Fiction: Cold Turkey

My cell phone chimed at 3:00 a.m. on Christmas morning. I knew it was Duke.

“Where are you, doc?”

“Morocco. Long, complicated story.”

“Merry Christmas.”

“Bah. I read your blog. I don’t believe you’re done with politics.”

“It’s true.”

“Temporarily, maybe; I give you four to six weeks. You need politics as much as I need illegal substances. It’s who you are.”

“Too depressing, doc. I can’t do it anymore.”

“You going cold turkey?”

“That’s the plan.”

“No more Alternet?”

“No.”

“Democracy Now?”

“No.”

“New York Times?”

“No.”

“TruthDig?”

“No.”

“Huffington Post?”

“Done. E-mail lists, too. Move On. Democracy for America. Color of Change. Courage Campaign. All of them.”

“Cold turkey?”

“Cold turkey.”

“I repeat: you’ll last four to six weeks. What else are you going to write about?”

“Dunno yet. My wife thinks I should write about raising kids, parenthood, that sort of thing.”

“Borrrring,” Duke sang.

“When are you coming back, doc?”

“My house is let for another month. Landscape painter. Lady on the run from a knucklehead husband. Paid in cash. I told her she could paint on the ceiling if she felt like it.”

“You’re full of surprises, doc.”

“Surprises. Shit. Sanctimony. Sentimentality. Spite.”

“What’s her name?”

“The painter?”

“No, the woman in Morocco.”

“Why do you assume it’s a woman?”

“When isn’t it a woman?”

Duke laughed. “You know me well. Allahu Akbar, boy. Give me a call when the jones for politics becomes overwhelming.”

I switched the Christmas tree lights on and went back to bed. Right before I drifted off to sleep I reminded myself to cancel my subscription to the Nation.

Done with Change, Over Hope

I’m done with politics for a while.

I’m disgusted, dejected, and discouraged.

I’m done with change and over hope.

No more will I respond to e-mail alerts from well-meaning but underfunded progressive organizations, no more will I e-mail or phone the people who are supposed to represent my interests in Washington D.C., no more will I pull my hair and gnash my teeth over the latest Obama capitulation.

I can’t do it, at least not without driving myself crazy or into a prolonged depression. I thought the Bush years were aggravating – and they were – but to watch the candidate I voted for bend over and spread his ass cheeks to appease the GOP, well, that’s beyond what I can tolerate. The latest tax giveaway to the rich was the straw that snapped the camel’s spine. I called, I wrote, I signed petition after petition, yet the package went forward just the same, pushed by Obama, to the delight of the wealthy; they received the goodies their campaign contributions paid for.

If I keep writing about politics I’m going to become a crank, like the one Philip Roth describes in Exit Ghost: “Otherwise, I told myself, you’ll become the exemplary letter-to-the-editor madman, the village grouch, manifesting the syndrome in all its seething ridiculousness: ranting and raving while you read the paper.”

I’m not naïve. I expected a limited resemblance between candidate Obama and President Obama, but I didn’t expect that Obama would become the second coming of Bill Clinton, surround himself with Clinton-era apparatchiks, and take economic advice from the likes of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner; I didn’t expect that he would bow and scrape and become Wall Street’s lackey.

I never thought that President Obama would endorse the Bush era economic plan: endless tax cuts that largely benefit the rich and endless foreign wars that benefit no one. But endorse them he has, putting his presidency and the Democratic Party in a box come 2012.

For a man blessed with such eloquence, why does Barack Obama find it so difficult to articulate a coherent vision of who he is and what he stands for?

Obama has taken to spinning the truth like a run-of-the-mill D.C. PR flack, calling the tax giveaway the product of compromise with the GOP and an economic stimulus package that will grow the economy. The truth is that the tax deal will exacerbate the federal deficit, add fuel to Republicans who want to dismantle Social Security and Medicare, and do little to promote job growth.

In Afghanistan, Obama claims things are on-track and that some American forces may depart next summer, though naturally this depends on conditions on the ground and how prepared the Afghan military is to take over. If the Afghan Army isn’t ready now, after nine years and billions of dollars, why should we believe things will be any different by mid-2011? Or by 2014 for that matter? Obama is selling us a fantasy at a time we cannot afford a costly and unwinnable foreign war. Strip away all the military-speak and the fact is that a few hundred al-Qaeda forces have effectively tied up 100,000 American troops – the sophisticated forces of an empire -- at a cost of $120 billion a year.

The war continues and the tax cuts continue and the calls for spending cuts continue and the tone deafness of the ruling class continues, and the people are impotent, far more interested in American Idol and the Kardashians than they are in how their children’s prospects are being diminished by a political and economic system owned and operated by plutocrats for the benefit of plutocrats.

Time to back off and think about something other than the death spiral of the American Dream.

The Last Straw

It’s only a matter of time before House Democrats pass the President’s tax giveaway to the GOP. Nancy Pelosi must be feeling pressure from the White House, the right wing echo chamber, the corporate media and any number of spineless Democrats. When it’s all said and done, signed and delivered, the President will claim victory for bipartisanship, but this claim will be as empty as the one Obama made the other day when he said that most economists think this absurd gift to the GOP will stimulate the economy.

Here’s what’s more likely to happen.

First, the federal deficit is going to get worse – much worse.

The gulf between the wealthy and the rest of us will get wider – much wider.

The temporary payroll tax holiday will hurt Social Security in the long run, exacerbating fears that the trust fund will not be able to meet its commitments; this will fuel calls from the GOP to reduce benefits, raise the retirement age or, at long last, end Social Security as we know it by privatizing the program.

The “temporary” tax cuts will become permanent because no politician of either party is going to suggest letting them expire in 2012. No matter what’s happening with the economy, the cuts will remain, starving the government of the revenue it needs to function. This is precisely what right-wing Republicans want to happen.

What argument will Obama fall back on when this middling “stimulus” fails to jumpstart the economy? What will he say when the official unemployment rate remains stuck between nine and ten percent and the true rate is up around seventeen?

The Democrats allowed themselves to be boxed in by the GOP and now they are stuck with what will be. This is Obama’s recession now.

The GOP offered one economic policy during the Bush reign, one policy prescription for every situation, one policy rain or shine, fire or flood, earthquake or tsunami: tax cuts. And how did that singular policy work out? The rich reaped the vast majority of the benefits, economic growth was anemic, the federal deficit ballooned, real wages for working people stayed dead flat or declined, and household debt exploded.

That’s the legacy of the GOP’s obsession with cutting taxes. It didn’t work last decade and it won’t work in this one.

If You See the President's Spine, Please Call

President Obama is wandering around the White House, looking under sofas and behind doors and in closets for his spine.

I’m sitting here in disbelief, having just watched the President’s press conference on the deal he “negotiated” with the GOP on taxes. Obama defended the deal and slammed liberals for being sanctimonious purists, and even said that he was willing to take John Boehner at his word.

Take John Boehner at his word? The Sultan of NO, the Lord of Obstruction, the King of Corruption?

It’s clear that Obama is feeling the pressure because he’s talking complete gibberish, like when he compared the tax debate to the debate over the public health care option. He can’t be serious…the public health insurance option was pushed off the table and buried before one word was said about it…right about the time the health industry lobbyists came in to write the damn bill.

The Republicans gave up nothing and got more than what they asked for from the President. There was no reason to couple extension of the Bush tax cuts with an extension of unemployment benefits. None at all. The issues should have been considered separately.

Obama can spin it any way he wants, send the Vice President out to do the same, dispatch David Axelrod to jaw on Good Morning America, rev up the Obama for America machine, but the fact is that he allowed the GOP to box him in, knock him on his butt and then rub his face in the dirt.

As a percentage of GDP, Americans are not heavily taxed, so all this talk about taxes, taxes, taxes is bizarre. In point of fact, tax rates have fallen for years, particularly for high income people, which is a key reason why the gulf between haves and have nots in America is so dramatic.

The tax cuts will have a minor stimulative effect on jobs and consumer spending and a major impact on the size of the Federal deficit. Two or three years from now, the GOP will claim from every rooftop that America will default, implode or collapse unless spending is slashed to reduce the deficit, and the first programs the GOP will go for will be the same ones they always zero in on: Social Security and Medicare. Not defense spending. Not corporate tax rates. Not farm subsidies. Social Security and Medicare. Got to gut or kill those entitlement programs or the sky will fall.

President Obama is an intelligent man but he’s behaving like a captive. He talks about fighting back, but if he was ever going to roll up his sleeves and get his knuckles bloody, this was the fight, this was the issue, and this was the time. Instead of fighting, the President walked to his corner and sat on his stool.

The presidential spine is on the lam. If you see it on a street in your city or town, please call the White House immediately.

POEM: Rogues Gallery

Palin
Paul
Murdoch

We’ve turned the country over to fools, liars and con artists
At a time when we need our best and brightest
Our bravest and boldest
To rescue the nation from disaster

Boehner
Bachmann
McConnell

Our economy is a shambles
The middle class is dying
The Chinese are kicking our ass
The polar ice caps are melting

Afghanistan is a needle in our arm
Iraq a noose around our neck
We can’t win, can’t withdraw
Might as well invade Yemen
Bomb the hell out of Teheran

Gingrich
Rubio
Armey

The fools call for tax cuts
Tax cuts
More tax cuts
Like an incantation for the damned
The defiled
And the doomed

Rove
Cantor
Roberts

Their America is not my America
Is it yours?

Better in the Morning

The odds are strong that Julian Assange will wind up confined to a cell for a long time, possibly the rest of his life.

With the release of hundreds of U.S. diplomatic cables, the founder of WikiLeaks has pissed off or embarrassed enough powerful people around the world to insure that those folks go to any lengths to punish him.

I imagine U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton screaming into her phone: “I want Assange hung by his balls. I don’t care how you nail him. I don’t care where you nail him. Just snuff him out!” Other world leaders painted in an unfavorable light in the cables would hardly object if Assange and WikiLeaks suddenly vanished.

Blame the leaker who exposes bad actors rather than the actors themselves.

Assange is wanted in Sweden on sexual assault charges, an accusation that came hard on the heels of a WikiLeaks release of thousands of documents about the Afghanistan war. It may be that I have become paranoid or that I have read too many John Le Carre spy novels, but when the news of the sexual assault charge first surfaced, my immediate thought was: Assange is being framed by the CIA.

Why would the CIA do that? Because even if the charge proves false, as Assange insists it is, the smear attached to his name won’t be easily removed or forgotten. And that’s the point. Discredit the source and you discredit his information; whether or not an accusation is true makes no difference at all.

Maybe. I am certain the clock is winding down for Julian Assange.

Meanwhile, here at home the GOP is standing strong for millionaires and billionaires, pledging to thwart every Democratic proposal unless the Bush Era tax cuts are extended for all income groups. The price tag for these cuts is something like $700 billion over a decade, at a time when millions of Americans are either out of work or stitching together part-time jobs to stay afloat; while money to extend unemployment benefits for the long term unemployed simply cannot be raised without exacerbating the deficit; while the Iraq and Afghan occupations continue without end; while the President’s bipartisan Deficit Commission proposes Draconian cuts to social programs along with – surprise, surprise -- corporate tax cuts; and while the President cannot seem to locate his spine.

It’s all disheartening and frustrating.

Perhaps it will look better in the morning.

The Point of No Return

I don’t want to believe it, even though I suspect that Chris Hedges, who writes regularly for the website Truthdig, is probably right: we can’t win. By “we” I mean political progressives, liberal Democrats and independents of good will. We’re so far behind the power and influence curve that we have no hope of catching up. But if we have lost who has won? That’s easy. The oligarchs and plutocrats who own and operate the corporate state, their hired hands in Congress and the Supreme Court, and their propaganda mouthpieces in the mainstream commercial media.

If the recent mid-term elections proved anything, it’s that money is murdering our democracy and real debate no longer exists in this country. The commercial media sets the parameters, dictates subject and slant, and draws from a shallow pool of “experts” and “insiders” to explain, or more often, spin, what is going on with the burning issue of the day. Dissenting voices are seldom heard in the major broadcast media. Without real debate and dissent, democracy cannot exist except in name, which is exactly the way the plutocrats and oligarchs want it.

We are trapped in a zero sum game waged between left and right, blue and red, liberal and conservative. And with the rise of the Tea Party and its political purity tests, it’s certain the GOP will tilt further right, and the Democrats -- petrified by their losses on November 2 -- will follow, as President Obama appears resigned to do on the Bush tax giveaway to the super rich.

So, we can’t win, but on the other hand, the stakes are so serious that we can’t afford to capitulate. Instead, like all outgunned and outnumbered armies, we have no option but to fight asymmetrically, locally, on a smaller scale.

Speaking of asymmetrical warfare, it looks like our commitment to the Afghan sinkhole just got extended to 2014. No public debate required for this decision, and no discussion of how we will pay for it. Nine years ago our target was Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda – now it’s the Taliban.

Though scattered by American firepower in the early months of the invasion, the Taliban regrouped and launched a reinvigorated campaign to rid Afghanistan of foreign invaders. Nine years, billions of dollars and thousands of killed and injured later, President Obama makes upbeat pronouncements about progress, improved security and increased recruitment for the Afghan army; the American media repeats these fabrications almost verbatim – when the media bothers to cover the war at all. For any sense of perspective one has to turn to the foreign press and independent, un-imbedded media, and there one learns that the war that isn’t going well.

For those of us old enough to remember, Obama’s statements have a definite Vietnam-era ring to them. LBJ and Nixon repeatedly assured the American public that we were turning the corner toward victory, securing territory, killing or capturing more Vietcong, and winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people.

The truth in Vietnam was dramatically different from official pronouncements, just as the truth in Afghanistan is different.

In Vietnam, the US attempted to prop up a corrupt, illegitimate regime; in Afghanistan, our purported partner, Hamid Karzai, is both corrupt and unreliable, and to make matters even worse, our supposed ally, Pakistan, plays both sides of the game for its own strategic advantage.

Governments routinely lie about the need for war and the reasons for keeping wars going. Polls show that most Americans are sick of the Afghan war and realize that it’s a dead end, but – and this is where we return to Chris Hedges and his thesis that we have lost – public sentiment has no impact on policymakers. Why? Because this war, unlike Vietnam, carries no obvious domestic political cost. The only people affected by Afghanistan are soldiers and their families, plus 100,000, give or take, employees of for-profit war contractors. No sacrifice is asked of the larger public – no higher taxes, no war bonds or resource rationing, and no draft.

I think this is the real lesson many American leaders learned from our Vietnam experience: the best way to marginalize domestic anti-war sentiment is to keep the costs of war hidden and citizen sacrifices at a bare minimum.

Of course, there is a huge domestic cost to our economy as the wars drive up the national debt, but this cost isn’t immediate or visceral enough to seize the attention of the public. For policymakers, our war on terror is sacred ground; instead of looking at the dollars we’re pouring into Iraq, Afghanistan and the bloated military-intelligence-security complex, key Republican leaders, and Obama’s bipartisan Deficit Commission, propose to slash Social Security and Medicare benefits, eliminate tax breaks for the remnants of the middle-class and, naturally, reduce taxes for the wealthy.

It’s a strange time in America, perhaps even a point of no return. The status quo works great for the very wealthy, for big business, and for the political class, and they will not relinquish their power and prerogatives easily. Average citizens seem to understand that something is fundamentally out of whack, but have no idea where or whom to turn to for a way out of this morass.

POEM: Pipe Dream

I want to live in a country that considers a state of permanent
War
Abnormal

I want to live in a country where the prison population declines
Rather than increases

I want to live in a country that cares more about meeting human needs
Than meeting the corporate bottom line

I want to live in a country that doesn’t torture people
Under any circumstances

I want to live in a country where young black men
Have the opportunity
To become old black men

I want to live in a country that respects international law
All the time
Absolutely

I want to live in a country where the distance between rich and poor
Is a narrow creek
Not a wide ocean

I want to live in a country that reveres the natural world
Instead of treating it like a 7-11

I want to live in a country that recognizes the difference
Between
Fact and opinion

I want to live in a country that prosecutes the crimes of the wealthy
As vigorously as it does the crimes of the poor

I want to live in a country that appreciates the contributions
Of women
Enough
To pay them the same as men

I want to live in a country that tells the truth
About itself
Instead of hiding behind false myths

Don’t wake me up
I don’t want this beautiful dream
To
End

Poem: Sometimes

Sometimes you must wait for Spring to banish
Winter

Sometimes you must wait until the caged bird
Sings

Sometimes you must wait for the water in the kettle to
Boil

Sometimes you must wait for the planets to
Align

Sometimes you must wait for the divorce to be declared
Final

Sometimes you must wait until the last child leaves for
College

Sometimes you must wait for the game to come to
You

Sometimes you must wait for your enemies to hang
Themselves

Sometimes you must wait for the past to repeat
Itself

And sometimes it all falls into place
Like magic
The words crawl across the page
Effortlessly
And this has nothing
To do
With
You

Prayer and Strong Drink

The lunacy is just beginning. Strap yourself in and be prepared for a very rough ride, with thunderstorms and heavy turbulence from takeoff till landing. Pray, if you’re so inclined; drink heavily if you’re not.

Sarah Palin is crazy, fucking-certifiable-rubber room-straitjacket crazy. A recent CBS News poll found that 48% of respondents view Palin negatively. Among people in the sample group who identify themselves as political Independents, 44% took a dim view of the former Alaska governor.

Palin’s boy, Joe Miller, lost to a write-in candidate in the Alaska senate race.

Let’s recap: Palin has huge negatives and her personal support failed to put Joe Miller over the top on her own turf, but this doesn’t stop her from appearing on Good Morning America and insisting, without a hint of self-doubt, that she can beat President Obama in 2012.

Granted, Barack Obama is not the transformational politician many people thought he might be and many of his core supporters are deeply disappointed. Many expected Obama to challenge the status quo, but the man turned out to be the status quo’s staunchest defender, a fact that cost him and his party on November 2. Timidity and caution – on jobs, financial regulation, health care reform, state sanction of torture, and the never-ending wars – far more than the Tea Party, is what doomed the president in the mid-term elections. Stand for nothing, give ground on everything, and you will go down.

Thus far, signs that Obama learned his lesson from the mid-terms are not very encouraging. The president’s ball sack is still shrunken and his spine is as flexible as Gumby’s.

All things considered, however, it’s unlikely that American voters – dense and juvenile as they may be -- will abandon all reason and elect Sarah Palin president. Unlikely, yes; impossible, no. Weird shit is happening in American politics – check Michele Bachmann out if you doubt this – because the bar is set so low that a self-proclaimed witch could easily slither under it, and because the national economy is liable to remain in the doldrums until 2012.

So weird and perverse is the political zeitgeist that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan hardly merited mention in the mid-term elections. No mystery as to why: both parties are totally complicit in these cock-ups and there was no advantage to gain by reminding voters of how much money and blood, for so little gain, has been poured into Iraq and Afghanistan. At a time when Americans are hurting for jobs and America is in dire need of rejuvenating social investment across the board, we’re dumping millions of our tax dollars into two countries where the population despises our presence. What’s astonishing is how little Americans seem to care. Obama’s 2011 troop drawdown in Afghanistan is in the process of being pushed back to 2014, solely because the US cannot stabilize the country in the next seven months. Hamid Karzai knows it. Mullah Omar knows it. David Petraeus knows it.

By 2014, the US will have been in Afghanistan for thirteen years and we will be no closer to victory then than we are today.

But swing back to Sarah Palin, the crazy lady who would be queen. If she does capture the GOP nomination, she’ll campaign on tried and true conservative tropes like tax cuts, tax cuts, and more tax cuts, along with mushy ideas like “freedom” and “free markets.” God will play a front and center role in Palin’s game plan, as will “personal responsibility” and “small government.” Palin will talk incessantly about the common sense of ordinary folks and the moral turpitude of Democrats and liberals and queers and university eggheads. Faith will be a constant theme.

Thinking Americans will be appalled and mortified that someone so ill-suited for any national office might actually fool enough people to win.

Here’s a thought that chills me to the bone: Palin is so ignorant that she makes W look smart.

Say another Hail Mary or pour another shot of whisky. Hold on. Here we go.

Poem: 5:00 to a Fool

Good Morning America gave all of :30
To a story about Jewish settlements in Jerusalem
Offering no context or perspective
Before pivoting smartly to a 5:00 segment about Sarah Palin
Showing video footage of the ex-governor
As she spoke to friendly audiences
In her down-home, folksy style
Hung with Todd in Alaska
Watched Bristol dance

:30 to one of the most contentious issues in the world
5:00 to a woman who mistakes ignorance
For a virtue
And reduces complex issues to nonsensical sound bites

Is it any wonder that most Americans
Can’t tell fact from fiction
Matters of consequence
From trivia?
That they fall for the same false promises
Time and time again?
Hold contradictory beliefs?
Follow fools off the edge of the
Cliff?

No wonder whatsoever.

POEM: The Wrong Interview

W is back
Hawking his memoir
With the same self-satisfied certainty
The same smugness
He had when he declared “Mission Accomplished”
Now he re-tells facile lies about the threat Iraq
Posed to the U.S.
Insists that invading was the only option
That it wasn’t a mistake
Because Saddam is gone and 25 million
Iraqi’s are free

The American media is interviewing the wrong
Man

Ask an average Iraqi citizen about shortages
Of water and electricity
Of neighborhoods destroyed
Of families and friends gone
Of lives forever upended

Ask an Iraqi widow if life is better for her now
Than it was before America unleashed its fury
Find out how she feels about her freedom
As she maneuvers around concrete blast walls
Security checkpoints
Shootings
Bombings
Carnage

Ask questions that matter of people
Who suffer the consequences of W’s monumental
hubris

Ask Iraqi’s who languish in prison
How they feel as days become years
With no charges filed or due process
Allowed

Instead of talking to W
Go deeper with people who cannot
Walk away from the war
Settle into a quiet retirement on the ranch
Down in Texas

Ask the American mother whose only son
Was killed in Fallujah
If W’s invasion was worth it
Ask the American father whose only son came home
From two tours of duty
A ghost of his former self
If W’s occupation was worth it

For W it’s all about talking points
Spinning a tale
Burnishing his image
Convincing us that we are safer now
Better off
Never about the death and suffering he unleashed
On thousands of human beings

End of the World? Hardly

It’s all about 2012 now.

Forget reaching across the aisle and working together in harmony for the good of the country – the sole aim of John Boehner and his pal Mitch McConnell from now until 2012 is to make the Obama Administration look inept, corrupt or any combination of the two.

Watching the midterm election returns was excruciating and not just because the Democrats took the beating every political expert – and American history itself – predicted they would. ABC News gushed that it was a Republican “tidal wave.” The New York Times called the results “historic.”

Not really. With few exceptions the party in power gets thumped in the midterms. In 1958 Ike Eisenhower’s Republicans lost 48 House seats and 9 Senate seats; in1992 Clinton’s Democrats lost 54 House seats and 9 Senate seats and watched control of both houses pass to the Republicans.

Obama’s Dems lost 60 House seats but retained narrow control of the Senate despite the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression. Given the terrible economy, which, please remember, was brought to us by almost continuous Republican misrule during the last decade, the Dems should have taken an even worse drubbing.

Watching the Republicans and the Tea Party nuts the other night was no less side splitting than a Saturday Night Live skit. From Christine O’Donnell calling utter defeat a victory to Crazy Carl Palladino wielding a baseball bat to John Boehner weeping as he described how he worked his way through college, it was hilarious theatre. (Side note: Is it just my twisted perspective or does Eric Cantor from Virginia look like he was sent from central casting to play a diabolical Waffen-SS colonel? That dude scares me – he’s got neo-fascist written all over him. Outfit him with jackboots and a riding crop and he’d happily stomp the shit out of gays, lesbians, illegal immigrants and union members.)

John Boehner, let’s not forget, is one of the most corrupt members of a corruption-ridden body, a man who boldly handed out checks from tobacco industry lobbyists on the floor of the House and was shocked when the propriety of his behavior was questioned, a man who has been in the breast pocket of Corporate America since he was elected to the House in 1991, and a man who wouldn’t know a small business owner if he tripped over him on his way to the tanning salon.

Euphoric with victory, one Republican after another mouthed the same old tropes: tax cuts, small government, free enterprise, capitalism, founding fathers, the American people have spoken, yada, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah – like 2000 and 2004 all over again. The GOP sings one tune and one tune only but give them credit for mastering that one song and convincing voters that people like Boehner, McConnell and Cantor care as much about average people as they do about their corporate benefactors.

Though Republican fingerprints are all over the current economic mess, voters took their frustrations and fears out on Barack Obama and the Democrats. This is the way the political game plays in America. Media barons and leading talking heads are making full-throated unanimous calls for Obama to move toward the political center, as if he has been living on and governing from the extreme left edge since 2009. This is pure hogwash, of course; is it possible that many Obama supporters from 2008 stayed home because their man has operated too far to the right?

Obama hasn’t helped his cause much over the past twenty-one months: he ceded control of the all important narrative to obdurate Republicans and Tea Party fruit loops, reacted too timidly and tardily on the economy and jobs, surrounded himself with Wall Street flunkies, failed to explain why health care reform was critical and how it would make the lives of real Americans better, and time and again tried to make nice with Republicans who had no intention of reciprocating. Obama clings to the hope that he can persuade the GOP to compromise the same way a cheetah clings to the throat of a gazelle.

It will get ugly now. Come January House Republicans will rule Congressional committees and have subpoena power – and you can bet they will not hesitate to use it. What will Obama’s Whitewater be? How much time, effort and taxpayer money will the Republicans piss away chasing every whiff of scandal?

Election night was long and dark and the forecast for the days and months to come calls for more of the same.

Poem: Headlines & Breadlines

LA Times, October 29, 2010
Front page headline – “GDP grew at weak 2% rate in 3rd quarter.”
Another headline in the same edition proclaims:
“Stocks edge up to close strong October.”

I guess this explains why people are so confused
And angry
Fearful of the future

No matter how much people suffer and struggle
In this broken economy
Stock speculators in the Wall Street casino
Still make money
Hand over fist

In the time it took to write this poem
Some poor soul in these United States
Lost his job
Another lost her house
And someone else received a hospital bill
It will take a lifetime of toil to pay

And the richest 1% became even richer

Fiction: Beggar's Kaleidoscope

In April I saw a man standing on the steps of city hall, dressed in grimy Army surplus fatigues, waving half a soiled American flag and chanting, “Dee-troit is the future of America. Dee-troit is coming to this city.” He kept on chanting until two police cruisers arrived and removed him.

In June four banks were held up in the space of three days. The perpetrators were white, Mexican and African-American. The white guy hit two different banks on the same day. The police determined that the holdups and perpetrators were in no way related. The Mexican crook made off with more loot than the African-American.

I felt like I was living inside a kaleidoscope of images and sound, information, voices and pulsing neon signs -- or that I was permanently high on powerful hallucinogens. Everything was chaotic and haphazard, unsure and uneasy – the streets were alive, and dangerous. I couldn’t get over the thought that my life and all the lives being lived around me had been reduced to its price in dollars, its perceived value on the great market, no different from rice, corn, oil, soybeans, prescription drugs, condoms -- everything had been turned into a commodity.

For the rich it was the best of times, a heyday, a non-stop XXL extravaganza, even while the number of poor swelled to a degree that was becoming difficult to ignore. I saw this with my own eyes and from inside the poor’s ranks. It became commonplace to see senior citizens carrying bags and boxes into the food bank. As more homeless people appeared downtown, local merchants bombarded City Hall with complaints. “They’re killing my business,” one storeowner told the local newspaper. “I wish they’d go someplace else.” But there was no place else any better, and most places were worse. To quell the complaints of the merchant class, the police chased the homeless from public benches and public parks, and made life untenable for people who had resorted to living in their cars or RV’s.

On the 4th of July, as I watched fireworks arc over the waterfront, I remembered the protests against the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, how along with 5,000 others I marched up the main street of town, while millions worldwide did the same, to the sound of chants, drums, horns and whistles. Overwhelming public sentiment against the invasion was brushed aside by Bush and Blair like lint brushed from the sleeve of a suit; the Coalition of the Willing, which, I now remember, included the nation of Togo, was unstoppable. Calling it a “war” even though Iraq had never attacked or threatened American soil, fear mongers and liars at the highest levels of the government had decided on a preemptive strike and no amount of public protest could dissuade them. During the days of Shock and Awe I learned that language is one of the first casualties of war, that civilian deaths become collateral damage and that the meaning of the word “enemy” changes as needed to fit circumstances. Iraq was destroyed, thousands were killed and no WMD were ever found.

Time spins forward to the fall of 2008. The world financial system is on its knees, reeling after years of unregulated high stakes gambles on derivatives, CDO’s and other exotic financial instruments nobody really can explain. Without so much as ten minutes of public debate, billions of taxpayer dollars are handed to the Secretary of the Treasury – a Wall Street alum and a man of stupendous personal wealth – who demands and receives a blank check to operate as he deems fit, meaning few rules and limited oversight. Scared witless, Congress accedes to this demand. Banks and investment houses that should – by every holy law of the great, infallible market – have lost their shirts and been allowed to die are made whole by the taxpayers. Once again language is a casualty, as the transfers are called a “bailout” rather than more pejorative terms like welfare, assistance, the public dole. Had someone proposed that a billion dollars be devoted to end poverty or homelessness or provide jobs for the unemployed, there would have been a revolt among the ruling class.

For more than a month the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico dominates the news, but once the well is capped, the story disappears. Worst oil disaster in US history, unknown long-term ecological damage, and it’s right back to business as usual as if nothing happened. Where did all that spilled oil go? Is Gulf seafood safe to eat?

Free market myths permeate every facet of life, from the corridors of government to the classrooms of public schools. Standardized test scores become the benchmark of learning and schools make no excuses for teaching to the tests. Educators stop talking about critical thinking skills, the curriculum narrows, focuses obsessively on math and language arts; schools that fail to meet mandated targets are singled out for sanctions. Teachers and their labor unions are excoriated. Aspirants for high political office are compelled to promise to run government like a business.

I sense that the center is collapsing, pulling apart. I sit in the small park across the street from the building where I once worked, on a low wall at noon, watching people I once bid “Good morning” to come and go, thinking about the job that kept me on the lower end of the middle class for seventeen years. Until the economy tanked I was a low-level public servant with a salary, health insurance and a pension. First came forced furloughs, then pay rollbacks, and then a dozen of us were released, separated, terminated on a Friday afternoon just before close of business, escorted to the front door by the personnel director. Fiscal austerity.

American-style capitalism has run amok, turned on itself as it does periodically, and now gnaws its own bone and marrow. Marx rolls over in his tomb and smiles. Sensing a potential tipping point, the wealthy class goes on the offensive, using all the machinery of power at its command. While average citizens lose homes and jobs in droves, every major American newscast includes a stock market report, as if the stock market and citizens hold a common stake, as if the stock market and the economy are one and the same. The Supreme Court reinforces whom it really works for when it rules against the Federal Election Commission in the Citizens United case. Predictably, anonymous millions pour into the campaign coffers of candidates pledged to defend and advance the Big Business agenda. The wealthy and well-connected manage the terms of public discourse, keep the focus tight on budget deficits and tax rates at a time when state and local governments are slashing services for the poor and unfortunate, slashing public education, slashing health programs for the young and elderly. I think the country has lost its soul, its heart, and its compassion. As I dumpster dive for bottles and aluminum cans I decide that I don’t give a fuck about budget deficits. Nobody I know does either. I want a roof over my head, heat, and a refrigerator, but what I want most of all, more than anything in fact, is my old bed, my blankets and pillows. I could sleep for twelve days straight.

Madness passes for sanity. The cost of the country’s foreign wars go largely unmentioned, and the budgets for the wars are sacrosanct. Iraq takes its place alongside Germany and Japan and Guam and Spain and Iceland and Italy and South Korea as hosts to permanent American bases. I hear a cost estimate related to the Afghan debacle: a million dollars per soldier per year. Only a hedge fund manager can wrap his head around such numbers.

All across the country people are furious, raging, but their temper is misplaced, directed at the government when it is corporations that are culpable. Why can’t people see this? Don’t rant about tax rates, I want to scream, rant about the horrible waste in Afghanistan and Iraq, the sprawling, costly, out-sourced Security-Intelligence apparatus that grew out of 9/11. Rant about tax subsidies to Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Agriculture. Follow the money from your wallet, through the laundering operation that is the United States Congress to the clients of powerful lobbyists. That is the root cause of your economic pain, the death of your American Dream, the reason your children face a future of diminished expectations.

Ask why the income gap between rich and poor is so wide.

But nobody listens to street people. We are glanced at but not seen; some of us are assaulted, even murdered, our bodies left by the railroad tracks for days. No one mourns for us.

Capitalism and heroin junkies can never sate their need. The rules of the game demand more, more, more, no matter the cost to people, communities, or the environment. More, more, more -- drill deeper, grow bigger, cut corners, whatever it takes to get more, more, more. Satisfy the beast.

A bearded man in a black suit two sizes too small, wearing a crown of thorns fashioned from aluminum foil, stands on the corner by the museum, screaming at the top of his voice: “It’s the end of the world.” The man seems to be the only person within a hundred miles not in total denial; he has walked in the valley, studied the dust, read the signs and portents. “They own your soul,” he screams at passersby. He will not be the least surprised when the sky darkens and the sun goes out for good.

Poem - The Winner and Still Champion

I’m not afraid to die
I’m not afraid to die
I’m not afraid to die

That’s not true
Nobody wants to die
But death is what every one of us has in common
Death is coming and unlike
Life
Death plays no favorites

The end is known at the beginning
But very few people posses the courage
To give the end much thought
We think we will live forever
Outwit
Dementia
Cancer
Shingles
Toe fungus
Kidney stones
Arthritis
Impotence
Depression
Osteoporosis
Outwit every calamity and spend eternity
In heaven
With our loved ones
Old friends
Pets
Happily ever after
Forever and ever
Amen

Death laughs at our conceit
And bides its time
We are stone and death is water
And we know who wins that fight
Don’t we?

Broken Promises, Bitter Tea

Is it November 2nd yet? I can’t take much more of the lies and misinformation that clog the radio, the TV and the Internet, the silly assertions that candidate X will, like a superhero, single-handedly reform Sacramento or Washington D.C.

One small blessing this season is that there hasn’t been a deluge of direct mail pieces.

There are many things about American politics that I don’t understand. Sarah Palin’s popularity has baffled me since John McCain jettisoned reason and tapped her as his running mate. Palin struck me as a stone idiot in 2008 and my opinion hasn’t budged one centimeter since. Palin’s pronouncements are as absurd as her grasp of American history is weak, though I grant that she is clever and opportunistic and has imbibed the code words of the far right: “government” run health care, socialism, freedom, liberty, free markets and so on. Getting back to good old American values and Christian faith makes for pithy sound bites, but poor public policy.

In Palin’s world, as in Orwell’s 1984, ignorance is strength and lies are truth.

The Tea Party is another. Where was the Tea Party during the reign of George W. Bush and Uncle Dick Cheney? Bush and Cheney didn’t exactly shrink the role of the federal government, but as far as I can recall, angry white people didn’t flood the streets demanding the abolishment of Social Security, Medicare and the Department of Education during Bush’s eight years of misrule.

It was only when a moderate, inherently cautious black man moved into the White House that the Tea Party flared to life, powered by secret financial donors and far right front groups. The mainstream media can’t get enough of the Tea Party, covering its rallies and whacky, incoherent proclamations, all of which make the Tea Party seem stronger and more ubiquitous than it actually is. Tea Party candidates who should be muzzled and locked away in padded rooms are treated like prophets, fawned over by the talking heads on the major network news programs.

The government that the Tea Party and far right conservatives excoriate and blame for our ills is the only force capable of reining in runaway corporate power.

How did we get into this mess?

The attacks of September 11, 2001 shattered America’s psyche, and the reactive military response launched by Bush – first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq – contributed to the breaking of our national treasury, not to mention vividly demonstrating the limits of brute force. We can bomb the hell out of a country with our high-tech weapons, murder thousands of non-combatants, and -- when the smoke clears and the dust settles -- find ourselves in a quagmire from which there is no easy escape.

Add the financial meltdown of 2008 into the mix and it’s no wonder that the United States has become the Kingdom of Fear. Americans are fearful that our best days are past and that the economic, political and environmental problems facing us are insurmountable; Americans sense that the way our economy is organized is deeply flawed and that money has corrupted our politics and rendered the wants and needs of average citizens irrelevant.

Whenever fear takes hold, the need for scapegoats increases and reactionary forces rise up and attack anyone who seems different or dangerous: gays, immigrants, Muslims, atheists, liberals, dissidents. Fear breeds polarization between those who want to break from convention and those who want to hold onto it at any cost. Every moderate and sensible idea that surfaces is drowned out by the caterwauling of extremists and ideologues.

November 2nd will come and go but these dark and dangerous times will remain.

Poem: Age of Snooki

American life is riddled with
Contradictions;
We claim to want peace
While arming ourselves to the teeth;
We claim to be ruled by law
But break the law whenever it suits
Our purpose;
We obsess about education
How our kids score on standardized tests
Compare to the Germans and Japanese
In Math & Science
Wring our hands over the decline
Of basic literacy;
We demand better teachers
More accountability
Less bureaucracy;
But ask us to pay a dime more
In taxes
And we’ll spit in your eye

Night after night on TV
We celebrate people who strut their stupidity
Boast of having read one or two
Books in their entire lifetimes
Happy know-nothings
Like Sarah Palin
Who
In a normal country
Would be laughed all the way back
To
Alaska

Stupid can make you famous
And famous can make you rich
At least until someone more outrageously
Stupid
Comes along

Right Snooki?
Right Kim?
Right Heidi?

Poem: AARP Has My Number

For $16 a year I can become
A card-carrying member
Of their club
(even though I’m not retired)
They promise discounts on rental cars and Rx drugs
A monthly magazine featuring folks like me
Sort of

They entice me with the possibility of joining a local chapter
Mingling over watery instant coffee and stale pastries
With other old farts
Sharing photographs of grandchildren (I have none)
Gripes about Social Security
Complaints about our ailments

You make me feel old, AARP
Like a fossil
Where did the years go?

How did you get my number?
And now that you have it
Will you ever leave me alone?

I’m not one of you
Not yet
Anyway

I don’t give a damn what the calendar
Says

The Real Obama

I didn’t recognize the fiery guy speaking to college students in Wisconsin. He looked like President Obama but spoke like candidate Obama – the man I cast my vote for in 2008 -- and watched take the oath of office on a cold January day a few months later.

Hope was in the air. Bush and Cheney were no more. A fresh wind was blowing across the country. But then a strange thing happened – or perhaps it wasn’t strange at all. When Obama moved into the White House he lost his mojo and began behaving like a typical corporate Democrat.

Now Obama chastises the very people who worked their tails off to get him elected.

That’s what I call audacity. It takes large balls to hector your political base, particularly when your party stands an excellent chance of being shellacked in the mid-term elections.

It’s one thing to ignore the concerns of your base for a year and a half while surrounding yourself with Clinton-era apparatchiks, Goldman Sachs alumni, the likes of Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, and quite another to accuse your base of apathy.

Hey, Obama, who betrayed whom here?

But OK, let’s be fair. Barack Obama began his presidency in a hole filled with stagnant, foul-smelling water. Generally speaking, Americans have the collective memory of a goldfish and most people have forgotten the mess George W. Bush and Dick Cheney left the country in; those cretins handed Obama the keys to a ruined country and beat it out of Washington D.C.

On the other hand, Obama didn’t do himself any favors by stocking his team with the very people who planted and nurtured the seeds of our financial meltdown. Let’s not forget, amnesiac America, that it was Bill Clinton who passed NAFTA and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, Bill Clinton who made happy with Robert Rubin and the moguls of Corporate America, and Bill Clinton who triangulated the Democratic Party so far toward the center that at times it’s indistinguishable from the GOP.

For a year and a half all we’ve seen is the passionless version of Obama, a cerebral, cool-headed, fair-minded fellow who allows himself to be maligned by right-wing radio hacks, Tea Party nut jobs, racists, and limp dicks like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. Obama has spent more time defending himself against charges that he is a closet Muslim than he has pushing an agenda that might help working Americans.

Obama squandered his political advantage (deep public support and Democratic control of the House and Senate) on tepid financial system reforms, a gutless health care overhaul, a failed program to assist homeowners facing foreclosure, and a sucker bet on Afghanistan. He bought in to deficit hysteria and the trumped up Social Security crisis. He hasn’t done squat on the environmental front except spew misinformation about “clean” coal.

On a progressive report card, Obama gets a D-minus.

But more egregious still is the way Obama and his team completely misread the economic hardship that has hammered average Americans since 2009. The Wall Street-centric advisors surrounding Obama bailed out the banks and made sure the financial sector was protected, while leaving the working class to fend for itself at a time when only government can provide jobs in sufficient numbers to start a real recovery.

When bold proposals were needed, Obama offered half measures. When the situation demanded a coherent narrative of what Democrats stand for and whose interests they represent, Obama remained aloof, speaking in nuanced terms and reaching his hand across the aisle only to have the GOP spit in his palm.

When it was time to come out of his corner swinging, Obama came out holding a wilted olive branch.

Now, with his poll numbers sliding toward oblivion and John Boehner measuring Nancy Pelosi’s office for new drapes and carpet, Obama hits the campaign trail to fire up the base and the last of the believers. The man still makes a stirring speech, but hope and change are hard sells now, with the gap between rich and poor Americans wider than at any time since the Roaring 20’s, unemployment high and holding, and more Americans living in poverty than there have been in 50 years.

The audacity of hope has morphed into cowardice, the promise of change into protection of the status quo.

Will the real Obama stand up and remain standing before it’s too late?

Sweet & Sour Poets

The handbill plastered on the lamppost
Advertised a reading by a local poet
The poet had full lips
Sensitive eyes
Thick hair
Gentle features
A warm smile

His new book of poems was just out
And for $5 I could listen to him
Read
In a coffee house
All proceeds destined for the Food Bank

I’m sure the poet loves his mother
And gets along with his siblings
I’m sure he drives a hybrid car
Casts his ballot in every election
Takes in stray cats
I’m sure he pays his taxes
And recycles aluminum cans

I’m sure he’s never slapped a woman
Cursed a cab driver
Stiffed a waiter
Embezzled money
Or puked in the gutter after a long night
Of bar crawling

His poems are probably sweet and uplifting
Lyrical
Celebrations of beauty and truth
The glory of sunsets and the magic
Of a harvest moon

In other words he’s full of
Crap
A pretender
A liar
A charlatan

He’s blind to the grimness of human existence
The cruelty and suffering inflicted on the powerless
By the powerful
On the poor by the rich
On the weak by the strong

I slipped a buck to a panhandler
And walked on;
I despise poets
Except
Of course
Old
Chuck Bukowski

So Long, Labor Dog

All victories for working people – no matter how small – are hard won.
Anonymous

My friend, colleague and mentor Bill Millard passed away a few days ago. If anyone knew how difficult it is to win gains for workers it was Bill because he was an old “labor dog” who had been in the thick of many tough fights on behalf of working people.

In Bill’s case those people were carpenters and accounting clerks and bus drivers and instructional assistants and plumbers and bakers and cooks and groundskeepers and purchasing agents and custodians – all of them employed by public school districts in California – unseen and unheard for the most part, those that work behind the scenes; Bill gave these people presence and voice.

Bill once drove a school bus for a living, and I’d wager that he was good at his trade and took pride in doing the job well because that’s the way he was wired. He got started in the labor movement as an active member in a local and became a professional labor relations representative. He negotiated and wrote contracts, filed and settled grievances, counseled employees, and agitated for legislation to protect workers.

Most of all, Bill taught working men and women to seize responsibility for their own fates by banding together and looking out for their common benefit – a concept that seems utterly foreign in this era of “me-first” greed.

The labor movement was more than a vocation for Bill – it was an intense passion more demanding than any woman, requiring the stamina and grit of a marathon runner, the patience of a Buddhist monk, and the mental toughness of a prizefighter. The battle for decent wages and safe working conditions, for respect and dignity, for basic fairness, has always been uphill against formidable odds.

Bill was a Liberal’s Liberal and proud of it and we immediately hit it off. Even though he was a decade and a half my senior, we shared an intense dislike for Ronald Reagan and William Jefferson Clinton as well as a belief that unchecked corporate power and influence was antithetical to democracy and detrimental for working people. Injustice ticked us off.

I shared The Nation magazine with Bill and he shared Mother Jones with me.

Love of language was another thing Bill and I had in common. When it came to writing Bill was a craftsman – careful, exacting and meticulous. He’d work a sentence the same way a sculptor works a slab of granite, chipping and shaping until it was flawless.

Whenever Bill and I went into a disciplinary meeting or contract negotiations the only thing I’d want to know is whether or not he had eaten beforehand. On an empty stomach Bill was ferocious. The hungrier Bill was the shorter his temper became – and I could tell with one glance when his cork would pop. I made it a practice to have a granola bar handy, just in case.

Like all people who work in close contact with one another over a long period of time and in tense situations, we developed a shorthand method of communicating. Bill knew the word or thought I was searching for just as I knew what question he wanted to ask next. This kind of connection is rare and wonderful.

One case we worked on together revealed Bill’s character more than any other. We were representing an employee who was clearly on the wrong side of the contract, of common sense, and of every policy on the school district’s books. The man had cooked his own turkey and deserved what was coming to him – or at least that was my take. Bill didn’t disagree with my assessment but the humanist in him saw deeper, saw that this man was a damaged soul, no danger to anyone but himself, seriously flawed, no doubt about it, but still deserving of empathy.

“He doesn’t have a leg to stand on,” Bill said. “But if we don’t help him walk away with at least some dignity we’ll both regret it.”

Quintessential Bill Millard. Die-hard, hard-boiled, realistic, pragmatic and idealistic, but most of all a man who never let his professional role rob him of his humanity.

You gave me courage, old dog, courage and hope, and I know how unlikely it is that I’ll ever have the good fortune to cross paths with your kind again. Long may your spirit run.

Can't Fix This

Another political season, another flood of misinformation on the TV and the radio.

Back in 2003, Californians were urged to “Join Arnold” and reform our dysfunctional state. The wealthy, charismatic and perpetually optimistic actor promised to “blow up” the boxes of state government and rub the tarnish from the California Dream.

Seven years later we know how that worked out. No need to run through Arnold’s many missteps and the mess the state is mired in.

Now voters are urged to “Join Meg” in refurbishing the dream. Meg being Meg Whitman, multi-millionaire former EBay CEO, who promises to bring corporate know-how to Sacramento and make California hum like a Fortune 500 business.

Sounds familiar, right? Republicans are fervent believers in corporate efficiency and the magic of “free” markets. Business can do no wrong, government can do no right; business is sleek and lean, government is bloated and clumsy.

I find this comparison amusing, given the recent record of Corporate America. Think of the renowned corporate names that would have destroyed the global economy or gone belly up without an infusion of taxpayer money or loan guarantees: General Motors, AIG, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs.

I don’t have any particular love for Jerry Brown but at least Brown understands that government is as different from business as an albatross is from a manatee. Governors are not autocrats and elected legislators cannot be bossed around like corporate underlings. Whitman may think she can snap her fingers and demand that assembly members bend to her will, but if she is successful in buying the governor’s office – and it appears that she has a real shot in November -- she will learn on Day One how limited her powers are.

Remember Schwarzenegger’s big tent on the grounds of the state capitol, the cigar fests he threw for legislators and key members of state government? The tent was a cornerstone of the new governor’s charm campaign but the bloom dropped off that rose in no time. Once Schwarzenegger had a taste for the way the lawmaking game really works, once the written and unwritten rules asserted themselves, the big tent came down, never to be raised again.

California doesn’t have a business problem, California has a political problem, which is why Meg Whitman -- should she fool enough voters on Election Day -- is destined for the same ignominious ride experienced by Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Like New York State, California is virtually ungovernable, paralyzed by gridlock and partisan posturing. The two-thirds super majority required to enact a budget or pass even modest tax increases, term limits that drain the assembly and senate of experienced legislators, gerrymandering that guarantees election of extremists on both ends of the political spectrum, and the perverted initiative process all contribute to making the state the subway wreck it has become.

Meg can’t fix that.

Poem: Standing in Line

The unemployment line snakes around the corner
Curves
Back upon itself;
Hope is in short supply here,
Nerves fray
Tempers flare;
One guy lost his job
Then he lost his house
His boat
And his wife
His Harley goes next
Friends got tired of hearing him complain
About his troubles – they have their own.

People are running scared
Holding on
Waiting for the economy to turn
Housing to bounce back
Or the politicians to finally do something
Most know that the odds are long
Stacked against them
Bailouts are for big banks and political insiders -
Truck drivers
Carpenters
Plumbers
House painters
Teachers
Nurses
Stand alone.

Welcome to the new Dust Bowl
People here avoid each other’s eyes
Ashamed for crimes they did not commit
Believing in magic was their only mistake
Now they pay the cost and bear the burden
Suffer the indignity of foreclosure,
Bankruptcy
And this slow-moving unemployment
Line
That curves back upon itself.

For the Laborers

Labor Day is one of my favorite holidays, neck and neck with the 4th of July and Martin Luther King’s birthday. On Labor Day we remember the men and women whose toil and sweat built this country, and we celebrate the very idea of work.

Names from the past roll across my mind like movie credits: Walter Reuther, George Meany, Joe Hill, John L. Lewis, Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Studs Terkel, A. Phillip Randolph -- people who dedicated their lives to improving the condition of workers, to building a strong middle class, and to insuring that labor was valued and had a place in the national conversation, a seat at the table.

Today the “Labor Movement” is like a terminal patient on life support. Union membership in the private sector is almost non-existent; meanwhile, as state and local governments continue to reel and stagger from the sluggish economy, union members in the public realm are forced to take pay cuts, furlough days, and watch as a backlash develops against pension plans that are always described in the media as “generous,” “lucrative,” or “Cadillac.”

Rough times for wage earners today, not much hope for improvement tomorrow. The mainstream media obsesses about stock prices and quarterly earnings forecasts, as if these are the only economic barometers that matter; CEO’s that boost earnings by dumping workers into the deep end of the pool of the unemployed are rewarded with bonuses.

There is a stark disconnect between the economy described by CNBC and the reality on the street that can no longer be glossed over or ignored. The nexus between worker productivity and reward is long gone – compared to their counterparts in other industrialized nations, Americans work longer hours per day and more days per year than anyone. We’re a nation of workaholics, driven by need and the fear that we are falling behind. Our productivity rises year after year but our reward – our wages – remain the same or fall.

The American economy is ass-backwards, upside down, off kilter and out of whack. We need John L. Lewis and Cesar Chavez and A. Phillip Randolph. We need their spirit, their sense of moral outrage and their determination for justice, equity and dignity. We need to pay more than lip service to people who wake up every single day and go to jobs and put in an honest day’s work building, maintaining, restoring or repairing; we need to honor those who serve, teach, or care for others; we need to honor those who clean, scrub and polish; we need to resuscitate the tacit agreement between capital and labor, bosses and workers, that once rewarded hard and honest work, reliability and fidelity, with pay scales that are not insulting or disgraceful.

On this Labor Day I think of John Steinbeck and the Grapes of Wrath because it seems to me that it is those grapes we are destined to harvest unless we wake up and face our delusions. Steinbeck wrote, “The great owners…know the great fact: when property (or wealth or political power) accumulates in too few hands it is taken away.”

The Somber Smorgasbord

ABC News described Obama’s Iraq speech as “somber,” and that’s certainly a fitting tone for a Commander in Chief calling an end to combat operations after seven years and more than 4,000 American soldiers killed and thousands wounded.

But it was also a carefully crafted speech that offered a little something for everyone. For military folks there were the standard platitudes about bravery, sacrifice and honor; for those who see the Iraq invasion and occupation as a colossal blunder based on fabricated evidence and false justifications, the President made the nexus between the cost of the war and the dearth of domestic investment in jobs, infrastructure and education that has millions of Americans facing a uncertain future. For the hawks and imperialists Obama promised to destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan and transform that ravaged land into a bulwark against the terrorists. For the benefit of Republicans, Obama even mentioned George W. Bush, the man who enthusiastically pushed the button that unleashed the horror of war on Iraq.

Call it a somber smorgasbord.

Missing from the speech was any mention of Abu Ghraib or the thousands of Iraqis who were killed during the shock and awe invasion and the long, bloody occupation. The New York Times reported that number as 100,000 dead – independent observers have pegged the number as high as 600,000. Americans should not forget the thousands of Iraqis displaced from their homes – either by the invasion or the sectarian strife that followed. I wonder if we have any idea of the number of Iraqis maimed, deformed or crippled as the result of our effort to free them from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, find Weapons of Mass Destruction or give Iraq the gift of democracy.

Obama referred to the Iraqis as our “partners” and noted our common interests though he didn’t elaborate on what those interests might be. Obviously, the United States has an abiding interest in Iraq’s oil reserves, though American multinationals didn’t fare well in the oil contract sweepstakes. The United States would love for Iraq to check Iran’s power and influence in the region, but that’s unlikely to happen given that Iraq cannot even form a government six months after holding elections.

50,000 American troops and thousands of private contractors remain in Iraq, housed in gargantuan bases that resemble small American cities. If the tables were turned, the world upended, if Iraq had occupied America, how would Americans feel if the end of combat operations meant that 50,000 Iraqi soldiers would remain on our soil?

Truth is a casualty of war, and in the years ahead America’s imperial adventure in Iraq will be spun and revised and retold as a heroic, altruistic campaign, undertaken with pure motives and the noblest of intentions. This won’t be a difficult undertaking since many Americans already believe – despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary – that Iraq was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Myth will become history and history will become truth. In a few short years it will be as if none of the horrible things ever happened, as if the Iraqi people greeted our soldiers with flowers and cheering, just as Donald Rumsfeld promised they would.

Victory was one thing Obama could not claim the other night because there was never anything to win by invading Iraq.

Looking for Mr. Jones

You don’t know what’s happening here, do you, Mr. Jones?

So sang Bob Dylan way back when, in a different American era, one that almost seems like an age of innocence now, even though it was anything but innocent. Still, I get the feeling that nobody knows what’s happening in America anymore – or more accurately – nobody in power knows. People on the street know well enough, even if they can’t put what they know into words. Not that they need to describe what they are living through, day after day.

The Fear that Hunter S. Thompson wrote about so often is upon us and we can’t shake it. The good Doctor saw it coming. What is the Fear you ask? Fear that the American era is over, that our global hegemony is untenable, and that the American Dream is finally and forever DOA. Fear that undesirables with dark skin, speaking in unfamiliar tongues or praying to an unfamiliar god are poised to overrun the country. Fear that our own government is a threat to freedom and liberty.

It’s a strange time, no doubt about it. The will of the people doesn’t seem to hold much sway in the scheme of things, but how can the will of the people compete with the buying and lobbying power of Corporate America? Plutocrats own the machinery of power, the airwaves, the courts, and the Congress; they write the rules and rig the game for their advantage and, judging by the obscene gap between the super rich and everybody else, their success can only be described as spectacular.

Take away the military power and the United States is a model banana republic.

Irony is everywhere. It takes a legislative slugfest to appropriate a relatively modest amount of money to extend unemployment benefits to idled workers, but billions of tax dollars are funneled into corporate bailouts, undeclared foreign wars and tax cuts for the wealthy with little or no debate and no cries for “fiscal austerity.” The Deepwater Horizon explodes and sinks, killing eleven workers and spewing millions of gallons of oil into the ocean. We hear next to nothing about those eleven workers or their survivors while BP spokespeople assure us that BP is doing everything in its power to make the Gulf right again. If this is true, why is so much of BP’s work shrouded in secrecy? Why won’t BP share its data with independent scientists? Our president tells us that Gulf beaches are open and that Gulf seafood is safe. If that’s true, why do locals refuse to eat the stuff?

Welcome to Oz. The Yellow Brick Road is due south. Keep walking.

Former senator Alan Simpson, co-chair of President Obama’s deficit reduction commission, is a crusty old fart who derides Social Security recipients as loafers, while he collects a generous taxpayer funded pension.

Glenn Beck, an unhinged right-wing demagogue, co-opts Martin Luther King Jr. and insists that he, Beck, is the man to restore America’s honor. Only a man with no honor could make such a bizarre claim.

A proposal to build a Muslim community center near Ground Zero in Manhattan that drew little attention when it was first announced suddenly becomes a lightning rod of controversy and vitriol that exposes a dark side of the American psyche. The deeds of a small group of fanatics from Saudi Arabia condemn an entire religion and its adherents as terrorists. Fear trumps common sense. Religious tolerance is jettisoned in favor of demagoguery. Hysteria tramples reason. All Muslims are guilty by association. All Muslims hate America. All Muslims are hiding explosives and looking for something or someone to blow up.

Where are you, Mr. Jones?

The United States invaded Iraq, destroyed Iraq, occupied Iraq, and is leaving (well, not really, not now, not ever) Iraq in a terrible political, economic, social and environmental mess. We call this victory.

Has everyone gone mad? Is there an antidote for this KoolAid?

Afghanistan is a military, monetary and moral sinkhole. Many of our allies have seen enough and are unwilling to ante up more coin or blood for a cause that is certainly doomed. The war in Afghanistan belongs to the United States, lock, stock and killing field. The war cannot be won under any circumstances, and the United States cannot exit without looking weak and emboldening the terrorists. Or so the conventional wisdom goes. The Afghanistan sinkhole will ruin us, despite General Petraeus’ promises to the contrary. Polling shows that a majority of Americans oppose the war but does this fact sway the politicians and generals?

Come back here, Mr. Jones. I want to talk to you, man.

The Democratic Party cannot tell a coherent narrative about what and who it stands for, and the Republicans do nothing but sing a chorus of No, No, No. Rigid ideology triumphs over pragmatic flexibility to the detriment of citizens from Maine to Oregon. How long can we continue this way?

Mr. Jones isn’t talking. Mr. Jones has nothing to say.

Dog Days Potpourri

We’re in what they call the dog days now, that part of summer when lassitude replaces energy and the baseball pennant races take definite shape. My Yankees are still in first place but I have an uneasy feeling that the defending champs had better watch out for an ambush from the Red Sox.

Flooding in Pakistan and China, record setting heat and raging wildfires in Russia. I heard a meteorologist on Democracy Now say that seventeen different nations have recorded all-time high temperatures this summer. Is this evidence of a planet simmering in greenhouse gas? What other explanation is there? Europeans get it; Latin American nations do too.

But not on the fruited plain. America is the land of make believe, where people like Rush Limbaugh froth and fulminate for hours every week about liberal plots to weaken this great nation, turn it away from the hallowed ground of capitalism and individual freedom. If you believe Rush Limbaugh, global warming is nothing more than a liberal ruse designed to rob decent Americans of their birthright. I can hear Limbaugh’s voice in my head: Don’t worry about the extreme weather you see around the world – get in your car and burn all the gas you can afford. Car-pooling is for liberal sissies! Bicycles are for Europeans! Mass transit is for socialists! You’re an American and it’s your divine right to buy toilet paper, dog food and laundry soap in bulk and drive all day and night if you damn well feel like it.

American denial. It’s going to nail us in the ass. Reality is a terrible thing to ignore.

As the dog days drag on, here are some things I find annoying:

Baseball players who cross themselves or point skyward after knocking a base hit or a home run, as if God is paying a whit of attention to them. I don’t think God is watching. Frankly, I don’t think God give’s a shit about baseball or any other sport for that matter. OK, maybe God follows the World Cup every four years, but that’s it. I’m certain God doesn’t root for any one team or any particular player; if God did, the Chicago Cubs would have won a World Series at least once during the past century.

Baseball announcers who talk about pitchers as if they are a weak sub-species of professional athlete. “Oh, I wonder if having to run the bases is going to take something out of Roy Halladay’s fastball. He was out on the base paths a long time last inning and we’ll see if that affects his velocity.”

Give me a break.

Sports fans who slap high fives in the stands. That’s almost as lame as the wave.

Any television commercial hawking fast food, though I reserve particular malice for Carl’s Junior: “Don’t bother me, I’m sucking down enough fat, sodium and cholesterol to stop an elephant’s heart.”

Gag.

I just remembered another annoying thing about baseball players: jewelry. What’s the deal with baseball players and the junk they wear around their necks? St. Christopher medals, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception medallions, barricuda teeth, wolverine testicles, strings of garlic, strands of twisted leather, and gold chains that look hefty enough to pull an Abrams tank from a ditch.

Oh, sweet Jesus, ESPN’s camera just stopped on the face of George W. Bush, worst president in American history. W and Laura are sitting with Nolan Ryan at the Yankees-Rangers game in Arlington. Ryan appears to be doing all the talking, no doubt trying to explain the mechanics of throwing a split-finger fastball in a 0-2 count. “What you want to do is bounce that pitch about six inches in front of the dish, make the hitter go down and get it.” Laura is smiling as if genuinely interested (I’d bet heavily that she’s bored out of her skull) while her husband shoves peanuts into his mouth. I wonder if Bush, now that he’s retired, ever thinks of all the human beings who died violent deaths while he resided in the White House. Probably not. Bush was never one for introspection. Shit happens. War is messy. Hell, most of them were Muslims anyway. Our God is better than their God.

These dogs are too tired to bark, and even the approach of an intrepid Jehovah’s Witness can’t coax them off the shade porch. I guess the dogs will eat when they get hungry enough.

Duke Meets the Flatfoots

I hadn’t seen or heard much of Dr. Duke since his botched suicide attempt. Aside from a postcard from Maui, a cryptic e-mail that alluded to a baby shower, and another postcard from Portland, Maine, I hadn’t had a word, and the one time I went by his house he wasn’t home.

For once the call came at a reasonable hour – 6:15 a.m. – and that alone should have put me on alert.

“Two FBI agents just left my house,” Duke said.

“I’m about to read the New York Times,” I said.

“The hell with that lying rag,” Duke said. “Did you hear what I said?”

“Talk,” I said.

The agents rapped on Duke’s front door at 3:30 a.m., perhaps hoping to catch him off-guard, clearly unaware that Duke is a nocturnal creature – more alert at 3:30 a.m. than he is at high noon. One agent was named Connors and the other was named Stevens -- both from the National Security Branch of the Los Angeles field office. Badges and credentials were scrutinized carefully and found to be in order. Connors, the older of the two, wore wingtips and a Brooks Brothers suit and reminded Duke of a CPA; Stevens was new to the trade and wore a Hugo Boss suit and shiny new loafers; Duke disliked him from the jump. It was the fresh out of college gung-ho attitude and the Oklahoma accent.

“Good thing I wasn’t smoking a joint,” Duke said. “That would have been awkward.”

More curious than alarmed, Duke showed the agents into his living room, offered them coffee, and got himself a Corona. He didn’t have anything better to do as he was between romantic entanglements, and sparring verbally with a couple of Federal agents broke the monotony and promised mental stimulation.

The agents made it clear that Duke wasn’t being charged with any crime, nor was he a suspect. Specifically, he was a person of interest in an ongoing investigation.

‘That’s mildly reassuring,’ Duke said. ‘On the other hand, the FBI is sitting in my living room at 3:30 in the morning. What are you investigating and how does it relate to me?’

‘It’s purely routine,’ Connors said.

‘Routine,’ Duke repeated. ‘But ongoing you say. What should I make of that?’

‘Let’s cut to the chase,’ Stevens said. ‘This is a dangerous time for the United States. The War on Terror is real – more real than most Americans understand. We want to know why you support radical groups like the NAACP and the ACLU?’

‘Since when is the NAACP and the ACLU considered radical? You have something against the Bill of Rights?’

‘I love my country,’ Stevens said, ‘which is more – ‘

‘What Agent Stevens means,’ Connors said with a smile, ‘is that the security terrain changed drastically after 9/11. Large amounts of information come into the field office and the Bureau is duty bound to investigate some of that information. I’m sure you understand, Professor Duke. Political Science, wasn’t it?’

‘You got a file on me? Should I be insulted or honored? This is becoming more interesting by the minute. OK, so you guys are just here doing your sworn duty by asking a retired poly sci prof about the non-profit groups he’s a member of. Of course you must know that I’m also a member of the AARP and a supporter of the March of Dimes. I assume you also know that I subscribe to the Nation, Mother Jones and Penthouse.’

‘You travel quite a bit, don’t you Professor?’ Connors asked.

‘I’m retired. I get bored easily and need stimulation. Travel is rejuvenating, not to mention an excellent way to meet women.’

‘Do you have any Muslim friends or acquaintances?’ Stevens asked.

‘Is your partner serious?’ Duke said to Connors. ‘Doesn’t the FBI put recruits through a rigorous training program? Obviously, a reject slips through every now and then. Where’d you go to school, Stevens?’

‘Texas Tech,’ Stevens replied with pride.

‘College Republican?’

‘All four years. How’d you know?’

‘Just a wild guess. You admire Newt Gingrich, don’t you?’

‘I think he’s a great American. Do you believe in a Christian god, Professor?’

‘How is that relevant, Agent Stevens?’

‘What about the Bible – do you believe that the Bible is the true word of God?’

Duke looked at Connors, who shrugged, as if to say, ”Hey, he’s just my partner.”

‘As a work of fiction the bible is OK,’ Duke said, ‘but the Good Book is too riddled with contradictions to be taken seriously. The concept of God – just, loving or vengeful -- has never worked for me.’

Stevens furiously jotted notes while Connors rubbed his chin and asked Duke about some academic papers he had written about the Black Panthers ten years ago. Connors wanted to know if Duke believed that violence was a viable political tool.

‘With apologies to Dr. King and the Mahatma, the use of violence can’t be ruled out. Sometimes there is no other way to influence the prevailing order to change. It depends on the context, on the opposition, and on the capacities of the people involved. I’d like to think that non-violent tactics always work, but I know they don’t. I don’t believe that non-violence alone would have changed the apartheid government in South Africa, for instance. Mandela said much the same thing.’

‘Do you consider yourself a radical, Professor?’ Stevens asked.

‘Define radical, Agent Stevens.’

‘A person intent on the overthrow of the existing social, economic or political order.’

Duke laughed. ‘Hell, as far as I’m concerned this is a golden age in this great country of ours. I like my democracy perverted by corporate money; I love it when my country invades other countries on false pretexts; I enjoy watching the gap between rich and poor widen every year; and I think the War on Drugs and the prison-industrial complex is working beautifully. I won’t even mention our glorious police state, of which you two are upstanding representatives. Of course I’m a radical – in the true sense of the word. Look it up, junior, when you have some free time.’

“It went on like this for two hours,” Duke said. “I still don’t know what the hell they were after, but I suspect the FBI isn’t the crack agency it was when J. Edgar Hoover was at the helm by day and wearing a bra and panty hose at night. Better watch your back, my friend -- you might be next. Some of that stuff you write is inflammatory.”

“If they’re worried about me, we’re in trouble.”

“Oh, we’re in the deep shit,” Duke said, “make no mistake. Deep, waist high excrement. Even Albus Dumbledore couldn’t help us now. I should have dispatched myself when I had the chance. It’s hopeless, Tang, absolutely hopeless. We had a shot, and then Obama lost his nerve. The window opened for a brief moment but instead of acting boldly, Obama veered to the safe, predictable center and lashed himself to the status quo. I knew he’d disappoint his supporters, I just didn’t think it would happen so fast. Ah, well, we will reap as we sow, and the coming harvest will not be bountiful. Keep in touch, brother.”

Poem: Saving the Temple

The game went like this:
Lower taxes (for corporations & the wealthy)
Let Big Business regulate itself
Turn all things public
Private
Acquire, merge and consolidate
Create monopolies
Crush organized labor
Move jobs overseas
Keep wages low
Buy politicians

The fable went that the rich would invest & innovate
And the “free” market would provide
For the common good

Prosperity for all was guaranteed
Once the heavy hand of government
Was lifted from our shoulders

For the fortunate few it worked
Better than Merlin’s magic
Wealth attracted wealth
Like ants to honey

For the many it’s Dante’s Inferno
The Grapes of Wrath
A foreclosure notice & the unemployment line
The divide between haves and have-nots
Has widened
And widened
Like that of any banana republic

We are two nations living side by side
The United States of Fabulous Wealth
The United States of Shameful Poverty
No in-between
No middle ground
And it’s unstoppable now

The unaccountable money men who make the rules
And rule the world
Never explained how wage slaving masses
Could keep the consumer economy humming
Once credit cards were maxed and the ATM
In the living room
Spit out its last dollar

When the bubble burst and the men behind
The silken curtain were exposed
As Armani clad liars and thieves
Our government rushed to their rescue
Pledged our money
To save the Temple of Greed

We the many pay the cost
We the many make the sacrifice
We the many watch the common good
On which our lives depend
Vanish

Wrong Color, Wrong Place: The Murder of Oscar Grant

What was your crime, Oscar Grant
Other than being born black
In Oakland, CA?

Face down on the cement
Handcuffed
Harmless
Shot in the back by a white transit cop
While witnesses recorded on cell phones

Born black in Oakland
Born black in America
Wrong color
Wrong place

47 years after the 16th Street Baptist Church
Bombing in Birmingham
18 years after Rodney King
Look at how far we have not come

Another white cop walks away
After murdering a black man

Though not scot free
Officer Merserle may serve less time
For killing Oscar Grant
Than Michael Vick served for killing a dog

That’s perversity not justice

Oscar Grant was killed twice
Once on that station platform in Oakland
And a second time in an LA
Courtroom

At the Expense of the Many

My family and I watch the fireworks arc over Stearn’s Wharf on the 4th of July. The beach and waterfront are jammed with people and the air is heavy with the smell of a hundred BBQ grills. Traditional American rah-rah music plays from a loudspeaker on West Beach. Most of the people sitting on the sand around us are speaking Spanish. Cameras flash as the sky overhead bursts into bright green, red and gold; I see faces illuminated by the light from cell phones.

Happy birthday, America.

On this holiday night I want to think about what is right with our country, but so many things are out of whack that I can’t focus on the positive – two wars dragging on, the long term implications of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the tanked economy, the largest prison population in the world, and the perils of climate change. This is what I’m thinking about as the fireworks rise up and explode.

How do citizens change a system dominated by two political parties who tap dance to the same corporate drummer? How do we restore a healthy balance of power between capital and labor, government and big business, domestic needs and geopolitical realities? How can we fight against the enormous power wielded by corporate lawyers and lobbyists?

Under the guise of taming the Federal deficit, President Obama’s blue-ribbon deficit commission is mounting a rationale to reduce Social Security benefits, raise the retirement age (again) or both. The campaign is built on fabrications since Social Security is actually a program that pays its own way and does not contribute to the deficit, but don’t bother telling that to the commission members who have concluded (in advance) that reducing Social Security will send the right message to the financial markets. In other words, it’s once again more important to place the perceived needs of the financial sector over those of millions of average citizens.

Are we going to stand for this?

There are far better ways to reduce the Federal deficit than eviscerating Social Security, which, by the way, has been the Holy Grail of GOP conservatives for decades. How about cutting the bloated defense budget, reducing the number of U.S. bases that straddle the globe? How about eliminating subsidies for Big Oil?

Our society is structured for the enrichment of the few at the expense of the many. For the most part, the people we elect to do our business make a mockery of representative democracy. There are, to be sure, some bright, committed people in Congress, but they are overshadowed and out numbered by mediocre partisans. It took many years to bring this society into being, and it figures to take many years to unravel it in favor of something more just and sustainable.

If you want to know what a nation values, you need only watch where it spends its resources. As the fireworks soar through the summer sky, I ask myself how this country can always find money for war but rarely for peace; I ask myself why taxpayer subsidies for profitable corporations arouse little or no ire, while help for the needy or a dignified retirement for senior citizens drives the political right into a self-righteous frenzy.

The finale has begun. Boom, boom, boom, red, green, gold, star bursts and molten streamers, and the voice of Lee Greenwood singing Proud to be an American echoing on the loudspeaker. I don’t feel that pride. Instead I feel a sense of loss, of wasted opportunities, and I wonder when the people will say, “Enough.”

The Malaise

(I began writing this piece before the flap over Stanley McChrystal hit the media.)

Something is terribly wrong with the American occupation of Afghanistan.

It’s not working. The Afghans are unwilling partners in the game we are playing with their country.

The world’s lone superpower appears lost and confused as it blindly chases shadows across one of the most backward countries on the planet.

Longest “war” in U.S. history.

Let that fact sink in.

Longer than the Civil War. Longer than WWII. Longer than Vietnam.

President Obama claims the U.S. will withdraw some of its combat forces in mid-2011, but in reality the U.S. has no intention of fully withdrawing from Afghanistan – not after pouring billions of dollars and at least a thousand American lives into the country. Bases and outposts are being built for a long stay by U.S. forces and private contractors, and it’s time – years past time – for American voters and taxpayers to ask why.

Why are we in Afghanistan almost nine years later? Who are we fighting? What is our primary strategic objective, and is that objective realistic? Are we in Afghanistan so that a long sought after oil pipeline can be built and then secured through the western part of the country? Are we simply after Afghanistan’s plentiful mineral reserves?

But perhaps the most important question is the one least asked by the American news media and American politicians: how many Afghans have been killed or wounded since we invaded in 2001? What’s the body count?

And let’s go further and ask another basic question: what is the will of the Afghan people? Do they want American and NATO soldiers in their country?

Time stands against us in Afghanistan, as does history. The language spoken today by the American military and political establishment is eerily familiar to that spoken during the Vietnam War. Our military firepower is unmatched, but the conflict in Afghanistan, like Vietnam, can’t be won by firepower alone.

Stanley “Poor Judgment” McChrystal is gone and David “The Miracle Worker” Petraeus is taking command, but something remains terribly wrong in Afghanistan, not to mention in Washington D.C., and Albany, NY and Sacramento, CA and Detroit, MI and Phoenix, AZ.

Call it the superpower malaise. The case might be terminal.

Iraq. Afghanistan. The BP oil hemorrhage. An economy that won’t recover for any except the wealthy. Stubbornly high unemployment. State budgets in disarray. People suffering. The national political system paralyzed, polarized, bought and paid for with campaign bribes.

I have the sense that the world’s lone superpower is like the proverbial Potemkin village – a façade, an elaborate charade – all polished surfaces perched on a rickety foundation very near total collapse. The confidence and élan we once carried as our American birthright has been replaced with apprehension and fear – fear of Muslims and Mexicans, fear of decline, fear of change, fear of the future, fear of taxes, fear of death, fear of life, fear of the dark, and, most of all, fear of the truth about our situation.

In the years following 9/11, Hunter S. Thompson referred to the U.S. as the Kingdom of Fear, but the sort of fear I’m talking about here penetrates even deeper.

We are now a nation living on borrowed time and paying the bills with borrowed money. Our politicians and their corporate masters hum the same hackneyed tunes while the shining city on the hill burns.

The Lost Highway

Strong-Arm – a & v, Physically powerful; (of a criminal) using violence; a thug; a bouncer. Oxford American Dictionary

The reporter for ABC’s Good Morning America program asserted that the Obama Administration has strong-armed BP into speeding up the claims process for those affected by the ongoing oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

Interesting choice of words.

When it comes to oil, it’s generally not the government that engages in strong-arming – it’s the oil companies, their lobbyists and legal firms – that shake down the government and taxpayers for direct subsidies, tax breaks, sweetheart deals to drill and extract on “public” land, royalty relief, and on and on and on.

But these are the days of the Tea Party movement – if one can call it that – and the corporate media is influenced by the stirring, though nonsensical, sayings of Sarah Palin, and images of angry white folk who want to take our country back – and the language of the movement advances the notion that the government is evil, profligate, intrusive and hell bent on strangling the free enterprise system. In that context, of course the Obama Administration is strong-arming poor BP and its hapless CEO, Tony Hayward, who simply and sincerely (at least he appears sincere on those TV spots) wants to make things right for all the people who live and work along the Gulf.

Well, sure, except for one minor problem: oil company CEO’s like Tony Hayward are paid huge money to do one thing -- find oil and extract it. End of story. Hayward and members of his tribe are not paid to protect the environment or even give a rat’s ass about it; when something goes wrong, CEO’s are expected to minimize the damage in any manner possible, shift the blame to others and fend off calls for increased regulatory oversight. The eventual legal outcome of the Exxon Valdez spill is a classic case in containing, deferring and reducing the financial exposure produced by a major oil spill.

BP has an abysmal safety record and evidence has recently surfaced that the company ignores safety concerns in order to lower costs and increase profits. That’s hardly a surprise. When profit is all, safety will always be a secondary concern.

The Governor of Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty, is on record as saying the Obama Administration should have had contingency plans in place for a major oil spill. Perhaps. I’m no fan of Obama when it comes to energy policy – he’s far too timid, prone to siding with Big Oil by continuing his predecessor’s industry-friendly protocols, and fond of spouting absurdities about “clean coal” and nuclear power – but I wonder if Pawlenty was in hibernation during the Bush-Cheney regime. In case there is any doubt here, two terms of Bush-Cheney were a boon to Big Oil -- an absolute run of the table, keys-to-the-kingdom, party-all-the-time, raid-the-cookie-jar, oil industry love orgy.

How was the Obama Administration supposed to unravel a decade of incestuous relationships between oil company lobbyists and regulators – not to mention all the Congress critters of both parties who are addicted to Big Oil campaign contributions -- in less than half a term? How many Republicans might have supported legislation calling for improved safety systems on deep-water oil drilling rigs or increased regulatory oversight of the drilling permit process?

Drill, baby, drill.

This isn’t to acquit the Obama Administration of blame; there’s more than enough to go around. Big Oil is guilty, our government is guilty, our campaign finance system is guilty, and so are we, the American people, for our stubborn insistence that we have the right to burn all the gasoline we can afford to buy. We love our cars, our suburbs, and the freedom offered by the open road, even as that false freedom imprisons us.