It's No Year's Leave
Back in July I warned that if Obama and the Dems came to power, the righties would erase 2008 from our memory banks just as surely as Judge Crater evanesced into that summer’s eve in long ago Gotham. I’m repeating my alert. You have until Inauguration Day to muster any memorabilia attesting to the existence of the 365 days between 2007 and 2009. Limbaugh and Hannity have already pinned the recession on Obama, while the ever clueless Bush has blamed his old man for the mess. In coming days, they’ll be faulting the Dems for the Gaza ghastlies and the Afghan agonies. It won’t be long before the mainstream media follow suit. By Memorial Day at the latest all the world’s woes will be laid at the bent knees of the Dems and anyone who recalls 2008 will end up behind the eight ball.
So, as I advised last summer, make a 2008 scrapbook to thrill and delight the grandkids and to prove to the doubtful that it was a year that was. --But Happy New Year!
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Things That You're Liable to Read in the Bible
Gaza and Genesis
We Americans decided by ourselves that we were the world’s leader and that the other 96 percent of humanity had better obey if they didn’t want visits from the CIA or the 82nd Airborne. Over the last two centuries we used force on hundreds of occasions in every part of the world to get our way. One can only imagine how many more wars we would have fought if we actually had a contract from God, inscribed in the Bible, that sanctified our conquests.
One quite aggressive country does. If you want to know what Israel is all about open your good book to Genesis 15:18 and you'll find a reason for a lot of the bloodshed in the Middle East. If you don’t have one handy, it says that “the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates.” It means that all or parts of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq belong to the Jews, according to the ultimate authority.
If you’ve been to their country, you’ll know that the Israelis are a tough bunch and not so much frightened by pinprick rocket attacks from Gaza as ticked at the countries that God meant them to rule. Their mien can be likened to that of a landlord anxious to drive out his tenants so that he can move in his relatives.
In furtherance of its grace from Genesis, Israel has taken land from all four of its neighbors and has organized its military to dominate the region well beyond its biblical bequest. Every few years, the Israelis kill great numbers of nearby residents and blow up their civil infrastructure to encourage their docility or departure. That's what happened in the summer of 2006 in Lebanon and today in Gaza. But like a cat with eyes bigger than its belly, Israel has been obliged at times to spit up some of its conquests either because of persistent resistance or because too few colonists could be found to inhabit the lands taken.
But no matter how violent the Israelis get, the neighbors don’t go away. They bury their dead, remain refractory, and make babies at double the rate of the Israelis. The Arabs believe that down the road, incha’allah, their numbers and their presence will prevail and that Israel will go the way of its erstwhile model, the late, unlamented Union of South Africa. In other words, Israel will become a multinational state rather than an apartheid one.
That will make some Jews miserable, particularly the observant kind who take the real estate deed in the Bible seriously. But it might intrigue secular Jews willing to chance living in a land in which they are only influential but not dominant. I say might because nothing is sure in that part of the world, whether it’s gospel or not.
We Americans decided by ourselves that we were the world’s leader and that the other 96 percent of humanity had better obey if they didn’t want visits from the CIA or the 82nd Airborne. Over the last two centuries we used force on hundreds of occasions in every part of the world to get our way. One can only imagine how many more wars we would have fought if we actually had a contract from God, inscribed in the Bible, that sanctified our conquests.
One quite aggressive country does. If you want to know what Israel is all about open your good book to Genesis 15:18 and you'll find a reason for a lot of the bloodshed in the Middle East. If you don’t have one handy, it says that “the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates.” It means that all or parts of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq belong to the Jews, according to the ultimate authority.
If you’ve been to their country, you’ll know that the Israelis are a tough bunch and not so much frightened by pinprick rocket attacks from Gaza as ticked at the countries that God meant them to rule. Their mien can be likened to that of a landlord anxious to drive out his tenants so that he can move in his relatives.
In furtherance of its grace from Genesis, Israel has taken land from all four of its neighbors and has organized its military to dominate the region well beyond its biblical bequest. Every few years, the Israelis kill great numbers of nearby residents and blow up their civil infrastructure to encourage their docility or departure. That's what happened in the summer of 2006 in Lebanon and today in Gaza. But like a cat with eyes bigger than its belly, Israel has been obliged at times to spit up some of its conquests either because of persistent resistance or because too few colonists could be found to inhabit the lands taken.
But no matter how violent the Israelis get, the neighbors don’t go away. They bury their dead, remain refractory, and make babies at double the rate of the Israelis. The Arabs believe that down the road, incha’allah, their numbers and their presence will prevail and that Israel will go the way of its erstwhile model, the late, unlamented Union of South Africa. In other words, Israel will become a multinational state rather than an apartheid one.
That will make some Jews miserable, particularly the observant kind who take the real estate deed in the Bible seriously. But it might intrigue secular Jews willing to chance living in a land in which they are only influential but not dominant. I say might because nothing is sure in that part of the world, whether it’s gospel or not.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Enemies Erstwhile and Otherwise
Threats Getting Threadbare
With a new administration as enthusiastic for change as it is respectful of business as usual, it looks like a good time to review the threat board. We Americans love God but can’t live without the devil. Satanic threats, virtually all of which we create for ourselves, justify our empire, prop up our economy by way of “defense” spending, and scare us into sticking with the status quo.
For decades we had the “evil empire” embodied by the quondam commies. Then there was the “axis of evil” among atheist Koreans, Shiite Persians and Sunni Mesopotamians (imagine what they jabbered about at their secret cabals?). Nowadays, we have only the rubric “terrorism” to flog the foreigners we deem disobedient. Though it’s not particularly accurate or enlightening, it is a scary word signifying that we must let our government run roughshod lest those satans slay us in our sleep. And, of course, it’s a single word. If you pejoratize our enemies with more than one word you tax the public’s attention span.
Which raises the problem that our most familiar threats are suffering senility and don’t drum up the dread they used to. The Cuban Revolution is going on 50, with a frail but still feisty Fidel about to gall his 11th American president. Washington still dubs his regime a threat to the western hemisphere, while the western hemisphere, with the isolated exception of the U.S., enjoys increasingly cordial relations with the tropic isle we used to call the “pearl of the Antilles.” Obama apparently accepts that Cuba should remain a threat but says he favors some minor amelioration. We’ll still try to starve Cubans to death, but will allow exiles here to send table scraps to their relatives. And we’ll close Guantanamo so it will no longer be a sobriquet for torture, but revert to being a nasty example of imperial armed robbery.
Across the Caribbean, Venezuela, a country that never fought a war beyond its borders, is sharing the calumny we dump on Cuba. While we tar him as an autocratic ogre, President Chavez is working hard to unify Latin America on the European model, making our old backyard into their brand new mall. On his side is the utter disgust most Latins have for the so-called Washington consensus economics that kept them so poor for so long. Venezuela’s been on the threat board for a decade now. It ain’t going nowhere.
An old standby is Kim Il Jung, North Korea’s erstwhile boy dictator, now nearing 68 and reportedly suffering from stroke and such. North Korea sits on a peninsula surrounded by three far more powerful countries it would not dare attack. It was virtually wiped out when it tried to reunite with South Korea by force in 1950 and has since had so little to do with the rest of the world that it’s known as a “hermit kingdom.” Nevertheless, Washington continues to label it a danger to all Asia and beyond. Ashton Carter, a high diplomat in the Clinton administration, gave up the game when he revealed the real reason we oppose nukes in the North. When other countries have nukes, we lose our “leverage” over them, he said.
Also going gray is our Persian paranoia. It’s been 30 years since Washington began scaring us with the ever imminent and inevasible threat from Iran and its never quite perfected nukes. Our leaders lately tell us that Iran now plans to target everything from Israel to Iceland once it perfects the missiles to carry its still developing nukes. As my father used to say, if we had ham we could have ham and eggs if we had eggs. Of course, no one asks and no one explains why Iran, a country that hasn’t attacked anyone for 270 years, wants to commit suicide by rocketing its oil customers in Europe. Here, Obama figures to follow exactly the same policy as Bush, with a few diplomatic niceties added for window dressing. Our aim in Iran is exactly the same as it was back in 1953 when we overthrew its democratic government and imposed a bloody dictator. As Kissinger has said, we regard Iran’s oil as our own and mean to get it back.
Afghanistan, which joined the threat board seven years ago with 9/11, has been at more or less continuous war since the early 70s--that would be the 670s. Other countries love to invade it and the Afghans enjoy fighting them off. I don’t know why, since there’s little there to fight over. All I remember from my trip back in ‘73 was the dirt cheap hash, delicious melons and handsome rugs. Obama says he will change Bush’s policy by making the war there bigger and bloodier.
Syria’s been on the threat board for 60 years. Since it’s not strong enough to fight off its neighbors, let alone attack them, it has lost land on the Golan to Israel and its position in Lebanon to the U.S. Since they don’t have much oil, the Syrians don’t make the top of our shit list. We always seem to threaten them as an afterthought.
As as wrote back in the summer (Iraq Going, Going, Gone, July 22), the Iraqis have no reason to accept subordination to our empire and we have no way to force them, having shot our bolt militarily. After 40 years, the far more capable Israelis have yet to pacify four million starveling Palestinian imprisoned on a few patches of land. Any hope of the U.S. doing better in Iraq was always a pipe dream. The recently agreed withdrawal agreement codifies a more or less total American defeat. Not that the war was a total loss. We’ve got $50 billion of Iraqi oil receipts in our banks. You can be sure the big boys will find a way to hang on to that stash. Meanwhile, we move our shock and awe show to Afghanistan as control of the Middle East and its energy drifts back to the people who live there.
With a new administration as enthusiastic for change as it is respectful of business as usual, it looks like a good time to review the threat board. We Americans love God but can’t live without the devil. Satanic threats, virtually all of which we create for ourselves, justify our empire, prop up our economy by way of “defense” spending, and scare us into sticking with the status quo.
For decades we had the “evil empire” embodied by the quondam commies. Then there was the “axis of evil” among atheist Koreans, Shiite Persians and Sunni Mesopotamians (imagine what they jabbered about at their secret cabals?). Nowadays, we have only the rubric “terrorism” to flog the foreigners we deem disobedient. Though it’s not particularly accurate or enlightening, it is a scary word signifying that we must let our government run roughshod lest those satans slay us in our sleep. And, of course, it’s a single word. If you pejoratize our enemies with more than one word you tax the public’s attention span.
Which raises the problem that our most familiar threats are suffering senility and don’t drum up the dread they used to. The Cuban Revolution is going on 50, with a frail but still feisty Fidel about to gall his 11th American president. Washington still dubs his regime a threat to the western hemisphere, while the western hemisphere, with the isolated exception of the U.S., enjoys increasingly cordial relations with the tropic isle we used to call the “pearl of the Antilles.” Obama apparently accepts that Cuba should remain a threat but says he favors some minor amelioration. We’ll still try to starve Cubans to death, but will allow exiles here to send table scraps to their relatives. And we’ll close Guantanamo so it will no longer be a sobriquet for torture, but revert to being a nasty example of imperial armed robbery.
Across the Caribbean, Venezuela, a country that never fought a war beyond its borders, is sharing the calumny we dump on Cuba. While we tar him as an autocratic ogre, President Chavez is working hard to unify Latin America on the European model, making our old backyard into their brand new mall. On his side is the utter disgust most Latins have for the so-called Washington consensus economics that kept them so poor for so long. Venezuela’s been on the threat board for a decade now. It ain’t going nowhere.
An old standby is Kim Il Jung, North Korea’s erstwhile boy dictator, now nearing 68 and reportedly suffering from stroke and such. North Korea sits on a peninsula surrounded by three far more powerful countries it would not dare attack. It was virtually wiped out when it tried to reunite with South Korea by force in 1950 and has since had so little to do with the rest of the world that it’s known as a “hermit kingdom.” Nevertheless, Washington continues to label it a danger to all Asia and beyond. Ashton Carter, a high diplomat in the Clinton administration, gave up the game when he revealed the real reason we oppose nukes in the North. When other countries have nukes, we lose our “leverage” over them, he said.
Also going gray is our Persian paranoia. It’s been 30 years since Washington began scaring us with the ever imminent and inevasible threat from Iran and its never quite perfected nukes. Our leaders lately tell us that Iran now plans to target everything from Israel to Iceland once it perfects the missiles to carry its still developing nukes. As my father used to say, if we had ham we could have ham and eggs if we had eggs. Of course, no one asks and no one explains why Iran, a country that hasn’t attacked anyone for 270 years, wants to commit suicide by rocketing its oil customers in Europe. Here, Obama figures to follow exactly the same policy as Bush, with a few diplomatic niceties added for window dressing. Our aim in Iran is exactly the same as it was back in 1953 when we overthrew its democratic government and imposed a bloody dictator. As Kissinger has said, we regard Iran’s oil as our own and mean to get it back.
Afghanistan, which joined the threat board seven years ago with 9/11, has been at more or less continuous war since the early 70s--that would be the 670s. Other countries love to invade it and the Afghans enjoy fighting them off. I don’t know why, since there’s little there to fight over. All I remember from my trip back in ‘73 was the dirt cheap hash, delicious melons and handsome rugs. Obama says he will change Bush’s policy by making the war there bigger and bloodier.
Syria’s been on the threat board for 60 years. Since it’s not strong enough to fight off its neighbors, let alone attack them, it has lost land on the Golan to Israel and its position in Lebanon to the U.S. Since they don’t have much oil, the Syrians don’t make the top of our shit list. We always seem to threaten them as an afterthought.
As as wrote back in the summer (Iraq Going, Going, Gone, July 22), the Iraqis have no reason to accept subordination to our empire and we have no way to force them, having shot our bolt militarily. After 40 years, the far more capable Israelis have yet to pacify four million starveling Palestinian imprisoned on a few patches of land. Any hope of the U.S. doing better in Iraq was always a pipe dream. The recently agreed withdrawal agreement codifies a more or less total American defeat. Not that the war was a total loss. We’ve got $50 billion of Iraqi oil receipts in our banks. You can be sure the big boys will find a way to hang on to that stash. Meanwhile, we move our shock and awe show to Afghanistan as control of the Middle East and its energy drifts back to the people who live there.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
The Election Business
Plus Ca Change...
Not since Seinfeld has so much money been made about nothing much. This year our uniquely American election industry topped $5 billion in revenues by serving up smears, inanities, thin hopes and cheap thrills. Despite the depression, posh resorts should be chock-a-block with flush campaign operatives this holiday season.
Apart from the couple of hundred thousand spent on Sarah Palin’s duds and do-jobs, the bulk of those spondulicks ended up in the accounts receivable of media companies and, in particular, television stations.
Just as Americans accept financial companies managing their treasury and doling out their health care, they likewise go along with media companies directing their democracy. This makes us different than other first world countries, where doctors manage health care and elections remain a political process, not a business.
Topping the trove of trivialities that marked the campaign was the stunning and serious fact that Americans, who have held on to their racism with a mite more nostalgia than other first world tribes, elected a not entirely white man as their leader. This gave half the country the warm fuzzy wuzzies and the rest a scary case of fear and loathing.
Apart from that notable fact whose repercussions we’ll see as time goes on, the election would have been a soporific were it not for Sarah. McCain could hardly stay awake. And it was noted that had Obama not been part African, he would have been long ago dismissed as a bright but utterly conventional business as usual pol.
There was some embarrassing pretense that Obama and McCain differed on major issues of which they dared not speak much. This game was given up no sooner than the results were announced. McCain bowed gracefully to Obama while Obama made it know that his notion of change stopped pretty much with his presence in the White House instead of George Bush’s.
In an indication of things to come, Obama named as his transition foreign policy honcho the cadaverous Warren Christopher, ill-famed for surrendering Florida to Bush back in 2000, and then picked John Brennan, an architect of the CIA’s torture regime, as his national security transitioner. Obama announced no hard feelings towards Joe Lieberman and indicated that he would treat the crimes of the Bush years with leniency rather than justice.
By such quick and clear moves, Obama was implicitly admitting that his change theme was strictly a campaign ditty. He underlined that by staffing his administration with yet more usual suspects from the Clinton and Bush gangs. A terrific story by the excellent Jeremy Scahill on Alternet tells the sad tale.
Obama may be business as usual, but his problem is that the business has gone bust. The American model of cut-throat capitalism is kaput, victim of its own hubris and greed. For all the neocon fantasies of global domination and Wall Street’s dreams of inflating new bubbles, the fact is that the self-proclaimed world’s greatest country has turned itself into the world’s greatest deadbeat. We have become indigent imperialists, our threats as empty as our wallets.
There are ways out of this mess. Unfortunately for us, none of them involve business as usual, the pretense of change, finding the bottom of the Dow, expecting foreigners to remain obedient, or Americans to stay docile.
The yahoos are already attacking Obama as the father of all evils, including the economic disaster, even before he takes office. The few progressives among us are already losing heart, dismayed by the realization that Barack will bring us just the same old same old. Little likely will change except to get worse for the next four years. Having never had the right and losing the left, Obama will be abandoned by those millions in the middle he leaves in the lurch. He's a one term wonder--unless the Reps come up with a super loser a la Sarah. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m staying short the market and not buying any Barack bonds.
Not since Seinfeld has so much money been made about nothing much. This year our uniquely American election industry topped $5 billion in revenues by serving up smears, inanities, thin hopes and cheap thrills. Despite the depression, posh resorts should be chock-a-block with flush campaign operatives this holiday season.
Apart from the couple of hundred thousand spent on Sarah Palin’s duds and do-jobs, the bulk of those spondulicks ended up in the accounts receivable of media companies and, in particular, television stations.
Just as Americans accept financial companies managing their treasury and doling out their health care, they likewise go along with media companies directing their democracy. This makes us different than other first world countries, where doctors manage health care and elections remain a political process, not a business.
Topping the trove of trivialities that marked the campaign was the stunning and serious fact that Americans, who have held on to their racism with a mite more nostalgia than other first world tribes, elected a not entirely white man as their leader. This gave half the country the warm fuzzy wuzzies and the rest a scary case of fear and loathing.
Apart from that notable fact whose repercussions we’ll see as time goes on, the election would have been a soporific were it not for Sarah. McCain could hardly stay awake. And it was noted that had Obama not been part African, he would have been long ago dismissed as a bright but utterly conventional business as usual pol.
There was some embarrassing pretense that Obama and McCain differed on major issues of which they dared not speak much. This game was given up no sooner than the results were announced. McCain bowed gracefully to Obama while Obama made it know that his notion of change stopped pretty much with his presence in the White House instead of George Bush’s.
In an indication of things to come, Obama named as his transition foreign policy honcho the cadaverous Warren Christopher, ill-famed for surrendering Florida to Bush back in 2000, and then picked John Brennan, an architect of the CIA’s torture regime, as his national security transitioner. Obama announced no hard feelings towards Joe Lieberman and indicated that he would treat the crimes of the Bush years with leniency rather than justice.
By such quick and clear moves, Obama was implicitly admitting that his change theme was strictly a campaign ditty. He underlined that by staffing his administration with yet more usual suspects from the Clinton and Bush gangs. A terrific story by the excellent Jeremy Scahill on Alternet tells the sad tale.
Obama may be business as usual, but his problem is that the business has gone bust. The American model of cut-throat capitalism is kaput, victim of its own hubris and greed. For all the neocon fantasies of global domination and Wall Street’s dreams of inflating new bubbles, the fact is that the self-proclaimed world’s greatest country has turned itself into the world’s greatest deadbeat. We have become indigent imperialists, our threats as empty as our wallets.
There are ways out of this mess. Unfortunately for us, none of them involve business as usual, the pretense of change, finding the bottom of the Dow, expecting foreigners to remain obedient, or Americans to stay docile.
The yahoos are already attacking Obama as the father of all evils, including the economic disaster, even before he takes office. The few progressives among us are already losing heart, dismayed by the realization that Barack will bring us just the same old same old. Little likely will change except to get worse for the next four years. Having never had the right and losing the left, Obama will be abandoned by those millions in the middle he leaves in the lurch. He's a one term wonder--unless the Reps come up with a super loser a la Sarah. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m staying short the market and not buying any Barack bonds.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Election Briefs
Go With The Late Gipper
Those of us who grew up in the cold war have been memory laned into insensibility by the revival of the epithets communist and socialist by the yahoo minions of McCain and Palin. I heard enough of it regurgitated locally that I know it made its intended impact on the declining numbers for whom those words still carry pejorative punch. Indeed, an unhappy lady in the Limon market told me just this morning that she’s terrified at the prospect of living under communism with Obama as our new commissar in chief.
I have a solution for such folks. It’s found in the words of the late Ronald Reagan, the exemplary conservative of his time and the leading inspiration for the current run of reactionaries. Back in his famous “Evil Empire”speech in 1983 Reagan offered the following:
A number of years ago, I heard a young father, a very prominent young man in the entertainment world, addressing a tremendous gathering in California. It was during the time of the cold war, and communism and our own way of life were very much on people’s minds. And he was speaking to that subject. And suddenly, though, I heard him saying, “I love my little girls more than anything.” And I said to myself, “Oh, no, don’t. You can’t — don’t say that.” But I had underestimated him. He went on: “I would rather see my little girls die now; still believing in God, than have them grow up under communism and one day die no longer believing in God.”
So you conservatives don’t have to live under Obama's communism. Ronnie and that young father suggest it’s better if you choose not to live at all. Think about it, yahoos.
Those of us who grew up in the cold war have been memory laned into insensibility by the revival of the epithets communist and socialist by the yahoo minions of McCain and Palin. I heard enough of it regurgitated locally that I know it made its intended impact on the declining numbers for whom those words still carry pejorative punch. Indeed, an unhappy lady in the Limon market told me just this morning that she’s terrified at the prospect of living under communism with Obama as our new commissar in chief.
I have a solution for such folks. It’s found in the words of the late Ronald Reagan, the exemplary conservative of his time and the leading inspiration for the current run of reactionaries. Back in his famous “Evil Empire”speech in 1983 Reagan offered the following:
A number of years ago, I heard a young father, a very prominent young man in the entertainment world, addressing a tremendous gathering in California. It was during the time of the cold war, and communism and our own way of life were very much on people’s minds. And he was speaking to that subject. And suddenly, though, I heard him saying, “I love my little girls more than anything.” And I said to myself, “Oh, no, don’t. You can’t — don’t say that.” But I had underestimated him. He went on: “I would rather see my little girls die now; still believing in God, than have them grow up under communism and one day die no longer believing in God.”
So you conservatives don’t have to live under Obama's communism. Ronnie and that young father suggest it’s better if you choose not to live at all. Think about it, yahoos.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Fright Whigs
Demon Destinations
I shared a flight back from San Francisco on Sunday with a cheery cohort of continentals heading home to Europe after their bargain vacations in the States.
That seemingly innocuous statement of fact contain the names of two places that conservatives fear and loathe as dreadful and dangerous. They are Europe and San Francisco. The yahoos have internally demonized the old world--particularly the French part of it--as a socialist Sodom that forces people to use the wages they don’t have to spend on health care and college tuition to take month-long paid vacations in such subversive venues as our pinko Gommorah on the bay.
Somewhere high over America I read in the SF Chronicle that McCain had attacked Obama as a “European.” Earlier in the campaign, ado had been done because Obama uttered his comment about ordinary Americans being “bitter” while fundraising in San Francisco. And, of course, Bill O’Reilly, the St. Paul of the yahoos, has urged America to shun France and invited al Qaeda to nuke San Fran.
The core commandment of conservatism is clear enough. It holds that business and the rich should be free to do as they want and everyone else should as they’re told. That’s been right wing dogma since the first master and the first slave. But beyond that there are lots of things I will never understand about the peculiar run of reactionaries we spawn on this side of the Atlantic.
In particular, what have they got against Europe and San Francisco? I can understand their abhorence of the whilom Soviet empire. It was grim, gray and gritty, characteristics perfectly tolerable to right wingers were they not accompanied by disdain for private investment.
Bible thumping yahoos get up tight about irreverent San Franciscans having so much fun, such as the hunky Jesus contests sponsored by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. But the cons enjoy their jollies as well--with the added fillip of hypocrisy.
Don’t the righties know that their beloved capitalism was invented in Europe and that entrepreneurialism got its biggest boost in the Bay Area? Are they aware that the Scots gave us Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” the Italians banking and double entry bookkeeping, and the French the reactionary rambunction of the Pujadiste petit commercants that we see reflected in every Palin rally? Do they think that the world’s wealthy flock to France and Frisco for fun and finance because those places are socialist hell holes?
And finally how wacky is conservatism for scaring itself half to death with the spectre of two of the globe’s most popular and inviting tourist destinations?
I shared a flight back from San Francisco on Sunday with a cheery cohort of continentals heading home to Europe after their bargain vacations in the States.
That seemingly innocuous statement of fact contain the names of two places that conservatives fear and loathe as dreadful and dangerous. They are Europe and San Francisco. The yahoos have internally demonized the old world--particularly the French part of it--as a socialist Sodom that forces people to use the wages they don’t have to spend on health care and college tuition to take month-long paid vacations in such subversive venues as our pinko Gommorah on the bay.
Somewhere high over America I read in the SF Chronicle that McCain had attacked Obama as a “European.” Earlier in the campaign, ado had been done because Obama uttered his comment about ordinary Americans being “bitter” while fundraising in San Francisco. And, of course, Bill O’Reilly, the St. Paul of the yahoos, has urged America to shun France and invited al Qaeda to nuke San Fran.
The core commandment of conservatism is clear enough. It holds that business and the rich should be free to do as they want and everyone else should as they’re told. That’s been right wing dogma since the first master and the first slave. But beyond that there are lots of things I will never understand about the peculiar run of reactionaries we spawn on this side of the Atlantic.
In particular, what have they got against Europe and San Francisco? I can understand their abhorence of the whilom Soviet empire. It was grim, gray and gritty, characteristics perfectly tolerable to right wingers were they not accompanied by disdain for private investment.
Bible thumping yahoos get up tight about irreverent San Franciscans having so much fun, such as the hunky Jesus contests sponsored by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. But the cons enjoy their jollies as well--with the added fillip of hypocrisy.
Don’t the righties know that their beloved capitalism was invented in Europe and that entrepreneurialism got its biggest boost in the Bay Area? Are they aware that the Scots gave us Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” the Italians banking and double entry bookkeeping, and the French the reactionary rambunction of the Pujadiste petit commercants that we see reflected in every Palin rally? Do they think that the world’s wealthy flock to France and Frisco for fun and finance because those places are socialist hell holes?
And finally how wacky is conservatism for scaring itself half to death with the spectre of two of the globe’s most popular and inviting tourist destinations?
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Wake Me on November 4
The Dull Debate
“And for the most part I agree with Senator McCain on many of the steps that have to be taken.” --Barack Obama, debating, October 7, 2008
A year ago in a letter to the NY Times Sunday Magazine, I wrote that: “...in our political system voters get to choose between two corporatized parties, financed by the same moneyed interests, that agree on major issues, while elections focus on lesser issues, personalities and smears.” The proof of that observation has been confirmed, certified, bold-faced and underlined by this year’s dismal McCain-Obama duel and in particular last Tuesday’s deadly dull “debate.”
The economy is eroding and the empire is evaporating. McCain and the Reps have shifted the blame for the former from the rampant chicanery on Wall Street down to the shiftless poor who cleverly conned Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac and the Dems into letting them buy homes they couldn’t afford. This is in line with America’s great tradition of “kick down and suck up” by which we fault the poor and powerless for any problems caused by the ever praiseworthy rich and powerful.
As for the ruffles in the empire, all we need do is to vainglory our “victory” in Iraq, move the troops to Afghanistan and have them stand guard on both sides of the frontiers of Pakistan. The stupidity of increasing combat operations on the border of China, a country that can pull the plug on what’s left of our economy with a few mouse strokes, was not considered.
The rest of the talk about those ever disobedient foreigners consisted of some tepid bear-baiting of the resurgent Russkies, and a promise by Obama to divert some of the money we borrow from Russia and other countries that actually produce things like oil “to provide [the former Soviet satellites] with financial and concrete assistance to help rebuild their economies.”
On the home front, Obama agreed that health care was a right, but wouldn’t deny it was also a commodity in our particular social order. In first world countries, sick people go to doctors and hospitals. Here, of course, they have to obtain permission from financial companies who determine whether it’s profitable to allow the ill to be treated. Those other systems produce healthy people at a reasonable cost to society; ours produces billions in premiums which are then invested in toxic derivatives and such. The health schemes offered by McCain and Obama differ only in the ways in which they channel the big bucks from premium payers to the big boys on Wall Street. If you want a real health care plan, you’ll have to move to the first world.
All in all, the campaign and the “debates,” drivel duels were it not for the putrid pageantry of Palin, have comforted us amid the historical turmoil now tearing up the old order. Their message is that a young and dynamic candidate can be just as wedded to business as usual as an old and doddering one. And if our America is not business as usual even in hard times, what is it?
(To my reader: I'm heading out west for a week and a couple of days. Will be back at the blog soon thereafter)
“And for the most part I agree with Senator McCain on many of the steps that have to be taken.” --Barack Obama, debating, October 7, 2008
A year ago in a letter to the NY Times Sunday Magazine, I wrote that: “...in our political system voters get to choose between two corporatized parties, financed by the same moneyed interests, that agree on major issues, while elections focus on lesser issues, personalities and smears.” The proof of that observation has been confirmed, certified, bold-faced and underlined by this year’s dismal McCain-Obama duel and in particular last Tuesday’s deadly dull “debate.”
The economy is eroding and the empire is evaporating. McCain and the Reps have shifted the blame for the former from the rampant chicanery on Wall Street down to the shiftless poor who cleverly conned Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac and the Dems into letting them buy homes they couldn’t afford. This is in line with America’s great tradition of “kick down and suck up” by which we fault the poor and powerless for any problems caused by the ever praiseworthy rich and powerful.
As for the ruffles in the empire, all we need do is to vainglory our “victory” in Iraq, move the troops to Afghanistan and have them stand guard on both sides of the frontiers of Pakistan. The stupidity of increasing combat operations on the border of China, a country that can pull the plug on what’s left of our economy with a few mouse strokes, was not considered.
The rest of the talk about those ever disobedient foreigners consisted of some tepid bear-baiting of the resurgent Russkies, and a promise by Obama to divert some of the money we borrow from Russia and other countries that actually produce things like oil “to provide [the former Soviet satellites] with financial and concrete assistance to help rebuild their economies.”
On the home front, Obama agreed that health care was a right, but wouldn’t deny it was also a commodity in our particular social order. In first world countries, sick people go to doctors and hospitals. Here, of course, they have to obtain permission from financial companies who determine whether it’s profitable to allow the ill to be treated. Those other systems produce healthy people at a reasonable cost to society; ours produces billions in premiums which are then invested in toxic derivatives and such. The health schemes offered by McCain and Obama differ only in the ways in which they channel the big bucks from premium payers to the big boys on Wall Street. If you want a real health care plan, you’ll have to move to the first world.
All in all, the campaign and the “debates,” drivel duels were it not for the putrid pageantry of Palin, have comforted us amid the historical turmoil now tearing up the old order. Their message is that a young and dynamic candidate can be just as wedded to business as usual as an old and doddering one. And if our America is not business as usual even in hard times, what is it?
(To my reader: I'm heading out west for a week and a couple of days. Will be back at the blog soon thereafter)
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Conditional Chatter
Remember Regime Change?
With an electorate largely residing in the blissful valley between ignorance and indifference, it’s easy for our politicians to distract us with what the Italians call fantapolitica. The idea is to sequester the serious and liberate the ludicrous. Any triviality that can displace important issues will do. Always popular are the forms of fornication practiced by our pols when they’re not busy screwing the country. Flag burning also gets the peasants passionate about something that hardly happens and doesn’t matter.
Large among the invented inanities this year is the debate over whether we should talk to those we call our enemies without first bombing the crap out of them to set the proper tone for conversation. McCain says he won’t even meet with Prime Minister Zapatero of Spain because he suspects that NATO ally of being in lingual cahoots with Latin America. He charges Obama with near treason for considering unconditional yatter with the likes of Castro, Chavez and the dread Ahmnedinejhad.
Well, where in hell did this idiot issue come from? Everybody everywhere else talks to friends and foes as a matter of course. It’s been going on for thousands of years and it’s called diplomacy. We used to practice it as well.
But then came Regime Change. Remember it? It wasn’t so long ago. When the neocons took over our foreign policy with the selection of George W back in 2001, they began work on the ambitious goal of removing 20 or so governments around the globe that they believed to be in Washington and Wall Street’s way. There were the usual suspects like Cuba, North Korea, Syria, Iran and Iraq, and new ones like Venezuela, Ukraine, Georgia and even, for a brief, heady time, Saudi Arabia.
The neocons made the practical point that there was no reason to talk to the leaders of these lands because they soon would be dead or in exile. Since George didn’t like palavering with disobedients, let alone foreign ones, that was just fine with him. Thus commenced an era when, if George W cut you dead, it was with a sniper rifle rather than a social snub.
The Bushies were somewhat successful, notably in Ukraine and the Caucasus where they managed to install client states now making trouble for us. But they missed their major targets. Iraq is no closer to being added to our insolvent empire than it was under Saddam Hussein. Iran and Venezuela are stronger and more influential than ever in their regions. And Bush wouldn’t let the neocons go near his Saudi satraps. It soon became clear that regime change was a flop and, worse, that no enemy had ever done more lethal damage to the American empire/economy than the Bush bunch.
Like the scum in the tub after a shower, all that remains of regime change is the idiot issue of whether our presidents should precondition their palaver with our adversaries. Given the turn of events in the world, it's more likely that those adversaries will have no more interest in talking to us than we do in chatting with an empty ATM machine.
With an electorate largely residing in the blissful valley between ignorance and indifference, it’s easy for our politicians to distract us with what the Italians call fantapolitica. The idea is to sequester the serious and liberate the ludicrous. Any triviality that can displace important issues will do. Always popular are the forms of fornication practiced by our pols when they’re not busy screwing the country. Flag burning also gets the peasants passionate about something that hardly happens and doesn’t matter.
Large among the invented inanities this year is the debate over whether we should talk to those we call our enemies without first bombing the crap out of them to set the proper tone for conversation. McCain says he won’t even meet with Prime Minister Zapatero of Spain because he suspects that NATO ally of being in lingual cahoots with Latin America. He charges Obama with near treason for considering unconditional yatter with the likes of Castro, Chavez and the dread Ahmnedinejhad.
Well, where in hell did this idiot issue come from? Everybody everywhere else talks to friends and foes as a matter of course. It’s been going on for thousands of years and it’s called diplomacy. We used to practice it as well.
But then came Regime Change. Remember it? It wasn’t so long ago. When the neocons took over our foreign policy with the selection of George W back in 2001, they began work on the ambitious goal of removing 20 or so governments around the globe that they believed to be in Washington and Wall Street’s way. There were the usual suspects like Cuba, North Korea, Syria, Iran and Iraq, and new ones like Venezuela, Ukraine, Georgia and even, for a brief, heady time, Saudi Arabia.
The neocons made the practical point that there was no reason to talk to the leaders of these lands because they soon would be dead or in exile. Since George didn’t like palavering with disobedients, let alone foreign ones, that was just fine with him. Thus commenced an era when, if George W cut you dead, it was with a sniper rifle rather than a social snub.
The Bushies were somewhat successful, notably in Ukraine and the Caucasus where they managed to install client states now making trouble for us. But they missed their major targets. Iraq is no closer to being added to our insolvent empire than it was under Saddam Hussein. Iran and Venezuela are stronger and more influential than ever in their regions. And Bush wouldn’t let the neocons go near his Saudi satraps. It soon became clear that regime change was a flop and, worse, that no enemy had ever done more lethal damage to the American empire/economy than the Bush bunch.
Like the scum in the tub after a shower, all that remains of regime change is the idiot issue of whether our presidents should precondition their palaver with our adversaries. Given the turn of events in the world, it's more likely that those adversaries will have no more interest in talking to us than we do in chatting with an empty ATM machine.
Beyond the Palin
Talk This Way Last thursday, October 2, 2008, will Wiki down in history as the day that American political discourse, with its historical roots in doubletalk, descended to gibberish thanks to the perky inanities of Sarah Palin.
Will gibberish displace doubletalk the next time around, or will it just have been a way stop of the rhetorical road to skimble skamble?
I don’t think so. With Barack Obama our likely next president, I’m betting that political discourse will gravitate from gibberish to jive.
Will gibberish displace doubletalk the next time around, or will it just have been a way stop of the rhetorical road to skimble skamble?
I don’t think so. With Barack Obama our likely next president, I’m betting that political discourse will gravitate from gibberish to jive.
Monday, September 15, 2008
ScenarioThree
Scenario Three
My Two Scenarios post back on July 19 posited an Obama victory that could go either way. Now it time to add a scenario figuring a McCain victory.
The Reps openly steal the presidential election. The Dems add to their majorities in Congress. But in the name of national unity they accept McCain’s fraudulent victory.
The blatancy of the fraud is designed to produce visceral anger and massive popular protest. The Bush crowd, still in power until Jan 20 2009, unleashes the forces that have been practicing wholesale repression by conducting massive round-ups of illegal immigrants and dope mongers,
They brutally repress the protests, jailing thousands and disappearing likely leaders. The Democratic congress, with a few honorable but isolated exceptions, looks on passively. It becomes apparent that democracy is dead and lawful protest is futile.
A long night of corporate fascism commences. An underground forms. The battle continues.
My Two Scenarios post back on July 19 posited an Obama victory that could go either way. Now it time to add a scenario figuring a McCain victory.
The Reps openly steal the presidential election. The Dems add to their majorities in Congress. But in the name of national unity they accept McCain’s fraudulent victory.
The blatancy of the fraud is designed to produce visceral anger and massive popular protest. The Bush crowd, still in power until Jan 20 2009, unleashes the forces that have been practicing wholesale repression by conducting massive round-ups of illegal immigrants and dope mongers,
They brutally repress the protests, jailing thousands and disappearing likely leaders. The Democratic congress, with a few honorable but isolated exceptions, looks on passively. It becomes apparent that democracy is dead and lawful protest is futile.
A long night of corporate fascism commences. An underground forms. The battle continues.
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