Today's internet news has Barack Obama showing more spark in taking on the critics of his health care reform initiative, blasting South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint for saying that failure to get this passed could be Obama's "Waterloo."
Good thing. It's pretty apparent that what the public wants, at this point, is a fighting president, not one who acts understanding and affable whole house goes up in flames. Then again, it seems unrealistic to expect great things legislatively, even from a president with Obama's degree of intelligence and imagination, during a period of such profound economic stagnation and wrangling over the deficit.
Yes, the deficit numbers are scary. Everything about this economic crisis has been scary. And it may seem like an odd time to be overhauling health care--except that we have no choice. As with many other painful prospects, including drastic action on climate change, the clock has simply run out on the old way of doing business. And, I would point out, do we really have an alternative to what Obama is proposing at this point? Either we get behind the President and the Democrats, or we do nothing--and doing nothing is not an option.
Torture needs to be firmly established as a crime against humanity. In order to do this, we must prosecute those who were responsible for giving it the green light. These need to be Nuremburg trials, ladies and gents. Otherwise we are all complicit in one of the darkest chapters in our American history. In fact, we already are.
There are some things about American society that I like a lot. One is our addiction to choice--i.e., free will. Hope is fed by the knowledge that we have the ability to affect our own, and the world's, destiny. The chances that we take in exercising that free will are balanced by potential payoff.
That is the American way. We have a lot of words--capitalism, "the market," "God's blessing"--that obscure the reality of what choice is all about. "Democracy" is a word I like--not only because of its cool Greek origins, but because it means what it says--"government by the people."
Mankind is an overwhelmingly diverse body. One can't possibly keep track of all the different popluations, their social customs, what they eat, what they wear, the nuances of their languages and what they believe--but one can appreciate the modernist canvas of diversity and believe that this Jackson Pollock-like splatter leads to a coherent picture--if you are able to absorb the data and get from it the right image.
We are in a fight right now to reclaim the choice of the people from commercialism, defeatism, cronyism, Bush-Cheney-ism, fear of terrorism.
Choice. The potential to be free, to make one's own decisions. Why is it that our choice is poisoned by contemporary commercialism and all its concomitant phenomena? If we could give a name to our pain, to the choking force behind all of these feelings of imprisonment in our "postmodern" society?
I think it could be "money." "Money" seems to be the poison in our veins. It is the weight that is crushing us. Those who sarcastically, scathingly, verbally lacerate opponents of free-market capitalism ignore this fact. They say, "things are fine--or, they would be, if we had the right economic approach, and my theory is (yadda yadda)."
Good and evil. Right and wrong. God and the devil. None of these things have anything to do with money. Money is a human invention--it may have outlived its usefulness.
Reacting to what has been called “populist anger” in the atmosphere of outrage over the AIG bonuses, Rick Perlstein writes in the same issue: “What makes this rage 'populist?' This is ordinary rage, rational and focused.”
Though I agree with Perlstein’s objection to the moniker “populist,” I disagree with the “ineluctably American” class-consciousness he touts as later on in his article as “common sense.” I think of the people protesting those bonuses as “ordinary people”—I don’t really think we’re still stuck in the same 19th Century distinguishing criteria between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The people who are angry these days often belong to the middle class, often drive decent cars, have okay-paying jobs. The majority is not, in this case, a “mass” or “mob” set up in contrast to a ruling “elite.” If we believe in democracy—and I do—money is not supposed to be the defining element in what gives a person value. It should be, “One person, one vote.” We are all equal before the law. Let us start acting like it. There is no “elite.” There exist only those who have money, and those who do not.
We have to remind ourselves of this fact—of our equality before the law, and our rightful equality in deciding what the government does—before we begin to address the problems that are being created in our society by money.
We must set apart our self-rule, our self-worth, and our true value as individuals, from the question of money. I know it is difficult to do this—the idea that money is what naturally rewards talent, ability, and worth, is ingrained in our thinking. I would like to take some time to address this notion, and hopefully get it out of the way so that we can think clearly:
Money, in the traditional American capitalist vision of a financial meritocracy, should always go to those who “deserve” it most. Who, then, is the most deserving? If those getting the money at the moment don’t “deserve” it, then who exactly does? Are we saying that middle-income Americans deserve it more? Or do we say that people in ghettoes, often being racial minorities and groups left out of historic prosperity, are more “deserving” because of these past and present unfair circumstances?
What is “fairness,” really, when you are attributing value to a monetary system designed to measure the worth of material goods? How much are some goods “worth” compared to others? Can you distribute this equally? Would it be fair to do so, when some contribute more to this material “wealth” than others? I wonder… are those who are caught up in the business of generating material “wealth” for themselves not, in effect, building their own prison—one of enslavement to increasing lifestyle demands and increasing expectations?
Certainly, Republicans have made the argument that people who “earn” their money ought to keep it, because, the implication is, they worked for it. Of course, this argument ignores the fact that others probably worked equally hard, and, because of talent and circumstances, but not for lack of trying, failed to produce as much wealth.
Rush Limbaugh, in one of his books, compared the “liberal” approach to social equity to an imaginary NBA where the best players were given physical restrictions in order that they not exceed the other, worse players in accomplishment.
Let’s ignore the fact that people who grow up in ghettoes, who have to deal with inferior circumstances and resist racial prejudice and social pessimism, are already in essence playing with blinders on their eyes and weights on their ankles. Even putting all that aside for a moment—do we really want our society to be like a professional sports league? In a given year, there is only one “winning” team in all of pro-basketball: the one that wins the NBA Championship. That means, out of 30 pro-basketball teams in the United States, there is 1 winner, and 29 losers. This makes for a dramatic sport, and a yearly battle that is exciting to watch, but if we start applying this kind of process to our economy, we are in trouble. Do we want our society to be that way, economically? Do we want 1 winner compared to 29 losers? That amounts to a 3.33% chance of ultimate success. I don’t like those odds—I don’t care who you are, how talented, how hard-working, we need support for those who don’t make the cut. If you are a pro-basketball player, being a “loser” probably won’t put you out on the street. But for a struggling poor person, it might.
Let’s go back to the “populist anger” furor for a moment. We agree that the outrage is, in large measure, just. But let us not have the romance of being a “wronged party” blind us to the big picture: the problem of “wealth.” We may ask, if we want some perspective: how is our perception of “wealth” affected by the capitalist system? By our ingrained habit of thinking that money will reward virtue and hard work and thrift—and, not only that, but thinking that it is the only important reward? By the idea that competition inherently produces more “wealth” and better quality of life?
There is more to morality than money. I know most of us believe this at some level, but let’s stop and take stock for a moment. If we really think that Wall Street got into trouble by being too concerned with their own money, are we putting ourselves much ahead by becoming equally obsessed with how they are spending ours? Money has always been a mixed bag, a limited and flawed system. We have to have some way of assigning material value to commodities for purposes of trade, so we came up with money. And here, money has seemed to have gotten away, even from its original material, or its “stock-market” speculative material definition of value. If anything went wrong during this whole problematic period in our nation’s capitalist career, it seems to have been that the thing we have learned to think of as “wealth” (in the form of “assets”), seems to have gotten too far away from real value—a phrase that deserves to be incised on our imaginations, not just as a warning to speculators, but as a caution against obsession with monetary rewards assigned in proportion to “merit.”
Most of the people in this country have a good idea what real value is. They--we--don’t want to enslave themselves to money, or imaginary “values” assigned to “assets.” I think what most people (most of the POPulation, if you will) want is to have money play a small, appropriate, reasonable role in everyone’s life.
Please don’t call us “populists”—we are “populationists.” However, what I think we desire most is not equality, but sanity. What we want is a right to work and live in peace and prosperity—not as it is defined by the endless obsession with more “wealth,” but as it is defined by the essentials of human community—housing, food, comfort, socialization, and health.
Controversy and debate. I love them, but there comes a point when we need positive thinking.
Obama's budget and his economic recovery plan don't seem too popular these days, either with the left, or with the right. The high-profile lending of billions of dollars in taxpayer money to Wall Street has eroded public confidence in Obama as a popular reformer. But I wonder if Obama and Geithner's plan might not actually be the surest road to long-term reform after all.
Consider the fact that whatever opposition there was to lasseiz-faire capitalism was faint at best before the global economic crisis precipitated an outcry against corporate greed. No-one was seriously committed to changing the system.
Now, the picture is different. People are tired of cynical, morally-bankrupt avarice in all sectors of American life--they want to see people who are working just as hard for their money earn a fair share of the pie, and they want the opportunity to restore some fairness and reality to our system of commerce. This would not have happened if there were not gross excesses and foolishness on the part of the big banks, insurance giants, and automakers making headlines every day.
In a sense, we needed these "money-grubbing," "greedy," "foolish," "irresponsible" Wall Streeters to counter the impression that the right has successfully foisted off on the American public in the past--that the Republican Party is "pro-business" and economically smart, whereas the "liberals" want to take all our money away and give it to gay welfare cheats and abortion-promoting sex education programs.
In the short term, it would be irresponsible to let the big banks go under, not because they deserve our charity at all, but because to do so would result in huge shockwaves across the economic strata of this and every country, which would unfairly impact the poor, the needy, and those in general lower in the economic spectrum--though it would, in fact, seriously impact everyone.
Poverty is not an easy thing to cope with under the best of economic circumstances, when there is plenty of money for charities and the like. Under conditions like those we are facing now, with so few jobs available, and so many employers unwilling to spend any money they don't have to, poor people are facing even tougher challenges. If the big banks were to fail, there would be nothing waiting to fill the void. We would see widespread financial panic.
Find fault with the approach that Geithner is taking, if you will. But we should, in the short term, shore up the existing financial system of lending and credit in order to have time for long-term reforms in how we approach the stock market and money in general.
It's not just about giving out money, or jobs, to those who need them. We need to employ our unemployed and underemployed population, which is sizable; we need to educate and train people for living-wage jobs, and get everyone into a position where they can be productive and contribute to society. We can't do all that if no-one has any money--and no-one will have any money if the current credit crisis goes on and on.
Transforming a population that has been poor and indigent to one that is working and producing is good for the economy. It's good for our communities. And you can't do it if there is widespread panic and business after business going belly-up.
We need to stabilize the economy before we can institute effective reforms. Past postings I've made on this blog have been pretty scathing about the banks and the other institutions that got us into this situation. But I don't think the answer is not to give up on the President's plan. What we want to do is to regain stability and confidence, and those are the things that, under the new Democratic Obama leadership, we can translate into real long-term reform and solvency for individuals in all areas of the economic spectrum.
As a volunteer for a local grassroots community-organizing effort, I do have a certain weekly dose of agitation for change. The people I work with are not overwhelmingly interested with the initiatives proposed by efforts like "Organizing for America." They are conditioned to distrust all institutions of power and privilege in this country, and anything as official as the Democratic Party, or the Barack Obama campaign, or, heaven knows, the Federal Government, is sort of what they think of as The Enemy—the recalcitrant adversary to whom no avenue of escape must be allowed. The only way to deal with government and economic power, they advocate, is to “demand change.”
I don't quite have the unqualified acceptance of "workers' rights" that some of my coworkers, and some people who aid our organization, have--not because I'm enamored of lasseiz-faire capitalism, but because I think these people can sometimes be a little self-involved. If you don't at least try to see it from the other guy's point of view, you risk self-defining and self-defeating insularity like the Cheney-Rumsfeld movement. Being for "equity," or "a living wage," or a "moral society," does not necessarily make you immune from the ideology bubble that eventually makes all unswervingly dogmatic groups a cultural irrelevancy.
What am I trying to say--"There is no power without compromise."
I do think there is something to be gained from keeping a step back from all political agendas and organizations, but some organizations--like the one I work with--seem to think they are immune from the universal poison of "groupthink"--the phenomenon of dogmatic convention within organizations that can sometimes be a cancer, and a very harmful malaise, when it comes to ordering and sustaining a real society--one in which there are diverse groups and complex ecologies of inculturation and reality-teaching.
I therefore re-stake my identity within the Obama-ish grassroots effort to promote optimism and gradual reform, rather than the cynical, anti-capitalist, Marx-Engels-derived socialist economic movement that demands instant, uncompromised, and absolute revolution.
This will be my fourth or fifth, and hopefully my final, attempt to try to finish this blog entry.
It is not hard for someone reading the Bible’s texts to compare our age to biblical times. God is the missing piece, the actor, the participant whose crucial role has been cut out of the (post)modern drama. Without Him, there is no hope, no idea that current sufferings and crises may result in eventual bliss and splendor. There is only the news, the endless cycle of disasters, crises, and disappointments. Anxiety comes and goes in waves, nature destroys, homes and fortunes are rebuilt.
I wish we had a Modern Bible. I think that the biblical proportions of modern conflict and crisis can only be stated within a drama that includes God, that recognizes God as a participant, that makes us aware, through all the hurricanes and flood watches and fires and fruitless wars that all is happening for a reason, that there is drama and meaning within the truth meted out by our experiences as a race, as a people.
Doubt. That seems to be the essence of all this--it seems to be the dark place that we are all inhabiting. Like the blackness of the soul that the addict is plunged into when he, or she, seeks to avoid taking the substance that has given him or her so much trouble. Doubt, like a sea monster threatening to destroy the frail ship. Sailors, on the decks, transfixed, looking at the horizon, imagining that the groans of the deep represent the coils of an infinite monster, about to wrap itself around their wooden vessel and crush all life and potential out of it. Doubt.
Because we exist in this middle realm, between Heaven and Hell, as the Norse had it, "Midgaard," the realm of doubt. I do not know a lot about Norse mythology. But I do know there is a phantom serpent abroad in our waters, and it is called "doubt."
I have little to say about "AIG" and its ridiculous bonuses--that story seems played-out to me. Hated insurance giant shames the world by using its bailout money to line its own employees' pockets, while the rest of the world roils with havoc created the irresponsible policies of this company and those like it. What can you say, really? What, except spit into the dust with disgust at the lack of control the government seems to have over the companies it has saved, or temporarily saved, from disaster. Disgust at the whole climate of greed, negligence, and indifference that pervaded our whole culture up until... well, perhaps now. And therein lies, I think, our potential for salvation.
There are those who would see nothing but greed and corruption in everything the government does. There are those who believe all who inhabit the top are lost, are the enemy, are those who have stole our homes and our lives and our self-respect, and our self-reliance, and our peace of mind, and the safety of our families. And these people would not be far wrong. A Jeremiah, filled with merciless, savage, apocalyptic vituperation at the sinful, feckless, greedy negligence and corruption of his own nation could scarcely condemn our situation, at the hands of the rich and the entitled, at the hands of a system of greed that was aided and accompliced by the scared self-interest in every single one of us, at our absurd, hopeless, and nihilistic sickness of the heart in the face of global capitalism, too harshly.
And yet--I feel a kind of divine shifting in the winds, a change blowing out of the East, or the North, or whatever direction change comes from--the settling in of a new awareness, an awareness that we need to change, that we must adapt, we must bear the pain of moving in a direction we once thought impossible.
Idiots like the ones we see on conservative news channels like Fox, and the ones we hear on the radio, prove that democracy cannot survive the modern, corporate idea of “free speech."
When those who decide what matters will be debated in the public forums, and who will do the debating, and under what parameters the debate will be conducted, with what information, and what assumptions, and what possible outcomes in mind, are the captains of corporate control and corporate power, free speech has become a farce. It had become a dog-and-pony show, with no relation to real debate. When the First Amendment was articulated, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, “the right of the people peaceably to assemble,” or “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” the intention was not to allow the political conversation to be monopolized by an empowered few. Nowadays, the “empowered few” are not government figures—they are corporate giants, who preside over the reigns of “infotainment” celebrities like Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann. While the corporations control the airwaves, our speech can never be truly free.
Change—real change—is not possible until we take control of the conversation. We must stop allowing a privileged few to determine what the dialogue is about and what is discussed. Even our historic, world-changing grassroots campaign efforts and use of the Internet will fail to take hold of mainstream consciousness as long as people watch TV and listen to the radio. Some “news” organizations do make an attempt to cover real stories. However, we must insist that what the people want to bring into the public mind is more important to what profit-motivated private organizations are motivated to broadcast.
Ultimately, we need to create an alternative source of information that is not tied to any particular campaign or party. Yes, we do need to talk about values. We need to define the public policy agenda of the coalition Obama has built. But this needs to be bigger than Party; it needs to be bigger than “progressive” or “conservative.” It needs to be about the people regaining their ability to debate, freely and substantively, about the issues of the day, in a way that can be broadcast and heard by all.
It's been a slow quarter-century, hope-wise. We had a few bright spots early on--the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the apartheid in South Africa, the end of the Cold War--but after that, things quieted down. Commercialism, corporate expansion, the "globalizing" process continued unchecked, but American optimism did not. Our faith in our country declined even as (some of our) bank accounts increased. We are unique among the generations of Americans in having such dismal hopes for the future. Should we call it "being realistic?" Should we say we are saving ourselves from disappointment?
I think a lot of this disillusionment has been a good thing. It is borderline delusional to believe that we have a right to an ever-increasing standard of living simply because "we are Americans." We were good with color TV, the Walkman, the cell phone. Other nations envied us our wealth in these types of toys. But now our "standard of living" is simply absurd. TV in color is not good enough--we must have flatscreen, "plasma" TVs. We are not good simply with cable--we need satellite, with how many hundreds of channels? We don't just need cellphones--we need iPhones. (Okay, I might be willing to be converted on the iPhone thing. They are pretty cool.) The point, however, is this: there was a certain level that our lifestyle achieved--I'm talking about middle class Americans here, not the super-wealthy--that was actually admirable to other cultures at one point. They saw it as part and parcel of living free--and we did too, when we thought about it.
Now other countries hunger for our wealth, not like admiring younger siblings, but like jackals circling a potential prey. They do not look up to us, or our lifestyle--they simply want what we have. They envy our luxuries, they don't think they represent anything "good" other than material wealth. And in many places this material wealth does not represent freedom, but evil. Religious leaders in other countries see that truth, at least, clearly, even if their ideologies sometimes seem incoherent and distorted. What can we expect? We dominate a world that is full of poverty and oppression and unfairness, and yet we paint ourselves the guardians of everything just and right. We must bear some measure of responsibility for the state of world affairs, and the state of world affairs isn't too good.
So, in those senses, we are right to be a little less impressed with ourselves than we once were. We would be wrong to unquestioningly believe America to be better than every other country--not to be subject to the same rules, to be "above" international efforts and international law. We would be wrong to believe we don't have to save our money, because "the market will take care of everything," and think we'll simply be able to earn more later. We would be wrong to believe we don't have to work as hard as people in developing countries because "we have more."
There are other ways in which we have behaved badly, however. Many of us, including me, were wrong to so long believe we didn't have to involve ourselves in our government, or our natural environment, or our local economies, because we couldn't see what difference we could make in fixing them. We're not necessarily to blame for that feeling of powerlessness, but nonetheness, it was there, and it needs to end. What we need now is a generation of heroes, not a generation of "I wish it were different" couch potatoes.
We are seeing this country change--but it will not be a lasting change unless we make it so. With a President in office who truly seems to have been elected by the people, we are running out of excuses for apathy. If nothing else, the potential for economic ruin should galvanize us into action. But I would like to see young people take a more more engaged role in the course our country is taking than I have seen. Okay, we helped Obama get elected. Good for us. Until we start believing in our own ability to change the country, to have it resemble what we think the country should be like, nothing is going to change. Obama and the Congress can only do so much. Without our moral belief in a better USA, there really is no hope. Unless we can find a way to change how people think, to change what we believe about our country, our prospects are dark. Because it's the attitude, stupid.
"Bankers say they're sorry"? "Bankers admit they made mistakes"? How about "Bankers donte their Central Park West apartments to the poor, jobless, hungry families made destitute by their irresponsible, greedy idiocy"? How about "Bankers vow to repent for rest of lives in sackcloth and ashes, consined to remote monasteries and convents while they meditate upon their sins?"
I think we need some headline adjustments here.....
I would like to talk a little about Thomas Jefferson. It is not that I know so very much about him; it is more that he is a figure I long disliked, and who I am now endeavoring to give a second chance. He was, without doubt, a polymath and a genius: architect, philosopher, statesman. I have been blinded to his many virtues by his political outlook. My hero, oddly enough, was Jefferson’s arch-foe, Alexander Hamilton.
Hamilton embodied what, early on, I wanted to be: smart, well-cultured, successful on his own merits, disdainful of the ignorant masses, pragmatic and lucid. Jefferson, by contrast, seemed to embody all of the sentimental, ill-informed idealism of my parents’ liberal views.Jefferson was born with the proverbial “silver spoon in his mouth.” He was an aristocrat, at least as far as American society is able to produce aristocracy, yet he idealized and championed the common man.
I was, growing up in Watertown, surrounded by common men, and they did not seem to me at all worth idealizing. Jefferson’s enthusiasm for populist politics seemed to me ill-informed and vague. I was ignorant, and remain ignorant, of Jefferson’s published writings, except of course the Declaration of Independence, which I liked in spite of its author.
I suppose this was also around the time I considered myself a Republican. For those who know about my support for Obama, this may come as a surprise, but there was a period in my teens when I thought of myself as a political conservative. In some ways, I still do, but the bloom is off the rose for my love for the Republican Party—to put it mildly. Back when Bill Clinton was impeached, I started to harbor doubts about my Party of choice. Those doubts were fully cemented with the election of George W. Bush.
I was not sensitive, when I was a teenager, to the real, important struggles that minorities and women went through to achieve their relative power in the face of white, chauvinistic tradition. All I saw was that the traditions, including those set in place by the Founding Fathers themselves, that I loved and valued as art and poetry and sentiment, were under fierce attack by my outspoken liberal-feminist teachers, my outspoken liberal-feminist sister, and my outspoken liberal-feminist mother; I was teased by black kids and white kids alike for my intellectualism, and I lived in an area full of working-class white people who did not seem to need defending from anyone—they were pitiless.
Thomas Jefferson’s mistake, in my eyes, was in believing that the people, once they were given power, would value contributions like his at all. In fact, most of what one heard in the media, filtered on down into high school classrooms, about Jefferson, was that he was a hypocrite. He had championed equality while keeping slaves; he had fathered an illegitimate black child on one of his slaves, Sally Hemmings. This was the “historical scandal” that marked Jefferson while I was learning about the Revolution in high school. If Jefferson promoted equality and practiced slavery, I reasoned, what did that say about Jefferson? And if he championed the common people and the common people had turned on him, what did that say about the common people?
Republicans have always, in my memory, made a show of promoting moral virtue while practicing political pragmatism. One might be tempted from this to generalize and say that Obama is like the Republican Party; he also promotes virtue and practices political expediency. However, I see integrity as being the difference between prominent Republicans of the past 30 years and Obama.
Integrity, interestingly enough, was what I thought Thomas Jefferson lacked, at least as far as his slave-owning was concerned. I learned of his treachery toward his former friend, John Adams, while serving as his Vice-President: Jefferson had published, indirectly and secretly, letters that slandered the sitting President even while he was serving as Adams’s Vice. Integrity did not seem to be a large facet of his character, given this action. His public expressions of disapproval regarding dirty politics while paying muckraker James Callender to dig up dirt on his enemies (especially Hamilton and Adams) added further weight to the charges of hypocrisy.
Jefferson, then, was a very human character, riddled with contradiction, hypocrisy, and inconsistency. However, it was not Jefferson’s inconsistency that I disliked most; it was his idealism. I did not like him because I considered him foolishly sentimental; I also saw parallels, increasingly, between Thomas Jefferson and the contemporary Republican Party I had learned to hate.Certainly, there are similarities. Thomas Jefferson was a Southerner who resented the influence of Northern bankers, merchants, and financial interests on American government and society. He sought to decrease the power and influence of the federal government, which is what Republicans professed to try to bring about in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Both Jefferson and the 20th and early 21st Century Republican Party found themselves unwilling, or unable, to make good on the full force of their government-reducing convictions once they attained power.
Jefferson, when presented with the opportunity of the Louisiana Purchase, expanded the role of the presidency with powers not outlined in the Constitution. In short, in the first term of his presidency, 1803, he made a move one hundred and eighty degrees away from his pre-presidential conviction that the role of the Executive should be restricted and reduced as much as possible. In doing so, he not only confirmed his historical labeling as a hypocrite, he actually saw things Hamilton’s way for once. After opposing, one-by-one, all of the expansions of executive power by Hamilton and Washington during Washington’s two terms as President, he concluded by producing a whopper of his own.
Jefferson, for all his faults, saw what some of his peers could not—that, in the end, the power of a U.S. government over its people could be no less “evil” than that of a British king. He did not—and this very likely to his credit—hold to his convictions when he was presented with an opportunity that would be greatly to the advantage of his country if he chose to go against them. He overcame his principles, and became a whole leader by doing what was necessary. It is not that he did not honor his beliefs; he saw that his beliefs could actually stand in the way of what was best for the country, and for its people, and he stepped away from them for their sake.
I do not think Obama has any political convictions that are quite as firmly held as Thomas Jefferson’s. He has made his way in life as a compromiser; very likely, he will need to grow as president more by acting upon conviction more than he is comfortable with. I could, of course, be wrong—Obama has certainly proved himself steadfast when confronted with challenges to his view that change is possible, but such a stance’s conviction is evidenced more by empathy and consideration than by opposition and contrarianism. However, we may be hitting a point when Obama’s ideas about the role that government must play in a democratic society such as ours are hitting the roadblocks of moneyed interests, free markets, and change in the economic climate.
It is difficult to know, especially without being an economist, whether Obama’s bill for stimulating the economy will have the effect it is hoped to have. One thing is for certain, however: Obama’s bill flies directly in the face of Republican ideas about reducing the power and size of the federal government (except in the areas of “national security” and law enforcement). It expands government spending in areas that are not directly tied to the Dow—for schools, bridges, clean water. Such an action will not be seen as a Jeffersonian sacrifice of conviction for the greater good—it is more in keeping with the actions Jefferson took before being presented with Louisiana. The bill’s combination of tax cuts and increased government spending in the areas of education and environmentally-conscious practices is a direct fulfillment of the ideas about taxation and stimulation laid out during Obama’s campaign for the White House.
I am not certain Obama’s bill will impact the market greatly; at least, I am not sure if it will do so very quickly. People do not buy stock in public schools, and entrepreneurs designing innovative energy solutions will have a hard time getting off the ground in this economic climate, even with government help.
I am not convinced this is the time for a big increase in government spending on public works—not when the deficit is already so high, and the need for an infusion of investment capital seems more urgent than the need for good-quality roads and bridges. However, I am willing to take a pass on all that for the moment, for one thing because I doubt I have very much power to affect the course of this bill, or whether it will become law or not, and for another, because Obama is very likely doing a better job than either Hillary Clinton or John McCain would have done if either one had been put in the same position. My question is a deeper one: can Obama lead the country to greater responsibility and prosperity in the years ahead? I am not certain of the answer, but perhaps a look back at the Founding Fathers may provide me with a clue.
Thomas Jefferson was a partisan, in the years following George Washington’s election as President, who believed that the world was about to throw off the chains of historical aristocracy and live within a common man’s republican, democratic ethic. Hamilton feared the abuses of democracy more than he feared the abuses of aristocratic power. In the years of Democratic and Republican squabbling, when I considered myself first an upset conservative, then an upset liberal, and finally writing off American politics altogether as a waste of time, my sympathies lay with Hamilton. Now I find myself sliding in a more Jeffersonian direction. I believe in the power of the people to effect change, to overthrow their standing government peaceably, as Jefferson’s Republican Party did, and to smash the chains of oppression girded upon them by governments that do not stay true to our values; who betray us and leave us high and dry in favor of moneyed interests and established power bases.
However, I think that people like Obama and me will need to remember our history. Governments and financial interests do not roll over easily. We cannot change the American approach to private and public life with an infusion of Jeffersonian enthusiasm for the common good of ordinary people. Rather, it will take political action of, at times, Hamiltonian guile, Madisonian compromise, and Washingtonian conservatism to achieve the ends we have set out to create. Of course, I believe Obama now has co-conspirators in his government who can provide some of the balance and intellectual integrity that Washington’s Cabinet possessed—we can only hope that they have a fraction of their genius—but they need to uphold the Constitution and the republican democratic tradition that the Founders played a principal role in producing and defending, even while often finding themselves in fierce opposition to one another.
Integrity, not political conviction, is what makes great leaders. Obama will do well to remember that when he is confronted with the emergencies and challenges of his presidency. However, I am made hopeful in remembering that he, more than any contemporary person I can think of, has always argued for and lived out that principle.
I think I am beginning to understand the public logic of the Republican Party.
Forgive me for being slow—I know others have probably grasped this justification for lasseiz-faire capitalism long before now—but just bear with me, because I believe I am finally starting to understand the difference between how I think and how a Republican thinks.
It is the opinion of the Republicans that the government, especially the federal government, is hopelessly inept and corrupt. Giving money to the federal government is like giving money to the bum with the clip-on tie who stands on your street corner with bad teeth and a Xerox copy of a “Save the Children” flier on an old clipboard, who says it’s going to “fight racism in America.”
Under this reasoning, cutting taxes is Always A Good Thing. It is Always A Good Thing because you’re taking money away from the bum with the bad clip-on tie and giving it back to Ordinary, Hard-Working, Resourceful, Entrepreneurial Americans.
Of course, these Ordinary, Hard-Working, Resourceful, Entrepreneurial Americans tend to be people who have a lot of money already. It makes sense to me—even though it might seem unfair to some—that people who earn $450,000 a year pay more in taxes than someone making, say, $25,000.
Much has been made of the fact that the Republican Party now seems to be for “corporate welfare,” which is essentially having the big, bad federal government give out more taxpayer money to private institutions, to save them from disaster, which is supposedly hypocritical of them because they have spent so long railing against out-of-control government spending and the welfare state, etc., etc.
However, their actions seem perfectly logical to me now that I understand their thinking. After all, we want to give these Ordinary, Hard-Working, Resourceful, Entrepreneurial Americans as much money as possible, even from the big bad federal government, because they will be able to do more useful and wise things with it than the government (A.K.A. the bum with the clip-on tie and the clipboard) is capable of doing. It makes sense, if you buy into their logic.
Democrats of a certain stripe, on the other hand, see these Ordinary, Hard-Working, Resourceful, Entrepreneurial Americans as, well… Scheming, Cutthroat, Robber-Baronish, Exploitative Corporate Fiends.
I’m not sure I am entirely in line with either characterization of these corporate figures, but that’s not the point. The question everyone seems to be preoccupied with now is: does it make sense for the government to give them our money (with whatever preconditions)?
Well, I don’t know, it does seem reasonable for the government to take some action to prevent the collapse of a crucial industry. However, I find myself offended by the Bush Administration’s decision to come up with a version of the bailout plan for these auto companies that protects Cerberus Capital Management, the outfit that owns 80 percent of Chrysler LLC as of last year, from being responsible for any losses experienced by taxpayers in consequence of the loan.
Cerberus Capital Management, a scary-sounding multinational "buyout" firm, from what little I can glean, does not seem to be made up of Ordinary, Hard-Working, Resourceful, Entrepreneurial Americans. And even if it were, why should they be protected from being responsible for the fortunes of a company they have invested so heavily in, especially when us non-capital-investment-firm-owning, yet equally Ordinary, Hard-Working, Resourceful, Entrepreneurial Americans are being asked to share in that investment with our tax dollars?
There seems to be more than one kind of corporate welfare—and it seems to me that where the Republicans have painted the government as the bum with the bad clip-on tie and the clipboard, in fact, it is looking more and more like the Republicans in government are the ones giving money to that guy—and he owns 80 percent of Chrysler.
Okay, now the auto industry bailout has been defeated in the Senate by hostile Republicans. Even though the White House now says it will act to avert a crisis, what does this say about our Congressional leadership? Are Republican sour grapes about a tough election for them so strong that they are willing to torch the American economy just to avoid an unpopular vote?
Or am I missing something? Was the bailout package so bad that it deseved to be defeated? I am having trouble imagining such a scenario. Now it is going to be touch and go.
I am hoping they manage to save the American auto industry despite this partisan vote.
I am really starting to worry about this.
There seems to have been a tone among the news and word-of-mouth buzz that I've imbibed of, "What can Obama do, and how quickly?"
Perhaps we've forgotten, but in a democracy, we, the people, govern ourselves. Yes, we elect representatives to lead us and to pass laws, but these elected officials are, in some ways, simply a mouthpiece for movements and will within the body politic. If we didn't want to accomplish the things Obama talked about, he would not be President-Elect.
The question should not be, "What can Obama do to fix these problems," but, "What can we do to help him, to help the government, to help the private sector, and our own neighbors and communities, to help fix our problems?"
[It’s now been some time since I made the first two in this series of blog posts, and the circumstances of the election have changed. Barack Obama now commands solid leads in the national polls.]
“Optimism” might seem a funny word to be using in a time when the economic crisis is putting a strain on the world economy in the most serious way documented since the Great Depression. However, I find myself hopeful. I suppose, in way, it is a kind of relief for me. All my life, I’ve been uneasy with unbridled consumer culture. Endless commercial advertisements, the sense that we are exploiting the less fortunate peoples of the world—that somehow we inhabit a separate universe from people in Bangladesh, or Singapore—these aspects of late Twentieth and early Twenty-First Century American life were troubling to me. Now, our country feels closer to earth to me. Somehow, this “tanking” of our economy reminds me of the more important things in life. Life is not about money. Life is not about “being a success.” Life is—life should be—about helping other people, living a blessed life, living a life in hope of a heavenly hereafter, benefiting from the great wonders of Nature and God’s creation.
Don’t get me wrong—I recognize that this crisis hurts people on the bottom the most—people who can’t afford not to think about money. People who are struggling just to get by, pushed from all directions by financial pressures, the need to put food on the table for children, to pay the heating bills, to meet health care costs. But the Obama campaign is already making those “invisible” people more visible.
Barack’s half-hour paid advertisement, aired before the World Series game last Wednesday, put those “invisible” Americans back on the map. And it reminded me that those who make up this country are not just statistics on some breakdown of voter demographics, as they do these things, county by county. They are real people, people who often put their heart and soul into what they do, who worry, as we all do, about how they will meet their obligations to themselves and to others, people who think about politics as something that affects their real lives. And I am glad to see those people put back in the spotlight, where they belong.
For too long, we’ve been watching Television People, people in pantsuits and makeup and perfect hair, commentating on where America is at, on who Americans are. And that is not the way it should be. I don’t know if is because ordinary people weren’t considered photogenic, weren’t speaking from a script, and weren’t on some advertising firm’s payroll, or what, but we haven’t heard much from them in the past eight years. Our technological improvements communication media, our 24/7 digital entertainment barrage, seem to have somehow resulted in a culture that does not usually recognize the value of “ordinary people.”
Well, I am an ordinary person. Very soon, once I leave this farm community, I will be wondering about how to pay the bills again. But I approach it all with a spirit of joy because I know I am equal to the task—that this is my opportunity to prove myself, as people in past generations have done, to be part of the good stories about life in America. That I will be able to shine in adversity as my ancestors have done, and to do so in the knowledge that I do not face such trials alone.
God bless Barack, and God Bless the United States of America.
[End of Part III. Good luck Obama-ites! GO VOTE AND GET BARACK ELECTED PRESIDENT!]
1%, or 1 vote out of 100There have been 12 Presidential elections that were decided by less than a 1% margin; meaning if less than 1% of the voters in certain states had changed their mind to the other candidate the outcome of the entire election would have been different. More than half were decided by less than a 2% margin.
In 2004, 57,787 votes would have given us President Kerry.In 2000, 269 votes would have given us President GoreIn 1996, 575,515 votes would have given us President Dole.
From ABC News:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/scienceandsociety/2008/09/squeakers.html
=========="Squeakers"Ned PotterABC NewsSeptember 29, 2008How close have Presidential elections been? Closer, perhaps, than we ever guessed. Mike Sheppard, a grad student in statistics at Michigan State, has done a mathematical exercise that shows it.He ran a computer program to answer this question: "What is the smallest number of total votes that need to be switched from one candidate to another, and from which states, to affect the outcome of the election?"The answer: in some years, very, very few. Take a look at his analysis HERE. It shows the powerful interaction between the popular vote and the electoral college.[...]==========
Full article here:http://blogs.abcnews.com/scienceandsociety/2008/09/squeakers.html
Detailed analysis here, including colored maps:https://www.msu.edu/~sheppa28/elections.html-Mike Sheppard
Barack Obama calls Reinhold Niebuhr "one of my favorite philosophers."
When asked by David Brooks what his takeaway was, Barack replied, "I take away...the compelling idea that there's serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn't use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away...the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naive idealism to bitter realism."
Barack a naive empty suit? I don't think so! Rather, he is someone who understands that in the face of the world's woes, hope is necessary, and that combined with intelligent assessment, compassion, resolution and hard work, it can make a difference.
I only discovered through this campaign that a lovely cottage and grounds that Niebuhr owned for about 15 years, and where he wrote his famous Serenity Prayer, is near my home!
The cottage is in private hands, but to benefit Barack Obama, the owners contacted us to help organize a fundraiser (and volunteer finder) event at the cottage. We were delighted to step in to help organize the event.
Now the public will have a rare chance to see the cottage (without paying for a weekly rental), stroll the grounds, socialize and enjoy refreshments and live music, and learn ways to volunteer to help Obama win the election. (There will be information about Niebuhr also.)
Please come join us on Saturday, October 4, from 1 to 4 p.m. for this event. Here's the link for more information and sign up:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/fundraising/gs79hf
Hope to see you there!
Linda
(This is Part II of a series.)
I am making this series of postings not because I want to get into some sort of debate about whether McCain or Obama has the better and more specific plan for changing Washington. Such plans nearly always go awry in some way; Presidents’ success is defined by how they respond to the events that are thrust upon the country during their time in office, not by how good their plan was going in. I am trying to make the case for leaving room in our political dialogue for vague talk about hope, because it strikes me that that is something we are in dire need of at the present time.
It is only ever with a vague desire to do good and with a vague sense of hope that people ever embark on a course to change the world. The good they do may not exceed the bounds of what they hoped to be able to do; it may fall far short of what they imagined they could, or should do. But it is miles ahead of what would have happened had they not tried at all. Point out to me the vast hordes of reformers who have been inspired by policy lectures from political candidates. Make clear to me how talk about tax credits and fuel subsidies ever motivated anyone to transcend self-interest and work for the common good. Tell me how it has ever done one iota of good for a Presidential candidate to make campaign promises about foreign policy before assuming office.
The negative reaction to Obama comes from a kind of image-distortion that has been used repeatedly by Republicans to try to capitalize on what is, after all, a very strange idea on the part of Americans: the idea that smart people, people who speak well and who seem to know things, can’t be trusted. There seems to be this notion abroad, that keeps coming up again and again when we hold national elections, that there is something “wrong,” something “suspicious,” something “not quite right” about eloquence and well-thought-out arguments from intelligent and educated people.
Eloquence—poetry, even—when it directed toward furthering a really worthy cause, is not the enemy of concrete goals related to improving our society. Rather, it is their best and sometimes only friend. Without eloquence and rhetoric from good politicians, we would have very few tools with which to persuade people, on a large scale, to care about the world they live in and to work to change it. It is true that most Americans do hold some “traditional values”—and, whatever we mean by this, it is usually a good thing; it is good that we are at least aware of the ethical implications of terminating unwanted pregnancies, whether it is a legal practice or not. It is a good thing that we want to avoid exposing our kids to influences that could hurt their healthy development, or that we want them to be well-educated and successful. We would be a terrible culture if we did not want such things.
What happens, though, is that people stop paying attention to what’s going on in politics because they think politicians are trying to sell them something—which is true, but the important point that they miss is that they are eating up what the media is selling them, which is a bunch of images and distorted facts, not the important, salient points in the debate. It’s not that Republicans have no legitimate points to make—it’s that they have gotten much better than Democrats at “working the system”—that is, using the media nonsense in a way that benefits and strengthens their party’s political position, at the expense of the quality of discourse and the real significance of the issues.
Democrats play politics too—they just don’t generally do it as well, or with such unity of purpose as the Republicans do. The Republican party operates like a military organization, a well-oiled machine—the Democrats can sometimes sound like the cranky people you will often meet on the street outside the Salvation Army in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (This is not necessarily intended as a criticism of such people--but they do not always have the best PR skills with which to represent their complaints about the government we live under.) I speak in terms of the images of national politics in the media coverage, not necessarily about the reality of what is said and done by the candidates. In order to win this election by the kind of margin they want, Democrats need to figure out that, though we have a star in Barack Obama, we need to figure out how to direct the movie that will associate him with American greatness and unity of purpose. That is what is missing in the campaign’s media outreach these days.
To hope for a better world, and to believe it is possible for all of us to do better, is not naïve—it’s brave. It’s brave to say such things and to challenge people to take action where they are tempted to do nothing. It is this spirit of accountability that Obama excels at promoting, and we, as Democrats, need to do a better job of getting across to people that strong (and, I might add, distinctly Obama-ish), tough kind of activism. We need to get the message out that changing the world will take courage and strength—and I know that most people in this country realize that courage involves more than pointing a gun and shooting it at somebody—it takes discipline, and faith in a better way of doing things, and a sense of right and wrong—a morality that includes both religious and secular values.
(End of Part II.)
[This blog posting got so big that I'm publishing it in several parts. This is Part I.]
I am almost nostalgic for the days when Barack Obama could have been safely criticized as being a dreamer. I hope he is still a dreamer; I hope he still has some vague ideas about his love for this country that have no specific political goals attached to them. It was only ever people who thought there was something “untrustworthy” about him who did not believe his love of country, or his promise of change, was sincere; how could we have won such people over, without compromising what is best and most selfless in this movement for political change, in this movement the media is calling “Barack Obama,” but which should really be called, “Democrats wake up and nominate a real leader, instead of another policy guru”?
What is Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial but a bunch of airy rhetoric? I believe anyone would be hard put to find any specific policy initiatives suggested by this speech. It is all pompous and poetic; he talks of the Emancipation Proclamation as a “beacon of the light of hope;” he stays that African-Americans of his day live on “on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity;” he talks of “the tranquilizing drug of gradualism;” he warns against the temptation to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred;” he says that the people in the Civil Rights Movement “will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Where are the concrete benchmarks in that? How will we know when justice has rolled down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream? Give us some specifics, Mac!
Right? Isn’t that what we should be asking? But no. Everyone knew what Dr. King was talking about; he was talking about the plight of the American citizens he called “Negroes”—the ones whose ancestors had been enslaved one hundred years previously, and were fighting against racism and segregation, against racially-motivated violence, and against economic and social injustice motivated by white supremacist sentiments. I don’t think Dr. King used those poetic images in his speech because he had no ideas for specific ways in which the changes he and his followers were looking for could be effected. On the contrary, he made such speeches while riding the wave of political action and non-violent protest that made up the day-to-day life of the Civil Rights Movement. It was not that the leaders of this movement had no specific goals in mind; the 1963 March on Washington that King had helped organize, which was the occasion for this speech, had six stated goals (as stated in Wikipedia’s article on the American Civil Rights Movement): “meaningful civil rights laws, a massive federal works program, full and fair employment, decent housing, the right to vote, and adequate integrated education.”
(Such a platform does not, in fact, look all that much different than Barack Obama’s slate of primary campaign issues; Senator Obama and his campaign staff have repeatedly tried to get the specifics of this program out to voters; voters have apparently failed to educate themselves about it, despite the fact that they could easily do so by logging onto his campaign website, BarackObama.com and looking it up. The main problem seems to be getting them to be curious enough to find out the facts.)
However, King’s speech does not mention those goals specifically; its rousing crescendo is really nothing more than a majestic imaginary tour of the high elevations of the American landscape, from which “freedom” shall “ring” if King’s dream be realized. Why should this be? Why would King skip all the details and go for vague poetic phrases and “insubstantial” imagery?
The answer should be obvious: it was because Dr. King realized that what was needed from him at that moment in history was (among other things including other forms of pragmatic action) inspiration, motivation, and hope; that one of the things holding people back from effecting the changes he sought was a lack of imagination for what “freedom” should look like in an America free of ethnic prejudice and racial injustice.
This is one of the most influential pieces of oratory, and of writing, in all of American history, having now inspired generations of Americans to seek to involve themselves in fighting for good causes and improving their political reality, and yet, as I have pointed out, it is nearly all imagery and poetry. It is not the kind of thing that the voting public of today would think of, in the context of this election, as “substance.” Or rather, I should say that the mainstream media news organizations do not seem to consider it “substance,” and their (false) charge that Obama is all style and no substance seems to finally have stuck, and lodged itself in people’s minds, aided by the McCain campaign’s attempt to use his celebrity and success against him and label him a “rock star.”
Of course, Republicans do not get accused very much, by the news media, of lacking substance when they cite “patriotism” and “values” and “country first.” No, the worst they are accused of is engaging in a culture war, and trying to use it to their electoral advantage. However, their message is just as vague and airy, and often a good deal more confused and self-contradictory, than the Obama campaign’s has been. What sort of “maverick” is McCain? What sort of change is he intending on bringing to Washington—having been there for over thirty years, and having worked hand-in-glove with the current Republican President?
[End of Part I.]
