Three-Headed Monster

I was thinking of writing about the American presidential election, the choice facing voters this November between two servants of the status quo, Mitt Romney and Barrack Obama. I have a vision of their heads on the sides of a tarnished coin: flip the coin and the ruling class wins and ordinary citizens lose; flip it again and the result is the same. There are differences between the two men, shades and subtleties, but strip away the campaign rhetoric and posturing and pandering, and what remains is the fact that Obama and Romney represent the same basic point of view.

Obama is insulated by the DC culture of power and influence, Romney by his money and privilege. For the electorate the choice is between bad and worse, between one set of dull prescriptions and another, between more of the same and way more of the same.

But if I delve too deeply into politics my head might explode like a watermelon dropped from a ten-story building. My reservoir of hope is running dry, and the idea that we are finally and fatally fucked as a nation is taking hold, and being reinforced every day.

More on my mind than the election is the passing of Rodney King, the black man savagely beaten by white LA police officers, the beating caught on videotape, shocking all but people of color who saw this brand of policing so often it was expected; the dim street, the cops encircling the victim, the flash of batons, the blows raining down. At their trial twenty years ago, the white officers were acquitted, touching off some of the worst riots LA has ever seen. Anger and rage and hopelessness bottled up for years exploded in the streets, the city burned, and once again it was time for Americans to confront uncomfortable truths about race and power.

What would happen today if a black cop shot and killed an unarmed white teenager in Beverly Hills or Pacific Palisades? Even if his service record were exemplary, would the black cop be given the benefit of the doubt by the media, by jurors, by the public? Would his superiors rush to his defense? Would the character of the victim be called into question, as it invariably is when the victim is black or brown?

The brutal truth is that armed white cops kill unarmed black men with near total impunity, and it happens so frequently we are inured to the injustice. Amadou Diallo had a wallet in his hand and was shot 41 times in New York City; Oscar Grant lay face down on a BART platform in Oakland and was shot in the back. These are only two examples of many.

Racism runs deep here, courses through our history, all the way back to the founding of our nation. Our most revered white forefathers preached freedom and equality but built their fortunes on the bent backs of slaves.

It’s hard to argue with the proposition that justice depends on the pigmentation of one’s skin. White citizens are not targeted for stop and frisk operations nor are they subject to racial profiling. White citizens get the benefit of the doubt; black and brown citizens get the harshest punishment the law allows. Presumed guilty until proven innocent.

The gnarled finger of racism even touches a sitting president of mixed race. Millions of Americans still believe Barrack Obama was born beyond our borders, that he’s not like us, not the upstanding Christian he claims to be. Two and three years after taking his oath of office, Obama was still being asked to prove his authenticity.  

Martin Luther King warned against three American evils: racism, militarism, and the brand of predatory capitalism now woven into our social fabric; these evils feed off and reinforce one another, making them difficult to ameliorate. I can’t help but believe King would be as disappointed in how little progress we’ve made against racism, militarism and predatory capitalism, as he would be at the vacuity of our presidential election season. 

Midas Cometh

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase bank, walked into the Senate Banking Committee hearing room the other day as if he owned the place.

And in a very real sense, Dimon and his brethren in the financial services industry do in fact own the Senate, not to mention the House, a slew of governors, a few judges and dozens of state legislators.

Vito Corleone never had it this good.

Before sitting down to testify, Dimon posed for photographers, his bearing regal, his expression imperious, certain he was the star of this middling formality. The Senate didn’t really care how or why JPMorgan Chase lost nearly $3 billion on trades that went sour, but it had a responsibility to the charade of American politics to pretend it did, so raise the curtain and let the drama begin!

Not wanting to upset their Golden Goose, most of the senators lobbed softball questions from the dais. Jim DeMint of South Carolina openly fawned, like a teenage girl within arms reach of Justin Bieber. DeMint remarked that the Federal government loses “$2 billion every day,” though he didn’t say how or explain why this silly statement was relevant to this hearing. Comparing the Federal government to a commercial bank is like comparing an apple to an armadillo, but what the hell -- this is only the US Senate -- which still fancies itself the greatest deliberative body in the world.

How far the bar has fallen.

The thrust of Dimon’s testimony was that despite the huge losses, JPMorgan remained a kick-ass, money-making machine able and willing to regulate itself. Rest easy, Dimon seemed to say, I’m on the case and in command. As long as the ranks of bank regulators are stacked with alumni from JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, and as long as our offices are overflowing with ex-legislators cashing in on their political connections, the golden pig trough will never run dry. We get obscene profits, you get campaign contributions, voila, everybody wins!

Corruption this slick and sanctified is a beautiful thing.

The hearing’s funniest moment comes when Dimon asserts that Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, and then chief of the New York Fed Tim Geithner, forced JPMorgan to take TARP bailout money at the height of the banking crisis in 2008. We didn’t want or need a federal bailout, said Dimon with a straight face, but Ben and Tim are very persuasive guys, and in fact they wouldn’t let me go to the men’s room until I agreed. It was late at night and we were drinking gallons of Starbuck’s and my bladder was screaming in agony. The same goes for the low interest federal loans that were forced on us; JPMorgan didn’t need loans because we were solid as granite -- it was all in the name of taking one for the Industry. Senators, please, faced with the choice of peeing your pants or taking millions of dollars in no-strings-attached money, what would you have done?

All in all the hearing was a spectacular farce.

Just a routine day on Capitol Hill.

Amerika?

Is this America or Amerika?

Where are we?

I wonder.

I worry.

Excessive and continuous glorification of military power, symbolism and of our inalienable right to use military power whenever and wherever our leaders deem necessary; the notion of American exceptionalism and belief in our own mythology when it comes to defining ideals like freedom or democracy for other countries; the concentration of corporate power and financial wealth, made possible by decades of explicit government policy; ill-defined foreign wars launched with relative ease; incessant and sophisticated surveillance and monitoring of citizens, their private communications and public gatherings; government secrecy and extreme punishment for those who divulge information exposing official malfeasance – even those acting from conscience; manipulated elections; militarized police forces; harsh criminal sentences and bulging prisons, particularly for people of color; intolerance of sexual differences, coupled with a false and harsh piety; denial of verifiable scientific facts; a corporate press that serves only as mouthpiece for its financial masters, framing every story and event so the status quo is never challenged or threatened, and no alternative to the “free” market is ever considered; the President as Executioner-in-Chief, keeper of the list of who must die in what far away land.

This is not creeping fascism – this is fascism arriving at a gallop – and it’s happening here and it’s happening now.    

Heart of Darkness

“He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable.” Joseph Conrad

It’s the day after the election and the last thing I want to do is write about politics, but I feel I should, even though doing so is like being trapped in a port-a-potty on a sweltering August day.

An outhouse is the perfect description for the debased American political environment: foul smelling and dirty, an affront to the senses, watch where you step and try not to touch anything. 

The big news is that Scott Walker escaped recall in Wisconsin, in a campaign dominated by money. Organized labor (unfortunately, that’s labor with a small “l”) drove the recall effort, but labor was outspent on TV, print and social media advertising by a 7-to-1 margin -- with three quarters of that money reportedly coming from outside the state.

Walker’s claim to infamy lies in his successful push to eliminate the collective bargaining rights of teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public employees, and to reduce the benefits of these workers so they become as financially insecure as most private sector workers. In other words, Walker, backed by the financial muscle of the Koch brothers and other virulently conservative think tanks and political action committees, is a player in the Republican game of Race-to-the-Bottom. I don’t know what it is about American conservatives that leads them to believe that the best path to a strong economy is to make a tiny slice of the population ridiculously wealthy, and the majority of people dirt poor, working poor, or financially insecure, but this is what their policies have wrought, and all they will continue to produce until enough Americans wake from their stupor and demand an end to coddling the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

As it stands, the US ranks number one among the world’s industrialized nations in income inequality, and we’re making great strides in child poverty, too. Thank you Ronnie Reagan, Alan Greenspan, Milton Friedman, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers and Bill Clinton.

The Wisconsin recall pitted people power versus money power and, no surprise, money won. No wonder then that Mitt “$Robot$” Romney and Barrack “No Conviction” Obama spend hours groveling for campaign contributions from corporate chieftains, hedge fund managers and sundry billionaires. Investments made by big donors will eventually be repaid with unlimited access to powerful legislators and regulators, for this is how American democracy is played post Citizens United: every political office -- local, state, national -- carries a price tag.

This morning the mainstream media were quick to point out that since Governor Walker extracted many pounds of flesh from public employees in Wisconsin, the state has staged a remarkable budget turnaround, moving from deficit to surplus. Other factors surely contributed to Wisconsin’s move from red to black, but those are cumbersome details, unsuitable for a 30 second sound bite. For now, Walker is a conservative hero, the man who challenged evil unions and greedy public employees, the champion of small business owners, those mythic people who carry the American economy on their hardy shoulders.

Out here on the Platinum Coast, a political hack by the name of Abel Maldonado is running for Congress on the GOP ticket; Maldonado’s TV ads during the primary touted small businesses too, along with individual integrity (“backbone” is what Washington needs!) and like all politicians in a time of high unemployment, an alleged gift for creating jobs. “My father owned a farm so I know how to create jobs!” Or some such nonsense. You can bet Abel and every other Republican will employ the Wisconsin template in the general election, hammering away at public employee unions and pensions, stoking envy, dissatisfaction, and anger among likely voters.

It will be a long summer full of empty promises, grotesque pandering, false claims, and outrageous mendacity. Mitt Romney will claim that he deserves to be elected president because he made a pile of money for himself. Barrack Obama will remind voters that it was he who sent assassins to kill Osama bin Laden. “I know how to make money!” “I know how to kill terrorists!”

No doubt about it: we’re headed up the river toward the heart of darkness. Best to keep your head down and your eyes shut.  

The Executioner’s Opera

The New York Times details how the United States decides to execute someone deemed a threat to our security. The decision is made in the White House, in secret, and the president has final say. There is no legal due process, presentation of evidence or questioning of witnesses, though the administration claims to be painstaking in its analysis.

Then the drones are launched, in Yemen, Libya or the frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan, against a single “militant” or group of “militants”, a surgical strike from the air, controlled by people thousands of miles away.

We are assured Herculean efforts are made to avoid civilian casualties in this program of targeted assassination, but miscues happen and innocents are killed, incinerated, blown to bits – women, children, elderly – whoever happens to be in the wrong place at the right time. If our government issues any apology at all, it is only grudgingly, after many denials. We are at war, after all, and remorse is voluntary.

Reading the New York Times story reminds me of Blood Meridian, the novel by Cormac McCarthy, about the scalp hunters who rode with Glanton and the Judge, murdering Apaches and Mexicans with no consequence and no burden on their conscience. Glanton’s men killed at close range and were often splattered with their victims’ blood, shards of bone, or strands of viscera. In that era, killing was intimate and messy.

We have evolved neater methods.

Obama the constitutional scholar and Nobel Peace Prize winner arrogates to himself the powers of an absolute monarch, life and death, guilt or innocence, friend or enemy. At home the monarch spies on his subjects and abroad murders those he deems a threat, real or only potential, even American citizens. Only Obama knows the difference between a militant and a terrorist.

What if the leaders of France or Germany or Sweden decided that they too must assassinate potential enemies in order to safeguard their people? Would the US allow it? Unlikely. The US would demand strict observance of international law and the will of the United Nations, a process to prevent civilian casualties. Other than the US itself, only Israel is allowed to kill with impunity.

The hypocrisy is astounding.

No public outcry follows the Times story, no debate, no doubt, the dual wings of our single political party stand in solidarity. The attacks on 9/11 were terrible, barbaric, the work of the criminally insane, but our response to 9/11 has been as lethal to our civil liberties and moral standing as the attacks themselves. We kidnap and indefinitely detain, we kidnap and torture, we assassinate. The bulwarks and levees of law constructed to curb the abuse of power by our government lay breached.

We have become as barbaric and insane as those who attacked us.