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.