Monday, April 13, 2020

The Ghost Of Corona Future


The bitter herbs of Passover Seders and the gall of the The Crucifixion Passion still grasp our collective imaginings, but nothing is more galling than the arrogance of ignorance in power and the willingness of so many of us to dance before false and gravestone images willfully misrepresenting the choices before us.

Are we truly compelled to choose between tyranny and chaos? Is one choice a dictatorship of inscrutable “experts” manipulating us into a bleak conformity for their own grim purposes? Could there be no alternative to that other than the untrammeled thrashings of millions of selfish wills celebrating crackpot interpretations of their various benighted ideas of “freedom”?

In the brightest of all pandemic scenarios, right wing operatives will soon be gleefully mocking all those dire projections from “expert institutions” like Columbia University and “McKinsey Capitalist Consulting” to claim this viral crisis was overblown for anti-American, liberal, socialist, globalist, elitist, managerial purposes. They will do so despite the trimp administration’s own projections currently forecasting at least 60 thousand deaths with trimp himself claiming anything less than 100k mortalities will represent a grand demonstration of his bold, skillful, and foresightful leadership. Nothing is more galling than the misuse of truth to deceive us and to also triumph malignantly over hope, caution, competence, and any awkward dreams of solidarity. And trimp dangles before his followers a glittering mirage of freedom expressed as the impunity to outrage delicacy, flout convention, despise complexity, and create an alternative universe of "facts" where smallness becomes greatness, cowardice becomes command, and ignorance becomes wisdom.

At the end of the Dickens classic, a grasping and desiccated Ebeneezer Scrooge is confronted with a devastating vision of his immediate future. Tremulously, he implores the implacable Spirit whether good works might alter the mortifying prophesy. Neoliberalism and other malignant forms of “conservatism” unceasingly tell us in all sorts of insidious way that there is nothing we can do to bend the curve toward justice. There is much in the current contagion that will bolster the power of their gloomy selfish claims. “No”, they will tell us, pretending to offer the best of all possible worlds, assuring us the “good people” have already grasped their “liberating truth”.

For ideologues in thrall to the plutocracy with all their privilege and greed, there is one Spirit that horrifies them most of all. The very same Spirit is a deadly menace to the dim ideas of those who, long ago (after untold agonies of rejections, betrayals, failures, and humiliations), rejected any prospect of quickening hope. This frightful Specter is the ghost of Karl Marx still proclaiming the most pernicious notion that we, even despite ourselves, make our own history. And, to an immeasurable but decisive extent, we do. We DO collectively make our own future; supported, propelled AND constricted as we are (in part) by our actions in the past and by the decisions, prejudices, folly, and heroism of our predecessors. Some of those follies, of course, were those of Marx himself and, even more so, of those who claimed his ideas, legitimately or not, as their inspiration.

As we are pressed into a future we are (in part) creating, we struggle to understand how our own projections, whether based on our best science or our most deceptive propaganda, will help to preserve what is best in us, as opposed to those which might condemn us to descend into deadly dystopias of ignorance, fear, and systemic cruelty. And our projections are affected by the spirits which animate us, inhibit us, petrify, or inspire us. 

Economics, dismal science that it is, has long recognized the importance of all sorts of projections. One of the most powerful types of economic projections are OUR informal expectations as we act as consumer or as investors. These expectations, exerting their inestimable influence on our activities at the micro level, have enormous implications for outcomes on the macro level. Economic expectations are the the emanations of the human spirit that often confound the projections of professional economists.

Politics, legislation, and policies, with their often decisive impact on economies, have too long been shaped by those who fear and loathe the idea that popular movements can be a productive force. Even now, there are too many who are determined to undermine solidarity by shifting the responsibility for the current pandemic and its economic implications onto foreigners, immigrants, and the usual scapegoats of panicked racist and anti-Semitic prejudices. Idiots that they are, they forget their vast wealth is based on all manner of good faith even as they undermine the institutions and habits of mind that make operational our collective faith and credit.

In the shadow of human induced climate change and the inevitability of new pandemics, a massive macro economic experiment is now being conducted. No doubt, in the past sobering recessions were inflicted upon us by the Federal Reserve, designed as they were, to combat inflation and discipline the work force. (That is “us”) But THIS shutdown is so very different in so many dimensions and on so many scales of magnitude. As we pause to successfully control the spread of infection, we are (with differing ends in mind) also planning for a new economy with, inevitably, a new set of winners and losers. This, in itself, is horrifying to some “conservatives.” In the meantime we will learn new lessons about what an economy is and how it works, just as we are relearning who actually make things work for everyone - and who are determined to make things work only for themselves.

Only in wartime has our government put itself so deeply into debt. And clearly our current deadly conflict is bound to compel our government to dig even deeper into unfathomable sources of monetizable faith in our collective self.

Except for the conflagration of World War II with its associated holocausts, wars have historically been followed by steep economic downturns. Depressions. In 1945, the United States escaped massive damage to its material infrastructure. This helped us avoid the projected slump by indulging in continued massive military expenditures, making weapons that were, to a merciful extent, never used to their full destructive capacity. (“Military Keynesianism” is a term often used to describe our current damning paradigm.) Those weapons, of course, are too often used to devastate peasant economies and  to support repressive regimes all over the globe, but they are arguably not the most potent instrument employed by our debased rulers to shape the global order. What's more potent is our economic might (and I do mean "OUR) and perhaps, even more, our culture onslaught which includes our highest ideals as well as our endless betrayals of the same.

Now we MAY have the opportunity to help shape a new global economy in a new spirit, one that MIGHT be based on actual productivity beyond the narrow scope of human effort that can be directed toward the profit claimed by a tiny and idiotic minority. We will also learn new lessons about sovereign debt, credit, and our capacity to have faith in our future selves.

Unfortunately the same pandemic, now fueling arguments and sentiments for solidarity and equality, is also a fierce engine for their counter forces. It is too much to hope that the 45% of solid support for the clownish imbecile in the White House will be eroded to any significant degree by what is happening now and what might happen in the immediate future. The harsh experiences of failure, foreclosure, and dislocation caused by the economic collapse of 2008 helped generate the Tea Party and its most poisonous outgrowth so far, trimpulism. And now, shuddering levels of grief are being laden onto extended periods of fear and uncertainty. The prolonged social and physical isolation, the unaccustomed downtime breeding new opportunities for reflection and brooding, and the strange emergence of new affinities supported by internet technology are working together to form new cultural realities. No doubt all this is brewing new coalitions, new imaginings, new resentments, new loyalties, and new resolves that might even lead to an increase in trimpulist style intransigence. The future does not inevitably take that course. But it might.

Forty-five percent!

It’s sobering to remember that Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party never won more than 40% in any quasi-legitimate election. But wasn’t that MORE than enough?

In the coming months and years we will be confronted by so many new choices. The election in November will surely be a crucial turning point. Hopefully, maturity and forward thinking will triumph over resentment, frustration, and any festering sentiments of fatalism. Hopefully, people will take their vote very seriously as one step in a very long process of liberating ourselves from our own inclinations to exploit and dominate each other. Hopefully we will take care to nurture what type of spirit we project and what manner of spirits we encourage and celebrate.

Hopefully or not, we have to choose. The arc of history is a curve which potentates and demagogues will always try to twist to their absurd purposes. Sometimes they, more than we, are irately aware that it is one which we together can bend toward justice, equality, and decency. It is also one we can allow to thrash or surge in strange and painful directions, just as conflicting spirits contend, in dubious battle. within ourselves.

This cup will not pass. Our epitaph is etched into nightmarish gravestones rolling out before us in endless dark rows of bleak Dickensian fantasy. We CAN try to rewrite it. Because if we don't TRY, who will ever bless us, and what would it ever mean?


Joe Panzica (Author of Democracy STRUGGLES! and Saint Gredible and Her Fat Dad's Mass.  He is currently working on his second novel I Wanna Be Evil.

Friday, April 10, 2020

Quo Vadis Democrats, Americans, . . . Democracy?

The Democratic primary is over. Since it's inception as the party of slavery, the battle for the party's soul has never ceased, just as the meaning of the United States of America has always been a matter of contention, frustration, despair, and boundless hope. Whether it's a matter for hope, cynicism, or disgust, it is difficult to refute Tim Murphy of Mother Jones when he claims, 

Bernie Sanders’ movement could shape Democratic politics for years to come.

Only one thing is certain. Politics and government ARE going to change. This is always true. But perhaps NOW, in the shadow of a murderous plague, we are in an especially fraught “moment of pivot”. Bernie can be counted upon to be solid, serious, honest, and relentless in his quest to make the meaning of America valid and stirring for those who are forced to confront the reality that too much of our culture is an arena where the strong can exploit the weak by keeping us divided, passive, cynical, and afraid.

But how things change is always (at least) PARTLY up to us. The belief that we are all (somehow) “change agents” is what makes us “progressives” and which is what recruits my support for Bernie.

Change agents and change advocates ALWAYS have had mixed feelings about the electoral process - the prime “official” avenue for democratic change — just as the electoral process is the principle vehicle for democratic conservatism.

When considering US electoral politics, the simplistic choice is between two binary options: to create a new political party or to “take over” one of the two major political parties. The two dominant US parties have NOMINALLY been “the same” since before the Civil War, but in reality they BOTH have gone through several major transformations.

Over the last forty years an uneasy coalition of right wing operatives has transformed the Republican Party. By the last Bush administration it was pretty clear that they had taken command of that party. The trimp election and its ongoing chaos have made it painfully obvious that the “Grand Old Party” is now something “new”* and dangerous with old guard leaders and traditional elite types scrambling to follow, taking advantage of its strange dynamics when they can. But the billionaires, the reactionary fundamentalist Christians, the crackpot vandals, and the politicians who struggle to broker among them and with other other political leaders are steadfast in putting their “principles”* above party.

Since their emergence in the late 19th century, progressives have historically played a balancing game between the liberal wings* of the major parties and “traditional”* workers parties. Putting workers first must still be one of the primary principles of any progressive movement. But time and experience has helped us to better incorporate the reality that workers are also consumers (of goods, services, and ideas) as well as citizens with families. And now, more than ever, we are becoming acutely aware of the fragility of the earth’s biosphere when it comes to supporting organized human cultures where people work, share, dream, and create.

Bernie is still working to coalesce progressives. In part he is doing this on the edge of the Democratic Party in the spirit of older workers’ parties in an attempt to activate young people, minorities, and women who have “traditionally” been actively marginalized by the US political process. Correctly AND sincerely he has reminded us that progressivism as a MOVEMENT is more important than any leader, any elected office, any branch of government, or ANY governing establishment as a manifold “entirety”.

Progressives ARE progressives because we believe that somehow we, playing our individual parts in a collective, CAN influence how our society (or civilization) will evolve and change. Bernie has relinquished his bid for the presidency, but not his claim to influence party platforms, legislation, policy, and the hearts and minds of the 99% of us whose status and means of survival are based on working for a system that is still too predatory and too destructive.

Bernie, people like Joe Biden, and all of us will have to weigh heavily how we will choose to proceed and present ourselves. We must do that knowing that we are facing an apocalypse of intentional incitement of our hopelessness, our fears, our desperations, and our selfishness - an intentional incitement malignantly designed to divide and demoralize us for NO DECENT PURPOSE.

Any serious analytical approach to projecting the effects of the challenges facing humanity is bound to be overwhelming - and can easily elicit despair. Just look at the projections the state government of New York used to plan its orchestrated response to the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. But as the New York governor magisterially points out, no such model can take full account of the human spirit, it’s appetite for creation, it’s urge towards sustainment, or its tendency toward self destruction. The future is ours to create. 


“The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.” - Martin Luther King (assassinated by racism)

“The trajectory is the trajectory we create by OUR actions.” - Governor Andrew Cuomo (NY)



Joe Panzica (Author of Democracy STRUGGLES! and Saint Gredible and Her Fat Dad's Mass.  He is currently working on his second novel I Wanna Be Evil.
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*something new - at least to the extent that Caesarism, Bonepartism, and Fascism were always “new” emanations of popular authoritarianism, a corrupt expression of the democratic and leveling impulse. Contempt for liberal (constitutional) democracy (the concept of a "republic) is an idiocy that those who claim to speak for the the majority are not immune to.



*”liberal wingS” - up until the 1990s there were still some proud remnants of the liberal wing of the Republican Party, the party that had been the original productive foil and vehicle of the original Progressive Movement of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

*"traditional workers parties" - There is indeed a long tradition of worker's parties in the industrialized world.  Just not in the United States.  And yes, along with the British Labour Party, there are those that proudly wave the red flag of the Paris Communards, sometimes emblazoned with the hammer and sickle.  But there is really no single "tradition" for Socialist Parties and their advocacy of economic democracy.  A meaningful distinction, though, can be made between those who honor and support the principles of liberal (constitutional) democracy and those who treat it with cynically affected respect or open contempt.


* “principles” — the legitimate “principles” of the conservative impulse have always veered between 1) protecting the position of the privileged because those in privileged positions are somehow essential to preserving and advancing civilization and 2) being especially cautious about extending and expanding ideas of injustice lest unforeseen consequences of any well-intentioned measure lead to new forms of injustice that conceivably could lead to an overall increase of injustice. But recent developments, including (but not limited to) neoliberalism demonstrate that their actual “principles” are totally (and cynically) fungible and wholly subservient to power politics that are fundamental hostile to liberal democracy and justice.