Beyond the Pretenses of U.S. Politics (Guest Post)

Author, performer, musician and maker of web things, solidad decosta once slept with the collected works of William Carlos Williams (Volume I) to get over her father complex. A recipient of the 2008 kari edwards scholarship at Naropa's Summer Writing Program, her work has appeared in Mirage, Shampoo, Fireweed, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online. When she is not writing sestinas about rioting with foam rubber bricks or writing odes to zombies, she bangs out Brechtian piano improvisations.
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While I am not ready to claim that there is no such thing in the present-day U.S. as genuine politics (as in a self-empowering of the present day polis), things do look rather bleak – and in this particular social drama, the bleakest of all situations can be found within the pretense of what gets called left and right. Consider two sides of an imaginary coin, with each side in its own respective universe – one marked conservative, the other liberal. One of the greatest farcical aspects of the right side of this coin is how much its adherents rail against a perceived socialism that mostly doesn't exist – and yet they carry on regardless, their mouths and hair full of the Ashes That Rush And Glenn Made. As for the coin's reverse: we're mostly a walking caricature at this point. While not as self-parodying as the far right, we are even less effective with our signs and slogans, our empty marches and protests, our infrequent clogging up the gears of the safely well-insured. In reality, what lies underneath and all around this simulacra is two wings of capitalism, with little if any concern for ideology beyond its own sphere: one wing globalized, centrist and authoritarian, and the other isolationist, fascistic and authoritarian. This is not to say that I have lost “faith” in the power of social action – far from it. My intention here is to demystify the false notions that drive the concepts of left and right in the U.S., while hopefully providing some insights that may help in the long process of moving away from manufactured hope/despair, and toward approaches that are fair and equitable for all.

A great deal of what drives sociopolitical life in the U.S. has more to do with core beliefs regarding humanity's nature as a whole viz. good and evil rather than the visages of left and right. On one side, there are the people who believe humanity is inherently flawed, that we all can't be trusted, that we need to be governed. (Note that this belief straddles both left and right, both historically and presently: this applies to Lenin as much as it does to Cheney.) On the other side, there are those who believe in our inherent goodness, that generosity is a prevalent attribute, that true democracy is nurtured from the ground up: the Zinns and Kuciniches (and yes, Ron Pauls, his backward views on abortion and “the border” notwithstanding) of the world. Unfortunately for the adherents of both sides of this debate, human beings appear to be capable of vast acts of kindness as well as unspeakable cruelty. As is evidenced by landmark studies such as the Milgram and Stanford Prison Experiments, cruelty is tied as much to circumstance as it is to individual beliefs or character, while more recent research indicates inherent human tendencies towards mutual support systems and cooperation ^[1].

Is it possible that “good vs. evil” when presented in an absolutist fashion is not complex enough to embody the emotional and psychological realities that we contend with daily?

Consider a frequent example used to uphold this dichotomy: the consequences of wars throughout the 20^th century, especially World War II. Axis? Evil. Allies? Good – simply because in order to defeat the ravages of unchecked malevolence, you need a benevolent force to defeat it. The consequence of casting all moments following WWII in this light is that it obscures whatever future crimes against humanity that may be occurring, including many of the ones that lie directly under our noses – Iraq, Katrina, Palestine – as well as the ones that have been with us for quite some time, but that were propelled into metastasis by Nazi Germany. (I will leave it to the reader to decypher how far this particular cancer has spread, and in what forms. Furthermore, this mapping of good vs. evil applies to canonic left/right ideology as well. For example, is individualism “good” and collectivism “evil,” or vice versa? This is an unmistakably false equation in both directions when you consider that what passes for good or evil in this instance largely depends on where you sit within the left/right divide. The left (or again, what passes for such in the U.S.) is mostly about addressing the results of unchecked individualism in service to capital, along with touting a highly vocal yet mostly dulled and outmoded sense of collective purpose (think the aforementioned protests and such here), while the right tends to consist of misguided attempts to forge collective meaning (religious, traditionalist or otherwise), without much of a concern for the consequences of an individual's actions in the “free” market. The problem with framing individualism and collectivism in this way lies in the presumption that there
is a uniform answer that is applicable to all situations and to all people. Consider power law distribution^[2], wisdom of crowds, the commons. All of these things are “collective,” but in ways that don't necessarily negate the individual. Conversely, consider that no one individual can survive without the assistance of others; ironically, this is most true of those who hold the most capital, whose grandiose hoardings of wealth depend on the subjugated labor of millions, “going Galt” notwithstanding.

Nevertheless, having a robust sense of self and one's purpose is critical. By this, I mean the kinds of self-actualization that emerge from breaking the multiple spells of work, production, schooling, family and sexual repression, not the navel-gazing menagerie of the new age movements from the 1970s onward. (If anything, much of the countercultural self-exploration in the late 20^th century west is what led to the eventual shift towards up-with-the-self conservatism – first via Thatcher, then Reagan.) What I am asserting instead is akin to situationism (the politics of everyday life), combined with a critique of the mechanisms and apparatuses that control us a la Illich – with quite possibly a bit of Wilhelm Reich in the mix. In order to break the spell, deeper waters need to be chartered, on both the personal and interpersonal levels; it is by shattering the cacophony of myths promoted by the so-called mainstream that one discovers one's true nature.

Plainly put, what the U.S. grassroots political movements lack is not resources, free speech (current setbacks notwithstanding), or even the ability to organize. What they primarily are bereft of is the articulated desire to control our daily lives in a manner that actively supersedes the dictates that are lined out for us, in a fashion that ultimately makes sense to the majority. What is needed is the will to overcome such dictates, and then the stamina to go from there. Without this, whatever passes for social change becomes a puppet show, railing against a universal Bad Father in order to Save The World. This is why the revolution we face is the one that is between our ears, and between each other; from this fundamental change in the dynamics of self vs. other follows the social revolution writ large, past failures notwithstanding. Anything else is mere set design with deck chairs, while the icy tower looms in the rapidly approaching distance.

Suggestions for further understanding and research:

The Century of the Self (documentary), Adam Curtis

The Power of Nightmares (documentary), Adam Curtis

Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky

La Commune (Paris, 1871) (film), Peter Watkins

Horizontalism, Marina Sitrin

Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich

Tools for Conviviality, Ivan Illich
Multitude, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

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[1] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_work_with_groups#Mutual_Aid.

[2] See Here Comes Everybody (Shirky 2009, Penguin Books), pgs. 122-30 for an introduction to this concept.

Categories: post-democracy, post-politics

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Toxic Wastes and Haiti (Guest Post)

The author of this article, Mitchel Cohen, hosts "Steal This Radio," a weekly show on http://www.NYTalkRadio.net, and is the Chair of WBAI radio's (99.5-FM) "Local Station Board". He works with the Brooklyn Greens / Green Party.
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Two decades ago, the garbage barge, the Khian Sea, with no place in the U.S. willing to accept its garbage, left the territorial waters of the United States and began circling the oceans in search of a country willing to accept its cargo: 14,000 tons of toxic incinerator ash. First it went to the Bahamas, then to the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Bermuda, Guinea Bissau and the Netherlands Antilles. Wherever it went, people gathered to protest its arrival. No one wanted the millions of pounds of Philadelphia municipal incinerator ash dumped in their country.

Desperate to unload, the ship's crew lied about their cargo, hoping to catch a government unawares. Sometimes they identified the ash as "construction material"; other times they said it was "road fill," and still others "muddy waste." But environmental experts were generally one step ahead in notifying the recipients; no one would take it. That is, until it got to Haiti. There, U.S.-backed dictator Baby Doc Duvalier issued a permit for the garbage, which was by now being called "fertilizer," and four thousand tons of the ash was dumped onto the beach in the town of Gonaives.

It didn't take long for public outcry to force Haiti's officials to suddenly "realize" they weren't getting fertilizer. They canceled the import permit and ordered the waste returned to the ship. But the Khian Sea slipped away in the night, leaving thousands of tons toxic ash on the beach.

For two years more the Khian Sea chugged from country to country trying to dispose of the remaining 10,000 tons of Philadelphia ash. The crew even painted over the barge's name -- not once, but twice. Still, no one was fooled into taking its toxic cargo. A crew member later testified that the waste was finally dumped into the Indian Ocean.

The activist environmental group, Greenpeace, pressured the U.S. government to test the "fertilizer." The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Greenpeace found it contained 1,800 pounds of arsenic, 4,300 pounds of cadmium, and 435,000 pounds of lead, dioxin and other toxins. But no one would clean it up.

The cost of the cleanup at Gonaives had been estimated to be around $300,000. Philadelphia's $130 million budget surplus would more than cover it, but Philadelphia lawyer Ed Rendell -- then mayor of that city and later Chairman of the Democratic National Committee -- refused to put up the funds. Joseph Paolino, whose company (Joseph Paolino and Sons) had contracted to transport the waste ash aboard the infamous Khian Sea garbage barge owned by Amalgamated Shipping, refused as well.

In July of 1992, the U.S. Justice Department -- under pressure from environmental groups throughout the world -- finally filed indictments against two waste traders who had shipped and dumped the 14,000 tons of Philadelphia incinerator ash. Similar indictments were brought against three individuals and four corporations who illegally exported 3,000 tons of hazardous waste to Bangladesh and Australia, also labeled as "fertilizer." But none of the waste traders were charged with dumping their toxic cargo at sea, nor even with falsely labeling it as fertilizer and abandoning it on the beaches of Haiti, Bangladesh, and Australia. They were charged only with lying to a grand jury. ("Indictments Announced in Philadelphia's Haiti Ash Scandal; Greenpeace Calls for Immediate Cleanup," Greenpeace News, July 14, 1992, and "Philadelphia and U.S. EPA Get Unexpected Ash Packets," Greenpeace Waste Trade Update, March 22, 1991.)

A month earlier, similar watered-down indictments were announced against three individuals and four corporations who illegally exported 3,000 tons of hazardous waste to Bangladesh and Australia, also labelled as "fertilizer." Meanwhile, the government stonewalled, for years; it took more than a decade for the U.S. government to clean up the waste.

U.S. law was interpreted to protect the dumpers, not the dumped on. Unwilling recipients of toxic wastes are offered no recourse. In recent years, much of the waste from industrialized countries is exported openly, under the name of "recycled material." These are touted as "fuel" for incinerators generating energy in poor countries. "Once a waste is designated as 'recyclable' it is exempt from U.S. toxic waste law and can be bought and sold as if it were ice cream. Slags, sludges, and even dusts captured on pollution control filters are being bagged up and shipped abroad," writes Peter Montague in Rachel's Weekly. "These wastes may contain significant quantities of valuable metals, such as zinc, but they also can and do contain significant quantities of toxic by-products such as cadmium, lead and dioxins. The 'recycling' loophole in U.S. toxic waste law is big enough to float a barge through, and many barges are floating through it uncounted."

Every year, thousands of tons of "recycled" waste from the U.S., deceptively labeled as "fertilizer," are plowed into farms, beaches and deserts in Bangladesh, Haiti, Somalia, Brazil and dozens of other countries. The Clinton administration followed former President George Bush's lead in allowing U.S. corporations to mix incinerator ash and other wastes containing high concentrations of lead, cadmium and mercury with agricultural chemicals and are sold to (or dumped in) unsuspecting or uncaring agencies and governments throughout the world. (Greenpeace Toxic Trade Campaign, "United States Blocks Efforts to Prohibit Global Waste Dumping by Industrial States," December 2, 1992.)

These dangerous chemicals are considered "inert," since they play no active role as "fertilizer" -- although they are very active in causing cancers and other diseases. Under U.S. law, ingredients designated as "inert" are not required to be labeled nor reported to the buyer.

President Clinton -- expanding the policies of his ignominious predecessors -- continued to obstruct the rest of the world from regulating the disastrous international trade in hazardous wastes. At a critical March 21-25 1994 international conference in Geneva, the United States stood with only a handful of waste-producing countries against the entire world in opposing a resolution banning the shipment of hazardous wastes to non-industrialized countries.

Shadowy covert operations figures spent the next two decades promoting schemes involving the shipment to Haiti of U.S. toxic wastes.

In November 1993, Time Magazine reported that a former U.S. government operative had detailed "an elaborate plan to tap U.S. aid funds for low-interest loans that would be used to transport New York City garbage to Haiti, where it would be processed into mulch to fertilize plants bioengineered to provide high-quality paper pulp. 'We could collect $38 a ton for the garbage,' claims [Henry] Womack ... who helped oversee construction of the base that the Reagan Administration-backed contras used to stage attacks against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua." Womack has similar dreams for Haiti: "We'd make a bundle, and the government could get enough to pay the whole army's salaries." (Jill Smolowe, "With Friends Like These: A Host of Shadowy Figures is Helping Haiti's Military Rulers Hatch a Plot to Sideline Aristide Permanently," Time Magazine, November 8, 1993.) Womack lived in a South Miami house with a couple: the sister of Michel François, who headed the death squads in Haiti and served as chief of its national police, and her husband.

Although most agents are not usually as candid as Womack, such plans are common. In August 1991, for example, Almany Enterprises, a company also headquartered in Miami, proposed shipping 30 million tons of incinerator ash from various U.S. cities to Panama over the subsequent four years. Almany would pay the government only $6.50 per ton of toxic waste received in Panama. The ash is believed to be highly contaminated with cadmium, copper, lead and zinc. Almany proposed to landfill the ash in marshlands near the free zone of Colon. Dozens of similar schemes are rampant. Throughout the Caribbean and Central America the devastating health crisis is exacerbated -- if not directly caused -- by international capital's "recycling" of toxic wastes. (Indeed, Haitian women who have emigrated to the U.S. have been found to have double or triple the cervical cancer rates as women born in the U.S.)

Said Ehrl LaFontant of the Haiti Communications Project: "Instead of repatriating Haitian refugees to Haiti, the U.S. government should repatriate this toxic waste back to its own country."

Toxic waste dumping in Haiti was, after all, a lucrative source of income for the Duvalier dictatorship. Former Haitian despot Duvalier profited handsomely in his relationship with the U.S., to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. That relationship included allowing U.S. toxic fertilizer to be dumped in Haiti, at the expense of the Haitian people.

Duvalier's U.S.-based lawyer, Ron Brown, also did well, economically, by their relationship. In the early 1980s, Brown was a partner at the powerful Washington law firm of Patton, Boggs & Blow. Duvalier secured his services by paying him $150,000 as a retainer, and Brown went to work for the brutal dictator on Capitol Hill. Before his death while flying over Yugoslavia and scouting U.S. investment opportunities, Brown had been personally linked to Lillian Madsen, who had married into an extremely wealthy Haitian family with vast holdings in coffee and beer. (She later divorced.) Madsen lived in an expensive Washington townhouse that had been purchased for her in 1992 by the commerce secretary himself and by his son, D.C. lobbyist Michael Brown. The Madsens were major backers of Duvalier and among the main domestic financial backers of the September 1991 coup against elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Brown uttered nary a word to support the return of Aristide and democracy to Haiti, nor did he protest the U.S.'s toxic practices there.

Brown also represented Fritz Bennett, the brother of Michelle Bennett Duvalier, wife of the deposed dictator, when the brother was arrested in Puerto Rico for trafficking in narcotics. (Michelle Duvalier's touch with reality herself can be somewhat shaky, as when, in exile, she said: "Flee Haiti? Why do you say we were fleeing Haiti? The president and I decided it was time to leave. Nobody can ever say we had to leave Haiti. We wanted to go.")

Brown was also the subject of a scandal involving Vietnamese businessman Nguyen Van Hao, who was the Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Development under the corrupt U.S.-backed Saigon dictatorship in the early 1970s. Hao alleged that Brown agreed to be paid $700,000 in exchange for his help in lifting a trade embargo against Vietnam. Hao, who previously lived in Haiti, and Brown had a mutual Haitian friend, Marc Butch Ashton -- Lillian Madsen's brother-in-law. Ashton was a financial advisor to Baby Doc. A large landholder and owner of Haiti Citrus, a lime exporter, Ashton allegedly used a squad of 40 Tonton Macoutes death squads to guard his properties. Poor farmers who leased their land to Haiti Citrus say they were intimidated and tortured by Ashton's thugs when they tried to get better terms. (Counterpunch, December, 1993)

Brown himself detailed his services to Duvalier in a nine-page memo. Brown's letter, written in French on Patton, Boggs & Blow letterhead, blamed Monsieur Le President's problems on an unfair image created by the U.S. media. As to his efforts on Haiti's behalf, Brown wrote that "We continue to dedicate a considerable amount of time to the improvement of relations between the Republic of Haiti and members of congress and the American government, with the goal of substantially increasing American aid to Haiti. Early success in this regard," crowed Brown, "is essentially the result of our Washington team." (Counterpunch, December 1993)

Brown also informed Duvalier that he was looking after Haiti's long-term interests by maintaining good relations with leading American political figures:

"While we have always enjoyed excellent relations with the government of President Reagan, we have also established personal contacts with almost all the Democratic candidates in order to ensure that we continue to have access to the White House regardless of who wins the presidential election in 1984." Brown boasted that his "leading role in the Democratic National Committee has served us in these efforts, while a certain number of my colleagues in the Republican Party assure the permanence of our access and the excellence of our relations with the government of President Reagan."

Juan Gonzalez, writing in the New York Daily News, continued the story:

"When Brown wrote his memo, Amnesty International had accused the Duvalier regime of torture, detentions without trial and `disappearances'.

"Here is some of what Brown reported to Baby Doc:

" 'Despite the unfair image of Haiti by the American media, and despite the opposition expressed by some members of Congress, it is certain that today ... a growing number of people -- both members of Congress and government officials -- stand ready to defend the interests of Haiti. This ... is essentially due to the work of our Washington team. ...

" 'We continue to pay a great deal of attention to the Black Caucus and to other liberal members of Congress ... [who] are now, thanks to our efforts, ready to help. Although some of them continue to make negative comments about Haiti, all, without exception, have proved to be cooperative on the issue of aid.' "

Brown was reporting on his success in getting Congress to say one thing but do another. On foreign aid, he proved more than worth his annual retainer. While he represented Haiti, annual U.S. assistance increased from $35 million to $55 million.

Brown offered not a word in the memo about human rights.

Brown went on to serve as President Clinton's Secretary of Commerce, which is one of the agencies that oversees toxic waste shipments and promotes corporate investment in Haiti, particularly in the notorious assembly zones established by the International Monetary Fund's structural adjustment program there. (The assembly zones were populated by the IMF's removal of 1/3rd of the rural population from their lands, now to be used for export crops to the U.S. and elsewhere).

In his confirmation hearings before the Senate, Brown was not asked a single question concerning toxic wastes, nor of his relationship with the Duvalier dictatorship.

Categories: Haiti, toxic-waste, Americanism, ecology, post-society, eugenics

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Fallen from a Great Depth

I am lying on my couch, trying to read. I do that a lot these days. Trying to read. Trying to accept that this is a slow time for me, a season of healing from old wounds and more recent ones, some self-inflicted. Trying to find a place of peace in an ecology that has shunned peace.

Although the blank screen saver has darkened the computer behind me, I can still hear you within the infinite waves of Twitter ever changing the guard; ranting, cajoling, flirting, pushing out declarations of fleeting news and grim prognostication. Beyond, I listen to black tires sighing along shining black streets, in them hearing old girlfriends and lost verse, burned books and crushed revolutions.

In contrast to my wish for both solitude and new friends, I have descended to what amounts to a basement apartment - the sort that has a couple of iron-barred windows right onto the sidewalk. I peer at your rustling feet there, revealing myself to you only for the short bus ride to and trudge back from a cigarette trip to the store. Lock the door. I own pepper spray now. Perhaps I am healing; but I still feel broken. There is nothing for it but time and emotional Kevlar ...

Writing at CounterPunch, Bruce Levine asks, "Are Americans Too Broken for the Truth to Set Us Free?":

Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not “set them free” but instead further demoralize them? Has such a demoralization happened in the United States? Do some totalitarians actually want us to hear how we have been screwed because they know that humiliating passivity in the face of obvious oppression will demoralize us even further? What forces have created a demoralized, passive, disCouraged U.S. population? Can anything be done to turn this around?

Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not “set them free” but instead further demoralize them?

YES. It is called the “abuse syndrome.” How do abusive pimps, spouses, bosses, corporations, and governments stay in control? They shove lies, emotional and physical abuses, and injustices in their victims’ faces, and when victims are afraid to exit from these relationships, they get weaker; and so the abuser then makes their victims eat even more lies, abuses, and injustices, resulting in victims even weaker as they remain in these relationships.

Does the truth of their abuse set people free when they are deep in these abuse syndromes? NO. For victims of the abuse syndrome, the truth of their passive submission to humiliating oppression is more than embarrassing -- it can feel shameful; and there is nothing more painful than shame. And when one already feels beaten down and demoralized, the likely response to the pain of shame is not constructive action but more attempts to shut down or divert oneself from this pain. It is not likely that the truth of one’s humiliating oppression is going to energize one to constructive actions ...

Later in the piece, Levine asks,

When human beings feel too terrified and broken to actively protest, they may stage a “passive-aggressive revolution” by simply getting depressed, staying drunk, and not doing anything – this is one reason why the Soviet Empire crumbled. However, the diseasing/medicalizing of rebellion and drug “treatments” have weakened the power of even this passive-aggressive revolution.

Many claim that we have been betrayed by our President. We have not. We have been betrayed by our own hope in a magic cure from a system that is itself at once broken and evil. We have sold ourselves for silver coin and now we're just angry at each other. Look around for someone to blame. Eventually we encounter the mirror. We should ask the guy in the mirror, "How could you dare to do this to me?"

How broken are we? Writing at Rense, Paul Levy declares:

We are truly in a war. It is not the war we imagine we are in, which is the way our true adversaries want it. It is not a foreign war against a foreign enemy. It is a war on consciousness, a war on our own minds. The global war on terror that is being fought around the world is an embodied reflection in the material world of a deeper, more fundamental war that is going on in the realm of consciousness itself ...

The underlying core of our government has become rotten such that the entire operation simply feeds into and is an expression of the same underlying corruption. All of the scandals continually coming out are like the superficial skin rash of a much deeper systemic disease, like a cancer that is infecting the greater body politic. Citizens who are not aware of our government's insidious intrusions into our lives are unwittingly feeding the corruption they are looking away from -- in their very act of looking away ...

It does no good, in these circumstances, to blame anyone. We would have to assume that accurately assessing blame would result in The Fix. Thanks for playing. Next?

For me, the only "fix" lies in creative, nonviolent non-cooperation. No credit cards. No money in big banks, just in a small credit union. No money to any big box corporation; no participation in commercial christmas this year. No car to leave a massive footprint of belch and steel; public transportation only. No cable TV, no DVD player, no Blackberry, no big screens or surround sounds. No movies with their indoctrination scripts and Oscar marvels of mass hypnosis. The only avatar I see is my own - a little pic of Django Reinhardt next to my tweets: hot jazz for the world forum. Living like this is not hard, but yes, it can get lonely. A couple of coffees with friends takes care of that (no Starbucks, thank you).

Am I being self-righteously narcissistic here? You are free to judge. I certainly am not suggesting that you sell your possessions and follow Christ. In fact, given the times, I begrudge you no comfort - you gotta do what you gotta do, right? Just don't feed insanity.

In "The Human Ecology of Collapse", John Michael Greer poses ...

The old legend of the Holy Grail has a plot twist that’s oddly relevant to the predicament of industrial civilization. A knight who went searching for the Grail, so the story has it, if he was brave and pure, would sooner or later reach an isolated castle in the midst of the desolate Waste Land. There the Grail could be found and the Waste Land made green again, but only if the knight asked the right question. Failing that, he would wake the next morning in a deserted castle, which would vanish behind him as soon as he left, and it might take years of searching to find the castle again ...

The essay is primarily about peak oil, but is worth a full read for its insights as to what questions need to be asked and answered. Most of us ain't gettin' it quite right yet.

One source of humor for me these days is the transhumanist movement, pushed by "techno-optimists" who think combining machines with humans in the next evolutionary phase is the answer to all our deadly ills. As if the answer to war and grand larceny and racism and infidelity and even death is to just make humans into something else. Many of these folks promise immortality. Oh, please. I'm happy to have at most thirty more years on this crumbling orb. And I don't believe in an after life. This is not a suicide note. But I am telling you that I'm at least as afraid of living through what's here and still coming as I am of dying.

I also find a dark humor in the growing alarum warning of "socialism" in the US. Most of these people have not a clue about Marx and Engels and cannot fathom the humane possibilities of democratic socialism. To continue to hope that capitalism (or whatever the system is that has allowed the few to steal all our money and enslave us) will right itself and sail along happily is just downright sick ...

My old blogging colleague, George Washington, urges us to:

Abandon false hope ... and get some real hope ...

... remember that hoping that Obama will change things is a "hopiate". We must stop smoking the "hopium" - no good daddy or heroic leader will save us.

We have to save ourselves.

The truth is that:

* "Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up."

* "It's time to stop waiting for hope to be handed down, and start pushing it up, from the hoperoots."

The truth is that real hope is an act of will. Real hope is like a muscle that needs to be developed. Real hope is an act of freedom, defiance and courage in the face of power, corruption and tyranny.

If you've dropped by here in the past, you know that I have never had hope that Nobama would do anything but cheerlead for the elitists who stole us. I didn't vote for him. I didn't vote for anybody, since Cynthia McKinney wasn't on the ballot in my state.

And I haven't had much faith in the PR pushed out by "our leaders" in fifty years, since I watched the system grind my school teacher father into dust for trying to actually educate people instead of train them to be cogwheels. If you haven't yet, you simply must read Zinn's A Peoples History of the United States.

We have never been the country we've pretended to be. We have simply fallen from a great depth.

Categories: alienation, Americanism, asylum, democracy, hopelessness, post-politics, post-society

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The Truth Won't Set Us Free

We know the truth. Michael Werbowski, in "America: After the Fall", tells us ...

20 years after the fall of communism, American-style capitalism has also fallen. But the downfall was silent, without any visible walls toppling or crumbling. The 9/11-like collapse of the financial firms of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers left no piles of rubble or slabs of fractured concrete on the ground, just lots of laid off traders and deal makers. But the brokerage and investment banks' end signaled the death knell of market capitalism as we knew it; another misbegotten ideology born out of the musings of Adam Smith, Ricardo and Milton Friedman was laid to rest unceremoniously. The troika which presumed that man’s most bestial instincts can be curbed in the pursuit of profit and happiness were wrong ...

The president’s inverted version of “perestroika” (that is, the restructuring or retooling of the economy) has been fine tuned to meet the need of the oligarchs and corporate barons who support him and prompt him behind the curtains. Obama and his czar–commissars (and his adoring minions of PR spin operatives) have deftly in a brilliant slight of hand in one swift jest, effectively expropriated the entire financial and industrial sectors in America by means of massive taxpayer funded “bail outs”. These ploys have turned the essence of capitalism upside down, by rewarding cronyism and criminal behavior to the point where “crime pays” very handsomely indeed, and enables billionaires, fraudsters and financiers to obtain great gain almost without almost any pain or punishment. These perverse policies are likely to fail. In the end, Gorbachev’s policies, although ostensibly well meaning, actually hastened the demise of the Soviet state. This later led to its fragmentation and disintegration of the communist superpower and its Eastern Empire. America’s current plight may lead to a similar outcome.

We know the truth. In his piece, "Self-jiving Nation", Jim Kunstler writes ...

If you think we have been in a crisis of finance and economy for the past year or so, consider that we have also been sunk in a comprehensive crisis of leadership. Nobody in authority is willing to face the truth, state the truth, and offer a reality-based idea about how to meet the truth, This is a leadership failure not just in politics and government, but also in business, in the university faculties, in the editorial and production offices of the news media, and even among a barely-breathing clergy ...

We know the truth, but we can't handle it. We grasp at straws of hope, looking for anything in the media blabber and bluster to light the sky over the wasteland. Even the survivalists don't seem to grasp that "The World as We Know It" is gone; what we see now is a chimera, and that's about all.

See it or not, most of us are sucking on a try breast of truly "faith-based" delusion that somehow "recovery" is just over the horizon.

I cringe when I hear that this will be a "jobless recovery". That is the new leader on the list of oxymora. An economic landscape which benefits only those who steal their money from the people is the new truth. We have not, through "bailouts", invested in a system in which the rich elitists reinvest their riches in the interest of a valued, common society of equal human beings. Fuggedaboutit!

But instead of moving gamely through the steps of dealing with our grief over the loss of comfortable, debt-generated illusion, we are caught in the vicious cycle of denial and anger, denial and anger, ad infinitum. And instead of turning our anger against those who have stolen our dreams (they were nothing more than that), we rage against each other in polarized cults, thinking we inhabit our own chosen political temples of truth. Such folly. Heh. We've got 'em just where they want us.

The truth is plain. Last week at the International Forecaster, in "A New System For The Privleged Is Not A Remedy For The Economy", the author writes ...

Our usurping, . . . spendthrift President, together with our corrupt, elitist-bootlicking Congress of money-grabbing Dumbos and Jackasses, are spending us into a multi-trillion dollar hyperinflationary oblivion as their ratings by their constituents drop into the toilet bowl, ratings which are disgracefully the lowest in all of US history. With a diabolical "Robin Hood in Reverse" plan in place since 1913 for the extortion of money from the US middle class to reduce their serfs to poverty and abject slavery, the Illuminati have managed to use the Federal Reserve Act and US income tax, together with the Social Security Ponzi Scheme, phony, orchestrated wars for profit, socialization of bankster-gangster losses, the globalism/free trade/off-shoring/outsourcing/legal-illegal immigration agendas, and a totally bought-and-paid-for President, Congress, judiciary and regulatory agencies, to reduce US citizens to consumerist credit addicts, living pay check to pay check like narcissistic hedonists ...

There's that word again - "narcissist".

This is from a book review piece done back in April by MSNBC/Today Show, "Me, me, me! America’s ‘Narcissism Epidemic’" ...

A popular song declares, with no apparent sarcasm, "I believe that the world should revolve around me!" People buy expensive homes with loans far beyond their ability to pay — or at least they did until the mortgage market collapsed as a result. Babies wear bibs embroidered with "Supermodel" or "Chick Magnet" and suck on "Bling" pacifiers while their parents read modernized nursery rhymes from This Little Piggy Went to Prada. People strive to create a "personal brand" (also called "self-branding"), packaging themselves like a product to be sold. Ads for financial services proclaim that retirement helps you return to childhood and pursue your dreams. High school students pummel classmates and then seek attention for their violence by posting YouTube videos of the beatings.

Although these seem like a random collection of current trends, all are rooted in a single underlying shift in the American psychology: the relentless rise of narcissism in our culture. Not only are there more narcissists than ever, but non-narcissistic people are seduced by the increasing emphasis on material wealth, physical appearance, celebrity worship, and attention seeking. Standards have shifted, sucking otherwise humble people into the vortex of granite countertops, tricked-out MySpace pages, and plastic surgery. A popular dance track repeats the words "money, success, fame, glamour" over and over, declaring that all other values have "either been discredited or destroyed."

The United States is currently suffering from an epidemic of narcissism. Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines an epidemic as an affliction "affecting ... a disproportionately large number of individuals within a population," and narcissism more than fits the bill. In data from 37,000 college students, narcissistic personality traits rose just as fast as obesity from the 1980s to the present, with the shift especially pronounced for women ...

Yes, you see, we know the truth. We just can't do anything with the awful stuff.

Consider ... the primary thesis of classical liberalism, now brought to the farthest extremes in our society, dictates that the individual embodies the highest form of being, endowed with inalienable rights. No matter that the pursuit of such rights pretty much guarantees the alienation of everyone else's rights. The reconciliation was supposed to be managed by capitalism, thus taking the need for personal responsibility away from the individual and allowing "markets" to govern our behaviors. That, as Werbowski notes above, has finally failed, leaving the thieves with the keys and combinations to all the safes.

The truth is this: we have been and are being inexorably distracted from grasping the truth - wars, health care "reform", same-sex marriage, economic "recovery" statistics, cash for clunkers, political and media peccadilloes, and all the silly crap we are fed on a daily basis are a cacophonous diverson from the stark reality that the bread is all but gone and the circus is in town.

In "Social Decay in America" at CounterPunch, John stanton writes ...

American society merrily avoids accountability and responsibility. Americans seek the loophole and blame others--be they individuals, networks or nations--for their own deficiencies. American leaders direct the consequences of poor judgment down the chain-of-command. Why?

The American people have taken the bait from the nation’s op-ed writers and talking heads, corporate CEO’s, financiers, the president, members of congress, justices of the Supreme Court, governors, sports/movie/think-tank/academic stars, and military leaders. In the USA these are the script writers of the American narrative and masters of the American consciousness. They stand firm in their belief that the masses down below will follow their words and deeds, even die for them. They are the Unaccountable Elite.

And the American people don’t disappoint. Only on rare occasions is an “American leader” taken to task by a concerned public. The American people revel in their leaders, glorifying and emulating them and striving, one day, to make it like their idols did. In so doing they have forsaken their duty as American citizens to hold their leaders to account and, as consumers, divine what is theater and what is not ...

Maybe, just maybe, the truth will set some of us free. But first, it is driving us crazy.

Categories: Americanism, narcissism, post-democracy, post-economics, post-society, reality


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Nobel: "Put Up or Shut Up"

I have thought very carefully before adding my voice to the discussion about the 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace. What I've discovered is that few, if any, have written or talked about the irony of the award, concentrating on whether Obama "deserved" the prize.

It is obvious that Obama has not "earned" it. But that's not the point. As many have noted, the Peace Prize has indeed been awarded in the past on an "aspirational" note in the hope that certain efforts had sown the most fertile seeds in the soil of hope. But y'all know how I feel about "hope": hope don't feed the bulldog.

I think what the Nobel Committee is saying to Obama is nothing less than "Put Up or Shut Up". It is a recognition that Obama talks a good game most of time, even considering the contradictions between what he speaks about on the stump and the policies he's continued or created. The actions don't match the words - it's as simple as that. The Committee is saying, "Look, man. Talking peace and making peace just ain't the same breed of cat".

Truth be told, some pretty nasty folks have been in the mix in the past. Hitler was nominated. Stalin made off with one. Run your finger down the list of 208 winners and you get the impression that the criteria are sometimes pretty questionable. Even more questionable when you factor in the resouces of the Nobel Institute, the organization of scholars, researchers, and impressive resources which advises the Committee on its selections. George Will's recent on-the-air comment about "seriousness" is well taken. So awarding the prize to a man who has done little besides make speeches about peace is really not so odious. At least they didn't choose Ahmadinejad.

As Matt Taibbi notes in "On the Nobel Prize for Occasional Peace",

It’s hard to believe, but there have been sillier moments in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize than this recent fiasco involving Barack Obama — it’s just so hard to remember them when you’re rolling around on the ground and spitting up greenish foam in a state of shock, as most of us were this past weekend as the news of Obama’s amazing award rolled over the airwaves.

The Nobel Peace Prize long ago ceased to be an award given to people who really spend their whole careers agitating for peace. Like most awards the Prize has evolved into a kind of maraschino cherry for hardcore careerists to place atop their resumes, a reward not for dissidence but on the contrary for gamely upholding the values of Western society as it perceives itself, for putting a good face on things (in Obama’s place, literally so).

Even when the award is given to a genuine dissident, it tends to be a dissident hailing from a country we consider outside the fold of Western civilization, a rogue state, “not one of us” — South Africa from the apartheid days, for instance, or the regime occupying East Timor.

You never, ever get a true dissident from a prominent Western country winning the award, despite the obvious appropriateness such a choice would represent. Our Western society quite openly embraces war as a means of solving problems and for quite some time now has fashioned its entire social and economic structure around the preparation for war ...

Therein lies the problem - and bolsters the question of whether the Nobel Committee is to be seriously considered or just another version of Dancing with the Stars.

Taibbi brings out the most obvious contradiction: we are a culture that has succeeded because it has, for the most part, made war (although, starting with Viet Nam, not so much lately). Thus, the Nobel "aspirations" seem to me very disingenuous. For the paradigm change needed in order to contribute fully to a culture of peace must be just that: fundamental and total.

In a recent piece at Common Dreams ("If We Want Peace, We're Going to Have to Learn to Say No"), Daphne Bramham notes ...

Ending war means a massive societal shift.

"We must create the idea that to even think of war is horrific," says [Irish Nobel laureate Mairead] Maguire, whose own peace prize was awarded for her work in ending the fighting in Northern Ireland.

It means transforming millennia of solving problems by fighting with solving conflicts through talking. It will be hard, but perhaps not impossible, says Maguire, who cites the mind-shift about smoking. In a very short time, smokers went from being cool to being pariahs.

As with smoking, it starts with children and education. Kids are already taught at home and at school that violence is bad. But as a number of University of B.C. researchers are finding, using programs that emphasize empathy and compassion can reduce children's aggression.

But much of what children learn doesn't come from either parents or teachers. It comes from television, movies and video games. All of which are becoming increasingly violent.

A decade ago, UNESCO research found that 93 per cent of children in 93 countries with access to television watched for three hours a day and saw five to 10 violent acts every hour ...

It is not, unfortunately, just the surface violence that we must reject. We must root out and replace all the sources of and justifications for violence, even in its seemingly subtle forms.

Capitalism, for example, is a very violent sport. Profit at any cost seems to be the only rule, competitive greed the object in play, destroying the competition the only goal. The field is covered with dead and dying players, while the owners are building castles with uncrossable moats. Many of their owners have turned war into a profit center - some even supplying all sides with the means of production destruction. Religion and nationalism are not far behind in undermining our deep desire for peace.

I am sorely tempted to call the honor bestowed on Obama the "Nobel Peace Pipe Dream". As noted by Taibbi, Obama is no dissident. His philosophy and his policies are fully rooted in the same garden that has grown war for centuries and he will continue to strive to "win". His message to Muslims and others is clearly, "We must have peace, but on Western terms - or else!"

Some commentary on the prize has suggested that it represented a hope that America would rise to world leadership in a grand journey to world peace. Sigh. I, for one, think we need to look elsewhere. I don't think we're up to it, judging by the actions of late at town meetings and the words of threat from a familiar "news" channel. It just doesn't seem to me that a country moving so quickly toward civil war is a likely beacon of peace on a troubled planet.

Others have said that Obama was not so pleased to receive the prize - that it challenged his true imperialist, bellicose agenda. It undoubtedly presents a conundrum, seeing as how making peace by making wars has been thoroughly discredited. We can hope as we might, but Obama will have his wars.


Categories: Americanism, Nobel, peace, war

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It's the Culture, Stupid!

I'm a pretty tolerant fellow. I was taught by my elders to appreciate the fact that there is usually a good reason for someone to believe, think, and act as s/he does. But I never thought I'd say this ...

I can understand why the Rockefellers and their rich, cultured, educated friends are so terrified of the common person and propose that the discipline of a centralized, fascist world order is the only thing that will save mankind. Or, at least, save their own asses from eradication by the great, rude, selfish unwashed.

After witnessing the spectacle of tea parties and town meetings, children being beaten to death by other children in urban streets, and political and other celebrities dusting themselves off after public acts of adultery, I get it, Mr Rockefeller. We just have failed to prove we can handle the responsibilities of democracy, open society, and popular liberty. We can't govern our individual behaviors, much less govern ourselves as a "civilization". It just seems as if the percentage of our icons and citizens whose motto is "fuck you very much" grows exponentially every time I look around.

I'd like to blame it on Ronald Reagan, but I really can't. He was just an opportunist who jumped on the lead horse of the "I, me, mine", "All for One and All for One" movements of the late 1970s and the 1980s. He merely articulated what most Americans were already screaming: "I paid for this microphone, pay for your own."

Reagan - and his counterpart Meg Thrasher in Britain - declared that there was no society, only individuals and families. By that time, they were only stating what they observed, the crumbling ghetto of Anglo-American civilization. The Left likes to think of Reagan/Thatcher as arch-conservatives, but in reality they were quintessential liberals, valuing individual rights above the need for responsible membership in the community in order for that community to survive.

It didn't take me very much effort to find this nugget at Mithmëoi the other day:

I read things like this or this everyday, I see teens that brag about how and when they lost their virginity, I see how lewd jokes are just shrugged off, kids can just back talk their parents and other adults and suffer no consequences at all. I keep hearing how we are the most advanced society of all time, yet we cannot treat each other with respect, most people lack any common sense, and things that were incredibly unacceptable fifty years ago are now just brushed off. I wonder if we’re so advanced, why do simple things like respect and common sense escape us? The more we start to push away from morals and a belief in God and the more we rely on ourselves and our creations, ie machines etc, the worse we seem to get. We have become arrogant and rebellious and we pay the price. We pay it with loss of freedoms, a generation of people that cannot think for themselves, a generation that cannot function unless someone tells them what they should or should not do by listening to not their elders, but the mass media. This is an apathetic generation. A generation that goes with the flow, do what feels good and do it now. There is no patience, there is no conscience. There is no value of life among them.

If you’ll look through history across the world you’ll see something interesting. The more a culture strays from their moral values they were founded on, reject God or just decide that they don’t need archaic rules anymore the more it degrades and eventually collapses. A nation cannot survive without moral values, without respect and a value on life. Once you lose those you are on a path to destruction. Everywhere I look I see this happening in every nation of the world, save for maybe the isolated tribes, but I’m referring to the major influences of this time. Every single one is suffering from the same thing, reliance on self and machine, crumbling morals, life losing its value and people who will not stand up for themselves, sheep.

Recently, at least one network news show (and I chose that word specifically) did a feature piece on the denigration of civil discourse. Plenty of talk about angry adolescent types shouting and pumping their fists in the faces of elected officials and other angry adolescents, carrying their assault rifles on their shoulders, just itchin' for a fight. The Silent Majority finally empowered to screeching by the spectre of "socialism". The programs failed because they treated the behavior as the illness, rather than more accurately as symptoms of something fundamental - the grinding narcissism I have spoken about in these pages so often.

From a strictly personal perspective, what absolutely devastates me is that there's a hefty percentage of my Woodstock Generation among these people. The generation that sang about and demonstrated for Peace and Love. Sheesh. It seems that a bunch of my brothers and sisters replaced their need to protect their stashes of marijuana and magic mushrooms with the need to protect their iPods and HDTVs. I now see most Americans as cave-dwellers, surrounded by appliances and guns to protect them.

If we have rejected society, what now? If our culture is demanding that government simply disappear, where does law come from. I think those who say that it will just naturally occur once the bureaucrats and regulators and cops disappear are terminally naive.

As a culture, we have descended into chaos. It's not just about money. The same folks who are screaming so loud for unrestricted personal liberty and rights are about to lose it all, for all of us. I'm not going to yell at you or point a gun. But I am going to tell you that that ticks me off.

Categories: new+world+order, Americanism, communitarian, community, post-society, principles, responsibilities

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Firing Up the Fear Factory

Does anyone else find it more than a coincidence that lately the fear factory in Washington has stoked the fires up pretty close to a meltdown? The last time there was as much collective dread, I believe, was during the 1962 'Cuban Missile Crisis', a few days in October forty-seven years ago when the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction was challenged and stretched to a literal snapping point. We could hear the Nuke War Clock ticking down in our sleep. At that time, our national fear was shared and focused on just one thing. Now it is much different. Now there are a hundred fears and, it seems, as many factions.

After the September 2001 'attacks' on Washington and New York, I was not particularly afraid of terrorists. I was, however, terrified of what I knew would be the government's opportunistic response. After eight years, there is no doubt that my assumptions were totally justified. The US government - and I don't mean the Bush or Obama administrations, per se - now rules in an atmosphere of terror, mainly self-generated.

We are bombarded often by the specter of "another 911". That event is unlikely, unless there is further fore-knowledge, complicity, or even participation. And frankly, such an occurance is not needed. Whoever pulled it off accomplished the intended purpose.

When a goverment claimed to be democratic functions independently of its people, making laws, policies, and procedures in its own interest and that of a both domestic and foreign alliance of ruling elites, it can do so only behind a shield of implied or overt threat.

Since we all feel them, the threats - manufactured or not - are easily enumerated: economic collapse with attendant poverty, crime, and general destitution; military or paramilitary attack; loss of security; loss of freedom and rights, perhaps taking the form of martial law; fear of socialism, communism, fascism, anarchy, and rascism. And these fears are factionalized in such a way that we a now afraid of each other. During the Cuban Missile Crisis we were afraid of a common enemy. Now we are all afraid of each other and our government; our government is afraid of us. In short, the nation is afraid of itself. It's no way to live.

In a recent interview with the TimesOnline, Gore Vidal remarked:

America has “no intellectual class” and is “rotting away at a funereal pace. We’ll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being over-educated. He doesn’t realise how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is. Benjamin Franklin said that the system would fail because of the corruption of the people and that happened under Bush.”

Vidal adds menacingly: “Don’t ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren’t any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I’m never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it.”...

The implication here is that Obama is no hero, and I agree. But I'll bet he's as afraid as the next guy. As an aside, aren't we taking free speech just a little too far when we allow people, even ordained ministers, to pray openly for the president's death?

Fear is normally a healthy reaction to both perceived and actual threat. It is a survival mechanism. But when the threats, real or not, are seemingly uncountable, consistent, and long-lived, the fear turns into a state of rage alternating with catatonic numbness, followed by systemic breakdown. This happens to large, complex systems like governments, as well as to small systems like people.

I believe that the government's intentions are clear - to engender a dark fog of fear with which to cow and confuse the people - because it has done nothing to defuse either the fear or the anger. At times, in town halls, teaparties, and demonstrations it has stoked the fires, notwithstanding the occasional pronouncement that the economy is on the mend. Instead of directly confronting the flames with cooling water, Obama makes grand speeches about more war; lies about the economic non-recovery; flies off to Copenhagen to advocate for a scheme that would probably bankrupt Chicago. Meanwhile, the fires rage up the hills through the dried thorny brush of hate and terror. It is difficult to believe the result will not be a meltdown.

Washington, in fact, is purposefully making things worse. Although the "intelligence" community apparently knew about the alleged nuke lab at Qom for many years, it chose to reveal it during a few weeks in which several alleged domestic terrorists and their heinous plots were uncovered.

Added to that, just yesterday the FBI director added to the fuel supply:

They could strike the United States. That grim assessment is the first time the FBI director or any other senior law enforcement or intelligence official has stated on the record that the Al Qaeda-linked group al-Shabaab is no longer content to strike within the East African nation of Somalia.

During a hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, FBI Director Robert Mueller was asked if members of al-Shabaab, which translates as "mujahideen youth," would send American recruits back to the U.S. to launch attacks.

"I would think that we have seen some information that the leaders would like to undertake operations outside of Somalia," Mueller told the Senate Homeland Security Committee ...

I must admit, I'm not immune. Although I'm still not afraid of "terrorists" (there still are elements of the FBI, CIA, and NSA who do a good job if they are tasked correctly and can operate without political interference), I am afraid of my government and a growing slice of the American citizenry. Lack of mutual respect and self-discipline, a sense of personal responsibility, and ignorance are not new. I've now been around for over sixty years and I've watched American culture dissolve steadily. We've long lost our moral edge. Fear will do that to you.

At CounterPunch, David Michael Green echoes my own feelings to a great degree ...

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which proposing a new and better version of corporate-plunder masquerading as national healthcare gets you burned in effigy for being a socialist stooge by gun-toting angry mobs.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which the same people who hate you for being a socialist simultaneously hate you for being a fascist.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which angry mobs of supposed anti-socialist demonstrators scream at their congressional representatives to “keep your government hands off my Medicare”.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which claims that the government is going to start killing off seniors are taken seriously by tens of millions of people.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which people are all worked up about government czars, but sat silently while the Bush administration destroyed the Bill of Rights and used a thousand signing statements to write Congress out of the Constitution.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which deficits have all of a sudden become the source of enormous anger among people who said nothing about them previously, as the tax cuts for the wealthy, off-budget wars based on lies, and unfunded prescription drug Big Pharma giveaway transmogrified the biggest surplus in American history into the biggest deficit ever.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which politicians can rant incessantly about other peoples’ sexual morality, get caught screwing prostitutes, and then still be reelected to the highest ranks of government by trashing the president.

I could go on and on, but what would be the point? ...

Indeed. Sigh.

Categories: new+world+order, 911, black+hole, democracy, fear, hopelessness, post-politics

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The Silence of Freedom

I know I'm not the only one, but I have to ask ...

Who's watching the store? Who is leading the Cabinet? Who is corralling the Democrats? Where does the buck stop? Instead of a presidency, we've bought into nothing more than a traveling wild west variety show, complete with gunslingers and the Snake Oil Salesman-in-Chief. The deluge of words over the weekend was simply over the top. For once, Faux Noose had the right idea in snubbing the guy.

Maybe it just ain't so great that we got ourselves a president that can string a few intelligible words together. At least Dubbleduh tended to be hilarious on the podium from time to time and we really didn't have to listen to him very much. This Obama cat just won't shut up. Nothing more than a cheerleader, but it remains to be seen just where the team is and where the game plan is supposed to get us.

It's not just the volume of words in his grand speechification tour. It's that the content still means no more than "hope" and "change". This man brings nothing to the table but thousands of vague generalities.

John McCain remarked that it might not be a good idea to put such an inexperienced man in the Oval Office. He was onto something. The problem, however, was not much Obama's lack of experience, as his total lack of any real political power to forward what may have been a "progressive agenda". He has no political capital to wield, no deals to cut, no long-term alliances with powerful Senators and Congresspersons. As a result of continuing the previous administration's policies of self-defeating wars, indefensible war crimes, obeisance to criminal banksters, and ignoring the now non-working poor, he has lost the support of all but the most hypnotised so-called progressives who swung the election for him.

A quick reminder here that he has betrayed no one. He promised nothing of substance. The people who insisted on endowing him with qualities he does not possess are culpable. They voted for their dreams, they elected an illusion - an arrogant, self-worshipping one, but an illusion nonetheless.

Witness John Pilger ...

The clever young man who recently made it to the White House is a very fine hypnotist, partly because it is so extraordinary to see an African-American at the pinnacle of power in the land of slavery. However, this is the 21st century, and race — together with gender and even class — can be very seductive tools of propaganda. For what matters, above race and gender, is the class one serves ...

During his brief period in the Senate, Obama voted to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He voted for the Patriot Act. He refused to support a bill for single-payer health care. He supported the death penalty. As a presidential candidate, he received more corporate backing than John McCain ...

In his book, Dreams From My Father, Obama refers to the job he took after he graduated from Columbia University in 1983. He describes his employer as “a consulting house to multinational corporations.” For some reason, he does not say who his employer was or what he did there. The employer was Business International Corporation, which has a long history of providing cover for the CIA with covert action, and infiltrating unions and the left. I know this because it was especially active in my own country, Australia.

Obama does not say what he did at Business International; and there may be nothing sinister, but it seems worthy of enquiry, and debate, surely, as a clue to whom the man is.

During his brief period in the Senate, Obama voted to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He voted for the Patriot Act. He refused to support a bill for single-payer health care. He supported the death penalty. As a presidential candidate, he received more corporate backing than John McCain. He promised to close Guantanamo as a priority and has not. Instead, he has excused the perpetrators of torture, reinstated the infamous military commissions, kept the Bush gulag intact and opposed habeus corpus ...

The horrible truth, therefore, is that Barack Obama was not elected ... he was elevated, as a shining symbol to mesmerize the population, by the elite class, to be their spokesperson. Nothing more than a cheerleader, but it remains to be seen just where the team is and where the gameplan is supposed to get us, although a great many more folks now have an inkling.

It is clear that Obama loves the spotlight. He loves it when all eyes are on him, enraptured by his rhetoric. But that's the problem, isn't it? If he stays in our face, pouring out his fine ideals with empty, vague "promises", we forget to look at all the Machievellis behind all the curtains. We forget about the Kissingers, Brzezinskis, Emmanuels, and Geithners who continue to connive and pull the puppets' strings. Obama, I'm afraid, is a shill. A front man. Just another political con artist.

So what do we do? A good first action is to stop listening. Just turn him off.

An old and dear friend of mine wisely counseled me once to listen very little but watch very carefully. He said, "Don't tell me you love me. Show me." I admit Obama's very good at what he does - but all that is is talking. He has already proven that he's a bit thin in the integrity category and thick with contradictions.

Next, we can try to overcome our deep ideological differences and learn something from the rabid right. In my opinion, they are better organized and significantly more motivated than the majority of liberals, progressives, and moderate Democrats. Although I loathe their values, laugh at their political poverty, and reject much of their methodology, they were able to put a noticeable few thousand in the streets of DC. They were heard. They had an impact. Ridicule them if you must, but give them credit for at least some measure of concerted action.

The best the Left seems able to do is organize yet another fruitless - and perhaps violent - anti-globalization rally for the up-coming G20. Borrrring.

At any rate, if we can't silence Obama, we can turn our silence against him. We can turn a deaf ear. We can find no more joy in listening to him than listening to talking barracudas and silly sock puppets on Fox and MSNBC. Turn them off. Let them fight it out with words with each other.

I have a small daydream. In it, I am walking up Pennsylvania Avenue in the midst of two million people. There are no speeches, no slogans, no shouting. Except for the echo of four million feet on the pavement, there is utter silence. A silence of protest. A silence of sadness. The silence of true freedom. A few people carry signs. But they all just say one thing ...

"NO MORE".

Categories: change, conscience, democracy, post-democracy, post-politics, presidency


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Blind Staggers

The bluesman Chris Smither, an old friend of mine, in our mutual drinking days would sometimes disappear after a coffeehouse appearance. The following morning, when questioned where he'd gone off to, would only say that he'd had the "blind staggers".

Medical dictionaries claim that the condition effects only horses and cattle. Its primary symptoms are an unsteady gait and the appearance of blindness. I beg to differ. From what I observe, there is a human pandemic of that same disease in the United States that makes the swine flu look like a match dying in a birdbath. And there's no vaccination; there's no foreseeable remedy ...

If there ever was a need for calmness and truly rational thinking, for measured discourse, and for intellectual contribution, this is it. But I see them appearing over no hill in shining armor to rescue us from the quicksand of this putrid swamp we've entered. Chaos reigns.

Here's a great example: Charles Bouley, writing at HuffPo, with "America is Losing Its Collective Mind" ...

I am leaving the Democratic party. It is with heavy heart that I change my affiliation to Independent. I'm 46, have been a registered Democrat since I was 18. My parents were from the East Coast, and proud Democrats. But it took the Democrats taking over, being in power, for me to see that Democrats talk a good talk but do not have the spine to walk the walk. They buckle under pressure, even ridiculous, obtuse pressure.

But it's not just the Democrats. I'm going to ask my country soon the horrible question, "them, or me." Truly; either we start listening to, following and promoting educated, sane, individuals and doctrines or I will seriously consider leaving the country. Because after all, what kind of country is it now, or will it be if this discourse and noncourse of action keeps up? ...

I certainly don't disagree, but my question is, "leave the Democratic Party for what?" Presently, there is no where to go. Period. Libertarians? Greens? They can't even get on the damned ballot in most states. The hard campaigning for the 2010 mid-terms is right around the corner. And if you think the non-existent leadership of either of those parties has a chance, I can connect you with your next crack dealer.

The fact is that we're at a point where there are no parties. There is no real leadership in any one, no party discipline, no discernible platforms. All that's left of the two "major" parties are a bunch of very pissed-off people calling each other names and accusing each other of everything from pedophilia to high treason. Instead of paying attention to real issues and concerns, we're now subject to rumors about whether Glenn Beck raped someone a few years ago and a controversy over whether our children should watch a presidential speech about education. Frankly, the "Left" is no better than the "Right". If this is not a massive national mental breakdown, it'll do until one comes along. But, no matter where you are on the post-political "spectrum" (or kaleidoscope?), the other guy is not the problem. We all are.

We have all clearly lost our way, stumbling blindly through a morass of our own making. You would think that eight years of The Dubbleduh-Chainey Gang would teach us some clear lessons about electoral politics and who really runs this country. It's not as if the information isn't out here. But we failed. We took the easy way out. Instead of rejecting a failed system and building our own, we embraced it once again and allowed ourselves to entrust our lives to the slick concoction of professional snake oil salesmen. Now everyone is shocked and dismayed that we got snake oil. Go figure.

Let me take a bit of a side road here. Government is the problem. But the solution is not the elimination of government, as the anarchists and libertarians propose. The solution is in taking the government back from the powers to whom we gave it and in making it work again as a tool of the citizens.

Edward Jayne, writing at Dissident Voice, in "Running on Empty", explains ...

Nor can much help be expected toward an effective solution from our government in Washington, D.C. Congressmen, for example, are almost entirely in the pockets of industries opposed to economic reform that might bear a negative impact on their profits. These elected officials are amazingly unprincipled in their acceptance of hefty campaign contributions in exchange for services rendered, and indeed big business, big banks, big agriculture, big labor, and inclusively anything “big” engages in the practice of paying them off. The amount of these contributions might seem large, but it turns out to be nominal compared to the yield, often more than 100-1 in federal subsidies obtained through earmark legislation and comparable services provided by these congressmen. The few Congressmen unwilling to go along with this arrangement quickly disappear from politics because of inadequate campaign funding. When others more willing to depend on corporate donations finally retire, most find the means to transfer their remaining campaign funds to their own bank accounts and often join the ranks of lobbyists who, like themselves, had first learned the ropes as congressmen. The situation is strictly plutocratic verging on klepto-plutocracy when the law is broken to make it happen. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens have little if any influence except to the extent that they belong to issues-related public constituencies represented by their own variety of lobbyists.

Not only are the government and the governed divorced, but the government increasingly does its business in the shadows, thumbing its nose at any remaining curiosity on the part of people. In The Nation recently, in the article "The Secret Government", Christopher Hayes details the struggle to rein in the forces of the burgeoning security state, beginning with the Church Committee hearings in the 1970s. He writes:

In 1976 the Senate created the Select Committee on Intelligence, and the House followed suit with its own Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence a year later. Also in 1976 President Ford signed Executive Order 11905, which flatly stated, "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination." Two years later, Congress passed and President Carter signed FISA, which provided clear procedures for covert action, surveillance and oversight. The law created the special FISA court, which grants warrants for wiretapping and surveillance of anyone on American soil as well as Americans abroad. The Church Committee's revelations also had a profound effect on the bureaucratic culture of the CIA, NSA and FBI. At all three agencies, internal legal controls were put in place requiring layers of attorneys to sign off on any possibly questionable activities.

But for all these needed reforms, it's impossible to look at the past eight years and conclude they were sufficient. If cold war presidents were surreptitious and/or cavalier about the lawlessness of their actions, the Bush administration perfected a kind of perverse legalism, using sympathetic lawyers to decree legal that which was manifestly illegal. It was an ingeniously devious approach. By relying on John Yoo, a loyal ideologue inside the OLC, Cheney et al. were able to perform an end run around the extensive legal checks and restraints created precisely as a response to the Church Committee's findings. Indeed, the reason the infamous OLC memos are so garishly specific is that CIA lawyers, still operating with a memory of the Church Committee, were insistent on obtaining explicit sign-off for every action and technique that they (quite rightly) believed to be of dubious legality.

Similarly, Congressional oversight proved no match for a determined executive. Many critics from across the ideological spectrum, from Clarke to Scheuer, note that this is at least partly because Congress often would rather not know what is going on behind the curtain. But the controversy over just what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew about the CIA's use of torture, and when she knew it, underscores how dysfunctional the notification system has become. Created as part of the Intelligence Oversight Act of 1980, the so-called Gang of Eight system allows a president, under emergency circumstances, to restrict briefings on covert activities to the leader of each party in both houses and the top member of each party of the House and Senate intelligence committees. What was intended as a limited briefing to be given only temporarily during crises has emerged, instead, as the standard.

Clarke explained its shortcomings to me this way: "Essentially what happens, you're a member of the Gang of Eight. You get a phone call: 'We have to come and brief you.' They ask you to go to the vault. They brief you. You can't take notes, you can't have your staff there and you can't tell anybody." In addition, each member is briefed separately and individually, so they can't even discuss the briefing and ask questions in a group setting. "That's oversight?" Clarke asks. "That's a pretense at oversight. That's a box check. The law required us to do that, and we did this."

I must repeat here that the solutions to these problems do not lie in simply eliminating the government. The fact is that even if the United States of America ceases to exist - is broken up into several sovereign entities - government(s) of some order will remain. The solution, therefore, must be based in the people once again taking personal responsibility for that government. And that, indeed, is hard work.

Our downfall, it seems, is the degree to which we actively participate in self-government. What can we expect when that participation is limited to waiting until all we can do is vote for the choices that international finance and corporate media give us? It is insufficient to simply growl and howl that there is no difference between the major parties without committing to put viable alternatives on the ballot, while actively working to bar corporate campaign contributions. We will, in this instance, continue to get what someone else is paying for.

Of late (and perhaps too late), many Obama supporters have awakened from self-hypnosis and begun to abandon this new, young administration. As I have noted at length in the past few months, the cry is that "we were lied to". But we were not - we didn't do the work to examine Obama's true political character. So we lied to ourselves and got caught. What now?

David Michael Green, in "After Obama" at Common Dreams, writes:

Eight months into it, it now seems pretty clear that the Obama administration is finished.

There were some of us -- indeed, many of us, myself included -- who thought there was a possibility that Barack Obama might seize this moment of American crisis, twinned with the complete failure for all to see of the regressive agenda, to become the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt ...

Right now, the question is what comes next? The Obama presidency is probably already toast, though of course anything can happen in three or seven years. But he is on a crash course for a major clock cleaning and, what's worse, he doesn't seem to have it remotely within him to seize history by the horns and steer that bull in his preferred direction. Indeed, near as I can tell, he doesn't even have a preferred direction.

Obama was complete fool if he ever believed for a moment that his campfire kumbaya act was going to bring the right along behind him. Even s'mores wouldn't have helped. These foaming-at-the-mouth lunatics have completely lost all sense and proportion, and were bound to viscerally hate any president left of Cheney, let alone some black guy in their white house. Meanwhile, centrist voters in this country seem pretty much only to care about taxes and spending, and so he's lost them, too, without the slightest rhetorical fight in his own defense. And he's blown off a solid progressive base by spitting in their eyes at every imaginable opportunity, beginning with the formation of his cabinet, ranging through every policy decision from civil rights to civil liberties to foreign policy to healthcare, and culminating with his choice not to even mobilize his email database in support of his policies ...

Put it all together and it's pretty hard to see how Obama gets a second term. Which can mean only one thing: We're looking at a Romney or a Palin or some sort of similar monster as the next president, despite the fact that their party was absolutely loathed only a year ago, and actually still is today. It won't matter. People will be voting against the incumbent, not for any candidate, and that will leave only one viable choice, especially for centrist and right-wing voters. Whoever wins the Republican nomination will be the next president, crushing Obama in the general election (assuming he survives the Democratic primaries). And that's a particularly scary notion, since the party's voting base who will make that choice in the Republican primaries is the same crowd you've seen featured all this summer at town hall meetings. Olympia Snowe is not going to be the Republican nominee in 2012. Know what I mean? ...

Let me finish this in a somewhat more concrete way, because at this point we must have solidarity with a solid foundation. Cindy Sheehan, at her Soapbox blog, just wrote an impassioned piece, "If McCain Were President". It is not very kind to the sitting president. In it, she offers some specific suggestions ...

There will be two major opportunities to put our bodies on the gears of the Machine this fall….

The anti-globalization movement will be out in full-force during the G20 nations’ meeting in Pittsburgh September 23-27 despite the jackbooted thuggery planned by the organizers of the G20 summit. Not only will there be 4000 riot police, but there will be 2000 Pa. National Guard there to suppress opposition. This is merely a bullying tactic designed to scare us away from the global “elite” while they plan more economic devastation for the world.

On October 5th, we will be gathering in front of the White House to protest Democratic wars of aggression (especially Af-Pak, since the 8th is the anniversary of the US invasion) and there will be opportunity for civil disobedience that is not just symbolic. We will also be reading the International People's Declaration of Peace (IPDoP) in front of the White House that day and kicking off the campaign to build an effective grassroots movement against all violence, but particularly, state-sanctioned violence.

The face has changed in DC, but the odious policies of the Machine remain the same.

Remember, if you don’t actively oppose the policies of this government, then you are passively supporting them and you are responsible for helping to oil the Machine and keep it running.

If you can't physically attend the protests, please consider making a contribution, even if it is tiny, to help defray expenses.

It may be a small one, but it's a steady step. Will it lead to a series of such purposeful steps, eyes open and clear? Or are we doomed to just stumble around in the dark of the Blind Staggers?

Categories: change, corporatism, democracy, elections

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