Category: history

culture

Longer Tomorrows

I recently read (reread) Leigh Brackett’s 1955 novel, The Long Tomorrow.  In a nutshell, this is a thoroughly underappreciated classic that ought to have the same attention and regard as other social commentary novels of around that period.  Given the political landscape today, it is remarkably trenchant.

The novel follows Len Coulter, who we meet at a large county fair near his home somewhere in Pennsylvania, in a country completely altered after a world war that left the cities in ruins and the only ones equipped to survive in the reduced technological circumstances that resulted were groups of religious communities like the Amish and Mennonites and similar enclaves who had eschewed modernism to begin with.  Len is a member of a New Mennonite community.

As the novel opens, his cousin Esau is trying to dare him into attending a revival meeting outside the boundaries of the fair, something they have both been forbidden to do.

The tensions between the various groups of believers are kept in check by the constraint of circumstance.  They need each other and cannot afford the luxury of complete separation.  But there are walls and this is one of them.  As such it also represents a kind of rite of passage for the adolescents.

This is a time and place where laws have been passed to keep the possibility of another war massively in check by keeping the technology that produced the atomic bombs suppressed.  Brackett made the savvy observation that it was the expansion of urban centers that permitted the kind of wealth, leisure, and political pressure to drive an ever-increasing and complicating technological base, so the Constitution has been amended to make towns of more than a thousand people and two hundred buildings illegal.  This enforced small town agrarianism has, in fact, achieved a kind of equilibrium.  People are not unaware of the past.  Libraries still exist, people read, but the cultural paranoia created by the devastation dominates.

Behind all this is the legend of Bartorstown, a place—somewhere—where the old technologies not only exist but people work with them to create new.  It’s a kind of boogieman story, but Len and Esau learn that it is not a lie, that there is such a place.  After seeing a member of Bartorstown denounced and stoned to death at the revival he and Esau attend, it becomes an obsession for Len.

And then Esau steals a radio and the two boys commit themselves to finding Bartorstown, no matter what.

There are no bad people in this novel.  In fact, there are no good people, either, not in terms of Good vs Evil.  Len is human to a fault and Esau often has feet of clay.  They run away from home and grow up in the river towns of the Ohio and encounter all manner of people, some good, some not so good, but all of them doing what they think is right.  Brackett painted very subtle and sophisticated portraits of human beings struggling to bring about change and simultaneously resist change.  At times, it gets ugly.

If there is an evil at the heart of this novel, it is in Brackett’s chilling portrayals of mob violence.  She understood how individuals could lose their capacity to think and act as moral agents when caught up by fear and passion in a wave of group reaction.  Fear, of course, and then anger unhinges people and perhaps the next day or the next month they come to regret what they did, but they seem incapable of doing otherwise at the time.

Laced throughout this is the thesis that any time we try to establish a set of inviolable rules to make people conform, we find over time that such rules simply do not maintain, not the way they were intended.  Too rigid a stance almost guarantees that such rules, such prohibitions will not only be violated but will themselves become the source of considerable harm.

Len’s journey from adolescent obsession to mature accommodation to things he ultimately cannot understand is poignant and frustrating.  This is not a standard-issue science fiction novel in which knowledge and truth set people free and all doubts are swept aside in the Eureka glow of enlightenment.  Len finds Bartorstown and it is nothing like he expected.  In fact, at its heart is the very thing he had been raised to fear more than anything else, and yet he is told that it must not only exist but that humans must learn to control it.

If I have a problem with this novel, it is in the all-too-typical treatment of women.  Too many of them are ultimately just vain and dependent and stereotypical.  But Brackett was juggling a lot in this book, so I gave her a pass on this in light of all the rest that she was so clear and prescient about.

Given the current global scene in which mobs seem to coalesce out of the very air over some of the most inane issues and great violence is done—more often than not driven by religious leaders who are more intent on maintaining their power than on caring for their clients—this is a strikingly contemporary novel, written by one of the best.  It is in some ways dated, but not by much.  In many passages, it seems this could have been written last year.

While I no longer believe a global nuclear holocaust is likely, all the rest she depicted seems all too possible.  This is one that ought to be read with fresh modern eyes and its insights taken to heart.

culture

The Other Side

I have a confession to make.  While I’m going to vote for Obama again, I do not like everything he has done and, even more, am disappointed by some of what he has not done.

That’s not the confession.  I promised some folks months back that I would write a post wherein I take Obama to task the same way I’ve been going to town on the Republicans.  I was sincere when I made the promise, because I had, in fact, winced often these past four years when Mr. Obama has let me down.  Or not me specifically, but my expectations.  And this is a question of spin.

All candidates run on a mixture of core issues and hyperbole.  The nature of the race requires sound-byte, slash-and-burn rhetoric, sweeping generalizations, and occasionally over-the-top characterizations of the opponent and promises too big to keep.  We as voters must walk through all this to determine how much of the hyperbole is simple exaggeration and how much of it is outright lying, slander, or total b.s.  As I say, all candidates do this.  Even after they leave office.  (George W. Bush’s acerbic “Do you miss me yet?” is an example of that, to which my response at the time and still is “You’re kidding, right?”)

Obama campaigned in 2008 on a wide range of issues and made a LOT of promises.  In fact, I believe he holds the record on the number of promises made by a presidential candidate, by a significant factor.  Depending on where he was at the time, he adroitly tailored his message, made the kinds of specific pledges that are ordinarily suicide for a candidate, and won by the biggest landslide since Reagan

In all those promises, inevitably some were going to go by the wayside, some were going to simply stall, others were going to stand as reminders of betrayal when exactly the opposite happened.

But in looking back over the last four years—especially in light of what he came into office having to deal with—I can’t find very much to complain about.

What there is, though, is pretty bad.

Implicitly and otherwise, Obama promised that business as usual in D.C. was going to change.  Of course, anyone who believed this was naive at best, but there were a few things that he could have done something about.  One is lobbyists.  He promised to close the revolving door, that people in government would not be permitted to leave for jobs as lobbyists and come right back.  Well, he sort of tried that, but then proceeded to issue waivers for certain people.

The biggest betrayal to my mind at the time was the selection of his economic team.  One may quibble about this, but I think it fair to say that he had something of a mandate to change the way government dealt with the financial sector.  The appointment of Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, both of whom had been instrumental in the years of deregulation that had led almost directly to the 2007-08 meltdown, signaled a marked turn-around from expectations.  At the time I looked at that and thought “What the hell?”  Talk about putting the fox in charge of the chickens.  (Certainly an argument could be made that these people understood the problem better than anybody else, but you also can’t tell me that there weren’t equally qualified and talented people with no ties to the last 20 years of fiscal irresponsibility and with a vision consistent with what we’d been led to believe was going to happen.  Elizabeth Warren was certainly such a person, but then he didn’t stand by her when she had Congress running scared that she meant business.)

Obama fell down, in my view, by the simple omission of demanding a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall.  Clinton had foolishly signed its repeal, it had worked for 60 years, its destruction allowed everything that followed to happen, and yet we heard nothing.  Instead we have an overly complex mess of rules that form a Rube-Goldberg assemblage of fingers-in-leaks that overburden everyone, Wall Street and regulators alike.  And while I came to support the auto industry bailout, his administration has made a hash of the housing recovery.

But the worst thing is the national security betrayals.  I do not approve of the drone program and I certainly do not like the indefinite detention aspect of the NDAA, which we were led to believe he also felt was a bad law.  Yet he signed the reauthorization and now his justice department is trying to overturn a judge’s ruling that indefinite detention is unConstitutional.  I grant you, this is all inherited from Bush, this is a Cheney construct, but that would seem to me all the more reason to do away with it.  Obama needed to nothing but sit back and let the ruling from bench hold sway, but instead he’s arguing for retention of powers I believed he ran opposed to.

He’s pulled some other stunts.  While I’m not a fan of Big Oil, I actually think the Canadian pipeline should have gone through.  It would have allowed him to stop issuing so many off-shore permits, which have greater possibilities of failure and environmental damage.  For myself, I wanted to see the end of the faith-based initiatives—this is a clear violation of the separation clause and the only thing that might have made it more palatable over what Bush had done would be its expansion to non-christian institutions.  And I’m still waiting for the repeal of No Child Left Behind, which was one of the worst things done on the federal level in education since…I don’t know.

But for all that, I have to confess that I still find him far more acceptable than what is being offered by his opponents, whose only solutions seem to be slash-and-burn spending cuts—except to the military.

So while this post is a complaint, an attempt at fair play, I have to apologize to those to whom I pledge a thorough drubbing.  Even when they make mistakes, I can’t seem to get as pissed at the Democrats right now as I do at the Republicans.  I know that sounds like excuse-making, but there it is.

I’ll try to do better.

culture

They Think You’ll Believe This Is A Good Thing

Here it is, stated baldly and without any evident embarrassment. Rick Santorum states exactly why what he represents is a dangerous and stupid movement.

This country has always contained a significant resentment toward intellectuals, knowledge, an active distrust and occasionally hatred of reason and understanding. We have been watching a “grass roots” movement develop since the late Seventies that embraces the anti-intellectual, the retrograde, the regressive as if being ignorant is a virtue. They have turned a refusal to face reality, to come to grips with facts, into a virtue, and an unwillingness to change ones mind into a kind of uber-patriotism that would, if fully empowered, destroy this country.

The difficulty in countering this is that he wraps his idiocy around two things that make anyone who would argue with them appear churlish if not downright immoral. This is a rhetorical game of false choices. It is not intelligence vs. family, it is not reason vs. church. It is not education vs. patriotism. This is a lie. By stating it this way, he makes it seem anyone who supports enlightenment, progress, rationality is somehow an enemy. It divisive in the most heinous and absolute way and it is exemplary of all that is currently wrong with the Right.

Smart people will never be on the side of ignorance and bigotry. Smart people will never support the idea that we should live by a code written by people who not only knew less than we do but also had completely different expectations of what life meant. Smart people will never be on the side of stupidity.

Out of the mouths of people like Santorum and Todd Akin and Michele Bachman we have heard a call to turn dumb into a desirable condition, to ignore ramifications, discard causal thinking, just “trust them” and America will be great again.

I appreciate that they no longer feel they need to couch their positions in user-friendly phrasing that softens their meaning. I’m delighted that they’ve decided to reveal who they really are.

This is one or two steps away from book burning.

Let me leave you with a few choice quotes.

Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction.
Adolf Hitler

Education is dangerous – Every educated person is a future enemy—– Hermann Goering

What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.
Adolf Hitler

It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge.
Adolf Hitler

Who says I am not under the special protection of God?
Adolf Hitler

culture

Where It Comes Down For Me

I grew up in a sexist culture.

No, really. I was born in 1954. I grew up in the stew of sexism and was made very aware of it because it was being challenged throughout my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. I came of age during the heyday of Male Privilege, when the default assumption was that men were the smart ones, the strong ones, the ones who shouldered all responsibility, and women basically came along for the ride because, well, we needed them for babies and cooking and occasional interludes of sex and, well, because they looked good. Strong, independent women were weird, unnatural, and intended to be conquered by a stronger man who, paradoxically, didn’t actually need them but decided, for some reason, to protect them because while they were getting along fine without him, that simply couldn’t last because women couldn’t sustain themselves and it was great that one was independent for as long as she was, but it was really a man’s duty to take care of her, so…

It sounds absurd when you break it down like that, but really, that’s what it was. Women couldn’t do anything without a man.

Except they usually took care of the family finances, maintained the house, made most of the health care decisions, and, oh yeah, raised the next generation of males who thought women were helpless.

Women who insisted on their own sexual needs were characterized charmingly as sluts, whores, trash, “mannish”, or some variation that included unnatural in the mix. Much to the consternation of everyone, Playboy changed all that, for better or worse, by basically putting it Out There that women were pretty much like men in that they liked sex and, oh yeah, had a right to it, just like men. (All the academic and political activism in the world didn’t move the culture half so much as Playboy did, which has caused another kind of push-back, but that’s another story.)

By the time I was in my twenties I’d watched my culture turn itself inside out over this and come to a place where it seemed any sane, rational person would be repulsed by the standards of that quaint and rather scary prior era. I thought—mistakenly—that the debate was settled.

Debate? Women are people.

Again, to some this might sound silly so simply stated, but that’s what it came down to and where it comes down for me. Women are people. First. They have dreams, aspirations, ambitions, hopes, talents, traits, expectations, and rights just like any man. That seems perfectly natural to me. I like that idea, I like the kind of world it implies.

But it seems some folks can’t seem to accept that. The first time I was aware of any counterargument was Phyllis Schlafly, who seemed intent on convincing women that there was something wrong with them if they wanted careers in lieu of families, that they were defying some natural order by refusing to get down on their knees and worship men the way women had been made to do for millennia. The more I found out about her, the more I found her position not only unpalatable but also hypocritical, since she herself never gave up any of her goals or ambitions for motherhood. After a while I realized that this was a perverse form of noblesse oblige, the aristocrat telling the peasant what to do and why they couldn’t have what the aristocrat had.

Still, this was a mere ripple. Things were improving.

And then something really unexpected happened. An argument was found that made the whole issue seem to have nothing to do with women’s civil rights or status as people, but with the entire culture’s responsibility to something that had never heretofore been an issue in this particular way. The argument made it seem like any woman insisting on her rights was in danger of being a murderer.

Well. It became clear after a while that although the rhetoric seemed to be focused on questions of what constituted a human life, the tactics and strategy demonstrated that it was just the same old bunch of ancient, tired arguments from privilege that women ought to have no such rights, that they ought to be little more than incubators and sex slaves.

Here is a video which pretty much sums the issue up for me and afterward I’ll tell you why.

For me, the issue comes down to this. I am a person first, a man coincidentally. Odds were pretty much even up that I might have been a woman—but I would still be a person. And by that token, I have to say that if you tried to treat me the way some people are trying to treat women, I would absolutely be in your face about it. It would be my decision to reproduce, to use my body for that purpose, no one else’s, and anyone else’s qualms about how I conduct my personal life matter not at all. This should not be a political issue. No one has a right to live off the body of another. That would be a gift. Gifts only count if they’re given willingly.

Those who would deny women the right to live as they choose have themselves decided—by proxy, on behalf of people they don’t even know—that history means nothing, that rights are conditional, and that their, for wont of a better term, sense of modesty trumps everyone else’s freedoms. They have shown time and again that what they say is the issue really is not and in the last year have made it absolutely clear that their priorities have nothing to do with the “sanctity” of life but rather with an idealized aesthetic of what they consider “appropriate” behavior.

I just wanted to be clear.

culture

The Vital Gore Is Gone

Gore Vidal has died.

Anyone with the merest scintilla of cultural or political awareness of the last 50 years should know who he was.  My first memory of him was from the 1968 election when he called William F. Buckley a crypto-nazi and Buckley, losing his cool, threatened to “sock you in your goddam face” on national television.  At the time (I was not yet 14 and only beginning to become aware of politics in any meaningful way), I thought Buckley was the cool one, but in retrospect Vidal never got ruffled, continued speaking clearly, and made his points.

Points which I later found myself in agreement with, by and large.

At other times I’ve found myself frustratingly at odds with Vidal, particularly in some of his reframings of American policies.

But I was right there with him during the Bush years when he told us what Bush-Cheney were doing to the Bill of Rights and what a fix we were all about to be in.

Vidal is one side of the spectrum of political essence that makes up who we are.  If you read Buckley, you must read Vidal for the other side (which most people don’t, on either side: we pick one or the other and stick to it without ever giving the opposing voice a chance, which is why we are in the cultural nightmare in which we are presently trapped), because between the two you can get some sense of the totality.

For my part, I would like to say that Vidal was one of those writers whose ability I admire.  He was a first-class stylist and his historical knowledge was enviable.  When he chose a historical subject—like Lincoln or Aaron Burr or a year, like 1876—he described what happened and what people said if reliable sources were available and added in the connective tissue with a fine eye for detail and sense of place.  His essays, often maddening, never bored, and usually revealed a vein of thought or fact hitherto unremarked that could prove absolutely trenchant.

Many on the Right hated him because he identified, generally quite accurately, the foundation of their politics (money or power, or both) and aimed his barbs at their historical amnesia, cultural ignorance, and always at their political hypocrisy.

Many on the Left were uncomfortable with him because he wouldn’t let them off the hook.  If they pandered, compromised their values, paid lip-service and then voted otherwise, he called them on it.

He once commented that he thought we had lost our chance to “have a civilization” here, that it looked for a time “like we were going to have one” but apparently not.  He said it with a deep sadness and while I took it as hyperbole, I can understand what he meant.  We’ve been arguing in the Forum about who we’re going to be as a nation and while the argument rages on we’re squandering our resources.  We have all the components of a really fine civilization but by and large they don’t seem to matter to most people, so they atrophy from lack of proper attention.

I stress though that a steady diet of Mr. Vidal’s writings, with nothing to balance it, can be as bad as a steady diet of William F. Buckley (or William Safire or George Will).  He represented an important aspect, one side, that must be respected and engaged as an equal part of all the other sides.  (Put Will and Buckley on one end and Chomsky and Vidal on the other and in the mix you find the substance of what it means to be a free people of serious intent.)

He was on Dick Cavett’s old talk show, often, and on one of them they were playing anagrams with names, and Vidal asked Cavett what his should be.  Without missing a beat, Cavett said “You’re the Vital Gore.”  Vidal smiled, apparently pleased.

Some of our essential vitality is gone.

Art

Jon Lord, Deep Purple, Legacies

I said I’d do a longer piece on Jon Lord, so.

In the aftermath of his death, I bought a couple of old Deep Purple cds I never had. By old I mean from the Sixties. The Book of Taliesyn, Shades of Deep Purple, Deep Purple. These three albums, the band’s first, were recorded with what is known as the Mark I line-up, which did not include Ian Gillan, who became the most recognizable voice of the band in the Seventies, during their most successful period.

What is fascinating now, in retrospect, is just how much a shift they made after they fired Rod Evans (vocals) and Nick Simper (bass).* The original Deep Purple was very much headed in the direction of what we now call Prog Rock. Not just in the wild sound effects they employed, but in the really intricate song-writing. The whole aesthetic approach of this early manifestation of the band embraced the novelty and innovation that defined bands like The Nice, Jefferson Airplane, Yes, and early Genesis. The break when they reorganized around Ian Gillan’s greater range and angrier delivery and Roger Glover’s far more fluid and, yes, heavier bass work is striking, not only for the differences manifest between songs like The Shield or Hush and the next-period thunder of Speed King, Hard Lovin’ Man, or Fireball, but also because of the album that came between the last Mark I Purple and In Rock—namely, Concerto for Group and Orchestra.

This album goes directly to what I consider the most significant aspect of Deep Purple, namely the incredible musicianship of Jon Lord. This is a Lord composition and it is a mature, fully-realized bit of what we call Classical Music (given that we tend these days to lump all the various schools of such music into that one bin—Baroque, Rococco, Classical, Romantic, NeoClassical, etc) that also incorporated rock motifs, elevating what at the time was still, despite the work being done by many gifted writers and performers to raise its stature, regarded as “kid’s music” or, more generally, “pop” or, less kindly, trash. Going back to the the first three Purple albums, you can hear the forerunners here and there throughout in the experimental elements and classically-tinged keyboard work of Mr. Lord. It is historically an astonishing piece of work, rendered even more so by the fact that after that, the new line-up of Deep Purple dove head-first in the hardest of hard rock, the music pitched at a roar and scream.

And yet, here and there throughout the next four albums—In Rock, Fireball, Machine Head, Who Do We Think We Are?—we hear that same sensibility flavoring the stew. Lord’s solos, while full-blown blues-idiom statements, would shift into energetic renderings of Bach, Vivaldi, Rachmaninoff, inserting passages of refined musicianship that fit in with, augmented, and yet stood apart from the thunder and shouts around them.

As good a set of musicians as Deep Purple comprised, it was the sensibilities of Jon Lord, I think, that made them stand out.

(I have to admit here that I never really loved Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar work. It’s fine for what it is and I’ve changed my mind about his actual abilities, especially after listening to the Taliesyn album. He could keep up with Lord, truly. I just didn’t care for his approach. But it was another distinctive voice within the Purple mix. I confess that both Tommy Bolin and present-day Steve Morse play more to my liking (especially Morse, whose work with the Dixie Dregs and later with Kansas established him as one of the best in the business), but there is also no arguing that Blackmore’s style is almost instantly recognizable. But I listened more in spite of him than because of him.)

Deep Purple became a bit of a cliche by the end of the Seventies. Smoke On The Water was so overplayed as to become its own parody. But despite periods of never listening to them, I always return, drawn to the power, yes, but always to those keyboard runs and the above-average musicality, which I identify with Lord’s continual influence.

What brought me finally to the realization that this was one of the finest composers on the planet was the series of albums he did all of his more or less straight classical compositions, starting with The Gemini Suite, which in many ways was a second try at the Concerto. The format is the same (modeled on, I believe, Bartok’s Concerto For Orchestra) but the music is all new. Lord did a number of these and after his retirement from Deep Purple in 2001 or so he devoted all his time to composition and recording his symphonic music. In albums such as Boom of the Tingling Strings, Durham Concerto and others, he has left us a set of musical experiences quite apart from the driving rock he also did with great ability and obvious passion. (He said of his later works that he composed music, not labels.)

Jon Lord was only 71 when he passed away, from complications of pancreatic cancer. His voice still speaks and I would urge everyone with any serious interest in music to go find his later recordings and be amazed.

As much as I love his classical works, though, I think this is how I will always remember him.

___________________________________________________________________

* Rod Evans, in these early recordings, displayed a common approach among a certain kind of rock’n’roll vocalist that was a sort of homage to Elvis. His exaggerated stylings can come across almost laughable in certain instances, but he was a credible singer within a certain range. He later became a founding member of Captain Beyond in league with a couple of Iron Butterfly alumni where his vocals leveled out and he displayed his qualities to much better and more honest effect. With the collapse of that band, Evans soon retired from music.

Nick Simper fared less well, though he worked more steadily, in and out of a variety of bands that never quite “made it.” The longest run after Deep Purple was a band called Fandango. Simper still gigs, though.

culture

Red Queen’s Race

I was amused this morning listening to the Market Report on NPR when I heard a commentator suggest that it “may be time to dust off the Glass-Steagall Act” to deal with the ongoing banking fiascoes which have caused us naught but grief since…

Well, this time around since 2008, but frankly since about 1982 when the first of a long series of financial sector deregulatory actions began under the misguided assumptions of Reaganomics and the hypnotic appeal of the Laffer Curve.

Don’t know what the Laffer Curve is?  Well, it was the brainchild of a man named Arthur Laffer, an economist, who came up with it and presented originally to President Ford.  Basically, he made a graph that showed a line of tax rates between 0 and 100 and how revenues would rise on the left side of the curve as tax rates were lowered in descending order toward zero and would likewise diminish on the right side as tax rates increased.  We’re talking tax revenue, now.  This was the basis for the whole “cut taxes and increase tax revenue” faith that has been the core of conservative policy ever since Reagan adopted it with a convert’s enthusiasm.  This is also what Reagan’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, called “Voodoo Economics.”

Bush Sr. was right.  There is a certain short term applicability to the Curve, but it fails to take into consideration many factors which have all subsequently made it, er, laughable.  After 32 years we can just look at the numbers and see that it flat out does not do what was promised and it has cost us.

But my word it was appealing!  What politician doesn’t want to be able to run on a lower taxes platform?  And to then assert that lowering taxes will automatically increase government revenues?  Why, that’s just icing on the cake!

Very simply, in combination with the fervor for deregulation, supply side has cost the working and middle class dearly.  Trickle down economics does not benefit those who cannot afford to play in the big leagues.

And frankly, I don’t think it works at the top level, either, because, clearly, if it did, the big banks would not have needed bailing out.

Glass-Steagall was a suite of four laws put in place in the 1930s that, among other things, separated the functions of banking and put a firewall between investment banking and regular, pedestrian commercial banking.  The reasoning was very simple.  Investment banking, no matter how you dress it up, is gambling.  It’s placing a bet on the success of markets and industries.  When things go well, the pay off is huge.  But when they don’t, the cost is equally large.  Glass-Steagall, among other things, said that a bank could gamble, but not with regular client money.  Namely, yours and mine, in a savings or checking account.  They can’t use our money to back their bets.

That’s how the great stock market crash of ’29 happened which ushered in the Great Depression.  Banks and other institutions gambled with everybody’s money, they had too little in reserve, and there was no safety net to stop their fall.  Everyone paid.

In the fever to increase profits in the 80s and 90s, Glass-Steagall was repealed, the firewall was taken down, and 2008 happened.

Except this time the federal government was there to catch the falling banks before they crashed on the pavement.  Everyone is bitching about Obama spending a lot of money, but this is where a lot of it went, and frankly if he had not, we’d be in a worse fix than we are.

Reinstating Glass-Steagall should have been the first thing Congress proposed.  Instead we have the rather awkward and not nearly as effective Dodd-Frank Bill.  The reason no one proposed reinstating Glass-Steagall is simple—big money doesn’t want it and they’ve spent a lot of money to make sure it doesn’t happen.

Why? Because they’re high-rollers and the only way for them to sustain themselves is by continuing to play.  Glass-Steagall would remove from their access a huge pool of capital with which to gamble.

Our capital.

It amazes me that so many people seem not to grasp this.  We have tried supply-side economics for three decades, both Republican and Democrat (Clinton signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall) and the result has been a tremendous boon to people with a lot of money and a slow disaster for everyone else.  We have somehow been convinced that reinstating regulations that worked very well for 60 years will result in people who have lost losing even more.  They’re willing to back the supposed “rights” of people who have been leaching off the common wealth of the United States for thirty years at the expense of workers, the middle class, and the common good, because they’ve been traumatized by slogans which explain nothing.

I was surprised to hear someone actually say the words, “reinstate Glass-Steagall.”  I agree, it should have been done in 2009 or 2010.  I doubt it will be, at least not in the near future.

I propose a new slogan.  Back in the 1960s and ’70s there was a popular phrase, a bumper sticker slogan, that declared “Federal Aid Hell, It’s Our Money!”  How about  “Private Capital Hell, It’s Our Money!”

The banks are too big.  They cannot sustain themselves.  The only way they can is by pillaging the general wealth.  They need to be broken up and the quite different functions of investment and commercial banking need to be separate again.  We’re running faster and faster in a Red Queen’s Race and soon our legs are going to give out.  Stop voting to give all our money to those who have shown repeatedly that they have no interest in the well-being of this country.  Looking out for the needs and desires of shareholders is not the same as looking out for the security of all the people.

current affairs

Why I Won’t Be Voting For Romney

It may come as a shock to some folks, but—

No, that’s being coy.  I don’t think anyone who knows me would be shocked by my admission that I will not be voting for Mr. Romney this fall.  What always dismays me, however, is the reaction that gets from some people.  They give me a look, an attitude, a combination of disbelief and betrayal, an expression that is the epitome of an exasperated “But…why?”  As if I could not possibly have any valid reasons for such a stance.

Well.  I have to say, it’s not because I’m particularly in love with Obama.

I admit in 2008 I cast my ballot for Mr. Obama with a bit more optimism than my usual cynicism allows.  I actually thought there might have been a chance that something new would come out of this one.  I wasn’t wholly disappointed, but…

I also admit that I understand enough about how politics work that the business-as-usual parts of the last three-plus years do not dismay me.  Merely disappoint me.

Obama said he would get us out of Iraq.  I approved.  As far as I’m concerned, it was a boneheaded act of petty vengeance combined with a big dose of insider opportunism that put us in there in the first place.  It provided nothing but an opportunity for Bush to wave the flag and pretend to be Doing Something while Cheney’s cronies dipped their collective beaks in the public trough to drink of billions of still-unaccounted-for money.  Even if the nuttiness of the invasion had been handled better, it was clear what was going on when all the people in Iraq who might have made the whole thing work to the benefit of all concerned were summarily pushed aside and pissed on so KBR could get all the no-bid contracts and face absolutely no local resistance to the milking they gave both Iraq and our treasury.

Obama got us out of Iraq.  He did say he’d have us out of Afghanistan by now and that has yet to happen, but we’re drawing down.

He said he’d go after Osama bin Laden, no matter what.  He did that and got him.  He pissed off Pakistan.  Oh my.  Pakistan has been the seething pit of all this nonsense with Al Quida and the Taliban all along, so I’m not inclined to lose any sleep over their hurt feelings, but I am very irritated at our drone program and all the unnecessary and ill-advised killing that has resulted.

Obama said he would go to bat for the middle class and the working class.  He saved the American auto industry.  Bush saved the banks that caused the depression.  (Yes, I say depression, and I further say we’re not out of it yet.  Everyone else is afraid of the D word, but let us face reality.  Despite the “official” unemployment rate, actual unemployment is well north of 15%, I suspect close to 25%, but as usual we don’t count actual unemployed, only those still drawing unemployment insurance.)  Obama of course is being blamed for TARP, which was a Bush program, and I’m not sure I would not have felt a lot better if he had torpedoed it and let the damn banks flounder.  But I am not an economist, so what do I know?

I am very irritated that he kept many of the same people who put us in this economic fix for his own economic team—Summers, Geitner, et al.  (Yes, they were part of Bush’s team, too, and some were on board with Clinton for his ill-considered gutting of our regulatory laws, cheering us on into greater profits for fewer people.)

He has kept much of the Patriot Act, which I believe to be a wholly unConstitutional infringement on American rights and liberties.

Yes, he saw a health care reform through, and many of its components are pretty good, but it is not what we really need and he did not, in my opinion, really push for it, but I suppose that’s a quibble.

There are other things I’m not terribly pleased with about Mr. Obama.  But the truth is, much the same can be said by any reasonable person about any president.  Still, I would prefer certain priorities to change.

So with all that I am displeased with my president, why, it may be reasonably asked, would I vote for him again as opposed to Mr. Romney?

There are very simple reasons.

Mr. Romney is an advocate of trickle-down economics.  He may not call it that, but from everything he has said that’s his focus.

Top down policies have not worked.  We can imagine that by cutting the rich a break and giving tax breaks to large corporations might benefit us all by allowing them more money to invest, and on paper it sounds great.  But seriously, look at the last three decades.  That is not what has happened and we keep doing the same damn thing.  Deregulate, more tax cuts for the top in the hope that they will spend it on this country.  We have more unemployment, working and middle class wages have been stagnant for thirty years, our infrastructure is decaying, the bottom half is getting worse off.  It simply has not worked.  I will not vote for him because he advocates a failed policy.  Period.

Mr. Romney claims he intends to repeal “Obamacare.”  He modified this claim by saying he wants it repealed and “something that works” put in its place.

He has not said what that would be and I find the hypocrisy both unsurprising and galling.  Many of the features of the Affordable Healthcare Act are the same as those he signed into law in Massachussetts and now repudiates, including the individual mandate.  (As a minor point, I find the Republican harping on “Obamacare” annoying.  Technically, Congress wrote that law, if we will all recall, not Mr. Obama.)  But more to the point, I simply don’t believe him.  Big Pharma and Big Insurance did not want health care reform.  They’ve been making plenty of money on things as they were and had absolutely no incentive to change anything.  They fought tooth-and-nail against the Affordable Care Act, they torpedoed single payer, they will certainly be right there at the table making sure that nothing gets put in its place if repealed.  The GOP has made it clear that they want no government controls over private enterprise whatsoever.  So I don’t believe Mr. Romney that he would do anything to put a better, or even a different, law in place.  He will sign the repeal, if it happens, and we will revert to accelerating costs and insurance premiums spiraling out of control.

Mr. Romney is one of a long line of people who claim that having been businessmen makes them ideally—or at least better—suited to run the country.  He is, like all of them, wrong.  The country is not a business and bottom-line thinking is a good way to hurt, damage, and destroy people through public institutions.  Right at the moment, he cannot even give a good account of why he maintains offshore accounts.  (This is done to avoid taxes.  No matter what  else is claimed, offshore accounts that are not simply part of a globally diversified portfolio are there as tax havens. I don’t care how you feel personally about taxes, this is a cheat, and I have no respect for it.)

The other reasons I do not intend to vote for Mr. Romney have less to do with him than with his party, which I feel is broken.  They have come out four-square against compromise.  This is insane.  This is a country of 300-plus million people, all of whom have needs that are not universal.  There is overlap, but not homogeneity.  The only way to govern such a country is through compromise.  To refuse to consider it is tantamount to saying that differences don’t matter and people who don’t fit in should receive no regard.  If such a party ends up in control of Congress—which I think is likely—then I want a Democrat in the White House to at least stick his thumb in the dyke of insanity.

How can I say that?

The GOP has conducted a series of campaigns against certain institutions and ideas which I find essential to the kind of country I want to live in.  They’re union busters.  They’re economic elitists.  They’re frankly warmongers and for the worst possible reason—they’re afraid of foreigners.  And they have embraced a constraining view of public morality that I find bizarre, one which as a consequence would see gains in equality for women reversed.

Here and there, but in growing numbers (because moderate Republicans keep leaving the party), they are anti-education.  Texas, as one example, is at the forefront of revisionist history and the purging of legitimate science from classrooms.  And they are more and more stridently theocratic.

Now, many people find nothing wrong with any of that.  There are many people who cannot stand to hear America criticized, so expunging certain episodes from history books seems like patriotism to them.  Many object to the ideas of Darwin, so deleting evolution from science classrooms seems like a good idea.  In the same vein, many think our biggest problem is that we as a nation don’t pray enough.

You are all entitled to your opinion.  I happen to believe truth and fact should trump wishful thinking and “belief.”

But I wanted to explain why I will not be voting for Mr. Romney.  The reasons are very simple.  I do, in fact, wish I had a better choice who I thought had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning.  I am very tired of voting against something by voting for something less than I really want. But there it is.  Mr. Romney and the GOP have a vision for this country which I believe will be very destructive.  It will be very good for certain people, but not for all the people, and the president in particular has to represent All the People.  I don’t believe Mr. Romney will do that.

I don’t think he has any idea who all the people are.

Art

Reflections On the 4th of July: A Personal Statement

I am not given to setting out pronouncements like this very often, but in light of the last several years I thought it might be worthwhile to do so on the occasion of the 236th anniversary of our declared independence.

I don’t think in terms of demonstrating my love of country. My affection for my home is simply a given, a background hum, a constant, foundational reality that is reflexively true. This is the house in which I grew up. I know its walls, its ceiling, its floors, the steps to the attic, the verge, and every shadow that moves with the sun through all the windows. I live here; its existence contours my thinking, is the starting place of my feelings.

The house itself is an old friend, a reliable companion, a welcoming space, both mental and physical, that I can no more dislike or reject than I can stop breathing.

But some of the furniture…that’s different.

 

I am an American.

I don’t have to prove that to anyone. I carry it with me, inside, my cells are suffused with it. I do not have to wear a flag on my lapel, hang one in front of my house, or publicly pledge an oath to it for the convenience of those who question my political sentiments. Anyone who says I should or ought or have to does not understand the nature of what they request or the substance of my refusal to accommodate them. They do not understand that public affirmations like that become a fetish and serve only to divide, to make people pass a test they should—because we are free—never have to take.

I am an American.

I am not afraid of ideas. My country was born out the embrace of ideas, new ideas, ideas that challenged the right of kings to suppress ideas. Ideas are the bricks that built these halls. I claim as my birthright the freedom to think anything, entertain any notion, weigh the value of any concept or proposition, and to take refuge in the knowledge that wisdom comes from learning and the freedom to learn is among the most hallowed and sacred privileges we have inherited as a country. The greatest enemy of our republic is the fear of ideas, of education, and by extension of truth and fact. Those who see no harm in removing books from libraries or diluting fact with wishful thinking and teaching our children to accept things entirely on faith and never question will weaken the foundations, damage the walls, and corrupt every other freedom they themselves boast about and then fail to defend.

I am an American.

I do not need to demonize others to make myself feel safe or superior or even right. I do not need to pretend that I am innately “better” than anyone else to prove my own worth. America was founded on the idea that all of us are equal in potential value. I do not need to oppress, undercut, strike, or otherwise impede others so that I can claim the dubious and ultimately meaningless label of Number One.

I am an American.

Sometimes I wear my sentiment on my sleeve, display my emotions at inappropriate times. I often side with unpopular causes, cheer those who aren’t going to win, get unreasonably angry over unfairness. I believe in justice and I don’t have any trouble with the idea of making an extra effort for people who can’t afford it for themselves. Other times I am stoic, even cynical. I accommodate a world-weariness far beyond the scope of my heritage. I do not believe in providence. Things will not just “work out in the long run” and the bad are not always punished and the good too often are crushed. I know the world doesn’t care and has no interest in level playing fields or evening up odds or anything other than its own ravenous acquisitiveness. It’s an uphill battle against impossible odds, but it’s the only one worth fighting, and I have an unreasonable belief that as an American I have a responsibility to help fight it.

I am an American.

I take a childish pride in many of the attributes and details of my heritage. We build things, we invent things, we have moved mountains, changed the course of rivers, gone to the moon, created great art, changed the face of the earth, broken tyrants on the wheel, and made the world yield. At the same time I am embarrassed at many of the other details of my heritage. We have hurt people unnecessarily, killed and raped, we have damaged forests, poisoned rivers, waged war when there were other avenues. I like the idea that I can work my way out of poverty here, but I hate the idea that we idolize the rich when they put barriers in the path of those like me just because they can. It’s not the money, it’s the work that counts, but sometimes we forget that and those with less must school those with more. That we have done that and can do that is also part of my heritage and I am glad of it.

I am an American.

I am not bound by ritual. Tradition is valuable, history must never be forgotten, but as a starting point not a straitjacket. Those who wish to constrain me according to the incantations, ceremonies, and empty routines of disproven ideologies, debunked beliefs, and discredited authority are not my compatriots, nor do they understand the liberty which comes from an open mind amply armed with knowledge and fueled by a spirit of optimism and a fearless willingness to look into the new and make what is worthy in progress your own.

I am an American.

I do not need others to tell me who I am and how I should be what they think I should be. I elect my representatives. They work for me. They are employees. If I criticize them, I am not criticizing my country. If I call their judgment into question, I am not undermining America. If I am angry with the job they do, I do not hate my country. They should take their definition from me, not the other way around.

I am an American.

If my so-called leaders send soldiers in my name somewhere to do things of which I do not approve and I voice my disapproval, I am not insulting those soldiers or failing to support them. They did not send themselves to those places or tell themselves to do those things. My country has never asked one of its soldiers to kill innocents, torture people, lay waste to civilians, or otherwise perform illegal, unnecessary, or wrong deeds. Politicians do that and they are employees, they are not My Country. Greedy individuals do that, and they are not My Country. No one has the right to call me unpatriotic because I condemn politicians or businessmen for a war they make that I consider wrong, nor that I am not “supporting out troops” because I want them out of that situation and no longer misused by the narrow, blinkered, and all-too-often secret agendas of functionaries, bureaucrats, and bought stooges.

I am an American.

My success is my own, but it is impossible without the work done by my fellow Americans. I acknowledge that we make this country together or not at all and I have no reservations about crediting those whose labor has made my own possible or condemning those who seek to divide us so they can reap the plenty and pretend they made their success all by themselves.

I am an American.

Which means that by inheritance I am nearly everyone on this planet. I am not afraid of Others, or of The Other, and those who would seek to deny political and social rights to people who for whatever reason do not fit a particular box simply because they’re afraid of them do not speak for me. I reject superstition and embrace reason and as a child I learned that this is what should be the hallmark of an American, that while we never discard the lessons of the past nor do we let the fears and ignorance of the past dictate our future.

I am an American.

I accept the rule of law. This is a founding idea and I live accordingly, even if I dislike or disapprove of a given example. If so, then I embrace my right to try to change the law, but I will not break it thoughtlessly just because it inconveniences me or to simply prove my independence. My independence is likewise, like my Americanness, something I carry with me, inside. The forum of ideas is where we debate the virtues and vices of the framework of our society and I take it as given my right to participate. Cooperation is our strength, not blind commitment to standards poorly explained or half understood. Because we make the law, we determine its shape and limits. The more of us who participate, the better, otherwise we surrender majority rule to minority veto, and law becomes the playground of those who learn how to keep the rest of us out.

I am an American.

Such a thing was invented. It came out of change, it encompasses change, it uses change. Change is the only constant and too-tight a grip on that which is no longer meaningful is the beginning of stagnation and the end of that which makes us who we are. Change is annoying, inconvenient, sometimes maddening, but it is the only constant, so I welcome it and understand that the willingness to meet it and work with it defines us as much as our rivers, our mountains, our cities, our art. A fondness for particular times and places and periods is only natural—humans are nostalgic—but to try to freeze us as a people into one shape for all time is the surest way to destroy us.

I am an American.

I do not need others to be less so I can be more. I do not need others to lose so that I can win. I do not need to sabotage the success of others to guarantee my own. I do not have to take anything away from someone else in order to have more for myself.

America is for me—

My partner, my family, my friends, the books I love, the music I hear, the laughter of my neighbors, the grass and flowers of my garden, the conversations I have, the roads I travel, and the freedom I have to recognize and appreciate and enjoy all these things. I will defend it, I will fight anyone who tries to hurt it, but I will do it my own way, out of my own sentiments, for my own reasons. Others may have their reasons and sentiments, and may beat a different drum. That’s fine. That is their way and we may find common cause in some things. This, too, is America.

“All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It’s a breed — selected out by accident. And so we’re overbrave and overfearful — we’re kind and cruel as children. We’re overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We’re oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic — and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture.”
John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“There’s the country of America, which you have to defend, but there’s also the idea of America. America is more than just a country, it’s an idea. An idea that’s supposed to be contagious.”
Bono

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
John F. Kennedy

“When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.”
Adlai Stevenson

culture

What Ails Us

Senator Bernie Sanders is a voice of conscience. When he stands on the floor to tell us what ails us, we should listen. A lot of people won’t—they’re too busy trying to prove Obama is a Muslim or not a citizen or that Obamacare is socialism run rampant or some other absurdity that does nothing but distract from the real problems. We have as a nation become obsessed with sideshows. We seem incapable of coming together to actually solve the problems that we have. It’s easier to bitch about what is unaddressable than to do the hard work to understand real problems and deal with genuine issues. Ahead of our anniversary as a nation, a bit of cold water.

Stay cool, folks.