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 . ..
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 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.
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.”
