Dictatorship Made Easy

One of us here at American Samizat suggested some months ago that the Bush Administration attack on Iraq, and in fact its basic response to 9-11, would reverberate throughout the world, emboldening new violence from friend as well as foe. The evidence of this sad unfolding continues its deadly march.

Allies most conspicuous in their frequent, continuing and escalating assertion of the right to various new violent policies have been Israel and Russia. Israel's attack on Syria is the latest instance. It may have been a single attack on a terrorist base, but it shattered the precedents that had limited violence in the region, with consequences that could be extremely dire. The U.S. had little choice but to agree that Israel could attack a sovereign nation in order to fight terrorism.

The point is not that any specific move is or isn't justified by circumstances. But that violent reaction is now the first reaction, a first resort rather than only with the most extreme justification. Iraq did that, and so did the response to 9-11, a combination of cynical exploitation and giving in to the reflex of fear, a sad abdication of leadership and an even sadder abdication of the people's responsibilities in a republic.

Israel is not the only instance. In moves that have not made conspicuous headlines here, Russia has recently asserted its right to preemptive strikes on other countries, and it has followed the Bush administration in considering the use of so-called battlefield nuclear weapons. While the U.S. has in fact used weapons in Iraq that push closer to the definition of nuclear, and the Bush administration wants to pursue several avenues of research into smaller scale nuclear weapons, Russia has suggested it might actually use battlefield nukes. But about the only people who noticed were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the city governments protested such a policy.

There is little that the U.S. can say about other nations breaking peaceful precedents or consensual restraints without being more obviously hypocritical than usual. The Bush administration is encouraging a more violent, more dangerous world.

George Orwell pointed out that what dictatorships require more than anything else is an enemy. That includes dictatorships of the proletariat, and this brazen attempted dictatorship of the oligarchy. But what the Bush administration is creating is a world of enemies. All the better to scare you with, my dears.

Stanley Crouch points out that the real lesson of the death camps is often missed, and it is that a supposedly educated, advanced, modern society is not automatically saved by those conditions from committing acts of genocidal barbarism. This may be the greatest country in the history of the world and all that, but that's no guarantee of virtue or self-knowledge.

Let's get a little perspective here. Nearly a month after a hurricane brushed by, one of the wealthiest communities in the world (in suburban Virginia) is still without telephone service. Millions of people were without electricity for days and some for weeks. These and other accidents and acts of nature reveal vulnerabilities that aren't likely to be addressed by bombing people in foreign countries. Our homeland isn't even secure against hurricanes, let alone terrorism. In our homes we are not secure against illness or unemployment. At the same time the health care system is falling apart because the health insurance system is crazed and collapsing under its own weight, it is more and more acceptable morally, culturally and socially for medical care to be denied those who need it but can't pay, and for those who can't get decently paying work or any work at all to slip into homelessness from the middle class in a matter of months.

Out of fear and self-righteous denial, lost in a televised delusion, we are becoming a cruel and callous people. We may wallow in our sentimental attachment to the television tragedy of the hour, but we are numbed to the crises around us. As long as we are distracted by speed and yoked to the chariots of fashion as we cycle endlessly through the maze of earn and spend, blind to our real motivations and the consequences of our public attitudes and actions, we will continue to be so easy to manipulate that dictatorship may as well be automated, carried out by computer chips in every appliance of our lives.

Can they recall?

In little more than 24 hours, the CA polls will open for the recall election. What will voters be thinking about? Will they recall the reasons so many thought Bush was more likable than Gore and therefore should be president, because 4 years of him on TV would be easier to stomach? Or that there was really no difference between Bush and Gore so it didn't matter which one you voted for, or especially if you voted for someone else?

Do they recall that when they took out their frustrations on their ballots, the U.S. was at peace, and the federal government had huge surpluses predicted into the indefinite future--enough to fix social security and Medicare and redress the inequities and injustices and meet the federal responsibilities pretty much everybody agrees on, but that the Reagan-Bush era bled of funding?

Arnold was a bad idea before, and for California, quite possibly a tragic idea. Now of course it's worse. On Sunday the allegations against him virtually disappeared from TV news. But to read a detailed story about even the latest round (which brings the number of women lodging accusations to 15) is to be convinced that there's something really wrong here.

Hold your nose, California, and vote against recall. Vote for Bustamante. Despite the conventional wisdom, which is puzzling at best, that he has run a bad campaign, he remains the most viable, honorable and most attractive candidate. He'd probably make a better governor than Davis. He'd certainly shake things up, and the issues would be defined for all to see, instead of this murky muddiness coming out of Sacramento.

But what we definitely don't want is the kind of whim and denial in the voting booth that gave us Bush, war, confusion, billions of dollars of debt and responsibilities way into the future, crippling our own country, causing untold suffering and hardship, and leaving us more vulnerable than ever.

Unfortunately this sorry circus probably won't even be over soon---the vote counting may turn into another extended nightmare. Yet as weird as this campaign has been (when the guy who promoted the recall ends up advising people to vote against recalling Davis, and one of the candidates drops out and throws her support against the recall) this isn't virtual reality. What happens Tuesday will have real consequences for real people throughout California, the U.S. and the world. As well as for the world that will face beings not yet born.

Fairness

In the last frenzied weekend of the recall campaign, the Arnold army is screaming that he isn't being treated fairly. Arnold is being accused of a variety of possibly criminal acts, allegedly committed at various times and in various places over the past thirty years. As of Saturday, the number of women publicly making these charges reached 11. The election is Tuesday.

The rhetoric on both sides heated up, with Governor Davis suggesting some of the alleged offenses are of a criminal nature, and likely to distract a governor from governing the state. At the same time, Arnold charged that Davis was behind these "dirty campaign" tactics, and his campaign manager fumed that the L.A. Times was politically motivated, and not fit to own a printing press.

The Los Angeles Times newspaper, which broke these stories, claims it printed them as soon as they were deemed ready, using ordinary professional journalistic standards. Arnold's opponents claim they are not the sources of the stories, nor has any evidence surfaced that they are.

A barrage of such charges so close to election day allows little time for point by point refutation, and unleashing them at this time certainly seems unfair. But the entire recall process is unfair. Apart from its basic injustice, especially when it resembles a prosecution of a duly elected governor on unspecified crimes, the recall does not follow the normal rules of elections. The Arnold campaign didn't balk at the comparatively short period of campaigning when it was to Arnold's advantage.

As a major celebrity, Arnold had an easy time promoting his candidacy. Major media was quivering at his feet. His visibility and celebrity persona behind a feckless but focus group tested emotional message moved the polls. Together with the money this celebrity and this apparently foregone coronation attracted, his millions bought still more air time for slick celebrity commercials. There was not very much time to look at his ideas, his policies, his past, and his fitness for office. Millions got a chance to see and hear him. No one got a chance to know him.

In a normal campaign cycle, these allegations might well have surfaced weeks or months before the election. The Arnold people must have hoped they would outrun this barrage. They didn't quite make it. Arnold may still become governor, but it's not clear he could govern.

Still, there is another issue of fairness that is quite troubling. Last week the polls seemed to indicate that Arnold would win. Someone interpreted the numbers to a single story line: it was an Arnold vs. Davis race. This despite the actual poll numbers which showed Governor Davis being recalled by a margin greater than that between Arnold and his main challenger, Cruz Bustamante.

This so-called campaign began with a media blitz of Arnold images. Despite that first barrage, early polls showed Bustamante ahead. He was actually seen on television news and interview programs a few times after that. Then new polls showed Arnold ahead, and Cruz completely disappeared. Even after these allegations became news, the pictures were still of Arnold and occasionally of Davis. Bustamante had to be content with debating the other Republican on state PBS stations.

Cruz Bustamante is Latino. He has been criticized for championing, and being supported by, California Indian casinos. In a week that saw a powerful white male media creation get booted from a sports show for a "racially insensitive" (and pretty stupid) comment concerning a black quarterback, there was no visible awareness of the racial implications of this campaign and how it is covered.

But even apart from issues of fairness concerning race, there are basic issues of fairness in covering elections. As electronic media in this country grew, a civic culture that treated elections as serious matters and news as important, together with laws and FCC regulations such as "equal time" provisions and the Fairness Doctrine, generally ensured as a matter of course that the major candidates would get fair and more or less equal treatment. There would be some attempt at balance, and it was likely that on every news report, what each major candidate said and did that day would be reported. On television, pictures of one candidate would invariably be followed by pictures of the other.

As limited as it was (especially on non-major candidates) all of that is gone now. The basic fairness necessary for fair elections has been sacrificed to the same market-driven, celebrity-dependent and sensationalist priorities as rule entertainment and commercials.

The Reagan era death of the Fairness Doctrine has permitted the wholesale takeover of radio and cable TV talk by self-righteous, self-promoting rabid right know-it-alls. The wholesale takeover of broadcasting frequencies and cable bandwidth by a handful of conglomerates keeps discourse within profitable bounds. They have all learned how to push the glandular fight-or-flight buttons of the public, and so they compete for the highest numbers with lowest common denominator violence seasoned with eye-candy and brain-nicotine.

After all those sweaty monosyllabic epics, Arnold the Barbarian should have figured out by now that he who lives by the sword can die by the sword after the next commercial.

Arnold Inflames Racism Against California Indians: Not To Be

We thought it would be classism that defined the California recall campaign, but maybe we were wrong. It's turning out to be racism.

We thought that Bustamante's call to tax the rich and the corporations at higher rates would inspire the traditional Republican reflex, always done with a straight face, of charging "class warfare." Instead, we've got Arnold, the Aryan strongman, inciting race warfare. And he's doing it with great success, it seems.

It's really the only explanation for the traction he's getting by making false charges against American Indians and the casinos that some tribes operate. It is of course true that the casinos provide money for these tribes to contribute to politicians, just as corporations provide money to contribute to politicians. But we don't hear about corporations or the rich having undue influence, or not paying their fair share to the state government. We hear Arnold braying his false charges about the tribes not contributing, even though they do pay millions of dollars directly to the state, as well as relieving the state of millions of dollars more they would be spending for social services and schools and health in a number of communities.

Arnold, who makes his money in one branch of entertainment, is pandering to the guilt involved in a different form of entertainment. The kind of people who gamble are not much different from the kind of people who go to Arnold's movies, but actors are no longer considered innately sinful.

Most non-Indians don't understand what the relationship of tribes is to the state government, to local communities or to the federal government. It is admittedly a complex set of relationships, but Arnold is exploiting that lack of understanding. He's lying, but it's a lie that plays to prejudices derived from ignorance. Focus group tested pandering, no doubt.

Behind this ignorance, feeding these prejudices, is the oldest form of racism in California's history. It is racism against American Indians. In the past it resulted in Indian slavery, in massacres both notorious and unheralded, in policies of extermination, in cultural destruction, in the all-American genocide. It continues to result in injustices every day of the week. This racism is exhibited in the habit of turning Indian reservations into toxic waste dumps, as well as in apparently "small" ways such as racist names and logos for sports teams like the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians, that would not for a moment be tolerated if they involved any other ethnic group.

So it is this racism that may tip the balance. (Interesting that the media swallows whole the rabid right vocabulary: repeating the "inciting class warfare" line, but calling racism "playing the race card." Why don't they call it "inciting race warfare" and "playing the class card"?)

It makes sense in that unconscious racism is of a piece with the appeal to the undifferentiated anger towards everybody in government for the mess we're in, as if "sending a message" is what voters are actually going to be responsible for doing in the recall election. They are apparently poised to lose their minds and go with their raw rage, and then find themselves with a governor who must lead and make decisions. And nobody has the first clue as to what he will do. Will he gut Medicaid to balance the budget? We have absolutely no idea.

His big appeal is hollow in terms of policy. There is in fact nothing a governor can do to force Indian tribes to cough up more money---that's a fantasy on the order of sending Arnold over to Iraq to clean up the Taliban in ninety-five minutes, while we munch popcorn and cheer.

Arnold seems to think that the governor's job is promotion. Wonder where he got that idea? He's been watching too many old Ronald Reagan G.W. Bush cowboy movies. He's also made it clear that promoting is how you make something "successful" (like bodybuilding) and anything you say can be morally justified if it is done to promote something.

In one of his movies (which he promotes along with his campaign) he recites the famous Hamlet line as he decides whether or not to kill the "bad" guy. To be or not to be? Not to be, he concludes. That's the quality of his solution. It's very satisfying. It isn't real.

Apparently a lot of Californians want to get rid of "the bad guy," or at least the only one they can in this election (polls also show that legislators, Republican as well as Democrat, are as unpopular as Governor Gray Davis). They are currently being aided and abetted by the media that has been promoting Arnold relentlessly, and now seems breathless in anticipation of a star quality governor with media savvy handlers who will provide them with great video and magazine covers.

The problem isn't getting rid of the bad guy. The problem is having a governor who can govern, and electing that governor--even in the sham of a recall election no longer supported by the man who started it---on the basis of policies and political abilities. What are Arnold's policies? Are they based on oversimplified and distorted information as are the few statements he has let slip concerning what he would actually do as governor? What are his political, as distinguished from promotional and "acting" abilities? We don't know that either. The question to be or not to be may hinge on the question of whether enough Californians care about what we know and what we don't know.

There's still a week to go. The election itself may still hinge on turnout. But if the media blitz for Arnold and the accompanying perception that the only choice is Davis or Arnold (though Cruz Bustamante is within eight poll points of Arnold, he has utterly disappeared from media reporting) combine to discourage union and Latino voters and real Democrats from voting, then California will enter its own nightmare. (Another California nightmare would be if Bustamante loses by a vote total equivalent to the Green Party candidate's total.) It will only amplify the national nightmare--let;s face it, the global nightmare---of the Bush administration, and not just for Californians.

A White House divided

At the moment of this musing, there is a furor over the outing of a CIA undercover operative, who happened to be the wife of a turncoat Bush I appointee who represented the U.S. in Iraq during Gulf War I but who recently has criticized Bush II and Gulf War II. Someone described so far only as a "senior Administration official" named the name to columnist Robert Novak and perhaps five or six other journalists, violating federal law. This is high crimes stuff, as well as being the latest hoist by their own petard turnabout for the Bushies, for it seems the motivation of the outing was to intimidate and punish a supposed political traitor, the kind of vicious "hardball" that's become a standard weapon in the arsenal of the self-righteous rabid right.

But what makes this additionally interesting is how it might relate to earlier evidence of a White House cracking and splitting under pressure.


At first the main publicized conflict was State v. Defense, the big rivalry in the Bush administration, though Iraq proved that to be less than a drama hungry press made it out to be. There was something called "The White House" that choose actions and policies from those offered by the moderate internationalist State or the American Empire rabid rightists of Defense and Justice, like items off a mix and match menu.

But in the quagmire phase of the Iraqi occupation, the central control of the White House seems to be unraveling, and the entity itself is showing fractures. It used to be the Bush-Cheney White House, with Bush the on-air personality and marketing guy, and Cheney the invisible string-puller from his undisclosed location behind and above the stage.

The first major sign of a serious divide, though little noted at the time, was the public repudiation by the Bush wing of v.p. Cheney's contention that Saddam and the Iraqis were implicated in 9-11 terrorism. This could indicate that while the Bush people aren't backing off the course previously set in Iraq, they aren't anxious to continue the headlong rush to defeat the axis of evil, the suicidal recklessness of which must be obvious even to them by now. At the very least it was cautioning to the Cheney wing to not get publicly ahead of the Bush line.

This, as well as GW's smug challenge for anyone with information on who told who what concerning the CIA exposure to come forward, suggests that the revenge play originated with the Cheney people, either in the White House or elsewhere in the government.

While we may yet see a sacrificial lamb offer itself up, we may also be looking at the possibility of a Cheney withdrawal from the 04 ticket, for health reasons. But even if it plays out very differently, these signs suggest a White House divided against itself. Meanwhile, the Iraq situation deteriorates, Bush's big UN speech didn't get him any international help, the U.S. armed forces are getting restive over the dithering and wasted by the strain of being overcommitted, American voters are wondering why Iraq schools are getting money and U.S. schools are being bled. Meanwhile, the poverty rate has gone up for the second year in a row, confidence in the economy is down, and the number of Americans without health insurance jumped last year by the highest percentage since the last time the Republicans lost the White House. It's a time for action in the public interest, and this White House, incapable of such so far on ideological grounds, may be too divided to respond even if it wanted to.

The Political Moment

As dangerous as things have been in general, this is perhaps the most dangerous moment. The Bush administration is starting to self-destruct, with public squabbles and distancing (repudiations of vp Cheney’s demagogic insistence that Iraq was behind 9-11). Bush has never been weaker, with a very public perception that he doesn’t have a clue what to do next, about Iraq or the economy. The chickens are coming home, and while that is more or less inevitable, it’s an invitation to desperation on the part of an administration not known for moderation or even good sense.

It’s a good bet for instance that the heat is on the exploited soldiers in Iraq. They are likely under intense pressure to distract the world with a win, like getting Saddam. It’s going to get more Americans killed, and a lot more Iraqis.

It's a moment in which desperate people with no concern greater than their political power (so they can keep their corporate sponsors happy) may do truly desperate things. Suddenly a new military confrontation somewhere. As adversaries smell disarray, they may do something just provocative enough to excuse big violence. The first official use of atomic weapons since World War II is not beyond this Bush bunch. That'll get people back to where they want them: shocked and awed.

Because the chickens are not only coming home, they’re talking, and squawking. The U.S. Conference of Mayors pointedly pointed out that two years after 9-11, fully 90% of American cities have not received federal funds to take effective measures against terrorism. Homeland Security is a fraud.

Speaking of frauds, the most straightforward charge of such concerning the war in Iraq came from Senator Ted Kennedy last week. The response to his unminced statements was especially desperate. Media pundits implied he was drunk. Republican leaders charged him with personal hate filled attacks, noting that he had more bad things to say about Bush than about Saddam. Then their rabid right minions renewed their standard personal attacks on Kennedy, with references both veiled and open to his weight and of course Chapaquidick. So longer ago now its spelling has fled, but the rabid right has long ago enshrined it as one of the articles of faith.

It’s also quite interesting that what he actually said was less reported than the reactions to it. The best a google search could do was the AP report, from a newspaper in Tapei. If you’re interested, that AP report follows.

On the homefront meanwhile, it's been reported that after a two year decline, the wealth of the wealthiest Americans is once again on the rise. It jumped 10% this year. The Bush tax cuts are having their intended effect, it seems. Meanwhile add "jobless recovery" to your vocabulary. What's next--the return of Stagflation?


ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORT

The case for going to war against Iraq was a fraud "made up in Texas" to give Republicans a political boost, Senator Edward Kennedy said on Thursday.
In an interview, Kennedy also said the Bush administration has failed to account for nearly half of the US$4 billion the war is costing each month. He said he believes much of the unaccounted-for money is being used to bribe foreign leaders to send in troops.
He called the Bush administration's current Iraq policy "adrift."
The White House declined to comment on Thursday.
The Massachusetts Democrat also expressed doubts about how serious a threat Saddam Hussein posed to the US in its battle against terrorism. He said administration officials relied on "distortion, misrepresentation, a selection of intelligence" to justify their case for war.
"There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud," Kennedy said.
Kennedy said a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office showed that only about US$2.5 billion of the US$4 billion being spent monthly on the war can be accounted for by the Bush administration.
"My belief is this money is being shuffled all around to these political leaders in all parts of the world, bribing them to send in troops," he said.
Of the US$87 billion in new money requested by President George W. Bush for the war, Kennedy said the administration should be required to report back to the Congress to account for the spending.
"We want to support our troops because they didn't make the decision to go there ... but I don't think it should be open-ended. We ought to have a benchmark where the administration has to come back and give us a report," he added.
Kennedy said the focus on Iraq has drawn the nation's attention away from more direct threats, including al-Qaeda, instability in Afghanistan or the nuclear ambitions of North Korea.

Star Trek Episode 34,495: Where No Nation Has Gone Before


"So Spock, where are we?"
"We are on Earth, Captain. But the more interesting question is, when are we?"
"What? We've traveled through time as well as space?"
"Yes, Captain. If we were in fact caught in a Converse Warp superfragment, that would indeed be the effect."
"Here---this looks like an information device. Yes, it displays images. If you can match these images with the historical data base patched through your tricorder--"
"We can ascertain the exact time period."
"Look there! The date is on the screen. September 7, 2003. Early twenty-first century! It appears to be a presidential address. Yes, look--President Al Gore."
"Fascinating."
"But wasn't Al Gore the losing candidate?"
"Indeed, Captain. He won the popular vote but lost the election through a decision of the Supreme Court. At least, in our timeline."
"You mean?"
"Yes. It seems we were caught in an Obverse Warp Superfragment. Therefore we traveled through space and time and into an entirely different timeline."
"In which Al Gore became President!"
"I believe this button controls the sound, Captain."
"Well turn it up, Spock, turn it up!"

"---the extraordinary events of these past few weeks, the revelations of improprieties, the resignations from the Supreme Court, the unprecedented suit brought before the reconstituted court that led to the reversal of the 2000 decision, the elimination of Florida's electoral votes resulting in my election to the presidency. Yet our nation has endured, and our system worked.

But now, my fellow Americans, to the task at hand. My predecessor launched an attack on the nation of Iraq in the mistaken belief that America was in imminent peril from weapons of mass destruction. This turned out not to be the case. I have therefore ordered a full review of our intelligence apparatus.

Our military power did depose a brutal dictator in a region of the world that is, for better and usually for worse, important to our national interests. The United States cannot send its military might to change every brutal regime in the world, and we will not. But what's done is done, and we start from this point, and move forward.

Together with Secretary of State Clinton, Secretary of Defense Wesley Clark and United Nations Ambassador Mario Cuomo, I have conferred with our NATO allies and members of the UN Security Council. Together we have put forward a plan for the reconstruction of Iraq, the return of self-rule to the Iraqi people and the withdrawal of occupying forces.

The first step will be the withdrawal of half the American and British forces now in Iraq, effective within three months. At the same time, United Nations peacekeepers will more than make up the numbers of withdrawing troops, although their duties will be somewhat different.

Second, a United Nations team will assist in a speedy inventory of the most pressing needs of Iraq, as well as a full inventory of the direct damage to that nation's infrastructure caused by the war. It is important for Americans to know that Iraq is a nation with the expertise, talent and desire to rebuild itself. Iraqi professionals-engineers, managers, scientists, builders, industrialists-will be involved in this inventory. When it is completed, Iraqi professionals will be contacted for estimates of what they need to repair and rebuild their country's bridges, electrical and water systems, and other needed infrastructure. When those estimates are completed, the United States will deposit with the United Nations a sum of money, including long-term loans, sufficient to cover the estimated costs. This reconstruction fund will be a large part of our commitment to Iraq.

Third, the United States will assist the United Nations in reconstituting the basic security and social infrastructure of Iraq-its courts and police, its fire departments, and medical systems, its systems of care for those who most need help and cannot help themselves.

Fourth, the United States will assist the United Nations in developing a process for returning the government of Iraq to its people within two years. We expect this will be a gradual process, but it will have a timetable, and be governed by the general principle of maximum participation by Iraqi citizens at each stage, until Iraq is a self-governing nation.

It is important for the American people to understand from the beginning that we cannot direct or control the political destiny of Iraq. We hope this process can be peaceful, but we cannot guarantee that it will be. There are many factions and many rivalries that the repressive regime of Saddam kept in check by brutal force. We will assist the transitional authority and, if we are asked, the provisional Iraqi government, in maintaining security, but only within that two year time period. We will no longer send our sons and daughters into situations for which they are unprepared, for which they are not trained, and frankly, where they-where we-- do not belong.

As part of our proposal, the United Nations agrees to permit two large military bases in Iraq, one for American forces, one for British forces, during this transitional period. We will pull back most of our remaining troops to our base. We will negotiate for a continuing presence in the region with the provisional government, and if necessary the elected government of Iraq. Britain, by its own choice, will withdraw all its forces from the region by the end of the two-year period.

In view of this plan, and to support certain special needs at home, I am asking Congress to allocate an additional $87 billion. Part of that amount will go to the military, to increase pay and medical and veteran's benefits. Part of it will go to the reconstruction fund for Iraq, part of it to the United Nations effort. A large part of it will be devoted to completely revamping our homeland security. This is where our attention belongs. Our infrastructure remains vulnerable. We must change that. Our cities are without adequate resources to do what needs to be done. We must change that.

As part of our enhanced homeland security, as well as our intelligence review, I will ask Congress to repeal most provisions of the so-called Patriot's Act, which not only abrogate the very rights that define us as Americans, but have given government a set of expensive, misguided and ultimately fruitless tasks. We can't afford this cynical exercise, financially or morally. The days of Big Brother Government are over.

September 11, 2001 showed us that we are vulnerable. Some of that vulnerability goes with the territory, if we are to be a free society. But we can do more to truly protect our infrastructure and our environment from attack. For years we have been slowly starving our public health and public safety systems and resources. We must reverse that process. The public good is best served by public means.

At the same time, there is no reason for Americans to live in fear. We have enemies in the world, but we also have friends. When we give in to unreasoning fear, we do the work of terrorists for them. Each one of us is endangered far more by accident and natural disaster than by terrorists. If we devote most of our efforts to measures that protect us and help us heal from every kind of disaster, we will be safer from the effects of terrorism as well. We can do more to undercut the very reasons that people support terrorism, by understanding them and understanding ourselves. We will still have enemies, and we must defend ourselves against them. But we will earn more friends. To exploit fear is shameful. To protect ourselves from old dangers as well as new dangers is-"
"Logical!"
"Shut up, Spock! And listen!"

"But it would be irresponsible for me as President to propose such a large amount of additional spending without proposing a way to pay for it. This used to be thought of as a Republican principle, although it never really was any more Republican than Democrat. We have a great deal of unfinished business in this country. We have a great many challenges ahead. So we can't spend the government into oblivion. It's just not realistic, nor is it right.

It is also not right to continue to ask the most sacrifice from those among us who are least able to bear it-the sick, the old, the very young, the overworked and underpaid, the most vulnerable in our society, all of whom were hurt terribly by the failure of the federal government to support the states in their efforts to provide the help that the richest nation in the history of the world is fully capable of providing. Nor should we ask more of the middle class, who continue to bear a disproportionate tax burden. I must also note that it is from these families, struggling to maintain their American Dream that most of soldiers have come. These families have made their contribution.

So I will introduce legislation to repeal most of the so-called Bush tax cut as it predominately affects the wealthiest 1%, and the wealthiest 10% of our nation. In addition we will increase taxes on corporations---not to 1970s levels, but closer to a fair share, considering the benefits that corporations have reaped by being able to conduct their business within the social and legal and physical infrastructure that the American people pay for with their hard-earned taxes.

Finally, a portion of that $87 billion will go to the new Apollo Project-a public/private effort to create the new American industrial revolution in new self-sufficient and environmentally sustainable energy technologies. I'll go into much more detail about that project in a few days. But this is a plan to ensure that never again will America spill blood for oil. It is an extremely exciting new start for American industry, to once again lead the world, to boldly go where no nation has gone before."

"Captain!"
"What is it, Spock? Can't you see I'm watching this?"
"But I have just logically deduced how we can reverse the process and return to our own time and place and timeline."
"Very good, Spock. But what's your hurry? Don't you want to see how this turns out?"

United Nations Once Again Hot Dog! I mean, Boudin Blanc!

Crisis was averted today as the U.S. announced it has secured support from France for a UN resolution to become a limited partner in the Bush Administration Iraq venture. President George Bush made the announcement after lunch at the White House with the French Ambassador.

“We are happy to be partners in the fight against terrorism with our oldest ally,” President Bush said.

The French Ambassador presented him with a ceremonial check, which was signed, with that dry Gallic humor for which the French are so famous, “the Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys.”

Standing beside a giant Perrier bottle, the President munched on what he described as “the best French Fries I’ve ever tasted. They sure make good French fries over there,” he quipped. “We’ll be sending a whole lot of them to our boys in Iraq, along with a selection of fine French cheese.”

He also touted another menu item, which he called a “French hot dog.” Reporters learned later that he was speaking of boudin blancs, a French white sausage. The President was so enthusiastic about them, his press spokesman said, that he’s requested that major league baseball teams begin offering them at all ball parks, beginning with this year’s World Series.

The President also announced changes to the federal school breakfast school program standard menu, which will now include French toast and croissants. In addition, all standardized tests administered to U.S. school children above grade three will require that the student be able to spell “croissant” or the student will not advance.

The President was joined by vice president Cheney, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General and the Secretary of State in a toast to the new international agreement. “With Champagne,” The Attorney General noted. “The Real Thing. From France. If it’s not from France, you can’t call it Champagne. That’s the law,” he warned, speculating that non-compliance could very well fall under the provisions of the Patriot Act.

The President and vice-president then had an informal contest to see who could eat a plateful of French cheeses the fastest, while a good natured debate ensued between Secretary Powell and Secretary Rumsfeld over the relative merits of Pinot Noir and Merlot.

They then prepared for an official state dinner at the White House, where twenty French chefs would be preparing a special delicacy for the Bush team, filet de crow.

Quagmire

It took the Clinton administration six years to substantially undo the damage that twenty years of Republican administrations had done to America. George Bush has not been president for even three years and the damage his administration has done will take a decade if not longer to even approximately correct. Even apart from the destruction and deaths, some can never be undone.


When Clinton took office, the American economy and position in the world was threatened by deficits and debts and the perception that the federal government was helpless if not clueless in dealing with them. Social problems were worsening and the natural environment was being heedlessly destroyed. Clinton maneuvered to win what he most needed to win out of what it was possible to win in Congress. He lost big on health care. He gave in big on welfare. He gambled that the injustices in welfare and in his trade and globalism efforts, and the mistakes in his environmental legislation, would be corrected, because prosperity and peace would give him or the next Democratic president the political muscle to do so.

He tried to reorient a foreign policy distorted by Vietnam, the reactions and subsequent adventurisms of the Reaganites. His record is mixed here as well, but despite a hostile military establishment (which seems remarkably unbothered by George Bush's draft dodging and lack of military experience) he managed to steer the ship of state away from tragically misconceived military interference and quasi-military conquest.

Now in 2003 we face the catastrophe of having Nixon and Reagan in one president. Bush has imposed his Reagan-Redux voodoo economics, presenting future presidents with the most enormous debt in history. Among the many astonishing elements of this black magic act is the lack of outcry, the fact that supply side economics, having proven to be worth less than the napkin the Laffer curve was reputedly first sketched on, is back without debate. It's as if the late 1980s never happened, that a book title of the period did not cry out "America: What Went Wrong?"

Yet forewarned has not proven to be forearmed. The United States had ample warning from knowledgeable analysts as well as governments of many nations and millions of people around the world that its military attack on Iraq would come to grief. How quickly everything has become its opposite. The policies and responses that lived by 9/11 are dying by terrorist bombs and counter-terrorist violence in the Middle East and Iraq. So quickly the quagmire, and we are beset with Reagan deficits and Nixonian warfare simultaneously.

Even the clearest achieved goal of the Iraq war has backfired. No, not deposing Saddam, but turning Iraq into an American military base so the military presence in Saudi Arabia could be ended. Now the withdrawal from Saudi Arabia has been essentially accomplished, and therefore the United States is forced to stay in Iraq or lose its land-based presence in the region. For this reason---which you will never hear officially articulated---there will be no quick end to the quagmire.

American troops, already unpopular among Iraqi people for aggressive and at times what has appeared to be criminally brutal operations, will be forced by recent blatant terrorist violence, to be even more aggressive and violent. The cost of the military presence will go higher, as the administration is compelled to actually accomplish some reconstruction, which will cost even more.

Recent polls and surveys indicate that the American people are not happy about this, and they are no longer enthralled with G.W. Bush, Commander in Chief. There are several Democratic candidates with the potential to be superior presidents. But their work is being made more difficult and more thankless every day, just to get back to where we were, more or less, in November 2000. Perhaps if this president is visionary enough, and can communicate that vision convincingly, and can back it up, such a scale won't be relevant. We will truly move on. But with a better than average, politics as usual president, it will take a very long time to get back to the condition of 2000, if we get there at all. If Bush is re-elected, I doubt we ever will.

For an all too pointed Labor Day message, look for Molly Ivins' August 28 column, which I hope you will find here.

More Like It

Patience, non-California fans. It'll all be over soon.

Another usually reliable poll, the L.A. Times, gave Bustamante a double digit lead over Arnold, and this week the media finally came around. They're a bit befuddled because he's not the typical media candidate. With his formal diction he reminds me of newsreels of 1940s statesmen, though not staid--just good enunciation. He seemed a little nervous on national TV but he held his own and made sure he got his answers in before the anchor went into his act. He could catch on, who knows? The retro candidate.

The news continues to be good for Bustamante, as unions and officeholders continue to endorse him, and even Gray Davis is now publicly supporting a vote for Bustamante as well as a no vote on recall. That's pretty significant, although it may be an act of desperation. But it is a strategy that could work. It's now close to even money whether Davis will be recalled, and Bustamante is pretty likely to be the top vote getter. Things will probably get nasty from here on out, though, because he's the frontrunner. Arnold has tried to make him sound like another Gray. That won't wash. But expect an onslaught backed by those who suddenly realize that if he wins, they--being rich and corporate--will have to pay more taxes, more than Gray Davis could get away with levying on them. How many minutes will go by before we start hearing the inevitable charge of "class warfare"?

If he can survive that, Cruz will cruise.
More and more it looks like Bustamante could very well be the next Governor of CA, if not this year, next time.

The Dashed Election Guide

Cousin Lemuel writes from Ontario(where he had to cope with the Great Blackout out east: we note in passing the counter-intuitive reports that say Toronto had more serious looting problems than did New York City), and where an election is likely to be "called" soon (rather than recalled). He writes of his own election blues dilemmas. His list is as follows:

I'm tired of investing hope and washing out.

I'm not sure about any of "my' candidates. Will they act like I want them to act, on the outside chance they are elected?

Or will they find a "higher calling" a more "strategic analysis"?

My time is more precious to me and I don't feel like wasting it.

What better use of time than a democratic struggle?

Yes, if the candidate is trustworthy and simpatico.

Once I'm there (in the campaign) auto-pilot will take over. I will be campaign-man and do my duty.

I'm not sure I like that any more.

All good points. Then he asks us for advice. We are not used to being asked for advice. Usually we are given it. "Love it or leave it," is a frequent example. However, we will hazard the following Point of View (which is not Advice, mind.)

Radical though we may be according to prevailing standards, such as they are, we tend to adhere to the only and oft-repeated pronouncements of Grandma, which were two:
"You live long enough, you see everything."
"We do the best we can."

We tend to feel that pretty much sums up life, the universe and everything.

Applied to elections, it results in this philosophy: what you're doing basically is hiring somebody. You have to hire somebody, you've got a limited number of probably limited quality job candidates, and you have to choose one.

So you choose the best available for the job. If you're not confident they'll do the job the way you would like---and in politics, that's pretty much a given---then we tend to fall back on the Hippocratic Oath test: which is likely to do the least harm. (Could be we'd also call it the Democratic Oath.) This alone made us staunch supporters of Al Gore in the last U.S. presidential bash. It was in many ways the reason we don't regret voting for Clinton twice: he did some good, he did some unforgivably bad, but basically he did a lot less harm than his immediate predecessor did, and his opponents would.

This by the way is our "general election" philosophy. Not necessarily our nominating or primary election approach. Right now the U.S. is poised to begin primary elections for president, and there's six or eight Democratic candidates vying for the eventual party nomination: to be one of the two major party candidates. We believe this is where a thousand flowers should be blooming, and a vigorous debate should ensue. Many people are choosing sides now, and although we have our eye on a couple of the candidates, we're not choosing yet. We haven't heard the debate. So far the debate has made health care a major issue---one candidate went out on a limb with an ambitious plan, it got a lot of voter interest and response, and so the other candidates had to come up with their own plans. This is how the process should work.

The candidates state their positions. They influence each other. We see who seems to have the goods in terms of smarts, ability to communicate, and smell. Do they smell trustworthy, resourceful, etc.? How electable are they? Some people make their choice on this basis very early. Things change too much and too fast for that, we believe. Of course, if some absolute pig is gaining momentum and emerging as a preemptive front-runner, then strategies change.

Here in the U.S., the issues that we will be looking at in judging presidential candidates will be: health care, campaign finance and global heating. Of course we'll be checking out positions on Iraq, foreign policy in general, other domestic issues, but assuming the candidates in our running are all for quieting the current imperialist warmongering (time for that advice again, eh?) we see these as the most important long-term issues. A comprehensive single-payer health insurance is the most desperately needed economic and social change, cutting across class lines from upper middle to the bottom. Elections are always going to be less than completely meaningful as long as candidates and officeholders can be bought. Global heating is the most important factor for the next generation and the ones following. Already we're seeing effects that may well be charged to global heating, including as many as 10,000 deaths in France from a heat wave and drought. If the number proves out, and the science suggests culpability, it could well be that the climate crisis has already killed more people than 9/11.

The contemporary voter may often be all too easily hoodwinked by image, but there's some sense in the instinct to elect people who can communicate. Only the ability to communicate can leverage enough power to overcome inertia, not to mention the very monied interests. It's chaos theory come to politics, the way a little can go a long way.

So charisma can be a plus, however dangerous it also can be. The point perhaps is to look at it objectively. Not only am I swayed, but are these positions solid, grounded in fact and analysis and good purpose, and are others swayed? Then maybe you've got a candidate.

When a candidate gets elected, they have to go do the job. It is a job like any other: you have to do it every day, but there are still only 24 hours in that day, and you are still only a human being. At this point, a candidate's self-knowledge can be important. How aware are they of their motivations, of their situation? Clinton may not have been completely clear on his motives, but he usually understood his political situation. JFK may not have been particularly astute psychologically, but he had a sense of irony, and that's almost as good. He almost always knew the score.

As voters and citizens, we tend to project a lot on our leaders. We see the flaws in them we'd rather not look at in ourselves. We don't give them the benefit of the doubt that we certainly give ourselves. Few officeholders have much power. Sometimes the ones who seem to be "getting something done" are getting it done because the monied interests want it done, and they're on the payroll already. So a little patience in general, but keep after them on issues. The citizen's responsibility does not end with the vote.

So that's the Voting Guide. Working on a campaign is a more stringent commitment, but if it helps get issues debated, that alone may be worth it. If your candidate gets elected, you might get easier access for your views. And the great thing about hiring somebody for public office is that you can help fire them at the end of their term without getting sued.

Why is the Press Ignoring Bustamante?


It's been all Arnold all the time in the national media, which unfortunately is to be expected. But California media has not been doing much better. Last weekend the Field Poll, which has a consistent record for accurate predictions, showed that Cruz Bustamante led Arnold among likely voters. This was before there was anything that could be described as a Bustamante campaign---no paid media, no endorsements, no speeches or statements after the announcement. You'd think that this would be a wakeup call, that the media should start taking the lieutenant governor seriously. No such luck.

The Sunday SF Chronicle news section was all over Arnold, and featured a photo of the stripper candidate pushing out her chest. But no Bustamante. Nothing. Or as they must be saying across the state, Nada.

It was the same story days later when Arnold had a press conference and then a media-ted meeting with advisers. The media was obsessed with the answers Arnold gave and didn't give. When was he going to give specifics on how he would solve California's problems, and especially balance its budget?

Meanwhile, Bustamante laid out a plan for dealing with the state budget. He gave specifics. He was largely ignored again. He maybe got a paragraph or two in a story on Gray Davis and his "from the heart" speech.

This week Bustamante got endorsements from some labor unions and from the California Democratic congressional delegation. Will this finally earn him some media credibility? Don't bet on it. The media would rather carp on the guy who won't give specifics than report on the guy who does. Gary Coleman has gotten more coverage than Bustamante.

Somewhere we heard or read a reporter saying that the media is re-learning how to cover campaigns. They're trying to figure out how people want them covered. So far their answer is to follow the celebrity. Cover it so that stories on news pages and news channels are indistinguishable from Entertainment Tonight. Forget any civic responsibility in framing the issues that will actually matter to the people of California at a time of crisis, the issues that the governor of California actually has to deal with, and reporting on what the candidates say about them. Talk about your harvest of shame.

If I'm a labor leader or a Latino leader I'm telling my people: Look, they're ignoring you again. They're ignoring what matters to your lives, they're ignoring the candidate who is willing to talk about taxing the rich more fairly and taxing wealthy businesses (and there are plenty of those) to do what government in a democracy is supposed to do. They're ignoring you. Get yours at the polls.

RECALL ARNOLD!
by Theron Dash

Now in our second minute of gathering signatures on petitions to recall Governor Arnold (we still can't spell his last name---reason number one to get rid of the sucker!), the Recall Governor Arnold Movement aka Terminate the Terminator is pioneering the politics of Anticipatory Boredom Remover.

Just thinking about how dull life (i.e. media) will be without a recall campaign is motivation enough. But think as well of all the really hard stuff we'll have to hear about when the circus leaves town. Fortunately California leads the way once again, especially in our cutting edge entertainment-news- industrial complex. Not only have we solved the budget crisis in the default choice of the truly desperate (when too little money is available for too much and there are no good choices, the solution is to throw it all away as fast as possible) but we see the future ordained by the logic of cable TV news: total recall all of the time. Like so totally.

Recall Arnold is the place to be. That he may not win the election is beside the point---who cares about the other nonentities and politicians? Let's get started, and give people something to sign in the Safeway lot.

Total Recall

Okay, so that's not the first Arnold pun you've seen, nor by the level of cleverness adored by major media, will it be the last. Every day changes the California recall election, but unless something major happens in the next 24 hours, the basic situation may be set: Arnold is in, Issa (the rabid reactionary who started this recall mess) is out, Feinstein is not getting in, nor is Riordan. But Democrat Lt. governor Cruz Bustamante is running with the slogan: vote no on the recall, then vote for me. And it looks like the state courts are going to let the recall election proceed in October as scheduled.

So far Bustamante is taking some hits for hypocrisy, but what he's done is just plain good sense. Recent polls showed Gray Davis even weaker than before as the recall became reality. The ballot is in two parts: yes or no on the recall is the first part. Right now sentiment is tracking yes. The second part is where you vote for the replacement governor, should the current one be recalled. Since this is not a "vote of confidence" election, and it makes no sense to recall the current governor in part one and then vote him back into office in part two, Davis cannot be a candidate to replace himself. Davis wants an all the eggs in one basket strategy for the Dems, to totally defeat the recall. But lots of Dems, in and out of office, were getting nervous about this all last week. Then Big Arnold announced, and Bustamante made his move. (Little Arnold-that is, Gary Arnold---also announced, but the only voters who care about that are the ones who are uncertain whether to vote for him or Larry Flynt.)

The media is currently concentrating on Big Arnold, and whether his candidacy might be derailed by "revelations." not from on high but from down low. Of course this is what the media would be concentrating on, especially with a candidate who announced on the Tonight Show. And they'll probably keep their cameras trained on the Arnold show for the next few weeks.

In which case, they'll miss the story. (Hey, they wouldn’t be the media if they didn’t.) Unless Arnold runs a brilliant campaign (his first words hardly suggest he will) and Bustamante runs a terrible one (his announcement was not very well handled, media-wise), then the governorship is likely to remain Democratic. And here's why:

The recall so far has all been about polls, hype, and getting people to register their anger and fear by signing their name outside the supermarket or post office. Californians will sign anything. It's their California-given right. But most of them don't bother voting, even on the propositions their signatures put on the ballot.

Voting is a different dynamic. It all happens the same day, so old-fashioned organizing and organizations are important to getting people to the polls. The Democrats swept the state last time. The patriotic wave for Bush has mostly crested, the surf is no longer up. There may not be a lot of grassroots GOP enthusiasm for Arnold. Rabid conservatives upset with Arnold's views on abortion and gun control may very well go to Bill Simon, their candidate last time, who is on the ballot this time, too.

By the numbers, Cruz Bustamante was the top vote getter in the state just two years ago. It's not because he has startling name recognition. I doubt if he's ever been on the Tonight show. He's not even especially telegenic. But he's a Democrat and he's Latino. Latino voters know him well. No Latino has ever been elected governor. California has no majority population, but the next time it does, it will be Latino. Bustamante is the future, and the future may be now.

So now the Democrats have two decent chances to hold the governorship. Gray Davis will put a lot of money into defeating the recall. That in itself may succeed. Unions will provide organizing, and get their people to the polls. (That Arnold is so aggressively anti-union will help their motivation.) They will be urged to vote no on the recall. But regardless of how they vote on the first question, they can vote on the second, and chances are they'll vote for Bustamante. He is after all the Lt. Governor.

But Davis has indicated he intends to spend the next couple of months governing, "trying to make the lives of Californians better." That's a somewhat better strategy than he started out with, which was Issa-bashing. Bustamante immediately criticized it and told him not to dare going negative. He's running again on "experience," even though this is his greatest weakness---he ran and won on experience, and has gone a long way towards turning it into a dirty word.
People are looking for leadership, and Arnold is sounding that theme. The problems of California are not the fault of Gray Davis, but his leadership has been lacking. But at a time when Davis' best hope is bold leadership and laying out a courageous vision for the future, he seems to be saying he's going to hunker down.

Dissatisfaction with that may be enough to push the recall button to Bye Bye Gray. Then Bustamante should win. If he can articulate a vision and show leadership, he's got the experience to make people more comfortable voting for him in time of crisis.

He may lose some votes on the left to the Green Party candidate and Arianna Huffington, although I wouldn't be surprised if she withdraws in September in favor of Cruz. Peter Camejo is the Green Party candidate, and in some ways has better credentials in advocating for Latinos. But he's running his campaign against Gray Davis. Democrats are not going to vote for him, especially with the memory of Nader and his indirect role in the Bush putsch. Rank and file Democrats are likely to vote against the recall and for Bustamante.

With moderate to conservative Democrats and an energized Latino electorate, Bustamante should have enough to win in a very crowded field. I don't think the Hollywood liberals will vote for Arnold, even if he is pretty liberal on social issues. Not if Cruz looks like he can win. Sometimes liberal guilt actually works out for the best.

A lot will depend on Bustamante. Can he articulate a strong, clear and sensible vision? Can he differentiate himself from Davis without criticizing Davis? He is supporting a "no" on recall, so he's not running against Davis. Then again, he is. It's delicate but doable.

This applecart might be spilled by a higher profile Democrat getting into the race. Leon Panetta is mentioned. Bad idea. Bad for the party, bad for him, now that Bustamante is in the race. I don't know what Panetta's political base is. I do know that he often comes across on TV as softly arrogant, especially when he starts every sentence with "Obviously." Few if any of the Clinton appointees did well at the polls last time. (Come on, you can't count Hillary.)

So pretty soon we may not be talking about Total Recall. We'll be looking at Cruz control.

CA Note from M.Dash

We think of him as a distant cousin: Jon Carroll, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, who this week referred to Ashcroft & Company as "inept fascists" who "can't even run a police state right" has pretty much nailed the reaction of non-Californians to California's budget crisis and recall election. Here's the link to Jon Carroll's CA column.

DASHNOTE:

If you missed Anatol Lieven's essay (ostensibly a book review) in the Nation, you should read it now, linked here: "The Empire Strikes Back".

It's as true now as it was when it was written, way back in June or July. (Published in July 7, 2003 issue.)

Here's a taste: "Given its immense wealth, the United States can afford a military capable of dominating the earth; or it can afford a stable, secure system of social and medical entitlements for a majority of its aging population; or it can afford massive tax cuts for its wealthiest citizens and no tax raises for the rest. But it cannot afford all three..."

Chaos: Theory and Reality

by Theron Dash

Could it be that the terrorists who created the 9-11 scenario were prophetic theorists in the application of chaos theory to politics and society? Did they foresee that without years of warfare, and huge quantities of blood and treasure, or even devastating weapons to wipe out millions, they could destroy the United States of America? Did they realize that they could do it with just a single day of dramatic horror, much as the well-placed, well-timed flap of a paradigmatic butterfly's wing could eventually cause a hurricane?

We are well on the way to providing their descendants with the material to support such a boast. The dominoes are still falling, but the pattern is clear: America is well on the way to destroying itself.

The events of 9-11 emboldened the hot-wired fanatics and coolly arrogant overseers of ruling class interests populating the Bush administration and their corporate (including media) and Rabid Right support system to manipulate the more infantile instincts of the public to power their apparently self-serving but dangerously delusionary agenda into consequential reality.

Now those consequences are being felt in virtually every home, in every corner of this noisy but numbed republic. With the federal purse closed to every institution except the military, and with prospect of federal poverty and inaction for years to come, the states and local governments are now facing destruction they can no longer hide. In the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, the states cannot fund programs to lend a life-giving hand to the poor, the sick and the old. They cannot lend a life-changing hand to poor and middle class children in the form of good schools and affordable higher education, or in support for the arts and other preposterously inexpensive ways of transforming lives with benefit to all.

And that's just the beginning. Local governments are facing the kind of decisions appropriate to nations mired in poverty or devastating warfare. Because people are being fired and infrastructure support is being neglected, there will be homes that burn down and people burned to death inside them because America cannot afford adequate fire departments. There will be people who suffer and die when earthquakes and storms wreak havoc because America cannot afford to provide timely assistance. Very quietly and individually, there will be people who suffer and die because America cannot afford to provide basic medical care to those who need it, especially now that even emergency room doors are often closed to those without enormously expensive insurance.

No one knows who the victims will be of ordinary but increasingly dangerous misfortunes. We will all soon be forced to understand that few homes, very neighborhoods, and no cities or regions will be as secure as they were just a few years ago.

Each state and locality has its particular layers of additional responsibility for their plight: bad laws, bad governmental practices, bad corporate behavior, bad politics. But since these situations are being repeated throughout America, there is a national responsibility.

Where is America's wealth going? It is going to the wealthy, partly in the form of enormous tax cuts. It is going to the military industrial complex, and it's going down the drain of misconceived warfare and occupation in Iraq. The Bush administration is responsible, and the media and the American people are complicit, however unconsciously or mistakenly.

Consider the blood lust exhibited at the news that Saddam's sons were killed. Consider the rules of engagement there, in which any returned fire permitted total destruction and killing of everyone---in this case, the sons (whose brutality and sadism had been visited on Iraqis, not Americans, who presumably have the right to set their own priorities) and a fourteen year old grandson. Consider that a few million dollars would make a huge difference in many American communities right now, and that the informant who led American troops to Saddam's sons will be paid rewards totaling some 30 million dollars. The current wave of triumphant preening and prediction that these killings spells the end of Iraqi resistance to America's criminally confused occupation will likely prove to be the usual wishful thinking, as it is the same kind of willful blindness and imagery-will-make-it-true so consistent with this delusionary policy as well as the fundamentalist mindset of much of the Rabid Right.

Our Dash in California
by Morgan Dash

California is a nation within a nation, large and wealthy enough to go a long way to solving many of its own problems, yet for that same reason feeling the ups and downs of the America to which it is appended more powerfully than almost any other state.

California's state budget crisis is having effects as severe as anywhere in America, and more severe than many other states. Layered on the national insanity is a political system that often bypasses both the barriers and institutional consistencies of representative government with single issue ballot measures that reflect the natural if moronic desires of Californians (as expressed in a recent poll) for lower taxes and more government spending.

Now mandated through the similar petition process, California will hold the first recall election of its governor in history. This comes when the California budget is still not passed, while millions of people are directly and indirectly affected by the expected cuts that have not yet been officially made (and thousands who are paid through the state are facing dramatic loss of income if the budget isn't passed very soon.)

The recall petitioning and politicking by the rabid right has already diverted attention and serious engagement in the process of dealing with the realities of state income and outflow. The upcoming recall campaign will mean much more politics and much less government, and therefore more chaos and neglect.

The recall campaign also offers governor Gray Davis the opportunity to go on a dramatic offensive, to talk sense about the total political system in the state, and to propose comprehensive reforms. The seeds of this approach are in his budget document itself, which catalogues the absurd and contradictory mandates of the ballot measure system. He has the opportunity to be heard on what the state really needs to do to make the state government work for California's people: To propose needed reforms of the system, to talk in graphic detail about the responsibility of the Bush administration for this crisis, and to propose how California can take advantage of its size and wealth to institute solutions to its people's most pressing problems, regardless of what the federal government does. At the top of this agenda should be a state financed comprehensive health insurance program that guarantees coverage to all Californians.

Gray Davis is widely believed to be excessively political, self-serving and insensitive to the needs of Californians. And that's just among his supporters. He may believe that he can survive a recall election with relative ease, but that may not be the case. If Richard Rioardan is his chief Republican opponent, he is in for a very tough fight. Even Arnold S. has the potential to draw enough votes, especially if he comes out strongly for support of the arts and adds that constituency to those who would vote for him because he's a Republican or a "non-politician" celebrity.

So Davis may decide that the best political move is to shatter his gray image with bold analysis and proposals. If he does and if he can do it with some effectiveness, California and the nation will benefit from the ensuing debate.

By the by, in the interest of family unity I remind you that brother Gabriel continues his archival verse project over at http://gabrieldash.blogspot.com.

Reaping

The United States of Bush was going to crush the Great Saddam, with his weapons of mass destruction and U.S. equipped army and CIA trained terror squads, and bring democracy to Iraq. It granted other less powerful and morally clarified nations the privilege of participating but when they balked, well fuck em. We don't need them. We'll see who gets the damn contracts when the dust settles and the oil flows again. Pass me some of them freedom fries.

So the U.S. of B. figured to get in, wipe out the bad guys, be conquering heroes, scare the shit out of other countries, get the contracts and get out. Couple of months, and on to Iran, or Syria maybe. Get the whole Axis of Evil by Christmas.

And it all worked great until it all started falling apart. The same folks who foisted such an obvious B-movie story of the Heroic Private Lynch onto a tabloid-brain media whose idea of a literary genius is Tom Brokaw, got caught crossing their fingers and telling a little white whopper in the State of the Union. Iraq turned out not to be a self-winding watch you took off a dead soldier; once you owned it you actually had to run it. Costs $5 billion a month just to keep the place in soldiers. Or some say $4 billion. The difference in the estimates could change several million lives back in the states, where the poor, the sick and the children would be paying for all this with their lives, but that's another story...or is it?

Well, turns out the U. of B. S. could use some help after all. How about some soldiers to replace the ones who are falling down with exhaustion and being picked off in the public market? Or a few bucks anyway, can you help us out here? Hey France? Germany? But oddly enough, nobody is lining up to volunteer. What do you mean, we're out of freedom fries?

Now that Bush Nation is showing how easily overwhelmed it is in that one little test case country without much in the way of even weapons of fairly big destruction (but still with lots of automatic rifles), those other Axis of Evil countries are no longer quaking in their boots. More like they're laughing up their nuclear weapons suitable aluminum sleeves.

Turns out those contracts aren't worth much without a government making sure the trains run, not to mention the water, and that there's a law or two, and some people to make them and enforce them, so you don't get picked off climbing the oil rig.

It's all very funny isn't it except for the Iraqis dying, the American dying, the Brits dying, and here at home when the house catches on fire it goes on burning because there's no firetrucks coming and you can just burn in America, and if you get sick or an infected cut and you've got no insurance even the emergency room doesn't have to take you anymore so you can just suffer and die in America, and if there's an earthquake or a terrorist attack you can call homeland security or you can call your momma in heaven for all the good it will do you because nobody's coming and you can wait and starve and die of thirst and exposure in America, and if you're looking for a future and some hope don't look to the schools, don't look for your arts programs your theater teacher who told you yes your life does mean something, you can do something well, there were people who suffered before and found out things, we can at least all sing together but don't bother because all that's unaffordable in America, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in human history and can't afford anything except an army for the 99% and everything else for the one-tenth of 1%, the gated ones, them of the royal coup, the supreme coup, the corporate backscratch club of the U.S. of Bush.

As the Worm Turns

Now that young Americans are once again the cannon fodder of politicians' ambitions, being subjected to from ten to 25 attacks every day in Iraq, and dying at the rate of one a day for awhile, the worm is starting to turn. The most vocal alarm is coming from a traditional harbinger (people who have been "in country" and have talked to troops there) and from a source that usually isn't heard from this early (families of military personnel.) But it's only going to grow.

At the same time as Americans are beginning to question what the hell we're doing over there, they are also beginning to doubt that there was sufficient reason to start the war in the first place. The White House admission that one of the two pieces of evidence Bush claimed in his State of the Union address to show that Iraq was readying nuclear weapons (the uranium buy in Africa) was false made lots of news, much more dramatically than the earlier revelation that the other bit of evidence (aluminum tubes that turned out to be the wrong kind for nukes) when it was shredded weeks ago.

This is how it happens to extremists. The uranium lie happened because White House political operatives intimidated and overrode intelligence and foreign policy professionals. They've been doing that since 9/11, although until recently it's been heresy to say so. But being hoist on their own petard is only a part of how the worm turns. Extremism always invites its opposite. The claim of complete virtue, of being the force of pure good battling against the force of pure evil, encourages the hidden evil to rise and explode. When it does, the claimer of total virtue looks doubly bad, and moreover, cannot admit to sin or error. It doesn't allow the worm a lot of wriggle room.

The drama, or at least the soap opera, will continue, with its ups and downs, heroes and villains, dizzying ascents and incredible collapses, the inevitable falters and the underdog comes through, or not. Que sera sera may not be much of a political philosophy, but stay tuned. As grandma used to say, you live long enough, you see everything. For instance, Ralph Nader running again.

Meme This: An Essay for a Day

by Phineas Dash

Blogger has switched to a new system which seems unable or unwilling to publish longer entries. I assume this is a temporary problem, so for now I’ve sliced this essay up into separate posts, but you should be able to follow it easily in the normal way, from top to bottom being from start to finish. Just ignore the time checks.


Something called a "meme" is a highly fashionable idea at the moment. What is it? A meme is a highly fashionable idea.

Richard Dawkins is credited with naming it, as a kind of imitation (from the French meme) as an analogue to genes, because it is copied and transmitted from one person to another. Darwinists like Dawkins sometimes use the term as if memes were genes for ideas or information.
But they also use it as if memes are viruses. People become infected with ideas or information, such as buzz-words, fads, "urban legends," and so on.

In that sense, as Lee Cronk writes, "The idea of the meme is itself a meme, and a successful one at that..." Highly respected thinkers like Daniel Dennett use the term. For the short time I was a consulting editor for them, the folks at Adbusters Magazine swallowed it whole. Perhaps they saw in it an alternate pedigree as well, from William Burroughs and his idea of language as a virus.

Are you confused yet? I am. And I suspect we're supposed to be. This meme stuff has the smell of semiotics and deconstructionism, both perfectly good tools until they became dogmas, with their own clergy and secret language. Memeticists who might chance to read the rest of this commentary might simply dismiss it by saying that I don't understand what they mean by "memes." And they may be right. But rather than saying I'm sorry, I am inclined to get loudly in their faces with the simple retort, THEN YOU DIDN'T EXPLAIN IT VERY WELL, DID YOU?

So let's get down to it. First off, no one has ever seen a meme. They have not mapped them as they appear in the human organism, as they have genes. They have not studied them under microscopes, as they have viruses. I mention this because, though sometimes memes are treated as metaphors or similes, they are also sometimes treated as if they have the same effects as genes and viruses---that they are genes and viruses of a sort.

But of what sort? And in what realm? Here is a source of major confusion. Genes are physical things that get passed on from person to person through sexual reproduction. The genes themselves pass on stuff that interacts with other stuff that forms yet other stuff into organized stuff that becomes feet and ears and brains. We say "Genes pass on information" but really, that in itself is pretty close to a metaphorical description. This is how we describe what genes do, in effect.

But memes aren't physical in the sense that genes are. So if genes replicate in the body, and viruses operate in the body, where do memes replicate and operate? Damn good question. (Remember, these are evolutionary biologists, philosophers, anthropologists, etc. talking about memes, not neuroscientists.) Name the realm better, then we can talk. Maybe you're making some sort of sense, or maybe you're just you're violating the categorical imperative by telling me that apples act like automobiles on television except when they don't.

But memes are very popular. The idea that ideas are infectious is infectious. We're enthralled by the speed at which commercial culture, corporate buzz-words, fad-driven media and electronic communication pass "facts", fashions, catch-phrases, images and ideas around.

But look at the words I've used so far, and how many different kinds of ideas and information they describe (don't forget "dogma"). Just exactly what do we gain by grouping them all, and more, under a single heading? Far less than what we lose, I think.

Sure, a phrase, a slogan, a hairstyle, a "look" will "catch on." Melodies can be "catchy," they are "infectious melodies." Certain books and authors, or political leaders, or movie stars, will "catch fire" with the public. Those are nice descriptions of particular phenomena. But they aren't all the same.

A fad is not the same as a dogma, though they both have a social component, a "belonging," a sense that exhibiting the same idea or image is a necessity of membership. But we have far more to learn by finding likenesses and differences, contrasting and comparing, and going deeper, than we do by equating them.

And they are certainly not the same as dogma, as cultural norms, as expectations, as legends, as discoveries, as new theories, as old assumptions, as wisdom. Yes, we can probably learn a few things by looking at them together. But we learn a lot more, with more accuracy and significance, by analyzing them separately, or within a restricted domain, and then comparing them, relating them, synthesizing something from them.

To me, memes are also a dodge, a way of avoiding personal and societal responsibility. We no longer have to worry about such phenomena as conditioning, as social pressure, self-censorship or the economic pressure to conform not only in certain behaviors but in certain worldviews and beliefs and even emotions. (It's not enough anymore to do a job for money; one has to be "committed" to it, be "an associate" and "part of the team," and one must even be "excited" by the goals and sometimes literally the gods of the employer. Giving control of the body and part of the mind to the economy is no longer enough in increasing areas of paid-for endeavor. They demand your soul as a condition of employment and therefore of a certain kind of survival.)

Once you posit ideas as behaving like and practically being biological entities, inherited or caught as infections, self-replicating entities for which you are merely some sort of carrier and they are somehow (like the selfish gene) only interested in their own survival (so to speak), then we are helpless, or require some unspecified form of medical attention (drugs probably.) What's really laughable is that the same sort of people who decry a culture of victimization---who prefer that people with emotional trauma, physical addictions and psychological pathologies just stop whining and get on with it---are now telling us that we're not responsible for what we believe, accept, favor, admire or choose. It's a different flavor of dehumanization, the mirror image of 1950s behaviorism.

Some adherents would say that by positing memes as infections, they are using a potent metaphor easily understood in today's world, in order to warn people that they need to fight off these infections, these pernicious ideas or skewed values or downright lies and subterfuge buried beneath the surface of a cheery commercial image or slogan. Fair enough-but what do you need "memes" for? And once you've gotten your point across, that these are powerfully infectious messages, that in some sense they are feed addictions to consumerism and so on, aren't they pretty useless? Don't they start getting in the way, when you're trying for more precise analysis? Or are you content to fight meme with meme?

Memes institutionalize the superficial. They discourage making distinctions, or developing and communicating more meaningful and significant explanations, or looking for cause (and maybe even cure) in social, cultural, political, economic and interpersonal realms.

Some would say that memes, like genes, are just one factor, and insofar as they are infectious, we can call upon the antibodies of consciousness and good sense to combat them. Fine. As some sort of new simile, as a weak metaphor meant to suggest the power of vivid images in a world high on connection and low on judgment, okay. But I don't think that's how the concept is usually used. Memes are real to their adherents. And they are certainly real enough to spawn an academic discipline, with its conferences, journal articles and books. To which I say, pish, tosh. Get in line behind deconstructionism, semiotics and postmodernism as dogmas that were pushed to absurd heights, and like stock market bubbles of ideas, deflated to nothing, leaving a lot of stale, stinking air.

Part of this also reflects what seems to me an overly mechanistic approach to Darwinist evolution and genetics. But I am not arguing that there is no biological basis for how we receive and judge ideas. New ideas are attractive, I'd guess, because humans survived by taking new information seriously, and not resting until every aspect of it, every possibility, was thoroughly explored. There is survival value in a stable and dependable set of beliefs and practices. (Plus there is resistance to new information by those heavily invested in the old, especially those who derive their power from the established order.) But humanity, and I suspect other creatures, haven't survived by ignoring new information completely. (Plus some will be excited by the old guard's resistance, especially those with less power.)

New information of a negative kind is the most obvious, such as the novelty of a new predator in the neighborhood. (If you think this doesn't still impress people, try the phrase "9-11.") But positive novelty is also important, beginning with new food sources or ways of getting food. We are curious creatures, as many creatures are, and among social creatures, new information that gets the attention of others provides identity and status.

There's also little doubt that humans (like other creatures) find certain qualities in the form of information-melody and rhyme for example-that may indicate some survival value as direct as making information easier to remember, and as indirect as that they cause pleasure, and pleasure has positive physical effects that can enhance survival and fitness for reproduction. And perhaps these qualities are akin to the burrs that encase seeds so the burrs will stick to animal fur and fall off on distant ground where the seeds propagate. But information doesn't come in catch-phrases and melodies. Corporations pay billions to have information crafted, shaped, formed in precisely the most infectious images, sounds and words that money can buy and, more to the point, human minds can devise, because they are trying very hard to do just that.

Some information---like push-button patriotic phrases, expressions of race hatred, or to some extent like the information in commercials and political persuasion-may bypass consciousness and go directly to the unconscious. (I suspect meme-meisters don't make this claim because "unconscious" is not a fashionable idea in their neighborhood.) Again, I find this terminology more useful, more fruitful, for contemplation, analysis and action (the action is: make it conscious and deal with it) than the blunt instrument of memes.

I could go on, but my box of memes is empty. Except for one more: I've concluded that memes make sense to extraverts, because extraverts are oriented towards information more fully formed from outside. So information would appear to them to be like an infection coming into a body. And since most people are extraverts, memes are a popular idea.

Intraverts have their own problems, but some-like being taken over like zombies (or patsies) by the belief that stock markets always go up, or believing in memes and selfish genes mostly because they're cute, fashionable, endlessly repeated, and the boss says so -we are immune to.

king to pawn

by Phineas Dash

Musings inspired by the confluence of Bushism and the Matrix Reloaded, among other distractions...

The idea of kings began perhaps as a mutation of the tribal figure we call the shaman: from one who hears the gods by deftly reading the signs of nature, to the one and only one, who the one and only God talks to.

Maybe the first were charismatic types with a flair for administration and certainly with a taste for power. They ruled by fear and love---by claiming to be the chosen of the King of Heaven who said whether or not the crops will grow to fruition, and by physical force: with an army to subdue the populace, and to fight enemies, invented or real. Conquest could lead to kingship. More lands meant more power. So it went, and so it goes.

When human societies were small and moved through the landscape among equals, there was no need of a king, an absolute ruler. Only when people became dependent on a single source of sustenance---even a single cultivated crop---in a single place, did they feel the need for a single authority. One King of Kings, one king of the realm, and a hierarchy of ownership and administration: the aristocracy to supply the army and control the peasants in exchange for land, power and courtside seats. Warfare of king against king, war within the aristocracy for the right to become king, transformed and absorbed the energies of human societies as they grew.

The religions that emerged from the Mesopotamian deserts were funneled into the king system. Who owns the holy truth? At first it's everybody until somebody claims it all, claims to know, claims the direct line to the King of Kings, so we fall right into following. But it's a damn good job so there are lots of contenders: prophets and heretics and who's on first-- so it becomes dogma eat dogma out there: popes vs. kings, kings vs popes, kings become popes, popes become kings, let's call the whole thing off. How about a savior then? Another name for the new king. Is this the best you can come up with?

We have yet to escape this system. It rules us in our so-called democracies and republics, in our churches, our sciences and arts. It governs our economics and determines how we spend the time of our lives. The authoritarian power may seem dispersed and unidentifiable now, but its basis is clear in how we deify one king or another, even if it is the king or queen of the moment; even if it's Stephen King.

The only meaningful revolt now is the revolt against kings, the idea of kings, the power of kings, the structures of kings, the king’s specialists, the emotions evoked by the system of kings, the beliefs based on the faith in kings and saviors.

Heroes are something else. Heroes and leaders, excellence, special gifts and sensitivities, and a captain to steer the ship, are all real, all to be nurtured and celebrated, and appropriately used. No hero triumphs without help, many myths are stories of groups of heroes, each contributing a talent or strength. The myths of heroes are myths of diversity and cooperation, with leadership and sensitivity to the realities of nature.

We need heroes, but we don't need another savior. Kings and saviors are the wellsprings of violence. The king suckers heroes and turns them into specialists, gets them fighting turf wars against each other, fighting for favor and funding, ignoring each other, learning nothing, dividing so the king can conquer.

We must oppose the king, disobey and resist. The king we must kill is inside us. We must understand what is inside us, what kings and what killers. The hero inside must be encouraged. We must understand, reconcile, invent, encourage, and work at it like the addicts to the king system we are. Saviors won't save us from ourselves.

WMD

Terrorists will try to use Weapons of Mass Destruction in America in the next two years, predicts the Bush administration. Say, doesn’t that include election year? I guess we’d better reelect these folks who are taking such good care of the country. What with Syria harboring terrorists and now Iran touted as a nuclear threat, we sure are glad we’ve conquered Iraq and are hard at work turning it into an American military base and oil well, surrounded by civil chaos.

So what if none of these WMDs are found in Iraq. The most important WMDs are in your minds and hearts anyway. The focus of your fears.

We’re too busy to read biographies of Karl Rove, or Joan Didion’s reporting going back to Bush the Elder that lay out the dangers in scandalously transparent detail. Despite their supposed piety, nothing is sacred to these people but power. They will manipulate every issue and emotion for one purpose: to keep and extend their power. Right now the Bush administration is as dangerous to America as Hitler and the Nazis were to Germany in the 1930s. (Of course, Americans would never commit such violence on a race or class as the Nazis did with the Jews. Never mind that our concentration camps are full of mostly one race, comprising a high proportion of said race, and we execute mostly one class, with some eugenic benefits when they also happen to be retarded.)

We’re so fixated on the latest flavor of fear, so attuned to novelty in our favorite WMDs, that a recently signed pact between the U.S. and Russia promising to reduce their arsenals of nuclear weapons by two-thirds came and went unnoticed. Apart from the mutual cynicism masking a tiny bit of actual progress (at least as measured against standing arsenals, if not previous agreements), this is a disquieting suggestion of how used to the idea of nuclear weapons we’ve become.

It’s been forty years since the nuclear test ban treaty, just after the Cuban Missile Crisis made the awful prospect of nuclear holocaust a clear and present danger. It’s been 58 years since Hiroshima; only fading codgers were around for that, and only retirees remember the days of desert booms and fallout in the backyard. Nuclear war is no longer the sum of all fears (especially if an a-bomb dropped in Baltimore doesn’t disrupt the Beltway too much.) So impoverished is our imagination that it seems quite thinkable that we’ll see a nuclear bomb—not a so-called “dirty” bomb, which is just some explosives that spread a little radiation and a lot of panic, but a bona fide big bang nuke---used by some country against an enemy—before the decade is out, perhaps well before any more chi-chi WMDs. We came close to the first actual nuclear exchange just a year or so ago, and India and Pakistan have not exactly resolved their differences since.

This is not to downgrade the dangers of your favorite WMD; biological and chemical and soon genetic weapons can be deployed cheaply and by small groups, and pretty soon by individuals who find automatic weapons too limiting. It would be nice if our leaders were actually doing something about these dangers other than trying to scare us into voting for them and increasing their power, but of course that's your usual liberal wishful thinking. No, the likelihood of a big bang is just a predictable consequence of our apathy. The nuclear threat has been around so long without anything much ever happening, and people no longer fear it, that it just becomes more likely that it will finally be fulfilled, and we'll see what it really looks like (that is, if we don't happen to be real close to where it happens.) Bet the cable channels can't wait.