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