The Center Never Holds

A new center is certain to be born. Only no one knows where it will be staked.

The ideological "big government v small government" dichotomy was always mostly a confabulation of the commenting class. And the idea that the redistributive state was essential for preserving the "freedoms" of predatory economic actors (a.k.a. "the market") was clear in theory well before the US finally actualized it during the 1930s. The 1930s New Deal also demonstrated how the redistributive state will always be essential for preserving the most humane incarnations of "individual rights" which in complex societies are largely dependent on the institutions of liberal democracy and its associated cultural attitudes.

The new "center" Brooks so devoutly prays for will probably involve some configuration of a "Green New Deal", but this time its formational forces will not be merely economic and political. They will be geological in the sense that climate change driven by global warming will also change landscapes and their carrying capacity for organized human life. If this image invokes images of inevitable political clashes of "biblical proportions", with mass migrations, fire & brimstone, and globally echoing wailing and gnashing of teeth, then we can see what is truly at stake.

The original New Deal barely averted the US descent into fascism. But our fascist (we, unfortunately, lack a better word) tendencies were only held at bay when FDR forged his coalition. An ongoing mistake which seems only to be encouraged by ANTIFA street reactions is that the enemies of liberal democracy are best depicted by the devastating realities of desolate gunmen and despicable fringe groups with their "embittered yet defiant" fashion statements. Those agonized souls are symptomatic pawns of an unholy entanglement between militant religious fundamentalism and the most atavistic elements of the 0.1% (a true "idiot elite").

Green New Deal Phobia

“For now, Democratic voters might think twice about embracing a candidate whose dark, distorting ideas about America bear such an uncomfortable resemblance to those of the president they detest.”      — Bret Stevens scribing about Elizabeth Warren

And then Democrats (and all democrats too) should think thrice about the shifty facile obfuscations and “both-siderist” dismissals of the absolute reality that America, like every other complex society, has powerful oligarchic tendencies while our fundemental infrastructures are being threatened on a global scale by climate change.

And THEN maybe we will think twice as deeply into relatively our recent history to see how idiotic oligarchic power can be democratically contained, reduced, and channeled for the good of other elements of society. We need only look at the New Deal of the 1930s and how it was hobbled from its beginnings by the racist Southern Wing of the Democratic Party, but still revitalized our culture and economy.

Now we have the opportunity for a broader-based, more transformational, Green New Deal. Actually, we have more than an “opportunity”. We have a visceral survivalist mandate to do so - if we can accomplish much before the effects of greenhouse gas induced global warming disrupts all organized human effort.

A Green New Deal strikes fear into the hearts of a tiny (idiot) 0.1% elite and the multitudes of scribes, Pharisees, and hacks who shill for their (self)destructive greedy instincts. Let’s hope we think thrice before crediting THEM at all.

The Corporatized GOP (as Fascist Blowback with Smirnoff and Chopsticks)

As the Maria Butina case demonstrates, the phenomena of the GOP’s possession by authoritarian tendencies is a direct result of the toxic influence of plutocrats and corporations.

For decades now, corporations have been recruiting and cultivating pliable ignoramuses, rabble-rousing cranks, and useful boobs to run for office on local, state, and the national level. (Democrats may apply, but they too often succumb to “special interest” loyalties to sketchy fringe groups like workers, students, minorities, consumers, poor people, parents, teachers, the elderly, children, and voters who try to stay informed about things like war, peace, nuclear weapons, pollution, climate change, politics, and corruption.)

Now this corporately fed confederacy of dunces is being swayed and laid by perky little minxes with Russian accents while Putin learns to play certain strings inserted by ALEC and the NRA into the otherwise limp limbs of these dimwitted dime store solons.

There is what the crafty ones refer to as "blowback".

In the meantime, our most dynamic corporations are converging their interests with the Beijing Politburo, and there are seemingly too many communist, fascist, and capitalist plots for any diligent conspiracy buff to keep up with.

In the short term, we wonder if there is any residual heart or spine left in the GOP.

Paul Simon strums and sings at the same time:

“Hey Hey Hey, Willard Rominey! The nation turns it anxious eyes to you. What will you do? 

Boob Oopy Do, Ole Mitt Rominey. D’ya think you’ll do the Mormon thing to do?” 

Woo Woo Woo???”

It's not impossible that the afterglow of Poppy's send-off might still ignite a gritty fire in the heart of some relatively grift free patrician like Mitt, former comandante of my old commonwealth. "God Save It" pipes up ol' Charlie Pierce!  He has a legitimate grudge stemming from his Waldorf mortification, a reputation for a capitalist version of probity that has survived many hard-fought political campaigns, and a family reputation for putting principle before party which he inherited from his dad.

But whether Republicans can save themselves or be swept into the ashcan of defunct parties to mingle there with the Federalists, the Whigs, and their kindred Know Nothings (the alternative is too gruesome), the danger of a globalized fascism is immanent, transcending as it does any individual conspiracy, but being driven instead dynamics of greed, competition, and power that predate, and may yet survive, capitalism.

Let us hope a new generation of Americans, critically supporting a new generation of politicians and lawmakers, will soon dedicate themselves to a more basic and clear-eyed vision of economic democracy.

History with Its Hits and Myths

History is, of course, constantly being made by our actions and the actions of others as events unfold around us all. The same is true of mythmaking whose memes are constantly being crafted and thrown into the polishing mosh of the collective id. Perhaps we were comfortably privileged to witness more of the latter in the relatively unpompous circumstances of George H. W. Bush's final layaway.

Not inappropriately, much scrutiny was applied to calculating the spiritual debits and bloody credits involved in memorializing Poppy's vaunted civility and how it cloaked and revealed his and our humanity - and inhumanity too. This is not inappropriate because whether or not we view ourselves as (a)theists, we rely on each other to each have some care for what are sometimes called our "souls" whether or not such questionable entities are understood as unique kernels of individuality or as amorphous parts of something vaster that encompasses so much more than we can ever comprehend.

In considering the legacy of the elder Bush, there were also the peripheral, but not at all unimportant, concerns expressed in eulogizing the transformational passage of a mythological WASPY elite. This is significant because venerating the former president's gracious manners was inescapably a limited rebuke to the obscene grotesqueries of OUR current president*. We have so much more to be concerned with in terms of both our governance and our culture. Scrolling past riveting real-time photos of starving Yemeni children ought to be sufficient to remind us of the limited utility of contrasting the brutalities and injustices of our recent past to gauzy memories of comity in bygone politics. If the atrocities of Vietnam and Guatemala and . . . and . . . and . . . and..., are not by now, indelibly tattooed onto our national self-image, then we are truly soulless by any definition of spiritual and moral emptiness. Despite any ultimate reliability or validity in the mythological notion of an Enlightenment Process and the gratifying empirical reinforcement for such notions provided by wits like Steven Pinker, the atrocities undeniably continue in their semi monotonous horror.

Returning to more reassuring preoccupations regarding the prospects of nubby digited trimp, it would be most surprising if that story is not, by now, already irrevocably barreling down the briskly steepening path of writing itself. Relentless prosecutors in the Departments of Justice and The House of Representatives are already pivoting past the inner circles of unscrupulously clueless cronies towards the empty blank sanctum of the "first" family. The only question is how large a portion of our crumbling institutional capital will trimp bring down with him - and how dramatic will be his inevitable implosion. We wait, with belted breath, to see whether any advisors able to curb or divert trimp's worst impulses will survive until the clutching final grasp while watching his less formidable (or more agile) accomplices scurry into the shadows. It's dramaturgically reassuring that one arch villain, Steve Bannon, has already absconded to the gilded recesses of the continent where he hobnobs and plots with aristocratic Opus Dei types for the future overthrow of liberal democracies and Papa Francesco. The buttery popcorn eats itself as we sit transfixed in the dark.

Anyone who lived sentiently through any portion of the Century of "The Quiet American" has their own grasp on how much of the "spirit of service" of the Waspy, Kennedy, (some Jews may apply) upper crust was merely hollow cant. This is in the nature of guiding mythologies after all. To the extent they are even recognized, they are rarely fully understood, much less embraced. And those rare souls who are allowed by some combination of circumstance and accomplishment to hold a capacious appreciation of a guiding mythology while still being possessed by it are cast into the crucible of its contradictions whether or not such souls are operationally involved in its clashes with "reality" in the way of presidents and statesmen. (This far into our history-making, the bulk of those anointed ones, who themselves exist at least semi mythologically, have not been women).

What must be remembered about myths is that because of their holding power on the collective imagination, they are always so much more than mere fantasy or cant. This is especially true of "Guiding Myths" because these, no matter how ineffectually or catastrophically, actually do exert some degree of guidance over most of us at least some of the time - and we can have interesting arguments about the extent to which their hold is fastest on the minds of some of the most eminent among us vs the extent to which the purview of such myths is mostly a preoccupation of observant scribes or gullible trudgers and consumers. The hold these myths have on our thoughts and hopes is their power and their reality. The spirit of compromise murmured about in appreciations of George H. W. Bush may be nominally applied to relationships between political parties vying for power in a rule-based system, but it is always just as much about the compromises of ideals in the face of (elite and popular) perceptions of expediency and (popular and elite) understandings of necessity.

Bemoaning "the spirit of service" (of which our collective myth machine has now made Bush I an emblem) is, hopefully, part of the process of generating some newer version of a guiding myth by which newer generations of leaders may be inspired, constrained, and befuddled. Yes, the WASPY Service Spirit, was in part limited in the hold it had over us all because it was, after all like the spirit of Noblesse Oblige which proceeded it, an ethos for an elite. There are those who claim an elite will always be necessary whether it is aristocratic, meritocratic, or based on some other (much) more or (much) less democratic mechanisms. They will not (soon) be proven wrong. Nevertheless, a truly robust guiding mythology must fulfill a large number of functions, not the least of which is uniting an entire people, which in this new century almost certainly means the entire global population. In that light, the slightly hapless, slightly Machiavellian figure of George "Poppy" Bush (playing ground champion, war hero, and chief spook) may be as apt a symbol of the passing guard as will ever be possible. And in his spirit of graciousness, I look forward to the possibility that the emergent spirit, typified now by the young likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be of signal help as we struggle to lift our common prospects together above our abysmal past one collectively forged nacho at a time.

Some Awkward Truths about H.W.

It feels unduly disrespectful to refer to the late president as a “mainstream guy” when a case can fairly be made for his excellence in ways that transcend the items on his resume. Yet, perhaps the biggest tribute we can pay to the undeniable interpersonal decency of this man is to ensure our appraisals of his broader life and legacy take into account our own contributions and complicities.

Maybe we applaud him for engaging in “the art of the possible” with such actions as the Americans with Disabilities Act and the spirit of compromise which belied his “lips” and energized the dark right while possibly upending his chance for a second term. Maybe we condemn him for that or for Willie Horton, climate change passivity, and paralysis in the face of the AIDS crisis. Or maybe we just sit back in wonder at how the US, counseled and abetted by murky organizations like the CIA, has been a ruthless counterforce against democracy across the world, prone to wading hip deep in the blood and tears of torture victims and in the smoldering rubble of unjust wars?

It is almost ghastly, while the current occupant of the White House still tweets there un-indicted, to contemplate the truth that our leaders reflect our own essential nature as a nation and a society. Yet courage and honesty force us to try. Maybe this would be the best way to honor what was best in George H. W. Bush - and what we hope are also the best impulses within ourselves that still struggle so awkwardly (and often counterproductively) to be realized in the world.






Joe Panzica
https://www.streamlygredible.com/

On China, The West, and Democracy

There is a somewhat uncomfortable side effect of our now daily spattering by fecal trimpisms from the paranoid right. This is a grudging appreciation of the actual merits of both the mainstream media and even certain elements of the international foreign policy establishment.

Here is a good article about China and the challenges it presents to “The West” by the former Prime Minister of Australia. Kevin Rudd’s ten points certainly deserve careful, and perhaps actionable, attention. I’m also strangely grateful for Her Kissinger’s last question, “Vhut are we NOT seeing?” (Leave it to him . . .) 

As is “traditional” the ‘establishment frame” presented here assumes (or insinuates) a much higher level of commitment to “liberal democratic” norms in the US and the West than is necessarily supported either by deep history or by more recent developments. Along those traditional lines I can see how those on the rightward end of the political spectrum (here in “The Land O’ the Free”) might blanch at the successful Chinese example of a powerhouse international economy with so much explicit government involvement. Those on the left are as likely to point with dismay at the seeming triumph of Chinese style repression characterized by a sophisticated combination of technology, propaganda, and brutality.

What might be missing here though, is recognition of a chilling degree of similarity between the Chinese and US models in terms of both government dynamism in the economy and anti-democratic repression. (Let’s just casually reference gerrymandering, voter suppression, the carceral state, and the perennial necessity to remind ourselves that “black lives matter” despite the ever twitchy trigger fingers of nervous police officers.)

Of course, failures on our part to recognize any realities along these lines could be a tribute to the success of an ideological (“propaganda”) system which may well be “designed” to obscure the perhaps necessarily intimate dependence of our vaunted private sector on state resources while also simultaneously exaggerating and trivializing liberal democratic rights and norms.

It is chillingly possible that the most repressive tendencies in both the US and China will Googly converge into something so horribly pervasive it becomes the nearly unquestioned norm for several generations. This is my fear. Or rather my dread is that this has already happened to a large extent and is a set of dark developments with an accelerating momentum. At the risk of echoing 1950s style anti-communist paranoia, such a system could already be overcoming us via the powerful anesthetic properties of triumphalism, distractions, ignorance, and numbing fears. Unfortunately, one of the ways fear is generated is by raising the specter of war against “inscrutable” enemies, but this is certainly not Mr. Rudd’s prime intention in this quite thoughtful and very comprehensive analysis.

Whether we like it or not, there are many ways in which “the establishment” is “our establishment” and it often reflects the best of us – as well as our worst.

On a more hopeful note, despite always being resisted to varying extents by establishments everywhere, freedom is sustainable only through the complexities of liberal democracy whether establishments (or peoples) recognize this or not. This is true in China. This is true in the US. This is true wherever there is humanity.

Ignoring, for now, the disruptive potentials of obvious forces like climate change and nuclear irresponsibility, and despite the haze of the incessant mind crushing deceptions we are so prone to embrace, there is something in us that will always strive for a dignified, sustainable, and genuine freedom where human potential is valued in everyone.

If only we can survive as a species long enough to realize this just a bit more . ..

Gravity, Grace, and Dead Presidents

No doubt George H. W. Bush would have testily rejected Noam Chomsky’s blistering condemnation of all post-WWII American presidents. I can almost envision him (or is it Dana Carvey?) doing this. After all, the assertion that all of them, by the Nuremberg Principles, merited hanging was put forth during the tenure of his own administration.

I can grudgingly agree with Chomsky without succumbing to hatred or disgust when it comes to Bush I. This is not simply because it is so easy to point to cruder examples of presidential lawlessness. Nor do I want to use the word “grace” either to allude to the senior Bush’s vaunted civility and capacity to laugh at himself. I would also like to avoid employing the word (exclusively) in its Christian religious sense. Still, it is impossible to escape the Christian (perhaps Judeo Christian?) conviction that all of us are nothing more than loathsome sinners who under any dreaded regime of purifying justice deserve nothing better than the searing agony of eternal abandonment.

I want to try to use the word “grace” in the most secular sense possible which means acknowledging all its complexities and paradox. I simply do not believe we can condemn him (as opposed to his actions which individually deserve their own plaudits and denunciations) without diminishing ourselves – if only because that type of condemnation threatens to push us into a false position of blamelessness. At the same time, to not enumerate the omissions and brutalities which he, like us, inherited and perpetuated is also a betrayal of all of us – and the hopes that we can gradually and collectively transcend the worst elements of our nature.

On this day of his internment, we should remind ourselves that we all struggle under these contradictions. It may be a false comfort to imagine that a man like George H. W. Bush might have struggled to the utmost of his ability to appreciate these quandaries in a way that still (and perhaps perpetually) eludes us as a culture. Still, to deny any possibility he was not sincerely humbled by this incarnate spiritual challenge is actually to assert our own moral vacuum.

The Niceness of George I

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world . . .” -- George Bernard Shaw

The value of decorous civility receives urgent new emphasis with every development from (or revelation about) the current administration*. But even the most perennially disgruntled among us should always have been at least dimly aware that politesse is ever so much more than the complacent visage of conservativism and privilege. Of course, "niceness", that often absolutely genuine human decency, was not George H.W. Bush's only virtue. His famously eminent resume was also nothing other than an emblem of competence. True as it may be that his birth offered him opportunities not afforded to everyone, he undertook the responsibilities of his many high offices with an admirable sense of determination to be both effective and accountable to the system he inherited (such as it was).

As a child, I made my acquaintance with the future president on TV. He was the first US emissary, sent by Nixon, to the Peoples' Republic of China. I remember how carefully he explained to me through the interviewing journalist (Mike Wallace?) without pandering or condescension, the nature of his groundbreaking mission. I was impressed. At the age of 13, though already an inveterate Democrat ("Before FDR," my grandfather would say, "We were like slaves."), I was naive enough to at least be open to the idea of bi-partisanship. With something of the same mindset, I recall being vaguely reassured when he took charge of the CIA following the Church and Pike Committee revelations. Before he joined Reagan's ticket, I admired the acuity of the term "voodoo economics" to describe the latest incarnation of the trickledown theory, now called "supply-siderism".

Politeness helps us get along. It also greases the way for "going along", and if George H. W. Bush "went along" with Reagan, he was not alone. If his public record demonstrated he was doing this at least somewhat against his better judgement, he was still in plenty of good company. It is quite significant that Mr. Bush was the final World War II veteran to serve as president. His generation went through fire and hell to learn the value of cooperation and faith in a mission larger than the bulk of our differences. And his generation accomplished a lot in the vital, and often bipartisan, struggle to realize the promise of democracy. The Americans with Disabilities Act is a significant contribution to the stirring progress made toward affording equal civil rights to every citizen during the last half of the twentieth century. Bush deserves everlasting credit for supporting a ban on assault weapons, and his letter of resignation to the NRA remains a shining example of a brand of decency and integrity which too many still irresponsibly ignore. It should be remembered that he signed a bill raising the minimum wage and strove, mostly credibly, to be the "environmental president". Though no one comes close to matching Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush's conduct (with Bill Clinton as his bi-partisan wingman) after his presidency is another testament to his abiding goodwill (on a personal level).

Whether being bi-partisan or not, there's no question that President Bush was an "establishment guy". And if being an essential leading advocate of the massive system known as the United States of America was sometimes (or often) in conflict with his inclination to be a decent human being, this is something all citizens of all parties must strive to understand if true democracy is ever to be realized.

My title "The Niceness of George I" is not meant to be an ironic pointer to any character failings of this man whose near-universally acknowledged good manners should be recognized, especially in these times, as a signal of strength, not weakness - and of generosity, perhaps much more than any patrician exclusivity. 

The "bipartisan failures" I want to point out are those of the system which he nominally led and which still shapes so much of all our hopes and plans and fears. One of the many reasons Bush lost the White House to Bill Clinton was the resurgence of movement conservativism. "Read my lips. No new taxes!" was an epithet hurled scornfully back at him by those who would brand him as a "promise breaker" instead of a statesman willing to make necessary compromises to avoid a government shutdown. It's worthwhile to pause here to contrast the "conservative" intolerance of Bush's "failure" with their seemingly infinite indulgence toward the abominations of our current president*.

A person's "character", in the most emblematic sense of the word, is as much a reflection of how he contends with his weaknesses as it is how he brandishes his virtues and strengths. The same goes for entities we call "nations". Included among the inherent challenges of the United States are racism and the permanent war economy which fuels and which is also driven by what Eisenhower presciently termed "the military-industrial complex." Both of these are so ingrained into our national character and institutions that too many of us fail to - or refuse to - recognize their existence never mind their "character" as disgraceful (potentially fatal) flaws.

It is quite possible that the vast condescension known as "History" might someday portray Bush I as either heroically or haplessly presiding over the apex of the Pax Americana and the start of a slow, but soon to accelerate, decline into mediocracy or chaos - or something fascistically worse. But I think it is fair to Mr. Bush's inherent patriotic decency to use the event of his passing to focus the systemic nature of the United States with as much attention to its ongoing failures as to its nearly endless potential.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world [ . . .] Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”    -- George Bernard Shaw

The US military industrial economy with its endless war economy is an ongoing global scourge generated by the Second World War in which Bush was simply a daring, but young, officer. How churlish it would be to fault George H. W. Bush for failing, in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, to seize upon and promote the idea of a "peace dividend" even if one were to condemn Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama in equal measures. The image of his son, George W, standing atop the smoldering wreckage of the twin towers in 2001 New York can fairly be used as an argument of the prescience for keeping our armed forces girded to battle a '"war on terrorism" rather than investing in human capital and peaceful infrastructure. But it is equally fair to point to trimp and the role of an incoherent surge of disaffected authoritarian populism as signal evidence that our system abjectly failed then to seize upon a necessary opportunity offered by the Soviet collapse.  We certainly continue in this same blind failure even now. This failure belongs to all of us because there were potential leaders then who did try to point the way, and we collectively ignored them.  If we put too much faith in establishment Democrats, we are likely to continue in this collective blindness. 

Perhaps, in the not too distant future, there will be an American leader who seizes upon the malaise (Yes, Jimmy Carter. You were right.) that bred trimpulism and the imminent catastrophes represented by anthropogenic global climate change to build a substantially new system where the permanent war economy is displaced to a large extent by a Green Revolution. This would be a revolution that valorizes ordinary human welfare as the pace of automation increases. It would acknowledge the entire planet as the relatively closed and fragile (at least with regard to our own survival needs) system which we have learned through hard experience that it is. This is not impossible and, with each passing year, it requires ever less of what was once called "the vision thing". If the spirit of someone like George H. W. Bush were ever to regret anything about the emergence of such a new leader, he would keep it to himself, but that quiet regret would very honorably be based on the credible conviction that he always had the metal, but that we, the people had not called upon it in his time.

This is not the time to be churlish about the crushing failures of George H. W. Bush or any other past leader, alive or dead. Yes, we will probably always need leaders to elevate and to bring crashing down. But, as our times may be making increasingly clear, to carp on the shortcomings of our "great ones" overmuch may be becoming less churlish and childish than it is suicidal. In any event, we owe it to ourselves and to posterity to contribute to and support as much as possible systems where "going along" is less obviously a pact with injustice and, even perhaps, the death of our species.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.”    -- George Bernard Shaw

All progress, may indeed, depend upon unreasonable men and woman. But compare donald j trimp to George Herbert Walker Bush. Decency on its own is quite liable to disappoint, but unreasonableness itself is rarely inspirational, never mind productive.

Regarding General Motors, Frogs, and Scorpians

That our current president is a liar and a fool is, at this point, established common knowledge. More than half the people who voted for him knew this in November 2016. Many of them still see trimp as the “lesser evil” or a “Hail Mary pass”.

And why not? The failure of our political system has been bruited by talk radio and corporate-funded whispering campaigns which long predate electronic social media. But this failure is much more than vague or feverish perceptions.

The many genuine failures of our political system are also much more complicated than the agonizing frustrations inherent in even a well-functioning democracy if one were ever to exist.

Somehow enough voters in Ohio thought it was worth taking a chance on trimp. Some of them actually believed there was some way he could bribe, order, cajole, intimidate, or shame the monster corporations to provide and protect their job opportunities.

Of course, this was just the most recent of a long chain of conservative Republican tax cuts for the rich and for the corporations. This giveaway was designed to trickle down through the economy to create and preserve “good jobs”. And just like every other conservative Republican tax cut in US history, it merely lined the pockets of the rich and emboldened policies and attitudes that foment more misery and hopelessness among the rest of us. This is our political system.

This is dysfunction.

Now trimp and many communities in the Midwest have been again betrayed by General Motors. This is a corporation which would likely not exist today except for a taxpayer bailout. It still receives subsidies today. The plants GM is closing are built on the ruins of neighborhoods purchased with taxpayer money. These plants were built on the crushed and scorned memories of the working poor who lived and loved and died in those bulldozed and buried neighborhoods. Like a scorpion on a frog's back GM is a corporation which cannot stop itself from repeatedly stabbing the communities which support it with poison sting after poison sting.

Maybe trimp will launch a justly deserved presidential campaign of vilification against this predatory corporation. Maybe a frightened GM will buy him off with vague promises to reopen these plants in return for further sweeteners and subsidies. Maybe trimp will find a way to blame the poor and the brown and immigrant for GM's troubles. Maybe our president* will distract us with some new and terrorizing conflict where we will feel obliged to support our troops. Maybe trimp will soon be paralyzed by revelations from the Mueller investigation and inquests into associated scandals.

Maybe, along with the voters of Ohio, we will be fooled again. And again. And again.

Maybe we are all nothing but crash test dummies for an idiotic, though very mighty, corporate elite.

Whatever happens with (or to) trimp, this is the time to focus more attention on the role of corporations in our economy and our society. As more and more jobs are replaced by automation or are exported to terror regimes which know how to keep wages low, Americans who care about the future need to re-examine old prejudices, ideas, and beliefs.

The original corporations were entities created to serve some public "good". They were projects to build cathedrals. They were universities. They were towns and cities. Later on, more mercenary corporations were chartered, but even then it was understood that corporate privileges and independence were granted in return for some benefit to the sovereign. This started happening right about the same time in history as the idea that the people were sovereign began to be realized. And not long after this came the idea that by their very nature "corporations are people too" began to be insinuated into our common law system of precedents.

These immortal undemocratic zombie-like "people" often sit on piles of accumulated wealth that would overwhelm and embarrass the neediest greediest dragon of any self-respecting fantasy world. These unsleeping profit-motivated entities glide shark-like through human communities taking as much value as they can and giving back as little as they can get away with. They buy, sell, and trade our politicians and lawmakers the way 11-year-olds used to swap bubblegum scented baseball cards. And too much of our economy, our education system, our hopes, and our dreams are all based on the idea of our selling our days and talents to them in return for a living wage.

A scorpion cannot stop itself from stinging. The profit motive overwhelms all scruples. But we can change our laws and our incentives to reinforce other motives and other responsibilities. We cannot erase or outgrow greed, but we can nurture and protect better motivators. We can certainly punish scofflaws and promise breakers.

The death penalty for a corporation is the revocation of its charter. GM may or may not deserve the ultimate sanction. But for our economy and politics to become functional, we have to start changing the terms by which corporations are chartered and governed. We also have to make them and their all too human chief decision makers more subject to the rule of law. We have to make them accountable to democracy instead of its destroyers.

Maybe the failing (oh so sad!) trimp administration can make itself slightly useful. Maybe it can draw attention to the way corporations and their billionaire owners have betrayed our gullible trust. And maybe it could do some clumsy and unintentional service to the centuries-old efforts to extend and establish a meaningful “rule by the people.”

Idiot Wind

Nobody knows what it means to be human, but the sensation of “empty spaces in our hearts” is apparently a core element of whatever passes for our “essence”.  It is part of the creative force which (sometimes mercilessly) drives us onward, inward, or outward to transcend our condition and our “selves”

So yes.  We know we must do better.  

And that starts by trying to see our situation(s) clearly even if that also is a Sisyphean struggle. 

No. Loneliness is NOT tearing America apart.

No. Empty spaces in our “hearts” are NOT causing angry and divisive politics.

Nobody knows the secret to happiness, fulfillment, or the formation of a “beloved community”.

But deep down we know we are only as safe as the most threatened and marginalized among us. And deep down we know that “among us” does NOT just refer to people of the same skin color or who live in the same nation state jurisdiction.

The empty spaces in our hearts may not be CAUSED by a tiny idiotic (0.1%) elite hoovering up more and more of the wealth of our society. But the anxious hateful greed that drives a minority to preserve and expand its control over our institutions IS the major cause of divisive, fearful, confused, and hate-filled politics.

Our politics are so dysfunctional we cannot even take baby steps toward a humane inclusive healthcare system without creating a boondoggle for useless insurance corporations and multiple opportunities to divide us further by race and class and geography.

Our economy is so dysfunctional it depends ever more on a growing “underclass” of decent, honest, hard working “illegals” whom we oppress and torture in all sorts of ways and do not even quail at ripping their babies from their mothers’ breasts.

And then there’s Arthur C. Brooks. . . What the hell is he talking about?

The Progessive Curse

“Elite hysteria about the depravity of the American people makes even less sense in 2018 than it did in 2016. This election was, absolutely, a mass repudiation of Trump and his foul agenda. Republicans lost the popular contest for Congress by millions of votes and over seven percentage points. The true power behind Trump’s throne, we should know by now, is not an irresistible army of zombie racists in the heartland, but the historical structures and top-down tactics that sustain Republican minority rule.” — Matt Karp

Matt Karp is a historian, and his hope filled comment is a preface to some profound concerns regarding the Democratic Party. Yes, the Democrats have swept Republicans out of ancestral strongholds like Orange County, CA. But as richer more suburban areas grow bluer, some poorer more rural areas are getting redder.

My worry is that post trimp, many suburban whites will resort to voting Republican. Perhaps this will be impossible though if GOP politicians continue to energize their “base” by hoisting the obsidian standards of racial hatred, class resentment, and testosterone chauvinism.

But that evokes the most profound worries.

Karp’s worry is that the Democrats will pursue policies that widen the financial and cultural divides between workers who labor with their hands and those who labor with information, systems, and persuasion.

Karp is also someone who quite stirringly writes:

“Democrats may disdain, subordinate, or proscribe vast swathes of the working class, but socialists — if the idea of socialism means anything at all — never can.”

As someone who votes Democratically, I have to wince at this because it is so hard not to disdain anyone who cheers for trimp and who falls for the types of authoritarian populist politicians whom trimp emboldens. trimp himself may fall, but the gleaming dark standards of incipient fascism will still be borne by others either up towards high places of triumph or down into low corners of skulking.

I’m forced to remember the majority of workers without higher education do not sympathize with trimp and the darkness he represents. It may often seem otherwise because racism and sexism are such pervasive forces, affecting all our thinking in subtle but damaging ways. It’s so easy to conflate “white working class men without college” with the working class as a whole. Yes, only a minority of white working class men without college reject trimpulism, but it is a large minority. Bullies and fascists can seize power, this never happens solely because of working class support.

We must also remember that trimp enthusiasm is significant among the more educated, prosperous, and privileged sectors of the professional classes. And here again, this is mostly a phenomenon among the older and the “whiter”.

“Whites” as a whole will soon no longer be the majority in US politics. Some, no doubt, will fiercely cling to strange ideas regarding privilege and exceptionalism. Their delusions and resentments will be exploited by others seeking to maintain a plutocratic minority rule via the GOP - or other more emblematic organizations. 

The fragile institutions that support democracy and rule of law will continue to be tested.

But they have been tested before.

Karp concludes by comparing circumstances of today with that of Reconstruction and the Gilded Age.

Yes, today’s Democratic Party is dominated by upscale professionals, many of whom are subordinate to the billionaire class.

Yes, today’s Democratic Party is dominated by upper middle class concerns about property values and exclusive educational opportunities for our children.

But the Democratic Party of today, thanks to its progressive wing and LBJ, has largely unfreighted itself of the necessity to appeal to ignorance and racism.

This is progress. This is real world progress which is achieved via collective efforts on historical and institutional scales. Its uncertain pace and often abstract nature are often disappointing and frustrating to us whose perspectives are defined by stages mostly confined to a single lifespan. It’s also frustrating to recognize that progress can be reversed as it is constantly being tested by the forces of greed, privilege, and the darker angels of our nature.

At this point billionaires have nothing to fear from those who call ourselves socialists - at least until miners and farmers and steelworkers and teachers and retail clerks start reading Jacobin. But who billionaires hate and fear the most are progressive democrats, the ones who do the grunt work of political campaigns while pressing steadily for universal dignity and justice.

Jihad

Yes. I do believe Nazis have a right to free speech.  I agree hate speech should be constitutionally protected.  But as demonstrated by the Boston Police on the Common in the weeks following Charlottesville, no one has any right to a megaphone.

Natalie Wynn pushes forcefully into the shrapneled edges where paranoia blends with all the ways liberal democratic values can be turned piercingly against themselves by deceitful malefactors and . . . most alarming of all . . . the clueless.

Us.

Yes, we are all a bit racist. We are all a bit fascist. We are all a bit Nazi . . . little Hitlers lurk inside us all. And this brings up the importance what the Muslims call “jihad”.

I’m not familiar with an equivalent term in Christian or Jewish theology - or at least none come to mind. ( . . . ? . . .)

Some Marxists groups talk about “self criticism”, but Wynn is, to my mind, engaging in what even atheists might recognize as a ”spiritual struggle” where there are no sure certainties except this very dangerous and very necessary “warfare”.

What’s portrayed in this video is a chilling struggle which leads one on towards an infinity of snares and pitfalls. And as frightening as is all this grappling with self, identity, agency, and essence, what can be more loathsome and horrifying than an identity based on hatred, superiority, or the crushing of human hope? Because that‘s what racism and fascism and Nazism is about: the crushing of human hope.

The “Luck” of the Democrats????

“One of the interesting features of this election cycle has been the gulf, often vast, between the hysteria of liberals who write about politics for a living and the relative calm of Democrats who practice it.” — Ross Douthat

The rest of Douthat’s essay is worth a read, but that lead sentence points to an essential difference between the two parties. Republican politicians and legislators are (on the whole) doing their best to stay ahead of the emotionalists in their base when they are not actively pandering to or even recklessly inciting the most loathsome forms of divisive triumphalisms.

Democratic legislators and politicians, being politicians after all, are not above pandering with occasional bursts of incitements. But on the whole they lag far behind the emotionalists in their base. (I use the word “emotionalists” to avoid the word “extremists” because so much of the lather on both sides is less related to actual policy than it is to sentiments and affinities.)

What’s behind this disparity is less of a moral distinction than a practical one (although this disparity has grave moral consequences). Democratic leaders and politicians are, on the whole, much more interested in actual governing. And they are much more interested in governing through the forging of majorities and compromises between various factions - whether those factions are part of a working majority or not. Republicans are currently feverishly striving to preserve and institutionalize minority rule.

In the long run, if the Democrats can sustain it, theirs is the only workable attitude that provides hope for a peaceful and (at least somewhat) democratic future. . . . meaning a future for a republican form of government. In the long run, the Republicans will either have to revert to a more inclusive, serious and sober approach to governing or risk destroying themselves as a party - or devastating the democratic republic as a workable set of institutions in the US of A.

But the short term is very frightening even if there is some semblance of a Blue Wave tomorrow.

Right now the Democratic leadership are hoping voters will put practical considerations like decent, affordable healthcare ahead of tribalist emotionalism.  But tribalist emotionalism recoils from the healthcare debate because a serious look at the world today reminds us that only government can ensure a fair and sustainable healthcare system - whether that is through the direct provision of services or through the planned structuring of "the market".

And the song of the Rhinoceros grows stronger and sweeter.

The Strong Man as Savior and OUR Contempt for Democracy

Robert Kagan refers to a “we” with a penchant for dictators comparing “our” misplaced faith in the current Saudi Crown Prince to previous crushes some of “us” have demonstrated for the likes of Hitler, Mussolini and others of the same murderous ilk. 

Yes. Robert Kagan is a member of the US foreign policy elite, but he is not totally wrong to include much of “us” in his well argued position

which is really the classic affirmation of democracy.  A great deal of “our” admiration for anti-democratic strong men is cultivated by elite opinion and corporate domination of the mass media.  And the commonplace disdain for politics and politicians is also a product of corporate and elite ideology that “we” (yes YOU too!) tend to adopt unthinkingly.

Partly. 

Because, after all, democracy IS “us” which means it is often ugly, selfish, petty, frightened, confused, and self destructive.  This is why encouraging and supporting democracy is so frought with pitfalls and frustrations.  Idealizing democracy might be one of the most insidious ways of undermining it no matter how well meaning the impulse to deemphasize our own weaknesses and sins. 

We Must Do Better

I'm totally partisan and not backing down, but it's still not fair to call Boy Kavanaugh a rapist.

The fairest, most reasonable, way to interpret the limited (and not 100% reliable evidence) is that two drunken 17-year-old boys took advantage of an opportunity to toss a 15-year-old girl onto a bed and roughhouse with her. They were, of course, testing to see what thrills might result, but mostly just uproariously amusing each other - at her expense. Things (and boys and girls) being what they are . . . it could have resulted in a rape or any number of various consequences, injuries, or humiliations. It did result in a terrifying and life impinging trauma for the girl who had every reason to believe Football Bret was trying to rape her and could have accidentally killed her.

To the boys it was all "good" fun. Or at least it was "not TOO bad" fun - as most anyone who has ever been a boy would probably recognize. Perhaps it even ended in some awkward regrets or momentary cringing concerns all too soon pushed out of memory. After all, it was only one of very many drunken escapades. It was only one of numerous incidents of larger boys tormenting someone smaller and weaker, and only a single grunting example of how teams of boys grant each other status by denigrating females sexually.

And this (the absence of weight in the grander scheme of things) is the real import of Dr. Ford's testimony. Late adolescence is a liminal period where the torments and outrages of human childhood start to take on a new cast. And early adulthood is when we try to incorporate the habits and attitudes of childhood into ways of life worthy of respect even as we struggle to balance the importance of the images we imagine we project compared against the fitful ways we tend to see ourselves.

The "MeToo" movement is making it more and more impossible for all of us to ignore how predatory behaviors rehearsed in childhood affect the ways we organize our adult working and family lives even as we struggle against and perpetuate grander systems of dominance, oppression, - and order.

No doubt there is a limit to what established adults should be held accountable for in times long past when they were green, dependent, and not fully formed (as if we ever are). But the child is the father to the man, and very few men or women have the wisdom, experience, and greatness of heart to sit on the highest court of the most majestically and destructively powerful empire yet to shake the earth.

Decency, not partisanship, is what whispers so urgently we can do better than Bret Kavanaugh.

The “Case of the Kavanaugh Boy” and it’s Frightful Ramifications

The issue is not primarily our conduct as teenagers - or as young adults. The issue is how and what we have learned from those experiences which invariably include transgressions. Of course, some transgressions are worse than merely “cringeworthy” but even the most heinous of these are not irredeemably shackled forever to only shame, pain, guilt, and punishment.


It’s obvious that unrepentant, unreformed liars, thieves, rapists and murderers are a threat to everyone. But under certain circumstances of “redemption” neither rape nor murder would “necessarily” disqualify someone from a successful career which might even include some degree of honor and prestige.


By this point, Bret Kavanaugh’s particulars have become secondary to much greater concerns. These include the character of any candidate for the high court as well as the process by which such “characters” are elevated - or cast down. But, even more important, are the structures of impunity which impinge upon the safety and dignity of men and woman (boys and girls) even as they cast some into the role of innocent oppressed and others into the role of callous (or callow) oppressors.


We can all worry about being upended by mistakes or habits forged in the past. We can also invest in finding (and offering) redemption — and in helping each other understand how this might work for everybody instead of only for certain individuals’ personal gains and advantages.  Such an effort is indeed both so daunting and perennial as to seem overwhelming, but it is the prerequisite for fulfilling what some might call our spirituality and others, our humanity.


For Bret Kavanaugh and his confirmation to a pivotal seat on the high court, the primary issue is his character today.  I don't know if Bret Stephens has children or whether they will attend an elite prep school.  But all parents and all perspective parents must now be worrying about issues connected to "The Case of the Kavanaugh Boy."  Unfortunately too many grown men (and women too) today still seem to be more worried about protecting miscreants from public consequences when their anxiety should really be for the hidden injuries suffered by both perpetrators and victims.  

The Question Now

Is Judge Kavanaugh telling the truth now?

This is the essential question when it comes to a lifelong position on the high court.

One might hope the results of a controversy over allegations regarding a 36 year old incident involving unsupervised minors would lead to more human understanding and a commitment from all of us to treat each other with both more justice and more mercy.

But such hope must take into account how we all struggle for decency and opportunity in a structure where a tiny few, very irresponsible elites, control too much “private” concentrated wealth.

Is Judge Kavanaugh telling the truth NOW?

The law is fabric, created, reinforced, undermined, and rewoven by power. Ultimately this power comes from human will, but the accomplishments and accumulations of past generations exercise tremendous pulls and insertions into the enveloping fabric of law.

This fabric, by force of history and the indeterminate nature of men and women, is cast over and stretched across all forms of injustice from war, genocide, expropriation of land, and brutal exploitation of human bodies and human labor.

In his Senate testimony Judge Kavanaugh spoke eloquently about the importance of judges dispassionately applying law as it was written in the past - despite the pressures of contemporary urgencies. He was speaking, of course, of the uncomfortable and inevitable distance between law and justice.

The law is a fabric, sometimes light as gossamer, sometimes more weighty than monstrous chains encrusted with biting rust. It is is woven between and around us to protect ourselves from ourselves. It is woven to protect rights (however they were defined) once they were won. And rights are always won, sometimes in the name of justice, sometimes as the result of might. Rights are never granted, especially not by law because law recognizes only rights that have been won, however that result came to be.

What kind of man is Judge Kavanaugh now? Is he now telling the truth?

Once they are won, law can protect rights. But law alone cannot guarantee rights.

The law is a fabric constantly being woven, reinforced, unwoven, and abraded by implacable forces of time and power. Rights, once won, can be scraped away by assertions and urgencies. Even the most treasured rights can be undone, leaving both the law and justice tattered with wide flapping gaps to be filled with the assertions and urgencies of power.

Some people believe we can, with the help of law, gradually improve the way we understand and deal with each other as humans with all our weaknesses, needs, and strengths. We hope in the possibility that our power is meaningful and worthwhile when measured against the highest standards which have emerged from our struggles to live and comprehend.

Power is simply not just the will of a majority, no matter how injured or angry or enthusiastic or organized - or hopeless. Power is also the accumulated force of traditions and legal rights which can protect a majority from its own folly - or allow an irresponsible few to control the disposition of concentrated productive wealth. The law bends to power as much (and sometimes more) than it shapes it.

Judges are men and women. They are not perfect. But we might hope judges are women and men who have learned from their own failures and weaknesses because they have developed the necessary courage and honesty to do that.

The question is whether or not Judge Kavanaugh is telling the truth now.

​

We Have Met the Enemy and . . .

It really is not the people taunting us with NAZI salutes who should worry us. It's definitely not the creeps who wear sheets or the mutterers who subscribe to the Daily Stormer.

It's the ordinary "salt of the earth" normal folk who like what trimp says about elites and immigrants and who think what trimp says and does is "no big deal". These are the types that give consent to fascism.

And we have much to seriously worry about.

Some of these good people are only superficially resonant with gobbeldigook about "blood and soil" or "white nationalism". Some simply relish the chaos and the outrage. Then there is a large contingent of the religiously devout who see trimp as God's imperfect instrument to "restore" a lost order of decency and justice overrun by secularism, drugs, gays, the UN, and money power etc. etc. etc.

We know there are people like Steve Bannon, now cavorting with Vatican malcontents and authoritarian populists in Europe, while Breitbartlike media entwines itself with Russian (and homegrown) trollmasters throughout the soup of stupid we call "the social network". But his ilk is probably not as dangerous as the legions of opportunists seeking to profit from whatever is unearthed during the current disruptions.

Thank goodness for the naive, opportunistic, studious, and hard charging Democratic Socialists who seek to generate visions of realistic hope. We can overhaul our infrastructures of education, healthcare, transportation, and energy to relieve, reform and redistribute our way to a possible future.

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