Every Man an Island

This will go in the books as a very bad week for the Romney campaign.

Not that it was any surprise to hear Mitt describe nearly half of all Americans as tax scofflaws who feel entitled to government support; this is a standard GOP trope, red meat for the party faithful and fat wallet donors, and it goes hand in glove with the laughable notion that wealthy people are beleaguered by excessive government regulation and exorbitant tax rates.

You see, it’s the rich who have a gripe about the terrible state this country is in, not the working class or the poor.

Voters can’t know Romney for a couple of reasons, the first being that the more of himself Romney exposes, the less voters like him, and second because he spends an inordinate amount of time on the campaign trail trying to distance himself from past statements and positions: I was against (fill in the blank) until I was for it, but now I’m against it because Obama is for it, but if Obama should change his mind, I will change mine.”

Hardly a profile in courage or conviction.

We have a fair sense of what Romney is against, but less clear is what he stands for and depends on the audience he’s addressing at any given time. On the one hand he seems to believe that America desperately needs a larger military and an even more bellicose foreign policy, and that America is duty-bound to agree with anything Benjamin Netanyahu says. America, according to some Romney statements, needs to be tougher and less apologetic in its dealings with the rest of the world, excluding Israel, of course. Under Romney, tiny Israel will continue to dictate American policy in the Middle East.

On the domestic front, all Romney offers is the tried and true Republican formula: more tax cuts, less regulation, more charter schools, less science, more religious nonsense in the public realm, more self-reliance, and, above all, blind faith in the free market. In Romney’s world view, there are producers and parasites, winners and losers, strong and weak; the old adage that no man is an island is flipped on its head so that every man (woman and child, too) is an island, and if he can’t walk the path of the rugged individualist on his own two feet, he has no one to blame but himself.

This is the same atavistic fantasy the GOP has advocated since Newt Gingrich rose from the muck to become Speaker of the House.

I suppose credit should be given Mitt for trying to pass himself off as one of us, a regular Joe, even though he flops every time. Mitt simply has no common touch, no capacity to connect with people other than those of his own rarified class, and he obviously finds mingling with the commoners distasteful. 

Thus far, Campaign 2012 has been dreadful, a grotesque parody of what democracy should look like, and the scripted-in-advance “debates” with their pre-approved questions are yet to come. Both camps will lie, spin, exaggerate, obfuscate and make outrageous claims about the other. The American media will treat each debate like the Superbowl, analyzing the style and tone while ignoring the content. Who got the debate “bounce” is the only question that will matter.

Welcome to the island.

The Forbidden Forest

In North Carolina last week, Bill Clinton made the Democrats swoon and long for the good old days when the economy hummed and the federal budget boasted a surplus, and the most pressing national question was whether or not Clinton lied about an Oval Office dalliance with an intern.

The passage of years hasn’t diminished Clinton’s silver tongue and down home charm – he can still cast a spell on an audience, make them forget history, believe in fairy tales.  

My wife watched Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention; I listened from another part of the house. While appreciative of Bubba’s oratorical flair, I couldn’t forget the inconvenient truth that it was “New Democrat” Bill Clinton who supported the North American Free Trade Agreement, ended “welfare as we know it,” signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and dismantled the Glass-Steagall act, effectively eliminating the firewall between investment and commercial banking and ushering in an era of reckless and unaccountable financial deregulation that would culminate less than a decade later in an economic nosedive nearly as severe as the Great Depression of the 1930’s.

Clinton planted the seeds and George W. Bush nurtured them, and now, twelve years on, ordinary people who work for their living find themselves standing outside a forbidden forest, surrounded by high fences topped with razor wire and No Trespassing, Keep Out signs posted every ten yards. Trespassers Beware. On the far side of the forest a better future awaits, but only a select few understand the ways of the forest and know a path through it.

Alchemy happens inside this forest: the wealthy get wealthier and while their influence and power grows, their accountability to their fellow citizens diminishes. Having paid handsomely for laws written in their favor, they have nothing to fear from government regulators or the legal system or the masses. They are untouchable, free to wheel, deal, scheme and steal, to force the sale of assets once owned in common at a profit, and to measure every social function or service by the price a rigged market deems it to be worth.

Life is grand on the far side of the forbidden forest.

The night after Bill Clinton energized the faithful, Barack Obama promised to lead us all to this nirvana if we only close ranks behind him and strive together. Though not as spell-binding an orator as Clinton, Obama is no slouch before the teleprompter, and his call for unity and patience and faith was momentarily appealing – like the Obama of 2008 – except when Truth reared its head and those with functioning memories remembered that this is the same Barack Obama who forsook the desires of the people who worked so hard to elect him, the people he now needs in order to defeat his rival and retain his crown.

This is the same Barack Obama who tosses his towel at the first sign of resistance from the GOP; the Obama who supported – and continues to support -- deficit reduction hysteria at a time when more government spending is needed to jump start the economy; the Obama who expanded the surveillance state; the Obama who unleashed Drone warfare; the Obama who has done precious little about climate change – the most serious issue facing the planet; the Obama who let criminal bankers off the hook; the Obama with nothing to say about the War on Drugs or the startling number of Americans incarcerated in federal or state prisons.

As it seems to every four years, the choice facing voters boils down to one between bad and worse, between the lesser of two evils, between two equally absurd and fantastic fables. The rhetorical question – are you better off now than you were four years ago -- is a false one, because on any number of fronts we are worse off, and not only because of Barack Obama. When one party in a two party system dedicates itself to negation on rigid ideological grounds, progress is impossible.

Life Support: Meditation on Organized Labor

Give the right wing credit for how skillfully it has used the long recession as a vehicle to generate envy between working people, and as a scapegoat for the financial woes ailing cities and state governments.

It takes a concerted campaign by think tanks, media outlets, political toadies and lobbyists to drive a wedge between private sector workers struggling with low wages and paltry benefits, and public sector workers with union representation, rights guaranteed in collective bargaining agreements, and humane benefit plans.

If only the American left were half as adept at planting the seed of discontent and watering it every day.

On this Labor Day I salute the right’s opportunistic genius. They artfully shifted the focus from the bankers, hedge fund managers and financial vultures who tanked our economy (with ample assistance from both political parties), and redirected it toward teachers, firefighters, police, city workers, and all the other public servants whose work keep our cities, towns and schools operating. In essence they said: ignore the CEO paid obscene bonuses to run his company into the turf, he’s a faultless hero of the American free market. Focus on the real culprits, the parasites, the overpaid, pampered public employees who live in luxury on your tax dime. Their greed is the cause of our misery, just as borrowers, not lenders, caused the housing bubble to burst. 

The forces of corporate greed, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Republican Party, and billionaires like the Koch brothers were never content to rest on their laurels. Having rendered private sector unions impotent through trade agreements and outsourcing, they turned their collective power against the only sector where unions still have a modicum of strength and political leverage. Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin is their poster boy.

Unions, private sector or public, are far from perfect. But when it comes to protecting working people from caprice, inequity and exploitation, unions are the best hope we have for achieving a modicum of workplace democracy and growing the middle class. Except by banding together, how else can workers share in the fruits of their productivity? The right excoriates and dismisses any talk of “collective” action, but that is precisely what’s needed to restore balance between the masters of capital and the laborers who build or serve.

I’m not optimistic for a resurgence of organized labor. After playing a large role in getting Barack Obama elected in 2008, union members watched as the new president turned his back on them. When workers made a stand in Wisconsin, Obama was nowhere to be seen. As happens every four years, many working people will troop to the polling place this November and vote against their own interests. Do they really believe Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have their back? Have they forgotten the Bush era, when tax cuts and less regulation were touted as the road to an “opportunity” society of plentiful jobs and higher wages? Net job growth was flat under Bush as were wages. The Ayn Rand Kool-Aid will not work for Romney any better than it did for Bush.

In this country it used to be that organized labor was at the center of the discussion of how to lift all boats on a tide of prosperity; we used to talk about expanding the economic pie, not shrinking it. The only vessels that rise today are of the luxury variety; they ride high on the water and their captains look down with disdain at the masses in their dinghies and rowboats and rubber rafts. 

The Fall of our Discontent

“The United States has entered a new historical era marked by a growing disinvestment in the social state, public goods, and civic morality.”  Henry Giroux

I can’t bear to watch the Republican National Convention, and when I heard Ralph Reed spinning a fable about thousands of nuclear centrifuges in Iran on Democracy Now on the radio this morning, I immediately switched the channel.

I’ve heard enough lies. The Republican Party is a monstrosity, full of zealots with zero respect for facts, science, history or rational inquiry. Their kit bag is loaded with tired and failed prescriptions, from tax cuts as a job generator to blind support of Israel, from deranged hostility to the public sector to opposition to abortion under any circumstances. Their belief in fairy tales is absolute and no amount of reason, data, or experience can sway them. If it would further their political power, they would happily run our ship of state aground.

The obstructionist GOP will nominate the human cipher, Mitt Romney, and his running mate, Paul Ryan. Romney seems to believe that his enormous personal wealth entitles him to the presidency, that his experience in the private sector makes him an expert in macroeconomics, and that the sprawling federal government can be run like IBM or Exxon-Mobil. Ryan is touted as a federal budget prodigy, but as Paul Krugman and others have pointed out, Ryan’s math is fuzzy. Given his way, Ryan would shred what little remains of the American social safety net and hand even larger tax breaks to people who least need them. Under Ryan’s prescriptions, the rich would become richer, the poor more so, and the gap between the two even wider than it is today.

Romney is the wind-up candidate, a politician who offers whatever audience he appears before whatever he thinks they want in the moment. Tonight he’s for marriage equality, tomorrow morning he’s against it. Looking in at Romney one sees no hint of soul or character, and he can hardly be regarded as a mirror of who the majority of us are.

I imagine the word “socialist” will be heard frequently this week in heavily guarded, Homeland Security-occupied Tampa. That the Right has affixed this label to Obama is a signature propaganda achievement since by no objective measure can any of Obama’s policy initiatives be called socialist. 

The Right will never admit the truth, but in Obama the status quo has had a devoted servant.

As Thomas Frank writes in the September issue of Harper’s:

“What Barack Obama has saved is a bankrupt elite that by all rights should have met its end in 2009. He came to the White House amid circumstances similar to 1933, but proceeded to rule like Herbert Hoover.”

I admit to drinking several pints of Obama’s Kool-Aid in 2008. Exhausted after eight years of the Bush-Cheney junta, I fell for the rhetoric of hope and change and fully suspended my critical faculties. Only after Obama surrounded himself with a posse of Clinton-era operatives did I realize how completely I had been duped. In my mind, the trip has been all down hill from there. Obama frittered away the first half of his term when he had majorities in Congress, allowed the right to take control of the national narrative, and failed to use his bully pulpit to advance policies that might have benefitted the middle class and working poor. The country needed a fighter with a tough chin; what we got was a compulsive compromiser.

I won’t watch the Democratic National Convention either, since the contemporary Democratic Party doesn’t represent my interests. As a matter of conscience I might not vote at all come November.

I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that it really makes no difference. 

August Farrago

Readers of the Balcony are a small, exclusive, and devoted lot who deserve far better than the meager output I’ve managed of late. Not much to offer in my own defense, other than to say these are the canine days of August which bring heat and induce lassitude.

There is no shortage of subjects to write about, only insufficient motivation to do so.

Here on the Platinum Coast a trio of events marks summer: the Solstice parade, the 4^th of July fireworks celebration, and Fiesta week. All are behind us now, though tourists still meander along State Street or wander Cabrillo Boulevard in search of landmarks to film or photograph. For kids, mine included, the clock is winding down and the new school term is no longer a distant event. Fans of the English Premier League (go Chelsea!) are anxiously awaiting the start of a new campaign, only a few days off now; American professional football teams are playing pre-season games, and the marathon Major League Baseball campaign has entered the stretch run toward the playoffs, and Derek Jeter and the Yankees are still in the hunt, despite being beset by injuries to key players all year.

The marine layer that is so prevalent in June and July hasn’t dared show its dreary face for days; mornings dawn clear, and in the late afternoon, cumulonimbus cloud formations rise over the blue-green Santa Ynez mountains. Seeing the clouds billow over peaks I have looked at most of my life, I can’t help but think of wildfires; we’ve had our share the past few years. When the foothills and backcountry are tinder dry a single errant spark and some wind are enough to produce a conflagration. Never will I forget being five or six, looking toward the mountains after sunset from our house on Ardilla Drive, and seeing flames from what came to be called the Coyote Fire advancing along the ridgeline as if no power on earth could stop them. The image has stayed with me all these years.

As the heat of the day gives way to another lovely evening, I can tell you, loyal readers, that I’m a lucky SOB. My family is healthy and thriving, my spouse continues to love me after nearly twenty years of marriage, the roof over our heads, though modest and rented, is watertight and the refrigerator is well stocked with staples.

Only a fool would complain.

The Cult of More

“In the midnight hour she cried ‘more, more, more.’” Rebel Yell, Billy Idol

John Boehner, our lachrymose Speaker of the House, insists at every opportunity that small businesses will suffer and stop hiring new workers unless the Obama administration once again extends the Bush-era tax cuts, but like all Republicans who inhabit economic fantasy land, Boehner never cites any objective evidence to support his point, like the fact that a miniscule percentage of small business owners would feel any pain if the Bush era cuts are allowed to expire – as they should.

Not that Boehner need bother with facts – the commercial media is all too happy to repeat his tripe without challenge.

Tax cuts as be-all, end-all, one-size-fits-all economic policy are an article of faith in the ranks of the GOP and on right-wing talk radio. In Congress, Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell bemoan the plight of small business owners as if their existence is constantly endangered. Switch on talk radio – if your mind can bear it – and Limbaugh, Hannity and O’Reilly echo the message day after day.

Taxes are too high and that’s why our economy isn’t rebounding! Taxes are too high and it’s all Obama’s fault! That unholy socialist Obama is scheming to steal the hard-earned income of this nation’s producers!

Someone able to speak Boehner’s peculiar language should explain to him that George W. Bush’s gift to America’s wealthiest citizens has been in play for more than a decade now, and that tax rates are at historically low levels. The wealthy and the uber-wealthy haven’t had it this good in decades, and the chasm that lies between these fortunates and the rest of us prove the point beyond any reasonable doubt.

By Boehner’s “low taxes equal booming economy” logic, the nation should be swimming in employment opportunities and all those heroic, stalwart small business owners across our blessed nation should be happier than pigs in slop.

Those of us who reside in the real world of flat wages and insecure employment know the score: the tax code and the entire economic system is a creation of the wealthy, by the wealthy and for the wealthy.

Working people don’t need to be told the deck is stacked against us anymore than we need to be reminded that neither political party represents our hopes and concerns.

We know any claim Republicans or Democrats make about job creation is hollow unless it also reveals whether the jobs are permanent or contingent, with employer-sponsored benefits or without, at a poverty wage or a liveable wage.

We haven’t forgotten the millions of jobs vaporized when the misdeeds of our financial masters came home to roost in 2008, and we know the majority of those jobs will never return, nor will the lives of thousands of our fellow wage earners ever be the same again. For working people it was the shaft -- for Wall Street it was low interest loans and taxpayer guarantees to make the banks and hedge funds and financial speculators whole. And look how it played out: the financial sector recovered quickly from the crisis, resumed business as if the calamity never happened, and no banker or CEO need worry about being held accountable for the blood on their hands. 

As Bruce Springsteen sings in a song from his album Wrecking Ball, “up on Banker’s Hill the party’s going strong.”

What do working people get as the recession drags on and on? Fiscal austerity, hysterical attacks on Social Security and Medicare and unemployment insurance, rabid assaults on public employees, their pension plans and their unions, public education, teachers. Even the venerable Postal Service, reliable servant of the underclass, must be targeted for dismantling and sale to the highest bidder.

Millions of us reject the prevailing ethos of this hyper-competitive, dog-devour-dog, more-more-more age, not because we are brilliant or noble but for the simple reason that this insane system isn’t sustainable. Perhaps in their headlong dash to incentivize destruction the oligarchs have forgotten or willfully ignored the lessons of history, but not us. Wisdom, courage, justice and moderation are the values that make for a sane, civilized society; one built on folly, mendacity, injustice and excess must eventually collapse.  

More, more, more.

This is the rallying cry as the morning sun rises over the canyons of Wall Street. More luxury vehicles, more homes, more yachts, more Gulfstream jets, more penthouses; more money, more connections, more power. Enough is never enough. Grab one brass ring and another immediately takes its place. No matter how much one has, someone else has more.

The beast of capitalism must be put back on its chain and trained to obey if for no other reason than to save itself – and us -- from certain death.

Money Bowl

“Men in suits should not undo what boys in uniform have achieved.” Gary Alan Fine

I don’t follow college football or college sports in general. The annual Bowl season, yawn; March Madness, snooze. When it comes to the NCAA’s big money makers, football and basketball, I’m not sure the term “scholar-athlete” carries any meaning. Gobs of money are made from the talent and skill of athletes who receive no remuneration for their efforts and have no rights or voice in the games they play. Talk about a feudal system.

I think I lost interest in college football when the number of bowl games proliferated to the point they became a meaningless collection of corporate advertising opportunities. It seems ancient history when the Rose Bowl was simply the Rose Bowl; now it’s the (insert name of major corporate sponsor here) Rose Bowl. Or Sugar Bowl. Or Fiesta Bowl. Take your pick.

Big time college sports in general, and football in particular, spiraled out of control years ago, driven by the American public’s love and a sophisticated promotion machine run by the NCAA that transformed athletic programs at major universities into hugely profitable enterprises. As a result, coaches at athletic powerhouses became highly paid, iconic and untouchable figures. The likes of Woody Hayes, Bobby Knight and Jerry Tarkanian are allowed to make fools of themselves on the sidelines, berating opposing players and referees, throwing chairs, or screaming obscenities at their own players, almost always without sanction because these, and other big name coaches, bring championship hardware home, which equates to prestige and cash for their schools and programs.

In keeping with the American Way, winning justifies aberrant behavior. 

As I have a general bias against college sports, I didn’t follow the Penn State-Jerry Sandusky-Joe Paterno scandal very closely. I heard the lewd allegations on the morning news, watched video of Jerry Sandusky climbing in and out of a black SUV, and saw file footage of storied coach Joe Paterno leading his Nittany Lions to glory – all before he turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the evil deeds being perpetrated in his own kingdom.

When Paterno died it was as if a head of state or the Pope had passed away, and for me the excessive media coverage of the funeral was emblematic of the outsized significance afforded college athletics. No question about it, Joe Paterno was a great football coach, but it’s not like he discovered the cure for HIV or led a social movement to guarantee civil rights for an oppressed minority or changed our conception of the universe; unfortunately, the American media doesn’t make much of an effort to place events and personalities in the proper perspective.

Former FBI Director Louis Freeh conducted an investigation on the cover-up and issued a report clearly indicting the adults involved for placing their own interests before those of young men. Earlier this week, the governing body of American college athletics, the NCAA, handed down its punishment. Most people focused immediately on the monetary aspect of the sanctions -- $60 million – but what captured my attention was threefold. First, the effort the NCAA made to protect its brand -- all that high-minded rhetoric by CEO Mark Emmert about athletics never again being allowed to overshadow academics. Seriously? Worshipping athletics at the expense of academics is exactly what fills university coffers with coin. Second, the sanction eliminating scholarships for athletes who were exiting nursery school when Jerry Sandusky was buggering boys in the Penn State locker room. Why slam the doors of opportunity on innocent kids? Punish the adults who were so intent on protecting their reputations, the good name of the university, and the money machine, but leave the innocent kids alone. Third, the NCAA’s sweeping decree erasing fourteen years of Penn State football history from the record books. Poof, in one fell swoop, all those games never happened, don’t count, and cannot be considered part of Joe Paterno’s legacy. As Gary Alan Fine noted in a New York Times editorial, George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth would approve.

Despite the NCAA’s actions, Penn State football will recover. Relatively speaking, $60 million is a drop in the bucket. The white men who run the NCAA empire will pat themselves on the back for swiftly disciplining a rogue athletic program, but until the too-big-to-fail nature of college athletics is rectified, little will change.

Until the day arrives when professors and graduate teaching assistants earn more than football or basketball coaches, the NCAA cannot claim with any credibility that academics are more important than athletics.

Return of the Warrior: A Conversation with the Doctor

He started like this: “It will come down to a handful of swing states and a hundred million dollars in propaganda.”

Last I saw my friend the Doctor he was running down his driveway dressed in a monk’s robe and wielding a pitchfork. I chased after him that afternoon in the hope I might prevent him from injuring himself or one of his neighbors, but the retired professor was too quick for me and had too large a head start. When nothing appeared on the KEYT News or the police blotter of the SB Independent in the days following, I assumed the Doctor had survived.

That was a few months ago and life moved on as it always does. The school term ended for my kids, the overblown summer Solstice festival came and went, tomatoes ripened on the vines in the backyard, fireworks lit the sky on the 4^th of July, and the marine layer rolled in and out; some famous people died, some unknown people were born; the happy little capitalist renovating the triplex across the way finally finished, though he shows up every other day to admire his handiwork.

Hearing nothing from the Doctor wasn’t unusual, as he often went to ground for six months or more, traveling the globe, entangling himself in doomed romances with foreign beauties half his age. When it came to the Doctor, virtually anything was possible.

At least he called before midnight.

“Hey Doc, you in town or calling from your secret bunker?”

“I’m on the landline, which is probably tapped. I destroyed my cell phone with a sledgehammer. I’m not letting the NSA track my movements -- they can suck my ball sack. How’ve you been? What the fuck is up?”

“Nothing much. My wife got called for jury duty. Were you aware that all bags, briefcases and backpacks brought into the jury waiting area are subject to search, and that jurors are not allowed to bring firearms, explosives, knitting needles, box cutters, toothpicks, nail clippers, knives or any other item that might be construed as a weapon?"

“That’s the security state for you. The whole process would move a lot more expeditiously if every juror packed a loaded Glock.”

“They also advise against wearing swim trunks, tank tops or flip flops, and layers of clothing are recommended because the temperature in the courtroom is unpredictable. I’m not making this up.”

“Country has lost its sense of humor. Humor died along with accountability. OK, so what about Obama-Romney, how do you see this fiasco playing out?”

I told the Doctor I had sworn an oath to my family not to think, speak, or write about the November election until after Labor Day as doing any of the three was detrimental to my mental equilibrium.

“OK, fine, but here’s the deal: Romney’s outspending Obama by an astronomical factor in key swing states, and his Republican governor cronies are doing everything in their power to disenfranchise thousands of Democratic voters. Romney buys this thing or he steals it. Mark my words. It doesn’t matter that Mitt zips around the country spouting complete gibberish or that he’s a kooky Mormon – it’s just money, money and money. The Holy Trinity.”

Despite a brutal battering over the past decade, some of my idealism remains intact, and I want to believe democracy in America is still alive and that the dreams and aspirations of ordinary citizens still matter to the men and women we elect to represent us. But my sense is of a corner turned, a bulwark breached; the collective consciousness of the nation isn’t what it was when we valued – and expected -- fairness, responsibility and accountability in our political, business, and religious leaders.

Our worst and dullest have deposed our best and brightest. The coup is very nearly complete.

“I know, Doc, but I can’t think about it without descending into a major depression.”

“The last candidate I believed in was Jimmy Carter,” the Doctor said, somewhat wistfully. “A fucking peanut farmer from the Deep South who wasn’t afraid to talk about honor and decency. He was the beginning of the end for the Democrats. All of them are craven pussies now. Well, fuck, at least we are a nation of well entertained citizens.”

“Where would we be without the Kardashians?” I said.

“Or Hoarders.”

“Or Cake Boss.”

“Top Chef.”

“American Idol.”

“The Voice.”

“Jersey Shore.”

“Is that still on?”

“No clue. You drinking again, Doc?”

“Heavily. I can’t cope without drink and illegal hallucinogenic substances. I’ve re-established reliable supply lines.”

“I’m glad. Your Buddhist monk phase threw me for a loop.”

“Me, too. I’m a warrior, man, not a saint. Keep the faith. The pig fuckers are strong but by no means invincible. They will overreach, and when they do, they will fall and be stomped to death.”

Ransacked in Rome

My wife and I have a free afternoon and decide to spend it at the movies. Our viewing choice is between Ted and Woody Allen’s new film, To Rome with Love, and because I like Woody and my wife likes Judy Davis, the Woodman wins our 15 bucks.

We arrive early, find seats, unpack contraband from Starbucks we have smuggled in -- chicken sandwich, iced coffee and a small bottle of Pellegrino. A predominately AARP audience arrives and settles in, and all is pleasant until First Look starts pimping new TV shows. CBS is launching some drama called Elementary, in which a modern day Sherlock Holmes, boasting tats and hip patter, solves crimes in New York City with his sidekick, Dr. Watson, a woman in this incarnation, played by Lucy Liu. Yawn.

I ask my wife if every second of contemporary American life must be filled with advertising.

“Wherever a captive audience can be found,” she says, “there will be ads. The moments before the previews roll is a prime advertising opportunity.”

“But nobody is paying the slightest attention,” I say. “Look around. What are people doing? Fiddling with cell phones, chomping popcorn and junior mints, staring into space.”

“Subliminal,” says my wife, tucking into her half of the chicken sandwich. “The messages work on a subconscious level. We’re being indoctrinated right now.”

“Silence has been totally devalued. Can I have the trail mix, please?”

“What trail mix? I didn’t bring any trail mix.”

“I put a bag in your purse before we left the house.”

First Look was now recapping the shows the audience had just ignored.

“You ransacked my purse?”

“Who said anything about ransacked? I simply opened your purse and dropped a bag of trail mix inside. That hardly qualifies as ransacking.”

My wife turns in her seat to look at me.

“You violated the sanctity of my purse, the one place where I have any privacy. Do I ever ransack your wallet? No, of course not. I respect your right to privacy even though you don’t reciprocate. You’re as bad as our children.”

“May I have the trail mix, please?”

“Not until you acknowledge my point,” says my wife, “and promise to respect the sanctity of the purse from this day forward.”

“OK, got it, though I think you’re taking this too far. I didn’t look through your purse -- I only put something in it that is too bulky to fit in my pocket. Now, if you will kindly hand over the trail mix, we can enjoy the movie.”

“Acknowledge my point.”

“I just did.”

“Not even close. Tell me what I need to hear and mean it.”

Beaten, I acquiesce, even though I still think she’s making an issue out of nothing. No point in waging a protracted battle now – I want to enjoy the movie and my trail mix.

Reaching in her purse, feeling around as if the thing were bottomless -- past wallet, cell phone, makeup pouch, checkbook, Kleenex, gum, key ring, pencil, pen, highlighter, miniature flashlight, hand sanitizer, lipstick, hand lotion – until she locates the bag of trail mix and shakes her head with obvious disappointment.

“You didn’t transfer it to a Ziploc bag.”

“I was in a hurry.”

“No trail mix for you. Opening this bag in a theatre would be like setting off a bomb in a closet.”

“Half the people here are partially deaf. They’ll never know.”

“They will. And they will hate us. We’ll be bombarded with hate vibes.”

“Who cares? Please, hand the trail mix over.”

The previews are about to start, the lights dim; a woman in the row behind us clears her throat with unrestrained gusto, as if she is sitting alone in her living room. Late arriving patrons stand in the aisle looking for seats. “Are those three taken?” “Is anyone sitting there?” Why people show up late and expect to find good seats is a mystery to me. Now the latecomers are climbing over people, imposing on them to move their legs, their shopping bags, canes, muttering, “excuse me, sorry, pardon me,” making a nuisance of themselves as the first preview rolls. I’m thinking of almonds and peanuts – natural and honey roasted – prisoners in my wife’s fortress purse; they call to me, but I am powerless to liberate them.

To Rome with Love isn’t as entertaining Woody’s last film, Midnight in Paris, and a half-hour in I’m bored and thinking we should have opted for Ted, the foul-mouthed talking teddy bear. The woman in the row behind us obviously agrees, for she is asleep, head cocked to one side, mouth open. The sight of Woody Allen on the screen doesn’t make me laugh, and the dialogue doesn’t sparkle. What happened, Woody?

My wife must be having the same thoughts. Dropping the bag of trail mix in my lap she says, “Knock yourself out.”

  

Teach the Children (The Last in a Series of Downer Posts)

“It all depends on the money/and who is in your family tree.” Bloody Well Right, Supertramp

That about sums up where we are, doesn’t it? Money and connections are the tickets to the fabled American Dream.

Don’t teach your children to work hard and play by the rules -- that’s for suckers, so hopelessly 1992 -- progress to our brave new world. Take a lesson from American bankers: teach them to lie and cheat, game the system, rig the rules so that even if they lose, they win.

Teach them the virtue of selfishness. If the house next door catches fire it’s no concern of theirs, let it burn.

Teach them that there is no such thing as conflict of interest, only self-interest.

Teach them to disdain the poor, the infirm, and the weak. The world is made of winners and losers; winners are righteous, losers are lazy, stupid or both.

Teach them that wealth and power are infallible signs of superior character, and that moderation isn’t a virtue a rational person pursues.

Teach them to blame the victims. Tuck them into bed at night with stories of rugged individualism, heroes that go it alone, asking for no help from anyone.

Teach them that the world is full of parasites eager to latch onto the successful, sucking the lifeblood of drive, initiative and ambition; explain that despite what they may see or hear or experience, the playing field is level and the game fair for all.

Teach them that “government” is the most rapacious parasite of all, an insatiable demon hell bent on redistributing wealth.  

Teach them to know rather than to think.

Teach them that some human lives are inherently more valuable than other human lives.

Teach them that honesty is for the faint of heart, accountability for the unenlightened.

Bloody well right. 

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.

One for All, All For One

Swinging their batons with vigor, the Chicago police drive protestors back and away from the heavily guarded building where NATO ministers are meeting. The footage I watched aired on Democracy Now and in addition to the crowd scenes showed veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions tossing their medals in the street; a few of them apologized to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan for destroying their respective countries.

NATO, lest we forget forget, is the acronym of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, conceived in the aftermath of World War II to contain Soviet expansionist designs in Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union is long defunct but NATO lives on as the military arm of the global 1%, active in conflicts far from its headquarters in Brussels.

The United States funds an inordinate share of NATO’s military budget, and in return NATO provides legitimacy, of sorts, for our invasion and decade-long occupation of Afghanistan. Under NATO’s aegis, the United States can claim it isn’t acting unilaterally. The claim is BS and cannot stand scrutiny (everyone knows who calls the shots and runs the show), but it allows our politicians to salve their consciences and sleep easier at night, as well as making it possible for our less-than-enthusiastic partners to convince their constituents that when it comes to NATO, it’s one for all and all for one.

The American public is overwhelmingly opposed to the war in Afghanistan and beginning to understand the staggering costs in blood and treasure, multiplying year after year with no end in sight, despite what the president says, but the political class remains immune to the public will. Popular sentiment against the war is present, but not focused enough to force politicians to pay attention. It’s often said that politics is really about distribution – who gets what, when, and how much – and it’s clear that in the United States the military-security complex is first in line, exempt from austerity fever, and ever and always sacrosanct.

 Even in a depression we find money for wars, for bombs, for aircraft, for ships, while the growing needs of citizens for affordable health care, decent jobs, education and public infrastructure are ridiculed as unaffordable “entitlement” programs that must be trimmed or sacrificed.

In this era of austerity and debt hysteria we can even find $70 million to hand to Israel for missile defense. What could $70 million buy here in our own nation, where so many are struggling? We can’t even debate the question because to do so is to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy, and in contemporary America, dissent is verboten, a lesson delivered to the Chicago protestors at the business end of a police baton.