at this point. When Newt Gingrich’s hair is longer than that of the Beatles in ’64, you know that long hair doesn’t have much meaning.

Drugs were also supposed to be revolutionary in some way. The more traditional leftists generally avoided this trap, but the Yippies proclaimed it as part of a new world of freedom, and of course Leary and Kesey and the Beatles and all the rest of them indicated a general expansion of consciousness. Well, it was, in a way, and for a little while, but for many it became an end in itself. The fact is, there’s nothing inherently radical about pot smoking or tripping on acid, outside of it being a defiance of the law. A guy smoking a bong in his basement and listening to Pink Floyd is not working for peace or social justice. He’s just having a good time. And many right-wingers, racists, and apolitical pleasure seekers have also enjoyed having a good time in the last forty years, without it affecting their political awareness at all. It could even be argued that the contemplative nature of the altered states involved, usually somewhat passive, works against the kind of energy and commitment needed in a political movement. Then, once other drugs came into the picture, such as heroin and cocaine, whatever progressive cultural effects drug use might have had evaporated to almost nothing. There is evidence that this transition to the so-called “harder” drugs was secretly promoted and enabled by the national security state.

Looser sexual mores had arguably a more long-term effect on the political culture. The women’s movement was born partly in reaction to the rampant sexism within the leftist movement. The gay rights movement was helped along by a greater tolerance for sexual diversity. Still, sexual “liberation” was easily co-opted by capitalism and incorporated into a culture of objectification and pornography that is not politically progressive in the slightest, but only reaffirms patriarchal structures in a new form. In general, we see the effect of the 60s on our cultural environment to a far greater degree than on our political one. Much of this is to the good, but without change in the political and economic power structure, cultural changes are confined mostly to the private sphere, where they can be assimilated by anyone regardless of politics, and are in any case constantly under attack from the religious right and other cultural conservatives.

We return then to my distinction between the movement and the counterculture. The counterculture involved far more people, and it was only briefly and tangentially connected to the movement. Once the draft ended in 1973, the antiwar movement deflated. The only logical conclusion was that many young people were involved because it was their lives on the line; once that threat was removed, they left. A movement cannot survive solely on opposition to a particular war—instead of an antiwar movement, it needs to be a peace movement that targets the confluence of military, corporate and political interests that continue to keep the country involved in wars. And a movement based on young people cannot win—it must contain the widest spectrum of ages, ethnic background, and classes in order to sustain itself for the long run.

For indeed it was the “long run” that we ignored. The ferment of the 1960s was so new, so exciting and intoxicating, and so dominated by youth (which of course doesn’t take the long view but always looks to the present) that the movement failed to work for sustained progress over decades of struggle. The urgency of ending the war played a major part in this. Of course it had to be stopped, but not to the point of disregarding the long-range goals that were vital to sustaining political progress. But rather than continue to mourn over a promise unfulfilled, or seethe with rage over battles lost, we can learn from the past. The movements for peace and justice today are still somewhat fragmented, separated into different identities and issues and thus not always united in focus. But they are more inclusive than the movement of the 60s, more mature, paying more attention to social and economic issues that face Americans, less naïve regarding what is possible, more strategically savvy in terms of its public relations and pronouncements, with eyes more surely trained on the future for the planet instead of this group or that. The challenges are also greater. We face the threat of environmental disaster and a resurgence of fascism. But I feel more hopeful seeing the activists of today, and their great energy and effort, then I did in the 1960s and 70s.

So what happened, after all? Just this: we were forced to grow up.

A Government of Men

2010-04-08T15:31:00.000-07:00

Now that Obama has authorized assassinating a U.S. citizen I am compelled to repeat the old verity: "We should have a government of laws and not of men."

President Obama seems to think that because his judgment is better than that of George W. Bush, it is okay to exercise unchecked executive power, even to the point of assassinating U.S. citizens.

Even if I were to agree, and trusted Obama to make the right decisions, this is entirely irrelevant. For such an executive power to exist violates the rule of law and basic American values. I cannot trust that another President after Obama would not use this power in unscrupulous ways, to silence political opposition or eliminate troublesome critics. A government of "laws, not of men" means that we don't base our decisions on trust of individuals, but on rules that apply to everyone.

This spook CIA criminality, this amoral gangland-style foreign policy, continues to undermine our country regardless of which of the two corporate parties are in power. For the President to think that there are no consequences, no blowback, for this kind of reckless, arrogant, murderous behavior is naive at best. Leaving aside all my concessions to practical politics and supposedly good intentions, I declare that is morally revolting and will surely rebound someday to our great harm.

Would Health Care Reform Help You?

2010-03-10T20:21:00.001-08:00

Today it's my honor to publish a piece by guest blogger Barbara O'Brien.

Many obstacles and stumbling blocks remain in the way of health care reform. The House and Senate bills will have to be merged, and then the House and Senate both will vote on the final bill. We don’t yet know what will be in the final bill, or if the final bill will be passed into law. Passage will be especially difficult in the Senate, where it will need 60 votes to pass. It is still possible that after all this angst, just one grandstanding senator could kill the whole thing.

But just for fun, let’s look at what conventional wisdom says will be in the final bill and see if there is anything in it that will be an immediate benefit to people with mesothelioma and other asbestos-related disease.

It is likely that the final bill will provide additional funding for state high-risk insurance pools. Currently more than 30 states run such pools, which are nonprofit, state-sponsored health insurance plans for people who can’t buy insurance because of pre-existing conditions. The biggest problem with such pools is that, often, the insurance they offer is too expensive for many who might need it. Both the Senate and House bills provide $5 billion in subsidies for state high-risk pools to make the insurance more affordable.

Under the Senate bill, beginning in 2014, private companies would no longer be able to deny coverage to adults with pre-existing conditions, nor could they charge higher premiums for people with pre-existing conditions. Until then, the state high-risk pools could provide some help.

Closing the Medicare Part D coverage gap — also called the “doughnut hole” — is another potential provision that could help some patients with asbestos-related disease. The “doughnut hole” is the gap between the coverage for yearly out-of-pocket expenses provided by Medicare Part D and Medicare’s “catastrophic coverage” threshold.

For example, in 2009 Medicare Part D paid at least 75 percent of what patients paid for prescription drugs up to $2,700. After that, patients must pay for all of their prescription medications until what they have paid exceeds $6,154. At that point, the catastrophic coverage takes over, and Medicare pays for all but 5 percent of the patient’s drug bills. The final health care reform bill probably will provide for paying at least 50 percent of out-of-pocket costs in the doughnut hole.

You may have heard the bills include budget cuts to the Medicare program, and this has been a big concern to many people. Proponents of the bill insist that savings can be found to pay for the cuts, and that people who depend on Medicare won’t face reduced services. But this is a complex issue that I want to address in a later post.

The long-term provisions probably will include many other provisions that would benefit patients with asbestos-related disease, including increased funding for medical research. Although there are many complaints about the bill coming from all parts of the political spectrum, on the whole it would be a huge benefit to many people.

— Barbara O’Brien

Hiatus

2010-01-24T22:26:00.000-08:00

It's my sad duty to announce that this blog is going on hiatus for an indefinite period of time. I'm not deleting it, but I won't be updating it unless the spirit compels me to, for the time being at least.

Blogs don't really get traffic unless they're updated at least once a week. I haven't been able to do that for quite some time. And now I need to focus on something greater--writing a book.

The book will be about ideas concerning spirituality, religion, and reason--ideas that I've already explored at some length on this blog. I seek a different way of writing about this. The declarative style ("such and such is true" or "you are this, or that") is fine for those already accepting a tradition. What I want to do is explore what we mean when we use spiritual and religious language, rather than merely accept them or dismiss them as somehow prima facie true or false.

My political commentary has covered just about everything that I'm concerned with. Frankly, it's hard to come up with much that is new when political events mostly consist of "same old, same old." For anyone still interested in that aspect of my writing, I point to my Twitter page.

In the meantime, I wish to thank the few loyal readers who have kept up with the blog over the years and offered their comments, arguments, and encouragements. A writer always needs to know that someone is reading. You keep me going. I appreciate it.

A Fool's Game

2010-01-03T14:00:00.000-08:00

In the progressive debate over American politics, an ugly aspect of reality is expressed by the conviction that “both parties are the same.” On one level, there’s truth in that statement. On another level, I don’t agree, and I think it can pose a trap for us.

The truth is that both parties are beholden to the corporate class that owns this country, and to the “national security” forces that advance the interests of that class. This is a very sobering truth that should not be avoided, because to do so is to succumb to a perpetual naïvete in American politics. The citizenry, which has been effectively reduced to a mere “electorate,” is expected to believe in the story of two diametrically opposed national parties and to put its hopes in one of the two. Liberals put their hopes in the Democratic Party, for differing and complex reasons which ultimately boil down to the simple fact that the Republican Party does not accommodate liberal points of view, whereas the Democrats ostensibly do.

The trap, however, which is laid for us in the statement that “both parties are the same” is that this ugly truth tends to produce apathy, despair, and an anger which can find little outlet in positive action. Political action outside the two parties has been effectively marginalized in the last four decades by reactionary forces, aided by the media, which has become almost wholly reactionary itself. Such political action must continue, however, and grass roots progressives must find new ways to organize, both in opposition to the corporate class and in support of positive alternatives that are firmly based in local communities. But progressives must also step up their efforts to change the Democratic Party and gain greater influence over its actions and policies.

This is simply a matter of practical politics. Grassroots change can only work in concert with transformation of existing political institutions. They have to go together because a movement wholly situated outside these institutions, without effective allies within them, will be defeated by the superior financial clout of the corporate class.

The realization that both parties serve the corporate class is a general truth that should not obscure important differences within that class, and within the political culture. The key difference at this time is between corporate internationalists who see themselves as part of a network that includes other countries, and proto-fascists who dream of total American dominance of the world. The Republican Party is now virtually controlled by the latter faction. At home they seek to abolish Constitutional government in favor of a centralized authoritarian state similar to China, where dissent is silenced, women and minorities are kept within patriarchal and white supremacist norms, and revanchist Christian groups are granted a repressive supervision over social and cultural policy. The Democratic Party is largely controlled by the internationalists, whose domestic policy tends to be more liberal, allowing more opportunity for women and minorities and putting a brake on fundamentalist demands. In foreign policy the Democrats still support corporate interests abroad, but with more of an emphasis on cooperation. On human rights they are alarmingly similar to the fascists, practicing double standards in regard to Israel and U.S.-sponsored authoritarian regimes, although there are conflicts within the Party on these issues.

The Republicans in power are an unmitigated disaster for progressives. They admit of no influence whatsoever. The Democrats represent a chance for influence. But the road is uphill and littered with obstacles. This is the difference, and it should not be ignored. To simply throw up one’s hands and say they’re absolutely the same is to counsel despair.

Liberal observers are often perplexed by the passive behavior of Democrats in the face of vicious Republican attacks. I have been puzzled myself. At times I can’t help but think that Democrats in Washington don’t realize how weak and pathetic they appear. Republicans are bold and relentless in their attacks. There is no lie they won’t stoop to tell. Yet rarely do Democrats hit back. And it’s not all just an attempt to be adult or “above the fray.” Obama and the Democrats talked seriously about bipartisanship and “reaching across the aisle”—this after 16 years of unparalleled Republican viciousness and intransigence.

The reason for this odd behavior, I believe, has to do with the two parties’ different constituencies, or “bases.” The Republican base generally does not recognize the corporate class as an enemy, unless certain elements, such as the Hollywood entertainment industry, are demonized as cultural elitists. Thus there is no conflict between the right-wing electoral base and the party’s corporate funders. But the Democrats, on the other hand, are split between their corporate funders, who are fundamentally conservative, and their electoral base, which tends to be more liberal on both domestic and foreign issues. So they try to placate their electoral base in certain ways, while being careful not to rock the corporate boat. Their passivity in the face of Republican attacks is not due to their fear of Republicans, but their fear of the corporate class and the national security apparatus that supports it.

Liberals who advocate accommodation in order to get things done are wedded to a very narrow idea of what is possible. Since the political make-up of Washington is what it is, they counsel resignation to that fact. But the possible isn't some inert fact. You influence what is possible by taking chances. To not take chances is to relegate the party to minority status even when it has Congressional majorities and the White House. We’ve seen exactly that during Obama’s first year. He and Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, don’t take progressives seriously. They don’t fear what progressives can do because we haven’t proven we can do anything.

I am convinced that accommodation is a failed strategy, both politically and in terms of successful policy. You can accommodate with Eisenhower Republicans, with reasonable men. But they don't exist any more. Reaching out to fascists is naïve. But because of corporate dominance of the process, Obama and the Democrats will continue to put on this dumb show of bipartisan reasonableness unless progressives find ways to flex political muscle. This constant scurrying to the right, a repeat of Clinton’s failures, won't stop until progressives develop strength and resolve to confront, challenge, and put their foot down, not just to Republicans (although that would be a good start) but to the so-called centrists, the corporate shills who stand in the way of change.

That means developing an aggressive, in-your-face political identity that doesn’t back down from right wing threats and intimidation, that gives back as good as it gets, and that is not afraid to attack the servile media, the complacent DC pundits, and most of importantly of all, Wall Street, the intelligence spooks, and the Pentagon. By rallying the base with a fighting spirit rather than the meek accommodation that gets us nowhere, progressives can become a force to be reckoned with, inside and outside of the Democratic Party.

The Unjust Nation

2009-12-20T15:29:00.001-08:00

Ten days after President Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech, I have come to some sense of clarity concerning my feelings about it. My immediate gut reaction was revulsion, and it marked the point at which I finally have stopped liking Obama personally (a “liking” which I see in retrospect was a far too hopeful reaction against my hatred of the barbaric yawping of Bush-Cheney and the neofascist forces they represent).

Just on the surface, it seems troubling to accept the peace prize with an argument for just war. Coupled with Obama’s recent escalation in Afghanistan, which I oppose, this might account for the sense of dissonance. Of course, the Nobel Peace Prize is symbolic, and a very weak and compromised symbolism at that. What little good it can do lies in the accumulated prestige conferred upon it by the world, prestige that may perhaps provide some help to a truly brave and embattled figure of peace, such as Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi. A lot of the time it seems like not much more than self-congratulation for liberal moneyed elites. To give the prize to Henry Kissinger, for instance, because he helped negotiate an end to a war that he had viciously prolonged, symbolizes not peace but blind complacency. Obama’s award seems to indicate a desperate hope that the U.S. will recover from the sink of depravity represented by Bush-Cheney.

Knowing, therefore, that the prize is symbolic, it is clear to me on reflection that the President’s acceptance speech symbolizes something more disturbing than any immediate political significance it may have. I see now that what I find revolting in such an argument for “just war” doctrine, presented in the context of peace on the world stage, is its stubborn refusal of accountability for unjust war, in short, its embrace of imperial hubris.

The invasion of Iraq and its aftermath resulted in somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million deaths, according to the most conscientious and objective sources. In 2007, the Iraqi government reported that there were about 5 million orphans in the country. Estimates of the number of children killed have ranged between about 8-12% of total casualties, with many thousands more killed by malnutrition and disease. Iraqis themselves have reported that virtually every family in Iraq has experienced the violent death of a first- or second- degree relative. During much of the war, there were terrorist bombings going off on practically a daily basis, with casualties often in the hundreds. If a comparable death toll had taken place in the United States, it would have plunged the country into unimaginable grief and terror. Yet the relatively prosperous citizens of the U.S., insulated by distance and a silent and complicit news media, did not adequately comprehend or feel the enormity of Iraqi losses. Attention has been paid to the deaths of over 4300 American soldiers, although even that has been blunted by government and media neglect, of which the prohibition against showing photographs of dead soldiers, or up until recently, even their coffins, is a symptom. In addition, there have been over 30,000 wounded soldiers, many of them seriously, and this toll has been similarly muted.

Proponents of this war have often said that getting rid of Saddam Hussein has made Iraq a better place, but Iraqis themselves disagree: the death toll during his reign was much lower, and the displacement of people has been catastrophic: somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million Iraqis fled the country, almost 10% of the entire population. It should be abundantly clear to all but the most ignorant by now that the U.S. invasion itself was based wholly on deception. The claim that Iraq was involved in the September 11 attacks was a shameful lie that has been repeatedly disproved. The Cheney fall-back position from this, that Saddam was aiding Al Qaida, has been thoroughly discredited. Then of course there was the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The evidence is now overwhelming that intelligence reports were manipulated and in some cases completely fabricated in order to support this false claim.

Once the invasion took place, the United States did nothing to help Iraq stabilize its infrastructure or to promote a peaceful transition to a post-Saddam government. The “strategy” of the Bush-Cheney war effort was one of utter venality. The oil resources were to be protected, but the people were expendable. The callous behavior of the military (and the mercenaries) towards civilians produced a death toll that actually exceeded the deaths from sectarian violence in the war’s first two years. The neocon crackpots who tried their hand at nation-building failed at every step of the way and on every level. The piles of dead bodies, the tragic destruction of an entire nation, are directly attributable to the greed, imperial ambition, and stupidity of the United States government.

So as a result of an invasion that was based on deliberate falsehoods, and carried out without the approval of the United Nations, many hundreds of thousands of people, probably over a million, have died, and millions more lives have been shattered forever.

By the time the so-called “surge” was put into place in 2007, Iraq was already a broken shell of a country and the bloodletting had already destroyed whatever hopes there might have been for a better post-Saddam reality. The war enthusiasts now use this contemptible and phony “surge” as a point of pride, even claiming that the United States somehow “won” the war, although what exactly we have won I have been unable to fathom.

I won’t even try to detail the massive looting and impoverishment of Iraqi resources (and the U.S. treasury) by rapacious corporations such as KBR, or the shameful use of torture on detainees which has called into question our very values as a people. The list of murders, crimes, and obscenities goes on too long to adequately discuss in a short piece.

And here is my question to the United States of America, not only to President Obama and the Congress but to our servile excuse for a news media, our corporate elites, the millions of flag-waving warmongering “patriots,” and the many more passive citizens watching their TV and saying nothing: Where is our remorse? Will there be no acknowledgment of guilt at all? Will no one express even a public sense of grief for the terrible damage and loss of life caused by this unjust, illegal and immoral war?

The so-called leaders of this country, the politicians, corporate executives, and other public figures and spokespersons, seem to think that you can wish murder away with silence and denial. And in this, I’m afraid, they represent the ignorance and sense of entitlement of a large percentage of the American people. The best many can do is admit that the war was a “mistake.” Many can not even do that, trapped as they are in the delusion that the United States has to be magically right in all things. The delusion of power, of “we’re number 1,” the fatal soul-sickness known as “American exceptionalism,” prevents most of us from even seeing the blood that stains our country.

If it is too much to ask for an admission of fault, guilt, or remorse, will we not at least allow mourning for what has been done to be publicly expressed? No, apparently, we will not. It is, I am told, politically unfeasible to do so. Those of us who express such things will be labeled weak at best, and at worst traitorous. So instead we have our President accepting the Nobel Peace Prize with a feeble and misguided apology for American “just war.”

“Whatever mistakes we have made,” Obama said, “the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest.”

This is the refined pseudo-intellectual version of the imperial lie. We kill for the good of the world, and for peace. I suppose Obama believes the lie. Henry Kissinger, at least, knew that “enlightened self-interest” was a rhetorical device masking what he considered the necessities of realpolitik. The military industry that has been in charge of American foreign policy for over half a century (at least) plays a global chess game with the lives of millions, and for the consumption of the stupid dolts, the citizens and voters, the game is called “just war” and “self-interest.” Well, it does represent the self-interest of a very few men whose ideas are centered solely on naked power and the economic control which sustains it. The actual self-interest of the vast majority of the human beings don’t matter. We are just pieces in this game.

There is a price to be paid. Responsibility for mass murder may be hidden and denied, and the killers may go unpunished in our courts of law. But crimes of such enormity take their toll on the spirit of a country’s people, and unless they are acknowledged with grief, remorse, and correction in values and behavior, they result in a gradual and steady corruption which can only end in disaster. No pretty words by eloquent politicians, no phony peace prizes, no empty proclamations of hope, can change that. Staying upon our present course, like a blind giant stumbling through chaos while proclaiming his own greatness, we will surely fall.

Deadly Denial

2009-12-16T21:36:00.000-08:00

The so-called conservatives are in full denial that global climate change is happening, and they have been for years. Recently they’ve pounced on some stolen emails from a UK research center as proof that global warming is a hoax. In fact, playing around with data in simulations is a common practice, and none of this tricked-up data was ever published. That hasn’t stopped the American media, always willing to run with whatever lies they’re fed by the right, from pretending this is a real story.

A recent open letter to Congress from U.S. scientists reaffirms that “The body of evidence that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming is overwhelming.” Yet the rightists and their corporate backers continue in their insistence on a hoax.

Take a moment to consider the implications of this. The climate change deniers would have us believe that there is a vast conspiracy of scientists to convince the world of a falsehood concerning the environment. And the motive for such a conspiracy would be the undermining of the capitalist system. In other words, all these scientists are being accused of plotting to bring down the economy. In the mythology of the right, they are being placed in the camp of the “liberals,” who are enemies of the American way of life.

Beyond this blanket accusation, the climate change deniers offer us no insight into why scientists would violate their ethics in such a way. Nor do they offer any plausible scenario for how so many hundreds of people could coordinate such a hoax. The whole theory is so patently absurd that it’s a wonder they even attempt it, but in the climate of stupidity fostered by Republicans in America for decades, there are many who are willing to believe anything they’re told.

The very simplest insights are often the ones never expressed in our public discourse. Here is one that needs to be said: economic self-interest is the obvious motive for attacks on climate change science. Global warming spells disaster for the petroleum industry, and a lot of other industries are heavily invested in petroleum—not just cars, but agriculture, pharmaceuticals, plastics, weapons, you name it.

Rather than consider the implications of climate change, these corporate elites look only at the short term: their profits. They go into full denial because they don’t know how to do anything else. The principle of short-term self-interest holds true in every aspect of politics, but what’s peculiar about this is that the stakes for humanity are unbearably high. If global warming creates catastrophe for the earth, it’s also bad for business in the long-term. Perhaps some of these people just don’t care—they figure they’ll be dead by the time anything happens, and they can let their kids or grandkids deal with it. But it seems more likely that they believe their own denials because it’s too frightening for them to contemplate the truth.

What we have is a situation in which a small segment of the population with a disproportionate amount of the world’s wealth has become, for all intents and purposes, insane. Learned and intelligent experts are sounding the warning; many reasonable people are listening; but these stupid, greedy elites are actually trying to prevent anything being done to save our future from environmental disaster. Whether they believe their own lies or not becomes irrelevant. They must not be allowed to drive our world off a cliff.

The Bad News

2009-12-01T20:39:00.000-08:00

I actually like Barack Obama. I think he’s a great improvement on the gangster Republican rule of Cheney/Bush. But here’s the bad news: Obama still represents the moneyed establishment in this country. This was not news to me. I knew this when I voted for him. I just think it’s easy to lose perspective when watching the political spectacle in Washington. The right wing in this country is so rabid, dangerous, and delusional that it tends to distort one’s awareness of the big picture.

In the economic crisis, Obama has chosen to prop up the Wall Street bankers. He’s also made some steps to stimulate the economy, but the attempt to keep the bankers alive will be a major failure. I don’t know how long it will take for this failure to fully manifest, it could even be delayed until after Obama’s second term. But these people don’t know any other principle than greed and piracy, and they will drive us all into a ditch again.

Obama has also rolled over to the military industrial complex. The policies are imperialistic in the old style, as opposed to the scarier crypto-fascist Cheney approach. But they’re still imperialistic, so we’re still being the cop of the world and the guardian of multinational corporations as opposed to the oppressed millions on this earth. Obama also flinched on Israel—there will be no serious stand against expansion of illegal settlements. The situation in foreign affairs is back to the status quo, which was never a healthy thing. The United States will apparently have to keep learning the hard way that world hegemony is untenable.

Even the arrogance of Bush’s “unitary executive” initiatives has not been repudiated in full. Obama has not renounced the criminal and unconscionable policies of CIA “rendition.” The same specious arguments are made by Obama’s Justice Dept. in favor of so-called preventive detention and other unconstitutional means in the bogus “war on terror.”

Being a moderate on social issues means that Obama doesn’t go to the mat for gay rights, but gives them lip service instead. He is not pro-active on equality, civil rights, labor rights, or human rights abroad—and sometimes actively ignores these issues in order to curry favor with more conservative members of his own party. Time and again he takes the support of progressives and liberals, who were responsible for getting him elected, for granted, while pursuing a naïve and unattainable ideal of bipartisanship.

My purpose is not to discourage aspirations to change, but to emphasize that real change only comes from the bottom up. The establishment elects its own to run its business—they will preserve and promote the status quo as long as the American people tolerate the status quo. The mass of American citizens will continue to passively observe their own exploitation as long as they identify their interests with the rich. When they stop doing that, what follows is committed action on the local level. When progressive-minded people serve their communities instead of living passive lives of consumption, change will accelerate.

The New Religion

2009-11-23T19:48:00.000-08:00

The next time you mute the television during a commercial, examine the silent language of an advertisement. It’s more obvious with the sound off. The human drama is centered on a non-human object, an object of attraction, even of obsession or worship. The satiated stare of the actors, whether speaking directly to you or in some concocted interaction, rests on the commodity. Whatever social milieu may be depicted, whatever situation presents itself as self-consciously typical of “us,” the viewer, is completed and fulfilled only by the commodity. Although life is portrayed as if it were something else, something existing outside of the commercial, the product being sold is manifestly the meaning of life.

Here is the real American religion, indeed the religion of “Western civilization.” The religion of prayer and sermons and churches is only a sideshow, a feature in the cultural landscape. There is no adoration in mass culture, the culture of day-to-day life in the “developed” countries, that can compare to the adoration of the car, the appliance, the light beer, the prescription drug. In fact it is not the specific commodity in itself that is significant, but our relationship with any product, the relationship of the consumer with any desired object, that constitutes our way of life.

To understand this fully it is necessary to clear away all illusions about the “means of existence.” Some commodities are necessary to us in terms of food, shelter, health, or future security. Many of them are unnecessary. But the cult of the commodity creates the same mental outlook in either case. You can be poor as dirt and still be hypnotized by a sense of dependency on products as such, a mental and emotional dependency that molds one’s entire attitude towards life.

When people talk disparagingly about “material things” as if an attachment to the physical world was a problem, it only obscures the issue. The object of worship in this religion is not really material at all. It represents a way of living that is purposely alienated from interpersonal relations. Our attention in the deepest sense, the locus of our daily awareness, is trained to turn away from ourselves as a human community and towards the product, which becomes a replacement for meaning. When the shiny car drives up in the commercial, the people turn towards it as if it were a god or a holy grail. It has been invested with a kind of magic, a meaning that has no meaning other than the turning of attention itself. The market, through the sheer mechanical logic of its operation, has colonized the human mind, turning society into a group of atomized individuals bonding with their commodities.

The effect on the world is disastrous, but it is difficult to realize what the problem is as long as one is under the spell of this new religion. If one has no experience with culture based on relationships between people, if all one knows is consumer culture, there is only a nagging sense of unease, a premonition of emptiness. It has become difficult to experience the natural world without the intrusion of commodities, but glimpses can be had if you are lucky. In the midst of the nonjudgmental and non-manipulative environment of the wilderness, gratitude can suddenly arise. There are people who can look at a forest or a canyon and only see the potential for some kind of use, something to grasp, something to consume. Humanity pays a steep price for ignoring its dependence on nature.

In architecture, too, we can tell when something has been built with an attention based on a relationship with nature, and on the sense of human community. Such places inspire an inner sense of freedom and contentment, and a connection with other people. The architecture of the consumer religion is only designed to showcase the commodity. People are always visitors in these environments. There is nowhere to rest, nowhere to interact meaningfully with anybody. We are impelled, rather, to interact with products. Such places foster a sense of inner constraint and dissatisfaction. Nothing can satisfy the restless seeking. No object is ever enough.

The U.S. is covered with strip malls now, from coast to coast. The strip mall is the perfect church for the new religion. They are alike in their ugliness. We park our cars in the parking lots and enter the strip malls looking for a promised fulfillment. Whatever conversations we may have with each other are only incidental to the drama of the capitalist economy. It is the epic drama of perfect boredom.

To break away from the new religion is to experience a wrenching of the psyche. There is no easy way for a free spirit to make his escape. An attitude of sheer negation is in itself a mere reaction, a symptom of malaise. Those of us who see a different reality are called also to make it visible. We find ourselves blending the unrelenting vigor of a satirist with the tenderness of a grieving lover. Shaking free of the common stupor is not something achieved once and for all, but must be practiced every day, with varying success, while at the same time we strive to meet the eyes of others without dishonesty or shame. At this time we are still spraying graffiti on the walls. By the time we tear down the walls, will we have learned how to grow gardens instead?

Special Victim Status

2009-11-10T20:32:00.000-08:00

I know people who are unwilling to express an opinion on Arab-Israeli issues because the political atmosphere is so charged with animosity. The decades-long conflict has the nature of ancient tribal hatred and vendetta. And it seems that nothing will ever solve the problem except a willingness by all parties to let go of this tribal hatred for a greater good.

But there’s also the peculiar nature of the debate as it manifests in the United States. One might more accurately say “lack of debate,” because in mainstream American politics there is a general taboo against criticizing the government of Israel.

It’s not my intention to analyze the immensely complex and entangled history around this issue. I only want to make one important point about nations and their governments. To consider any country as simply a nation among nations, with the same powers, rights and responsibilities as any other nation, is a sign of respect. When Israel was founded, as much as that event was marked by conflict and injustice, the true intent was to create a new nation that would be equal to other nations in the sense that I have just stated, a country that a long-suffering and persecuted people could call their own.

It seems more than evident to me that there is always a difference between the people of a given country—the country per se—and whatever government that country may have at a given time. I am opposed, for instance, to the repressive and inhumane policies of the current Iranian government, but I do not hate Iranians as people. Even more to the point, I have strongly opposed the policies of my own government, yet I myself am an American and do not hate Americans.

Equating opposition to a government’s policies with hating the country itself, is a common rhetorical trick. It is nothing more than a way of silencing dissent without having to argue effectively with it. In fact, it exemplifies what I would call totalitarian thinking, since it identifies the people of a country with the state.

In the case of Israel, this rhetorical trick has the added potency of race and religion. If you publicly criticize the government of Israel in the U.S., I can guarantee that you will be accused of anti-Semitism. Keeping in mind the long and shameful history of Jewish persecution, culminating in the horrific genocide in Europe, this is a very serious accusation indeed. Although “anti-Semitism” is the common term, I will use the more explicit phrase “Jew hatred” here to avoid confusion, since the Arabs are a Semitic people as well.

Jew hatred has not gone away. It exists on the extreme right and extreme left. Because it has finally become generally unacceptable in society, it is usually disguised. We find it frequently on the “conspiratorial” fringes, by which I mean those groups that interpret world power relations in terms of certain groups of people that secretly control institutions. Recently someone told me that the Jews controlled most of the American media, and he named the heads of some of the networks and movie studios, as if this Jewish element somehow explained everything. Countering this argument with the names of numerous Gentiles wielding enormous power is only partially effective as an answer. The point is that ethnicity and religion are nothing more than lightning rods for scapegoating behavior. To believe in their significance is to claim an essentialist meaning for these categories, the same way a white supremacist believes that Africans are “inferior.”

Of course there is Jew hatred among Arabs and Muslims as well. And there is hatred of Arabs and Muslims among Jews, Christians, Europeans and Americans. The latter has been greatly encouraged recently within mainstream discourse in America, without the contradiction being widely noted.

Relying then on the power of all this history, and of the persistence of Jew-hatred in the world, the defenders of Israeli government policy routinely accuse those of us who criticize said policy of being Jew haters. If the dissenters are themselves Jewish, we hear the label “self-hating Jews.”

Returning to my original point, then, concerning the correct and respectful attitude towards nations, I contend that this defensive stance, taken by a large portion of the dogmatic pro-Israel forces and lobbyists in the U.S., is an infantile and disrespectful stance to take regarding the nation of Israel. They are claiming a special victim status for this particular country—rather than a nation among nations, they see Israel as an exception to the rules, a privileged nation whose government is exempt from criticism. For if you cannot criticize the policies and actions of Israel without therefore being a Jew-hater, any such criticism must be automatically invalid. This is totalitarian thinking.

I have had enough of this. What I see is a long-standing militaristic, anti-democratic faction within Israel dominating its political life and implementing policies that are profoundly inhumane and destructive. And if I oppose the aggressive expansion of settlements, the constriction of Palestinians within a system of virtual serfdom, and the killing of innocent people, including many children, in Gaza and the West Bank, I know there are those who will say I am unfair, pro-terrorist, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic. It’s a lie. And it is a transparent technique for avoiding responsibility. Using Jew hatred and the Holocaust as an excuse to justify whatever the Israeli government does is a strategy of cowardice. If Israel is the free and proud democracy that it claims to be, then it doesn’t need to hide behind a special victim status in order to function as a nation on the world stage. The United States continues to enable this blind dogmatism by writing the Israeli government a blank check for whatever it does, and then vetoing whatever actions the UN tries to take. I don’t hold a brief for Arab governments, which are by and large corrupt autocracies that do not serve their own people. But it does not aid the security of America, or indeed the world, for Israel to avoid making peace with the Palestinians, using the fear of terrorism to put off taking any action that would aid the progress of peace in the region. If Israel wants to claim moral superiority over their opponents, then it’s high time for them to show leadership in the cause of peace. The world sees the emptiness of official Israeli rhetoric. Fewer people in the United States are being fooled. And those who accuse critics and dissenters of Jew-hatred are actually hurting Israel more than any critic ever could. Blurring the distinction between actual anti-Semitism and honest criticism is bad for everyone.

The Age of Arrogance and Greed

2009-10-31T10:32:00.000-07:00

If I’m asked to name the biggest problems facing the world today, my answer is “arrogance and greed.” People tend to shrug at that answer. I understand. These things are just aspects of human nature, and seemingly intractable. When they’re asking this question, they’re thinking of objective conditions such as war, environmental degradation, poverty, and so forth. I don’t expect the mass of humanity to undergo a spiritual transformation. But I do think that in order for problems to be solved, there has to be a change in the social ethos—that which is generally considered desirable in our social attitudes and behavior. Arrogance and greed won’t disappear, but there needs to be a general recognition that these traits are destructive and inappropriate for the conduct of social institutions and government. Instead, they are either tacitly accepted as “the way things are,” or in the case of capitalist economics and right-wing ideology, actively encouraged.

The opposites of arrogance and greed are humility and compassion. Both tend to be ridiculed nowadays, at least in the political arena. They are associated with a sort of airy and unrealistic idealism that is practically unworkable. Politicians of all stripes tend to adhere to self-interest as a guiding principle. This has the effect of enslaving us to short-term goals. It may be ultimately in our self-interest to solve the environmental crisis, for instance, but this kind of self-interest implies a wider conception of “self” that is outside the orthodox view.

Humility involves the simple realization that we are limited and mortal creatures; that we don’t know everything, and therefore must adopt uncertainty and open-mindedness as guiding attitudes if we are to succeed in governing ourselves well. Nothing could be more opposed to the way nations have conducted themselves until now. In the last sixty years, we have possessed nuclear weapons, for instance. These weapons are capable of incinerating millions of people in a matter of minutes. Yet governments have persisted in the illusion that human beings can possess such godlike powers indefinitely; that our wisdom and abilities can be trusted in such a matter. Nothing in the history of humankind confirms this as valid. Arrogance alone, the refusal to practice humility, justifies it.

In daily political life, arrogance is rampant. Politicians and their owners operate from a stance of close-mindedness and certainty, based on their ideologies. You might think that religion would encourage humble attitudes, but the religious groups that have wielded the greatest power have also demonstrated the most unbridled arrogance. Fundamentalists who trust that their sacred book (and their own narrow understanding of that book) is beyond criticism, give themselves permission to be absolutely right about anything they think. The notion of human beings humbling themselves before the wisdom of a higher power has proven ineffective. The zealots, armed with their infallible book, presume to speak for God. They think God needs their help. The self-righteousness of dogma poisons the social atmosphere, while the zealot accuses everyone who disagrees with him while failing to examine his own limitations.

Arrogance has reached a stage in which facts no longer stand in the way. Our political discourse is clogged with pundits and demagogues who make reckless claims and accusations every day, statements that have no basis in reality, but are born wholly from the ideological certainty of the closed-minded bigot.

Compassion in its political form involves the simple realization that all human beings are connected; that there is such a thing as the common welfare. Governments operating from such an ethical standard would seek to foster the basic health and well-being of the community, and not simply be the tools of private gain. On the international level, there has to be an effort at cooperation and the empowerment of all people and countries. Such is the stated purpose of the United Nations, undermined as it is by the hegemony of the richest countries. Mike Huckabee, who calls himself a Christian, recently said that we should cut the UN loose and let it float away into the East River. For such people, there is no value in listening to any other points of view (arrogance) or aiding anyone outside of our nation or tribe (greed).

Even if President Obama had the wisdom of a Martin Luther King, which he doesn’t, it would be impossible for one politician to transform the ethical culture which keeps us bound to narrow and self-defeating behavior. It is up to those people who have realized the inescapable necessity to practice humility and passion to continually express their values publicly, while denouncing arrogance and greed as wrong and destructive. It’s not enough to attack certain persons, as if the problem were simply that the wrong people were in charge. It’s not enough to express positive values without calling out the negative ones, or vice versa. Arrogance and greed have to be named for what they are, over and over, and their opposites affirmed as necessary, over and over. If only one half of this action is performed, there is no choice presented. It hardly needs to be said that humility and compassion need to be practiced to the best of our ability as well, otherwise our insistence on their value is empty posturing.

This is not to deny the necessity for taking practical steps to solve problems. But as long as the sociopolitical ethos is based on arrogance and greed, the practical solutions will be stopgap measures that only gain us a little time, while narrow self-interest labors continually to negate them. Compassion, which recognizes the connection of all life, is actually a form of self-interest, but one in which a long-term and universal sense of self, namely a sense of community, takes precedence over the short-sighted self-interest of “us versus them.” When anti-environmentalists, for instance, ridicule efforts to save a species of bird or fish, they simply fail to see that the extinction of a species ends up damaging our chances of survival. They seem to think it’s just some disinterested love of the animals, unconnected to our own interests as human beings. An awakening of a general ethos of connectedness would gradually obviate this point of view in public policy.

It’s a measure of how cynical and degraded our social conceptions have become that the ideas I’ve presented here probably seem impossible to many readers. The influence of life-affirming values is slow, and often escapes wide notice. But culture does change, and as the conditions around us become more threatening, we are seeing more and more people rejecting the suicidal values that are driving us towards a cliff. Necessity, I believe, is forcing us to access values that have always been within us, both as individuals and communities. But in order for humility and compassion to become more consciously valued as a social ideal, and not just a private belief, we need a third virtue: courage.

What Character?

2009-10-21T22:20:00.000-07:00

I’m not often inspired by the speeches of politicians, and I can measure the gap between idealistic phrases and actual policy. Nonetheless, there was something about President Obama’s Sept. 9 health care speech that still resonates with me: his invocation of Senator Kennedy’s letter in which he said that, “At stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.”

It’s important, in other words, that we ask what kind of country we are, and what kind we want to be. This question doesn’t get asked in public very often, at least not in the mainstream, not in Washington. Whatever core beliefs are at work in the echelons of American power are revealed through actions that often belie official rhetoric. The central one, it seems to me, is to make money, and make as much of it as possible all the time. Politics is simply a way of aiding the “economy,” the modern term for business interests. On the face of it, this is a legitimate purpose or value, if you look at in the most simplistic terms: people need food, housing, the ability to fulfill various other needs and wants, and the means to raise and educate children. These are just the terms that are emphasized because they are at the end of the chain of power. Voters can understand that. But those aren’t the operative terms. Capitalism functions through the self-interest of the capitalist, not because of a socially desirable result.

Ask any CEO if there is any other motive that takes precedence over the profit motive in the operation of a company. If he’s honest, he’ll say no. That’s how it works, and within those terms, there’s nothing wrong with it. The problem is that this motive, this sole overriding principle in the operation of a business, became identified with the ultimate value of society. The “free market” ideologies, identified most purely with Republicans but permeating the thought of members from both major parties, are hostile to any principle that places itself above the profit motive. Politicians may say something different, but in practice the core value is profit above all else. And there are consequences to this regarding other human values—there are effects on our character.

The logic of “free market” values leads to deregulation, removing effective oversight from business, and to so-called “privatization,” the handing over of traditionally public functions to business. It also leads to the dismantling of social programs, which have no profit-centered logic, and therefore no reason for being. From the victory of the right wing under Reagan until now, the effect on the economic condition of the masses has been quite clear. The middle class has become increasingly less affluent, with wages stagnating and families forced to take two or more jobs in order to get by. At the same time, the poor became poorer, and more numerous with the addition of people falling from the middle into the lower class.

I never saw masses of homeless people on the streets before Reagan was President. Almost immediately after he took office, they became a permanent presence in our cities. The ideologues mounted a campaign to explain this fact away. The homeless deserved their plight: they were lazy, irresponsible people who often chose to be homeless. The same kinds of campaigns were waged against welfare and food stamp recipients. This wasn’t just a practical move on the part of the right—it was a conscious attempt to define the American character in a new, non-liberal way.

Which brings me back to Obama’s speech. Kennedy’s notion of “social justice and the character of our country” has its roots in the epochal founding events of modern American liberalism, the Depression and the New Deal. Such ideas had of course existed long before, but they gained power under FDR. Essentially what the New Deal said is that we as a nation have a stake in caring for the basic needs of people, and that this “caring” is in itself a principle independent of the profit motive. It was never that the profit motive should go away, or that there is something inherently wrong with making a profit—although the free marketers would always try to paint liberal thought in those terms. It was only that there were other worthy principles and values that people need to live by, besides making a profit. And that all these principles must be honored in order for a country to be well and justly governed.

Schooling children doesn’t really make a profit. People try to couch it in terms of the country needing to have well-educated children in order to be “competitive” in the world economy and so forth, which only goes to show how much the profit motive dominates the public discourse. But really, most parents don’t seek to educate their children for business reasons.

The same is true for having a police force, a fire department, public transport, traffic lights, driver’s licenses, and a host of other public institutions and functions. Communities have needs, and the need for businesses to make money is only one of those needs, not the only one or even the primary one. So when the “free market” ends up denying basic needs to people, such as food, shelter, and health care, the contradiction between the belief in the sacredness of the profit motive and the reality of most people’s lives becomes evident. In the case of health care, it has become insupportable, and yet the disciples of making the most money possible all of the time will fight tooth and nail to prevent health care from being recognized as a right, since they recognize no other good but profit.

The world in which profit has been elevated above compassion, caring, family, neighborhood, and friendship is very much like the world depicted in Charles Dickens’ novels, the world of predatory capitalism before regulation. If we can accept people living on the streets, ultimately we accept them dying from cold or starvation on the streets. From there, we can accept people dying because they can’t afford treatment for their health problems. If it weren’t for labor laws that were pushed through by liberals, we would be accepting children being worked to death in factories. In fact, corporations still accept it when they use sweatshops in other countries.

The point is, there is no possible moral or principled objection to such things in terms of the “free market.” In philosophical terms, human beings are replaceable objects in the profit system; if profit is the one organizing social principle, then there is no crime that is not excusable in the name of business. I’m not speaking of the future here, but of the present. The prisons are packed with poor, working class, and minority criminals. The so-called “white collar” criminals are, more often than not, given a slap on the wrist, or even acquitted, if they’re ever charged at all. This is an open secret in our society, and it follows from the valuing of profits over people.

What then is the character of our country? There is no simple answer. The masses of ordinary people, working day by day to get by, possess whatever variety and degree of character they have been able to cultivate. People still love their families and help out their neighbors. It’s a fact that the lower middle class gives proportionally more to charity than the rich or upper middle class. I don’t believe that self-centeredness is the only distinguishing trait of our society. I don’t think we could have survived this far if it were. But as a country, we are split. The economic system, and the government, is aligned with a callous and anti-humanist philosophy. By no means is there agreement on fundamental principles of social justice, or even that social justice is a good to be aimed at. For the country to realize a character greater than the examples of greed and power-seeking we have been shown so far will involve relegating the profit motive to its proper place in society. It will always participate, but it can no longer run the show.

The Best We've Got

2009-10-10T14:10:00.000-07:00

A patriot says “My country, right or wrong.” A nationalist says, “My country can never be wrong.” Implicit is a different view of what “my country” is. Simone Weil made the distinction in The Need for Roots between country as land, people, culture, and language; and nation as authority, state, army, and flag. And I would add to that list the notion of a dominant or privileged class. The nationalist wants to be in a dominant group, and will kill his fellow countrymen en masse in order to achieve that.

In the United States, the tension between these two ideas of country is at a height, and the lines are often blurred. We hear a lot about the founding fathers these days, and the ideas and principles that guided the U.S. at its birth. Everyone wants to claim that mantle. But history is never simple, and when we try to make it so in the service of our ideals, we do ourselves a disservice. When I truly love someone, with the deep and unconditional love that comes with time and effort, I don’t just love certain attractive aspects, but the entire flawed human being. I would argue that the same is true of loving one’s country.

The right-wing extremists who still dominate public discourse have an antique schoolboy veneration for the founders without displaying much insight into their ideas, the principles that shaped the Constitution of the United States. American revolutionary thought was anti-autocratic. Despite major differences in the views of such figures as Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison, they shared the vision of a republic that would represent the will of citizens rather than the desires and caprices of a monarch or dictator. The founders, being British, were enormously influenced by the British parliamentary and legal tradition. It was, however, too easy for Great Britain to succumb to despotism in one form or another, and the founders therefore sought remedy for this by fashioning a purer kind of republic that had no monarch to be revered, but three branches of government with powers divided between them, all servants of the people.

To this structure was added a Bill of Rights that restricted the government’s ability to interfere with people’s lives. If you study the first ten amendments as originally ratified, you get a good idea of the threats that the founders were worried about. A tyranny would try to control what religion people could practice, what they could say or print, their ability to gather together in groups for peaceful purposes, and their ownership of arms. A tyranny would attempt to break into people’s homes without legal warrants based on probable cause. It would try to arrest and imprison people without formal charges, without the right to confront their accusers, detaining them indefinitely without trial and without a jury. A tyranny would steal people’s property from them, or force them to give their property over for the use of the military.

All these threats, these fears, sprung from the founders’ experience of treatment by the British government. They all reflected the desire to prevent untrammeled authoritarian power, which they called tyranny, and to make government a servant of the people rather than a master. The founders differed as to how much power and authority the government should have—Hamilton believed in a strong central power, whereas Jefferson and his followers tended to think in decentralized terms. All shared the belief that the legitimacy of government power depended on the consent of the governed. What exactly this “consent” is, and how to determine it, was the perennial issue of debate, and it was in the very nature of a republic for this to be the case.

If we look at the right-wing “patriots” of today, outside of the pure libertarians, it is remarkable how indifferent they are to the actual thought of the founders. What we see here is crude authoritarianism, in which “America” needs to be the greatest and most powerful country in the world, providing its citizens with a good measure of economic affluence. The Bill of Rights is mainly viewed as an obstacle to getting things done, and other than the part about bearing arms (which makes money for the gun companies), the “rights” enumerated are painted as threats to national security, law and order, morality, and the Christian religion. When someone outside of the right-wing becomes President, the “patriots” start squawking about rights again, but it’s only political warfare, not principle, since the same rights didn’t mean anything to them when a right-wing President was in office.

What we have, then, is an American “patriotic” movement that is essentially no different than monarchism or dictatorship—the polar opposite of the republican ideal aimed at by the founders.

Turning from the schoolboy notions of American history to actual history, in the air and sunlight of reality, there is a painful tension between the ideas of the founders and the historical conditions in which they grew. British colonists settled on a new continent, killing and displacing native populations in the process. The cultivation of land and the development of this new society were greatly facilitated by the importation of African slaves. The property owners held power, and enjoyed the greatest benefits, including the benefits of education. They were the true “citizens,” not the laborers or the poor. Women had no vote—that went without saying, as it was the condition of women in all of Europe as well.

Post-revolutionary history reflects all these tensions quite explicitly. The killing and displacement of Indians increased as colonization expanded westward. This expansion brought out other imperialist tendencies, such as in the Mexican War. And of course, the existence of slavery became an impossible moral and political burden, resulting in a huge civil war between the northern and southern regions of the country. Although slavery ended, the struggle over the status of African Americans continued.

The tragic and bloody history of the United States has caused many on the left to be skeptical about the republican ideals of the founders. If Washington and Jefferson held slaves, how can we take their notions of liberty seriously? This is an understandable reaction to the schoolboy version of American history. Moreover, the awareness of economic power and the class system as crucial factors in politics makes the founders’ reliance on Enlightenment ideals seem naïve. They tended to rely on moral explanations based on character, without reference to economic realities. Yes, despotism has its root in greed and selfishness, but these character defects thrive in a socioeconomic culture.

But to be aware of the truth of our history does not necessitate turning against love of country. For the right wing, in the spirit of “my country can’t be wrong,” the only recourse is denial or minimizing. Slavery wasn’t so bad; the Indians mostly deserved what they got; that sort of thing. For progressives who still retain love of country, however, the answer lies in a vision of the United States as work in progress. We view the republic as an ideal to which successive generations add their experience and insights, expanding the scope of what liberty means. In fact, this is largely in the spirit of the founders themselves, who had the foresight to make the Constitution a document that could be amended and variously interpreted. They even made provision for more constitutional conventions by which the people could revamp the founding document. We were not stuck with slavery, or with no suffrage for women. Provision was made for change, although it was deliberately made rather difficult to actually amend the Constitution, perhaps more difficult than has been good for us. The rapidity of social change has made our founding document seem rather rickety at times.

The states, for instance, were very important entities in the beginning. It really meant something to be from Virginia, or New York, or Massachusetts. The U.S. Senate owes its origin to this notion of state autonomy. In modern times, though, with migration between states becoming so common as to be the norm, there just isn’t the same significance attached to the idea of one’s home state, at least not in the political sense. It has created an imbalance of power in the legislative branch, since sparsely populated states such as Wyoming have just as many senators as California or New York. This reinforces an American provincialism which empowers the most backward elements of society. It would require a major Constitutional change to correct this, and it’s not at all clear that this would be to our ultimate advantage.

The biggest problem with the form of government bequeathed to us, in my view, is that it did not prevent the rise of an industrial capitalist ruling class that has effectively assumed power in the U.S. government since the 19th century. Critics point to the use of the 14th Amendment to confer personhood (and thus citizenship status) on corporations as the nail in the coffin. As long as corporations are treated as free entities with rights, their dominance of the political process is assured.

No Constitution will ever be perfect, and ours is no exception. At heart, though, I think the system of government devised by the founders is better than any of the alternatives so far attempted in other countries. I suppose this makes me old-fashioned. I just think it’s the best chance we’ve got, and I see many of the problems posed by an imperialist, corporate, authoritarian America as a turning away from the American tradition, a regression, if you will, to older monarchic and despotic ways of thinking. There is no mention of Wall Street in our Constitution, or of a two-party system. The equation of the United States with such things is a convenient myth for the powerful. As an American progressive, I embrace love of country, and love of our Constitution as a living document capable of growth and adaptation. I accept this framework as what we have to work with, and I look with suspicion on those who claim to support it while undermining it with their actions.

The Church of Conformity

2009-09-29T14:51:00.000-07:00

In the lobby during the intermission at classical music concerts, I almost never overhear conversations about the music or the performance. Indeed, observing such audiences mummified in their evening dress, with their vacant stares, suggests a certain shallowness of middle class interest in culture. The concert is more of an occasion to dress up and be seen, a sort of of class ritual. This isn’t very fruitful an insight, except that I immediately drew a parallel with going to church.

I like to think that I’m far from alone in remembering feelings of oppression and bewilderment when I was made to go to church as a kid. Five days of the week I was forced to sit at a desk in a school, enduring a great deal of boredom for the sake of very little actual learning. The weekend should have been a break, but on Sunday mornings I was dressed up in a suit and tie (hot and uncomfortable) and taken to church. “Sunday school” was not school in any meaningful sense. The little we were “taught” made no sense; mostly we were just baby-sat. As for church itself, if anyone remembers sitting on wooden pews, standing and singing horrid and incomprehensible songs, and listening to the pretentious babbling of a bore in a black gown as a pleasurable experience, I would like to meet him.

I always assumed that the church experience was meant to signify religious truth in some way. Being a precocious child, I set to work reading the Bible, and although I was often confused and disturbed—especially by the Old Testament—I sensed the titanic nature of the text, the assumption of overwhelming importance and gravity in almost every line. Subconsciously I felt a great distance between the goings-on in church and the world view of the holy book. Sunday service was quite patently mediocre and petty, even to a young mind, whereas the Bible had a huge, looming, dramatic presence that quite dwarfed anything ever said or sung in church.

Only much later in life did I see, in a way that the analogy with the classical music concertgoer makes vivid, that church was not experienced as significant in religious terms, but as a social event with a purely social meaning. Going to church meant that you were an upstanding, normal member of society. It signified one’s status as a conforming member of an acceptable group. It also reassured parents that their kids would continue in the path of normality. The “values” assumed under the rubric of religion were primarily general cultural values, such as obedience to authority, sexual restraint, and (to some degree) helping behavior. They were only religious in the most abstract sense. And to continue the analogy with the concertgoers, I never heard parishioners discussing religion on the steps after service. I got the feeling that it would have been considered embarrassing to do so.

I’m sure there were, and are, exceptions, but I think the exceptions prove the rule. My experience was with mainstream Protestantism. I didn’t notice much difference when I talked to my Catholic friends. I’m not sure how different it might be in the Jewish traditions. I suspect that it’s fairly universal, though, simply because the true religious impulse is not a common one. The idea that it could become common, that devotion to God, spiritual fervor of one sort or another, could become the status quo, has proven illusory. Most people just want to live their lives in reasonable comfort without bothering about the “big questions.” This has always been acknowledged at some level—in the ancient pagan traditions there were regular worshippers and initiates; in the Catholic Church the monastic orders were set apart from the laity, and so on. It’s only that the gradual advance of reason and science has made the forms of organized religions seem increasingly irrelevant to the real needs people have for social cohesion.

Fundamentalist Christianity was in many respects a “non-conformist” movement in the sense that it decried the lack of passion in the church, the lack of religious meaning in the church service. The fundamentalists brought enthusiasm back into the service for white Christians. (The black church is an entirely different matter—social and political conditions channeled spiritual passion there.) The Pentecostals and their like defied the upper middle class decorum of the mainstream churches, and in that respect seem like more of a lower middle class or sometimes even a working class phenomenon. On closer inspection, however, we find that fundamentalists are still wedded to a vision of social conformity, and that their religious doctrines follow from that vision rather than the other way around. There is a sense of great anxiety about liberal social change. The intense anger around feminism, abortion, and gay rights, for instance, is not centered on religious passion, although they think it is. The Bible has simply become the authority figure which absolves the worshiper of reason and responsibility—the written “word of God,” because it is does not require anything except obedience, is a handy tool for conformity to the social norm. For all their sound and fury, the fundamentalists do not mark a significant change in church culture. All they did was give it a sharpened political edge that isolated church members within their group through a shared sense of threat from secular forces outside. But when it comes to secularism, they pick and choose what to accept and reject—embracing the social Darwinism of predatory capital while fighting against scientific Darwinism because it threatens the centrality of man in the cosmic narrative.

I believe that all the stages of culture are present in any current stage. Children will always be pagans, and it is folly to bind them in suits and take them to church, and nothing less than cruel to deny them fairy tales, Halloween, and Harry Potter. For adults, however, I think that the church experience is becoming useless at best and harmful at worst. I have no idea what more healthy forms of social cohesion are going to look like, except that they will have to foster and reflect a more humane social order.

The Immortal Soul

2009-09-26T13:52:00.000-07:00

It was raining as I ran along the silent road. When I came to the crossing place I saw them. My mind spun, my body convulsed. Those piles of bloated flesh, reeking with stench, used to be my mother, my father, my brother. All the refugees had been lined up on the embankment and shot. The immortal soul.

You will never understand. You may turn away, or you may ask questions. You may be silent, or you may cry out. But you will never understand. We, the survivors, are now forever separate from you.

Whoever says the words “noble cause,” “brave men and women,” “honor,” “glory,” “victory,” or “not in vain,” you are lying to me. You who are standing in church with your hand on your heart, praising the lord of war, you are a gravedigger. Empty stone sanctuary, religion of the vultures and crows, you have nothing. Your holy whispers are useless and end in agony.

Because we survived this time, we think it’s all a story. My mother, father, brother, they say nothing. The survivors tell stories. We fools, we ragged jesters. We too are bloated, stench-filled piles. The immortal soul.

In the name of what, I ask, are living beings turned into things, just trash to be cleared away? Am I to believe that a child, nursed and loved by a mother, raised and taught and treasured for so many days of care, years of priceless cherishing; a living, breathing soul with a universe of feelings, thoughts, dreams, and dances contained in the heart and pulse and in the brilliant eyes; is all for nothing but to be pierced or crushed or suddenly blown to pieces by some stupid bomb? Do you really believe? What is the measure of our indifference? And for what—a piece of earth, a box made of gold? I reject your sacrifice.

I will not cheer your uniforms. I will not salute or wave your flag. Your monuments I will avoid. I turn my back on the parade. I walk away, without looking back, even when you call me. You must cross the gulf of silence between us on your own. I have no more stories to tell you, hopeless immortal souls.

History Lessons

2009-09-19T13:42:00.000-07:00

Of all the subjects taught in elementary and secondary education, history is the most primitive. For when it comes to history, we teach children the pretenses that man has given for his actions as if they were the substance, and for the most part communicate the truth only subliminally.

Beginning with Mesopotamia and Egypt, we follow a wearying succession of states, wars, and empires. The details can of course be entertaining, but the simplicity of the truth is obscured by the many names, dates, and actions. What is an empire, for instance? Why did Alexander bother to go on a rampage from Macedonia through the Middle East all the way to India? Wouldn’t it have been less of a bother to just stay home and enjoy life? The student would get a complex answer to this, I’m sure, but here is my answer: Macedonia saw the chance of stealing a lot of land and possessions, so they did. A few centuries before, Persia had seen the chance of stealing a lot of land and possessions in Greece, so they tried and failed.

The point is: it’s stealing.

Stealing is taking what you want by force. Applying this principle to political science in general, we see that states and kingdoms were based on groups of people forcing other groups of people to do what they want. Sometimes what they wanted was good, relatively speaking—a more peaceful and organized state rather than a chaotic warlord-type state, for example. The principle I’m laying out is more fundamental than whatever good or bad results you might get. It’s simply the principle of force. As the last line of defense, so to speak, in the social order, after persuasion, indoctrination, promises and agreements have failed, there is just force. We will force you to do what you don’t want to, or punish you by force for doing what we don’t want you to do.

Children understand this at a deep level, but it’s seldom spelled out so clearly. The parent will impose his or her will on the child through physical restraint or the infliction of pain. The parent also teaches morality of some kind, ideals and principles of good behavior. But when push comes to shove (how revealing is that phrase?) the child will be forced to comply with the parent.

However (and there are thousands of years of history contained in this “however”), the wills and desires of human beings are various, and with will and desire comes a sense of freedom and justice. I’m referring to the simplest kinds of feelings, not the great ideals fashioned later from these words. Freedom is the basic pleasure of action, of following my desire and perhaps attaining it. Justice is the sense that my freedom is respected and that my will is recognized by others. When someone else—who has will and desire as well, but also more power than I, more access to force—when someone else makes me do something against my will, or prevents me from doing something I want to do, it is experienced as the opposite of free or just. When someone takes something away from me by force, it is felt acutely as unjust, and this is perhaps the most basic experience of injustice there is.

The dilemma of humanity in the development of civilization becomes this: How can we have an organized society without bondage and injustice? This is often modified to mean: with a minimum of bondage and injustice. In a nutshell, the principle of force seems to contradict our humanity in essential ways.

The dominant school, today and for most of history, claims that force is not a contradiction at all, as long as it works efficiently. From monarchism down to fascism, this strain of thought vigorously persists. The competing schools of thought claim that the principle of force is something to be overcome, or at least reined in, so that higher principles (freedom, justice, love) can prevail in society.

What I find interesting is that even from the authoritarian point of view, force tends to be disguised in idealistic terms. Honor, glory, and fame have been the trappings of force since Homer, and they are still worn today. Heroism, bravery, courage—these describe the incredible risks of life and limb taken by those fighting in the cause of theft. In the modern age, the words are borrowed from the non-authoritarian traditions: we fight for freedom, democracy, human rights, peace. The old words have lost something of their power because of the memory of mass murders that boggled our minds, such as in the Holocaust. So these newer idealistic words need to be brought in for service. Our troops are fighting for our freedoms, right? If you say they’re fighting for oil, that’s considered an affront to the soldiers.

When a nation fights in its own defense, then the war is considered “just,” and rightly so from that relative point of view. World War II is considered a “good” war by Americans, because we were fighting against those who sought to enslave us. But if we are not to be entangled in our own rhetoric, we must acknowledge the big picture: World War II was started the old-fashioned way: a group of people (Germany, Japan) saw the chance of stealing a lot of land and possessions, and they went ahead and did it. Notice, however, that the Germans clothed their murder and theft with idealistic words: purity, fatherland, destiny, and so forth.

The contradiction therefore remains, as evidenced by the need for those wielding power to disguise the naked character of force with ideas of a more exalted nature. So the child reading an American history book, at least in my day (there have been modifications since then), learns that Europeans “discovered” America, explored it, and colonized it. The English colonists eventually broke away from their mother country because they wanted political freedom. They owned black slaves in America, and eventually there was a Civil War in the United States that freed them. The implications of this history can only be sensed subliminally by the student, for the most part—a student with a critical and inquiring mind (a rarity) will intuit the meaning in the gaps of light darting between the obfuscating mists of the textbook.

My 7th grade history teacher made an effort to head such inquiries off at the pass—he told us that Africans were actually much better off in America than they had been in their miserable grass huts in Africa. There is a need on the part of the social order to turn history into a narrative in which everything is “ok,” at least in terms of “our” country, whatever that may be. Sure, there was slavery, but it was better than slavery in Brazil, and eventually it worked out and justice prevailed. This imperative of the social order manifests as a political pathology in which nothing can be “wrong” about one’s country. The authoritarian is invested in his country as “great”—better than other countries. The reality of power is minimized in order to instill pride. If you point out injustice in history, you’re being unpatriotic and denigrating the country.

A history book written from the sole point of view of force might be a very short one. A summary would perhaps be something like this: When people formed into cities and nations, they created structures by which groups of people forced the rest of people to do things the way they wanted them done. The more power was amassed by these groups of people, the more they needed in order to sustain power. So they organized more efficient ways of theft—mass killings and thefts known as wars. Some people got so good at this that they gained power over huge areas known as empires. The Romans developed methods of warfare that allowed them to steal on an unprecedented scale, and their empire lasted for many centuries. Other societies followed the same pattern, to a greater or lesser degree.

When the countries of Europe had developed their technology to a certain point, they discovered the existence of other countries in parts of the world of which they had previously been unaware. They saw the opportunity for stealing vast areas of land, and huge possessions, and therefore went ahead and invaded these countries. In order to develop these stolen lands more quickly and to greater profit, they enslaved millions of people from Africa and forced them to work on the stolen lands. A few centuries later, they went into Asia and Africa and stole every bit of land they could, dividing these places up between themselves so they could steal more efficiently.

Eventually the competition between the various thieving European countries proved to be so intense that they could no longer cooperate at all, and they got to killing and stealing from each other on a mass scale, which was known as the Great War. This didn’t really resolve the issue, so a few decades later there was another killing and stealing spree that was even more terrible than the first. This time Japan had caught the fever, and made a bid for big thief status along with Europe. Luckily the more humane countries ended up winning the Second World War, but by this time the people in the stolen countries had organized and decided to reclaim their lands and possessions. Gradually they succeeded, although there was a lot of thieving and bloodletting in the process. When the dust settled from World War II, the two countries with the most power left entered into a contest to see who would survive, and they used smaller wars to try to attain this. Technology had advanced to the point where the weapons could quickly destroy everybody in the world, so that made world wars much less desirable for stealing. Eventually the United States emerged as the most powerful thief in the world. Since that time, they have been struggling to consolidate and expand their stolen goods by maintaining a higher level of force than any other country.

This overview of the history of empires is of course very general. One must keep in mind that all the people everywhere, not just in Europe, experienced periodic instances of killing and stealing in order to maintain and expand power and possession. Moreover, by focusing on wars and conquests, it is easy to lose perspective on humanity as a whole. While all this was going on, people were also maintaining families and communities, enjoying themselves, creating culture, sharing ideas, and so forth. It’s just that the farther away from the individual we stand as an historian, the more we consider the actions of humanity en masse, the more important mass killing and theft becomes—the more evident, that is, becomes the principle of force.

Most people would be horrified by such a history book. I would imagine that a teacher who instructed students in this way would be hounded out of his or her job by enraged parents and politicians. There is an investment in hiding the principle of force. Such things as “Operation Iraqi Freedom” would be much more difficult to implement if a majority of people were to see through the language of empire. The entire narrative of military honor, honoring of troops, memorializing the war dead with parades and speeches, the very logic of war as an answer to our problems, would be terribly weakened if the curtain were lifted from empire.

In that case we would be faced once again with the question of how force can be reconciled with freedom and justice. We could at least consider this question together with a certain degree of clarity. Who knows what answers we would come up with? At least we would be asking the question again, the question with which philosophy, religion, political science, ethics, and art have grappled for thousands of years. But first we must acknowledge that such a question exists, and to do that we must clear our minds of attractive and comforting lies.

Spirituality: an Inquiry (Part 3)

2009-09-14T20:49:00.000-07:00

Most Christian philosophers in the centuries before Protestantism believed that faith was in accord with reason. Since God created reason, it was an offense to God’s wisdom to maintain that the truth contradicted logic. If we turn to that exemplar of scholastic theology Thomas Aquinas, for instance, we witness a rigorous definition of God that is almost wholly consistent with the process of Aristotelian reasoning. The logic and structure of Aquinas’ thought in this regard is impeccable. Drawing on Aristotle’s proof of the “unmoved mover,” Aquinas explains God as the absolute reality itself. And despite the traditional attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, this God of Aquinas is primarily conceivable in negative terms: without limit or condition of any kind, either in terms of time and space or the conditional abstractions of thought.

In doing so, Aquinas ends up with a God that, for all intents and purposes, is identical to what I call “reality itself,” the context of all conditions being unconditioned. Language and tradition still implied an entity or “Supreme Being” as the moderns came to call it, but it’s doubtful how seriously such an implication should be taken in Aristotelian terms, since such a “being” necessarily involves conditions. What is more glaringly obvious, however, is that language and tradition involved the use of the personal pronoun “He” and all that implies, with its historical background in the Bible, including the Lord of the Old Testament, the Father of the New Testament, and every other personal formulation in the Christian faith. Aquinas never pointed out the metaphorical nature of such language. We can only assume, based on the iron-clad nature of his logic, that he was aware of it, but there is no actual evidence of this. It would be impossible to point such a thing out at the time, because challenging the literal truth of the personal God would be dangerous, possibly heretical. As a man who was thoroughly at home in the culture of the Church, Aquinas would probably not be aware of a contradiction. The distinction between the truth of reason and the truth of revelation was a convenient boundary protecting the philosopher from questions regarding the role of metaphor in religion.

In any case, it doesn’t take a genius to notice, now that science and the secular have created some breathing room for our capacity to reason, that the god of the philosophers, the Godhead, Being itself, this ultimate principle, if you will, of reality, is not at all the same as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who is in all respects a personality, with desires and moods and specific plans for specific nations and people. A better case could be made for the Father of the New Testament, who at least takes a more symbolic role in the theological drama, but then we have the very human figure of Jesus Christ, who is supposed to be God incarnate in the form of man or begotten Son. We not only have the tension between an impersonal and personal conception of God, as the 19th century Indian guru Ramakrishna liked to talk about, but a tension between God as absolute truth and God as a very specific personality. The personal Christian God is involved in history, like an actor performing an essential part in a cosmic play. And in this God’s relationship to his worshipers, a huge variety of human interactions and feelings are reflected.

Spinoza was one of the first to point out the difference between the mythical, cultural God of scripture, and the actual God, which he considered to be the same as Nature. Pascal, his contemporary, famously chose to have faith in the Biblical God rather than the philosopher’s God. By any rational measure, he was wrong, but it’s important to understand why such a great intellect would make such a choice. It is because the personal God allows the human as such, which includes the entire range of thought, emotion, and action, especially including love, to be experienced as cosmically valid, as real, significant, and meaningful. The God of the philosophers swallows the human up, along with everything else, in infinity.

I have taken this brief stroll through the struggles of western philosophy and Christianity in order to arrive at a central point. The creation of the God “out there” who watches us, the personal deity embraced by the theist in alternations of love and fear, is a product of a primeval form of alienation. The helpless subject confronted by the all-powerful and enduring objective world lies at the core of human duality. I argue that it is identical in origin to the idea of the soul trembling before the possible annihilation of death. When subjectivity recognizes that it is already not separate, when the absolute it seeks is realized to be already that which has been seeking, there is no more contradiction. The impersonal and the personal are the same. The “I and Thou” of the encounter is still present as a form of spiritual practice. At the same time, however, the entire superstructure of “literal” truth, with all its mythological baggage, is revealed as poetry. This is the point at which we will have to part ways with the orthodox of all stripes, because the insistence on “belief” is now meaningless to us, but still has an overriding significance to those who cling to the power principle and all the repressions of the social order.

Those of us who find that we are unable or unwilling to use the word “God,” or to employ theistic language in our spirituality, and I count myself among that group, need have no compunction about dropping personal deities from our practice and our daily lives. There is so much cultural pressure in the West around the “God” complex that it has become very difficult to separate oppressive structures and notions from our use of that kind of language. For one thing, there is a constant affirmation of male power with practically no corresponding affirmation of female power. In addition, associations from childhood or from abusive and addictive religious beliefs and practices can even block one’s ability to access an “I-Thou” form of encounter.

Buddhism is the one example of a world religion that did away with most theistic forms of thought, along with reliance on beliefs based on “being” of one sort or another. It is, however, a tradition with its own history, cultural associations, and problems. I don’t think it’s necessary to be a part of any religious organization or group in order to have a spiritual life. At the same time, I have learned from all the traditions, including the ancient and so-called “pagan” ones, insights and practices that are beneficial. Ultimately none of it matters unless I make the initial connection between “self,” subjectivity, consciousness, and what I call the unconditioned nature of reality. It is the “in here” and “out there” that constitutes the binding illusion, and it is felt as fear and denial of death. If the Divine is something separate from me, then that separation might as well be an infinite distance. “Something” with which I have no direct contact cannot have a real effect on me outside of the vagaries of abstract thought. When those vagaries are seen for what they are, one may choose to pick up one form of traditional metaphor or another, or let go of them all. It doesn’t matter. For the knower, for what we somewhat inaccurately call the “mystic,” the experience becomes radically simple, and the language with which it is expressed is often simple as well: love, consciousness, ecstasy, compassion, service, surrender, celebration.

Humanism For Dummies

2009-09-03T20:12:00.000-07:00

Lawrence J. Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corporation, was paid $193 million last year. If we go down the list of highest-paid executives a little, just for perspective, we see that no. 14, Steven A. Burd of Safeway, took home $67 million in a single year. On the list of richest Americans, choosing at random, we discover that Orange County developer Donald Bren, number 20, has a net worth of $12 billion. We also notice that positions 4 through 7 are occupied by members of the Walton family, those folks that gave us Wal-Mart, with a combined net worth of about $93 billion.

My initial reaction, my mental reflex, if you will, is “How unfair.” But if I stop and pay closer attention, a more interesting thought—a question, really—emerges: “What in the world could any one person do with that much money?”

Even allowing for the most fantastically excessive luxury—multiple homes, cars, and so forth—there is a limit to how much one can enjoy materially. I wonder, then, if the rest is simply saved for the perpetual comfort of the family—an inheritance to one’s descendants that will last for generations. But the huge amount of capital involved is grossly out of proportion to any such planned security, and the wealth still exceeds human desires even when divided up among progeny.

The real reason is simple, although it opens up wide avenues for thought. Wealth is not merely a means for possessing material things, but the means to power. And I’m not talking about personal power, the power of an individual to control his conditions. Nor am I referring to political power in the narrow sense, even though many rich people, such as Michael Bloomberg (no. 8 on the net worth list at $20 billion), choose that form of enjoyment. To be sure, people like the Waltons have only the most limited kind of private interest in mind when they act, but I maintain that they truly operate on a principle that is unconscious, and does not need to be conscious in order to be effective: power as the interest of their class. It matters little whether or not someone is born into a class, or in the case of the so-called self-made man, works his way “up” to it. The class system works according to its own laws because it is a principle of social organization that determines action, economic or otherwise, regardless of our intent.

Recently, for instance, we have seen the phrase “spreading the wealth” used negatively to characterize proposals to increase taxes on the rich in order to repair the economy. One could make a reasonable argument that a more even distribution of wealth would be good for business—consumers would have more income, and would therefore be able to spend more money on goods and services, which makes more money for corporations, therefore achieving greater stability in the system. The rich will still, for the most part, oppose such ideas, not only because the logic of “the market” always presupposes maximum short-term profit as the greater good, but because greater economic equality is a threat to class itself as a determining factor in society. When we internalize class as “the way things are,” anything that makes the class system more fluid threatens our sense of stability. The irony of “individualism” as preached by American conservatives is that it subordinates the diversity of individual goals to the blind mass of economic determinism. Power supports the stability and authority of the system. It does not support “freedom,” despite all the lip service paid to it. Individual freedoms are maintained only by the constant vigilance and effort of individuals who are aware of and find value in other principles besides power.

In the section of Capital entitled “The Working Day,” Marx enumerated the suffering, destitution, and death experienced by workers under industrial capitalism. The entire chapter has a tone of outrage and indignation, strikingly different from the analytical tone of most of the rest of the book. Yet Marx never bothered to explain why we should be indignant. He fashioned an ideology of “historical materialism” that ended up rejecting humanist values as impotent bourgeois sentiment and mysticism. Since economic conditions determine value, human beings are inevitably a means towards the achievement of economic ends—in Marx’s case, communism—and there is no explicit reason to be indignant about the historical process as it works out. Consequently, those countries that have attempted to use Marxism as an alternative social structure have merely created a different form of the class system. It never seemed to have occurred to Marx, for instance, that the party itself, and its military and police power, could constitute a ruling class, but we witnessed just that result in Russia and China. Without even the “bourgeois” notion of individual freedom to stand in the way of “progress,” the Marx-inspired governments committed murders and cruelties on a mass scale, while mouthing grotesque slogans of victory for the “people.”

This line of thought may seem like a diversion, but I have briefly discussed Marxism as way to make a larger point. Economics are only one aspect of the human as such. As the power principle that determines social organization, it is a failure. With money as the center of human striving, the reality of existing individuals becomes a mere means towards the maintenance of power. The reason we are indignant about poverty, hunger, and all their attendant sufferings, is not because of mysticism or “bourgeois” illusions. It is because human life as it is actually lived and experienced is in itself the only true end, encompassing all realms of emotion, relationship, affection, intellect, and enjoyment. Our environment, especially including the food that sustains us, is a gift from nature that belongs to us by right and not by the prerogatives of avarice, competition, or war. The same holds true for shelter and physical health, which are the inherent responsibilities of a human community. The subjective values of freedom of thought and movement, of self-determination and psychic well-being, also spring from a need inherent in human nature as such. Law is necessary to maintain the stability of care, respect, and nurturance as assumed values. Law became arbitrary and oppressive because power became the primary principle of society rather than a means towards these ends. In the end, the class system expresses an undeveloped animal instinct that has never matured into a truly human form of social organization. The perennial struggle for a just society is a gigantic attempt to evolve from a pre-human way of life.

I call my point of view, for lack of a better term, humanism. The daunting challenge posed by humanism is that it exists primarily as an aspiration in the hearts of men and women, and finds only fitful expression in religion, the arts, and other forms of culture, all of which have been infected at the same time with inhuman forms based on the power principle. Because the entire record of history is almost exclusively that of class, the humanist is always in a position of uncertainty, of a striving towards the unknown which is often only dimly seen. With dreams of utopia come the dangers of ideology—once again, we build a prison when we imagine ourselves as means towards an ultimate social end. The futility of the utopian enterprise leads the humanist, in the modern age, the age of arrogance, to the refuge of anarchism.

Anarchism has of course, been turned into just another scare word, a threat of social dissolution. But what is extremely valuable in anarchist thought is that it rejects the economic definition of the human being. An anarchist consciously maintains a subjective independence from class as a value. An important consequence of this is an affirmation of ourselves as we are now, in the present, as inherently valuable and important. As a leftist, I have often experienced a great weariness in the midst of a constant struggle towards social justice and equality—in the face of agonizingly slow progress in the long term and constant defeat in the short, leftists can become grim, humorless, and bitter. We often become obsessed with the “enemy,” consumed with anger at the opponents of freedom. It is easy to see how we can become that which we hate, daydreaming about trials and firing squads and the settling of accounts. I have heard progressives say that we should waterboard Dick Cheney, architect of the recent American torture policy, and they are not aware of a contradiction when they say it.

The anarchist rejects this joyless march to the future in favor of an affirmation of the possibilities of freedom, love, and enjoyment in the present. This does not preclude social action; rather, it grounds such action in a conscious awareness of human value and well-being as existing realities that can find expression today.

Another essential aspect of the anarchist view is the rejection of work as a dominant value. The class system assumes that two-thirds of our life should be spent working. What are we doing and creating that is so valuable that it takes up most of our time? We’re just oiling the machine so it will keep running. A majority of the labor is deadening to our faculties and devoid of pleasure. The class system creates a chimera of “prosperity,” an illusory wealth that goes largely unenjoyed. Anarchism takes a stance outside of work; posits work as a minor aspect of life that in any case should be a means towards actual well-being in the present.

The modern humanist, then, must take a radical position in order to validate the human as such. This is not an arbitrary choice—we either value ourselves as we are, or we don’t, and the affirmative choice is one of necessity if we are to be both aware and happy in our awareness. The bad news is that justice and equality cannot be imposed from “above” by rearranging power relations according to theory, although progress within the system in order to relieve suffering and provide a kind of “breathing room” is generally to the good.

The good news is that at least we know where the solution lies—within ourselves. We must understand, however, that “ourselves” does not refer to a mass of atomized individuals, but to the only reality that matters, and consequently the only value worth having.

Tramp

2009-08-30T11:24:00.000-07:00

A downtown street on a windy morning, paper and other trash blowing in fits and starts across the intersection. Red weathered skin and dull eyes, a haunted man wrapped in stale cast-offs. Can you spare a quarter? Here you go. God bless you sir.

God bless pockets of clinking change. If I could recreate the scope and wide-angle visions of this walking life in words, I’d plunk it down into your skull right away, with appropriate chants and prayers. All elusive, though, a passing thought and I go on, we go on, crossing the street when the light changes.

What would Walt Whitman do if he could see America now? Would he clutch his head in agony and bellow like some poor tortured animal? I sing the god epileptic. The dreaming masses squirming to eat free. Out of business sale, everything half off.

There was a day when, out of fear and no wonder, I gave in and bought a ticket for the home town fair. Mom and Dad woke me up at three in the morning, light on suddenly, shouting in tandem. We overheard that phone call, we read your diary, we know what you’re doing. You are taking drugs, don’t lie about it. We cannot allow it.

Mean facial contortions and vicious yelling I omit here for sake of retrospective justification. Volenti non fit injuria. Hey, it’s okay, don’t worry about me.

From now on you will come directly home from school. You are not allowed to see any of your friends. They are not your friends. Real friends would not give you drugs.

Au contraire, mon pere. I would define my friends precisely as those who give me drugs. I speak to you from the future, from the realms of dialectic.

Waiting for the bus, surrounded by youthful characters smoking and swearing and saying god knows what, I seek no advancement, I ask for no difference in my condition. Freedom comes the long way, roundabout the mountainous landfill and under the arching forest of clotheslines—tramp tramp tramp, the tramps are marching. Without fear, finally, I can breathe the fetid atmosphere. Oh see can you say why the spawn’s yearly flight while so loudly he wailed despite all their scheming. America, show us your hairy ass. Let loose, I pray, a thunderous fart to astound and dismay the cowering world.

So then, that day, when all I could muster was hysterical pipsqueak bargaining—let me keep my long hair, damn it, and I promise to see a shrink—there was another way before me. Two roads diverged in the yellow fucking wood—one of them rutted washboard, the other with a school crossing sign. And I followed the one with the trail of crackerjacks, back from the witch’s house, you know, never mind that you left us out here, father, in the first place.

In this other life I ran away, truly, hooking up with the underground teenage bus route. With desperate stealth I blazed a cunning journey west. A new name, an altered visage, concealed in poverty the best disguise. Across the country, fending for scraps, living free on the back roads, a tough street kid, older than his years, I bartered the occasional ass-fuck for a roof and to score the needed dope. Years pass. The family has all but given up. All that’s left is a blistering good-bye note of undying hate. No, not really, it’s better without a note. There are no reasons.

The pain in the story is incident to the joy of revenge. They thought they could murder me, but I was stronger. Oh vagabond loner in a torn leather jacket, you decided your own fate. I salute you. Later you became—what? The notorious artist, voice of an outcast generation. There he is, at the table in the corner. You can glimpse him through the smoke. Cool but not aloof. If there is one man in this city who can help you, it is he, forcing his heart and nerve and sinew and so on. And which is more, you’ll be a man, my son. Pass the whiskey.

The reality, I know, is in the sick and dirty morning, my bones on the sidewalk, waking to find the next fix and avoid the next cop. Shivering as my teeth fall out, I crawl to the gutter and heave. Dead dog for dinner again. With vermin.

To live it is not the same as to dream it. The mewling pupa curls into a ball. If you can forgive, good. Even better would be to forget, he said. Daddy, were you playing a lead role in your story? I understand. Whenever I try to forget, I remember again.

I’ve arrived. I know most of the passengers by now—silently we say farewell. The bus drives away and I walk two blessed blocks and a half to home. Three squares, a bed, and someone to call me honey. Shut out the howling winds with song, in stereo. If I could give you all this, the days and times behind me, tramp tramp we march ahead and all for love of course—I would, and no delay. I would give it to you and hold back—nothing.

America, where are you? I’ve left messages. My letters have all been returned. I filled out a missing country report, but the police have no leads. Are you cold and hungry? I don’t expect you to come back. Just let me know you’re okay, and I promise not to bother you again. Your mother is inconsolable.

Dear dad, I’m off to the wars. Don’t worry. I’m doing fine, civilizing the natives. All is forgotten. Can you spare a quarter? God bless you sir.

The Left as Straw Man

2009-08-21T21:49:00.000-07:00

If you take a look at the history of the “left” in the United States—and I mean really study the reality of it—and then compare that with the notion of the “left” as framed by conservative or “mainstream” discourse in this country, you just have to laugh. It’s a melancholy type of laughter, I suppose, but nonetheless the comparison is funny in a gallows humor type of way.

I am loosely defining the left as those who are in favor of a truly participatory democratic process, and who oppose the domination of government and society by class interests, which has primarily meant capitalist interests but has also included military and police forces considered as classes. Usually this has also involved a belief in justice conceived as human rights, not just in the sense of the three rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, but also the rights to adequate food, housing, health, and socioeconomic equality. There is of course plenty of room for differences within this definition of the “left,” but I think this covers it in broad outline.

Separate from this, but sharing occasional points in common, is that segment of political culture known as “liberalism.” Liberalism has always operated within the class system, and assumed as an article of faith that the class system is inevitable, yet has argued that relatively equitable conditions should be maintained for all classes in order for the system to work. So-called conservatism, on the other hand, claims that the government has no business trying to maintain even relatively equitable conditions, and that, in effect, it’s every person for himself, with the wealthy wielding power by right. (In detail, the landscape is always more complex and varied, but this will do for my purposes.)

If you study the history of the United States, then, it is clear that the left has never gained anything close to a major share of power in the political process. There have been isolated figures with small followings, such as Senator LaFollette and the Progressive Party in the early 20th century, but in truth there’s never been a powerful leftist faction in Congress, and certainly never in the White House. The left has been active in grass-roots organizations, in the early labor movement, and in social movements of one sort or another, such as the women’s movement, the civil rights movement, and the various peace movements over the years. There has been a certain degree of influence on politics, especially as a general cultural force that seeps gradually into the process, which happened for example in the 1970s as a result of the ferment in the previous decade. But in tangible terms, in terms of who holds the real power in the government, the left has always been isolated on the margins.

Liberalism, on the other hand, has held power within the establishment at various times, and with various degrees of influence. The New Deal, for instance, and the social programs instituted in the 1960s and 70s, attempted to foster and maintain more equitable conditions, economically and socially, in America. It’s significant that liberalism has at the same time held to imperialist foreign policy aims. The Vietnam War was begun under liberal administrations, and supported by most liberals. More recently we saw a majority of mainstream liberals in the Congress, including such figures as John Kerry and John Edwards, vote for the invasion of Iraq. Liberalism does not take an anti-militarist stance, not only because it’s politically taboo to do so, but because liberals identify with the class interests that support themselves through foreign intervention and control of foreign markets.

For someone on the left, therefore, as I have defined it, the political experience in this country has been one of constant frustration and failure. Psychologically, a sense of defeat has been a salient feature of progressive consciousness for generations. I have witnessed this personally as an almost fatalistic attitude, a perpetual underdog role, and a constant underlying feeling of anger and despair. One backlash after another has effectively neutralized the labor movement and stymied the progress of the women’s movement, the movements for racial and ethnic equality, and just about every other facet of leftist political struggle. The use of protests and demonstrations, which for a brief moment in the 1960s seemed a potent force, has become practically meaningless due to a strategy of deliberate indifference and marginalization on the part of the establishment. Whatever satisfaction has been experienced in the ranks of progressives has been almost solely the satisfaction of solidarity with those of like mind and purpose, with actual achievements being sorely limited in scope and effect. Being on the left in this country has been, in terms of real power and influence on events, to be a loser.

Now if we turn from the historical reality of the American left and look at the narratives that have been, and continue to be, presented within the mainstream of public discourse as describing the left, you see a grotesque distortion, a set of assumptions and beliefs divorced from reality yet dominating the political landscape. It is the “right,” the so-called conservative movement, that has written and honed this narrative so that it is now largely accepted without challenge within the establishment and its expression in corporate media.

First of all, the left was lumped together with liberalism as one monolithic entity. Sometimes the distinction is subtly acknowledged by referring to certain politicians as “liberals,” and groups outside the “mainstream,” such as the peace movement, as “left.” Nevertheless, they are essentially treated as synonymous terms. Increasingly over the years, these terms have become interchangeable. In the language of the right, the “left” encompasses everyone from a business-friendly “centrist” such as Bill Clinton all the way over to Noam Chomsky. This is a deliberate strategy. Actual leftists had already been demonized many times over, particularly after World War II, when the right identified them with hostile foreign powers—the Communist bloc—and then persecuted them as threats to the country’s security. McCarthyism was one of the first attempts to connect liberalism with the “anti-American” left in order to gain political advantage and win elections through fear. This strain continued to have a considerable degree of influence on politics, although its more overt varieties—the John Birchers and their ilk—were generally perceived as on the fringes. With the right-wing backlash, first under Nixon and then with the triumph of the hard ideological right under Reagan, the conflation of “left” and “liberal” became more mainstream, until finally the term “liberal” was accepted as a complete negative, an insult. By 1988, the Democratic candidate for President, Michael Dukakis, denied that he was a liberal when asked. He was actually much more conservative than the liberals of the 1960s, but the point is that his campaign considered it political suicide to accept “liberal” as a label.

During the Clinton administration, leftists found themselves in the bizarre situation of seeing the President relentlessly attacked by the right and portrayed as a dangerous leftist. Self-aware progressives knew, on the contrary, that Clinton was in almost every respect an enemy to the left. Yes, he was pro-choice, and tried to throw a few crumbs to progressives in his social agenda, but overall he was a staunch NAFTA-backing corporatist, a traditional imperialist in foreign policy, passive on the environment, never challenging the oil interests, and aiding the erosion of the Bill of Rights in his anti-terrorism policies. It was his administration that helped spearhead the deregulation of the banking industry. He was also fond of trying to out-conservative the conservatives in an attempt to win votes from their base—the regressive “end of welfare” policy being just one example. Meanwhile, less politically aware citizens who tended to be more liberal, at least on social and economic issues, bought into the idea of Clinton as “one of them” because the right-wing fought him as if he were in fact a liberal. The progressive movement was left out to dry.

I go into such detail on this period because it is crucial in understanding how the right-wing narrative about the left and liberalism succeeded. It was to the advantage of the liberal establishment to abandon traditional liberalism in order to shore up the support of the upper class, and replace it with a sort of “conservatism lite,”—giving lip service to the notion of equality while relying on corporate power to keep the campaign money flowing. Greed had made liberalism in the traditional sense unfeasible for the political leadership. The old idea was that the system worked better when the government tried to foster more equitable conditions for the people. The right harassed that notion into the margins, and the Democratic Party for the most part abandoned it, in order, they thought, to hang on to a share of power.

The trouble was, that since the right had found a winning political formula, they weren’t about to be co-opted by Clintonesque “triangulation” strategies. Conservatives heated up the rhetoric even more, and after the September 11th attacks, the paradigm of the liberal as dangerous leftist traitor was established as official White House doctrine under Bush Jr. It didn’t matter that most Democrats had stopped calling themselves liberals. The right simply made the word “Democrat” synonymous with “liberal” just as they had done with “liberal” and “leftist.”

A very significant development of the last thirty years was the right’s identification of the media as “liberal.” The “mainstream” media has always been thoroughly establishment, which should be obvious since it is corporate-owned. It’s just that the establishment was not yet thoroughly right-wing. By hounding the media with accusations of “liberal bias,” the right was able to frame themselves as something of an oppressed political minority, with the media as part of a liberal elite opposing the will of “the people.” In response, the media shifted gradually rightward, until conservative dominance of the public discourse was effectively achieved. The “liberal media” became a famous catchword, and the right still clings to it strategically even though it is a patently false description. By continuing to demonize the media, the right can maintain its fictitious identity as a movement outside the establishment, fighting the power of the government with populist anger.

The absurd result, from the point of view of progressives, is that “the left” is treated in the right-wing narrative as a powerful establishment force, even a force of tyranny opposing the will of the citizenry. Rightist demagogues persistently frame themselves as oppressed by a powerful left-wing movement. But the truth is quite the opposite, as you may recall. The actual left in the United States has been isolated to the margins of power for generations. This fact has not changed to any significant degree. Liberalism, on the other hand, has shown faint signs of life within the establishment, simply because the effort to co-opt conservative Republican strategies has failed, and Democrats have been forced in some degree to attempt a more spirited opposition. Nevertheless, Obama still represents a segment of “centrist” political strategy—still supporting the imperialist enterprise, still beholden to Wall Street, still taking an ameliorist approach to social issues. Leftists are in a similar situation as in the Clinton years—howling outside the gates of power, while many of them reluctantly support the President because the right-wing alternative is so much worse. Liberalism has always offered more of an opportunity for the left than conservatism—liberalism allows for the awareness of inequality and injustice as social realities, whereas conservatism doesn’t.

The dominant narrative about our political process that we are presented with today is so riddled with confusion and deliberate obfuscation that it takes a concerted effort of attention and awareness to not be fooled. The left in western Europe, for example, takes overtly socialist positions, which are in line with general developments, since socialist institutions have been effective there to some degree. They also have had much more success gaining real power within the political structure of those countries, although the history of their influence is problematic for a variety of reasons. The left in the U.S., on the other hand, has no access to real power, and yet finds itself in the curious position of being demonized as if it were extremely powerful, while at the same time being confused with an establishment liberalism that won’t challenge corporate or military power. If you hear the term “left” or “leftist” on TV in this country, it has no relation to any actual conditions on the ground. These terms are nothing but straw men set up by dominant conservative forces in order to characterize all their opponents as dangerous and beyond the pale. This extends across the spectrum of policy. In foreign affairs, for instance, it would be virtually impossible to discern from the American public discourse that Muslim fundamentalism is an essentially right-wing movement. Since the left opposes imperialist foreign policy, and that includes the so-called “War on Terror” and the Iraq war, the right simply identifies the left (and therefore liberalism, and therefore Democrats) with Muslim terrorists, even though the social aims of the left are directly opposed to the conservative, intolerant, anti-feminist, anti-labor aims of Muslim fundamentalism.

Recently the right has been attempting to revise historical realities that have seemed inviolable. The latest outrage is the equation of liberalism with fascism and Hitler. There is seemingly no end to the mendacity of the conservative “message.” Before any meaningful discussion of politics can be had in this country, it is necessary, unfortunately, to dispel the fog of rightist rhetoric that surrounds our public conversation. This requires continual alertness, and the work involved in simply dispelling incorrect assumptions might seem like an enormous waste of time. But that was the right-wing strategy, and they have proven adept at it, so that is where a great deal of the battle needs to be fought. The one saving grace, perhaps, is that the lies and distortions become, as if impelled by a natural law, increasingly extreme over time. If you even compare the sort of things said nowadays with what the right could get away with during the Reagan years, you will notice a very sharp increase in the extremist tone. As a result, we are finally seeing the rhetoric becoming too outlandish for a majority of the voting populace, and consequently the first signs of the right painting themselves into a corner where they could become marginalized themselves. The more they sense themselves losing, however, the more desperate and hysterical they become, so that what could be a tipping point for the country in a progressive direction has also the potential for unpredictably dangerous developments. The role of the left will be to oppose right-wing extremist rhetoric at every opportunity while at the same time pressuring the establishment to challenge its investment in a failing class system. The task is not easy.

Spirituality: an Inquiry (Part 2)

2009-08-16T18:37:00.000-07:00

The wonder of life is not just the wonder of existence—that there is a world—but also that there is experience of the world. Consciousness, in other words, is both the cause of wonder, and a cause for wonder. Human thought has the power of reflection, so that the human being can not only know that there is the world, but that something within the world experiences the world. I give this the rather dry and analytical title of subjectivity, but abstraction frames all knowledge in terms of things, i.e. objects. So, to continue our practice of describing the development of human consciousness as if it were a deliberate process of thought, we come to this archetypal formulation: There has to be something that experiences all this, and this something is the “I.” Thus we have the idea of the soul, or the self. Another word for this is “spirit,” although the development of culture has caused this notion to vary sometimes from the self.

Everything is experienced by the self, in the context of the self. There is simply no experience outside of this context. The world itself cannot exist for me outside of this context. Contained in this “for me” is the wonder of life, and the apparent contradiction. For we know that the world exists after I die, but for me it cannot be experienced outside of my life.

We come then, to another ancient archetypal thought. If our lives can only manifest by and for our “selves,” then the world as a whole can only manifest by and for its “selves.” These “selves” are the spirits or gods that have created this manifestation and control it, and are in a sense the world itself as experienced by itself.

Why are the spirits plural? Because human beings are plural, and the objective conditions of human life are experienced and dealt with as a community. The manifestations of the world are various—water, earth, ocean, mountains, plants, animals, and so forth. The selves of the world are likewise various. Two factors eventually result in the notion of one “God” instead of many “gods”: first, the gradual development of individual ego-consciousness, which allows greater awareness of the single subjective being within the community; and second, the gradual narrowing of political authority in the community into hierarchies that require greater unity in order to maintain power. This line of thought is a subject for further essays. Suffice it to say that in essence a “god,” whether single or plural, constitutes the “self” of the world.

Although the self experiences everything, we cannot experience the self in the same way that we experience objects, precisely because the self is the subject or context of experience. We only experience its effects, both in terms of our thoughts, desires, and emotions, and in terms of the actions we take in the world. Human beings remain essentially unaware of the metaphorical nature of “soul” and “spirit” as long as they assume that subjectivity is an object like any other. Thus every aspect of human nature becomes reflected in the stories concerning gods and spirits.

The subject-object split finds a perfect analogy in the opposition between life and death. The outside world towers over the individual like a tremendous mountain of fact, while the self is only perceived by a kind of reflective intuition. The self dies, and the world remains. But how could the self really die, since it is the one and only context of all experience, all known life? It must not die, therefore (goes our archetypal conversation) it must survive death. It must be separate from the body—don’t I perceive the body the same way I perceive objects outside of it? So, this “I” that perceives is a separate entity. It travels somewhere else after death, perhaps to a special place, or to a new body. The key to this “as if” progression of thought is that the end of experience is literally unthinkable. We cannot imagine “nothing.” Instead, we imagine the entrapment of an endless darkness, an experience of eternal nullity. The natural urge to survival is transformed by the human capacity for reflection into a fear beyond all other fears. The intuition of eternity is channeled through this fear into a belief in the immortality of the individual self.

The consciousness of death has had the historical effect of a wound on the psyche of humanity. But preceding this wound is the error of separation. The contradiction between subjectivity as context and objectivity as content is a false one. Yet to call it an error is really to use a small word for a much bigger one, one that doesn’t seem to yet exist. An intellectual error can be solved by a mental readjustment—one absorbs the truth of the situation intellectually, and one’s thought adjusts accordingly into a correct path. The contradiction I speak of, however, seems to be inherent in the very act of individuation. If consciousness were just one unified subjectivity, there would be no manifestation, no world. But of course creation, the manifest world with its many forms and living beings, can only exist in plurality. Philosophically, this is one of those “given” truths that Aristotle spoke of, beyond which we cannot go. A plurality of experiencing subjects, then, a plurality of living beings, necessarily involves duality. Duality isn’t just thought up--it is felt, perceived, experienced necessarily as part and parcel of the very individuation which is the manifest world. Logic can only describe. Metaphor, the poetic capacity, is the mental form that seeks to span the divide between life and death, subject and object, pain and pleasure, good and evil, and all the other dualities which make up the content of our experience.

Prior, then, to the fear of death, and in a certain sense the cause of it, is the experience of the self as separate, as a separate entity, as perceived content perpetually unable to directly experience its context. Spirituality is the desire for wholeness. The goal of desire is felt as an end of striving, a cutting off of restless seeking for wholeness, a final satisfaction of the urge to unity. For the individual, this part of religious history emerges later than any other, because its cause lies in the deepest stratum of the mind. It is prefigured in the rituals of communion with nature instituted by human societies and reflected in the ritual and sacramental regulation of everyday activities such as the hunting or cultivation of food, sex and procreation, and so forth. The tribe or community simulates wholeness through ritual. But simulation is ultimately not enough—the self seeks direct unity. The rise of the world religions, and their practices centering on devotion, power, and transcendence, culminates in the mystical quest, or in terms of Eastern religion, enlightenment or awakening.

Separation is replicated in mythical form in the separation of man from the gods, and later of man from God. In the theistic traditions, this is where the “inner” path begins to diverge from the path of tribal religion, even though it must of necessity remain within it to survive in the social realm. The seeker of God seeks to be united with God. The tribal religion, on the other hand, insists that we must remain separate while worshipping and obeying God from afar. The tribal path, what we now call organized religion, became a form of social organization with its own political interests, thus tragically embedding the contradiction of the separate self in the body of culture, and refusing to budge. In the context of the discussion on atheism with which I began, this is where we remain stuck today, the rise of science having exposed mythology as metaphor and not as literal fact, while organized religion refuses to surrender its position as the arbiter of manifest and objective truth. Here we part ways with the direct analysis of organized religion, at least for the purposes of this essay. Religion has turned against spirituality, its own child, and will continue to struggle in painful throes of illusion as it long as it fails to acknowledge metaphor as its proper (and powerful) realm.

Interestingly, there is a strong and valid strain within spirituality that retains the idea of “God” as a centerpiece of its practice. For the urge to wholeness, we learn, is identical with the urge to love. The love that is experienced in the relationship of selves to one another, the deep connection and caring that unites people together while transcending the limited drives for personal survival and “self-interest,” finds an overarching metaphor in the love of the self for the Self of the World. A theist’s feeling of love for his “creator” is of course analogous to his worldly love for a parent. We are very familiar with this one, since “parent” and “authority” have become fused in the authoritarian version of religion. Present also, yet less often remarked, is the parent’s deep love for the child, the sibling’s love for a sibling, the friend’s love for a friend, and, most significantly, the lover’s love for a beloved. That which transcends the ordinary separations of life is experienced as a source of universal transcendence. Consider this quote from St. Theresa of Avila:

I gave myself to Love Divine,
And lo! My lot so changed is
That my Beloved One is mine
And I at last am surely His.

Devotion to God is an all-consuming practice that aims at complete transformation of the self. Whether the unity is expressed openly, or in more traditional language, the effect is far different from conventional sentiments expressing devotion from afar. Furthermore, there is something inevitable about the expression of spiritual desire in personal terms. Martin Buber, in his classic book I and Thou, makes the case for this relationship as a fundamental aspect of spiritual metaphor. The formulation of “I and Thou” is one of direct relationship, from self to Self, without intermediary. Its significance is not historical, but purely in the context of the soul and its intuition of the Absolute as source and as love. Even when the third person is used, as in the quote from St. Theresa above, the meaning is only understood in the context of this direct relationship. Observe, on the other hand, how the third person dominates in the following quote from John Calvin:

God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.

God is now completely “He” (a separate denizen of the objective world) and not a “Thou.” We are out of the realm of spirituality and wholly in the realm of historical authority. I chose the quote for its obviousness, but even if the God described were more benign, the distance would remain. The door to unity has been barred.

In the practice of such “I and Thou” spirituality, the conscious awareness of metaphor becomes practically irrelevant. Insofar as the seeker’s experience is direct, or desires to be, philosophy is beside the point. Nor is this just a phenomenon of the West, although it could be argued that it has found a greater foothold here. Here is an excerpt from the Buddhist text called The Lotus Sutra, addressing the Bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokitesvara:

O you, whose eyes are clear, whose eyes are friendly,
Whose eyes betray distinguished wisdom-knowledge;
Whose eyes are pitiful, whose eyes are pure,
O you, so lovable, with beautiful face, with beautiful eyes!

In a religion with no gods, that moreover denies the reality of the separate self, the urge to direct relationship still finds a way, with all its attendant feelings of love and adoration, in this case directed towards an awakened person. Similar notes are struck in the Theraveda tradition of Buddhism, and indeed in all the religions of India, China, and the rest of Asia.

I maintain, therefore, that the metaphor of the gods, and God, and all other variations of the “spirit” idea are valid metaphors for our intuition of the eternal and its expressions in wisdom, love, and wholeness. They will survive all attempts to argue them away. I choose not to use them myself because they don’t adequately reflect my understanding, but I don’t dare deny their usefulness for others. My arguments against the “literal” truth of religious and mythic language are pertinent to the social and political struggles centering on the place of organized religion in the world. But in terms of the self’s desire for wholeness, and all the expressions that it engenders, they serve only as a reminder of the need for humility, a need that no one would recognize more clearly than the seeker himself.

In the third part of this essay I plan to examine how it is possible to practice spirituality without the idea of God or gods, and what kind of challenges that may present to the seeker.

The Confederate Party

2009-08-08T17:20:00.000-07:00

Since the election of Barack Obama, the racist tone has risen markedly, and alarmingly, in this country. The so-called “birther” movement—people who claim that Obama is not an American citizen—has made this development most explicit. The underlying message is one of revulsion against a black man being the President of the United States. The reality of a black President is so horrifying to the racist mind that it must resort to denial—this man cannot really be eligible to live in the White House. His birth certificate must have been forged. Such insidious nonsense was planned by individuals seeking to exploit racist fears and beliefs in order to undermine the President and ultimately defeat him.

Obama himself is one of the most ingratiating and conciliatory politicians to occupy his office. He is not challenging the war machine in the Middle East to a significant degree. He pursues similar anti-terrorist policies as his predecessor, including many troubling aspects of Bush’s illegal detention programs. His economic approach to a large degree consists of attempting to prop up the same Wall Street powers that brought the country into a massive recession, i.e. a very “business-friendly” approach. On social issues he is largely a conventional liberal—nothing earth-shattering here. He has even dragged his feet on gay rights.

But if you listen to right-wing talk radio or watch the Fox “News” channel, you see a different President. Rush Limbaugh and his crowd of extremists paint Obama as a far-left radical, a scary black man who is a racist against white people and seeks to replace the rule of law with a totalitarian state. The charge of racism is particularly significant—racists have learned to project their own attitudes onto their opponents in order to confuse the public. In general, the right has adhered to a strategy of portraying anyone other than the right as dangerous and an actual enemy of the people. In the case of Obama, the rhetoric has gotten even more feverish, less connected with any real conditions, more downright hysterical in its lies and distortions, and all tinged with the blatant flavor of racial hatred. Perhaps it’s because Glenn Beck is the least sophisticated of the bunch (which is saying a lot) that he was the one to blurt out last week that Obama hates white people.

The leadership of the Republican Party sometimes makes a pretense of distancing itself from the rhetoric and thuggery of right-wing media. But only just so much to cover their asses. Most of the time they support it, feed it, encourage it, and refuse to disavow it. This points up a glaring flaw in this country’s political culture, which has infected both parties and all facets of government and media, but which is particularly acute among Republicans. This is that the idea of actually governing for the good of the country has been replaced with the notion that gaining and maintaining power, i.e. “winning,” is the only worthwhile value. The Republican Party has internalized this idea to such a degree that it no longer has any real values.

When LBJ inaugurated the Great Society programs, the Republicans faced a choice. They could have agreed that justice and equality were values that all politicians needed to embrace for the common good, and then perhaps proposed alternative ideas on how such values could be maintained. What they decided to do instead was to enlist racist whites into their party by stoking resentment against blacks and against the liberal programs that were seeking to foster equality.

Civil rights had gained such a major foothold in the consciousness of Americans that the Republicans couldn’t maintain the pure George Wallace-style opposition to racial equality without committing political suicide. So instead, they paid lip service to civil rights while stimulating racial hatred and fear through other “issues” that were actually code words for race. “Crime” was the first of such issues exploited—Nixon’s emphasis on law and order was intended to tap into white resentment at the spectacle of rioting blacks in the inner cities. And since poverty breeds crime, and a higher percentage of African Americans were poor as compared to whites, a higher incident of crime would provide an apparently objective basis to what was really a racial scare tactic. Liberals were “permissive” towards crime, but real Americans like Nixon knew that getting “tough” with criminals was the only thing that worked. This strategy helped win the votes of consciously racist whites, as well as working-class whites who would project their resentments about economic stagnation and social unrest onto liberals who were supposedly selling them out, and by extension onto minorities getting “favored” treatment. Over the years since Nixon, the figure of the black criminal has paid continuing dividends for the Republican Party. The infamous “Willie Horton” ad during Bush Sr.’s 1988 campaign against Dukakis is a perfect example. Later, the gangster imagery from hip-hop culture has been brought up repeatedly as a menacing social force to be condemned by politicians of both parties, far out of proportion to any real effect it had on the lives of the mass of voters.

Under Reagan, the “welfare queen” stereotype was used as a means of demonizing liberal programs to aid the poor. People on welfare were characterized as parasites who were taking advantage of government programs to avoid work. It is a barely disguised version of the old “lazy shiftless coon” image, a staple in racist rhetoric since Reconstruction. Once again, the resentment of working-class whites could be directed against blacks without having to mention race at all. These were just people that didn’t want to work, unlike the decent hardworking Reagan voters who had too much pride to accept a “handout.”

Another part of the strategy was to ridicule and condemn black leaders. Jesse Jackson may have said foolish things, yet no more foolish than a great number of white politicians in the Congress and elsewhere. But by focusing negative attention on Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and others, Republicans sought to discredit the entire movement of justice and equal rights for African Americans. In addition, if any black public figure made a statement that was considered objectionable by right-wingers and their media mouthpieces, other black public figures were asked to condemn or apologize for the statement—I’m thinking of Louis Farrakhan in particular, a militant black Muslim who was repeatedly used as a club to beat other black leaders or spokespeople into silence. Of course, no one would ever ask Senator John McCain, for instance, to condemn something that Senator Jesse Helms had said.

By the time the 1990s rolled around, right-wing extremism held exclusive power in the Republican Party. The strategy of using code issues and words to encourage racial fear and hatred continued, and now the denial became a blanket one. The official line was that there was no more racial problem in America. Racism was over, and those who continued to talk about it were guilty of “politically correct” oppression of free speech. The attack on “political correctness” (from a phrase that actually began as left-wing self-referential humor) was always primarily an attack on the public consciousness that had been attained regarding civil rights and racial equality. In fact, if a liberal or progressive said something that challenged the prevailing ideology, whether it was about race, economics, the military, or whatever—the phony concern about free speech would instantly go out the window, and the person would be attacked for daring to say such a terrible thing. The double standard continues to this day: a right-winger can get away with saying almost anything, while similarly extreme language from the left meets with swift retribution. It’s interesting that when a right-winger does catch flak, as in the case of Don Imus, it’s when he fails to sufficiently disguise the racist import of his words. “Nappy-headed hos” wasn’t that much different from the kind of thing you hear on Rush Limbaugh’s or Michael Savage’s programs on a regular basis. It was just enough over the line, and Imus had flirted with the line long enough, and he was a prominent enough figure in the media elites, for it to backfire. This is the exception rather than the rule. Day after day, right-wing media gets away with thinly veiled race-baiting.

One of the most insidious Republican tactics is the promotion of self-hating and delusional black conservatives to positions representing the Party. From Clarence Thomas to Alan Keyes and Michael Steele, the Republicans try to fool us by propping themselves up with token black spokesmen representing the tiniest fraction of the African American community.

The Republican Party consciously and deliberately developed a political strategy based on stoking racism in order to win votes. And to a great degree, it worked. They held the White House for 20 out of the 24 years between 1969 and 1992. They undermined the Clinton White House with their disruptive tactics, and gained control of the House for 12 years, from 1994 to 2006. They regained the White House under Bush Jr. and ended up with majorities in both the House and Senate.

Finally, having achieved close to total power in Washington, they wrecked the country. Since they didn’t care about governing, only gaining and keeping power, once they were in power they proved ruinous to everything they touched, from foreign affairs to the economy and the environment. So in 2008, the people elected a new President, the first African American chief executive. And he has a huge mess to try to clean up.

Once again, as it was when LBJ launched the Great Society, Republicans faced a choice. They could have decided to take the high road, and to work with the new President, opposing whatever ideas they might have to Obama’s while abandoning the old strategy of racial division.

Of course they did not. The racial rhetoric we’re hearing now is more frightening than anything we’ve heard since the 1960s. Extremists on the right have openly advocated secession, a word not seriously used since, significantly, the Civil War. Republican leaders, instead of taking a principled stand, tacitly approve of incessant race-baiting from unscrupulous demagogues such as Limbaugh, Beck, and Sean Hannity.

Who knows how much further we could have come as a country by now if the Republican Party had tried to serve the good of the country instead of deliberately fostering the old racial divide? It’s been three decades since Dr. King was assassinated, and yet the Republican leadership continues to aid and abet the most hateful elements in our nation, all for their own petty political gains.

The Republican Party has had plenty of chances to redeem itself. On every occasion it has chosen to align itself with Jim Crow politics. It is now nothing more than the Confederate Party, the standard bearer for white supremacy, the symbol of the old racist hegemony, clinging to memories of slavery and segregation, whispering a multitude of code words for “nigger” into the ear of the populace.

The Republican Party must end. They have lost all claim to legitimacy in the modern world. They represent a test for the United States—whether or not our country can deal constructively with its real problems today, or crumble into fatal weakness and senility, wrapped in a Confederate flag.

Spirituality: an Inquiry (Part 1.5)

2009-08-02T13:11:00.000-07:00

The subject I’m tackling is more involved than my initial, recklessly confident, estimation would have it. There is some basic philosophical and anthropological ground to be covered before I can proceed to a clearer explication of spirituality. This is the way with inquiries of this nature. They expand and take on their own life, with scant regard for the author’s original plans or desires. My goal, however, is the same. The path is just more circuitous than I expected. So before we go to part 2 (or who knows how many parts?) I present this necessary interlude.

All life is experienced by a person, a subject. Or to put it in terms of process, all life is experienced as subjectivity. This is actually a tautology, since in my view all life is subjectivity, but because of the innate tendency of thought to objectify everything, it doesn’t seem obvious.

Human thought is self-reflective, which gives it the quality of “thought” as we know it, as distinct from whatever kind of thought other animals have. This of course lends an enormous range to human ability—it also brings into greater relief the realm of emotions. Joy and sadness are two primary emotions. Love, anger, and fear are words indicating other important feelings universally experienced. Emotion and action are always linked, so that it is not wholly accurate to speak of any emotion without taking its expression into account. As a more inclusive category we must mention the axis of pleasure and pain, a duality that extends throughout the physical, emotional, and mental aspects of experience, and finds expression in desire and aversion.

The expression of thought in the form of analysis was a very gradual and difficult process. It constituted the effort, in the most basic sense, to understand and master the phenomenal world, and by the time Aristotle began the process of codifying the thought discipline of “logic,” human beings had lived on the earth for hundreds of thousands of years. But analysis could never be the only form of thought, and it was never meant to be. There is no place in it for the expression of emotions. It can describe emotions, analyze and seek to understand them as phenomena, but expressing them is outside of its purpose, and in fact tends to interfere with it.

Our emotions, I would venture to say, are the very flavor of subjectivity. They are practically indistinguishable from the sense of vitality, the inherent feeling of importance that being alive has for a person. In particular, our memory is suffused with it—humanity’s greatly expanded capacity to remember previous experience involves ever-increasing self-reflection and deeper emotional resonance.

In the everyday life of a person, experience is seamless. It is only in reflection that we discern and separate the strands of physical sensation, thought, emotion, memory, and so forth. I am emphasizing emotions here only because the development of analytical thought, what we call science, has by necessity involved the separation of objective knowledge from emotion. It is the entire range of experience, however, that is expressed and manifested as culture. And if we survey all the various aspects of culture, we must admit that emotions are a very large and important element, just as they are in experience. In terms of language, culture takes the form of metaphor. One must understand how general and sweeping this statement is. In truth, all language is representational, and is in that sense metaphor. In a wider sense, however, metaphor expresses the emotional flavor of thought, along with its complex reflective associations. There is no apparent limit to the sophistication of metaphor. From Shakespeare’s second sonnet:

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,

Any first-year literature student can tell you that beauty is not literally a field, and then you can’t dig literal trenches in it. And this is why I maintain that the literal truth is meaningless outside of mere instrumentality. The subjective significance of any phenomenon can only be conceived metaphorically. That does not make it somehow invalid or unreal. On the contrary, it is all the more real in that it expresses the full range of experience, especially including the emotional realm. We don’t, however, turn to Shakespeare to find out how many planets there are in the solar system, or indeed what a solar system is, because that is the realm of analytical thought or science, which has a purpose far more narrow than the general one of expressing human subjectivity as culture. Metaphor, or what the ancients called poetry, is a basic and fundamental form of human expression, which predates science by thousands of years.

I don’t doubt that there are those who would argue that poetry is some kind of irrelevant luxury, something that we don’t need or have perhaps even outgrown. This is nevertheless a false notion. We use metaphor constantly every day, in the ordinary events of life, whether we know it or not. The more complex our usage, the wider our range of expression becomes, and the more freedom we feel intellectually and emotionally. In terms of emotion in particular, the loss of metaphorical range of expression coincides with a loss of affect. And everyone perceives the loss of affect as a frightening thing—we don’t want to be unfeeling machines because experience would thereby have no “quality,” no flavor, i.e. no meaning. Meaning, the sense of importance that we have concerning ourselves as living beings, is always rich in emotional resonance.

I have taken this long route because I consider it very important to understand the link between the basic expression of experience as culture, and the origins of religion and spirituality. Religion, in the broadest sense, is of the same nature as culture—it is a part of culture. More than that, it provided the primary and original structure in which culture manifested. This is because the aspect of experience expressed was considered the primary aspect—but here we are in danger of falling into unnecessary confusion. Religion expressed not merely an aspect, but the idea of subjectivity itself—the experiencer himself, if you will, the soul or spirit, the very fact of experience, of human life in toto.

Prior to any particular experience, any representation of life as content or phenomenon, there is the reality that I am alive, experiencing life, and able to reflect experience in thought and express it through action and language. This is the context for everything else, the one factor, so to speak, that never varies. Speaking logically as I am here, speaking after the fact, it is clear that all events being conditioned by other events, that all experience being subject to change, and all phenomena (the objects of my experience) being subject to change, that the relative nature of existence as we experience it can only be relative because reality itself is not relative, but absolute and unconditioned. Using space as the simplest metaphor available, I would explain it in terms of two objects that we see relative to one another. It is impossible for me to perceive these two objects in relation to each other unless they both occupy a field of space which serves as their background.

This primary awareness, however, is not the product of logic. I only come to it now through logic because I seek to express the fact analytically. Human beings came to this awareness not through a step-by-step process of thinking, but suddenly and without premeditation, with what I call an intuition. An intuition of eternity.

Intuition is a form of thought in which we experience something as true without having a clear perceptual or logical trail leading to this experience. In this general sense, intuition is not necessarily accurate. We may intuit something that proves in the end to be untrue. However, I am using the term in a much narrower and specialized sense. I contend that human beings, by the very fact of subjectivity, combined with the ability to reflect on their own experience in thought, possess an inherent sense of reality as absolute and eternal. Subjectivity itself, the context of every particular experience in a person’s life, represents a direct correlation with reality itself as the context of all individual, limited things.

The philosophical question without an answer: “Why does anything exist at all?” is an expression in analytical form of this primary intuition. The intuition also has an emotional accompaniment: we call it “wonder.” The human stands in wonder at the fact of creation (to use a faintly archaic term), and this wonder is also a kind of awe, a corresponding sense of human limitation in the face of the unlimited reality. My argument is that the intuition of eternity is necessarily produced by the human being’s realization of his own subjectivity, and the corresponding wonder is produced by his realization of self-reflection, of his ability to reflect on his own experience through thought. Metaphors for the absolute are originally and necessarily metaphors for the self.

Language, like every other phenomenon, is limited and conditioned. Therefore it can never express the absolute nature of reality without running up against its own conditioned nature, creating a paradoxical effect, a self-contradiction of expression. The intuition of eternity, and the resultant awe and wonder, are preverbal. The human being struggles to express what he intuits and feels.

It is doubtful, however, that even this primary, preverbal intuition would have enough force to inspire the foundational social structure that we have come to call religion. But there is one limitation, one condition, not only of human life but of all life, that throws the intuition of eternity into sharp relief, that highlights what appears to be a fundamental problem and creates a crisis in the development of understanding—and that is the reality of death. The awareness of death as a universal event constituted the impetus for the formation of religion as the foundation of culture and social organization.

Spirituality: an Inquiry (Part 1)

2009-07-22T21:49:00.000-07:00

It’s questionable how useful a statement of convictions can be, if it’s only that, and not a stimulant to further reflection. I am here undertaking a clearer definition of my views on theism, atheism, and spirituality, not because I benefit through such an act of definition, but in the hopes that I can aid readers in finding their own way through these issues and perhaps gain some wisdom along the way.

Atheists don’t seem to spend a lot of time defining what theism means. Most of the literature I’ve seen attacks traditional religious texts and beliefs in a piecemeal fashion. It’s no wonder, really. I’ve often remarked that people generally assume that they know what we mean by the word “God” when such questions are asked as “Do you believe in God?” or “Are you religious?” When we get down to actually asking folks to define God, the diversity of the answers is often astonishing.

The general conception, however, if I had to summarize it, is of a being or entity that is all-powerful and created the universe. Since it is a being or entity, it is separate from us in some way. Even if we allow for the idea that the being is “everywhere” and is beyond space and time, there is still the assumption that this being is greater than, and not the same as, people and things.

If we define theism, then, as the belief in this general concept, then I am an atheist. For me, such a being or entity is logically impossible. I also consider it morally impossible, on historical grounds. I have no intention of presenting the full range of this argument here. I would point curious readers to David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion for starters.

There are two prominent aspects to the current debate. The first is that theists put forward “God,” and the attendant religious texts and doctrines, as explanations for natural events, and as ultimate explanations for nature itself. In other words, they claim scientific truth for theistic beliefs. Atheists, along with scientists in general, challenge this, as they must if they are to retain the integrity of reason and method in science. For complex reasons, evolution has become the focal point for this struggle, but it really encompasses all of science, and particularly its fundamental reliance on evidence, demonstration, and logic. There can be no compromise with an approach that relies on an a priori acceptance of authority outside of reason.

The second aspect is actually more comprehensive, although it gets less attention than the struggle over science and evolution. Theists put forward “God,” and the attendant religious texts and doctrines, as the absolute authority on human conduct and sociopolitical organization. Here we run into the issue of separation of "church and state," and all the problems involved with religious groups attempting to implement their religious convictions as public policy. Atheists challenge this, of course, favoring a secular society in which freedom of belief and opinion is absolute and government is not affiliated with religion in any way.

In both aspects, I stand with the atheists. Religion is not science; it never has been, and it’s a dangerous folly to try to pretend that it is. And the social and political authority of religious groups has proven vulnerable time and again to the common human maladies of greed, cruelty, domination, and self-destruction. The age-old appeal to blind obedience is a terrible dead end. Even propagated by well-intentioned and virtuous people, it stifles human freedom and understanding—and increasingly, the most prominent voices of religious authority are neither well-intentioned nor virtuous.

My experience, however, has led me to part ways in crucial respects with the mainstream of atheist thought. I don’t believe that religion is just superstition, or that it is inherently wrong and destructive. I am convinced that the religious impulse, for lack of a better term, occurs in human beings because of a vital and central truth.

Many atheists seem only to comprehend religion as a failed attempt to explain natural phenomena. In this paradigm, reason is awakened through science, and therefore no longer needs religion, since science explains everything adequately. But in fact, religion has never been primarily an attempted explanation of natural phenomena, but only marginally so. A mythological creation story, for instance, doesn’t function as an answer to a curious mind looking for the how and wherefore of the universe. It is, rather, a metaphorical formulation of a shared cultural perspective within a community. As such, it reflects whatever values and necessities are primary in the tribe or group, both conscious and unconscious. Many themes are intertwined in the mythopoetic tale, and usually they are connected to ceremonies and celebrations involving central aspects of life for the group, such as the finding or growing of food, sexuality and procreation, life cycle stages, family dynamics, authority within the tribe or group, and the entire world of nature surrounding and sustaining the community, especially animals and plants. Social cohesion is achieved through metaphor, along with levels of self-awareness and personal development that increase through time. The ultimate source of wonder and awe in human society is subjectivity itself, the very fact of experience, which is inherently ineffable because it is the precondition of human life. Culturally we find at this source the shaman, and later the holy man, mystic, saint, or guru. The poet is the direct descendant of all these, although this heritage has often seemed obscure to modern eyes.

My contention is that this religious aspect of life, which I prefer to call spirituality because the word is less contaminated by literalist or authoritarian influence, will never go away. Human beings would die without it, because it is essentially the intuition of meaning, and there is no society without meaning. I get the impression that many atheists believe reason and science is a substitute for spirituality, and that we should work towards eliminating religious belief altogether for the good of humanity. On a practical level alone, this is naïve. It’s the same mistake that proselytizing religions make when they work towards everyone believing the same way, i.e. their way. There’s just as much chance of humanity becoming all atheist as there is of humanity becoming all Christian. None. But I go further and say that such an outcome would not even be desirable. We need metaphor—poetry and myth—and metaphor ultimately always points to an intuition of eternity, the absolute and unconditioned reality as symbolized by subjectivity itself, or what we call spirit, soul, or self, albeit these words have implications that become problematic for us.

If you, the reader, are at all familiar with my writings, you know that I reject all literal interpretations of religious symbolism and consider such interpretations as nothing but methods of domination by authoritarian groups. But you also know that I find religious metaphor to be meaningful in the context of subjectivity, as symbols of self in all its journeys, suffering, discoveries, and fulfillments.

The secular viewpoint on social and political organization necessarily involves freedom for religious people to practice whatever religion they may choose. So it’s not a question of trying to force a more enlightened point of view onto people who choose to be literalists, fundamentalists, or religious believers of one sort or another. The problem involved here, as any atheist will tell you, is that religious authoritarians are not satisfied in practicing their faith undisturbed—they want non-believers to be converted to their beliefs, and they want society and government to conform to their views. This aspect, then, presents a purely social and political problem that needs to be dealt with on that level.

My concern here is of a different sort. What does spirituality look like when one has renounced theism? What meaning, if any, does the word “God” have from a non-dualistic perspective? What would a healthy relationship between spirituality and science look like, and what is the role of reason in spirituality? Can one find wisdom and spiritual nourishment from the various religious traditions without succumbing to group-think, obscurantism, or other kinds of irrationality? What is the purpose of spirituality anyway? Is there a social purpose as well as a personal one? Rather than dismiss spirituality out of hand as some sort of aberration, I seek to understand it better, and to follow the strivings of my understanding as far as I can, without fear.

Born Again

2009-07-12T12:18:00.000-07:00

Hey, Mister Jesus. Get back on your throne. There are plenty of threatening, thundering things to do. Sinful cities are waiting for earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and typhoons. There remain more poxes and plagues to be visited on those who disbelieve. We need to get on with our business.

Hey, Mister Jesus. We’ve got a gold crown for you here, and—whatayacallit—a scepter. The earth is your footstool, and I don’t mean naugahyde neither. It’s a genuine jewel-encrusted golden kind of stool I’m talking about. You just sit there, and anything you say to have done, it will be done, that’s a fact. So let’s get on with our business.

Hey, Mister Jesus. We’ve read about all that walking around you did, living on loaves and fishes and cheap wine, healing sick kids and talking all cryptic and such. You did your part. Now you take your well-earned rest up there in the cloud country, and let us manage the details. We know the plan. You can count on us. Relax and be at your ease on that throne. Enjoy the view, while we get on with our business.

Hey, Mister Jesus. It’s been awhile. We’re still waiting for the trumpet call and the marching band and the light show and the handing out of the party favors and the banishment of the bad people. I know it’s all on your time and everything, but it sure looks like the finale and the curtain call coming up. Do you need help? Just a little note, or even a nod of the head will do. No need to say more. We’re with you all the way. We’re ready to take care of business.

Dear Mister Jesus. Thanks for the check. It came right when we needed it. I don’t know how we could have ever doubted you. Stay in touch. We’ll talk business.

The Elitists

2009-07-08T21:08:00.000-07:00

Rhetoric is notoriously fluid, never more so than in this media-saturated age. A case in point is the term “elitist.” The word gets flung about now and then, but you can take it at least two ways.

Obama was accused of being elitist when he talked about people clinging to their guns and religion during the campaign. Politicians are supposed to make obeisance to such symbols of blue-collar life, without of course doing anything to actually help blue-collar people.

A CNN “reporter” recently called people who criticized the wall-to-wall Michael Jackson coverage “elitists.” It reminded me of Ted Koppel defending the O.J. coverage on the basis of “that’s what the people want.” (Both examples concern African American celebrities, but significantly their stories were freakish and atypical.) The media can justify avoiding the actual practice of journalism, and its ever-increasing reliance on entertainment as “news” fodder, by calling critics elitists.

This use of the term is actually more general than the examples might indicate. Elitism in mainstream discourse simply means educated, book-learned, someone who thinks critically. It’s another code word for the fine old American tradition of anti-intellectualism. The Republicans have been milking this one for decades: “Hey, we’re just regular dumb folks like you with simple values. Our opponents are pointy-headed academics who go to the ballet and read the New York Times.” Spiro Agnew called them “effete snobs.”

Everyone hates snobs, right? You just want to be a regular guy, one of the gang, one of the boys, not some uppity college professor who reads books. This is really what “elitist” talk amounts to. And by this definition, I would have to say that I’m proud to be an elitist. I wear the title like a badge of honor. I am educated. I read, and I understand concepts. I can think critically, and discuss issues intelligently. I consider all these to be virtues, in fact necessities, and I refuse to apologize for them.

There is another meaning of elitist, however, which is more than just a verbal weapon to intimidate smart people and win gullible ignoramuses to your side. I am referring to actual elitists, people who are members of the elite groups that make most of the decisions in this country. These elitists are not distinguished by their education or intelligence, but by their money.

The one or two percent of the population that makes a million and a half a year or more, that runs the major corporations, owns the major media outlets, and makes the laws in this country – they are the elite. They give themselves and their kids the top jobs, the positions of influence that determine their continued dominance. They reap the profits of oil, of weapons, of war. They determine what plays on the TV and radio. One percent of the U.S. population owns sixty percent of the stock and forty percent of the total wealth. Government benefits flow overwhelmingly to them, not to you. They are able to avoid paying taxes and avoid getting killed in wars. It is their game. They own it, and run it. They own the Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court. They pay for those people to do what they do.

Those are the elitists. And fittingly enough, it is those people, and the ones who directly serve their interests, who most often point their fingers at others accusing them of being “elitists.” They have no idea what it’s like for you and I to hold a job, to struggle to make the payments, to worry if a health crisis will bankrupt us. And they thrive on the deaths of millions of people, millions of children in other countries, who starve and die of disease and are killed because these elitists must continue to live in their selfish bubble of gratification. Yet they won’t hesitate to throw around the “elitist” label at someone in order to gain advantage.

When a powerful person in this country talks about morality, or religion, or faith, or freedom, they are lying, either consciously or not. The only real value in their world is self-interest. The only chance for justice is for their elite status to be eliminated, and the centralized power of super-capital to be brought down.

The End of the Map

2009-06-28T12:59:00.001-07:00

“The knowledge of Truth as gained through the established creeds is like the knowledge of a town which one gets by studying it on a map. To see and know the town one has to take the trouble of actually going there.” –Meher Baba.

Meher Baba’s formulation is about as close to a perfect metaphor for the difference between literalism and actual spirituality as one could expect. Religious groups and individuals who cling to their sacred texts and proclaim them as literally true and binding are very much like a travel agent selling you a tour guide instead of getting you an actual ticket to where you want to go. Yet like all metaphors, and especially those pertaining to spiritual truths, this one is limited.

To extend the idea further, then, let us admit that there are many maps of the same town, and that each map is significantly different in key respects than the others. Each one also includes a bunch of material that may not be specifically relevant to finding one’s way around in this town, such as advice on sex, food, children, politics, family, and war; advice that is not only different in each map but often contradicts itself within the same map. On the margins of the map are written stories and legends concerning inhabitants of the town, of widely varying credibility and value. Finally, notwithstanding the confusing nature of the map in terms of the actual layout of the streets and buildings within it, there are practically no indications of where the town is located within the larger map of the world, which begs the legitimate question of whether the town exists at all or is merely an illusory destination invented in order to benefit the manufacturers of the map.

Even this amusing and complex metaphor, however, is ultimately too simple to encompass the real conflict between religious tradition and spiritual experience. The knowledge of Truth, with a capital T as indicated in the quote from Meher Baba, is not really like a town because a town exists in space and time and is therefore subject to all the conditions that characterize the phenomenal world. Truth with a capital T can be nothing else than reality itself, which is unconditioned since it constitutes the only absolute condition by which all relative phenomena can be. The human mind, and consequently religion, abstracts even this Truth into something separately immutable, when in fact if there were a separate Absolute over and above the conditioned world, this Absolute would be only another conditioned thing. The correspondence of language with the description of phenomena is practically effective, but as a description of reality itself, it becomes metaphorical in the most radical sense, a pointing or an indication that falls away as it is being uttered.

The main difficulty, I continue to maintain, is that Truth can only be intuited in the context of self, or to be more accurate, subjectivity. Humanity’s struggle with this intuitive awareness, which involves a struggle against it, is in my view the central story of organized religion. It is a political struggle in the sense that society became organized around the figure of dominant authority—the supposed separate Absolute known as the gods and later as God. The personal nature of this metaphor is significant precisely because the intuition of reality is always in the context of all experience, i.e. subjectivity, which is ineffable in its aspect of absolute context. The self as context for all experience corresponds to reality or Truth as context for all phenomena. Abstracting this into an authority separate from self is an unconscious process of alienation from ourselves and the psychological elevation of an all-powerful force existing in an “external” world. I believe that this alienation springs from the survival instinct and the fear of death unique to humanity.

The undoing of this alienation is the real goal of all spirituality. This fact is largely a secret because it runs counter to the basic organizing principles of the established creeds, which affirm the original alienation as necessary. To wake up to this Truth, then, as Meher Baba might put it, is to go beyond religion into actual experience. To return to the map metaphor, this is a peculiar case where once you actually reach the town, you don’t need the map anymore. You can throw it away, or you can draw on it as a source of metaphor in order to help others. Some things in the map may actually be detrimental to the goal, other aspects may be metaphorically potent. But the map has no ultimate significance—it crumbles and disappears like all things. Only reality itself is eternal.

Throughout history, teachers have stressed the continuity between religious tradition and spiritual experience as being to their advantage. I think that this policy has in many respects proven to be a failure. I’m aware of the risk that this statement is presumptuous, disrespectful, arrogant, perhaps even dangerously foolish. I still feel the need to make this statement on the evidence of history. Literalism, the use of the map as a way to organize a society through domination, has always constituted a threat to spirituality, and I think more so today than ever, when the wisdom traditions are increasingly scattered and powerless in the world. The proclamation of the Bible, for instance, as the so-called “Word of God,” is an excuse for every kind of cruelty and vice under the sun. Without requiring any spiritual experience, the mainstream Christian churches, and particularly the fundamentalists, simply rely on a book to allay their unconscious fears of death and limitation, while wildly projecting them onto the “enemies,” the people outside their clans. The same destructive idolatry occurs with followers of the Koran, the Torah, or any other book, even including books by secular ideologists who share with religious literalists the view of human beings as mere means towards some ideal end.

It has become necessary to proclaim openly that there is no scripture that is literally true, that all such scriptures are metaphorical, and are therefore only useful in a religious sense as metaphors for spiritual experience. As long as we ascribe supernatural origin to human writings, we succumb to an unbridled sense of pride and entitlement. It is a kind of blindness that we cannot afford as a species. Furthermore, the metaphorical nature of scriptures is not uniform—the metaphors are widely various and often conflicting, and it is impossible for one person to agree with all of their meanings at the same time. Far less is it possible for everyone to agree. Neither is it necessary—we need only recognize their nature as symbols of meaning.

The scriptures also contain material concerning the range of human action, history, and culture; ordinary metaphors, if you will, as distinct from spiritual ones. You may take them or leave them, but to insist that everyone take them is madness, and unattainable in any case. The Zulus say that Unkulunkulu was the the first human. The Israelites say it was Adam. Outside of mythology’s cultural resonance, by which a people weaves its identity through story, this matter has no importance for me spiritually. There is no stake involved in believing one or the other unless someone is trying to force my obedience to a central authority through an organizing myth. We must see through mythology if we are to be nurtured by it and not destroyed.

As long as humanity exists, there will be spiritual literature. There is no danger of that going away. But those who maintain the absolute authority of such literature are in fact doing a disservice to their own traditions, because such practices, such beliefs, sap the power from religious traditions and turn them into dead relics, monuments only to the human need to rule through fear.

There is a life.

2009-06-19T22:43:00.001-07:00

Cold thoughts in the morning, when my shaky hand lights a cigarette, and the sounds of traffic are already swallowing my heart. There is a life where stale verities sustain their hum and drone in the skull of a woman in dressing gown and curlers, and the old man in the back room slurping his soup. The local rapist is moonlighting as a cop. He patrols the neighborhood dreaming of crime, cursing the privileged and ungrateful homeowners who assemble around the TV before emerging into the open air, where any number of insults are possible and some inevitable. A barking dog refutes all my attempts at argument. I shrink inside, divesting the casual talk around the clothesline of its meaning, only hearing the sounds spitting and gurgling. This routine is desolate when most we do not notice the overpowering forces of sun and wind, when we say good morning and goodbye and don’t forget your lunch. On the way to work I pass the wall again where obscure messages are spray painted, hostile to my comfort, speaking of blind realms that I prefer to forget. The Messiah is sure taking his sweet fucking time. There is a life where the same story continues without pause, no hint of doubt or crack in the faultless façade, the mud-streaked glass of the window behind which we watch the world, murmuring in our coffee about great men and wars and kingdoms below the ocean. Members of the local amnesia society are going door to door, offering blank pamphlets, prophecies of the return of memory, when sore bones will shudder and shake and be forced to turn out of bed and show ID. I won’t open the shutters today. Most terrible is the clock with its ticking. The hands point aimlessly at the hour, a radio crackles next door, a stranger lies amidst discarded plastic at the bus station, and someone’s coarse rasping laugh echoes back. I flick the cigarette, please self, please whoever I am, save me from this my self. There is a life raw and blinking in the winter light.

Tyranny in Iran

2009-06-13T16:10:00.000-07:00

As I write this, Iranian cities are exploding with protests against their fundamentalist right-wing government’s fraudulent elections. Fox has been fairly silent so far—they haven’t figured out how to frame this in anti-Obama terms yet (but they eventually will).

It’s important to remind ourselves that the Bush-Cheney regime did everything they could to turn Iran against us. Neocons seek to foster and create threats against the U.S., rather than work towards peace. As a result, we have an entrenched theocracy in Iran that sees a fair democratic process as the enemy.

My thoughts also turn to the two fraudulent elections we recently had in this country, in 2000 and 2004. The American people chose to stay asleep and apathetic, for the most part, and the fact that we were ruled by an illegitimate executive branch for eight years is still suppressed in the corporate media.

When a government rigs an election, it makes manifest the powerlessness of its own people in the face of authoritarian rule. Ultimately, however, it is a symptom of weakness in government, not strength. A country is fundamentally weak when there is a fundamental divide between those holding power and the masses of people who constitute the majority of the population. This is as true of our country as it is of Iran. Countries like North Korea or Egypt have thrown off all pretense of representing the consent of the governed. Currently, the U.S. government supports whatever state it considers advantageous to its economic hegemony, regardless of whether it is democratic or not. As long as this hypocrisy continues as sanctioned foreign policy wisdom, any protests by our government on democratic grounds (such as Bush’s absurd claims of promoting democracy in the Middle East) are empty and will have no effect.

Pro-democracy Iranians, on the other hand, are demonstrating political courage in protesting against their political enslavement. Freedom-loving people everywhere should support them in whatever way is possible.

The Iranian embassy in Washington can be contacted at the following numbers: (202) 965-4991, 965-4992, 965-4993, 965-4994 and 965-4999. Address: Interests Section of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 2209 Wisconsin Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20007. Email: requests@daftar.org

The belief delusion

2009-06-07T16:28:00.000-07:00

Consider how much death and suffering has been inspired by the notion of belief—religious belief in particular. One group says that God is such-and-such and so-and-so. Another denies that, and affirms something different. And this becomes a reason for bloodshed. The absolutism of religious doctrine and belief ends up manifesting itself in secular beliefs as well: one group says that the correct political system is such-and-such, and another affirms something different. The stakes in the latter case may seem more evident to modern eyes, but my concern here is with belief itself as a motive for behavior. My point may become clearer if one considers that medieval Christians professed to believe in forgiveness, yet practiced great cruelty, and that Communist states professed freedom and equality yet practiced greater repression than the capitalist and feudal systems on which they supposedly improved. Statements of belief, then, have consistently failed to match real practices and actions, or rather the beliefs have provided cover for practices and actions that have been consistent throughout history regardless of varying belief systems.

A basic error underlying all this, in my view, is the notion that if I believe something fervently, it is true. The tension between human desires and whatever conditions and circumstances set limits on these desires produces the wish that my thinking can turn my desires into facts. This is supported by the undeniable truth that we can produce desired effects through planned and purposeful action. And in order to plan actions, we must think them through. But that the wish itself creates the effect is an error prompted, I would say, by the frustration of a subject felt as free yet limited by conditions. One might even say prompted by desperation, like the fundamental desperation of an infant who feels a need that isn’t met, and therefore cries. The baby cries, and if she has an attentive parent, the need is met by the parent. Nature, however, is not always attentive in this way. The whole, so to speak, does not take orders from the part. But the human self, the conscious subject, experiences an inherent freedom that manifests as a seeking of power over conditions. Thought is the expression of that search. This phenomenon known as thought is so remarkable that we become dazzled by it. Magical thinking, as it has been called, is really just thinking in its beginning stages, when the child identifies thought with truth, and truth, above all, with that which is desired.

What, then, is belief? It is a kind of way station on the path of knowledge. Once we actually know something, belief is redundant. What we really know comes from experience. In addition, there is knowledge as the fruit of reason, but the process of reasoning has its own structure (we call it logic), experience must enter into this process in some way, and the results are open to further reasoning. Knowledge is therefore open to change, and this, paradoxically, is part of its security. It cannot depend solely on thinking, but must correspond to experience. I can say that I believe that day will follow night, but this belief is so firmly founded on experience that unbelief is not an option. Knowledge, then, is when thought is in accordance, to some degree, with experience. Belief by itself, without knowledge, is either the possibility of knowledge conceived without yet being confirmed by experience, or—and this is where we founder on the rocks of religious belief—a conviction concerning something of which we have no experience, and of which it may not even be possible to have experience.

Religion deals with absolutes. Religion is about reality itself, especially including consciousness as the absolute condition of experience. Belief, however, is nothing more than a thought or series of thoughts expressing a wish or a desire concerning reality. All thinking is limited. It can only indicate the absolute. Thought itself is not absolute. Attributing magical power to thought in the form of belief is the primary manifestation of what I call the error of misplaced absoluteness.

I may believe that God is so-and-so or such-and-such. I may believe any number of stories handed down about God, or people that were God, or spoke for God, or in the case of Eastern traditions, perfect masters and gurus and so forth. No matter what I believe, my limited nature as a human being has not changed. Furthermore, the power of my beliefs to cause beneficial or good actions, actions desirable for humanity or even just for myself, is limited by time and place. They are merely motivating thoughts, that compete with all the other components of my character—habit, desire, unconscious tendencies, inherited or acquired capacities—in determining my actions and the psychic modes of my experience. History has shown time and again that beliefs are ineffective in causing the kinds of changes in the human personality that are claimed for them. Believers in a humble savior of love and forgiveness still went ahead and practiced slavery, torture, and war, and justified it on religious grounds. Believers in the righteousness of the one God (Islam) still perpetrated the same crimes on their fellow man as those who believed in multiple gods without righteousness. Buddhism and the other eastern religions stood by while the social order violated every tenet of the faith that it supposedly supported.

Why? I think that people instinctively realize that the notion of belief making something true is an error. But they refuse to admit it to themselves because of a second primal error: Common belief is necessary for society to survive. Belief became a tool for the maintenance of power and authority. The state and its religion, originally identical, was founded on the perceived necessity of enforced common belief. Physical force ultimately fails unless society also coheres through belief.

The power principle failed, and continues to fail. War, injustice, cruelty, and greed continue to hold sway despite the patina of religious belief. Since the 17th century, society has been battling over what to do about it. Believing something is merely a mental operation—it is not transformative. Forcing people to believe something is even less successful. What kind of inward belief can be compelled by a sword or a gun? The slave will of course bow down because he has to, but to call this religion is nothing more than massive self-deception. And this lie, this compounded falsehood of the centuries, is what we now commonly call religion.

There is a secret that is concealed in religious history. It is only a secret as long as one focuses on beliefs and all the particulars of belief. This is the truth of the mystics, the truth of union. In the eastern traditions, it is the truth of enlightenment, non-duality, realization. As soon as you turn it into a belief, it becomes limited like every other thought. One must see through all beliefs, see them as essentially limited human constructs, without lasting force or significance, in order to understand reality. It takes some bravery to do this, because it essentially places one outside the accepted religious structure, outside the political structure, outside the social order. That is why it has continually been forced to hide, prevaricate, and compromise itself throughout history—because it threatens the basic illusion that we need common belief in order to survive. The power principle is driving us to the abyss, and like lemmings we are encouraged to go off the cliff by absolutist thinking, i.e., deluded thinking, whether it is through religious fundamentalism, sociopolitical ideology, or combinations thereof.

All religious beliefs are misguided metaphors for the self. The self seeks liberation from its ignorance and delusion. Beliefs are sold to us as a way of release, but they only chain us more securely in bondage. The transformation we need comes from experience itself, qua experience. Spirituality is not the acquisition of beliefs, but the shedding of them, the penetration of them all as conditioned. Then the source of all thought, all experience, may become evident. That is what humility really is. At that source, there is no religion, no doctrine, nothing to fight over, nothing to separate me from you. There is no more belief, only knowledge.

Official Resolution Concerning Our Predicament

2009-06-02T11:18:00.000-07:00

For the first time, the dead are outnumbered by the living. If they could reflect, Charlemagne, Columbus, General Custer, and the rest of them, might understand what a mess they’ve made. The dead at least have learned humility, albeit too late for amendment.

Learned scholars mourn the end of Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare, lost forever and too early. Yes, these classics would eventually disappear with the implosion of our star, five billion years from now. But damn it, this is too soon.

Probability experts say that life on other worlds is a certainty. Small consolation to us that the Zoozongs are enjoying Glickgluck on the planet Klang. Who knows if they even have poetry or if all they read are cheap Kag VaWamach stories. It could be very boring there.

Time was, we could tend our little garden with Candide, and let the maniacs have at it. Out of sight, out of mind. But then they muscled into the gardening business and we got frozen food. Then came frozen sex. Before long, Walt Disney was frozen solid, for our own protection, and in the hopes of resurrection, when Walt would wake to the shattered pestilent landscape and horrified, seek means of ending it, this time for good. A scream is a wish your heart makes.

Most of us just wanted to be left alone, to enjoy what there was. Most of us cared not for structured asset-backed securities, nor did we fondly dream of multi-mission mobile processors. What little ambition we had, for home and hearth, children playing on the lawn, was usurped by ravenous, conniving, global grab-ass grandiosity-mongers who had had a few too many drinks at the club.

No, I’m not in the mood for fireworks. No, I will not sign the cooperative spectatorship agreement. No, I don’t think it was all worth it. I do not accept coupons.

The Nietzschean Uberman, I am sorry to report, got lost on the Cross-Bronx Expressway. He ain’t comin’. The meek have inherited the earth, and being meek, we don’t know what to do. It’s just us left here alone, the faint-hearted, the knock-kneed, barely able to raise our arms in salute—hail shepherd, lead us back to the pen! We’ve had all the history we can stand.

The dead do not laugh any more. They do not look upon us. We outnumber them now, and there’s no telling what could happen. Here is what I say. Mr. Chairman, my proposal is as follows. We must settle. All hostages must be released immediately, and the weather report submitted for arbitration. There is no shame in surrender. You may return home with your swords, uniforms, and the remainder of whatever pay is owed you. Put your little medals on the mantle and brag all you want to your grandchildren, if you still have any. Just go. Stop everything. Let silence be our treaty.

Reality Check

2009-05-25T15:26:00.000-07:00

Mr. President, “indefinite” or “preventive” detention is not compatible with the rule of law. Merely saying that it is does not make it so. A person cannot lawfully be detained without charges. To do so is in essence an act of unchecked executive power. Even if the Congress were to authorize such detention, it would violate our principles as a nation. Human rights are not privileges bestowed by the government, at the whim of whatever individuals are “in charge.” If we were founded upon trust in the benevolence of authority, we would not need a Constitution. In that case, a king would suffice for us. It is of no account whether the people trust you as a leader more than they trusted your predecessor, when there is no safeguard against abuse of power. A benevolent ruler may always be succeeded by a tyrant. The concept of inalienable rights was established precisely for this reason.

You talk about detainees at Guantanamo who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people. This is double talk. If they have committed crimes, they can and should be prosecuted. To say that they cannot be prosecuted is to say that you have no case. It creates a system of perpetual imprisonment without due process. If the executive has the power to determine that someone poses a danger to the American people, and yet not have a case, that means that the executive’s power is unchecked by the rule of law. There is nothing to prevent a President from declaring that his administration’s domestic political enemies pose a security threat. As far as I can tell, the only safeguard you are offering against this untrammeled power is trust in your character. Even if I were to accept this as a valid safeguard (which I don’t, since I retain a healthy mistrust of all politicians who claim special powers not stipulated in our Constitution), it would still not protect us from the ambitions of a future untrustworthy President.

There is nothing to prevent the “indefinite” detention of a U.S. citizen deemed to be “dangerous” by the White House. In fact, this was already done in the case of Jose Padilla. The supposed guilt of a suspect has been used over and over as a justification for the violation of our Constitution. There is nothing in what you have said that bars that practice from continuing.

This is supposed to be a nation of laws, and not of men. The fact that you are turning from some of the flagrant abuses of the Bush administration does not give you permission to continue using such spurious claims of executive power in your current administration. I regret to say that I will be unable to vote for you again if you continue to adhere to this line. No, I will not vote for your Republican opponents, who openly advocate lawlessness. But I can stay home on election day. There are certain things that I cannot in good conscience tolerate. The fundamental principles of our republic, including the ancient and venerable writ of habeas corpus, and the 6th Amendment to the Bill of Rights, are not negotiable. I know that I am not the only one who feels the way. To take supporters like us for granted, as if our votes belong to you, could be a serious mistake. I urge you to follow your profession of faith in the Constitution, in actions as well as words. Otherwise I must vigorously oppose you. And I will not be alone.

Pink: the Color of Justice

2009-05-17T20:05:00.000-07:00

I’ve noticed that of the many groups on the left, Code Pink raises more hackles than most. Of course right-wingers hate them and demonize them pretty regularly, but I’ve also heard them catch flak from leftists for their tactics, and just from casually informed people I hear more rejection of them than I would normally expect to hear about a political group.

Code Pink’s style of protest is to get into the face of people in power and call them out. Recently, at the Washington press dinner, they started yelling “Here comes the war criminal!” when Donald Rumsfeld showed up. A few years ago, famously, a Code Pink member with fake blood on her hands got right up in Condi Rice’s grill at a Senate hearing. I find it remarkable how offended many people get at this sort of thing.

The right’s antipathy is fairly easy to dissect. Code Pink is basically a women’s organization. Any activist organization on the left that is primarily composed of women is going to be a special target of the right because the right wing hates feminism, along with any woman who is aggressive in the cause of peace or human rights. The basic position of the right is that male supremacy is the way it should be, and that anyone challenging that is a scary extremist.

In terms of the mass of only casually informed people, it’s my belief that we have been instilled with a sense of “propriety” that pretends to be about respect, but is in fact based on blind deference to authority. Boldly and loudly confronting political authority seems frightening because of the unconscious fear of retaliation from those in power. It’s as if we’re all tiptoeing around the powerful, doing everything we can not to upset them so that we can stay out of harm’s way. Code Pink violates that unspoken fear, and it frightens people.

Now, if a group of people were to go up to Casey Anthony, a woman accused of murdering her child in a case hysterically covered by the sensationalist media, and yell “murderer!” at her, I would guess most people wouldn’t be offended. Casey Anthony is not an authority figure, but a media-sanctioned object of our moralistic scorn. Donald Rumsfeld, on the other hand, is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. But because it’s a war, and we’re not supposed to criticize war, since that would be unpatriotic, then people get offended by Code Pink calling Rumsfeld a war criminal.

Again, think of the socially sanctioned hatred that many have felt towards rioters and looters. I remember vividly the disgust and disapproval people openly expressed about the looting that occurred in Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict in 1992. Fair enough, it’s looting and it’s wrong. And yet, during the late 1980s and early 90s, the perpetrators of the Savings & Loan collapse looted on a scale thousands of times greater, robbing ordinary people of their life savings to the tune of billions of dollars. Some went to jail, most didn’t. In fact, Reagan-Bush policies allowed and encouraged the looting to occur, and taxpayers ended up paying the bill when the industry needed bailing out. Was there a comparable sense of disgust, contempt, outrage among the populace? There was not. These looters were elite bankers and politicians in suits and ties. Their power made it less safe to attack them.

Cowardice is the basic moral currency of American political life. The Republicans turned this into an art form. They learned how to divide white working class from black working class, men from women, straights from gays, Southerners and Midwesterners from Californians and East Coast residents, and any number of variations on the basic theme of scapegoating. The ultimate scapegoat was the liberal, who became the author of everything wrong in the country. The rule of thumb is that the scapegoat is always less powerful than you. To attack those who are actually powerful is taboo, and will result in attacks being aimed at you.

Code Pink breaks that taboo by calling the powerful what they are—criminals. They reject the passive spectator role that has been assigned to ordinary citizens, and especially women, in this country. Some on the left sincerely believe that their tactics are counterproductive. I understand that point of view, but I don’t agree. In my view, one of the functions of a progressive movement is to break through the false propriety, the denial of what is right before our eyes but goes unnamed. If someone were to scream at an SS or NKVD officer who has gone unpunished for murders they committed or ordered, we would consider that normal. But there is a common assumption that America is magically different, and that we don’t have war criminals in our midst. For the truth to get out in this case, someone must first yell it in public, despite all the social taboos against it.

War remains an abstraction for many of us. A Rumsfeld or a Rice may have loving relationships with their families, and their pets. At the same time, the suffering they cause is put at a far remove from their actual experience. As a people, we have become accustomed to thinking of war in these abstract ways. We don’t imagine what it’s like to be the father or the sister of someone who has been suddenly blown to pieces for no reason. The car bombings and the so-called collateral damage are just statistics to us. But war is very real, and real people’s lives, many thousands of them, have been cut off because of the lies and manipulations and greed and self-interest of people sitting calmly in a Washington office. Code Pink gives voice to the outrage that is real and that needs to be expressed. And I think the degree of condemnation and hatred that they receive is a measure of how important their work is.

I haven’t heard of them killing anyone yet. I cannot say the same of their targets. We must learn to channel our outrage towards the powerful who continue to cause untold suffering without having to endure meaningful consequences for it.

History Occurs at Night

2009-05-10T21:55:00.000-07:00

The following is a recently discovered fragment of an introduction to the history of a neglected era by an intrepid academic at the turn of the century, who to this day remains anonymous.

History records roughly two thirds of what we know to have happened. The other third consists of when people were asleep. The textbooks are strangely silent on that period.

To be fair to historians, it is more difficult to keep track of the many changes occurring during sleep. One person has often changed into another; many have combined into one; one has split off into many. Locations and times have shifted suddenly and wildly. The dead frequently reappeared, and people were known to flap their arms and fly through the air to escape danger, or just to impress others of their acquaintance.

The frequency of embarrassing and even scandalous occurrences was remarkable. Many went to work or school in their underwear, or without any clothes at all. Society was correspondingly more tolerant of these lapses in etiquette during sleep. During this period, most people acted as if a naked person walking down the street was, if not a completely normal event, at least an understandable one, whereas in waking history it usually led to an arrest. This phenomenon seems ripe for sociological study.

Despite the loosening of moral standards, this historical timeframe seemed to be, on the average, fraught with considerable fear and anxiety. Reports of people searching frantically for lost items were very frequent. There were very many incidents of people being late for appointments, classes, work, or even major events. Many others forgot the names of their family and best friends, while having intense and intimate encounters with complete strangers, or people whose identity is at best obscure.

Magical powers or occult abilities of one sort or another were considered routine, which is fortunate, since violent attacks by others were a constant threat. On the one hand, a person might have been able to slay an opponent by firing bullets out of his hand; on the other, he may have suffered a bout of slow motion when attempting to flee. The need for constant vigilance was countered by a persistent vagueness and confusion of mental outlook.

As to sexuality, the range of practices seems to have been incredibly wide, with voyeurism, paraphilic infantilism, coprophilia, urophagia, and numerous other fetishistic behavor being extremely common. Incest, rape, and other forms of sexual assault appear to have been so popular as to be considered almost normal. It is difficult for the objective historian to credit this, yet virtually all available testimony confirms the startling fact of complete sexual chaos as characteristic of the time.

What accounts there are of governments, treaties, wars, and political arrangements are so various and complex as to challenge the abilities of the most skilled researchers. Democracy would appear to have been almost unknown. Dictatorship was the most common political arrangement, yet there were so many autocrats that they seem to have actually outnumbered the subjects under their rule. In truth, the political situation during sleep came closest to the concept of anarchy as this is popularly termed, and many scholars find it both puzzling and significant that society survived the period relatively intact.

More matter for the cream of the scholiasts has no doubt dripped from the statue of the hearse in barns of square. We have reported again soon how in fact unreliable fists of fancy dress preponder the food they ate. Leaders of sexual insurpency coffin contradict the delusions we have run to, and I would not deign to outrage this steaming crowd with more toots than it can fester. Pending verification to continue and

Here the manuscript breaks off. Is est optimus nos permissum lemma somnus.

The mythology of modern life

2009-05-03T13:13:00.001-07:00

Celebrities are the gods and goddesses of our age. A sordid, petty pantheon they are, but they are all the culture offers to fill the vacuum caused by the death of mythology and folklore.

Commercialism does not recognize awe and wonder unless these emotions pertain to products that are being sold to us. In the commercial world view, nature is only a place for consumption and entertainment. Therefore the sense of awe before nature, the intimate experience of nature as power, being and sustenance of humankind, is replaced with empty acquisition and spectatorship. An entire realm of mythology and spirituality has been banished to the margins of life.

Much of the organized monotheistic culture has staked its authority on the flimsy notion that its myths are “literally” true, i.e. science. The unintended result is that “myth” has now become synonymous with “falsehood” in the popular mind. Fundamentalism blames science for this, because literalist religion is blind to the potency of myth, considering it only as a means to enforce obedience to the social order. We are left with a religious culture that has been drained of meaning. When myth is hardened into dogma, it dwindles down into superstition.

Spirituality as such is tainted in the popular mind, both by commercial culture which ridicules it, and organized religion which has largely neglected and abandoned it. In the debate between theists and atheists, there isn’t even any conception of spirituality as a phenomenon, since it essentially lies outside the endless and futile struggles over “belief.”

People need folklore and mythology because our imagination discovers meaning through stories and symbols that illuminate all aspects of life. Their significance is subjective. The historicity of King Arthur is of no account when considering the power of the mythos surrounding him. Even in the case of Jesus, where his historical existence is an essential aspect of the religious tradition, the power of the tradition as it affects the soul of the Christian is not historical.

The modern age, then, finds itself in a predicament whereby the subjective is not considered meaningful. Commercial culture promotes the “meaning” of owning products, of prestige through material possessions. The dominant religious cultures promote the “meaning” of obedience to a patriarchal social order. It hasn’t worked. People still need mythology, and so we end up with the pathetic mythos of the celebrity. Homer’s gods and goddesses fell in love and squabbled and broke up and fought over children as well—as I said, myth illuminates every aspect of life. But they did much more. Our present-day pantheon does nothing but reenact the blind dramas of romance and personal conflict. Our myths reflect badly on ourselves—the horizon of imagination limited to the most narrow boundaries of alienated self-involvement and powerlessness.

The Barbarism Issue

2009-04-28T21:53:00.001-07:00

There appears to be policy differences between the left and right on the barbarism issue.

The President recently made public certain documents in which barbarians from the previous administration discussed the kinds of barbarities they planned to commit. Prominent barbarians have reacted with outrage. Revealing our barbaric practices, they argue, makes it impossible to effectively practice them on our enemies.

Is barbarism effective? Experts in the cruelty community are divided. Many of them are arguing that civilization is better for our security in the long run, but proponents of barbarism are loudly accusing the President of putting us at risk by being a weak little girl.

“If your child’s life was at stake, you better believe that you’d rape whomever you had to, burn your enemies alive, eat their babies, whatever,” said talk show host Bill O’Reilly. “Hey, we were attacked. Descending into barbarism was what we had to do to protect the nation.”

Political observers are saying that the President is being torn between the urgings of angry civilized supporters and the caution of moderate barbarians who advise leaving the past behind and “moving forward.”

“Look, barbarism won’t come back. We’ve turned a corner now, and we shouldn’t waste time seeking retribution,” said an anonymous official wearing a moose pelt on his head. “These loony civilized people are just making it harder for us to deal with pressing issues.”

Primitive barbarism and bloodlust came back into fashion during the last eight years, and the President’s stance against them is perceived as a distraction by many pundits. On ABC’s This Week, Cokie Roberts said that she’s glad that videotapes of barbaric, cannibalistic rites have been destroyed, since they would be “great recruiting tools for our enemies.” George Will pointed out that no less an authority than Torquemada, one of the great intellectual figures of the Church, approved of the rack and the garrotte. Peggy Noonan appeared faint and said that her sensibilities were too delicate to discuss such things, and that these matters should be left in the dungeons where they belong.

“I’ve never seen such deep divisions in our society between civilization and barbarity,” said David Gregory of NBC. “People are worried that it’s being exploited for political reasons. There are many good Americans who think the President should be burned at the stake, or drawn and quartered. I don’t know what to think. You decide.”

Twisting in the Wind

2009-04-21T22:21:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I like to think that Obama is playing rope-a-dope with Republicans. It's probably wishful thinking. But the recent release of the torture memos, along with assurances that the Prez opposes prosecutions, seems like a prime example. Of course I'm in favor of putting Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, and all the rest of the vicious thugs who ruled us illegally for eight years on trial. But let's say we don't. The release of the memos alone brings the stench of their crimes vividly into the public nostrils. Which is why our right-wing perverts and their media lapdogs seem more worried about revealing the truth than they do about the moral sinkhole of torture itself.

The truth has been known for some time, folks, This is just more detail, and further confirmation. And those who say we should keep it secret know full well that the goal is to conceal the truth from the American public, not from foreign enemies who already knew. George Will (who floated the attractiveness of torture early after 9/11), Peggy Noonan, Pat Buchanan, and all our good friends at the Zombie Channel--their concern is that YOU be kept in the dark, and that your knowledge not interfere with the elite's management of your government, your money, and your life.

Transparency is the enemy of the right, and of the national security establishment. The more transparency Obama allows, the more the rotting corruption of the political class that has dominated Washington for the last 50 years will be exposed.

So, Mr. Cheney and all your enablers, take your immunity, and your pardons, and your Nuremberg defense, and crawl into a corner while your crimes continue to be cataloged on the front pages. I hope you enjoy your "freedom."

Tweet tweet

2009-04-15T22:34:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine recently introduced me to Twitter. I’m not sure whether to thank him or not. Don’t get me wrong, I love Twitter. But I love it the way an addict loves crack.

Twitter is a social networking system in which a whole bunch of people post messages in short little bursts of 140 characters or less. When I first heard of this, it sounded unappealing. And if the messages are something like “Just stopped at the pizza place, ordered a veggie with olives,” then yes, it is unappealing, at least to me. And believe it or not, a lot of tweets are like that.

But if you are a political junkie, like I am, and you “follow” as many like-minded political junkies on Twitter, the result is an endless scroll of pithy comments, wisecracks, and pronouncements, seasoned with links to the latest news, blog posts, and general snark. If you add a few dozen very amusing people who say whatever is on the mind—well, you can end up spending hours on Twitter if you’re not careful. So far I haven’t been careful enough.

The appeal for me is that Twitter simulates an experience of being part of a very smart and talkative community, or a never-ending cocktail party, take your pick. Blogs go into much more depth, but the comments sections on blogs don’t have the same sense of immediacy and back-and-forth engagement between people. So if in your everyday life you don’t have that much opportunity to talk casually about politics, or culture (my other area is film), or whatever, Twitter is almost like the real thing.

Whether the short form dumbs everything down, or instead forces you to clarify and tighten your thoughts into a more potent expression, depends on the tweeter. In my case I think it does the latter. On this blog, I tend to go on at length, unraveling whatever subject I’ve tackled to the end, or what seems like an end. It’s my style, and it usually feels like my duty. That takes work, and unfortunately I don’t always feel like working, so I end up posting here only four or five times a month. But when I twitter, on the other hand, I can just go in there, write what I hope is a nice little bon mot, and then go on to something else. Instant gratification. Plus all the other little bon mots end up stimulating my imagination, and so on.

Like I said, crack.

It remains to be seen whether this development will be a good one for me as a writer, or…otherwise. But in any case, you can follow me here.

Infowhores

2009-04-08T23:48:00.000-07:00

Alex Jones appeared on Judge Napolitano’s Fox show a few weeks ago, talking about “globalists” and how Obama is taking away our freedom, and how finally Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Michael Savage (!) are catching on to what Alex Jones has been saying for years, etc.

But do you know what Alex Jones never mentioned? 9/11. He said not a word about how the 9/11 attacks were an inside job.

Now, if you’re at all familiar with what Alex Jones has been saying and doing for the last eight years, you know that 9/11 is a central aspect of his thinking. For him to go on Fox and not mention 9/11 is an unbelievable bit of theater, because it means not mentioning the most important aspect of his own stated world view in the last decade.

It’s self-evident at this point that Fox wouldn’t put Alex Jones on the air to talk about how Obama and Hilary Clinton are part of the scary globalist conspiracy unless he promised not to say anything about 9/11 being an inside job. For those who are new to Alex Jones, he therefore comes off as another soldier in the wingnut rebellion. But those of us who aren’t new to Alex Jones are supposed to think, I can only suppose, that 9/11 no longer matters now that Bush is gone. It would take a severe case of myopia to believe such a thing, but readers of Alex Jones are not generally known for their critical thinking.

I am actually a 9/11 skeptic. I don’t believe the official story, and I don’t think that atrocity has been properly investigated. The collapse of the WTC7 building still makes no sense to me, and there’s a lot else that stinks about the case. Nevertheless, I could always tell the difference between a sincere investigator of the facts like David Griffin, and a self-promoting huckster like Jones.

It may seem ridiculous for me to be even spending time discussing Alex Jones, but the fact is I’ve know many people in the online community who follow him and send me links from his Infowars sight. Occasionally, very occasionally, there’s been some good information in the links. Naively, I assumed he was on the left, albeit of the deranged variety. But his willingness to go on Fox without mentioning 9/11, and implicitly praising neofascists like Glenn Beck and Michael Savage to boot, proves me to have been woefully mistaken.

Alex Jones is a right wing troll. And a whore. Not mentioning his belief that 9/11 was an inside job, so that he could get on Fox, proves him to be a whore. The truth, as it turns out, doesn’t matter to Alex Jones. The only thing that matters to him is Alex Jones.

He’s also the worst thing that could have happened to the 9/11 truth movement. It seems inevitable nowadays, though, that conspiracy, even when the suspicion of one is well-founded, is going to attract the unscrupulous exploiters of fear, who end up discrediting everyone else involved. The larger issue involved here is that conspiracy, such as it is, represents only a symptom of a systemic problem rather than a cause.

Meanwhile the incredible hysteria of the hard right drives the Republican Party further into the ground, possibly destroying it forever. I don’t have any interest in preserving that institution, but at the same time we shouldn’t underestimate the mischief that brownshirt-style rhetoric and a lynch mob mentality can cause in this country. Every civilized person should be speaking out against this barbarism, but instead the maniacs seem to have an open mike on the national stage.

Spiritual Feminism

2009-03-31T23:30:00.000-07:00

“Our inner being, which we call ourself, no eye nor touch of man or angel has ever pierced.”—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Solitude of Self.

Stanton’s famous 1892 address captures the essence of the feminist idea. With allowances for the language and culture of that time, the message is just as relevant now as ever. It is a refutation, in what I would call spiritual terms, of all arguments for male supremacy.

Every person experiences her life singly, as the one and only center of that life. The preciousness of one’s life lies precisely in the fact that it is the only life one has. Moreover, all human beings desire the free exercise of their wills, minds, and faculties. When a person is treated as if she were an object, a means towards an end not her own, this is perceived as unjust at some level of consciousness, because it is essentially a lie, a denial of her reality as self. Even if she is so thoroughly socialized that there is no conscious awareness of injustice, the denial of self will exact a psychological price. The suppression of truth at such a fundamental level cannot be maintained without destructive effects. In the long view, this sums up the history of the subjection of women by men.

Engels seemed to hint that the domestication of animals led to the herdsman’s application of the same idea of ownership and control to women, and later to other men. This is of course speculation—the origins of the problem are murky. The outcome, however, is clear. Women were eventually made the slaves of men. The patriarchal social order limited women to the roles of sexual mates, mothers, and domestic laborers. Slavery as it developed in the ancient world was not much different in principle from what already existed in the family structure.

The system was powerful and all-pervading, so embedded in the social order that most people couldn’t even see it. In addition to being firmly established through law and custom, women’s “role” was deeply internalized and transmitted from parents to children for thousands of years. The limitations of patriarchal culture made it almost impossible for anyone, male or female, to see beyond it, until the intellectual rebellion of the 17th century, and the subsequent gradual widening of education in society, awakened the long-dormant thirst for freedom. But even before any of this, from the most ancient times, lack of freedom was perceived at a subconscious level as painful and unjust, and there were sporadic instinctual rebellions, sometimes only suppressed by the cruelest measures.

The act of force, the establishment of patriarchy through domination, far preceded the various reasons and justifications offered for male supremacy. Nevertheless, the anti-feminist arguments lead us to the awareness of certain assumptions about men and women. The basic assumption, as Stanton so shrewdly divined, is that selfhood is a prerogative of the patriarch, and that women are meant to serve the patriarch as a means towards his ends. That’s what objectification ultimately means, in the sexual and every other sense: the subservience of the female self to a power outside of her—in effect, the denial of any absolute value to her self.

A secondary assumption, following from the basic one, is that men are superior to women. The idea of superiority arises, as in the debates on slavery, from the need to justify the already existing power structure. A lot of words have been spent arguing the merits of either side of this question. After modern feminist gains, the superiority idea has been supplanted for the most part by the notion of essential difference. In other words, neither is superior; it’s just that men are designed to do certain things and women to do other things, and these things shouldn’t be mixed. Of course it’s really just a new version of the old idea: the things men are designed to do turn out to involve the exercise of their wills, minds, and faculties; while women are romantic nurturers and mothers.

Concepts of superiority and inferiority are, in any case, completely determined by what one considers more or less valuable. The anti-feminist argument sometimes even falls back on physical strength as an absolute value, as if we were still hunter-gatherers. The point is that the feminist argument for equality is based on the inherent worthiness of each human life rather than on comparisons of perceived qualities peculiar to the different genders. In fact, even if one were to concede (purely for the sake of argument) that men possessed some sort of natural superiority, the claim doesn’t even touch the validity of the point Stanton is making. For my self, the one life that only I experience, there can be no imposition of an absolute role based on some sort of natural or social comparison. I still desire freedom as my condition, and in my heart I cannot fully accept myself as a mere object of someone else’s will or purpose.

So the superiority debate is a sham, a cover for the basic assumption, which is that the male authority is the only valid subject. We come back to earth and find nothing but a simple self-centeredness that exercises its power and control over other people in order to gain more power and control. This is what patriarchy amounts to in the end.

In our imagination we can turn the mirror around and see how a man would react to becoming an object. A man is encouraged to strive in a realm of action, or to explore a realm of ideas, or perhaps even both. At the least, he is expected to have some measure of ambition in the world, however modest. He is also expected, usually, to find a mate and raise a family. But try to imagine if he was told that his primary purpose was to find a mate and raise a family, and that all else was frivolous compared to that. Would a man accept this? Of course not. There is more to life, he knows, than romance and babies, and it would be an intolerable restriction on his free will for society to limit him so. And what if his appearance, his sexual attractiveness, was valued above everything else—mind, creativity, commitment or effort? Most men would be driven to despair by such an arrangement. And yet, because of the hypnotic effect of the ancient patriarchal structure, many men fail to see that this is exactly what women are faced with.

That women have made gains, particularly in the West, in recent centuries, is almost entirely due to the struggles of women who have awakened to reality. There have been male allies, many of them perhaps not fully realizing the implications of the movement, but the institutional structure has resisted feminism every step of the way, and continues to do so. The oldest form of oppression, it would seem, dies the hardest.

With all the gains, however, we can sometimes minimize or forget the fundamental importance of the struggle. In the conventional discourse, it is framed in terms of women’s rights and the need for equality, especially in economic and political terms. This is all very important because women need more power over their own lives, and everything that works towards that end is worthwhile. Still, feminism ultimately looks beyond the symbolism of the woman executive or soldier or politician, the woman integrated more equally into the system, and extends its thought to a radical critique of the patriarchal structure itself.

Behind the anti-feminist argument, grown softer and subtler and more ingratiating in the modern age, stands the unacknowledged shadow of slavery. It still survives undisguised in the poorer nations. It is important to remember that the argument always leads to the same place. Male supremacy, in the end, is founded on force. Rape is not an aberration, but a primary symptom of the central problem of human society. You’ll notice that rape always accompanies war; it’s an essential expression of it. Domination, the power principle, is the illusion that an inviolable, free, solitary self can be transformed into a mere object, sacrificed on the altar of authority. This is the tragedy of human history, and patriarchy is at its very core. Feminism is the awakening insight, the recognition of freedom as an absolute and inherent value in the self. Its significance embraces the political, social, and cultural realms—it is ultimately a spiritual liberation.

False Memory

2009-03-23T23:12:00.000-07:00

Conversation between a Republican and a non-amnesiac:

R: The country’s going to hell. What a rotten mess!

NA: You’re only noticing this now, after eight years?

R: I’m talking about the huge amounts of money we’re just throwing down the toilet.

NA: Yeah, I agree about the Iraq War.

R: No, I mean the stimulus bill. It’ll make Iraq look like a garage sale.

NA: Really? How many people have been killed in the stimulus bill so far?

Most real colloquies aren’t so polite, of course. More typically, a wrong winger will start yelling, wildly gesticulating, frothing at the mouth, and bleating hot-button words like “socialism” and “communism.”

My position is this. If you aren’t outraged about what happened during the last eight years, if instead you make excuses for the Republicans and other crooks who lied and stole and killed and tortured, and disgraced the country—then I have nothing to say to you. There’s nothing that can be said. It’s no use wasting my time trying to persuade people that what actually happened, happened. If after all this time, you’re ignorant of what happened, willfully or otherwise, then you have no place in rational political discourse.

That doesn’t mean Democrats should be immune from criticism. By no means. But if you’re angry about Obama, and you weren’t angry about Bush, then you are out of touch with reality.

Politically, the Republicans still have influence because they still have some power. But it’s only by virtue of power in the most naked sense that they have any role to play. In terms of values, perception of truth, or desire for the good of the country, they have no role. They represent exactly that which has brought us to our present crisis. They are the spokesmen for what is destroying us. I’m sorry, but there is no reaching across the aisle when the person across the aisle is a delusional maniac. Whatever progress is made, will be made in spite of the liars and looters, not with them, and every single day since Obama was inaugurated has confirmed that truth.

Nobodaddy

2009-03-15T00:39:00.000-07:00

I was talking about a Higher Power with someone and she said, “I have a hard time believing that there really is something out there that cares about me.”

The language she used brought questions to my mind. Questions by themselves are often more valuable than answers because they challenge our assumptions and take us beyond what we think we already know.

Here are the questions. Where exactly is “out there”? How far “out there” would God, or the Divine, really be? Above the clouds? Farther than the moon? A few light years? A trillion light years? A few feet? Six inches?

And ultimately, if this Reality is “out there” somewhere, no matter how far it may be, can it ever really be in contact with me, with us, over “here”?

If I touch something, or if something or someone touches me, doesn’t that mean there is no distance between us? And with literally no distance between us, what becomes of “in here” and “out there,” “you” and “me”?

If you ask these questions long enough, you will begin to understand what those wily old Chinese masters meant by “putting a second head on top of your own.” The chasm opening up beneath your feet marks the difference between spirituality and religion.

Techno-Hubris

2009-03-04T21:13:00.000-08:00

How civilized do you think the human race really is? It depends on what we mean by “civilized.” I happen to be a student of history and politics. And when I survey the events of the last century, I see two world wars and dozens of other bloody conflicts, the proliferation of weapons that can destroy all life several times over, environmental destruction on a scale that seriously threatens to make us extinct, and a catalogue of genocides, cruelties and oppressions that would have made our 19th century ancestors turn insane with horror if they could have foreseen it all. If nothing else, such awareness should foster a sense of humility. But let’s stop for a moment and listen to what technology guru Ray Kurzweil has to say, according to a recent article in Rolling Stone:

“In our lifetime, Kurzweil believes, machines will not only surpass humans in intelligence - they will irrevocably alter what it means to be human. Cell-size robots will zap disease from our bloodstream. Superintelligent nanotechnology, operating on a molecular scale, will scrub pollution from our atmosphere. Our minds, our skills, our memories, our very consciousness will be backed up on computers—allowing us, in essence, to live forever, all our data saved by supersmart machines.”

Okay, Kurzweil is a lunatic. But Freeman Dyson is a highly respected scientist, one of the leading modern writers on physics. Here he is in the New York Review of Books a couple of years ago:

“Within a few more decades, as the continued exploring of genomes gives us better knowledge of the architecture of living creatures, we shall be able to design new species of microbes and plants according to our needs…Green technology could replace most of our existing chemical industries and a large part of our mining and manufacturing industries. Genetically engineered earthworms could extract common metals such as aluminum and titanium from clay, and genetically engineered seaweed could extract magnesium or gold from seawater. Green technology could also achieve more extensive recycling of waste products and worn-out machines, with great benefit to the environment. An economic system based on green technology could come much closer to the goal of sustainability, using sunlight instead of fossil fuels as the primary source of energy. New species of termite could be engineered to chew up derelict automobiles instead of houses, and new species of tree could be engineered to convert carbon dioxide and sunlight into liquid fuels instead of cellulose.”

Kurzweil thinks that immortality is a good idea, even though population has exploded beyond a sustainable level. Dyson, the more reasonable one, thinks that manipulating genes will solve our problems. His error seems less obvious. In fact it’s the same error. They both believe that humanity can be trusted to wield technological power in a benevolent fashion, and even that technology is a kind of agency in itself. But the history of technological advancement proves them wrong every step of the way.

A fool can sometimes teach us more than an intelligent man, if he makes a fundamental error more clear. Kurzweil with his “singularity” (and believe me, there are enthusiasts out there who really buy into this stuff) does us a service precisely in this way. The error is simply egoism and its corollary, intellectual pride—the belief that self-interest and reason is all we need. Technocrats simply refuse to see that there is an element of human nature that is independent of their goal-oriented model of control.

It’s not that technology is bad. Of course it isn’t. The problem is that human culture has not matured sufficiently to handle the almost god-like powers of modern technology. Instead we’re using them to kill each other and ourselves. The problem that faces us is actually the same that faced the ancient philosophers who puzzled over the problems of political life. How do we foster a civilization based on love, respect, and mutual cooperation, rather than the habitual structures of power, domination, and greed? Reason plays a part in this, but so do emotions. Without taking human emotional needs into account, we have no vantage point from which to understand love and hatred, peace and war, kindness or cruelty.

The techno-fix will not work. I wish it would, because it would be so much easier. But for a species that doesn’t understand its limitations, that chooses arrogance over humility and ignorance over self-awareness, in short, for an uncivilized creature, a barbarian in a suit and tie, technology will only reflect the emptiness and vanity of his soul. The task is to free ourselves from our inner chains, and only then can we use our tools with wisdom, and for the good.

On Wall Street today...

2009-02-22T14:24:00.000-08:00

For years on the news we’ve heard “On Wall Street today…” followed by a recital of a bunch of numbers that the majority of us don’t have the time to understand. And when something happened in the world of any importance, we would hear how Wall Street reacted. After a while, it became evident to anyone paying attention that Wall Street ran this country and pretty much dictated the terms of the debates, such as they were. Even though the words “Wall Street” don’t appear in our Constitution, the reality of Wall Street was more important. This is really the essence of right-wing and so-called free market ideology.

Conservative social and cultural issues such as abortion are only battering rams to keep the people divided, and this should be obvious if you observe that the huge corporations that have benefited from right-wing political dominance are never averse to financing and disseminating cultural products that are anything but “conservative.” NewsCorp, for instance, which owns Fox, is in the pornography business, as is Time Warner and many other big players.

The ideology of Wall Street is that profit trumps all values. We may give lip service to “all men are created equal” and other sentiments from the era of the nation’s founding, but in practice the only motive that is considered valid without question is the profit motive. Regulation, therefore, contradicts free market ideology, as does government action towards any public good considered to be independent of profit, or potentially limiting to business. At the libertarian end of the spectrum we have the absurd naivete of Ron Paul, who thinks that the market would work just dandy if government did virtually nothing. People know that it’s dangerous nonsense, which is why libertarians never win elections. The Wall Street ideology, on the other hand, sees government as a clenched fist protecting corporate interests, maintaining economic hegemony through military might abroad while greasing the wheels for privileged elites to make money off the working majority at home. The people bought into this sucker’s game because it sustained enough of a consumer lifestyle to keep them docile, and kept us divided by scapegoating minorities and playing on fear—first of communism, later, of terrorism.

The unique moment we are experiencing now is the utter collapse of Wall Street’s claims to legitimate rule over our lives. Of course people are afraid of this. Our de facto rulers, the Big Daddies of America, were supposed to have things in hand. Now we’re expected to quake with fear at the prospects of losing our jobs, our homes, our lifestyles. But at the risk of alienating some readers, I have to confess a kind of grim pleasure at the spectacle of all these government “experts” and economists and financiers and media pundits going spastic in hysteria as they contemplate the collapse of their beloved hog trough, the American economy. No, I do not enjoy the suffering of the millions of ordinary men and women who are the real victims of their masters’ rapacity. And I certainly am not pleased to witness the complete lack of consequences for the thieves who speculated the banking and credit system into the dirt. But I do think this was all bound to happen, and the fact that it is finally happening marks a decision point for our country and the world.

One of my constantly reiterated themes since I started this blog has been the distinction between the conventional view of what’s happening as some kind of malfunction within an essentially valid political framework, and my own view that corporatist rule constitutes a criminal enterprise. I include so-called “centrist” approaches within my indictment, because the interests of the financial elites still obviate all other values. The United States treasury has simply been looted by the ruling class. A criminal element gained political and military power and proceeded to steal public wealth to enrich its own private coffers. And when the stealing reached a certain point, the system began to collapse. That’s the truth, and that’s what you won’t hear in the media or from politicians.

I’ve come to believe that one of the ruling ideas of the Cheney regime (not Bush, who was too simple-minded to do anything but obey his handlers) was that a Third World-type dictatorship would be eventually necessary in the United States if rule by economic elites was to continue. For 1% of the people to maintain a monopoly on the country’s wealth, what was left of democratic institutions had to be radically modified, ensuring military and political dominance world-wide. Thus a permanent war on terrorism, a permanent state of emergency requiring a “unitary executive” (a dictator) who would be above the law, torture and other forms of state violence in order to keep people in fear, and so forth, were all components of the rightist “vision” of the future. The enemy was not terrorism, but the American people.

The ascension of Obama represents a setback to that vision, a victory for the old-fashioned East Coast establishment with its ties to European capitalism, as opposed to the cowboy Reaganist upstarts who dreamed of total American dominance. But the danger of dictatorship is not over. The centrists who are now in charge still seek to prop up the rule of Wall Street, to somehow save the system which places profit above all other values. The alternative, we are told, is socialism, which is unthinkable, so we carefully refrain from thinking about it. The danger, however, is that these attempts to save Wall Street may only exacerbate the crisis, leading to a resurgence of neo-fascism, which will be sold to us as the only way out.

So this is an important time, because we can all see that the emperor is naked. There is a lot of anger against Wall Street right now, and that’s a very healthy thing. This anger needs to build into a demand for economic justice in which the mass of working people are released from the vise of this destructive and criminal system. Thieves must be identified as thieves and their ill-gotten gains taken from them, through taxation or other means, and redistributed downwards. Yes, I’m talking about spreading the wealth to the people who actually created the wealth—us. Our work created our country’s wealth. The bankers and speculators did not create their own wealth; they gambled ours. And lost. The vast sums devoted to military dominance need also to be redirected to our real needs—housing, education, health, infrastructure. Our anger at Wall Street can be a fuel to ignite these demands. They are not only reasonable, but necessary for the survival of our republic.

Numbers Don't Lie

2009-02-15T20:44:00.001-08:00

African Americans make up 13% of America’s population. The population of the American prison system, on the other hand, is roughly 50% African American.

The very first conclusion I draw from this fact is that our judicial system, within which I would include law enforcement and corrections, is institutionally racist. To put it another way, white supremacy is built into the judicial system as it operates today.

This is only the first conclusion. From there it is necessary to determine how we are to proceed in order to remedy the situation.

Unfortunately, only those people who are willing to consider the possibility that the status quo involves injustice will even come to this first conclusion. There is a sizeable and quite powerful segment of Americans, particularly in right-wing conservative circles, and more generally in the political establishment, who are unwilling to ever concede that the status quo involves injustice. Especially when it comes to race and race relations, these conservatives and establishment figures are determined to deny that there is anything wrong or unjust about American institutions, laws, or economic structures.

There is really no subtlety or nuance involved here, although the right wing has spent years trying to make it seem so. The simple question in this case is: why should the 13% of the population who are black furnish half of the prison population?

Once we’ve eliminated the possibility of chronic institutional racism, I would argue that the only other explanation is that there is something inherently wrong with African Americans—in other words, that they are racially inferior.

Since the civil rights movement, it has become less acceptable to maintain an intellectual position of white supremacy in public. Instead, conservatives have resorted to insinuations, code words, winks and nudges, directed at possible white constituencies who will respond with predictable fear and hatred, and then dutifully elect “tough” or “law and order” candidates.

Trying to reason from cause and effect is only a delaying tactic. If blacks are more likely to commit crimes, then why? Because of their race? Or does economic racism necessarily increase crime within the minority community? To admit the latter is impossible for the right-wingers, so they talk ad nauseam about personal responsibility, hoping you’ll forget about the lopsided statistics and settle into a complacent moralism. Nothing needs to be done, in other words, except wag our fingers at the poor black people and tell them to behave better.

The overrated gasbag Daniel Moynihan, a Democrat, began the fashion of blaming the problem on “culture.” African Americans had developed a dysfunctional culture, which led to single-parent families, drugs, and crime. Again, this begs the question, why? Are blacks simply racially predisposed to create inferior forms of culture? National Socialist doctrine, I would remind you, focused almost exclusively on culture as an indication of racial purity or impurity. The Jew’s culture was a primary threat to the German people, even more than Jewish money or politics. To try to explain racial disparity in terms of culture is to simply switch the terms of white supremacist arguments so that they sound more tolerant and civilized. We want to help these people develop a healthier culture, you see, so that they can succeed. At the same time, we don’t need to examine our judicial system or economic system with a critical eye, since the problem is “cultural.”

Every couple of decades or so, some white “scientist” or “researcher” will come out with a book or a study that proves statistically that blacks are inferior to whites. In 1994 we had a book called The Bell Curve, which actually created serious discussion and controversy. It was simply a resurrection of old fallacies in new and more sophisticated language, and mucked up with a lot of complex and ambiguous hedging about genes and intelligence and how that translated into “success.” Like the reemergence of the national id after years of attempted sublimation, white supremacist assumptions periodically resurface in order to justify the status quo.

This need to justify the status quo at all costs is a prevalent and widely held compulsion that applies across a wide range of issues besides race. It makes serious evaluation of our problems extremely difficult.

I ask again, then, and in this case the subject is racism: why are 50% of American prison inmates black, when black people are only 13% of our population? If you can’t start with the word “racism” (and then move from there into substantive discussions about how to change our society), I guarantee that you will end up twisting your mind into knots, all so that you don’t have to admit the problem—in short, so that you can stay comfortably asleep.

Not Important

2009-02-04T19:42:00.000-08:00

Rush Limbaugh says he hopes Obama will fail. Limbaugh says that Obama is unqualified. Limbaugh, blaugh, blaugh, blaugh. How do I know this? Because it’s reported on the news. Apparently, Rush Limbaugh is news. He has a radio show, you see, a conservative radio show, and, uh, it’s newsworthy.

Yeah, AM radio. That’s where it’s happening. That’s what all the kids are listening to. Hannity and O’Reilly and Lou Dobbs and lots of other guys have radio shows. AM radio shows. That’s the wave of the future, you know. AM. When I’m tired of listening to good music with good sound quality, there’s nothing I like better than to turn on the crackling old AM and listen to some bellicose ignoramus raving and whining about whatever he happens to be hating on that day. Mmm, good.

These people that report on what Rush Limbaugh says apparently think that he is significant. I’d like to know how some fucking tub of lard on AM radio gets to be significant. Honestly, these shows are the most boring piles of shit in the universe. I can predict every single thing on them. Everything is the fault of liberals. Nothing is ever the fault of conservatives. Liberals are a priori wrong on anything, no exceptions. Even if conservatives have controlled the White House for the last eight years, and the Congress for twelve out of the last fourteen years, none of the problems we have are attributable to them. It’s always someone else’s fault.

That’s it. I’ve summed up the content of every single AM right wing “talk” show in a paragraph. It never varies. Anyone who can listen to this crap day after day, year after year, and not be bored out of his skull, is lower than a moron. He’s a sheep.

Rush Limbaugh is over, and deep down he knows it. The more these parasites lose, the crazier they get. Look for even more insane blubbering in the months to come, and look for it to be reported on as if it mattered. It does not matter. The cretins sitting home during the day listening to AM radio are dying. People are turning away from the putrid stink of wingnuttery in record numbers. There are actual problems that ordinary people are faced with, and fat ugly demagogues have nothing to offer them but more of the same ignorant rubbish. Eventually even the media will stop paying attention to Rush Limbaugh, and then he and his friends will dissipate into the air like yesterday’s fart.

Between the Lines

2009-01-26T12:45:00.000-08:00

The U.S. was "suspected" of two missile strikes in Pakistan on Friday. "Suspected" only because the Pentagon never publicly acknowledges such things, but of course, who else would have launched a missile strike?

The American empire flexing its muscles in the Middle East never makes me feel any safer, regardless of whether the dead in this case are innocent civilians or (as is claimed) "suspected militants."

In the world of realpolitik, one always needs to read between the lines. Tom Hayden offers an interesting take in his Obama Notes:

"The night after Obama's torture order, I was at dinner with a human rights lawyer who worried that the right-wing would launch political attacks on Obama for "letting our guard down." With that in mind, I became certain that the following day's Predator attack in Pakistan, which killed at least 10-18 people, was as much political as military, a message that the Pentagon will keep on launching strikes against a sovereign country in keeping with "war on terrorism" objectives. The cold truth may be that those people died in Pakistan to make closing Guantanamo more politically palatable. Many more will die as America tries to exorcise and replace the war on terror mentality.

"Obama has good reason to worry about counter-pressures from the right and the intelligence community. One day after the executive order banning torture was signed, an odd article appeared on the New York Times' front page about a former detainee who has joined al Qaeda in Yemen. There was no apparent reason for the article's timing except the Obama announcement. The detainee in question was released by President Bush, and is suspected of involvement in car bombings in September 2007."

It would seem that a President advocating change needs to cover his back at all times, prone as he is to constant harassment from the militarists and their right-wing enablers in and out of government. When, for instance, a seemingly coincidental article in the NYT such as that cited by Hayden appears, you must assume a deliberate strategy on the part of some faction. This is what it's been like for a long time--the real maneuvering is secret, far from the phony narratives concocted to explain events to a passive TV audience. It's to be expected that the domination of politics by elites will take on a conspiratorial character, although not the neat and monolithic type as dreamed by believers in Illuminati and such. There are power struggles within the establishment, within the ruling class if you will, and that is the real story occurring behind the curtain of public events and pronouncements.

The struggle against the notion of American empire will continue to be the primary field of struggle for progressives. It will be long and difficult because we are opposed not only by the Republican right, but by the so-called centrist Democrats, including Obama, who are unwilling (for whatever reasons: self-interest, political expediency, or just fear) to advocate true peace, which would involve shifting away from old notions of hegemony. It will take many years for this gradual shift to occur, but ironically the one factor in our favor is the collapse of the financial system. The sheer cost of military dominance is becoming economically unsustainable.

Final Philippic Against Bush

2009-01-19T18:36:00.000-08:00

In the last week we’ve seen Bush give a final press conference and a farewell address. Before that there were some interviews, and in all these appearances Bush has sought to defend his record, his so-called legacy. It’s not enough that he leave office having been despised by close to 80% of Americans and—this is the remarkable thing—been despised by the majority for the greatest continuous length of time of any President in U.S. history. It’s not enough to simply exit quietly to enjoy his wealth and privileges while ordinary Americans sink into an economic morass. Bush must now try to justify himself. During his eight-year reign, he operated primarily in secrecy. Most of his speeches were made at military rallies, before captive audiences who were required to be silent and respectful. Or he would appear at carefully rehearsed events that were prepared by his handlers so that there would be no hard questions. Most of his interviews were granted to toadies, charlatans, and demagogues, such as Sean Hannity and other Fox “news” propagandists. So I find it unseemly, to say the least, to observe Bush trying to appear open and available in the final days of his regime. It is obvious that he was sealed in his bubble long ago, and that there is no possibility of contact with reality.

The “farewell address” (I shudder to use the same phrase to describe this pathetic piece of theater, when it brings to mind Washington’s great speech) was the usual carefully parsed pack of lies, among which was the following: “Iraq has gone from a brutal dictatorship and a sworn enemy of America to an Arab democracy at the heart of the Middle East and a friend of the United States.” Hundreds of thousands of deaths (by conservative estimate!), many hundreds of thousands of more displaced, a country in ruins, and the killing hasn’t stopped, even if Bush succeeded in paying off some of the militias to reduce violence as part of his phony “surge.” That’s what I see. But Bush’s Iraq is apparently populated by unicorns, rainbows and happy furry bunnies liberated by American kindness. There’s no grief for the murdered children, the shattered families, or even the deaths of American soldiers, because after all, they signed up.

The news conference I found more interesting, in a perverse kind of way. Bush on his own, without a prepared speech, is usually a weird experience, and revealing, if you have the stomach for it. Here his body language was sickening in itself—looking down, grimacing like a half-wit, that creepy little snigger that passes for a laugh in his mind, the way he shifted from foot to foot like a very bad boy who’s been caught and is trying to think of a good excuse—Bush is the anti-gravitas. There is no dignity in this man.

So let’s go to the press conference:

“I think Israel has a right to defend herself. Obviously in any of these kinds of situations, I would hope that she would continue to be mindful of innocent folks, and that they help, you know, expedite the delivery of humanitarian aid.”

Israel defending herself seems to mean the same thing as America defending herself in Bush World: smashing everything in sight with overwhelming military power, and to hell with civilians. In other words, Israel’s government is acting just like Bush, so any talk of being “mindful of innocent folks” is nothing but empty words for the public.

“And third, why haven't we achieved peace? That's a good question.”

Since you basically agree with whatever the Israeli government does, no matter what, that gives it carte blanche to do whatever it wants without any consequences. Your unilateralism has been disastrous for the Middle East. Your mindless policy of aggression has made everything much worse than it was in 2001 when you took office. And yet you pretend otherwise, against all the evidence. There hasn’t been a more feeble, or more futile, peace effort in the history of American Middle East policy than yours.

“The most urgent threat that he'll have to deal with, and other Presidents after him [Obama] will have to deal with, is an attack on our homeland.”

Where did you get this “homeland” word? Everyone I know has always said, “my country.” If you look back through all of our history, it always says “country,” not “homeland.” It’s really a German phrase, isn’t it? At first I thought this was some creepy way to instill a kind of proto-fascist thought-process into the citizenry. You know, dying for the fatherland and all that. Recently I realized that “homeland” implies that America owns other lands, foreign lands, like a colonial power. So it’s really a colonialist/imperialist style of terminology. Well, I’m sure you didn’t invent it. As usual, you adopted a way of speaking that you were instructed in.

“This [Republican] party will come back. But the party's message has got to be that different points of view are included in the party.”

That’s odd, because that’s not the way things were in your administration. You demanded absolute loyalty, ideological and otherwise, from the party, and they voted as an almost unanimous block for your policies. It was quite robot-like, really. So this sudden interest in diversity of opinions can’t be taken seriously.

“In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession, I am ending on a recession. In the meantime there were 52 months of uninterrupted job growth.”

The recession you are “ending on” is many, many times the severity of the situation you supposedly inherited. To compare the mild downturn which actually started in March 2001, when you were already in office, to what we’re going through now, which has already lasted longer than any recession in 25 years and will probably get worse, is nothing short of chicanery. You are a liar.

As for job growth, there were only 3 million jobs created in your two terms, as opposed to 21 million under Clinton. Then we lost 2.6 million jobs in 2008, the most since World War II. Are you blind?

“And so, I view those who get angry and yell and say bad things and, you know, all that kind of stuff, it's just a very few people in the country. I don't know why they get angry. I don't know why they get hostile. It's not the first time, however, in history that people have expressed themselves in sometimes undignified ways. I've been reading, you know, a lot about Abraham Lincoln during my presidency, and there was some pretty harsh discord when it came to the 16th President, just like there's been harsh discord for the 43rd President.”

Arrogant pipsqueak, you dare to compare yourself to Lincoln? You're a mental midget calling yourself a giant.

You know, I never thought of myself as that patriotic, not in the stereotypical way. But since Bush has taken office, I realize how patriotic I am, because I am so angry at the way he has trampled on the Constitution of our country and made a mockery of our traditions. Yes, I am furious, and I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror if I weren’t outraged by your actions. Just in the last few months your administration has pushed through regulations that allow mining companies to dump waste into rivers and factory farms to allow their animal waste to seep into the reservoirs. You’ve opened up two million more acres of public land in the West, in and around our national monuments, to oil drilling. You’ve removed protections from workers exposed to toxic chemicals. You’ve pushed through regulations that allow providers to deny treatment to people because of religious views. These are only examples from the last few months! Your entire eight years have been filled with nothing but this kind of thing, policies that hurt ordinary people all over this country. Many people are losing their jobs right now because all you cared about was giving more wealth to your rich friends. More will suffer from poverty. Many people have died needlessly because of you. And you wonder why there is anger! What could be more despicable than this willful unconsciousness of the suffering of others caused by your own actions?

“You know, Presidents can try to avoid hard decisions and therefore avoid controversy. That's just not my nature. I'm the kind of person that, you know, is willing to take on hard tasks, and in times of war people get emotional; I understand that. Never really, you know, spent that much time, frankly, worrying about the loud voices. I of course hear them, but they didn't affect my policy, nor did they affect -- affect how I made decisions.”

If you had really made hard, principled decisions we would be seeing some benefit from them. You might not be popular with the majority, but you would have a sizable minority in this country that would understand and agree with what you did. But there’s a difference between hard decisions and wrong decisions. You’ve consistently made the wrong ones, and to say that you’re unpopular because you’re principled is sheer vanity on your part. Do you really believe that over 70% of Americans just don’t understand how high-principled you are? That we’re all so stupid that we turned against you because you made tough decisions? We judge by the results, Bush, we see the havoc you’ve created, and the total failure on all fronts, and we judge by that. If you invade a country, for instance, and then make every wrong decision about how to secure that country, so that the infrastructure collapses and the country dissolves into civil war, while billions of dollars get poured into the toilet, do you think the people aren’t going to judge by those results? Most of the time you didn’t even make decisions, you appointed incompetent ideologues who made bad decisions that you didn’t keep track of. So spare us this idiotic nonsense about “your nature” and how you take on hard tasks. It’s a lie. You’re obviously lazy and inattentive, and the people know that.

“I wasn't kidding when I said Wall Street got drunk and we got the hangover.”

Your entire administration was about handing over our wealth to Wall Street. You outsourced the war to greedy contractors who ripped us off on an unprecedented scale. Yet you talk as if Wall Street was something different than you, something outside of you that you had nothing to do with.

“Clearly putting a Mission Accomplished on a aircraft carrier was a mistake. It sent the wrong message. We were trying to say something differently, but nevertheless, it conveyed a different message. Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake.”

Yeah, you would consider anything that goes wrong with your public relations a mistake. But since you did whatever Karl Rove thought would be politically advantageous, there doesn’t seem to have been anything else going on except public relations. You flew onto that aircraft carrier in your little flight suit, and you thought you were really cool, I bet. Oh look at me, I’m a macho man. And six years later, and many thousands dead and maimed later, the only mistake in your mind was that banner behind you.

“I've thought long and hard about Katrina -- you know, could I have done something differently, like land Air Force One either in New Orleans or Baton Rouge. The problem with that and -- is that law enforcement would have been pulled away from the mission. And then your questions, I suspect, would have been, how could you possibly have flown Air Force One into Baton Rouge, and police officers that were needed to expedite traffic out of New Orleans were taken off the task to look after you?”

You seem to think that you’re just an individual with some sort of symbolic power. Don’t you realize that you were the President during Katrina? It is grotesque beyond belief that you would think that the problem with Katrina was you not visiting New Orleans right away. People were stranded there dying, and nobody came to help, you idiot! Five days after the levees broke, and FEMA didn’t even know that there were people at the Superdome screaming for help. You were the head of the executive branch. It was your job to help those people, and you failed miserably. And you continued to fail after that. There has been no commitment to recovery in New Orleans. Most survivors have either scattered to other places or are still living in trailers. You didn’t care, and it’s obvious from your feeble response here that you still don’t care.

“I believe that running the Social Security idea right after the '04 elections was a mistake.”

Destroying Social Security was a bad idea no matter when you would have proposed it. But it’s so typical of you that a matter of political timing would be your sole idea of a mistake.

“There have been disappointments. Abu Ghraib obviously was a huge disappointment during the presidency. Not having weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment. I don't know if you want to call those mistakes or not, but they were -- things didn't go according to plan, let's put it that way.”

How can you call Abu Ghraib a disappointment? It was a crime, and it was really just the tip of the iceberg concerning the widespread crime of torture, which you approved. Abu Ghraib was merely a result of the policies that you, Cheney, and Rumsfeld approved. And you continue to promote torture to this day. So I guess the disappointment was that the photos of Abu Ghraib were released. If there had been no photos, no publicity, you wouldn’t have been disappointed.

And by the way, words can't express how disturbing it is to have my government using torture and trying to justify it. What is this sick obsession with torture, anyway? Anyone with morals knows it's wrong. If you're not against torture, you're probably a sociopath. Yet those of us who oppose this were said to be anti-American, as if being an American meant having to endorse your sick perversions. I honestly believe you should be in a prison mental ward instead of strutting around the world stage.

Then it’s gruesome that you would say that you were disappointed by “not having weapons of mass destruction.” But it’s very revealing. Of course you wanted to find horrible weapons to justify your unilateral, illegal war. The weapons were of course just a pretext for the invasion, because you wanted to invade even before 9/11, so you used whatever made-up arguments you could, and you twisted the intelligence to fit your desire to invade. And that’s a crime. I remember how you joked about it later at the press dinner--where are those weapons, ha ha--just like you would smirk and laugh when talking about the war, even while people were dying. I've been ashamed to even look at you. It's as if you are the personification of everything soulless and cynical in this world, while pretending to be a paragon of virtue.

“And in terms of the decisions that I had made to protect the homeland, I wouldn't worry about popularity. What I would worry about is the Constitution of the United States, and putting plans in place that makes it easier to find out what the enemy is thinking, because all these debates will matter not if there's another attack on the homeland. The question won't be, you know, were you critical of this plan or not; the question is going to be, why didn't you do something?”

How bizarre that you would say you were worried about the Constitution. Yeah, I guess you were worried that the Constitution of our country was something that made us weak, so you sought ways to nullify it, in violation of your oath of office, in which you pledged to protect it. As far as the notion that torture makes it easier to find out what the enemy is thinking, I don’t believe you. Torture never served that end. It never led to any convictions or foiled any threats. The phony examples you’ve given have been debunked over and over, but of course that doesn’t stop you from continuing to lie about it. But in any case, if you don’t think torture is wrong, how can you claim to be moral, or a Christian? Whenever challenged on this, you sputter about how you’re protecting us and our kids as if you were the big daddy and we shouldn’t question you. As if this country, which has survived a civil war and world wars and many trials, needs to crawl under the bed and shiver in fear because of a few terrorists, and then hand our liberties over to some little tin-horn wimp squeaking about the homeland. You impudent, pathetic little man, did you really think that one terrorist attack meant that we had to scrap over two hundred years of our history and become a one-party dictatorship like China? Because that’s the way you acted. To call it hubris would be to dignify it. You are simply and appallingly ignorant of what the United States of America is about. When you talk about freedom I guess you mean the freedom to buy products from big corporations, or maybe the freedom to vote in rigged elections. But freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from unlawful search and seizure—you don’t have the slightest inkling of what that is.

“Do you remember what it was like right after September the 11th around here? In press conferences and opinion pieces and in stories -- that sometimes were news stories and sometimes opinion pieces -- people were saying, how come they didn't see it, how come they didn't connect the dots? Do you remember what the environment was like in Washington? I do. When people were hauled up in front of Congress and members of Congress were asking questions about, how come you didn't know this, that, or the other? And then we start putting policy in place -- legal policy in place to connect the dots, and all of a sudden people were saying, how come you're connecting the dots?”

You were warned that bin Laden was going to attack, and you took a vacation. Not a single person was disciplined or investigated for failing to stop 9/11. Instead they got medals. So why shouldn’t the Congress ask questions, you dolt? That’s what they’re supposed to do, but as I recall, there really weren’t enough questions. And suddenly the Patriot Act is brought out, this huge document produced very quickly—and maybe you call this “connecting the dots”—yet it had little to do with actually preventing terrorism and everything to do with giving unlimited power to the executive and its spy agencies to attack the left, jail people without trial, and generally exploit the crisis for your own advantage. Then you used the NSA to tap Americans phones, without getting a FISA warrant as you were required to do. It’s not as if it would have been hard to get a FISA warrant. You would have easily gotten one. So the implication is clear—you broke the law and went around FISA because you were using the NSA to spy on political opponents, and you didn’t want that known. How contemptible.

“I believe this -- the phrase "burdens of the office" is overstated. You know, it's kind of like, why me? Oh, the burdens, you know. Why did the financial collapse have to happen on my watch? It's just -- it's pathetic, isn't it, self-pity.”

Unconscious people generally affirm what they try hardest to deny. It is clear that you are drenched in self-pity. The fact that you would use the financial collapse happening on your watch is revealing. To you, the financial collapse just happened and you had nothing to do with that. You’re just a passive observer. All the dismantling of regulations, the looting of the treasury to help your rich friends through sweetheart contracts and tax cuts, the economic sinkhole of your two wars and your phony war of terror, all that had nothing to do with the financial collapse in your mind.

What’s amazing to me is how such a narcissist could have served two terms as President of the U.S. Everything’s about you and your feelings. I never get a sense from you of the public good, or even civic duty. It’s all just a little drama with you in the center. It’s revolting to listen to a totally self-centered person with no values and realize that this was our President. It’s really shocking. Why did you even run for President? It doesn’t seem you ever cared about the country, or had a vision of any kind. I’ll bet you were persuaded by a bunch of Republican buddies that you could win, and you thought, “Wow, that would be really cool to be President.” You get to be really important and strut around and have your picture taken. You can live in the White House and get your name in the history books. Is that why you ran for President? I can’t figure it out. I could see if you were someone who was ambitious for power, but when you got to be President you basically did whatever Dick Cheney and Karl Rove told you to do. You were disengaged from the job. It was as if you wanted to be President without having to think.

The fact that you actually wore a little device on your back during the 2004 campaign, through which somebody would whisper your lines to you, really shows that you have no pride at all. Oh, we know that you were being prompted during the debates. We saw the device under your suit jacket. Of course the media never probed too deeply on that one because it was so embarrassing, and the media bent over backwards not to reveal anything embarrassing about the “commander in chief.” But I can’t imagine anyone with a shred of pride agreeing to do that. So on the one hand, you’re a narcissist, thinking about yourself all the time, and on the other hand you don’t have enough pride or resilience to really stand on your own. That’s a very sick combination.

The fact that you chose your campaign manager, Dick Cheney, to be your running mate in 2000 was a real tip-off. I mean, no other politician would have done that. Most Presidents want a VP who is subordinate, but you chose someone who manages your campaign, someone who ended up managing your administration. Why did you allow that? Why, if you really care so much about your legacy, would you hand your power off to someone else? I can only conclude that you’re basically a shiftless coward with no center. Without stronger people directing you, you’re helpless. You’ll just sit there with a lost look in your eyes, even when the country’s being attacked, until someone tells you what to do.

“People said, well, the federal response [to Katrina] was slow. Don't tell me the federal response was slow when there was 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed. I remember going to see those helicopter drivers, Coast Guard drivers, to thank them for their courageous efforts to rescue people off roofs. Thirty thousand people were pulled off roofs right after the storm moved through. It's a pretty quick response.”

Yes, the Coast Guard did their job. But no one else did. So now you hide behind the Coast Guard, just like you hide behind the troops, making excuses. Revolting.

“It's just the rhetoric got out of control at times…I don't know why. You need to ask those who -- those who used the words they used.”

You never disassociated yourself from the rhetoric. Your entire team used the rhetoric. Your Republican supporters used the rhetoric. And you used it too. You implied over and over that Democrats were somehow aiding the enemy. Cheney said that if Kerry won there would be probably be another attack. Now you act as if you played no part in any of this, as if your work with Karl Rove never happened. You’re lying.

I’m getting tired. There’s much more I could say. I could talk about how you promised to fire anyone involved in outing the CIA agent, and broke the promise, and then commuted Libby’s sentence. I could talk about how you paid phony journalists to promote your policies and planted Jeff Gannon in the press room; how you went back on nuclear “no first use” policy which opened the door for Armageddon; I could talk about your close ties to Enron, failing to support troops with proper armor, failing to support troops when they come home, not allowing dead soldiers’ coffins to be photographed, the horrendous military commissions act voiding habeas corpus, Terry Schiavo, Dubai, appointing right wing judges like Roberts and Alito, censoring global warming data, using false terror alerts for political ends, firing attorneys when they refused to cooperate in election tampering, lickspittle Gonzo and his chronic amnesia, Pat Tillman, Blackwater, oh I give up. I couldn’t possibly mention all the damage you’ve done, all the scandals and crimes and lies, because everything you did failed and everything you touched turned to shit.

Just a few final thoughts. When you and your friends argued for a theory of the “unitary executive,” did you understand that meant that you were above the law? That you were essentially lawless? What’s to prevent a President from announcing a never-ending war (remember to give it a snappy name) and then using that war to justify overriding all the safeguards against the separation of powers? In fact, that’s exactly what you did, or what you tried to do. I count that as treason because it deliberately strikes at the very heart of our republic and seeks to establish a dictatorship. You basically tried to overthrow the United States, using terrorism as a pretext.

Among the most shameful aspects of the last eight years were the elections of 2000 and 2004. You cheated in order to win Florida in the 2000 election. Most people agree that this is true. And in a way, it seems par for the course for a politician to try to win by any means. But then in 2004, on Election Day, when there was no more campaigning, you suddenly took Air Force One to Columbus, Ohio, accompanied by Karl Rove, where you met with Kenneth Blackwell, Republican campaign manager and Secretary of State for Ohio. Why did you do that? That seems very unusual for the President to make a trip to Ohio on Election Day, when there was no more campaigning to be done.

There was voter suppression in Ohio. We know that. What is obvious to anyone with eyes to see is that there was also outright fraud in Ohio. You conspired with Karl Rove to steal an election. Ken Blackwell was involved in switching computer-tabulated votes in that state to your column. And as a President, not just a candidate, that constitutes a breathtaking violation of every citizen’s trust in their government. When we can’t believe that our votes are counted, when elections can be rigged by the government, that’s a sign that freedom has ended and we can give up hope.

So in your secret little mind you know that you really didn’t earn being President. Both elections were stolen. For you to live with it requires an astonishing level of mendacity, perhaps a very complicated system of rationalization and denial. It’s certainly delusional, and it means that you were always unfit to serve, from the very beginning until now.

I gather that you are interested in how history will judge your Presidency. This is how it will be. In the list of Presidents in the history books, your name will be the only one with an asterisk next to it. Next to the asterisk at the bottom of the page it will say “Illegitimate.” You will be the President that unlawfully usurped the White House, and was therefore, technically speaking, never President at all. These eight years will be like a gap in history, an unfortunate and tragic period in which a criminal acted as if he were the elected leader of the country. Your name will be only a blot on the history of the nation.

And if your Presidency is mentioned when kids are being taught social studies at school, you will be compared to Benedict Arnold. Both were traitors to the United States; both names will be forever associated with crime and treason. This is a bit unfair to Benedict Arnold, the teacher will point out, since Arnold was a real hero before he betrayed the country. But Bush was never anything, and moreover, he betrayed the country while serving as President, which is the greatest act of treason one could imagine.

That is your legacy. Now go away. We mourn all the people who died and suffered because of you, and the many who will continue to suffer in the future because of your betrayals. There was a sign in New Orleans after Katrina that said “All looters will be shot.” In the end, all you are is a looter. You looted whatever you could and then you whined that you were misunderstood. Count yourself lucky that you haven’t been shot, because that’s what you deserve. We don’t want to hear any more bullshit from you, Go to your fucking ranch with your thorazine-addled wife, get drunk, and leave us alone. You’ve done enough damage. Get lost.

War Crimes

2009-01-17T22:33:00.000-08:00

That is what is happening in Gaza. Any government that uses phosphorus on human beings has lost all legitimacy. (See here also.) I said it about the U.S. government in Fallujah. I now say it about the Israeli government in Gaza. The Israeli people need to overthrow the right-wing militaristic gang running their country. Anyone making excuses for this at this point in history is either a liar or seriously deluded.

To My Readers (you happy few)

2009-01-13T19:02:00.000-08:00

My posting has dwindled in frequency over the past year. I know it, and I wish it were different, but so it is. What I plan to do in '09 is post shorter thoughts, insights, etc., like most blogs do, instead of thinking that every piece has to be some well-crafted essay. It just doesn't work that way.

Having said that, I also need to say that witnessing Bush making the rounds lately, being interviewed, giving a press conference, and on Thursday is scheduled a "farewell address" for god's sake, I am mightily pissed, and am planning a final philippic against that blood-stained sociopath before he leaves. Silly me, I thought such a colossal failure might just slink away quietly, but the bastard won't shut up, trying to convince us that things weren't that bad, and that he actually accomplished things. There's a reason that three quarters of the country hates your guts, douchebag. Shut the fuck up and get out.

Superficial

2009-01-03T16:12:00.000-08:00

As a film lover, and a critic, it has become impossible to ignore the ever-increasing presence of the comic book superhero on the screen. Of course this is not a new phenomenon, but it is obvious that in the last few years Hollywood has been making movies from the Marvel Comics catalogue at an unprecedented rate, along with other superhero and comic book characters.

I’m not going to take the position that comic books rot the minds of the young. I read them myself when I was a pre-teen, and occasionally even later. An industry expert might argue that the adolescent and “young adult” market is the primary targeted demographic of Hollywood, and that therefore it makes perfect sense that it would latch on to this genre, which also happens to involve a popular element from videogames: computer-generated imagery. In terms of cinema history, this is another example of the tension between film as commercial product and art form. Hollywood’s investment in a blockbuster strategy, in which huge sums are spent on a film in the hopes of massive profits, has meant that the creative aspect of cinema keeps getting pushed farther onto the margins. It also indicates a state of “mainstream” film craft that is increasingly out of touch with what I would call “literary” ideas. Industry filmmakers seem to live in a world without books—we witness instead a steady stream of TV show remakes and adaptations of comic books and graphic novels.

What I find more interesting is how film fans and reviewers manage to convince themselves that superheroes are invested with more significance or insight when they are adapted into films. The daily newspaper reviewers, and those for major magazines and media outlets (I don’t say critics, for that’s a different matter) are going to pay attention to these money-making films or else be out of a job. Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight has gotten this treatment, and plenty of rave reviews. The film struck me as a repellent mélange of sadism, sensory over-stimulation, and traditional simplistic action-movie tropes.

What I call sadism in the movies is the exploitation of the “thrill” of witnessing immoral, amoral, or extremely taboo behavior—in short, brutal violence for its own sake, for the sake of excitement in the spectator rather than as an integral element in a story idea or theme. It took off in the horror genre, and has since migrated to the action/adventure and suspense films. This aspect has come to overshadow narrative itself in many cases. The amped-up “aesthetic” of a film like The Dark Knight reminds me of stronger, more potent forms of drugs that are made to provide a greater “hit” for the addict who has already developed a tolerance for previous forms. In any case, fans and reviewers praise the way Nolan (and the late brilliant actor Heath Ledger) invests this superhero story with “darkness.” I would argue, however, that the nature of the superhero genre itself resists any deeper meanings, either associated with dark themes, or any meaningful themes at all.

Superhero comic books express an adolescent fantasy that is a reaction against fear and powerlessness. A child is confronted with control and interference from adults and from the powerful influence of society. This becomes something of a conflict when the child reaches pre-teen age, about eleven years old, sometimes earlier. We crave autonomy, but we’re not old enough to exercise it wisely. Adolescent rebellion is in large part a striving for separation from the controlling adult forces.

In literary fiction, and in all forms of art that are meaningful and of high quality, the desires of human beings are portrayed and expressed in the context of real life realities. A primary reality is pain and mortality—in other words, the natural limitations of any sentient being or in fact any existing thing or condition. I don’t restrict this to realism or naturalism in the arts. Symbolist or mythic art engages with reality. Lewis Carroll’s playful fantasy, and even the best science or fantasy fiction, engages the human condition in some way that is meaningful.

With modern popular genres, however, we observe a steady flattening effect, a reduction of human reality to much smaller dimensions. In simplest form, genre becomes an expression of wish-fulfillment fantasy. The romance novel or the paperback western don’t give us the unexpected—what the reader wants is the same thing over and over. The good guy beats the bad guy. The woman meets and marries the prince. And so forth. The pleasure of repetitive genre is very crude, but effective. It feels good to see good triumph over evil because it’s a fantasy. In reality, things aren’t that clear cut. Art forms that seek to express the truth that is not “clear cut” are often rejected by the genre lover. The common aversion to the “unhappy” ending, for instance, is really the genre lover objecting to the wish fulfillment being frustrated.

There is a distinct pleasure involved in the literary or non-genre arts. It is the perception of truth. An increase in awareness, which usually involves an increase in emotional presence, is pleasurable, but it is a pleasure that needs to be learned. It is more complex than genre pleasure, and needs more time to develop. The fact, however, is that both elements are often blended together in works of art. Some filmmakers, for example, have employed genre structure while also expressing truth—the results can be very effective. Wishes, desires, are an important part of human nature, so it’s only natural that they should take a prominent place in art.

The superhero tale is a genre in which wish-fulfillment no longer tries to conceal itself within physical reality. H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man had a mythic precursor: the folklore hero with the magic cloak that makes him invisible. But then there’s The Time Machine. It’s curious that no author in all of recorded history ever conceived of time travel before. The scientific and industrial revolutions solidified a world-view in which magic no longer had a place. There’s a sense in which science fiction explored the possibilities within that world-view. But there was also a strong impulse to defy this new regime of thought.

In a popular form of the superhero tale, the main character is a nebbish, a loser who is often bullied by stronger people. Somehow this loser gains supernatural powers. He puts on a costume and fights crime—a hero in disguise. Meanwhile he maintains his old identity as a loser, continuing to be slighted and ignored while secretly knowing that he is a super-powered hero. This isn’t the only form, though. Batman is a rich playboy in “real” life, and he has no supernatural powers, only far-advanced technology and fighting skills. Still, in most cases there’s a “secret” identity (the ordinary identity he was born with) and a separate superhero identity.

Why would this genre originally be aimed at pre-teens and adolescents? Because the peculiar frustration of this group is that they are prevented from exercising autonomy in the world even though they feel the need to express it somehow. And the forces arrayed against their autonomy are so powerful that there is no hope for the child to prevail. The fantasy, then, requires extraordinary powers, powers that defy physical reality, in order for the hero to triumph over the forces that oppose him. The ordinary frustrating life, the real life of the child, is preserved in the story by a secret identity, with the superhero identity expressing the wish for power. (With time, when the readers became thoroughly accustomed to the genre, it became impossible to abandon the “secret identity” altogether. The reader could still identify with the superhero without having to keep a foot in reality.)

I no longer read superhero comic books, for a few reasons. The main reason is that as an adult I have developed a need for the awareness of truth, an engagement with reality through the transforming power of art. I haven’t lost all my wish-fulfillment tendencies—they’ve simply taken a less central role. As a critic, I now view genre fiction and other pure forms of genre narrative, as less interesting, less vital, less important. Therefore I get accused of being a snob, which I’ve co-opted in a humorous way as part of my identity as a critic. Personally, I can’t do much about this. It’s as if I’ve dined regularly on filet mignon and can therefore no longer find the appetite for a Burger King “whopper,” to which the whopper lovers respond by calling me an elitist. But the truth is that I don’t consider the pleasures of genre to be worthless, and I even partake of them sometimes, though less often. I simply think that they are less meaningful and less important than art forms that engage with the truth of human life in an honest and uncompromising fashion, and that an art form that becomes dominated by genre to the point where reality becomes a dirty word is an art form that is in poor health. In terms of film, then, I don’t see anything wrong with superhero films per se. But when the film industry devotes a huge percentage of its resources to the creation of superhero films, I sense something wrong, in fact something dishonest.

I don’t refer to graphic novels in general, but only to the superhero narrative. The notion of the super-powered individual as hero is based, I believe, on a fantasy, and it’s a fantasy of the impossible. When this story emerges from its adolescent origins into the cultural mainstream, what it tells me is that frustration and powerlessness are expanding elements of our experience. The only form of wish-fulfillment that can remedy this is an impossible infusion of power. There is no balance between the autonomy and capabilities of the individual and the powers that restrict him. In social terms, the national security state and the advanced technical power of destruction achieved by the armed forces reduces the powers of the individual protagonist to insignificant proportions. Even the non-superpower action heroes, such as Jason Bourne in the Bourne movies, regularly perform and endure things that are beyond belief. The demands of wish-fulfillment, in short, become more and more exaggerated as our actual powerlessness increases.

The pretensions of a film like The Dark Knight are insurmountable, simply put, because the hero, wearing tights and a cape, is an adolescent fantasy that cannot be transformed into meaningful content since it defies the core human reality of death and limitation. For the same reason, the exaltation of violence in Hollywood cinema, not just in superhero or action films but in almost every genre, is meaningless because it is intended as an addictive hit for a powerless spectator rather than as a truth that actually engages us.

A vital art, a vital literature or cinema of the future, would need to explore the actual power and capabilities of human beings without giving way to nihilism and despair. The superhero narrative reduces all power to the physical—it’s the counterpart to the doctrine of pure force and domination that is destroying the world. Higher art forms present wisdom, intelligence, love, emotion, presence, connection, and engagement as forms of true power and meaning in the world. The hero himself, or herself, has long ago lost relevance to the degree that he or she has lost human fallibility, and with it human depth and complexity. The story that Joyce tried to tell in Ulysses, that the mythic hero was a lie that needed to be transcended in favor of the “ordinary” (yet marvelous) narrative of real life, has not yet been absorbed into mass culture. Perhaps it is an adjustment that must come from social conditions as a whole. When the fantasy bubble bursts, there is a chance for light to come in. One of the tasks of art nowadays is to burst the bubble. And it doesn’t take superpowers to do it—just a commitment to honesty.

Clean House

2008-12-23T19:51:00.000-08:00

Chris Wallace asked Dick Cheney what his “highest moment” in the last eight years was, and he answered “9/11.”

You know, it’s become easy to just dismiss Cheney as a bizarre Darth Vader figure, but people should pay more attention to this answer. All the Bush years are succinctly contained in it. These ghouls, these spooks who somehow gained a grip on power in the United States, were overjoyed at the events of September 11, 2001. They saw it as a great opportunity to be exploited. I’ve said this before, and for those of us who are sane it still might sound extreme, but really, it’s right there in the record. These men exploited this horrific atrocity for their own benefit—and a majority of the American people let them. Like sheep, the majority went along with using a single disaster as an excuse for overturning two hundred years of democratic tradition. They bought into Cheney’s lie about “extraordinary” and “dangerous times” that required the exercise of unfettered executive power. And after five plus years of death in Afghanistan and Iraq, and corruption and criminal incompetence at home, it still took an economic collapse for the voters to turn against the monsters that usurped their country.

I won’t take the time to analyze Cheney’s interview further—he reiterated his dishonest arguments for torture and dictatorship. Dahlia Lithwick lays it out nicely for you at Slate (not exactly a radical left-wing site), and her main point is a most dispiriting one, i.e. Cheney’s views on everything have long been thoroughly discredited, yet there he remains, giving interviews and repeating the Orwellian lies that have surrounded us like a fog.

Let’s be absolutely clear. Richard Cheney should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, and for treason. As detestable a human being as he is, revenge is really not the point. Justice requires that when an individual holding high office in this land violates his oath of office, causes the deaths of untold thousands, and threatens the very foundation of constitutional government, there should be an accounting. Not for his sake—he’s incapable of remorse or apparently even of the recognition of ethical values—but for our sake and the sake of the country. If there’s no accountability for criminal behavior on the part of the most powerful people in the nation, then the law itself becomes hypocritical when applied to lesser crimes. Silence equals approval. If Cheney walks away with no consequences, then it’s essentially a win for fascism because it opens the door to future abuse.

I do not propose submitting Cheney to beatings, sleep deprivation, water torture, sexual mutilation, or any of the other methods he so enthusiastically promoted to be inflicted on others. I do not propose that he be imprisoned indefinitely without trial, kept in isolation until he goes insane, and then tried in a military court where he is denied the basic rights and elements of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. I would not propose that for anyone, because I believe in the Constitution of the United States, even for those who try to destroy it. No, I would like to see Dick Cheney tried in a regular court of law, with full right to counsel, and all other rights that are supposed to be guaranteed to someone accused of a crime. That’s not too much to ask. The victims of 9/11, who have been so disgracefully used by this man and his accomplices, deserve that much. So do the victims in Iraq. We all deserve some closure. I don’t want to hear any nonsense about “putting the past behind us.” The past never gets behind us unless there is some resolution.

The political establishment is afraid of bringing the Bush-Cheney crimes to account because they fear “instability.” The two parties are more interested in prestige than justice, so they maintain the false respectability of the status quo rather than bringing criminals in high places to justice. There is probably also a fear of being caught in the net—many members of Congress have been complicit in one way or another in the blood and corruption. So the consensus seems to be that nothing will be done. There will be no trials for Cheney, or Stephen Hadley, or Doug Feith, or Donald Rumsfeld. There may even be pardons—pardons before anyone has even been charged, which is a travesty.

So much the worse for us. But even given this probability, we need all the facts to come out. We need to know exactly what these men said and did. The secrecy must stop, or else it will continue to poison our society. We can’t just put our trust in some new “good” guy like Obama and leave it at that. Even if Obama turns out to be a good president, accountability and justice are structural needs that can’t be met with rhetoric or personalities. In politics, as in life, as in recovery—you don’t grow unless you first clean house.

The Perfect President

2008-12-14T20:14:00.000-08:00

Tolstoy wrote a tale called Esarhaddon, in which a king is in bed thinking about how he will order the torture and execution of his chief enemy the next day. He wakes up to discover that he is no longer himself, but his enemy, and as such he experiences the entire process by which he is captured, put in a cage, and then led to the stake to be executed. From this waking dream he also awakes, as the king again. Horrified by what he has learned, he frees his prisoner and gives up his crown.

Miracle stories like this express, among other things, a desire that the truth could be directly known and grasped by supernatural means, thus making the world a far better place than it is. Conscience has not proven to be a strong enough force to contend with the desire for gain. In the corporate world, for instance, money has lulled conscience safely to sleep.

I wish that the CEOs of Wal-Mart, Nike, Reebok, Guess? Jeans, JC Penney, and Bloomingdale’s (to mention only a few) would wake up some morning as a 12-year-old kid working in a foreign sweatshop, or a Mexican immigrant sewing clothes in L.A. for minimum wage and supporting two kids. Because I’m sure these guys don’t think about those people--to them, the workers are just a means towards the end of profit, and their struggles and suffering don’t matter.

And I wish that Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, William Kristol, Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams, and the rest of those fine, upstanding men who got us into this marvelous war would wake up tomorrow as Iraqi civilians, who have seen family members killed, their society destroyed, their country soaked in blood, and for what? Because I’m also sure these guys don’t think about their victims. Everything is abstract to them--ordinary people are just units in a geopolitical game. They can write the suffering off as “collateral damage,” justified for what they consider a noble end, which happens to coincide with American hegemony, as well as their own power and influence.

I thought of Esarhaddon whenever I saw George W. Bush being interviewed in recent days. It’s obvious he’s on a last-minute mission to spruce up his image, trying to appear like a decent, thoughtful person. It’s impossible, of course. Whether he’s saying, “Obviously I don't like the idea of people losing jobs, or being worried about their 401(k)s” (a far cry from admitting any responsibility for these developments) or naming his biggest regret as “the intelligence failure in Iraq” (when in fact he deliberately bent the intelligence to fit the policy of invasion, as we all should know by now), there’s simply no room for real honesty when you’re sitting on a mountain of lies.

I never dreamed I would be saying this, but there’s something absolutely perfect about George W. Bush as a representative both of U.S. power and the conservative political class. He is the end product of years of political image-making: the elevation of the talking point and the attack narrative over actual discussion, the reduction of ideology to its most basic (and stupid) elements, the shallow pseudo-patriotic rhetoric of Reaganist “pride” in country, the equation of naked greed with “principles.” Behold the apotheosis, the final incarnation of the right-wing ideal, summed up with an almost classical concision in one man, one “decider.” Leaving aside the policies (wrong and destructive 100% of the time, which I would have thought a statistical impossibility), and the corruption (as close to total as we can expect to see in American history), let us look at the man himself. The overriding characteristic is self-centeredness; indeed, narcissism of the most degraded variety. With an utter lack of self-knowledge, and certainly no awareness of an actual moral dimension to human life, Bush is all about himself--his own paltry emotions and thoughts, his image, his role, his “legacy.”

This would be a terrible shortcoming in a talented person, but in Bush’s case we see self-regard combined with a personality so mediocre, so lacking in distinction, that it should make anyone who has learned to read above the 6th grade level experience a cold shudder of fear. This is the end result, embodied in a kind of historical logic that seems eerie in its perfection, of the phony “conservative” movement--a complete cipher, an empty man, a man with no insides, no conscience, no reflection, no shadow. A grinning, head-bobbing, self-regarding fool, who doesn’t even know that he’s done incalculable harm, but thinks that the harm somehow just happened independently of him, and is therefore incapable of true remorse. If Bush woke up, like Tolstoy’s character, as a tortured Guantanamo prisoner, he would lack the ability even then to make the connection. The level of selfishness achieved here, and symbolized for all of us, is itself the true engine of capitalism, the real power behind American imperial ambition. The world’s great superpower is a feckless frat boy trying to impress his drunken friends—oh boy, I get to be the President! The specialness of Bush is not that he is different from other figures in the political establishment, but that he is such a perfect symbol of their secret aims and desires.

You see, the CEOs of Wal-Mart, Nike, and the rest--and the pack of neocons too--are no doubt family men who love their kids, and their pets too. I don’t believe in the Illuminati or any of that diabolical crap. The hidden meaning of Arendt’s “banality of evil” is that banality is the purest (and stupidest, and dullest) avenue of harm in this world. Self-interest, so called, is the most banal motive of all, and the most universal. Only rarely do we see this banality portrayed with such impeccable accuracy by the (harrumph!) “leader of the free world” as we have since 2001. Most of the time I would get so angry watching Bush that I’d switch the channel before the man had said more than two or three sentences. As it turns out, however, there was something to be learned (yet at such cost!).

It is not enough to imagine ourselves in someone else’s shoes. Or to be more accurate, it may be sufficient for those who have taken care to develop a strong conscience, but not for the rest. Why? Because power in the modern age, the age of arrogance, the tragic age when entire peoples can be vaporized with the flip of a switch--power has become synonymous with a failure of imagination.

We are all the same person, not in imagination alone, but in reality. This is the fact, a spiritual fact (dare I say a religious fact), the heaven, the nirvana, the whatever you want to call it, that we eventually confront with our own death but which we are called upon to experience today in order to truly know ourselves. As Tolstoy wrote: “You thought life dwelt in you alone, but I have drawn aside the veil of delusion, and you have seen that in doing evil to others you have done it to yourself as well. Life is one in everything, and within yourself you manifest but a portion of this one life. And only in that portion that is within you can you make life better or worse, magnify or diminish it. To destroy the life that dwells in others is not within your power. The life that was in those you have slain has not been destroyed: it has merely vanished from before your eyes. You thought to prolong your life and to shorten the lives of others, but you cannot do this. For life there is neither time nor space. The life of a moment and the life of thousands of years, your life and the lives of all creatures seen and unseen, is one. To destroy life, even to alter it, is impossible, for life alone exists. All else only seems to be.”

Just a few questions

2008-12-02T22:54:00.000-08:00

I watched the unveiling of Barack Obama’s “national security team,” and I have some questions for him.

Why is there not a single person on the team who opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003? I’m not suggesting that every person you appoint should have been right about the war, but I think it’s reasonable to expect at least one non-hawk appointee. One of your main selling points in the campaign was that you were opposed to this war. I don’t see why your appointments shouldn’t reflect that position in some way.

Why should we put up with having Bush appointee Robert Gates continue at Defense? As an old crony of Reagan spook William Casey, he was deeply involved in Iran-Contra and other dirty covert operations. Under Gates, the corruption and looting by war contractors in Iraq has not abated. He continues to push for massive budget increases at Defense, which does not represent any change from the past. And what about all the Rumsfeld parasites still on the Pentagon staff? Do they stay too? Really, sir, are we supposed to believe that you can’t find anyone better than this Bush toady to run Defense? If there was one chance to show courage and determination in appointments, it would be the Pentagon. All this signals is more of the same. I consider any person who worked for Bush-Cheney as already morally compromised.

Speaking of the Pentagon, will you take a good hard look at cutting the Defense budget? I realize that it’s considered politically dangerous to do so, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we happen to be having an economic meltdown after throwing away our resources on an illegal war. The war industry is in fact a drag on the economy—we can have a strong defense without having to waste billions of dollars making weapons manufacturers filthy rich. Moderate cuts in the Defense budget, including clamping down on the massive waste and fraud, will be needed if we’re going to restore the economy. If we can’t challenge this sacred cow, all the economic stimulus packages in the world aren’t going to do the trick.

What about Blackwater and the other private mercenary forces that are a stain on our honor and a threat to freedom? Will you please cancel their contracts?

Will there be accountability for the crimes and corrupt practices of KBR and other Iraq War contractors who have been looting billions from our Treasury?

You have nominated Janet Napolitano to run Homeland Security. This is a huge department created as part of Bush’s so-called “War on Terror.” Are you planning on continuing this so-called “war” which by definition can never end? Do you support the Patriot Act, one of the key items in Bush’s attack on the Bill of Rights? Do you plan to continue the illegal NSA spying “program” which uses the pretense of “terrorist surveillance” to violate the rights of our own citizens? Why is it called “Homeland Security” anyway? This is colonialist language that implies that we have other lands to administer—couldn’t we just call it domestic security?

You have said that you oppose the shameful use of torture by the Bush-Cheney regime, and that torture will end under your administration. Will you also end the so-called “renditions” in which human beings are kidnapped and sent to other countries who then torture these prisoners? Will you end secret prisons and indefinite detention without charges? Will you call for the repeal of the Military Commissions Act, which denies the age-old right of habeas corpus and violates the Bill of Rights?

Will there be any accountability for the crimes against humanity committed by the Bush administration? Will there be investigations into the unlawful actions of these people? If not, doesn’t that send the message that future Presidents can fail to uphold their oaths of office without fear of any consequences? How does sweeping these crimes under the rug help this country to change for the better?

I noticed that there was no nomination for CIA director. Does that mean that Bush appointee Michael Hayden, who has supported all the illegal and immoral foreign policy doctrines of the Bush-Cheney regime, is staying on at CIA? Isn’t it time for thorough reform of the CIA, NSA, and other intelligence agencies, especially following a period when a covert agent’s identity was exposed for political reasons by the administration, with minimal consequences?

I hear you talking about the danger of Iran getting a nuclear weapon. Could we also talk about the danger of any country at all having a nuclear weapon? How can we tell other countries not to get nukes when we’re not doing anything to reduce our own? Are we supposed to think that somehow we have the moral right and the inherent ability to wield these weapons, but other countries don’t? Will you lead by example and create a plan for gradual de-escalation of our nuclear arsenal, thereby lending legitimacy to our professed concerns about proliferation?

I haven’t heard you or Hillary Clinton questioning any of the policies of the Israeli government. Why should criticizing these policies be taboo and equated with hating Israel or being antisemitic? We can criticize the Mexican government’s policies without being accused of hating Mexicans, can’t we? Are you willing to admit that the Palestinians have rights too? This endless conflict in the West Bank and Gaza doesn’t make me feel safer—it makes everybody less safe, in fact. What do you plan to do to help Israel and the Palestinians make peace?

American politicians have been talking about supporting freedom and democracy for as long as I can remember. Why, then, do we pump arms and money into repressive authoritarian governments such as Egypt, Indonesia, or Uzbekistan? Will you end funding of such regimes?

We still hear anti-Cuban rhetoric every election cycle. Yet we continue to treat China, a totalitarian government, as a favored nation. Will you challenge China on its numerous violations of human rights? Will you open dialogue with Cuba?

The Bush administration expressed constant contempt for the United Nations. Will your administration recommit to the principles of international law and cooperation? Will you accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, or will you continue the Bush policy of defying the court, the Geneva Conventions, and other international standards of human rights and responsibilities?

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have contributed to the drastic poverty and debt of the developing world by using so-called “neoliberal” economic policies to maintain the power and privileges of rich countries and international corporations. Would you consider policies of debt forgiveness for the Third World in order to free poor countries from burdens unfairly placed on their people by corrupt leaders? Would you oppose the predatory economic strategies of international corporations that are impoverishing millions in Latin America, Africa, and Asia?

I expect the answers to a lot of these questions are going to be “no.” I know that there are great political constraints on a President in this country. Some are theorizing that you are bringing the establishment under your tent so that you can govern with less disruption than previous Democratic presidents. You’ve proven yourself to be a brilliant politician, which is a definite plus if you really want to create change. Nevertheless, I think these questions need to be asked, because change has to involve the challenging of preconceptions. And the level of disintegration we are witnessing today, socially and economically, makes this even more vital. You talk about unity, and I appreciate the sentiment, but you know, there are powerful groups who don’t want anything more than a cosmetic change, if that. And they aren’t giving up without a fight. If you just give in to these interests without confronting them, I think that there won’t be a significant enough change. This is true in every area of policy, but since I’m focusing on national security in this case, I will say that we need to make peace our priority, first and foremost. That means shifting away from our war-based social and economic structures. That means letting go of the illusion that we can be the world’s policeman. That means ending the madness of trying to exploit the world’s resources and people for the exclusive benefit of the U.S. and the international corporate classes. That means coming to our senses and recognizing our country as a republic, a nation among nations, and not an empire or superpower.

I wish you luck. I hope you prove yourself worthy of your promises.

The Issue of Straight Marriage

2008-11-23T20:25:00.001-08:00

Marriage is confusing. You can take it from me personally. But speaking solely in political terms, marriage is confusing because there are two kinds—civil and religious—that have always been confused together, if only because they’re both called “marriage.”

This constitutes one of the most basic mix-ups between church and state that we have. You go to court, you get a license, sometimes you get a blood test. (The clerk actually gave us a little bag of goodies that included detergent, god only knows why.) And then, if you choose, you can have a J.P. perform a marriage ceremony. Or you can have some licensed religious person perform it. In any case, to make the civil part legal, you sign the marriage license with witnesses, and the person who performed the ceremony signs it, and it’s done.

If you just do the religious part without getting the license signed, you’re not legally married, i.e. in terms of civil marriage.

Civil marriage confers various legal benefits involving taxation, inheritance, insurance, medical decisions, and other social advantages. An argument could actually be made that the state discriminates against single people by conferring special benefits on married couples. The idea is that marriage somehow advances the interests of the community or the nation. Traditionally that would mostly imply the advantage of producing children, although of course people who are not married do that regularly. Then we get into the whole notion of legitimate versus illegitimate children, which really ends up being about property and how it’s passed on. Marriage itself was primarily a way to perpetuate property through the male line, and it’s only been in relatively recent times that the question of love has entered into it.

Organized religion being one of the bulwarks of the social order, it stands to reason that civil marriage and religious marriage were traditionally one and the same. But the rise of the secular state has occasioned a gradual split between the two marriages.

I know I’m not the first person to point out that, considering marriage in the light of the First Amendment, it would make sense for the American government to get out of the business of marriage by calling it something different such as “civil union.” That’s what civil marriage already is, but by taking the word “marriage” out of it, we could continue to allow religious institutions to marry, or refuse to marry, whomever they wished, and at the same time allow consenting adult couples to enjoy the benefits of civil union.

Of course this isn’t going to happen, and I think if we consider that fact calmly and clearly we can understand why it is more difficult to protect equal rights for gay people in terms of marriage than such a logical solution would suggest.

The values and mores of a people change over time. It used to be considered fine and dandy to enslave human beings. That changed, and there was a considerable struggle involved in that change. In terms of marriage, we can learn from the Bible that patriarchal society used to believe that having multiple wives was okay. That changed too. The notion that is undergoing change at this point in time is that homosexuality is immoral. There is an ever-increasing number of people who no longer believe this. However, those who still believe it are tenaciously struggling to maintain this “moral” position as part of the laws. The so-called sodomy laws have been successfully challenged. Now the marriage laws are being challenged.

One of the more ironic, and even a bit amusing, aspects of the legal struggle is that gay marriage was never specifically outlawed, simply because the folks who made the laws never conceived of the possibility of gay marriage. The general social hostility against homosexuality precluded any such notion. Now that this hostility is being eroded, those who still believe that homosexuality is immoral want to “define” marriage as between one man and one woman.

In the recent controversy around California’s Proposition 8, a spokesman for the Mormons said that the church was not against gays, but only wanted to protect the institution of marriage. Other religious opponents of gay marriage have put forward this argument, and presented various imaginary disasters that will happen to society if we allow gays to marry. This argument is nothing more than a lie, or at best a piece of outrageous self-delusion. Without the belief that homosexuality is immoral, there is no reason to oppose gay marriage. Those who try to claim that they’re not anti-gay, and yet continue to oppose gay marriage, are simply afraid to state their true belief, which is becoming less popular, and thus less likely to succeed. (Of course there’s also the “love the sinner, hate the sin” canard, which only the most fervent state of denial could distinguish from the position of being “anti-gay.”)

In the case of politicians such as Obama who are, I suppose, not anti-gay, their refusal to support gay marriage is just another example of electoral timidity. They stick their fingers in the wind, and if there’s too much cross-current, they take the safe route, even if it means betraying principle. As soon as the zeitgeist shifts decisively, these same politicians will support gay marriage. This is another example of how change has to come from the bottom up.

Why authoritarian fundamentalists are so fixated on homosexuality, when they pass by the everyday immorality of their own death-dealing imperialist country, and even confer a Christ-like blessing on the nuclear bomb, is a subject for another essay, or probably an entire book. Religion as a guardian of the sexual order has become so dominant that it might escape the average person’s awareness that there used to be something more to “faith” than bickering about who gets to have sex with whom. In a world of suffering and calamity, it behooves us to ask if two loving people wanting to get married really hurt anyone, and if someone purporting to carry a gospel of “love” can reasonably dictate whom we should not love, especially when his own hatred and fear is on glorious display for all of us to see. But such is the predicament of religion in modern life. The least worthy representatives of faith seem to have a monopoly on all the megaphones.

Here is a question that I never hear asked. If gay marriage is outlawed, what of all the churches and other religious groups that have allowed it? For instance, I have attended gay weddings that were performed by liberal Methodist ministers. What of their religious freedom? Does it not violate their First Amendment rights to say that their weddings are invalid? It should go without saying that even if gay marriage is legalized, any church or other religious group has the right to refuse to marry someone within their tradition. So it really comes down to certain religionists wanting to dictate their own marriage (i.e. sexual) beliefs to everyone else.

The issue, it seems to me, is not gay marriage, but straight marriage. If the union of two consenting adults is conceived in the light of an ideological agenda that excludes certain people because of their sexuality, what does that say about the institution itself? I would argue that it diminishes it, and even threatens to invalidate it completely. The real immorality is to enjoy a benefit, civil or religious, that is inherently denied to others. It thereby becomes an unjust privilege rather than a blessing, and it loses whatever sacramental character it might have had. Allowing gays to marry, therefore, is necessary in order for marriage itself to be preserved.

Real reasons to celebrate

2008-11-12T17:37:00.000-08:00

The Obama victory is a cause for reflection, and there will be plenty of it in the two-month limbo which is the Bush regime’s last gasp. I here draw attention to one curious aspect of the post-election hubbub—some of the comments from left-wing and progressive voices that don’t buy into the “mainstream” political narrative. I count myself as one of those voices, albeit a small one, so what I have to say can be taken in a sense as self-criticism.

More than one writer has referred to Obama’s supporters as “cultists”—brain-dead enthusiasts with no understanding of their candidate’s adherence to establishment views on the economy and foreign policy. When it comes to policy, a critical stance is a very good thing. But when generalizations about the people who supported Obama are made with the language of contempt, I suspect that there’s something wrong going on psychologically.

Alex Jones went so far as to say that Obama would be much worse than Bush because the positive consensus, the perception of a mandate, would give Obama more power to take away our freedoms by consolidating a police state. By that logic, the less popular a President is, the better—which amounts to saying that the worse President is better because he will more effectively galvanize the opposition. This is a fallacy. The more the government is inclined to rightist, neo-fascist ideology, the less chance there is for successful progressive action. I know, I know: Alex Jones is not a good example of “leftist” thinking, but this particular idea is revealing of a certain very specific, and wrong-headed, way of looking at American politics.

One can become so obsessed with the criminal actions of the government, and the corruption of the political system, that one’s energy and motivation become trapped in what I call “enemy mind.” Instead of being fueled by a passionate love for human beings and their rights, we can end up stuck in a place of hatred for enemies. From years and years of being marginalized, progressives can become used to not making a difference—become inured, in other words, to an emotional condition of angry futility.

There were a lot of people who were celebrating after this election. I was one of them. Rather than look dismissively on this as the enthusiasm of “cultists,” couldn’t we just acknowledge the valid reasons for celebration? The media focused on the fact that Obama will be the first black President, and that’s certainly momentous. But I really don’t think that was the main reason people were celebrating. For me, there was a huge sense of relief that the right-wing Republican electoral strategy, personified in recent years by Karl Rove, had been defeated. There was relief that McCain, this year’s personification of rightist mendacity, had been denied, putting an end to the Bush-Cheney nightmare. Instead of an insane bloodthirsty criminal, we elected someone who can actually think, can conceive that there is such as thing as the public good and not just another opportunity for looting.

On the positive side, Obama signals that at least some effort will be made to deal with the tremendous problems that the world is facing. There is the possibility of actually getting out of Iraq. Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, or Souter can safely retire without being replaced by another right-wing fanatic. We have a chance to reverse the subversive actions against our Constitution represented by Bush regime torture, rendition, military tribunals, Patriot Act insanity, and Gitmo.

We need to celebrate progress once in awhile. This is part of the energy that keeps us going. Five years ago, I never would have thought that we could have come this far. People at the grassroots made this happen, and are making a lot of other things happen that are not as well known.

The least encouraging aspect of Obama is, of course, his adherence to the idea of empire. Making Rahm Emanuel his chief of staff is not a good sign when it comes to foreign policy. It signals more of the old “support the government of Israel at all costs” approach to the Middle East which is our perennial dead end. But to conclude that there won’t be any difference between Obama and Bush on foreign policy is to overstate the case. The so-called Bush doctrine could drive the world over a precipice—it is a doctrine of unabashed criminal aggression coupled with contempt for diplomacy. The traditional foreign policy establishment is still imperialist, but less dangerous. We’ve got a long way to go before the people of the United States force the state to relinquish empire. At least there’s more of a chance for survival under Obama.

Jim Hightower, speaking in my home town this summer, pointed out that FDR was not a leftist, and that his election was not in itself a transforming event. Instead, it was an opportunity for more progressives to get involved in the government and to influence American policy. The same is true in this case. The answer to the old question from the 1960s of whether one should work within “the system” or outside of it always seemed obvious to me—we should do both, of course. Change isn’t going to happen just because some writer for Counterpunch or The Nation maintained his ideological purity. It will happen gradually, in the messy and imperfect world of grassroots politics.

TV Wasteland

2008-10-27T22:47:00.000-07:00

My blogging has been less frequent than usual because I’ve been recovering from carpal tunnel surgeries. Regrettably, I’ve been spending a lot of time watching the cable news networks. Hey, I already knew that TV news was a joke, but I never realized the full extent of the imbecility before.

For the most part, the news shows display a phony concern for “balance,” a stance which has become meaningless because it has been drained of content. What you get is a supposed conservative squaring off against a supposed liberal, both spouting talking points instead of imparting information, and both confined within the most narrow and superficial “centrist” mindset.

The presidential election is covered almost exclusively in the aspect of who’s winning, who’s behind, what the candidate that is behind will or must do to catch up, what the one that is ahead will or must do to stay ahead, what the latest speeches say about the campaign strategies, and endless variations on the “horse race” theme. Pity the viewer seeking insight into the actual problems and issues facing us, because the coverage only provides the most rudimentary information on that, mixed up with huge wads of “spin” that bear no relevance to any of the aforesaid actual problems and issues.

This is emphasized in the presidential race—but in fact, all the political coverage follows the same model. In addition, we have the usual tornadoes and hurricanes, along with lurid crimes and celebrity show biz stories. Last year, as you may recall, the death of a former Playboy bunny took up more air time than all the political news from Europe, Africa, and Asia combined. Somehow the purveyors of this rubbish can look themselves in the mirror and think that they represent a legitimate source of news.

One of the excuses we hear is that with 24 hours to fill up, the cable news networks have to rely on junk. But the truth is that they’re lazy, greedy, and dishonest.

To illustrate my point, take a look at Democracy Now, Amy Goodman’s daily news show that is broadcast on community radio and public access TV. Let me say first of all that I don’t idolize Amy Goodman. She has her blind spots, like any journalist. Nevertheless, Democracy Now is the most important non-corporate news program in the country.

Every day, on a shoestring budget, the show covers a wide range of issues, and features interviews and guests that you almost never see anywhere else. Goodman provides a voice for many authors, representatives of organizations, political figures, activists, and ordinary people. During the Democratic convention, for example, she would interview delegates and give them a good ten or fifteen minutes to talk, and you would learn more from these interviews about the feel of the convention than you would from an entire day of CNN. Her guests have the time to go into detail about events, issues, and problems, in a way that facilitates greater understanding.

Her approach, admittedly, is left-wing alternative, although occasionally someone from the right will agree to be on the show and be given the opportunity to explain his or her positions and debate others with different views. If the networks were to follow her methods, they might justifiably include many more establishment figures, as well as conservative, centrist, and liberal guests, etc. But the point is that there are a lot of people out there who could and should be allowed to speak and be heard.

What the networks give us instead are the same people over and over again, ad nauseam. The same political consultants and operatives, the same pundits, the same columnists, are repeatedly interviewed. In addition, CNN has a “team” of commentators who sit, inexplicably, at little computer screens, and offer up the same pablum week after week. On MSNBC, they have a resident right-wing crank, Pat Buchanan. On almost every show, the host will eventually say, “Now we’ll have a discussion with so-and-so and Pat Buchanan” and out trots the right-wing crank for the millionth time. On ABC’s Sunday show This Week we are privy to discussions between Cokie Roberts, George Will, and Sam Donaldson, all desiccated Beltway insiders who haven’t said anything new or insightful in twenty years or more.

I won’t even bother to describe Rupert Murdoch’s Jim Crow channel, which is a nothing but a wingnut propaganda organ that no one with self-respect should ever agree to appear on.

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, it should be noted, is more informative than most cable network hosts, yet there is still a reliance on a small group of repeat guests. Rachel Maddow’s show demonstrates some progress in the right direction, but I think there are corporate restraints at work even in her case. I really didn’t encounter, for example, a strong, principled dissenting view on the bailout from watching Maddow’s show.

The excuse that there’s not enough funding for real reporting won’t cut it. Goodman’s show does real reporting every day, on a microscopic fragment of the networks’ budgets. I think the networks could easily fill 24 hours with a huge variety of voices and viewpoints, along with important news from around the world.

They don’t want to. And one doesn’t need to resort to notions of an overt conspiracy in order to understand the reason. Corporate news is set up to make money for advertisers, and to do that one simply needs to “entertain” the audience and stay within a certain narrow framework of information and opinion. The news that is conveyed on Democracy Now doesn’t fit within that framework because it reveals the darker aspects of governments and corporations. Someone working at CNN or MSNBC doesn’t need to be told not to go there—if you’ve climbed the career ladder high enough to get on these networks, you already know how to toe the line without it being explicitly drawn.

As far as PBS and NPR are concerned, they aim at a more educated audience, but their range is still circumscribed, and the right regularly threatens to cut off their funding when they don’t behave. The honorable exception: Bill Moyers, who was not so subtly squeezed off the air during the Bushevik heyday, and finally made a comeback when public opinion started to catch up with him. This brings up another important insight—the TV talking heads only come around when it’s perceived to be “safe” to do so. When Bush’s poll numbers went into the toilet, people like Chris Matthews finally started to voice skepticism. Even so, a comprehensive, critical understanding of the real damage done by the Bush regime is still lacking on network TV. It’s always framed in terms of popularity—Bush is unpopular now; the war is unpopular; etc. The alarming extent of the corruption and degradation of the country and the world is skimmed over. We now go on to the next distraction as if it had no connection to what went on before.

Can you think of an instance in which TV news has broken a national story within the last forty years? 60 Minutes might have done it once or twice—the rest is smoke and mirrors. Then there was the Dan Rather story on Bush’s desertion from the Texas National Guard—which turned out to be a Rovian trap, even though the facts were there. TV news doesn’t break stories. It doesn’t really practice journalism in the true sense. It just receives information from official sources and then chatters over it incessantly.

The newspapers are still the only news sources that actually “break” stories in the classic fashion, but that’s also become rare. Most of the revelations nowadays come from whistle blowers and other people and organizations outside of the media, such as Amnesty International, who courageously bring things to public attention that would otherwise be ignored by the press. We should be grateful for these truth tellers, but most of the time they are attacked and demonized.

There is one more saving grace I must mention—the internet. Oh, it’s not all that the starry-eyed proponents of online community would have us believe, but it’s made a difference. Before the web, the corporate media completely monopolized the political narrative. It was almost impossible for regular citizens to have their views heard in any meaningful way. The internet showed progressives that they were not alone, and that the dominant narrative was far to the right of where most people in the country really were. I’m sure the right-wing establishment hates the internet and wish it could be suppressed and controlled. The corporatists are still trying, and they mustn’t succeed. There’s a sense in which the Fourth Estate—the real one, not the faux press you see on TV—has taken refuge in the blogosphere.

We will need a free press in the struggles ahead. In the meantime, don’t watch too much television. It warps your mind.

A Chance

2008-10-17T19:55:00.000-07:00

I wish the White House weren’t so powerful. This imperial presidency, as Arthur Schlesinger called it, is a huge obstacle to any progress. But the reality today is that this power exists. I see the vote in the presidential race, therefore, in purely practical terms. What candidate gives us, gives the people, a chance at achieving progressive goals, a chance to make gains in the areas of peace, human rights, and equality?

The amount of public attention devoted to this campaign has been obscenely exaggerated. It’s been going on for close to two years. The media treats it like a game show, like a huge perverse form of mass entertainment. And this one’s been stupider than ever—the nomination of that idiotic "hockey mom" being only the most obvious example. Meanwhile, the most important things happen at the grassroots. Progressives need to continue organizing at the local level. We need a sustainable movement that doesn’t just protest what the corporations are doing, but actually wrests economic and political influence from them. This slow, often frustrating work is more important than the presidential election.

Nevertheless, it needs to be said: this is not a game show. It does matter who is in the White House, not because electing someone new will overthrow the empire—of course it won’t. That’s obvious just from seeing Obama kowtow to the Israel lobby and talk tough about Afghanistan. No, it’s important because—we need a chance to influence things. That’s all. Just a chance.

There is very little chance for progress as long as the Republicans run the White House. We dare not forget the horrors of the last eight years. Obama and the Democrats tiptoe around this by talking about “failed policies.” The Bush years don’t just represent failure, they represent criminality of the most dangerous kind. These people used terror to try to destroy the last vestiges of freedom in this country. They’ve murdered hundreds of thousands of human beings and displaced many more, while mouthing lies about “democracy.” Their rich allies and military contractor buddies have shamelessly looted our wealth. They’ve made torture and kangaroo courts our official policy. They’ve illegally spied on us, and when they were caught, expanded their spying powers. They’ve rigged elections by voter suppression and fraud, while using the Justice Dept. to cover their tracks. They’ve poisoned our discourse with their sneering, attacking style and their hate radio, labeling anyone with disagrees with them a traitor or terrorist. They constantly sought to divide us with race and ethnicity and gender, demonizing African Americans and immigrants, women and gays. They have opposed women’s rights every step of the way. They let over a thousand people die in New Orleans without lifting a finger to help, and then they blamed the victims. They stacked the government with crazy religious fanatics who want us to go back to the Middle Ages. Their Supreme Court appointees supported the powerful against the weak, marching in lockstep with the right-wing agenda. They lied about everything and sought to conceal all their works from any public scrutiny.

And there’s more. They’ve committed so many outrages, lies, insults, deceptions, betrayals, cynical ploys, and disgusting actions that it would take hours to catalog them all. This is fascism. If fascism wins in this country, there’s no chance for us.

In the last debate, John McCain told Obama that he wasn’t running against President Bush, and that if he wanted to run against President Bush he should have run four years ago. The shithead pundits actually thought that was McCain's best moment. It’s typical of the sort of superficial, amnesiac, twisted thinking that dominates our elections. We’re supposed to think that this is just about personalities. President Bush is a different personality from John McCain, so we’re told not to compare them. But it’s not about personalities. These people represent political and economic forces, powers that hold sway in our government. By himself, Bush is just an empty suit. His power comes from his backers. And the Republicans, with few exceptions, backed him all the way. To pretend now that the last years were all because of Bush, and that they weren’t crucially enabled by all the Republican leaders, including McCain, is to play us as fools. But of course that’s the only way they know how to play us.

With an Obama victory, there will still be a corporate establishment running the country. There will still be a war machine in the Pentagon. The nature of our predicament is such that we do not have truly progressive alternatives at the national level yet. But one thing we would have with an Obama victory is—a chance. A chance to push back against fascism. A chance for progressives and liberals to have some breathing room, and maybe even some influence, if we can flex our muscles. A chance to work for peace, human rights, equality, or at least, some sanity.

I voted for Nader twice, in 1996 and 2000. I was tired of the centrist Democrats taking my vote for granted. Clinton did not offer a meaningful alternative for me in the long term. Gore hadn’t found any courage yet. We forget how much he tried to sound like Bush in 2000—picking Joey the Rat as his running mate, for fuck’s sake.

But I believe the stakes are too high now. I did not foresee the push towards totalitarian rule. I did not foresee 9/11, which became the excuse for an assault on our Constitution. I voted for Kerry in ’04, even though he has the appeal of a soggy piece of driftwood, because I wanted to push back at the fascists. Obama, for all his faults, is a hell of a lot smarter and better than Kerry.

I don’t understand the notion of principled non-voting. When I hear some people say they won’t vote, I just don’t get it. Voting is just a practical thing. You aim at the closest you can get to a practically desirable result. How hard can it be just to get your ass to a voting booth, or to send in a ballot? I do understand the despair and the apathy, but I don’t understand not voting out of supposed principle. That seems phony to me. Of course I’d rather have a real progressive in charge like Nader or Cynthia McKinney. But in practical terms, I want us to have a chance.

If the Republicans win again, it will justify every sick, slimy thing they’ve done to stay in power for the last eight years. They have to be hurt. They have to be beaten down without mercy. That’s another reason I’m voting for Obama. Those fuckers need to be taught a lesson, and nothing hurts them quite as much as losing.

And during an Obama administration, we need to continue to organize and fight and speak truth to power. We need to fight the Democrats’ allegiance to big money and empire, even while we continue to fight the fascist right. Because of course they’ll still be around, whining and throwing tantrums as always.

But in order to do that we need—a chance.

Vote for Obama.

The Man Behind the Curtain

2008-10-05T17:03:00.000-07:00

As heartless as it may seem to say so, in the midst of financial crisis, I believe that there is a sense in which we are experiencing a privileged moment. There are very few times in which the official narrative of our politics, the story of capitalism presented day after day as the only truth, falls away to reveal, if only for an instant, the reality behind the façade.

This is that moment, if you will, when Toto pulls the curtain back and we can all see the con man pulling the levers and yelling into the mike.

Recall, if you have not succumbed to the peculiar strain of amnesia prevalent in America, decades of political blather concerning the “free market.” The corporatists railed incessantly against regulation, saying that if only the restraints were taken off our fine economic system, prosperity would come. Conservative or “centrist” (liberal was now a dirty word), Democrat or Republican, all agreed that greed was good. And when the wingnuts came to power, first in Congress under Clinton (who co-opted their message instead of fighting them) and then in the White House under the current torturer, stealer of elections, and all-around useful idiot, they went whole hog—or whatever porcine metaphor you prefer.

The rich got a lot richer. You and I were forced to endure downsizing, outsourcing, and other forms of economic rape—with the result that both members of a household now work full-time, and often have to take second jobs to pay the bills. And the debt piled up.

Meanwhile, the official narrative was that poor people were the problem. Welfare queens and other shiftless minorities needed to be weaned from the welfare tit. Social programs were a waste of our hard-earned tax dollars—money that could be better used for war toys like the Star Wars missile defense boondoggle.

There aren't enough funds for all these liberal programs. Where are you going to get the money for all that? Just tighten your belt, salute the flag, and watch Survivor on TV.

Politicians became our elected school marms and moral instructors—wagging their fingers at us as they bleated about personal responsibility. Don’t have children out of wedlock, people! Stop looking for handouts and get a job—like the decent hard working people who vote for us. We’re sick of hearing about sexism and racism from people who basically hate American values. Instead of protesting war and poverty, look at the true moral issues facing us today—women getting abortions and those filthy queers flaunting their depravity in public. Don’t forget flag burning. And those creepy artists getting funded by the NEA. This is important stuff, people. And while we’re at it, let’s impeach the President for having sex with an intern.

Your problems are the fault of the others. Not with us. Blame the immigrants. Declare holy war on Islam. And behind all of it, the crazy, wacky, moonbat left. Obama, Osama. Coincidence?

And the hockey mom joe six-packs said Amen.

But now, when the thieves and pirates who’ve been getting filthy rich while the rest of us languish in socioeconomic limbo—when these captains of industry who think nothing of moving their companies overseas while screaming “Country first!”—finally bring the whole stinking edifice down around our ears, what do you think happens?

Suddenly there is $700 billion available from the public treasury to save their asses. There wasn’t enough money for those liberal social programs, but when Wall Street needs a bailout, well lookee! We just happen to have $700 billion handy.

But the voters didn’t buy it. Even the American electorate, capable of voting en masse for an empty Texas suit for President (twice!)—wasn’t fooled. The public was overwhelmingly against this bailout, and they let the Congress know it.

If you’ve been watching the news channels during this time—the regular networks, the cable networks, PBS, NPR, whatever—you couldn’t fail to notice that the corporate media was in favor of this bill. Barely a whisper of an alternative ever made it to the airwaves. We were bombarded with fear—if the bill didn’t pass, disaster would ensue. Your jobs were threatened. Your way of life was threatened. The survival of America was at stake. And this was not confined to Fox or right-wing commentators—all of them toed the line, even the supposedly liberal ones.

And yet—the public still opposed the bill!

After the first try failed, and the Dow plunged, the politicos went into panic mode. The people just don’t understand economics. They don’t realize how crucial this is. Something has to be done—now.

Obama supported the bill. What the hell did you expect? He’s heavily funded by Wall Street. McCain stumbled around like the clueless senile bastard he is, not knowing which way to go, because the extreme right of the party was afraid of getting blamed and voted No. What isn’t talked about much are the Democrats that voted No—they were on the left-end of the spectrum, like Kucinich. No one mentioned their arguments on the news channels. That might call into question the whole system, which is based on greed, exploitation and class war.

The amazing thing is, none of this con-job worked. The public still hated the bill.

So here comes the moment when Toto pulled open the curtain. A month before Congressional elections, with the voters angry as hell, the House ended up passing the bill.

I can’t imagine how the actual structure of power in this country could have been more clearly or obviously revealed. The government doesn’t run the country. Wall Street does. All that Wall Street had to do was kick and whine and declare emergency, and then take a big dive when it didn’t get its way at first, and eventually the Congress bailed them out.

Hey, joe six-pack hockey mom—try to learn a lesson here, if you’re not brain-dead already. The people who own the country don’t give a shit about you or your family. When they use race and sex and homophobia to sway your mind, they’re not looking out for anything but their own bottom line. When they talk about cutting government spending, they mean for you, not for themselves. Hell, no. Government is there to cater to them. They tell it what to do, and it will do what they say even if every single one of you calls your Congressperson to complain.

The man behind the curtain is the wizard of Wall Street. That’s the truth. All this talk about freedom and democracy and the American dream—it’s a sham, and it has been for many years. This is one of those moments when that truth is naked for all to see. Imprint it on your mind and don’t forget it.

There will be no change until we refuse to believe the lies.