Planned Statehood

I just finished reading Building a More Resilient Haitian State, a Rand Corporation report that was published in the wake of the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti. It is somewhat better than I expected it to be, since it acknowledges the destructive roles that both France and the US have played in Haitian history -- up until the election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the Presidency in 1990,

Planned Statehood

I just finished reading Building a More Resilient Haitian State, a Rand Corporation report that was published in the wake of the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti. It is somewhat better than I expected it to be, since it acknowledges the destructive roles that both France and the US have played in Haitian history -- up until the election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the Presidency in 1990,

Every Knee Shall Bow and Every Tongue Confess the Name of Nike

Today I'm reading China in Ten Words (Pantheon, 2011) by Yu Hua. Born in 1960, Yu grew up during the Cultural Revolution in conditions of moderate poverty (which means he was hungry most of the time, but not hungry enough to die of it), though both his parents were medical doctors. In these essays, he contrasts his memories of China's recent past with its drastically changed present, but he's

Every Knee Shall Bow and Every Tongue Confess the Name of Nike

Today I'm reading China in Ten Words (Pantheon, 2011) by Yu Hua. Born in 1960, Yu grew up during the Cultural Revolution in conditions of moderate poverty (which means he was hungry most of the time, but not hungry enough to die of it), though both his parents were medical doctors. In these essays, he contrasts his memories of China's recent past with its drastically changed present, but he's

"Oh, Didn't You Know I'd Been Ruined?" Said He

Right after Steve Jobs died, I did a long post which touched on the human cost of economic development in other countries, though it also applies to the US. Much like Lucy yanking the football away from Charlie Brown before he can kick it, there's a recurring pattern of excusing the inhumane treatment of workers (long hours, dangerous working conditions, low pay) by promising that things will

"Oh, Didn't You Know I'd Been Ruined?" Said He

Right after Steve Jobs died, I did a long post which touched on the human cost of economic development in other countries, though it also applies to the US. Much like Lucy yanking the football away from Charlie Brown before he can kick it, there's a recurring pattern of excusing the inhumane treatment of workers (long hours, dangerous working conditions, low pay) by promising that things will

Occupy New Delhi

I just finished reading Arundhati Roy's Broken Republic: Three Essays (Hamish Hamilton / Penguin, 2011), about the uprisings in India's forests against government-corporate depredations. The highest-profile rebels are led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist), and though Roy discusses other groups, the Maoists are her focus in this new book. In the second essay she recounts a time she spent

Occupy New Delhi

I just finished reading Arundhati Roy's Broken Republic: Three Essays (Hamish Hamilton / Penguin, 2011), about the uprisings in India's forests against government-corporate depredations. The highest-profile rebels are led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist), and though Roy discusses other groups, the Maoists are her focus in this new book. In the second essay she recounts a time she spent

In My Back Yard

The above image makes a good point, but there are some problems with it. For one thing, while there is too much hunger in the world, 99% of the population don't look like the children in the lower half. The worldwide maldistribution of wealth has as much to do with relative standards of living as with catastrophic famine, but it is really not a good idea for everyone to use as much electricity

In My Back Yard

The above image makes a good point, but there are some problems with it. For one thing, while there is too much hunger in the world, 99% of the population don't look like the children in the lower half. The worldwide maldistribution of wealth has as much to do with relative standards of living as with catastrophic famine, but it is really not a good idea for everyone to use as much electricity

Please Master

Richard Seymour (aka Lenin) posted this:As public citizens we exercise a franchise, but in the private sphere we accept bondage: the discipline of the market compels us to accept it. For most of our waking hours, we cede executive control over our bodily and mental powers to someone else – in the vain hope of one day retiring with a decent pension. Whoops, that’s gone. You’ll just have to

Please Master

Richard Seymour (aka Lenin) posted this:As public citizens we exercise a franchise, but in the private sphere we accept bondage: the discipline of the market compels us to accept it. For most of our waking hours, we cede executive control over our bodily and mental powers to someone else – in the vain hope of one day retiring with a decent pension. Whoops, that’s gone. You’ll just have to

Here Comes Everybody

Via Lenin's Tomb:I was also gratified to learn that Lenin doesn't like Zizek either.

Here Comes Everybody

Via Lenin's Tomb:I was also gratified to learn that Lenin doesn't like Zizek either.

Personal Responsibility for Thee But Not for Me

Men's rooms aren't the kind of place I associate with intellectual activity, so I was surprised today while using the facilities at the local Borders to find a debate about political economy written above one of the urinals. The only part of it I remember, aside from "SOCIALIST BULLSHIT!!" written after one contribution, was what followed:

WE DON'T MAKE PEOPLE POOR!!
WE CAN'T MAKE POOR PEOPLE HAPPY!
IT'S ABOUT PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY!

(Those last two words were underlined twice.)

The words "personal responsibility" always make me pay attention, since they usually mean other people's personal responsibility, not the speaker/writer's. But I'll begin at the beginning.

Who's the "we," I wonder? It could refer to rich people, Republicans, capitalists, whatever. I'm going to be generous, though, and let it mean "human beings." That is, the graffitist was saying that poor people aren't poor because of what other people do to them, it's because of what they do, or perhaps because of natural law: some must be at the top of society, some must be at the bottom; there's only a limited amount of wealth in the world, so if I have more, you have less, but I have more because of my natural virtue, my ability to accumulate -- because, as I once read in an article by the philosopher Antony Flew, wealth just naturally concentrates in fewer and fewer hands over time.

It may be that I misunderstand social construction theory, but I always thought that its point was that phenomena which people consider Just Natural can often be shown to be the result of social forces, decisions and actions of people rather than impersonal nature. It's easy to see the appeal of passing all the blame off on Mother Nature, but it doesn't really matter whether poverty is natural or not. There are any number of natural phenomena that human beings refuse to accept: death, which we try to postpone as long as possible; the courses of rivers and tides, which we try to dam or divert; nudity, which most cultures cover to a greater or lesser extent; and so on. In the end, apologists for the status quo generally contradict themselves: on one hand, the poor are responsible for their poverty because they are inferior or make bad choices, while the rich are either not responsible for their wealth because they are naturally superior, or superior because they made good choices, but those choices have nothing to do with the kind of society in which they live.

Even if it is true that wealth naturally concentrates in fewer hands over time, there is no reason why we should let it do so. We might not succeed in stopping that process altogether, any more than we can stop the tides, but we don't have to let it continue unimpeded either. (Speaking of the tides, a proverb that was popularized by Ronald Reagan, "A rising tide lifts all boats," is commonly used to argue that making the rich richer will also enrich the poor. (Notice the fictional graphs in that post.) If true, it would work both ways -- help the poor and you'll help the rich -- but it isn't true. Looking around the Web, I see that Obama and numerous Obama supporters have invoked the phrase, which does none of them any credit.

As it happens, certain economic and business policies can make people poor. We've seen it up close in the past few years, after all. If irresponsible lending policies lead to a large number of mortgage foreclosures, for example, many people will lose their homes, their standard of living may drop, and there will be more poor people around. If "free trade" policies encourage employers to replace well-paid jobs with poorly-paid, no-benefits jobs, then the number of poor people will increase. If they had medical insurance but lose it because of job loss, not only is their quality of life degraded, they may have to bankrupt themselves to settle medical debts. If a country with a substantial social safety net eliminates those social programs under pressure from international financial bodies like the International Monetary Fund, then poverty increases; that is, people who previously had not been poor become poor. Not everyone is impoverished, of course; the scum continue to float to the top, like those supposedly rising boats.

True, there are adults who can't seem to manage their economic lives -- they can't hold jobs for long, can't manage their money, couldn't study for long enough to get a job that would pay them more. There is, however, no reason why children should be punished for their parents' incapacity or mistakes. This is why we have public education, public health care, aid to dependent children, and other programs which are meant to help children primarily or in large part.

This reminds me an anecdote Wendy Kaminer tells in the introduction to her book True Love Waits (Addison-Wesley, 1996). The editor of the National Review asked her to write a book review. She protested that she's "an old-fashioned liberal," and he reassured that it was okay, because she's "sensible."

"But you don't understand," I explained. "I believe in the welfare state. People think I'm conservative because there are messages about self-reliance in my work, and I value self-reliance, but I don't expect it of children." There was a long pause. He stopped reassuring me that I was sensible.

Of course, there still have to be jobs waiting for those children when they grow up and complete their schooling, and because of the choices that American leaders have made, such jobs can't be taken for granted nowadays, as in many periods of American history. But there's no reason to believe, thanks to past experience, that the supply of jobs can't be improved by human planning and effort.

"We can't make poor people happy"? I'll go along with that, but only because we can't make rich people happy either. We can make it easier for people to work on their happiness, and this too is not the work of Nature. Some people no doubt will be unhappy no matter what we do, but that doesn't mean we aren't responsible for making a society where people can seek it. Or, harking back to the Declaration of Independence, to pursue it. Many conservatives try to evade this phrase by saying that the Declaration doesn't guarantee happiness, only our right to pursue it; but such a right is meaningless in a society which blocks off the pathways to happiness to all but the elite. I'll settle for a society in which no one goes hungry, or lacks medical care or access to education; happiness is up to them. (See, I believe in "self-reliance" too.)

Which brings me back to personal responsibility. Again, in discussions of wealth and poverty that term is almost always thrown at those below the uppermost ranks. We hear very little from the bankers and financiers, the politicians who deregulated our financial system with such disastrous consequences, about their responsibility for the outcome. On the contrary, they demanded rescue from the deluge, and on their terms. Their companies must not be permitted to fail, the taxpayers must bail them out, but the taxpayers must not be permitted any control as a result. The financiers must not only not lose their jobs, they must keep the bonuses they were promised, even in the face of their failure. They must be allowed to continue the practices that brought about the collapse, with the likely outcome that there will be more collapses in the future. But it's not their fault, they insist: it's the inherent (that is, natural) risks of our economic system. No one is responsible, except perhaps the worthless, overpaid American workers whose labor costs them so unconscionably much. Indeed, the whole purpose of incorporation is to limit liability as much as possible. To use the words "personal responsibility" in the context of capitalism is completely ... well, irresponsible.

Personal Responsibility for Thee But Not for Me

Men's rooms aren't the kind of place I associate with intellectual activity, so I was surprised today while using the facilities at the local Borders to find a debate about political economy written above one of the urinals. The only part of it I remember, aside from "SOCIALIST BULLSHIT!!" written after one contribution, was what followed:WE DON'T MAKE PEOPLE POOR!!WE CAN'T MAKE POOR PEOPLE

Personal Responsibility for Thee But Not for Me

Men's rooms aren't the kind of place I associate with intellectual activity, so I was surprised today while using the facilities at the local Borders to find a debate about political economy written above one of the urinals. The only part of it I remember, aside from "SOCIALIST BULLSHIT!!" written after one contribution, was what followed:WE DON'T MAKE PEOPLE POOR!!WE CAN'T MAKE POOR PEOPLE

Celebritize Me

The trailer for Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story is now online, and it occurs to me that the teabaggers, the birthers, and the town hall clowns should be asked what they think about Michael Moore now. Hasn't he been saying all along what they are now saying -- that corporate America feeds like a vampire on the mass of the American people, and that the government enables them with billions in taxpayer money? That it's time to stand up and put a stop to the madness? Where have they been for the twenty years since Roger and Me was released? Why, complaining (or jeering) that Michael Moore is fat, of course.

Granted, it will be very difficult to get them to speak coherently about such things. As Roy Edroso writes,

It could be that these folks haven't thought any more deeply about it than their comments reveal. Maybe AP didn't talk to them long enough to find out what's really driving them. Or maybe message discipline has something to do with it: When the anti-Obama "tea party" movement held its first New York event back in February, many people stepped up to the bullhorn to denounce the socialism, Shariah law, and Hitlerism of the Obama administration. At the next, much larger, New York event, the few citizen-speakers who made it to the stage were carefully guided by the organizers; the more professional speakers who dominated put the ix-nay on the ocialism-say, and focused on "entrepreneurship," "out-of-control" spending, and the like.

That's my problem. I'm sympathetic to people who are critical of Big Gummint, but when all they've got to fill out their critique is the lies we've been hearing -- Kenya, Hitler, Ayatollah Obama, and death panels -- with a serene refusal to recognize just how much they love all kinds of Big Gummint programs -- not just Social Security and Medicare, but public schools, public highways, public libraries and public space in which to hold their teabag rallies -- and without much in the way of substantial criticism to balance the lies, then I'm not inclined to join their party. The people Hitler appealed to, after all, had their own good reasons for being dissatisfied; even better reasons, very possibly, like hyperinflation and unemployment rates that far outrun anything the US has to face ... yet. Still, they preferred to blame the Jews and the Communists for their problems. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

I'm pleased to notice that Glenn Greenwald seems to be less worried than he used to be about being on the margins. Now that Tom Ridge has said aloud that the Bush administration manipulated terror alerts to keep the populace scared, nice mainstream journalists are floundering, just as they have been about the War on Terror generally. It turns out that the fringe leftist hippie conspiracy theorists were right all along, so they must have been right for the wrong reasons. Greenwald cites Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic, who

acknowledges that Bush critics were right that the terror alerts were being manipulated for political ends (he has no choice but to acknowledge that now that Ridge admits it), but still says journalists like himself were right to scorn such critics "because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence." As always: even when the dirty leftist hippies are proven right, they're still Shrill, unSerious Losers who every decent person and "journalist" scorns.

Ambinder has retracted the "gut hatred" bit, but left the rest of his claim intact. As Greenwald points out, "gut hatred" isn't really the problem. The trouble is Ambinder's admission that, "living as we do in a Democratic [sic] system, most journalists are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt, even having learned lessons about giving the government that benefit". In other words, despite having had their faces rubbed in government lies, most journalists are going to keep coming back for more. So, apparently, will the people who read or watch these journalists.

My only complaint about Greenwald's discussion is that he harks back to a day when "Distrusting the statements and actions of government leaders was once the central value of our political system and of basic journalism." There was not ever such a day, as far as I know. Greenwald mentions I. F. Stone and his dictum that all governments lie, forgetting that Stone was a pariah among respectable journalists -- the exception, not the rule.

Still, Greenwald is making progress. Today's post starts from a Paul Krugman column. Greenwald says:

More than any betrayal on a specific issue, it is Obama's seeming eagerness to serve the interests of those who have "run Washington for far too long" -- not as a result of what he has failed to accomplish, but as a result of what he has affirmatively embraced -- that is causing what Krugman today describes as a loss of trust in Obama from those who once trusted him most. This approach is not only producing heinous outcomes, but is politically self-destructive as well. In a superb post the other day, Digby recounted what fueled the Naderite movement in 2000 and warns, presciently I think, that the willingness of Obama/Emanuel so blatantly to disappoint those to whom they promised so much (especially young and first-time voters who were most vulnerable to Obama's transformative fairy dust) will lead them either to support a third party or turn off from politics altogether:

Rahm Emanuel believes that the key to Democratic success is a coalition in which Blue Dogs and corporate lackeys mitigate progressive change on behalf of the moneyed interests which he believes the political system must serve. Regardless of his malevolent view of how the political system should work, on a political level, I think he's living in the past. . . .

But on a political level, the left has been betrayed over and over again on the things that matter to us the most. The village is pleased, I'm sure. But the Democratic party only needs to look back eight short years to see just how destructive it is to constantly tell their left flank to go fuck themselves. . . .

At the time [in 2000] nobody believed that an incumbent Vice President in a roaring economy would have a race so close that the Republicans could steal it. But we know differently now don't we? And you would think that the Democratic establishment would also know that because of that, it may not be a good idea to alienate the left to the point where they become apathetic or even well... you know. It can happen. It did happen. Why the Democrats persist in believing that it can't happen again is beyond me. . .

Obama mobilized a whole lot of young people who have great expectations and disappointing them could lead to all sorts of unpleasant results. Success is about more than simply buying off some congressional liberals or pleasing the village. It's worth remembering that a third party run from the left is what created the conditions for eight long years of Republican governance that pretty much wrecked this country.

After 2000, what is it going to take for the Democrats to realize that constantly using their base as a doormat is not a good idea? It only takes a few defections or enough people staying home to make a difference. And there are people on the left who have proven they're willing to do it. The Democrats are playing with fire if they think they don't have to deliver anything at all to their liberal base --- and abandoning the public option, particularly in light of what we already know about the bailouts and the side deals, may be what breaks the bond.

It's really not too much to ask that they deliver at least one thing the left demands, it really isn't. And it's not going to take much more of this before their young base starts looking around for someone to deliver the hope and change they were promised.

Of course, what Greenwald and Digby are describing here is simply the Democratic Leadership Council's program to win power from the Republicans by appropriating their policies. This program gave us Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and the other Democratic Presidential candidates of the past twenty years. From a strictly Realpolitik point of view, it's unexceptionable; from the point of view of the great majority of Americans, it's totally objectionable. Someone needs to find a way to break the hold the DLC has over the Democratic Party. But national politics is a very expensive business, and the DLC's partnership with the corporate bloc means that they will be able to outspend any foreseeable challengers. Obama had gone over to the Dark Side by the time he ran for the Senate, which is why we dirty hippie leftist conspiracy theorists have not been surprised by his conduct as President. He raised a lot of money from the netroots, but he couldn't have won the election if he hadn't gotten the support of the national party and its corporate donors. Which brings me to Greenwald's other important point:

Indeed, as I've written many times, "trust" is appropriate for one's friends, loved ones, family members and the like -- but not for politicians. That's what John Adams meant when he said: "There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." "All" means "all" and "none" means "none."

But that's not how our political culture works generally. Our politics have become entirely celebretized. Political discussions typically resemble junior high chatter about one's most adored and despised actors: filled with adolescent declarations of whether someone "likes" and "trusts" this politician or "dislikes" that one. "I trust Obama" has long been a common refrain among his most loyal supporters. The fact that, as Krugman says, that is much less true now is quite significant, even if "trust" is an inappropriate emotion in the first place to feel towards any political official.

Here too Greenwald can't keep from appealing to an American lost innocence that never was. American politics has always been "celebritized," with politicians running on image more than substance. George Washington, the Father of His Country; Abe Lincoln the Rail Splitter from Illinois. But the main point, that trust is not appropriate for politicians, is gold. It's easy to entertain a healthy skepticism toward guys from the other team; what's hard, but utterly necessary, is to be just as skeptical about one's own candidate.

Celebritize Me

The trailer for Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story is now online, and it occurs to me that the teabaggers, the birthers, and the town hall clowns should be asked what they think about Michael Moore now. Hasn't he been saying all along what they are now saying -- that corporate America feeds like a vampire on the mass of the American people, and that the government enables them with

Celebritize Me

The trailer for Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story is now online, and it occurs to me that the teabaggers, the birthers, and the town hall clowns should be asked what they think about Michael Moore now. Hasn't he been saying all along what they are now saying -- that corporate America feeds like a vampire on the mass of the American people, and that the government enables them with